Myths, Mysteries, Megaliths and the Lost Continent of Atlantis — PART I

by James Vieira    

     
Observe how in the last few years science is returning to the study of Atlantis. How many naturalists, geologists, zoologists or botanists are asking one another today whether Plato has not transmitted to us a page from the actual history of mankind? It seems more and more evident that a vast region, continental or made up of great islands, has collapsed west of the Pillars of Hercules.       

                                 —M. Pierre Termier before the Institute Oceanographique, published in The Smithsonian Annual Report, 1915

     One day in 1826, 8-year-old Benjamin Blyth was out for a walk with his father when the child asked, “What time is it?” “Seven fifty AM,” said the father, to which Benjamin replied, “in that case, I must have been alive...,” and he gave the number in seconds: 190 million. His father wrote the number down on his cuff, and when they got home he worked it out on paper. He told his son he was 172,800 seconds off. “No,” said Benjamin, “you've forgotten the two leap years.”

     How is this possible? There are actually innumerable examples of this kind of ability exhibited in certain humans. One such person who possessed the ability to tap into a supernatural level of knowledge was Edgar Cayce, born in 1877. Cayce was a world renowned healer, mystic and visionary. As a child he would rest on a book and then be able to recite any word from any page in that book. He was called the sleeping prophet because he would enter a trance like state and dictate health information for his patients. One day in a session he started to talk about the lost civilization of Atlantis. His scribe was amazed, and soon Cayce was being asked many questions about this subject.

     Cayce would eventually dictate over 14,000 readings and 25 million words that are recorded at the Edgar Cayce Library in Virginia Beach, Virginia. Regarded as the father of holistic medicine, Cayce also produced astounding information on such diverse topics as science, geography, metaphysics and the earths past. Although only possessing an eighth grade education in his waking state, he generated highly technical and advanced material in his sleep state. Notably, Cayce stated that the Nile flowed backward into the Atlantic over 10,000 years ago, an assertion initially scoffed at, until it was recently proven by satellite imagery. He also spoke of the Essences having women in their ranks long before the Dead Sea Scrolls were even unearthed, confirming his statement. The accuracy of Cayce’s retro-cognitive statements (knowledge of the past) is astounding, and is being continually verified by new scientific discovery.
        
Libraries and Legends

     The subject of Atlantis brings immediate academic scorn—but why? This topic is taken very seriously by archaeologists and scientists in other countries, but in the west it is viewed as taboo, the equivalent of career suicide. Plato, who was one of the most brilliant and influential thinkers in human history, wrote extensively in the Timaeus and Critias about many aspects of the Atlantean continent he said existed in the middle of the Atlantic, past the Gates of Hercules. Critics fail to consider that, beyond his position as the seminal philosopher of Western civilization; Plato based his entire body of thought on an uncompromising pursuit of the truth. He was adamant that his information on Atlantis was accurate. He carefully outlined his sources and researchers have verified them. Plato had access to the Library of Alexandria, which Cayce states was built by Atlanteans in 10,300 B.C. to house the records of civilizations from across the globe. The library was purported to have many documents pertaining to Atlantis, but it was burned and destroyed by Christian invaders in 391 A.D. Indigenous cultures worldwide recount the same story of cataclysmic flooding, and an influx of strange mystical bearded giants from a destroyed ocean continent in the Atlantic, who taught them enlightened civilization, the arts, sciences and culture.

      “Myths” and “legends” are historical records passed down through generations for a very meaningful purpose, not some fanciful re-creation of reality. Why would cultures intimately connected to the cycles of the earth and struggling for survival retain massive amounts of erroneous information? The information I will present here stands alone in undermining conventional archaeological theory, but the work of Cayce not only adds corroborating evidence,  it offers extremely interesting details as well.
 
Ancient Dates and Impossible Feats

     Let us take a look at the evidence for Atlantis and see how it corresponds with the Cayce readings. Cayce said Atlantean temple priests brought stone spheres to the Yucatan before its final destruction 12,000 years ago because they were important and revered objects. We find these same stone spheres where Cayce said they would be. Uncovered by the United Fruit Company in the 1930's as they hacked through dense Costa Rican jungle, the stone spheres are made of immensely hard granite and andesite, are nearly perfectly smooth and spherical and weigh up to 16 tons each. Archaeologists attribute their construction to the ancestors of the local population, a culture with no written language or concept of the wheel. How could one create nearly perfect spheres with rock this hard without diamond tipped precision machines?  I spoke with a stonemason who was a native of Costa Rica while doing a job in Williamstown last year. I asked him about the spheres, and he told me that the legends say they are extremely old, artifacts of a lost race now vanished. He said when he was young he and some friends broke one open hoping to find gold or some treasure inside based on their legendary status. He said that it was solid all the way through. Cayce had said as much, that these spheres were used because of the electromagnetic properties of the granite, not because they had something mystical inside them.
 
The Obsession of a Genius

     Cayce stated that an Atlantean colony was established in Peru and northern Bolivia. Here we find possibly the most bizarre and improbable megalithic ruins on the planet. The city of Tiahuanaco and the remains of Puma Punku are what are left of an ancient port complex on the former shore of Lake Titicaca, the highest altitude lake in the world. After nearly fifty years of investigation at the site, Professor Arthur Posnansky concluded that it was more than 15,000 years old, and his assertion is strongly supported by many astronomical orientations at the site.  Posnansky used the obliquity of the ecliptic, a 41,000 year astronomical cycle with the precision and predictability of a Swiss chronograph, to come to his conclusion. Several high-powered scientists from other disciplines carefully studied his results and uniformly agreed. The area is now dry and barren, 12 miles from the original shoreline because some ancient cataclysm tossed around the megalithic blocks like Styrofoam. The stones weigh up to 800 tons, are mostly granite and diorite, and are inexplicably carved. Only diamond is harder than diorite, thus only some form of diamond tipped machine could have done the work at Puma Punku.

Examples of the evidence of machining include interior cross cuts, perfectly drilled circles, and perfectly straight 6-inch millimeter cuts with equidistant drill holes at a precisely consistent depth. Stone cutting experts agree that it would be nearly impossible for modern humans to duplicate this inexplicable cutting, yet there it is. Archaeologists claim that the Aymara Indians built Puma Punku. The Aymara plainly state that they did not build these structures; they claim advanced beings from a sunken continent in the Atlantic came and did so in the mists of pre-history. Corroboration of a different sort may prove their claims.
        

Continued…Part II will follow in January, 2013.

               
                                                                               —30—

James Vieira is a writer, researcher, stonemason and member of the Northeast Antiquities Research Association. Vieira is a frequent contributor to the Shelburne Falls Independent and the national publication Ancient American Magazine. He has been a student of Edgar Cayce's most of his life and sees Cayce's readings continuing to be verified by new science. Through his own explorations and investigations he hopes to add to this growing body of evidence.

Jim Vieira also writes for The New Era Times periodically about his research findings on ancient civilizations.