Flex Mentallo

Since continents float on the sima much like icebergs float on water, a continent cannot simply "sink" under the ocean overnight.

Lost Continents Modern geological knowledge rules out "lost continents" of any significant size. According to the theory of plate tectonics, which has been extensively confirmed over the past 40 years, the Earth's crust consists of lighter "sial" rocks (continental crust rich in aluminium silicates) that float on heavier "sima" rocks (oceanic crust richer in magnesium silicates). The sial is generally absent in the ocean floor where the crust is a few kilometers thick, while the continents are huge solid blocks tens of kilometers thick.

Certainly this leaves room for charlatans to ply a lucrative trade in poorly researched publications that pander to our wish for a better story.

Perhaps this is because of a twin dissatisfaction with modern society coupled with a feeling that there is more to the human story than is contained in our philosophy.

The notion that a great civilisation flourished and died in a cataclysm before the dawn of recorded history is indeed a seductive one.

Fittingly, he now writes novels. His first novel, Entangled: The Eater of Souls, the first in a fantasy series, was published in the UK in April 2010 and in the US in October 2010. The novel makes use of Hancock's prior research interests and as he has noted, "What was there to lose, I asked myself, when my critics already described my factual books as fiction?"

BBC Two's Horizon TV series broadcast a programme, Atlantis Reborn, on 4 November 1999 that challenged the ideas presented by Hancock. It detailed one of Hancock's claims that the arrangement of an ancient temple complex was designed to mirror astronomical features and attempted to demonstrate that the same thing could be done with perhaps equal justification using famous landmarks in New York. It also alleged that Hancock had selectively moved or ignored the locations of some of the temples to fit his own theories. Although his books have sold more than five million copies worldwide and have been translated into twenty-seven languages, his methods and conclusions have found little support among academics, his work being labelled "pseudoarchaeology".

So, why do mainstream archaeologists reject his hypothesis of an Ice Age civilisation? Hancock and his supporters maintain that this is because of the hidebound nature of academic archaeology. This shows a failure to understand how academia works. Careers are made by overturning accepted hypotheses: the person who discovers a previously unknown civilisation would have their future career assured, but only if they are able to provide evidence that it actually existed. This would take the form of remains dating to the period that civilisation flourished. What does Hancock do? Faced with a complete lack of contemporary evidence for his “lost civilisation”, he claims that it can be detected through its influence on later cultures. In one or two cases, he tries to show that the accepted dates for monuments of known civilisations are wrong and that they are actually from the eleventh millennium BC. In these cases, his redating of the monuments has not been accepted by mainstream archaeologists.

Among Hancock’s many complaints about orthodox Egyptologists and archaeologists is that they have consistently underestimated the scientific knowledge of ancient societies. Paradoxically, though, this persuades him that this knowledge was developed not by those societies already recognised by the archaeologists, but by an earlier civilisation not accepted by them. He claims to find evidence for his so-called ‘lost civilisation’ all over the world.

His books include Lords of Poverty, The Sign and the Seal, Fingerprints of the Gods, Keeper of Genesis (released in the US as Message of the Sphinx), The Mars Mystery, Heaven's Mirror (with wife Santha Faiia), Underworld: The Mysterious Origins of Civilization, and Talisman: Sacred Cities, Secret Faith (with co-author Robert Bauval).In 1996 he appeared in The Mysterious Origins of Man. He also wrote and presented the documentaries Underworld: Flooded Kingdoms of the Ice Age (2002) and Quest for the Lost Civilisation (1998) shown on Channel 4. In Hancock's book Talisman: Sacred Cities, Secret Faith, co-authored with Robert Bauval, the two put forward "a version of the old Jewish-Masonic plot so beloved by ultra-right-wing conspiracy theorists." They suggest a connection between the pillars of Solomon's Temple and the Twin Towers, and between the Star of David and The Pentagon.

Ice Age Civilization British writer Graham Hancock claims that there were civilizations as far back as the Ice Age.

He further claimed that Tamils, "H. Dravidia" were the original humans from which all races evolved around 200,000 BC.

These ideas gained notability in Tamil academic literature over the first decades of the 20th century, and were popularized by Devaneya Pavanar, who held that all languages on earth were merely corrupted Tamil dialects.

In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, Tamil nationalists came to identify Kumari Kandam with Lemuria. In these accounts, Kumari Kandam became the "cradle of civilization", the origin of human languages in general and the Tamil language in particular.

According to Silappadhikaram, one of the Five Great Epics of Tamil Literature written in 2nd century AD, states that the "cruel sea" took the Pandiyan's land, part of which was present between the rivers Pahruli and the mountainous banks of the Kumari.

Kumari Kandam Kumari Kandam is the name of a legendary sunken continent mentioned in early Tamil literature and some Sanskrit literature.

Some Tamil writers such as Devaneya Pavanar have tried to associate Lemuria with Kumari Kandam, claiming that it was the cradle of civilization.

Within Blavatsky's complex cosmology, which includes seven "Root Races", Lemuria was occupied by the "Third Root Race", described as being about 7 feet tall, sexually hermaphroditic, egg-laying, mentally undeveloped and spiritually more pure than the following "Root Races". Before the coming of the Lemurians, the second "Root Race" is said to have dwelled in Hyperborea.

Lemuria entered the lexicon of the Occult through the works of Helena Blavatsky, who claimed to have been shown an ancient, pre-Atlantean Book of Dzyan by the Mahatmas.

Locating the origins of the human species on this lost continent, he claimed the fossil record could not be found because it sunk beneath the sea.

Ernst Haeckel, a German Darwinian taxonomist, proposed Lemuria as an explanation for the absence of "missing link" fossil records.

Lemuria is the name of a hypothetical "lost land" variously located in the Indian and Pacific Oceans.

Lemuria "The anomalies of the Mammal fauna of Madagascar can best be explained by supposing that ... a large continent occupied parts of the Atlantic and Indian Oceans ... that this continent was broken up into islands, of which some have become amalgamated with ... Africa, some ... with what is now Asia; and that in Madagascar and the Mascarene Islands we have existing relics of this great continent, for which ... I should propose the name Lemuria." "The Mammals of Madagascar" Philip Sclater 1864

Though he does not understand what he has seen, the curator is horribly shaken. He orders an opening of the mummy's braincase. The curator and all present are shocked that the mummy's brain is still alive. The mummy is the living remains of T'yog, and is aware of its surroundings.

Soon, several attempts are made to steal the mummy. During one attempt, two men die as the mummy seemingly springs to life, opens its eyes and reveals an image of the approaching form of Ghatanothoa. The image has the power of Ghatanothoa to mummify any who view it, but it only frightens the curator.