Teleguin north-pole

http://www.atlantisrising.com/mm5/merchant.mvc?Screen=CTGY&Store_Code=AR&Category_Code=magcd

Order BOOKS, DVDs & MORE: See Our Catalog on Page 74

®®

ANCIENTMYSTERIES

FUTURE SCIENCE

UNEXPLAINEDANOMALIES

PUBLISHER & EDITORJ. Douglas Kenyon

CONTRIBUTORSDavid H. ChildressThomas J. CareyMichael CremoFrank Joseph

Julie LoarJeane Manning

Patrick MarsolekMarsha Oaks

Martin RugglesRobert Schoch, PhD.

Steven SoraWilliam B. Stoecker

Carly SvamvourSergey TeleguinMichael E. Tymn

COVER DESIGNRyan Hammer

GRAPHICSRandy HaraganDenis OuelletteRyan Hammer

ATLANTIS RISING®(ISSN #1541-5031)

published bi-monthly(6 times a year)

by Atlantis Rising, LLC521 S. 8th St., Ste. A

P.O. Box 441Livingston, MT 59047

Copyright 2013ATLANTIS RISING

No part of this publicationmay be reproduced withoutwritten permission from the

publisher.

Periodicals Postage Paid atLivingston, MT and

at additional post offices.USPS Number: 024-631

U.S. Subscription priceis $24.95 (6 issues)

POSTMASTER:Send Address Changes to

Atlantis RisingPO Box 441

Livingston, MT 59047

42 Lake Vostok’sSecret LifeNew Evidence ofthe Strange WorldBeneath the Ice

44 PolarMemoriesDid a ForgottenAncient Saga Beginat the North Pole?

46 Lemuria’sIgnoredEvidenceWhere Might Suchan Enormous PlaceBe Found?

48 Astrology51 DVD57 Puzzle

28 Easter Island’sAstonishingAntiquity

32The Suspensionof DisbeliefU.S. AirforceStrategy andthe Roswell Case

35 Glastonbury’sZodiacHow Real Was Mrs.Maltwood’s Vision?

39 The Spirits ofGlastonbury

41 Did the WelshDiscoverAmerica?

6 Letters

10 AlternativeNews

16 JeaneManningSecrets ofElectricity

18 Michael CremoThe WolfseggObject

22 Big Bang or NotShouldn’t There Be a BetterExplanation?

25 Unraveling theSirius PuzzleWhat Were theAncients Tryingto Tell Us?

CONTENTSCONTENTS

28

42

14

19

41

#102

November / December 2013

35

32

Subscribe or Order Books, DVDs and Much More!14 ATLANTIS RISING • Number 102

ALTERNATIVE NEWS

Mars be a veritable youngster? For yearsscientists have been saying the red

planet is incredibly old—four billion years, infact—but lately some have suggested it mightbe as young as 200 million, a small fractionof the previous estimate. The latest numberscome from scientists at Canada’s Royal On-tario Museum who are relying on a newanalysis of the various meteorites from Marsthat have crashed on Earth. Both estimates,however, are based on conventional wisdomabout how long it takes for geological eventsto unfold and could be way off the mark.

Just as estimates of the age of things onEarth are based on the prevailing theory thatvarious changes we know of did so very grad-ually and required vast aeons to develop, sim-ilar logic is used relative to Mars. The rolethat sudden and relatively recent catastrophic

intterview with the web site Space.com Kri-oukov said the universe really develops likea brain, building its networks as it grows,with the electrical f iring between braincells ‘mirrored’ by the shape of expandinggalaxies. Krioukov is quick to point outthough, that doesn’t mean the universe isthinking. He did concede, however, “for aphysicist it is an immediate signal thatthere is something missing in our under-standing of how the universe works.” That

-e,

ngtsat-t

is, of course, what some might call a no-brainer.

It is interesting that science could ob-serve such patterns while still seeing no ev-idence for a designer. If nothing else, thestudy shows a recurrence of form betweenthe very large and the very small, and sug-gests we might f ind other similarities, suchas consciousness, something long believedby just about every religion. As the an-cients might put it, ‘as above, so below.’

inoawcgttpts

The idea is not new. Scientists and sci-ence f iction writers have suggested as

much for years, but now a new study saysa closer look at the universe and thehuman brain reveals many surprising simi-larities.

