Remnants of the Gods

by Erich von Daniken

  There has certainly been plenty of speculation. The “tracks” were a cult... a calendar... a conduit system... writing.... We are flooded with clever and, indeed, logical explanations, and yet an ultimate answer which is beyond any doubt is still missing. I consider the Maltese tracks to be a classic case of archaeological misconception and will explain why nothing can add up: Malta must never be looked at in isolation. Whatever this unknown civilization in past millennia might have been, it was—as we have to realize today—transnational. It was connected with the whole Mediterranean area, including the adjacent regions, from North Africa to Britain, from Spain to Egypt. Track-like grooves in the ground can also be found in Sicily, Italy, Sardinia, Greece, southern France, Spain, Portugal, Turkey, and so on. The timeframe in which these incredible things happened is not 2,000 to 3,000 years BC, but a good 10,000 years ago or more. Today we know nothing about that time; there are no archaeologists at any university who are studying these things. Although “pre- and early history” is still taught at individual universities, it is without exception restricted to tiny geographical areas. Something like a comprehensive overview over the whole of Europe and beyond appears to be taboo. People are valiantly investigating their own little region. Giant spaces do not fit into the concept.

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  In Europe alone, there are several hundred stone and wood circles from the unknown past, and although no magazine called Megalithic Today existed at the time, all of these circles have an astronomical orientation. And all were designed using the same unit, the so-called Megalithic yard of 82.9 centimeters.14 Who cares? Several of these complexes lie under water. For example, columns of menhirs lie off the island of Gavrini in Brittany; two stone circles are also snoozing there at a depth of 12 meters under the Atlantic. Tracks near Cadiz, in Malta, or on Sardinia lead into the water. And nowhere is there a science in sight that cares about that. What a superficial lot we have become! A society, moreover, that imagines that, thanks to the Internet, it is the best informed. Forget it!

  Who, apart from the intelligent disbelievers and doubters who are interested by the mysteries of the world, has ever heard of a “hypogeum”? The word comes from the Greek and means “below the earth” (hypo meaning “below” and gaia meaning “earth”). The Hypogeum of Malta is just as mysterious as the tracks on the surface. The space was discovered purely by chance. In 1902, a builder found a stone slab in the ground near the quay wall of the large port of Malta which did not fit there. He levered it up and peered down into a rectangular shaft which disappeared vertically into the depths. The builder kept silent. He knew that there were subterranean complexes all over the island. He also kept his mouth shut because he feared the authorities might block his building plans. Today the underground chambers have been opened up to tourists—with restrictions. Groups wanting to visit the Hypogeum have to register in advance. Guests are first taken into a cinema where they can admire impressive pictures of the rock chambers. Then they can go in single file along a prescribed ramp to view a part of the complex. The Hypogeum is different from any other dolmen elsewhere in the world, different from the royal tombs in Egypt. Passageways branch off the main chamber to niches and smaller chambers. (Images 43–44) Walls and ceiling have been worked in perfect Megalithic style: clear lines and sharp edges on mighty blocks. Above them is a rounded, curved ceiling in three layers, one above the other. (Images 45–46) A total work of art, it is a masterpiece which does not fit into the Stone Age at all. The monoliths extend smoothly from the floor to the ceiling, the niches have been flawlessly hammered out of the rock, the curved ceiling even in the form of a dome. That is totally alien to Stone Age thinking. (Images 47–48) Who chiselled this complex out of the rock? What was it for?

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  It is the same as at Lixus. It was not the Romans, Greeks, or Phoenicians, because the Hypogeum had long been in existence in their time. The Greeks were just as unaware of the complex lying up to 12 meters underground as the Romans. From the rear-most chamber of the Hypogeum, a shaft leads into unknown depths, in which up to 7,000 skeletons are said to have been found. I cannot check whether this is true.

  The Stone Age is called the Stone Age because people worked with stones. They did not know metals. Flint, at minimum, would have been required to chisel the Hypogeum out of the rock. It is harder than limestone. But there is no flint on Malta. The guidebooks for tourists say the Hypogeum had been built in three phases. It may well be true that in later periods (whenever that may have been!) natural niches in the rock were extended and smoothed, but this has nothing to do with the main chamber and the curved, domed ceiling. “These chambers display a symmetry in their construction which has no equal,” the Malta specialist Alexander Knörr writes.15 “Furthermore, the chambers have impressive acoustics. Words whispered into an oracle hole can be loudly and clearly heard in the whole complex.” Once again, Stone Age geniuses were at work here whose methods we cannot even begin to fathom. The academic discipline that should take responsibility refuses to include these things in its research program, and so the impossible is suppressed. The same applies to the 30 megalithic temples on the island, whereby at least the temple of Mnajdra can be shown to be at least 12,000 years old. How is that possible? (Images 49–50)

