Magicians of the Gods from Amazon
The Tusk has a large library of books related to catastrophism. I love them all. From the laboratory inspired to the ridiculously speculative, the range of publications touching on what happened 12,800 years ago is delightfully enormous. Unfortunately, many of these books have painfully small sales — sometimes in inverse proportion to their attention to the Younger Dryas Boundary event.
But that is changing this year. The world’s most popular alternative historian Graham Hancock has written “Magicians of the Gods.” By all accounts the book is an attentive study of the Tusk’s favorite planetary disaster and its consequences, and gives direct credit to the research of Kennett, West, Bunch and the gang for providing an empirical basis for many years of speculation and inference by others. Hancock is presenting the new publication as a bookend to his enormously popular bestseller twenty years ago: Fingerprints of the Gods.
The YDB subject needs attention of all kinds in order to be widely appreciated and further researched. Thankfully, the science journal press has been (somewhat) busy for nearly a decade publishing point and counter-point to the YDB claims. And mainstream science reporters pay attention from time to time.
Yet surprisingly, the popular and hyper-speculative “New Age” press has lagged behind with scant attention paid to YDB data despite support for many traditionally wild claims. You can find out more about the YDB at Google Scholar or Academia.edu than the “Alternative” section of your local bookstore.
So, love him or scoff, Hancock is a welcome figure to the Tusk. He is a big deal and in our camp. Fingerprints of the Gods sold millions. His fans are everywhere and will soon be curious new experts in the Younger Dryas Boundary phenomena. Perhaps it is juvenile, but I enjoy the thought of the The Bos and his “Requiem” chorus cringing before the wave of attention this book will bring. Our subject is going precisely nowhere but up in the imagination of the public.
“New age” about to do in hard science…because the anti-YDB science ain’t that “hard.”
Ya gotta love it.
The “paradigm” had a chance. They had many “chances” and passed up on all of them. What can you say.
George: “Perhaps it is juvenile, but I enjoy the thought of the The Bos and his “Requiem” chorus cringing at the wave of attention this book will bring. Our subject is going precisely nowhere but up in the imagination of the public.”
ROFL, folks. “Cringing” maybe even isn’t the word for it.
All Hancock’s book can do is help bring attention to the YDB. It won’t hurt any of the scientific work going on. Those will be what those will be. But getting this out to the alternative audience, once and for all, will be a good thing.
Good on ya, Graham. I’ve only begun the video, but am eager to get into it and see what he’s brought to the table.
Graham, if you are out there, we welcome you to drop in and join the fray here. Cheers!
Trent –
Yeah, you it the nail on the head: The YDB sketics’ science is pretty damned weak.
A lot of kibitzing and some failed replication because they couldn’t follow protocols. And a LOT of arm-waving to their favorite captive science editors. (“Captive” meaning defenders of the orthodoxy…)
David – Hahahaha, yeah, the paradigm DID have a chance. They COULD have recognized some solid forensic-type science and joined in and contributed to finding out where it all leads to. But they chose instead to dig their heels in and pretend that models are real and that being Monday-morning quarterbacks is actually part of the scientific method. Years from now, perhaps they will be known as the “OOPS! scientists”.
Don’t forget: Most of the same types of scientists a generation earlier tried to fight the K-T Boundary dinosaur-killing meteor/comet impact. And they thought they were winning that one, too, until an industry scientists (an oil company geologist), a non-academic, found the Chixculub crater. Which was THEIR “OOPS!” moment.
When our crater is found, egg is going to be on a lot of old-paradigm faces. . . But that’s science for ya!
But I’d really like us/our guys to prove it even without a crater. Won’t THAT be a step forward in science, when forensic evidence by itself proves an impact? It will be like proving a murder cse without the corpus delicti – which HAS been done before.
Steve Garcia.
A lot of “Hard” science ain’t that hard.
See:
Earth Was Once a Snowball Locked in ‘Crazy’ Deep Freeze
Apr 13, 2015 03:00 PM ET // by Irene Klotz
http://news.discovery.com/earth/weather-extreme-events/earth-was-once-a-snowball-locked-in-crazy-deep-freeze-150413.htm
The instant reflex — it was volcanism — as to the cause of warming up 2.4 billion years ago excludes asteroid impacts as a cause.
See also —
http://www.pnas.org/content/early/2015/04/08/1422887112.full.pdf
Full Text (PDF)
Daniel Herwartz,
Andreas Pack,
Dmitri Krylov,
Yilin Xiao,
Karlis Muehlenbachs,
Sukanya Sengupta,
and Tommaso Di Rocco
Revealing the climate of snowball Earth from Δ17O systematics of hydrothermal rocks
PNAS 2015 ; published ahead of print April 13, 2015,
‘–on easy science—
that far back in time is a “safe zone”. Historians, etc. really don’t care about that. What they care about is “uniformity” and “no one in North America before Columbus”. And, of course, meteors and comets really had nothing at all to do with history, just “neurotic” generals and their religions. How else can they justify having just over “About 268,000,000 results” from George Washington. (# of hits when I typed “number of books on George Washington on Goggle)
Absolutely nothing else is any importance.
of course, if we want to get technical, you notice it was rounded off to the nearest billion.
so the range, statistically, could be from 267,500,000 (?) to 268,500,000 (?)– rounded off, of course. a million here, a million there — ugh
ah, bad day — should read “millions” not “billions”. (good thing I’m not balancing check book today.
and the you tube stuff he has, I lived up there in the Columbia Gorge for 25 years. Incredible country.
If you go to Google Earth and type in “Beacon Rock” in the Columbia Gorge, you will see it sticking up straight in the gorge. Now this is a “volcanic plug”.
Now think of this,
1) Mt St Helens was over 10,000 ft. (before big blow)
2) Mt Hood is over 10,000 ft.
3) Mt Jefferson is over 10,000 ft.
4) Mt Adams is over 10,000 ft.
5) Mt Rainer is over 10,000 ft.
6) The Three Sister’s over 9,000 ft.
So it would stand to reason that the plug (Beacon Rock) was a volcano OVER 10,000 ft. at one time —– its is all gone —-
BUT the current thinking is that “more likely a segment of a large north-south dike where basalt lava oozed up through cracks in the earth’s crust only 50-60,000 years ago. In either case, the softer outer layers were stripped away by massive floods during the last Ice Age to leave the monolith that remains today.”
And that is a LOT OF ROCK that has disappeared. I’ll go with the flow (joke) but I still think its a “volcanic plug”….
http://trails.gorgefriends.org/trail/beacon-rock/
Reading Fingerprints of the Gods back in the late 90’s reawakened my interest in such a big way.
What struck me the most was the conversation that Hancock has with his readers, he didn’t try to trick you into believing what he proposed, instead he simply stated how he arrived at his point of view. Also, to be honest, it was refreshingly free of “aliens” and other ancient astronauts silliness. (I’m open to the existence of aliens, but they aren’t necessary to explain the arc of human history.)
I have always found most of Hancock’s work to be very convincing, and as the years have gone by, even more so.
Graham Hancock, Randall Carlson, the Thunderbolts Project and a few others represent a growing field of study that I think will one day create a new paradigm in science and the story of humankind.
Professor Klaus Schmidt passed away in July 2014, I just now learned of this when I heard Graham Hancock mention it in the interview posted above.
I’ve always thought information from Göbeklitepe was sparse in coming and generally hard to find; and now I learn the the chief archaeologist has been gone for almost a year now.
“Professor Klaus Schmidt, a pioneer of excavations in Göbeklitepe, known as the “zero point in history” in the eastern Turkish province of Şanlıurfa, died of a heart attack while swimming in Germany at the age of 61.
…
It is not yet clear whether the fall excavations will start in September or who will head the excavations.”
http://www.hurriyetdailynews.com/ancient-gobeklitepe-pioneer-schmidt-passes-away.aspx?pageID=238&nID=69418&NewsCatID=375
REH –
I’ve said for decades that aliens were not necessary, that all you needed was a previous high and technical civilization. No one argues that the people in much of the world BETWEEN the megalithic cultures and our modern culture were aboriginal/ almost “no-tech” societies. And THAT fits in with both the orthodoxy and the alternative viewpoints. The big difference in the two positions is whether a previous high culture could have existed before, as Plato stated did exist. But Plato was not the only one. MANY of the aboriginal low-tech cultures assert that before them was a time of “gods” or some such other highly capable culture – and that it was THOSE who built the pyramids and so-called temples.
The orthodox concept of a single-line advance of civilization is belied by such megalithic structures in obviously planned and well-laid out cities/centers. Their very existence argues that no such “single-line ascent of man” happened. What really cuts to the chase is that the stone work in the megalithic cities/centers could not be duplicated by “modern man” until at least the end of the 19th century. Thus the great bulk of the stone work was actually MORE advanced than any stonework that was built by modern man. THIS could not be admitted to by the scientists of the 18th and 19th centuries.
It also cannot NOW be admitted by 21st century scientists that a sizable amount of that stone work STILL cannot be done today – or some of it it CAN be, but at extremely high prices. But some? No, not at all. Anyone who has read Christopher Dunn’s books (see on amazon.com) is fully aware that the Egyptians were “carving” statues that would require giant CNC machining centers to make to the exactitude and symmetry that we find. I won’t even go into how they used the same cutting tolerances for unimportant blocks as they did for important ones – something no modern project manager would ever allow, because of the inevitable cost overruns that would accrue.
If there are those who would argue that such tolerances are evidence of ancient aliens, I would argue back that carving stones precisely and building interstellar rockets are two VERY different technologies. No one would even TAKE granite blocks on an interstellar rocket ship; that would be foolishness in the extreme, bordering on stupidity.
The facts:
1. Those megalithic site DO exist on Earth.
2. None of them could have possibly been built by the people found by European explorers/invaders.
3. If it is possible that they were built by an earlier human culture, then the need for aliens dries up.
4. The orthodoxy has to go with either aliens or with a previous ante-diluvean human culture.
5. The orthodoxy chooses “E.) None of the above”, and instead puts the megalithic sites in a time from in which it is KNOWN that such technologies did not and COULD NOT exist.
6. The orthodoxy then wipes its hands of things and states that “The problem is taken care of; Next question?” – pretending that no unanswered problems remain, even though many such problems DO still remain.
That is about the strongest argument that they can make – that they have already swept it under the carpet, so it can’t be important or true in any way that their ad hoc dismissal didn’t cover.
Ay caramba….
I’d like to point at one thing that Hancock doesn’t notice, nor Schock.
At 52:01 in the Hancock video there is a REALLY good aerial shot of the Sphynx, taken from the direction of the Great Pyramid, looking SE. In this image you can see the results of the terrible erosion or flaking off of much of the body of the Sphynx itself. This is a different issue than that of the south wall of the Sphynx enclosure which was the focus of Schock’s and John Anthony West’s work back in the 1990s.
I already argue that even that south enclosure wall erosion did not happen for the many centuries that the Sphynx was buried in sand up to its neck – literally – along with the enclosure. All representations of the Sphynx In the same way, the body of the prior to about the late 1800s was covered in sand. Photos from about 1890 show the sand covering the haunches but sloping down in front and exposing the breast and paws. But in such photos the erosion is all horizontal, suggesting wind erosion. But the breast and sides appear equally eroded, in bands all the way around the front and sides, arguing that the erosion all occurred when the entire Sphynx body was exposed to the wind and blowing sand. This erosion was clearly visible in my two trips to Giza in the early 1970s. The haunches and paws and parts of the body were partly restored by the time I got there, but the erosion was horrible, even then. I was able during both trips to wander around the Sphynx enclosure and even climb on the Sphynx, if I wanted. I chose not to. (I am horrified – for them – to see that the tourists now are held so far away from the Sphynx. I feel sorry for them, though I know it is necessary, to avoid having any more damage done than the very minimum of wind and sun and the very occasional rain.) I had such good access to it, and I have to consider myself fortunate.
Prior to 1849 the sand allowed people to stand underneath the chin of the Sphynx, no lower than about 11 feet below the chin. Caviglia partially excavated around the paws and breast at that time, but by 1860 sand storms had filled in the sand again. In 1906 the sand had been cleared down to just below the breast plate and about the top of the steal that is between the forelegs. Only since about 1920s has the entire Sphynx body been clear of sand. At no time in recorded images before the 1840s has there been drawings or photos showing the Sphynx body exposed to the elements. The earliest images are in 1579, and they show only a head sticking up out of the sand.
The wind erosion HAD TO occur when that body was exposed – but when was that?
If the sand could re-fill in what Caviglia cleared way in 1849 in a few sandstorms, then it would appear that the entire time that the sand has existed on the Giza plateau the Sphynx’s body was almost certainly covered and un-exposed. This certainly suggests that what West and Schock argued in the 1990s was correct – that only before at least 5000 BC, when there was regular rain in Giza, could the Sphynx enclosure erosion have occurred. But “at least before 5000 BC” is pretty vague – and they would not deny that.
And that severe amount of erosion did not happen in a day. It is imperative for someone to do erosion studies on the Sphynx to determine the rate of erosion under present conditions, to at least begin laying a groundwork for estimating the length of time it might have taken for the present total erosion to have occurred. As much as I’d like to chime in here with a guess, any guess I’d make would be certainly wrong. It is more than 1,000 years, but how much more, who knows?
