This item is
from Robert Schoch who is a geologist and has plenty to say about the aging of
the sphinx. Otherwise, I have become quite frustrated with the shortsightedness
of the archeological community generally who ignore literally mountains of hard
data over and over again until someone rubs their noses in it for a couple of
lifetimes.
What I do want
to do is to define several Epochs of mankind history to assist us in
understanding human history more generally.
I have spoken to parts of this throughout this blog, but I am now going to
set up a complete list for us.
Pre human Epoch Before
200,000 BP. A human pig hybrid breeds
true and expands globally to dominate many biomes with a simple stone age tool
kit. It likely took particular advantage
of marine environs to cause large populations and social development.
Garden of Eden Epoch From
200,000 BP through 45000 BP. Substantial
evidence supporting alien intervention exists and locale is now understood and
lifeway is understood. Mind to mind
communication allowed protection from animals and although the garden complex
was limited likely to South Africa, there is also reason to think that such
empowered humanity spread throughout the world as active hunter gatherers as
well.
Antediluvian Epoch From
45,000 BP through 12,900 BP. For this we
presently have scant evidence as most will have been on the continental shelf
and inundated. However presume the
arrival of full modernism and the capacity to aim a huge comet directly at the
North Pole to shift the Earth’s Crust.
High Stone Age Epoch From approximately 10,000 BP through 5000
BP. Agriculture is introduced globally
and this takes critical biological engineering to properly accomplish in all
locales. Six such key locales have been
detected, but many more likely existed.
The first large urban centers arise based on exploitation of marine
resources and not on agriculture as yet.
Thus we have the natural regime in the Nile Delta producing their sphinx
in the obvious place. Astronomical
knowledge emerges at a high level and a mathematica also emerges. Some record keeping is achieved.
Global Bronze Age Epoch From 5000BP to 1159 BC or 3159
BP. This was the global Atlantean Age
with dominant palace based copper trading providing the global political
infrastructure. Population reaches tens
of millions in Atlantean communities and extensive record keeping emerges
including Sumerian cuneiforms. Military
advantage against local continental
barbarism never lost until the Atlantean subsidence in 1159 BC knocked
it out.
Global Iron Age Epoch From 1159 BC to 1800
AD. This is our world built largely on
iron metallurgy and cavalry and later with concrete. It also became naval based during the last
three centuries.
Global Modernism Epoch From 1800 AD to
present. The exponential expansion of
knowledge became discernable and critical to planning. Fiat currency succeeds and grows to drive the
economies worldwide.
Thus it
suddenly becomes easy to understand the earlier Sphinx. The whole organized Nile Delta was populous
early on and could engage in monument building.
As well the hinterland was well
vegetated and also populous. We need to
ne looking for additional evidence and that will mean digging deeper in the
delta were fishing was easiest.
Robert Schoch Essay
When and where did civilisation begin? How
far back in time does high culture go? Indeed, what do we mean by such terms as
civilisation, or sophisticated and high culture?
When I was in college, more years ago than I
perhaps care to remember, I learned the standard story which still holds sway
in many circles: Civilisation and high culture
date back to, at most, perhaps five or six thousand years ago. A handy
marker for recognising a true civilization was written language, and it was
generally agreed that the earliest true writing could be dated to the late
fourth millennium BCE (that is, circa 3500 to 3000 BCE).
The Sumerians are generally credited with
developing writing about 3300 to 3200 BCE, although the earliest Egyptian hieroglyphics
may date back to the same period, or even a century or so earlier, and there is
also evidence of writing possibly from as far back as 3500 BCE found at
Harappa, the Indus Civilisation, in what is now modern Pakistan.1
But then there are reports of much earlier
possible writing from Henan Province, China, dated to 6600 to 6200 BCE,
inscribed on tortoise shells.2 I recollect a book I read while still an
undergraduate, The Roots of Civilization
by Alexander Marshack, which argued that various lines, notches, and
“scratchings” on ancient bone artefacts dating to 10,000 BCE and earlier, before
the end of the last Ice Age, were in fact symbolic systems, including lunar
calendar notations.
