Unraveling the Mystery: Who Sculpted California's Intriguing Hemet Maze Stone?

Located in Reinhardt Canyon, southern California, near the quaint town of Hemet, sits an enigmatic petroglyph known as the Hemet Maze Stone. This curious figure comprises interconnected rectangular patterns forming a cyclical labyrinth set within a square or rectangle. The overarching form intriguingly echoes the shape of a swastika, a motif prominent in Native American and Asian art for thousands of years prior to its ill-famed association with the Third Reich.

Despite fervent studies, archaeologists remain in the dark about the exact origin or age of this drawing. Various theories suggest the creator of the petroglyph could have been an unidentified indigenous Californian tribe or even Chinese Buddhist monks. This piece seeks to evaluate these compelling theories, anchored in the certainty archaeologists, historians, and scholars have about the real artist behind the maze.

IN 1914, A RANCHER JUST outside Hemet, California was surveying his property and discovered a boulder with a strange maze-like image carved into it. Archeologists later determined – based on some artifacts found near the stone – that the carving is at least 500 years old, if not even older. However, even today archeologists are not sure who made the carving, or why.

Part of the mystery comes from the design itself. The maze-like design is quite different from other petroglyph designs in the United States; most petroglyphs are stylized pictures of animals or people, or designs representing rivers, trails or other natural features. The carving on the Hemet stone, however, is an intricate maze in a swastika-like shape -a design more commonly found in Buddhist tradition. It’s also rare – since 1914, only 50 other similar carvings have turned up, all of them within 150 miles of each other.

The design’s Buddhist symbolism, and the proximity of other such stones, sparked a theory that they were all carved by a crew of Chinese sailors shipwrecked in California as early as 500 CE. However, the swastika is also found in Native American art – to the once-nomadic Hopi, for example, the swastika represents their wanderings, while among the Navajo it represents the movements of the tsil no’oli, or “whirling log,” a canoe which a legendary hero rode during a quest. Native American swastika designs turn up on textiles, pottery, and sand paintings more so than in petroglyphs, but their prehistoric use does at least suggest a more local source for the maze carvings.

Unfortunately, today the swastika is more often associated with the German Third Reich, and the Hemet Maze Stone has suffered some damage as a result. The stone and its surrounding land became a California state landmark in 1956, and sometime thereafter a vandal added swastika in the orientation favored by the Nazis to one corner of the carving.  The stone is now protected by a pair of chain-link fences, and the surrounding park has since been closed.  But the carving is still an official California Historical Landmark, receiving occasional visits from intrepid and curious guests.

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10-07-2023 om 23:46 geschreven door peter  

New Moai Statue Found on Chile’s Easter Island Excites Researchers

In the news last October for the damage inflicted by a forest fire over 100 hectares, Easter Island is now in the news again – for the discovery and addition of a new Moai statue on the Chilean island. The discovery was found buried in a dried lake bed, in an area not usually available for access to humans, but now reachable due to climate-change related drying up. It has been described as a “very, very important discovery” for the Rapa Nui people.

Researchers inspect the new-found Moai in the dry lake bed on Rapa Nui.

(GMA/ YouTube Screenshot )

New Moai Smaller Than Most: Hiding in Plain Sight

The new Moai is smaller than most of the other sacred monuments found on Easter Island - statues that are important markers of Rapa Nui culture and heritage. The Rapa Nui people carved almost 1,000 Moai statues from tuff, a volcanic rock, between the 13th and 16th centuries. The statues are believed to represent ancestors or important leaders of the community and are arranged in a ring around the island, facing inwards.

“The moai are important because they really represent the history of the Rapa Nui people,” Terry Hunt, professor of archaeology at the University of Arizona, told  ABC. “They were the islanders’ deified ancestors. They’re iconic worldwide, and they really represent the fantastic archaeological heritage of this island.”

The discovery of the new Moai statue has excited researchers, as it is smaller than most others on the island, and had been hidden by tall reeds in the dry lake bed. Archaeologists believe that there may be more statues to uncover, and are looking for evidence of other Moai as well as the tools that might have been used to make them. The discovery of new Moai statues could provide insight into the culture and traditions of the Rapa Nui people.

• The Return of the Moai: Rapa Nui and the Fight for its Ancestors
• Easter Island and the Mysteries of the Moai

New Moai seems to be lying on the lake bed, and smaller than the existing finds.

(GMA/ YouTube Screenshot)

“They’ve been hidden by the tall reeds that grow in the lake bed, and prospecting with something that can detect what’s under the ground surface may tell us that there are in fact more moai in the lakebed sediments,” Hunt added. “When there’s one moai in the lake, there’s probably more.”

• Truck Driver Destroys Famous Easter Island Moai Statue
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The Moai Statues and the Rapa Nui People

The Moai statues are one of the most recognizable and fascinating features of Easter Island, which is also known as Rapa Nui. The Moai are large, monolithic stone statues that were carved by the Rapa Nui people between the 13th and 16th centuries. They are thought to represent ancestors or important leaders of the community.

The Moai are made from a volcanic rock called tuff, which is found in several quarries on the island. The statues were carved using stone tools and were transported to their final locations on the island using a system of ropes, ramps, and rollers, reports Artnet News .

There are over 800 known Moai on Easter Island, ranging in height from a few feet to over 30 feet tall. The largest Moai weighs over 75 tons, and it is believed that the Rapa Nui people used a combination of levers and ropes to move the statues from the quarries to their final locations.

The Moai were placed on stone platforms called ahu, which were built by the Rapa Nui people. The ahu served as a ceremonial center and were often located near the coast. The Moai were typically placed with their backs to the sea, facing inland, and were arranged in a line along the ahu.

Moai (stone statues) on Ahu Nau, Anakena Beach, Easter Island, with their backs to the sea.

(Guillaume Massardier/ CC BY-SA 3.0 )

The reason why the Rapa Nui people carved and erected the Moai statues is still a mystery, though it is believed that they may have served as a way to honor ancestors, leaders, or gods. The decline of the Rapa Nui civilization is often associated with the over-exploitation of the island's resources, including the deforestation of the island and the loss of fertile soil, which led to a collapse in the island's agricultural system. The exact cause of the Rapa Nui civilization's decline is still debated among archaeologists and historians.

The Moai statues are vulnerable to damage or attack. For instance, an arsonist set fire to the island last fall, leaving some statues charred and cracked, while in 2020, another was knocked over by a runaway pickup truck .

As a result, there is an ongoing debate about the repatriation of one sculpture, Hoa Hakananai'a, which was taken without permission by the U.K.'s Royal Navy in 1868 and is currently held by the British Museum. In the current political climate, where there are renewed conversations around protecting the heritage of indigenous peoples all over the world, the Rapa Nui people and their cultural heritage hold a vital place in this discourse.

• Top image: Stylized AI generated graphic of a Moai statue.        
• Source: artefacti/Adobe Stock

By Sahir Pandey

{ https://www.ancient-origins.net/ }

05-07-2023 om 01:30 geschreven door peter  

The Brilliance of ‘Pre-diluvian’ Sculpture - Cannot Be Hand Made!

I'm still digesting our recent tour to Egypt; the temple and the pyramids - just the atmosphere of the ancients was a lot to take in. Each time I visit, I’m stunned at the beauty, sophistication, and intelligence of those who left evidence of their time on Earth.

Each Spring, a group of listeners joins me and our guide, Mohamed Ibrahim, for a 12-day tour of ancient Egypt. These visits are unique and feature compelling evidence of a highly sophisticated people who shaped Egypt’s pre and Dynastic periods. This past May, we were introduced to a class of statuary that appeared to reveal clues about these people who settled in Cairo and the surrounding area. We're also learning that the egos of many of the dynastic pharaohs and their “God” status may have overwhelmed their common sense, and in the case of Ramses, Khafre, and others - - buildings, temples, and statuary thought to be commissioned in their time period are actually from earlier people.

Diorite sculpture of Khafre. Egypt Museum, Cairo Egypt.

(Cliff Dunning)

An example of this misinterpretation is a discovery presented by Mr. Ibrahim is a statue identified as  the pharaoh Khafre at the Cairo Museum. Found in the valley temple of his pyramid complex thought to have been commissioned by Khafre, the figure is seated on a throne decorated with the  sema-tawny, a symbol of the unity of Upper and Lower Egypt. Perched on the back of the throne, behind the king's head, the god Horus in the form of a falcon spreads his wings around the head of the individual in a gesture of protection. Khafre is thought to have reigned during the Old Kingdom (c. 2600 BC – c. 2551 BC), which can be confused with a much earlier pre-diluvian period (perhaps 9500 BC or earlier.) Very little is known of the pharaoh, and few other statues remain.

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Historians attribute the sculpture to Khafre based on a cartouche crudely scratched into the base of the seated figure. The cartouche shows none of the craftsmanship or tooling used in the creation of the statue, is poorly cut into the stone, and appears entirely out of place, like graffiti, marring the elegance of the statue. Why was it defaced??? Did the priesthood or an administrator notice a slight resemblance to Khafre, and choosing to gain favor with the pharaoh, mention its uncanny likeness?

One would think it sacrilegious to carve their name on an ancient relic, but here we can look at what writings we have of the dynastic period for a possible reason for defacing the statue. During that period in history, pharaohs were elevated to gods and goddesses allowing them to behave in a manner we might consider disrespectful. In this example, the god Khafre, agreeing with his counsel, has an artist carve his name on the statue.

Wanting to learn more, I found two additional statues and created a comparative view which is telling; each figure has unique and separate features but is not the same man.

The known statues of Khafre - three similar, but different statues.

(Cliff Dunning)

In his seminal book Lost Technologies of Ancient Egypt, Christopher Dunn provides a comprehensive look at exquisite and precise statuary created with unknown and highly advanced cutting tools. His primary focus is on the Ramses II statues at Karnak, Egypt. Each is identical and leaves us wondering how the work was achieved. I’ve applied Dunn’s formula to this seated figure, leaving us with remarkable evidence of machining technology.

I took a photo of the face of the statue, cut it down the middle, then flipped it - placing the two sides together. When you compare the original to the manipulated version, you can see they are identical. This means that the face, perhaps the entire body, was cut using some schematic or what may have represented the ideal man.

Left is the original photo, right is the photo cut in half and flipped. The symmetry is remarkable.

(Cliff Dunning)

You can see from the images below and above, that both feet, the shoulders and chest, left to right, are identical and that a human being did not carve the work by hand as is generally proposed, but rather, some sophisticated technology. My conclusion is, this sculpture was made from a highly advanced culture  from an early, unknown epoch. 

• Why Are So Many Ancient Egyptian Statues Missing Their Noses?
• Mummy Found Covered in Gold May be Oldest Ever Found in Egypt!

The crude cartouche of Khafre at the base of the statue. Notice the exacting quality of the left and right feet.

(Cliff Dunning)

I’ve often wondered what type of people occupied the earth’s previous epoch, before 9500 BC. Archaeologists tell us that our ancestors were hunters and gatherers, primitive hominids of limited intelligence and means. But I think a great deal of evidence is confusing because we have little documentation for places like Atlantis, Doggerland, and other cultures that were swallowed by the seas when the ice caps melted. The dynastic Egyptians were left with the ruined cities and statues as evidence of these early people, and because there were no records of their existence, much of the culture was absorbed, sanctified, and resurrected (copied as a form of devotion.) It’s likely, the gods known to us as Isis, Osiris, Ra, Amon, Hathor, and others were once living human beings immortalized in stone by the survivors of the planetary deluge. I believe this statue represents these early people.

This wonderful statue is another key to understanding our past.

• Cliff Dunning  is an archeo-investigator, author, and host of the popular History podcast, Earth Ancients: Startling New Discoveries from our Planets Distant Past:  www.earthancients.com
• Top image: Left is the original photo of the Khafre statue; right is the photo cut in half and flipped.
• Source: Author provided.

By Cliff Dunning

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04-07-2023 om 20:56 geschreven door peter  

The Siberian Unicorn: A Collision of Science, Myth, and Legend

The Elasmotherium, colloquially known as the Giant Rhinoceros or the Giant Siberian Unicorn, is a prehistoric rhinoceros species that once roamed the Eurasian region during the Late Pliocene and Pleistocene eras. Their existence has been traced back to 2.6 million years ago, with the most recent fossils being approximately 29,000 years old. The most recognized species of this group, the E. sibiricum, compared to a mammoth in size, had a hairy exterior and is believed to have sported a large horn on its forehead, giving rise to its nickname, the "Siberian Unicorn". Initial descriptions estimate the beast to have stood around 2 meters (6.56 ft.) in height, measured 4.5 meters (14.76 ft.) in length, and weighed a hefty 4 tonnes.

Decoding the Tale of the Siberian Unicorn

The Elasmotherium species was first identified in 1808 by Johan Fischer von Waldheim, the perpetual Director of the Natural History Museum at Moscow University. His claim was based solely on the lower jaw of the species, gifted to the museum by Yekaterina Romanovna Vorontsova-Dashkova, which led to further study and identification of the species.

In March 2016, an excellently preserved skull was discovered in the Pavlodar region of Kazakhstan, indicating the species' survival until the Pleistocene era around 29,000 years ago, challenging the prior belief that they had vanished 350,000 years ago. Judging by the skull's size and condition, it is hypothesized that it belonged to an elderly male, though the cause of death remains a mystery.

• What Extraordinary Discovery Led to Unicorn Cave Magically Transforming into a Cash Cow?

