Underworld: The Mysterious Origins of Civilization

  39. Encyclopaedia Bhtannica, Micropaedia, vol. 12, 127

  40. Or at least so claim its enthusiasts

  41. Robert Kunzig, Mapping the Deep, 1, Sort of Books, London, 2000

  42. In Goa and Lakshadweep

  43. See full discussion in parts 2 and 3

  44. G. A. Milne, J. L. Davis, J. X. Mitrovica, H.-G. Scherneck et al., ‘Space-geodetic constraints on glacial isostatic adjustment in Fennoscandia’, Science, 291, 2001, 2, 381–5. G. A. Milne, J. X. Mitrovica, J. L. Davis, ‘Near-Field Hydro-Isostasy: The Implementation of a Revised Sea-Level Equation’, Geophysical Journal International, 139, pub. 1, 1999, 464–83. G. A. Milne, J. X. Mitrovica, ‘Postglacial Sea-Level Change on a Rotating Earth’, Geophysical Journal International, 133, 1998, 1–19. G. A. Milne, J. X. Mitrovica, A. M. Forte, ‘The sensitivity of GIA predictions to a low viscosity layer at the base of the upper mantle’, Earth and Planetary Science Letters, 154, 1998, 265–78. G. A. Milne, J. X. Mitrovica, D. P. Schrag, ‘Estimating past continental ice volume from sea-level data’, Quaternary Science Review, in press, 2001

  45. Sharif’s rough guess was very close. The coordinates, per GPS to within 50 metres, are latitude 11 degrees 11.200 north and longitude 79 degrees 54.192 east

  2 / The Riddle of the Antediluvian Cities

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

  2. Ibid., 148

  3. The account is in the Book of Genesis, chapters 6–9

  4. Kramer, op. cit., 148

  5. Ibid., 148

  6. Ibid., 149

  7. Ibid., 149

  8. Ibid., 149; William Hallo, ‘Antediliuvian Cities’, Journal of Cuneiform Studies, vol. 23, 1970, 61

  9. I have discussed these texts at length in earlier publications

  10. Cited in Kramer, op. cit., 149–51

  11. Ibid., 151

  12. Ibid., 151

  13. Ibid., 151

  14. Ibid., 152

  15. Ibid., 152

  16. Ibid., 152

  17. Ibid., 152–3

  18. Ibid., 153

  19. Ibid., 148

  20. See discussion in Gerald P. Verbrugghe and John M. Wickersham (eds.), Berossos and Manetho, 15ff, University of Michigan Press, 1999

  21. Samuel Noel Kramer, The Sumerians, 39–40, University of Chicago Press, 1963

  22. Ibid., 39

  23. Ibid., 39–40

  24. Ibid., 40

  25. Ibid., 42

  26. Time-Life, The Age of the God Kings, 10–11, Time-Life Books, 1989

  27. See www.grahamhancock.com, Forum, ‘The Quantas Mystery’

  28. Leonard Woolley, Ur of the Chaldees, 21, Pelican Books, 1940

  29. Ibid., 21

  30. Ibid., 21, 24

  31. Ibid., 24

  32. Oppenheimer re Flandrian transgression

  33. Kurt Lambeck, ‘Shoreline Reconstructions for the Persian Gulf Since the Last Glacial Maximum’, Earth, and Planetary Science Letters, 142, 1996, 43–57

  34. Ibid., 47

  35. Oppenheimer, Eden in the East: The Drowned Continent of Southeast Asia, 57, Weidenfeld and Nicholson, London, 1998

  36. Ibid., 46. See also Julius Zarins, ‘The Early Settlement of Southern Mesopotamia’, 57, Journal of the American Oriental Society, 112, 1, 1992

