Legendary Times...

I have just finished reading Volcanoes: Crucibles of Change by Richard V. Fisher, Grant Heiken, and Jeffrey B. Hulen. It is a good popular account of the way volcanoes shape the landscape around us. It contains illustrations that make clear the 'rising bubbles of buoyant magma' mechanism that fuels eruptions at the surface. It stops short of discussing the nuclear core of the earth, but does discuss supervolcanoes and megatsunamis.

The most interesting part of the book to me was a small section on tribal legends as reliable scientific signposts that offer clues to the types of eruptions, their effects, and future occurances.

'We ignore legend', said Heinrich Schliemann, 'at our peril'.

I am curious if the belief in astrology of the temporal position of sometimes-unseen stars as a cause of earthquakes could have an exemplar in the Indonesian tsunami and the magnetar eruption in Sagittarius. Gravity waves from the magnetar could have been brought to a spherical focus by the Earth beneath the Indian Ocean, triggering the earthquake. The Indian Government uses Astrology to predict earthquakes. And that brings me to the point of all this: is there something we should be paying attention to in the Mayan prophecies? If so- what is it?

[edit on 19-2-2005 by Chakotay]