Well, now good old Nutkin is gathering and hiding nuts while the wallflowers continue flowering, blossom and buds on the trees and for two days I've had my window open -THAT is mild!
It surprises me that people are astonished when they read these articles. Humankind has a long history in the way it captures and badly treats or misuses animals. If you know your Mesoamerican history you shouldn't be surprised.
Historically it is interesting as it tells us more about how this civilisation operated. I am just hoping that one day -and it will happen- while I am still alive the archaeologists are going to find remains of animals science does not know about -whether a canid or felid -Onza-like cats?
Now a zoologist ought to really make a long study of the known records for Mesoamerica, pictographs and see what they can find because it is still true that a lot of remains lie hidden in South and Central American museums (as they do in European museums).
Remains Of Captive Carnivores Discovered At Mexican Pyramid
Photo credit:
Pumas, wolves and eagles were raised by the inhabitants of the
ancient city of Teotihuacan, probably for use in sacrificial rituals.
Ricardo David Sánchez via Wikimedia commons
Archaeologists have discovered the remains of the earliest known
captive carnivores in Mesoamerica, after excavating the pyramids at the
ancient city of Teotihuacan
in Mexico. Among the findings were the bones of pumas, eagles and
wolves, many of which displayed markings which probably correspond to
brutal treatment by their human captors.
Remains of almost 200 animals were found in tunnels underneath the famous Moon Pyramid and Sun Pyramid, during excavations carried
out between 1998 and 2004. It is believed that the creatures were
placed there as offerings at various stages of the temples’
construction. As such, they predate all previous evidence for captive
carnivores in the region, such as the famous descriptions of Aztec zoos and breeding programmes provided by early conquistadores and missionaries such as Hernán Cortés and Bernardino de Sahagún.
The latest findings, described in the journal PLOS ONE,
are thought to date back to between 150 and 350 CE, and therefore
suggest that the domestication of these creatures was prevalent more
than 1,000 years earlier than previously thought.
The position of the discovered animals, combined with depictions of
pumas and wolves dressed in military regalia while devouring human
hearts, suggests that they were probably involved in sacrificial
ceremonies, and may well have eaten humans who were offered to the gods.
To confirm this, the researchers conducted isotope analysis
on the bones they found. This involves the study of the atoms in
organic remains, focusing particularly on isotopes – atoms with
particular numbers of neutrons in their nuclei – which give clues as to
what the animal may have eaten. Drawings of pumas devouring human hearts suggest that they
may have been involved in sacrificial rituals at Teotihuacan. Credit:
Nawa Sugiyama
Many of the specimens found at Teotihuacan contained high levels of
certain nitrogen isotopes that indicate they probably fed on omnivores
such as humans or dogs. Furthermore, the presence of a carbon isotope
called C4 suggests they ate large amounts of maize, implying that they were raised in captivity rather than in the wild.
Additionally, many of the animals displayed injuries that were
probably inflicted by humans attempting to manipulate them. For
instance, a number of eagles were found with fractures and other lesions
on their legs, probably suffered as a result of being tethered. In
addition, many of the skeletons were found to have been preserved using
techniques resembling taxidermy. From this, the study authors
hypothesize that these animals were probably accidentally killed before
they could participate in ritual sacrifices, and were then stuffed so
that they could still be used in these ceremonies. Eagle remains discovered at Teotihuacan displayed injuries that were probably inflicted by human captors. Credit: Nawa Sugiyama
Adding up all of this evidence, the team concludes that the treatment
of these captive beasts provides an interesting insight into the
challenges involved in ancient Mesoamericans’ “initial experimentation
in manipulating dangerous and specialized carnivores.”
When you sit there and laugh at the idea of a Sasquatch or unknown sea creature that is basically because you are an educated fool.
When you laugh at the idea of there being intelligent life on another planet in space, laugh at the idea of an alien spacecraft -a "UFO" or "Flying Saucer"- visiting the Earth to look around or even at the possibility of a genuine alien (no, no, NO -I am not talking about "Greys") abduction scenario, it is because you are an educated fool.
