DR. ANTHONY F. AVENI
Anthony F. Aveni is the Russell B. Colgate Professor of Astronomy and Anthropology, serving appointments in both Departments of Physics and Astronomy and Sociology and Anthropology at Colgate University, where he has taught since 1963. Dr. Aveni helped develop the field of archaeoastronomy and now is considered one of the founders of Mesoamerican Archaeoastronomy, in particular for his research in the astronomical history of the Maya Indians of ancient Mexico. Dr. Aveni is a lecturer, speaker, and editor/author of over two dozen books on ancient astronomy.
http://anthonyfaveni.com/
ROBERT BAUVAL
Robert Bauval was born in Alexandria, Egypt, in 1948. In 1967 he went to England to complete his higher education in Building Construction and Management at the University of the South Bank in London. From 1973 to 1985 Bauval worked on various construction projects in Oman, Iran, Sudan, Guinea, and Saudi Arabia.
In 1989 Bauval published a study proposing that the layout of the three Giza Pyramids and their relative position to the Nile was intended to mirror the layout of the three stars in Orion's belt and their relative position to the Milky Way. This thesis, now known as the 'Orion Correlation Theory', became the subject of his first book, The Orion Mystery, published in 1994. The Orion Mystery has been translated into more than 20 languages and has been the subject of television documentaries by the BBC, ABC, Discovery Channel, Germany ZDF-Arte, Italy RAI, France A3, and many other European channels.
Bauval's second book, The Message of the Sphinx, co-authored with Graham Hancock, and translated into over 23 languages, was also the subject of several major television documentaries. Other books by Bauval are Secret Chamber (1999), Talisman (2004, with Graham Hancock), and The Egypt Code (2006).
Bauval is presently working on a new book, Sirius Rising, which will track the influence of the Egyptian star-goddess Sopdet (Sirius) from prehistoric times to the early Christian era, with special focus on her role in the rebirth cult and temple rituals and alignments.
Bauval lives in Cairo near the Giza pyramids with his wife Michele.
http://www.robertbauval.co.uk/
WALTER CRUTTENDEN
Walter Cruttenden is a history theorist involved in the study of ancient myth, folklore and megalithic structures for the purpose of determining the science and character of the higher ages. As Director of the Binary Research Institute he researches the celestial mechanics of the precession of the equinox, as well as myth and folklore related to this phenomenon. He is the writer-producer of The Great Year, an award winning PBS broadcast documentary film (narrated by James Earl Jones) that explores evidence of astronomical cycles of time known to cultures throughout the ancient world.
Cruttenden is also the author of Lost Star of Myth and Time, a book that provides an alternative view of history based on the solar system's motion through space. It is his belief that the myth and folklore depicting a repeating cycle of Golden Ages and Dark Ages may have a basis in fact, due to the alternating stellar forces that affect Earth as our solar system moves in a 24,000-year binary (dual star) orbit. Walter started the Conference on Precession and Ancient Knowledge (CPAK) to bring together like minded authors, scientists and independent researchers to explore the character and nature of ancient cultures with the hope of better understanding our history and the goal of making a better future.
http://www.cpakonline.com/
BENITO VENEGAS DURAN
Benito is an archeologist working for The Instituto Nacional de Antropologia e Historia (INAH, National Institute of Anthropology and History) at the classic period Mayan city of Palenque, in Chiapas, Mexico. INAH is a Mexican federal government bureau established in 1939 to guarantee the research, preservation, protection, and promotion of the prehistoric, archaeological, anthropological, historical, and paleontological heritage of Mexico.
GRAHAM HANCOCK
Graham Hancock is the author of the major international bestsellers The Sign and The Seal, Fingerprints of the Gods, Supernatural and Heaven's Mirror. His books have sold more than five million copies worldwide and have been translated into 27 languages. His public lectures and TV appearances, including the three-hour series "Quest For The Lost Civilisation," have put his ideas before audiences of tens of millions. He has become recognized as an unconventional thinker who raises legitimate questions about humanity's history and prehistory and offers an increasingly popular challenge to the entrenched views of orthodox scholars.
