Newsdesk Archive

An exchange between David Frawley and Michael Witzel regarding the origins of Indian civilization. The conversation is presented in chronological order. Thanks go to SriKowtha for bringing this to attention.

July 10, 2002 Havana, Cuba ­ A year ago in May 2001, I first reported at Earthfiles.com the startling comments made by ocean engineer, Paulina Zelitsky in Havana, Cuba about her finding earlier in 2000 "possibly a sunken city built in the pre-classic period and populated by an advanced civilization similar to the early Teotihuacan culture of Yucatan. ...Researchers using sonar equipment have discovered at a depth of about 2,200 feet (700-800 meters) a huge land plateau with clear images of what appears to be urban development partly covered by sand. From above, the shapes resemble pyramids, roads and buildings."

Found in the desert in Chad by an international team and...thought to be approximately seven million years old. Scientists say it is the most important discovery in the search for the origins of humankind since the first Australopithecus "ape-man" remains were found in Africa in the 1920s.

In my previous essay "The Debunker: A Pseudo-Skeptic By Any Other Name", I examined the philosophy and tactics of 'the debunker', reasoning that an underlying insecurity caused the debunker to commit fiercely to dogmatic beliefs. I noted that the true skeptical attitude of questioning everything did not apply to debunkers, and that they were, therefore, pseudo-skeptics. And while the 'alternative community' may see such essays as the truth finally told, I'm not about to start making friends by leaving their thought processes unexamined. The plain fact is that most of the support for alternative ideas originates in similar insecurities as those that the drive the debunker - most importantly, over the need for a stable and fulfilling world-view.

Watching a hyena man perform is not for the faint-hearted. From a small plastic bag, he produces pieces of meat provided by the curious spectators. The hyenas advance towards him and snatch the meat from his mouth with their large teeth, before scuttling back a few feet. According to legend, the hyenas were fed by the inhabitants of Harar to appease the animals in good times, so that in times of drought they would not attack people or livestock.

An excavation at a quarry in Norfolk has revealed what could be one of the best-preserved Neanderthal sites ever found in the UK.

Atkins was by no means the first to get rich pushing a high-fat diet that restricted carbohydrates, but he popularized it to an extent that the American Medical Association considered it a potential threat to our health. The A.M.A. attacked Atkins's diet as a ''bizarre regimen'' that advocated ''an unlimited intake of saturated fats and cholesterol-rich foods,'' and Atkins even had to defend his diet in Congressional hearings. Thirty years later, America has become weirdly polarized on the subject of weight. On the one hand, we've been told with almost religious certainty by everyone from the surgeon general on down...that obesity is caused by the excessive consumption of fat.... On the other, we have the ever-resilient message of Atkins and decades' worth of best-selling diet books, including ''The Zone,'' ''Sugar Busters'' and ''Protein Power'' to name a few. All push some variation of what scientists would call the alternative hypothesis: it's not the fat that makes us fat, but the carbohydrates.... Over the past five years, however, there has been a subtle shift in the scientific consensus. It used to be that even considering the possibility of the alternative hypothesis, let alone researching it, was tantamount to quackery by association. Now a small but growing minority of establishment researchers have come to take seriously what the low-carb-diet doctors have been saying all along.

A fossil has been discovered in Scotland that has the oldest legs designed to walk on land ever seen by scientists. The four-legged, five-toed creature, which looked like an ungainly crocodile, shuffled around Auchenreoch Glen around 350 million years ago, represents a missing link in the animal world.

Around the year 232 B.C., Captain Rata and Navigator Maui set out with a flotilla of ships from Egypt in an attempt to circumnavigate the Earth... The Maui expedition was under the guidance of Eratosthenes, the great scientist who was also the chief librarian of the library at Alexandria...One of the navigational instruments which Maui had with him was a strange looking "calculator" that he called a tanawa; such an instrument was known, in 1492, as a torquetum.

Astronomers say there could be billions of Earths in our galaxy, the Milky Way. Their assessment comes after the discovery of the 100th exoplanet - a planet that circles a star other than our own.

The widespread news of mysterious iron pipes at the foot of Mount Baigong, located in the depths of the Qaidam Basin, Qinghai Province, has roused concern from related departments. Some experts believe that these might be relics left behind by extraterrestrial beings (ET), for the site, with its high altitude and thin, crisp air, has long been held as an ideal place to practice astronomy.

