We have already given the huge megaliths some attention as suggesting the activity in ages past of beings much superior to present man in physique at least, and a  case was  made out  for their intellectual superiority also. At this point we can with advantage look with a fresh eye at some of these strange creations of early man as an introduction to our main theme in this chapter.

     I, like many people seeing Stonehenge, thought that the monument was unique in the world - until that is, visiting the famed biblical and tourist sites of Israel, I saw the Gigal Refaim ( the Circle of the Rephaim) situated on the Golan Heights, overlooking Syria. It was constructed on a plan similar to Stonehenge, but was if anything larger, probably some 160 yards in diameter. There were (or are) five stone rings round a tumulus.  Some of the stones must weigh  twenty tons or more and their average height is about  seven to ten feet.  It appeared to be, like most theory about Stonehenge, an astronomical observatory.  Like Stonehenge, the rays of the sun coming from a certain angle at a certain time, seemed to indicate as much. But the question remains (as with Stonehenge): why build on such a massive scale?  Pot sherds found on the site date back to about 3000 BC, and so pre-date the conventional wisdom regarding the building of the Egyptian pyramids.
     The megalith seems to have more affinity with the huge constructions of Europe, (insofar as it is a stone circle), but there was no contact AS FAR AS WE KNOW, between the indigenous nomad population of the region, and Europe.  Moreover the circle was unique at the time of building; no other one like it has been found in the area.  What is more puzzling still is that, like the Nazca lines and figures, the  monument can only be fully appreciated from the air!  It could have been constructed as a sort of message to supposed star dwellers, in the context of astronomical knowledge as it was then.
     Around were hundreds of dolmens, some of them enormous, encompassing an area larger than that of the Giza pyramids. This megalithic construction was  the only one built - by wandering tribes who had only primitive technology? It struck me as unlikely.  More probably, derived from my study of ancient megaliths, monoliths, and ancient (biblical) history, it could be argued that the Rephaim, those scriptural giants, were the real builders of the circle.  Not far from the monument is the site of a city named in the Bible as Ashterot; in Genesis we read that the Rephaim dwell at a place known as Ashterot-Karnaim. In Joshua, 12; 4, there is the reference to King Og of Bashan, whom we have already encountered, the last of the Rephaim, who lived at Ashterot.  We are told in 1 Chronicles that the tribe of Manasseh inhabited Golan in Bashan.  We remember reading of the giant size of king Og - and presumably the rest of his tribe were similar. In Deuteronomy we are told that the Rephaim were large, powerful and very tall.  We recall in Chronicles the last Anakim giant was killed: the one with six fingers and six toes.

Builders of the Megaliths

     It seems possible to some scholars therefore, that giant, maybe heavenly beings, could have built the megaliths.  Og himself was believed to be descended from the Nephilim, deities who fell to earth from the skies or heavens, according to one interpretation of the meaning of the word, Nephilim. It seems from the Bible that Og (and his descendants) mated with Noah's daughters, giving rise to hybrid giants, known as Rephaim or Anakim - and, they lived in the area now known as the Golan Heights.  Perhaps in this fact lies the answer to the question: who built the Gilgal Refaim?
     The men who built the megaliths elsewhere, as in Europe, had farmer ancestors of the Neolithic (using implements in the Stone age) era who came from the Middle East about 8000 years ago. They later crossed into the British Isles.  They adopted a way of life, i.e. non-nomadic, that enabled them to build gigantic stone monuments. From the seemingly harmonious mingling of indigenous and settler races, rose a civilisation living in communities conducive to building vast works, which may have been social in intent, and at the same time, places of ceremony and burial.
     The Nabta site in Egypt's Sahara, is as strange as any.  Similar to Gigal Refaim (and to Stonehenge), this site consists of a stone circle, dolmens and lines of huge stones, some of which are nine feet high.  It is believed that Nabta predates Stonehenge by about 1000 years.  The remains lie near an ancient lake which began to fill with water about 10,000 years ago, namely at the end of the last ice age.  Alignments in the monument may be understood as astronomical.  Human remains have not been found there, but those of cattle have.
     Geometric lines between other stone monuments in the area and alignments to the main points of the compass, signify what?  - maybe the whole represents a symbolic geometry related to water and the sun. The existence of such as Nabta culture suggests that this it was that stimulated the society that later built the great pyramids some 4500 years ago (if conventional dating is correct).

