Showing posts with label Enigma. Show all posts
Who were the Vikings?
Vikings were warriors. More precisely ‘ Viking’ is the name by which the Scandinavian sea-borne raiders of the early medieval period are now commonly known.
Even before the earliest Viking raids on the monasteries, the Anglo-Saxons used an Old English word ‘wicing’. But this was not a word that they used often or exclusively for the Scandinavian raiders; instead it was used for all-comers and meant ‘pirate’ or ‘piracy’. It was only in the late tenth or early eleventh century, in Anglo-Saxon poems such as ‘The Battle of Maldon’ that wicing came to mean ‘a Scandinavian sea-raider’.Vikings were not professional privateers or full-time soldiers – or at least not at first. Originally they were full-time fishermen and farmers who spent much of the year at home. Only in the summer would they have rallied to the call of a local leader and ventured across the sea to raid, trade or seek out new lands to settle.
The Old Norse language spoken in Scandinavia used the word ‘vikingr’ in its vocabulary, but its origins are uncertain. The explanation currently favoured is that it originally meant ‘a seaman who came from the Vik district of Oslo fjord’ and then came to mean sea-borne warrior, firstly from that area and later from all over Scandinavia.
Tag :
Enigma
Do we have a god ?!
Just once wouldn't you love for someone to simply show you the evidence for God's existence? No arm-twisting. No statements of, "You just have to believe." Well, here is an attempt to candidly offer some of the reasons which suggest that God exists.
But first consider this. When it comes to the possibility of God's existence, the Bible says that there are people who have seen sufficient evidence, but they have suppressed the truth about God.1 On the other hand, for those who want to know God if he is there, he says, "You will seek me and find me; when you seek me with all your heart, I will be found by you."2 Before you look at the facts surrounding God's existence, ask yourself, If God does exist, would I want to know him? Here then, are some reasons to consider...
1. Does God exist? The complexity of our planet points to a deliberate Designer who not only created our universe, but sustains it today.
Many examples showing God's design could be given, possibly with no end. But here are a few:
The Earth...its size is perfect. The Earth's size and corresponding gravity holds a thin layer of mostly nitrogen and oxygen gases, only extending about 50 miles above the Earth's surface. If Earth were smaller, an atmosphere would be impossible, like the planet Mercury. If Earth were larger, its atmosphere would contain free hydrogen, like Jupiter.3 Earth is the only known planet equipped with an atmosphere of the right mixture of gases to sustain plant, animal and human life.
The Earth is located the right distance from the sun. Consider the temperature swings we encounter, roughly -30 degrees to +120 degrees. If the Earth were any further away from the sun, we would all freeze. Any closer and we would burn up. Even a fractional variance in the Earth's position to the sun would make life on Earth impossible. The Earth remains this perfect distance from the sun while it rotates around the sun at a speed of nearly 67,000 mph. It is also rotating on its axis, allowing the entire surface of the Earth to be properly warmed and cooled every day.
And our moon is the perfect size and distance from the Earth for its gravitational pull. The moon creates important ocean tides and movement so ocean waters do not stagnate, and yet our massive oceans are restrained from spilling over across the continents.4
Water...colorless, odorless and without taste, and yet no living thing can survive without it. Plants, animals and human beings consist mostly of water (about two-thirds of the human body is water). You'll see why the characteristics of water are uniquely suited to life:
It has an unusually high boiling point and freezing point. Water allows us to live in an environment of fluctuating temperature changes, while keeping our bodies a steady 98.6 degrees.
Water is a universal solvent. This property of water means that various chemicals, minerals and nutrients can be carried throughout our bodies and into the smallest blood vessels.5
Water is also chemically neutral. Without affecting the makeup of the substances it carries, water enables food, medicines and minerals to be absorbed and used by the body.
Water has a unique surface tension. Water in plants can therefore flow upward against gravity, bringing life-giving water and nutrients to the top of even the tallest trees.
Water freezes from the top down and floats, so fish can live in the winter.
Ninety-seven percent of the Earth's water is in the oceans. But on our Earth, there is a system designed which removes salt from the water and then distributes that water throughout the globe. Evaporation takes the ocean waters, leaving the salt, and forms clouds which are easily moved by the wind to disperse water over the land, for vegetation, animals and people. It is a system of purification and supply that sustains life on this planet, a system of recycled and reused water.6
The human brain...simultaneously processes an amazing amount of information. Your brain takes in all the colors and objects you see, the temperature around you, the pressure of your feet against the floor, the sounds around you, the dryness of your mouth, even the texture of your keyboard. Your brain holds and processes all your emotions, thoughts and memories. At the same time your brain keeps track of the ongoing functions of your body like your breathing pattern, eyelid movement, hunger and movement of the muscles in your hands.
The human brain processes more than a million messages a second.7 Your brain weighs the importance of all this data, filtering out the relatively unimportant. This screening function is what allows you to focus and operate effectively in your world. The brain functions differently than other organs. There is an intelligence to it, the ability to reason, to produce feelings, to dream and plan, to take action, and relate to other people.
The eye...can distinguish among seven million colors. It has automatic focusing and handles an astounding 1.5 million messages -- simultaneously.8 Evolution focuses on mutations and changes from and within existing organisms. Yet evolution alone does not fully explain the initial source of the eye or the brain -- the start of living organisms from nonliving matter.
2. Does God exist? The universe had a start - what caused it?
Scientists are convinced that our universe began with one enormous explosion of energy and light, which we now call the Big Bang. This was the singular start to everything that exists: the beginning of the universe, the start of space, and even the initial start of time itself.
Astrophysicist Robert Jastrow, a self-described agnostic, stated, "The seed of everything that has happened in the Universe was planted in that first instant; every star, every planet and every living creature in the Universe came into being as a result of events that were set in motion in the moment of the cosmic explosion...The Universe flashed into being, and we cannot find out what caused that to happen."9
Steven Weinberg, a Nobel laureate in Physics, said at the moment of this explosion, "the universe was about a hundred thousands million degrees Centigrade...and the universe was filled with light."10
The universe has not always existed. It had a start...what caused that? Scientists have no explanation for the sudden explosion of light and matter.
