Dit is ons nieuw hondje Kira, een kruising van een waterhond en een Podenko. Ze is sinds 7 februari 2024 bij ons en druk bezig ons hart te veroveren. Het is een lief, aanhankelijk hondje, dat zich op een week snel aan ons heeft aangepast. Ze is heel vinnig en nieuwsgierig, een heel ander hondje dan Noleke.
This is our new dog Kira, a cross between a water dog and a Podenko. She has been with us since February 7, 2024 and is busy winning our hearts. She is a sweet, affectionate dog who quickly adapted to us within a week. She is very quick and curious, a very different dog than Noleke.
DEAR VISITOR,
MY BLOG EXISTS ALREADY 13 YEARS AND 2 MONTH.
ON 06/08/2024 MORE THAN 2.161.100
VISITORS FROM 135 DIFFERENT NATIONS ALREADY FOUND THEIR WAY TO MY BLOG.
THAT IS AN AVERAGE OF 400GUESTS PER DAY.
THANK YOU FOR VISITING MY BLOG AND HOPE YOU ENJOY EACH TIME.
The purpose of this blog is the creation of an open, international, independent and free forum, where every UFO-researcher can publish the results of his/her research. The languagues, used for this blog, are Dutch, English and French.You can find the articles of a collegue by selecting his category. Each author stays resposable for the continue of his articles. As blogmaster I have the right to refuse an addition or an article, when it attacks other collegues or UFO-groupes.
Druk op onderstaande knop om te reageren in mijn forum
Zoeken in blog
Deze blog is opgedragen aan mijn overleden echtgenote Lucienne.
In 2012 verloor ze haar moedige strijd tegen kanker!
In 2011 startte ik deze blog, omdat ik niet mocht stoppen met mijn UFO-onderzoek.
BEDANKT!!!
Een interessant adres?
UFO'S of UAP'S, ASTRONOMIE, RUIMTEVAART, ARCHEOLOGIE, OUDHEIDKUNDE, SF-SNUFJES EN ANDERE ESOTERISCHE WETENSCHAPPEN - DE ALLERLAATSTE NIEUWTJES
UFO's of UAP'S in België en de rest van de wereld In België had je vooral BUFON of het Belgisch UFO-Netwerk, dat zich met UFO's bezighoudt. BEZOEK DUS ZEKER VOOR ALLE OBJECTIEVE INFORMATIE , enkel nog beschikbaar via Facebook en deze blog.
Verder heb je ook het Belgisch-Ufo-meldpunt en Caelestia, die prachtig, doch ZEER kritisch werk leveren, ja soms zelfs héél sceptisch...
Voor Nederland kan je de mooie site www.ufowijzer.nl bezoeken van Paul Harmans. Een mooie site met veel informatie en artikels.
MUFON of het Mutual UFO Network Inc is een Amerikaanse UFO-vereniging met afdelingen in alle USA-staten en diverse landen.
MUFON's mission is the analytical and scientific investigation of the UFO- Phenomenon for the benefit of humanity...
Je kan ook hun site bekijken onder www.mufon.com.
Ze geven een maandelijks tijdschrift uit, namelijk The MUFON UFO-Journal.
Since 02/01/2020 is Pieter ex-president (=voorzitter) of BUFON, but also ex-National Director MUFON / Flanders and the Netherlands. We work together with the French MUFON Reseau MUFON/EUROP.
ER IS EEN NIEUWE GROEPERING DIE ZICH BUFON NOEMT, MAAR DIE HEBBEN NIETS MET ONZE GROEP TE MAKEN. DEZE COLLEGA'S GEBRUIKEN DE NAAM BUFON VOOR HUN SITE... Ik wens hen veel succes met de verdere uitbouw van hun groep. Zij kunnen de naam BUFON wel geregistreerd hebben, maar het rijke verleden van BUFON kunnen ze niet wegnemen...
20-02-2020
Ancient ‘megasites’ may reshape the history of the first cities
Ancient ‘megasites’ may reshape the history of the first cities
Some early urban areas may have been spread out and socially egalitarian
Farmland in Ukraine now covers most of an ancient settlement called Nebelivka that some researchers consider to be one of the earliest known cities. Here, Nebelivka’s site plan is superimposed over where it once stood.
Nebelivka, a Ukrainian village of about 700 people, sits amid rolling hills and grassy fields. Here at the edge of Eastern Europe, empty space stretches to the horizon.
It wasn’t always so. Beneath the surface of Nebelivka’s surrounding landscape and at nearby archaeological sites, roughly 6,000-year-old remnants of what were possibly some of the world’s first cities are emerging from obscurity. These low-density, spread-out archaeological sites are known as megasites, a term that underscores both their immense size and mysterious origins. Now, some scientists are arguing the settlements represent a distinct form of ancient urban life that has gone largely unrecognized.
Megasites were cities like no others that have ever existed, says archaeologist John Chapman of Durham University in England.
For decades, researchers have regarded roughly 6,000-year-old Mesopotamian sites, in what’s now Iraq, Iran and Syria, as the world’s first cities. Those metropolises arose after agriculture made it possible to feed large numbers of people in year-round settlements. Mesopotamian cities featured centralized governments, bureaucratic agencies that tracked and taxed farm production, and tens of thousands of city dwellers packed into neighborhoods connected by dusty streets. Social inequality was central to Mesopotamia’s urban ascent, with a hierarchy of social classes that included rulers, bureaucrats, priests, farmers and slaves.
Over the last decade, however, researchers have increasingly questioned whether the only pathway to urban life ran through Mesopotamian cities. Chapman, along with Durham colleague Marco Nebbia and independent, Durham-based scholar Bisserka Gaydarska, is part of a movement that views low-density, spread-out settlements in several parts of the world as alternative form of early city life.
An artist’s reconstruction shows what an assembly house may have looked like at Nebelivka. Communal gatherings were likely held in these structures.C. UNWIN (BASED ON DATA FROM S. JOHNSTON), B. GAYDARSKA, M. NEBBIA AND J. CHAPMAN/CAMBRIDGE ARCHAEOLOGICAL JOURNAL 2020
Ukrainian megasites were built by members of the Trypillia culture between about 6,100 and 5,400 years ago. Typically covering a square kilometer or more, some of the sites are bigger in area than Manhattan.
Megasites may have been built so that people could better defend against invasions by rival villages or foreign forces. Based on that assumption, some estimates of population at these places run into the tens of thousands. But recent work by Chapman, Nebbia and Gaydarska indicates megasites in general may have had only a few thousand inhabitants.
And Nebelivka appears to have lacked a class of elites ruling over hordes of common folk who did the dirty work. Instead, excavations suggest that the site was organized to promote shared rule among groups of equal social standing. Thus, Nebelivka demonstrates that urban development doesn’t automatically split people into haves and have-nots, Chapman and colleagues argue, a common assumption among those concerned about social and economic inequality in modern societies.
Nebelivka novelty
In the 1970s, archaeologists began excavating several Trypillia megasites in fertile soil between the Southern Bug and Dnieper rivers in Ukraine. Aerial photography and geomagnetic surveys on the ground revealed outlines of buried structures. At least two dozen megasites have been located in the country since then.
Ukrainian archaeologists have excavated small parts of several of the sites. But it’s a daunting task. Researchers working at one location have unearthed about 50 houses over the last 25 years, Chapman says. “They have another 2,150 houses to go.”
At Nebelivka, Chapman, Gaydarska and Nebbia have reconstructed the megasite’s entire layout. This settlement blueprint, the first of its kind for a megasite, appears in the February Cambridge Archaeological Journal.
Over six years of fieldwork since 2009, the researchers have excavated and mapped Nebelivka structures located over more than a square kilometer. Aerial photos, satellite images and geomagnetic data, supplemented by excavations of 88 test pits, identified 1,445 residential houses and 24 communal structures dubbed assembly houses. Residential houses, some intact and most in ashes after having burned, were grouped into 153 neighborhoods, a majority containing three to seven houses. Neighborhoods, in turn, formed 14 quarters, each with one or more assembly houses situated in an open area.
This blueprint of the Nebelivka megasite is based on excavations and geomagnetic surveys (orange lines mark the areas of those surveys). About two-thirds of houses had been deliberately burned at different times, perhaps as part of ceremonial burnings, researchers say. Purple lines denote borders of residential quarters made up of neighborhoods.Y. BEADNELL (BASED ON DATA FROM D. HALE), B. GAYDARSKA, M. NEBBIA AND J. CHAPMAN/CAMBRIDGE ARCHAEOLOGICAL JOURNAL 2020
During about 200 years of occupation, Nebelivka served as both a dwelling site and, oddly enough, a kind of cemetery for incinerated houses, Gaydarska says. About two-thirds of Nebelivka houses had been deliberately burned at different times, creating mounds of charred debris across the site. Sediment and pollen excavated in and around Nebelivka display no signs of wildfire, a clue that the houses were intentionally set aflame.
In 2015, the researchers built and then burned a replica of a Trypillia house, producing lumps of ashy clay residue like those found where actual Nebelivka houses once stood. Only after filling the replica with much more dry timber than had been used to build the house did the experimental conflagration reach temperatures high enough to raze the entire structure and produce Nebelivka-like residue mounds. Nebelivka’s ancient residents must have gone to great lengths to gather enough wood for what was likely ceremonial house burnings, Chapman says.
“Burning a house down in this way created a spectacle that could be seen from many kilometers away,” he says.
Scientists built a wooden version of a Nebelivka house and set it on fire (left) to investigate how and why ancient residents burned down many of their houses. Burned remains of the experimental house were examined in a 3-D image (right).FROM LEFT: B. GAYDARSKA; M. NEBBIA
No signs of a centralized government, a ruling dynasty, or wealth or social class disparities appear in the ancient settlement, the researchers say. Houses were largely alike in size and design. Excavations yielded few prestige goods, such as copper items and shell ornaments. Many examples of painted pottery and clay figurines typical of Trypillia culture turned up, and more than 6,300 animal bones unearthed at the site suggest residents ate a lot of beef and lamb. Those clues suggest daily life was much the same across Nebelivka’s various neighborhoods and quarters.
Although Chapman and colleagues agree Nebelivka’s city life differed from that of Mesopotamian metropolises, the researchers disagree about the details.
Chapman suspects the megasite was a permanent settlement in which, at any one time, 2,000 to 3,000 people occupied up to 400 houses. Residents likely came from 10 regional groups, known from previous investigations of smaller Trypillia villages, that had traded goods and formed some common cultural beliefs and practices, he says. Members of the 10 groups established the neighborhoods and quarters outlined in Nebelivka’s site plan, Chapman speculates. Given the need to ease inevitable tensions among groups living unusually close together, a council recruited from throughout Nebelivka may have made political decisions. Council leadership might have even shifted annually from one group to the next, he says.
Nebbia thinks it’s more likely that perhaps 3,000 to 4,000 people inhabited Nebelivka for around one month each year. During that time, people who assembled at the megasite made new contacts, shared knowledge and goods, and conducted communal activities such as house building and burning. Perhaps 100 to 150 guardians lived at and maintained Nebelivka year-round, he speculates.
Yet another possibility, favored by Gaydarska, portrays Nebelivka as a large center for religious pilgrims from throughout the Trypillia world. Over a roughly eight-month pilgrimage season, presumably scheduled for seasons when the weather permitted long-distance journeys, between 1,000 and 2,000 pilgrims per month inhabited Nebelivka. Ritual leaders from various Trypillia communities maintained the settlement and organized construction projects, she suspects, including the raising of assembly houses where religious ceremonies were held.
