Forbidden History: Prehistoric Technologies, Extraterrestrial Intervention, and the Suppressed Origins of Civilization Read online

  Very few realize that Velikovsky was a psychoanalyst by profession, an associate of Sigmund Freud and Carl Jung. His insights into the psycho/sociological impacts of cataclysmic events, in my view, were his greatest contribution to a proper understanding of our ancient experience. Sometime in the mid-1980s, I ran across his book Mankind in Amnesia, and my own thinking about the condition of humanity on Earth has never been the same. According to Velikovsky, the psychological condition and case history of planet Earth is one of amnesia: We find the planet today in a near-psychotic state, left so by traumatic events of an almost unimaginable magnitude that, thanks to a collective psychological defense mechanism, we cannot bear to remember.

  Today, psychiatrists have applied the term post-traumatic stress syndrome to a group of mental disorders that have been known to follow the witnessing of life-threatening events (e.g., military combat, natural disasters, terrorist incidents, serious accidents, and violent personal assaults such as rape). Symptoms of the disorder include depression, anxiety, nightmares, and amnesia.

  The question that must be asked is whether or not such a diagnosis could be applied to the culture of an entire planet? And could a collective unwillingness to explore and define our mysterious past—unconsciously dreading that to do so would open ancient wounds—eventually harden into a systematic repression of the truth? Could it become tyranny? Certainly our reluctance to honestly explore the past has led to many such evils. Over time, this reluctance to consider the truth of our origins has often become codified and institutionalized, culminating in nightmares like the inquisitions of the Middle Ages and the book burnings of Nazi Germany. How often we have watched as a brutal elite, supposedly acting in our name, enforced the collective subconscious wish to keep such threatening—and thus forbidden—knowledge safely out of sight? The answer, Velikovsky believed, was, ‘all too frequently.’

  In many ways, his views were supported by Carl Jung’s notion of an innate collective unconscious undergirding all of human awareness. From this vast and mysterious well of shared experience, Jung argued, emerge many of our greatest aspirations and many of our deepest fears. Its influence is recorded in our dreams and in our myths. In the subtext of such narratives, Velikovsky read the tale of a monumental, albeit forgotten, ancient tragedy.

  As I reflected on Velikovsky’s theories, my own thinking came into sharper focus, for it seemed apparent to me that collectively we have indeed been persuaded to close our eyes to certain realities—to dissociate from them—and that, perversely, compounding the error, we have justified this willful blindness and endowed it with a certain authority, even nobility. The strange effect of this has been to turn many moral issues upside down—to make right wrong and wrong right, if you will.

  Recall the Church fathers of the Middle Ages and their refusal, because of what they considered to be Galileo’s incorrect conclusions, to look through his telescope for themselves. Galileo’s notion that the Sun, not Earth, was the center of the solar system was deemed heresy, no matter what the evidence might show to the contrary. In other words, the minds of the authorities had already been made up, and they had no intention of being confused by such minor annoyances as facts.

  Does such blindness persist today? Some of us think so. The ruling elite of today may subscribe to a similarly intolerant “religion”—what John Anthony West has sardonically called “the Church of Progress.” As Graham Hancock affirmed to Atlantis Rising in a recent interview, “The reason we are so screwed up at the beginning of a new century is that we are victims of a planetary amnesia. We have forgotten who we are.”

  Sadly, the establishments of government and industry and the academic world—along with those who categorically and systematically debunk any and all alternate theories which might undermine the ruling paradigm—today remain determined to thwart any reawakening from the ongoing amnesia.

  Often, when it proves difficult to find an adequate rationale to support the misguided choices of our leaders, it is tempting to think in terms of dark conspiracy theories and treacherous hidden agendas. For Velikovsky, though, the explanation for behavior that some might describe as evil and others would view as, at the very least, self-destructive and unenlightened, lies in the classic mechanism of a mind seeking to regain its equilibrium in the aftermath of a near mortal blow.

  In the case of amnesia, it’s not enough to simply say that a hole has been blown in our memory. The victim of a near fatal trauma is driven, it would appear, by fear—both conscious and unconscious—to exorcise, by whatever means possible, the demons of such a dreadful experience lest he or she be overwhelmed. How else can we get on with our lives, put the past behind us, think about the future? To rid ourselves entirely of the memory of such an episode, however, is not such an easy task. Much more than the record of the trauma itself may be lost in the process. The human identity—what some would call the very soul itself—is often the first casualty. Moreover, what is true on an individual level Velikovsky felt was also true on the collective level.

  This process might move more slowly and allow for personal exceptions, but the institutions of society would in time come to reflect and then enforce a deep collective subconscious wish that, for the good of all, certain doors stay closed and certain inconvenient facts stay forgotten—that such history remain a forbidden zone. And in the meantime, the risk of reenacting the ancient drama grows, as does our need for reliable guidance.

