Most Amazing Mysteries!: Mysteries of the world investigated

MYSTERIES

INTRODUCTION

WHAT IS A MYSTERY? To the writer of popular song or the poet, there is the mystery of life. To the thriller writer, there are mysteries round every corner. To Joseph Conrad, the unchanging sea was wrapped in mystery, while to William Wordsworth only those who braved the sea’s dangers could comprehend its mystery. To the dictionary compiler, the word has several different meanings, ranging from an unexplained or inexplicable event or phenomenon to a person or thing that arouses curiosity or suspense because of an unknown, obscure or enigmatic quality!

The mysteries related in this book will cover many aspects of the word. There is the mystery of Atlantis: was there ever a ‘great island’ in the Atlantic, Mediterranean or Aegean, which, according to Plato writing in 350BC vanished in ‘a day and a night’? There are various theories as to the identity of Jack the Ripper – a mystery that has kept professional and amateur sleuths occupied for more than a century: was it Queen Victoria’s son, the Duke of Clarence? Or perhaps Walter Sickert, the famous artist? What about the Man in the Iron Mask: did he ever exist or was he a figment of Alexandre Dumas’s imagination? Who ordered the regicide of the Princes in the Tower – Richard III, Shakespeare’s royal villain? Or Henry VII, the usurper, anxious to paint Richard in the worst possible light? And what happened to the crew and passengers on the Marie Celeste, the ship that was found abandoned in calm seas in 1872?

Hopefully, the mysteries examined here will arouse curiosity. Hopefully they will all contain an element of suspense. And hopefully, even after looking at all the facts in the cool light of day – they will retain the ingredient that all have in common: Mystery!

2528BC

ANCIENT EGYPT

A tomb?

An observatory?

Or something stranger?

Of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World – the Pyramids of Egypt, the Hanging Gardens of Babylon, the Tomb of Mausolus, the Temple of Diana at Ephesus, the Colossus of Rhodes, the Statue of Jupiter by Phidias and the Pharos at Alexandria – only the Pyramids survive. And of these, the greatest is the Great Pyramid of Khufu (also known as the Pyramid of Cheops), built almost 5,000 years ago on the bank of the Nile at Giza, a stone’s throw from Cairo.

It was built as a tomb for Khufu, the pharaoh who ruled Egypt during the fourth Dynasty and who died around 2528BC. It is said that the construction of the pyramid almost bankrupted Egypt. No wonder, for it took an army of 20,000 slave labourers around 30 years to build it.

It covers an area of five hectares and stands approximately 150 metres high. Work started on the pyramid while Khufu was still alive. As a tribute to his might and power, he wanted his body to be placed in the grandest pyramid ever seen, and to lie amid the treasures that would ease his path through the afterlife.

Thirty times larger than the Empire State Building and with each face covering an area of two hectares each, the Great Pyramid can easily be seen from space stations orbiting the Earth. The Pyramid is not just a tomb, it is probably the world’s oldest observatory and is constructed with such skill that even today experts are mystified as to how a civilization that flourished five thousand years ago had the skill to build it.

Facing true North, the Pyramid is said to stand at the exact centre of the Earth’s landmass. Why? Because it stands at the precise point where the longest land parallel across the Earth (that passes through Africa, Asia and the Americas) crosses the line the line that runs from the tip of South Africa to the northernmost point of Scandinavia.

The Pyramid’s corner stones have balls and sockets built into them, which have allowed the structure to stand without suffering the damage caused by expansion and contraction brought about by heat and cold, earthquakes and other surface movements. Incredible when you consider it wasn’t until the twentieth century that balls and sockets were incorporated as a standard safety measure into the design of bridges and other structures where any significant movement could spell disaster.

The outside surface stones are cut to within 1/100th of an inch of perfect straight and at nearly perfect right angles. Not only that, they were put into position with a consistent gap of 1/200th of an inch between them to allow just enough space to seal the stones together. And the white cement that connected the casing stones and made them watertight is as strong as anything that modern technology can produce.

