Graham Hancock states,"In this alternative past the civilisations of Egypt, Mesopotamia, the Indus Valley, and Pre-Columbian America might not have arisen spontaneously – almost out of nowhere – as the historians would have us believe. Instead we must consider the possibility that they could have benefited from a shared legacy of culture and knowledge handed down to them from an earlier civilisation – lost to memory – that was ancestral to them all."
* * *
What was this earlier civilization? Was it Atlantis?
The “Fertile Crescent,” a land occupied by modern Iraq located between the Tigris and Euphrates rivers, where people had lived for thousands of years, and by around 4500 to 4000 BC those Ubaid people began the steps toward civilization by developing agriculture and permanent settlements. The benefits of such settled life allowed the Sumerians, as we have come to call this civilization, to specialize in various tasks, creating a division of labor that efficiently used the skills of individuals at their specific specialty instead of each person having to master every single survival skill. Specialists such as carpenters, weavers, brewers, farmers, clothes makers, metal smiths, and arms makers emerged to create their contribution to society secure in the knowledge that other people were likewise creating the other necessities of life. Animal domestication also reached a widespread and sophisticated level by this time.
As with other ancient budding civilizations, the Sumerians also developed a graphic method of communication by using pictographs and a written language called cuneiform. Cuneiform is considered a “logo-syllabic script” language that used wedge shaped symbols to represent syllables of words and was used from around 3300 BC until about 1200 BC. Cuneiform was used by other ancient civilizations, not just the Sumerians, at least in various forms. (Some of the other languages that used cuneiform as their method of writing include Akkadian, Hittite, Eblaite, Elamite, Hurrian, Luwian, and Urartian.) Another ancient form of written language that rivals cuneiform as the beginning of human writing is the Egyptian hieroglyphic form of writing, a complex system of about 1000 characters that represented an olio of methods of meanings, including logographic, syllabic and alphabetic.
Like many ancient civilizations, the Mesopotamian region spawned a polytheistic religious culture. The early Mesopotamian cultures, including those of Sumer, Akkad, Assyria and Babylonia, practiced a polytheistic religion from their inception around 3500 BC until the introduction of major monotheistic religions, specifically that of Christianity, firmly established around 400 AD, and Islam around the 7th Century AD. Natural forces and phenomena were naturally a source of wonder for these ancient people, and they soon ascribed a persona to fit the major natural forces in their world, each being labeled as a god. Also consistent with other polytheistic cultures, each Mesopotamian culture singled out a main god as their preeminent deity, and developed a mythology concerning the origins and development of their gods.
In the Mesopotamian religious mythology, primordial gods were given roles in the establishment of the universe, the Earth, and gave rise to other gods. These primordial gods included Tiamat and Abzu, Lahamu and Lahmu, Kishar and Anshar. Amd Mummu. (These primordial gods listed together were mated couples that begat other gods.) The successors to the primordial gods included 7 major deities that had the power to decree, including 4 primary gods and 3 “sky” gods; specifically Anu (the supreme god of Mesopotamia, a personification of the Sky and ancestor to all the other gods), Enlil (god of the wind, air and Earth as well as storms, Enlil was the chief god of the Sumerians, though also worshipped by other Mesopotamian cultures), Enki (god of mischief and crafts, as well as water, creation and knowledge), Ninhursag (ancient Sumerian mother goddess of fertility), and the sky gods; Inanna/Ishtar (goddess of war, beauty, love and sex, politics, and justice), Nanna/Sin (goddess of the Moon and planets, represented by a crescent that may have given rise to the familiar Islamic crescent of today), and Utu/Shamash (the male twin of Ishtar, the god of the sun, truth, justice and morality). (Please note that these gods and related characters have a variety of names and spellings of those names.)
The Mesopotamian cultures often overlapped with their gods and myths, and also worshipped a variety of other major and minor gods and goddesses, as well as demi-gods and assorted heroes. Spirits and monsters were also part of the Mesopotamian religious myths. The gods and goddesses were worshipped in temples located at each major population center, the typical temple consisting of a “ziggurat,” a stone and earth massively built terraced dome, some of which survived into modern times. Although there are several major examples extant today, others have been destroyed over the centuries as symbols of bygone pagan religions.
