My antediluvian baby

I've always loved the music of Donovan in general, and Donovan's Atlantis in particular.

Besides being an evocative song all by itself, and being an excellent example of the intersection between the issue of ancient civilization and popular culture, Atlantis is one of the only songs I know of that uses the excellent word "antediluvian." The entire second half of the song is a beautiful "round" consisting of the lines

Way down below the ocean
Where I want to be She may be

My antediluvian baby I want to see you someday

The word "antediluvian" has become the linguistic equivalent of a persona non grata (Latin for a person who is not welcome) since the late 1800s or early 1900s. That's because the word itself combines the Latin prefix for "before" (ante-, also found in "anteroom" and "antebellum") with the word for a flood or deluge (diluvia, the root of which is also found in the modern words "dilute" and "deluge").

As we have discussed, there is a tremendous bias against any theory positing a global flood ever since the Darwinian theory of evolution gained ascendancy in academia and popular culture towards the end of the 1800s and early 1900s, and this bias carries over to a prejudice against the related term "antediluvian," meaning pre-flood.

This bias even carries over into the field of alternative history and the search for lost civilizations, such that the most prominent voices in the field rarely look to a global catastrophic flood as a helpful theory in explaining the mounds of anomalous evidence about mankind's ancient past. The crustal displacement theory, close-encounter with Venus theory, and even the theory of ancient alien visitors are far more popular. However, the real answer might have been under our noses all along in the Biblical account of a worldwide flood. The bias against this notion has kept many from giving it due consideration.

In order to counteract this unfortunate bias, listen to Donovan's Atlantis as often as possible, and use the wonderful term "antediluvian" in your daily language. If you have young children, you can play it for them over and over at night as they fall asleep. If you prefer it without attached video, you can listen on your computer at this link (turn up the speakers), and we also recommend you go purchase the CD so you can blast it in your car while waiting at red lights on your way to work (guaranteed to turn heads).

Of course, we also recommend that you check out the Mathisen Corollary, which delves into the connections between a global catastrophic flood and the evidence for an advanced ancient lost civilization.

Darwin was wrong

If there is extensive evidence for a catastrophic global flood (see here and here), for advanced scientific knowledge in civilizations prior to Stonehenge (including precise knowledge of the size of the spherical earth -- see here), and for ancient crossings of the ocean several centuries before Christ (see here, here and here), then why wouldn't everyone want to investigate such evidence and become excited by the possibilities this evidence raises of an advanced ancient civilization not described in the current theories?

The answer is: Darwin.

It is no exaggeration to say that the Darwinian theory has achieved the status of a religion. It would be heretical for a potential professor seeking a position on a university faculty to openly express personal doubts about the validity of the Darwinian theory. To do so would destroy the possibility of becoming tenured (unless such doubts were kept secret until after becoming tenured, and even then expressing those views would lead to ostracism and ridicule).

In the case of Kitzmiller v. Dover (2005), defenders of Darwinian orthodoxy took exception to a proposed statement inserted into the high school science curriculum which read that "Because Darwin's Theory is a theory, it continues to be tested as new evidence is discovered. The Theory is not a fact. Gaps in the Theory exist for which there is no evidence." Such statements (although true) were deemed unacceptable by those whose cult-like devotion to this theory brooks no such expressions of doubt, who used the power of the courts to have the offending phrases removed before they could poison the minds of any young high school students.

Even titling a blog post "Darwin was wrong" will set off emotional reactions in some readers equivalent to or even more powerful than would a similar phrase substituting some religious figure for Darwin.

The uniformitarian theories of geology which predated Darwin's work by about fifty years formed an essential foundation for Darwin's biological theories, and the mutual dependence remains to this day. The theory of Darwinian evolution relies upon a formula of mutation plus natural selection, plus an enormous amount of time. Uniformitarian geological theories supply this time, while catastrophic theories pose a grave threat to the idea of nearly unlimited time, because catastrophic processes do not require hundreds of millions of years.

