I think the lower med may be an important point. The egyptians had reasonable ships but do not have the navigational experience to undertake this voyage. For example, they knew of the Kheftiu (Minoans), but did not know their exact home, it was an asymmetric trade and had better ships (probably flax composite reinforced hulls) and critically the navigational tools to make such a journey. The highest concentration of surviving Minoan DNAin Europe is in Oxford. When you then look at Minoan spirals you can see a connection, e.g. the iconography on the new grange enterance stone. This same iconography and bee hive structures is a common theme on the islands in the med and potentially the ports outside the pillars of Hercules.
Kalash seem to have strikingly similar culture compared to Armenians living in Armenia. Their carving of eternal wheel can be seen in Armenian carvings dating back 5000 years ago.
Society is one meal away from a rebellion. I wonder if there was some manipulation to deliberately create a regime change. E.g. Buying up the supply of food to the Paris population would probably do it. This could have backfired on the instigators of such a scheme, they may have also found themselves on the big black block with a cheap and chippy chopper about to come down, or should that be the guillotine.
The thinking behind this is sound. It's not isolated to this site either, it's applicable to all historical sites. We could be missing something hugely important. Just because a site is repurposed by an elite as a burial chamber does not imply that this was there intended purpose from construction. There are Babylon sites that use that take in cold nighttime air to regulate temperature in the day (a natural refrigerator using no power, OK slightly different method). All these beehives tombs on the islands may have once been winter food storage chambers (it is a much better match). Completely dug in too, so raiders, don't get your Winter food. It's been overlooked just how important this is, the Egyptian had a 7 year food reserve when Thera erupted, with the proceeds they purchased huge amounts of land! Great article. It would be well worth considering the need for a society to store food for winter (we don't think of this today as food is abundant) but in ancients times you were one failed harvest away from perishing and your entire society collapsing (leading to raiding).
This is the problem with symbols. They mean different things to different people. We don't all see these symbols in the same way and we're fools if we say that a symbol is a "symbol of hate" without acknowledging that others don't necessarily see them that way. While many, of course, see the swastika as a symbol of "hate" and "nazis," for me it was the name of my college yearbook at New Mexico State University.
You really have got it all wrong about the origins of Merlin. The sword in the stone is an ancient story from Tuscany in Italy. the sword is still in the stone there at Montesiepi, the knight was Sir Galgano Chuidotti. The story was taken to England. However the real surprise is on the town register at the village of Chuidotti Galgano's birth place a few minutes away. There you will find recorded the name 'Merlini' a friend of the knight.
I don't think England ever claimed to have been the first to play what later became football or soccer, just the first ones to set the rules of the game we know it as now, and to establish it by forming teams, officials to adminster conduct and rules and leagues.
I'm at a loss, as to why a sentence such as 'This shocking, barbaric practice was illustrated very clearly in 2011' would be used in this article. The widespread practice of human sacrifice in the ancient world is neither shocking nor barbaric. These are terms that we can safely use in the 21st century. But to look at this practice with a knowledge of the ancient mindset, and some objectivity. The practice of human sacrifice. Especially that of children becomes something wonderful and full of meaning. Now I'm not saying we reinstate the practice. In the modern world we know better. But for communities living under the eye of capricious gods. Giving the most precious assets of your community as a gift to the gods, is something very special indeed. So I think we can do away with the writing style of tabloid so called newspapers, and be a little more enlightened in our approach to the people and cultures of the past.
Amazing! I can't see it being a ring or an earring. Let's assume it was whole, you could have sewn it to an item. THe section cutaway may have been for a payment, metal was the equivalent of cash.
Another futile attempt to claim that civilization came from Asia and Africa to Europe....when it originated in Old Europe-from the Danube river down south to the Aegean and Crete.
It is held as a consensus among historians that the peoples of the Inca Empire, unlike the Maya and Aztecs, had not developed a writing system. They had created recording devices based on knots in strings, the quipus, but these were more like systems to record quantities and numbers than writing systems in order to write stories and narrative down. So, how did the Spaniards burn their written records in 1532, as the text asserts? They certainly had quipu-based numerical records, but not their history and myths written in records.
