K'inich Yax K'uk' Mo' (lit. "Great-Sun First/Green Quetzal Macaw, ruled 426 – c. 437) is named in Maya inscriptions as the founder and first ruler of the pre-Columbian Maya civilization centered at Copán, a major Maya site located in the southeastern Maya lowlands region in present-day Honduras.
In this quality Nova/PBS video the history of Copán, and the chronology of the 400 year dynasty founded by Yax K'uk' Mo', is presented in all of its glory.
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The ancient Maya civilization of Central America left behind a riddle: an intricate and mysterious hieroglyphic script carved on stone monuments and painted on pottery and bark books. Because the invading Spanish suppressed nearly all knowledge of how the script worked, unlocking its meaning posed one of archaeology's fiercest challenges. Until now. [PBS Nova]
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Listened to a broadcast recently with guest Maurice M. Cotterell, 'scientist and author'. It was an hour of more bullshit and mindless speculation than I have ever encountered. I spent 12 years in eastern Mexico, much of it on frequent trips to Mayan sites, including my favorite Palenque, which contains the ancient home and tomb of Pacal. Not much regarding the history and geneology of Pacal that I have not encountered before, but Cotterell's ramblings were certainly unique.
I love the internet and the facility with which I can find informaition about the world, past, present, and future, but mindless rambling and speculation, such as the following, just drives me up the wall.
"In his book, "Supergods", Maurice M. Cotterell equates the leader of the Mayan people, Lord Pacal with Lord Krishna, Buddha and Jesus. All four had common threads.
All had immaculate conceptions, performed "miracles", had similar teachings such as love & service to humanity, self control, karma, spirituality of man, immortality of the soul, qualities to be gained and overcome, purification of the soul through sacrifice.
All prophecied some destruction at this time on Earth, a belief in reincarnation and an existance of a destination for the dead or afterlife.
All also had an "association with a tree!" Lord Krishna was said to have died on a tree. Buddha said enlightenment came while sitting beneath the Tree of Knowledge. Jesus died on a cross with a Crown of Thorns. On his tomb lid, the famous Lid of Palenque, Lord Pacal had "carved" a central feature, "The Suckling Tree". Is was said the tree has 100,000 nipples and dead babies could suckle the "tree of life" and gain strength to reincarnate.
When I visited the town of Palenque in south east Mexico a few years ago I didn't realise the significance of Lord Pacal Votan's tomb lid. His Temple of Inscriptions houses the famous "Lid of Palenque" which is fully encoded with stories and images of historical and spiritual signifance. The Temple also includes prophecies and predictions for our time leading to the year 2012. . . . . . . "
The Amazon rainforest is the epitome of a last great wilderness under threat from modern man. It has become an international cause celebre for environmentalists as powerful agricultural and industrial interests bent on felling trees encroach ever deeper into virgin forest. But the latest evidence suggests that the Amazon is not what it seems.
As more trees are felled, the story of a far less natural Amazon is revealed - enormous manmade structures, even cities, hidden for centuries under what was believed to be untouched forest. All the time archaeologists are discovering ancient, highly fertile soils that can only have been produced by sophisticated agriculture far and wide across the Amazon basin. This startling evidence sheds new light on long-dismissed accounts from the very first conquistadors of an Amazon teeming with people and threatens to turn our whole notion of wilderness on its head. And if even the Amazon turns out to be unnatural, what then for the future of wilderness?
On December 26, 1541, Francisco de Orellana sailed up the newly discovered Amazon River with the Dominican Gaspar de Carvajal who chronicled the expedition. De Caravajal wrote of vast cities with roads and highways, and yet they had all disappeard within 20 years. The book "Relacion del Descubrimiento del Rio Grande de las Amazonas" was not rediscovered until 1895 but was considered to be primarily myth and fabrication.
Secrets Of Eldorado - TERRA PRETA - Horizon [Note, video ends at 0:48:31]
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This is from the third installemt of the BBC documentary series [Unnatural Histories] about the unknown history of the Amazon .