Dimitri Krioukov, a professor at theUniversity of California, San Diego haspublished a study in Nature’s Scientif ic Re-ports which suggests that different kindsof networks evolve in similar ways. In an

Could the Universe Be a Giant Brain?Neural Network in the Human Brain

Artist’s conception of the Mars Onecraft landing on the red planet

Galactic Centerof the Milky Way

aaarrs bbe a vveritablle yyoouunnggssteerr?? FFoor yearrssscccciiiieeennnntisttss hhaavve bbeeeenn ssaayyiinngg thhhee reeddd

MARS MAY BE MUCH MUCH YOUNGER THAN WE ONCE BELIEVEDaaarrrrssss bbbee aa vveritabblle yyoouunnggsstteerr?? FFoor yearrs

MMMMMAAAAARRRRRSSSSS MMMMMAAAAAYYYYYAAAAAA BBBBBEEEE MMMMMUUUUUCCCCCHHH MMMMMUUUUUCCCCCHHH YYYYYOOOOOUUUUUNNNNGGGGGEEEERRRRR TTTTHHHAAAAANNNN WWWWWEEEE OOOOONNNCCCCCEEEE BBBBBEEEELLLLIIEEEEVVVVVEEEEDDDDDMARS MAY BE MUCH MUCH YOUNGER THAN WE ONCE BELIEVEDevents could have played in shaping what wefind today is not fully considered. Nor, forthat matter, is the role that electro-magneticforces may have had in the formation of whatwe now find on both Mars and Earth. Suchso-called catastrophist ideas, once proposedby scientists such as the late Immanuel Ve-likovsky, are today espoused by a new gener-ation of researchers (http://www.thunderbolts.info/wp/), but are still virtually ignored bythe mainstream.

Definitively settling such questions, in-cluding the possibilities for life, probablywon’t come before humans actually set footon Mars. The bad news: NASA says it won’tbe ready to attempt something like that forat least another 20 years. The good news: wemay not need to wait so long. Scientists inthe UK have been planning a manned mis-sion to Mars in just eight years. A team at Im-perial college in London says a three-personcrew could do in 2021, and then return toEarth using prepositioned rockets fueled byhydrogen extracted by robots from Martianpolar ice. If that fails, there is always the real-ity-TV option. The Dutch company MarsOne plans on sending a one-way mission toMars, funded by TV advertising revenues, in2022. Organizers say over 200,000 volunteershave already signed on for the trip.

Subscribe or Order Books, DVDs and Much More!

LATE-BREAKING STORIESwe're following on the Internet

www.mcremo.com

Notes from

Michael A. Cremo

The Strange Case of the Wolfsegg Object

Continued on Page 20

In the fall of 1885, a workman at aniron foundry in the village ofSchondorf in Austria made an in-teresting discovery. He was breaking

up big blocks of coal, which were to beburned in the smelting furnaces of thefoundry. Inside one of the blocks ofcoal, he found an iron object with ascalloped surface. The object soon at-tracted the attention of scientists, includ-ing Dr. Adolf Gurlt of a natural sciencessociety in Bonn, Germany. A summaryaccount of Dr. Gurlt’s report to the nat-ural sciences society (the Niederrheinis-che Gesellschaft für Natur- undHeilkunde) was published in the scien-tific journal Nature (November 11, 1886,vol. 35, p. 36).

The Naturearticle gave thisdescription ofthe object: “Inform, the mass is almost a cube, two opposite faces being rounded,and the four others made smaller by these roundings. A deep inci-sion runs all round the cube. . . . The iron is covered with a thinlayer of oxide; it is 67 mm. high, 67 mm. broad, and 47 mm. at thethickest part. It weighs 785 grammes, and its specific gravity is 7.75;it is as hard as steel, and it contains, as is generally the case, besidescarbon, a small quantity of nickel.”

At the meeting of the natural sciences society, members expressed different opinionsabout the origin of the iron object. The Nature article said, “It was examined by variousspecialists, who assigned different origins to it. Some believed it to be a meteorite; others,an artificial production; others, again, thought it was a meteorite modified by the hand ofman.”

If the iron object really is an artificialproduction, i.e. made by humans, and isas old as the coal in which it was found, itis extremely old. The coal used in the ironfoundry came from a mine at Wolfsegg,Austria. According to a report by moderngeologists, the coal at Wolfsegg belongs tothe Miocene, the geological period thatextends from five million to twenty mil-lion years ago. The Wolfsegg coal comesfrom the late middle Miocene, whichmeans it is about ten to twelve million

TheWolfseggObjectDr. Adolf Gurlt


Typical Miocene Coal Strata

18 ATLANTIS RISING • Number 102

• TED Talks Routinely

Censoring Scientists

on Consciousness

The “TED talks” organization,once founded on the idea ofspreading good ideas, has, somesay, become the new priesthoodof status quo dogma.

http://www.naturalnews.com/041931_TED_talks_censor-

ship_consciousness.html

• Evidence for ‘New

Physics’ Means Universe

Is Not as We Know It

Evidence that the universe is notas we know it has emerged fromthe Large Hadron Collider(LHC), the giant atom-smashingmachine built to recreate condi-tions at the dawn of time.

http://www.huffington-post.co.uk/2013/07/31/evi-

dence-for-new-physics-_n_3684411.html

• Mysterious Amazon Web

Tower Baffles Scientists

A bizarre-looking web structurehas been found in the PeruvianAmazon, and apparently nobodyknows what it is, not even scien-tists.

http://news.discovery.com/animals/mysterious-amazon-

web-baffles-scientists-130904.htm#mkcpgn=rssnws1

• Dark Matter Questioned

Can dark matter as an explana-tion of the universe be dismissedas completely unnecessary?

http://www.thunderbolts.info/wp/2013/08/09/shaping-

what-is/

Number 102 • ATLANTIS RISING 25See Our Great 8-page Catalog Beginning on Page 74


• BY PATRICK MARSOLEK

MYSTERIES

What Were the Ancients Trying to Tell Us?