3. Does God exist? The universe operates by uniform laws of nature. Why does it?
Much of life may seem uncertain, but look at what we can count on day after day: gravity remains consistent, a hot cup of coffee left on a counter will get cold, the earth rotates in the same 24 hours, and the speed of light doesn't change -- on earth or in galaxies far from us.
How is it that we can identify laws of nature that never change? Why is the universe so orderly, so reliable?
"The greatest scientists have been struck by how strange this is. There is no logical necessity for a universe that obeys rules, let alone one that abides by the rules of mathematics. This astonishment springs from the recognition that the universe doesn't have to behave this way. It is easy to imagine a universe in which conditions change unpredictably from instant to instant, or even a universe in which things pop in and out of existence."11
Richard Feynman, a Nobel Prize winner for quantum electrodynamics, said, "Why nature is mathematical is a mystery...The fact that there are rules at all is a kind of miracle."12
4. Does God exist? The DNA code informs, programs a cell's behavior.
All instruction, all teaching, all training comes with intent. Someone who writes an instruction manual does so with purpose. Did you know that in every cell of our bodies there exists a very detailed instruction code, much like a miniature computer program? As you may know, a computer program is made up of ones and zeros, like this: 110010101011000. The way they are arranged tell the computer program what to do. The DNA code in each of our cells is very similar. It's made up of four chemicals that scientists abbreviate as A, T, G, and C. These are arranged in the human cell like this: CGTGTGACTCGCTCCTGAT and so on. There are three billion of these letters in every human cell!!
Well, just like you can program your phone to beep for specific reasons, DNA instructs the cell. DNA is a three-billion-lettered program telling the cell to act in a certain way. It is a full instruction manual.13
Why is this so amazing? One has to ask....how did this information program wind up in each human cell? These are not just chemicals. These are chemicals that instruct, that code in a very detailed way exactly how the person's body should develop.
Natural, biological causes are completely lacking as an explanation when programmed information is involved. You cannot find instruction, precise information like this, without someone intentionally constructing it.
5. Does God exist? We know God exists because he pursues us. He is constantly initiating and seeking for us to come to him.
I was an atheist at one time. And like many atheists, the issue of people believing in God bothered me greatly. What is it about atheists that we would spend so much time, attention, and energy refuting something that we don't believe even exists?! What causes us to do that? When I was an atheist, I attributed my intentions as caring for those poor, delusional people...to help them realize their hope was completely ill-founded. To be honest, I also had another motive. As I challenged those who believed in God, I was deeply curious to see if they could convince me otherwise. Part of my quest was to become free from the question of God. If I could conclusively prove to believers that they were wrong, then the issue is off the table, and I would be free to go about my life.
I didn't realize that the reason the topic of God weighed so heavily on my mind, was because God was pressing the issue. I have come to find out that God wants to be known. He created us with the intention that we would know him. He has surrounded us with evidence of himself and he keeps the question of his existence squarely before us. It was as if I couldn't escape thinking about the possibility of God. In fact, the day I chose to acknowledge God's existence, my prayer began with, "Ok, you win..." It might be that the underlying reason atheists are bothered by people believing in God is because God is actively pursuing them.
I am not the only one who has experienced this. Malcolm Muggeridge, socialist and philosophical author, wrote, "I had a notion that somehow, besides questing, I was being pursued." C.S. Lewis said he remembered, "...night after night, feeling whenever my mind lifted even for a second from my work, the steady, unrelenting approach of Him whom I so earnestly desired not to meet. I gave in, and admitted that God was God, and knelt and prayed: perhaps, that night, the most dejected and reluctant convert in all of England."
Lewis went on to write a book titled, "Surprised by Joy" as a result of knowing God. I too had no expectations other than rightfully admitting God's existence. Yet over the following several months, I became amazed by his love for me.
6. Does God exist? Unlike any other revelation of God, Jesus Christ is the clearest, most specific picture of God revealing himself to us.
Why Jesus? Look throughout the major world religions and you'll find that Buddha, Muhammad, Confucius and Moses all identified themselves as teachers or prophets. None of them ever claimed to be equal to God. Surprisingly, Jesus did. That is what sets Jesus apart from all the others. He said God exists and you're looking at him. Though he talked about his Father in heaven, it was not from the position of separation, but of very close union, unique to all humankind. Jesus said that anyone who had seen Him had seen the Father, anyone who believed in him, believed in the Father.
He said, "I am the light of the world, he who follows me will not walk in darkness, but will have the light of life."14 He claimed attributes belonging only to God: to be able to forgive people of their sin, free them from habits of sin, give people a more abundant life and give them eternal life in heaven. Unlike other teachers who focused people on their words, Jesus pointed people to himself. He did not say, "follow my words and you will find truth." He said, "I am the way, the truth, and the life, no one comes to the Father but through me."15
What proof did Jesus give for claiming to be divine? He did what people can't do. Jesus performed miracles. He healed people...blind, crippled, deaf, even raised a couple of people from the dead. He had power over objects...created food out of thin air, enough to feed crowds of several thousand people. He performed miracles over nature...walked on top of a lake, commanding a raging storm to stop for some friends. People everywhere followed Jesus, because he constantly met their needs, doing the miraculous. He said if you do not want to believe what I'm telling you, you should at least believe in me based on the miracles you're seeing.16
Jesus Christ showed God to be gentle, loving, aware of our self-centeredness and shortcomings, yet deeply wanting a relationship with us. Jesus revealed that although God views us as sinners, worthy of his punishment, his love for us ruled and God came up with a different plan. God himself took on the form of man and accepted the punishment for our sin on our behalf. Sounds ludicrous? Perhaps, but many loving fathers would gladly trade places with their child in a cancer ward if they could. The Bible says that the reason we would love God is because he first loved us.
Jesus died in our place so we could be forgiven. Of all the religions known to humanity, only through Jesus will you see God reaching toward humanity, providing a way for us to have a relationship with him. Jesus proves a divine heart of love, meeting our needs, drawing us to himself. Because of Jesus' death and resurrection, he offers us a new life today. We can be forgiven, fully accepted by God and genuinely loved by God. He says, "I have loved you with an everlasting love, therefore I have continued my faithfulness to you."17 This is God, in action.