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The Siberian unicorn's appearance, dietary habits, and behavior are subjects of various hypotheses owing to the wide-ranging interpretations of the reconstructions. Some depict the creature running like a horse, others bent over with its head towards the ground similar to a bison, and still others submerged in a swamp like a hippo.

Controversies over the Siberian Unicorn’s Horn and Extinction

The existence, size, and purpose of the horn remain hotly contested. Speculations regarding its function span from self-defense, to mate attraction, to competition deterrence, to snow clearing for feeding, and even to digging for water and plant roots. Considering the creatures were herbivores like present-day rhinos, it's unlikely the horn was used to attack or kill prey.

Only indirect evidence from sparse specimens exists to confirm if the beast had a horn or not and whether it was covered in hair or was hairless. Nonetheless, some evidence points towards the animal having a hairy exterior, much like the well-known woolly mammoth.

The primary evidence indicating that the Siberian unicorn possessed a horn is the frontal protrusion on the skull, which caught 19th-century paleontologists' attention and was instantly deemed the base for a horn. There is also evidence that the horn was not circular, as a fossil with a non-circular, partially healed puncture wound in the base suggests it could have been the result of combat with another male possessing a horn.

While male Siberian unicorns likely engaged in territorial disputes, their territory stretched from the Don River to eastern Kazakhstan. Findings suggest these ancient rhinos inhabited the southeast of the West Siberian Plain for an extended period. The exact cause of the extinction of the last Siberian unicorns remains uncertain. Scientists are examining specific environmental elements that might have triggered the species' extinction, hoping to glean insights that could be applied to modern species facing extinction.

The Legendary Unicorn

Myths and legends about unicorns, or creatures with a single horn, have permeated Chinese and Eastern European cultures for thousands of years. The Chinese term "K’i-lin," referring to a certain type of creature, was assimilated into Turkish and Mongolic languages and folklore. Although scribes in these languages struggled to describe the creature, a recurring theme was its single horn and its imposing size.

A bronze relic from the Warring States period portrays an animal remarkably similar to one depicted in cave paintings thought to represent Elasmotherium: grazing with its head lowered, a horn jutting from its forehead, and a drooping head and shoulders.

In 1866, Vasily Radlov encountered a Yakut legend in Siberia about a "gigantic black bull" slain by a lone spear. The beast reportedly had a single horn so enormous it had to be transported by sled. Other legends in this region typically involve a large white or blue woolly bull with a massive horn on its forehead.

From medieval Northern Russia, a collection of ballads, named "Golubinaia kniga" or "The Book of the Dove," influenced by Zoroastrianism and laced with Christian nuances, emerged. The ballads portray a righteous unicorn combating a lion, symbolizing falsehoods. The unicorn in these tales resided on a sacred mountain and was considered the progenitor of all animals. This creature saved the world from drought by using its horn to dig up springs of clean, fresh water. At night, it wandered the plains, blazing trails with its mighty horn.

• Is the Story of Christ Portrayed in the Unicorn Tapestries?

• Legends of the Unicorn Horn: Cures, Antidotes and Medicinal Magic

This creature features in other religious scriptures as well, though it is generally seen more as a symbolic entity than a real one. The Arabo-Persian term for a unicorn conflates unicorn and rhinoceros, viewing the rhinoceros as a symbol of truth and goodness. In Christianity, the single horn represents monotheism.

While mythology hints at the creature's existence, it is only circumstantial evidence. More research and additional fossils need to be discovered before we can definitively determine what this creature looked like and if unicorns were ever real.

If you're intrigued by our deep dives into the mysteries of history and want access to even more exclusive content, consider subscribing to Ancient Origins Premium.

• Top Image: A reconstruction of what the Siberian unicorn may have looked like.
• Source: Elenarts /Adobe Stock

By Veronica Parkes

{ https://www.ancientoriginsunleashed.com/  }

19-06-2023 om 20:54 geschreven door peter  

Unraveling the Tower of Babel: Myth or Reality? (Video)

The ancient ruins of Babylon, located in central Iraq, have long captivated historians and archeologists alike. Among its remnants lies a structure that has stirred intrigue and speculation—the Etemenanki ziggurat, believed by some to be the legendary Tower of Babel . With its colossal size, estimated to have reached a towering height of nearly 300 feet, this ancient edifice stands as a testament to the grandeur and ambition of the Babylonian Empire.

The biblical account of the Tower of Babel portrays a tale of human unity, divine intervention, and the consequences of defying higher powers. Scholars draw parallels between the ziggurat and the Tower, noting the shared location and remarkable similarities in construction materials. The presence of bitumen-infused bricks, as described in biblical texts, adds weight to these connections. Yet, the story does not end there. The question remains: Was the Tower of Babel destroyed by a mighty wind summoned by an angered deity, or was it brought down by the forces of nature, such as a powerful earthquake?

• Inside Etemenanki: The Real-Life Tower of Babel
• Ancient Babylonian Tablet Provides Compelling Evidence that the Tower of Babel DID Exist

• Top image: The Tower of Babel.
• Source: FrankBoston / Adobe Stock.

By Robbie Mitchell

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18-06-2023 om 23:42 geschreven door peter  

700,000-Year-Old Tools Found in Greece Rewrite History

The rich historical tapestry of Greece has been dramatically expanded with the recent discovery of hunting tools dating back an astonishing 700,000 years. Unearthed in a coal mine in Megalopolis, these ancient stone tools have not only pushed back Greece's historical timeline by a staggering quarter of a million years but have also opened a window into the development of our ancient hominin ancestors before their migration to northern Europe.

Megalopolis: Where Time Began

The ancient Greek city of Megalopolis was located in Arcadia, a region in the central Peloponnese peninsula of Greece. The original settlement was founded in 371 BC by the Theban general Epaminondas, during the Peloponnesian War, to counter the power of Sparta and to support the independence of the smaller Greek city-states.

Megalopolis shares the same sun-battered landscapes as Olympia, Mycenae and Pylos, each of which feature centrally in Greek mythology. Olympia, the home of the Olympic Games, housed the chief sacred site of the god Zeus, and Mycenae was the city of the legendary King Agamemnon who led the Greeks during the Trojan War. Pylos, was a centre of the Mycenaean civilization most famously ruled by King Nestor, and it featured in Homer's Iliad and Odyssey.

But now, the recent discovery of very ancient stone tools in a coal mine are shadowing the nation's semi-mythological history, by revealing valuable secrets about the development of our ancient hominin ancestors, before they populated northern Europe.

A Game Changing Discovery

According to a report in Greek City Times the latest archaeological discoveries in Megalopolis are “game-changing.” In the oldest-known archaeological site in Greece, dating back approximately 700,000 years, not only did the archaeologists recover the remains of now extinct giant deer, elephants, hippopotamus, rhinoceros, and a macaque monkey, but they also found stone tools from the Lower Palaeolithic period (3.3 million to 300,000 years old).

The skull of a member of the deer family in Megalopolis

(Greek Culture Ministry)

Used for butchering animals and chopping plants approximately 700,000 years ago, the still sharp stone flakes are suspected to have been manufactured by a Lower Palaeolithic Homo antecessor, considered a possible ancestor of both Neanderthals and modern humans. While this is yet to be confirmed, if hominin remains are discovered, the find pushes back Greece’s official archaeological record by up to 250,000 years.

Until now, the oldest tools in Greece date back to around 500,000 years ago, and were discovered in the Petralona Cave, in the Chalkidiki region of northern Greece. These stone tools were unearthed alongside the fossilized remains of an ancient human skull, known as the Petralona Skull , and such a discovery would need to be made at the Megalopolis site to definitely date the new discoveries.

• The controversial Petralona skull and Greek government suppression of information
• New Information on the Petralona Skull Controversy

Stone tools dating back 700,000 found in the coal mine.

(Greek Culture Ministry)

Pushing Back Archaeological Timelines

These new finds come after a 5-year-long project led by Professor Panagiotis Karkanas of the American School of Classical Studies in Athens , Eleni Panagopoulou from the Greek Ministry of Culture and Katerina Harvati, a professor of paleoanthropology at the University of Tübingen in Germany .

An article in Breaking News said these “groundbreaking discoveries surpass any previously known archaeological record in Greece.” And, if the dating is confirmed, what these finds demand, effectively, is a rewriting of Greek archaeology with a new starting point at around 700,000 years ago.

A Second Stunning Discovery

In addition to this main discovery, the team of archaeologists explored a second site in the Megalopolis area where they found “the oldest Middle Palaeolithic remains ever found in Greece, dating back approximately 280,000 years.” In conclusion, the researchers said of this second discovery, that it suggests Greece played a significant role in stone industry developments throughout ancient Europe, “solidifying its position as a pivotal hub of ancient civilisation.” Furthermore, the researchers said this discovery further illustrates what is known about “hominin migrations to Europe and human evolution as a whole.”

Megalopolis declined in importance following the rise of Macedon under Philip II and his son, Alexander the Great, and it finally lost its prominence during the Roman era, after which it faded into obscurity. Today, the ancient ruins of Megalopolis can still be visited, but these new archaeological discoveries extend well beyond the ancient city's history and architecture, providing new insights into Greece’s ancient past.

• Top image: Stone axe and knife (representational).
• Source:  JPS / Adobe Stock.

By Ashley Cowie

{ https://www.ancient-origins.net/ } 

14-06-2023 om 01:23 geschreven door peter  

In 1938, a discovery was made off the eastern coast of South Africa that shook the science world. A peculiar fish was discovered among the day’s catches of a group of local fishermen, and fortunately, a museum curator named Marjorie Courtenay-Latimer was on hand and noticed the primeval-looking specimen. Upon contacting Rhodes University ichthyologist J.L.B. Smith and sending sketches she made of the fish, Smith dispatched an emergency responding cable that read, “Most Important Preserve Skeleton and Gills = Fish Described.”

Smith’s urgency was based on the fact that, rather than being a new species, what Courtenay-Latimer had found was something he recognized… from the fossil record. Remarkably, the specimen appeared to be a variety of ancient fish known from the late Cretaceous period known as the Coelacanth, a kind of transitional species whose curious fins placed it someplace within the evolutionary lineage between fish and tetrapods.

Since the famous discovery, several similar instances of “living fossils” have been discovered, and the most recent of these turned up in an unlikely place: off the southern coast of California.

Discovered alive within the waters at Naples Point, slightly North of UC Santa Barbara, is a small variety of clam previously known only from the fossil record.

Jeff Goddard, a research associate at the Marine Science Institute at UC Santa Barbara and co-author of a new paper detailing the discovery, says it is remarkable partly due to the location where the specimen was found.

“It’s not all that common to find alive a species first known from the fossil record, especially in a region as well-studied as Southern California,” Goddard said in a statement released by the University.

Comparing the find to the famous discovery of the Coelacanth in the late 1930s, Goddard notes that what he and his colleagues turned up at Naples Point doesn’t go quite as far back as the famous ancient fish did, “representing an entire class of animals thought to have disappeared 400 million years ago.”

Still, Goddard notes that the remarkable little bivalve they found “does go back to the time of all those wondrous animals captured by the La Brea Tar Pits.”

The discovery was made in November 2018, as Goddard had been searching under rocks at low tide for a variety of sea slugs when he noticed not one, but instead a pair of tiny, translucent clams. As he observed them, he noticed that they possessed a white-striped foot that exceeded the length of their shell. Goddard then realized that he recognized this species, even though that seemed impossible.

Specimens of Cymatioa cooki photographed by Jeff Goddard

(Credit: Jeff Goddard/Paul Valentich-Scott/ZooKeys).

Mirroring the Coelacanth discovery of almost a century earlier, Goddard, rather than procuring sketches, took high-quality images of the pair of bivalves, opting to leave the pair in their natural habitat. The images were immediately sent to Paul Valentich-Scott curator emeritus of malacology at the Santa Barbara Museum of Natural History. Like Goddard, Valentich-Scott found the appearance of the little creatures intriguing, as they were unlike any of the well-known similar species along the California coast.

Ultimately, it was decided that a specimen would be needed after all, but by the time Goddard returned to Naples Point in search of his new quarry, the mysterious clams proved more difficult to find a second time around. In fact, such would be the case over the course of several more failed attempts to rediscover the tiny creatures.

After nine attempts over the course of the next several months, Goddard finally managed to relocate the creatures—this time a single clam—beneath a rock alongside two of the nudibranch sea slugs he had originally come to Naples Point in search of.

Initially, Valentich-Scott thought they might have uncovered an entirely new species.

“When I suspect something is a new species, I need to track back through all of the scientific literature from 1758 to the present,” the curator said in a statement announcing the discovery. “It can be a daunting task, but with experience it can go pretty quickly.”

After pouring over data in the museum’s collections, including fossils of similar species known from California’s prehistoric coasts, the two researchers uncovered drawings of a variety of bivalve, Bornia cooki, first described in 1937—just two years prior to the rediscovery of the Coelacanth—which looked like a match for the tiny, long-footed California clams Goddard had found.

After comparisons between the original fossils discovered by George Willett in the 1930s with the new specimen, as well as a single shell Goddard retrieved during a subsequent visit, a positive match was confirmed: Willet’s original discovery, now given the classification Cymatioa cooki, was indeed still alive in California’s coastal waters. Another living fossil had been confirmed.

Cymatioa cooki, the latest “living fossil” discovered off the California coast

(Credit: Jeff Goddard/Paul Valentich-Scott/ZooKeys).

Noting the intertidal boulder fields that cover broad ranges of the California coast, Goddard says he thinks it’s likely that the newly rediscovered “living fossil” Cymatioa cooki is “probably living in close association with animals burrowing beneath those boulders.”

