Evidence of the Gods (19 page)

Henri Cosquer showed his photos to some archeologists. They were not very enthusiastic, remained skeptical, or even thought that the pictures were forgeries. It was not until six years later, on September 19, 1991, that the
Archéonaut
, a French naval research vessel, anchored off Cape Morgiou. Eleven frogmen followed Henri
Cosquer into the cave system. Eight specialists were waiting aboard the
Archéonaut
, including two archeologists. Specialist equipment was lowered into the depths, the subterranean picture gallery was thoroughly mapped, and small samples of the paintings were brought to the surface. The C-14 dating produced a minimum age of 18,400 years.

The sea level of the Mediterranean 18,400 ago was 35 meters lower than today. At that time, the entrance to the cave was on land. The water has risen—be it in the Mediterranean or in the Atlantic at Er Lannic. That can also be proved at the port of Lixus in Morocco, where the oldest parts lie under water; at Cadiz in Spain, where a 100-meter-long piece of road can still be seen underwater at low tide; in Malta, where so-called “cart ruts” sink below the surface of the Mediterranean; and off the island of Bimini in the Caribbean, where clear remains of walls and a road lie under the surface of the sea. The sea has risen—worldwide. It’s as simple as that. (There are many other examples of water having risen. Even Plato wrote about it some 2,500 years ago, in the third book of his
Laws
.)

Today, as I’m sitting typing these words on my keyboard, mankind is being gripped by an unfathomable debate: climate change. The glaciers are said to be melting and the oceans rising. But they have been doing that every few thousand years, quite obviously also in the Stone Age, when there were no industrially produced CO
₂
waste gases to warm the climate. What is wrong with this society? Looking the other way, spreading ignorance and half-truths, not taking account of the facts—the same also applies to many scientists, particularly the type who constantly and angrily demand to be taken seriously. That is the society we live in. Looking away and refusing to register what is also applies to the incredible messages from the Stone Age.

The small island of Gavrinis lies directly next to the two stone circles of Er Lannic, which are partly disintegrating under the water. Before the sea level rose, Gavrinis and Er Lannic were part of the landmass. Gavrinis is a mere 750 meters long and 400 meters wide. The island is fringed by trees. Mossy grass and rampantly proliferating gorse cushions one’s steps, as if a thick carpet had been laid down leading into the sacred place. And what a sacred place it is! For the “passage grave” on the hillock has been fitted with a mathematical message which can turn us smart-alecks speechless.

The indigenous Bretons always knew that the hillock in truth contained a structure from the Stone Age. The entrance was discovered in 1832—the apparent grave inside was empty—and between 1979 and 1984, an archeological team led by Dr. Charles-Tanguy Le Roux restored the cyclopean complex. The inside of the passage grave turned out to be a phantom from a time long past and, at the same time, contained the most logical of all answers: mathematics.

The Stone Agers began by completely flattening the hill on the island of Gavrinis. Then they carted huge quantities of stones of various sizes to the building site and also rolled a few dozen cyclopic megaliths along. (
Image 165
) Even the floor of the passage grave consists of slabs. The builders must have known from the beginning that they were creating a message for eternity.

The entrance consists of two vertical stone slabs with a horizontal one on top. (
Image 166
) This is followed by a gallery, flanked and covered by monoliths, into the interior of the artificial hill. (
Image 167
) Then there is the “sanctum,” also called the “burial chamber,” although a grave has never been found. This “burial chamber” is a further 2.6 meters long, 2.5 meters wide, and 1.8 meters high. It is formed by six mighty slabs and covered by a gigantic ceiling slab which measures 3.7 by 2.5 meters. In total, 52 megaliths were used to build the actual passage grave, of which half (26) were engraved with strange symbols. The local archeologists assume that these ornaments were carved deep into the stone slabs with small quartz stones. Logically this work would have had to be done while the slabs were still lying on the ground, that is before the passage grave was built. That is the first thing to make us prick up our ears. The people who built this masterpiece cannot have been pottering about in a piecemeal fashion, in whatever way happened to work best at the time, but they must have been working to plan. They knew in advance which engraved slab later had to be placed in which position. The engravings are of innumerable spirals and circles which flow into and over one another, peculiar grooves which look like enlarged fingerprints, snaking lines which often flow over from one monolith to another, and in all this confusion a slab with depictions which are reminiscent of axes or pointed rock implements. (
Images 168
–
172
) It is an engraved world which, depending on the angle of the light, throws bizarre shadows on the curious patterns on the walls. It is these grooves which speak. They contain the mathematical message, timeless and valid for every generation that can do sums.

The mathematics were discovered by Mr. Gwenc’hlan Le Scouëzec, a Breton and obviously a mathematical genius, although he modestly thinks that the thousands-of-years-old message is quite obvious to everyone.
¹

The count begins where everything has to start in mathematics, with one. Counting from the entrance, the sixth stone on the right is particularly conspicuous. It is smaller than all the others and is engraved with a single “fingerprint”—nothing to the side or on top, only the circles and grooves of a “fingertip.” It is the only stone with just a single symbol. All the others either have no engravings at all or several at once. Does the sixth stone indicate the number 6? Was this intended to signal the system which was to be used for the calculation?

The 21st stone in the gallery shows a “fingerprint” at the bottom, above which there are three rows, one above the other, with a total of 18 ax-like, vertical engravings. (
Image 173
) Eighteen is equivalent to 3 × 6. The multiplication of 3 × 4 × 5 × 6 gives 360 or 60 × 6. The 18, the number of “axes,” in turn signals the twentieth part of 360. In our geometric system, this number represents the number of degrees in a full circle. But what is the connection between our system and the past?