The first civilized settlements were tiny villages that grew into towns and eventually into larger cities. These cities became somewhat like small individual countries, each ruled separately and making their own way through life with their own language, customs and culture. The city state concept continued to be evident for many centuries and can be found in notable examples such as Rome, Athens, Sparta, Carthage.
Just as the Italian city states eventually united to form the larger nation of Italy, the ancient Mesopotamian city states also coalesced into a nation larger and more significant than any of its component states. The first great nation or empire in human civilization was the product of the unification of Sumerian Mesopotamian city states under the leadership of Sargon of Akkad (alternatively known as Sargon the Great). This Akkadian Empire is the first such empire in history and existed under the rule of Sargon from 2234 BC to 2279 BC, and as an entity until 2154 BC. Under Sargon the empire spread across about 250,000 square miles and later to as much as 310,000 square miles across what is now Iraq, Iran, Syria, and Turkey.
Prior to the establishment of the Akkadian Empire under Sargon, some Sumerian city states had joined in what has been called an “empire,” so the title as “first empire” and “first emperor” are debatable due to differences in the definition of empire, though most scholars recognize Sargon and his Akkadian Empire as the first. The vast distance of time between today and the life of Sargon precludes detailed information about the man and the mechanics of how he created his empire, though some sources claim Sargon came from humble roots and usurped the reigning King to take control of a city state before conquering surrounding city states and expanding his empire from Mesopotamia into Anatolia and the Levant. As Sargon referred to himself as the “King of Akkad,” it seems his original city state may have been called Akkad, with Kish (in modern Iraq) being the next city state on his agenda for conquering. Unfortunately, the exact location of Akkad is unknown to us today, though speculation places it between the modern cities of Samarra and Baghdad in Iraq. Sargon had a reign of about 50 years, and his dynasty lasted about another century. The spread of the Akkadian Empire allowed Sargon to impose a standard spoken and written language upon the region, at least officially, further enabling the spread of information and ideas.
With civilization being partly defined as the widespread cooperation of many people over a shared set of norms and mores comes the concept of the law, a codified form of rules and mores enforceable by those in authority. The earliest well documented such code of laws available for modern scholars to study is the Code of Hammurabi, a Babylonian set of laws in the ancient Akkadian language, supposedly written by King Hammurabi of Babylon, a monarch in the First Dynasty of the Babylonian kingdom. Since the survival of paper, papyrus, or wooden texts is problematic over such enormous spans of time since the 1755 to 1750 BC approximate date of the Hammurabi Code, it is fortunate for modern scholars that the code was inscribed on a large stone stele (a sort of column) over 7 feet tall with over 4100 lines of cuneiform writing. Apparently taken as loot from a plundering some 6 centuries after it was written, the stone relic was taken to modern Iran, where it was discovered in 1901 by archaeologists near the city of Susa. Hammurabi was sure to include his own likeness on the stone, along with that of the Sun God, Shamash (or Utu) and an introductory part explaining the divine right of Hammurabi to reign and rule.
Beyond the Fertile Crescent we have the city of Knossos on Crete where King Minos, famous for his wisdom and, later, one of the three judges of the dead in the underworld, would give his name to the people of Knossos and, by extension, the ancient
civilization of Crete: Minoan. The settlement was established well before 2000 BCE and was destroyed, most likely by fire (though also by the tsunami caused by the enormous eruption of the volcano on the island of Thera ) c. 1700 BCE.
Knossos has been identified with
Plato's mythical
Atlantis from his dialogues of the
Timaeus and
Critias and is also known in myth most famously through the story of Theseus and his slaying of the Minotaur. It should be noted that King Minos' character in the story, as the king who demands human sacrifice from
Athens, is at odds with other accounts of him as a king of wisdom and justice who, further, built the first navy and rid the
Aegean sea of pirates.
