THE RIDDLE OF HUMAN ORIGIN

By Dr. Girish Chandra, Ph.D.

 

Our own origin and existence on the planet earth happens to be one of the most puzzling facts of nature. There is hardly any straight record of human history prior to the invention of writing around 3,500 B.C., and while a large number of animals tell the story of their origin and evolution through a series of fossils, human species can be singled out as the one having the most haphazard and incomplete fossil record. Human evolution has been not only erratic but also extremely slow till about 40,000 years ago when the modern man (Homo sapiens) made sudden appearance in Europe, bringing about a meteoric rise in the evolutionary rate. On the other hand religions, myths and folklore everywhere carried through generations from the time immemorial unanimously tell that man was created by Gods who descended from heaven.

 

THE DARWINIAN THEORY

 

The special creation concept was widely accepted till Charles Darwin published his book, The Origin of Species, which took the world by storm. Man then began to be accepted to have descended from the ape-like creatures that migrated from forests to grasslands during Pliocene, about 20 million years ago. Creatures like Dryopithecus and Propliopithecus were more apes than human. Life in grasslands was full of dangers. There were few trees to take shelter on, and anatomically the creatures did not possess any specialized organs of defence like horns, fangs, fast running or physical strength. To survive in such unprotected conditions the animal had to use hands to pick up and throw stones or sticks at the offender, much like the chimpanzees do today. Constant uses of hands exerted a lot of pressure on the brain to develop intelligence and skill, and as the hands were engaged in handling objects only legs were used for walking, leading to bipedal locomotion.

 

Fifteen million year old fossils of Ramapithecus found in Shivalik Hills indicate the first man-like bipedal primate. But the cradle of human evolution appears to be the East and South Africa where majority of the human fossils have been unearthed. Australopithecus which roamed in eastern Africa sometime 5-6 million years ago had already started developing stone tools and hunting in groups. It walked erect but was ape-like in appearance. Homo erectus evolved 1.5 million years ago, was distributed everywhere in Asia and Africa and apparently had several distinct races. Stone tools and animal bones have been recovered along with the fossils in caves where this species sought shelter. Chinese caves also indicated the use of fire by these hominids.

 

European fossils date back to 100,000-75,000 years and belong to a more advanced species, the Neanderthal man. These people were well-built, stocky but still made stone tools and stone-tipped spears for hunting and lived in caves. In appearance, they possessed protruded chinless face, slanting forehead, bulging eyebrow ridges, hairy body and drooping posture. Then about 50,000 years ago, suddenly and awkwardly, the Cro-Magnon man (Homo sapiens fossilis) appeared in Europe or Middle East. Fossils and cave drawings indicate that this man looked like any modern European and had flat face with well-developed chin, high forehead, completely upright stature and hairless body. These people hunted with advanced spears, lived in more organized colonies and sketched coloured pictures of animals on cave walls. Later they gave up hunting to develop agriculture and community living.

 

Homo sapiens, according Darwinian Theory, evolved from Ramapithecus which lived 15 million years ago, through gradual evolution and natural selection. But human phylogeny based on fossils does not indicate a gradual and straight sequence of events. Fossil records are scanty and localised in few places of the world. Striking is the fact that human evolution was extremely slow from Australopithecus, which made stone tools and hunted in bands about 6 million years ago, to Neanderthal man which existed about 70,000 years ago, but still had the same primitive ape-like features, hairy body, and still hunted with primitive stone tools. During 5 million years between Australopithecus and Neanderthals, man could not advance beyond stone-tool making capability.

 

            Then suddenly around 50,000 years ago Cro-Magnon man made sudden appearance out of nowhere, a species which looked very different from its contemporary Neanderthal and had no apparent ancestral links. Its intelligence took such a sudden leap that in only the next 40,000 years it developed agriculture, cities, advanced industry, nuclear technology and began to travel in space. Emergence of Homo sapiens (Cro-Magnon man) happened virtually overnight in terms of millions of years of slow evolution of earlier stages. What caused this sudden change? Was a mega-mutation responsible for this sudden evolutionary jump? Strangely, Cro-Magnon man evolved during ice age, when one-third of the earth was freezing under ice. How and why then the modern man suddenly appeared defying natural evolution, and at the most inopportune time—the ice age? And why do the fossil records not indicate a gradual transition from primitive to modern man.

 

SPECIAL CREATION THEORY

 

When science fails, myths and religious beliefs predominate. There has been a determined revival of the theory of special creation in recent times, which says that the earth was once host to the visitors from distant planets, who possibly interfered with the slow-paced human evolution going on here, leading to the emergence of modern man. Some of the books advocating this theory that appeared in recent times are: Andrew Tomas', We are not the first; Jacques Bergier's, First Extraterrestrial Visitations from prehistoric times to the present; Robert Charroux's Masters of the world; W. Raymond Drake's Gods and Spacemen in the Ancient Past; L.M. Lewis' Footprints on the Sands of Time; Eric & Craig Umland's Mystery of the Ancients and Eric von Daniken's Chariots of the Gods, Return to the stars and The Gold of the Gods.

