Stone Circles - Mostly Just Ritual Space?

I was just watching a documentary (Standing With Stones) on the stone circles and burial chambers of Ireland, and they started off with Carrowmore in County Sligo. It seems that the very first standing stones and burial chambers in Ireland were "dolmen circles", and the ones in Carrowmore date to between 4300 and 3500 BC, and possibly even as far back as 5400 BC.

These dolmen circles consist of a dolmen with 5 orthostats and 1 capstone creating a burial chamber in the shape of a pentagon. Enclosing each dolmen is one or two circles of 30-40 boulders.

As the documentary shows, the final dolmen at Carrowmore became fully enclosed, establishing a trend towards bigger & bigger burial mounds and eventually massive passage tombs like Newgrange.

What interests me the most is that these boulder circles are quite likely the first ever stone circles, and that means they originally were used to demarcate burial zones. With time, although plenty of monuments were still enclosed by circles (standing stones, boulders, pits, ditches), most dolmens were not, and most standing circles had nothing within them.

I suggest that originally people used dolmens to bury their dead, and the boulder circle separated the sacred space from the world - and within this space they conducted rituals of burial and/or remembrance. At some point the need arose for a ritual space that was not where ancestors were buried, for purposes other than burying or remembering ancestors. Perhaps this is where fully-fleshed pagan religions began - with a multi-purpose ritual circle?

Modern pagans still revere the pentagon / pentacle. And witches still sweep clear and "cast" a circle for conducting rituals within. Could these be remnants from as long ago as 5400 BC?

After years of looking for more esoteric explanations, I now figure that the primary purpose of stone circles was to mark a ritual space. Their locations, which I also hoped might have significance, could also be explained by something as simple as "it has a nice view", or "it was a flat spot near where we lived".

Pygmy Hippos in Cyprus - Eaten to Extinction?

Once again I suspect that archaeologists are making false assumptions when studying piles of bones.

Half way down a cliff on Cyprus's southern coast, researchers dug up thousands of remains of the animal which is thought to have roamed the island for perhaps a million or more years during the Pleistocene period, and then died out around 12,000 years ago.

Today, nothing remotely resembling a pygmy hippo roams Cyprus. Its largest wild mammals are timid sheep, strictly protected from an army of enthusiastic hunters, and donkeys.

..."There were over 500 individual hippos represented at the site ... for some reason they (humans) stored the bones, instead of throwing them into the sea, perhaps for use as fuel," said Simmons, who has written a book on the subject.

Together with thousands of pygmy hippo bones, as well as several large birds and a few dwarf elephants, the archaeologists discovered man-made implements on the same site, pointing to a link between humans and the animals.

Radiocarbon dating puts the site at around 10,000 BC, some 3,000 years earlier than most scholars had assumed humans had arrived on the island.

Simmons says a small group of humans could have triggered extinction of the animals, which were already under stress from cold and dry climatic changes around 12,000 years ago. Many animals went extinct around the same time.

The article has plenty of ammunition for my scepticism. Halfway down a cliff? Great place to eat dinner. They stored the bones "for some reason". Can't even hazard a guess? Oh, and they mention the sheep that are probably more tasty, but somehow not extinct.

When you have read the work of Delair and Allan - unlikely for most archaeologists - you are made aware of caves full of bones being a worldwide phenomenon. Quite often many species are found all jumbled up, and there is no evidence of humans being behind the slaughter.

However, when there is an indication that humans have also had some activity in a bone cave, the assumption becomes we ate them all. Ignoring the possibility of a global catastrophe that mostly likely occurred circa 12,000 years ago.

John Cusack Impersonates Indiana Jones

Over at MTV is a complete scene from the forthcoming 2012 movie that perhaps provides some clues as to the tone and style it will have. What we see is a roller coaster ride where the hero survives due to some skill but mostly luck. The graphics are great but unbelievable. There are jokes and accents...

Movie Trailers - Movies Blog

GPS Failure in 2012?

It wouldn't be a total catastrophe, but it could certainly cause lots of trouble for transportation systems that rely on GPS, especially passenger airlines.

Existing satellites are ageing, and replacements are behind schedule and over budget, according to a report from the US Government Accountability Office.

