Now we talk about ancient stuff.

When I was young, I saved up my money to buy a Spirograph. My Mom and Dad made me burn it because they thought it was satanic.

Blue eyes were supposedly a mutation, as was RH negative blood. But why the similar iconography in cultures isolated from each other?

How about the weird cave drawings in Horseshoe Canyon Utah?

R4 But what of you released a Pandora's Box of tormented spirits onto the world, by burning it?!

blue eyes would be an incredibly rare mutation in many cultures, but not impossible. I wouldn't be surprised if these cultures held various superstitious beliefs about them and documented them in their iconography. I don't totally discredit wilder theories, but it also doesn't mean that they had some immediate connection.

R7 How about art that depicts almost precisely the same imagery, with very slight variations or similar structures and traditions? Do you think we're just missing some contact that happened between civilizations earlier than we thought? Do humans just develop at relatively the same place in time, unless civilizations fight certain changes?

Pyramids aligned in same place, Aztec and Egyptian

Stegosaurus depicted in Cambodian temple.

Do you think some alien planet's version of James Spader came here through a Stargate thousands of years ago and was organically compatible enough to have knocked up some humans, thus spreading his blue eyed trait in the population?

What if ancient humans thought he was a Sun god, when he was really just some alien planet's version of the preppie prick from an alien version of a Molly Ringwald film?

aliens. . .for sure

R12 Isn't it the ultimate, snobby academic's dream? To find a portal to a place where they'll be worshiped like a god king on that planet?

So we've determined that if you have blue eyes, you may be a descendant of James Spader's seed, from when he traveled back thousands of years in time through a Stargate.

R11, the stegosaurus is my spirit animal. Don't forget to shine bright like a diamond!

The architecture traits: Most often it's just about the most practical ways to create sturdy structures. Scaninavian wooden hutts have celings and walls fashioned in similar manners to Papua New Guinea, but probably there's no connection.

R17 is correct, and some of the comparisons and attendant links seem crude at best.

The stegosaurus isn't that much of a mystery. Ancient cultures could have easily found fossils just as modern cultures did, and there's one theory that the very common legends of dragons were influenced by the discovery of dinosaur remains.

Also, practically all ancient cultures believed there had been a flood.

The stegosaurus was depicted with other animals of the Cambodian time frame. There were no "fantasy" animals, just real, every day creatures the people saw and interacted with.

Just because WE havent yet found a connection among these ancient cultures, doesn't mean they were never in contact with each other.

The ancient Egyptians were in contact with many civilizations across the Mediterranean & Mid East regions - Greeks, Macedonians, perhaps tribes in modern day France, Spain, Italy, Turkey. Blue eyes could have been a genetic import.

Ancients Asians came to N America & traveled southward over eons. No written records. We have no idea who they may have encountered along the way. Theres simply no proof. Doesn't mean it didnt happen.

Hmm I like this thread topic

R21 here.

Ive never bought the assertion that the Americas, from Alaska to Argentina, were completely uninhabited by humans until Asians crossed the Bering Sea.

This is all so fascinating to me, and I appreciate the links.

santeria has many similar characteristics to celtic, greek, roman and hinduism practices,even to ancient judaism as well. in fact, long time ago it was found in an ancient temple in turkey the exact same symbol of Shango as drawn by Yorubans in West Africa.

Yorubans

Any polytheistic faith is bound to have similarities with an other polytheistic faith since the same things often where the once that matters, like crops, sea, seafaring, sun, moon, war, fertility etc.

Even Christendom and Judaism can trace their roots to the same polytheistic faith, with "El" as the Zeuzic or Odinesque-like characther.

.........

I want to know why R4's parents thought the Spirograph was satanic.

Greco-Buddhist:

Fusion before its time:

5,000-Year-Old Nativity Scene Found in Egypt: Ancient cave art in the Egyptian Sahara desert depicts two parents, a baby and a star in the east.

This thread needs to be revived!

[quote] R19: Also, practically all ancient cultures believed there had been a flood.

This could be due to any rare, hard rain. We have floods today.

Nonetheless, the Black Sea was once much smaller, and fresh water. Settlements were on the shore, just like today. At some point, a connection (which still exists today) between the Mediterraneanand and Black seas was made, and the Black Sea converted to salt water, and it flooded the shoreline settlements. That might have been the source of the myth.

