Understanding our past is what historians and anthropologists seek to do. Looking back we will witness civilizations rise and fall, as humanity walks down a very repetitive path of construction and destruction. Still, there are some ancient cultures that seem incredibly alien to us, legends and strange encounters cast nothing but shadow over some of these peoples. Some are said to be very advanced and tranquil only to vanish with some cataclysm and others, despite stories and accounts of encounters, never seem to have existed. Here is a list of mysteries surrounding ancient peoples.
Most Egyptologists believe the Great Sphinx on the Giza plateau is about 4,500 years old. But that number is just that – a belief, a theory, not a fact. As Robert Bauval says in ‘The Age of the Sphinx’, “there was no inscriptions – not a single one – either carved on a wall or a stela or written on the throngs of papyri” that associates the Sphinx with this time period. So when was it built? John Anthony West challenged the accepted age of the monument when he noted the vertical weathering on its base, which could only have been caused by long exposure to water in the form of heavy rains. In the middle of the desert? Where did the water come from? It so happens that this area of the world experienced such rains – about 10,500 years ago! This would make the Sphinx more than twice its currently accepted age. Bauval and Graham Hancock have calculated that the Great Pyramid likewise dates back to about 10,500 B.C. – predating the Egyptian civilization. This raises the questions: Who built them and why?
I’ll just point out that the general sphinx shape is a natural formation in that part of the world, due to winds + sand. Egyptologists point out that the Egyptians would have noticed the cat-like shape, and then carved in the features.
The famous Nazca lines can be found in a desert about 200 miles south of Lima, Peru. On a plain measuring approximately 37 miles long and one mile wide are etched lines and figures that have puzzled the scientific world since their discovery in the 1930s. The lines run perfectly straight, some parallel to one another, many intersecting, making the lines look from the air like ancient airport runways. This prompted Erich von Daniken in his book Chariots of the Gods to suggest that they actually were runways for extraterrestrial craft. More intriguing are the gigantic figures of 70-some animals carved into the ground – a monkey, a spider, and a hummingbird among others. The puzzle is that these lines and figures are of such a scale that they can only be recognized from a high altitude. So what is their significance? Some believe they have an astronomical purpose, while others think they served in religious ceremonies. A recent theory suggests the lines lead to sources of precious water. The truth is, no one really knows.
There are many, many, many theories as to the true location of Atlantis. We get the legend of Atlantis from Plato who wrote about the beautiful, technologically advanced continent-sized island back in 370 B.C., but his description of its location was limited and vague. Many, of course, conclude that Atlantis never really existed. Those who think it did exist have sought evidence or at least clues in almost every corner of the globe. Edgar Cayce’s famous prophecies said remnants of Atlantis would be found around Bermuda, and in 1969, geometric stone formations were found near Bimini (a.k.a. The Bimini Road) that believers said confirmed Cayce’s prediction. Other proposed locations for Atlantis include Antarctica, Mexico, off the coast of England, possibly even off the coast of Cuba (see below). The controversy and theories will likely continue until someone uncovers a sign saying: “Welkommen zu Atlantis! Eat at Joe’s.” For a more indepth article on Atlantis, go here.
There’s been a lot of hoopla over the supposed prophecies of the Mayan calendar. More people fear it, perhaps, than feared the predicted catastrophes of the year 2000. All the fretting is based on the finding that the Mayan “Long Count” calendar ends on a date that corresponds to our December 21, 2012. What does this mean? The end of the world through some global cataclysm or war? The beginning of a new era, a new Age for mankind? Such prophecies have a long tradition of not coming to pass. But the only way we’ll find out for sure is to wait and see. Just in case, however, in 2012 you might want to do your Christmas shopping early.
