Forgotten Ages Research

Forgotten Fire in the Gemstone—The Story of Vanished Crystal Technology

Report Topics:

• Quartz crystals present among Neanderthal, Paleolithic and Megalithic ruins
• Crystal lenses found in ancient Nimrud, Troy, Ephesus, Carthage, Tyre, Luxor and Pompeii
• Prehistoric evidence of semi-precious stone drilling using magnifying lenses
• Examples of microscopic artwork that could only have been carved using lenses
• Greek and Roman accounts of telescopes and eye-glasses
• ”Burning mirrors” utilized in Greece, India, China and among the Maya
• Precolombian ornamental gold work performed using crystal lenses

Full Report:

In the “accepted” history of modern scientific discovery, the use of lenses did not occur until Galileo first developed the telescope at the beginning of the seventeenth century. Yet there are “out-of-place” remains and evidence that reveal the knowledge of lenses is far older.

The magical properties of crystals impressed themselves upon humankind far back in antiquity, for we find among Neanderthal remains dating back to 70,000 B.C.E. collections of quartz stones and stone balls made of quartz crystals. Among the later Cro-Magnon peoples of the Magdalenian period, circa 14,000 to 11,000 B.C.E., translucent crystals appear to have been used for scrying, and even for detailed artwork. A number of stone etchings from the Upper Paleolithic are so intricate that some form of magnification must have been utilized.

Pieces of crystal have also been found in Megalithic cairns, and at New Grange in the Boyne Valley of Ireland, tiny pebbles of white granite quartz cover the entire mound above its energy chamber. Within this covering a crystal sphere with powerful magnification properties was reported discovered in the eighteenth century.

In 1849, archaeologist Austen Henry Layard, while doing early excavation work in what is now Iraq, discovered in Chamber Room AB in the ruins of King Sargon II’s Northwest Palace of the Assyrian city of Kalhu (Nimrud), a polished rock crystal lens with opposite convex and plane faces. Dating to the seventh century B.C.E., the lens measures 1.63 by 1.32 inches with a maximum thickness of 0.24 inch, and has a magnification power of 1.25X to 2X. On close inspection, Layard noted:

“It is obvious from the shape and cutting of the lens, that it could not have been intended as an ornament. We are entitled, therefore, to consider it as intended to be used as a lens, either for magnifying, or for concentrating the rays of the sun.”

A more modern analysis concludes that the Assyrian toroidal-ground lens had been specifically designed to correct for astigmatism, and is the right size and shape to have been used as a monocle in aiding someone reading documents—most likely King Sargon himself.

Famed archaeologist Heinrich Schliemann unearthed no less than forty-nine crystal lenses at Troy. One lens has a hole in the middle to allow an engraving tool through while magnifying all around it. Other lenses have resting points which enabled engraving tools to be inserted beneath the crystal to work directly on the carved piece it covered.

Over thirty lenses have been excavated at Ephesus in Asia Minor. These lenses are concave, reducing images by 75 percent, and would have been good for myopic (short-sighted) users.

In the museum at Candia, in Crete, are rock crystal plano-convex pieces discovered in the Minoan palace of Knosses, and Mount Ida, exhibiting significant focal powers. They date from about 1800 B.C.E. The crystal eye in the famous Bull’s Head Rhyton also found at Knosses is most unusual, for it is convex on the top and concave underneath.

The Athens Archaeological Museum has several rock crystal lenses on display which are either round or plano-convex, have magnification powers varying from 1.5X to 2.5X, and date from the Mycenaean period, between the sixteenth and thirteenth centuries B.C.E.

A gemstone estimated to be at least three thousand years old was known in Ireland as the Liath Meisicith, or Magical Stone of Speculation, also called the Druid Vision Stone. The crystal is an inch and a quarter thick, five and a quarter inches long and slightly more than two inches wide. Besides having been used for divination purposes, it was also said to be able to “draw down the logh or heavenly fire”—it could concentrate sunlight and ignite fires.

A total of sixteen lenses were unearthed from the ruins of Carthage in North Africa, dating between the sixth and third centuries B.C.E. Two of the lenses, which form a matching pair, were found in mummy wrappings of a Carthaginian noble buried in the city necropolis. Careful analysis shows there can be little doubt that these two lenses formed part of a pair of spectacles used by the deceased.

