Television shows and movies emphasize gruesome rituals and violent warfare, but what was life really like in pre-Columbian cultures? This book presents a holistic view of Mayan and Amazonian civilizations and includes maps, stunning full-color photographs, and engaging sidebars about key figures. The book separates fact from fiction and demonstrates the rich history of the Americas.
The real history of the New World and the visitors, from both East and West, who traveled to the Americas long before 1492 • Provides more than 300 photographs and drawings, including Celtic runes in New England, Gaelic inscriptions in Colorado, and Asian symbols in the West • Reinterprets many archaeological finds, such as the Ohio Serpent Mound • Reveals Celtic, Hebrew, Roman, early Christian, Templar, Egyptian, Chinese, and Japanese influences in North American artifacts and ruins As the myth of Columbus “discovering” America falls from the pedestal of established history, we are given the opportunity to discover the real story of the New World and the visitors, from both East and West, who traveled there long before 1492. Sharing his more than 25 years of research and travel to sites throughout North America, Carl Lehrburger employs epigraphy, archaeology, and archaeoastronomy to reveal extensive evidence for pre-Columbian explorers in ancient America. He provides more than 300 photographs and drawings of sites, relics, and rock art, including Celtic and Norse runes in New England, Phoenician and Hebrew inscriptions in the Midwest, and ancient Shiva linga and Egyptian hieroglyphs in the West. He uncovers the real story of Columbus and his motives for coming to the Americas. He reinterprets many well-known archaeological and astronomical finds, such as the Ohio Serpent Mound, America’s Stonehenge in New Hampshire, and the Crespi Collection in Ecuador. He reveals Celtic, Hebrew, Roman, early Christian, Templar, Egyptian, Chinese, and Japanese influences in famous stones and ruins, reconstructing the record of what really happened on the American continents prior to Columbus. He also looks at Hindu influences in Mesoamerica and sacred sexuality encoded in archaeological sites. Expanding upon the work of well-known diffusionists such as Barry Fell and Gunnar Thompson, the author documents the travels and settlements of trans-Atlantic and trans-Pacific explorers, miners, and settlers who made it to the Americas and left their marks for us to discover. Interpreting their sacred symbols, he shows how their teachings, prayers, and cosmologies reveal the cosmic order and sacred landscape of the Americas.
The examination of four great civilizations that existed before Columbus’s arrival in North America offers evidence of sustained contact between the Old and New Worlds • Describes the cultural splendor, political might, and incredibly advanced technology of these precursors to our modern age • Shows that North America’s first civilization, the Adena, was sparked by ancient Kelts from Western Europe and explores links between Hopewell Mound Builders and prehistoric Japanese seafarers Before Rome ruled the Classical World, gleaming stone pyramids stood amid smoking iron foundries from North America’s Atlantic seaboard to the Mississippi River. On its east bank, across from today’s St. Louis, Missouri, flourished a walled city more populous than London was one thousand years ago, with a pyramid larger--at its base--than Egypt’s Great Pyramid. During the 12th century, hydraulic engineers laid out a massive irrigation network spanning the American Southwest that, if laid end to end, would stretch from Phoenix, Arizona, to the Canadian border. On a scale to match, they built a five-mile-wide dam from ten million cubic yards of rock. While Europe stumbled through the Dark Ages, a metropolis of weirdly shaped, multistory superstructures, precisely aligned to the sun and moon, sprawled across the New Mexico Desert. Who was responsible for such colossal achievements? Where did their mysterious builders come from, and what became of them? These are some of the questions investigated by Frank Joseph in his examination of ancient influences at work on our continent. He reveals that modern civilization is not the first to arise in North America but was preceded instead by four high cultures that rose and fell over the past three thousand years: the Adena, Hopewell, Mississippian, and Anasazi-Hohokam. How they achieved greatness and why they vanished so completely are the intriguing enigmas explored by this unconventional prehistory of our country, Advanced Civilizations of Prehistoric America.