Middle Eastern sites for large, periodic gatherings date back at least 10,000 years and could have set the stage for similar but larger get-togethers at Nebelivka, however they were organized, Gaydarska says. While Nebelivka’s site plan can’t unveil the exact nature of social life there, it reveals a large open space in the center of the megasite where researchers previously assumed many people lived. Earlier estimates that Nebelivka housed 10,000 people or more are thus way too high, the three researchers contend.
Power sharing
As at Nebelivka, an increasing number of archaeological sites in Asia, Europe and the Americas are being classified as low-density urban settlements, says archaeologist Roland Fletcher of the University of Sydney. For instance, settlements comparable in size and population to megasites, known as oppida, emerged elsewhere in Europe more than 2,000 years ago. Whether people inhabited oppida year-round or seasonally, these sites contained households of roughly equal status that participated in collective decision making, Fletcher says.
Aerial laser mapping has uncovered much larger examples of urban sprawl that date to around 1,000 years ago at Greater Angkor in Cambodia (SN: 4/29/16) and roughly 2,000 years ago at Maya outposts in Central America (SN: 9/27/18). In those cases, kings and other power brokers ruled spread-out populations that cultivated crops such as rice and maize using sophisticated irrigation techniques.
Aerial laser mapping has revealed much larger examples of urban sprawl around Maya outposts in Central America than previously thought. Here, a representation of the site of Naachtun in what’s now Guatemala is shown. Yellow dots indicate ancient structures.M.A. CANUTO ET AL/SCIENCE 2018, L. AULD-THOMAS AND M.A. CANUTO
Though some of these sprawling sites had social inequality, egalitarian cities like Nebelivka were probably more widespread several thousand years ago than has typically been assumed, says archaeologist David Wengrow of University College London. Ancient ceremonial centers in China and Peru, for instance, were cities with sophisticated infrastructures that existed before any hints of bureaucratic control, he argues. Wengrow and anthropologist David Graeber of the London School of Economics and Political Science also made that argument in a 2018 essay in Eurozine, an online cultural magazine.
Councils of social equals governed many of the world’s earliest cities, including Trypillia megasites, Wengrow contends. Egalitarian rule may even have characterized Mesopotamian cities for their first few hundred years, a period that lacks archaeological evidence of royal burials, armies or large bureaucracies typical of early states, he suggests.
Megasite mystery
Not everyone views Nebelivka as emblematic of an alternative branch of early city life.
“Nebelivka may be an interesting example of a ritual, ceremonial or defensive gathering place rather than an ‘all-purpose’ city or a distinctive pathway to urbanism,” says archaeologist Monica Smith of UCLA.
Unlike bustling Mesopotamian cities, which featured walls or other prominent structures along their borders, Nebelivka contained lots of apparently open space and was encircled by only a ditch, Smith observes. And from the start, cities brought together large numbers of people who had to cooperate with strangers and heed the edicts of political and religious leaders, Smith argues. Ancient cities typically included massive official structures and were densely occupied for thousands of years, unlike megasites that drew smaller crowds for several hundred years at most, she says. Smith reserves judgment on the nature of city life at Greater Angkor and the Maya sites, where further excavations might reveal higher-density occupations than currently suspected.
Some investigators regard densely populated Mesopotamian settlements from around 6,000 years ago, such Tell Brak in Syria, as the world’s oldest cities. The remains of a Tell Brak palace are shown.BERTRAMZ/WIKIMEDIA COMMONS (CC BY 3.0)
Smith suggests calling permanent and temporary gathering spots — a category that, in her view, includes Trypillia megasites — “collective settlements.” In her 2019 book Cities: The First 6,000 Years (SN: 4/16/19), Smith provisionally identifies the oldest known city as Tell Brak, a roughly 6,000-year-old Mesopotamian site in northeastern Syria.
But Nebelivka and other Ukrainian megasites transcended Trypillia village life too dramatically to be classified simply as gathering places, Gaydarska argues. Trypillia people, she maintains, engaged in one of several early experiments in large-scale urban living, even if for only part of the year. It’s time to revamp traditional ideas of what makes an ancient settlement a city, she says.
For now, the next challenge is to explain why the Tyrpillia megasites arose in the first place and lasted no more than around 700 years. To get a better grip on that mystery, Gaydarska plans to excavate Trypillia villages dating to just before and after Nebelivka’s heyday. “We have nothing to compare Nebelivka to at this point,” she says.
It was a hot and humid evening on August 19, 1952, and hardware store clerk and Boy Scout Scoutmaster Dunham Sanborn “Sonny” DesVergers was driving a group of Boy Scouts home on a coastal highway near West Palm Beach, Florida, that winds right alongside the vast swamp wilderness of the South Florida Everglades. As he made his way down a darkened side road towards the home of one of the boys, his attention was captured by a bright flash in the sky out over the gloomy swamp near a dense grove of palmettos. His first thought was to just keep on driving, but then it occurred to him that an airplane had possibly gone down out there in the wilderness, so he turned back, stopped the car, and after some moments of thought peering into the dimness of the swamp he decided to grab a machete and start hacking his way through towards where he believed the accident to have occurred. And so would begin a strange odyssey that has remained one of the weirder UFO encounters on the books.
DesVergers told the Boy Scouts to stay behind, and if they did not hear from him in 15 minutes they were to make their way to a farmhouse off the road and fetch help. He then gripped his machete, hoisted his flashlight, and began penetrating the murky, snake and alligator infested wilderness. As he progressed through the choking brush he allegedly noticed an unpleasant smell in the air, which got steadily worse as he progressed. He continued hacking his way through the vegetation and thickets through the fog of stench that pervaded the air until he reportedly came to a clearing, where he signaled to the boys with his flashlight and then turned to notice what he would describe as an intense heat, as if an enormous oven door had suddenly opened to belch forth its fire. Disoriented, he looked up to see something blocking out the sky above, which he claimed was a large disc-like object measuring around 30 feet in diameter and ringed with glowing lights, and when the beam of his flashlight hit it he could ascertain that it was smooth, metallic, and had a concave bottom. This is where things would get really weird.
As the frightened scoutmaster started backing up in a growing panic, he claims that he heard a grinding sound like metal upon metal, which he soon realized was a hatch of some sort opening on the side of the unearthly craft. From within emerged what he describes as an intense red light that approached him and then transformed into a red mist, which engulfed him and caused him to instinctively cover his face. According to him, he then lost consciousness. Back at the car, the Boy Scouts, who had been tracking their scoutmaster’s progress by watching the glow of his bouncing flashlight beam in the gloom, purportedly saw a “big red ball of fire” through the trees, as well as “a series of red lights … a lot like flares.” That was when they decided to go for help.
Police arrived on the scene not long after, and were about to launch a search through the swamp for DesVergers when he came stumbling out of the thicket in a kind of daze, disoriented, mumbling incoherently and quite obviously very shaken, to the point that deputy sheriff Mott Partin would later say, “In all my 19 years of law-enforcement work, I’ve never seen anyone as terrified as he was.” Closer inspection of the man showed that his skin seemed lightly burned and the hair on his forearms singed, as well as a strange series of three burn marks in his scoutmaster’s cap. Making it all even odder still was that when some of the officers went to the clearing that DesVergers had come from they found his flashlight lying on the ground and a flattened ring of grass they could not explain.
DesVergers would be brought back to the Palm Beach County Sheriff’s office and that was when the case would attract the attention of Captain Edward J. Ruppelt, who was at the time part of the U.S. Air Force Project Blue Book, which was with investigating and analyzing UFO-related incidents in the name of national security. Ruppelt, who would later call it “one of the weirdest UFO reports that I came up against,” took his team to Florida in order to interview the witnesses and investigate the area of the alleged UFO encounter. Talking to the Boy Scouts he learned that they stood by their story of seeing bright red lights, and DesVergers also seemed very sincere, which impressed Ruppelt at first and of which he said he had the “immediate impression he was telling the truth.” The team also were able to find anomalous singed grass in the clearing where it had all gone down, which lab tests were unable to find an answer for, especially since in many instances the samples showed burned roots but intact upper leaves. Nor was there any conventional medical explanation for the victim’s singed hair, slightly burned skin, which was determined to have been caused by a “flash heat source,” or his damaged cap, thought to have been the work of “sparks of some kind,” all of which made it all even more promising, but cracks would slowly start to reveal themselves.
Red flags started going up when DesVergers began drumming up media attention for his alleged encounter, even going so far as to hire a press agent, and the story got more and more exaggerated the more he told it, adding in details such as that he had seen alien beings and even fought with them. A little digging into DesVergers’ past also brought up some warning signs, as he was found to be an insufferable teller of tall tales and as well as having gone AWOL during military service and also a convicted car thief. In other words, honesty was not really his thing, and although dishonest people can still potentially have a strange UFO encounter, Ruppelt was starting to get suspicious. Although there were certainly many oddities that could not easily be explained, and he couldn’t see how they could have been faked, Ruppelt would nevertheless eventually label it “the best hoax in UFO history.” He would go on to write of the account in his 1956 book The Report on Unidentified Flying Objects, and as much as he liked to think of it as a hoax, some of the aspects have never been satisfactorily explained, such as the weirdly singed grass roots and physical evidence, and so the debate has remained open as to whether it really happened or not, with one researcher Jeffrey Wilson saying:
Something unusual happened to the guy, and the physical evidence backed him up. That’s why I put the effort into checking this out. Why would you go to the trouble of faking something like this?” Why, and how, would he stage that? It doesn’t make any sense.
The case is still quite remarkable for the physical evidence left behind and the assertion by the witness even in later years in the face of withering criticism that this was all real. Regardless of whether DesVergers was a known liar or not, there seems to be a lot to unpack here, and it is important to remember that strange phenomena do not always necessarily happen to the most honest or reliable of people. What are we to make of his burns or the scorched grass, or the corroborating reports of the Boy Scouts he was with at the time? Was this perhaps a real event that he merely embellished and took advantage of over time, or was it merely the rantings and scheming of a known liar? The case was certainly enough to catch the attention of Project Blue Book and other researchers since, still unexplained, and whether it is real or not has managed to lodge itself firmly within some of the more curious and puzzling UFO cases there are
A great name for a band, an intriguing plot for a movie … but a scary thing to find out your military has developed. Yes, they claim it’s for bomb-sniffing … just like gunpowder was originally developed for medicinal purposes. What could possibly go wrong? Let’s find out.
“Finally, we developed a minimally-invasive surgical approach and mobile multi-unit electrophysiological recording system to tap into the neural signals in a locust brain and realize a biorobotic explosive sensing system. In sum, our study provides the first demonstration of how biological olfactory systems (sensors and computations) can be hijacked to develop a cyborg chemical sensing approach.”
“Hijacked to develop a cyborg chemical sensing approach” means the brains of locusts – made famous by so many plagues – are connected via electrodes in their brains to tiny packs on their backs which transmit sensory images picked up by the locusts’ antennae and send them to a computer, which monitors the signals and sees when the grasshoppers detect the vapors of one of many different explosives, a process that takes a mere few hundred milliseconds, thanks to the 50,000 olfactory neurons in those sensitive antennae. That’s a brief summary of “Explosive sensing with insect-based biorobots,” a non-peer-reviewed paper published this week in BioRxiv describing four years of research by a team led by Baranidharan Raman, associate professor of biomedical engineering in the School of Engineering and Applied Science at Washington University in St. Louis.
