Considering there is plenty of evidence for humans being in the Americas 20,000 years ago, that means archaeological goldmines could be on the current seafloor on the eastern, Atlantic seaboard.
The ancient coastline used to be a few hundred miles out from the current coastline. When you combine that with how people tend to live near the ocean, that means that:
Evidence for ancient civilisations could be on the seafloor
Atlantis could even have been there
As an example of the evidence for this, fishermen have hauled up mastodon bones up to 180 miles from the current coastline.
TLDR; the construction methods at Canta Gallo and Nan Madol are very similar and quite unique – it is a good guess that the same people were the driving force for both.
Nan Madol has walls built like this:
Canta Gallo has walls and pyramids built like this (pic source):
Yes, the volcanic nature of the rocks – columnar basalt – is behind the similar shapes of the lengths of rock used. And such rocks, although quite unusual, can be found in numerous places around the world. But there are only three examples globally, each in remote places, of it being used as a building material. The third is Gunung Padang in Indonesia, which has a massive pyramid that is perhaps very ancient.
Canta Gallo is in Nicaragua and the only example, so far, of pyramids in that country. There may be many more as this location, which has at least 10 pyramids, was only discovered in 1998. There is very little information about it online.
Bluish gray stone slabs are piled up to form huge stone balls and pyramids that might be over 20 meters in height. The Rama told us that these structures are known to date back from 3000 to 5000 years.
I have always been intrigued by Nan Madol, because it is so unique, in such a remote location. If it was made or influenced by ancient mysterious elders who roamed the world, providing knowledge, then the question has to be – why?
Why build such enormous structures, and presumably at great effort and cost? If the purpose was religious – everything in antiquity was related to rituals, archaeologists tell us – then surely something smaller would suffice. If the same “elders” made or inspired these, then at least we know that big was important, hence the pyramids around the globe.
Nan Madol is on the remote island of Pohnpei, part of Micronesia, and home to only 36,000 people. It is 4300 kilometres from Taiwan and 1600 kilometres away from Guam. Not only is it small (334 km2) and remote, it is also one of the wettest (rainiest) places on Earth. In other words, hard to find and not appealing. Possibly it had value as a place to stop for food, something that is plentiful in the lush surroundings.
Nan Madol itself is an archipelago of 92 artificial islands made from rock and coral.
Carbon dating indicates that megalithic construction at Nan Madol began around AD 1180 when large basalt stones were taken from a volcanic plug on the opposite side of Pohnpei. The earliest settlement on Pohnpei was probably around AD 1 although radiocarbon dating shows human activity starting around AD 80–200
Wikipedia makes it clear that the ruling Saudeleur dynasty behind the construction of Nan Madol were not fellow Pacific islanders, and not very nice:
Pohnpeian legend recounts that the Saudeleur rulers were of foreign origin, and that their appearance was quite different from native Pohnpeians. The Saudeleur centralized form of absolute rule is characterized in Pohnpeian legend as becoming increasingly oppressive over several generations. Arbitrary and onerous demands, as well as a reputation for offending Pohnpeian deities, sowed resentment among Pohnpeians.
Worship and construction seemed to be the purpose of the missionaries. Many aspects of their rule are useful in understanding what they elders were like across their various global missions, because this one was thankfully recent enough (1100 – 1200 to 1528) and localised enough for the stories to be more reliable.
The two original foreigners (men) were known as sorcerers who could levitate rocks. More likely the construction process was kept secret, and myths created.
They arrived in a “large canoe” which suggests the type of craft was not seen as unusual
There was a sequence of singular leaders, all of whom descended from the original sorcerers and their local brides.
Sometimes the locals assassinated a leader, but a replacement always emerged
A foreign god was rejected by the locals. The worship was towards existing local gods
Different leaders had different styles. Some were benevolent and liberal
One introduced the First Fruits custom, which also occurs in many major religions, where priests get the first produce from the annual harvest
“According to legend, the rulers of the Saudeleur Dynasty were never concerned with military affairs, and the era is generally characterized as peaceful, though native Pohnpeians suffered and grew dissatisfied with the administration” – which makes sense. When mysterious elders arrived anywhere in the world, they were few in number, and used knowledge and sorcery to win people over. They were not interested in anything military, and seemingly dominating with wealth and power was not important, but religion was. And while they may have preferred that people worshiped the gods of the elders, if that did not take then local gods continued to be worshipped. The who was not important, but the doing was.
A big question is whether religion was a means to an end – megalithic construction – or whether it was important on its own as well. I am guessing that the megaliths mattered most.
More specifically, one-sided admiration, and deservedly so.
Graham Hancock’s Fingerprints of the Gods was wonderful in many ways, and it also was my first encounter with the ancient Mayan calendar. While Hancock was seemingly not interested in being a quack who predicted a 2012 doomsday, I was. Yes, I quantified and qualified it, but there was pretty much only myself, Patrick Geryl (gone to ground) and Laurence E Joseph (books removed from sale).
My opinion: I put more effort into researching a 2012 doomsday than anyone else. It was my baby. Consequently I came up with what I believe to be original ideas:
The Great Pyramid is a survival bunker
2012 (+/- a few years) marks the return of a comet, possibly a dark comet
Noah’s Ark was a bunker, not a boat
With Magicians of the Gods in 2015, Graham Hancock published a sequel to Fingerprints… And it included:
Calculations indicate that this presently invisible object… around the year 2030 [will come close to Earth]
He also shares the concept that a build-up of tar can render the comet invisible. All I understood was that the melting and removal of ice would stop it being shiny.
His instruction to build an underground shelter where some remnant of humanity could take refuge
Hancock beats around the bush (a lot) but indirectly says that Noah’s Ark was a bunker. He only nominates Cappadocia, which suggests to me that he was not aware of my additional Iran suggestion
I feel that Hancock gave a lot to me, and has taken a little (or nothing) from me. Be aware that you cannot copyright ideas…
So now it is – to my mind – my turn. I hope to take a lot of Hancock’s ideas, and those of others, and try to nail a hypothesis and timeline for the mysterious elders, something nobody else has seemed to have attempted. Instead they play join-the-dots and perhaps-it-could-be questions.
I have long speculated that the legendary Atlantis was nothing more than a ruse. A made-up conglomerate of things that do not appear in the same place, anywhere. Along with purposefully fudged location indicators.
Which means the true location of Atlantis probably matches none of the myth, aside from it now being below the sea.
I have not found any good candidates that were islands before. I do think that “Atlantis” was quite likely on land, near the coast as things were during the Ice Age.
This map shows what would’ve been land 15,000 years ago, as well as the extent of the ice.
When thinking about the myths of the mysterious elders who traipsed around the globe, teaching and getting people to build megaliths and pyramids, we are reasonably sure that they were white-skinned and quite likely had red hair.
So, therefore, Europe is where I am looking. I’m ruling out anywhere near the ice cap as too cold to grow food, and too cold to have the variety preferred for hunting and gathering. Even if they were advanced, they still needed to eat.
That means the now-submerged areas of the Mediterranean and Black Sea. Any of those places (light green on the map) could be the location, and almost all of it is unexplored by archaeologists.
But I’m trying for somewhere more specific. And I am guessing that a large cometary fragment from the Younger Dryas impact could have destroyed Atlantis, as in a bulls-eye and not just from any subsequent flooding.
Now if that location is now submerged, we are still none the wiser. So the next best I can do is look at the two locations where we know there was impact – Spain and NW Syria.
But there is nothing sufficiently ancient in Spain to be where they regathered…
And as a wild guess, I’ll look at the submerged land between Venice and Croatia, which is now the Adriatic Sea. It is close to the line of known sites that stretches from Russia to Spain.
Tell Abu Hureyra, Syria / Cyprus
Ticks many boxes. Not only was it an impact site, it was also perhaps the biggest town 13,000 years ago and the first place to have agriculture. The settlement was rudimentary by today’s standards and does not suggest an advanced civilisation. However, historians and archaeologists have it in their heads that a permanent settlement was permanently occupied. Back then, there was most likely a combination of agriculture and hunter gathering, and so there would be plenty of moving around, seeking whatever was in season or wherever animals had migrated to.
So while Tell Abu Hureyra may have been a base for food, the elders could easily have lived somewhere else. It makes sense that fishing was also important, and that suggests a town by the (Ice Age) coast, nearby. Maybe it will be discovered one day?
It could simply be Cyprus. The Ice Age coast was just south of the current island, close enough for the current island to be part of or related to the actual Atlantis. And author Robert Sarmast thinks he found ancient structures deep in the sea between Cyprus and Syria. Scientists have debunked the structures, but the other reasons for that location have merit.
The nearby cities of Aleppo and Damascus are very old, the latter being the oldest continuously inhabited city in the world. Potentially “Atlantis” on Syrian coast (ice age version) was destroyed and so they decamped to those cities.
The Citadel of Aleppo is interesting. The site was in use at least 5,000 years ago, but could easily have been much earlier. And it has underground passages…
A bit to the south, Gilgal seems to have been a very ancient site of experimental agriculture.
Nearby is all sorts of ancient stuff. Baalbek of course. And Byblos, the home of western alphabets. Around Beirut, on the modern coast, there has been habitation for 10,000+ years.
