Read Fingerprints of the Gods Page 3

of my previous book, The Sign and the Seal. Like a guardian angel he

  volunteered to devote a hefty chunk of his spare time to helping me out

  in the US with research, contacts and the collection of documentary

  resources of relevance to Fingerprints of the Gods. He did a brilliant job,

  always sending me the right books just when I needed them and finding

  references that I didn’t even know existed. He was also an accurate

  weather-vane on the quality of my work, whose judgement I quickly

  learned to trust and respect. Last but not least, when Santha and I went

  to Arizona, to the Hopi Nation, it was Ed who came with us and who

  opened the way.

  Ed’s initial letter was part of an overwhelming deluge of mail that I

  received from around the world after writing The Sign and the Seal. For a

  while I tried to answer all the letters individually. Eventually, however, I

  got swamped with the new work on Fingerprints and had to stop

  replying. I feel bad about this, and would like to take this opportunity to

  thank everybody who wrote to me and to whom I did not write back. I’m

  intending to be more systematic in the future because I enormously value

  this correspondence and appreciate the high-quality information that it

  frequently turns out to contain ...

  Other researchers who have helped me on Fingerprints of the Gods have

  been Martin Slavin, David Mestecky and Jonathan Derrick. In addition I

  would like to thank my Anglophone editors on both sides of the Atlantic,

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  Graham Hancock – FINGERPRINTS OF THE GODS

  Tom Weldon at Heinemann, Jim Wade at Crown and John Pearce at

  Doubleday Canada, as well as my literary agents Bill Hamilton and Sara

  Fisher, for their continuing commitment, solidarity and wise counsel.

  My warmest appreciation also to those co-researchers and colleagues

  who have become my friends during the course of this investigation:

  Robert Bauval in Britain (with whom I shall be co-authoring two future

  books on related subjects), Colin Wilson, John Anthony West and Lew

  Jenkins in the United States, Rand and Rose Flem-Ath and Paul William

  Roberts in Canada.

  Finally I want to pay tribute to Ignatius Donnelly, Arthur Posnansky, R.A.

  Schwaller de Lubicz, Charles Hapgood and Giorgio de Santillana—

  investigators who saw that something was badly wrong with the history

  of mankind, who had the courage to speak out against intellectual

  adversity, and who pioneered the momentous paradigm shift that is now

  irrevocably under way.

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  Graham Hancock – FINGERPRINTS OF THE GODS

  Part I

  Introduction

  The Mystery of the Maps

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  Graham Hancock – FINGERPRINTS OF THE GODS

  Chapter 1

  A Map of Hidden Places

  8 RECONNAISSANCE TECHNICAL SQUADRON (SAC)

  UNITED STATES AIRFORCE

  Westover Airforce Base

  Massachusetts

  6 July 1960

  SUBJECT: Admiral Piri Reis World Map

  To: Professor Charles H. Hapgood,

  Keene College,

  Keene, New Hampshire.

  Dear Professor Hapgood,

  Your request for evaluation of certain unusual features of the Piri Reis World Map of

  1513 by this organization has been reviewed.

  The claim that the lower part of the map portrays the Princess Martha Coast of Queen

  Maud Land Antarctica, and the Palmer Peninsula, is reasonable. We find this is the most

  logical and in all probability the correct interpretation of the map.

  The geographical detail shown in the lower part of the map agrees very remarkably

  with the results of the seismic profile made across the top of the ice-cap by the SwedishBritish Antarctic Expedition of 1949.

  This indicates the coastline had been mapped before it was covered by the ice-cap.

  The ice-cap in this region is now about a mile thick.

  We have no idea how the data on this map can be reconciled with the supposed state

  of geographical knowledge in 1513.

  HAROLD Z. OHLMEYER

  Lt Colonel, USAF

  Commander

  Despite the deadpan language, Ohlmeyer’s letter1 is a bombshell. If

  Queen Maud Land was mapped before it was covered by ice, the original

  cartography must have been done an extraordinarily long time ago.

  How long ago exactly?

  Conventional wisdom has it that the Antarctic ice-cap, in its present

  extent and form, is millions of years old. On closer examination, this

  notion turns out to be seriously flawed—so seriously that we need not

  assume the map drawn by Admiral Piri Reis depicts Queen Maud Land as

  1 Letter reproduced in Charles H. Hapgood FRGS, Maps of the Ancient Sea Kings, Chilton

  Books, Philadelphia and New York, 1966, p. 243.

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  Graham Hancock – FINGERPRINTS OF THE GODS

  it looked millions of years in the past. The best recent evidence suggests

  that Queen Maud Land, and the neighbouring regions shown on the map,

  passed through a long ice-free period which may not have come

  completely to an end until about six thousand years ago.2 This evidence,

  which we shall touch upon again in the next chapter, liberates us from

  the burdensome task of explaining who (or what) had the technology to

  undertake an accurate geographical survey of Antarctica in, say, two

  million BC, long before our own species came into existence. By the same

  token, since map-making is a complex and civilized activity, it compels us

  to explain how such a task could have been accomplished even six

  thousand years ago, well before the development of the first true

  civilizations recognized by historians.

