By 1871 the mapping of India was the most detailed of any country in the world, thanks to the Great Trigonometrical Survey of India, begun in 1802. This British project was headed in turn by four military men in the role of Surveyor General. These were Lt.Col. William Lambton (1753-1823), Col. Sir George Everest (1790-1866), Maj.Gen. Sir Andrew Scott Waugh (1810-78) and finally Capt. James Walker (1826-96).

The second of these gentlemen, Everest (pronounced “Eve-rest”), worked on the Survey from 1818 to 1843 and his successor, Waugh, arranged for the newly-measured Himalayan Peak XV on the Nepal-Tibet border to be named after him, i.e. Mount Everest (nowadays pronounced “Ever-est”). Everest objected as the mountain already had a name ~ Sagarmatha ~ meaning ‘mother of the universe’.

Waugh’s accolade of Everest may well have been due to his legacy of highly accurate maps produced with the latest mechanical instruments. His calculations included the 11.5-degree meridional arc from the Himalayas to the southernmost tip of India. This involved advanced mathematics which had to take into account the Earth’s irregular curvature, light refraction and the effect of heat on the metal instruments and 100ft.-long chains. Everest’s expertise contributed to a survey which turned out to be accurate to within 0.09% of modern-day GPS measurements.

(Image: NASA at Wikimedia Commons / Public domain)

Edinburgh-born Graham Hancock (1950-) grew up in India and studied at Durham University. He is an investigative journalist and author whose 1992 book on the location of the Ark of the Covenant set him on the track of ancient civilisation. He has since spent his life connecting the dots of prehistory, much to the annoyance of established academia who see this as their sole domain. Nevertheless, Hancock’s mission is to encourage further research and much-needed scientific probing of the status quo.

He and his wife Santha, a photographer, spent seven years carrying out more than a thousand scuba dives around the coasts of India, Malta and the Far East. Their book ‘Underworld: Flooded Kingdoms of the Ice Age’ (2002) showed many fascinating stone structures that were submerged after the 400ft. rise in sea level at the end of the Younger Dryas period.

Hancock is anything but an armchair researcher and travels the world to discover clues for himself. His genius is in piecing together peer-reviewed studies in geology, archaeology and astronomy with religious and ancient writings. ‘Fingerprints of the Gods’ (1995), ‘Magicians of the Gods’ (2015) and ‘America Before’ (2019) are his exploration into what caused the last ice age and almost obliterated our technologically-advanced ancestors.

(Top image of columns at Göbekli Tepe 11,600 years old: Cobija at Wikimedia Commons / CC BY-SA 4.0)