Civilization Timelines Keep Getting Earlier

Anyone studying the origins of human civilization on earth is aware of the earlier, earlier, earlier start-dates archaeologists are citing. The reasons are basically the discovery of previously unexplored sites and the enhanced technology enabling more precise dating of artifacts.

Here’s a wrap-up of some newer findings, especially the Gunung Padang site in Indonesia, first thought to be a natural hill but now revealed as a 300-foot step pyramid. According to The Mind Unleashed website:

The hill was actually not a natural hill but a 300-ft high step-pyramid. And what’s even more controversial is that the structure was much older than anyone imagined . . . Radiocarbon dated the terrace structures at around 500 to 1,500 BC, similar to previous estimates. 

. . . As the drills dug deeper, Natawidjaja continued to discover that the columnar basalt structures extended far beneath the surface and yielded much older dates. At depths of 90 feet and more, the material was found to be 20,000 BC to 22,000 BC years old. Using radiocarbon dating, he and his team proved that man-made megalithic structures and hence a prehistoric human civilization existed well into the Ice Age.

Gunung Padang is a recent addition to the growing list of archaeological sites proving that our history books regarding early civilizations are now hopelessly out of date.

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New Research on Peruvian High-Elevation "Lost City"

Choquequirao is a truly “lost city,” abandoned around 1572 when the last Inca ruler, Tupac Amaru, was captured in the distant jungles, dragged back to Cusco and executed by Spanish colonial authorities.

Choquequirao’s ancient houses, temples, canals and walls were soon reclaimed by the silent, green, primeval forest only to be rediscovered and revealed in recent times. Located on the unpopulated side of the immense Apurimac Canyon, the region has remained disconnected from the farms, villages and roads.

In this account from Peruvian Times, archaeologist Gary Ziegler writes:

It is little known that Yale professor Hiram Bingham, the now famous scientific discoverer of Machu Picchu in 1911 was inspired to launch his return to Peru and archaeological explorations after a visit to Choquequirao in 1909. Bingham visited Choquequirao twice, the second time with a crew of surveyors, cartographers and specialists to produce the first map and scientific description.

Like many other Incan sites, Choquequiarao appears to have been carefully designed according to astronomical alignment with sacred rivers, mountains and celestial movements.

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More Uses Deduced for Antikythera

Scientists keep edging closer to determining the who, what and why of the Antikythera Mechanism recovered from an ancient shipwreck near Crete in 1901.

So far, we know the strange, complex assembly of bronze gears could accurately predict lunar and solar eclipses and tell the positions of planets throughout the solar system.

According to the New York Times:

Now a new analysis of the dial used to predict eclipses, which is set on the back of the mechanism, provides yet another clue to one of history’s most intriguing puzzles. 

Christián C. Carman, a science historian at the National University of Quilmes in Argentina, and James Evans, a physicist at the University of Puget Sound in Washington, suggest that the calendar of the mysterious device began in 205 B.C., just seven years after Archimedes died.  The mechanism was most likely housed in a wooden box and operated by a hand crank. The device itself bears inscriptions on the front and back. In the 1970s, the engravings were estimated to date from 87 B.C. But more recently, scientists examining the forms of the Greek letters in the inscriptions dated the mechanism to 150 to 100 B.C. 

Over the years scientists have speculated that the mechanism might have been somehow linked to Archimedes, one of history’s most famous mathematicians and inventors. In 2008, a group of researchers reported that language inscribed on the device suggested it had been manufactured in Corinth or in Syracuse, where Archimedes lived.

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Aboriginal Stories Tell of Rising Sea Levels

New research into early Aboriginal stories set along Australia's coast has detected evidence of dramatically rising shoreline waters over several thousand years. It seems that sea level about 20,000 years ago was 120 meters below its current level, rising 13,000 years ago to about 70 meters below current sea level. 

It seems today's sea level was finally reached only about 6,000 years ago. Linguists have also uncovered ancient Aboriginal tales about living where the Great Barrier Reef now stands.

How do we know that these stories are authentic? We suggest that because they all say essentially the same thing, it is more likely that they are based on observation," according to the article in The Conversation.com. "All tell of the ocean rising over areas that had previously been dry. None tell stories running the other way ~ of seas falling to expose land."

"We might expect to find comparable collections of sea-level rise stories from all parts of the globe, but we do not," it continues. "Perhaps they exist, but have been dismissed on account of an improbable antiquity by scholars adhering to the more orthodox view that oral traditions rarely can't survive more than a millennium."

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