Born in Edinburgh, Scotland, Hancock's early years were spent in India, where his father worked as a surgeon. Later he went to school and university in the northern English city of Durham and graduated from Durham University in 1973 with First Class Honours in Sociology. He went on to pursue a career in quality journalism, writing for many of Britain's leading newspapers including The Times, The Sunday Times, The Independent, and The Guardian. He was co-editor of New Internationalist magazine from 1976-1979 and East Africa correspondent of The Economist from 1981-1983.
In the early 1980's Hancock's writing began to move consistently in the direction of books. His first book (Journey Through Pakistan, with photographers Mohamed Amin and Duncan Willetts) was published in 1981. It was followed by Under Ethiopian Skies (1983), Ethiopia: The Challenge of Hunger (1984), and AIDS: The Deadly Epidemic (1986). In 1987 Hancock began work on his widely acclaimed critique of foreign aid, Lords of Poverty, which was published in 1989. African Ark was published in 1990.
Hancock's breakthrough to bestseller status came in 1992 with the publication of The Sign and The Seal, his epic investigation into the mystique and whereabouts today of the lost Ark of the Covenant. Fingerprints of the Gods, published in 1995 confirmed Hancock's growing reputation. Described as "one of the intellectual landmarks of the decade" by the Literary Review, this book has now sold more than three million copies and continues to be in demand all around the world. Subsequent works such as Keeper Of Genesis (The Message of the Sphinx in the US) with co-author Robert Bauval, and Heaven's Mirror, with photographer Santha Faiia, have also been Number 1 bestsellers, the latter accompanied by Hancock's three-part television series "Quest For the Lost Civilisation."
In 2002 Hancock published Underworld: Flooded Kingdoms of the Ice Age to great critical acclaim, and hosted the accompanying major TV series. Talisman: The Sacred Cities and The Secret Faith, co-authored by Robert Bauval (2004) returned to the themes last dealt with in Keeper Of Genesis, seeking further evidence for the continuation of a secret astronomical cult into modern times. In Supernatural: Meetings With The Ancient Teachers of Mankind (2006), Hancock investigated the influences that gave birth to the modern human mind.
http://www.grahamhancock.com/
JOHN MAJOR JENKINS
John Major Jenkins is an independent researcher who has devoted himself to reconstructing ancient Mayan cosmology and philosophy. Since 1986, John has traveled to Mexico and Central America seven times. In 1990 he helped build a school in San Pedro, near Lake Atitlan in Guatemala. In 1994 he delivered relief supplies to a Quiché Maya community in the Western highlands of Guatemala. Since beginning his odyssey of research and discovery with the Maya, John has authored dozens of articles and many books, including:
Journey to the Mayan Underworld (1989), Mirror in the Sky (1991), Tzolkin: Visionary Perspectives and Calendar Studies (1992/1994), Mayan Sacred Science (1994), Maya Cosmogenesis 2012 (1998) and Galactic Alignment: The Transformation of Consciousness According to Mayan, Egyptian, and Vedic Traditions (2002).
As a visiting scholar, Jenkins has taught classes at The Institute of Maya Studies in Miami, The Maya Calendar Congress in Mexico, The Esalen Institute, Naropa University and many other venues both nationally and abroad. He has been interviewed on numerous radio and television shows and has appeared in many television documentaries. John's careful scholarship and cutting-edge insights into why the Maya chose 2012 to end a great World Age cycle have been endorsed by the most progressive thinkers of our day.
http://alignment2012.com/
LAWRENCE E. JOSEPH
Lawrence E. Joseph was formerly the chairman of an advanced plasma physics research and development company in Albuquerque, New Mexico. Key projects included the development of the Vulcan Plasma Disintegrator, an ultra-high temperature (10,000 to 15,000 degrees K) furnace designed to completely dissociate highly toxic biological and chemical wastes, leaving no toxic residue.
As a writer Joseph has written for, among other publications, The New York Times (Sunday magazine, Op-Ed, Travel), Salon.com, Family Circle, Audubon, Art News, Discover and Diversion.