If you refuse to let them go, I will bring locusts into your country tomorrow. They will cover the face of the ground so that it cannot be seen. They will devour what little you have left after the hail, including every tree that is growing in your fields. They will fill your houses and those of all your officials and all the Egyptians—something neither your fathers nor your forefathers have ever seen from the day they settled in this land till now. — Exodus 10:3–6
7- They will come out of the graves with downcast eyes like an expanding swarm of locusts. (54- The Moon, 7)
And as when beneath the onrush of fire locusts take wing to flee unto a river, and the unwearied fire burneth them with its sudden oncoming, and they shrink down into the water; even so before Achilles was the sounding stream of deep-eddying Xanthus filled confusedly with chariots and with men. The Iliad
Yeah, yeah, yeah … they know all about your biblical, Quran and Iliad locust plagues, but that didn’t stop the U.S. Office of Naval Research from investing $750,000 back in 2016 to develop cyborg locusts … or was that the reason for the investment? While it’s accepted that cheap bomb detectors are in demand by police, the military and airport security for dealing with terrorists, and by governments like Vietnam and South Korea who still have active minefields left over from not-so-recent wars, it’s easy to imagine other uses for these bionic bugs whose main claim to fame is not bomb-detection but swarming crop devastation of the plague kind. Back in 2016, Raman saw other uses for the cyborg locusts as well.
“But the real key, he says, is the relative simplicity of the locust’s brain. That’s what allows it to be hijacked, which, if all goes right, will allow for remote explosive sensing. Raman believes that eventually cyborg locusts could be used for other sniff-centric tasks, even medical diagnoses that rely on smell.”
Send them to countries with bombs and mines right before the crops are ripe. Have them do their jobs detecting the explosives, then reward them by letting the cyborg locusts detect the wheat fields and let the destruction begin.
What could possibly go wrong?
“Something neither your fathers nor your forefathers have ever seen from the day they settled in this land till now.”
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- Gemiddelde waardering: 0/5 - (0 Stemmen) Categorie:SF-snufjes }, Robotics and A.I. Artificiel Intelligence ( E, F en NL )
DE MAGISCHEGEBEURTENISSEN RONDOM MOUNT SHASTA ( VIDEO )
DE MAGISCHEGEBEURTENISSEN RONDOM MOUNT SHASTA ( VIDEO )
Er zijn van die speciale plekken op aarde en één daarvan is de Amerikaanse vulkaan Mount Shasta in Californië. Er wordt gezegd dat er zich onder de vulkaan een buitenaardse basis bevindt en de Indianen die ooit het gebied bevolkten spraken van de mystieke krachten van Mount Shasta.
Voor veel mensen is Mount Shasta een heel bijzondere plek en zij schrijven dan ook dingen zoals het volgende:
De vijfde chakra (gerelateerd aan onze keel), is gelegen in het gebied genaamd Mount Shasta, Noord-Californië. De eigenschappen van de keelchakra zijn communicatie, uitdrukking en verbinding tussen je geest, emoties en ziel. Wij hebben veel mensen horen vragen waarom Amerika het centrum van nieuwe ideeën en gedachten lijkt te zijn. De energie van Mt. Shasta is de poort waardoor communicatie kan worden gechanneld in ons collectief bewustzijn. Wij hebben het nu over communicatie van een hoger bewustzijnsniveau, communicatie over de geest en communicatie over het menselijk potentieel. Enkele van de zeer fundamentele leringen kwamen uit de streek van Mt. Shasta. Dus, de verantwoordelijkheid van Mount Shasta is het kanaliseren van de energie van wereldwijde communicatie.
De Mount Shasta is een vulkaan in de Cascade Range in Noord-Californië, VS. Hij heeft een hoogte van 4.317 m. De kegelvormige top is in sterke mate vergletsjerd en vertoont een zeer symmetrische vorm. In de buurt van de top vindt men verschillende zeer hete zwavelbronnen.
Er zijn vele engelen, lichtmeesters en hoger dimensionale wezens aanwezig en er is een sterke verbinding met Lemurië voelbaar, welke je ook kunt voelen en ervaren in Nederland op de Elohim Krachtplaats.
Zes jaar geleden schreven wij het volgende over Mount Shasta:
We hebben het afgelopen jaar veelvuldig voorbeelden gezien van UFO activiteit rondom vulkanen. Zoals de spectaculaire opnames rond de Popocatepetl vulkaan in Mexico.
In Amerika hebben we ook een vulkaan die veelvuldig in verband wordt gebracht met UFO activiteiten en dat is de Mount Shasta in de Amerikaanse staat Californië. Het is niet alleen bekend vanwege UFO’s, maar wordt ook wel één van de heilige plaatsen op deze planeet genoemd. Dit was reeds het geval in de tijd dat de indianen dit gebied bevolkten en ook vandaag de dag worden er mystieke krachten toegeschreven aan Mount Shasta.
Ook hier gaan al decennialang geruchten dat er zich onder Mount Shasta een buitenaardse basis zou bevinden en er worden uiteraard ook regelmatig UFO’s waargenomen.
Een voorbeeld hiervan zie je op de volgende foto, die geloof het of niet, gemaakt is door Google.
En nu komt Mount Shasta weer in het nieuws vanwege een bijzondere foto die op sociale media werd geplaatst door een medewerker van de Amerikaanse overheid.
Het is een foto die valt in de categorie: wolken die allesbehalve wolken lijken te zijn en waarvan we recentelijk meerdere voorbeelden hebben gezien. Wolken in een meestal wolkeloze hemel soms helemaal geen wolken blijken te zijn.
Wat het ook moge zijn, het is een prachtige opname en voor ufo onderzoeker Scott Waring bestaat er dan ook geen enkele twijfel en hebben we hier te maken met een gecloakt buitenaards ruimteschip.
In het licht van alle mysterieuze zaken rond Mount Shasta, geen vreemde conclusie en in de volgende video vertelt hij meer waarom hij denkt dat we hier te maken hebben met een ruimteschip.
Hij vertelt verder over het enorme ondergrondse gangenstelsel dat zich onder Mount Shasta bevindt en hoe daar op mysterieuze wijze mensen zijn verdwenen. Compleet verdwenen zonder dat er ooit iets van hen is teruggevonden.
Soms komen er volgens Scott mensen uit de tunnels die geheel in het wit gekleed zijn en omringd door een vreemd gloeiend licht. Deze mensen worden in verband gebracht met Saint Germain en er schijnt zelfs een soort complete religie te zijn rondom Mount Shasta.
Voor Scott is duidelijk dat degene die voor Saint Germain wordt aangezien niemand anders is dan een buitenaardse die afkomstig is van de ET basis diep onder de vulkaan.
En tot slot nog een deel uit een eerder artikel over iemand die een buitenaardse ontmoeting heeft in de buurt van Mount Shasta.
Ik reed op Highway 31, afkomstig van Klamath Falls. Toen ik het stadje Merril binnenreed zag ik een fel vierkant licht dat vanuit "iets" naar buiten scheen. Het licht leek te fel om afkomstig te kunnen zijn van een keukenvenster ofzo.
Op de achtergrond zag ik de silhouetten van een aantal huizen. Het licht leek afkomstig te zijn uit een veld dat ongeveer 25 meter bij mij vandaan lag, langs de kant van de weg. Alhoewel het donker was kon ik zien dat er een object stond dat de vorm had van een bord/schotel met een doorsnee van ongeveer 7 meter waarbij het leek alsof het aan één kant een soort inkeping had.
Het was ook aan die kant van het object dat ik meer dan twee, maar niet meer dan vier, kleine personen ontdekte. Ik kreeg de indruk dat ze aan het werk waren. Ik besteedde er niet al te veel aandacht aan, maar begon toch langzamer te rijden om beter te kunnen kijken.
Plotseling kreeg ik een gevoel dat ze geschrokken waren omdat ik ze had gezien. Ik tuurde in het donker, maar kon ze niet goed zien. Ik dacht dat het misschien een mix was van volwassenen en tieners. In ieder geval stopten ze met wat ze aan het doen waren en bleven stilstaan.
Ondertussen was ik de stad ingereden en verloor ik ze even uit het zicht. Ik reed in een gehuurde bestelbus met daarachter een aanhanger. Waarom weet ik niet, maar ik besloot om te keren en terug te gaan om beter te kunnen kijken. Het viel niet mee om om te keren met die aanhanger en tegen de tijd dat ik weer op die plek terug was, waren er ongeveer drie minuten verstreken.
Tot mijn verbazing was het object weg, er hing alleen nog een soort mist. Ik hing met mijn hoofd uit het raam om naar de lucht te kijken en ik zag een rood knipperend licht zoals je dat ziet op torens en dergelijke, als waarschuwing voor vliegtuigen. Het hing ongeveer op een hoogte van twintig meter. Ik staarde ernaar en besefte dat er niets was waar dit licht aan vastzat, het was alsof het los in de lucht zweefde.
Toen stopte het licht met knipperen en verschenen er rode en witte lichten rondom de hele omtrek van het object. Ze flitsten aan en uit in een bepaalde volgorde, waardoor het leek alsof de lichten bewogen rondom het object. Dat was het moment waarop ik zeker wist dat het een schotel was.
De voorkant, tenminste ik neem aan dat het de voorkant was, hing onder een hoek van 20 graden naar beneden en toen begon het langzaam weg te vliegen, ongeveer met de snelheid van een helikopter. Ik moest lachen in mijzelf, want ik bedacht dat ze dit misschien wel deden om mij te laten geloven dat het een helikopter was. Ik luisterde met gespitste oren om te horen wat voor soort geluid het maakte, maar er was nauwelijks iets te horen.
Eerst vloog het naar het zuidwesten. Toen een paar kilometer verder veranderde het van koers naar een richting waar Mount Shasta ongeveer ligt, schat ik. Ik kon het object nog een tijdlang volgen en toen verdween het uit zicht.
Ik bleef nog een beetje in de buurt rondrijden aan de rand van de stad, de plek waar het object was geland. Ik merkte toen nog een paar dingen op die ik vreemd vond, maar die misschien niets met mijn waarneming te maken hadden.
Zoals een man die voor een groot raam zonder gordijnen zat in het huis dat het dichtst bij de landingsplek stond. Hij leek totaal niet te merken dat ik probeerde met een grote combinatie een honderdtachtig graden draai te maken op zijn gazon. Het leek alsof hij in een soort trance was of iets dergelijks.
Ik vervolgde mijn trip. Toen ik een stukje verder was verloor de auto bijna alle vermogen en was niet vooruit te branden. Ik ging zo langzaam dat ik bijna stilstond. Ik had nog nooit eerder in dat gebied een probleem gehad met een signaal voor mijn mobiele telefoon, maar nu was dit wel het geval. Ik kon niet bellen en ook geen sms versturen.
Tijdens het vervolg van de rit naar Reno voelde ik dat ik geobserveerd werd en dat ik niet alleen was. Ik heb dat gevoel nog steeds, tot op de dag van vandaag. Als ik nu ’s morgens vroeg in het donker buiten loop voel ik me niet op mijn gemak. Ik begrijp dat niet want toen ik die ontmoeting had voelde ik helemaal geen angst.
