DNA taken from ancient European skeletons reveals that the genetic makeup of Europe mysteriously transformed about 4,500 years ago, new research suggests. Here, a skeleton, not used in the study, but from the same time period, that was excavated from a grave in Sweden.
The genetic lineage of Europe mysteriously transformed about 4,500 years ago, new research suggests.
The findings, detailed Tuesday in the journal Nature Communications, were drawn from several skeletons unearthed in central Europe that were up to 7,500 years old.
“What is intriguing is that the genetic markers of this first pan-European culture, which was clearly very successful, were then suddenly replaced around 4,500 years ago, and we don’t know why,” study co-author Alan Cooper of the University of Adelaide Australian Center for Ancient DNA said in a statement. “Something major happened, and the hunt is now on to find out what that was.”
The new study also confirms that people sweeping out from Turkey colonized Europe, likely as a part of the agricultural revolution, reaching Germany about 7,500 years ago.
For decades, researchers have wondered whether people, or just ideas, spread from the Middle East during the agricultural revolution that occurred after the Mesolithic period.
In response to assumptions that the Boston bombing suspects were of Arab or Middle Eastern descent (and the use of a lot of rude terms for people from that part of the world), brilliant Twitter account @YesYoureRacist pointed out that the suspects were the textbook definition of white guys:
So these guys, from the Caucasus, are Caucasian. Me, with my mixed Slavic and Baltic heritage, I’m also Caucasian. So are my friends whose families come from Italy, Ireland, Germany, and pretty much anywhere else in Europe. How did all these different white ethnic groups get lumped into “Caucasian?”
It goes back to German anthropologist Friedrich Blumenbach. In his work in the late 1700s and early 1800s, Blumenbach divided Homo sapiens into five distinct races based on their physical characteristics. There was the Mongolian, or “yellow,” race, the red American race, the brown Malayan race, the black Ethiopian race, and the white Caucasian race.
While he looked at a lot of physical traits to carve out his categories, Blumenbach thought characteristics of the skull—the size and angle of the forehead, jawbone, teeth, eye sockets, etc.—were especially important. He thought that the skulls of Georgians were exemplary of the characteristics of his white race and named the group after the Caucasus Mountain Range that runs along Georgia’s northern border.
All this makes Blumenbach sound like a forerunner of phrenology, and “scientific” attempts to justify discrimination, but while he categorized the races, Blumenbach didn’t put them in a hierarchy and protested any attempts to misuse his groupings to divide people or paint one group as inferior to another. “Blumenbach wrote forcefully of the kindredness of the human races…he opposed the stress on racial hierarchies of worth by more conservative colleagues in his own university and elsewhere in Europe,” historian Nell Irvin Painter writes. “Throughout his work, and especially in the definitive 1795 edition of De generis humani varietate nativa (On the Natural Variety of Mankind), Blumenbach rejected racial hierarchy and emphasized the unity of mankind.”
Blumenbach’s Caucasians weren’t even strictly white or European, as the term is commonly used today. He described this “variety” as “Colour white, cheeks rosy; hair brown or chestnut-colored; head subglobular; face oval, straight, its parts moderately defined, forehead smooth, nose narrow, slightly hooked, mouth small…To this first variety belong the inhabitants of Europe (except the Lapps and the remaining descendants of the Finns) and those of Eastern Asia, as far as the river Obi, the Caspian Sea and the Ganges; and lastly, those of Northern Africa.”
The synonymity of Caucasian and white, and the use of racial lines as discriminatory tools, came later and from other men. Painter specifically calls out “Dutch anatomist, Petrus Camper, whose ‘facial angles’ proves so useful to scientific racists’ so-called ‘Great Chain of Being’,” and his “racist elaborators (like Edward Tyson, Josiah Nott, G. R. Gliddon, and even Johann Caspar Lavater) [who] placed Negroes and Kalmucks as close to apes as to Europeans.”
Today “Caucasian” lacks any real scientific meaning (though its cousin “Caucasoid” is still used in some disciplines), but hangs on in common usage as a blanket term for white/European people.
“Europäid” (Caucasoid) types. :1. Nordic (Karl von Müller) :2. Dinaric (Tyrolian woman) :3. Mediterranean (Corsican) :4. Alpine (Heinrich Kiepert) :5. East Baltic (Volhynian woman) :6. Turk of Karahissar :7. Bedouin :8. Afghan (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
We stand today at an unprecedented turning point in human history. In recent years two versions of ancient history have formed. One, we shall call ‘alternative’ history, the other we shall refer to as ‘official’ history. The former ponders over a variety of anomalies and tries to make sense out of the corpus of evidence, i.e., the pyramids and timelines, why they were built, by whom and when. The latter conducts digs, catalogues pottery shards, and tries to defend its proposal there are no enigmas, and virtually everything is explained.
At one point perhaps as late as fifteen years ago these two camps seem to be engaged in an informal dialogue. That all changed after, 1) the Great Sphinx redating controversy caught Egyptologists off guard and, 2) the impact of Chris Dunn’s book The Giza Power Plant: Technologies of Ancient Egypt at the end of the last decade.
There is no more dialogue and no more polite, gloves on debate. The proponents of ‘official’ history have taken an increasingly political and ideological approach to the issue. They now do little more than offer pronouncements of the historical ‘truth’ on the one hand, and denounce of all those who dare challenge officialdom on the other. In this context we offer evidence that our ‘scholars’, the gatekeepers who control our institutions of ‘higher learning’, refuse to consider.
The Great Pyramid – Precision Engineering
This colossal structure, the last of the seven ancient wonders and the largest stone building in the world, still provokes awe, controversy and a plethora of theories that inspire bitter debate to this day. Instead of going over the well-established mysteries, we would like to shine new light on this important enigma that appears out of place in ‘Stone Age’ Egypt.
The real challenge the Great Pyramid still poses to us in the opening decade of the Third Millennium is the physical plant itself. Theorists have gone on endlessly speculating about how it was built and the metaphysical, cultural and religious significance and/or symbolism behind its construction. Though several authors have offered tantalising possibilities, none have been conclusively proven.
The mystery remains unsolved.
To begin with, the massive size – the staggering volume and weight of the building blocks – remain problematic. With an estimated 2.3 million blocks with a weight of about 4 million tons, the pyramid is two-thirds the mass of the Hoover Dam. The sheer size and the numbers of blocks that had to be quarried and moved into place, presents numerous architectural, construction and engineering headaches.
