Graham Hancock: amazing discoveries (video)

Graham Hancock (News, Feb. 24, 2014); Pat Macpherson, Wisdom Quarterly

11,000-year-old settlement found under Baltic Sea

Evidence of a Stone Age settlement that may have been swallowed whole by the Baltic Sea has resurfaced near Sweden, revealing a collection of well-preserved artifacts left by nomads some 11,000 years ago.

Dubbed by the local press “Sweden's Atlantis” after the fabled island which, according to the Greek philosopher Plato, sank around 9600 B.C. in the Atlantic Ocean, the newly discovered site was in fact some sort of dump in which nomadic Swedes discarded objects, according to a report by the Swedish daily The Local. More

(Knowledge Center) Sunken Civilizations: Secrets of Underwater Lost Cities Underwater

Grainy digital images presented as evidence of structures constructed on the 400C surface of Mercury

First it was the face on Mars. Then it was the Nazis on the Moon. Now is it buildings on the surface of Mercury? One UFO expert is convinced NASA photos show a city on the red-hot planet’s surface.

 

UFO Sightings Daily author Scott Waring is set to sell more books after revealing what he claims are recently built structures “without breaks or fissures and clean with no dirt of dust blanketing them over time, which tells me…they are occupied.” More

Source of Stonehenge bluestone rocks identified 

Scientists have found the exact source of Stonehenge's smaller bluestones, new research suggests.

The stones' rock composition revealed they come from a nearby outcropping, located about 1.8 miles (3 km) away from the site originally proposed as the source of such rocks nearly a century ago. The discovery of the rock's origin, in turn, could help archaeologists one day unlock the mystery of how the stones got to Stonehenge. More

"Microbial Pompeii": 1,000-year-old plaque preserves bacteria, microscopic particles of food

A "microbial Pompeii" has been discovered, preserved on the teeth of skeletons which are around 1,000 years old. A research team discovered that the ancient human oral cavity carries numerous opportunistic pathogens and that periodontal disease is caused by the same bacteria today as in the past, despite major changes in human diet and hygiene. More

Early Christians in Viking Denmark

Excavations at the Domskirke in Ribe, Denmark, began in 2008, and analysis of the results lend new insight into early Christianity, where this may have been one of the first places in the country where a small enclave of Christians worshipped and died.

Studies have now shown that there may have been Christian Vikings in Ribe around 865 A.D. Denmark officially became a Christian country around the year 965 A.D. when Harald Bluetooth announced his deed on the Jelling stone. More

People who believe HELL are less happy

Fire, brimstone, eternal-seeming suffering -- hell is not a pleasant concept. But research has pointed to the societal benefits of a belief in supernatural punishment, including higher economic growth in developing countries and less crime.

But there are also drawbacks, even in this life. A new study links believing in hell, and perhaps even thinking about it, with lower levels of happiness and satisfaction in life. More

A Guide to Psychoactive Plants in the Bible

Holy Anointing Oil (Leviticus 10:6) - Then took Mary a pound of ointment of spikenard, very costly, and anointed the feet of Jesus, and wiped his feet with her hair: and the house was filled with the odor of the ointment (Exodus 29:7). Then shalt thou take the anointing oil, and pour it upon his head and anoint him. More

After 400 years, mathematicians find new class of solid shapes

The work of the Greek polymath Plato has kept millions of people busy for millennia. A few among them have been mathematicians who have obsessed about Platonic solids, a class of geometric forms that are highly regular and are commonly found in nature. More

Hundreds of tiny satellites could soon deliver free [government-Google spying and] Internet worldwide

Developers say they are less than a year away from deploying prototype satellites that could someday soon broadcast free and universal Internet all over the globe from high in orbit.

The “Outernet” project being bankrolled by the Media Development Investment Fund (MDIF) of New York is currently in the midst of conducting technical assessment of the project. More

Lost Civilizations: Cambodia, Egypt, Mexico...

