Hidden History: Lost Civilizations, Secret Knowledge, and Ancient Mysteries

Hidden History: Lost Civilizations, Secret Knowledge, and Ancient Mysteries

by Brian Haughton
Hidden History: Lost Civilizations, Secret Knowledge, and Ancient Mysteries

Hidden History: Lost Civilizations, Secret Knowledge, and Ancient Mysteries

by Brian Haughton

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Overview

An archaeologist explores history’s most fascinating enigmas, from the ancient Druids to the mysteries of the Mayan calendar and the lost city of Atlantis.
 
Across thousands of years of history, so-called lost civilizations still speak to us through their artifacts and architecture. In Hidden History, archaeologist Brian Haughton fills the gap between archaeology and alternative history using the latest available data and a common sense, open-minded approach. Divided into three sections, this expertly researched volume shares the secrets of Mysterious Places, Unexplained Artifacts, and Enigmatic People.
 
Haughton introduces readers to the greatest mysteries of the ancient world, from the labyrinthine palace of Knossos on Crete to the pyramids of Egypt, the remote jungle temples of Peru, and the megalithic mystery of Stonehenge. But he also goes further to explore historical puzzles like the Coso Artifact, the possibility of ancient flight, and the Voynich Manuscript, as well as mysterious peoples from the Magi and the Druids to the Knights Templar and the Green Children. With more than 50 photographs and illustrations, this is the ideal reference work for those interested in the archaeology of these great enigmas.

Product Details

ISBN-13: 9781601639684
Publisher: Red Wheel/Weiser
Publication date: 04/17/2020
Sold by: Barnes & Noble
Format: eBook
Pages: 272
Sales rank: 46,740
File size: 7 MB

About the Author

BRIAN HAUGHTON was born in Birmingham, England, in 1964, of Irish-Welsh parents. He studied archaeology at Nottingham and Birmingham Universities, and has worked on archaeological projects in England and Greece. He has written on the subject of unusual people in history for various print and Internet publications, and has also authored a book, Coaching Days in the Midlands (Quercus 1997), about stage coaches and highwaymen in the English midlands. His particular interests include the sacred landscapes of prehistory, the modern mysteries and traditional folklore surrounding ancient sites, historical human enigmas, and the occult in the 19th and early 20th centuries. At present he lives in Patra, Greece, where he teaches English and writes for his Mysterious People Website. He long ago fell for the lure of ancient mysteries and the supernatural, initially inspired by television programs such as Arthur C. Clarke's Mysterious World and Leonard Nimoy's In Search of... series, and later by visits to the ancient sites of Greece, Crete, Britain, and Ireland.

Read an Excerpt

CHAPTER 1

The Lost Land of Atlantis

The magical lost land of Atlantis has captured the imagination of poets, scholars, archaeologists, geologists, occultists, and travelers for more than 2,000 years. The notion of a highly advanced island civilization (that flourished in remote antiquity only to be destroyed overnight by a huge natural catastrophe) has inspired believers in the historical truth of the Atlantis tale to search practically every corner of the Earth for remnants of this once great civilization. Most archaeologists are of the opinion that the Atlantis story is just that, a story, an allegorical tale with no historical value whatsoever. And then there are the occultists, many of whom have approached the story of Atlantis from the standpoint that it represents either a lost spiritual homeland (such as Mu/Lemuria), or a different plain of existence entirely. What is it about Atlantis that has inspired such diverse interpretations? Could there be any truth behind the story?

The original source from which all information about Atlantis ultimately derives is the Greek philosopher Plato, in his two short dialogues Timaeus and Critias, written somewhere between 359 and 347 B.C. Plato's supposed source for the story of Atlantis was a distant relative of his, a famous Athenian lawmaker and Lyric poet named Solon. Solon had, in turn, heard the story while visiting the court of Amasis, king of ancient Egypt from 569 to 525 B.C., in the city of Sais, on the western edge of the Nile Delta. While at the court of Amasis, Solon visited the Temple of Neith and fell into conversation with a priest who related the story of Atlantis to him. The priest described a great island, larger than Libya and Asia combined, that had existed 9,000 years before their time, beyond the Pillars of Hercules (the Strait of Gibraltar) in the Atlantic Ocean. Atlantis was rule over by an alliance of kings descended from Poseidon, god of the sea and earthquakes, whose eldest son, Atlas, gave his name to the island and the surrounding ocean.