These issues have been raised time and again, yet are still unsettled. It is time to move on and define the even more difficult issues. We consider the core ‘hard’ problems to be those that reflect precision engineering and assembly line manufacturing accomplished on a massive scale. The primitive tools scenario concocted by Egyptologists does not explain the following tasks:
1. Creating precision-cut casing blocks weighing 16 tons, fitted together and held by a super-glue mortar that maintained a tight seal forming a nearly seamless shell.
2. Leveling the 13-acre limestone bedrock base to a degree of accuracy only recently achieved with laser technology.
3. Squaring the base to True North with minimal deviation.
4. Excavating the ‘Descending Passage’ 350 feet into solid bedrock at a 26-degree angle while keeping the tunnel arrow-straight for its length.
5. Bringing the massive 48-story pyramid together around complex internal structures, retaining the true shape to enable the builders to form the apex. (These internal structures include four enigmatic ventilation shafts and a coffer in the King’s Chamber that is too large to have been moved through the opening. It shows evidence of having been cut with a jewel-tip saw.)
6. Extensive usage of different types of machined granite inside the Great Pyramid chambers.
The father of modern Egyptology, Sir Flinders Petrie, marvelled at the precision and size of the casing blocks. He carefully measure the blocks and found that “the mean thickness of the joints are .020 and therefore, the mean variation of the cutting of the stone from a straight line and from a true square, is but .01 on length of 75 inches up the face, an amount of accuracy equal to most modern opticians’ straight-edges of such a length.”
The modern international engineering firm of Daniel, Mann, Johnson & Menendhall conducted a forensic analysis of the Great Pyramid. Their findings are evaluated in an article published in Civil Engineering.
The pyramid was oriented with its major sides either north-south or east-west. This in itself was a remarkable undertaking, given the accuracy to which it was done, because the Egyptians had to perform the work using astronomical or solar observations – the compass had not yet been invented. The dimensions of the pyramid are extremely accurate and the site was levelled within a fraction of an inch over the entire base. This is comparable to the accuracy possible with modern construction methods and laser levelling.1
The summary speaks volumes between the lines. The problems with the Descending Passage are numerous. For starters the tunnel is less than 4 x 4 feet, enough for no more than one excavator wielding a hammer-stone at any given moment. How would our proposed digging crew negotiate the space in the suffocating darkness once they had dug down 50 feet and more? In addition how would the 26-degree angle be set and maintained without lights or levels? The lack of carbon deposits on walls and ceiling indicate that torches were not used.
Once again, Petrie measured the passage and found an amazing accuracy of .020 of an inch over 150 feet and a mere .250 inch over 350 feet of its constructed and excavated length. We submit that this passage with its smooth surfaces, squared shape, and accurate angle could not have been tunnelled with primitive tools and methods.
The Great Pyramid remains the world’s greatest wonder and ancient enigma. We suggest researchers should pay more attention to these details and ask about the materials used inside the Great Pyramid, especially near the ventilation shafts. We now have two doors blocking a very important shaft, the one that pointed to the star Sirius in 2450 BCE.
The Origin Of Dogs – Biogenetic engineering
Now we turn to a mystery that nearly equals the pyramid, though it is a little known conundrum hidden in the mists of remote antiquity. Let us start with a simple question that appears to have an obvious answer: what is a dog? It turns out geneticists in the past decade have shown the answer is not so obvious. In fact, generations of anthropologists, archaeologists and wildlife biologists turned out to be dead wrong when it came to the origins of “man’s best friend”.
Prior to DNA studies conducted in the 1990s, the generally accepted theory posited that dogs branched off from a variety of wild canids, i.e., coyotes, hyenas, jackals, wolves and so on, about 15,000 years ago. The results of the first comprehensive DNA study shocked the scholarly community. The study found that all dog breeds can be traced back to wolves and not other canids. The second part of the finding was even more unexpected – the branching off occurred from 40-150,000 years ago.
Why do these findings pose a problem? We have to answer that question with another question: how were dogs bred from wolves? This is not just difficult to explain, it is impossible. Do not be fooled by the pseudo-explanations put forth by science writers that state our Stone Age ancestors befriended wolves and somehow (the procedure is never articulated) managed to breed the first mutant wolf, the mother of all dogs. Sorry, we like dogs too, but that is what a dog is.
The problems come at the crucial stage of taking a male and female wolf and getting them to produce a subspecies (assuming you could tame and interact with them at all). Let us take this one step further by returning to our original question, what is a dog? A dog is a mutated wolf that only has those characteristics of the wild parent, which humans find companionable and useful. That is an amazing fact.
Think about those statements for a moment. If you are thinking that dogs evolved naturally from wolves, that is not an option. No scientist believes that because the stringent wolf pecking order and breeding rituals would never allow a mutant to survive, at least that is one strong argument against natural evolution.
Now, if our Paleolithic ancestors could have pulled off this feat, and the actual challenges posed by the process are far more taxing, then wolf/dog breeders today certainly should have no problem duplicating it. But like the Great Pyramid, that does not seem to be the case. No breeders have stepped up to the plate claiming they can take two pure wolves and produce a dog sans biogenetic engineering techniques.
The evolution of the domesticated dog from a wild pack animal appears to be a miracle! It should not have happened. This is another unexplained enigma.
Mohenjo Daro – Civil Engineering
Since indoor plumbing did not arrive in modern societies to any extent until the 20th century, and urban planning has still not been adopted much to this date in history, what we find in the ancient city of Mohenjo Daro is anomalous indeed.
This city in the Indus Valley was built on a grid system about 4,500 years ago, obviously planned out and drawn up before the first brick was laid. It had houses, some with indoor plumbing, a granary, baths, an assembly hall and towers all made out of standard size bricks. The streets were about eight to ten feet wide on average, and were built with well-engineered drainage channels.
Mohenjo Daro was divided into two parts; the Citadel was on the upper level and included an elaborate tank called the Great Bath that was made of fine quality brickwork and drains. The Great Bath was 40 feet long and 8 feet deep, a huge public facility by any standards. A giant granary, a large residential building, and several assembly halls were also on this upper level.