The star Sirius has fascinated humansfor many millennia. Many differentcultures around the world have be-liefs and myths that are tied up with

the star. It is the brightest star in the sky fromEarth and it is the fifth closest star we’veidentified to our sun. You can see it from theNorthern hemisphere in the winter monthsby following a line down from the belt ofOrion, where it appears as a white/blue star.In the right conditions, at high elevation andwith the sun low in the sky, it can even beseen during the day.

Beyond the fact that it is the brighteststar seen from Earth, the ancient Egyptians,Babylonians, Indians, and Chinese all hadspecial understanding about the importanceof Sirius. Sirius has shown up in our popularculture in movies like The Truman Show andthe Harry potter series with the character Sir-ius Black, who seems to represent some of thequalities of Sirius’ binary partner. Recently,scientists and astronomers have taken agreater interest in the star due to its peculiarrelationship to Earth and our Sun.

At the crux of the current debate is thephenomenon of the precession of theequinoxes. This refers to an approximately26,000-year cycle whereby the rotational axisof the earth appears to wobble, inscribing a

great circle in the starry sky. Currently Polarisis almost in line with the earth’s Northernaxis. Thirteen thousand years from now theaxis will be pointing closer to Vega. This greatcycle is also called Lunisolar precession, refer-ring to the theory that this wobble is causedby the interaction of gravitational forces be-tween the earth and the other heavenly bod-ies in our solar system.

The scholar Walter Cruttendon has of-fered a radical theory that the reason for thisapparent wobble is, in fact, because our sunis part of a binary star system. In his book,Lost Star of Myth and Time, Cruttenden ar-gues that our sun has a companion star, andthat the best candidate is Sirius. Though thismay seem a radical proposition, the idea ofour sun being in a binary system is not new.There have been numerous scientific publica-tions examining the evidence for a dark star,literally, a brown dwarf which would be diffi-cult to see, and with which our sun might begravitationally bound. This hypothetical star,named Nemesis, has been proposed due toperturbations of other orbiting objects in oursolar system. The star should be fairly easy todetect, even if it is a dwarf star. However, nonearby companion has been found so far.

Proposing that Sirius may be the com-panion to our sun flies in the face of what wecommonly think of regarding binary stars, be-cause it is over eight light years distant and

it’s not the closest star to our own. In general,the term “binary star” refers to a pair of starsthat revolve around a common center ofmass. We can observe other binary star sys-tems due to the wobbly movements thesestars make or through regular f luctuations intheir brightness. Scientists have recently pro-posed that there may be many more binary,or even triple, star systems than we previouslybelieved, though typically they are closer to-gether.

Cruttenden’s theory builds on the workof Schwaller de Lubicz, Karl-Heinz Hommanand Uwe Homman and has received supportfrom astronomers, such as Dr. William Brownof Colorado State University. Yet this “fringe”theory does not go uncontested in the scien-tif ic world, since it turns long-standing“truths” on their heads. There continue to beheated debates as to the validity, and evenpossibility, of the Earth being in part of a bi-nary system, and if it is, if Sirius could evenbe a candidate.

Here are a few of the key points of Crut-tenden’s binary theory, starting with the issueof angular momentum. It is generally ac-cepted that every solar system has a certainamount of angular momentum when it isformed. The sun contains about 1,000 timesmore mass than all the planets combined yet

ANCIENT MYSTERIES


• BY DAVID H. CHILDRESS

While Easter Island is thought tohave been first discovered andinhabited by Polynesians (prob-ably coming from the Marque-

sas Islands, north of Tahiti), around AD 300,it is believed by most mainstream archaeolo-gists that the time of the excavation andmovement of the statues was between AD1100 and 1680. This is based on radio-carbondating of wood, bone, and shell found buriedin and around the statues and the quarry ofRano Raraku. However, we do not know howdeeply these objects were buried. Indeed, thedated material might well have been placedthere long after the statues had been carved.

Currently, 887 statues of various sizes(some gigantic) have been inventoried, andmost are still around the quarry. Many ofthese are leaning over or fallen. Often theyare buried under dozens of feet of “shiftingsoil.” But where all this shiftingsoil originated is a still a big ques-tion. These statues, after all, areup against the sheer cliff walls ofthe quarry and virtually devoidof soil. Has soil been swept to thespot by a tsunami? When one ofthe large moai statues was com-pletely uncovered in 2011, manyarchaeologists were astonished tolearn the moai were not justheads, but had even larger bodiesbeneath the soil. This naturallygot bloggers and others speculat-ing on just how old the statuescould be. Were they a mere fourhundred years old as is conven-tionally believed or were they ac-tually thousands of yearsold—buried by the dust of time?

