Irrefutable Proof: Mars Origin I Series Book II Read online

  The new book.

  Just the thought of it gave me pause. I still hadn’t finished it. All I cared about was that, thank you God, nowadays those manuscripts didn’t ravage my brain every second of the day like they used to.

  “Yeah. I’m still working on the final rewrite,” I said. “Do you think I should put it in?”

  “Duh. Everyone wants to know about Atlantis.”

  “Everyone like who?” I laughed. “Who even read my first book? Probably nobody.”

  I had written a book based on manuscripts that I discovered had been found with the Dead Sea Scrolls. The manuscripts contained a big revelation, but people catching wind of the book, and it catching fire, hadn’t happened. Probably me refusing to do any marketing for it hadn’t helped. I never checked on the sales for it. But I knew they couldn’t be good. Still, just like Mase, my publisher kept questioning me about finishing the sequel. I’m sure that little publishing house had lost money by agreeing to publish me.

  “Anyway,” I said, looking across the table at Mase. “It’s not for me to explain every ancient mystery. I am just gonna write about what was in the remaining manuscripts that Dr. Sabir translated and be done with it.”

  “You mean that you translated.”

  I smiled. “Yeah. That I translated. People will have to figure the rest out for themselves. I’m still nervous about revealing all that stuff. I’m only doing it because I think the information should be out in the world somewhere. I don’t want to have to feel guilty when I go to my grave.”

  Mase shook his head and chuckled.

  “And who knows if anyone,” I plucked at a leaf, “if they did read it, believed what I wrote in that book.”

  “Sooo?” he said.

  “So?” I titled my head and looked at him.

  “Atlantis?”

  “Oh, yeah. I forgot we were talking about Atlantis.”

  He narrowed his eyes waiting for me to answer. “Stop trying to change the subject, Justin.”

  “I’m not.” I smiled. “C’mon.” I stood, pulled the dish towel I had thrown over my shoulder off, and wiped my hands with it. Dropping it on the table, I said, “I have to show you on a map. I’ve got an atlas in my study.”

  We headed down the hallway. Mase went in and plopped down in one of the chairs, leaving me to struggle and get the huge book down off the top shelf of the bookcase. I took it over to the desk, pushed the stuff that was lying on it aside, and put the atlas down. Opening it up, I leaned over the desk and flipped through the first few pages, searching for a map of the world that would make it easy for Mase to follow.

  “Plato wrote - ” I said turning a page.

  “Plato?” he interrupted. “Justin. C’mon now. I just wanna know what the manuscripts said about Atlantis. Not what Plato wrote.”

  “Plato knew about Atlantis,” I said, looking over at him. “Just maybe he found out about Atlantis from someone who actually knew about my manuscripts.” I gave him a cheeky grin. “Don’t you care about that?”

  Mase got up from the chair and walked over to the desk. Leaning down, he put his face close to mine. “Justin.” He said my name and nothing else.

  “Okay,” I said, and chuckled. It was obvious he was not interested in the “backstory.”

  “Here.” I found a good map and pointed at a place close to the Mediterranean. “This is the area that the people of antiquity called the Pillars of Hercules. They were two huge rock formations that protruded off the shores of Africa and Spain and flanked the entrance of this area.” I drew a circle with my finger. “It leads out into the Atlantic.” I pointed to a spot on the map of the land masses separated by a narrow waterway. “See. Look. It almost looks like the edges of the two continents are kissing. Only about eight miles separate the shores of Africa and Spain at this point. Can you see how close they are?” He nodded. “So, on the Spain side there’s the Rock of Gibraltar, right here. That’s one side of the Pillars. The other “rock” was either in Morocco, here,” I pointed, “or here in Ceuta.” I hesitated, stood up straight, and looked at him. “You know. I kinda like have to say Plato because he and Josephus-”

  “See. I don’t even know who that is.”

