An Interview with John Burke: Electromagnetic Phenomena at Ancient Sites

by Brent Raynes

John Burke (the “B” in BLT Research Team) and his colleague Kaj Halberg, have written a startling and highly thought-provoking book entitled Seed of Knowledge, Stone of Plenty (http://www.bltresearch.com/JohnBurkeBook.htm). In this exclusive interview, Mr. Burke shares with us exciting details of the field work and the lab work that makes up the foundation of this book and the mind-boggling conclusions that were reached.

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Editor: Your book, Seed of Knowledge, Stone of Plenty, which you co-authored with your colleague Kaj Halberg, makes an absolutely exciting and sensational claim that “old-world engineers” constructed standing stone circles, pyramids, mounds and dolmen using a “secret” that ties in their structures, local geology, and geomagnetism so that they seemingly could affect human consciousness and plant growth. How did you and your colleague come to embark upon such an unusual quest and ultimately to make such a startling discovery?

John Burke: By accident. We were working in England in 1993, partly in collaboration with Nancy Talbott, on trying to figure out why such a disproportionate amount of the world’s crop circles were occurring in such a small area of England. A geologist friend of mine had suggested he’d like to see a map of the geology that underlay the area. I found that it was mostly chalk aquifer, with strong seasonal fluctuations of the water table. Now, water running through chalk can create a strong electric charge. Using standard scientific instruments, my co-author, Kaj Halberg, and I were able to confirm that that was exactly what was taking place at Silbury Hill, the largest manmade mound in Europe circa 3,000 B.C., with an estimated 14 million man hours in the building. The owner of the B&B at which we were staying suggested that we take our instruments to Avebury Henge (the forerunner of Stonehenge and half a mile from Silbury Hill), insisting that we would get some interesting readings there. We tried it and he was right. We found an intriguing pattern of magnetic alignments that wound up taking 5 weeks of work and 1,000 measurements to understand. But what we found was that the 66 remaining standing stones were magnetic and that their north poles were all aligned in the same direction, pointing at the next stone in line. This could not have been by accident.

Next we realized that the geology below both Silbury Hill and Avebury Henge was special in another way. Both were placed atop “conductivity discontinuities”, something that sounds far more technical than it is. A conductivity discontinuity is simply the intersection of two zones of land, one of which conducts natural electrical ground current relatively well and the other less well. At such sites the normal daily fluctuations of the earth’s geomagnetic field are magnified several hundred percent, and with them the telluric currents that flow through the ground.

The way in which Silbury Hill and Avebury were designed and built further amplified this energy. Once we started looking at other places and other countries we found out that this was the rule rather than the exception. Overwhelmingly, the ancient megalithic architects all over the world chose to build on conductivity discontinuities, and then designed and built these enormous structures in such a way as to further concentrate the natural electromagnetic energies present at those sites. You do not need to get on a plane and fly to a foreign country to experience this. Two thirds of the American population lives within a few hours drive of such sites and one of the appendices in our book lists dozens of such sites, with directions, hours, etc. The other appendix tells you how you can duplicate our work while visiting these sites.

We wondered how an ancient people without our fluxgate magnetometer, electrostatic voltmeter, and ground electrodes could have discovered such energies. But then we stumbled into a spot in the Black Hills of South Dakota that was both a geomagnetic anomaly and a vision quest site, dating from the days of Crazy Horse and his visions. That’s when we found that many sensitives, such as shamans, can sense these energies as well as our instruments.

Furthermore, we began examining the chronology at megalithic sites around the world, whether pyramid, henge, or mound and found that they overwhelmingly were built during a time of food crisis, and that after their construction the crisis seemed to have vanished. Now, at the time I was working for a company that enhanced agricultural seeds with an artificial version of such energies and obtained advanced yields as a result. I asked myself if the same thing might have been true for the ancient builders. So we began bringing seeds to the sites and the results were startling.

Editor: Sounds intriguing. Please tell us more!

John Burke: We have used our instruments to examine henges, mounds, pyramids, and stone chambers in England, Guatemala, and across the U.S. While we did not get to France, and the oldest megalithic structures (circa 4,800 B.C.), a Belgian engineer named Pierre Mereaux spent 30 years surveying the region with the same types of instruments we used and came up with findings that precisely matched the pattern we found. For example, stone chambers we have examined in New England, starting just one hour north of New York City, are structurally and electromagnetically identical to ones built from Ireland to India over a 6,000 year period. You cannot argue they were a cultural phenomenon because there was no one culture across that time span and geographic range. But they are functional. They are always sited on conductivity discontinuities, have a negative magnetic anomaly right at the entrance, and electrically charged air inside.

