Here is my understanding, now let’s get down to business:

First, we have an excerpt from the Wikipedia article on "Baghdad Battery":

However, even among those who believe the artifacts were in fact electrical devices, electroplating as a use is not well regarded today. The gilded objects which König thought might be electroplated are now believed to have been fire-gilded (with mercury). Reproduction experiments of electroplating by Dr. Arne Eggebrecht consumed "many" reproduction cells to achieve a plated layer just one micrometre thick. Other scientists noted that Dr. Eggebrecht used a more efficient, modern electrolyte; using only vinegar, the "battery" is very feeble.

An alternative but still electrical explanation was offered by Paul Keyser. It was suggested that a priest or healer, using an iron spatula to compound a vinegar based potion in a copper vessel, may have felt an electrical tingle, and used the phenomenon either for electro-acupuncture, or to amaze supplicants by electrifying a metal statue. [my emphasis]

See the rest of the article for non-electrical use theories.

Then we have evidence that the electroplating experiment undertaken by Dr. Arne Eggebrecht was anything but scientific, from www.world-mysteries.com:

Testing this idea in the late seventies, Dr Arne Eggebrecht, then director of Roemer and Pelizaeus Museum in Hildesheim, connected many replica Baghdad batteries together using grape juice as an electrolyte, and claimed to have deposited a thin layer of silver on to another surface, just one ten thousandth of a millimetre thick.

Other researchers though, have disputed these results and have been unable to replicate them.

"There does not exist any written documentation of the experiments which took place here in 1978," says Dr Bettina Schmitz, currently a researcher based at the same Roemer and Pelizaeus Museum.

"The experiments weren't even documented by photos, which really is a pity," she says. "I have searched through the archives of this museum and I talked to everyone involved in 1978 with no results."

And finally, there is an article in a technical journal called "Plating and Surface Finishing" (which my university does not have) which refers to the battery. The abstract of which seems to hint at the non-electric theory of scroll repositories mentioned in the Wikipedia article, although what the actual article says I do not know. Said abstract follows:

The Baghdad battery - myth or reality?

D. E. Von Handorf.

Plating and Surface Finishing (USA), Vol. 89, No. 5, May 2002, pp. 84-87.

In 1938, Wilhelm Konig, the director of antiquities at the Iraq Museum in Baghdad, was reviewing the findings of archeological digs of a site near Baghdad where the 1936 construction of a rail line had unearthed ancient remains. While it may not be unusual for archeologists to find items in gravesites for which the use is unknown, Konig was taken by one set of four unglazed ceramic vessels found in a grave that was dated in the time of the Parthians occupation of the area (248 BC-226 AD). Three vessels had copper cylinders made of copper sheet with a copper end that was lead-soldered to the bottom of the cylinders. One of these vessels had an iron spike inside the copper cylinder, with the remains of an asphalt-like plug. The other two vessels did not have the iron spike inside, but there were other iron spikes in the grave. The fourth ceramic vessel did not have the copper cylinder. Inside the copper cylinders were flaky remains of a papyrus-like material. Konig decided that the vessels looked like galvanic cells. Thus began the story of the Baghdad Battery, and the controversy that surrounds that description.

[edit on 12-10-2005 by Lexicon]

Well, I did some more searching and found what appears to be the part of the Mahabharata that the verses claimed to prove nuclear war are based on. They can be found in the first few sections of book 16, found here.

The quoted verses are excepts of very small portions of those sections, some are highly modified, much is completely fabricated, and, of course, huge amounts of the original are left out. When read in the context of the story, it's clear that something 'bad' is happening in the story, but it's not nuclear war.



[edit on 12-10-2005 by Lexicon]

Originally posted by Lexicon
Unfortunately, respected archaeologists generally don’t spend their time refuting crackpot theories. They may not even be aware of them. But they do present their findings, especially ones as important as the one in question, in scholarly articles and books.

I don't know what you read,but archeologists refute claims all the time. Particularly those made by other scientists like this one. And particularly still those that majorly alter timelines. You just found an article right off the bat showing scientists attempting to refute the ancient battery. Almost everything from the distant past is in dispute in some form or another,hence why I pointed out to you the relativity of verification earlier. Yet you have nothing refuting this but claim hoax anyway(in bold,no less) on your own based on not one single refutation found. That's a lack of factual integrity.

I have yet to find anything academic which mentions this fusion.

Except that the findings come from academics,of course.

As for seeing ‘reports,’ no I haven’t. I’ve seen an article from Pravda

Featuring reports.

--and websites that anyone and their grandmother could put up.

It's funny,you tossed up websites earlier in this thread to show that we know that the pyramids were built as tombs and that we know how they were built(both claims which are incorrect and not even made by your own sites,by the way). But now websites are dismissed.