Sinds die ontmoeting werkt mijn nieuwe camera ook niet meer. Ik had er die dag helaas geen batterijen in en die heb ik nu al een paar keer vervangen, maar hij doet helemaal niets meer. Ik denk dat ze die op de één of andere manier kapotgemaakt hebben.
Tot zover het verhaal van die vreemde ontmoeting in de buurt van Mount Shasta.
Iemand die ook veel ervaringen heeft met UFO’s rondom Mount Shasta is de auteur Brian Wallenstein. Hij heeft er een dik boek over geschreven van ruim 600 pagina’s met de titel “Mount Shasta Sightings”.
Hieronder volgt een vorig jaar opgenomen interview met hem over zijn boek en zijn eigen UFO waarnemingen.
What's wrong with this satellite image of Saunders Island?
What's wrong with this satellite image of Saunders Island?
There is a list of satellite map images with missing or unclear data. Some locations on free, publicly viewable satellite map services have such issues due to having been intentionally digitally obscured or blurred for various reasons.
Now take a look at the imagery of Saunders Island, a crescent-shaped island 8.8 km (5.5 mi) long, lying between Candlemas Island and Montagu Island near Antarctica and you see that the images having been intentionally digitally obscured by Google Earth.
We may wonder why they have digitally obscured a part of the island or it must be that they have to hide something!
Something like a never-seen-before lake of bubbling lava under the island?
The shocking discovery was made by the British Antarctic Survey using powerful satellite imagery of the Southern Hemisphere.
The Antarctic survey confirmed not only the presence of molten lava in the crater of Mount Michael, an active volcano on Saunders Island but this lava lake is the eighth of its kind to be found on Earth.
This UFO video was just submitted through our Facebook page. It was recorded over Winnipeg, Canada on 13th February 2020.
Witness report:
My daughter and I recorded a UFO last Thursday night in the sky to the west of our home. It was a sphere of light in the sky. Two other light spheres appeared as well shortly after we began recording. The lights would fade in and out. White lights seem to briefly shoot out from one side of the middle light. The lights stayed in the same location until a military aircraft began flying toward it. The lights started to fade more to the west after 9 minutes or so when the plane was flying toward it. We stopped recording when it wasn’t visible. If I edited it to shorten the clip, could I send somewhere for someone to look at it? I apologize in advance for my daughters disgusting language.
Amysterious event takes place, in a land considered “far away” by most. Hundreds of children witness something they cannot explain, but no one believes them. The few adults present, teachers no less, are coerced into silence. Students vanish into thin air. The presence of a foreign unknown military force. An idealistic American scientist travels to the under side of the world looking for answers, eventually disgraced, he takes his own life. UFO sightings fluctuate, a man reports a UFO sighting and unusual experience, claiming that his car is being sucked into ethereal lights on an isolated road. Three days later, a fatal car accident occurs at the exact location where the strange event took place. You might be thinking I’m describing the events of some sci-fi drama series, only a great many individuals, to this day, would attest that all, if not most of these claims were entirely true. The least disputed detail of all the strangeness, is the sighting of an unidentified flying object, a flying saucer.
It was 11:00 am, Wednesday, April 6th, 1966, Melbourne, Victoria, Australia. What no doubt may have presented itself as an ordinary day at Westall High school, would have drastically changed the moment voices began to shout, “look up in the sky, it’s a flying saucer!”
Immediately, a sense of frenzy, fear, wonderment and exhilaration resonated among the students, because as many eyewitnesses will tell you, as they looked to the clear blue morning sky, there was a silver flying saucer performing aerial feats beyond the capabilities of the (publicly known) aircraft of the day.
As hundreds of students charged toward an area nicknamed ‘The Grange’ where a paddock converged onto a grove of pine trees (today a nature reserve) beyond the edge of the school, numerous eyewitness reports claim that the flying saucer actually lowered into the tall grass. Causing a circular impression that remained after the UFO ascended, some noting also a swirling inner pattern. The UFO was not alone in the sky, according to many eyewitnesses, a number of small airplanes (claims as high as 5) were tailing it. (Though there were no reports of any unusual activity made by Air traffic control or the Royal Australian Air force. To this day, the alleged ‘5 pilots’ have never come forward).
There have since been claims that children, one girl identified only as “Tanya” and others that were closest to the unidentified object when it made its descent, passed out and lay unconscious on the ground around it. Eyewitnesses make the claim that even an ambulance attended the scene to see to the students seemingly suffering physiological effects of the experience. It is claimed by one eyewitness, that “Tanya” was never seen again, after succumbing to some physiological effect from the experience, never returning to school after the event on April 6th.
All up, it is believed the aerial chase, the landing and high speed escape/disappearance happened within a window of approximately 20 minutes. 20 minutes, according to most of the vocal eyewitnesses that has profoundly effected their lives.
(Dr. James E. McDonald)
In interviews conducted by American Physicist/Ufologist, Dr. James E. McDonald roughly one year later, he managed to speak with science teacher Andrew Greenwood who was there that fateful day. Greenwood upon realizing the frenzy sweeping up outside among the students, headed outside to get a look at what they were reacting to. Andrew Greenwood described the UFO as a “round, silver object about the size of a car with a metal rod sticking up in the air.” He then remarked that one of the first things to occur after the event took place, was the headmaster instructed all students to return to their classrooms, after which Greenwood said “he [the headmaster] gave the school a lecture and told the children they would be severely punished if they talked about this matter and told the staff they could lose their jobs if they mentioned it at all.”
From there, according to those who tried to speak out about the event, an element of secrecy and suppression arose. Military vehicles were seen around the area, the site was under total lockdown. Ironically, exactly as virtually every film surrounding such an event would have you believe. Men in camouflaged uniforms were reportedly seen by dozens of the eyewitnesses still vocal on the issue now more than half a century on. The unusual thing about men in camouflage is that in Australia during the 1960’s, neither the Australian nor the British had incorporated it into the military uniforms. Suggesting a possible involvement of either a group, outside of a national government, or even the U.S government which did/does have a presence on Australian soil.
There is talk of suppression of information surrounding this incident. I don’t know how things were managed at the time, perhaps due to the nature of news in the 1960’s it simply did not receive the coverage it might if it occurred today. Though, anecdotally, I would have to agree that something does seem unusual about the records. In researching the event through the usual channels, archives of Australian public newspaper records, the entire year of 1966 in Australia seems oddly slim. Searching terms like “UFO”, “Westall”, “Flying Saucer” were actually proving fruitless. So then I changed the search purely based on date.
In Melbourne, 1966, possibly by coincidence, 1966 draws a blank. So then I started checking other states, in case stories made it to further away Newspapers. When I looked up ‘The Canberra Times’, checking through dates around early April I didn’t find any mention of the Westall UFO event (though perhaps I was just lazily looking in all the wrong places). I did however, find this story, reported in Canberra, about a story that happened in Victoria, approximately 2 hours NW from the Westall incident, mere days after the UFO was sighted at the back of the school:
“MELBOURNE, Monday. — The current world-wide spate of sightings of flying saucers was brought closer to home today by a report by a Maryborough man. Mr Ronald F. Sullivan, a 38-year-old builder of Victoria Street, Maryborough, said he had seen an unidentified flying object on the Bendigo to St Arnaud Road last Monday. Three days later a youth was killed when his car ran off the road at the place where Mr Sullivan said he had seen the object.
Mr Sullivan said, “the headlights on my car were suddenly diverted to the right, for no apparent reason. And if I had followed them I would have run off the straight stretch of road. The fact that I am an experienced driver, and know the district well, saved my life. I managed to stop before I crashed.
Then I saw a display of gaseous lights in all colours of the spectrum in a nearby paddock. The object rose about 10 feet in the air. It later disappeared”, Mr Sullivan said.
Mr Sullivan said he drove on to Wycheproof where his headlights were checked and found to be in perfect order. He went to the crash scene with police on Friday. “We all noticed there was a depression about five inches deep in the freshly ploughed paddock, about 50 feet from the fence. It was about five feet in diameter.” Mr Sullivan said. Police at Maryborough, Castlemaine, Bealiba and Newstead said today they had all heard reports of flying saucers in the area. They have not been able to find the cause of the accident in which the youth, Gary Taylor, 19, of Carnegie, died.”
—THE CANBERRA TIMES, TUESDAY, APRIL 12, 1966
It’s also claimed that the chemistry teacher at Westall High, Barbara Robins, had access to a camera and was hastily snapping photographs of the UFO during the 20 minute frenzy. There are a great many photographs claiming to be taken during this event, but when I cross referenced them (reverse google search) every single one was linked to other UFO sightings, though that is common in many news stories, surrounding issues even outside of the paranormal. It’s been suggested that Barbara Robins had her camera and film confiscated and was coerced into silence.
Ultimately, in my opinion, this is more a story about suppression than anything else. It has endless possible explanations, but these are the top four I could come up with.
Mass Hysteria, somehow something potentially non-existent has been blown way out of proportion. Disingenuous recollections of a misinterpreted reality. This is actually the least likely scenario, in my mind.
Extraterrestrial or Ultraterrestrial life with access to highly advanced technology, presented itself to hundreds of Australian schoolchildren. For whatever reason, some “agency” (government or otherwise) wants to keep it a secret, suppressed knowledge.
Certain groups on this planet have access to technology that far surpasses what is currently available to the masses. Information is power, and the power is being kept from the general people. Those that rule the world don’t want individuals to be self-sufficient and able to thrive off of the nipple of “the system“.
The whole thing was setup. The entire experience was orchestrated. “They” wanted to test how a group would react to something like this, then how they could suppress it.
Some estimations to the total number of witnesses of UFO phenomenon (of varying levels and vicinity of encounters) in Victoria around the 6th of April, 1966 are approximately 300 individuals. 300 individuals that saw “a flying saucer” at a very low altitude. This wasn’t a craft people were squinting to see through the clouds, this was something narrowly avoiding telegraph poles (as one witness claimed). All said and done, in this account of strange events, there is one major thing to ask yourself. Someone in all of this is lying, that much is certain. The question that only you can truly ask yourself is, who? Did the students decide to create some charade? For the fun of it? For fame? They didn’t achieve any, the story barely got out. Or is the reason that seemingly “military” types were involved almost instantly, liaising with the powers that be, because certain people know certain things, that the rest of us are not allowed to understand.
If you think time will reveal the answers naturally, that the truth will rise to the surface on it’s own accord, like cream, remember this event happened over half a century ago. Many of the eyewitnesses have spent their entire lives waiting to make sense of what they saw, like something would emerge from the woodwork and link the pieces together. That day, unfortunately, has yet to come. Unless something changes, something gives out, the secrets will remain secrets, dormant and unknown.
According to UFO-Hunters.com as of the year 2020, there are over 200220 sightings reported and that number expected to continue to grow as more people around the world continue to more avidly monitor and record the activity of the skies.
Iron Age Temple Uncovered in Jerusalem Challenges Biblical Claim
Iron Age Temple Uncovered in Jerusalem Challenges Biblical Claim
The famous Temple of Solomonmight not have been the first or only temple in the Holy Land.
Dating to around 900 BC, an Iron Agetemple located near Jerusalem negates the long-held idea the ancient Kingdom of Judah (southern Israel) only had one temple, the First Temple, better known as Solomon's Temple, which was operational between 10th century BC until it was destroyed in 586 BC.