The Atlanteans possessed an empire that stretched from the Atlantic into the Mediterranean as far as Egypt in the south and Italy in the north. During an attempt to extend their empire further into the Mediterranean, the Atlanteans came up against the combined powers of Europe, led by the city-state of Athens. In this remote time, Athens was already a great city and a society ruled by a warrior-elite class who disdained riches and lived a spartan lifestyle. The armies of Atlantis were eventually defeated by the Athenians alone, after their allies deserted them. However, soon after the victory there was a devastating earthquake followed by huge floods, and the continent of Atlantis sank beneath the Ocean "in a single dreadful day and night," in the words of Plato.

The destruction of Atlantis and its location beyond the Strait of Gibraltar takes up only a few lines in Plato's Dialogues, in contrast to his much more detailed description of the island's physical and political organization. Initially Atlantis had been an idyllic place, endowed with a wealth of natural resources; there were forests, fruits, wild animals (including elephants), and abundant metal ores. Each king on the island possessed his own royal city over which he was complete master. However, the capital city, ruled by the descendents of Atlas, was by far the most spectacular. This ancient metropolis was surrounded by three concentric rings of water, separated by strips of land on which defensive walls were constructed. Each of these walls was encased in different metals, the outer wall in bronze, the next in tin, and the inner wall "flashed with the red light of orichalcum," an unknown metal. The Atlanteans dug a huge subterranean channel through the circular moats, which connected the central palace with the sea. They also carved a harbor from the rock walls of the outer moat. The main Temple of Poseidon, on the central citadel, was three times larger than the Parthenon in Athens, and was covered entirely in silver (with the exception of the pinnacles, which were coated in gold). Inside the temple, the roof was covered with ivory and decorated with gold, silver, and orichalcum; this strange metal also covered the walls, pillars, and floor of the temple. The temple interior also contained numerous gold statues, including one of Poseidon in a chariot driving six winged horses, which was of such a colossal size that the god's head touched the roof of the 381 foot high ceiling.

All other ancient sources for the lost continent of Atlantis are subsequent to Plato, and at best provide tantalizing glimpses of what the people antiquity really believed about Atlantis. In the fourth century B.C. the Greek Philosopher and student of Aristotle, Theophrastus of Lesbos, mentioned colonies of Atlantis, but unfortunately the bulk of his work has been lost. In his commentaries on Plato's dialogues, Proclus, writing in the fifth century A.D., commented on the reality of Atlantis, stating that the Atlanteans "for many ages had reigned over all islands in the Atlantic sea." Proclus also tells us that Crantor, the first commentator on the works of Plato in the fourth century B.C., had visited Sais in Egypt and had seen a golden pillar with hieroglyphs recording the history of Atlantis. Claudius Aelianus, a second century A.D. Roman writer, mentions Atlantis in his work On the Nature of Animals, describing a huge island out in the Atlantic Ocean, which was known in the traditions of the Phoenicians (and sebsequently the Carthaginians of Cádiz), as an ancient city on the coast of southwest Spain.

For the most part, the legend of Atlantis lay dormant for many centuries before its revival in the 19th century. The modern quest for the fabled island began in ernest in 1882, with the publication of Atlantis: the Antediluvian World by Ignatius Donnelly, an American congressman and writer. Donnelly took Plato's account of Atlantis literally, and attempted to establish that all known ancient civilizations were descended from the lost continent. Around the same time, Madame Helena Blavatsky (the co-founder of the Theosophical Society, and a leader in the growing occult movement) began to take an interest in the idea of lost continents such as Atlantis and Lemuria. Blavatsky mentions Atlantis numerous times in her first work Isis Unveiled, written in 1877. Madame Blavatsky's massive opus The Secret Doctine (1888), was apparently based on a mystical work called The Book of Dzyan, allegedly written in Atlantis. In it she gives a detailed description of Atlantis and its inhabitants, which includes advanced technology, ancient flying machines, giants, and supernormal powers. Some of these wilder aspects of Blavatsky's descriptions were to have a significant influence on a number of Atlantis theorists, though her lost continent seems to exist on another, more spiritual, level — altogether different from the physical continent proposed by Donelly.