And I don’t think any of the sites I’ve seen were ‘science sites.’ If you’d direct me to some scholarly report that gives documented evidence for this fusion I would be more than willing to entertain the idea.

Archeology was a science the last time I checked. www.archaeologyanswers.com... was one of the sites you found. The person tied to that site is an archeologist. And if your grandmother can put up sites like this www.bibliotecapleyades.net... then maybe you should listen to what she has to say.

I searched for various words and found none in ‘verses’ with the same meaning as those claimed—I didn’t search for entire sentences. It’s unfortunate that you don’t intend on proving for yourself whether or not a claim is true, especially when it’s not that difficult to do so—it’s the attitude the hoaxers expected of you. I will continue to search through the Mahabharata and keep you posted.

It's very difficult to do as I'd have to read a good chunk of an enormous work I'm not interested in,and find one snippet of something that I may not recognize even if I was staring right at it due to differences in translation. All in order to disprove a claim of hoax that was never proven in the first place. That's partly why the mandatory claims of hoaxes for everything sometimes gain influence. Because people will claim hoax out of the air,knowing the time and energy it takes to check a statement that it took no energy at all to blurt out. If I had any doubt of the genuineness of that verse and had use of it,I'd just refer to any of the numerous other ones that speak of the same thing. Simple solution to a simple problem. Much easier than trying to flip through an entire Hindu epic.

You've been given the citation,at least two of the scientists by name,and even the experiments performed. If you can dismiss that as"threadbare" then there's not much point in presenting much of anything.

I haven’t been given a citation, if by citation you mean a journal name, volume and page number, which would be the proper way to find a scholarly report.

I cited a discovery and then later cited an article on it.

ci·ta·tion ( P ) Pronunciation Key (s-tshn)
n.
1.The act of citing.


I don't know what lexicon you're in that "citation" means you gave someone a journal name,but that's not the definition proper.

The internet is a nice place to find general information, but it’s not going to answer everything for you. I have access to a good (although not perfect) university library, and I’m willing to use that library to educate myself if only you would point me towards the information.

If you truly want to educate yourself you're going to first have to realize that information comes from much more than the sources you've limited yourself to. No science or journal is the Holy Grail. Scientists argue over discoveries all the time. And different scientists from different fields have different views of the same thing. There is no clean cut,universal truth when dealing with the past that you can point to and say "This is real. Everything else is a crackpot theory.". It doesn't exist. One cannot be rigid to the point where they lose common sense and independent thought. That's not only a gross perversion the scientific method,but it does little but promote ignorance instead of insight.

The article did not mention what material was used for the bath, at least the one I read. The mention of electroplating was a few sentences long, I believe.

The conditions were simulated as they were assumed to have been at the time by those scientists. Otherwise there would have been no purpose for running them in the first place.

In addition, you even mistook it (or another website, earlier in this discussion) as making the claim that 4500-year old electroplated batteries were actually discovered, so it must have been badly written or something.

One has nothing to do with the other. I was going from memory and misremembered. That's not the article's fault. To err is human. You're human too as numerous errors in your posts illustrate. That article wasn't even where I got it from. That was just something I quickly pulled up on the web since you apparently hadn't heard of it.

As I said, I have access to a university library and I know how to use it. Take advantage of that and give me something to do.

You can have access to the Library of Congress but if you don't acknowledge anything that conflicts with a pre-conceived notion than no information will help no matter how abundant. Knowledge and discovery are free-flowing by nature. If your mind is rigid,the two will conflict.

We must ignore all we don’t know, because we don’t know it. So We search to find out more, but until then we work on what we know is generally correct.

But what we know is that we haven't discovered much. A pattern has been established. The pattern dictates that we must automatically assume we will find more,not vice versa. You don't assume the money you have at this instance is all the money you'll have for the rest of your life. Because history tells you you will get another paycheck. History has shown we will find more things than we have.

If we are to presuppose things about ancient civilizations for which we do not have proof, we would be introducing countless numbers of new variables into our calculations. We would be inventing new theories left, right and centre to explain everything in the archaeological record. We would be making a mockery of science.

On the contrary. That would only be the case if we were under the assumption that we had a near complete picture or that our research was finished. But since we know it's not then science dictates that we must introduce this fact into the equation. Hence why little of the distant past is ever officially declared fact,but theory. Variables can only be eliminated when we are through. Until then,we have to deal with them.

We don’t suppose that the Egyptians had giant power stations. We don’t suppose that aliens interacted with humankind. We don’t suppose what we don’t have reason to suppose.

You don't have to suppose any of those things(although history is generally not considered supposition). But you do have to suppose that we will find more than we have.

Could you give me a particular title or two so that I might find them? Also, have you ever heard of this thing called fiction? We have a lot of it, you know.