But that 1,000 years has to be added to the duration that the sand was burying the Sphynx to its neck. That is at least 5,000 years, so we are starting at 6,000 years and going back in time. The orthodoxy cannot blow any of this off. NO erosion like is seen could have happened to the body of the Sphynx since the sand covered it.
Some naysayers to West and Schock argued that the limestone in the wall flakes while under the sand, if water creeps in and begins dissolving. That may be a stronger argument for the wall than for the Sphynx body, because the erosion on the body is NOT anything like water erosion. It is wind erosion. So no “water dissolving” can be called up in this case.
All you have to do is look at the Sphynx body in that aerial view in the video (at 52:01), and you can see that the wind erosion has been MASSIVE. It couldn’t have happened while it is buried, and it didn’t happen in only a few centuries.
(BTW: In that video the hips and paws have been reconstructed, so don’t let that fool you.)
‘@Steve Garcia
I agree, of course. There has been a dismal failure of the imagination especially in the fields of science and archeology. Whether by willful ignorance when contrary evidence comes to light or the use of selective dating methods for sites that have been in use for millennia; the most conservative interpretations are nearly always the default. This being necessary to stay in compliance with the “official time-lines”.
I am so grateful for the solid work at Göbeklitepe that has at least locked down the age of the site without the usual equivocation and slant.
The lack of imagination goes even further when people picture human progress, first they believe it goes in a straight line, always advancing. Then, if they finally and grudgingly concede that other civilizations existed in distant antiquity, they use their current measure of what civilization is to paint a picture of the past.
Just comparing traditional Eastern Culture to Old World Western should give us a clue of the great possibilities in the spectrum of civilization.
As for the “aliens” I still haven’t watched the History Channels Series, but I read Däniken Book back in the 80’s as a teen, and though I was captivated, I later found out that so very much of it was bunk.
But as you mentioned, it doesn’t mean that by ruling out aliens equates to there not being any high technology in the distant past.
For example, I have read theories and videos on the use of sound as a method of floating stones. I’m fairly open minded about alternative tech in regards to there being other power sources we are currently unaware of, and so forth.
In support of my assertions about the erosion on the body of the Sphynx, I point to Klaus Schmidt’s paper “Göbekli Tepe – the Stone Age Sanctuaries. New results of ongoing excavations with a special focus on sculptures and high reliefs” http://arheologija.ff.uni-lj.si/documenta/authors37/37_21.pdf, pg 242, which reads:
It then goes on to describe the filling materials, which were certainly other than wind-blown dust and sand.
pg 241 points out how the mortar in the brick walls has been already shown to be very susceptible to “wind erosion”, “rain water”, and even “insects”. This magnifies how well being buried preserves stone structures, which the Sphynx certainly is. Any susceptibility to decay WILL occur when exposed to the elements. Since the Sphynx IS decayed, it doesn’t seem like much of a stretch to think that such decay occurred during periods when it was exposed, NOT when it was buried in sand.
It might be worth noting that the Sphynx is also at the bottom of a slope, which would provide some extra protection from wind erosion from the (now) prevailing westerly winds (from the desert). Gobekli Tepe, on the other hand, is JUST below a hilltop exposed on almost all sides – and burying it protected it very, very well. So, even though much more protected by the geomorphology and by millennia of being buried, the body of the Sphynx looks like crap.
This is what we are up against. He sounds so serious. Not one word of tidal waves, meteors, etc etc. I may have missed it but he doesn’t mention any tree ring studies or soil studies (like were any horizons “overturned” etc.)…..
Its the fault of a “drought”. I wonder what the “core drilling” shows about this. Oh, I’m sorry, “core drilling” is a “science”. Being just really a jerk today.
http://www.haaretz.com/life/archaeology/.premium-1.651529
… Now an archaeologist believes he has figured out what lay behind the cataclysm.
The trigger seems to have been the invasion of ancient Egypt in 1177 BCE by marauding peoples known simply as the “Sea Peoples,” as recorded in the Medinet Habu wall relief at Ramses III’ tomb….
from the story above. does this really make sense? He wants me to buy his book and listen to him when he blames it on the same thing they have used for the last 100 years. According to him…nothing new under the sum, same old same old.
Says all the copper came from Cyprus — mining engineers have shown this to be a complete fabrication. There was not enough copper there to start with. So where did it come from — let me guess?? Should we discuss again, the burned houses from the “straw” at temperatures of 2500 degrees and higher. He doesn’t talk about that either.
David (9:54am) –
The Haaretz article is 100% behind a paywall.
Core drilling (ice cores and varves, I assume you mean) IS scientific – a scientific sampling method, that gives real evidence, real facts. The interpretations can be less than scientific, though, partly because of the presumptions and assumptions put into reading the evidence.
Sometimes they don’t really KNOW what the evidence means, like in the O18 graphs from the GISP2 and GRIP ice cores that show the really big swings in O18, which is universally interpreted as a valid proxy for temperatures. I don’t have anything better to replace that with, but let’s just say that if it some day turns out to not be true, I won’t be surprised. YES, the O18 went up and down. Does that REALLY mean that temps swung up and down by 13°C or 14°C? As a catastrophist thinker, I’d WANT it to be, but as a realist, I have to wonder.
I’d also point people to Zbigniew Jawaworski here: http://www.warwickhughes.com/icecore/ (just a few paragraphs long)
IOW, there are technical complications with ice cores, such that a simplistic thinking process – as presented to the public – has all sorts of problems that may or may not be being dealt with.
Varves from lake sediment cores? What I know right now about varves you could pour into a thimble… I THINK they are pretty reliable and fairly idiot-proof, in terms of reading them. But what do I know? Also, I don’t think anyone is trying to read varves for trapped gases.
now that is really not right. I just read the whole article online — it came through on my facebook — I just checked again and its still there.
when I do the link from cosmic — paywall but when I go through facebook — there it is
omg — its on a news feed to my facebook — I get the whole thing
The “Sea Peoples” – I’ve never figured out why no one equates those to Atlantis.
And speaking of which… I’ve been doing a bit of looking at that name, and concluded that, in the Timaeus, Plato has Timaeus tell his audience that names he gives will sound Greek, and Timaeus says that is because the names have all been transliterated into Greek from the names the Egyptians gave, and that the Egyptian names are descriptive of the earlier names.
So, “Atlantis” is a Greek version of an Egyptian name, based on the original name.
“…is” is a common ending for Greek names.
“Atla…” comes from the name of the King of the place, which is, in Greek, “Atlas”.
“…nt…” I haven’t gotten worked out yet, but am pretty sure it means something like “Land of” or “Isle of” or “Island”. As in”Land of Atlas” or “Atlas Isle”, or “Atlas Island”.
But what this means is that there never WAS a place named “Atlantis”. That is the name given 9000 years after the fact and in another language.
So, what its name was, WHO KNOWS?
But don’t be surprised if the real name means something like “Sea Peoples”. We may never know…
Also: In “The Egyptian Book of the Dead”, the term “Amenti” is one of the symbols, as per A.E. Wallis Budge. Its symbol is a low rectangle with a round scoop/notch taken out of the center of the top edge. My impression on that has always been that it represented the sunset direction, the place where the Sun goes down, or the place beyond the sunset. The name is sufficiently like the Greek “Atlantis” that I wondered about the linguistic similarity. Just speculation, but something I’ve thought about for over 40 years… (I am partially convinced that the Book of the Dead is NOT about the trip to the afterlife, but a story of the death of Atlantis. Working on it… It is a tough one, given all of the misinterpretations Budge put into it, with his mumbo-jumbo projections onto the people of the past.)
The copper came from Isle Royale and the Michigan Upper Peninsula.
And thanks for bringing Abu Hureyra back into the discussion. Yeah, those burning mud brick houses and their massive conflagration…
Oy vey… cubed.
I was hinting at Isle Royale. Just waiting for someone to say the Phoenicians weren’t smart enough to get across the Atlantic
>>The lack of imagination goes even further when people picture human progress, first
>>they believe it goes in a straight line, always advancing. Then, if they finally and
>>grudgingly concede that other civilizations existed in distant antiquity, they use
>>their current measure of what civilization is to paint a picture of the past.
This is the “Whig interpretation” of history — human history is a straight line improvement from the past, AKA we are superior to our ancestors — and it is even more entrenched the uniformism.
They may both be part of the same intellectual “paradigm box” all science seems caught up in.
So many of the ancient texts have been corrupted and mistranslated. I don’t even go there — its all lot of “allegorical” literature. Something I’m not much good at.
I know I’m jumping thousands of years here but look at the pictures of “Hidden Inca Tours” with Hugh Newton (I know this is a commercial site). To me the pictures are screaming “ancient, ancient” and not Inca.
http://hiddenincatours.com/tour/atlantis-in-the-andes-tour-november-2015/
The evidence leans to the Sea People being Sardinians, Etruscans and Mycenean refugees, ie former Minoans,
All of the historical and archeological evidence points to the city on Thera being the prototype for the Atlantis story.
The frescoes in Akrotiri show a harbor in the collapsed old cauldera, with a central island and concentric canals, just as the story does. The Therans had hot and cold running water plumed into their three and four story houses, just as the story tells us. They were very warlike and made war with the Greeks
The Minoans controlled the trade of copper into the eastern med and Aegean as well as the tin.
The copper that supplied much of the med. bronze age came from Iberia and the Balkans. The tin came from Iberia and Cornwall and Wales.
By the time the Minoan trade empire failed when Thera erupted, they held sway over most of the Mediterranean basin.
They counted the Myceneans as client states, had trade cities in Egypt, Syria, Anatolia, Italy, Iberia , Britain and France.
They were so influential in Egypt they had their own port, independent of the imperial ports. The cities that later became
Phonecia were Minoan ports, the Phonecians , just as the Myceneans did, adopted a version of the Minoan alphabet.
And when the Minoans stopped coming both of those peoples picked up the slack in trade.
Sorry about my Minoan Atlantis rant,
In a newer translation of the epic, with a more complete understanding of the ancient Greek language, the “outside of” or “past” becomes “in the direction of”, which would be consistent with how people of the age would pass along navigational information.
I used to be very skeptical of Mediterranean cultures of making it to the new world, but I have changed that stance in the last couple of months, for a couple of reasons.
The first is that there is a group of Indians in Venezuela, that have a very specific genetic marker that found in eastern Mediterranean people.
Then while pursuing images of late archaic native American points from the upper Mississippi drainage, I found a particular type of point, used a knife , that looks just like a bronze age age short sword. The size, the shape are virtually identical to tangless dirks, just chipped out of flint. The only thing missing is the rivet holes for the handle.
They certainly made it to canary’s and the Azores.
One would think that with any meaningful contact, we would see what we saw when europens showed up in meaningful numbers, a population crash from disease.
But that may be masked by the overall downturn from climate based effects.
More on the sea people,
“AN ‘ETEOCRETAN’ INSCRIPTION FROM PRAISOS AND THE HOMELAND OF THE SEA PEOPLES
Luuk de Ligt
The whereabouts of the homeland or homelands of the so-called Sea Peoples have been endlessly debated. This article re-examines this problem by looking at one of the ‘Eteocretan’ inscriptions from the town of Praisos. It is argued that this text is written in an Indo-European language belonging to the OscanUmbrian branch of the Italic language family. Based on this finding it is suggested that this language must have arrived in eastern Crete during the Late Bronze Age, when Mycenaean rulers recruited groups of mercenaries from Sicily, Sardinia and various parts of the Italian peninsula. When the Mycenaean state system collapsed around 1200 BC, some of these groups moved to the northern Aegean, to Cyprus and to the coastal districts of the Levant. It is also suggested that this reconstruction explains the presence of an Etruscan-speaking community in sixth-century-BC Lemnos. An interesting corollary of this theory is that the Sea Peoples were present in the Mycenaean world some considerable time before its collapse in the early twelfth century.”
http://dienekes.blogspot.com/2015/02/italic-eteocretan-sea-peoples.html?m=1
The link to the pdf.
http://www.talanta.nl/wp-content/uploads/2014/08/TAL-40-412008-2009-pag-151-172-DeLigt.pdf
Steve & REH @ April 14, 2015 at 9:17 pm –
There is an appreciable body of thought that suggests that some portion of the large structures in Egypt and perhaps in Peru were not carved, but rather poured. Look into something called geopolymers. Think concrete type liquids with different chemical composition and hardening. Papyrus or paper-like materials would explain the joints bottom joints.
http://www.geopolymer.org/
http://www.academia.edu/7112375/Geopolymer_Pyramid_show_we_are_on_the_right_way_with_our_Earthbag_building_system
I ran across a SoCal lady a couple decades ago who thinks that the Egyptians used kites to move large objects around and raise obelisks. Fun stuff all. Cheers –
http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2001/06/0628_caltechobelisk.html
David (12:23pm) – “So many of the ancient texts have been corrupted and mistranslated. I don’t even go there — its all lot of “allegorical” literature. Something I’m not much good at.”
Yeah, it is difficult to read the translated (necessarily so) ancient texts. So much of the meaning of each of them seems to range from fairly clear to patently obvious, from a catastrophist viewpoint. And then we see the uniformitarian translators (who all believe in the mumbo-jumbo “priests scam everybody” point of view of the arkies) try every possible crowbar to avoid acknowledging the catastrophist themes running so fluently through the ancient texts. Insteead what comes out of the translations is “allegorical”, as you say. NO ONE among the ancients was, evidently, capable of watching events and recording them accurately. ALL of them saw magic everywhere – gods and dragons and chariots in the skies.
