So, ask yourself... how can you prescribe an actual physical substance for a mental disease that has no biological source? These Psychiatrists are asking that question too...
Note: There is a difference between a psychiatrist and a psychologist. A psychologist has different capabilities for dealing with situations to certain degrees based on understanding and experience. A psychiatrist PRESCRIBES drugs for textbook (or pharma pamphelts) signs of mood swings. Human emotions are now expected to be divorced from events and everyday living realities to such a degree that mood swings can get you some very dangerous drugs that can cause long-term brain damage. Fortunately the brain can repair itself, but there is a limit to a doctors authority and that authority ends at "psychologist in training"... for life. Understanding why drugs are so popular (from PBS)... It is tempting to view this pattern as suggesting that the ADHD diagnosis provides teachers with a new technique for regaining control of the classroom in a world where many of the traditional methods of control have been eliminated. Drugs have replaced the reprimand. But it seems to me that the real problem may be that the concept of compulsory, cookie-cutter education needs rethinking. In spite of the rhetoric in schools of education about the importance of taking into account the individual needs of the children in a classroom, the current system of public education is designed to make that nearly impossible. State curriculum guidelines and requirements, coupled with further requirements from the local community, prevent teachers from making any serious effort to tailor materials and assignments to the differing abilities and dispositions of individual children. Nor is there any mechanism, of the sort one would find in a school-choice-based system of education, for parents to seek out schools tailored to the temperaments and capabilities of their children. Instead, it becomes necessary to find ways of making children able to perform in the environment as they find it. And, in late twentieth-century America, when it is difficult or inconvenient to change the environment, we don't think twice about changing the brain of the person who has to live in it. The rise in consumption of Ritalin is only one manifestation of this cultural practice. Consider Prozac or, in previous decades, Valium. None of this should be taken to suggest that there are no cases of genuine brain damage or dysfunction that require medical intervention. There have always been diseases of the brain, as of any other organ, and they should be treated as such. But difference does not automatically equal disease. Is changing the child's brain chemistry, by prescribing Ritalin-like drugs, really the most appropriate response to the child who doesn't perform well in the modern school environment? Perhaps it's time we asked ourselves whether the fact that so many children can't learn well in our schools is a reflection on the schools, not the children.Read more In this case, I can't fathom what the reasoning is: ARTICLE: Nearly 1 million children in the United States are potentially misdiagnosed with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder simply because they are the youngest -- and most immature -- in their kindergarten class, according to new research by a Michigan State University economist. From Salon: "Anatomy of an Epidemic": The hidden damage of psychiatric drugs... What about stimulants used to treat ADHD. How effective are they? These stimulants alter behavior in a way that teachers can appreciate. They subdue finger-tapping and disruptive symptoms. But in the 1990s, the National Institute of Mental Health started looking to see if things like Ritalin were benefiting kids with ADHD, and to this day they have no evidence that this drug treatment improves long-term functioning in any domain -- the ADHD symptoms, lower delinquency rates, better performance at school, et cetera. Then the NIMH studied whether these drugs provide a long-term benefit, and they found that after three years, being on medication is actually a marker of deterioration. Some patients’ growth has been stunted, their ADHD symptoms have worsened. William Pelham, from the State University of New York at Buffalo and one of the principal investigators in that study, said, "We need to confess to parents that we’ve found no benefit." None. And we think that with drugs, the benefits should outweigh the risks.What's so risky about Ritalin? For one, a significant percentage -- between 10 and 25 percent -- of kids prescribed medication for ADHD will have a manic episode or psychotic episode and deteriorate in such a way that they’re diagnosed with bipolar disorder. A similar study in 2000 on pediatric bipolar disorder reported that 84 percent of the children treated for bipolar illness -- at the Luci Bini Mood Disorders Clinic in New York -- had been previously exposed to psychiatric medications. The author, Gianni Faeda, wrote, "Strikingly, in fewer than 10 percent of the cases was diagnosis of bipolar disorder considered initially." The reality is that until children were medicated with stimulants and antidepressants, you didn't see juvenile bipolar mania.But if these studies are so groundbreaking, why have they gone unreported in the media? Because the NIMH didn’t announce it. Just as they didn’t announce the 2007 outcome study for schizophrenia patients. In that study, the recovery rate was 40 percent for those off meds, but only 5 percent for those on meds. I checked all the NIMH press releases for 2007, and found no release on this study. I found no announcement of it in any American Psychiatric Association publication or textbook. Not a single newspaper published an account of the study. And that’s because the psychiatric establishment -- the NIMH, the APA, even the National Alliance on Mental Illness, an advocacy organization -- did not put out any press release about it or try to alert the media in any way.Are you suggesting that psychiatrists are beholden to pharmaceutical companies? Not exactly, although most of the leading academic psychiatrists act as consultants, advisors and speakers for them. The problem is that psychiatry, starting in 1980 with the publication of the DSM-III, decided to tell the public that psychiatric disorders were biological ailments, and that its drugs were safe and effective treatments for those ailments. If it suddenly announces to the public that a long-term NIMH-funded study found that the 15-year recovery rate for schizophrenia patients was 40 percent for those off meds and 5 percent for those on meds, then that story begins to fall apart. By not reporting the results, psychiatry maintains the image of its drugs in the public mind, and the value of psychiatrists in today’s therapy marketplace.So do you think psychiatric drugs should be used at all? I think they should be used in a selective, cautious manner. It should be understood that they’re not fixing any chemical imbalances. And honestly, they should be used on a short-term basis. But beyond this, I think we should look at programs that are getting very good results. This is what I love about Keropudas Hospital’s program in Finland. They have 20 years of great results treating newly psychotic patients. They see if patients can get better without the use of meds, and if they can’t, then they try them. It’s a best-use model, not a no-use or anti-med model. It fits with our studies done in the 1970s that found if you use this model, you get better outcomes, and a good number of people get better and go on with their lives. Miscellaneous Information on the Side Effects of Ritalin... U.S. DEPT. OF JUSTICE: “Of particular concern is that ADHD literature prepared for public consumption does not address the potential or actual abuse of methylphenidate. Instead, methylphenidate is routinely portrayed as a benign, mild substance that is not associated with abuse or serious side effects. In reality, however, the scientific literature indicates that methylphenidate [Ritalin] shares the same abuse potential as other Schedule II stimulants. Further, case reports document that methylphenidate abuse can lead to tolerance and severe psychological dependence.” Ritalin (methylphenidate) is an amphetamine-like prescription stimulant commonly used to treat Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) in children and adults. Many think Ritalin (methylphenidate) is safe, or mild, because so many children use it. However, the government classifies the psychoactive drug with cocaine and morphine because it is highly addictive. Long-Term Effects of Ritalin: Changes in Brain Development Ongoing research shows early-life use of Ritalin (methylphenidate) has complex effects that endure later into life. A study published in Biological Psychiatry suggests that exposure of Ritalin in youth may later disrupt development of brain cells in the hippocampus, region of the brain critical to memory, spatial navigation, and behaviorial inhibition. Damage can lead to memory problems, disorientation and depression in adulthood. Ritalin is a Schedule II Substance, which means Ritalin has a "high potential for abuse" that "may lead to severe psychological or physical dependence," and the federal government sets limits on the amount of these amphetamine drugs that may be manufactured each year. A review of 20-years of scientific literature on using stimulant medications, including Ritalin, to treat children with ADD and ADHD found a consensus: there is no documented long-term benefit (academic achievement or pro-social behavior) in using psychoactive drugs.Abrupt cessation of stimulant drugs such as Ritalin can cause extreme fatigue and severe, even suicidal, depression in adult patients. The question of whether methylphenidate (Ritalin) impairs creativity in children; Ritalin may have subtle impacts on cognitive and intellectual processes. Both parents and researchers have noticed that children taking Ritalin sometimes answer questions in ways that seem overly compliant or narrow, suggesting the drug might restrict creative thinking. One study found hyperactive children taking Ritalin offered less varied answers to open-ended questions. How much do the “neuro-enhancing” drugs really help? And there's the question of what we mean by “smarter.” The psycho-stimulants help students bear down on their work, but with odd effects. One college student says he spends “too much time researching a paper rather than actually writing it.” Another student looked back at papers he'd written while on Adderall and found them verbose: “I'd produce two pages on something that could be said in a couple of sentences.” Could enhancing one kind of thinking exact a toll on others? All these questions need proper scientific answers, but for now much of the discussion is taking place furtively, among an increasing number of Americans who are performing daily experiments on their own brains (or their children's brains)A few links and videos that seal the case for, abolishing psychiatric drugs being administered to children... How drug companies' PR tactics skew the presentation of medical research When doctors are deciding which drug to prescribe a patient, the idea behind evidence-based medicine is that they inform their thinking by consulting scientific literature. To a great extent, this means relying on medical journals. The trouble is that pharmaceutical companies, who stand to win or lose large amounts of money depending on the content of journal articles, have taken a firm grip on what gets written about their drugs. That grip was strong way back in 2004, when The Lancet's chief editor Richard Horton lamented that "journals have devolved into information laundering operations for the pharmaceutical industry." It may be even tighter now. Drug companies exert this hold on knowledge through publication planning agencies, an obscure subsection of the pharmaceutical industry that has ballooned in size in recent years, and is now a key lever in the commercial machinery that gets drugs sold. The planning companies are paid to implement high-impact publication strategies for specific drugs. They target the most influential academics to act as authors, draft the articles, and ensure that these include clearly-defined branding messages and appear in the most prestigious journals. Over the past few months I've tried to find out as much about these companies as possible. I wanted to know how big this industry is, exactly how it operates, and how people in the business think about their work. It's a nervous, opaque industry, but I did find answers to some of my questions. There are now at least 250 different companies engaged in the business of planning clinical publications for the pharmaceutical industry, according to the International Society for Medical Publication Professionals, which said it has over 1000 individual members. Many firms are based in the UK and the east coast of the United States in traditional "pharma" centres like Pennsylvania and New Jersey. How flimsy research gets inferior drugs to market Some of the biggest problems in medicine don't get written about, because they don't concern eye-catching things such as one patient's valiant struggle: they're protected from public scrutiny by a wall of tediousness. Here is one problem that affects millions of people. What if we had rubbish evidence on whether hundreds of common treatments really work, simply because nobody asked the right research question? A paper published this week looks at how much evidence there was for every one of the new drugs approved by the FDA between 2000 and 2010, at the time they were approved. You might think drugs only get on the market if they've been shown to be useful. But "useful" can mean many different things: for FDA approval, for example, you only need trials to show your drug is better than a placebo. That's nice, but with most medical problems, we've already got some kind of treatment. We're not interested in whether your drug is better than nothing. We're interested in whether it's better than the best currently available option. So it turns out that, out of all the 197 new drugs approved in the past decade, only 70% had data to show they were better than other treatments (and that's after you ignore drugs for conditions where there was no current treatment).
Related Blog Post: Psychiatric Drugs For Dogs? Have Psychiatrists Gone Mad?
There are many different theories as to why the last civilization of the time of Plato's Atlantis ( which has apparently been found) ... ended. I think it was us. In other words, regular Homo Sapian Sapiens who lost control in some way and their civilization and culture collapsed. A comet wouldn't explain the rise of the sea levels for the underwater ruins that have been found in Japan and India over several centuries. (Not saying there wasn't a comet strike in North America, for example, just saying the complete disintegration of a civilization by that one comet strike GIVEN that there seems to have been civilizations after that... though the comet strike - as was explained in the PBS documentary - works for the sudden disappearance of large mammals, such as mammoths, in North America. Though small pockets may have survived upto recent times.). Also, I think Archaeologists are good at mechanical tasks (read Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance) but not theoretical tasks. So if you want an archaeologist to understand what something was made of or you want them to dig something out for you, then they can accomplish that task. Ask them to put a culture in context and they can't do that cause their training isn't in culture or civilizations. Nor do they read anything outside of their field so they can't know anything about the cultures they study as they start from assumptions which are often inaccurate (though there are exceptions in the (4000BC-2000AD period). Probably the best outline of our type of " civilization" would be Arnold Toynbees Outline of History. For example: Ask an archaeologist and they will give you a ton of different reasons for why they classify neanderthals as a different species. The major one is the head/brain size... Here is a graphic example of this theory (the one on the right is supposed to be Neanderthal)... Is there a scientific theory to explain the huge variation in skull shapes and sizes in ancient humans and modern humans (of the various races) in a simple manner?
Yes, for Neanderthals in particular but it applies to all theories connecting humans to apes and other species through skull sizes, for example: pygmies will have smaller heads than a gorilla but its doesn't mean a gorilla is smarter, ... ScienceDaily (Aug. 16, 2007) — Chance, not natural selection, best explains why the modern human skull looks so different from that of its Neanderthal relative, according to a new study led by Tim Weaver, assistant professor of anthropology at UC"For 150 years, scientists have tried to decipher why Neanderthal skulls are different from those of modern humans," Weaver said. "Most accounts have emphasized natural selection and the possible adaptive value of either Neanderthal or modern human traits. We show that instead, random changes over the past 500,000 years or so – since Neanderthals and modern humans became isolated from each other – are the best explanation for these differences."
Weaver and his colleagues compared cranial measurements of 2,524 modern human skulls and 20 Neanderthal specimens, then contrasted those results with genetic information from a separate sample of 1,056 modern humans.
The scientists concluded that Neanderthals did not develop their protruding mid-faces as an adaptation to icy Pleistocene weather or the demands of using teeth as tools, and the retracted faces of modern humans are not an adaptation for language, as some anthropologists have proposed.
