From October 2-6, 1996, the International Association for New Science (IANS) presented its Seventh Annual Forum on New Science in Denver, Colorado. The 5-day conference included a roster of speakers and workshop leaders that featured such notables as Zecharia Sitchin, Dr. John Lilly, P.M.H. Atwater, Courtney Brown, William Tiller, as well as numerous other researchers in the fields of alternative science and paranormal phenomena.

Highlights of the conference included P.M.H. Atwater, who presented lectures detailing her decades of research into the near-death experience, in particular the brain shift or transformations of consciousness, personality, and physiology that often follow the occurrence of this phenomenon. The subject of a follow-on workshop was future memory, under which people, while fully awake, experience a full-sense vision of an event or interaction that subsequently, sometimes weeks or even month later, happens to them.

Courtney Brown, author of the recent book Cosmic Voyage, provided a report of team findings concerning extraterrestrial civilizations and activities gleaned from the application of remote viewing techniques. Dr. John Lilly, renowned for his work involving dolphins, reviewed this work and his later investigations into altered states of consciousness. One of the senior statesmen of New Science, he was honored at the conference for his pioneering efforts. Stanford Professor William Tiller presented the evidence of his research for the ability of the subtle energy of human intentionality to effectuate measurable changes in physical and physiological systems. Dr. Nick Begich, Jr. discussed the wide-ranging impacts of the federal government's new ground-based Star Wars weapon in Alaska on human health and behavior, and weather patterns.

The last day of the conference was devoted to the works of author/researcher Zecharia Sitchin on the extraterrestial origins of humankind. Sitchin himself delivered an overview of the evidence based on ancient writings of a superior race from another planet who once inhabited our world and planted the genetic seed that resulted in our own species. Professor of Geology Madeleine Briskin, among six speakers who followed, spoke of the scientific evidence corroborating Sitchin's report of an ancient astronomical 432,000-year cycle that is responsible for various earth dynamics and possibly supportive of the existence of another planet in our solar system.

IANS, the forum sponsor, is a non-profit organization dedicated to furthering education and research in the many areas of human experience and curiosity that are worthy of serious investigation but which have been overlooked by traditional science. In addition to holding its annual symposium, IANS has sponsored conferences dealing specifically with New Energy, UFO Research, and New Agriculture, Gardening, and Housing. For information on membership and future activities, IANS may be contacted at 1304 South College Avenue, Fort Collins, Colorado 80524, (970) 482-3731, Fax: (970) 482-3120. Its e-mail address is galactic@fortnet.org.

AUSTRALIAN ROCK ART COULD UPSET ESTABLISHED SCENARIO FOR HUMAN ORIGINS

The orthodox chronology for human origins on planet earth, usually cited to rule out the existence of pre-ice-age civilizations, has been dealt yet another blow. The latest challenge comes from Australia, where archeologists have found rock art dating to 75,000 years ago. Indeed, stone tools and other associated evidence suggest Australia had human inhabitants as much as 176,000 years ago.

A team from the Australian Museum and the University of Wolongong have discovered, in the tropical northwest, thousands of dot-like indentations engraved on a group of monoliths in the unmistakable image of a kangaroo. The findings will be published in the prestigious British archeological journal Antiquity in December.

Contradicting prevailing theories postulating that Australia was first inhabited 60,000 years ago the new data suggests that human habitation may be at least twice that age. If the new findings are confirmed, the conventional notion that Homo Sapiens did not emerge from Africa until about 100,000 years ago will have to give way to a scenario which has them capable of crossing large bodies of water many thousands of years earlier.

As archeologist Richard Fullagar puts it, It opens up a whole plethora of questions.

SPARKS FLY DURING RETURN TO THE SOURCE CONFERENCE AT U.D.

If, as many believe, the source of life is fire, then the Return to the Source conference at the University of Delaware during the last weekend in September fulfilled its promise. There was certainly plenty of heat. And, as for light, there was no shortage of that either.

Scheduled speakers at the University's Clayton Conference Center were among today's most distinguished challengers of the academic paradigm, especially in the realm of ancient origins. Included were the likes of John Anthony West, Graham Hancock, Robert Bauval, Robert Schoch, Rand Flem-Ath, Colin Wilson and Paul Roberts. Not surprisingly, attendees came to the first symposium of the Society for Scientific Exploration expecting to be inundated with hard-to-get information and insight. They were not disappointed, but few could have anticipated the fireworks which were to explode over the current and controversial research at the Great Sphinx in Egypt from which West, Hancock and Bauval, authors of much of the new research indicating a much greater antiquity for the Sphinx and much greater astronomical wisdom than previously supposed, have been summarily excluded (as reported in the previous issue of Atlantis Rising and other media).

