Australian Ufologist Magazine takes pleasure in announcing the publication, in December 1999 of the most startling and sensational book ever written on the 'unwritten' history of Australia; the long awaited "Pyramids in the Pacific", by Rex Gilroy. This book contains the results of 35 years research by Rex Gilroy, Australia's foremost researcher of unexplained mysteries. If you have ever wondered who were our earliest stone-age inhabitants, and who really discovered Australia, then this is the book for you, for "Pyramids in the Pacific" contains a wealth of information and photographs demonstrating that Australia is a land of unsurpassed archaeological mysteries beyond our wildest dreams.
In "Pyramids in the Pacific" Rex Gilroy presents evidence that, besides the presence of giant tool-making hominids and other smaller races which preceded the Aborigines, Australia was the birthplace of modern humans and also the birthplace of civilisation, in the form of a highly-advanced megalithic culture which spread out across the earth to influence the rise of all others at the dawn of history, giving birth to the legend of Atlantis; he will reveal the name of this mother civilisation and its builders.
"Pyramids in the Pacific"presents a mass of evidence - stepped pyramids and ziggurats, stone circles and megalithic alignments, large stone heads, mystery rock scripts and other relics - demonstrating that, during Copper, Bronze and Iron Age times, Australia and its Pacific Island neighbours were visited, colonised and mined by the peoples of India, Sumeria, Egypt, Phoenicia, Libya, Greece, Chine and many other ancient lands. Rex Gilroy's first book, "Mysterious Australia",[NEXUS 1995], merely touched on our 'unwritten' history and was quickly sold out. "Pyramids in the Pacific" will be equally popular, especially with Australians wanting to learn about these fascinating mysteries and evidence of our 'unknown' past, which our university-based, conservative archaeological establishment have suppressed for far too long.
The following article is composed of extracts from this book.....
Extracts from: Pyramids in the Pacific - the unwritten history of Australia by Rex Gilroy [Copyright (C) 1999]
One day in 1931 at Glenloth, Victoria on a windswept sandhill, the remains of the shoreline of a long-vanished lake about 100 km south of the Murray River, John Gibbs, a 10 year old local boy was playing in the shellgrit on an ancient Aboriginal midden. In a basin of the sandhill amid the debris of broken shells, he picked up a large fragmenting, football-sized lump of petrified mud. Protruding from one of the fragments he found a small bronze coin.
Years later a Melbourne's Museum numismatist would identify it as Greek, and that it had been minted in Egypt during the reign of the Greek Ptolemy Philometor the 6th, in the 2nd century BC. The suggestion as to how the coin turned up where it was found is, of course, that it had been left behind by ancient visitors; Greek explorers perhaps, or even Arabs, Indians and Malayans with whom the Greeks traded. Similarly, in 1961 a family picnicking on the Daly River, west of Katherine in the Northern Territory, found a gold scarab, an object of worship of the ancient Egyptians. How did this valuable ornament find its way to such a remote location?
One might ask the same question of 2,000 year old carved stone head of the ancient Chinese goddess Shao Lin [Protectress of mariners at sea], recovered from a beachfront hillside at Milton, on the New South Wales far south coast in 1983; and the many ancient rock inscriptions of Phoenician, Libyan, Egyptian Celtic, Scandinavian and other origin that have turned up across Australia.
Relics, rock inscriptions and megalithic ruins, left here by seafaring adventurers who came from civilisations now long turned to dust. They sailed in search of new lands rich in gold, silver, copper and tin, precious stones and pearls, using the world's oceans as watery highways. It is one of the objectives of this book to demonstrate that these peoples not only discovered, and mined the mysterious "Great South Land" and its island neighbours, but established colonies, some of which survived for generations, and were large and important enough to establish a local ruling class.
By the time they vanished they had influenced the cultures of the native peoples of the region, leaving behind them ghostly megalithic ruins and temples, tombs and pyramids, and rock scripts in a host of ancient tongues; relics that continue to perplex conservative historians, and question the dogma that the peoples of the ancient world lacked the ability to construct and navigate ocean-going water craft. The fact is that people were putting to sea centuries before the invention of a written language and that the water craft they sailed in were far from flimsy.