However, extensive evidence from the geological record as well as from mankind's ancient past (including undersea ruins and mythology encoding sophisticated precessional understanding) indicates that the current uniformitarian geological theory (plate tectonics) may be fatally flawed. However, the importance of Darwinism in academia creates a tremendous bias towards uniformitarian explanations and against any suggestion of the possibility of a catastrophic event.

In fact, it would not be incorrect to assert that the entire structure of the modern American university (and hence the rest of the education system, which is controlled almost entirely by approved graduates of the universities) rests upon a Darwinian foundation. This explains the resistance any doubter entering the halls of academia will meet, as well as the vehemence with which any challenges to Darwinian theory will be attacked, as in the case of the high school in Pennsylvania.

However, just as in other areas of life in which much is at stake, failure to perform "due diligence" and examine more than one possible explanation for human origins can lead to expensive mistakes.

If the Darwinian theory is in fact wrong, then the potential mistakes we can make by accepting it anyway can include:

1. Mistaken dietary advice; much dietary advice today is predicated upon statements such as "Our ancestors consumed [. . .] and thus from an evolutionary perspective, human beings were adapted to [. . .] rather than to [. . .]."

2. The idea that humans are animals, and that "dog-eat-dog" behavior is not only natural but salutary (and similarly that sexual promiscuity is not only natural but salutary).

3. Rejection of spiritual realities that have been "proven" to be impossible by science (could a "soul" evolve over millenia in an animal that originated as a protozoa or an amino acid, given enough mutations and natural selection? to ask the question is to answer it).

The proposition that mankind already possessed sophisticated mathematical, geodetic, astronomical, and architectural capabilities before the first Sumerians or dynastic Egyptians poses a direct challenge to Darwinian assumptions. The possibility that most of the features of the earth were formed by a world-wide flood rather than by gradual non-extraordinary processes poses an even more unacceptable affront to Darwinian proponents.

Nevertheless, the Mathisen Corollary ties the evidence for both of these possibilities together, in spite of the fact that such evidence will be dismissed out-of-hand by many adherents of the Darwinian religion.

The extent of the evidence makes a strong case for reconsidering the possibility that Darwin was wrong.

Earthquakes far from plate boundaries

Above is a diagram of the boundaries of the supposed tectonic plates from the US Geological Survey (USGS), the federal source in the US for science about the earth.

Simply looking at it should raise some intuitive questions, such as "if the continents once fit together, how did they ever slide apart, seeing that there is so much material between them (and, in at least one case, an entire Pacific Plate between them)?" Another intuitive question would be how the Pacific Plate ever moves at all, especially in the northern region where the words "Ring of Fire" are located with three red arrows pointing northwards -- the "arc-and-cusp" pattern of trenches in that area (discussed briefly towards the end of this previous post) would seem to create a pretty solid lock on movement, besides being very difficult to explain via plate motion (is the plate somehow expanding in all three directions indicated by those red arrows?).

Another major piece of evidence that there are grave problems with the tectonic theory are the earthquakes that take place in the middle of huge plates, far from plate boundaries. The tectonic theory seems to provide a compelling explanation for earthquakes by arguing that they are primarily caused by the rubbing and colliding that takes place along plate boundaries, and indeed many earthquakes do take place along such boundaries. However, there are numerous earthquakes which take place far from boundaries, some of them quite severe. These pose a serious problem for adherents of tectonics.

For example, in the diagram above, the North American plate is shown as one of the largest plates on the globe, and many earthquakes take place along its western edge. However, scientists recently have been issuing warnings about severe earthquakes in the past taking place right in the middle of it, and saying that the midwest might be due for another one in the near future.

This recent article discusses the debate among scientists over the danger for another major earthquake in Missouri based upon the history of several fairly large quakes there during the 19th century. Major earthquakes have also been noted in the interior of Antarctica, which have caused scientists to scratch their heads due to their location in the middle of a plate.