THE WORK OF GIANTS

     The question therefore is: are the gigantic megalithic remains the work of giants? Biblical evidence and indeed all other evidence is not completely clear on this point. What does appear to be emphasised is that, as we have stated before, that there were originally benevolently intentioned giants and, later, malevolent giants.
      "There is," says John Foster Forbes and Iris Campbell in their book, GIANTS, MYTHS AND MEGALITHS, "considerable evidence that giants of enormous stature did exist in Britain.  No-one knows for certain ...the reason for the erection ...of the mysterious [megalithic] remains" (p. 9) These "sons of God" if so we call them, had vast knowledge, who needed to inhabit an earthy type of body, that of the children of men, essential for life on this planet.  (An interesting comment by the above two writers.)  A sentence follows which is deserving of quotation: "They were emissaries of the Godhead, empowered to impart divine wisdom...among the sons of Men who had reached that degree of evolution which enabled them to receive of the divine wisdom...These Sons of God dwelt with the sons of Men for a long period to redeem the fallen planetary conditions brought about by the previous episode of the fallen angels..." (p. 9). The sons of the angels who transgressed, say the authors, being involved in the Fall ...bereft of their divine source...and unable to free themselves from their God-endowed potency, turned these powers downwards and outwards.
     There is much evidence, write Foster Forbes and Campbell, to prove that this unhappy progeny was made up of the "fallen people" who had survived that cataclysm, the sinking of Atlantis. Who were these Titans of Greek mythology but the "unfortunate products of the union of gods and men ..."(13)
Surely, the writers maintain, the great western megaliths, of Palestine [and of other places] testify to superhuman powers.
     It does seem, they say, from ancient records that semi-human people, even monstrous "abortions" resulting from experimentation, (about which more anon), having misappropriated "true white magic" and perverted its use, were able to "apply their powers to an infinite number of arts". (p. 14)

The First Time

     But this was all after the First Time or Golden Age when gods (as in the Old Testament) fraternised with mortals as they did with the Egyptians before the Greek and Hebrew civilisations. In Homer's ILIAD and ODYSSEY we read of the Olympian era when gods spoke to, and directed, human beings. As Robert Bauval and Adrian Gibert put it, "Every civilisation has looked into its mythical past and provided itself with a divine pedigree"  (THE ORION MYSTERY, p. 180). The Egyptians believed that the country had been ruled by a race of gods for thousands of years before the rule of the divine mortals, the pharoahs.  It was  something, therefore, of great significance connected with the First Time that motivated the ancient Egyptians to build the pyramids; what exactly we do not know, but it was something in relation to the stars, especially Sirius and those of Orion.
     Was the Giza Necropolis, especially the Great Pyramid, ask Bauval and Gilbert, a great marker of time, a type of star-clock to mark the epochs of Osiris? (The supreme god and king of eternity of ancient Egypt who was resurrected to an eternal reign in heaven and therefore the symbol of hope for life beyond the grave.) Osiris could be regarded as the counterpart of Viracocha and Quetzalcoatl, the civilising deities of Central America. Quetzalcoatl was the nature god of various Mexican tribes before the Spanish conquest. If a date of about 10500 BC is accepted (based on the position of the stars at that precise time and the discovered alignments of and in the pyramids) then we must ask ourselves why these colossal edifices were built; the answer, vague as it is and unrevealing, is that the ancient Egyptians wanted to tell us something, wanted to draw out attention to the significant date. It was in the eleventh millenium in which the age old Tiahuanacan civilisation  came to an end; in which the designs of the astronomical monuments of Giza were being implemented; in which the erosion patterns on the Sphinx could be clearly discerned; in which Egyptian agriculture and large mammals ceased to flourish.
 
