 |
|
Organist William Herschel discovered the planet Uranus in 1781 with the first reflecting telescope that he built. He named it Georgium Sidium in honour of King George III of England but in 1850 it was renamed Uranus in accordance with the tradition of naming planets for Roman gods. |
|
 |
|
|
|
|
|
 |
|
 |
|
Before Recorded History: The Civilizations Lost in Time
Posted on Friday, November 10, 2006 (CST) by Thoth
 We live in a world where flight allows us unlimited travel, our engineering skills enable us to build the seemingly impossible and our mastery of science and medicine promises us a bright future. Evidence of mankind’s tenure of planet earth is everywhere, as our magnificent cities demonstrate.
After coming so far, is it possible that we could lose everything in the blink of an eye? We know that a large meteorite strike for example could easily wipe out civilization, creating tsunamis, earthquakes and plunging the world into darkness.
Survivors of the initial impact would struggle to survive, robbed of food, shelter, warmth and even daylight itself; a global nuclear war would have a similar effect. The hi-tech comforts that civilization grants us today would be lost forever and life as we know it would cease to exist. In effect we would be plunged into a new dark age.
If
civilization as we know it was brought to its knees, the technology
that we currently take for granted would be useless. Transport,
household equipment, in fact anything that still worked would wear out
in the years that followed the cataclysm and could not be replaced, as
our industry and infrastructures would be crippled. Over the next few
generations mankind’s own memory and accumulated knowledge would
diminish as the remaining survivors `adapted and evolved in order to
live. Priorities would change.
Within a few hundred years life as we
know it today would be unrecognizable. Practically all traces of what
had been a modern society would disappear over the next few thousand
years, as the survivors started afresh. Anything made from metals,
plastics and wood would simply rot away without a trace. All that would
remain is the biggest and most robust of structures capable of
weathering the ravages of time. Eventually a civilization might be
founded from the ashes of the old one; one that might grow to be as
great as we once were.
Now the $64,000 question, could this have happened before, maybe even more than once?
Conventional archaeology replies to that question with an emphatic ‘No!’ Archaeologists maintain that civilization goes back no further than 7,000 years. According to them, if a major civilization had existed anywhere prior to that, some of its remains would be evident today. That assertion has two fundamental flaws; it ignores the impermanent nature of carbon based matter – in time most things decompose and it fails to acknowledge mans reliance on the sea. Ancient maritime civilizations would have typically built their cities and ports on the ocean shores to take advantage of the sea in terms of food and even travel.
Archaeology is constantly being faced with artifacts and ruins that it struggles to explain. In addition to this, mythology is annoyingly consistent across the world, especially in relation to stories of a great flood. We also know that the ancients seemed to possess a level of mathematical and astronomical knowledge beyond our expectations, suggesting they may have inherited that knowledge from somewhere or someone else. There is much to suggest that our understanding of the earth’s history is curiously incomplete.
The Great Cities that time forgot
 Evidence of unknown but seemingly advanced civilizations existing thousands of years ago can be found across the globe. Together, these remnants of history begin to build a picture of a world far different to the primitive cultures we’ve been conditioned to expect.
There are many respected researchers who theorize that rather than little more than nomadic tribes existing 10,000 years ago, there was a network of great cities that spanned the earth. There are several ruined cities that point to our current understanding of ancient history being flawed and which give substance to the claims of these researchers.
Interestingly, several of these cities have been discovered below the sea. This makes many people question if the ‘Great Flood’ myths common to so many cultures are an oral account of an actual historical event rather than being just stories.
 It is known that at the end of the last ice age some 13,000 years ago, sea levels rose by an incredible 400 feet. This mean that any towns, cities or villages built anywhere near the coast would have been lost beneath the oceans forever and possibly in a very short period of time. To put this rise in sea level into perspective, if today’s sea levels rose by as little ten feet, huge areas of land would be swallowed up by the sea; cities like London, states like Florida and entire countries like the Netherlands, would disappear beneath the waves. Logic tells us that if that’s what effect a 10 foot rise in sea levels will have, a 400 foot rise would have been unimaginably catastrophic.
