Greece
I visited Corinth back in 2015.
I never imagined the city was so large, considering all that’s really left is the main centre – the agora and its surroundings, and the huge Temple of Apollo – plus the theatre. The hilltop citadel is still there as well. There’s a few videos of Corinth that I made on my YT channel, but nothing is as good as this amazing 6-minute 3D video…
https://www.greecehighdefinition.com/blog/2017/3/31/ancient-corinth-3d-presentation-video
Egypt
A 4,000-year-old tomb, dating the 12th Dynasty, has been uncovered at Aswan.
The tomb will provide more detail about the lives of those who were born into high status families, as very little is known about them during that epoch.
https://www.rt.com/viral/382281-4000yo-tomb-discovery-egypt/
Mexico
It is well known that diseases nearly wiped out the native American populations of central and south America after the arrival of the Spanish, but what those diseases actually were has been the subject of much debate. Smallpox has been considered the most likely culprit, but now new evidence from two studies shows that a deadly form of salmonella caused a massive epidemic in the Aztec culture, that may have killed 80% of the entire Mexican population.
It is also something that needs to be looked at regarding the “collapse” of the Maya culture. The continuous rhetoric of climate change as the cause of the Maya collapse I am not in favour of, as you well know. Certainly salmonella or smallpox would not be the culprits since they were brought over by the Spanish in the 1500s, and the classic Maya collapse occurred 600 years earlier, but it is something that needs to taken into consideration – that pestilence, war, or anything else brought about the collapse of the Maya. Also, since the collapse was only occurring with the Maya culture, we have to question the theory of climate change as other cultures do not seem to have been affected.
The population of Mexico in the 1500s was estimated to be around twenty-five million, but after the epidemic and war with the Spanish, that population was reduced to as little as just one million, the majority of those deaths attributable to the epidemic. Salmonella poisoning would not have been a pleasant way to die.
United States
Ancient Pueblo people using advanced geometric mathematics, or modern scientists drawing shapes and making patterns that don’t exist?
Looking at the map of the site I would say the latter option.
I do not doubt they had a system of measurement similar to a foot, but I do not believe for one second they mapped out the site using the geometry described in the article. Often when one is studying a site for too many years, thinking goes way too deep, and Occam’s razor tends to be forgotten altogether.
India / Pakistan
Staying with the Indus Valley culture, once again their undeciphered script makes interesting reading.
Granted, that was my worst pun to date, but never mind…
One thing you must never do in a piece of writing is mention a film, either by quote or comparison. That’s the only flaw in this very well written piece by Mallory Locklear.
The Indus Valley script is extremely difficult to decipher for many reasons. Firstly, there is no trace of their culture – no one has any idea who they were, where they came from, or where they went, so that removes the possibility of tracing their language. Secondly, the seals found do not have long enough pieces of writing to be able to figure out the structure of the text, and that means the writing may just be names of families, of measures from trade goods, or something else. There is no doubt, however, that the script IS a language because the symbols do follow the rules of a linguistic system. Others disagree with that idea though, and believe the seals contain just symbols. I am certain it’s a language, so there’s another one of my predictions that is bound to come true!
Pakistan / India
Mohenjo Daro is not only the most important archaeology site in modern-day Pakistan, but also one of the most important in the world. It is part of what I believe to be the oldest civilisation in the world – the Indus Valley culture – which covered an area over one million square miles at its height.
Walls recently found in Harappa are thought to be around 8,000 years old, placing the city as the oldest ever discovered anywhere on earth, and I am certain similar finds will show Mohenjo Daro to be of a similar age. Also, before what is termed the “Mature Harappan” (2600 – 1900 BC), finds have been attributed to stages termed the “Early Harappan” and the “Pre-Harappan”, taking dates back to the aceramic Neolithic period, 9,000 years ago (7000 BC).
Potential new finds, however, are looking extremely unlikely with the current state of affairs at the site. A huge reduction in visitor numbers, a lack of funds to protect the site and carry out further digs, and crumbling walls are some of the reasons to be immensely concerned. One of the most frustrating aspects is the fact the Indus script has never been deciphered, and yet buried within the walls of this huge city may be the clues that finally break the code of the Indus culture, and this would be the archaeological find of the millennium.
What you see in the images and the video of the article is only ten per cent of the entire site – the other ninety per cent of the city is still unexcavated.
Current dating places the city in the 3rd Millennium BC – around 4,600 years ago (2600 BC) – and the city contained a population of up to 40,000 people. To make a comparison, during this time Greece was still a land of warring tribes, two thousand years before they banded together to fight the Persian invasions; Rome never existed at all, and Britain was a country of farming communities who were about to embark on the building of the classic Stonehenge site. But it was during this time at Mojenjo Daro that sanitation channels, running water, water storage tanks, baths, engineered irrigation, and even toilets were already in existence. The reality of these dates is startling, for to have a large city of 40,000 inhabitants, with all of the technology it employed, it goes without saying this level of sophistication had evolved from a much earlier time period, clearly taking the culture rightfully back further in time.
Places like Mohenjo Daro and Harappa are as important as the pyramids of Egypt, and I think it is disgraceful that organisations like UNESCO are doing little to help with funding, or even basic protection of the site.
http://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/features/2016/12/pakistan-moenjodaro-crumbling-161219084641324.html