Tuesday 28 February 2012

Google Earth deletes Atlantis!

Earlier this month, Google Earth sparked a number of conspiracy theorists into action when their latest update removed a grid like pattern from the sea bed just off the coast of Morocco. When first discovered in 2009 it unsurprisingly ignited rumours that the underwater city of Atlantis had been found.

Google’s official response to the discovery described it as a misrepresentation caused by overlapping datasets, and Atlantis had not been found; but the map remained - until now.

"[W]hat users are seeing is an artifact of the data collection process," a Google spokesperson said in an e-mailed statement. "Bathymetric (or sea-floor terrain) data is often collected from boats using sonar to take measurements of the sea floor. The lines reflect the path of the boat as it gathers the data. The fact that there are blank spots between each of these lines is a sign of how little we really know about the world's oceans."

 Before: Google gave users false hope in its 2009 mapping, which suggested the lost city of Atlantis had been found
The sea floor as mapped under Google’s original mapping programme in 2009.

 After: Google Earth has updated its map, which removes the mystery of Atlantis and gives a 'clearer view' of Earth¿s subterranean landscape
The sea floor as mapped under Google’s current mapping programme released Feb 2012.

Is this a cover up to prevent scores of greedy treasure hunters digging up the sea bed or is there something more to it than that? Of course we cannot ignore the official position and in reality maybe this grid like effect was just a data glitch. That said, if you look closely, and although the area has been darkened, parts of the grid are still visible. Are Google programmers being a little mischievous and deliberately leaving just enough of the 'grid' visible to entice all the "See! I can still see it! What are they hiding??" posters into a conspiracy frenzy or is their new imaging equipment still picking up on the anomaly. Surely if Google had really wanted to erase the feature, they simply would have done so.

Is there something hidden under the sands of the coast of Morocco? I guess only time will tell…

Thursday 16 February 2012

Atlantis - A Civilisation Lost

Rather than start somewhere in the middle I feel my first blog should at revolve around some compelling evidence for advanced civilisation existing long before current accepted theories.
 Athanasius Kircher's map of Atlantis, in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean. From Mundus Subterraneus 1669, published in Amsterdam. The map is oriented with south at the top.

In 2001 a librarian named Rand Flem Ath introduced a new theory to the world in his book, The Atlantis Blueprint. Inside amongst other things Rand asserted that by shifting the prime meridian from its current position at Greenwich and positioning it at Giza in Egypt the world suddenly took on a very different identity.
Marking up a map of the modern world into a grid with Giza as the Prime Meridian he was surprised how many sites of religious importance lay at ten degree intervals from the Giza Pyramids. Easter Island lies 140 degrees west; the pyramids at Teotihuacan and Tula (sacred city of the Toltecs) in Mexico are positioned at 130 degrees west; the pyramids at Copan and Quirigua (also in Mexico) can be found 120 degrees west; Quito, the northern capital of the Inca Empire, is 110 degrees west; and the Gateway to the Sun at Tiahuanaco lies 100 degrees west of the Great Pyramid. To the East, the great Ziggurat at Ur lies exactly 15 degrees east; and Lhasa, the capital of ancient Tibet, lies 60 degrees east of the Great Pyramid. This is not an exhaustive list and many more sites are identified in the book.
As pleased he was with his findings a number of significant sites such as Stone Henge and didn’t seem to fit the theory and he realised he must be missing something. It was then that Rand’s second big breakthrough occurred when he substituted magnetic north for a previous incarnation. You may or may not know that as a result of Earth Crust Displacement magnetic North has not been a constant during Earth’s history; a fact substantiated and logged by Geologists studying volcanic rock. The temperature of molten rock is above the curie temperature of any ferrous oxide it may contain which therefore means that during an eruption the rock gets so hot that any magnetism present within it simply resets. As the rock cools, the ferrous oxides inside it regain their magnetic properties and, unlike other rock types, they will then hold onto these properties until the end of time. Essentially therefore, volcanic rocks can give you a very accurate reading of the whereabouts of magnetic north at the precise time of their respective eruptions. Scientists know that magnetic north has switched twice in the last 100,000 years; moving approximately 80,000BP from its position in the Yukon Valley to the Hudson Bay and then moving again sometime around 12,500BP to its present coordinates.
            This brings in a whole new set of Rand’s ‘sacred’ sites into the equation; sites such as Jericho/Jerusalem and Stone Henge now fitting into his theory as having latitudes of 5 and 30 degrees respectively when recalculated using the ancient poles.
In carrying out his research he also discovered that when they were constructed, a number of ancient sites around the world had been aligned to reflect the positions of these obsolete poles. The avenue of the dead at the site of Teotihuacan in Mexico, for example, was orientated and aligned using the Hudson Bay pole.
View from Pyramide de la luna.jpg The Avenue of the Dead at Teotihunacan.