  37. Oppenheimer, op. cit., 46

  38. Georges Roux, Ancient Iraq, 4, Penguin Books, London, 1992, citing C. E. Larsen, ‘The Mesopotamian Delta Region: A Reconsideration of Lees and Falcon’, Journal of the American Oriental Society, 95, 1975, 43–57. P. Kassler, ‘The structural and geomorphic evolution of the Persian Gulf’, in B. H. Preuser, The Persian Gulf, Berlin, Heidelberg, New York, 1973, 11–32. W. Nutzel, ‘The formation of the Arabian Gulf from 14,000 BC’, Sumer, 31, 1975, 101–11

  39. Kramer, The Sumerians, 2 and 31

  40. Ibid., 30 and 31

  41. Ibid., 31

  42. Ibid., 31

  43. Roux, op. cit., 60

  44. Ibid., 60

  45. Ibid., 48, 60. Roux identifies the first stages of construction at Eridu with Ubaid I pottery, a style that he dates to 7000 years before the present

  46. Ibid., 108

  47. Ibid., 112

  48. Zarins, ‘The Early Settlement of Southern Mesopotamia’

  49. Ibid.

  50. Ibid., 57

  51. Ibid., 60

  52. Roux, op. cit., 111

  53. Kramer, The Sumerians, 26

  54. Roux, op. cit., 109, 112

  55. Hallo, op. cit., 61

  56. Verbrugghe and Wickersham, op. cit.

  57. Ibid., 49

  58. Ibid., 49

  59. Ibid., 49, footnote 19

  60. Ibid., 49–50

  61. Ibid., 50

  62. Roux, op. cit. See maps, Southern Mesopotamia

  63. Hallo, op. cit., 61

  64. Edmond Sollberger, The Babylonian Legend of the Flood, British Museum Publications, London, 1984, 17

  65. The Epic of Gilgamesh, Penguin, London, 1972; Stephanie Dalley, Myths from Mesopotamia, Oxford University Press, 1990

  66. E.g. see Verbrugghe and Wickersham, op. cit., 3–91

  67. Hallo, op. cit., 63

  68. Ibid., 63

  69. Roux, op. cit., 33, 48

  70. Ibid., 37–38

  71. Ibid., 44–5

  72. Ibid., 49

  73. Ibid., 51

  74. Ibid., 53

  75. L. Luca Cavalli-Sforza et al., The History and Geography of Human Genes, 215, Princeton University Press, 1994

  76. Roux, op. cit., 54

  77. Encyclopaedia Britannica, Micropaedia, vol. 12, 98

  78. Roux, op. cit., 69

  79. Cavalli-Sforza et al., op. cit., 215

  80. Roux, op. cit., 48, 69

  81. Roux, op. cit., 82–3: ‘In all respects the Uruk culture appears as the development of conditions that existed during the Ubaid period

  82. Roux, op. cit., 48, 76–7. There is an intervening sub-phase of the Uruk period known as the Jemdat Nasr period after the type-site between Baghdad and Babylon. Roux, op. cit., 76: ‘Between the cultural elements of that period [Jemdat Nasr] and those of the Uruk period there is no fundamental difference.’

  83. Ibid., 48

  84. Ibid., 66

  85. Ibid., 66

  86. Ibid., 80

  87. Ibid., 80

  88. Ibid., 80–81

  89. Ibid., 80

  90. Ibid., 80

  91. Cavalli-Sforza et al., op. cit., 215

  92. Roux, op. cit., 82

  93. 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, 174; Verbrugghe and Wickersham, op. cit., 17 and 44; Stephanie Dalley, op. cit., 182–3, 328; Jeremy Black and Anthony Green (eds.), Gods, Demons and Symbols of Mesopotamia, 41, 82–2, 163–4, British Museum Press, London, 1992