When the world’s myths talk of the great deluge it may be prudent to think of these myths as a reminder of past events and maybe a warning for the future. When Plato spoke of Atlantis disappearing beneath the sea in a single night and day of cataclysm, is it possible he was retelling an event that had happened not once, but a thousand times before?
The key to understanding what has happened in the past, the only way to discover the truth, is to unlock the secrets of the three major cities we know lie silently beneath the waves.
Yonaguni
 In 1985, the imposing ruins of a submerged city was found quite by accident by a local fisherman off the coast of Japan. The Yonaguni ruins as they are known are an apparently urban development that cover a massive 311 miles and actually includes eight separate sites. Divers have reported that in addition to the huge eight story tall structures that many people are familiar with; there is clear evidence of roads, paved streets, huge altar-like formations and a processional walk way surmounted by pylons. The single largest structure so far discovered lies in water that is around100 feet deep, just off the eastern shore of Yonaguni. It is approximately 240 feet long, 90 feet across and 45 feet high. Archaeologists have no idea who built this structure or indeed any part of this underwater metropolis; however geologists point to the fact that it must have been built more than 8,000 years ago, before the sea levels rose and claimed the land for itself.
Geology versus Archaeology
Conventional archaeology tends to inform us there was no civilization in existence 8,000 years ago that could have constructed Yonaguni. However, Yonaguni exists and archaeologists can offer little by way of explanation as to how and why it does. In fairness to the archaeological establishment, underwater archaeology is still in its infancy and presents archaeologists with a far different set of challenges than they are used to facing.
Skeptics have suggested that the formations are natural rather than manmade but Prof Masaaki Kimuru, a marine geologist with the University of the Ryukyus in Okinawa who has studied the ruins for many years believes otherwise. He reasons that if the Yonaguni site had been carved by nature, you would find debris from the erosion to have collected around the site, but no such debris is evident. Interestingly Kimura believes that constructing this monument would have required a high degree of technology and engineering skill which would be indicative of an advanced society.
Professor Kimuru is not alone in his thinking. Dr. Robert M. Schoch has also conducted extensive research into the Yonaguni site, as has Professor Teruaki Ishii, a professor of geology at Tokyo University. Common thinking seems to be that the site is at least 8,000 years old, but could actually be much older.
Cuba
 Cuba and the area stretching up to Bahamas is another place where evidence of a sunken city and some would say a large scale urban development is apparent. In Cuba’s case the city lies deep beneath the Yucatan Channel, off the coast of Guanahacabibes in western Cuba. The Russian-Canadian oceanographer Paulina Zelitsky and her team have used hi-tech sonar equipment to reveal images of symmetrically organized stone structures reminiscent of a cosmopolitan development. The site is contained in a sizable area of around twenty square kilometers and like Yonaguni is said to include roads, pyramids and other large structures.
Film footage taken by an exploratory robot confirmed the presence of huge, smooth blocks with the appearance of cut granite, again suggesting that this is a man made city rather than a natural rock formation. In addition to pyramid shaped constructions other circular shaped structures were apparently identified by researchers who believe the city dates back well over 6,000 years, possibly longer.
Some commentators have suggested that the city may have been part of a series of prehistoric communities linked by the so called Bimini Road; a massive limestone road that was discovered on the seabed off the coast of Bimini in 1968. The limestone blocks are neatly aligned suggesting that this construction is a deliberate one rather than a chance of nature and must have been part of something bigger.
Quite what Cuba’s sunken city is, how old it actually is and who built it remains a mystery. All we can say with certainty is that before 2001 we there was nothing in recorded history that mentions this place, or the civilization that lived there.
India
In India too, there is evidence of a lost city that lies concealed beneath the ocean. A chance discovery made by a team of scientists, in the Gulf of Cambay region, has established that the account in the classic Hindu text ‘The Mahabaratha’ which recounts the story of the city of Dwaraka, the home of Krishna being lost beneath the sea is not a myth, but seems to be a factual account. The splendid city of legend had indeed been submerged beneath the ocean several thousand years ago, probably as the result of a cataclysmic earthquake sometime in the last 10,000 years.
The End of a Great Age
One theory that is gaining popularity is that the end of the last ice age was triggered by a sizable comet that collided with Earth causing catastrophic damage by triggering earthquakes, tidal waves and a sudden rise in the earth’s temperature. Such an event could conceivably wipe out an entire civilization, destroying cities and reducing the survivors from living in a structured and ordered civilization not unlike our own to that of the nomadic tribe forced to wander the land in the aftermath of a cataclysm that destroyed everything they owned.
