The Hollow Earth: A Mostly Nutty Ideareview by Theresa Welsh
Openings at the Poles Based mainly on two other books, which Bernard complains have been suppressed, The Hollow Earth says that the earth, like other celestial bodies, began with a ball of fire that threw material outward, forming a surface, but retaining a central interior "sun." The polar regions of earth have openings through which it is possible to enter the world that exists inside the earth. This world is populated with people who are more advanced than us surface dwellers. They have flying saucers, which they use to fly out of their interior world to our world. They have been making more trips here since we detonated the first atomic bomb in 1945, hoping to protect us from our own dangerous weapons.
The book claims the openings at each pole are 1400 miles wide! That is quite a large opening, and should be visible from space. Why don't airplanes routinely see this opening? The book claims airplanes never fly over the actual pole and that no one has ever been to either pole (except for Admiral Byrd and a few others who report seeing the green area with a warm temperature). The books says that the explorers who claim to have reached the poles did not actually get there, due to problems computing their real location. Compasses point straight down near the poles and there was no simple way to determine someone's position at the time of the early explorers. (what about GPS? This book was written before we had GPS technology, and of course, Admiral Byrd made his flights before any such technology existed). Although we have pictures from space, what if a fog or cloud constantly covers that part of the earth? What if the opening is actually smaller? Could it exist without us knowing? How much do we know about what's inside our planet? I can't answer these questions, but they would make a good start for future research. Hollow Earth or Underground Caves? The most startling information this book has to offer is the story about Byrd and his claim to have seen green country where there shouldn't have been any, and information about caves that supposedly have openings into the earth. These caves exist in Tibet and in Brazil. That takes us to another theory. Others have believed there are extensive caves underground where people live, unknown to those of us on the surface. Stories about caves in Tibet abound. The artist Nicholas Roerich is supposed to have been to these underground places where he attained esoteric knowledge from the underground stream of ancient wisdom that's been preserved through the centuries. Roerich believed in the existence of Shambhala, which was a place associated with Hyperborea, which literally means "land beyond the north wind." The idea of a spiritual homeland for mankind somewhere in the far north goes back thousands of years, with traditions in Tibet, Russia, and Scandinavia. In Bernard's version, Hyperborea is the land inside the earth and Shambhala its captial city. I had not heard of the caves of the Roncador Mountains in Brazil before, but found the story interesting. These caves are in a jungle area guarded by hostile indians. An Englishman, Colonel Fawcett, disappeared there in 1925 while searching for a lost city, and later letters turned up with the claim that he was alive and living in the underground city. (Of course, he couldn't have simply been done in by the poisonous snakes, wild animals, or hostile Indians!) A 2010 book about Col. Fawcett, The Lost City of Z, pretty much puts to rest these stories. Check it Out on the Internet But underground cities are not the same thing as a hollow earth with an internal sun and 1400 mile openings at the poles. There could be some truth to one but no validity to the other. And yet, there are even today people who believe in the hollow earth. Just do a search on "hollow earth" or check out these links:
Flying Saucers from Inside the Earth The chapter on the origins of flying saucers was unexpectedly full of good information, with quotes from antiquity that indicate the UFO phenomenon is not new. A number of Roman sources mention the sun appearing at night. For instance, "In the consulship of Tiberius Gracchus and Manius Juventus at Capua the sun was seen at night. At Formice, two suns were seen by day. The sky was afire." (Obsequens, Prodigiorum). The last chapter postulates a method by which UFOs could perform the incredible rapid movements they've been observed making. The author asks "When flying saucers accelerate from 0 speed to many thousands of miles per hour in a few seconds, why isn't their internal machinery torn apart and any crew member squashed?" What follows is a discussion of the laws of inertia and the possibility of overcoming those "laws" through use of an "anti-gravity screen." Well, why not? The only place in the book where I could definitely agree with author Bernard is that flying saucers DO exist. But do they come from inside the earth? I doubt it, but I have no other explanation for them, so if we should discover that the earth actually is hollow and inhabited by intelligent beings, they would be a more likely source of UFOs than some far-off star system. But unlike Bernard, I do not ask "Where else could they come from?" Lots of authors have speculated on where they could come from, with "other planets" only one of the possibilities. My own favorite theory is that they are time travelers, but I have no proof of that, and I admit my theory is only slightly more credible than the idea that they come from inside the earth. The Hollow Earth by Raymond Bernard is a poorly-written book full of illogic, but I still enjoyed reading it. It touches on a number of ideas that are worth pursuing in the never-ending search for the truth about human existence. If you're interested in alternate history, you have to at least take a look at the ideas surrounding the belief in a hollow earth. Why has this theory persisted for so many years? Because it has strong appeal; it draws on ancient myths and more recent enigmatic and unexplained reports from explorers, and it offers an explanation, however erroneous, for mankind's origins. Buy The Hollow Earth by Raymond Bernard at amazon.com. |
|
You may enjoy my reviews of these books:
 |
 |
The so-called "proof" for this hardly holds up. The most interesting piece of
evidence is the testimony of Admiral Richard Byrd who supposedly flew into the
opening at the north pole and found a warm climate, green pastures and pre-historic
animals in 1947 and into the Antarctic opening in 1955. However, the validity of
Byrd's story is hard to evaluate from an author who makes sweeping generalizations
that defy logic. For instance, he says that the northern lights,
the brightly-colored auroras of the extreme north, are the lights of the internal
sun shining through the opening and asks (as he frequently does in this book)
"what else could they be?" I laughed when I read this because there are plenty of
other things they could be! The November '01 issue of National Geographic has a
nice story on the aurora borealis phenomena and attributes it to interaction
between the solar wind and the earth's magnetosphere (although it adds, mysteriously,
that the details of how this works are still unknown).
