AN ANCIENT CALCULATOR?

Reconstruction of the Antikythera mechanism in the National Archaeological Museum, Athens (made by Robert J. Deroski, based onDerek J. de Solla Price model).

Further evidence of ancient machining can be observed in the mysterious ‘Antikythira Device,’ an artifact that was found at the site of an ancient shipwreck just off the Greek island of Antikythira. The artifact is manufactured from bronze and consists of a series of interlocking cogs and wheels and although heavily corroded, is quite unique and very extraordinary. When it was first discovered experts thought it was possibly some type of navigational instrument, but a more detailed investigation revealed it to be something vastly more complex.

Radiograph and X-ray examination revealed the existence of a differential turntable comprising of over 30 interlocking geared cogs set at various different planes fixed within the device testifying to an extremely high degree of craftsmanship and a clockmakers attention to detail. It is quite obviously a precision instrument of enormous complexity. But what exactly is it?

The instrument bears inscriptions, unfortunately heavily corroded by sea water, that seem to refer to zodiac positions with a great deal of accuracy which, apart from its perfection in manufacture, is something that then also involves a considerable amount of astronomical expertise. It also has certain similarities with some known astronomical instruments and is thought to possibly be an advanced type of ‘astrolabe’, a celestial calendar and navigational device used for determining and exhibiting the year round positions of stars and planets.

Adding even further to the puzzle, the wreck, from which the device was salvaged, dates back to nearly one hundred BC and it has been previously thought that such refined craftsmanship was completely unknown until the mid 16th century. No other artifact that comes anywhere near this degree of sophistication has ever been recovered from another wreck either before or since. Even Astrolabes that have been recovered from vessels that sank millennia later look simplistic by comparison as the above diagram shows.

The Antikythira Device is very much a puzzle in itself but another very intriguing part of the puzzle is this: For this kind of precision machined instrument to even exist, it means that there must also have been an equally sophisticated machine on which it was made, yet we have no record of such a machine ever existing and no hint of any such capability has ever been found, so who made it – and how?

LINK

LINK

HOLY LAND

Gerard de Jode, in Speculum Orbis Terrarum, Antwerp, 1578
Smith Collection, University of Southern Maine
West is at the top. A detailed bird's-eye view of the walled city of Jerusalem to a contemporary pilgrim, with the Dome of the Rock on the former site of Solomon's Temple. The view is flanked by vignettes of the Church of the Holy Sepulchre (above and to the right) and the Chapel of the Nativity in Bethlehem (to the left).

The Nasca Lines

In continuing our display of ‘ooparts’ mention must of course be given to the enormous motifs, spirals and geometric shapes that appear on the Nasca Plains in Peru. There really are few places on earth more baffling or shrouded in mystery. The actual Nazca civilization was one that had flourished in the area from between 200 B.C. and 600 A.D. but no one really knows the true origins or meaning of the enormous and very mysterious Nazca Lines.

The lines appear etched into a vast plateau, 37 miles long and 15 miles wide called Pampa Colorado that sits high in the mountains of the Nasca region of Peru. The lines were probably first brought to the wider attention of the world by Eric Von Daniken in his book “The Chariots of the Gods.” The etchings are of truly monumental proportions with the plain containing literally thousands of criss-crossing, zigzagging, spiraling and parallel lines covering virtually the entire plateau. The lines have been made by simply removing the hard rocky surface of the plain and exposing the lighter soil beneath. They range in average width from 6 inches to over 6 feet and run in absolutely every direction across the plain. Some of the lines are over 6 miles long and yet they still run unbroken over plains, hills and valleys and always remain perfectly straight and true. The motifs they depict include bird, animal and human forms, astronomical symbols and interestingly, even one section that seems to look exactly like an enormous long runway.

The truly gigantic size of these glyphs that are depicted at Nazca also means that none of them at all are visible to a person standing on the ground and only a person viewing them from the air can see that they actually form shapes and pictures.

The Nazca lines were only discovered accidentally when a plane flew over the site in the mid 20th century and the surprised pilot suddenly noticed them from the air. From the vantage point of the sky however, there can be clearly seen the huge shapes of a monkey, a Hummingbird and one that really does look like an astronaut. And that’s just a few. There are many, many more, covering virtually the entire plateau.

The enormous size of these pictograms really and truly cannot be understated and it is widely believed that the design blueprint for the Nasca site could only properly have been realized from the air. How else would the artist ever know if the design was correct? It also seems strange that anyone would go to all the trouble of covering a mountain plateau in huge pictograms that no-one (who couldn’t fly) would ever possibly be able to view in the first place, there is simply no apparent point to such an exercise.

LINK

AGIOS GEORGIOS KOLOKYTHIAS

Byzantine fortification, Agios Georgios Kolokythias, Kythera, rendered as a plan and as a three dimensional visualization through extrusion of mapped features. The plan and visualization were created during fieldwork using GPS and GIS software.