  It is a premise of this book that the map we must follow in order to find our way out of the current dilemma is one that may be drawn from our myths, our legends, and our dreams—from the universal, collective unconscious that Jung talked about. The real story of our planet’s tragic history, we suspect, can be deduced from these mysterious records.

  Read between the lines and Plato’s account of Atlantis in the Timaeus and the Critias is corroborated by the Bible, by the Indian legends of Central America, and by a thousand other ancient myths from every part of the world. Giorgio de Santillana, a professor at M.I.T. and an authority on the history of science, and his co-author, professor of science Hertha von Dechend, hypothesized in their monumental work, Hamlet’s Mill: An Essay Investigating the Origins of Human Knowledge and Its Transmission through Myth, that an advanced scientific knowledge had been encoded into ancient myth and star lore.

  Indeed, the mythology of many ancient societies is filled with stories of cataclysmic destruction of Earth and its inhabitants. We agree with Graham Hancock when he says, “Once one accepts that mythology may have originated in the waking minds of highly advanced people, then one must start listening to what the myths are saying.”

  What they are saying, we believe, is that great catastrophes have struck Earth and destroyed advanced civilizations (not unlike our own) and, moreover, that such cataclysmic destruction is a recurrent feature in the life of Earth and may very well happen again. Many ancient sources (again, including the Bible), warn of possible cataclysm in a future end time—perhaps in our lifetime. If it’s true that those who cannot learn from the mistakes of history are doomed to repeat them, these enigmatic messages from our past could very well prove to be something that we can ignore only at our peril.

  As Hancock points out, we’ve received a legacy of extraordinary knowledge from our ancestors, and the time has come for us to stop dismissing it. Rather, we must recapture that heritage and learn from it what we can, because it contains vitally important guidance. To prevail in the challenges before us now, we must recover our lost identity. We must remember who we are and where we came from.

  We must, at last, be awake.

  PART ONE

  * * *

  THE OLD MODELS DON’T WORK: DARWINISM AND CREATIONISM UNDER FIRE

  1 Darwin’s Demise

  On the Futile Search for Missing Links

  Will Hart

  Charles Darwin was a keen observer of nature and an original thinker. He revolutionized biology. Karl Marx was also an astute observer of human society and an original thin
ker. He revolutionized economic and political ideology. They were contemporary nineteenth-century giants who cast long shadows and subscribed to the theory of “dialectical materialism”—the viewpoint that matter is the sole subject of change and all change is the product of conflict arising from the internal contradictions inherent in all things. And yet, as much appeal as dialectical materialism had to the intellectuals and working classes of certain countries, by the close of the last century it had failed to pass the test in the real world.

  Darwinism is beginning to show similar signs of strain and fatigue. It is not just creationists who are sounding the death knell. Darwin was well aware of the weaknesses of his theory. He called the origin of flowering plants “an abominable mystery.” That mystery remains unsolved to this day.

  As scientists have searched the fossil record assiduously for more than one hundred years for the “missing link” between primitive nonflowering and flowering plants without luck, a host of other trouble spots have flared up. Darwin anticipated problems should there be an absence of transitional fossils (chemically formed duplications of living creatures). At the time, he wrote: “It is the most serious objection that can be urged against the theory.”

  However, he could not have predicted where additional structural cracks would appear and threaten the very foundation of his theory. Why? Biochemistry was in an embryonic state in Darwin’s day. It is doubtful that he could have imagined that the structure of DNA would be discovered in less than one hundred years from the publication of Origin of Species.

  In a twist of fate, one of the first torpedoes to rip holes in the theory of evolution was unleashed by a biochemist. In Darwin’s Black Box: The Biochemical Challenge to Evolution, Michael Behe, a biology professor, points to a strange brew bubbling in the test tube. He focuses on five phenomena: blood clotting, cilia, the human immune system, the transport of materials within cells, and the synthesis of nucleotides. He analyzes each phenomenon systemically and arrives at a single startling conclusion: These are systems that are so irreducibly complex that no gradual, step-by-step Darwinian route could have led to their creation.

  The foundation of Darwin’s theory is simple, perhaps even simplistic. Life on Earth has evolved through a series of biological changes as a consequence of random genetic mutations working in conjunction with natural selection. One species gradually changes over time into another. And those species that adapt to changing environmental conditions are best suited to survive and propagate and the weaker die out, producing the most well-known principle of Darwinism—survival of the fittest.

  The theory has been taught to children for generations. We have all learned that fish changed into amphibians, amphibians became reptiles, reptiles evolved into birds, and birds changed into animals. However, it is far easier to explain this to schoolchildren—with cute illustrations and pictures of a lineup of apes (beginning with those having slumped shoulders, transitioning to two that are finally standing upright)—than it is to prove.

  Darwinism is the only scientific theory taught worldwide that has yet to be proved by the rigorous standards of science. Nevertheless, Darwinists claim that Darwinism is no longer a theory, but rather an established scientific fact. The problem is not a choice between biblical creation and evolution. The issue to resolve boils down to a single question: Has Darwin’s theory been proved by the rules of scientific evidence?

