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    Fingerprints of the Gods

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      earthquake, which swept so rapidly over the face of the earth that only a

      few people managed to escape in their canoes or take refuge on the tops

      of the highest mountains, petrified with terror.20

      The Luiseno of lower California had a legend that a flood covered the

      mountains and destroyed most of mankind. Only a few were saved

      because they fled to the highest peaks which were spared when all the

      rest of the world was inundated. The survivors remained there until the

      flood ended.21 Farther north similar flood myths were recorded amongst

      the Hurons.22 And a legend of the Montagnais, belonging to the

      Algonquin family, related how Michabo, or the Great Hare, re-established

      the world after the flood with the help of a raven, an otter and a

      muskrat.23

      Lynd’s History of the Dakotas, an authoritative work of the nineteenth

      century which preserved many indigenous traditions that would otherwise

      have been lost, reports an Iroquois myth that ‘the sea and waters had at

      one time infringed upon the land, so that all human life was destroyed’.

      The Chickasaws asserted that the world had been destroyed by water ‘but

      that one family was saved and two animals of every kind’. The Sioux also

      spoke of a time when there was no dry land and when all men

      disappeared from existence.24

      Water water everywhere

      How far and how widely across the myth memories of mankind do the

      ripples of the great flood spread?

      Very widely indeed. More than 500 deluge legends are known around

      the world and, in a survey of 86 of these (20 Asiatic, 3 European, 7

      African, 46 American and 10 from Australia and the Pacific), the specialist

      researcher Dr Richard Andree concluded that 62 were entirely

      independent of the Mesopotamian and Hebrew accounts.25

      20 New Larousse Encyclopaedia of Mythology, p. 426.

      21 Folklore in the Old Testament, pp. 111-12.

      22 New Larousse Encyclopaedia of Mythology, p. 431.

      23 Ibid., pp. 428-9; Folklore in the Old Testament, p. 115. In this version the character of

      Michabo is called Messou.

      24 From Lynd’s History of the Dakotas, cited in Atlantis: the Antediluvian World, p. 117.

      25 Frederick A. Filby, The Flood Reconsidered: A Review of the Evidences of Geology,

      Archaeology, Ancient Literature and the Bible, Pickering and Inglis Ltd., London, 1970,

      p. 58. Andree was an eminent German geographer and anthropologist. His monograph

      on diluvial traditions is described by J. G. Frazer (in Folklore in the Old Testament, pp.

      46-7) as ‘a model of sound learning and good sense set forth with the utmost clearness

      and conciseness ...’

      190

      Graham Hancock – FINGERPRINTS OF THE GODS

      For example, early Jesuit scholars who were among the first Europeans

      to visit China had the opportunity in the Imperial Library to study a vast

      work, consisting of 4320 volumes, said to have been handed down from

      ancient times and to contain ‘all knowledge’. This great book included a

      number of traditions which told of the consequences that followed ‘when

      mankind rebelled against the high gods and the system of the universe

      fell into disorder’: ‘The planets altered their courses. The sky sank lower

      towards the north. The sun, moon and stars changed their motions. The

      earth fell to pieces and the waters in its bosom rushed upwards with

      violence and overflowed the earth.’26

      In the Malaysian tropical forest the Chewong people believe that every

      so often their own world, which they call Earth Seven, turns upside down

      so that everything is flooded and destroyed. However, through the

      agency of the Creator God Tohan, the flat new surface of what had

      previously been the underside of Earth Seven is moulded into mountains,

      valleys and plains. New trees are planted, and new humans born.27

      A flood myth of Laos and northern Thailand has it that beings called the

      Thens lived in the upper kingdom long ages ago, while the masters of the

      lower world were three great men, Pu Leng Seung, Khun K’an and Khun

      K’et. One day the Thens announced that before eating any meal people

      should give them a part of their food as a sign of respect. The people

      refused and in a rage the Thens created a flood which devastated the

      whole earth. The three great men built a raft, on top of which they made

      a small house, and embarked with a number of women and children. In

      this way they and their descendants survived the deluge.28

      In similar fashion the Karens of Burma have traditions of a global

      deluge from which two brothers were saved on a raft.29 Such a deluge is

      also part of the mythology of Viet Nam, where a brother and a sister are

      said to have survived in a great wooden chest which also contained two

      of every kind of animal.30

      Several aboriginal Australian peoples, especially those whose traditional

      homelands are along the tropical northern coast, ascribe their origins to a

      great flood which swept away the previous landscape and society.