CODED MESSAGES

     We are coming to realise the extent to which the great Greek thinkers are (or were) indebted to the much older philosophy of the Egyptians.  Undoubtedly the Greeks regarded Egyptians as possessed of much astronomical knowledge and sophisticated technology. Dynastic Egypt began about 3100 BC under king Menes who unified the country.  Before that, the First Time, there had been divine kings, rulers of a kingdom established by Osiris. The latter was of course only one of  many god-kings who ruled in Egypt according to general belief in remote times.  Others, equally well-known were such as Isis, Horus, Thoth.  Who were they?  Did they simply represent myth memories of real events which had occurred in the remote past? Or were they as Hancock poses, part of a coded message from the ancients which had been transmitting itself over and over again..? Had the historical archetypes for Osiris and Isis come to the Nile Valley in the First Time, twelve and a half thousand years ago?  Certain mysterious structures around the world were built, maintains Hancock, to preserve and transmit the knowledge of an advanced civilisation of remote antiquity  which was destroyed by a terrifying upheaval. (See p. 490) Epitomising the conclusions of FINGERPRINTS OF THE GODS, is the following sentence, worthy of full quotation: "Cyclical, recurrent and near-total destructions are part and parcel of life on this planet; such destructions have occurred many times before and they certainly will occur again".  (p. 498)

ATLANTIS

     It would be opportune now to refer briefly to the "legend" of Atlantis and the origin of the story (which we have earlier mentioned in passing).  Plato in his TIMAEUS first revealed the tragic events.  In the dialogue, the story is reported to Plato by Critias who said he had got it from Solon when visiting a city in Lower Egypt.  (Solon was a Greek statesman flourishing about 640-560 BC.) It had been told to Solon by Egyptian priests, write Bauval and Gilbert, who said that mysterious people from a land called Atlantis had invaded much of the Mediterranean basin as well as Egypt some nine thousand years ago and that records of them still survive in Egypt.  In the TIMAEUS is the statement that the souls of humans are the stars and that they return to the stars when they die. Some of today's  researchers place the date of the Atlantis events in about 15000 BC.
     Some of the accounts regarding  Atlantis  tell of a disasterous flood occasioned by an eathquake or some natural upheaval which caused Atlantis to sink beneath the waves.  Where it was, nobody really knows although there is no shortge of speculation. It may be that the thawing of the ice at the end of the last ice age (about 10000 BC) caused the catastrophe. There is in fact no doubt about the occurrence of cataclysms about 10000 BC - at the beginning of the Neolithic period. Charles Hapgood, a noted authority, in his book, MAPS OF THE ANCIENT SEA KINGS, states that the old charts, among which is the PIRI Reis map mentioned earlier, were first drawn up by a highly cultured people existing about 10000 BC i.e. before they were overtaken by a catastrophe. It seems the Atlanteans were aware of impending doom, and that a large number managed to escape.  Interestingly enough, there are references in ancient manuscripts to a time when "demi-gods" came to Egypt: about 10000 years BC.
     We have pointed out several times that Egyptian civilisation must go back much, much further than extant historical records indicate. One line of thought suggests that "initiates", men with advanced knowledge from Atlantis, did bring their technical skills into Egypt (and from what we have already said into other lands as well), many thousands of years ago. These people/s, so advanced in many ways, could have possessed the art of utilising the forces of nature to which we have alluded earlier; these forces may have encompassed the secret (or art) of levitation, and/or anti-gravity.
      The famous American psychic Edgar Cayce (died 1945) who had a good record in this field, is recorded  as saying in the volume, EDGAR CAYCE ON ATLANTIS, that a highly skilled race left the doomed island? of Atlantis to settle largely in Egypt.  These people moreover were  of giant stature.  It is not fanciful to say therefore that the massive buidings of Giza and of Karnak may owe much to these erstwhile Atlanteans. Indeed, Cayce alleged that the Giza pyramids were built  about 10000 BC  by survivors of the doomed Atlantean race.
 
Postponing the End of the World

      It may be deduced from what we have seen that a primary concern of Egyptian peoples, Central American societies, especially the Maya, and indeed other cultures around the world in past times, was pre-eminently with postponing the end of the world - or at least with calculating it!  We now know for example that the terrible bloodshedding by the Aztecs had this very concern as its motive force.

