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The mysterious mysteries of the Ancients!
tbloxham
Registered User regular
Registered User regular
2012, stonehenge, the alignment of historical sites around the world! It all points to one thing, mysterious mysteries beyond the ken of modern science
Could these stones point the way to the stars? How did the ancients calculate so precisely the angle at which to place them? Could it be alien intervention, or, possibly the fact that there is a huge amount of evidence that they just shifted the stones about a lot over a 1000 years until they all lined up nicely.
What of the pyramids. Built in dozens of countries around the world. Evidence of a transplanetary gestalt mind implanted by alien overlords? Perhaps a globe spanning empire, sharing knowledge and living in peace. Or perhaps, evidence of the fact that if you only have access to stone and don't know how to build a decent arch, scaffolding, or concrete its your only real option to build something tall.
What of the mysterious alignments between historical sites. Could it be a sign of powerful leylines buzzing beneath the crust of the earth, resonating secret messages of power which only our ancestors could read? Could tapping into them solve our energy crisis! Or perhaps, evidence of the fact that nearly every square inch of this planet is sacred to someone and thus it's easy to make some of the sites line up, espescially when people like to build things halfway between other major things.
And most mysterious of all the mysteries, the end of the world calender of the Mayans. Could it be the most accurate of all calenders? Predicting the motion of unknown and unseen worlds. Could its strange accounting system indicate a deeper tie to reality than our own? Did they predict the end of days in 2012? Could their science have been in advance of ours? Or, in fact is our calender and almost all calenders from after theirs such as the chinese or Persian calender far more accurate in every way than theirs. And could what seems to be an epic mystery, in fact simply be that their king liked the idea of 4 days at work to 1 day off.
In truth its clear that tens of thousands of people around the world, if not millions, truly believe there is something to all this stuff. Clearly you can see from my tone that I think its about as valid a belief as Odin, but do you think there is something to it? Something beyond the fact that people since the dawn have time have loved patterns and puzzles. If so, then what is going on? And where did all this mysterious ancient knowledge go. If you think as I do that its all rubbish, why do so many other people believe it so absolutely?
Could these stones point the way to the stars? How did the ancients calculate so precisely the angle at which to place them? Could it be alien intervention, or, possibly the fact that there is a huge amount of evidence that they just shifted the stones about a lot over a 1000 years until they all lined up nicely.
What of the pyramids. Built in dozens of countries around the world. Evidence of a transplanetary gestalt mind implanted by alien overlords? Perhaps a globe spanning empire, sharing knowledge and living in peace. Or perhaps, evidence of the fact that if you only have access to stone and don't know how to build a decent arch, scaffolding, or concrete its your only real option to build something tall.
What of the mysterious alignments between historical sites. Could it be a sign of powerful leylines buzzing beneath the crust of the earth, resonating secret messages of power which only our ancestors could read? Could tapping into them solve our energy crisis! Or perhaps, evidence of the fact that nearly every square inch of this planet is sacred to someone and thus it's easy to make some of the sites line up, espescially when people like to build things halfway between other major things.
And most mysterious of all the mysteries, the end of the world calender of the Mayans. Could it be the most accurate of all calenders? Predicting the motion of unknown and unseen worlds. Could its strange accounting system indicate a deeper tie to reality than our own? Did they predict the end of days in 2012? Could their science have been in advance of ours? Or, in fact is our calender and almost all calenders from after theirs such as the chinese or Persian calender far more accurate in every way than theirs. And could what seems to be an epic mystery, in fact simply be that their king liked the idea of 4 days at work to 1 day off.
In truth its clear that tens of thousands of people around the world, if not millions, truly believe there is something to all this stuff. Clearly you can see from my tone that I think its about as valid a belief as Odin, but do you think there is something to it? Something beyond the fact that people since the dawn have time have loved patterns and puzzles. If so, then what is going on? And where did all this mysterious ancient knowledge go. If you think as I do that its all rubbish, why do so many other people believe it so absolutely?
"That is cool" - Abraham Lincoln
tbloxham on
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Also, people believe it because people are idiots and will believe anything.
I'm not trying to be elitist, I'm just saying that any bit of nonsense you can come up with, you can find someone to believe in it.
EDIT: They also believe it because of a sizable streak of modern-era arrogance where they refuse to believe that ancient people were intelligent enough to do the marvelous things they did because said ancient people didn't have the technology that we have today and therefore they must have been stupid.
Glass-making was not the only thing lost. Ever wonder why so many ancient Roman aqueducts are named "Bridge"? Because, again, after the Fall of Rome, the western world lost the knowledge to maintain them, and without maintenance they didn't carry water anymore. Then people in the Middle-Ages started using them as bridges. Ancient Rome also moved Egyptian Obelisks, a feat that would not be repeated until the 16th Century, and they had in-door plumbing and heating, which were virtually unknown in the Middle-Ages. A massive amount of Ancient Greek texts on natural philosophy and how the natural world works (or was believed to work) was lost; only one text from Plato (the Timaeus was known until the Renaissance of the 12th Century).