According to the myths surrounding the early city, King Minos hired the Athenian architect, mathematician, and inventor Daedelus to design his palace and so cleverly was it constructed that no one who entered could find their way back out without a guide. In other versions of this same story it was not the palace itself which was designed in this way but the
labyrinth within the palace which was built to house the half-man/half-bull Minotaur. In order to keep Daedelus from telling the secrets of the palace, Minos locked him and his son Icarus in a high tower at Knossos and kept them prisoner. Daedelus fashioned wings made of wax and bird's feathers for himself and his son, however, and escaped their prison but Icarus, flying too close to the sun, melted his wings and fell to his
death. The Minotaur, the monster-child of Minos' wife, thrived on human sacrifice and Minos demanded the tribute of the noblest youth of Athens to keep the beast fed. Theseus of Athens, with the help of Minos' daughter Ariadne, killed the Minotaur, freed the young people, and returned triumphant to his home city. Both stories cast King Minos in a very unflattering light while emphazing Athenian heroes which is unsurprising as the stories are considered Athenian in origin.
Under Minos' rule, Knossos flourished through maritime trade as well as overland commerce with the other great cities of Crete, Kato Sakro (Phaestos) and Mallia. Knossos was destroyed and re-built at least twice. The first palace identified in modern times was built c. 1900 BCE on the ruins of a much older settlement. Based upon excavations done at the site, the first palace seems to have been massive in size with very thick walls. Ancient
pottery found throughout Crete, at various sites, indicate that the island was not unified under a central
culture at this time and so the walls of the palace were most likely constructed to their size and thickness for defensive purposes. As the
writing of this period, so-called `Cretan Hieroglyphs', has not been deciphered, nothing is known about this time save what can be discerned through archaeological evidence.
This first palace was destroyed c. 1700 BCE and re-built on a grander, though less massive, scale. Great attention was paid to intricacy of
architecture and design with less effort spent on defensive walls. As the pottery of this period shows a unity of culture throughout Crete, it has been determined that the culture of Knossos prevailed at this time and the island was a unified nation under a central government. This palace had four entrances, one from each direction, all leading to the central court. As the corridors within were dark and circuitous, it is thought that this gave rise to the story of the labyrinth of Minos. The throne room was particularly impressive. According to The British School at Athens, “Two double doors led into the Throne Room with gypsum benches on three sides and the magnificent throne in the centre of the north
wall flanked by the reconstructed Griffin
fresco." The scholars of the British School have also speculated that the throne room was not intended for the ruler but, rather, as the seat for the goddess who would receive supplicants and sacrifices there. This theory is based upon wall paintings and other evidence found at the site which suggest the king's throne was most likely in the central court and the throne room was more ceremonial and religious in nature. The Snake Goddess of the Minoans was the supreme deity who may have been an early version of the
Greek goddess Eurynome who danced with the serpent Ophion across the chaos of the primordial sea in the act of creation. Images and figures of the Snake Goddess (now at the Iraklion Museum) have been found at Knossos and elsewhere in Crete dating from this period. Further evidence of the goddess is the repetition of the motif of the double axe, most notably in the Hall of the Double Axes in the palace. There is no doubt that the double axe symbolized an important goddess of the Minoans but it is not clear whether it was the Snake Goddess or another.
The city of Knossos, and almost every other community centre on Crete, was destroyed by a combination of
earthquake and the invading Mycenaeans c. 1450 BCE with only the palace spared. The eruption of the volcano on the nearby island of
Thera (Santorini) in c.1600 or 1500 BCE has long been held a major factor in the destruction of the city and second palace. Recent scholarship, however, argues against this theory citing
Mycenaeanactivity at the palace after 1450 BCE. The Mycenaen writing system, known as `
Linear B', continues in Crete after the eruption of the Thera volcano and there is further evidence that the Mycenaens re-built the damaged palace. In fact, it appears that Knossos became an important base of operations and capital of the Mycenaeans until it was destroyed by fire and finally abandoned c. 1375 BCE. The date which traditionally marks the final end of the
Minoan civilization is 1200 BCE after which there is no evidence for the culture. Some scholars cite the final date as 1450 BCE with the Mycenaean invasion and others claim c.1375 or c.1300 BCE on account of the fire which destroyed both palace and city. However long the Minoans may have continued on the island, following the fire the ruins of the great metropolis were abandoned and left to decay.
