Another succinct and interesting post by Jason Colavito on that nemesis of clear thinking, the ancient astronaut theory. It’s about Soviet interest in the theory. Some Russians are just as gullible as those in the good old USA.
Here’s a comprehensible summary of this recent academic paper that proposes Egyptian astronomers successfully recorded the eclipse period of a distant star.
Here’s an excerpt of the summary:
Egyptian astronomers used what they learnt to make predictions about the future. They drew these up in the form of calendars showing lucky and unlucky days.
The predictions were amazingly precise. Each day was divided into three or more segments, each of which was given a rating lying somewhere in the range from very favourable to highly adverse.
One of the best preserved of these papyrus documents is called the Cairo Calendar. Although the papyrus is badly damaged in places, scholars have been able to extract a complete list of ratings for days throughout an entire year somewhere around 1200 BC.
An interesting question is how the scribes arrived at their ratings. So various groups have studied the patterns that crop up in the predictions. Today, Lauri Jetsu and buddies at the University of Helsinki in Finland reveal the results of their detailed statistical analysis of the Cairo Calendar. Their conclusion is extraordinary.
These guys arranged the data as a time series and crunched it with various statistical tools designed to reveal cycles within it. They found two significant periodicities. The first is 29.6 days–that’s almost exactly the length of a lunar month, which modern astronomers put at 29.53059 days.
The second cycle is 2.85 days and this is much harder to explain. However, Jetsu and co make a convincing argument that this corresponds to the variability of Algol, a star visible to the naked eye in the constellation of Perseus.
So, why post this on PaleoBabble? Basically, because of this post from the Daily Graal suggesting that this discovery will dredge up talk of the “mystery” of the Dogon’s knowledge of Sirius.
As readers know, I think there is zero evidence in support of ancient astronaut visitation of the Dogon, primarily because recent research has demonstrated that the theory is based on the word of one Dogon, whose story and mythology is unknown and unconfirmed by other Dogon elders (for starters).
But should I reconsider ancient astronauts in light of this discovery?
Uh … no. Did you read the excerpt above? Read it again. The Egyptians did what they did using two very human techniques: (1) naked eye astronomy (“the variability of Algol, a star visible to the naked eye in the constellation of Perseus“) and (2) a little thing we earthlings call math.
Sorry. No aliens needed for this either. But it’s pretty cool — and shows once again how much we underestimate the ancients.
I wanted to draw readers’ attention to this post by Jason Colavito. It documents the “confusion” of Hatcher-Childress on whether he believes in ancient aliens or not. Is it confusion, or opportunism?
I’m guessing all PaleoBabble readers know about the Ancient Aliens series put out by the Fantasy Channel (still though of by many as the History Channel). I’m thrilled to announce that I’ll be interviewed later this summer for the documentary film response, Ancient Aliens Debunked. If you visit the link you can sign up for email notification when the documentary is released. It will be FREE and viewable online. The trailer is below. The film is being produced by Chris White. Since the documentary will be free, all of the expense incurred by Chris is his own. This has been true of his online and YouTube ministry since its inception. Please visit his site to donate and help support this project!
I just read a short but telling post by Jason Colavito on the blog that bears his name entitled, “The Dubious Authorial Accomplishments of Gorgio Tsoukalos.” Gorgio is the star of the cinematic tribute to non sequitur thinking known as Ancient Aliens. Jason examines Gorgio’s publication credentials which have been used (frequently) to promote the show and his expertise as one of its content sources. Those to whom things like credentials matter will want to have a look at it.
Check out this fascinating post over at Forgetomori, complete with videos of von Daniken noting that he made up his ancient astronaut stuff, but still considers it true. It’s illustrative of why this bunk transcends sophistry.
I just wanted to alert readers to this page on the NASA astrobiology website. It’s a Q&A regarding the 2012 hysteria. The page answers the questions that the more conspiratorially-minded think are “gotchas” that really aren’t. Very worthwhile. (Thanks to Guy for the heads up!)
You’ll notice that one of the links the NASA people refer people to is my site debunking Zecharia’ Sitchin’s Nibiru nonsense. Nice to get the love!
I saw two items today that have convinced me that the PaleoBabble blog needs to begin awarding the PhD in Non Sequitur Thinking for ancient astronaut theorists.
