Egyptian discovery found in grand canyon suppressed?

[Digit]

Yeah! Chichester was amazed that the principle appeared to have been forgotten.
Chichester also held the record for the slowest around the world flight. He crashed an island and rebuilt the wing himself. His time was 18 months for the trip!
And by the way, the fastest circumnavigation of the globe is 8 minutes.

Answers on a post card please!

[Rokcet Scientist]

I'll hazard a guess RS that you live in an urban area.

Which proves guessing is not a very good idea, Digit: I've sailed/navigated the seas for about 45 years and lived under the unpolluted African night sky for years.

My wife was city born and bred and she was amazed how bright the night sky is when there is no light pollution. In fact we have many millions of people here who apparently have never seen the Milky Way.
I live near the coast and night or day the sky dominates everything and in the northern hemisphere the Pole star was almost certainly known to all for many thousands of years.

Of course they 'knew' about it! They could see it, couldn't they? That does not mean they A) understood what they saw, or that B) they knew what to fucking do with that knowledge.

And in any case, a sea anchor would hold reasonbly well at night.

If you can't navigate, it's useless. A recepy for disaster.

Please do not assume that if there is something that you or I can not accomplish means that nobody else can.

But, more importantly, vice versa, Digit: please do not assume that if there is something that you or I can accomplish means that pre-holocene man could too!

[Digit]

I've sailed/navigated the seas for about 45 years and lived under the unpolluted African night sky for years.

Then you should have known about use of the Pole Star in the Northern hemisphere, and as I'll make another gues and say that you did why are so certain what you have done our ancestors couldn't?

[Rokcet Scientist]

I've sailed/navigated the seas for about 45 years and lived under the unpolluted African night sky for years.

Then you should have known about use of the Pole Star in the Northern hemisphere, and as I'll make another gues and say that you did why are so certain what you have done our ancestors couldn't?

Digit, you may understand the concept of celestial navigation, but you seem to lack experience with the practice: celestial navigation requires volumes of extensive tables. These tables, by themselves, take/took multiple millenia to compile from observation, i.o.w. requiring literacy and dogged science. And the navigator needs a lot of knowledge and skill. Which is why it takes years of study – at college level! – to learn to navigate and become a third mate (who does the navigating on board ships, which is always double checked by a senior mate).
And – most importantly – pre-holocene man had no time keeping! Without it, celestial navigation is a pure gamble. A mortally dangerous one.

[Digit]

So on this occasion you are wrong RS. I am familiar with celestial navigation, with its principles, usage and history.
But there is no requirement for volumes of tables to keep the Pole Star in a certain position at night when sailing in a certain direction.
Those table you speak of would be useful for finding your POSITION but are not necessary for establishing a direction, which is what I and KB were talking about.
Men sailed the oceans before writing, never mind about hiring 'computers' to do the long hand calculations needed for those tables.

[Rokcet Scientist]

So on this occasion you are wrong RS. I am familiar with celestial navigation, with its principles, usage and history.
But there is no requirement for volumes of tables to keep the Pole Star in a certain position at night when sailing in a certain direction.
Those table you speak of would be useful for finding your POSITION but are not necessary for establishing a direction, which is what I and KB were talking about.

Stars move, Digit. Setting a direction guided by celestial bodies requires that you know precisely – to the second! – where a particular celectial body is supposed to be at that particular date and time. That's what the tables are for. Next you need very precise measurement, requiring high-grade navigational observation and measuring equipment (i.e. sextant) and the considerable skills to use them (to "shoot the stars").

None of that was available to pre-holocene man.

Men sailed the oceans before writing

No, they didn't! They hopped along coastlines, navigating by visual reference points, landmarks, never sailing in the dark. That's hardly "sailing the oceans"!

[Digit]

No, they didn't! They hopped along coastlines, navigating by visual reference points, landmarks, never sailing in the dark. That's hardly "sailing the oceans"!

Evidence please.
And please don't tell me the Pole Star moves enough in one night to miss Europe or North America and CC didn't have a chronometer to work to your stated accuracy either.
The Pole Star, give or take a bit, shows true north, if it's on your right you are heading West. For that no tables nor chronometer are needed, and as KB pointed out it works just as well on land as at sea.
Correct me if I'm wrong, (I'm sure you will), but the Polenesians lacked all your 'essentials' did they not?

[Rokcet Scientist]

No, they didn't! They hopped along coastlines, navigating by visual reference points, landmarks, never sailing in the dark. That's hardly "sailing the oceans"!

