Africa's Stonehenge.

Some physicists claim that time is an illusion while those of us missing deadlines curse it as a man-made construct intent on ruining what would otherwise have been a most pleasant day. However, this fascination with time isn’t new – ancient stone calendars from the Aztec Empire, to Rome to ancient China show that mankind has always been fascinated with the concept of time. Many of these stone calendars no longer work or only rubble and ruins remain, but what if I was to tell you that there is one ancient stone calendar that still survives?

The oldest man-made structure ever found, predating even Göbekli Tepe, that not only still stands but actually still works. I think we can all agree that it would be the archaeological discovery of the century.

So, without further ado, I present to you Adam’s Calendar, also known as Africa’s Stonehenge, an ancient man-made calendar that could change everything we think we know about the development of mankind – if it’s the real deal. With some extraordinary claims from believers, and frowns from skeptics, we have to ask the important question: Is Adam’s Calendar truly the mystery it’s hyped up to be, or is it simply a case of imagination gone wild?

The Mysterious Adam’s Calendar

In the year of our Lord, 2003, Johan Heine made an extraordinary discovery. As a pilot and manager of the largest fleet of fire-fighting aircraft in Africa, Heine had been flying over the Mpumalanga Mountains of South Africa for over 20 years. Early on he found himself fascinated by the mysterious stone circle ruins which can be seen all over Mpumalanga and even started taking photos, eventually contacting some experts to try and figure out what exactly these strange stone circles were. The experts, as is usually the case in our stories, were of little help.

They claimed the stone circles were all that remained of kraals, or animal pens, built by African peoples from around the 14th century until the 18th century as they migrated south. Not a very exciting explanation. However, all this changed with a plane crash and a remarkable discovery.

Our tale begins with a rescue mission in 2003 when a colleague of Heine crashed his plane on the edge of a high mountain cliff in Mpumalanga. During the rescue operation, Heine spotted some strange monoliths, arranged in a sort-of circle, around 30m in diameter, overlooking the valley below. After dealing with the pilot, who thankfully only suffered a broken arm, Heine decided to take a closer look at this strange stone circle.

At first glance, the site appeared to be a bunch of randomly scattered boulders arranged in what could possibly be a circle, if you squint a bit and use your imagination, situated on the edge of a sloping cliff. Imagine a tiny Stonehenge in the mists of Mpumalanga rather than the mists of the Salisbury plain. He realized that four of the stones were aligned with north, south, east and west.

Excited about his discovery, Heine brought some academics to the site later on, but they all claimed that it was just a random collection of stones and nothing more.

Undeterred by their short-sightedness, Heine continued his investigation, eventually contacting Michael Tellinger, author of Slave Species of the Gods, and, together, the two men embarked on a journey to discover the truth about this miniature Stonehenge, and the stone circle ruins found all over Mpumalanga. Neither of the men had any training in archaeology or anthropology or astronomy, but that didn’t stop them from making such astounding discoveries, it’s hard to believe all the archaeologists, anthropologists, and astronomers missed it. Apparently, a tertiary education isn’t worth much these days.

Early on the men realized that the strange configuration of stones was a calendar. Two carved boulders in the middle of the circle function as the actual calendar – the taller of the two stones casts its shadow over a flat rock, named the calendar stone, lying next to it, measuring the progression of the year. The bedrock of the area where the calendar is found consists of black reef quartzite, but the monoliths making up the calendar are dolerite, suggesting the stones were quarried elsewhere and moved to this specific spot overlooking the valley below.

The closest source of dolerite is around a kilometer away, and some of the monoliths weigh up to 5 tonnes, so moving them to the site must’ve been quite the undertaking – not exactly building the pyramids, but certainly more effort than popping to the corner store. Based on the age, which we’ll get to in a bit, it’s the oldest man-made construction ever found, so the men decided that ‘Adam’s Calendar’ would be a fitting name. However, as it turns out, Adam’s Calendar is so much more than just a calendar.

On top of being aligned with the cardinal directions, Adam’s Calendar also indicates the equinoxes and solstices suggesting that it functioned as an astronomical observatory of some kind and possibly even served as a religious site as the stars and religious practices often go hand in hand. After about six years of research, our intrepid duo discovered that the calendar’s north-south alignment is out by 3 degrees, 17 minutes and 43 seconds which is apparently proof of some disaster befalling the planet after the calendar was built. I, of course, refer to the work of Charles Hapgood, a favorite scientist of conspiracy theorists everywhere, who theorized that the earth experienced a crustal displacement possibly due to an impact event at some time in the very distant past, around 9000 years ago. We’re not exactly sure when this impact happened, but it completely mucked up the north-south alignment of Adam’s Calendar which was just very inconsiderate – moving 5 ton stones ain’t no easy feat.