From 2002 Survey

One of these special investigations involved the medieval settlement at Agios Georgios Kolokythias in the far northeast corner of the survey area, on the coast north of Agia Pelagia. We had carried out intensive survey at this site in 2001 and recorded the remains of a second church—beside the one currently standing—as well as two large cisterns, an apparently secular building, and the substantial remains of a fortification circuit. Ceramic remains allow us to propose a date of the 11^th or 12^th century for the complex—earlier in fact than Paliochora—and the site thus seemed to be an especially important one. We received permission this year to carry out a detailed program of investigation at Agios Georgios, including the construction of a full plan. The latter could be done only after considerable work of cutting the dense growth around the walls, but this was accomplished by members of our team with speed and good humor!

Measurement for the plan was carried out by Andrew Wilson, using high-precision GPS equipment from the ACL of the University of Sydney. Although the plan still requires some fine-tuning and attention to detail, it shows considerable details about the fortification, the churches, and the settlement that apparently existed both inside and outside the fortification walls. In addition, this means of recording allows the construction of 3-dimensional views of the site that can be turned and manipulated in order to study the fortress in its natural setting and to see it from different perspectives.

The work at Agios Georgios is a good example of the kind of study we will focus on in the coming seasons. After four years of intensive survey, we feel we have the basic information needed to discuss the basic settlement history of northern Kythera, and in the next few years we will devote ourselves especially to detailed study of the artifacts and features, as well as to publication.

LINK

THE MERCATOR MAP OF 1538

And even yet another intriguing map is one drawn in 1538 by Mercator, another highly respected cartographer who lived in the 16th century. His works are quite famous and you can still buy a Mercator atlas in shops today. Mercator was known to periodically update is works and produce a new, more definitive world atlas as more shores became charted and more accurate charts become available to him. In doing such an update, his 1538 world map was replaced by a new one in 1569. However we now know that not only was his 1538 map far more accurate than the latter one but what proved to be even more amazing was that it also contained correct measurements of longitude.

To put all this mention of longitude into some sort of perspective for you: Longitude is the distance in degrees east or west of the Prime Meridian. Due to the Earth’s rotation, it is far harder to calculate longitude than it is latitude, which can be measured by using the stars or the sun for observation. To calculate Longitude, requires an equation of ‘distance = speed x time’ and, most importantly, an accurate clock. Discovering longitude was once described as "greatest of all naval problems" and in the 1700’s an actual Board of Longitude was set up in England to solve the issue. In 1714, Sir Isaac Newton appeared before the board and explained that the real problem was that "a watch required for such accuracy has not yet been invented". The Queen then offered a prize of 20,000 pounds to any man who might build such a device and finally, in 1761, a man by the name of Harrison claimed the prize and put forth his prototype chronometer which then "ushered in a new era of sea travel" for the world.

During the 19th century maps then began being updated with the correct degrees of longitude. However Mercator’s map of 1538 was marked with correct longitude a full 223 years before it was discovered. Where was he able to gain that information from? It is obvious that Mercator himself had no real knowledge of longitude at the time and must have borrowed or been given the information from another source because he then updated his subsequent maps incorrectly with what was considered to be more recent and therefore, supposedly more reliable information. These maps constitute some extremely significant evidence indeed, for if ancient man had never circumnavigated the globe or possessed any knowledge of longitude then how can any of these maps exist?

LINK

Pirates of the Spanish Main Maps

The Winds

Settlements

All hands on deck! In the waters of the Caribbean there are fortunes to be made and lost…or stolen. In these times it takes courage and daring to carve out a niche and forge a new legend. Will you sail the high seas in search of fame and fortune, lead a band of buccaneers in search of booty, or captain a ship of the line in the service of King and country?

Pirates of the Spanish Main is a complete game based on Wizkids’ best-selling Constructible Strategy Game and the award winning Savage Worlds roleplaying game system. All the rules you need to play this game of fast and furious swashbuckling fun are in this book. So set a course for adventure; fame and fortune await over the horizon. Full color and lavishly illustrated throughout, this is a complete RPG containing everything needed to play - no separate rulebook is required.

NEW ORION CORRELATION?