Maybe our ancestors were not so primitive
and stupid after all. Maybe defining civilisation and high culture in terms of
a written language (or more accurately our knowledge of a recorded language; we
can easily miss things in the archaeological record) simply is not a fruitful
approach. This is the conclusion I have come to while pursuing my own research.
Re
-Dating the Great Sphinx of Egypt I first came to the problem of the origin of civilization
through my studies of the Great Sphinx of Giza, Egypt. Combining a Ph.D. in
geology and geophysics from Yale University (1983) with a lifelong enthusiasm
for ancient cultures, on my first trip to Egypt in 1990 I was primed to take a
careful look at the Sphinx.
As I have recounted elsewhere,3 my colleague
and friend John Anthony West had suggested to me various silly notions that the
Great Sphinx might be older than the standard Egyptological attribution of
circa 2500 BCE.
I figured that through a careful analysis of
the geology, I could show the error in such thinking. Surely all those professional
Egyptologists could not be wrong. It turns out they were.
Based on my geological and seismic analyses,
utilizing the weathering and erosion patterns correlated with the
palaeoclimatology and subsurface features,4 I concluded that the oldest
portions of the Great Sphinx date back to at least the period of 7000 BCE to
5000 BCE, and perhaps back to 9000 BCE or earlier. To oversimplify a bit, the core body of the Great Sphinx
shows features that place it well back before the onset of the current arid regime
(the Giza Plateau is on the edge of the Sahara Desert) some 5,000 years ago.
Such a conclusion has deep implications,
suggesting that high culture and civilisation dates back much earlier than
previously believed. I have been told on
more than one occasion that my conclusions cannot be true because if they are,
then “history must be rewritten.” Certainly, we cannot have that, can we?
Vested interests run high, and I have been attacked from many sides, both by
orthodox Egyptologists and historians, and by various people not as closely
associated with mainstream academia.
Through it all over the last two decades, I
have looked at the alternative theories suggested to explain the data, and I
continue to maintain that the evidence clearly points to the origins of the
Great Sphinx being much older than 2500 BCE. Indeed, the attacks and
criticisms, forcing me to carefully scrutinize and enlarge my dataset, have
served only to reaffirm my conclusions.
The Sphinx Under Water, or Under Fire?
Recently my work on the Great Sphinx has
come under fire from a self-described anti-Establishmentarian. Given the number
of people who have been asking me about this latest “Sphinx theory,” I feel it
is imperative that I briefly address it here.
Robert Temple has proposed a moat theory
(that is, the Sphinx Enclosure was purposefully filled with water such that the
body of the Sphinx was submerged and sat as a statue in a small artificial
lake) to explain the clear signs of water weathering and erosion on the body of
the Great Sphinx and on the walls of the Sphinx Enclosure.
Temple contends that the moat theory
explains the data adequately without hypothesising that the Great Sphinx dates
back to a much earlier period during which there was more rainfall than at
present. (Here I will not address his hypotheses, which I do not find persuasive,
that the Sphinx was the jackal [wild dog] Anubis and the face seen on the
Sphinx is that of the Middle Kingdom pharaoh Amenemhet II, though I would point
out that the original Sphinx has been reworked and the head has been re-carved,
perhaps more than once.)
The body of the Sphinx, carved from the
bedrock, sits largely below ground level, and various moat, pool, or artificial
fountain hypotheses have been suggested fothe Sphinx from time to time. I
considered such notions carefully as far back as my early analyses of the
geology of the Sphinx, starting in 1990. In summary, such moat and related
theories do not hold water (to use a bad pun) and are not compatible with the
features of the actual Great Sphinx, the Sphinx Enclosure, and the general geology
and palaeohydrology of the Giza Plateau.
Scrutinising the Sphinx While in Egypt
recently (March 2009) I made it a point to look at the Great Sphinx and Sphinx
Enclosure with fresh eyes to see if there could be anything to the moat class
of theories. I will summarise briefly a half dozen points.6
1) Based on my observations and analyses,
the Sphinx Temple (built out of blocks removed from the Sphinx Enclosure when
the body of the Sphinx was initially carved) and the so-called Valley Temple to
the south of the Sphinx Temple show clear signs of heavy precipitation- induced
weathering on the limestone core blocks.