      Meanwhile, in the origin myths of a number of other tribes, the cosmic

      serpent Yurlunggur (associated with the rainbow) is held responsible for

      the deluge.31

      There are Japanese traditions according to which the Pacific islands of

      Oceania were formed after the waters of a great deluge had receded.32 In

      Oceania itself a myth of the native inhabitants of Hawaii tells how the

      26 Reported in Charles Berlitz, The Lost Ship of Noah, W. H. Allen, London, 1989, p. 126.

      27 World Mythology, pp. 26-7.

      28 Ibid., p. 305.

      29 Folklore in the Old Testament, p. 81.

      30 Ibid.

      31 World Mythology, p. 280.

      32 E. Sykes, Dictionary Of Non-Classical Mythology, London, 1961, p. 119.

      191

      Graham Hancock – FINGERPRINTS OF THE GODS

      world was destroyed by a flood and later recreated by a god named

      Tangaloa. The Samoans believe that there was once an inundation that

      wiped out almost all mankind. It was survived only by two human beings

      who put to sea in a boat which eventually came to rest in the Samoan

      archipelago.33

      Greece, India and Egypt

      On the other side of the world, Greek mythology too is haunted by

      memories of a deluge. Here, however (as in Central America) the

      inundation is not viewed as an isolated event but as one of a series of

      destructions and remakings of the world. The Aztecs and the Maya spoke

      in terms of successive ‘Suns’ or epochs (of which our own was thought to

      be the Fifth and last). In similar fashion the oral traditions of Ancient

      Greece, collected and set down in writing by Hesiod in the eighth century

      BC, related that prior to the present creation there had been four earlier

      races of men on earth. Each of these was thought more advanced than

      the one that followed it. And each, at the appointed hour, had been

      ‘swallowed up’ in a geological cataclysm.

      The first and most ancient creation had been mankind’s ‘golden race’

      who had ‘lived like the gods, free from care, without trouble or woe ...

      With ageless limbs they revelled at their banquets ... When they died it

      was as men overco
    me by sleep.’ With the passing of time, and at the

      command of Zeus, this golden race eventually ‘sank into the depths of

      the earth’. It was succeeded by the ‘silver race’ which was supplanted by

      the ‘bronze race’, which was replaced by the race of ‘heroes’, which was

      followed by the ‘iron’ race—our own—the fifth and most recent creation.34

      It is the fate of the bronze race that is of particular interest to us here.

      Described in the myths as having ‘the strength of giants, and mighty

      hands on their mighty limbs’,35 these formidable men were exterminated

      by Zeus, king of the gods, as a punishment for the misdeeds of

      Prometheus, the rebellious Titan who had presented humanity with the

      gift of fire.36 The mechanism the vengeful deity used to sweep the earth

      clean was an overwhelming flood.

      In the most widespread version of the story Prometheus impregnated a

      human female. She bore him a son named Deucalion, who ruled over the

      country of Phthia, in Thessaly, and took to wife Pyrrha, ‘the red-blonde’,

      daughter of Epimetheus and Pandora. When Zeus reached his fateful

      decision to destroy the bronze race, Deucalion, forewarned by

      Prometheus, made a wooden box, stored in it ‘all that was necessary’,

      33 New Larousse Encyclopaedia of Mythology, pp. 460, 466.

      34 C. Kerenyi, The Gods of the Greeks, Thames & Hudson, London, 1974, pp. 226-9.

      35 Ibid.

      36 World Mythology, pp. 130-1.

      192

      Graham Hancock – FINGERPRINTS OF THE GODS

      and climbed into it with Pyrrha. The king of the gods caused mighty rains

      to pour from heaven, flooding the greater part of the earth. All mankind

      perished in this deluge, save a few who had fled to the highest

      mountains. ‘It also happened at this time that the mountains of Thessaly

      were split asunder, and the whole country as far as the Isthmus and the

      Peloponnese became a single sheet of water.’

      Deucalion and Pyrrha floated over this sea in their box for nine days

      and nights, finally landing on Mount Parnassus. There, after the rains had

      ceased, they disembarked and sacrificed to the gods. In response Zeus

      sent Hermes to Deucalion with permission to ask for whatever he wished.

      He wished for human beings. Zeus then bade him take stones and throw

      them over his shoulder. The stones Deucalion threw became men, and

      those that Pyrrha threw became women.37

      As the Hebrews looked back on Noah, so the Greeks of ancient

      historical times looked back upon Deucalion—as the ancestor of their

      nation and as the founder of numerous towns and temples.38

      A similar figure was revered in Vedic India more than 3000 years ago.

      One day (the story goes)

      when a certain wise man named Manu was making his ablutions, he found in the

      hollow of his hand a tiny little fish which begged him to allow it to live. Taking pity

      on it he put it in a jar. The next day, however, it had grown so much bigger that

      he had to carry it to a lake. Soon the lake was too small. ‘Throw me into the sea,’

      said the fish [which was in reality a manifestation of the god Vishnu] ‘and I shall

      be more comfortable.’ Then he warned Manu of a coming deluge. He sent him a

      large ship, with orders to load it with two of every living species and the seeds of

      every plant, and then to go on board himself.’39

      Manu had only just carried out these orders when the ocean rose and

      submerged everything, and nothing was to be seen but Vishnu in his fish

      form—now a huge, one-horned creature with golden scales. Manu

      moored his ark to the horn of the fish and Vishnu towed it across the

      brimming waters until it came to rest on the exposed peak of ‘the

      Mountain of the North’:40

      The fish said, ‘I have saved thee; fasten the vessel to a tree, that the water may not

      sweep it away while thou art on the mountain; and in proportion as the waters

      decrease thou shalt descend.’ Manu descended with the waters. The Deluge had

      carried away all creatures and Manu remained alone.41

      With him, and with the animals and plants he had saved from destruction,

      began a new age of the world. After a year there emerged from the

      waters a woman who announced herself as ‘the daughter of Manu’. The

      couple married and produced children, thus becoming the ancestors of

      37 The Gods of the Greeks, pp. 226-9.

      38 World Mythology, pp. 130-1.

      39 New Larousse Encyclopaedia of Mythology, p. 362.

      40 Ibid., Satapatha Brahmana, (trans. Max Muller), cited in Atlantis: the Antediluvian

      World, p. 87.

