In a Grove of Ash (Azor Ahai Goes into the Weirwoodnet)

[ravenous reader]

33 minutes ago, Unchained said:

Isaac Newton spent a lot of time working on alchemy and decoding the Bible (what kind of lunitic would read the same book over and over looking for hidden secrets), but only the real science he did is ever discussed today.  

I can forgive him.  At least he had the humility to say:

Quote

I do not know what I may appear to the world; but to myself I seem to have been only like a boy playing on the seashore, and diverting myself in now and then finding a smoother pebble or a prettier shell than ordinary, whilst the great ocean of truth lay all undiscovered before me.

Isaac Newton, From Brewster, Memoirs of Newton (1855)
English mathematician & physicist (1642 - 1727) 

 

7 minutes ago, sweetsunray said:

I can propose a set of quantum laws and particles, write it on a paper and date it and put my  name on it

We look forward to your enlightening contributions (all duly substantiated, of course)!

[LmL]

1 hour ago, Unchained said:

I am not super knowledgeable on this subject, but I wanted to throw in my 2 cents anyway.  Last I heard people were still focused on the nanodiamond layer in the soil being that comet's version of the iridium layer in the soil left by the asteroid at the end of the Cretaceous.  I wasn't aware it had fizzled out.  

Not completely, it just hasn't borne out in the way you would hope if the Younger Dryas comet theory were true. 'More research is still needed,' is the current state of affairs I believe. 

1 hour ago, Unchained said:

That research paper connecting it to GT is unbelievable.  It's like something straight out of fiction.  I agree that is what Hancock will be remembered for regardless of any crimes against the scientific method he may have committed.  Isaac Newton spent a lot of time working on alchemy and decoding the Bible (what kind of lunitic would read the same book over and over looking for hidden secrets),

I died laughing at this part 

1 hour ago, Unchained said:

but only the real science he did is ever discussed today.  You have to be forgiving to visionary types from time to time for being a little crazy it goes with the territory.  

 

The younger Dryas is not the only climate altering event I think is used in the books.  The very first time I read about the crazy seasons in ASoIaF I thought of the Roman warm period - Middle Ages cold period - medieval warm period - little ice age series.  It is believed that the medieval cold period was set off and/or made more extreme by a volcanic eruption.  GRRM seems to be directly referencing this theory with the Doom of Valyria.  He just had the volcano also be the source of the Rome analogue's demise instead of just happening around the same time.  

For sure. As with all influences, he's grabbing and merging. However it's probably noteworthy that Fingerpints came out in 94 as he was writing AGOT, and right with the Shoemaker-Levy 9 comet thing happening. It was... 'in the air,' if you will.

1 hour ago, Unchained said:

Following all those climate events, we get the Renaissance and the Enlightenment.  Of course I have no way to support it, but I always wondered if this wasn't one of the reasons George filled the AA myth with so much rebirth and light bringing.  

It's all part of the general theme of regenerative nature mythology. Winter, death, disaster, it's a tomb, but also a womb. And so on. The light form the darkness is the same as the spring born from the winter.

1 hour ago, Unchained said:

A flaming sword wielding ice demon killing hero will be useful, but planetos really needs some leaders to usher in those periods.  After spending so much time showing us how horrible feudalism is I hope for an ending that hints that it is coming in some way.  

If you look around, there are a lot of emerging female leaders, as well as men like Jon, Sam, Davos, etc who have a more evolved view of gender and equality and the like. @Equilibrium wrote a great and under-appreciated essay on this topic.

1 hour ago, Unchained said:

The best example I am aware of showing enlightenment knowledge changing people's mentality involves the most famous comet of all.  Halley used Newtons laws of gravity to predict when the comet later named for him would appear next and put an end to everyone thinking comets were signs of doom, victory, or whatever popped into their heads like we see in ASoIaF.  By doing that, he made the comet his, also like we see a bunch of people do in ASoIaF.  Again, no idea if this is something GRRM was thinking about or not, but I like to think it is.  

Naming and owning, now you are speaking @ravenous reader's language.

[LmL]

2 hours ago, sweetsunray said:

It is an interview or Q&A with Andrew Collins after he "discovered" together with one of his tourists he guided in the museum of Gobekli an artifact that looks like an engraving or depiction of the central pillars in one of the Gobekli temples/encolsures. You may find the discussion on what it depicts and what it might mean interesting. It is also interesting, because it clarifies a few issues with regards Hancock's claims, or the claim that Hancock is the man who had the idea. Let's say that both Andrew Collins and Hancock are both alternative populist brainstormers with similar ideas. They both write books, but Hancock sells better. Both have astro-archeological ideas regarding Gobekli, except they disagree on what astronomical direction or star one must focus (a star at the north or a star in Orion at the south). Furthermore it also clarifies that of the two Andrew was actually the first one who focused on Gobekli not long after its discovery, and Hancock picked it up after him. This is one of the things that Hancock is actually good at - he ammasses ideas of others, and most of his proposals are echoes of others that precede him (some are plain old). Except they sell less books or don't have the the platform or are dead and thus less known. I don't know who of the two is "right" - Andrew, Hancock or neither, or both only partially. But I do think it's very important to be aware of this, because it does put a perspective in how much Hancock is a genius, and what exactly he is so generally genial on then (over time I find that his genius is mostly the promotion of his name).  

I cannot recall if Hancock mentioned Collins in his book or not, he may have. He is not hesitant to cite other's work. And in terms of doing the science, I think his comments are meant to as a disclaimer, that he is not a scientist. That is why he generally calls in experts in a given field that he needs to understand, and he does not hide that fact. His talent is indeed as an aggregator, an explainer, and someone who (imo) grasps the mindset of ancient man in terms of their spiritual connection with astronomy, what they were doing with their monument building, etc. 

I am probably planning to re-read his book after I read the scholarly paper, it's been at least a year since I read it the first time. 

I really enjoyed your summary of findings here, thanks so much for sharing all of that. It seems like a lot changed in that 2,000 years in terms of starting out with bigger stones and a deep connection to astronomy, and eventually becoming small shrines inside the home. From Hunter-gatherers with a central locus point like these temples to farmers. It's pretty fascinating. The idea some of the circles could be older is tantalizing, as is the question of what life was like for them before the comet. 

Anyway, I am glad you've taken such an interest in this. 

ETA: I'd like to add that I have learned a lot simply by reading the authors in Graham Hancock's bibliography. We need people who tell a good story to make some of this stuff accessible to regular people (and yes, obviously it's important that they be accurate while doing so). Point being, Graham's books whetted my appetite for a lot of ideas relating to mythology, astronomy, and ancient culture (back when I was 17, in 1997), and the fact that he stands on the shoulders of others made for an easy trail to follow.

Have you heard of R.A. Schwaller de Lubicz? He did a bunch if groundbreaking work at the Luxor temple. Lived there for 17 years or something, broke down how the entire temple functions as a detailed anatomy of the human body, with scientific and spiritual information encoded throughout. Ring a bell?  

[Unchained]

38 minutes ago, LmL said:

Not completely, it just hasn't borne out in the way you would hope if the Younger Dryas comet theory were true. 'More research is still needed,' is the current state of affairs I believe. 

I died laughing at this part 

For sure. As with all influences, he's grabbing and merging. However it's probably noteworthy that Fingerpints came out in 94 as he was writing AGOT, and right with the Shoemaker-Levy 9 comet thing happening. It was... 'in the air,' if you will.

It's all part of the general theme of regenerative nature mythology. Winter, death, disaster, it's a tomb, but also a womb. And so on. The light form the darkness is the same as the spring born from the winter.

If you look around, there are a lot of emerging female leaders, as well as men like Jon, Sam, Davos, etc who have a more evolved view of gender and equality and the like. @Equilibrium wrote a great and under-appreciated essay on this topic.

Naming and owning, now you are speaking @ravenous reader's language.

First, thanks for derailing your thread with this.  I had not seen it in my daily news circuit.  It seems like you agree that the Renaissance and Enlightenment are ideas that GRRM is playing with.  I would love to read @Equilibrium's thread about it.  I see similar themes.  The Nights watch is a democracy(and John Snow had a role in bringing knowledge of diseases to the world), Dany is a female leader and a slave emancipator, Tyrion is kinda Ben Franklin-like.  They both are chess masters, hedonistic, and have knack for little inventions (as well as treating bastard children fairly).  Ben did the same thing to lightening Newton and Halley did with comets proving it was a natural event and disarming it inventing the lightning rod.  I am going into extreme speculation town I know, but still.  I see the leaders coming into power as being the ones to make the needed changes and they all show AA symbolism as well.  

 

I remember the collision event on Jupiter from when I was young.  It prompted my parents to buy a telescope to watch.  I went and got it to watch, this February I think, an event where there was a green comet and a partial lunar eclipse in the same night.  On a side note this August, I think, there is a full solar eclipse that will be visible from my house.  Local hotels' prices went from $60 a night to $1000.  

 

[Prof. Cecily]

5 hours ago, Unchained said:

 The very first time I read about the crazy seasons in ASoIaF I thought of the Roman warm period - Middle Ages cold period - medieval warm period - little ice age series.  It is believed that the medieval cold period was set off and/or made more extreme by a volcanic eruption.  GRRM seems to be directly referencing this theory with the Doom of Valyria.  He just had the volcano also be the source of the Rome analogue's demise instead of just happening around the same time.  