In 1834, a plano-convex lens was brought to light from a Greek tomb at Nola in southern Italy. It has a diameter of 1.71 inches and is mounted in a gold rim. It is thought to date to circa 400 B.C.E.

A rock crystal lens excavated in the nineteenth century from the ancient Phoenician city of Tyre dates to circa 300 B.C.E. It was described as button-shaped yet having a magnification power of 2X. In 1870 the lens was shipped to the University of Athens and was on display until 1877. After that, the artifact disappeared.

On display in Case B, Room 49, in Section 2 of the Cairo Museum is one of four lenses excavated at Karanis in the Fayum region of Egypt between 1924 and 1929, dated to circa 100 A.D. or the Roman period. It measures 1.92 by 1.96,inches, is .29 inch thick, and has a magnification of 1.5X—a perfect reading lens for a long-sighted individual.

In 1854, a magnifying lens was discovered in the ruins of Pompeii dating to the first century A.D. It is flat on one side and convex on the other, with a diameter of 2.53 inchesand the highest point of convexity is 0.46 inch. It was on exhibit in the Museum of Naples, but has subsequently been lost. Another lens-piece had been excavated at an earlier date, circa 1770, in nearby Herculaneum. It is today in a private collection in England.

Still other lenses of Roman manufacture were reported found in Venice, the Catacombs of San Lorenzo in Rome, and in the remains of Roman Londinium.

Scattered throughout European museums are several examples of Roman glass and crystalline globes which, when filled with water, were used to either magnify or to concentrate the sun’s rays to ignite a fire. In one German collection of late Roman artifacts is an ingeniously designed crystal vase containing a perfectly ground convex lens inside it, which when placed in the sun has the ability to light on fire whatever flammable material it sits on.

A crystal piece called the Eryum Lens was unearthed from Thebes in Egypt circa 1880, in the vicinity of Karnak temple. It is today in the collection of the Cumings Museum in London. Two more lenses were excavated by Sir William Flinders Petrie in 1883 from the Nile Delta city of Tanis, and are presently housed in the British Museum. The latter date from the Roman period, second century A.D. One of these pieces Petrie described as a highly polished plano-convex lens measuring two and a half inches across and half an inch thick. Petrie also excavated two more Roman lenses of a similar size and magnification at Hawara, today on exhibit at the Petrie Museum of University College London.

Three large Roman plano-convex lenses the size of window panes dating to the first or second century A.D. were housed in the Berlin Museum before they were destroyed during World War II. Several French and German antiquarians from the turn of the last century remarked that “the makers of such enormous lenses were without a doubt also capable of making magnifying glasses or spectacles.” Looking through the panes from certain angles corrected the viewer’s vision for presbyopia or astigmatism.

Small crystal spheres have been found in German graves dating to the fourth century A.D., some engraved with magical Greek inscriptions, which indicate a far older age.

The Stockholm Historical Museum houses a large collection of over one hundred Viking rock crystal lenses, as well as eighth century gold work so tiny that lenses had to have been employed in its production. At Sigtuna, Sweden several polished crystal lenses were found the size of water drops, yet which have magnification powers of 3X.

The National Archaeological Collection in Helsinki contains seven crystal lenses found in Finland, all dating to the early medieval or Viking period, between the sixth and eleventh centuries. Some samples have a mount of silver beadwork in the Viking style, showing soldering done on a microscopic level. A number of such lens-pieces appear to have been widely traded throughout the Baltic region, for they have been discovered in Denmark, Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania. Still other Viking lenses have been located in Britain, Ireland, Russia, Hungary and Bulgaria.

Several Swedish royal and private collections contain ground and polished crystal lenses and crystal spheres, all dating to the eleventh century, of late Viking origin.

It is recognized by Swedish historians that the Vikings used what they called a solstenen or “sun-stone” for oceanic navigation. This was iolite cordierite or more commonly called water sapphire found throughout Scandinavia, which when cut into a thin slice becomes bipolar or dichroic whereby polarized light can be seen through clouds and the sun’s location accurately determined. According to the medieval Icelandic sagas, use of such a sun-stone allowed the early Vikings to find their way to the coast of North America.

