It looks like you're using an Ad Blocker.
Please white-list or disable AboveTopSecret.com in your ad-blocking tool.
Thank you.
Some features of ATS will be disabled while you continue to use an ad-blocker.
Originally posted by Aluxe
The fist picture on the OP is actually the Aztec sun stone, NOT the Maya calendar! this is a very common error but I must say a really bad start for someone trying to present factual information.
Originally posted by sir_slide
reply to post by Byrd
Nice response Byrd, some good points to add. The 26,000 year cycle of time I was referring to is based on the calender not the mythology, the calender represents that period of time.
As far as the issue of the start date and your assertion that you cannot speculate backwards I will have to disagree. The Calender is incredibly specific and it seems unlikely that a culture with such accuracy in other areas would be flippant about such an important part of their culture, the calender.
As far as the rise in sea level goes, the majority of the melting of the ice caps ended about 10,000 years ago, so this would have been a time of significant rises in sea levels. The sea level we have today would not be much more than when the last ice age ended, of course it would be bigger, but the dramatic rise in sea levels ended 10,000 years ago.
Originally posted by JaxCavalera
I mean, we currently have things like Accelerometers and GPS and Satellites, tho we still don't have all the elements of our solar system mapped out. These ancient civilisations wouldn't of had our Hubble telescope or even ground based telescopes, but somehow were able to map out the difference between planets and normal stars in the night sky, which are things you just can't differentiate between without the use of a telescope or prior knowledge that they aren't just brighter stars etc..?
If we were to be hit with a strong CME that took out all of our current technologies, we would be forced to rely on more primitive technology and no doubt all hell would break loose on earth with crime and war etc.. not to mention that you may or may not invoke several nuclear meltdowns or malfunctions of nuclear weapons/storage facilities. The end result being that a lot of our technology would disappear.
because there is evidence that Earth has previously experienced super volcanoes and large seismic activity both accompanied, no doubt, by devastating tsunami's.
We know that should earth take a direct hit from an intense CME, all electrical devices would fry (similar to the 1859 CME :
Perhaps the reason that we can't find any traces of "digital" or "electrical" technology like we have today is because they discovered alternative methods of technology that simply operated in unison with the natural energies that Earth emits.
Originally posted by Byrd
Originally posted by sir_slide
reply to post by Byrd
Nice response Byrd, some good points to add. The 26,000 year cycle of time I was referring to is based on the calender not the mythology, the calender represents that period of time.
I understood that. I was interested enough in the culture at one point to begin learning to read the glyphs.
As far as the issue of the start date and your assertion that you cannot speculate backwards I will have to disagree. The Calender is incredibly specific and it seems unlikely that a culture with such accuracy in other areas would be flippant about such an important part of their culture, the calender.
I think we'll agree to disagree here. I feel that as they developed astronomy and assigned important deities to planets (Venus being particularly important) that they began to calculate backwards for a 'start date' when everything "came together." In order to calculate when you will have a certain conjunction you need several things that aren't present in earlier cultures, including writing and mathematics. You can't just "guess" on those cycles. You have to know that there's a cycle for Venus and one for the Moon and one for the Earth. That requires a lot of observations (an observatory) plus written records and the ability to add and subtract (multiplication and division isn't necessary.)
More primitive civilizations usually have a lunar calendar only.
As far as the rise in sea level goes, the majority of the melting of the ice caps ended about 10,000 years ago, so this would have been a time of significant rises in sea levels. The sea level we have today would not be much more than when the last ice age ended, of course it would be bigger, but the dramatic rise in sea levels ended 10,000 years ago.
Actually, the sea levels today are higher than they were at the end of the last ice age... but I stand by my point (based on excavations of hunter camps -- I've talked to the archaeologists who were working on this (one was my professor)) that the increase in sea level was gradual. One other point of evidence about the sea level rise being gradual is that there was no great extinction of sea life at the end of the ice age.
Oceanic life needs a pretty specific set of circumstances for life. A cataclysmic flood -- caused (as speculation goes) by sudden rise in temperature and melting of the ice cap causing the ocean level to suddenly rise 40 feet or more and abruptly drown any civilizations on the coast -- would flood the oceans with so much cold fresh water that we'd have a sudden and massive die off of species. The ocean would eventually mix and stabilize but in the mean time, sea life that can't live in brackish water would simply drop dead -- the same way your salt water aquarium will die off rapidly if you suddenly dilute the salt by adding drinkable water.
Does anybody remember the following image? It caused quite a stir when it was first released. It shows the destruction of a civilization from a tremendous volcanic eruption followed by flooding. Could this depiction and the Olmec ruins be proof of that titanic destruction?
Sophisticated technologies are built from more primitive ones. Humans didn't just wake up one day and say "I'm tired of banging rocks together. I'm going to make a digital watch." You have to develop electronics, which means you have to develop furnaces, which means you have to mine materials, which means you have to have a large and stable population, which means domesticating plants and animals (they change when you domesticate them), which means societies with special classes, which means a complex theology and laws and so on and so forth.