themiddleway

You still have to explain how a 23 (?)tonn stone was moved to the site ( unless it was built where the stone was found..?) some of the quarries for the Dolmens were up to 5k away or more. The simplest solution I can see was that it was dug out with the vertical standing stones placed underneath as they were going.The Kilclooney Dolmen was aligned to a winter solstice sunrise, why bother to use a 23 tonn stone for this ? Its remarkable, for such simple structures, we still don´t have a coherent theory about how or why neolithic people built them and why they were spread over most Europe and parts of North America.

I don´t believe that Davidovitts theory is the correct one either but the research of Michel Barsoum supports that it may have been one of the methods used. The granite beams in the Kings Chambers, weighing as much as 70 tonnes each ,have so far confounded every ´expert´. The question of how the pyramid builders had the knowledge to reconstitute limestone that can outlast Portland cement goes begging aswell. Geopolymer is relatively easy to explain in comparision to the giant granite boxes found in the Serapeum at Saqqarra, perfectly flat with perfect 90 degree corners. As Chris.Dunn said if we ignore how they did it, the need for presion is just as loaded with implications. The Egyptians had no wheels, no iron tools, and were just out of stone age. Yet were about as accurate as we are today and had complete mastery over working with granite - there are a lot of other ´theories´ that need revising too.

Another perspective : http://min-eng.blogspot.de/2010/12/geopolymerisation-and-pyramids.html?m=1 >>>>The problem of there not existing a universally accepted theory to explain the construction of the pyramids is easy to clarify: - up to now civil engineers, which have the knowledge to explain and discuss the possible methods of construction, were not consulted or involved in the discussions. Egyptologists, like archeologists, are very aware of their science and nobody wants to invade their dominions, but what do they know about construction methods? The closest approach was involving architects, but as far as I know from 35 years of engineering practice (buildins, dams, walls and big infra and superstructures) they know very little about constructing simply because it is not within their academic background. Architects design, architects discuss the space, the color, the shadow, but they do not build or define engineering methods for erecting a huge building or other type of constructions. What do they know about concrete technology, about concrete placing and cure, about formwork or scaffolding? I do not want to be rude neither to offend the very few architects that are familiar with construction methods. If you place the Davidovits theory to a group of Civil Engineers I would say that 99% of them would agree with it, because it is very simple, possible, repeatable with very easy tools and explains everything. Try for example to look at the pyramids from the apex, by a satellite image or simply by the Google Earth. You should note a very peculiar characteristic of all of them (not with the same intensity, anyway): - the entasis. This means that the sides of the pyramids are concave, which is consistent with the indications of Heron of Alexandria (10-70 BC that entasis had been invented by the Egyptians to disguise the optical illusion that gives curvature to large flat surfaces. What a surprise indeed. How is it possible to explain this construction feature? They had no surveying equipment, theodolites, total stations and levels. How were they able to carve and place a layer of stones in such a way to favor the entasis? Look at the pyramid steps, they are perfectly leveled? How? Look at the convergence of the four edges of each pyramid, they cross one another at the apex without deviation. They could only see 3 at a time, but not from above, only from below. They were not able by sight to detect any imperfection. How could they did it? The answer is very simple to civil engineers and very easy to do: using a wire, as even today is used to score alignments or deploying curved surfaces (marking at regular spacements on the wire, distances to the final position of formwork). This can lead us to a very big discussion. To finalize: - In terms of Science nobody knows how the Pyramids were built. Davidovits theory anyhow is the closest, simplest and most supported theory to explain that mystery. It is supported by Egyptian documents and stelae. It is time for the Egyptologist to open their minds and try to translate from the old egyptian language the same documents he is presenting in his books. Is that so difficult? What is behind that apparent lack of interest? The well-known obstinacy of the Egyptian authorities, they do not want to counter? Or are they afraid to discover how wrong they are? <<<<: A.Teixeira-Pinto

"At the last judgment the ink spent by scholars is equal to the blood of martyrs." Said Nursi

