I strongly suspect, however, that the stone egg is even older. It was found at a depth of between four and five meters, in arable land at the brow of a hill. It is unlikely that soil would have been naturally washed down onto it: the opposite is far more likely.
In their book Uriel’s Machine, Robert Lomas and Christopher Knight detailed a strong scientific case for Noah’s great flood occurring in 7640 B.C.100 This also concords with the last great glacier melt. Apart from the host of worldwide legends, the evidence is supported by research. The measurable results point to the cause being a large ice meteorite breaking into pieces and plunging into the oceans around the world. Large chunks of the ozone layer would have been destroyed, leading to an increase in the production of carbon-14. Nitric acid would have been formed by nitrogen being burned by the sheer energy of the impact. This has been measured in worldwide ice cores, demonstrating that an event of this magnitude happened in about 7640 B.C.
That some ten thousand species became extinct around that time is strong supporting evidence.
The inevitable result would have been gigantic tsunamis crashing over all the world’s landmasses at speeds of around 640 miles per hour. Even worse, their height would have reached five kilometers. Only those on the highest mountains or hundreds of miles from any coast could have survived the initial calamity. The equivalent of a nuclear winter would have followed, with the sun blotted out in most areas. There would also have been unprecedented deluges of rain.
Colossal amounts of mud, rock, and debris would have been tossed around before being dragged back out to sea or deposited on land as the waters subsided. The world’s great saltwater lakes—the Dead Sea and that in Utah, for example—would have been formed as the ocean water remained trapped in large valleys.
The many menhirs that can still be seen all over the western Algarve are, almost certainly, still in their original standing positions. They must, therefore, have been erected since this flood, otherwise they would have been flattened and buried. Archaeologists concur in dating them back to between 3500 and 2500 B.C. The great egg, however, was buried under thirteen to sixteen feet of soil. It is tempting to presume that this was a result of this last great flood. It must have been buried sufficiently deep to have disappeared. If it had just lain toppled on the ground and even partly visible for centuries, its significance would almost certainly have led to any superstitious new populace reerecting it to an upright position.
The specific area where it was discovered is called Vale de Lama, which translates as “Valley of Mud.” The precise spot on which it was found is too high to have been affected by the great tsunami of 1755. The land on each side of the Arade River, near its mouth at Portimão, was then temporarily flooded to a height of around thirty-six feet. The egg site is nine kilometers upriver, but not on its banks: it is on a rise overlooking the old harbor and is elevated more than thirty-six feet.
If it was erected before Noah’s flood, then it must be more than 9,640 years old. But even a perfunctory examination reveals that before being buried, it had been subjected to eons of weathering. This is particularly obvious on the symbol.
Could it be from Atlantis? Could it even have been toppled and buried in the disaster that crippled the civilization? Plato stated that the disaster was caused by earthquakes and floods.
There is no way of knowing, unless archaeologists were to undertake new, deep exploratory digs in the immediate area of the discovery where it is possible that artifacts might be found that can be dated. Plato wrote that the area was densely populated, all the way down the waterway between the harbor and the coast. Nowhere would there have been a greater concentration of people than in this area overlooking the ancient harbor. If the town just upriver was the original Atlantis capital, then discoveries could at last start putting flesh on the Atlantis skeleton.
Let us reconsider all the known information:
• We have what appears to have been a large, meticulously carved stone egg, the ancient worldwide creation/fertility symbol. A world or cosmic egg, a mythological symbol in many other cultures, has long signified the beginning. The account of it in the Hindu Vayu Purana is but one example from distant shores.
• The Algarve stone is very old. Although it is now impossible to be emphatic about an exact date, it is almost certainly at least fifty-five hundred years old, from the period when the ancient megalithic necropolis was built at Alcalar, about twenty kilometers to the west. Most menhirs or dolmens are found either still standing, toppled over on the land, or just partially buried. Since this stone egg was buried so deep in a location where soil was unlikely to be deposited on top of it, it could be considerably older. One of the events that could have caused that was a great flood, possibly in 7640 B.C. The weathering on the egg would indicate that it had already been subject to the elements for a few thousand years before becoming buried. Alternatively, it just might have been toppled and initially buried by the very disaster that befell Atlantis.
I believe that this last astounding hypothesis is worthy of consideration. Its association with the site of the capital of Atlantis described in such detail by Plato, and with the hints he gives regarding the creation of the Atlantean population, justifies drawing that conclusion.
That nobody has ever made those connections until now is, perhaps, the reason why its significance has never been considered and the stone egg has been dismissed as just another Neolithic menhir.
Memory of the symbol on its shell could have survived and ultimately found its way to Sumeria with the fleeing Atlanteans, perhaps first via Egypt—or even with ancient mariners. There, because of its powerful symbolism, it was eventually adopted as their creation/fertility motif and subtly altered to become the Ningishzida and eventually the caduceus. The Sumerians were fascinated with serpents, one of them being featured in their creations myth and, of course, another in the Bible.101
Displayed alongside the “egg” in the museum is a smaller item. It is a stone with the same motif, also labeled a menhir—although, strangely, nowhere near the usual height of one. It appears to be much more recent than the “egg,” as its condition is much better. It is probably an example of how memory of the powerful symbol had been preserved locally, as they knew it was hugely significant and related to fertility and the creation of life. Tradition had it that barren women would approach and embrace standing menhirs, in the belief that this would help them conceive.