One of the Pharos of Egypt was tested to find tobacco and cocaine in his crypt or body, I can remember which Pharos. These plants are not native to the Old World, meaning someone travelled from the Americas to the old world, more than 5000 years before the Vikings. I'd imagine they went back and forth, so as to know to bring these items to a place where they don't already exist.

[quote] R21: Ancients Asians came to N America & traveled southward over eons. No written records. We have no idea who they may have encountered along the way. Theres simply no proof. Doesn't mean it didnt happen.

Polinesians made it to Hawaii. It wouldn't surprise me if they made it to South America, too.

American Indians only came over to the Americas about 10,000-15,000 years ago, during the last ice age.

I've heard that the Great Lakes' shorelines are changing. Apparently, the landmass was weighed-down by a mile deep glacier, and that weighed the land mass down. It is still springing up, 10,000 years after the last glacier receded.

I understand why the grand canyon is so deep. The Colorado river cuts through the rock over millions of years. But why is the canyon so wide? My hunch is it was due to glacier melt, but I've never heard an explanation of any kind.

There is a huge canyon in Missoula, I believe, that was carved out in a day, the experts think, when an ice dam broke at the end of the last ice age. This huge lake behind the dam was emptied and made its way to the Columbia river to the Pacific.

Has anyone here seen Joyce DeWitt,Susan Richardson or Donna Pescow?

Lucille Ball in Mame

The stegosaurus is an elephant.

Cleopatra lived closer to our own time, than she did to the pyramid builder's time.

As Illuminati Queen, I know all and, if you're intelligent, you can decode the secrets of the universe through my music. There are other royalty such as the Gaga and the KatyPerry who have pieces of the puzzle, but not the whole thing as I do.

I like those Nazca Lines

Our Queen Bey only pretends to be retarded in every interview she gives.

When your husband and children are so beautiful, and you are such a talented singer, humility is your only respite.

Cyrus the Great (559-530 B.C.) was a Babylonian king. He came to the throne with an enslaved Jewish population which he freed. It's hard to imagine anyone doing that in that day and age.

Yeah. Especially since there's no enslaved Jewish population to be freed. On the face of the Earth. I'd say we have our problems but this time period is a lot more gentle and humane than when Cyrus was king.

I think there'll be a proof positive discovery connecting an ancient civilization to the Americas.

A buried shipwreck, skeletons, coins, something like that, from Asia or the Middle East.

It'll happen. Its just a matter of time.

During hard economic times, people seek comfort in mysticism and the occult. They notice things that seem unusual (at least to them) and automatically jump to an explanation involving supernatural forces or space aliens, even if the phenomenon is perfectly explainable in other ways.

Leonard Nimoy starred in the TV series "In Search of" which attempted to "find" such explanations. The series ran from 1977 to 1982, a period in which the U.S. was experiencing severe recession with high unemployment, and extremely high interest rates. Once the recession was over, the TV series faded from view.

The Earth may have been "seeded" with life by ancient aliens billions of years ago.

Nothing scares us humans more than not being on top of the food chain and not being the ultimate superior beings on this planet, because we sure wouldn't like to be treated the way we treat the things we believe are inferior.

That's why so many people are very eager to dismiss the idea of superior beings being out there or nearby.

J.R. "Bob" Dobbs explained this all to me a few years ago but then as soon as I'd achieved full awareness he wiped it from my memory.

He must have had a good reason but I don't understand it, or at least I don't remember.

In the 19th century, when the British were exploring the interior of Africa and someone died, they'd send a condolence letter home, explaining the explorer died of fever. Actually, the explorer often died in a crocidile or hippo attack.

What years constitute as being "ancient", OP?

Also Cyrus was a Persian, not a Babylonian. and a Zoroastrian, the original monotheistic religion. there is a weird and interesting theory that he actually sort of invented modern Judaism, by injecting monotheism into Judea while freeing the Jews, really the elite Jews, from Babylon and letting them return to their homeland. Had them rebuild the temple, but may have used his agents to change the entire religion from it's original polytheism to its much more familiar monotheism.