In the early 20th century, world-renowned psychic Edgar Cayce gave many readings that involved Atlantis. He believed that Atlantis was a highly evolved civilization that possessed ships and aircraft (which echoes Blavatsky) and were powered by a mysterious energy crystal. Cayce predicted that part of Atlantis would be discovered in 1968 or 1969 in the region of Bimini, near the Bahamas. In September of 1968, a half-mile stretch of precisely aligned limestone blocks, now known as the Bimini Road, was discovered off the coast of North Bimini, suggesting to many that this was the remains of lost Atlantis.

However, in 1980, Eugene Shinn of the U.S. Geological Survey published the conclusions of his examination of the underwater stones at Bimini. The results of his tests indicated that the blocks must have been laid there by natural means. The radiocarbon dates obtained from the shells embedded in the stones gave dates in the range of 1200 B.C. to 300 B.C., for the laying down of the so-called road. This is generally a lot later than the proposed dates for Atlantis.

Taking the ancient writers at their word, many researchers have searched for Atlantis in the mid-Atlantic, identifying the Mid-Atlantic Ridge — a long chain of undersea volcanoes running along the center of the ocean, as the remains of the lost continent. With the modern understanding of continental drift (which is due to the action of plate tectonics) geologists have ruled out the possibility of a sizeable continent existing in the Atlantic. However, plate tectonics is still only a theory, so until it is proven as fact, believers in a lost continent in the Atlantic will continue their search. If the island is in the mid-Atlantic, researchers reason (echoing Ignatius Donnelly back in the 1880s) that the Azores, a cluster of nine islands amid a chain of underwater mountains, may be its remnants. Others add Madeira, the Canary Islands, and Cape Verde to its remains, though as yet not a shred of proof exists in these areas for a vanished ancient civilization.

Almost every year, without fail, the headline "Atlantis Found!" screams out from the newspapers. In fact, the range of hypothetical locations for Atlantis is staggering. The Minoan civilization of Late Bronze Age Crete, supposedly destroyed by a colossal earthquake on the neighboring island of Thera (modern day Santorini), was long thought to have been an indirect influence on Plato's Atlantis. However, research into Late Bronze Age Crete has shown that the Minoan civilization continued to flourish long after the Theran quake. Other suggested locations within Europe and the Mediterranean include Ireland, England, Finland, the island of Heligoland off the northwest German coast, Andalucia in southern Spain, the island of Spartel in the Strait of Gibraltar, Sardinia, Malta, the city of Helike on mainland Greece, an area in the Mediterranean between Cyprus and Syria, Israel, Troy in northwest Turkey, and Tantalis. Elsewhere in the world the Black Sea, India, Sri Lanka, Indonesia, Bolivia, French Polynesia, the Caribbean, and Antarctica have all been suggested as locations of the lost city.

This vast array of wildly different theories has contributed to the scepticism of many researchers, who believe that Plato's Atlantis was merely a political allegory designed to glorify Athens as the perfect state fighting against a decadent and greedy Atlantean Empire. For them the story begins and ends with Plato. Solon never visited Egypt or heard the story from the priest at Sais. They reason that Plato located Atlantis in the Atlantic, beyond the Pillars of Hercules, because in his time this vast ocean represented the limit of the known world. Nevertheless, although there are no references to Atlantis in ancient literature prior to Plato, we do have a reference in The Histories by the Greek historian Herodotus (484 B.C.-425 B.C.), which states that Solon borrowed certain laws from Amasis of Sais in Egypt. This indicates that Solon was in Egypt during the time stated by Plato in his dialogues. It is obvious from Plato's writings that he was aiming in part to glorify Athens, and convey his political and philosophical ideas regarding the inability of wealth and power to overcome a perfectly formed and well-governed society. In order to color his account, Plato may well have added details from actual events involving a catastrophic destruction. For this, the philosopher would not have had to look far.

In the summer of 426 B.C. one of the most disastrous earthquakes in ancient history hit Greece just north of Athens. The tsunami from this colossal quake caused havoc along the coast north of Athens, destroying part of an island called Atalante. In 373 B.C. (only around 15 years before Plato wrote his Dialogues) a catastrophic earthquake and tsunami destroyed and submerged the wealthy ancient Greek city of Helike, on the southern shore of the Gulf of Corinth, on mainland Greece. Helike was known as the City of Poseidon, and contained a sacred grove of the terrible god of earthquakes and the sea, which was second only to that at Delphi. There are certainly parallels between these earthquakes and the destruction of Plato's Atlantis, which indicate the philosopher was drawing on his own country's recent history for much of his narrative. However, if Plato was simply using recent disasters in Greece to make his point, why did he attribute his story to Egyptian priests? Surely his contemporaries would have recognized a description of a catastrophic earthquake in the area of Athens or Corinth, especially one that had occurred only a decade or two before. There still seems to be an element missing from Plato's sources for his story.