In the middle of the nineteenth century, Jean Baptiste Biot, a French physicist, visited Giza. After a long investigation, he came to the conclusion that the Pyramid was an enormous sundial, which had been built with such precision that it was possible to record not just the time of the day, but also the precise date of the year. Paving blocks had been cut in such a way that the length of each and every day could be measured out accurately.

Egyptian astronomers could have used the pyramid to forecast the equinoxes – the two days of the year when the Sun crossed the Equator – and the solstices – the two days of the year when the Sun is farthest from the Equator.

Later in the same century, the British astronomer Richard Proctor explained how the Pyramid was a perfect astronomical observatory. The great gallery that leads deep into the structure is set at precisely the correct angle to align it with the Pole Star. As skilled astronomers, the Ancient Egyptians identified the five visible planets and had worked out the difference between them and the surrounding stars several thousand years before the telescope was invented.

They used their knowledge to work out two of the calendars that were vital to life in the Nile Valley. The first was based on the date when Sirius, the Dog Star, rose in the sky just before sunrise. That signalled the start of the annual inundation of the Nile, the most important event in the economic life of the country. It was so important that Sirius’s appearance at this time signalled the start of the Egyptian New Year.

The second calendar was a lunar one, based on the phases of the Moon, with each month lasting 29.5 days. This calendar was used to calculate the date of important rites and festivals.

And it was the work of astronomers that divided the Ancient Egyptian year into 365 days – the basis of our calendar year today.

The Great Pyramid has given rise to all sorts of theories, including one that the Egyptians were given the knowledge to build it by some sort of alien life from outer space. True or not, the mystery does remain as to how a civilization that flourished five thousand years ago succeeded in building a structure that would challenge even the most sophisticated builders of the twenty-first century.

THE DIM AND DISTANT BC –

SOMEWHERE AT SEA

A lost continent

The story of Atlantis is well known – it is perhaps the most persistent of all the legends of the sea: a once lush and beautiful continent that lay west of Greece flooded by the waters of the ocean, submerging it for all time. First recorded in the fourth century BC it has fascinated men and women ever since …

The legend of the lost continent was first recorded in 350 BC by the Greek philosopher Plato (born c.428BC). In the Timaeus, one of his famous dialogues, he records a great land ‘larger than Asia Minor with Libya, situated just beyond the Pillars of Hercules.’ Plato’s description places Atlantis opposite the Straits of Gibraltar.

Plato wrote that its architecture was among the finest in the world and its civilization one of the most advanced. The cities were remarkable for their fine buildings and artistic life. It was a land where industry flourished, a place of great riches. Its women were beautiful and graceful, its men brave and strong.

Critias, one of Plato’s subsequent dialogues of which only a fragment survives, goes into more detail, describing Atlantis as a place where the people lived up to the ideals that he had extolled in his Republic. Spiritual health was regarded as highly as physical strength. Philosophers, soldiers and workers co-existed happily, all playing an equal part in the scheme of things.

Plato wrote that it was Poseidon, god of the sea, who was the forefather of the people of Atlantis. He fathered ten children by the mortal woman Cleito and kept them all prisoner on a hill surrounded by a canal. The succeeding generations were great engineers and architects. They built palaces, temples, harbours and docks. The buildings were magnificent. Fountains ran with hot and cold water. The stone walls of the public buildings were dotted with precious metals.

According to Plato, the capital city of the land was built on a hill, surrounded by concentric circles of land and water, which were connected by huge tunnels and canals. The largest of these, connecting the outermost of these rings of water to the sea, was 100 metres wide and 30 metres deep – large enough for any ship to sail right into the heart of the city.

The city itself was seventeen kilometres in diameter. Behind it was a vast plain, 370 kilometres deep and 550 kilometres wide, on which farmers grew more than enough food to supply all of Atlantis. Beyond the fertile plain, were mountain ranges, dotted with villages that overlooked lush meadows on which grazed all manner of livestock.

The Atlanteans were peace loving, but occasionally they took to arms and invaded other countries, and it was this that may have caused their downfall. Towards the end of their history, invading armies sailed from Atlantis and overran much of the Mediterranean world, conquering North Africa and southern Europe as far north as Tyrrhenia (present-day Etruria in central Italy). Eventually only Athens stood against the Atlantean armies.

