An arctic ice video I like

[Suff]

This youtube Video shows the cubic km of ice volume in the Arctic since the satellite records began in 1979.

Very descriptive.

[Aggers]

Suff - I thought of you the other day. I am presently reading a book called Magicians of the Gods by Graham Hancock, and finding it enthralling. It concerns the theory, now becoming more or less generally accepted, that the earth was struck by a comet, mainly in the Northern half of the USA, about 12,800 years ago, causing part of the immensely thick Northern ice cap to melt suddenly, resulting in catastrophic flooding, drastic geographical changes and the extinction of wildlife and many advanced civilisations as a consequence. He points out that folklore worldwide, such as the biblical Noah's Flood, refer to some such catastrophic and destructive event.
Such a happening, of course, is always on the cards - a sobering thought. I have a feeling that you might enjoy this book.

[Suff]

Aggers, it's a follow on from his Fingerprints of the Gods which I have read mostly but not completed. He asks for some direct answers to some very compelling questions. Those answers are not what people expect but the answers are very convincing.

Our biosphere is changing faster than it has ever been seen before in the fossil and ice core record. This is due to human activity. It has, however, been seen that rapid change can come from events such as comets.

What is often missed is that the impact of runaway greenhouse gasses is very similar to a comet strike on a massive ice field.

One of the key points Hancock made about the "forerunners" is that they had the ability to lift and transport extremely heavy weights. Weights which would take tens of the largest and most powerful cranes in existence today (non mobile) and also move those stones great distances and then set then with a precision which is actually quite difficult for us to do today.

One of the most stupid things I've heard in my life was when someone told me, in all earnest, that the Egyptians were "fantastic" engineers because they managed to get the great pyramid level with nothing more than bowls of water with lines on them to make levels.

Let's examine that bit of idiocy for a second. The Great Pyramid is big enough to be affected by the curvature of the earth. If the Egyptians were to have used a water level, then the great pyramid would not have been level. It would have been curved around the surface of the earth, by about 1.3cm over the length of a side. Something no dish of water could ever measure. In fact that pyramid is not only totally flat to a precision which would require laser measuring today (we simply could not have made it in the 50's), it is also socketed into the ground at each of the corners in a way which makes the structure almost impervious to earthquakes. Which means that the rock it was laid on was carved and prepared to be level "through" the curvature of the earth. Then blocks of stone which would tax our current technology were laid with extreme proficiency to a precision which we struggle to attain today with our computerised laser driven measuring and levelling equipment. Some of the stones in the great pyramid weigh 200 tonnes. Other stones have been found, quarried far away from where they are placed, at 1,200 tonnes. A feat of movement which would, today, take hundreds of thousands of horsepower (or put another way millions of manpower), steel hawsers, the largest lifting machines on the planet or even new machines which would have to be purpose built.

The positioning and juxtaposition with star sight lines and other large structures of similar age point to a clear knowledge of spherical geometry and a knowledge of the diameter and circumference of the Earth. Mathematical knowledge which did not exist at the time they were supposed to have been built.

And we are expected to believe that this was done with "manpower" by a culture who's pinnacle of achievement was bronze tools and rope......

So, yes, I'm interested. Because a society which had managed to defeat gravity would probably be significantly less wasteful of world resources than we are today.

This is without even talking about the Earthquake resistant structures built of stones weighing hundreds of tonnes in south America....

I do wonder, if our society were destroyed by such an asteroid strike, what fingerprints we would leave some 12,000 years later???? Perhaps future archeologists might think we never exceeded Roman technology? Because that is likely to be all that would be left.... And if we think about it, it's less than 2,000 years since Rome fell....

[Workingman]

So let's get this right.

The last Ice age has come to an end and N. America becomes inhabited by the Clovis people. They thrive and hunt mammoth, sloths, buffalo...... Then they get wiped out.

One well known theory is that about 12,800 years ago a series of air blasts from a disintegrating comet, similar to the one over Tunguska in 1908, caused a mini Ice age, the Younger Dryas period, and they were gone. In essence that is the accepted version and there is plenty of evidence for it being so. There is archaeological evidence for the Clovis culture. There is geological evidence for layers of ash from the explosions. There is rapid extinction evidence for many types of flora and fauna.

There is not a shred of evidence for a highly advanced civilization with profound knowledge of such things as astronomy, architecture, and mathematics existing before or alongside the Clovis. Not one thing has been found - no drawings, no artefacts, no tools, no dwellings and no skeletons.