  Ancient sources

  In attempting that explanation it is worth reminding ourselves of the

  basic historical and geological facts:

  1 The Piri Reis Map, which is a genuine document, not a hoax of any

  kind, was made at Constantinople in AD 1513.3

  2 It focuses on the western coast of Africa, the eastern coast of South

  America and the northern coast of Antarctica.

  3 Piri Reis could not have acquired his information on this latter region

  from contemporary explorers because Antarctica remained

  undiscovered until AD 1818,4 more than 300 years after he drew the

  map.

  4 The ice-free coast of Queen Maud Land shown in the map is a colossal

  puzzle because the geological evidence confirms that the latest date it

  could have been surveyed and charted in an ice-free condition is 4000

  BC.5

  5 It is not possible to pinpoint the earliest date that such a task could

  have been accomplished, but it seems that the Queen Maud Land

  littoral may have remained in a stable, unglaciated condition for at

  least 9000 years before the spreading ice-cap swallowed it entirely.6

  2 Ibid., pp. 93-98, 235. The period lasted from about 13000 BC to 4000 BC according, for

  example, to the findings of Dr Jack Hough of Illinois University, supported by experts at

  the Carnegie Institution, Washington DC. John G. Weiphaupt, a University of Colorado

  specialist in seismology and gravity and planetary geology, is another who supports the

  view of a relatively late ice-free period in at least parts of Antarctica.
Together with a

  number of other geologists, he places that period in a narrower band than Hough et

  al.—from 7000 BC to 4000 BC.

  3 Ibid., preface, pp. 1, 209-211.

  4 Encyclopaedia Britannica, 1991, I:440.

  5 Maps of The Ancient Sea Kings, p. 235.

  6 Ibid.

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  Graham Hancock – FINGERPRINTS OF THE GODS

  6 There is no civilization known to history that had the capacity or need

  to survey that coastline in the relevant period: between 13,000 BC and

  4000 BC.7

  In other words, the true enigma of this 1513 map is not so much its

  inclusion of a continent not discovered until 1818 but its portrayal of part

  of the coastline of that continent under ice-free conditions which came to

  an end 6000 years ago and have not since recurred.

  How can this be explained? Piri Reis obligingly gives us the answer in a

  series of notes written in his own hand on the map itself. He tells us that

  he was not responsible for the original surveying and cartography. On the

  contrary, he admits that his role was merely that of compiler and copyist

  and that the map was derived from a large number of source maps.8

  Some of these had been drawn by contemporary or near-contemporary

  explorers (including Christopher Columbus), who had by then reached

  South America and the Caribbean, but others were documents dating

  back to the fourth century BC or earlier.9

  Piri Reis did not venture any suggestion as to the identity of the

  cartographers who had produced the earlier maps. In 1963, however,

  Professor Hapgood proposed a novel and thought-provoking solution to

  the problem. He argued that some of the source maps the admiral had

  made use of, in particular those said to date back to the fourth century

  BC, had themselves been based on even older sources, which in turn had

  been based on sources originating in the furthest antiquity. There was, he

  asserted, irrefutable evidence that the earth had been comprehensively

  mapped before 4000 BC by a hitherto unknown and undiscovered

  civilization which had achieved a high level of technological

  advancement:10

  It appears [he concluded] that accurate information has been passed down from

  people to people. It appears that the charts must have originated with a people

  unknown and they were passed on, perhaps by the Minoans and the Phoenicians,

  who were, for a thousand years and more, the greatest sailors of the ancient

  world. We have evidence that they were collected and studied in the great library

  of Alexandria [Egypt] and that compilations of them were made by the

  geographers who worked there.11

  7 Historians recognize no ‘civilizations’ as such prior to 4000 BC.

  8 Maps of the Ancient Sea Kings, pp. 220-4.

  9 Ibid., p. 222.

  10 Ibid., p. 193

  11 Maps of the Ancient Sea Kings (revised edition), Turnstone Books, London, 1979,

  preface.

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  Graham Hancock – FINGERPRINTS OF THE GODS

  Piri Reis map (original)

  16

  Graham Hancock – FINGERPRINTS OF THE GODS

  Redrawing to show detail

  17

  Graham Hancock – FINGERPRINTS OF THE GODS

  The US Airforce map shows the probable projection

  that governed the layout of the ancient Piri Reis map.

