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Sunken City Found Off Of India

Raindeer writes "A city only known from old myths about seven pagodas and thought by Western scientists not have existed, was found off the coast of India. The myths speak of six temples submerged beneath the waves with the seventh temple still standing on the seashore. The myths also state that a large city once stood here which was so beautiful the gods became jealous and sent a flood that swallowed it up entirely in a single day. " With the purported discovery of a city off of Cuba, as well as the the finding of Herakleion underwater archaeology is doing well.

460 comments

  1. So which one is Atlantis? by Uttles · · Score: 3, Funny

    And when can I buy my flight-enabling crystal?

    (intended as humor)

    --

    ~ now you know
    1. Re:So which one is Atlantis? by t0ph3rus · · Score: 0, Offtopic

      Acutally, a popular belief now is that Atlantis was actually a city from the Minoan civilization. I forget the name of the city and island. I think it may have been there capital, Minoa. The island is still around is actually a dormant volcano in the shape of a caldera. Infact the Volcano not only wiped out the population of the island, it also wiped out most of the Minoan empire due to the resulting tidal waves. This island is very similary shaped to the myths of Atlantis. I am sure you can do a google search for it and find more info on it.

    2. Re:So which one is Atlantis? by Mondrames · · Score: 2, Informative

      The island is called Thera - "Fear" in Greek according to the TLC Documentry. One problem is that the explosion occurred 900 instead of 9000 years prior to Plato's original story. This however can be explained by difference in number systems, or clerical errors.

    3. Re:So which one is Atlantis? by t0ph3rus · · Score: 1

      I guess you saw the same Episode. Isn't TLC great!!

    4. Re:So which one is Atlantis? by Zack · · Score: 1

      And another popular belief now is that there is no Atlantis, but rather it was a conglomerate of stories about several sunken cities that was written about one city that never really existed.

      Kinda like a made for TV movie about child abuse. The characters in the movie probably didn't exist, but it was based on several real stories.

      Very interesting, now that we've seen that there have been several cities lost in this way.

    5. Re:So which one is Atlantis? by t0ph3rus · · Score: 3, Interesting

      Well, if you think about it. There has to be many more cities that have been lost in a similar way. After all water is extremly vital for transportation and comerce. It is only natural that people would build cities in areas that are close to water and easily floodable. I can't think of any major city that was founded before the auto-mobile that is not near a major source of water. We have even had "lost cities" in modern times. There was a storm in the early part of the 20th century that submerged a vacation island off the coast of NYC. Every one forgot about it untill a few years ago when some researchers found pottery washing up on the shorlines.

    6. Re:So which one is Atlantis? by t0ph3rus · · Score: 1

      Hey, I just noticed. Why did the guy that posted the origial comment have a score of 3. All he did was post a lame attempt at humor. I mean really. I think the slash-code needs some tweaking.

    7. Re:So which one is Atlantis? by Cheetahfeathers · · Score: 1

      Thera is also known as Santorini. You might have better luck searching based on that name. As to the 900 vs. 9000... it's the same thing, when you get into the record keeping accuracy of Plato's time. They could easily have made up the number based on the stories.

    8. Re:So which one is Atlantis? by Russ+Steffen · · Score: 1

      Yeah, they only run that show about every other week.

    9. Re:So which one is Atlantis? by t0ph3rus · · Score: 1

      Really, I have been in the UK on project for the past year. So I have been living life without TLC.

    10. Re:So which one is Atlantis? by The+Phantom+Blot · · Score: 2, Informative

      The Minoan capital was Knossos, not Minoa. Knossos is located on the island of Crete. Minoa is located on the island of Amorgos, in the Cyclades island group. The Cyclades also include the island of Thera/Santorini, referred to elsewhere in this thread.

      Here's a map for your convenience.

      --
      Ned Flanders, I mock your value system. You also appear foolish to the eyes of others.
    11. Re:So which one is Atlantis? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      There is an interesting theory about Atlantis, where there really was no single placed Atlantis (or maybe there was, it's irrelevant), but instead it was a bunch of land the somehow got submerged. These existed all over the place, Cuba, India, Japan, and undoubtedly many more we haven't found yet, and the catastrophy got mythalized and distilled down to a single island, Atlantis.

    12. Re:So which one is Atlantis? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      that is the work of moderators, not slash code. if slash code were advanced enought that it could tell the difference between off-topic (like this comment i am writing), insightful, troll, interesting, etc. it would be one of the most advanced AI systems ever created. readers get mod access and rate stuff. it's separate from the code, though the code is built to allow moderation.

    13. Re:So which one is Atlantis? by Black+Parrot · · Score: 1


      > The Minoan capital was Knossos, not Minoa. Knossos is located on the island of Crete. Minoa is located on the island of Amorgos, in the Cyclades island group.

      Also, the Minoan civilization is named after Minos, mythical king of Crete, not after any city. (The name is modern, plucked from an appropriate mythology.)

      --
      Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
    14. Re: So which one is Atlantis? by Black+Parrot · · Score: 4, Informative


      > The island is called Thera - "Fear" in Greek according to the TLC Documentry. One problem is that the explosion occurred 900 instead of 9000 years prior to Plato's original story. This however can be explained by difference in number systems, or clerical errors.

      Or maybe Atlantis didn't exist at all?

      Just because some myths have historical underpinnings doesn't mean that all myths have historical underpinnings.

      And when you have to start twisting the myth around a lot to make it match the "evidence", then you should really stop and wonder why you're trying so hard to make it match.

      Moreover, Plato isn't exactly a good source of mythology. He was neither a historian nor a mythographer. He was a philosopher, and not a very deep one at that. (IMO he operated on about a 10th grade mentality.) He liked to write stories about things like how the ideal state would be constituted, and he used an idealized Socrates as a sock puppet in his writings.

      Plato tells the Atlantis story in his Timaeus . In particular, Plato tells a made-up story about a conversation between Socrates, Critias, and a couple of others, and in that story Critias tells a story he heard from another guy named Critias, and in that story the second Critias tells that he heard it from Solon, and in that story Solon tells that heard it from the Egyptian priests (along with a bunch of other drek). So we the recursively embedded stories Plato(Critias1(Critias2(Solon(Egyptians)))) -- and we know that the outermost story was a work of fiction (one of Plato's so-called dramatic dialogues). This is not a source that inspires a lot of confidence.

      Once you get beyond that it makes a lot more sense to try to figure out what role the story played in whatever point Plato was trying to make with his polemic than it does exploring the world trying to find something that can be stretched to fit the story.

      The story doesn't even appear to be real mythology, let alone real history.

      <uncle>One more thing!</uncle> "Thera" doesn't mean "fear", it means "the hunt", "the chase", "pursuit", "the catch", or "hunting ground". And the name of the island may not even be the same word; Liddel and Scott list it under a separate entry.

      Hopefully this gives everyone an idea why scientists and historians tend to scoff at claims that lost civilizations have been discovered, until verifiable evidence is in hand.

      --
      Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
    15. Re:So which one is Atlantis? by Stephen+Maturin · · Score: 2, Interesting

      There is also the lost city of Indianola, on the upper Texas coast. The city was washed away by a hurricane in the early part of the 20th century (or was it late 19th century?). Nothing but a few foundations remain as far as I know. The few who survived left to settle elsewhere.
      An interesting anecdote related to this is that in St. David's Episcopal Church in Austin, Texas, is a stained glass window of St. Cecilia, the patron saint of musicians. The organist at the time had never been to the coast, and decided to take a vacation. She told people that if anything happened to her, she wanted a stained glass window.
      She was one of those lost at Indianola.

      --
      Non tam praeclarum est scire Latine, quam turpe nescire
      -- Cicero
    16. Re:So which one is Atlantis? by sjwt · · Score: 0

      shoudl be a limit on mod as to what its set too..

      funny should be limted at +1..

      oh, and poor fools like me who got moded
      down like a year ago, just a -1.. but i was only on 1 sould get there 1 point back after some
      point in time..

      --
      You have 5 Moderator Points!
      Which Helpless Linux zealot/MS basher do you want to mod down today?
  2. Atlantis by goodhell · · Score: 1, Funny

    So does this mean that we will have to watch more rotten Disney movies?

    Mod me mad.

    1. Re:Atlantis by MtViewGuy · · Score: 2

      Actually, Atlantis: The Lost Empire is not as bad as some people think.

      I think people are so engrained by the successful style of Disney animated features from The Little Mermaid to The Lion King that any deviation from that formula results in a lot of complaints about Disney not doing the right style of movie.

      Given that I have the two-disc Collector's Edition DVD set, I can say that the movie as escapist entertainment actually works quite well; after all, by definition this type of movie has to seen with some suspension of belief (which is true of most science fiction and fantasy stories).

      There are two things I loved about the movie: 1) the breathtaking quality of animation (especially backgrounds), especially the wonderful digital-to-digital transfer on DVD; 2) the very effective use of sound effects throughout the movie (the opening sequence WILL damage your home theater setup of speakers and amps if you're not careful). Too bad Disney didn't submit this movie for Best Animated Feature Oscar, because I think the movie could have been nominated for Original Score, Sound and Sound Editing.

    2. Re:Atlantis by MsGeek · · Score: 2
      Of course, you realize that Atlantis may very well have been a ripoff of Gainax' "Nadia of Blue Water" as well as Miyazaki/Studio Ghibli's "Laputa."

      Here is some food for thought, both pro-and-con Atlantis/Nadia connections:
      DVDAngle: an introduction to the controversy
      Nadia/Atlantis: The evil Disney Empire rips off Anime, again...
      Nadia/Atlantis: an opposing view
      Nadia/Atlantis: list of "homages" in Nadia

      --
      Knowledge is power. Knowledge shared is power multiplied.
    3. Re:Atlantis by goodhell · · Score: 1

      Well I do agree with you. Atlantis wasn't so bad. They didn't follow their 'traditional' mode for their cartoons. If you look at most of the "recent" cartoons they fit the same mold.

      For instance 'The little Mermaid', 'Lion King', 'Alladin', 'Hunchback of Notre Dam', 'Emporers New Groove'. They all fit the same mold. It's like someone followed the programmers model - copy, paste, modify. Except that they did a poor job of covering that up too. Everyone of them has the main character with one or two funny companions, and then there is the main antagonist with the comically inept companion(s). They go through some sort of story, some bad things happen to the protagonist and in the end despite all odds, the antagonist screws up and protagonist wins. Oh, and don't forget the songs. They must have some song that they sing or dance to. Everyone of them follows that moldy mold.

      After watching some of them in a row you can definetly see the pattern. But what I hate worse are the II's. Cinderalla II, Alladin II, etc. Just milking for more money with no originality.

      Whatever happened to the creed that ol' Walt started the company off on? He wanted to make sure that his work was original that it didn't follow the same mold. The story on Pinnochio (sp?) about how it was made after Snow White is interesting. They talk about how he didn't follow the marketing dept and create more dwarves and the like, but went with something different.

      I do like some Disney films. They're great entertainment for the kids. I just wish they'd shoot for something more original.

    4. Re:Atlantis by MtViewGuy · · Score: 2

      Mind you, Nadia was in many ways a retelling of Jules Verne's Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea, so there.

      The problem with Nadia: Secret of Blue Water was while the early and late episodes were great, the middle episodes bored me to tears at times, and Nadia's attitude is nowhere like that of Kidagakash's, that's to be sure.

    5. Re:Atlantis by MtViewGuy · · Score: 2

      I just wish they'd shoot for something more original.

      It'll be very interesting to see the reaction of the general audience to Lilo & Stitch (due in June) and Treasure Planet (due late this year). Both are definitely not in the early 1990's mold of Disney animated features.

  3. Right by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Funny

    Sure... it's all fun and games until someone's hometown gets sunk.

    1. Re:Right by ackthpt · · Score: 1
      Sure... it's all fun and games until someone's hometown gets sunk.

      Exactly. I'm sitting here in California, dreading the day that the Big One hits and all the land east of the San Andreas Fault slides off into the Atlantic.

      --

      A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
    2. Re:Right by DickPhallus · · Score: 2, Informative

      all the land east of the San Andreas Fault slides off into the Atlantic.

      That'll be one hell of an earthquake if all the land east of the fault ends up in the Atlantic!

      How about the land west of the fault ending up in the Pacific?

      --

      --
      Some weasel took the cork out of my lunch.
    3. Re:Right by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Nope. Everything worthwhile is west of the fault.

    4. Re:Right by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Guess you must be on the east of the fault eh?

  4. 5000 years old by pieterh · · Score: 3, Informative
    This is about 1000 years earlier than the assumed birth of cities in ancient Iraq.


    Just maybe, human civiliation is a lot older and spread much wider, earlier, than we tend to believe.

    1. Re:5000 years old by Arsewiper · · Score: 1, Interesting

      It's likely that the entire dating system is skewed. May have something to do archeologists agreeing not to research anything that doesn't sit well with biblical timeline like the sphinx (which isn't a sphinx) possibly having eroded in flooding that occurred about 8000 BC. Read Forbidden Archeology by Cremo as it lists finds that blow the whole accepted timeline of events away. Michael Baigent also did a book recently that had a few intersting examples such as fossilised human footprints alongside dinosaur footprints.

    2. Re:5000 years old by Brian+Knotts · · Score: 2
    3. Re:5000 years old by toofani · · Score: 4, Informative

      The ancient town of Mehrgarh has been excavated in the Baluchistan area. It is part of the Indus-Saraswati civilization, and dates back to 6500 BC. Spread over 168 acres, it had a population of 30,000. The earliest Sumerian settlements date to 4000 BC. Lots of sources for information on the web. One sample.

    4. Re:5000 years old by zangdesign · · Score: 4, Funny

      Human settlement may be more widely spread than previously thought, but recent world events lead me to believe that civilization is probably not possible.

      --
      To celebrate the occasion of my 1000th post, I will post no more forever on Slashdot. Goodbye.
    5. Re:5000 years old by Cally · · Score: 1, Offtopic

      Just maybe, human civiliation is a lot older and spread much wider, earlier, than we tend to believe.


      And if my aunt had wheels, she'd be a bicycle...
      --
      "None are more hopelessly enslaved than those who falsely believe they are free." -- Goethe
    6. Re:5000 years old by ackthpt · · Score: 3, Funny
      This is about 1000 years earlier than the assumed birth of cities in ancient Iraq.

      According to Sources:

      The age of 5000 years has been verified by the finding of a 750MHz Athlon, which we all know is ancient by now.

      The city was actually sunk by angry gods because, inspite of building wonderous temples, the inhabitants fooled around with creating restrictive copyright laws.

      The decendents of all survivors live in Wooster, Ohio.

      The Co$ claims it's the work of rampant Thetans and you really, really, really should believe them and send them lots of money.

      Most of the worlds missing left socks were found inside the sunken temples.

      No claims have yet been issued by Ankh-Morpork or Klatch, but armies and navies are quietly being assembled.

      Through exhaustive research, i.e. I've totally made up.

      --

      A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
    7. Re:5000 years old by betis70 · · Score: 3, Insightful

      The tricky thing with archaeology is you have to actually have evidence of such things as dates.

      That always buggers up the hypothesis that human cities have been around for a long time. Since C14 dating needs organic material and other dating methods are less accurate (other than tree-ring dating), you need to have organic material preserved. This means a specific chemical/depositional environment (anerobic is great--like the Black Sea).

      Underwater arch has the BEST potential for making stunning discoveries that re-write the history books because of the preservation potential of many of these areas (and the lack of later humans trampling all over the earlier strata).

      The only thing left to ponder is HOW this city got there. That will take some talented surficial geologists (not the oil finding structural kind our Uni't tend to produce) and a bit of luck. Looking forward to hearing more about this and the site off Cuba.

      --
      I forget...are we at war with Eurasia or East Asia?
    8. Re:5000 years old by stew-a-cide · · Score: 1

      The wonders of multiculturalism: Fundamentalist HINDUISM :)

    9. Re:5000 years old by dirty · · Score: 2, Informative

      http://www.infidels.org/. Go there, you'll find scientific arguments against everything you just stated.

      --

      -matt
    10. Re:5000 years old by sniggly · · Score: 1

      I thought it was pretty well clear archaeology is more or less serving a totally outdated ethnicentric way of thinking about civilization. They hate to admit theyve been wrong about some very important historical facts all along.

      Archaeology started during the colonial era and a lot of its premises date from those days, some of them havent been critically examined.

      If you examine articles like this (added by an earlier poster) you cant help but think the whole "science" of archaeology is a ludicrous waste of money. Given all the recent evidence there is to throw some of its old premises out of the window, and the total unwillingness of the estalished "scientists" to do so, we might as well start the whole thing allover.

      Maybe "social science" is just a total oxymoron.

      --
      Of those to whom much is given, much is required.
    11. Re:5000 years old by KH · · Score: 1

      The brother poster's joke notwithstanding,

      If you read the article linked in the parent post, it is quite evident that the book is not any better than Hancock's book. (And it's darn hard to figure which book the reviewer was reviewing!) It dates Ashoka in 950BC, and Buddha and Mahavira in 1150BC or so. It is quite hard to counter all the evidence that suggests Ashoka was later than Alexander.

      By the way, books of that kind are published in tens each year in india.

    12. Re:5000 years old by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Total waste of money, alright. Afterall, if no one funded their work, we'd still all get to live with those wonderful early premises.

    13. Re:5000 years old by sniggly · · Score: 1

      at least we'd have a say in our own mythology without being "unscientific" :)

      --
      Of those to whom much is given, much is required.
    14. Re:5000 years old by sansoo · · Score: 1

      Sure, we should just ask you which web sites to go to. Stupid archaeologists. They should simply toss out the current mainstream hypotheses and theories and embrace whatever new idea comes along, as scientists in other fields do.

      --
      We are the first generation of Morlocks. Eat the rich!
    15. Re:5000 years old by prakashj79 · · Score: 1
      From the article: Scientists now want to explore the possibility that the city was submerged following the last Ice Age. If this proves correct, it would date the discovery at more than 5,000 years old.

      References to the lost temples in both the local Tamil literature and the little recorded history attribute their construction to the rulers of the Pallava dynasty. That would put down the age of the temples to be around 1000 years old, no more. While the credibility of these sources cannot be vouched for, this must be the first instance where science presents a more grandiose scene than art.

      --
      With profound apologies to whomsoever this sig originally belonged.
    16. Re:5000 years old by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      I think that our species have had 3 advanced cultures in a time span of 30.000 years, where each has taken 10.000 years to create. I think this because our current culture has taken 10.000 years to create.
      If we think like that, and why wouldn't we?, we can also say that the "neanderthals" have had ~25 advance cultures, since they've been around for 250.000 years.

      Anyone given this any seriouse thought?

    17. Re:5000 years old by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      The majority of our society questions the current archaeology society, and there is no doubt - it's fishy by far.

      Any theory that proposes that humans might have had a highly advanced civilisation is quickly regarded as pseudo science.
      Any theory that proposes that neanderthals wheren't looking like trolls, could speak, and wasn't kidnapping females to populate is regarded as pure nonsence.

      Everything that questions the divineness of our civilisation is quickly denied, why?
      Could it be that advanced civilisation likes to look upon them self as superior?
      Perhaps it even has happened before!?

    18. Re:5000 years old by sansoo · · Score: 1

      We are studying stone tools and remnants of cloth, leather, and rope. We are not studying old airplanes, computers, or bricks. There is no evidence for any of this. Our prehistoric ancestors were smart, healthy, superstitious, and stone-age.

      --
      We are the first generation of Morlocks. Eat the rich!
    19. Re:5000 years old by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      I have always wondered if there was another intelligent species on earth that produced an advanced civilization in the Mezozioc or somthing. I could see how we could miss somthing like that, considering that there are so big of gaps in the fossil record that we could easily miss a technical civilization lasting only 10,000 years.

    20. Re:5000 years old by KH · · Score: 1

      (I hate to reply to the same post twice, but the post is misleading. And I don't have moderation points.)

      This Indus-Saraswati civilization, mehrgarh, Indus script being Sanskrit, etc., are highly controversial.

      I am beginning to think that the book reviewed in the page the parent post referred is talking about Rajaram's book on deciphering the Indus script. Many people think it is a revisionist history.

      This was a highly controversial book, and even Indian mainstream media picked up the issue.

      I would like to suggest a little google search with the words ``mehrgarh, rajaram, witzel''

    21. Re:5000 years old by pyrrho · · Score: 2

      this reminds me of the Ghandi quote when asked "What do you think of Western Civilizaiton", Ghandi said, "Sounds like a good idea to me."

      --

      -pyrrho

  5. Could somebody post the text? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    My firewall won't allow me to go to sites hosted outside of the U.S. so could somebody post the text of the (BBC) article? Much appreciated.

    1. Re:Could somebody post the text? by Ubergrendle · · Score: 1

      OMG! That's horrible! You must work in the Foreign Policy department at the white house...
      :)

      --
      John Maynard Keynes: "When the facts change, I change my mind. What do you do?"
    2. Re:Could somebody post the text? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Yeah, one of the downsides of working for the DoD.

  6. Date of Discovery by DullTrev · · Score: 1

    According to the article, the date of discovery was April 1st. Can't think why they didn't announce it immediately...

    --
    Trev - used to be interesting. Honest.
    1. Re:Date of Discovery by ltsmash · · Score: 1

      They wanted to be absolutely sure of what they had found, given that the news is almost mythological. People expect everything in the news to be gospel, and resending a report would greatly undermine reader's faith.

    2. Re:Date of Discovery by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      There was a spot about this on NPR several weeks ago - I'm glad that we're finally getting to hear more about this. However, the location is unfortunate. Then again, who knows what may be preserved underneath all of that mud and silt?

      Could this be related to the Harapa / Indus Valley civ's unique (perhaps ritual) water systems?

    3. Re:Date of Discovery by einer · · Score: 1

      April 1st is April Fool's Day. The ONE day of the year where it's perfectly acceptable to tell your boss that the entire codebase dissapeared along with all of the backups and accounting information.

  7. Don't Dis-myth Out of Hand! by McLuhanesque · · Score: 4, Interesting

    From where we sit in modern times, ancient myths and legends are often considered little more than fairy tales. But given what we know about the effects of natural catastrophes - namely their ability to eradicate all traces of any civilization that once stood in their path - there is probably much that is buried, inundated or otherwise obscured from view.

    One interesting question that is perhaps particularly revealing is, why are are so surprised whenever we find this stuff?

    1. Re:Don't Dis-myth Out of Hand! by drivers · · Score: 2
      From where we sit in modern times, ancient myths and legends are often considered little more than fairy tales. But given what we know about the effects of natural catastrophes - namely their ability to eradicate all traces of any civilization that once stood in their path - there is probably much that is buried, inundated or otherwise obscured from view.


      Tolkien, is that you? That was pretty much the premise of Tolkien's work.

    2. Re:Don't Dis-myth Out of Hand! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      What gets me, is that supposedly human beings with the same level of intelligence as now, have been around for a LONG, LONG time (exact length of time anyone?). Why now that there is such huge technology advances?? and if there was before, why haven't we found their plastics, other long lasting things.. thoughts?

    3. Re:Don't Dis-myth Out of Hand! by sansoo · · Score: 1

      Short story: low population density until about 10,000 years ago. Then we had to build cities and allow specialized jobs, including alchemists (heh) and other investigators of the world. Communication was slow, and hard-earned knowledge easily lost. Things didn't really start picking up the pace until the publishing of books. Now we have telecommmunications, data storage, number crunching, and it's getting kinda crowded. Look for an ever-increasing rate in knowledge acquisition (don't forget the various enhanced brains just around the corner). But yes, people 100,000 years ago were just as smart.

      --
      We are the first generation of Morlocks. Eat the rich!
    4. Re:Don't Dis-myth Out of Hand! by spike+hay · · Score: 3, Interesting

      Many legends you look at have some basis in truth. It's pretty easy to see how a natural disaster could get distorted over the millenia. Take the great deluge for example:

      Around 8,000 years ago, the black sea was a freshwater lake about 2/3 of it's current size. It is now believed that there was a proto-civilization along it's shores. Then, water from the Mediterrainean broke through the strip of land at the Dardanelles. This caused a cataclysmic flood around the Black Sea area, inudating hundreds of square miles, including the proto-civilization.

      Now the flood took about 48 hours to fill up the black sea. Everyone should have been able to escape. But over the millenia, as the story was told orally, embellishments were added on to it. You know how Granpa said he blocked the exploding grenade with his helmet, shot Heinrich Himmler, and did all that other crap during the war? Anyway, this story was told orally for 3,000 years before a distorted version of it was written down in the classic "Epic of Gilgamesh", the first great literary achievement.(read it. It's very good.)

      The Flood legend was incorporated into pretty much every culture in the fetile crescent area, including the jewish culture.

      Other legends: The indians of the Columbia Basin in WA st. also have a flood myth. This is from the devastating Missoula Floods. This series of floods was caused by an ice dam reapededly blocking the Clark Fork River. It formed a lake the size of Lk Eerie behind it and it was 2,000 feet deep. When the dam broke, it realesed a 2000 foot high wall of water, devastating everything and killing any indians in it's path. These floods also formed huge rock coulees all over the columbia basin.

      Another one is Atlantis: This was probably the island of Thera near crete. It had a very technologically advanced Minoan city on it. Then one day, the Thera volcano exploded with a force many, many times more than the Krakatoa eruption. It sunk part of the island and also produced huge tidal waves.