The hydroplate theory of Dr. Walt Brown does not have a problem explaining earthquakes in the middle of plates the way the tectonic theory does. As the name implies, Brown's theory does not deny the existence of plates, but argues that they were created by the forces surrounding a catastrophic global flood and that they slid apart as a result of the chain of events he describes in greater detail in his book. Since that time, they have not been "drifting," but there is a fairly common incidence of "shifting," as described in the post on earthquakes linked previously.

Brown's theory holds that water trapped under the earth built up pressure and eventually led to a rupture, which allowed the high-pressure water to escape with enormous power, leading to a worldwide flood. The removal of the water and sediments above the line of this rupture allowed the basement crust to spring upwards, initiating the slide of the plates away from this rupture. Some water (although only a small percentage of the original) remained trapped beneath, and remains there to this day.

As Dr. Brown explains, this sequence of events helps explain the cause of earthquakes. In the 7th edition of his book, published in 1999, he writes:

Trapped, subterranean water, unable to escape during the flood, slowly seeps up through cracks and faults formed during the crushing of the compression event. The higher this water migrates through cracks, the more its pressure exceeds that in the walls of the crack trying to contain it. Consequently, the crack spreads and lengthens. (So before an earthquake, the ground often bulges slightly, water levels sometimes change in wells, and geyser eruptions may become irregular.) Simultaneously, stresses build up in the crust, again driven ultimately by gravity and mass imbalances at the end of the flood. Once the compressive stress has risen enough, the cracks have grown enough, and the frictional locking of cracked surfaces has diminished enough, sudden movement occurs. The water then acts as a lubricant. (Therefore, frictional heat is not found along the San Andreas Fault.) Sliding friction instantaneously heats the water, converts it to steam at an even higher pressure, and initiates a runaway process called a shallow earthquake. 108.

This theory also explains why earthquakes can be caused by injecting high-pressure water deep into the ground and by filling huge man-made reservoirs with water (as happened in India in 1967 and 1998 and in China in 2008 and possibly 2010). In his 1999 book, Brown noted: "The plate tectonic theory claims earthquakes occur when plates rub against each other, temporarily lock, and then periodically jerk loose. If so, why are some powerful earthquakes far from plate boundaries? Why do earthquakes occur when water is forced into the ground after large reservoirs are built and filled?" (91).

Here is a recent story describing the possibility that the injection of high-pressure water into the ground could be responsible for earthquakes in Arakansas. All of these examples accord perfectly with the predictions of Brown's hydroplate theory.

The origin of fossils

In the previous post linking to an author interview on Rodger Price's Life, the Universe & a Cocktail, there is a point very early in the first segment at which show host Rodger Price says:

Well, we’ll judge the craziness later, but – you know -- I don’t see that as crazy because, I mean, we know that people have been crossing and tectonic plates have been shifting and moving for millions of years, unless you believe that dinosaurs were buried by the Devil . . . [a little over 3:00 minute mark in the first segment].

We've already seen in this previous post that there are several problems with the tectonic theory, but we shouldn't be too hard on Rodger for assuming that the tectonic theory has moved beyond theory and into the category of things that "we know" (after all, this was very early in the interview and before much of the anomalous evidence from geology and archaeology had even been discussed).

The more interesting part of the above quotation, however, is the assertion about fossils, in which the question is framed as a binary choice involving either:

a) "millions of years,"

or

b) "dinosaurs were buried by the Devil."

This dichotomy is actually a perfect example of a "false dilemma," since the actual best choice might in fact be something completely different than either of the above. However, this is exactly the way the choice is generally presented in the United States (and many other countries) throughout the education system, and most adults who grew up over the past hundred years or so can be forgiven for thinking that the choice boils down to just such a pair of alternatives.

The unstated assumption is that choice a) "millions of years" is the rational and scientific choice, and choice b) "dinosaurs were buried by the Devil" (or some other phrase indicating a preference for a supernatural answer rather than the accepted scientific answer involving millions of years) is the irrational and unscientific choice.

