Civilization question?

[john]

Interested Onlooker:

I'm not willing to go as far to suggest what this outside influence might be.

I should leave it at this regarding this topic since it is way too easy to scrutinize and there has never been conlcusive evidence that an outside influence occurred.

Getting back to the main question regarding a global connection....

Has anyone, on this board, done any research on the earliest domesticated dogs in South America?

Interested -


Here's a start.

http://www.nytimes.com/books/first/s/sc ... ref=slogin


john

[Ishtar]

I would have to agree with what you all were saying. What I'm having trouble understanding is how do we account for these inate qualities. It may be laziness, but it is easier for me to agree that there was an "un-earthly" influence to account for these characteristics vs. acquiring them from evolutionary random mutations and the applied natural selection pressures.

I'm not willing to go as far to suggest what this outside influence might be.

I may also be shown how that there are other examples in nature that exist that can draw parallels.

Jeremy Narby, in his The Cosmic Serpent: Dna and the Origins of Knowlege, makes a good case for shamans' journey's actually being a bit like the film The Incredible Journey - in other words, they visit and talk with the information in DNA. I know I know, it sounds ridiculous. But if you read his book, it does make very good sense.

Anyway, where did Life or DNA come from was the question:

Narby did a lot of reading around this and one of the things that fascinated him was Francis Crick's work on the origins of DNA. For those that think that this whole caboodle is just a biochemical accident, it will make interesting reading, I think.

Sorry this is a bit late but I haven't time until now to type up the extract, but here it is now:

Crick writing in the early 1980s, criticises the usual scientific theory on the origin of life, according to which a cell first appeared in the primitive soup through the random collisions of disorganised molecules. For Crick, this theory presents a major drawback: it is based on ideas conceived in the 19th century, long before molecular biology revealed that the basic mechanisms of life are identical for all species and are extremely complex — and when one calculates the probability of change producing such complexity, one ends up with inconceivably small numbers.

The DNA molecule, which excels at stocking and duplicating information, is incapable of building itself on its own. Proteins do this, but they are incapable reproducing themselves without the information contained in the DNA. Life, therefore, is a seemingly inescapable synthesis of these two molecular systems.

Moving beyond the famous question of the chicken and the egg, Crick calculates the possibility of a change emergence of one single protein (which could then go on to build the first DNA molecule).

In all living species, proteins are made up of exactly the same 20 amino acids, which are small molecules. The average protein is a long chain made up of approximately 200 amino acids, chosen from those 20, and strung together in the right order. According to the law of combinatorials, there is a one in 200 multiplied by itself 200 times for a single specific protein to emerge fortuitously. (In other words, 20 to the power of 200, which is enormously greater than the number of atoms in the observable universe – i.e. 10 to the power of 90). …

However, since the beginning of life on earth, the number of amino acid chains that could have been synthesised by chance only represent a minute fraction of all possibilities….Crick concludes that the organised complexity found at the cellular level “cannot have arisen by pure chance.”

[Interested Onlooker]

From the "Harappa in the news" thread:

Cognito wrote:

"there are "cities" out there older than Caltal Hoyuk but, no, that's not the settlement I was considering. Jericho is older, being founded as early as 9,000bc by Natufians who displayed some Gravettian characteristics in their culture. But I still expect something older will be found. It really doesn't matter to me whether the oldest is in India, the Middle East, Northern Africa or even China. But my money is on the Northern Middle Eastern area since that's where the greatest variation in human haplogroups stems since the LGM.

Estimates of the world human population in 10,000bc generally range around 4 million, by 5,000bc that number was 5 million when suddenly the population began growing exponentially due to agriculture taking root. To me, if Natufian Jericho had huge stone walls and an impressive stone tower by 8,500bc I see no reason why people could not create the same type of city thousands of years earlier somewhere else since the population was stable and it wouldn't take a genius to build walls to encircle houses.

The initial genetic trail moves from Africa to the Middle East and then branches into India and the Anatolian/Caucasus region. With the onset of the LGM pushing Eurasian populations south after 22,000bc I would put the first civilisations somewhere south of the Black or Caspian Seas, pushing back into Northeast Africa, the Middle East and India; also east towards China (the first Tocharians were moving in that direction about 15,000bc).

Genetic traffic indicates groups were "getting out of Dodge" in a big way, traveling south at the same time the planet was entering the most severe Ice Age in the last half million years. My scenario doesn't rule out India -- it would have been a warm-weather getaway and a vacation paradise."

Is the general consensus on this board an acknowledgement of a Black Sea flood?

There are controversies pertaining to Ryan & Pitman's "Noah's Flood" book and other evidence that would suggest this. A Diaspora comes across as fairly self evident to a general onlooker. Non?

[Minimalist]

and it wouldn't take a genius to build walls to encircle houses.

No, it doesn't take a genius...it takes a need.

Pastoralists and Hunter/gatherers move from place to place and so they tend to not select a particular place as more important than any other. But farmers need to do much work to prepare fields and they are essentially tied to that piece of real estate. You get a network of villages surrounding the fields and some grow into towns and one grows into a city. It's all interconnected and it is about getting the farmer to go work in his fields and give him a place to retreat to in case of danger.

Have shepherds or HG types generally built monuments? Do they do it today in New Guinea or the Amazon? I can't recall such an allegation.

