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The Magic of Lost Cities
By Scott Corrales
"When
will we discover Wasukanni, capital of the Mitanni empire? When will we
excavate Kussara, the erstwhile seat of Anittas, first king of the
Hittites? Who is going to discover the city of Nessa, entombed in the
soil of eastern Anatolia, or identify the location of Arzawa?"
--- Ivar Lissner, "The Living Past" (1962)
The
notion of lost cities is very appealing to the Western mind. It
conjures up images of ancient ruins covered in lianas and jungle
vegetation, concealing treasures forgotten by man or sometimes the
opposite--fully functioning cultures of either warlike or benign people
voluntarily or accidentally cut off from the flow of our civilization,
representing a source of danger and opportunity to the adventurer or the
explorer. Of course, lost cities in real life have more in common with
archaeological finds like Angor Wat, Ebla, or forgotten Troy itself than
with the ones that will occupy us here.
As distances shrank
during the 19th century and intrepid explorers pushed back the frontiers
of the unknown, the lost city and its treasures had to be moved farther
still. Authors of fiction, such as Jules Verne, chose to keep his plots
safe by relocating his lost cities beneath the Earth's surface in his
classic Journey to the Center of the Earth (1864). His British
contemporary, H.Rider Haggard, sent his memorable protagonist Allan
Quartermain into the heart of unexplored Africa to find King Solomon's
Mines (1885). Both of these novelistic endeavors were probably inspired
to a certain extent by the writings of hollow-earth enthusiast John
Cleves Symmes, whose Symzonia (1820) described a highly advanced
technological society beneath the ice and snow of the Antarctic.
But
while science fact and science fiction each endeavored to give us
different kinds of lost city (the former less glamorous than the
latter), the esoteric tradition and cryptoarchaeology held their own
variety of forbidden kingdoms, accessible only to initiates or to those
unlucky enough to come across them.
The Quest for Iarchas
Apollonius
of Tyana was a philosopher and mathematician who lived in the year 17
of the Common Era. and a keen follower of the Pythagorean tradition. A
contemporary of Jesus, the Cappadocian philosopher was also considered
to have been divine and endowed with supernatural powers. Temples were
built throughout the Roman Empire after his death or disappearance and
even coins bearing Apollonius' image were minted by some ancient cities
of the Mediterranean.
This intriguing character is perhaps most
famous for his wanderings throughout the Mediterranean countries,
Ethiopia, Assyria and India. He returned to the Roman Empire after his
travels and displayed some of his paranormal abilities, particularly
after settling in Ephesus (in modern Turkey) to open his school. The
city was being then being ravaged by the plague,and the Pythagorean
philosopher commanded that a certain beggar be stoned to death, as it
was really a devil in human guise. The beggar, tradition tells us, was
literally covered by a mound of stones thrown by the angry Ephesians.
When efforts were made to drag the beggar's corpse from under the rocks,
nothing at all was found, and the plague ended immediately.
But
it was Apollonius of Tyana's quest for the "City of the Gods" during his
travels through the Himalayas that are of interest to us. In the
company of his apprentice, Damis, he reached the mysterious city of
Iarchas. Historians have tried to identify it with one of the many Greek
cities founded in the Punjab by Alexander the Great, but without any
avail. The philosopher himself has this to say about it: "I have seen
men who are living on Earth but are not of this Earth, defended
everywhere yet defenseless, and having nothing beyond what we ourselves
possess."
The story tells us that as Apollonius and Damis
approached their destination, strange things occured. The road behind
them appeared to vanish and the landscape around them became surreal.
They were led to the ruler of the city (in certain versions also
identified as Iarchas) and told that they had reached the realm "of men
who knew everything" and were shown a variety of wonders, such as a
working model of the solar system built under the sapphire dome of a
temple, as well as impressive feats of levitation. Master and apprentice
were invited to dine with Iarchas' eponymous ruler, and were served by
four automatons; night was made as bright as day through the use of
"luminous stones" and Apollonius was surprised by what he described as
"living wheels" which transported messages from the gods. Being a
geometrist, it is understandable that this most remarkable personage was
fascinated by the fact that Iarchas was "on Earth, yet at the same
time, outside it."
Chroniclers tell us that Apolonius acquired
considerable powers after his sojourn in the "City of the Gods", most
notable among them the ability to "draw fire from the ether" and the
gift of teleportation, which he used successfuly when brought before the
Emperor Domitian under charges of sorcery. Present at the trial were
witnesses to his "miracles" under the reign of Nero, and who were
willing to testify to his powers. The philosopher reportedly looked at
the emperor and said: "You may hold my body captive by not my spirit,
and let me add, not even my body!" with which he disappeared in a
brilliant flash of light, made all the brighter by the fact that the
paranoid Domitian had ordered the walls of his palace polished to mirror
brightness to foil any assasination attempts.