Of cource but.. The problem isn't the lack of evidence it's the lack of collective investigation by scientists or people trained in the scientific method. Very few qualified inderviduals have done research, like materials engineer Michel Barsoum who used scanning and transmission electron microscopy, and found that pyramid samples had mineral ratios that did not exist in any known limestone sources. Which supports the geopolymer theory of Joseph Davidovits See below: http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2006/12/061209122918.htm The head of Egypts Antiquities Department, Zahi Hawass, dismissed the study as plain stupid, idiotic and insulting . There simply isn't enough money and interest for the proper research to occur therefore a priori assumptions and foregone conclusions are made on both sides.

Don't you mean Foregone conclusion...?http://youtu.be/qnLKC7UrT4I

These artifacts need to be thoroughly mapped and inspected with the following tools. 1. A laser interferometer with surface flatness checking capabilities 2. An ultrasonic thickness gage to check the thickness of the walls to determine their consistency to uniform thickness. 3. An optical flat with monochromatic light source. Are the surfaces really finished to optical precision? The precision in these artifacts is irrefutable. Even if we ignore the question of how they were produced, we are still faced with the question of why such precision was needed. The implications of this question is just as profound. Chris.Dunn

When ever I have visited sites like stone henge I am reminded of : " Simplicity is the the ultimate sophistication" da Vinci, another way of saying clarity of thought. Why bother building with such heavy stones only for the purpose of marking an equinox or moon cycles ? When your dealing with structures that can be classified by the tonnage, the effort that would of gone into building them seems redundant. None of the above is consistent with what we know of North American Indian culture or colonial settlers. At what point were the first settlers capable of handling stones weighing in the tonnes anyway ?

If ya gonna take aim at science don't do at the 99% of DNA we share with chimps... http://www.ucsf.edu/news/2010/06/5993/what-makes-us-human-studies-chimp-and-human-dna-may-tell-us

Big Bang model originated with the observation that the Universe is expanding. The Big Bang model became the dominant model when one of its predictions, the cosmic microwave background, was observed.Seems reasonable enough. This blog refutes the claims of plasma cosmology:http://scientopia.org/blogs/galacticinteractions/2011/01/15/how-i-know-plasma-cosmology-is-wrong/

I don't have any understanding of the mathematics underpinning cosmology. But is standard cosmology setting aside Occam's razor by branding plasma cosmology as heresy? Can someone explain to me in laymans terms why the standard model is correct ? I have no investment in either by the way.

That video on the Easter Island moai is classic but it depends on terraine, weight, height, man power etc As for evidence based,I keep an open mind, or rather I have the luxury of being able to keep an open mind . I think that machinists and engineers are some of the best people to study these sites because they are not restricted by trying to establish themselves in academia.The purported decuctive evidence that the "sarcophagus" in the Great Pyramid (featuring Aswan rose quartz granite and perfect rights angles) was machined is within the bounds of rationality. It may not be agreeable to the wider academia but its a conclusion based on a disinterested analysis by some engineers. Of cource such speculation fuels all kinds of nonsense as well, "advanced civilisation" sells books, tours, talks,cults etc...but its still a valid hypothese, providing one unpacks the word `advanced`. Its well within the bounds of sense to suggest it, based on the genius of some megalithic construction. I wonder sometimes how much the spirit of disinterested enquiry has been compromised under the zeitgest of strict linear development. Its irrefutable that all life on Earth has a common ancestor but some of our ancestors were way ahead of their time.

