To decide on such an unlikely date purely by specualtive playing about with the geometry and astronomy is madness . Reiki ? why not chakras , the Olympics logo or the London tube map .
George

According to your religion, you were all heathens and pagans some two thousand years ago, and many of your people were heathens for many centuries subsequently. We can trace our religion, culture, mythology, legends and history back tens of thousands of years in the past, farther back than any known civilisation on earth, to the later Stone Age. It is part of our culture — we did not learn these from recent archaeological discoveries ...

Man’s environment is the world as a whole, and the latter’s environment is our solar system. “Man is part of the stars — and the stars, sun and moon are all part of Man!” Thus believes the Fire-Worshippers of the Southern Bu-Kongo.

Astronomy was not brought to Man in Africa by Western civilisation.

We have our own theories on the origin of the solar system. These we have jealously withheld from foreigners for fear of being ridiculed. But I have compared our theories with those brought to us from beyond the seas, and the latter do not impress me.

Lucky for me, Michael Tellinger stopped by the site a couple of weeks ago. I followed his initial comment on the September 20 article with a list of questions, to which he graciously responded.

Here are his answers in their entirety:

1. First, according to makomati.com, conventional wisdom explains the ruins as cattle kraal built and used by the Bantu people within the past 1,000 years. The Makomati Foundation dates these structures as being far older: somewhere between 75,000 to 250,000 years old. This is actually the basis for several questions:

75,000 - 200,000 years seems like a pretty broad estimate, given what little I personally know of dating techniques. What accounts for the 125,000 year discrepancy?

We are dealing with a very complex site that covers over 500 square kilometres and makes up the largest and oldest city on Earth that has almost completely eroded.

We have gathered artifacts from the same site that date back from 300,000 yrs and 600 years. This points to a very long occupation of these sites.

But we deal with archaeoastronomy mainly to determine the deviation from today’s cardinal points. 3 degrees; 17 min. and 42 sec deviation.

The precessional cycle of 25,800 years has almost been completed - this means that we are in essence working with chunks of 25,000 years.

Now we have to look for other clues as to how many years it actually is.

The main indicators are the alignment with Orion – which could have only happened 75,000 years ago and more.

And geology – erosion.

Dolerite erodes very slowly and the erosion patterns on most monoliths indicate that they were brought there a long, long time ago.

Lichen growth is also a reasonable indicator. We have lots of evidence there.

2. What techniques have been used? What are the advantages of these techniques?

Archaeoastronomy; geology – alien rocks brought from elsewhere; astronomy; and what most of us often forget about – logic and reason.

3. Did the Bantu in fact use these structures as cattle kraal, as recently as the 13th century? If so, were they making use of what at that time were already ancient artifacts, or were additional structures built by the Bantuu (or other indigenous peoples) in the intervening time?

Many examples indicate that the Bantu people used the existing materials to build their own dwellings and kraals and sometime simply occupying existing structures.

They were also used by the British and Boer soldiers in the South African War around 1900. This has introduced many contaminants into the original sites but many still remain pristine.

4. If not, would you care to theorize on how this wrongful theory came to be accepted as doctrine?

This incorrect doctrine was adopted by ignorant and lazy historians who have done very little research themselves into ancient human history – and simply accepted the stories taught in mainstream academic institutions.

I know this sounds conspiratorial but unfortunately it is so. When ill informed people deal with the current finds they simply cannot see the bigger picture.

It is as if there was no history in South Africa before the Bantu people arrived. This is obviously a very ignorant and arrogant stance – but it does hold a firm grip on many academics in this part of the world. It is called political correctness and is doing us all a great disservice.

5. The ruins cover a considerable piece of real estate. When I think of empires or civilizations with both a) similar geographical spread and b) an inclination to build durable structures ( for example, the Egyptians, Romans, Incans and Greeks, as opposed to the Sioux or Aborigine), I typically picture a display in a museum that includes all manner of ‘household items’: pots, tools, earthenware, jewelry and so forth. Has Makomati discovered any such artifacts?

We are dealing with the largest and oldest city on Earth with many thousands of habitants over an extended period of time.

With ancient terraces; roads; wells; irrigations systems; dwellings, temples and work places.

Many artifacts that show a habitation period of over 300,000 years. With specific items pointing to various incidents.

We also have what we now believe to be the OLDEST pottery in the world – maybe as old as 50,000 years. But the academics that dated it from WITS university in 1986 were so freaked out by this discovery that they returned the fragments to the owner with a short message – “They are about 10,000 years old.”

Other archaeologists recall this find and attest that the ash heal in which the pottery was found was around 30 – 50,000 years old.

6. Same question as 1, above, applied specifically to Adam’s Calendar.

Adam’s Calendar is the flagship among all these because it is unique in the world today and can be dated with some accuracy to a great time in antiquity.