Instead, random "genetic drift" is the likeliest reason for these skull differences. All ancient human classifications are based on a few fossils and the variations in skull shape and size seem to be within modern day variation of our species to some extant [there is also mention of a bone here or there which is supposed to be further evidence of an evolutionary change but the main arguments are based around the skull sizes and the size of the brain that these cranial cavities could hold] "Archaic forms of Homo sapiens first appear about 500,000 years ago. The term covers a divers...e group of skulls which have features of both Homo erectus and modern humans. The brain size is larger than erectus and smaller than most modern humans, averaging about 1200 cc, and the skull is more rounded than in erectus. The skeleton and teeth are usually less robust than erectus, but more robust than modern humans. Many still have large brow ridges and receding foreheads and chins. There is no clear dividing line between late erectus and archaic sapiens, and many fossils between 500,000 and 200,000 years ago are difficult to classify as one or the other. " Let me give you an example of how easy it is to make up theories: When you find one bone, according to statistics, you have a sample size of 1 (you can extrapolate from there the same way a fiction writer extrapolates part 7 of Star Wars, it can be done. It shouldn't be in the news section of a website). You can't make any conjectures about what a culture or society was like based on finding a bone. It's why I always say, "If you want to hear some good bullshit from someone who genuinely believes what they are saying, despite the tremendous amount of evidence proving them to be wrong, talk to an archaeologist or..." well, lets end it there shall we? Ancient dog skull unearthed in Siberia: Although the snout is similar in size to early, fully domesticated Greenland dogs from 1,000 years ago, its large teeth resemble those of 31,000 year-old wild European wolves."This indicates a dog in the very early stages of domestication, says evolutionary biologist Dr Susan Crockford, one of the authors on the study." "The wolves were not deliberately domesticated, the process of making a wolf into a dog was a natural process," explained Dr Crockford of Pacific Identifications, Canada. This indicates a dog in the very early stages of domestication, says evolutionary biologist Dr Susan Crockford, one of the authors on the study. "The wolves were not deliberately domesticated, the process of making a wolf into a dog was a natural process," explained Dr Crockford of Pacific Identifications, Canada.
Based on one bone the guy literally describes a whole lifestyle and makes a historic determination i.e. that this was the "early stages of domestication", despite the tons of evidence showing a much older origins to humanity than textbooks will admit to. I can make up theories based on one data point myself. ... Another dog found in the 'early stages of domestication' but DIDN'T make it into theories of the great Archaeologists... "An illegal wolf-dog hybrid was found roaming wild in a residential neighborhood in Brooklyn, authorities said Thursday." Police found the approximately 3-year-old, 53-pound female wearing a collar and chain near Elton Street and Vandalia Avenue in East New York on Tuesday evening, according to Richard Gentles, spokesperson for New York Animal Care and Control. "She's not a wild animal," Gentles told the New York Post. "Nobody's come forward to claim her," he added, noting that it is illegal to possess a wolf-dog hybrid in New York City. The animal, which was apparently being kept as a pet, will not be put up for adoption or be freed into the wild. She will be probably be sent to a sanctuary for unwanted wolf-dogs, a spokesman for Animal Care and Control told The Associated Press. THEORIES: 1. A person gets zapped back into the deep past with his dog and it mates with a local wold and his kid inherits one of their half-dog/half-wolf hybrid who then goes out into the forbidden forest where there is a strange device. He accidentally trips a wire on the device and the last spurt of energy it had left was used to zap his poor pet dog into the future where he got caught by authorities. 2. This wolf-dog was frozen in ice with his prehistoric owners. When they came out and discovered society had changed they bought their hunting companion a collar as it turns out he's just a pet. Then they find out you can't even keep dogs in the early stages of evolution. SO they got rid of it. My theories uses just as much evidence as a modern archaeologist uses, only I'm saying things that are absurd for an average person/thinker/observer (well, for about 95% of the US population). However, since I am only looking at one data point (i.e. one piece of evidence)... I literally have the same amount of evidence as the archaeologists who made up his random theory from finding one skull. So the key to a good story by an archaeologist is simply to keep it within the parameters of the accepted history books (which tend to originate, in some way, from Texas - though in the 1800's and early 1900's it was the British "archaeologists"). And you will be believed even if what you are saying contradicts good sense, why? Only because of the degree. Nowadays, literally anyone can become an archaeologist as the art of understanding culture & civilizations IN ANY HISTORICAL CONTEXT comes from reading AS MANY OF the best scholars on the subject that exist. Period. Not some school textbook. It actually makes more sense (as per occam's razor law) that dogs already existed alongside humans and one inter-mated with a wolf. Rather than positing evolution of an entire species based on finding one skull. Even if it wasn't for the following simple discoveries, assuming this skull wasn't an early part of dog evolution would still be absurd. But let's go on...
Here's how far back our finding of organically made clothes goes (we call them furs today and charge allot of money for them)... 'Amazing' bronze age burial site treasures on DartmoorSamantha Smith looks at what has been called the most significant historical find ever on Dartmoor - the discovery of an internationally important prehistoric burial site. The 4,000-year-old remains of the Bronze Age grave or cist, which were found in a peat bog, are set to rewrite the history books. BBC Inside Out has been given exclusive access to the results of the dig on White Horse Hill, which include an intact cremation deposit, an animal pelt, textiles, ear stud and beads. Experts say it is unusual for so many organic objects to survive for this length of time in a grave from the Bronze Age period. Dartmoor National Park Authority, the Wiltshire Conservation Service and other specialists have begun to piece together the story of this important discovery. Work has moved to laboratories where painstaking investigation is taking place which, it is hoped, will reveal more about the lives of prehistoric people on Dartmoor.
Another report... The discovery of a bronze age granite cist, or grave, in 2011 in a peat bog on White Horse Hill revealed the first organic remains found on the moor and a hoard of about 150 beads. As the National Park's archaeologists levered off the lid they were shocked by what lay beneath. The park's chief archaeologist, Jane Marchand, said: "Much to our surprise we actually found an intact cremation deposit [human bones] which is actually a burial alongside a number of grave goods. "What was so unusual was the survival of so many organic objects which you never usually get in a grave of this period, they've long since rotted away." Amongst the grave goods was an animal pelt, containing a delicate bracelet studded with tin beads, a textile fragment with detailed leather fringing and a woven bag . Here is how far back our finding of spears goes... 400,000 year old spears found in Germany!: Little is known about the organic component of Lower and Middle Palaeolithic technologies, particular with respect to wooden tools. Here I describe some wooden throwing spears about 400,000 years old that were discovered in 1995 at the Pleistocene site at Schöningen, Germany. They are thought to be the oldest complete hunting weapons so far discovered to have been used by humans. Found in association with stone tools and the butchered remains of more than ten horses, the spears strongly suggest that systematic hunting, involving foresight, planning and the use of appropriate technology, was part of the behavioural repertoire of pre-modern hominids. The use of sophisticated spears as early as the Middle Pleistocene may mean that many current theories on early human behaviour and culture must be revised. Think about it: If man was hunting 400,000 years ago... how far back could he have made friends with wolves? Isn't this evidence to support the simpler theory that this ancient skull was a chance mating between already present species of dog and wolf a simpler theory? Afterall, to go with the mainstream theory you not only have to use just one skull as your sample size you have to ignore a ton of physical evidence. Archaeology as a degree in a university should be banned. With the above information in hand lets look again at the Neanderthal skull that I began this post with... What would a Neanderthal look like today?
(Notice the variation in skull shape & size)
Note: The problem of Old Testament VS New Testament in US Question by Colbert: 'How can the caves be 32,000 years old when the world is only 6,000 years old?' Answer: Colbert is referring to the dating system derived from the Gregorian calander and the Genesis version of creation (i.e. everything was created in 6 days and the 7th day God rested). The problem here can be solved from the New Testament ... 2 Peter 3:8 (KJV 1900) 8 - "But, beloved, be not ignorant of this one thing, that one day is with the Lord as a thousand years, and a thousand years as one day." I.e. To say the earth was created in a 'day' is a metaphor. In other words , if you must be literal, it means 'one unit of time'... this leads to the possibility that the big bang theory is mythological projection (looking for ways to validate your childhood beliefs in different ways - such as the modernly accepted "scientific method" - often implied but rarely, if ever - or so it seems - used.) Underwater Ruin: Estimated Date Of Creation... 10,000 BC! The following is an abstract of a study done by Japanese scientists about an underwater structure off the coast of Japan followed by hsome pictures that show that these structures are man made (the extract below indicates that these structures date back to at least 10,000 years ago, i.e. 8,000 BC). Abstract;Submarine research surveys using SCUBA and sonic surveys reveal detailed topography similar to submarine, pyramidal features looking like a stepped pyramid off Yonaguni in Okinawa, Japan. The site is called Iseki Point(ruins site) as a leisure diving spot. Yonaguni Submarine Pyramid(YSP) is the major structure that stands under approximately 25 meters of ocean. Essentially, it has a cliff face like the side of a stepped pyramid, and dimensions of about 290m(length) by 120m(width) by 26m(height). Flat terraces, straight walls and its surface structure of walls with scars of tool marks driven in by a wedge on the structure are identified to be artificially fabricated. Appearance and size of YSP are similar to the biggest, ancient castles such as Shuri and Nakagusuku Castles in Okinawa Island, where they are called 'gusuku'. Roads associated with drainage canals were recognized, surrounding YSP, and that a retaining wall was found along a road. The southern point of the wall is composed of huge rock fragments. Stone tools and other artifacts were discovered from the sea bottom. Those evidence strongly shows that the YSP has not been manufactured by nature. It is identifie to be man-made. The formation age is estimated to be about 10,000 years ago based on 14C and 10Be age determinations. (author abst.) "Very deep." Wrote Thomas Mann at the opening of his mythologically conceived tetralogy, Joseph and His Brothers. "is the well of the past. Should we not call it bottomless?" And he then observed: "The deeper we sound, the further down into the lower world of the past we probe and press, the more do we find that the earliest foundations of humanity, its history and culture, reveal themselves unfathomable." Primitive Mythology by Joseph Campbell page 5 With this quote Joseph Campbell began his study in mythology. What I want to examine in this post is just how far back we can trace civilization, cities or even just large communities. During Joseph Campbell’s time certain excavations (such as Catalhoyuk) had just been uncovered which was beginning to push back the horizon of when our civilization actually began. Since the discoveries were made after he had finished his books he wrote about these recent archeological finds in his forward to the book on Primitive Mythology and pointed out how these discoveries had pushed back the timelines he had outlined in this book. In addition to this, other fascinating discoveries have completely destroyed the original timeline of civilizational development outlined in Campbell’s early overview. However, this was something he expected as he noted, "there will, no doubt, be as many astonishing disclosures during the seventies and eighties as there were in the decade of the sixties."(Forward from Primitive Mythology) With the discovery of Catalhoyuk we now have evidence of an established villages cluster of at least 10,000 people living together over hundreds of years. The village life is firmly established around 7,500 B.C. So this spreads out the cradle of civilization from the fertile crescent more towards Central Asia and it also pushes back the dates of the earliest cities. The first examples of developed pottery is actually found (rather suddenly) in catalhoyuk which suggests that its was a growing and innovative society. With the Mesopotamian civilization firmly established in textbooks as the source of civilization everyone has heard of the later cities of Babylon and Egypt. The newer archeological finds, such as Catalhoyuk from the 1960's, haven't quite made it into school or college textbooks. However, museums seem to be catching up to the discoveries of the last century. Next is a group of cities made of brick which seem to have materialized from nowhere; "The so-called Harappa stage of the great cities of Mohenjo-daro, Chanhu-daro, and Harappa (c. 2500-1200/1000 B.C), which bursts abruptly into view, without preparation, already fully formed and showing many completely obvious signs of inspiration from the earlier high centers of the West (i.e. fertile crescent), yet undeniable signs, also, of a native Indian tradition – this too already well developed. As professor W. Norman Brown has suggested, a native Indian center (i.e., a mythogenetic zone) somewhere either in the south or in the Ganges-Jumna area would seem to be indicated, where the characteristically Indian traits, unknown at this time farther west, must have come into form." [Ibid - Page 435] Other interesting facts about the cities of Mohenjodaro and Harappa is that the bricks used in making them are uniform, i.e. they had a system to measure and weigh stuff accurately. They had their own sewage system, public baths and the structure of the architecture suggest an egalitarian society, but there are no signs of architectural development. That means these cities arrived fully developed and then went into decline. There are no in-between cities or towns where the Mohenjodaro/Happan style of architecture is first used. In other words, these are colonies or offshoots from some main civilization which was, possibly, already in decline as the architecture quality went down over time later appearing fully developed. Some off these potential "root cities" probably lie beneath the Indian Ocean. Such as this one...
"The carbon dating of 7500 BC obtained for the wooden piece recovered from the site changes the earlier held view that the first cities appeared in the Sumer Valley [in Mesopotamia] around 3000 BC," said B Sasisekaran of India's National Science Academy.The images gathered over the past six months led to a surprising discovery - a series of well-defined geometric formations were clearly seen, spread irregularly across a nine-kilometre (five-mile) stretch, a little beneath the sea bed."
Some of them closely resemble an acropolis - or great bath - known to be characteristic of the Harappan civilisation.
The Gulf of Cambay is one of the largest tidal areas in the world - with a current of very high velocity - and so it is conceivable that the area may well have submerged an entire ancient settlement, Mr Ravindran said to the BBC.
I have covered a bunch of evidence of underwater structures in an earlier post called Underwater Ruins. It also has a video of an Indian Archeologist who finds evidence of some underwater structures and links it to the Mahabharata which describes a city that was submerged in some long ago time with vibrant images of life in the city as well as some romanticized images of a city of gold. You don't believe there could be buried underwater cities off the coast of India? Then you may not have heard of the recently disovered anient carvings...
Take a look at these amazing pillars that were recently uncovered just short distance from Catalhoyuk called Gobekli Tepe; [Images of Gobekli Tepe and article quotes are from here] Six miles from Urfa, an ancient city in southeastern Turkey, Klaus Schmidt has made one of the most startling archaeological discoveries of our time: massive carved stones about 11,000 years old, crafted and arranged by prehistoric people who had not yet developed metal tools or even pottery. The megaliths predate Stonehenge by some 6,000 years.
Background (news report related to the neurological lesson from the 1970's, i.e. habits form in about 3-4 weeks) : From The BBC: The brain's wiring diagram is not like that of an electronic device which is fixed. It is thought that changes occur after each experience, and so each person's brain map is different - an ever changing record of who we are and what we have done.
"Some of the connections between different parts of the brain might be different for people with different characters and abilities, so for example there's one connection we already know about in people who like taking risks and (a different one) for people who like playing it safe.
