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Forbidden Archaeology (Miscellaneous)

A

Anonymous

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Has anyone read this book? or seen the NBC video that was broadcast across the States regarding the theories of Michael Cremo?

I have seen quite a lot of people talking about this on another website, but haven't heard anything about the book or the author myself. I understand he is trying to overthrow the theory of evolution, and suggesting that man has remained relatively unchanged for millions of years.

Regards,

Skycat
 
Uh huh,

I trawled through this website before- most of the evidence is one hundred forty years old -at Tuolumne Table Mountain...
back then, they only had a vague idea of palaeontology and stratigraphy
so it would be nice to have a bit more up to date stuff
eh...
the Julian May Pliocene SF books are based around the idea of tertiary civilisation
mind you, they are a bit daft
 
Re: Uh huh,

Eburacum45 said:
the Julian May Pliocene SF books are based around the idea of tertiary civilisation
mind you, they are a bit daft
Yes, I liked the very first one, where society's criminals and undesirables were being sent back irrevocably in time, they had to survive and you were wondering if they would turn out to be the real beginning of homo sapiens and civilisation. Exciting and thoughtful stuff, with homework obviously done.
Then the elves and fairies turned up.....
 
Re: Uh huh,

Eburacum45 said:
I trawled through this website before- most of the evidence is one hundred forty years old -at Tuolumne Table Mountain...
back then, they only had a vague idea of palaeontology and stratigraphy
so it would be nice to have a bit more up to date stuff
eh...
the Julian May Pliocene SF books are based around the idea of tertiary civilisation
mind you, they are a bit daft

Well I liked em anyway.:yeay:
 
Don't get me wrong, they are fascinating books- I like the Chalikotheres as replacements for horses,for instance, and the many folktale references
but it is fantasy
whereas this chap Michael Cremo thinks this sort of thing happened in real life- humans in the Pliocene I mean, not the aliens :)
file under very unlikely
 
The thing about the book that struck me was the water ape theory (first time I'd come across it) - thread about it on here somewhere. Will seek it out and post link later on, unless someone knows where it actually is.

Stu
 
Are you talking about fans of Julian May or Fans in general?
 
Niles,
is the chair leg of truth similar to Bill Bailey's Leg of Time?

Stolen by Nigel BTW.

LD
 
lorddrakul, it comes from a comic book called Transmetropolitan. At one point the book's Anti-Hero Spider Jerusalem, a Gonzo Journalist of the future, beats an lying informant with a chairleg which he dubs the Chair Leg of Truth.

As for Bill Bailey I prefer Bill Hicks, but I do possess an Arse of Beezlebub
 
I'll try to dig it out but I have an MP3 of Bill Bailey with a metal song called Who Stole the Leg of Time.

LD
 
If humans have remained unchanged for millions of years, howcome our technological abilites have surged over the past several thousand years? And not earlier
 
IIRC, there's genetic evidence that the human race has been through one or more evolutionary bottlenecks, coming within a whisker of becoming extinct.

But since then, and following the devlopment of agriculture, our numbers have grown enormously, allowing us the spare human resources to develop things like art, science, and technology. These things are cultural, not directly linked to our biology. You only need a relatively few James Watts, Faradays, and Henry Fords to kick-start technology.
 
Even so.....there would be SOME record of ANY type of technological achievement. And the chances of that are astronomical. But.....Bush is president, I suppose anything is possible
 
YeaYea2001 said:
If humans have remained unchanged for millions of years, howcome our technological abilites have surged over the past several thousand years? And not earlier
Well, human beings, similiar to us have only really been around for the last, 200,000 years. There have been some pretty catastrophic changes to the earth's climate in between, like Ice Ages. About 30 to 40,000 years ago there were still at least two distinct human types, Homo Sapiens and Homo Neanderthalis.

Homo Sapiens as we know them today spent a long and probably very satisfying time as Hunter/Gatherers before experimenting with Nomadic Animal Husbandry, Farming, the development of Trading Settlements and Towns.

It was in the more arid parts of the world that technologically advanced, Irrigation Cultures developed to make the most efficient possible use of the available water supply. This was so successful, that these cultures endured somtimes hundreds, or thousands of years with little real change. Rising and falling, dependant, mostly, on the upkeep of vast, centralised, systems of irrigation and distribution.

As the technologies, like metal working moved out from the arid regions into more temperate and congenial parts there was a population explosion which forced an Agrarian Revolution especially in the Mediterranean region. There was a subsequent trading and population explosion and the growth of Empire Building cultures, which rose and fell over thousands of years.