The Great Bath was made watertight by the use of two layers of brick, lime-cement and then finally sealed with bitumen (tar). The bath included a shallow section for children.
We should wonder how an ancient culture of which nothing is known, not even their language, created this sophisticated city at a point in time many thousands of years ahead of the curve? Civil engineers do not crawl out of thatched-roof huts able to draw up plans for a complex urban environment. We need to address the following question to archaeologists and historians:
1. Where are the cities that demonstrate the path of urban development, social and technical organisation, leading to Mohenjo Daro?
2. How do you explain the sudden emergence of a complex society when 99.99% of the rest of humanity were living primitively?
These issues cannot be brushed aside with some arrogant pretence that the questions have already been addressed and answered by digging up and labelling pottery shards and other artefacts. We have been and are being overly indulgent with our “soft sciences” regarding their cavalier assertions about having all the answers. In fact, they have very few, so why are they throwing stones at independent researchers from behind glass towers?
Extraordinarily little is known about the Indus Valley civilisation that once spanned nearly a thousand miles with other cities matching the description of Mohenjo Daro.
We file this under our list of great enigmas and challenge orthodox scholars to prove differently as with the first two of our mysteries.
We note that the Indus Valley civilisation was contemporary with the Great Pyramid. It is often said this was one of the first three civilisations, having a written script that has never been deciphered. Now we turn next to the mother of all civilisations, Sumer.
Sumeria – The Source Of Civilisation
Are we missing something or are our historians looking at our earliest civilisations through a strange and distorted lens? Like Egypt and the Indus Valley, the biblical ‘Land of Shinar’ – the birthplace of Abraham – was a brutally hot, largely barren, empty desert with a mighty river cutting a swath through it. Does this sound like the magnet that would attract late Stone Age tribes to hunker down and pull wonders out of a hat?
In fact, historians thought Shinar was a piece of biblical fiction until the mid-19th century, but now they know everything about it with complete certitude that we, the unwashed masses, dare not question. Nonetheless, we encourage readers to maintain an attitude of healthy skepticism and dare to question ‘official history’.
As is the case with the culture that built the cities of the Indus Valley, no one knows who the ancient Sumerians were or where they came from. They called themselves ‘the black-headed ones’ and spoke a strange language that was unrelated to the languages of the Semitic tribes in the region. Some linguists note a similarity between the Sumerian language and that of the Basques, another anomalous culture.
We find it curious that any primitive peoples would choose the rigours of a hostile desert environment to settle in and build a civilisation. Why not a gentle river in a forested mountain valley? Especially in light of the fact that Sumeria contained very few resources, no forests, no minerals, not even the rocks that were plentiful in Egypt.
How are we to explain the fact this mysterious culture managed to invent all of the core components of civilisation under such restrictive conditions? It occurs to us that a culture would need minerals like copper, gold, silver and tin immediately available to experiment with over the course of generations in order to create process metallurgy. There is nothing simple or accidental about making the connection between raw ores, the metals they contain, and how to reduce them out of their native state using high heat.
Nevertheless, the Sumerians not only figured out geology, how to obtained the ore, knew the levels of heat needed and how to build kilns to achieve it, they also took very different metals and created the first alloy, bronze. As metal-smiths were performing these feats, other citizens were apparently creating the wheel, building cities, ziggurats, inventing writing, movable type, the ox-drawn plow, cereal crop agriculture, and advanced mathematics, to mention the most notable of their innovations.
Something is wrong with this picture. Most human beings were counting using their fingers, if at all, hunting animals and gathering plants for their meals. Yet, we find the Sumerians in classrooms learning the principles of the sexigesimal math system. Yes, the very same 60-base system we use today to keep track of hours, minutes and seconds. This advanced system was the first to reveal that a circle has 360 degrees and can be subdivided using 60, 30, 15, 12, etc., all fractions of the root number.
Teotihuacán, in Mexico, is an immense, even overwhelming archaeological site, oriented along a twin axis. In the 1960s a team of archaeologists and surveyors mapped out the entire complex in great detail. The resultant map revealed an urban grid centred around two principal, almost perpendicular, alignments.
From the Pyramid of the Moon at the north end, the complex extends south along the Avenue of the Dead beyond the Ciudadela and Great Compound complexes for about 3.2 kilometres. To this north-south axis we must add an east-west alignment that led from a point near the Pyramid of the Sun to a spot of prime astronomical significance on the western horizon.
Anthony Aveni, an astronomer-anthropologist, discovered that on the day the Sun passes directly overhead in the spring of the Northern Hemisphere (May 18), the Pleiades star cluster makes its first annual predawn appearance. It was at this point on the western horizon that the Pleiades set, and the builders aimed the east-west axis.
Additionally, the Sun also sets at this point on the horizon on August 12 – the anniversary of the beginning of the current Mesoamerican calendar cycle (5th Sun) – determined by a consensus of academic and independent scholars to have begun on August 12, 3114 BCE.
It is very clear Teotihuacán was laid out according to a set of alignments that reflected celestial, geographic, as well as geodetic relationships. Walking along the avenue from one pyramid to another, up the steps to the top, and surveying the site from a multitude of angles, one is struck by the sense of being in the middle of some vast geometric matrix.
Teotihuacán was the first true urban centre in the Americas. At its peak around 500 CE, it boasted a population of an estimated 200,000. George E. Stuart, archaeologist and the editor of National Geographic magazine sums up our ignorance:
We speak of it with awe, as we do the pyramids of Egypt, but we still know next to nothing about the origins of the Teotihuacános, what language they spoke, how their society was organised, and what caused their decline.2
As for one the most anomalous of artefacts on the planet, in the 1900s archaeologists discovered a sheet of mica in the upper tiers of the Pyramid of the Sun. This was no ho-hum pottery shard to catalogue and file away in a dusty box, yet that is about how archaeologists treated the find. To anyone with even a smattering of technical knowledge, discovering a large sheet of mica in an ancient pyramid site comes as a shock. In fact, it is one of the great ‘smoking guns’ that turn archaeologists mum.
Mica is an inflammable and non-conductive mineral that grows in fairly weak plate-like structures. It is not at all useful as a structural building material. NASA uses it as a radiation shield in space vehicles. Mica is also utilised in electronic components and microwave ovens, and it is a good shield for electromagnetic radiation, like radio waves. Like the Great Pyramid, the Pyramid of the Sun has a subterranean cavity under the middle of the pyramid. A large pyramid with layers of thick mica would be an excellent EMI shield.
