Magicians of the Gods

by Graham Hancock

  29. Alan Condron and Peter Winsor, “Meltwater Routing and the Younger Dryas,” PNAS, 4 December 2012, Vol. 109, No. 49, p. 19930.

  30. James T. Teller, “Importance of Freshwater Injections into the Arctic Ocean in triggering the Younger Dryas Cooling,” PNAS, Vol. 109, No. 49, 4 December 2012, p. 19880. See also Claude Hillaire-Marcel, Jenny Maccali et al, “Geochemical and isotopic tracers of Arctic sea ice sources and export with special attention to the Younger Dryas interval,” Quaternary Science Reviews (2013), p. 6.

  31. S.J. Fiedel, “The mysterious onset of the Younger Dryas,” Quaternary International 242 (2011), p. 263.

  32. Andreas Schmittner, John C.H. Chiang and Sydney R. Hemming, “Introduction: The Ocean’s Meridional Overturning Circulation,” in Andreas Schmittner et al, Ocean Circulation: Mechanisms and Impacts—Past and Future Changes of Meridional Overturning, Geophysical Monograph Series 173, 2007, p. 1 (published online 19 March 2013).

  33. Ibid.

  34. S.J. Fiedel, “The mysterious onset of the Younger Dryas,” op. cit., p. 264.

  35. R.B. Firestone, A. West, Z. Revay et al, “Analysis of the Younger Dryas Impact Layer,” Journal of Siberian Federal University, Engineering and Technologies, Vol. 3 (1), 2010, pp. 30–62 (page 23 of pdf: http://www.osti.gov/scitech/servlets/purl/1023385/).

  36. Ibid.

  37. J. Tyler Faith and Todd A. Surovell, “Synchronous extinction of North America’s Pleistocene mammals,” PNAS, Vol. 106, No. 49, 8 December 2009, p. 20641. The last appearance dates of 16n of the 35 genera fall securely between 13,800 and 11,400 years ago—i.e. clustered very closely around the Younger Dryas. “Analysis of the chronology of extinctions suggests that sampling error can explain the absence of terminal Pleistocene last appearance dates for the remaining nineteen genera.” In other words the extinction of North American Pleistocene mammals is “a synchronous event.”

  38. Ibid., p. 20641.

  39. S.J. Fiedel, “The mysterious onset of the Younger Dryas,” op. cit., p. 264.

  40. D.G. Anderson, A.C. Goodyear, J. Kennett, A. West, “Multiple Lines of Evidence for a possible Human Population Decline during the Early Younger Dryas,” Quaternary International, Vol. 242, Issue 2, 15 October 2011, pp. 570–83.

  41. Sanjeev Gupta, Jenny S. Collier, Andy Palmer-Felgate, Graham Potter, “Catastrophic Flooding Origin of the Shelf Valley Systems in the English Channel.” Nature, Vol. 448, 19 July 2007, pp. 342–5.

  42. Don J. Easterbrook, John Gosse et al, “Evidence for Synchronous Global Climatic Events: Cosmogenic Exposure Ages of Glaciations,” in Don Easterbrook, Evidence-Based Climatic Science, Elsevier, August 2011, Chapter 2, p. 54.

  43. For further discussion of these possibilities, see W.C. Mahaney, V. Kalm et al, “Evidence from the Northwestern Venezuelan Andes for extraterrestrial impact,” op. cit, p. 54, and William C. Mahaney, Leslie Keiser et al, “New Evidence from a Black Mat site in the Northern Andes Supporting a Cosmic Impact 12,800 Years Ago,” The Journal of Geology, Vol. 121, No. 4 (July 2013) p. 317.

  44. See in particular, Sir Fred Hoyle, The Origin of the Universe and the Origin of Religion, Moyer Bell, Wakefield Rhode Island and London, 1993, pp. 28–9. See also Fred Hoyle and Chandra Wickramsinghe, Life on Mars? The Case for a Cosmic Heritage?, Clinical Press Ltd., Bristol, 1997, pp. 176–7.

  45. Sir Fred Hoyle, The Origin of the Universe and the Origin of Religion, op. cit., p. 29.

  46. Jeffrey P. Severinghaus et al, “Timing of abrupt climate change at the end of the Younger Dryas interval from thermally fractionated gases in polar ice,” Nature, Vol. 391, 8 January 1998, p. 141.