Dhr. Seven, Dev, Wisdom Quarterly; Graham Hancock; Cambodia Channel

(Cambodia Channel) "In Search of the Lost Civilization" by Graham Hancock (3 episodes)

Khmer, Bayon temple, Angkor Wat (PKP)

"In Search of the Lost Civilization" with Graham Hancock features Cambodia's magnificent Angkor Wat Hindu then Buddhist temple complex, the center of an advanced jungle civilization of 1 million urban and suburban residents and a great Southeast Asian empire. It is compared to the untold treasures of dynastic Egypt, megalithic Mexico, underwater Japan, the Nazca Desert of Peru, Easter Island, Micronesia, and elsewhere.

What are the connection between Angkor Wat in the Cambodian jungle (formerly the seat of the great Khmer Empire), pyramids in the Egyptian desert, and stone monuments on Easter Island and in Micronesia?

Scanning Angkor Wat sites (livescience)

What is the underwater mystery of the stone complex in Japan? The last time it was above water was 10,000 years ago.

 

Our ancestors were certainly highly intelligent beings with technology excelling our own today. For thousands of years ago they precisely predicted a solar eclipse over Mexico that arrived in 1991.

Egypt destroyed by Aegean Sea Peoples

In this set of video recordings, writer Graham Hancock traverses the world and explains his controversial theory that an ancient civilization of highly intelligent people sailed or traversed the planet as early as 10,500 B.C. They spread advanced astronomical knowledge and built precise ancient observatories.
 

Angkor Thom, Cambodia (Dibattista)

Skeptics may scoff, but Hancock points out similarities in giant stone structures in the Egyptian desert and Cambodian jungle, and on Easter Island and in Micronesia. He points out evidence of an ancient society of seafarers. His proposals seem utterly bizarre at first, but he presents them in an understated way making use of clever computer graphics and aerial photography to illustrate the startling similarities in ancient structures found from the North Atlantic to the South Pacific.

Cambodian Theravada Buddhist monks in front of Angkor Temple, central shrine and pool

Tour Vedic and Buddhist India with Graham Hancock in 2014

Hominoids, evolution, and us (video)

Pat Macpherson, Dhr. Seven, CC Liu (eds.), Wisdom Quarterly; LloydPye.com; SciShow

Science vs. science: We did not evolve by gradual transition as we are taught (26:50).

Human origins? Everything we are told is wrong. But science and truth will surface.

 

The revolving evolving theory (RU)

(Nov. 2011) Lecturer Lloyd Pye puts it all together -- human origins and who we are as a species. Pye explains, with an amazing degree of scientific certainty, the four types of hominids on the Earth today (their archeological lines and distribution on the planet). Why has Wisdom Quarterly been talking about cryptozoology, "forbidden" archeology, ancient Indian and Sumerian mythology, or any other "outlandish" topic? We dare to question, to find in these verboten topics something about ourselves as earthling human beings. There are other kinds of humans, as we have pointed out before. But it will be a long time before mainstream science will admit its biases, errors, and cover-ups.

Hominoids (primates, prehumans): Yetis (upper montane, Himalayan range), Sasquatches (lower montane forests generally peaceful, probably omnivorous mainly-plant eaters, to be distinguished from cannibals, which Native Americans and Forest Service anthropologist Kathy Moskowitz Strain call "Hairy Man" and consider human), Almas (lower montane, possibly remnant Neanderthals, a human species surviving in Southern Russia and Western China), and Agogwes or the pygmies of the group mainly residing in jungles (South America [duende?], Africa, Indonesia). Where this would leave Australia's Yowie/Yahoo is unclear, but it is described as a Sasquatch by Aboriginals down under.

All of these "ogres" may be described by the general Buddhist, Hindu, and Jain term "yaksha" (yakshi, yakkha, yakshasa, rakshasa) -- intelligent brutes and beasts living apart from humans. The most famous is featured in the texts by the name of the Yakkha Alavaka. Yakkhas are cannibalistic hominoid* creatures so crafty and mean that the term is often simply translated as "demon." This is not to suggest that they are actually "demons" (titans, hellions) or devils, but simply brutally callous to human suffering.

