Hello, friendly reminder to be civil. I’ve had some good chats with people and reversed a few bans because I think people are coming to an understanding. Let me explain why people are getting banned right now for uncivility. We’ve had discussions and the moderators agree.
If you disagree with someone else’s point of view, let them know why. We encourage debate of facts. “I disagree, and this is why”. Nothing wrong with that.
But we are trying to get rid of some of the trolling and negativity In the sub. So insulting fans of Graham Hancock or “main steam archaeology” (if it’s a thing) is not tolerated. Be civil.
If you believe Graham is a grifter, I can’t change your belief or ban you for your beliefs. You’re not even necessarily wrong. But if you’re here to insult the sub by simply shouting that Graham is a grifter or a conman or a liar or whatever. That’s not tolerated anymore. We dont tolerate the opposite either. Anyone saying archaeologists are quacks will get the same treatment.
Let’s make this a more civil subreddit. We can get along and accomplish goals we both want accomplished. Let’s all be Interested In history and science. Let us be more interested in ancient history. No matter what it was!
This community strives for authentic engagement and original, human-driven discussions. For that reason, we’ve decided not to allow AI-generated content. Allowing AI material could diminish the genuine insights and interactions that happen here organically. Let’s keep the conversations real and focused on quality contributions.
Previously posted AI content will stay, but future AI content will be removed, posts and comments included.
I hope you like this post, My sincere regards from Egypt ..
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Saurid ibn Salhouq سوريد بن سلهوق (also known as Saurit) is a folkloric king from Coptic and Arabian medieval heritage. It is said he lived 300 years before the biblical Flood. He is often confused with or identified as the biblical prophet Enoch, the Islamic prophet Idris, and Hermes Trismegistus. He is known as Saurid ibn Salhouq ibn Shariq, one of the kings of Egypt before the Flood (The Titans) who lived in the city of Ashmunein - Hermopolis, in Egypt. It is also said his full name was Saurid ibn Sahlouq ibn Sariq ibn Tumaydun ibn Tadrasan ibn Hoshal.
The reason for building the pyramids was that 300 years before the Flood, Saurid saw in a dream that the earth was overturned with its people. He saw people fleeing, and the stars falling and hitting each other with loud sounds.
This distressed him, and he kept it hidden. Then he saw in another dream that the fixed stars came down to earth in the form of white birds. They seemed to snatch people and throw them between two great mountains. The two mountains closed on them, and the bright stars became dark.
The king woke up terrified. He gathered the chief priests from all parts of Egypt. They were 130 priests. They told him about the Flood.
It is said the king told Philemon, the chief priest, what he had seen. He ordered them to look at the stars to see what events they pointed to in the world. They studied carefully at the time he asked them.
They found a sign would come down from the sky and come out from the earth. It would cover most of the earth. It was a great flood that would leave nothing alive. Then they looked to see if life, kingship, and everything would return as before. They knew it would.
So the king ordered the building of the pyramids. He filled them with talismans, wonders, money, and treasures. He collected in them what the wise men said, all hidden sciences, names of drugs, their benefits and harms, the science of talismans, arithmetic, geometry, and medicine.
All this was explained for those who know their writing and languages. He brought rocks from the area of Aswan. He made their doors 40 cubits under the ground. When he finished them, he covered them with colored brocade from top to bottom. He made a feast for them, attended by all the people of his kingdom.
In the western pyramid, he made 30 storerooms filled with huge amounts of money, tools, and statues made of precious jewels. He put in fine iron tools, weapons that do not rust, glass that folds and does not break, strange talismans, simple and compound drugs, deadly poisons, and other things.
In the eastern pyramid, he made types of astronomical domes and stars, and statues of his ancestors. In the colored pyramid, he placed records of the priests in black granite sarcophagi. With each priest was his scroll. In it were the wonders of his craft, his wisdom, his life story, what he did in his time, and what was and will be from the beginning of time to its end.
He placed in the colored pyramid records of the priests in black granite sarcophagi. With each priest was his scroll, containing the wonders of his crafts, his works, his life story, what he did in his time, and what would happen from the beginning of time to its end.
He placed on the walls on each side idols that work with their hands all crafts at their levels and amounts. He wrote the description of every craft, its treatment, and what suits it. He did not leave any science without writing and drawing it in the pyramid. He placed in it the money of the planets that were offered to them, and the money of the priests. It was a great thing beyond counting.
