By Sharon St Joan
In the book Human Devolution: A Vedic Alternative to Darwin’s Theory, which is a sequel to his book “Forbidden Archaeology” (which I read about ten years ago) Michael Cremo presents the thesis that humans have walked on the earth for millions of years – even hundreds of millions. As evidence, in the second chapter, he provides a large number accounts taken from nineteenth century newspapers, often with credible witnesses present.
This theory about humans being around for millions of years can be a little hard to swallow, and it may be best not to worry for the moment about what is real or not real, true or not true – just suspend judgment; consider it all a fantasy, if you wish.
Here is just one of Michael Cremo’s examples: In California in the nineteenth century, as well as panning for gold in rivers, gold miners often dug in deep mines to extract gold. In Table Mountain, in Tuolumne County, miners digging in deposits dating back to the early Eocene age, around 50 million years ago, found the bones of modern humans embedded in the layers of rock. The Chief Government archaeologist of California, at the time, Dr. J. D. Whitney, documented these in a book published by Harvard University in 1880.
There isn’t much point here in giving a list of further examples, because citing a few brief examples won’t make this seem any less incredible, but Michael Cremo does give a great many examples in his book – cases where human remains or artifacts were found inside undisturbed layers of earth. In one case, for example, a metal ball with artwork inscribed on it, was found inside a piece of coal that was formed millions of years ago.
As one reads case after case after case, reported in newspapers, it seems less and less plausible that these could all have been fraudulent.
My first reaction to this idea that we humans had been around for millions of years was to think, “How could the earth have survived with humans living on it for millions of years? It is barely surviving now – after just a few thousand years of the intense destruction that we have inflicted on the poor earth.”
Some of these accounts tell of modern human footprints embedded in ancient layers – others are about the presence rough stone tools or artwork, in one case a gold string, embedded inside layers that are many millions of years old. Maybe there could be a simple explanation, and we are just missing it.
Surely humans simply could not have existed for many millions of years, could they? After all, we all have firmly implanted in our heads that there is a clear line of evolution, and all the evidence supports it – until one begins to ask oneself whether perhaps this clear evolutionary picture only seems clear because all the evidence that contradicts it has been unceremoniously brushed aside and discounted by scientific authorities, who belittle it and absolutely refuse even to consider it. This “scientific” position of “putting one’s head in the sand” like the ostrich has become more and more entrenched as time goes along.
One possible thought is that perhaps all the dating systems are terribly wrong and need to be recalibrated.
On the other hand, many people do have the sense that there were indeed extremely ancient civilizations before this one. Civilizations created by giants, extraterrestrials, or very advanced early humans. Maybe even previously existing intelligent species that we have absolutely no knowledge of. What if all the legends and all the mythologies in the world were based on fact? What if there really were giants, wizards, elves, fairies, goblins, dwarves, bigfoot, leprechauns? Or all the magical beings spoken of the ancient books of India – yakshas, rakshasas, gandharvas, apsaras, and kinnaras. The seers or rishis of ancient India were also a kind of divine human being. Every tradition has its own list of magical beings, events, countries, and lands. The ancient books of India for example are filled with accounts of aerial ships, which take off and land, and are considered a very commonplace way to travel.
What if the current, prosaic view of human development is just not the only way to look at things – the idea that apes descended from the trees, learned to walk upright, made stone tools, discovered fire, and developed into us? Mind you, this doesn’t mean that I would mind being descended from apes – who are in many ways a great deal nicer and much kinder than a lot of us humans.
But there is still the sense that in these vast epochs of millions upon millions of years, there may have arisen advanced civilizations, that rose and fell, and that we now know nothing of – and just perhaps, they may not have been possessed by the tendencies to use up and demolish the natural world that our own civilization is plagued with.
Does one view have to be true and the other false? What if there are multiple histories? What if they are all true? There might be a purely physical view of time – as a slow evolution from one-celled animals through trilobites, reptiles, dinosaurs, mice, apes, and early humans? And at the same time there can be other levels of reality – magical, mystical, enchanting – long lost civilizations, intergalactic empires, worlds of angels or elves? Why not?
Our standard view of logic – which is a rather pedestrian view – requires that either something “is” or it “isn’t”; but that kind of “logic” may not correspond to reality. Maybe reality is the dreams of God – or the dreams of the Gods? Even our own dreams have a certain reality – though not absolute reality. Surely, the dreams of God must have a vastly greater degree of reality than our own. Yet, there can still be one dream one day and another completely different dream another day. Only the ultimate reality – the divine reality – lies beyond the dreams which come and go. That is the only real, eternal reality – and is the essence of all that is.
So perhaps there are many histories of the earth and the universe, on many levels. If we did not have to try to fit all of reality into the little narrow physical box that our education provides for us, that would make things so much easier. Look for example at the theories of quantum physics. There is the entanglement theory, which briefly put, is this: If you take a sub-atomic particle and you pair it with another one — and if one spins in one direction and the other spins in the opposite direction, then if you take them far away from each other, say a few miles – and you reverse the spin of the first one, then the second one, will all by itself, at the same instant in time, reverse its own spin. This has been actually demonstrated in real scientific experiments. But how does it happen? Do the two particles communicate telepathically with each other? Or is there really no such thing as time and space?
This is a real, scientific demonstration, yet it must be filed in our heads as something that cannot possibly be true. It doesn’t fit into the ready-made box that we have inside our heads.
Think of all the miracles we have seen in our lives – and most of us have indeed seen miracles, though we may not talk about them – maybe not even to ourselves – but there are events that transcend the “laws” of physics.
Perhaps, as has been said before, what we call reality is the play of shadows cast upon the wall – and behind, hidden, there is the real, ultimate reality. The shadows are real too – just as real and solid as we are. But there is no longer any need to insist on just one history of the earth or the universe – there is much room for many levels, dimensions, mystical mountains and rivers, and undiscovered lands on far-away stars. There is more than we know, and there are times, places, and beings greater, more innocent, and more magnificent than any we might imagine.
Seen, in this perspective, there is no need for us to judge what is “true” and what is not, and we can be more open to the wonders that lie before us – or those that arise in the most distant, ancient past.
© 2014, Sharon St Joan
Top photo: Wikimedia Commons / “This work is in the public domain in the United States, and those countries with a copyright term of life of the author plus 100 years or less.” / An image of a horse from the Lascaux caves.
Second photo: Wikimedia commons / “This work is in the public domain in India because its term of copyright has expired.” / Ravana, the demon king of Lanka. Watercolor-painting by an unknown artist around 1920.
Third photo: Sharon St Joan / Guardian spirits with a horse at Puthupet sacred grove, in Tamil Nadu.
Fourth photo: NASA, ESA, CFHT, CXO, M.J. Jee (University of California, Davis), and A. Mahdavi (San Francisco State University) / A “merging galaxy cluster Abell 520, formed from a violent collision of massive galaxy clusters.”
To find Michael Cremo’s book, Human Devolution: A Vedic Alternative to Darwin’s Theory, on Amazon, click here.
Yes! There is a Bigger Picture, a much bigger picture than we can possibly imagine. Thank you for opening up the discussion.
Yes, indeed – why not?