The same symbol was probably taken by the survivors of Atlantis to other areas of northern Europe. Consequently, other menhirs and assorted megalithic monuments may well feature it.
In 2005, the author Frank Joseph published an encyclopedia full of references and terms that might concern Atlantis.102 In it, he gives an explanation of the name Alatuir. The Slavic people have a legend that they migrated to central Europe from a sunken island kingdom in the western ocean called Buyan or Bouyan. The Alatuir was a big, egg-shaped object of white stone. It had magical properties and was the source of ultimate power at the very center of their kingdom. Joseph claims that it was the egg-shaped symbol of the primeval mystery cult in Atlantis, but does not give any explanation for this. Is there a connection between this story and the egg found by the ancient capital in the center of what this book identifies as the Atlantis kingdom, or is it just another of the scores of bewildering coincidences?
I also cannot help wondering if there has been confusion in the real origin of this legend between the Slavs and the Thracians. The Slavs did not occupy the Balkans till the fifth or sixth century A.D., and it is generally accepted that they migrated there from the north, perhaps central Russia. Prior to that, the Balkan region and its fringes were largely occupied by Thracians, who were discussed in the last chapter. They are recorded by various ancient writers as being a bawdy, drunken, rowdy lot but fierce warriors. They would probably have figured much larger in history in the last two millennia B.C. if they had managed to put their tribal animosities aside and unite. Interestingly, they were also descr
ibed as being tall and blue-eyed, with blond or red hair and ruddy complexions, remarkably similar to the Guanches in the Canaries, living in a great western ocean. You can see what I am alluding to.
It is not at all clear, but quite possibly these Thracians stemmed from the very old and little-appreciated Vinca civilization. This is not a recorded historic name but that of the village where, in 1908, the largest Neolithic settlement ever found in Europe was excavated. It is fourteen miles from Belgrade, on the river Danube. This unique archaeological site showed it was from an organized society with wooden homes, orderly rows of streets, advanced agriculture, and developed trades such as ceramics. They were particularly expert in working with gold and silver, as clearly demonstrated by the stunning, exquisitely detailed jewelry unearthed in Bulgaria. Some of these discoveries have been reliably dated to approximately 5000 B.C.103 Nothing of such quality has been unearthed anywhere else in the world that is remotely near that age. It unambiguously indicates an advanced society. It would have taken many centuries for any race to arrive at such high pinnacles in craftsmanship and technique. The Sumerian civilization has generally been accepted as the world’s oldest, but it was barely stirring at that time.
Not a great deal is known about this impressive Vinca culture, apart from the fact that it flourished over a wide area of central Europe, including the Balkans, from 6000 to 3000 B.C. One earlier site has even been dated to 7000 B.C. The area the culture covered included that part of Bosnia where controversy rages over claims of the ancient pyramids that exist there. Some experts, often after a very cursory inspection, dismiss them as completely natural formations. Others believe they are indeed natural hills but that they have been modified to the pyramid shape. More recent discoveries of a hard conglomerate previously laid over the surface but now just below that of the main hill would seem to settle the argument, confirming that the latter version is correct. The dates so far arrived at for these “pyramids” are for many thousands of years before the arrival of the current Slavic population.
Were the Thracians the remnants of the Vinca culture? If so, did they fashion these pyramids? If that was the case, the legend of the “egg” and its homeland way to the west in the great ocean assumes an even greater significance. It could have been a legend of the Vinca civilization, absorbed into the overall community with the Slavs as the two races intermingled. Incidentally, some historians believe the Sumerian culture was triggered, or at least influenced, by the Vinca culture. It would explain how the Sumerians had, puzzlingly, managed to reach such a high level of sophistication so quickly. Many figurines of people with weird serpentine faces are wrongly attributed to the Sumerians—they were Vinca. These have resulted in wild theories that lizardlike aliens were the gods who kick-started the Sumerian civilization. If the Vinca came from the western ocean (Atlantis), the “helix”-style symbol could have arrived in Sumeria via them.
Returning to the Algarve egg, I have been unable to find references to other ancient monuments sculpted to this perfect shape, although I would not be surprised if there are some, considering how the Atlantis tribes appear to have spread. It truly is a piece of sculpture, not just an adaptation from a chunk of naturally formed rock, as menhirs usually are. There is another group of standing stones farther north in Portugal; they are also described as egg-shaped but are far too elongated to be realistically considered as “eggs.”
The Egyptians saw the universe in the image of the egg, associating it with one of their earliest deities, Knefu. He was credited with being the creator of the bodies of human children, which he then placed in mothers’ wombs. He was given the title of “Lord of created things from himself.” His depiction often featured a ram’s head with an egg between its horns.
Eggs were also at the center of the creation myth of the Persians, who kept carved eggs in their temples as symbols of everything that is born.