From http://jayarava.blogspot.de/?m=1 This has no bearing on my practice but it is interesting nonetheless. What was the Buddha's name? In the Pāli texts his followers called him Bhagavan. Other people tended to call him Gotama or 'sāmaṇa' depending on whether they were being polite or impolite. Later is was established that his name was Siddhartha Gautama. In this essay I want to take a brief look at the evidence we have for what the Buddha's name was, or as we shall see, what it probably wasn't. The name Siddhartha occurs in the Pāli texts, in the form Siddhattha, only in the Jātakas and later commentarial works. It is not used in the Nikāyas or Vinaya as the name of the Buddha, though it is used for other people. The Jātakas are legendary material which we can't take seriously as historical accounts. Siddhartha is used in the Sanskrit Mahāvastu - technically a vinaya text of the Mahāsaṅghika sect but actually an extended and much elaborated biography, really a hagiography of the Buddha. The fact is that the more strictly biographical accounts of the Buddha, such as the Ariyapariyesanā Sutta, make no mention of his given name at all! The best we can say is that apart from the name Siddhartha there is no other name mentioned as a contender. Gautama (P. Gotama) is something of a puzzle because it is a distinctively Brahmin name. There are several well known Brahmin philosophers called Gautama, and even a Brahminical Gautama Sūtra. Gautama is a traditional Brahmin gotra (P. gotta) name. The gotra is like a clan name, and indicates people descended from a particular ancestor. While the Vedic Brahmins did not worship their ancestors, whom they referred to as the pitaraḥ 'the fathers', they did revere them and in earlier versions of rebirth theories the good Brahmin would leave this world and go to the world of his fathers (women were not included in this scheme) for a time before coming back to this world. A hint into the original use of this term is that it also means a cow (go) shed (tra, 'protection') - the image is of the herd of cows enclosed and protected, similar to the relationship of the individual to the clan group. Only a few dozen traditional gotra names are recorded (there are lists in the pre-Buddhist Bṛhadāranyaka Upaniṣad for instance). Monier-Williams' Dictionary suggests there are 49, and gives Gautama as one of his examples in his Sanskrit dictionary. It is mentioned many times through the Buddhist canon that the Buddha was a kṣatriya - that is of the class (varṇa) [1] which is associated with rulers and secular leadership - sometimes kṣatriya and rāja 'king, ruler' are treated as synonyms. The other three classes were priests (brāhmaṇa) merchants (vaiṣya) and peasants (śudra). Although the Buddha's father was referred to as a 'rāja' at that time the Śākya nation was more like an oligarchy or republic. Rāja cannot really mean king or royalty in this context, and probably just means 'leader' and even then one leader amongst many. In the commentarial traditions we find that the Śākyas did not follow Vedic, but Dravidian marriage customs, suggesting that perhaps they were not Āryans [2] at all (though this is a late tradition it must have had the ring of truth to survive since it contradicts his being a kṣatriya, which is a more convenient appellation in caste conscious India). There are pockets of Dravidian speaking peoples in North India still and it is usually assumed that they were the aboriginal inhabitants of the Ganges plain and were displaced by the encroaching Vedic/Sanskrit speaking peoples. There is some doubt about this theory now, and of course it tends to ignore the other major language group in India - Muṇḍa - traces of which can be found in the Ṛgveda (see my discussion of the Dhp 1 and 2 for an example of a Muṇḍa loan word in Sanskrit and Pāli). In any case politically and it seems socially the Śākyas were distinct from the Brahmins - making the fact of the Buddha's Brahmin surname even more odd. There is evidence that Brahmins were not above adopting clans into the Āryan class/caste system - sometimes making their priests honorary Brahmins. It has been suggested that perhaps the Śākyans employed a Brahmin purohita (a priest) and adopted his gotra name. If this is true it shows how very powerful the influence of the Brahmins was on the culture of Greater Magadha even at this early stage when it was dominated by the various śramaṇa groups. The Vedic languages were a powerful means of cultural imperialism. To summarise then: while there is no other contender the name Siddhartha is not associated with the Buddha in the earliest texts, though Gautama is. Gautama however is a distinctive traditional Brahmin name which does not fit the general picture of the Buddha's non-Brahmin, probably non-Āryan background. Such uncertainty does not sit well with religious sentiments, and so the legends which filled the gaps in our knowledge gained the status of facts: the Buddha's name simply is Siddhartha Gautama and we 'know' many details of his parentage and life. Of course it is possible that the legend is based on a fact not recorded in the suttas, however unlikely this seems. Perhaps the Buddha deliberately obscured aspects of his pre-enlightenment existence. I've noticed that occasionally when people wish to belittle me they will insist on using my birth name instead of my Buddhist name - particularly when denying the validity of my ordination. Perhaps the Buddha wished to create a bit of distance between that old identity and 'the Tathāgata'. Other details of his life are equally vague, and even more elaborately filled in by Buddhists. Indeed the further we get from the actual life the more elaborate the stories become until they leave behind any sense of historicity. Does it matter? I think not. The Buddha is a symbol of our potential - every human being if they pursue the dhamma can become 'like that' (tathāgata), i.e. we can all have that experience which the Buddha had. The fact is that people have been having that experience ever since the Buddha's first disciples and right down to the present. Buddhists do not rely on the divinity of the Buddha. We have the dhamma - the ways and means of following the Buddha. We have the Saṅgha - each other, but more especially those with experience, with the experience, to support and guide us. The main reason for pointing out the problems with the hagiographic narratives is to prevent us from deifying that version of the Buddha who is more a product of human imagination than of history. Such a figure must remain a symbol and not become an idol if we are to retain the spirit of the Buddha's teaching.