[Beagle]

Is the general consensus on this board an acknowledgement of a Black Sea flood?

There are controversies pertaining to Ryan & Pitman's "Noah's Flood" book and other evidence that would suggest this. A Diaspora comes across as fairly self evident to a general onlooker. Non?

Yes I/O, we've discussed the Black Sea Flood from every angle. Fresh views are always good, so start another thread on the subject if you like. There are some new forum members and it's an interesting topic.

[spacecase0]

Digit - I'm in the same line of thinking that perspectives can be gained from the 'non-professionals' to a field.

Most professionals, in all fields, are lead down a road of having a very high degree of knowledge on a specific subject matter. Eventually, they're lead to a narrowing path that forces them to look down and forward vs. up and around.

The information that springs out from this trend has been expanding exponentially and can only be appreciated with gratitude.

Hi,
I am a non-professional and I have tried to pay attention to what people have discovered.
me and all of my friends have come to a few conclusions about the 10K year old civilization origin.
I was potentially accused of being a troll on this forum before, and I avoided it for a long time for that reason, I have no intention of messing with someone for fun, and as a non professional I have no idea what is a "hot button topic" here. so I am sorry for what I have posted before and in advance if I annoy you.

I know that I keep my mind open to the point that it may fall out, but

I think that the answer lies in the dogon tribe in africa. (no idea what you think of them here)
they say that "people" from the sirius star system visited and left them information.
I think this information is what triggered the rise of civilization.

another reasonable idea that is out of the box.
the weather is unstable during an ice age, the only place stable enough to grow crops is near the coast, and that old coast line would be far under water now, so it is just a matter of all the evidence of pre 10K year old civilization is 300 feet under water, covered in silt and destroyed with salt water, so that all archaeologists have to see from the before is the "strange nomadic people" in the hills.

I know many people that think the 2 ideas that I have written,
I hope this is the viewpoint that you were looking for.

[Minimalist]

Dogon astronomy has been "debunked" as cultural contamination from Europeans. However, after reading the efforts of the debunkers, they seem to be no more convincing in their arguments than the claims of the Dogon themselves. This one is a mystery, still.

The idea that whatever pre-historical civilization (or, at least culture) was drowned by the rising waters at the end of the ice age is not even outlandish as far as I am concerned. People have always lived near the coasts for a lot of reasons and I see no reason why the ancients would have gotten away from that pattern.

Welcome.

[Ishtar]

Yes, welcome spacecase.

You don't seem like a troll to me!

[Forum Monk]

However, after reading the efforts of the debunkers, they seem to be no more convincing in their arguments than the claims of the Dogon themselves. This one is a mystery, still.

Really? So you're saying the suggestion that amphibian-like aliens taught them about Sirius B and the yet undiscovered Sirius C is equally compelling as the cultural contamination debunk.

[Ishtar]

Well, it's about as believable as some chap being born to a virgin and then going on to perform miracles like walking on water and bringing the dead to life - and then dying himself and then coming back to life again and then shooting up into the sky to heaven accompanied by a whole host of angels singing the Hallelujah Chorus.

And I haven't even mentioned the loaves and fishes or the water into wine (now that's a good party trick!)

[Forum Monk]

Sorry, Ish. I went back and re-read the last few posts and didn't find any mention of those claims in this thread.

[Ishtar]

You crack me up, FM!

[Minimalist]

Concentrating on the claim of contamination by Europeans, FM.. Otherwise, its as convincing as anyone else's 'foundation stories.'

[woodrabbit]

Ishtar noted above on April 9th:

Jeremy Narby, in his The Cosmic Serpent: DNA and the Origins of Knowlege, makes a good case for shamans' journey's actually being a bit like the film The Incredible Journey - in other words, they visit and talk with the information in DNA. I know I know, it sounds ridiculous. But if you read his book, it does make very good sense.

Anyway, where did Life or DNA come from was the question:

Narby did a lot of reading around this and one of the things that fascinated him was Francis Crick's work on the origins of DNA.

....."they (Shamans) visit and talk with the information in DNA." Apparently thats exactly what Crick did....

Francis Crick, the Nobel Prize-winning father of modern genetics, was under the influence of LSD when he first deduced the double-helix structure of DNA nearly 50 years ago.

The abrasive and unorthodox Crick and his brilliant American co-researcher James Watson famously celebrated their eureka moment in March 1953 by running from the now legendary Cavendish Laboratory in Cambridge to the nearby Eagle pub, where they announced over pints of bitter that they had discovered the secret of life.

Crick, who died [2004-07-28], aged 88, later told a fellow scientist that he often used small doses of LSD, then an experimental drug used in psychotherapy, to boost his powers of thought. He said it was LSD, not the Eagle's warm beer, that helped him to unravel the structure of DNA, the discovery that won him the Nobel Prize.

His first shamanic DNA sketch



Later day cave art...?

[Forum Monk]

His first shamanic DNA sketch

Hmmm. Drop some acid and contemplate the structure of the universe (or your navel if easily distracted) and thirty years later you are hailed a Shaman. I estimate there must have been about 90,000 practicing Shamans in 1967 during the "summer of love".

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Summer_of_Love

Huh? And we used to call ourselves hippies. Gotta admit though, shaman does sound better on a Curriculum Vitae.