Prehistoric snapshots in the photo album of time, the mysterious cave paintings of Baja California match and excel any of the ancient cave paintings found in Europe. Some of them are believed to be 2,000 to 10,000 years old. No one knows for sure who painted them or why. Before the completion of the Trans-Peninsular Highway (Mexico 1) in 1973, the paintings were little more than rarely visited curiosities.

Director, Robertson Medical Institute and Ayurveda Ratna Gopalji Agarwal on Tuesday said he had deciphered the much-elusive Indus script which, he claimed, would prove historic in the realm of world history and civilisation. Agarwal also revealed that this deciphering of Indus script, the linkage and location of Indus like religion and civilisation had been unfolded to encompass almost all countries of the world. Even Britain, Latin American, China, Mexico, Peru and Inca religions and civilisations were Indus like iconic and these people worshipped mother goddess Durga and Tirka

A group of nine Chinese scientists will go to west China's Qinghai Province this month to closely examine the relics thought by some to have been left by extraterrestrial beings (ET). The site, known by local people as "the ET relics", is on MountBaigong about 40 kilometers to the southwest of Delingha City.

A German-led team is attempting to prove that prehistoric mariners sailed the high seas, linking ancient civilizations. Inspired by Norwegian explorer Thor Heyerdahl, the Abora project is using a Bolivian-made reed boat to sail more than 450 nautical miles between Egypt, Lebanon and Cyprus.

Our pedigree has been revised. Our closest relatives--gorillas, orangutans, chimpanzees, gibbon apes, and baboons--have been joined by an animal whose appearance hardly resembles that of humans: the Dermoptera or the flying lemur.

Police are investigating the disappearance of rare Roman artefacts which have gone missing from storage in Carlisle. The items, including part of a Roman uniform, were uncovered during the city's millennium dig in 2000.

Scientists working in Brazil's central Amazon have discovered two new monkey species that are about the size of small cats, Conservation International announced Sunday. The monkeys were discovered by Marc Van Roosmalen, a Dutch scientist working at Brazil's National Institute for Amazon Research in Manaus, 1,800 miles northwest of Rio de Janeiro. Van Roosmalen works in a little-explored region of the Amazon near the confluence of the Madeira and Tapajos rivers.

The revellers came from all over, new age travellers, druids, hare-krishnas, who all celebrated the solstice in their own manner amid a cloud of smoke and incense haze. Police said although some people flouted the rules and tried to climb the stones, there was a "good atmosphere at the site.

Our instinctive feel for the ideal projectile could explain the design of hand-grenades, the collecting habits of geologists, the size of handballs and the weight of the imperial pound, says an engineer.

Seeing smiling faces makes the brains of extroverted people light up more than the brains of shy people, researchers said on Thursday in a study they believe could help shed light on the biology of personality differences.

leading example of evolution given in biology textbooks has come unglued, evoking jeers and jubilation in the camp of creationists, who have been trying for years to expel Darwin from the classroom.

Cellular evolution, Woese argues, began in a communal environment in which the loosely organized cells took shape through extensive horizontal gene transfer. His theory challenges the longstanding Darwinian assumption known as the Doctrine of Common Descent -- that all life on Earth has descended from one original primordial form.

In 1996, marine geologists William Ryan and Walter Pitman published a scientifically popular hypothesis, titled Noah's Flood Hypothesis. The researchers presented evidence of a bursting flood about 7,500 years ago in what is now the Black Sea. This, some say, supports the biblical story of Noah and the flood. But, such a forceful flood could not have taken place, says Jun Abrajano, professor of earth and environmental sciences at Rensselaer. He is part of an international team of scientists who refute the so-called Noah's Flood Hypothesis.

The world's oldest known boat, built 7,000 years ago out of tarry, bitumen-covered slabs, has been found in an unlikely place: the Kuwaiti desert.

With the fate of the ancient bones found in Kennewick six years ago remaining in legal limbo, Peter Lampson has decided to take action. In one of a handful of developments related to the once high-profile case, Lampson is erecting a sign in Columbia Park to commemorate Kennewick's world-famous former resident, who was dredged from the Columbia River shallows during the 1996 hydroplane races.

Archaeologists have discovered a series of ancient pyramids in Uzbekistan. The hidden structures are 15 metres high and believed to be up to 2,700 years old.

For 4,000 years it has remained one of Britain's most enchanting mysteries - just what did Stonehenge look like? Mr Bedlam, from Plymouth, claims the outer ring of monolithic stones supported a magnificent cone-shaped timber roof.

Egyptian archaeologists have uncovered what may be the oldest intact sarcophagus belonging to a supervisor of the Pyramids builders.

