Atlantis Rising 82 Sampler

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4/1310 ATLANTIS RISING Number 82 Subscribe or Order Books, DVDs and Much Mo

EARLYRAYS

new study of 2009 British crop circles by

researchers in England and Americapoints to some kind of plasma discharge be-hind the phenomenon.

A team formed by New York businessmanJohn Burke, Michigan biophysicist WilliamC. Levengood, and British Crop Circle re-searcher Nancy Talbott (BLT Research) hasanalyzed the microscopic changes made inthe stalks of crop circle plants and demon-strated that something very unusual is atwork.

In the 1990s multiple plant abnormali-tiesincluding elongation and stretching ofplant nodes, holes blown in the nodes, dis-tinct bending of nodes, and inhibited seed-head developmentwere documented at var-ious laboratories in both the United Statesand Great Britain (Research papers on Leven-goods work are listed at: http://www.iccra.org/levengood/international.htm).Such commonly reported effects, however,accompanied only genuine crop circles andwere not found in the mechanically flattened

A

P lasma

Dischar geCr edited inCrop Circle

Cr eation

The curiousstroll througha formation

south ofAvebury in2005

creations of various hoaxers.

We were curious to know, said Talboin the new report, if some of the receBritish formations continued to exhibit thesame visible plant changes.

After careful comparison between affectplants and controls taken in similar contions outside the circles, the BLT team hconcluded that the only known methwhich could possibly produce the observeffects would be a plasma discharge of somkind.

As to who or what, whether terrestrial extraterrestrial, continues to generate tmany astonishing images appearing reglarly in fields throughout the world, and epecially in the Wiltshire of the U.K., therestill no satisfactory answer. We can, howevebe reasonably certain that Doug and Dave tinfamous circle hoaxers cannot claim tcredit.

To view the full report go to: http://wwbltresearch.com/fieldreports/uk2009.php.

UNEXP LAINED RADIO WAVES FROM GALAXY

omething in a nearby galaxy isspouting radio waves, and

here on Earth astronomersadmit that that they haveno idea what it is. In fact,reports Tom Muxlow, ofthe Jodrell Bank observa-tory in England, itdoesnt look like any-thing we have seen be-fore.

About a year ago ingalaxy M82 a very brightspot appeared in radio im-ages. It hasnt gone awaysince. The spot is moving side-ways, relative to us, at four timesthe speed of light. Its also moving

S toward us at near the speed of lightScientists have not ruled othat it is a large black ho

though it is not in the correposition for that properlyexplain it. It also might be

microquasar though itnot generating the x-rawhich would be expect

from such an object. Whthey do know for sure

that it is very massive avery dense and sending o

a lot of radio waves.The discovery was report

in April to the Royal Astronomical National Astronomy Meeting

Glasgow, UK.

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5/13Number 82 ATLANTIS RISING 1See Our Great 8-page Catalog Beginning on Page 74

n the last few years, main-stream science has been

slowly warming to the idea thatour planets past has been punc-tuated and profoundly changedon numerous occasions by colli-sions with debris from space, butthe conventional wisdom is thatall of that was a very long timeagomillions of years ago. Butwas the Earth victim to a great

asteroid hit as recently as 13,000years ago? After all, there is evi-dence that at about that time,after having partially emergedfrom the last great ice age, some-thing caused the planet toplunge back into the deep freezefor another thousand years. Thetransition is marked by a greatseveral centimeters thicksootlayer still visible in many spotsthroughout America. Then thereare the many nanodiamondsfound only in meteor craters.But an asteroid? Many scientists

have said no, since such a strikecould not account for over-the-horizon phenomena such as con-tinent-wide wildfires.

Professor Bill Napier of Car-diff University Astrobiology

I

DIS INTEGRATING COMET 13 ,000YEARS AGO RESTARTED ICE AGE

An earthbound comet, apotential planet killer, asenvisioned by NASA artists.But would it be even morethreatening if it broke intomany pieces?

The Hubble SpaceTelescope photographs

comet 73P/Schwass-mann-Wachmann 3, as

it falls apart.(NASA photo)

center has another ideathougha very scary one. TheEarth was struck 13,000 yearsago, says Napier, within a singlehour by literally thousands of the

Tunguska-class fragments froman enormous disintegratingcomet. The result was the deathof 35 genera of North American

mammals, the breakup of the Pa-laeoindian culture, a renewed

planet-wide cool-off of as muchas 8 degrees C, and centuriesmore of ice.

