As the complicated relationships are only recognisable from a great height, we must ask whether ‘someone’ instructed the builders, whether someone worked out a geometrical network of sites all over Hellas, sticking flags in the ground and saying: This is where you must build a temple!
Or did the ancient Greeks—as Professor Rogovski 38 suggests—first work on a very small scale which only later developed into the large geometrical network? If that were so, why did Plato expressly say in his Timaeus that the geometrical relationships were sacred knowledge which had been handed down for several thousand years? And if he spoke of ‘several thousand years’ around 400 B.C., we are right in the middle of the age of the gods.
Such puzzles always give rise to a series of similar questions. If we assume that temples and religious sites were built before Euclid and fitted into the schema of the geometrical pattern, we must ask why did the Greeks build in that way. We must find out the reason for this extraordinary kind of planning. We must also explain where they acquired such vast mathematical knowledge at such an early date. Lastly, it would be interesting to know who showed the Greek tribes the way to the locations if they themselves could not find them. The series of questions puts us in a dilemma.
But the affair gets even more confusing.
To his surprise, Dr Manias has found that the geometrical system of the ancient peoples is not confined to Greece. The temples of Cyprus, the Lebanon (Baalbek), Alexandria, and even the Egyptian pyramids are included in the network.
The Russian researchers Goncharov, Makarov and Morosov worked on a map of the world which would include all the important ancient cultural centres. When Nikolai Goncharov of the Moscow University of Art saw the finished work, he could not help thinking that he was looking at a picture of a football.40 The points marking important ancient cultural sites described a ball with twelve pentagonal panels on the globe. Nikolai Bodnaruk, correspondent of the Komsomolskaya Pravda, wrote:
‘According to the map many ancient cultures did not inhabit chance locations or areas, but were settled precisely on the focal points of this system. This was true of the Indus culture of Mohenjo Daro, of Egypt and North Mongolia, of Ireland and Easter Island, of Peru and Kiev, the “Mother of Russian cities”.
‘The oil-bearing regions of North Africa and the Persian Gulf stretch along the “seam” where the gigantic ‘panels’ meet. The same thing can be observed in America from California to Texas. Take a closer look at the focal points of the double network: the enormously rich southern part of Africa, the sites of Cerro de Pasco, South America, Alaska and Canada; the underground oil and gas oceans of western Siberia and many others. ‘Naturally one cannot trace such a connection everywhere. Yet it occurs all too frequently to be the product of pure chance. Besides, deviations from the strictly geometrical pattern are quite understandable, for our planet itself is changing and the formation of natural treasures is still taking place.’
When Russian scholars transferred religious sites from all over the world to a globe, they thought it looked like a football made up of pentagons.
In connection with these recent discoveries, I should point out that Plato had already said in his Timaeus that if we looked at the earth from above, it would resemble a leather ball made up of twelve parts.
Is there really nothing new in the hills and dales on the face of mother earth?
With my knowledge of the gigantic ‘stone signs’ all over the globe, I cannot help feeling that the memorials and centres of all cultures were laid out according to the master plan of a global building committee and that signs which could be seen by the flying ‘gods’ were placed at the ‘holy places’. I give these examples off the cuff (more can be found in my ‘ancient’ books):
The gigantic pictures cut into the ground between the landing strips on the (now) world famous plains of Nazca.
The gigantic chessboard pattern on the rock faces in the Province of Antofagasta, Chile.
The 100-metre-high ‘robot’ in the desert of Taratacar in the north of Chile.
The 110-metre-long White Horse at Uffington in the Berkshire Downs.
The 55-metre-tall giant of Cerne Abbas.
The Long Man at Wilmington, Sussex.
The horse, 13 metres long and 9 metres high, the giantess with outstretched arms, 28 metres high and 21 metres wide, and the 31-metre-tall giant, all three to be seen at Blythe, California.
The 46-metre-tall giant at Sacaton, Arizona.
The Boulder Mosaics in White Shell Provincial Park, Manitoba. Silbury Hill, 8 km west of Marlborough, Wiltshire.
The six enormous octagons with a total length of 11.2 miles, near Poverty Point in Louisiana, USA.
The Snake Mound, over 400 metres long, at Bush Creek, Ohio, USA. The gigantic concentric circles or wheels to be found at Ripon, Yorkshire, on the Japanese island of Hokkaido near Nonakado and in various states of the USA, not to mention the Medicine Wheel in the Big Horn Mountains, Wyoming.
Last, but not least, the 250-metre-high Bagpipes of the Andes in the Bay of Paracas, Peru.
This little collection may help to prove that the men of ancient cultures cut gigantic signs on mountain sides or hammered them into plains, although they were only recognisable in all their glory from a considerable height. Why did they do it, for whom did they do it?
In every case archaeological literature assures us that the signs were associated with an ancient cult. Possibly, but what kind of cult? In all modesty we should like to know that, but we never do. If a cult was involved, it must have been one of the universal sort. It had a common ‘denominator’ which inspired all peoples to the same activities. How else are the peoples of every continent supposed to have agreed that they must climb mountains and incise signs on them or draw figures on a plain, activities whose end-products were unrecognisable at close hand.