The orthodox framing of every scene is carefully worded so that “the sky” is “heaven”, and comets are gods, and mega-floods aren’t really floods, and meteors crashing down are metaphors, and the fires are “the revenge of the gods upon a sinful world”. (Well, YEAH, when the arkies are through with the accounts!) To the orthodox, NOTHING that is said by an ancient chronicler is real; everything is magical and mythical (even as it is being witnessed!).
It takes a LOT of effort to read through such crap – trying to see how the meaning of passages can change drastically with simple straightforward swapping of one word for another. I’ve done that a bit, and it is amazing what comes out when a crowbar isn’t used.
David –
Brien Foerster of Hidden Inca Tours is a parasite. He went all palsey-walsey with Chris Dunn and David Hatcher Childress a handful of years back, in order to give himself some street cred. I warned Chris and David about him. I could see the leech in him.
Chris agrees and will never do anything with Brien again. (I won’t write here exactly what Chris said to me, because I promised not to.)
David I am not sure of. But Brien now has street cred and now he is able to take people around on tours during which he points at things, saying such things as “Wow! Look! It’s a hole in the rock! It must be alien!” or some such. The people sign up with him because – “HEY! LOOK! He has done trips with David Hatcher Childress! And Chris Dunn, too! He must be legit!”
I looked at Brien’s early videos (he is ALWAYS doing videos, and with Brien center stage, pointing and gooing “Oooh! and “ahhh!” and contributing nothing) and CRINGED, really CRINGED. A sign post could do just as well. The people are wasting their money when they go with him.
IMHO, Foerster is a parasite and a no-nothing. All he has going for him is that he chose to live in Peru, so he can take advantage of people who want to see mysterious places. Well, after Brien takes the people, the places are still mysterious – because he doesn’t know jack.
Okay, just to give Brien another chance, I went to his video supposedly about his upcomng 2015 tour with Hugh Newman, and immediately it is all about Breien Foerster, speculating out his ass, about pre-Incan work vs Incan. Except that he is standing in front of a MODERN reconstructed wall and yammering about how it is Incan. It is made up of pre-Incan blocks but with mortar 2″ thick and blocks put together in haphazard fashion with no regards as to how the blocks fit together. And he goes on and on about the mortar – but that pink mortar he is talking about isn’t even OLD.
And THEN the camera pans up and you can see that the ROOF of the buidling is a modern roof. Foerster is talking about a modern building and panning it off as an Incan building. Talk about a numb nuts…
Even the Incas fitted their blocks together very tightly – but they did it with much smaller blocks than the pre-Incans. ONE GLANCE at that wall and I knew it was a modern reconstruction.
But, see, this is the thing about most people who are “into” mysteris of the ancient world – most of those with Brien are eating it up and not even KNOWING that they are seeing a new P.T. Barnum in the 21st century, who is still saying, “Nobody ever lost money underestimating the intelligence of the average American.”
Oy vey…
Welcome, REH! Thanks for the enlightening commentary and Reddit post, bro.
CevinQ –
“All of the historical and archeological evidence points to the city on Thera being the prototype for the Atlantis story.”
I don’t know where you got the idea that all evidence points to Thera, Perhaps it is the circles you are running in. Yes, SOME people think that. But not all do. Not all the evidence points to Thera.
But NO evidence disputes the Thera theory? How about these for starters?
– The timing is wrong, for one. The people who claim that Plato misplaced a decimal and that his 9,000 years was really 900 years don’t know that in Egyptian such a mistake is not possible. Egyptologists will afform this as an impossible error.
– Thera also is NOT in the “true ocean”.
– Thera was never a capital, as Atlantis is said to have been.
– Thera, unlike Plato’s Atlantis, was never rich in precious metals
– And if anyone thinks that Plato – the greatest, most educated mind of his age – did not know where the Pillars of Hercules were, versus the island of Thera (which is on the way in the WRONG direction, south to Crete), they don’t know what they are talking about.
— If it was Thera, Plato would have simply said that it was Thera.
— There is only 130 km from Athens – to the SE
— Thera is on a direct line between Athens and Alexandria. With all the interchange between Egypt and Greece in Plato’s time and before, Thera was certainly a VERY well known island and could never be mistaken for anyplace NEAR the Pillars of Hercules.
– There are no circular canals nor a great city on Thera.
— Akrotiri is a small town, and it is on one of the flanks of the volcano, not on the plain.
– The SIZE of Thera is all wrong.
– There is no rectangular plain on Thera.
– Thera did NOT sink “in a single day and night” because it is still there and never went away.
– The Minoans were not ever a conquering nation. They got their power from TRADE. This is well evidenced in the fact that no Minoan cities have fortified walls around them, which all warring nations of the ancient world had to have. They DID have a strong navy to combat piracy, but no fortified cities.
– Minoan cities were not laid out in circles but is rectilinear and following the grade of the terrain.
– Minoans did not plate their floors and walls with metals, like Plato says Atlanteans did. The Palace at Knossus, instead, is famous for having frescoes and murals on its walls.
– Minoans worshipped in sacred caves and hilltop sanctuaries, not in temples.
– Minoan gods were the Earth Mother, the Goddess of the Hunt, and the God of the Beasts, very unlike Atlantean worship of Poseidon, the God of the Sea.
– Therans had no possibility of great irrigation systems like Plato described as existing all over the plain of Atlantis
Yes, tin came from Wales and Cornwall – but what does that have to do with Atlantis?
Therans fought against the Greeks? I can’t find anything on that so far at all.
CevinQ, none of the points you’ve made seem to have any connection to Atlantis as Plato described it. In reading the list I see things having to do with Minoan culture and trade, but none are about Plato’s Atlantis.
I gotta run. All I can say is that even one of these things I’ve listed should show that not ALL of the evidence points to Thera. I don’t think there is much at all to support it, frankly.
I myself have never understood how “Atlantologists” take whatever things Plato said that don’t fit their pet theory and declare that, “Well, Plato really meant something else, not that”. Be it the location or the time or the direction or that Plato didn’t really MEAN the Pillars of Hercules. Nor did he REALLY mean “the true ocean”. IMHO they all are making it up more than they say he did.
‘@George Howard
Thank you! I admire you greatly and appreciate your notice. I always check in over here for a sanity check, your website is keeping the flame alive.
——————————-
I’m sure most of the readers here are aware (or have heard of) Doggerland and Sundaland; if not, I highly recommend looking the subject. (amazingly, even Wikipedia has passable articles on the subjects as a starter)
Even if we were to foolishly ignore the devastating extraplanetary YDB event, the sheer magnitude and scope of what transpired in the last portion of the last major glacial period is still awe-inspiring; truly the stuff of legendary epics and sagas.
The sea-level rise of some hundreds of meters inundated vast areas of land over an unknown period over 12,000 years ago. Human-made artifacts in both Doggerland and Sundaland have indicated that people were indeed living in the areas now submerged and probably had inhabited the regions for tens of thousands of years prior to the sea level rise.
There’s so much we don’t know, a lot of that ignorance is partially due to establishment science simply not being “curious” enough to entertain the possibilities and pursue the subject.
I haven’t found any degree of certainty concerning how fast or gradual the sea-level rise took place, I imagine that portions of the flooding could have been rapid and the rest was gradual in the years since the last major glacial period. The same mystery arises in the Black Sea area, but the speculation and dates for that are all over the place last I checked.
Anyway, just thought I’d throw this subject onto the pile.
Peace
I’m not promoting him or anybody. I was hoping it was for the pictures of the ruins. I think there isn’t a mason alive that will say the “Inca” did it. The rocks took some very heavy machinery.
David –
Enough on Foerster, IMHO.
As to very heavy machinery to cut the stones, that is a very solid observation, but not one anyone has come up within my knowledge. The surfaces are FLAT (except exterior faces), so in machining it would be necessary to have equipment that had the following characteristics:
1. ROBUST enough to handle stones of several tons if not tens of tons.
2. The bed would need to be at least as FLAT as the surface to machined. Currently we would want it TEN times flatter than that. Literally.
3. The cutting “head” would need internal precision that is also at least as flat and true as the surface(s) to be cut. Again, preferably TEN times as precise.
4. The guides for the cutting mechanism (the head) would need enough “travel” in X-direction and Y-direction (and likely also in Z-direction).
5. Re #3 and #4, as Chris Dunn puts it, “What GUIDED the cutting tool?”
All of the above are basic machine tool parameters. The need for each to be TEN times as flat is that with each added mechanism/guide, precision is lost, so there has to be OVERKILL on the precisions EVERYWHERE, to make sure there is still some “leftover” precision, leaving the combinations of all of it MORE precise than the cutting precision desired. “Ten times the desired end result” is the default level of precision used in today’s machinery.
The level of precision evident EVERYWHERE is defacto proof – forensic proof – of them having had machines of a very high level of precision – and thus a very high level of technology. That such machines are not present at the “temples” and “mastabas” and pyramids means nothing. Such machinery isn’t found in churches today, either, and no one would EXPECT any such machinery there. The fact that we have not found any ANYWHERE so far means one of three things:
A. Such machinery never existed (the arkies’ default argument)
B. Such machinery existed but was later scavenged or destroyed
C. Such machinery exists but is not recognized as such
I’d guess that the answer is a combination of B and C – that even if we FOUND such machinery, we would expect it to look like ours do now. Such an expectation may be a good starting point, but it may mislead us, too.
Ciao!
Oops!
“As to very heavy machinery to cut the stones, that is a very solid observation, but not one anyone has come up within my knowledge.” Should read:
“As to very heavy machinery to cut the stones, that is a very solid observation, and not one anyone has come up with, to my knowledge.”
REH –
Orthodox natural science does not accept anything that hasn’t already been seen. I don’t think it is a matter of curiosity as much as it is a matter of keeping one’s career out of danger.
I’ve often advised people dealing with bureaucracy to never accept any “No”, because bureaucrats’ survival depends on not making any risky moves. A bureaucrat cannot ever get in trouble for saying “No”; they can only get in trouble for telling you “Yes”. So, when you get a “No”, it isn’t necessarily YOU they are saying “No” to, but to the risk to their careers. Therefore, when a bureaucrat says “No”, it is YOUR job to say, “I need to talk to your supervisor.” That bureaucrat will be happy to get you out of his/her hair. The next level up, the same thing will happen, because that person is a bureaucrat, too. And you need to again say, “I will need to talk to your supervisor”. And on and on. At some point you WILL talk to someone who is actually empowered to risk saying “Yes.”
The same thing I think holds true for scientists. Perhaps we need to begin looking at them as the bureaucrats that they are, instead of inquirers into any truths. Like operatives in a bureaucracy, they need to first be defenders of the status quo. When we look at them like that, we can have a game plan that takes the bureaucrat element into account and the defenders of the status quo.
The YDIH is, by its very nature a change in the status quo, so their knee-jerk, defend-the-status-quo MUST be to say “No”. We should expect nothing less, nothing more.
Fortunately, not all f the scientists are afraid to break new ground.
But there will always be those who say, “But. . . But. . . We’ve ALWAYS done it this way!”
Steve I worked in a stone mill for 8yrs ands yes the machines are large and powerful. The quarries cut the limestone blocks from the quarry walls with a diamond rope saw and back filling with sand slurry. As the rope cuts the sand fills in behind it once it is deep enough gravity takes over and the wall face falls. The rubble is cleared with large fork lifts and loaders. Each block is weighed and tagged for sale. We had a 6ft diamond vertical blade saw for rough cutting blocks then several smaller saws for trimming and finish cuts. We had planers for surfacing and edging and a 2 head rotary surfacer for finishing slabs on 2 flat faces. A diamond scroll saw for small shapings and an engine lathe for fabricating round shapes such as ball and turning ballasters. The biggest blocks we could handle were 25 tonners. All of this was heavy equipment for sure. we had split a couple of overly large blocks by hand with drills and split wedges. Just drill about one hole every 6 inches and insert the round wedges and then start swing the mall until the block splits. Try to make sure you’re on the part that stays upright. only takes a couple of hours per block on limestone. I’m sure granite is much worse.
‘@Steve Garcia
Concerning YDIH:
I just came across this on Eureka Alerts:
http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2015-04/uoc-has041615.php
University of Cincinnati | How ancient species survived or died off in their old Kentucky home
“Tankersley’s evidence also revealed significant periods of radical shifts in environmental temperature since the last glacial maximum more than 25,000 years ago, which caused an increase in the deposit of sediment that was greater than the system was able to support. And those radical shifts from cold and dry to warm and moist significantly altered the landscape and the vegetation and plant life.
“To determine what animals roamed the area and how they survived, we looked at the stable carbon and nitrogen isotope chemistry of both the animals and plants that were in the sediment for the past 25,000 years,” says Tankersley. “Since we are what we eat, we discovered that the mammoths, mastodons and bison were not eating the plants we originally thought. As it turns out, they were eating more C3 vegetation, which is tree leaves and weedy vegetation more like we see outside today.”
After incidents like cataclysmic cosmic events caused temperatures to drop and darkened the air with clouds of poisonous gas, the resulting climate change presented challenges for most plant and animal species to continue living. According to Tankersley, life at that time became a true test of survival skills for all living things, so those that could move or adapt to their new surroundings survived – many by evolving into a smaller, lighter and faster species.”