According to Napier thecomet entered the inner solarsystem between 20 and 30 thou-sand years ago and has beenfragmenting ever since, creatingseveral closely related swarms ofmeteors and asteroids known asthe Taurid Complex. We have pe-

riodically encountered that bris many times and it seldom been fun. Once agaappears that the catastropschool of human history habetter case than orthodoxy believed.

Napiers new model has bpublished in the journal MonNotices of the Royal Astronical Society.

hen, in 1952, ImmanuelVelikovsky published Ages

in Chaos, the scientific world re-coiled at his suggestion that thebiblical stories of the plagues ofEgypt and the ensuing exodus ofthe Israelites might be true. Themaverick Russian scientist hadproduced a great deal of evidencebut his ideas, it was felt, could besafely dismissed, since he was ob-viously a crank. Now respected

W

BIBLICALP LAGUES

REALLYHAPPENEDSAY S NEW

STUDYscientists at the leading edge ofarchaeology are declaring thatthe biblical story of the plagues isprobably true.

The new research presentedin a National Geographic docu-mentary in April does not cite avengeful god for the problemsbut instead, names a moremodern source of woes, globalwarming and an unfortunate vol-canic eruption. Evidence of real

natural disasters at the end ofthe reign of Rameses II has beenfound which supports the entirenarrative from the biblical Bookof Exodus.

According to Augustor Ma-gini, a paleoclimatologist at Hei-delberg Universitys Institute forEnvironmental Physics, the cli-mate was favorable for most ofRameses rule, but drought andhigh temperatures came eventu-

ally and brought about a seof disasters corresponding rectly with the plagues.

Toxic fresh water algaesulting from low rainfall rising temperatures, it is argprobably turned the Nile red first plague) and ultimately duced the second, third fourth plagues of frogs, lice flies. The aftermath of thwould have been diseased stock and boils, the fifth sixth plagues. The volcanic etion of Thera 3500 years would have produced the eigand ninth plagues of hail, tlocusts and darkness. The teplague is blamed on a fungpoisoned grain supply, wherefirst born who had first pickwere the first to die.

Global warming, we are tis nothing new, just the cathey say: us.

The Plague of Frogs, Jollain

Number 82 ATLANTIS RISINGSee Our Great 8-page Catalog Beginning on Page 74



ANCIENTMYSTERIES

BY JOSEPH R. JOCHMANS, Lit.D.

uthor/Researcher Robert Temple re-cently publishedThe Sphinx Mys-tery (Inner Traditions, 2009). A vir-tual gold mine of information, the

five-hundred-page-plus book is augmentedby rare photographs and illustrations.Highly recommended for anyone evenslightly curious over the greatest of allEgyptian mysteries, the book will prove animportant reference for years to come.

Temple, however, draws a number of con-clusions that need closer examination.

One of the most controversial is that theSphinx was never a recumbent lion but, in-stead, a guardian jackal or dog, called An-ubis. (In A.R. #78, geologist Dr. RobertSchoch responded to several criticismsmade of himself by Temple and he also com-mented on Temples jackal theoryED.)

Today, it is obvious that the monumentspresent head is too small for the body. Sev-eral contemporary Egyptologists believethat at some point in the distant past thehuman face of a Dynastic Pharaoh wasadded to the Sphinx. Indeed, the entire headhas been re-carved and downsized, possibly

from that of an older animal image,matching the rest of the body. But was it alion or a jackal?

The primary evidence for the Sphinxbeing leonine comes from the over-whelming testimony of Egyptian, Ptolemaic,Greek, Roman, early Christian, and med-ieval Arabic records, as well as the eyewit-ness accounts of numerous European trav-elers and scholars.

At one point Temple expresses amaze-ment at how old stories and legends passeddown through many generations stillmanage to preserve their kernels of histor-ical facts. He gives several examples. And

yet, a few chapters away, when confrontedby the vast agreement among these very

Asources concerning the Sphinx as lion, hedismisses such testimony as age-old miscon-ception perpetuated over millennia. If the in-formation instilled in one set of stories canbe accepted as truthful, then why cannot thenear consensus observations madethroughout time regarding the Sphinx like-wise be trustworthy?

Temple further states his belief that thebody of the Sphinx could not have been a fe-line because it is generally too narrow inshapeits stony back too horizontallystraightto have been anything but thesleek form of a jackal. But the real answer tothe problem had to be the artistic limitationsfaced by the original sculptors.

