Finally, here is additional miscellaneous information which is taken from the book We Are Not The First by Andrew Tomas (Bantam Books, 1971), pages 74-76. This information in included here for the record.
QUOTEThe people of antiquity believed in the tremendous ages of the world and mankind, which they estimated in tens of thousands and even millions of years. To the European of Napoleonic times, the earth and man were created by God only several thousand years ago. However, the Asiatics had different views.
The Brahmins of India calculated the duration of the universe, or the Day of Brahma, to be 4.32 billion years. The Druses of Lebanon set the beginning of creation at 3.43 billion years. The present age of the earth is considered to be about 4.6 billion years, whereas that of the crust is 3.3 billion years. There are strange parallels between these figures. What is really extraordinary is the pundits' time reckoning in milliards of years -- cosmic chronology of this type was unknown until this century.
According to Simplicius (sixth century A.D.) ancient Egyptians kept records of astronomical observations for 630,000 years. The archives of Babylon were 470,000 years old, wrote Cicero with a remark that he did not believe this claim. Hipparchus (c. 190-125 B.C.) mentioned Assyrian chronicles stretching back for 270,000 years.
The Egyptian priests told Herodotus [sic -- actually it was Solon, whose visit was mentioned by Plato in Timaeus & Critias] in the fifth century B.C. that the sun had not always risen where it rose then. This implied that they had kept records of the precession of equinoxes, covering at least 26,000 years.
The Greek historian Diogenes Laertius (third century A.D.) claimed that the astronomical records of Egyptian priests began in 49,219 B.C. He also referred to their registers of 373 solar and 832 lunar eclipses, which would involve a period of approximately 10,000 years.
The Byzantine historian George Syncellus said that the chroniclers of the pharaohs had recorded all events for 36,525 years. Martianus Capella (fifth century A.D.) wrote that the Egyptian sages had secretly studied astronomy for over 40,000 years before they imparted their knowledge to the world.
The first dynasty after the Deluge was traced by Babylonian priests to a date 24,150 years before their time.
According to Codex Vaticanus A-3738, the Mayas had kept their calendrical system since 18,612 B.C.
Herodotus places the reign of Osiris at about 15,500 B.C. from the information given to him by the priests of the land of the Nile. He made the remark that they were quite certain about the exactitude of the date.
The lunar calendar of Babylon and the solar calendar of Egypt coincided in the year 11,542 B.C. The calendrical computations of India began with the year 11,652 B.C.
According to Plato, the Egyptian priests fixed the date of the sinking of Atlantis at 9850 B.C., while the Zoroastrian books set the "beginning of time" at 9600 B.C.
That these dates are correct can be questioned. But we cannot escape the conclusion that the ancients were much closer to the truth than the scholars and clerics of one and a half centuries ago who thought that the world had been created in 4004 B.C., according to the Biblical chronological study of Bishop Ussher.
The universe of the Brahmins was almost as old as that of modern science. The chronicles of the Mayas, the Egyptians, and the Babylonians went farther back in time than our history. In view of what our science has yet to learn, it would be presumptuous to accuse them of exaggeration.
The mental horizons of the peoples of antiquity were vast, and we are only beginning to see today what they perceived yesterday.
The priests of Babylon and Egypt believed that man was civilized 500,000 years ago. They kept historical and astronomical records in their archives, as Simplicius and Cicero tell us. We can smile at these claims and give civilization 5,000 years to progress from the chariot to the automobile, from bows and arrows to the atomic bomb, from the boat to the spaceship.
UNQUOTESince 1973, I have been a charter lifetime member of the Ancient Mediterranean Research Association headquartered in Los Angeles, California. Our Founder and Director is Professor Maxine Klein Asher, formerly of Pepperdine University. The Co-Founder was Pepperdine Professor Julian Nava, who later served as U.S. Ambassador to Mexico under President Jimmy Carter.