Its placement in the complex raises questions that we could only answer today after the development of electronic, atomic and space age technologies.
Thick sheets of mica were also found by archaeologists about 400 meters down the avenue from the Sun Pyramid, these precision-cut sheets were of considerable size: 27.5 meters square. They were located under a rock-slab floor of a complex now called “the Mica Temple”.
What possible reason could the builders have had for including a layer of mica in any structure? It was obviously not decorative. To add greatly to the growing mystery, the particular mica used was traced to Brazil. Now we are getting in deep. How would a supposedly indigenous “Stone Age” culture know that mica existed 3200 kilometres away in the jungles of Brazil? Not only that, how did they transport these large sheets over that long distance intact without wheeled vehicles? Surely not via relay teams on foot travelling overland! No large seagoing boats or ports have ever been found in ancient Mexico.
High Technology In Stone Age Peru
Lake Titicaca borders Bolivia and Peru in the Andes. The highest large lake in the world, there are many signs it was once exposed to the ocean. Megalithic structures like the Gateway of the Sun in Tiahuanacu, Bolivia, also indicate a long lost past. The gateway was carved out of one solid block, the hard way to make a gate.
Moving northward near Cuzco, Peru, we find even more large, impressive and mysterious structures. Here we find walls built with complex jigsaw type megalithic blocks similar to the more familiar walls found at nearby Machu Picchu. Some of the megalithic structures contain complex cut-rocks weighing over 100 tons; a few were joined together by bronze clamps. Some of the bronze had obviously been poured in place, a skill not available in pre-Columbian Peru.
Like Sumer, the high Andes is an unlikely location for Stone Age cities, evidence of advanced technologies, and seminal agricultural discoveries. It is well established that the region around Tiahuanco, at 12,500 feet elevation, had been turned into a highly productive agricultural zone. That was achieved by the building of dikes, dams, canals and raised beds that created microclimates which protected the plants from frost.
We have attempted to show our planet is full of ancient wonders and mysteries that have yet to be solved. You can find more information as well as our theories on who and what created these enigmas in our books, The Genesis Race (by Will Hart) and Ancient Gods and Their Mysteries: Will They Return in 2012 AD? (by Robert Berringer).
Will Hart is a journalist, photographer, and filmmaker who has investigated ancient mysteries and evidence of extraterrestrial intervention on Earth since 1969. His first book The Genesis Race: Our Extraterrestrial DNA and the True Origins of the Species is the outcome of three decades of research. Robert Berringer is the author of Ancient Gods and Their Mysteries: Will They Return in 2012 AD? which is distributed by Book Clearing House www.bookch.com and available from www.CloudriderBooks.com. He can be contacted at rtberringer@netzero.com.
With long arms, high shoulder blades and powerful fingers, the ancient creatures were built for climbing trees. But they also had long lower limbs, flat feet and a flexible lumbar spine that gave them a distinct evolutionary edge: They could cover long distances by walking upright on two legs.
After four years of intense analysis, a team of paleoanthropologists is making its most detailed case yet that a pair of ancient skeletons discovered in a grassy South African valley could represent the direct evolutionary link between modern humans and the family of human ancestors that includes the Australopithecus known as Lucy.
In a series of six papers published in Friday’s edition of the journal Science, the researchers argue that the “mosaic nature” of the Australopithecus sediba specimens makes them a strong candidate to be the “missing link” — the branch of Australopithecus that ultimately gave rise to the genus Homo, which includes Homo sapiens.
The skeleton fossils have so many human-like features “across the whole of the body that it must be considered, at the very least, a possible ancestor,” said Lee R. Berger, a paleoanthropologist at the University of Witwatersrand in Johannesburg, South Africa, who discovered the fossils in 2008. Berger was senior author of all the new studies.
But not everyone accepts this view. Critics say the skeletons are not old enough to be the precursors to Homo. Others say the similarities can be chalked up to the diversity of early hominids, but that certain aspects of A. sediba’s anatomy make it an unlikely candidate for being our forebear.
Rangers patrolling the Way Kambas National Park (TNWK) in Lampung claim to have sighted dozens of pygmies in a number of areas across the park.
According to them, the pygmies sport dreadlocks, measure no more than 50 centimeters tall and do not wear any clothing.
“A number of rangers claim the pygmies grow their dreadlocks down to their waist. The first sighting by the rangers was on March 17 at 6:40 p.m. local time,” said TNWK spokesman Sukatmoko.
He added that several rangers patrolling the park claimed the pygmies were seen moving to the PT Nusantara Tropical Fruit (NTF) plantation. They were seen running from the TNWK forest to the plantation.
“Apparently, many fruit trees, such as banana, guava and dragon fruit, are grown in the NTF plantation area. If the pygmies like fruit, they might have entered the plantation for food,” said Sukatmoko.
I like this video because it shows in a few minutes some of the weirdest things going on in the planet. Watch it and tell me you are not wondering what the heck is going on.
Do you wonder sometimes if something else that we don’t grasp yet is at play in this reality ?
And, it is produced by Christians and most of the info is from the mass media.
If anything, it gives you a glimpse of what people are thinking.
With large eyes staring out behind his brilliantly painted face this young child is a proud member of one of east Africa’s most fascinating tribal groups.
His face decorated with coloured clay and a crown of greenery topping his little head, the youngster belongs to one of the tribes living in the remote Omo Valley, tucked away beyond the towns and cities of modern life.
This incredible set of pictures allows a glimpse into the lost world of the Omo tribes, who live peacefully and close to nature in one of the most far flung, yet beautiful parts of the world.
Proud: With his painted face and crown of greenery this child is a proud member of one of the tribes who call the Omo Valley in Ethipia home
Camouflaged: A group of children disguise themselves with vegetation for a hunting trip near their African home
Sharp shooter: A young boy plays with a wooden gun. Although the tribes’ rustic lifestyles are far removed from modern towns and cities influences have crept in
Ritual: The tribes people’s way of life is largely untouched by modernity
Intricate: This young child is shown with intricate face paint, a bright red flower in his mouth and strings of hand-strung beads
The tribes people’s way of life is largely untainted by modern life, although the extent to which some of the bleaker elements of civilisation are creeping into their world is apparent in another photograph in which a young boy, his body and face decorated with clay paint poses proudly with a toy gun made of wood.