Curiously, all
sources agree about one thing: on the 16th of September of the year 96
C.E., while Apollonius lectured in the gardens of Ephesus, he suddenly
fell silent and his face became clouded with unspeakable anger,
exclaiming: "Strike the tyrant! strike him!" Regaining his composure, he
turned to the puzzled assembly and said, "Be of good cheer, people of
Ephesus. The tyrant has been murdered this very day in Rome."
The
life of this remarkable character has been interpreted in various ways:
to the Theosophists, particularly George R. Stow, who wrote a biography
of Apollonius, he is an "ascended master" and one of the many guises of
the ubiquitous Count of St. Germain; Jacques Bergier posited that
Apollonius had been in contact with extraterrestrials; still others
believe that this first century thaumaturge was an extraordinary human
who visited a strange repository of hidden wisdom, possibly located in
another dimension within our own world.
The Forgotten Capital of Hsiung-Nu
While
mysterious Iarchas may indeed have existed "beyond the circles of the
world" (to borrow that evocative phrase from J.R.R. Tolkien), one could
venture the guess that many would-be adepts have lost their lives
searching for it. Yet there are other lost cities in Central Asia which
are endowed with an equally potent aura of mystery.
Central Asia,
stretching from the Tarim Basin to the enigmatic Gobi Desert, is
considered by many--notably historians Roy Chapman Andrews and Henry
Fairfield Osborne--as the original birthplace of mankind. During his
exploration of this region of mystery, Andrews found prehistoric remains
of trees, foliage, and freshwater crustaceans, indicating that the area
was once rich in water and vegetation. A six foot, six inch tall human
skeleton was also unearthed and identified as "proto-Mongolian".
Until
not very long ago, schoolchildren studying early European history were
told that Attila and his Huns, whose activities contributed greatly to
destroying the Roman world, were known to the Chinese as the western,
northern and southern Hsiung-Nu; the Avars, another eastern horde that
spread terror throughout the Middle Ages, were likewise identified with
the Juan-Juan. But it may have turned out that our instructors were
wrong, after all.
Controversial author Peter Kolosimo, who can
rightfully lay claim to being the "Italian Von Daniken", caused a stir
among cryptoarchaeology buffs and academics alike with his book Timeless
Earth (1968). The Hsiung-Nu, this author tells us, were not only not
the bow-legged, horse-riding Huns, but rather a sophisticated,
star-worshipping culture whose capital city was nestled in the desolate
reaches of the Tarim Basin (not far from the modern Chinese nuclear test
range at Lop Nor). Of Middle Eastern rather than Asiatic origin, this
mysterious civilization appeared to share some kinship with the Mitanni
or other Mesopotamian cultures. Most history texts have few words to
spare on this forgotten race. One of them succinctly states: "according
to some researchers, the Huns were descended from the Hsiung-Nu, a
Siberian peoples who had settled between Lake Balkhash and Mongolia in
the 4th century B.C.E." Maps show the extension of this realm as going
as far as the Korean border, although the same map shows the "residence
of the Hsiung-Nu chief" as being on the banks of the Ongin River in
Mongolia. In 209 B.C.E., Mao-tun became Emperor of the Hsiung-Nu and
forced China to pay tribute to his kingdom.
According to Kolosimo,
Father Duparc, a French explorer, reached the ruins of the Hsiung-Nu
"capital" in 1725, finding a succession of monoliths which had
apparently been part of a place of worship. Other discoveries included a
three-tiered pyramid and a royal palace "with thrones surmounted by
images of the sun and moon". Successive expeditions found jewels,
weapons and accoutrements, but none of Duparc's findings, as the ruins
had apparently been covered by sandstorms. A Soviet team reached the
area in 1952 and reportedly found the tip of a monolith resembling
structures found in Africa's mysterious Zimbabwe. The author goes on to
say that Tibetan monks befriended the Soviet scientists and showed them
documentation describing the past glory of the nameless Hsiung-Nu city.
Kolosimo tells us that a "fiery cataclysm" was apparently to blame for
the loss of this highly advanced civilization and the descent into
barbarism of its survivors.
Even more tantalizing are the
indications that this lost city may have been the source of the
paranormal/psychic abilities that Tibetan monks are endowed with, such
as thought-transmission and the ability to "communicate with other
planets".
