Our Cosmic Ancestors (17 page)

Aside from the debatable methods that were used to obtain the elements of Transit satellite, this system is of great simplicity and unsurpassed precision. The calculator keeps working all the time and tells your position with an error margin of less than 100 feet. The only drawback is the price of this computer. Only the Navy, cruise ships, and the big oil tankers can afford it. The Air Force has long been peeved that it has to use the Navy system and satellites; and announcements have been made recently that a new and better system, using more satellites and more precise receivers, will be soon put into operation by the Air Force. When that day arrives, every electronics engineer will be able to construct less expensive equipment and make navigation even more precise and easier than it is already.

Now that we have seen how difficult it was to develop good navigation on Earth, you can imagine how much more complicated it is in space. In fact, it is so difficult that up until now, not a single space vehicle has been steered by its own navigational system. All depended on ground guidance. Tracking radars measure the distance and the angular coordinates of the spacecraft from widely based stations. Ground computers establish the navigational data and corrections of trajectory, which are transmitted by radio. Even the astronauts in Apollo spacecraft who had a sextant and a telescope linked to an onboard computer did not make the slightest move without previous approval from the Houston Space Center. The crew was advised of all necessary maneuvers; and the astronauts carried these orders out without questioning them.

But the day is not far away when interplanetary spacecraft will roam so far in space that they will be impossible to guide by radio or check by radar from Earth. What then? Again, the same principle discovered by Austrian scientist Christian Doppler in 1842, and used for the first time by French physicist Armand Fizeau to measure the relative velocity of stars, will come to our aid, We will use the powerful radio signals transmitted by some stars to guide our spaceships. These invisible radio stars are very powerful transmitters in space. Some keep sending continually in the 21 cm band, on the frequency of atomic hydrogen, 1,420 MHz. Three of these sources that have been chosen to guide our future spaceships are situated in the constellations of Cassiopeia, Sagittarius, and Taurus respectively.

The distribution of these sources on the celestial vault is very favorable to the navigation of interplanetary spacecraft, which are always launched in a plane close to that of the ecliptic. Negative or positive Doppler frequencies obtained with the aid of a computer will guide our vehicles with great precision automatically, being compared all of the time with the real course of the spaceship and checked against the radio space markers of the stars. The radio source of Cassiopeia, which is the strongest one and always 'visible' to radio telescopes at 40
^°
N, is subject right now to intensive studies.

It is true that our ancestors had discovered electricity. Very old electrical batteries have actually been found around Baghdad, Iraq, and a design for an electrostatic generator was discovered in Dendera, in Upper Egypt. But they did not use electronic gear to navigate around the world. Much simpler means were available. They used currents and winds that year after year flowed and blew in the same directions at the same time of the year. Just like the travellers of not so long ago who had to change from one steamship line to another to go to faraway places, so did our ancestors manage to cross the oceans by using the winds to pass from one current to another when the first one turned in a direction different from that where they wanted to go.

The global map of sea currents shows six main ocean currents, all of circular form, caused by the rotation of the Earth. This is the Coriolis effect, and it is also what makes the water in your bathtub drain rotate clockwise in the northern hemisphere and anticlockwise in the southern.

With the help of the circular currents, it was always possible to come back home. The chance of a safe return was so good that regular transport lines probably were strung across the Atlantic and Pacific oceans.

The great North Atlantic current flows south along the coasts of Portugal and Mauretania to the Cape Verde Islands, where it turns westward to the Antilles, northwest between Puerto Rico and the Bahamas, then north to Newfoundland, across the North Atlantic and back to Portugal after skirting the shores of Brittany.

This current has a curious feature - it forms at its westernmost tip a smaller separate current of a circular form that encloses the Bermuda Triangle, where ships and planes disappear without a trace, and the Sargasso Sea where migrating birds fly in circles for hours as if searching for an island that is there no more. This is the only place where the eels come for spawning, as if there were a river estuary there for them to ascend. The genetic memories of a distant past are demonstrating here most visibly the possibility that 12,000 years ago this part of the Atlantic could have been the sunken continent of Atlantis.

The South Atlantic current starts at the Cape of Good Hope, flows up along the West African coast as far north as Gabon, then crosses the Atlantic at its narrowest from east to west until it reaches Natal in Brazil. It then descends in southerly direction to Buenos Aires, where it turns back east to the Cape of Good Hope.

Circular navigation routes using winds and
currents

This map shows how our ancestors could have crossed wide oceans without sextant, compass, or chronometer, using only winds and currents that would bring them back home a few years later. They could determine their latitude from the height of the polar star and their longitude from the relative motions of the Sun and Moon.

Both of these currents played very important roles in the past, After circumnavigating Africa, Hindu and Sumerian sailors used the South Atlantic current to go to the estuary of the Amazon, the Antilles, or the Gulf of Mexico. If the search for traces they left behind continues successfully, we will eventually have a map of all their incredible voyages.