Very likely the Sphinx was shaped out of agebel, a knobby rock protrusion found inmany places in the Sahara-Libyan desert, ofwhich the Giza plateau is only a small exten-sion. Just south of the Sphinx is a good ex-ample of a gebel still in existencea largehigh-standing, shapeless mound of limestonewell-worn through the ages by the sur-rounding wind-blown sands. Doubtless thisis how the Sphinx began, before being

sculpted into a definite animal form.We do not know, however, what the an-

cient gebels original contours were. It mayhave been that fashioning the arched back ofa lion figure was not possible, because thetop surface was already flat. What we doknow is that in the middle of the Sphinxs

Continued on Page 27

present back is a vertical tomb shaft, and aleast one of the early European explorers othe Sphinx was of the opinion that this tombmay have been very old, even predynastic. Inother words, it was already present when thmonument was first carved, and the tombhad been excavated when the gebel was stilintact. This would indicate that to be accessible, the tomb had been made in an alreadexisting flat-surfaced environment.

The dimensions of the original gebel outcropping probably determined how thSphinxs upper layers were shaped. As thesculptors then cut down and removed throck around the sides of the beast to its baseits fashioning would still have been limitedby the size and shape of the gebel. The intended image remained that of a lion, only slender-looking one.

Perhaps the greatest objection toTemples idea of the Sphinx as Anubis is thfact that the existing geology of the monument would have prevented it. The reasonthe original, stony Sphinx body has a definitelayered look with slightly different colorations is that the limestone, out of which th

monument was originally carved, does nohave a consistent stratification. The base icomposed of a soft stone classified as typMember I, and the reclining body is made uof an equally soft type Member II. Such limestone is porous, lightweight, flakable, andvery susceptible to weathering. It is for thireason that, over the ages, the ongoing deterioration of the Sphinx body caused a serieof succeeding Dynastic, Ptolemaic, Romanand modern-day restorers to continually addbrickwork to the original base in an attempto preserve it from further erosion.

In contrast, the head is of a much hardermore compact and heavier form of limeston

Number 82 ATLANTIS RISING 2See Our Great 8-page Catalog Beginning on Page 74

The SphinxThe Sphinx Anubis(Cairo Museum)Wallpainting,

Tomb ofSeti I Lion or Jackal?



he flyer I d received in the mail in-vited me to a four-hour seminar onfirewalking. Everyone participatingwill be taught how to walk barefoot

on hot coals without burning their feet, itproclaimed. To a long-time investigator of

the paranormal like me, it was an irresistiblechallenge. So I made a deposit toward the$75 registration fee to reserve my place, andeagerly looked forward to the event.

I didnt doubt the reality of firewalking. Ithas been a well-documented fact for centu-ries. It is almost always done in a religiouscontext, as part of a ceremony. The phenom-enon was recorded as far back as when Plinythe Elder in the first century A.D., told of thepractice by an ancient Roman family whichperformed it at an annual sacrifice to Apollo.Anthropologists have observed it today inIndia, Greece, Spain, Japan, China, Bulgaria,Sri Lanka, Tibet, Thailand, Fiji, and Brazil.

Then, of course, there is the biblical story ofthe Hebrews and the fiery furnace.

Id personally witnessed firewalking inl974 at a California festival of religious/spiritual/metaphysical organizations; it wasdone by a Japanese priest, who demonstratedit as part of his sects worship. Moreover, sev-eral years later a friend of mine had spentthree days meditating and chanting at a yogacenter in Canada as preparation for his ownsuccessful firewalk with others at the center.About that time I became friends with Komarthe Hindu Fakir, who holds the GuinnessBook of World Records distinction for havingwalked on hotter coals than anyone else.Komar (the stage name for Ohio, cheese-

maker Vernon Craig) casually strolls over co-albeds wearing Hindu-like clothing and aturban but with no more preparation thanperhaps smoking a cigarette and sipping aCoke. Last of all, I knew that firewalking hadbeen done by thousands of ordinary Ameri-cans in the last few years as a veritable crazefor it swept the West Coast, thanks to a Cali-fornia teacher named Tolly Burkan, origi-nator of the firewalking movement, andthose whom he had trained. Burkan demon-strated it on the Phil Donahue Show in 1984;a student of Burkans, Tony Robbins, likewisedemonstrated firewalking on the Merv GriffinShow. Another friend of mine, a Russian em-

igre and psychic researcher named LarissaVilenskaya, was writing a book entitled Fire-walking which tells of her experiences as aBurkan-trained teacher and as a scientific re-searcher into the paranormal.

Could it be done? I had no doubt what-soever. But could it be done by me? That wasthe question.

