Tales from the Island of Serendip 4 4

[Flex Mentallo]

In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, Tamil nationalists came to identify Kumari Kandam with Lemuria. In these accounts, Kumari Kandam became the "cradle of civilization", the origin of human languages in general and the Tamil language in particular.

 

 

 

 

 

[Flex Mentallo]

These ideas gained notability in Tamil academic literature over the first decades of the 20th century, and were popularized by Devaneya Pavanar, who held that all languages on earth were merely corrupted Tamil dialects.

 

 

 

[Flex Mentallo]

He further claimed that Tamils, "H. Dravidia" were the original humans from which all races evolved around 200,000 BC.

 

 

 

 

[Flex Mentallo]

Ice Age Civilization

British writer Graham Hancock claims that there were civilizations as far back as the Ice Age.

 

 

 

 

 

 

[Flex Mentallo]

His books include Lords of Poverty, The Sign and the Seal, Fingerprints of the Gods, Keeper of Genesis (released in the US as Message of the Sphinx), The Mars Mystery, Heaven's Mirror (with wife Santha Faiia), Underworld: The Mysterious Origins of Civilization, and Talisman: Sacred Cities, Secret Faith (with co-author Robert Bauval).In 1996 he appeared in The Mysterious Origins of Man. He also wrote and presented the documentaries Underworld: Flooded Kingdoms of the Ice Age (2002) and Quest for the Lost Civilisation (1998) shown on Channel 4. In Hancock's book Talisman: Sacred Cities, Secret Faith, co-authored with Robert Bauval, the two put forward "a version of the old Jewish-Masonic plot so beloved by ultra-right-wing conspiracy theorists." They suggest a connection between the pillars of Solomon's Temple and the Twin Towers, and between the Star of David and The Pentagon.

 

 

 

 

 

 

[Flex Mentallo]

Among Hancock’s many complaints about orthodox Egyptologists and archaeologists is that they have consistently underestimated the scientific knowledge of ancient societies. Paradoxically, though, this persuades him that this knowledge was developed not by those societies already recognised by the archaeologists, but by an earlier civilisation not accepted by them. He claims to find evidence for his so-called ‘lost civilisation’ all over the world.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

[Flex Mentallo]

So, why do mainstream archaeologists reject his hypothesis of an Ice Age civilisation? Hancock and his supporters maintain that this is because of the hidebound nature of academic archaeology. This shows a failure to understand how academia works. Careers are made by overturning accepted hypotheses: the person who discovers a previously unknown civilisation would have their future career assured, but only if they are able to provide evidence that it actually existed. This would take the form of remains dating to the period that civilisation flourished.

 

What does Hancock do? Faced with a complete lack of contemporary evidence for his “lost civilisation”, he claims that it can be detected through its influence on later cultures. In one or two cases, he tries to show that the accepted dates for monuments of known civilisations are wrong and that they are actually from the eleventh millennium BC. In these cases, his redating of the monuments has not been accepted by mainstream archaeologists.

 

 

 

 

 

[Flex Mentallo]

BBC Two's Horizon TV series broadcast a programme, Atlantis Reborn, on 4 November 1999 that challenged the ideas presented by Hancock. It detailed one of Hancock's claims that the arrangement of an ancient temple complex was designed to mirror astronomical features and attempted to demonstrate that the same thing could be done with perhaps equal justification using famous landmarks in New York. It also alleged that Hancock had selectively moved or ignored the locations of some of the temples to fit his own theories.

 

Although his books have sold more than five million copies worldwide and have been translated into twenty-seven languages, his methods and conclusions have found little support among academics, his work being labelled "pseudoarchaeology".

 

 

 

 

[Flex Mentallo]

Fittingly, he now writes novels. His first novel, Entangled: The Eater of Souls, the first in a fantasy series, was published in the UK in April 2010 and in the US in October 2010. The novel makes use of Hancock's prior research interests and as he has noted, "What was there to lose, I asked myself, when my critics already described my factual books as fiction?"

 

 

 

 

 

 

[Flex Mentallo]

The notion that a great civilisation flourished and died in a cataclysm before the dawn of recorded history is indeed a seductive one.

 

 

 

 

 

[Flex Mentallo]

Perhaps this is because of a twin dissatisfaction with modern society coupled with a feeling that there is more to the human story than is contained in our philosophy.

 

 

 

 

[Flex Mentallo]

Certainly this leaves room for charlatans to ply a lucrative trade in poorly researched publications that pander to our wish for a better story.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

[Flex Mentallo]

Lost Continents

Modern geological knowledge rules out "lost continents" of any significant size. According to the theory of plate tectonics, which has been extensively confirmed over the past 40 years, the Earth's crust consists of lighter "sial" rocks (continental crust rich in aluminium silicates) that float on heavier "sima" rocks (oceanic crust richer in magnesium silicates). The sial is generally absent in the ocean floor where the crust is a few kilometers thick, while the continents are huge solid blocks tens of kilometers thick.

 

 

 

 

 

 

[Flex Mentallo]

Since continents float on the sima much like icebergs float on water, a continent cannot simply "sink" under the ocean overnight.

 

 

 

 

 

[Flex Mentallo]

But there are underwater continents that sank long ago as water levels gradually rose.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

[Flex Mentallo]

Zealandia

Zealandia is a nearly submerged continental fragment that sank after breaking away from Australia 60–85 million years ago. It stretches from New Caledonia in the north to beyond New Zealand's sub-Antarctic islands in the south - the same distance as from Haiti to Hudson's Bay.

 

 

 

 

[Flex Mentallo]

At Curio Bay, logs of a fossilized forest closely related to modern Kauri and Norfolk Pine can be seen that grew on Zealandia about 180 million years ago during the Jurassic period, before it split from Gondwana.

 

 

 

 

[Flex Mentallo]

It is true that continental drift and seafloor spreading can change the shape and position of continents and occasionally break a continent into two or more pieces as happened to Pangaea 200 million years ago.

 

 

 

 

 

[Flex Mentallo]

However, these are very slow processes that occur in geological time scales (hundreds of millions of years). Over the scale of history (tens of thousands of years), the sima under the continental crust can be considered solid, and the continents are basically anchored on it. It is all but certain that the continents and ocean floors have retained their present position and shape for the whole span of human existence.

 

There is also no conceivable event that could have "destroyed" a continent, since its huge mass of sial rocks would have to end up somewhere—and there is no trace of it at the bottom of the oceans. The Pacific Ocean islands are not part of a submerged landmass but rather the tips of isolated volcanoes.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

[Silver Surfer]

Quickly becoming one of my favorite threads. Keep it coming.