It was also discovered that three of the stones at the site align with the three stars that make up Orion’s Belt. If you know anything about ancient mysteries, you’ll know that ancient structures aligning with stars, usually Orion’s Belt, is a recurring theme – the best example is probably the pyramids at Giza. This realization was very useful in determining the age of the calendar.

Apparently, our lovely planet wobbles on its axis, very scientific terminology there, which means the stars and constellations change position in the night sky on a cyclical basis and each cycle lasts around 26,000 years. By determining when these three stars would’ve aligned exactly with the three stones at Adam’s Calendar, we can get some idea of when the calendar was built. According to Michael Tellinger, the calculations were done by amateur astronomer Bill Hollenbach and he concluded that the calendar was around 75,000 years old.

For a bit of context, the Sumerian civilization in Mesopotamia, considered to be the first civilization, only appeared around 6000 years ago, construction on Stonehenge started around 5000 years ago, and the pyramid of Giza is only around 4600 years old meaning someone was running around Africa building stone calendars thousands of years before civilization even got going. However, more calculations in 2009, this time taking into account the weathering of the dolerite stones, lichen growth and stellar alignments, suggested the calendar was actually around 160,000 years old while the most recent research placed the age at around 250,000 years old. I think they better stop calculating because at this rate, the calendar will soon be older than the planet which would present a number of problems – the most important being the accuracy of their science.

On top of all this, Adam’s Calendar is perched along the same 31-degree longitudinal line as the Great Zimbabwe ruins and the Great Pyramid of Giza all the way in distant Egypt. Is this a coincidence, or is there some link between whoever built Adam’s Calendar and the ancient Egyptians?

As research into the mysterious calendar continued, more links to ancient Egypt and Mesopotamia came to light. According to the intrepid researchers, one of the fallen monoliths that formed the outer circle, marking the position of the sunrise on the spring equinox, around 22 or 23 September, is vaguely shaped like the head of Horus, the Hawk-headed Egyptian god. It also resembles the bird statues found amongst the ruins of Great Zimbabwe suggesting that Great Zimbabwe is somehow linked to Egypt as well but that’s a story for another time.

Of course, the shape is very vague, you really have to use your imagination to see a bird, so basically the site can be linked to any culture or artist that ever made a bird-shaped anything, but if this is a statue of Horus, it would be the oldest Horus statue ever found. I’m guessing it’s also the only Horus statue found outside of Egypt. Apparently, the surrounding landscape and the stone circle ruins also have a lot of vaguely bird-shaped rocks and statues so whoever built Adam’s Calendar, and the surrounding stone circle ruins, really liked birds.

A small sphinx, around 1.5m long carved out of dolerite rock has also been found as well as rock carvings of a winged disk, Sumerian crosses, and an Egyptian ankh, symbolic of eternal life. Finally, a humanoid shaped stone, nick-named Adam, also belongs at the site; however, it was moved at some point and ended up at the entrance to the Blue Swallow Reserve, home of the enigmatic stone calendar, where it was decorated with a plaque, proudly bearing the name of the reserve, to commemorate its opening back in 1994, an all-round big year for South Africa. It seems like Adam’s Calendar, and the surrounding stone ruins, was once the domain of a much older civilization; one we know nothing about.

Some of the most recent discoveries around Adam’s Calendar have to do with sound. It turns out that many of the rocks at the site have acoustic properties, and some are even described as ringing like bells when struck. This in itself is not entirely remarkable since rocks are known to reflect and transmit sound waves; however, the rocks at the stone circle ruins surrounding Adam’s Calendar were chosen with such great care that you can play a simple melody by striking the rocks in the correct sequence.

Using modern technology to measure these sound frequencies, Tellinger concluded that the stones actually conduct electricity. With Adam’s Calendar functioning as a calendar, an astronomical observatory and an energy conductor, it’s clear that the builders of this inspiring site was light years ahead of their time, but who were they?

Who Built Adam’s Calendar?

To answer this question, we need to step back a little and take a closer look at those stone circle ruins found all over Mpumalanga. After all, Adam’s Calendar is not an isolated ruin on a windy hilltop; it’s part of what is known as the Blaauwboschkraal Stone Ruins. It’s a complex of circular stone ruins, sitting on the Mpumalanga escarpment in the Mpumalanga province, around 10km from Waterval Boven, and it covers an area of around 10.4 thousand square kilometers making it a bigger city than Johannesburg today.

The ruins were constructed with mainly flat dolerite stones carefully piled on top of each to create walls, and each circle ruin is divided into cells or have apses added to the sides. While most of the ruins have been lost due to erosion or being destroyed by farming or paper plantations, many can still be seen, especially from the air. A small number of ruins still have standing walls, some as high as 2.5m, or around 8 feet, suggesting that at least some of the structures once had roofs.