However, as with many mystery stories, the generally accepted explanation (in this case, "millions of years") has some serious difficulty with some overlooked clues, and the actual solution may be something quite different from the "only possible explanations" being offered.

As stated in the post linked above, "if the features on the earth were not created by tectonics (and there is extensive evidence that calls the tectonic explanation into question), and if they were instead created by catastrophic forces (as Dr. Brown's theory posits and as extensive evidence seems to support), then these geologic features would not necessarily have required hundreds of millions of years to form but could in fact have been shaped within the course of weeks, months, or a few years."

In that case, as Dr. Brown's book on the hydroplate theory explains, the same can be said for fossils: they would not necessarily have required hundreds of millions of years to form but could in fact have been shaped within the course of weeks, months, or a few years. In fact, the forces that would have been unleashed in the cataclysmic global flood described by the hydroplate theory would explain the formation of fossils much more effectively than does the conventional explanation involving gradual processes over long periods of time.

Fossils are actually quite difficult to explain using gradualist theories. Most dead animals and plants decompose fairly rapidly, aided by bacteria. As Dr. Brown and other observers have noted, fossilization generally requires rapid burial in thick mud that seals out air and bacteria, as well as extraordinary pressure. Soft animals such as jellyfish do not normally last long enough to create fossils today, but in the extraordinary events of the catastrophic flood, jellyfish fossils were in fact created (see image below):

The hydroplate theory posits that the massive amounts of sedimentary material eroded by the initial rupture of the waters under the earth spread out and rapidly buried many plants and animals. The forces of hydrodynamics then sorted these sediments into layers, and sorted the animals and plant matter within them as well. Dr. Brown explains that:

Fossils all over the world show evidence of rapid burial. Many fossils, such as fossilized jellyfish, show by the details of their soft, fleshly portions that they were buried rapidly, before they could decay. (Normally, dead animals and plants quickly decompose). Many other animals, buried in mass graves and in twisted and contorted positions, suggest violent and rapid burials over large areas. These observations, together with the occurrence of compressed fossils and fossils that cut across two or more layers of sedimentary rock, are strong evidence that the sediments encasing these fossils were deposited rapidly -- not over hundreds of millions of years. 9.

In other words, there are numerous pieces of evidence that the gradualist approach has a very difficult time explaining, but which fit perfectly into the framework described by Brown's hydroplate theory. It turns out that not only are we not forced to choose between a sensible explanation of "millions of years" and a less plausible "dinosaurs were buried by the Devil," but that the supposedly sensible explanation in that binary is not so sensible after all.

If Dr. Brown's theory is correct, it also provides a compelling new perspective on the question of mankind's ancient past, and the extensive evidence of an advanced civilization previous to those cultures that we are commonly told represent man's very earliest civilizations (such as Sumeria, Babylon, and dynastic Egypt).

This important possibility is completely obscured by the false dilemma that we are offered by the conventional strongholds of learning, which is basically the choice offered by Rodger Price at the beginning of our interview -- "millions of years" or "the Devil." No offense to Rodger is meant by using his quotation to frame this dilemma -- he is only articulating what society has drilled into us very effectively, and I am grateful for the opportunity to have been a guest on his show.

Besides, as noted before, he made that observation at the very beginning of the interview, and before the forty or so minutes of enlightened conversation that can be yours as well by simply visiting the internet archive and listening on your computer!

Life, the Universe, and a Cocktail

Author David Warner Mathisen recently appeared on Life, the Universe & a Cocktail, hosted by Rodger Price of San Diego, on San Diego's online talk radio station, SignOn wsRadio.

As you might expect from the literary reference to the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy in the show's title, host Rodger Price's style can be at times irreverent, sarcastic, fun or playful as he pours a cocktail and relaxes in the virtual space to have interesting conversations with his guests.

To listen to the show, click on the following links (four ten-minute segments):

Part One

Part Two

Part Three

Part Four

Due diligence

If you were going to invest a large sum of money in the common stock of a certain corporation, you would be advised to conduct what the industry refers to as "due diligence."