 

Following all those climate events, we get the Renaissance and the Enlightenment.  Of course I have no way to support it, but I always wondered if this wasn't one of the reasons George filled the AA myth with so much rebirth and light bringing.  A flaming sword wielding ice demon killing hero will be useful, but planetos really needs some leaders to usher in those periods.  After spending so much time showing us how horrible feudalism is I hope for an ending that hints that it is coming in some way.  The best example I am aware of showing enlightenment knowledge changing people's mentality involves the most famous comet of all.  Halley used Newtons laws of gravity to predict when the comet later named for him would appear next and put an end to everyone thinking comets were signs of doom, victory, or whatever popped into their heads like we see in ASoIaF.  By doing that, he made the comet his, also like we see a bunch of people do in ASoIaF.  Again, no idea if this is something GRRM was thinking about or not, but I like to think it is.  

 

 

This mirrors my own thinking on the subject. I believe the GoT Academy have some videos proposing this, a transition from feudalism to modern thought, as a possible ending for ASOIAF.

While I shall spend many hours reading and viewing all the material about Gobekli Tepe, etc. sourced in this thread (I'm a Jared Diamond fan) I'd be most interested in a link to the essay you mentioned, @LmL

Quote

If you look around, there are a lot of emerging female leaders, as well as men like Jon, Sam, Davos, etc who have a more evolved view of gender and equality and the like. @Equilibrium wrote a great and under-appreciated essay on this topic.

.

[sweetsunray]

7 hours ago, ravenous reader said:

We look forward to your enlightening contributions (all duly substantiated, of course)!

I did not claim that me thinking up particles would be either substantiated or enlightened (actually the point was that they most likely would not). While the math behind it is not chinese to me and I can teach the subject on HS level, my effort would be no more than a brainstorm of ideas springing to mind, including the silly ideas to make someone laugh. In fact, most of my ideas would be silly. My comment was thus more self-deprecating than boasting. 

[Equilibrium]

@LmL Thanks for the mention, btw what do you make of my post in this thread, you haven't commented, probably my bad, I should have @-ed you or something. 

@Unchained You are more than welcome to read it 

 

[sweetsunray]

More video's (still Gobekli Tepe):

There are 3 videos of a symposium on GT, again giving an overal nice general picture of all the types of depictions, how they differ from other examples or to each other, how they correlate positively with other depictions of other sites. The first one is Klaus.

At the end of it people can ask questions, and one makes proposals. One person who asks questions to Klaus asks about certian holes in the walls or indentures made on top of the T-shaped megaliths. These are important in relation to Andrew Collins (and based on the accent, I think the person who asks the questions about these indentures and holes at the end of the lecture is the same guy who talked with Andrew Collins in the other video I linked to). Collins is heavily focused on those holes in the walls, and indentures on the small plaque he talks about in the video I linked to earlier (because he thinks it are eyeholes and symbolic star allignment depictions to the star Deneb of Cygnus). Klaus clarifies more stuff on the digging itself, which reveals a picture of the upper surface of the T-heads at one point having been beneath the feet of later generations on the man-made mount, and thus such indentures may have been made by later building generations, after the monuments we're talking about were buried in rubble, to build something else. There is not just one hole in the wall, but several. Clearly they had a function, but Klaus seems again to have the impression that they are construction related (and he does not word it otherwise as a probability). 

I am personally more inclined to follow Klaus on this for several reasons: he has a clear overall picture of the layers that were created, because he dug through the layers in reverse order to unearth the (currently exposed) site. He knows where which item was found where. He knows what types of depictions can be found on what types of items, etc.

The issue I have in general with such types of discussions is that one advocate isolates an artifact and then hypothesize what it might mean, explicitly ignoring the context and surroundings of the general body of work. Isolated the holes in the walls and indentures can be presented as super important for example to anyone who hasn't actually dug up the whole site. Meanwhile the other actually unearthing the stuff has an actual relevant context and surround knowledge from which those features cannot be isolated from. And it appears to me now that the same thing is happening with the symbolism of the pillar symbolism discussed in the paper you linked to. By itself and isolated they make a very good case on saying that it's most likely telling a story of constellations and therefore is a time-stamp. While they do mention and cite the prevalence of depicted animals at GT, they don't give an actual clear picture of it (even verbally). This lecture video by Klaus at the symposium does present a larger context. 

Just as the headless man cannot be entirely isolated from the context of burrial rites where the people who built GT removed the heads from their dead, and apparently made plaster heads that they kept in the house as its meaning, nor can the scorpion and the birds. In the above lecture, Klaus shows several intricately engraved pillar sides, with sometimes a whole army of birds and wild animals, insects and poisonous animals (scorpions, snakes), as well as some abstract geometric motifs. It's hard to see how those other engravings are star-map related at all. That doesn't mean that the one with the headless man can't have astronomical meaning, but it makes it less certain as the authors of that paper try to make it out, especially since in the above video, Klaus provides a context for the combination of an eagle/vulture like bird with a human head - totem poles and sculptures have been found at the site and in contemporary settlements of birds carrying a human head. The more I see pictures and lectures and cultural finds the more it becomes clear that the particular stele with the headless man, scorpion and bird and sun/disk/possible human head has links to actual cultural rituals and burrial practices, and the idea of a time-stamp of constellations in relation to a historical event (let alone a mass scale one) less likely. You basically have to ignore the cultural context on the site and contemporary settlements and practices to regard it in that way.

Then there is the GT story of abandonment. So, in the time period that the last cold climate spike is over and done with, these hunter gatherers start to build the monuments in question, and that this is a gathering place for these people. The idea of several groups of hunter gatherers that have cultural links within a region gathering every so often years or yearly have been around for a while. It's likely a cultural tradition that hunter gatherers practiced for thousands of years before that, for several purposes - finding marriage partners that aren't near kin, exchange of craft ideas and findings, trade on skills. The issue usually with such larger gatherings is that they risk depleting the hosts's territory of its resources, unless they chose an area where the nomadic tribes weren't dependent on for their survival. Nomadic tribes travel at least half of the year, but they tend to cycle through a territory or area, and they often choose a semi-permanent location for the winter, that either provides a natural shelter, or they built a shelter that may weather the surroundings for 3 generations (such as the steppe lodges built of mammoth bones) in the territories that have no natural shelter. GT appears to have been used as such a gathering place for the nomadic groups in the levant that seems to have been "neutral" grounds (the lack of water resources). As these groups become more sedentary, because the positive change of climate, their gathering location becomes fixed too, and that's imho likely when they start building at GT. It becomes their permanent gathering cult centre. One of the groups makes the discovery of the mutated wheat and begins to plant it within a few generations, shares this find and discovery with the other groups and they all start to experiment with it. They become farmers, which influences some of their beliefs and storytelling in that it alters. The more they farm, the more they stay at home, the less important GT becomes. And thus we see the old sites being burried and smaller buildings being erected with less effort and less craftmansship and eventually abandoned.

While it certainly cannot be ruled out that the hunter gatherers named constellations after the wild life they hunted, ate and depicted (it would seem logical to me), their main importance would be as wild life surroundings imo. Whatever stories they told of the stars, it's far more likely to have been a projection of their earthly stories onto the stars. Anyhow, I think that at this point it's actually impossible to claim without a doubt what those stories would have been either way, except that memorabilia or something like totem animals of the taurus, bear, fox/wolf, jaguar/lion were highly important icons in the hunter gatherer society that we've preserved in some way or another in our iconography and mythology, but within a whole different context.

The taking of the skulls imho is related to the pre-sedentary hunter gatherer way of life. While no scientist would ever make 100% conclusions about it, they make a good case within the contextual evidence that it's ancestry worhsip related. Now the issue for (semi-)nomadic hunter gatherers is that while they bury their dead, many of them either have to be buried at a location where they don't have their "home" or the descendant generation have to move away from the burrial site and home a lot of the time. If the ancestor is seen as a guardian or advizor that is problematic. So, how do you have your ancestor with you, while leading a semi-nomadic life? Well, you carry a part of their body with you. So I speculate that it's likely that the hunter gatherers buried their dead, marked the location, and when they returned to that area by the next year, they dug up the grave and took a bone (or in this case their skull) and traveled on their tour with those, until they would eventurally reburry the skull again (in other people's graves).

Now, the above story of GT does not fit with Hancock's at all. There is no conclusive evidence for an advanced civilisation lost through cataclysm prior to the building of GT, not materially, not in GT's story. GT actually appears to have been the height of hunter gatherer cultural achievement, with likely evidence still not unearthed that there was a learning process to it. And then afterwards their pinnacle is lost because of cultural changes (farming), with only a remnant of burrial practices and male initiation practices with wild animals still being practiced and findings its symbolic equivalents in later altered form until this day.  If GT was the pinnacle of hunter gatherer achievement, its timing falls right after the last ice age cold dip and its decline and being lost was man-made because of cultural evolution, not a natural disaster. GT itself to me likely represent the earliest pinnacle of a civlisation in human history, a hunter gatherer society in particular, and it was lost in time and over time. It ought to be any early civilisation hypothesist's grail. Unfortunately for Hancock the things we can be certain about with regards to GT doesn't fit his narrative, and requires an insertion of some artifact or feature that references an even earlier lost civilisation.