All of these ruins are connected with straight pathways often leading to rivers or streams, edged with low stone walls. It’s obvious that these formations aren’t natural – they were man-made and what’s truly remarkable is the fact that each circle ruin is unique.

We’ll be focusing on the South African ruins in Mpumalanga around Adam’s Calendar, but these strange stone circles show up through most of southern Africa, and scholars estimate at present there are around 20,000 of them still standing. However, according to Tellinger, based on his own observations, exploration and extrapolations, that number is closer to 100,000, a figure confirmed by a retired archaeology professor in 2009. The mysterious stone circles ruins can been found in Zimbabwe, Botswana, Namibia, Zambia, Kenya and Mozambique. Unfortunately, we still know very little about them, which have led to some imaginative speculations.

Most academics consider these stone circles to be little more than animal pens, but, as Tellinger points out, that doesn’t make a lot of sense. Traditionally, animal pens were constructed using thorny bushes to keep the animals in, not stone. There’s also the problem of entrances.

If you study the aerial photographs, it soon becomes clear that many of these structures don’t seem to have any entrances which you would expect to see if you were looking at a domestic dwelling or animal enclosure – very strange indeed. However, it’s the roads and paths connecting the structures that give us an idea of the size of the population who once called these ruins home. According to Tellinger, the remains of this road covers around 500km, around 310 miles, and that’s just the bits we can see – in its highway days, the road most likely covered thousands of kilometers, possibly from the coast of Mozambique all the way to Botswana and even beyond.

Tellinger and his team calculated that the remains of the road that can still be seen would’ve required around 500 million stones, weighing between 10 and 50kg each, to build. Quarrying and transporting the stone to build the roads and the structures suggest a much larger population living on the southern-most tip of Africa than is currently accepted to be the case. Since the wheel was apparently only introduced in the 1500s by the Portuguese, the question also arises as to why this ancient settlement would need roads at all.

Here I have to pause for a moment before we continue because I find this question ridiculous. The Inca had an extensive road network despite not using the wheel either and no-one has ever questioned their need for roads. However, I digress.

The ruins are also surrounded by around 450,000 square kilometers of terraces, indicating advanced farming methods and some serious food production going on – clearly, there were a lot of mouths to feed. But what were all these people doing here and what was these strange circle structures used for if not homes and animal pens? Well, the short answer for this would be gold.

In the late 1800s, gold was discovered in the rivers in Pilgrim’s Rest and Barberton, eventually leading to the first gold rush which would get a further boost with the discovery of gold in the Witwatersrand area in 1886 – the discovery of which led to the founding of the city of Johannesburg. However, the story of gold started long before that – the precious metal was mined by local peoples well before the first Europeans even thought of leaving their over-crowded cities and finding adventure on other unexplored continents. Apparently, the Egyptian Pharaoh, Ramesses II (1279-1213), wrote about people crossing the African continent, all the way to the southern-most tip, where they discovered rich deposits of gold.

We also have the Biblical legends of the wealthy and powerful Queen of Sheba, who has long been associated with the Great Zimbabwe ruins, and King Solomon’s goldmines in the distant and mysterious land of Ophir. There are some theories suggesting that Ophir was actually in southern Africa, so we’ve finally managed to solve the eternal question of where Solomon’s wealth came from – good job us.

Apparently, when the European prospectors arrived in droves in the 1880s, they mentioned that there were signs of earlier mining efforts and ancient mine shafts have been discovered all over the area. Tellinger theorized that many of the mine shafts used during the gold rush were actually rediscovered shafts that were reopened by the prospectors in their crazed search for gold. Today, some of the richest gold mines in the world can still be found in the Barberton area – the richest of them being the Sheba Gold Mine, according to Tellinger. According to my research, Sheba doesn’t even hit the top 5 in South Africa, never mind the world, but the area is very rich in gold, so it wouldn’t be outside the realm of possibility that an advanced civilization once inhabited the slopes of the Mpumalanga Mountains mining for gold.

Finally, studies in 2011 showed that the circular stone ruins were actually energy generating devices using the natural sounds emanating from the earth’s surface to create electromagnetic fields by amplifying these natural earth frequencies. Tellinger believes that the stone circle ruins were used as magnetrons, high-powered vacuum tubes which generate microwaves using a stream of electrons interacting with a magnetic field. Apparently, the internal cells of a magnetron look very similar to some of the cell-like internal structures found in some of the stone circle ruins.

These magnetrons would then be used to extract the gold from the rocks though he never really explains the exact process, so I suppose we’ll just have to rely on our own vivid imaginations to fill in the details. The pathways leading to the rivers and streams are actually channels used to draw energy from the water but they also connect all these energy generating ruins forming a giant grid. As for Adam’s Calendar, the ancient calendar radiates sound frequencies and powerful electromagnetic waves suggesting that, along with the stone circle ruins, it formed a power grid powerful enough to cover a vast area.