“There is such a long history of shell-collecting and malacology in Southern California,” Goddard says, admitting that “it’s hard to believe no one found even the shells of our little cutie.” Indeed, sometimes the most remarkable discoveries turn up right under our noses, and in Goddard’s case, quite by accident.

Goddard and Valentich-Scott’s remarkable discovery was the subject of a recent paper published in the journal ZooKeys.

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 { https://thedebrief.org/ }

11-06-2023 om 01:15 geschreven door peter  

The Oldest Living Tree on Earth is Older Than the Egyptian Pyramids

Visitors from around the world flock to visit the famed 4,500-year-old Great Pyramid of Giza , now remembered as one of the seven wonders of the ancient world . But hidden high in California’s White Mountains is an unassuming natural wonder which out-dates the Giza Pyramid by hundreds of years.

A Bristlecone Pine tree ( Pinus longaeva ) known as Methuselah holds the Guinness World Record as the oldest named individual tree on Earth. At over 4,850 years old, its age was determined through core samples. To put its age into proportion, by the time of the Trojan War around 1200 BC, Methuselah would have been over 1,600 years old! The name pays homage to the biblical figure Methuselah, the oldest person of all time (969 years to be precise) according to Judeo-Christian tradition.

With their distinctive gnarled appearance, molded over (literally) thousands of years, Bristlecone Pines have survived unforgiving landscapes and temperatures. There’s something ironic in the fact that the oldest living tree is actually located in the so-called New World .

Methuselah’s discovery in the 1950s attracted tourists to the area, causing damage over time. Another Bristlecone Pine, nicknamed Prometheus, was inadvertently cut down when a researcher tried to recover his tree corer from its trunk. Smithsonian Magazine revealed he only realized what he’d done after reviewing the sample and discovering it had been over 5,000 years old. This tragic event inspired the authorities to create the Great Basin National Park to protect the millennial Bristlecone Pines. As a result, the true location of Methuselah is now classified.

A Bristlecone Pine in the White Mountains of California, home to the oldest living tree in the world.

(Rick Goldwaser / CC BY 2.0 )

But, what’s the secret to its survival? Resilient to extreme conditions, its roots have adapted to nourish only certain branches, limiting the impact when they die. The Bristlecone Pine is also a slow-grower (one-hundredth of an inch a year) while its needles live for over 30 years, helping the tree conserve energy.

Over the years, Methuselah has faced some stiff competition. In 2022, Science reported that the Jonathan Barichivich concluded that a Patagonian cypress ( Fitzroya cupressoides ) in Chile, known as the Gran Abuelo (great grandfather) was actually over 500 years older than Methuselah. Alternatively, a clonal forest of Populus tremuloides in Utah, known as Pando, could be as old as 14,000 years. The enormous forest—spanning 80 football fields according to National Geographic —is a collection of genetically identical stems which sprang from one single seed.

Studying and protecting these ancient trees and their tree rings can provide invaluable information about the climate throughout ancient history, which in turn can provide clues for protecting against the effects of climate change. Dubbed “faithful chroniclers of the world’s weather patterns,” we have a lot to learn from ancestral trees, be they South American conifers or weathered Californian pines.

• Top image: Methuselah is the oldest named individual tree on Earth and is located in the White Mountains of California.
• Source: Yen Chao / CC BY-ND 2.0

By Cecilia Bogaard

{ https://www.ancient-origins.net/general }

03-06-2023 om 00:40 geschreven door peter  

The Mysterious Sphinx of Balochistan: Natural Formation or a Man-made Architectural Wonder?

Bibhu Dev Misra

A mysterious Sphinx-shaped structure known as the Balochistan Sphinx looms over the desolate, rocky, landscape of the Makran coastline in the Balochistan province of Pakistan. The region of Balochistan lies between Iran and Afghanistan on the west and India on the east, with the Arabian Sea bordering the south. This arid region of desert and mountains is primarily populated by the ethnic Baloch people who converted to Islam after the Arab occupation of the region.

No-one really knew about the existence of the Balochistan Sphinx before the Makran Coastal Highway opened in 2004, linking the city of Karachi with the port town of Gwadar on the Makran coast. The structure lies right alongside the highway, in close proximity to a number of other structures resembling temples and buildings. It takes nearly four hours by car to reach the Balochistan Sphinx from Karachi (240 kms) along the Makran Coastal Highway which meanders through a surreal landscape. The Sphinx is located within the Hingol National Park, where people occasionally come for day visits from Karachi.

When I first saw pictures of the Balochistan Sphinx and the surrounding areas, it looked to me as being a rock-cut archaeological site of great antiquity. However, I was surprised to find that, the journalists who wrote about the Balochistan Sphinx, routinely referred to it as a natural formation, even though no there is no evidence of any archaeological survey being conducted at the site. This was very strange, to say the least. How can any person – with even a little bit of interest in history or archaeology - look at this place and not feel a desire to investigate further? Why have archaeological excavations not been conducted here? And, on what basis are journalists calling this a natural formation? Are they simply guessing or have they been instructed to refer to it that way?

I first wrote about the Balochistan Sphinx in a blog post in 2017, where I brought attention to the many peculiarities of the site, and since then more people have become interested in the place, even though an official survey has not yet been done. A cursory glance at the Sphinx shows that it has a well-defined jawline and discernible facial features such as eyes, nose and mouth. The Sphinx wears a head-dress that closely resembles the Nemes head-dress of the Egyptian pharaoh. The Nemes head-dress is a striped head cloth that covers the crown and back of the head. It has two large, conspicuous flaps which hangs down behind the ears and in front of the shoulders. The ear-flaps of the Nemes head-dress can be clearly seen on the Balochistan Sphinx. The Sphinx also has a horizontal groove across the forehead corresponding to the pharaonic head-band that holds the Nemes head-dress in place. We can even make out the contours of the reclining forelegs of the Sphinx, terminating in well-defined paws.

In other words, this is not just any other rock formation that bears somewhat of a resemblance to an animal. It is a very realistic rendition of the Sphinx – a well-known legendary animal that is found in the art and archaeology of many ancient cultures.

What is really intriguing about this site is not just Sphinx itself, but the surrounding structures, all of which give the impression of being carved by the hands of man. Let’s look at the elevated platform on top of which the Sphinx is located. One can easily make out pillars, niches and a symmetric crosshatch pattern carved on this platform, just as you would expect in any temple complex. There are a series of steps leading to site. The steps, and in fact the entire site, has been covered by sediment and heavily eroded. 

Some people look at the Sphinx and associated structures and say it is “pareidolia.” In case you didn’t know, pareidolia is the phenomenon of seeing familiar objects and patterns where none exists. It is the easy way out for those who don’t want to do the hard work of surveys and excavations. If pareidolia was even a "thing" in archaeology, then none of the Mesoamerican pyramids - as well as many other archaeological structures from around the world - would have been discovered, for they had turned into mounds of earth, and were completely unrecognizable until the hands of man cleared away the mud. The only logical thing to do when you see a place like this is to conduct full-scale surveys and excavations. And that, unfortunately, has not yet been done here.

Now onto the surrounding structures. Very close to the Sphinx, situated on top of the same platform is a large temple-like structure, with a symmetrical spire. The Sphinx appears to be looking in the direction of the temple, and acting as its protector. Close by there are two more structures which look man-made. One resembles a small temple, resembling the typical rock-cut temples of India, and the other seems to be a megalithic building.

Let’s look at these structures a bit more closely. The structure closest to the Sphinx appears to be large temple with a flat-topped spire. I am calling it the Sphinx Temple, since the Sphinx appears to be looking in the direction of the temple, functioning as its protector. In sacred architecture, the Sphinx always performed a protective function. The Egypt, the Sphinx faces the eroded ruins of the Old Sphinx Temple which dates to the time when the Sphinx was built. The limestone blocks used to build the walls of the Old Sphinx Temple came from the ditch surrounding the Sphinx. When the Sphinx was being carved out of the bedrock, workmen hauled away the quarried blocks to construct the temple.[1]

In India, the Sphinx appears in the early Hindu-Buddhist art of Central and North-west India from the 1st century BCE onwards. Its primary position was near the temple gateway, acting as a guardian of the sanctuary. However, figures of sphinxes were sculpted all over the temple premises including the entrance gates, halls and near the central shrine.[2] In one of its forms, it crouches or stands in front of a miniaturized temple, indicating that it is a protector of the temple.

A closer look at the Sphinx Temple of Balochistan shows evidence of pillars carved on the walls. The temple entrance may be concealed behind a large pile-up of sediment in front. It seems there are one or more figures carved on the façade of the temple, above the entrance. These figures may have been intended as “dvarapalas” i.e. door guardians. In Hindu-Buddhist temples, dvarapalas are giant figures who stand guard in pairs on either side of the temple entrance. The Sphinx Temple of Balochistan actually looks similar to the flat-topped entrance towers, called gopurams, of the temples of Southern India. 

Close to the Sphinx Temple, there is a smaller temple-like structure on top of the elevated platform. This temple has clearly defined pillars and a spire, and looks very similar to the rock-cut temples of ancient India. For anyone who is familiar with Indian architecture, it hard to believe that this is not man-made.

In addition to these two temples, there are a number of interesting structures in lying in close proximity to the Sphinx. Some of them resemble palaces, while other look like rectangular megalithic buildings. It is inconceivable how such symmetric structures can be produced through random processes of erosion. Here are a few such structures, which are routinely passed off as natural formations by journalists.

Right next door to the Balochistan Sphinx there is another prominent landmark of the Makran coast called the “Princess of Hope”. The name was coined by Angelina Jolie who had visited the Hingol National Park in 2002 as a UN Goodwill Ambassador. She thought that the structure resembles a crowned and skirted female figure looking toward the horizon. However, in my opinion, the structure looks more like a heavily eroded watchtower or temple spire. A drone view of surrounding landscape shows how surreal it is, with pillars and geometric patterns everywhere you look.

There are a few interesting YouTube videos made over the past few years which provide a good sense of what is going on that area. This video (click here) of a drive along the Makran Highway is an excellent place to start.

As you cross the Buzi Pass, the scenery suddenly changes for a distance of around 2-3 kms (till 3:30 min in the video) when all kinds of surreal and apparently man-made structures start popping into view. It is almost as if this was an ancient city, with the Balochistan Sphinx located at its extremity. If this was solely the work of nature then why would be restricted to a specific area? Humans, on the other hand, tend to build their buildings in clusters. Some interesting drone footage of the Sphinx and Princess of Hope can be seen in this video (click here) shared by Juliette Jean, who also references my blog post.

This video (click here) gives a good virtual tour of the Princess of Hope area where one can easily spot rock cut caves, balconies, and regularly spaced pillars.

Many people from Balochistan and Pakistan who have visited the Balochistan Sphinx site are of the opinion that the Sphinx is such an imposing and majestic structure, and looks so lifelike, that it is most likely man-made, in addition to all the other structures nearby. My opinion, based on all the images and videos I have seen online, is on similar lines. There was, probably, a large ancient city here, which was devastated by cataclysms and subsequently suffered extensive erosion.

Geologists have observed that the hills around the Makran coastline are covered with sea shells, which indicates that the place was once inundated by sea water. This is not surprising since the Makran coast of Balochistan is a seismically active zone, which frequently produces enormous tsunamis. It is reported that the earthquake of November 28, 1945, with its epicenter off the coast of Makran, caused a tsunami with waves reaching as high as 13 meters at some places. Moreover, a number of active mud volcanoes are strewn along Makran coastline, with a bunch of them concentrated within the Hingol National Park, near the delta of the Hingol River. Intense earthquake activity triggers the mud volcanoes to erupt, which can spew staggering amounts of mud drowning the surrounding landscape. Sometimes, mud volcano islands appear in the Arabian Sea, off the coast of Makran, which are dissipated by wave action within a year. 

This tells us that the Balochistan Sphinx complex may have been ravaged multiple times by powerful earthquakes and destructive tsunamis which dumped tons of sediments on the structures before the waters receded. Subsequently, wind and water erosion did its job. The actions of humans and nature appear to have combined to create this surreal landscape, which seems to be hiding a lost city of unknown antiquity.

The question is, if this site or ancient city is man-made, how old is it? We know that the Indus Valley Civilization extended along the Makran coastline and its westernmost archaeological site was Sutkagen Dor, situated near the Iranian border. Therefore, some of these structures could have been built thousands of years ago, during the Indus Period (c.3000 BCE). It could be even older than that, and may have been built by some pre-Indus culture. The site may have been constructed in phases, starting from a very remote period. Perhaps, it was on the mountains of the Makran coast that the Indus artisans honed and perfected their architectural and rock cutting skills, which were later transported to the Indian civilization.

