The Ancient Alien Question (30 page)

After the conquest of the Aztec Empire by Spain, after they committed most of the Aztecs’ books to the fire, in the late 17th century Don Carlos de Sigüenza y Góngora studied some of the few remaining Aztec manuscripts and learned that the Aztecs possessed a calendar lasting 52 years. The calendar was a combination of a “regular” solar year, lasting 365 days (known as
haab
), and a calendar that was 260 days long (known as
tzolkin
). The former consisted of 18 months of 20 days, to which the Aztecs added five days to make it coincide with the solar year. The latter is normally linked with the duration of a fetus’s gestation inside the womb—the time from conception to birth. The tzolkin is known to have been used as early as 600
BC
, and though it was found in Aztec material, it is Mayan in origin. Today, several Mayan people, specifically those living in the highlands of Guatemala, continue to use and cherish the calendar. “New Agers” in the West are beginning to embrace the calendar as well.

De Sigüenza’s discovery was the first of many Mayan calendars that were found to have been used either throughout or for long periods of Mayan history. The most famous calendar today is the so-called Mayan Long Count Calendar, a calendar that was used for almost one millennium; it has been found on hundreds of monuments, dating from approximately 36
BC
to
AD
909, and it is the calendar that mentions the famous date of
AD
December 21, 2012.

In the Mayan Long Count, the date December 21, 2012 is rendered as 13.0.0.0.0. This date should be read as 13 Baktun, 0 Katun, 0 Tun, 0 Unial, and 0 Kin, and illustrates the basic building blocks of the Mayan calendar:

1 Kin equals 1 day.

1 Unial equals 20 days.

1 Tun equals 360 days.

1 Katun equals 7,200 days, or 20 tuns.

1 Baktun equals 144,000 days, or 20 katuns.

This sequence shows the wheels within wheels of the Mayan calendar—its cyclical nature. The date marks the end of a cycle, which is equivalent to 13 times 144,000 days, or a period of 5,125 years. The Long Count therefore began on August 11, 3114
BC
, annotated as 0.0.0.0.0—the beginning of the Fourth World, said to end on
AD
December 21, 2012.

As mentioned, we can use this Long Count Calendar to work our way back to circa 18500
BC
, when the First Age was said to have begun. But did you know that the Mayans had calendars that were 34,020,000,000 days, or more than 90 million years long? The Mayans were not alone in this. A Babylonian clay tablet in the Library of Nineveh gives to the Assyrian king Ashurbanipal (685
BC
–
Ca
. 627
BC
) a calendar that is 195,955,200,000,000 days long—a period that is many, many, many,
many
times the few billion years our planet has existed! It has therefore been suggested that the number does not represent days, but seconds, which would still make it 2,268,000,000 days, or a period that is more than six million years!

As incredible as it may be, Dutch author Willem Zitman has been able to show that these two periods, one from Central America and one from the Middle East, are actually related: The Babylonian period is 15 times smaller than the Mayan period! This is not a coincidence, and shows that the two cultures either worked out extremely long cycles of time, based upon astronomical events, on their own, or that both cultures have a common heritage: a knowledge of astronomy that was somehow shared by two cultures that lived on two ends of the world at a time when standard history states there was no exchange of culture at all!

Among the many questions this idea raises, one important one is why the Babylonians and Mayans were obsessed with such incredibly long cycles of time. The only light that Zitman can shed on this is that if we assume the Babylonians thought that the cycle of precession (a change in the orientation of the Earth’s axis resulting in changes to the position of the stars in the sky) lasted 25,872 years, then the Babylonian unit expresses 240 Precessional Cycles. As to why this would be important, again, no one has an answer, if only because science does not address the issue. But seeing as two ancient civilizations that were experts in astronomy highlighted the cycle, I would suggest that astronomy in future years is likely to uncover a very interesting significance for this period of time.