Unfortunately, Eskom, the South African electricity provider, hasn’t yet figured out how to get this generator going again, but it might be the perfect solution to South Africa’s electricity shortage, so someone should probably get on that. Personally, I think the people who lived in the stone structures most likely needed to collect water so they build paths to the water sources to make things easier for themselves, but I’m no archaeologist. However, a geologist from the University of Zimbabwe apparently wrote several papers arguing that the ruins in Zimbabwe were most likely used to extract and purify gold and weren’t actually slave pits, grain pits, or animal pens, so perhaps Tellinger is onto something after all.

But who were the people doing all this mining?

The Dravidians

One possible theory to explain all this came from historian Dr Cyril Hromnik, who claimed in his 1981 book, Indo Africa: Towards a New Understanding of the History of sub-Saharan Africa, that the MaKomati people, or Komates, an Indian seafaring people, with their Indonesian slaves on board, travelled all the way from India, across the Indian Ocean, in their search for gold, diamonds and ivory. They sailed to a land called Kiliyadvipa, meaning ‘black land’, a fitting description considering the locals all had dark complexions. There they found gold, diamonds and all kinds of precious metal and stones. Was Kiliyadvipa actually South Africa?

Buddhist literature already refers to a gold trade in Africa in pre-Buddhist times, as early as the 6th century BCE, and Hromnik believe that, upon arriving on African shores, these Dravidian merchants immediately got busy building stone temples, shrines and other places of worship as well as agricultural terraces for farming in order to feed everyone and, of course, stone calendars. The stone circle ruins found all over Mpumalanga are all Afro-Indian temples, similar to those found in Madagascar and on the East-African seaboard. Apparently, some architectural features discovered around the ruins by modern archaeologists hint at this spiritual connection, for example a perfect Zoroastrian Swastika, which had nothing to do with Nazis, but was a symbol for prosperity and good fortune, as well as prayer rocks among other cultural artifacts and carvings.

According to Hromnik, these first traders mining gold in South Africa were all men, as they left the women-folk back in India, so it didn’t take long for them to start taking wives and lovers from among the local San people. This inter-marriage eventually gave rise to the Quena people who continued living and mining in the area until they were finally sent packing by African farming communities moving south. Hromnik relied heavily on comparing languages to make his case, for example claiming that the Quena word for priest is ‘suri’ which also happens to be the Tamil word for priest and ‘karu’ in Tamil means “dry land”, which is similar to the word ‘Karoo’ which means ‘land of thirst’ in the San language.

The presence of the MaKomati can even be found in place names like Komati River and Komatipoort. His fellow archaeologists, anthropologists and even linguists questioned the accuracy of this approach and considering that the San would’ve been here before the Dravidians, they might have a point. Hromnik also claimed that it was from these Dravidian ancestors that the BaPedi people gained their knowledge of metallurgy and making iron tools.

Of course, ascribing African achievements to Indian ancestors who used West Africans as slaves to carry all the gold, ivory and other precious metals and stones back to India, didn’t go down well and Hromnik almost got deported for his trouble. Hromnik, in turn, accused academia of being Afro-centric in their approach to archaeology. Since we’re in Africa, considered the cradle of humankind, any other approach would seem a little odd, but enough about politics in academia.

One could write a whole book about that.

Of course, Hromnik never claimed that the stone circle ruins were magnetrons used to mine gold – he only believed they were temples built by the Dravidians. So who were building technologically advanced mining devices? We’ve reached the point in our story where things are about to get really strange or really ridiculous depending on your point of view, so buckle up and enjoy the ride.

The Annunaki

It always seems to get back to aliens, so it’s no real surprise that the Annunaki would make this very short list. As I mentioned before, the first recognized civilization was the Sumerians in Mesopotamia around 6000 years ago. However, according to Tellinger and his fellow researchers, this wasn’t actually the first civilization.

In fact, the Sumerians, the Egyptians, all those ancient civilizations, learned everything they knew from a much older civilization that started on the southern-most tip of Africa. Apparently, the bird statues found in the Zimbabwe ruins, and some of the bird-like stone carvings found around Adam’s Calendar and the stone circles in Mpumalanga, I’m assuming these are different birds to the Horus statues, resemble the bird symbol used for the goddess Hathor, meant to protect miners. With all the gold mines in the region, I suppose it would make sense to find the same symbol carved into rocks around the ruins in Mpumalanga and Zimbabwe.

However, mining gold without all the fancy equipment we have today would’ve been an incredibly dangerous endeavor which begs the question – why would people risk their lives for a metal that you can’t eat and is too soft to make weapons? Well, probably because they had no choice in the matter.