During the historical period, the Makran region was regarded by the Arab chroniclers as the “frontier of al-Hind” i.e. the frontier of India. The sovereignty of parts of the region alternated between Indian and Persian kings from the early historical period. In the decades preceding the Muslim raids, Makran was under the dominion of a dynasty of Hindu kings, who had their capital at Alor in Sind.[3]

When the Chinese pilgrim Hiuen Tsang visited Makran in the 7th century CE, he noted that the script which was in use in Makran was “much the same as India”, but the spoken language “differed a little from that of India”. Historian Andre Wink writes that:

“The same chiefdom of Armadil is referred to by Hiuen Tsang as O-tien-p’o-chi-lo’, located at the high road running through Makran, and he also describes it as predominantly Buddhist, thinly populated though it was, it had no less than 80 Buddhist convents with about 5000 monks. In effect at eighteen km north west of Las Bela at Gandakahar, near the ruins of an ancient town are the caves of Gondrani, and as their constructions show these caves were undoubtedly Buddhist. Traveling through the Kij valley further west (then under the government of Persia) Hiuen Tsang saw some 100 Buddhist monasteries and 6000 priests. He also saw several hundred Deva temples in this part of Makran, and in the town of Su-nu li-chi-shi-fa-lo - which is probably Qasrqand- he saw a temple of Maheshvara Deva, richly adorned and sculptured. There is thus very wide extension of Indian cultural forms in Makran in the seventh century, even in the period when it fell under Persian sovereignty. By comparison in more recent times the last place of Hindu pilgrimage in Makran was Hinglaj, 256 km west of present day Karachi in Las Bela.”[4]

Thus, as per the accounts of Hiuen Tsang, even in the 7th century CE, the Makran coast was dotted with hundreds of Buddhist monasteries and caves, as well as several hundred Hindu Temples, including a richly sculpted temple of Lord Shiva. What happened to these caves, temples, and monasteries of the Makran coast? Were they all destroyed during the Arab raids? Or is it possible that some remnants of them have survived? And having become highly eroded and covered with sediment, they are being passed off as natural formations?

It is a mystery, therefore, why an official archaeological survey has not yet being conducted at this place, when the signs of human civilization are so obvious. Could it be due to a lack of funding? Balochistan is an impoverished place, and from the conversations I had with some academics of the region, there are no trained archaeologists in Balochistan to carry out a scientific survey. The onus is on Pakistan, and from what I have heard, archaeological explorations in Pakistan are heavily underfunded, with many known Indus sites still remaining unexcavated. However, funding cannot be a such big issue for a preliminary survey to be done here. Some people think that the Balochistan Sphinx is a dangerous place to visit because of the Baloch insurgency that has been going on for many years, which is why official surveys are risky. That is not really true, because people from Karachi routinely travel along the Makran highway, and they have told me that it is quite safe to travel to the Sphinx, since the insurgents are not active along this route. The other issue is that, this region falls under the CPEC (China Pakistan Economic Corridor) and is under the control of the Pakistan army. However, I do not see why that should hinder an official survey, although it could be difficult for foreigners to roam around freely here.

So what is going on? Could it be that the people in authority are already aware that this is a very ancient site which could topple the chronology of civilization in South Asia, or in fact, the entire world, and are deliberately trying to cover it up? It’s a possibility that cannot be ruled out. Some recent contacts have told me that they are not being allowed by the army to walk up to the Sphinx and explore the surrounding ruins, with the excuse that it could “endanger” these natural formations. So, not only are official surveys not being conducted, ordinary people not being allowed to explore the site freely, and the media is being instructed to refer to these astonishing monuments as “natural formations”. All the signs of a deliberate cover-up seem to be in place. It is an unfortunate reality of our times that many people in power misuse their authority to hide and distort the truth. The only possible way this situation can be salvaged is if international attention can be drawn to these monuments, appropriate pressure is exerted on the government of Pakistan through petitions and other means, and international bodies like the UNESCO are alerted and convinced to conduct a much-need archaeological survey of the site, so that thtruth can emerge.

References

1. Allen Winston, "The Old and New Kingdom Sphinx Temples at Giza", http://www.touregypt.net/featurestories/sphinx3.htm
2.  Sphinx in Indian Art <http://www.chidambaramhiddentreasure.com/sphinx-indian-art/>
3. André Wink, Al-Hind: The slave kings and the Islamic conquest (BRILL, 1991) 132-133
4. André Wink, Al-Hind: The slave kings and the Islamic conquest (BRILL, 1991) 135

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01-06-2023 om 23:10 geschreven door peter  

Lost Treasures of Chichen Itza: Maya Marvels Revealed (Video)

In a world where Europe languished in the dark ages , the splendor of the Maya civilization reached its zenith. Their majestic temples soared high into the heavens, their intricate hieroglyphic writing system captured the essence of their culture, and their breathtaking artworks showcased their impeccable sense of style. Nestled in Mexico's Yucatan Peninsula , the grand city of Chichen Itza rose to prominence. Legends speak of sacrificial rituals, where victims were thrown into sacred wells to appease the rain god. The Maya's astronomical prowess shone through their observatory, where they meticulously tracked the stars and predicted solar eclipses.

Influenced by diverse cultures, Chichen Itza became a melting pot of civilizations. Its most renowned structure, El Castillo, an awe-inspiring pyramid with 365 steps, guarded a remarkable secret. During the equinoxes, a shadow descended upon the pyramid in the form of a slithering serpent, captivating all who witnessed this celestial spectacle. From the colossal ball court to the bustling trading center, Chichen Itza thrived for centuries until succumbing to the same forces that plagued other Maya cities. Now, amidst the encroaching rainforest, the remnants of this ancient metropolis endure, a testament to the proud and enigmatic Maya civilization that crafted it.

• Chichen Itza: Ancient Maya City Built Above A Gateway to the Underworld
• Advanced Engineering Discovered at the Maya Observatory at Chichen Itza

• Top image: Chichen Itza, Yucatan, Mexico.
• Source:   IRStone / Adobe Stock.

By Robbie Mitchell

{ https://www.ancient-origins.net/ }

25-05-2023 om 23:54 geschreven door peter  

Discoveries of Ancient Underground Cities Around the World

Beneath the surface of our world, hidden under layers of soil, stone, and history, lie remnants of ancient civilizations - vast networks of tunnels, expansive  underground cities , and complex subterranean structures. Our ancestors demonstrated remarkable ingenuity, carving out these intricate labyrinths for reasons as diverse as their cultures. Whether born out of necessity, spirituality, or security, these underground marvels have been preserved, waiting to share the untold stories of our human past.

South and Central America

In the heart of Mexico, the  ancient city of Teotihuacan  houses an extensive labyrinth of tunnels beneath the Pyramid of the Sun. Discovered only in the 1970s, this intricate network of tunnels extends to over 5 kilometers, with rooms branching off in various directions. These chambers are believed to have been used for rituals and ceremonies, with artifacts such as sculptures, pottery, and even human remains unearthed during excavations. The  tunnels of Teotihuacan  offer a unique insight into the spiritual and cultural life of this ancient civilization.

In 2008, another remarkable discovery was made in Mexico that further underscored the importance of the underground in Mesoamerican cosmology and architecture. Archaeologists uncovered eleven stone temples inside an underground cave system beneath the Yucatan Peninsula, complete with an underground road which the Mayans believed led to the mythical underworld city known as Xibalba. The underworld was a crucial part of the Mayan spiritual belief system, with Xibalba often depicted as a dangerous place filled with deadly trials for deceased souls.

In Peru, the Qenqo Chico tunnel network is an impressive example of Incan engineering. These tunnels, part of the larger Qenqo archaeological complex near Cusco, were carved directly into the rock and are thought to have been used for religious and ceremonial purposes. Qenqo Chico and its subterranean passages continue to fascinate archaeologists and tourists alike, offering a glimpse into the spiritual life of the Inca civilization.

The sprawling  Mayan pyramid complex at Tikal , located in present-day Guatemala, has also revealed an intricate system of underground tunnels. These tunnels, rediscovered in the late 20th century, appear to connect various parts of the vast city-state, suggesting an efficient transportation or communication system. However, their exact function remains the subject of ongoing study. What is clear, however, is that these subterranean structures provide significant insights into the city planning and architectural capabilities of the ancient Mayan civilization, which flourished at Tikal from around 200 to 900 AD.

• Secret Chamber and Tunnel Discovered Under the Temple of the Moon at Teotihuacan Emulate the Underworld
• Descending into the Underworld of Teotihuacan: Labyrinthine Tunnels and Rivers of Mercury

Underground shrine at Qenqo Chico, Peru.

Source:  Leon petrosyan  / CC by SA 3.0

Africa

In Ethiopia, the  rock-hewn churches of Lalibela  represent an impressive feat of subterranean architecture. Carved directly into solid rock in the 12th century, these 11 monolithic churches were reportedly created to represent a symbolic representation of Jerusalem. Each church was chiseled out of the ground, then further shaped into doors, windows, columns, and decorated with carvings. This UNESCO World Heritage site is a testament to the ingenuity of ancient African architects, and the underground network connecting the churches adds to the mystical aura of Lalibela.

In Egypt, the Giza Plateau has an  enormous underground system  that is a combination of manmade caverns and tunnels as well as subterranean rivers and passages. Since 1978 the caverns have been mapped using ground penetrating radar with  explorations led by Dr Jim Hurtak who has allegedly entered massive chambers larger than our largest cathedrals. A few historians believe that the underground cave system in Giza, is the legendary ‘City of the Gods’, a massive underground city described by ancient writers Herodotus (5 ^th century BC) and Strabo (1 ^st Century AD). Herodotus wrote:

“There I saw twelve palaces regularly disposed, which had communication with each other, interspersed with terraces and arranged around twelve halls. It is hard to believe they are the work of man. The walls are covered with carved figures, and each court is exquisitely built of white marble and surrounded by a colonnade. Near the corner where the labyrinth ends, there is a pyramid, two hundred and forty feet in height, with great carved figures of animals on it and an underground passage by which it can be entered. I was told very credibly that underground chambers and passages connected this pyramid with the pyramids at Memphis.”

Furthermore, Herodotus spoke of the discovery of a multi-level megalithic metropolis under Giza that was 15,000 years old.

Many ancient writers supported Herodotus' record of underground passages connecting major pyramids. Lamblichus, a 4 ^th century AD Syrian representative of the Alexandrian School of mystical and philosophical studies, recorded information about an entranceway through the body of the Sphinx into the Great Pyramid:

“This entrance, obstructed in our day by sands and rubbish, may still be traced between the forelegs of the crouched colossus. It was formerly closed by a bronze gate whose secret spring could be operated only by the Magi. It was guarded by public respect, and a sort of religious fear maintained its inviolability better than armed protection would have done. In the belly of the Sphinx were cut out galleries leading to the subterranean part of the Great Pyramid.  These galleries were so art-fully crisscrossed along their course to the Pyramid that, in setting forth into the passage without a guide throughout this network, one ceasingly and inevitably returned to the starting point.”

One of the most impressive underground constructions in Egypt is the Serapeum of Saqqara, a vast subterranean complex that housed the Apis bulls, considered incarnations of the god Ptah. Housing massive granite sarcophagi in crypt-like galleries, this labyrinthine network showcases the Egyptians' advanced engineering skills.

• Underground Cities Around the World – Myths and Reality
• The Ancient Subterranean City of Nushabad: Why Were People Living Underground?

Asia

The discovery in 1992 of 24 man-made caves in China, known as the  Longyou Caves , revealed an extraordinary feat of ancient engineering and craftsmanship. The caves, carved into solid siltstone, represent a massive undertaking that required the removal of an estimated 36,000 cubic meters of stone. The floor area of each grotto extends over two thousand square meters, with the highest point in the caves reaching over 30 meters. Interestingly, there are no historical records or legends pertaining to the caves, rendering their origin and purpose a mystery. The precision and symmetry of the carving, along with the sheer volume of excavated material, imply a level of planning and organization that challenge our understanding of ancient Chinese society and its capabilities. The absence of tool marks or signs of work, coupled with the scale and complexity of the caves, continue to perplex researchers and historians, making the Longyou Caves one of the most enigmatic archaeological sites in the world.

One of the Longyou caves.

Source:  Zhangzhugang  / CC by SA 4.0.

India, with its rich and ancient history, is also home to a number of fascinating underground structures. The city of Varanasi, believed to be one of the oldest continuously inhabited cities in the world, has an extensive network of underground passages and rooms that date back several centuries. These passages were used by the residents for various purposes including travel, trade, and religious ceremonies. Furthermore, the UNESCO World Heritage site of  Ellora in Maharashtra , famous for its rock-cut temples, includes an intricate network of tunnels and chambers beneath the surface. One of the most astonishing of these underground marvels is the Kailasa Temple, which was carved from a single rock and extends into the earth, showcasing the advanced architectural and engineering skills of ancient Indian civilization. The purpose and full extent of these subterranean networks in India remain subjects of ongoing archaeological exploration and research.

Turkey, particularly the region of  Cappadocia, is world-renowned for its ancient underground cities. These cities were primarily used as hideouts by early Christians to escape persecution.  Derinkuyu, one of the most well-known of these underground cities, is an expansive network that extends approximately 60 meters deep and could accommodate an astonishing 20,000 people along with their livestock and food stores. It had more than 600 entrances to the surface. Another famous subterranean city is Kaymakli, which was believed to have been used as a large agricultural depot and trading hub. The cities contain numerous features such as ventilation shafts, wine and oil presses, stables, cellars, storage rooms, refectories, and chapels, showcasing a sophisticated understanding of underground construction. Turkey may have the greatest number of underground cities and networks in the work and more are being discovered every year.

Europe

In Italy,  the legacy of the Etruscans , a pre-Roman civilization, is visible through an extensive network of underground tunnels known as "Vie Cave" or "Etruscan Ways." These narrow, canyon-like paths, which were dug into tuff stone, often reach staggering heights, creating an impressive spectacle. Their purpose remains largely a mystery, with theories ranging from a means of communication and transport between settlements, to having religious or ceremonial importance.