 

EVIDENCES OF EXTRATERRESTRIAL VISITS

 

All the above books outline evidences which point to the existence of advanced civilizations on earth in prehistoric times, and traces of activities that were beyond the capabilities of primitive man. For instance, gigantic Egyptian pyramids whose smallest stone weighs 3 tons could not have been built by primitive people. Apparently pharaohs were assisted by people in possession of advanced technology. Apart from the mountainous size, there is mystery about pyramids' perfect geometrical dimensions, mummies housed in them and the mysterious radiation that has so far claimed lives of over 20 inquisitive archaeologists. Moreover, dating of pyramids is still controversial.

 

According to the Anglo-American Corporation, promising gold mining sites in South Africa had been used for mining activities ranging from 2,000-20,000 B.C. Was Neanderthal man a miner?

 

Copernicus' theory that earth revolved around the sun was published in 1543 when earth was still considered flat. Yet Eudoxus, a Greek astronomer, as early as in 400 B.C. designed the statue of Atlas supporting a spherical earth. How did he learn the fact that earth was like a giant ball? Perhaps he drew from the Babylonian and Mesopotamian sources which depicted earth as a globe with equator and poles as early as in 4,000 B.C. But who taught Sumerians such advanced astronomy?

 

In June 1965, a Hungarian born archaeologist Juan Moricz discovered a vast system of tunnels 500 feet below the surface, extending hundreds of miles under Ecuador and Peru. They are not natural tunnels as their glazed walls make perfect right angles and they connect to halls as large as 153 by 164 yards, which contain metal plaques with unknown writings, stone and metal statues and various other artefacts from antiquity. An engraving on one of the stone plaques depicts a dinosaur (Stegosaurus), animals which had become extinct 80 million years ago, and about which we learned recently through the reconstruction of fossils. How could primitive man, who was not even evolved then, see a dinosaur to carve it on stone? Some of the plaques depict pyramids similar to those found in Egypt and also pictures of elephants. But elephants became extinct in Americas 14,000 years ago. Were these caves built before that? But man then was not advanced enough to build them. Similarly Inca civilization in South America and Mayan civilization in Central America arose suddenly as if helped by mysterious hands.

 

                         In Nazca region of Peru there are strange stone lines extending across the desert in huge geometrical shapes, some of which are discernible only from an altitude of 1 ,000 feet. They are over 2,000 years old, long before men could fly, and Nazcas could not have composed such complicated designs without having an aerial view.

In China Prof. Chi Pen Lao came across similar cave system with glazed walls at a depth of 105 feet. Walls of these tunnels were covered with paintings. Even 87 caves and rock temples near Malabar Coast and Ajanta and Ellora caves are believed to have been built by blasting technology but this technology was invented recently.

 

In 1972, American archaeologists discovered submarine settlements off the coast of Bahamas over an area of 40 square miles. Two kilometre long walls are built of stones each weighing 25 tons. Carbon dating assigned the date before 10,000 B.C. Is it the submerged continent of Atlantis? Who built these gigantic structures and how did they submerge deep in ocean?

 

At Delhi near Kutub Minar there is an iron pillar that contains no phosphorous or sulphur and therefore does not rust. At Kottenforst near Bonn in Germany also there is a similar iron column which is 4 feet over ground but embedded 90 feet deep into the earth and this also does not rust. Origin and age of both these pillars are unknown. Which mysterious people knew such advanced technique of making non-rusting iron and why did they embed them deep into soil?

 

In the isolated Easter Island in Pacific ocean about 1,000 giant statues carved out of solid granite have been found, each about 30 feet tall and weighing 90 tons, all looking up into the sky. What do they symbolize and who constructed them? At Sete Cidades in Brazil there are ancient rock paintings depicting helmeted astronauts with antennae on head. Natives call them Star-Gods. Were Gods astronauts that wore space suits?

 

Archaeologists have found indications of advanced Sumerian civilization in the ruins of Mesopotamia (present Iran-Iraq) dating 3,800 B.C. But no one knows who the Sumerians were and from where they came. The ruins also provided 25,000 tablets which indicated existence of a highly developed civilization, people who possessed advanced knowledge of astronomy. The cylinder seals and tablets depict the story of creation of earth and other planets. They also mention about gods who landed on earth from heaven and also returned.

 

All civilizations, namely, Babylonian, Greek, Hurrian (later called Aryan), Huttites and Egyptian arose from the same mysterious source, Sumer. The belief that man was created by Gods whose abode lay in heaven (distant planet?), has apparently originated from the Sumerian sources. Ruins of the city of Jericho indicate still older and highly developed civilization dating back to 7,000 B.C., 4000 years before Sumer.

