Between July 1, 1957, and December 31, 1958, over 8,000 scientists from 67 nations participated in a global research project known as The International Geophysical Year (IGY). During this period, worldwide scientific resources were organized at an unprecedented scale to investigate Earth’s interior, crust, oceans, and atmosphere. IGY scientists worked on such diverse projects as Antarctic exploration, mapping of the ocean floor, the drilling of core holes deep into the crust; and space and solar research that resulted in, among other things, the discovery of the Van Allen radiation belt. Knowledge obtained during the IGY revolutionized our understanding of the earth and provided a model for future international cooperative science. The IGY prepared the way for an era of phenomenal scientific advancement during the decade of the sixties, arguably culminating with the Apollo-11 moon landing on July 20, 1969.
Some science teams went on with their projects after the IGY ended. One group in particular, led by the American geologist E.F. Clydeson Adams, continued the study of glaciers and glacial processes, for two decades. On May 16, 1966, the Adams research team was conducting an excavation of sediments near Kristiansand, Norway. This dig was like the hundreds of others conducted by the team in their research on how the ancient ice-ages affected the distribution and fertility of the world’s farmland. During the course of this excavation however, at a depth of 3.6 meters, the team encountered a boulder that displayed engravings unmistakably recognizable as writing. Beneath this boulder lay the entrance to a small cavern that was found to contain a bronze sarcophagus, the origin of which was a complete mystery.
The container was removed from the chamber and transported to the team’s field laboratory where it was cleaned, photographed, and then opened. Inside were found 54 parchment scrolls imprinted in a language never before seen. Adams assembled a team of specialists from a variety of scientific disciplines to examine the parchments. Via these examinations it was discovered that the scrolls were composed of preserved horse-hide embossed by copper and bronze imprinting tools. Chemical analyses of the hides indicated that they had been treated with arsenic and chromium compounds. When unfolded each scroll measured approximately two meters in length and one meter in width; and were wrapped on rods of a previously unknown species of oak (recently named Q. zunara).
Recognizing the scientific and sociological significance of the discovery, Adams took measures to ensure the secrecy of both the scrolls and the location where they were found, until more could be learned about the civilization that produced them. In June of 1966, he submitted the first scroll to the Polish cryptographer Anton Koryenko, a pioneer in digital cryptography and also an expert in pre-Indo-European languages. However, since the writing in the scroll had no common references with any known language, the initial prognosis for translation appeared grim. The breakthrough came when the project’s anthropology team requested Koryenko’s assistance with interpretation of what they thought was a map they found engraved on the inner wall of the sarcophagus. When Koryenko examined the engraving he was astounded. Instead of a map, the anthropologists had discovered a detailed pictographic encryption key containing 4,096 individual drawings of common objects, each aligned with corresponding alphanumeric and phonetic symbols. It was obvious that the key had been designed expressly to facilitate translation of the scrolls into any language.
In a private interview with Daniel McCasoway in 2005, Koryenko recalled that as he studied the encryption key he was struck with the curious sensation that he was communicating with the person who wrote it, 600 centuries earlier. “It was as if he were speaking directly to me. His logic was flawless, the idiomatic mechanisms were perfect. Our minds were as one. It was the most exhilarating time of my career.”
Koryenko used the encryption key to create a numeric algorithm to tackle the ancient language. By April of 1967, all of Scroll I (known as Kristiansand Scroll I, or KS-1) had been translated and The Seventh Illumination of Kefram Andemov was resurrected from what most experts now agree has heretofore been an unrecorded and unknown epoch of human history. When the translation was reviewed by Adams he determined that the nature of its subject matter was so controversial that it had the potential to interfere with his ability to obtain continued funding, at a time when cuts were starting to be made in many science research budgets. Based solely on this motivation, Adams decided to postpone announcement of the discovery of the scrolls until after his death. KS-1 and its translation, along with the balance of the untranslated scrolls were subsequently sealed in a controlled-environment security vault in Zurich, Switzerland, until August 15, 2005, twelve days after Adams’ death, as specified in his last will and testament.
The alphabet used in the KS-1 scroll reportedly contains nineteen consonants, ten vowels, and eleven punctuation characters. Much of the narrative is composed of pre-Indo-European verse structures that translate poorly. Where possible however, Koryenko conserved the metrical idioms. Numeration used in the scroll comprises ten basic characters, with a more-or-less, modern positional value format, indicating a base-ten notational system. The mathematical sophistication displayed in the numerous navigational logs, and in other parts of the scrolls, indicates a strong familiarity with the concepts of algebra up through at least the quadratic formula; and a grasp of trigonometry and geometry that is fundamentally Euclidean in form.
Anthropologists have customarily estimated that during the time period represented in the scrolls the global human population was probably less than 1,000,000. However, the complexity of the scrolls and the references within them indicate that this estimate may be low. The traditional model has also assumed that during this period most humans existed as hunter-gatherers and/or roving opportunists, whose incohesive, nomadic groups were scattered in a few isolated environments in Africa, Australia, and Eurasia. However, KS-1 indicates that long before what modern science has traditionally accepted the time frame of civilization to be, there may have been another more ancient epoch of sophisticated human culture.