Strange Similarities

     As we have pointed out, there are many similarities between the constructions in Egypt and Central America, particularly the pyramids.  Is it all coincidence, asks Hancock, in FINGERPRINTS OF THE GODS. Is it not more logical, he asks, to conclude that there was an ancient connection between Mexico and Egypt. We might be dealing with a legacy "that the pyramids of Egypt and the remains of [ancient South American cities]  expresses the technology, the geographical knowledge, the observational astronomy and perhaps of religion, of a forgotten civilisation of the past..."(169). These mysterious cities, old when the Aztecs discovered them, had a local legend asserting that they had been built by giants and had the purpose "to transform men into gods".(170). Speaking specifically of the enormous causeways that lead to the pyramids, Bauval and Hancock state that these causeways, like the temples and pyramids of the site, appear to all intents and purposes, to have been the work of builders who thought like gods or - giants.  Hancock's book speaks of the people of the advanced culture in the remote past as, from all evidence, tall, white and bearded.
     Similarities do not exist only in constructions of course; we have seen how universal is the flood story for example. Accounts  of the global tribulations suffered by humanity in the last Ice Age (about which more later) and its end which produced rapid climate changes described in the stories. (I hesitate to use the term "myths"!) Connecting these universal legends of cataclysm, is it possible, asks Hancock, that such coincidences cannot be coincidences...and that these things could denote "the global influence of an ancient, though unidentified, guiding hand? Could it be that same hand  during and after the last Ice Age which drew the series of highly accurate and technically advanced world maps...might not the same hand have left its ghostly fingerprints on myths...those concerning the death and resurrection of gods..." (p. 244). Could these myths contain a record of encounters between scattered palaeolithic tribes which survived the last Ice Age and an as yet unidentified high civilisation which passed through the same epoch; Hancock poses the question.
     The answer unfortunately is that we shall probably never know, short of some great discovery, of these mysteries and other equally baffling ones, because too much written evidence has been lost or destroyed, most of it in remote times. That is why we have to "read into" what remains as testimony, the great, ancient monuments of the world, especially those of the Giza plateau.  As we now know, for example, as Bauval and Hancock state, the three great pyramids are the terrestrial counterparts of the three stars of Orion's belt and the Sphinx draws down to earth the regal image of Leo, the celestial lion. (KEEPER OF GENESIS: p. 293).
     Recent research, with a "hands-on" approach, like that of Bauval and Hancock, has gone a long way to explaining the ancient mysteries of Egypt.  It has led many people to doubt the conventional wisdom of academic, what one may call mainstream archaeologists and historians, which informs in effect that Egyptian achievement and the Pharaonic culture developed suddenly and dramatically in the first half of the third millenium BC.  What is in fact much more likely is summed up concisely by John West in his book, SERPENT IN THE SKY, where he says that, "Egyptian civilisation was not a 'development', it was a legacy". (p. 1)

EGYPTIAN LEGACY

     This legacy at its centre had the belief held implicitly by the ancient Egyptians that the world of men was linked to the world of the gods - from the "First time" to their present day. It was the "people" of the Golden Age, of the First Time, the Gods and Heroes, the Followers of Horus, who imparted the technology and organising skill to the Egyptians, enabling them to construct their great monuments. The great pyramids were emphatically not just necropolises  - though some Pharaoes may have used them LATER as such - and not only astronomical structures, but as we have said, indicators to later generations of some things of great importance, transmitters of a significant message across the ages which the pyramids were designed to outlast.
     We can do no better than to let Bauval and Hancock sum for us the burden of our foregoing sentiments.  "The function of the Giza blueprint is to provide a virtually indestructible 'holographic' apparatus for the use of 'reincarnated' or 'reborn' entities of the Horian lineage in order to induce 'remembrance' of a 'divine' genetic origin in Egypt in the time-frame of 10, 500 BC". (p. 302)
     The theme of a "message" left by superhuman people (and they would have to be to design and build the great pyramids and Sphinx)  cannot be left without a mention of the "Pyramid Texts", hieroglyphic writings carved on the inside walls of pyramids dating from about 2200 BC.  Although ancient themselves they derive from an even more remote period.  These writings were composed by astronomer-priests who dictated the state religion of king-gods whose destiny was to reside as stars in the world of Osiris.  These priests created or devised the concept of the Giza necropolis as mirroring the three main stars in Orion's belt with the Nile as a refection of the Milky Way. As Bauval and Gilbert conclude: "We have discovered the true mystery of the pyramids - an earthly map of the stellar landscape of Orion, the eternal home of the star-kings of Egypt". (p.225).   A great civilisation such as that of the ancient Greeks exemplified by truly eminent figures in virtually all the then intellectual disciplines regarded the ancient Egyptians as possessed of great astronomical wisdom.

