Oddities, curiousities and strangness in history

This is a place for things on the fringes, things which have all the appearance of being odd, unuasual or out of time and which actually exist. Hers a couple of examples of what I mean;



ABYDOS CARVINGS

Located approximately 450 kilometres south of Cairo in Egypt is the very ancient city-complex of Abydos. Believed by many to be one of the most important historical sites relating to ancient Egypt it is also the location of a set of carvings that have caused significant controversy amongst archeologists and historians. Within the Temple of Seti the 1st (Seti I) you can find the outer Hypostyle Hall and on one of the lintels you can find a series of carvings that look very much like helicopters and futuristic space craft. The Helicopter is particularly recognizable and this has led to questions being raised about how this can possibly exist. Naturally, every UFO enthusiast or believer in a once technologically advanced Atlantean civilization has pointed to these images as proof of their theories.

The official theory for these carvings is as follows; "they are nothing more than the result of older hieroglyphs that were plastered over and then carved again so that when the plaster later collapsed the modified images that were under the plaster reappeared but in their new and coincidental design."

But recently there have been a couple of problems raised with this explanation. Firstly recarving in such a fashion would highly unusual as the Egyptians had a special sandstone filler that they were well experienced in making that was much more robust for the job. And secondly all recent attempts to reproduce such an effect have failed.



Quite a famous one this.
THE BAGHDAD BATTERY

These strange artefacts were originally discovered in 1936 during an archaeological dig at village of Khuyut Rabbou'a which is located approximately 20 miles south east of the city centre of modern Baghdad and close to the Arch of Ctesiphon. Described as 13 – 14cm in height they contained a copper cylinder and within this was suspended an iron rod. In December 1939, shortly after the start of World War II a German archaeologist by the name of Wilhelm Konig came across the item in the basement of the National Museum of Iraq. He immediately recognised their similarity to galvanic batteries and published a paper that suggested that these ancient electrical devices may have been used for electroplating precious gold onto silver.
Reconstructions of this device have proved that it could generate an electrical current of between 0.4 and 1.9 volts.

Any chance the carvings are early mid 20th century forgeries?

no doubt from the moving of the temples wholesale, to stop them being lost under the waters of the Aswen dam!

I haven't found anything anywhere to say they are not genuine. The Egyptoligists dont even seem to doubt them- just what how they come about and what they represent. As far as I can tell they are genuine and of the same age as all the surrounding carvings.

Pettytyrant101 wrote:I haven't found anything anywhere to say they are not genuine. The Egyptoligists dont even seem to doubt them- just what how they come about and what they represent. As far as I can tell they are genuine and of the same age as all the surrounding carvings.

Then they MUST be helicopters. Cool...

I find the official excuse a bit implausible I have to say. Even if it was the result of what they say I can buy one underlying picture breaking up in just the right fashion to look like a vechile of some sort but 4 seperate pictures?

Pettytyrant101 wrote:I find the official excuse a bit implausible I have to say. Even if it was the result of what they say I can buy one underlying picture breaking up in just the right fashion to look like a vechile of some sort but 4 seperate pictures?

I think the jury is in --- another cover up, another conspiracy revealed. All we need is a "motive" and some "culprits" and the Conspirators can be brought to justice.

Where's GB when you need him? Oh yes out causing conspiracies!

I thought the same thought, but thought, I should be careful, as he does have a thin skin about being called a Conspiracy Theorist.

All in good humour of course. I agree with a lot of what he says, if not always his conclusions.

I think I remember GB bringing up the Baghdad Battery once. Perhaps he has spent too much time watching the Alternate History Channel: they are fond of conspiracy theory explanations of history with only a token skeptic at best (often Michael Shermer of Skeptic magazine, for some reason). That's actually where I first heard of the Baghdad Battery and, via Shermer, of the electroplating explanation. That certainly makes the most sense to me, unless people believe that the Ancient Mesopotamians had electrical appliances and wiring and all that jazz that have been lost to history, with only their batteries surviving.

Might explai how they decorated the interior of tombs without making any smoke damage anywhere. (The other theory for that being mirrors to refract light)

A bit more modern but no less mysterious this one. Greek Fire.

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A weapon of the Byzantine Empire in use around 600ad. It had some very unusual qualities.

-It burned on water, and, according to some interpretations, was ignited by water. In addition, as numerous writers testify, it could be extinguished only by a few substances, such as sand, which deprived it of oxygen, strong vinegar, or old urine, presumably by some sort of chemical reaction.

-It was a liquid substance, and not some sort of projectile, as verified both by descriptions and the very name "liquid fire".-

-At sea, it was usually ejected from siphons,although earthenware pots or grenades filled with it or similar substances were also used.

-The discharge of Greek fire was accompanied by "thunder" and "much smoke".

No one has ever worked out what it was or how to recreate it. It was 'fired' from a siphon and in fact the entire weapon seems to have been quite complicated. Each part of it was a state secret so that you only knew how the bit you had to work with worked. This way even when the Bulgarians took Mesembria and Debeltos in 814, and captured 36 siphons and even quantities of the substance itself, they were unable to make any use of them.

People often seem to think it unlikely that in the past humans could have developed and lost technologies we do not have, or understand, or can reproduce even today. And yet here is a well accounted historical weapon, from little more than 1000 years ago and we haven't got a clue. Given modern humans have been about for at least the last 50 thousand years it seems more likley to me that we have lost stuff than we havent. We went from hunter gatherers to pc's, internet and mars within 6 thousand years after all. So our known history covers only an eight of the total- what happened during the much longer rest of it?