And the more I read up on it the less tenable it becomes. If only because the proponents of the star/contellation map and alligment interpretation or believing that it is part of the site on some particular feature of the site (whether holes, stele allignment, or particular depictions on one stele of the many) are arguing amongst each other what it alligns to. Is it Orion, Syrius, Deneb and Cygnus or a comet?  This is Andrew Collins's website with a number of papers and articles witten that argue his preferred candidate or rebuttals against that of others. http://www.andrewcollins.com/page/articles/index.htm 

I'm not going to review those, but I commend reading his GT articles as an illustration of the debate over it between the various men. At the very least I conclude that if there is actually an intended coherent constellation reference on the GT site, it is at this moment not proven what depiction/item/feature is irrefutable evidence for it, nor what it refers to, let alone whether it is to be taken in spiritual context of some soul travel to the afterlife, or in memory of an event. The paper you linked to initially, @LmL, makes statistical probability claims that I now find unattainable given all of the above information.

I'm at this moment watching a Hancock interview about GT. I'll post a review on that particular video, because there are issues I have with plenty of stuff he mentions that go beyond GT (claims about what Plato said, earth crust displacement, etc).

 

[sweetsunray]

15 hours ago, LmL said:

If so, that's poor, but I would like to see the transcript/ footage. In his books he's always very consistent on this issue. It would be a major reversal to say accuracy doesn't matter. 

Ok, finally found the horizon documentary. It was called "Atlantis reborn":

Not sure whether this is the edited or original version. Hancock made a formal complaint after its original airing, and the BBC edited it before a re-airing.

But it still retain value by showing some of the issues there are with the "precise" and "exact" claims of what Hancock insists is uncontroversiable evidence, but when it does not exactly fit, he starts to say the builders or priests weren't meticulous bureaucrats who intended to be exact-exact (ant-fuckers) but merely giving an artistic rendering. So, on the one hand it's precise and exact, but on the othar hand it's only an artistic rendering that is to be merely intuitively and spiritually understood.

These are the things pointed out by critics:

• only 3 of 81 pyramids in Egypt sort-of match the Orion belt in 10500 BC, the rest you can't find a match with.
• while the pyramid's shafts and alligment show that the Egyptians can perfectly match northern sky stars with northern alligment on the ground, and prove to care about correct ground N-S alligment with the pyramid shafts, we must accept that the Egyptians turned Egypt on its head to allign the pyramids with the Orion belt. The Orion belt's star orionetateion is from north to south. The Gizeh formation matches only with the Orion belt if you have south at the top and north at the bottom. Even if Hancock and Beauval have an explanation for that (priests aren't ant-fucking bureaucrats, but artists), their explanation is contradicted by the allignment of the pyramid shafts to stars (when apparently the priests were indeed ant-fucking bureaucrats). You can't have both.
• the two main pyramids allign at an angle of 45°. This is supposedly the exact same angle of 10500 BC. However, in 10500 BC the angle of the two alligned stars to the N-S axis is 54°, not 45°. Hancock's answer: I don't expect the Egyptian priests to have cared to be that precise (paraphrasing). My reaction: if they are supposedly alligned to the Orion belt at a certain date, it's important to recheck the program and find out what the date is when Orion belt's allignment is actually 45°, and not 54°, because it clearly ain't 10500 BC.

And yes, these are eye-opening statements when you wish to claim that the pyramids of Gizeh are in perfect star-map allignment to the date of 10500 BC. Any fan of his can be angry and furious with the BBC that they confronted him with it, but you can't really negate he made those "it doesn't have to be exact" statements.

The response is similar in relation to the confrontations about Angkor Wat and the constellation Draco. Despite the fact that the Khmer were very capable of precisely building whichever temple at the precise necessary location they wanted it (without ever needing to get into the air for it... goniometrics suffices), the Khmer built it imprecisely to Draco and inscribed various self-proclaimed reasons for the monuments that do not mention draco at all. And just like in Egypt, but even more relevant in Cambodja, you have over 60 temples for Angkor Wat, of which Hancock only selected the temples that come closest to his claim, regardless of the reasons the Khmer themselves recorded for the reasons of building a temple where they built it.

Admittedly the BBC's exercise of applying Hancock's reasoning to buildings in Manhattan in relation to a constellation seems petty, but nevertheless is a typical valid debate analogy, and shows exactly what Hancock does with Angkor Wat.

Then he proposed the site of Tiwanaku at Bolivia. He uses the arguments of the "discoverer" of the site, who stumbled on it at the turn of the 19th to 20 th century and who died before carbon dating became an established method. The discoverer believed that it was built by a race of people who fled a disaster and continued to survive high in the mountains, and that the site was built over 12000 years ago, and is the cradle of civlisation in the Americas. He based his dating on the alligment of certain stones in relation to the sun's rising at the exuinox. There is however a huge issue with that belief. Namely, in the 17th century the Spanish came upon the site, destroyed it into a ruin, moved statues and blocks, built a church nearby out of it. The blocks are strewn about and no one is sure where the blocks actually originally stood. Not now, not at the start of the 20th century either. In other words, the discoverer "guessed" where the stones might have stood, and that at an age when bad science was rampantly practiced.

Hancock then said: oh but I don't need those sites. The lost civilisation was in Antarctica and he comes with the earth crust displacement hypothesis (which can be thoroughly debunked as overall very bad science). Ice cores are dug up and show that Antarctica was covered with ice for the past 400,000 years. Hancock's answer - let's drop Antarctica and the earth crust displacement hypothesis (but not entirely as the recent video on GT will show... he still believes the earth crust displacement hypothesis is possible and has merrit ). And he proposes a possible discovery underwater near Japan. The geologist Schoch is one of those dubious "scientists" (he believes apparently GT might be a machine intended to provide certain tonal vibrations) but even he admits after several dives that the site is naturally formed, not man made. And in that respect I'd certainly point out the 3rd episode on the Ness of Brognar by BBC last fall, as there too a, underwater site was found underwater, and they hoped that carbon dating might show it was above water once in the correct time period and might be the first stone circle of the Orkney islands (and thus of the whole stone circle cult of the British Isles). However, carbon dating shows that the site was underwater already before the established oldest date for the Ness (so far) and that the seeming stone circle underwater is in fact a natural formation.

Now one would think that GT is the answer to Hancock's quest, that it is the lost civlisation of 12000 years ago, except that it's a 1000 years younger. But not even Hancock regards it that way. While it is an 11000 old civilisation that was lost of the historical records until 1994-1995, it isn't the civilisation he's been looking for. While it is a culture from which certain rituals and mythically related animal icons were inherited into the ages after, it isn't the Atlantean story of spreading culture across the globe like a cradle. Meanwhile GT proves that archeologists and historians are perfectly able and willing to rethink ancient civilisation and how our civilisation came into being - GT is accepted as being that incredibly old, accepted as having been built by hunter gatherers (not farmers), and they accept that monumental building and settling came before farming, and that farming and domestication is actually a by product of the choice to settle somewhere. GT certainly and undoubtedly rewrites the understanding of human history and the historical record, but it doesn't do it in the way that Hancock wants it to be (apparently Gizeh's allignment can be off for 9° but the refound lost ancient civilisation can't be off for 1000 years). According to this video, Hancock instead now puts his hopes on a temple in Java, Indonesia.

I will review this video next.

[Jon Ice-Eyes]

Well, no one can really accuse you of failing to engage with the material. Although your critique is spilling over from just the one site and its meanings into a more general hit job on Hancock. Which we don't really need here, whether we like him or not...

[sweetsunray]

4 minutes ago, Jon Ice-Eyes said:

Well, no one can really accuse you of failing to engage with the material. Although your critique is spilling over from just the one site and its meanings into a more general hit job on Hancock. Which we don't really need here, whether we like him or not...

I was personally accused and attacked for giving a vague reply originally, called a hypocrite, a writhing fish by the OP who personally invited me to comment on Hancock. I've gone through an update-myself on GT from various sources, but had left Hancock out of view for a while. LmL also asked me to give me a source for my claim on certain statements of Hancock. The above post merely summarizes the BBC Horizon video and gives the link. Obviously GT is not part of it, but it gives a brief summary of Hancock's various and changing claims and goalposts. If I am to give him credit if he deserves credit, one needs to pinpoint what exactly he can be credited for. Now, I am perfectly willing to give him credit if he deserves credit. I cannot do that however without actually going through his claims, and figure out exactly what claim he still backs or not.

If LmL (our OP) prefers me to only pay homage to the man publically and leave out pointing out the issues, that's fine too (though there is a chance I'll have to mute myself as I watch the last linekd video). If he prefers me to continue this over PM, fine too. If he wishes me to be forever silent on Hancock either way, I'm totally good with that. 

I do this for LmL, because he asked, because I respect his work, and because I consider him a friend. And when someone I consider a friend pulls my integrity through the mud like that (and you can betcha that actually hurt) I intend to play with open cards entirely.   

[sweetsunray]

So, leaving aside the groaning and painful squinting I did to some of Hancock's rants in the last video I linked to (which seems one of the most recent dialogues with him) here's what I derive from it.

According to Hancock his main point has always been that an advanced civilisation was lost from the historical record through a cataclysm since 1995*. We now have evidence that an advanced civilisation was lost with GT and found again, but there is no evidence in the other sources that I can relate to a cataclysm with that. In particular to GT he says that he regards the builders of GT as survivors of that lost civilisation who taught their ways to the hunter gatherers they encountered in that region and taught them to farm. So, clearly Hancock does not believe the builders were hunter gatherers themselves, but farmers**, some more advanced race that moved into the area and acted like teachers to the local pre-existing hunter gatherers. He also fudges with the presentation of the decline of the GT civilisation and its dating. According to him it's all precisely at the "same time": the building of GT, the cataclysm, the loss of the civilisation and the change from hunter gatherer to farming. The evidence does not show such a picture at all. 800-1000 years of use after the last cold dip with a gradual decline of the building and a gradual increase of domestication of wild wheat describes a gradual cultural shift, not a cataclysm.

