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Underworld: The Mysterious Origins of Civilization Paperback – October 28, 2003
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Graham Hancock is featured in Ancient Apocalypse, a Netflix original docuseries
In this explosive new work of archaeological detection, bestselling author and renowned explorer Graham Hancock embarks on a captivating underwater voyage to find the ruins of a mythical lost civilization hidden for thousands of years beneath the world’s oceans. Guided by cutting-edge science, innovative computer-mapping techniques, and the latest archaeological scholarship, Hancock examines the mystery at the end of the last Ice Age and delivers astonishing revelations that challenge our long-held views about the existence of a sunken universe built on the ocean floor.
Filled with exhilarating accounts of his own participation in dives off the coast of Japan, as well as in the Mediterranean, the Atlantic, and the Arabian Sea, we watch as Hancock discovers underwater ruins exactly where the ancient myths say they should be—submerged kingdoms that archaeologists never thought existed. You will be captivated by Underworld, a provocative book that is both a compelling piece of hard evidence for a fascinating forgotten episode in human history and a completely new explanation for the origins of civilization as we know it.
- Print length784 pages
- LanguageEnglish
- PublisherCrown
- Publication dateOctober 28, 2003
- Dimensions6.13 x 1.62 x 9.18 inches
- ISBN-101400049512
- ISBN-13978-1400049516
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Review
“Hancock wonderfully introduces the general reader to Indian and Japanese subcultures . . . an entertaining writer and an interesting cultural journalist.” -- Publishers Weekly
About the Author
Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.
I knew that I had to learn to dive and talked my wife Santha into doing lessons with me when we were on a visit to Los Angeles. We took our PADI Open-Water courses in the chill, kelpy waters off Catalina Island in November 1996.
My first reaction to diving was that it was a weird and scary experience, contrary to the laws of nature, and that I was unlikely to survive it. I was wrapped up like the Michelin Man in a full-body neoprene wetsuit, and there seemed to be a ludicrous amount of equipment strapped, velcroed or clipped on to me.
Let’s start at the feet. Here the diver wears short rubber boots tucked inside the ankle-cuffs of his wetsuit. The wetsuit works by taking in a thin layer of water between the skin and the suit; this is rapidly warmed to body temperature and remains warm for some time because the neoprene of the suit is an excellent insulator. Over the boots are strapped the diver’s fins, without which he would be almost as clumsy and immobile submerged as he is on land with all his gear on, and would unnecessarily waste a great deal of energy thrashing about. Strapped to his calf there should be a strong stainless-steel knife with a sharp blade–this can be life-saving if you get caught up in a drifting fishing net or some other equally uncompromising, usually man-made, hazard.
Around the diver’s waist is a belt through which are threaded a number of lead weights to compensate for the natural buoyancy of the body and the additional buoyancy of the wetsuit. These days I can often get away with 2 kilos, but inexperienced divers need a lot more. On my first dives back in 1996 and into the first half of 1997, I remember having to use 12 and in one case even 14 kilos–a horrendous load.
Moving on up the body, the next item of equipment the diver wears is a partially inflatable sleeveless jacket called a Buoyancy Control Device–‘BCD’, or just ‘BC’ for short. The scuba tank which provides the diver with air to breathe underwater is strapped on to the back of the BC and typically comes in 10, 12 and 15 litre sizes. A mid-sized tank weighs more than 15 kilos and for most dives is filled with nothing other than normal air under enormous compression. This is delivered to the diver through two transformers which step down the pressure of the air to a level where it can be breathed easily. The ‘first-stage’ is mounted immediately on top of the tank and removes most of the pressure, from here a rubber hose leads to the ‘second-stage’, or ‘regulator’, which is placed in the diver’s mouth and provides air on demand. Three other rubber hoses also emerge from the first-stage. One of these connects to the BC, allowing the diver to power-inflate it direct from the tank. One leads to a dangling instrument-console usually containing a compass and gauges that tell you how much air you have left and how deep you are. The last, called the ‘octopus’, is a spare second-stage for use in emergencies–for example to provide air to another diver whose own tank is empty.