  Darwin knew that the only way to verify the main tenets of the theory was to search the fossil record. That search has continued since his day. How many paleontologists, geologists, excavators, construction workers, oil- and water-well drillers, archeologists and anthropologists, students and amateur fossil hunters have been digging holes in the ground and discovering fossils from Darwin’s day until today? Untold millions.

  What evidence has the fossil record revealed concerning Darwin’s transitional species? The late Harvard biologist Stephen Jay Gould, the antithesis of a Bible-thumping creationist, acknowledged: “All paleontologists know that the fossil record contains precious little in the way of intermediate forms; transitions between major groups are characteristically lacking.”

  Notice he didn’t say that there is a dearth of fossils—just of the ones that are needed to substantiate Darwin’s theory. There are plenty of fossils of ancient forms and plenty of newer ones. For example, we find fossils of early and extinct primates, hominids, Neanderthals and Homo sapiens, but no fossils of the transition linking ape and man. We find a similar situation with Darwin’s dreaded appearance of flowering plants, his Achilles’ heel.

  Water deposits in the ancient past have left millions of fossils in a vast geologic library. Why do we find representative nonflowering plants from three hundred million years ago and flowering plants from one hundred million years ago still alive today but no plants showing the gradual process of mutations that represent the intermediate species that (should) link the two?

  There are no such plants living today, nor are they found in the fossil record. That is Darwin’s cross.

  This is a serious, even critical issue that needs deep and thorough analysis. In an interview about his penetrating critique, Facts of Life: Shattering the Myth of Darwinism, the science journalist Richard Milton describes what made him write the book: “It was the absence of transitional fossils that first made me question Darwin’s idea of gradual change. I realized, too, that the procedures used to date rocks were circular. Rocks are used to date fossils; fossils are used to date rocks. From here I began to think the unthinkable: Could Darwinism be scientifically flawed?”

  Milton makes it clear that he does not support those who attack Darwin because they have a religious ax to grind: “As a science journalist and writer with a lifelong passion for geology and paleontology—and no religious beliefs to get in the way—I was in a unique position to investigate and report on the state of Darwin’s theory in the 1990s,” he said. “The result was unambiguous. Darwin doesn’t work here any more.”

  According to Milton, who had been a firm Darwinist, when he began to rethink the theory, he became a regular visitor to Great Britain’s prestigious Natural History Museum. He put the best examples that Darwinists had gathered over the years under intense scrutiny. One by one they failed to pass the test. He realized that many scientists around the world had already arrived at the same conclusion. The emperor was as naked as an ape. Why had no one gone public with papers critiquing the theory?

  What trained, credentialed scientist earning a living through a university or government position wants to jeopardize a career and earn the disdain of colleagues in the process? Apparently none. Rocking the boat is never popular. The HMS Beagle is still afloat and it appears to be buttressed by a Darwinist army that is every bit as dogmatic about its beliefs as are the creationists, who, Darwinists complain, have a religious, nonscientific agenda.

  Scientists have dropped hints, however. During a college lecture in 1967, the world-renowned anthropologist Louis B. Leakey was asked about “the missing link.” He replied tersely, “There is no one link missing—there are hundreds of links missing.”

  Gould eventually wrote a paper proposing a theory to try to explain the lack of transitional species and the sudden appearance of new ones. He called this theory “punctuated equilibrium.”

  The public is not generally well informed about the scientific problems associated with Darwin’s theory of evolution. And while the average person is aware that there is a war going on between creationists and evolutionists, that is seen as a rear-guard action, an old battle between science and religion over matters that the Scopes trial settled more than a generation ago. And there is some consternation over “the missing link” between apes and man.

  The true believers among Darwinists have long been puzzled by the lack of transitional fossils. The reasoning goes something like this: They must be out there hidden in the record somewhere. How do we know this? Darwin’s theory demands it! So the search goes on. But just how long a time and how many expedi
tions and how many years of research are needed before they finally admit that there must a good reason that the transitional fossils are not there?

  Critics contend that the reason for the lack of transitional fossils is simple: Darwin’s theory fails to meet the rigorous scientific criteria for proof because it is fatally flawed. The main tenets did not predict what has proved to be the outcome of more than a hundred years of research: missing links instead of transitional species.

  Darwin knew the flak would come should the fossil record not contain the necessary transitional species.

  Geneticists have long known that the vast majority of mutations are either neutral or negative. In other words, mutations are usually mistakes, failures of the DNA to accurately copy information. It would appear that this is not a very reliable primary mechanism and it needs to be, because natural selection is obviously not a dynamic force that could drive the kinds of changes that evolutionists attribute to the theory.

  Natural selection operates more like a control mechanism, a feedback system that weeds out poor adaptations and selects successful ones.