So, what can I give him credit to? He predicted correctly that our historical record was incomplete and that there was room for findings that would push back dates of civilisation milestones that were lost from the historical record and that it would change how we view our human history. 

*In reference to 1995 that is changing the goalposts somewhat, as at the time, he did particularly back the earth crust displacement theory (and still hopes to unify it to this day with the comet proposals).

** In relation to the later rant about cognitive dissonance and the archeologists who cling to their beliefs that have supposedly been the same historical narrative for the past 100 years, given the many videos with those scientists speaking - who is clinging to the same narrative here and refuses to be open minded of a different narrative and contrary evidence than previously clung to?

[Durran Durrandon]

@sweetsunray, I really appreciate your thoroughness. This has been entertaining and educational.

[Jon Ice-Eyes]

Yeah, this is some pretty thorough work. Archaeology is all about context, and you've certainly done a good deal of homework here. Hats off to you. 

The archaeo-astronomy interpretation (minus all the atlantis stuff) is still a damn good story. I reserve judgement on whether it's factually true -- you certainly gave us a lot to think about there. But a compelling narrative is what we're after here, and on that level, the possibilities of the site, and The George's universe, remain awesome. 

[sweetsunray]

21 hours ago, Durran Durrandon said:

@sweetsunray, I really appreciate your thoroughness. This has been entertaining and educational.

Thank you. I really enjoyed watching and searching for all that. The other two lectures of the symposium on Gobekli Tepe are hugely interesting as well.

Watkins provides recommended literature, and basically talks of this era in human history from a sociological and brain pov. His major point is that while humans specialised into having a big brain, where other animals specialised in speed, or force, etc, and that this is linked to being able to function in large groups. It's a social brain, basically. But even then, our brain is not able to handle a group more than 150 members. So, what happens if we end up living with a group larger than that. That's where symbolism, abstrahation, national identity, and rituals come in. It are these things that help us manage the reality of living in a group that has more than 150 members. Hence a ritual place becomes so important. He shows other very interesting charts about how the farming and PIE language spread. But that was the proposal that I found interesting, especially in how it links to aSoIaF and LmL's and several other analysts dealing with book scenes and chapters, and myths and stories.

The third lecture was a speciliast of the Rig Veda.

He gives a few examples of stories and hymns in the Rig Veda (the earliest, oldest part especially) and how they actually are not just mere myth, but coded references about the stars and constellations. There is for example a story about a man who gets incestually excited for his daughter, and the gods behead him. He then points out the "headless man" on the stele, who is depicted with a phallus. He speculates that the headless man is a depiction of Orion, the "hunter". He claims that at the time of GT and at that particular degree north, Orion would have been a constellation that circled the horizon, but would never lift into the sky. Orion is one of the few constellations that intuitively looks the most like a person, a headless person. So, they would have seen the "hunter" as being earth-bound, with the lowest star of the belt close to the horizon and never going higher. And that is basically one of the early rig veda teachings - that man is earth bound and cannot go to heaven. The lecturer believes that the Rig Veda actually originates from GT. And he thinks that the guardian sculpted animals on the steles are indeed the first creation of the zodiac. One temple has 12 megaliths. It doesn't hold for the other temples, and we know that later temples were down-sized. He links the weird bird with the disk to Garuda and Shiva. And he regards the fox symbol as the "moon".

What I found interesting was that he showed a picture of a symbol on one of the megaliths that I think is undeniably astronomical - it's the abstract symbol of an eclipse, a dentured disk with a sickle. And above it you see two identical human figures facing each other, forming what we would regard the letter H - Gemini. Both are symbols that are still used especially in astrological charts in that exact way. I can't even conceive of an alternative possible explanation for the use of those signs. So, that stele imho undeniably records or mentions a solar eclipse in Gemini. And it's quite startling to see such a typical symbol on a megalith that's 11000-12000 year old. Just thinking of the sheer distance in time, and how that symbol is perhaps one of the few that remained completely unaltered in use and interpretation, is mind-staggering, especially in relation to a zodiac sign still in use today. The rest of the imagery is still something you can see as speculative and think there might be other explanations or interpretations about, and I'd be cautious with to apply certainty, but that symbol.

Yesterday, I've been getting up to speed on the comet proposal. This is a lecture by one of its proponents.

After watching that, I checked up on how it goes with the peer reviewing and what exactly the criticism is against it. Especially because something nagged at me while watching the above lecture: the claim about the extinction. I know that the past 2 decades there have been quite a lot of developments with regards to "what happened to Clovis" and "who are the ancestors of N. Americans", so it was sort of weird to me to hear this man state that Clovis people went extinct. I had to refresh my memory on that. And that claim is most certainly wrong. More about that later.

But also the extinction of the mammoth and other animals made me frown, especially because I know from my debates in 2000 on the earth crust displacement hypothesis that those extinctions weren't simultaneous and very gradual. Now he does say "geologically" speaking. People say "geologically speaking" meaning "to us it would appear a long time, but for the eartht's existence (a rock) it's a mere second". I don't think that saying works at all for the Dryas, a climatic period. While climate can be relatively stable for thousands and thousands of years, climate can also go through unstable periods and then it can be warm for several hundred years, and very cold for anything between 60 to a thousand years. So, if say, a particular climate period lasted 400 years (geologically very short), but an animal went extinct 500 years before that, it becomes problematic to claim that animal went extinct because of a cataclystic event that abruptly brought on the climate change.

DRYAS

The name is used for climate glacial periods: the oldest, the older, and the younger.

27000 to 24000 years ago there was a gradual warming during the Ice Age, interrupted by the Dryas stadials. A "stadial" means a cold climate period. An "interstadial" is a warm climate period.

The oldest Dryas starts with a slow slope, but ends steeply and abruptly. The general timing of this cold phase is from 16050 BC-13050 BC. Because of the slow start slope it can be argued it started in 17050 BC. C-14 measurements place the end of the oldest Dryas to 12700 BC, whereas Antarctica calibrated measurements put the end at 14600 BC. So, its max duration was from 17050 BC-12700 BC (or 19050-14700 years ago)  = 4350 years of cold period. Its shortest time-span of likely the coldest temperatures of this phase is from 16050 BC - 14600 BC (or 18050-16600 years ago) = 1450 years. But its coldest peak would have been around 15070 to 14700 years ago, lasting 400 years, about close to 1800 years before the Younger Dryas. 

For humans this is the Cro-magnon period (first early modern homo sapiens). Their earliest dated appearance is 45000-43000 years ago, and they had 1600 cc brain capacity (actually larger than we have generally speaking). In Europe they shared territory for a while with the Neanderthalls. By the oldest Dryas the Neanderthalls were extinct already, or absorbed via inter-species hybdrisation. By the oldest Dryas the Venus figurine worship or making of it was already petering out (most that were found date back to 30k and +20k years ago). They are the people who painted at Chauvet (30k-35k years ago), but the cultural period called the Magdalenian (17000-12000 years ago), aka the "reindeer hunters" (but also red deer, horses and other large mammals), starts right smack in the oldest Dryas. Lascaux and Altamira are cave painting examples of the Magdalenian. In that period the dog and wolf was being domesticated. In Ukraine people built shelters of mammoth tusks and lived semi-nomadic with small groups (20-25 individuals). In the peninsula that would become Japan, the Jomon begin to make pottery, implying they too at least begin live semi-sedentary (because pottery is bulky, heavy and fragile to carry around), and possibly may have been growing rice (but they weren't urban yet).

Ecologically most of the northern continent turned into tundra and many of the big game (megafauna) made its way back more south, where they were relentlessly hunted by people.

At the end of the oldest Dryas the Bolling interstadial starts, its warm peak roughly dated between 14600-14100 years ago (Greenland) and 14650-14000 years ago (Switzerland). Sea level rose 35 m. Tundra became forests and the big game receded back to the arctic region. The big herds are under ecological stress, because of the hunting but not having the optimal envorinment anymore (tundra). It changes little for the Magadalenian, except expansion. Meanwhile in the middle-east, the Natufian settle at the east Mediterranean of the levant. They are sedentary hunter-gatherers, hunting mostly gazelles, gathering wild emmer and barley (for which they use sickles). Their settlements living capacity ranges between 100-150 people, covering 1000 square meters sometimes - so what we would call "villages".  There are no indicators or definite storage facilities. They would have stored food (such as in self-made baskets), but no facilities seemed to have been built for the purpose. No mud brick, but round houses with stone foundation and brushwood supra-structure, that was as easily abandoned.

The older Dryas is not observed everywhere, and thus had no global impact. For example, the older Dryas is unobserved in the French region. So, some regions went from the Bolling insterstadial into the Allerod interstadial, of which Bolling was the warmer one, and had no actual cool period. It also makes it difficult to pinpoint an actual age, though all agree that it lasted but 2 centuries where it did occur. Roughly speaking though we are talking about 14000 years ago (12000 BC) Man hunts with dogs (comparable to a great Dane). At Ukraine where mammoths are hunted mostly, the ivory and bone is used for artwork etc,including a star-map. And thus the hunting stress on this species is becoming enormous. Other people migrate more northward hunting after the reindeer, living in huts, while Magdalenian is long standing by now in their rock shelters in France.