While native people mayhave been near these statues fivehundred years ago, leaving allsorts of datable material for lateranalysis, these people did notnecessarily create these statues.The moai may have been stand-ing there then, just as enigmati-cally as they stand today. Perhapsa fragment of a coke bottle from2013 will be dug up by archaeol-ogists in the future who will sim-ilarly misinterpret their find.

The Rongorongo ScriptLittle is known of the is-

land’s strange written script,

which includes pictographic and geometricshapes; often the figures are of a birdmanwith his arms and legs in various positions.The rongorongo script, as it is called, waswritten in the unusual boustrophedon patternwhere the successive lines are read (“as the oxplows”) left to right and then right to left.Certain older forms of Greek, such as DoricGreek, were written in the boustrophedonmanner, as were Etruscan, Sabaean, Safaitic,Hittite, and possibly Indus Valley writing,such as that from Harrapa or Mohenjo Daro.

The writing was first reported by EugeneEyraud, a French missionary on the island, in1864. Eyraud recognized then the significanceof a written language on a tiny, remote islandin the South Pacific—contradicting all ac-cepted theories of the time—so he sent speci-mens to the Archbishop of Tahiti. It wasgenerally thought that only peoples in con-tact with higher cultures could rise to a levelthat included written communication. At

Easter Island, it was then surmised, was a cul-ture isolated from the development of writ-ing, art, megalithic construction, etc., whichare found throughout the rest of the world.The notion that a few hundred people shouldcreate all that without the aid of the outsideworld was astounding then, and still is.

At the time of Eyraud, a few of the is-land’s “royalty” were still capable of readingthe rongorongo tablets, but they were quicklydying out. Some were taken to the guano is-lands in Peru. The French author and archae-ologist Franis Maziere claimed in his bookThe Mysteries of Easter Island that the lastinitiate of the rongorongo tablets died of lep-rosy and had once told him: “The first raceinvented the rongorongo writing. They wroteit in stone. Of the four parts of the world thatwere inhabited by the first race it is only inAsia that the writing still exists.” The nativewas apparently speaking of the Indus Valleyculture and the writing at Mohenjo Daro and

other cities.

Moving the StatuesThe once orthodox theory

that Easter Island’s massive stat-ues were moved to their places bythe use of wooden rollers or sledsclearly has some problems: one isthat the island is so rocky, itwould have been impossible toroll any logs across it, with orwithout statues on them.

In his 1975 book The Mys-teries of Easter Island, Jean-Michel Schwartz says he believesthe statues were not moved bywooden rollers or sleds but ratherby using ropes which “walked”the statues in the same way onemight walk a refrigerator; by tilt-ing it first to one side, and shift-ing the airborne portion forward,before setting it down again. Bythis method, the statues could bemade truly to walk in a waddlefashion around the island.

Later, a Czech mechanicalengineer named Pavel along withThor Heyerdahl re-created themethod. With 20 other men,they tied ropes around a statueand leaned it from side to sidewhile pulling it forward with therope, a slight variation onSchwartz’s method. It worked

Easter Island’s Astonishing Antiquity

Thor Heyerdahland One of hisMoai Excavations

Why Orthodox Science Has a Lot of Explaining to Do


Overview diagram of theGlastonbury Zodiac, fromthe 1937 supplement toKatherine Maltwood’sbook on the GlastonburyZodiac.

Was Mrs. MMaltwood’sGloriousVision Realor Imagined?

to locate them as theywere purposefully de-signed to be invisible toall who did not possess the

key.” (John Dee: Scientist,Geographer, Astrologer and

Secret Agent to Elizabeth I,1968, p. 174; quoted by Thor-

ley, p. 7, and by Yuri Leitch, p.195, in Signs and Secrets). Deacon

claimed that Dee had drafted a mapof the Glastonbury Zodiac, and in hisbiography Deacon published a directquotation concerning the Zodiac pur-portedly transcribed from a Dee manu-script. As we climbed Glastonbury Tor,I asked Thorley about the Dee connec-tion to the Zodiac. He respondedquickly and definitively: there is nosolid evidence that Dee ever visited orinvestigated the Zodiac. Indeed, inDee’s time much of the current land-scape that comprises the Zodiac wasunder water!

