As we enter the 21st century technological advances are coming to the aid of scientists of all descriptions. But it will likely be the Marine Archæologists, whose discoveries on the continental shelves that were once the coastal plains of the archaic world that will most significantly change our picture of the past. We cannot go on thinking of the past from the scant knowledge available to us from excavations of the remains of ancient peoples discovered solely on the dry land we now live on.
This dry land comprises just 29% of the total surface area of our planet and the remaining 71% is currently ocean. Over the last 15 years The Morien Institute has been carefully documenting as much information about new discoveries underwater as we can find, and The Morien Institute Marine Archæology Archive gives just a glimpse of the many recent discoveries showing evidence of sometimes vast coastal settlements that were inundated by the seas in ancient times.
During the last Ice Age the sea-levels were more than 300 feet lower than they are today, and a wide band either side of the equator enjoyed a pleasant enough climate for human civilisation to have flourished in many parts of the world. When the sea levels rose as the ice sheets melted many coastal settlements disappeared under the waves – forgotten except in the oral traditions of peoples in every land. These oral traditions represent an invaluable archive of knowledge from the archaic world, but they are almost always dismissed by academic archæologists and prehistorians who have traditionally regarded them simply as ‘quaint myths’ which they claimed have no bearing on reality.
But that is a very foolish perspective. What remains of the oral traditions of the many ancient societies that once developed on our planet must be preserved at all costs so that future peoples can study the wisdom of ancient peoples with an open mind that was sadly absent from 20th century academic thinking. These oral traditions are now acknowledged as being the invaluable “Indigenous Knowledge” of ancient peoples, and represent a collective understanding of the natural world that had developed through careful observation over countless millennia. Despite the scepticism expressed in some academic disciplines, we cannot afford to let this ancient knowledge die out simply because the supposed “experts” of today cannot understand it.
Neither can we continue to look at the prehistory of human societies and civilisations as if our planet somehow stands alone in empty space. Nothing could be further from reality. Our immediate solar system environment is more of a cosmic shooting gallery’ than a vast expanse of emptiness, and a great body of evidence is building which shows that the environmental impact of encounters with comets, asteroids and cometary debris has been responsible for the destruction of numerous ancient civilisations on many occasions in the archaic world over the past 10 to 20 millennia.
Throughout the last few hundred years, and quite probably before that, individual researchers ranging from the eccentric ‘Gentleman Antiquarians’ of the 17 & 1800s to the so-called ‘dissident professors’ of the 20th century have pursued lines of enquiry which has horrified general academia. Those individuals were ridiculed and vociferously opposed by academic archæologists and prehistorians who had often invested a lifetime’s work in what the more honest amongst them might reluctantly admit in private company to have been a totally inaccurate view of human prehistory.
Theories that many megalithic sites began life as some form of observatories acting as ‘early-warning systems’ for imminent impacts of cosmic debris from the break up of a giant comet have been emerging over the last 30 years or so. Evidence supporting these theories is helping not only to date some of these monuments, but also illustrates how well their builders were oriented in time and space. A new appreciation that our ancestors were acutely aware that the Earth orbited the Sun, and that it periodically encountered streams of cometary debris, suggests that ancient peoples understood the dynamics of the solar system to a far greater degree than has previously been acknowledged.
Dr. Duncan Steel, then of Spaceguard Australia, presented a paper to the Society for Inter-Disciplinary Studies conference at Fitzwilliam College, Cambridge, in July of 1997, in which he gave details of his research suggesting that the earlier ‘henge circle’ which preceded the stone circles at Stonehenge could have been deliberately constructed to function as a ‘cosmic impact early warning system’. His paper, “Before the Stones: Stonehenge I as a Cometary Catastrophe Predictor” is must reading for all serious students of ancient astronomy, astro-archæology and prehistory.
The Cambridge Conference focussed primarily on the effects of natural catastrophes resulting from the impacts of cometary debris. These impacts were presented as being the likely causes of the sudden collapse and in many cases the total destruction of various Bronze Age civilisations, giving rise to radical cultural changes, and to a number of new religions with accompanying astro-mythologies that had hitherto been impossible for academia to understand.
The simultaneous collapse of these civilizations has long puzzled archæologists and prehistorians as the vast areas affected ran right across the ‘fertile crescent’ destroying the most advanced societies of the time, ranging in distance from Greece and Anatolia through to Mesopotamia and Afghanistan and continuing eastwards to encompass India and Central Asia.
The cause of this most perplexing ‘Bronze Age Event’ around 2350 – 2300 BC has only recently become clear as a wide variety of assorted ‘ologists from various disciplines have begun reviewing the mythologies of the time. What they have found throughout numerous inter-disciplinary studies are the accurate observations of ancient skywatchers describing cosmic bombardment and flooding which in every case, and in every region, came directly from the ancient skies.
