mch

140 OUR ANCESTORS CAME FROM OUTER SPACE
Tracing' the equator line of 54,000 years ago and starting again
from Africa around the world we find that it touched the ruins of
Zimbabwe, in Rhodesia; the anthropological sites of Java; the
Nan Madol ruins of the island of Temuen in the Carolines; the
Hawaiian Islands; the Galapagos Islands, in the Pacific; the caves
of Cuenca, in Ecuador; and again the mouth of the Amazon. On
the equator of 18,000 years ago we find the kingdom of the
Queen of Sheba, in southwest Arabia; the Indus valley; Lhasa,
in Tibet; Changsha, in China where a 2,000-year-old mummified
princess was found; French Polynesia; and Easter Island.
Naturally,
not all old cultural sites are on these lines of the equator of
the last 100,000 years. But it is significant that we find there the
most mysterious ones like Angkor, Nan Madol, Tiahuanaco,
Nasca, Cuenca, Machu Picchu and Easter Island.
There must have been a good reason why all these impressive
civilizations
estabhshed themselves around the equatorial zones
of their period. Three reasons can be seen right away. First,
there was the flight from ice ages that most probably in the distant
past destroyed great parts of humanity more than once. The
second reason is astronomical and nautical. If you stand on the
equator, all stars are visible—Polaris, the polar star, and the
Southern Cross too. It is the best place to study the movements
of the stars, also the best place for navigation. AH you do is
observe
the polar star for your latitude,
and figure out the longitude
by observing the time difiFerence between the sunset in the
west and moonrise in the east. The third reason is extraterrestrial.
It is easier to handle a spaceship near the equator
than in a polar region, just as it was with our landings on the
moon.
No matter what all the reasons were, the zone between the
tropics of Cancer and Capricorn, the borders of the tropical belt
around our planet, has played the most important part in the development
of civilization. During the ice ages the climate there
was very pleasant, the sea level in the oceans much lower and all
distances between islands and continents substantially shorter
than now. Navigation was simpler because all centers of culture
and commerce were on the same line and one could simply go
with the sun to find them all. There can be no doubt any more