The Iron Age site of Tel Motza, about 4 miles (6.4 kilometers) outside Jerusalem, has been known of since the early 1990s and archaeologists found the remains of a settlement dated to the Neolithic period (about 6000 BC). In 2012 a settlement from the First Temple period was discovered containing a cultic structure and 36 wheat granaries, indicating that Motza was part of an ancient economic center, and it is the presence of this one ancient religious complex that challenges the history of Judah presented in the Bible.
The Tel Motza Iron Age temple excavation site in Jerusalem.
Judah Was Not As Well Established As The Bible States
A new study of the temple by co-researcher Shua Kisilevitz, a doctoral student of archaeology at Tel Aviv University in Israel and an archaeologist with the Israel Antiquities Authority (IAA), and review co-author Oded Lipschits, the director of the Sonia and Marco Nadler Institute of Archaeology at Tel Aviv University, was published in the January/February issue of the Biblical Archaeology Review magazine. In the article the researchers say the temple had been built about 900 BC and that they think it operated until the early 6th century BC.
And where this discovery is controversial is that the existence of this temple means that people living close to Jerusalem had their own place of worship, a cultic temple, which in itself suggests the rule of the Jerusalem high priests was “not so strong”, and that the kingdom was “not so well established” as the Bible leads us to believe, Kisilevitz and Lipschits, told Live Science .
Oldest Known Horse Depictions In Judah
A report in the Daily Mail detailing the study says the ancient temple could have held about 150 congregants who worshiped the god Yahweh, but they also used idols to communicate with the divine in the same period as the First Temple. This contradicts the Jewish Bible that details the religious reforms of King Hezekiah and King Josiah, who consolidated worship at Solomon's Temple in Jerusalem, and allegedly stopped ‘all’ cultic practices out of its walls.
Kisilevitz told Live Science that the temple was a rectangular building with an open courtyard at the front that would have been a focal point for cultic worship, and inside they found a stone built sacrificial altar near pits for dead animal bodies. Two human-like and two horse-like clay figurines were discovered smashed and buried in the courtyard, which was thought to have been associated with a rainfall, fertility and harvest ritual of some kind. The researchers added that the horse-like figurines may be the “oldest known depictions of horses from the Iron Age of Judah.”
Figurine of a horse found in Tel Motza Iron Age temple in excavation site.
The teams of archaeologists at Tel Motza unearthed dozens of grain storage silos (granaries) and associated administrative and religious buildings. This informs us that Tel Motza sold grain to the nearby Jerusalem. Over time, the settlement is believed to have become an agricultural and economic “powerhouse,” the researchers wrote in the magazine piece. They also speculate that perhaps the temple was permitted to exist by the high priests at Solomon’s Temple, because it was part of the granary and didn’t threaten centralized control of the kingdom.
During the time this temple was functional, new political groups and alliances emerged in the Levant, and it is believed that in the face of these changes people maintained traditional religious practices. The researchers said this was evident in the temple’s artifacts and architecture, which they say are reminiscent of religious traditions from the ancient Near East that had been practiced since the third millennium BC.
Figurine of a ram found in Tel Motza Iron Age temple excavation site.
The discovery and analysis of this ancient Iron Age temple not only enlightens historians on the state formation of Judah during this period. It also determines that the state was nowhere near as centralized as it would later become and that in its formative days it depended not solely on the administrative elite at Solomon’s Temple, but on trading relationships with nearby settlements like Tel Motza, and maybe others yet to be discovered.
Top image: Main: The Tel Motza Iron Age temple excavation site in Jerusalem. Source: Skyview / Israel Antiquities Authority . Inset: Ancient figurines of people found at Tel Motza. Source: Clara Amit / Israel Antiquities Authority
De neanderthalers waren een stuk verfijnder en beschaafder dan eeuwenlang werd aangenomen, blijkt eens te meer uit een nieuw onderzoek.
De wetenschap verwijst het cliché van de neanderthaler als een menselijke ondersoort in alle betekenissen van dat woord almaar nadrukkelijker naar de prullenmand. Nieuw onderzoek stelt dat beeld van een primitief wezen, dat alleen maar met een steen in een hand gruizige keelklanken zou brommen, nog wat meer bij aan de hand van een gelijkenis met een wel erg menselijk aanvoelend ritueel.
Bloemen en kransen
Voor het eerst in twintig jaar werd in het eldorado van de neanderthalexperts, de Shanidargrot in de Koerdische Autonome Regio in Irak, weer een geleed skelet opgegraven: een geraamte waarvan botten, beenderen en andere lichaamsdelen nog grotendeels met elkaar verbonden waren. En dat opent nieuwe onderzoeksperspectieven rond een hypothese die specialist Ralph Solecki in de jaren 50 van de vorige eeuw formuleerde. Uit de aanwezigheid van pollen in begraafplaatsen leidde deze Amerikaanse archeoloog toen af dat neanderthalers, net zoals de mens, met bloemen afscheid namen van een overledene.
De botten van de linkerhand van een neanderthaler, gevonden in de Shanidargrot. Credits: Graeme Barker
Dat leidde tot een decennialange controverse, want niet alle wetenschappers waren ervan overtuigd dat de bloemen wezen op doodsrituelen, laat staan begrafenissen tout court. En bij uitbreiding twijfelden zij sterk aan de veronderstelling dat neanderthalers ook maar enige culturele verfijning van die orde hadden. De nieuwe vondst door een team van de universiteiten van Cambridge, Birkbeck en Liverpool (John Moores) maakt het nu mogelijk dit stukje neanderthalerbeschaving verder te verkennen met de nieuwste technieken, zoals CT-scans en DNA-onderzoek.
Culturele complexiteit
‘Inscripties in grotten, decoratieve schelpen en klauwen van roofvogels… De voorbije jaren zijn er steeds meer aanwijzingen en bewijzen gekomen dat neanderthalers een stuk gesofisticeerder waren dan werd gedacht,’ stelt onderzoekleidster Emma Pomeroy. ‘Wat hun dodenrituelen betreft waren we tot nog toe aangewezen op decenniaoude resten en onderzoeken met intussen verouderde technieken. Maar als nu blijkt dat zij de Shanidargrot inderdaad gebruikten als een kerkhof, met bijhorende rituelen bovendien, dan wijst dat op een culturele complexiteit van een nog net iets hogere orde en een grotere gelijkenis met de mens dan verondersteld.’
Findings From NASA's Juno Update Jupiter Water Mystery
Findings From NASA's Juno Update Jupiter Water Mystery
The JunoCam imager aboard NASA's Juno spacecraft captured this image of Jupiter's southern equatorial region on Sept. 1, 2017. The image is oriented so Jupiter's poles (not visible) run left-to-right of frame. Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/SwRI/MSSS/Kevin M. Gill › Full image and caption
The mission publishes its first stream of data on the amount of water in Jupiter's atmosphere - the first findings on the gas giant's water since the agency's 1995 Galileo mission.
NASA's Juno mission has provided its first science results on the amount of water in Jupiter's atmosphere. Published recently in the journal Nature Astronomy, the Juno results estimate that at the equator, water makes up about 0.25% of the molecules in Jupiter's atmosphere - almost three times that of the Sun. These are also the first findings on the gas giant's abundance of water since the agency's 1995 Galileo mission suggested Jupiter might be extremely dry compared to the Sun (the comparison is based not on liquid water but on the presence of its components, oxygen and hydrogen, present in the Sun).
An accurate estimate of the total amount of water in Jupiter's atmosphere has been on the wish lists of planetary scientists for decades: The figure in the gas giant represents a critical missing piece to the puzzle of our solar system's formation. Jupiter was likely the first planet to form, and it contains most of the gas and dust that wasn't incorporated into the Sun.
The leading theories about its formation rest on the amount of water the planet soaked up.Water abundance also has important implications for the gas giant's meteorology (how wind currents flow on Jupiter) and internal structure. While lightning - a phenomenon typically fueled by moisture - detected on Jupiter by Voyager and other spacecraft implied the presence of water, an accurate estimate of the amount of water deep within Jupiter's atmosphere remained elusive.
Thick white clouds are present in this JunoCam image of Jupiter's equatorial zone. At microwave frequencies, these clouds are transparent, allowing Juno's Microwave Radiometer to measure water deep into Jupiter's atmosphere.
The image was acquired during Juno's flyby on Dec. 16, 2017. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/SwRI/MSSS/Kevin M. Gill Full image and caption
Before the Galileo probe stopped transmitting 57 minutes into its Jovian descent in December 1995, it radioed out spectrometer measurements of the amount of water in the gas giant's atmosphere down to a depth of about 75 miles (120 kilometers), where the atmospheric pressure reached about 320 pounds per square inch (22 bar). The scientists working on the data were dismayed to find ten times less water than expected.
Even more surprising: The amount of water the Galileo probe measured appeared to be still increasing at the greatest depth measured, far below where theories suggest the atmosphere should be well mixed. In a well-mixed atmosphere, the water content is constant across the region and more likely to represent a global average; in other words, it's more likely to be representative of water planetwide. When combined with an infrared map obtained at the same time by a ground-based telescope, the results suggested the probe mission may have just been unlucky, sampling an unusually dry and warm meteorological spot on Jupiter.
"Just when we think we have things figured out, Jupiter reminds us how much we still have to learn," said Scott Bolton, Juno principal investigator at the Southwest Research Institute in San Antonio. "Juno's surprise discovery that the atmosphere was not well mixed even well below the cloud tops is a puzzle that we are still trying to figure out. No one would have guessed that water might be so variable across the planet."
Measuring Water From Above
A rotating, solar-powered spacecraft, Juno launched in 2011. Because of the Galileo probe experience, the mission seeks to obtain water abundance readings across large regions of the immense planet. A new kind of instrument for deep space planetary exploration, Juno's Microwave Radiometer (MWR) observes Jupiter from above using six antennas that measure atmospheric temperature at multiple depths simultaneously. The Microwave Radiometer takes advantage of the fact that water absorbs certain wavelengths of microwave radiation, the same trick used by microwave ovens to quickly heat food. The measured temperatures are used to constrain the amount of water and ammonia in the deep atmosphere, as both molecules absorb microwave radiation.
The Juno science team used data collected during Juno's first eight science flybys of Jupiter to generate the findings. They initially concentrated on the equatorial region because the atmosphere there appears more well-mixed, even at depth, than in other regions. From its orbital perch, the radiometer was able to collect data from a far greater depth into Jupiter's atmosphere than the Galileo probe - 93 miles (150 kilometers), where the pressure reaches about 480 psi (33 bar).
"We found the water in the equator to be greater than what the Galileo probe measured," said Cheng Li, a Juno scientist at the University of California, Berkeley. "Because the equatorial region is very unique at Jupiter, we need to compare these results with how much water is in other regions."
Northward Bound
Juno's 53-day orbit is slowly moving northward, as intended, bringing more of Jupiter's northern hemisphere into sharper focus with each flyby. The science team is eager to see how atmospheric water content varies by latitude and region, as well as what the cyclone-rich poles can tell them about the gas giant's global water abundance.
Juno's 24th science flyby of Jupiter occurred on Feb 17. The next science flyby takes place on April 10, 2020.
"Every science flyby is an event of discovery," said Bolton. "With Jupiter there is always something new. Juno has taught us an important lesson: We need to get up close and personal to a planet to test our theories."
NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California, manages the Juno mission for the principal investigator, Scott Bolton, of the Southwest Research Institute in San Antonio. Juno is part of NASA's New Frontiers Program, which is managed at NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama, for NASA's Science Mission Directorate. The Italian Space Agency contributed the Jovian Infrared Auroral Mapper and the Ka-Band translator system. Lockheed Martin Space in Denver built and operates the spacecraft.
The Very Large Array observatory in New Mexico will gather data to be analysed by the Seti Institute. Photograph: Robyn Beck/AFP/Getty
Astronomers will sweep the entire sky for signs of extraterrestrial life for the first time, using 28 giant radio telescopes in an unprecedented hunt for alien civilisations.
The project is a collaboration between the privately-funded Seti Institute and the Very Large Array observatory in New Mexico, one of the world’s most powerful radio observatories. Gaining real-time access to all the data gathered by VLA is considered a major coup for scientists hunting extraterrestrial lifeforms and an indication that the field has “gone mainstream”.
Normal astronomy operations will continue at the VLA, which was featured in the 1997 film Contact, but under the new arrangement all data will be duplicated and fed through a dedicated supercomputer that will search for beeps, squawks or other signatures of distant technology.
“The VLA is being used for an all-sky survey and we kind of go along for the ride,” said Andrew Siemion, director of the Berkeley Seti centre. “It allows us to in parallel conduct a Seti survey.
“Determining whether we are alone in the universe as technologically capable life is among the most compelling questions in science, and [our] telescopes can play a major role in answering it,” said Tony Beasley, director of The National Radio Astronomy Observatory, which runs the VLA.
The first phase of the project, installing new cables, has been funded by John Giannandrea, a senior Apple executive and trustee of the Seti Institute, and Carol Giannandrea.
The VLA project is one of a wave of upcoming Seti initiatives sketched out at the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) conference in Seattle on Friday.
Jill Tarter, an emeritus researcher at the Seti Institute, gave updates on Panoseti, a proposed observatory in the prototype stage of development designed to continuously watch a large portion of the sky. If funding is secured, Panoseti will comprise two geodesic domes covered in half-metre lenses, giving it the appearance of a giant pair of insect eyes. The ability to simultaneously watch a vast expanse of sky would make it uniquely suited to spotting transient signals, such as the flash of a distant powerful laser. “To catch that kind of thing you really do want to be looking when the signal comes your way,” said Tarter ahead of her talk.
The veteran Seti scientist said the field had been boosted in the past decade by the discovery that about a fifth of stars host planets in the “habitable zone”.
“Now that there might be more habitable real estate out there than we ever imagined early on … it seems to make this next question about intelligent life more realistic,” she said. “It’s not as far on the fringes as it once was – it’s almost mainstream.”
Others are hunting for less intelligent varieties of alien life. Speaking at the same session at AAAS, Victoria Meadows, who leads Nasa’s Virtual Planetary Laboratory at the University of Washington, described observations planned with the James Webb Space Telescope, scheduled to launch next year.
Three Earth-sized planets orbiting a cool, dim star called Trappist-1 in the constellation of Aquarius will be high up on the hit list. Computer models suggest the Trappist-1 system is among the most promising for finding planets with atmospheres and temperatures that would enable liquid water to exist on the surface.
“The James Webb Telescope will be able to tell us whether they have atmospheres like the Earth or Venus,” said Meadows. “It gives us our first real chance to search for gases given off by life on another planet. We’re basically going to get to study Earth’s cousins.”
Siemion also announced the second tranche of results from the $100m (£76m) Breakthrough Listen Initiative: no alien transmissions have been detected so far.
The latest survey, the most comprehensive to date of radio emissions, included the first search of the “Earth transit zone”. The transit zone search targeted 20 stars in positions where the hypothetical inhabitants of these solar systems would be able to observe the Earth’s shadow flickering across the sun. This method of detection has allowed astronomers to identify thousands of exoplanets and determine whether their conditions are potentially habitable.
“This turns that around and says, ‘What if some other civilisation were watching our sun?’” said Siemion.
If there is, it is either watching quietly or watching from some of the other 200bn stars in the Milky Way.
As the latest technology advances bring scientists a step closer to answering the question of whether anyone or anything is out there, there are still issues to be ironed out over best practice in the event that an alien civilisation is detected.
Stephen Hawking warned against attempting any form of contact, suggesting the outcome for humans would not necessarily be good. Siemion disagrees. “Personally I think we absolutely should and I think without a doubt, we would,” he said. “Part of being human is wanting to reach out into the unknown and wanting to reach out and make connections.”
He is less decisive about what Earth’s message should be, however. “I don’t know … I spend absolutely zero time thinking about that,” he said. “I guess I would just say, ‘Hello’.”
Saturn's most Earth-like moon looks a bit less likely to host life, thanks to quantum mechanics, the weird rules that govern subatomic particles.
Titan, the second largest moon in our solar system after Jupiter's Ganymede, is unique in two ways that have convinced some researchers that this moon might host extraterrestrial life: It's the only moon in our solar system with a dense atmosphere, and it's the only body in space, besides Earth, known to definitely have pools of liquid on its surface. In Titan's case, those pools are frigid lakes of hydrocarbons, closer to the gasoline in a car than the oceans on Earth. But some researchers have suggested that complex structures could arise in those pools: bubbles with special properties that mimic ingredients found to be necessary for life on our planet.
On Earth, lipid molecules (fatty acids) can spontaneously arrange themselves into bubble-shaped membranes that form the barriers around the cells of all known life-forms. Some researchers think this was the first necessary ingredient for life as it formed on Earth.
On Titan, researchers have speculated in the past, an equivalent set of bubbles might have emerged, these consisting of nitrogen-based molecules called azotosomes.
But for those structures to arise naturally, the physics has to work just right in the conditions actually present on Titan: temperatures of about minus 300 degrees Fahrenheit (minus 185 degrees Celsius), without liquid water or atmospheric oxygen.
Previous studies, using molecular dynamics simulations — a technique often used to examine the chemistry of life — suggested that such bubble structures would arise and become common on a world like Titan. But a new paper, published Jan. 24 in the journal Science Advances, suggests that those earlier simulations were wrong.
Using more complex simulations involving quantum mechanics, the researchers in the new paper studied the structures in terms of their "thermodynamic viability."
Here's what that means: Put a ball at the top of a hill, and it's likely to end up at the bottom, a position of lower energy. Similarly, chemicals tend to arrange themseIves in the simplest, lowest-energy pattern. The researchers wanted to know whether the azotosomes would be the simplest, most efficient arrangement for those nitrogen-bearing molecules.
Titan represents a "strict test case for the limits of life," the researchers wrote in their paper. And in this role, the moon fails. Azotosomes, the simulation showed, just aren't thermodynamically viable on Titan.
This work, the researchers said in a statement, should help NASA figure out what experiments to include on its Dragonfly mission to Titan, planned for the 2030s. It's still theoretically possible that life emerged on Titan, the researchers said in the paper, but such life would likely not involve anything we'd recognize as a cell membrane.
The ever-growing number of satellites and orbital debris in space prompted calls for change at a House hearing, although how this will be legislated is still under consideration.
At issue is the rise of privately owned satellite constellations by companies such as SpaceX and OneWeb. Satellites today are smaller and more affordable than the big machines of past decades, thanks to advancements in technology. But with fleets of small satellites comes other risks, such as more chances for them to slam into each other. And high-profile near misses are starting to become more common.
"This is one of the most important and rapidly evolving issues facing our ability to operate in space," said Kendra Horn, D-Okla., chair of the House Subcommittee on Space and Aeronautics, in her opening statement at the hearing in Washington, on Feb. 11.
Two large, defunct and uncontrollable satellites nearly collided in orbit two weeks ago, passing about 60 feet (18 meters) from each other — narrowly avoiding a collision that could have sent thousands of pieces of "space junk" into low Earth orbit. And in late 2019, the European Space Agencyhad to redirect one of its satellites to reduce the risk of a collision; the other satellite operator, SpaceX, did not respond to requests to move its own machine out of the way.
This doesn't even mention the numerous confirmed examples of space collisions and space junk over the decades that in some cases, are still causing problems today. For example, the International Space Station has changed its orbit in the past to dodge dangerous space debris. Space assets such as weather satellites, telecommunications links and the GPS navigation system for the United States are among the vital links of space infrastructure that could be knocked out if collisions continue.
The U.S. Department of Defense has a catalog of more than 20,000 known space objects, Horn said, although this number has a couple of limitations. The catalog only represents unclassified satellites or objects, and it also indicates the number of trackable objects. There are some things in space that are just too small to be tracked with current technology.
"Space is going to get more crowded," Horn said, as thousands of new objects join what's already in space. The SpaceX Starlink constellation could have more than 12,000 satellites alone in a few years, and (besides the collision concern) it already is raising concerns from astronomers for its bright objects blocking night-sky observations.
The House subcommittee commissioned a few experts to speak on how lawmakers can address this problem, under a provision in the 2020 NASA budget to carry out research and development activities concerning space debris mitigation, and to consider a strategy for space situational awareness research and technology.
The solutions proposed were diverse, but for the most part, the experts said it will likely involve using several government entities that could include NASA, the Department of Commerce and other possibilities. There may be some private industry involvement as well.
Public-private partnerships
One possibility is finding more sources for satellite data outside of the Department of Defense. "We need better data," said subcommittee ranking member Brian Babin (R-Texas), adding that the Department of Defense cannot release all data for national security concerns — and it does not see everything.
Babin suggested that the Department of Commerce could form a partnership with the private sector. It already has experience with regulating standards such as export controls, he said. It also already gives a "light touch" to emerging industries, he pointed out — such as its careful relationship in the 1990s with the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) that assigns internet addresses, among many other functions.
Brian Weeden, the Secure World Foundation's director of program planning, testified as a witness for the subcommittee. He said alerts are already coming from private industry nonetheless. It was LeoLabs, a private American company, that first sent out the alert about the possible 2020 collision in a tweet three days before the event, he said — based on ground-based tracking radars. But he warned the current infrastructure is "dangerously insufficient to face the growing number of space challenges."
But Commerce is not the only federal entity that could step up to help solve the space junk crisis.
International collaboration
Much of space law rests on precedent, taking into account how things are done in international waters or on the continent of Antarctica (where multiple countries have jurisdiction). For that reason, scholar Ruth Stilwell called for considering the "high seas" as one area where space policymakers could turn for legislation. (Stilwell is an adjunct professor at Norwich University and a senior non-resident scholar at the Space Policy Institute of George Washington University.)
Stilwell called for an "international agreement on standards and behaviors," with a transition to new space traffic management taking into account the needs of various space players. Whatever the framework is, however, it would need government oversight of some sort. "You can only be a good actor with rules to follow," Stilwell added later in the hearing. "You can't expect somebody to be a good actor if rules do not exist."
There is also concern that by handing space traffic control to big entities like Commerce and a few private companies, other voices (such as smaller companies) could be lost in the space world. "We need to ensure the expertise developed in small communities is not lost in the transition phase," Danielle Wood, the director of the space-enabled research group at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, said at the hearing.
While NASA does have expertise in the space domain, the agency doesn't have all the expertise that other ones have — which is why Joanne Gabrynowicz, professor emeritus of space law at the University of Mississippi Law Center, called for an interagency solution. "There is no one agency who has it all," Gabrynowicz said at the hearing, referring to other government agency possibilities for managing space traffic.