Researcher Scott Creighton may have discovered a new dimension to the alignment between the pyramids at Giza and the constellation Orion. According to Creighton the so-called queens’ pyramids, two sets of three small pyramids each, next to the largest and smallest of the main Giza pyramids, are aligned with the three belt stars of Orion at two precise points in time exactly 12,960 years apart. The group to the south of Menkaure’s pyramid were aligned, he says, with the belt stars in 10,948 B.C. and the other queens’ pyramids to the east of the Great pyramid will be aligned with those same stars in 2012 A.D. Interestingly enough the alignment of the two sets of small pyramids, in relation to each other, is exactly perpendicular. Researchers Robert Bauval and Adrian Gilbert caused quite a stir in the mid-nineties with their book, The Orion Mystery, which argued that Giza was an attempt to reflect on earth the image of the constellation Orion. If Creighton is right, the arrangement would also seem to point to times important to the builders of the Giza complex. By suggesting that the pyramids of Giza also act as a kind of clock, tracking the progress of Orion through the heavens toward the 2012 date, a year to which the Mayan calendar and other ancient indicators also point, Creighton is calling attention to another indication of the astonishing ancient advancement on display at Giza.

To see an animation of Creighton's Greater Orion Correlation Theory go to: http://www.thegizaoracle.co.uk/Flash/GOCT.swf.

Creighton is also author of the book The Giza Oracle.

Newsarama.com : Getting Into Viking with Ivan Brandon

Last week, we posted the teaser for the April-launching Viking, a “9th century crime comic” by writer Ivan Brandon and artist Nic Klein. And that was it – just the teaser.

Today, we speak with Brandon about the book, its characters, his motivation, and more.

Newsarama: You've worked with the criminal underground in Cross Bronx and NYC Mech. Why did you choose to go back to the ninth century for Viking?

via Newsarama.com : Getting Into Viking with Ivan Brandon.

The Giant Stone Balls of Costa Rica

Yet such proof may have already been long ago provided by an amazing discovery was made in the 1930’s by workmen would were clearing land for a banana plantation.

While burning and hacking away the jungle the workmen literally stumbled across scores of stone balls that had somehow been shaped and placed in the forest. Many of these balls are perfectly spherical and vary greatly in size ranging from the size of a tennis ball to around 8 feet in diameter and weighing up to around 16 tons and are great distances from each other with not apparent design to their positioning. Though these spherical stones are quite obviously not a natural occurrence, who may have made them and placed them at their locations or why remains a complete mystery. Some have theorized that the area was once a huge scale map of the Solar system but unfortunately too many of the stones have now been moved from their original locations to know whether this may have been the case.

These spheres are also cut to perfection and are incredibly smooth. Cutting a large stone into an absolutely perfect sphere is a n extremely difficult undertaking and the methods that may have been used to achieve such flawless results is also totally baffling.

LINK

The Puma Punka Stones

There is a most interesting thing that can be found in the Puma Punka Complex near Tiahuanaco. At the ancient site, standing upright in a courtyard, there can be found a tall flat stone that has a striking feature on it. The entire complex is actually quite remarkable, featuring a huge doorway complete with lintels that has been cut from a single stone and many other odd shapes that appear to have been machined including this one.

The remarkable thing about this ancient slab is that it has a perfect cut or groove approximately 1cm wide running down its entire length while inside the groove there is a set of equidistant holes that appear to have been drilled into it.

The site is only a few hundred meters from the famous site of Tiahuanaco but the stone slab and many other enigmatic features of the site are so hard to explain and pose so many difficult questions that the entire site is virtually hushed up by the entire archeological community and almost never mentioned to tourists.

The consistent accuracy of the groove and the holes within it cannot possibly have been achieved with any known types of hand tools. It would appear that the only satisfactory explanation is that it was done by a machine or possibly – by molding?

The Drowned World by J.G. Ballard (1962)

Paperback cover blurb

BACK TO THE JUNGLE

Kerans could not remember how it had been before the violent solar storms shattered the ionosphere and turned the earth into a vast tropical heat zone, a seething world of jungle, swamp and fetid water…

In the drowned, lost cities, there was the eerie beauty of the lagoons, the towering sixty-foot-high plants, the once-proud buildings smothered in silt…

Above all, there was the colossal fireball in the sky, the giant solar disk that seemed to blind him with its rays, lulling him into a strange hypnotic state, seeming to lure him back to the dawn of preconscious, to another age when Man was yet unborn and reptiles ruled the earth…

My thoughts

A new Age of Reptiles has begun, and humanity is nearly extinct. A sudden flare-up of the sun has melted the polar ice caps and turned the world into a great primordial swamp. (The Drowned World was written before the modern concept of global warming.) Most mammals have died out, and reptiles and plants are devolving into their ancient, Triassic-period forms to adapt to the new environment.

Kerans is a biologist accompanying a military expedition to a submerged London to study the new plant and animal life. There’s one problem: he’s haunted by dreams that may be recollections of long-lost racial memories of ancient times, when reptiles first ruled the earth. Soon he suspects that it’s just not plants and reptiles that are changing to fit the new climate.

The Drowned World was one of J.G. Ballard’s first novels, and it’s considered one of his best, although it is extremely hard to find in the U.S. The work is not so much about ancient creatures as it is about ancient environments and how humans would change to fit those environments. Ballard’s descriptions of a near-future London overrun with Triassic-age swamps are among the most haunting I’ve read. The Drowned World is not a book with much plot or action. It’s mostly about atmosphere, and on that Ballard excels brilliantly.