This is not to say that Dee neverhad a connection with Glastonburyand the Abbey there, for he certainlydid. Glastonbury was a well-known me-dieval pilgrimage site and center of es-oteric and arcane knowledge (along thesame lines, today Glastonbury is a focal

point of the New Age movement). Glaston-bury is located in Somerset in southwesternEngland—originally an area predominated bymarshlands that were drained, even if againflooded at times and during certain seasons.Glastonbury Tor is a natural hill, although ap-parently artificially terraced in ancient or me-dieval times, which rose like an island abovethe f looded lowlands. This may be why somehave identified Glastonbury as the legendaryisland of Avalon. Was this the site of theArthurian legends? Here, too, it is said thatJoseph of Arimathea came, bringing with himvarious relics, including the Holy Grail; in ad-dition, Joseph brought the Holy Thorn treeto Glastonbury. Perhaps even Jesus himselfvisited Glastonbury, according to some leg-ends. Joseph (or Jesus) founded the earliestChristian church in the British Isles, whichwould become Glastonbury Abbey, a thriving

On a brisk English daythis past May, I found my-self climbing GlastonburyTor in the presence of none

other than Anthony Thorley, an expert,indeed in my opinion perhaps the fore-most living authority, on the Glaston-bury Zodiac. A retired psychiatrist whofor over three decades has been studyinglandscape traditions, histories, and ener-gies, Thorley is currently pursuing aPh.D. at the University of Wales (TrinitySaint David) focused on landscape zo-diacs, such as the Zodiac found at Glas-tonbury.

I had come to Glastonbury at theinvitation of Hugh Newman to speak atthe 2013 UK Megalithomania Confer-ence, and I quickly fell in love with thevillage and became fascinated by thelocal history, particularly the Glaston-bury Zodiac. As we climbed to the topof the tor, Mr. Thorley shared freely and en-thusiastically his penetrating insights concern-ing the landscape zodiac that surrounded us.Later, at the parking lot in the center of Glas-tonbury near the bed and breakfast whereKatie (my wife) and I were staying, I was hon-ored when Thorley inscribed to us a copy ofthe recently released, large-format, multi-au-thored anthology titled Signs and Secrets ofthe Glastonbury Zodiac (edited by YuriLeitch; Avalonian Aeon Publications, Glaston-bury, 2013). Thorley contributed the openingand closing chapters to this massive tome.Thorley and I had had some deep and pro-found discussions during the better part of aday we had spent together, as Katie and I hadjoined a small group Thorley led on a tour ofGlastonbury Abbey and Glastonbury Tor. Heassured me that I would learn much morefrom this new publication, and he was right.Yet, like any good book, it only sparked my

KatherineMaltwood

JohnDee

thKbZ

twsiall

keyGeo

Secre1968, p

ley,yy p. 7,195, in Sig

claimed thatof the Glastonbbiography Deaquotation conportedly transcscript As we cl

glish dayI foff und my-yyGlastonburyence of noneey,yy an expert,haps the foff re- John

Dee

interest to read and research further! Soon Iwas in possession of secondhand copies ofthe original 1930s descriptions of the Glas-tonbury Zodiac by Katherine Maltwood. Iwas hooked, but it turns out not for the rea-sons that initially attracted me to this enig-matic Zodiac that stretches some ten miles indiameter across the landscape.

I have always had a fascination for oldthings, for deep antiquity, and my initial in-terest in the Glastonbury Zodiac came froma passage I had read while researching theElizabethan scientist, mathematician, as-tronomer, astrologer, geographer, occultist, al-chemist, and general polymath Dr. John Dee(1527 – 1608/9). In his biography of Dee,Richard Deacon (the pseudonym of DonaldMcCormick, 1911 – 1998) wrote, “Certainlythere is evidence that Dee mapped out someof the zodiacal effigies in this district, thoughthe puzzle is how he found the key or code



• BY ROBERT M. SCHOCH, Ph.D.

INTUITIVE ARCHAEOLOGY

verview diagram of thelastonbury Zodiac, fromhe 1937 supplement toWWaWWaWaWWaWWaWW ss MMrrss..

OvGth

GLASTONBURY’S ZODIAC


LOST HISTORY


• BY STEVEN SORA

Three hundred and twenty years be-fore Columbus, it is said, a WelshPrince sailed across the Atlantic andinto the Gulf of Mexico. His voyage

of discovery and two subsequent returns werenot recorded outside of his own homeland,but, nevertheless, they were recorded. Like theVikings whose similar adventures were de-scribed in their Sagas, the Welsh voyages werealmost always considered fiction. The Vikingssailed in search of new lands; others, includ-ing Basque and Breton fishermen, had fishedthe Grand Banks for cod long before Colum-bus, but the Welsh Prince sailed for peace.

The Prince was Madoc ab OwainGwynedd, or simply Prince Madoc. His ad-venture begins in Wales in 1170 after thedeath of his father Owain Gwynedd. Uponthe ruler’s death his sons battled for thethrone that might have gone to the eldest ifhe had not been regarded as unfit to rule. An-other son had been born to an Irish motherand was thus also deemed disqualified. Thatparticular son, David, had gathered thoseloyal to him and killed another of the broth-ers, so Madoc decided discretion was the bet-ter part of valor, and left Wales.

Madoc ab Owain Gwynedd sailed west-ward until he came to the “country” whichthe Spaniards would later claim as their own“discovering.” His story was recorded byRichard Hakluyt, a late sixteenth centurywriter who documented numerous oceancrossings. Besides his work as a historian,

Hakluyt was also in the employ of QueenElizabeth’s spymaster Francis Walsingham. Hedidn’t particularly enjoy his work as a spy, butit did give him access to documents not avail-able to other historians. Hakluyt insists thePrince Madoc made it all the way across theAtlantic, and that he then returned, and morethan once.