Australia had, it seems, always been known to someone. No doubt seafarers from south-east Asia were first to find our shores and word passed to the Indo-Aryans of the Indus Valley, Sumeria and in time to the Babylonians and Persians. The tradition was already hoary with age by the time it was given to the first rulers of Egypt by the Sumerians. Celtic and pre-Viking Scandinavian peoples, the Greeks and later the Romans followed and the Indian and Pacific Oceans became watery highways, which in time became highways of commerce, that provided easier and safer trade routes to and from lands hitherto accessible only by long and arduous overland expeditions.
While these historical events were transpiring, there was already great cultural activity taking place on the opposite side of the Pacific; for the Amerindian civilisations were also putting to sea, their great balsa wood craft carrying large migrating groups of men and women with food and livestock across the central Pacific and beyond and those who returned to their home ports brought tales of the great lands that lay across the water beyond the western horizon.
Thus it can be seen that Australia sat between two oceans, or rather, two great watery highways by which the civilisations of the ancient world had access to Australia and its riches. This traffic increased with the onset of the Bronze Age, which lasted from around 2000 to 1400 BC. .......In 600 BC Anaximander drew a world map in Myletus describing a southern continent. Theopompus of Chios in the 3rd century BC drew a similar world map and wrote that, far beyond India and the known world, there lay a great island, in the region where Australia is situated.
In 239 BC Eratosthenese, the Greek scholar, drew a world map as a sphere, on which he described the Great Southern Continent of 'Ausio'. He also measured the Earth's circumference as being about 28,000 miles, an error of excess of only 13 per cent.
It is obvious that maritime and geographical knowledge was far more advanced in the ancient world than hitherto realised by many historians. In 150 BC Crates of Mallos, in Asia Minor, constructed a 3.3m diameter world globe, upon which he depicted four continents divided by two great oceans, one with a north-south axis, the other with an east-west axis, intersecting west of the Mediterranean.
Asia/Europe/Africa he described as a single continent, 'Oecumene'. Separated by his east-west ocean he described 'Perioeci', known as North America. Below this, in the vicinity of Panama and to the south of it he placed 'Antipodes', known today as South America. Far below these land masses, in the region now occupied by Australia, he placed 'Antoeci'. Flavius Philostratus of Athens [175-249 AD] wrote: "If the land be considered in relation to the entire mass of water, we can show that the earth is the lesser of the two".
Unless the ancient Sumerians, Babylonians, Persians, Egyptians, Phoenicians, Greeks and others had not crossed the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans, how else could Philostratus have know that the oceans cover the greater part of the earth's surface? ....... Early in the 20th century, anthropologist Sir Grafton Elliot Smith of Manchester University, claimed there was an apparent Egyptian influence in the cultures of the natives of New Guinea and island Melanesia, dating back over 2,000 years.
He pointed to aspects of their art and religious rites and beliefs, including solar worship, and mummification. Today the islanders still carve wooden human-bodied deities with bird beaks and often horns with surmounting sun and moon discs, figures remarkably similar to ancient Egyptian deities. The people of Darnley Island, Torres Strait, once mummified their dead by removing the stomach contents, then extracting the brains by making an incision through the nostrils with a bone instrument.
After inserting artificial eyes of pearl shell, they embalmed the corpse with bark cloth bandages, painting it in red ochre [their colour for death, as with the ancient Egyptians] and ,like the Egyptians, rowed it westward to an "Island of the Dead" in a funerary canoe shaped like the "Boat of Ra' with an all-seeing eye painted on the prow, for burial in a roughly dug tomb. An imitation of the ancient Egyptians, who ferried the mummies of their Pharaohs across the Nile River to the west bank tombs.
In 1975 my wife Heather and I discovered the now famous "Gympie Pyramid", in a forested farming area. Built of small to large sandstone-ironstone rocks, the crumbling edifice measured 60 metres high, its sides facing the four points of the compass. With 18 terraces, or 'steps', the structure resembles stepped pyramids built in Egypt around 5,000 years ago. The terraces were composed of stones of various size, some weighing up to 4 tonnes, the summit being capped by one enormous slab weighing around 10 tonnes.