The incredible photographs which capture the way of life for the 200,000 tribal people who call the lower Omo Valley home were taken by photographer Hans Silvester and have been published in a new book: ‘Natural Fashion: Tribal Decoration from Africa’, published by Thames and Hudson.
The book highlights the ways of the Omo tribes who live close to nature with their painted faces, scarified bodies and extravagant headdresses with plants and feathers cleverly combined.
Incredible: The photographs have been published in a new book: ‘Natural Fashion: Tribal Decoration from Africa’, published by Thames and Hudson
Illustrated: The book highlights the ways of the Omo tribes who live close to nature with their painted faces, scarified bodies and extravagant headdresses with plants and feathers cleverly combined
Intricate: Some of the tribes people decorate their faces and bodies with coloured clay as often as three times a day
A flower in your hair: This youngster sports a floral headdress and a brightly painted face and body
Traditional: A woman with her face painted in white circles wears a crown of dried corn and a mouth plate
Their painted bodies and intricate headdresses combine as what photographer Mr Silvester described as ‘a kind of coquetry, seduction, pride and celebration’.
Many of the indigenous people living in the valley decorate their faces and bodies with coloured clay as many as three times a day.
The Omo Valley is renowned as being one of the most unique places on earth because of the wide variety of people and animals that inhabit it.
Located in Africa’s Great Rift Valley, the region is known for its culture and diversity.
Famous: The Omo Valley is renowned as being one of the most unique places on earth because of the wide variety of people and animals that inhabit it
Decorative: The tribe members often fashion their beautiful headdresses out of flowers
Celebration: Photographer Hans Silvestre described the paint and head dresses worn by his subjects as a ‘kind of coquetry, seduction, pride and celebration’
At play: These two children both wear headdresses and clothing made from plants, as well as having their bodies painted
The tribes that live in the lower Omo Valley are believed to be among the most fascinating on the continent of Africa and around the world.
Among the numerous different tribes are Arbore, Ari, Bena, Bodi, Bumi, Daasanech, Dorze, Hamer, Kara, Konso, Kwegu, Mursi, Tsemay, and Turkana people.
Tours are offered of the region, which is so remote that it does not even show up on GPS devices.
Climbing high: A young boy, his face decorated with a large red cross and naked apart from his grassy headdress climbs a tree
Hidden: A youngster clings to a tree in the region which is so remote it can not even be found on a GPS device
Standing proud: On older member of one tribe forgoes body paint in favour of an animal skin to cover his head
Tribal: This man wears a traditional mouth plate with his straw-covered beaded headdress
Secret: Despite his painted body this man manages to blend in amongst the Ethiopian vegetation
Balancing act: A young child balances a branch laden with seed pods
Taking the plunge: A child takes a dip in the waters of the Omo river
Two of a kind: Two children from one of the Omo tribes which populate the remote Omo Valley in Ethiopia
Six percent of Americans believe in unicorns. Thirty-six percent believe in UFOs. A whopping 24 percent believe dinosaurs and man hung out together. Eighteen percent still believe the sun revolves around the Earth. Nearly 30 percent believe cloud computing involves… actual clouds. A shockingly sad 18 percent, to this very day, believe the president is a Muslim. Aren’t they cute? And Floridian?
How it all really happened. Obviously.
Do you believe in angels? Forty-five percent of Americans do. In fact, roughly 48 percent – Republicans and Democrats alike – believe in some form of creationism. A hilariously large percent of terrified right-wingers are convinced Obama is soon going to take away all their guns, so when the Newtown shooting happened and 20 young children were massacred due to America’s fetish for, obsession with and addiction to firearms, violence and fear, they bought more bullets. Because obviously.
In sum and all averaged out, it’s safe to say about 37 percent of Americans are just are not very bright. Or rather, quite shockingly dumb. Perhaps beyond reach. Perhaps beyond hope or redemption. Perhaps beyond caring about anything they have to say in the public sphere ever again. Sorry, Kansas.
Did you frown at that last paragraph? Was it a terribly elitist and unkind thing to say? Sort of. Probably. But I’m not sure it matters, because none of those people are reading this column right now, or any column for that matter, because reading anything even remotely complex or analytical is something only 42 percent of the population enjoy doing on a regular basis, which is why most TV shows, all reality shows, many major media blogs and all of Fox News is scripted for a 5th-grade education/attention span. OMG LOL kittens! 19 babies having a worse day than you. WTF is up with Justin Timberlake’s hair?!?
It is this bizarre, circular, catch-22 kind of question, asked almost exclusively by intellectual liberals because intellectual conservatives don’t actually exist, given how higher education leads to more developed critical thinking (you already know the vast majority of university professors and scientists identify as Democrat/progressive, right?) which leads straight to a more nimble, open-minded perspective. In short: The smarter you are, the less rigid/more liberal you become.
Until you get old. Or rich. And scared. And you forget. And you clamp down, seize up, fossilize. And the GOP grabs you like a mold.
Oh right! The question: How to reach the not-very-bright hordes, when they simply refuse to be reached by logic, fact, or modern mode? How to communicate obvious and vital truths (conservation, global warming, public health, sexuality, basic nutrition, religion as parable/myth, the general awfulness of Mumford & Sons) the lack of understanding of which keep the country straggling and embarrassing, the laughingstock of the civilized world?
And who are these people, exactly? And are they all really in Kentucky and Florida and Mississippi? Are they all in the Tea Party? Is failing education to blame? A dumbed-down media? Reality TV? In the wealthiest and most egomaniacal superpower in the world, why is the chasm so wide?
There is no easy answer, but there is a great deal of irony. It is a wicked conundrum that you and I can debate the definition of elitism, whether or not it’s fair to criticize those who believe that, say, gay marriage means kids will be indoctrinated into homosexuality, or that evolution is still a theory, or that Jesus literally flew up out of a cave and into the sky, when the discussion itself is, by nature, elitist, exclusionary, requiring fluid, abstract thinking the very people we’re discussing simply do not possess, and therefore cannot participate in.
Discussion of elitism is elitist. Intelligence can talk itself blue about what to do about all the dumb; the dumb will never hear it.