We will probably never know just how many ancient cities lie hidden beneath the oceans. It seems unlikely that we have found anything but a fraction of the places that may have been lost by the flood that resulted from the end of the ice age. But even if, for arguments sake, these three cities are the only three cities, how do we explain their existence without conceding that there is a distinct need to re-evaluate our understanding of history?
A Natural or Man made Cataclysm?
Whilst we can demonstrate repeatedly that previously unknown ancient cities – and therefore civilizations, have existed in the past, that fact alone doesn’t prove that advanced technology existed alongside them or give any indication of what might have caused the cataclysmic event that led to their disappearance. It simply proves that our knowledge of ancient history is far less complete than the history books have led us to believe. When we start to search for answers to the anomalies we know exist we might arrive at a very different world view and a substantially revised timeline for that history
Accounts of flight and nuclear warfare both are commonplace in history. Across the globe from India, Africa and the Americas there are pointers that indicate that ancient people may have been familiar with not just the concept of flight, but the experience of flight. Ancient texts such as the Ramayana and the Drona Parva tell of flying machines, called Vimanas, which were powered by mercury and enabled people to cover great distances quickly. In both Egypt and central America model aircraft made from materials such as wood and gold have been discovered by baffled archaeologists.
Vedic Literature is often thought of as being more mythical than factual by Western Scholars, although authors such as Helena Petrovna Blavatsky have done much to promote the ancient wisdom and historical content of Vedic texts in the last 100 years or so. All too often, despite these efforts, accounts like the story of the city of Dwaraka are relegated to the status of myth and legend or even wishful thinking on the part of the authors. There will always be those that support this dogma until indisputable proof to the contrary is unearthed. The textural accounts of a nuclear war in India are certainly worthy of consideration as there is much evidence to support the theory that there have been catastrophic nuclear wars in the earth’s history.
The Mysterious Green Glass
In various parts of the world such as the Euphrates Valley, the Sahara and Gobi Deserts, Iraq, Scotland, Egypt and Turkey, traces of a layer of a fused green glass have been found many feet below the earth. How did this strange green glass get there and what is it exactly?
 According to geologists, this phenomenon is caused by subjecting sand and rock to exceptionally high temperatures. Experts estimate that it would take a fireball with temperatures in excess of 1800C to turn sand and rock into a molten lava that would then become glass when it cooled. Opinion is divided as to whether the most likely cause for this is a meteorite strike or a nuclear explosion, but the fact that the phenomena is so spread out across the globe is rather interesting as it suggests either multiple meteorite strikes occurred or that there was a global nuclear war. Either of these events would have course have had a devastating effect on life on earth. It’s tempting to opt for the slightly ‘safer’ theory of a meteor strike, on the basis that such events have been validated by science and could have brought the last ice age to an abrupt end, but so too would a nuclear war and there isn’t always evidence of impact craters when these sites are studied.
In the Euphrates Valley archaeologists discovered the glass below archaeological remains that were known to be at least 8,000 years old, which gives us some indication as to the period when it was created. In Egypt this strange glass was even used to make funerary amulets that were discovered in the tomb of Tutankhamen. It is generally agreed the glass came from an area of Egypt called the Great Sand Sea, but there has been uncertainty over how it was formed because there is no crater to support the idea of a meteorite impact. In Egypt, the lack of impact craters at these sites points to a global nuclear war as being a surprisingly plausible cause for the glasses presence.
From the same time period, scientists have found a number of uranium deposits that appear to have been mined or depleted in antiquity. When the cities of Mohenjodaro and Harappa were excavated, scientists allegedly discovered ruins of a more ancient city that appeared to have been destroyed by a nuclear blast between 8,000 to 12,000 years ago. The blast was said to have destroyed most of the buildings and probably killed a half-million people living in the blast zone. Reports of skeletons being discovered which proved to be highly radioactive, the remains of people that seemed to be just lying in the ancient streets, suggested their final moments were sudden and not of natural causes.