Trees up to 600 years old growing up through the crumbling stonework demonstrate its pre-European settlement age. Later, in 1976, near the pyramid's western base, I unearthed a small, weathered ironstone idol, thought to depict the Egyptian god Thoth [god of writing and wisdom] in ape form, clutching the Tau of Cross of Life. The pyramid actually stood on the northern shoreline of a long-dried-up-harbour, which Brisbane University geologists believe, until about 1,000 years ago, extended from east to west for approx. 55 km inland from Tin Can Bay. Local ancient Aboriginal legends tell that, in ages past, a race of "culture -heroes" sailed up the harbour in "big canoes shaped like birds".
They "dug hoes in the hills", carrying the rocks back out to sea in their vessels. These "culture-heroes" also built the "sacred mountain" [pyramid] and other structures still hidden in the district, passing on their Sun-worship religion to the tribes people before they left. How else could primitive Aborigines have described a Bronze Age, Middle-east mining operation? Local residents have been turning up rock inscriptions, pottery fragments and other relics of ancient Middle-east origin since the mid-19th century.
They have also uncovered apparent pre-European open-cut copper, tin and gold mining operations at widely scattered locations of this mineral-rich district; all of which supports my theory that the Gympie district was once an important Bronze Age Egyptian-Phoenician mining colony, supporting a sizeable population. In 1994, a few short months apart, Heather and I discovered large numbers of stones of varying sizes, inscribed with Phoenician and Egyptian scripts, at rich gemstone-bearing locations on the Bremer River west of Brisbane, Queensland and at Moree in northern New South Wales.
Some of these inscriptions were in Canaanite script, placing the era of mining of these no later than the 14th century BC. The remote locations of many of these mining operations, sometimes hundreds of kilometres inland, suggest horses or camels would have been used for transport in the search for mineral deposits and certainly for the removal of the separated metals [which had been smelted at the site] to coastal bases. These animals would have been shipped from Asian ports in large vessels to these coastal bases.
If Middle-eastern explorers had colonised the Australian-West Pacific region, they presumably returned home with items obtained hereabouts. Such evidence is emerging. Opals identified as Australian have been recovered from Mediterranean Phoenician settlements and in 1964 the tomb of a woman, dating to 1000 BC, was excavated in the Jordan Valley. Subsequent examination by British scientists revealed that Eucalyptus resin had been employed in the embalming process.
As in those time Eucalyptus could only have been obtained from Australia or New Guinea, it seems reasonable to assume that Egyptians had once sailed these waters. .......The sun-worshipping peoples of the Old World who entered the Indian Ocean at the dawn of metallurgy, believed that, if they continued eastwards in the direction of the rising sun, they would eventually re-discover the Lost Paradise of Mankind, the abode of the Sun-God, from where 'He' arose each morning to cross the sky; the land of Kenti-Amenti [Land of the Gods] of the Egyptians and, after Euro-Asia and Africa, the third continent.
Indeed, the third continent - Australia - was known and explored before Bronze Age seafarers first sighted the Americas.. My book ,"Pyramids in the Pacific" reveals in detail, traditions of the "Lost Paradise" of Mankind [ie the Garden of Eden] spread across the Old World from Mesopotamia. Yet the Sumerians believed the location of the "Lost Paradise" was located in the southern land of 'Arali'. Here the first men and women had lived in a state of bliss, until they were forced to leave because of natural disasters [or, as other traditions state, "for displeasing the gods"].
The "Lost Paradise", first man/first woman mythology is found wherever the megalithic monuments were erected, from the British Isles across mainland Europe and on through western, central and south-east Asia into Australia and its west Pacific island neighbours. The spread of megalithic 'Stonehenge' and 'Carnac' type structures across the earth is a point of contention among cultural diffusionists and conservative archaeologists alike. From where and when this culture spread is still one of the greatest mysteries of antiquity, as is the identity of the people responsible for it.
Current archaeological opinion holds that the megalithic culture arose in western Asia around 5000 BC and spread into Europe where it died out about 1500 BC. But what of the other structures that extend on down through island south-east Asia into Melanesia and New Zealand, dating back in time until the oldest are found in Australia? Indeed, the oldest known Australian megalithic monument and stone arrangement sites average from 10,000 to over 20,000 years old, with extensive sites in the central west of New South Wales possibly the earliest built on Earth.