Does God exist? If you want to know, investigate Jesus Christ. We're told that "God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life."18
God does not force us to believe in him, though he could. Instead, he has provided sufficient proof of his existence for us to willingly respond to him. The earth's perfect distance from the sun, the unique chemical properties of water, the human brain, DNA, the number of people who attest to knowing God, the gnawing in our hearts and minds to determine if God is there, the willingness for God to be known through Jesus Christ. If you need to know more about Jesus and reasons to believe in him, please see: Beyond Blind Faith.
If you want to begin a relationship with God now, you can.
This is your decision, no coercion here. But if you want to be forgiven by God and come into a relationship with him, you can do so right now by asking him to forgive you and come into your life. Jesus said, "Behold, I stand at the door [of your heart] and knock. He who hears my voice and opens the door, I will come into him [or her]."19 If you want to do this, but aren't sure how to put it into words, this may help: "Jesus, thank you for dying for my sins. You know my life and that I need to be forgiven. I ask you to forgive me right now and come into my life. I want to know you in a real way. Come into my life now. Thank you that you wanted a relationship with me. Amen."
God views your relationship with him as permanent. Referring to all those who believe in him, Jesus Christ said of us, "I know them, and they follow me; and I give them eternal life, and they shall never perish, and no one shall snatch them out of my hand."20
Looking at all these facts, one can conclude that a loving God does exist and can be known in an intimate, personal way.
Tag :
Enigma
Who Built the Pyramids?
Egyptologists and historians have long debated the question of who built the Pyramids, and how. Standing at the base of the Pyramids at Giza it is hard to believe that any of these enormous monuments could have been built in one pharaoh's lifetime. Yet scholars think they were built over mere decades for three pharaohs who were father, son, and grandson (Khufu, Khafre, and Menkaure).
Mark Lehner and Zahi Hawass agree wholeheartedly: Egyptians built the Pyramids. But who were they exactly?EnlargePhoto credit: © Ugurhan Betin/iStockphoto
Egyptologists Mark Lehner and Zahi Hawass have been trying to solve the puzzle of where the 20,000 or 30,000 laborers who are thought to have built the Pyramids lived. Ultimately, they hope to learn more about the workforce, their daily lives, and perhaps where they came from. In the meantime, Lehner has been excavating the bakeries that presumably fed this army of workers, while Hawass has been unearthing the cemetery for this grand labor force.
The two scholars believe that Giza housed a skeleton crew of workers who labored on the Pyramids year-round. But during the late summer and early autumn months, when the Nile flooded surrounding fields, a large labor force would appear at Giza to put in time on the Pyramids. These farmers and local villagers gathered at Giza to work for their god-kings, to build their monuments to the hereafter. This would ensure their own afterlife and would also benefit the future and prosperity of Egypt as a whole. They may well have been willing workers, a labor force working for ample rations, for the benefit of man, king, and country.
In the following interviews, Mark Lehner and Zahi Hawass address the long-standing question of who actually built the Pyramids at Giza:
"Every time I go back to Giza my respect increases for those people and that society, that they could do it," Mark Lehner, here standing atop the Khufu Pyramid, says of the ancient Egyptians who built the Pyramids. EnlargePhoto credit: © WGBH Educational Foundation
INTERVIEW WITH MARK LEHNER, Archeologist, Oriental Institute of the University of Chicago and Harvard Semitic Museum
PEOPLE POWER
NOVA: In your extensive work and research at Giza have you ever once questioned whether humans built the Pyramids?
Mark Lehner: No. But have I ever questioned whether they had divine or super-intelligent inspiration? I first went to Egypt in 1972 and ended up living there 13 years. I was imbued with ideas of Atlantis and Edgar Cayce and so on. So I went over, starting from that point of view, but everything I saw told me, day by day, year by year, that they were very human and the marks of humanity are everywhere on them.
And you see there's this curious reversal where sometimes New Age theorists say that Egyptologists and archeologists are denigrating the ancient culture. They sometimes put up a scarecrow argument that we say they were primitive. And the New Agers sometimes want to say these were very technologically sophisticated people who built these things; they were not primitive. Well, actually there's a certain irony here, because they say they were very sophisticated technological civilizations and societies that built the Pyramids and the Sphinx, and yet they weren't the ones that we find. So to me, it's these suggestions that are really denigrating the people whose names, bodies, family relationships, tools, and bakeries we actually find.
Everything that I have found convinces me more and more that indeed it is this society that built the Sphinx and the Pyramids. Every time I go back to Giza my respect increases for those people and that society, that they could do it. You see, to me it's even more fascinating that they did this. And that by doing this they contributed something to the human career and its overall development. Rather than just copping out and saying, "There's no way they could have done this." I think that denigrates the people whose evidence we actually find.
Who carved the Sphinx? Lehner and others believe it was Khafre, the builder of the second Great Pyramid.EnlargePhoto credit: © WGBH Educational Foundation
NUMBER THEORY
Herodotus, the Greek historian, wrote that 100,000 workers built the Pyramids, while modern Egyptologists come up with a figure more like 20,000 or 30,000 workers. Can you explain that?
Well, first of all, Herodotus just claims he was told that. He said, 100,000 men working in three shifts, which raises some doubt, I guess, if you read it in the original Greek, as to whether it's three shifts of 100,000 men each or whether you subdivide the 100,000 men. But my own approach to this stems to some extent from "This Old Pyramid." [In this NOVA program, a crew attempts to build a small pyramid at Giza.] Certainly we didn't replicate ancient technology 100 percent, because there's no way we could replicate the entire ancient society that surrounded this technology. Our stones were delivered by a flatbed truck as opposed to barges; we didn't reconstruct the barges that brought the 60-ton granite blocks from Aswan. So basically what we were doing is, as we say in the film and in the accompanying book, that we're setting up the ability to test particular tools, techniques, and operations, without testing the entire building project.
"In a NOVA experiment we found that 12 men could pull a one-and-a-half-ton block over a slick surface with great ease."
One of the things that most impressed me, though, was the fact that in 21 days, 12 men in bare feet, living out in the Eastern Desert, opened a new quarry in about the time we needed stone for our NOVA Pyramid, and in 21 days they quarried 186 stones. Now, they did it with an iron cable and a winch that pulled the stone away from the quarry wall, and all their tools were iron. But other than that they did it by hand.