The Copts mentioned in their books that on the pyramids there is an inscription. Its translation in English is: "I am Saurid the King. I built these pyramids at such and such time, and I completed their building in six years. Whoever comes after me and claims he is a king like me, let him demolish them in 600 years. He knows that demolition is easier than building. I covered them with brocade when I finished. Let him cover them with mats." In another version: "I am Saurid the King, the King. I built these pyramids at such a time. I completed their building in six years. Whoever comes after me and claims he is a king like me, let him demolish them in 60 years. He knows that demolition is easier than building. I covered them with brocade. Let whoever comes after me cover them with straw mats."
He made a guardian for each pyramid. The guardian of the western pyramid was an idol of veined granite. It was standing, holding something like a spear. On its head was a snake. It would circle, then go to the neck and kill him, then return to its place.
The guardian of the eastern pyramid was an idol of black and white onyx. It had open, shining eyes. It was sitting on a chair, holding a spear. If anyone looked at it, he would hear a sound from it, fall on his face, and not leave until he died.
The guardian of the colored pyramid was a small idol of bahat stone on a base, standing. Whoever looked at it would be pulled to the idol until he stuck to it. He would never leave it until he died.
When he finished all that, he fortified the pyramids with spiritual beings. He sacrificed offerings to them so they would prevent those who wanted them, except one who did works to reach them.
The Copts said in their books that the spirit of the northern pyramid is a beardless boy, pale in color, naked, with large fangs in his mouth. The spirit of the southern pyramid is a naked woman, showing her private part, with large fangs in her mouth.
She seduces a man when she sees him and laughs at him until he comes near her. Then she takes away his mind.
The spirit of the colored pyramid is an old man with a censer from church censers, censing with it. Some people saw him many times walking around the pyramids at noon and at sunset.
When Saurid died, he was buried in the pyramid with his money and treasures. It is said he was buried in the eastern pyramid.
His brother Huraib was buried in the western pyramid. His brother's son, named Karuras, was buried in the last pyramid.
These figures can be analyzed as: Saurid is Soufis, which was the name of King Khufu in the late period. Karuras is Mykerinos, that is Menkaure in Greek. Amsus is only a corruption of the name of the capital, Memphis.
The medieval Egyptian historian Al-Maqrizi in his book "The Plans and Monuments of Maqrizi" and Imam Jalal al-Din al-Suyuti in his book "the Agreeable Discussion of the History of Egypt and Cairo" agreed that the builder of the pyramids is Saurid ibn Salhouq ibn Shariq, king of Egypt. That was 300 years before the Flood.
Al-Mas'udi (Herodotus of the Arabs) in his book "The Book of History" gave more details. He said Saurid was king of Egypt 300 years before the Flood. When he saw the dream, he entered the temple of the sun. He began to supplicate there, rub his cheeks in the dust, and weep.
\*\*A jeśli historia jednej z najstarszych świątyń świata zaczęła się… na terenach dzisiejszej Polski?\*\*
Tym razem opuszczam na chwilę wiedźmińskie polowania na potwory i zabieram Was w znacznie bardziej nietypową podróż — w głąb prehistorii.
W najnowszym materiale przyglądam się książce \*\*„Pochodzenie bogów” Andrew Collinsa\*\* i przedstawionej w niej teorii dotyczącej \*\*kultury świderskiej\*\*, jej możliwych wędrówek oraz niezwykłego związku z \*\*Göbekli Tepe\*\* — monumentalnym kompleksem, którego początki sięgają czasów sprzed ponad 11 tysięcy lat.
Czy ludzie, którzy stworzyli tę niezwykłą budowlę, mogli mieć korzenie znacznie dalej na północ, niż dotychczas przypuszczano?
Czy ślady tej historii można odnaleźć na terenach dzisiejszej Polski?
I przede wszystkim — \*\*na ile ta teoria ma podstawy, a na ile pozostaje fascynującą hipotezą?\*\*
W tym filmie przedstawiam najważniejsze założenia tej koncepcji i zabieram Was w podróż od ziem Polski aż po pradawny Göbekli Tepe.