Where lenses have long ago been destroyed, the story of their existence, or remains that would have necessitated their use, have survived.

Over eight millennia ago unknown Neolithic artisans at Catal Huyuk in modern Turkey somehow expertly transformed obsidian stone into excellent mirrors. Just how they accomplished this has experts mystified. Archaeologist O. C. Shane observed:

“How these mirrors were ground and polished is not known. Their exceptional planar surfaces are highly polished and reflect a sharp image. Obsidian can be ground by quartz and polished with charcoal.”

But how this could have been possible by using just handwork operations, and withot some form of magnification to create the near perfect edges, is regarded as a near impossibility.

Necklaces of strung-together agate, carnelian and quartz pebbles and dating to 7,500 B.C.E. were unearthed at another Neolithic site of Ashikli Hoyuk, also in Turkey. What amazed the discoverers was that the individual stones, measuring between 1 inch to one-third inch in diameter, had been perforated by holes less than one-fifth of an inch wide. How this was done without a good magnifying lens, not to mention a form of sophisticated drilling comparable to our modern technology, is baffling.

Egypt also appears to have had a rich background in the lost arts of crystal and glass lens-making. The classical writer Strabo, in the first century, referred to glasslike mirrors once adorning the roof of the Temple of Ra in Heliopolis used to reflect sunlight deep into the sanctuary’s interior.

In 1999, while digging in the Predynastic cemetery at Abydos in Upper Egypt, Dr. Gunter Dreyer—Director of the German Archaeological Institute in Cairo—excavated a tomb of an unknown ruler from the Naqada II Period, dated circa 3300 B.C.E. In the tomb he found a knife handle made from elephant ivory with microscopic carvings, the intricacies of which cannot be fully appreciated without a good magnifying glass. On one side of the handle is a group of human figures in procession whose heads measure only 0.039 inches across. On the other side is a group of animals—oxen, antelope and lions—with details of horns and manes which cannot be seen by the naked eye alone. There is no way possible such miniscule carving could have been accomplished without a good lens.

Object Number 37 in Case 13 of Room 43 in the Cairo Museum is a two-inch high rock crystal goblet unearthed from the tomb of Hemaka at Saqqara and dated to the beginning of the First Dynasty, circa 3000 B.C.E. The goblet, besides exhibiting some unusual light refraction properties, demonstrates that the Egyptians had the ability to cut and polish crystal from the very start of their recorded history. The goblet is contemporary with the Pyramid Texts, among whose hieroglyph “Utterances” are descriptions of a sacred object called the “Eye of Horus.” A number of interpreters believe the Eye was actually a crystal globe filled with water which was then used for optical survey work. Horus was the hawk god—and the eye of a hawk has a remarkable lens system, giving it and all birds of prey with similar eyes wonderful abilities at locating their prey at great distances. Thoth, the God of Measurement, was said to have used the Eye of Horus to “mark out (survey) the land from horizon to horizon.” Significantly, several Egyptologists have questioned how several early Dynastic temples and pyramids were laid out so accurately without the use of some form of optical lenses.

The Cairo Museum also has on display several statues of noble dignitaries and members of royalty—including one statue of Pharaoh Zoser from the Third Dynasty, circa 2600 B.C.E.—which either have or once had quartz crystal eyes. The examples which have survived were so cleverly designed that the light reflection-refraction in the eyes make them glow as if life-like. The optical principles demonstrated in these crystal eyes could have been easily adapted for use in a sophisticated lens technology.

In the Abbots Museum is an Egyptian ring that dates to the Fourth Dynasty, circa 2300 B.C.E. It has near-invisible hieroglyph inscriptions and engravings of several deities which cannot be viewed except with a good magnifying lens.

Chinese accounts record that as early as circa 2283 B.C.E. the Emperor Chan placed two magnifying lenses in a straight line in order to observe the planets.

Several examples of Babylonian and Assyrian baked clay tablets and cylinder seals dating as far back as the seventh century B.C.E. contain microscopic cuneiform texts.

In March, 2004 members of the U. S. Army Corpse of Engineers stationed near Baghdad, Iraq reported finding the remains of an ancient Babylonian astronomical observatory dating to 600 B.C.E. Among the artifacts discovered were a number of parabolic mirros made of brass and silver-plated measuring 3.25 feet across. They also unearthed an azmuth mount, a glass eyepieces and sighting tubes, as well as thousands of clay tablet fragments with cuneiform inscriptions demonstrating that the Babylonians had been serious students of the heavens.