So that's where the idea of "lost ancient knowledge" comes from: from actual lost knowledge in Ancient times, and in the Middle-Ages.
Thing is, since the Middle-Ages, we have greatly advanced scientifically and technologically. But the idea of "lost ancient knowledge" endured, and was constantly updated to reflect our level. When we didn't know about glass-making and in-door plumbing, it was true that there was much lost Ancient knowledge. Now that we have space-age technology, if the ancient had lost knowledge, well they must have had contact with aliens.
Nobody ever seems to attach a particular significance to the fact that, all over the world, people construct rectangular buildings. Even to this day many societies carry on this strange tradition. What could explain this mysterious phenomenon? Nobody knows.
And then you have the fact that mayan pyramids and most egyptian pyramids barely even resemble each other in shape, design, function, etc., other than the fact that they're both "pyramids" in the sense that we would consider both the Dome of the Rock and the Capital Rotunda "domes".
Has "greek fire" ever been rediscovered or is that what basically napalm is?
pleasepaypreacher.net
To be fair there are an awful lot of us. When you have 7 billion odd people even small percentages of stupid add up to millions.
Alexandria.
What?
Precisely. Add to that the notion that stupid people somehow tend to be really loud, and you have the makings of a religion.
Was that library real? I remember because I want to say its associated with the atlantis myth, but it could have been a real place that much like a lot of things got associated with a nice myth to add validity.
pleasepaypreacher.net
It was real. The king or pharoah or emperor or whatever he called himself banned the export of papyrus so he could use it as leverage (or a 'gift') to other rulers in order to get copies of anything in their own libraries. He also confiscated any/all books that people carried with them into the city in order to have it copied for his library. They'd give it back later, but still.
pleasepaypreacher.net
However - this is just from memory so I'm not sure - I believe the library didn't suffer a single catastrophic event, but rather from several lootings, fires, and invasions throughout a period of time which slowly destroyed it.
As far as the Atlantis myth being connected to the library goes... it definitely got shoehorned in there in the past few years because it was an ancient library and it had books so obviously it had all kinds of texts on Atlantis and it was destroyed because even back then the Man didn't want you to know.
While it's very possible that similar myths to Atlantis were contained in the texts at the library, it's important to keep in mind that pretty much nobody took the Atlantis myth seriously until the 19th century, not even during ancient times.
edit: ugh! beaten bad.
That and no self respecting state wastes funds on a library. We got police and firemen to hire!!
pleasepaypreacher.net
Plato.
It was most likely Santorini since that's a relatively concentric circle island and it got asploded by a volcano.
Damn it Hasbro does your evil know no bound?!
pleasepaypreacher.net
Just a matter of time, right? I mean, Damascus steel was lost for centuries, now you can use it to chop your veggies.
Now we know the real reason billy mays was killed, he discovered greek fire...
pleasepaypreacher.net
Of course, that part of the world is pretty volcanically active, and Santorini itself is actually an active volcano. One day there was an enormous eruption - no doubt preceded by many ominous warning signs such as earthquakes, unnatural heat and what have you (not a geologist here) - wherein the middle of the island (and the city inside of it) literally blew sky-high. A big chunk of the island collapsed into the ocean (you can clearly see it on a map of the island) while the rest was made desolate and covered in volcanic ash.
Seeing such cataclysmic destruction, you could hardly have blamed ancient people for believing they were being punished by the gods. As oral tradition got handed down in the region, the story went from oral folktale to true legend. Eventually Plato wrote it down in his Dialogues and the rest is history.
That's one theory, anyway, and the one that I find the most plausible. Most myths have some basis in reality, after all, however tenuous. Check out the wiki article on Santorini if you're interested. There's been a lot of fascinating things excavated out of the ash; it's kind of like Pompeii but over a thousand years older.
For example, they had crazy special effects shows going on in their temples, with pyrotechnics, animatronics, and all kinds of stuff.
It's important to note that Atlantis was not a utopia for Plato. Plato's utopian society was the one he described in The Republic, which had nothing to do with Atlantis. Atlantian society was disorderly and decadent, while the Athenians were ordered and functioned like whatever the Ancient Greek equivalent of a well-oiled machine was, which each individual Athenian knowing his function and his place and performing his function for the greater good. And it was this social superiority that allowed the Athenians to defeat the Atlantians, despite their superior military might.
― Marcus Aurelius
Path of Exile: themightypuck
The ancient Egyptians had a method of primitive "air conditioning" for their Nile barges which involved constant use of poured water; obviously, it was only available to the royalty and other extremely wealthy people.
The ancient world is intensely interesting to me (that's what I hope to study for a living, anyway). I never cease to be amazed at how much like our own society they could be.
When you have as much gold and slaves as Tutankhamen, anything's possible.
Of course, anyone in a position to see the eruption was probably killed by it, because they were either on the island, or in the surrounding water where even if they survived the flying debris, there was probably some heinous wave action going on. Everyone else though, would've felt the massive earthquake, and hey, what do you know, that island city is gone!
Which of course ignores all the smoke and ash, but for most of the people who were alive then, it would've been felt as an earthquake.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Damascene_steel
:^: