Discovery Channel - Myths and Legends

Saruman

Anyone see the Discovery doc on myths.. serious stuff.. Basically Civilisations have been around for over 12,500 years or more.. Indications of sea travel between the continenets long before recorded history states.. Maps of Antarctica complete with Longitude Thousands of years before we discovered them. The spynx for instance dated to 10,500 BC... much older than thought.. The head was recarved by pharoes to look like them but was originally a lion.. Placed in the exact location of Leo in the celestial sphere in relation to Orion which the Pyramids perfectly pinpoint in 10,500BC

Amazing stuff, same with South American cultures.. Incas Tiwanaca i think (probably not right spelling) IS a giant City thats basically a huge observatory making it the oldest city on the planet (we know of). There are carvings of heads depicting an African before thousands of years before Columbas Traveled to the new world.. markings depicting white men with beards! Its genetically impossible for the natives to grow a bear apparently!

Some pointing towards Atlantis.. even indications it was Antarctica which was not frozen back then as the poles where at a different location.

Too much to put down but damn interesting stuff!!

azezil

Seen part of it.. the part about atlantis, interesting theory.
They say that there was no ice-age that infact where we live now was once covered with ice but thats because the poles reversed. They say they found maps of a civilisation which they say was Atlantis but its now where we call the north pole!

Interesting stuff alrite.

Saruman

yup, could do with a History/Myths and Legends section
as per your other post!

bonkey

Originally posted by Saruman
Anyone see the Discovery doc on myths.. serious stuff.. Basically Civilisations have been around for over 12,500 years or more.. Indications of...

Not trying to rain on the parade, but I'm curious as to how balanced a view Discovery gave of this.

Take the Sphinx, for example. There are a number of problems surrounding it. There appears to be exceptionally large amounts of erosion near its base, which would match the pattern of water-based erosion, and which place the Sphinx at about 7,500 years old. There is other evidence suggesting (as Discover seem to have) that it is even older (12,500) years, and then there is cimpelling evidence that it is actually only as old as the Egyptians - about 3,500 years IIRC.

Now, when we look at these, its easy to say "it couldnt be 3,500 years old, look at that erosion man" and assume, therefore, that the 7,500 or 12,500 theory is therefore valid.

Except for one small problem.

There is no archaelogical evidence of any large-scale habitation of the Nile basin prior to the Egyptians. There is no evidence of a technologically advanced society having existed there. What happened to all of this?

The sphinx is BIG. It took a lot of people a fair amount of time to build it. Such an operation leaves "traces" behind it - traces that are almost impossible to hide against archaeology unless a deliberate effort was made to remove said evidence.

So - what do we have? We have the possibility that the Sphinx is 3,500 years old, with some sketchy theories about how the erosion occurred. Or we have the possibility that the Sphinx is 7,500/12,500 years old, with nothing but the Sphinx itself to back up this theory. No traces of the advanced civilisation which built it, no history carried through, no legends. This mostly leaves us with a second theory - the Egyptians deliberately removed all traces of said earlier civilisation, do not reference it in their history books, and as a result, future generations have been conned. Of course, one would have to ask *why* this was done - and again we have a question with only speculative answers (i.e. no evidence).

I'm not saying that the theory is wrong, just that reporting its age as 12,500 years without pointing out the flaws in *that* theory would be, for me, little more than an interesting work of speculative fiction.

The same applies for a lot of the stuff you mention - these are mostly speculative theories - and often not even the most probable. Atlantis, for example, has been shown on numerous maps throughout history. Its location ranges a bit off the Irish west coast, to Antartica. They cant all be right, and picking one above another requires that we have good reason not just to believe one location, but also to discredit all the others.

jc

bonkey

Originally posted by azezil
They say that there was no ice-age that infact where we live now was once covered with ice but thats because the poles reversed.

The poles have reversed in history, on several occasions, and at least one such reversal is known to have caused an ice-age.

Did they mention the mass of evidence for there having been numerous ice-ages, and explain why such evidence is wrong?

jc

Saruman

on the ice age part, for one thing they showed that in Siberia, when there was a temperate climate.. they found a perfectly frozen mamoth with undigested food in its belly.. it was said that in order for this to have happened that it must have been frozen in a very short space of time, say hours or days.. not sure how true that is but i would imagene its short enough.. since the food was undigested. anyway what was in his belly was from plants that only grow in a temperate climate so as if in the space of days the temp dropped enough to freeze it.. It was explained that was the polar ice grows, if it grows in a disproporiante direction then it sends the earth spinning off its axis slightly (the wobble) and the poles move.. dont know how plausable it is...

