What Archaeologists Really Think About Ancient Aliens, Lost Colonies, And Fingerprints Of The Gods

originally posted by: Marduk
a reply to: Tsurugi

Don't forget to also turn Orions belt upside down and that the constellations of the Zodiac originate from Mesopotamia and were completely unknown in Egypt until the much later Graeco-Roman era.

They could see the stars, right? Same stars as everyone else. Whether they recognized the Orion stars as a constellation or not, they could see them. The question of knowledge of the zodiak constellations is a side issue.

Oh and that it doesn't match at any time except, 10,000 bce isn't adding credibility, but taking it away. Since the Giza radiocarbon project conclusively proved that the pyramids were built approx. 2500bce, you'd have to imagine that the tribes who lived there before the Egyptians existed to notice the alignment, sat around for 8000 years before doing anything about something that must have been so important that the Egyptians themselves never mentioned it...

The alignment to that time does not necessarily mean the pyramids were constructed at that time. Anyone capable of constructing such an alignment would be able to point the alignment to any period they wanted, not just the one they were presently in.

a reply to: Tsurugi

The alignment to that time does not necessarily mean the pyramids were constructed at that time.

What "alignment", exactly?

The stars of Orion's belt form one of the most striking asterisms in the sky. I don't know if the pyramids were constructed as a (not very accurate) mirror of them or not but it wouldn't surprise me if they were. I just don't see any useful significance to it, aside from Hancock's broad assumptions.

originally posted by: Phage

Precession only changes the "season" in which it rises, not how it "lays."

Right. The arc of the Ecliptic as seen from Giza, combined with precession, results in the standing up and laying down.

a reply to: Tsurugi

The arc of the Ecliptic as seen from Giza, combined with precession, results in the standing up and laying down.

False. Precession does not change the arc of the ecliptic because it does not change the path of the Earth around the Sun, which defines the ecliptic. Precession does not affect the "lay" of constellations, their relationship to the ecliptic. You need to study a bit more astronomy before you venture into "archaeoastronomy."

The ecliptic marks the path of the sun. It’s the projection of Earth’s orbit onto the sky. And it’s an essential part of any stargazer’s vocabulary.

earthsky.org...

originally posted by: Phage
a reply to: Tsurugi

What "alignment", exactly?


The stars of Orion's belt form one of the most striking asterisms in the sky. I don't know if the pyramids were constructed as a (not very accurate) mirror of them or not but it wouldn't surprise me if they were. I just don't see any useful significance to it, aside from Hancock's broad assumptions.

Okay. In my opinion, the alignment is intentional. Not accident or coincidence.
It isn't a "mirror" alignment. It is a projection. Like a map projection. A mirror alignment uses a reversed image, projection does not.

As for significance? No clue. Who did it and why? No idea.
Fun questions to speculate on, though.

a reply to: Tsurugi

Right, not a mirror. But it is "upside down."

As for significance? No clue. Who did it and why? No idea.

You seem to think it would be helpful in providing a date for the construction of the pyramids, however.

originally posted by: Phage
a reply to: Tsurugi

The arc of the Ecliptic as seen from Giza, combined with precession, results in the standing up and laying down.

False. Precession does not change the arc of the ecliptic because it does not change the path of the Earth around the Sun, which defines the ecliptic.

Phage. Precessional wobble changes the orientation of the axis. Polaris is not always the north star. The path of the ecliptic changes from the perspective of someone standing on the surface of the earth. All precessional changes are earth relative, not absolute. I would not suggest the ecliptic actually moves around in space. Just that it moves around in the SKY.

Thanks for suggesting I continue to educate myself in astronomy. I have every intention of doing so. But the problem here is one of communication, not knowledge. (I think.)

It is way easier to describe this stuff using diagrams.

originally posted by: Phage
a reply to: Tsurugi

Right, not a mirror. But it is "upside down."

As for significance? No clue. Who did it and why? No idea.

You seem to think it would be helpful in providing a date for the construction of the pyramids, however.

What? No.

Allow me to quote myself, from this post:

The alignment to that time does not necessarily mean the pyramids were constructed at that time. Anyone capable of constructing such an alignment would be able to point the alignment to any period they wanted, not just the one they were presently in…

a reply to: Tsurugi

Then again, I will have to ask you to explain what you were getting at here (whether or not it was an accurate statement):

There is also a time component. Roll the clock back to approx 10.5k BC, and the positions of the pyramids on the ground matches the positions of the belt stars in the sky while the nearby Nile matches the Milky Way.

originally posted by: Phage
a reply to: Tsurugi

Then again, I will have to ask you to explain what you were getting at here (whether or not it was an accurate statement):

There is also a time component. Roll the clock back to approx 10.5k BC, and the positions of the pyramids on the ground matches the positions of the belt stars in the sky while the nearby Nile matches the Milky Way.

I just meant that the alignment had a time dimension as well as spatial ones. In my opinion, this makes it less likely to be a coincidence.

a reply to: Tsurugi

Ok. But that "time dimension" has nothing to do with the "alignment" of the stars of the belt, unless you can provide some indication that 10,500 years ago there was a better correlation with the positions of the stars of the belt than there is now. Because, based on that, the pyramids could have been constructed with the 21st (or 15th, or -2nd) century in mind.

originally posted by: Tsurugi

originally posted by: Deaf Alien
a reply to: Phage

I know that you know

I was just merely pointing it out for others members.

I remember seeing what orion would have looked like hundreds of thousands years ago but can't remember where. But it wasn't much of a difference from today.