After reaching the Gulf of Mexico,Madoc headed back to Wales where he de-scribed the beautiful lands he had seen. Hethen gathered a large group of followers andset about making a voyage of exploration andcolonization. Again he crossed the sea butthis time with ten ships and the company ofboth men and women.

A Documented Voyage, IgnoredMadoc’s story might have been entirely

forgotten except for the fact that it had beenwritten down by monks who had labored inthe abbeys of Wales. The monasteries of theBritish Isles and Ireland preserved much ofthe medieval culture of the period althoughtime and catastrophe, punctuated by periodsof disinterest, seem to have prevented muchof their lore from surviving to modern times.A Welsh bard, Gutton Owen, in the employof King Henry VII, came across the storywhile researching the genealogy of the king.The tale of Madoc was found recorded in theBenedictine Abbeys of Conway and StratFlur. These in turn had been used to reviseCaradoc’s History of Wales. The travels ofMadoc were also sung by Welsh bards longbefore Columbus.

The Prince’s story was then recorded inHakluyt’s Voyages compiled in the late six-teenth century in the era of John Dee andQueen Elizabeth I. Hakluyt is the most fa-mous of early chroniclers of discoveries of Eu-rope’s explorers. He is criticized because heoften included what were considered the fan-ciful details which sailors brought home—many of which were later proven true—andwere avoided by serious historians. Such de-tails are not the only reasons the stories weredoubted, though. Some believe they wereconcocted entirely as another English attemptto build a claim for a piece of the New World,despite having been preceded by Columbus.

One criticism of Hakluyt is that heclaims it was in what is now modern Mexicothat the prospective colonists landed. If aWelshman had been to America before theSpaniards, it might have added weight toBritish claims on that territory. The authoralso suggested that it might account for thepractices and sacraments carried on by theAztecs, that included Christian symbols andelements. Montezuma, after all, said thatwhite men had come before to bring educa-tion to his people. These bearded white menhad left and promised to return. TheSpaniards, as we know, would prove not to bethe benevolent teachers he was expecting.

In 1580 Dr. John Dee, alchemist and as-tronomer to Queen Elizabeth, would includethe Madoc tale on his map. Dee believedMadoc had inhabited “Terra Florida or ther-

Prince Madoc and the English Claim to the New World


ALTERNATIVE SCIENCE

Startling Proof ofthe Very StrangeWorld BeneathAntarctica’s Ice

In the twenty years since thediscovery of Lake Vostok,the burning—or should wesay chilling?—question

about the giant sub-glacial bodyof liquid water has been: will wefind life there? In late June of thisyear the world learned that thedefinitive answer is a resounding,yes. The enormous lake is, in fact,“teeming” with life. Before theannouncement, conventional wis-dom has had it that Vostok wasprobably sterile. It is, after all,very cold and inhospitable downthere, but once again conven-tional science seems to have un-derestimated the capacity of lifeto exist, and even thrive, inworlds far stranger than previ-ously imagined.

The first ice cores takenfrom Lake Vostok, almost threemiles beneath Antarctica’s ice,have now undergone painstakinganalysis; and, according to Dr,Scott Rogers of Bowling GreenState University in Ohio, “Wefound much more complexitythan anyone thought.” A paperpublished in June by Rogers andhis colleagues in PLOS ONE(Public Library of Science) re-ports that, through genetic se-quencing, no less than 3,500species have been identified.

By sequencing DNA andRNA taken from the Vostok icecores, the team has identifiedbacteria commonly found in thedigestive systems of fish, crus-taceans, and annelid worms, inaddition to fungi and two speciesof archaea, or single-celled organ-isms that tend to live in extremeenvironments. Other speciesidentified are commonly foundelsewhere on Earth in habitats oflake or ocean sediments. Asmight be expected, organismsthat live in extreme cold werefound, but, surprisingly, therewere also heat-loving ther-mophiles. This suggests, scientiststhink, the presence of hydrother-mal vents deep in the lake. Inother words, it may be warmdown there. Moreover, claimsRogers, the presence of marineand freshwater species indicatesthe lake once was connected tothe ocean, and that fresh watermay have been deposited thereby the overriding glacier.

For many years Atlantis Ris-

ing Magazine has been amongthose making the case that therecould be a great deal more to thestory of Antarctica in general,and Lake Vostok in particular,than conventional science has ledus to believe. With the emergingnew evidence for “teeming” lifebeneath the ice, we think itworth reconsidering some of themore extraordinary possibilitiesof the region.