Now, Ive dealt with fears of many kinds,from physical to metaphysical. As a teenagerI had a near-death experience throughdrowning; I spent four years as a naval officerin anti-submarine warfare and nuclearweapons, with time on the Cuban Blockade

T

The Baptism ofJesus, Leonardo

da Vinci

THEUNEXPLAINED

FIREWALKINGFIREWALKINGFIREWALKINGFIREWALKINGFIREWALKING

Sometimes Talking the Talk is Not Enough

BY JOHN WHITE

and in Vietnam. Thats not to brag, but justto say that Ive been in some unusual situa-tions where I had to deal with fear, and did.Nevertheless, as I contemplated treading onthe coals, I sometimes felt apprehension.After all, their pyrometer-measured temper-

ature would be nearly l,300 F., higher thanthe melting point of the cast aluminum usedfor the engine block in my car. Would I walkor chicken out? Several friends whom Idtold of the firewalk also signed up, and wecasually discussed the question, each forhimself. My answer: Ill decide when I facethe coalbed.

So at 7 p.m. on a bitterly cold evening inJanuary 1985, two dozen people and I met ata private home in West Hartford, Connec-ticut, for the firewalking seminar. It was thefirst time for all of us. Wed come for variousreasons: curiosity, to deal with fear, to ex-plore our human potential, to say wed done

it, to extend professional counseling andtraining skills. We were a diverse group:housewives, businessmen, astrologers, ho-listic health practitioners, karate instructors,an author (me), a dentist, a postal worker,an elementary school teacher, and whoknows what else. A reporter and a photogra-pher from The Hartford Courant were alsopresent to record the event.

Our instructor was a 32-year-old,slightly-built, bearded Connecticut residentwith the self-conferred name of Shoshame(pronounced as three syllables: Show-shah-mee). He told us he took the name five years

earlier for spiritual reasons but didnt eplain why or what it means. Shoshamebusiness card identified him as a firewalkininstructor, researcher, lecturer, masseuholistic health practitioner, nutritional anherbal consultant, and a multi-level ma

keting trainer and distributor of flowpollen, freeze-dried algae, wheatgrapowder, ion generators, and metabolic ezymes. He received his certification froBurkan after completing a three-weetraining course. Since his first firewalk, hebeen on the coals l7 times.

By 8 oclock we were ready to build tfire. Bundled up in our coats and gloves, wfiled outside in silence to the frigid back yafollowing Shoshames instructions to talogs from a nearby woodpile and, one by oncreate the pyre. A large area, lit by a spolight on the house, had been shoveled neafree of snow. We laid the hardwood logs in

five-foot circle, built it up several feet likewall, and then filled in the center. When wfinished in silence ten minutes later, it wwaist-high and solid with half a cord of oaand maple. Next we crumpled sheets newspaper and stuck them into the pi

Then we formed a circle around it, holdinhands, while Shoshame doused it with seeral gallons of kerosene. He offered a prayto God and to the spirit of the fire-to-be anthen lit the paper. We stood quietly as tflames quickly warmed us. When the fiwas well lit, we went back inside single fstill maintaining silence.

32 ATLANTIS RISING Number 82 Subscribe or Order Books, DVDs and Much Mo



ANCIENTMYSTERIES


n 1947 a number of scrolls were discov-ered in caves along the Dead Sea coast.

They have gone down in history as TheDead Sea Scrolls and continue to be at

the center of worldwide controversy. Why?Because the discovery and especially deci-pherment of these scrolls opened a radicallydifferent point of view on early Christianityand Judaism around the time of Christ. Atthe time of the discovery, some experts be-lieved that the community thatresided nearby, at Qumran, andwhich some have labeled the Es-senes, might have been the relig-ious group out of which John theBaptist and/or J esus himself ema-nated. Today, most have aban-doned the idea that Jesus waslinked to these Essenes, but sev-eral are still pondering whetherthe Baptist might have been

the Qumran community wasknown, as was the Baptist, to beextremely ascetic.

On a more scholarly level: inall, experts have identified the re-mains of about 825 to 870 sep-arate scrolls from several cavesnear Qumran. Many of the textshave provided new insights. Forexample: before 1947, the oldestHebrew texts from the Bibledated to the ninth century; theDead Sea Scrolls pushed thisdate radically back, as the com-munity that lived at Qumran

compiled these texts from a fewcenturies BC to about AD 68. Thediscovery was on par with findinga dinosaurs actual carcass ratherthan having to rely on analysis ofits bones.

Originally, the Dead SeaScrolls were found by local shep-herds who took one documentfrom the collection to Bethlehem, in thehope of selling it. At first, they met with nosuccess, but then an interested party waswilling to buy it for seven pounds (around$30 today). When the scrolls hit the antiqui-ties market, academics soon learned of them

and set out to uncover where the materialhad originated.By 1952, the caves in which the Dead Sea

Scrolls had been found were under intenseexcavation from a collective of universitiesand academic institutions. Then, on March14, 1952, inside the so-called Cave 3, an-other enigmatic scroll was found made en-tirely from copper.