I was pleasantly surprised to see the reference to “incidents like cataclysmic cosmic events” in regards to the missing animal species.
The article does focus on climate change and has that angle of approach to things:
“”What we found is that deforestation efforts over 5,000 years ago by humans significantly modified the environment to the degree that the erosion began filling in the Ohio River Valley, killing off much of the essential plant life,” says Tankersley. “At that point animals had to either move, evolve or they simply died off.””
I can’t help but think the impact on wildlife is somewhat overstated, but on the other hand, I firmly believe that there were thriving communities throughout North America with trade connections all the way back to Europe.
REH: “I haven’t found any degree of certainty concerning how fast or gradual the sea-level rise took place, I imagine that portions of the flooding could have been rapid and the rest was gradual in the years since the last major glacial period.”
Pretty much there is only one sea-level graph that goes back past the YDB, and it is the shown one at http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/1/1d/Post-Glacial_Sea_Level.png
That graph doesn’t show much at that time period, so we have to wonder if a new study wouldn’t show a somewhat different curve between, say, 14.0 kya and 11.0 kya. Near 12.8 kya there is not even any indication of a severe cold period, so it seems to be in disagreement with the ice cores from Greenland, if not Antarctica. At that time the slope doesn’t even go down, but only slows down its upward slope. One has to wonder what is going on there.
There is a sharp upward kink at about 15 kya, and I don’t know what that is supposed to be about. Anybody here have any idea?
In fact, DURING the latter half of the 1300-year-long YD, the sea levels are – according to that graph – in an accelerated rise. The graph
And then at 12.0 kya the rise accelerates again, according to that graph. At no point does the level fall. This tells us that the graph is faulty – or that there was no YD cold period (which we know isn’t true).
Thus, that graph I would take as a GENERAL guide but would not read anything specific or precise into anything it shows.
So, REH, I have to agree with you – there is no reliable sea level data out there. If DATA existed, it would surely be shown in graphical form, somewhere.
But there really isn’t any other that covers that time period, not that I can find online.
In the past I have noted other faults with this same graph. But we don’t seem to have anything else at the moment.
‘@Steve Garcia
Here’s what I found sometime ago on Sundaland, it’s animated:
https://www.eeb.ucla.edu/Faculty/Barber/SundaSeaLevels.htm
Sorry, completely forgot I had this bookmarked!
SahulTime:
http://sahultime.monash.edu.au/explore.html
It’s referenced from the page of the animation I posted previously:
https://www.eeb.ucla.edu/Faculty/Barber/Animations.htm
I wish I had an edit button 🙁
There’s a chart on the SahulTime with a slider so you can adjust for the year and the sealevel increase relative to the timeline.
It looks like around a 100 meter increase between 16k BP and 10 BP. A huge range but unfortunately lacking in granularity.
Here is one with a slight decrease in rise during the YD, although their explanation for the YD doesn’t make much sense.
http://www.giss.nasa.gov/research/briefs/gornitz_10/
Barry –
Thanks for finding that other sea level chart, but in looking at it, it looks like the curve is extracted from the other graph, but does not show any of the data points.
With a 1300 year YD, there should be NO reason for sea levels to keep rising at all, and should, by all logic, have fallen. That single point IMHO discredits the curve on these graphs. I amn not disputing the data points shown on the other one, but the software that developed the curve was inadequate for the task. My bet is that the software was coded to get a smooth curve, een when the data points do not present such a blended and smoothed curve. I do not fault the software; I just think it was not the right software for this. OR that they set it to average too many years together (or not enough?).
I would like to see the curve set on the lowest number of years averaged.
Well, it happened but then didn’t happened but then happened…our favorite guy from Egypt…..the great debate…..
“….Likewise during Zahi’s Q&A he was asked a question about the 12,000-year-old megalithic site of Gobekli Tepe in Turkey and whether it had any impact on his assessment of the disputed age of the megalithic Great Sphinx of Giza. Unfortunately it appeared that Zahi was completely ignorant of the existence or implications of Gobekli Tepe so he was unable to answer the question, which he passed on to the moderator who also happened to be an Egyptologist. I did at that point have a brief opportunity to stand up and give my own point of view on Gobekli Tepe and on its implications for the age of the Sphinx…..”
for your reading pleasure…
https://www.facebook.com/GrahamHancockDotCom/posts/1030893743605784:0
‘@David L Ulrich
Thanks! I’m looking forward to any videos that show up of this debate/Q&A session.
This seems to strike another blow in the “how far back were there human civilizations in the America’s” debate.
See:
Is the Amazon rainforest MAN-MADE? At least 8 MILLION humans may have lived and farmed the basin at its peak, study claims
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-3173398/Is-Amazon-rainforest-MAN-8-MILLION-humans-lived-farmed-basin-peak.html
See also this, and particularly the knocks at the environmentalist “But the amazon was pristine” (AKA without civilized humans) faith myth —
The domestication of Amazonia before European conquest
Charles R. Clement, William M. Denevan, Michael J. Heckenberger, André Braga Junqueira, Eduardo G. Neves, Wenceslau G. Teixeira, William I. Woods
Published 22 July 2015. DOI: 10.1098/rspb.2015.0813
http://rspb.royalsocietypublishing.org/content/282/1812/20150813
Abstract
During the twentieth century, Amazonia was widely regarded as relatively pristine nature, little impacted by human history. This view remains popular despite mounting evidence of substantial human influence over millennial scales across the region. Here, we review the evidence of an anthropogenic Amazonia in response to claims of sparse populations across broad portions of the region. Amazonia was a major centre of crop domestication, with at least 83 native species containing populations domesticated to some degree. Plant domestication occurs in domesticated landscapes, including highly modified Amazonian dark earths (ADEs) associated with large settled populations and that may cover greater than 0.1% of the region. Populations and food production expanded rapidly within land management systems in the mid-Holocene, and complex societies expanded in resource-rich areas creating domesticated landscapes with profound impacts on local and regional ecology. ADE food production projections support estimates of at least eight million people in 1492. By this time, highly diverse regional systems had developed across Amazonia where subsistence resources were created with plant and landscape domestication, including earthworks. This review argues that the Amazonian anthrome was no less socio-culturally diverse or populous than other tropical forested areas of the world prior to European conquest.
1. Introduction
The word ‘Amazonia’ conjures images of dense rainforests, painted and feathered natives, exotic fauna and flora, as well as rampant deforestation, biodiversity extinction, and climate change. These fragmentary images seldom coalesce into robust understanding of this vast area, which is partially a legacy of eighteenth to nineteenth century descriptions with already decimated human populations [1]. Over the past few decades, archaeology has revealed numerous fairly large-scale complex societies across all major regions, which contrast with the small-scale twentieth century societies described by anthropologists, but agree well with initial European eye witness accounts from the sixteenth to seventeenth century [2–6]. The current consensus among historical ecologists suggests that Amazonia is a complex mosaic of coupled human-natural systems, typical of anthropogenic biomes or anthromes globally [7], refuting earlier claims of uniform environmental limitations [8,9]. Here, we summarize the nature and extent of these transformations during the Holocene to show that Amazonia was no more limiting than tropical forested regions elsewhere across the globe. Amazonia was domesticated before European conquest.
As elsewhere, human societies dramatically modified species composition in many ecosystems, beginning in some areas by the early Holocene and giving rise to complex and sophisticated systems of land management associated with large, settled populations by European conquest. Specifically, large pre-Columbian societies domesticated large portions of their landscape to make them more productive and congenial [10], as expected in cultural niche construction theory [11]. The modifications of species and ecosystems are due to domestication, both of plant and animal populations and of landscapes [10,12–14]. Growing populations caused long-term modifications in soils, creating Amazonian dark earths (ADEs), and transformed naturally biodiverse forests into anthropogenic forest landscapes [3,12,15,16].
This revisionist view of a domesticated Amazonia is contested by some natural and social scientists [17–20]. These critiques are based on small samples that are used to extrapolate across the region, often without engagement with the full breadth of scholarship on pre-Columbian Amazonia. Most commentators agree that Amazonia was occupied by societies with different levels of complexity [2] and each had different impacts on their landscapes. There were dense populations along some resource-rich sections of major rivers, less dense populations along minor rivers and sparse populations between rivers [15]. Given the antiquity and intensity of these impacts, few—if any—pristine landscapes remained in 1492. There were anthropogenic forests throughout the basin, and an overall population and landscape footprint far greater than argued recently. Resolving these views has obvious implications for indigenous cultural heritage.
>snip<
Trent –
Yeah, in 2006 the book “1491: New Revelations of the Americas Before Columbus” brought this all to light about terra preta. Terra preta was known before that, of course.
But the book discussed at length the early Spanish soldier who SAW towns lining the Amazon for miles and miles and miles – only for those to not be there later when others arrived. The guy was assumed for a long time to have been a big liar, until the terra preta was found. The terra preta was discussed as having broken up shards of HUMAN-MADE ceramics mixed in with carbon and other materials, in some places meters and meters thick. And it HAD to be done by people, because human-made ceramics were mixed in. The thickness of the terra preta soils is part of the mystery, because the common understanding is that Amazon soils are only a few inches deep, making the Amazon a very fragile environment (part of the subject of the Mail article). If, instead, the Amazon has the best soil in the world – bar none – then this fragility doesn’t really exist.
So, what is terra preta? A VERY dark soil. One that is claimed to NEVER need any fertilizer. Somehow – and this is NOT know how – the terra preta re-generates its nutrient levels.
LARGE areas in the Amazon basin have terra preta – right where the Spaniard said the towns were.
I’ve heard that scientists have been trying and trying to replicate terra preta – and the last I heard they had not succeeded.
So, where did all the people and towns go – especially if they had the bests soil ever discovered/created? Charles Mann strongly suggests that the populations of both North and South America were devastated more by the diseases brought from Europe than was previously appreciated. He suggests that the Americas had upwards of 300 million people immediately before 1492*** – and that 97% of them died from those diseases. He goes into great length to explain why.
I am REALLY happy to see that some scientists have pursued this line of inquiry. And I am happy also that your link is the complete paper. Yeay! I will rada it with delight – whatever they have found.
The Spaniard’s name was Carvajal, and his accounts are discussed in at least one source for that paper. He WAS the first European down the Amazon – coming from the Andes in the west, if I recall, all the way to the mouth.
Oh, and BTW, if (actually WHEN) anyone figures out the terra preta, it will revolutionize farming EVERYWHERE. Not requiring ANY fertilizer, terra preta will actually put some companies damned near out of business. It will STOP nitrogen fertilizers from leaching/running off into the streams and rivers. It will make agriculture even more efficient than it presently is. If it holds water like I think it does, it will also mean less water will need to be applied, and less agricultural demand out of rivers.
The Amazon has more things than we could imagine. Have You seen the news?
https://www.newscientist.com/article/dn27945-myth-of-pristine-amazon-rainforest-busted-as-old-cities-reappear/
Steve Garcia.
Terra preta (Amazon dark earth in the paper) proves with a bullet that the ancients had technologies that were superior to present day technology.
If they had that, what else did the ancients have?
This seems to be the major intellectual obstacle in archeology.
As for this:
>>Charles Mann strongly suggests that the populations of
>>both North and South America were devastated more by
>>the diseases brought from Europe than was previously
>>appreciated. He suggests that the Americas had upwards
>>of 300 million people immediately before 1492*** – and
>>that 97% of them died from those diseases.
I have run into this thought repeatedly the more I have read on the population size of the the Mississippi mound building cultures.
DeSoto’s search expeditions for the fountain of youth acted as one of human histories worst biological attacks.
He introduced at least a 1/2 dozen fatal to the American Indians diseases and at least one of them (bucilosis sp?) was carried by the pigs his expeditions took with and lost into the South East.
And the suite of these diseases tended to wipe out cities, then villages and finally close, intact, extended family groups.
Imagine trying to rebuilt a civilized culture after the top 95% of the most cooperative and sociable individuals in it are dead.
That was the fate of the Mississippi mound builders and the Amazonian Terra preta making cultures.
Trent –
Yeah, you understand.
I really liked what you said about what else did the ancients have, and that it is one of the major intellectual obstacles of archaeology.
IMVHO, that obstacle blinds arkies to the point where they simply are IGNORANT of their stupidity and their bias and their projected disrespect that shows up in everything they write. To them everyone in the past was mumbo-jumbo savages (except in Rome and Greece), even when those “savages” have huge cities like in Mesoamerica or China or India or Indonesia. Their attitude is racism, plain and simple, temporal racism, but since no one from the past can sue them, they can do it to their hearts’ content.
The Asian Indians, Chinese, and Indonesians were fortunate to not all have the same antibodies, so that they were able to survive Marco Polo and the sailors of Magellan better than the Mound Builders survived DeSoto, or the Mexicans and Peruvians survived Cortez and Pizarro.
If we lost 97%, we’d be back in the stone age really quickly – or be an easy takeover. Hell, if we only lost the truck drivers, the USA would be done for. Almost everyone would starve – maybe even the corn and wheat and soybean farmers.