On the archipelago of Malta is home to a vast network of underground tunnels. The  Hypogeum of Ħal-Saflieni , a UNESCO World Heritage site, is an extraordinary subterranean structure dating back to around 3300-3000 BC. This labyrinthine complex spans three levels, with rooms, halls, and passages hewn directly into the limestone. The Hypogeum was likely used as both a sanctuary and a necropolis, with remains of over 7,000 individuals discovered within its depths.

Elsewhere in Europe, the city of Odessa in Ukraine is known for its labyrinthine catacombs, which stretch approximately 2,500 kilometers, making them among the largest networks of tunnels anywhere in the world. Originally, these tunnels were the result of limestone mining in the 19th century, the same limestone used to build much of the city. Over time, the catacombs served various purposes – from a hideout for Soviet partisans during World War II to an illicit playground in more recent years. These varied examples underline Europe's rich history of utilizing subterranean spaces for an array of purposes, each of them contributing to our understanding of past civilizations.

The ability of ancient people to shape the earth, to build beneath the surface, and to create these complex subterranean networks across continents is a testament to their resilience, ingenuity, and adaptability. These underground cities, tunnels, and structures are more than just historical relics; they are enduring symbols of humanity's enduring desire to innovate, adapt, and survive.

• Top image: Man standing in underground city of Derinkuyu, Turkey.
• Source:  Parilov / Adobe Stock.

By Joanna Gillan

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24-05-2023 om 01:28 geschreven door peter  

8 Ancient Voyages That Changed the World

Throughout human history, the call of the unknown has driven explorers to embark on daring voyages into uncharted waters. These intrepid explorers have braved treacherous seas, and unknown dangers, driven by the thrill of discovery and the promise of new knowledge and riches. From the earliest days of seafaring civilizations the human desire to explore and push the boundaries of what is possible has led to some of the greatest achievements in history. Here are 8 of the greatest voyages of all time and how they shaped history. 

1. Pytheas - Discovered Thule (Kind Of)

We start our list with one of the great ancient Greek explorers, Pytheas. Born in around 350 BC, Pytheas spent much of the 4th century BC on voyages exploring the coasts of Europe. His most famous voyage was when he set sail from the Greek colony of Massalia (modern-day Marseille in France) and sailed to the north, reaching regions the Greeks had never laid eyes upon before.

His most famous achievement is perhaps discovering the land of Thule in the Northern Atlantic. This is a bit of a strange one because, for all intents and purposes, Thule doesn’t exist and never has. Pytheas believed he had discovered a hitherto unknown frozen island far North of Britain, the only problem being, there was no island there.

Today many historians believe Pytheas was either lying or got lost. It is likely that “Thule” was actually modern-day Norway or Iceland. Pytheas described Thule as a land of perpetual ice and snow where the sun barely rose. It’s more likely Pytheas would have described anywhere near England as perpetually damp and grey!

Pytheas didn’t just discover imaginary islands. He extensively voyaged around the coasts of Britain, Iceland, and northern Germany, documenting the customs and lifestyles of the people he met along his way. 

His greatest accomplishments were perhaps on the scientific side of his voyages. He was fascinated by tidal systems which he studied and described them in great detail. He is also credited as being one of the first navigators to identify the phenomenon of the midnight sun, where the sun remains visible for 24 hours a day in the far north during the summer months.

2. Leif Erikson - Beat Columbus to it

Christopher Columbus was the first European to set foot on North American soil. Right? Wrong. Over the years it has become increasingly likely that a Norse explorer by the name of Leif Erikson beat Columbus to it, and likely many others did too.

Leif Erikson was a Norse explorer active during the 10th century. According to the Norse sagas , Leif’s greatest achievement was when he sailed from Greenland to a region called Vinland, believed to be somewhere in modern-day Newfoundland, Canada today.

L'Anse aux Meadows is the only site widely accepted as evidence of pre-Columbian trans-oceanic contact. It is notable for its possible connection with the attempted colony of Vinland established by Leif Erikson around the same period or, more broadly, with Norse exploration of the Americas. 

(Michel Rathwell/ CC BY 2.0 )

Our knowledge of Norse history is famously spotty, but it’s believed Leif’s voyage set sail around the year 1000 AD. It is likely he got the idea for his journey after another famous Norse explorer, Bjama Herjolfson, had been blown off course while sailing to Iceland and stumbled across the unknown region.

Leif set sail with around 30 of his best men and upon reaching Vinland, established a Viking settlement in an area called L’Anse aux Meadows. They weren’t there for very long (carbon dating estimates from 990-1050 AD) but it was a major achievement in Norse exploration and colonization. Evidence of Norse buildings including a longhouse and a smithy has been found and it is believed they traded and interacted with the locals, whom they dubbed “Skraelings.”

Leif Erikson is a celebrated figure in Norse culture and mythology but only in recent years has he started to get the recognition he deserves as the first European to land in North America. Today L’Anse aux meadows is a UNESCO World Heritage Site and a popular tourist attraction. 

3. Columbus - Set Out for Asia, Found America

It might seem a little unkind to follow up Leif with Columbus, but Columbus’s voyage was still an important one. Born in Genoa, Italy, in 1451, Columbus is perhaps the most famous explorer of all time. In particular, he’s famed for his attempt at finding a new route to the lucrative spice trade in Asia.

Going against what was accepted knowledge at the time, Columbus believed that by sailing west across the Atlantic, he could reach Asia more quickly than by sailing around the southern tip of Africa like everyone else. 

"Columbus map", drawn c. 1490 in the Lisbon mapmaking workshop of Bartholomew and Christopher Columbus.

( Public Domain )

Getting sponsors for his voyage was no easy task. Most people believed the earth was flat and thought Columbus’s ship would sail right off the edge of the earth. Those who were coming around to the idea of earth being a globe just thought he’d get lost. Still, in 1492 Columbus set sail from the port of Palos in Spain and headed west. He took three ships with him, the Nina, the Pinta, and the Santa Maria.

After a few weeks at sea, Columbus and his crew spotted land, which they believed to be Asia. Instead, they reached an island in the Bahamas, which Columbus named San Salvador. Over the next few months, Columbus and his men explored the coasts of Cuba and Hispaniola, establishing the settlement La Navidad. 

Over the years Columbus made a total of four voyages to the New World. Once hailed as a hero, today his legacy is a complicated one. On the one hand, he’s credited as being responsible for opening up the Americas to European exploration and colonization.

But on the other hand, what one person calls colonization, another calls exploitation. His treatment of the indigenous peoples he found has been widely criticized. Columbus and his men brought disease and violence to the New World and the European colonizers happily enslaved and exploited many of the locals.

4. Zheng He - Ancient China’s Greatest Explorer

It isn’t just Europe that has given us some of history’s greatest voyages. The Chinese explorer Zheng He was born in China in 1371. A high-profile admiral in the imperial navy of the Ming dynasty, Zheng He was tasked with an important mission, to lead a series of voyages to establish diplomatic and trade relations with other countries.

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His first voyage took place in 1405 and was of a grand scale. Zheng He commanded over 300 ships, including colossal treasure ships measuring up to 400 feet long (121.92m). The voyages had one goal, to promote Chinese power and prestige and it was Zheng He’s mission to deliver gifts and treasures to the leaders of the countries he visited.

Under the Yongle Emperor (third Emperor of the Ming dynasty ) and Xuande Emperor (fifth Ming Emperor) Zheng He carried out 7 voyages. He visited a wide range of countries and regions, including Southeast Asia, India, and East Africa. Along the way, he established important Chinese trading posts and diplomatic missions in these areas. On his return trips, he brought home exotic animals such as giraffes and zebras to entertain the Chinese court. 

All of this wasn’t cheap. While his voyages were remarkable achievements in both maritime exploration and diplomacy, after his death in 1433 the Chinese government turned inward and brought an end to China’s age of exploration.

Woodblock print representing Zheng He’s ships.

( Public Domain  )

5. Magellan - Around the World in 1095 Days

Columbus wasn’t the only European whose voyages were focused on the spice trade. Ferdinand Magellan , born in Portugal in 1480, was a soldier and sailor who was commissioned by the Spanish government to lead an expedition to find a western route to the spice islands of Indonesia.

He set sail from Spain in 1519 with a fleet of five ships and a crew of over 200 men. He crossed the Atlantic and traveled south along the coast of South America. In doing so he discovered a passage that led through the southern tip of the continent, the Strait of Magellan. His voyage then continued as he crossed the Pacific Ocean, encountering several new islands along the way, including Guam and the Philippines.

Magellan’s voyage was a long one. So long in fact, that by the time his crew returned to Spain in 1522, they had circumnavigated the globe. The first people in history to do so. Despite being remembered as the first man to circumnavigate the globe, Magellan didn’t finish his voyage. 

His trip had faced numerous challenges along the way from storms to mutinies and skirmishes with ingenious people. One of these skirmishes proved fatal and Magellan fell in the Philippines, killed by a bamboo spear, on 27th April 1521 after trying to convert the locals to Christianity.

6. Hanno the Navigator - Ancient Voyage in Africa

Hanno the Navigator, or Hanno the Carthaginian as he was also known, was an explorer from the ancient city-state of Carthage located in modern-day Tunisia. In the 5th century AD, he set out on a voyage along the west coast of Africa looking to establish new trade routes that would expand his people’s influence.

Hanno voyaged far and wide. His ships took him along the Atlantic coast of Africa through present-day countries like Morocco, Western Sahara, Senegal, and Gambia. Along the way Hanno stopped to take in the sites, encountering many new lands and peoples, including the people of the Verde Islands. He even discovered a tribe of ape-like, highly aggressive people. He killed three of them, skinned them, and took their pelts back to Carthage. Their name? The Gorillai.

The term gorilla comes from Carthaginian explorer Hanno the Navigator, who was exploring the African coast. He described coming across a tribe of “gorillae”, monstrous and violent humans. It is likely he actually encountered chimps or baboons.

(Mira Miejer /  CC BY SA 4.0  )

Hanno recorded his voyages in a text called the Periplus of Hanno which details the lands and peoples he came across. While some historians today doubt its accuracy it is still seen as an important document in the history of exploration and geography. Hanno’s voyage helped establish Carthage’s influence along Africa’s west coast and paved the way for further exploration and trade in the region. 

7. Sir Francis Drake - Survived Circumnavigating the Globe

Magellan may have been the first man to circumnavigate the globe but Sir Francis Drake, the second man to do so, did it in style. Sir Francis Drake was a 16th-century English explorer, privateer, and naval commander whose voyages have become the stuff of legend.

Drake’s first voyage was in 1567 when he sailed to the Caribbean as part of a slave trading expedition. Over the next ten years, he made several voyages to the Americas. During these trips, he was a state-sanctioned privateer. He raided Spanish ships and settlements accumulating great wealth and fame in the process.

A map of Drake's voyage [showing Europe, western Africa, northern South America, and eastern North America]; the four other engravings consist of bird's-eye battle plan views of the cities of Santiago, Santo Domingo, Cartagena, and St. Augustine, Florida.

( Public Domain )

In 1577 he used this wealth to set out on a three-year voyage around the world, copying Magellan’s feat. Along the way, he explored the west coast of South America, claimed land for England in what is now California, and traded with the people of the Moluccas in modern-day Indonesia.

Perhaps his greatest achievement came in 1588 when he played a key role in the defeat of the Spanish Armada which had been sent to invade England. Drake's years of experience and skill as a naval commander helped to turn the tide of the battle and secure a massive victory for England.

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8. Erik the Red - The Great Norse Adventurer

History often focuses on those explorers who made the most famous discoveries or whose accomplishments had the most visible impact on history. But often these men’s successes and achievements wouldn’t have been possible if it weren’t for the work of the lesser-known explorers who came before them.

Erik the Red was a Norse explorer and adventurer whose voyages paved the way for later Norse expeditions to North America during the 10th century AD. According to legend, Erik was exiled from Iceland after committing murder and so he set out to find new lands to live in.

He and his crew sailed westward across the north Atlantic and eventually arrived in a remote, uninhabited land that they named Greenland. Conditions were harsh and the environment was challenging, but Erik and his followers managed to set up several settlements, thriving there for several centuries.

These settlements enabled later explorers, like Leif, to head even further northwards, eventually discovering North America. Today Erik is remembered as a bold and daring explorer who played a crucial role in shaping the history of the North Atlantic region. 

Erik the Red is remembered in medieval and Icelandic sagas as having founded the first continuous settlement in Greenland. 

(tonynetone/ CC BY 2.0 )

Conclusion

The voyages of exploration throughout human history have shaped the world we live in today. From the ancient mariners like Pytheas and Hanno who connected different civilizations and sparked cultural exchange, to the early voyages of discovery that led to the discovery of new continents, each journey has contributed to our understanding of the world and our place within it.

Today we often take travelling great distances for granted, or worse, see it as a chore. We must remember these early voyages required incredible feats of courage, resourcefulness, and adaptability from the explorers who undertook them. They not only expanded our knowledge of the world, but also enriched our cultures and transformed our societies. The legacies of these voyages continue to inspire and captivate us, driving us to seek out new frontiers and push beyond our boundaries.

• Top image: Ancient voyages set off to discover new realities. 
• Source: XaMaps/Adobe Stock

By Robbie Mitchell

{https://www.ancient-origins.net/ }

19-05-2023 om 00:59 geschreven door peter  

ROBBIE MITCHELL

The Search for England’s Underwater City (Video)

In the depths of the English Channel lies a lost city that has been submerged for over 8,000 years. It is known as Doggerland. One maritime archaeologist , Garry Momber, has spent two decades exploring these waters to uncover its secrets. The English Channel is notoriously difficult to navigate, with cold water and powerful tides creating treacherous conditions for divers.

