Fingerprints of the Gods

  intelligent people—these astronomers, these ancient scientists—who

  worked behind the stage of prehistory?

  Let us start with some basics.

  The wild celestial dance

  The earth makes a complete circuit around its own axis once every

  twenty-four hours and has an equatorial circumference of 24,902.45

  miles. It follows, therefore, that a man standing still on the equator is in

  fact in motion, revolving with the planet at just over 1000 miles per

  hour.2 Viewed from outer space, looking down on the North Pole, the

  direction of rotation is anti-clockwise.

  While spinning daily on its own axis, the earth also orbits the sun (again

  in an anti-clockwise direction) on a path which is slightly elliptical rather

  than completely circular. It pursues this orbit at truly breakneck speed,

  travelling as far along it in an hour—66,600 miles—as the average

  motorist will drive in six years. To bring the calculations down in scale,

  this means that we are hurtling through space much faster than any

  1 Hamlet’s Mill, pp. 57-8.

  2 Figures from Encyclopaedia Britannica, 1991, 27:530.

  222

  Graham Hancock – FINGERPRINTS OF THE GODS

  bullet, at the rate of 18.5 miles every second. In the time that it has taken

  you to read this paragraph, we have voyaged about 550 miles farther

  along earth’s path around the sun.3

  With a year required to complete a full circuit, the only evidence we

  have of the tremendous orbital race we are participating in is the slow

  march of the seasons. And in the operations of the seasons themselves it

  is possible to see a wondrous and impartial mechanism at work

  distributing spring, summer, autumn and winter fairly around the globe,

  across the northern and southern hemispheres, year in and year out, with

  absolute regularity.

  The earth’s axis of rotation is tilted in relation to the plane of its orbit

  (at about 23.5° to the vertical). This tilt, which causes the seasons,

  ‘points’ the North Pole, and the entire northern hemisphere away from

  the sun for six months a year (while the southern hemisphere enjoys its

  summer) and points the South Pole and the southern hemisphere away

  from the sun for the remaining six months (while the northern

  hemisphere enjoys its summer). The seasons result from the annual

  variation in the angle at which the sun’s rays reach any particular point

  on the earth’s surface and from the annual variation in the number of

  hours of sunlight received there at different times of the year.

  The earth’s tilt is referred to in technical language as its ‘obliquity’, and

  the plane of its orbit, extended outwards to form a great circle in the

  celestial sphere, is known as the ‘ecliptic’. Astronomers also speak of the

  ‘celestial equator’, which is an extension of the earth’s equator into the

  celestial sphere. The celestial equator is today inclined at about 23.5° to

  the ecliptic, because the earth’s axis is inclined at 23.5° to the vertical.

  This angle, termed the ‘obliquity of the ecliptic’, is not fixed and

  immutable for all time. On the contrary (as we saw in Chapter Eleven in

  relation to the dating of the Andean city of Tiahuanaco) it is subject to

  constant, though very slow, oscillations. These occur across a range of

  slightly less than 3°, rising closest to the vertical at 22.1° and falling

  farthest away at 24.5°. A full cycle, from 24.5° to 22.1°, and back again to

  24.5°, takes approximately 41,000 years to complete.4

  So our fragile planet nods and spins while soaring along its orbital path.

  The orbit takes a year and the spin takes a day and the nod has a cycle of

  41,000 years. A wild celestial dance seems to be going on as we skip and

  skim and dive through eternity, and we feel the tug of contradictory

  urges: to fall into the sun on the one hand; to make a break for the outer

  darkness on the other.

  3 Ibid.

  4 J. D. Hays, John Imbrie, N.J. Shackleton, ‘Variations in the Earth’s Orbit, Pacemaker of

  the Ice Ages’, Science, volume 194, No. 4270, 10 December 1976, p. 1125.

  223

  Graham Hancock – FINGERPRINTS OF THE GODS

  Recondite influences

  The sun’s gravitational domain, in the inner circles of which the earth is

  held captive, is now known to extend more than fifteen trillion miles into

  space, almost halfway to the nearest star.5 Its pull upon our planet is

  therefore immense. Also affecting us is the gravity of the other planets

  with which we share the solar system. Each of these exerts an attraction

  which tends to draw the earth out of its regular orbit around the sun. The

  planets are of different sizes, however, and revolve around the sun at

  different speeds. The combined gravitational influence they are able to

  exert thus changes over time in complex but predictable ways, and the

  orbit changes its shape constantly in response. Since the orbit is an

  ellipse these changes affect its degree of elongation, known technically

  as its ‘eccentricity’. This varies from a low value close to zero (when the

  orbit approaches the form of a perfect circle) to a high value of about six

  per cent when it is at its most elongated and elliptical.6

  There are other forms of planetary influence too. Thus, though no

  explanation has yet been forthcoming, it is known that shortwave radio

  frequencies are disturbed when Jupiter, Saturn and Mars line up.7 And in

  this connection evidence has also emerged

  of a strange and unexpected correlation between the positions of Jupiter, Saturn

  and Mars, in their orbits around the sun, and violent electrical disturbances in the

  earth’s upper atmosphere. This would seem to indicate that the planets and the

  sun share in a cosmic-electrical balance mechanism that extends a billion miles

  from the centre of our solar system. Such an electrical balance is not accounted

  for in current astrophysical theories.8

  5 The Biblical Flood and the Ice Epoch, pp. 288-9. Fifteen trillion miles is equivalent to

  fifteen thousand billion miles.