As to what the ancients had, I think it is an open question about a previous high civilization. My friend, engineer Chris Dunn, CLEARLY shows that the Egyptians produced statuary and a Great Pyramid that were the results of tremendous engineering skills and TOOLS, even though he can’t produce the tools. In other ways he shows with hard evidence, presented methodically and clearly, that they had ways of machining stone that boggle the mind. Examples include: a schist bowl that could not be made today without breaking the schist; drilling cores that show that their rates of stone removal exceeded any today (by a LOT); northwest of Cairo a narrow circular saw cuts with a curvature that shows that the cutting blade was over 50 feet in diameter; and giant statues at Karnak that are so symmetrical in all three dimensions that no manual cutting could have possibly achieved it.
Megalithic sites around the world testify that somehow earlier cultures were FAR advanced of the peoples westerners found. These DO include the Mound Builders, but also pyramids, stonework of sophistication and engineering equal to or exceeding today. CERTAINLY much of it was more technically advanced than what was possible in Europe in the 1800s. Even some that wasn’t, was surely advanced over the tech of the 1600s – or even over Rome.
So, what did the ancients have? The evidence is out there. But it has been very badly misread due to the blinders on the arkies – who are our official window into the past. So, every aspect of ancient societies that the arkies tell us should be suspect. Alternative researchers are sometimes silly and sloppy in their work, but they at least take off their blinders and are, therefore, sometimes more objective than the arkies. The blinders of the arkies ALONE makes their work sloppy (read: inaccurate).
Charles Mann early in his book talked about the hubris, the superior attitudes, of the American arkies, the attitude that pisses off Latin American arkies. If the ancients could come back today, I think they would scream bloody murder at the ignorance and blindness of the arkies that has been perpetuated now for 300 years.
The attitudes of the arkies may be illustrated by something a recent girlfriend said to me. She has a degree in history and is very supportive of archaeologists. (You can see how well THAT would pan out, with me!) She said one day that everyone has an opinion, and that we cannot know which opinion is correct. She thinks it is all about opinions. (Opinions are like assholes – everybody’s got one, I guess?) As an engineer, I think that such attitudes are 100% STUPID. I asked her if 2 + 2 = 4 is just an opinion. If measuring something to be 1.2783 meters long is just an opinion? If the strength as tested (and replicated) of steel is just an opinion? And I can throw thousands examples of such solid reality that are not opinions. There are engineering reference books with table after table of measured values that have been compiled by the work of thousands of lab workers over decades and decades, testing various metals and woods and setting exact standards for sizes of things. NONE of that is opinion – ALL of it is hard fact. And – seriously – if the ancient architects and engineers could do some of the things they did as well or nearly as well as we can today, then someone THEN must have tabulated many, many measured facts, so that the architects could trust their own designs. Buildings or bridges don’t stand for even hundreds of years unless their designers KNEW their materials’ strengths and other qualities.
But with things in the past, we allow the arkies to just toss any opinion into the ring and – as long as they have a PhD – the opinion is allowed to stand. (I FURIOUSLY disagree!) No matter how it insults the people of the past, no matter how much conjecture and projection is in it – sometimes up to 100% guesswork – their opinions are accepted by their peers.
But megalithic sites show SOLID, OBVIOUS evidence of planned and thoroughly designed buildings, statuary, artifacts, and cities. Buildings that have stood for thousands of years are in that way (at the least) better designed than ANY in our cities today. Ergo, they had people who understood forces, materials, and environment at least as well (and very probably better than) engineers and architects today.
The biggest problem in learning the past is the very group of idiots who are our eyes into the past. I urge everyone to CHALLENGE everything that the arkies tell us. So much of it is guesswork and attitude problems that it boggles the mind.
The Mail is coming into this a wee bit late…
FIVE years ago even NatGeo was getting into the act: http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2008/11/081119-lost-cities-amazon.html – “Superdirt Made Lost Amazon Cities Possible?” John Roach for National Geographic News November 19, 2008″
It is SO demeaning that people 2000 years ago figured out stuff that caught all our scientists with their pants down… /snarc
There is a REALLY good short video on terra preta in the NatGeo article.
Hahaha – Some potshards taken from deep in the terra preta soils have even in some cases been reconstructed into the original pots – 100% proof that the soils were man-made/man-assisted and not somehow natural.
They still dont’ know what purpose the ceramic shards do.
Much focus seems to be on the charcoal by itself, named “biochar” by the scientists, in their vanity to be at the center of it all. They’ve even renamed the terra preta “Amazonian dark earth”, usurping the native name for it. Shame on the scientists. They think that science is about giving things names, like new species of butterflies and worms. When something ALREADY has a name, stupid a-holes, leave it be!
But in the biochar they are assuming that the ceramics do not play a part. And that may be a big part of why they aren’t yet able to create terra preta themselves.
Looking at the DEPTH that the ceramics are found, it boggles my mind as to how much LABOR it must have taken to make the terra preta 50-2000 sm deep.
What could even be the REASON to bury the ceramics so deep? And create the terra preta as deep or deeper? What does the depth do for it? For any plants? Do they need to overshoot the depth so that there is a certain amount below the deepest roots? And why 2 meters in some places while others all average only about half a meter? The difference is SIGNIFICANT in the amount of labor. No practical people do anything MORE than is necessary. It’s waste of available manpower, time, and other assets. Time especially is crucial in marginal living regions. (That might indicate that those areas were far from marginal.) And if there is one thing you MUST be when dealing with nature it is practicality.
I am WAAAAY impressed that someone would develop such a soil. In the video the main man says straight out that the soils are balanced pH and have been stable for over 1,000 years. That to me is as impressive as building pyramids. That is HIGH TECH SOIL.
And THAT is not a phrase you are going to hear often.
I have done this comment in a different way. I wrote it up as a blog post at https://feet2thefire.wordpress.com/
It is about terra preta.
I probably will begin to do that more often, to keep the comment lengths here down.
Steve G,
Regards this —
>>IMVHO, that obstacle blinds arkies to the point where they
>>simply are IGNORANT of their stupidity and their bias and
>>their projected disrespect that shows up in everything they
>>write. To them everyone in the past was mumbo-jumbo savages
>>(except in Rome and Greece), even when those “savages” have
>>huge cities like in Mesoamerica or China or India or Indonesia.
>>Their attitude is racism, plain and simple, temporal racism,
>>but since no one from the past can sue them, they can do it
>>to their hearts’ content.
The archeology community’s combination of willful ignorance and invincible arrogance are the 180 degrees opposite of the foundation of all science, the scientific method.
Anyone demonstrating that behavior combination are operating from faith, identity issues, vested interests, or some combination of the three, not science.
This behavior cluster by the Climate “warmists” is the core reason I am a skeptic of human caused global warming.
Trent –
I agree with you 100% on all this. Especially the global arming issue. Their arrogance is not my own primary reason for being a skeptic, but it certainly plays a part.
But the two groups of scientists are seriously not the same people, and yet the arrogance factor is nevertheless ubiquitous in both groups. To a design engineer it is anathema to have arrogance; it is necessary to be humble in the face of any project’s requirements. So many times I’ve said – and mean it – that a design engineer cannot have an ego. To go in with arrogance is the surest way to fail.
That does NOT mean that we don’t KNOW what we know. I often also say that, “I know what I know.” That can be taken two ways. One, that the knowledge I have is solid. The other way is that I know ONLY what I know and clearly discern the line between what I know and what I don’t know. And the scientists have to know what they know, too. And I think in the same ways.
The problem comes when scientists confronting a new topic assume that their prior understanding will suffice, that their preconceptions constitute real knowledge and WILL always form a solid basis upon which to begin their inquiry. No. The first thing a scientists or group of them needs to do is to CHALLENGE their preconceptions, to make SURE the preconceptions are correct IN THIS PRESENT AND SPECIFIC CASE.
This was the error in global warming. Part of that was their anecdotal experiences with temperatures – they seemed to sense that the weather was warmer than when they were younger, only 10-20 years earlier. Part of it – the BLAME part – came from them thinking that humans are ruining the Earth. Part of it was that the very people who got into climatology were the same people who thought in those two ways. It seems to not have occurred to them to even CHECK if the temperatures were really warming over LONG periods of time. The “thermometer age” only goes back about 250 years or so. The thermometer age in most of the world doesn’t even go back 100 years.
Faith in their starting premises doomed climate science to make several errors early on in the global warming alarmism. They ASSUMED – but did not check – that temperatures were really rising. This caused them to be 10-20 years into it before anyone actually CHECKED. In fact, their are THREE separate databases for the climate since 1979, which is when the first temperature-measuring satellites went up. One is the thermometers – 95 of which are on land. One is the satellites. The third is weather balloons, which are STILL used to this day. The problem is that the thermometers do not agree with either the balloons and satellites (both of which DO agree with each other). Guess which database is the one the climate guys accept as 100% valid? So, is warming even really happening? The balloons and satellites say yes, but very little.
With those decades of operating with those “warming is real and dangerous” and “Humans are the cause” premises, it stained their efforts. Everything was interpreted that CO2 = global warming, when in fact it does not. They actually conflate the two, using them interchangeably. Add to that that they never challenged their assumption that HUMAN activity was the cause of the perceived warming. I went looking in the late 1990s for the academic papers that eliminated all causes other than human industrial emissions. I thought that surely SOMEONE used the fundamental rule of process of elimination before assigning the blame to human industrial emissions. Now in 2015 I am still looking for that foundational paper. At this time I am sure that it doesn’t exist. If it existed, I would have found it.
Just like those “climate guys” (I am loather to call them scientists, in a way), arkies also started from a flawed foundation, back when arkies were rich white Christian westerners with too much money and too much time on their hands. In their hubris they assumed that western society was the apex of all human history and that that history was a one-time up-slope from cavemen to tea and crumpets. Even when they FOUND megalithic sites that were impossible to have been constructed by the indigenous peoples around the sites, the arkies assigned the design and construction to those peoples, anyway. The arkies connected the religious level of thinking the present inhabitants to all times previous, assuming mumbo-jumbo was the entire history of humans up until the scientific age. And THEN the arkies presumed to include THEMSELVES in among the real scientists. Most people don’t know that the arkies were not accepted initially into the world of scientists. So the arkies, instead of simply grave robbing and filling museums with artifacts, began what is now their more systematic way of grave robbing – they tie strings up in a grid pattern and send of some stuff to scientific labs for dating. With the strings, they give the impression of QUANTIFYING arky sites – “that such and such was found at coordinates X and Y and was at depth Z”. This is supposed to be equal to the scientific method. And it gives them cover whenever they speculate (48% of what they do) or project their assumptions onto the past (another 48% of what they do). Science is about quantification and replication and falsification – none of which either group does well. “The climate guys? They don’t do quantification?” you may say. If any of you thinks that the numbers that underlie those graphs are not PRE-massaged, you haven’t looked into it. One of the reasons that the thermometers don’t agree with the balloons and satellites is that the pre-adjust the thermometer data BEFORE even making up the graphs. Look it up.
And what do they base their adjustments on? Pre-conceived assumptions. Otherwise, WHY do all the adjustments for recent temps are in one direction only (UP)? And why do all the long ago temps only get adjusted DOWN? Because the assumption (and now the flow of government money) MUST SHOW an increase, and up-slope.
So, both groups – climate guys and arkies – assume that their projected assumptions are facts, and therefore when the data doesn’t support the assumption, they find flimsy reasons for applying arbitrary but agreeable manipulations TO the data/evidence, to make the data conform to the assumptions. Hence, arkies describe new and unknown artifacts as “ceremonial” or “ritualistic”, while climate guys adjust past temperatures and proxy adjustment ratios so that it supports the meme of global warming.
It’s all fudging the data, when you come down to it. If you don’t like the evidence, SPIN IT. And ALWAYS spin it in the direction that the money lies. And that is just it: “The money lies.” Money distorts the science. Arkies have a VERY small total money pool that funds their evidence gathering and especially expeditions. Their is TERRIFIC competition for that little pile of money. Climate science used to be that way, too. It was one of the backwaters of science, with very little money to fight over. Fortunately for their careers, the climate guy latched onto something that they could sell to Congress and spin in a way as to increase their haul of “the loot”. Now, what was a backwater gets funded in the BILLIONS of dollars per year. The arkies should be so lucky. I F-ING HOPE NOT!
How do you know an arky is lying? His lips are moving. He himself may not even know he is; he is too far on the inside, and he MUST play the game, so to him it isn’t lying – it is just playing the game. In politics it is called corruption. In science it is “getting along in one’s career”. But office politics is still politics.
“…operating from faith, identity issues, vested interests, or some combination of the three, not science.” Yes, yes, yes, and yes. And no, no it isn’t science.
>>Their arrogance is not my own primary reason for being a skeptic,
>>but it certainly plays a part.
Core reason isn’t the “only reason.”
It is my personal evaluation template for all science debates, based on the way people are acting in the debate, as opposed to the data.
It seldom steers me wrong.
I learned it watching Carl Sagan’s “Nuclear Winter Theory” debacle.
Damn, I can’t imagine how I issued that Carl Sagan debacle” at the time. I wish I had been a fly on the wall or had front row seat. The guy nauseated me. When I later learned how he had sandbagged Velikovsky it just confirmed my own sense like yours.
Steer me to a good, full account of that, would you?
Steve G,
A friend of mine in the Civil Defense Community spotted Sagan’s sand bagging his fellow Nuclear Winter (TTAPS study) authors and got that screw up to Professor S. Fred Singer in March 1984.