Liquid Water Under the IceThe largest of Antarctica’s

nearly 400 known subglaciallakes, Lake Vostok is located atthe so-called southern Pole ofCold, beneath Russia’s VostokStation (site of the coldest tem-perature ever recorded on Earth,-89C) on the central East Antarc-tic Ice Sheet. The Russian re-search station, itself, is situated11,444 feet above sea level. Thesurface of the lake, however, isapproximately 13,100 feet be-neath the surface, or approxi-mately 1,600 feet below sea level.One hundred and sixty mileslong, and thirty miles across at itswidest point, the lake covers anarea of about 4,830 square miles,roughly the size of Lake Ontariobut much deeper, averaging 1,417feet. Lake Vostok’s physical char-acteristics have led NASA scien-tists to argue that it might serveas an earthbound analog for Eu-ropa, the ice-covered moon ofJupiter.

In 1996, by integrating a va-riety of data, including airborneice-penetrating radar observationsand space-born radar altimetry,both Russian and British scien-tists confirmed the lake’s exis-tence. Over a century earlier,however, Russian scientist, PeterKropotkin, had proposed thepossibility of fresh unfrozen

water under Antarctica’s icesheets—theorizing that thetremendous pressure exerted bythe cumulative mass of thou-sands of vertical feet of ice could

increase the temperature at thelowest portions of the ice sheetto the point the ice would melt.The theory was further developedby I.A. Zotikov, a Russian glaciol-

• BY MARTIN RUGGLES

LAKEVOSTOK’S

LAKEVOSTOK’S

thtt e VeVV ree yr Strtt arr ngegg

U

oo

ouRto

ntTt

vea1actame83or,klead analog foff r Eu

overed moon of

SECRET

LIFEStatt rtltt ill nii g PrPP orr of oftht e VeVV re yr Strt ar ngegg

nder theof Antarc

own subgok is locatuthern Pole ofRuRR ssia’s VoVV stokhe coldest tem-orded on Earth,tral East Antarc-

The RuRR ssian re-tself,ff is situatede sea level. Theake, however, is13,100 feff et be-ce, or approxi-below sea level.

and sixty milesmiles across at itse lake covers an30 square miles,of Lake Ontario, avaa eraging 1,417’s physical char-rred NASA scien-at it might served analog foff r Eu-

Icgted at

Icectica’sglacial SECRET

LIFESatellite view of Lake Vostok

which may be heavily populatedwith mineral-hungry microbes.

The buried lakes, it is feared,may be contributing to the cur-rent rapid melting of Antarcticice and creating what could bethe world’s largest wetlands. Thelakes stay f luid, say scientists, be-cause the ice covers them likeblankets, trapping the heat whichrises from the earths’ interior. In2008, about 145 lakes had alreadybeen found, and nobody was sureexactly what kinds of life theymay have hosted, but “bizarrenew deep-sea creatures” had beenreported off the coast of Antarc-tica which were believed to origi-nate from the buried wetlands.

The Russians had first dis-covered Vostok while carryingout a scientific drilling project in1989. Ever since, speculation onwhat really might be down therehas raged. Some have envisioneda world of perpetual twilight—atleast during summer months—warmed by geothermal energy, in-habited with everything fromone-celled organisms to giantfish. The lake, we are told, hasbeen sealed for at least 400,000years and likely has a pristine en-vironment possibly quite differ-ent than the world we know.Many have feared that the lakecould be contaminated by vari-

ous proposed explorationattempts or that somekind of catastrophe couldendanger the lives of theexplorers, or worse.

Lost CivilizationSome researchers, like

ex-CBS space consultantRichard Hoagland (authorof The Face on Mars), haveconjectured that the lakemay contain the ruins of alost, ancient civilization. In-deed, unusual magneticanomalies have been detectedin the neighborhood. Re-searcher Len Kasten investi-gated Hoagland’s claim in 2008and filed the story “MysteryUnder the Ice” (A.R. #68).

Hoagland, wrote Kasten, as-serted that in early 2001, “A teamof scientists from Columbia Uni-versity, working under the aus-pices of the National ScienceFoundation (NSF)… began a se-ries of unprecedented low-alti-tude aerial surveys over LakeVostok, designed to chart gravita-tional, magnetic and thermal ac-tivity under the ice. In the course


ogist, who in 1967, wrote a Ph.D.thesis on the subject.

According to a dramatic re-port released in December, 2008by National Geographic News,

of doing so, they made a stun-ning find. A huge magneticanomaly was discovered coveringthe entire southeast portion ofthe shore of the Lake.” One pos-sible explanation for the phe-nomenon, Hoagland theorized,was a large accumulation ofmetallic structures. This, he ar-gued, could be “the ruins of anancient, buried city.” Immedi-ately after this finding, saidHoagland, the Jet Propulsion Labpulled back its Lake Vostok ex-ploration program and turned itover to the NSA, the agencywhich has lately made so muchnews. This scenario, he said, is“eerily” reminiscent of the plot ofthe French novel Subterranean“in which Antarctic scientists dis-cover an inhabited ‘Lost City’under the ice.”