Sometimes divers wear a rubber hood, since heat loss from the unprotected head is very rapid. A glass-fronted mask, without which the human eye can only perceive blurred images under water, covers the eyes and nose. The final major pieces of equipment are a small wrist computer, which can save your life by warning you if you are ascending too fast from depth, and a pair of gloves to keep your hands warm and prevent grazing or accidental contact with unpleasant marine organisms like fire coral.
Wrapped up in all this stuff, with our total scuba experience at that time amounting to just three half-hour swimming-pool dives each, Santha and I contemplated the waters of the Pacific with certain misgivings. To be honest, we were afraid. It looked deep and dark and dangerous down there, down amongst the waving streamers of kelp, down in Davy Jones’ Locker … But if we wanted to see that incredible underwater structure in Japan for ourselves then we were going to have to do this. On our instructor’s command we jumped in and paddled out from shore.
Four days later we were licensed but definitely not yet experienced enough to dive at Yonaguni.
A generous offer
I did not know when we would be able to organize a diving trip to Japan but knew only that it would be expensive. Then a strange synchronicity occurred. Out of the blue some time in January 1997 I received a fax from an American company representing a Japanese businessman. The fax said that the business man had read Fingerprints of the Gods and would like to invite Santha and me to fly first-class to Yonaguni at his expense to explore the island and to dive at the monument. He would ensure our safety by sending a group of top-flight diving instructors with us from the Seamen’s Club, a hotel and dive school on the neighbouring island of Ishigaki. He would also provide us with a fully equipped dive boat and all other facilities.
There were no strings attached to this generous offer, which we accepted. In March 1997 we flew from London to Tokyo and then via Okinawa to Yonaguni to do our first dives there. This was the beginning of a long-term friendship with the businessman (whose privacy I protect) and of what began as an informal project to explore, document and try to understand the sequence of ancient and highly anomalous structures that have been found underwater at Yonaguni and at other islands in south-west Japan.
Yonaguni
The first anomalous structure that was discovered at Yonaguni lies below glowering cliffs of the southern shore of the island. Local divers call it Iseki Point (‘Monument Point’). Into its south face, at a depth of about 18 metres, an area of terracing with conspicuous flat planes and right-angles has been cut. Two huge parallel blocks weighing approximately 30 tonnes each and separated by a gap of less than 10 centimetres, have been placed upright side by side at its north-west corner. In about 5 metres of water at the very top of the structure there is a kidney-shaped ‘pool’ and near by is a feature that many divers believe is a crude rock-carved image of a turtle. At the base of the monument, in 27 metres of water, there is a clearly defined stone-paved path oriented towards the east.
If the diver follows this path–a relatively easy task, since there is often a strong west-to-east current here–he will come in a few hundred metres to ‘the megalith’, a rounded, 2 tonne boulder that seems to have been purposely placed on a carved ledge at the centre of a huge stone platform.
Two kilometres west of Iseki Point is the ‘Palace’. Here an underwater passageway leads into the northern end of a spacious chamber with megalithic walls and ceiling. At the southern end of the chamber a tall, lintelled doorway leads into a second smaller chamber beyond. At the end of that chamber is a vertical, rock-hewn shaft that emerges outside on the roof of the ‘Palace’. Near by a flat rock bears a pattern of strange, deep grooves. A little further east there is a second megalithic passage roofed by a gigantic slab that fits snugly against the tops of the supporting walls.
Two kilometres to the east of Iseki Point is Tategami Iwa, literally ‘The Standing God Stone’, a natural pinnacle of rugged black rock that soars up out of the ocean. At its base, 18 metres underwater, there is a horizontal tunnel, barely wide enough to fit a diver, that runs perfectly straight west to east and emerges amidst a scatter of large blocks with clean-cut edges.