In 1940, husband-and-wife archaeological team, Sydney and Georgia Wheeler found a mummy in ‘Spirit Cave’ thirteen miles east of Fallon, Nevada. Upon entering Spirit Cave they discovered the remains of two people wrapped in tule matting. One set of remains, buried deeper than the other, had been partially mummified (the head and right shoulder). The Wheelers, with the assistance of local residents, recovered a total of sixty-seven artifacts from the cave. These artifacts were examined at the Nevada State Museum where they were estimated to be between 1,500 and 2,000 years old. 54 years later in 1994, University of California, Riverside anthropologist R. Erv Taylor examined seventeen of the Spirit Cave artifacts using mass spectrometry. The results indicated that the mummy was approximately 9,400 years old — older than any previously known North American mummy. Further study determined that the mummy exhibits Caucasoid characteristics resembling the Ainu (an Ethnic Japanese people), although a definitive affiliation has not been established.
The April 5, 1909 edition of the Arizona Gazette featured an article entitled “Explorations in Grand Canyon: Remarkable finds indicate ancient people migrated from Orient.” According to the article, the expedition was financed by the Smithsonian Institute and discovered artifacts that would, if verified, stand conventional history on its ear. Inside a cavern “hewn in solid rock by human hands” were found tablets bearing hieroglyphics, copper weapons and tools, statues of Egyptian deities and mummies. Although highly intriguing, the truth of this story is in doubt simply because the site has never been re-found. The Smithsonian disavows all knowledge of the discovery, and several expeditions searching for the cavern have come up empty-handed. Was the article just a hoax? “While it cannot be discounted that the entire story is an elaborate newspaper hoax,” writes researcher/explorer David Hatcher Childress, “the fact that it was on the front page, named the prestigious Smithsonian Institution, and gave a highly detailed story that went on for several pages, lends a great deal to its credibility. It is hard to believe such a story could have come out of thin air.” Supporters also claim that the restricted areas (of which even workers at the Canyon) are evidence of the cover-up.
The legendary lost world of Mu, sometimes call Lemuria is nearly as famous as Atlantis and indeed, parallels it closely at times. According to tradition among many Pacific islands, Mu was an “Eden-like” tropical paradise located somewhere in the Pacific that sunk, along with all of its beautiful inhabitants, thousands of years ago (sounds familiar). Like Atlantis, there is ongoing debate as to whether it really existed and, if so, where.
Christopher Columbus is said to have “discovered” America, but of course we all know better than this, as long before him people/peoples had been there, even settled. Native Americans arrived there many centuries before Columbus, and there is good evidence that explorers from other civilizations beat Columbus here, too. Artifacts have now been found suggesting that ancient cultures explored the continent. Greek and Roman coins and pottery have been found in the U.S. and Mexico; Egyptian statues of Isis and Osiris were found in Mexico as well as evidence of Egyptians in the Grand Canyon (see above). Ancient Hebrew and Asian artifacts have also been found. Stories of travellers from distant lands in native myths and folklore also suggest probability.
The truth is, we know very little about early, far-traveling cultures.
In May 2001, an exciting discovery was made by Advanced Digital Communications (ADC) who were mapping the ocean bottom of Cuba’s territorial waters. Sonar readings revealed something unexpected and quite amazing 2,200 feet down: stones laid out in a geometric pattern that looked very much like the ruins of a city. “Nature couldn’t have built anything so symmetrical. This isn’t natural, but we don’t know what it is.” said Paul Weinzweig, of ADC. A great sunken city? National Geographic showed a great deal of interest in the site and was involved in subsequent investigations. In 2003, a minisub dove down to explore the structures. Paulina Zelitsky of ADC said they saw a structure that “looks like it could have been a large urban center. However, it would be totally irresponsible to say what it was before we have evidence.”
Off the southern shore of Okinawa, Japan, under 20 to 100 feet of water lie enigmatic structures that may have been built by some ancient, “lost civilization”. Skeptics say the large, tiered formations are probably natural in origin (which seems crazy looking at the pictures). “Then, in late summer of the following year,” writes Frank Joseph in an article for Atlantis Rising, “another diver in Okinawa waters was shocked to see a massive arch or gateway of huge stone blocks beautifully fitted together in the manner of prehistoric masonry found among the Inca cities on the other side of the Pacific Ocean, in the Andes Mountains of South America.” This seems to confirm that these are manmade ruins. The architecture includes what appear to be paved streets and crossroads, large altar-like formations, staircases leading to broad plazas and processional ways surmounted by pairs of towering features resembling pylons. If it is a sunken city, it is huge. It’s been suggested that it might be the lost civilization of Mu or Lemuria (see above).