  From Alexandria, according to Hapgood’s reconstruction, copies of these

  compilations and of some of the original source maps were transferred to

  other centres of learning—notably Constantinople. Finally, when

  Constantinople was seized by the Venetians during the Fourth Crusade in

  1204, the maps began to find their way into the hands of European

  sailors and adventurers:

  Most of these maps were of the Mediterranean and the Black Sea. But maps of

  other areas survived. These included maps of the Americas and maps of the Arctic

  and Antarctic Oceans. It becomes clear that the ancient voyagers travelled from

  pole to pole. Unbelievable as it may appear, the evidence nevertheless indicates

  that some ancient people explored Antarctica when its coasts were free of ice. It is

  clear, too, that they had an instrument of navigation for accurately determining

  longitudes that was far superior to anything possessed by the peoples of ancient,

  medieval or modern times until the second half of the eighteenth century.

  This evidence of a lost technology will support and give credence to many of the

  other hypotheses that have been brought forward of a lost civilization in remote

  times. Scholars have been able to dismiss most of that evidence as mere myth, but

  here we have evidence that cannot be dismissed. The evidence requires that all the

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  Graham Hancock – FINGERPRINTS OF THE GODS

  other evidence that has been brought forward in the past should be re-examined

  with an open mind.12

  Despite a ringing endorsement from Albert Einstein (see below), and

  despite the later admission of John Wright, president of the American

  Geographical Society, that Hapgood had ‘posed hypotheses that cry aloud

  for further testing’, no further scientific research has ever been

  undertaken into these anomalous early maps. Moreover, far from being

  applauded for making a serious new contribution to the debate about the

  antiquity of human civilization, Hapgood until his death was coldshouldered by the majority of his professional peers, who couched their

  discussion of his work in what has accurately been described as ‘thick

  and unwarranted sarcasm, selecting trivia and factors not subject to

  verification as the bases for condemnation, seeking in this way to avoid

  the basic issues’.13

  A man ahead of his time

  The late Charles Hapgood taught the history of science at Keene College,

  New Hampshire, USA. He wasn’t a geologist, or an ancient historian. It is

  possible, however, that future generations will remember him as the man

  whose work undermined the foundations of world history—and a large

  chunk of world geology as well.

  Albert Einstein was among the first to realize this when he took the

  unprecedented step of contributing the foreword to a book Hapgood

  wrote in 1953, some years before he began his investigation of the Piri

  Reis Map:

  I frequently receive communications from people who wish to consult me

  concerning their unpublished ideas [Einstein observed]. It goes without saying that

  these ideas are very seldom possessed of scientific validity. The very first

  communication, however, that I received from Mr. Hapgood electrified me. His

  idea is original, of great simplicity, and—if it continues to prove itself—of great

  importance to everything that is related to the history of the earth’s surface.14

  The ‘idea’ expressed in Hapgood’s 1953 book is a global geological

  theory which elegantly explains how and why large parts of Antarctica

  could have remained ice-free until 4000 BC, together with many other

  anomalies of earth science. In brief the argument is:

  1 Antarctica was not always covered with ice and was at one time much

  warmer than it is today.

  12 Ibid.

  13 Ibid., foreword. See also F. N. Earll, forewor
d to C. H. Hapgood, Path of the Pole,

  Chilton Books, New York, 1970, p. viii.

  14 From Einstein's foreword (written in 1953) to Charles H. Hapgood, Earth's Shifting

  Crust: A Key to Some Basic Problems of Earth Science, Pantheon Books, New York, 1958,

  pp. 1-2.

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  Graham Hancock – FINGERPRINTS OF THE GODS

  2 It was warm because it was not physically located at the South Pole in

  that period. Instead it was approximately 2000 miles farther north.

  This ‘would have put it outside the Antarctic Circle in a temperate or

  cold temperate climate’.15

  3 The continent moved to its present position inside the Antarctic Circle

  as a result of a mechanism known as ‘earth-crust displacement’. This

  mechanism, in no sense to be confused with plate-tectonics or

  ‘continental drift’, is one whereby the lithosphere, the whole outer

  crust of the earth, ‘may be displaced at times, moving over the soft

  inner body, much as the skin of an orange, if it were loose, might shift

  over the inner part of the orange all in one piece’.16

  4 During the envisaged southwards movement of Antarctica brought

  about by earth-crust displacement, the continent would gradually have

  grown colder, an ice-cap forming and remorselessly expanding over

  several thousands of years until it attained its present dimensions.’17

  Further details of the evidence supporting these radical proposals are

  set out in Part VIII of this book. Orthodox geologists, however, remain

  reluctant to accept Hapgood’s theory (although none has succeeded in

  proving it incorrect). It raises many questions.

  Of these by far the most important is: what conceivable mechanism

  would be able to exert sufficient thrust on the lithosphere to precipitate a

  phenomenon of such magnitude as a crustal displacement?

  We have no better guide than Einstein to summarize Hapgood’s

  findings:

  In a polar region there is continual deposition of ice, which is not symmetrically

  distributed about the pole. The earth’s rotation acts on these unsymmetrically

  deposited masses, and produces centrifugal momentum that is transmitted to the

  rigid crust of the earth. The constantly increasing centrifugal momentum

  produced in this way will, when it has reached a certain point, produce a

  movement of the earth’s crust over the rest of the earth’s body ...”18