The seventh century B.C.E. poet Alcaeus was the earliest Greek writer to refer to the dioptra or crystal lens telescope. Homer used the term diopter—”to watch with accuracy from a distance”—in the Iliad. Plato used a similar term in the fourth century B.C.E. And by the time of Plutarch, in the second century A.D., the classical sources had developed dioptrikos, a full science of dioptrics, or telescopic observation techniques.

Euclid, in the fourth century B.C.E., wrote a treatise, Optics, in which he described a method by which “things thought to be greater than themselves seem to be increased, and the things nearer the eye appear greater. So objects increased in size will seem to approach the eye.” Some Greek scholars believe the ancient geometer was actually seeing magnified images through a crystal lens.

That the telescope was known from the earliest times was demonstrated by the fact that Democritus, in the fifth century B.C.E., described the Milky Way as “composed of a vast multitude of stars,” and later Plutarch wrote that the “surface of the Moon is very uneven and rugged”—two observations that could not have been made with the naked eye alone.

The Greek playwright Aristophanes in the fourth century B.C.E. made reference in his first theatrical production of The Clouds to, “that fine transparent stone with which fires are kindled.” One of his characters, Strepsiades, when confronted by a court subpoena which in that period was written in wax, threatened, “I will get that stone and, holding it up to the sun, I will at long distance melt all the writings of the summons.”

In the same century, the early Chinese scholar Mo Zi, writing in his scientific treatis Mo Jing, spoke of the use of concave mirrors utilized to concentrate the sun’s rays to produce a focal point of intensity he called the zhongsui or “central fire.” The Roman Pliny, several centuries later, described how magnifying lenses, properly directed, could be used to cauterize wounds.

The great philosopher Artistotle, in the fourth century B.C.E., described how by looking down special tubes called aulos a person “will see farther” and “be able to see from a distance just as he would from close quarters.” The aulos likely contained crystal lenses, for Artistotle also noted, “the further the tube extends”—the greater distance between the lenses—”the more accurately most distant objects will be seen.”

In 1918, while examining a Cypriot coin dating the the fourth century B.C.E., British numismatist Munroe Endicott noticed tiny Greek letters cleverly incorporated into the coin’s portrait of King Nikokes of Paphos. But only by looking at it under a powerful magnifier lens did Endicott discover that the letters spelled the name of the ruler himself. Further investigation determined that the script had been engraved on the original coin die—which meant that whoever had minted it had to have had a magnifying glass as well to make it. Since this initial find, five other Cypriot coins were revealed having the same name.

More recently, Dr. Nickos Kokoris, a Roman specialist from Oxford Uiversity, has made a comprehensive survey of all classical coinage, and has found that a significant percentage of both Greek and Latin metallic monies had borderline microscopic writing hidden somewhere in their design. His theory is that the royal mint die-cutters utilized the tiny letters to prove a coin’s authenticity—in much the same manner watermarks are used in modern banknotes. The problem, however, is how was such miniscule etching achieved, unless by using powerful lenses.

In the third century B.C.E., Phanias of Eresos described the scribe Ascondas as once possessing “blue-green spectacles that give sweet light.” The Greek wording used, plinthida, can mean “rectangular window frame” or something square that is looked through. It is related to smaragdos or the precious stone emerald. Roman chroniclers noted that emeralds had several properties, one of which was to make objects look larger when looked through, that “smaragdi are generally concave in shape, so that they concentrated the vision.” And another property is that emerald is a cool bluish-green color that is very healing to the eyes, especially those strained by overwork. It would appear that the Greek scribe owned a pair of square-cut emerald glasses which he used for reading and writing.

Third century B.C.E. Roman playwright Plautus made several references to a conspicillum or optical lens with which one of his characters was able to secretly spy on someone else and “observe them from a great distance.”

Plutarch noted that the Sicilian inventor-scientist Archimedes, in the third century B.C.E., employed optical tools “to manifest to the eye the largeness of the sun.” By the same means he was remembered for setting on fire the Roman fleet in its siege of Syracuse by deploying a series of “burning glasses” in a specific configuration which concentrated the sun’s rays to such an intensity as to ignite timber and sails at a distance.