Amazon - Terra Preta [BBC]
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Book of Mormon Book of Lies [Amazon]
"The Book of Mormon is one of the boldest hoaxes of all time. And millions of people have fallen for it.
Joseph Smith Jr. claimed that an angel gifted him—an uneducated farm boy—with ancient golden plates and the ability to translate their hieroglyphics. From that improbable premise sprang The Book of Mormon and the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints, with its millions of followers, known as Mormons. In Book of Mormon, Book of Lies, authors Meredith Ray Sheets and Kendal M. Sheets expose The Book of Mormon and the story surrounding its creation as one of the greatest deceptions in the history of America, if not the entire world.
The result of twenty-five years of research, Book of Mormon, Book of Lies will alter the course of global religion, finance, and politics. Book of Lies proves that Smith’s manuscript, which he published in 1830, is nothing more than cleverly disguised plagiarism of The Travels of Marco Polo, the voyage of Christopher Columbus to the New World as recorded by his son, histories of the Spanish conquest of Mexico, and travel journals . . . all readily available to Smith. In Book of Lies, Meredith Sheets, a retired petroleum executive, and Kendal M. Sheets, an experienced intellectual property attorney, compare content from historic books with the content of The Book of Mormon. The results are astonishing. For the first time ever, the authors show exactly how the American-born religion of Mormonism and its religious scriptures were created by man and not by God."
Historical facts , linguistics, and archaeology all indicate that the Mormon religion is based on a fabrication of lies and deception, but will that convince someone who believes in the LDS faith? Sort of doubt it.
Mormon Doctrine Has Been Plagiarized
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The Lost Book of Abraham
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DNA vs. The Book of Mormon
Yet another intriguing scientific mystery from the BBC's 'Horizon' series.
Tut's gem
"In 1996 in the Egyptian Museum in Cairo, Italian mineralogist Vincenzo de Michele spotted an unusual yellow-green gem in the middle of one of Tutankhamun's necklaces. The jewel was tested and found to be glass, but intriguingly it was older than the earliest Egyptian civilisation. Working with Egyptian geologist Aly Barakat, they traced its origins to unexplained chunks of glass found scattered in the sand in a remote region of the Sahara Desert.
But the glass was itself a scientific enigma. How did it get there and who or what made it? "
BBC Horizon Tutankhamun's Fireball
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Maya Scholar Deciphers Meaning of Newly Discovered Monument That Refers to 2012
"David Stuart, professor of art history at The University of Texas at Austin, has deciphered the second known reference in Maya culture to the so-called “end date” of December 21, 2012. Stuart says the reference does not predict the end of time but rather, was intended to promote continuity during a time of crisis.
..... The findings are the latest from Stuart’s more than 15 years of exploration and documentation of a site of Maya ruins in northwest Guatemala, which he named La Corona (“The Crown”).
......“What this text shows us is that in times of crisis, the ancient Maya used their calendar to promote continuity and stability rather than predict apocalypse,” says Canuto.
Stuart is the David and Linda Schele Professor of Mesoamerican Art and Writing at The University of Texas at Austin. He is the author of “The Order of Days: The Maya World and the Truth about 2012.” Stuart’s research is supported by the Schele research fund from the College of Fine Arts at The University of Texas at Austin, and through the Casa Herrera research facility in Guatemala, where he does much of his work throughout the year."
Hopefully these latest findings will help to erase the contemporary new age myth of the Apocalyse on Dec 21. 2012, though I sort of doubt it. 'Prophets of Doom' seem to enjoy their preoccupation with end-of-time fantasies, and conveniently overlook the actual facts.
"In this excerpt from NOVAs two-hour special, The Bibles Buried Secrets, archeologist William Dever describes evidence that the ancient Israelite God, YHWH, had a female counterpart. "
In the complete 'Bibles Buried Secrets' [available on YouTube] Nova shows how ancient Judaism changed from polytheistic to monotheistic, and along the way Jehovah [YHWH] got rid of his wife. Contemporary Judaism, Christianity and Islam would all probably prefer to ignore this newest archeological and historical evidence.
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The 'Octopostes marinis' lived in vast colonies in swampy areas during the Carboniferous period [359 million years ago].