  47. W. Dansgaard et al, “The Abrupt Termination of the Younger Dryas Event,” Nature, Vol. 339, 15 June 1989, p. 532.

  48. Oliver Blarquez et al, “Trees in the subalpine belt since 11,700 cal BP, origin, expansion and alteration of the modern forest,” The Holocene (2009), p. 143.

  49. Paul E. Carrara et al, “Deglaciation of the Mountainous Region of Northwestern Montana, USA, as Indicated by Late Pleistocene Ashes,” Arctic and Alpine Research, Vol. 18, No. 3, 1986, p. 317.

  50. Sir Walter Scott (Ed. and Trans.), Hermetica: The Ancient Greek and Latin writings which contain Religious of Philosophic Teachings Ascribed to Hermes Trismegistus, Shambhala, Boston 1993, Asclepius III, pp. 345–7.

  Chapter 7

  1. The late Professor Cesar Emiliani of Miami University, a winner of the Vega Medal from Sweden and the Agassiz medal from the National Academy of Sciences of the United States, whose studies focused extensively on sea level rise, did put a figure on it: “As a result of the flood that formed the Scabland, the sea level rose very rapidly from minus 100 meters to minus 80 meters. By 12,000 years ago more than fifty percent of the ice had returned to the ocean, and the sea level had risen to minus 60 meters.” The references to minus 100 meters, minus 80 meters and minus 60 meters are by comparison with today’s sea level. So, before the flood that formed the Scabland of the Columbia Plateau, sea level was 100 meters lower than it is today, after the flood it was 60 meters lower than it is today, i.e. a staggering rise of 40 meters or 131 feet. See Cesare Emiliani, Planet Earth: Cosmology, Geology and the Evolution of Life and Environment, Cambridge University Press, 1995, p. 543.

  2. Ted E. Bunch, Richard B. Firestone, Allen West, James P. Kennett et al, “Very high temperature impact melt products as evidence for cosmic airbursts and impacts 12,900 years ago,” PNAS, June 2012, Vol. 109, No. 28, op. cit., pp. E1903, 1909–10 and 1912. See also Kinzie et al, “Nanodiamond-Rich Layer across Three Continents Consistent With Major Cosmic Impact 12,800 years ago,” The Journal of Geology, Vol. 122, No. 5 (September 2014) op. cit., p. 476 and Appendix B “Site descriptions and dating.”

  3. Ted E. Bunch, Richard B. Firestone, Allen West, James P. Kennett et al, “Very high temperature impact melt products” op. cit., p. E1912.

  4. Encyclopedia Iranica, “Zoroaster ii. General Survey,” http://www.iranicaonline.org/articles/zoroaster-ii-general-survey.

  5. Ibid.

  6. Ibid.

  7. Ibid.

  8. R.C. Zaehner, The Dawn and Twilight of Zoroastrianism, Weidenfeld and Nicolson, London, 1961, e.g. see page 135: “The whole story of Yima’s golden age, his excavation of the Vara, or underground retreat, and his re-emergence to re-people the earth (the last episode occurs only in the Pahlavi books) must belong to a very old stratum of Iranian folklore wholly untouched by the teachings of Zoroaster.”

  9. J. Darmetester and H.L. Mills, Trans., F. Max Muller, Ed., The Zend Avesta, reprint edition by Atlantic Publishers and Distributors, New Delhi, 1990, Part I, p. 5.

  10. Ibid., p. 11.

  11. Ibid.

  12. Ibid., p. 13.

  13. Ibid.

  14. Reported by Frank Brown and John Fleagle in Nature, 17 February 2005. And see Scientific American, 17 Feb 2005, http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/fossil-reanalysis-pushes/.