This article is re-produced with permission from About.Com
Contributor: The Doppleganger
Its soo cool about like the thing like a about atlantis and stuff and for example Why whould they build the atlantis hotel If it didnt exist and is still such a controversial subjet Oh and one question jamie can you make a list about i dont know somthing completley weird
Boxxy?
Awesome!
10 Aliens!
9 Aliens!
8 Aliens!
7 Aliens!
6 Aliens!
5 Aliens!
4 Aliens!
3 Aliens!
2 Aliens!
1 Um – er – Aliens!
Correcct
mmm…mysterious
Why would you suggest that the city of Mu or Lemuria is nearly as famous as Atlantis? I have never heard of either of these two cities.
thats coz you are a DUMP ASS!!!!!
astraya– i agree, it was all aliens!!
I’ve heard about most of these, but i didn’t know about the Sphinx. Weird. Great list!!!!!!!
Sorry, should have included……pretty good list, you got me to read the whole thing.
Crisp guns on the list, g. More history if ya can…
…and mystery!
Wow, this list is AMAZING!
…too bad its plagiarized.
Search “The 10 Most Intriguing Mysteries of Lost Civilizations” at about dotcom
http://paranormal.about.com/cs/lostworlds/a/aa020204.htm
Whoever posted the list said it was reproduced with permission from about.com at the end of the list genius.
Great list. It’s amazing to think that even now, there’s real mystery about the world that we will probably never find the truth about.
Oz: NICE FINDING
i thought the indus valley civilizations sudden & abrupt disappearance from the pages of historywould be featured, mistaken i was, though ….
I remember watching a documentary on google vids a while back on the subject of ‘esoteric egypt’, I think it was narrated by john Anthony West. He goes into some depth about the age of the sphinx. I was actually convinced until I read that last paragraph that the egyptians used an already sphinx like shape as the foundations for their sculpture. This seems more plausible to me.
Great list… but quoting Graham Han*****won’t score too many historical points. Not many take him serious, but very entertaining reading. “The Message of the Sphinx” covers his take on it in detail.
About #7; if the world is going to end on Dec. 21, 2012, why would I want to do any Christmas shopping at all? So far all of the end of the world propechies have been wrong. I predict someday one of them will be right.
I love this sort of stuff. Good list.
And if the Mayans were so brilliant to be able to see in to the future and know when the end of the world was coming, I wonder why they couldn’t see their own impending doom
@ I45 Start: It’s not AS well known, but still, most people have heard of Mu. Hell, they even referenced Mu in a computer game on the SNES, ‘Illusion of Time’. Actually covers quite a lot of this sort of stuff, great game if anyone has a SNES – they go to Mu, the Nazca lines, Egpyt, the Great Wall… very interesting historical RPG.
Errm… Plato explicitly said that Atlantis wasn’t real, that he was making it up for the purpose of philosophical *****ogies.
So Atlantis no more a lost civilization than Middle Earth or the Discworld are.
The Mayan calendar doesn’t end on that date. The current cycle of the Mayan calendar ends on that date. There’s nothing in Mayan calendarology that precludes the next cycle of the Mayan calendar from starting pretty much without incident, just as the previous cycles of the Mayan calendar have started pretty much without incident, possibly except for a few New Cycle’s Eve’s parties.
The Gregorian calendar “ends” on 31 Dec 2008. I expect that 1 Jan 2009 will happen pretty much as planned.
Hmmm, very interesting.
These are my favorite kinds of lists! What about Amazon Women? Or Easter Island?
jajdude…i’ve got to ask again, because you didn’t answer last time. what does “Crisp guns on the list, g.”? you say it on almost every list, and i don’t get it.
on to the list…good list…these are my favorites, mysteries, history and the like. i’d love to have the money to just travel around and investigate things like these.
I45 Start: i too have never heard of Mu.
McSquida: maybe “most people” is a bit of a stretch. it’s not only that i don’t know of it, but i’ve never even heard the name Mu or Lemuria.