7. The people who built these structures: do they have a name? Beyond their architectural capabilities, what else do we know about them?

We know very little about them except what we are discovering on a daily basis in the expansive ruins.

They were most likely all involved in gold and other metal mining.

Apologies if you felt bullied Ishtar , however I stand by the comment that to date something simply from an archaeoastronomical view is not how to go about dating something particularly if the methodology itself is doubtful . As in most cases like this a lack of parsimony is the problem . What is the oldest stone circle known in Africa , I would guess Nabta Playa a generous date would be 8000 BC , to consider a monument to be nearly ten times that age with no dating evidence is .......... insert appropriate non bullying term .
Certainly 75,000 years ago HSS would have had an interest in the heavens ,would have included into their cosmology and may have recorded that interest but we have precious little proof ,probably due to taphonomy . Believing that does not make that site 75,0000 yeras old . Once again another element of suspicion is the mention of reiki . I only had a cursory glance as this stuff looks as it belongs to the mysteries section so no doubt it will be full of holes .

George

On 2009-03-04 11:46, Ishtar wrote:
[quote]

Apologies if you felt bullied Ishtar , however I stand by the comment that to date something simply from an archaeoastronomical view is not how to go about dating something particularly if the methodology itself is doubtful . As in most cases like this a lack of parsimony is the problem . What is the oldest stone circle known in Africa , I would guess Nabta Playa a generous date would be 8000 BC , to consider a monument to be nearly ten times that age with no dating evidence is .......... insert appropriate non bullying term .
Certainly 75,000 years ago HSS would have had an interest in the heavens ,would have included into their cosmology and may have recorded that interest but we have precious little proof ,probably due to taphonomy . Believing that does not make that site 75,0000 yeras old . Once again another element of suspicion is the mention of reiki . I only had a cursory glance as this stuff looks as it belongs to the mysteries section so no doubt it will be full of holes .

George

On 2009-03-04 13:22, Ishtar wrote:
You're definitely not a bully, George!


Yes, there is a lot of ignorance about the intelligence and cognition of early man, especially given that those tools dating back 1.8 million years turned up in Malaysia a few weeks ago:

But if HSS came out of Africa, we should expect to find megaliths dating to at least those dates (circa 70,000 BCE) and even back beyond that - I think the tools from the Wonderwerk caves were dated to around 1.5 million years?

I think we assume too much if we think that these peoples did not have shall we say, spiritual aspirations, for want of a better term. My own research has shown that spirituality and astronomy have been inextricably interlinked worldwide for many thousands of years before Christianity - and that, in fact, the story of Jesus was probably based on Egyptian and Sumerian astronomic allegorical tales.

What existed worldwide before religion was shamanism, and in the writings of the shamans of India (Vedic rishis, c. 3,000 BC) we find the earliest writings about astronomy - and all this without telescopes or any of the technology we have today. So they were obviously using something else ... and so how can we make a value judgement about ancient man's proficiency in such sciences, given that we don't even know how he did it?

As Credo Mutwe points out in that quote (if you read it) the astronomical knowledge of the African people goes back many thousands of years before the 'white man' brought such knowledge to the continent.

So ... sorry this is a bit longwinded but I am getting there! ... it stands to reason that if they had astronomical knowledge, we would expect to see evidence of it in the form of megaliths.

However, the dating of such megaliths is always a bit nebulous. We have a sticky, running Stonehenge thread running on my forum which should be sub-titled "And how are the dating Stonehenge today?".

As I'm sure you know, every other month, someone comes up with another date for Stonehenge - reason being, how can you date stones that are old as the earth itself? You can't? You can only use common sense and look at geology, placement of other rocks, lichen growth and so on, and this Bantu stones guys have done.

The 50,000 date for the pottery comes from the date of the ash it was found in.

And finally, speaking as a shaman and Reiki Master, I'd be very interested to know what they mean by 'Reiki symbolism'. This is because, as far as I know, Reiki does not have any associations with sacred geometry and even the symbols can vary slightly. So I have my doubts about that bit ... but the rest, I'm keeping an open mind to.

(Right ... now I've announced that I'm a shaman, I'm definitely going to get booted downstairs! )

[ This message was edited by: Ishtar on 2009-03-04 13:24 ]

[ This message was edited by: Ishtar on 2009-03-04 13:26 ]

On 2009-03-05 23:34, MickM wrote:
It is thermoluminescence & it is used to calculate how long soils etc. have been buried.

On 2009-03-06 11:46, Rich32 wrote:
G, is that the method they use to date Aussie stuff from desert varnish?

On 2009-03-06 14:49, tiompan wrote:


[quote]
On 2009-03-06 11:46, Rich32 wrote:
G, is that the method they use to date Aussie stuff from desert varnish?