From Atlantis to the Sphinx Read Free Page B

Yet we can imagine some tiny, blind, wormlike creature who is convinced that the world consists of surfaces, and who cannot even begin to imagine what we mean by height. As offensive as it is to human dignity, we have to recognise that, where knowledge is concerned, we are blind, wormlike creatures.
    So I had no problem with the notion that Hapgood’s pre-ice Age civilisation might differ from our own in some absolutely basic manner. I recalled an observation by the archaeologist Clarent Weiant, to the effect that when the Montagnais Indians of eastern Canada wish to make contact with a distant relative, they go into a hut in the forest and build up the necessary psychic energy through meditation: then the relative would hear his voice . And Jean Cocteau records that when his friend Professor Pobers went to study the same phenomenon in the West Indies, and asked a woman ‘Why do you address a tree?’, she replied: ‘Because I am poor. If I were rich I would use the telephone.’
    The implication would seem to be that by using telephones—and the rest of the paraphernalia of ‘solar knowledge’—we have lost some abilities that our remote ancestors took for granted.
    When I met Geoffrey Chessler at Gatwick airport, I was en route to Melbourne again, for the annual Literary Festival, after which I intended to meet John West in New York. By total coincidence, West had written to me out of the blue a few weeks earlier, enclosing a magazine with an article he had written about the latest developments in his investigation—including the facial ‘reconstruction’ by Detective Frank Domingo which demonstrated that the face of the Sphinx was nothing like Chefren’s. We had never had any contact—although I had recently reviewed his book The Case for Astrology —and he had no idea I was interested in the Sphinx. I wrote back immediately, mentioning that I would be in New York in a few weeks’ time, and we arranged to meet.
    John West proved to be a thin, bespectacled man of immense enthusiasm, and information poured out of him in great spurts, like water from a village pump. I found that, like all genuine enthusiasts, he was generous with his ideas and his time; there was none of the mistrustfulness that I have occasionally encountered in people who seem to believe that all other writers are waiting for an opportunity to steal their ideas. He had with him a first ‘rough cut’ of the videotape of his programme about the Sphinx, and we were able to watch it in the home of playwright Richard Foreman, who found it as exciting as I did. Later, John came out to dinner with my family—my children had met us in America and with the writer on ancient megaliths Paul Devereux. We discussed my projected book on the Sphinx, and John mentioned that I ought to contact another writer, Graham Hancock, who was also writing a book to prove that civilisation is far older than we assume. He also threw off another name—Rand Flem-ath—who was writing a book arguing that Atlantis was situated at the South Pole. This made sense—Hapgood had argued that his ancient maritime civilisation was probably situated in Antarctica, and, now I thought about it, the idea seemed almost self-evident.
    And so when I returned to England, I wrote to both Graham Hancock and to Rand Flem-ath. I had heard of Graham, because I had seen a television programme about his search for the Ark of the Covenant. Now he sent me the vast typescript of his book Fingerprints of the Gods , and as soon as I began to read it, I wondered whether it would be worth going ahead with my own book on the Sphinx. Graham had already gone into the whole question that John West had dealt with in his television programme, screened in America soon after I returned.
    Moreover, Graham also knew all about Rand Flem-ath and his Antarctica theory, and made it virtually the climax of his own book. I had by this time received the typescript of When the Sky Fell by Rand and Rose Flem-ath, and