Some chroniclers recorded the devices used were “burning mirrors,” an array of highly polished metal concave plates or bowls, yet other classical and Arabic writers insisted that at the very center of the array, as the initial fire-starter, was a “great refracting crystal” or configuration of rock crystal lenses which first focused the sun’s rays and projected the resulting light into the plates, which then broadcast the light as a heat-ray to its intended target. In the sixth century A.D., Anthemius, the architect of St. Sophia, saved his native city of Constantinople from a sea attack by the Goths by rebuilding and using Archimedes’ device.

The Greek historian Polybius, in the second century B.C.E., gave an account that the Carthaginians had communicated using watch-towers built across North Africa and Sicily equipped with signal devices, and dioptron (lenses) arranged in duo alischous (two tubes)—like a modern pair of binoculars—for viewing the signals.

In ancient China quartz rock crystals had been used since early times to focus solar rays to start fires, replaced by glass lenses by about 500 B.C.E. The Hua Shu or Book of Transformations, composed by Tan Qiao in the tenth century, recorded the use of several varieties of concave and convex lenses and mirrors, with actual examples embedded in sighting tubes dating back to 150 B.C.E.

The Han Dynasty text, Lun Heng, described the use of optical lenses as early as the second century B.C.E., and during the same period several bronze art pieces contain close-work so minute that lenses must have been used in their production.

From first century B.C.E. China, from the Court of Liu An, Prince of Huainan, a metaphysical book was written called the Huai-nan-Tzu. In it are references to a device called a fu-sui which translates into “burning mirror.” Some sources say it was made from polished metal, but other Chinese chroniclers declared that the “mirror which gives birth to fire” was composed of quartz.

Diodorus Siculus, in the first century B.C.E., using historical materials gathered by Hecataeus of Miletus in the sixth century B.C.E, noted that on the island west of Celtic Europe (Britain) the ancient Druids “brought the sun and moon near them,” knew that the moon had mountains that cast shadows, and that the Milky Way is composed of individual stars—observations made only with a good telescope.

The Druids called certain colored crystal forms ovus anguinum or glein neidr—”serpent eggs”—believing they were created by etheric serpents of energy beneath the earth that conjugated together at the time of the midsummer sunrise. Druidic records known as the Triads described how these “serpent eggs” were the source of the “speculum of the pervading (all-seeing) glance and searcher of every mystery,” and portrayed them as one of the secrets of Britain. That this is a cryptic reference to the telescope is confirmed by the large collection of crystal lenses and spheres, some dating as far back as the Neolithic period, found in Britain and Ireland, both ancient Druidic domains. Crystal spheres of Druidic origin are presently part of the John Westward collection in the Sedgwick Museum of Geology in Cambridge and in the National History Museum in London.

Adding to the evidence is the discovery that the majority of the several thousands of Megalithic structures erected throughout the British Isles between 4000 and 1800 B.C.E. were laid out with measuring accuracies of 1 in 1,000—a degree of sophistication which could not have been possible without telescopic surveying tools.

Roger Bacon, quoting ancient sources that have since been lost, described how Julius Caesar, before his invasion of Britain in 54 B.C.E., used “certain looking-glasses” employing the “art perspective” (optics) “which by reflection multiplieth hidden forms.” Caesar had these set up along the coast of Gaul in order to view the dispositions and encampments of enemy forces across the Channel.

Strabo, in the first century, reported that his contemporary, the Roman philosopher Posidonius, was able to observe solar phenomena over the Atlantic Ocean off the coast of Spain with the use of aulon or “tubes.” The appearances of the sun described could only have been seen through two lenses place in a line—as in a telescopic tube.

First century Roman historian Pliny described the miniature artwork of a contemporary sculptor named Callicrates who made ivory models of ants and other creatures with anatomical parts that were invisible to the naked eye. Other classical artists were cited who carved chariots and ships smaller than a fly’s wing—all feats which could not have been accomplished without optical magnification. Michelangelo was said to have possessed a Roman or Greek seal containing fifteen letters engraved in a circular space of 0.54 inch in diameter which could not be seen without a good lens-piece. A Roman ring, with a disc or cameo only three quarters of an inch in diameter, depicts the hero Hercules, complete with interlacing muscles, curly beard and other details that cannot be seen, let along have been carved, without some form of magnification. Art historians also note that a portrait of the wife of Emperor Trajan, who died in A.D. 122, was engraved on a gemstone and measures only 0.23 inch in diameter.