"So we'll be able to tell the type of people who like skydiving and who would rather watch TV from their brain scans. The idea is that depending on what we focus on develops those parts off the brain... so when we have enough scans we should, generally speaking, be able to tell a person who has race car driving experience VS one who has only driven a bicycle. Once upon a time we believed that IQ was set for life. We believed that your brain, though it developed till a certain age, it ceased to develop after we reached adulthood. Yet studies with stroke patients (an extreme example) has shown that the brain CAN repair itself. In the following talk you will see evidence of how the brain can grow new areas in response to a skill. This is called "brain plasticity": Michael Merzenich: Growing evidence of brain plasticityMichael Merzenich studies neuroplasticity -- the brain's powerful ability to change itself and adapt -- and ways we might make use of that plasticity to heal injured brains and enhance the skills in healthy ones.Neuroscientist Michael Merzenich looks at one of the secrets of the brain's incredible power: its ability to actively re-wire itself. He's researching ways to harness the brain's plasticity to enhance our skills and recover lost function. Notice at 9 minutes how when a monkey learns to use a tool to get food he develops new areas of/in the brain, same thing happens when a kid learns language i.e. massive brain change This means that neuronal development and restructuring is possible with training. Since lack of brain exercise can increase the "noise" in your brain and make it less efficient over time, a type of brain gym for older people is likely in the future as part of daily activities. Brain Plasticity--An Overview "What is brain plasticity? Does it mean that our brains are made of plastic? Of course not. Plasticity, or neuroplasticity, describes how experiences reorganize neural pathways in the brain. Long lasting functional changes in the brain occur when we learn new things or memorize new information. These changes in neural connections are what we call neuroplasticity.
To illustrate the concept of plasticity, imagine the film of a camera. Pretend that the film represents your brain. Now imagine using the camera to take a picture of a tree. When a picture is taken, the film is exposed to new information -- that of the image of a tree. In order for the image to be retained, the film must react to the light and ?change? to record the image of the tree. Similarly, in order for new knowledge to be retained in memory, changes in the brain representing the new knowledge must occur.
To illustrate plasticity in another way, imagine making an impression of a coin in a lump of clay. In order for the impression of the coin to appear in the clay, changes must occur in the clay -- the shape of the clay changes as the coin is pressed into the clay. Similarly, the neural circuitry in the brain must reorganize in response to experience or sensory stimulation." This means that the way you can build your muscles is the same way that you can build your brain i.e. with exercise. Here is an introduction to neuroscience for beginners by Win Wenger PhD. Mature Learners Other things equal: the older you are, the more readily you should be able to learn. This is because human learning is by association. We make sense of current stimuli by relating them to previous experience. The older you are, the more experiences and the more aspects of more experiences you have ready to tie in with incoming new experiences, to recognize them in terms of previous concepts and experiences and to make sense of them.
You are not about to run out of memory capacity, either, in this lifetime or in a thousand lifetimes. You have more different possible connections available in your brain than there are atoms in the universe.
Alas, other things are not equal.
One of the regards in which they are not equal, is in the millions upon millions of brain cells you’ve allowed to languish unstimulated and unexercised, eventually to die, compared with the number of cells you’ve developed and the number of cells you’ve replaced.
Yet you know that only a tiny percentage of your physical brain is developed. So much is this the case that even when you are an octogenarian you could, with a little effort and direction, have several times more of your brain developed, online and firing, than when you were a youth!
This aspect, so counter to popular expectations of inevitable dwindling into senility, deserves at least two sidenotes: - There is science behind the folklore you‘ve heard so often - to the effect that only 5-10% of the physical brain is developed. It always helps to go back to original sources and this instance is certainly a good example of this principle. Going back to original sources is what so many leaders of workshops in creativity and/or self-development failed to do, passing along instead what became mere folklore in this context. Folklore which is now being shrugged aside AS mere folklore, so that people don’t have to think about the enormous implications. A look at this 5-10% figure, and how that was arrived at, is pretty instructive. J.Z. Young (A Model of the Brain. Oxford Univ. Press, 1964) was the one who sampled brain cells in various parts of the brain, and who literally counted what proportion of the cells in his samples were developed compared with how many were not developed...
...It IS true that only 5-10% of the cells in the human brain are developed at all. That part of his findings was correct. It is NOT true, however, that 5-10% or even 1% of the brain is developed. Consider....
...A neuron is considered developed if it has developed an insulating myelin sheath and has synaptically linked in to other neurons. That was what Young was counting. The method made no allowance for the DEGREE of development. Neurons have been counted with upward of 60,000 synaptic connections with other neurons - but most of the developed neurons in your brain or mine have only a dozen or so such connections. Factor together the percentage of cells developed with their degree of development, and the brain clearly is not 5% or so developed - but more like one ten-thousandths of one percent developed! In other words, there is some bit of room for improvement.
- Besides stimulus and feedback, a primary factor driving the percentage and degree of development in the brain is the amount of circulation reaching it. A substantial portion of the people who have been diagnosed with Alzheimer's, when examined turn out instead to have been launched into an Alzheimer’s-like spiral dwindling of their faculties through a failure of circulation in key areas of their brain, or even more frequently an onset of anemia, conditions for which some other treatments could be more appropriate than some of the treatments which they are receiving as misdiagnosed Alzheimer's victims. Very occasionally, reports have surfaced of restoration of limb function after paralyzing spinal chord injury, after extra arterial circulation has been routed through the site of injury for some while. In any event it stands to reason that if one improves the physical circulation of oxygen, energy, food energy and nutrition TO the brain and removal of fatigue products and toxic wastes FROM the brain, the physical condition and functioning of the brain will improve.
...HOW does one improve circulation to the brain? Come now: even if you’ve not looked into this topic previously, you can probably brainstorm a half dozen or more ways, half of which would successfully work. However, unless you’ve read our work on this point, the most powerful of all known ways probably would not have made it into your brainstormed list of methods for improving circulation to the brain. That most powerful way is held-breath underwater swimming—please see Two GUARANTEED Ways to Profoundly Improve Your Intelligence; "Did You Know? A Few Specific Points" (Winsights No. 77); and Breathing and Personality Traits: A Hypothesis (Winsights No. 61)—that combines the CO2-Carotid Effect (the more carbon di-oxide, within reason, that you have conserved in your bloodstream, the wider the Carotid arteries open to allow more circulation through to the brain) with the Mammalian Diving Response (we mammals have a reflex which powerfully sends more blood circulating to the brain and internal organs when we are under water). Also improved by this held-breath underwater swimming is one’s span of attention, allowing one to better see relationships and make sense of things.
Some people still are caught up in the old belief that brain function and intelligence are unchangeable quantities, fixed at or near birth, that one is pretty well stuck for life with the level of intelligence he was born with - or with the lack thereof. Clinicians have no trouble with recognizing trauma and processes which reduce intelligence, but cling to the antique conviction that nothing can increase it. Yet the subject of brain plasticity has become a frequent object of published scientific research. The phenomenon of brain plasticity: the tendency of the brain (which is, indeed our primary organ for adapting!) to change its circuitry, its structure, its shape, its size, even its mass, to better handle the levels and types of information it has been coping with over the previous year or so. Google for “brain plasticity,” sample the many studies which come up, and draw your own conclusions about the supposedly fixed nature of one’s intelligence.
The last few years in brain research have seen the discovery that the brain, all the time, is replacing some of its old cells with new neurons, and that the quality, speed and focus of this process is susceptible to many different kinds of influences as to stimulus and feedback, circulation, nutrition, select chemicals, and the “cognitive program” running in your necktop computer.
Educators in recent years have come to emphasize the value of feeding experience into a young child’s growing brain. They have described the condition of having a small amount of experience providing little “surface area” to which incoming new experiences can be linked and associated and made sense of - hence the desirability of enriching experience in a young child’s growing brain so that he instead has many ways to attach to and associate his ongoing new inputs. The case for this model is persuasive except for one thing:
- The observed phenomenon of the slowing of one’s learning with age.
I believe the “sticky surface area” model of associative learning is correct, and that means that our learning SHOULD become much easier and faster as we grow older. What more than offsets this positive tendency, however, is what we allow to happen to our brains as we grow older. We compound this physiological deterioration by neglecting entire sectors of brain function and types of thinking and learning and perceiving which we had as children and which were an important part of our intellectual performance and growth. These neglected sectors DE-myelinate and eventually die out of our brains.
I wonder what wonderful ranges of perception, understanding and experience could await us if we did not allow these losses or even reversed them, and the expanded “sticky surface area” of our mature lifetime-accumulated experience continued to make sense of our ongoing world unabated..... Comments to:
Win Wenger Intelligence Enhancement? This is an introduction to how you can increase your intelligence using what you have learned about brain plasticity... Pole-Bridging in the Brain:Why and how it builds intelligence
by Win Wenger, Ph.D. The key to building intelligence is to get widely different, separate regions of the brain to work more closely together. John Ertl's EEG brainwave analyzer, the most purely physiological "I.Q." test ever devised, found that intelligence is usually high when left and right sides have tightly knit phase relationships, low when they don't. Later evidence also suggests that the same is true for phase relationships (how quick an interval between the time one side is stimulated and the other side shows response) for front and back of the brain as well. How to get different regions of the brain into such closer phase relationships? Consider that most of our learning and development depends upon our sensory feedback upon our own actions. Now let's look at the speed of that feedback —
External/Internal Through millions of years of our mostly challenging history as a species, and before, we've had to be able to respond very quickly to external sensory information. Tiger! — quicker than thought we're running toward the campfire or shelter or grabbing a weapon. But internal perceptions — adjusting a cramped position, say, or adjusting for warming or cooling of the day, or developing a gradual feeling about a situation... These internal sensory perceptions have not been subjected to the same pressures for speed as have our external perceptions. Processing our feelings, say, takes a while. So the feedback we get on our own externally expressed actions is immediate. Our internal awarenesses are less immediate. To set up a closer phase relationship between two or more very different, remote regions of the brain, take the characteristic activity of each of those parts of the brain and express those activities externally. Coordinating these with immediate sensory feedback will force those regions of the brain into a much closer phase relationship. Practice — exercise of that closer relationship — builds intelligence. How Closer Phase Relationships Mean Higher Intelligence Processing a stimulus or sensory datum that has come into one part of the brain — much rides with how quickly other parts of the brain also get in on the act. If phase relationships are slack, the first region of the brain has done with it before the others receive it, so what they receive is a message of "job done, go back to sleep." If other regions receive the stimulus or datum faster than the first part of the brain can finish it, they get more involved with it. The person with close phase relationships in his brain characteristically will see more aspects to things, notice more, get more out of each experience because more of his brain is actively involved with it. Characteristically, powerful pole-bridging activities include: We also propose specific Pole-Bridging methods to rehabilitate brain-injured patients and stroke victims. Please see Winsights No. 67, "Proposal for Rehabilitation of Stroke Patients" — especially the discussion in the section titled 'Integration of Brain Functions' and the section titled, 'Pole-Bridging Around Specific Injury Sites in the Brain.'
Comments to:
Win Wenger Short extract from another article about how you can increase your IQ by learning how to hear pitch... Another Brain-Boost through Music Does it strengthen your intellect to hear better the pitch and tone of musical notes? If so, what can you do about it? And what does it mean for our schools? At Dusseldorf, Germany, in 1994, Gottfried Schlaug, Lutz Jancke, Yanxiong Huang and Helmuth Steinmetz established that the main part of our brain for understanding nuances of word-meaning, the left plenum temporales, in people with perfect musical pitch is double the physical size of the same organ in people without perfect musical pitch! — (Science, Feb. 3, 1995, vol. 267, 699-701.) Related links on my blogs explaining "intelligence" in more detail: Male vs. Female Brains - Brain Differences and What We Can Learn from Them Learning and Education With The 'Socratic Method' Book Review: What Is Intelligence? - The Flyn Effect (Studies showing that culture creates it's own brain/intelligence/IQ processing speed - This means that people of other races will automatically adjust to any dominate alpha culture over time and match what that particular culture considers to be "intelligent" (IQ tests measure a small band of intelligence that the Rain Man would have scored wonderfully on. Strange but true.)
Guns, Germs & Steel (to understand distribution of wealth & it's lack of relationship to race/ethnicity) - Alternative site Guns, Germs & Steel 1 and Guns, Germs & Steel 2.
First published by me here.
Could Speedy Gonzales be a caricature of a real life hero who was probably very unpopular in the US even upto the times in which these cartoons were made?
Notice how a Mexican Revolutionary General was robbing trains (as it is, non-whites were not appreciated in the South - especially upto the 1960's). From Wikipedia: in 1916, U.S. Army General John J. Pershing tried unsuccessfully to capture Villa in a nine-month pursuit that ended when the United States entered into World War I More complete extract from Wikipedia: José Doroteo Arango Arámbula (5 June 1878 – 20 July 1923) – better known by his pseudonym Francisco Villa or his nickname Pancho Villa – was one of the most prominentMexican Revolutionary generals.
As commander of the División del Norte (Division of the North), he was the veritable caudillo of the northern Mexican state of Chihuahua which, given its size, mineral wealth, and proximity to the United States of America, provided him with extensive resources. Villa was also provisionalGovernor of Chihuahua in 1913 and 1914. Although he was prevented from being accepted into the "panteón" of national heroes until some 20 years after his death, today his memory is honored by Mexicans. In addition, numerous streets and neighborhoods in Mexico are named in his honor.
Villa and his supporters seized hacienda land for distribution to peasants and soldiers. Herobbed and commandeered trains, and, like the other revolutionary generals, printed fiat moneyto pay for his cause. Villa's men and supporters became known as Villistas during the revolution from 1910 to roughly 1920.
Villa's dominance in northern Mexico was broken in 1915 through a series of defeats he suffered at Celaya and Agua Prieta at the hands of Álvaro Obregón and Plutarco Elías Calles. After Villa's famous raid on Columbus, New Mexico in 1916, U.S. Army General John J. Pershingtried unsuccessfully to capture Villa in a nine-month pursuit that ended when the United States entered into World War I and Pershing was called back. Villa retired in 1920 and was given a large estate which he turned into a "military colony" for his former soldiers. In 1923, he decided to re-involve himself in Mexican politics and as a result was assassinated, most likely on the orders of Obregón.
This is the standard description for this cartoon from a movie database: From IMDB:
Speedy Gonzales is a cartoon character from the Looney Tunes. He is a Mexican mouse.
He first appeared in the cartoon "Cat-Tails for Two".
He has super-speed, being "the fastest mouse in all Mexico".
He uses his speed and intelligence to help his fellow mice when they are in trouble. His enemies are Sylvester the Cat (who wants to eat them all) and Daffy Duck (who wants to con them or drive them out of their land).