However, Momber's meticulous preparations have paid off, revealing that Doggerland is a treasure trove of ancient wood that has survived underwater for millennia. These preserved hunter-gatherer landscapes offer a rare glimpse into life from another age, and composite structures like these are of international significance. The discovery of what is believed to be the oldest boat building site in the world adds to the intrigue of this remarkable find.

• 8000-Year-Old Shipyard Located off English Coast is World’s Oldest
• Digging the Deep Blue: Challenges and Triumphs in Underwater Archaeology

• Top image: Representational image of an underwater city.
• Source: Henry Letham / Adobe Stock.

By Robbie Mitchell

{ https://www.ancient-origins.net/ }

18-05-2023 om 21:48 geschreven door peter  

Eden Revisited: The Sumerian Version

Sumer, in Mesopotamia, was called ‘the land of civilized kings’. It reached its peak around 6,500 years ago when it had the distinction of being a very advanced civilization with a sophisticated written language, magnificent architecture for the time, complex mathematics, and amazing astronomy. Hundreds of gods comprised its religious system. Sumerians believed that although humans and the gods once shared the earth together, they didn't share a co-equal existence. Humans, they believed, were designed for the express purpose of serving the gods. Their chief god, Anu, commissioned his son, Enki (Ea), and his daughter Ninki (Enki's half-sister) to create humans by sacrificing a god, mixing his body and blood with clay, and forming the first human being made in the likeness of the gods.  

The Creation of Man: Adapa

According to Sumerian mythology, human-like gods called Anunna had initially come to mine resources that were needed on their home planet. Now, with the creation of a human labor force, their duties were changed. They ruled over what was, for all practical purposes, a human slave race. Their base of operations was Mesopotamia, the land between the Tigris and Euphrates river. In the Epic of Gilgamesh, the world's first epic poem, it was called Eden.

At first, according to the texts, humans were unable to reproduce on their own. This proved inconvenient. So, Enki and Ninki found a way to modify the new species. The result was a man called Adapa, a fully functional and independent human being. Enki had given Adapa great wisdom and the ability to understand the concept of eternal life. But Adapa's curse was that he could never attain that which he was able to conceive.

Were it not for the Amarna texts, discovered all the way over in Egypt in the archives of the Egyptian king Amenophis, we might never know about Adapa. But in 1912 his story was verified and confirmed by a unique discovery in the Library of Ashurbanipal. Five partial fragments, since translated, were revealed that told part of the story, called Adapa and the South Wind.

According to the story, Adapa had risen to the position of priest or sage. One day, while fishing in the Persian Gulf, the sea became rough and his boat capsized. Adapa became angry and: "broke the wings of the south wind." He prevented it from blowing for seven days and nights. This, of course, caught the attention of the god Anu, who wanted to punish Adapa for the sin of hubris. But Enki came to Adapa's aid. He instructed him to journey to the abode of the goddess Tammuz, who, along with Gishzida, stood guard at the gates of heaven. While there, he was told not to eat or drink anything because heavenly food would kill him.

Adapa put on traditional sackcloth and ashes, the garb of mourning, and appeared before Tammuz and Gishzida, claiming he was in mourning because the two gods had disappeared from his land. Ever hospitable, they offered Adapa food and drink. Forewarned, he refused.  Only later did he come to understand that he had made a mistake. When he was brought before Anu, Anu asked why he hadn't eaten the food that had been placed before him. He said it was because Enki had told him not to eat: "the bread and water of life."

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At this, Anu laughed: "What ill has Adapa brought on mankind?" If Adapa had partaken of the food, he would have obtained immortality. As it is, humankind, the creation of Enki, would henceforth suffer disease and death.

The Deluge

Compare this story to the biblical account. In Genesis, God forbid the first man from eating of the Tree of Immortality. In the Sumerian version, it was Enki. This is about to become an important distinction.

Adapa was sent back down to earth. Now the plot thickens. Enki's brother, Enlil, hadn't been told about Enki's work. He had wanted only an obedient slave race, and now Enki was tinkering with things like wisdom and eternal life. Enlil and Enki fought, and the battle continues to this day.

Enlil advised the gods that he was going to destroy the newly created human race with a great flood. Afterwards, he reasoned, they could start over from scratch. But Enki overheard the plans and contacted a righteous man named Utnapishtim.

Ancient Sources Predating the Bible

It's important to remember that the Sumerian authors didn't believe they were the earliest human civilization. They claimed to have received all this from an earlier civilization that had, by their time, become extinct. Who comprised this civilization, and where they came from, is a mystery.

Added to the dilemma is the fact that when we read a text such as the Bible, we are reading the edited work of scholars who lived centuries ago. They made choices, compiling one work and condensing another, so it seems as if we are reading a seamless book written by one author. No one ever did that with ancient Sumerian texts. We read a little of this and a little of that, from here and there, and the story doesn't seem as uniform as the familiar Hebrew text. On top of that, some of the old texts are written in Sumerian hieroglyphs, some in Babylonian cuneiform, and others in ancient Egyptian. A modern editor has a lot to choose from, and can snip a little from one text or another, confidant that most of us, who don't read any of the ancient languages, will be none the wiser. But a comparison of Sumerian and Biblical texts, even in translation, is revealing. 

One of the most important Sumerian texts is called Enki and the World Order. In this myth, Enki decided that the world needed to be managed by the gods or it would descend into chaos. He appointed various overseers to supervise such activities as managing the use of water and crops, building cities, herding domestic animals, overseeing the heavens, and managing the activities of women.

Both the Genesis Eden Story and the Sumerian texts address similar issues and help us understand what was going on in the minds of the old ones at the time of the birth of our civilization. They can be read as metaphors for historical precedents such as the agricultural revolution and city building. They are an attempt to explain why things are the way they are in the world. They point back to an earlier civilization, now lost to history. They reveal that our ancestors thought long and hard about philosophy and psychology. They point to what was even back then considered a lost golden age—paradise. They try to plumb the depths of human behavior and ask questions about the nature of good and evil.

In that sense, things haven't changed a great deal in the last 5,000 years. But there is another way to read these two stories. From a religious perspective, they are very different.

Is Eden Paradise?

Anton Parks is a French scholar who has devoted years to the Sumerian texts, even going so far as to translate them himself. He points out that the Bible portrays our ancient ancestors being very happy in Paradise. In the Sumerian texts, they are living in a concentration camp. In his translation God doesn't plant a garden for humankind in which he: "walks in the cool of the evening," as in Genesis. His version says the gods: "came in strength from beyond time. They were carried, one day, by the rebellion of the universe." His gods, the Anunna, were very real entities from beyond, who represented a patriarchal and a matriarchal regime. Enlil, the so-called ‘evil’ god who wanted to enslave the human race, was quite different from Enki, who befriended them.

The feminine presence, represented by Ninki, is often portrayed as a reptilian figure. Could she have been the inspiration for the serpent in the Eden of Genesis? If that is the case, then the serpent wasn't evil at all. She was trying to free humankind by offering them the gift of the knowledge of good and evil. She then wanted them to eat of the Tree of Life and: "be like gods." It was a good thing she was doing, not a bad one.

But Enlil won the day. Although he failed to keep them from eating the fruit of the Tree of Knowledge, he cast humans out of the garden before they ate from the Tree of Life. And since history is both interpreted and written by the winners, Enlil's story was later told in Genesis, not Enki's. That explains why the Genesis account emphasizes the fact that sword-wielding cherubim, or ‘Shining Ones’, were placed at the entrance to Eden in order to ensure that humans never attain the godhead, or eternal life. It has been said that the smartest thing the devil ever did was to convince humans that he didn't exist. This reading of the Sumerian myth goes one step further. It says that the smartest thing the devil ever did was to convince humans that he was God.

Jehovah the Evil God Enlil

According to Anton Parks, YHVH of the Bible, translated ‘The Lord’, is not the Creator. The creator is Enlil, the enslaver of humankind, henceforth known as the Demiurge. He is head of the Patriarchal system that wants to suppress freedom, especially the freedom of women. He doesn't want equality. He wants subservient slaves. He doesn't want creative, right-brained, intuitive thinkers. He wants left-brained, obedient servants who are forced to toil every day.

This reading of the story says that humans were upright-walking animals who were modified through DNA manipulation to fill the role of worker bees. The word Adam in Sumerian, according to Parks, means ‘animal’. Eden consists of the words E, meaning ‘home’ and den, which means ‘life’. Satan, in Sumerian, means ‘The Administrator’

Enki managed to grant wisdom to humans when he, through Ninki, the ‘serpent’ of Eden, gave them the ability to discern between good and evil. That caught Enlil by surprise. The best he could do was to drive them out of Eden and forbid their return. To put it bluntly, according to this reading of the story, the God whom monotheists have been worshipping for the last 5,000 years is not Jehovah, the creator God. He is Enlil, the patriarchal Demiurge—Satan himself. This explains the God of the Old Testament who sent the flood to destroy humankind, who commanded the Israelites to kill innocent Canaanite women and children, who was the justification for the Crusades and the Inquisition, who seems so incredibly bloodthirsty. It explains why the author of John in the New Testament could declare that: "we know we are of God and the whole world is in the hands of the evil one" (1 John 5:19). He recognized that humans have been fighting the good fight, trying to get back to Eden.

According to this interpretation, we are caught in a divine battle of competing spiritual forces. We still need to: "earn our daily bread by the sweat of our brow." It's just that we have turned our curse into a search for meaning. We want to get back to Paradise.

Sophia, Wisdom the Word of God is Feminine

There are indications that the Gnostic texts, discovered in Nag Hammadi, Egypt, in 1945, sympathized with this version of the story. The Gnostics were an early Christian sect that was declared heretical by the Roman establishment. The church burned their scriptures and made sure none of them, except for perhaps, the Gospel of John, made it into the New Testament. But with the discovery of books that had been hidden away and kept from destruction, we now know that to the Gnostics, wisdom, or Sophia, represented a feminine energy that refused to be kept buried. She was the Logos, or Word of God.

The Gnostics believed there was a bigger game being played out, by forces outside of planet Earth. The universe is bigger than we realize, they declared. As a matter of fact, the universe is simply one cell in the immense body (Multiverse) that is God. Here on earth the battle between good and evil, between the feminine and the masculine, between Enki and Enlil, is raging. But good will eventually triumph.

This religious system of belief says we have an ‘angel’ on one shoulder and a ‘devil’ on the other. Their names are Enki and Enlil. The earth may be the domain of the Demiurge, but that domain itself is called ‘Mother Earth’, the world of Sophia, the goddess of wisdom, the divine spark that Enlil, the devil, strives to put out. The Demiurge may dominate our day to day reality, but Eden still awaits if we can only persevere. And we are not alone in the battle.

This is a completely different reading than the biblical account many of us grew up with, and whether we read it allegorically or historically, it causes us to pause and think about what we have been taught in our impressionistic youth—to contemplate the idea that we are involved in something a lot bigger than we thought.

This article is an edited excerpt from the Jim Willis’ new book, Lost Civilizations: The Secret Histories and Suppressed Technologies of the Ancients, published by Visible Ink Press available from October 2019.

Jim Willis is author of several books on religion and spirituality, he has been an ordained minister for over forty years while working part-time as a carpenter, the host of his own drive-time radio show, an arts council director and adjunct college professor in the fields of World Religions and Instrumental Music. He is author of Supernatural Gods: Spiritual Mysteries, Psychic Experiences, and Scientific Truths and Ancient Gods: Lost Histories, Hidden Truths, and the Conspiracy of Silence

• Top Image: Sumerian Artifact with the Tree of Life. (swisshippo  / Adobe Stock)

By  Jim Willis

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{ https://www.ancientoriginsunleashed.com/ }

18-05-2023 om 02:03 geschreven door peter  

Sheer Fluke: 7 of the Most Amazing Accidental Discoveries in Archaeology!

Uncovering the mysteries of our past has always been a fascinating pursuit for humans. From exploring hidden caves and discovering ancient artifacts to deciphering cryptic scripts and unlocking the secrets of lost civilizations, the quest to understand our history continues to captivate and inspire us. While many people spend their entire lives searching for the next big discovery, some just stumble upon them. Some of the most important archaeological discoveries in history were made by normal people through sheer luck. These are the stories behind history’s most amazing accidental archaeological discoveries.

1. Terracotta Army: Found by Farmers

Few archaeological discoveries have been as amazing, or as surprising, as that of the Terracotta army . The Terracotta Army is a massive collection of life-size terracotta sculptures that depict the armies of Qin Shi Huang , China’s first Emperor and a man obsessed with gaining immortality. 

The army was created over 2000 years ago during the Qin dynasty (221-206 BC). It was buried with Qin when his quest for immortality failed (and perhaps even killed him) and he died. The army was built to protect him in the afterlife. 

Terracotta Warriors and Horses, is a collection of sculptures depicting the armies of Qin Shi Huang, the first Emperor of China. Xi'an, China.  

(Aneta Ribarska/ CC BY-SA 3.0 )

People had been reporting pieces of terracotta figures in the region for centuries and so archaeologists were brought in to investigate. They discovered an enormous underground complex that contained thousands of life-sized terracotta warriors, horses, and even chariots. It’s believed the complex spans around 22,000 square meters with many areas still being left undiscovered.

The discovery of the Terracotta Army has been hailed as one of the most important archaeological finds of the 20th century. The figures are not only historically significant, but they also provide a unique insight into the art and culture of the Qin Dynasty. Today, the Terracotta Army is a UNESCO World Heritage site and a major tourist attraction in China.