  94. Verbrugghe and Wickersham, op. cit., 43

  95. Ibid., 44

  96. Benno Landsberger, op. cit., Essay 2

  97. Ibid., Essay 3

  98. Ibid., Essay 2

  99. Ibid., Essay 2

  100. Ibid., Essay 2

  101. Lambeck, op. cit., 43–53

  102. Ibid., 43

  103. Roux, op. cit., 48, 60

  104. Lambeck, op. cit., 55

  105. Ibid., 55

  106. Ibid., 56

  107. See for example discussion in William Ryan and Walter Pitman, Noah’s Flood, 178–9, Simon and Schuster, New York, 1998

  108. Roux, op. cit., 4

  109. Ibid., 4

  110. Lambeck, op. cit., 54

  111. Ibid., 54

  112. Ibid., 54

  113. Ofer Bar-Yoseph, ‘The Impact of Late Pleistocene-Early Holocene Climatic Changes on Humans in Southwest Asia’, in Lawrence Guy Straus et al., Humans at the End of the Ice Age, 68, Plenum Press, New York and London, 1996

  114. Ibid., 68

>   115. Lambeck, op. cit., 54

  116. See discussion in Verbrugghe and Wickersham, op. cit.

  117. See Kramer, History Begins at Sumer

  3 / Meltdown

  1. Elise Van Campo puts the beginning of his ‘LGM interval’ at 22,000 carbon-14 years ago (approximately equivalent to 25,500 to 21,500 years ago], based on his Arabian sea-core data: Quaternary Research, 26, 1987, 376. Jonathan Adams gives 17,000–15,000 carbon-14 years ago as the period of most extreme glacial conditions in several areas of Eurasia. This corresponds to a period of 20,300 to 18,000 calendar years ago. J. Adams, Eurasia During the Last 150,000 Years, on-line literature review at http://www.esd.ornl.gov/projects/qen/nercEURASIA.html

  2. Cesare Emiliani, Planet Earth, 543, Cambridge University Press, 1995

  3. Glenn Milne, Dept of Geology, University of Durham

  4. China: 9.6 million sq. kms; Europe 10.3 million sq. kms; Canada 9.9 million sq. kms

  5. Lawrence Guy Straus et al., Humans at the End of the Ice Age, 175, Plenum Press, New York and London, 1996

  6. Ibid., 175

  7. Ibid., 175

  8. Ibid., 177 and 188–9, emphasis added.

  9. Richard Rudgley, Lost Civilizations of the Stone Age, 100, Century, London, 1998

  10. Ibid., 100

  11. Ibid., 100

  12. N. C. Fleming, ‘Archaeological evidence for vertical movement of the continental shelf during the Palaeolithic, Neolithic and Bronze Age periods’: ‘Of the 500 known submarine sites worldwide containing in situ remains of buildings, structures, harbour works, quarries, or lithic artefacts, approximately 100 are older than 3 ka BP, that is, in European archaeological terminology, Bronze Age or older.’ To assess the preponderance of interest in shipwrecks over the search for ancient structures see the British Museum Encyclopaedia of Underwater and Maritime Archaeology, British Museum Press, 1997

  13. Thomas J. Crowley and Gerald R. North, Palaeoclimatology, 48, Oxford University Press, 1991

  14. Ibid., 48

  15. R. C. L. Wilson, S. A. Drury and J. L. Chapman, The Great Ice Age, 14, The Open University, London, 2000

  16. Ibid., 15

  17. Ibid., 15

  18. Ibid., 14

  19. Ibid., 16

  20. Oppenheimer, Eden in the East: The Drowned Continent of Southeast Asia, 43, Weidenfeld and Nicholson, London, 1998

  21. Ibid., 41

  22. Wilson et al., op. cit., 17

  23. Ibid., 14–17

  24. Ibid., 16

  25. Plato, Timaeus and Critias, 38, Penguin Books, London, 1977

  26. Vitacheslav Koudriavtsev, Atlantis: Ice Age Civilization, Institute of Metahistory, Moscow, 1997. Koudriavtsev’s work may be accessed on the Internet at www.imh.ru