Evidence please.
And please don't tell me the Pole Star moves enough in one night to miss Europe or North America

Yes it does! Easily! Especially if "the navigator" didn't even know there was a Europe or a North America to go to in the first place . . . Which you seem to assume they did.
I've got news for you: they didn't.

and CC didn't have a chronometer to work to your stated accuracy either.
The Pole Star, give or take a bit, shows true north, if it's on your right you are heading West. For that no tables nor chronometer are needed, and as KB pointed out it works just as well on land as at sea.
Correct me if I'm wrong, (I'm sure you will), but the Polenesians lacked all your 'essentials' did they not?

Correct. So they hopped from island to island by visual reference, including following land birds and currents. The peopling of way-out places like Easter Island were coincidents. I'd bet 99,9% of such expeditions – intended or not – were never ever heard of again and ended in total disaster!

[Digit]

Evidence please!
Actually I didn't think it necesscary to point out that CC wasn't sailing to America was he? Cathay was his intended destination and he had a certain suspicion that Cathay existed didn't he?
And if the Polenesians accidentally bumped into Easter island they certainly weren't hopping along any coast lines that I know of, and unless the first people to land there were the actual colonists they were able to return to base and then presumbly find Easter Island all over again.
All without tables and chronometers!

[Rokcet Scientist]

Evidence please!
Actually I didn't think it necesscary to point out that CC wasn't sailing to America was he? Cathay was his intended destination and he had a certain suspicion that Cathay existed didn't he?

No, he didn't 'suspect' Cathay was there, he knew Cathay existed and that – if the world was really round, which he came to believe – you should be able to get there going west, circumnavigating that globe.
Conceptually, that was sound reasoning.
Practically, he lacked a considerable amount of data. That globe proved almost 3 times bigger than he had reckoned. And there was a fucking great continent plus another ocean (3 times the Atlantic) blocking his westerly plan to Cathay.
So he was very wrong in how to get there. He was fucking, bleeding lucky to 'find' NA. Stumbled blindly upon it, is more like it.
Care to wager how many ships before CC struck out west never to be heard of again?
I think thousands would be a very conservative estimate.
FYI: ironically, CC has all his life remained convinced that he did reach a remote part of Cathay!

And if the Polenesians accidentally bumped into Easter island they certainly weren't hopping along any coast lines that I know of, and unless the first people to land there were the actual colonists they were able to return to base and then presumbly find Easter Island all over again.
All without tables and chronometers!

Are you comparing 900 AD polynesians, with possibly 10,000 years of experience in navigating by dead reckoning and oral history with pleistocene man . . . ?

[Digit]

Exactly my Point RS, he knew Cathay was there, he didn't set out blind he had a target. But what he didn't have was a chronometer nor astronomical tables.
If all these things were as risky as you suggest why didn't they just stay at home and blow their brains out?
And what exactly did the Polenesians have that early man didn't, if 99% of people who sailed into the wide blue yonder never returned, unless suicide was a national trait, I doubt very much that much of the globe would have ever been discovered? Most people will take a calculated risk, not a suicidal one.

[Sam Salmon]

So they hopped from island to island by visual reference, including following land birds and currents. The peopling of way-out places like Easter Island were coincidents. I'd bet 99,9% of such expeditions – intended or not – were never ever heard of again and ended in total disaster!
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
And – most importantly – pre-holocene man had no time keeping! Without it, celestial navigation is a pure gamble. A mortally dangerous one.

For some modern day info on stone age/pre literate celestial navigation achievements http://pvs.kcc.hawaii.edu/ -when you do you'll come to the realisation that you are woefully uninformed.

Remember the people we know as Polynesians travelled the open Pacific for thousands of years using a store of knowledge that was never recorded-except in rhyme and memory.

They were not guessing they knew where the land was!

Further reading The Last Navigator Stephen D. Thomas.
http://www.amazon.com/Last-Navigator-St ... 0070645744

May your road to enlightenment be not so long and Happy!

[fossiltrader]

OK HERES HOPING THIS COMES OUT RIGHT.
All the talk of knowing about sailing and stars etc?.
That is how we would think but we do not know early mans mind set is it not possible they just rafted off into the unknown because their minds where not capable of understanding great distances etc maybe to them an ocean just another big river to cross?
Maybe there where thousands of such crossings i think we implanting on early man our ideas we may think in terms of stars and navigation and food and water and distance etc maybe early man just thought big river float across! end of their thought processes.??

[Digit]

There is always that danger FT, we tend to do the same thing with animals. I think this is not the case here though because people colonised various islands, which meant they took with them all that was necessary for colonisation, including women folk. That implies planning which implies the ability to think things through.
Early man was making stone, and other implements, before he left Africa, you might be able to produce a cutting edge by banging two rocks together but more than that requires thinking the task through.

[kbs2244]

Meanwhile, back in the Grand Canyon, there is an Egyptian Temple, setting on intersecting “power lines”, with it’s entrances dynamited by the Smithsonian and any present exploration forbidden by the U S Park service.
Right?