The TTAPS J.Geophys.Rev. article and TTAPS Science articles by Turco et al significantly different that the Sagan TTAPS PARADE article
Carl Sagan alleged in his Parade article, page 7, that:
“We found for the baseline case that roughly 30 percent of the land at northern midlatitudes could receive a radioactive dose greater than 250 rads, and that about 50 percent of northern midlatitudes could receive a radioactive does greater than 100 rads.”
This statement is not supported in either the TTAPS Science article or in the draft J.Geophys.Rev. article my friend got from Turco through members of his leftist church congregation.
Sagan made it up whole cloth and got caught doing so.
Professor S. Fred Singer saw that this unprofessional conduct by Sagan got exposed in the correct places and Sagan had to turn to a fairly successful career as a talking head after his science grants ran dry from his destroyed credibility.
The whole Nuclear Winter theory stopped right there, as no one on the scientific left wanted this dirty laundry aired. After 1989, it simply became forgotten trivia with the fall of the Soviet Union.
Fascinating. I’ll never forgive his treatment of Dr. V.
Great post. I agree completely, Steve.
Whoops, slight correction..
Sagan didn’t make it up, he used a source stating an extreme hypothetical case as a proven fact that all the other authors of the TTAPS study specifically rejected as bad science.
See from the March 1984 letter excerpt below:
Sagan’s allegation about radiation exposures is based on an unpublished article by Joseph Knox of Lawrence Livermore Labs, a copy of which is enclosed with his permission. It states, on page 4 (note 4) and pages 14_15 that exposures of 100 _ 250 rads could occur if all nuclear power plants, stored fuel and reprocessing facilities in the world are vaporized. Knox admits on pp. 13_14 that this is only hypothetical. It is as preposterous as TTAPS’ deliberate targeting of vegetation.
TTAPS Science specifically rejects targeting the nuclear fuel cycle in its reference 69, which states: “We also neglect additional potential sources of radioactive fallout from salted “dirty” weapons and explosions over nuclear reactors and fuel reprocessing plants.” TTAPS Geophys. also rejects it on page 23.
TTAPS Geophys. is a year old. (Trent – As of March 1984) TTAPS Science was submitted to Science in October of 1983, the same month that the Parade article was published. Carl Sagan knew that the other TTAPS authors did not support him in this and said it anyway. He alleged something to the general public that was rejected in an article to a more technically sophisticated audience. This means that he, at least, is promoting propaganda rather than science.
So you have the story of how Carl Sagan committed career suicide as a scientist.
I did read about Sagan and Dr V, and Sagan was the game player he always seemed to be. A front man that the public (if they knew about any of it) would trust, and he violated the trust – as he was supposed to do. His job was to sandbag Dr V.
Don’t get me wrong. I thought Velikovsky got it wrong, too. He brought to the fore much that is used today – totally UNCREDITED, because anyone sourcing hm would be persona non grata forEVER. Velikovsky brought much to the fore, but his conclusions were just too far out for me. I had a REALLY open mind back then, but not that open. Having said that I don’t agree with his conclusions, I then have to say that if the conclusions were wrong, then mechanisms existed within the civilized side of science – the non-vicious side of science politics – and they could have dealt with Dr V’s errors in the normal way.
Harlowe Shapley threw the baby out with the bath water, though, in his nastiness. And he brought shame on science. And later, when Shapley’s forces had decided that they ust not have shown Velikovsky the door sufficiently enough, went for the jugular. And they chose Sagan to be the tip of the poisoned arrow. And Sagan, to his discredit, took on the task eagerly – IMHO in order to fortify his standing as the public face of science. Nasty is as nasty does.
It is one time in science when it can truly be said that there was a conspiracy. The orthodoxy had seen that ignoring Dr V wasn’t sufficient, that his name and fame had grown, and they planned out how they were going to take him down, once and for all.
Who GIVES a damned whether Velikovsky was wrong?!
Like Richard Nixon and his Watergate cover-up, Sagan and the rest of the orthodoxy had hoped to sweep the dastardly Dr V under the carpet, but the noisy bugger wouldn’t STAY under the carpet. Sweeping under the carpet is one of those stages science goes through when dealing with ideas they don’t like and don’t want anyone to hear about. The first stage WOULD have been to ignore Dr V. But since he had a #1 bestseller out specifically about what they wanted to seep under the carpet, the cat was out of the bag already. So Shapley panicked and BULLIED the publisher. Nasty, nasty action, that. The viciousness of science’s orthodoxy had to actually come out into the OPEN, of all things.
This was cover-up by neutron bomb – kill everything living that had anything to do with Worlds in Collision and Dr V’s ideas.
Oh, early on Nixon tried to play his power games, and then he even erased 19-1/2 minutes on one of his White House tapes, destroying evidence. It wasn’t one of the charges levied against him in the Bills of Impeachment that later were drawn up (though never used).
Shapley chose another way to destroy evidence – to ridicule it and remove its public forum (the book itself). “And, how did you enjoy the play, Mrs. Lincoln?” might as well have been, “And how did your suppression of Dr Velikovsky’s book go, Professor?”
Five years after trouncing Hitler and his book burners, science took up Herr Hitler’s cause, and, no it did NOT go well. All those disaster movies of the 1950s? They fed the public’s lust for all things Velikovsky. Burning Velikovsky’s book only poured alcohol on the flames of non-orthodoxy.
And, having failed at that, 20 years later they took another stab at it. And Sagan was point man.
And he was so full of CRAP, too. I don’t recall the specifics, but I do recall that his logic was flawed, and his logic was also hypocritical. Sagan was allowed a double standard, in that the bar was set at different heights for him as opposed to Dr V.
This was one guy whom I detested playing courtroom lawyer attacking someone whose conclusions I didn’t agree with. And I came down on the side of the non-lawyer. I have to think that any thinking man would have done so, too. Sagan’s droning, boring, somnambulistic voice – I can hear it now, putting everyone to sleep.
Sagan as marionette. Sagan as martinette. Sagan as the insidious, creepy lawyer who, everyone hopes to be ruled against.
But, of course, the judges were all from the orthodoxy, in that kangaroo court. Dr V had no illusions that he would win any of the judges over. Sagan had no illusions about NOT winning.
In one sense, it was not Sagan, but the pre-judgment of all of the orthodoxy, embodied in those judges, that an outsider was not going to be allowed to influence anything or carry the day. No, it wasn’t Sagan. But it was Sagan as sure as it was the Sanhedrin who took out Jesus. He was there. It was certainly HIS voice being heard. It was certainly HIS acceptance of his role, and it was certainly HIS playing the role to the fullest.
They put up the puppet, and the puppet did nothing to act on its own.
That is the Carl Sagan I have always known and loved. NOT.
And THAT is also the role that the YD skeptics play, on behalf of their superiors in the orthodoxy.
Except for one thing:
They got a bunch of nobodies at first. And not enough of them. And the orthodoxy thought that simply having the minions/skeptics appeal to authority and engage in as hominem attacks and use their control over the science editors of popular magazines – and, above all, ridicule – that this would all succeed in putting down the upstarts. But this was not ONE Dr V’s but 30 Dr V’s.
And the orthodoxy sent the third team scrubs in, instead of sending in THE Carl Sagan.
As a belated “fix”, they decided to toss in one of their pretty boys, their media darlings – The Bos.
Again, “How did that work out, folks?”
The Bos dipped his toe in the water, spieled out his plug for his work, and then ran away to write more computer code that could give no nswers but the ones he wanted (again). And in so doing he abandoned them. Nice guy, that!
THEY GOT NO MO’ SAGANS, FOLKS!
Hahahaha – They only gots Nick Pinter and other little backwater guys. “The B Team”. The water boys.
Well, Sagan was a water boy, too.
Graham Hancock is out selling books and got an article in the UK Daily Mail.
See:
———–
Is a comet about to destroy Earth? Best-selling author GRAHAM HANCOCK argues that a cosmic explosion will soon strike Earth – triggering epic floods
Within 20 years a comet big enough to end life as we know it will hit Earth
That is view of author Graham Hancock who says it will trigger epic floods
Says 200 ancient myths tell of a human civilisation brought to end by fire
He argues scientific evidence now indicates these are based on hard fact
By Graham Hancock For The Daily Mail
Published: 18:45 EST, 10 September 2015 | Updated: 04:19 EST, 11 September 2015
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3230040/Best-selling-author-Graham-Hancock-argues-cosmic-explosion-soon-strike-Earth.html#ixzz3lRKUGJFA
I’d thought I would throw this out there —- this is the kind of stuff that gives Graham, Andrew and the entire group authenticity…..and the academics are lost in the backwaters of their gov’t grants…this is quite enjoyable as I sipped my favorite “scottish” and laughed by head off (well, not really but…anyway, enjoy)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QsqG8DKq8vA
http://www.grenzwissenschaft-aktuell.de/erdstaelle-interview-hoehlenkundler-dr-heinrich-kusch20150917/
used the goggle translator but the picture will say a “million words”……
here is a quote from the article above — take it for what he said
GreWi: Means then latter finding may also be that the affected programs were probably made with machines?
Dr. Kusch: Yes, it is possible entirely.
GreWi: machines so 10,000 years ago !? Who should have prepared and used these?
Dr. Kusch: The currently known evaluations show an operation, which is clearly visible through the tool marks on the tunnel walls. However, there are still no answers and explanations about the who, how, when and why! These questions must remain still unanswered at this time, pending further investigation and new dating results –
See more at: http://www.grenzwissenschaft-aktuell.de/erdstaelle-interview-hoehlenkundler-dr-heinrich-kusch20150917/#sthash.aJYL48n5.dpuf
David –
Too long for me to watch the video for several days, but I will get to it. Your last quoted passage I can comment on, though…
I can speak in support of the “tool marks on the tunnel walls” statement, because I noticed them 44 years ago on the vertical shafts that are visible on the Giza plateau. The one in particular I saw had tool marks that did not make any sense at the time and STILL do not. It is (partly) because of those tool marks that I first got in touch with Christopher Dunn. So, YES, to tool marks. The ones I saw were arced. There several, and they were spaced maybe 1/2″ (13mm) apart, and they were NOT concentric, but looked like they were made with a mechanism that was able to be advanced in order to make the next cut. The cuts appeared to be 1/16″-1/8″ deep. In limestone that takes a LOT of ‘normal’ force to be applied directly TOWARD the wall surface. This REQUIRES a very robust mechanism, not something fly-by-night.
I drew my companions’ attention to all of that, and that the arcs did NOT go tangent to the corner that the arcs aimed toward. A modern circular saw would make arcs on the wall face that would be tangent to the corner. These did not do that. Instead they ‘dead-headed’ and stopped at the corner. Thus the swinging arm had to be pulled back for the next cut (upward or downward in the vertical shaft). The appearance was sort for like that of a dirty windshield wiper blade streaking a windshield. But then imagine that and then moving the arm pivot 1/2″ for the next swipe. All four vertical shaft walls had this pattern on them.
NOTHING we presently do would make such a pattern. Any mechanism that would make such a marking pattern seemed to me as very inefficient and ODD. But somehow they used that mechanism to finish the walls in that vertical shaft. I do not entertain the idea that the marks were made by the main cutting mechanism which made the vertical tunnel.
It should, I guess, be noted that the authorities did not let unauthorized people down into the shaft complex below that plateau surface. In addition, as shown on the video, there were vizible horizontal shafts that exited into the vertical shafts. These horizontal shafts were/are also square in cross section. That is not them being creative.
The first bits of the 3D depiction in the video seem to me to very likely be a good representation of what is down there, under the plateau surface. It is quite consistent with what I saw.
(And BTW, I was there for two months on ne trip and two full weeks on a second trip, and I had PLENTY of time to browse around the Giza plateau and view such things. These vertical and horizontal tunnels I must have observed 20 or 30 times.)
Oops!
vizible = visible
I’m the author of ATLANTOS: The Early Erthe Chronicles Book I, the science fiction novel that has been very favorably reviewed and excerpted on Graham Hancock’s website and Facebook page http://grahamhancock.com/maxwellr1/. I’m down with the comet impact that began the Younger Dryas (and it’s featured in my book, though of course I couldn’t call it by its current name). I’m wondering what you think about what event ENDED the Younger Dryas 11,600 years ago, the exact date that Plato gives for the demise of Atlantis.
comments from my facebook regarding the publishing of this junk from the academia….and then they wonder why they can’t sell “their” books. talk about being tone deaf.