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  The cartographer Paul Micallef, used to precision work by nature of his job, made an astonishing discovery during the survey work in Mnajdra.16 The whole Mnajdra complex looks like a trefoil with a diameter of about 70 meters. The temple has an astronomical orientation. On the day of the summer solstice, precisely at sunrise, a beam of light shines from the right entrance monolith into the oval chamber behind. There it throws a small, vertical beam of light on to a block standing on the left side. But that was not always the case. At about 3700 BC, the beam went past the monolith and touched the edge of a stone lying further back; 10,000 years BC, it was different again. At that time, the beam of light precisely hit the center of the altar stone lying even further back. At the winter solstice on December 21, the spectacle repeated itself except from the opposite side. But there is no altar stone there. Sounds complicated.

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  That there is no coincidence involved is shown by the alignment of the temple with the dates of the spring and autumn equinox. How is it possible to read a date of 12,000 years from this natural play of the light? This is where we get to the exciting bit and Images 51–54 prove it: Depending on whether it is the winter or summer solstice, a column of light is created on the monolith lying behind on the right or left side. The right-hand monolith measures 1.33 meters in width, the left-hand one 1.2 meters. The light columns can easily be read off the right monolith; after all, we know what line is created at the winter solstice of our century. The column of light circuits the whole stone once in the course of 25,800 years. Its width signals the start of the whole spectacle: 10,205 BC. That this number is difficult to digest for my friends the pre-historians is understandable. The date completely upsets the whole much-loved categorisation of our Stone Age ancestors. But it is of little value in any case, as I will go on to show.

  If hitherto we have always learnt that religious culture started in Mesopotamia with the Sumerians, followed later by the Babylonians, Egyptians, and a few others, this school of thought is wrong again. In southeastern Turkey, about 15 kilometers northeast of the provincial capital Şanliurfa, excavations are underway at Göbekli Tepe, which once again call into question the natural evolution of technology, as they do of spirituality. Göbekli Tepe, incidentally, means “potbelly hill” in the local language, and according to legend, the patriarch Abraham is said to have been born in the nearby city of Şanliurfa. A circular te
mple complex was uncovered in which three rings of walls enclose a center. (Images 55–56) There are monoliths which remind us of seating, and at the edge of the inner circle there are T-shaped stone columns, weighing up to 16 tonnes, with individual incisions on them—circles, half-moons, and a carving similar to our letter “H.” We can also admire stone carvings of foxes, lions, snakes, gazelles, and cranes. (Images 57–59) All the T-shaped crossbeams on top of the monoliths are aligned toward the center of the complex. So far, three of these ring-shaped complexes have been uncovered. Yet geomagnetic measurements have revealed the existence of at least 20 other stone circles. A mere 10 percent of the structures lying under the ground have been recorded. All in all, a difficult lump to digest: it has been determined to be 11,500 years old. Who in the obscurity of that distant past built not just one, but several stone circles directly next to one another? Weren’t we always taught that the fur-clad nump-ties of the time had been fully occupied with foraging for food and keeping wild animals at bay? Reality speaks a different language. Another incomprehensible thing: the builders are said to have reburied their stone rings intentionally and at a time of peace. Not simultaneously. They buried one of their complexes and then started building another circle nearby. “What is the meaning of that?” the archaeological writer Hartwig Hausdorf enquires. “Did [the builders] want to preserve the unique complex for the people of the future? What message did they want to send us?”17

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  Nothing is impossible. I cannot, however, see why a civilization would carefully bury its holy sites, if that is what they were, in sand and rubble for the people of the future. After all, they could not know whether their complexes would ever be discovered again. I consider another variant to be more likely: they buried their structures in order to prevent anyone being harmed in them. Had a deadly disease broken out which they could not control? In Leviticus, the Lord gives precise instructions from chapter 14 onward about what should be done in the case of infectious diseases—up to and including the destruction of the affected buildings.18 The fact is that Göbekli Tepe was gradually and carefully buried again by someone, and it happened about 8,000 years ago.