Pliny also recorded that the first century Roman Emperor Nero was myopic, and used a smaragdo or ring containing an emerald as an eye-glass with which to watch gladiator contests at a distance.

Likewise, Pliny informs us that the physicians of his day cauterized wounds with fire produced “by means of a crystal ball placed in the path of the facing rays of the sun.”

Mauritius, in the second century, possessed a mysterious instrument called a nauscopite, by which, from Sicily, he could observe the coast of Africa—something that could not have been done with eyes unaided by an optical instrument.

The second century chronicler Philostratus gave two descriptions of how the ancient Brahmins of India used crystal lenses to light sacred fires in their temples. The same method appears to have been employed in certain Greek sanctuaries during ceremonial rites of initiation.

The Neoplatonist philosopher Iamblichus, in the second century A.D., wrote that Pythagoras, four centuries earlier, had known about how to use lenses as a dioptra or telescope, and lamented that there was in his day no equivalent instrument to improve hearing in the same way a telescope improves sight. Hipparchus, a contemporary of Pythagoras, claimed to have made a dioptra and used it. A century later, Geminus used a dioptra to observe eclipses of the moon. A contemporary of Iamblichus, the astronomer Claudius Ptolemy, was described as examining the heavens through special long tubes and was responsible for making lists of stars that could not have been seen with the unaided eye alone.

In the medieval Arab world, tenth century physicist-astronomer Ibn al-Haytham investigated the mathematical laws of optical reflections and refractions in glass and other media. A century before, the astronomer al-Battani had utilized “sighting tubes” at his observatory at Raqqa, and more than a century later Nasir al-Din a-Tusi had employed similar devices at his observatory at Maragha in his study of the Sun. In the early ninth century the Kitab al-Hiyal—”Book of Ingenious Devices”—recorded over a hundred mechanical mechanisms dating back to the first century Alexandrian inventor, Hero, including sophisticated clock-drives powered by a clepsydra used for telescopic observations.

Such mechanisms attached to viewing instruments wer aldo known in Inida, as given in the account of the Bhatadipika of Paramesvara. As early as the fifth century “armillary spheres” called gola yantra were used for distant viewing first mentioned by Argabhata I of Kusumpura.

These Old World finds and stories are complemented by similar discoveries throughout the Western Hemisphere.

At La Venta in the Yucatan, the chief city of the Olmecs, and considered to be one of the earliest major civilized sites in the New World, eight small concave mirrors of polished magnetite and ilmenite iron were excavated. According to the Bureau of American Ethnology at the Smithsonian Institute, these mirrors are almost identical with modern parboiled optical reflectors, and even though almost two millennia old, they can still be used today to focus sunlight and start fires. Investigator I. Bernal commented on their mystery:

“Even though the dimensions and focal distances vary, all the mirrors are similar and therefore represent a cultural tradition. Their polish is so extraordinary that it reaches the limit of possible perfection. This was not accomplished with the use of abrasives, for the microscope does not reveal traces that these would necessarily have left. The curves in all these examples is very similar and so perfect that it is not possible to reconstruct the technique employed to fabricate these concave mirrors.”

These lenses were later employed by the Olmecs’ successors, the Maya and Aztecs, who referred to them as “smoking mirrors.” The ancient Mesoamericans were aware that the lenses did not originate with them, but were a remnant of civilizations long vanished. The Maya Popul Vuh, for example, recorded that the “first men” had the ability to “see what was far away, and what was very small,” and they used these means to see everything in the earth and among the stars above. But then, “the gods closed their eyes (in death) and all their knowledge was lost.”

Ancient pre-Columbian art and engraving art and engraving also reflect the use of magnifying crystals for intricate work. The pre-Incan craftspeople of the Andes likewise mastered microscopic drilling utilizing unknown techniques. The mummy of an Incan nobleman found at Cuzco, Peru had a string of quartz beads around his neck—beads strung together with a thin filament of gold, passing through tiny holes that only a jeweler wearing a microscopic eye-piece could appreciate. On display in the Museum of the American Indian in New York City are tiny beads of gold engraved with intricate designs. Only under a good microscope can it be observed that many are welded together in groupings, and every one of them is perfectly pierced.