Orion doesn't look different in terms of shape, but it does change orientation relative to the horizon over time--i.e., it "stands up" and "lies down", etc.

Precession doesn't make any constellation stand up or lie down.

Orion would appear the same as today, only slightly lower in the sky 10,000 years ago. Approximately one degree lower, as precession moves everything North and then South in the sky by about 30 arc minutes every 4100 years. It doesn't turn anything sideways.

Harte

originally posted by: Tsurugi
]The alignment to that time does not necessarily mean the pyramids were constructed at that time. Anyone capable of constructing such an alignment would be able to point the alignment to any period they wanted, not just the one they were presently in.

unfortunately, the authors of this nonsense have no reason for 10,000bce to be special, they had some cheap astrology software and just ran the alignment back until they found one that looked good
again, cherry picking on that magnitude, hardly makes it credible and to the Egyptians at the time of Khufu, Orions belt was meaningless. If you can't see why the OCT is nonsense then you should go back to culture school

originally posted by: IridiumFlareMadness
Archaeologists want to go postal over it because it would mean all those years in college were a waste of time.

Yup! No one wants to be wrong, obsolete or stupid. While it is more possible that the mainstream are correct, the fringe is still possible. Until proven...they are all theories.

What's more amazing?

Humans doing this with the tools it's proven they had and, more importantly, used.

Or some technology that's "rumored" to have been used? No proof has ever been found.

There seems to be some form of misconception that man built these huge monolithic buildings "overnight", or something on a much shorter time span then we realize.

These buildings, and I'll include European cathedrals in this, took lifetimes to build in some cases. A lifetime. The records are there to be read, in the case of cathedrals, and in found writings from the time of the Pharaohs.

Personally, I find the accomplishments of my long ago ancestors with their stone tools, and fulcrums, and whatever else they used.

originally posted by: seagull

These buildings, and I'll include European cathedrals in this, took lifetimes to build in some cases. A lifetime. The records are there to be read, in the case of cathedrals, and in found writings from the time of the Pharaohs.

Except for the Sphynx whose construction is not discussed anywhere in Egyptian records.

originally posted by: Phage
a reply to: Tsurugi

Ok. But that "time dimension" has nothing to do with the "alignment" of the stars of the belt, unless you can provide some indication that 10,500 years ago there was a better correlation with the positions of the stars of the belt than there is now.

There is a better correlation at that time. I am obviously not doing a very good job describing it verbally, so I will try to illustrate it with diagrams. I'll get back to ya later tonight.

originally posted by: WeAreAWAKE
While it is more possible that the mainstream are correct, the fringe is still possible. Until proven...they are all theories.

Indeed, the fringe generates innovative thought, without which our knowledge base stagnates. That is just the beginning of the process, though - not the conclusion, which is the point that so many people chose to ignore.

originally posted by: Harte
Precession doesn't make any constellation stand up or lie down.

Orion would appear the same as today, only slightly lower in the sky 10,000 years ago. Approximately one degree lower, as precession moves everything North and then South in the sky by about 30 arc minutes every 4100 years. It doesn't turn anything sideways.

If you're in the right place on the planet, you can watch Orion "stand up" and then "lay down" in a single night. When it rises in the east, it appears to be laying on its back. As the night progresses and it rises higher in the sky, it straightens until it is standing upright.

Precession goes through all those same apparent motions. The difference is that precession takes 26k years instead of 24 hours to complete a cycle, and it does it all in reverse. You can only see it effectively by looking once per year, at the same hour, in the same direction, from the same geological location. If you did that every year for 26,000 years and took a single photograph each time, then used the images to make a time-lapse video, it would look like a video of one night(and day) played in reverse.

This is why it is called the Precession of the Equinoxes--the normal daily motion of the heavens precesses once every 26k years, and is normally observed on one of the equinoxes.

originally posted by: JohnnyCanuck
Here's an interesting article and academic review of that stuff that makes archaeologists want to go postal (or if you're in Ottawa, its 'go OC Transpo'...but I digress). Archaeologists don't live in a vacuum - they are fully aware of what popular culture likes to represent as alternatives to accepted truths of the day. Yes, scientific investigation is driven by challenging the status quo, but people, there's a lot of poop our there masquerading as revelation. Here's a revealing look at archaeology's take on it

There’s a popular meme that my archaeology friends have been circulating on social media lately: a picture of Giorgio Tsoukalos, a producer of the popular History Channel show Ancient Aliens, overlaid with the caption “I’m notsaying it was aliens, but it was aliens.”What Archaeologists Really Think About Ancient Aliens, Lost Colonies, And Fingerprints Of The Gods

Give it a read, then sashay over to the reviews. Gotta love a piece that reads:

Do me a favor. Go over to a window and look outside. I’ll wait. Okay, are you looking? See anything extraordinary? Yup, it is pigs flying. So many pigs. That should explain how a Graham Hancock book is being reviewed in American Antiquity. And it is about time. Since its publication in 1995, the book is estimated to have sold more than three million copies and has been published in 27 languages. As archaeologists, we ignore such a phenomenon at our peril.
TALKING TO THE GUY ON THE AIRPLANE

They probably have a fairly hard time explaining erosion marks on the pyramids.
Don't see why they dissed Hancock? I suspect it has something to do with "Don't tow the line you get no funding."

Ahhh, funding: The deciding factor of truth. When you've got the money you're too smart to say, "I don't know, it's all theories boys and girls ... funded 'theories.'"