The science – with references to devolution and racial memory – may strike modern readers as dated. The Drowned World also comes to a screeching halt in the middle when a gang of looters sacks London, although it finds its footing again near the end. Still, it’s not a book to miss, and it’s a crime it’s so hard to find these days.

Trivia

• The Drowned World was the second book in Ballard's Elemental Cycle, a series of novels dealing with the end of the world, each disaster based on the elements of earth, fire, air and water. The element of The Drowned World was, obviously, water. Other titles include The Wind from Nowhere (air), The Burning World (fire), and The Crystal World (earth).

• At least two of Ballard's novels have been made into movies: Empire of the Sun and Crash.

• The novel was reissued in 2000 as part of the SF Masterworks series, which was released in the U.K..

Reviews

• SF Site
• Strange Words
• L.J. Hurst
• Sci Fi Weekly

CELTIC EUROPE

Abraham Ortelius, in Parergon, Antwerp, 1595

Osher Collection, University of Southern Maine

This map depicts Europe during the period of Celtic dominance. Between the sixth and third centuries B.C., the Celts, a group of barbarian tribes from central Europe, conquered a vast region extending from Iberia to the Black Sea. They were driven back and defeated by the Romans in the third and second centuries B.C.

KING AHUITZOTL

Although Ahuitzotl undertook war campaigns, he was best remembered for concluding, after eight kings and endless struggles, the construction of the Great Temple dedicated to Huitzilopochtli, their supreme deity.

After the death of their seventh king, the Aztec looked for a candidate who would be the exact opposite of Tizoc. They desired a young warrior full of vitality and strong military interest. The council decided to choose the youngest son of their fifth king, Motecuhzoma. However, this time, many nobles were hesitant about the election, for the past monarchs Axayacatl and Tizoc, also direct descendants of the great Motecuhzoma I, had failed to bring glory to the Aztec or to surpass the golden age of their father. With great controversy, in the year 1486, King Ahuitzotl, Motecuhzoma I’s last son, ascended to the throne. The eighth monarch of the Aztec quickly came to enjoy the support of his military comrades, as he showed genuine interest in developing new martial strategies and greatly favored the military class. Although Ahuitzotl undertook war campaigns, he was best remembered for concluding, after eight kings and endless struggles, the construction of the Great Temple dedicated to Huitzilopochtli, their supreme deity.

King Ahuitzotl invited all the people that inhabited his vast lands to celebrate; every noble, warrior, commoner, and slave was commanded to attend the festivities that would represent the culmination of Aztec supremacy over the Valley of Mexico. There was no distinction of class, gender, or ethnicity. Tenochtitlan erupted with people, and it is said that from an aerial view, the city resembled a gigantic ant colony.

The ceremony began with the placement of the four most powerful lords of the Aztec Empire at the top of the pyramid, each one situated at a cardinal point. King Ahuitzotl stood next to the statue of Huitzilopochtli; beside him stood the ruler of Tetzcoco, Lord Nezahualpilli; the ruler of Tlacopan; and the king’s adviser (cihuacoatl), Tlacaelel. The drums began to play at early dawn, and the first sacrifice took place. Lines of slaves and prisoners awaited as each lord conducted the sacrificial offering. One prisoner after the next was sacrificed from dawn to dusk for four continuous days; the temple of Huitzilopochtli poured a river of blood that emanated from the four cardinal points. It is said that 80,400 people were sacrificed during the four days, but this was probably an exaggeration. People at the footsteps of the temple waited for the blood to come down, then they collected it in small containers and spread it over their houses, temples, and municipal courts, as well as their faces, as a blessing. Tenochtitlan was covered in blood, and on the fifth day after the sacrificial ceremony had ended, the king honored the bravest warriors and lords by covering them with riches of gold and new weaponry.

Unlike the previous monarch, King Ahuitzotl worked hard to expand the Aztec Empire. During his government, he fought against multiple citystates and annexed them to Tenochtitlan. He engaged in war with the cities of Izhuatlan, Miahuatlan, Tehuantepec, and Amaxtlan and obtained great wealth. He colonized lands extending as far south as Guatemala. Because the newly acquired lands required protection and military domination, Ahuitzotl declared that all freeborn males of the age of 18 and up should be trained as warriors in order to reinforce the army and secure Tenochtitlan’s economic interests. Additionally, Ahuitzotl devoted a great amount of effort to properly urbanizing the capital and populating cities such as Alahuiztlan and Oztoman, which he later used as military centers.