The standard model has always considered this to have been a time before agriculture, written language, currency, and organized government. But as the narrative illustrates, some ancient cultures may have been considerably more developed than previously thought, or at least there may have been intermittent periods of relatively complicated cultural and technological advancement occurring between natural, or social cataclysmic events that reversed the advancements. That is, there have been multiple locations in space and time when sophisticated ideology and/or culture developed.
One of these regions of exceptional advancement is believed to have been situated in the highlands and temperate heartland steppes of a land known to us only as Kalikeri. It was there, nestled in the generative cradle of its vast heaths and temperate river valleys, that a few precocious clans are believed to have developed a community of thriving city-states, each with unique technologies, ideologies and cultures, all interdependent via an interplay of complex socioeconomic engines driven by the bartering of such commodities as grain, herbs, alloys, and textiles. The narrative describes one particular group known as the Zunara Clan.
Based on certain geographical descriptions in the narrative, and radio-isotope analysis of the KS parchments, the era described is believed to have existed entirely during a relatively brief span of time between what scientists call the Late Würm and Third Riss glacial epochs of north-western Europe, or about 65,000 to 55,000 years ago. Many clans are now thought to have existed in the region during this period. Subsequent glacial advances in the region are thought to have since obliterated all surficial traces of their existence. It is believed that the Zunara occupied rugged highlands proximal to both the coastal regions and the interior savannas and steppes of northern Kalikeri.
The Zunara possessed exceptional ship building technology. Their level of navigational expertise was essentially modern, more or less equivalent to mid-19th century methods. Their navigational tools included the magnetic compass, chronometer, time table, star chart, transit, and sextant; and an understanding of latitude and longitude. Together these tools and skills allowed them to determine their global position to within about one second of arc, and ultimately facilitated their circumnavigation of the world. Through their wide travels they eventually accumulated a large body of practical information regarding the geography and cultures of the world at the time.
Contained within the essence of their mythology (which appears to have been based on notions about the orbital relationship between the Earth, Moon, and Sun) are indications that the Zunara also had a basic awareness of planetary physics, particularly regarding the innermost bodies of the solar system, this knowledge being at least in part apparently supported by a relatively advanced optics technology. In their wide travels, the Zunara are believed to have established a network of trade routes within the North Sea and into the Atlantic Ocean, the Mediterranean Sea, along the coast of Africa and into the Indian Ocean. There are indications that they also had contact with the ancient Japanese and other Pacific islanders. Their travels also, as portrayed in the KS-1 account, took them across the Atlantic and into what many scholars believe was probably the Gulf of Mexico.
The most remarkable trait of the Zunara however, was not their technology, navigational expertise, nor even their development of a relatively sophisticated culture. Most experts now concur that the organized explorations of the world carried out by this group was their crowning achievement. There were members of Zunara society whose purpose was exclusively to explore the world. This is regarded as an exceptional trait, especially for a race of human beings who lived nearly 60,000 years ago, when the balance of mankind was presumably struggling for survival at a Stone Age level of development.
After reviewing the KS-1 text, some scientists and philosophers have commented that the Zunara phenomenon may represent a glimpse of the truest irrepressible nature of mankind, i.e., the enigmatical flowering of civilization from the fertile tilth of the primitive. Such a process is believed to characterize the incredible potential that lies within all human beings, at all levels of development. Yet an equal number of learned scholars have observed that such a rapid evolution of civilization from the darkness of native anarchy is in fact a caveat to be heeded by modern society, in that, as history has repeatedly demonstrated, the process is also at least easily, if not unavoidably, reversible.
Nearly all of the Zunara’s exploratory campaigns involved voyages across broad expanses of open ocean, followed by well-organized inland excursions. They apparently explored every major habitable continent and land area, including a continent believed by many experts to be that land we now know as North America. This account is a cursory record of the physical and cultural landscape encountered during the Zunara’s initial journey to a continent they called Kafahtan, some 600 centuries ago, as observed by the young scribe Kefram Andemov, who was apparently commissioned as the official historian for the journey. His detailed record was intended to not only be a narrative documentation of the exploration, but also a kind of written map to help cartographers and other artisans in their homeland understand the nature of the region.
Translation of the remaining scrolls has now been commenced using the most modern digital decoding techniques available. Indications are that the information contained in these latest translations is of such a controversial nature that the E.F.C. Adams Foundation will probably delay publication until the potential impact to society can be more fully assessed. It is interesting to note that this translation would still be unavailable to the public were it not for Dr. Adams’ tragic death. Although the exact circumstances remain unclear, eye-witness accounts indicate that he died while attempting to rescue a drowning child in the waters of the Mississippi River, near Mellwood, Arkansas. The child was saved by another swimmer.