AS for Atlantis yes i know people have said its located everywhere from Ireland to Antarctica but one thing is for certain.. its not below the sea as it has been mapped.. no traces have been found of an underwater city.. Its Platos fault he was a little vague! Hell some people have speculated Atlantis was not an Island at all but another planet that dissapeared from the sky thousands of years ago and became the Asteroid belt? Right.... doubt it but interesting.

bonkey

Originally posted by Saruman
on the ice age part, for one thing they showed that in Siberia, when there was a temperate climate.. they found a perfectly frozen mamoth with undigested food in its belly.. it was said that in order for this to have happened that it must have been frozen in a very short space of time, say hours or days.. not sure how true that is but i would imagene its short enough.. since the food was undigested. anyway what was in his belly was from plants that only grow in a temperate climate so as if in the space of days the temp dropped enough to freeze it.. It was explained that was the polar ice grows, if it grows in a disproporiante direction then it sends the earth spinning off its axis slightly (the wobble) and the poles move.. dont know how plausable it is...

Aye, and if you read "the Coming Global Superstorm" it also comes up with some credible theories about the mammoth and its food.
I remember doing some research after reading said book, and can recall reading an expert completely debunking the mammoth thing. There are, apparently, numerous very credible reasons as to why this would happen.

Incidentally, did they happen to mention that there is signficant evidence to show that a polar swap (north to south, etc) would have a catastrophic on the brains of most living creatures, and would probably cause an extinction event?

Also - are they claiming that this shift happened in *every* ice age (or, optionally, that there werent multiple ice ages)

jc

bonkey

Found one reference about the mammoth :
---
Regarding the frozen mammoths, Discovery Channel Canada's website had this to say:

"First, were the mammoths quick-frozen? No. Almost all of the frozen specimens found so far have been rotten, and in some cases, mutilated by scavengers before freezing. Even the ground around the aforementioned Beresovka mammoth, as well as the mammoth's flesh, stunk of decay. Had freezing been instantaneous, no decay would have occurred."

"They died, not by freezing, but by asphyxiation. Evidence for that is the discovery of vessels still filled with coagulated blood..."

"Second, the stomach contents. Turns out both the Mamontova and Beresovka mammoths had eaten a variety of plants, including grasses, sedges and other tundra plants, as well as the cones and twigs of northern trees. Overall these plants represent a flora that would exist in slightly warmer and wetter conditions than exist in Siberia today, but such conditions are well within the climatic variability of the past."

"Finally the numbers of frozen mammoths don't support the idea of a catastrophe. It's been estimated that there might have been about 50,000 mammoths living in the Arctic, while something like forty have been found frozen. Hardly the signs of a cataclysmic event."

ObeyGiant

I don't have the Discovery Channel, but from what you're describing, it sounds a lot like the stuff covered by Graham Hancock in his book "Fingerprints of the Gods" amazon link. He mentions the rhythmic shifting of the Earth's polarity, the map of antarctica,

According to Hancock, the world was once covered with many advanced civilizations, who suddenly and mysteriously disappeared.. he proposes a number of possible explainations for their disappearance, some of which are plausible, although extraordinary. Overall, however, it feels like you're reading the paranoid writings of someone reading far too much into a number of coincidences.

Come to think of it... Hancock did a miniseries for Channel 4, called uh.. "Heaven's Mirror" (I think). It was basically a summary of "Fingerprints of the Gods", altered for TV. Don't suppose this was what you were looking at?

Either way, you should check out Fingerprints of the Gods, it deals with exactly what you're mentioning, and probably goes into greater depth, since it doesn't have to fit within a TV formula.

Saruman

no Discovery did not mention those MAMOTH DETAILS (excuse the pun). The Doc basically said it was almost instantanious and erm.. unbelievably there is no technology on earth capable of such a thing.. well fridge technology.. i reckon Liquid Nitrogen would do the trick.

and i think Hancock was in ths Doc also.. did not get the name but i think i saw that C4 one and it was the same guy doing Tiwanaka (one day i will look up the correct spelling and maybe im right?...)

It was very interesting though it did mention a lot of what you said about Hancock.