14 January, 2017

01 January, 2017

16 December, 2016

The Amazonian Stonehenge - A Brief History


CALÇOENE, Brazil — As the foreman for a cattle ranch in the far reaches of the Brazilian Amazon, Lailson Camelo da Silva was razing trees to convert rain forest into pasture when he stumbled across a bizarre arrangement of towering granite blocks.

“I had no idea that I was discovering the Amazon’s own Stonehenge,” said Mr. da Silva, 65, on a scorching October day as he gazed at the archaeological site located just north of the Equator. “It makes me wonder: What other secrets about our past are still hidden in Brazil’s jungles?”

After conducting radiocarbon testing and carrying out measurements during the winter solstice, scholars in the field of archaeoastronomy determined that an indigenous culture arranged the megaliths into an astronomical observatory about 1,000 years ago, or five centuries before the European conquest of the Americas began.

Their findings, along with other archaeological discoveries in Brazil in recent years — including giant land carvings, remains of fortified settlements and even complex road networks — are upending earlier views of archaeologists who argued that the Amazon had been relatively untouched by humans except for small, nomadic tribes.

Instead, some scholars now assert that the world’s largest tropical rain forest was far less “Edenic” than previously imagined, and that the Amazon supported a population of as many as 10 million people before the epidemics and large-scale slaughter put into motion by European colonizers.

In what is now the sparsely populated state of Amapá in northern Brazil, the sun stones found by Mr. da Silva near a stream called the Rego Grande are yielding clues about how indigenous peoples in the Amazon may have been far more sophisticated than assumed by archaeologists in the 20th century.

“We’re starting to piece together the puzzle of the Amazon Basin’s human history, and what we’re finding in Amapá is absolutely fascinating,” said Mariana Cabral, an archaeologist at the Federal University of Minas Gerais, who together with her husband, João Saldanha, also an archaeologist, has studied the Rego Grande site for the last decade.
Back in the late 19th century, the Swiss zoologist Emílio Goeldi had spotted megaliths — large monumental stones — on an expedition through Brazil’s frontier with French Guiana. Other scholars, including the pioneering American archaeologist Betty Meggers, also came across such sites, but argued that the Amazon was inhospitable to complex human settlements.

It was not until Mr. da Silva, the former ranch foreman, came across the stones at Rego Grande while deforesting surrounding jungle in the 1990s that scholars focused greater attention on the findings. Mr. da Silva said he first stumbled on the site while hunting wild boar as a teenager in the 1960s, but had subsequently avoided the area.

“The place initially felt sacred, like we didn’t belong here,” said Mr. da Silva, who now guards the Rego Grande site as its custodian. “But it was impossible to miss it during the deforestation drive of the ’90s, when the priority was to burn down trees.”

About 10 years ago, after securing public funds to cordon off the stones, Brazilian archaeologists led by Ms. Cabral and Mr. Saldanha began excavating the site, which is shaped roughly like a circle. They soon identified a portion of a river about two miles away where the granite blocks may have been quarried.

They also found ceramic burial urns, suggesting that at least part of the Rego Grande site may have been a cemetery, while colleagues from Amapá’s Institute of Scientific and Technological Research discovered that one of the tall stones seemed to be aligned with the sun’s path during the winter solstice.

After identifying other points in the site where stones could be associated with the sun’s movement on the solstice, the researchers began piecing together a theory that Rego Grande could have served various ceremonial and astronomical functions connected to agricultural or hunting cycles.

Ms. Cabral said that Rego Grande and a series of other less elaborate megalithic sites found in Amapá may have also served as markers for hunters or fishermen on a landscape that was being transformed by Amazonian peoples a millennium ago.

Still, other scholars say that more information may be needed about Rego Grande to lift it into the realm of prehistoric places clearly conceived for astronomical observations.

“We’ve seen a lot of similar claims, but it takes more than a circle of standing stones to get to a Stonehenge,” said Jovita Holbrook, a scholar of physics and cultural astronomy at the University of the Western Cape in South Africa, citing the need for more findings about Rego Grande’s characteristics and how the site was used by the people who built it.

For now, Rego Grande, which local people already call the Amazonian Stonehenge, remains enigmatic. Pottery shards jut through the soil as if offering tantalizing clues around the place, which has the feel of a contemporary conceptual art piece. Researchers are still trying to determine how Rego Grande fits into the evolving views on the Amazon’s human history.
 Representatives of the Palikur, an indigenous people living in Amapá and French Guiana, have recently stepped forward to say that their ancestors had frequented Rego Grande. Still, archaeologists express caution about establishing such links, emphasizing how much can change in human societies over the span of a thousand years.

Ms. Cabral, the archaeologist who has spent years studying Rego Grande, said that evidence of large settlements remains elusive, in contrast with other sites in the Amazon like Kuhikugu, at the headwaters of the Xingu River, where researchers have drawn parallels to the legends surrounding the mythical Lost City of Z, long an irresistible lure for explorers and adventurers.

Either way, John McKim Malville, a solar physicist at the University of Colorado who writes extensively on archaeoastronomy, emphasized how the field is moving away from focusing exclusively on astronomical functions to interpretations that are more holistic, by including the ceremonies and rituals of ancient cultures.

In that sense, the site in Calçoene offers a beguiling if cryptic glimpse into Amazonia’s past.

“The stones of Rego Grande are quite extraordinary and in their irregularity may have their own unique meaning, different from other megalithic sites around the world,” Mr. Melville said, raising the possibility that Rego Grande reflects the importance in Amazonian cultures of animism, the attribution of a soul to entities in nature and even inanimate objects.

