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Adam's Calendar and the Hidden Ruins of Southern Africa

Scholars have told us that the first civilisation on Earth emerged in aland called Sumer some 6,000 years ago. Recent archaeologicalfindings suggest that the Sumerians may have inherited some of theirknowledge from an earlier civilisation that emerged many thousands

of years earlier in southern Africa, the cradle of humankind.More than 100,000 years ago, early humans built a stone calendar that

precedes all other man-made structures found to date. This discovery is soastounding that it requires a true paradigm shift in our approach to ancienthuman activity, as it takes us closer to the emergence of the earliest humanson planet Earth.

This "African Stonehenge", which we call Adam's Calendar, has created forthe first time a link to the countless other stone ruins in southern Africa andsuggests that these ruins are much older than we thought. The complex thatlinks Waterval Boven, Machadodorp, Carolina and Dullstroom covers an arealarger than modern-day Johannesburg and has emerged as the largest andmost mysterious ancient city on Earth. The discoveries of petroglyphs ofwinged discs and carved dolerite statues of giant birds, some resembling thehawk-headed god Horus, suggest that the prototype Sumerian and Egyptiancivilisations had their origins in southern Africa thousands of years beforethey emerged in the north.

Seven years of research by a group of independent scientists and explorershas delivered what may be the crucial missing elements in ourunderstanding of the lives and development of early modern humans. Theirdiscoveries have been released in the book Adam's Calendar, co-written by thisauthor and Johan Heine (Zulu Planet Publishers, 2008). However, theresearch has also shown that these stone settlements represent the mostmysterious and misunderstood structures found so far. It points to acivilisation that lived and dug for gold in this part of the world for thousandsof years. If this is in fact the cradle of humankind, we may be looking atwhat's left of the workings of the oldest civilisation on Earth.

Johan Heine manages the largest group of fire-fighters and fleet of fire-fighting aircraft in Africa. As a pilot, he has been flying over the mountainsof Mpumalanga for over 20 years. He instantly took a keen interest in thethousands of strange circular stone ruins that lie scattered throughout thisregion and he started photographing them. In consulting various so-calledexperts on their origins, he was informed that these are merely the remainsof "cattle kraal" left behind by the Bantu people when they migrated from thenorth around the 14th century until about the 18th century. But it was an aircrash involving one of his crew that brought Johan to discover themysterious monolithic circle which we now call Adam's Calendar and put theentire mystery of these ancient ruins into perspective.

In 2003, Johan spotted the strange monoliths standing upright in the

TTHEHE OOLDESTLDEST MMANAN--MADEMADESSTRUCTURESTRUCTURES ONON EEARTHARTH

Ancient stone ruinsand a sophisticated

clifftop calendarfound in southernAfrica could be at

least 100,000 yearsold and are evidence

that this region was the cradle of

humankind as well ashome to the world's

first civilisation.

by Michael Tellinger MaKomati Foundation

© 2009–2010

Email: publisher@zuluplanet.com

Websites:http://www.makomati.org

http://www.zuluplanet.com

centre of a larger eroded circular structure right on theedge of a high mountain cliff (figure 1). After dealingwith the crashed aircraft and recovering the pilot, whowas only suffering from a broken arm, Johan returned toinvestigate the monoliths. He also brought at least fiveacademics to the site in search ofexplanations—and this is when hefound out how amazingly blind"those who will not see" can be. Notone of them could see the truesignificance of the discovery,claiming that these were just randomstones. This was a big blow to hisoriginal excitement, but like a trueexplorer he did not stop there.

The site is situated on the edge ofwhat is known as the TransvaalEscarpment, which geologicallyconsists of the Black Reef QuartziteFormation that's rich in gold.(Incidentally, this is where goldprospecting started in the early1800s.) But the monoliths of Adam'sCalendar are all dolerite. The closestvein of dolerite is about a kilometreaway from the site. This means thatthe architects went to a lot of troubleto transport the monoliths, some ofwhich weigh over five tonnes, to thesite. The central monolith is carvedwith such precision as to allow the

setting sun to cast a shadow on whatwe call the "flat calendar stone".