Laughing at a "genuine" ghost report -whatever a "ghost" might be. You are an educated fool.
You went to school and were taught historical, geographical or scientific dogma that other educated fools were taught because their teachers disliked something or were told by religion to dismiss things -the Church as not decided upon the ghostly after 2000 years but they will give "sainthood" for 'miracles' performed by a rather less than Christian nun?
Educated fools.
In the past educated fools tortured, executed (in some VERY nasty ways) and pushed what we would today call "free thinkers" to suicide. Because what they discovered was fact and proven but went against standard dogma.
Travellers from Europe or the Middle East and Asia could NEVER have gotten to the Americas before Columbus. Where did Columbus get his charts from? Why are there Pictish carvings, Viking runes, Roman coins and artefacts, accounts of large red-haired Europeans in Amerindian history? Ask those questions at your own risk because, sadly, younger historians are still being taught to laugh first and keep laughing until there is evidence and when there is to quibble and doubt it and when they cannot "Well, we never said it was all hog-wash but just needed the proof -what a discovery we historians have made!"
This goes for most fields. Astronomers and those searching for signs of extra terrestrial life will talk about the possible statistical (guessology) number of inhabited planets in the Milky Way galaxy and what forms this life may take, how advanced it might be and much more. However, a thoroughly investigated mass sighting of what seems to be a totally alien constructed craft? Howls of derision. Talk of mass hysteria. Optical illusions -everything but really studying the report, talking to witnesses and visiting the area involved themselves. Dr J. Allen Hynek, the former US Air Force advisor noted how once, at a meeting of top astronomers, someone entered the room and told them there were UFOs being reported in the skies outside right then. They laughed. Silly stories. How many do you think exhibited scientific curiosity and went outside to have a look? Guess. None.
But not every Light In The Sky (LITS) is an alien aircraft. Not every helicopter or aircraft light or satellite either. There are many explanations that have to be looked at before you can say something is "unknown" and even then unless it looks like a physically constructed craft -NOT a big multi coloured light- what do you have? Something to make you think and dig deeper.
Skeptics have an easy time because, even when anyone with a brain realises they are talking total crap, bilge and hog-wash, people think "Well,they are experts" -but so are many serious researchers; some far better qualified than a man using wood cut outs to prove their case and ending uplooking a fool while stating "Well,those results prove my point"!
If you have a brain and can read, get up off your backside and go talk to people and accept that "Nothing is what is claimed until everything has been checked and double-checked then you are a thinking human being learning and passing on that knowledge and, perhaps, even make the odd discovery.
You are, literally, walking the path of "counter-actuality".
It is not a question of believing the hard core, irrational Doubters or the hard core, irrational Believers that everything is evidence because it was found on the internet.
Be a proper Skeptic. And learn what being Skeptical means!
"WHAT??! They were like this when I arrived -seriously!"
____________________________________________________________________________
Folks, I am seriously thinking about closing this blog. Rare comments are not the problem. The problem comes from 'researchers' who are using material from posts as their own work. Even my books have had original research stolen from them -but that happens all the time.
Just sat here yesterday and thought I'd need to seriously think about the blog. If anything...doesn't happen you know why.
Over the last three decades I've written about pre-Columbus travels to the Americas -in fact visits prior to even the Vikings. In the 1990s I was even asked to write an article on this for war-gamers.
Still, now it looks like I can laugh in the face of people who burst out laughing in mine -and others faces.
Hopefully....more photos on the page link below.
Startling new report on Oak Island could ‘rewrite history’ of the Americas
Oak Island. Image copyright 2015 DigitalGlobe
Roman artifacts allegedly found on and off Oak Island
Findings would pre-date Columbus by more than a thousands years
17:00Wednesday 16 December 2015
Ancient mariners visited the New World more than a thousand years before Columbus - according to a sensational new report.
The main findings of the study, which centres on the mysterious Oak Island, off Nova Scotia, have been exclusively revealed to Johnston Press.