‘Nazca’ by Jim Woodman (1980), floats the intriguing possibility that those people accidentally discovered and developed hot-air balloon flight. He went on to speculate that the giant *line drawings*, which can only be appreciated and discerned for what they are from altitude, had religious significance. He thought that perhaps their shamans, or more likely their dead, were involved in ritual flights.
Like Thor Heyerdal, Woodman did not stop short at *hot-air* speculating. He put his hypothesis into practice. It was founded on the basis that the Nazca people had developed among the finest and closest-woven textiles prior to the Industrial Revolution. So, reconstructing identical cloth, he built himself primitive craft based only on the materials and technologies that would have been available and feasible, including hot-air fire pìts. Apparently remnants of what might be their equivalent exist. First came models, then a full-size man-lifter (Woodman!). It worked spectacularly.
Your choice to accept. We might only wonder why there are no representative images of the *flying machines* themselves in the culture. Nevertheless, true or not, Woodman made an undeniable point that the possibility of early flying Peruvians can be put to the positive test. The existence of aliens from millions of light years away in space can’t!
Worth more than a mention here are the Inca stones. No one knows how walls of different-sized irregular rocks have been trimmed to flat-edges of different lengths so that all fit together so perfectly and in depth jig-saw puzzle-wise, that a knife cannot be inserted between them. If memory serves, there is one exceptionally large example in Cuzco with 11 faces! If you think that’s easy, try taking a large number of pieces of paper, cut one into an irregular pentagon, match another irregular pentagon to one of its sides, then (by eye only) fit a third between them, and so on, and so on. You’ll end up with confetti and a very bad temper, I promise! And that’s just working with small bits of paper and effectively in two dimensions.
Thanks for an interesting topic.
i am the descendant and the last of ORC TRIBE i suld be this list… grg.
just kid, good list
St Brendan the Navigator from Ireland was sailed to America some time between 500-577 AD.
The Doppleganger: Nice work!
I’ve heard of all of these places, but putting them all together, as you did, makes more of an impression than does each one separately.
I’ve always harbored a slight bias toward Mu ( Lemuria) and Atlantis being one and the same, though I believe neither existed. I think of them as parables; teaching stories for the masses.
Egyptian culture has always fascinated me. That they could have made it to the North American continent, and as far inland as the Grand Canyon, is by no means a stretch of the imagination. They were an intelligent and resourceful people, far ahead of their time in comparison to what other peoples around them were doing.
The sphinx? The pyramids? The magnificent buildings and statues, some of which still stand, all prove their greatness.
Yes. They accomplished it all with slave labor,but they conceived them, drew up the plans, knew beforehand how everything had to be done. Because they did not have slaves in abundance, means they had to treat the ones they did have carefully, with respect. Forget “Ben-Hur”, and slaves being lashed to within an inch of their lives while on the job. A man had to be healthy and strong to do that kind of work. So slaves, if slaves there were, were well fed and well cared for.
The Maya are another people I’ve always been fascinated by. To have done so much, built such amazing cities in the jungles, to have constructed such accurate calendars, all without the benefits of the Egyptians is just mind-boggling.
I have visited Chitzen-Itza and Tulum, both are amazing although Chitzen-Itza blows everything else out of the water! There’s something there. I don’t mean something spiritual, although I suspect if someone was so attuned it would come across that way, and it’s something I can’t describe. Just walking through the rooms, passing through the spaces, there is a feeling, almost a presence left behind. I know it’s your mind playing tricks, but it plays them well.
I’ve already told the story of watching the sunrise from atop the great pyramid at Chitzen-Itza, so I won’t repeat myself, but do yourselves a favor, if you live in North or Central America, and visit there.
You won’t be sorry.
Hopefully Doppleganger is Steven Wagner, the original author of this article.
Anon; I can believe that hot air balloons were discovered and used by the ancients. A lot easier to believe though is their use of plumb bobs mounted to a tall cross shaped device called a groma. Like a T with the weights hanging off it, use 2, make sure they are level, line ‘em up, you have a straight line. They had wheels that were used to measure distance quite accurately. Wouldn’t be that difficult to enlarge a drawing to giant proportions.