These limestone temples were subsequently
refurbished with Aswan granite ashlars during the Old Kingdom (as evidenced by
an Old Kingdom inscription still found on a block located at the Valley
Temple). The moat theory cannot explain the nature of the very ancient
weathering seen under the Old Kingdom granite veneer.
2) There is much heavier surface erosion on
the western end of the Sphinx Enclosure, and the surface erosion tapers off
dramatically toward the eastern end of the enclosure. This is exactly what is
to be expected based on the palaeohydrology of the Giza Plateau and is
incompatible with a moat theory where it is hypothesised that water was brought
in from the Nile to the east.
Furthermore, the nature of the surface erosion
throughout the enclosure and on the body of the Sphinx is as expected if there
were water running over or raining down on the rock layers. The erosion
actually observed is not compatible with pooled water in the enclosure.
3) The highest levels of the middle member
strata, as seen in the Sphinx Enclosure on the western end, are most severely
eroded, which is compatible with the agency of precipitation. If the moat
theory were true, then the lower strata on the eastern end of the Sphinx
Enclosure would be most heavily eroded (caused by water being brought in via
canals from the Nile), but the opposite is seen in reality.
4) The subsurface seismic data demonstrating
the depth of weathering below the floor of the Sphinx Enclosure, based on my
analyses (using areas excavated during the Old Kingdom for comparison), even
when calibrated very conservatively, gives an age of initial carving for the
core body of the Great Sphinx of at least 5000 BCE. More than one geological
colleague has suggested to me that a more realistic calibration gives a date thousands
of years earlier. And no, standing water in the Sphinx Enclosure would not
accelerate the depth of weathering below the floor of the enclosure.
5) The vertical fissures observed in the
walls of the Sphinx Enclosure show diagnostic signs of having been formed by
precipitation and water runoff. In my opinion, they do not show any
characteristics that are diagnostic or even suggestive of having been formed by
artificial dredging of the Sphinx Enclosure, as some have suggested.
6) If the Great Sphinx actually had sat in
an artificial pool or lake, either the water level around the Sphinx would have
had to have been the same as that of the surrounding water table, or the walls
and floor of the pool in which the Sphinx sat would have had to have been
sealed up and watertight (and any artificial walls, such as on the eastern end,
would have had to have been strong enough to withstand the pressure of the
water).
Clearly, the ancient water table was well
below the levelof the floor of the Sphinx Enclosure (or else the Sphinx Temple,
for instance, would have been flooded). The Sphinx Enclosure, if simply carved
from the bedrock (as all the evidence suggests) would not have held a deep pool
of standing water. The bedrock in the enclosure is highly faulted, and
characterised by a karst morphology that would leak like a sieve (another bad
pun, perhaps). The enclosure would have had to have been fully sealed up (with
some kind of mortar or cement, perhaps), and there is no evidence of such
sealing.
Furthermore, if the enclosure had been
sealed in such a manner, this would not be compatible with the dredging theory for
the vertical fissures mentioned in the previous point. I would also note that
the chambers and tunnels under the Great Sphinx would have been flooded from
above if the Great Sphinx had been sitting in a pool of water, unless the
Sphinx Enclosure had been watertight; yet the evidence suggests the enclosure
was not watertight.
Could the Sphinx be Hundreds of Thousands of
Years Old?
Even as my re-dating of the Great Sphinx has
been attacked as impossible by some authorities, other serious researchers have
suggested that I have underestimated the true age of the oldest portions of the
Great Sphinx by a factor of ten or more!
For instance, two members of the National
Academy of Sciences of Ukraine, Vjacheslav I. Manichev and Alexander G.
Parkhomenko,7 citing my work, have reinterpreted the geology and erosional
features on the Great Sphinx to mean that the core body of the statue could
date back as far as 800,000 years ago. And they are not referring to simply a
natural outcropping that may have existed 800,000 years ago that was later
shaped into a statue. (Remember, too, that to carve the core body of the Sphinx
huge multi-ton blocks were removed from the
Sphinx Enclosure and assembled as the Sphinx Temple, so the original
Sphinx Temple is as old as the core body of the Great Sphinx).
