Forbidden Archeology - Michael A. Cremo - Michael Cremo's Travel Blog

2009

Hour of the Time Conference: Eagar, Arizona

On September 20, I flew from LA to Albuquerque, New Mexico. From there I went by car to Eagar, Arizona, which is in a very isolated part of the state. Outside Eagar there is the X Diamond Ranch, which was the site of a seminar held by Doyle Shamley and Rob Houghton, hosts of the Hour of the Time radio talk show. I have been a guest on this show a couple of times, and they invited me to be a speaker at their annual seminar held at the ranch. I spoke about my book Forbidden Archeology to a receptive audience.

I was given a comfortable cabin to stay in. It was good to be out in this sparsely populated part of the country. I guess you would call it high plains. The elevation was about seven thousand feet. Nearby there were Apache and Navajo Indian reservations. On the ranch there was the Little Bear archeological site, an excavation of an ancient Pueblo Indian settlement, a project administered by Charles Rand http://www.xdiamondranch.com/archaeological_site.html.

Sacred portals to Native spiritual realms at the Little Bear Ruins

The nights were quite different than the nights in LA. Stars were brilliantly present in the sky, and instead of traffic noise, there was the bugling of elk in the nearby hills. After a couple of days at the ranch, I went by car back to Albuquerque airport and flew back to LA.

Decoding the Lost Symbol Conference

Simon Cox hosted the Decoding the Lost Symbol Conference

On November 8, 2009 I spoke about my book Human Devolution: A Vedic Alternative to Darwin’s Theory at a conference called Decoding the Lost Symbol. The conference, held in the Glendale Hilton in the LA area, was organized by Simon Cox and some of his associates. The Lost Symbol is the name of Dan Brown’s latest novel. In his novels, Dan Brown makes use of the work of alternative science and alternative history researchers. For example, in his novel The DaVinci Code, Brown made use of the work of researchers into the idea that Jesus Christ married Mary Magdalen and had children with her. In The Lost Symbol, Dan Brown has made use of research of the same kind I have used in my book Human Devolution: out of body experiences and past life memories, which provide evidence for a conscious self that can exist apart from the body; random number generator experiements that demonstrate mind over matter effects; remote viewing, etc. I had a good time at the conference, meeting people interested in my work and meeting with the other speakers, including William Henry (who spoke on the symbolism of the US Capitol building), Simon Cox (author of the book Decoding The Lost Symbol), and John Major Jenkins (author of books on 2012 and Mayan cosmology). At the conference there was a musical interlude, provided by John Payne, singer for the rock group Asia, and friends. Videos of the conference will be available after some time. Information will be available on this website.

2010

Journey to India

On January 10, 2010 I started my flight to India. I was flying on Asiana airlines. The first leg of the flight went from Los Angeles to the Seoul/Inchon airport in Korea. I spent a night in a hotel near the airport. I had some Korean vegetarian things for breakfast (rice, seaweed, different vegetables). Then I flew to Delhi, India. Asiana has good planes and service. I arrived in Delhi at night and went to a hotel near the airport. The next morning I went to the Delhi airport domestic terminal for a flight to Allahabad. The main reason I was in India was to attend a conference called Science and the Spiritual Quest, organized by the Kolkata branch of the Bhaktivedanta Institute. The flight out of Delhi was delayed because of fog. Fog is a definite hazard in north India in the winter months of December and January. Flights, trains, and buses can be delayed or cancelled. In the end, the Air India flight was rerouted to Varanasi (Benares). And from the Benares airport, Air India arranged for a bus to transport the passengers to Allahabad. It took a few hours. All of this was causing some problems for the organizers of the conference, who had been waiting to pick me up at the Allahabad airport. Eventually, the bus dropped us off in the middle of Allahabad at night, but the driver from the conference somehow found me standing in the middle of a circle of rickshaw and taxi drivers eager to take me. I was taken to a guesthouse at a local engineering college (Motilal Nehru National Institute of Technology).

The next day, the conference began. The following day, I gave my talk, on my book Forbidden Archeology. The day after that, I gave a workshop on the topic. The conference was well organized, attended by over five hundred science professors and students from all over India. At the end of the conference, some of the speakers and attendees went on an excursion to “the Sangam.” Sangam means “joining together.” It reference to the place where the sacred rivers Ganges and Yamuna come together at Allahabad. The Sangam is considered one of the most sacred places in India. Every twelve years, a huge festival is held there in January. It is called the Kumbha Mela. It is perhaps the largest such gathering of humans on earth. Millions of people converge there to bathe in the Sangam at an astrologically auspicious time. This particular year was not the Kumbha Mela time, but still there were about a million people camped out in well organized tent cities on the banks of the rivers. Our group went out to the confluence of the Yamuna and Ganges rivers in a boat. It was too cold for me to jump in the water, so I just took some on my head.

The south water reservoirs at Dolavira

After the conference in Allahabad, I went on a research trip. My main research interest is archeological evidence for extreme human antiquity. But I am also interested in the history of Vedic civilization in India. Many scholars say that Vedic culture entered India from outside, from the northwest, about 3,500 years ago. Others say that Vedic culture is native to India, and was there 3,500 years ago and earlier. There are some archeological sites in north India that are judged to be four or five thousand years old. Many scientists and scholars say they are not Vedic. On the basis of their urban design pattern, which conforms to the Vedic system of architecture and town planning called Vastu, I think these sites are Vedic. I visited two such sites, Dholavira in Gujarat and Kalibanga in Rajasthan. To get to Dholavira, I flew from Delhi to the town of Bhuj in Gujarat. Using Bhuj as a base, I went to the isolated site of Dholarvira.

At the Rann of Kutch

To get there one has to go across the Rann of Kutch, vast salt plains that look like ice fields. Seasonally, these salt flats are covered by water, but when I went they were dry. After visiting Dholavira, I visited an interesting place called Mandvi. This is a town on the coast of Gujarat where people build sea-going ships from wood just as they did hundreds, perhaps thousands, of years ago. From Gujarat, I returned to Delhi, and from Delhi I journeyed to Hanumangarh in the north. From Hanumangarh, I visited the site of Kalibangan. Along the way, I saw the dried up channel of the ancient Sarasvati River, which is mentioned in the Rg Veda. The fact that the Rg Veda mentions this river helps locate the place where the Rg Veda was composed and also the time it was composed. The Sarasvati River began to dry up about five thousand years ago, so the Rg Veda, which describes the Sarasvati as a huge flowing river, must be at least that old and must have been composed in northern India. The cities it describes along the bank of that river are arguably Vedic.

Michael Cremo and Guide at Kalibangam

After visiting Kalibangan and the old river channel, I went back to Delhi. And from there I flew back to LA by way of Seoul. At the Inchon/Seoul airport I had about a ten hour layover. Asiana gave me a food voucher, so I tried some Korean vegetarian food (not easy to find in the airport). Then I rested a bit in the airport hotel before heading back to LA.