Some of which can found in scientific journals. We also presently don't know which parts are fiction and which are not as we keep discovering things that we thought originally were only myth,but weren't. A good start would be the Earth Chronicles translations. And if you honestly think we know how the pyramids were built or that the science and math of Egypt was "no greater than was expected" as you said,I'd suggest Egypt Revisited by Van Sertima. Or any cross-comparison of these 3 civilizations to those that came after them for that matter.

Okay, before I go any further, the time was primitive. Apparently, you’re claiming that technology was given to Sumerians, Akkadians, and Egyptians (and Harappans?) from aliens

It's not my claim. It's theirs.

and this technology was used in such a way that the Sumerians would have a battery, but would have it in a clay pot—this suggests that the knowledge among the human half of this culture was, indeed, primitive. So primitive that aliens felt they had to give them technology.

From what I've read,the Illuminati(humans) were taught a working knowledge of the more complex principles by these beings themselves and it trickled down from there. The general masses may not have been as technologically adept as the top but that's the case in any society. I couldn't build the computer I'm using right now and I doubt you could either. But I wouldn't say that makes our culture primitive.

It is only the fact that a few choice bits of technology have been discovered that you claim an advanced civilization. We have a civilization with a few advanced items given to it by the ‘heavenly beings’ and this makes it an advanced civilization?

I would say a civilization that has writing,commerce,complex science,math,and medicine,and construction that astounds us even today is advanced,yes.

Now, those who discovered the battery did not, in fact, discover the principles of electricity. They discovered that if they put metal A and metal B into liquid C, something happens. Heck, even your claim that aliens gave the technology to humans precludes them from having discovered it, so I don’t know what you’re trying to do, saying that humans discovered all this stuff with their sharp minds.

Wherever the impossible knowledge these people had came from,they had it. So their civilization cannot be considered primitive anymore than ours can because we have uneducated or outright stupid people around too.

I’m pretty sure math was no accident, but what do you mean by ‘charting the solar system’? If you’re about to claim that they knew the relative distances of the planets from the sun, I would like you to provide the evidence up front.

Amongst other things,they knew of all the planets in our solar system. Something not (re)discovered until thousands of years later.

I’d think that someone who defends these theories like you should have some examples at your fingertips.

I do. But if you're running on a preconceived notion,particularly to the level where you'll dismiss things out of hand or outright declare things of your own creation as fact(such as your Mohenjo hoax claim),then you're better off doing an independent search. Only you know what will satisfy your own standards. It's obviously not just a presentation of information that will do it.

P.S. - One is supposed to put spaces after commas.

When you're finished reading through the Mahabharata,you may want to do a quick search on informal writing.

[edit on 12-10-2005 by Loungerist]

Alright, I think I'm done with this discussion. I'd like to continue, but you refuse to provide an independently-verifiable scholarly source for the 'fused layer' claims, or else you claim as scholarly websites and disreputable newspapers that give names, but not universities or institutions, and lack footnotes or bibliographies to original sources. We cannot go any further until we have some evidence for the claim in question. I will gladly take up the gauntlet again if someone provides this evidence (although I think we'll have to change forums since, clearly, we've been off-topic all this time, and I wonder why no moderator has closed the thread).

P.S. - No, really, no matter how informally one writes, one always places a space after a comma.

[edit on 13-10-2005 by Cicada]

Guys, lets not worry about spelling and grammar problems, obviously its better to write as properly as one can, and of course one's points will be taken more respectfully and seriously when they are respectfully and seriously presented, but lets focus on the subject of the thread here.

As far as asking for evidence and a rationale, well, of course thats what is asked for, thats what we're all here for, to discuss these subjects. We can't discuss them in a sensbile manner if the ideas are so airy and insubstantial that they fall apart the minute someone tries to apply a sensible system of investigation and consideration on them.

[edit on 13-10-2005 by Nygdan]

Originally posted by Cicada
It is really poor message board etiquette to attack a person's posts on grammatical issues, especially as a means to boost yourself up while you're losing an argument. You have no idea who you are communicating with, what their education level is, whether English is their first language, if they have a disability of some nature, etc. You run a great risk of offending someone on a level that has nothing to do with the topic at hand. You have a very school oriented approach to all of this, but this isn't school, no one is being graded by you, and there are no formalized formats for posting. Individuals using these boards are allowed to express themselves however they feel comfortable as long as they comply with a few simple, reasonable rules.

