Who does not like a delicious conspiracy theory? The British author and journalist Graham Hancock in his books Fingerprints of the Gods and Magicians of the Gods, as well as the Netflix documentary series Ancient Apocalypse proposes an advanced global civilisation that existed during the last ice age. This society possessed sophisticated knowledge of astronomy, architecture, agriculture, navigation and spiritual practices, and well, they talked to plants lol. Hancock argues that this civilisation was seafaring and capable of long-distance ocean voyages. Now this civilisation has not been identified. The Indian archaeoastronomer Nilesh Nilkanth Oak claims that Sugriva, one of the vanar kings created a detailed world atlas 14,000 years ago. The theory is that Sugriva dispatched search parties that explored the entire world. The geographical descriptions align with Ice-Age landmasses, coastlines, and features such as lower sea levels. Both the Piri Reis map and Sugriva's Atlas feature places such as Antarctica far predating modern cartography. These claims are outlined in the book The Historic Rama: Indian Civilisation at the End of Pleistocene.
Now these numbers are relatively tame, and not that dramatic. It is just that our recorded history has a short horizon, but our archaeological excavations have revealed that Homo Eructus had the capability for sea faring, a complex language, and demonstrated tool as well as fire use over 1.5 million years ago. So 15,000 years ago is not at all a surprising timeframe for such activities by humans. The problem here is agriculture and domestication, we know for a fact that these occurred 12,000 years ago at best, limiting the possible time frame for a more advanced civilisation. This civilisation may have existed in more harmony and balance with the natural world than humans today, who may one they revert to such a state with sufficient technological progress.
Graham Hancock's advanced civilisation lasted between 115,000-11,700 years ago, ending due to comet impacts that ushered in the Younger Dryas between 12,900 and 11,700 years ago. These events caused floods and sea-level rise around the world. The survivors of this disaster imparted knowledge to nascent cultures in Egypt, Mesopotamia, Southeast Asia and South America. In the Valmiki Ramayana, the vanars are a race of people that resemble monkeys or apes in appearance. Their king, Sugriva dispatches four search parties to scour the Earth for Rama's abducted wife Sita. His instructions themselves form a comprehensive atlas detailing rivers, mountains and oceans. There are over 600 stellar references in the text, which has been used by Oak to date the Ramayan.
Oak dates the events of the Ramayan to around 12,209 BCE, right in the middle of the Younger Dryas impact. Sugriva's description align with a world with lower sea levels, exposed land bridges, and ice-free coastlines. He references seven continents as well as Antarctica, which are supported by the world as described in the Brahma Purana. The vanars had the capability for rapid transportation and flight, which can be interpreted as possessing high technologies. In 1513, the Ottoman General Piri Reis compiled a fragmentary world map drawn from over 20 sources, including maps from the Library of Alexandria. These source maps are now lost. It depicts Atlantic coasts with eerie accuracy, including the contours of South America, the Carribean and Queen Maud Land without the ice sheet in Antarctica. Hancock cites this map as proof of Ice Age Explorers, arguing that the advanced tech needed to explore these longitudes were not available in the 16th century, let alone antiquity. In the Valmiki Ramayan, Sugriva describes the Udaya Mountain as the easternmost point where the Sun rises, with a prominent landmark. This is a golden pylon resembling a palm three with three branches, etched on a golden rock peak, with a golden base. This feature is described as an easterly compass, a directional marker established by celestial beings called deva-nirmana. The description matches a feature known as the Candelabra of the Andes. This is a geoglyph found on the Paracas Peninsula at Pisco Bay in Peru.
Skeptics claim that in the Piri Reis map, Antarctica is likely to be a distorted Patagonia, with inaccuracies stemming from Portuguese voyages. The depictions of the ice-free southern lands align with geological data. Antarctica was last navigable around 4,000 BC, but Hancock pushes the dating back to the last Ice Age, implying lost sources from a drowned civilisation. My question here is that if they were so advanced, why did they drown so easily while the primitive peoples of the world survived? In any case, Sugriva's vanars are dated to around the same time, and were a society capable of seafaring, studying astronomy, and creating world maps. Both Sugriva and the Piri Reis map depict an unglaciated Antarctica, including lost mountains and seas. Sugriva's teams are dispatched eastwards to the Americas, west towards Europe, north to the Arctic regions and south to Antarctica. There are descriptions of land bridges lost to rising seas. The transatlantic details on the Piri Reis map are also difficult to explain, with the longitudes showing spherical projections far ahead of 1513 science.
Now, Oak's dates of the Ramayana based on the 600 astronomical references align with Hancock's proposed timeline for the destruction of an advanced Ice Age civilisation around 12,800 years ago. One way to reconcile the question of survival is that there was a widespread global cataclysm, but the civilisation survived! Ramayana's narratives do include cosmic events and widespread destruction, associated with the serpent Ananta, that can easily be interpreted as a comet that caused the cataclysm. The potential influence of Ramyana on ancient sites such as Angkor Wat, also align with Oak's timeline. Oak's dating of Sugriva's Atlas at the end of the Pleistocene is consistent with Hancock's hypothesis of a seafaring society that mapped a world with lower sea levels. Oak relies on bathymetric and sea-level reconstructions by the geologist Glenn Milne to validate Sugriva's descriptions matching Ice Age configurations such as exposed land bridges and unglaciated coastlines. These maps were published in Hancock's book Underworld. Long story short, Oak's Vanars may be the lost ancient civilisation of Hancock.
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