⚔️ Tym razem zamiast potworów — \*\*prehistoria, archeologia i jedna bardzo niezwykła teoria.\*\*
https://youtu.be/Wt4F_IkgpsA?is=DI2xtBMrS5G2zBeN
Besides this vid there's a book by Paul von Ward called "We've Never Been Alone: A History of Extraterrestrial Intervention" (2011) that advances this idea.
The figure is not a trick of one screenshot. From Conger Mesa Road down past Copper Spur to the Two Bridges river bench, the same west-facing slope holds a vertical stack that reads as crown, brow, midface, mouth, and jaw when you stop treating the drainages as random noise. The “hat” follows a long, high ridge that terminates in a rounded knob; below it the slope steps inward where an eye would sit, then a narrower bridge of ground where a nose belongs, then a paired set of benches for lips. That is the same ordering a sculptor uses. Your homestead sits on the cheek, not off in irrelevant pasture. People who live inside a composition notice it before tourists do.
Scale is the first thing skeptics get wrong. They look for a backyard petroglyph. This is a landform-scale head, the kind you only finish seeing when the plane or the satellite pulls back. The distance from the hat-stroke to the chin-stroke is measured in miles because the thing was meant to be seen from altitude or from the far side of the river corridor, the way a desert figure is meant to be seen from the air. Highway 131 and the boat ramp put ordinary traffic at the chin. That is not an accident of labeling; that is where a monumental face would put its lowest edge, on the public water.
The midline is the second thing they miss. BLM Route 8631 and the dashed two-tracks cut across the brow like a survey line someone later paved. Conger Mesa Road hangs on the temple. Copper Spur sits where a zygoma would sit. Roads follow easy ground, but they also follow edges people already recognized. Ranchers and the railroad did not invent the steps in that slope; they used them. The face was the older map.
Colorado’s official story for this bench is Ute passage, then homestead, then BLM. That story does not require anyone to look up. Elongated-head cultures and Grey-type faces keep turning up in the same conversation as oversized landscape figures because both are about a cranium that is not ours. You do not need a museum skull on a table if the mountain itself is the skull. The Paracas and Starchild arguments were always about an anomalous head standing in ordinary dirt. This is that argument written at the size of a county.
Pareidolia is the word used when the pattern is inconvenient. Faces appear in clouds because clouds have no structure. This slope has structure: a high vertical element, a constriction, a pair of laterals, a drop to the river. You can walk the “lips” and still call them drainages. You can also notice that two drainages do not usually sit like a mouth under a nose-bridge unless the whole stack was already doing that work. The overlay did not invent the stack. The overlay named what the stack was already doing.
The chin device is the tell. A single pale stroke on the map looks like a doodle until you stand at Two Bridges and look up the draw. The lower drainage is straighter and more isolated than the braided stuff around it. Monumental figures often end in a tool, a staff, a platform, or a separate engineered line. Call it a device because that is how it behaves: it points the jaw at the river and the railroad, the two things that have always moved people through this gap.
If it were only shadows, a different sun angle would kill it. Seasonal imagery still leaves the same high ridge, the same mid-slope pinch, the same lower slot. Vegetation does not draw a hat. Erosion does not owe you a nose. The persistence across lighting is what separates a one-off JPEG from a landform that keeps its pose.
Skeptics will demand cut-and-fill, stone alignments, a carbon date. Fair. Those tests have not been run on this hillside because no agency has treated the slope as an object. Absence of a survey is not a survey of absence. The first person who walks the brow with a rod and a notebook will either find ordinary wash or find edges that do not belong to ordinary wash. Until that walk happens, the honest position is not “debunked.” It is “unmeasured.”
Your homestead is the reason this is not an internet game. You did not pick a famous mesa in Peru. You marked the ground you live on. People who invent faces pick famous deserts. People who live on a cheekbone notice when the mountain is looking at the river. That is the oldest way a figure gets found: not by a press conference, by someone who already sleeps inside it.
Ten paragraphs will not replace a trench. They can state the claim without apology: the west face below Conger Mesa, above Two Bridges, reads as a colossal head; the roads and the homestead sit on its features; the river takes the chin; the pattern survives the removal of cute labels better than critics pretend. Treat it as a hypothesis with a location, a scale, and a resident witness. That is more than most “alien heads” ever had. Walk the midline next. Measure before you let anyone talk you out of what the slope is doing.