The Annunaki is a theory first proposed by Zecharia Sitchin in his 1976 book, The 12th Planet, based on his own, very creative, translation of the Sumerian tablets, the oldest written records of human history. Those-in-the-know claim that these tablets tell a remarkable story. Around 450,000 years ago, the Annunaki arrived on earth from the planet Nibiru. Due to war, or some kind of conflict, they needed gold to repair their atmosphere and they decided to come find it here on our beautiful blue and green planet. Initially, there was a working class of gods to do the actually digging in the dirt, but they eventually burned their tools and went on strike because it turned out that mining is hard work. The ruling-class gods, because even gods are classist apparently, realized that they’ve been very inconsiderate of their working class brethren and decided to create a human-alien hybrid slave race to do the actual work by combining homo erectus and Annunaki DNA in a rather complicated procedure that sounds a bit like cloning and in-vitro fertilization all mixed together. This is a very simplified version, but, according to believers, this is how man was actually created.

All these slaves were taken to the land of Abzu, a land below the equator rich in gold. Apparently, the alien in charge of the mining operation in the lands of Abzu was Enki, hence the name Enki’s Calendar for those who don’t like the biblical reference to Adam. He had a brother, Enlil, who had a bit of temper and at one point attempted to wipe out humanity with a great flood.

This is most likely where the idea of the wrathful, vengeful, God of the Old Testament comes from – we’re just offending everyone today. Apparently, Enki took his job seriously and established a base in Abzu which grew into a very large ancient city occupied mostly by the cloned human slaves digging up gold for their alien overlords. The Great Zimbabwe Ruins was his headquarters because, in this part of the world, the mine manager always has the biggest house – some things never change.

Eventually all, or at least most of, the Annunaki left, but the offspring of the Annunaki is still with us today, and most of them can be found among the global elite controlling our planet. That would certainly explain Elon Musk and Donald Trump; they’re from a different planet. May they return to their home planet soon.

According to an isiZulu traditional healer, or sangoma, Credo Mutwa, Adam’s Calendar is known to African knowledge keepers as Inzalo Ye Langa which translates to “birthplace of the sun”. It is here that heaven mated with mother earth and where humanity was created by the gods – and not just any god. It was a deity known in isiZulu as Enkai, the same entity known as Enki by the Sumerians. In fact, the links between this ancient African civilization and the gods of the Sumerians can even be found in the names of the indigenous people. The word Abantu is commonly used to describe black South Africans and according to Mutwa, the name comes from the Sumerian goddess Antu. Abantu literally means ‘the children of Antu.’ I have no idea how true any of this is, but I’m South African, and I have no intention of questioning or contradicting a sangoma. May he rest in peace, and we will move on swiftly.

A Mystery Is Born

At first glance, Adam’s Calendar seems like an interesting and even plausible mystery. The terraces prove that whoever built the stone structures were farmers using advanced agricultural techniques. Farmers would most certainly need a calendar to keep track of the seasons for planting and harvesting, and stone calendars are hardly unheard of – many ancient cultures used them.

However, it doesn’t take long for the wheels to fall off the wagon in a most spectacular fashion, well before we get to the Annunaki. Since Heine and Tellinger only started their research in 2003, Adam’s Calendar is relatively new when it comes to unsolved mysteries, and it’s a rare opportunity for us to get a good look at just how a mystery gets started. While some mysteries might grow almost organically, the mystery surrounding Adam’s Calendar seems to be a very carefully man-made construction, much like the calendar itself.

Firstly, in order to create the image of a neglected and misunderstood mysterious site, there’s a lot of misrepresentation and twisting of facts. According to Tellinger, academics shrug off the stone circle ruins surrounding Adam’s Calendar as cattle kraals of little importance; however, that’s simply not true. I couldn’t find a single source claiming this and the archaeologist I spoke to explained that while these sites aren’t that well understood just yet, they’re hardly considered unimportant.

In fact, research into the sites started as early as the 1930s and is still ongoing. However, over the last 100 years, South Africa had a bit of a turbulent history, we were on the brink of a full-blown civil war around 40 years ago, so we had slightly more important things to deal with than stone ruins that weren’t going anywhere. Despite the political turmoil the country was in though, the stone ruins were considered important enough that the Blaauboschkraal ruins were declared a heritage site back in 1975.

As with many laws in South Africa, it’s not really enforced effectively, but removing artifacts from the site is a criminal offense. It’s true that we don’t know much about these ruins and a lot of research still needs to be done, but they’re not considered unimportant.

Like many conspiracies theories and other mysteries we’ve covered on this channel, the story of Adam’s Calendar is based on what seems like rational appeals to science. Arguments in favor of Adam’s Calendar being an ancient stone calendar are made to sound more complex and scientific than they really are. Complicated calculations and reasoning that your average reader might not fully understand make people more willing to trust the apparent expertise of those telling the story.