For almost 30 centuries—from its unification around 3100 B.C. to its conquest by Alexander the Great in 332 B.C.—ancient Egypt was the preeminent civilization in the Mediterranean world. From the great pyramids of the Old Kingdom through the military conquests of the New Kingdom, Egypt’s majesty has long entranced archaeologists and historians and created a vibrant field of study all its own: Egyptology. The main sources of information about ancient Egypt are the many monuments, objects and artifacts that have been recovered from archaeological sites, covered with hieroglyphs that have been deciphered thanks to the Rosetta Stone. The picture that emerges is of a culture with few equals in the beauty of its art, the accomplishment of its architecture or the richness of its religious traditions.
Few written records or artifacts have been found from the Egyptian Predynastic Period, which encompassed at least 2,000 years of gradual development of the Egyptian civilization.
Around 3400 BCE, kingdoms were established in the Red Land to the north, based in the Nile River Delta and extending along the Nile perhaps to Atfih; and the White Land in the south, stretching from Atfih to Gebel es-Silsila. A southern king, Scorpion, made the first attempts to conquer the northern kingdom around 3200 B.C. A century later, King Menes would subdue the north and unify the country, becoming the first king of the first dynasty.
King Menes founded the capital of ancient Egypt at White Walls (later known as Memphis), in the north, near the apex of the Nile River delta. The capital would grow into a great metropolis that dominated Egyptian society during the Old Kingdom period. The Archaic Period saw the development of the foundations of Egyptian society, including the all-important ideology of kingship. To the ancient Egyptians, the king was a godlike being, closely identified with the all-powerful god Horus. The earliest known hieroglyphic writing also dates to this period.
Hundreds, if not thousands, of volumes and scholarly articles have been written on pharaonic Egypt. I suggest the following books, as suggested by Toby Wilkinson, the great current Cambridge Egyptologist: Cultural Atlas of Ancient Egypt, by John Baines and Jaromir Malek; Ancient Egypt: Anatomy of a Civilisation by Barry Kemp; Tutankhamun’s Armies, by John Coleman Darnell and Colleen Manassa; Akhenaten by Dominic Montserrat and finally Egyptian Art in the Age of the Pyramids, by Dorothea Arnold.
During the 1930's the leader of the Nazi SS, Heinrich Himmler, attended an archaeological presentation in Berlin. Heinrich Himmler could barely contain his excitement as a young archaeologist spouted an outlandish theory. He claimed to know the location of the mythical city of Atlantis, where a master race had lived before their island paradise was engulfed by the sea. A handful of survivors escaped the island's fate and roamed the far corners of the Earth, sowing the seeds of their civilization.
(Here I am reminded of the singer Donovan's hit 'Atlantis', wherein he describes that the Antlanteans;
"Knowing her fate,
Atlantis sent out ships to all corners of the Earth.
On board were the Twelve:
The poet, the physician, the farmer, the scientist,
The magician and the other so-called Gods of our legends.")
For Himmler and his cronies it was the perfect solution. At the heart of the Nazi creed was the conviction that the Aryan race, from which true Germans were said to be descended, was superior to all others. Yet there was one huge stumbling block. No one had ever uncovered any temples, scriptures or artefacts to prove this ancient civilisation existed. But if they found the evidence the Nazis could establish their own religion to replace Christianity.
For the next decade Himmler led a shadowy project devoted to this bizarre theory. An SS unit called the Ahnenerbe (Ancestral Heritage), comprising archaeologists and scientists, scoured the globe hunting for proof of the lost Aryans of Atlantis. Also driving this secret mission, was the lure of securing the greatest prize of all - the Holy Grail.
The work of the Ahnenerbe only came to light in 1945 when US soldiers uncovered thousands of files in a cave in central Germany. The contents were to shed light on why the Nazis started the Holocaust and illuminate some gruesome experiments done to obtain "Jewish" skeletons.
The archaeologist who unwittingly lit the fuse was Herman Wirth, a scholar of ancient religions.
He believed the discovery of similar-looking symbols in different parts of the world was no coincidence.
Linking them was a single race, which had lived in Atlantis in the Atlantic Ocean, somewhere between Portugal and Britain. Wirth proposed an expedition to prove that survivors from Atlantis had fled to high parts of the world, determined never again to be caught out by the sea. He was sure descendants were still living in Tibet.
He found an enthusiastic sponsor in Himmler and in 1938 five SS scientists set off for the Himalayas.