  6 Ice Ages, pp. 80-1.

  7 Earth in Upheaval, p. 266.

  8 New York Times, 15 April 1951.

  224

  Graham Hancock – FINGERPRINTS OF THE GODS

  The obliquity of the ecliptic varies from 22.1° to 24.5° over a cycle of

  41,000 years.

  Inner planets of the solar system.

  225

  Graham Hancock – FINGERPRINTS OF THE GODS

  The New York Times, from which the above report is taken, does not

  attempt to clarify matters further. Its writers are probably unaware of just

  how much they sound like Berosus, the Chaldean historian, astronomer

  and seer of the third century BC, who made a deep study of the omens he

  believed would presage the final destruction of the world. He concluded,

  ‘I Berosus, interpreter of Bellus, affirm that all the earth inherits will be

  consigned to flame when the five planets assemble in Cancer, so

  arranged in one row that a straight line may pass through their spheres.’9

  A conjunction of five planets that can be expected to have profound

  gravitational effects will t
ake place on 5 May in the year 2000 when

  Neptune, Uranus, Venus, Mercury and Mars will align with earth on the

  other side of the sun, setting up a sort of cosmic tug-of-war.10 Let us also

  note that modern astrologers who have charted the Mayan date for the

  end of the Fifth Sun calculate that there will be a most peculiar

  arrangement of planets at that time, indeed an arrangement so peculiar

  that ‘it can only occur once in 45,200 years ... From this extraordinary

  pattern we might well expect an extraordinary effect.’11

  No one in his or her right mind would rush to accept such a

  proposition. Nevertheless, it cannot be denied that multiple influences,

  many of which we do not fully understand, appear to be at work within

  our solar system. Among these influences, that of our own satellite, the

  moon, is particularly strong. Earthquakes, for example, occur more often

  when the moon is full or when the earth is between the sun and the

  moon; when the moon is new or between the sun and the earth; when the

  moon crosses the meridian of the affected locality; and when the moon is

  closest to the earth on its orbit.12 Indeed, when the moon reaches this

  latter point (technically referred to as its ‘perigree’), its gravitational

  attraction increases by about six per cent. This happens once every

  twenty-seven and one-third days. The tidal pull that it exerts on these

  occasions affects not only the great movements of our oceans but those

  of the reservoirs of hot magma penned within the earth’s thin crust

  (which has been described as resembling ‘a paper bag filled with honey

  or molasses swinging along at a rate of more than 1000 miles an hour in

  equatorial rotation, and more than 66,000 miles an hour in orbit’13).

  The wobble of a deformed planet

  All this circular motion, of course, generates immense centrifugal forces

  and these, as Sir Isaac Newton demonstrated in the seventeenth century,

  9 Berossus, Fragments.

  10 Skyglobe 3.6.

  11 Roberta S. Sklower, ‘Predicting Planetary Positions’, appendix to Frank Waters, Mexico

  Mystique, Sage Books, Chicago, 1975, p. 285ff.

  12 Earth in Upheaval, p. 138.

  13 Biblical Flood and the Ice Epoch, p. 49.

  226

  Graham Hancock – FINGERPRINTS OF THE GODS

  cause the earth’s ‘paper bag’ to bulge outwards at the equator. The

  corollary is a flattening at the poles. In consequence, our planet deviates

  slightly from the form of a perfect sphere and is more accurately

  described as an ‘oblate spheroid’. Its radius at the equator (3963.374

  miles) is about fourteen miles longer than its polar radius (3949.921

  miles).14

  For billions of years the flattened poles and the bulging equator have

  been engaged in a covert mathematical interaction with the recondite

  influence of gravity. ‘Because the Earth is flattened,’ explains one

  authority, ‘the Moon’s gravity tends to tilt the Earth’s axis so that it

  becomes perpendicular to the Moon’s orbit, and to a lesser extent the

  same is true for the Sun.’15

  At the same time the equatorial bulge—the extra mass distributed

  around the equator—acts like the rim of a gyroscope to keep the earth

  steady on its axis.16

  Year in, year out, on a planetary scale, it is this gyroscopic effect that

  prevents the tug of the sun and the moon from radically altering the

  earth’s axis of rotation. The pull these two bodies jointly exert is,

  however, sufficiently strong to force the axis to ‘precess’, which means

  that it wobbles slowly in a clockwise direction opposite to that of the

  earth’s spin.