These natural cosmic catastrophes were recorded by all ancient societies and passed down through many generations to become the oral traditions that are held sacred by the peoples whose ancestors directly experienced them, but which are often dismissed as being ‘quaint myths that have no bearing on reality’ by so-called scholars who have never even tried to understand them. Bombardment of our planet by cosmic debris is, like all things in the natural world, a cyclical phenomenon. It has happened many times in the past, and if we dismiss the records kept by ancient peoples simply because they were recorded in a language that our modern scientists cannot understand, then we will not be prepared when it happens again.
The sophistication and unprecedented accuracy of the astronomical phenomena that was an integral part of almost all of the megalithic structures that have been discovered on most continents suggests a long period of development, yet academic archæologists and prehistorians have been at a loss to expain them. Most have simply ignored the astronomy, or made idiotic statements about ancient peoples not being capable of that level of understanding, but there they are for all the world to see.
In October 1900, Captain Dimitrious Kondos was leading a team of sponge divers near the island of Antikythera off the coast of Greece. They noticed a shipwreck about 180 feet below the surface and began to investigate. Amongst the artifacts that they brought up was a coral-encrusted piece of metal that later archæologists found was some sort of gear wheel. The rest of the artifacts, along with the shape of the boat, suggested a date around 2000 years ago, which made the find one of the most anomalous that had ever been recovered from the Greek seas. It became known as “The Antikythera Mechanism”.
In 2006 the journal “Nature” published a letter, and a full paper about the mechanism was published in 2008, detailing the findings of Prof. Mike G. Edmunds of Cardiff University. Using high-resolution computed tomography to study the fragments of the anomalous Antikythera Mechanism, they found that it was in fact a bronze mechanical analog computer that could be used to calculate the astronomical positions and various cycles of the Moon – as seen from the Earth.
This incredible discovery is indisputable evidence that ancient peoples were far more capable of understanding the cyclical nature of heavenly bodies than they had previously been given credit for, and
“The Antikythera Mechanism Research Project” showed they could also construct devices which could predict them. There was much discussion about its supposed anomalous nature, but it is only anomalous if viewed in isolation or in the context of a completely inaccurate view of prehistory. In the context of the astronomical knowledge embedded into megalithic structures a long period of development becomes evident, and is deserving of radical review in light of the discovery of The Antikythera Mechanism.
Over the past 15 years The Morien Institute has archived new archæological discoveries as well as new interpretations of old archæological discoveries. In our news pages we list many items that may not seem directly related to a better understanding of what our ancestors saw and experienced in ancient skies. But astromythology and its interpretation, and constant review of our poor appreciation of the scientific achievements of our ancestors remains the common theme that we feel ties most of them together. It is only an open-minded approach to prehistory, and a willingness to accept what is found rather then attempting to make new discoveries fit into some pre-conceived paradigm, that will help us gain a better understanding of our ancient past than is currently taught in our schools, colleges and universities.
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“The music of ancient Greece, unheard for thousands of years, is being brought back to life by Armand D’Angour, a musician and tutor in classics at Oxford University. He describes what his research is discovering.
“Suppose that 2,500 years from now all that survived of the Beatles songs were a few of the lyrics, and all that remained of Mozart and Verdi’s operas were the words and not the music.
Imagine if we could then reconstruct the music, rediscover the instruments that played them, and hear the words once again in their proper setting, how exciting that would be.
This is about to happen with the classic texts of ancient Greece.
It is often forgotten that the writings at the root of Western literature – the epics of Homer, the love-poems of Sappho, the tragedies of Sophocles and Euripides – were all, originally, music.
Dating from around 750 to 400 BC, they were composed to be sung in whole or part to the accompaniment of the lyre, reed-pipes, and percussion instruments.”
“Analysis of non-metric tooth crown traits of the ancient inhabitants of northern Mesopotamia conducted by the Polish team showed that there were no large migrations in this region from the 3rd millennium BC until the Middle Ages.
It was not until the invasion of the Mongols in the thirteenth century that a significant change of population occurred. Until now, researchers have believed on the basis of written sources that the movements of population in this part of the Middle East were much larger.
Recent research results have been published in Homo – Journal of Comparative Human Biology. The authors of the analyses are Arkadiusz So?tysiak and Martha Bialon of the Institute of Archaeology, University of Warsaw.
The researchers analysed the non-metric tooth crown traits, for example, the shape of the incisors, the number of nodules on the molars, which are largely inherited and can be used instead of DNA testing to track population changes in prehistory.”
“Ancient humans known as Denisovans only interbred with modern humans after they both crossed a severe marine barrier in Indonesia, say researchers.