These facts imply that the first civilisation arose in Australia. At many of these sites Australia-wide, are to be found examples of the "megalithic script" [as I call it] engraved upon monuments or upon nearby rock slabs. When found along often extensive alignments of standing stones, or at stone circles, they frequently bear astronomical information, while others found at crude megalithic temple sites refer to the various deities worshipped by this mystery race.
One thing is certain, these people were avid sun-worshippers. It has taken me some 25 years to translate this "megalithic script", found at sites dating back at least 10,000 years BP [Before Present], which implies the Australian megalithic script certainly pre-dates the earliest known Old World [Bronze Age] scripts of the Sumerian and Phoenicians [ie around 1500 BC]. The earliest Australian script contains glyphs to be found in the later scripts of the Old World. From translations of the Australian "mother script" I have identified the name of the Sun-God 'Nim', and the Earth-mother 'Nif' [among other deities] of this people.
Aboriginal dream-time traditions speak of this mystery race of "culture-heroes" as having "rolled stones across the land" and that they "worshipped the Sun, Moon and stars". The limitations of space preclude me going into greater detail for now on the "Lost Civilisation of Australia", but the reader can learn more in greater detail in "Pyramids in the Pacific", and also in another book on this subject now in preparation. .......Chinese traditions centuries of old speak of the Great Southern Land of Chui Hiao [among other names] as being inhabited by a race of gods who built in stone. They also describe it as land of indescribable wealth, and their most ancient writings and maps show they were more than mere casual visitors here.
It was Franciscan missionaries who went to China in the 16th century, who were the first Europeans to obtain written evidence pointing to Chinese contacts with Australia.. This evidence included copper scrolls dating from the 6th century AD onwards, including a crude 6th century map of Australia. These scrolls are still being translated. They tell of such things as voyages across the Pacific Ocean in the 10th and 11th centuries in gigantic fleets of massive junks [60 to 100 ships] carrying hundreds of passengers each. The Confucian work "Spring and Autumn Annals" [481 BC] records the observation of two solar eclipses by Chinese astronomers, possibly in Arnhem Land - one [by modern calculation] on April 17th, 592 BC and the second on August 11th, 553 BC.
And "Atlas of Foreign Countries", written between 265 and 316 AD, describes the far north coast of the Great South Land of Chui Hiao, as being inhabited by a race of small, one metre tall black people - an obvious reference to the pygmy-sized Aboriginals identified by Australian Anthropologist, Norman B Tindale in 1938, in the mountains above Cairns, in far North Queensland.
Chui Hiao is described as lying some 30,000 'li' away from southern China. Here it is stated, plants grow leaves in winter and lose them in summer, as occurs in Australia. In the south temperate zone of the southern hemisphere the seasons are the opposite to those of China where in the north temperate zone, plants grow leaves in summer and lose them in winter. The book, "Shih-zu", written in 338 BC, reported the presence of apparent kangaroos in the Imperial Zoo, Peking as well as further similar reports that continued in later dynasties in the north-western part of Hopei Province; in the north-eastern part of Shansi Province and in Chahar, Jehol and in places in the north-eastern provinces.
Even as recent as about 1938, people could still see wild kangaroos in Heilung Kiang Province; the reason being that Emperor Chao of Yen had, in 338 BC dispatched a fleet of junks, with orders to return with more of these pouched animals, from the 'Southern Land of Chui Hiao". In the book, "The Classics of Shan Hai Jing" [Classics of Mountains and Seas], a treatise on geography divided into parts, are further remarkable disclosures. Believed written by "the Grat Yu" [who became Emperor in 2208 BC] about 2250 BC, the book may refer to visits to the American west coast, while other parts of the narrative suggest considerable knowledge of Australia, beginning in the Broome area of Western Australia, across the Kimberley region to the east coast. Australia is described as a great wilderness land across the southern seas called "The Great beyond", where dark hopping animals called "Shuti" were said to have had two heads and carry their young in a pouch.