But the association between the historic Hsiung-Nu and
these more mysterious namesakes indicate that the denomination must be
largely coincidental. The highly advanced inhabitants of the ruined city
of the Tarim Basin probably had more in common with the mysterious
mummified bodies of visibly caucasoid ancients discovered in 1997 and
tentatively identified with the "Tocharians" of the ancient chronicles.
Perhaps the intense search for oil presently underway in the Takla Makan
desert may unearth some clues as to this truly forgotten civilization
and its city: one potential opportunity lies in the use of space-based,
remote sensing devices such as the SIR-CX-SAR deployed on the space
shuttle Discover in 1994 to reveal manmade structures along the Silk
Road in the Takla Makan desert. This amazing radar system can find
objects buried up to under 3 meters in the sand. Similar advances were
employed to find the lost city of Ubar in the Hadramaut (Yemen/Oman).
A Citadel for Prester John?
The same game of historical "maybe/maybe not" that affects the Hsiung-Nu city in the desert applies to Prester John.
Documented
sources throughout the middle ages inform us of the repeated visits to
the Pope and other European monarchs of envoys claiming to be from the
"kingdom of Prester John", bearing gifts and messages from this mighty
ruler.
Around 1165 C.E., a letter was recieved at the court of the
Byzantine Emperor, Manuel Comnenus, from a distant prince known only as
Prester John, who claimed to recieve "the tribute of 72 kings" and was
"a devout Christian and everywhere proect the Christians of Our empire."
In the war-torn Crusader era, with the christian kingdoms of the levant
slowly being pushed into the sea by the Muslim tide, news of a powerful
ally was welcome indeed. Attempts at placing the location of his
kingdom were many: some placed Prester John beyond India; others in the
Caucasus; the mapmakers who placed a figure of a scepter-wielding
monarch in what is modern Ethiopia won out, and the "kingdom of Prester
John" became a magical realm straight out of the chansons de geste of
the period, high in the mountains at the birthplace of the Nile.
After
the travels of Marco Polo proved beyond a doubt that the only powerful
monarch beyond India was the Great Khan, efforts at finding Prester John
in Africa began in earnest. In 1520, the Portuguese sent a delegation
to Ethiopia in the hope of forming an allegiance with this immortal
prince against Arab merchants who proved a hindrance to the Portuguese
spice trade. Instead, they ran into the King of Ethiopia, who had never
heard of Prester John.
However, while the "Prester John" craze may
have been a medieval hoax, every hoax has a germ of truth to it. Could
there have been a Coptic or Nestorian bishop named John who ruled a
small kingdom, inflated beyond belief to frighten his enemies or merely
to salve his insecurities?
This line of speculation might be
reinforced somewhat by an article in World Explorer Magazine (Vol.1
No.4) entitled "The Mysterious Egyptian Castle-Fortress" and penned by
J.J. Snyder. The author alleges that while flying a large cropduster
plane to the Sudan from Aswan in Egypt he flew over a "black,
fortress-like castle" which surmounted a small hill, and had "twin
battlements facing southward" in the most desolate region of the Nubian
Desert, on the Egyptian/Sudanese border. While none of his fellow
crop-dusting pilots could confirm the sighting, Snyder felt the
structure "was vacant...and could have been deserted for hundreds of
years or longer."
A trick of the landscape? Maybe. But what if
Prester John had been less of a king and more a cult figure like the
"Old Man of the Mountain" who ruled the Order of Assassins? Could the
black castle seen by Snyder have been the "lost" citadel of this
medieval ruler? Unlikely, but an enchanting possibility.
Lost Cities--Physical and Metaphysical
When
we sever ties with history and even with folklore, we drift along the
powerful currents of speculation that draw us closer to mysticism. This
is best exemplified by the beliefs espoused by a number of South
American (predominantly Argentinean) writers such as Guillermo Terrera,
who have come up with an entire cosmology of lost cities and hidden
human history.
Terrera makes clear distinctions between real lost
cities and the purely metaphysical ones (subterranean and presumably
metaphysical ones), yet making the latter no less "real" than the cities
of the Mayas, Incas or Aztecs. The metaphysical cities would include
Thule, Agarthi, and Shamballah. Central to this cosmology is the magical
mountain of Uritorco, a place of new age pilgrimage. "The link between
the knowledge of the Comechingones and their ancestral beliefs,"
indicates Terrera, "was proven decades ago when the legendary Staff of
Power or Stone of Wisdom was found in the vicinity of the Uritorco by
Master Ofelio Ulises in 1934, shortly after returning from the Tibetan
city of Shamballah (sic) where he studied for eight years. It was
precisely in this city that he was shown the location of the basalt rod
whose construction had been ordered by the chieftain Multán eight
thousand years ago."