The current of the North Pacific moves south along the coasts of California and Mexico, turns west at Acapulco, crosses the Pacific at its widest, passing south of Hawaii, and arrives at the Philippines, where it starts flowing north until it reaches Japan, turns east, and comes back to California. This current must have played an important role in the migration of the Asiatic races who came to America between ice ages, when the passage over Bering Strait was not frozen solid.

The South Pacific current moves north along the coast of Chile up to the northern part of Peru, then turns west and traverses the Pacific north of Tahiti and south of New Caledonia and the New Hebrides. It skirts the east coast of Australia, hooks to the north and then twists south to evade New Zealand before returning to Chile by way of Easter Island and the Juan Fernandez Island group off Chile. This current played a decisive part in the migration of Polynesian people to South America or vice versa. The only thing that we have to find out is who brought civilization to whom. In my opinion, the Polynesians are much more civilized than the Indians of South America, but that does not prove a thing, because I have been off the mark in my judgment many times.

The north current of the Indian Ocean starts from the east coast of Africa at the latitude of Zanzibar and flows north up to the estuary of the Indus River in Pakistan, then turns southeast to Ceylon, reverts in a northerly direction up to the River Ganges in the Bay of Bengal, flows south to Sumatra, in Indonesia, where it takes a western direction and flows back to Zanzibar by way of Diego Garcia. It carried Egyptians from the Gulf of Men, and Sumerians or Hindus from the Gulf of Oman; and, after a cruise along the Sunda Isles, it brought them back to Africa, the Mozambique Channel and the current of Agulhas that led them to the South Atlantic current for a passage to the Amazon, the Antilles or Mexico.
The southern current of the Indian Ocean has not been sufficiently explored, We know that it runs south along the coast of Madagascar, turns east at the latitude of Cape of Good Hope and crosses the most desolate ocean of the world, passing the islands of New Amsterdam and St Paul, to arrive at the West Australian coast, where it changes direction and returns to Madagascar, flowing north of the islands of Reunion and Mauritius. We do not know the history or prehistory of this current, which probably also had importance in the very distant past when the continent of Antarctica was not ice covered and could have been the cradle of an advanced civilization.

In all three oceans there is an equatorial countercurrent between the big northerly and southerly circular currents. These countercurrents are linear and they flow from west to east making it easier for navigators to change directions and pass from one hemisphere to the other. It was these countercurrents that enabled the Phoenicians, who, once through the Pillars of Hercules, or Strait of Gibraltar, sailed south to reach the Antilles or, going a little farther south, the mouth of the Amazon River. Then, by sailing up the river, they could get close to the mines of Peru and Bolivia.

Access routes to South American metals from Atlantic to Amazon

This map of northern South America shows how ancient navigators from the Mediterranean, after crossing the Atlantic with winds and currents, could navigate up the Amazon, cross the Andes, and reach the continent's gold, silver, copper, and tin mines. Moreover, the whole Amazon basin could have been a huge inland sea many thousand years ago, making navigation much easier.

A map of these worldwide ocean currents looks very much like a big city's subway map. You have your different lines and the transfer stations from one line to another. One of the busiest changing stations must have been the Canary Islands where all of the traffic from and to the Mediterranean flowed by.

Once we understood how the ocean currents helped men to migrate, we can also understand why the monuments of Easter Island look so much like the ancient buildings of Tiahuanaco and the submerged ruins in the Bahamas; we can explain how Roman coins could be found in an old amphora on a beach in Venezuela and the remnants of Hindu plantation colonies, where cotton and jute were grown, on the east coast of Mexico. Sumerians and Phoenicians established mining towns in Peru and Bolivia to obtain copper and tin. To get there, these intrepid sailors had to navigate the Amazon for thousands of miles, and that is why mysterious inscriptions resembling the Phoenician alphabet have been found all along the banks of the world's biggest river.

In short, the use of the sea currents for navigation explains why all ancient civilizations seem to have so many things in common; so that it looks as if all of them developed from one much older and much more advanced central civilization. The men of this central civilization were the 'kings of the sea'; and their art of masterful navigation and knowledge of astronomy and mathematics could very well have been gifts of astronauts who came from another world to educate and civilize them. Unfortunately, we may never know who these astronauts were or where they came from.

THE SIGNS OF THE ZODIAC

Today astrology has grown into such an important social phenomenon that it takes courage to try to unravel its secrets and mysteries. But we must attempt to determine once and for all whether astrology is an exact science like astronomy and mathematics or just an enormous imposter.

Quite a few people before me have already tried to do it. But they could not come to clear conclusions because they started with the intention to demonstrate the validity of their preconceived theories. Some even went as far as to fabricate their own evidence.

As for myself, astrology, like most other things in my life, came to my serious attention by accident. I am supposed to be a man of science; but I love many other activities, like diving for old gold doubloons off the Florida Keys or exploring the history of science. The latter activity focused my attention on astrology which, maybe, is not a science at all, but without which we never would have had astronomy.
After all it was the ancient astrologers who, during many thousands of years, accumulated their observations about the positions and movements of the heavenly bodies and tried to relate them to human or terrestrial events.
Considering the very primitive means at their disposal, these men left behind incredibly precise records that can be easily matched with the best modern astronomical tables.