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Voyages Of The Pyramid Builders

Is it a mere coincidence that pyramids are found across our globe?
Did cultures ranging across vast spaces in geography and time, such as the ancient Egyptians, early Buddhists, the Maya, Inca, Toltec, and Aztec civilizations of the Americas; the Celts of the British Isles; and even the Mississippi Indians of pre-Columbus Illinois, simply dream the same dreams and envision the same structures?

Scientist and tenured university professor Robert M. Schoch -- one of the world's preeminent geologists in recasting the date of the Great Sphinx -- believes otherwise. In this dramatic and meticulously reasoned book, Schoch argues that ancient cultures traveled great distances by sea. Indeed, he maintains that primeval sailors traveled from the eastern continent, primarily Southeast Asia, and spread the idea of pyramids across the Earth, involving the human species in a far greater degree of contact and exchange than experts have previously thought possible.

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Eden In The East

From Kirkus Reviews
In an exhaustively researched and creatively argued reassessment of mankind's origins, British physician Oppenheimer, an expert in tropical pediatrics, contends that the now-submerged area of Southeast Asia was the cradle of ancient civilization.
From time to time, scholars from various disciplines have argued for the existence of a vastly old ``founder civilization.'' Among the most famous was Charles Hapgood, who based his theory of a lost seafaring civilization on his analysis of the famous 16th-century ``Piri Re'is'' maps of the Antarctic land mass.
In this tradition, Oppenheimer blends evidence from geology, genetics, linguistics, archaeology, and anthropology to argue persuasively that such a civilization existed on a submerged land mass in Southeast Asia, which geologists call the Sunda shelf.

Pointing to geological evidence for the submersion of the shelf by abrupt rises in the sea level about 8,000 years ago, Oppenheimer contends that the coastal cultures of Southeast Asia were drowned by a great flood, reflected in flood mythologies scattered from the ancient Middle East (such as the biblical story of Noah) to Australia and the Americas.

According to the author, tantalizing archaeological evidence exists of settlements under a ``silt curtain'' left by the sea floods in drowned coastal regions from Southeast Asia to the Middle East, while linguistic markers indicate that languages spread from Southeast Asia to Australia and the Pacific.
The shared flood story is one striking example of similar Eurasian myths according to the author; the ancient Middle East and Asia share other myth typologies, conspicuously including creation and Cain and Abel myths, which point to common origins in a progenitor culture.
Absorbing, meticulously researched, limpidly written, and authoritative: should be regarded as a groundbreaking study of the remote past of Southeast Asia, and of civilization itself. -- Copyright ©1999, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

[orionblamblam]

> Is it a mere coincidence that pyramids are found across our globe?

Yeah, pretty much. Pyramids are an easy and obvious shape for early peoples wanting to build big.

[Mister Baredog]

Fascinating stuff. If only the ancients had created a permanent record. That's what I love about Egypt, they etched it all in stone and it's still there! Of course the Rosetta Stone has made a big difference.

Thanks for the post, new things to ponder.