Civilisation’s Beginnings

Waikato Times, Volume 119, Issue 19799, 1 February 1936, Page 13 (Supplement)

Civilisation’s Beginnings

Before the Flood : Explorer’s Claims.

(Mr Mitchell-Hedges in Sunday Chronicle.)

I HAVE JUST RETURNED from an area in which there is to be found conclusive proof that the Flood actually occurred, but it was not the Flood as the Bible describes it; it was something bigger more cataclysmic. Three conclusions that I have reached as a result of my discoveries are (i) That at some remote time a great land area stretching eastward from Central America sank and was engulfed by the sea; (2) during this gigantic “geological readjustment a portion of what had been sea-bed was heaved upward to become land-even uplands*— within the area we now know as Central America; (3) a great and cultured race of people was destroyed by this unparalleled catastrophe. The vestiges of this luxurious civilisation which flourished in pomp and circumstance “before the Flood” are to be found on the Bay Islands, off the coast of Honduras. Excavations in twenty-one new sites on flve islands prove that here lived the earliest cultured man of whom there is any record. 1 am convinced that here lay the True Cradle of Civilisation. The geological evidence is indisputable. Upon the islands, and again upon the mainlands, appear cliffs riven and split by the incalculable forces of an epic upheaval. Inland 40 miles distant from the island as the crow flies, there is a fresh-water lake in which sharks and tarpon, both salt-water fish, live and breed. In that distant day of chaos the sharks had become inland captives and presumably had “adjusted themselves” during the ages in w-hich the lake lost its salt quality. There came to us one day a dugout manned by two natives, who told us of a strange place of cliffs upon the little island of Helene. When our 22-ton boat Amigo had negotiated a perilous coral barrier we found a wonderful bay running deep into this island. Ancient lava flows, black and sinister, ended in the sea. Through the translucent water we could see that they continued beneath

the water exactly as on land. A white-hot lava flow cannot strike water and continue beneath it retaining the same formation as when it cools upon land. The sea could not have been there &t the time of that eruption. Upon the little island of Bonaca we found the site of what was once a great religioua centre, or city. The reward of cutting through the Jungle was the uncovering of the oldest specimens of cultured man’s handicraft yet discovered upon this earth. In the mighty cliffs of Helene we came upon a tunnel-like aperture. Hot, fetid air greeted us. This, we found by digging in the rubble and earth floor, had been long occupied by prehistoric man of the Stone Age. We found many traces of an ancient civilisation —not of a crude, ignorant, savage race* They indicated a • High Btate of Culture. There were large fragments of what had once been a beautiful vase, exquisitely painted; curious stone carvings, unknown to science; perfectly modelled pottery figurines in the forms of grotesque animals. The highest rounded hill of Helene proved to be the site of a city or town. Here we found some most curious specimens of pottery. One was in the form of an animal about three inches long with four holes in the body, and at the top another hole. I blew experimentally through the top hole and a clear, sweet note sounded. By moving fingers over the other holes, a tune could be played. We found 11 of these instruments. Here was a veritable orchestra, since different sizes were made for different sets of tones. Ignorance could not evolve instruments with such a range of harmony and tone. The ancient race which left these behind were a musically-cultured people. It was an eerie experience to sit aboard the Amigo, and experiment with these musical instruments which had been unplayed for perhaps 25,000 years.