ADVERTISING
A team of expert researchers reckon they have unearthed astonishing
evidence that Roman ships visited North America in antiquity - ‘during
the first century or earlier’ and long before Columbus landed in 1492.
The History Channel’s series Curse of Oak Island, now in its third season, follows the Lagina brothers as they attempt to discover the island’s long-held secret.
The Roman sword allegedly found in water just off the mysterious Oak Island, Nova Scotia. Photo: investigatinghistory.org
Now historic investigator J. Hutton Pulitzer, who previously featured
on the show, has put a large white paper together with a group of
academics from the AAPS (Ancient Artifact Preservation Society).
He claims to have evidence of a Roman sword found submerged just off Oak Island - and what is believed to be a Roman shipwreck.
Pulitzer says this sword is ‘100 per cent confirmed’ and described it as the ‘smoking gun’ to his theory.
“The ceremonial sword came out of that shipwreck,” he said. “It is one incredible Roman artifact.”
The object first came to his attention when a man contacted the show to reveal its existence.
Pulitzer
explained: “Some years ago, a man and his son were scalloping off Oak
Island, which sees them hang rake-like object off the back of their
boat. When they brought this up, the sword came up with it.
“The father kept it for decades, and when he died it went to his
wife, then his daughter. Then when she died many years later it went to
her husband. It was he who came forward to the island and said ‘I think
you should know about this and where it was found.”
Pulitzer claims the complex metallic properties of the sword match those of other ancient Roman artifacts.
“I began my forensic work into it using an XRF analyser - which is a
leading archaeological tool for analysing metals,” he explains. “And we
found all these other metals that tell you this was made from ore that
came directly from the ground. It has the same arsenic and lead
signature in it. We’ve been able to test this sword against another one
like it and it matches. This goes against everything we have been
taught.”
Exactly what else could lurk in the mysterious shipwreck
is unknown as it has not been investigated by divers. Astonishingly,
there are thousands of unexplored shipwrecks in the Nova Scotia area,
the majority of which are thought to date back to the 18th and 19th
century.
“The shipwreck is still there and has not been worked,”
said Pulitzer. “We have scanned it, we know exactly where it lays, but
it will be a touchy thing for the Nova Scotia government to allow an
archaeological team to survey it. We know beyond a shadow of a doubt
that it is Roman.
“I think this is the single most important discovery for the
Americas - an event that will re-write history.
They will talk about it
very briefly on Curse of Oak island but something like this
shouldn’t be a footnote in a TV show - this is a gunshot to be heard
around the world. It changes all of our history on this side of the
pond.”
He said mainstream historians often dismiss such finds by
suggesting artifacts that do not conform to the orthodoxy must have been
dropped by collectors in more modern times.
“That’s how they
poo-poo having to talk about it,” Pulitzer says. “But it’s a pretty
blatant Roman artifact. The knee-jerk reaction was to think somebody put
that sword there. It was found incredibly close to Oak Island in water
only 25ft deep. But if you dropped that rare collectors’ sword
overboard, wouldn’t you dive down to get it?”
In an attempt to demonstrate the Roman sword and shipwreck are more
than mere coincidence, Pultizer and his team examined the area around
Nova Scotia, alongside archaeological records to see if there were any
other ‘coincidences’. They looked at the indigenous natives of Nova
Scotia - the Mi’kmaq people - who are believed to have lived on their
ancestral lands for more than 8,000 years.
Pulitzer said: “The
Mi’kmaq carry the rarest DNA marker in the world which comes from the
ancient Levant (the eastern Mediterranean). You can’t screw with DNA.”
The
report details a number of Mi’kmaq petroglyphs (carved images) on cave
walls and boulders along riverbanks in Nova Scotia. Some of these
images, first discovered in the 1800s, depict what Pulitzer’s team
believe to be Roman legionnaires marching with their swords - and Roman
ships.
Myron Paine, author and former South Dakota State
University professor, notes there are numerous ancient pictographs in
the area which show voyages, advanced learning, foreign symbols, ancient
peoples and ancient mariners.