  The location of Göbekli Tepe is also a curiosity. Why here? What was so important about this geographic site? After all, the builders needed water but the nearest river lies five kilometers away. What important event turned this location into holy ground, a spiritual site for the community? Some religious thought must have united the people. Perhaps the patriarch Abraham can help; after all, the place of his birth, today’s city of Şanliurfa, lies only about 15 kilometers away. Something extraordinary did indeed happen in Abraham’s immediate environment millennia ago. It is told in the Apocalypse of Abraham.19

  There an eyewitness tells in the first person how the boy Abraham was working one evening in his father Baruch’s garden. We learn how two “heavenly beings” descended to earth.20 The two of them grabbed the boy Abraham and dragged him “to the edge of the flames.” Incidentally, Abraham is quite specific that they were not human, because they did “not have human breath” and they “sparkled all over their bodies like sapphire.” Then the smoke and fire opened up, and the sparkly characters ascended with Abraham “as if with many winds.” Up there, Abraham sees “from the heights we had climbed something like a powerful, indescribable light” and finally large figures who spoke words to one another “which I did not understand.” Next, the youth Abraham notes succinctly and unequivocally where he is: “But I wished to travel down to earth. The high place where we stood was sometimes upright but then it turned downward.”21

  We should savor this statement. Here we have someone reporting from ancient times, written down in the first person, that after his journey toward the sky he had wished to descend downward to earth. He must logically have been outside the earth. Furthermore, Abraham must have been in a spaceship in orbit around the earth. Why? Because “the high place where we stood” is rotating around its axis: “was sometimes upright but then it turned downward.” Every spaceship in orbit rotates constantly around its own axis because such rotation creates a centrifugal force inside it: artificial gravity. Not something a Stone Age person could have known—unless he experienced it on his own body.

  This is just one suggestion for the archaeologists searching for a spiritual event to explain the mystery of Göbekli Tepe. The Apocalypse of Abraham describes a sensational, plausible reason for the inconceivable. After all, “Abraham’s ascension” started in the garden of his father Baruch, and he lived directly next to “potbelly hill” called Göbekli Tepe.

  There are thousands of granite blocks—so-called menhirs—in Brittany which are set up in geometrical lines.22, 23 They form Pythagorean triangles (a2 + b2 = c2), and they did so millennia before Pythagoras. No professor of archaeology is interested. (Images 60–63) Straight lines are drawn across Europe over hundreds, sometimes thousands of kilometers. They connect Stone Age holy sites from Norway to Sicily, from Denmark to Greece—not something that is actually possible, because our ancestors would have had to survey the whole of Europe for that. But the impossible is a reality and has been proven without a shadow of doubt.24, 25, 26 The discoverers of such realities are ridiculed and mocked by society. There are neither honors nor prizes for them. No one takes responsibility: no foundation, no university, and no newspaper publisher, let alone a TV station. Cowardice, a lack of moral courage, rules. And all of us have become fellow travelers of indifference. There are hundreds of dolmens in the Mediterranean region and just as many stone circles. The great majority of them have an astronomical orientation. Our society with its electronic stupification, could not care less. Stone Age? Lost civilizations? Of what relevance is our past to us? Yet incomprehensible facts lie below everyone’s feet, so to speak, which do not fit into any conception of history or archaeological textbook. The absurd thing is that all these impossible facts about which I am about to report are childishly simple to check without any great effort. The only things that are required are a map, dividers, and a ruler. And in no time at all, ancient links on European soil become visible, links that should never have existed because they originate in that unknown, fairy-tale Stone Age over which there rises a stench of decay. The impossible is reported next.

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  CRAZY FACTS

  “It seems as if the whole of northeastern Bavaria is covered by a network of such aerial lines....” These words come from Karl Bedal, who investigated a curious network of lines in his home region and rediscovered his sense of wonder.1 “Millennia ago,” the thorough Karl Bedal said, “the eastern part of Upper Franconia, that is, the Fichtel Mountains and Franconian Forest, was covered with impenetrable woods.”2 It was not until after the birth of Christ that farmers and monks arrived and began the clear the forest. So there cannot have been a network of lines in that hilly, Bavarian forest which links Stone Age points with one another. Make sense? Yet it does exist. Karl Bedal writes, “These are inexplicable straight lines which cross and intersect one another...always comprising a measure of 6.75 km or a multiple thereof, that is, 13.5 km, 27 km, up to 54 and 81 km and so on.”3