In the year 1502, upon return from a war fought in the area of Oaxaca, King Ahuitzotl was very ill. It is unknown what disease afflicted him, but in less than a year he lost his strength and became thin and brittle. He died accidentally that same year, during the inauguration of an aqueduct in Tenochtitlan. With his death, the empire suffered a great loss, for he was loved by his people, respected by the council, and admired by his military men. Under his government, the Aztec prospered, and their cities were modernized.

CAESAR'S GAUL

Abraham Ortelius, in Parergon, Antwerp, 1595

Osher Collection, University of Southern Maine

Ancient Gaul is depicted here in accordance with the description in Julius Caesar's Commentaria, one of the earliest works to have historical maps created for it. Major topographic features and locations of native tribes, cities and Roman provinces are indicated.

THE LANZHOU STONE

A truly amazing object has recently come to light in the form of an uncommon stone with a threaded metal bar inside it that was recently found by a Mr Zhilin Wang in China near to the Marzong Mountain region on the borders of the Gansu and Xijiang provinces.

 

The mysterious stone is pear shaped, about 6 x 8 cm, extremely hard and weighs 466 grams. Incredibly the rock is of a type that is totally unknown suggesting that in may in fact be a meteorite. However it is not only due to its unknown make up that the item has attracted enormous attention from many geologists and collectors around the world but also because of the starling artifact it contains within it.

 

As reported in the ‘Lanzhou Morning News’ on June 26, 2002: “More than 10 geologists and global physicists from the National Land Resources Bureau of Gansu Province, Colored Metal Survey Bureau of Gansu Province, the Institute of Geology and Minerals Research of China Academy, Lanzhou Branch, and the School of Resources and Environment of Lanzhou College gathered to study the origin of this mysterious stone.

 

“After a discussion about its possibility of being man-made and the possible reasons for its formation, the scientists unanimously labeled the stone as one of the most valuable in China and in the world for collection, research and Archeological studies.

 

“During the discussion, the scientists proposed many hypotheses about the formation of this stone, but found all incredible. The screw-threaded metal bar is tightly enclosed in the black lithical material. Neither the bar's entrance to the stone nor the exposed bar tip appear to be manmade. Moreover, the screw thread width remains consistent from the thick end to the thin end, instead of varying due to the growth of organisms. One of the hypotheses says that this stone could be a relic from a prehistoric civilization, since a civilization equivalent to ours is thought to have existed on earth before our current one. Another theory is that it could be a stony meteorite and it could have brought the information of an extraterrestrial civilization.

 

At the end of the conference, all scientists agreed that further research is needed to address questions such as how the stone was formed and whether the "metal bar" is truly metal, before the "visitor-from-outer-space" mystery can be solved.”

 

What this stone and the threaded object is still remains any bodies guess at the moment but if it is indeed a meteorite, then it has provided us with unquestionable prove that we are not alone.

CAUSES OF THE VIKING AGE

Historians and writers, from the Viking Age onward, have suggested many different reasons why, between the years 800–1100, there was this sudden surge of activity on the part of the Scandinavian people:

• Monastic writers thought it was God’s punishment.

• European clerics, such as Adam of Bremen and Dudo of St-Quentin, attributed it to over-population and land shortage in Scandinavia. However, there is no real evidence for this, and in some places, such as Rogaland in southwest Norway and the Baltic island of Oland, archaeological evidence suggests that the population seems to have been larger in the sixth century.

• The development of the classic Viking ship has been seen as a key to the Viking Age, and certainly without it the Viking Age would not have been possible.

• Icelanders, such as Ari Thorgilsson and Snorri Sturluson, thought the Vikings left Scandinavia to avoid the growing power of kings. Certainly during the Viking Age, the kings of Denmark and Norway had much more power and control over their countries than had previously been the case.

• There also appears to have been a trading boom in Europe - improved ships made it possible to travel and exchange goods farther afield than before.

The account that the Norwegian trader, Ohthere, gave to King Alfred of England also provides an insight into some of the reasons why Scandinavians traveled in the Viking Age. He mentions trading as one of the reasons for his journey, but also curiosity—he wanted to explore the regions of north Norway because he did not know what type of country and, perhaps more importantly, what resources he might find there. He discovered the existence of a number of Sami tribes and was able to impose tribute on them, and so to exercise a sort of economic power. Certainly the desire to acquire wealth—either moveable wealth in the form of loot or fixed wealth in the form of land or even wealth through employment—was an extremely important motive that helped to trigger the journeys of the Viking Age and that underlies many of the expeditions. The desire to gain political power was also important and was an extension of this economic motive: political power meant that you could impose taxes and tribute and control trade. However, there can be no one single explanation of the Viking Age: motives varied over the three hundred years for which it lasted and across the vast distances of Scandinavia. The only real agreement today is that many different factors played a part in triggering this wave of outward activity.