A series of air blasts over any ice sheet could melt millions of cu/km of ice in no time causing all sorts of global climate events. Why introduce Atlantis type myths to try to explain the abilities of civilizations later down the line?

[Suff]

Better read the fingerprits of the gods.

There is actually quite a lot of evidence of intelligence, maths and many other things in South America dating from around 12k years ago.

Fingerprints of the Gods sort of starts around the Piri Reis map. It is a map which has only recently been confirmed to be the coastline of Western Antarctica without the ice. It is pretty well assumed that Piri Reis got this knowledge from the looted knowledge of South America. The Spanish Priests destroyed massive amounts of knowledge when they pillaged the continent but some escaped their "devotion".....

The question was very simple. How could someone draw a topographical map of Western Antarctica, underneath the ice, in 1513; which is then validated as correct in the 20th century? That is the starting point of a very strange journey.

There is also the controversy surrounding the sphinx and it's age. Whilst different specialists may come up with different ages for it, the consensus in those who can't explain the weathering any other way, is that the age is 5,000 to 8,000 (more likely 8,000). Not 4,500 as is proposed.

The Egyptian hypotheses that there has been no other civilisation there because there is no pottery is ludicrous. After all, how much footprint would we leave? An even more advanced civilization might leave even less...

I find it all quite interesting. There is simply too much evidence out there for the inertia of the modern interpretation of history to hide... Some day we will possibly know more of the truth. Or maybe not.

I found a quote from Mark Lehner, an archaeologist.

It's all just circumstantial. And sometimes we smile at that, because virtually all information in archaeology is circumstantial.

Rarely do we have people from thousands of years ago who are writing, who are signing confessions. So there's no one easy way that we know what the date of the pyramids happens to be. It's mostly by context. The pyramids are surrounded by cemeteries of other tombs.

So, if some Pharaoh decided to build their tombs and cemeteries around the most prominent building in the area, we would never know would we. But because they are all together, then they must be the same age... You can't radio carbon date stone and nobody can guarantee that any organic material found on the site was there when it was built.....

I love this kind of stuff. It's like lateral thinking problems. You have to examine it from all angles. The theory which stands up to the most scrutiny is usually the one which is correct. I'm not having much confidence with "We don't know but because everything else is around it, we're pretty sure it is"....

[Workingman]

There is actually quite a lot of evidence of intelligence, maths and many other things in South America dating from around 12k years ago.

Maybe so, but is there any evidence for it coming from a lost advanced civilization?

How could someone draw a topographical map of Western Antarctica, underneath the ice, in 1513; which is then validated as correct in the 20th century? That is the starting point of a very strange journey.

The Piri Reis map is not validated in any shape or form. It is a partial representation of the 'known' World in 1513 based on other maps of the ancients from the Arabs, Indians and Portuguese.

Interesting as these hypotheses and theories might be they are no more scientific than Erich von Daniken's 'Chariots of the Gods'.

[Aggers]

Wow !!! I'm really enjoying this discussion.

I'm now only about half-way though my book (I think), but it really is interesting reading.

I agree with you, Suff, on most of the points you make. There are a lot of stick-in-the-mud so-called experts lacking the ability to accept new thoughts on this subject, and who cling to the theories they learned in their youth, and are loath to accept new concepts. It should be remembered, however, that the ideas put forward by Graham Hancock, although they are contrary to long-held views on this matter, are now acknowledged by many experts on the subject as being largely correct.

A truly fascinating subject.

P.S. Frank, I have an idea that if you read this book you might change your mind somewhat. It really is quite
convincing.

[Suff]

The most fascinating thing I found about his earlier book was the tentative link between Sonics and gravity.

After all, everything in the universe is vibrating all the time, even atoms and sub atoms. If you were able to stop them from vibrating that would be pretty much a definition of stasis...

[Workingman]

P.S. Frank, I have an idea that if you read this book you might change your mind somewhat. It really is quite
convincing.

Aggers, I did read some of 'Fingerprints' but got bored. Don't get me wrong, I love pseudo-science and hypotheses, but they have to hold proof and evidence, not only conjecture.

everything in the universe is vibrating all the time, even atoms and sub atoms. If you were able to stop them from vibrating that would be pretty much a definition of stasis...

No. it would be the definition of absolute zero temperature.

[Aggers]

Aggers, I did read some of 'Fingerprints' but got bored. Don't get me wrong, I love pseudo-science and hypotheses, but they have to hold proof and evidence, not only conjecture.

I haven't read Graham Hancock's first book on the subject, but this latest book is certainly not pseudo-science. It is full of convincing evidence provided by other experts in this field since his first book on the subject was published.