Pulitzer adds: “There are also 50
words in the Mi’kmaq language which are ancient nautical sailing terms
used by ancient mariners from Roman times - but they were not a
seafaring culture.
“Another very interesting ‘coincidence’ is a
bush on Oak Island and one on the mainland which is listed in Canada as
an invasive species (Berberis Vulgaris). “This was used by ancient
mariners, including Romans, to season their food and fight scurvy. It
grows in Oak Island and across the way in Halifax. All these things,
signs and symbols add up to more than just coincidence.”
Two
carved stones on Oak Island also ‘possess a language from the ancient
Levant’ according to Pulitzer. The first is the famous ‘90ft stone’
which was inscribed with strange symbols and first unearthed in 1803,
90ft down the money pit. The second is the so-called ‘HO stone’ - a
large boulder believed to have been sited on the shoreline and inscribed
with secret codes for mariners - but later blown up by treasure hunters
who thought the treasure was buried beneath. “How can someone in that
time have faked that?” he asks. “They wouldn’t have known about that
language.”
Other findings detailed in the report include a Roman
legionnaire’s whistle found on Oak Island in 1901, a metal ‘boss’ from
the centre of a Roman shield unearthed in Nova Scotia in the mid-1800s,
and a small Roman head sculpture found in Mexico City in 1933 under
foundations of a pre-colonial building dated to between 1476 and 1510.
What
Pulitzer’s team believe to be ancient burial mounds were also sited in
shallow water close to the western shoreline of Oak Island.
Prof
James P. Scherz, of the University of Wisconsin notes these mounds are
‘consistent with ancient European and Levant burial mounds, not native
American’.
In the report, Prof Scherz states: “I am in agreement
the underwater mounds being of a foreign (ancient mariner style) and not
native to Nova Scotia or traditional North American. These mounds, in
looking at the known ocean levels for the area, give a possible date of
occurring between 1500BC and 180AD.”
Gold Roman Carthage coins
have also been discovered on the mainland near Oak Island. A number of
these are said to have been found buried in the same location. Pulitzer
said: “We had them authenticated by some of the best experts. Yet in the
show, they dedicated just 90 seconds to the topic.”
Pulitzer and
his team are not the first to put forward a theory that ancient
Europeans visited the Americas in pre-Columbian times - with others also
pointing to the Minoans and the Phoenecians as having visited the
continent.
His report also references the 16th century scholar
Marineo Siculo who first claimed it was the Romans who discovered the
New World, not Columbus.
However, Pulitzer says, with the new discoveries and modern science, it’s time these findings were taken seriously.
Indeed,
he claims such findings in the past were ‘forgotten about and never
fully investigated’ as they did not fit with mainstream history.
“When
you put all these things together and you look at the anomalies, it’s
not a coincidence,” he says. “The plants, the DNA, the artifacts, the
language, the ancient drawings - you have something that deserves to be
taken seriously.
“We have absolutely been lead to believe that
nothing happened on this side of the pond before Christopher Columbus.
That’s a church-induced concept. All the ancient records that exist make
it very clear the world was circumnavigated and the world was round.
“But
when the Catholic Church and the Romans came in, all those records were
destroyed – so we had to kind of re-learn this stuff. History is
political on our side of the pond. There’s been so much politicizing of
who is native, and what was the first nation, that when discoveries come
about that change this, it’s wildly controversial.
“The problem
is, to rewrite history it would mean rewriting every textbook and
university course in the world. That’s the detriment. I think anything
that challenges history is very risky, very dangerous and extremely
political. But I think the world has matured and history may force
politics to mature.”
Speaking about the report, he said his team
of researchers include experts and academics who are largely ‘out of the
system’ so have nothing to lose by supporting unorthodox theories.
“Some are retired, and some have left the system for various reasons,”
Pulitzer explained. “I think we should all fight for the truth and
people should make up their own minds. We are just saying ‘here’s what
we have found’.”
Research team member Prof Carl Johannessen,
formerly of the University of Oregon, agrees: “Our research challenges
the orthodoxy of 1492 as the pivotal date when the New World met the Old
World.”