Heavily corroded, the ancient metal couldnot be unrolled, clearly posing a significantchallenge for those intent on knowing whatwas actually written on this curious findunique amongst the Dead Sea Scrolls. It fell

I

BY PHILIP COPPENS to John Allegro of Oxford University to con-vince the leaders of the archaeological teamto permit him to take the scroll to England.

There, it was most carefully sliced into 23strips by H. Wright Baker of Manchester Uni-versity. But when Allegro began, in fact, toread the scroll a new mystery was born.

The scroll was 30 cm (one foot) wide and

2.5 meters (eight feet) long. Allegro tran-scribed it immediately and made a quickEnglish translation. It contained a list of 64locations written down in twelve columns.Each entry pertained to a treasure site and

there were indications specifying where alarge quantity of gold and silver and otherprecious objects, like jewelry, perfumes, andoils, had been hidden. The nature of thescrollunlike the other material hidden inthe Dead Sea cavesit was realized, was not

religious. The Copper Scroll appeared to be atreasure map! The Dead Sea Scrollsalready controversialhad become an evenhotter potato!

Ever since its discovery, a number of re-searchersfrom both within and withoutthe academic communityhave attemptedto use the scroll in support of their own par-ticular theories. Some, like maverick Amer-ican Bible scholar and archaeologist, Vendyl

Jones, believe the treasure includes the lostArk of the Covenant as well as the lostwealth of the Temple of Solomon. Eventhough the scroll, itself, does not refer to

other scrolls but rather to hidden preciousmetals, Christopher Knight and RobertLomas, in their book Second Messiah, whichfocuses on the Copper Scroll, argue that atleast twenty-four such scrolls were secretedbelow the Temple. At no point does theCopper Scroll claim that the treasures arebelow the Temple, but the possibility cannot

be ruled out.Being a treasure map, the scroll wasbound to attract treasure hunters, and it wasclear that it would not remain the exclusivebailiwick of academics. Most academics, in

fact, have stayed well clear of the CopperScroll.

The official translation of the text was as-signed to Father Jzef Milik, the JordanianDirector of Antiquities. But Allegro grew dis-satisfied with the slow pace in which the

translation was carried out; there were, afterall, only 64 short entries. For a number ofyears, Allegro wanted to publish his owntranslation ahead of the official publicationbut his superiors in Israel would not allow it

The argument was that such publicationwould bring a flood of treasure hunters tothe Qumran area thus interfering with on-going excavations. Their fears were not to-tally misplaced. In December 1959 andMarch 1960, Allegro himself organized twoexpeditions to Jordan in the hope of findingsome of the treasure mentioned in the

Its Certainly a Treasure Map,but Where Does it Lead?



UNTOLDHISTORY

ne of the worlds most renownedartists and troublemakers had fi-nally gone too far. And this time noone could protect him.

Previously, even after being convicted of abrutal murder, he had been allowed to jointhe Knights of Malta who had become hisprotectors. That had lasted until he com-mitted another offense the nature of whichremained unknown until this century, but itwas serious enough to have him booted outof the order. So his erstwhile protectors, thevery same Knights of Malta, contracted for ahit to be made on his life. The Vatican wasasked for approval of the assassination andconsented. The artist was then murdered, hisbody never found.

In a matter that might be titled the DaVinci Code meets Cold Case, four centuriesafter the murder of one of Italys most fa-mous artists, the crime is apparently still

under investigation. The four-hundred-yearanniversary now has Italy in a frenzy that hasbeen described as Caravaggio-mania; but arthistorians, archaeologists, scientists, and atleast one independent investigator are hot onthe trail of the perpetrator.

Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio wasborn in Milan in 1571 and trained at thetender age of 13 under one of Italys most fa-mous artists, Titian. It was a time whenmany new churches and palazzi were beingbuilt and many new works of art were neededto decorate them. Before he was 30, Cara-vaggios radical naturalism and unique con-trasts of light and darkness made him fa-

mous. Even after his death he is given creditfor considerable influence on Baroquepainters. After his initial public commissionshe was never without patrons. But despitethe religious themes of most of his work, hislife was more like that of a modern rock starwhose early success had gone to his head. Hewould go to work for a few weeks producinghis remarkable art and then turn to thestreets where he behaved like a brute. He isbelieved to have committed his first murderas a teenager. At just 21 he fled to Rome afterseriously wounding a police officer.