Sir Richard Evans, a historian at Cambridge University who has written on the history of the Atomic Bomb, says: "The Nazis saw world history in terms of a struggle between races and survival of the fittest. They thought all races were inferior to the Aryans.
"Himmler wanted to press forward with a new religion, including sun worship and old gods. He wanted the SS to become a kind of cult, or an Aryan aristocracy."
In the countdown to the Second World War all sorts of other expeditions, aimed at proving the Aryan theory, were launched. As well as Tibet, the SS scientists travelled to Finland, Sweden, Scotland, Iceland and France.
In Tibet the SS team set about studying the local people. Using a checklist of facial features they concluded that the Tibetans were descended from the Aryans. When members of the expedition arrived back in Munich a few weeks before the outbreak of war in 1939, they were treated like heroes.
"Hitler and his anthropologists thought that by measuring people's heads you could tell which race they were," adds Sir Richard. "What makes it so sinister is the idea of a racial hierarchy with the Aryans at the top. The Nazis viewed the mixing of races as a road to catastrophe."
It's claimed that this expedition, which Himmler believed proved the existence of Atlantis, also led to the liquidation of an entire race. He was convinced the study in the Himalayas also showed how the Aryan master race had been weakened after the survivors of Atlantis mixed with Tibetans. He became obsessed with racial purity and believed Jesus was descended from Aryan, not Jewish, stock.
Himmler also enlisted Otto Rahn, a historian, who was fascinated by the legend of King Arthur. Rahn was an eccentric who wore a black fedora hat and has been described as the Nazi Indiana Jones. He was certainly the inspiration for Steven Spielberg's hero and, like Indiana in the Last Crusade movie, was obsessed with finding the Holy Grail. Rahn's research suggested that the last keepers of the Grail were the Cathars, who were wiped out in the 13th century.
There have been many works written on Atlantis. Kindly view and read the article by Thorwald Frank (
https://www.atlantis-scout.de/atlantis_introduction.htm) and peruse the collections on Atlantis and the best search words to use when searching online.
Meanwhile, the “Lost City of Atlantis” has captivated many as fable. But there are theories, and even some evidence, floating around that Atlantis was real, and it was Minoan.
We’ve all heard stories about the “Lost City of Atlantis”, sunken into the ocean thousands of years ago. This intellectually and technologically advanced civilization, with its electricity and sophisticated plumbing systems and supposed death rays was far ahead of any other ancient culture thriving during its time. Then, like a flash, it was gone, sunken at the bottom of some ocean in a catastrophic event.
Like any great myth or legend, the question always exists: did Atlantis exist? And if so, where was it and who were they? And why is it relevant to ancient history?
One very plausible theory is that the city of Atlantis was in fact the mysterious Minoan civilization, see above, destroyed some 3,000 years ago in a devastating volcanic eruption that had effects reaching as far as the Orient.
The island of Thera, or modern Santorini, was part of the Minoan Empire during the Bronze Age of ancient history. Located in the Aegean Sea, the island has become the best known and one of the most visited of the Minoan sites. The theory that this group of islands could have once been the “Atlantis”, is very tempting, and not completely out of the realm of possibility.
Some of the strongest arguments in favor of the Thera theory of Atlantis come from two dialogues written by Greek philosopher Plato. His works Timaeus and Critias, written around the 350’s B.C., used the debates and conversations of characters to discuss and reveal the thinker’s own thoughts and discoveries about the ancient civilization. The main character, Solon, had traveled to Egypt, where he had learned of Atlantis from priests. In Plato’s works, we learn of the city’s great advances, as well as its great apocalyptic demise. Plato very much believed that the civilization of Atlantis existed. But some feel that he made the whole story up.
In modern times, the theory that the island of Thera was actually the ancient civilization of Atlantis was fiercely upheld by Greek archaeologist Spyridon Marinatos. As the chief archaeologist behind the excavations on Thera, he passionately believed in the myth begun with Plato’s dialogues.
In Plato’s dialogues, Atlantis was a sea-faring and peaceable civilization. Minoan archeological evidence points to the lack of weapons as well as no depictions of warfare in its artwork, which was very common in Greek art.
Like Atlantis, the Minoan culture ended in a cataclysmic way. Around 1470 B.C., a massive volcanic eruption left a huge crater in the center of Thera, which turned one big island into a series of smaller islands. Whatever was in the middle is on the ocean floor now. This supports the “sunken city” story.