Dinosaurs vs. humans vs. giants

R56, that is a weird theory. Very weird, in fact. Do you think the Nephilim were somehow involved? That is also a weird possibility!

not sure who the Nephilim were, in whatever theory you are saying, but the theory is that Cyrus, a Zoroastrian Emperor decides to spread Zoroastrianism surreptitiously through various priests (look up the books of Ezra and Nehemia, where there are very clearly Persian agents running Judea after the return of the Jews), and they inject a very different religion into the very ancient, but largely polythestic religion of Judaism after the restoration of the temple. there is no doubt that a lot of ancient Judaism was polytheistic, and a lot of that survives in the Old Testament, psalms about a council of Gods, God making Man and Woman in "our" image, etc. It is intriguing.

Abraham was monotheistic.

there was no Abraham. you know that, right?

Recently read that there are potential superbug bacteria under the permafrost in far northern Russia.

Only, with global warming, its not so perma anymore.

There is some worry that if any of that bacteria were virulent, it could cause a global, possibly untreatable, pandemic.

And lets speculate about whats under the ice in Antarctica...

Gobekli Tepe.

There's a Borg under the ice.

R59, the creation account for Genesis, with God referring to Himself as "we"and "our" is considered by rabbinic texts to be the royal "we" used by nobility. And later interpretations by Christianity say that God refers to Himself as "we" because God is a Trinity.

Even the virus from 1919 would do a lot of damage today, R62.

r65, Who knew God was actually Queen Victoria?!

The Big Bang created space and time, so there's no such thing as "before" the Big Bang.

Newspaper accounts of giant skeletons found in nineteenth century America were very common. It seems probable there was some kind of ancient ritual of breeding people for height that we don't know about, but since it is mostly white power types who are in to this, not much investigation is being done.

The Chesapeake Bay impact crater was formed by a bolide that impacted the eastern shore of North America about 35.5 million years ago...The entire circular crater is about 85 km (53 mi) in diameter and 1.3 km (0.81 mi) deep, an area twice the size of Rhode Island, and nearly as deep as the Grand Canyon.

R68 But even the concept of "something" falls apart when we're talking about pre-time because the word itself is relative to how our human senses and intellect are able to interpret it. But there is always something and even in this context, where we have "something blindness" due to our human limitations, nothing is still something. At this point, we are just are incapable of defining what it is or was (or maybe both at the same time.)

That is interesting, R68. I have a riddle for you. Given that the Big Bang happened at a particular point, and that all matter has been ejected from that point into the vastness of the universe; if we could magically travel to the furthermost point that this ejected matter has yet reached in the universe, what would be ahead of you?

Would it be a true vacuum of an empty void, where even trace gases are not present? I'm guessing this is so. Then my question is this: did this true vacuum of an empty void exist before the Big Bang? Is it not considered to be "space" until it is occupied by matter? In which case I would argue that the BB created matter, but not actually space itself.

I can't get an answer to this on the history channel and it bugs me.

Trade routes circa 800 AD

The Big Bang may well have come from another dimension.

I also have a problem trying to wrap my head around the no-space concept. If space was created with the big bang, that would mean the universe has an edge where space was created. What's on that edge?

Blue eyes are not impossible among any group of people. But I think we forget that the ancients were more in tune with the natural world around them. Babies are often born with milky blue eyes and after death its common for eyes to turn milky blue again. Maybe blue eyes were representative of where we come from and where we go to the ancients.

The Tarim mummies in China

OP, is the Dyatlov Pass incident considered ancient, or do we need a separate thread for that?

Huskies have blue eyes. Explain that please.

They didn't release the DNA findings of King Tut because they thought the results would anger too many people.

Tut was probably a white boy.

The Nephilim were a goth band.

I don't remember what I did last week, so all this is very fascinating!

The best gift I've been given in the past couple of years is a subscription to National Geographic HISTORY, a bimonthly, advertising-free glossy that is usually fascinating from cover to cover. Just received the new issue. Among the stories are a history of mummification, a recounting of Caesar's crossing the Rubicon, new reporting on Lord Elgin looting (preserving?) the Parthenon marbles, and the trial of Joan of Arc.

