First a news report about a group of people who carried out a very strange investigation...
On the (BBC) World Today ... the Statues that Walked. A National Geographic investigation solves an old mystery: how did an ancient people move 5-ton statues on Easter Island? Join us at 0250 and 0350 GMT to hear Carl Lipo and Terry Hunt explain all. © Photo by Sheela Sharma...
Well, to begin with, they are so well educated that they don't need to do any actual research into these statues that they are trying to explain ...
The Stone Statues in Easter Island have bodies !
This is absolutely incredible. Here we've been thinking for all these years that they were just heads. They are going to be absolutely huge when they are completely excavated. It all just adds to the mystery of these amazing sculptures. Maybe now they can get more information about them seeing as they have writings on them.
Note: It took almost a century for us to discover that these huge statues in front of us have bodies. What else haven't we noticed yet?
Note 2: Since these were made they have been covered with over 20 feet of earth!
Moment Of Zen
Possible extent of underground structures across the earth(from the BBC)...
Seventeen lost pyramids are among the buildings identified in a new satellite survey of Egypt.
More than 1,000 tombs and 3,000 ancient settlements were also revealed by looking at infra-red images which show up underground buildings.
Initial excavations have already confirmed some of the findings, including two suspected pyramids.
The work has been pioneered at the University of Alabama at Birmingham by US Egyptologist Dr Sarah Parcak.
[Case Study for the Disneylanders of Archaeology] First study the differences in buildings in NY, London and Dubai... then study images of ancient stone slab and column/sentinel cultures.
The following is from the website Smithsonian.com:
"Six miles from Urfa, an ancient city in southeastern Turkey, Klaus Schmidt has made one of the most startling archaeological discoveries of our time: massive carved stones about 11,000 years old, crafted and arranged by prehistoric people who had not yet developed metal tools or even pottery. The megaliths predate Stonehenge by some 6,000 years. The place is called Gobekli Tepe
The tallest pillars tower 16 feet and, Schmidt says, weigh between seven and ten tons. As we walk among them, I see that some are blank, while others are elaborately carved: foxes, lions, scorpions and vultures abound, twisting and crawling on the pillars' broad sides."
Here are some images from the archeological site:
It seems like cultures using large stones may have existed from England all the way to Tibet!
Check out these similarities...
Fist a sample of stone structures of England taken from this website:
Then there are these monolith stones in Tibet from this website:
Could these be similar cultures? What do you think?
So we found monolithic stones in Turkey 11,000 years old and other cultures seem to have been using this concept in their building as well. In fact, the artwork on the 11,000 years old monoliths and its precision in building with stones of huge weight almost seems to suggest that the best monolith builders were the earlier ones. Weird huh?
Are these ancient stone cultures remnants of an earlier time?
"Very deep." Wrote Thomas Mann at the opening of his mythologically conceived tetralogy, Joseph and His Brothers. "is the well of the past. Should we not call it bottomless?" And he then observed: "The deeper we sound, the further down into the lower world of the past we probe and press, the more do we find that the earliest foundations of humanity, its history and culture, reveal themselves unfathomable." Primitive Mythology by Joseph Campbell page 5With this quote Joseph Campbell began his study in mythology. What I want to examine in this post is just how far back we can trace civilization, cities or even just large communities. During Joseph Campbell’s time certain excavations (such as Catalhoyuk) had just been uncovered which was beginning to push back the horizon of when our civilization actually began. Since the discoveries were made after he had finished his books he wrote about these recent archeological finds in his forward to the book on Primitive Mythology and pointed out how these discoveries had pushed back the timelines he had outlined in this book. In addition to this, other fascinating discoveries have completely destroyed the original timeline of civilizational development outlined in Campbell’s early overview. However, this was something he expected as he noted, "there will, no doubt, be as many astonishing disclosures during the seventies and eighties as there were in the decade of the sixties."(Forward from Primitive Mythology) With the discovery of Catalhoyuk we now have evidence of an established villages cluster of at least 10,000 people living together over hundreds of years. The village life is firmly established around 7,500 B.C. So this spreads out the cradle of civilization from the fertile crescent more towards Central Asia and it also pushes back the dates of the earliest cities. The first examples of developed pottery is actually found (rather suddenly) in catalhoyuk which suggests that its was a growing and innovative society. With the Mesopotamian civilization firmly established in textbooks as the source of civilization everyone has heard of the later cities of Babylon and Egypt. The newer archeological finds, such as Catalhoyuk from the 1960's, haven't quite made it into school or college textbooks. However, museums seem to be catching up to the discoveries of the last century.