 

SOURCE OF THE EXTRATERRESTRIALS

 

If evidences point to the existence of highly developed civilizations more than 15,000 years ago and to the landings of advanced beings on earth, the inevitable question would arise, from where these spacemen called Gods by the primitive man would have landed on earth and left traces of their existence? Close up pictures of the planets of our solar system sent by the American Spacecraft Pioneer have ruled out the possibility of intelligent life existing on any of them. The other solar systems, though extremely abundant even in our own galaxy, are situated far away. Even the nearest one, Proxima Centauri is six light years away, which means even if we travel with the speed of light it will take six years to reach that star. Others are thousands of light years away. It would simply be impossible to reach such long distances in one's life time even if travel with light's speed was possible. Nevertheless, if Einstein's theory that time slows down when one travels just under the speed of light is to be believed, these long distances could be reached. Were these god spacemen capable of travelling with such impossible speeds? If not, then there should have been some planet within our solar system (abode of gods) from where they could have easily travelled to earth.

 

 

THE TWELFTH PLANET POSSIBILITY

 

Zecharia Sitchin, after life long research on the archaeology of the Near East wrote a book, The Twelfth Planet in which he produced evidences from the Sumerian and Babylonian texts, from decipherment of ancient tablets and from the Old Testament that there has been an additional planet, the size of Jupiter, in our solar system with a highly elliptical comet-like orbit and that the planet reached near the sun every 3,600 years.

 

An Akkadian seal from 3,000 B.C. now in Berlin Museum shows twelve celestial bodies encircling the Sun. The depiction which is accurate in order and size shows a major planet between Mars and Jupiter. The depiction apparently shows moon and asteroid belt (debris of a planet) also as planets. Mesopotamian tablets indicate that about 4 million years ago a wandering planet called Merduk was pulled in by the gravitational force of Saturn and Jupiter and hurled towards the Sun. Moving in reverse direction it scraped past the planet Tiamet splitting it into two, producing earth and the asteroid belt. Moon was trapped as a satellite of earth during this celestial catastrophe. Apollo 17 moon rock samples confirm different origins of earth and moon. The collision also gave off splinters which became comets, and they, like Merduk, obtained highly elliptical orbits. L.W. King in his book, The Seven Tablets of Creation describes the cosmic catastrophe that produced earth and asteroid belt. Mesopotamian texts depict Murduk as a winged globe which travelled to unknown regions of the skies in great elliptical path. The verses describe its arrival with rains, floods and other catastrophe. The gravitational pull of such a large planet would no doubt cause such disturbances on earth.

 

Did intelligent life capable of space travel develop on Merduk? Sumerian verses amply indicate this. Countless seals, tablets, temples and paintings as well as Old Testament, point to the landing of Nefilim (Gods who descended) on earth about 450,000 years ago. Merduk has been repeatedly described as the abode of the Sumerian God, Enki, whose temple has recently been discovered in the ruins of the first Sumerian city Eridu.

 

ARTIFICIAL CREATION?

 

If Nefilim landed on earth half a million years ago, human evolution would have been in the primitive stone age of Homo erectus or Neanderthal, who would have posed no resistance to them in their quest for precious metals and radioactive materials. Prehistoric gold mines in South Africa are indicative of that. Did these Gods interfere with the natural but painfully slow evolution of man and created an intelligent Homo sapiens by advanced genetic engineering techniques. If they did, why? Why do religions and myths in all parts of the world unanimously accept the concept that Gods created man. “Let us make Adam in our image and after our likeness," describes Old Testament. Or, that Brahma created man after Pralaya (deluge) say Hindu scriptures.

 

If at all these extraterrestrials decided to create modern man from the Stone Age man, the purpose would have been to develop an obedient worker, intelligent enough to carry out menial jobs in gold mines. Being from different planet, Nefilim would not have been genetically compatible with Homo of earth and hence simple cross-breeding would not have produced viable hybrids. Perhaps advanced techniques such as gene cloning, cell fusion etc., were used to achieve the objective. Sumerian texts speak of deformed humans created by the God Enki and Goddess Ninhursag before a perfect man Adapa was created, who possessed skin like the skin of God, a smooth hairless body different from apes. Some ancient seals depict the goddess flanked by the tree of life, holding laboratory flasks and a new born human baby. All Sumerian texts mention that Gods created the primitive worker man to carry their burden of work. Old Testament and biblical tales apparently stem from the Sumerian base. And then there is uncanny similarity between the Greek tales and Vedic tales. Vedic verses are believed to have been composed by these Gods themselves and then passed orally from generation to generation, till a sage wrote them down in the form of four Vedas.

 

Scientific evidences are not strong enough to substantiate a smooth natural selection process that led to the emergence of modem man. There is wide anatomical gap between the Neanderthal or Homo erectus and the Cro-Magnon man. Then fossil finds of modern man at Swanscombe and Steinham in Germany 200,000 years before the Neanderthal, further add to the mystery, and sudden explosion of civilization after the appearance of Homo sapiens, a giant leap in the otherwise slow evolutionary process is simply strange. Surely something mysterious had happened during the late Pleistocene for which we have no scientific evidence. On the other hand mythological explanations cannot be disproved either, as they are not considered pure fantasies but exaggerated tales based on the past events which are distorted over time.

 

 

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