Ancient cities whose stone walls have literally been vitrified, that is, fused together like glass, can be found in various parts of the world including India, Ireland, Scotland, France, Turkey and other places. There is no logical or natural explanation for this kind of vitrification to take place, except as the result of an atomic blast.
In India there is also textural evidence to support the theory that a nuclear war has taken place there. In later period temples excavated at Harappa, archeologist Francis Taylor translated an etching that related a story of how people prayed to be spared from a great light that was coming to destroy them. This is a rather ambiguous description that could describe either a meteorite or nuclear warhead, however the following excerpt from the Mahabharata adds further weight to the claim that a nuclear holocaust was responsible for massive destruction in ancient times.
... (it was) a single projectile
Charged with all the power of the Universe.
An incandescent column of smoke and flame
As bright as the thousand suns
Rose in all its splendor...
...it was an unknown weapon,
An iron thunderbolt,
A gigantic messenger of death,
Which reduced to ashes
The entire race of the Vrishnis and the Andhakas.
...The corpses were so burned
As to be unrecognizable.
The hair and nails fell out;
Pottery broke without apparent cause,
And the birds turned white.
After a few hours
All foodstuffs were infected...
....to escape from this fire
The soldiers threw themselves in streams
To wash themselves and their equipment
 Interestingly, in Cappodocia, Turkey there are two massive underground cities; Derinkuyu and Kaymakli. Both cities are believed to have had from 8 to 10 underground levels, although Derinkuyu is thought to have once tunneled 13 levels down into the earth.
The original builders of these cities remain a mystery, however the communities that lived in them were so sophisticated they had shops and numerous other amenities, including a complex air-conditioning system that ran throughout the city. There were thousands of rooms, ranging from bedrooms, with “box beds” carved from the rock walls, to kitchens and storerooms, and even stabling quarters for animals. To all intents and purposes an unknown civilization seems to have built and inhabited these underground cities, but why would this civilization choose to live below ground? The natural conclusion that many people draw from this is that they were forced underground because conditions above ground made normal life impossible. Could it be the result of a cataclysmic event?
Lost knowledge
There are many unexplainable relics from the past that do not fit in with modern understanding of ancient history. No one knows for example how the 60 tonne trilithons of Baalbek were quarried and the used in the construction of the temple there – even today there are only a handful of cranes in the world capable of lifting such a weight. It seems inconceivable that manpower alone could achieve such a feat. Yet we are expected to believe that across the world from Egypt to Easter Island and from Stonehenge to Central America, people quarried, transported and built with immense stones of impossible weights using nothing more than brute strength.
Anomalous artifacts like the so called Baghdad battery suggest an awareness of electrical currents that simply should not be. Likewise the Antikythera mechanism, which used gears 2,000 years before gears were invented offer more for food for thought. Both artifacts seem to provide evidence of technologies that we would not expect to find. Probably the most well known anomalous artifact is the Great Sphinx itself. According to research conducted by geologist Dr. Robert M. Schoch and John Anthony West into the weathering of it's limestone body, the Sphinx is thousands of years older than Egyptologists estimate, which suggests that this amazing monument may be a relic from a long forgotten civilization.
Taking the Time-line back to Prehistory
 So how old is life on earth? The most extreme estimates take the whole realm of ancient history in an entirely new sphere understanding. We have looked at the possibility that around the time of the last ice age ending, sophisticated civilizations existed on earth, however there are other ancient artifacts that push that time-line back much further.
If the Ica stones of Peru are to be believed for example, humans and dinosaurs walked the earth at the same time. This is something that anthropologists and archaeologists refute but there is nothing to indicate that these stones – of which there are hundreds, have been faked.
Probably the most incredible claim relates to several hundred strange man made spheroids discovered in South Africa. The metallic balls had apparently been manufactured and had been mined out of a layer of pyrophyllite rock. According to the various dating techniques used to analyze them, they appear to be 2.8 - 3 billion years old. Have there been mistakes made in dating these artifacts? Its possible, anything is possible however it would have had to be a pretty big one. The idea that something can be man made and 3 billion years old turns everything we ever thought we knew about life on earth on its head.
