Google Earth Reveals Lost Tombs in Saudi Arabian Desert

Google Earth Reveals Lost Tombs in Saudi Arabian Desert

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Little is known about the archaeology of Saudi Arabia, as the government has historically forbid aerial photographs of the landscape and religious sensitivities have made access tricky. But Google Earth is changing that. Satellite images available via the Web-based 3-D map program show that large portions of the country hold a wealth of archaeological remains that predate Islam and may be several thousand years old.

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Very Interesting! It's amazing what you can find in Google Earth. This Juris Zarins guy who led part of the survey, he basically sais the reason they weren't discovered before is what he calls "religious sensitivities".

The Article sais..

"They don’t want people fooling around with prehistory because it contradicts the Koran — any more than fundamentalist Christians want anyone to say anything is older than six thousand years," Zarins told LiveScience.

-ChriS


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Pre-Islamic history of Arabia has become a recent fascination for me. As I understand it, the Arabs migrated from Yemen in the south to the northern regions. They built a fabulous garden civilization at the borders of the Persian and Roman empires.
en.wikipedia.org...
en.wikipedia.org...

Given that recent-ish archaeological studies suggest a connection between Yemen and Ethiopia, through the historical vector of Queen Sheba, it seems to me that the Arabs may have migrated into Arabia from Africa.
mondovista.com...

The Empty Quarter of Arabia is interesting too. It makes up a large portion of the central peninsula, and is virtually impenetrable to human beings. For some reason (dream? Hallucination? Voices from beyond time and space?) I think that there is a ruined capital of a great and truly ancient civilization there, hidden beneath the dunes. However, I do not remember why I think this. Can anyone help me with speculation, theories, especially on other sites?

DELETED BY POSTER AS OFF TOPIC

I was looking around thailand on google earth and came across crazy ruin like things but later I found out it was dated 15 century..if i knew how to imbed pics I'd put some up but heres a link... www.aguidetoasia.com...
thaithanic.com...
If they were doing this in 15 century how did we lose the technology or principles of how to do this???to me its equal to puma punku and other stone megaliths

Originally posted by BlasteR


Very Interesting! It's amazing what you can find in Google Earth. This Juris Zarins guy who led part of the survey, he basically sais the reason they weren't discovered before is what he calls "religious sensitivities".

The Article sais..

"They don’t want people fooling around with prehistory because it contradicts the Koran — any more than fundamentalist Christians want anyone to say anything is older than six thousand years," Zarins told LiveScience.

-ChriS


www.foxnews.com
(visit the link for the full news article)

Islamic clergy think any history pre-Islam, is irrelevant, distracting and should be destroyed. Saudi Arabia is actually more conservative than in the 1970s, and if there was a modern day effort to put a lot of time and money into studying relics of that old time, the clergy would not just oppose it, but would want all that dismantled and destroyed. They think honoring history and studying it, is the same as having false idols

It was like when the Taliban wanted those large Buddhist statues in Afghanistan dynamited, they idea of another religion symbol being present was so abhorrent to them, they wanted them blown up.

they don't want people knowing thier history, cause they will find out that the middle east region was once very advanced and ahead of its time..... until islam came along and put everyone in the dark ages.

reply to post by wingsfan

The thing is, Islam wasn't always an anti-enlightenment force. When Baghdad was first built it was an architectural marvel; the Caliphs in Iberia were the premiere patrons of the arts and sciences in Europe; the Caliphs at Baghdad were patrons of Sabian philosophers and translators, and the Abbasid era Caliphs were patrons of such great minds as Al-Farabi.

Modern Arabia is dumpy and repressive because the Saud is an old, old patron of Wahabbis, the most dreary and boring people in Arabia.

Nah - it is dumpy and repressive because the Islamic theocracy cannot abide the idea that science is telling people things that it cannot deal with. Never mind that most states are not "officially" theocracies like Iran - it permeates their culture jsut like christianity permeates whe west

The West would be the same.....except that the "scientific method" was born of religion (eg Newton more-or-less wanted to show how wonderful God is) and with the profit motive and no theocratic control of government it's gotten a good head start that couldn't be hauled back in....yet....although various x-ian fundamentalists are trying their best.

Before science the Islamic world was pretty much ahead of the west in everything - after it it has been behind in everything.

Originally posted by ArieZ
I was looking around thailand on google earth and came across crazy ruin like things but later I found out it was dated 15 century..if i knew how to imbed pics I'd put some up but heres a link... www.aguidetoasia.com...
thaithanic.com...
If they were doing this in 15 century how did we lose the technology or principles of how to do this???to me its equal to puma punku and other stone megaliths

edit on 15-2-2011 by ArieZ because: (no reason given)

It's interesting, isn't it? We still just sit in awe when we try to figure out how exactly ancient civilizations constructed what they did without all the technology we have today. The Great Pyramid of Giza, Stonehenge, etc..

They all had different approaches when it came to solving complex engineering problems and that led to new building techniques. This implies that all of these ancient civilizations possessed complex mathematical know-how too. Pretty incredible!

These days we have all this technology, engineering know-how, etc. and we still can't figure out exactly how they did it with the resources and technology available to them.

-ChriS

reply to post by firepilot


You're absolutely right.

It's amazing how destructive religion can be. What I don't get is why so many people actually believe the stuff about the earth being only a few thousand years old though. I mean, come on! Are you freaking kidding me?!

Back in 2002, when I was in the military, I had an extremely heated debate with a co-worker about the origins of the universe and the like. The guy I was debating with said God put the dinosaur fossils here to "test our faith".

They, honestly, just come up with this kind of stuff to dismiss the factual science of it all and justify their own pre-existing beliefs.

We started getting into things like radio-carbon dating and the like (which is a pretty accurate scientific method). That's where the debate ended with this guy's face all red and his hands shaking.

But think about it. When we go to science class and we're taught all about the dinosaurs, origins of life on earth, etc.. how many kids and teenagers are being told by their parents that it's all B.S. and to ignore it all?

Are Middle Eastern countries so far behind the times because of Islam, in particular?

Saudi Arabia, alone, sits on 20% of the world's oil reserves too. Do they actually believe that much oil can be made naturally in just 2,000 years? I guess they do?

-ChriS

Man i've seen this. It's all over africa too.... Lots of circles everywhere, with roads and stuff...
viewzone2.com...
www.abovetopsecret.com...

And Google Earth coordinates :
Carolina -- 25 55' 53.28" S / 30 16' 13.13" E
Badplaas -- 25 47' 33.45" S / 30 40' 38.76" E
Waterval -- 25 38' 07.82" S / 30 21' 18.79" E
Machadodorp -- 25 39' 22.42" S / 30 17' 03.25" E