Interesting claim that this St Mary's Church Youghal, dating to 1220 AD, is the largest surviving medieval Parish Church in Ireland. St Mary's Cathedral Limerick was founded in 1168 and is in daily use. It has the only complete set of misericords left in Ireland. Domnall Mór Ua Briain, the last King of Munster founded the present cathedral on the site of his palace that had been built on the site of the Viking "Thingmote". One thing both St Mary's have in common was that in 1651, after Oliver Cromwell's forces captured Limerick, the cathedral was used as a stable by the parliamentary army.
Ashley, if you take this literally that the muses were the daughters of Zeus. Making the bold assumption that Zeus was born and died on Crete, then he is Minoan (probably a Wanax). There may be some association that the Wanax is the embodiment of Apollo. The Minoans have four deities and they represent directions. Gaia (Earth Mother) North, her son Apollo (the Sun) South, consort Venus East, Apollo's Twin (Artemis the Moon) - West. They also represent times of day! Midnight, Midday. Sunrise and Sunset. They are the ones that organise! It's not magic, it's science. When the Sun rises, the land to the immediate East is heated up, surfaces winds are drawn towards the East at sunrise, at mid-day the southern land heats up more (same thing surface winds drawn towards the south), at sunset towards the West and at Midnight towards the North. This is a generalisation, but influences the Wind direction and can be seen if you study wind rose or daily wind patterns (I have). It was probably important to them for sailing.
They had prestress that were the embodiment of each diety. Note there are three female dieties and there were three fates! This is where many of the mythology comes from. Not sure where the nine comes from, but the reference to the underworld is referring to nine DOUBLE hours (18.00) - sunset at Autumn equinox (her time of year) ! The Earth is away from the Sun when the Moon comes out. It is the Prestiess of Artemis that are virgin maidens. Not sure, probably those that don't marry and stay in the sisterhood. All the prestress seem to have functions associated with their corresponding houses, but mostly they are civil servants that organise society, under the Wanax command (could be the embodiment of Apollo). They would not have known the twins as Apollo or Artemis but the Master and Mistress of Animals (potnia theron), domesticated and wild animals respectively. They had a minor deity called BRITOmartis, that was associated with fishing, which may be a reference to the Tin islands, she is sometimes shown small above Artemis in iconography. Long distance sea trade appears to be well established before the Thera eruption. This is the earliest reference to Britain I can find, it is well documented by the Phoenicians but was a well-kept secret.
This gets very jumbled up by the Greeks, that had had different names for the same diety in different regions, that then get certain attributes associated with them. The Mistress of Animals becoming Athena for example. But you can see the four on which they are based are preserved in the Greek Pathenon. How this got to Britain and Ireland I can't explain, but this also shows they may have had a similar belief system (that you can see in myth). By the way, the Minoans had ten figures that were responsible for the technical disciplines too.
A possible explanation is functions were appointing functions into Double hours (12 be day) and reported to one of the four houses. In this way you would get 9 reporting into one head priestess. The Egyptian used the double hour, I think Sumer did too. If Minoans did get this far north, they would have favored smaller defensible islands, they would have setup organisation (food storage for example) and traded with the main island from a smaller base and may explain the early neolithic structures on Manx and Scottish Islands. The Priestess would have probably been perceived as magicians, with potions and chants to cure, astronomy to tell time and could predict future events like eclipse, and organisation of society into functions, etc. The tech they had was well ahead of everyone (possibly eclipsing the Eygptians) for every material: stone, metal, leather, navigation etc. They wouldn't have stirred up the sea, it was more they preserved knowledge, they were fascinated by how things worked, they monitored winds and tides and current to see how they worked and changed by the time of day or season. They were almost certainly doing the same as the Sumerians and Egyptians were doing, but had a practical need to look at meteorology to support maritime trade and navigation between ports. Their peak sanctuaries were at high altitude to monitor shipping lands, coastal approaches, they set fires at night in cloudy skys to help sailors. It's very clever, it combines: science (astronomy, observation) with Art and commerce. The importance of nine is the clock position using double hours (WEST, sunset). Athena of the flashing eyes (that kept you safe when the sun went down by moonlight). The animals they would represent would be doves (Venus), owls (Mistress of Wild Animals), Snakes (Mother Earth - pointing to Thuban the snake, North), who wobbles backward due to precession in a great year - that they well understood - protected by Griffins (sometimes two Dragons in other culturers). The master of Animals, could be a Sun or a bull. Oh yeah all the animals in Irish mythology! I suspect all the islands were trading together before Thera errupted, they share the same iconography, structurers and similar beliefs and critically DNA.