In most locations we used two or three instruments. Our fluxgate magnetometer will measure the vertical axis of the earth’s magnetic field anywhere, and this is the axis that changes dramatically each day in the pre-dawn hours and sets up natural electric currents in the ground which we can measure with our specialized geological ground electrodes. You stick a pair in the ground connected by a hundred feet of wire, have the wire run through a standard volt meter, and you can measure the current running through the ground between those two points. Our third instrument, and perhaps the most useful, is an electrostatic voltmeter, which will measure the electric charge of the air or an object.

Working at the New York chambers, we brought in samples of the same primitive varieties of corn used by Native American farmers from 700 A.D. onwards, about the same time period as the chambers were built. We would get statistically significant improvements in the growth rate and germination percentage of these seeds as compared to seeds left 100 feet outside the chambers and in the lab back home. The climax of this investigation came when we put 9 samples of 100 seeds each inside several chambers and had them grown out to harvest organically by the same Harvard-trained ethno-botanist who had supplied the seed. The samples left in the chambers yielded double to triple the amount of corn vs. the samples placed outside. When you combine these results with the fact that most megalithic structures seem to have been erected at a time of food crisis, it becomes compelling evidence that there was a functional purpose to these things that would explain how you could mobilize a population to invest such vast resources in building them.

We got similar results at North American mounds and earthen pyramids. And at the oldest Mayan city of Tikal, the oldest limestone pyramid (circa 600 B.C.),known as the Lost World Pyramid, produced visually stunning improvements that we show in the book, and the degree of improvement was in proportion to how powerful the electric charge was in the pre-dawn hours of a given day, as measured by the electrostatic voltmeter and the ground electrodes.

While I have not been able to measure the sites we discuss in South America and Egypt, the geology, the engineering, and the chronology all fit the pattern. This is a case based mostly on circumstantial evidence but the amount of it is overwhelming, and to claim it is all coincidence, frankly, begins to seem ludicrous. Every statement in Seed of Knowledge is backed either by personal, direct measurement with standard scientific instruments or by one of our 300 references from peer-reviewed journals or books from academic or university presses. This is solid science here. We even understand and have measured the biochemical processes taking place inside the seeds that triggers these remarkable transformations. And there is some direct evidence, detailed in the book, that ancient farmers actually brought their seed to these sites.

On the one hand, this all seemed very surprising. Yet, on the other hand, I began to think of it from a modern perspective. After all, these ancient builders had the same brain we do, they just worked in different media. In our modern world the biggest structures we build, by far, are hydroelectric dams. And why are we willing to invest such gargantuan amounts of time and effort to build them? Because we know it will be worth it in very concrete terms. From them we get electricity, the lifeblood of our industrial civilization. By comparison, I wonder if our ancestors weren’t willing to also invest mind-boggling amounts of time and effort creating pyramids and such in order to achieve a very concrete reward: fertility, the lifeblood of any agricultural civilization.

Editor: Earlier today (03-31-07) you explained to me that many of us live close to similar sites and that you encourage people to go out and explore and investigate such places for themselves. Could you please share with us how anyone interested might also embark upon a similar quest of exploration?

John Burke: In one appendix to Seed of Knowledge, Stone of Plenty, we list details of many dozens of such sites open to the public in the U.S., Canada, and England. In the other appendix, we explain how you can use similar instruments or seed yourself at these sites to confirm or refute our work. After all, it isn’t accepted science until the work has been replicated, so there is important work that needs to be done by others. So far I have worked with one university biology student who confirmed the growth differences between control seed which she kept in her lab and seed she sent me and which I placed in a rock chamber for her. Anyone wishing to do similar work can contact me at seedofknowledgestoneofplenty@yahoo.com.

Even without seed or instruments, there is work to be done using the human brain as the sensor. I personally experienced a powerfully disorienting sensation during a lunch break in the Black Hills of South Dakota when I unknowingly leaned my head back against what turned out to be a highly electrified vein of quartz. The Black Hills are the second biggest conductivity discontinuity in the United States and were always sacred land to many tribes. Some vision quests still being conducted today clearly consist of sitting an individual alone atop a sufficiently strong magnetic anomaly for an all night vigil. Dr. Michael Persinger, a Canadian neuroscientist, has confirmed that the magnitude of magnetic changes we have found at these sites conforms to those he has found capable of creating visions in volunteers in his lab. Finally, the largest conductivity discontinuity in the U.S. is on the west bank of the Rio Grande at Albuquerque. This land is today the Pictograph National Memorial because it contains thousands of rock carvings which are considered by anthropologists today to have been made by shamans illustrating their trance hallucinations. I measured very powerful and extremely odd surges of electric current in the ground there. When the ranger at the Visitor Center heard what I was finding, she said to me, “You know, periodically I get these “New Age types” coming in here and telling me they just love to go sit up in the rocks and feel the energy. I thought they were a bunch of flakes, but you’re telling me there might be something to this.”