Way back in 1995, I was one night "surfing" the cable channels, when I stumbled across an author giving an interview in support of his just-published book. His name was Graham Hancock, and the book was Fingerprints of the Gods. As I listened to what he was describing of the contents, I was struck by how similar it was in theme to thoughts I had myself a few years prior: that there might have been a civilization before our recorded history. In the epochs that our planet has existed, it seemed to me that the perfectly linear development of our historically recognized civilization might be missing something. Why could there not have been one before ours? Modern humans, from the archaeological view, have been around far long than our civilization - time enough for some other to have sprung up and then knocked down - say by the catastrophe known in the Christian Bible as the Flood.
I knew, too, that other cultures had similar stories of deluge; and also knew that there was something "missing" in the historical record - mostly, I guess, because when you go back far enough, no one was making any records that could be later interpreted by us to lend insight in to the far past. Or if there had been, those records might not have survived.
Unless they have.
What intrigued me was that Mr. Hancock's underlying thesis seemed sound: that there are, in fact, clues, fingerprints as it were, of that lost civilization if you actually look for them. Now, he will be the first to state, and has on several occasions, that he is not rock-bound to any one idea of why that lost civilization became lost, for which open-mindedness he has been castigated by the so-called mainstream academicians who would see such as being too waffling.
What Mr. Hancock has stated further, though, for these critics is that he is still searching for the evidence, and as any new evidence must be put in perspective, so that perspective may change. It's detective work. It's reportage, and Mr. Hancock is a reporter, a collector of information. One clue leads to another, making a fuller picture, and until such time as the picture, or case-file, or story, is complete (if it ever is) the why is open-ended. Under all of that there is this: the comparative lack of evidence does not mean that our predecessor civilization did not exist.
So what the hell does all this have to do with my images?
In Fingerprints of the Gods, Mr. Hancock wrote of one theory that might explain the Flood: earth crust shift. That the mostly-solid rock crust pieces of the surfaces of the Earth are floating on a softer layer, and that those pieces are mobile has been accepted for decades. The theory is this: the whole of the crust, all of the pieces at the same instant, can slide around on the mantle underneath, resulting in geographic locations fairly suddenly ending up somewhere else - the center of the Great Lakes Region sliding "up" to occupy the polar zone, say. Further, the why this might happen has several theories, but the one that I found most dramatic was that of an asteroid impact: a substantial enough chunk of rock slams in to the Earth, and not only casts up unimaginable amounts of debris, but that impact translates as motion in the crust of the planet, and it slips. That theory has never held water with most geologists, and Hancock may have left it behind himself, but it still carries some interest where a fantasy movie is concerned!
Yes, I'm getting there! Now - there has been debate, too, in the academic community, about why the Earth has so little trace of these kinds of impact events. Some recent research, if I remember correctly, has actually shown that the Earth has, in fact, received its fair share of impacts, but that the surface is so mutable that it has only been since the advent of very sophisticated imaging in satellites that the crater remains can be discerned. It was, remember, long and long within the history of geology before anyone had the technology to find the impact event that brought an end to the reign of the dinosaurs 65 million years ago. Still, they are not as numerous, if I remember correctly, as those visiting our Moon. Or Mars.
And this is where I take the turn, admittedly, in to Joss Whedon territory, with a hefty dose of George Lucas, too.
What if there were, once, people who were in tune with their natural world? Not only the natural world of the Earth, but of the Universe surrounding it? They didn't leave a lot of evidence, because they were not like us, leaving big footprints across the landscape (fingerprints, maybe, but not footprints). What if they were able to do, for lack of a better word, magic? Or, what us techno-geeks would call magic, anyway, because they could do things with little or no mechanical devices. What they did do, they did with respect to the planet, and with as little damage as was possible to the environment. They were "Green?" And why not? There were arguably a lot fewer of them, too, so it would not have been that difficult to maintain a civilization that left fingerprints instead of footprints.
Alright, further, what if, yes Buffy-like, there had been people who were able to turn aside destruction from the cosmos? Or would that be Yoda-like?