      --
      If you don't understand any of my sayings, come to me in private and I shall take you in my German mouth.
  8. Re:Still more evidence for creationism by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Interesting ? Creationism ? Oh well.

  9. Re:Still more evidence for creationism by Uttles · · Score: 1

    I'm interested in how exactly finding a city a few hundred or even thousand years old is evidence of creationism?

    I'm neither an evolutionist or a creationist, I beleive in God and think that not matter how we got here, the fact is he made it happen, or at least provided the environment for it to happen.

    My beleifs aside, I don't see how this proves creationism.

    --

    ~ now you know
  10. First Numenor Post by cheekymonkey_68 · · Score: 0, Troll

    Perhaps they've really found Numenor

    IMHO Numenor or Atlantis one is as real as the other

    1. Re:First Numenor Post by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Numenor was a lost civilisation in Tolkiens mythology, and just like Atlantis supposed to be underwater

      Next time try not to put the words first or post in your headline, for that offense you will cast aside as a troll and made to read Jon Katz articles

      The Númenor story was Tolkien's re-telling of the Atlantis legend (the tale published in the Silm was entitled "The Akalabeth", which may be translated as "Downfallen").

      Númenor was an island far to the West, a "land apart" given to the heroic Edain (humans) of the First Age who had aided the Noldor in the wars against Morgoth.

      The theological situation was the "standard" one of a Ban and a Fall. The Númenóreans, despite having been granted a longer lifespan than other, humans, nevertheless had to remain mortal. They had also been ordered not to sail West to the Undying Lands (Valinor).

      They managed to convince themselves that physical control of the Undying Lands would somehow make them immortal(it would not have); however, they also retained sufficient wisdom not to attempt any such foolish action. Significantly, the more obsessed they became with death the more quickly it came as their lifespans steadily waned.

      Near the end of the Second Age King Ar-Pharazôn the Golden pridefully challenged Sauron for the mastery of Middle-earth. The Númenóreans won the confrontation and took Sauron to Númenor as a prisoner. Still wielding the One Ring, he swiftly gained control over most of the Númenóreans

      As King Ar-Pharazôn's death approached Sauron finally convinced him by deception to attack Valinor. This was a mistake. A great chasm opened in the Sea and Númenor toppled into the abyss.

    2. Re:First Numenor Post by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Funny

      dude.. you ever get laid?

  11. Warning ! by Krapangor · · Score: 1

    It might be R'ley or Leng.
    Or even something worse.
    Did they found any seals of the elder gods out there ?

    --
    Owner of a Mensa membership card.
    1. Re:Warning ! by Kierthos · · Score: 2, Funny

      1) It's R'lyeh.

      2) Leng is always depicted in the Lovecraftian stories as being on a plateau. (And presented in "The Dreamquest of Unknown Kadath" as actually being in Earth's Dreamlands).

      Although it is an underwater city... I suspect that the aqua-archaeologists couldn't recognize an Elder Sign until it was far too late.

      Kierthos

      --
      Mr. Hu is not a ninja.
    2. Re:Warning ! by jgerman · · Score: 2

      Heh, too bad I ran out of mod points yesterday. ROFL though. "That is not dead which can
      eternal lie,and with strange eons even death may die"

      --
      I'm the big fish in the big pond bitch.
  12. Noah's Ark by DeadBugs · · Score: 2, Offtopic

    Robert Ballard who found the wreck of the Titanic. According to the article he is searching the Black Sea "where four 1,500-year-old wooden ships were found two years ago. He's looking for evidence of a great flood, possibly linked to the story of Noah's ark"

    --
    http://www.kubuntu.org/
    1. Re:Noah's Ark by t0ph3rus · · Score: 1

      There is already plenty of evidence of a localized flood in that area. It is in the fozillized sea life ,remains of huts that were covered and sonar readings showing river beds that extend hundreds of miles into the black sea. The fact is. The black sea was a lot smaller a few thousand years ago. Also the great flood pre-dates noah. However, it's timeline co-incided nicely with a babylonian tale of a great flood.

    2. Re:Noah's Ark by The+Good+Reverend · · Score: 3, Informative

      Perhaps if he's looking for such evidence FOR a flood he should also check out the mountains of evidence AGAINST a global flood. While this document deals largely with the Noah's Ark myth, it has a good deal of information on the geological and logistical problems associated.

    3. Re:Noah's Ark by arkanes · · Score: 2

      There's evidence for a nearly world-wide flood, too - there's examples of the flood myth in native american mythology (can't remember the tribe, sorry), babylonian, bible (of course), hindi, practically every culture has one.

    4. Re:Noah's Ark by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      just some random data ........nothing to back it up.

      dang that bugs me.

    5. Re:Noah's Ark by The+Good+Reverend · · Score: 2

      That doesn't mean there was a global flood, that just means there were lots of little floods.

    6. Re:Noah's Ark by GeoNerd · · Score: 1

      Ballard was scooped long ago by Pitman and Ryan. Read their book on a catastrophic flood that filled what is now the Black Sea. They've put a good scientific story together, not the bunk that keeps appearing in this thread.

    7. Re:Noah's Ark by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      1,500-year-old wooden ships

      Uh, that would be A.D. 500. Noah's Ark was several thousand years BC (if at all, of course).

    8. Re:Noah's Ark by Peyna · · Score: 3

      There are many many texts, including the Bible and Gilgamesh just to name 2 which have an account of a great flood. (Both corresponding to approximately the same time period for the flood occuring). I'd say from the evidence and everything else that there probably was a huge flood at some point in time that killed a lot of people, whether or not it occured exactly as describe in the book of Genesis, I am not certain.

      --
      What?
    9. Re:Noah's Ark by t0ph3rus · · Score: 1

      That does not mean there was a global flood. Remember that many civilizations have risen from the off-shoots of other civilizations. Kind of like how almost every culture has a vampire. With your reasoning that means that there is evidence for vampires all over the world.

    10. Re:Noah's Ark by the+phantom · · Score: 5, Informative

      It is little wonder that both the Bible and Epic of Gilgamesh have many common themes. Much of the Bible was written by people who had lived in Summaria, then left, perhaps because they felt that civillization was wrong. There are many themes that are repeated in both Gilgamesh and the Bible.

      In Gilgamesh, the walls are made of "...burnt brick and good." (Sandars, 61) In the Bible, people come together, saying "...let us make bricks, and burn them thoughly," in order to create the Tower of Babel (Gen. 11:3). The Jews regarded the Ziggarat (Summerian temple/pyramid/great public work) as a bad thing made of burnt brick. This smae structure was at the core of Summerian life. The same thing is described by both Summerians and Jews with very similar language (perhaps the building blocks of an oral tradition cum written document.

      The flood is another major theme in both documents. However, the Jews saw the flood as a punishment. People were wicked and corrupt, so they had to be wiped from the face of the Earth. This was not done on a whim. In Gilgamesh, Enlil (one of the gods) says "the uproar of mankind is intolerableand sleep is no longer possible by reason of the babel" and the gods decide to wipe out humanity on a whim so they can sleep (Sandars 108).

      The Jews migrated out of Summaria, forsaking Summarian civilization to become sheperds. While many of the stories were turned on their heads to better fit the Jewish world view, many elements were taken from the familier Summerian stories. The fact that there are similarities is more likely evidence of common cultural heritage rather than common events in some long forgotton past.


      References

      Coogan, Michael D.
      1991. The NewOxford Annotated Bible, 3rd ed. Oxford University Press:New York.

      Sandars, N. K., trans. and ed.
      1972. The Epic of Gilgamesh. Penguin Books:London.

    11. Re:Noah's Ark by Peyna · · Score: 2

      You must be the only person on /. to actually provide references with your comments. I swear my English profs would have fits if they saw everyone else's posts =]

      --
      What?
    12. Re:Noah's Ark by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      I'm glad to see your English professors have a grip on reality. I hope they cite references when they speak aloud, too. And while they're at it, they could try having an original thought once in a while.

    13. Re:Noah's Ark by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      No, as I understand him Ballard has speculated on how the probable* flooding of the Black Sea by a catastrophic break through the Bosphorus may have been the origin of the many flood myths in the area, but he isn't intent on proving it.

      *'probable' because he hasn't had time to gather evidence that the areas he has searched (200-300 feet below the surface of the Black Sea) aren't there due to some other phenomenon like subsidence (not likely, but still possible).

    14. Re:Noah's Ark by arkanes · · Score: 2
      well, there certainly is. I'm not saying there was a flood, just that the flood is a common thread between civilization, which is a reason to look for a connection. There's no evidence AGAINST vampires, after all.

      (For what it's worth, I think it's more likely that the flood legends are based on local flooding caused by global climate change, not that the entire world was flooded all at the same time)

    15. Re:Noah's Ark by Peyna · · Score: 1

      A lot of people on slashdot give many claims that are not their own ideas, or make claims without sufficient evidence to support them. When you see a post like the parent here, you can have much more confidence in the content therein. You don't have to think 'is this guy just blowing smoke out his ass, or does he really know what he is talking about?' It helps make things much more informative.

      --
      What?
    16. Re:Noah's Ark by elefantstn · · Score: 2
      Much of the Bible was written by people who had lived in Summaria, then left, perhaps because they felt that civillization was wrong.


      Whoa, slow down there, Sparky. First of all, none of the Bible was actually written until, at the very earliest, the 10th century BCE.

      Secondly, even if by "written," you really meant "composed [orally]," it's hardly "much of the Bible." Casting aside the unsubstantiated migration from Sumeria theory, more than 90% of the material in the Old Testament describes events that took place after these people lived, so they hardly could have written it.

      Thirdly, as far as migration out of Sumeria is concerned -- it's totally tangential to your point. The fertile crescent was crisscrossed by trade roads, so there's no reason to assume that the only way the Hebrews had contact with Mesopotamian legends was through having lived there and left.
      --
      If it ain't broke, you need more software.
    17. Re:Noah's Ark by Dashiel · · Score: 1

      Yeah, and most early culture developed along river valleys where floods would likely be common. As for the similarities between Gilgamesh and Noah, i think they're probably related to the same massive Tigris-Euphrates flood that probably seemed like a world wide flood, but may instead have been only regional. Another more interesting hypothesis deals with the Black Sea. The idea that at the end of the last ice age, the mediterranean began rising and started sloshing up against the natural barrier that today we call the Bosporus. At some point, enough ice melted and the sea came roaring over and spilled into the depressed region that became the Black Sea. Archaeologists have found evidence for small homes underneath the sea there, about 300 feet deep. The survivors of this catastrophe passed on the story to generations that spread around the world.

      --
      -- I once had something to say.
    18. Re:Noah's Ark by t0ph3rus · · Score: 1

      I believe in your first post you said something like "evidence of a nearly world wide flood" Also, be quite about the vampire thing. I am trying lay low.

    19. Re:Noah's Ark by subgeek · · Score: 1

      i don't know enough to argue about what happened; i'm just following the logic. it doesn't mean that there was one large flood or that there were lots of little floods. but it does mean that there was flooding in many areas.

      --
      you probably shouldn't have read this.
    20. Re:Noah's Ark by The+Good+Reverend · · Score: 2

      I don't know if you've noticed, but many places in the world regularly flood, and have for many thousands of years. The most likely explaination is minor, not major, flooding.

    21. Re:Noah's Ark by subgeek · · Score: 1

      places do regularly flood. you are so clever to have given me this piece of information.

      the sun regularly rises and sets. every day, in fact. this has as much to do with what i said as your point about flooding being a worldwide phenomena.

      i was simply pointing out that similar great flood stories all over the world does not prove that there were many smaller great floods any more than it proves that there was one all-encompassing flood. it just means they had experience with floods.

      it could be based on a history of a great flood, or it could just be an exaggeration of a normal activity. it *proves* neither. that is my point.

      i enjoy your overly pompous attitude. i especially appreciate it because i don't think you are necessarily wrong. neither did i say that the "multiple small flood theory" was wrong. i don't have archeological data or personal memory of these events to prove or disprove this theory. but i think you're right that if someone disagrees with you even a little, the best course of action is to be condescending. then restate your opinion. it will look like you have aquired more factual back-up for your statements.

      --
      you probably shouldn't have read this.
    22. Re:Noah's Ark by EnderWiggnz · · Score: 2

      oh my god.

      let me guess - christian fundamentalist?

      its common speculation that much of the old testament and new testament was lifted from local legends.

      The creation story is a mirror image of the Enuma Elish legend, down to what was created on what day.

      The flood story is a mirror image of the gilgamesh legend.

      and the "jesus story" is a mirror image of the su-god legend.

      you're bible is a neat story, but it isnt particularly creative, or true. just rehashes of old legends.

      --
      ... hi bingo ...
    23. Re:Noah's Ark by elefantstn · · Score: 2

      Listen here, dumbass -- I am not a Christian fundamentalist. I don't even know where the hell you got that idea from. I majored in Mediterranean Studies in college, and your Discovery Channel knowledge frankly doesn't impress me. I know the origins of the biblical stories you just quoted, and only about half of them are really derivative. The other half just represent archetypes that show up in stories all over the world.

      So please, don't try to troll someone who knows more than you.

      --
      If it ain't broke, you need more software.
    24. Re:Noah's Ark by the+phantom · · Score: 2

      Pardon me, you are correct; I was being a bit liberal with the language. Compiled into some form of oral tradition is more what I was trying to express.

      Also, you are right that similarities in material and oral traditions could be related to trade networks, I seem to recall something from Intro to Arch about the Jews coming out of Summeria. As the class was several years ago, and the mid-east/Palestine/the Mediteranean is not my area of expertise, I am more than willing to concede that point as well.

      As for the comment about "much of the Bible," the first 10-15 or so chapters of Genesis deal with topics that are common to both traditions. This is not a majority of the Bible, or a great plurality even, but I would argue that this counts as "much." The term is subjective, and is once again a mistake or misuse of the language on my part, and I should have limited my comments to Genesis. I apologize for being unclear.

      Still, all of this is somewhat tangential to the core of my argument, which is that there is, in fact, a common origin. Parts of Hebrew (and later Christian, Muslim, and Morman) mythology are derived from Mesopotamian myths, and that it should come as no suprise that common themes appear.

    25. Re:Noah's Ark by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      I'd like to point out that recent genetic studies have linked Jewish origins with the Armenians.

    26. Re:Noah's Ark by Banjonardo · · Score: 1
      I think it may be the " we all descended from the same people" deal. You know, great floods, or Adam and Eve, and whatever.

      Don't forget the Greek one: Deucalion's race.

      --

      -----

      Score 3? For what? Being wrong, at length? - smirkleton

    27. Re:Noah's Ark by Banjonardo · · Score: 1
      Is Greek culture older?

      Cause they have Deucalion's Race, in which (one again) all of humanity is descending from a small bunch of people.

      --

      -----

      Score 3? For what? Being wrong, at length? - smirkleton

    28. Re:Noah's Ark by the+phantom · · Score: 2

      Summerian civilization is (arguably) the oldest human civilization. They popped up in the fertile cresent between the Tigris and Euphretis Rivers about 7 kBP (BP == years before present). The Greeks appeared maybe 4 kBP, though "classical" Greek civilization was much later, maybe 2-2.5 kBP. The Jews have been around for perhaps 5 thousand years.

      It is probable that there was some contact between the ancient Greeks and Jews, and it is possible that Jewish culture and lore had an effect upon Greek traditions, but I don't really know to what extent.

      SHORT ANSWER: Summerian and Jewish culture are both older than Greek culture.

      However, I have little expertise in the Mediteranean (or the Old World in general -- I am much more interested in the hunter-gatherer societies of the pre-historic New World than Old World ancient civ.). The above dates are all from required Western Civ course and associated textbook:

      Mattews, Roy T. and F. DeWitt Platt, eds.
      2001. The Westen Humanities: Volume One: Beginnings through the Renaissance, 4th Ed.Mayfield Publishing Company:Mountain View, CA.

      If there is some one with more knowledge, please correct me if I am wrong.

    29. Re:Noah's Ark by Banjonardo · · Score: 1

      Okely-Dokely. I just find it interesting that all these themes recur with so many civilizations. Perhaps the bit about common descendants comes from the all-important we-are-second-only-to-the-gods double determinism found in Greek Culture.

      --

      -----

      Score 3? For what? Being wrong, at length? - smirkleton

    30. Re:Noah's Ark by the+phantom · · Score: 2

      The reasons for the recurrances can probably be tracked to two or three factors. First, there is the obvious common origin idea... these themes all come from some common event, culture, or oral tradition.

      The other possibility is that they are simply archetypes that tend to appear because humans are all basically alike. For instance, hero figures tend to be very similar across many cultures. Or take creation stories as an example. Nearly every culture has a creation myth. They often include a "man is wicked and so must be punished" theme. The floods in the Bible and Gilgamesh. Escaping from the underworld in south west American Indian lore. Examples can be found in Greek and Norse mythology as well.

      Or elightenment style stories. The apple in the Garden of Eden. Prometheis bringing fire to humans. Coyote doing the same for the Hopi.

      Anthropologists have studied the commonality of themes in folklore, and the jury still seems to be out. There are those that argue that all folklore follows one of several trajectories, containing a finite number of themes that are deeply ingrained in human culture. Others argue that common folklore represents common cultural traditions and see commonalities as evidence of some great cultural heritage.

      In the end, I feel that some middle ground is most probable. There is some shared tradtion, but there are also themes that tend to have an effect on people. Those themes are explored in nearly every culture: why are we here? what makes us (humans) unique in the world? how do you define good and bad?

      Now, as it is way past the time I am generally long asleep, I must bid you good night.

    31. Re:Noah's Ark by elefantstn · · Score: 2
      Still, all of this is somewhat tangential to the core of my argument, which is that there is, in fact, a common origin. Parts of Hebrew (and later Christian, Muslim, and Morman) mythology are derived from Mesopotamian myths, and that it should come as no suprise that common themes appear.


      That, I certainly agree with. I was just correcting a few factual errors in your previous post -- the essence of your argument, though, is totally correct.
      --
      If it ain't broke, you need more software.
  13. global flood by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    yes, this is pretty interesting, this is basically scientific proof of the genesis flood (you know, the one that evolutionists swear up and down "could NEVER have happened!") heh. 8-) my faith in Scripture grows each and every day.

    1. Re:global flood by garcia · · Score: 3, Insightful

      no one doubts the flood. Hell, there have been many theories about how the story originated. It most likely did happen.

      I don't see how the finding of this city (or any other city) or that some city was flooded proves there is a god, and He created us.

    2. Re:global flood by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Rising sea levels is proof of a genisis flood, AC?

      Not really. The sea levels have just risen. If the deluge caused this city to become swamped, why is it still under water today? It doesn't make sense.

    3. Re:global flood by ch-chuck · · Score: 1

      I don't know why it has to be a "global" flood - didn't they even imagine the earth as a globe back then? Or flat w/ Heaven above the clouds? Anyway, it is possible that, say, the black sea was once a landlocked area below sea level with some cities and settlements - you know, people didn't really travel much or communicat over vast distances then, so "the world" was pretty much your local town and outlying areas - so that once the ocean rose enough or eroded the barrier enough the below-sea-level area could have experienced a catastrophic flooding, possibly flooding out some towns. It's entirely possible that someone could have gotten advance word from a traveler that it was going to happen and built a boat and wrote a morality play about the wickedness of mankind into the whole geological event. We'll just have to collect more evidence.

      --
      try { do() || do_not(); } catch (JediException err) { yoda(err); }
    4. Re:global flood by Stalke · · Score: 1

      The article mentions the 'researcher' Graham Hancock. This same guy has written a few books and hosted a few shows about his alternative history of the civilization in ancient times. Basically he contradicts the history that most of us probably know wrt Egypt and the Aztecs. He's considered somewhat of a quack.

      He does has some good points though. One of which is that every major civilization has a flood myth of some fashion. This doesn't mean that this is evidence for a creationist view of the universe. What he argues is that there most likely existed a global environmental disaster, most likely a flood, that occured in ancient times and was incorporated into the myths of many cultures.

      --
      -?-
    5. Re:global flood by jamie · · Score: 2
      "What he argues is that there most likely existed a global environmental disaster, most likely a flood, that occured in ancient times and was incorporated into the myths of many cultures."

      A flood at the end of the last Ice Age (ca. 9,000 BC)? I am shocked, shocked to learn that the melting of planet-girdling glaciers could somehow be linked with deluges of water.

    6. Re:global flood by OroMan · · Score: 1

      people with religious beliefs as their core values should at least try to acknowledge, that proof is not notional, or based on prayer, or even belief. Proof comes from the answers found to investigations carried out by ever questioning the current ideology; this comprises the greatest difference between religion and science. It is not a question of fitting what suits to the argument already proposed. Science frequently fails us with this same flaw, but has a self checking mechanism that ultimately corrects the problem. (in this case, proper scientific analysis of the data, rather than offhand conjecture) Religion generally suggests that to question is blasphemous.... Proof as a concept has a very definite meaning in scientific terms. People have built cities and settlements in bad locations since they started to build...if California falls into the sea after a major earthquake, would that provide evidence of something biblical to future generations that might discover the ruins....? Or just that the people of the time didnt feel the risk was enough not to go ahead and live there? Ultimately, there is no substitute for independent thought!!

    7. Re:global flood by geigertube · · Score: 1

      "yes, this is pretty interesting, this is basically scientific proof of the genesis flood (you know, the one that evolutionists swear up and down "could NEVER have happened!") heh. 8-) my faith in Scripture grows each and every day. "

      Uh, yeah

  14. Re:Still more evidence for creationism by spike+hay · · Score: 4, Informative

    Actually, this city has sunk because the sea levels have risen since the last ice age. U see, during the last ice age, much of the ocean's water was locked up in ice. Sea level was about 300 feet lower than it is today. As the ice melted over several millenia, sea levels rose to their present levels.

    Anyway, I think we would see some real evidence for a world engulfing flood that occured only 5,000 years ago. Using the bible's genealogy and stuff, scholars have pinpointed the year of Noah's flood according to the bible. It supposedly was around 2700 BC. Funny that the egyptians and the Sumerians never seemed to notice it!

    --
    If you don't understand any of my sayings, come to me in private and I shall take you in my German mouth.
  15. Re:Still more evidence for creationism by Kierthos · · Score: 1

    You do realize that this city is over 5000 years old, and homo sapien was still homo sapien, even back then.

    This is not evidence, either for or against creationism, or evolutionism. Sure, it's evidence of a particular legend possibly being true, but that's it. When you, and Indiana Jones, go and find the Ark of the Covenant, or the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil, let me know. Until then.....

    Kierthos

    --
    Mr. Hu is not a ninja.
  16. how did this happen?? by thetman · · Score: 0, Troll

    How did it get underwater like this?? Can't be rising sea levels as this was before the industrial revolution, so there wouldn't have been anything to increase temperatures and raise sea levels. So how did this happen?? I'm so confused.

    1. Re:how did this happen?? by boltar · · Score: 1

      Confused and thick.
      Don't they teach anything at school these days?
      What do you think happened at the end of the
      ice age when all the ice melted? This is mentioned
      in the article , perhaps you should try reading
      it before posting.

    2. Re:how did this happen?? by Troed · · Score: 1
      Honestly, you don't know that world average temperature was 10 degrees celcuis higher at (as an example) 65 million years ago?


      The Earth has a climate, to think man has any larger influense on that is ... ridiculous. The next big flood (which will raise sea-levels with about 1m - covering Bangladesh and "a few" islands) will come in a hundred years when the ice in/at Antarctica melts (already started).

    3. Re:how did this happen?? by Kierthos · · Score: 1

      Nothing to raise water levels? Other then the ice age ending, natural temperature changes over time, etc. Yeah, just because all us nasty anti-Luddites weren't there belching out hydrocarbons from our SUVs doesn't mean that the seasonal temperatures remained constant over all those years.

      Kierthos

      --
      Mr. Hu is not a ninja.
    4. Re:how did this happen?? by HitchHik · · Score: 1

      Didn't you read the article?

      Quote:

      "...a large city once stood here which was
      so beautiful the gods became jealous and
      sent a flood that swallowed it up entirely in a single day. "

      --
      -- &&
    5. Re:how did this happen?? by swordgeek · · Score: 2

      Hmm. So humans just are too minor to have any substantial effect? While the other things you say are true, that is TOTALLY over the top. Regardless of how the planet is going on its own, we're doing a fair bit to screw it up as well.

      --

      "People who do stupid things with hazardous materials often die." -- Jim Davidson on alt.folklore.urban
    6. Re:how did this happen?? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Unstable geologya dn an earthquake can do it.
      A town on a smaller island was once swalloed by the ocean due to an earthquake.

    7. Re:how did this happen?? by thetman · · Score: 1

      ummmm.....sarcasm anyone??

    8. Re:how did this happen?? by Creepy · · Score: 1

      Maybe you should ask yourself why is Venice sinking?

      There are many reasons a city could sink - icecaps melting, built on poor soil, erosion, earthquakes (especially along certain types of faults), etc. Pick one.

      Herculaeum sunk from a massive earthquake, at least according to old records about the city. 7 pagodas apparently from a rapid flood. I vaguely recall this legend from studying Asian mythologies (mainly for use in RPGs) but I can't remember any more details off the top of my head.