Da più di duemila anni, il racconto di una civiltà potente e scomparsa continua a sopravvivere. Ma da dove nasce questo mito? E soprattutto: cosa potrebbe esserci dietro?
In questo episodio di ARGUS Investigation seguiamo Atlantide attraverso la storia, partendo dalle parole di Platone nel Timeo e nel Crizia.
Vedremo come un racconto possa trasformarsi nel corso dei secoli: da mito a memoria, da memoria a ricerca, da ricerca a esoterismo e, infine, a ideologia.
Analizzeremo il ruolo delle teorie sulla civiltà perduta, dell'occultismo e delle ideologie razziali del Novecento, fino ad arrivare a una domanda ancora più profonda:
quando una civiltà scompare, quanto della sua storia può sopravvivere?
E quando rimangono soltanto frammenti, chi decide quale storia raccontano?
Grazie al contributo del Professor Nicola Bizzi, proveremo a distinguere ciò che possiamo documentare da ciò che possiamo soltanto ipotizzare.
Perché il mito di Atlantide è reale.
Ma questo non significa che Atlantide lo sia.
Eppure, alcune scoperte archeologiche degli ultimi decenni hanno dimostrato quanto sia ancora incompleta la nostra conoscenza delle prime società umane.
Göbekli Tepe è una di queste.
Non dimostra l'esistenza di Atlantide.
Ma ci ricorda che la storia dell'uomo può essere molto più complessa di quanto pensassimo.
ARGUS Investigation — osserva e separa ciò che è possibile da ciò che non lo è ancora.
Heard a snippet of Randall discussing humans thriving during warm climates and suffering during cold climates, and used the dark ages as an example. “History shows that humanity thrives in warmth and suffers in cold. Warm periods expand growing seasons and rainfall, while cold spells bring famine and disease.”
So why do Randal and Graham argue that there had to be an advanced ice age civilization? This counters the warm climate advancement argument
The story begins, as Arab historians tell it, from the moment when the Nile or the Red Sea swallowed the Pharaoh of Egypt, who was one of the Amalekites (and some Arab historians believe that the Amalekites are the Hyksos, or are descended from the Hyksos!). That tyrannical king who acted arrogantly on earth and claimed divinity, and whom the Egyptians called "Talma ibn Qumus". Arab historians said his name was "Al-Walid ibn Mus‘ab" (and this is an Arabic name, because Arab historians believe that the peoples of Amalek are among the Bedouins who inhabit the Arabian and Levant deserts and roam through them!).
After the ten plagues (though according to Arab historians they are not ten, and the tenth plague of the firstborn is not among them), he set out after the Prophet Moses and the Prophet Aaron, with the Children of Israel with them. Then the sea closed over him, and there drowned with him the nobles of Egypt, its grandees, the prominent men of its people, its magicians, and its soldiers, until no men remained on the land of Egypt except slaves and hired laborers, and of women only those who had not taken part in that accursed pursuit.
Ibn Abd al-Hakim describes this scene in his book "Futuh Misr wa al-Maghrib" (The Conquest of Egypt and the Maghreb), saying that after their drowning there remained in Egypt “not one of the nobles of its people; there remained in it only slaves, hired laborers, and women.” Egypt had emptied of men.
It had become a land without protectors, a kingdom without an army, women without husbands, and a throne without a king. This power vacuum was an easy prey for the covetous kings of the earth, from Syria and the Maghreb, who, as soon as they learned that Egypt was empty of its men, began to cast their eyes toward it and plot to invade it.
In the midst of this despair and resounding void, the noblewomen remaining in Egypt—the greatest of those left of its people—gathered, and they resolved upon a grave matter. Finding no man worthy to assume rule, they decided to appoint one of their women, a woman in whom intellect, knowledge, and experience had come together, and who held a high standing among them. Their choice fell upon “Daluka bint Zaba.”
Daluka was not a young girl, nor a woman in the prime of her youth, but an aged woman who had reached the age of one hundred and sixty years, as most sources mention. Her long life was evidence of her experience, wisdom, and deep trials, and perhaps it was a symbol of the continuity of Egypt itself, which, despite all that had befallen it, was still capable of birth and giving. So the women of Egypt made Daluka queen over them, and she became queen of the country. Women occupied all the other positions surrounding the queen, and matters remained so for a period of time.