  27. Cesare Emiliani, The Scientific Companion, 251 and 257, Wiley Popular Science, 1995

  28. Cesare Emiliani held a Ph.D. 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

  29. Emiliani, Earth and Planetary Science Letters, 41, 1978, 159, Elsevier Scientific Publishing Company, Amsterdam

  30. Robert Schoch, Voices of the Rocks, 147–8, Harmony Books, New York, 1999

  31. Ibid., 148

  32. Paul LaViolette, Earth Under Fire, 183, Starburst Publications, New York, 1997

  33. E.g. scenario: population is tempted to migrate to coasts, or to low-lying valleys near coasts, by improved conditions; several thousand years of stability and prosperity; all eggs placed in the one basket of the coastal cities; flooding suddenly resumes and engulfs the cities; there are only a few survivors, etc.

  34. Emiliani, Planet Earth, 543

  35. Ibid., 540

  36. Emiliani, The Scientific Companion, 251, 257

  37. Taped interview with John Shaw, conduced by John Grigsby, research assistant to GH, 1999

  38. Nature, vol. 389, 2 October 1997, 473

  39. Ibid., 473

  40. Ibid., 474

  41. Ibid., 474

  42. Ibid., 474

  43. Ibid., 474–5

  44. Arch C. Johnston, ‘A Wave in the Earth’, Science, vol. 274, 1 November 1996, 735

  45. Oppenheimer, op. cit., 40

  46. Johnston, op. cit.

  47. Ibid.

  48. Ibid.

  49. Ronald Arvidsson, ‘Fennoscandian Earthquakes: Whole Crustal Rupturing Related to Post-Glacial Rebound’, Science, vol. 274, 1 November 1996

  50. Ibid.

  51. Johnston, op. cit., 735 (emphasis added)

  52. Re measures of seismic magnitude: the comparative figures for the Parvie quake were given in ML units in the source document. ML units are on the Local Magnitude scale, which is the basis for establishing an earthquake’s level on the famous Richter scale. ML measures the amplitude of a wave as it appears on a seismograph that has been set up in a particular location, so it is essentially a measure of the extent to which a certain bit of ground moves vertically in an earthquake. The Richter scale is logarithmic, so the magnitude goes up exponentially (by a factor of 10) with each step up the scale. An earthquake measuring 6.0ML has 10 times greater magnitude than an earthquake measuring 5.0ML, and 100 times greater magnitude than one measuring 4.0ML. NB, the units of the Richter Scale are M rather than ML, because the magnitude we’re dealing with is no longer local but should be the same everywhere.

  53. Johnston, op. cit.

  54. Encyclopaedia Britannica, Micropaedia, vol. 10, 55

  55. Guardian, London, 18 January 1995

  56. Encyclopaedia Britannica, Micropaedia, vol. 10, 55

  57. Johnston, op. cit.

  58. Arvidsson, op. cit.

  59. Wilson et al., op. cit., 19 and 28

  60. Straus et al., op. cit., 129–30

  61. Schild in ibid., 129–30

  62. Schoch., op. cit., 147–8

  63. Plato, op. cit., 38

  64. Ibid., 35–6

  65. Emiliani, Earth and Planetary Science Letters, 159

  66. Isaac and Janet Asimov, Frontiers II, 110–11, New York, 1993, cited in Charles Ginenthal, ‘The Extinction of the Mammoth’, 266, The Veilkovskian, vol. 3, nos. 2 and 3, New York, 1997

  67. Encyclopaedia Britannica, Micropaedia, vol. 4, 235; LaViolette, op. cit., 203–4: ‘Drumlin fields are found widely distributed in both North America and Europe. In North America conspicuous fields are present in regions that once lay at the edge of the ice-sheet, such as those found in central-western New York (about 10,000 drumlins), east central Wisconsin (about 5000 drumlins), south central New England (about 3000 drumlins), south-western Nova Scotia (2300 drumlins). Other fields are believed to be present in intervening districts but to have escaped detection …’