  15. A golden age in which “fields would bear plenty of grass for cattle: now with floods that stream, with snows that melt, it will seem a happy land in the world…” J. Darmetester and H.L. Mills, Trans., F. Max Muller, Ed., The Zend Avesta, op. cit., p. 16. See also the following passage from the Yasna, cited in R.C. Zaehner, The Dawn and Twilight of Zoroastrianism, op. cit., pp. 92–3: “Kingly Yima, of goodly pastures, the most glorious of all men born on earth, like the sun to behold among men, for during his reign he made beasts and men imperishable, he brought it about that the waters and plants never dried up, and that there should be an inexhaustible stock of food to eat. In the reign of Yima the valiant there was neither heat nor cold, neither old age, nor death, nor disease…” “Yima’s golden reign, in which all men were immortal and enjoyed perpetual youth, lasted a full thousand years.”

  16. J. Darmetester and H.L. Mills, Trans., F. Max Muller, Ed., The Zend Avesta, op. cit., pp. 15–18.

  17. E.W. West, Trans., F. Max Muller, Ed., Pahlavi Texts, Part I, Reprint Edition, Atlantic Publishers and Distributors, New Delhi, 1
990, p. 17.

  18. J. Darmetester and H.L. Mills, Trans., F. Max Muller, Ed., The Zend Avesta, op. cit., p. 5.

  19. Cited in Lokmanya Bal Gangadhar Tilak, The Arctic Home in the Vedas, reprint edition by Arktos Media, 2011, p. 254.

  20. E.W. West, Trans., F. Max Muller, Ed., Pahlavi Texts, op. cit., p. 17, note 5.

  21. J. Darmetester and H.L. Mills, Trans., F. Max Muller, Ed., The Zend Avesta, op. cit., p. 18.

  22. Ibid.

  23. Ibid., p. 20. See also the US (1898) edition of Darmetester’s translation of the Vendidad, reprinted 1995, edited by Joseph H. Peterson, p. 14, note 87.

  24. R.C. Zaehner, The Dawn and Twilight of Zoroastrianism, op. cit., p. 135.

  25. J. Darmetester and H.L. Mills, Trans., F. Max Muller, Ed., The Zend Avesta, op. cit., p. 17.

  26. Ibid.

  27. Ibid., p. 20.

  28. Ibid., note 5.

  29. Ibid., note 4.

  30. Encyclopedia Iranica, op. cit. “Jamshid i” (http://www.iranicaonline.org/articles/jamsid-i) and “Jamshid ii” (http://www.iranicaonline.org/articles/jamsid-ii).

  31. E.W. West, Trans., F. Max Muller, Ed., Pahlavi Texts, op. cit., p. 26.

  32. Delia Goetz, Sylvanus G. Morley, Adrian Reconis, Trans., Popol Vuh: The Sacred Book of the Ancient Quiche Maya, University of Oklahoma Press, 1991, p. 178.

  33. Ibid., p. 93.

  34. John Bierhorst, The Mythology of Mexico and Central America, Quill/William Morrow, New York, 1990, p. 41.

  35. J. Eric Thompson, Maya History and Religion, University of Oklahoma Press, 1990, p. 333.

  36. Genesis 6: 19–20.

  37. Genesis 6: 16.

  38. Louis Ginzberg, The Legends of the Jews, The Jewish Publication Society of America, Philadelphia, 1988, Vol. I, p. 162.

  39. Ibid.

  40. Omer Demir, Cappadocia: Cradle of History, 12th Revised Edition, p. 70.

  41. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Derinkuyu_%28underground_city%29.

  42. Hurriyet Daily News, 28 December 2014 (http://www.hurriyetdailynews.com/massive-ancient-underground-city-discovered-in-turkeys-nevsehir-aspx?PageID=238&NID=76196&NewsCatID=375), The Independent, 31 December 2014 (http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/middle-east/vast-5000-yearold-underground-city-discovered-in-turkeys-cappadocia-region-9951911.html).

  43. E.g. see report in The Independent, 31 December 2014, op. cit.

  44. Turkey, Lonely Planet, 2013, p. 478.

  45. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Derinkuyu_%28underground_city%29.