    9. Re:how did this happen?? by OroMan · · Score: 1

      actually, not quite true.... The rising sea levels will come not from ice melting, but rather from the basic law of physics that heating causes expansion. So they vast oceans will expand as they heat up; this is already happening and will continue......and has a far greater impact than just ice melting adding to the volume of water....

    10. Re:how did this happen?? by OroMan · · Score: 1

      it is more correct to say that we are messing up OUR environment, rather than THE environment.... when Pangea split to form the continents, THE environment at the time was rather uniform, but altered radically as a result: the geological upheavals, the different oceans; the differece that brought in terms of precipitation and cloud formation....so the climate of this rock has always been changing... the worst we can do is make this place inhospitable for ourselves...(but sadly we believe that we are divine, and so this couldn't possible, ever, in a million years happen....(unless nostradamus said so...))

  17. Re:Still more evidence for creationism by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Interesting

    Why is this "interesting?" The above comment is sheer nonsense, flaimbait at best.

    Floods happen. End of story. How is this "proof" of creationism? How does this "disprove" evolution? This discovery does neither.

  18. Re:Still more evidence for creationism by trix_e · · Score: 2

    exactly what I was thinking!

    more vindication for my theory that the Flintstones is, in fact, a documentary... They can't hide the truth forever.

    --
    No man is an island, but Gary is a city in Indiana.
  19. Re:Still more evidence for creationism by sugrshack · · Score: 1

    I really not sure how this exists as evidence against evolution... one really has nothing to do with the other. changes in climates may change water levels resulting in a city being drowned. If you are arguing that this is somehow some "act of god," though this may be suggestive of such a thing, there is no evidence that confirms your position. or have I just been trolled?

    --
    I can't believe it's not lard!
  20. Cities before the Ice Age? Whats the big deal? by boltar · · Score: 5, Interesting

    I've never understood why academia seem so intent
    on believing that civilization has only been
    around
    for the last 4 or 5 thousand years or so. After
    all, if the genetic record is correct homo sapiens
    have been around for a few hundred thousand years
    at least and I find it far harder to believe that
    in all that time all humans did was hunt and gather as opposed to them building cities and
    towns. Carving blocks of stone , building roads
    etc isn't rocket science and if some race had built
    a city 100,000 years ago VERY little of it would
    still be around today (Ice Ages notwithstanding).
    Look at how little is left of most Roman ruins and
    they're only 2000 years old!
    Though Graham Hancock may come out with a lot of
    BS at times , I think in this case he's spot on.

    1. Re:Cities before the Ice Age? Whats the big deal? by Joe+Dawson · · Score: 1

      Silly Mortal, 2000 years my ass - christ was born 2000 years ago, Rome was around well before that Joe

    2. Re:Cities before the Ice Age? Whats the big deal? by boltar · · Score: 1

      I was taking the average age pal. Rome rose about
      400 BC and died around 400AD. Whats your problem?
      FYI a lot of roman cities in the UK (oh , like Londinium) were built in the 1st and 2nd centuries.
      Trying to be a smartass when you don't know your facts just makes you look stupid.

    3. Re:Cities before the Ice Age? Whats the big deal? by MindStalker · · Score: 2

      Not really the foundation of rome was only 735BC and wasn't the democratic society that we know of till 509BC.

    4. Re:Cities before the Ice Age? Whats the big deal? by Cally · · Score: 5, Informative

      I've never understood why academia seem so intent
      on believing that civilization has only been
      around
      for the last 4 or 5 thousand years or so.


      It's not that they're intent on proving it; it's just that there's little or no evidence of any large settlements before then. What artifacts we do have are consistent with loosely organised, unsepcialised hunter-gatherer type societies. No big conspiracy, honestly.

      And are you American by any chance? If you lived in Europe you'd realise the Romans left a LOT of stuff behind. And of course Roman civilisation goes back a couple of thousand years BC.

      --
      "None are more hopelessly enslaved than those who falsely believe they are free." -- Goethe
    5. Re:Cities before the Ice Age? Whats the big deal? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      I bet you believe in diffusionism too

    6. Re:Cities before the Ice Age? Whats the big deal? by Izeickl · · Score: 1

      Trying to be a smartass when you don't know your facts just makes you look stupid.

      Agreed, be quiet.

    7. Re:Cities before the Ice Age? Whats the big deal? by Tenebrious1 · · Score: 5, Informative

      For the same reason most people think the Internet was created in 1996. Sure, it existed much longer. I started using email, ftp, and gopher back in the mid 80's. But we didn't have MS Outlook, we didn't have IE, we didn't have Netscape. All the sudden, in 1996, the WWW blossomed, and all these tools became available. WWW became the "Internet". Hardly anyone believes anything could possibly have existed before 1996. Finding a fully graphical web browser that was written in 1975, like finding a massive city over 10000 years old would be a huge surprise- if not impossible.

      Homo Sapiens has been around for some 250k years. But they were our predecessors- we are classed as Homo Sapien Sapien- who've only been around for about 40k years. The Cro Mags. The difference between the Homo Sapiens and Homo Sapein Sapiens is that the latter, us, settled down, started farming, domesticating animals, using bows and arrows to hunt.

      So while we can't rule out there were massive civilizations by an known race of humans (or aliens), judging by what science has uncovered, the cro mags were the first to settle in community groups that gave rise to civilization as we know it.

      --
      -- If god wanted me to have a sig, he'd have given me a sense of humor.
    8. Re:Cities before the Ice Age? Whats the big deal? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Interesting

      Actually, carving blocks of stone and building roads actually was the equivalent of rocket science at the time of the first civilisations. And why do you find it so hard to believe that civilisation is a relatively recent phenomenon, and that hunter/gatherer societies were around for a very long time? What does in fact remain of human material culture from 100,000 bp up until around 8000 years ago suggests absolutely that humans hadn't developed cities, built roads, or even invented pottery, let alone writing or agriculture.
      Perhaps you find it hard to understand the academic point of view on this because you've never actually examined it, or the evidence upon which it based. And yes, since I have an an Honours degree in Archaeology, I do know something about it. Why is it by the way that of all the academic subjects, the study of the human past is the most readily ignored in favour of uninformed, home-grown theory?

    9. Re:Cities before the Ice Age? Whats the big deal? by BushLad · · Score: 1

      The last time I checked, the Roman Empire began under the Republicans at around 500 B.C. - before that it was all Etruscans, and their civilization began in the 8th century.

      It doesn't help your point when you pick large numbers out of a hat and use them

    10. Re:Cities before the Ice Age? Whats the big deal? by boltar · · Score: 1

      As I said elsewhere , I took the average age of
      roman ruins. Its shorter than type 400BC to 400Ad ok?

    11. Re:Cities before the Ice Age? Whats the big deal? by hattig · · Score: 2
      Agreed to some extent. Depends on the society that the humans lived in though. Caves could have been adequate for a society which did not grow in size. Nomadic societies have no reason for cities. Once a cave dweller discovers something that lets the society grow however, or the nomads discover somewhere that is always plentiful, then maybe the need for cities would arise. And they would most likely start off with wooden frames covered in skins or large leaves, mud walls perhaps first. And society would have lived like this for many thousands of years.

      Then you get climate changes which force the society to move to better climes, and this is what most likely makes leaps in development. If you have a mud house, then why make a wooden house or a stone house? But if you have no house and there is a lot of wood or stone lying around, then why not use these for building your new dwelling? Especially if the soil is not suitable for making mud houses! Necessity breeds invention?

      Carving blocks of stone with wood or bone doesn't work! You need something that can carve that stone - perhaps harder stone like flint on softer stone? But not much would remain of a sandstone dwelling after 10,000 years! To cut decent stone that would last to today you need metal. And when did people find out how to make metal? People will be asking these questions for hundreds of years to come...

    12. Re:Cities before the Ice Age? Whats the big deal? by the+phantom · · Score: 2

      FYI, Roman civ. only goes back to maybe 2.5-3 k years, not a "couple of thousand" of years BC.

    13. Re:Cities before the Ice Age? Whats the big deal? by boltar · · Score: 1

      No I'm not american. But there won't be any evidence because sediments shift in a period of
      hundreds of thousands of years. Sure you can bury a flint axe in some soil and come back 5000 years
      later and it may well still be there , 100,000
      years later? Anything could have happened to the
      soil strata in that time. We know humans existed
      that long ago but just how many human bones do
      you find of that age? Very very few.

    14. Re:Cities before the Ice Age? Whats the big deal? by betis70 · · Score: 2
      Hmm I thought the Roman EMPIRE started under the EMPEROR, Caesar Augustus circa 27 BC.

      Prior to that it was just a land-grubbing, republican nation-state.

      --
      I forget...are we at war with Eurasia or East Asia?
    15. Re:Cities before the Ice Age? Whats the big deal? by (void*) · · Score: 2

      It's called evidence. The evidence before that is just good not enough, although there are reasons to believe such ancient civilizations did exist.

    16. Re:Cities before the Ice Age? Whats the big deal? by linzeal · · Score: 0

      we don't find anything beyond humans anyway, because creationism is correct, right?

    17. Re:Cities before the Ice Age? Whats the big deal? by t0ph3rus · · Score: 1

      "And are you American by any chance?" That is a pretty ignorant and rude statement. For all you know that poster could be Canadian or from any other country. I have lived abroad from the US for quite a few years now. One thing I learned is that people are people were ever you go. Yes I have met my fair share of ignorant Americans. However, I have met just as many ingnorant people of varying nationalities. I am continually surprised at the steriotypes the people have about america. It is like they base all of there facts from pop TV shows. I once actually had someone that had never been to the U.S. try to tell me what high school in the US was like!! Take a look in the mirror before you make statements about other peoples cultures. I think you will find that people are pretty much people no matter how you cut it.

    18. Re:Cities before the Ice Age? Whats the big deal? by swillden · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Carving blocks of stone , building roads etc isn't rocket science

      Isn't it? Have you ever tried it? No fair using carbon-steel tools, either. For that matter, have you ever tried chipping flint to make stone tools? Or tried tanning and cutting a hide to make clothing? Again, no scissors, please.

      In fact many of the "simple" technologies that we consider trivial because we can now do so much more are really anything but trivial. They were far from obvious and took a long time to develop and perfect.

      And the idea of a road had to have been a blindingly brilliant insight at first. I mean, everyone knew how nice it was when a nice, broad, smooth path went where you wanted to go, but the idea of cutting and scraping the land to *make* it that way so that you could move people and goods easily... that can't have been obvious. Many of the peoples conquered by the Romans were both puzzled and awed by the Roman army's focus on and ability to construct roads. The whole road-building idea was *not* obvious, much less the techniques used to do it. But it was an extremely powerful idea, and a major part of why Rome was able to dominate so much of the world.

      Heck, if I was the Cro-Magnon patent examiner, I'd have granted "Method for using rock and compacted soil for constructing broad and smooth artificial pathways to improve travel and transportation of people, goods, livestock and armies", wouldn't you?

      --
      Note to ACs: I usually delete AC replies without reading them. If you want to talk to me, log in.
    19. Re:Cities before the Ice Age? Whats the big deal? by radish · · Score: 1, Troll


      I think his point is that in Europe we are surrounded by Roman artifacts and constructions, so we're pretty well versed on their history. Unlike Americans, many of whom spend $$$$ getting here to view the all the old things. Sure it's an (incorrect) stereotype to say that all Americans are unaware of european history & world, but many are, in my experience. There is also no country (in the "western" world anyway) which I am aware of which is as insular and generally unaware of the outside world as the US.

      For the record I'm british but have spent a fair amount of time living, travelling and working in the US.

      YMMV, as always :)

      --

      ---- Den ene knappen er powerknapp, den andre er Bender voice knapp "Bite My Shiny Metal Ass"

    20. Re:Cities before the Ice Age? Whats the big deal? by OroMan · · Score: 0, Flamebait

      yeah, I mean look at George W... How could anyone ever think that Americans (or should that be people from the U.S.) were stupid!!!

    21. Re:Cities before the Ice Age? Whats the big deal? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      the word "empire" comes from the Roman "imperium", meaning "power". The Roman "empire" - where the Romans held sway as an imperial power - existed long before there was an "imperator" ("one who holds power" - v. v. loose translation) who ruled the state.

      The British had an empire long before there was an Empress of India on the throne (1876 or so IIRC).

    22. Re:Cities before the Ice Age? Whats the big deal? by Darby · · Score: 1, Troll

      christ was born 2000 years ago,

      I think you mean, "There are legends which speak of a person called christ who was born 2000 years ago".
      Unless you can provide some evidence for his existence? No, the bible doesn't count.

    23. Re:Cities before the Ice Age? Whats the big deal? by betis70 · · Score: 1

      Hmm very interesting. Learn something new everyday.

      --
      I forget...are we at war with Eurasia or East Asia?
    24. Re:Cities before the Ice Age? Whats the big deal? by austad · · Score: 3, Interesting

      Actually, Antarctica used to be where austrailia is, and it wasn't covered with ice. There's a very good chance that there are ruins under 2 miles of ice there. In fact, Plato had detailed maps of the land under antarctica which he says he copied from sources that were very ancient. One of the notable things about the maps is that the measurements for latitude are extremely accurate. Our current civilization didn't develop an accurate way to measure latitude until the 1400's.

      A good book to check out is Graham Hancock's "Fingerprints of the Gods". It gets a little fanatical towards the end but it's very interesting.

      --
      Need Free Juniper/NetScreen Support? JuniperForum
    25. Re:Cities before the Ice Age? Whats the big deal? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      I think Europe is fairly insular and generally unaware of the U.S., or its citizenry. Frequently citing information they hear from their news sources, which as luck would have it, carry even less information pertaining to the real news than the usually barely informative U.S. news. Coupled with an inferiority-complex driven desire for the U.S. and its inhabitants to give half of a shit about Europe, they tend to spout off pretentious nonsense about Roman history, which is a standard part of any middle school or highschool curriculum. Oddly enough they think that having Roman ruins would make them more informed of the Roman civilization, but even more insane, is that they think that knowledge of the Roman civilization is relevant anyway.

      As per usual, Europeans project an image of superiority and generally have nothing to show for it, except the desire for the U.S. to love them, and recognize them. We're too busy living to care about you.

    26. Re:Cities before the Ice Age? Whats the big deal? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      the agricultural revolution was only 10 or 15 thousand years ago, though, not 40.

    27. Re:Cities before the Ice Age? Whats the big deal? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Yup, because you actually know anything about him, or more importantly, the actual people running the administration.

      Save your retardation for yourself.

    28. Re:Cities before the Ice Age? Whats the big deal? by KjetilK · · Score: 2

      Carving blocks of stone , building roads etc isn't rocket science

      Why the hell would you go around carving blocks of stone and build roads when you're out hunting happily?

      It's not a question if they had the brains to do it, we haven't changed much since then, it is a question of whether they had any interest in doing it. They may not have had that.

      and if some race had built a city 100,000 years ago VERY little of it would still be around today (Ice Ages notwithstanding). Look at how little is left of most Roman ruins and they're only 2000 years old!

      What? You need to do a lot more travelling! There are so many roman ruins around, you wouldn't believe it! Yeah, I've done a lot of travelling, and I've seen tons of them. If you had seen Pompeii, there is no way you would have made such a statement, because that city might well have been preserved for another 98000 years.

      Ever heard of fossils? There are many excellently preserved fossils on record that are many millions of years old.

      If, for some reason, our civilization had died out, it is very likely that there would be tons of stuff left after us to be found in 100 000 years.

      That being said, I'm as excited by lost cities as anybody.

      --
      Employee of Inrupt, Project Release Manager and Community Manager for Solid
    29. Re:Cities before the Ice Age? Whats the big deal? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      All of you Eurobitches are jealous of America. That's why you have to constantly try and degrade America. Just admit it.

      Hey British boy, your food sucks, you have no concept of dental hygiene, and your women are fucking BUTT UGLY.

    30. Re:Cities before the Ice Age? Whats the big deal? by ender1598 · · Score: 0, Flamebait

      I think you mean, "There are legends which speak of a person called christ who was born 2000 years ago". Unless you can provide some evidence for his existence? No, the bible doesn't count.

      So you're saying the fact that there are several religions based on this supposed mythical person is not evidence in and of itself? In addition to the Bible there is also the historical account of Josephus which was published in Rome in 93 AD. For more info check out http://members.aol.com/FLJOSEPHUS/home.htm

      --
      There are 10 kinds of people in the world; those that understand binary and those that do not.
    31. Re:Cities before the Ice Age? Whats the big deal? by elefantstn · · Score: 1, Flamebait
      There is also no country (in the "western" world anyway) which I am aware of which is as insular and generally unaware of the outside world as the US.


      Don't be an idiot. I am really sick of Europeans who think "awareness of the outside world" means "can point to my hometown on a map." Jesus Christ. What, you know more about France than most Americans? Fantastic. I know more about Mexico than most Europeans. Big fucking deal. Can you all just get your head out of your collective asses and realize that the world does not revolve around you and your oh-so-important history and culture?

      And by the way, this is coming from a person with a degree in Classics and Ancient Mediterranean Studies who visits Europe as often as his budget allows.
      --
      If it ain't broke, you need more software.
    32. Re:Cities before the Ice Age? Whats the big deal? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Well, if you are Brittish then you would also realize that other Erupeon countries look upon the Brittish unfavorably. Why is that?? Because, Brittan has more economic power than other European countries. Other than the Asian population. I don't know of many Britts that are Bi-lingual. Like I said. Examine your own culture before you make statements.

    33. Re:Cities before the Ice Age? Whats the big deal? by goodhell · · Score: 1

      "If you lived in Europe you'd realise the Romans left a LOT of stuff behind. And of course Roman civilisation goes back a couple of thousand years BC."

      What you don't understand is that these societies were very environmentally friendly. The Sierra Club and other environmental groups have made some improvements in that field for us. Already in National forests we have what are known as "non-impact trails". For those geeks who never get to see the 'Yellow Face', this means that when you go hiking you try to leave no trace that you were ever there.

      Well, these societies were way more advanced than we can ever dream of being. They have followed a similar strategem called the "non-impact society". They came and went, and left no impact on their environment. And just think how lucky we are today. If they would have created tons of pollution it is possible that we would not even be able to thrive today.

      So let's learn from them and make our society a non-impact society.

      Mod me mad.

    34. Re:Cities before the Ice Age? Whats the big deal? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      If I could mod you up. I would. You are spot on. Eurpean Aragance is just a prevelent as American arroagance. Oh wait. The poster was Brittish. Brittian isn't really a part of Europe...... or so they say.

    35. Re:Cities before the Ice Age? Whats the big deal? by bryan1945 · · Score: 1

      Unfortunately, I have to agree with most of this. Please now read my full post before freaking out.

      US national news broadcasts are utter shit (some local news casts are ok). US pop culture (most tv, music, and movies) is utter shit. This is because society runs on a Bell curve, so you tailor your media to the biggest group possible, which just happens to be at the middle point. This means you are not getting many "advanced" ideas.

      Next, computers and the 'net are fairly new to the mainstream public, and the majority of the people who frequent entertainment/interactive sites are fairly young. (No, I have no proof, no stats, just a rough feel of what I just said. Argue if you want.) As I've aged over the past 7 years, the amount of time I've been on the 'net, the average post has devolved in overall knowledge. It seems that everyone is an expert in something (which is good) but focus so narrowly on something that they miss a larger picture. And their political views verge on the ludicrous- I have come across some who think that Communism should be tried again! Of course they missed the whole USSR/cold war thing.

      Enough ranting. Mods can blast me to hell for all I care, I spoke my views.

      --
      Vote monkeys into Congress. They are cheaper and more trustworthy.
    36. Re:Cities before the Ice Age? Whats the big deal? by t0ph3rus · · Score: 1

      Hate to break it to you. However, I am watching the "Tele" right now and most of the shows on are from the US. I agree with you on the news thing. However, you have to look at thinks realistically. 1 State is bigger than most countries in Europe and around the world. There fore the news in the states gets kind of saturated. As far as communism. I can introduce you to the hard core commie at the local tube stop. He will yap your ear off about the virtues of communism. The fact is were ever you go it's the same ole shit. Just a different toilet.

    37. Re:Cities before the Ice Age? Whats the big deal? by dgroskind · · Score: 1

      Big fucking deal. Can you all just get your head out of your collective asses...

      Spoken like a true American with a degree in Classics and Ancient Mediterranean Studies.

    38. Re:Cities before the Ice Age? Whats the big deal? by Tony-A · · Score: 2

      There is also no country (in the "western" world anyway) which I am aware of which is as insular and generally unaware of the outside world as the US.
      An oversimplification, but is, IMHO, an accurate accessment, but hardly unique to Americans, and hardly uniform within America.
      Americans can for the most part safely ignore the rest of the world in their daily routine. Canadians tend to be acutely aware of what's going on stateside, because the Canadian economy tends to flow North-South rather than East-West and small changes within the US can have large impacts on Canadians. New Yorkers safely ignore the rest of the country, except maybe Los Angeles. I suspect that good Parisians safely ignore the Provinces and the same type of situation should apply to Berliners.
      The awareness is not "being able to point to my hometown", but like the awareness you would have of New York City when you are somewhere in rural New Jersey. It's the persistent pressure of your neighbors' existence.

    39. Re:Cities before the Ice Age? Whats the big deal? by locust · · Score: 2
      It's not that they're intent on proving it; it's just that there's little or no evidence of any large settlements before then.


      No, there isn't a whole set of people who made their bread and butter on one set of theories, and whose egos have expanded to enormous size. They have no vested interest in preserving the status quo. And there is no peer review, by which the old established theories get entrenched.

      All science at the high level is done in spite of the politics that goes on in academia and everywhere else. Probably the examples most familiar to the average /. reader are those dealing with the catholic church. And while today, you wouldn't burn someone at the stake, you could certainly deny him funding, snow job his work, or just attack him personally in academic circles.


      In this vien one might think, well there is no evidence, we would have looked and found it. But have we infact looked and found it? Or did funding some piece of revolutionary research not fit in somebody's personal agenda?


      Its not all this black, but this sort of thing goes on much more than any academic would like to admit.


      --locust

    40. Re:Cities before the Ice Age? Whats the big deal? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      > gave rise to civilization as we know it.

      If you *know* it, prove it.

      Until you do, I'll regard your theories as means to ensure the superiority of your society.

    41. Re:Cities before the Ice Age? Whats the big deal? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      It's funny that archeaologists claims the opposite when it comes to building pyramides - "bah, it's trivial, put some ramps here and there and you're set to go!, no advanced tools needed just some hacks."
      If egypts could build the pyramids with some silly tools, anyone can build squillion meter highways with theyr asses.

    42. Re:Cities before the Ice Age? Whats the big deal? by sansoo · · Score: 1

      "Well, these societies were way more advanced than we can ever dream of being. They have followed a similar strategem called the "non-impact society". They came and went, and left no impact on their environment."
      Or perhaps they simply didn't have the technology to do the damage? This is the virtue of the powerless. The Anasazi (sp?) of New Mexico and the Easter Islanders are two examples of low-tech societies which deforested themselves into poverty. They didn't have the tools to see what they were doing to their environment over two or three lifetimes (graphs, measurements, photos, etc.). The Pacific Islanders wiped out numerous species, either by hunting or bringing in rats (pests) and pigs (food). The North American Indians probably hunted numerous species to extinction when they crossed the land bridge. Some of these cultures were certainly cooler than, say, my 21st-century US, but we can't tell by their inablity to damage their surroundings.

      --
      We are the first generation of Morlocks. Eat the rich!
    43. Re:Cities before the Ice Age? Whats the big deal? by ahde · · Score: 2

      Once a cave dweller discovers something that lets the society grow however

      Like sex? Every civilization thinks they're the first to discover it.

    44. Re:Cities before the Ice Age? Whats the big deal? by sansoo · · Score: 1

      Archeologists do not claim that it was a trivial act, only that it does not need extraterrestrial technology to explain it. Building a log cabin with an axe doesn't have to be done by flying saucer either, but I'm not going to run out and do it this afternoon to prove a point. And the pyramids were a lot bigger. Years. Thousands of laborers. A major investment of society's wealth. But not inexplicable.

      --
      We are the first generation of Morlocks. Eat the rich!
    45. Re:Cities before the Ice Age? Whats the big deal? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Well you certainly don't live anywhere near Europe. The Brits a large economic power? Your information is from 2 centuries back. Do some reading follow the current news.

      Made me laugh though

    46. Re:Cities before the Ice Age? Whats the big deal? by oldays · · Score: 1

      Yeah, anything's possible. We don't have any proof that there was no galactic empire 50k years ago either. Sciense concerns itself with what proof we *do* have, the rest is SF.

    47. Re:Cities before the Ice Age? Whats the big deal? by oldays · · Score: 1

      It ain't rocket sciense, eh? Well, it's funny that Americas never invented something as simple as a wheel and system of roads. We can't say which things are obvious and which aren't because we've been subjected to them while growing up. They're common knowledge. I think to hunterers-gatherers the obvious idea was that if they don't hunter-gather and instead play around with chunks of wood of round shape, they won't have enough food and die out. We've becomed accustomed to a leisurely attitude toward innovation but at the time if you didn't catch some animal, you didn't say "ah, hell, let's just order pizza or something?". And after a full day of running and hunting, you're too tired to do much inventin'.