NASA also has numerous other things to think about, Weeden said in a separate piece of testimony — including its mandate to land astronauts on the moon by 2024 and then move on to Mars. "NASA could do it, but my sense is they will be overwhelmed by all the other things," Weeden said.
If people don't act quickly, there is the risk that space debris could lock out the possibility of future missions for a while, if a collision creates pieces of debris that slam into other satellites and break them up, too. (This is known as the Kessler Syndrome.)
Over time the collisions would stabilize, noted Daniel Oltrogge, who is founder and administrator of the Space Safety Coalition, but the effects would still be felt. "By the time it does [stabilize], you have a huge number of small particles out there, and some fragments … that are quite large," said Oltrogge, who is also chair of the space traffic management space governance task force for the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics.
More subcommittee hearings will be coming up to discuss what to do next.
Are They Alive... Antarctica Melting Ice Is Revealing Something No One Thought Possible!
Are They Alive... Antarctica Melting Ice Is Revealing Something No One Thought Possible!
As the ice melts, through volcanic activity and human intervention, the world will be watching as this mysterious land reveals the secrets it has held for so long.
Any artifacts recovered that would give us free or clean energy will be covered up and hidden away under the Vatican for sure until they can dumb it down make it dirty and charge us monthly for it! AC
The military hires private companies to do the research so they don’t have to disclose what’s going on. Private companies don’t have to answer to congress. Kens32052
It’s called nuclear destruction and guess what, never trust the miss leading information given here, they lie and withhold info because too much knowledge to the public will disrupt these governments agenda to control all our minds. Drygrass
SPACEX WANTS TO SEND REGULAR CITIZENS INTO SPACE — HERE'S HOW
SPACEX WANTS TO SEND REGULAR CITIZENS INTO SPACE — HERE'S HOW
A human-carrying capsule will help a lucky few live out their space travel dreams.
SpaceX has teamed up with a private space tourism company to send up to four private citizens into space.
Space Adventures, a Washington, D.C.-based firm, announced Tuesday that it will work with Elon Musk's firm to host a voyage using the Crew Dragon capsule. The mission, the Crew Dragon's first free-flying mission, could be the first such space tourism trip powered entirely by American spaceflight technology. A launch could take place as early as 2021.
“This historic mission will forge a path to making spaceflight possible for all people who dream of it, and we are pleased to work with the Space Adventures’ team on the mission,” Gwynne Shotwell, president and chief operating officer of SpaceX, said in a statement.
The mission will use SpaceX's Falcon 9 reusable rocket to send up a Crew Dragon capsule. The rocket will launch from the Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida, a common launch site for SpaceX's missions. Timing is unclear, but the company suggests a window stretching from late 2021 to mid-2022. Following "a few weeks" of training in the United States, the group will lift off and fly for up to five days.
It could mark a momentous occasion in commercial spaceflight history. Over the course of 2001 to 2009, Space Adventures flew over 36 million miles in eight separate missions. Its clients have non-professional astronauts like Dennis Tito, Richard Garriott, Mark Shuttleworth and others. But all successful orbital missions used Roscosmos Soyuz rockets, and this arrangement was put on hold after the rockets became the only means of reaching the International Space Station.
SpaceX, a private company founded by Musk in 2002, routinely sends satellites and cargo into space but has never flown a human. The Crew Dragon, developed as part of NASA's Commercial Crew program, is designed to send astronauts to and from the International Space Station. With this new announcement, the Crew Dragon could also expand human spaceflight and bring tourists along for the ride.
The Space Adventures website failed to load in the wake of the announcement, but the team also shared a video with more details via its YouTube account:
"Honoring our combined histories, this Dragon mission will be a special experience and a once in a lifetime opportunity – capable of reaching twice the altitude of any prior civilian astronaut mission or space station visitor,” Eric Anderson, chairman of Space Adventures, said in a statement.
The company has big plans for the trip. Its official announcement states that the trip will offer the chance to "break the world altitude record for private citizen spaceflight," offering a chance to see Earth like no other human since NASA's Gemini program in the 1960s.
It's not the first time SpaceX has announced plans to send private citizens into space. Japanese billionaire Yusaku Maezawa plans to use the under-development Starship to fly around the moon with a team of six to eight artists. The "Dear Moon" voyage is expected to take around five days, and passengers will be encouraged to create art capturing their experience. The mission is scheduled to take place in 2023.
But like the Starship, the Crew Dragon is still under development. The first manned flight could take place as early as the first half of 2020, with SpaceX reportedly looking at May 7 as a possible launch day. But as the project has already experienced delays during development, a further delay is not entirely out of the question.
AFPSpaceX-CEO Elon Musk tijdens een persconferentie over de SpaceX Crew Dragon demo-missie in maart 2019.
WETENSCHAPIn samenwerking met een Amerikaanse firma voor ruimtetoerisme zoekt de Amerikaanse raketbouwer SpaceX vier privépersonen voor een ruimtereis. De prijs van het ticket is nog niet geweten.
Bouwer van de Falcon-draagraket SpaceX heeft een overeenkomst gesloten met Space Adventures, met zetel nabij Washington. Die firma werkte samen met het Russische ruimtevaartbureau Roscosmos om acht ruimtetoeristen met een Russische Sojoez naar het Internationaal Ruimtestation ISS te brengen en terug te halen.
SpaceX, het bedrijf van Tesla-kopstuk Elon Musk, biedt nu de kans om mee te vliegen met zijn door een Falcon-9 gelanceerde Crew Dragon, of de bemande versie van zijn onbemande cargo die voor rekening van het ruimtevaartbureau NASA instaat voor vervoer naar en van het ISS. Die Crew Dragon moet binnen enkele maanden - echt bemand - voor het eerst vliegen, maar wanneer precies is nog niet bekend.
De raketbouwer beklemtoont ruimtetoeristen geen verblijf in het ISS aan te bieden. SpaceX geeft geen details over de datum, de duur en het programma van de trip. Voorzitter Eric Andersen van Space Adventures zei dat de vlucht twee keer zo hoog kan gaan als voorgaande missies van een amateur-astronaut of bezoeker van het ruimtestation. Dit wentelt op ongeveer 400 km hoogte rond onze planeet.
Concurrentie
Ook werkzaam in de sector van het ruimtetoerisme zijn Virgin Galactic en Blue Origin. Zij werken aan trips tot 80 à 100 km hoogte of de grens van de ruimte, voor enkele minuten, voor 250.000 dollar of meer. SpaceX zal ongetwijfeld duurder zijn.
Met een Falcon-9 heeft SpaceX maandag nog eens 60 satellieten tegelijk voor zijn Starlink-constellatie voor wereldwijd breedbandinternet gelanceerd. Het netwerk omvat zodoende al 300 kunstmanen.
Voor de eerste keer sinds 2016 kon de teruggekeerde eerste rakettrap echter niet landen op een droneschip in de Atlantische Oceaan. Die trap werd ook al gebruikt bij drie eerdere lanceringen. Het lijkt onwaarschijnlijk dat het in zee geplofte ding nog eens gebruikt zal kunnen worden.
Archaeologists say a group of people tunnelling into the side of a country road in search of a race of pre-Polynesian giants' skeletons could be damaging the archaeological record.
A representative of local iwi, Ngāti Taahinga, who have tīpuna and taonga buried in the limestone-rich north Waikato area's caves, has described the group's actions as "disturbing".
The group say this bone belongs to a giant pre-Polynesian human and could be more than 2500 years old. Experts say it's likely from a moa. Photo / Supplied
RNZ understands one member of the group is a caver, but none are trained archaeologists.
Since 2016, the group has recorded progress of the dig by sharing photos, videos and written updates on a blog that has been viewed more than 88,000 times.
Otago University associate professor of bioarchaeology Dr Siân Halcrow worries about the number of people who might come across the blog and believe the information being put out on it.
"It does really highlight what some New Zealanders think, in terms of pre-Māori conspiracy theories, with really racist undertones. It's not grounded in fact, so people should be aware."
Though the group has tried to keep the location of the cave secret, RNZ has been able to confirm its whereabouts and contact the landowner, who was unaware of the dig and said the group did not have his permission to be tunnelling into his property.
Under cover of darkness
The secretive group has been sporadically digging out the tube-like cave for close to four years, often under the cover of darkness. They are yet to find any real evidence of the supposed giants they call the "tall ones", although they say they have already found several bones in the cave.
The group has determined one is the leg bone of an 8 foot tall human and could be up to 2500 years old. "This here, my friends, is a human bone of a pre-Polynesian inhabitant," a male voice says in a video of the hollow bone posted online by the group. "You can tell by the triangular shape. It's most likely a tibia, which would make this… individual 8ft 4 inches tall… Regardless of its length, this is an older bone than any human being in New Zealand. What do our detractors say now, we wonder?"
Experts say the bone probably belongs to a moa.
The lack of evidence hasn't hampered the enthusiasm of the group's apparent leader, who does not reveal his name online but goes by the initials 'IJ'.
"Providing proof of 8' humans to the world will be bigger than finding Tutankhamen," he tells RNZ, via email, adding that the discovery will be "the most talked about worldwide story of the millennium."
Tuakau man Maurice Tyson says the cave may contain the skeletons of Spanish flu victims. Photo / RNZ, Claire Eastham-Farrelly
A spokesman for Heritage New Zealand - the government entity tasked with protecting New Zealand's historic and cultural heritage - is less excited. Although it's illegal to modify or destroy any part of an archaeological site without authority from Heritage New Zealand, the spokesman says he has "no reason to believe that the purported cave is an archaeological site". In other words, the experts don't think the cave contains any evidence of pre-1900 human activity - giant human bones or otherwise.
The farmer who owns the land is fuming. Despite writing on the blog that "the land owner knows and approves of what we do", the property owner told RNZ he was unaware of the dig, and the group did not have his permission.
The 'Tall Ones'
There are many myths, rumours and oral histories pertaining to what lies beneath the crumpled farmland that spreads along the west coast, between Port Waikato and Raglan. Some are more far fetched than others.
Al Mannering, who grew up on a farm in the Waikaretu Valley where the tunnel is being dug, recalls stories of a pou whenua (carved wooden post) being found near a sharp bend when the road was cut, which he says may have signified a nearby urupā. He also recalls seeing a human femur about 2cm longer than his own. "And I am 6ft."
Another story comes from 88-year-old Maurice Tyson, who has lived in nearby Tuakau since he was a teen. He tells of a 'crypt' filled with 14 or more 8ft tall skeletons being uncovered by road workers, then quickly reburied by archaeologists, as part of a wider conspiracy to keep New Zealand's true history a secret.
Tyson doesn't claim to have seen the skeletons, or their reburial - but says the story was told to him by the road workers who found them. He has multiple theories about who the skeletons belong to - from victims of the Spanish flu to WWII Japanese soldiers.
On self-proclaimed "astro-archaeologist" Martin Doutre's CelticNZ website, an article describes a tribe of tall "Aztec type Maoris" [sic] referred to as the "Tall Ones" who lived in north Waikato caves and were eaten to extinction. The article mentions a "secret burial cave" that is "packed with the dead of the tribe."
It is these stories that seem to have inspired IJ and his crew, (who use the initials BM, YM, RL Davidson and MD on their blog,) to tunnel into the limestone cave in a bank on the side of Waikaretu Valley Rd.
"In the following pages and over the next three years or so you will find digital photos and information, along with video, that will prove that the 'tall ones' actually existed and that they were here long before Maori ever arrived and took the land from them," the blog reads.