The Sioux Indians tell this legend:
‘Many moons ago in the past of our ancestors a great wheel came from heaven. It shone like fire and from the wheelnave it twinkled like a star. The winds hissed frighteningly when the wheel came down on Medicine Mountain. The villagers ran away in fear and trembling. When they looked round, from a considerable distance, the wheel rose up—like a wild goose in the bush—and was never seen again. The wise men of the tribe took counsel and decided to surround the spot with stones so that future generations would remember the “Matatu Wakan”, the heavenly wheel, for all time. As the Sioux believed that the wheel came from the sun, they began to etch gigantic signs in the earth that could only be observed by a high-flying eagle.’
We should not laugh at them. ‘Cults’ like this are still springing up in our sophisticated twentieth century!
The inhabitants of the Melanesian Islands in the South Pacific are tattooed with letters they themselves cannot read, namely USA. They claim that long ago they were visited by the king of a foreign land called America. The king was called John Frum and he promised that he would return one day from the Masur volcano with 50,000 celestial companions to improve their miserable lives and bring them happiness. However, they say, god John Frum would only return if they observed their customs and worshipped the gods. So they shoulder wooden laths, whisper prayers into primitive wooden boxes from which long palm fronds dangle and perform rhythmical circular dances. What are they up to? They are imitating American soldiers who crash-landed on their island in 1942 and stayed there a while until they were picked up by the US Air Force. This comparatively recent religion was called the Cargo Cult in specialised literature. Cargo means goods loaded on a ship, but the name was given by western cult experts.
On 16 October 1978, the BBC showed a film about rocket launchings in Zaire, Africa. For years the German company OTRAG had been making such experimental launchings in Mobutu’s state to test out a cheap rocket. The camera swung on to a group of negroes who were amazed at the goings-on. An interpreter asked what they thought about it. A negro answered: ‘Those are our powerful friends who are sending fire up to heaven!’ Who kn
ows if a ‘rocket cult’ will develop when the OTRAG team have long since departed?
If cults are still initiated in our own day by actual events, we can justifiably assume that cults and myths of the distant past were also inspired by realities, things that really happened. It even makes the gigantic ‘stone signs’, the signs for the ‘gods’, plausible. Is that so difficult to understand?
In 1868 the German explorer and ivory dealer Adam Renders got lost in the dense Southern African bush. With his knife he slashed a path through the tropical undergrowth in an attempt to find his way back to civilisation. Suddenly he found himself facing a wall that was ten metres high!
For a moment Renders was convinced that he was safe again, for where there are walls, there are generally men, too. He ran along the walls, but realised that he was going in a circle, as he kept on coming back to his starting-point. Finally he found a hole in the wall covered with brushwood and trees. Renders suspected that he was the first white man to come across the ruins of Zimbabwe.
In 1871 he guided the German geologist Karl Mauch to the spot. Mauch made a plan of the ruins, returned to Germany and claimed that he was the discoverer of Zimbabwe. Mauch supported the theory that Zimbabwe and its environs had once been the site of the dreamland of Ophir from which King Solomon had gold and precious stones sent (I Kings 29:26 et seq.).That was one of the countless explanations which were supposed to solve the mystery of Zimbabwe.
But others located Ophir in India and Elam, in Arabia and East Africa. Probably it lay on the southern part of the west coast of the Red Sea. However that may be, Karl Mauch contributed one of many theories and had no idea that the mysterious place had been reported long before. Incidentally, Adam Renders never left the ruins, staying there until his death.
A dense mist, in which imaginative theories flourish, envelops the ruins of Zimbabwe. The archaeologist Marcel Brion41 collected all the theories about Zimbabwe and came to the conclusion that they were nothing more than ‘romantic speculations’.
It is not surprising that, given its site in the depth of the African jungle, Zimbabwe must have been rather a secret place, for not even the learned Arabian writer and world traveller Abu al-Hasan Mas’udi (about 895), who lived in Baghdad and made extensive expeditions of discovery from there, mentions Zimbabwe in his main book Gold-washing sites. However, there is no doubt that large quantities of gold were mined in this area even in Mas’udi’s time.
Damiao de Goes (1502-1574), a much-travelled Portuguese historian, does mention Zimbabwe, but he never actually saw it; he was told about its massive architecture by proud negroes. His countryman and colleague Joao de Barros (1496-1570) speaks of Zimbabwe in his four-volumed book Asia. He wrote:
‘The natives call these buildings Zimbabwe, which means “royal residence” . . . No one knows when and by whom they were erected, for the inhabitants of the country cannot write and have no traditional history. However, they claim that the buildings are the work of the devil, because, in view of their own capabilities, they think it impossible that they were the work of human hands. . .’
200 years later, the Governor of Goa commented:
‘It is reported that in the capital of Monomotopa there is a tower or building of masonry which to all appearances is not the work of the indigenous blacks.’41
I was in Zimbabwe, which has long been a popular tourist attraction, in the autumn of 1976. You reach the ruins from Fort Victoria by a narrow asphalt road. Only a few kilometres from Zimbabwe lies the Zimbabwe Ruins Hotel. Several thatched huts form a horseshoe around a shady courtyard. Polite blacks serve you food and drink while you sit at stone tables. Silk bands across their chests announce their job in large letters. Food waiter! Wine waiter! Head waiter! You could live an idyllic life here, if it were not for the almost incessant sound of rifle and machinegun fire from a nearby valley. Mozambique is only one and a half hours away.