2. Rosetta Stone: Was Nearly Used to Patch a Wall

It really is complete dumb luck that the Rosetta Stone was ever rediscovered. The stone is a large, black granite slab measuring around 3 feet tall and two feet wide. Upon it is inscribed a decree issued at Memphis in 196 BC on behalf of King Ptolemy V . 

What makes the stone so special is that the decree was written in three scripts: Egyptian hieroglyphs, Demotic script, and Ancient Greek. This meant the stone could be used to decipher ancient Egyptian hieroglyphs which had been stumping historians for centuries. 

The Rosetta Stone Trilingual decree: Egyptian Hieroglyphic (14 lines), Demotic (32 lines) and Greek (53 lines).

( The Trustees of the British Museum )

The stone was discovered on 15 July 1799 by Lieutenant Pierra-Francois Bouchard of the French army. He was overseeing the repair of an old fort near the town of Rosetta (now Rashid) in the Nile Delta when he noticed one of the stones his soldiers were going to use to patch a wall was covered in strange inscriptions.

Bouchard recognized its potential historical significance and reported the stone to his commander, General Jacques-Francois Menou. From there it was sent to Napoleon’s scientific institute in Cairo, the Institut d'Égypte where it was quickly revealed just how big a find the stone was. 

After the French were defeated by the British in 1801, the Rosetta Stone became British property and was taken to the British Museum in London, where it remains on display to this day. Its discovery was a major breakthrough in the study of ancient Egyptian history and language and provided valuable insights into the culture and politics of the time. 

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• Excellently preserved, complete crossbow from 2,200 years ago found at Terracotta Warrior site

3. The Dead Sea Scrolls: Unearthed by a Bored Shepherd

Another amazing find, the Dead Sea Scrolls are a collection of Jewish texts that were discovered in the mid-20th century near the Dead Sea, in the West Bank area of Israel. The discovery was made by a young Bedouin shepherd called Muhammad edh-Dhib and his cousin, Jum’a Muhammed, who were tending to their goats in the area.

According to the young men’s accounts, Muhammed noticed the caves and the curious edh-Dhib decided to go in and have a look. Inside he noticed some old-looking jars. He broke one of them open and found several scrolls (which turned out to be the Isaiah Scroll, Habakkuk Commentary, and Community Rule). 

He took the scrolls back to his camp where they were put on display while everyone decided what to do with them. They eventually decided to sell them, but the first dealer they approached was unimpressed. He informed the Bedouins the scrolls were worthless; most likely having been stolen from a Synagogue.

They eventually found a dealer willing to buy them and the scrolls fell into the hands of John C. Trever of the American Schools of Oriental Research. He realized how significant they really were and had them transported to Beirut in Lebanon for safekeeping. 

Over the next few years, a total of 11 caves in the area were discovered to contain more than 900 texts, including fragments of every book of the Old Testament except for the book of Esther. The scrolls were written in Hebrew, Aramaic, and Greek, and date back to the period between 250 BC and 68 AD.

The Dead Sea Scrolls are considered to be one of the most significant archaeological finds of the 20th century, as they shed new light on the development of Judaism and the early Christian Church . They contain copies of many biblical texts, as well as non-biblical works, such as prayers, hymns, and commentaries. Today, many of the Dead Sea Scrolls are on display at the Israel Museum in Jerusalem.

Then Sea scrolls are a collection of psalms and hymns, comprising parts of forty-one biblical psalms.

( CC BY-NC-SA 2.0 )

4. Lascaux Cave Paintings: Sniffed Out By A Boy and His Dog

The Lascaux Cave Paintings are a collection of prehistoric art that was rediscovered on 12 September 1940 by four teenage boys, Marcel Ravidat, Jacques Marsal, Georges Agnal, and Simon Coencas in southwestern France. 

The cave was initially discovered when Marcel was walking his dog in the area and his dog started sniffing at a hole that had been left by an uprooted tree. Intrigued, Marcel returned later that day with his friends to investigate. 

Believing they had found a legendary secret passage to a nearby manor the boys entered through a 15-meter-deep (50-ft) shaft. Instead of a hidden passage, they found a cave whose walls were covered with strange depictions of animals such as horses, bulls, deer, and bears as well as human figures, odd symbols, and geometric shapes.

Amazed, the boys ran and reported the discovery to their schoolteacher, who notified the authorities, and the cave was soon made open to the public. The Lascaux Cave quickly became a popular tourist attraction and was visited by thousands of people every year.

This proved to be a problem. The influx of visitors caused considerable damage to the cave’s fragile environment and in 1963 the French government was forced to close the cave to the public. A replica cave, known as Lascaux II, was built nearby, and opened to visitors in 1983.

Paintings on the walls at Lascaux Cave.

(Adibu456 /  CC BY-SA 2.0  )

5. The Stone Spheres of Costa Rica: Discovered Through Deforestation

The problem with accidental discoveries is people don’t always realize, or really care, what they’ve found. The Stone Spheres of Costa Rica is a collection of over 300 spherical stones that were discovered in the Diquis Delta region of Costa Rica in the 1930s. The stones all vary with some just being a few centimeters in diameter while others are over two meters in size and can weigh up to 15 tons. 

Several stone spheres of the Diquís exhibited at Museo Nacional de Costa Rica. For comparison purpose, the image on the wall shows the diameter of the biggest recorded stone sphere, 2.66 metres (8.7 ft)

Stone spheres of the Diquís in Museo Nacional de Costa Rica. The image on the wall shows the diameter of the biggest recorded stone sphere, 2.66 m (8.7 ft)

(Mariordo/ CC BY-SA 4.0 )

The stones were discovered in the 1930s when the United Fruit Company was clearing the jungle for banana plantations. Not exactly known for respecting the local environment, when the workers came across these strange stones, they simply used bulldozers and other heavy equipment to knock them out of their way, damaging them.

Even worse, inspired by old stories of hidden gold, workmen drilled holes into the spheres and blew them open with sticks of dynamite. Several spheres had been completely destroyed by the time news of the discovery had reached local authorities.

The first scientific investigation into the stones was carried out by Doris Stone (ironically), the daughter of a high-level United Fruit executive. The publication of her initial findings in American Antiquity led to other experts visiting the area to carry out their own excavations. 

It’s believed the stones may have been created by the extinct Diquis culture (a pre-Columbian indigenous people of Costa Rica who thrived there from 700-1530 AD). Their purpose is unknown, but it’s thought the spheres may have been placed in lines along the approach to the homes of local chiefs although this has never been confirmed. 

The stones were declared a UNESCO World Heritage site in 2014 and have become a major tourist attraction in Costa Rica . Many of the stones have been moved from their original locations over the years, and some have been damaged or destroyed, but efforts are underway to preserve the remaining stones and their cultural significance.

6. The Cave of Altamira: Too Good to Be True

Sometimes an accidental discovery is so amazing that experts refuse to believe it is real. This is what happened in the case of the Cave of Altamira , a prehistoric cave located in northern Spain that is famous for its stunning collection of Paleolithic cave paintings . The cave was discovered in 1868 but it wasn’t until the early 20th century that historians began taking it seriously. 

The cave was first discovered by a local hunter called Modesto Cubillas. This initial discovery led to an amateur archaeologist, Marcelino Sanz de Sautuola, visiting the cave the following year. It was his 8-year-old daughter who actually led him to discover the paintings. 

Bison from Magdalenian occupation of Altamira Cave. c. 16500 – 14000 years ago. 

( CC BY-SA 3.0 )

He published his findings, and the cave was excavated by two archaeologists from the University of Madrid. In an 1880 publication, they stated the paintings were Paleolithic in origin.

The piece was widely ridiculed. The art in the caves was deemed to be of too high a quality to be so old and their exceptional conservation raised suspicions. Sautuola was accused of forging the paintings and paying a local artist to paint them. 

It wasn't until the early 20th century, when French archaeologist Henri Breuil visited the cave and confirmed the authenticity of the paintings, that they were finally recognized as one of the greatest examples of prehistoric art in the world. Some of Marcelino Sanz de Sautuola’s initial critics backed down and admitted their mistake, but it was too little too late. Sautola had died 14 years earlier. 

• Ten Mysterious Examples of Rock Art from the Ancient World
• Ten Incredible Mummy Discoveries That Shocked the World

7. Otzi the Iceman Mummy: Found by Hikers

While most accidental discoveries must be pretty exciting, some of them are a little scary. Ötzi the Iceman is a mummified human corpse that was discovered in the Ötztal Alps on the border between Austria and Italy in 1991. The mummy is believed to be around 5,300 years old, making it one of the oldest and best-preserved human corpses ever found.

Reconstruction of the Iceman. Prehistory Museum of Quinson, Alpes-de-Haute-Provence, France.

( CC BY SA 3.0 )

He was discovered by a couple of German hikers, Helmut and Erika Simon who found him sticking out of a melting glacier. It was initially thought the mummy was the body of a mountaineer who had died on the mountain, but Otzi was soon determined to be a prehistoric human from the Copper Age (around 6000 BC).

Ötzi's remains have been extensively studied by scientists, who have been able to learn a great deal about his life and times. It is believed that he was a man in his mid-40s who was about 1.6 meters (just over 5 ft) tall and weighed around 50 kilograms (110.2 lb). He had brown eyes, a beard, and long hair.

From his clothing and equipment, it has been deduced that Otzi was most likely a skilled hunter and craftsman who was remarkably well-equipped for survival in the harsh alpine environment. He was found with a variety of tools and weapons, including a copper ax, a quiver of arrows, and a wooden bow. Ötzi also had several tattoos on his body, which may have had symbolic or medicinal significance.

Ötzi's body and artifacts now sit in the South Tyrol Museum of Archaeology in Bolzano, Italy, where they are on display for all to see. The discovery of Ötzi has provided valuable insights into the life of prehistoric humans and has shed new light on the ancient history of Europe.

Conclusion

These amazing discoveries are proof that we never know what we’re going to stumble across next. It’s amazing to think that if it were not for pure chance, many of these incredible discoveries would never have been made. 

These discoveries have helped us to better appreciate the achievements and experiences of our ancestors, while also providing insights into the evolution of our species. They have demonstrated the incredible diversity and ingenuity of human cultures across time and geography and have inspired generations of explorers and scholars to continue uncovering the secrets of our past. 

So, whether you’re walking your dog, working in a field, or going for a nice long hike, keep your eyes peeled. You never know what you’ll find or how you might accidentally change history as we know it.

• Top image: Montage of 7 most amazing discoveries in history images.
• Source: Credited in article body

By Robbie Mitchell

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{ https://www.ancient-origins.net/ }

16-05-2023 om 02:03 geschreven door peter  

Watch the Evolution from Ape to Man in this Remarkable Animation (Video)

The journey of evolution has been a long one, spanning over millions of years, and our ancestors have survived some of the toughest conditions imaginable to get where we are today. Starting from the primitive fruit-eating creatures that lived in African trees called Proconsuls, we have evolved through many stages, including Ardipithecus and gracile australopiths, before ultimately evolving into the first humans, Homo habilis . With a growing brain size and new hunting tools, our ancestors thrived and evolved into Homo ergaster, which were the first humans to conquer new territories beyond Africa.

Finally, Homo heidelbergensis emerged as the first prehistoric humans whose brain size was comparable to modern humans, and this marked the dawn of a new era in human evolution . Through hardships and challenges, our ancestors' journey towards reason and intelligence has been nothing short of remarkable, and their legacy continues to shape the way we live today.

• Evidence for a Great Evolutionary Leap Finally Found?
• The Origin of ‘Us’: What We Know So Far About Where We Humans Come From

• Top image: A reconstruction of Homo habilis.
• Source: YouTube Screenshot / Scientists Against Myths.

By Robbie Mitchell

{ https://www.ancient-origins.net/ }

16-05-2023 om 01:30 geschreven door peter  

10 Jaw-dropping Engineering Marvels of the Inca Empire

 ALEKSA VUČKOVIĆ

The Inca were an illustrious ancient civilization, whose sprawling empire stretched from Ecuador to the north, to central Chile in the south. Many of the remnants of their incredible civilization are found today in Peru, both along its coasts, and in its rugged highlands. The Inca were enigmatic in many ways - possessing incredible architectural skills that often defy all sense of logic. They were true ancient engineers - and many of their secrets are forever lost to time. Here are 10 of their most famous engineering marvels.

1. The Lone Jewel on the Mountaintop, Machu Picchu

Perhaps the most famous of all Inca ruins is the magnificent Machu Picchu , the self-sufficient citadel and royal residence. Today, it is considered as the most recognizable symbol of the Inca, and for years it was called their “Lost City”. The site is situated on a 2,430-meter (7,970 ft) mountain ridge, in inhospitable terrain where one would never imagine a settlement to stand. And yet, the ingenious Incas managed to create a thriving community so high up in the mountains.

View from south to north. To the left you can see the Hanan sector of the city (with the pyramidal structure of the Intihuatana hill) and to the right the east sector, separated by the main square. In the background the Cerro Huayna Picchu.   

(Zielonamapa.pl/CC BY-SA 2.0 )

Machu Picchu is located above the Sacred Valley, 80 kilometers (50 mi) northwest of Cusco, with the important Urubamba River flowing past it. The important citadel was likely built as a royal estate for Emperor Pachacuti, also called Pachacutec (1438–1472), sometime around 1450 AD. However, it was abandoned just a century later, as the Spanish Conquistadors ravaged the Inca Empire .