He is known for his catchphrase "¡Andale andale andale, ARRIBA YEEEHAAAA!!!!!!!!"
In "Looney Tunes: Back in Action", he appears in the Warner Bros studios, whining about how he is considered to be politically incorrect.
In the television series "Tiny Toons", we see his nephew, Sneezy Gonzales, who has super-strong sneezes.
In the early part of the last century there was a boy named William James Sidis who became known as a child prodigy. He entered Harvard at age 11 (as they wouldn't let him in when he was ready - at age 9) and everyone expected him to do big things. And he did. In the world of ideas. He was the first to predict the existence of black holes and wrote many books on many different topics. How could Native American perspectives influence the early American pioneers? The pioneers, or the people who moved west, always contained individuals who kept to themselves and made friends with the natives. They traded and made friends with many different tribes. Besides goods such as furs that these individuals would get from the natives, they also learnt their ways. These types of people are represented in the western novels written by Louis La'more. The immigrants who came to settle and farm the land hated the natives. For territorial as well as cultural reasons. However, they respected the mountain men. Since all the immigrants were new to this strange and untamed land they had to develop new ways of living to deal with this. Ways that were different from their original land. They copied the very self assured and well established mountain men and traders. Do you see the chain? Since these mountain men learnt from the natives and the new immigrants learnt from the mountain men, the ideas being absorbed by the new people to this land (and the founding fathers) were from the people that most considered to be ‘savages’. In fact, the cowboy gunslinger is the western version of a native american warrior. Both are calm upto the very moment of battle. When they stike it’s sudden and decisive. Both have a code of honor. The perfect example for this kind of man, which is honored in American society (and rightly so) can be seen in the Louis La'more books. Here are some quotes by Native Americans that exemplify their steadfast perspective on individuality, freedom and equality - concepts as much a part of America and it's founding fathers, as it once was a part of the Natives who lived there. Notice the continuity in perspectives from Native Americans to modern Americans (the other side of the American mind set is inherited from the Old World and is beyond the scope of this post). All birds, even those of the same species, are not alike, and it is the same with animals and with human beings. The reason Wakan Tanka does not make two birds, or animals, or human beings exactly alike is because each is placed here by WakanTanka to be an independent individuality and to rely upon itself. - Shooter Teton Sioux If the white man wants to live in peace with the Indian, he can live in peace.....Treat all men alike. Give them all the same law. Give them all an even chance to live and grow. All men were made by the same Great Spirit Chief. They are all brothers. The Earth is the mother of all people, and all people should have equal rights upon it.......Let me be a free man, free to travel, free to stop, free to work, free to trade....where I choose my own teachers, free to follow the religion of my fathers, free to think and talk and act for myself, and I will obey every law, or submit to the penalty. - Chief Joseph, Nez Perce I do not think the measure of a civilization is how tall its buildings of concrete are,
But rather how well its people have learned to relate to their environment and fellow man. - Sun Bear of the Chippewa Tribe All birds, even those of the same species, are not alike, and it is the same with animals and with human beings. The reason Wakan Tanka does not make two birds, or animals, or human beings exactly alike is because each is placed here by WakanTanka to be an independent individuality and to rely upon itself. - Shooter Teton Sioux When a child my mother taught me the legends of our people; taught me of the sun and sky, the moon and stars, the clouds and storms. She also taught me to kneel and pray to Usen for strength, health, wisdom, and protection. We never prayed against any person, but if we had aught against any individual we ourselves took vengeance. We were taught that Usen does not care for the petty quarrels of men. - Geronimo [Goyathlay], Chiracahua Apache Out of the Indian approach to life there came a great freedom, an intense and absorbing respect for life, enriching faith in a Supreme Power, and principles of truth, honesty, generosity, equity, and brotherhood as a guide to mundane relations. - Luther Standing Bear, Oglala Sioux Chief If you see no reason for giving thanks, the fault lies in yourself. - Minquass Sharing and giving are the ways of God. – Sauk Man's law changes with his understanding of man. Only the laws of the spirit remain always the same.- Crow Man has responsibility, not power. - Tuscarora Do not judge your neighbor until you walk two moons in his moccasins. - Cheyenne Force, no matter how concealed, begets resistance. - Lakota
This teaching is brought to you by... Flintism: New Political Party Based on "The Book Of Flint"
"Long ago he had heard of an old Chinese saying to the effect that any man who could concentrate for as much as three minutes on any given problem could rule the world. The thought had remained in his mind, and he had cultivated the ability to apply all his intelligence to any given situation. To close out everything from his mind but one idea to be considered had taken long practice, but much of his success had been due to that ability to concentrate, to formulate the problem, to bring to it all the information and knowledge he had, and to reach a decision." The Book of Flint Page 73 Training for attaining focus and concentration of Flint...Prep:Basic breathing meditation tips -Inhale and exhale slowly, taking full deep breaths. -Keep your attention only on your breathing. Be aware of each inhale and exhale. -If you notice your mind drifting (i.e. if you start thinking about something) then just return your attention back to your breathing. It doesn’t matter if your mind wanders as long you bring your attention back to your breathing as soon as you notice your attention is not solely on your breathing. -Do this for 5-15 minutes. This meditation is very simple yet very powerful. Studies have shown that this simple form of meditation increases your brain size in areas such as attention and memory. The following extract is from an article from Time Magazine: "Everyone around the water cooler knows that meditation reduces stress. But with the aid of advanced brainscanning technology, researchers are beginning to show that meditation directly affects the function and structure of the brain, changing it in ways that appear to increase attention span, sharpen focus and improve memory." from Time Magazine's article " How To Get Smarter One Breath At A Time" This next meditation technique is more difficult and is considered to be an advanced technique designed to increase your ability to concentrate on a problem for 3 minutes... This technique is from the ancient yogis(who were in the Himalayas and so thier teachings exist on both sides of the great divide)... it’s called dhyana. It involves focusing your mind on an object or image without distraction. In other words, the goal of this meditation practice is to focus unwaveringly on your chosen object/image. Nothing should be able to distract your mind. An accomplished yogi is expected to be able to hold his/her concentration on an object for several hours at a time. To get to a point where you can practice dhyana meditation for even a short while requires mastering the simple breathing meditation first. If you can focus on your breathing – without distraction – for over 5-10 minutes then you are ready to practice dhyana for at least a few minutes a day. Other Satirical Posts In This Series:
Lesson 2
Lesson 3
The gambler knew the story of the gunfight at The Crossing, but there was nothing to connect the youngster of that shooting with the immaculate New York financier.
The gambler had recieved his first hint that all was not as he had expected during the early part of the game. Kettleman played shrewdly and with icy control, and the gambler quickly grasped that he himself was being studied with cool calculated interest. As part of his scheme, the gambler delibertaley invited an accusation of cheating whenever a showdown developed between Kettleman and himself, but Kettleman ignored the opportunity, and the gambler grew worried.
Nothing was going as planned, and he began to realize that his opponent knew what he was trying to do, and was deliberately avoiding it. So anxious was he to lead Kettleman into an argument that his mind was not on the game, and suddenly he lost a large pot.
Suddenly, he looked at the table and realized that he himself had been cheated, with coolness and effontery. He had been stripped of more than six thousand dollars with the skill of a professional. His eyes lifted to Kettleman's.
"You have been looking for trouble," Kettleman said quietly. "I am offering it to you."
The gambler was nervous. He touched his toungue to his lips and felt the sweat beading his forehead.
"You are looking for trouble," Kettleman said. "Why?"
There was no one close by. "I am going to kill you," the gambler said.
"If you wish to leave the game, we can divide the pot, and I will forget what you have said."
It was there then - a way out. As a gambler he knew he should take it, but gambling was only a part of his business and he had his pride.
"I cannot I have been paid."
"There are other ways to make a living and you have chosen the wrong one. I am offering you your last chance. Get out."
"I gave my word. I took their money."
Kettleman had seemed almost negligent. "When you are ready, then."
The gambler stepped back quickly, overturning his chair. "If you say I cheat," he said loudly, "you are a liar!" And he grasped his gun.
Everybody saw him grasp the gun, everybody saw him start to draw it, and then he started coughing and there was blood on his shirt, blood dribbling down his chin, and on his face the realization of death.
Kettleman leaned over him. He looked down at the gambler and knew this man was only a step away from the man he was himself. "I didn't want to kill you," he said. "Who hired you?"
"Your wife," the gambler said. "And her father."
Kettleman realized then that he had known something like this would happen. He started to rise but the gambler caught his wrist. "I must know. Who are you?"
Kettleman hesitated. For the first time since that night he spoke of it. "I was the kid at The Crossing.
"God!" The gambler was excited. He started to rise, began to speak, and then he died. Since death is certain, avoiding the thought of Death, makes you avoid Life itself (as they are two sides of the same coin)...
The following is an extract from this page. As a global culture we fix ourselves in 'palaces' of what is familiar and secure. We sense there is more to life than trying to gratify our desires and defend ourselves from fear. Yet we don’t know how to get their and this leads to even more activities of distraction. For Example; We all know that the only certainty in life is death. If we keep the inevitability of death on our minds many things we worry about will no longer matter. Instead we try to avoid that thought at all costs to the point where when we encounter death we are shocked and terrified and say, 'his/her time came early'. There is no such thing. Without the perspective of our death how can we possibly make short or long term decisions that aren’t influenced by drowning ourselves in momentary pleasures?
"Since no one knows the future,
who can tell him what is to come?
No man has power over his spirit to retain it,
so no one has power over the day of his death."
Ecclesiastes 8:7-8:8 Death is always there waiting for you, every day of your life. It is sad, depressing, part of the sorrow of life, but it is not 'early'. What is life? It is the flash of a firefly in the night. It is the breath of a buffalo in the wintertime. It is the little shadow which runs across the grass and loses itself in the sunset. - Blackfoot
Since death is certain, avoiding it makes you avoid life itself. Think about it. How do you know that someone is alive? By the simple fact that he/she is not dead. In other words, death defines life. Without death we would not know what life is. So by avoiding the acceptance of death we become escapists of life itself. Chasing momentary pleasures to cloud our awareness and our fears. If you are constantly making life to be some perfect image to be attained at some point in the future, you will ALWAYS be chasing that image. If you cannot be content now you will never be content as there will always be something else you 'need' before you can be happy. A bigger car, a bigger house, a plane? This will give a rush of excitement followed by boredom with your new toy and craving for the next one. This doesn't mean you shouldn't enjoy expensive things just that you should be happy first or nothing you get will ever satisfy you. (“Be bountiful and multiply”) If you jump from one emotion to another, blindly avoiding pain and seeking pleasure with no awareness or separation from your emotions THEN your emotions will control you. You will be a slave to your desire. Anyone who knows your desires can control you.
"All man's efforts are for his mouth,
yet his appetite is never satisfied."
Ecclesiastes 6:7 Laziness brings on deep sleep,
And the shiftless man goes hungry.
Proverbs 19:15
"The wise man has eyes in his head,
while the fool walks in the darkness."
Ecclesiastes 6:7 Learning to distance yourself from your roles... According to this book, the first step out: Become aware of every emotion you have as you experience it. Don't try to stop the emotion but learn to distance yourself from it, pain, sorrow or joy. Keep a part of yourself that is always observing yourself and your emotions.
By these definitions awakening is a process of building and maintaining the discipline of awareness. The following cartoon, a part of my Bugs Collection on my Instant Stress Management website, can be a helpful illustration of how getting involved in your roles can be kinda like a deep form of self-hypnosis...
It is given to few people in this world to disappear twice but, as he had succeeded once, the man known as James T. Kettleman was about to make his second attempt.
The country outside was invisible. The windows had steamed over, and the train moved as if through an endless tunnel. To Kettleman it did not matter, for he knew every foot of this roadbed and the surrounding country from descriptions which has come to his desk in New York.
The high plain was broken at intervals with long ridges and outcroppings of lava, and in the mountains there was marketable timber. When he began planning his second dissapearance, Kettleman had gone over all available reports and maps.
They were climbing steadily. Ahead were high mesas, more lava, and occasional ruins. Soon the train would slow for a long, steep grade. When that time came he would step off the train into the darkness.
His destination was familiar only from the description given him fifteen years ago, over a campfire, by a man who had often used the place for a hideout. When he left the train he would return to the oblivion from which he emerged fifteen years earlier.
Then James T. Kettleman would cease to exist.
In ancient India a concept developed called ' Maya' which means illusion. Since the world is considered impermanent and constantly changing - and you can interpret it in many ways with your mind - it is considered to be an illusion. Thus a common, though ancient, psychological perspective on 'attachment': if you hold on to it as your psychological/mental foundation, you are holding on to something that will dissolve away - eventually - so you are holding on to something which is inherently unstable. Note: The ancient idea of the world/universe as an 'illusion' has re-emerged in modern physics as the idea of the world and universe as a hologram from string theory (approx 5 minutes into following video).... Video Interview: Brian Greene: Brian Greene says math is the gateway to reality and calls Stephen a bag of particles governed by the laws of physics. (05:58)[Also read about the movie Mindwalk for perspectives on physics. Watch it 3 times if possible]To put it in other words; you are not the person you were a year ago. You know this. You can probably see the ways in which you've changed and grown over the last year. You probably see the world in a different way then you did a year ago (or ten years ago). Since you see the world differently, you have a different image of yourself as well. You define yourself differently than you did 10 years ago. What you are capable of, what you can do, who you are, all these definitions tend to change for every person - given enough time. The ancient philosophers noticed that as soon as you imagine a event happening to you - or your role in any situation - you first have to place yourself in it (i.e. you have to imagine your role or character) then you decide what to do or how to feel (this all tends to happen very fast for most events). In other words, every time you imagine yourself or a situation that you are in you are, in a sense, recreating yourself. Scientific American Mind magazine in an interview with the Nobel laureate Neuroscientist Eric Kandel (click here to read article)Mind: We tend to think of memory as a kind of library that holds a record of events and
facts that can be retrieved as needed. Is this an accurate metaphor?