It was at this point that, according to the Critias, the people of Atlantis lost the wisdom and virtue that the gods had bequeathed them, their greed and corruption becoming an affront to the Pantheon who lived on Mount Olympus. Having committed hubris by challenging the gods, the same gods wreaked their revenge on the people of the beautiful continent. Zeus called all the gods together and ordered them to bring calamity to Atlantis. In the course of a single day and night, earthquakes rocked the land. The rain came down in torrents. The sea rose and enormous waves crashed over the city, submerging it, the plain and the mountains beyond. Forever afterwards, Atlantis was lost, the waters above it becoming unnavigable, the keels of ships striking ‘the mountains of sand that covered the towers of the buried cities’.

Ever since Plato’s time, Atlantis has fascinated many people, gripping their imaginations. A whole host of theories has been put forward as to where Atlantis might have been and what caused its disappearance. Some of these theories can be dismissed as the ideas of cranks, others …well, we simply cannot be sure.

The modern revival in interest in the lost city came with the publication of The Antediluvian World in the 1882. Written by Ignatius Donnelly, an American writer and politician, something about it caught the popular imagination and it became a best seller. Atlantis had existed, Donnelly wrote, backing his belief with various zoological and geological theories and statistics. Pointing out that modern earthquakes and volcanoes had caused tremendous change to the landscape in the centuries immediately before he was writing, he wrote that it was highly plausible that a natural catastrophe could have wiped out a land of the size that Plato described. He cited evidence that Australia is the only part that remains visible of Lemuria, a continent that once stretched from Africa to the Pacific. Turning to the myths of other Ancient cultures, he noted that stories of lost landmasses were common to many of them.

Thousands of people were convinced by Donnelly’s arguments. Among his supporters was the British Prime Minister, William Gladstone, who tried to persuade his cabinet to finance an expedition to trace the outline of Atlantis. For once his formidable powers of persuasion deserted him and his ministers refused to countenance the scheme.

Five years after the publication of Donnelly’s book, a Russian mystic, Helena Blavatsky, took up the same theme in her two-volume opus Isis Unveiled.

The book sold well, but her thesis, that the people of Atlantis were Earth’s fourth race who all possessed mystical powers, belongs to the realms of fantasy. Sadly, she wrote, this mystical race became corrupted by the dragon-king Thevetat and a great war destroyed their country – Atlantis. Some people did survive and they made their way to Egypt where they subsequently built the Pyramids. And from there a small band set out to explore the world and ended up in present-day Wiltshire where they erected the great and enigmatic stone circle of Stonehenge. An intrepid race of people indeed!

One man who was certain that Atlantis had existed was the English explorer, Colonel Percy H. Fawcett. He was influenced by the theories of a Scottish newspaperman and antiquarian, Lewis Spence, who wrote in The Problem with Atlantis (1924) that there was geological evidence for the existence of a large continent that lay in the Atlantic up to ten million years ago. Then, because of shifts in the Earth’s plate, the continent had started to disintegrate into ever-smaller landmasses, the last of which finally vanished 10,000 years ago.

Fawcett came to believe that evidence for Atlantis was to be found in the lost cities in the Brazilian and Bolivian jungles. He set out to prove his theory in 1924 – and was never seen again.

Around 30 years after Fawcett disappeared, Immanuel Velikovsky, a compatriot of Helena Blavatsky, wrote Worlds in Collision, in which he claimed that Atlantis had existed but had been wiped out by a comet.

According to these and other writers, Atlantis was situated variously in the Atlantic, near Sri Lanka, around Greenland, in South America, in South Africa and even in the Sahara Desert.

All these locations, indeed all locations, for the location of Atlantis were dismissed in 1975 by delegates at a conference sponsored by the University of Indiana in the USA. Debating the motion ‘Atlantis, Fact of Fiction?’ the experts came to the conclusion that the story of Atlantis was a myth.

However like many myths its roots may well be firmly embedded in fact. There is real archaeological evidence that around 1500BC, Thira, then a large round island in the Aegean Sea, was