So many of the sword-and-sorcery tales of Robert E. Howard (1906-1936) were inspired by vivid dreams that some researchers have wondered if REH was experiencing a phenomenon called retrocognition, i.e. dream-channelling or psychic glimpses of the remote prehistoric past.

Nowhere is the suggestion of this stronger than in Robert's unfinished Kull story, Black Abyss, which was never published in his lifetime.

The story is set in "languid Kamula," a prehistoric city somewhere in Europe, "this dreamy pleasure city of snowy marble and lapis lazuli that crowned the crest of the hill." In Kings of the Night, a story published in Weird Tales in November 1930, REH reveals that his King Kull character lived "a hundred thousand years ago."

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In Kings, there's a stirring scene where Kull steps out of his yuga into the Celtic Britain of 100 B.C., startling Bran Mak Morn, the king of the Picts.

"Against the golden birth of day he loomed colossal; a gigantic god from the dawn of creation. Now as he strode toward them the waking hosts saw him and sent up a sudden shout of wonder..."

"Sandals of curious make were on his feet and he wore a pliant coat of strangely meshed mail which came almost to his knees. A broad belt with a great golden buckle encircled his waist, supporting a long straight sword in a heavy leather scabbard. His hair was confined by a wide, heavy golden band about his head."

"Such was the man who paused before the silent group. He seemed slightly puzzled, slightly amused. Recognition flickered in his eyes. He spoke in a strange archaic Pictish which (Bran's aide) Cormac scarcely understood. His voice was deep and resonant."

"'Ha, Brule, (the wizard) Gonar did not tell me I would dream of you!'"

"For the first time in his life Cormac saw the Pictish king (Bran Mak Morn) completely thrown off his balance. He gaped, speechless. The stranger continued:"

"'And wearing the gem I gave you, in a circlet on your head. Last night you wore it on a ring on your finger.'"

"'Last night?' gasped Bran."

"'Last night--or a hundred thousand years ago--all one!' murmured Gonar, in evident enjoyment of the situation."

Soon it's revealed that the wizard Gonar (a sorcerer in the same major league as Merlin and Gandalf--J.T.) used his magickal arts to make contact with either his ancestor or his younger self in 125,000 B.C., to arrange for Kull to do some time-travelling to the next yuga to save the Picts from the armies of Rome.

As my old geology professor, Dr. Ralph Fellows, once explained, the Pleistocene Period saw four distinct glaciations, or advances of the ice sheets, across Europe and North America. The final Wurm glaciation began 120,000 years ago, leaving both continents looking like Antarctica today. It ended around 12,000 B.C. But prior to this was the Riss-Wurm interglacial period, which lasted from 120,000 to 190,000 years ago, in which Europe was free of ice.

As Henri Breuil and Raymond Lantier pointed out in their book, Les Hommes de la Pierre Ancienne (French for Men of the Old Stone Age--J.T.) "It was all too easy to forget the vast durations of geological time, the untold revolutions of the planet witnessed by ancient man, the constant and complete changes of scenery upon Earth's stage...We are all inclined to suppose that the world has always looked as it does today."

With Europe's topography totally reshaped by the Wurm glaciation, how is it possible to find lost Kamula?

Well, we have Robert's clues--a hilltop city, set amidst "the green hills of Zalgara," underlain by tunnels and caverns of incalculable age.

Is there any place in Europe that would still fit that description long after the Wurm ice flows retreated?

As a matter of fact, there is. It's the Schwaebische Alb region of Baden-Wurttemberg in southern Germany. The Schwaebische Alb is what geologists call an uplift feature, described as "an upland region of Jurassic limestone of about 700 meters (7,300 feet) in height, and extends for 210 kilometers (130 miles)...To the southeast, the Alb slopes gently down to the Danube," just west of Ulm, "in a gently undulating plateau of permeable limestone through which most surface water seeps away, forming caverns, swallowholes and dry valleys."

The Alb has been uplifted since the Jurassic Period, when dinosaurs swam in its shallow seas. Four times it's been scoured over by the Pleistocene glaciers. But in 125,000 B.C., the Alb was a hilly upland, just as it is today.

The Wurm glaciers long ago did away with any surface artifacts of lost Kamula. But it is possible that artifacts from Kull's era are tucked away in the caverns and tunnels deep within the Schwaebische Alb.

In April 1938, the Reichsfuhrer-SS Heinrich Himmler ordered the SS-Ahnenerbe (German acronym for Ancestral Heritage Office--J.T.) to undertake a massive archaeological survey of the upper Danube River valley west of Ulm. Nazi archaeologists, assisted by student volunteers, excavated a number of sites, including Bad Buchan on the Federsee (lake), where they found Neolithic and early Bronze Age remains; Alt-Hayingen and Zweifalten, where Stone Age forts were discovered; and a mysterious prehistoric citadel at Grosse Heuneberg in Upflamor.

(Editor's Note: Grosse Heuneberg has a long history. It was captured in 40 A.D. by the Roman legions of the emperor Claudius. But it was recaptured by the Alemanni, the ancestors of the Germans, in 260 A.D.)

These projects were immediately shut down in September 1939 with the outbreak of World War II.

Although many promising archaeological sites were found, Himmler, who was a great believer in the Hindu concept of world-ages, felt that the main prize had eluded him--proof positive of the existence of a prehistoric civilization in the Schwaebische Alb dating back to the Tetra Yuga.

(Editor's Note: Himmler actually kept a German translation of the Bhagavad Gita at his desk all through the war and read from it during his lunch hour.)

Exactly why Himmler was fixated on the Schwaebische Alb is not known. Most likely he was directed to those hills by his "Rasputin," SS-Brigadefuhrer Karl Maria Wiligut (1866-1946), an Austrian occultist who claimed to possess "ancestral clairvoyant memory" dating back to 300,000 B.C. Wiligut, who sometimes used the alias "Weisthor," claimed that the ancestors of the German people had come to northern Europe from the lost continent of Atlantis.

Since Robert E. Howard's Black Abyss did not see publication until 1967, twenty years after Wiligut's death, there's no way he could have read the story. So how did Wiligut come up with the idea of a Kamula in the upper Danube valley?

Maybe he dreamed it! (See the books Les Hommes de la Pierre Ancienne by Henri Breuil and Raymond Lantier, Payot, Paris, 1959, pages 30 and 31; Germany, Baedecker Guide, 3rd Edition, 1996, page 507; The Nazis and the Occult by Dusty Sklar, Dorset Press, New York, N.Y., 1977, pages 48, 77, 101 and 102; Bran Mak Morn by Robert E. Howard, Baen Books, 1996, pages 70 to 73; and King Kull by Robert E. Howard and Lin Carter, Lancer Books, 1967, pages 61 to 67.)

Reproduced with permissions UFO ROUNDUP

Volume 9 Number 2 January 14, 2004 Editor: Joseph Trainor