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Explorer Plans Hunt For Genghis Khan's Long-Lost Tomb
Velcroman1 writes "The tomb of brutal Mongolian emperor Genghis Khan — the one who created the world's most powerful empire by raiding and invading across Eurasia, not Kirk's nemesis — is a lost treasure archaeologists have sought for years. And one man thinks he knows where it is. Last fall Alan Nichols, the president of The Explorers Club, mapped out possible locations for the tomb of Khan (also known as Chinnggis Qa'an). His hypothesis: Khan's tomb is located in the Liupan Mountains in Northern China, where the emperor who was born in 1162 and is said to have perished from an arrow wound in August 1227. Next fall, Nichols plans the next phase of his research: pinpointing Khan's exact resting place. 'Ghengis Khan's tomb is my obsession,' Nichols, a noted authority on the emperor, said recently. 'I couldn't stop thinking about it. But I'm not happy just reading about it, or knowing about it. I need to have my feet on it.'"
Genghis Khan existed. Jesus not.
There is strong evidence that Jesus existed. He may not have been divine, but he was almost certainly a real person.
>Virtually all historians, whether Christian, atheist or of some other religion, hold that a man Jesus existed, even if his biography is just so much myth accreted around the historical figure.
All the honest ones are clear that there is no direct evidence and many of the myths clearly relate to different people at different times. There have been many people names Jesus. With high probability, there has never been magic Jesus, born of a virgin, 2000 years ago, who could perform miracles.
I should use this sig to advertise my book ISBN-13 : 978-1501515132.
http://archive.archaeology.org/online/features/macedon/
The guy cited the wrong source. Here is a better one:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sources_for_the_Historicity_of_Jesus
Basically what it boils down to is that there are multiple independent sources attesting to his existence.
See Q Source and the Gospel of Mark. Or the Gospel of Thomas. Those are the 2 big ones I can think of. I will grant you that they were oral traditions before being written traditions. I will grant you that there are differences and contradictions between the various sources. But the differences are consistent with the way that oral history spreads.
We may not be able to identify his tomb, but sure as heck we can identify his ancestors! It so happens that this guy had about half a thousand children that have descendants that survive today. Rape and pillage he did, allrighty. There's more than ten million of those descendants alive today, by the way. Genetics for the win, I say.
A successful API design takes a mixture of software design and pedagogy.
LOL, Genghis Khan has way more up his sleeve than you give him credit for. Show me a U.S. president that had about a thousand 1st-generation descendants. 800 years later - today - Genghis has about 15 million descendants. This is based on hard science genetic testing, not historic record, by the way. An average male person living 800 years ago has a bit above 500 descendants living today.
A successful API design takes a mixture of software design and pedagogy.
Khan has a unique genetic marker that could be identified in a DNA test: http://www.nytimes.com/2003/02/11/science/a-prolific-genghis-khan-it-seems-helped-people-the-world.html
That would at least narrow him down to his family, if found.
I always thought, though, that Genghis chose a "true" Mongol's burial: dragged on a pallet up a mountain, left where his body slid off the pallet and then fair game for all the critters of the wild to pick clean...
If you were me, you'd be good lookin'. - six string samurai
While the thrust of the military power of the British empire is truly not what it was, he is accurate in saying that "the sun never sets". :-)
Nobody really refers to it as an "empire" anymore, but in addition to Britain and Northern Ireland, the U.K. still controls territories including "Gibraltar, Bermuda, numerous Caribbean islands, Ascension, St. Helena, Tristan da Cunha, the Falkland Islands, and South Georgia." Some have argued that the sun finally set over the empire after the handover of Hong Kong in 1997. But some argue this view ignores two tiny but crucial territories which bridge the gab: the Pitcairn Islands in the South Pacific and the British Indian Ocean Territory -- also known as the Chagos Islands, where Britain and the United States maintain a joint military facility at Diego Garcia. The question is "on midwinter's day in the southern hemisphere, does the sun set over Pitcairn before it rises over Diego Garcia?"
Here's what Peter Hammond's calculations found:
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[The] results allow for the refraction of the sun's rays when it is close to the horizon. They indicate that, on 21st June, the sun rises over Diego Garcia at 01:22 hrs GMT, more than half an hour before it sets over Pitcairn at 01:59 hrs GMT.
Thanks to Diego Garcia (uninhabited except temporarily by various U.K. and U.S. military personnel) and to Pitcairn (population now about 50), the British Empire appears safe from sunsets for the time being.
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