His artistic career in Rome started badlyas well. He arrived penniless and ended up

doing minor work for Pope Clement VIIIs fa-vorite artist Giuseppe Cesari. He lived in theCampo Marzio neighborhood which wasseedy and frequented by other starving art-ists and artisans. With the help of his newconnections and a few close friends, he soonrose to fame again. One of his friends was thearchitect Onorio Longhi; another was the Si-cilian artist Mario Minniti. And a third wasthe painter Prospero Orsi. Orsi introducedhim to wealthy collectors including the Co-lonna and Sforza families.

Regarded as a ruling Renaissance family,the Sforza clans power extended well beyondItaly. Today the family tree even includes the

OBY STEVEN SORA

Spencer family and Princess Diane. Equallypowerful in the middle ages, the Colonnafamily was strong enough to depose Popesand elect their own family members to theCollege of Cardinals where one could be-come Pope.

The architect Longhi reintroduced Cara-vaggio to the streets and Fight Club, Romanstyle. With a menacing servant at his sideand his sword always ready to be drawn heswaggered from sports event to tavernspoiling to start a brawl, or finish one. InMay of 1606, one such brawl had the youngartist killing another man named Ranuccio

Tomassoni. The murder was so brutal that it

offended sensibilities even in the violentstreets of medieval Rome. According to oneversion of the story, Ranuccios girlfriend,Lena, was a prostitute and pregnant with ei-ther his child or the artists. After she wasfound dead, Ranuccio was arrested. The To-massoni family was powerful and Ranucciowas known as a swordsman. Upon his re-lease, Caravaggio challenged him to a dueland killed him in the streets. Since duelingwas illegal but also because of the vicious-ness with which he finished his crime, Cara-vaggio was convicted of murder; but thanksto the protection of the Colonna family hewas freed. He next turned up in Naples. Continued on Page 67

The violent nature of his life also began tobleed into his art. Decapitations, violencetorture, and death played such a prominenrole that much of his art was regarded asvulgar and even rejected by those who hadcommissioned the works. One was theDeathof the Virgin intended for a private chapel inthe Carmelite Church of Santa Maria dellaScala. One reason for the rejection was that awell-known prostitute had posed as theVirgin. Caravaggio had his share of friends inlow places, and many of them would serve amodels for his religious paintings. Anothereason was that her bare legs were depictedIt mattered little to Caravaggio, though, as

the Duke of Mantua purchased the work rejected by the Carmelites.In Naples, and under the protection of the

Colonna family, Caravaggio was still a wantedman for the murder in Rome. He found therewas a bando da Roma, a price on his head

This meant anyone could exact the deathpenalty on him and collect a reward. Theartist then fled to Malta. On that island theCo-Cathedral of St. J ohn had recently beenconsecrated. Malta was the new home for theOrder of the Hospital of St. John which had long history dating back to the Crusades

The Strange Death ofCaravaggio

The Latest Italian Crime SensationIs a Very Cold Case Indeed

CaravaggiosThe Burial ofSt. Lucy. The

painter wasno stranger

to violentstreet life.



aster Island (Rapa Nui; Isla dePascua) is a tiny speck of land,a mere 64 square miles, in theSouth Pacific just below the

Tropic of Capricorn, 2300 miles west of

South America. The closest inhabitedland, Pitcairn Island (where mutineersof theBounty settled in 1790), is over1200 miles to the west.

The moai, those giant heads andtorsos of Easter Island, are emblematicof ancient mysteries and lost civiliza-tions. Viewing them firsthand in alltheir magnificence during a recent geo-logical reconnaissance trip to Easter Island, Icould only be impressed. Carving, trans-porting, and erecting these inscrutable meg-alithic statues (some of which are over 30feet tall and weigh tens of tons) was no meanfeat. Surely they reflect a sophisticated so-

ciety of which we are but dimly aware. Yet,conventional archaeologists have consideredthe big heads to be, well, big headstheproduct of a Stone Age culture that spent itsenergy carving monotonously stereotypicmegalithic monuments as part of some prim-itive religion, perhaps ancestor worship, orsimply as busy work devised by the rulingelite to keep the populace in line on an islandfrom which there was no escape.

The moai are fascinating, and by ap-plying geological expertise to the problem oftheir chronology (as I did for the GreatSphinx in Egypt), new light might be shed onthe islands enigmas. I hope to organize a

full-fledged geological expedition to the is-land and pursue such research. But the moai,literally the biggest mystery in terms of theirphysical size (an unfinished moai still in thequarry is over 60 feet long), are not alonewhen it comes to the perplexities of RapaNui. Though tiny in physical comparison, in-scribed wooden tablets have been the subjectof curiosity and heated debate ever since theycame to the attention of nineteenth centuryEuropean missionaries.