It’s a fact even recognized by Louisiana’s own Gov. Bobby Jindal, who had the nerve to defy his own state’s (and his own party’s) famously low IQ by saying, after the last election, “The GOP must stop being the stupid party. It’s time for a new Republican Party that talks like adults.”
Of course he’s right. But where would that leave their base? And who will tell the megachurches? And does Jindal not know Louisiana is where they teach that the existence of the Loch Ness monster is evidence that evolution is a lie?
Brings to mind a stunning study about facts and truths. Have you ever heard it? It goes something like: Here is hard evidence, scientific evidence, irrefutable proof that something is or is not true. Here is dinosaur bone, for example, which we know beyond a doubt is between 60 and 70 million years old. Amazing! Obviously!
But then comes the impossible snag: If you are hard-coded to believe otherwise, if your TV network or your ideology, your pastor or your lack of education tell you differently, you will still not believe it. No matter what. No matter how many facts, figures, common senses slap you upside the obvious. You will think there is conspiracy, collusion, trickery afoot. The Bible says that bone is only eight thousand years old. Science is elitist. Liberals hate God. The end.
It is not enough to say people believe what they want to believe. They will also believe it in the face of irrefutable counter-evidence and millennia of fundamental proof.
This! This is what stuns and stupefies liberals and progressives of every intellectual stripe. We cannot understand. We cannot compute. We think, “Well, if more people just had the facts, just heard a reasonable and cogent argument or read up on the real science, surely they would change their minds? Surely they would see the error in their thinking?”
Oh, liberals. All those smarts, and still so naïve.
Here is the body of Jesus! We found it! In a cave in a hole deep in an iron-gated alcove beneath the Vatican! Turns out he is not the Messiah after all! Turns out – look at those tribal tattoos! Those mala beads! That blond hair! – he’s a wild non-dualist guru from parts unknown. Christianity is a total fabrication! Always has been, always will be.
Here is hard evidence coupled with an ocean of common sense that more guns equal only more violence and death! Stat after stat, mass shooting after mass shooting proving we have it all wrong about protection and fear. Also! At least 2,605 people have died by gun violence in America since the Newtown shooting. Can we ban them now? No?
Here is overwhelming evidence that global warming is ravaging us like a furious god, and not only are we complicit, not only have we blindly raced forth into the abyss, we are, if all goes according to current trends and speeds and attitudes, totally f–king doomed.
Mark Morford’s new book, ‘The Daring Spectacle: Adventures in Deviant Journalism,’ is now available at daringspectacle.com, Amazon, BN.com, and beyond. Join Mark on Facebook and Twitter, or email him. His website is markmorford.com. Mark’s column appears every Wednesday on SFGate.
Belsebuub & Angel Pritchard, Guest Writers Waking Times
Some of the most famous ancient megalithic sites in the world align to the summer solstice – in numerous different cultures: Egyptian, Pagan, Mayan, Essene, Buddhist, Native American, and Easter Islander. Below are some examples. There are others, but there may be many more that have not yet been discovered.
Sites such as the Great Pyramids and Easter Island, are speculated to be some of the most ancient in the known world, and to have links to the civilizations of Atlantis and possibly Lemuria. Others trace their lineage back to the original spiritual knowledge of the Mayans and ancient peoples of Britain.
These sites indicate the existence of an ancient cosmic spirituality, sometimes referred to as ancient solar religions – some highly advanced in their technology and understanding of the cosmos.
The summer solstice sun setting between the two Great Pyramids of Egypt, crowning the Sphinx in the foreground.
The Great Pyramids ~ Egypt
At the Great Pyramids of Egypt, when standing at the Sphinx, the sun on the summer solstice sets precisely between the two largest of the Great Pyramids. The sun’s descent between the two pyramids seems to enact the moment of creation where the sun emerged from between two mounds, but in reverse, perhaps signifying the return of the sun to the source of creation.
The Osirieon ~ Egypt
The temple of Osireion at Abydos in Egypt. It shares many architectural similarities with the Valley Temple beside the Sphinx, as well as a connection to the deity Anubis as head of the underworld in alignment with the sun and constellation of Leo. (photo copyright wiki user RsAzevedo 2008)
There is an incredibly mysterious temple at the ancient site of Abydos in Egypt. For thousands of years Abydos was believed to be the final resting place of the Egyptian god Osiris. Then in 1902 AD the Osireion temple was unearthed, which many believe, could have been the tomb of Osiris.
The Osireion shares incredible similarities with the Valley Temple that lies next to the Sphinx. Both the Valley Temple and Osireion are made out of huge unadorned granite blocks, which also look very similar to Stonehenge, and share the same construction methods and a number of mathematical characteristics (for example, both feature the number 17). The Valley Temple was built at the same time as the Sphinx, and its similarities with the Osireion seem to indicate that the Osireion may too have been built by the builders of the Sphinx.
The Osireion is dated to between 6,000 – 3,100 BC, although it is possibly much older. It had been unearthed at least once before when the Pharaoh Seti I uncovered it during the construction of his temple in around 1,280 BC.
The Valley Temple located beside the Great Sphinx of Egypt. It shares remarkable similarities in building style with the Osireion, another ancient temple. Both are made out of huge unadorned granite blocks. (photo copyright Daniel Mayer 2008)
Like the Great Pyramids and Sphinx, the Osirieon has a summer solstice sunset alignment. On the summer solstice, the light of the setting sun shines through a nearby gap in the Libyan Hills, which intersects the Osirieon temple.
The temple was constructed near a natural spring, which was used to feed a pool of water inside the temple that forms a moat around its central part. Some believe this was intended to symbolize the mound that rose from the primeval waters at the beginning of creation in ancient Egyptian texts, whilst others draw similarities to the sacred pagan healing well springs of the ancient Britons.
Other mysterious aspects of the site include a flower of life symbol found inscribed on some of the pillars of the temple, believed to have been left there by Greeks possibly around 300 BC. Ancient hieroglyphs of what appear to be hovercraft, and various flying machines like helicopters, can be found in the temple of Seti I next door.