Johan began to measure andcalculate the layout and parametersof the monoliths. Informed by hisyears of experience in aeronauticalscience and navigation, he veryquickly realised that the circularstructure was purposefully designedand aligned with the cardinal pointsof the Earth as well as the equinoxesand solstices.

However, it took another six yearsand many more explorations ofamazing new discoveries on everytrip to the mountain-top before thesite was accurately surveyed and thetrue age of the monoliths wasrevealed. It turned out that thenorth–south, east–west alignment isout by 3 degrees 17 minutes 43seconds. This means that we aredealing with a structure at least25,000 years old, based onarchaeoastronomic calculationsrelating to the 26,000-year cycle of

the precessional wobble. Further studies of the geology, erosion, stellar

alignments and lichen growth have allowed us to reacha reasonably sound and scientific conclusion that thissite is at least 75,000 years old. Our latest research has

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Figure 1: Eastern view of a 3D reconstruction of Adam's Calendar. The oldest version of the Egyptian Horus hawk stands in line with the spring equinox sunrise.

To the right are the three aligned stones of Orion. Near the top right corner of thephoto can be seen the faint outline of two pyramids, also aligned with Orion's rise.

Figure 2: This is one of many mysterious ancient stone ruins that seem to have a greater purpose in their design. The phi factor of 1,618 was well used in the

dimensions of this and other structures.

pushed back this date to well over100,000 years.

Mysterious Stone Ruins It is generally estimated by

scholars that there are about 20,000ancient stone ruins scatteredthroughout the mountains ofsouthern Africa (figures 2 and 3).Modern historians have beenspeculating about the origins ofthese ruins, often calling them"cattle kraal of little historicimportance". The truth of the matteris that closer scientific inspectionpaints a completely different andastonishing new picture about theancient history of these stone ruinsof southern Africa. The scientificreality is that we actually know verylittle about these spectacular ancientruins, and it is a great tragedy thatthousands have already beendestroyed through sheer ignoranceby foresters, farmers and developers.

After my personal explorations onfoot and by air over the past two or more years, I canconfidently estimate the number of ancient stone ruinsto be closer to 100,000—a figure confirmed in January2009 by retired archaeology professor Revil Mason.

The Population ProblemThis finding immediately poses a

huge problem for archaeologists,anthropologists and historiansbecause the accepted history of thispart of the planet does not place, atany time in our past, anywhere nearlyenough people here to have builtthis number of structures.

It gets even more complex whenyou realise that these were not justisolated structures left behind bymigrating hunter-gatherers. The truereality hits you when you take in themagnitude and expanse of thesesettlements and witness thestaggering number of ancientterraces that surround thesesettlements which cover over 450,000square kilometres and possibly muchmore in southern Africa. Detailedarchaeological scrutiny ofphotographic evidence of theseterraces shows some to be at least5,000 years old (figure 4).

The complex that links Waterval

Boven, Machadodorp, Carolina and Dullstroom coversaround 20,000 square kilometres, which is an area largerthan modern-day Johannesburg. Most of the originalsettlement structures are well buried beneath the soiland can only be seen from the air by a trained observer.

The picture gets even more confusing when you

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Figure 3: This is a small section of an ancient city that stretches for more than20,000 square kilometres, linked by ancient roads, one of which can be clearly seenhere from the air. This kind of detail is not at all visible to observers on the ground.

Figure 4: Ancient terraces surround large complex settlements covering more than450,000 square kilometres in southern Africa. Some sections of these terraces have been estimated to be at least 5,000 years old, based on erosion patterns.

observe the ancient roads that link all these settlementstogether. We have traced the remains of these roadsthat can still be seen stretching to a distance of about500 kilometres. In their original state, they would havecovered thousands of kilometres. The positions of theancient road sections that we have discovered suggestthat this network once ran continuously from the coastof Mozambique to Botswana and possibly beyond.