Next is a group of cities made of brick which seem to have materialized from nowhere;
"The so-called Harappa stage of the great cities of Mohenjo-daro, Chanhu-daro, and Harappa (c. 2500-1200/1000 B.C), which bursts abruptly into view, without preparation, already fully formed and showing many completely obvious signs of inspiration from the earlier high centers of the West (i.e. fertile crescent), yet undeniable signs, also, of a native Indian tradition – this too already well developed. As professor W. Norman Brown has suggested, a native Indian center (i.e., a mythogenetic zone) somewhere either in the south or in the Ganges-Jumna area would seem to be indicated, where the characteristically Indian traits, unknown at this time farther west, must have come into form. [Joseph Campbell - Primitive Mythology- Page 435]Other interesting facts about the cities of Mohenjodaro and Harappais that the bricks used in making them are uniform, i.e. they had a system to measure and weigh stuff accurately. They had their own sewage system, public baths and the structure of the architecture suggest an egalitarian society, but there are no signs of architectural development. That means these cities arrived fully developed and then went into decline. There are no in-between cities or towns where the Mohenjodaro/Happan style of architecture is first used. With the discovery of ancient cities off the coast of India, the sudden appearance of Mohenjodara and Harrapa makes more sense. Cities that existed before a rise in the oceans(that began at the end of the last ice age) would explain the sudden appearance of cities like Mohenjodaro and Harrapa;
"The carbon dating of 7500 BC obtained for the wooden piece recovered from the site changes the earlier held view that the first cities appeared in the Sumer Valley [in Mesopotamia] around 3000 BC," said B Sasisekaran of India's National Science Academy.
The images gathered over the past six months led to a surprising discovery - a series of well-defined geometric formations were clearly seen, spread irregularly across a nine-kilometre (five-mile) stretch, a little beneath the sea bed. Some of them closely resemble an acropolis - or great bath - known to be characteristic of the Harappan civilisation. The Gulf of Cambay is one of the largest tidal areas in the world - with a current of very high velocity - and so it is conceivable that the area may well have submerged an entire ancient settlement, Mr Ravindran said to the BBC.
Pakistani officials say they are doing their best to save one of the most important archaeological sites in south Asia. Mohenjo Daro, in the southern Pakistani province of Sindh, is one of the first planned cities to have been built anywhere in the world.
But the Bronze Age site has been rapidly deteriorating, leading some experts to fear it could soon be lost.
The design of Mohenjodaro is extremely similar to the one that is underwater and 9000 years old, suggesting that it was a part of, or remnant of, the same civilization/culture!
[Underwater city example 1] ****Semi-detached houses with gardens, clothes drying in the courtyards, walls and well-made streets - Pavlopetri epitomises the suburban way of life. Except that it's a Bronze Age port, submerged for millennia off the south-east coast of Greece.
This summer it became the first underwater city to be fully digitally mapped and recorded in three dimensions, and then brought back to life with computer graphics.**** http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-15191614
[Underwater city example 2] ****Britain's own underwater "Atlantis" could be revealed for the first time with hi-tech underwater cameras.
Marine archaeologist Stuart Bacon and Professor David Sear, of the University of Southampton, will explore the lost city of Dunwich, off the Suffolk coast.
Dunwich gradually disappeared into the sea because of coastal erosion.
"It's about the application of new technology to investigate Britain's Atlantis, then to give this information to the public," Professor Sear said.
Mr Bacon, director of the Suffolk Underwater Studies, first located the debris of the lost city in the 1970s.**** http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/england/7187239.stm
[Underwater city example 3] ****The remains of what has been described as a huge lost city may force historians and archaeologists to radically reconsider their view of ancient human history.