The Essene Monastery ~ Qumran, Egypt
The ruins of the Essene community at Qumran (photo copyright 2011 wiki user MotherForker)
Said to be the inheritors of the ancient initiatory knowledge of the esoteric schools of Egypt, the Essenes were a mystical Jewish group which followed a solar (rather than traditional Jewish lunar calendar) and like the sites of ancient Egypt, had a sacred place aligned to the summer solstice sunset.
The Essene community is believed to have existed between around 200 BC to the 1stcentury AD and lived together in various places in Palestine, Syria and Egypt. They are the authors of the Dead Sea Scrolls – a set of ancient mystical texts discovered in Qumran in Egypt in 1947 in the caves nearby one of their settlements.
The largest room of their stone communal building at Qumran is aligned so that the rays of the setting sun on the summer solstice illuminate the eastern wall where there are two altars. Two ancient historians had written that the Essenes worshiped the sun (just as the Egyptians did), and the discovery of this alignment along with their texts, now confirms this.
Additionally, a limestone sundial was discovered there, designed to measure the sun throughout the year rather than the day, and which could measure the solstices and equinoxes.
They appear to have been a solar religion, as many of the most ancient religions were – each morning they would begin their day with a prayer to the sun and they called themselves the Children of Light. It is believed that Jesus spent time with the Essenes who had been awaiting the arrival of a messiah, and the life of Jesus also follows the path of the sun.
Stonehenge ~ England
The summer solstice sunrise aligns with the avenue off the circle around Stonehenge. At sunrise the sun shines down the avenue into the center of the stone circle.
The giant megalithic stone circle of Stonehenge aligns most prominently to the summer solstice sunrise. On this day the sun rises over the Heel Stone outside the circle, and penetrates into its center to the altar stone.
A giant ancient avenue leading from Stonehenge to the nearby River Avon also aligns to the summer solstice sunrise. Another ancient stone circle called Bluehenge lies where this avenue and the river meet.
Yet another ancient site called Durrington Walls lies 2 miles north-east of Stonehenge. It contains a henge called the Southern Circle consisting of six concentric circles that would have been made out of large timber posts. The circle is aligned to the winter solstice sunrise, but like Stonehenge has a paved avenue leading to the River Avon and a post which acted as the Heel Stone, but aligned to the summer solstice sunset rather than sunrise.
It is possible that Stonehenge was part of a sacred landscape in which a number of sites were used ceremoniously during various celestial occasions, but it appears, particularly the summer solstice.
Tallaght Hill of the Fair Gods ~ Mount Seskin, Ireland
On Mount Seskin, the tallest of the Tallaght Hills (outside of the town of Tallaght) there are a number of ancient stone ruins including standing stones and passage cairns. The summer solstice sun rises in the distance, right beside the Lambay Volcano and reflects off a pool of water on the hill called Lin Oir, meaning golden pond.
The cave at Ajanta called number 26, which aligns to the summer solstice sunrise. As the sun rises, a beam of light penetrates this cave and illuminates the stupa and the statue of Buddha within. (photo copyright 2011 wiki user dola.das85)
The Ajanta Caves are an extraordinary group of around 30 manmade caves cut into the side of a sheer cliff face. The cliff is naturally U-shaped and was hidden in a remote part of the jungle. The caves are believed to have been built by Buddhist monks by carving into the cliff face – what they created were elaborate shrines and temples, all cut into one single giant rock.
Work is believed to have begun on the caves in around 200 BC and ended around 480 – 650 CE. The caves contained sculptures and artwork centered around the life of Buddha.
Two of the caves align to celestial events.
Cave 26 aligns to the summer solstice sunrise. It contains a statue of Buddha seated within a stupa, which is illuminated by the rays of the rising sun.
Cave 19 aligns to the winter solstice sunrise (more about this in the Ancient Sacred Sites Aligned to the Winter Solstice). It contains a state of Buddha standing within a stupa, which is also illuminated by the rays of the rising sun.
A stupa is a symbolic monument which it is said Buddha uses to ascend and descend. The stupas for the winter and summer solstice at the Ajanta Caves differ in their design, perhaps for a symbolic reason.
The creator god Amun being worshiped, seated with his feet raised above the level of the ground.
The summer solstice is a time of ascent. In the cave aligned to the summer solstice Buddha is seated with his feet on a pedestal. Perhaps this was symbolic of him no longer being on the earth – as ancient Egypt gods were sometimes portrayed standing upon pedestals to show their heavenly status.
Serpent Mound ~ Ohio, United States
The serpent mound in Ohio, whose head aligns with the summer solstice sunset. (photo copyright 2002 Timothy A. Price and Nicole I.)
The serpent mound is a giant earth work in the shape of a serpent made by an ancient people’s who once lived in the United States. The head of the serpent faces the summer solstice sunset.
The mound is around 1,370 feet (420 m) long. The serpent holds an oval in its mouth, has seven undulating coils along its body and the tip of its tail is coiled 3 times. Its coils point to the winter solstice sunrise and equinox sunrise. It is believed there was an altar inside the oval at the head, in which ceremonies could have been conducted whilst watching the summer solstice sunset.
Many believe, using carbon dating and studying artifacts surrounding the site, that it was built by the Native American Adena culture who were active between 1000 BC to 1 CE, and who commonly built mounds and used sacred circles, and was later refurbished by subsequent Native American cultures.
However, there exists another very similar site in a very different part of the world – Scotland. At a place called Loch Nell there is an ancient serpent mound, around 300 ft long, and which used to have a circle of stones which contained an altar at its head. It too faced west, although not to the summer solstice sunset but so that looking back east across its body, it had a special view of 3 mountain peaks. Someone who viewed the site in the mid 19th century before much of it was damaged and dismantled wrote:
A drawing published in 1883 of the Loch Nell serpent mound in Scotland. The altar in the stone circle at the head of the serpent is in the foreground, and the 3 mountain peaks in the background. The design of this particular serpent mound shares a number of similarities with the one in the United States.
“The mound was built in such a manner that the worshipper standing at the altar ‘would naturally look eastward, directly along the whole length of the Great Reptile, and across the dark lake, to the triple peaks of Ben Cruachan. This position must have been carefully selected, as from no other point are the three peaks visible.”
There are other serpent mounds in Scotland and Ireland. At least one dated to around 2000 BC used fire burnt stones, which were also apparently used in the building of the serpent mound in Ohio. The oval at the heads of these serpents may have represented the sun, thus forming the same symbol of a serpent with a sun disk on its head found throughout Egypt.