Adriatic Sea
Looking at the current depths, it is reasonable that the seaside village was just north-west of JP (Jabuka Pit), which even today is a great fishing spot.
And nearby islands of today where inhabited 13,000 years ago.
So where was the agriculture, and where did they flee to that was familiar, when the cataclysm occurred?
Background > Hancock’s Fingerprints of the Gods introduced me to the ancient Mayan prophecy, which in turn led to the doomsday meme of 2012. So I hold him in very high regard.
Even so, he is admittedly is a journalist and not an archaeologist. And also seemingly not great at math and probabilities. His Heaven’s Mirror finds alignments that would exist from chance alone, but his beliefs override his possible criticisms.
In his new (2022) Netflix series – which I love and have learned so much from – the 3rd episode, about Malta, makes the same mistake. Malta has numerous ancient temples, all aligned in different directions. But they are all meaningful because Sirius has appeared in different parts of the sky over millennia (due to precession) and the temples point in different directions. For his assertation – that they all aligned with Sirius when built, and the timeframe is very long – he needs to show evidence of increasing sophistication of temples fitting the timeframe and alignment with Sirius. Out of a dozen or so temples, he offers just two with such an alignment, which is quite meaningless, given that the time of their construction is unknown.
I do not expect perfection from someone covering the whole planet and various disciplines. But Hancock also seems to have at least some minor hubris, and at least a disinclination to hear objections, or at the very least invite them.
While I am at it… it easy to point out probable evidence of ancient advanced cultures, but not Hancock or anyone else actually provides a global timeline, motive or any insights into why the ancients did such things, beyond what mainstream archaeologists also come up with – worship and sacrifice.
I aim to “connect the dots” and at least come up with a timeline and story of what caused all of these massive monuments to be built over millennia, around the world.
In recent times we have been trusting that monitoring systems will alert us when a massive solar storm (CME – Coronal Mass Ejection) is about to hit us, and preventative measures can be taken. The only risk was that humans would make bad choices because of economics and the fear of making a mistake.
Now, that has all changed!
Over the past few years, solar physicists have begun to suspect that some CMEs sneak up on Earth, launching themselves without an observable ultraviolet signature. They call such wraiths stealth CMEs. (New Scientist)
On April 19, 2020, a stealth CME occurred, and the Solar Orbiter spacecraft didn’t know it was coming until it hit.
On January 30, 2022, a launch of Starlink satellites did not go to plan. 40 were destroyed when a solar storm pushed them off course. While we knew of a solar storm, all indications were that it was too small to effect the launch.
So basically we are sitting ducks. The big event that can destroy western civilisation – satellites, GPS, Internet, ATMs, power grids, railways and gas pipelines – can happen at any time, without warning.
It is more likely to happen during the solar maximum (many more storms), which peaks in 2025.
You have been warned. Your animals, crops and supplies won’t be affected, but society could be wrecked.
(disclaimer: many human societies will cope just fine. The most advanced economies are the least resilient and deaths could be in the millions…)
Deep Space Climate Observatory, or DSCOVR, is the singular satellite that can tell us of an approaching solar storm, flare, coronal mass ejection (CME)… that can damage infrastructure on Earth like railway lines, power lines and pipelines. Things (and people) in space are even more vulnerable because there is no atmosphere to protect them.
When the next solar storm approaches Earth and the deep-space satellite provides its warning—maybe an hour in advance, or maybe 15 minutes, if the storm is fast-moving—alarms will sound on crewed spacecraft. Astronauts will proceed to cramped modules lined with hydrogen-rich materials like polyethylene, which will prevent their DNA from being shredded by protons in the plasma. They may float inside for hours or days, depending on how long the storm endures.
…As the atmosphere heats up, it will swell, and satellites will drag, veer off course, and risk collision with each other and space debris. Some will fall out of orbit entirely. Most new satellites are equipped to endure some solar radiation, but in a strong enough storm, even the fanciest circuit board can fry. When navigation and communication systems fail, the commercial airline fleet—about 10,000 planes in the sky at any given time—will attempt a simultaneous grounding. Pilots will eyeball themselves into a flight pattern while air traffic controllers use light signals to guide the planes in.
…the electricity coursing through the atmosphere will begin to induce currents at Earth’s surface. As those currents race through the crust, they will seek the path of least resistance. In regions with resistive rock (in the US, especially the Pacific Northwest, Great Lakes, and Eastern Seaboard), the most convenient route is upward, through the electrical grid.