An advanced civilisation

     Deductions such as we are able to make from the above  suggest that indeed there was a technologically  advanced civilisation in predynastic Egypt, maybe long, long before the rule of the first Pharoah, a civilisation whose leaders were the fabled Watchers - and people of great stature, if indeed they were "people" in the usual sense, if not demi-gods, whatever we may understand by this term.  It may be that the strange city of Jericho, whose foundation is lost in the mist of time, was built by superhumans: the sixteen feet high, proportionately thick walls, the colossal towers, the ditches dug out of hard bedrock.
     Man's history has clearly not been one of continual progress; on the contrary, it shows declination and decay.  Theories accounting for this puzzle adduce natural (and unnatural) catastrophes, ice ages, earth crust displacement, visitations from the "gods"/extraterrestials; dispersements (of the teacher/Watchers) and "mutations" (among humans); - these are but some of them.  Some of which may be correct!
     However this may be, it is a fact that respected Egyptologists have testified to the finding of predynastic human remains considerably larger than those of the ordinary; the remains of a race who are believed to have founded the royal line of Egypt.  It appears to be the curious shape of the skulls found that intrigues above all: the large size and the strange  elongation.  Were the Watchers (or their ancestors) linked to these long-headed peoples of predynastic Egypt?  Deduction seems to indicate answers in the affirmative. This was in the "First Time", the Golden Age of peace and order, in which the Egyptians implicitly believed, an era of great antiquity.  This epoch was established, according to Plato in his TIMAEUS (mentioned earlier), by survivors of the catastrophe which destroyed Atlantis.
     Even if the evidence is convincing that the pyramids and Sphinx are of much greater antiquity than conventional Egyptology alleges, we still cannot identify with any degree of CERTAINTY who exactly the original builders were and, more importantly, WHY they were built - although theory abounds. We can only attempt to build up supporting evidence for a/our point of view, indeed a belief.

The meaning of the Monuments

     We must ab initio ask ourselves the question: what did these huge monuments MEAN to the ancient Egyptians?  That the Sphinx we now see is not the Sphinx the creators saw is now taken as axiomatic;  the size of the head, disproportionately small, the weathering on (particularly) the sides which appears to have been caused by water (rain) rather than by wind. Recent research has indicated that the Sphinx dates from about 10,000 BC, and therefore could indeed have been eroded by the subpluvial rains following the end of the last Ice Age - some 10,000 years ago.  Also adduced is the point that the leonine characteristics of the monument would tie in with the then state of the heavens, the age of the constellation of Leo, about 11000 to 9000 BC;  which itself is a mind boggling thought, indicating as it does, a vast astronomical knowledge  of the movements of the  stars and planets, including our own, and a knowledge of the phenomenon of "precession", an involved concept too involved to go into in any detail here, but put simply (I hope) drives from the wobble of the earth on its axis which produces a variety of visual effects.
     Wondrous as this astronomical erudition was, the marvellous construction abilities displayed on the site rival the former: abilities that have never since been surpassed.  We cannot now with all our technical aids raise and put 200 tons blocks  in place with precision as was done in the construction of the Valley Temple.  The conclusion is inescapable: the builders must themselves have been super or supra human, or have had the help of beings far advanced physically and mentally, who were themselves possessed of an esoteric knowledge now lost to subsequent mortality.

THE SPHINX AND THE WATCHERS

     Might the Sphinx have been carved originally as "a reminder of the great cataclysms that took place during this troublesome epoch [the Age of Leo] of human history" as Andrew Collins asks in FROM THE ASHES OF ANGELS (p. 340).  A profound and pertinent question.  Undoubtedly, the Age of Leo was a time of climatic upheaval and extremes:  cold, vulcanism, violent rains.  It may be that the underground cities found in several parts of the world were built as shelters from the cataclysms above; were the Watchers themselves inhabitants of these underground cities before they moved out? Eminent scholars, Hapgood, Santillana, Massey, have concluded, or at least advanced the theory that the Sphinx was carved in the age of Leo about thirteen thousand years ago by a high civilisation.
     The Watchers as we have seen are closely identified with the  giant Nephilim in the Book of Enoch. Reading the latter, it is clear that the Watchers had a profound understanding of great astronomical time cycles that had probably been derived from the ancient Egyptian obsession.  This knowledge was passed on to the races of the Near and Middle East, thereby accounting for the developments in human history that occurred comparatively overnight.
     It is equally clear in "Enoch" that the Watchers were of two camps: one group remaining loyal to heaven and the other consisting of those who descended to earth and mixed with mortal beings. That they taught  humanity many "forbidden" skills and imparted much complex and esoteric knowledge is emphasised several times, especially in the "non-canonical" Books (of the Bible).  Particularly, it seems, was astronomical information imparted and to several races other than Egyptian, of which the most amazing was knowledge about precession. Collins' conclusion about the Egyptian elders is that they were probably the "true source behind the traditions concerning the angels and Watchers of the Book of Enoch, as well as the gods, goddesses and demons of ancient Mesopotamia ...the giants and Titans [about whom more anon] of Greek mythology" (p. 356).

