Cyprus
FINALLY!
After three-and-a-half months I have now completed my longest travelogue. I could have completed it in two weeks of full time work, but naturally I have other things to be doing in life.
I have not had this much stress over a piece of writing since finalising the last draft of The Evolution towards the end of 2013, prior to publication. There are moments during that stress when you wonder if it’s all worth the effort, but I hope it is.
Suffice to say, however, unless you have an interest in either Cyprus, ancient history and archaeology, mosaics, the Greeks and the Romans, this piece of work will bore the hell out of you. It is rather specialised in that respect. On the contrary, if you are having trouble sleeping then try reading this paper and you’ll be asleep within three minutes!
It’s already had 118 revisions and there will be a few more as I finalise a few issues. I still have around 50 photos to add descriptions to, but I’ll likely finish that by tomorrow, plus a few references to check up on.
I hope now to re-focus on the follow up to The Evolution – The Guru – because if I don’t get back into that soon it will be left to the history books forever (excuse the pun) and will never be completed…
https://www.stephenmaybury.co.uk/travelogue/2-paphos-archaeological-park/
Scotland
A dig on a construction site in Carnoustie, Angus, has produced a bronze age hoard of weapons, among other items, that dates to between 1000 BC to 800 BC.
A bronze sword and a gold spearhead are the two most valuable items, and I am not referring to their monetary value. Organic materials, namely that of a leather and wooden sheath that covered the sword – the best preserved ever found from the bronze age – and fur skin covering the gold spearhead, are equally as valuable. Items of this nature rarely survive due to climatic conditions, so the preservation of these items makes the findings even more important.
The Celtic tribes that existed in ancient Britain, prior to the many invasions from Europe, consisted of warrior clans in small numbers, most likely farming and hunting communities. Although the druids were not mentioned until at least 400 years after 800 BC, the tribes likely had shamanic priests who were also tribal leaders, soothsayers, and medical and political advisors. The gold spearhead was likely to have been used as a symbolic status symbol, but also may have been used in ritual. In other words these items may have belonged to a very important tribal leader.
On the same site, the largest neolithic hall ever found in Scotland, and dating to 4000 BC, has also been discovered. This was clearly an important settlement that had continuity for at least 3,000 years. To put that into perspective, the neolithic hall is 3,000 years older than the bronze age hoard, and the bronze age hoard is 3,000 years older than today…
Mexico
As many of my theories on our past are slowly proven correct, I should be the world’s leading theoretical archaeologist by now!
And here’s another one.
For years I have been extremely irritated by the generally accepted theory that the two great Maya “collapses” were caused by drought. I find this one of the dumbest theories out there. First of all, Mexico lies in a tropical climate, and while there may be less rainfall in certain years, drought is an extremely unlikely scenario for an entire civilisation to seemingly disappear. Like the Nazca Lines, in which the prevailing theory is that they were created in relation to a water cult because there was supposedly little water, the same stupid idea has been placed on the Maya. Like the Nazca, the Maya had plenty of water. And if you are running out of water, you move to an area where there IS water. You don’t spend centuries making lines in the earth in the hope that gods may bring it to you. People are NOT that stupid, and these arrogant archaeologists who assume our ancestors were “primitive” need to be lined up against a wall and shot.
If we go back to the Maya collapse(s), it has always been obvious to me that other reasons caused the people to “disappear” and abandon their cities. The obvious explanation is internal, tribal warfare on a large scale, reminiscent of today’s civil wars.
Thankfully new research is suggesting exactly that – the Maya collapsed due to social instability, political strife, and internal warfare, the latter of which would be the final phase of such upheavals. No doubt the idiotic old guard will say drought preceded those issues, but I can assure you there was no drought involved in the collapse of the Maya.
At least there are some sensible archaeologists out there who think outside the box, because if there weren’t we’d be stuck in the dark ages of archaeological research forever.
https://phys.org/news/2017-01-archaeologists-uncover-clues-maya-collapse.html
Italy
First of all let me vent my annoyance at the media’s (whoever they are) incessant comparison with sites like Stonehenge every time there’s a discovery. It’s sensationalist bull crap, designed for page clicks only. As a “professional” I find this kind of thing extremely irritating.
An incredible discovery in Sicily; a rock with a man-made hole in it was clearly designed to line up with the winter solstice. Dating to 5,000 years ago, the rock was discovered only recently and, after GPS and digital calculations, has been proven to be genuine. In other words, the chances of this hole being made naturally, or for any reason other than measuring the winter solstice, is unlikely in the extreme.