He is the author of Strawberry Fields Forever: John Lennon Remembered (1980), a New York Times bestseller, American Lifestyles for the 1980's (1981), Amerika, (1987), a bestselling novelization of the 14-hour ABC miniseries on which he also served as creative editor, Gaia: The Growth of an Idea (1990), arising from his 1986 article on Gaia in The New York Times Magazine, Common Sense: Why It's No Longer Common (1994) and Apocalypse 2012 (2007), a New York Times bestseller. He is currently writing a follow up entitled 2012: The Aftermath.
http://www.apocalypse2012.com/
JIM MARRS
A native of Fort Worth, Texas, Jim Marrs has worked for several Texas newspapers, including the Fort Worth Star-Telegram. After a leave of absence to serve with Fourth Army intelligence during the Vietnam War, he became military and aerospace writer for the newspaper and an investigative reporter. Since 1980, Marrs has been a freelance writer, author and frequently invited public speaker.
Marrs can justifiably be considered the world's leading conspiracy author, with multimillion bestsellers like Alien Agenda, Rule By Secrecy and the book that Oliver Stone used as a basis for his JFK movie, Crossfire: The Plot That Killed Kennedy. His most recent books include the New York Times bestseller, The Rise of the Fourth Reich and Above Top Secret.
http://www.jimmarrs.com/
ALONSO MENDEZ
Alonso Mendez is an archeo-astronomer and research associate with The Maya Exploration Center, based at the classic Mayan site of Palenque in Chiapas, southern Mexico. An artist of Tzeltal Maya heritage, Mendez was born in the highlands of Chiapas and raised in San Cristobal de Las Casas. His mother worked as a secretary for famed explorer and archaeologist Frans Blom in the 1970's and as a result, Mendez grew up amongst anthropologists, botanists and ethnographers.
As a teenager, he was awarded a grant to complete high school and attend college in New England. Living with relatives in New York he obtained a BA in Fine Arts and Latin American Literature from Middlebury College, Vermont in 1987.
In 1995 he moved to Palenque. Mendez's skills as an artist, an ecologist and a builder combined with his personal interest in the ancient Maya, made him a welcome addition to archaeological teams working at the ruins.
First with the Palenque Mapping Project and subsequently with INAH and the PGC, Mendez has worked at the ruins for the last seven years as a project artist, a surveyor and an archaeologist. His reconstruction drawings of the ruins and faithful reproductions of Maya ceramics have gained him a reputation as one of Palenque's most talented artists.
http://www.mayaexploration.org/
DANIEL PINCHBECK
Author Daniel Pinchbeck has deep personal roots in the New York counterculture of the 1950s and 1960s. His father was an abstract painter, and his mother, Joyce Johnson, was a member of the Beat Generation and dated Jack Kerouac as On The Road hit the bestseller lists in 1957 (chronicled in Johnson's bestselling book, Minor Characters: A Beat Memoir). Pinchbeck was a founder of the 1990s literary magazine Open City with fellow writers Thomas Beller and Robert Bingham. He has written for many publications, including Esquire, The New York Times Magazine, The Village Voice, and Rolling Stone. In 1994, he was chosen by The New York Times Magazine as one of "Thirty Under Thirty" destined to change our culture.
His latest book, 2012: The Return of Quetzalcoatl, is a literary and metaphysical epic that binds together the cosmological phenomena of our time to support the contention of the Mayan calendar that the year 2012 portends an unprecedented global shift.
Pinchbeck lives in New York's East Village, where he is editorial director of Reality Sandwich (www.realitysandwich.com). He writes a column, Prophet Motive, for Conscious Enlightenment publishing (www.cemagazines.com), which appears in Conscious Choice (Chicago), Conscious Choice (Seattle), Whole Life Times (LA), and Common Ground (SF). He is co-creator of the animation project, PostModern Times (postmoderntimes.com).
http://www.realitysandwich.com/
DOUGLAS RUSHKOFF
Winner of the first Neil Postman award for Career Achievement in Public Intellectual Activity, Douglas Rushkoff is an author, teacher, and documentarian who focuses on the ways people, cultures, and institutions create, share, and influence each other's values. He sees "media" as the landscape where this interaction takes place, and "literacy" as the ability to participate consciously in it.
His ten best-selling books on new media and popular culture have been translated to over thirty languages. They include Cyberia, Media Virus, Playing the Future, Nothing Sacred: The Truth about Judaism, Get Back in the Box: Innovation from the Inside Out and Coercion, winner of the Marshall McLuhan Award for best media book. Rushkoff also wrote the acclaimed novels Ecstasy Club and Exit Strategy and graphic novel, Club Zero-G. He wrote a series of graphic novels for Vertigo called Testament, and is now finishing a book on the corporate spectacle called Life Incorporated for Random House, to be released in June 2009.