THE BRITISH ISLES IN ROMAN TIMES

Abraham Ortelius, in Parergon, Antwerp, 1595

Osher Collection, University of Southern Maine

This map, oriented with north to the right, contains place names from the Roman period. Ireland is Hibernia, England is Britannia Major and Scotland is Britannia Minor or Scotia. The Scottish highlands are Caledonia, and London is Londinum Augusta. An inscription adjacent to London indicates the point at which Caesar crossed the Themes (Tamesis) River.

A FRUIT THAT REALLY SHOULD NOT EXIST

I’ve included this last little tid-bit in simply because I think it’s interesting and just because it may give you something to think about in your everyday life, something that really is most strange.

 

Most people are completely unaware of this fact but there is a fruit that is eaten by millions of people all around the world everyday that is quite remarkable and in all reality, simply shouldn’t exist. I’m talking of course, about the banana. Bananas are actually the most mysterious fruit in the world because bananas have no seeds and what makes this even more mysterious is the fact that they are found in almost every country in the world.

 

Now that may not sound so odd at first but let me fully explain this enigma to you: Firstly, banana plants are not trees; they are actually a perennial herb. The trunk of the plant is really nothing more than the plants outer leaves. The real stem of the plant doesn’t actually become visible until it pushes out through the top to produce the large purple flower that will eventually develop into the fruit. Then, having finished its perennial reproductive cycle, the plant dies. The problem here, is that in the reproductive cycle of the banana, seeds are completely absent from the mature fruit! A new ‘seedling’ (known as a ‘sucker’) can only ever be generated from a piece of the plants rootstock and yet bananas are found in almost most every place on earth, even on quite remote and isolated islands.

 

How in the world did they all get there?

 

The seeds certainly weren’t carried across the oceans by prevailing winds. To fully appreciate this anomaly first consider that the only other seedless plants that exist anywhere in the world are things like seedless grapes, naval oranges and the many genetically modified varieties of commercial vegetables that can now be purchased, the point is, any other seedless plants that exist, anywhere in the world, are all that way because they have genetically modified!

 

And yet here we have the humble banana, which is also the only food in existence that contains exactly the correct requirements of vitamins and minerals for mans metabolism completely. It is the only food that man can live on healthily, by itself, with complete nutrition, it is found all over the world and yet we have no knowledge of how it could possibly have come into being. It seems highly improbable that the worldwide distribution of a seedless fruit that is perfectly tailored for sustaining man would have just somehow ‘happened.’

 

It is extremely unlikely for such a plant to have ever been produced by nature all on its own and many people believe that somehow, somewhere, sometime, someone in our far distant past genetically engineered bananas into the widely dispersed and remarkably nutritious plant that we find everywhere in such abundance today.

 

These people cite that bananas are living daily proof of an ancient culture that spanned the entire globe in remote pre-history. Botanists also now tentatively agree that the spread of the banana plant appears to have radiated outward from the Pacific region.

 

The Banana plant incidentally, is not actually a fruit or a vegetable, but it does reach a height of around 30 feet at maturity which makes it the World’s largest herb and the tallest plant in existence that does not have a woody trunk.

A HISTORY IN MYTH

Marduk, the king of gods defeating Tiamat, the Goddess of Chaos

Truly, one of the most difficult tasks in attempting to understand what many of the ancient texts are actually trying to say to us is breaking through the layers of metaphor and myth. People have sometimes commented to me that it would be nice if some of these stories just came right out and said what they mean, but it must be understood that some of these tales are extremely ancient and when you consider the options, the reasons for preserving the information as colorful myths are really very simple and quite clever too, I might add.

 

In reality, it’s much easier to preserve a nice story than it is to preserve technical information as people always prefer to listen to a nice story. Let’s imagine for example, that we wished to preserve the event of the Comet, Levy-Shoemaker-nine, impacting with Jupiter. Rather than give dates and names for things that we’re not even sure will be understood thousands of years from now we could associate the event with a grandly tale involving people and preserve it as a myth. Let’s for arguments sake, pretend that Mars and Venus were in alignment when the event occurred. We could create a simple tale of three Gods:

 

“There was once, a mighty warrior God who one day, while making a long voyage, met a beautiful maiden in a gown of blue at the edge of a great expanse of ocean. The maiden was his sister, a Goddess and the two tarried together a while conversing, for they had not seen each other in many years. But meanwhile, as they spoke together, their mighty brother God, a Giant with a single great red eye who adorned himself in robes of many colors, was attacked by an outside invader. At first, seeking to catch the giant off guard, the invader appeared as only one solitary attacker but soon cast off its disguise and divided, to reveal a force of 9 strong. It then became clear to the Giant that the attackers were his subjects, mainly cobblers who were angry at the unfair levy the God has imposed upon their trade and seeking retribution. However the force was no match for the solitary giant who, though wounded in the battle, fought back bravely and withstood the blows which numbered 20, finally devouring his foes and absorbing their essences into his Godly self.”