Even today, over 4,500 years since Khufu's time, Egyptian masons use hand tools to chip out narrow trenches in limestone to make blocks.EnlargePhoto credit: © WGBH Educational Foundation
So I said, taking just a raw figure, if 12 men in bare feet—they lived in a lean-to shelter, day and night, out there—if they can quarry 186 stones in 21 days, let's do the simple math and see, just in a very raw simplistic calculation, how many men were required to deliver 340 stones a day, which is what you would have to deliver to the Khufu Pyramid to build it in 20 years. And it comes out to between 400 and 500 men. Now, I was bothered by the iron tools, especially the iron winch that pulled the stone away from the quarry walls, so I said, let's put in an additional team of 20 men, so that 12 men become 32, and now let's run the equation. Well, it turns out that even if you give great leeway for the iron tools, all 340 stones could have been quarried in a day by something like 1,200 men. And that's quarried locally at Giza—most of the stone is local stone.
So, then, because of our mapping and because of our approach where we looked at what is the shape of the ground here, where is the quarry, where is the Pyramid, where would the ramp have run, we could come up with a figure of how many men it would take to schlep the stones up to the Pyramid. Now it's often said that the stones were delivered at a rate of one every two minutes or so. And New Agers sometimes point that out as an impossibility for the Egyptians of Khufu's day. But the stones didn't go in one after another, you see. And you can actually work out the coefficient of friction or glide on a slick surface, how much an average stone weighed, how many men it would take to pull that. And in a NOVA experiment we found that 12 men could pull a one-and-a-half-ton block over a slick surface with great ease. And then you could come up with very conservative estimates as to the number of men it would take to pull an average-sized block the distance from the quarry, which we know, to the Pyramid. And you could even factor in different configurations of the ramp, which would give you a different length.
During the making of the NOVA film "This Old Pyramid," Egyptian workers successfully pulled a large limestone block along using wooden rollers. Did the ancients use such a technique?EnlargePhoto credit: © WGBH Educational Foundation
Well, working in such ways—and I challenge anybody to join in the challenge—it comes out that you can actually get the delivery that you need. You need 340 stones delivered every day, and that's 34 stones every hour in a ten-hour day, right? Thirty-four stones can get delivered by x number of gangs of 20 men, and it comes out to something like 2,000, somewhere in that area. We can go over the exact figures. So now we've got 1,200 men in the quarry, which is a very generous estimate, 2,000 men delivering. So that's 3,200. Okay, how about men cutting the stones and setting them? Well, it's different between the core stones which were set with great slop factor, and the casing stones which were custom cut and set, one to another, with so much accuracy that you can't get a knife blade in between the joints. So there's a difference there. But let's gloss over that for a moment.
NUTS AND BOLTS
One of the things the NOVA experiment showed me that no book could is just how many men can get their hands a two- or three-ton block. You can't have 50 men working on one block; you can only get about four or five, six guys at most, working on a block—say, two on levers, cutters, and so on. You put pivots under it, and as few as two or three guys can pivot it around if you put a hard cobble under it. There are all these tricks they know. But it's just impossible to get too many men on a block. So then you figure out how many stones have to be set to keep up with this rate, to do it all in 20 years. It actually requires 5,000 or fewer men, including the stone-setters. Now, the stone-setting gets a bit complicated because of the casing, and you have one team working from each corner and another team working in the middle of each face for the casing and then the core. And I'm going to gloss over that.
But the challenge is out there: 5,000 men to actually do the building and the quarrying and the schlepping from the local quarry. This doesn't count the men cutting the granite and shipping it from Aswan or the men over in Tura [ancient Egypt's principal limestone quarry, east of Giza]. That increases the numbers somewhat, and that's what things like NOVA's series on ancient technologies really bring home, I think. No, we're not recreating ancient society and ancient Pyramid-building 100 percent, probably not even 60 percent. But we are showing some nuts and bolts that are very useful and insightful, far more than all the armchair theorizing.
"We are showing some nuts and bolts that are very useful and insightful, far more than all the armchair theorizing," Lehner says of his team's effort to understand the mechanics of pyramid-building. Here, he appears high on the Khafre Pyramid. EnlargePhoto credit: © WGBH Educational Foundation
Now, just recently I was contacted by the construction firm DMJM. The initials stand for Daniel, Mann, Johnson & Mendenhall, and it's one of the largest construction firms; they're working right now on the Pentagon. One of the senior vice presidents decided to take on for a formal address for fellow engineers a program management study of the Great Pyramid. So these are not guys lifting boilers in Manhattan; these are senior civil engineers with one of the largest construction corporations in the United States. I'm sure they'd be happy to go on record with their study, which looked at what they call "critical path analysis." What do you need to get the job done? What tools did they have?
They contacted me and other Egyptologists, and we gave them some references. Here's what we know about their tools, the inclined plane, the lever, and so on. And without any secret sophistication or hidden technology, just basically what archeologists say, this is what these folks had. DMJM came up with 4,000 to 5,000 men could build the Great Pyramid within a 20- to 40-year period. They have very specific calculations on every single aspect, from the gravel for the ramps to baking the bread.
"'The Friends of Khufu Gang.' This doesn't sound like slavery, does it?"
I throw that out there, not because that's gospel truth, but because reasoned construction engineers, who plan great projects like bridges and buildings and earthworks today, look at the Great Pyramid and don't opt out for lost civilizations, extraterrestrials, or hidden technologies. No, they say it's a very impressive job, extraordinary for the people who lived then and there, but it could be done. They are human monuments.
Some of the ancient graffiti found deep inside the Great Pyramid EnlargePhoto credit: © WGBH Educational Foundation
GANGS AND GRAFFITI
You've made reference to inscriptions at Giza that indicate who built the Pyramids. What do the inscriptions say?
One of the most compelling pieces of evidence we have is graffiti on ancient stone monuments in places that they didn't mean to be shown. Like on foundations when we dig down below the floor level, up in the relieving chambers above the King's chamber in the Great Pyramid, and in many monuments of the Old Kingdom—temples, other pyramids. Well, the graffiti gives us a picture of organization where a gang of workmen was organized into two crews, and the crews were subdivided into fivephyles. Phyles is the Greek word for tribe.