    48. Re:Cities before the Ice Age? Whats the big deal? by *xpenguin* · · Score: 1

      Would you please
      learn to not press
      enter
      as
      lines
      do
      wrap

    49. Re:Cities before the Ice Age? Whats the big deal? by ScRoNdO · · Score: 1
      And are you American by any chance? If you lived in Europe you'd realise the Romans left a LOT of stuff behind. And of course Roman civilisation goes back a couple of thousand years BC.

      Sorry pal, Rome was founded between 700 and 800 years before Christ, the legend says it was on 759 BC.

    50. Re:Cities before the Ice Age? Whats the big deal? by banking_intern · · Score: 1

      Media in the US exists to make money, given that yes a great many things focus on that BIG fat middle of the curve. Go into an american bookstore and walk around, they will be a LOT of people there reading things besides the latest star wars novel or romance book. Look throught the magazine racks and you'll find titles such as "foreign policy". America has the tails of the curve but they arn't going to be seen from 3,000 miles away.

    51. Re:Cities before the Ice Age? Whats the big deal? by Darby · · Score: 1

      So you're saying the fact that there are several religions based on this supposed mythical person is not evidence in and of itself?

      Indeed I am. I think you actually agree with me, unless you think that Zeus, Quetzlcoatl, Baal, and thousands of other beings around which religions are based actually existed.

      For more info check out http://members.aol.com/FLJOSEPHUS/home.htm

      I will check this out. It was my understanding that there was zero mention of him in Roman records.

      Whoever modded you as flamebait is an ass. I asked a question politely and you answered in the same manner. I got troll *and* insightful both of which are wrong. Interesting at best, but just plain nothing would have been most accurate in my opinion.

      Take care.

    52. Re:Cities before the Ice Age? Whats the big deal? by ddavies · · Score: 1

      I find the fact that dinosaurs were around 65 MILLION years and never developed intelligence or culture fascinating. (Well, unless you believe Gary Larson)

    53. Re:Cities before the Ice Age? Whats the big deal? by MrOrn · · Score: 2, Insightful
      I presume you are referring to the Piri Reis map. I'd suggest that Plato had nothing to do with it. Pretty much all the serious archaelogical study of this has shown that it is not at all accurate. For a debunking, see http://www.intersurf.com/~chalcedony/FOG9.html.

      Anything that involves Graham Hancock's Fingerprints of the Gods (his degree is, by the way, in sociology, not anything related to archaeology or history), I'd take a barrel full of salt before believing. For a debunking of the book, see http://www.intersurf.com/~chalcedony/wildside.shtm l.

      Basically the man is a fraud. His basic premise is "I think this based on my naive intuition - I am well informed, so I don't have to do any research into the technical aspects of archaeology, nor do I need to actually prove my theory with any evidence. It's up to the archaeologists to disprove my theory. However, what they say is only subjective opinion (not based on a lifetime or multiple lifetimes of research and discovery, of course).

    54. Re:Cities before the Ice Age? Whats the big deal? by dgroskind · · Score: 1

      Canadians tend to be acutely aware of what's going on stateside, because the Canadian economy tends to flow North-South rather than East-West and small changes within the US can have large impacts on Canadians.

      No, it's because American television is so readily available and popular in Canada.

      And "acutely" does not accurately characterize Canadian awareness of the U.S. Canadian perceptions are formed by American media the way American perceptions are. Canadian perceptions may be tinged with envy and resentment, but that's as close to acute as Canadians gets.

    55. Re:Cities before the Ice Age? Whats the big deal? by firewood · · Score: 1

      Finding a fully graphical web browser that was written in 1975, like finding a massive city over 10000 years old would be a huge surprise- if not impossible.

      Although some of Engleberts work is surprisingly prescient, given SRI's budget and the technology of the time.

    56. Re:Cities before the Ice Age? Whats the big deal? by mshurpik · · Score: 1

      I find it interesting that dinosaurs were so goddamn BIG. You have to wonder how much more stable, lush, and vibrant the environment must have been to produce such gigantic creatures, and the massive quantities of food they consumed.

      The global climate we're living in is basically just the rebound from a recent ice age, ten thousand years ago. Meanwhile, the dinosaurs lived in perpetual SoCal weather for sixty-five million years.

      Probably the reason why they never developed intelligence or culture is because the environment was too comfortable to need it (I mean, just look at SoCal :) Meanwhile, we've gone too far in the opposite direction, having created so many adaptive technologies that we've long since conquered the climate and are now endangering it.

      Life is a slow process, and so environmental stability is absolutely the critical element. I'm guessing the climate was better before the ice age, and so pottery, cities, and agriculture just weren't needed to survive. Hell, they say the Sahara used to be lush. Who needed camels and waterskins back then?

    57. Re:Cities before the Ice Age? Whats the big deal? by Tony-A · · Score: 1

      Point well made, but compared to the awareness of Americans, Canadians are acutely aware.

    58. Re:Cities before the Ice Age? Whats the big deal? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      > I am really sick of Europeans who think "awareness of the outside world" means "can point to my hometown on a map."

      That's only when they're dumbing down the concept for the sort of American for whom "can point out my country on a globe" is a difficult task.

      > I know more about Mexico than most Europeans.

      Good for you. But when was the last time you heard a "didn't realize New Mexico was part of the US" story about a European?

      > realize that the world does not revolve around you
      Pot, meet Kettle.

    59. Re:Cities before the Ice Age? Whats the big deal? by joekool · · Score: 1

      you seem to imply that a couple is less than 2.5/3thousand years--for your info, a couple implies 2. As in 2 thousand years. Which is less than 2.5.

      --

      Slackware: old school feel, new school gear.
  21. Re:Still more evidence for creationism by AftanGustur · · Score: 3, Insightful


    Let's see how quickly the evolutionists try to cover this one up.

    Well, scientists have been proven wrong numerous times before, that's the difference between science and pseudo-science, you can't prove pseude-science wrong because they are based on a belive in themselves. (I.e. you can walk through that wall if you stop beliving it's there (and all of scientology's 'technology'))

    The evolutionists will simply adapt to new facts (if there is anything that needs adapting, that is)

    Science is a process, not a belive.

    --
    echo '[q]sa[ln0=aln80~Psnlbx]16isb572CCB9AE9DB03273snlbxq' |dc
  22. Western scientists must be pretty dumb! by seldolivaw · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Personally, if I heard a legend about 7 temples, and the 7th temple was not only already discovered standing on land, but also one of the most photographed temples in India, then I'd be inclined to believe the other 6 temples existed, wouldn't you? Call me wacky...

    1. Re:Western scientists must be pretty dumb! by mac.newbold · · Score: 1
      "Personally, if I heard a legend about 7 temples, and the 7th temple was not only already discovered standing on land, but also one of the most photographed temples in India, then I'd be inclined to believe the other 6 temples existed, wouldn't you? Call me wacky..."

      Or, perhaps they made up a story to impress the Western Dummies... "Gee, they like this temple so much, let's tell them we've got 6 more just like it under the sea..."

      Just because there is one real temple doesn't mean that there are 6 more just because they have a story that says so.

      Mac

      --
      Does the name Pavlov ring a bell?
    2. Re:Western scientists must be pretty dumb! by Coward,+Anonymous · · Score: 1, Insightful

      if I heard a legend about 7 temples, and the 7th temple was not only already discovered standing on land, but also one of the most photographed temples in India, then I'd be inclined to believe the other 6 temples existed

      George W. Bush is one of the first surviving septuplets (don't believe the lies about the McCaughey septuplets being the first). George W. Bush exists and has been photographed many times, therefore his six identical brothers also exist.

      Call me wacky

      You're wacky.

    3. Re:Western scientists must be pretty dumb! by InigoMontoya(tm) · · Score: 1

      Six more Dubyas? That means we potentially have 54 more years of Bush reign left!

      Oh, the humanity!

      InigoMontoya(tm)
      the one with the (tm)

      --
      This signature is self-referential.
    4. Re:Western scientists must be pretty dumb! by Kredal · · Score: 1

      This is all just an elaborate tie-in to a new video game. You must travel to the 6 underwater temples to collect magic crystals, before using them to unlock the 7th temple, where you'll fight the main bad guy.

      --
      Whoever stated that signature sizes should be limited to one hundred and twenty characters can just go ahead and kiss my
    5. Re:Western scientists must be pretty dumb! by i0lanthe · · Score: 2

      Well... if I recall correctly, people didn't believe Troy existed either until Schliemann said he'd dug it up. (though there seems to be dispute over whether that really was Troy.) Some things don't change much, eh.

      --
      "The Crystal Wind is the Storm, and the Storm is Data, and the Data is Life"
    6. Re:Western scientists must be pretty dumb! by Dephex+Twin · · Score: 1
      George W. Bush exists and has been photographed many times, therefore his six identical brothers also exist.

      I wonder if they've developed gills after being underwater for so long.

      mark
      --

      If you want to make an apple pie from scratch, you must first create the universe. -- Carl Sagan
    7. Re:Western scientists must be pretty dumb! by ahde · · Score: 2

      no, people weren't sure where troy was until he found it -- though many suspected it was somewhere around where he was searching.

    8. Re:Western scientists must be pretty dumb! by cappadocius · · Score: 1

      Consider that the man who found the ruins of Troy was laughed at because he tried to locate it based on the description of its location in Homer. That's where it was though.

      --

      omnia tua castra sunt nobis

  23. Ancient Civs by Vidmaster_Steve · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Back in high school Chem class, we had to argue pro or con for a Nuke plant to be built locally (one, rural Nevada... why bother?). Me, always being an argumentative dickhead, chose to Devil's Advocate the task, and sided with the whiny, anti-nuke hippies.

    Aaaanyhow, one of the arguments that I had used was that there are extinct civilizations that have only died out as recent as FIVE HUNDRED YEARS AGO, and we, with all our fancy European-style education have yet to come within reasonable nearness to decyphering their written language.

    So, I argued, what if... Something catastrophic happens again, and in a few thousand years, after civilization has dragged itself back up through the ashes to the point where its out exploring the seas again in galleys and colonizing the farthest reaches of the globe. What if... What if they stumble across the Yucca Mountain dump?
    Now, they have absolutley no knowledge of what that yellow and black circle, divided up into sixths means. They're seeing metal signs with an indecypherable alien text on them. They find these vaults, and manage to tunnel in and are exposed to radiation. Potential catastrophy there...

    Anyhow. Since I got to thinking about that, then I start thinking some more. What if it had already happened once? What if Jericho weren't really the "First City?" What if we humans became significantly advanced (pre-industrial age or so?) then got wiped out by the encroaching glaciation? Which would explain the decided lack of structures and monuments, with the notable exception of the alleged sunken cities in the Sea of Japan, off India and Cuba.

    I read somewhere that the temples at Ankor could be upwards of 12k years old. Which predates the "Fertile Crescent" civs by at least a thousand years...

    Just the ruminations of a crazy drunk that's been up for three days. Responses would be keen, a full-fucking-fledged discussion would rock.

    --
    Why is it when I hit ^R that ZSH calls me a cocksucker?
    1. Re:Ancient Civs by Leven+Valera · · Score: 2

      I was reading a book the other day by Michael Cremo which had a theory in it that man has been on this planet, in our current form, for at least two million years, and our current society is not the first enlightened civilization. Neat stuff.

      LV

      --
      Woot w00t w007.
    2. Re:Ancient Civs by 2nd+Post! · · Score: 2

      Have you heard of laser induced fission?

      Take a laser of high enough energy to encourage radioactive material to fise until it reaches a suitably short half life and is safe to store? Say a half life of a couple months?

      The neat part is that it may be possible to get more energy out of the reaction than we put in, at least for the first few cycles; uranium, plutonium, etc.

      The advantages are twofold;no nuclear reactor would need critical masses, and nuclear waste would only be as dangerous as we choose not to degrade it, according to energy cost. If a half life of 100 years is acceptable, we can choose that. If a half life of 1000 years is acceptable, we can choose that.

      This presupposes of course that research into laser induced fission proceeds on course.

      Google search.

    3. Re:Ancient Civs by KieranElby · · Score: 3, Interesting

      > What if they [future civs] stumble across the Yucca Mountain dump?

      This is getting slightly off-topic, but the nuclear industry has been researching how to warn future civilisations 10000 years later about nuclear waste.

      There's some excerpts from a report here that are surprisingly interesting reading.

      Amongst other things, the report discusses using earthworks and markers to try and convey an impression of danger and inhospitability - but, importantly, without making the waste repository look like it might contain anything valuable. After all, it did not take long for grave-robbers to break into the pyramids, curse or no curse...

    4. Re:Ancient Civs by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      This reminds me of a short story I read in a Junior High Textbook it think.

      Its something about some tribe that had priests that were allowed to touch ancient chunks of metal found from the outskirts of their town. Since they were priests or monks or whatever they didn't die.

      Anyway, one of them eventually ventures out far enough to find that the metal came from an ancient ciy. He eventually figures out that a massive war had killed most every one off and his society is decendents from that post-appocalyptic metropolis.

      Cool little story anyone remember the name of it? Its been at least 15 years since I read it. It would be cool to read again.

    5. Re:Ancient Civs by sulli · · Score: 1

      Note that this is for the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant in Carlsbad, NM, which is already in use. (You can take a tour!)

      --

      sulli
      RTFJ.
    6. Re:Ancient Civs by gUmbi · · Score: 2

      Take a laser of high enough energy to encourage radioactive material to fise until it reaches a suitably short half life and is safe to store? Say a half life of a couple months?

      This might be a dumb question but what are you going to use to power this laser?

      Jason.

    7. Re:Ancient Civs by blair1q · · Score: 2

      You aren't the first smartass to think of this.

      The regulations for storing nuclear waste long-term require that the legends on the site be durable, pictographic, and clear enough that anybody could understand that this place is bad.

      Which sure helped the Pharaohs protect their treasure...

      --Blair

    8. Re:Ancient Civs by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      It reminds me of Planet of the Apes (the originals, not the one by Tim Burton)

    9. Re:Ancient Civs by MAJ+Rantage · · Score: 2, Funny

      Oh don't worry....the giant laser is on the moon, and we're using solar power.

      And we shall call it...the Alan Parsons Project!

    10. Re:Ancient Civs by Galvatron · · Score: 2
      Well, we have found things like bodies frozen in glaciers, and they've all looked like hunters and gatherers. It's possible there were a few cities here or there, but it seems unlikely that civilization was widespread. Besides, there's plenty of areas the glaciers didn't roll over, around the equator for instance, where one would still expect to find ruins. There could, as you say, have been a few pre-industrial societies, but certainly nothing advanced.

      Regarding the whole "what if future explorers blunder into a radioactive dumping ground?" I have to admit that the possibility of maybe half a dozen explorers in a post-apocolytic world dying from radiation does not seem like a compelling reason not to use nuclear power.

      --
      "The question of whether a computer can think is no more interesting than that of whether a submarine can swim" -EWD
    11. Re:Ancient Civs by 2nd+Post! · · Score: 1

      Well, two thoughts come to mind;

      Nuclear power or solar power.

      Nuclear power requires, of course, that the process be refined so that the energy to power the laser is less than the power generated by the reaction; this doesn't violate the second law of thermodynamic, but does require the right frequencies, the right catalysts, the right designs.

      The other thought is solar power, since we get essentially unlimited power from the sun, coupled with the energy released by the nuclear reaction itself. Move the radioactive material into the middle of the desert, into a special solar powered nuclear reducer, and burn away the radioactive materials...

    12. Re:Ancient Civs by arkanes · · Score: 2
      They should design ingenious puzzles and traps to snare the wary, with lots pf pressure plates and levers and stone blocks. Then only Lara Croft will be able to get in!

      On a more serious note, how are they going to get pictoglyphs that are any more dangerous looking than "curse of the mummy' type stuff? Images of the face from "Scream" are all well and good, but that's more or less what they egyptians had on thier pyramids.

    13. Re:Ancient Civs by Canis+of+Ithaca · · Score: 1

      How do you define "advanced"? Were the Sumerians advanced? The Egyptians? Is metalurgy an absolute requirement? That's like saying the concept of war is a necessary prerequisite to being advanced.

      If these cities are the real thing, they're exactly where we'd expect them, parts of the world that were coastal, BEFORE the last batch of glacial recessions. People generally put their cities where the trade is. Pre-industrial trade works a LOT better when you have a convenient body of water.

      As for radioactive dumping grounds, a little bit more radiation in a post-apocalyptic landscape is like another bucket of water in the ocean. Big deal. Rather than waste time and money on developing sufficiently scary hieroglyphics, I'd spend that time and money making people scared of the consequences of their actions in the here and now. Then maybe the question of a post-apocalyptic world could be rendered academic.

    14. Re:Ancient Civs by thaths · · Score: 1
      What if it had already happened once? What if Jericho weren't really the "First City?" What if we humans became significantly advanced (pre-industrial age or so?) then got wiped out by the encroaching glaciation? Which would explain the decided lack of structures and monuments, with the notable exception of the alleged sunken cities in the Sea of Japan, off India and Cuba.

      Now, we would see signs of these civilizations, won't we? IMO, any civilization that advances to pre-industrial level leaves behind evidence.

      I read somewhere that the temples at Ankor could be upwards of 12k years old.

      Having actually visited Angkor and having read quite a bit on the Khmer people let me say that this is simply hogwash. Angkor was built circa 13th century. Angkor is a Hindu temple (one just has to see the Ramayana / Mahabharat bas reliefs on its walls). If Angkor was indeed 12k years old, Hinduism itself would have been much older. There simply isn't any evidence that Hinduism that old. Hell, the Brahminical Aryans weren't even in India back then.

      Thaths

    15. Re:Ancient Civs by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Sounds like the novel A Canticle for Leibowitz

      Great read, don't remember the author, but if my memory serves me it was written directly after the second world war.

    16. Re:Ancient Civs by jafac · · Score: 2

      What destroyed the ancients?

      onerous copyright protection laws.

      --

      These are my friends, See how they glisten. See this one shine, how he smiles in the light.
    17. Re:Ancient Civs by 2nd+Post! · · Score: 2

      I like the black hole concept.

      Why not scatter, near the surface, a low amount of radioactive material, intentionally?

      Not lethal levels, but enough to be measurably higher than the background, so that the casual adventurer with the right tools would realize this place is radioactive, with an obvious gradient from background to max near the center?

      For that matter, why not have 'fossilized' bodies, 'skeletal' shapes, and such, litter the landscape, made of impossibly tough materials? Like, say, titanium? If they are advanced enough to process the titanium, they should be advanced enough to figure out the whole purpose of the site, and if they cannot cut/process the titanium, then, well, wouldn't it be awfully foreboding to see the utterly black surface pockmarked by skeletal remains?

  24. April Fools? by mac.newbold · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Does anyone else find it interesting that the article says:

    "The discovery was made on 1 April by a joint team of divers from the Indian National Institute of Oceanography and the Scientific Exploration Society based in Dorset."

    Sounds like it might have been a joke that the BBC picked up on about 10 days late...

    Mac

    --
    Does the name Pavlov ring a bell?
    1. Re:April Fools? by morbid · · Score: 0

      Yes, probably. The BBC's science reporting is notoriously naieve. They had a guy on Radio 4 once talking about the perpetual-motion anti-gravity device he'd "invented." They were being serious about it!

      --
      I'm out of my tree just now but please feel free to leave a banana.
    2. Re:April Fools? by boltar · · Score: 1

      Its not a joke , theres been video footage on it on the BBC TV news. If it is an April Fools then
      someone has `gone to a lot of trouble for something thats not even amusing.

    3. Re:April Fools? by Hard_Code · · Score: 2

      And what about this:

      "Expedition leader Monty Halls"

      How many gold pieces and dragon treasure did they find?

      --

      It's 10 PM. Do you know if you're un-American?
  25. Re:Still more evidence for creationism by BWJones · · Score: 2

    Let's see how quickly the evolutionists try to cover this one up.

    How do you make this leap of logic based on the article? And why we are here, why is it that evolution and religion have to be mutually exclusive? I am a hard core scientist (neurophysiologist), that also happens to believe in God. What is there to say that God cannot work through evolution? To deny evolution exists is to be blind to the world around you.

    Think about the following:

    Why is it that bacteria can develop resistance to antibiotics? Evolution. This is a reality and we have to deal with it daily.

    --
    Visit Jonesblog and say hello.
  26. finally, and interesting Slashdot article by z00r · · Score: 1

    I am so very glad to see something that doesn't obsess over games or get overly chipper about a new piece of hardware that is 0.01 percent faster. Finally, something with a human element.

  27. Re:Still more evidence for creationism by t0ph3rus · · Score: 1

    Actually, the ancient "Floods" were contained to only the black Sea area. They were caused by the melting glaciers and a slight rise in sea level that over flowed a portal that protected the area that was around the black sea which was under sea level. Also, the biblical flood is actually strangely similar to the story of Giglemesh (SP?). This story was told in Babylonian courts and is thought to have been borrowed by early Jewish people that were seeking refuge in the Babylonian court. There has actually been a lot of scientific research done in this area proofing a large localized flood. Such as remains of aquatic life that was fresh water being replaced by salt water organisms very quickly. Do a google search on Black sea flood or something for more info.

  28. What blows my mind by cs668 · · Score: 1

    Isn't that this city was there. It is that it's story has been passed down through oral tradition from what they think is 5000 years ago.

    1. Re:What blows my mind by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Hey, one European oral tradition goes back 15,000 years. One African one goes back _40,000_ years!

  29. Its always the same by Psiren · · Score: 2

    Its always the same isn't it. Years and years and no citties to be seen. Then suddenly three turn up at once! ;-)

  30. Funny about the dates... by rsidd · · Score: 3, Interesting

    First, the surviving temple is certainly not 5000 years old: it dates from the 7th or 8th century AD.
    Second, Hindu civilization itself is old but not that old. For temples of this kind, 1000 BC would be an optimistic early limit; 3000 BC is out of the question.
    From this article it seems that the claim of 5000 years comes from Graham Hancock, a controversial writer about "lost civilizations". I'd like to see the opinion backed by some credible evidence.

    1. Re:Funny about the dates... by BlueUnderwear · · Score: 3, Insightful
      Indeed, some dates are rather funny, most importantly the date of discovery:

      The discovery was made on 1 April by a joint team of divers from the Indian National Institute of Oceanography and the Scientific Exploration Society based in Dorset.
      --
      Say no to software patents.
    2. Re:Funny about the dates... by akiaki007 · · Score: 1

      I coulda sworn that the Bhavad Gita was about 5000 years old, dating back to near Mesopotamian age. For those that don't know, the Bhagvad Gita is the oldest known script in human lineage, and is also among the sacred scriptures in Indian culture.

      --
      "Time is long and life is short, so begin to live while you still can." -EV
    3. Re:Funny about the dates... by soapvox · · Score: 1

      Strange... You are awfully certain of that. While I am not saying it is the true age one way or another, I would keep an open mind and get more facts before such a closed statement.

    4. Re:Funny about the dates... by Black+Parrot · · Score: 3, Funny


      > I coulda sworn that the Bhavad Gita was about 5000 years old, dating back to near Mesopotamian age.

      If you do decide to swear that, don't swear it on your yarbles or anything else you hold dear.

      --
      Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
    5. Re:Funny about the dates... by sisukapalli1 · · Score: 2, Informative

      The Rig Veda is widely believed as the most ancient script. Bhagavad Gita is what has been preached by Lord Krishna during the Mahabharata time, so it would be fairly yound document.

      Interestingly, the first verse of Rig Veda says something like this (paraphrasing...)

      "There was no truth before life, no falsehood, no sky, no space. Where was all hidden, who dug it up? Where was all the water?"

      Sastry

    6. Re:Funny about the dates... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Don't argue about this now, once 30-40 bronze, silver, or gold artifacts from different places around the ruins are brought to the surface (if any) they will be able to pinpoint the year of demise within 100-200 years. One would have to assume that this is at the very least before 500AD otherwise there would be a written record of it, Another possibility is that it was a slow progression of sea taking over land and people had enough time to move inland but they had to leave the city behind and since there wasn't a cataclysmic explosion or massive death, people might have remembered it for a while but then forgot about it. Also Hindu Temples tend to be built close to water, it is not unfeasible that these ruins are just "temples" and not an entire city.

    7. Re:Funny about the dates... by loche451 · · Score: 2, Interesting

      Graham Hancock has written several books, probably the most well-known is Finger Prints of the Gods. I would highly recommend reading it. BTW- it has about 50 pages of footnotes, so it is not like he is pulling his theories out of his butt.

      He does provide an interesting link between alot of facts...and goes into detail about which facts are accepted, and which are not...and then provides usually compelling evidence for either side.

      For example: Probably the easiest thing to point out is that the Pires Ries Map (I know I spelled that wrong) has a landmass drawn upon it that fits extremely closely with antartica...only problem is the the Pires Ries map was drawn up in the 1500's based upon a collection of older maps. Antartica was officially discovered in the late 1800s and has still not been entirely surveyed (to my knowledge at least) but enough major points of interest match to say it is a rendering of antartica before 2 miles thick of ice covered the continent.

      Another good example would be water errosion found on the Sphinx in egypt. (the evidence is accepted by geologists, but denied by egyptologists) The last time enough water was in egpyt to account for that level of errosion is guessed to be about 10,000 bc or thereabout.

      Some of it may be crap...but alot of these facts are extremely conspicous. I hope the reseachers find some more questions to ask based on these new ruins.