Given our planet's age, for us to assume that we are the one and only civilization on Earth that has ‘made it’ in terms of technology, culture and knowledge seems to be putting ourselves on a very tall pedestal at the expense of the lost civilizations that have gone before us. It may fit the archaeological model, but does it fit the true time-line?
Perhaps one of the reasons we avoid challenging the archaeological paradigm is that doing this challenges more than our understanding of the past; it challenges who we are and what might become of us. If we discover that advanced civilizations have existed before us and that those civilizations have been destroyed, that in turn emphasizes our own vulnerability, despite our assumption that we are a technologically advanced and unassailable civilization.
If the truth of our origins and our future fate depend on that knowledge, many say that it’s high time we all made an effort to dig that little bit deeper; to open our minds to what might have been.
© Thothweb - http://www.thothweb.com
All images copyright © by their respective photographers. This article is copyrighted. No part of this article can be reproduced without the written permission of ThothWeb.
|
|
|
 |
|
 |
| |
|
|
|
|
|
|
| | The comments are owned by the poster. We aren't responsible for their content. |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
No Comments Allowed for Anonymous, please register |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Re: Before Recorded History: The Civilizations Lost in Time
by visionenhanced on Wednesday, November 22, 2006 (CST)
(User Info | Send a Message) | | excellent! The strange thing is I have always questioned the unexplained things of our world. Here are a couple things to add. The fused glass and nuclear like devastation could be attributed to a cosmic gamma ray close enough to the earth. The scientists have recently said that the earth may be 13 billion years old. I still think it is alot older. Yes we roamed with the dinosaurs and immensely better technology than today. Maybe the government has stuff close. Yes, the pyramids could have been made with bronze tools, as according to Zahi Harwas, if they were made of limestone. However they are made of granite. there is a major conspiracy going on between or government and many others around the globe concerning all aspects of life. They dont think we could handle the truth. It all starts with the onset of certain religious sects that obscure the truth. Drive fear into their hearts and we can control them. Is a big saying I gather from the world. We do however out number them, and this planet is not ours we belong to it and the great conciousness. The law of the land that we abide by, when we are ancient mariners locked into guided control. Our cities sank and had no choice but to move to the terra firma. How about the ancient spark plugs found encased in stone? I dont believe they are aliens, more like cousins that vibrate at a slightly different frequency. What if the nuclear bombs we set off are simply sending particles though time forward and backward causing some of the destruction we read about today of ancient civilizations. Is that why the big scare the government gets when others start to test? What if Roswell was the result of the nuc tests in nevada during WWII sending gravity type waves through time causing the craft to crash that started this whole mess. The point of this comment is that when I was a young child I was told to question everything. So now I do and I formulate my own ideas based on ancient knowledge and contemporary studies. I do believe that I figured out how water was turned into wine and it is so simple that it blows my mind. we are locked in being fed misinformation everyday in every aspect of our lives that it has become normalcy. So much so that when we see something extrordinary we say things like no way or thats impossible. one last point to look at. the theory of evolution is quite flawed. 10,000 years and here we are. no no no. The alligator, seaturtle, Gilla monsters, birds, cats, dogs, plants all of it date back extremely large amounts of time to get to their current state. I will always be the first to tell anyone that the scholars are dead wrong. What of intelligent design? Davinci saw the numbers and all his paintings used the proper variables. Go figure, right. THE TRUTH IS STRANGER THAN FICTION, AND HISTORY REPEATS ITSELF. Loved your article hope it expands others minds to the true way of things. Peace and best wishes.. |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Before Recorded History: The Civilizations Lost in Time
by JudyLou on Thursday, October 04, 2007 (CDT)
(User Info | Send a Message) | SHLM
It has been said by King Solomon - there is nothing new!
BRK
Lourens |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Re: Before Recorded History: The Civilizations Lost in Time
by Leemoy on Sunday, February 03, 2008 (CST)
(User Info | Send a Message) | Your site does not seem (so far) to mention that you are aware of Marca Huarca (one of many names). After stumbling on the two sites listed below, I am sure it could be the oldest 'carved rock' location anywhere on Earth - mainly kept 'safe' due to its location and relatively newess to westerners. The stories associated to visitors there is amazing. The 2 sites are:
http://www.markawasi.com/articles.html
and
http://www.jerrywills.com/A/X/Peru/marcahuasi.html
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
 |