The phyles are subdivided into divisions, and the divisions are identified by single hieroglyphs with names that mean things like endurance, perfection, strong. Okay, so how do we know this? You come to a block of stone in the relieving chambers above the King's chamber. First of all, you see this cartouche of a King and then some scrawls all in red paint after it. That's the gang name. And in the Old Kingdom in the time of the Pyramids of Giza, the gangs were named after kings. So, for example, we have a name, compounded with the name of Menkaure, and it seems to translate "the Drunks (or the Drunkards) of Menkaure." There's one that's well-attested, in the relieving chambers above the King's chamber in the Great Pyramid, "the Friends of Khufu Gang." This doesn't sound like slavery, does it?
In fact, it gets more intriguing, because in certain monuments you find the name of one gang on one side of the monument and another gang, we assume competing, on the other side of the monument. You find that to some extent in the Pyramid temple of Menkaure. It's as though these gangs are competing. So from this evidence we deduce that there was a labor force that was assigned to respective crew, gang, phyles, and divisions.
The Meidum Pyramid, which villagers brought up the Nile from the south by boat would have seen before arriving in Giza to work on the PyramidsEnlargePhoto credit: © WGBH Educational Foundation
A PYRAMID-RAISING
Where did the gangs come from? Were they local people, or did they travel from afar?
There's some evidence to suggest that people were rotated in and out of the raw labor force. So you could be a young man in a village, say, in Middle Egypt, and you had never seen more than a few hundred people in your village, maybe at market day or something. And the King's men come, and it may not have been entirely coercion, but it seems that everybody owed a labor tax. We don't know if it was entirely coercive, or if, in fact, part of it was a natural community donation as in the Incan Empire, for example, to building projects where they had a great party and so on. But, anyway, they started keeping track of people and their time on the royal labor project.
And if you were brought from a distance, you were brought by boat. Can you imagine floating down the Nile and—say you're working on Khafre's Pyramid—and you float past the Great Pyramid of Meidum and the Pyramids of Dashur, and, my God, you've never seen anything like this. These are the hugest things. We're talking about a society where they didn't have cameras, you didn't see yourself age. You didn't see great images. And so here are these stupendous, gigantic things thrust up to the sky, their polished white limestone blazing in the sunshine. And then they go on down to Giza, and they come around this corner, actually the corner of the Wall of the Crow, right into the harbor, and there's the Khufu Pyramid, the biggest thing on the planet actually in the way of a building until the turn of the 20th century.
And you see, for the first time in your life, not a few hundred, but thousands, probably, of workers and people as well as industries of all kinds. You're rotated into this experience, and you serve in your respective crew, gang, phyles, and divisions, and then you're rotated out, and you go back because you have your own large household to whom you are assigned on a kind of an estate-organized society. You have your own village, maybe you even have your own land that you're responsible for. So you're rotated back, but you're not the same. You have seen the central principle of the first nation-state in our planet's history—the Pyramids, the centralization, this organization. They must have been powerful socializing forces. Anyway, we think that that was the experience of the raw recruits.
The Great Pyramid of Giza, with ancient tombs at its base and modern Cairo stretching off to the eastEnlargePhoto credit: © WGBH Educational Foundation
But there must have been a cadre of very seasoned laborers who really knew how to cut stone so fine that you could join them without getting a razor blade in between. Perhaps they were the stone-cutters and -setters, and the experienced quarry men at the quarry wall. And the people who rotated in and out were those doing all the different raw labor, not only the schlepping of the stone but preparing gypsum. We don't know to what extent the other industries were also organized in the phyles system. But it's quite an amazing picture.
"This was as great as it comes in terms of art and sculpture and building ships in the whole repertoire of ancient cultures."
And one of the things that is motivating me now is the question of what vision of society is suggested by a pyramid like Khufu's? Was it, in fact, coercive? Was it a militaristic kind of state WPA project? Or is it possible that we could find evidence that would bring Egypt into line with what we know of other traditional ancient societies? Like when the Inca build a bridge, and every household winds its twine together, and the twine of all the households in the village are wound into the villages' contribution to the rope. And the rope on the great day of bridge-building is wound into a great cable, and all the villages' cables are wound into this virtual bridge. Or in Mesopotamia we know that they built great mud-brick city walls by the clans turning out and giving their contribution, a kind of organic, natural community involvement in the building project. I wonder if that wasn't the case with the Great Pyramid of Khufu. You know, it's almost like an Amish barnraising—but, of course, the Great Pyramid of Khufu is one hell of a barn.
Statue of the pharaoh Khafre in the Egyptian Museum in CairoEnlargePhoto credit: © WGBH Educational Foundation
LOOK NO FURTHER
Some of the theories of who built the Pyramids suggest that the builders may not have been from Egypt. How do you respond to that?
One thing that strikes me when I read about these ideas—that it couldn't have been the Egyptians of the Fourth Dynasty who built the Pyramids and the Sphinx, it had to have been an older civilization—I think about those claims and then I look at the marvelous statue of Khafre with the Horus falcon at the back of his head [in the Egyptian Museum in Cairo]. I look at the sublime ship of Khufu that was found buried south of the Pyramid. We know that these objects date from the time of Khafre and Khufu. And I think, my God, this was a great civilization. This was as great as it comes in terms of art and sculpture and building ships from any place on the planet, in the whole repertoire of ancient cultures. Why is there such a need to look for yet another culture, to say, "No, it wasn't these people, it was some civilization that's lost, even older."
To some extent I think we feel the need to look for a lost civilization on time's other horizon because we feel lost in our civilization, and somehow we don't want to face the little man behind the curtain as you had in "The Wizard of Oz." We want the great and powerful wizard with all the sound and fury. You know, go get me the broomstick of the Wicked Witch of the West. We want that sound and fury. We always want more out of the past than it really is.
"It's very important to prove how the Pyramid was built," says Zahi Hawass, who has been excavating the workers' cemetery for clues to how they lived—and died. EnlargePhoto credit: © WGBH Educational Foundation
INTERVIEW WITH ZAHI HAWASS, Director General of Giza
BUILDERS? EGYPTIANS.
Let's address the question of who built the Pyramids.