Praising the TV show, Pulitzer said Curse of Oak Island
had ‘captured people’s imaginations’ by offering viewers the exciting
opportunity to see history unfold on their television sets. However, he
criticsised the show’s producers for showing little interest in
alternative theories outside those of the Knights Templar, as he says
‘that is what they think audiences are hoping to see’.
“Google
will tell you that most of the searches for ‘Oak Island’ also include a
reference to the Knights Templar,” said Pulitzer. “Television uses this
information to appeal to the fans of those types of theories. But I’m a
historian and forensic researcher. My job is to not believe any
particular theory, but let the evidence tell me where to go.”
On
the show Pultizer told the Lagina brothers he believed the area of Oak
Island was visited in the past by Templars - but that they were ‘looking
for something’ - the same as teams are today.
“I believe that
many different ancient mariner societies came to Oak Island and it was
an important stop-over for them,” he says.
“We just hope our
report will open the dialogue that will re-write history as we know it.
If we can just get rid of this Columbus conspiracy.”
Concluding,
he added: “I think as humans we have evolved enough to be able to handle
the truth now. It’s time for theory to be reflected by hard science.
Even if there’s no gold inside Oak Island - it’s a trillion-dollar
treasure we are uncovering in history for our children and
grandchildren.”
The AAPS team’s report is scheduled to be published in full in early 2016.
An artist's impression of an exoplanet with the potential to support life NASA/JPL-Caltech
Again, it needs to be pointed out that this is based on what we know about Earth -and ask a scientist, out of 100% -what per centage figure covers what we know about Earth?
Conditions may vary for other life forms and we have found bacteria and other life forms on Earth living in conditions that had been thought totally impossible.
"Just" 14 light years away?
Wolf 1061c: Astronomers spot nearest 'Earth-like' planets capable of supporting life ever seen
The star is just 14 light years away — next door to us in space
terms — and has a planet going around it that sits perfectly in the
“Goldilocks zone” that makes worlds able to support life
Astronomers have spotted a planet that is the closest potentially habitable world humanity has ever seen.
The planet is four times as big as Earth and sits perfectly within
the “Goldilocks zone” that would make it able to support life.
Astronomers look for worlds that that sit in that perfect region, where
it is not too hot or cold to support liquid water.
It is one of the first times that astronomers have spotted a planet
near to us that has the kind of rocky, solid surface that is thought to
be necessary for alien life.
"It is a particularly exciting find because all three planets are of
low enough mass to be potentially rocky and have a solid surface, and
the middle planet, Wolf 1061c, sits within the 'Goldilocks' zone where
it might be possible for liquid water — and maybe even life — to exist,"
said lead study author Dr Duncan Wright in a statement.
"It is fascinating to look out at the vastness of space and think a
star so very close to us — a near neighbour — could host a habitable
planet.”
Scientists might now be able to catch a view of the planet, helping
them study its atmosphere and explore whether it might be able to
support life.
The team found three planets going around a star that is stable like
our own but smaller and relatively cool. One of the three planets, known
as Wolf 1061c, sits squarely within the habitable zone.
The team, from the University of New South Wales (UNSW), made the
discovery using the HARPS spectrograph, which is part of the European
Southern Observatory's 3.6 metre telescope in La Silla in Chile.
"Our team has developed a new technique that improves the analysis of
the data from this precise, purpose-built, planet-hunting instrument,
and we have studied more than a decade's worth of observations of Wolf
1061," Professor Chris Tinney, head of the Exoplanetary Science at UNSW
group, said in a statement.
"These three planets right next door to us join the small but growing
ranks of potentially habitable rocky worlds orbiting nearby stars
cooler than our Sun."
Scientists will now hope that they can explore the planet’s atmosphere in more detail.
"The close proximity of the planets around Wolf 1061 means there is a
good chance these planets may pass across the face of the star. If they
do, then it may be possible to study the atmospheres of these planets
in future to see whether they would be conducive to life," said team
member UNSW's Dr Rob Wittenmyer in a statement.