    8. Re:Funny about the dates... by rikki_t · · Score: 1

      I noticed that too. But I checked, and the team spells INIOSES, which doesn't seem to be any kind of satire or pun. Things do actually happen on April 1 occasionally. The fact that the diver's name was Monty Halls (cf Monty Hall of Let's Make A Deal) was a bit bothersome as well, but I don't see the BBC putting up a story like this 10 days after April Fool's....

      --
      Any technology which is distinguishable from magic is insufficiently advanced.
    9. Re:Funny about the dates... by Phork · · Score: 2

      The Bhagavad Gita purports to have last been told to mankind by Krishna 5000 years ago.

      --
      -- free as in swatantryam - not soujanyam.
    10. Re:Funny about the dates... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      You're talking shit, dude. Hinduism has an oral before the Vedas that goes back to some 10,000 years.

    11. Re:Funny about the dates... by btellier · · Score: 2

      "facts can be used to prove anything that's even remotely true"

      This is especially true with consipiracy theorists and people who want to believe in archeological coverups, such as that the pyramids were built by aliens. Anyone can skew the facts in their own book to make it seem plausible.

    12. Re:Funny about the dates... by Chris+Mattern · · Score: 2

      > BTW- it has about 50 pages of footnotes, so it is not like he is pulling his theories out of his butt.

      Unless, of course, he's also pulling the footnotes out of his butt. Footnotes are not meant to admired for their sheer mass--"Oooh, lookit all the footnotes! He *must* be a scholar!"--but to be followed, checked, and used to see if his sources truly do support his conclusions.

      Chris Mattern

    13. Re:Funny about the dates... by KH · · Score: 1

      Interestingly, the first verse of Rig Veda says something like this (paraphrasing...)

      "There was no truth before life, no falsehood, no sky, no space. Where was all hidden, who dug it up? Where was all the water?"


      That is not true. The first verse of the Rgveda says "agnimILe purohitaM yaj~nasya devaM RtvIjam | hotAraM ratnadhAtamam ||", etc., which praises the god Fire (Agni). And this continues for quite some time.

      What you cited sounds vaguely familiar. Maybe that's from one of the Upanishads?

      And I am a Sanskritist (but not a Vedicist).

    14. Re:Funny about the dates... by nsupathy · · Score: 1

      As a native belonging to this region, I knew quite a bit about this. Even my father, who is now 58 years old, used to say this and he has seen 2 Pagoda temples during his childhood days. But I had seen only one.

      As far the literature is concerned, the ancient Tamil (language of this region) Grammar book named "Thozhkappiayam" dates back to 1500-2000 BC and it references "Agasthiyar Kappiyam" the date of which is yet be traced.

      But no one took initiative to show this to the world. Finally it appeared in Slashdot and I am really hapy

      --
      #include std_disclaimer.h
  31. Not Caused by the Ice Age ending by fiendo · · Score: 1
    Check the Gaurdian's article for Hancock's retraction of this theory:
    "Mr Hancock admitted yesterday that the submerged ruins might not be old enough to relate to the kind of post-ice age flooding that destroyed the supposed civilisations of his books."
    However he does think it still vindicates the use of local myths/legends as a resource.
    --
    I went to the city because I wished to live without deliberation.
  32. April Fools? by Dunkirk · · Score: 2, Interesting

    Found on April 1 with a team leader by the name "Monty Halls?" Sounds like a prank to me...

    --
    Acts 17:28, "For in Him we live, and move, and have our being."
  33. Let's Make a Deal by iiii · · Score: 1
    So that's what Monty Hall has been up to. I've been wondering.

    From the article: Expedition leader Monty Halls said...

    --
    Light cup, beer drink, thin so chain, neck turtle fat, man I won't say it again
  34. Also consider that... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Earthquakes, volcanoes, plate movements etc, happen too in addition to climate changes which affect sea level.

  35. sea level rise by Alien54 · · Score: 3, Interesting
    Scientists now want to explore the possibility that the city was submerged following the last Ice Age.

    If this proves correct, it would date the discovery at more than 5,000 years old.

    Actually I thought the sea level rose about 120 meters at the end of the last ice age (starting about 20,000 years ago)

    There are some interesting graphics here: One, Two, Three

    --
    "It is a greater offense to steal men's labor, than their clothes"
    1. Re:sea level rise by Peyna · · Score: 5, Informative

      Why does everyone say 'the end of the last ice age'? We are still in the middle of an ice age that just happens to be in a slight recession. Just because half of the US isn't covered in ice doesn't mean it's not an ice age. In fact, we are about 1.6 million years into this ice age. Periods like the one that we are in right now (where it is warmer there's not so much ice everywhere except at the poles and on mountains) tend to last about 10-15,000 years. I guess that means we're due for some more ice pretty soon.

      If you don't believe, go pick up the nearest geology book and have a good read.

      --
      What?
    2. Re:sea level rise by Alien54 · · Score: 3, Interesting
      Why does everyone say 'the end of the last ice age'? We are still in the middle of an ice age that just happens to be in a slight recession.

      Unfortunately, the periodic elements usually cite as contributing to an Ice Age usually vary over tens of thousands of years, not Millions. Check out thies graphs on Orbital eccentricity, Axis Tilt, and Precession of the Equinoxes. There is a Composite Graph as well.

      End result is that we do knot know what actually causes the Ice Ages; these variations seem to be operating at the wrong time scale. More realistic factors include Plate tectonics (the forming of Panama as a link block off the Pacific from the Atlantic) - Solar activity also indicates global warming on Mars, which would indicate that the sun is slowly warming up.

      All of which puts the nature and duration of the current "warm period" into confusion.

      But then, I find pictures like this of Mars fascinating, since it looks so much like standing water, when this is of course impossible. I don't know what to make of it. Damn good illusion, if nothing else

      --
      "It is a greater offense to steal men's labor, than their clothes"
    3. Re:sea level rise by Fizzlewhiff · · Score: 2

      Why does everyone say 'the end of the last ice age'?

      No doubt! Bud Ice, Icehouse, Molson Ice, one only has to go as far as the supermarket to see we are in an ice age.

      --

      'Same speed C but faster'
    4. Re:sea level rise by Tony-A · · Score: 2

      Major culprit for the ice ages is probably the Himalayan(sp?) Mountains. Disturbs air flow and pulls CO2 from the atmosphere.
      If you consider the earth as a heat engine which basically takes in heat at the equater and radiates it out to space from the poles, where the boundaries of this engine are made of air and water, and no good idea as to what it takes to switch from one equilibrium state to another, ....
      A plausible consequence of "global warming" is another ice age, not the most likely, but not unreasonable.
      Somebody that actually knows the stuff could fill in better than this, but the minor contributers are probably just that, minor.

    5. Re:sea level rise by Dr.Dubious+DDQ · · Score: 1
      Solar activity also indicates global warming on Mars

      See what the irresponsible US Government did!?!? They went and sent that damned "Viking" SUV to Mars back in the 70's, and now it's got global warming too! :-)

  36. Graham Hancock often on Art Bell by fire-eyes · · Score: 1

    One of the people quoted in that article, Graham Hancock, is often on the Art Bell show. Regardless of what you think of Art or the show, it is always interesting when Graham is on.

    http://www.artbell.com/

    --
    -- Note: If you don't agree with me, don't bother replying. I won't read it.
    1. Re:Graham Hancock often on Art Bell by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      I was on an overnight 15hr drive a few weeks ago and I heard the Art Bell show for the first time, and was engrossed. One of the most amazingly funny things I have ever heard... then I realized people were taking it seriously. However, I did hear Graham Hancock talking about this exact story. I don't remember the exact details, but the method he used to date the city was by calculating the last time it was above water. Seemed resonable, but then I remembered it was surrounded by talk of "shadow people" and "the laws of thermodynamics are crap".

  37. Here is the Text by akiaki007 · · Score: 3, Informative

    Here is the text as requested by some users:

    An ancient underwater city has been discovered off the coast of south-eastern India.

    Divers from India and England made the discovery based on the statements of local fishermen and the old Indian legend of the Seven Pagodas.

    The ruins, which are off the coast of Mahabalipuram, cover many square miles and seem to prove that a major city once stood there.

    A further expedition to the region is now being arranged which will take place at the beginning of 2003.

    'International significance'

    The discovery was made on 1 April by a joint team of divers from the Indian National Institute of Oceanography and the Scientific Exploration Society based in Dorset.

    Expedition leader Monty Halls said: "Our divers were presented with a series of structures that clearly showed man-made attributes.

    "The scale of the site appears to be extremely extensive, with 50 dives conducted over a three-day period covering only a small area of the overall ruin field.

    "This is plainly a discovery of international significance that demands further exploration and detailed investigation."

    During the expedition to the site, divers came across structures believed to be man-made.

    One of the buildings appears to be a place of worship, although they could only view part of what is a huge area suggesting a major city.

    Jealous Gods

    The myths of Mahabalipuram were first set down in writing by British traveller J. Goldingham who visited the South Indian coastal town in 1798, at which time it was known to sailors as the Seven Pagodas.

    The myths speak of six temples submerged beneath the waves with the seventh temple still standing on the seashore.

    The myths also state that a large city once stood here which was so beautiful the gods became jealous and sent a flood that swallowed it up entirely in a single day.

    One of the expedition team, Graham Hancock, said: "I have argued for many years that the world's flood myths deserve to be taken seriously, a view that most Western academics reject.

    "But here in Mahabalipuram we have proved the myths right and the academics wrong."

    Scientists now want to explore the possibility that the city was submerged following the last Ice Age.

    If this proves correct, it would date the discovery at more than 5,000 years old.

    --
    "Time is long and life is short, so begin to live while you still can." -EV
    1. Re:Here is the Text by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0
      series of structures that clearly showed man-made attributes.



      How do they the site is more than 5000 years old. It doesnt seem like they have done a thorough investigation.

  38. 12ft Tall Giant Lizards by UberFish · · Score: 0

    This place was on telly in the UK a couple of months ago, with G.Hancock pushing his interpretation of evidence past breaking point and then some.

    Its just a natural formation. Theres no tools, no carvings, no evidence buldings, nothing other then things that look like monoliths, but are actually just undercut and fallen sedimentary rock layers. Theres loads of other natural formations just as odd, like the Giants Causeway.

    Otherwise, this thing has such large irregular steps in it, it must have been originally inhabited by 12ft Lizard Men.

    1. Re:12ft Tall Giant Lizards by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Like the ones in V ?

    2. Re:12ft Tall Giant Lizards by UberFish · · Score: 0

      Like the ones in David Ike's head.

      Hes a UK based nutter. Was a sportsman, then sports presenter, and then something happened, we know not what.

  39. Comment removed by account_deleted · · Score: 1

    Comment removed based on user account deletion

  40. Just wait until more exploration is done... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    ...in the extreme northern parts of Canada Alaska and Siberia. Those lands were once the northern shores of Pangea/Gondwannaland/whatever before the slpit-up and drift, and were once a lot further south and warmer than they are now.

    1. Re:Just wait until more exploration is done... by Unknown+Poltroon · · Score: 4, Interesting

      I Think that thats too long a time sacle for humans. Weve been "human" for the past, call it 500,000 years give or take, which is nothing in goelogical, continental drift terms. THe continents probably moved a mile or two in that time.

      --
      All Troll + "offtopic" mods are meta moderated as "Unfair", because you abused the system.
  41. Re:Still more evidence for creationism by Tremul · · Score: 1

    I love how you boldly make this statement yet you offer 0 reasons as to why this would favor creationism.

    --

    "Can't sleep. Clowns will eat me"
  42. evidence of the flood? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    what does it take to sink an entire city?

    "an act of God"

    Genesis 6

    D~y

  43. How to veiw this by secondsun · · Score: 4, Funny


    Southern Baptist -- "See? They worshipped their gods and look what our God did to them!"

    Hindu -- "We were right all along."

    Creationist -- "Let's see how long it will be before the evolutionists try to cover this one up."

    Evolutionist -- "Where is my shovel?"

    Historian -- "Legends really do rave a basis in fact, whoda thunk it?"

    Captialist -- "Get your 6 temple tour here today!"

    Di$ney -- "We are working on our new film, Searh for the six temples. PLease pay our Congressmen accordingly."

    Mafia -- "Oh damn, there goes our hiding spot."

    </humor>
    <serious>
    Our world is so huge and our history is so enormous. Why is it that when a site of great historical impoartance is found that there are always dozens of holy rollers that try to twist it more than what it is? (That being an archaeological find.) I find it amazing that we could be so close to something so signifigant and think it wasn't there for 2000 years. Kinda makes me wonder about Atlantis.

    Secondsun

    --
    There is nothing wrong with being gay. It's getting caught where the trouble lies.
    1. Re:How to veiw this by Bandman · · Score: 2

      LOL i had to laugh at that....i guess according to the guide above, I'm Hindu/Evolutionist...with a slight twist of Mafia...

    2. Re:How to veiw this by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      The same can be said of all the rationalists who try to make it less than what it is, discredit the discovery or discoverer and sweep it under the carpet because it represents evidence that something else might be true.

    3. Re:How to veiw this by Tackhead · · Score: 2
      > Southern Baptist -- "See? They worshipped their gods and look what our God did to them!"
      >Hindu -- "We were right all along."
      >Creationist -- "Let's see how long it will be before the evolutionists try to cover this one up."
      >Evolutionist -- "Where is my shovel?"
      >Historian -- "Legends really do rave a basis in fact, whoda thunk it?"
      >Captialist -- "Get your 6 temple tour here today!"
      >Di$ney -- "We are working on our new film, Searh for the six temples. PLease pay our Congressmen accordingly."
      >Mafia -- "Oh damn, there goes our hiding spot."

      Illuminist: "And those Discordian bastards stole the statues we were planning to sell them!"

      Discordian: "Hot shit! 8 months after a splinter group of the Leauge of Assassins goes apeshit, 6 months after we barely catch the germ warfare leaks in time, and only a week after we buy the luxury submarine we read about on Slashdot, and we've got the gold Atlantean statues! Finally, we can buy the Mob back from the Illuminati and stop the power grab in the States. (Dorn, that's your job!) The rest of us will haul ass through the secret tunnel to Lake Totenkopf! Let's move it, we've only got three weeks to go before they immanentize the Eschaton!"

      (I gave up on reality when I realized the The Illuminatus! Trilogy, (1975), was a better guide to world events fnord than CNN. Robert Anton Wilson was right -- science fiction fnord authors aren't writing fiction, they're just people who happen to be travelling backwards in time fnord and they're writing their memoirs...)

    4. Re:How to veiw this by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      wouldn't the evolutionist say: "Oh great, a bunch of temples got flooded and someone blamed it on a god, let's see how long it takes before the creationists forget that this is older than their version of earth..."

    5. Re:How to veiw this by CableModemSniper · · Score: 0

      Guess what? This author links to Amazon.com.

      --
      Why not fork?
    6. Re:How to veiw this by Anthony+Boyd · · Score: 2

      </serious>

      Sorry, just couldn't stand to have an unclosed tag. 8^)

  44. Re:Still more evidence for creationism by Tenebrious1 · · Score: 4, Informative

    They have discovered what they think to be the site of the great flood, around 5500BCE around the Black Sea. The idea is that it was a large, freshwater lake before then judging from the shellfish they've dug up in core samples. After the 5500BCE layer they find only saltwater shellfish. The earth wall at istanbul collapsed and the sea rushed in, doubling the size of the Black Sea.

    The Babylons did notice, for there is a legend of Gilgamesh searching for the survivor of the great flood, which eventually turned into the Noah story in Genesis from what I understand of it.

    And even if it isn't the origin of the biblical flood, it's still a pretty cool discovery.

    --
    -- If god wanted me to have a sig, he'd have given me a sense of humor.
  45. Pertinence?? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    And why is this posted here -- is it truly that slow of a news day??

    1. Re:Pertinence?? by Justice+Potter+Stewa · · Score: 1

      Objection overruled!

  46. Re:Still more evidence for creationism by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    another atheist proven wrong ;P

    http://www.religioustolerance.org/ev_date.htm

    get your dates straight dude.......and research your comments.

  47. Attack of the Flood Myths by kvn299 · · Score: 1

    Uh, oh...

    All this talk about flood myths, and, hey, wasn't there a lot of water in that Attack of the Clones preview?

  48. Ummm by wiredog · · Score: 2

    You didn't read that comment, did you? Ballard is looking for evidence of a great not global flood.

    1. Re:Ummm by The+Good+Reverend · · Score: 2

      Yes, but if said "great" flood is supposed to be linked to the Noah's Ark story, it would follow that it was a global issue. Regardless, it's still good information.

    2. Re:Ummm by Troed · · Score: 1
      "World" vs "The World as We know it"


      I.e, a biblical flood doesn't have to be global. Distant memories of when the Atlantic broke through Gibraltar or when Tigris and Eufrat flooded the "known civilization" would be enough.

    3. Re:Ummm by emir · · Score: 1

      atlantic broke through gibraltar long before humans evolved.

      memory of flooding probably comes from black sea flooding. when water broke through bosphorus (5600 bce), over 60,000 square miles of land around black sea shores where flooded.


      --
      -- http://electronicintifada.net --
  49. UK researcher: crackpot or for real? by Cally · · Score: 4, Informative
    This chap (Graham Hancock) is really very interesting. He recently had a series of (IIRC) six shows on TV here in the UK looking at various evidence he'd accumulated to backup his theory. The basic hypothesis as I understand it is that there were complex, advanced, city-building civilisations BEFORE or possibly DURING the last ice-age; but that most of the evidence was lost under water at the end of the last ice age when the sea level rose. (Of course they'd only be in relatively shallow water, not far offshore - continental shelves, down to a couple of hundred feet. The claimed ruins off Cuba are supposed to be several THOUSAND feet down, which sounds highly unlikely to me -- unless Cuba has a hitherto unknown tectonic fracture or something...

    The case against seems to be that (a) the earliest settlements accepted by most archeologists go back perhaps 6000 or 7000 years, and these are flimsy houses built of wood, reeds, thatch etc - not monolithic dressed stone covering many thousands of acres. Secondly, if these civilisations existed, they would surely have built in OTHER places than right next to shore lines -- where are their ruins on land? In one of the programs he looked at a stone-age Japanese society (one I hadn't heard of previously) - however these are " only " 5000 years ago, and built using wood.

    Of course there are plenty of lunatics, new age freaks and other riff-raff -- the "jesus was a spaceman, UFOs built Atlantis" types -- who should of course deserve nothing more than laughter, pity and contempt. (Try to explain the distinction to my girfriend though... *sigh*... a great way to teach oneself patience and forbearance... =)

    --
    "None are more hopelessly enslaved than those who falsely believe they are free." -- Goethe
    1. Re:UK researcher: crackpot or for real? by Black+Parrot · · Score: 1


      > The case against seems to be that (a) the earliest settlements accepted by most archeologists go back perhaps 6000 or 7000 years, and these are flimsy houses built of wood, reeds, thatch etc - not monolithic dressed stone covering many thousands of acres.

      Dunno about that last part, but regular sane archaeologists know that Jericho had stone walls almost 10,000 years ago.

      --
      Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
    2. Re:UK researcher: crackpot or for real? by hattig · · Score: 3, Interesting
      I personally find all this ancient stuff fascinating.

      Maybe these cities were built close to the shore because they were mainly fish-eating people? Another argument goes that cities built inland would have been built by rivers, and that over a few thousand years river action (erosion, silting, etc) would basically cover most of the cities up. Imagine 100 years of the Mississippi getting free reign over the landscape basically - how much would remain afterwards?

      And smaller communities would most likely still be built with wood. Maybe a stone temple or something - but you try finding a 4000 year old stone building that is most likely collapsed and buried under mud!

      When you look at these things, you have to look at them with an open mind. I.e., never trust any previously held beliefs about the origin of mankind, etc, that modern civilisation has its roots only in the last few thousand years and before that we were ooga-booga cavemen...

      The ice age would have made most temperate climates pretty unlivable in, so an ancient civilisations would have been much closer to the equator. We are talking south America thru mexico, cuba, africa (which has undergone a major climate change over the last 3000 years anyway), india, china, etc.

      And there appears to be plenty of evidence suggesting older civilisations did develop. Shame is, they built most of their cities it seems under 120ft above sea level. Which would wipe out many major cities today, btw. The sea is an obvious food source, trading mechanism, etc.

      The only people currently that are finding these things are people that the "archaelogical community" think of as weirdos. However these people are the only people who are actually willing to look for these places, so what do you expect. Maybe in 50 years time we will have a greater knowledge of mankinds recent origins and they will be accepted as the truth.

      And for every honest "nutcase" there will be a dishonest "nutcase" as well - in any field. The existence of one person claiming 20,000 year old civilisations that turns out to not be true does not mean that there were never any 20,000 year old civilisations. However the current oldest claims are about 12,000 years old, in South America.

      Other interesting things are that geneticists have worked out that ALL current human beings are descended from around 2,000 humans at a point around 80,000 years ago. Yes, 2,000, separated out into separate clusters around the planet (China, Africa, etc). That is why humanity is not like other animals like dogs for which there are a myriad of different shapes and forms.

      Still, I don't think it will ever turn out that Atlantis is buried in deep ice on Antartica and is basically a giant stasis field generator for when the Sun does a 12,000 year pulsar cycle... :) Nor do I think that UFOs built Atlantis or that we are the descendents of an Alien civilisation that landed here so many aeons ago...

    3. Re:UK researcher: crackpot or for real? by Bazzargh · · Score: 2

      I watched all of that series (there is a book of the series too, called Underworld IIRC). Graham Hancock has been banging on about pre-ice age global civilisation for some time and had previously made one of a pair of programs presenting the case for this on land (looking at Angkor Wat, the Pyramids, and Easter Island as having been built by the remnants of an older global civilisation). The interesting thing with those programs - and with the current set - was that space was given over to the conventional viewpoint to explain these things away.

      The earlier assertions looked pretty tenuous. The new programs covered underwater structures off the coast of India (supposedly remnants of the Indus civilisation, and the origin of the flood stories in the Bhagavad Gita); between India and Sri Lanka; off the southern tip of Japan; and some others.

      The case for most of these was pretty much debunked by a geologist he dived with, who said they arent cities at all but natural rock formations. The Indus city had by far the strongest case, as trawling had pulled up artifacts that did appear to be man made (such as a long cylindrical stone with a hole drilled through its centre, presumed to be a bead).

      On the whole I wasnt convinced, but you have to give some time to Graham as he at least attempts to find real solid evidence for his claims, and allows contrary opinions into his work.

    4. Re:UK researcher: crackpot or for real? by Cally · · Score: 2


      Jericho had stone walls almost 10,000 years ago.


      Wow, really? Do you have a source or URI for that? I'm not saying you're wrong, just that it's news to me and I'd like to read up on it ;)
      --
      "None are more hopelessly enslaved than those who falsely believe they are free." -- Goethe
    5. Re: UK researcher: crackpot or for real? by Black+Parrot · · Score: 2


      > Wow, really? Do you have a source or URI for that? I'm not saying you're wrong, just that it's news to me and I'd like to read up on it ;)

      I'm not very expert at knowing which Web archaeology sites are real and which are loonie-sites, and google turns up zillions of hits for sites of the fans of a certain religion that doesn't want to acknowledge that the world existed that long ago, but here is a timeline site that looks reasonable.

      You can also find out about it in lots of books; next time you're in a bookstore look in a historical atlas (but not in the religious section) and you'll almost certainly find mention of it.

      --
      Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
    6. Re:UK researcher: crackpot or for real? by rob-fu · · Score: 1

      I took a class dealing with this sort of thing at college -- investigation of hard-to-believe claims in archaeology.

      Unfortunately, Hancock is not considered to be an archaeologist by many. He's lumped into the same category as Erich Von Daniken, who makes money off of books about fantastical claims about human civilization, such as aliens building the pyramids, etc. etc.

      Hancock pushes the lost-city-of-Atlantis theory, but he has recreated and rehashed his theory when proven wrong. First he believed that Atlantis could have been off the coast of Antarctica on some sort of ice shelf. The theory was proven to be false when it was concluded that nothing was found there.

      Then he changes his theory and said that Atlantis existed somewhere off the coast of Japan because of a recent discovery of some stone figures some distance offshore underwater. After diving off the coast of Japan, researchers found that these were natural stone structures and not manmade. Hancock refused to accept that as true, so it seems that he went back to the idea that there was no way to NOT prove that Atlantis existed.

      Basically, Hancock is a crackpot. He is not accepted by the archaeological community and is regarded as a charlatan. His Atlantis theory has changed each time a discovery like this happens, and he could just as easily say now that this new discovery is Atlantis. Don't believe him.

  50. Did you listen to Art Bell? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    I heard about this last night during the Art Bell Coast to Coast Raido show.. Is it possible that you heard it there? www.artbell.com

  51. Nation-wide web? by $beirdo · · Score: 3, Funny

    So, what do they call it internally, the Nation-Wide Web?

  52. Article by uzhappali · · Score: 0
    An ancient underwater city has been discovered off the coast of south-eastern India.

    Divers from India and England made the discovery based on the statements of local fishermen and the old Indian legend of the Seven Pagodas.

    The ruins, which are off the coast of Mahabalipuram, cover many square miles and seem to prove that a major city once stood there.

    A further expedition to the region is now being arranged which will take place at the beginning of 2003.

    'International significance'

    The discovery was made on 1 April by a joint team of divers from the Indian National Institute of Oceanography and the Scientific Exploration Society based in Dorset.