@2:40 the mind boggles.

A very interesting read on polygonal masonry: http://davidpratt.info/andes2.htm "Jean-Pierre Protzen conducted experiments that convinced him that the trial-and-error method was the most likely method used for shaping stones." Typical lazy approach because such sites do not conform to a strictly linear view of development. See below: "The welded rhyolite stones used at the Inca site of Ollantaytambo had a hardness of between 6 and 7 on the Mohs scale. Protzen does not mention performing experiments with that type of rock. Nor did he try to shape many-angled, interlocking stones. Nor did he experiment with multi-tonne blocks. A. Hyatt Verrill writes: No sane man can believe that a twenty-ton stone was pecked here and there, dropped into position, hoisted out and trued and cut over and over again, until a perfect fit was obtained. Even if we can imagine such endless herculean labor being performed, it would have been impossible in many cases owing to the fact that the stones are locked or dovetailed together. Although some of the stones are fairly square or rectangular and with six faces, many are irregular in form, and some have as many as thirty-two angles. The only way in which such complex forms could have been fitted with such incredible accuracy was by cutting each block to extremely fine measurements, or by means of a template, a process which would indicate that these prehistoric people possessed a most thorough and advanced knowledge of engineering and the higher mathematics"

Polygonal masonry http://www.dry-stone.co.uk/Pages/Books/Articles/Polygonal/Polygonal.html

I agree a complete reconstuction is impossible. But unless we apply some critical thinking of their motives( e.g. the great pyramid is a tomb for a despotic ruler, a very convientent fit) we will never make any progress. People like Christopher Dunn have pointed out that the construction techinques are not consistent with a slave work force, its too precise. In regards to stone tools, what stone tools and methods were used ? The Cuzco wall is polygonal and the accuracy of the dressing is amazing. A watertight 2-D and 3-D fit can not be passed off with "they had more time on their hands".

Thanks I will check it out. But inferring from the word scaling, do you mean the plausibility of such skulls being a 'natural' mutation vs the larger the animal is...'the less surface area it has relative to overall body mass and the harder it is for the creature to rid its body of excess heat' *Scientific American* Which would make a temperature sensitive organ like a larger brain implausible? Another problem I can see is birth, such large crania would require a wider pelvis, that might inhibit bipedalism see here http://weber.ucsd.edu/~dkjordan/resources/clarifications/HumanBirth.html Further, larger brain vs diet. I don't know if any complete skeletons have been found but I will try and find out.

Could you elaborate or provide some info on the building techniques? The most plausible theory to date on how the ancient Egyptians built the great Pyramid is Jean-Pierre Houdin´s internal ramp but its still just a theory of how 2.3 million blocks were put into place and the site was leveled to within a fraction of an inch. Much of the problem has been the orthodox accounts have been woefully inadequate, which fuels alternative history.