Much as I hate to say it, I think this was a case of they just had no idea what the place was. Were there any signs or interpretive panels ? As a general rule youngster are not taught in school about ancient monuments, so they grow up with little or no knowledge about them. It also has to be remembered that it is only relatively recently that we have assigned value to a lot of our ancient past. Previous generations just cleared old stuff and built new.
" Alexander the Great conquered Egypt with a ‘mixed army of Macedonians and Greeks in 332 BC’, according to the Encyclopaedia Britannica ." WRONG!!! Alexander always proclaimed he conquered all terrotories on behalf of all Greeks except the Spartans who did not join his army!
Opps. If 10mm diameter (looks to be this) and 300mm length, then the weight would be 267 grams. This is 1/100th of a talent weight (around 30 kg, 27-33kgs were used depending on city state). This is an unusual fraction it would normally be divided by sixty, the only people I know divided in 1/100th were MInoan and this was for internal transaction, they used whatever units the host port used when trading. This is too later to be MInoan, may have been PHoenician that might have used similar weights to the MInoans, say exhanging this for tin from iberia and then exchanged for say amber or maybe flax in Ireland. Bullion being highly exchangable as it is today.
All inventions started as thoughts and ideas through the ages of man's civilization. The basis for such thoughts and ideas may never be known and they may be way ahead of their time but, that does not mean that they did not serve as an inspiration for some latter day scientist or inventor. The universe is so amazing that man will always dream dreams that make no sense now and which someone centuries later will say "Bah, humbug".
Here you can navigate quickly through all comments made in any article sorted by date/time.
I think the lower med may be an important point. The egyptians had reasonable ships but do not have the navigational experience to undertake this voyage. For example, they knew of the Kheftiu (Minoans), but did not know their exact home, it was an asymmetric trade and had better ships (probably flax composite reinforced hulls) and critically the navigational tools to make such a journey. The highest concentration of surviving Minoan DNAin Europe is in Oxford. When you then look at Minoan spirals you can see a connection, e.g. the iconography on the new grange enterance stone. This same iconography and bee hive structures is a common theme on the islands in the med and potentially the ports outside the pillars of Hercules.
Kalash seem to have strikingly similar culture compared to Armenians living in Armenia. Their carving of eternal wheel can be seen in Armenian carvings dating back 5000 years ago.
https://www.peopleofar.com/2012/01/14/the-six-pointed-star-of-armenia/
Society is one meal away from a rebellion. I wonder if there was some manipulation to deliberately create a regime change. E.g. Buying up the supply of food to the Paris population would probably do it. This could have backfired on the instigators of such a scheme, they may have also found themselves on the big black block with a cheap and chippy chopper about to come down, or should that be the guillotine.
The thinking behind this is sound. It's not isolated to this site either, it's applicable to all historical sites. We could be missing something hugely important. Just because a site is repurposed by an elite as a burial chamber does not imply that this was there intended purpose from construction. There are Babylon sites that use that take in cold nighttime air to regulate temperature in the day (a natural refrigerator using no power, OK slightly different method). All these beehives tombs on the islands may have once been winter food storage chambers (it is a much better match). Completely dug in too, so raiders, don't get your Winter food. It's been overlooked just how important this is, the Egyptian had a 7 year food reserve when Thera erupted, with the proceeds they purchased huge amounts of land! Great article. It would be well worth considering the need for a society to store food for winter (we don't think of this today as food is abundant) but in ancients times you were one failed harvest away from perishing and your entire society collapsing (leading to raiding).
This is the problem with symbols. They mean different things to different people. We don't all see these symbols in the same way and we're fools if we say that a symbol is a "symbol of hate" without acknowledging that others don't necessarily see them that way. While many, of course, see the swastika as a symbol of "hate" and "nazis," for me it was the name of my college yearbook at New Mexico State University.