Understandably, Terrera's statements are hard
to digest, but he is hardly alone in his cavilations. French author
René Guénón posited the belief that geography does not take into
consideration the folds or "wrinkles" which can and do occur on the
surface of the world. Dubbing these irregularities as dwipas (a word of
Hindu origin), seven of which are accessible to the initiates. These are
worlds much like our own, holding oceans and continents. At least one
of these is inhabited and holds the city of the "King of the World", a
place where sacred traditions are upheld and where initiates go to be
tested. Guénón states that secret societies on our world are sworn to
protect the knowledge of how to reach this place--to the death, if
necessary--from mere mortals.
There are still indications that
South America may contain disturbingly "real" cities: A very curious
event took place in the late 1960's while Louis Pauwels was putting the
finishing touches on his classic La revolte des Magiciens: his
co-author, Jacques Bergier, had received a puzzling mineral sample from a
Brazilian mining and metallurgy firm called Magnesita S.A., which
looked for magnesium derivatives for use in diverse metallurgical
processes. The company's manager, Miguel Cahen, had sent Bergier a
sample of a strange crystal found on the borders of the mysterious
region of inner Brazil known as the "forbidden land". Under analysis,
the shard proved to be a fragment of magnesium carbonate of uncommon
transparency and purity, "with very curious properties on the infrared
spectrum, emitting polarized radiation," Pawels adds. Since the crystal
did not match anything in the mineralogy texts, Bergier turned to a
French government agency which ruled the crystal's origin as artificial.
No further tests were possible since no other samples of the material
could be located.
The "forbidden land" where this mineral oddity
was found is none other than the region which lies between Brazil's
Amazon, Tapajós and Xingú rivers, the source of so many rumors and
contradictions.
The City of the Caesars
With a name like la
Ciudad de los Césares (city of the Caesars), this lost city should
surely conjure up visions of ancient Rome. But it in fact refers to a
lost city of Patagonia which has been the subject of numerous quests
over the centuries. Tradition holds that this astonishing city was
located at edge of an Andean lake and that its towers and spires
reflected lights of gold and silver, if not the materials themselves.
Contemporary folklore indicates that the city becomes visible only on
Good Friday and then disappears -- a South American Brigadoon.
But
it wasn't Brigadoon that the 16th-century conquistadores were looking
for as they set out on horseback in search of this hidden kingdom.
Stories of the El Dorado-like wealth of this mountain city were common
among the rustic tribes of the area, and the belief soon spread that
this magical city had such an abundance of precious metals that even the
most common tools were made of gold and silver. It was variously
referred to as "the enchanted city," "Trapalanda," and "Lin Lin" before
finally being known as la Ciudad de los Césares. Spanish chroniclers
believed that the city had been founded by nobles from the Inca's court,
fleeing from the depredations of Diego de Almagro, and defended by
fierce Araucanian warriors.
The city acquired its curious name not
from any ancient monarch but from the expedition of Francisco César in
1526, which hoped to conquer the tantalizing prize and return its wealth
to Spain: setting out from a fort at Sancti Spriritus, his band of
soldiers penetrated the Andean range and found tribes with great wealth
in gold, silver and cattle, which the bold explorer brought back to his
fort, only to find it destroyed.
In 1620, Captain Juan Fernández
(whose name still survives as that of an archipelago off the Chilean
coast) approached the supposed location of la Ciudad de los Césares from
the island of Chiloé, crossing the tortuous glaciers of
three-thousand-foot Mt. Tronador, until reaching lake Nahuel Huapi.
Despite indications that this was the Andean lake on whose shores the
fabulous city existed, nothing was found. Seven years later, Fernández
led a 200-man expedition north of the location of modern-day Neuquén and
but failed to find reach his goal.
Descriptions of Ciudad de los
Césares were very detailed: "It had walls with moats, ravellins and a
single entrance guarded by a drawbridge...its buildings were sumptuous,
almost all of them of dressed stone and well-roofed, in the Spanish
style..Nothing could equal the opulence of its temples, covered in solid
silver. The same metal was employed in making pots, knives and even
plowshares..to have an idea of their wealth, the residents sat on golden
seats within their homes. They were fair, blond, blue-eyed and with
dense beards; their language was incomprehensible to the Spaniards and
the indians alike.
Well into the 18th century, the Captaincy
General of Chile ordered his chief auditor to compile nine volumes of
information on the "lost city" based on a proposal by Capt. Manuel Josef
de Orjuela in 1781 to launch an expedition aimed at subjugating Ciudad
de los Césares. Don Pedro de Angelis published a condensed version of
these findings in his Colección. In 1863, Martin de Moussy's Atlas
located the "fabulous ciudad de los Césares" as being in the general
vicinity of lake Nahuel Huapi.