They do more recent stuff, too...the current issue has a feature on US entry into WW1. Not being a shill, but those of you into this thread might enjoy this mag. I donate my used copies to the local library, which amazingly has not subscribed.

Oy..my con was way more plausible the Elron Hubbard's

Pumapunku!

The cocaine mummies are at the link, though you might have to flip through some pages to get there.

[quote] The Cocaine Mummies - Cocaine is pretty prevalent in the modern world and it sort of seems like a timeless drug. The fact is that it hasn’t always been there and that’s why German scientists, who tested the remnants of Egyptian mummies, were so floored by the prevalence of the drug. Back in 1992 scientists were testing the chemical make up of Egyptian mummy remains. Inside the bones, skin, and hair of these embalmed people the scientists found evidence of cocaine and tobacco. These drugs weren’t in Egypt at the time as the drug was cultivated in the Americas. There has been no documented trading between the two communities so the scientists were understandably baffled. Where were these mummies getting their fix?

The first humans to arrive at California's Channel Islands discovered dwarf mammoths, only about the height of a modern man. Most of the Mediterranean islands, at one time, had populations of dwarf elephants and or/hippos. Insular dwarfism is a fascinating subject: probably the best known modern example are the Key Deer in Florida. In the Caribbean, there were dwarf ground sloths.

Also Hobbits in the Shire, r85

Quite, R86.

I bin tryin' a tell ya. They bin here. They was here 10,000 - 12,000 years ago.They come in them ships surrounded by Far. Hot blue and white and orange far, and they seemed ta float when they touched ground. They stayed a real long time. hundreds a years. Maybe even 500 years or so. They was on a quest and their mission was to take local shit and make things from it, grow it and see if it could stand on its own and they did. And they made us in scientific labs with some a the stuff in that dirt. And after they seen we could make it on our own, they took aside some a the smart ones and told them to make sure they tell the story and pass it on. And so they did.

Tiwanaku!

R89 That stuff those ruins, look like they could have been in ancient Egypt. Years ago I once presented a paper analyzing various forms of mytholofy in cluding Bible stories. Amazing the similarities that exist across centuries and cultures.

r74, A camera.

Comparative mythology, R90!

Cocaine mummies!

Zoroaster didn't invent monotheism. People all over the world independently developed from polytheism through henotheism to monotheism. Judaism had already become montheistic by the time of Josiah's Yahwist reform.

Judaism did borrow from Zoroastrianism during the Exile some elements like the idea of the end of the world, the messiah, etc.

Is this thread supposed to be a subtle dig at Dustin Lance Black?

r90. You sound at the beginning of your search, as I began with comparative mythology. Once you delve more, you will arrive here:

[quote] Is this thread supposed to be a subtle dig at Dustin Lance Black?

Have horses been mentioned?

R96, how's Magicians of the Gods compared to Fingerprints of the Gods?

There were European men living in Massachusetts before the Pilgrims landed. They were scouting-out the area, fur trapping, trading, and so forth. I don't know for how long they were here.

r99, Yes, Squanto already spoke English, and had actually been to Spain and England before the Mayflower arrived. The official first permanent (European) settlement in Ohio was at Marietta in 1788, which conveniently forgets the Moravian settlement at Gnadenhutten that was established during the Revolutionary War and, of course, the Gnadenhutten Massacre of 1782.

r98, I've just started it. I read FotG so long ago, and my memory is so bad, that I couldn't tell you anyway. One thing, though; apparently the current team of archaeologists do NOT intend to dig the entire huge Gobekli Tepe Complex, so as not to "disturb" it! One bit of "breaking news" is the Ice-Age end date of 9600 B.C.E. so far agreed-upon for GT. I'll let you chase down that clue. ;-)

Gobekli Tepe might be the Cradle of Civilization. It is beyond fascinating, in age, in construction, in its carvings, in its intentional burial, and so on.

Now this is where I have a problem with public education: we never learn of any ancient sites besides the (fiction about) Egyptian pyramids; never Teotihuacan, Tiahuanaku (r89)Sacsahuaman, Baalbek, Puma Punku (r83), Carnac, etc.