Marine scientists say archaeological remains discovered 36 metres (120 feet) underwater in the Gulf of Cambay off the western coast of India could be over 9,000 years old.
The vast city - which is five miles long and two miles wide - is believed to predate the oldest known remains in the subcontinent by more than 5,000 years.
The site was discovered by chance last year by oceanographers from India's National Institute of Ocean Technology conducting a survey of pollution.
Using sidescan sonar - which sends a beam of sound waves down to the bottom of the ocean they identified huge geometrical structures at a depth of 120ft.**** http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/south_asia/1768109.stm
[Underwater city example 4] ****A team of explorers working off the western coast of Cuba say they have discovered what they think are the ruins of a submerged city built thousands of years ago.
Researchers from a Canadian company used sophisticated sonar equipment to find and film stone structures more than 2,000 feet (650 metres) below the sea's surface.**** http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/
We have all learned in school that the first cities emerged in 'The Fertile Crescent" in Mesopotamia around 4000 B.C. and it is from here that civilization is supposed to have spread.
As stated at the University of Chicago's website: "Ancient Mesopotamia is where the world's first cities appeared around 4000 - 3500 B.C."
Yet remains of a city has been found in Turkey that has so far been dated to 6300 B.C. That's 2300 years before the one in Mesopotamia is supposed to have started! Best part, and are still excavating i.e. they haven't reached the point where the city ends. This find is called Catal Huyuk.
The following is from the Science Museum of Minnesota:
"9,000 years ago, this place was home to one of the world's largest settlements!
A couple of images from CatalHoyuk.com:
You want to see something really surprising?
Check out this picture of the Sphinx;
Now compare the above picture to a carved out structure found underwater;
Very similar. The head is larger. But many archeologists have commented that the Sphinx's head is too small for it's body and may have been chipped away later from an original version (more on the mysterious Sphinx later).
There are extensive erosion patterns on the Sphinx and it's surrounding structures. It is normally accepted that the Sphinx got it's erosion because of the wind and sand as it was supposed to have been built around 2500 B.C. That area has been covered in desert since about 4000 B.C. so water erosion was simply never considered. Except by some geologists;
"In 1996, a pair of controversial Egyptologists claimed that rain, not just wind and sand, caused significant erosion of the Sphinx; geologists backed up their claim. Considering that the region's moist prehistoric climate shifted to current arid conditions around 4,000 B.C., rain damage would indicate that the Sphinx was built well before Khafre's time." (snippet from here)
This is what wind erosion looks like - the erosion pattern moves sideways:
This is what water erosion looks like - the erosion pattern moves from up to down an creates cracks or fissures:
This is what erosion on the southern wall of the sphinx looks like:
Notice the wall behind the Sphinx, how the erosion pattern goes from up to down. Exactly the kind that water erosion would cause. Notice the Sphinx itself, how new it looks...it's because of a reconstruction project. Bricks have been placed all around the Spinx where you could previously see more water erosion.
So basically the accepted theory is that wind and sand erosion caused the erosion of the Sphinx because if water erosion is accepted then the structure would have to predate the accepted dates of the Egyptian civilization.
Besides the obvious water erosion patterns there is also one simple fact that gets overlooked by conventional Egyptologists. Sand will pile up against rocks or stones and cover or mostly cover them.
If a stone is covered in sand then it won't get eroded by the wind or loose particles of sand. In other words, the stones are protected.
When Napoleon visited the Sphinx in 1798 it was covered in sand:
This picture is from the early 1900s when the Sphinx was being excavated:
1. The Sphinx has water erosion patterns when it should have wind and sand erosion.
2. Sand piles up against rock. So the Sphinx has been covered in sand for most of its history, protected.
How could the Sphinx possibly have gotten water erosion while it was covered in sand?
What do you think?
More of my ORIGINAL research:
Evidence for ritual and hunting in ancient humans
How artists perception influence their drawings of ancient humans (Neanderthal example) [Note: If archeologists will stop calling ancient humans 'ape look alikes' then the artist drawings of ancient humans with ape-like feature will stop.]
The Fragmentation of Knowledge Part 1 [Or, The case against over-specialization in theory based academics]