    Expedition leader Monty Halls said: "Our divers were presented with a series of structures that clearly showed man-made attributes.

    "The scale of the site appears to be extremely extensive, with 50 dives conducted over a three-day period covering only a small area of the overall ruin field.

    "This is plainly a discovery of international significance that demands further exploration and detailed investigation."

    During the expedition to the site, divers came across structures believed to be man-made.

    One of the buildings appears to be a place of worship, although they could only view part of what is a huge area suggesting a major city.

    Jealous Gods

    The myths of Mahabalipuram were first set down in writing by British traveller J. Goldingham who visited the South Indian coastal town in 1798, at which time it was known to sailors as the Seven Pagodas.

    The myths speak of six temples submerged beneath the waves with the seventh temple still standing on the seashore.

    The myths also state that a large city once stood here which was so beautiful the gods became jealous and sent a flood that swallowed it up entirely in a single day.

    One of the expedition team, Graham Hancock, said: "I have argued for many years that the world's flood myths deserve to be taken seriously, a view that most Western academics reject.

    "But here in Mahabalipuram we have proved the myths right and the academics wrong."

    Scientists now want to explore the possibility that the city was submerged following the last Ice Age.

    If this proves correct, it would date the discovery at more than 5,000 years old.

  53. Graham Hancock... again... by Krieger · · Score: 2

    Go figure. Well despite being a poorly documented academic, his stuff tends to read like creationist babble and tends to frequently single source for theories that support his ideas, he's doing a pretty good job of pursuing his theories and attempting to make the traditional scientific community (archaeological) reconsider their current theories. If nothing else his books put together various theories in a way that make you think. He's been pretty obsessed about Maps of the Ancient Sea Kings by Charles Hapsburg.

    I'm impressed, he may eventually get past crack pot status.

    1. Re:Graham Hancock... again... by Alarion · · Score: 1

      That's the thing. He is not stating "I know for a fact that this is true". He is taking things from all over the world and saying "hey.. this sort of relates to this, and that event coincides with this event here" etc.

      It's the same thing as you, before taking any classes in history or geography, looking at a world globe/atlas and noticing that North and South America seem to "fit" with Europe and Africa, and Australia seems to "fit" against Africa, etc. So you maybe make cutouts of the continents and try putting them together like a puzzle. He's just taking facts and ideas and combining them and saying "Hey, it might be possible".

      I'm not saying to take everything he (or DuVal, Sitchin, et al) writes as fact, but it's a good idea to consider it instead of immediately dismissing it as the work of a crackpot :)

      But then, most famous discoveries are made by "crackpots", right?

  54. Geology involved by GeoNerd · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Archaeology is doing so well because archeologists finally grew brains and started incorporating geology into their work.

    For years, archaeologists have thought like this "these people liked to live by rivers, so lets dig around by rivers and see what we find!", when in fact, they should have been thinking like this "these people liked to live by rivers and hung around here about 10,000 yeras ago, lets figure out where the rivers were 10,000 years ago and dig there!".

    Sea level has risen significantly since the last ice age. Most population centers in the world are right on the coast, and that hasn't really changed for a long time. Therefore, to find old population centers, one must look where the shoreline USED to be, which is now underwater.

    Don't be surprised if you start hearing about more and more of these types of discoveries - none of them are Atlantis.

    1. Re:Geology involved by Tablizer · · Score: 1

      (* Sea level has risen significantly since the last ice age. Most population centers in the world are right on the coast, and that hasn't really changed for a long time. Therefore, to find old population centers, one must look where the shoreline USED to be, which is now underwater. *)

      Year 4025:

      "According to scrolls of one of our ancient ancestors, a great city called 'Silicone Valley' once sat near the shore. They built great machines with magic screens. However, during the Year Of Chaos, your know, the Middle East Armaggeden thing in your history scrolls, the city slid into ocean, never to be seen again."

    2. Re:Geology involved by saider · · Score: 1

      "According to scrolls of one of our ancient ancestors, a great city called 'Silicone Valley' once sat near the shore.

      Silicone Vally? Vally of the Tits? Sure they built great and magic things, but if they slid into the ocean, they'd float and be seen by any number of lonely fishermen.

      --


      Remember, You are unique...just like everyone else.
  55. archaeology is doing well. ..... by PsiPsiStar · · Score: 2

    ...civilization on the other hand...

    --

    ___
    It's the end of my comment as I know it and I feel fine.
  56. Flood in many cultures by cyberkahn · · Score: 2, Informative

    Similar stories of a great flood are recorded within many cultures besides the Judeo-Christian Bible. For example, as I am sure everyone here as already heard in many history/literature classes, The Epic of Giglemesh. The American Indians also have a tail of a man getting into a boat because of a great flood. One could debate as to whether the flood covered the earth, only part of the earth, or possibly it appeared to these people that is was the whole earth because the known earth to them at this time was quite vast, but in reality it was only a part.

  57. sunken squishee by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Mr Simpson, please take your purchases, get out, and come again!

  58. Sure by NetMasta10bt · · Score: 2, Interesting
    I was there last June. I took a tour of the Mahabalipuram Temple. The tour guide mentioned the sunken city. So apparently this isn't really all that new to them.

    This site although in Japanese, does have some very nice photos of the shore temple that didn't sink. One thing to note is, these monuments were all carved from one stone.

    As seen in this photo here this is all ONE rock.

    Very impressive.

  59. Deja Vu by smack_attack · · Score: 1

    I think all the Nostradamus sooth-sayers are slacking off, I'm pretty sure the current world events (including this) were all described.

    Pi Spiral Theory Illustration

    1. Re:Deja Vu by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Pah you new age thinkers with your spiral theory, I'm sticking with my waterfall model thank you

      >I'm pretty sure the current world events
      >(including this) were all described.
      >
      >Pi Spiral Theory Illustration [geocities.com]

  60. Not so fast... by ryanvm · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Every couple years somebody annouces the "discovery" of an ancient underwater city. They're usually characterized by massive, blocks of stone neatly organized in the formation of a wall. (Couldn't tell if that was what this article was talking about - not enough detail.)

    However, what usually happens is the general scientific community decides that it's actually orthogonal jointing of beachrock - which it turns out is pretty common (Bimini Road, Tasmanian Parking Lot, the referenced story about Cuba, etc.). There was actually a pretty interesting segment on TLC (I think) about this a couple weeks ago.

  61. Sunken pyramids off Japan by sstidman · · Score: 5, Interesting

    A similar, fairly recent find is the controversial "pyramids" found off the coast of Japan. There are many web sites about this site, but a pretty decent one can be found at http://www.lauralee.com/japan.htm. There is a lot of debate about whether these structures are man-made or natural. Either way, there are some pretty cool pictures:

    http://www.lauralee.com/japan/japan1.htm

    http://www.lauralee.com/japan/japan2.htm

    --
    Send/track messages to 100K people: www.xPressAlert.com
    1. Re:Sunken pyramids off Japan by whovian · · Score: 1

      100 feet is in the ballpark of sea level rise from 8,000-10,000 years ago pointed out in links to images posted above above by another reader. Science seems consistent here.

      --
      To-do List: Receive telemarketing call during a tornado warning. Check.
    2. Re:Sunken pyramids off Japan by thelizman · · Score: 1

      There are literally hundreds of such cases. If you ever listened to Art Bell (late night radio kook, fun show), you'd know about his book "The Coming Global Superstorm" (coauthored with Whitley Streiber). Throughout sections of the book, they support the possibility of catastrophic climate changes affecting civilization by pointing to evidence of past cultures many of which were thought to be very advanced industrially.

    3. Re:Sunken pyramids off Japan by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Enormous blocks of green stone underwater... You do know what this means, right?

  62. Not 5000 years old + LINKS by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    I don't know if its 5000 years old. This Guardian article suggests it is more recent: http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk_news/story/0,3604,682 031,00.html

    Here are some other links for people who think this is a hoax. The group who carried out the dive: http://www.ses-explore.org/current/southeastindia. htm

    The actual site about the dive: http://www.india-atlantis.org/

    Nuff Said - Jer

  63. We have been around for a long time� by 1001+0000 · · Score: 2, Insightful

    Humans evolved to their current form (more or less) almost half a million years ago. That leaves plenty of time for societies to rise up and disappear into dust in a relative blink of an eye. It seems we only remember those who leave massive monuments that endure across the millennia.

    I know it seems impossible right now, but I wonder if we will be forgotten 10,000 years from now. I bet those who build the pyramids thought they had the universe under their thumbs, just like we do today. Call me pessimistic, but somehow I don't see our civilization as the enduring type.

    Maybe a day will come when people worship our telecommunications "gods" as they glide across the sky.

    1. Re:We have been around for a long time� by ichimunki · · Score: 1

      Unless we vastly miscalculate how long it takes plastic to degrade, we'll be very well remember in 10,000 years.

      --
      I do not have a signature
    2. Re:We have been around for a long time� by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Yeaahhhh....
      Riiggghttt...

      Exactly half a million years?

      And you know this, how? I love all the pseudo scientists around here. In ten years, you'll be spouting another, equally useless and inaccurate date.

      Why don't you face the facts. We know nothing about how life was started. We know nothing about the true age of the earth. In general, we know nothing about anything.

      Considering your "worship" of the hubris-filled researchers of our time, one would think you would remember one of Einstein's most famous theories: "The more I learn, the less I know." Think on that, please...

      Not a AC, just to lazy to log in...

    3. Re:We have been around for a long time� by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      That's nice, very nice.

      Let me ask, do you know everything? Apparently you do not, since you claim you know nothing. Based on this, what gives you the right to claim his words to be "useless" and "inaccurate", as far as I'm concerned they *might* be writen by god himself, accurate as accurate can be, but I do not know, thus I do not claim anything about his statements. THAT in opposite to you, who claims his claims to be inaccurate, whereas that would require you to know something. Thus you're the one who is wrong.

    4. Re:We have been around for a long time� by 1001+0000 · · Score: 1

      I for one do not interpret science according to my own convenience. Like most rational people, I look for the theories that best explain the current state of the universe and everything in it. My mind is not rigidly set on anyone idea, and I will gladly accept new and better theories as they come.

      I agree we know nothing for sure. This could all be a dream, or yes, even some god's joke. But again, I believe what best explains the things around me; I think I got out of bed this morning - this explains better than any other theory why I am awake and sitting at the computer . Therefore i will accept it as valid for now (though it doesnt explain the talking llama...ah nevermind!)

      BTW, half a million is stretching it. But I was referring to the point at which homo erectus evolved to homo sapiens (300k ~ 400k) years ago. At which time they were using tools and living in hunter-gatherer societies.

  64. Still more evidence for poor research methodology by HopeOS · · Score: 1
    Apparently, you do not understand the meaning of the word "proven." Moreover, this plainly shows that you, the maintainers of the page you linked to, and the good doctor quoted below spend more time with your heads in the clouds than on God's green earth. 9:00AM on October 23, 4004 BC? What hubris. In elapsed hours, that's like 8 significant digits.

    Ussher was able to use the ages of famous pre-flood personages in the Bible to estimate the number of years between creation and the flood. In 1650 CE, he arrived at an estimate of 4004-OCT-22 BCE. Dr. John Lightfoot, Vice-Chancellor of the University of Cambridge in the 19th century refined the calculations and arrived at 4004-OCT-23 BCE, at 9 AM. (We assume that this was Greenwich Mean Time). This would make the time interval between the creation of the world and a common estimate of the birth of Christ at precisely 4000 years. Some people believe that Ussher fudged the data to make it come out this neatly. This date found general acceptance among Christians.

    As a Christian myself, I do not accept this date or the methodology used to derive it. In fact, I find it an insult to my intelligence. I'm surprised that you do not have a better sense of self-worth.

    -H
  65. Not Hindu, Indus ... by SimonK · · Score: 4, Interesting

    This city is part of the Indus valley civilisation. Most scholars believe the Indus language and culture were Dravidian, that is pre-Aryan and (probably) pre anything like Hinduism.

    Hancock disagrees, but then, as you say, he's not the most reliable source of evidence.

    1. Re:Not Hindu, Indus ... by KH · · Score: 2, Informative

      Indus valley civilization (IVC) is called Indus valley civilization because its prominent sites (Harappa and Mohenjo Daro) are in that valley.

      Old school scholars view is that the inhabitants of the civilization moved to the south after the collapse of the civilization (circa 1200BCE). We don't know much about prehistoric South India around 3000BC. There are no large scale sites that are associated with the IVC.

      Current view of the IVC is that it spread over up to modern day Gujarat. There are several large scale sites in that state.

      Shouldn't there be other large sites like the seven temples in South India if the Indus Valley Civilization was so prevalent. FYI, Mahapariburam is just south of Madras, which is pretty south.

      OTOH, there are other more interesting archaeological sites in South India. The most interesting for me is those that belong to a megalith culture. The book I read said that one person (or more than one?) was about 2m (or more) high.

    2. Re:Not Hindu, Indus ... by rsidd · · Score: 2
      This city is part of the Indus valley civilisation.

      If so, it has nothing to do with the surviving shore temple, which is from the Pallava period in the 7th/8th century AD.

      But I don't see any evidence for this Indus theory. It is also a very long way off from the Indus valley sites which are, well, in/near the Indus valley on the other side of the subcontinent, mainly in today's Pakistan (look at the map). The likely explanation is surely that this is a Pallava city dating from the same time as the surviving temple.

    3. Re:Not Hindu, Indus ... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Actually Indus valley civilization had artifacts with a god's sign (Lord Shiva) on it. This would suggest some relation to the civilizations after that. (continuation as opposed to start of a new civilization).
      -Srini

    4. Re:Not Hindu, Indus ... by SimonK · · Score: 2

      Ah, OK. My mistake. I didn't realise how far south it was. I just immediately thought "ancient India - Indus valley".

      Nonetheless, that makes it even less likely that the city will have had any aspects of Hindu or Aryan culture in its makeup.

    5. Re:Not Hindu, Indus ... by prakashj79 · · Score: 1
      This city is part of the Indus valley civilisation.

      All traces of the Indus valley civilization have been found within a few hundred miles of the Indus river, almost 1000 miles from the place where the temples were discovered. If these temples are indeed found to belong to the Indus v. c. (a long shot, if you ask me), this would be one of the most remarkable archaeological discoveries ever, and would debunk most theories of the Aryan invasion.

      Again, there are claims that Hinduism itself is about 5000 years old. Most of these "theories" are really a combination of scientific hypotheses and local folklore; so it's nice to see some actual evidence come along.

      --
      With profound apologies to whomsoever this sig originally belonged.
    6. Re:Not Hindu, Indus ... by abhinavnath · · Score: 1

      The city is definitely NOT part of the Indus valley civilisation. The IVC was located in the INDUS VALLEY, which is now in Pakistan and the north-west of India. Mahabalipuram is in the south-east of the country, and the seventh temple there (still used as a site of worship) is definitely a Hindu temple, dedicated (if I remember correctly from my visits) to Shiva. Another famous Mahabalipuram was supposedly built by the Pandavas, the five brothers who were the heroes of the epic Mahabharata. It's a very cool town, with awe-inspiring architecture and some very nice beaches. Visit, if you get the chance.

      --
      My other sig is also a .Porsche
    7. Re:Not Hindu, Indus ... by KH · · Score: 1

      Ah, OK. My mistake. I didn't realise how far south it was. I just immediately thought "ancient India - Indus valley".


      OK.


      Nonetheless, that makes it even less likely that the city will have had any aspects of Hindu or Aryan culture in its makeup.


      If it ever existed. The parent poster was pointing out that the supposedly remaining temple of the seven is actually a quite famous Hindu temple. And it's from the 7th and 8th century. So, either that the temple is not the surviving temple or there were no 7 temples (6 of which sunk around 5000BC) in the first place.
  66. Ph'nglui mglw'nafh Cthulhu R'lyeh wgah'nagl fhtagn by necrognome · · Score: 1

    It's only a matter of time :)

    --


    Let's get drunk and delete production data!
  67. Global flood is impossible by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    A flood of the kind described by the bible is simply not possible. There is simply no way that enough water to cover all of the mountains of the earth could be present in the atmosphere (not without the Earth having oppressive surface pressure and a temperature of thousands of degrees.) Now of course, the religious can just say "well, God magicked the water in and then he magicked it away." That's fine, if it floats your boat (pun intended.) But normal folks demand a bit more reasonable answer. In this case, the reasonable answer is that there was one or more catastrophic regional floods that made their way into the cultures that they affected. No need to make things ridiculous or difficult

    1. Re:Global flood is impossible by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      ac,
      actually, this shows you havent read the Flood account. it was biblical, global and wet.

      there use to be a canopy of water above the earth and also water in the earth......God used both, from above and water came up .......then the water went back to where ever it went.

      D~y

  68. Graham Hancock... by JimPooley · · Score: 2

    ...is a nutter. Pure and simple. He's right there in the nutter squad with such people as David Icke and Whitley Streiber.
    Just because they may have found some ruins in the sea doesn't mean these ancient myths are true.

    --

    "Information wants to be paid"
    1. Re:Graham Hancock... by MtViewGuy · · Score: 2

      I think you might be correct if you're mentioning his earlier books, but his more recent books are better-rooted in decent scientific research.

      I do know that Underworld, which will be published in the USA later this year, notes that there are many unusual structures found only a few hundred feet below the ocean level at many spots around the world.

      Besides, consider this: back during the last Ice Age up to about 12,000 years ago, because of the massive advance of glaciers much of North America, Europe and Siberia was buried in those glaciers. This meant because so much water was locked up in ice, the sea level could be quite a bit lower than now--probably as much as 100 meters (328 feet). When you have 100 meters lower sea level a lot more lands near the equator will be exposed, to say the least. For one thing, that would turn the entire West Indies chain of islands from Cuba eastwards into one pretty big land mass, which could end up being a candidate for the location of the ancient Atlantis.

      We do know that as the glaciers melted, lakes formed by ice dams broke and there was unprecedented land flooding; the emptying of the ancient Lake Bonneville in what is now Utah about 15,000 BC (which carved out the Snake River Canyon and much of the canyons of the Columbia River gorges) is a good example of this. Also, the rise of the Black Sea around 9,000 BC was probably caused by a combination of heavy water outflows from the north from melting glaciers and the breakthrough of water from the Mediterranean Sea through the Bosphorus Straits as the Mediterranean's sea level exceeded that of the natural dam in the Bosphorus holding the water back as the sea level rose from the melting of the glaciers.

    2. Re:Graham Hancock... by the+phantom · · Score: 1

      You forgot Erik von Daniken (sp?)

    3. Re:Graham Hancock... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0
    4. Re: Graham Hancock... by Black+Parrot · · Score: 1


      > I think you might be correct if you're mentioning his earlier books, but his more recent books are better-rooted in decent scientific research.

      Yeah, lots of nutters turn into top-notch scientists after a bit of practice.

      --
      Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
    5. Re:Graham Hancock... by the+phantom · · Score: 1

      thank you

    6. Re: Graham Hancock... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Yeah, lots of nutters turn into top-notch scientists after a bit of practice.

      Nope. Probably many fewer than you think.

    7. Re:Graham Hancock... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      such people as David Icke and Whitley Streiber

      Nah, I would place Hancock among people like Thor Heyerdahl: interesting, earnest, honest and just plain wrong.

  69. yay! by banka · · Score: 0

    score one for the sand people!!

  70. Re:Still more evidence for creationism by betis70 · · Score: 1

    >>Actually, this city has sunk because the sea levels have risen since the last ice age.

    Um, the glaciers receded by about 10,000 BC, give or take 2,000 years.

    This city supposedly dates maybe around 5,000 years ago (~3,000 BC).

    Are you trying to say that it took 7,000 years for the water to reach this city?

    --
    I forget...are we at war with Eurasia or East Asia?
  71. Corroborated by Indian legend by donutello · · Score: 2

    What I find most interesting is that Indian mythology also has a story very similar to Noah's ark.

    To me, this points to one of two things:
    1. A great flood (of some magnitude) or
    2. A common cultural origin (more likely)

    --
    Mmmm.. Donuts
    1. Re:Corroborated by Indian legend by betis70 · · Score: 1

      Or perhaps a common need for the elite to control the masses?

      Kinda like a certain unnamed corporation.

      ;-)

      --
      I forget...are we at war with Eurasia or East Asia?
    2. Re:Corroborated by Indian legend by dirty · · Score: 1

      Both are probably right. Think about the flooding that occurs whenever a particularly nasty hurricane hits. Now think of that flooding with an extremely nasty hurricane (bound to have happened at least a few times in the past 10,000 years or so), without anyone to sandbag rivers and what not, and keep in mind that to people 5000 years ago the world probably seemed a whole lot smaller. So, at least to me, the chance of one or more large floods (not global, or anything near that size, just large enough to wipe out a city or two) seems very high. Now keep in mind that many civilizations spawned other civilizations and the flood myths make a whole lot of sense (once you take out all of the religious elements).

      --

      -matt
  72. Rome was a democratic society? by ArsSineArtificio · · Score: 2

    Rome was a republic, and bore little resemblance to what we might consider a democracy.

    The city magistrates were elected (until Imperial times), but by (what would seem to us) a really screwy procedure. The popular assemblies, which qualify as direct democracy, only really became powerful at the time of the Gracchi, in the 2nd century BC. The Senate was a plutocracy (given that the primary qualification was a specific level of personal wealth).

    Why however is Rome the canonical "really ancient civilization", and not, say, Sumeria? 753 BC, nothing.

    --
    All employees must wash hands before seeking equitable relief.
    1. Re:Rome was a democratic society? by the_2nd_coming · · Score: 2

      the Gracchi brothers realt let the people be heared. to bad that was the begining of the end for the republic. I am sure the Roman Senate feared the people having power so they invoked the Emergency rules that allowed them to appoint a 6month emporer. it is funny how they changed the law so they could make him emporer for life.

      the Irony of the entire situation is that the very act of self preservation that the Senate used ended up to be their eventual downfall.

      thank-god we have all learned from that.

      --



      I am the Alpha and the Omega-3
    2. Re:Rome was a democratic society? by MindStalker · · Score: 0, Offtopic
      thank-god we have all learned from that.


      HAHHA ROTFL good one
      In other news Representave Traficant found guilty of corruption charges, refused to resign Why this isn't major news? I don't know.

    3. Re:Rome was a democratic society? by the_2nd_coming · · Score: 1

      I was hoping some one would get that joke.

      --



      I am the Alpha and the Omega-3
  73. Re:Still more evidence for creationism by Black+Parrot · · Score: 1


    > Funny that the egyptians and the Sumerians never seemed to notice it!

    They were too busy treading water.

    --
    Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
  74. Atlantis is Actually S. America by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    At least I'm convinced, after an excelent special on the Discovery Channel (or one of those type of channels). A link to the same guy is http://www.geocities.com/webatlantis/ if you want to check out some of the evidence.

  75. Re:Still more evidence for creationism by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    And you offer 0 reasons why this doesn't devastate evolution.

    Reasons? Okay, first of all, evolution says that the Bible is false. The Bible says that there was a global flood. Which of these two does this discovery support? It supports the Bible.

    This discovery does not support evolution in any way.

  76. Re:Still more evidence for creationism by DarenN · · Score: 1

    Thank the poster of this comment for some common sense :)

    Many people of a scientific persuasion (including Einstien) believe/believed that the fact that there is a ecosystem of such robustness and a universe that seems to have underlying order is as good an argument as any for a god....

    --
    Rational thought is the only true freedom
  77. Re:Still more evidence for creationism by Zack · · Score: 1

    I'd email you, but you have no email listed. I have some very OT questions for you. Please drop me a line.

    Why is it that bacteria can develop resistance to antibiotics? Evolution. This is a reality and we have to deal with it daily.

    True... but this is a form of micro-evolution. Macro-evolution is something else. Even some creationists believe in micro-evolution

  78. So much for space exploration! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    This discovery just shows that we have a lot more to discover about our own planet before even bothering about alien civilizations. Who knows, maybe alien contact was already made in the past and maybe we will come to know about it when we run into some ancient discoveries like this.
    I just get the feeling that we should be focussing our energies inwardly first before any outer exploration.

  79. Re:Still more evidence for creationism by OroMan · · Score: 1

    As Creationism is wrong (the science you are rejecting is based on the same principles as the science that allows you to use the internet), how can this be still more anything other than misunderstanding on your part? So what if theres a shelf of rock that looks manmade; so what that it is under water? It doesnt mean anything except that people might have lived there a long time ago; it doesn't mean they were "civilised" or advanced...just dead! Science, people!!!! Not wishful imaginings!!

  80. Look at the date of discovery by KH · · Score: 1

    I just read thearticle, but could this be a little late come April fool's joke?

    Also, note the name Graham Hancock. Isn't this the Fingerprint of the Gods guy?

    I am rather skeptical of the discovery. I, for one, had never heard of the seven pagodas of Mahapariburam. South Asians don't use the word pagoda, in the first place, I think. Pagoda is a word used in Southasian Buddhist architecture context.

    1. Re:Look at the date of discovery by KH · · Score: 1

      Oops, I meant Southeast Asian, not Southasian.

    2. Re:Look at the date of discovery by arkanes · · Score: 2

      Guess you don't know everything, after all. http://www.bartleby.com/65/ma/Mahabali.html

    3. Re:Look at the date of discovery by KH · · Score: 1

      Guess you are right. But the name Pagoda still doesn't sound right. Maybe the Brits called the site in that way, seeing 7 towers?