I’m also pretty sure the city off the coast of Japan has been proven to be a natural occurrence. Sedimentary rock splits along straight lines; any vertical shifting, you’re going to get something that looks like stairs.
You should reverse the order, it was kinda a disappointment at the end. Also, ‘Osis and Isiris’ should be ‘Isis and Osiris’.
isn’t when a calendar cycle ends, a new one starts?
like, after 31 december > 1 january.
what’s the big deal?
Number 3 is preposterous. Stating matter-of-factly that egyptian,roman and greek artifacts have been found doesn´t make it any more true. Links, please.
What makes it worse is that it doesn´t talk about Vikings who seem to have really discovered America before Columbus.
very interesting list. someone should make a list of out-of-place-artifacts, like the starchild skull or the baghdad battery.
One of the best lists!
I believe that every thing has an origin, nothing comes out of nothing, and a row of dominos doesn’t fall by itself, it need the push!
Like the story of the Flood and Noah’s Ark, many say it didn’t happen, but haven’t any one notice that the story of a flood, an arc, and a Noah figure is in many culters and share many similarites, Matsya in the Hindu Puranas, Deucalion in Greek mythology, Utnapishtim in the Epic of Gilgamesh… and many others.
Not these mysteries again…. *sigh.*
Okay. Debunking time. I love mysteries as much as the next guy–in some instances more–but these particular ones need some thumping, because they keep rising up even though largely discredited or solved.
Let’s begin with this: Your humble Randall himself once debated with Robert Schoch, the geologist who supports (or supported–he may have since drawn back from it a bit) the notion of an older age for the Sphinx. We were actually debating another topic (Randall does not pretend to know more than an accredited geologist, it not being his field), namely pre-Columbian “evidence” (so-called) for non-Native American cultures and people in North America, as well imagined “evidence” for a “shared culture” between various Pre-Columbian South and Central American native cultures and Old World cultures such as the Egyptians. Shoch was stepping outside of his field of expertise, I felt, in supporting the idea of shared culture, and I opposed the notion. I humbly feel I won the exchange. This doesn’t mean that I feel it was impossible that there was some kind of Pre-Columbian contact between the Old World and the New; I simply find it to be unlikely, and do not find the “evidence” impressive… nor do I believe that what little of it there is cannot be explained by other, more reasonable means.
Mysteries 3, 5, and 6 can fall under this heading. The question of contact between the two “worlds” is open, yes. But don’t fall into the trap of thinking there is any REAL evidence for it, anything solid. There isn’t. CERTAINLY not the “evidence” propounded by people who are NOT archeologists, anthropologists, or historians, who believe that because the Mayans, for instance, built pyramids, and the Egyptians did too, then there must be a connection. Nope. Sorry. A) The two pyramid styles are entirely different–the Egyptian pyramid evolved from a long series of previous incarnations beginning with the mastaba tomb, and built up from there. In short, they were always tombs. New World pyramids were only tangentially used as tombs, and were from the beginning mainly temples. Their designs were also entirely distinct. B) They are separated not only in distance but TIME. The evolution of the Egyptian pyramid dates back to the pre-dynastic period of Egypt, when mastaba tombs first appeared. That is some 6000-6500 years ago. The earliest—EARLIEST—pyramidal structures in the New World date back, if I recall correctly (Randall’s expertise is in the Old World, not so much the New) to at best 1000 BC, or some 3000 years ago. Big difference. IN FACT… by that time the Egyptians had LONG SINCE stopped building pyramids in the true sense–the primary styles are mainly a product of the Old Kingdom–and had long moved to smaller, more modified types and eventually gave up the pyramid altogether. That’s a LONG time for a hand-me-down influence.
The Egyptian treasures in the Grand Canyon? Certainly a newspaper hoax VERY typical of the day. We’re used to the idea of journalism being (basically) an objective, truth-honoring profession. It wasn’t, always. It was common habit up until about the 1920s or 30s for provincial newspapers in particular to mix “invented” news stories with honest to goodness reporting. The lines, you see, between straightforward journalism and entertainment being more blurred back in the day than we realize–more so than even we think of our media today. This led to the invention of “crashed spaceships” (the famous Aurora, Texas tale) and “airship scares” (a broad hoax of the turn of the century midwest) and the like, and often included these types of “out of place” archeological tales–some also calculated to serve–or make fun of–the ideas of religious zealots.
