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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.'"
*gestures*
Will it be possible to identify his tomb after all these years? How are we sure that even if we find such an ornately decorated tomb, that Khan is the one buried there, instead of some relative or whatnot. I don't know, but many cultures have superstitions about their corpse in the afterlife, so that might be a motivation to "hide" the real corpse?
>Genghis Khan existed. Jesus not.
Jesus is everywhere, tending gardens across the United States. Cash only.
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.
Just because someone at Fox News put "Noted Authority" on the Chiron under a TV guest doesn't mean they know what they are talking about.
I actually did a fair bit of research myself into this a few months back, to answer a question on History.SE. There is indeed a romantic notion of there being some undiscovered tomb with untold wealth in it. Then there's the reality:
Depositing the corpse in the steppe was meant to sacrifice it to predatory animals. According to Mongolians this is the last virtous act a person can carry out. This idea is much older than Lamaism and exhibits a really strong shamanistic element of spiritual thought.
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.
The Wikipedia page talks plenty about how convinced scholars are (who have a vested interest in that answer) but doesn't actually cite any evidence
You need to improve your reading comprehension skills. The passage cites a reference to Roman documents that mention the crucifixion of Jesus. What are you expecting? A giant Iridium plated monument that says "Jesus Was Here"? Jesus had a tremendous influence on future generations, but very, very little on his own generation. So there is little contemporaneous evidence, just like there is little direct evidence that 99.99% of any other specific first century individuals existed. But Christianity began to take off when there were still people alive that would have had a memory of him, and there were plenty of opponents of what, at the time, was an extremist cult. Yet none of them denied that he had lived.
There is strong, but not conclusive, evidence that he was a real person. There is no evidence that his existence was fabricated. Many of his disciples were tortured and crucified, yet they refused to denounce him. Why would they do that, for something that (in your opinion) they had made up?
Joke all you want, but according to a Darwinian fitness perspective he was one of the most successful humans to have ever lived.
I only look human.
My mother is a halfling and my dad is an ogre, so that makes me an Ogreling
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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Let’s consider you point. What is your Epistemology in this situation?
Do you reject evolution? It’s got massive holes. There are bits that don’t (yet) make sense. Yet I still believe it because of the strong evidence. The holes take some extrapolation to move from point to point, but the logic to do so is consistent.
Or, let’s choose an example more on point. Should I disbelieve in Socrates? Like Jesus no primary source material exists. None of his writings exist. Should I take the position that he was just the figment of somebody’s imagination?