The high drama began Friday night (actually early Saturday morning) when Hancock and Bauval were guests on the nationally syndicated Art Bell radio show. Space researcher Richard Hoagland called in to announce that he had been invited to attend the opening, later in the year, of newly found chambers beneath the Sphinx, whereupon Hancock and Bauval proceeded to state in the most stinging terms just how they felt about the exploration and the people doing it. Singled out for intense criticism were the U.S.-based Schor Foundation, which is funding the work, and Zahi Hawass, the Egyptian Antiquities Director for the Giza Plain.

Later on Saturday, in the symposium, during the question and answer session following their remarks both Bauval and Hancock announced that after the radio show they had been asked to meet with the Schor Foundation in New York the following Monday to discuss their differences. Whereupon a representative of the Schor Foundation who was attending the conference, Joe Jahoda, took the microphone to defend the Foundation and its much-criticized confidential arrangements with Egyptian authorities.

According to Jahoda, nothing underhanded was going on. While suggesting that researchers were indeed making many findings confirmatory of assertions made by Hancock and Bauval, as well as John Anthony West and geologist Robert Schoch, Jahoda said the foundation had simply contracted with the Egyptian antiquities bureaucracy to keep its findings confidential until approval had been obtained from those authorities. Hancock responded that anything less than full public disclosure of the facts was unacceptable. Both Hancock and Bauval made it clear that they did not trust the antiquities authorities.

As a case in point Bauval cited German engineer Rudolf Gantenbrink's recent robotic exploration of the ascending shaft from the Queen's chamber which revealed a hitherto unknown door with metal handles, an undertaking which Bauval asserted had been blocked for 150 years by the obstinacy of the authorities. Gantenbrink himself had been restrained by a secrecy contract but had inadvertently leaked news of his discovery to Bauval who had released it. Information is being sat on, Bauval lamented. And, Hancock interjected, in a pointed reference to the Schor tactics, If something is wrong, we don't have to accept it. If we do, we are participants in the wrong.

In an effort to be conciliatory, Bauval complimented Jahoda on his honesty and invited him to join them on the stage. Jahoda accepted. Bauval, though, went on to complain that Zahi Hawass was treating the site like his own personal property. Various members of the audience began to chime in with critical stories of Hawass, such as, that he was interested only in tourism, that he had denied the academic credential of Robert Schoch (a tenured professor at Boston University) and that he had publicly slandered his other opponents. The temperature in the room seemed to be rising, but it would get warmer.

Regarding the meeting set for Hancock and Bauval with the Schor group, someone wanted to know what about John West? To which Hancock replied, Yes, what about John West? a cry then echoed by many in the audience. Whereupon John West himself appeared and joined the group on stage. Joking that he had been away on another planet, West said he had missed the fact that someone was following up on his research at the Sphinx and had not invited him. He did concede that, Hawass has a difficult job, but added, so does Saddam Hussein. The crowd roared with laughter.

We are not going to take Hawass anymore, Bauval declared and described how he personally had been threatened with bodily harm by Hawass. Quoting one essentially unprintable remark which he said he had on good authority, Bauval made it clear, Hawass apparently intended him a very dire fate indeed.

By now Jahoda was looking quite uncomfortable but was, nevertheless, sticking to his guns. Whatever remarks had been made by Hawass, he saw as essentially rhetorical, Just an Egyptian letting you know he was mad.

The episode then drew to a rapid conclusion when conference organizer Brenda Dunn broke in to say the University was insisting the Conference Center be cleared. There, pending the Monday meeting, the matter was rested.

As Atlantis Rising goes to press, the outcome of that meeting has not been released publicly but sources in both camps report that its results were inconclusive. An uneasy truce has been reached, says one source.

In the meantime, work continues at the Sphinx and Atlantis Rising has been told that some kind of penetration, perhaps with a camera through a drill hole, of what could be the fabled Lost Hall of Records could occur as early as late October. A possible live NBC telecast of the complete opening of the chamber may follow by the end of the year or perhaps early in 1997. As to what role may yet be played in all of this by John Anthony West, Graham Hancock or Robert Bauval, stay tuned.