 

OK, so now all we need to do is leave behind enough information for people in the future to be able to associate the warrior with Mars and his sister in blue with Venus and The Giant in many colors with the great red eye, with Jupiter. We have comfortably dated the event by incorporated the alignment between Mars and Venus by our brother and sisters ‘meeting’ and dalliance at a far off place when Jupiter was attacked. We have even been able to make a reference to Levy- Shoemaker Nine, and the fact that it broke into 20 pieces with our inference to a force of nine ‘cobblers’ angry at a new ‘levy’ delivering 20 blows. We have covered the fact that some severe and visible wounds were left on Jupiter from the impacts and also shown that the fragments were ultimately absorbed into the mass of the planet.

 

So there we have a nice little ‘Myth,’ to explain the event of comet levy-shoemaker nine impacting with Jupiter, though please understand that there was no actual alignment between Venus and mars during the comet impact I’m referring to. It was a fictitious event merely used to demonstrate a point. But as you can easily see from this example, an event described in metaphor and presented as a story, is much more likely to be actually told and accurately handed down in oral traditions or written down to be read by people than technical data because names and dates are forgotten, event continuity becomes muddled, and quite frankly, technical data simply confuses too many people whereas campfire tales do not.

 

It’s easy to see how and why many actual events have been recorded and preserved in the form of myths. There is no reason to believe that people, thousands of years into the future, will ever be able to translate your language in entirety, look at all the nuances and double meanings in English for example. It’s much easier to preserve an event in myth and then leave behinds the means to associate the characters with their celestial and terrestrial counterparts. This has been clearly demonstrated in the Babylonian description of the cosmic collision described in Sumerian texts, as Marduk, the king of gods defeating Tiamat, the Goddess of Chaos, in a great cosmic battle, splitting her in two and forming heaven and earth from her two halves. Interestingly, in this case, ‘chaos’ could very easily be interpreted as being similar to the biblical terminology of "void and without form" that is used in genesis. Chaos also figures prominently in Greek mythology as being the stuff from which the earth was formed before the creation of the gods. The Babylonian version also contains obvious and substantial elements of the earlier Sumerian account.

 

The real beauty of using myth as a means of transmitting complicated information is that you can rely on uneducated people to transmit the information with a certain degree of accuracy. Then, as long as those who live in the future have the means to decipher the code you have used correctly, the knowledge is secure.

 

The only two coded languages you need to use are astronomy and mathematics and in all reality, these are the only two languages available to you because they are the only two languages that are guaranteed to remain consistent over exceptionally lengthy periods of time.

THE MYSTERIOUS SINAI

A huge and very mysterious plain that can be found in the Sinai desert.

The tales of creation, ancient wars and great annihilation by sophisticated weapons told by the Ancient Sumerians talk of a great destruction that was wrought upon an ancient space port that is said to have existed in the vicinity that was utterly destroyed by advanced weaponry. If such an event really occurred surely some trace of such devastation would still be found; and indeed such can still be seen in the area presently known as the ‘Israeli Militarized Zone’ of the Sinai peninsula.

The area contains a vast triangular plain that consists of normal coloured sands but appears black from a distance because the ground is literally covered with scorched and blackened rocks. The extent of the contrasts on this plain that continues to baffle scientists was not fully realised until satellite pictures were taken of the area which only succeeded in adding to the puzzle.

Sumerian texts tell us that this plain was the location of the Ancient Spaceport, the Edin and the 5 other ‘vital control centres’ that were completely obliterated in the final conflicts of the Anunnaki by “Seven Weapons of Terror” and it is here that we find a huge blackened scar on the planets surface that can be likened to nowhere else on Earth. Now what do you suppose would cause that?

THE PIRI REIS MAP OF 1513

In 1929 there was an amazing map discovered in the Imperial Archives at Constantinople that had been sitting, virtually unexamined, for years. The map, which had been drawn in 1513 by a Turkish Admiral named Piri Reis, showed North America, South America, Greenland and Antarctica. However what is so perplexing about this map is that Antarctica had not been discovered in 1513. Antarctica was not located until 1820 and America had only been discovered in 1492, a mere 21 years prior to the maps creation and yet it is mapped quite accurately.

 

Remarkably, the map also depicts several land masses bearing their correct longitudes even though longitude itself was not discovered until the late 1700’s either.

