The 10 Most Puzzling Ancient Artifacts

[Mustakrakish]

Interesting stuff. Kinda reminds me of Coral Castle

That site was kinda awkward. I couldn't get much out of it, is there a better information about this?

 

[Karalysia]

Hoax, hoax, hoax, not puzzling, not puzzling, hoax, hoax, not puzzling, hoax, hoax. In that order. You're welcome.

 

[Cashie]

The Dropa Stones
In 1938, an archeological expedition led by Dr. Chi Pu Tei into the Baian-Kara-Ula mountains of China made an astonishing discovery in some caves that had apparently been occupied by some ancient culture. Buried in the dust of ages on the cave floor were hundreds of stone disks. Measuring about nine inches in diameter, each had a circle cut into the center and was etched with a spiral groove, making it look for all the world like some ancient phonograph record some 10,000 to 12,000 years old. The spiral groove, it turns out, is actually composed of tiny hieroglyphics that tell the incredible story of spaceships from some distant world that crash-landed in the mountains. The ships were piloted by people who called themselves the Dropa, and the remains of whose descendents, possibly, were found in the cave.

What do you think about this?

Moderator Action: Foul language
Please read the forum rules: http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=422889

In a word: bullcrap.
Who translated this?

I saw a documentary on the Antikythera Mechanism a few years ago (apart from being difficult to spell), they "concluded" that it was some sort of calendar or astronomical calculator - which showed phases of the moon and/or where constellations were. And Wikipedia seems to think that in no uncertain terms.

 

[Holycannoli]

That site was kinda awkward. I couldn't get much out of it, is there a better information about this?

Umm it's on wiki but let me see if there's any other info about it.

Ok this link is pretty interesting: http://paranormal.about.com/od/moremadscience/a/coral-castle-secrets.htm

And another: http://www.crystalinks.com/coralcastle.html

I don't care about what kind of mystery surrounds the place, overall it's just cool.

 

[Neonanocyborgasm]

I stumbled across an interesting article on the internetz while browsing some wild wacko "planet X, Nibiru" end of the world stuff for lolz.

That's about all this site is good for -- lulz.

The Antikythera Mechanism...It is still unknown who constructed this amazing instrument 2,000 years ago or how the technology was lost.

It is an astronomical instrument used to determine the relative positions of the planets in the sky. Its technology is identical to gears used on mechanical clocks, which have been around for centuries, and were never lost.

 

[El_Machinae]

The Antikythera Mechanism has been getting good articles in the high-impact scientific press, though. Apparently, it's wicked interesting.

 

[Dachs]

@Dachs: Have we deciphered that yet? Haven't heard anything about it in ages.

No, but apparently they've recently done tests that show that it's from the early 15th century, both the paper and the ink.

 

[Berzerker]

http://www.google.com/imgres?imgurl...&sa=N&biw=1280&bih=779&tbs=isch:1&um=1&itbs=1

4500 year old depiction of our solar system

This cylinder seal matches up with the celestial "gods" in the Enuma Elish or Babylonian Epic of Creation. Twelve bodies - 9 planets, Sun, Moon, and "Creator" (Marduk in the Babylonian version).

And here's the Incan "creator" - its the ellipse connecting 4 bodies at the bottom, 5 at the top, with the Sun and Moon on either side. Notice the 7 dots below the Earth in the lower left, the same designation shows up in sumerian cylinder seals

http://www.google.com/imgres?imgurl...dsp=25&ved=1t:429,r:19,s:180&biw=1280&bih=779

In this one, we see 13 "levels" of Heaven - 9 bodies in groups of 4 and 5, Sun, Moon, and the "Creator" occupying 2 levels. The Toltec believed in the 9 Lords of the Night and Chichen Itza has 9 steps with a serpent formed by 7 steps ascending and descending the pyramid on the equinoxes. But the Toltec "Heaven" had 13 layers too, and their creator occupied 2 levels.

http://www.bibliotecapleyades.net/sitchin/stairway_heaven/stairway05.htm

a 5100 year old "flywheel" from Egypt

rip Zecharia

 

[Tee Kay]

http://www.google.com/imgres?imgurl...&sa=N&biw=1280&bih=779&tbs=isch:1&um=1&itbs=1

4500 year old depiction of our solar system

It sure doesn't look like it.