You really have got it all wrong about the origins of Merlin. The sword in the stone is an ancient story from Tuscany in Italy. the sword is still in the stone there at Montesiepi, the knight was Sir Galgano Chuidotti. The story was taken to England. However the real surprise is on the town register at the village of Chuidotti Galgano's birth place a few minutes away. There you will find recorded the name 'Merlini' a friend of the knight.
thanks Ron Ritter
I don't think England ever claimed to have been the first to play what later became football or soccer, just the first ones to set the rules of the game we know it as now, and to establish it by forming teams, officials to adminster conduct and rules and leagues.
I'm at a loss, as to why a sentence such as 'This shocking, barbaric practice was illustrated very clearly in 2011' would be used in this article. The widespread practice of human sacrifice in the ancient world is neither shocking nor barbaric. These are terms that we can safely use in the 21st century. But to look at this practice with a knowledge of the ancient mindset, and some objectivity. The practice of human sacrifice. Especially that of children becomes something wonderful and full of meaning. Now I'm not saying we reinstate the practice. In the modern world we know better. But for communities living under the eye of capricious gods. Giving the most precious assets of your community as a gift to the gods, is something very special indeed. So I think we can do away with the writing style of tabloid so called newspapers, and be a little more enlightened in our approach to the people and cultures of the past.
Amazing! I can't see it being a ring or an earring. Let's assume it was whole, you could have sewn it to an item. THe section cutaway may have been for a payment, metal was the equivalent of cash.
Another futile attempt to claim that civilization came from Asia and Africa to Europe....when it originated in Old Europe-from the Danube river down south to the Aegean and Crete.
I remember buying celery 30 years ago that had Paris Green on it as an insecticide.
It is held as a consensus among historians that the peoples of the Inca Empire, unlike the Maya and Aztecs, had not developed a writing system. They had created recording devices based on knots in strings, the quipus, but these were more like systems to record quantities and numbers than writing systems in order to write stories and narrative down. So, how did the Spaniards burn their written records in 1532, as the text asserts? They certainly had quipu-based numerical records, but not their history and myths written in records.
Interesting claim that this St Mary's Church Youghal, dating to 1220 AD, is the largest surviving medieval Parish Church in Ireland. St Mary's Cathedral Limerick was founded in 1168 and is in daily use. It has the only complete set of misericords left in Ireland. Domnall Mór Ua Briain, the last King of Munster founded the present cathedral on the site of his palace that had been built on the site of the Viking "Thingmote". One thing both St Mary's have in common was that in 1651, after Oliver Cromwell's forces captured Limerick, the cathedral was used as a stable by the parliamentary army.
Ashley, if you take this literally that the muses were the daughters of Zeus. Making the bold assumption that Zeus was born and died on Crete, then he is Minoan (probably a Wanax). There may be some association that the Wanax is the embodiment of Apollo. The Minoans have four deities and they represent directions. Gaia (Earth Mother) North, her son Apollo (the Sun) South, consort Venus East, Apollo's Twin (Artemis the Moon) - West. They also represent times of day! Midnight, Midday. Sunrise and Sunset. They are the ones that organise! It's not magic, it's science. When the Sun rises, the land to the immediate East is heated up, surfaces winds are drawn towards the East at sunrise, at mid-day the southern land heats up more (same thing surface winds drawn towards the south), at sunset towards the West and at Midnight towards the North. This is a generalisation, but influences the Wind direction and can be seen if you study wind rose or daily wind patterns (I have). It was probably important to them for sailing.
They had prestress that were the embodiment of each diety. Note there are three female dieties and there were three fates! This is where many of the mythology comes from. Not sure where the nine comes from, but the reference to the underworld is referring to nine DOUBLE hours (18.00) - sunset at Autumn equinox (her time of year) ! The Earth is away from the Sun when the Moon comes out. It is the Prestiess of Artemis that are virgin maidens. Not sure, probably those that don't marry and stay in the sisterhood. All the prestress seem to have functions associated with their corresponding houses, but mostly they are civil servants that organise society, under the Wanax command (could be the embodiment of Apollo). They would not have known the twins as Apollo or Artemis but the Master and Mistress of Animals (potnia theron), domesticated and wild animals respectively. They had a minor deity called BRITOmartis, that was associated with fishing, which may be a reference to the Tin islands, she is sometimes shown small above Artemis in iconography. Long distance sea trade appears to be well established before the Thera eruption. This is the earliest reference to Britain I can find, it is well documented by the Phoenicians but was a well-kept secret.