Egyptian Elder Culture

     All current information appears to suggest that Egyptian "elder" culture encompassed a comprehensive knowledge of many subjects apart from astronomy. This advanced culture however, it is to be deduced, did not continue to evolve, after the end, approximately, of the last ice age, about 10000 BC. These Watchers of the Book of Enoch survived catastrophes, but could not survive dispersal and disintegration due largely  to physical as well as emotional factors.  It may be that disillusion set in and before succumbing to their inevitable fate they decided to impart further knowledge to humanity - for their own purposes - and gain?  This revealment of secret knowledge is remembered by us as the transgressions of the fallen angels, the descent of the gods, the actions of demons and giants, as Collins puts it.  His  deduction therefore is that humanity's wisdom in not divinely derived; the "supernatural" beings of the Scriptures are accordingly beings of flesh and blood who once communicated with human kind, who were the survivors of a previously high civilisation. The conclusion is that we today are not the most (for our time) or first advanced civilisation to have lived on earth. The fate of the Watchers and their predecessors of the remotely ancient cultures serve to give us pause and it is this dire message  that the antique monuments of the world could convey

"ENOCH" AND ITS INTERPRETATIONS

      The Book of Enoch, vitally important though it is to our study, has given rise to various interpretations about the origin of man, or rather intelligent man, some of which seem fanciful but none of which can be authoritatively refuted.  Foremost among these latter day exegetes are Erich von Daniken and Zecharia Sitchin, about whom we shall say more in later chapters. According to the theory, the Watchers were giant physical beings of extraterrrestial origin who had imparted their knowledge to mankind. Indeed, von Daniken believes, backed by  Judaic tradition  it must be said, that underground chambers (for which there is some evidence) were built by Enoch in which to secrete scientific papers when the Flood threatened.  Sitchin adduced that the Nephilim were extraterrestials of great stature, from a far distant planet of immense elliptical orbit round the sun, who had created "man" to work for them.  For Sitchin, the Nephilim (of ENOCH) were a race of physical beings who once communicated with the old civilisations of Egypt and Sumeria.
     The Watchers, "human angels" as Collins alludes to them, are described in the ancient writings, especially "Enoch" as possessing white skin, ruddy complexions, white woolly hair, bright eyes and serpent or viper-like faces.  (See particularly 1 ENOCH 46; and 106 where descriptions of white haired people are given.) They were also very tall.  The gods, goddesses mentioned in the Near Eastern texts were apparently of giant stature and, we deduce, so were the ancestors of these people inhabiting the land areas east of the Mediterranean Sea.  Moreover, ancient remains unearthed in the Near East lands including Egypt have indicated the existence of beings of vast size possessed of the long headed skulls we have mentioned earlier. Where did this elder culture, the presumed ancestors of the mysterious Watchers, come from? It is possible they came from Africa into the Mediterranean area some time prior to 13000 BC. Or they could be extraterrestials, according to Daniken, Sitchin and others; they could be from Antarctica (remember the Peri Reis map?) - one suggestion for lost Atlantis, which according to the crustal displacement theory, was abandoned about 14000 BC, leading to  its peoples' migration.

Merely an offshoot?

     Of course it may be that the society of the ancestors of the ancient Egyptians was but an offshoot, a part only of the great high civilisation that in time came to influence and dominate the surrounding nations.  Where EXACTLY they came from is open to conjecture; a people very tall,  with white skin and white hair.
     A quotation from THE ASHES OF ANGELS, summarises the argument thus far:
     "Either the Watchers were incorporeal beings - divine messengers in the service of God who fell from grace.  Or they were simply the creation of our ancestors' deep psychological needs, fears and desires.  Or they did really once walk the earth as beings of flesh and blood".

     In the next chapter we shall consider some of the proposals and theories put forward by influential writers about the  history  of the earth and in  it, changes to its peoples, that have much relevance to the present study.

© A.B. Finlay Ph.D