Not long ago, a convex expertly ground obsidian lens about two inches thick in diameter was brought up from the sea near Esmeralda, Ecuador. It functions like a mirror, except that everything reflected is reduced to half size, in perfect proportion, with no distortion whatsoever.

American antiquarian H. Verrill, in his historical writings, made these remarks about Precolumbian ornamental gold work found in Ecuador that had been done on a microscopic level:

“When viewed thorugh a magnifying glass, they are revealed as most perfectly and beautifully wrought beads. Many are elaborately engraved or chased, others are built up and welded or soldered together and are all pierced. It seems impossible that such minute objects many times smaller than the head of a common pin could have been produced by human beings without the aid of a lens.”

Legendary researcher Maria Reiche, who spent a lifetime studying and helping to preserve the Nazca lines in Peru, voiced her opinion that not only did the ancient desert floor constructions reveal an advanced understanding of mathematics and astronomy, but the layout of the lines in such dead-straight exactness pointed to an aerial survey employing some form of lens sighting instrumentation. Today, the linear patterns could in no way be reproduced except utilizing the best optical survey equipment we have.

In 1978, archaeo-astronomer Marilyn Denny Childs was working in the archives of the Denver Museum of Natural History, helping to catalog a large collection of artifacts excavated from archaeological sites throughout the Americas. Quite unexpectedly she came across a cache of objects from various Central American and Canadian Indian sources which no one previously had been able to classify. But Childs, who also had worked at several planetariums and had expertise in telescope-making, immediately identified they mystery items as mirrors and cylindrical tubes that could only have been used for long-distant viewing. The mirrors were notched and the tubes were eighteen inches long, with all the design features for a reflector telescope.

Since this discovery, Childs has done a detailed stody of the Mayan Dresden Codex, in which she has found over four hundred references to observations of stars, constellations, planets and other celestial objects that could not have been made only with the unaided eye. In fact, her research reveals that the Maya knew about the existence of Uranus and Neptune, not discovered in Europe until 1781 and 1846 respectively. Again, these orbs cannot be clearly seen except with good telescope lenses.

In the distant past crystals were not only used as lenses, but for other forms of innovation we cannot fully comprehend today. French explorer Captain V. D. Auvergne, reporting in the Bihar and Orissa Research Journal (vol. 26, part 2) near the turn of the last century, told this story of his encounter in Tibet of the use of crystals and sound to produce light:

“Upon entering the gates at the mouth of the cave, we had daylight with us for thirty to forty yards. Then, turning a bend, I observed a gallery of utter darkness. At the entrance, the Che-sho priest reached down to the ground and picked up a nine-inch diameter metal gong and an attached wooden hammer. The gong appeared to be polished bronze through which ran a highly ornamental decorative tracery of thin silver thread. The Che-sho priest raised the mallet and struck the gong once.

“I was startled to see half a dozen lights of a strange green color slowly come into vision. They shone dimly at first, but within a minute the lights had grown in intensity, perhaps attaining some five hundred candle power each. The lights were situated twenty feet apart along the gallery walls and hung from a kind of wooden bracket about five feet above the ground.

“When I approached one of the lights, I found that it was only a lump of common stone crystal about four inches in diameter placed on a plate of stone of some kind of gray metal, about half an inch thick and one foot in diameter. All of the foregoing were hung by bronze wire loops, extending from an arm at right angles, mounted on a wooden upright. Over and around the plate ran an ornamental tracing of thin lines of gold hieroglyphs resembling the character of cave writing.

“The Che-sho priest willingly informed me that the sound of the gong penetrated the metal plate from which a vibrating force emanated. He said that it had the effect of infusing the crystal with particles of bright luminous glow, gradually growing to a certain intensity in accordance with the volume of the vibratory sound. According to the priest, had the gong been struck with a metal hammer, however, the glow would have been so great that the human eye could not stand it without a head covering of thick cloth. Still, neither the crystal nor the plate produced a particle of heat.”