Diligence is a noun that refers to rigorous attention to detail, hard work, careful effort. Due is an adjective describing that which is proper or merited by the situation, that which is deserved. In other words, before you commit your hard-earned capital to shares of ownership in someone else's business, there is a level of rigorous effort that is proper, merited, and deserved. Failure to perform it would be to fail to give the effort that is due to the situation (we still use the term to refer to wages or pay that someone has earned, such as paying a worker his dues, or we use it to refer to paying the respect or appreciation that someone is due).

Most people instinctively realize the importance of due diligence when it comes to committing a large sum of money. You don't just "buy" every story you are told -- you should check it out for yourself, gathering every piece of evidence available and connecting the dots to try to discern the true picture for yourself.

When a piece of evidence turns up that appears to contradict the story that you are being told, it is a good idea to investigate that piece of evidence carefully, to see if it is a fluke that can be dismissed or if perhaps it is connected to other clues that might lead to a different picture than the one you are being sold.

The concept of due diligence can be applied to areas outside of securities investing. The more expensive the potential consequences of the decision, the more diligence is due. Those attempting to get you to "buy in" to their picture of the situation might have motives for doing so: considering the evidence yourself and conducting your own analysis of the available facts is often a very good idea.

It may seem at first that the potential cost of "buying into" the conventional narrative of mankind's ancient past is not particularly high for us today, living as we do in a very modern age, already in the second decade of the twenty-first century, and enjoying as we do the benefits of unprecedented technological advances and the expansion of human knowledge in so many fields of study.

However, the cost of buying into a false narrative can be subtle and corrosive. When it comes to mankind's ancient past, the conventional narrative presents a picture of long and generally steady progress from a state of relative ignorance and primitive technological ability, to greater and greater levels of organization and accomplishment over periods of thousands of years, culminating in ever-more rapid achievements from the age of steam to the age of spaceflight and mobile computing in just a couple of centuries.

Such a storyline is attractive in many ways, and many people buy into it without much poking around to see how well it holds up.

However, just as a potential investor in a company would be unwise to overlook reports of possible improprieties in the behavior of the key executives, or indications that something is amiss with the company's ability to generate operating cash flows that consistently cover fixed expenses, it behooves us to pay attention to pieces of evidence that appear to paint a completely different picture from the one that everyone seems to accept without question.

If there are only one or two pieces of anomalous evidence (evidence that doesn't fit), then we might be justified in dismissing them. However, if anomalous evidence keeps popping up, and when pursuing each clue leads to a whole new trail of evidence that also seems to contradict the conventional story, then we would be most unwise to simply wish it away.

In the case of mankind's ancient past, this anomalous evidence is extremely plentiful -- plentiful enough, in fact, that an alternative theory appears to fit the evidence much better than the generally-accepted timeline. Some of those pieces of evidence have already been mentioned in this blog, such as the case of the skull of the Ruamahanga Woman, the evidence of advanced geodetic and mathematical knowledge encoded in Stonehenge and other sites, the presence of red-haired mummies in abundance in South America and other anomalous locations, and extensive evidence from ancient mythology of an understanding of precession long before mankind was supposed to have come even close to figuring it out.

Just as in other fields in which due diligence is called for, failure to conduct due diligence in the question of mankind's ancient past can be costly -- perhaps even more costly than investing a large sum of money in the wrong stock.

If mankind once possessed very advanced knowledge and technology, and then fell into millennia of relative ignorance and backwardness, how did it happen? How could it be prevented from happening again? And, seeing that it did happen once, how did those people pass on the clues of what they knew in ways that could be deciphered by people who did not speak their language or even know of their existence, and do so even after thousands of years of darkness?

We cannot even begin to ask those questions if we do not examine the narrative we have bought, and see if it might not be flawed. We cannot get to the important questions of "why" and "how" if we do not even perceive the "what" of mankind's past.