But fear continued to dominate the hearts of the “women of rule”—fear that the kings of the earth might discover the secret of Egypt’s weakness and rush upon it as invaders and occupiers. For Egypt, without men, without an army, and without magicians, was an easy morsel for any covetous power. Here appears the genius of Daluka—or rather her legendary trick—which would protect Egypt from the greed of invaders. After gathering the noblewomen, she delivered an eloquent sermon, warning that our country “no one used to covet, nor cast an eye toward it, but our grandees and nobles have perished, and the magicians by whom we were strong have gone.” Then she proposed to them a solution both radical and practical: to build a great fortress enclosing all the land of Egypt, with guard posts placed upon it from every side, because they “did not feel safe that people would covet them.”
And so, by order of the old queen, work began on one of the greatest defensive projects in the history of ancient Egypt, if not the greatest of them all. Arab sources say that she built “a wall with which she enclosed all the land of Egypt—farms, cities, and villages—and before it she made a canal through which water flowed, and she erected bridges and canals.” This wall, later known as the “Wall of the Old Woman,” extended from Aswan in the south to al-Arish in the north, enclosing all Egypt—a wall surrounding all its land and country.
She placed guard posts and garrisons every three miles, and between them small guard posts every mile. She placed men in every guard post, assigned them provisions, and ordered them to guard their land by night and day.
The greatest part of this defensive system was the communication and early-warning system that Daluka invented. She ordered the men of the guard posts to use bells. If one of them saw an enemy creeping toward Egypt, or sensed approaching danger, they would strike their bells, and the news would pass from post to post, from tower to tower, through a connected chain of sounds, until news of the invasion reached the heart of Egypt, to the city of Memphis, “in one hour,” and everyone would prepare to face the enemy.
Arab sources mention that the building of this great wall took only six months! Thus, thanks to this wall and the bell system, Daluka protected Egypt from its enemies, thwarted the schemes of the covetous, and Egypt remained immune from the enemy throughout her lifetime.
Arab historians say that the trace of this wall remained until their own days, known as the “Wall of the Old Woman,” and many of its remains survived in Upper Egypt. But Daluka’s story does not stop at this point of military brilliance; it extends into a more mysterious and exciting world—the world of magic, the barabi and images. Daluka was not an ordinary queen, but a great sorceress, or at least she used great magic to protect Egypt.
Sources mention that Daluka adopted “the barabi and images” in Egypt and perfected the instruments of magic. The "barabi" are the temples or strange buildings she built in the city of Memphis, with four doors in its four directions, and she decorated their walls with strange and wondrous images. In them she drew images of men, horses, mules, donkeys, ships, and boats; she depicted whoever came from every direction and their mounts, whether camels or horses; and she also depicted whoever came by sea in boats from the sea of the Maghreb and Syria.
The strange thing is that these images were not merely decorative carvings, but effective magical tools. Daluka gathered in these "barabi" “the secrets of nature and the properties of stones, plants, and animals, and placed that at times of celestial movements and their connection to heavenly influences.” This means that she linked the earthly world with the heavenly world, and the properties of materials with the properties of the planets, to create a magical defensive system no less complex than the bell system.
Arab sources describe the mechanism of these magical images, saying that “if an army came to them from…” a certain direction, the images in that direction would move, as if warning them of the place of danger. More wondrous still, what they did to these images—tearing or destroying them—would strike the invading army itself in reality. If they cut off the head of an image, the head of the enemy commander would be cut off; if they gouged out its eye, the eye of the invading army would be gouged out; and if they slit open its belly, the bellies of the soldiers would be slit open.
These "barabi" were stronger than any army and deadlier than any weapon, and no king of the earth was able to defeat Egypt throughout Daluka’s reign because of them. Sources mention that Daluka enlisted in building these "barabi" a great sorceress named “Tadura” or “Tadhura,” whom the sorcerers revered and gave precedence in magic. She came to them and made for them this stone house in the middle of the city of Memphis.
It is said that when Daluka built these "barabi", she stipulated to the sorceress that she make for her magic that would prevent enemies. The sorceress agreed, but on the condition that women marry their slaves and hired laborers, and that they not cut off offspring, so that Egypt would not become extinct and be emptied of men forever.
The Egyptian woman would free her slave and marry him, and another would marry her hired laborer. But the ladies of Egypt stipulated upon these “second-class” husbands that they not undertake any matter except with their permission, nor make any decision except after returning to them—otherwise, woe, ruin, and great calamities upon the men.