Over the years rumors havepersisted that in the period pre-ceding and during World War II,the Nazi’s established a presencein Antarctica and that muchUFO activity may have origi-nated from bases maintained be-neath the ice after the Nazidefeat. During the War, U.S. RearAdmiral Richard Byrd is said tohave warned of a threat from thepoles. Some say, that when, afterthe war, he visited the polar re-gion with a Naval task force, hemay have done so to finish offthe German bases. Little in theway of convincing evidence tosupport such assertions hasturned up, but one amazing storyabout Antarctica for which thereis plenty of evidence has to dowith the cartographer Charles

Many hcould b

ouakee

Lo

ex-RiRR cof Tconmaylost,deedanomin thsearchgated Hand fiffUnder

Hoserted thof scientversity,yypices ofFoundatries ofogist, who in 1967,7 wrote a Ph.D.

h i h bjAntarctica is not a barren polardesert, after all, but is a rich,complex environment whererivers larger than the Amazonlink a series of “Lake districts,” Continued on Page 69

A scientist checks on oneof Lake Votok’s revealing

ice cores (Photo, NSF)

1933 commemorative stampcelebrating Admiral Byrd’s second

expedition to Antarctica

Lake Vostok with itsimmense ice ceiling. (NSF Illustration)



The book Arctic Home in the Vedas,was first published in 1903. Writtenby the Indian philosopher Bal Gan-gadhar Tilak (1856-1920), the work

was an analysis of the texts of the Rigvedaand Avesta. A mathematician turned as-tronomer, historian, journalist, philosopherand political leader of India, Tilak had cometo the conclusion that many of the hymnscomprising the ancient texts came not fromIndia or Iran but from the ancient polar re-gion. He noted that descriptions of the longmonths of darkness, the protracted daybreak,the movement of the sun along the horizonand the position of the pole star directly over-head, corresponded best to descriptions of

the sky at the North Pole.Scientists estimate that Indo-European

tribes inhabited the polar region sometimebetween the end of the Ice Age (10,000 BC),and around 7000 BC, when an abrupt dropin temperature caused the tribes to abandontheir frozen land and disperse across Europeand Asia. In the myths of various Indo-Euro-pean peoples, Tilak found descriptions of thepolar sky and recollections of the tragic lossof a God-given land. Yet why did Tilak speakonly of the tribes which resettled in Europeand Asia? What about the Americas? Manynative North and South American tribesshare similarities with Europeans in terms oftheir external appearance and blood type. Intheir myths we can also find recollections ofan ancient polar homeland. Foremost among

them is the Popol Vuh, a collection of mytho-historical narratives, or religious text, from theMaya and Quiche people of ancient CentralAmerica.

The Endless NightIn the tropics a twenty-four hour period

can be naturally divided into spells of lightand dark—day and night. In contrast, a strik-ing feature of the Mayan holy book is a de-scription of a very long night lasting manydays. All events described in the first, secondand third chapters occur “during night.” Thesun, it was said, had not been created yet.Epic heroes Hunahpu and Ixbalanque carriedout all their heroic deeds “in the darkness ofnight.” All people, heroes and even Gods waitimpatiently for the coming of the sun, but itnever appears. Over the world an endlessnight prevails.

This is perfectly understandable, whenone recalls that time passes differently in thekingdom of God than in the world of men.This notion can be found in the holy mythsof many different peoples, including theMayans. If 24 hours on earth is made up ofday and night, then in the world of gods dayand night can stretch out over a year. Onewidespread myth concerns a man who endsup in the world of gods. It seems to him thathe has spent three days there; however, uponreturning home it turns out that he has beenthere for three years (or even three hundredyears—a typical epic exaggeration). A day inthe world of the gods covers a whole year. Itseems entirely plausible that such a mythcould have developed only in the vicinity ofthe North Pole, where dark and light periodsdivide not the day but the year into two parts.Night at the poles, after all, when the sun iscompletely hidden goes on for months.

During the polar night only one thinglights up the dark sky—the northern lights. Inthe Popol Vuh a character called “Vucub-Caquix” announces himself as “the true sunfor the whole world.” The real sun, however,is not yet created. Vucub-Caquix simply hasfeathers which shine brightly in the darkness.So he is the “false sun” and thus is killed. Isit possible that this character with his featheryglow is actually a mythical representation ofthe northern lights—a false light in the polarnight?

In Guatemala, where the Quiche live,and in other regions of Central America,dawn breaks into day very quickly. The sunrises vertically from the horizon and quicklyfills the skies. However, in the Popol Vuh wecome across a completely different descrip-tion of dawn, where the holy men preparethemselves for the event, waiting a long timefor its coming. The Popol Vuh text is con-cerned not only with the longing to break themelancholy of the long night but also withthe hope of dawn. When called, all the tribesgather to “await dawn.” Almost the entirethird chapter of the Popol Vuh describes thisexpectation of dawn and the people’s hope

• BY SERGEY TELEGUIN

ALTERNATIVE ARCHAEOLOGY

Did a Great Ancient Saga Begin at the North Pole?

The Aurora Borealisor Northern Lights