The false picture of generally steady progress from primitive hunter-gatherer to modern man with amazing digital powers at his fingertips might lull us into a false sense of security. Just as an investor who has bought a salesman's story without examining the facts might be in for a later rude awakening, ignoring the data points in the record of history can leave us vulnerable as well.

When it comes to any important story we are asked to "buy," we may be ridiculed for doing our own due diligence (especially if we arrive at different conclusions than the mainstream, in which case the term "conspiracy theory" will likely be applied in a dismissive way), but the bigger the implications are, the more such diligence is warranted.

Stonehenge

Besides being beautiful and awe-inspiring in its own right, and a testament to the technological and aesthetic achievements of ancient mankind, Stonehenge is also an incredibly important source of clues for unraveling the mystery of the timeline of ancient history.

Deer bones and other items from beneath the outermost earthen embankment which encircles the site have been dated to around 3100 BC. The entire site consists of concentric circles of embankments, post holes, and trilithons -- massive post-and-lintel arrangements of three stones arranged as two pillars with a lintel stone across the top. Inside the inner Sarsen circle is a horseshoe arrangement (not circular) of five massive trilithons composed of mighty blocks weighing up to fifty tons each.

The question of who built Stonehenge, how they did it, and why remains open for exploration. In his 1999 book, Ancient Celtic New Zealand, Martin Doutré argues that the angles and measurements of prominent details of Stonehenge indicate that the site actually contains a scale model of the Great Pyramid of Giza.

The diagram above (click for greater detail) presents a rough illustration of Mr. Doutré's theory. The concentric blue circles and the horizontal line indicate the positions of: 1. the inner trilithon horseshoe, 2. the Sarsen circle, 3. the Y-holes, and 4. the Aubrey circle. The red lines indicate the outline of the Great Pyramid based upon Doutré's discovery that the diameter of the outermost perimeter of the site measures 378 feet: exactly half of the 756 feet that each side of the Great Pyramid measures.

Based upon this, he discovered indications that the apex of a half-scale two-dimensional representation of the Great Pyramid rested in the avenue leading to the Heel Stone as indicated. His entire argument, which goes into much greater detail about this and many other important aspects of Stonehenge should really be read in its entirety in his book, Ancient Celtic New Zealand, which belongs in the library of everyone interested in the subject of our earth and mankind's ancient past upon our earth (which is everyone, right?).

This discovery is just one piece of evidence that the Great Pyramid might actually predate Stonehenge, and that Stonehenge might well have been built by the people who once occupied Egypt and left, or by their descendents.

It is also an indication of the advanced technological, mathematical, and astronomical advancement of very ancient mankind, as both the Great Pyramid and Stonehenge incorporate elements which indicate a sophisticated understanding of pi and phi and even (as many have noted before) knowledge of the size of the spherical earth itself.

The Great Pyramid is a model of the earth, on a scale of 1:43,200. The base perimeter of the Great Pyramid is 3,023.154 feet, which multiplied by 43,200 yields 130,600,523 feet -- a number that approximates within an error of 1% the circumfrence of the earth (as Robert Bauval and Graham Hancock demonstrate in Keeper of Genesis). Anyone wishing to argue that this is mere coincidence must contend with the fact that 43,200 is a clear precessional number, as explained in this previous post.

If Stonehenge is a one-half representation of the Great Pyramid, then it too is an accurate scale model of the earth.

For these and other reasons, Stonehenge is a critical source of clues to the truth about mankind's ancient past. In the Mathisen Corollary, I argue that the hydroplate theoryof Dr. Walt Brown, which deals primarily with geological evidence of a catastrophic flood within human memory, provides an excellent explanation that fits the archaeological and mythological evidence of man's past as well.

He explains why precession (which is encoded by the number 43,200 at the Great Pyramid and at Stonehenge, as we have just seen) was caused by this ancient catastrophe, and even suggests: "Perhaps changes in earth's spin axis in the centuries after the flood motivated construction of ancient observatories such as Stonehenge" (7th edition of In the Beginning, page 117).

These connections are important to examine very closely.