      Odd thing is that the seven pagodas refer to ``existing'' temples in the village, according to the article you referred.

  81. 1500? by Smallest · · Score: 1

    doens't that put them a few thousand years too late to be Noah's ark? i'm of course assuming the Old testament was written before 500 AD.

    -c

    --
    I have discovered a truly remarkable proof which this margin is too small to contain.
  82. Re:Ancient Civs - how to dispute them. by Shivetya · · Score: 3, Interesting

    The problem with the ever present "ancient civilizations" theorey is the course of our own civilization.

    Working of metals from early bronze days to the industrial revolution was really only possible because the raw ores themselves were either found on the surface or very near it. Even with a glacial age it would not explain the preponderance of such ores in many areas (some of which would not have been affected by glacial ice)

    Let alone the fact that some of the advanced metals (or not so advanced - your choice) that we have today will easily survive glacial ice or be found in such quantity to reveal that "something" did exist.

    --
    * Winners compare their achievements to their goals, losers compare theirs to that of others.
  83. Re:Still more evidence for creationism by Tremul · · Score: 2, Interesting

    And you offer 0 reasons why this doesn't devastate evolution.

    I'm not making bold statements about the correctness of evolution. I am merely calling on you to back up your statement.

    Reasons? Okay, first of all, evolution says that the Bible is false.

    Wrong. Evolution does not mention anything about the bible. It mereely describes how organisms have developed over time. Certain people use the theory of evolution to show the bible is incorrect in some respects. In actuality the Bible and evolution go hand in hand if you go back to the ancient Hebrew interpertations. The word translated to day in most English Bibles actually means period of time in Herbrew.

    The Bible says that there was a global flood.

    Modern science says there was a global flood. Modern sciecne also says evolution is correct. Your methodology is flawed.

    I love how you have attempted to disprove a theory with incredible amounts of evidence with a one sentence corrolation.

    --

    "Can't sleep. Clowns will eat me"
  84. off of by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    the grammatically correct version would be found off india

  85. Josh McDowell? you mean Michael Denton? Same thing by OppressiveZionist · · Score: 1

    Try to search for the books that these guys write. You will mostly find reviews of there books explaining why there logic is critically flawed. I read a Josh McDowell book. His assertions are leaps of faith off a cliff. -Israel

  86. Alexadria under the sea by peter303 · · Score: 2

    The outer parts of older Alexandria are underwater too. Perhaps there is faster subsidence in some seashores.

  87. Cambay recently found off the coast of Gujurat by DaoudaW · · Score: 3, Interesting

    The Feb 11, 2002 issue of India Today had the story of the discovery of Cambay off the coast of Gujarat in January of this year. The India Today website is subscriber only, but here is the teaser.

    The article is somewhat sensationalist, but here are the highlights: Wood from the site has been dated between 5500BC and 7500BC. Structures found include stone roads, a bath complex, and acropolis-style raised platforms. Among the artifacts were large numbers of semiprecious stones and beads.

    1. Re:Cambay recently found off the coast of Gujurat by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Actually, the Cambay discovery is also mentioned in the BBC site referenced in the original post of this South East India ocean ruins discovery:

      http://news.bbc.co.uk/hi/english/world/south_asi a/ newsid_1768000/1768109.stm

  88. re-seeing the sculptures by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    hmmm...this ought bring forth a whole new set of interpretations of the "fall of ghanga" sculptures at mahabalipuram...some will now see the flood story quite directly depicted in those carvings...

  89. You mean proof of the Gilgamesh flood? by OppressiveZionist · · Score: 1

    Genesis was based on the older Sumerian tale, you know. "Forest Gump" can been verified to be true also. Think about it.

  90. Re:Ancient Civs - how to dispute them. by the_2nd_coming · · Score: 2

    perhaps the ancient civilizations that existed were moe like the aztecs who did not use any metals in construction and only presious metals in ornamentation. that way, he presious metals would ahve not been disernable from a huck of naturaly found stuff and the clay bricks and wooden swords would have been neatly returned to the eco system.

    advanced civilization is possable with out using the resources that we use.

    no need for what we have to be consdered advanced, just need a large population, a mature governmental system, and law enforcement. that is all.

    --



    I am the Alpha and the Omega-3
  91. Re:Still more evidence for creationism by OroMan · · Score: 1

    Exactamundo!! Science looks to find answers, and is based on methodology. Pseudoscience tries to describe square pegs as being round, and fit them into triangular theories....

  92. Re:Qwik-e-mart by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Considering the age, it was probably called a "VII-XI"

  93. The one off Gibraltar by j_w_d · · Score: 5, Informative

    There was a set of links that showed up with this post including one regarding a French study. The author concluded that there actuall are several drowned islands, just west of Gibraltar, that were submerged about 11,000 years ago. Sea level at the height of the Pleistocene was about 400 feet (120 meters) below its present level. So, in fact there is a substantial piece of real estate now underwater that once was dry land when you consider the planet as a whole. The French author plans to dive on these "islands" this summer. It is worth noting - to us archaeologists any way - that this is the second drowned city found off India. Another was found last year in 120 feet of water off southwest India - the other side of the subcontinent from the latest find. My colleagues are unconfortable with the radiocarbon dates from this site, which reportedly run about 9,000 years old. This would tack a good 5,000 years onto the archaeology of civilizations, as opposed to less complexly organized societies.

    --
    ------ The only greater hazard to your liberty than n politicians is n+1 politicians.
  94. Re:Still more evidence for creationism by BWJones · · Score: 2

    I'd email you, but you have no email listed. I have some very OT questions for you. Please drop me a line

    Sure, I'd love to but your email address gives me Reason: Illegal host/domain name found and http://hookah.truedork.net:8080/ gives me no reply.

    --
    Visit Jonesblog and say hello.
  95. It's a Monty Halls campaign! by iabervon · · Score: 2

    Expedition leader Monty Halls said: "Our divers were presented with a series of structures that clearly showed man-made attributes. The scale of the site appears to be extremely extensive, with 50 dives conducted over a three-day period covering only a small area of the overall ruin field."

    Right, and now they're going to find tons of overly powerful items and monsters which are not dangerous considering the characters.

  96. Nope by Penguinoflight · · Score: 0, Flamebait

    Sorry, your date is wrong. The earth is 6000-7000 years old, so the earliest country has to be less than 4000BC.

    --
    "And we have seen and do testify that the Father sent the Son to be the Savior of the World"
    1 John 4:14
    1. Re:Nope by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Hahaha! youre quite funny!

  97. Re:Still more evidence for creationism by OppressiveZionist · · Score: 1

    The Bible is a collection of lengends, some derived from actual events. -Israel

  98. Re:Still more evidence for creationism by OroMan · · Score: 1

    It doesnt need to be covered up. The more it exposes itself to rigorous scientific examination, the more flaws are exposed. (just like creationism) I saw the TV show that was made highlighting the discovery, and found it boring....all conjecture and BAD science. science is about fining out new things about the world, the universe, ourselves....not about fitting spurious data to tendentious argument. Even still, there is not doubt that there were people around long before us, and there were civilisations that prospered (in south America, a civilisation that prospered in peace for 1000 years has been found) What this should tell us, is that we are not special; that our ways are not progressive just because we think so, and that the world has a way to obliterate our memory, if we let it.

  99. Graham Hancock, racist? by uqbar · · Score: 2

    A lot of people have big issues with this guy.

    The implications of many of his writings are that the people we *think* built great civilizations aren't capable of being that smart. For example, say the aboriginal Maya peoples of Central America couldn't have build all those great cities and pyramids, let alone figured out all that astronomy, etc.

    Instead some other "greater" previous civilization is responsible. Whatever.

    1. Re:Graham Hancock, racist? by Alarion · · Score: 1

      not once has he *ever* said that

      he is just posing a thoery whereby there *seems* to be evidence supporting it.

      If I say "well, America or England or some other predominately caucasion country 'X' is greater(meaning, more prosperous, better living conditions, that kind of thing) than anything in Africa" does that mean I am racist too? Even though I am just stating facts? Does that mean I think Africans are too stupid or incompetent to build a great nation that is 100 times better than any "white" country? Nope, not at all.

      Ok, enough analogies for me today

  100. Re:Still more evidence for creationism by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Tell that to the biology professor at Dalhousie University (Halifax, CA) who flipped out on some poor girl who dared to ask about connections and reconciliations between biology and creationism. The jerk lectured her for half the class. The longer he talked the angrier he got. He was practically yelling ten minutes into his tirade. He wasn't the only one either. Lots of science profs I've met, and not just from that university either, are just as bigotted and reactionary. I left the sciences and have been firmly entrenched in irrationalism and chaos (thanks to the judicious use of tinfoil and the Elder sign) ever since. Mind you have met a few who are open minded and scientific at the same time. They use science as a tool to discern facts and, as a scientist should be, are critically open to new evidence.

  101. Re:Ancient Civs - how to dispute them. by Canis+of+Ithaca · · Score: 1

    I have to agree. Metallurgy was one of several technologies that primarily developed for the purposes of war. (Secondary uses in agriculture and what not were happy accidents) If there was only one significant civilization (or a small number spread out geographically) there would be little incentive to worry about metals.

  102. heroic couplets. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    here is a translation of the story into heroic verse.

    Lost city found off Indian coast
    by Anonymous J. Coward
    An ancient underwater city has been found
    Off the coast of south-east India; a profound
    Discovery, to be sure, for now
    The legend that the fishermen avow
    (Of "Seven Pagodas", an old Indian story)
    Has come to be confirmed in all its glory.
    From England and from India divers came
    To find among the depths a fleeting fame:
    They postulated, plumbed, and proved a theorem
    Off the coast of Mahabalipuram.
    Many a square mile's ruin there would seem,
    Well to have proven the theories of the team:
    An ancient major city there had stood,
    Before the Gods submerged the neighborhood.
    A further expedition to the site
    Should take place early next year, all goes right.
    "International significance"
    The discovery was made on April first
    (Really, as far as timing, quite the worst [-AC])
    By the Indian National Institute of Oceanography
    and Dorset's Scientific Exploration Society.
    Expedition leader Monty Halls
    Said: "Our divers saw these crumbling walls
    Which had what clearly looked like man-made features
    [Though now they're home to more aquatic creatures -AC]"
    The team, as stated, will return next year.
    [After fund-raising from Albania to Zaire.
    Halls elaborates: "The site's extensive!
    Therefore, searching it will be expen$ive."]
    (So far, the team has made but fifty dives,
    Which took three days from out their busy lives.
    "There's lots to do, and we've done one small part,"
    Halls says, "but even that's a start."
    "This site should be of international investigation;
    It clearly warrants further exploration."
    That's cuz' (like we said) they found some stuff,
    That seems man-made; as if that weren't enough
    The design of one such "building" would suggest
    A place of worship, prayer, and all the rest.
    "Think of a crumbling church, but don't forget
    That underwater things are much more wet."
    This one building, Halls goes on to say
    Suggests a major city in decay.
    "Jealous Gods"
    The myths of Mahabalipuram
    Were first set down by the British J. Goldingham
    Who visited the South Indian coastal town
    In 1798, at which time the place was known
    To sailors as the Seven Pagodas,
    [With something here, for rhyme, about cream sodas. -AC]
    The myth says six of seven were submerged
    When (as we shall see) the flood-tide surged.
    For by that myth a city once had stood
    There, too beautiful for its own good:
    The gods went envying it and so
    (And this is the only reason, as all men know)
    They sent a flood to swallow up the place,
    Which in one day submerged it without a trace.

    Graham Hancock, one of the expedition team,
    Said, "I long have argued that the motif'ed theme
    Of flood-myths among cultures should be taken seriously.
    But Western academics regard me mysteriously,
    It's not mysticism, damnit! Listen to me,
    I say, but they don't they just won't see."
    But now, Graham Hancock, you've been proven right,
    And the Academics, wrong, for all their might.
    Anyway,
    Scientists are beginning to explore
    The possiblity that the city was submerged before
    Or after, or during the last Ice Age
    (5000 years ago), which would give it quite a nice age.

  103. Cargo Cult Archaeology by RDW · · Score: 2, Insightful
    I'm surprised that the BBC swallowed this one so uncritically. The Guardian has a rather more sceptical story, which implies that the underwater 'structures' have not been dated in any meaningful way, and may in fact be natural rock formations :

    http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk_news/story/0,3604,682 031,00.html

    Curiously, the expedition does not seem to include any professional archaeologists:

    http://www.india-atlantis.org/

    Graham Hancock, the most prominent member of the expedition, is well known for what might kindly be described as 'fringe' theories of ancient civilizations, Faces on Mars, etc:

    http://www.grahamhancock.com/

    For a critical view, see:

    http://www.ramtops.demon.co.uk/

  104. Other things to consider by CAIMLAS · · Score: 2

    Sounds a lot like the story of the Minoan Crete island, Thera/Santorini - the gods also became jealous, and the nation was sunk in a single day. For those not familiar, this is probably the city/nation referenced to by Plato (or is it Socrates? I get their works confused sometimes) in his account of Atlantis, which subsuquently is a story he got from a man in Egypt, who got it from his father, who was a supposed escapee from the 'sinking Atlantis'. It's quite a fascinating story, but kind of sad that things like Atlantis are debunked instead of being found in their whole glory. However, the Minoan society -was- quite advanced - their houses had cold -and- warm running water fixtures that came from pipes! Their society was destroyed by a large volcanic explosion that errupted from teh center of their island. No remains have been found of humans, so it's suspected there were earthquakes that warned them to leave. This Theran volcano is probably what destroyed the Crete civilization.

    It's kind of interesting how there are multiple accounts of 'great cities/nations that sink into the sea, never to be seen again' throughout various cultures. I suspect we'll have such Atlantean rumours in the future as well - New York after the polar ice caps melt, anybody? "A city that never slept, with pillars that reached to the sky, holding the world together" - I can see it now. Very, very interesting indeed.

    --
    ~/ssh slashdot.org ssh: connect to host slashdot.org port 22: too many beers
  105. ehhhhhh? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Modern science says there was a global flood.

    Whaaaat?

    Please, *please* do not let the creationists get away with this.

    Modern science most definitely does NOT say that there was a "global flood."

    A global flood that would have covered all of the continents is impossible. It is a physical impossibility. Where did all of the water for this supposed flood come from? Where did it go? Read this, particularly "the flood itself."

  106. So when's the *next* underwater cataclysm? by westies-from-hell · · Score: 1

    And can we pick the city?

    I vote for Redmond. :-)

    --
    "Just because you're a genius doesn't make you a smart guy!" -- Narrator, Powerpuff Girls
  107. A couple of corrections by FreeUser · · Score: 3, Insightful

    You are right to be open minded about such things.

    However, others are right to be skeptical of many of the claims ... without significant evidence they are just that ... claims. I think it is quite possible ancient civilizations have risen and fallen, and had their every trace eradicated by glaciers, erosion, and who knows what else. However, without physical evidence one should view these things as hypothetical possibilities, not probabilities. As for the alien slant I agree with you entirely ... show me the alien, or stop wasting my time with nonsense. Extraordinary claims require extraordinary proof.

    Other interesting things are that geneticists have worked out that ALL current human beings are descended from around 2,000 humans at a point around 80,000 years ago.

    Clarification. IIRC all humans are descended from a few thousand humans 80,000 ... when some natural catastrophe (possibly a yellowstone-like so-called super-volcano, possibly disease or climatic change) nearly wiped the species out.

    However, everyone outside of Africa is believed to be descended from about 500 people who emigrated more recently. That's right, something like 90-95% of human genetic diversity is in Africa. The rest of us, be we European, Native American, Asian, or whatever, are all much more similar, having only 5-10% of the genetic diversity. I'll leave it as an excercize to the reader as to which group some future humans, having survived some arbitrary change in survival requirements and conditions, is most likely to come from (hint, the math can be done by any 10th grade algebra student).

    That is why humanity is not like other animals like dogs for which there are a myriad of different shapes and forms.

    First, dogs are not naturally occuring creatures. They were bred for specific characteristics and traits, indeed inbred extensively, which is why there are so many varieties of dogs, some taking very odd form. A better example would have been different wolves, or bears, whose differences exist because of natural selection and not human intervention.

    Second, that bottleneck is one possible contributing factor to humankinds homogeneous nature. Other factors which may have been more important were the destruction of the Neanderthal and perhaps other intelligent primates we don't know about (i.e. the ethnic cleansing of a differing kind of primates, leaving homo sap alone to dominate the world), our ability to modify our environment (easing some evolutionary pressures that wolves and bears must endure), and probably numerous other things as well.

    --
    The Future of Human Evolution: Autonomy
  108. whats the fuss? the cities were known by guest12 · · Score: 1

    so many sunken cities are known to people in India whats the big deal? ice ages arent the only reason for rise and fall of local sea level. tectonic events commonly cause changes in elevation of large area. If theyre near the sea, well..

    all along the seacoast of india there are sunken "cities". archeology is expensive, especially marine underwater archeology. usually new findings are secondary to strategic ocean floor mapping for submarines or mineral-oil prospecting or plain snooping. Expect many more sunken cities to be "found".

  109. Yonaguni by paulplee · · Score: 1

    As long as we are on this subject, there is a hugh ruin(?) discovered off the coast of Japan.

    http://www.morien-institute.org/yonaguni.html

    I said '?' is because nothing distinctly man-made (e.g. writings etc.) has been found, but a large number of structures that are too rare to happen just by erosion. Stuff like a perfect cube "stages" and lots of right-angled platforms just boggles the mind.

  110. Which one is Atlantis? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Discovery channel had an interesting show a while back that suggested "Atlantis" could be a city discovered in a mountain platau in South America. The
    same show/series seem to follow the idea that a group of advanced people traveled the globe way back and interacted with Egypt, mesoamerican, polynisian and asian cultures thus the ideas of pyramids and the variations of winged serpents all over the anciant world... They also claimed the advanced seafarers were why anciant egyptions were drugging out on south american coacoa(sp) leaves...

    Anyways, the South American platau seemed to match Plato's descriptions of the geography and layout of "Atlantis".

    Another rumor point.

  111. also, by sootman · · Score: 1
    With the purported discovery of a city off of Cuba, as well as the the finding of Herakleion underwater archaeology is doing well.

    Not to mention Michael J. Fox finding Atlantis last year.

    --
    Dear Slashdot: next time you want to mess with the site, add a rich-text editor for comments.
  112. Looks like they found Spongehead Bob! [pic] by Frank+of+Earth · · Score: 1

    Spongehead Bob

    Although.. he seems to been have encrusted with lots of mollusks

  113. okay by zephc · · Score: 2

    when will we find the lost Towers of Hanoi?

    =]

    --
    "I would say that 99 per cent of what my father has written about his own life is false." - L. Ron Hubbard Jr.
  114. Filling of Mediterranean and Black Sea by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    You're right, there was a flood. It was a permanent flood, and for good reason.

    Until a few thousand years ago, the Black Sea area was a small lake at the bottom of a very large depression (anyone looked for asteroid dust around there?). Then the Mediterranean broke through and flooded it. It is indeed a big flood when an ocean is pouring in. You'll note there is an earthquake fault right along the connecting line, so the water had help getting through.

    Of course, the same thing had happened to the Mediterranean much earlier, when the Atlantic breached through the Gibraltar area. Now THAT's a FLOOD!

    Hey... if all that water used to be in the other oceans...what was the old waterline? And what did the extra water across the near-Arctic shoreline do to the polar ocean currents?

  115. Problem With Underwater Archeology by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Underwater archeology is all fun and games until you have to empty the water out of a grid square so you can reach the good stuff at the bottom with your camel's hair brush.

  116. Good points. by hattig · · Score: 1
    Agreed, without proof you just have claims!

    Some of the people that make the claims are at least trying to find proof, although it would be helpful if they didn't claim that every submerged city was 8000 years old or so before any dating had been done!

    That Yellowstone super-volcano is scheduled to erupt within the next few hundred years isn't it?

    Say 10,000 years ago a group of 40 people left africa and went to india. Assume that there are two surviving offspring per person, and that a generation is 25 years. 40 people are not going to build a city, but 25 years later there are 120 people + children, 25 years after that 240 people + children, then ~500, then ~1000 and so on. A couple of hundred years and you have a need for several joined communities (10-20,000 people). Someone else can do the maths assuming a lifespan of around 40-50 years and more accurate survival rates for offspring, and maybe the generation gap was as low as every 15 years... add a few droughts and other population killers into the mix, and sell the result to Maxis.

  117. Re:Still more evidence for creationism by OroMan · · Score: 1

    Scientists are people just like creationists, and prone to the same personality and ideological inconsistencies. Every ideology should be judged based on the merits of whats being proposed, and the manner in which it evolves (can I use that word safely?) and not on the people making the argument. Ultimately the difference is that one theory evolved, and the other was created!!! Ha Ha

  118. By the waters of Babylon by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    The story was called "By the waters of Babylon"

    Here's the full text of the story and some commentary. It's cleary about nuclear war, but what I found interesting is that the author, Stephen Vincent Benet, died in 1943.
    Two years before the US dropped the first nukes on Japan. I'm not sure how much before his death the story was written.

    Interesting, and only a few pages.

  119. Gulf of Cambay (also nearIndia) hides another city by innermind · · Score: 2, Interesting
    There is another sunken city that has recently been discovered in the Gulf of Cambay, off northwestern India..


    http://news.bbc.co.uk/hi/english/world/south_asi a/ newsid_1768000/1768109.stm


    http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=Cambay+unde rs ea&btnG=Google+Search


    It's beginning to seem plausible that much of what we know about prehistory is clearly wrong..


    Excavations at Santorini (the Aegean Sea) have found four and five story buildings with indoor plumbing and heating systems.. dating back to before 1800 BC.. They are buried under as much as 200 meters of ash from the huge volcanic eruptions there..

    :)

    This is not conjecture.. it's scientific fact...

  120. i can see the headlines in the year 2525... by bmooney28 · · Score: 1

    "Ancient ruins of sunken dot coms dating back to 2000 AD discovered!"

    1. Re:i can see the headlines in the year 2525... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      I don't think the Zager and Evans original had anything about dot coms :-)

  121. Gravity is 1% Less in India by Mad+Man · · Score: 0

    Coincidence? Probably.

    Mapping Gravity
    Posted by michael on Thursday November 22, @01:22AM
    from the slim-fast dept.
    overThruster writes: "No, you don't need to drink the water... Gravity is less strong in India--enough so that you weigh almost 1% less there. See BBC story about NASA's gravity map." Here's another story about the mission, and the GRACE home page (or NASA's less-informative page).


    But this did make me wonder if there is any connection to what I posted back then:

    Back in 1978, Arthur C. Clarke ended his book The View from Serendip by writing about a gravitational anomaly which was found off the coast of Sri Lanka (formerly Ceylon) -- the small island near India where he lives.

    I am able to visit my favorite spot (Chapter 13) for only a few days a year. But now, quite unexpectedly -- and literally since I wrote the preceding paragraph! -- Serendipity has struck again. While researching a totally different subject, I've discovered a good reason for spending more time on the south coast.

    It concerns the greak Sanskrit epic, the Ramayana. In this 2,200-year-old poem, the demon-king Ravanna kidnaps Sita, wife of Rama, and takes her to his island stronghold of Ceylon. Needless to say, she is ultimately released, after aerial battles involving what look suspiciously like atomic weapons and laser beams.

    To heal the wounded, the heroic monkey-general Hanuman is later sent back to India to fetch a medicinal herb found only in the Himalayas. Unfortunately, when he gets to the right mountain he is unable to identify the herb. No problem; he brings the whole mountain back! However, one piece drops off, on the southern tip of Ceylon. The locals believe this fragment is in fact my favourite bay, for its name in Sinhalese means "there it fell down" (onna watuna).

    There it fell down. Place names usually have a meaning, though it is often lost in the mists of time. Did something really fall down, centuries or millennia ago, at Unawatuna Bay? A meteorite would be the obvious explanation; it must have been a big one for the legend to have lasted down the ages.

    And here's another weird coincidence. Little Unawatuna, believe it or not, is the closest point on dry land to the world's greatest gravitational anomaly, a few hundred kilometres out in the Indian Ocean. On the Goddard Space Flight Center's 3-D map of the Earth's Gravimetric Geoid, that strange phenomenon looks liek a deep pit
    [1] into which the whole island of Sri Lanka is about to slide.

    Let's put two and two together. A few thousand years ago, a huge object of peculiar density plunged into the Indian Ocean, creating a tradition that is remembered to this day. And it's still there, distorting the earth's gravitational field -- Terran Gravitational Anomaly I.

    That might make an opening for a pretty good science-fiction movie . . . and an even better ending for this book.

    Ayu Bowan.

    1. One hundred and ten metres below zero reference on the Goddard model (March & Vincent, 1974).


    Of course, the Ramayana is "only" 2,200 years old, compared to an estimated age of 5,000 years for this discover. Since I don't have a map of the locations of either TGA-1, or the sunken city, I don't know how close they are.

    1. Re:Gravity is 1% Less in India by Dstrct0 · · Score: 0, Flamebait

      How much is known about this anomaly? Granted, I know nothing about physics, and not too much more about gravity, but could the principles/physics found at this place not be applied to other things?

      IMHO, things like transportation and launching spacecraft would be a lot easier if we were able to distort gravity. Think how much less of a problem SUVs (and even vehicles that people actually need because of the sheer size of them) would be on fuel consumption if they only had to move half the weight of the vehicle!