 

Reis had been a famous Turkish Admiral of the 16th Century. He had a passion for maps, He loved cartography and was a highly experienced and respected mariner. In his day, he was considered to be an expert on all Mediterranean Lands and Coastlines and also held high in the favors of the Turkish court. Such a noble status enabled him to enjoy privileged access to the Imperial Library at Constantinople and he spent much of his spare time there. In his notes Reis said that he had based his map on several much older maps he had seen at the library, including one that Columbus is reported to have viewed prior to his voyage to the Americas. The map in question was said to have been captured from the Spaniards in a naval engagement and later given to the admiral by a Spanish prisoner who had apparently sailed on three of Columbus's New World voyages! Many scholars have indeed suspected that Columbus was in possession of a map and already knew of the existence of America before embarking on his famous ‘voyage of discovery’. Reis also wrote a well known Turkish book on sailing called ‘Kitababi Bahriye’ in which he gives detailed and accurate descriptions of the coastlines, harbors, bays, currents, shallows and straits of the Mediterranean and Aegean Seas. He was beheaded by the Turkish Court in 1554 or 1555 for reasons now unknown.

 

In case you can’t see it, That’s the top piece of Africa on the top right of the map and the tip of south America reaching out to it from the left side of the map, running up through the gulf of Mexico and up to Nth. America. The tip of Antarctica can be seen sticking up on the bottom right. Another interesting point to this map is the strange layout of the South American continent which looks sort of stretched out of shape. However, viewing the sphere of earth from space accurately produces this type of view. Funny that…

LATIUM

Abraham Ortelius, in Parergon, Antwerp, 1595

Osher Collection, University of Southern Maine

This map depicts the central region of Italy inhabited by the ancient Latins. A miniature plan of the walled city of Rome is seen at its western border. An insert view at the lower left depicts the Circaean Promontory, described in the Aeneid as the home of the enchantress Circe, who changed the companions of Odysseus into swine.

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Between the steep scarp of the Appennine ridges and the outlying Ausonian mountains, the Valle Latina provides an excellent low level inland route north from Campania. It debouches into a wide plain from which rise two large volcanic uplands, the Monti Sabatini and the Alban hills. Between these flow the perennial and navigable Tiber, and its tributary the Anio, whose headwaters form a rare east-west route across the mountain spine of the peninsula. A relatively heavy rainfall has furrowed the sides of the volcanoes with a radial pattern of deeply incised gullies, between which are many defensive sites. In the eighth to sixth centuries these were occupied by the numerous small agricultural settlements of an Italic people whose copious archaeological remains are now usually called Latial. Over the last twenty years it has become clear from sites like Castel di Decima and Osteria dell’ Osa that their society was prosperous and complex, as well as distinct from the Hellenised Etruscans to the north and in Campania, and from the other Italic peoples.

Near the Tiber—which served both as a route to the interior and as port of entry for overseas cultural influences—the terrain is flatter, though not very fertile. This is the distinctive landscape of the Roman Campagna, an area virtually uninhabited in large tracts almost within living memory, but in the imperial period the teeming hinterland of Rome: it was crisscrossed by a network of local and long-distance roads, which gave access to suburban communities, dormitory towns, villas and horticultural areas. This unique human landscape was the product of Rome’s astonishing success as an imperial capital. Her cultural and political achievement was founded upon her nodal position on the navigable Tiber: in the Latial period this had given her the hegemony of the towns of the region, as well as a prosperity which even in the sixth century made her one of the larger cities of the western Mediterranean.

ANCIENT JERUSALEM / MODERN JERUSALEM

Lyman Coleman, in Text Book and Atlas of Biblical Geography, Philadelphia, 1854

Osher Collection, University of Southern Maine

This is the frontispiece of a popular nineteenth-century biblical geography book designed to call attention to "a most important but neglected branch of education." "Modern Jerusalem" is actually the old walled city as it existed in the mid-nineteenth century. Many important holy sites are identified, including the ancient Temple, the Church of the Holy Sepulchure, the Mosque of Omar and the "Wailing Wall."

Jerusalem had the protection of the deep, steepsided valleys of Kidron and Gehenna to the east, south and west: these acted as vast natural fosses in front of the city walls and of the east wall of the Temple enclosure, which was itself part of the fortifications. On the north there was only manmade protection. The first north wall was Hasmonaean. The second was possibly built in the latter part of the first century BC by Herod the Great, who strengthened the north west angle with three massive towers. The line of this wall is conjectural, but it is known to have run from near Herod’s towers to Antonia, his new fortress built for the protection of the Temple on more or less the same site as two earlier ones. These two walls were not demolished when Agrippa I planned a new north wall (not actually completed until early in the war of AD 66–70) to enclose the growing suburb of Bezetha. Some scholars hold that this new wall followed roughly the line of the present sixteenth-century wall, but evidence is accumulating for the more northerly line of the wall, named ‘Mayer-Sukenik’ after the archaeologists who found the first traces of it. Robinson’s Arch at the southern end of the western wall of the Temple enclosure supported a broad stairway leading down to the Tyropoeon or Cheesemakers’ Valley. Wilson’s Arch is the first arch of a viaduct leading across the valley to the Upper City. Josephus describes the city, its fortifications, and the Temple in his Jewish War 5.136–247.