To Chinamen who had never seen them before, female kangaroos with pouched joeys would certainly have appeared to have two heads. The fourth part of this book deals with the geographical features of north-western Australia; the rivers, flora and fauna, including the dolphins of the Broome area. Arnhem Land is similarly described, along with a good description of a koala. It also speaks of a gold mining colony, possibly somewhere in the Cooktown area of far north Queensland, and the finding of black opals, which are to the best of our knowledge, almost entirely confined to Lightning Ridge in north-western New South Wales.
Centuries old maps found in China describing the southern continent are indisputable proof of extensive Chinese contact with Australia. In Taiwan University there is a map drawn on a porcelain plate, which shows the southern coastline of New Guinea, the east coast of Australia as far south as the Melbourne area, and the crude outline of Tasmania's north coast. It dates back 2,000 years. Other maps of the same period show, if crudely, the entire continental coastline. In 1584 the Jesuit missionary, Father Mateo Ricci, during a lengthy stay in China, was given a copy of a large world map, the original at least some centuries older. The portion dealing with the islands of south-east Asia includes the unmistakable outlines of New Guinea and Australia. .......
Another, virtually unknown explorer of our coastlines was Japan. Japanese history books record that, in the early years of the 15th century, their mariners made voyages to Australia in search of pearls. The Famous Japanese pirate admiral, Yama da Nagamasa, with a fleet of forty ships, navigated by Koreans and crewed by Japanese, explored every land from Japan to Australia, between 1620 to 1633. Japanese texts of that time referred to Australia as 'Sei-yo', meaning "The Great South Land"; and 'Sei-tso', "The South Land of Pearls". Far earlier Japanese claims of contact with our shores date back at least 2,000 years.
These tell of mineral-seeking voyages to the Arnhem Land-Gulf country. In the Kojiki, or "Record of Ancient Matters", written in 712 AD, the southern "Underworld" is described as being inhabited by weird animals [some of which carry their young in pouches attached to their bodies] and giant birds [?the Emu]. The Nihongi, or "Chronicles of Japan", relates that, in 667 BC, the Emperor Kami-Yamato-Ihare-Biko, at the age of 45, heard that there was a fair "Land of the Gods" encircled on all sides by mountains, situated at the actual centre of the world; located where Australia is situated and that is contained vast wealth in pearls, precious metals and stones.
He thus declared: "I think that this land will undoubtedly be suitable for the extension of the Heavenly task [ie for the further expansion of the Imperial power], so that it's glory should fill the universe". Thus, having claimed Australia for Japan, he dispatched a large fleet of ships, commanded by Admiral Nigi-hoye-lu ["Soft-Swift-Sun"] to the Great South Land, to eventually return laden with gold, pearls and other riches A report of 460AD tells of Japanese mariners who, having landed somewhere in the Gulf of Carpentaria, had to defend themselves with bows and arrows, against a number of "tall wild black men" who attacked them with spears soon after they had gone exploring in the nearby scrub.
.......
I hope the foregoing information will wet the appetite of readers for "Pyramids in the Pacific", and its refreshing approach to our 'unwritten' history of discovery and exploration. This book does not concern itself with the voyages of Captain James Cook RN or the earlier Dutch mariners, for their exploits are too well known to rate repeating. I offer instead a literary "time machine" which will take the reader through a vast panorama of ancient mysteries; fossil footprints of giants and other primitive hominids that walked our land millions of years ago;
Megalithic temples, 'Stonehenge'-like circles and other astronomically aligned monuments of the unknown "Lost Civilisation of Australia"; the "lost race of the Solomon Sea" and other sunken megalithic culture centres of the west Pacific Ocean; ghostly pyramids and ziggurat-type structures, stone heads and many other 'unexplained' mysteries of our 'unknown' ancient past: more than enough to demonstrate that our history is far older than most Australians realise. .....
Readers wishing to obtain Rex Gilroy's latest book can enquire at either PO Box W 285, West Tamworth, 2340 NSW or PO Box 202, Katoomba, 2780. NSW. Phone 02 6762 2357.
Source: The Australasian Ufologist Magazine Vol. 4 No.1 Pgs 27-33 (Photos/Illustrations)