Kandel: No, memory is not like that at all. Human memory reinvents itself all the time. Every time you remember something, you modify it a little bit, in part dependent on the context in which you recall it. That is because the brain's storage is not as exact as written text. It is always a mixture of many facades of the past event: images, pictures, feelings, words, facts and fiction-a "re-collection" in the true sense.Modern nuero-science agrees with the Buddhist idea of an impermanent self. As Eric Kandel points out that, " Every time you remember something, you modify it a little bit, in part dependent on the context in which you recall it." In other words you recreate your image of yourself to fit the new situation. If the self was something permanent and real, then your image of yourself would always remain the same. The fact that you can consciously or unconsciously change your image of yourself and react to situations in a new way - or just create a new you - proves that the self is something you make up as part of living in society. What does this mean?This means that you are not limited to being any particular 'self' or person. If you feel like you have low self-esteem you can change that self. If you feel like you are not comfortable is social situations, you can change that image too. Any limiting image you have of yourself can be changed as you create your 'self' or how you want to be.
The Solstice and equinox occurs twice a year. Although there are many cultures in our history that celebrate religious festivals on this day, the equinox itself just means that the day and night are equally long. Solstice in the summer means extra long day in the Northern Hemisphere and Winter Solstice means extra long night in the Northern Hemisphere. The equinox and solstice marks the transitions. Something we (our current global culture which has the same behavior patterns differing only in degree)... figured out how to do in the 18th or 19th centuries. Examples: Ancient Solar Observatory DiscoveredHistory of Science In Non-Western TraditionsPersonally, I think the spring equinox was the ancient new years (though some believe it may be the winter solstice as the day starts getting longer after that point). Many monuments have been built by cultures that have basically been lost to time. Later festivals and religious celebrations are simply that, later celebrations that someone made up. (Background: Plato's Atlantis Found!) This is an equinox event at Chichen Itza (the sun causes light effects like Newgrange below)...Kukulkan at its finest during the Spring Equinox. Chichen Itza Equinox March 2009. The famous descent of the snake at the temple.
On Stonehenge:As seen from the northern hemisphere, the winter solstice – typically around December 21 to 23 – is the day on which the sun’s path stops moving southward in the sky. The winter solstice marks the longest night and shortest day of the year. For us in the northern hemisphere, it’s the day on which the days stop growing shorter and will soon begin to lengthen again. For this reason, in festivals and celebrations across this hemisphere of Earth, the winter solstice is linked to the idea of rebirth.The sun is perfectly aligned for winter solstice, between two stones, at Stonehenge... Nebraska has created it's own version of Stonehenge as a tourist attraction (stuff like this is part of the reason I call the US " Disneyland" - no connection to Disney Inc. )... Holy Circles
Whatever the significance of the Equinox was to the Ancients, one thing can't be argued, circles have always played an important part in rituals, architecture and the basic psychology of people throughout the ages...
Example 1; Cosmology
(Image and extract source): This unprecedented exhibition marks the first public presentation of the preeminent psychologist C. G. Jung’s (1875-1961) famous Red Book. During the period in which he worked on this book Jung developed his principal theories of archetypes, collective unconscious, and the process of individuation. It is possibly the most influential unpublished work in the history of psychology. More than two-thirds of the large, red, leather-bound manuscript’s pages are filled with Jung’s brightly hued and striking graphic forms paired with his thoughts written in a beautiful, illuminated style. Jung was fascinated by the mandala—an artistic representation of the inner and outer cosmos used in Tibetan Buddhism to help practitioners reach enlightenment—and used mandala structures in a number of his own works. Jung’s first known mandala-like work, Systema mundi totius (1916), will be on display. Created between 1914 and 1930, the Red Book has never before been seen in public, outside the circle of Jung’s family and very close friends. First exhibit of works created by patients of Swiss psychoanalyst Carl Jung goes up at Oglethorpe University Art Museum.
More Information: Rubin Museum of Art
"Very deep." Wrote Thomas Mann at the opening of his mythologically conceived tetralogy, Joseph and His Brothers. "is the well of the past. Should we not call it bottomless?" And he then observed: "The deeper we sound, the further down into the lower world of the past we probe and press, the more do we find that the earliest foundations of humanity, its history and culture, reveal themselves unfathomable." Primitive Mythology by Joseph Campbell page 5
In artist's imaginations... and movies as well, there seems to be this idea that the ruins of a civilization that are 12,000 years old (or even 6 thousand years, if you want to be conservative to start), will just be laying there at the bottom of the ocean and all you gotta go is snorkel past one to find it. Yet, there has never been ANY ruin found, of ANY age, that hasn't been covered in a ton of dirt. So why wouldn't buildings at the bottom of the ocean be covered in dirt? On the side of a mountain that is submerged, yes. you can find uncovered ancient ruins (like with Japan below). But that whole area is pure rock. The Atlantic is pure mud. "Naturally, every age thinks that all ages before it were prejudiced, and today we think this more than ever and are just as wrong as all previous ages that thought so. How often have we not seen the truth condemned! It is sad but unfortunately true that man learns nothing from history." - Carl Jung
In this case, the above quote means simply, 'we like to believe what we have always believed and don't like change'.
The Sphinx before being excavated... ( Image Source) The Stone Statues in Easter Island have bodies !This is absolutely incredible. Here we've been thinking for all these years that they were just heads. They are going to be absolutely huge when they are completely excavated. It all just adds to the mystery of these amazing sculptures. Maybe now they can get more information about them seeing as they have writings on them.UNEARTHED: Massive carved stones about 11,000 years old... pre-dating Stonehenge by some 6,000 years!
The following is from the website Smithsonian.com: "Six miles from Urfa, an ancient city in southeastern Turkey, Klaus Schmidt has made one of the most startling archaeological discoveries of our time: massive carved stones about 11,000 years old, crafted and arranged by prehistoric people who had not yet developed metal tools or even pottery. The megaliths predate Stonehenge by some 6,000 years. The place is called Gobekli Tepe
The tallest pillars tower 16 feet and, Schmidt says, weigh between seven and ten tons. As we walk among them, I see that some are blank, while others are elaborately carved: foxes, lions, scorpions and vultures abound, twisting and crawling on the pillars' broad sides." Here are some images from the archeological site: There are STILL at least 17 pyramids buried under the sands of Egypt... Atlantis CRITIAS by Plato 360 BC translated by Benjamin Jowett New York, C. Scribner's Sons, [1871]: Let me begin by observing first of all, that nine thousand was the sum of years which had elapsed since the war which was said to have taken place between those who dwelt outside the Pillars of Heracles and all who dwelt within them; this war I am going to describe. Of the combatants on the one side, the city of Athens was reported to have been the leader and to have fought out the war; the combatants on the other side were commanded by the kings of Atlantis, which, as was saying, was an island greater in extent than Libya and Asia, and when afterwards sunk by an earthquake, became an impassable barrier of mud to voyagers sailing from hence to any part of the ocean. The progress of the history will unfold the various nations of barbarians and families of Hellenes which then existed, as they successively appear on the scene; but I must describe first of all Athenians of that day, and their enemies who fought with them, and then the respective powers and governments of the two kingdoms. Let us give the precedence to Athens.(Some or most of the Dialogue of Critias has been lost) Map of Atlantis based on Plato's descriptions, published in the New York American
on October 20, 1912 from Imagining Atlantis © 1998 by Richard Ellis.
This extract from the work of Plato (circa 427 - 347 BC) is the first appearance in classical literature of the Atlantis myth. It is supposed to be part of a story told by Plato's great grandfather (Critias), who heard it from his great-grandfather (Dropides), who heard it from an Athenian traveller (Solon). The narrator is an Egyptian priest talking to Solon. It is supposed to describe a historical war between the ancient Athenians and the legendary Atlantis.
[EXTRACT] 'Our records show how your city checked a great power which arrogantly advanced from its base in the Atlantic Ocean to attack the cities of Europe and Asia. For in those days the Atlantic was navigable. There was an island opposite the strait which you call the Pillars of Hercules (Straits of Gibraltar), an island larger than Libya (Africa) and Asia combined; from it travellers could in those days reach the other islands, and from them the whole opposite continent which surrounds what can truly be called the ocean. For the sea within the strait we were talking about is like a lake with a narrow entrance (the Mediterranean sea); the outer ocean is the real ocean and the land which entirely surrounds it is properly termed continent. On this island of Atlantis had arisen a powerful and remarkable dynasty of kings, who ruled the whole island, and many other islands as well and parts of the continent; in addition it controlled, within the strait, Libya up to the borders of Egypt and Europe as far as Tyrrhenia (Italy). This dynasty, gathering its whole power together, attempted to enslave, at a single stroke, your country and ours and all the territory within the strait. It was then, Solon, that the power and courage and strength of your city became clear for all men to see. Her bravery and military skill were outstanding; she led an alliance of the Greeks, and then when they deserted her and she was forced to fight alone, after running into direst peril, she overcame the invaders and celebrated a victory; she rescued those not yet enslaved from the slavery threatening them, and she generously freed all others living within the Pillars of Hercules. At a later time there were earthquakes and floods of extraordinary violence, and in a single dreadful day and night all your fighting men were swallowed up by the earth, and the island of Atlantis was similarly swallowed up by the sea and vanished; this is why the sea in that area is to this day impassable to navigation, which is hindered by mud just below the surface, the remains of the sunken island'
Translation by Sir Desmond Lee, first published 1965, Penguin Classics.
Although Plato describes Atlantis as an island in the Atlantic Ocean, and some Canarian writers have associated Atlantis with the Canaries, it is now generally believed that the Atlantis myth is a memory of Minoan Crete, a civilisation which was overwhelmed by the volcanic explosion of the Mediterranean island of Santorini in the fifteenth century BC.
Atlantis (in Greek, Ἀτλαντὶς νῆσος, "island of Atlas") is a legendary island first mentioned in Plato's dialogues Timaeus and Critias, written about 360 BC. According to Plato, Atlantis was a naval power lying "in front of the Pillars of Hercules" that conquered many parts of Western Europe and Africa 9,000 years before the time of Solon, or approximately 9600 BC. After a failed attempt to invade Athens, Atlantis sank into the ocean "in a single day and night of misfortune".
Scholars dispute whether and how much Plato's story or account was inspired by older traditions. In Critias, Plato claims that his accounts of ancient Athens and Atlantis stem from a visit to Egypt by the legendary Athenian lawgiver Solon in the 6th century BC. In Egypt, Solon met a priest of Sais, who translated the history of ancient Athens and Atlantis, recorded on papyri in Egyptian hieroglyphs, into Greek. Some scholars argue Plato drew upon memories of past events such as the Thera eruption or the Trojan War, while others insist that he took inspiration from contemporary events like the destruction of Helike in 373 BC[1] or the failed Athenian invasion of Sicily in 415–413 BC.
The possible existence of a genuine Atlantis was discussed throughout classical antiquity, but it was usually rejected and occasionally parodied by later authors. Alan Cameron states: "It is only in modern times that people have taken the Atlantis story seriously; no one did so in antiquity".[2] The Timaeus remained known in a Latin rendition by Calcidius through the Middle Ages, and the allegorical aspect of Atlantis was taken up by Humanists in utopian works of several Renaissance writers, such as Francis Bacon's New Atlantis and Thomas More's Utopia. Atlantis inspires today's literature, from science fiction to comic books to films. Its name has become a byword for any and all supposed advanced prehistoric lost civilizations.
Every time someone finds ruins underwater they immediately think they have found Atlantis. It is more likely that there are such ruins underwater all over the planet - especially the ancient coastline...there is still a lot of investigation that needs to be done. What we don't need to do is wonder if there are any more underwater structures. They keep turning up year after year, some in plain sight, so there are definitely more. A thorough exploration across the globe is called for (we have only explored 3-5 percent of the ocean floor, which means there is a lot of territory left to cover - which we can narrow down using data of sea levels to find where the ancient coastline used to be. That's where we should start looking for more underwater ruins). The following is an example of someone promoting thier pet theory of where Atlantis is despite all evidence (or because of it? With such bad exposure and weird explanations that don't fit the facts, for anyone who is even a little Google competent, gives rise to paranoia, conspiracy theories and ultimately anarchy because of lack of trust. Only truth can solve that problem.). The interesting thing is that the key to understanding why they found this area of circular ruins underground is in the article (in bold). The funny part is that they only thought of Tsunami as a possibility after the Tsunamis that struck recently. Rising sea levels over thousands of years, till recently, has been the preferred theory as well as some Island that was covered in a volcanic eruption some 3000 years ago. I sometimes feel like if there isn't a cover up then we are dealing with some of the dumbest people known to man... who should not be allowed to teach in any respectable university. Lost city of Atlantis believed found off Spain Archaeologists and geologists use imagery to find site ravaged by tsunami
NORTHAMPTON, Mass. — A U.S.-led research team may have finally located the lost city of Atlantis, the legendary metropolis believed swamped by a tsunami thousands of years ago, in mud flats in southern Spain.
"This is the power of tsunamis," head researcher Richard Freund told Reuters.
"It is just so hard to understand that it can wipe out 60 miles inland, and that's pretty much what we're talking about," said Freund, a professor at the University of Hartford who led an international team searching for the true site of Atlantis.
To solve the age-old mystery, the team analyzed satellite imagery of a suspected submerged city just north of Cadiz, Spain. There, buried in the vast marshlands of the Dona Ana Park, they believe that they pinpointed the ancient, multiringed dominion known as Atlantis.
The team of archaeologists and geologists in 2009 and 2010 used a combination of deep-ground radar, digital mapping and underwater technology to survey the site.
Freund's discovery in central Spain of a strange series of "memorial cities," built in Atlantis' image by its refugees after the city's likely destruction by a tsunami, gave researchers added proof and confidence, he said.
Atlantean residents who did not die in the tsunami fled inland and built new cities there, he added. Standard approach to interpreting Plato's description of Atlantis is that the Egyptian Papyrus writings couldn't hold writing (magically I assume - or they thought Egyptians were just messing with Plato's head) ... and ancient people were so fickle out that an overflowing river would give rise to beliefs of a world wide deluge. [From "The Encyclopedia of Science" on The legend of Atlantis] any fantastic stories from the past must have built up around natural phenomena that were beyond the power of people at the time to explain in rational terms. Dramatic reports from individuals who narrowly escaped a violent catastrophe of nature or who witnessed its effects from afar would have been eagerly seized upon by others and quickly exaggerated beyond all recognition. It seems at least possible that one the most fabulous legends of the western world may have come about in this way.
So much has been written and surmised about the "lost continent" of Atlantis in recent decades that it's easy to forget that the whole tale rests upon just one source of highly uncertain provenance: a description by Plato in his Timaeus and Critias. Plato claims, in these writings, that the story came to him by way of various intermediaries from his ancestor Solon who learned it, in turn, from Egyptian priests in 590 BC.