The dating of Manichev and Parkhomenko could
push the age of the Great Sphinx time period, one that has been suggested for
possible, but ambiguous, ancient structures, sculptures, or simulacra that are
found in many parts of the world, such as Markawasi in Peru, 8 the Romanian
Sphinx, 9 or a possible stone circle dubbed Adam’s Calendar by researchers Johan
Heine and Michael Tellinger with a claimed date of 75,000 years ago.10
Personally, I am not convinced that the Great Sphinx is anywhere close to the
age postulated by Manichev and Parkhomenko, or that various claimed very
ancient, very eroded statues are anything more than natural formations, but the prospects are
intriguing.
Without going off on such limbs, there is
clear evidence for early high culture at a remote period beyond just that of the Great Sphinx.
Nabta Playa
In the Sahara Desert of southern Egypt, west
of Aswan, is an area known as Nabta Playa. Here an ancient stone calendar
circle, as well as many other megalithic erections and structures, was
identified by archaeologist Fred Wendorf (Southern Methodist University) and
his team and dated to circa 4000 BCE and earlier.11 Thomas Brophy 12 has
carried out extensive analyses of Nabta. According to Brophy, three stones
inside the Nabta calendar circle represent the belt of Orion (just as the three
pyramids of Giza represent the belt of Orion according the research of Robert
Bauval13). The stones on the Playa and the corresponding stars in the sky aligned
on summer solstice nights between about 6400 BCE and 4900 BCE. Brophy found
even more correlations, however. Three other stones in the Nabta calendar circle
correspond to the configuration of Orion’s head and shoulders as they appeared
in circa 16,500 BCE, about half a precessional cycle earlier than the
previously mentioned alignment. Based on these and other analyses of monoliths
in the area, Brophy concludes that the early inhabitants of Nabta Playa
possessed incredibly sophisticated knowledge, the type of knowledge we
associate with high culture and civilisation. Furthermore, the dates of the
Nabta structures are in line with my dating of the oldest portions of the Great
Sphinx, and at both Giza and Nabta the constellation of Orion (which represented
the god Osiris during dynastic times) was of prime importance.
Göbekli
Tepe
If the dating of the Great Sphinx remains
controversial (after all, old ideas die hard), and the analyses of Nabta Playa
are questionable in the eyes of some researchers, there is one site that even
the most ensconced conventional archaeologists cannot ignore. In modern Turkey,
just north of the border with Syria, is a site known as Göbekli Tepe that has
yielded dozens of carved limestone megaliths, many of which date back to the
extraordinarily early period of 9000 BCE to 10,000 BCE.14 Klaus Schmidt, of the
German Archaeological Institute, has been heading an excavation team there since
1994, and there is no doubt as to the importance, authenticity, and dating
(based in part on radiocarbon)of Göbekli Tepe. This is a discovery made by
mainstream academics.
Göbekli Tepe boggles the imagination on many
accounts. The date is incredibly early, even earlier than my “conservative”
estimate for the date of the Great Sphinx.
Göbekli Tepe dates back to the end of the
last Ice Age. The monolithic megaliths are in the range of two to seven metres
high (the latter is the height of an unfinished megalith left where it was
being quarried). Sculpted onto the surfaces of the monoliths are a variety of
animals, including snakes, boars, foxes, vultures, spiders, scorpions, a
centipede, and a three-dimensional figure that has been interpreted as a lion.
The megaliths excavated thus far had been erected into four distinct stone
circles, ranging from ten to thirty metres in diameter. Based on geophysical surveys,
the entire site may cover three dozen hectares (about 90 acres) and contains
another twenty or so stone circlesAlthough very different from the Great Sphinx and the Sphinx Temple,
in my estimation, taking the entire Göbekli Tepe site as a whole into account,
just as much effort, social organisation, and sophisticated or high culture
must have been required to construct the Göbekli Tepe complex as the Sphinx
complex. When I first presented my findings on the age of the Great Sphinx, I
was told over and over again by mainstream archaeologists and historians that
my dating was simply impossible because it was well known that nothing so
elaborate and sophisticated, requiring an advanced level of social organisation,
could occur so early. Göbekli Tepe proves these assertions false and helps
place the Great Sphinx in a larger context.