Could Ohio’s serpent mound be part of a lineage of people and knowledge that ran from Egypt, through ancient Britain and Europe, and is now barely traceable in North America?
Chaco Canyon ~ New Mexico, United States
The giant kiva in Chaco Canyon, whose window let in the light of the summer solstice sunrise. Kivas were sacred circular temples which had thatched ceilings. (photo copyright 1998 wiki user HJPD)
Located near the ruins of an ancient city of the Native American Pueblo people’s is the famous Sun Dagger. Found high up on the top of what is called the Fajada Butte, a giant volcanic outcrop, is a stone carving in a spiral. Stone slabs especially arranged around it direct the sunlight so that on the summer solstice, a dagger of sunlight pierces the center of the spiral. Daggers of sunlight over different parts of the spiral also mark the winter solstice and the equinoxes.
Down below the Casa Rinconada, which is one of the five great kivas (temple buildings) of the Chaco Canyon city, aligns to the summer solstice sunrise. As the sun rises, a beam of light shines through a lone window and moves across the room until it illuminates one of the five niches on the Western wall.
These 15 maoi statues, which includes the heaviest on Easter Island ever erected, stand facing the summer solstice sunset. (photo copyright 2006 Honey Hooper)
Ahu Tongariki ~ Easter Island
The Ahu Tongariki, is the largest ahu (or stone platform) on Easter Island. On its stone platform stand 15 maoi (giant stone statues). These 15 statues face the summer solstice sunset, watching it disappear over the ocean. One of the 15 statues is the heaviest ever erected on the island, weighing 86 tones.
The Pyramid of the Magician at Uxmal ~ Yucatán, Mexico
The Pyramid of the Magician at the Mayan city of Uxmal in Mexico. Its western staircase faces the summer solstice sunset. (photo copyright 2007 tato grass)
Uxmal is a Mayan city that dates to between 600 – 1000 CE. The city’s tallest structure is called The Pyramid of the Magician. The pyramid’s western staircase faces the setting sun on the summer solstice.
Building is believed to have first begun on this pyramid in around 600 CE. This first pyramid temple was successively built upon four times, meaning that the pyramid is now made of five layered temples in total. This was a common Mayan building practice, thought to capture and amplify the power of the underlying structure.
When the original temple was excavated it was found with a door lintel decorated with the face of the rain god Chaac, however it is not known whether this was added later.
Unfortunately human sacrifice and ritual bloodletting was practiced here, as it was in other Mayan cities. Perhaps the original culture did not practice these rites, but at this stage it is not possible to tell.
The Lost World Pyramid at Tikal ~ Guatemala
The Lost World Pyramid at Tikal. It started as a small platform before 700 BC that faced three structures aligned to the solstices and equinoxes. (photo copyright 2007 Dennis Jarvis)
At the ancient Mayan city called Tikal located in the dense jungles of Guatemala, there is evidence for the original spiritual and cosmic knowledge of the Mayans. The oldest part of Tikal is called the Lost World and consists of 38 structures. They are believed to have been set aside entirely for the observance of the cosmos, and are perhaps the oldest Mayan structures used for that purpose.
The main structure of the Lost World is a great pyramid, which was built in five successive layers over hundreds of years, just like the Mayan Pyramid of the Magician above. It began as a platform dating back to before 700 BC – the most ancient of any at Tikal. The platform faced east, looking over 3 other structures that aligned with the winter solstice, equinox, and summer solstice sunrise.
A similar grouping of structures, in which a pyramid is used as a viewing platform to see the sun rise on the winter solstice, equinoxes, and summer solstice over three temples, was also found in Guatemala at Uaxactun. The ancient Mayan name for this site however was Siaan K’aan which means “Born in Heaven”. Perhaps this could indicate that the Mayan Pyramid of the Magician above also started as a spiritual astronomical observatory, which was successively built on, and which degenerated into horrendous acts of sacrifice, as also happened at Tikal and other Mayan cities.
Wurdi Youang stone arrangement ~ Victoria, Australia
A diagram of the Wurdi Younag stone arrangement in Australia showing how it aligns to the solstices and equinoxes. (image copyright 2009 Ray P. Norris)
At Mount Rothwell in Australia, aboriginals built a stone ovid shaped arrangement around 50 meters in diameter. It aligns to the solstice and equinox sunsets, including the summer solstice sunset. It is unable to be dated – and could have been built anywhere between 25,000 years ago right up unto 1835.
What is so spiritually important about the summer solstice?
Today as a humanity we have such an incredible heritage of knowledge left by ancient peoples from all over the world who worked so hard to leave behind what they knew for future generations.
What they left are indicators of a deeper understanding of our place in the cosmos and an integration between the outer and inner worlds.
With our modern technology we have been able to ascertain a certain scientific understanding of the summer solstice, but as a day it passes just like any other. Whereas ancient peoples not only built structures around this date, but created ones that incorporated incredible spiritual symbols.
At the summer solstice the sun is at its greatest strength in its annual cycle, and it represents the apex of the sun’s journey throughout the year. And, as the cycle is completed, a new one begins.
In the solar religion the sun at the summer solstice represents the spiritual ascension, enlightenment and the return to oneness. It is the culmination of the individual’s journey to enlightenment that has been represented in the solstices and equinoxes of the year.
The solar religions formed the basis for many of today’s religions and share many common principles. The celebration of the summer solstice is the celebration not only of the life giving power of the physical sun, but is the celebration of the complete awakening of the spiritual son, symbolized by the physical sun.
The message of the solstices and equinoxes transcends both time and culture and forms a cosmic book for all who can read it.
~ By Belsebuub and Angela Pritchard
About the Author
Belsebuub is the author of a number of books on out-of-body experiences, dreams, self-knowledge, and esoteric wisdom including A Course in Astral Travel and Dreams, which became a bestseller in its genre. His book Gazing into the Eternal was finalist in the Best Book Awards 2009 in spirituality, and he has appeared on over 60 radio and television programs internationally.
Belsebuub is the name of his spirit/soul/consciousness, everyone has their own unique spiritual name, it’s a matter of knowing it. Please visit his excellent website, Belsebuub.com.
This article is offered under Creative Commons license. It’s okay to republish it anywhere as long as attribution bio is included and all links remain intact.
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