ZAHI HAWASS: We are lucky because we found this whole evidence of the workmen who built the Pyramids. We found the artisans. Mark found the bakery, and we found this settlement of the camp, and hieroglyphic inscriptions of the Overseer of the Site of the Pyramid, the Overseer of the West Side of the Pyramid. We found the craftsmen, the man who makes the statue of the Overseer of the Craftsmen, the Inspector of Building Tombs, Director of Building Tombs—I'm telling you all the titles. We found 25 unique new titles connected with these people.
Then who built the Pyramids? It was the Egyptians who built the Pyramids. The Great Pyramid is dated with all the evidence, I'm telling you now, to 4,600 years, the reign of Khufu. The Great Pyramid of Khufu is one of 104 Pyramids in Egypt with superstructure, and there are 54 Pyramids with substructure. There is support that the builders of the Pyramids were Egyptians. They are not the Jews as has been said. They are not people from a lost civilization. They are not from outer space. They are Egyptian, and their skeletons are here and were examined by scholars and doctors. The race of all the people we found are completely supporting that they are Egyptians.
The Greek historian Herodotus claimed in 500 B.C. that 100,000 people built the Pyramids, and yet modern Egyptologists believe the figure to be more like 20,000 to 30,000.
Herodotus, when he came here, met guides who told stories and things like that. But I personally believe that, based on the size of the settlement and the whole work of an area that we found, I believe that permanent and temporary workmen who worked at building the Pyramid were 36,000.
Hawass believes that some pyramid-builders worked permanently for the king, while others were rotated in and out on a temporary basis throughout the year. EnlargePhoto credit: © WGBH Educational Foundation
How do you come to that number?
I come to that number based on the size of the Pyramid project, a government project, the size of the tombs, the cemetery. We know we can excavate the cemetery for hundreds of years—generations after generations can work in the cemetery—and the second is the settlement area. I really believe there were permanent workmen who were working for the king. They were paid by the king. These are the technicians who cut the stones, and there are workmen who move the stones and they come and work in rotation. At the same time there are the people who live near the Pyramids that don't need to live at the Pyramids. They come by early in the morning and they work 14 hours, from sunrise to sunset.
THE WORKING POOR
From your excavations of the workers' cemetery you say you found skeletons. Did you analyze the bones, and if so, what did you learn about the workmen?
We found 600 skeletons. And we found that those people, number one, they were Egyptians, the same like you see in every cemetery in Egypt. Number two, we found evidence that those people had emergency treatment. They had accidents while building the Pyramids. We found 12 skeletons who had accidents with their hands, and they supported the two sides of the hand with wood. And we have another one, a stone fell down on his leg, and they did a kind of operation, they cut his leg, and he lived 14 years after that.
"The Pyramid, you know, has magic, it has mystery," says Hawass. Here, Khafre's Pyramid as seen from the top of that of his father, Khufu.EnlargePhoto credit: © WGBH Educational Foundation
How do you know that?
Because we have a team here from the National Research Center who are doctors, and they use X-rays to find all the evidence about age. They found that the age of death for those workmen was from 30 to 35. Those are the people who really built the Pyramids, the poor Egyptians.
"Mark Lehner and I are excavating around the Pyramids to tell the world the truth."
It's very important to prove how the Pyramid was built. The Pyramid, you know, has magic, it has mystery. It's a structure that was built 4,600 years ago. There is no accurate book until now that really explained all of that. All the theorists, in other books, say that the stones were taken from Tura about five miles to the east of the Pyramid. This is not true. All the stones have been taken from the plateau, except the casing stones that came from Tura, and the granite in the burial chamber that came from Aswan. But the magic of the Pyramid makes people think about it. An amateur comes by and looks at this structure and doesn't know the mechanics. The cult of the Egyptians, the religion, the Pyramid—it's all part of a whole civilization.
TELLING THE TRUTH
There is an inscription above Khufu's burial chamber that identifies the Pyramid as that of Khufu. Some people claim that is a fake inscription. Can you comment on that?
They say that the inscriptions inside the five relieving chambers are fake. Fine. I went last week, and we lighted all of them. It has been never lighted before. We did beautiful lighting. Then we can read each single inscription.
As far as Zahi Hawass is concerned, these Egyptians are the direct descendants of the people who erected the Pyramids 4,600 years ago.EnlargePhoto credit: © WGBH Educational Foundation
And what do they say?
The workmen who were involved in building the Great Pyramid were divided into gangs or groups, and each group had a name and an overseer. They wrote the names of the gangs. And you have the names of the gangs of Khufu as "Friends of Khufu." Because they were the friends of Khufu proves that building the Pyramid was not really something that the Egyptians would push. It's like today. If you go to any village you will understand the system of ancient Egyptians. When you build a dam or a big house, people will come to help you. They will work free for you. The households will send food to feed the workmen. And when they build their houses, you will do the same for them.
That's why the Pyramid was the national project of Egypt, because everyone had to participate in building this Pyramid. By food, by workmen, this way the building of the Pyramid was something that everyone felt the need to participate in. Really it was love—they were not really pushed to do it. When the king took the throne, the people had to be ready to participate in building the Pyramid. And when they finished it, they celebrated. That's why even now in modern Egypt we still do celebrations when we finish any project, because that's exactly what happened in ancient Egypt.
But what about the incriptions in the relieving chambers in Khufu and the claim that they were not written in the time of Khufu?
They say that these inscriptions were written by people who entered inside. And if you go and see them they are typical graffiti that can be seen around every pyramid in Egypt, because the workmen around the Pyramid left this. I would like those people who talked about this to come with me. I will take them personally to the rooms. First of all, they say that only the second room is inscribed. It's not true—all the five relieving chambers are inscribed. Number two, there are some inscriptions there that could not be written by anyone except the workmen who put them there. You cannot reach those spots. It had to be the men who put the block there. Mark Lehner and I are excavating around the Pyramids to tell the world the truth, because we believe the public has the right to know the truth.
Tag :
Enigma
Are we alone in the universe?
Nasa's Curiosity, the rover now on Mars, may find evidence for creatures that lived early in Martian history; firm evidence for even the most primitive bugs would have huge import. There could be life in the ice-covered oceans of Jupiter's moon Europa. But what really fuels popular imagination is the prospect of advanced life – the "aliens" familiar from science fiction – and nobody expects a complex biosphere in those locations.