In the Rhodesian hotels and guest-houses I got to know, there were black and white waiters, and black and white chambermaids. Black and white taxidrivers form part of the urban scene. There are many whites who do not like the blacks and many blacks who do not like the whites. Is it very different here? Do the Germans like their immigrant Turkish workers? Do we Swiss love the hundreds and thousands of southerners who build our motorways and barrages, and cut tunnels through the Alps?
I am not trying to soft pedal the racial problem with these remarks, but it is worth mentioning, because even the ruins of Zimbabwe have been dragged into the political arena. Not so very long ago it was considered shocking in Rhodesia to attribute the buildings to the blacks. And in fact the countless negro tribes in the north and south have not erected such enormous edifices. Organisation and planning were alien to them then, and still are today. Twenty years ago, anyone who claimed that Bantu negroes built Zimbabwe would have made himself very, very unpopular, for political reasons. Negroes were not supposed to be capable of such achievements!
I had a talk with the 35-year-old Rhodesian archaeologist Paul Sinclair of the National Museums and Monuments of Rhodesia, who has been working for the Zimbabwe Museum for many years. On his own initiative he organised excavations in neighbouring valleys and at deep levels found Chinese silks, Arabian pottery, countless Bantu ornaments and strange figurines.
I asked Sinclair:
‘Who built the massive buildings in your opinion?’
‘The blacks,’ he answered. ‘In the Shona language Zimbabwe means something like “esteemed” or “revered house”. A “revered house” can equally well mean a religious temple or a kind of royal residence. Unfortunately, we have not yet found the grave of the megalomaniac dictator who may have commissioned the gigantic works. So the question of his identity will remain unanswered.’
‘What led you to the conviction that the blacks were the builders?’
Sinclair led me to a cupboard with many drawers, which he pulled out one after the other.
‘Look, we found all these objects in the Valley of the Ruins. Between here and the ports of Sofala and Quelimae in Mozambique there are about a hundred similar ruins, generally on a more modest scale, but built by the same methods. Granite slabs were split by the application of heat and laid in layers without mortar. In the past the Kingdom of Zimbabwe stretched as far as the Indian Ocean. Presumably the unknown kings of Zimbabwe exported gold in order to obtain other goods from the Arabs and Chinese. Here are the proofs! This is Chinese silk and those are Chinese ceramics which were found in the ground here. We found Arabic cloths, bracelets, fragments of glass and even the odd ornament from India. These finds convinced us that there was a trade route here to the ports on the Indian Ocean (present-day Mozambique). What did they trade with? Gold, of course, for we know that there were gold mines in and around Zimbabwe. The king’s title, Monomotata, also points to this, for it means roughly “Master of the Mines”.’
‘Wouldn’t it be more reasonable to assume that the Arabs were the builders?’
‘No. The fact that objects of foreign origin were found in much smaller numbers than those which were obviously of negro provenance contradicts that theory. All these drawers are full of finds. Relics of the black construction workers.’
There they lay in the drawers, the figurines which may have been carved around a campfire as a leisure activity. The faces exhibit predominantly negro features, but I also saw some which immediately reminded me of my astronaut gods. They had round heads totally enclosed by a helmet. I rummaged among ivory bracelets, bone necklaces and more refined artefacts of wood, with ivory intarsia.
‘If I understand you correctly, Mr Sinclair, the blacks built Zimbabwe, but why and for what purpose?’
The archaeologist thought that Zimbabwe was built as a fortress, a protection against robbery, for even in those days the gold stored there was a much sought after metal.
This answer did not satisfy me at all.
What was it the Portuguese historian wrote, after listening to native traditions?
‘
They claim that the buildings are the work of the devil because, in view of their own capabilities, they think it impossible that they were the work of human hands . . .’
What does Zimbabwe look like today?
The main feature of the ruins is an elliptical wall, 100 m in length, which encloses an area of some 2000 sq m, in other words an area about the size of two football fields. Today this ellipse is called the ‘Royal Residence’, which is a rather absurd name, as we know that it is most unlikely that a king ever resided within the walls. No tombs, writing, statues, busts or remains of tools or implements have been found there.
Zimbabwe has no history.
The wall that surrounds the ‘residence’ is 10 m high, with an average width at the base of 4.50 m. The wall was dry built, without mortar, and used up an estimated 1,000,000 tons of material.
There is no satisfactory explanation of the ruined walls inside the ellipse. There are circles, smaller ellipses, a lower wall running parallel to the outside one and a tower, 10 m high on a base with a diameter of 6 m, in the right-hand corner (of course an ellipse has no corners, strictly speaking). I could make no sense out of the tower. It has no entrance, no steps or windows, and its exterior wall is completely packed with stones on the inside.
Signs of the Gods? Page 16