I first became acquainted with Dr. Asher in 1973, because she was in the news for her expedition to Spain to prove the discovery of the Lost Atlantis. Accompanied by Spanish undersea diver Francisco "Paco" Salazar Casero, she travelled with a university group to Cadiz. Paco, she reported later, took some underwater photos of Atlantean artifacts. But, as luck would have it, they were diving and exploring too close to a top-secret naval facility and got "chased out" of Spain as spies, fearing for their lives, and sought refuge in Ireland.
Back in New York City, Maxine gave a press conference, and she got stories written in Time, Newsweek and US News & World Report, as well as in various newspapers like The Dallas Morning News. 1973 was also the same year that I'd taken up the study of Atlantis myself, and I was most intrigued by her expedition. However, before I ever heard of her, I'd already made up my own mind that Atlantis was Antarctica, not some area only a short mile or two off the coast of Cadiz.
Paco's pictures were blurry black-and-white images of a couple of "ancient" vases, supposedly on the bottom of the ocean. There was no size-frame of reference for anything, and no people were in these pictures. But other than these pictures and her own account of events as she chronicled in her book The Atlantis Conspiracy, over the years Dr. Asher has produced absolutely no evidence of Atlantis off/in Spain. And she has made over 40 trips to Spain in this regard.
She informed me several years ago that she has a lot of "confidential" material which she is unable to reveal to anyone, not even to trusted longtime association members like myself, who have contributed money to the funding of one of her illustrious expeditions to Cadiz and who were promised a full report which we investors never received. Frankly, I don't buy it anymore. After all these years, as well as the fact that she herself is getting older, she should release some of this material to prove her contention. Periodically she will send out a newsletter from AMRA, faithfully I might add for 27 years. In it she will once again state that an exciting new discovery is about to be made in Atlantis research, so stay tuned for more details. After a while, it becomes repetitively old news.
Atlantis was Antarctica. Once whilst on a trip to Southern California, I visited Dr. Asher and was invited to lecture to the association. I took along my world polar globe and demonstrated how Plato could have been referring to Antarctica. Maxine and the group listened politely and applauded, but I got the distinct impression that I was merely their "curiosity program" of the month, that none of them intended to give up the fantasy belief that Atlantis was off the coast of Cadiz.
Again, her newsletter arrived today. She had the following to report about a recent television program which I personally did not see and knew nothing about.
QUOTE
The Brahmins of India calculated the duration of the universe, or the Day of Brahma, to be 4.32 billion years. The Druses of Lebanon set the beginning of creation at 3.43 billion years. The present age of the earth is considered to be about 4.6 billion years, whereas that of the crust is 3.3 billion years. There are strange parallels between these figures. What is really extraordinary is the pundits' time reckoning in milliards of years -- cosmic chronology of this type was unknown until this century.
According to Simplicius (sixth century A.D.) ancient Egyptians kept records of astronomical observations for 630,000 years. The archives of Babylon were 470,000 years old, wrote Cicero with a remark that he did not believe this claim. Hipparchus (c. 190-125 B.C.) mentioned Assyrian chronicles stretching back for 270,000 years.
The Egyptian priests told Herodotus [sic -- actually it was Solon, whose visit was mentioned by Plato in Timaeus & Critias] in the fifth century B.C. that the sun had not always risen where it rose then. This implied that they had kept records of the precession of equinoxes, covering at least 26,000 years.
The Greek historian Diogenes Laertius (third century A.D.) claimed that the astronomical records of Egyptian priests began in 49,219 B.C. He also referred to their registers of 373 solar and 832 lunar eclipses, which would involve a period of approximately 10,000 years.
The Byzantine historian George Syncellus said that the chroniclers of the pharaohs had recorded all events for 36,525 years. Martianus Capella (fifth century A.D.) wrote that the Egyptian sages had secretly studied astronomy for over 40,000 years before they imparted their knowledge to the world.
The first dynasty after the Deluge was traced by Babylonian priests to a date 24,150 years before their time.
According to Codex Vaticanus A-3738, the Mayas had kept their calendrical system since 18,612 B.C.
Herodotus places the reign of Osiris at about 15,500 B.C. from the information given to him by the priests of the land of the Nile. He made the remark that they were quite certain about the exactitude of the date.
