Ok, I enjoy a few different ancient cultures - Egyptians, Greeks, Romans, Mayans, Incans, Aztecs and a few other not so well-known cultures (i.e. Etruscans). Well, I was bored today, and so I went to the Art Museum in St. Louis, it’s right down the street and it is completely free. Much to my amazement, it was awesome. The place was enormous, and the architecture of the building itself was great.
To the point - I’ve always watched the shows about mummies from Egypt and watched the excavations and all that. Well, I go downstairs in the museum, and what do they have? 3 MUMMIES!! I was so damn excited man. One of the encasings was opened too, and you could see the mummy itself. It was the coolest exhibit I have ever seen. It was off in a dark room, where not many people went. I swear I was in there for 30 minutes just gazing at the mummies. Beside them were the organ cases. I was in heaven.
Oh yeah - they had a few van Gogh’s and a few Monets (they had the Water Lillies one - damn that thing is huge)
There are a whole bunch of those Water Lilies paintings. My favorites were the ones from at the very end of his (Monet’s) life, when his eyesight was getting really bad (I think that’s why they are so big… room size).
Yeah man, this one was like 8 feet tall and about 15 feet wide. I had no idea it was that big.
I’m more of a fan of realistic paintings and ancient sculpture. Some of that stuff, geez, I think I can do it. But then again, that’s why I’m a student, and they’re dead. HAHA!!
I love studying ancient history, I’ve even read quite a bit of plato’s stuff (had a long time fascination with Atlantis) I’ve always wanted to go to italy to see what’s left of pompeii. There’s lots of things over there I’d love to see. I like almost all history though, I’d love to see Elba where they exiled Napoleon, there’s lots of stuff.
Ive always been fascinated by these ancient civilizations. It’s simply amazing when you consider the rich cultures they developed.
I gotta say though, while in an Communications class in College, in attempt to help me find a topic to write about, My teacher directed me to several respected sources on the Net - Web Libraries - and found several articles which claimed some of these very ancient civilizations HELD the technology to fly. It described their air ships as cigar-shaped which were capable of flying at high speeds.
Obviously theres no proof any of that ever existed, but it was interesting. my teacher became obsessed with it and read every single article on the subject she found. Ill see if I can find the damn things and read again myself to see if it’s credible at all.
For example Nazca, Peru, is filled with large scale drawings of condors, monkeys and other shapes. These are ancient drawings.
However, these drawings could not be appreciated or even noticed on the ground. In fact they werent discovered until very recently when someone overflying the field in an aircraft noticed the shapes. Why make these drawings if they cannot be appreciated or even noticed?
Additionally there are fields with what seems to be straight runways. At the very least, it's argued these ancient Peruvians held the power to fly through the use of balloons that seen from afar had a somewhat cilidrical shape.
In India, there are ancient books, which after being translated revealed either a very imaginative writer, or directions for air combat with the use of air craft - and ways to camouflage in the sky from the enemy (although these camouflaging techniques consisted of abhorrent equations such as 8 parts sun, 7 parts water, and 16 parts air, or something like that). The spacecraft described in these books were called the Vimanas. There used to be a cartoon about this stuff when I was a kid, I think a french one. There was a man and a kid whod found a golden eagle and flew away from a group who wanted to capture them. This group in turn flewe their own cigar shaped air ships with these condors and figures painted on them. These spacecraft could turn invisible and appear back and such.
Anyhow, this is all likely nothing but the fruit of someone very imaginative - after all hunger and lack of tv and sex can turn a man insane right? Im sure these Ancient people just had a very imaginative mind. Still it’s interesting. There’s a whole bunch of links if you type in ‘Ancient Aviation’ in a search engine. Or you can check out this one Photographs of Mysterious Mars Anomalies.
I’ve never really cared to go to Europe, don’t know why. I’m half hispanic, so I’d much rather go to Central or South America. Now, after seeing this stuff, I definitely want to go to, at least, the museums. It was so cool, I can’t stop thinking about it.
I’ll definitely see if I can find some books by Graham Hancock!!
JWright-The museums are great for seeing the artifacts, but nothing beats actually being there. When I was growing up, we lived overseas, and my parents took us everywhere. It was cool to see mummies in a museum, but it was far better to stand in the valley of the kings!
I visited some Mayan Ruins last month and one thing I thought was cool was that each side had 91 steps, making 364, and a single top step for all sides to come to, which makes 365 - the number of days in the year. Also, on the summer solstice, the pyramid has a snake running down the side, and at sunset, it actually looks like the snake is slithering down the pyramid. Pretty cool huh?
I’ve always been fascuanted by the greeks and romans, especially the Spartans. Just got a new book called Gates of Fire about the battle of Thermoplyae where 300 Spartans and their allies took on 2 million Persians and there conscripts from the Empire of Xerxes. I believe its supposed to be made into a movie as well.
hyooge - that’s funny you mention that, it was just on tv last night, on history channel I think. It was 30,000 spartans vs 200,000 persians, I think. Still, the odds are way against you.
Did you know that the spartans promoted homosexuality among their warriors? This unites them, because you will be fighting along side of your lover. Plus, you can’t go to war unless you are the father of a boy. To promote sex, the husband couldn’t see the wife in DAYLIGHT for the first 10 years, so when they saw each other, it was at night, humping time. Pretty cool huh? You’ll read all about this in that book.
On the subject of history and considering im a military buff, something that always triggered my interest was those very smart tactical moves that allowed an army or civilization to defeat someone much more powerful and developed than them.
The horse of troy for example (thank God Geraldo Rivera didnt cover THAT war, lol). It was one of the most ingenious moves devised by an army which allowed them to defeat their enemy.
Take Portugal for example. An army of a mere 1,000 soldiers planned their attack so well on a spanish castle which was served by over 10,000 soldiers, the smaller force defeated the spanish and gained possession of the area.
There are a lot of factors that make or break a civilization. Every once in a while a weaker one manages to get these factors on their side so well, that no matter how much weaker or smaller their force, they become victorious.
I know all greeks promoted some form of homosexuality to some degree since women weren’t seen as humans, and it was in many ways a right of passage to manhood. It really hasn’t mentioned it in this book so far, although the boys going through training are each assigned a mentor to teach them how to be men. But it isn’t exactly written from a Spartans point of view; it is written from a slave’s point of view who becomes a squire and is the sole survivor of the battle. According to the book, rge number of total Greek warriors was 5000, but only 300 Spartans who were the last to die. Either way it was crazy shit.
Sometimes I can’t get enough of the Nazi channel, uh I mean the History channel. Not to mention Discovery, TLC, The Science channel, Oxygen. (Uh, scratch that last one.)
Ancient South America is fascinating, as well as ancient Egypt, Mesopotamia, etc? As mikesmith00 mentioned, Atlantis is interesting, but many believe it is just a story meant to comment on his society at the time. While I do believe he dramatized it, I think he did it with a story he actually heard.
The most interesting theory of Atlantis is that it was South America. It sounds far fetched, but less so since they found corn (ok, maze) in an Egyptian tomb. Also seeing an area in South America that matched the ringed “islands” of Atlantis, though completely dried up, and seemed a little small, but could have supported a building that could have been the center of their government.
The manmade waterways crossing South America are fascinating. Almost a boat freeway system unmatched anywhere.
Now what do people think of the theory that the Sphinx is 12,000 years old?
