Forbidden Archeology

Sometimes, when just randomly surfing through the Internet or just searching for something totally unrelated, one can stumble upon some gems of knowledge. One such gem I happened upon is the following video:



Don't let the fact that it's presented by UFO TV deter you. The video is well made, and there was even space for a little humor at one point. The title of the presentation is Forbidden Archeology - Secret Discoveries of Early Man. The first half of the video discusses research from the book Forbidden Archeology - The Hidden History of the Human Race by Michael A. Cremo and Richard L. Thompson. The second half of the video is more speculative, in my opinion, but I was happy enough that a video about the book even exists.

I actually have the book, but watching a video is way easier than plowing through close to 1,000 pages filled mostly with scientific jargon and other terms that I had not seen used in such frequency since college. Yes, I'm saying that it has the readability of a college textbook so you can understand why I prefer to watch the video.

As a bonus, for those who are fans of History Channel's Ancient Aliens, you'll see a lot of the same resource personalities being interviewed towards the second half of the video. It was really interesting watching younger versions of these same guys.

Anyway, the book (and video) is titled "Forbidden Archeology" because it showcases different archeological anomalies that were dismissed simply because they did not fit the "generally accepted" models and theories of the scientific community. One example, featured in the video, is the case of etched metal spheres found by South African miners in rock strata that are 2.8 billion years old.

The uniformity of the spheres and the parallel grooves etched into their sides clearly identify them as something other than naturally formed, but since modern man is only supposed to have appeared 150,000 years ago, the presence of the spheres threatens that particular model of human history hence the scientific community has chosen to sweep that case under the rug, so to speak. One other detail not included in the video but mentioned in the book is that the spheres are very hard and cannot be scratched, even by steel.

One other example not in the video but mentioned in the book is the unmistakable impression of a partial shoe print in Triassic rock (which means it is dated between 213-248 million years ago). There is a picture along with the description and it really does look like a shoe print. Boggles the mind, doesn't it? Apparently, most scientists find it too boggling, so their response is to pretend that the evidence does not exist.

The above examples remind me of what T. Lobsang Rampa consistently mentioned in several of his books. He says that we are not the first civilization to inhabit the Earth. There were many more advanced civilizations that existed millions, even billions, of years ago in forms that were compatible with the atmosphere of the Earth during the times those advanced civilizations existed. However, there is always an end to every particular cycle and periodic Earth upheavals would wipe these civilizations away until barely a trace was left. All this in order to prepare the ground for the next wave of civilizations that would appear (this is also similar to what other spiritual teachings are saying, such as Blavatsky's mention of the different root races). Lobsang Rampa compared it to a gardener plowing the field to mix the soil, so that some things that were previously on the top would get buried deep in the ground. For all that, it seems tantalizing hints of these very ancient civilizations are still being discovered, but automatically dismissed, by the modern scientific community.

At first glance, such dismissive attitudes among majority of the scientific community may be inconceivable. Aren't we in the age of reason, when the scientific method is supposed to predominate over superstitious belief and erroneous conclusions? But upon closer inspection, we see that scientists are not immune to human attitudes that influence any other occupation: peer pressure, professional reputation, fear for the future of one's career, politics and sometimes just plain greed and jealousy.

Scientists may not (always) display the emotional fanaticism that led the Catholic Church to excommunicate Galileo when he suggested that it's the Earth that revolves around the sun, but one can still sense the same mindset of inflexible belief that was incapable of accepting anything that contradicted the generally accepted status quo. No one likes to rock the boat, especially if that boat is the one that's keeping you employed. To them there is only one right path, and to stray from the path is to step into a minefield.

When too much is at stake, that is a sign that one is heavily invested in something (financially, emotionally or mentally). And so we again see the importance of detachment. Being too invested in something interferes with correct interpretation and right action. Yet I can understand how difficult it can be for the ego to accept that one's belief was wrong, especially if it's going to be publicly known. And so we have cases of people defending untenable intellectual positions instead of admitting they were wrong (I'm sure you can point out examples of this based on your own observations of public figures).

So the lesson we can extract from the above is this: the scientific method only works when one has humility and detachment. It doesn't get simpler than that. It's just another example that shows that scientific objectivity cannot be divorced from spirituality.