Massive cycles of time are not only typical of the Mayans or Babylonians, but also of the Egyptians. In the 1970s, a French Egyptologist claimed to have discovered an inscription in the Temple of Isis in Denderah that represented a period of time of 36,159,177,600 years, or a staggering 13,207,139,618,400 days. Of what use is a period of time of 36 billion years? We do not know, but the Ancient Egyptians clearly felt it was important.

Whatever these cycles represent, it is clear that our ancestors held these calendars to be important. It is equally clear that it had to have been a nonhuman intelligence that told our ancestors that a cycle of 90 million years was somehow important, for 90 million years ago there were no humans on this planet! Not even a lost civilization like Atlantis can bridge that divide. Therefore, whatever intelligence knew of this cycle was either millions of years old or had knowledge—if not technology—at its disposal that had calculated a period of 90 million years and had revealed its importance. That intelligence must somehow have made contact with humankind and given our ancestors this knowledge.

Oannes

In the third century
BC
, the Babylonian Berossus, head of the temple organization between 258 and 253
BC
, reported on the existence of a mythical being called Oannes who had taught humankind wisdom. The name
Oannes
was a Greek rendering of the Babylonian
Uanna
, a name used by the god Adapa, a son of Ea. In mythology, he was indeed the god of wisdom and the one who brought civilization to the city of Eridu—the cradle of Sumerian civilization, and for some the word from which the name for our planet, Earth, originates from. Though Ea gave Adapa knowledge, particularly of the arts and civilization, eternal life was not bestowed upon him.

What was remarkable about Oannes was not only that he taught people how to create temples, compile laws, and use geometry, but that he rose out of the Persian Gulf at daytime and returned to this watery abode at night. He had the body of a fish, but underneath the figure of a man—he was, by all accounts, nonhuman.

The first century
BC
scholar Alexander Polyhistor summarized Berossus’s
Babyloniaca
and left us the following account of Oannes:

At Babylon there was (in these times) a great resort of people of various nations, who inhabited Chaldæa, and lived in a lawless manner like the beasts of the field. In the first year there appeared, from that part of the Erythraean sea which borders upon Babylonia, an animal destitute of reason, by name Oannes, whose whole body (according to the account of Apollodorus) was that of a fish; that under the fish’s head he had another head, with feet also below, similar to those of a man, subjoined to the fish’s tail. His voice too, and language, was articulate and human; and a representation of him is preserved even to this day.

This being was accustomed to pass the day among men; but took no food at that season; and he gave them an insight into letters and sciences, and arts of every kind. He taught them to construct cities, to found temples, to compile laws, and explained to them the principles of geometrical knowledge. He made them distinguish the seeds of the earth, and shewed them how to collect the fruits; in short, he instructed them in every thing which could tend to soften manners and humanize their lives. From that time, nothing material has been added by way of improvement to his instructions. And when the sun had set, this being, Oannes, retired again into the sea, and passed the night in the deep; for he was amphibious.
⁸

Oannes was the first of the Apkallu, seven Sumerian demigods who gave civilization to humankind. They served as priests of Enki and as advisors or sages to the earliest “kings” or rulers of Sumer, before the flood. Gustav Guterbrock in his study of the Apkallu concluded that they were the “bird men” visible in many Sumerian depictions. The Greeks would label the Apkallu “heroes”: They were not immortal, but they were more than mere men. At the same time, they were religious educators and seem to have formed the blueprint of the priest class. In primitive civilizations, these priest classes were termed “shamans” and they were specifically identified with totem animals, most often with birds. This was because the shaman was said to fly and enter the Otherworld to seek advice from the ancestors.

The story of Oannes was picked up by Carl Sagan in his book
Intelligent Life in the Universe
, where he commented, “I support the contention that a major cultural change did take place with the advent of the Oannes.” Elsewhere he noted: “These beings were interested in instructing mankind. Each knew the mission and accomplishments of his predecessors. When a great
inundation threatens the survival of this knowledge, steps are taken to insure its preservation.”
⁹
Sagan was therefore convinced that the series of nonhuman civilizers were part of a larger plan, as each one knew of its predecessor’s mission.