• Zana the Almasti (slave, sex object Neanderthaloid)
• Albert Ostman (Canadian captive of nice Sasquatch)
• Native American lore (Forest Service archeologist)

The Buddha and the ogre (yakkha) Alavaka

The closest Buddhism comes to a "creation myth" is the arrival of advanced life forms on Earth (Bhumi) from space/sky (akasha deva loka) or "the heavens," a celestial plane. They then devolve into us, "Man." Interestingly, the word for the human realm is manusya-loka. This is gleaned from the Aggañña Sutra. What most fail to notice is that this discourse, often translated as "A Buddhist Genesis," does not talk about how life or existence originated. The story is about how "human" or humanoid life arrives on this planet cyclically. This did not happen one time; it happens over and over. The Buddha is famous for using Vedic lore and popular conceptions, imbuing them with a lesson, a parable of sorts. The sutra is very general and covers spans of time only Michael Cremo could countenance because ancient Indian time is measured in great aeons (maha kalpas), ages (kalpas), and epochs, which are indeterminate periods of time too large to measure and staggering to contemplate.
 

We are lied to about our origins on Earth

*HOMINOID: Some or all hominoids are also called "apes" [humans being the "naked ape" according to Desmond Morris; see below]. However, "ape" is used in different senses. It has been used as a synonym for "monkey" or for any tailless primate with a humanlike appearance. So the Barbary macaque, a kind of monkey, is popularly called the "Barbary ape" to indicate its lack of a tail. Biologists have used "ape" to mean a member of the superfamily Hominoidea other than humans, or more recently to mean all members of the superfamily Hominoidea, so that "ape" becomes another word for "hominoid." See Primate: Historical and modern terminology.

(Nov. 2013) The SciShow (Subbable, Facebook, Tumblr) explains where this over-simplified "March of Progress" magazine image of Darwin's evolution comes from. The scientist who used it was not confused, but we have been led to take this literally. What is it actually supposed to mean? SOURCES: wiki, evolution.berkeley.edu, mentalfloss.com, sci-news.com

  

The truth is much stranger than fiction.

We may be related to the "apes," but we did not evolve on Earth as they did. Archeologist Michael Cremo has found and presented evidence for the extreme antiquity of "modern" humans (Homo sapien sapiens). We are far older than 120,000 years, far older than 1,000,000 years, older than 100,000,000 years... How is this possible? What was here, what has been here and come to its demise, did not evolve from the popular fossil record many scientists use to theorize our origins on the planet. Evolution is occurring; this is not a fundamentalist Christian argument. But, as Cremo points out, we are currently devolving. Intentional genetic manipulation made us who we are, as Pye describes, and as the historical record from ancient Sumer and Egypt documents.

 

The Naked Ape

Naked Ape (amazon.com)

"A startling view of man [modern humans, the Homo sapien sapiens], stripped of the facade we try so hard to hide behind." In view of [hu]man's awesome creativity and resourcefulness, we may be inclined to regard [ourselves] as descended from the angels, yet, in his brilliant study, Desmond Morris reminds us that man is relative to the apes -- is in fact, the greatest primate of all. With knowledge gleaned from primate ethnology, zoologist Morris examines sex, child-rearing, exploratory habits, fighting, feeding, and much more to establish our surprising bonds to the animal kingdom and add substance to the discussion that has provoked controversy and debate the world over. Natural History Magazine praised The Naked Ape as "stimulating... thought-provoking... [Morris] has introduced some novel and challenging ideas and speculations." "He minces no words," said Harper's.  "He lets off nothing in our basic relation to the animal kingdom to which we belong... He is always specific, startling, but logical." More

All Civilizations (and Self) Must Fall (video)

Dhr. Seven and Amber Larson, Wisdom Quarterly

(B1) The seafaring Aegean civilization (a general term for the Bronze Age civilizations of Greece around the Aegean Sea, the Minoan, Mycenaean or Crete, the Cyclades, and the Greek mainland) destroyed ancient Egypt. Crete is associated with the Minoan civilization from the Early Bronze Age around 1200 BCE.

One facet of the universe, along with being ultimately impersonal and disappointing, is that it is impermanent. This radical flux, or constant state of change, leads to a wearing away of larger structures, such as entire human civilizations. They may last thousands of years, but that is of course only in the sense of continuity. They, in fact, do not last two consecutive days. This is the ever present change or flux the Buddha refers to as anicca. 