Some 9,000 years earlier, according to the legend, there was an island metropolis, roughly 32,000 square miles in area, lying beyond the Pillars of Hercules (the modern-day Straits of Gibraltar). It was dominated by hills and surrounded by two concentric rings of land, linked by bridges and roads. The water separating the rings formed extensive harbors connected by canals 150 feet deep and 500 yards wide. The vegetation was luxuriant, the land fertile and self-sufficient, and there were both hot and cold freshwater springs. Black, white, and red stones were quarried from beneath the central hill, leaving a natural roof for the inner harbor. The Atlanteans lived securely and comfortably in their island paradise – until, suddenly, disaster struck. According to Plato: "Through violent earthquakes and floods, in a single day and night of misfortune ... [the whole race] ... was swallowed up by the Earth and the island of Atlantis ... disappeared into the depths of the sea."
If a researcher doesn't believe what Plato has written in the Critias AND has done no other research (or is just an idiot)... he will assume that outside of the Straights of Gibraltar means inside and 9000 years ago means 1000 years ago... Most of the historically proposed locations are in or near the Mediterranean Sea: islands such as Sardinia, Crete and Santorini, Sicily, Cyprus, and Malta; land-based cities or states such as Troy, Tartessos, and Tantalus (in the province of Manisa), Turkey; and Israel-Sinai or Canaan. The Thera eruption, dated to the 17th or 16th century BC, caused a large tsunami that experts hypothesize devastated the Minoan civilization on the nearby island of Crete, further leading some to believe that this may have been the catastrophe that inspired the story. A. G. Galanopoulos argued that the time scale has been distorted by an error in translation, probably from Egyptian into Greek, which produced “thousands” instead of “hundreds”; this same error would rescale Plato’s Kingdom of Atlantis to the size of Crete, while leaving the city the size of the crater on Thera; 900 years before Solon would be the 15th century BC. In the area of the Black Sea the following locations have been proposed: Bosporus and Ancomah (a legendary place near Trabzon). The Sea of Azov was proposed in 2003. The map above illustrates potential locations in the Mediterranean region. Often EVERY Ancient Underwater Ruin Is ASSUMED to Be Atlantis By Their Discoverer! The location of Atlantis in the Atlantic Ocean has certain appeal given the closely related names. Popular culture often places Atlantis there, perpetuating the original Platonic setting. Several hypotheses place the sunken island in northern Europe, including Sweden (by Olof Rudbeck in Atland, 1672–1702), or in the North Sea. Some have proposed the Celtic Shelf and Andalusia as possible locations, and that there is a link to Ireland. The Canary Islands have also been identified as a possible location, west of the Straits of Gibraltar but in proximity to the Mediterranean Sea. Various islands or island groups in the Atlantic were also identified as possible locations, notably the Azores. However detailed geological studies of the Canary Islands, the Azores, and the ocean bottom surrounding them found a complete lack of any evidence for the catastrophic subsidence of these islands at any time during their existence and a complete lack of any evidence that the ocean bottom surrounding them was ever dry land at any time in the past. The submerged island of Spartel near the Strait of Gibraltar has also been suggested.
Elsewhere
Caribbean locations such as Cuba, the Bahamas, and the Bermuda Triangle have been proposed as sites of Atlantis. Areas in the Pacific and Indian Oceans have also been proposed including Indonesia, Malaysia or both (i.e. Sundaland) and stories of a lost continent off India named “Kumari Kandam” have inspired some to draw parallels to Atlantis, as has the Yonaguni formation of Japan. Antarctica has also been suggested. The simple reality is that there are underwater ruins EVERYWHERE... Underwater Ruins Off The Coast Of India  Next is a group of cities made of brick which seem to have materialized from nowhere; "The so-called Harappa stage of the great cities of Mohenjo-daro, Chanhu-daro, and Harappa (c. 2500-1200/1000 B.C), which bursts abruptly into view, without preparation, already fully formed and showing many completely obvious signs of inspiration from the earlier high centers of the West (i.e. fertile crescent), yet undeniable signs, also, of a native Indian tradition – this too already well developed. As professor W. Norman Brown has suggested, a native Indian center (i.e., a mythogenetic zone) somewhere either in the south or in the Ganges-Jumna area would seem to be indicated, where the characteristically Indian traits, unknown at this time farther west, must have come into form. [JC1 - Page 435]Other interesting facts about the cities of Mohenjodaro and Harappa is that the bricks used in making them are uniform, i.e. they had a system to measure and weigh stuff accurately. They had their own sewage system, public baths and the structure of the architecture suggest an egalitarian society, but there are no signs of architectural development. That means these cities arrived fully developed and then went into decline. There are no in-between cities or towns where the Mohenjodaro/Happan style of architecture is first used. With the discovery of ancient cities off the coast of India, the sudden appearance of Mohenjodara and Harrapa makes more sense. Cities that existed before a rise in the oceans(that began at the end of the last ice age) would explain the sudden appearance of cities like Mohenjodaro and Harrapa; "The carbon dating of 7500 BC obtained for the wooden piece recovered from the site changes the earlier held view that the first cities appeared in the Sumer Valley [in Mesopotamia] around 3000 BC," said B Sasisekaran of India's National Science Academy.The images gathered over the past six months led to a surprising discovery - a series of well-defined geometric formations were clearly seen, spread irregularly across a nine-kilometre (five-mile) stretch, a little beneath the sea bed.Some of them closely resemble an acropolis - or great bath - known to be characteristic of the Harappan civilisation.
The Gulf of Cambay is one of the largest tidal areas in the world - with a current of very high velocity - and so it is conceivable that the area may well have submerged an entire ancient settlement, Mr Ravindran said to the BBC.There is undeniable evidence - i.e. you can see it for yourself - that there was a civilization or at least a bunch of advanced cities along the coastline before the end of the last ice age (about 12,000 years ago).
Underwater Ruins of Yonaguni Jima Off The Coast Of Japan
The strangest(and most convincing) of all underwater finds concerns the monuments of Yonaguni Jima discovered off the coast of Japan...which were hotly debated at one time but more and more evidence has been accumulating suggesting that the structures are actually man made(cut right into the bedrock like many other structures found).
Most alternative archeological researchers seem to believe that there was a technologically advanced civilization who built their structures in stone that existed at the end of the last ice age, when the sea levels were over a hundred feet lower than today. Since the biggest cities are always built on the coast, the place to look for ancient cities would be the levels at which the ocean used to be at before all the ice melted(approx 9500 BC).
However, even without taking such extreme dating ideas seriously we can see that there are definitely underwater ruins strewn all over the planet. Since the ocean levels are thought to have gone up and done with mini ice ages, it may be that we had civilization earlier than we thought just not as early as some like to believe.
Take a look at the following pictures of possible staircases and other structures that must be man made...
There is no way nature made that. that is definitely man-made. This structure consists of huge blocks of stone with a 'wedge' forming an arch. A common architecture design in ancient structures of Egypt and South America.
Triangular shaped structure - top view. Notice the gap between the stones. It looks like two stones chiseled and placed together. That isn't a natural formation either.
A Japanese Study Has Confirmed That The Age Of These Ruins Is Approximately 10,000 Years! Here is an abstract of a Japanese Study; Title;Research for submarine ruins off Yonaguni, Japan. Journal Title;Bulletin of the College of Science, University of the Ryukyus Abstract;Submarine research surveys using SCUBA and sonic surveys reveal detailed topography similar to submarine, pyramidal features looking like a stepped pyramid off Yonaguni in Okinawa, Japan. The site is called Iseki Point(ruins site) as a leisure diving spot. Yonaguni Submarine Pyramid(YSP) is the major structure that stands under approximately 25 meters of ocean. Essentially, it has a cliff face like the side of a stepped pyramid, and dimensions of about 290m(length) by 120m(width) by 26m(height). Flat terraces, straight walls and its surface structure of walls with scars of tool marks driven in by a wedge on the structure are identified to be artificially fabricated. Appearance and size of YSP are similar to the biggest, ancient castles such as Shuri and Nakagusuku Castles in Okinawa Island, where they are called 'gusuku'. Roads associated with drainage canals were recognized, surrounding YSP, and that a retaining wall was found along a road. The southern point of the wall is composed of huge rock fragments. Stone tools and other artifacts were discovered from the sea bottom. Those evidence strongly shows that the YSP has not been manufactured by nature. It is identifie to be man-made. The formation age is estimated to be about 10,000 years ago based on 14C and 10Be age determinations. (author abst.) In all likelihood, Atlantis was just one island/culture amongst MANY. Just like the United States is one country amongst many. Every country is at different technological level all the way down to people living in grass skirts roaming in the deserts of Africa who think glass is an advanced creation.
While the Indian civilization was slowly inundated, at least in part... Atlantis was said to have been swallowed by earthquakes and the ocean in one night. Could such a thing happen today? Yellowstone park is actually a super-volcano... and California is constantly quaking. So the answer is yes. Anything is possible, especially when we live on a super volcano and are helping to create earthquakes which can lead to Tsunamis. Think about it. New York City, Staten Island and New Jersey were torn apart by a category 1 storm. What if there was a real storm? Category 3 or 4? The fall of civilization or a city can be quick and abrupt. In the old map above, north is pointing downwards. This means that according to this map, Atlantis was a large Island or continent that was in between Europe and North America. Which makes the mountain chain of "the Azores" a possible remnant of that land. After thier land was destroyed, about 10,000 BC, the survivors spread out in all directions, or so it seems. Deep underwater, in the Atlantic, structures have been found. The structures are way too deep to have been built even during the ice age. It seems that, that area may have sunk! i.e. " there were earthquakes and floods of extraordinary violence, and in a single dreadful day and night all your fighting men were swallowed up by the sea and vanished" Plato in The Critias Above images seem to be og one of the cities of Atlantis (atleast, to me). The Bimini Road/Wall Or The Road To Atlantis? [Another confirmed ruin leading into the Atlantic ocean though it may be more recent.] [From Dive Spots] The Atlantis Road, or Bimini Road is one of the most popular tourist attractions in Bimini because of the mystery surrounding the site. In the 1930s, an American psychic named Edgar Cayce reported that he had spoken with a person who had lived in the Lost City of Atlantis in a former life. This Atlantean told Cayce that Atlantis had been near Bimini. Cayce predicted that portions of the temples of Atlantis would become visible near Bimini in '68 or '69. When a private pilot flying over the waters near North Bimini reported seeing a strange parallel structure in shallow water, many people believed these were either walls from Atlantis or a mysterious road leading to Atlantis. And thus the mystery of the Atlantis Road was born.
Since the 1970s, the structure has been explored by thousands of visitors, filmed for several TV specials, written about in books and magazines and drilled into by geologists. Eugene A. Shinn led a team of geologists who core-drilled the rocks and determined that the stones are submerged, natural beachrock that is the same as the beachrock found on nearby North Bimini. In spite of his findings, there are still many who believe that the two rows of parallel stones were placed in the "road" formation by intelligent beings.
The rectangular stones lie in 15 feet of water just a mile offshore of North Bimini. The stones are straight and certainly look as if they were placed in a wall or road. The site is a regular stop on all the dive charters. It is easily explored by snorkelers and divers. Whether you believe the stones are linked to the Lost City of Atlantis or merely just an interesting natural rock formation, the Atlantis Road is a fun divespot.
The Bimini road is a series of limestone rocks that go out into the sea. The standard belief is that they are natural formations but some people say that they are part of a man made harbour. A through investigation that refutes the above refutation (yes, I know it sounds funny) has been done by Greg Little called " Underwater Stone Formation At Bimini: Ancient Harbor Evidence" (since I got the pdf by email I uploaded it to my own Google account for easy access). Best part of the Bimini structure is that it is easily explored by American divers and someone with time and money on their hands could do a deep sea survey of the general area and might find more structures buried underneath (deep sea sonar and satellite scanning is a way to get started). Although the PDF suggests a date around 9500BC, the type of stone structures found have been found in the Mediterranean as well. Thus this could be an ancient pier made when the ocean was lower during a mini ice age and not necessarily the big ice age 12000 years ago. The dominant theory is that it was a mid-way harbour to get to the underwater ruins of Cuba. Probably from a city that existed around the same time the height of the Mesopotamian Civilization (before the seas rose again). Given the ludicrous amount of evidence we have on ancient civilizations and underwater ruins, why arn't the history books being updated? Well, the archaeologists have been through years of training. They now believe their theories, which were ALL learnt from a textbook NOT experience, as if it's scripture. Historically, knowledge has always been approached from a holistic perspective. The Ancient Greeks studied every field of knowledge and put together theories after careful thought on all the evidence and theories they had on the world around them (this applies to Democritus, Socrates, Plato and Aristotle amongst others). In fact, it has been shown that the word they used which is often translated as 'virtue' (i.e. the word Arete) actually has meanings along the lines of 'Excellence' with the idea that a person should seek excellence in all aspects of life(shown in the Ancient Greeks approach to knowledge and ideas on living life) Yet, in todays 'modern' academic world, from which all our theories on the structure of the worlds cultures and economy come from, is heavily fragmented into specialized fields of knowledge. This leads to problems in comming to agreement about simple facts and theories making progress on the more intricate theories and studies almost impossible (except by a tiny group of degree holders which tend to be called 'alternative' and relegated to the edges of mainstream science and media). During the renaissance the scholars studied every field of knowledge. In fact, major break-throughs in science tended to come from individuals not directly linked to science for most of the history of science. It was only when the math became so complicated that specialized mathematical skills were required that 'lay men's' theories about the specific implication of mathematical formula became useless. For contradicting religious doctrine many Renaissance age scholars learned the hard way to avoid to contradict the church and over time an agreement was reach between the church and the new form of specialized knowledge that came to be known as 'scientists'. The agreement was simple, scientists will focus on observable phenomenon and avoid studying matters of faith and religious belief. So the modern enlightenment, or reemergence of ancient knowledge, began crippled. It's why I think A. N. Whitehead, (Process and Reality, 1929), is right when he says that all of modern western philosophical thought is a footnote to the works of Plato. "The safest general characterization of the European philosophical tradition is that it consists of a series of footnotes to Plato". It had to be. Plato could consider fields of knowledge that became socially and culturally unacceptable from about the 1700's to today's extremely fragmented state of academia, creating a type of scholar which gives scholarship a bad name. A better type of scholar for understanding the complexity of science and the connection between the various fields of knowledge is Leonardo Da Vinci. A genuine liberal arts education with accurate textbooks could help generate more such scholars in the long-term (needs to be combined with better media influence as well). The video below is of an interview of a modern 'ethical' philosopher. It is obvious that he believes that only he can ask and ponder the questions he has even when Stephen Colbert (a non-philosophy or economics degree holder) makes a brilliant case for the inaccuracy in one of his theories. (Note: This overspecialization of knowledge, particularly the division of 'ethicality' from other aspects of knowledge is something that Robert Pirsirg ranted about in his book " Zen and The Art of Motor Cycle Maintenance" attributing this problem to Plato and Aristotle, which could very well be correct). Note that Michael's question about why baseball players get paid more than teachers is something you could explain to a 10 year old. It is easier to teach little kids than it is to throw 100 mile per hour fast balls or hit these fast balls out of the playing field. If all teachers could compete with modern baseball athletes on their level ONLY then could such a question be valid. The simple reality is that the skill that is rare gets paid more for. This is simple demand and supply economics (as Colbert points out) - Also note that I have a degree (bachelors) in economics which gives my simple explanation more weight but I prefer to use links to authoritative information as I think every writer in any field of knowledge should. Also note that he simply ignores Colbert's accurate counter response hiding behind the degree by saying roughly. ' this is a question for ethical philosophy' implying Colbert can't understand this particular field of philosophy (after all, the argument is, 'I have a degree in this, you don't'). Its not Michael's fault he doesn't know economics. It's not a requirement for knowledge (specialization begins right at the beginning at college level education and school textbooks are grossly out of date), he is illustrating a symptom of a much larger cultural problem (fragmentation of knowledge) which must be addressed and is the main point of all my blogs (the idea being to combine news media and education to create larger perspectives on modern challenges). One of the most fragmented fields of knowledge is the one of archeology. The skills of excavation (or more accurately, patience?) have reached a new high but putting together the finds in a proper theoretical framework based on all available evidence, that has been confirmed as reliable, has broken apart to such a degree that cults seem to have formed around different theories. This seems to have made the support of various archeological theories (and evidence associated with it) a political and religious issue. Introduction to the modern archeology problem
The type of problems in archaeology revolve around one group disbelieving in historical writings if they are from a book of scripture vs. literal interpreters of the Bible vs. the archaeological evidence that is actually found. The following extract of a report on a recent discovery in Israel exemplifies this problem in analysis of archaeological evidence.