_________________________
I finally have my free copy of this indepth report (code word for trash), and you guys have won the war. I really hope your books go right up the list at Amazon and the overpriced college textbooks which one writer mentioned (nobody reads and college students are forced to buy) go even further through the floor. Is there any logical reason why, in this whole charade that NOT ONE astronomer or scientist is listed (eg. Richard Firestone, et al is just a great start)….they lost … and I have two questions from Chris Dunn’s book (Lost Technologies) they need to answer before I really start to laugh: 1) the 90d corners in the boxes of the Serapeum have a 5/32″ radius – explain how they cut these and the tools that were used (pg 133 – Dunn 2010) and 2) the finish on the interior has a calibrated accuracy to within 0.00005″ – explain how this was done and the tools they used (pg 131 – Dunn 2010). And last but by far NOT the least is the discovery of “””The network today largely sealed and backfilled tunnels and chambers under the eastern Styria Vorau, as it could be mapped using ground radar again ( – See more at: http://www.grenzwissenschaft-aktuell.de/erdstaelle…/… “”””” —- one of the reviewers made the snide remark that if the ancients saw the disaster coming why didn’t they do something about it……THEY DID….they built tunnels and thousands of them……
GreWi-Interview: Dr. Heinrich Kusch über Erdställe im Alpenraum
grenzwissenschaft-aktuell.de
this is the link to the article (if you can call it that)
http://www.ingentaconnect.com/content/saa/aa/2015/00000080/00000003/art00013
https://www.facebook.com/garydavid
scholl down to Sept 21…..for the full posting
Steve; When I worked at the stone mill we had a large block saw for rough cutting slabs from blocks. It had a 20hp motor that turned a 6ft diamond tipped blade. You could not cut stone until the rpm’s were at full range because until the blade was singing if you touched the block before that it would bend the blade badly. (harmonics?) There were a couple of times when we had to plunge cut a block to create an internal cavity. We would plunge into the stone to the max depth for the square dimension on four sides then chisel out the internal plug. This would leave arcing marks on the stone face on all four sides. Also when cutting flat slabs as the saw cut past the leading marks arcing forward it would also leave overlapping marks arcing rearwards. I know this doesn’t exactly matchup to what you saw but it’s a possibility. Now if you want to go out on the limb of fantasy they may have had a four headed tunnel mole whose power source only allowed for 1/2″ cuts before having to remove the resulting plugs. Pure speculation is a fun exercise!
Steve; I was rereading your posting and the image you portrayed came to as the markings of a water jet saw. We also had one of these but it was only capable of cutting 1ft deep. It is a small one compared to others I have seen. As it cut it could leave an almost perfect finish or if moving faster it would leave very small chatter marks marking the angle it was positioned at. Just another possibility. All of what was accomplished either with machines or by hand is EXTRAORDINARY!! just on the scope and time frames of these projects.
I just finished reading “Magicians of the Gods”. Here is my take on it.
Hancock embraces the YDIH as the piece of the puzzle that was missing in his 1995 book “Fingerprints of the Gods” and incorporates it in the theme of this book, which is that the YD comet obliterated an advanced civilization that existed at the time, but a group of survivors (the Magicians) set about to reseed civilization among primitive peoples and left messages in stone that people in the distant future (us) would be able to read as evidence of their existence. The book is about those messages and other evidence that Hancock identifies. As a sequel to FOTG it presents much the same story, but carries it a great leap forward, thanks to the YDIH, Gobekli Tepe, and other discoveries and developments that have occurred since the first book.
The book begins as an investigative travelogue to Gobekli Tepe, then moves to North America to examine the visible effects of the great post-ice age floods, notably the Washington scablands which some think could not have been formed by the episodic drainings of Lake Missoula, as most geologists accept, because a much greater melting was required that could only have come from a cometary impact on the ice. He devotes a chapter to the YDIH and does a credible job of explaining the controversy that surrounds it.
Hancock then settles into the core of the book, which is an examination of ancient Egyptian and Mesopotamian history and lore, and the evidence that these civilizations were legacies of an earlier “pre-diluvian” civilization. He goes deep into parallels between Plato’s story of Atlantis, the Egyptian Edfu texts, the Sumerian cuneiform tablet writings, and Gobekli Tepe.
The book then returns to travelogue form and examines the giant megaliths at Baalbek in Lebanon, returns to Turkey, then moves to South America and on across the Pacific to Easter Island, and finally to Indonesia. In all of these places, it tells of surprising discoveries that have several things in common: they are of unknown origin and seem to be, on close examination, much older than archaeologists dare to consider, and they have stylistic similarities that suggest they came from a common ancient source.
The book ends as a cautionary tale, with the warning that it could happen again, as the earth is about to re-enter the part of the Taurid complex where the largest cometary objects will once again cross the earth’s orbit, posing the threat of another impact as there was 12,800 years ago.
Hancock has done a great amount of research and first-hand investigation, from which he weaves together many disparate threads to create a non-traditional tapestry of our ancient past. In doing so he makes some assumptions about certain events and how they were connected, but he also presents many facts that support his ideas. Some of the book is not an easy read, due to the massive amount of detail, the complicated connections he makes between ancient events, and his often convoluted writing style. But as always, Hancock is an original and unconventional thinker, and he has come up with a lot of information that is new to me. It stoked my interest, and was definitely a worthwhile read.
The book will reach a wide audience, so his message will be heard. But Hancock is not just battling history, he is also battling the conservatism of archaeologists (the arkies), Egyptologists, and uniformitarian-leaning geologists, who he spends some time bashing in the book. Still, the book is hard to ignore. Will it make a difference? In the long run I think it will, if only for the discussions it is sure to stimulate.
Was the past as he says? Maybe, but likely not. He did not prove his case (it is not possible at this time), and no doubt critics will find fault with what he has written, but I think he is on to something, and I applaud his achievement. One thing is clear, though: the history that we are taught is wrong. However, I am confident that the mystery of our past will become clearer in time, if we only look in the right directions. This book can help focus our gaze.
Noel –
A great synopsis of Hancock’s take on things. Thanks. It gets my brain into high gear…
“…a group of survivors (the Magicians) set about to reseed civilization among primitive peoples and left messages in stone that people in the distant future (us) would be able to read as evidence of their existence…”
While this is what has happened (in spite of the arkies’ holding to their wrong premises), I would argue against such a viewpoint. IMHO those post-diluvial folks had a LOT more on their minds than worrying about some possible future historians/arkies/alternate researchers and what those in the future would think. The post-diluvial builders were, IMHO, trying to RE-BUILD their former civilization and doing so without the benefit of the infrastructure. So one of their aims was to re-create the infrastructure. I’d add that they MAY have also been doing it with an eye to dealing with MORE possible incoming objects PLUS building more robustly in order to withstand another hit. Their post-diluvial civilization was a DEAD CLADE WALKING – a not quite an extinct society and noe which was on the edge. They had a minimal number of survivors – and with some of the survivors being technically trained. Those members NOW are interpreted as being priests, but were actually, IMHO, scientists and engineers (the ones Hancock calls “Magicians”, it seems). They held it together for as long as they could – and they ALMOST made it. After their failure, life on Earth was “back to the stone age”, but with a lot left from the Dead Clade Walking period – which we call “megalithic sites”.
“…notably the Washington scablands which some think could not have been formed by the episodic drainings of Lake Missoula, as most geologists accept, because a much greater melting was required that could only have come from a cometary impact on the ice.”
This is a VERY good take on this. I need to get the book and read it, to see his exact points, but overall, I would agree with GH. There we have the BIGGEST and BADDEST scouring on record, and there is every reason to see if it can connect with the YDIH. To NOT try to connect it is, frankly, irresponsible. So GH is leading the push, and even if it turns out not correct, it should be one of the first things to check out.
“…In all of these places, it tells of surprising discoveries that have several things in common: they are of unknown origin and seem to be, on close examination, much older than archaeologists dare to consider, and they have stylistic similarities that suggest they came from a common ancient source.”
Absolutely correct. When features of ceramics or art or architecture are ever found, the first direction arkies go is to assume identity in time and/or place. But when it comes to megalithic sites the first direction is to deny or ignore the evidence of common design and common technology – evidence which is written in BOLD letters (metaphorically speaking) all OVER the megalithic structures.
“…In doing so he [GH] makes some assumptions about certain events and how they were connected, but he also presents many facts that support his ideas.”
I have read PLENTY of academic papers (and will read many, many more), and I can say this with no misrepresentation at all:
Academics are given free rein to make exactly such assumptions and connections, and no one bat an eye. Alternate researchers are castigated for doing the same thing. GH does a good job of it, and I daresay his batting average is quite a bit better than the academics. The academics seem to always be back on their heels when new evidence comes in, because it so often contradicts and erases their assumed realities about the past. On the other hand, the new evidence seems to most of the time tend to agree with the solid alternate researchers (like GH).
The weighting of evidence seems to keep undercutting the “standard model” and add fodder to the alternative researcher positions on things.
“…Was the past as he says? Maybe, but likely not. He did not prove his case (it is not possible at this time)”
Exactly. There is a LONG way to go, but the trend is in OUR direction, not theirs.
Guys, take a look at the photos of the spear point my friend Charles Helm of Champaign, IL has had on his shelf for 3 decades:
https://www.flickr.com/photos/33314128@N06/albums
Feedback, PLEASE! What do you all think?
The specific album is actually here: https://www.flickr.com/photos/33314128@N06/albums/72157659346605715
Steve,
Nice piece your friend has, but it is not a projectile point.
It is a chopper or hand axe.
It is too wide and to thick to be an effective point or knife.
But just the right proportions to be a chopper.
What’s most interesting, is its striking resemblance to a Neanderthal mousterian hand axe.
There is a decent image of a HSN hand axe on this page.
http://pages.ucsd.edu/~dkjordan/arch/tools.html
Where did your friend find it, upper Midwest?
An evaluation of Mandan and Arikara skulls shows one individual with a definative Neanderthal trait, it has a retro molar gap.
It is a large gap at the back of the lower mandible.
Austin Whitall has a good blog entry about retro molar gap.
http://patagoniamonsters.blogspot.com/2015/04/mandan-arikara-neandertal-retromolar.html?m=1
His blog also hits on some interesting things, that many anthropologists don’t want to dog to deep into, as it may upset the apple cart
Steve
“… While this is what has happened (in spite of the arkies’ holding to their wrong premises), I would argue against such a viewpoint … those post-diluvial folks had a LOT more on their minds than worrying about … what those in the future would think.”
That is a very good catch and you are absolutely right – you nailed Hancock’s message perfectly. I should clarify what Hancock actually said, which I summarized a bit too much. The messages in stone were, of course, the Sphinx and the Giza pyramids. The pyramids were built around 2500 BC, not immediately after the cataclysm in 10,800 BC. Their goal WAS to re-build their former civilization, as Hancock says multiple times. There is obviously an 8,000-year gap, which is a problem that Hancock noted. He handled it by surmising that the knowledge of the Magicians, whom he also calls the Sages and who were not immortal, was handed down through what amounted to a priesthood (as you noted), and it was they who were the architects. This is one of Hancock’s assumptions, stemming from the Edfu texts, which I thought was a bit weak, since 8,000 years is a long time to maintain anything. But the astronomical alignments are obviously there. The pyramids were a representation of a star cult and were not built as tombs, as Egyptologists have always held. Hancock thinks that there is more to them that is yet to be discovered.
Steve, you should write your own book(s).
“… they MAY have also been doing it with an eye to dealing with MORE possible incoming objects PLUS building more robustly in order to withstand another hit.”
The book describes the vast underground tunnel complexes in Turkey which are impossible to date, since they were in use until modern times. They possibly were originally constructed for the very purpose of surviving another hit and the subsequent climate disruption.
I don’t know where to put the following, but the Tusk has followed the Asteroid plus >insert name here< Traps eruption thread a number of times.
We now have "reputable scientists" going there.
See:
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2015/10/151001153038.htm
Asteroid impact, volcanism were one-two punch for dinosaurs
New dates for Deccan Traps eruptions puts them within 50,000 years of impact
Date: October 1, 2015
Source: University of California – Berkeley
Summary: The debate whether an asteroid impact or volcanic eruptions in India led to the mass extinction 66 million years ago is becoming increasingly irrelevant, as new dates for the eruptions show that the two catastrophes were nearly simultaneous. Scientists found that the eruptions accelerated within 50,000 years of the impact and were likely reignited by the impact, which may have generated magnitude 9 earthquakes or stronger everywhere on Earth.
Wow, I posted 2 days ago (I thought) and it didn’t take…
CevinQ –
I have to agree with you, that the piece is not a spear point but most likely a hand axe or scraper. I doubt the scraper, because the edges aren’t that acute and/or sharp (though the edge is QUITE finely produced). It fits in the hand well. But why the full edge is needed from one side all the way around the forward knapped edge to the other side of the break seems a bit odd.
I was NOT able to find anything quite like it on Google images. The closest was an Achulean hand axe at https://www.pinterest.com/pin/303993043574921431/ . . . But that one is 100,000 years old. 100kya for an artifact from an Illinois field is not going to fly with anybody.
As to your link to the hand axe – they are not even close to being the same, IMHO. (That other one is also an Achulean and is from Africa.) The text there talks about the “un-chipped end being the grip end. Charley’s piece has no un-chipped end… The worked edge goes full around the curved edge.
So, all in all, I am not satisfied with the hand-axe assignation, either. But it seems the most likely.
Noell –
I need to get GH’s book and read it. I am CERTAIN that you are conveying GH’s meaning well. (I got it, didn’t I?…LOL)
That 8,000 year gap is quite troubling, and I need to dig in and see exactly how GH arrived at the 2500 year gap.
I DO agree on the Magician/Sage terminology as FAR better than the arkies’ meme of them being priests, as in religious mumbo jumbo priests (which I kee saying is idiotic and insulting, not only to the sages, but to the people the arkies always assert “believed in” (read “got suckered in”) the “magic” of the ones who knew stuff from an earlier time.