  68. John Grigsby, interview with John Shaw

  69. Ibid.

  70. Shaw, ‘Drumlins, subglacial meltwater floods, and ocean responses’, Geology, vol. 17, September 1989, 853–6

  71. Ginenthal, op. cit., 267; John Shaw and Donald Kvill, ‘A Glacio-Fluvial Origin for Drumlins in the Livingston Lake Area, Saskatchewan’, Canadian Journal of Earth Science, vol. 21, 1984, 1442

  72. Shaw, op. cit., 855

  73. John Shaw, A Meltwater Model for the Laurentide Subglacial Landscapes, Geomorphology Sans Frontiers, 181, John Wiley and Sons, 1996

  74. John Grigsby, interview with John Shaw

  75. John Shaw, ‘A Qualitative View of Sub-Ice-Sheet Landscape Evolution’, Progress in Physical Geography, 18.2, 1994, 166

  76. Ibid., 164

  77. Shaw, ‘Drumlins, subglacial meltwater floods, and ocean responses’, 854

  78. Shaw and Kvill, op. cit., 1455

  79. John Shaw, ‘Sedimentary Evidence Favouring the Formation of Rogen Landscapes by Outburst Floods’, http://www.sentex.net
tcc/rogen/main.html, 4

  80. Shaw and Kvill, op. cit., 1455

  81. Paul Blanchon and John Shaw, ‘Reef drowning during the last deglaciation: Evidence for catastrophic sea-level rise and ice-sheet collapse’, Geology, vol. 23, no. 1, January 1995, 6. See also Wilson et al., op. cit., 113–21

  82. Blanchon and Shaw, op. cit., 4

  83. Shaw, ‘Sedimentary Evidence Favouring the Formation of Rogen Landscapes by Outburst Floods’, 4

  84. Fletcher and Sherman, ‘Submerged Shorelines …’, Journal of Coastal Research, special issue no. 17, 147

  85. Ibid., 147 (emphasis added]

  86. Scott Fields, ‘Metafloods at the end of the Ice Age’, cited in Charles Ginenthal, op. cit., 267

  87. Reported in Fletcher and Sherman, op. cit., 148

  88. Wilson et al., op. cit., 113–15

  89. Ginenthal, op. cit., 265

  90. Blanchon and Shaw, op. cit., 6

  91. Wilson et al., op. cit., 117

  92. Ibid., 117

  93. Ibid., 117

  94. Ibid., 117

  95. Crowley and North, op. cit., 61–2

  96. Blanchon and Shaw, op. cit., 7

  97. Fletcher and Sherman, op. cit., 147

  98. Crowley and North, op. cit., 64

  99. Fletcher and Sherman, op. cit., 147

  100. Ibid., 147–8

  101. Ibid., 148. Approximately the same dating for the catastrophic draining of Lakes Agassis and Ojibway through the Hudson Strait is given in D. C. Barber et al., ‘Forcing of the cold event of 8200 years ago …’, Nature, vol. 400, July 1999, 344ff

  102. David Keys, ‘Lethal Floods Ravaged Stone Age Britain’, Independent, London, 15 October 2000

  103. Oppenheimer, op. cit., 35

  104. There was, for example, a 25 metre rise in sea-level, followed by a similar fall, during a period estimated at less than 2000 years centred on 8000 years ago. American Association of Petroleum Geologists Bulletin, 1995, 1568

  105. Oppenheimer, op. cit., 40

  106. LaViolette, op. cit., 225

  107. Ibid., 206

  108. Ibid., 199–200; 202–3

  PART TWO: India(1)

  4 / Forgotten Cities, Ancient Texts and an Indian Atlantis

  1. Jonathan Mark Kennoyer, Ancient Cities of the Indus Valley Civilization, 70, American Institute of Pakistan Studies, Oxford, 1998

  2. Introduced in 1972, the written script for the Somali language is based on the Latin alphabet, with modifications