A three-minute swim to the south-east brings the diver to what looks like an extensive ceremonial complex carved out of stone. Here at depths of 15 to 25 metres there are massive rectilinear structures with sheer walls separated by wide avenues.
At the centre is the monument that local divers refer to as ‘the stone stage’. Into its south-facing corner either man or nature has carved an image that looks to some like a gigantic anthropoid face with two clearly marked eyes . . .
Product details
- Publisher : Crown; First Edition (October 28, 2003)
- Language : English
- Paperback : 784 pages
- ISBN-10 : 1400049512
- ISBN-13 : 978-1400049516
- Item Weight : 2.24 pounds
- Dimensions : 6.13 x 1.62 x 9.18 inches
- Best Sellers Rank: #215,817 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #35 in Prehistory
- #230 in Archaeology (Books)
- #446 in History of Civilization & Culture
- Customer Reviews:
About the author
I am the author of Magicians of the Gods, published on 10 September 2015, and of the major international bestsellers The Sign and the Seal, Fingerprints of the Gods, Heaven's Mirror, Underworld, and Supernatural.
I share below the story of the journey that led me to these books
In the early 1980's, when I was East Africa correspondent of The Economist, writing about wars, politics, economics and aid programmes, I had no idea where fate was going to lead me or what strange seas of thought I would find myself sailing on. But in 1983 I made my first visit to Axum in northern Ethiopia, then in the midst of a war zone, and found myself in the presence of an ancient monk outside a little chapel in the grounds of the cathedral of Saint Mary of Zion. The monk told me that the chapel was the sanctuary of the Ark of the Covenant and that he was the guardian of the Ark, the most sacred relic of the Bible, supposedly lost since Old Testament times. What he said seemed ludicrous but for some reason it intrigued me. I began to look into the Ethiopian claim and found much surprising and neglected evidence that supported it, not least the faint traces of a mission to Ethiopia undertaken by the Knights Templar in the twelfth century. I kept adding to that dossier of evidence while also continuing to pursue my current affairs interests (including Lords of Poverty, my controversial book about foreign aid, published in 1989), and finally, in 1992, I published The Sign and the Seal: A Quest for the Lost Ark of the Covenant, my first full-fledged investigation of a historical mystery.
As well as to Ethiopia and to Israel, my research for The Sign and the Seal had taken me to Egypt and opened my eyes to the incredible enigma of the Great Pyramid of Giza, while the "technological" aspects of the Ark (shooting out bolts of fire, striking people dead, etc) had alerted me to the existence of out of place technologies in antiquity. The stage was now set for my next project - a worldwide investigation into the possibility of a lost, prehistoric civilisation that resulted, in 1995, in the publication of Fingerprints of the Gods, undoubtedly my best known book. Keeper of Genesis (co-authored with Robert Bauval) followed in 1996, looking specifically into the mysteries of the Great Sphinx of Giza, and then in 1998 Heaven's Mirror, photographed by my wife Santha Faiia, which shows why many ancient sites in all parts of the globe replicate the patterns of constellations on the ground and are aligned to important celestial events such as the rising points of the sun on the equinoxes and the solstices. In 2002, I published Underworld, the result of five years of scuba diving across all the world's oceans to find ancient ruins submerged by rising sea levels at the end of the Ice Age.
After Underworld, I decided to step away from lost civilisation mysteries for a while and my next non-fiction book, Supernatural: Meetings with the Ancient Teachers of Mankind, published in 2005, focussed on shamanism, altered states of consciousness and the astonishing universal themes that appear in rock and cave art from deepest antiquity right through to the paintings done by shamans in the Amazon rainforest today.