In my wild confabulation of these ideas, I conceived of a story about the last of these Defenders of Earth - the last because her culture had run up against something new in their experience: the Prophet. The Prophet I conceived of being, to put it bluntly, the antithesis of the Defender.
The world-view of the people of Australis, and their Defender, acknowledges responsibility for their actions in the wider world, seeing themselves as part of the Universe and all in it - that the god was in them and they were in god. The Prophet sees it rather differently: god, or God - to the Prophet it's definitely a masculine, father figure - resides outside, and the world is there for utility. The Defender and her culture are anathema to his world-view. By using magic, which should only be the work of the god that gave mankind the world to use, they defame it. And not being god, or God, since god resides outside of all this, they must, therefore have truck with God's Enemy. Therefore, the Defender and her people must be eliminated.
Like I stated, it's personal.
This then, is the root of much of the strife that has come down to us across the subsequent 10,000 + years. On the one hand, those who seek to become more responsible in their world and in the cosmos; on the other, those who seek to deny the world. Those who believe that there is "power" inherent in all of us, and those who believe that the only true "power" exists somewhere, in something else.
My story, then is that the Prophet, having gained enough adherents to his beliefs (people who find it easier to abstain from responsibility for the planet) sees it as his divine mission to eliminate the abomination of magic from the world by leading a crusading army to Australis, the seat of the Defender's civilization, and sweeping them away. His invasion fleet arrives just as the Defender prepares to - well - Defend. In the ensuing combat, the Defender is killed, just before she can enjoin her task. The asteroid makes planet-fall, with the subsequent cataclysm casting the civilization of Australis in to the shadows.
Of course, that's not where the story ends. Those fingerprints are left behind, and enough of the folk from Australis still roam the Earth to spread the word of peacful civilization, with myths of magical beings in their wake. Their knowledge is codified by later generations, and hints and clues come down to us today. The strife doesn't end, either - the esoterica of Australisian society has, historically mind you, been surpressed by organized religions in the West. That conflict, whether "hot" or "cold" has been ongoing. Christmas or Solstice? Easter or Oestara?
And my story finds continuation, as well, with Tiahuanaco. At the risk of plagiarizing Mr. Hancock's very life, my idea was of someone inadvertently discovering some of those fingerprints, and searching for more. I imagined him as a kind of proto-freelance photo-journalist - someone who's livelihood allows him to go to places that most people never will (as opposed to the somewhat frequently written protagonist who is independently wealthy and can go just because he can. My guy still has to pay his rent and bring home the photos and get paid). His travels around the globe keep kicking up "fingerprints," evidence that leads to his discovering that the descendants of Australis know who they are, and they're still struggling with the descendants of the Prophet. It should be obvious by now which way he throws his allegiance.
I set the story in 1927 for no better reason than I have an affinity for the inter-war period. It could have been in the 1950's or the 2020's. But, there's the third chapter to consider, too - which, by the way, will probably be early in the 21st Century. I haven't completely wrapped my mind around how that story might work, but I'll get there. Maybe. It's been a few years now since I started this, and I've yet to actually get to part 3. Trouble is, I can come up with the start of stories, but finishing them? Oy, not so much. And years
As for the theories of asteroid impact and earth crust shift, those are just theories, and while dramatic, not necessarily the cause of that civilization becoming "lost." Mr. Hancock has, in his further investigations, moved along to more fully developed ideas as to how that loss came about. If any of that interests you, I would certainly suggest picking up his books--or maybe I might say some of his early books. Lately, it seems (I've heard anyway) that he's got a little further out into even more fringey ideas, maybe even dabbling in conspiracy theories. The last book of his that I looked at a few years ago hinted at such, and I have not kept up since.
I'll also mention that I'm reserving the rights to those elements of the story that I've described here as particularly mine.
Fingerprints of the Gods, by Graham Hancock; Crown Publishers, Inc., New York, New York, 1995. ISBN 0-517-59348-3
R. Jake Wood
Updated a little in 2024.