      If this is simply a naturally occurring phenomenon, then with the right conditions, could it be reproduced?

      If this is the lasting effect of a large spacecraft (yes I believe in aliens and UFOs) having crashed in that area, then first of all, we could probably stand to learn a thing or two about the technology that is disrupting our gravity, and second of all, that must be on hell of a power source to keep creating an anti-gravity field after such a long time.

      Either way, this really reinforces my belief that we should be spending a lot more time exploring and learning more about our own planet before we push too hard to get to other planets.

      --
      Build boards not bombs
    2. Re:Gravity is 1% Less in India by arkanes · · Score: 2

      I suppose I shouldn't post unless I know for sure, but I believe the current theory is that the lower gravity is caused by the fact that the earth is not a perfect sphere, nor of a consistent density.

    3. Re:Gravity is 1% Less in India by gutigre · · Score: 1

      I suppose I shouldn't post unless I know for sure, but I believe the current theory is that the lower gravity is caused by the fact that the earth is not a perfect sphere, nor of a consistent density.

      That's part of the effect, but the effect of the earth's rotation is more important. As the Earth spins, objects on its surface have to continally accelerate inward (to the Earth's center) to avoid flying off into space. At the equator, this is a large effect, but near the poles there is very little motion (think of the edge and center of a top) so the effect is much smaller.

      Gravity, of course, provides this acceleration - part of the gravitational field keeps you from flying away, and the rest (99% of it) holds you against the ground. At the poles all 100% presses you to the ground, so you feel what seems to be a stronger gravitational field.

  122. Naturally Occuring? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Couldn't the underwater structures, especially those in the Japanese ruins, be something like these maturally formed polygon structures
    registration needed
    http://www.nytimes.com/2002/04/02/science/ physical / 2GIAN.html

  123. re: extredordinary claims require...... by Tablizer · · Score: 1

    (* Extraordinary claims require extraordinary proof. *)

    It is not quite that Boolean. Evidence can be broken into at least these 5 categories:

    1. I am certain beyond a reasonable doubt that X is true

    2. X is probably true

    3. I hesitate a conclusion, but the mystery deserves more study

    4. Interesting mystery, but not worth investigating

    5. Mystery is probably nonsense and a complete waste of time

    What chaps me is those who suggest that if it is not 1 or 2, then it must be 5. UFO's fall into #3 IMO. The eyewitness evidence that something odd goes on is enough to convict a million OJ's. Yet, some skeptics try to lump everybody into the nut-case category, even suggesting that TV and media makes them actually *hallucinate* things that aren't there. How can pilots, cops, etc. do there jobs if they were so prone to TV-show-based hallucinations?

  124. You're a fool by Uttles · · Score: 1

    Read what I said, jackass. I didn't support creationism or the claim that the discovery proves it. I wanted an explaination of how one could arrive at the logical conclusion that this discovery proves creationism.

    --

    ~ now you know
  125. Ice age? by MsGeek · · Score: 2
    We are still in the middle of an ice age that just happens to be in a slight recession. Just because half of the US isn't covered in ice doesn't mean it's not an ice age.

    ***Set sarcasm mode ON***

    Then W00t! for Global Warming! We sure are giving that Ice Age what-for! Greenhouse gases? Hell, we are doing the Earth a favor by driving our big SUVs and using chloroflurocarbons!

    ***Set sarcasm mode OFF***

    --
    Knowledge is power. Knowledge shared is power multiplied.
  126. Do you have any good links that show this? by Unknown+Poltroon · · Score: 1

    Im not doubting you, really. ;) I'm interested in paleloclimatolgy and found a bunch of links about that and recently lost them, and was hoping to not have to dig for them all over the internet again.

    --
    All Troll + "offtopic" mods are meta moderated as "Unfair", because you abused the system.
  127. Holy shit by Unknown+Poltroon · · Score: 1

    you had me laughing my ass off. Hail Eris. Have you eaten your hotdog today?

    --
    All Troll + "offtopic" mods are meta moderated as "Unfair", because you abused the system.
  128. Re:How to view this by Vantigo · · Score: 2, Funny

    Hey! None of the comments after yours were funny because you forgot to close your tag. Thanks a lot.

    --

    Remember the tooth!
  129. Re:Is the date 1 April Significant? by Dorival · · Score: 1

    [no further comment]

  130. Hoax given away in article by WillSeattle · · Score: 1

    To quote:

    "The discovery was made on 1 April by a joint team of divers from the Indian National Institute of Oceanography and the Scientific Exploration Society based in Dorset."

    Clue number one.

    "Expedition leader Monty Halls said: "Our divers were presented with a series of structures that clearly showed man-made attributes.""

    Clue number two.

    Let me guess, they found an extensive warren of underground treasure troves, right?

    Sigh. Second oldest trick in the book, after having a halfling vampire "trapped" in a coffin banging on the lid, trying to get out.

    Gets them every time ...

    -

    --
    --- Will in Seattle - What are you doing to fight the War?
  131. No report in the Indian Press by sureshm · · Score: 2, Interesting

    I've tried looking for this piece of news in the Indian Press (Try http://www.samachar.com for a list of and links to various Indian newspapers and magazines) but have failed. I can't help but wonder about the credibility of this news report -- I'm not disputing that something may have been located beneath the waves at Mahabalipuram but am sceptical as to whether the find is really as significant as claimed.

    1. Re:No report in the Indian Press by nsupathy · · Score: 1

      There were reports about this in the Tamil news papers.

      check that out

      --
      #include std_disclaimer.h
  132. Real or left-over April nonsense? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    It's an interesting read (that site); but down at the bottom of the page, it notes an April 1st `discovery' date. Perhaps, coincidence. Perhaps, merely the ultimate proof the Conspiracy Theorists have been looking for!!! Or I'm just bored on a Friday morning...

  133. no, without proof you have theories by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    proven theories are facts

    Why are the most arrogant asses like skeptical inquirer usually the scrub scientists, who never really discover anything new and/or significant.

    1. Re:no, without proof you have theories by macaddict · · Score: 1
      proven theories are facts

      Sorry, no.

      A theory is a "unifying principle that explains a body of facts and the laws that are based on them" (Chemistry, 3rd ed., by Chang)--evolution, atoms, gravity, etc. all have theories describing them, made up of observed (directly or indirectly) facts. I think you are confusing "theory" with "hypothesis". Most basic chemistry or physics textbooks will give you a good rundown of theory, hypothesis and law.

      Why are the most arrogant asses like skeptical inquirer usually the scrub scientists, who never really discover anything new and/or significant.

      Why do the arrogant asses who get ticked when science doesn't prove (or disproves) their personal worldview feel the need to push their unproven beliefs on everyone else, usually with the claim that their "science" is being supressed by arrogant asses? And they always seem to think that the Scientific Method doesn't apply to them and any attempt to question their claims are taken as personal attacks on their "revolutionary" ideas by "scrub scientists".

  134. if youre skeptical by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    why dont you take a dive for yourself? if not, than
    who would you BELIEVE?

  135. sH!TS not found till the Brits notice by dnoyeb · · Score: 1

    Funny how nothing is ever "found" until the British get there...Were still waiting on em to "find" salvation.

  136. Yes by SimonK · · Score: 2

    And the soma ritual may also go back to Indus times. The matter is far from closed, but the best evidence comes from the language: people have mapped Indus valley script onto something like Dravidian quite convincingly. Attempts to map it onto a Sanscrit like language are much less convincing.

    My bet would be that modern Hindu culture includes aspects of the ancient Indus culture, and aspects of the Aryan invader's culture.

  137. April fools? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    The discovery was made on 1 April by a joint team of divers from the Indian National Institute of Oceanography and the Scientific Exploration Society based in Dorset.

  138. Closer to home by randall_burns · · Score: 1
    Are Ballard's National Geographic funded expedition in the Black Sea and the Institute for Meta History's Expedition in Britain(the page hasn't unfortunately been updated for a while).


    Why is this all significant? Well, major portions of the world have religious sentiments that date after these cities existed. Islam tends to discourage too much emphasis on history before Islam arose. Similarly, the mindset of Christianity has largely been that nothing important happened until about 6000 years ago.


    These findings are very graphic evidence that humanity has a history much older than either Islam or Christianity. Even the academic orthodoxy today tends to be that everything of value came of of the middle east-this now appears to be that everything important came out of the middle east. This appears to be far from true.


    Randall Burns

  139. why so slow? by samantha · · Score: 2

    I heard about this underwater city being discovered at least three months ago. The question in my mind is why the official news about it is moving so slowly as is (apparently) the archaeology community. Perhaps it could have something to do with the early estimates I saw that this city is over 9.000 years old. If so then a lot of theories about the history of early civilization come into question. Stay tuned.

  140. Studies? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Could you post a URL or URLs that supports the hypothesis that all homo sapiens come from such a small group? This is a very interesting idea and i'd like to learn more about it.

  141. Pretty intresting isn't it? by Mashiki · · Score: 1

    I mean, here we are finding sunken cities and all, where people though they didn't exist and people who said they existed were considered crazy. I mean come on, use common sense people. The earth *has* gone though catistropic geologic changes before.

    I'm actually surpised that the main stream media is just catching on, this has been in the lesser publications for atleast a year or more. Hell it was even on art bell awhile back.

    Just remeber that what you think you know, it's always what you know for sure.

    --
    Om, nomnomnom...
  142. Base 10 by Arker · · Score: 3, Informative

    It's not just the date that's off by a power of 10 in Platos story, but also the dimensions. This consistency makes it seem very likely that it's simply a result of a greek mistake while interpreting egyptian numbers.

    The island is also called Santorini, btw, and it was not the capital of the Minoans, at least during the times we know of, and neither was Minoa... the capital was Knossos on Crete, Minoa is closer to Thera. However, hopefully someone will correct me if I'm wrong, but I can't remember any reason to rule out the hypothesis that Thera was the site of the Minoan capital in prehistoric times, before the explosion?

    Anyway, it's a far better fit than any other site I've seen for the Atlantis story, the details all seem to fit, as long as we change the actual numbers consistently by factors of 10.

    --
    =-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
    Friends don't let friends enable ecmascript.
  143. Futurama by rmohr02 · · Score: 1

    The crew find stone ruins: CITY OF ATL[rest is obscured by seaweed].

    Professor: Could it possibly be? Are the old legends true?

    [Leela clears the seaweed, revealing the rest of the city's name]

    All: Oooh.

    Professor: It is! It's the fabled lost city...of Atlanta!

  144. It's a hoax by reflector · · Score: 1

    Apparently no one noticed this bit:

    The discovery was made on 1 April by a joint team of divers...

    .

  145. Wrong approach perhaps? by castlan · · Score: 2

    Quickly, I don't understand why the "radiation symbol" should not be used. So future peoples may see the symbol, do a background ratiation check, and ignore the rest of the message. We want to convey the dangers of the radioactive material - if they already understand radioactivity, then why is the rest of our message so important? This seems to be overstating our importance, and the importance of our message, rather than allowing for the competence of later peoples. What if our hazardous waste becomes a valuable resource for their more advanced energy harnessing needs?
    Not that I think the current approach is really wrong, but lets pretend for a minute that I do.

    Instead of "We are a great culture, this is important to us" there should be more emphasis on penance and shame in relation to visitors There should be an emphasis on "you" the visitor, and our guilt on what we perpetrated against you. Why should a great civilization care about this place so much to invest so greatly in it? "This is our shame. We were wrong to make this. This is a plague. We cannot save you. You should avoid this mistake. We are guilty of leaving this burden here for you."

    Now I really think that this style, emphasizing the visitor's importance should be incorporated into the linguistics of the message. The tone near the end of the report should maybe be given more attention. The entire report emphasized messages of great importance and greatness. Maybe there should be more of a sense of penance and regret, or even a sense of understatement out of shame.

    Is the right approach really to embark on our civilazation's greatest and most ambitious work to date? How does this compare to, e.g. the Great Wall of China, which can be seen from outer space with the naked eye?

    How do "cultures", as in "ways of life" end? What happened to the Egyptians, for example? The Greeks were assimilated into the Romans, so that important knowlegde was carried over into the next culture. The Romans "fell to barbarians", or collapsed under their own weight, how ever you want to look at it. In the following "Dark Ages" some knowlege of the Romans was preserved, but was lost to the general populace. The elite few religous scholars had most of the transmitted knowlege, but even if they subjugated the masses via religous ritual, it seems unlikely that the medieval scholars would have let humanity be irradiated by an ancient Greek WIPP.

    More significant breaks in cultural meme transmission are widespread cataclysmic events, like a pandemic plague, globally significant meteor impact, or many imaginitive events. At this point, who cares? Where do we draw the line of responsibility? Some "native American" tribes have a law that they are responsible for seven generations of successors. Will a post apocalypic people care about any warnings we can give, or will they just be intrigued by any proof of prior civilization? Are we responsible to protect the hostile succesoors to the human race? What about just leaving the site nondescript and undifferentiated so that it can be forgotten for 10K years? Will any disconnected culture (assumed less technologically capable) be able to dig down 4 miles? Perhaps the post-apocalyptic culture will be a burrowing underground civilization, how will we protect/warn them with our surface markers?

    Of course while it may be presumptuous of us to think we are keener than 10000 years of post humanity, I fully support this kind of cross disciplinary research, and value the fruits of foresight. Alternative perspectves are good, especially if they may slow down certain aspects of our current "civilization", and allow a more organic, sustainable culture of meditation and self reflection. I like the sentiment of holding responsibility to our next seven generations as being a limiting factor to some of our folly. While I am encouraged by the creativity that can occaisionally be expressed my out industry, I can't help but feel that this isn't enough. This report almost has a sense of not having been put under much public review - there are even a few minor typographical errors. At least a sentence is spared to reflect on the possiblity that this report itself is an indication of our current error.

    -castlan

  146. I know the area well by abhinavnath · · Score: 2, Insightful

    Mahabalipuram (or Mamallapuram) is now a moderately large town and a pretty nice resort. I grew up not far from there (in Vellore, Tamil Nadu). I've seen the seventh temple - there are lots of very nice temples and rock-carvings by the seaside. Anyway, the existence of six submerged temples has always been taught as fact, at least when I was in school, and I think that preliminary diving expeditions had already found evidence of a submerged city there. The new discovery doesn't really surprise me.

    India has another submerged city : Dwaraka, the legendary abode of Krishna, located (probably) off the west coast a little north of Mumbai (formerly Bombay). I'm pretty sure archaeologists have found some submerged ruins in that area as well, but nothing specific.

    --
    My other sig is also a .Porsche
  147. Re:Ancient Civs - how to dispute them. by jafac · · Score: 2

    I'm pretty sure gold, which does not oxidize, would still be around, and any worked or fashioned gold jewelry would be a dead givaway. I don't believe that there are any examples of that in existance which are known to be "inexplicably old".

    --

    These are my friends, See how they glisten. See this one shine, how he smiles in the light.
  148. Atlantis in the Indies/South China Sea (atlan.org) by Etcetera · · Score: 1


    A Portuguese academic has some rather interesting (and exhaustively researched) ideas on Atlantis, stating basically that the legends of Atlantis actually refer to the large area south of China, west of India, and near Indonisia which would have been an above-water continent during the last Ice Age. (There's a nice map available here. I wonder how close this is to the recent discovery?

    The site overall is worth a look at http://www.atlan.org/

    It's nice to see some of this guy's theories get validated! =)

  149. Re:Still more evidence for creationism by spike+hay · · Score: 2

    Um, the glaciers receded by about 10,000 BC, give or take 2,000 years.

    This city supposedly dates maybe around 5,000 years ago (~3,000 BC).


    Well, the melting of glaciers was gradual. It occured over many thousands of years. It's not like, "Boom" and we were out of the ice age. There have even beem sunken cities due to sea level changes less than 2,000 years ago. Parts of Alexandria are now submerged.

    From the article:

    Scientists now want to explore the possibility that the city was submerged following the last Ice Age.


    However, you make a good point. Now I wonder if it was just built during a very cool period (as opposed to the end of the last ice age) and it has just been submerged by today's comparatively warmer climate. I don't know.

    --
    If you don't understand any of my sayings, come to me in private and I shall take you in my German mouth.
  150. Underwater Structures Off Okinawa by spiedrazer · · Score: 1
    Another large manmade underwater structure has been causing a stir off the coast of Okinawa Japan. Said to have architectural links to Inca cities and other pre-historic civilizations. More found Here

    --
    Keep passing the open windows...
  151. Re:Ancient Civs - how to dispute them. by the_2nd_coming · · Score: 2

    hmmm gold jewelry buried in the ground for 6 or 7 thousand years.....it would seem to me that most of it would have been ground into hunks of shapeless crap by glaciers and siesmic activity.

    --



    I am the Alpha and the Omega-3
  152. In related news... by Alsee · · Score: 3, Funny

    Mt. Olympus, mythical home of the gods and the tallest mountain on earth - many times the size of Mt. Everest - was recently discovered by a team of explorers in Hackensack, New Jersey.

    When asked how the biggest mountain on earth cound go unreported fo so long the explorer said "Well, we just never noticed it before. It was in New Jersey after all. Nobody pays any attention to Jew Jersey with New York right next door. We plan to explore other overlooked palaces such as Canada as well."

    -

    --
    - - You can't take something off the Internet! That's like trying to take pee out of a swimming pool.
  153. Re: extraordinary claims require...... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    How can pilots, cops, etc. do there jobs if they were so prone to TV-show-based hallucinations?

    Because people are not very reliable witnesses, especially in unfamiliar situations.

    Personal case: while not a trained observer I have done a bit of star-gazing. One time I was looking out in the evening sky when I caught out of the corner of my eye a bright light seeming to jerk back and forth in a small area of the sky (about 5 times the width of a full moon). It took me over 30 seconds to figure out that the light was Jupiter and somehow by looking at it through the top of a set of trees partly lit by the street lights Jupiter seemed to dance back-n-forth as I moved my head from side to side. it was an optical illusion which I could repeat and knowing that the light was Jupiter did NOTHING to stop me from thinking that it was moving.

    Just imagine how a non-star-gazer might react.

  154. How about the city of Mu? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    When I was in Japan a few years ago, several large temples were discovered off of the Ryukyu islands. That's supposed to be the lost city of Mu. That myth includes a reference to seven temples in the west. This is enlightening indeed.

  155. The problem with archaeology by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    As someone who has been quite interested in archaeology at one time, I know how it works. You'd think that archaeologists would be people who are dedicated to objectively uncovering the truth, and there are some like that, but the overwhelming majority are definately not. Their interest in archaeology is fueled by egotism and brownie points... they fanatically attack any new ideas or theories because it would threaten what is 'proper' to think in arachological circles (think: a Victorian level of fanatical properness). Anything which doesn't fit in with the *correct* theorium is either systematically ignored or attacked. I've seen arachaeologists come up with the most fatastically crazy explanations to try and defend the 'proper' worldview when something contradicts it. Not that I am saying these 'alternative' archaeologists are any better though.

  156. Re: extraordinary claims require...... by Tablizer · · Score: 1

    (* It took me over 30 seconds to figure out that the light was Jupiter and somehow by looking at it through the top of a set of trees partly lit by the street lights Jupiter seemed to dance back-n-forth as I moved my head from side to side. it was an optical illusion which I could repeat and knowing that the light was Jupiter did NOTHING to stop me from thinking that it was moving. *)

    Flashing, jumping lights close to the horizon are generally discarded anyhow by serious investigators, since there are too many causes. Besides, a regular inspection of the area and sky charts would likely reveil Jupiter, the trees, and the street lamps.

  157. Lovecraft by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    First, giant squids that look like squids but aren't quite squids or in fact anything zoologists can put a finger on... and now another set of submerged cities.

    That's a little too much Lovecraft for my taste.

  158. Neither!! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Historians should be replaced or work with paleontologists, and especially geologists. Myths from various places speak of Atlantis, we know or heed only the Europeans and Egyptians.

    I think this site actually explains it here. If any person has a National geographic dec 1981 undersea map of the undersea world (or some other with similar detail), It is apparent that the 'horse shaped, volcanic land, which sunk leaving the chain of isles called Eldorado or Suvarna-dvipa (the latter is the sanskrit name for Indonesia, the source of the word serendip, both mean isles or cities of Gold), after 40 or so days of continous ash rich downpour and a Flood following the rise of sea-level by about 500 mts by melting ice at the pleistocene extinction, following a huge volcanic eruption, much larger than the one in Krakatoa in the last century (which was similarly devastating)' is indeed Indonesia. It is apparent that Nahu (or Manu or Noah or whatever) tried to escape this land in his boat, with all his lifestock in posession, and sailed, following the monsoon winds of India.

    The antiquity and importance of Indian culture cannot be underestimated. Soon it will be proved that the so called Aryans (spiritual people in Sanskrit, not the totally distorted meaning taken by Nazism), actually came from the sunken parts of Indonesia. That the four river paradise of Danu (or Daneus or Adam) lies beneath the south China sea (four rivers are visible in undersea maps), that what is stated in the Puranas and Vedas (which always compare the land of Varuna as the Horse) of India are at least partly true both scientifically (geographically ) and historically and other sources like the Genesis are summaries of these. That the Greeks and other Indo-European races migrated from India and settled elsewhere. That the Egyptians actually migrated from East India (from references in Indian texts of Embalming of bodies after death by groups in East India. These groups were out of favour in the region and driven away. Also Egyptians and some East Indian villagers worship(ped) a cat headed Goddess of theologically the same type, called Pasht or Sashti).

    This city also has significance. It certianly isn't the only one out there, there are others which are older than the oldest cities in the world (the oldest is dated 7000BC, which is quite unbelievable!!). The people who lived here in the Rig Vedic period when the Vedas were written, were called as Panis in the Vedas (Pani meant traders in sanskrit, people of materalistic virtues). These Panis held large port cities like Dwarka, near the site of the sunken cities. These people traded with the middle east and colonized it (They could be ancestors of the middle-eastern people), using it as an intermediate point for trade between the Indies and the Mediterranian.

    This area was at the mouth of a large seasonally flooding river, the revered Saraswati, which is extinct today but has left its traces. This river brought a large amount of silt and flooded very heavily (more than any river today - If the geological structure called the Indus and Ganges Fan, in the seas around India, visible in ocean floor maps, indicate enough). It must have been considered a pilgrimage for people to travel up this river to the spiritual land near its source. This along with earthquakes, caused the cities to sink. The most famous is described in the Mahabharata - the great Hindu Epic - the sinking of Dwarka (traditionally dated 3078BC ). This, along with the drying up of the Saraswati, forced them to search for another promised land. These same Panis were called the Poeni by Greeks and we know the better as Phoenicians. Those people who remained in India are still called Vanis (if they are traders).

    Plato said that Atlantis sank 9000 years before him (600BC). The date then is 9600BC. The Matsya Purana which describes the story of Manu (apparently whose real name was Nahu, since his descendents are described as Nahusha in the Vedas) and the flood, dates the flood at 9600BC. The Great Pleistocene Extinction which wiped out most large plains animals in America (apparently by the striking of tidal waves), signalling the end of the Great Ice Age, melting ice leading to the rising of sea level, took place EXACTLY in 9600BC

    Homer descibes the sinking of the 'Greatest Ciy of the Phoenicians' 3000 years before him. Apparently he refered to the sinking of Dwarka, and Bet Dwarka, whose pier is still the largest in the world.

    Historians should remember that Earth is the second most geologically active body in the solar system, and get an idea of the earth at a particular time and place before tackling history of that place and period.

    Think about it!! All this won't make full sense until you look at an oceanfloor map, visit www.atlan.org, have a basic idea of hindu myths(I got mine from comic books:) and read some of the Indocentric books on history. All these sources are independant and don't make full sense, but taken together, you will get a revolutionary idea of history that confirms with all your beliefs, whichever culture you belong to, geology and climate, and also many other answers that are considered 'mysteries' , like that of Easter Island.

  159. ...and Japan! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    >With the purported discovery of a city off of Cuba, as well as the the finding of Herakleion underwater archaeology is doing well.

    Dont forget the underwater stuff near Japan as well.

  160. Re:Still more evidence for creationism by gartogg · · Score: 2

    "The word translated to day in most English Bibles actually means period of time in Hebrew"

    Ummm... no.
    "Vayikra elokim l'oar yom u-l'chosech karah layla, vayihi erev vayihi boker yom echad." (transliteration, Genesis 1-5)
    "And god called the light day, and the dark he called night, and it was evening and it was morning of the first DAY" (Genesis 1-5)

    To go through the last part of the phrase, "yom echad", or "day one," is a very good translation, because "yom" means day. Nothing else, no more, no less.

    Many people attempt to reconcile modern astrophysics with the bible, and most will tell you that you should not take the word "yom" literally, but not one will tell you it should be translated as "period of time." There is much literature written on the subject, but I would be amazed if you could find a single book that was published that claimed the word "yom" does not translate as day.

    In essence, you are correct that there is no single aspect of the bible (understood only somewhat symbolically) that disagrees with any part of evolution that is scientifically accepted. The most common point I have seen raised is that evolution would work better if one postulated the existance of certain creatures. Each of the "explosions" that is discussed in biological histories corresponds well with a certain interpretation of the time scale, which is not linear.

    I agree with you, but you argue the point so badly it is painful.

    --
    I'm a concientious .sig objector.