He has written and hosted two award-winning Frontline documentaries: "The Merchants of Cool" looked at the influence of corporations on youth culture, and "The Persuaders," about the cluttered landscape of marketing, and new efforts to overcome consumer resistance.
Rushkoff writes a column for the music and culture magazine, Arthur. His commentaries have aired on CBS Sunday Morning and NPR's All Things Considered, and have appeared in publications from The New York Times to Time magazine. He wrote the first syndicated column on cyberculture for The New York Times and Guardian of London, as well as regular columns for Discover Magazine and The Feature.
Rushkoff is a PhD candidate at Utrecht University's New Media Program. He teaches regularly for the Maybe Logic Academy, NYU's Interactive Telecommunications Program, and the Esalen Institute. He also lectures about media, art, society, and change at conferences and universities around the world.
He serves on the Board of Directors of the Media Ecology Association, The Center for Cognitive Liberty and Ethics, and as a founding member of Technorealism, as well as the Advisory Board of The National Association for Media Literacy Education, MeetUp.com and HyperWords . He has been awarded Senior Fellowships by the Markle Foundation, the Center for Global Communications, and the International University of Japan. He served as an Advisor to the United Nations Commission on World Culture and regularly appears on TV shows from NBC Nightly News to Larry King and Bill Maher. He developed the Electronic Oracle software series for HarperCollins Interactive.
Rushkoff is on the board of several new media non-profits and companies, and regularly consults on new media arts and ethics to museums, governments, synagogues, churches, and universities, as well as Sony, TCI, advertising agencies, and other Fortune 500 companies.
http://rushkoff.com/
ALBERTO VILLOLDO
Alberto Villoldo, PhD, is a medical anthropologist who has spent the last 25 years investigating the healing practices of the shamans of the Amazon and the Andes. He is the founder of the Four Winds Society, an organization dedicated to the bridging of ancient shamanic traditions with modern medicine and psychology.
He is the author of over 10 books, including Shaman, Healer, Sage; Mending the Past and Healing the Future with Soul Retrieval; The Four Insights; Yoga, Power and Spirit and Courageous Dreaming. He makes available a complex body of shamanic knowledge in an elegant and accessible manner.
http://www.thefourwinds.com/
JOHN ANTHONY WEST
John Anthony West is a writer, scholar and Pythagorean, born in New York City. He is the author of The Traveler's Key to Ancient Egypt, and consulting editor for the Traveler's Key series. His previous book, Serpent in the Sky: The High Wisdom of Ancient Egypt is an exhaustive study of the revolutionary Egyptological work of the French mathematician and Orientalist, the late R.A. Schwaller de Lubicz.
In The Case for Astrology, John Anthony West presents compelling new evidence that proves the astrological premise: that correlations exist between events in the sky and on earth, and that correspondences exist between the human personality and the positions of the planets at birth.
Mr. West has published a novel and many short stories; his plays have been produced on stage, television and radio, and he writes articles, essays and criticism for The New York Times Book Review, Conde Nast Traveler and other general interest and specialized newspapers and magazines in America and abroad. He won an EMMY Award for his 1993 NBC Special Documentary "The Mystery of the Sphinx," hosted by Charlton Heston.
The ancient Egyptians themselves attributed their wisdom to an earlier age going back 36,000 years. West set out to test the hypothesis that the Sphinx was much older than its conventional date of 2500 BC. His findings provide the first hard evidence that an earlier age of civilization preceded the known development of civilization in the Nile valley.
John Anthony West is today the leading authority and proponent of the 'Symbolist' school of Egyptology, an alternative interpretation of ancient Egyptian culture advanced by the French scholar and philosopher, R.A. Schwaller de Lubicz (1891-1962). In the Symbolist view, Egyptian architecture and art disclose a richer and more universal wisdom than conventional Egyptology has assumed.
Mr. West lectures extensively on Egypt and personally leads several in-depth study tours to Egypt every year.
http://www.jawest.net/