Chinese exploration of the world is often left out of Western textbooks (at least it was left out of mine), but for a brief period, from 1405 to 1433, the Chinese under Ming emperor Yongle sent out numerous trade missions that reached as far as present-day Kenya. During the fourth expedition, which left China in 1413, part of the fleet led by commander Zheng He sailed to Bengal in India, where in 1414 they met envoys from the African coastal state of Malindi (now part of Kenya). The men from Malindi had brought with them as tribute giraffes, and they gave one of those giraffes to the Chinese, who took it home. A year later, Malindi sent another giraffe to China, along with a zebra and an oryx. The fifth Chinese trading expedition then brought back “an arkful of African animals, including antelopes, leopards, lions, oryxes, ostriches, rhinos, zebras — and more giraffes,” Peterson writes.

Not surprising, r99. The Puritan Pilgrims didn't arrive until 1620.

Thanks so much, R96/R101.

I will not be ignored, r94!

Okapis were 'officially' in the Congo in 1901, but somehow, the ancient Egyptians were familiar with them, and one was presented as tribute in Persepolis.

[quote]I can't get an answer to this on the history channel and it bugs me.

Try addressing your question to Chumlee c/o the Pawn Stars, r72.

But r106, Egypt is also in Africa. Solomon, Sheba, etc.?

R108, Yes, I know. I just think conventional history (or whatever history is taught at all right now) doesn't seem to like to accept how ancient societies were able to interact the way they did. We know the Egyptians traded with Nubia and Somalia and Greece and much of the ancient world, but the Congo is quite a bit out of the accepted trade routes of the Mediterranean and the Indian ocean. I'm really fascinated by the whole hidden history of our societies and cultures.

Mithras is an old Indo-Aryan god, known also in the Indian Vedic texts as Mitra. He later became very popular with men in the military in the Greek world. In fact, those men left their women and slaves alone to go worship Mithras, leaving the women and slaves alone to join Christianity.

Imagine what it was like to be a man in those days that would have made you be one of the first settlers on the North American continent? Imagine what you must have seen nature wise? Before masculinity was declared toxic? It's not ancient by any means but I've done a lot of reading on Lewis & Clark. I would have love to have done that. One of the cable channels should do a series or mini series on that.

[quote] He later became very popular with men in the military in the Greek world. In fact, those men left their women and slaves alone to go worship Mithras, leaving the women and slaves alone to join Christianity.

Quite. Mithraism was popular among the officer class while Christianity appealed more to the lower classes and regular soldiers. Christianity's more widespread adherence was one of the reasons it survived while Mithraism didn't, i.e., the ruling classes could use it more readily to manipulate the populace as the Western Empire declined.

check out the Lauren Bacall thread

For you, r109.

Pazuzu, king of the wind demons.

Yes THAT Pazuzu, immortalized in "The Exorcist".

A description of the ancient Near Eastern demon: "He stands on two legs and has human arms ending in claws, with two pairs of wings, a scorpion's tail, a snake-headed, erect penis, and a horned, bearded head with bulging eyes and snarling canine mouth."

Is ancient considered before Luise Rainer or Livvie DH?

R111 = Jack Donovan

Judaism started out polythestic, as the Jews started out as Canaanite. Later, everyone decided they had to be a new people, with a new religion. but it was all invented. there was no ancient tradition of monotheism. there was just a need for a very old religion, and a very old people, to be something different.

Prior to Abraham, his tribe were polytheistic.

there was no Abraham, but if there were, he would have been polythestic too. it's actually there in the story. his wife's (well, one of his wife's) household gods snuck out of the tent were his household gods. it's all invented after the fact. there was no monotheism until much later, and just as he was invented, GOD was invented.

God, you're tiresome, R120. That is, [italic]if[/italic] you exist.

I exist more than Abraham, and what is your anger, honey?

Passive aggression is tiresome, too, R122.

It's possible that people who do not have blue eyes had an innate awareness that blue eyes indicated being at a higher level.

It is highly unlikely the Tocharians were the first people in the Tarim Basin, many migrations would have preceded them, but without mummies.

How do the Xtians explain away the fact that their little fairy tale existed thousands of years prior to the Jebus?

r126, No; the correct question is WHY were there all those much, much older tales, "Gilgamesh," etc.? Very ancient peoples are literally on record as supreme recorders of daily events; we have the Sumerian clay tablets as proof.