My original comment was not intended to be an 'attack.' I found that when I pasted Loungerist's posts into Word in order to formulate my responses I kept getting red underlining which was fairly distracting. As for not knowing enough about Loungerist re first language, disability, etc., I think I do. Loungerist is more than adequately proficient with the language, and I find it very likely that English is a first language. Even if it is not, it is clearly understood fluently. The only major problem Loungerist is making is in regards to not putting a space after commas. I can hardly see a connection to a disability. Now, by claiming that informal writing allows for such an omission, Loungerist invited a response from me, someone who knows that it is in fact obligatory to follow a comma with a space in formal or informal written English. As for your claim that I am losing the argument, I'm afraid that I do not see it that way.



[edit on 13-10-2005 by Lexicon]

Whoa, is this the English 101 forum?

Originally posted by intrepid
Whoa, is this the English 101 forum?

No, but it's also not the ancient civilizations forum either.

Originally posted by Nygdan
As far as asking for evidence and a rationale, well, of course thats what is asked for, thats what we're all here for, to discuss these subjects. We can't discuss them in a sensbile manner if the ideas are so airy and insubstantial that they fall apart the minute someone tries to apply a sensible system of investigation and consideration on them.

Of course, but there's a level of speculative theory that has to be allowed to take place in certain gray areas. There is at times levels of insistence on sources representing some sort of authority that to me seems to totally miss the point. To dismiss any topic too abstract for investigation means that all discussions of philosophy or theology are off limits. There are scores of suppositions that have to be made to accept any paradigm, even the popular ones. We are not able from our limited human frame of reference to take into account the entire field of factors on any topic, and this is especially true in a discussion of esoteric subject matter. No offense is meant by this to any one, but these matters simply aren't that cut and dried.

Originally posted by Cicada
Of course, but there's a level of speculative theory that has to be allowed to take place in certain gray areas. There is at times levels of insistence on sources representing some sort of authority that to me seems to totally miss the point. To dismiss any topic too abstract for investigation means that all discussions of philosophy or theology are off limits. There are scores of suppositions that have to be made to accept any paradigm, even the popular ones. We are not able from our limited human frame of reference to take into account the entire field of factors on any topic, and this is especially true in a discussion of esoteric subject matter. No offense is meant by this to any one, but these matters simply aren't that cut and dried.

Cicada, I'm not looking for authority, but verifiability. "Argument from authority" is a fallacy. It is unfortunate that verifiability is often connected to authority, but it is the verifiability that is important. Peer-reviewed journals are a treasure trove of verifiable information, since, well, peers review the articles before they are published, and articles require good documentation when they refer to previous sources. If anything as important as the claims of a fused layer that is put forth as evidence for ancient atomic warfare was discovered, it would have been presented in the journals by those discovering it. That's not to say they would present it as evidence of ancient atomic warfare--they likely would claim something else, or present no theory at all. It is then that the argument between those on this board should come in--argument over the interpretation of the verifiable factual findings.



[edit on 13-10-2005 by Lexicon]

Lexicon,

You are very self-defensive. We're talking about different things here. I'm not involved in the "fused layer" high-tech weaponry argument. There's a lack of careful reading going on here and for some reason a strong urge to separate people into camps. If someone is debating a specific example of something, something physical that can be observed with the senses, than I'm all for looking at it and investigating it to the highest rigors available to us. This is different to the knee-jerk reaction frequently expressed on these boards to any notion of alternative history, any deviation from the mainstream attitudes that is on the borderline of being treated as scientific dogma. It's anti-imagination, anti-intuition, and dependant upon the perfect infallibility of popular consensus. To me it reads as lazy arrogance and it's as irritating to me as those red marks on Word seem to be to you. If you don't feel that you are guilty of this than there's really nothing to get upset about.

Originally posted by Cicada
Lexicon,

You are very self-defensive. We're talking about different things here. I'm not involved in the "fused layer" high-tech weaponry argument. There's a lack of careful reading going on here and for some reason a strong urge to separate people into camps. If someone is debating a specific example of something, something physical that can be observed with the senses, than I'm all for looking at it and investigating it to the highest rigors available to us. This is different to the knee-jerk reaction frequently expressed on these boards to any notion of alternative history, any deviation from the mainstream attitudes that is on the borderline of being treated as scientific dogma. It's anti-imagination, anti-intuition, and dependant upon the perfect infallibility of popular consensus. To me it reads as lazy arrogance and it's as irritating to me as those red marks on Word seem to be to you. If you don't feel that you are guilty of this than there's really nothing to get upset about.

In making the comment about the fused layer and verifiability, I wasn't making the claim that you believed or were arguing it. I was simply using it as an example of the type of claim that I expect verifiable findings about as the basis for intelligent conversation.

As for the rest, no, I suppose it is true about me. I will never seriously entertain certain notions, such as that aliens are responsible for the pyramids. There is only so far one who's had an education in ancient history like I have will go with these things. But there are certainly other less controversial (read: crazy) theories that I'll entertain.



[edit on 14-10-2005 by Lexicon]