Therefore it is not beyond the bounds of possibility that there could be a connection between life and civilization on Mars and life and civilization on Earth. Since time began, Earth has played host to literally millions of strange visitors from outer space - meteorites. It has been estimated that a million meteorites hurtle through the Earth's atmosphere every year.
Fortunately most of them are tiny and quickly burn out after entry, appearing to us as 'shooting stars'. A few survive the atmosphere and reach the ground. These can be as small as a ping - pong ball or as large as a London bus. The most spectacular meteorites found on the Earth are the large 'oriented' meteorites, so called because they cut through the air retaining their direction of flight like a cannon shell, with their front part taking the brunt of the frictional heat. When they hit the ground they are found to be shaped like cones or pyramids.
Wonderful examples of 'oriented' meteorites can be seen in museums around the world. a 15-ton 'oriented' iron meteorite called Willamette is displayed in the Smithsonian Institute in New York and another, called Morito, can be seen at the Institute of Metallurgy in Mexico city.
Such an 'oriented' meteorite, probably pyramidal in shape, could have been at the root of the mystery of the Giza pyramids. It is known that long before the so-called pyramid age of Egypt circa 2,500 BC) a strange pyramidal or conical 'stone' was kept within a sanctuary called the Temple of the Phoenix, 12 miles to the east of Giza in the sacred city of Heliopolis. This mysterious stone was called the Benben, derived from the root Ben - a word which Egyptologists say means 'seed'' or procreation'.
Other details that ancient Egyptian texts give us about the Benben strengthen the possibility that it may have been a meteorite. We are told that it came 'down from heaven' like the fire-bird or Phoenix. It was also said to have been 'sent by the gods' at the moment of ' Creation' an epoch the pharaohs called Tep Zepi, literally meaning 'The First Time'.
using the science of astronomical alignments the date of the 'First Time' has been calculated to 12,500 BC. The implication, if the Benben was indeed an oriented meteorite, is that it landed in Egypt in precisely the same period during which the meteorite containing a fossilized organism from Mars arrived in Antarctica.
The original Benben of Heliopolis - an object that was already old in the time of the ancient Egyptians - is lost. Whatever its origins , it must have been of paramount importance to the pyramid builders, because stylized replicas of it served as the capstones of all pyramids.
A surviving example, carved in one piece out of a hard stone known as diorite, is in the main hall of the Cairo Museum. On it are two rows of enigmatic hieroglyphs evoking the 'Lord of the Horizon' (the rising sun, according to Egyptologists) and making reference to a deity called Sahu, identified with the constellation of Orion and the deity Osiris - the archetypal god of the 'First Time', whose 'Divine seed' created humanity.
Beneath the complex layers of symbolism, the ancient Egyptian texts can be taken to link the origins of life - and civilization - to the arrival of a meteorite. Within the past ten years, scientists have independently reached a similar conclusion, arguing that life on Earth may indeed have been imported - or 'seeded' - by a meteorite or a comet, billions of years ago.
A striking characteristic of the pyramids and Sphinx of Giza is the way in which they are integrated into a grand architectural plan, based on mathematical and astronomical data. There is no evidence that the pyramids were used as tombs. What is certain is that two narrow shafts emanating from inside the Great Pyramid were directed to two specific stars: Zeta Orionis, one of the three stars in Orion's belt, and Sirius, in the constellation of Canis Major.
It is certain, too, that the principal Giza monuments form an accurate terrestrial 'map' of the three stars of Orion's belt as these constellations appeared in 10,500 BC. Who could have been observing the skies over Giza in 10,500 BC and who, at that date, could have had the technical capacity to realize such monumental works as the Sphinx and the pyramids?