Were these human beings (we aren't speaking of Neanderthals) simply history's best fabulists? Did group mental illness strike their societies, such that all hallucinated the same images? Und so veiter.

But, r126, to answer your particular jejune query:

By declaring the past the forerunner, the presage, to the True.

Cool, r128. That must be where the new president gets off declaring "to the victor go the spoils." Fuck international law and a century of consensus, if the ancients were into it, we're into it.

Also, I love that Vikings settled the Maritimes in Canada. Explains how hot those North Country dudes are.

Enjoying this thread, though this is my first post. I do wish you'd leave current politics out of it, though.

r129, Your post is insane.

There's a book called "Jerusalem by Simon Sebag Montefiore and it offers a fascinating well documented look at the development of Judaism, and so many of the biblical figures we know about. Fascinating stuff. corroborates a lot of the comments on here. He has a withering sense of humor too, and a fresh writing style. It's not dry history so much as gossipy.

There's nothing "weird" about ancient stuff.

Turns out trade was going on between far flung cultures a lot arlier than was thought. The reason for this is that most things that are thousands of years old do not survive, so it's hard to know what happened back then. But disvoveries of things like mummies in china and the Iceman in europe add to our knowledge. Tartans have been woven for thousands and thousands of years. Redheads lived in the desert. People in northertn europe had goods from the middle and far east.

There are statues with rubies for eyes. Doesn't mean the ancients had red eyes. Blue eyes are a mutation that sometimes happens. Some cultures had slaves with blue eyes, traded thousands of miles away by nomadic tribes to tribes who had ships to other tribes who traveled overland.

There are blonde, blue eyed people in Afghanistan and China. The Turks didn't come from Turkey. They came from Mongolia. All people living at the top of the world were Asian at one point. Most still are. Europe, North America, Siberia -- all had asian people living in the northernmost parts of their landmasses.

Europeans lived in North America much earlier than was thought. Vikings had ingenious, labor intensive methods of traveling extensively overland with boats.

Old hollywood films depicted black men in egyptian costumes as slaves. But looking at egyptian hieroglyphs, dark skinned blacks and lighter brown skinned north africans were depicted together doing the same jobs and taking part in the same rituals. It was the US history of enslavement of black people which informed Hollywood producers, directors and writers.

Thinking ancient things are weird or impossible is just uninformed and misinterpretation.

[quote] this could be due to any rare, hard rain. We have floods today.

Could be due to tsunamis as well. An earthquake or volcanic explosion hundreds or thousands of miles away could trigger a tsunami in an area where nothing had been detected. So there you are in your ancient village or city and all of a sudden the sea disappears. Cool! Everyone rushes to the shore to pick up fish and other sea life thats been stranded. Then the ocean comes back, not in a giant tidal wave, but in a wave that doesn't look all that bad. Problem is, that first wave doesn't break....it keeps coming up into the town and behind that wave are other waves you can't see. And it's too late.

It's something the people had never seen before and there didn't seem to be any reason for it to happen. The earth didn't shake and there wasn't an explosion. Everything was fine. So why did it happen? God(s). Some god was really pissed off about something and smote the people.

Survivors would try to explain why it happened and would come up with various reasons. Someone was a heretic, or there was a whole group of heretics at work and they provoked the gods. Maybe witches! Better start killing suspicious people. Or maybe there weren't enough really good sacrifices to the sea god, so they decide they'd better step up their game and start sacrificing really precious things, like pretty young people.

Or it was their enemy. Those guys three villages down --- they're always drinking and fornicating, stealing, cheating, causing crop failures and plagues, and now THIS. Survivors vow they will make war with those guys as soon as they regroup and get strong again.

A tsunami in an area where a quake wasn't felt, or an eruption wasn't heard, would be something that could only come from the gods.

The parting of the Red Sea sounds tsunami-ish. The sea rushes away. People escape. Then the sea comes back and kills their pursuers. Maybe some slaves really were able to escape their o erseers when a tsunami caused the ocean or bay to recede in an area that was normally too deep and wide for someone to swim across. Slaves say, "Run! Wade! Its an answer to our prayers to our god!"

