Articles in Ancient Technology
Ancient Tunnel Network
I need to buy the book, for this report from the Daily Mail makes it hard to assess whether there truly was a network (from Scotland to Turkey), or if people in various places just dug a few tunnels…
‘Across Europe there were thousands of them – from the north in Scotland down to the Mediterranean.
‘Most are not much larger than big wormholes – just 70cm wide – just wide enough for a person to wriggle along but nothing else.
‘They are interspersed with nooks, at some places it’s larger and there is seating, or storage chambers and rooms.
‘They do not all link up but taken together it is a massive underground network.’
I understand hiding in tunnels for defensive purposes, but crawling underground for many miles does not make a lot of sense. 10,000 years ago there just wasn’t the population or deforestation of today. Even in WW1 and WW2 it wasn’t …
Baigong Pipes / Antikythera Device / Arctic Forest
This is great fodder for Ancient Astronaut theorists. Over in China is a pyramid that has iron pipes within it, and heaps of pipes laying about outside. Like many such mysteries, the pipes could actually be naturally occurring – and Wikipedia cites similar, natural examples. But combined with a pyramid, that’s interesting!
According to Skeptoid, they are fossilized trees, and this seems to ring true (pardon the tree pun)
—
Seems that the beautiful theory that either Hipparchus or Archimedes designed the Antikythera device is wrong. The way it works suggests that the concept comes from the Babylonians / Sumerians. Increasingly they are looking like the fulcrum of ancient knowledge…
—
Speaking of fossilized trees, adding to the body of evidence for an ancient crustal displacement (aka pole shift) is another forest found in the Arctic, where it could not possibly have grown today.
George Lucas: 2012 Believer
Just in, via a news report quoting Seth Rogen on a meeting he had with George Lucas and Steven Spielberg:
He recalls, “George Lucas sits down and seriously proceeds to talk for around 25 minutes about how he thinks the world is gonna end in the year 2012, like, for real. He thinks it. “He’s going on about the tectonic plates and all the time Spielberg is, like, rolling his eyes, like, ’My nerdy friend won’t shut up, I’m sorry…’
I wonder if Lucas’ knowledge came from coming up with the Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull story, or if he already knew about 2012 and this inspired the film?
If not a joke, this is is heavy duty. George Lucas not only has immense capacity to build a bunker or three, but he can also influence large numbers of people, should he choose to do …
Working Model of Ancient Greek Computer
Fans of ancient technology are probably already aware of the 2,000 year old Antikythera computer from Greece:
According to ancient Roman author Cicero, this device was devised by Archimedes, and working models existed. The above relic proved that such ancient technology existed, and now we can watch a video of a modern-day version of it!
Philip Coppens on the Crystal Skulls
One of my favorite writers has a new article out, all about the Crystal Skulls. It’s pretty rare to find a scholarly article on the skulls, let alone one that doesn’t take sides. It presents the possibility of them being fakes, but provides lots of fresh information that might inspire you to believe they are genuinely ancient:
Walsh and some of her colleagues have largely presented Boban as a charlatan, but they’ve failed to report that Boban was known to have owned genuinely ancient artefacts as well as a collection of rare books and early Mexican manuscripts. He had even written a scientific study, “Documents pour server à l’histoire du Mexique” (“Documents to serve the history of Mexico”) (1891). Furthermore, he personally crusaded against frauds and fakes, such as in 1881 when he spoke out against forgeries that were being made in the suburbs of Mexico City. Would he shoot …
Experts: Crystal Skulls are fake
These findings are due to appear in The Journal of Archaeological Science:
…research suggests two well-known crystal skulls, in the British Museum and the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, are not, after all, from ancient Mexico. Academics now believe the British skull was made in 19th-century Europe and the American one even later.
The British Museum bought its skull, a life-size carving from a single block of rock crystal, from Tiffany and Co., New York, in 1897, …and a larger white quartz skull donated to the Smithsonian in 1992.
The scientists have concluded that, because the source of the quartz used was probably Brazil or Madagascar (and ancient cultures didn’t communicate), and because both skulls “were carved with rotary disc-shaped tool, a technology the ancient Mexicans didn’t have” – that therefore they were made in modern times.
Both assumptions are at odds with those who believe in advanced ancient cultures, but in this case …
1507 Waldseemuller map goes on display
The map was created by the German monk Martin Waldseemuller. Thirteen years after Christopher Columbus first landed in the Western Hemisphere, the Duke of Lorraine brought Waldseemuller and a group of scholars together at a monastery in Saint-Die in France to create a new map of the world.
…”The actual shape of South America is correct,” said Hebert. “The width of South America at certain key points is correct within 70 miles of accuracy.”
…The map gives a reasonably correct depiction of the west coast of South America. But according to history, Vasco Nunez de Balboa did not reach the Pacific by land until 1513, and Ferdinand Magellan did not round the southern tip of the continent until 1520.
…The mapmakers say they based it on the 1,300-year-old works of the Egyptian geographer Ptolemy as well as letters Florentine navigator Amerigo …
