Brian Haughton - Historys Mysteries: People, Places and Oddities Lost in the Sands of Time

People, Places, and Oddities Lost in the Sands of Time

By
Brian
Haughton

Copyright 2010 by Brian Haughton

All rights reserved under the Pan-American and International Copyright Conventions. This book may not be reproduced, in whole or in part, in any form or by any means electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system now known or hereafter invented, without written permission from the publisher, The Career Press.

HISTORYS MYSTERIES

EDITED BY JODI BRANDON

TYPESET BY EILEEN MUNSON

Cover design by Jeff Piasky

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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Haughton, Brian, 1964

Historys mysteries: people, places, and oddities lost in the sands of time / by Brian Haughton.

p. cm.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN 978-1-60163-107-7 ISBN 978-1-60163-732-1 (ebook) 1. Civilization, Ancient--Miscellanea. 2. Curiosities and wonders. 3. Geography, Ancient. 4. Historic sites. 5. Historic buildings. 6. Antiquities. 7. Prehistoric peoples. 8. BiographyTo 500. I. Title.

CB311.H345 2010
930.1--dc22

2010003633

For Elina

Thanks to Elina Siokou for reading the manuscript,
Michael Pye at New Page,
and my agent, Lisa Hagan, of Paraview.

W hat is an ancient mystery? The distant past will more often than not be mysterious by its very nature. We can uncover buildings, artifacts, and sometimes even texts, but we do not know how the people of these ancient societies felt, what they believed, or what motivated them to behave in the way they did. Nevertheless, modern science is allowing us the kind of access to secrets of the past that was only dreamed of a few decades ago. DNA studies, for example, of modern inhabitants of parts of Syria, Palestine, Tunisia, Morocco, Cyprus, and Malta have shown extraordinary connections with the ancient Phoenicians, who once had colonies in those areas. Ongoing study, conservation, and sampling of the Uluburun Shipwreck, the remains of a 3,300-year-old ship and its extraordinary cargo from the coast of southern Turkey, are discovering fascinating connections between ancient Canaan, Egypt, Mycenaean Greece, Italy, and even the Baltic Sea area of Northern Europe.

Science alone, however, will not give us a complete picture of the ancient world. But when combined with the study of mythology, folklore, and sometimes simply a sharp change of viewpoint when looking back at the ancient world, science can be extremely enlightening. Indeed, it is surprising what can be accomplished by turning oneself off from a technology-obsessed 21st-century mindsetfor example, in terms of understanding what the priorities may have been for the inhabitants of Nabta Play in the Egyptian desert 11,000 years ago, or the builders of Tenochtitlan in Mexico around 700 years ago. Nevertheless, even if we could somehow project ourselves back into antiquity, one suspects that the magic and mystery that were undoubtedly a part of the lives of many of these ancient civilizations would remain elusive.

It is often said by alternative historians that a certain controversial ancient site or artifact will turn conventional wisdom on its head. Conventional archaeologists (conventional presumably meaning those who have studied and are qualified as archaeologists) are criticized for not being open-minded enough to accept new theories and ideas. Generally this is not the case. Witness the (often-heated) discussions surrounding genuinely challenging archaeological puzzles such as the extraordinary Turkish site of Gbekli Tepe, the enigmatic Venus figurines of the last Ice Age, the abandonment of Mesa Verde, or the volcanic eruption that destroyed the Mediterranean island of Thera. Spurious ancient artifacts or sites (such as the Oak Island Treasure or the Dendera Lamps) are anything but a challenge to conventional archaeology. The furor surrounding these subjects on the Web and in various print publications is the result of speculation based on the preconceived agenda of the writer, and as such has no place in history or archaeology. It is this distinction between genuine and bogus ancient mysteries that Historys Mysteries attempts to clarify. Sometimes a few hours of research and a modicum of critical thinking can dispense with anything in the second category.

Historys Mysteries is an investigation into 35 archaeological mysteries from across the globe, organized by geographical region. As with my previous book, Hidden History, this work separates its collection of enthralling ancient riddles into three sections: Mysterious Places, Unexplained Artifacts, and Enigmatic People. The choice of subjects was made to include a wide range of cultures, and a mixture of both the well-known and the relatively obscure. Consequently you will read about Indias celebrated Taj Mahal and the biblical Temple of Solomon, as well as the little-known Royston Cave in the UK, the infamous Rennes-le-Chteau in France, and the forgotten site of Great Zimbabwe in South Africa.

In writing Historys Mysteries, I have not attempted to justify any personal prejudices regarding the enigmas of the ancient world. Rather, I have been guided by the facts, even if, in the end, they can sometimes be unsatisfactory. This has to be the case, especially when we are dealing with prehistoric cultures that left no writing. We do not knowperhaps will never knowall the answers. In this brief work I have tried to present a summary of the current level of knowledge for a small selection of archaeological mysteries. I leave it to my readers to pursue in more detail these riddles left to us by our ancient ancestors.

St. Michaels Mount.

T he story of the drowned land of Lyonesse, often referred to as the English Atlantis, is told in medieval Arthurian tales and may also be connected to older Celtic legends of cataclysmic floods. The country of Lyonesse is said to have had many towns, woods, and fields, and 140 churches, but all this was all lost underneath the waves in one catastrophic inundation. According to local tradition, only one person escaped the flood: the hero Trevilian, who rode a white horse to the safety of high ground. Lyonesse is most commonly located between the English county of Cornwall and the Isles of Scilly, 28 miles to the southwest of the United Kingdom, but does this legendary land have real geographical coordinates?

The earliest extant sources for the story of Lyonesse, which are in Old French literature, do not go back any further than the 12th century. However, the legend seems to have been brought to Northern France from older Celtic sources that have not survived. Lyonesse appears as