The slaves get across the now shallow waterway and scoot up to high ground. Overseers realize what's happening, go after the slaves and get caught in the tsunami, drowning before they can get to high ground. This gets embellished overtime until it reaches Trumpian proportions.

"Yep, our god is the best god. He's the strongest and smartest god and he looks out for his people. He made the sea part so thousands and thousands of us could escape. And when a yuge, tremendous army came after us, well, god just shut that shit down and drowned them all in a fantastic victory that the world had never seen before. God delivered our entire people , cuz he is the best and because we are the best. "

Teepees and yurts are similar all around the world because they are simple forms of shelter that work. It's pretty likely that these developed in different areas of the world separately as opposed to only one group of people discovering them and spreading them all over the world.

Some people have never been taught deductive and inductive reasoning skills and fall prey to believing idiocy line "majik" and aliens are responsible for similarities in ancient civilzations.

Interesting, r136. It has always seemed likely to me that primitive advances like firestarting, cooking meat, simple agriculture would develop separately in different regions, prehistory.

The pyramid thing used to perplex me. But if pyramids are a way to build high and strong without more complex architectural or engineering calculations, it would make sense that multiple populations would figure it out.

I've never necessarily bought in to the "cosmic placement of these structures" thing; always seemed like numerology to me. Won't the rising sun on the solstice always shine somewhere on the thing? But I would love to be educated

Teosinte? When did I eat teosinite?

Actually it's quite possible that humans had contact much earlier than we believe.

The pyramid is the logical shape for both large and high stone buildings before the development of a barrel vault sophisticated enough to cover large spaces, which is a later development, because it requires a higher level of calculation and skill. The corbel vault (the second-row images in R7), which is usually the first type of vault developed, can only cover comparatively narrow rooms. Peristyle temples or courtyards are another option for representative buildings, but their height is much more limited.

Astronomy is important in most ancient cultures, so it is only natural that these buildings, whose purpose for the most part was at least partly religious, would be aligned accordingly.

[quote]. R133: There are blonde, blue eyed people in Afghanistan and China. The Turks didn't come from Turkey. They came from Mongolia. All people living at the top of the world were Asian at one point. Most still are. Europe, North America, Siberia -- all had asian people living in the northernmost parts of their landmasses.

I had NatGeo analyze my DNA. They reported that after my ancestors left Africa, they travelled to the Afghanistan region, then reversed course and made their way to Europe.

The ancient Mayans were the only American Indian culture to develop a written language. The Spanish burned most of their books, believing them to be idolatry.

American Indians also had not invented the wheel. I can't verify the following, but I did once read that they had the wheel for use with children's toys, but because they had no work animals to pull carts (donkeys, horses, oxen), wheels were useless. I question this because slaves could have done that work, I should think.

One cool thing about the pyramids and other ancient structures is that they are aligned with the stars; however, the stars slowly move over thousands of years, so the eggheads have to plot where the stars were thousands of years ago when these structures were built, in order to see the alignment.

Has anyone on this thread mentioned the stegosaurus rock art yet?

Yes Wilma yes.

Scientists now believe that the earth goes through a cycle evert 20,000 to 100,000 years or so. The Earth's tilt changes, causing ice ages.

They also believe that the magnetic North occasionally flips to be a magnetic South. I don't know how animals will function. Birds, sharks, and other animals sense magnetism and use it to figure out how to migrate. I don't know if Moose sense it or not, sorry.

[quote] I don't know if Moose sense it or not, sorry.

Why do you mention Moose?

All this stuff reminds me of a "documentary" I saw about 40 years ago, based on this book by Erich von Daniken. Title is similar to others quoted above (Fingerprints and Magicians), I wonder if some of it inspired the more recent ones.

R147, I just though someone might be curious or it might be of general interest.

R148, I read that book when it came out!

Thanks, R146/R149. I know at least two "people" who would be interested.

R77 we def need a new thread for the Dyatlov Pass incident. The last one got hijacked by trolls.

R152, I agree. I wonder whether someone will start one.

Lets talk about Justified and Ancient. Is Moo Moo Land real?

We know that some Mars rocks made their way to Earth, by comparing their chemistry to the chemistry of rocks we tested on the Martian surface via rover.