The lunar calendar of Babylon and the solar calendar of Egypt coincided in the year 11,542 B.C. The calendrical computations of India began with the year 11,652 B.C.
According to Plato, the Egyptian priests fixed the date of the sinking of Atlantis at 9850 B.C., while the Zoroastrian books set the "beginning of time" at 9600 B.C.
That these dates are correct can be questioned. But we cannot escape the conclusion that the ancients were much closer to the truth than the scholars and clerics of one and a half centuries ago who thought that the world had been created in 4004 B.C., according to the Biblical chronological study of Bishop Ussher.
The universe of the Brahmins was almost as old as that of modern science. The chronicles of the Mayas, the Egyptians, and the Babylonians went farther back in time than our history. In view of what our science has yet to learn, it would be presumptuous to accuse them of exaggeration.
The mental horizons of the peoples of antiquity were vast, and we are only beginning to see today what they perceived yesterday.
The priests of Babylon and Egypt believed that man was civilized 500,000 years ago. They kept historical and astronomical records in their archives, as Simplicius and Cicero tell us. We can smile at these claims and give civilization 5,000 years to progress from the chariot to the automobile, from bows and arrows to the atomic bomb, from the boat to the spaceship.
UNQUOTESince 1973, I have been a charter lifetime member of the Ancient Mediterranean Research Association headquartered in Los Angeles, California. Our Founder and Director is Professor Maxine Klein Asher, formerly of Pepperdine University. The Co-Founder was Pepperdine Professor Julian Nava, who later served as U.S. Ambassador to Mexico under President Jimmy Carter.
I first became acquainted with Dr. Asher in 1973, because she was in the news for her expedition to Spain to prove the discovery of the Lost Atlantis. Accompanied by Spanish undersea diver Francisco "Paco" Salazar Casero, she travelled with a university group to Cadiz. Paco, she reported later, took some underwater photos of Atlantean artifacts. But, as luck would have it, they were diving and exploring too close to a top-secret naval facility and got "chased out" of Spain as spies, fearing for their lives, and sought refuge in Ireland.
Back in New York City, Maxine gave a press conference, and she got stories written in Time, Newsweek and US News & World Report, as well as in various newspapers like The Dallas Morning News. 1973 was also the same year that I'd taken up the study of Atlantis myself, and I was most intrigued by her expedition. However, before I ever heard of her, I'd already made up my own mind that Atlantis was Antarctica, not some area only a short mile or two off the coast of Cadiz.
Paco's pictures were blurry black-and-white images of a couple of "ancient" vases, supposedly on the bottom of the ocean. There was no size-frame of reference for anything, and no people were in these pictures. But other than these pictures and her own account of events as she chronicled in her book The Atlantis Conspiracy, over the years Dr. Asher has produced absolutely no evidence of Atlantis off/in Spain. And she has made over 40 trips to Spain in this regard.
She informed me several years ago that she has a lot of "confidential" material which she is unable to reveal to anyone, not even to trusted longtime association members like myself, who have contributed money to the funding of one of her illustrious expeditions to Cadiz and who were promised a full report which we investors never received. Frankly, I don't buy it anymore. After all these years, as well as the fact that she herself is getting older, she should release some of this material to prove her contention. Periodically she will send out a newsletter from AMRA, faithfully I might add for 27 years. In it she will once again state that an exciting new discovery is about to be made in Atlantis research, so stay tuned for more details. After a while, it becomes repetitively old news.
Atlantis was Antarctica. Once whilst on a trip to Southern California, I visited Dr. Asher and was invited to lecture to the association. I took along my world polar globe and demonstrated how Plato could have been referring to Antarctica. Maxine and the group listened politely and applauded, but I got the distinct impression that I was merely their "curiosity program" of the month, that none of them intended to give up the fantasy belief that Atlantis was off the coast of Cadiz.
Again, her newsletter arrived today. She had the following to report about a recent television program which I personally did not see and knew nothing about.
No comments:
Post a Comment