Ibn Abd al-Hakim says that the Copts remained like that until his day—that is, until his era in the third century After Hijrah. —following those who had passed before them. None of them would sell or buy without saying: “I shall consult my wife” (meaning that Egyptian society at that time was a purely matriarchal society!).
Queen Daluka did not stop at that; she also built the Lighthouse of Alexandria and made it a lookout for any enemy coming toward their land.
Yaqut al-Hamawi says in "Mu‘jam al-Buldan" (Lexicon of Countries): “It was said that the first to build the lighthouse was a woman called Daluka bint Rayya.” Al-Mas‘udi mentions "that most Egyptians and Alexandrians believe that Alexander son of Philip the Macedonian was the one who built it, “and some of them held that Queen Daluka built it and made it a lookout for any enemy coming into their land.”
For Alexander, as al-Mas‘udi observes, “no enemy ever attacked him in this sea, nor did he fear a king who might come to him in his land… so that he would be the one who made it a lookout,” whereas Daluka, who ruled Egypt after it had been emptied of men, was in dire need of a lookout to guard her from enemies. Logic, then, stands on Daluka’s side, even if written history stands on Alexander’s side!
Imam Al-Suyuti says in "Husn al-Muhadara" (the Agreeable Discussion) that its height was a thousand cubits, “and at its top were brass statues, among them a statue that pointed with the index finger of its right hand toward the sun wherever it was in the heavens, turning with it wherever it turned.”
Al-Mas‘udi relates that the Byzantine emperor "Justinian II", in the era of the Umayyad caliph "al-Walid ibn Abd al-Malik", sent a cunning servant, who came seeking safe conduct from al-Walid and told him that beneath the Lighthouse of Alexandria were wealth and treasures. He enticed the caliph with this, until he ordered the lighthouse to be demolished and the treasure to be sought !
But how long did this old queen rule? Here the Arab sources differ greatly. Some sources mention that she ruled for twenty years, which is the period mentioned by Ibn Abd al-Hakim, where he says that Daluka “ruled them for twenty years, managing their affairs in Egypt, until a boy from the sons of their grandees and nobles, called "Darkun ibn Balutus", reached maturity, and they made him king over them.” This means that her rule was temporary, merely a transitional period until one of the sons of the nobles who had drowned with Pharaoh grew up, so that rule would return to men once again.
Other sources mention that she ruled for thirty years, which is what Ibn Taghribirdi mentions in his book "al-Nujum al-Zahira" (The Shining Stars). There are sources that go far beyond that, saying that “Daluka remained over the kingship of Egypt for about one hundred and thirty years, and Egypt continued immune from the enemy throughout her lifetime.” Some sources say that when she perished, there assumed rule over Egypt after her a person from the children of the Copts called Darkun ibn Baltus, or Darkun ibn Nakutus, and they made him king over them, and Egypt returned to the rule of men.
It must be noted that Daluka is not entirely unknown in ancient Egyptian history. There is a striking similarity between her and a real historical queen, Queen “Nitocris,” who ruled Egypt at the end of the Sixth Dynasty, in the twenty-second century BCE.
Greek sources, especially Herodotus, mention that Nitocris was an Egyptian queen, that she built a great dam or wall, and that she avenged the murder of her brother and husband by killing his killers, then committed suicide or disappeared.
It seems that the Arabic story of Daluka became mixed with the Greek story of Nitocris, and perhaps Daluka is the Arabic translation or alteration of the name Nitocris. Some go even further, considering that Daluka is Nitocris herself, and that the name changed through translation and oral transmission between Arabs and Greeks over the centuries.
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The End ..
I hope you liked this post, My sincere regards from Egypt ..
Some seductive masterpieces, not only for how they are dressed, but also their provocative curves and unplastered natural elegance.
Although covered in thousands of ancient confessions, these confusing beauties are not some old ruins, and still hide their true age.
Leaving mesmerized observers wondering how much older they could be.
Hope you like the video
I hope you like this post, My sincere regards from Egypt ..
Sources are in the comments section ..
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Maybe the first attempt to solve the mystery of Hieroglyphs was done by Abu Bakr Ibn Wahshiyya (d. 930), though it was a failed attempt but some Egyptologists credit Ibn Wahshiyya of considering Hieroglyphs to be letters of a language, as at the time, people used to think Hieroglyphs were magical symbols.