The most recent theory for the location of Atlantis was put forward in 2004 by Dr. Rainer Kuehne of Wuppertal University in Germany. Using satellite photographs, Kuehne identified an area of southwestern Spain that reveal features apparently matching Plato's description of Atlantis. The photographs, of a salt marsh region called Marisma de Hinojos, near the city of Cadiz, show two rectangular structures and parts of concentric rings that may once have surrounded them. Dr. Kuehne thinks that the rectangular features may be the remains of a silver temple devoted to Poseidon and a golden temple devoted to Cleito and Poseidon, as described by Plato in his Dialogues. He also believes that the area was possibly destroyed by a flood between 800 B.C. and 500 B.C. He supports this mainland — rather than island — location for Atlantis by suggesting that Greek sources may have confused an Egyptian word for coastline with one meaning island during translation of the story. Dr. Kuehne hopes to organize excavations at the site in the near future to test his theories. Will these excavations, in an area just beyond the Pillars of Hercules, finally solve the mystery of Atlantis?

CHAPTER 2

America's Stonehenge: The Puzzle of Mystery Hill

Mystery Hill, or America's Stonehenge, as it has become known, is situated in North Salem, New Hampshire, about 40 miles north of Boston. This enigmatic megalithic complex is scattered over roughly 30 acres and consists of a disordered mix of standing stones, stone walls, and underground chambers. Mystery Hill is not an isolated site, but one of hundreds of areas of unusual stone arrangements and underground chambers in North America, many of which are in New England. Examples from Massachusetts include the Upton Chamber, stone-lined tunnels in Goshen, and a beehive-style stone chamber in Petersham. There are also stone chambers and walls at Gungywamp in Groton, Connecticut, and a large stone chamber in South Woodstock, Vermont. The exact functions of some of these unusual buildings are unknown, but many people have speculated that they were built by prehistoric European settlers for ceremonial meetings and astronomical events.

The recent history of Mystery Hill began with Jonathan Pattee, a farmer who lived on the site from 1826 to 1848. There are various accounts of Pattee, including suggestions that he ran an illicit alcoholic still on the site. A more supportable story is that he and his son Seth were abolitionists, who operated a way station on the underground railroad that helped slaves escape from the South. In fact, there is some evidence for this in the form of shackles discovered on the site, which are now displayed in the America's Stonehenge Visitor's Center. During the next 50 years, quarrymen bought and removed a large portion of the stone structures at Mystery Hill. It is thought that most of the stones were taken to the town of Lawrence, Massachusetts, to be used in the construction of the Lawrence Dam and for street curbing. In 1937, William Goodwin, an insurance agent, bought the Mystery Hill site, and during his excavations made many structural changes to reinforce his theory that Irish monks had once lived there. Consequently, the site's history is now extremely confused. In 1950, Mystery Hill was leased by Robert Stone, who purchased the property in 1956. He began restoration, study, and preservation of the area around Mystery Hill, and in 1958 built a visitors center and opened the site to the public. Christened America's Stonehenge, it is now a major tourist attraction.

One of the most enigmatic features of Mystery Hill is a large, 4.5 ton flat stone slab, approximately 9 feet long and 6 feet wide, resting on four stone legs, similar to an enormous table. There is a deep groove running around the edge of this structure, leading to a spout, which has persuaded some to label it the Sacrificial Stone. According to one popular theory, the groove around the edge of the stone allowed the draining of blood from the sacrificed victims into libation bowls. Unfortunately, this Sacrificial Stone shows marked similarities to another large stone in the Farmer's Museum in western Massachusetts. But rather than being connected with any lurid sacrificial rites, this object was used in the process of soap making, and is in fact known as a lye-leaching stone. It is a relatively common find around New England colonial farm sites.

(Continues…)


Excerpted from "Hidden History"
by .
Copyright © 2007 Brian Haughton.
Excerpted by permission of Red Wheel/Weiser, LLC.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.