In a region where history, belief and ideology play such an important role, the discovery is controversial. Other archaeologists dispute the significance of the find. Professor Israel Finkelstein, of Tel Aviv University, pointed out that the remains are not evidence of a powerful biblical state. He said: "We are not talking about some great empire ruled from a wonderful capital, the way we look at Assyria in the 9th century B.C., or even the northern Kingdom of Israel in the 9th century B.C. We are here in a formative phase of the rise of Judah." Finkelstein added: "Khirbet Qeiyafa does not make Judah a great empire with great armies." Garfinkel argued that even if it was not the great empire of the bible, its existence is significant. "What people try to do is say that the Kingdom of Judah didn't exist," he said. "What I am saying is that it existed. It's a small one, not so glorified as the Bible presented. But it doesn't mean there was nothing." Here are a few extracts from websites of mainstream archeological theories about the age of civilization (not in line with Darwin's theory of evolution... please note that my visual explanation below of the variations of skull shapes and sizes nullifies much of the evidence cited by Darwinians. This does not mean that the theory is wrong, just that, like any scientific theory, it is a theory 'in the works' and does explain many natural phenomenon but not all archeological and observational evidence). Website example 1: CIVILIZATION BEGINS: THE COPPER-STONE AGE, 3600-2800 B.C. Website example 2: By 6500 B.C.E., humans secured for themselves a dependable food supply by planting crops and domesticating animals. As a result, the human population increased, food surpluses allowed for economic specialization and exchange, and the emergence of civilization was made possible.[The problem with the second theory statement is the large structures that have been found with no obvious settlement, i.e. large structures require a large population to make them. The idea of these structures being religious don't fit the evidence found thus far so shouldn't be put into that category - click here to read my theory] The following is the more religious version of the theory of evolution (Christian source): First, even though some people believe that evolution is correct, and that men evolved from animals, that does not make it right. People believe all kinds of things that are wrong. Humans did not "evolve," but were created specially by God (Genesis 1:26-27). Second, the fact that a person lives in a cave has nothing to do with whether or not he or she is human. Saying that a man who lives in a cave is "half human" would be like saying a dog that lives in the house is "half human." The place where you live does not determine your "humanity." Third, the Bible explains that people of the past lived in caves for various lengths of time, and for various reasons.
There are some attempts to bring together the religious idea of creationism with it's opposite, the theory of evolution. The basic theory tends to be along the lines of 'God create man with the capacity to evolve and change for various reasons and that is why we find so many variations of human beings in fossils'. [ Click here to read an excellent example of bringing together a faith based idea in-line with a modern scientific perspective] Amongst some Christian religious scholars there is even an attachment to a literal interpretation of the meaning of the word "day" in the first two books of Genesis. Amongst the more reasonable and open minded this can be countered with a New Testament quote, "But, beloved, be not ignorant of this one thing, that one day is with the Lord as a thousand years, and a thousand years as one day." 2 Peter 3:8 The Death Of Observational Science Paleoanthropologist Chris Stringer shares his book, "Lone Survivors: How We Came to Be the Only Humans on Earth." (05:42)
Notice how the above palaeontologist classifies people by brain size and species according to which region they live in. By that logic asians, whites, blacks, browns, aboriginal ... ALL represent different species of humans. This isn't a theory, it's a cult. Let me explain using simple images where you can see that different brain sizes or shapes of human being doesn't mean you're a different species. That seems to be a racist argument by the archaeologists of the 19th Century which has now become dogma. All ancient human classifications are based on a few fossils and the variations in skull shape and size seem to be within modern day variation of our species to some extant [there is also mention of a bone here or there which is supposed to be further evidence of an evolutionary change but the main arguments are based around the skull sizes and the size of the brain that these cranial cavities could hold] "Archaic forms of Homo sapiens first appear about 500,000 years ago. The term covers a divers...e group of skulls which have features of both Homo erectus and modern humans. The brain size is larger than erectus and smaller than most modern humans, averaging about 1200 cc, and the skull is more rounded than in erectus. The skeleton and teeth are usually less robust than erectus, but more robust than modern humans. Many still have large brow ridges and receding foreheads and chins. There is no clear dividing line between late erectus and archaic sapiens, and many fossils between 500,000 and 200,000 years ago are difficult to classify as one or the other. "
Here is a graphic example of this theory (the one on the right is supposed to be Neanderthal)...Is there a scientific theory to explain the huge variation in skull shapes and sizes in ancient humans and modern humans (of the various races)?
Yes, for Neanderthals in particular but it applies to all theories connecting humans to apes and other species through skull sizes, for example: pygmies will have smaller heads than a gorilla but its doesn't mean a gorilla is smarter, ... ScienceDaily (Aug. 16, 2007) — Chance, not natural selection, best explains why the modern human skull looks so different from that of its Neanderthal relative, according to a new study led by Tim Weaver, assistant professor of anthropology at UC"For 150 years, scientists have tried to decipher why Neanderthal skulls are different from those of modern humans," Weaver said. "Most accounts have emphasized natural selection and the possible adaptive value of either Neanderthal or modern human traits. We show that instead, random changes over the past 500,000 years or so – since Neanderthals and modern humans became isolated from each other – are the best explanation for these differences."
Weaver and his colleagues compared cranial measurements of 2,524 modern human skulls and 20 Neanderthal specimens, then contrasted those results with genetic information from a separate sample of 1,056 modern humans.
The scientists concluded that Neanderthals did not develop their protruding mid-faces as an adaptation to icy Pleistocene weather or the demands of using teeth as tools, and the retracted faces of modern humans are not an adaptation for language, as some anthropologists have proposed.
Instead, random "genetic drift" is the likeliest reason for these skull differences. Problem with this skull size and shape theory is that these variations occur even today, yet according to archeologists we are supposed to be one species of humans of different races while the humans of the past are supposed to look like apes. Take a look at examples of individuals with different skull sizes, both in one race and across different races. You can carry out these observations across many segments of modern populations and you will find these variations in skull size and shape are very common. Do you think we are all human or are we representing different species of people? It should be obvious from the above images that skull shape and size is highly variable even in our time of 'homo sapian sapians' making that argument for a different human species untenable.
If we are to believe the nonsense that is coming out of the mouths of modern academics about Neanderthals (and with it early human history) then we would have to name Dwayne Johnson’s species Homo Rockathalis and Jackie Chan’s species Homo Chanathalis. Since the one with the bigger skull is the supposed to be the dumb one that means that Rockathalis is a dumb species (Note to The Rock: This is what the academics are saying not me). While Chanathalis is the smart one that has learned how to speak and cook. Shaq's comes from yet another Neanderthal type species. The whole theory of different species of humans that is now one species is just stupid (I would say it's outdated, but it became outdated in the 1960's, now it's just ridiculous)
History: The earliest evidence of culture When Archeologists do their digs looking for artifacts or fossils, they can only find what is made of stone or is preserved somehow as a fossil or frozen in ice. Accordingly we now have the most extensive collection of stone tools and weapons going back far into antiquity. This has led some to believe that stone was the only material all human races have ever used or maybe just the first material that we mastered which has led to the term ‘stone age’. Joseph Campbell mentions that wood is probably the oldest material humans have ever used as it’s easily available and is still used almost exclusively by hunter-gatherer groups that have survived to our age. It is also the easiest to re-use in another construction or for burning (firewood) and it is easily lost from our historical (archeological) record through decay.[note: can’t find the exact quote but have some more recent authoritive evidence] Could our earliest houses, weapons and even jewelry have been made of wood? After all, we don’t need stone to make an arrow or a spear.
Our recent archeological discoveries are simply mind-blowing and though there is currently no evidence of wooden jewelry or wooden musical instruments (how difficult would it be to make a wooden lute/guitar with a box and some appropriately prepared animal hair?) from our deep deep past, we may yet find some as the following presentation of evidence and examples will show.
Wood does decay but it also gets preserved by accident. First take a look at this 10,000 year old wooden spear-like object found in some melting ice: Craig Lee, of the University of Colorado Boulder, holds a 10,000-year-old atlatl dart that had been frozen in an ice sheet near Yellowstone National Park. The dart was straight when it was entombed and became bowed from the melting and barely survived being snapped in half by a passing animal. What looked like a small branch that blew off a tree during a storm turned out to be an ancient wooden hunting weapon wielded by Paleo Indians. The 10,000-year-old atlatl dart was discovered in a melting patch of ice high in the Rocky Mountains close to Yellowstone National Park.Next consider the wooden spears found even longer ago (400,000 years!) Gamble cites wooden spears found preserved in a bog at Schöningen, Germany, and are associated with horse bones. Dated to 400,000 years ago, the spears provide the first hard evidence of human hunting and are weighted at the ends to be thrown like a javelin. "I just wonder whether the Schöningen spears were ever used. Yes, there are horses at the site, but are the tips of the spears damaged? You'd think spears like that would break after they'd been jammed in a few horses," muses Gamble. For heidelbergensis, tools and hunting weapons may have played an important role in social display, one that we don't yet fully understand and may even border on ritual. "They may have been more interested in making things as a demonstration of who they were and what was important to them. Killing horses was probably something they did once a week," Gamble remarks. "It is very hard to get colleagues to accept evidence of ritual for early humans," says Bermúdez de Castro. BBCTo say there are signs of ritual or culture is one thing but to actually begin to describe how they must have performed a possible ritual is a little absurd. To compare with modern tribes in some way to draw some logical conclusions about possible meanings of the rituals or possible lifestyles of ancient humans is more appropriate. No matter what we now know that ancient man did use wood in hunting and probably in other spheres of life. Since wood is easiest to form or build with it is possible that every stone advance came after a development that was earlier and based in wood. For example, check out this hunter-gatherer group, their 'huts' are made solely of wood and leaves; They are not living in caves, (though I’m sure if they were facing horrible weather they would lose their housing and end up in any caves available to them) and their little thatched houses would rot away with time so that people living 10,000 years from now would find no evidence of them, plus if there is any change in environmental or geographical conditions they would provide great firewood. With the rise and fall of the ice ages (and local catastrophes that must have been associated with large changes in weather throughout history) such evidence of human culture would be completely wiped out. The article explains; Because humans lived as hunter-gatherers for 95 percent of their species' history, current foraging societies provide the best window for viewing human social evolution, according to the authors. Given that, the researchers focused on co-residence patterns among more than 5,000 individuals from 32 present-day foraging societies around the globe, including the Gunwinggu, Labrador Inuit, Mbuti, Apache, Aka, Ache, Agta and Vedda. A major point in the study is that foraging bands contain several individuals completely unconnected by kinship or marriage ties, yet include males with a vested interest in the offspring of daughters, sisters and wives. "The increase in human network size over other primates may explain why humans evolved an emphasis on social learning that results in cultural transmission," said Hill. "Likewise, the unique composition of human ancestral groups promotes cooperation among large groups of non-kin, something extremely rare in nature." The group's findings appear in the paper "Co-Residence Patterns in Hunter-Gatherer Societies Show Unique Human Social Structure." It is the first published analyses of adult co-residence patterns in hunter-gatherer societies based on census data rather than post-marital residence typologies, Hill noted.Notice how flexible these groups of human are. They aren’t bound to a small tribe for life but rather a system of tribes that together form a large social system. Here we find a modern counterpart to what an ancient culture of small hunter-gatherer groups could look like. In fact, even in the large cultural groupings of the North American Apaches or Sioux or Cherokee we can see possible echoes of an ancient system of cultural organization that maximized the resources of the land and the practice of the hunt by forming small groups that could live together without adversely affecting their food supply. They use stone but notice how much of their technology revolves around wood. At the same time these North American hunter-gatherers would have large social meetings where two or more small tribes celebrate some event. Could this be a practice that is natural to any human culture going back through the millennia? What about the hunt? To hunt you need to track animal footprints, understand its habits, prepare a trap or have some skill in killing it effectively and have the ability to communicate this body of knowledge to youngsters, i.e. language. The Apache teach the whole role a youngster is expected to play using stories which we call their 'religion' or mythology. Every primitive tribe has such stories that explain and train the young ones. Why not ancient humans? The theme of language and the hints of the existence of a human culture and society can be been clearly in the development of the hand ax, as Campbell explains; Indeed, some excavations (for example, those of L. S. B. Leakey at Olduvai Gorge in the north of Tanganyika) have revealed in perfect sequence every stage of the evolution of the hand ax from the pebble tools of man’s first beginnings to the finely finished, really elegant axes of the period of the Neanderthal. And if the view into the depth of the well of time that we obtained in the South of France was great, this of Olduvai is simply beyond speech. But what is even more amazing than the profundity of the prehistoric past here illustrated is the broad diffusion over the face of the earth of exactly the same ax forms as those of Paleolithic East Africa. As Dr. Carleton S. Coon has remarked: “During the quarter of a million years when man made these tools, the styles changed very little, but what changes were made are to be seen everywhere… This means that human beings who lived half a million years ago were able to teach their young skills that they had learned from their fathers in most minute detail, as living Australians and Bushmen do. Such teaching requires both speech and a firm discipline, and the uniformity of hand-ax styles over wide areas means that members of neighboring groups must have met together at stated intervals to perform together acts that require the use of these objects. In short, human society was already a reality when the hand-ax choppers of the world had begun to turn out a uniform product.
