THE EARTH HAS undergone drastic and violent changes over the billions of years that have passed since its formation. No one can tell how many human civilizations have flourished, only to disappear into the endless void of time. Even as this book is written, the remains of ancient cities, long believed nothing more than fables, have been discovered in the eternally shifting sands of Africa and the Middle East, under the Mediterranean’s warm waters, and buried deep in the jungles of South America.

Only now do we piece together, from varied and vague sources, our true history. India’s Mahabhareta and Ramayana; the Hittite tablets of Boghaz Koy; the Egyptian temple walls of Karnak, Luxor, and Abydos; and Homer’s epic poems (which were themselves ancient bardic songs when Herodotus first investigated them in the fifth century BC) are but a few. However, these ancient sources provide only a brief, tantalizing glimpse into our long-forgotten past.

Today, as our present world age races to its fateful end on that dark winter solstice of 2012, some of what we know is accepted fact, while we conveniently place the remainder into a time of legends and fables. However, the vast history of human endeavors has been lost, possibly forever, into dim and distant myths and the realms of the ancient gods.  How tragic it would be for us to never really learn our true and original story or that history yet to come may prove to be the future long past.

-- C.R. MacPhadrick