Exploring the mysteries of our past, civilizations, cataclysms, and what it all means for us today
Teaser…
just a little teaser for what I’m working on…
postscript: there are 24, not 27, but the point is made I think…
One thought on “Teaser…”
Greetings Ben; I am a fan and longtime follower of your channel. I developed a curiosity of antediluvian civilizations after reading Erich VonDaniken’s Chariots of the Gods in college many years ago. VonDaniken’s all alien theory brought me more questions than solutions, then I read Fingerprints of the Gods in 1995 and found a kindred curiosity seeker in Graham Hancock. I have been a follower of Graham’s ever since, and more recently Randall Carlson, yourself and others.
Now I am a retired Registered Nurse and at near 70 have the time to pursue my hobby, and interest, in pre-flood anthropology and archeology. Also, I was born, raised and lived most my life in North Central Washington and have spent hours and days, hiking, mountain biking and snowmobiling the channeled scablands and Columbia Plateau. Though I am a fan of geologist Nick Zentner (in fact my wife, who is a journalist, has interviewed Nick) and the multi-flood theories, after hiking and biking from Dry Falls to Lenore Caves and beyond many times, Randall’s one-time flood theory makes sense to me.
To the reason I am writing, several weeks ago my wife and I visited Ireland for the first time and headquartered in Dublin. The trip was wonderful, the Irish people were delightful, and the highlight of our trip was a guided, private tour to the Boyne River Valley. As you are aware, this is the home of hundreds of ancient passage tombs to include the mega passage tombs of Knowth, Dowth and New Grange. We toured Knowth and New Grange to include the interior of New Grange where we spent several minutes of total darkness before seeing a recreation of the winter solstice sunrise penetrating the inner chamber. An incredible experience.
To make the day’s explorations better, our guide had a key to a nearby passage tomb named Fourknocks which is on private land. The Irish Office of Public Works (a governmental department akin to the Department of Interior and National Museum of American History combined) cares for all the passage tombs, however some are on private land which requires the owner’s permission to access – or a guide with the key.
The name FourKnocks comes from the Gaelic Fuair Cnocs, meaning cold hill – which on our visit lived up to its name. It is contemporary to New Grange and Knowth, lying on a geometric intersection between New Grange and the Hill of Tara. As we were with a group at New Grange our time in the chamber was limited, however we had no time restrictions at Fourknocks and spent almost two hours there with only our guide. If you would like I am happy to forward pictures from the interior of Fourknocks to include what is, arguably, the oldest representation of a human face ever discovered. The passage tombs were our second visit to an ancient megalithic site, the Callinish Stones in Scotland being our first in 2019.
Our guides, the public guides at Knowth and New Grange as well as our private guide, were very open to questions and fairly answered them without bias with most answers being, we simply don’t know. After an incredible day exploring the Boyne Valley, to include the Hill of Tara, there is indeed little clue what moved a neolithic society to build these huge, magnificent structures made from stones from as far as 50 miles away in such a remote and challenging location. For New Grange alone this took 200,000 tons of stone, gravel, boulders and rocks, and the social organization to construct just this one structure had to be incredible. I asked our guide, where are the remains of the builders, their homes, their fields, their graves and he said, there are none.
Granted I went into the tour with my own ante diluvian bias, but at the end of the day found the experience truly humbling. Here are my thoughts:
• Building the passage tombs – even the small ones – was no easy task, especially in consideration of Irish weather and terrain. This does not preclude their astronomical alignments, and the amount of observational time it would take to ensure that.
• The tombs are oriented to the sky, and to the marking of time, both seasons and the cycles of time.
• The interpretation of the artwork of the tombs remains debatable, by even experts. However, there are repeated designs and patterns, particularly spirals and triads of spirals, lozenges and chevrons – though there are others such as the face. Obviously these three designs, and their combinations, had great significance.
• The inner chambers share a basic design with three smaller chambers surrounding the central chamber. However, the size of the chambers varies tremendously. While the structure of Newgrange is huge, the chamber is quite small with 11 of us of snuggly fitting inside. Meanwhile Fourknocks, less than a quarter the outside diameter of New Grange, has a chamber easily four-to-five-times the size of New Grange.