This gets very jumbled up by the Greeks, that had had different names for the same diety in different regions, that then get certain attributes associated with them. The Mistress of Animals becoming Athena for example. But you can see the four on which they are based are preserved in the Greek Pathenon. How this got to Britain and Ireland I can't explain, but this also shows they may have had a similar belief system (that you can see in myth). By the way, the Minoans had ten figures that were responsible for the technical disciplines too.
A possible explanation is functions were appointing functions into Double hours (12 be day) and reported to one of the four houses. In this way you would get 9 reporting into one head priestess. The Egyptian used the double hour, I think Sumer did too. If Minoans did get this far north, they would have favored smaller defensible islands, they would have setup organisation (food storage for example) and traded with the main island from a smaller base and may explain the early neolithic structures on Manx and Scottish Islands. The Priestess would have probably been perceived as magicians, with potions and chants to cure, astronomy to tell time and could predict future events like eclipse, and organisation of society into functions, etc. The tech they had was well ahead of everyone (possibly eclipsing the Eygptians) for every material: stone, metal, leather, navigation etc. They wouldn't have stirred up the sea, it was more they preserved knowledge, they were fascinated by how things worked, they monitored winds and tides and current to see how they worked and changed by the time of day or season. They were almost certainly doing the same as the Sumerians and Egyptians were doing, but had a practical need to look at meteorology to support maritime trade and navigation between ports. Their peak sanctuaries were at high altitude to monitor shipping lands, coastal approaches, they set fires at night in cloudy skys to help sailors. It's very clever, it combines: science (astronomy, observation) with Art and commerce. The importance of nine is the clock position using double hours (WEST, sunset). Athena of the flashing eyes (that kept you safe when the sun went down by moonlight). The animals they would represent would be doves (Venus), owls (Mistress of Wild Animals), Snakes (Mother Earth - pointing to Thuban the snake, North), who wobbles backward due to precession in a great year - that they well understood - protected by Griffins (sometimes two Dragons in other culturers). The master of Animals, could be a Sun or a bull. Oh yeah all the animals in Irish mythology! I suspect all the islands were trading together before Thera errupted, they share the same iconography, structurers and similar beliefs and critically DNA.
Another excellent article with fantastic references. The scope of your interests are extraordinary
Much as I hate to say it, I think this was a case of they just had no idea what the place was. Were there any signs or interpretive panels ? As a general rule youngster are not taught in school about ancient monuments, so they grow up with little or no knowledge about them. It also has to be remembered that it is only relatively recently that we have assigned value to a lot of our ancient past. Previous generations just cleared old stuff and built new.
facts are only facts until proven otherwise ... i guess speculation is entertainment for some but for me the speculators are the entertainment!
" Alexander the Great conquered Egypt with a ‘mixed army of Macedonians and Greeks in 332 BC’, according to the Encyclopaedia Britannica ." WRONG!!! Alexander always proclaimed he conquered all terrotories on behalf of all Greeks except the Spartans who did not join his army!
Opps. If 10mm diameter (looks to be this) and 300mm length, then the weight would be 267 grams. This is 1/100th of a talent weight (around 30 kg, 27-33kgs were used depending on city state). This is an unusual fraction it would normally be divided by sixty, the only people I know divided in 1/100th were MInoan and this was for internal transaction, they used whatever units the host port used when trading. This is too later to be MInoan, may have been PHoenician that might have used similar weights to the MInoans, say exhanging this for tin from iberia and then exchanged for say amber or maybe flax in Ireland. Bullion being highly exchangable as it is today.
All inventions started as thoughts and ideas through the ages of man's civilization. The basis for such thoughts and ideas may never be known and they may be way ahead of their time but, that does not mean that they did not serve as an inspiration for some latter day scientist or inventor. The universe is so amazing that man will always dream dreams that make no sense now and which someone centuries later will say "Bah, humbug".
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