Based on Plato’s description of Atlantis physically and topographically, many believe Atlantis and Thera could have been one and the same.
The ritual of bull jumping commonly depicted in Minoan artwork parallels stories told by the Egyptian priests (in the legend) that describe the inhabitants of Keftiu (a city in Atlantis) of ritual bull jumping and sacrifice.
Plato made the whole story up to serve his own needs for his dialogues.
Thera and Atlantis could not be the same because of the problem with dates. Plato stated in his writings that Atlantis had sunk 10,000 years earlier. In his time, the Minoan volcano would have just occurred approximately 1,000 earlier. However, this could be explained by a simple mistake in the translation of the Egyptian numerals on Plato’s part, or even a mistake in subsequent translations of Plato’s work.
See:
https://www.express.co.uk/news/world/444076/The-Nazis-search-for-Atlantis-and-the-Holy-Grail
See:
https://www.azlyrics.com/lyrics/donovan/atlantis.html
See:
https://fivebooks.com/best-books/ancient-egypt-toby-wilkinson/
See:
https://www.history.com/topics/ancient-history/ancient-egypt
See:
https://www.worldhistory.org/knossos/
See:
https://www.timelessmyths.com/history/sumerian-inventions/
With the possibility of ancient civilizations as old as 10,000 years being knocked out of the game due to a simple problem with the translation of Plato and his followers.
New research now indicates that even though people likely reached North America no earlier than 24,500 to 17,000 BCE, occupation did not become widespread until the very end of the last ice age, around 12,700 to 10,900 BCE.
Map of the Americas. The Bering Land Bridge between Asia and North America in 18,000 BCE is shown in dark green. The map also shows the extent of ancient civilizations in Central or Mesoamerica (Ellis and Esler, 2014).
This new evidence dispels the Clovis-first model, named for evidence of human occupation in Clovis, New Mexico. This model suggests that the first people to reach North America traveled across the Bering Land Bridge and then into North America along an ice-free cross-continental corridor around 14,000 to 8,000 BCE (map below). It is likely that by then North America had already been occupied by people who migrated via the Pacific coastal route.
Under the Pacific Coastal Route Hypothesis, people traveled south along the “kelp highway” of the western coast of the Americas because it was mainly ice-free and therefore easier to traverse than the ice-covered inland areas (map below). The coastal waters had common giant kelp species such as
Durvillaea antarctica and
Macrocystis pyrifera, which supported rich ecosystems that provided food, such as sea bass, cod, rockfish, sea urchins, abalones, and mussels for the migrating people. At the end of the last ice age, glaciers melted and sea levels rose, flooding the “kelp highway.”
Map of North America during the Last Glacial Maximum, depicting both the coastal route suggested by the Pacific Coastal Route Hypothesis and the ice-free corridor route suggested by the Clovis-first model. Chiquihuite Cave is marked in red (from Gandy, 2020, National Geographic Magazine).
After the initial migrations to North America, people began moving southward, following the Pacific coast from Alaska to Chile. Those who made it to northern and central South America were limited to small communities because the cold, harsh climate of the ice age prevented populations from expanding. A short period of rising temperatures and retreating glaciers followed, which allowed people to migrate further south and establish new settlements in Patagonia, such as in Monte Verde (map below). Then, around 12,500 BCE, in what is known as the Antarctic Climate Reversal, temperatures dropped as much as 6℃ below present-day and remained low for 2 millenia. When temperatures rose yet again, more glaciers melted, flooding the Strait of Magellan and cutting the southernmost settlements on
Tierra del Fuego off from the mainland (map below), leading to a cultural division between mainland and coastal inhabitants.
Map of southern South America. The Patagonia region is shown in dark brown. Monte Verde, located on the western coast, is marked with a red dot. The Strait of Magellan, marked in blue, and Tierra del Fuego are at the southern tip of the continent (from Salbuchi, 2010).
See:
https://www.science.smith.edu/climatelit/migration-of-humans-into-north-america/
With the above and the generally accepted theories about human migration into North America from Asia across the land bridge caused from the lowering of the sea level due to the onset of the last glacial maximum, some 12,500 years ago. These early hunter-gatherers made their way down the Pacific Coast to Patagonia.