But we need to get this straight–the Egyptians were never a sea-faring people. They navigated the Nile and the shores of their world, venturing out no further than the Aegean on diplomatic and trade missions. When they needed sea-faring or exploration done, they hired others, such as the Phoenicians or the Greeks. The possibility, then, of Egyptian missions to the New World is so extremely remote as to be impossible. In fact it is HIGHLY unlikely that ANY culture of the ancient world possessed the sailing and navigational technology necessary to traverse the ocean. Of course, the Polynesians did it thousands of years before, in the Pacific–so it isn’t impossible. But there is also no evidence for a flourishing or even slight trade of goods or ideas between the New World and the Old.
As for the Spirit Cave Mummy—the features of the reconstruction are, to my eyes, debatable. I’ve seen many an artifact that was supposed to “blow the lid off” the idea of no New World involvement in the Old, prior to Columbus, by claiming that depictions of faces were negroid, Chinese, Semitic, etc. While I admit these things often look quite startling, there is A) not a one that can’t be explained by variations in features within native Americans–race is not a science folks, nor is it an accepted scientific notion–and B) some are not even proven to actually BE pre-Columbian. As for this mummy–if he IS related to the Ainu, this would not be terribly surprising as the Ainu WERE native (it’s theorized) to the Siberian region. (And it is therefore their cousins who migrated to North America). It is only out-dated racial conceit that holds them (the Ainu) to be “caucasion”–in fact they are perfect proof that there is so much overlap and blurring between the “races” that the concept of race is virtually worthless scientifically.
So much crap has been said and written about Atlantis over the centuries that it’s hard now to even pick out the gems from the manure. Edgar Cayce… Please! The simplest explanation is that Atlantis was a sort of half-recalled legend which Plato embroidered to make the philosophical points he intended to convey in his dialogues and in the Republic. If it has any basis in truth at all, it obviously hearkens back to a memory of the Minoan civilization of Crete and the Aegean in the Bronze Age, just prior to the ascendancy of Greek (Mycenean) civilization in the region. Clearly the Egyptians knew of the Minoans, and it is in Egypt where Solon supposedly heard the legend of Atlantis, and from whence it was passed down in retellings to Plato. It perfectly fits the combined picture of the Minoan civlization coupled with physical descriptions of the island of Thera (today’s Santorini) before it blew up in the most massive volcanic eruption in the prehistoric age of mankind. At any rate, there is no possibility of a sunken continent in the Atlantic—the seafloor of the Atlantic is spreading, building, and in places rising—not sinking–due to the processes of the mid-Atlantic ridge.
As for Mu/Lemuria… the two are NOT the same, really. One–Mu–is more or less the *invention* of a 19th century antiquarian who thought he saw similarities between the ancient civilizations of the region. The mystic Madame Blavatsky also took it up as the supposed home of another Atlantean type “mother culture.” Nonsense. As is Lemuria, supposed to explain the presence of similar animals in both Africa and Asia. Today we know that this is explained by continental drift, not sunken continents.
Well, that puts me in my place, as it should, ancient history not being my area of expertise.
Re: the Egyptian artifacts in the Grand Canyon. I’d forgotten, or put into the back of my mind, the “yellow journalism” of the 1920′s -1930′s. The seedbed of Charles Fort!
My other errors; I’ll take responsibility for my own enthusiasm overcoming common sense.
I still stand by my exhortation to visit Chitzen-Itza. It is magnificent, and should be on everyone’s bucket list.
On number 3, its Osiris, and Isis, not Osis and Isiris.
Interesting.
Randall…could you please turn your superior *****ytical powers upon yourself and provide the rest of us an answer to the following question? Why do people like you suck the life out of harmless entertainment by being so smug and overbearing? Nowhere in this list does the author state any of these as being FACT. Is it really necessary for you to nitpick this list and ridicule it all in the name of trying to impress the rest of us with intellectual prowess. Maybe you should go out on a date or something and loosen up. Its just for fun…try having some.