• Though termed tombs, the rationale for building the structures remains a mystery. From observation, the New Grange chamber is so small even if the venerated body, or bodies, was cremated there would be little room for mourning rituals or large religious articles.
• The tombs, from ones measuring tens of feet in diameter to ones measuring hundreds of feet in diameter, share the same construction of kerb stones surrounding the structure, cairns at the entrance and a stone lined passage leading into the inner chamber covered by a domed multi-layer roof. My observation is, this was a proven method of construction which did not need significant trial and error as there is no evidence of earlier failed designs (I asked). The design is proven in the fact the New Grange chamber has not leaked a drop in 5,500 years.
My conclusions are:
• An early neolithic culture, of which there is no evidence of, builds gigantic megalithic structures which required a high degree of communication, engineering, planning and social order in an unfriendly location and environment. These special people were extremely motivated.
• The structures themselves, regardless of size, come from a scalable, proven design which has no known evidence of requiring trial and error. The design and construction methods were known before building began, to some degree.
• The sky, the measurement of seasonal cycles, celestial mechanics and observations of these things were very important to the point of literally marking/recording/measuring them in stone.
• The importance of constructing these structures was parallel to late stone age survival and at least equal to the basic needs of food, safety and shelter. To divert limited resources to the building of these structures indicate a high degree of urgency, social value and gravity.
• With newfound humility, I offer that these structures were first repositories of those things held in highest value to the society who built them. The shear mass and design of the structures was to protect these items from a disastrous threat, one that had a known history of occurring. Secondly their art appears to connect earth to sky and sky to divinity, both an observable statement and a message of hope and renewal. Lastly, I feel the structures and the items they contained were to mark the presence, the existence, of these people by making the indestructible statement to those yet to come – we were here.
Ben, thank you for you taking the time to read this. My experience in Ireland brought me a deeper understanding of the human, the people, side of this complex and fascinating question of what was before. Thank you for your work on this important question, and for so openly sharing your findings and thoughts. I feel our only hope for the acceptance of one another, our planet, our future lies in fully understanding what was before.
Greetings Ben; I am a fan and longtime follower of your channel. I developed a curiosity of antediluvian civilizations after reading Erich VonDaniken’s Chariots of the Gods in college many years ago. VonDaniken’s all alien theory brought me more questions than solutions, then I read Fingerprints of the Gods in 1995 and found a kindred curiosity seeker in Graham Hancock. I have been a follower of Graham’s ever since, and more recently Randall Carlson, yourself and others.
Now I am a retired Registered Nurse and at near 70 have the time to pursue my hobby, and interest, in pre-flood anthropology and archeology. Also, I was born, raised and lived most my life in North Central Washington and have spent hours and days, hiking, mountain biking and snowmobiling the channeled scablands and Columbia Plateau. Though I am a fan of geologist Nick Zentner (in fact my wife, who is a journalist, has interviewed Nick) and the multi-flood theories, after hiking and biking from Dry Falls to Lenore Caves and beyond many times, Randall’s one-time flood theory makes sense to me.
To the reason I am writing, several weeks ago my wife and I visited Ireland for the first time and headquartered in Dublin. The trip was wonderful, the Irish people were delightful, and the highlight of our trip was a guided, private tour to the Boyne River Valley. As you are aware, this is the home of hundreds of ancient passage tombs to include the mega passage tombs of Knowth, Dowth and New Grange. We toured Knowth and New Grange to include the interior of New Grange where we spent several minutes of total darkness before seeing a recreation of the winter solstice sunrise penetrating the inner chamber. An incredible experience.
To make the day’s explorations better, our guide had a key to a nearby passage tomb named Fourknocks which is on private land. The Irish Office of Public Works (a governmental department akin to the Department of Interior and National Museum of American History combined) cares for all the passage tombs, however some are on private land which requires the owner’s permission to access – or a guide with the key.