The Lost History of Ancient America presents new evidence of transoceanic visitors to America, hundreds, even thousands, of years before Christopher Columbus was born. Its 20 eminent contributors are experts in a variety of fields, from botany, biology, and prehistoric engineering to underwater archaeology, archaeo-astronomy, and Bronze Age warfare. In ancient times, the sea was not an impassable barrier separating our ancestors from the outside world, but a highway taking them to every corner of it. Never before and nowhere else has so much evidence proving the impact made on America by overseas visitors been assembled. You will learn about: A chain of stonewalls across southern Illinois that has stood for the last two millennia. A profusion of plants flourishing throughout the United States and Canada that originated more than 20 centuries ago. Underwater ruins recently found off the coast of Oregon. Bronze Age oil wells in Pennsylvania. And much, much more. The Lost History of Ancient America ends the debate between cultural diffusionists--who have always known that our ancient ancestors did not consider the sea an impassable barrier--and cultural isolationists, who have been equally certain that humans lacked the know-how and courage for global navigation until a little more than 500 years ago.
The Instant New York Times Bestseller! Was an advanced civilization lost to history in the global cataclysm that ended the last Ice Age? Graham Hancock, the internationally bestselling author, has made it his life's work to find out--and in America Before, he draws on the latest archaeological and DNA evidence to bring his quest to a stunning conclusion. We’ve been taught that North and South America were empty of humans until around 13,000 years ago – amongst the last great landmasses on earth to have been settled by our ancestors. But new discoveries have radically reshaped this long-established picture and we know now that the Americas were first peopled more than 130,000 years ago – many tens of thousands of years before human settlements became established elsewhere. Hancock's research takes us on a series of journeys and encounters with the scientists responsible for the recent extraordinary breakthroughs. In the process, from the Mississippi Valley to the Amazon rainforest, he reveals that ancient "New World" cultures share a legacy of advanced scientific knowledge and sophisticated spiritual beliefs with supposedly unconnected "Old World" cultures. Have archaeologists focused for too long only on the "Old World" in their search for the origins of civilization while failing to consider the revolutionary possibility that those origins might in fact be found in the "New World"? America Before: The Key to Earth's Lost Civilization is the culmination of everything that millions of readers have loved in Hancock's body of work over the past decades, namely a mind-dilating exploration of the mysteries of the past, amazing archaeological discoveries and profound implications for how we lead our lives today.
Howard Carter's discovery of King Tutankhamen's tomb in 1923 sparked worldwide fascination about ancient Egypt, and the mysteries of the Egyptians still loom large. The Pyramids, the Sphinx, mummies, surviving artwork, and more all hold priceless clues about what life was like in ancient Egypt. This book takes a closer look at the information that archaeology has revealed and the lasting impact of these findings.
Robert Kennedy, director of the National Park Service, analyzes the discovery of North America and the loss of ancient civilization, from the cities, roads, and commerce of the past as the nation evolved into present day. In Hidden Cities, Robert Kennedy sets out on the bold quest of recovering the rich heritage of the North American peoples through a reimagination of the true relations of their modern-day successors and neighbors. From the Spanish and French explorers that discovered the land that would one day make up the United States to present day in the country, very few Euro-Americans have paid attention to the evidence and meaning of the nation’s heritage. As Kennedy shows the magnificence of the mound-building cultures through the sometimes prejudiced eyes of the founding generation, he reveals the astounding history of the North American continent in a way that sheds important light on the credit Native American predecessors deserve but many refuse to give.
In this final work of his American trilogy, Nicholas Hagger focuses on the unified World State it is America's secret destiny to create, and on the world's divided culture that impedes its creation. Throughout world culture there are conflicting and entrenched metaphysical and secular approaches that permeate all its main disciplines, including history, philosophy and science, literature and comparative religion. In each discipline there is a tussle between the traditional religious view, which is supported by the 4.6 billion of the world's 7.3 billion population that follow a religion, and the secular and social approach associated with humanism and the scientific reductionism of Hawking and Dawkins, which sees the universe as a random accident. Hagger argues that it is America's secret destiny to bring in a democratic, UN-based, partly federal World State that can unify humankind. The conflict between metaphysical and secular approaches can be healed within a new reconciling philosophy that unites both outlooks, Universalism, which is already making an impact in the US. The key to this reconciliation is focusing on the scientific view of the order in the universe, and on the experience of the common essence which resides in all religions (the belief in the ordering Light), and on the traditional view of order in the seven disciplines of world culture. This reconciliation can reunify each discipline and therefore world culture, and create world unity. Restoring the metaphysical vision of order in world culture can strengthen Americ's harmonizing of humankind within a World State based on political Universalism.