The rock is located near Gela, on the southern coast of Sicily, and the area is also full of burial tombs. Not only that, a 16.4-foot standing rock (now fallen), is located some 26 feet from the holed stone, directly in front of it. These maker stones are often the smoking gun when these kinds of discoveries are made – they were used for the accurate alignment of the sun’s rays through whatever passed as the measuring tool, in this case a holed stone. Since the sun only moves slightly in the sky each day, accurate measurement was required to locate the solstice, which would last for three days (December 21 – 24 +/-); during the winter solstice the sun appears to be stationary for three days before it starts its rise towards summer. This is the reason Jesus Christ supposedly was dead for three days before rising again, as he is a representation of the sun god (not the “son of god”). But that’s another story…
Egypt
An incredible 360-degree view of the Sphinx, its enclosure, the old kingdom temple, the new kingdom temple, and the three pyramids in the background.
Suffice to say I was mesmerised by this imagery, and spent around half an hour closely scrutinising the Sphinx and the so-called old kingdom temple. Of course there is a reason for that.
Following the theory of Robert Bauval and Graham Hancock on the dating of the Sphinx, I’ve spent many years analysing the data and doing my own research. The culmination of that research went into my book, The Evolution. Although touched on briefly relative to the entire book, in fact only three pages out of over five hundred, the conclusions were based on intense mathematical and astrological calculations.
Both Bauval and Hancock suggest the Sphinx was built around 10000 BC, by using a computer programme that shows the night sky during any time period, and this was when Leo was on the eastern horizon – directly in front of the Sphinx. But my conclusions are that the Sphinx was built around 8180 BC. I won’t go into the detail here, but it’s to do with the length of time each star sign takes to pass through the ecliptic.
The reason I mention this is because this incredible 360-degree image gives a much better view of the entire area, rather than just images of the Sphinx. If you look closely, the new kingdom temple (to the front left of the Sphinx) looks remarkably well built, with straight walls and smooth blocks, but the old kingdom temple (in front of the Sphinx and to the right) clearly shows similar erosion to that of the Sphinx and its enclosure. I am not an expert on geology or rocks, but I have spent many years of my life visiting ancient sites all over the world – Peru, Ecuador, India, Turkey, Cyprus, Italy, Greece, and so on – and I spend most of that time staring at the building blocks and have tried to figure out their methods. The new kingdom temple in front of the Sphinx looks rather like the pyramids, but the Sphinx and the Sphinx enclosure, as well as the old kingdom temple, are clearly thousands of years older than anything I have seen anywhere else on earth.
Geologist Robert Schoch has spent many years at Giza and has come to the conclusion that erosion on the Sphinx and its enclosure was caused by many hundreds of years of rainfall, and that last time Giza was existing under such climatic conditions falls in line with Bauval and Hancock’s theory.
There is no doubt that the Sphinx and the temple in front of it are much older than the dates attributed to them, and that is why I am confident a date of 8180 BC is not too far off the mark. This image has only enforced that notion.
**Breaking News**
United Arab Emirates
A 7,500-year old house has been found on Marawah Island, off the northern coast of UAE. It is one of the most astonishing archaeological discoveries of the millennium because it widens the map of very ancient sites. Very few sites have been uncovered at this date range – most notably those in Egypt, India, Iraq, and Turkey – so to bring the Arabian Peninsula into the frame is quite an incredible alteration in historical knowledge. It shouldn’t be a surprise really, but when you see the date of 5500 BC on paper it sends shock waves through the region.
Ironically, Marawah Island sits almost bang in the middle of a straight line between the great empire of ancient Egypt and the Indus Valley Civilisation, undoubtedly the first two “civilisations” in the world. To the north sits Iran and Iraq, where the great cultures of Mesopotamia began. The house at Marawah Island dates to the exact time when the Samarra Culture arose in Mesopotamia (5500 – 4800 BC), the second earliest in the region behind the Hassuna Culture, which appears to have started around 6000 BC. In the Indus Valley region new findings have shown the civilisation there was already well established in 6000 BC, proving the Indus Valley civilisation to be the oldest in the world. And that new discovery was much to my delight as I’ve been rambling for years that civilisation started with the Indus Valley culture, and not Mesopotamia.
The three-bedroomed, 7,500-year-old house found on Marawah Island is far better than the one I’m currently living in.
Egypt
An absolutely incredible reconstruction of Queen Nefertiti (1370 – 1330 BC +/-).
Taken from the famous bust of Queen Nefertiti, which is housed in the Neues Berlin Museum and thought to be a true likeness, this image has digitally reconstructed the statue, giving her life-like features. The work is so good it almost looks like a photograph.
The artist responsible for this great rendition is Sven Geruschkat. (http://www.svenger.de). The interesting aspect of his artwork is that he has given Queen Nefertiti an African tone, producing an appearance that suggests African origins, or mixed African blood. The actual bust of Nefertiti portrays the queen with paler, almost European skin. Most DNA tests carried out on Pharaohs has shown they are most closely related to modern-day Egyptians. So was Nefertiti as light skinned as the original bust, made when she was alive, or has Sven Gerushkat produced a more accurate rendition?