I am re-reading the TERRIFIC book “1491” by Charles Mann, and there is a Nahuatl term – tlamatini, a “thinker-teacher” or one “who himself was writing and wisdom” – a term of great respect for some kind of real-world KNOWLEDGE and EXPERIENCE (and specifically NOT not as an intermediary with “the gods”). I think that this is a much better concept than that of a dominant religious priesthood which lorded it over the populace.
This tlamatini principle/essence is somewhat close to the Egyptian ibis-headed god Thoth/Tehuti, who was in “the later history of ancient Egypt… heavily associated with the arbitration of godly disputes, the arts of magic, the system of writing, the development of science, and the judgment of the dead. [Wiki]” I’ve long understood it that the science aspect specifically applied to architecture.
I have come to understand that it is probably a coincidence that the term/syllable “teoti” is associated with pyramids in the early Teotihuacán culture in Mexico. This designation is a later, post-Columbian development, not the Mexica’s term.
The “1491” book is a great un-doer of many myths about the pre-hispanic world. I can recommend it VERY highly.
Noell –
I personally don’t agree that the star alignments as Bauval depicts them is “obviously there”, though I am not trying to win anyone over. The “misalignment” angles are not the same, as I see it, between Orion’s belt and the Giza pyramids. It is somewhat close, but IMHO no cigar.
Just because there are non-colinear points does not necessarily mean anything.
If we are to assign such meaning to the Giza pyramids and call it a star cult, then why not also say that the stone circle peoples were also a star cult? I DO think that the stone circles were used for searching the sky, but not in the way it is currently envisioned (with all due respect to what has been found so far). I think they don’t take it far ENOUGH. But I don’t see it as a star cult. ANY depiction of ancients as “mumbo jumbo gullibles” makes me want to scream, and using the word “cult” just gives the arkies too much credit for having got it right. I am certain they have NOT, and that there were real-world reasons for studying the heavens.
…I AM working on a book, but it will take YEARS to finish – I have to depend on others to do the research and find pieces of my puzzle. I am not in control of any of it. But when they read things one way, their FACTS tell me something different, and it actually seems to make a good and internally consistent hypothesis (…almost…). It is the “almost” which has me holding back. (As an engineer I want more solidity than I have so far.)
Noel –
“The book describes the vast underground tunnel complexes in Turkey which are impossible to date, since they were in use until modern times.”
I am not sure that this is the case.. I would think they could still date them – at least tentatively – by C14 dating the organics in the soil layers outside the tunnels at the depth of the bottom surface (AND TOP, TOO?) of the tunnels. Fluids leaching out of the tunnels and into the soils may affect the dating, but until they’ve actually SEEN such leaching, they should not assume it to be the case. If the tunnel walls are solid rock, such leaching should be spotty and/or minimal.
Steve; Welcome back! I just came back from a week away from work. Now I’m back to relax (work?) I have a mapping site that does antipode mapping. It’s called a tunneling map. I believe they go into the earth at 90o from what ever point you give them. I tried to use it to see if there was an antipodal point between the Gulf of Mexico and the Deccan Traps, Not directly. The Gulf antipode is in the Indian Ocean about 2/3rds of the way between Madagascar and the Australian coast. A question that came to mind was the angle of impact; Does the angle of impact affect the angle of the antipode? If so it just might work out. Another question about the arcing you saw on the tunnel walls is:; Was it going up or down? I guess it doesn’t really matter but at the stone mill we also did some material removal by doing a shallow down cut then moving horizontally across the surface to remove a curved section of stone then drop down a bit again and repeat but we had to stop when max width had been met. Again to make square corners we would hand pitch the remaining material to make a sharp corner. To make a rounded corner we would use a hand (air)tool that was pre-shaped to the required radius. How it was done with copper tooling is a mystery.
Stve,
Re the tunnels. The tunnels were mentioned by a fourth century BC Greek historian so they are at least that old, but how much older no one knows. A new tunnel complex, the biggest yet found, was discovered in 2014, so it seems there might be some way to do C14 dating.
“1491” sounds like a book I need to read. It is often not obvious where to turn for useful info that is not loaded with hogwash. I appreciate any help I can get.
One of my favorite books in recent years is “Eden in the East”, which examines the idea that civilization began in Sundaland (Indonesia), and that when it was flooded at the end of the Ice Age, the population dispersed across Austronesia to India, Mesopotamia and other areas, and that this was the source of Sumerian culture. Hancock mentions this in “Underworld”, and both books discuss the progression of the sea level rise and land submergence in some detail. Hancock notes in “Magicians” that Danny Natawidjaja, the Indonesian archaeologist who is excavating Gunung Padang, thinks Sundaland was Atlantis. How long is the list of locations of Atlantis now? The Edfu texts say the Magicians’ homeland was an island that was submerged, but don’t say where.
Jim –
All that I’ve read is that when craters are formed by impact the force is ALMOST ALWAYS vertical, which is what is underlying the making of circular craters. This does not seem to be the case on very low angle impacts, such as are accepted at Rio Cuarto in Argentina, a multiple impact event identified by Peter Schultz and accepted by the impact database people over objections by others. What the dividing line is, I don’t know.
Thus, it seems that the angle of impact is probably going to put antipodes at 180° in all directions, plus or minus a few degrees. For the present I assume that IF the antipode thing is a correct concept, then the variations would be due to vagaries in the structure of the mantle and lithosphere. I am very tentative about the antipode thing myself. I am not against it, but I don’t see it as necessarily a true thing…
Jim –
Crap. My interface erased my first try at typing this…
Try again…
As to the arcs in the vertical tunnel I saw, I did not look at other vertical tunnels… Only one. That one was off to the SE of the Great Pyramid, perhaps 75-100 yards.
The notes here are NOT 43 year old memories. I noted all of this at the time and have returned to it several times, including during my time there and soon thereafter. The following points are what I recorded then and reviewed several times. I do not have my notes of that anymore. But having reviewed them several times, I am confidant that the points here are the same points I noted on the trip. I was there for 2 months, and I saw the tunnel more than once.
1. The tunnel was essentially square in cross-section and vertical.
2. The arcs I noticed and focused on were on the South wall of the tunnel.
3. Let’s refer to the extreme top point of each arc as 0° and call that Top Dead Center (TDC).
4. That puts the centerpoint/pivot point of each arc directly below the TDC point (as it should).
5. The TDC point was, to the best I recall, closer to the East wall than to the West wall. It MAY have centered in the East-West direction, but I don’t think it was quite centered. I recall it being a little bit closer to the East wall.
6. I did not focus on the arcs West of TDC. I focused almost all my attention on the arcs East of TDC.
7. The downward angle of the East portion of the arcs as they dead-headed into (went toward and then STOPPED just short) the West wall was about 40°. In saying this, 0° would be horizontal. I would put the +/- at +20°/-10°, making the downward angle at 30°-60°. It seemed to NOT be 45°, but somewhat close. At no point did any of the arcs even come CLOSE to being tangent to the corner. THIS is what startled me and made me look at all of this closely.
8. THIS IS IMPORTANT: NO TWO ARCS HAD THE SAME CENTER PIVOT POINT. Looking at any two adjacent arcs, the arc on top was not parallel to the lower one. Though they were about 1/2″ (maybe 3/4″) wide at TDC, they were closer (vertically) near the East wall. (This seemed a consistent observation for each and every vertically adjacent pair of arcs.
9. That last point – the NON-concentricity of the arcs – was a shock to my brain. It told me that the pivot point was moved DOWN from the top arc to the second one.
10. Since the arcs seemed to all have the SAME RADIUS, I could only conclude that the mechanism HOLDING the swinging arm was moved down (or up) about 1/2″-3/4″ for the next arc. Whicever spacing it was, this spacing appeared to be consistent for all the cuts that I paid attention to.
11. Each arc also seemed to have only ONE cut being made. We saw no evidence of multiple sweeps making concentric cuts from the same pivot point. I.e., only ONE tool mark was noticeable for each arc.
12. The DEPTH of each cut seemed to be about 1/8″. This also was a shock to my brain, if I was correct in thinking each was made in one sweep. Limestone resists being cut a LOT, even though it is considered a “softer” stone.
13. The WIDTH of the cutting tool (the “bit”) seemed wider than the spacing of the arcs at TDC.
14. Given the depth of each cut and the amount of limestone removed in each cut/arc, if it was made in one sweep, then a VERY sizable normal force had to have been applied. THIS made me surmise how the overall frame/structure of the mechanism was designed, with bracing strong enough to overcome the resistance of the limestone to being cut. (I thought then, and now, that the frame probably extended all the way to the North wall, using it as leverage to back up the swinging cutting arm. Thus (at LEAST) that arm would have needed rollers to bear against the North wall.
So, I saw non-concentric arced cuts, spaced downward, made apparently by some mechanism that could be advanced up or down the tunnel.
Noel –
As to “Eden in the East”, I have to ask if the book includes MtDNA haplotype in its figuring. Off the top of my head, I am pretty sure that the MtDNA data shows SE Asian haplotypes being younger than African and the Levant. I might be wrong, but that is what I recall.
As to Sundaland possibly being Atlantis, it is but one of dozens of places that modern researchers claim is Atlantis. With Plato’s degree of education (and Solon’s), it is inconceivable to me that they misplaced the Pillars of Hercules, which was at that time clearly and widely known.
There is no reason to assert or believe that Atlantis would have been the only location that had some measure of architecture. Gunung Padang being a separate culture is not impossible at all. Gobekli Tepe is older than the date Plato reported that Solon gave for the destruction of Atlantis, and so far no one is connecting Gobekli Tepe to an Atlantean culture. IMHO, we do not have sufficient information about ANY of the sites, so IMO ALL of the assertions about alternative Atlantis sites are premature.
In addition, Plato made a point of metioning that the area JUST OUTSIDE of the Pillars of Hercules was made impassible by debris from the sinking of Atlantis. Almost no one mentions this. IMHO this point makes it obvious that Mediterranean sailors were sailing in the waters affected. This point alone rules out Gunung Padang. it also rules out Peru and Antarctica and almost all other sites, including Santorini, which was and is a stones’s throw from Athens’ port of Pireaus; Santorini is directly on the way to Crete, so I am 100% certain if Atlantis was at Santorini Plato would have known about it and discussed THAT location, not something outside the Pillars of Hercules. Plato was not STUPID.
So far in my 45+ years of knowing about this, EVERY alternative site has had some very pertinent point of Plato’s account conveniently left out, or had an assumption that Plato was stupid. Bottom line: Plato was not stupid.
In addition, Indonesia was – as far as we know – completely unknown to the ancient Greeks. In addition the Atlantean story includes the Greeks FIGHTING the Atlanteans – and all the Greeks DYING, too – and SAVING the entire Mediterranean area and its peoples from the invaders from Atlantis. Gunung Padang is completely unsuitable for such a scenario. No Greek army went to Indonesia. Any that would have would include in the account of SOME place east of Egypt – Arabia, Babylon, Persia, India, etc. They were fully aware of places as far to the east as Persia. Transplanting the Greek army all the way to Indonesia without them having stepped foot in the intervening countries is impossible.
Being old – by itself – does not mean “We found Atlantis!” is a true claim.
I do not know much about the Efu texts (almost nothing at this moment). I found an Atlantis skeptical book that discusses this in particular. https://www.academia.edu/547838/Atlantis_Egyptian_Genesis The authors admit to being skeptical about Atlantis but are open to SOME advanced civilization. I intend to read up on what they have to say about the Edfu-Atlantis connection. At this moment I have no clear idea what they’ve come up with… But I want to look into it right away. Please, Noel, if you want to read it, too, go at it.
Thanks for the detailed description of the tunnel and markings you saw in Egypt. It appears that it shoots down everything I threw out at you. That plus the fact that the amounts of power needed to run my machines was not available at that time as far as anyone knows. Sawing out the main shafting and pitching out the corners is the only way I can see to accomplish what you saw but the HOW is the rub, as in all things Egyptian and monolithic.
Jim –
I tend to think that their thinking processes were VERY different from our modern ways of machining and construction. And WE are so stuck in our ways that it is a bridge we may never be able to cross. I hope not, though. I’d dearly love to know how and why they did things…
FYI check out “latest” post. At least I am here for the big stuff!
In general; I was going over some info on the monoliths at Stone Henge when a similarity struck my mind. Most of these monolithic rings are at least 2 outer rings with a center stone or focal point of some kind. Could these have built to mimic an impact crater with the ability to predict the next round of incoming objects. Just saying.
Jim –
An interesting take on those stone circles. IMHO, they had to have had a real-world function (as opposed to a ceremonial one). I say that primarily because people do not DO that much work for no good reason. The arkies all think that ancient man was all mumbo jumbo and gullible, but I don’t think so. I think they had to be VERY practical in their world of no infrastructure and so much time spent staying alive.
And as to the sunrise/set thing, I insist that the OTHER stones also had functions. But what WERE those reasons, if not something to do with things in the sky – real things in the sky?
With the stone circles, there is SO much similarity to the 1800s garden observatories of the 1700s and 1800s – which were done LARGE because without techonology, large is the ONLY way to get precision to astronomical observations. The larger, the more precise.
And if stone circles were built in either 2700 BCE or 10,000 BCE, what would possibly BE the real-world purpose, if not to observe dangerous bodies in the sky just above the horizon?
I/we may be wrong, but the answer lies in that direction…
What it would be like to actually get into the minds of those people….