Voyages of the Pyramid Builders
The True Origins of the Pyramids from Lost Egypt to Ancient America.
My colleague Robert Schoch's previous book VOICES OF THE ROCKS was a state-of-the-art statement on 'catastrophe theory', the idea that in the not so distant past (ca. 12000 BC) the earth was rocked by a tremendous catastrophe (possibly a strike by an asteroid, bolide or comet) that almost instantly annihilated a large proportion of the larger land mammals then roaming the globe -- mammoths, woolly rhinoceroses, saber-toothed tigers and many others. The extinction of those mammals is of course a matter of record as are the accompanying radical and permanent climatic changes; the North American ice sheet melted, temperate Siberia became tundra, sea levels rose over three hundred feet. There is no argument about the event itself. The bolide/asteroid/comet theory is, in scientific circles, controversial to a certain extent, but generally 'respectable'. That is to say, there is no doubt whatever that something disastrous happened; there is debate over the exact nature of its cause. The real controversy swirls about the state of human civilization at that time and prior to it. The accepted academic view is that mankind was in a state of global hunter-gatherer development. I.e., no civilization to speak of in our currently held definition of that word.
As readers of these Eg-updates will know, we believe that our geological work on the weathering to the Sphinx of Giza effectively obliges a radical revision of that view. And the most recent developments in archeo-astronomy (the astronomy of ancient times) provides mounting complementary evidence from another hard-nosed scientific discipline. We feel that there is fundamental factual basis to the innumerable myths and legends around the world that hearken back to a 'Golden Age', a long period or periods of highly sophisticated civilization and a Deluge or other catastrophe that put an end to this advanced culture or cultures.
Schoch's new book VOYAGES OF THE PYRAMID BUILDERS: The True Origins of the Pyramids from Lost Egypt to Ancient America is the logical sequel to VOICES OF THE ROCKS. It is a state of the art statement on Diffusionist Theory -- the idea that the remarkable similarities between the customs, architectural, artistic and manual techniques, legends and beliefs of cultures all over the world (which seem to have had no connection with each other past or present) stem from 'Diffusion' from an earlier and very ancient central or possibly global 'master culture'. The prevailing view in archeology and in all other disciplines devoted to the past is, at the moment, resolutely anti-Diffusionist; that is to say, that these myriad similarities are largely coincidental and correspond to a kind of innate (but quite undemonstrable) evolutionary stage attained by humanity at large. In simple terms: for no particular reason, certainly no practical reason, cultures around the globe with no connection or communication with each other suddenly decided to throw vast amounts of energy into the construction of massive pyramids and pyramid-shaped (anyway, conical) earth mounds.
Schoch focuses mainly on the pyramid shape and structure -- hardly an architectural form or practice that one would logically associate with cultures just emerging from putative primitivism. He traces and describes the variants of the pyramid wherever it is found -- which is just about everywhere: Mesoamerica of course, but also China, Japan, the United States, England and elsewhere. In the process he argues that in the most ancient times we can really document, the shipbuilding techniques and navigational skills were already in place for societies around the globe to communicate with each other ... in short, there is no commanding reason, actually no reason at all to dismiss the Diffusionist view and countless reasons to do away with anti-Diffusionism. Like the redating of the Sphinx, this is no mere academic quibble. Upon the outcome hangs the entire picture of the development of humanity prior to recorded history and the level of knowledge available to it.
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John Anthony West
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