A rough calculation shows that just the visible piecesof the original ancient roads would have required over500 million stones, each weighing between 10 and 50kilograms, to construct. If we assume that the roadsmake up only two per cent of the ancient settlements,the number of stones required to build the entireancient city/settlement becomes unthinkable. Thissimply would not be possible with the currentpopulation model of ancientcivilisation in southern Africa.

The other issue we need to deal withis the need for roads, since previously itwas believed that the wheel onlyarrived in this part of the world withPortuguese explorers in the 1500s.

The Oldest City on EarthIt would not be unthinkable that we

are possibly looking at the oldestsettlements on Earth. Artefacts thathave been recovered from these ruinsshow a long and extended period ofsettlement that spans well over200,000 years. Over the past threedecades, several researchers haveraised this issue, only to beridiculed and often ostracised.Many leading scientists andhistorians have since voiced theirsupport for such ancient origins.

Since southern Africa is thecradle of humankind, we shouldnot be surprised to find suchruins but, rather, we should expectthese discoveries. The realityseems to be that we are dealingwith what is possibly the largest and least understoodancient civilisation on Earth.

It's important to note that the mysterious ruins ofsouthern Africa, which include Great Zimbabwe andthousands of similar ruins in that country, also extendinto neighbouring areas such as Botswana, Namibia,Zambia, Kenya and Mozambique. But why were theseancient people here in the first place? What were theydoing?

Ancient Gold FieldsThe past 200 years has seen a number of explorers

write in great detail about these ruins, but their findings

have been largely forgotten and their books are out ofprint. Most of these early explorers wrote aboutthousands of ancient mine shafts found in closeproximity to the ruins. These mines have beendescribed as sources of gold, copper, tin and iron. In mypersonal experience and research, I have found at leastfive ancient mine shafts in gold-rich areas and havebeen told of dozens more by farmers of the region. Itseems that gold-mining has been going on here for a lotlonger than most of us ever imagined.

In 1891, a coin issued by Roman Emperor AntoninusPius in AD 138 was found 25 metres deep in a gold mineby Theodore Bent, who conducted the first excavation ofGreat Zimbabwe. The Egyptian Pharaoh Ramesses II(1279–1213 BC) wrote about crossing the Africancontinent to its southern tip and of his encounters with

gold in this part of the world. Itbecomes evident that these areprobably the fabled mines of KingSolomon.

Should we be surprised by thisdiscovery? The oldest written recordsof human history, the Sumeriantablets, describe extensively theancient activity in a land calledAbzu—the land below the equatorwhere the gold was mined. Thetablets describe the early humansettlements and the quest for gold.The fact that many scholars keep

ignoring these scripts is a greatpity.

The links with the Sumeriancivilisation in southern Africasimply cannot be ignored orerased. They can even be tracedetymologically in the names andorigins of indigenous people.The most obvious piece ofevidence that has never beenexplained is the word Abantu,the name commonly used todescribe black South Africans.According to the pre-eminent

shaman and medicine man Credo Mutwa, the name isderived from the Sumerian goddess Antu. Abantusimply means "the children or people of Antu".

The Orion Connection and the Horus Hawk Statue The monolithic Adam's Calendar is the flagship

among these southern African ruins because we candate it with relative certainty to at least 75,000 years ofage, based on a number of scientific evaluations. Inturn, it points to the diverse ancient history of southernAfrica and presents the first tangible evidence of theearliest humans in the "cradle of humankind".

The remarkable calendar was originally a large circular

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...we are possiblylooking at the

oldest settlementson Earth.

Artefacts thathave been

recovered fromthese ruins show along and extended

period ofsettlement thatspans well over200,000 years.

stone structure resembling but pre-dating Stonehengeby many thousands of years. Its original shape is stillclearly visible from satellite images. Adam's Calendar ispositioned along the same 31-degree longitudinal lineas Great Zimbabwe and the Great Pyramid of Giza.Three of the monoliths are aligned with Orion's beltwhen the constellation rose horizontally on the horizonat least 75,000 years ago. The latest astronomiccalculation suggests that the last time Orion would havebeen flat on the horizon was around 160,000 years ago.