From my years as a journalist I've always distrusted armchair theorising and believed I have a responsibility to seek out direct personal, "boots on the ground" experience of what I'm writing about. That was why I did five years of often difficult and dangerous scuba diving for Underworld. And it's also why, as part of my research for Supernatural I travelled to the Amazon to drink the visionary brew Ayahuasca with shamans there. As well as better equipping me to write Supernatural, my experiences in the Amazon changed my life and brought out a new side of my own creativity. I've continued working with Ayahuasca ever since and in 2006, during a series of sessions in Brazil, in a ceremonial space overlooked by images of a blue goddess, my visions gave me the basic characters, dilemmas and plot of the book that would become my first novel, Entangled, published in 2010. Entangled tells the story of two young women, one living 24,000 years ago in the Stone Age, and the other in modern Los Angeles, who are brought together by a supernatural being to do battle with a demon who travels through time.
Since the publication of Entangled I have also written the first two volumes of a series of three epic novels about the Spanish conquest of Mexico - the War God trilogy. The first volume, War God: Nights of the Witch, was published in 2013, and the second volume, War God: Return of the Plumed Serpent, was published in 2014. The third volume, War God: Apocalypse, is already more than half written and will be completed in 2016 and in the meantime my new non-fiction book, Magicians of the Gods, was published on 10 September 2015. Magicians is the sequel to Fingerprints of the Gods, and presents all the new evidence that has emerged since 1995 for a great lost civilisation of prehistoric antiquity and for the global cataclysm that destroyed that civilisation almost 13,000 years ago - a cataclysm on such a scale that it forced mankind, as Plato put it, "to begin again like children with no memory of what went before."
My ideas on prehistory and on the mysterious nature of reality have made me something of a controversial figure. In 1999, for example BBC Horizon made a documentary ("Atlantis Reborn") attacking my position on the lost civilisation. But part of that documentary was found by the UK's Broadcasting Standards Commission to be unfair - the first time ever that the flagship Horizon series had been judged guilty of unfairness. The BBC took the problem seriously enough to put out a revised re-edited version of the programme a year later. More recently, in 2013, my TED talk "The War on Consciousness" was deleted from the TED Youtube channel on grounds that TED itself later admitted to be spurious by striking out every one of the objections it had originally raised to my talk. TED, however, refused to restore the talk to its Youtube channel resulting in dozens of pirate uploads all over the internet that have now registered well over a million views.
I make mistakes like everyone else, but ever since my time with The Economist I've felt it is important to strive for rigour and accuracy, to check facts, to set out my sources clearly and openly for all to see and to admit my mistakes when I make them. As I continue to explore extraordinary ideas in my works of non-fiction, and in my novels, I'll also continue to do that.
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I recently decided to give it another try, this time during my morning walks listening on Audible instead of reading. It was a completely different experience, and I enjoyed the audio book so much I was disappointed when it came to an end (the sign of a great read).
Graham's premise has always been that the advancement of civilization was not a continuous linear incremental advancement to modern culture. He believes, quite convincingly, that the cycle of advancement of civilization is more cyclical, consisting of alternating advances and declines. He believes, therefore, that there was a sophisticated civilization thousands of years ago unknown to us who were wiped out by a great cataclysm.
The implications of such a claim are huge of course, but academics are quick to ask, and rightly so, “where is the proof? Where are the potshards of this ancient civilization?”
Grahams answer in this book is – underwater. Its well known that after the last ice age massive amount of water were released as glaciers melted about 17 thousand years ago which caused sea levels to rise about 20 meters all around the world. If no one is looking for civilizations on these ancient, inundated sections of coastline, you will never find that proof.
As it turns out, only a handful of scientists (marine archeologists and geologists) are paying any attention to this potentially groundbreaking idea. So, Graham taught himself scuba diving, strapped on the tanks and began diving off the coasts all over the world where fishermen and other divers have for years reported seeing strange underwater cities & temples.
His 20 year quest, carefully analyzed and documented as only Graham can do, is an incredible revelation. Though he is a journalist and not a scientist, his rigorous efforts to ask difficult questions and dig (or dive) for the evidence are impressive. It’s truly mind blowing to realize that conventional science & academia has completely missed proof of Paleolithic civilizations all over the world simply because no one bothered to do the difficult and expensive work of underwater archeology. In a nutshell: you’ll never find what you don’t look for.