A partial answer to this mystery may have been discovered in 2006 by scientists at Sandia National Laboratories, who found that certain geometric configurations of what are identified as “photonic crystals” can bend light and dictate which frequencies can pass through the crystals. The result is that, rather than in a regular modern light bulb in which only five percent of energy produces light and the rest is wasted as heat, the new crystals can achieve at least sixty percent efficiency, with most of the heat being transmuted from infra-red back into visible light.

But while such investigations are a start, it does not answer the full enigma of how exactly crystals affect light and vice versa. Recent experiments performed by National Gem Collector Curator Jeffrey Post on the famed Hope Diamond, today housed in the Smithsonian’s National Museum of Natural History in Washington D.C., found that after the Diamond had been bombarded with focused ultra-violet light, the gem then glowed a bright orange-amber color for several minutes in a darkened room. What causes this fluorescence remains unexplained, even in terms of modern physics. Other experiments performed has shown that similar gemstones will also emit a mysterious glow when subjected to ultrasound.

In the Old Testament Book of Exodus are described two gemstones called the Urim and Thummin, which were worn by the Tabernacle High Priest over his heart and behind the Breastplate of Twelve Stones. The words Urim and Thummin can be translated to mean “light-revelation” and “truth-perfection.” In ancient Hebrew tradition the two gemstones were said to be used as a form of oracle.

The historian Josephus recorded that they would give off a brilliant light to specify a favorable answer to questions posed to the officiating priesthood. Other sources suggest that the Urim was a sapphire that would significantly brighten in its luster as a positive response, and the Thummin was a ruby that would visibly darken in color as a negative response, in accordance with the Creative Forces of Divine Guidance flowing through them.

Josephus and other chroniclers suggest that the two gemstones were much older than the time of Moses, that the patriarch had obtained them from the Egyptians while he was High Priest in Heliopolis before the Exodus. Still others see a link between the Urim and Thummin with the Babylonian “Tablet of Destiny,” depicted in cuneiform texts as stones configured in a breastplate that was worn only “by those gods who were considered the messengers and mediators between the gods and humankind.”

Other writings from Mesopotamia spoke of these enigmatic “Tablets” being called the “Water-stone” and the “Apex-stone” which were “magical” and “ray-emitting.” These were in turn linked with ancient Hebrew myths concerning the “Stone of Destiny,” said to be a sapphire upon which the Book of the angel Raziel was inscribed. This esoteric source of wisdom had been given to Adam while he was in the Garden of Eden, who thereafter passed it on to the patriarch Seth, who in turn gave it to Enoch—the equivalent to the Egyptian Thoth—and was subsequently preserved by Noah from the destruction of the Deluge. Occult author William Henry believes the sapphire Stone of Destiny is still hidden, having been placed in the Hall of Records by the progenitors Abraham and Sarah, and that one day when it is rediscovered it will serve as a key “for opening gateways to other parts of the universe.” This will be based on the lost knowledge it contains on the “interconnectedness between time, gravitational energy, acoustics and geometry.”

The wearing of the Urim and Thummin gemstones over the heart by the Hebrews brings to mind the practice in many ancient cultures of placing crystals and stones on various chakra energy centers of the body to enhance their specific energies, or standing in the presence of a gemstone and touching various energy centers in order to receive a diagnosis.

Similarly, the Chinese understood that wearing crystals over certain acupuncture points of the body aided in the healthy flow of physical and psychic energies. The Emperor Tsin Shi, who reigned from 259 – 210 B.C.E., is said to have possessed at his palace at Hien-Yang in Shensi a mirror-like stone of crystal which “illuminated the bones of the body” when a person stepped behind it. It was rectangular in shape, measuring four feet by five feet nine inches, and glowed on both sides. The placing of the hand over the heart somehow activated the stone, whereby the patient’s inner parts were clearly portrayed, and diagnosis of illness could be obtained. Two hundred and fifty years earlier, the Hindu sage Jivaka also had a large “jewel” which “illuminated the body like a lamp lights up a house,” and from which nothing within could be hidden by any intervening obstacle. In like fashion, the medicine people of the Hopi of the American Southwest used crystals to observe the energy centers of the body, and could tell when physical currents were impeded, causing ill health.

[Copyright 2009. Joseph Robert Jochmans. All Rights Reserved.]