A recent observation is that the fallen monolith on theouter circle that marks the vernal equinox sunrise isshaped like the Horus hawk head from Egypt and alsoresembles the bird statues found amongst the ruins inZimbabwe. This is the oldest statue of the Horus hawkby a long shot, and should attract great interest in theyears to come.

Rewriting Human HistorySouthern Africa holds some of

the deepest mysteries in all ofhuman history. Although muchhas been written about the firsthumans who appeared in thispart of the world, we have foundvery little evidence of theiractivities and what kind of livesthey led from around 250,000 to75,000 years ago. What we aretold is that around 60,000 yearsago the people from Africabegan to migrate north and eventually populated thewhole planet. Who were these first humans? What didthey do? How did they live? And where did theydisappear to?

The first signs of human intelligence andconsciousness only appeared around 75,000 years ago,when the Khoisan people of southern Africa startedleaving behind an array of spectacular cave paintings allover this part of the continent. Finely crafted beads andbracelet fragments found at Blombos Cave in SouthAfrica's Western Cape show that these early humans hadalready developed a feel for the arts and crafts.

The legends become even more vivid when we learnabout the great empire of Monomotapa, which arguablywas at its height around AD 1000 and whose kings werepowerful and wealthy in gold. When we move back toaround 1000 BC, we encounter the mysterious Queen ofSheba, who ruled a kingdom in the lost land of Ophirthat was teeming with endless supplies of gold, and thewise and wealthy King Solomon, who seduced her andobtained all his gold from her. Is it possible that thereactually was such a place? Was it really filled withlimitless wealth in gold? Was it here that the wealthiestkings on Earth mined their gold?

Ophir is an etymological derivative of the ancientplace called Afer, "where the gold came from"; then it

became the Arabic Afir, for Africa, from which wasderived K'Afir, which became the slang word for blackpeople in later years. In the Bible, it was changed toOfir or Ophir. There seems to be a clear link between allthese places, and this link leads to southern Africa—where the gold came from.

This is, after all, the place where most of the world'sgold has been mined in modern history, and it was nodifferent in ancient times. Is it a coincidence that therichest gold mine in the world today is the Sheba GoldMine, located right here in Mpumalanga, South Africa?These may seem like naïve questions to some, but afterpersonally exploring the remnants of enormous ancientcities and civilisations in southern Africa I am convincedthat what we think we know about our ancient humanhistory is further from the truth than we ever imagined.

Adam's Calendar firmly places the many ancient ruinsof southern Africa at a point inhistory some 100,000 years agothat we modern humans havenever faced before. It takes usfurther back in time, closer tothe emergence of Homo sapiens,than any other structure everfound to date, and it will forcehistorians and archaeologiststo reconsider ancient humanactivity and consciousness. ∞

About the Author:Michael Tellinger has had a 30-

year obsession with the origins of humankind. Hegraduated from the University of Witwatersrand,Johannesburg, in 1983 with a Bachelor of Pharmacydegree and a passion for the cosmos, genetics, humanhistory and music. Before he began his research/writingcareer, he was an acclaimed musical performer andsongwriter in South Africa and then a sound designer andeditor based in Los Angeles, USA. He has also worked asan actor, a screenplay writer and a radio/TV producer/presenter specialising in science and technology.

Tellinger set up his own publishing company, ZuluPlanet Publishers, and is the author of Slave Species of god(2005), Adam's Calendar (with Johan Heine, 2008) andTemples of the African Gods (also with Johan Heine, 2009;see review in this edition). He is a member/director of theMaKomati Foundation, a non-profit organisationestablished in 2003 to research, protect, maintain andpromote the ancient ruins of Mpumalanga in SouthAfrica.

Michael Tel l inger can be contacted by email atpublisher@zuluplanet.com. For more information, visitthe websites http://www.adamscalendar.com,http://www.slavespecies.com, http://www.makomati.organd http://www.zuluplanet.com.

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Adam's Calendar ispositioned along the same31-degree longitudinal lineas Great Zimbabwe and

the Great Pyramid of Giza.