The first is this wonderful post from the Skeptophilia blog. Please read it. It is an uncannily accurate accounting of how ancient astronaut conspiracy theorists think (and it’s entertaining). I loved it since I’ve lived it (too many times). I hereby infer, with all the authority invested in me by virtue of the possession of a sound mind, the degree of Doctor of Philosophy of Non Sequitur Thinking on the student referred to in Gordon Bennet’s Skeptophilia post. May he wear the mantle well. My thanks to professor Bennet for recommending his student for the degree.
The second item comes from my comments page. Karku asked my thoughts on one Maximillen de Lafayette, whom the commenter is apparently having trouble tracking down in terms of credential verification (what a surprise). Basically, de Lafayette seems to want to be the heir apparent to Zecharia Sitchin’s gold train, and so claims expertise in about everything pertaining to the ancient world, along with authoring hundreds of books and thousands of other items worth reading (!). After yawning and chuckling, here was my short response:
1. It matters not how many publications one has if one is writing only for the uninformed. Rather, when one subjects one’s views to experts in the relevant fields (i.e., subjects one’s work to peer review) and they determine that such writings pass muster, THEN and only then should we care.
2. If Mr. de Lafayette lacks real credentials from real universities, then he is a liar when it comes to his credibility for saying anything about any ancient language. I don’t know if he’s lying. I’m giving you a chance to defend him.
3. Who cares if he “takes Sitchin further” when Sitchin’s material is bogus? Taking ideas that do not exist in ancient Mesopotamian records is like taking the anatomical study of unicorns “further.” Caring about his work would therefore be a waste of time.
My guess, of course, is that Lafayette knows even less about ancient languages than Sitchin did, which wasn’t much, as I have noted elsewhere. But maybe he studied something somewhere and can prove it. All this before we even get to the non sequitur nature of his work.
Thanks go to Charles Jones at Ancient World Online for posting this “pre-print” article, “The Cosmos in the Antikythera Mechanism” (due to the size, it is best to right-click and “Save File As”; you will also have to re-size the file in Adobe Reader, since the images do not scale with the font size). It is far and away the most detailed report on the Antikythera Mechanism I’ve seen. It is basically a full analysis of the mechanism, and ancient celestial calculator, that I’ve seen. It has many X-Ray photos and graphical reconstruction images. If you’re interested in this amazing piece of ancient HUMAN technology, this is a must-read.
Since the link for the article is not permanent, I have converted the page to PDF. But be advised, all the images in it make the file large (30 MB), so give it time to download. The permanent URL for online access to this paper is not active yet, but will be: http://dlib.nyu.edu/awdl/isaw/isaw-papers/4
And for those who will insist the mechanism is another example of alien technology, either given to humans or “reverse engineered” by the ancient Greeks, think again. As amazing as the mechanism is, it didn’t work that well. From section 3.10 of the report:
We compare the positions of Mars, as reconstructed by NASA with the Mechanism’s predictions over the middle seven retrogrades of Mars in the 1st Century BC—a period of about 13 years.(86) Serious error spikes can be seen, amounting to nearly 38°—more than a zodiac sign—at the retrogrades. The deferent and epicycle theories, on which the mechanisms depended, might be regarded as an adequate first-order approximation but were completely inadequate for accurate prediction at the retrogrades, particularly for Mars. More accuracy would have to wait for more sophisticated theories such as those employed by Ptolemy in the second century AD. Added to these inherent theoretical errors were significant mechanical inaccuracies because of the way that the rotations were transmitted through the gear trains.(87)
In short, the Antikythera Mechanism was a machine designed to predict celestial phenomena according to the sophisticated astronomical theories current in its day, the the sole witness to a lost history of brilliant engineering, a conception of pure genius, one of the great wonders of the ancient world—but it didn’t really work very well!
Many readers are familiar with Coast to Coast AM, the most-listened to late night talk show in the world. I’ll be on the evening of Feb 2. I’ve been on Coast over twenty times, and it’s always fun and unpredictable. The topics tend to be fairly wide-ranging when I’m on, but no doubt things like ancient astronauts and other PaleoBabble fodder will come up for discussion. One new item I am offering listeners is English translations to the only three scholarly articles on the Anunnaki that I know of. They are all in German, and over the past two years I have had them translated into English. Hopefully Coast listeners will want to actually engage the original sources in regard to the Anunnaki, which are a favorite candidate for ancient astronaut mythology.