On to the Allerod interstadial. Temperatures and climate in Northern Atlantic were almost comparable to what it is today, and thus Europe and North America would have vegetation as we know it to be today. When it starts depends on whether that region had experienced an older Dryas or not. Where there was no older Dryas, it's a slightly cooler continuation of the Bolling. Conventionally it's said to have started around 14000 years ago and ended abruptly 12900 years ago, with a sudden cooling that reduced temperatures to near glacial in mere decades. While stadials and interstadials are defined by region, the Allerod had a global effect, raising sea levels globally.

The Clovis culture appears in North America in this time period. The most precise measurements and dating put the uncalibrated C-14 measurements as 13200-12900 years ago. The Clovis culture is named and recognized for its spear points, which are meant for megafauna. In New Mexico, near Clovis, at an archeological site, artifacts were found, and its makers were ever after called Clovis. It is however unclear whether all those who made Clovis spear points were actually the same people, or whether the technology itself spread quickly amongst several people. For a long while it was hypothesised that the people who developed the Clovis spearpoint were the first people to arrive at the Americas, but older sites of other cultures are in evidence, as are older non-Clovis points (likely and conservatively to 22000 years ago). Only one discovered burrial is directly connected to Clovis artifacts - Anzick-1 (who died when he was 1-2 years old)- discovered in 1968 and dated to 12700-12500 years old. His genome has been fully sequenced, showing both connections to Siberian ancestry and a close genetic affiliation to modern Native Americans, including Central and South Americans, but less closely related to the people of the Canadian arctic. Because of this Anzick-1 is regarded to belong to a "founder" people, who migrated from Siberia to N. America (around 13000 years ago) but early on already split into a group traveling more south along the Pacific route, while the other group moved into the Rockies. Anyhow, paleogenetics proves that "Clovis people" did not go extinct, on the contrary. What happened is that the people living in the area stopped making Clovis spearpoints. Since Clovis spearpoints were specifically made for megafauna hunting of megafauna animals that went extinct, the likeliest answer is that they stopped making them, because the animals they were used to hunt with had gone extinct.

And then we have the Younger Dryas, conventially dating from 12900 to 11700 years ago, with a cooling of average temperatures between 2 to 6 °C, glacier expansion and drier tundra climate in the northern regions, but a slight warming in the southern hemisphere and een south-eastern N. America (Florida, etc). The glaciers in Ireland were thicker and extensive in the Older Dryas than the Younger one. The ending of the Younger Dryas happened over 40-50 years in 3 discrete steps, each taking 5 years, into the Hollocene.

The start of the Younger Dryas is time transgressive within the northern hemisphere, as in not simultaneous, but starting earlier in some regions while later in others. Layers of the same material are found at different ages in different regions (diachronous). Along the latitude of 56°-54° North (Kattegat in Denmark, Baltic states, just north of Moscow, Kamchatka, Alaska, British Columbia, Ontario, Alberta, Manitoba, Hudson Bay, Quebec, Newfoundland, Scotland and just north of Edinburgh)  it started as early as 13100-12900 years ago. More north than that it started no earlier than 12600-12750 years ago. So, the discrepance of the onset of the Younger Dryas north of all those listed locations was 250-300 years later than in those listed locations, that's slower than it took time for the particular region to cool or warm up again, longer than the Older Dryas lasted (200 years). Sure, geologically we can say that 250-300 years are almost simultaneous (it's the time jump from now back into 1715, a time jump to Black Sails Nassau), but in comparison to the fluctations that have been occuring between warmer and colder for less than the 2000 years since the cold peak of the Oldest Dryas, it's a time discrepance of over 10%, and not something to shrug away.  

Another discrepance occurs between Asia and the North Atlantic. In Japan the cooling of 2-4 ° C occurs no earlier than 12300 years ago. That's 600 years later than the Hudson Bay, which is the total timespan of the Older Dryas and the peak of the Oldest Dryas together. The dating of the ending of the Younger Dryas in Europe coincides nicely with the ending of it at Lake Suigetsu (Japan), but it actually started several hundred years earlier in Europe than Lake Suigetsu. Chinese data also reveals a discrepance of 200-300 years at least in the onset, as is data from a cave in the Philippines. Overall the southern hemisphere seems to have not experienced a Younger Dryas, and seems absent for Antarctica, New Zealand and parts of Oceania. There the Antarctic Cold Reversal (a cooling) started a cooling thousand years earlier than the Younger Dryas and it ended midway the Yougner Dryas of the Northern Hemisphere.

Obviously the end of the making of the Clovis spearpoints coincides very well. But despite the claims of megafauna extinction, the megafauna was already experiencing a collapse between 14800 and 13700 years ago (basically the Bolling and Allerod period. For example the Woolly Mammoth was extinct in Beringia (Alaska and Yukon) 13300 years ago, right smack in the Allerod, not the Younger Dryas and in connection with the arrival of Clovis culture who hunted megafauna. Other populations survived into the Hollocene. The Woolly Mammoths survived on Wrangler island as far as 4000 years ago, on St. Paul's island of Alaska until 5600 years ago. The Wrangler Island population suddenly went extinct, again shortly after the arrival of people there., while the St. Paul's population went extinct before human habitation, because of shrinkage of habitat. They lasted in Siberia until 9650 years ago. Similar discrepancies can be observed for other megafauna animals (such as the sloth) but not say bizon and brown bears (also large animals). 

So, while the final extinction collapse occurs roundabout the Younger Dryas, it's already happening before it, with well enough time discrepance relative to the other climate changes from cold to warm to cold to warm. It does not disprove a comet strike, but it shows that neither a comet strike nor the Younger Dryas caused megafauna collapse and extinctions. In fact, reasonably speaking, a colder period should have saved the Woolly Mammoth, because their optimal habitat was steppe tundra (shrubs, grasses, mosses for diet), not dedicious forests. That's one of the reasons why the earth crust displacement hypothesis was laughable to explain Woolly Mammoth extinction. The likeliest explanation to the various patterns and extinction dates is the combination of the loss of habitat through warming of the northern hemisphere and the extensive hunting by people. (humming Bowie's "He's a Dodo")

If they start with over generalized wrong assumptions on extinction data, and gloss over a 200 to 600 years in this overall unstable climate period the premisse to search for the smoking gun to explain the extinction drops away.

COMET STRIKE

As I said - just because for example Woolly Mammoths died earlier than the onset of the Younger Dryas and Clovis people would have stopped making Clovis spearpoints because they didn't have the mega animals to hunt anymroe, it does not exclude debris from a comet striking earth. Comets act and travel independently. And the findings and proposals look promising. But there are issues that should not be shrugged away as insignificant. One of the major reasons why scientists are supposed to publish in peer reviewed journals is because it goes through a preliminary examination, and that peers can replicate the measurements and tests. If I were to take a sample from a layer of soil and find something determinitive in it (say gold), and you take a sample from the same layer of soil at the exact same location (that I claimed to have taken it from) you should be able to find traces of gold in it too. Say I claim I hit the jackpot and found a vein of gold to mine with my sample. If you don't find traces of gold in it, you're going to question me and my sample. If I claim I have discovered something that shrinks tumors in a petri-plate, and you repeat my procedures and find the tumor does not shrink, you're going to question my findings. And that is what happened in the cases of the measurements of the iridium, nanodiamonds, etc. So far the sample findings could not be replicated. Worse, upon further inquiry they descovered that the researcher who handled and provided the samples to the proponents is someone who has been convicted of fraudulent practices with evidence and that the samples weren't properly handled (contaminated), and that some of the spheric stuff found in the samples was mis-identified with fungal spores. Basically, it's me claiming to have hit the jackpot gold vein with my sample, you can't find gold in your sample and upon further investigation it turns out that I got my sample from a known con-artist and my gold turns out to actually be fool's gold. There's no way you're going to invest in my mine, even if I have the best intentions.

Should that stop the proponents from pursuing to prove it, redo the research, work out better procedures etc? Of course not. It's not disproven that a comet strike influenced the onset of the Younger Dryas. Independent researchers who are not proponents have indeed found a spike of titanium in the Greenland Ice core dated to 12890 +- 5 years ago. They dismiss its possibility to cause extinction level wildfires, and they actually may be right (there is no evidence for that level of wildfires in the appropriate time period, there is evidence for wildfires at later dates and it's suggested they were man made for hunting), but it could still have broken the ice shelf at the Hudson Bay to start a cooling of the Northern Atlantic, consequentionally tamper with the Gulf Stream, etc etc etc causing a northern hemisphere cooling, rapidly locally (50 years, aka a human lifetime), but globally across a discrepance of 200-600 years. Of course the warming climate itself could have done that too without any cataclystic impact (it's what ice shelves do when the weather warms for an extended period), as it might do again in the coming century.

Tthe picture that the proponent above paints, (and certainly Hancock), about the cooling, its cause and its impact on people and animals is imo an oversymplification. A picture is presented of a house being demolished in one fell swoop with all the inhabitants and pet animals dying. But instead one pet died 20 years before, the father died of cancer a decade ago, the daughter moved out of the house with her dog, and the mother started hoarding and neglecting repairs and it started to fall in ruins. A comet strike in such a tale would be the equivalent of the mother falling asleep while smoking a cigarette after all the previous.