The ancient Greek and Egyptian civilizations fused at Thonis-Heracleion (Hilti)

 

Insight into this is liberating when it leads to dispassion and letting go, accompanied by the realization that it is in a sense unreal as well. All formations (compounded things, composites, constructions, fabrications) are unreal. What is true for the micro is true for the macro. The Buddha focused on psychological phenomena, on what we regard as "self," those things we feel closest to and identify with. On a grander scale and much more obvious to our investigations is the fact that large things fall apart, dissolve, crumble away. If we cannot accept that this happens to the greatest of humans, the most glorious "gods" (brahmas and devas in space), the loftiest of plans, it will be very hard to accept the fact that -- and this is verifiable through vipassana -- it is true of I, me, and mine.

Monuments in Egypt are far older than ancient Egypt. They actually go back 10,000+ years, but to say so and show the evidence is to step into the realm of "forbidden" archeology.

 

(AW) "The True Story of Troy" documentary: It's the site of history's most legendary war and the Western world's oldest "adventure" story. According to myth it began with a rigged beauty contest and ended with a giant wooden Trojan horse unleashing utter destruction. Now archaeologists and literary detectives and military analysts are uncovering evidence suggesting the war was really waged. From archaeological trenches at ancient Troy and the citadel fortress of King Agamemnon from Homer to Hollywood, we search for Troy.

 

Khmer King Yayavarmann VII, Bayon temple, Angkor Wat, Cambodia (platonkohphoto/flickr)

  

End of Khmer Rouge (Hanumann/flickr)

When Buddhism ultimately says there is "no soul" (anatta) it is not aligning with materialistic science and its annihilationist view of the afterlife -- that we all die and it ends here in a pile of ashes. 

When Buddhism conventionally says there is a "soul" (atta), it is not aligning with Abrahamic religions and their eternalist view of the afterlife -- that we all die and it continues from here because an imperishable part of us goes on to one more rebirth in heaven or hell.

Who am I? Five Aggregates

Ultimately, that amalgamation of heaps of (1) form (the four primary material elements) and the four primary components of mentality), (2) feeling, (3) perception, (4) mental formations, and (5) consciousness we call body and mind, the "soul" or "self" is ultimately not what it seems.

 

Some of the treasures recovered from the Greco-Egyptian civilization (Franck Goddio)

  

These are opposite views, so how could the Buddha not side with either? That's a logical fallacy surely? It may seem like a paradox or sophistry. But we can rest assured that it is neither. When we realize for ourselves the reality we, too, can get to sounding like mystic or Zen koan writer. It really is not this way, and it really is not the other way either. Indeed, there is no self (ultimately speaking), and there are countless rebirths. We do not die at death...except that we are dying at every single moment, and physical death is one of those moments, too. There is continuity. But what "continues" or seems to continue is not the exact same thing, is not some imperishable "soul" as Hindus, Jains, and the Abrahamic faiths maintain. 

Khmer (Cambodian) Empire may have come to Olmec Mesoamerica

Buddha, Ladakh, Likir Gompa (Ifphotos/flickr)

Buddhism is unique in this assertion -- that there is no ego, no personality, nothing to cling to. Letting go is NOT possible by an act of will. Only liberating-insight can bring it about. Fortunately, it is also possible to gain an intellectual grasp of the Teaching, the Dharma, but a mere intellectual grasp will never do to reach enlightenment. 

We must know-and-see, that is, directly experience the truth. And the truth will set us free from the illusion we currently feel so utterly trapped by. Only insight into the truth can do it, and for mindfulness of body, sensations, mind, and phenomena to produce liberating-insight, we need a great deal of calm, serenity, tranquility.

If we are motivated by disappointment (dukkha), suffering, a strong desire to escape, this craving may do more to ultimately obstruct us just as it helped get us very far along the Path. We need not "want" the truth to be true. The truth is true regardless. And if the heart/mind is calm, absorbed, purified by concentration and applies these four kinds of intensive mindfulness, it will produce insight. One of the most amazing things the Buddha ever said occurs in the discourse on the Four Foundations of Mindfulness. It ends with the Buddha guaranteeing that whosoever practices correctly according to these instructions for seven years...not even seven years but just seven days will surely break through to the truth, will surely gain at least one of the stages of enlightenment and thereby make an end to all suffering.