  I laughed. “You do know who that is. Josephus? From the Bible?” He looked at me as if we had a two-inch plate of glass between us, and he couldn’t hear a word I was saying. “Anyway,” I continued, taking the clue, “They were the only ones of the ancients that wrote about Atlantis. Plato wrote that when you went through the Strait - ”

  “Straight?”

  “The Gibraltar Strait. S-T-R-A-I-T. It’s the waterway that is in this narrow passage. Need to brush up on your geography?”

  “No, Sweetie. Now, keep going.”

  “Well, he -- he is Plato, said that when you pass through here, you would find Atlantis.” I drew a line with my finger from the Mediterranean, through the Gibraltar Strait and out into the Atlantic. “He said that the Continent of Atlantis was bigger than Libya, although he probably meant all of Africa, and Asia combined. So here, take your finger,” I placed his finger on the map right in the middle of the Mediterranean, where I had started. “Now follow along the Strait, then pass through the Pillars of Hercules.” I dragged his finger through the beginning of the route and let him finish the path without my guidance.

  “Now, what do you see?”

  “Water.”

  “No, Mase. What land mass do you see?”

  “I see water. There is no land.”

  “If you keep going. Across the water. Into the Atlantic. What do you see?”

  “North America.” He seemed irritated.

  “And South America, right?”

  “Yeah. I mean, of course. They’re both right there. Kind of stuck together, Justin.”

  “Okay, then.”

  “Okay, what?”

  “You just found Atlantis.”

  “Uhm. No. I found the Americas.”

  “You found Atlantis. The Americas and the Continent of Atlantis are one in the same.”

  “Atlantis disappeared under water,” he said, not seeming to believe me.

  “No. The knowledge of how to cross the Atlantic disappeared, and when people couldn’t travel farther, not able to cross the Atlantic anymore, the Continent of Atlantis disappeared. At least in their minds.” I turned and looked at him. “We would give them life, but not all the knowledge that we had. It would be lost to them.’” I quoted.

  “From the manuscripts?”

  “Mm hmm.”

  Thanks to my photographic memory, more than twelve years later, I still remembered every single word of the translation I did from Dr. Sabir’s journal.

  “So, Atlantis didn’t sink into the Atlantic Ocean?”

  “Not unless we live underwater.”

  He looked at me with narrowed eyes and said nothing.

  “Mase. C’mon. An entire continent larger than Africa and Asia combined could not just disappear.”

  “It didn’t disappear. It sank.”

  “A continent that big could not have sunk, either. There would be evidence of it somewhere. Has anyone ever found a large land mass under the Atlantic? No. I’ll answer that one for you.”

  “They’ve found things under the ocean that show remnants of ancient cities.”

  “Cities, but not continents, Mase. Don’t you think that if an entire continent sunk we would have been able to find it by now? I’m the archaeologist here. I would know.” I stood up straight and rubbed the top of his head. “C’mon. I wouldn’t tell you something wrong.”

  He stood up straight, turned around and went back and sat in the chair with that “whatever” look on his face.

  “Mase,” I went over and knelt by him, “Archaeologists have used satellite space photography, have digitally mapped out subsurface sites through ground penetrating radar.” I counted it out on my fingers. “They have excavated a hundred different sites underwater and used all the historical data they could find to locate Atlantis. An
d not just in the Atlantic Ocean, but everywhere, and they have found nothing.”

  “Well, maybe there just wasn’t such a place as Atlantis,” Mase said. “Some people don’t believe there was anyway. Makes more sense than what you’re saying.”

  “Oh, there was an Atlantis.” I pushed up off the arm of the chair, walked back over to the desk and closed the atlas. “It was a huge land mass in the Atlantic. And that land mass was North and South America. Our ancestors were able to cross the Atlantic.” I reached up and tried to put the book back on the shelf. It was too heavy and awkward, and Mase finally decided to come over and help me. “Ever heard of the continental drift?” I asked as he took the book from me.

  “Yeah. Theory that the surface of the Earth moves around,” he said.