  This important motion is our planet’s characteristic signature within the

  solar system. Anyone who has ever set a top spinning should be able to

  understand it without much difficulty; a top, after all, is simply another

  type of gyroscope. In full uninterrupted spin it stands upright. But the

  moment its axis is deflected from the vertical it begins to exhibit a

  second behaviour: a slow and obstinate reverse wobble around a great

  circle. This wobble, which is precession, changes the direction in which

  the axis points while keeping constant its newly tilted angle.

  A second analogy, somewhat different in approach, may help to clarify

  matters a little further:

  1 Envisage the earth, floating in space, inclined at approximately 23.5°

  to the vertical and spinning around on its axis once every 24 hours.

  2 Envisage this axis as a massively strong pivot, or axle, passing

  through the centre of the earth, exiting via the North and South Poles

  and extending outwards from there in both directions.

  3 Imagine that you are a giant, striding through the solar system, with

  orders to carry out a specific task.

  4 Imagine approaching the tilted earth (which, because of your great

  size, now looks no bigger to you than a millwheel).

  5 Imagine reaching out and grasping the two ends of the extended axis.

  6 And imagine yourself slowly beginning to inter-rotate them, pushing

  14 Figures from Encyclopaedia Britannica, 1991, 27:530.

  15 Ibid.

  16 Path of the Pole, p. 3.

  227

  Graham Hancock – FINGERPRINTS OF THE GODS

  one end, pulling the other.

  7 The earth was already spinning when you arrived.

  8 Your orders, therefore, are not to get involved in its axial rotation, but

  rather to impart to it its other motion: that slow clockwise wobble

  called precession.

  9 To fulfill this commission you will have to push the northern tip of the

  extended axis up and around a great circle in the northern celestial

  hemisphere while at the same time pulling the southern tip around an

  equally large circle in the southern celestial hemisphere. This will

  involve a slow swivelling pedalling motion with your hands and

  shoulders.

  10 Be warned, however. The ‘millwheel’ of the earth is heavier than it

  looks, so much heavier, in fact, that it’s going to take you 25,776

  years17 to turn the two tips of its axis through one full precessional

  cycle (at the end of which they will be aiming at the same points in the

  celestial sphere as when you arrived).

  11 Oh, and by the way, now that you’ve started the job we may as well

  tell you that you’re never going to be allowed to leave. As soon as one

  precessional cycle is over another must begin. And another ... and

  another ... and another ... and so on, endlessly, for ever and ever and

  ever.

  12 You can think of this, if you like, as one of the basic mechanisms of

  the solar system, or, if you prefer, as one of the fundamental

  commandments of the divine will.

  17 Jane B. Sellers, The Death of Gods in Ancient Egypt, Penguin, London, 1992, p. 205.

  228

  Graham Hancock – FINGERPRINTS OF THE GODS

  Precession.

  In the process, little by little, as you slowly sweep the extended axis

  around the heavens, its two tips will point to one star after another in the

  polar latitudes of the southern celestial hemisphere (and sometimes, of

  course, to empty space), and to one star
after another in the polar

  latitudes of the northern celestial hemisphere. We are talking here, about

  a kind of musical chairs among the circumpolar stars. And what keeps

  everything in motion is the earth’s axial precession—a motion driven by

  giant gravitational and gyroscopic forces, that is regular, predictable and

  relatively easy to work out with the aid of modern equipment. Thus, for

  example, the northern pole star is presently alpha Ursae Minoris (which

  we know as Polaris). But computer calculations enable us to state with

  certainty that in 3000 BC alpha Draconis occupied the pole position; at

  the time of the Greeks the northern pole star was beta Ursae Minoris; and

  in AD 14,000 it will be Vega.18

  18 Skyglobe 3.6.

  229

  Graham Hancock – FINGERPRINTS OF THE GODS

  A great secret of the past

  It will not hurt to remind ourselves of some of the fundamental data

  concerning the movements of the earth and its orientation in space:

  • It tilts at about 23.5° to the vertical, an angle from which it can vary by

  as much as 1.5° on either side over periods of 41,000 years.

  • It completes a full precessional cycle once every 25,776 years.19

  • It spins on its own axis once every twenty-four hours.

  • It orbits the sun once every 365 days (actually 365.2422 days).

  • The most important influence on its seasons is the angle at which the

  rays of the sun strike it at various points on its orbital path.

  Equinoxes and solstices.

  Let us also note that there are four crucial astronomical moments in the

  year, marking the official beginning of each of the four seasons. These

  moments (or cardinal points), which were of immense importance to the

  ancients, are the winter and the summer solstices and the spring and

  autumn equinoxes. In the northern hemisphere the winter solstice, the

  shortest day, falls on 21 December, and the summer solstice, the longest

  day, on 21 June. In the southern hemisphere, on the other hand,

  19 Precise figure from The Death of Gods in Ancient Egypt, p. 205.

  230

  Graham Hancock – FINGERPRINTS OF THE GODS

  everything is literally upside down: there winter begins on 21 June and

  summer on 21 December.

  The equinoxes, by contrast, are the two points in the year on which