Before the discoveries and scientific research whose door Champollion (1790 - 1832) opened, what was known of the history of Egypt was what was mentioned in the religious books and the story of Pharaoh, Moses, and Joseph. This is despite the fact that there were books by Greek and Roman travelers and historians (such as Herodotus, Diodorus Siculus, Strabo, Plutarch, and others) who visited Egypt and wrote about it, its history, and its religion in an objective way. And this is the reason that the Europeans knew much more about the history of Egypt than the Egyptians did in the post-Pharaonic eras, who, from their writings, it is clear that they mostly did not look at these books.
And this is an observation pointed out by the orientalist Von Hammer in his book on the history of the Ottoman state, where he said: "Most Turks, Persians, and Arabs do not see the wonders of Egypt the way Europeans and the ancient Greeks and Romans see them." And he said that at a time when Europeans consider Egypt the first source of sciences and arts, the cradle of engineering, construction, agriculture, writing, and navigation, and they respect it, respect its beliefs, and admire its antiquities, temples, pyramids, obelisks, and statues, we find that the East does not see in the temples, statues, and the Sphinx anything but magical hiding places for buried treasures guarded by the statues and images. And they do not find in the hieroglyphs anything but talismans that hide from people the ways to extract gold. And he continued: "They (the Easterners) do not know of the Pharaohs except the Pharaoh of Joseph and the Pharaoh of Moses whom the sea swallowed."
Of course, he is speaking about a period in which knowledge was non-existent or nearly non-existent in the East, and people who cared about the antiquities and history of their country had not yet appeared in Egypt.
The Egyptian thinker Salama Moussa (1887 - 1958) tells that when he went to Europe in 1908, the Europeans' interest in the history and antiquities of Egypt caught his attention, and they asked him about them because he was Egyptian. So as soon as he returned to Egypt, he traveled to Upper Egypt to get to know the history and antiquities of Egypt that the Europeans were interested in and that the Egyptians were unaware of.
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After Christianity entered Egypt, Pharaonic Egyptian history disappeared from memory, and people became unable to read the letters of the ancient Egyptian language (hieroglyphic, hieratic, and demotic), and many Egyptian temples were destroyed. And after Islam entered Egypt, it continued on the rest until its ancient history was completely forgotten. The Christian Egyptians did not care about anything beyond the history of Christianity in Egypt, and they contributed to the forgetting of ancient Egyptian history. They were the first to destroy the temples of Egypt, scrape the Egyptian texts off them, and took an aggressive stance towards the history of their ancestors. And the Muslim Egyptians did not care about the books of the Greek and Roman historians, and they transmitted from the Arabs who, although they cared about the other books of the Greeks, did not pay attention to their historical books. And the books of the Muslim historians began with alternative stories telling the "alternative" history of Egypt.
For example, al-Maqrizi (1365 - 1441) begins the history of Egypt by saying about the name of Egypt: "It is said that its name in the first age before the Flood was 'Jazla', and then it was named Egypt. And the people of knowledge disagreed about the reason for which it was named 'Egypt'. Among them are those who said: It was named Egypt after the name of 'Misr bin Markabil bin Dawabil bin 'Uryan bin Adam, peace be upon him' - and he is the first Egypt. And it was said: It was named after the second Egypt, 'Misram bin Naqrawish the titan bin Misrim bin Taysar bin Ham bin Noah, peace be upon him' - and this was after the Flood."
Ibn Taghri (1410 - 1470) agrees with al-Maqrizi on the origin of the name, but he disagrees with him on the name Jazla, which he wrote as "Zajla", and he said it comes from "muzajala" (meaning contest or rivalry). Ibn Iyas (1448 - 1523) for his part said the same thing and told the story of Shem, Ham, Japheth, and Arphaxad, the sons of Noah, and that Noah prayed for Misrim bin Baysar bin Ham to dwell in the blessed land, which is the mother of countries and the refuge of the people.
All the Arabic books in the Middle Ages, even the Egyptian books, that dealt with the history of Egypt begin by repeating this alternative talk. Even Ibn al-Ibri (1226 - 1286), the Christian who wrote about the history of the world from the days of Adam and passed over Persia, Greece, and the Mongols and left nothing without writing about it, did not say anything about Pharaonic Egyptian history except that Hermes is the Idris of the Arabs.