  46. Omer Demir, Cappadocia: Cradle of History, 9th Revised Edition, p. 61.

  47. For example in Proto-Hittite times up to 2,000 years earlier. See Omer Demir, op. cit., p. 70.

  48. Ibid., p. 60.

  49. Ibid.

  50. Ibid., p. 59.

  51. Ibid., p. 61.

  52. R.C. Zaehner, The Dawn and Twilight of Zoroastrianism, op. cit., p. 135.

  Chapter 8

  1. Genesis 6: 7.

  2. Genesis 6: 8–21.

  3. Genesis 6: 19–20.

  4. Genesis 8: 3.

  5. Genesis 8: 4.

  6. Genesis 8: 13–17.

  7. Genesis 8: 20–1.

  8. Genesis 9: 1–7.

  9. For example see Jeremiah 51: 27; also Isaiah 37: 38; 2 Kings 19: 37.

  10. Armen Asher and Teryl Minasian Asher, The Peoples of Ararat, Booksurge, 2009, p. 241.

  11. Charles Burney and David Marshall Lang, The Peoples of the Hills: Ancient Ararat and the Caucasus, Phoenix Press, London, 1971, p. 127. See also Amelie Kurht, The Ancient Near East, Routledge, London and New York, 1995, Vol. II, p. 550: “Archaeologically, the second millenium of the region is something of a blank at present.”

  12. Ibid., p.17.

  13. Armen Asher and Teryl Minasian Asher, The Peoples of Ararat, op. cit.

  14. Moses Khorenatsi, History of the Armenians, Caravan Books, Ann Arbor, 2006, pp. 72 and 82ff. Haik, also spelled Hayk, is said to be the son of Torgomah [T’orgom], who was the son of Tiras [T’iras], who was the son of Gomer [Gamer], who was the son of Noah’s son Japheth [Yapeth].

  15. Arra S. Avakian and Ara John Movsesian, Armenia: A Journey Through History, The Electric Press, California, 1998–2008, p. 47. See also Armen Asher and Teryl Minasian Asher, The Peoples of Ararat, op. cit., p. 284–5.

  16. http://www.armenian-genocide.org/genocidefaq.html.

  17. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ahoFlLh2Y3E.

  18. https://www.youtube.com/all_comments?v=ahoFlLh2Y3E.

  19. The quotation is from William Faulkner’s Requiem for a Nun, 1951.

  20. This was the flood that formed the channeled scablands of the Columbia Plateau. Cesare Emiliani, Planet Earth: Cosmology, Geology and the Evolution of Life and Environment, Cambridge University Press, 1995, p. 543, researched the extent of the sea level rise involved: “As a result of the flood that formed the Scabland, the sea level rose very rapidly from minus 100 meters to minus 80 meters. By 12,000 years ago more than fifty percent of the ice had returned to the ocean, and the sea level had risen to minus 60 meters.” The references to minus 100 meters, minus 80 meters and minus 60 meters are by comparison with today’s sea level. So, before the flood that formed the scablands, sea level was 100 meters lower than it is today, after the flood it was 60 meters lower than it is today, i.e. a staggering rise of 40 meters or 131 feet.

  21. Cesare Emiliani held a PhD from the University of Chicago where he pioneered the isotopic analysis of deep-sea sediments as a way to study the Earth’s past climates. He then moved to the University of Miami where he continued his isotopic studies and led several expeditions at sea. He was the recipient of the Vega Medal from Sweden and the Agassiz medal from the National Academy of Sciences of the United States.

  22. Emiliani, Earth and Planetary Science Letters, 41 (1978), p. 159, Elsevier Scientific Publishing Company, Amsterdam.

  23. E.g. see Karl W. Luckert, Stone Age Religion at Göbekli Tepe, Triplehood, 2013, p. 101.

  24. Joris Peters and Klaus Schmidt, “Animals in the symbolic world of Pre-Pottery Neolithic Göbekli Tepe, southeastern Turkey: a preliminary assessment,” Anthropozoologica, 2004, 39 (1), pp. 204–5.

  25. Karl W. Luckert, Stone Age Religion at Göbekli Tepe, op. cit., pp. 100–2.

  26. Genesis 9: 1.

  27. Joris Peters and Klaus Schmidt, “Animals in the symbolic world of Pre-Pottery Neolithic Göbekli Tepe,” op. cit., pp. 206–8.

  28. Samuel Noah Kramer, The Sumerians: Their History, Culture and Character, The University Press of Chicago, 1963, p. 33.

  29. http://www.penn.museum/collections/object/97591.