  The small town of Schesslitz is located in the Upper Franconian district of Bamberg (Bavaria, Germany). It is also known as the “gateway to Franconian Switzerland.” Northwest of it, there is an ancient wooden cross called the Red Cross. A heathen cultic stone previously stood at the same spot. From the Red Cross, draw a straight line in a northeastern direction to Castle Peesten 27 kilometers away. Nothing special about that: two points can always be connected with a straight line. From Peesten, the line continues to Tennersreuth, 27 kilometers away—and another 27 kilometers to the Schönwald Stone near Schönwald. Up to this point, we have measured three times 27 kilometers as the crow flies, a total of 81 kilometers—this in hilly primeval forest. We started in Schesslitz. From there, lines radiate in all directions to target the following other points: Peesten (northeast), Hoher Kreuzberg (east), the
druid grove Druidenhain at Ebermannstadt (southeast), Auerberg (south), the Rote Marter near Kaiserpfalz (south), Pommersfelden (southwest) and Hummelmarter (west). Every point is precisely 27 kilometers distant from Schesslitz. (Image 64)

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  What looks like a silly game turns out, on closer inspection, to be prehistoric planning. The town of Staffelstein lies north of Bamberg, and a short distance away from it, the Staffelberg mountain. From here, 27 kilometer-long lines radiate out to Rotheul, Haig, Veste Rosenberg, Burghaig, Schloss Thurnau, Hoher Kreuzberg, Unteraufsess, Heiligenstadt, Rothof (north of Bamberg) and Burgpreppach. That alone makes eleven points around the Staffelberg mountain, all of them 27 kilometers away. But this only scratches the surface of the inexplicable grid which indisputably lies over the landscape. In his pamphlet, which, incidentally, is published by the Historical Society of Upper Franconia, Karl Bedal flawlessly demonstrates the existence of a whole grid of ancient points which are all connected by dead-straight lines. The distances are always 27 kilometers, half of that (13.5 km) or a quarter (6.75 km). To quote Karl Bedal, “The whole system of lines is interlinked and connected, all crossing points and nodes are linked through other cross-connections.”4

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  All just a game? Did Mr. Karl Bedal simply draw a few lines on a map and some places just happened to lie underneath? Definitely not. The straight lines and identical distances mean that any coincidence is absurd. What Mr. Bedal (and others) discovered in Germany was found by Monsieur Xavier Guichard in the same way in France. Our Mr. Guichard first held office as the chief of police in Paris, then studied philology, advanced to become the vice president of the French Society for Prehistory, and began to ask himself how many places there might be in France with the same root word in their name. So he started searching for places containing the word “Bourg,” others with the root words “Flora” or “Calais.” At the word “Alaise,” his heart began to beat faster. Believe it or not, 382 place names contained the same root word, and a further 47 places went back to “Calais.” That could no longer be described as normal. Monsieur Guichard reached for a ruler and map. Many of the places lay under a straight line from the British Isles over the Alps to Sicily: Calais—Mont Alix—Mont Alet—L’Alet—Anxon—Aisey—Alaise—L’Alex—Alzano—Calesi—Cales, and so on. Here 24 lines from all points of the compass crossed at the village of Alaise. (Image 65) This place lies in the eastern Jura, northeast of Salin-les-Bains, just 70 kilometers away from the Swiss border—actually in the heart of Europe. The 24 lines that cross here run from Scotland to Corsica, from Great Britain to France, from Portugal to Germany. More and more parallel lines appeared. One of them intersected Carlisle and Ely in England, Calais and eight further names derived from Alaise in France, and went via Alasio and Calice in Italy to Aliso on Corsica. Xavier Guichard originally thought that the whole system of lines was based on the old “wind rose system.” Before longitude and latitude were introduced, maps were made in accordance with the “wind rose system.” A point was fixed, usually on a hill top, and lines were drawn from there in various directions. Someone then rode along those lines to measure the length of the ride from one point to the next. Cross-connections between the lines were also possible. But Guichard soon noticed that many lines had to be older than any wind rose system. Frequently the points were not just the same distance from one another, they also touched on places which were unknown in the early Middle Ages—for example, a Stone Age settlement under the waters of Lake Zurich near the town of Meilen. Rotten poles, bones, ceramics, and stone from a settlement thousands of years old were found there in the winter of 1854. Xavier Guichard’s line went precisely over it. Furthermore, the wind rose system could not explain lines from England to Sicily. The linear distance is about 2,000 kilometers. And the prehistoric holy sites with the common root words—L’Allet, Alaise, L’Allex, and so on—existed long before the wind rose system was introduced. The philologist Guichard could not contain his surprise and noted, “There must at some point have existed a homogenous civilisation which was based on considerable scientific knowledge.”5