Numerous wooden tablets covered witha strange hieroglyphic-like script were foundin many of the natives houses, according toBrother Joseph-Eugne Eyraud, reporting to

E

BY ROBERT M. SCHOCH, Ph.D.

ANCIENTMYSTERIES

Is This the Fearful Story of a Planetary Catastrophe?

his superiors in Paris. The writing be-came known as rongorongo (lines of in-scriptions for recitation). Unfortunatelybetween the missionaries zeal, at-tempting to separate their new convertsfrom old pagan ways, and internecine

warfare, almost all of the rongorongotablets were burnt or otherwise de-stroyed. Today just upwards of twodozen remain. Furthermore, those na-tives literate in rongorongo were killedin fighting, succumbed to disease, or werecarried off the island in slave raids. By thelate nineteenth century, no one could genu-inely read the rongorongo script, and to thisday nobody has put forth a convincing deci-pherment.

I became fascinated by rongoro-nogo, immersing myself in the volumi-nous literature on the subject and pur-suing firsthand analyses of the script.

There is no agreement among re-searchers concerning even the fun-damentals of rongorongo. How farback in time it may go is a subjectof debate. Some scholars assert itwas invented on Easter Islandduring the late eighteenth cen-tury, in imitation of Europeanwriting the natives had observed.Others believe that rongorongotraces its ancestry back thou-sands of years, though the sur-viving wooden tablets are atmost a couple of hundred yearsold. Indeed, the known tablets

Rongorongo tablet (Photo: W. J. Thomson)

Easter Island moa(Photo:R. Schoch & C. Ulissey

Easter Islands

Mystery Script

Easter Islands

Mystery Script

Easter Islands

Mystery Script

Easter Islands

Mystery Script

Easter Islands

Mystery Script

42 ATLANTIS RISING Number 82




European alphabetical language, or even as ascript based on pictographs, ideographs, ohieroglyphics, is either the wrong approachor an incomplete approach. Here I offer a dif-ferent interpretation of rongorongo, an ideainitially suggested to me by my wife, Catherine Ulissey.

Just back from Easter Island (January2010), steeped in the conundrums of its his-tory and culture, I could not get my mind ofof rongorongo (as well as other enigmas othe island). One evening, needing some relaxation, Katie insisted that we re-watch thevideo Symbols of an Alien Sky, Episode One(MIKAMAR Publishing, 2009), written andnarrated by David Talbott. Katie had thehunch it might pertain to the questions wewere grappling with concerning Easter Island. In the video Talbott, author of the 1980bookThe Saturn Myth, discusses his conclusion, based on mythologies collected aroundthe world, that the sky was very different inancient times, and Earth and the solarsystem underwent major upheavals. Fothose familiar with the writings of ImmanueVelikovsky, it should come as no surprise

of Easter Island, or perhapseven in China. Others look to

South America for its origins.Still others have seen similarities

between rongorongo characters and the en-igmatic ancient scripts of the Indus Valleycivilization of modern Pakistan and neigh-boring regions. One researcher seriouslysuggested that rongorongo might be relatedto ancient Egyptian hieroglyphics. I havelong advocated that there is good evidencesupporting cultural contact across both thePacific and Atlantic Oceans in remote an-cient times (see my book Voyages of the Pyr-amid Builders), so I do not automatically re-vile diffusionist ideas as many conventionalarchaeologists and historians do. Butlooking carefully at such rongorongo anal-yses, I do not find them particularly con-vincing. A stylized fish, human figure, Sun,or vulva could conceivably look similaracross unconnected cultures. Or, might an-cient Chinese scripts, Indus Valley scripts,Egyptian hieroglyphics, and rongorongo allstem from a common source or inspiration?

Perhaps simply treating rongorongo as ascript, as a form of writing comparable to a

(Above) Plasma configurations, petroglyphs, and rongorongo glyphs. (Plasma and

petroglyph illustrations courtesy of Dr. Anthony L. Peratt, reprinted with permissionfrom IEEE Transactions on Plasma Science, December 2003, vol. 31, page 1200.

could simply be copies of copiesof copies . . . Perhaps the scribes,for many centuries, were notable to truly read the script butpiously copied and recopiedsomething they knew was im-portant and held in reverence.Brother Eyraud wrote in 1864,

But the little they [the EasterIslanders] make of these tabletspersuades me to think that thesecharacters, probably a script inorigin, are for them now justsimply a custom they preservewithout attempting to accountfor it (quoted by S. R. Fischer,Rongorongo, 1997, p. 12).

