The 40,000-year-old body in the Antarctic could have been buried there only last week, such was its similarity to modern-day humans, but the dead body she was looking at now literally screamed ‘alien’.
The body was small, its limbs short and slim, its stomach slightly distended so that it looked not unlike a child suffering from famine. But the skull was large, much larger than a modern human’s, and the eyes were also oversized, set into deep pits below the enlarged cranium. The face itself was small like the body, the mouth even smaller, almost as though evolution was in the process of eradicating it altogether. But the circumference of the brain case must have been twice that of a man’s, indicating great intelligence.
Adams was struck by how similar the body appeared to popular images of such creatures — large head and eyes, small child-like body. The skin had a strange, grey pallor, as if the species had not seen the sun in millennia, which perhaps explained why ‘eye witness’ evidence had resulted in such beings being labelled ‘Greys’ by the UFO press.
‘Which planet does it come from?’ Lynn asked with unbridled excitement, turning first to Steinberg, and then to Travers. ‘Is it from the same place as the body we found?’
Steinberg and Travers exchanged looks, and then Travers turned to Lynn, nodding his head. ‘Of course it is,’ he said, slightly confused.
‘Why “of course”?’ she asked immediately.
‘Because both this body and the body you discovered in the Antarctic are from the same species — Homo sapiens.’
He saw the look of utter shock on her face, and decided to confirm his statement.
‘They are both human.’
19
‘Human?’ Adams asked, breaking the silence that had hung in the air for several seconds. ‘How in the hell is that thing human?’
‘Oh, it’s human all right,’ Travers said. ‘It’s just undergone a very specific form of evolution for the past fourteen thousand years or so.’
Adams knew they were pressed for time but he felt the need to know more, and knew Lynn would too.
‘I think you’d better explain that,’ he said.
Travers thought for a second or two, then looked at the pistol in Adams’ hand still aimed at him, and nodded curtly. ‘Very well,’ he said. ‘Follow me.’
They followed the professor to one of the mortuary drawers, which he pulled open. Lynn gasped as she saw the body on the metal slab, the one Tommy Devane had stumbled upon in Antarctica.
‘I’ll try and make this as simple as I can,’ Travers said. He pointed at the body. ‘This body that you found was part of the group of Homo sapiens that inhabited the earth from as early as two hundred thousand years ago, a highly advanced people who were expert in science and mathematics.’
‘Two hundred thousand years ago?’ Lynn asked. ‘Highly advanced?’
Travers nodded his head again. ‘Yes, and don’t ask me how they evolved, as they don’t even know themselves. One moment the earth had other Homo species, including ergastor, heidelbergensis, rudolfensis, habilis, neanderthalensis, among others, and the next, we had Homo sapiens sapiens, fully formed not only physically but also mentally. We’ve known for some time that anatomically modern humans existed as long ago as two hundred thousand years. But we had no idea that mentally advanced human beings inhabited the earth so long ago. There seems to have been an entire era of high human advancement, stretching far into pre-history.’
‘So if we accept this,’ Lynn said, ‘then what happened to this ancient civilization?’
‘Destroyed,’ Travers said simply. ‘Or at least, almost destroyed. People, buildings, vehicles, entire cities, lost forever.’
‘But how?’ Adams asked.
Travers held up a hand. ‘Before we get into that, we need to look at how human society was before the destruction. This will help you understand what happened.’
Both Adams and Lynn, along with a seemingly fascinated Steinberg, looked at him expectantly, urging him to continue.
‘As technology moved on and humans became more and more advanced, the world was much the same as it is today — various nation states looking after their own citizens while vying for power with each other. War followed war, followed war, until democracy started to spread, and federal blocks of like-minded nations joined forces. After several false starts — remember that this process took thousands of years — a true world government emerged, bringing peace to the earth.
‘But what occurred then was that society started to split down the middle, the rich became richer and the poor became poorer, until there were essentially two tiers. The “upper” tier, if you will, were known as the “Anunnaki”, which translates as “those who from heaven came to earth”, while the lower, much larger tier, was known as the “Arkashians”, or the “Others”, and they essentially became slaves to the Anunnaki. The Arkashians spread to the far corners of the world, living mostly unsophisticated lives, while the Anunnaki created one supreme city-state, located off the coast of what is now the Atlantic Ocean.’
‘Atlantis?’ Adams asked with disbelief.
‘Yes, Mr Adams,’ Travers confirmed. ‘There was indeed such a place, and it was the single, most highly advanced centre of civilization ever seen on the planet, before or since.’
‘So if these events were recounted for future generations, then presumably there were survivors of whatever disaster befell them?’ Lynn asked.
Travers grunted. ‘There are always survivors,’ he said. ‘And in this case, there were two sets, which brings us nicely on to the next part of our story. Fourteen thousand years ago, the world saw the flood that has found its way into tales of every single civilization and religion ever since. But it really happened, and wiped out an estimated ninety-five per cent of the world’s life forms current at that time.’
Lynn gasped. ‘A meteor?’ She knew NASA had looked into various ways such a flood could occur and she had read the research. One of the most likely explanations was that if a large meteor hit the earth in an oceanic area, the impact would create a mega-tsunami that would completely change the face of the planet.
Travers shook his head. ‘No, although the effect was much the same. At the time, there was a huge rocky island, just off the African coast — a little like the Canaries, only much larger. It had a cliff on one side, five hundred metres high, essentially a waterside mountain, that eventually just collapsed. Possibly seismic activity was the cause, but a huge chunk of this cliff just basically sloughed off and crashed into the sea. We’re talking about millions of tons of rock slipping straight down towards the ocean floor, the resulting force of which created a tidal wave two miles high that sped across the Atlantic and completely destroyed the eastern seaboard of what is now the United States of America.’
‘And Atlantis,’ Adams added.
‘In a way,’ Travers offered non-commitally. ‘But it didn’t end there, as the incredible force of the impact threw up billions of tons of debris into the atmosphere, which then inflamed and landed all over the planet, causing vast devastation by forest fires, which in turn caused carbon dioxide gases to clog up the atmosphere, until there was a nuclear winter that helped stamp out much of what life remained.’
‘How do you know all this?’ Lynn asked.
‘I’m the foremost expert on the Anunnaki,’ Travers answered. ‘I’ve been working with them for years, I’m an expert on their history.’