I've seen a few faulty assumptions made, but I'm not going to rehash the ones that have already been debunked, especially relating to the physical
makeup of humans. Instead I think I'll level my guns on the earlier mention of Lemuria/Mu, as well as the suggestion that the pyramids imply higher
technology in ancient time.
www.abovetopsecret.com...
Forgive me for being a bit of a braggart, but I'd have to say that I've given the "Atlantis-like" Mu/Lemuria story a pretty fair thrashing.
In the 1880s a failed evolutionary theory invented a lost continent to explain the geographic distribution of lemurs. A year later, HP Blavatsky
piggy-backed the story of Mu onto to that theory, in keeping with the Theosophical Society's aim of demonstrating the continuity between science and
the occult. A man named LePlongeon then simply made up a false translation of a Mayan codex and claimed it was about Mu. (examinations of similar
codices have shown that the document he translated was probably an almanac, and its dating has been shown to be post-Spanish conquest.) Thus the
entire legend was a gambit by charlatans to demonstrate an agreement between scientists and occultists. The gambit failed when the discovery of
continental drift made Haeckel's invention of Lemuria obsolete. Only in ignorance can belief in any such place as Lemuria/Mu be maintained today.
This brings us to the question of non-Lemurian advanced civilizations. Do the pyramids imply high technology? Is is likely that there were ancient
civilizations which somehow failed to leave any trace that we can detect? The answer to both is that it is highly unlikely.
The pyramids are a great feat of engineering, but engineering does not require computers, cranes, etc. It is perfectly possible for a crew of
sufficient expertise to construct the pyramids using ropes, pulleys, levers, fulcrums, beasts of burden, and assorted clever applications of the
principle of leverage. If you will visit the link I provide below, you will see a man who manipulates 10 ton concrete blocks singlehandedly and
constructs stone-henges out of them. He claims that with a crew numbering in the hundreds he could built a pyramid in 30 years, working 40 hour weeks.
His explanation is convincing. He even shows one possible way of moving the blocks long distances by moving a large concrete block several feet with a
just one push of his hand.
Not only this, but Byrd has said repeatedly that descriptions of the construction have been found, and that there is nothing high tech about it. I am
not aware of the source on that, but I trust that Byrd will point us in the right direction on that.
Last but not least, what could we expect to be left over from ancient high-tech civilization? Forgive me for this shameless plug, but if you'll read
my story "A Vagabond's Tale" you'll eventually get several descriptions
. We could expect a lot.
We'd get right to work rebuilding civilization. We'd find ore-bearing rocks to smelt and make metal tools. The attention span of the average person
being what it is, I'm guessing that survivors of an advanced civilization would never even bother to try shaping stone tools when they knew it was
possible to cast things from metals instead.
We'd start making glass right away- nobody "civilized" is going to stay happy very long with dirty crude wooden bowls when the sand under their
feet is the stuff glass is made of.
And for all of this we'd need fire. Nobody who knows much about chemistry is going to do their smelting and forging with a wood fire. We'd have to
create sites for processing animal fats into fuel, or perhaps biomass generators to produce methane for us to burn.
Then there is electricity to consider. If I can generate electricity then I can make a magnet. If I can make a magnet then I can make a crude electric
motor. If I can make an electric motors I'm going to crude power tools, like a millstone for sharpening blades, a crude power saw, and a drill.
And if I've got all that, I'm going to build more elaborate structures. etc etc etc.
The bottom line is that if you dropped a few hundred educated people on a new planet, within the first century or two they'd be in a semi-industrial
age and growing like mad. You'd think that we'd find traces of such a civilization.
I believe that humans are from Earth. Are we a bunch of genetically engineered monkeys who were trained to work for ETs? I don't know, I suppose it
is possible. Did we know a lot of neat stuff early on, maybe even apply it sporadically? When you look at things like the Baghdad Battery you might be
inclined to say yes. Does that mean that we had a high tech civilization in the past that widely knew and applied advanced knowledge and technology?
Probably not.
We're just a bunch of bald monkeys who've been sitting around here making funny faces trying to build stuff for several thousand years. Somewhere
around 5,000 BC we nailed it finally- either we got help or somebody of incredible genius came along to push-start us, or maybe just the discovery of
writing allowed us to really retain our discoveries for the first time.
[edit on 6-4-2005 by The Vagabond]