For example, the claim that the north-south alignment is exactly 3 degrees and 27 minutes off seems rather complicated and very scientific when you read it. It’s made to sound even more scientific with the mention of Dr Charles Hapgood and his theories of an impact event leading to a displacement of the earth’s crust. Hapgood was indeed a scientist, and even Einstein once thought his ideas had merit, but science has come a long way since the 1960s.

Since there’s just no proof for any of Hapgood’s theories, his work on crustal displacement isn’t accepted as solid science by the academic community – a small detail that’s never mentioned.

Another way to make the mystery sound more scientific is through the research of self-proclaimed experts, a technique often seen in conspiracy theories. In this case, the expert is Michael Tellinger and the vast majority of all scholarly research on Adam’s Calendar, and I use that term in its broadest possible sense, is written by Tellinger and Heine. Not a single scientist has come forward to support any of their claims.

Heine is a pilot and Tellinger is a failed politician, songwriter and musician with a degree in pharmacology and a brief career as a sound designer and editor based in LA. He also has a fondness for writing about aliens – his first book claiming that humanity started as a slave race to the gods were already published when he was first introduced to Adam’s Calendar. Not a lot of people are lucky enough to find a site to prove their published work in their own backyard.

The major problem with basically everything being researched and written by one person is that we don’t get a complete overview of the site or any alternative explanations or objective views; we get a one-sided mystery, very carefully curated by a single person who has little interest in any information that would contradict his story. In an article written by an American journalist who was visiting the site as part of a guided tour hosted by Tellinger, the journalist mention discovering some pottery shards in one of the stone circle ruins. Pottery can tell us a lot about the people who once lived at, or possibly even built, the ruins.

However, when shown this find, Tellinger simply shrugged it off, stating that the ruins were no doubt occupied later by African tribes moving south, so it’s of no real value to date the site. Ironically, he’s doing the exact same thing he accuses the archaeologists of doing – looking at plain evidence and dismissing it as unimportant because it doesn’t fit the first ancient civilization/Annunaki narrative. This is something we see time and time again with more established mysteries, like how the pyramids were built or what happened to the ancient Maya – evidence is presented by academics, but simply dismissed by conspiracy theorists and their followers because it doesn’t fit with their version of events.

Besides, the pottery might actually solve the mystery and we don’t really want that, do we?

On top of all this, there’s a fair bit of selective reporting and circular reasoning going on that sounds scientific but, upon closer inspection, doesn’t stand up to scrutiny – I speak of course of the three stones supposedly aligning with Orion’s Belt and the stone circle ruins not having any entrances. In order to determine the date, we are assuming that three of the stones were meant to align with Orion’s Belt, but there’s nothing to even suggest this was the intention of whoever built the calendar. In some African cultures, it’s believed that erecting a pole or monolith will bring rain while knocking them down will stop the rain.

The civilization who built the stone ruins and probably Adam’s Calendar were farmers – it’s possible that they were simply trying to ensure optimal rainfall for the crops. According to one researcher, no matter how far back you go in time, Orion’s Belt will never fully align with these three rocks which immediately calls Tellinger’s scientific methods into question and throws the whole theory out the window. Tellinger also claims that most of the stone circle ruins surrounding Adam’s Calendar have no clear entrances meaning they can’t be animal pens or domestic dwellings.

However, I’ve looked at the aerial photos and even I can see that the majority of these structures have very clear openings that were most likely entrances. There are a fair few of these structures that don’t have openings, but these structures could’ve been granaries or the like. Besides, if these ruins were all energy generating devices used to extract gold, and not domestic dwellings, where were all the people mining the gold and growing the crops living?

There aren’t enough caves in all of Mpumalanga to house a community that size.

In order for any mystery to thrive and remain in the spotlight, we need a hint of sensationalism – this is something we see time and time again. A simple stone calendar in Mpumalanga is interesting, but hardly a once-in-a-lifetime discovery, so in order to make it more sensational, it has to be old, older than the pyramids themselves. To achieve this, the numbers keep getting bigger.

Initially, the site was 75,000 years old. Then it was 160,000 years old. Finally, it’s over 200,000 years old.

Every time a new article appears, the site is a bit older. At first, there were around 20,000 stone circle ruins in southern Africa, later the number is 100,000 ruins and, finally, in one article, Tellinger claims that based on observation and extrapolation, there are around 10 million stone circle ruins in Southern Africa. When talking about discovering ancient mineshafts, Tellinger initially discovered around 5 ancient mine shafts himself.

In a later article, it’s 25 ancient shafts. It’s very possible that between these two articles Tellinger just did a lot more walking and exploring, but there is a definite trend of numbers getting bigger and more impressive the more attention the mystery gets. It feels a bit like a fisherman’s tale – with every telling, the fish gets bigger.

