Lost Civilization Lost

The sudden appearance of the ancient Egyptian civilization in the Nile Valley about 5,000 years ago is a mystery. Other ancient civilizations have roots, deep roots, that show the slow transition from earlier times written in the archeological record. But the Egyptian civilization appears suddenly almost fully formed, seemingly out of nowhere. There is no ancestry, no ruins, no relics, no period of development, no intermediate steps; it just suddenly appears. Almost everything is there from the start: domesticated plants and animals, government, even writing. The origin of the ancient Egyptian civilization is a mystery that has been debated for years, made all the more puzzling by its location in the middle of a desert. There are many theories: ancient aliens, refugees from Atlantis, immigrants from Mars. Others look to invaders originating in Mesopotamia or perhaps Asia. Evidence from Göbekli Tepe and Nevali Çori seems to lend support to that idea. Precipitation may come from thin air, but civilizations do not. To alternative archaeologists, this was proof that survivors of a catastrophic natural disaster that destroyed their civilization had found refuge in the Nile River Valley. Taken together the sudden appearance of the ancient Egyptian civilization 5,000 years ago and a 12,000-year-old Sphinx was the proof they were looking for. Alternative archeologist Graham Hancock wrote: “The central claim of my 1995 book Fingerprints of the Gods is not that there was but that there could have been a lost civilisation, which flourished and was destroyed in remote antiquity.” At the time Hancock wrote those words in 2002, the source of the ancient Egyptian civilization remained a mystery.

One-Sided

Still to mainstream archaeologists this was nonsense. It did not fit the narrative found in the archeological record. “I felt that the only way to confront this mindset was to write a passionate one-sided book — and this is exactly what I set out to do with Fingerprints of the Gods,” Hancock said. To mainstream archaeologists, such one-sided proposals make alternative archaeologists appear as novices, unaware of the evidence that contradicts them. Factual errors and obvious omissions only seem to confirm that assessment. This is why alternative archaeologists are so often compared to creationists. Inclusion of a global flood does nothing to dissuade that assessment. The one-sided perspective is what mainstream archaeologists find most disturbing. To scientists this is seen as cherry picking to deliberately distort the evidence. It may make for an interesting story, but it is not science. Presentation of a one-sided biased version of prehistory that ignores the majority of the scientific evidence should not be confused with reasoned challenges to current scientific theories. Hancock, at least, to his credit, never claimed to present a scientific account of prehistory. “And I wrote the book [Fingerprints of the Gods], quite deliberately, not as a work of science but as a work of advocacy.” With more fantasy than fact, the proposals presented by alternative archaeologists were never taken seriously by mainstream archaeologists. Still mainstream archaeologists could not explain the sudden appearance of the ancient Egyptian civilization 5,000 years ago.

Lost Civilization Found

Hidden beneath the Sahara sand was a surprise: the unimaginable discovery that people had once lived throughout the Sahara. Between 12,000–5,500 years ago the Sahara was a green savanna with abundant precipitation. Here was the archaeological evidence that shows the slow transition from hunter-gatherers to the ancient Egyptian civilization. Although there is still much left to be discovered in the Sahara and elsewhere, there no longer is a gap large enough to place a lost civilization. The mystery of a lost civilization was finally solved.

Lost Civilization