I agree credulity is an issue here but it all stands and falls on whether they circumvent the peer review process, not on Brien´s business or connection to the alternative history crowd. Skeptics rightly keep asking for papers and journals but the research into the Paracas skulls has only just started- at least involving DNA testing - nothing has been submited to any journal because there are no results yet. The majority of the testing is being done at a undisclosed lab in the U.S.A. not connected with Melba.Ketchun. There is a Peruvian archaeologist who is in charge of the research being done into the Paracas skulls, including the DNA testing, to get archaeological samples out of Peru you have to be registered with COARPE. Brien is really just publicizing it, perhaps captilizing on the hype but is it that different from R.Dawkins who´s anthropomorphizing of genetic biology is equally as misleading ? And more profitable I might add.

I have no idea about the two tones. But the skull at 2.20 clearly has one parietal plate. They are pre Incan and because of the aridity of the region skin and hair is still attached to some the skulls, though red hair dose not necessarily indicate ethnicity. I believe they have found infants skulls that show the same abnormality, I think at the very least its a mutation going back generations. Brien speculates that the Nazca people killed them off.

I want to clarify my understanding and position on the Paracas skull topic, from memory.. Brien.Foerster has claimed to have taken three samples from three elongated skulls housed at a muesum in Paracas Peru to a geneticist for an analysis. This was done because the skulls exhibit phenotypical abnormalities not consistent with head binding, this includes the singular parietal plate. Brien.Foerster has kept the identity of the geneticist confidential but has released a statement that he claims was made by the geneticist doing the testing. The testing has not been finished. I have chosen to believe all of the above. As for the content in the preliminary statement made by the geneticist, I am undecided. Brien.Foerster has a science diploma but given that this issue can only be properly resolved by genetic testing I have no issue with his credentials or lack of, I trust that he is capable of taken a proper sample which included molar teeth. As to why Brien has kept the identity of the geneticist secret and to what extent this calls into question the validity of the testing I can only speculate. Is it uncommon for research or the identity of persons involved to be kept secret, at least untill such testing has been completed? Even if the geneticists and testing proves to be credible and the subsequent results shows genomic anomalies, there will still be a long way to go before any concrete conclusions can be drawn. My specaltive theory is that the Paracas skulls represent an archaic (extinct) human. Thats it.

And so is cherry picking from fringe internet sources that are distorting a prelimanary statement about an ongoing test. Your exaggerating Koonin´s use of the word fact. (Dose the statement "absolute fact" have a place in scientific discource anyway?) Koonin is generalizing about his research to make it assesible to the wider academia and layperson. Most popular science i.e. Dawkins, Gould is collating "facts" that are the subject of interpretation and ongoing research, these are then spun into a narritive to suit the authors agenda. Scientists still opperate under a Zeitgeist, research is made normative by spinning it into a narrative. Where the layperson gets confused is assuming that these narratives represent a unfied collation of the research on a subject or represent the unified views of the wider scientific establishment. Craniosynostosis occurs in one in 2000 births according to wikipedia or the skull base institute reports one in every 4,200, nice to see the science is settled on that issue. The Paracas skulls are predominantly adults that exhibit a singular parietal plate at the rear of the skull. We are looking at possibly hundreds of adult skulls with a phenotype uncommen in homo sapiens. Evolutuionary scientists spend much time researching and debating over minutia in poorly preserved transitional fossils that they extrapolate to missing link status. Much of the bad press this recieves tarnishes an obviously worthy topic for research, rhetoric like "missing alien species" could easily be rationilized with " The Incidence of Craniosynostosis among Dolichocephalic Human Crania in Peru".

The above video shows clear examples of unknown phenotypes, at 2:20 there is clear evidence of this. It's axiomatic to anyone with a basic understanding of anatomy. Please watch it before indulging in misleading attempts at trying to derail the topic