  30. http://www.schoyencollection.com/literature-collection/sumerian-literature-collection/sumerian-flood-story-ms.-3026.

  31. Samuel Noah Kramer, History Begins at Sumer, University of Pennsylvania Press, 1991, p. 148ff.

  32. Kramer, History Begins at Sumer, op. cit., p. 148.

  33. http://www.penn.museum/collections/object/97591.

  34. http://www.schoyencollection.com/literature-collection/sumerian-literature-collection/sumerian-flood-story-ms.-3026.

  35. Ibid., and see Irving Finkel, The Ark Before Noah, Hodder and Stoughton, London, 2014, p. 91.

  36. Kramer, History Begins at Sumer, op. cit., p. 149.

  37. Ibid., p. 149.

  38. Ibid.; William Hallow, Journal of Cuneiform Studies, Vol. 23, 61, 1970.

  39. Cited in Kramer, History Begins at Sumer, op. cit., pp. 149–51.

  40. Ibid., p. 151.

  41. Ibid.

  42. http://www.schoyencollection.com/literature-collection/sumerian-literature-collection/sumerian-flood-story-ms.-3026. And again see Irving Finkel, The Ark Before Noah, op. cit., p. 91.

  43. Kramer, History Begins at Sumer, op. cit., p. 151.

  44. Ibid., p. 152.

  45. Ibid.

  46. Ibid.

  47. Ibid., pp. 152–3.

  48. Ibid., p. 153.

  49. Ibid., p. 148.

  5
0. See discussion in Gerald P. Verbrugghe and John M. Wickersham (Eds.), Berossos and Manetho, University of Michigan Press, 1999, p. 15ff.

  51. Benno Lansberger, “Three Essays on the Sumerians II: The Beginnings of Civilization in Mesopotamia,” in Benno Lansberger, Three Essays on the Sumerians, Udena Publications, Los Angeles, p. 174; Berossos and Manetho, op. cit., pp. 17, 44; Stephanie Dalley, Myths from Mesopotamia, op. cit., pp. 182–3, 328; Jeremy Black and Anthony Green (Eds.), Gods, Demons and Symbols of Mesopotamia, British Museum Press, London, 1992, pp. 41, 82–83, 163–4.

  52. Berossos and Manetho, op. cit., p. 43.

  53. Ibid., p. 44.

  54. George Smith, with A.H. Sayce, The Chaldean Account of the Genesis, Sampson Low, London, 1880, p. 33.

  55. Berossos and Manetho, op. cit., pp. 26 and 34. See also George Smith, with A.H. Sayce, The Chaldean Account of the Genesis, op. cit p. 32.

  56. Amar Annus, “On the Origin of the Watchers: A Comparative Study of the Antediluvian Wisdom in Mesopotamian and Jewish Traditions,” Journal of the Study of Pseudepigrapha, Vol. 19.4 (2010), p. 285.

  57. Ibid.

  58. Ibid.

  59. Ibid., e.g. pp. 282, 290, 297, 301, 306. See also Jonas C. Greenfield, “The Seven Pillars of Wisdom (Prov 9:1): A Mistranslation,” The Jewish Quarterly Review, New Series, Vol. 76, No. 1, Essays in Memory of Moshe Held (Jul., 1985), p. 16.

  60. Ibid., p. 281: “Many kinds of Mesopotamian sciences and technologies were ideologically conceived as originating with antediluvian apkallus.”

  61. Erica Reiner, “The Etiological Myth of the Seven Sages,” Orientalia NS 30 (1961), p. 10.

  62. Jonas C. Greenfield, “The Seven Pillars of Wisdom” op. cit., p. 15.

  63. Amar Annus, “On the Origin of the Watchers,” op. cit., p. 289.

  64. Jonas C. Greenfield, “The Seven Pillars of Wisdom,” op. cit., p. 16.

  65. Amar Annus, “On the Origin of the Watchers,” op. cit., p. 289.

  66. Ibid., p. 283; see also: W.G. Lambert, “Ancestors, Authors and Canonicity,” Journal of Cuneiform Studies, Vol. 11, No. 1, 1957, pp. 8–9: “The sum of revealed knowledge was given once and for all by the antediluvian sages.”