Lost Civilisations and Dinosaur Dragons

Posted on May 5, 2013 Updated on May 5, 2013

The combination of a computer seemingly in the process of conking out, and my usual interesting internet connectivity issues, I’ve done pretty well in the temper tantrum department lately. I still have quite a bit to trawl through on my desk dinosaur and transfer to the laptop, so there’s a definite underlying sense of terror there that I’ll lose something. This last week every time I’ve tried to load up my actual Twitter page I’ve been confronted by a weird gobbledegook of text, so a few small falls there, temper wise. This morning I managed to actually open it properly, and so far my dinosaur hasn’t rebooted itself once. Calm prevails, and no innocent passer by is likely to have his ears assaulted by foul Irish curses.

That’s the thing though. My Irish heritage is only the half of it. I had eight aunts and two uncles on my mother’s side of the family alone, which kind of negated the aura of virtuous innocence my granny liked to project. My grandfather was six foot four inches of carrot topped Irish terror, and within the gaggle of cousins there was always some sort of feud going on. Family get togethers generally started out with a lot of loving it up, but invariably ended with some sort of verbal brawl, especially after Uncle Cedric got down towards the bottom of his bottle of single malt. My dad died when I was six, my mom got together with an Italian guy, and he brought his rowdy lot into the fray. I had a loud childhood. Tantrums were normal. So you can see now how absolutely brilliant I am by controlling my unavoidable temper gene, and being so wonderfully accepting and tranquil. I’m humble also. Really.

Yesterday I couldn’t hook up to any of my sites properly all day. A while ago this would probably have resulted in a computer being hurled out of the window, but now I see that there really isn’t any point to getting cross. I’ve done everything I can now, and this is as good as it’s going to get for me here and now. This internet is what it is. And if I fail to win friends and influence people because of it, it won’t be from lack of trying. So I sloped off with the horde to catch up on my Ancient Aliens again. Then I had a bit of time on my hands. So. I hope you’re comfy.

I don’t disagree that aliens have been visiting us. I don’t agree either. I do think that it might be wrong to credit aliens with all the major building work more than a few thousand years ago though. Who knows what sort of things happened here back in the mists of time. If you watch a series called Life After People you’ll see how quickly the trappings of a civilization will be obliterated when there’s nobody around to look after them. Apart from nuclear waste and rocks, not much survives over thousands of years. One thing that’s always struck me as weird is the fact that after six million years of human evolution, homo sapiens only popped up around two hundred thousand years ago, apparently never progressed very far beyond flint tools and arrows until a couple of thousand years ago, remained really thick even then, and then suddenly got incredibly “civilized” only in the last hundred years or so. I never believe anything I can’t actually look at myself, but if I do see something that exists, I don’t see any point in agreeing with “theories” about it that aren’t logical to me – I believe what I see, no matter how odd it may be. All of this eyeballing of ancient structures has me firmly believing that in Earth’s past there were hugely technologically advanced civilizations. What happened to them is another story. They all seem to have disappeared. Maybe they were wiped out by each other or climatic events, or even little green guys from the planet Zog. Who knows? But I will never believe that these mysterious ancient places were built by people wielding the simple tools that the experts of the day insist were used in their construction.

Ollantaytambo is one of those fascinating places where, as in many such sites around the globe, there is much more ancient construction under the top level of the structures believed to have been built in 1440 AD. These ancient structures are around 14 000 years old.

Slabs weighing fifty tons were cut out of a mountain face, moved down said mountain, over a river, and then fused together using some sort of really high heat source.

The stone in question is called Andesite – a pretty hard rock, and today would have to be cut using a very powerful tool. So I’m looking at these things, and wondering why I’m being told that this area was definitely only populated by hunter gatherers 14 000 years ago. It makes no sense at all. This was not done by a couple of muscly guys in loincloths with a couple of flakes of flint.

Then there are the ancient “Cart Ruts” on Malta – 10 000 years old. Ruts carved into the rock, consistently equidistant, that zoom around for metres in some places, and in others, miles. This can only have been used as some sort of rail system. Nothing else makes sense here either. Hunter gatherers moving their nuts?

Still on Malta you have more ancient temples, but a lot more fascinating is the underground structure.

I can’t imagine what approaching disaster made people all around the world head underground, but there literally are dozens of underground cities thousands of years old. And those are only the ones that have been found so far. There’s one at Derinkuyu in Turkey that’s a bit mind blowing.

It goes down several stories, can comfortably house 20 000 people and their livestock.

It’s beautifully constructed with storage rooms, winepresses, and pretty much anything I would want to be a happy camper.

There are perfectly designed ventilation shafts and huge stone sliding doors. These can only be opened from the inside, and each floor can be totally cut off separately. It really makes me wonder why such a large society would head underground and lock themselves in. Hunter gatherers hurling arrows?

It makes me think that if some terrible disaster were to take out most of our population today, and maybe only a few hundred people were left scattered around and about, their focus would be on physical survival. Within generations it’s very possible that their descendents wouldn’t be able to read or write, and maybe as the remnants of our civilisation mostly crumbled to dust, they’d go back to the wilds entirely. Languages would be lost forever, and those that survive will change. Anything is possible after all. In another ten thousand years they may have formed a completely new civilisation though, with new modes of building, transport, and power generation unrecognisable to us. Our computers, kindles, paper books, most housing and vehicles would all have degenerated and broken down by then. They would dig up a couple of interesting artefacts I’m sure, but probably not have too much of a clue what they were looking at. The huge events of our times, especially the one that took us out, would become legends, to be scoffed at and disbelieved by those far off future progeny of ours. The old rock structures at Tiahuanacu and other places around the world would more than likely still be around in ten thousand years, and maybe a couple the things we’ve built would still be too, but I doubt that they would give much indication of life as we know it today.

I don’t see any reason to believe that dragons didn’t actually exist either. Considering the shape of dinosaurs, and the fossils now being found proving that a lot of them had feathers. And the mystery of the collective unconscious, or instinct, or whatever you’d like to call it, makes these strange writerly visions seem like ideas, when really they’re just memories. So. Now you understand the lack of internet tantrums. Without it I head off to LaLa Land. A bit.

Till next time friends. xxx