terpinator72 said:
Fossilized battery remains found from ancient civilizations.
You might have posted this before I answered this in another thread, but the "battery" isn't a battery at all, but rather a 1920's era spark plug (the Cosovo Artifact). The provenience and context (both of which are largely missing) of the artifact's recovery are such that it cannot be dated by strata.
terpinator72 said:
The Nazca landing strips.. the scraping and drawings of creatures depicted wearing shoes, gloves, and helmets in a period where these things simply did not exist.
First, the
period was of the Nazca Indians, which flourished from around 200 BCE to 600 CE. They certainly had use of various articles of clothing such as headdresses and footgear as well as gauntlets.
Second, I'm unaware of which of the Nazca geoglyphs are supposedly wearing headgear, footgear, or gauntlets. Perhaps you could point out which one. The ones I'm familiar with are depictions of animals and typical totems of mesoamerican people of the day.
The most important thing to consider here, however, is that stating headdresses, footgear (anklets & sandals), and handgear (guantlets & wristlets) didn't exist is completely wrong. Each of these could easily be misinterpreted by a modern Western person as "helmets, boots, & gloves." The pre-Columbian Mesoamerican would see them for what they were, however.
terpinator72 said:
why would indians create objects that they couldnt see from the ground? That were only visible from the Sky?!?
Ahh... but experimental archaeology has demonstrated that these geoglyphs
could be identified from the ground (Nickel, 1983). This experiment, and others, have also demonstrated that the Nazca Indians had the capability to create the lines using rudimentary tools, particularly if they had a design to model from. Many of the geoglyphs have smaller versions of them close by, the condor for instance. Indeed, the same glyphs are present on Nazca pottery.
terpinator72 said:
Air strips for chariots on fire, which they have seen?!?
Doubtful. One of von Daniken's assertions was that the "gods" (aliens) hovered overhead and directed the construction of the glyphs in their "chariots." If this were possible, then why did the "gods" not have V/STOL technology? Vertical/Short take off & landing would negate the necessity for a "landing strip," would it not? Indeed, why use depictions of monkey's, birds, and lizards as landing instructions?
Indeed, why land there at all? For any craft needing a landing
strip (presumably to off-set the mass and inertia of the craft in landing or to provide sufficient space for a craft of heavy mass to reach a speed to gain lift in take off), the area is poorly suited. Loose gravel and soft dirt comprise the matrix of sediment in that region of Peru.
Another of von Daniken's assertions was that a particular line was comparable to a modern airport's parking apron or some such nonsense. The glyph that von Daniken used in his comparison was the knee of a bird's leg, barely a few feet wide. It would have to be a tiny "chariot," to park there! But this is germane only in the sense that it demonstrates von Daniken's lack of original thought. Had he really thought out his speculations, he'd have bothered to note the size of the glyph. The remainder of von Daniken's speculations follow similar, spurious trends.
The real mystery of Nazca isn't how the lines were created, it is the purpose. Since the field of ancient ritual and religion is a fast emerging interest to me in my education in archaeology, I find Nazca an interesting site. To suggest that the glyphs were intended for gods might not be far from the truth, but to suggest that these gods were, in fact, ET visitors in UFOs is preposterous. Man has never needed an ET visitation to create fantasies of gods and deities in the past (or the present).
It's just as likely that these lines are part of a ritualistic event that occured regularly for the Nazca Indians, particularly since several of the lines correspond directly to summer and winter solistaces and, perhaps, other astronomical points. Primitive religions, as we can still see in contemporary primitive religions, have a worldview that is foreign to those that are raised in modern religions: there is little or no separation between the sacred and profane and nature consists of deities and gods within.
Walking the path of a glyph shaped like a condor or monkey might have been considered a way to take on the strength or power of the totem. It's likely that the social structure of the Nazca people included clans and perhaps each clan identified with particular animals. Construction of the glyphs might have been a ritualistic method of connecting the clan to the totem.
I admit, this is speculation. There is little artifactual evidence to support the notion, but there is considerable
ethnographic evidence. That is to say, there are many contemporary cultures that share beliefs similar to this speculation. But as speculations go, which seems more likely? UFO/ETI or the ritualistic representation of totems?
terpinator72 said:
ancient artwork
Artwork depicting ufos... Is there something that modern civilizations missed?
The iconography represented in many of the "UFO" representations in ancient art is, again, an oft misunderstood set of depictions. First, consider that the art being rendered (mostly in the Byzantine style) was created centuries, if not a millenia, after the events they depicted. Considering this, ask the question, "how does an artist do this?"
The answer, of course, is that he uses accepted accounts of the event as well as accepted depictions of the event. Historic artists of the Byzantine style had little say in
what they painted. Their work was more trade than craft in that they were technical in their production rather than "artistic." In fact, "artistic license" is a distinctly recent phenomenon in the world of art. Artists of antiquity through the Renaissance were commissioned and paid to produce a specific and agreed upon image.
Another thing to consider is that Byzantine art relies heavily on
symbology and little on realism. This is primarily for religious purposes and the symbols that ufologists see as UFOs represent something else entirely to those educated in Byzantine art and certainly to those that lived in the period contemporary to Byzantine art.
The Carlo Crivelli painting depicted on the website you linked to is a good example. The so-called "UFO" may seem obvious to the modern ufologist, but in reality, it is a symbolic device used by many artists of the period in representing
divine power of God. Other Annunciation paintings by Signorelli, Alamanno, etc. use the same device. The "beam" is in actuality meant to represent the anchor, or thread, that ties the holy person to God.
I won't go through and address each of the site's claims of UFOs in ancient art, mainly because my knowlege of art is limited to what has so far been relevant in my archaeological education, but I will discuss one more: "The Crucifixion" from the Visoki Decani Monestary in Kosovo, Yugoslavia.
There are a lot of Byzantine paintings that have symbols or icons in the corners of the work itself, particularly with regard to Crucifixion depictions. They are, quite simply, the Sun and the Moon, which were often depicted throughout antiquity to have anthropomorphic (or human) characteristics.
Let me offer an excerpt from the
Dictionary of Subjects & Symbols In Art (Hall, 1979).
Dictionary of Subjects & Symbols In Art said:
The sun and moon, one on each side of the cross, are a regular feature of Medieval crucifixion. They survived into the early Renaissance but are seldom seen after the 15th century. Their origin is very ancient. It was the custom to represent the Sun and Moon in images of the pagan sun gods of Persia and Greece, a practice that was carried over into Roman times on coins depicting the emperors.
...the sun is simply a man's bust with a radiant halo, the moon a woman's, with the crest of Diana. Later they are reduced to two plain disks. The moon having a crescent within the circle, may be borne by angels. The sun appears on Christ's right, the moon on his left.
You can see these symbols on other paintings by artists like Crivelli, Bramantino, Durer, and Raphael. They'll range from flat disks to comet-like depictions with the people inside as simply a face or full depictions of Apollo and Diana in horse pulled chariots.
terpinator72 said:
What about the massive pyramids that are perfectly jointed at every angle... It would take hundreds of years of a MASSIVE scaled workforce to create a single pyramid... Rollers as a hypothesis, out of wood, is not feasible in many areas pyramids exist.
There is simply no reason to exclude dynastic period Egyptians from being the builders of the pyramids and much evidence to support that they were. Wood existed in abundance in Africa and the Levant.
References
Hall, James (1979).
Dictionary of Subjects and Symbols in Art (Icon Editions). Westview Press: Boulder, CO
Nickell, Joe (1983).
The Nazca Drawings Revisited: Creation of a Full-Sized Duplicate."
Skeptical Inquirer, Spring 1983.