Table of Contents

Title Page,
Copyright Page,
Dedication,
Acknowledgements,
Foreword,
Introduction,
PART I - Mysterious Places,
The Lost Land of Atlantis,
America's Stonehenge: The Puzzle of Mystery Hill,
Petra: The Mysterious City of Rock,
The Silbury Hill Enigma,
Troy: The Myth of the Lost City,
Chichén Itzá: City of the Maya,
The Sphinx: An Archetypal Riddle,
The Knossos Labyrinth and the Myth of the Minotaur,
The Stone Sentinels of Easter Island,
The Lost Lands of Mu and Lemuria,
Stonehenge: Cult Center of the Ancestors,
El Dorado: The Search for the Lost City of Gold,
The Lost City of Helike,
The Grand Canyon: Hidden Egyptian Treasure?,
Newgrange: Observatory, Temple, or Tomb?,
Machu Picchu: Lost City of the Incas,
The Library of Alexandria,
The Great Pyramid: An Enigma in the Desert,
PART II - Unexplained Artifacts,
The Nazca Lines,
The Piri Reis Map,
The Unsolved Puzzle of the Phaistos Disc,
The Shroud of Turin,
The Stone Spheres of Costa Rica,
Talos: An Ancient Greek Robot?,
The Baghdad Battery,
The Ancient Hill Figures of England,
The Coso Artifact,
The Nebra Sky Disc,
Noah's Ark and the Great Flood,
The Mayan Calendar,
The Antikythera Mechanism: An Ancient Computer?,
Ancient Aircraft,
The Dead Sea Scrolls,
The Crystal Skull of Doom,
The Voynich Manuscript,
PART III - Enigmatic People,
The Bog Bodies of Northern Europe,
The Mysterious Life and Death of Tutankhamun,
The Real Robin Hood,
The Amazons: Warrior Women at the Edge of Civilization,
The Mystery of the Ice Man,
The History and Myth of the Knights Templar,
The Prehistoric Puzzle of the Floresians,
The Magi and the Star of Bethlehem,
The Druids,
The Queen of Sheba,
The Mystery of the Tarim Mummies,
The Strange Tale of the Green Children,
Apollonius of Tyana: Ancient Wonder Worker,
King Arthur and the Knights of the Round Table,
PART IV - Some Further Mysteries to Ponder,
Mysterious Places,
Unexplained Artifacts,
Enigmatic People,
Further Information,
The Lost Land of Atlantis,
America's Stonehenge: The Puzzle of Mystery Hill,
Petra: The Mysterious City of Rock,
The Silbury Hill Enigma,
Where Was Troy?,
Chichén Itzá: City of the Maya,
The Sphinx: An Archetypal Riddle,
The Knossos Labyrinth and the Myth of the Minotaur,
The Stone Sentinels of Easter Island,
The Lost Lands of Mu and Lemuria,
Stonehenge: Cult Center of the Ancestors,
El Dorado: The Search for the Lost City of Gold,
The Lost City of Helike,
Egyptian Treasure From the Grand Canyon,
Newgrange: Observatory, Temple, or Tomb?,
Machu Picchu: Lost City of the Incas,
What Happened to the Library of Alexandria?,
The Great Pyramid: An Enigma in the Desert,
The Nazca Lines,
The Piri Reis Map,
The Unsolved Puzzle of the Phaistos Disc,
The Shroud of Turin,
The Stone Spheres of Costa Rica,
Talos: An Ancient Greek Robot?,
The Baghdad Battery,
The Ancient Hill Figures of England,
The Coso Artifact,
The Nebra Sky Disc,
Noah's Ark and the Great Flood,
The Mayan Calendar,
The Antikythera Mechanism: An Ancient Computer?,
Ancient Aircraft?,
The Dead Sea Scrolls,
The Crystal Skull of Doom,
The Voynich Manuscript,
The Bog Bodies of Northern Europe,
The Mysterious Life and Death of Tutankhamun,
The Real Robin Hood,
The Amazons: Warrior Women at the Edge of Civilization,
The Mystery of the Ice Man,
The History and Myth of the Knights Templar,
The Prehistoric Puzzle of the Floresians,
The Magi and the Star of Bethlehem,
The Druids,
The Queen of Sheba,
The Mystery of the Tarim Mummies,
The Strange Tale of the Green Children,
Apollonius of Tyana: Ancient Wonder Worker,
King Arthur and the Knights of the Round Table,

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