Maybe we discover time travel in the future, so the Egyptians send people back in time, they build the pyramids
make a few carvings thus creating a tourist trade for the future. Simple

It'll all be the Doctors fault. Him and that Tardis always mucking about. (Theres probably a lost heiroglyph somewhere of a hot scottish redhead in a tiny skirt )

Pettytyrant101 wrote:All in good humour of course. I agree with a lot of what he says, if not always his conclusions.

I personally think he's as mad as a hatter, and that's the very reason I love him.

chris63 wrote:Maybe we discover time travel in the future, so the Egyptians send people back in time, they build the pyramids
make a few carvings thus creating a tourist trade for the future. Simple

Yes, indeed. I can detect "issues" though. Why did the "progress" not continue in a way one would have thought it would with this "new" stuff shown to people? Oh, I know, the Priests covered it up, seeing the new

Actually, I imagine that the Future folk then got really pissed off and said, "Well, if they want to be so "ancient" in their thinking, then f*^k 'em, we're not going back again. It was pretty dull back then anyway. No flycars, or Martian beef, you know."

Sliding rocks, is it the wind or magic

During your lifetime, the average human will grow 591 miles of hair. Unverified But hair does grows about 6 inches per year and the average head has 100,000 hairs. Take an average lifespan of 80 years. 6 x 100,000 x 80 = 48,000,000. Unfortunately hair growth is not uniform through out your lifespan, I have yet to find a formula for this.

The United States has more bagpipe bands than Scotland does. To be verified But would appear to be true since Scotland has a population of only 5,000,000, compared to the U.S. at 304,059,724
10 percent of electricity in the US comes from "dismantled nuclear bombs, including Russian ones.

The reason firehouses have circular stairways is from the days when the fire engines were pulled by horses. The horses were stabled on the ground floor and soon figured out how to walk up straight staircases

On average, 100 people choke to death on ballpoint pens every year

The cigarette lighter was invented before the match

The term "the whole 9 yards" came from WWII fighter pilots in the Pacific.When arming their airplanes on the ground, the .50 caliber machine gun ammo belts measured exactly 27 feet, before being loaded into the fuselage. If the pilots fired all their ammo at a target, it got "the whole 9 yards." Unverified

The chances of you dying on the way to get your lottery tickets is greater than your chances of winning.

Good stuff Chris!
In answer to the moving rocks question posed- wind, ice and a few other factors seem to be the likely explanations. Although I still think its just someone nipping out of a night and pushing them with a stick.

Never quite got why America uses bagpipes on State Occasions. The bg Highland Gathering for my neck of the woods is at the end of the month- I may post some video of the event.

http://video.stv.tv/bc/scotland-cowal-20090829-malcolm-barclay/

Right-handed people live, on average, nine years longer than Left-handed people do

10% of all woman registered for computer dating are teachers.
7 in 10 Americans have some kind of fear of the dark.
More people have a phobia of frogs than rats.
More people have a phobia of vomiting than death.


The location of the Mars face on Mars matches the location of Stone Henge in England

Assuming current population growths remain constant: by the year 3550 the total human population will have the same mass as the earth; assuming the average person is 60 kg (132 pounds).

Recycling one glass jar, saves enough energy to watch T.V for 3 hours!

If you fart consistently for 6 years and 9 months, enough gas is produced to create the energy of an atomic bomb

In average, a human being will have sex more than 3,000 times and spend two weeks kissing in their lifetime.
More than 50% of the people in the world have never made or received a telephone call.
The sixth sick sheik's sixth sheep's sick is said to be the toughest tongue twister in the English language

In England, the Speaker of the House is not allowed to speak.

The average person falls asleep in seven minutes

A snail can sleep for three years

Beelzebub, another name for the devil, is Hebrew for "Lord of the Flies", and this is where the book's title comes from

It is believed that Shakespeare was 46 around the time that the King James Version of the Bible was written. In Psalms 46, the 46th word from the first word is 'shake' and the 46th word from the last word is 'spear'.

The lifespan of a taste bud is ten days.
Only one person in two billion will live to be 116 or older.

A 'jiffy' is an actual unit of time for 1/100th of a second! I'll be there in a jiffy

A lump of pure gold the size of a matchbox can be flattened into a sheet the size of a tennis court!

If you counted 24 hours a day, it would take 31,688 years to reach one trillion

The IKEA Catalog is the 3rd most printed publication in the world after the Bible and Harry Potter

You're born with 300 bones, but when you get to be an adult, you only have 206!

Alexander Graham Bell, the inventor of the telephone, never phoned his wife or his mother. They were both deaf.

Ancient drinkers warded off the devil by clinking their cups

Armored knights raised their visors to identify themselves when they rode past their king. This custom has become the modern military salute.

Brazil got its name from the nut, not the other way around

Bruce Lee was so fast that they actually had to SLOW a film down so you could see his moves. That's the opposite of the norm

Clans of long ago that wanted to get rid of their unwanted people without killing them use to burn their houses down -- hence the statement "to get fired."

Hindu men believe(d) it to be unluckily to marry a third time. They could avoid misfortune by marrying a tree first. The tree ( his third wife ) was then burnt, freeing him to marry again

Human birth control pills work on gorillas.

chris63 wrote:Human birth control pills work on gorillas.

This "curiousity" activates many curious questions in my mind.

Clans of long ago that wanted to get rid of their unwanted people without killing them use to burn their houses down -- hence the statement "to get fired."

Apprently the English are still doing this!

Spooky, hey! If all the rich people get their houses burnt down, then the meek (loosely speaking) will inherit the earth (burnt earth, in this case).