Far from being an indige-nous creation of the Easter Is-

landers, some researchers suggestthat the rongorongo script origi-

nated in parts of Polynesia well west

Rongorongo tablet (Photo: K. Routledge)

Birdman Petroglyphs(Photo: R. Schoch & C. Ulissey)

Moai(Photo: R.Schoch & C.Ulissey.)

Number 82 ATLANTIS RISING 4See Our Great 8-page Catalog Beginning on Page 74



ATLANTOLOGY

n his 2,300-year-old dialogue knownas theKritias, Plato provides the namesof the first kings of Atlantis. Athens fa-mous philosopher tells us very little

about them, although at least some havebeen identified by investigators with partic-ular places, peoples, or persons. For ex-ample, he cites an Atlantean monarch calledGadeiros. Curiously, that is the same nameby which the modern Spanish city of Cadizwas known to Platos fellow Greeks.

Another member of the Atlantean kingslist is Elasippos, as Portugals Lisbon wascalled by the earlier Phoenicians. Euaemonfrom theKritiassuggests Eremon, the flood-hero of pre-Celtic Irish myth who survivedthe cataclysmic deluge of a splendidkingdom with his wife and children to settlein Ireland, where they became the EmeraldIsles first royal family. Four hundred years

after Plato, a Greek geographer, DiodorusSiculus, told of an indigenous peopledwelling along the Atlantic coast of Moroccowho called themselves the Autochthones, ap-parently after Autochthon, the sixth Atlan-tean ruler. Appropriately, each of the firstten kings of Atlantis has been associated witha particular location, folk, or mythic figurein non-Greek societies on both sides of theAtlantic Ocean which long ago was domi-nated from its center by the great capital ofAtlantis. It seems unlikely Plato merely fabri-cated these names, given their geographicaland cultural affinities.

IBY FRANK JOSEPH

Continued on Page 7

A case in point is his fifth Atlantean mon-arch, Musaeus. The name bears a philolog-ical resemblance to Muyscas, the foundingfather of the Chibcha Indians. They occupiedthe high valleys surrounding Bogota andNeiva at the time of the Spanish Conquest,

in the early sixteenth century. AlthoughMuyscas means, literally, the Civilizer,they also referred to him as the White One,a bearded man from across the EasternWater (i.e., the Atlantic Ocean), who longago laid down the ground rules for Co-lombias first civilization. The Chibcha re-ferred to themselves, after Muyscas, as theMuisca. Appropriately, Colombias out-standing archaeological remains may befound along the Atlantic shores of SantaMaria, just where Muyscas was said to havelanded in the company of fellow sorcererswho escaped a great flood that overwhelmedtheir overseas homeland.

It was here, along this coastal region,

that G. Reichel-Dolmatoff, the doyen of Co-lombian archaeology, found abundant evi-dence of a sprawling public works system,cities and ceremonial centers, paved roads,efficient irrigation, and sophisticated agri-cultural practices (G. Reichel-Dolmatoff, Co-lombia, NY: Praeger Press, 1965). Althoughthese abundant ruins were discovered in themid-twentieth century, they are still largelyunknown to the outside world, just as theidentity of their builders continues to defyscholars.

Among the best-preserved and most dra-matic physical remains from this enigmatic

people are huge, sepulchral chambers cinto the soft rock at Tierra Dentro, in Colombias southwest. Concealed beneath stonslabs hedged with earth, they were laid out a circular or oval plan with squat columnhewn from the living rock. Roofs are slante

and vaulted, and niches, perhaps once cotaining effigies, were chiseled out of the iterior walls on either side of stone blocformed as columns. The walls themselvwere colored black, white, and red, and decorated with spirals, lozenges, concentric ccles, and rhomboids. Shallow pits in the floocontained human bones, and a large, appaently ceremonial urn was found nearby.

Colombias Tierra Dentro complex so resembles a similar underground structure othe other side of the world, that both mighhave been designed by the same architec

The South American sites twin counterpaoccurs at a place called Hal Saflieni, on thisland of Malta, in the Mediterranean Se

Hal Saflieni is part of a Stone Age complexdated to the early third millennium BC, cotemporaneous with the pyramid-builders Dynastic Egyptand no less mysterious thathe pre-Chibcha civilizers of Colombia. ThMaltese site is likewise a subterranean serieof rooms carved out of limestone rock to rsemble a vault supported by slanting archeStone slabs covered with earth conceal etrances. Niches containing statues are spaceoff by squared columns. The grand plan circular or oval. There are sunken pits in th

AKingofAtlantisforColombia





Did Plato Point the Way

to South America?

Did Plato Point the Way

to South America?

Hypogeum at Tierra Dentro, Colombia (Photo: InyuchHypogeum at Tierra Dentro, Colombia (Photo: Inyuch


13/13
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