Is the heaven about to fall?

After seeing Machu Picchu with my own eyes, and despite the rhetoric by the local guide, I am pretty sure that it is much older than the 15^th century built-date proclaimed by the Peru’s cultural and antiquity authorities.

Machu Picchu reminds me of the awesome Sphinx and the great Pyramids of Giza. We casual tourists were told that they were built circa 2,500 BC.

To me it is simply inconceivable that the Incas could have the know-how and resources to build such an outlandish estate on a mountain ridge almost 2,500 metres above sea level at that time. Ditto for the Egyptians on the Sphinx and the Great Pyramid – no matter how great or powerful Pharaoh Khafra was said to be at that time.

These two great wonders have one thing in common, i.e., nobody is able to convincingly explain how they were built. And when they were built! (By then, I had read somewhere – by a serious researcher – that the Pyramid was at least 6000 years old.)

To many people, there is only one answer: Aliens from outer space! But to me, if this was true, then these aliens would have to travel inter-galaxies to reach us. Surely what they had left behind would look much ‘modern’ than Burj Al Arab or Petronas Twin Towers, and not just megalithic ruins.

I don’t buy all these conventional theories or explanations at all.

A good friend, SS, who is a firm believer of UFOs and paranormal phenomena, suggested that I should read Preston Peet’s Ancient Aliens, Lost Civilizations, Astonishing Archaeology & Hidden History. With a click on one of Amazon.com’s weblinks, the Kindle edition of the book came straight to my iPad.

The book is basically a compilation of essays and papers written by others. While some of the articles are pretty good, many are hearsays. However, I did emerge somewhat enlightened that (a) these structures are about 10000 years old, and (b) there might already be a civilisation that had fantastic knowledge about monolithic works and transportation.

These wonders might have been built before the Ice Age!

One thing good about Kindle is that it also introduces books of related interests or topics to you. I was hungry for more and was attracted to one by Robert Schoch: Forgotten Civilization. Schoch is a PhD in Geophysics from Yale and has been credited with “re-dating” the Sphinx. He was also not convinced that those outlandish structures like Sphinx and Machu Picchu were built in the era pronounced by the mainstream archaeologists, whom he believes many are humbugs in the first place. He began his journey in Easter Island in the Pacific where the Moais still stood erect. He went on to talk nostalgically about his work on the Sphinx. After that it was Göbekli Tepe in Southeastern Turkey that he drew upon to argue his case.

To him, they were all built well before the Ice Age, and the evidences he offered were very compelling. But by whom? His conclusion: mankind was mostly wiped out by a great cosmic phenomenon, thanks to the not-so-eternal Sun. He cited research after research to prove his conclusion. The book is thick with physics, which is difficult for a layman like to retell.

Before this, I had always been a believer in Darwinism. Homo Sapiens were said to have evolved from Homo Erectus and they spread out from Africa some 40-60,000 years ago to populate the earth and men did not begin to “civilize” until a couple of thousands years ago. This might not be the case after all!

And while it is conventionally agreed that climate change is a major concern for mankind now, Schoch argues that scientists might just be barking up the wrong tree! Yes, global warming is to some extent caused by our exploitation of the earth's natural resources. His bigger fear, however, is that we might be going into the Sun’s next cosmic tantrum which, according to his estimate, might already be overdue!

Or have I fallen into the 齐人忧天 (Qi-ren Yu-tian, or heaven-is-about-to-fall) syndrome?