The deserts of Syria may hold many archaeological secrets ­ but one has recently been discovered by a team of American and German scientists.

Lam Lay Yong believes the Chinese were adding, subtracting, multiplying and dividing at least 1,000 years before anyone else.

Beneath vast layers of the soil which make up this hill, a city called Hekmataneh or Ekbatan is buried. This city which was Iran's first capital city, was established by the order of Diaco, the Medes Commander of Arian race. This city was made as a surrounding location for preventing the attacks of the foreigners and enemies. Therefore it was built in seven layers and in different colors and now only a hill has remained of it.

Following in the footsteps of Norwegian scientist Thor Heyerdahl, Goerlitz hopes to prove the links between prehistoric communities in Asia Minor and the Americas. Heyerdahl used models of Pharaonic boats to build two papyrus crafts, the Ra II and the Tigris, which succeeded in crossing the Atlantic and the Indian Ocean respectively. His expeditions called into question the notion that Columbus was the first transatlantic navigator and demonstrated how the ancient Sumerians could have travelled widely.

Spices, gems and other exotic cargo excavated from an ancient port on Egypt's Red Sea show that the sea trade 2,000 years ago between the Roman Empire and India was more extensive than previously thought and even rivaled the legendary Silk Road...

In the 1980s, Goddio concentrated on excavating shipwrecks, including a Chinese junk and the Spanish galleon San Diego, off the coast of the Philippines. Since then, he has focused on Egypt.

Cranes on the Baphuon lift pieces for workers to ease into place. Throughout the complex are scaffolds upon which workers clamber to nudge ornate stone carvings into position. A couple of towers have makeshift cloth bands wrapped around them to prevent further damage.

Archaeologists doing maintenance at the famous Inca citadel of Machu Picchu have found new stone terraces, water channels, a rubbish dump and a wall dividing the site's urban sector from its temples...

A Sino-Russian archaeological team announced on earlier this month that the original settlements on both banks of the Heilongjiang (Amur) River were very similar and the region may have been an important route for humans migrating from Asia to America

Until now, native Americans were believed to have descended from Asian ancestors who arrived over a land bridge between Siberia and Alaska and then migrated across the whole of north and south America. The land bridge was formed 11,000 years ago during the ice age, when sea level dropped. However, the new evidence shows that these people did not arrive in an empty wilderness. Stone tools and charcoal from the site in Brazil show evidence of human habitation as long ago as 50,000 years.

Experts at Peru's National Culture Institute have cast doubt on the reported discovery of a new Inca city near the ruins of Machu Picchu, institute archaeologist Wilber San Roman told EFE Saturday.

Unique artifacts unearthed this season in Syria will force historians and archaeologists to rewrite the history books, because the traditional view of how civilization developed is looking increasingly wrong. This season's work at Hamoukar is beginning to make inescapable the conclusion that cities and the other hallmarks of civilization (stratification, craft specialization, monumental architecture, monumental artwork, government above a tribal level, writing, etc.) were coming into being in a number of places simultaneously in the Near East, not just in southern Mesopotamia.

New geographical and genetic evidence point to a specific 'core area' in the Fertile Crescent, near the sources of the Tigris and the Euphrates, as the cradle of agriculture.

Looking for a new hobby? Why not try 'debunking', which seems to be growing in popularity and requires little except a narrow viewpoint and a handful of faulty arguments.

Indians were digging canals hundreds and perhaps thousands of years ago....Some canals likely were used for canoe travel between villages and rivers....archaeologists have found canals with complicated lock systems to maneuver canoes up hills, earthen mounds in geometrical shapes and intricate wooden sculptures....

Researchers looked at problems such as bias and conflict of interest among peer reviewers who approve studies before they are published....researchers found the majority of authors used a statistic that made their results look the most favourable.

More accurate models of tsunami behavior are now possible, thanks to recent improvements in high-performance computers and the codes that run on them funded by the NNSA's Advanced Simulation and Computing program.

The North Magnetic Pole could soon abandon Canada, migrate north of Alaska and eventually wind up in Russia, according to a Canadian scientist.

...The man described by the London Sunday Times as the "Indiana Jones of alternative archaeology" wants to give it all up. His latest book, Underworld, is his last word on the subject, he says....

Algonquian-speaking Indians of the Eastern Seaboard...had settled into permanent, year-round village life on Block Island....Before this discovery, the traditional view was that year-round villages only became possible with the rise of agriculture.