Golly, there’s a tremendous amount of snarky, pompous people on here. Why not enjoy civil debate instead of trying to decimate and belittle those around you? (Not directed at you drmos).
Jamie, the allegations of plagiarism really do need to be looked into. The link Oz provided was the same material, only reversed order. The Doppleganger even kept the spelling mistake on the original one: “Egyptian statues of Osis and Isiris were found in Mexico”.
Doppleganger, I seriously hope you wrote the original. If not, you should feel pretty ashamed of yourself.
Aliens.
Juliet..no problem. I normally do not say things like that. But I had had enough of the self appointed experts. This is a FUN and ENTERTAINING site…I would like to continue to enjoy it.
interesting list =)
I agree with Cedestra. This list is plagiarised.
Just in case people are wondering about this: There is a link at the very top of the page that says Hotlinks. If you find a cool list like this one then submit it there rather than passing it off as original material.
Nicley done and entertaining list. I’m hoping that The Doppleganger and Steven Wagner are the same guy too.
Drmos: I agree, this site is supposed to be fun and entertaining.
Awesome list! It’s lists like these that keep me addicted to the site…
drmos,
“This is a FUN and ENTERTAINING site…I would like to continue to enjoy it.”
As a point of fact, that’s not how the topic is specifically presented at all. It’s your personal interpretation. It is actually *subtitled* – A list of mysteries surrounding ancient peoples.
“But I had had enough of the self appointed experts.”
Is there not room for a variety of perspectives, not to mention tolerance? Seems to me one can have a giggle at one comment and learn from the next. Or am I just a LV butterfly? There’s a technique called *skipping*. It can be used to avoid (in particular long) comments which don’t interest one (but which may well interest others). To plough through an entire comment that *****es you off and then post a complaint about it rather smacks of …
to Drmos and Juliet: I consider this list and Randall’s comment to be fun and entertaining.
Come on, what would a mystery list be without a Randall debunking? It’s part of listvese’s short but rich history.
Sorry, I guess I’d been visiting too many other lists previous to this one where there were outbreaks of ad hominem attacks in comments and lots of sniping, so I was referring to the site in general, or at least to some of the contributions in comments. I’m not suggesting that everyone skips laughingly hand in hand through the tulips with ne’er a disagreement, but jaded put-downs aren’t necessary.
Just can’t stand those people who have to show off with pompous psuedo-intellectualism in order to make themselves feel superior. They cross the line between what constitutes debate and veer into the territory of sheer rudeness. Disclaimer: Not counting Randall among those types.
Wow, I love lists like this. Such interesting subject matter and really well explained in the short space available. Well done The Doppleganger!
A lot of these I hadn’t heard of, but was very interesting to read about.
Thanks!
In number three, “Osis” and “Isiris” are used instead of “Isis” and “Osiris”.
drmos: wait for randall’s response to your criticism. that will be fun and entertaining. at least for the rest of us.
Being Peruvian myself, Im always amazed to hear about the Incas technology and cool stuff they did.Incredibly massive spans of roads, terrace farming, skull surgery,the aformentioned masonry work,and all without a writing system!
what i love about lists like this, accurate or not, is that they point me to doing more research on things i find interesting. this list is great. thanks.
Not for anything but why all the talk of plagiarism with this list? I’m not denying that this wasn’t his own work but almost every other list has most of its descriptions taken directly from wikipedia. So thats people plagiaring work that has already been plagiarised. Basically the internet is full of stolen work, just copy and repaste it somewhere.
Now it says “Isis” and “Isiris”.
shadow: oops I didn’t notice that while I was editing. I am out at lunch so will fix it when I get home
You can take large quotes off this list, and do control f, control v to cut and paste it into a quick search of Oz’s link and it matches except for a few wording changes.
Randall~ I have researced some of these fantastic claims as well and without a doubt debunked them for myself. It’s nice to see your input on these “history mystery” lists. It’s endearing how you speak of yourself in 1st person…
oh-and drmos, there are quite a few individuals who would be more than delighted to be Randall’s date for an evening…(me!me!me!) just seems like the time would be more intellectually stimulating than hearing someone criticize another person’s critique…
rtr