This may explain why DNA from these ancient humans is only found in people from some parts of Southeast Asia, Papua New Guinea and in Australian Aborigines, argue Professor Alan Cooper, from the University of South Australia, and Professor Chris Stringer, from the Natural History Museum in London.
Evidence of the now-extinct human relative was first found in a Siberian cave three years ago. Since then, genetic studies have revealed they interbred with modern humans.
But while traces of Denisovan DNA have been found in Southeast Asia, they have not been found in mainland Asian populations, which is closer to where the original fossils were found.”
“Scientists have rediscovered a record of Neanderthal archaeology that has been thought to be long lost and must be the lost home of the last Neanderthals.
The study conducted by NERC-funded scientists working in the Channel island of Jersey reveals that a key archaeological site has preserved geological deposits which were thought to have been lost through excavation 100 years ago.
According to the scientists, it was discovered when the team undertook fieldwork to stabilise and investigate a portion of the La Cotte de St Brelade cave, on Jersey’s south eastern coastline.
During the study, the researchers found a large portion of the site contains sediments dating to the last Ice Age, preserving 250,000 years of climate change and archaeological evidence.”
“Researchers studying clay balls from Mesopotamia have discovered clues to a lost code that was used for record-keeping about 200 years before writing was invented.
The clay balls may represent the world’s “very first data storage system,” at least the first that scientists know of, said Christopher Woods, a professor at the University of Chicago’s Oriental Institute, in a lecture at Toronto’s Royal Ontario Museum, where he presented initial findings.
The balls, often called “envelopes” by researchers, were sealed and contain tokens in a variety of geometric shapes the balls varying from golf ball-size to baseball-size.
Only about 150 intact examples survive worldwide today.
The researchers used high-resolution CT scans and 3D modeling to look inside more than 20 examples that were excavated at the site of Choga Mish, in western Iran, in the late 1960s.
They were created about 5,500 years ago at a time when early cities were flourishing in Mesopotamia.”
“Archaeologists in northern Sweden have located the remains of a farm from the Bronze Age, a find which challenges the established history of the area around UmeÃ¥ and the province of Norrland.
‘It is completely unique’, Jan Heinerud at Västerbotten’s Museum in UmeÃ¥ told The Local on Friday. ‘We have never previously found a long house like this so far north.’
The farm was discovered in the area between Backen and Klabböle in an area known as Klockaråkern and it is thought that the farm was in use for almost 600 years from around 1100 BC.
Heinerud explained that the find changes the history of the region around Norrland’s main city of UmeÃ¥ and raises further interesting questions over how the area was used between 500 BC and 500 AD, of which little is known.”
“Academics at Coventry University have uncovered complex social networks within age-old Icelandic sagas, which challenge the stereotypical image of Vikings as unworldly, violent savages.
Pádraig Mac Carron and Ralph Kenna from the University’s Applied Mathematics Research Centre have carried out a detailed analysis of the relationships described in ancient Icelandic manuscripts to shed new light on Viking society.
In a study published in the European Physical Journal, Mac Carron and Kenna have asked whether remnants of reality could lurk within the pages of the documents in which Viking sagas were preserved.
The academics used the Sagas of Icelanders – a unique corpus of medieval literature from the period around the settlement of Iceland a thousand years ago – as the basis for their investigation.”
“The world’s oldest boatyard dating back nearly 4,000 years has been uncovered by archaeologists at the site of a new housing estate in Wales.
The site, believed to be the first prehistoric boat building site ever to be discovered, was found when developers came upon the edge of a long-vanished Ice Age lake.
Work on the housing estate in Monmouth, South Wales, was stopped for six months as a team of archaeologists unearthed the remains of the ancient boat building site used by prehistoric man.
Archaeologist Stephen Clarke said the discovery of the site, which dates back to 1700 BC, was of ‘international importance'”
[In October 1900, Captain Dimitrious Kondos was leading a team of sponge divers near the the island of Antikythera off the coast of Greece. They noticed a shipwreck about 180 feet below the surface and began to investigate. Amongst the artifacts that they brought up was a coral-encrusted piece of metal that later archaeologists found was some sort of gear wheel.
The rest of the artifacts, along with the shape of the boat, suggested a date around 2000 years ago, which made the find one of the most anomalous that had ever been recovered from the Greek seas. It became known as The Antikythera Mechanism.
In 2006 the journal “Nature” published a letter, and another paper about the mechanism was published in 2008, detailing the findings of Prof. Mike G. Edmunds of Cardiff University. Using high-resolution X-ray tomography to study the fragments of the anomalous Antikythera Mechanism, they found that it was in fact a bronze mechanical analog computer that could be used to calculate the astronomical positions and various cycles of the Moon – as seen from the Earth: – Ed]