For more information on this topic, see also: http://www.aces.uiuc.edu/~sare/columbian.html

IMPORTANT! To view this site... 1) Go to http://babelfish.altavista.com 2) Select "Translate Spanish to English" 3) Paste into the text-box the following URL: "http://www.medioambiente.cu/museo/exmar.htm" 4) Click the "Translate" button

Diving equipment will be used to try to find artefacts from the submerged site in the western Solent, near Hurst Castle. The Solent area is known to be an area rich in prehistoric remains - artefacts found indicate that settlements existed 8,500 years ago.

Underwater archaeologists have discovered Byzantine era gold coins and a sign which might lead to an ancient cemetery...

What could be the oldest lifelike drawings of human faces have been uncovered in a cave in southern France. The images were first recognised over 50 years ago, but were then lost after doubts were cast on their authenticity.

Using instruments on NASA's 2001 Mars Odyssey spacecraft, surprised scientists have found enormous quantities of buried treasure lying just under the surface of Mars -- enough water ice to fill Lake Michigan twice over. And that may just be the tip of the iceberg.

Scientists, historians, and archaeologists view many of these enduring tales as myth, legend, or allegoric tales meant to illustrate moral principles. Recent findings indicate that at least a few of them could be based on real floods that caused destruction on an enormous scale.

In part three of this series, Christopher F. Ash argued the sea level changes produced a superior distribution of fertile silts over the Ice Age lowland plains -- later lost to the early Holocene floods. In part four, Christopher presents his central thesis: that the ocean itself, during flood periods, transformed the coastal soils into the most fertile the world has ever known.

Chemicals in cockles, mussels and other seafood gave us evolutionary edge, scientists claim

Ward Sanford is an Hydrogeologist with the U. S. Geological Survey. He has kindly contributed a review of Underworld for the benefit of readers of the GrahamHancock.com (those who have not yet purchased a copy).

A British scientist has discovered the oldest sample of DNA known to man. A 425 million-year-old micro-organism found in salt in a remote part of the US is 4,000 times older than the earliest DNA found so far.

...Scientists exploring the wilds of Guatemala say they have found the mother lode...It was discovered after a hurricane tore through the landscape and exposed the veins of jade, some of which turned up in stores, arousing the curiosity of scientists.

early 100 feet beneath the Yucatán Peninsula in southern Mexico, cave divers are mapping the world's longest underground river. More important, they are unraveling the mysteries of a fragile ecosystem that may be destroyed before it is fully understood.

Floating aboard the Spanish trawler she chartered to explore the Cuban coast for shipwrecks, Paulina Zelitsky pores over yellowed tomes filled with sketches and tales of lost cities - just like the one she believes she has found deep off the coast of western Cuba.... [Click the link below to read more]

Read this article from the BBC News website by following the link below.

Archaeologists in Wiltshire say they've made a 'unique' find at the 4,000-year-old grave of an earring-wearing archer. They say it's the richest Early Bronze Age burial in Britain with more objects than any other from around 2,300BC.

Scientists believe Earth is under attack from tiny cosmic missiles weighing tons and travelling at 900,000 mph. They are only the size of a pollen grain but so dense they can rip through the planet and exit on the other side in seconds. >>Am I the only person who finds this a tad scary??

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In an excellent and well-researched essay, Paul V. Heinrich argues that most of the artifacts thus far retrieved from Cambay may be explained as natural formations. Click the link below to read the article.

Daily Mail (UK) Saturday weekly magazine, 27 April 2002, carried a major feature on Graham Hancock and the discovery of the submerged ruins of Mahabalipuram. Article is entitled "Lost Kingdoms of the Deep" and appears on pages 21-23.

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Cirrus, stratus, cumulus. We take these terms to describe the clouds above us pretty much for granted these days, often assuming they are names of ancient origin. While great age can be ascribed to their Latin roots, the specific terms for various basic cloud forms are not yet two centuries old and were only accepted as the international standards during the Twentieth Century.

The Yongle encyclopedia (Yongle Dadian) -- made up of 22,877 volumes in 11,095 books -- is being republished by the Beijing Library Press, China's state-run Xinhua news agency said on Thursday.

The mystery revolves around the source of a rapid change in the geochemistry of oceanic carbon that occurred just as the last ice age ended, between 16,000 and 20,000 years ago.

Follow up to earlier article - The 19 fossilized signs of life have also cast doubt on the theory that the plateau was fully covered by a glacier one kilometer thick at that time

The late fifth or sixth century cemetery in the New Forest, Hampshire, was pinpointed after a member of the public using a metal detector found a Byzantine brass buckle at the site

Heyerdahl (87) died at a home at Colla Micheri near Alassio in northern Italy on Thursday after a long battle against cancer. His eldest son, also called Thor, said he died quietly and peacefully with family members at his bedside

The archaeologists who discovered the tableau seven years ago now say it may be the world's earliest historical document

A supercolony of ants has been discovered stretching thousands of miles from the Italian Riviera along the coastline to northwest Spain.