The entire citadel of Machu Picchu is an engineering marvel in itself - a pitch-perfect commune that was created on top of a steep mountain point. And even so, it had all the comforts of life - storage buildings, housing, incredible agricultural terraces, as well as a stunning Temple of the Sun. For centuries all of these structures were hidden beneath dense foliage, until their rediscovery in 1912. Today, it remains an incredible window into the ingenuity of the ancient Incas.

2. The Impregnable Citadel of Sacsayhuamán

The vastness of the Inca empire had to be defended from any would-be attackers. The mighty citadel of Sacsayhuamán is a mind-boggling archaeological site located on a hill overlooking the city of Cusco, Peru. The site is believed to have been built by the Inca civilization during the 15th century, during the reign of Sapa Inca Pachacuti, and served as a military fortress and religious center.

Sacsayhuamán, Cusco, Perú

(Diego Delso/ CC BY-SA 4.0 )

The thing that Sacsayhuamán is most noted for are its massive stone walls, which feature impressive stonework and some truly awe-inspiring engineering feats. The impregnable citadel walls were constructed using massive stone blocks that weigh up to 200 tons, and were fitted together so tightly that it is said a piece of paper cannot fit between them. How did the Incas achieve such an incomprehensible architectural feat? Many theories exist, but none can say for certain how the process looked like. The site also features a number of other structures, including temples, palaces, and fountains, all of which captivate with their grandeur.

Today, Sacsayhuamán is a popular tourist destination and is recognized as a UNESCO World Heritage site. It is an incredible feat of human skill, and one of the most renowned Inca sites.

3. Qhapaq Nan, The Great Inca Road

In order to control such a large empire and to make everything function as it should, the Inca had to create a reliable road network. It wasn’t an easy task, but they did it, nevertheless. The result is Qhapaq Nan , also known as the Great Inca Road - a vast network of roads and footpaths that spanned more than 20,000 miles (more than 32,000 km) throughout the Andes Mountains of South America. The road system served as a vital communication and transportation network for the Inca civilization and connected many of their major cities and settlements.

The Qhapaq Nan was built over several centuries, beginning around the 15th century AD, and was constructed primarily using stone and gravel. The road system features numerous impressive feats of engineering, including suspension bridges, tunnels, and switchbacks. The roads were also lined with waystations and storage depots, which provided food, water, and shelter for travelers. The Great Inca Road connected the coastal and the mountainous parts of the empire, making traveling easy and less dangerous.

Today, many sections of the Qhapaq Nan are still in use, centuries later - it was that well-made. And it only serves as proof of incredible Inca skill.

• Inca Empire Constructed Over 40,000 Kms of Roads and Superhighways in 100 Years
• The High-Tech Stonework of the Ancients: Unsolved Mysteries of Master Engineers

4. Ollantaytambo and its Impregnable Walls
The Inca city of Ollantaytambo is an archaeological site located in the Sacred Valley of Peru , approximately 72 kilometers (45 miles) northwest of the city of Cusco. It is believed to have been built by the Inca civilization during the 15th century AD and served as a military, religious, and agricultural center.

Ollantaytambo is renowned for its truly impressive fortress, which features massive stone terraces and walls that rise up to 60 feet high (18 m). And once again, science was baffled by the skill and mastery with which these stone walls were built. Some of the pieces are incredibly heavy, but still placed with absolute precision and a tight fit. The site was strategically placed as to defend against attacks from hostile neighboring tribes, and played an important role in the Inca resistance against Spanish conquistadors. Its position and impregnable walls made it an easily defendable site.

In addition to the fortress, Ollantaytambo features a number of temples, palaces, and other structures, all of which showcase the remarkable engineering and architectural skills of the Inca civilization. The site also features a sophisticated system of canals and aqueducts, which were used for irrigation and water management. In its heyday, Ollantaytambo was a sprawling Inca city that had all the comforts of life, and was also well protected. It is a bustling city today as well, and many original Inca structures, houses, and doorways are still in daily use.

Ollantaytambo is a very popular tourist destination and is recognized as a UNESCO World Heritage site. When traveling to the area, you cannot miss visiting it.

5. The Stunning Terraces of Moray

One of the foremost accomplishments for which the Inca were praised was their mastery of agriculture in an otherwise inhospitable and rugged terrain. With their unique system of terraces and irrigation, they became the true masters of growing crops. And the Inca city of Moray is an ideal example of this. It is an archaeological site located in the famed Sacred Valley of Peru, approximately 50 kilometers (31 mi) northwest of the city of Cusco. It consists of several terraced circular depressions in the ground, which were used by the Incas for agricultural experimentation and research.

The circular depressions at Moray range in depth from approximately 30 to 150 feet (10 to 45 m) and are arranged in a series of concentric rings. The terraces were likely used to simulate different microclimates, which allowed the Incas to experiment with different crop varieties and growing conditions. The temperature difference between the top and the bottom levels of these terraces can be as much as 5 °C (9 °F), allowing for different growing conditions. Furthermore, the terraces are connected by a complex system of channels and canals, which allowed for precise control of water flow and irrigation.

Moray is believed to have been built during the 15th century AD by the Inca civilization and served as an important agricultural research center. The site is considered a remarkable example of Incan engineering and agricultural innovation and is recognized as a UNESCO World Heritage site.

• Do the ancient stone walls of Saksaywaman in Peru contain hidden communication?
• 15 Incredible Ancient Buildings and Structures (Video)

6. Tipon Showcases the Hydraulic Engineering of the Incas

Ancient water spouts at Tipón, Peru

( CC BY 2.0 )

Did you know that the Incas also mastered hydraulic engineering ? Their majestic city of Tipon is a remarkable example of this. This archaeological site is located in the Cusco region of Peru, approximately 15 kilometers (10 mi) southeast of the city of Cusco. It is situated on a hillside at an altitude of about 3,400 meters (11,154.86 ft) above sea level and covers an area of approximately 6.5 hectares. Tipon was built by the Inca civilization around the 15th century AD and likely served as a royal estate and an agricultural center. The site contains a sophisticated system of terraces, canals, and aqueducts, which were designed to irrigate the crops and gardens that grew on the terraced hillsides. The engineering prowess of the Incas is evident in the precision of the stonework and the complexity of the hydraulic system. The terraces are so well built that they remain incredibly well preserved today.

One of the most impressive features of Tipon is the extensive system of water channels and fountains, which were used for both irrigation and aesthetic purposes. The channels are made of finely cut stone and are carefully aligned to maximize water flow. The fountains are adorned with intricate carvings and were likely used for ceremonial purposes as well.

7. Raqch’i Venerated Viracocha

Religion played a great role in the daily lives of the Incas. Their once-majestic city of Raqch'i is located in the southern highlands of Peru, and is believed to have been built by the Inca civilization during the 15th century AD and served as an important administrative and religious center.

Central wall of the Temple of Viracocha in Raqch 'i, Peru. The bases of the circular columns that in the past supported the roof of this large temple are still visible. 

( PIERRE ANDRE LECLERCQ/ CC BY-SA 4.0 )

Raqch'i is renowned for its massive temple complex, which features a rectangular courtyard surrounded by a series of impressive, titanic stone walls. The temple is truly enormous, and measures 92 meters (302 ft) by 25.5 meters (84 ft). It is dedicated to Viracocha, the great creator God of the Inca, and their most important deity. The temple complex also includes a number of smaller buildings and structures, as well as a sophisticated system of irrigation canals and terraces.

The site is also notable for its extensive agricultural terraces, which were used to grow crops such as potatoes, quinoa, and corn. The terraces feature a complex system of irrigation channels and are a testament to the impressive engineering skills of the Inca civilization - in all spheres of their lives.

8. Pisaq, The Royal Estate and its Irrigation Canals

Built in the Inca heyday during the 15th century AD, Pisaq (Písac) was an important royal estate and city, which served as a religious and agricultural center. Its ruins are situated some 20 miles (33 km) northeast from Cusco.

Pisaq is renowned for its truly impressive agricultural terraces that leave every visitor in awe. They were used to grow crops such as corn, potatoes, and quinoa (the staples of Inca diet) - with incredible success. These terraces feature a truly sophisticated system of irrigation canals and are a testament to the impressive engineering skills of the Inca civilization. The level of expertise with which they were constructed allowed them to remain almost perfectly preserved - after centuries.

The site of Pisaq is also notable for its monumental stone structures, which include a series of temples, palaces, and other buildings. It was an important city of the Inca. Alas, it was completely devastated and destroyed in the 1530s by the Spanish conquistadors, headed by Francisco Pizarro . The modern settlement of Pisaq arose in the shadow of these noble ruins.

The Pisaq residential area.

( Public Domain )

9. Choquequirao Sanctuary

Nestled in the breathtaking Andes Mountains of Peru, just a stone's throw away from the world-famous Machu Picchu, lie the majestic ruins of Choquequirao, an ancient Incan citadel city whose lofty position and ambience won’t fail to invoke a sense of wonder and grandeur. Built in the 15th century AD as a sacred sanctuary and royal estate, this awe-inspiring site remained hidden from the eyes of the world until the early 20th century.

Spanning a vast area of 1,800 hectares, Choquequirao boasts an impressive collection of well-preserved structures, from sprawling plazas to ornate temples and residential quarters. However, its most striking feature is a colossal terraced complex that spans over 2,500 square meters and comprises two levels of buildings, agricultural terraces, and a serene ceremonial fountain. These terraces were built on steep hillsides and rugged terrain, and were even so a functioning source of abundant crops.

Left: Main Plaza at Choquequirao. ( CC BY-SA 3.0 )

Right: Remains of Inca houses at Choquequirao ( CC BY-SA 3.0 )

Despite its undeniable allure and stunning views of the surrounding mountains and valleys, Choquequirao remains a hidden gem due to its remote location and challenging accessibility. It takes a lot of hiking in rugged terrain in order to reach the site. But even so, for those who dare to venture away from the beaten path, this hidden treasure offers a unique and captivating glimpse into the fascinating daily life and religious practices of the Inca people. Don't miss out on the opportunity to discover one of Peru's most extraordinary and least-known wonders!

10. Tambo Colorado, the City of Colored Houses
Tambo Colorado is an Incan archaeological site located in the Pisco Valley of Peru, and was built during the reign of the Inca emperor Pachacutec in the mid-15th century. This unique city served as a strategic administrative and military center for the Inca Empire, after the region was annexed from the Chincha culture.

The name Tambo Colorado means "Red Tambo" in Spanish, referring to the red color of the adobe walls. It is likely that all the buildings in the town were adorned with bright colors, and many of them can still be seen today. The site covers an area of about 6 hectares and includes several well-preserved buildings, including a large central plaza, residential quarters, and administrative buildings. Observing these majestic ruins, we can understand the complexity of the Incan Empire, and the importance of keeping the coastal and highland regions connected and controlled.

Panorama of Tambo Colorado.

(Eric Bronder/ CC BY-SA 3.0 )

One of the most notable features of Tambo Colorado is the complex network of channels and canals that were used for irrigation and agriculture. Wherever the Incas chose to settle, they brought their advanced knowledge of agriculture with them. The site also includes a number of rooms and chambers that were used for storage and as living quarters. This means that Tambo Colorado had all the necessities for the thriving life of many citizens.

• Top image: Sun over Moray, Sacred Valley of the Incas, Peru. 
• Source: alexpermyakov/Adobe Stock

By Aleksa Vučković

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06-05-2023 om 21:31 geschreven door peter  

From Pyramids to Temples: Discovering the 15 Most Ancient Buildings on Earth (Video)

The world is full of ancient structures and buildings that have managed to withstand the test of time. From Gobekli Tepe, the oldest place of worship in the world, to the ancient Fortress of Masada , these buildings are a testament to the ingenuity and craftsmanship of early human civilizations. The Karnak Temple complex in Egypt is another fascinating example, taking over 2000 years to build and featuring impressive architecture such as the great hypo-style hall and towering pylons.

One of the most impressive (and famous), the Colosseum in Rome, officially unveiled in AD 80, could seat 50,000 people and is still considered an impressive feat of engineering today. These structures, and others like the Tower of Jericho, continue to raise questions about the people who built them and their way of life. Here are 15 of the oldest buildings in the world.

• Can Gobekli Tepe Reveal Prehistoric Masonic Secrets?
• Archaeologists to Explore Mysterious Underground Structure at the Desert Fortress of Masada

• Top image: The ancient site of Masada, Israel.
• Source:  Jonatan / Adobe Stock.

By Robbie Mitchell

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03-05-2023 om 00:29 geschreven door peter  

{ https://mysteriousuniverse.org/ }

30-04-2023 om 22:44 geschreven door peter  

The Ancient ‘Computer’ That Simply Shouldn’t Exist (Video)

When we think of ancient technology, we often imagine simple tools and primitive machinery. But what if we told you that over 2,000 years ago, the ancient Greeks had built the world’s oldest computer? That's right, we're talking about the Antikythera mechanism, a complex device discovered in a shipwreck off the coast of Greece in 1901.

This incredible machine contained a system of gears and cogs that was able to predict astronomical positions and eclipses with incredible accuracy. It's no wonder that some have called it the world's first computer, a marvel of engineering that was centuries ahead of its time. The Antikythera mechanism is a reminder that even in the ancient world, there were minds that were capable of incredible feats of technology and innovation.

• Top image: Artistic rendering of the Antikythera mechanism, the oldest analogue computer.
• Source: AkuAku / Adobe Stock.

By Joanna Gillan

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27-04-2023 om 22:48 geschreven door peter