Historian Enrique de Gandía
mentions in his Historia Crítica de la Conquista Americana (1929) other
efforts at finding this mythical city as well as two other
locations--the "Sierra de Plata" (Silver Mountains) and the reino del
Rey Blanco (realm of the White King)--a sort of Patagonian "Prester
John" whose allegiance was sought by the conquistadores. As late as the
1930's, the City of the Caesars was being sought in earnest by Francisco
P. Moreno, a student of Patagonian tribes.
Patagonia's Enigmatic Citadel
But
the ubiquitous Ciudad de los Césares is hardly the only anomalous
location that Argentina can contribute to the lore of lost cities.
For
a number of years, Grupo Delphos, spearheaded by Argentinean
scientist/researcher Ing. Flugberto Ramos, has paid special attention to
a curious geological feature on Argentina's Atlantic Coast which could
well prove to be the best documented discovery of a supposedly mythical
lost city.
The location appears on the maps as cerro El Fuerte
(Fort Hill) and dominates the approach to Golfo San Matías. Seen from a
distance, the perfectly sided plateau looks like an island rather than a
rocky outcropping. Some of the surface stones appear to have been
worked by stonemasons many centuries ago, and a curious vitrified
substance has been found covering curious drawings. Walls of
superimposed stone held together by some kind of whitish mortar have
also been discovered. Perhaps most important is the unexpected discovery
of a totemic figure inscribed with unusual carvings and, in Grupo
Delphos' opinion, "completely different from any object made in the
Americas."
Historians scoff at these suggestions and geologists state
that the only fort present is the plateau's distinctly military aspect.
Yet French maps of the area, dating as far back as 1779, label the
feature ancien fort abandonné (ancient ruined fort), and a British map
from 1849 does the same. Flugberto's team has further discovered clearly
artificial features such as pier and four docks.
In the light of
these findings, scholars are willing to concede the possibility that
pirates may have fortified the point in the past and used it as safe
haven. But even the safety of these conjectures fell by the wayside when
the group discovered a slab of dressed stone clearly marked with a
Templar cross!
This discovery prompted Flugberto to offer the
following working hypothesis: "In pre-Columbian times, some centuries
before and after 1000 A.D., a series of enclaves may have existed in
Patagonia which were established by some kind of Templar or
proto-Templar order, made up of fair-skinned indoeuropeans. There would
have been at least three cities--a fortified port on the Atlantic, and
another on the Pacific, both at the same latitude. The third would have
been in the Andean foothills, corresponding to the Ciudad de los
Césares."
The suggestion that the mountain city of silver and gold
described earlier in this article may be connected to the mystery
citadel spawns further speculation, much to the fury of academics. Could
these cities have been supplied from Europe by an order not linked to
the medieval Catholic church, but following its own precepts? The
members of Grupo Delphos have tentatively proposed the boldest concept
yet--the citadel, and indeed the elusive Ciudad de los Césares, were the
enclaves of an order entrusted with the keeping of the Holy Grail
[author's italics], which would have been removed after the Spanish
takeover of these distant lands.
Despite the outrageosness of this
notion, the reader is urged not to throw his/her hands up in despair:
an old French book about the Holy Grail, the Livre du Graal (edited by
Victoria Cirlot, Rama XI Eds. Paris), makes mention of a castle in a
"strange land overseas" whose dimensions, physical layout regarding the
local environment, and characteristics of the bay in which it is located
closely match those of the Patagonian citadel...
Conclusion
Archaeologists
raise their voices in protest against those who would purvey stories of
mysterious places while suggesting that their existence in any way,
shape or form contravenes what has already been determined by academe.
Any questionable ruin in the Central Asian desert becomes an abandoned
Buddhist temple; any curious feature in the Americas becomes a
geological anomaly; oral traditions regarding the existence of a given
locale are chalked up to mistranslation and misinterpretation. Other
cynics will say that dreamers are bound to fill in any empty space on
the map with ruined cities of past glory and lost kingdoms simply
because "something" must have thrived once in these barren areas.
Nevertheless,
millenia are like seconds in the inexorable procession of history. Who
can say what future generations will look back in time and think about
mythical cities that may be languishing in oblivion...cities with names
like London or New York.
Of
course, much of the technology required to accomplish NESD hasn’t been
developed yet. That will require innovations in neuroscience, synthetic
biology, low-power electronics, photonics and medical device packaging,
as well as advances in neuro-computation and neuron-communications.
DARPA expects to get all of that in four years out of a $60 million
budget from Presdient Obama’s BRAIN Initiative .