And it is probable, they say, that these double asteroid systems have been formed as a result of gravitational effects during close encounters with at least two of the inner planets, including Earth.

Felix Chami, professor of archaeology at the University of Dar es Salaam has uncovered a major site on Juani, near Mafia Island, which he believes will substantially increase the evidence that East Africa was part of a wider Indian Ocean community.

Archaeologists say the find may solve some of the mysteries surrounding the Inca civilisation.

Archaeologist Yannos Lolos said on Tuesday that he found two buildings and uncovered several small hamlets scattered around the ancient acropolis of old Salamis, now known as Kanakia.

They say the lakes are filling up because rising temperatures are melting the surrounding glaciers and snowfields that feed them

The invention raises the possibility of being able to unlock one's inner genius by reawakening dormant parts of the brain

New research suggests the animals from which humans emerged were living in the tree tops 85 million years ago, when the dinosaurs still ruled the Earth

The official opening of the Knowth prehistoric monument by Noel Dempsey, Minister for the Environment and Local Government, last Thursday, brings Europe's largest Megalithic tombs complex and the largest collection of Megalithic art anywhere in Europe to public access.

Coventry writer Graham Phillips believes the staff, on display at Birmingham Museum, belonged to the historical Egyptian official Tuthmosis, whose life had strong parallels with the Moses of the Bible.

Jürg Leckebusch of the cantonal archaeology office is a specialist in the use and interpretation of ground penetrating radar (GPR).

The Chinese Academy of Sciences has produced a £9 million blueprint to reverse deterioration of the caves and improve facilities for tourists at Zhoukoudian, 30 miles from Beijing.

Then "civilization" showed up, sowing violence and discord. Some see this claim as naive. It even has a derisive nickname, the "noble savage myth."

That question had representatives of the remote Pacific outpost scratching their heads Thursday as they protested what they say is the latest Tinseltown tiki production--an upcoming "Laverne & Shirley" television special

Odyssey's Thermal Emission Imaging System (THEMIS) captures the images as the craft orbits Mars. The photos are not yet fully calibrated for scientific use, and so no science findings are being discussed, said researchers who operate the camera from Arizona State University

An ancient underwater city has been discovered off the coast of south-eastern India

Coverage has been mainly in the British Press, with articles appearing in the broadsheets, namely the Guardian, Independent, Telegraph and Times and the Scotsman. The tabloid press also weighed in, included among them the Evening Standard, the Daily Mail, the Sun and the Daily Express. Television coverage included Channel 4 News who ran a brief item, and in an interesting development, BBC News Sci-tech, their renowned online news service, also carries the story, even featuring GH in a photo! BBC national TV Six O'Clock News also ran an extensive item on the Mahabalipuram mystery featuring Graham diving at the site and including a statement by Durham University geologist and sea-level rise specialist Dr. Glen Milne. Dr Milne presented evidence that the submerged structures at Mahabalipuram were last above sea-level around 6,000 years ago - a figure seriously at odds with an estimated age of 1500-1200 years old, proposed by India's National Institute of Oceanography, in a press release of their own. In the NIO's opinion, the site in question represents one of a series of seven temples, contemporary with the Pallava dynasty. Curiously, the NIO report made no mention of Graham at all. Given the fact that GH was the inspiration behind the expedition in the first place, the omission of his name in the context of this report is mystifying indeed. More intriguing however is NIO's hasty dating of the site, on the flimsiest and most ambiguous of evidence, to just 1500 to 1200 years old. The latter date will ruffle no historical feathers if it proves to be correct. But if Glenn Milne's date of submergence of over 6000 years ago proves to be correct then the massive ruins underwater off Mahabalipuram represent a hitherto undetected high culture on the coastlines of India and a potential revolution in our understanding of the prehistory of the subcontinent. For more on all of the above, please visit the Underworld page, and to see the Press articles, please follow the various article and story links elsewhere on the Newsdesk.

Mr Feather rejects current thinking that the copper document was written by the Essenes monastic sect 2,000 years ago. A member of the Jewish Historical Society, and the Egypt Exploration Society, Mr Feather believes the engraved scroll, which lists treasures buried in the Holy Land, is written in Egyptian not in Hebrew