Suppose, however, we widen our gaze beyond our solar system. Astronomers have learnt that other stars have planets circling round them. Nasa's Kepler spacecraft monitors about 150,000 stars, measuring their brightness sensitively enough to detect the very slight dimming (about one part in 10,000) that occurs when an Earth-like planet transits a sun-like star. The data already reveals thousands of planets. But we'd really like to see these planets directly – not just their shadows – and that's hard. To realise just how hard, suppose an alien astronomer with a powerful telescope was viewing Earth from, say, 50 light years away. Our planet would seem, in Carl Sagan's phrase, a "pale blue dot", very close to a star (our sun) that outshines it many billion times – a firefly next to a searchlight. But if the hypothetical aliens could detect Earth, they could learn quite a bit about it. The shade of blue would be slightly different depending on whether the Pacific Ocean or the Eurasian land mass was facing them. They could infer the length of the day, the seasons, the gross topography and the climate.
In the 2020s, European astronomers hope to complete, in Chile, a telescope with a mosaic mirror 39 metres across. It will be powerful enough to analyse the faint light from planets orbiting other stars with enough precision to infer whether they harbour life.
We know too little about how life began on Earth to lay confident odds. It may have involved a fluke so rare that it happened only once in the entire galaxy. On the other hand, it may have been almost inevitable, given the right environment. In the next two decades we can expect progress in understanding the biochemistry of life's origins: this is one of the great unsolved problems – fascinating to the most Earth-focused biologist, but also crucial in guiding astronomers on how and where to search for alien life.
Even if simple life is common, it is, of course, a separate question whether it's likely to evolve into anything intelligent or complex. Indeed, evolutionists don't agree on how divergently our own biosphere could have developed if such contingencies as ice ages and meteorite impacts had happened differently. If, for instance, the dinosaurs hadn't been wiped out, the chain of mammalian evolution that led to humans might have been foreclosed and it's not clear whether another species would have taken our role.
Maybe the search for life shouldn't restrict attention to planets like Earth. Science fiction writers have other ideas: balloon-like creatures floating in the dense atmospheres of planets such as Jupiter, swarms of intelligent insects, nano-scale robots and more. (And it's often better to read first-rate science fiction than second-rate science – it's far more stimulating, and perhaps no more likely to be wrong.) The most durable form of "life" may be machines whose creators have long ago been usurped or become extinct.
The great physicist Enrico Fermi famously argued that advanced life must be rare. Many stars are a billion years older than our sun. Life, were it common, would have had a head start around these more ancient stars. Why then, Fermi argued, haven't aliens already come here? Why aren't their artefacts staring us in the face? There is substance to this argument. However, we mustn't be too anthropomorphic: some advanced life could be unimaginably different from that on Earth. Others could be living contemplative lives, perhaps deep under some planetary ocean, doing nothing to reveal their presence.
We may learn in the coming decades whether biological evolution is unique to the pale blue dot in the cosmos that is our home, or whether Darwin's writ runs through a wider universe that teems with life – even with intelligence.
Tag :
Enigma
Bermuda Triangle Facts
- Located in the Atlantic Ocean, the Bermuda Triangle falls between Bermuda, Puerto Rico and Florida.
- The Bermuda Triangle has long been believed to be the site where a number of mysterious plane and boat incidents have occurred.
- While it has become part of popular culture to link the Bermuda Triangle to paranormal activity, most investigations indicate bad weather and human error are the more likely culprits.
- Research has suggested that many original reports of strange incidents in the Bermuda Triangle were exaggerated and that the actual number of incidents in the area is similar to that of other parts of the ocean.
- While its reputation may scare some people, the Bermuda Triangle is actually part of a regularly sailed shipping lane with cruise ships and other boats also frequently sailing through the area.
- Aircraft are also common in the Bermuda Triangle with both private and commercial planes commonly flying through the air space.
- Stories of unexplained disappearances in the Bermuda Triangle started to reach public awareness around 1950 and have been consistently reported since then.
- Unverified supernatural explanations for Bermuda Triangle incidents have included references to UFO’s and even the mythical lost continent of Atlantis.
- Other explanations have included magnetic anomalies, pirates, deliberate sinkings, hurricanes, gas deposits, rough weather, huge waves and human error.
- Some famous reported incidents involving the Bermuda Triangle include:
- The USS Cyclops and its crew of 309 that went missing after leaving Barbados in 1918.
- The TBM Avenger bombers that went missing in 1945 during a training flight over the Atlantic.
- A Douglas DC-3 aircraft containing 32 people that went missing in 1958, no trace of the aircraft was ever found.
- A yacht was found in 1955 that had survived three hurricanes but was missing all its crew.
Tag :
Enigma
Enigma 23
Am I going insane? w00t.gif
The "23 Enigma" refers to the belief that all incidents and events are directly connected to the number 23. The number 23. Think am crazy? Think again. Heres some examples, skim through them, or read them all if intrigued. What I want you to read really is below all this sh!t.
***2/3= .666 the number of the beast
The New York Yankees won the World Series 23 times
The Uranium isotope used in Nuclear bombs is U235
AOL chat rooms only allow 23 people at a time
In the film Airport, the mad bomber has seat 23
***There are exactly 23 charicters, numbers and letters, on the face of all U.S. coins
***Every 23rd wave crashing on a beach averages twice the size as normal
In the film Airplane II, the name of the spaceship is XR-2300
230 people died in the conspiracy plagued TWA flight 800 disaster
The Unibomber killed or wounded 23 people
The address of the Freemasons lodge in Stafford, England, is 23 Jaol Road. In New York City it's on 23rd street.
***The letter W is the 23rd in the alphabet and has 2 points down and 3 points up
The first Apollo landing on the moon was at 23.63 degrees east; the second was 23.42 degrees west.
April 19th the date of the battle of Lexington, the holocaust at Waco, and the Oclahoma city bombing is written 4/19 by Americans and 19/4 by Europeans. Either way it adds up to 23.
In Star Wars Princess Lea was held in cell AA-23
***Shakespeare was 46(2*23) when the King James Bible was published. Psalm 46(2*23) has it's 46th word "shake" and the 46th word back from the end is "spear".
On the Seinfeld show, Kramer hides an Air-Conditioner on levl purple 23 of a parking garrage.
***William Shakespeare was born on April 23,1556 and died on April 23, 1616.
51, as in Area 51 breaks down to 23 + 23 + (2*3)=51
August 23,1305 William Wallace was exicuted for treason.