 

[Dachs]

Eleven little dots around that "star"?

 

[Lord Baal]

No, but apparently they've recently done tests that show that it's from the early 15th century, both the paper and the ink.

Rules out Bacon then, the most popular choice for an author.

 

[civ_king]

Rules out Bacon then, the most popular choice for an author.

Francis or Roger?

 

[Cashie]

Francis or Roger?

Andegg McMuffin

 

[Lord Baal]

Francis or Roger?

Roger. The favourite theory last time I checked was that Bacon had invented a microscope and studied some miroscopic type things, writing about them in code. If the book wasn't written until a few hundred years after he died then he's a better scientist than I thought.

 

[JtheJackal]

Rules out Bacon then, the most popular choice for an author.

This is always annoyed me with conspiracy theories for stuff from this time period, people automatically start naming famous names. To conspiracists it can't be someone we never heard of, it must be a person already famous because we already know they are so great.

 

[GoodGame]

Needs more Xenu.

Xenu makes me cry.



I think the Antikytheran is the most amazing one by far, unless the dating can somehow be invalidated (which I doubt it can at this point). If Hero of Alexander and Archimedes were the closest thing the Greeks had to engineering genius, and they couldn't have touched the quality of the mechanism, and nothing similar would be seen for at least 1000 years, then I got to be mind-boggled by it.

http://www.sciencenewsblog.com/tags/antikythera
http://www.etl.uom.gr/mr/index.php?mypage=price


EDIT: And I believe the Costa Rican stone spheres have been emulated in "Kon Tiki" like experiments using the natives. So I don't think they're really much of a mystery, but more the "testament to human perserverance +ingenuity" like the pyramids and stonehenge are. I.e. mere Megaliths

 

[Dachs]

This is always annoyed me with conspiracy theories for stuff from this time period, people automatically start naming famous names. To conspiracists it can't be someone we never heard of, it must be a person already famous because we already know they are so great.

This isn't a "conspiracy thing", it used to be a "history in general" thing. Until the last few decades, for instance, classical art history was plagued by a tendency to attribute works chiefly to those artists attested in textual sources. This led to some entertaining hiccups - e.g. the one with the Farnese Herakles, which supposedly matches accounts of one done by the famous Lysippos but which is signed by one unknown Glykon "the Athenian". So art historians scrambled to say that the Farnese Herakles was in fact a marble copy of the bronze original 'aged Herakles' type, first turned out by Lysippos. Except the sculpture doesn't match the descriptions of the Lysippan Herakles either, bringing into question, among other things, the whole concept of "copies" in classical art. Exciting times in classical art history!

I personally don't think there's anything wrong with theorizing that famous period intellectuals may have had something to do with the Voynich manuscript, but only so long as an entire theoretical edifice isn't constructed on the basis of those intellectuals, their known behavior, and the relationship of those things to the manuscript text.

 

[bhsup]

I think some of these things can be answered by the History Channel. I recently learned that the horns Joshua was using at the walls of Jericho were actually highly sophisticated alien sonic projection devices.

See here to learn more.

 

[GoodGame]

I think some of these things can be answered by the History Channel. I recently learned that the horns Joshua was using at the walls of Jericho were actually highly sophisticated alien sonic projection devices.

See here to learn more.

Thank Ezekiel (1:16) for the link VWRC!!!!!!!!

 

[Miles Teg]

Just as an aside, at least three of these "mysterious" things are pretty popular in Creationist circles (#3, #9, and #10). Not the best scientific compatriots.