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The Hidden Threads of Crypto-History
A Multi-Part Exploration into Alternative Theories of the Human Experience
Instalment 1: Introduction
In recent years, literally dozens of scientists, historians, academics and authors have put forward theories which – if accepted as fact – pose insurmountable challenges to the dogma that has been accepted as conventional history. Some, like discoveries by archaeologist Tom Dillehay that suggest a breaching of the Clovis Barrier, and the probable need to abandon the Bering Bridge model for settlement of the New World are, while controversial, at least generally palatable enough to the academic community that rational discussion is allowed.
Others theories, however, like those put forward by Graham Hancock, are more vigorously opposed. Among other conclusions, Hancock suggests that an advanced civilization existed before recorded history began. Despite often savage attacks, many of which are not limited to the evidence, but instead focus on the so-called lack of crediblity of the writers, Hancock and his peers begin to form a convincing tapestry. Popular authors like Kevin Knight and Robert Lomas, Laurence Gardner, Richard Leigh and MIchael Baigent, Colin Wilson and
Adrian Gilbert, to name just a few, are among those whose re-imagining of history is beginning to serve at least some of their readers as a new architecture for understanding the human journey.
The multidisciplinary approach they advocate and their startling conlusions seem to become even more valid when taken in context with work done by earlier pioneers in the field of what I'll call 'crypto-history'. These visionaries, mavericks like Charles Hapgood
(Maps of the Ancient Sea-Kings and Immanuel Velikovsky (Ages in Chaos, Worlds in Collision) inarguably inspired today's current crop of what one commentator has called 're-historians'. Indeed, without Velikovsky and Hapgood, it's possible that -- for good or for ill -- we may not have had a Da Vinci Code.
How can this be? What connection could possibly unite two such seemingly unrelated frameworks? In one, the central theorem is that mankind had -- prior to recorded history -- advanced to a level of sophistication perhaps equalling our own; in the other, the founding figure of Christianity was also the founder of a kingly dynasty whose descendants are today active in a mysterious cabal pulling strings behind the great powers of Europe and elsewhere. Impossible to reconcile, at first glance.
But maybe not. It is possible that in the corpus of materials published by the authors named in the preceding paragraphs, there exist hidden threads that form a strand of continuity; a consistent and common stream of underground knowledge, here and there breaking to the surface.
The series of articles being introduced today is not an attempt to prove any of these theories. Rather, its intent is to allow the reader a basis for envisioning an overall timetable into which these speculative theories can fit. When we first created the Newsvine group Hall of Mirrors, we alluded to the possibility of creating a worldview in which all (or at least the majority of) the many existing conspiracy theories and alternative histories could find a common home. That is the intent of this series, and the source of its greatest challenge.
Does a thread of consistency emerge? You, the reader, must judge for yourself.
Coming Soon: The Hidden Threads of Crypto-History,
Instalment 2: in the Beginning...
