Reply #8: Well let me go into more detail....

[mainegreen]

I admit that my comment on airbrushing was just a cheap swipe. Much of the 'fashion sense' of the new age movement has that airbrushed look they picked up in the eighties and just never let go. A cheap shot and I admit it.

However, he is a crackpot because he takes a few simple concepts and a good idea and extrapolates an absurd web of reasoning to come up with some absurb conclusions. He had a set of beliefs, and went looking for something to use to 'prove' his beliefs. Backwards.

The first paragraph on his website is so inflammitory that I just can't take it. Lets break it down.

The oldest symbolic rock art is attributed to the early ancestors of modern Homo Sapiens found in caves along the coast of Africa over 150,000 years ago.


ok. Start with a simple, plain fact. This leads one into believing this site may be scientific


When we look at rock art from the Neolithic age through to the Egyptian and Celtic peoples we observe symbols that are largely universal but as yet undecipherable. Just because they appear undecipherable to us, does that really make them meaningless?


Ok, right on the second sentence we have a random, unverified claim. What are these symbols that are both universal yet undecipherable? Circles? Crosses? Squares? These things are fundamental geometry. We are hardwired to like these things. If not these symbols, then what are they?


Many of these symbols reveal clues to the eventual design of monuments that were aligned to the stars and therefore give us a practical insight into ancient minds.


WHAT? Come on, this is what I would normally call 'flaimbait'. Either a) he thinks building geometric structures is in some way unusual or b) cave people drawing on walls were actually designing stonehenge and the pyramids and it was all part of some master plan.
How have these symbols of lost knowledge become myths and dismissed by modern Man as just religion and how have the ancient constructions that we are unable to replicate become labelled as merely "Ceremonial"?


Would it be considered arrogance if we display in our linear Darwinian thinking, a disdain for the works of our ancestors and in our ignorance bestow upon them the name "Savage" ?


Ah yes, music to my ears. Attack modern society, disdain scientists as deluded self important 'experts', and phrased as a question that leads nicely into his sales plug. Could it be? Is it?....


If we want a practical explanation of their achievements so as to remove the mystery, we must first ask rational questions and then understand the resulting practical, rational and logical solutions.


Ah yes, enlighten us! Tell me more! Clearely your logic is brilliant. As you can see, his argument style is entertaining and superficially persuasive, but lacks the all important evidence.

I mean just listen to this:

So the rational question is:
"If accurate measurement is an unavoidable requirement, what instrument could they have used to perform this form of "science"?"
The answer:
Modern scientists still do not know.


WHAT? The answer: modern scientists do know! Its the same tools carpenters, masons and contruction companies use today. Levels, planes, saws, acid, chisels, fire, we still use these things. Constructions has changed very little. Oh sure the 'plumbing' is way more complicated but construction has not. We have some of the originals tools they used from archeological digs for crying out loud! I've been to museums and seen them with my own eyes. This statement of his is classic crackpot.

Now I dont deny that you could use this instrument of his as he says you could, but just because you can take one thing, modify it, and then use it for another purpose does not mean the original object was used for this purpose. You have to find evidence of the original object used in this way.

Heres another of his great crackpot statements (and I'm not even off the first page!)

The cross is the only form of instrument that could enable our ancient ancestors to build civilisations that lasted for thousands of years because what they observed and how they did it, allowed them to understand the awesome powers of Nature, cause and effect, order and chaos and the recurring cycles of Time.

The ONLY one? Gee-whiz. How did the cross allow them to 'understand the awesome powers of Nature' yadah, yadah, yadah. Crap statement. The sole purpose of this is inflamitory.

Heres something for you: If this cross was used to measure angles, then why for crying out loud are the angles not notched on the circle around the cross? Instead we have all that tangly stuff inside the cross and circle which seems a lot more confusing for measurement on the eyes. In fact I'd say the tratidional celtic cross is a fairly crappy device for measuring angles.

At this point I'd like to point out the celtic cross is not all that ancient. Its old, but not older than christianity. In fact, just so we can be clear, the cross isn't even the original symbol of christianity, even in breatonia. Its the Chi-Rho a weird P-X symbol. I suppose this also was used for navigation? I could stick a plum-line on it and build a house, by why not use a more tradition instument?

Just because you can conjecture something is used for a task, doesn't mean it was used for it. The 'ancients', who in reality are not all that ancient, did know how to do some things we didn't, but heres the kicker: quite often these ancient ways were lost because a better method came along. That, and slaveries demise as well as fair (or fairer at any rate) makes it very difficult to make giant stone thingies that serve no economic purpose.

Well, hope I helped to sway you. This guy may have a neat toy, but all his other ideas about the nature of history: crap.