Though this book can be difficult to get through at times because of the 1200 pages, the long and unpronounceable names and the detailing of myriad flood myths that underscore his belief, it’s a very worthwhile read and the unabridged audible version is well worth looking into.
Top reviews from other countries
Much info about India and its ancient history & places as well as other fabulous places. Makes me easily imagine what it’s like to be right there - wish I was. At least we have Graham to tell us about exploring the world & ancient places & traces.
He opens up about personal history and his experiences in his expeditions, clearly states his theories as such, and collects facts for the reader to examine and make up his or her own mind.
This book is about diving around the world, finding hindrance and help with locals and authorities. And it clarifies how the mainstream has worked up their minds to not allow what threatens careers/the status quo.
If you want to know what goes missing in museums and is omitted in scientific journals, this is a book for you- and without any far out nonsense- you get facts.
He de decir, que a diferencia de otros autores y de las teorías que postulan, lo que el Sr. Hancock explica es pausible y que en este libro, lo presenta de manera concienzuda ( y aportando datos, lo que es de agradecer). Puede que haya partes que sean más farragosas ( la parte "técnica" de los templos megalíticos de Malta) y otras menos explicadas ( el apartado sobre los mapas medievales), pero en conjunto, pese a que se pueda estar de acuerdo o no con lo que defiende, es cierto que no se puede negar que lo defiende de manera racional y además, de forma muy amena ( las ilustraciones y las fotos submarinas son muy de agradecer para un lego en la materia). Recomiendo este libro a cualquier persona interesada en historia y en la arqueología submarina.
Reviewed in Spain on May 15, 2019
He de decir, que a diferencia de otros autores y de las teorías que postulan, lo que el Sr. Hancock explica es pausible y que en este libro, lo presenta de manera concienzuda ( y aportando datos, lo que es de agradecer). Puede que haya partes que sean más farragosas ( la parte "técnica" de los templos megalíticos de Malta) y otras menos explicadas ( el apartado sobre los mapas medievales), pero en conjunto, pese a que se pueda estar de acuerdo o no con lo que defiende, es cierto que no se puede negar que lo defiende de manera racional y además, de forma muy amena ( las ilustraciones y las fotos submarinas son muy de agradecer para un lego en la materia). Recomiendo este libro a cualquier persona interesada en historia y en la arqueología submarina.
Hancock followed Fingerprints of the Gods with Underworld, employing the same marriage of science and the self evident to wonder what lies under the world's coastlines. Its indisputable that sea levels have risen x hundred feet since the end of the last ice age some 10,000 years ago. Yet there seems to be no real effort to develop an understanding of what civilizations existed before this time and the contributions made. Clearly, from the mythological to the geological to the architectural, there is evidence of a proto civilization in the archetype of human legends and collective memory. Sadly, there also appears to be an amnesia masking this wellspring.
Building on the recent finds throughout the world, predicted in Fingerprints of the Gods, Hancock fits yet another puzzle piece into the enigma of civilization- its appearing simultaneously throughout the world with alphabet, language, agriculture, medicine, science, astronomy, architecture, and highly evolved cosmologies. Hancock, like the authors of Hamlet's Mill, weave these narratives into the 'facts on the ground' (or in this case, under water).
Hancock's premise requires:
proof of an ancient proto civilization- done.
proof of a specific period and cataclysm- done.
Connecting the disparate links into a plausible, verifiable theory- done!
Now if science would stop spending its energies shoring up the redoubts of their pet civilization framework, they could explore previously unconsidered aspects. Note: The current framework is based on a linear Darwinian evolution of both Man and civilization. It basically posits that Man became civilized roughly 5-7,000 years ago. The efforts to reinforce this framework, I believe, is based on the false logic that granting civilization is older effectively destroys Darwinism or otherwise empowers creationism. Both elements would hardly be the case.
See Graham Hanock's latest work, Magicians of the Gods, where the aspect of who this proto civilization was is developed further. Charles Hapgood would have been proud.