  “Right. All the continents started out stuck together. It’s called Pangaea, and then, due to continental drift, they moved apart.”

  “Yeah. I know about that.”

  “So, millions of years ago when all the continents were smashed up together, cracks started opening up through the surface. The holes spread into rifts and water started first oozing and then gushing in between the cracks. That was the start of the Atlantic Ocean. When it broke open, it pushed the land masses apart and formed the continents.”

  “Yeah. And?”

  “So, those continents – Africa, Europe and the Americas – were closer together at first.”

  “You said that.”

  “Travel distance wasn’t as far.”

  “And what? That’s when people, well, our ancestors, traveled between them.

  “Yeah. People traveled easier and faster between the continents. But once the land started moving, it kept moving. Really, the land is still moving. But I digress. At some point the land masses got too far apart for man to travel with the technology they had at that point. Anyway, after a while it became too far and too difficult for people to make the trip. That technology was gone. People lost the know-how to do it. It’s called the Lost Knowledge Theory.”

  “Yeah. But we found out from the manuscripts that the knowledge was lost on purpose.”

  “Me and you know that.”

  “And everyone that’s read your book, he said, and winked at me.

  Yep, probably all ten of them, I thought.

  “So, the Americas,” I said, “the then called ‘Continent of Atlantis’ was forgotten. The ‘true’ story of Atlantis has gone from real to legend to myth because no evidence was ever found. But believe me, the continent is not. A myth, that is.”

  He grunted, seemingly disgusted at the knowledge of all this stuff. He headed for the door, and stopped just short of it. Turning around, shaking his head, he said, “You know, Justin, you and your manuscripts are going to destroy all the intrigue and excitement of our ancient history.”

  “Ha-ha. You’re upset about that. Wait until I tell you why they built the pyramids.”

  Chapter Four

  I leaned up against the book case after Mase left. My mind filled with the thoughts of what I knew. And, as far as I knew, no one out of my little circle, knew about. The world, thanks to me were blissfully still in the dark.

  For twelve long years I did nothing with those manuscripts. I wrote that first book at Mase’s suggestion, and that was the end of it. And probably wouldn’t have done that much, but Mase, thought better of it, and me.

  “Write a book,” he had said. “Make it fiction, and people can take it for truth or not.” So that’s just what I did. But whether he said it or not, I knew Mase wasn’t happy with what I had done with the information. After I tried so hard to obscure the truth of what I’d found, he had wanted me to do more than the book. Even though, as I constantly reminded him, the book was his idea.

  I had started calling the manuscipts the AHM Manuscripts. AHM stood for Alternative History Migration.

  I breathed hard, making an exaggerated sigh, and tried to relax. What I wrote was that there was an alternative history to what everyone believed was mankind’s origin on this planet, and what he was capable of. And when I said to Mase man would have to figure out for himself the answer to our ancient mysteries, I didn’t mean that either. I did plan on telling it all.

  I was just waiting on one more thing.

  I headed back to the kitchen and washed my hands at the sink.

  The ultimate questions of who we are, where we came from, and what our minds are truly capable of, was answerable. And, I had the answers. Well, at least I knew where to get them.

  I flicked the excess water off my hands, dried them on the dish towel, threw it back over my shoulder, and sat down to finish cleaning the greens. Looking over where Mase had sat earlier, I spied the newspaper he had been reading, spread over the table and the floor. I guess waiting for me to dispose of it.

  After taking out the sports section, so he could glower over his syndicated column that he writes, he had no further use for it. So, I hopped back up and dumped the newspaper in the trash. Sitting back down at the kitchen table, I picked up a leaf, and absently pulled the stem away.

  It was just me and Mase now. We spent most of our time together. My three kids were grown, and on their own, whatever “being on their own” meant because we still had to help them with their bills and college tuition. Logan, my youngest daughter, had followed in my footsteps and became an archaeologist. Micah and Courtney, a lawyer and teacher. So much had changed. I didn’t work as curator for the Museum of Ancient History anymore. I taught at Case Western Reserve University. It gave me more time to spend at home with Mase, my seven brothers and sisters, and in my flower garden.