Of course, getting a mystery off the ground ain’t easy – it’s hard for a really old stone calendar in Mpumalanga to compete with the disappearance of the Maya, Atlantis, and Noah’s ark; however, by plugging this small mystery into a bigger, more established mystery, what is originally a local curiosity becomes part of a global conspiracy. I speak of course of the whole Annunaki angle taken by Tellinger. The belief in the Annunaki is so prevalent that this belief system is known as Annunaki theory – a belief very popular among groups of people who reject the scientific and religious beliefs of mainstream society, instead embracing their own theories of human history, often based on faith and intuition rather than analysis and science.

The Annunaki theory can be very dangerous, especially when people start believing that some folks are superior because they have more alien DNA than other folks who have more slave DNA. However, when it comes to Adam’s Calendar, the Annunaki theory isn’t really that dangerous, it’s just condescending and insulting by assuming that native African peoples couldn’t possibly have built stone ruins, developed advanced farming techniques, established trade routes, or built impressive cities like the Great Zimbabwe ruins.

When reading all the articles and watching the videos on Adam’s Calendar, the same words keep showing up – elite agenda, global elite, the ignorant academic fraternity, paradigm shift and my personal favorite, “dogma of our existing knowledge”. Accredited and experienced academic researchers and institutions are accused of being blind and unwilling to consider alternative theories. It’s suggested that a global elite are controlling academia to manipulate world events in their favor – in this case, hiding the existence of the Annunaki.

There’s a very clear ‘us’ versus ‘them’. With ‘us’ being the only ones enlightened enough to see the truth about the alien overlords while the rest of ‘them’, the sheep unwilling to listen to the truth, are led around by these powerful forces. One of the most popular narrative tropes we see time and again in blockbuster movies, books and even PC games is the small band of revolutionaries fighting against a cabal of powerful people – be it an evil corporation or a corrupt government.

It’s really no surprise for this theme to be popular in conspiracy theories and mysteries, like the story of Adam’s Calendar, as well.

We can clearly see how this mystery is being built up – all the right words are used, the supposed academic research has been done, and it’s rooted in an existing conspiracy theory, which raises an important question – who is telling this story and why? Some folks create mysteries and conspiracy theories because they truly believe the story. Others spread or promote certain theories for political or financial gain while others just like toying with people and spreading anarchy.

Personally, I’ve never met Mr Tellinger or Mr Heine myself, so I can’t speak to their motives and since they’re not hurting anyone, they can believe whatever they want. However, according to one article, Tellinger allegedly claimed that Adam’s Calendar would one day become as famous as the pyramids in Giza and archaeologists would flock to South Africa to excavate these phenomenal ruins, the remains of the very first civilization that ever existed. A horde of foreign archaeologists, anthropologists and tourists would be great news for anyone who has a business, like say a bar, restaurant or museum dedicated to the stone circle ruins, in the surrounding towns like Waterval Boven, Machadodorp and Dullstroom.

Make of that what you will.

What Is It Really?

The stone circles first show up in written historical records around 1891 when they were discovered and recorded by the English explorer Theodore Bent. Today, archaeologists and anthropologists believe that the Blaauboschkraal ruins, of which Adam’s Calendar is a part, are the remains of the stone-walled cities of the Bokoni people who lived in Mpumalanga sometime from the 16th to the 19th centuries – an advanced community of traders, blacksmiths and farmers.

Since African cultures pass their history from one generation to the next through stories and songs, nothing was written down so we don’t know as much about the Bokoni people as we would like to. Based on the terraces they built into the landscape, they were innovative farmers with advanced agricultural methods. The structures themselves were most likely used as housing and cattle enclosures; significant soil enrichment inside some of the enclosures certainly suggests the presence of cattle.

The ruins are mostly found on a steep sided valley, close to the Blouboskraal River, a tributary of the Crocodile River, which is believed to have been one of the ways the Bokoni used to trade. Considering all the terraces, we’re probably looking at an agricultural hub, producing far more food than was needed locally, suggesting that the Bokoni were one of the main food producers and traders on the Zimbabwe-Portuguese trade route, possibly even playing an important role in food security in the region. It’s doubtful that they mined intensively – they probably traded food for other necessities like metal and ivory, items commonly found in surrounding regions.

It’s estimated that the Bokoni people settled the area between the 16th and 19th century, but by the 1830s, the homesteads and terraces were abandoned. We’re not sure what happened to drive the Bokoni away, but war-like African tribes moving south probably had something to do with their relocation. From what we can tell, the Bokoni weren’t fighters, they preferred to farm and trade.

As for the stone calendar itself, some academics doubt that it’s even a calendar at all. Some suggest that it’s simply a random collection of stones, and there are even rumors that some of the stones might’ve been moved to make it look more like something resembling Stonehenge; however, this has not been proven. Humans have a wonderful ability to see patterns in random objects, so it’s not surprising that someone saw a stone circle and concluded that they were looking at a calendar.