Michael Tellinger, in his book Temples of the Ancient Gods, recounts his dramatic discovery of ancient habitats in the Swaziland and Zululand areas of South Africa.104 A team of international experts using the latest dating techniques came to the conclusion that the sites dated from 8,000 to 11,500 years ago. Close by were equally ancient gold mines. Zulu legends assert that these mines were worked by artificially produced flesh-and-blood slaves created by the “First People.”
This seemingly unbelievable account mirrors those given by Zecharia Sitchin in several books on his translations of some of the tens of thousands of inscriptions on clay tablets unearthed in Sumeria.105 Some people dispute his controversial interpretations, which are that the original rulers, long before the Sumerians, are recorded as doing exactly the same: creating a race, initially to work mines for them. You may have already noted that these accounts bear a passing resemblance to the creation account in Genesis. It would all have been laughed out of court fifty years ago, but hardly a week passes now without a new report about scientists manipulating genes, duplicating life-forms, and generally “playing God.”
Why was this Algarve egg sculpted with an emblem that resembled the basic building block of life, combined with the rod variously recorded as indicating “the Lord of manufacture,” “the implement of life,” and “the tool and vehicle of the power of the heavens”?
Did Plato hint at the answer? In clue 20, he wrote: “… then the gods peopled their districts.”
The egg’s unique shape, the enigmatic symbol on its shell, where it was found, the depth at which it was buried, the indication of long weathering on its surface, and that astonishing similarity to the Slavic legend all amount to an extraordinarily potent combination.
You can imagine it yourself, the egg standing proudly on the brow of a small rise in the center of a heavily populated area overlooking the ancient port and its environs, on a suitable plinth, possibly created and installed there by Poseidon, Atlas, or one of their heirs as a permanent monument to their creation of Atlantis … perhaps even the very creation of its people. The myriad of visitors from other parallel civilizations and from all over the sprawling Atlantis Empire docking at the port could have been told this. That could have been an intrinsic and crucial aspect of the hold the gods had over them. There was nothing to be lost and everything to gain by making sure that their subjects and visitors knew it.
This is a highly speculative theory, but it would explain this extraordinary object and where it was found.
It may be minute compared to the Great Pyramid, but could this egg encapsulate a message even more significant than the pyramid is thought to convey?
On the subject of pyramids, where did they originate? They can be found in slightly differing forms and sizes in most parts of the world where those Atlanteans would appear to have lived or visited. Is there a connection?
CHAPTER TWENTY
The Pyramid Connection
Another author, Jim Allen, in his book Lost Kingdom of the Andes, claims to have found a site on the Bolivian Altiplano that matches Plato’s description of the Atlantis Citadel.106 It sits on a large plain surrounded by mountains, but he admits he had to adjust Plato’s measurements for it all to hang together.
My analysis of the geographic and other clues detailed in earlier chapters makes the above claim groundless. Atlantis, as described by Plato, could not have been in South America. Nevertheless, Mr. Allen could well have discovered an important link. Did those tall, white visitors to South America have an agenda, other than simply helping the locals to advance? Did they yearn to replicate their successful homeland civilization to the extent that they discovered a site that lent itself to reproducing the same configuration as their ancient capital? We know their experiments included setting up a model of their original agricultural system with its extensive use of irrigation, as well as divulging knowledge that they had previously acquired about astronomy, mathematics, and construction. Could they have also contemplated creating a duplicate of their old capital as well as other aspects of their original civilization?
There are several clu
es that this was so. One is embodied in some of the huge buildings and walls they constructed thousands of years ago and that still exist in South America. These have survived to this day because of their polygonal style of construction. This method entails the use of large blocks of stone cut into irregular shapes, then so perfectly fitted together that it’s impossible to get a cigarette paper into the joints. The buildings withstood serious earthquakes because this form of construction effectively dissipates any tremors. The tall strangers appear to have brought this knowledge with them—an indication that it had evolved in their homeland. Taking the logic a stage further, they could only have done that if that original country was subject to serious tremors, so allowing experimentation … borne out of necessity. That would certainly have been the case if they had come from southwest Iberia. Elena Wishaw discovered several surviving examples of this style of construction in and around Niebla. Some were in the earlier walls of the town, while others were in the ancient construction of the desembarcadero. She also quotes Dr. Oric Bates, an eminent archaeologist of the period who worked with her for a while at Niebla, as saying that he had personally inspected several similar examples at sites in Morocco, at Lixus near Larache, for example. Both indicate that this method of building was practiced in the Atlantis kingdom.
In Chapter Three, when discussing the remains that were seen briefly from the top of the cliff on the Algarve coast as the sea withdrew just before the 1755 tsunami struck, I made the point that they had most likely been built in the polygonal style. They would not otherwise have survived the huge quakes and raging seas.
Another significant clue is that in South America, these visitors appear to have even gone to the length of reproducing the unique Atlantis metal alloy of gold and copper, orichalcum. In all probability, this was because it maintained the appearance of gold and was the ideal material from which to make fine jewelry. This is the very alloy Plato mentioned, which had previously caused so much head-scratching but was finally identified in an earlier chapter. It has not been found elsewhere.
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