  I looked over at the newspaper sitting in the trash.

  I wonder did he want to keep that.

  Better not get Mase upset with me, I thought. I was going to need him to help me make it through what I needed to do. Although he rarely got angry with me, even after thirty years of marriage and all my craziness and bouts with depression, I can’t remember a time where he was truly upset about something I had done. He seemed to take it (me) all in stride.

  The manuscripts told the true history of man’s origins on Earth – yes, the truth. That humankind migrated to Earth after destroying their home. It told how our ancestors once possessed knowledge even more vast than what we have today. But, they admitted in those manuscripts, whoever wrote them, that with the knowledge they had gleaned also came arrogance. That their mindset of superiority is what helped to destroy their home.

  Mars.

  Mars was the original home of a one world governed, technologically advanced, and superior intellect being. And after destroying it they needed a new home. And this one world government decided the new home should be Earth. Oh yes, it sounded so other-worldly and sci-fi-ish, but it was the truth.

  A truth I needed to find a way to make the world understand and believe.

  How upsetting would it be to the people of this Earth if they learned that our ancient mysteries were actually built by aliens? Well, that might just be more believable than me telling them that those aliens weren’t aliens in the true sense of the word, but rather they were human. Same DNA as us. Mr. Homo sapiens himself.

  Actually, I found out from the AHM manuscripts that there are no such things as aliens. No life anywhere else in the universe.

  Life is singularly ours.

  Well, so the AHM manuscripts said.

  But now I found out there was something else. Another glimpse of our arrogant ancestors, the “Ancients,” I called them.

  Shifting in my chair, I shivered at the thought of it.

  I took the bowl of the greens over to the sink to wash them off so I could put them in a pot to cook.

  That is what had motivated me to write the second book. I could not in any good conscience, withhold this new information. I couldn’t just brush it under the rug.

  Archaeologists first had found and excavated Nevalı Çori in the mid-eighties through the early nineteen-nineties. That was the start of it. Then in 1996, six miles from Ur
fa, an ancient city in southeastern Turkey, they found Göbekli Tepe.

  Göbekli Tepe brought all of the previous tidbits found together.

  Göbekli Tepe was an ancient temple built on a plateau in Anatolia. It once was fertile land. Several rivers had flowed through it, making vegetation abundant. Now it was more or less desert. The city had been buried for more than ten thousand years. It was made up of huge stones perfectly hewed out in the shape of a “T” that created the walls to the open structure. And, according to archeologists, it had been built by “prehistoric people,” who “had not yet developed metal tools or even pottery.”

  They couldn’t be more wrong.

  Thank goodness scientists were slowly coming to that realization. But just not quick enough. Without understanding our past and how it affected our future we were in trouble. History repeats itself. And we were heading down the same path as Mars.

  And it would be my fault if I kept what I knew a secret. I had to tell what I knew about our history.

  Anthropologists had always thought that people become domesticated first – learned to farm, then the order of things was that they next built cities around those farms and then built places to worship. The Agricultural Revolution. It had been practically carved in stone, based on evidence from hundreds of archaeological digs and years of analyzing what was found. Everyone was certain that hunter-gatherers turned to “city life” first then “religious life” second. But this dig showed it the other way around.

  From what was gleaned at Göbekli Tepe, hunter gatherers, a nomadic society, certainly not ones to stay put too long, built the temple first. Then only sometime after, actually more than a thousand years after, people started to “settle” and corral wild sheep, pigs and cattle, and plant wheat.

  So now were hunter-gatherers building temples? How could that be? Scientists were scratching their heads. After excavating the ancient temple on the mount, they were now starting to understand that civilization didn’t quite happen like they’d thought. Indeed, scholars were asking, “Will this turn the conventional view of the rise of civilization upside down? Could we have been wrong?”