Hello, Mamasita. Sorry to be so late replying, but it's been a busy week with computer crashes and homework.
thanks for that information, and I always read wikipedia for unbiased information.
Ok so goldmines are out but what about all the pyramids all over the world? Theres no way ancient people went to all that effort with their primative
tools - not to mention the fact that they all say they were there when they arrived.
Hoooboy. Now there we get into a deep subject. Instead of me lecturing you (since you're so intelligent and curious), why don't I simply suggest
that you read up on the Egyptian pyramids... the other 100 of them.
And the Nubian pyramids (look for pictures from curators of the sites because they'll have the archaeological info plus other artifacts associated
with the structures)
...and the Incan pyramids (which are different from the Mayan) and the Chinese pyramids.
When I started, I had to kind of keep a timeline in mind so I could learn who had what when -- and what else was found with it.
So many people come out and make up pompous statements about pyramids without ever learning ABOUT the pyramids.
And...ah... Wikipedia isn't exactly unbiased (there's been lots of howls about that). It's a great starting point but shouldn't be taken as
ultimate truth.
Atlantis and Sumeria don't mention eachother but they have to have similar origins.
?
Why? Atlantis was simply a fable -- a fictional place to set up a dialogue. Sumeria was a real place, and as the links said, evidence of the people
who lived there before they called themselves "Sumerians" is around and in museums.
And about the Athens fighting with the Atlanteans the information is on this site (dont know how to quote yet)
atlantis.haktanir.org...
That's someone else's interpretation -- Read Plato instead! He's the original source (and you should ALWAYS go to the original source)
Here's links to Plato and the translation of Timaeus and Critias, the books with the brief mentions of Atlantis:
www.activemind.com...
Don't read others "putting words into Plato's mouth" -- read Plato!
As for the language - I found a great site dedicated to ancient languages:
www.ancientscripts.com...
which says that Egyptians, Sumerians and Mayans were taught to read and write by their gods.
Oh dear.
What it says is that their legends say that certain gods taught them writing.
However, what evidence says is that they didn't suddenly learn to write one year, but rather that they develop "ownership marks" (this is the way I
draw an ox and anything that has THIS ox on it means "Clan of the Green Lawn") and from proto writing like this comes writing.
Here's a better page on how the cuneiform developed, with examples of the proto-cuneiform:
www.mesopotamia.co.uk...
And how did the Sumerians know so much about the solar system including the colours of uranus and neptune? And how our planet was smashed in a
collision creating our moon?
Answer: They didn't.
Go off to the Cuneiform sites and the word lists for Sumerians and you'll find that they had no word for any planets beyond Saturn (visible planets.)
You'll also find out that they didn't know anything about how the Earth was created cosmologically... but that they kept very accurate tables of
star and planetary movements.
...of planets up to and including Saturn... and nothing else.
Go to the Sumerians and start reading driectly what they knew. Look at the tablets for yourself.
In fact why would ancient people spend so much time dedicating their lives to astronomy when they had more things to worry about like staying
alive and defending against invading allies?
They didn't. The only astronomers around were at courts (who could afford them.) Everyone else had to work at other jobs.
A nice little site that explains it all:
mesopotamia.mrdonn.org...
And isnt it weird that we're "bush men" for hundreds of thousands of yrs n all of a sudden pow suddenly talking and writing and inventing
agriculture and laws and wheels and buildings - and for no reason - it would take a slow gradual rise to b able to do that. They had to be taught.
Why isnt this subject being taken seriously by academics - there's obviously something there.
What's happened is that a number of people (whose sites and books you may have been reading) decided to proclaim things about humans that aren't
true based on their own bad understanding of history.
Humans have been around for about 150,000 years... homo sapiens has been around for about 60,000 years (some debate on this figure). The population
was fairly small (too busy running and hiding from predators) but began to live in larger groups during the Ice Age. The Dryas "dry period"
following the end of the last ice age forced most tribal societies into valleys where they had to settle down (you don't do much innovation when most
of your day is spent wandering around trying to find food or moving to a better campsite) and develop cities and agriculture.
Different climate pressures force different arrangements. Different materials offer opportunities for different development paths (low metal areas
usually went into ceramics, high metal areas usually entered Bronze Ages first, etc, etc.) Trade and wars caused innovation, as did increasing
longevity, social change (more leisue time), education, and the rise of a system that valued knowledge as much as a grain of wheat.
You can't develop tvs if your group is spending its days running around on the plains, chasing buffalos, and tanning hides and your expected lifespan
is 45 years. You can't develop silicon chips if you live in a low tech city and spend most of your time in a shop trying to sell your wares. You
can't develop sophisticated metal compounds if your only ore furnace is heated by animal dung and wood charcoal.
But they developed a lot of amazing and interesting things that are often overlooked by folks -- things well known to scholars and historians but
completely unknown to most people (who aren't interested in diving into dusty manuscripts and long old treatises.)
[edit on 23-10-2008 by Byrd]