The work at Göbekli Tepe has literally just
begun. Most of the site has yet to be excavated and who can predict what
surprises might be in store for us? Who were the people that built the site,
and why did they build it? So far there is no evidence that the site was
inhabited; no living areas have been excavated, though the thousands of animal
bones found (the most common animal represented is the aurochs, a type of
extinct ox) are evidence of feasting at the site. Was it a holy, sacred site?
An area for religious pilgrimages? Or perhaps an ancient centre of knowledge?
My instinct is that the positions of the monoliths, and the specific carvings
on their surfaces, probably encode information... but what? And what happened to
the people who built and used Göbekli Tepe?
Curiously, the site did not simply fall into
disuse and gradually decay. It was intentionally buried somewhere around 8000
BCE. Why? The mystery only deepens.
The
Origin and De ise of Early High Culture
There has been space here to mention only a
few examples of archaeological sites that challenge the conventional view of
when high culture, advanced knowledge, and civilisation arose. Admittedly, I
have dwelt on those that most interest me, including the Great Sphinx with which
I have become entwined. Put all the evidence together and there is no doubt in
my mind that what we can term high culture existed at least 11,000 years ago (and
possibly much earlier).
Where did early civilisation originate? And
what happened to it? Is there a lost primordial ancient civilisation, one that
was destroyed in some cataclysmic natural catastrophe? Could the legend of
Atlantis have some truth to it? These are questions I have pondered long and hard
for many years.
Being a geologist, I view Earth and our
environment as unstable, full of unexpected surprises, at least over the long
term. Climates change, sea levels rise and fall, volcanoes erupt, earthquakes
rock the land and sea, and objects fall from the sky. I have discussed how such
natural cataclysms may have influenced the history of ancient civilisations,15 and in particular I have
pointed out that Earth has experienced a series of encounters with comets during
historical and prehistoric times.16
Depending on the severity of the encounter
(size of the comet, whether it actually touched the surface of Earth or perhaps
resulted in a mid-atmosphere explosion, and so forth), dramatic climatic
changes could be affected on Earth, which in turn could affect sea levels, and
weather extremes can wreck havoc on animal and human populations, causing
famines.17 In 2003 I suggested that the end of the last Ice Age may have been
brought about in part by comets bombarding Earth,18 and this hypothesis has
received dramatic support with physical evidence for an impact around 10,900
BCE. 19 There is also evidence for impacts around 7600 BCE, 4400 BCE, 3150 BCE,
2345 BCE, 1628 BCE, 1159 BCE, 207 BCE, 536 CE, and 1178 CE.20
Bottom line, based on all the evidence,
there is no doubt in my mind that these incidents, these cosmic catastrophes, had
a profound influence on ancient civilisations. In some cases migrations were
sparked, in other cases entire cultures may have been wiped out.
At the end of the last Ice Age, from before
around 18,000 BCE to perhaps 11,000 BCE or later (dates at such a far remove
are approximate), when sea levels were significantly lower (by seventy-five to
a hundred and twenty metres), a sub-continental expanse of land was exposed in
Southeast Asia where there is now only water in the area bounded by Indochina,
the Malay Archipelago, the islands of Indonesia, and Borneo. To geologists this
drowned region is known as Sundaland, and there is a variety of evidence that
here an early civilisation was located; they fled as the waters rose and the
comets came down.21 Could this be the primordial lost civilisation that so many
of us suspect once existed?
And what about that intentional burial of
the structures at Göbekli Tepe? Did they see their fate in the skies? As the
comets rained down did those ancient builders do their best to cover and
preserve that which they had so carefully created, perhaps hoping to return one
day to uncover their monuments? Or did they leave them for us to recover?
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