August 23, 1970 River Pheonix was born.
The original Star Trek, as well as Babylon Five are set in the 23rd century
***The human Biorhythm cycle is 23 days
***It takes 23 seconds for blood to circulate through the human body
***Julius Ceasar was stabbed 23 times by the assasans.
X-Files: 10.13 productions.10 + 13 = 23
"Scottish Rite Freemasonry" has 23 letters.
A technological singularity has been predicted by "experts" in the near future. It is expected around 2030 AD.
***Geosynchronous orbit occurs at 23,000 miles above Earth's surface.
Psychic Edgar Cayce started having visions of lost Atlantis in 1923.
Hitler joined a secret society in 1923.
Avagadro's number as used in the ideal gas law is 6.02 * 10^23
The CIA headquarters in McLean, VA is located on rt. 123.
***The tilt of Earth's axis is roughly 23o accounting for the changing seasons and the procession of the Zodiac.
***Homo sapiens are given 46 chromosomes from their parents, 23 male and 23 female.
***The Dog Days of Summer begin on July 23 when Sirius the Dogstar rises from behind the sun.
Sydney Carton was the 23rd man beheaded in the climax of Dickens' Tale of Two Cities
Accordidng to Noam Chomsky over half of the national media is owned by 23 companies
The average smoker inhales 23 ciggarettes a day
There are 23 chapters of the Cult Awareness Network
Joseph Smith, the founder of the Church of Jesus Christ of Later Day Saints was born on December 23, 1805.
On December 23, 1805 the Federal Reserve Act passed in congress.
***According to ancient Mayan prophesy on December 23, 2012 the world will end.
***In both ancient Sumaria and Egypt July 23 is the start of the new year.
The Nissan car takes its name from "Ni" which means 2 in Japaneese and "san" which means 3. Nissan means 23.
The articles of Impeechment used against Richard Nixon and Bill Clinton are under Article 2, section 3 of the constitution.
The United States set off 23 atomic bombs at Bikini Atoll in the Pacific.
Lines 22-23 of Book I of Milton's Paradice Lost "What in me is dark/ Illumine, what is low raise and support."
In a recent film version of Alice in Wonderland a stuffed Rabbit comes alive and runs away from a case numbered 23.
***The first prime number in which both digits are prime and add up to make annother prime is 23.
It is believed that Adam and Eve had 23 daughters. [citation needed]
It is believed that the verses of the Qur'an were revealed over a period of 23 years. There exist hadith that support this figure, but many more that give other lengths of time.
Psalms, the longest book of the Bible, is the 23rd book of the Old Testament, and the famous "Divine Shepherd" psalm is Psalm 23. Those repeating this popular claim overlook that it is only true in a handful of very specific modern Catholic translations. The famous psalm is actually number 22 in the Septuagint and traditional Catholic Bibles, while the books of the Old Testament appear in several different orders; Psalms is number 23 only in modern Catholic Bibles, being book 21 in the traditional Vulgate, book 26 in the Greek Orthodox Bible, book 19 in most Protestant Bibles, and book 14 in the Jewish Tanakh. It is therefore completely false for the Vulgate (chapter 22 of book 21), and only partly true for the King James Version (chapter 23 of book 19).
December 23, 2012 is the date on which the Mayan calendar ends, predicting an apocalyptic event.
Both the ancient Egyptian and Sumerian calendars begin on 23 July. Both calendars were apparently calculated from the date of the heliacal rising of Sirius, which occurs at that latitude around that time of year.
The list goes on and on.
They say that once you reasearch heavily into the 23 mystery, they say that the number starts appearing in your life everywhere. You become obessed, paranoid, it comes after you. It...haunts you. I am living proof. Heres my diary of how the number 23, is coming after me. It can mean many things, patterns, messages, clues to future events, many things. In theory anyway. Heres my diary:
11/19/06
This was the day I watched the trailer for the upcoming film "The Number 23". Intrigued, I went to the website, and researched it. I believe that it is not coincidence...its something...else. It must mean something...but what? And what does it mean to me? On the "Saw 3" website, on the messageboards, I`ve been making this saw story called "Saw 4 Rebirth RPG". On page 20 of it, I made a password for the plot. In it is the number 23.
11/20/06
I own the Saw 2 Uncut DVD. On the special features there is game you can play. Once you get through it you get to a safe, the number to the safe is 7293. You know what number is in it.
11/21/06
A white kid in my 2nd hr said his birthday was on the 23rd of some month, don`t remember month. Werid. Then in 4th hour my US History teacher said shes been working at my school for 23 years! Werid. Whys it keep from appearing?! This number... Then, near the end of 4th hr, coming from the bathroom, I passed a combination lock that had the numbers 23 fixed into it. Plus, 11/23/06 is coming up! Thanksgiving! Am sooooo f***ing creeped out! Then after school, standing at the light by mcdonalds, when I was just about to talk more about the 23 thing with my cousin, i looked over at the sign for armstrong, and the number 23 was on it! What does...it mean? Can i somehow firgure what 23 means? But how?! I`ve come to realize that you don`t look for the 23...it comes for you unexpectedly.
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Enigma
Peru's Government UFO Agency
Peru's official UFO investigation department is now back in business, and its government is soliciting information from the public after an increase of sightings.
The Peruvian Office of Anomalous Aerial Phenomena Research (OIFAA) -- which was shut down for the last five years -- will seek the expertise of air force personnel, sociologists, archaeologists and astronomers to analyze as much information as possible about UFOs, OpenMinds.tv reports.
For those "who observe seemingly unconventional phenomena, which cause surprise or concern, know that there is an institution that will study and research your information," said Peru air force Col. Julio Jose Vucetich Abanto, who is in charge of the Directorate of Aerospace Interests.
The OIFAA was originally set up in 2001, but closed after seven years because of administrative issues. But other South American countries -- including Chile, Brazil and Argentina -- have ongoing UFO investigative agencies.
Vucetich told the press over the weekend that the Peruvian UFO agency is coming back to life due to "increased sightings that are occurring in the country and that people are reporting to media."
Media reports indicate that citizens of the central Andes town of Marabamba have been spotting luminous objects in the sky for several days.
Tag :
Enigma