Sumeria, Babylonia, Phoenecia, Carthaginia, Troy, Athens, Sparta, Rome, Byzantium, Holy Roman Empire, Ottoman Empire, British Empire, etc. And that's only in the Western Hemisphere and Middle East! Helped keep our ancestors busy and no mistake!
 
Aye but

Why did Bill Bailey put crabs on his eyes?

And where can I get a copy of "Human Slaves in an Insect Nation"?

I have this thing for archimedes screws, and if they did use them in the Hanging Gardens of Babylon, how come they're called archimedes screws (they have them at Milton Keynes Sewage treatment Works, you know).

Sam
 
Even Further Off-topic (much prefer Snickers)

4imix said:
My God, someone else has read the Julain May books! i thought i was alone..! next you'll be telling me you're all yes fans. :D

Haven't read the Julian May books, but I'll happily stand up and be counted as a Yes fan.
 
Re: Even Further Off-topic (much prefer Snickers)

Brown said:
Haven't read the Julian May books, but I'll happily stand up and be counted as a Yes fan.

High Vibration Go On :yeay:
 
Blimey this thread has gone off topic and is running for the hills!!

"The Mysteries Origins of Man" TV show (advertised in FT a while ago) is largely based on the Forbidden Archaeology book (and its sequel) and Talk Origins have put together an awful lot of resources dealing with the various claims and I certainly can't better their coverage:

http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/mom.html

Emps
 
Yeah, Forbidden Archaeology is actually a pretty decent book. While the author does bring with him a built-in religious bias (a hindu belief in the eternal man), the information it presents is fascinating, regardless. The author's perspective matters less to me than the data he presents, assuming it's mostly correct. The reason that most of the stories he relates are a hundred+ years old is because they're scientific curiosities from the 1800's and early 20th century that were never properly studied or investigated in the first place. Some are of a dubious nature, and may have never been true in the first place, but others almost certainly are true, and some of the relics he mentioned can still be seen in museums and state parks throughout the US. Not all "forbidden" relics are lost, but a lot of the ones we have are simply ignored. I don't think the point of his book is really to negate evolution (which I'm a fairly staunch supporter of), but to show that the evolutionary record may not be as clear-cut as some would have you believe, and to illustrate the way that inconvenient discoveries are often ignored (as if we didn't know that already!).

When it comes to things like fossilized footprints, bones coming out of the wrong strata, and manmade objects locked in solid rock, or at the bottom of a mine, I feel like there are a lot of alternate explanations, other than a gross antiquity of man, as the author believes. Others have suggested time travel, which is almost as far-fetched but a bit more plausible. As much as I detest theories in general, my personal thoughts on the matter are that current geologists don't yet have a grasp on all the workings of the earth, and it may be possible for things to fossilize or become encased in stone much, much faster than previously believed. That seems logical to me, anyway, but it would have to be a rare occurence or else we'd see things getting stuck in rocks a lot more often.
 
it has been known for certain mixes of limestone/sandstone to form a natural cement. get it wet and let it dry and it will be solid forever!
 
Sertile said:
When it comes to things like fossilized footprints, bones coming out of the wrong strata, and manmade objects locked in solid rock, or at the bottom of a mine, I feel like there are a lot of alternate explanations, other than a gross antiquity of man, as the author believes. ..

The Glen Rose "human footprint" fossils have been positively identified as a combination of perfectly normal, if surprising-looking, dinosaur tracks - a dinosaur that walked on its toes sometimes and plantigrade at others, and when you look over the entire fossil trail you can trace the individual with confidence - dinosaur tracks which have been deliberately altered, and modern carvings. In the Forbidden Archeology television show, an altered track was used by a creationist as evidence of human/dinosaur contemporaneity. A fellow creationist had already recognized the track as a fake and identified it to this individual, who should in any case have studied the fossil closely enough to detect the alteration, but it was used anyway.

There's enough legitimate complexity, confusion, and weird data in archeology and paleontology without people deliberately promoting known hoaxes like that. You've got to read a lot of stuff to catch this sort of thing - and who among us has read enough to catch it all? The author should have, but didn't.
 
Care to elaborate? I've heard the claim before that the Glen Rose footprints were wholly created by dinosaurs, without humans present. However, I've never heard what dinosaur it was, exactly. Can you tell me more? For instance, did the dinosaur actually have five toes, or is that supposed to be an illusion of some sort?
 
Sertile, the best I can do is refer you to this website:

http://members.aol.com/Paluxy2/paluxy.htm

Which is greatly expanded since I first discovered it. This guy really cares about those tracks! No glitz, just text and references. Since I can't make stories about dinosaurs I don't keep up with this the way I do with some things, but it appears that there's a number of different species behind the "human" footprints, not one of them mammalian.
 
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