A 2018 study in Nature, saw researchers, from Denmark and England, working on the 11,500 year old buried Native American child, decoded the infant’s complete DNA set and estimated the timing of key events in the ancestral history of Native Americans and indigenous communities in North, Central and South America. She descended from a single wave of migrants that crossed a land bridge along the Bering Strait during the last great Ice Age.
“The study provides the first direct genomic evidence that all Native American ancestry can be traced back to the same source population during the last Ice Age,” Ben Potter, an archaeologist at the University of Alaska Fairbanks, said via
Reuters.
That source population was Asian. Around 36,000 years ago, a single ancestral Native American group separated from East Asians and crossed Beringia, the land bridge that previously connected Asia to Alaska.
Then, 16,000 years later, the group diverged into two lineages. The first spread throughout North and South America and became the ancestors of today’s Native Americans.
The second lineage, on the other hand, were the female infant’s people. They were the Ancient Beringians, a newly-identified population that eventually disappeared and were likely absorbed by another group that settled in Alaska later.
Turning back to Graham Hancock's book, data for this period, 125,000 to 130,000 years ago, are in short supply. Frenzel (1992) and Velichko et al. (1992) have only three data points for eastern USA; these suggest warmer (2-3 degC warmer) winter temperatures north of about 30 deg.N, and warmer summer temperatures north of about 45 deg.N. The annual rainfall is also suggested as being higher than present across the eastern USA. Whitlock & Bartlein (1997) suggest slightly drier and warmer conditions than present in the Cascade Range (45 deg.N) of the western Cordillera, with dry woodland at lower elevations but a strong steppe element.
However, the data we do possess indicates that the pre-cursors of our Native Americans journeyed across the land bridge linking Asia with America some 36,000 years ago and then, some 16,000 years ago, this grouping split in two with the Berlingians dying out and the Native Americans making it to Patagonia.
There is little data on the natural conditions some 125,000 years ago and many current scientists indicate that the perceived markings on the Mammoth bones found in Southern California and attributed to Neanderthal tools may just as easily be a result of natural processes, to wit, the cobbles found in the dig concomitant with the bones.
The truth about Atlantis, whether it existed and if it was Thera or the city of Knossos will likely never truly be known. Like so many of the fables in ancient history (the Homerian epics of The Odyssey and the Iliad which featured the Trojan Horse, for example) it is a captivating legend that would be made even more incredible if proven true. It is not impossible to think that a civilization so advanced would have existed so long ago.
Ancient history, paleontology, archaeology all fascinate me. In the end it is interesting to see that our ancestors invaded the Americas. One ancient branch crossed a land bridge to get here from Asia while my father's ancestors came by ships from Holland, the earliest in 1635 to Nieuw Amsterdam, then a Dutch colony which is today called New York City. My mother's family came from Southern Norway and Doggerland.
Doggerland ca. 10,000 BCE By Max Naylor - Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=6011686
Doggerland was also a land bridge which connected England to Holland, Denmark and Northern France during the last ice age. Many interesting finds belonging to ice age peoples have been removed from the sea floor in this area.
When we view our ancestors it is always extremely interesting to visualize their environs and their homes. Imagine if our ancestors were somehow tied to those wanderers from 125,000 years ago?
Or take Darrell "Dusty" Crawford, for instance. His DNA has been traced back 55 generations with 99 percent accuracy, according to the ancestry company, CRI Genetics, that tested him. Crawford is part of MtDNA Haplogroup B2, which has a low frequency in Alaska and Canada and originated in Arizona. This means that the man’s ancestors were in North America 17,000 years ago.
Darrell Crawford, who is Native American, has said he was taught in school that his ancestors, the Blackfeet Native Americans, used the Bering Land Bridge during the Ice Age to reach the Americas. However, his DNA testing contained another surprise: It seems that Crawford’s ancestors are from the Pacific Islands. From there they presumably traveled along the coast of South America into what is now North America, his DNA data suggests.
The DNA test focused on mitachondrial DNA and Crawford’s line of female ancestors.
Whether we look far afield or closer to home, ancestry and the search for the oldest civilizations will always consume us. The advent of DNA services have helped us on our way.
Hartmann352
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