"Maori, as we know them, did not possess an empty land as taught in the school books these days or as printed these days in the media - Polynesian's, in fact, came to a land already occupied and then they conquered it [sic] … What is inside our cave, when we finally reach the cavern part, will eventually prove this".
Disturbing approach
Though some believe the group is motivated by racism, Eru Whare of Ngāti Taahinga, who is chairman of Pukerewa Marae which is near the cave, is giving IJ and his crew the benefit of the doubt. "I wouldn't put it down to racism. I think it would be a lack of education and understanding of cultural values," he says.
But it's still hard for Whare to understand how or why something like this would be done without talking to iwi first - especially if it's human bones the diggers are searching for. "We have a number of caves back home [in the Waikaretu Valley] and there's still some of our loved ones buried in there. In our history and our culture we always talk about our bones. Where we come from, that's where our bones are. So in an urupā, or this case a cave, when you remove the bones from a place where we laid our dead or our loved ones, it removes that whole spiritual, tapu essence.
The group tunnel into the limestone caves. Photo / Supplied
"It's very hard for our people to try and decipher why people would do such things. And whether they are looking for, you know, big giants or moas. I mean I can understand... But for guys just going in there without any consultation. Well, that's something else. That's a pretty disturbing approach."
Grounded in racist ideologies
Despite the group's raison d'etre being the search "for those here long before the Polynesian migrations occurred," there is no evidence of human habitation of Aotearoa New Zealand prior to the arrival of Polynesians. "Every professional archaeologist will tell you the same," Waikato-based archaeologist Sian Keith says.
The pervasive myth that an earlier population of Moriori was displaced by Māori has been repeatedly rejected by academics. So have suggestions that, prior to the arrival of Polynesians, the country was settled by Egyptians, Celts, Greeks, Chinese, Melanesians, or Phoenicians by people like Doutre and Ross Baker of the One New Zealand Foundation (which opposed the return of land to Māori under the Treaty of Waitangi), Bryan Mitchell who believes New Zealand was first settled by a Scottish cattle farmer in the 12th century, Ross Wiseman, Noel Hilliam, Gary Cook and former National Front secretary Kerry Bolton.
More recent stories by writer Barry Brailsford of a mystical, peace-loving, non-Māori race which colonised New Zealand 2000 years before Polynesians arrived, were described as "virulent myth" by archaeologist Atholl Anderson. As with stories of Moriori pushed to justify British colonisation, Brailsford describes the purported peace-loving race as having been killed by Māori.
"These conspiracy theories are really grounded in racist ideologies. They need to be pulled apart for what they are," bioarchaeologist Siân Halcrow says. "There's no cover up."
University of Waikato teaching fellow Dr M Dentith, who studies conspiracy theory, fake news, and secrecy, agrees. "Quite a lot of these theories are used to make some variation of the claim 'Well, if white people were here first, then the Treaty is null and void', or 'We did to Māori only what they did to our distant ancestors'," Dentith says. "My interest is largely in the kinds of 'evidence' people like this put forward in support of their conspiracy theory that the government and Māori are hiding the existence of a pre-Māori, white civilisation here." Like Eru Whare, Dentith links the prevalence of these ideas back to a lack of education about the history and prehistory of Aotearoa.
IJ and his crew appear to loosely subscribe to Brailsford's theory. On the blog, IJ writes of his belief that the "true ancient history" of this country has been "covered up, secreted away, and legislated against" by academics, iwi and archaeologists.
Canterbury Museum curator Paul Scofield calls alternative theories about pre-Polynesian inhabitants of New Zealand "crackpot" and says the north Waikato cave dig reminds him of a low-cost version of a Dutch-American textiles magnate's 20 year search for gold buried by Spanish pirates on Juan Fernandez Island, off the coast of Chile. But he says nothing can be done about the removal of moa bones from the cave if it is on private land, as there is no legislation protecting the extinct birds' remains.
Talk of cover-ups and academic conspiracies frustrates archaeologist Sian Keith. "One of our jobs as archaeologists is to assess, retrieve and analyse the data from historic sites," she says. "We work with tangible evidence, scientific dating, environmental analysis, and engaging with iwi and hapu who have a rich oral tradition. There are many specialists working in the archaeological field who are passionate and thorough.
"The evidence for pre-Māori inhabitants, of any origin, simply isn't there. If it was, the professional community would have identified it and it would be common knowledge. Archaeologists are not secretive, the work we do is carefully managed under the Heritage New Zealand Pouhere Taonga Act, and investigations and excavations have to be formally reported on."
It doesn't matter to the diggers. The most recent update on their progress was posted online by IJ and MD last week. They expressed surprise at the lack of social media reaction to the bone they found. The tunnel they have excavated is now about 14 metres into the hillside. There is still no cavern in sight.
A secretive group who spent four years tunnelling into the side of a country road in search of a mythical race of pre-Polynesian giants' skeletons have called off their dig.
But one of the diggers, who has revealed his identity via Facebook, has warned a "reiki protection is on the cave dig".
The diggers have excavated a tunnel bout 14 metres into the hillside.
Photo: Supplied
Last week, RNZ revealed iwi, academics and the landowner were concerned by the anonymous group's dig in the Waikaretu Valley, west of Huntly.
The group say this bone belongs to a giant pre-Polynesian human and could be more than 2500 years old. Experts say it's likely from a moa.
Photo / Supplied
The group, who updated their progress on a blog, were searching for evidence of pre-Polynesian inhabitants of New Zealand.
They believed they had found a bone in the tunnel that belonged to a giant human up to 2500 years old.
But after viewing photos and a video of the bone, multiple experts told RNZ it likely belonged to a moa.
The dig was done without the consent of the landowner, or consultation with iwi who have tīpuna and taonga buried in the north west Waikato area's limestone caves.
Archaeologist Dr Siân Halcrow expressed concern that the group's fossicking behaviour could damage the archaeological record.
In a blog post on Saturday, the group announced they would abandon the dig, writing that the world will "now never know for sure if this cave was filled by hand specifically to hide some fourteen 8'+ pre-Polynesian skeletons."
In the post, the group said they would focus on three other locations in their search for proof that a race of eight foot humans beat Polynesians to become the first humans in Aotearoa, which they told RNZ would be "the most talked about worldwide story of the millennium."
Today, Rodney Davidson, a reiki practitioner from Northland, confirmed he was involved in the dig.
He posted a warning on Facebook: "Be aware that a Reiki protection is on the cave dig and has been since the start too. It has made it,s [sic] presence felt on at least two occasions to great benefit in fact. Abuse it in anyway and there will be a ' result ' ! I have no control over this so all your choice!"
There is no evidence of human habitation of Aotearoa New Zealand prior to the arrival of Polynesians.
The pervasive myth that an earlier population of Moriori was displaced by Māori has been repeatedly rejected by academics.
The 1916 and 1946 editions of the School Journal taught generations of school children many myths about Moriori. They include that they were wiped-out by Māori during an 1835 invasion, and that they were conquered due to their inferiority.
A true account of the history of the iwi is about to be entrenched in law.
Other alternative histories suggest that prior to the arrival of Polynesians, the country was settled by Egyptians, Celts, Greeks, Chinese, Melanesians, or Phoenicians.
Halcrow said "conspiracy theories" about the settlement of New Zealand by non-Polynesians were "grounded in racist ideologies."
She raised concerns about the number of people following the group's blog, saying, "It does really highlight what some New Zealanders think, in terms of pre-Māori conspiracy theories, with really racist undertones. It's not grounded in fact, so people should be aware."
Eru Whare of Ngāti Taahinga, chairman of Pukerewa Marae which is near where the group was digging, said, "I wouldn't put it down to racism. I think it would be a lack of education and understanding of cultural values."
"It's very hard for our people to try and decipher why people would do such things. And whether they are looking for, you know, big giants or moas. I mean I can understand... But for guys just going in there without any consultation. Well, that's something else. That's a pretty disturbing approach."
University of Waikato teaching fellow Dr M Dentith, who studies conspiracy theory, fake news, and secrecy, said theories about pre-Polynesian inhabitants of New Zealand were often used to make some variation of the claim, "'Well, if white people were here first, then the Treaty is null and void', or 'We did to Māori only what they did to our distant ancestors'".
“(The world will) now never know for sure if this cave was filled by hand specifically to hide some fourteen 8’+ pre-Polynesian skeletons.”
There’s a mini war of sorts underway in New Zealand over … giants! A reporter for Radio New Zealand (RNZ) has brought to light a hunt that has been underway for some time for evidence of giants that the searchers believe lived on the island prior to the Polynesians who arrived between 1250 and 1300 and developed the Māori culture. The group calls itself Tangata Whenua (Māori for “people of the land”) and, according to its website, has been secretly digging (often at night) a cave or tunnel since 2016 in the Waikato region in northern New Zealand for evidence of the 8-foot tall giants that they believe have been found before in 16 locations. The website states that the group knows of four of these sites and, earlier this month, they found what they claim is part of a femur from what would have been a being 7’10” to 8’4″ tall and lived 2500 years ago. (You can read the account and see a photo here.)
“But after viewing photos and a video of the bone, multiple experts told RNZ it likely belonged to a moa.”
Moa
RNZ reporter Susan Strongman has been reporting on the secret dig that has annoyed the landowner, who says they never asked permission, and archeologists and indigenous people, who say the hunters are not archeologists and risk harming historical artifacts and human remains. Strongman raised the heat on the group by revealing the name of one member — Rodney Davidson, a reiki practitioner from Northland. In a response on the group website and on his Facebook page, he defended the hunt, criticized Strongman and admitted that the group has stopped looking in that area, so no one will ever know for sure in the cave has giant skeletons in it. He said they will continue their clandestine searches in the other caves whose locations are apparently still secret.
“Be aware that a Reiki protection is on the cave dig and has been since the start too. It has made it,s [sic] presence felt on at least two occasions to great benefit in fact. Abuse it in anyway and there will be a ‘ result ‘ ! I have no control over this so all your choice!”
Along with the warning that a reiki aura or shield is protecting the cave, Davidson also gave out her twitter and email addresses for his supporters to send their responses – supporters whose numbers he claims have risen since she broke the story.
Meanwhile, experts like Otago University associate professor of bioarchaeology Dr Siân Halcrow agree that the bone is probably from a moa (a large extinct flightless bird resembling the emu), there is no evidence of any humans or human-like species of any size on New Zealand prior to the Māori (thus, no evidence that the Māori killed them off – a popular but unproven theory), and any searches for pre-Polynesian giants are disconcerting.
“It does really highlight what some New Zealanders think, in terms of pre-Māori conspiracy theories, with really racist undertones. It’s not grounded in fact, so people should be aware.”
Māori
Archaeologist Sian Keith told RNZ that archeologists seek evidence and are passionate and thorough, so talk of coverups and secrecy in his field are upsetting. That may be true among his own colleagues, but there are plenty of stories from Egypt, Central America and other archeology sites that would disagree.
As with any war of words, deep-seated beliefs, secrecy, conspiracy theories and conflicting information, this one is far from over.
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Over mijzelf
Ik ben Pieter, en gebruik soms ook wel de schuilnaam Peter2011.
Ik ben een man en woon in Linter (België) en mijn beroep is Ik ben op rust..
Ik ben geboren op 18/10/1950 en ben nu dus 73 jaar jong.
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