He added, “We can only speculate what its stones mean.”

 Source: http://www.nytimes.com/2016/12/14/world/americas/brazil-amazon-megaliths-stonehenge.html

More Information:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amazon_Stonehenge
http://www.abc.net.au/news/2006-05-14/amazon-stonehenge-found-in-brazil/1752936
http://www.nbcnews.com/id/13582228/ns/technology_and_science-science/t/another-stonehenge-discovered-amazon/

24 November, 2016

Trump UFO: Not A UFO But A Bird/Bug?

As the headline states MUFON, has stated that the image of a UFO during a Trump campaign in Iowa was just a bird or bug.

MUFON Case 69530, was snapped by a witness at the Iowa State Fair, on August 15, 2015, and was posted to MUFON's Report a UFO (MUFON Sighting Report) on August 18, 2015

Iowa MUFON State Director Gregory Andersen investigated and closed the case as an IFO – an Identified Flying Object. Andersen believes the object near the helicopter was either a bird or a bug.

“The temperature was 73 degrees and wind was out of the south at 10 mph,” Andersen wrote in his report.“It was mostly clear with a few clouds.I looked at Google for other footage of the Trump helicopter at the state fair and there was none when it was in the air. I compared the two images and the same object is in the sky and at different locations. As the helicopter was not in both, the object was not following the helicopter and was moving slower than the helicopter. The comparison of the object when enlarged shows a similar shape that changed a little. The shape seems to rule out a balloon as it was not symmetrical.”

Andersen believes there is a natural explanation to the image.

“My analysis of the photos is it appears to be either a bug or a bird. The witness was very willing to find out what he saw and supplied me with the two original photos and these have been uploaded to CMS. He also supplied me with a photo that he put together to show the whole scene and this indicates his eagerness to resolve this case.I am classifying this as ‘IFO – Natural Phenomena.’ It is either a bug or a bird that was closer to the witness and out of focus. Although blurry, you can see that the shape changes between shots and that indicates wing movement.”

UFO Spotter Films ‘Blob’ Near Donald Trump’s Chopper | The Xenologist

Source:  http://www.openminds.tv/trump-ufo-was-bird-or-bug/39100

09 November, 2016

26 October, 2016

Russian Scientists Discover Secret Nazi Base in The Arctic!


"About 500 items of historical importance during the Second World War - in particular, gasoline cans and paper documents, bullets and personal care products, shoes with a swastika."  Press secretary of "Russian Arctic" national park Yulia Petrova has said about the findings.
 
Rumors about the existence of the base on the island of Alexandra Land went many decades. "Before that, it was about the only known from written sources, but now we have real evidence", - said a senior researcher at the National Park Evgeny Ermolov.
 
Experts believe that the secret base was built in 1942, on the direct orders of Adolf Hitler. Most likely, the Germans began to operate the facility in September 1943 and left in June 1944. The reason for folding mission scientists believe trichinosis - infected employees plant nematodes due to the use of raw meat of polar bears. Some members of the crew, scientists believe, died, and the survivors were evacuated seaplane BV-138 as part of a special rescue mission. The most valuable equipment was taken later the German submarine U387.
BV-138 Seaplane
"Treasure Hunter", also known as "Schatzgraber" - one of the most mysterious Nazi bases in the Arctic. The existence of meteorological and military direction-finding station became known in 1942, when Soviet pilots flew close to the base depots. However, traces of the Germans in the Soviet military island seen before - in 1941, and after World War II, the Nazis abandoned the base attended a specially organized Soviet expedition, which is preserved scraps of information. 
The Blohm & Voss Manufactured Seaplane BV-138, 1943
 For example, it is known that in September 1951 Icebreaker "Dezhnev", as reported in his book "Arctic shadow of the Third Reich" military journalist Sergei Kovalev, held in the strait between the island of George Land and Alexandra. The ship's crew explored the abandoned Nazi station. The expedition discovered five bunkers, designed for 30 people, meteorological mast and the antenna. The residential base bunker consisted of seven equipment rooms, bedrooms, dining room, kitchen and pantry. A quarter of the construction was hidden in the ground, and the rest is painted with oil paint white.
U-Boats at Sea
Dugout surrounded by trenches, in which researchers found a radio station, mortars and machine guns. A more powerful transmitter was hidden under the tent is five kilometers from the coast, in the interior of the island. Also on the coast close to the base of found motorboat. The station was invisible from the water and was about half a kilometer from the coast, at an altitude of 30 meters above sea level. Obviously, the "Treasure Hunter" was in direct command of the Kriegsmarine (the German Kriegsmarine). 



This was confirmed by the Soviet military, which in the vicinity of the station, and the Nazi airfield on Alexandra Land saw podskalnuyu database of German submarines. Unfortunately, today the witnesses are dead, and the available information about the secret station is a collection of hard checked rumors. In wartime, close to the German airfield and weather station on the island of Alexandra Land was Soviet airstrip. Unlike Germany, it is not located in the excellent location of the island: the Arctic winds regularly purged, so dries slowly.

Sources:
In Russian / https://lenta.ru/articles/2016/10/25/base/
http://www.ancient-code.com/researchers-find-secret-nazi-base-built-to-search-for-ancient-artifacts-in-the-arctic/ 
http://thewashingtonstandard.com/secret-nazi-military-base-code-named-treasure-hunter-discovered-arctic/