      41 Ibid. See also Folklore in the Old Testament, pp. 78-9.

      193

      Graham Hancock – FINGERPRINTS OF THE GODS

      the present race of mankind.42

      Last but by no means least, Ancient Egyptian traditions also refer to a

      great flood. A funerary text discovered in the tomb of Pharaoh Seti I, for

      example, tells of the destruction of sinful humanity by a deluge.43 The

      reasons for this catastrophe are set out in Chapter CLXXV of the Book of

      the Dead, which attributes the following speech to the Moon God Thoth:

      They have fought fights, they have upheld strifes, they have done evil, they have

      created hostilities, they have made slaughter, they have caused trouble and

      oppression ... [Therefore] I am going to blot out everything which I have made.

      This earth shall enter into the watery abyss by means of a raging flood, and will

      become even as it was in primeval time.44

      On the trail of a mystery

      With the words of Thoth we have come full circle to the Sumerian and

      biblical floods. ‘The earth was filled with violence’, says Genesis:

      And God looked upon the earth, and, behold, it was corrupt; for all flesh had

      corrupted his way upon the earth. And God said unto Noah, ‘The end of all flesh is

      come before me; for the earth is filled with violence through them; and behold I

      will destroy them with the earth.’45

      Like the flood of Deucalion, the flood of Manu, and the flood that

      destroyed the Aztecs’ ‘Fourth Sun’, the biblical deluge was the end of a

      world age. A new age succeeded it: our own, populated by the

      descendants of Noah. From the very beginning, however, it was

      understood that this age too would in due course come to a catastrophic

      end. As the old song puts it, ‘God gave Noah the rainbow sign; no more

      water, the fire next time.’

      The Scriptural source for this prophecy of world destruction is to be

      found in 2 Peter 3:

      We must be careful to remember that during the last days there are bound to be

      people who will be scornful and [who will say], ‘Everything goes on as it has since

      it began at the creation’. They are choosing to forget that there were heavens at

      the beginning, and that the earth was formed by the word of God out of water and

      between the waters, so that the world of that time was destroyed by being flooded

      by water. But by the same word, the present sky and earth are destined for fire,

      and are only being reserved until Judgement Day so that all sinners may be

      destroyed ... The Day of the Lord will come as a thief in the night, and then with a

      roar the sky will vanish, the el
    ements will catch fire and fall apart, and the earth

      42 Encyclopaedia Britannica, 1991, 7:798. The Rig Veda, Penguin Classics, London, 1981,

      pp. 100-1.

      43 The Encyclopaedia of Ancient Egypt, p. 48.

      44 From the Theban Recension of The Egyptian Book of the Dead, quoted in From Fetish

      to God in Ancient Egypt, p. 198.

      45 Genesis, 6:11-13.

      194

      Graham Hancock – FINGERPRINTS OF THE GODS

      and all that it contains will be burnt up.46

      The Bible, therefore, envisages two ages of the world, our own being the

      second and last. Elsewhere, in other cultures, different numbers of

      creations and destructions are recorded. In China, for instance, the

      perished ages are called kis, ten of which are said to have elapsed from

      the beginning of time until Confucius. At the end of each kis, ‘in a

      general convulsion of nature, the sea is carried out of its bed, mountains

      spring up out of the ground, rivers change their course, human beings

      and everything are ruined, and the ancient traces effaced ...’47

      Buddhist scriptures speak of ‘Seven Suns’, each brought to an end by

      water, fire or wind.48 At the end of the Seventh Sun, the current ‘world

      cycle’, it is expected that the ‘earth will break into flames’.49 Aboriginal

      traditions of Sarawak and Sabah recall that the sky was once ‘low’ and tell

      us that ‘six Suns perished ... at present the world is illuminated by the

      seventh Sun’.50 Similarly, the Sibylline Books speak of nine Suns that are

      nine ages’ and prophesy two ages yet to come—those of the eighth and

      the ninth Sun.’51

      On the other side of the Atlantic Ocean, the Hopi Indians of Arizona

      (who are distant relatives of the Aztecs52) record three previous Suns,

      each culminating in a great annihilation followed by the gradual reemergence of mankind. In Aztec cosmology, of course, there were four

      Suns prior to our own. Such minor differences concerning the precise

      number of destructions and creations envisaged in this or that mythology

      should not distract us from the remarkable convergence of ancient

      traditions evident here. All over the world these traditions appear to

      commemorate a widespread series of catastrophes. In many cases the

      character of each successive cataclysm is obscured by the use of poetic

      language and the piling up of metaphor and symbols. Quite frequently,

     
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