Graham Hancock - Magicians of the Gods: The Forgotten Wisdom of Earth’s Lost Civilization

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First published in Great Britain in 2015 by Coronet

An imprint of Hodder & Stoughton

An Hachette UK company

Copyright Graham Hancock 2015

The right of Graham Hancock to be identified as the Author of the Work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

All rights reserved.

No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means without the prior written permission of the publisher, nor be otherwise circulated in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.

A CIP catalogue record for this title is available from the British Library

ISBN 978 1 444 77969 1

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For Santha, my soul mate.

Photo credits:

All photos by Santha Faiia except:

, Nico Becker, German Archaeological Institute, Orient Department.

, Klaus Schmidt, German Archaeological Institute, Orient Department.

: Daniel Lohmann who was also the excavator of the column drum.

The astronomical interpretations of Pillar 43 at Gobekli Tepe, , were rendered in graphic form by Luke Hancock.

Graphics credits:

Camron Wiltshire (.

Afua Richardson: Figure numbers (with Luke Hancock).

Luke Hancock: Figure numbers .

Michael Mauldin: Figure numbers .

Samuel Parker: Figure numbers (lower row, left)

Pon S. Purajatnika: Figure number .

Contents

First and foremost my love and appreciation to the photographer Santha Faiia, who honoured me twenty years ago by becoming my wife. She had her own successful career long before she met me, but she kindly agreed to work with me. Santha took the majority of the photographs in this book, as in so many of my previous books, and has travelled with me every step of the way on the long journey from Fingerprints of the Gods to Magicians of the Gods. Thank you! Thanks also to our children Sean, Shanti, Ravi, Leila, Luke and Gabrielle. While I was writing Magicians our first grandchild, Nyla, was born and it is a delight to welcome her to our big, boisterous family. Thanks too to my mum Muriel Hancock, and to my uncle James Macaulay, and I keep in my heart fond memories of my dad, Donald Hancock, who taught me so much and who passed away in 2003 after years of unstinting support for my work.

My brilliant literary agent Sonia Land has worked wonders and is everything a great agent should be. My UK editor Mark Booth and my US editor Peter Wolverton have both played hugely positive roles in nurturing Magicians of the Gods and putting it before the public in just the right way at just the right time.

The graphics team who created the maps, charts, drawings and diagrams for this book were Camron Wiltshire and Afua Richardson, with backup from Michael Maudlin and Samuel Parker. My son Luke Hancock also provided a number of diagrams. Each artist is acknowledged individually in the graphics credits but I want to thank them all collectively here for their dedication, talent, intelligence and hard work.

The late Professor Klaus Schmidt of the German Archaeological Institute went far above and beyond the call of duty when he showed me around Gobekli Tepe in Turkey in 2013. As the discoverer and excavator, Klaus possessed unique knowledge of this very special site that he generously shared with me during three days of visits and on-the-spot interviews. I regret his passing but trust that his name will be remembered by history.

I made a research visit to Lebanon in 2014. My work there was greatly facilitated by the kindness, good will and logistical support on the ground given by my friends Ramzi Najjar and Samir and Sandra Jarmakani. Subsequent to the trip I benefitted enormously from extensive correspondence concerning Baalbek with archaeologist and architect Daniel Lohmann. He was patient and persuasive in his valiant efforts to persuade me of the merits of the mainstream analysis.

In Indonesia special thanks go to Danny Hilman Natawidjaja, the excavator of the extraordinarily ancient pyramid site of Gunung Padang. Thanks also to his colleagues Wisnu Ariestika and Bambang Widoyko Suwargadi who joined us on an extensive field trip in Java, Sumatra, Flores and Sulawesi.

In the United States I am particularly grateful to Randall Carlson for his deep insights into catastrophist geology and for the knowledge he shared with me during our journey by road from Portland, Oregon, to Minneapolis, Minnesota, to study the effects on the land of the cataclysmic floods that afflicted this entire region at the end of the Ice Age. Thanks, too, to Bradley Young who accompanied us on the journey and did all the driving a heroic effort!

I am grateful to Allen West, corresponding author amongst the large group of scientists investigating the Younger Dryas comet impact. I tell the story of their work at length in Chapters 3 through 6, and Allen was very helpful in ensuring that I got the facts right and in offering me further insights into the implications of the cataclysm.

Thanks also to Richard Takkou and Raymond Wiley for their sterling efforts as my research assistants at different stages of the project.

Many, many thanks to our dear friends Chris and Cathy Foyle for their solidarity and wise advice.

And last but not least, thanks to my loyal and supportive readers all around the world who have stuck with me for more than twenty years as Ive pursued my quest for the lost civilization. Magicians of the Gods is the latest destination on that journey and while it is a new work I have inevitably, at a few points, had to revisit ground that I first explored in Fingerprints of the Gods and in my other books in order to place the new evidence I present here in its proper context.

Graham Hancock

Bath, England, September 2015

A house raised on sand will always be in danger of collapse.

The evidence is mounting, though most of the later construction is of high quality, that the edifice of our past built by historians and archaeologists stands on defective and dangerously unsound foundations. An extinction-level cataclysm occurred on our planet between 12,800 and 11,600 years ago. This event was global in its consequences and it affected mankind profoundly. Because the scientific evidence that proves it happened has only emerged since 2007, and because its implications have not yet been taken into account at all by historians and archaeologists, we are obliged to contemplate the possibility that everything we have been taught about the origins of civilization could be wrong.

In particular it must be considered as a reasonable hypothesis that worldwide myths of a golden age brought to an end by flood and fire are true, and that an entire episode of the human story was rubbed out in those 1,200 cataclysmic years between 12,800 and 11,600 years ago an episode not of unsophisticated hunter-gatherers but of advanced civilization.