The name FourKnocks comes from the Gaelic Fuair Cnocs, meaning cold hill – which on our visit lived up to its name. It is contemporary to New Grange and Knowth, lying on a geometric intersection between New Grange and the Hill of Tara. As we were with a group at New Grange our time in the chamber was limited, however we had no time restrictions at Fourknocks and spent almost two hours there with only our guide. If you would like I am happy to forward pictures from the interior of Fourknocks to include what is, arguably, the oldest representation of a human face ever discovered. The passage tombs were our second visit to an ancient megalithic site, the Callinish Stones in Scotland being our first in 2019.
Our guides, the public guides at Knowth and New Grange as well as our private guide, were very open to questions and fairly answered them without bias with most answers being, we simply don’t know. After an incredible day exploring the Boyne Valley, to include the Hill of Tara, there is indeed little clue what moved a neolithic society to build these huge, magnificent structures made from stones from as far as 50 miles away in such a remote and challenging location. For New Grange alone this took 200,000 tons of stone, gravel, boulders and rocks, and the social organization to construct just this one structure had to be incredible. I asked our guide, where are the remains of the builders, their homes, their fields, their graves and he said, there are none.
Granted I went into the tour with my own ante diluvian bias, but at the end of the day found the experience truly humbling. Here are my thoughts:
• Building the passage tombs – even the small ones – was no easy task, especially in consideration of Irish weather and terrain. This does not preclude their astronomical alignments, and the amount of observational time it would take to ensure that.
• The tombs are oriented to the sky, and to the marking of time, both seasons and the cycles of time.
• The interpretation of the artwork of the tombs remains debatable, by even experts. However, there are repeated designs and patterns, particularly spirals and triads of spirals, lozenges and chevrons – though there are others such as the face. Obviously these three designs, and their combinations, had great significance.
• The inner chambers share a basic design with three smaller chambers surrounding the central chamber. However, the size of the chambers varies tremendously. While the structure of Newgrange is huge, the chamber is quite small with 11 of us of snuggly fitting inside. Meanwhile Fourknocks, less than a quarter the outside diameter of New Grange, has a chamber easily four-to-five-times the size of New Grange.
• Though termed tombs, the rationale for building the structures remains a mystery. From observation, the New Grange chamber is so small even if the venerated body, or bodies, was cremated there would be little room for mourning rituals or large religious articles.
• The tombs, from ones measuring tens of feet in diameter to ones measuring hundreds of feet in diameter, share the same construction of kerb stones surrounding the structure, cairns at the entrance and a stone lined passage leading into the inner chamber covered by a domed multi-layer roof. My observation is, this was a proven method of construction which did not need significant trial and error as there is no evidence of earlier failed designs (I asked). The design is proven in the fact the New Grange chamber has not leaked a drop in 5,500 years.
My conclusions are:
• An early neolithic culture, of which there is no evidence of, builds gigantic megalithic structures which required a high degree of communication, engineering, planning and social order in an unfriendly location and environment. These special people were extremely motivated.
• The structures themselves, regardless of size, come from a scalable, proven design which has no known evidence of requiring trial and error. The design and construction methods were known before building began, to some degree.
• The sky, the measurement of seasonal cycles, celestial mechanics and observations of these things were very important to the point of literally marking/recording/measuring them in stone.
• The importance of constructing these structures was parallel to late stone age survival and at least equal to the basic needs of food, safety and shelter. To divert limited resources to the building of these structures indicate a high degree of urgency, social value and gravity.
• With newfound humility, I offer that these structures were first repositories of those things held in highest value to the society who built them. The shear mass and design of the structures was to protect these items from a disastrous threat, one that had a known history of occurring. Secondly their art appears to connect earth to sky and sky to divinity, both an observable statement and a message of hope and renewal. Lastly, I feel the structures and the items they contained were to mark the presence, the existence, of these people by making the indestructible statement to those yet to come – we were here.
Ben, thank you for you taking the time to read this. My experience in Ireland brought me a deeper understanding of the human, the people, side of this complex and fascinating question of what was before. Thank you for your work on this important question, and for so openly sharing your findings and thoughts. I feel our only hope for the acceptance of one another, our planet, our future lies in fully understanding what was before.
BH