Personally, I think the calendar theory is plausible – like I mentioned before, these were farmers, they probably needed a calendar of sorts – but the calendar is definitely not 75,000 years old. It might be man-made, but it’s not the oldest man-made structure on earth. At this point, there’s nothing to really prove that Adam’s Calendar is anything more than one man making a mountain out of a mole-hill, or I guess in this case, a calendar out of a pile of stones.

Conclusion

With theories for the stone circle ruins and the calendar itself running the gamut from the very likely to the ridiculous, the story of Adam’s Calendar is a fascinating one. On the one hand, we have the fantastical – Adam’s Calendar and the stone circle ruins are the remnants of the Annunaki, proof of our alien overlords’ influence on earth. In fact, some even claim that it’s still an active portal for other-worldly visitors to our green planet.

On the other hand, we have archaeologists running the risk of injury and oxygen deprivation, due to all the eye-rolling and deep sighs, who firmly believe that the ruins are the fascinating, though not yet that well understood, remains of the Bokoni people who only arrived around the 16th century. As for the calendar, while some researchers consider that it might have some human influence, the majority consider it to be nothing more than a natural formation with a few randomly placed big rocks. However, while Tellinger’s theories are dismissed, the work of Johan Heine in photographing the stone circle ruins from the air for over 20 years has given researchers an insight into just how extensive the ruin field is, so at least some of the effort has proven quite useful.

If, like me, you poke around the unsolved and the strange, you eventually discover a few blogs and sites frequented by the more enlightened among us, who firmly believe in the Annunaki, amongst other things, and even they question the story built around Adam’s Calendar. Honestly, if people who believe in the existence of Atlantis question the validity of your work, it might be time to take a long, hard look in the mirror and reconsider your life choices. Despite everyone’s best attempts to hype this mystery, I doubt that Adam’s Calendar will ever reach Pyramids of Giza status, so if you’re considering investing in a restaurant in the area, you might want to rethink that idea. Mpumalanga is beautiful, and we get a lot of tourists, but it’s unlikely that we’ll ever be able to compete with the Giza Plateau.

Frequently Asked Questions

What is Adam’s Calendar?

Adam’s Calendar, also known as Africa’s Stonehenge, is an ancient man-made calendar discovered in the Mpumalanga Mountains of South Africa. It is a stone circle that still functions as a calendar and is believed to be the oldest man-made structure ever found.

Who discovered Adam’s Calendar?

Johan Heine, a pilot and manager of the largest fleet of fire-fighting aircraft in Africa, discovered Adam’s Calendar in 2003 during a rescue mission.

How does Adam’s Calendar function?

Adam’s Calendar functions through two carved boulders in the middle of the circle. The taller stone casts its shadow over a flat rock, named the calendar stone, measuring the progression of the year.

What is the significance of the alignment of Adam’s Calendar?

Adam’s Calendar is aligned with the cardinal directions and indicates the equinoxes and solstices, suggesting it functioned as an astronomical observatory and possibly a religious site.

What is the estimated age of Adam’s Calendar?

The estimated age of Adam’s Calendar varies. Initial calculations suggested it was around 75,000 years old, but later research placed its age at around 160,000 to 250,000 years old.

What are the stone circle ruins surrounding Adam’s Calendar?

The stone circle ruins surrounding Adam’s Calendar are part of the Blaauwboschkraal Stone Ruins, a complex of circular stone ruins in the Mpumalanga province. These ruins are believed to be the remains of the stone-walled cities of the Bokoni people, who lived in the area from the 16th to the 19th centuries.

What is the theory about the Annunaki and Adam’s Calendar?

Some believe that Adam’s Calendar and the surrounding stone circle ruins are the remnants of the Annunaki, an ancient alien civilization that mined gold in the region. This theory is based on interpretations of Sumerian tablets and other ancient texts.

What is the academic perspective on Adam’s Calendar?

Academics generally dismiss the extraordinary claims about Adam’s Calendar, suggesting it is either a random collection of stones or a natural formation with some human influence. They believe the stone circle ruins are the remains of the Bokoni people’s settlements.

What is the significance of the terraces found around the stone circle ruins?

The terraces indicate advanced farming methods and significant food production, suggesting that the Bokoni people were innovative farmers and traders who played an important role in food security in the region.

What is the controversy surrounding the age and authenticity of Adam’s Calendar?

The controversy surrounds the varying age estimates of Adam’s Calendar, which range from 75,000 to 250,000 years old. Some academics doubt its authenticity as a calendar and suggest it might be a natural formation or a manipulated site.

Sources

• Original Decoding the Unknown video: Africa’s Stonehenge.
• Hero image source by thegetty / openverse, cc0.