All of which speaks volumes for the force and reach of diffusion in the primitive world.Moreover, what is perhaps more remarkable still is that some of the most beautiful of the symmetrically chipped hand axes of this period are as much as two feet long, a size too cumbersome for practical use; the only possible conclusion being that they must have served some ceremonial function . Professor Coon has suggested that such axes were not practical tools but sacred objects, comparable to the ceremonial tools and weapons of later days, “used only seasonally, when wild food was abundant enough to support hundreds of persons at one place and one time. Then the old men,” he supposes, “would cut the meat for the assembled multitude with some of these heavy and magnificent tools,” after which, like the magically powerful tjurungas of the Australians, the sacred implements would be stored in some holy place. Primitive Mythology by Joseph Campbell, Page 364 In Campbell’s time the debate of when the human species first appeared on our planet was considered to be about a half a million years ago. The African finds that have most recently stirred the halls of science are roughly (very roughly) dated at the commencement of the Pleistocene or Ice Age, circa 600,000 B.C.; and at the Fifth International Congress of Anthropological and Ethnological Sciences, held at the University of Pennsylvania in 1956, Dr. Raymond Dart of Witwatersrand University, Johannesburg, South Africa, showed a convincing series of slides in which the implements of this pre-lithic (pre-Stone Age) culture were illustrated. These included the lower jaw bones of large antelopes, which had been cut in half to be used as saws and knives; gazelle horns with part of the skull attached, which showed distinct signs of wear and tear use, possibly as digging tool; and a great number of ape-man palates with the teeth worn down – human palates being used to this day as scrapers by some of the natives of the area. Primitive Mythology by Joseph Campbell, Page 359In our time evidence of the use of jaw bones of animals to cut and eat meat (indicating the hunt was developed) goes back even further. The following extracts bring Joseph Campbell’s archaeological survey up to date. The last article I’m presenting in full as I think that it represents the border of our current archaeological acceptance of the existence of a species that has the distinct behaviour patterns that can be called human. Hunting (involving tool making such as wooden spears, the need for speech for communication of the techniques of the hunt and passing on of the art of the hunt – i.e. how to make the spears/arrows(?) or just a way to trap an animal and drop rocks on it or push it over a cliff), walking upright and taking care of the members of the tribe. Lucy, whose people are at the forefront of archaeological theory as the possible first humans, was found in the geological layer indicating an age of about 3 million years. From About.comThe Stone Age (known to scholars as the Palaeolithic era) in human prehistory is the name given to the period between about 2.5 million and 20,000 years ago. It begins with the earliest human-like behaviours of crude stone tool manufacture, and ends with fully modern human hunting and gathering societies. The Palaeolithic is the earliest archaeology; anything older is palaeontology. Today scholars divide the Palaeolithic into three categories, more or less as follows. Lower Palaeolithic (sometimes called the Early Stone Age) The Lower Palaeolithic lasted between 2.5 million-200,000 years ago (or at least according to one permutation), and it was when the Hominin ancestors of human beings, including Australopithecus, Homo habilis, Homo erectus and Homo ergaster, roamed most of the earth and began making the first stone tools.ScienceDaily (Feb. 11, 2011) — A fossilized foot bone recovered from Hadar, Ethiopia, shows that by 3.2 million years ago human ancestors walked bipedally with a modern human-like foot, a report that appears Feb. 11 in the journal Science, concludes. The fossil, a fourth metatarsal, or midfoot bone, indicates that a permanently arched foot was present in the species Australopithecus afarensis, according to the report authors, Carol Ward of the University of Missouri, together with William Kimbel and Donald Johanson, of Arizona State University'sInstitute of Human Origins. The research helps resolve a long-standing debate between paleoanthropologists who think A. afarensis walked essentially as modern humans do and those who think this species practiced a form of locomotion intermediate between the quadrupedal tree-climbing of chimpanzees and human terrestrial bipedalism.Ancient Cut Marks Reveal Far Earlier Origin of Butchery By Kate WongResearchers working in Ethiopia's remote Afar region have recovered evidence that humans began using stone tools and eating meat far earlier than previously thought. The finds—cut-marked animal bones dating to nearly 3.4 million years ago—push the origin of butchery back a stunning 800,000 years. Furthermore, these ancient butchers were not members of our own genus, Homo, but the more primitive Australopithecus, specifically A. afarensis, the species to which the celebrated Lucy fossil belongs. Scientists have typically viewed tool use as the purview of Homo. Indeed, in 1964 Kenyan paleoanthropologist Louis Leakey and his colleagues named the earliest Homo species, H. habilis ("handy man"), for its association with stone tools. Subsequent finds have since extended the evidence of stone tool use back to between 2.5 million and 2.6 million years ago. But exactly which member of the human family made and wielded these older tools was unclear, both because no human remains turned up in direct association with the tools and animal bones, and more than one human species lived in the area at this time. The earliest example of a clear association between humans and tools dated to 2.3 million years ago, and the human remains belonged to an early Homo species. Still, archaeologists suspected that earlier stone tools remained to be discovered, because these examples seemed too advanced to represent humanity's first foray into tool manufacture. "Nearly everyone that works with the earliest stone tool industries at between 2.3 [million] and 2.5 million years has commented on the surprisingly high level of skill and understanding that we see in these early knappers. Most have predicted that something older will be found," says archaeologist Shannon P. McPherron of the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig, Germany.That hunch helped motivate McPherron and his colleagues, who have been working at a site in the Afar region called Dikika—just a few kilometers from the Lucy site—to look in older geologic deposits in the area for earlier evidence of stone tool use or manufacture. They were rewarded with bones from two animals—one cow-size and another goat-size—that display cutmarks and percussion marks indicative of flesh removal and marrow extraction with stone tools. McPherron, along with Dikika Research Project leader Zeresenay Alemseged of the California Academy of Sciences and their collaborators, describe their discovery in an August 12 paper in Nature (Scientific American is part of Nature Publishing Group).Because the earliest Homo remains date to just 2.3 million years ago, scientists can be certain that an australopithecine made the cut marks on the 3.4-million-year-old Dikika bones. And because the only human species that is known to have lived in the Dikika area during this time period is A. afarensis, it seems reasonably certain that this species in particular butchered the bones. (The A. afarensis remains found at Dikika include a spectacularly well-preserved skeleton of a youngster, popularly dubbed "Lucy's baby.")Australopithecines had teeth and jaws that were in many ways adapted for eating fruit, seeds and other plant foods. "[The discovery] shows that meat was added to the diet earlier than we had thought," McPherron observes, although he notes that it is difficult to say what portion of the diet was meat. "We could now be looking at an extended period of time when hominins were including meat in their diet and experimenting with the use of stone tools." Although the Dikika finds prove that A. afarensis was using tools, whether they were fashioning implements from stone or just picking up sharp-edged rocks from the landscape and using those to carve up the carcasses remains unknown, because no stone tools have turned up at the site. Future discoveries may resolve this question. They may also reveal the extent to which Lucy and her kin relied on stone gadgetry, setting the stage for developments that would profoundly impact the course of human evolution. "This discovery dramatically shifts the known time frame of a game-changing behavior for our ancestors,"Alemseged remarked in a prepared statement. "Tool use fundamentally altered the way our early ancestors interacted with nature, allowing them to eat new types of food and exploit new territories. It also led to tool-making—a critical step in our evolutionary path that eventually enabled such advanced technologies as airplanes, MRI machines and iPhones." History: The earliest evidence of ritual and myth Joseph Campbell writes in Primitive Mythology:
In Dreachenloch and Wildermannlisloch little walls of stone, up to 32 inches high, formed a kind of bin, within which a number of cave-bear skulls had been carefully arranged. Some of these skulls had little stones arranged around them; others were set on slabs; one, very carefully placed, had the long bones of a cave bear (no doubt its own) placed beneath its snout, another had the long bones pushed through the orbits of its eyes.
The cave in Germany, Petershohle, near Velden, which was explored by Konrad Hormann from 1916 to 1922, had closet like niches in the walls, which contained five cave-bear skulls – and once again the leg bones.
Now the cave bear, it must be told, for all its size, was not an extremely dangerous beast. In the first place, it was not carnivorous but herbivorous, and in the second place, like all bears it had to go to sleep in the winter. But during the ice age the winters were long. The bears would go into the caves to sleep and, while there, could be readily killed. In fact, a tribe of men living in the front part of a cave with a couple of sleeping bears in the rear would have had there a kind of living deep freeze. (Page 339) The following article show us a little about the evidence we have of cave bears; ScienceDaily (Aug. 25, 2010) — The cave bear started to become extinct in Europe 24,000 years ago, but until now the cause was unknown. An international team of scientists has analysed mitochondrial DNA sequences from 17 new fossil samples, and compared these with the modern brown bear. The results show that the decline of the cave bear started 50,000 years ago, and was caused more by human expansion than by climate change. There is evidence that one species of bear has survived over another simply because they didn't live in caves as a normal part of their behavior pattern. Could this be because of the ancient cave bear cult that hunted this species of bear to extinction? "The present day brown bear did not suffer the same fate and has survived until today for one simple reason -- brown bears did not depend so heavily on the cave habitat, which was becoming degraded, and this is why they did not follow the same pattern as the cave bears.
"Brown bears rely on less specific shelters for hibernation. In fact, their fossil remains are not very numerous in cave deposits," the Galician researcher says. The definitive extinction of the cave bear "broadly" coincides with the last cooling of the climate during the Pleistocene (between 25,000 and 18,000 years ago), which may have led to a reduction in shelter and the vegetation that the animals fed on.
The cave bear inhabited Europe during the Late Pleistocene and became definitively extinct around 24,000 years ago, although it held out for a few thousand years longer in some areas, such as the north west of the Iberian Peninsula, than in other places. This ursid was a large animal, weighing 500 kg on average, and was largely a herbivore. The bear hibernated in the depths of limestone caves, where the remains of individuals that died during hibernation slowly accumulated over time." This suggests the possibility that if there was a ritual being played out in the ancient tribes of hunting the cave bear then there would be a large continuum of this culture with obvious signs of thier passing. And there is: Vestiges of a circumpolar Paleolithic cult of the bear have been identified throughout the arctic, from Finland and Northern Russia, across Siberia and Alaska, to Labrador and Hudson Bay: among the Finns and Lapps, Ostyaks and Vogul, Orotchi of the Amur river region, Gilyaks, Goldi, and peoples of Kamchatka; the Nootka, Tlingit, Kwakiutl, and others of the Northwest American Coast; and the Algonquins of the Northeast. And so here is a northern circumpolar hunting continuum in counterpoise to tha broad equatorial planting belt which we traced from Sudan to the Amazon in Part Two. And just as there a certain depth of time was indicated, going back to perhaps c. 7500 B.C., the dawn of the proto-neolithic, so here too there is a depth in time – but how very much greater! For in the high Alps, in the neighborhood of St. Gallen, and again in Germany, some thirty miles northwest of Nurnberg, near Velden, a series of caves containing the ceremonial arranged skulls of a number of cave bears have been discovered, dating from the period (it is almost incredible!) of Neanderthal Man.(Joseph Campbell, Primitive Mythology page 339) Here we come to the amazing possibility that Neanderthals could be JUST another race of human beings. Well, its kind of implied in the earliest signs of culture that there might be a continuous cultural continuum from ancient times to our own age but this is the first evidence we have of genuine culture and mythological thought. Before I begin my analysis of the evidence of deep thought in some human species, that may have been our evolutionary cousins, I would like to point out one simple fact; Whatever an artist's preconceptions of the Neanderthal lifestyle and intelligence may be it is likely that this perspective gets reflected into their illustrations of Neanderthals. Consider the following portrayals of ancient Neanderthal Man. Again and again, we discover "anomalies" (stuff that makes no sense). Rather than covering it up, pretending it doesn't exist, sending up one satillite after another to Mars and forgetting to add a simple scooper to test for life (even though water on Mars is now confirmed... and was ALWAYS a part of the theory of how the Martian surface came to be that way)... Wednesday June 25, 2008: Neil deGrasse Tyson explained at 5 minutes that the Mars Rover is only looking for conditions where life COULD exist even-though on earth there is ALWAYS life where there is water. Recently the rover sent with all it's sophisticated sensing equipment ... ALSO, didn't carry a simple test for life. At what point do we say, "OK, enough. What have you guys found that yall are not telling us about?". The Nazca Lines in the desert only make sense if you realize they are meant to be seen from above. Far, far above. Some of the species of animals drawn in the Nazca desert don't even exist in the region. Rather than assume these drawings were for religious purposes or alien landing runways... doesn't it just make more sense that our last big civilization achieved space flight? Doesn't that make sense as to why we are constantly sending satellites to Mars that are getting more and more sophisticated (including infra-red which was used to find the buried Pyramids in Egypt - see at the top/into of this post) ... but publicaly say they are only testing for one or two things. It just seems like a VERY serious waste of money... unless they found something already. Nazca Spider
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