Little is known about 'Octopostes marinis' other than that fact that had a rather curious habit of growth, in vast rows of five columns and that reproduction was by a form of mitosis. This can be seen in the second row of these fossil remains, where the parents have begun to split. The third row shows five young juveniles that have broken away from their parent cells and begun life on their own, and of course the parent is now a new cell itself.
The individual cell was eight sided, hence the Latin name Octopodes [from the Greek 'οκτώ όψης'] and though very small, they occurred in such incredibly large numbers the Octopodes are thought to be a major contributor to the vast coal deposits around the world.
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BTW, all of the above is pure fantasy. Time for me to reveal my 'Piltdown man' fossil fakery.
The 'Octopodes fossils' were found during a recent session with the Mandelbulb 3d software. Whereas most of the people who use Mandelbulb3d prefer to entertain situations and fantasies of future scenarios, I have found that this incedible fractal generation program is equally at ease in producing phenonmenal versions of the past, even if they are not necessarily true.
For a more detailed view of this 'fossil' image, visit my deviantArt page, and click on the enlargement button.
Microraptor – the four-winged dinosaur that ate birds
:"We now know that birds evolved from small, feathered dinosaurs. It’s easy to think that since birds are still around today, they must have come after their dinosaur* cousins, but that’s not true. In the Cretaceous period, dinosaurs were still around while their descendants flitted through the skies. And some dinosaurs made meals of their flighty relatives. Jingmai O’Connor from the Chinese Academy of Sciences has uncovered the remains of a small dinosaur called Microraptor that has the bones of small bird in its gut.
O’Connor analysed the fossil with Xing Xu, a Chinese scientist who has made a career from discovering beautiful feathered dinosaurs. Microraptor is one of his most important finds. This tiny animal, about the size of a pigeon, had four wings, with long feathers on both of its legs as well as its arms. It was, at the very least, a very competent glider, if not a true flier.
The specimen that O’Connor and Xu have studied isn’t the best preserved Microraptor around. However, it does clearly have the remains of a small bird in its gut, including the left wing and both feet. There aren’t enough bones to tell which species it was, but the distinctive shape of its leg bone singles it out as one of the enantiornithines, an extinct group of early birds. They were, after all, one of the most common groups of birds in the forests of China, where Microraptor hunted. , , , , "
Equally amazing is that someone by the name of 'Jingmai O’Connor' is a member of the Chinese Academy of Sciences.
But she does indeed exist, and here is her home page:
Malapa Fossils
A new ancestor emerges from the richest collection of fossil skeletons ever found.
"Lee Berger is standing in a death trap, smiling. It is a hole in the ground about 25 miles northwest of Johannesburg, in a ridged brown valley where herds of giraffes occasionally parade between stands of trees. The red-rock walls of the pit are higher than Berger's head, and steep enough in spots to make a scramble up, or down, rather daunting. Some two million years ago, the hole was a great deal deeper, with no possibility of escape for any creature that fell in. This accounts for the trove of fossils Berger is finding, which in turn accounts for his upbeat mood. He leans over a red boulder near the pit bottom, tracing a white-colored protrusion with his fingers. "It looks like part of an arm," he says. "That means we've found another individual. . . . . "
The Verge of Human
"If you were this man, you’d be smiling too.
The man is Lee Berger, a paleoanthropologist at the University of Witwatersrand in South Africa. He’s holding the skull of Australopithecus sediba, a 1.98 million year old relative of humans, otherwise known as a hominin. In April 2010 Berger and his colleagues first unveiled the fossil in the journal Science. As I wrote in Slate, Berger argued that A. sediba was the closest known cousin to our genus Homo. Hominins branched off from other apes about 7 million years ago, but aside from becoming bipedal, they were remarkably like other apes for about five million years. Among other things, they were short, had long arms, and had small brains. Berger and his colleagues saw in A. sediba what biologists often find in transitional forms–a mix of ancestral and newer traits. It has Homo-like hands, a projecting nose, and relatively long legs. It was intermediate in heigh between earlier hominins and the tall Homo. And it still had a small brain and long arms. . . . . "