It's likely that Earth, Venus, and Mars have been exchanging rocks since day 1. Primitive life could have hitched a ride one way or another. This is why I'm against sending an astronaut to Mars and bringing him home. I don't want any funky microbes from a Mars that might have evolved independently coming over here and eating people's faces.

R154, Thank you for showing me another hidden history (and for making me seat-dance). I declare.

I think the gods of that time were the fallen angels, but of course lied about their true identity. They are what we think of now as aliens, and are most certainly evil are not going to come in peace, but will pretend initially to do so.

Xanadu (not the 1980 Olivia Newton-John movie).

"North of the Great Wall, the Site of Xanadu encompasses the remains of Kublai Khan’s legendary capital city, designed by the Mongol ruler’s Chinese advisor Liu Bingzhdong in 1256."

The Shake Shack was much more intriguing.

Here, r144. Note how the Establishment (i.e., the Smithsonian) tries to persuade that the carving cannot be identified, not REALLY.

Looking at ballads and folk tales, ancient contact among cultures was not that rare.

It's because plagiarim is truly the world's oldest profession R127.

earrings and CAFTANS

R143, I thought the pyramids and Stonehenge aligned with the sun. There's also the moon and the star of Venus that mostly stays in the same place.

Actually, the stars seem to stay in one place over the course of a lifetime, but over 5000 years, they do not. When the pyramids were built, there was a different North Star, for example.

I can't say how the pyramids' foundation is aligned, but the shaft that runs through to the Pharaoh's chamber was aligned to Orion's Belt, which had some significance to the Egyptians. There was a second main shaft which I think was aligned to Venus on some particular, important date.

The two pyramids--Egyptian and Aztec-- aligned from R9's link.

That is so precise, R166.

I saw a documentary once that noted that ancient civilizations developed at the latitude (or is it longitude?) because starch grew easily there (Egypt, wheat; China, rice; Mexico, Corn). Then there is Peru with potatos, too. So that's not so much a coincidence as if is a consequence of geography.

r168, No, not coincidence, r168; you are correct in that. But their histories (what we call "legends") tell of learned beings (Quetzalcoatl; Viracocha; Osiris; etc.) who taught them agriculture after the deluge.

The pyramids of Giza align with the Belt of Orion. The Nile is the Milky Way. The lion-bodied Sphinx faces due East, and was thus likely constructed during the Age of Leo (as contrasted with our Age of Aquarius, the Christian-era's Age of Pisces, the Moses-era's Age of Aries, etc.).

Sphinx and Leo:

I don't care who they're pointed at you know that a Capricorn built them.

Do you mean candy corn? That would make more sense to me.

I dunno about passive aggressive, R123, but I could probably stand to be a little less overbearing.

Still, the vast majority of the Old Testament is made up, made up history, made up myth, made up religion, made up belief. it is not what it seems.

My Dad said he recalled seeing zeppelins over Manhattan when he was a boy.

You've written about that before, R175, haven't you? Something about how you didn't believe it but then discovered photographic evidence it could have been possible.

[quote] But their histories (what we call "legends") tell of learned beings (Quetzalcoatl; Viracocha; Osiris; etc.) who taught them agriculture after the deluge

Quetzalcoatl was described as fair, blue-eyed, Caucasian-like. It's possible that people from Europe traveled to the New World earlier than we thought. The idea that extra-terrestrials could have landed is preposterous and puts down human ingenuity. For example, the Tarim mummies (deemed to be mummies thousands of years old BC) found in China over were blonde, red-haired and Caucasian.

R176, I may just have done so! Would you consider a career as my personal assistant? Obviously, things can't continue as they are.

R177, meet the ancient R75 and R176.

Selection bias. There are so many stars that obviously every geographic structure will align with a bunch of them.

Pazuzu and William H. Macy? Twins separated at birth?

R180, maybe. However, sometimes they'll find a constilation carved into something with a big arrow, reading, "you are here".

R142, not so. The Mik'maq was the other.

Who were the Mik'maq? Specifically, where and when?

I've read that Julius Caesar killed a quarter of the population of Gaul when he conquered it.

The Romans invented the "arch" which enabled them to create large open interiors without cluttering them up with supporting pillars.

They also perfected the invention of concrete, which could harden under water.

Puma Punku! Gobekli Tepe!