The weakest points in the grid are its intermediaries—machines called transformers, which take low-voltage current from a power plant, convert it to a higher voltage for cheap and efficient transport, and convert it back down again so that it can be piped safely to your wall outlets. The largest transformers, numbering around 2,000 in the United States, are firmly anchored into the ground, using Earth’s crust as a sink for excess voltage. But during a geomagnetic storm, that sink becomes a source. Most transformers are only built to handle alternating current, so storm-induced direct current can cause them to overheat, melt, and even ignite. As one might expect, old transformers are at higher risk of failure. The average American transformer is 40 years old, pushed beyond its intended lifespan. [Wired]
Prolonged power outages can mean nuclear power plant meltdowns (they typically only have 3 days worth of diesel as backup), water treatment facilities not operating, petrol stations not pumping, electronic transactions not working, and so on. There will be anarchy, of course.
DSCOVR can warn us, and if everything goes to plan, and there is no human error or stupidity, perhaps the power grid can be saved. The transformers can be disconnected, but that requires people to choose to switch of the power for an entire nation. A similar decision at a dam in Queensland, Australia a few years ago went wrong, resulting in destructive, deadly flooding.
Expect train lines and gas/oil pipelines to be severely damaged, that is unavoidable.
There is no saving the satellites when the solar storm comes. They will be wrecked. Goodbye GPS, and all that relies on it, including ATMs and stock exchanges (they use it for timing). And that means, of course, that our singular warning system, DSCOVR, will likely be destroyed. Which leaves us totally vulnerable to the next big one, which, for all we know (we have only seen a handful of big ones), could occur in clusters.
Western civilisation being destroyed due to a CME should be seen as a when, not an if.
Talianki (Ukrainian: Тальянки́) is an archaeological site near the village of the same name in Cherkasy Oblast, Ukraine. It was the location of a large Cucuteni-Trypillian settlement dating to around 3850–3700 BC, currently the largest known settlement in Neolithic Europe
I am into ancient history and had zero idea that such sites existed in that part of the world, until I read The Dawn of Everything. This site had perhaps 10,000 people (and even 25,000 if you include satellite towns) and was not unique in that location. The homes had timber frames and stone foundations, and each had their own garden.
It points out that because the city had no “government buildings, fortifications, or monumental architecture” and no “acropolis or civic centre”, and no “gran burials”, then there is no story to tell. So we never heard of it!
Seemingly people just got along, everyone being equal.
Archaeologists refuse to call it a city, because of the lack of apparent social structure and no rulers. So they call it a “mega-site” or even an “overgrown village”, as if to punish it for not telling them a story.
This relatively simple idea comes from Termination Shock, a fiction book by futurist Neal Stephenson. And it is mostly brilliant (and scary).
Drop a shipping container, full of high explosives to the ocean floor. Detonate it and high waves spread in every direction, then dissipate.
But, not far away is a second shipping container, and it explodes when the first wave is overhead. This amplifies the wave.
Keep doing this for a sequence of shipping containers in a line, and you get a tsunami.
The science is correct in theory. The problem I foresee is that oceans are predictable enough to pull it off. You would need an intimate understanding of the current state of the waves, and wind and weather.
Still, yet another reason to not live by the coast.
Background: John von Neumann came up with the idea of self-replicating machines in 1949. This lead to the computer virus…
Then in 1986 K. Eric Drexler coined the term Grey Goo. Read this carefully because it is very, very scary, and nobody will see it coming:
Imagine such a replicator floating in a bottle of chemicals, making copies of itself…the first replicator assembles a copy in one thousand seconds, the two replicators then build two more in the next thousand seconds, the four build another four, and the eight build another eight. At the end of ten hours, there are not thirty-six new replicators, but over 68 billion. In less than a day, they would weigh a ton; in less than two days, they would outweigh the Earth; in another four hours, they would exceed the mass of the Sun and all the planets combined — if the bottle of chemicals hadn’t run dry long before.
A progamming error or errant scientist is all that it takes. Of course this is all fantasy until someone actually invents it.
Err…
…these computer-designed and hand-assembled organisms can swim out into their tiny dish, find single cells, gather hundreds of them together, and assemble “baby” Xenobots inside their Pac-Man-shaped “mouth”—that, a few days later, become new Xenobots that look and move just like themselves.
And then these new Xenobots can go out, find cells, and build copies of themselves. Again and again.
“With the right design—they will spontaneously self-replicate,”
Many scientists don’t mind dabbling with danger, like creating black holes in labs. In this instance, the seem to not care that nothing is ever 100% safe:
These millimeter-sized living machines, entirely contained in a laboratory, easily extinguished, and vetted by federal, state and institutional ethics experts
It’s OK, they are only little…
This was not widely reported, and we are edging closer to a situation where dabbling with nature and assigning ourselves god-like powers could end all intelligent life as we know it.