Satnavs and other GPS devices calculate their position by comparing time signals from at least four satellites. To keep that many within range at all times requires a fleet of at least 24. For now there are 31 operating, but 13 of them are more than four years past their design lifetime.

The first replacement "block IIF" satellites are not due to launch till November, three years behind schedule, and the GAO predicts a 20 per cent chance that the fleet will drop below 24 at times in 2011 and 2012. That wouldn't cause GPS to shut down, but its accuracy would drop unpredictably.

And you wouldn't want to trust an unreliable GPS...

Farewell Sunspots?

http://science.nasa.gov/headlines/y2009/03sep_sunspots.htm?list1302321

Because I know that is has happened before - the Maunder Minimum was a period between 1645 to 1715 where sunspots were very rare compared to today - I am quite concerned that the decline in the magnetic field strength of sunspots will continue.

"According to our measurements, sunspots seem to form only if the magnetic field is stronger than about 1500 gauss," says Livingston. "If the current trend continues, we'll hit that threshold in the near future, and solar magnetic fields would become too weak to form sunspots."

What could it mean for us? We could be entering a phase of global cooling. According to Wikipedia:

The Maunder Minimum coincided with the middle — and coldest part — of the Little Ice Age, during which Europe and North America, and perhaps much of the rest of the world, were subjected to bitterly cold winters. Whether there is a causal connection between low sunspot activity and cold winters is the subject of ongoing debate...

Fireproof concrete for bunker construction

Not the most sizzling headline, but may just save you from being sizzled. Ready for public consumption just prior to 2012...

The geopolymer, developed by William Rickard and a team from Curtin University of Technology, can withstand temperatures of over 1600oC for at least an hour - heat that would rip through regular walls.

The super concrete can also defend us from less natural types of fire – its resilience makes it ideal bomb shelter material. In addition to scorching flames, the geopolymer can withstand almost three times more pressure than run-of-the-mill concrete. To put it into perspective, you could stack 8,000 tonnes (that’s about 5,000 Ford Falcons [a large Aussie car]) on a square metre of this stuff and it still wouldn’t crack. There has also been a lot of research to suggest that geopolymers can provide protection from radiation, which will be handy if we ever face nuclear war.

...it will actually be cheaper than regular cement because it’s made from fly ash, a waste product of coal-fired power plants.

If you are leaving bunker construction to the last minute, consider this product. More here:
http://www.sciencealert.com.au/features/20090109-19666.html

Pyramid / Meteorite Coin - A 2012 Collectible?

Imagine living in a post-2012 apocalyptic world, due to our planet colliding with an asteroid...

Now, imagine showing your children this, to help explain what happened:



Not only does it show the orbits of the planets, and not only does it have genuine meteorite fragments embedded in the center, but it also depicts Egyptian and Mayan pyramids, and an Easter Island statue!

Great gift idea (hint to Mrs Bast), buy it from the Aussie Mint for $155:
http://mintissue.ramint.gov.au/mintissue/product.asp?code=801373

Teenage Sex Before The World Ends!

Imagine what will happen in the months leading up to Dec 21 2012....

[Australian] high school students allegedly filmed sex acts while believing that the Large Hadron Collider was about to end the world.

...Two students aged between 13 and 15 performed the sex acts in the toilets during school hours several months ago.

...It is understood the girl wanted to lose her virginity to the boy - believing that the world was about to end.

Full story at the Courier Mail.

Leader of the Post-2012 World - Last Chance to Play!

The (Sony movie tie-in) contest ends in a few days, but it's not too late to join in:
http://www.instituteforhumancontinuity.org/election/

Tip: don't use any browser other than IE - games can crash and therefore you are unable to complete them. I'm hoping that it won't affect my chances too much, perhaps cost me 1500 points before I switched browsers...

I managed between 12K and 15K points. I'm kinda lucky that the type of person this contest is biased towards is myself - I'm good at those types of puzzles (my IQ is way higher than my real-world intelligence), and for the knowledge section I used to work for Google, searching for stuff, and I've been promoting the idea of a 2012 pole shift for 9 years now...

I'd like to think I'm a contender. However, how many people have entered? One thousand or one hundred thousand? Thirty-three? Impossible to say.