Interesting enough the Younger Dryas may actually have had a positive influence for the development of human civilisation: those Natufian in the levant (Lebanon and Israel region) who picked wild emmer and barley, are hypothesised to have been pushed into farming. The hypothesis goes that the drier climate the wild emmer and barley got under competition stress of dryland scrub. Their territory was not so large, with other tribes hunting the steppes, and they already lived sedentary in larger groups than close kin, so they needed to ensure their sustenance. They allegedly started to clear the scrub and plant rey they got from elsewhere. It is however a controversial proposal. Most food related evidence are wild species. What is certainly evidenced is that the evidence of the domestication of the dogs comes from Natufian graves. An elderly Natufidan was found buried with a 5 mont old puppy (12000 BC, 14k years ago), and at another Natufian site, in a cave, humans were found buried with a pair of canids. Genetically they seem to have migrated back into Africa (well Egypt), around 9500 BC, 11500 years ago.

In relation to aSoIaF, I think it's unlikely that Hancock's Fingerprints of the Gods in 1995 could have influenced GRRM with regards the concept that a comet disaster caused the Long Night, because in 1995 Hancock proposed Earth Crust Displacement as the mechanism that caused the advanced Ice Age civilisation to be lost. So, if GRRM read Hancock in 1995 he wouldn't come away with a comet, but the earth crust shifting. He could have come away with the comet idea though through the Victorian Ignatius Donnely's "Atlantis: The Antedevulian World" published in 1882, because Donnely proposed a comet (as does Haley propose a comet strike to cause the Great Flood in the 17th century) as the mechanism. Much of Fingerprints is a reworking of the 1882 book with his own twists and a changed mechanism. It is only in the last few years that Hancock altered his voice to a comet strike, and thus has written a new book "Magicians of the Gods" as the scientists' proposals were pointed out to him and Andrew Collins' book came out.

Note:

1. Except for the handler of the samples, the other proponents don't seem happy with Hancock's backing, based on actual posts I found by one of them on a sceptic site (see second note).
2. Allegedly Hancock copies regularly from Andrew without due credit in his last book: see http://www.jasoncolavito.com/magicians-of-the-gods-review.html. I have to warn you that the reviewer Jason Colavito is a sceptic of Hancock's work, but he knows textual source material really well on the Atlantean related writings, from Greek, middle age writers, Arab, to Victorian teophists and authors like Andrew Collins and Hancock. His professional field of work is the connection between science, pseudoscience and speculative fiction, both historically and currently as a skeptic, and he knows his Lovecraft.

[LmL]

On 5/1/2017 at 0:01 PM, sweetsunray said:

I do this for LmL, because he asked, because I respect his work, and because I consider him a friend. And when someone I consider a friend pulls my integrity through the mud like that (and you can betcha that actually hurt) I intend to play with open cards entirely.   

 

On 5/1/2017 at 0:01 PM, sweetsunray said:

I was personally accused and attacked for giving a vague reply originally, called a hypocrite, a writhing fish by the OP who personally invited me to comment on Hancock. I've gone through an update-myself on GT from various sources, but had left Hancock out of view for a while. LmL also asked me to give me a source for my claim on certain statements of Hancock. The above post merely summarizes the BBC Horizon video and gives the link. Obviously GT is not part of it, but it gives a brief summary of Hancock's various and changing claims and goalposts. If I am to give him credit if he deserves credit, one needs to pinpoint what exactly he can be credited for. Now, I am perfectly willing to give him credit if he deserves credit. I cannot do that however without actually going through his claims, and figure out exactly what claim he still backs or not.

If LmL (our OP) prefers me to only pay homage to the man publically and leave out pointing out the issues, that's fine too (though there is a chance I'll have to mute myself as I watch the last linekd video). If he prefers me to continue this over PM, fine too. If he wishes me to be forever silent on Hancock either way, I'm totally good with that. 

First of all I apologize for hurting your feelings. We are indeed friends (though it's been a long time since I've seen you on any of my threads, I was beginning to wonder...)

My challenge to your integrity in regards to the way you were arguing, I cannot recant, because you started out with ad hominem sneering - exactly what I hope you would not do - and by making straw man arguments which the article nor Hancock ever made. I don't mean to come at you with hostility, and I am not asking for an apology, but I feel I have to call that out when that's what you throw at me. Also, you previous comments about Hancock were anything but ambiguous. Now I invited you to comment by asking if you had anything nicer to say about him, and in my opinion, you kind of just doubled down on your hate of Graham before you actually started looking into all of this of even considering what Graham or the scientists had found. Once you did, I didn't have a problem with your comments and in fact very much appreciated and enjoyed your extensive research. So... again, I'm sorry to have offended, but I think you are indeed very biased in regards to Hancock because some of his ideas are not correct. Earth crust displacement never seemed realistic to me, and from what I understand, if it actually happened, the air friction would cause global firestorms and basically instant death for pretty much all living things. I roll my eyes when he mentions it too, but that's not really a big deal to me, and here's why. And here's what you are not getting about Hancock, imo. 

He's not a scientist. He says that a lot, for a very good reason - because he wants the reader to know up front that he is at most a clever layman and an author and traveller, and nothing more. He is following the myth first, always, and trying to figure out how it might describe real events. He's picking up universal tales of an Atlantis like civilization that was destroyed in flood and fire, with many stories involving comets explicitly or possibly through symbol ("the great leaping snake that caused a flood of the isle of the gods," etc). What Graham has been doing is following his intuition that these myths are not simply fables, that they describe - on some level, some of them - real events. That's an eminently logical and rational approach to take, because ancient man used mythology as cosmology, as a way of understanding the universe and the environment and their place in it. What this means is that he is going to be coming up with a hypothesis, with speculation, with a potential connecting of the dots... and all of these things need to be followed up and investigated. 

So I don't expect someone like him to get everything right, and when I read a declarative statement from someone like him, I see an asterisk. These days, I see an asterisk everywhere until I have verified it, with all the misinfo out there. Anyway, you pile on Graham because he used to tout ECD and now he's all about the YD comet. But that's not a valid criticism, because he's not a scientist attempting to conclusively have explained the history of the world. He's not a tectonic scientist - ECD was only one possible mechanism for a disaster. The disaster is thing - it's fingerprints are what he is following. He didn't start out with the crust theory as his theory; his theory is about the lost civilization idea. ECD isn't true, so what - that's not the point. The point is that he is looking at the cultural myths and seeing a consistent story, and he's looking for evidence that it is in some way true. He isn't claiming to be a non-biased source. He's hunting Atlantis, and I am glad he is.

Most of his ideas are speculative, theoretical, most cannot be disproven or disproven without further research. If he gets even one major thing right, then he's achieved something. If his line of questioning leads other people to do research and make a discovery, then terrific. He's been looking at these monuments and myths in terms of archeoastronomy, and from the research that you shared, it seems that indeed there is a lot of astronomy going on. If one of his proposed alignments doesn't turn out, your response is to cry "fraud!" and mine is to say "well, what is going on there? Does he have part of it right? Right idea, wrong date?" It's the myth and the astronomy and the history - the truth - that I care about more than anything.  

It's one thing to disagree with some of his ideas - and clearly, you know a lot about this subject - but I do resent the insinuations that he's conning people for money, which is what a few people say, and that's he's ripping people off without attribution. I am very confident that he is a man of integrity who is doing his very best to follow the evidence where he thinks it is leading. He does not hesitate to cite other people and credit other people - he has extensive bibliography and speaks of other people's work frequently. I am quite sure he would have attributed whats-his-face if he should have. I know that Magicians of the Gods started out with high praise for Claus Schmidt and an interview Graham did with him (Schmidt escorted Graham around GT about a year before he died apparently). 

Now, does he oversimplify at times to make his case? Probably. Does he over exaggerate the rigidity of academia at times? Perhaps so - I wish he'd forgo this talk and just get to the point, myself - but I will say that in his defense this view of mainstream archeologists comes form having butted heads with Zawi Haiwass over the years, so it's somewhat understandable. Also, his excellent and popular TED talk was banned, and it was a great one (it was on psychedelic advocacy, a cause I believe in deeply).  But again I say this is inconsequential. 

Here's what I can say about Hancock - he is thinking the right way about mythology, imo of course. He's going about things in reverse from what geologists and archeologists do - they dig around, then figure out what it means. Graham is reading the myths and looking for the facts that may have been overlooked or misinterpreted. I don't think there is anything wrong with him doing so, and I feel that he offers adequate disclaimers and "possibly" "maybe" and "we need to do more research" type phrases in his books. He's a questioner, he's not some prophet who has everything right and is followed by a cult of believers. He's probing around at this idea of a lost Atlantis-type civ (and of course the name doesn't matter, 'Atlantis' is just a shorthand for "advanced lost civ").

Anyway, I appreciate the very academic place that you are coming from, I understand you eye rolls. I guess I just see him in different context than you. It seems like to you, because he latched on to a seemingly obviously bad idea - crust displacement - in your mind he's a quack with no more credibility. But as I have said, the crust displacement was never the thing, and he's never claimed to understand the mechanics in the way a geologist or tectonics expert would. What I am interested in is his interpretations of myth and his attempts to find matching facts. 

Now, you've just left us with like... I don't know, an LmL essay sized contribution there. I just started a new job this week and don't have much time (that's why I haven't been around), and besides that, I just don't know enough to engage with you on a lot of this (though I have been following all the peopleing of the Americas discoveries lately, very exciting). But there is one point I want to raise, and it's in regards to the way you see the facts around GT conflicting with his lost civ hypothesis. You said:

On 5/1/2017 at 0:45 PM, sweetsunray said:

According to Hancock his main point has always been that an advanced civilisation was lost from the historical record through a cataclysm since 1995*.

Indeed - that is the point.

On 5/1/2017 at 0:45 PM, sweetsunray said:

We now have evidence that an advanced civilisation was lost with GT and found again, but there is no evidence in the other sources that I can relate to a cataclysm with that.

GT is not supposed to be 'Atlantis.' The idea is that 'Atlantis' (again, generic for 'lost civilization of farmers) collapsed, and that a small group of survivors - the seven sages in many myths, in various forms - show up in various cultural myths to bring advanced knowledge of farming and astronomy or whatever it happens to be. Quetzcoatal myths fit this mold, and the Egyptians have an Isle of the Ka which was destroyed in fire and flood, it's a lot like Atlantis, etc. This is one of the seemingly universal myths which Hancock is following. Quite frankly - and this is why I put stock in his ideas, more than anything else - the myths he is following do indeed turn up in a lot of places, with startling similarities. This was one of the actual bits of non-quackery in Atlantis and the Antediluvian World (which I have read). They turn up in too many places to easily dismiss as coincidence, so I will be looking for for the missing pieces of hard evidence which reveal the truth behind these stories until we find it. 

Anyway, the point is that Atlantis died, and a few survivors helped found or accelaerate the developement of people in various places afterward, so that some of their knowledge might not be lost. That's a common theme of all these myths, these god-like sages trying to preserve knowledge so man does not have start over completely. GT and the Armenia homeland / Ararat / Uratu region would have been a place which received some of this legacy. 

On 5/1/2017 at 0:45 PM, sweetsunray said:

In particular to GT he says that he regards the builders of GT as survivors of that lost civilisation who taught their ways to the hunter gatherers they encountered in that region and taught them to farm.

I was just re-listening to his book today, and I believe what he is suggesting is that yes, hunter gatherers built GT, but that they were influenced by the knowledge and guidance of these sages, whom Graham believes are depicted at GT - the therianthropes and the dude holding the weird bag. That weird bag or something like it turns up in Sumerian art and a few other places... 

On 5/1/2017 at 0:45 PM, sweetsunray said:

So, clearly Hancock does not believe the builders were hunter gatherers themselves, but farmers**, some more advanced race that moved into the area and acted like teachers to the local pre-existing hunter gatherers.

Again, listening to his book, I am pretty sure he said that the consensus view is that GT builders were hunter-gatherers, and he sees no reason to question that. He's saying the teachers or sages basically passed on knowledge and helped them get going on the trajectory they took. 

Again I thank you for all the detail about the evolution of farming in that region, really fascinating to get closer and closer to the answer of where and when and how man started farming. 

On 5/1/2017 at 0:45 PM, sweetsunray said:

He also fudges with the presentation of the decline of the GT civilisation and its dating. According to him it's all precisely at the "same time": the building of GT, the cataclysm, the loss of the civilisation and the change from hunter gatherer to farming.

Again I am going off of his book, but I do not think you are accurately summarizing his idea. First off, he's not so specific as to have a fir timeline - he's basically saying that an advanced civ came to an end during the YD, either primarily at the time of the proposed comet, or as a combination of that event and subsequent climate change and turbulence. You mentioned three 5-year surges of warming, which I am imagine might be accompanied with flooding and sea level rise due to ice caps melting, and it's possible this advanced civ might have taken it's last breath during one of those events. This would square with Plato's 9600 BCE date for Atlantis's demise. Clearly, some people from this hypothetical lost civ would have to have survived to pass on info to people at GT and elsewhere. 

Beyond that, I need to check again to see what he was saying about the hunter gatherers learning farming and how that squares or doesn't with what you're saying. 

On 5/1/2017 at 0:45 PM, sweetsunray said:

The evidence does not show such a picture at all. 800-1000 years of use after the last cold dip with a gradual decline of the building and a gradual increase of domestication of wild wheat describes a gradual cultural shift, not a cataclysm.

I would say there's middle ground, something along the lines of a cataclysm which set of a gradual cultural shift. Some big event happens, people have to start thinking differently or doing something differently, and it may just be a small step for them, which would then lead to more steps that lead to something which, a few centuries later, is a new thing entirely.  I mean, leaving comets aside, there's no question the Younger Dryas ended pretty suddenly in 'geological time,' as you say, and the warming climate would have opened up new areas to live, new animal migration patterns, new possibilities. I guess I am saying, wouldn't such a climate shift kind of have to lead to responsive cultural shifts? We don't know if a comet set off the YD, but we do know if came on pretty quick (although apparently staggered in different areas, you're saying? I hadn't heard that). Again, it's the same idea - wouldn't a shift like that necessarily lead to changes in the behavior of the humans in that part of the world? If humans developed farming over the course of 2,000 years beginning right after the YD ended, then it's fair to say the new climate was a factor that enabled them to farm. Or if they had been learning during the YD because it was colder and they had to use ingenuity to survive - I'm not sure which is the consensus argument - then again, they are changing behavior because of changing climate. 

Finally, just how exactly do we get to the place where we feel confident saying that we learning farming over that 2,000 period, gradually? What kind of evidence is that based on? Carbon dating wheat essentially? 

Also, is the possibility that farming was invented more than one time in more than one place entertained by mainstream academics? I'd be curious about that. 

On 5/1/2017 at 10:41 AM, sweetsunray said:

And he proposes a possible discovery underwater near Japan. The geologist Schoch is one of those dubious "scientists" (he believes apparently GT might be a machine intended to provide certain tonal vibrations) but even he admits after several dives that the site is naturally formed, not man made.

I have looked at a lot of photos of Yonaguni and it's hard for me to see how it's not man-made, but I am not an expert and Schoch is, as are others who say it's probably not, but... I wonder, if this were above water, would we say the same thing? I mean, there are just so many straight angles. In any case, I don't think you can pile on Hancock for thinking they might be man made - they sure do look that way. If they are natural, then it's one of the most extraordinary things ever found in nature. 

As for Antarctica, no, that's not plausible. A fun idea for a fantasy story I have a mind to write, but not for real history. 

On 5/1/2017 at 10:41 AM, sweetsunray said:

And in that respect I'd certainly point out the 3rd episode on the Ness of Brognar by BBC last fall, as there too a, underwater site was found underwater, and they hoped that carbon dating might show it was above water once in the correct time period and might be the first stone circle of the Orkney islands (and thus of the whole stone circle cult of the British Isles). However, carbon dating shows that the site was underwater already before the established oldest date for the Ness (so far) and that the seeming stone circle underwater is in fact a natural formation.

Yeah it doesn't always work out, It usually doesn't. But when it does, it leads to re-organizing of history on some level. 

On 5/1/2017 at 10:41 AM, sweetsunray said:

Now one would think that GT is the answer to Hancock's quest, that it is the lost civlisation of 12000 years ago, except that it's a 1000 years younger. But not even Hancock regards it that way. While it is an 11000 old civilisation that was lost of the historical records until 1994-1995, it isn't the civilisation he's been looking for.

Right - it seemd like you were not clear on this in other comments. GT is not Atlantis. His theory is a few Atlanteans taught the GT folks some skills, passed on some knowledge of the past and their history. 

On 5/1/2017 at 10:41 AM, sweetsunray said:

While it is a culture from which certain rituals and mythically related animal icons were inherited into the ages after, it isn't the Atlantean story of spreading culture across the globe like a cradle.

GT would be one of a few places that received some part of this cultural legacy, with Egypt obviously being another one. There's no conflict with Hancock's theory here. GT is not Atlantis, he's not claiming that. 

On 5/1/2017 at 10:41 AM, sweetsunray said:

Meanwhile GT proves that archeologists and historians are perfectly able and willing to rethink ancient civilisation and how our civilisation came into being - GT is accepted as being that incredibly old, accepted as having been built by hunter gatherers (not farmers), and they accept that monumental building and settling came before farming, and that farming and domestication is actually a by product of the choice to settle somewhere.

True, he doesn't give them enough credit. I agree. A good idea will eventually win out, I tend to believe. There's no hurry. 

On 5/1/2017 at 10:41 AM, sweetsunray said:

GT certainly and undoubtedly rewrites the understanding of human history and the historical record, but it doesn't do it in the way that Hancock wants it to be (apparently Gizeh's allignment can be off for 9° but the refound lost ancient civilisation can't be off for 1000 years). According to this video, Hancock instead now puts his hopes on a temple in Java, Indonesia.

No, there's no conflict here, like I said. He's proposing a general idea, with some survivors influencing the GT builders at the beginning of their project. And yes, a lost civ can be off by 1,000 years, absolutely. The question is whether they existed at all, sometimes around and before the YD. GT is, according to his theory, like a seed blown on the wind from Atlantis which flowered in another place, in another form. That is again what so many myths say, that a small group of strange foreigners came with advanced knowledge and passed on their gifts before departing or sometimes integrating. Don't forget that the entire Ararat / Mesopotamian region is filled with variations of the flood myth, which always include some sort of golden age which was lost in cataclysm. That story is everywhere in this region. They all have it in their cultural memory, so on a certain level what Graham is saying is "let's listen to these old cultural memories and treat them as evidence, to be followed up on and taken seriously." Setting aside Hancock's theory, we do know that there was specific periods of dramatic climate turbulence at the start of during, and at the end of the YD, so I have to think these flood and fire catastrophe myths probably speak of that era, don't you? They all talk of a golden era before that fall, which makes you ask the question of what they might be talking about. As we know, humans have been anatomically modern and smart for a lot longer than 10,000 years, so there is nothing stopping people from figuring out or inventing any given thing in the remote past. 

As far as Indonesia, he's been interested in that for a while now too - he included that info in Magicians. Mostly we are waiting for deeper layers of the site to be sampled / excavated to see what we can date from there, so there's not a lot to say until they make there way down. They are of course going methodically and carefully, but I think they are still going. In the book, written in 2013-2014, he was saying they might be getting to the interesting layers in 2017 some times, but I don't know what the status is. In any case, it's not a matter of "oh now he's hopping on this," he's interested in all evidence that humans were building things before the YD period. 

Anyway that's more than the time I had, and it might be a couple days before I can get back, but I thank you for all the information. 

[LmL]

On 5/1/2017 at 6:13 AM, Equilibrium said:

@LmL Thanks for the mention, btw what do you make of my post in this thread, you haven't commented, probably my bad, I should have @-ed you or something. 

@Unchained You are more than welcome to read it 

 

Hey EQ, apologies, I must have forgotten to respond. I will rectify this tomorrow when I have a moment. Cheers my man. Your thread is great, I am happy to recommend it. 

[LmL]

Btw, @sweetsunray, I would certainly not claim to be without bias myself, in the interest of fairness. Not in the least - I tend think the possibility of an Atlantis like substance has some truth to it, and I am certainly hoping it turns out to be the case. Also, I believe in Hancock's approach, as I said, and I believe his way of viewing myth is correct, has resulted in breakthroughs in this regard, and will continue to do so. 

So, I am certainly biased, and have no problem admitting that. I am arguing from a position that is not neutral. I'm not overly attached to any one idea or theory about the past but as I said, I think there is too much golden age / disaster / Atlantis mythology to not have some kind of truth behind them. 

[LmL]

On 4/26/2017 at 2:12 PM, Equilibrium said:

Excellent my friend, really interesting read.

I am pleased you are pleased my friend

On 4/26/2017 at 2:12 PM, Equilibrium said:

About sea dragon, it would fit if sea dragon designated fiery greenseer who came across the sea. He brought shipbuilding technology and merged with the weirwood circle, then Grey King defeated him, maybe even took his weirwood net, you know like skinchangers can take the beast from one another. Weirwood circle being ribs transformed to hall is pretty straightforward, he took his physical enviorment, both as body and dwelling, GK warming his halls with heart of sea dragon, could mean he used his power. 

I was talking about this on another thread; Azor Ahai is the alien, the foreigner, the Stranger. The virus in the system. I think the Velaryons are basically telling the story of the Iron Islands - dragon people came to an Islands ruled by fish people, took over the wooden throne of said fish people, then ruled over the island while taking on the fishy trappings of their new subjects. All the Velaryon symbolism is sea dragon / see dragon / green dragon stuff. 

On 4/26/2017 at 2:12 PM, Equilibrium said:

GK looks like the man who got the curse of the Burrow King, First King, he turned gray, so maybe he took the circle in which First King was weirnetted (I am trademarking this word :D). And FK could be AA. Maybe he is still there in that petrified wood circle, covering like Hodor's self when Bran wargs him, that is the ember for ya.

Yes, this is what I was getting at. He's the minotaur. I think the entire wwnet might be his mind or something weird like that. I think it's possibel that the trees are like wight trees - walking dead. They are being inhabited by another presence, they are not in control. What we think of as the wwnet is not the tree mind. It's an alien mind which has invaded and created something weird on the backs of the trees. Something along those lines. 

On 4/26/2017 at 2:12 PM, Equilibrium said:

Now onto the giants. Last of the Giants song, the one we know isn't talking about giants, could be talking about greenseers. Last verse For when I am gone the singing will fade,and the silence shall last long and long. points to the COTF connection as they are called singers. You should look more into the lyrics, all songs are knee deep in symbolism.

That's a good. I have and do, I have a couple I am waiting to use when the time is right. 

On 4/26/2017 at 2:12 PM, Equilibrium said:

Tyrion's, giant of Lannister moniker is also probably important, as he is a known AA stand-in. After Shae divulged that nickname to court, courtiers laughed to the earthquake like volume The sudden gale of mirth made the rafters ring and shook the Iron Throne. Tyrion, the lion, himself grew darker, like he was of the night, say and uttered I wish I had enough poison for you all. You make me sorry that I am not the monster you would have me be, yet there it is. I am innocent, but I will get no justice here. You leave me no choice but to appeal to the gods. Yup, he was wronged, got omnicidal and decided to appeal to celestial (objects) beings for the justice. Seems like something AA would do, and maybe later forgot, just to mention the one piece of you essay were you link Tyrion's body count to AA's.

That's really good analysis; Tyrion's giant nickname in conjunction with singing rafters (people rafting on the green see?) and a shaking Iron Throne. Appealing to the gods only got him a battle between sun, comet, and moon, ha ha. The Mountain vs. The Viper and the Hammer of the Waters, as they say. 

On 4/26/2017 at 2:12 PM, Equilibrium said:

Next we have bloody grass which is pretty obvious symbolic stand in for bloody trees and greenseers, sacrifice and bloodmagic, so you should be on the look out for that as well. As blood is connected to fire, bloody tree (grass) is burning tree, and blood is conduit to connecting to weirwoodnet and as you put it filling the weirwood with fire of the greenseer. Also by Asshai, ghost grass glows with the souls of the damned, see grass can trap souls as well and it is also pale white like some trees we talk about.

All true, although I would say the ghost grass is a slightly different line of symbolism than the bloody grass idea. At the core is the simple idea that blades of grass express both swords and plants, so it works well. As for the Ghost Grass, it's like a field of Dawn swords, what's up with that?

On 4/26/2017 at 2:12 PM, Equilibrium said:

One more note, I honestly can't remember if you previously mentioned this so I am going to go ahead, no harm done  The head fell off the Smith with a puff of ash and embers. Melisandre sang in the tongue of Asshai, her voice rising and falling like the tides of the sea. This is great, his head is a meteor stand-in, impact results in ash and LN and Mel's voice is rising like a tide, connecting fall and impact with tides.

Yes, I did mention that in the essay. I think I went to hat scene like three times actually - I compared pulling lightbringer from the wooden former sea dragon statue as pulling Gram from the Brandstokr tree. And I will have even more to say on that subject in my next essay, Venus of the Woods, which will be all about the overlap between Nissa Nissa and the weirwoods. 

[Equilibrium]

2 hours ago, LmL said:

I am pleased you are pleased my friend

I was talking about this on another thread; Azor Ahai is the alien, the foreigner, the Stranger. The virus in the system. I think the Velaryons are basically telling the story of the Iron Islands - dragon people came to an Islands ruled by fish people, took over the wooden throne of said fish people, then ruled over the island while taking on the fishy trappings of their new subjects. All the Velaryon symbolism is sea dragon / see dragon / green dragon stuff. 

Yes, this is what I was getting at. He's the minotaur. I think the entire wwnet might be his mind or something weird like that. I think it's possibel that the trees are like wight trees - walking dead. They are being inhabited by another presence, they are not in control. What we think of as the wwnet is not the tree mind. It's an alien mind which has invaded and created something weird on the backs of the trees. Something along those lines. 

That's a good. I have and do, I have a couple I am waiting to use when the time is right. 

That's really good analysis; Tyrion's giant nickname in conjunction with singing rafters (people rafting on the green see?) and a shaking Iron Throne. Appealing to the gods only got him a battle between sun, comet, and moon, ha ha. The Mountain vs. The Viper and the Hammer of the Waters, as they say. 

All true, although I would say the ghost grass is a slightly different line of symbolism than the bloody grass idea. At the core is the simple idea that blades of grass express both swords and plants, so it works well. As for the Ghost Grass, it's like a field of Dawn swords, what's up with that?

Yes, I did mention that in the essay. I think I went to hat scene like three times actually - I compared pulling lightbringer from the wooden former sea dragon statue as pulling Gram from the Brandstokr tree. And I will have even more to say on that subject in my next essay, Venus of the Woods, which will be all about the overlap between Nissa Nissa and the weirwoods. 

Yeah, it really has some sort of Lawnmover Man vibe whole wwnet and AA thing. If you read Martin's Nightflyers you know he is into that stuff and likes to use it in his books.

Somehow it slipped my mind and I forgot to mention your analysis of Mountain vs Viper when I talked about Tyrion's trial, but you connected the dots none the less.

I did't conflate the symbolic lines of meaning, I just connected bloody grass to burning trees and ghost grass supposed ability to hold souls with weirwood of the same coloring that holds souls. Those are different lines even thought they can point to the same thing. Explanation for the field of Dawn swords and the expansion of ghost grass that threatens life could be foreshadowing of the apocalyptic restoration of GEotD.

Yeah I knew you talked about it, I just couldn't remember if you drew that conclusion and connected the fall of the head with the rising of tides voice.

Looking forward to the next one, you do majestic job and your essays keep getting better and better, if nothing this stuff helped you refine your writing which is nice bonus.