This alone points to an understanding of both science and geography during the Neolithic era that our ancestors have not been credited with. How could the inhabitants of a settlement established around two thousand years ago have possibly been party to the co-ordinates of magnetic north as it was ten thousand years previously? This is not the only example and these alignments crop up at other sites including Tula, Copan and Xochicalco.
 Stepped Pyramid at Tula archaeological site

 Temple of the Feather Serpent at Xochicalco

The anomaly also appears outside of the Americas and at the site of Ur it is clear that both its stepped pyramid and shrine to the moon god have both been aligned with the Hudson Bay Pole.
 Reconstruction of Ur-Nammu's ziggurat, based on the 1939 reconstruction by Woolley (vol. V, fig. 1.4)
Rand believes that the Atlanteans established settlements on these ‘sacred’ sites which accounts for why so many of them still retain this status. In my opinion it is more likely that these early cartographers placed some kind of marker down which was later interpreted by the indigenous population as other worldly and revered as such. Either way I feel this is a compelling starting point for arguing that advanced civilisation existed at a time when current archaeology still has humanity scavenging for scraps in small groups all around the world. If it could be proven that man accurately mapped the Earth as much as 80,000 years ago, it would certainly blow all current archaeological theory as to the origins of civilisation completely out the water.    

Current Theory - The Orgins of Civilisation in the Ancient Near East (Wikipedia)
The Ancient Near East is considered the cradle of civilisation. It was the first to practice intensive year-round agriculture; it gave the rest of the world the first writing system, invented the potter's wheel and then the vehicular- and mill wheel, created the first centralised governments, law codes and empires, as well as introducing social stratification, slavery and organised warfare, and it laid the foundation for the fields of astronomy and mathematics.

NamePeriodAreaOccupationsWritingReligion
Indus Valley Civilization- Harappa / Mohenjo-daro3000 – 1500 BCNorthwest India, Pakistan,Potter's wheel, Agriculture, dams, city planning, sealsPictographicUnknown
Mesopotamian3000 – 750 BCSumer, Babylonia, Assyric HighlandsDairy farming, textile, metal working, potter's wheel, sexagesimal systemCuneiformPolytheistic
Egyptian3000 – 800 BCNorth Eastern Africa along River NileEgyptian Pyramids, Mummification, Decimal system, Solar calendarHieroglyphicPolytheistic
Chinese1600 BC – 1 ADChinaSilk, Pottery, Chinaware, Metals, Great Wall, PaperChineseTaoism, Confucianism
Persian730 BCGreater PersiaAgriculture, architecture, landscaping, postal serviceCuneiform, PahlaviZoroastrianism
Greek2700 BC - 1500 BC (Cycladic and Minoan civilization), 1600 BC – 1100 BC (Mycenaean Greece), 800 BC (Ancient Greece)Greece (Peloponnese, Epirus, Central Greece, Western Greece, Macedon), later AlexandriaAgriculture, winemaking, architecture poetry, drama, philosophy, history, rhetoric, mathematics, political science, astronomy, physics, chemistry, MedicineGreekPolytheistic
Roman600 BCItalyAgriculture, Roman calendar, concreteLatinPolytheistic
Mayan1500 BC – 300 ADCentral AmericaAgriculture, cotton, dyeing, Mesoamerican pyramidsHieroglyphicPolytheistic
Aztecs1325 AD – 1519 ADMexicoAgriculture, smelting, metal workingPictographicPolytheistic
Incas1300 AD – 1532 ADEcuador, Peru, ChileTextile looms, agriculture, Inca architecturePolytheistic