Doug Weller

Found by a Creationist group. No reliable dating, no peer review yet. Not written in Hebrew but proto-Canaanite. And if it is as early as the ABR claims, it won't have been the Jewish God but Yahweh, who was originally a "divine warrior from the southern region associated with Seir, Edom, Paran and Teman"., then became of one of the gods worshipped in Israel (as a storm-god it seems), and of course when monotheism developed the only god. Expect virtually everything about it to be challenged. And of course calling Canaan at that time the "Land of Israel" is politically charged.

Don't bother. Although there is some reasonable stuff at Ancient.orgins there's a lot of fringe nonsense. Claims for giants in America, more nonsense about Ancient technology, authors writing about ancient power plants, one lying about his background and arguing that the Celts and Vikings were black, another arguing Jesus was King of Edesssa and that Josephus invented Christianity, etc. With a few decent writers thrown in to make it look good.

I loved their photo of a London double decker bus on the moon. Doug

http://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/did-marco-polo-discover-america-180952765/?no-ist " But as Olshin is first to admit, the authenticity of the ten maps and four texts is hardly settled. The ink remains untested, and a radiocarbon study of the parchment of one key map—the only one subjected to such analysis—dates the sheepskin vellum to the 15th or 16th century, a sign the map is at best a copy. Another quandary is that Polo himself wrote nothing of personal maps or of lands beyond Asia, though he did once boast: “I did not tell half of what I saw.”" And Rossi, who donated the map, seems a pretty dodgy character. ~~~~

Do read the Wikipedia article, it is actually very good on this with the latest research, etc (and very little kook stuff as the editors have been making sure Wikipedia policies and guidelines are maintained). Doug

Barsoum is good at getting publicity, the author of the article is not good at researching what he's writing. To quote a geologist friend: The original geopolymer crowd seemed to have a whole litany of colloquial explanations for natural geological features... crossbedding was packing & settling lines that formed as the cement was pored/packed into the molds, solution vugs were air bubbles in the cement, or if all else failed the offending masonry was just a replacement block of natural limestone that was used to repair damage, etc. etc. This was coming from people who claimed through petrographic and X-ray analysis that there was a whole array of exotic minerals in the limestone that when other qualified researchers looked at the same specimen could not find any of them. What they did find was typical of a natural limestone (as well as an ancient whitewash coating on one of the surfaces) with bedding lamella and a calcite veinlet in the bulk limestone. When this was pointed out it was declared by the geopolymer crowd that the qualified researchers did not understand the geopolymer theory properly, they did not know how to analyze the samples properly, they were part of a demeaning stand against the geopolymer researchers and their scientific theory, etc. Here is a summary of the analysis against the geological claims of geopolymer theory: 7mb Pdf file: http://www.cmc-concrete.com/CMC%20Publications/2007,%20The%20Great%20Pyramid%20Debate,%2029th%20ICMA.pdf Jana, D. (2007) The Great Pyramid Debate: Evidence from detailed petrographic examinations of casing stones from the Great Pyramid of Khufu, a natural limestone from Tura, and a man-made (geopolymeric) limestone. Proceedings of the Twenty-Ninth Conference on Cement Microscopy Quebec City, PQ, Canada May 20 -24, 207-266.

Dennis Price is an enthusiastic amateur who has indeed worked with Wessex archaeology in a variety of capacities. He is also the one who identified Vespasian's Camp as Apollo's Lost City. I don't know why the Swindon Advertiser keeps calling him an expert on Stonehenge and an archaeologist. I'd take this with a big grain of salt. I suspect he thinks the skeleton and Apollo's Lost City are tied in somehow... Doug

Common names. Why a tomb in Jerusalem anyway. These ossuaries have been discussed before, and the James ossuary is almost certainly a forgery. This is brought to you by the people who discovered the nonexistent 'Lost Tribes', and, among other things, an apparently very inaccurate book on the Titanic.

This isn't a treasure hunter's board. By found do you mean in your back garden, or that you took it without permission from land that didn't belong to you? Doug

Video of pyramid Warning, large file: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-JigXhEZRuE&search=piramida And if you think the comments you hear express disappointment, I'm told you're right! Doug

I seem to have messed up the quoting, sorry. Formal excavations at the Archeological park: Bosnian Pyramid of the Sun site will start in April and continue to October 2006. The following archaeologists confirmed their participation in the expert teams: Mrs Grace Fegan, a leading Irish archaeologist, Mr Royce Richards, an experienced archaeologist from Australia, as well as archaeologists who graduated from the University of Insbruck (Austria), Glasgow (Scotland) and Ljubljana (Slovenia). Doug, the more I think about it the more it perplexes me. There is no way the Royce Richards that I studied with would be working on a site like this in the near future, except as a volunteer. But he is Australian and an archaeology graduate with a relatively unusual name... Well, it's been shown now that Grace Fegan's name was used in vain. I think we need to try to contact Royce Richards. See here: http://www.piramidasunca.ba/indexeng.htm Subcommittee for Archaeology Program: The Subcommittee collaborates very closely with the Subcommittee for Geology on the plans for excavation; manages the appropriate documenting, packaging, and protection of artifacts and cares for their further analysis, translates found artifacts, and prepares information for the Committee for Public Relations for the purpose of preparing press releases

Actually, it proves that Barakat should stick to his specialty, minerals. Symmetry is often found in nature. See Are Straight Lines and Rectangular Blocks Always Man-Made? http://www.hallofmaat.com/read.php?1,37078...0789#msg-370789 Doug (oh, the pyramids weren't made out of concrete blocks either, but I'm not sure if he really said that or if someone misquoted him).

Straight from a press release, I despair sometimes about the media. Semir Osmanagic a Bosnian archaeologist? Hardly. Not even in Bosnia do the archaeologists believe in Lemuria.

There is no such person as Royce Richards. Grace Fegan is a real archaeologist. There is a Richard Royce, but I don't know his credentials or experience. It would be nice to find out who really is working there. Yes there is, I studied with him at Flinders University. He recieved his undergraduate Bachelor of Archaeology in 2004, he is now completing a Masters in Journalism and works for the Department of Environment and Heritage in Adelaide. I wouldn't say he is an 'experienced' archaeologist, but he definetly exists... Thanks. So there's a Royce Richards? As well as a Richard Royce? It is really confusing, as both names are used in various articles, and Austria is sometimes substituted for Australia. http://allaboutbosnianpyram.blogger.ba/arhiva/2006/04 ". Participation has been announced by following archaeologists: Mr. Richard Royce, experienced archaeologist from Australia, together with graduate archaeologists fro Universities of Innsbruck (Austria), Glasgow (Scotland) and Ljubljana (Slovenia)." http://www.kakanien.ac.at/weblogs/imagines...9788/index_html "Participation has been confirmed by the following archaeologists: Grace Fegan, a leading Irish archaeologist, Royce Richards from Austria, together with other archaeologists from the University in Innsbruck, Glasgow and Ljubljana." But of course, neither of them may be in Bosnia, the names were of people who might participate. It would be nice to get in touch with Grace Fegan. Doug

There is no such person as Royce Richards. Grace Fegan is a real archaeologist. There is a Richard Royce, but I don't know his credentials or experience. It would be nice to find out who really is working there.