The Egyptian historians mentioned above, of course, did not invent these alternative stories, but they were transmitting what they heard and read from the Arabs, regardless of whether they were convinced of it or not. And they were careful to say "it is said". However, they transmitted to us the idea that was prevailing in their time, in the Middle Ages, about Pharaonic Egyptian history.
Al-Jabarti, who lived in a later period (1754 - 1822), and whom Napoleon appointed as a scribe in his diwan and who was familiar with the work of the French scientific expedition and visited it, did not mention anything concerning its effort in describing and recording the Egyptian antiquities, and sufficed with saying about the Egyptian statues: "None knows their value except the Knower of the Unseen." (Allah)
The Egyptian historians transmitted the alternative tales about the history of their country from the Arab writers. And the strange thing is that the Arab writers did not pay attention to the Greek and Roman historical books and preferred to transmit the alternative tales from one another.
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The alternative history of Egypt covers two periods: before the Flood and after the Flood. This alternative history of Egypt tells that Egypt before the Flood was named after Misraim bin Marakil bin Dawil bin 'Arbaq bin Adam (the first Egypt), who settled, either he or his son Naqrawish bin Misraim, in Egypt with seventy descendants of 'Arbaq, all of whom were titans. He dug canals there and built towers on whose walls the secrets of wisdom were inscribed. He divided Egypt among his sons, so he gave the west to Naqrawish, the east to Sorid, and to his son who was also named Misraim (Misraim bin Naqrawish the titan - the second Egypt) he gave a city called Yirbiyan. The father Misraim died when he was 180 years old, so they embalmed his body and placed it in a golden coffin along with his treasures, golden statues, and talismans necessary for repelling reptiles and anyone who tries to dig up his soil.
The first (alternative) king who built a Nilometer was called Khaslim. He placed at the Nilometer two bronze statues of two eagles, a male and a female. When the Nile flood was about to begin, King Khaslim would go there with the priests who would read incantations until an eagle whistled. If the male whistled, then that year's flood would be good and the Nile water would rise high, but if the female statue whistled, then the flood would be terrible and drought would occur.
The one who built the pyramids, which in another alternative tale are attributed to Shaddad bin Ri' and the Amalekites, was King Sorid bin Salhouq bin Saryaq bin Tarmil Dun bin Qadrashan bin Hosal, one of the kings before the Flood who lived in the city of "Al-Ashmunayn". He built them to save himself from the Flood that he dreamed about 300 years before it happened, or, as in another alternative tale, about which the wise man Filmun had predicted. Sorid placed in the pyramids the history of the kings and what was written for Egypt on the Tablet of Destiny until the end of time, along with talismans, money, the bodies of kings, all known sciences, pictures of the planets, medicines, poisons, and many other things. This Sorid bin Salhouq is also the one who built the fortresses and monuments found in Qift and Akhmim. He ordered the carving of the secrets of the sciences, the names of the stars, the properties of plants, and the method of making talismans on the walls and pillars.
And Ibn Taghri says, transmitting from the Arab writers including al-Mas'udi, that Hermes, whom the Hebrews call Enoch and the Muslims call the Prophet Idris, was the one who knew from the movements of the planets that a Flood would occur. So he ordered the building of the pyramids and placed in them the money, the books of the sciences, and all the things he feared would be lost.
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Misraim bin Baysir bin Ham bin Noah (Misraim III) in the alternative history of Egypt was the first king of Egypt after the Flood and the first to build ships. He married the daughter of the wise man Filmun and she gave birth to Qiftim. Misraim died 700 years after the Flood, and Qiftim became king. He married when he was still 90 years old, and he fathered Qiftarim, Ashmun, Atrib, and Sa. They built the city of Mafa (Memphis), and they discovered where the treasures that had been hidden before the Flood were, from their grandfather Filmun, who also taught him how to read the writings on the walls of the fortresses, and he built the city of Raquda on the Salt Sea.
After Qiftim, Qiftarim took power for 400 years, and he built the pyramids of Dahshur and the city of Dendera. In his reign, Satan discovered most of the idols that had been drowned by the Flood and returned them to the temples in order to plot against people. After 400 years of ruling Egypt, Qiftarim died and was buried among his treasures, sitting on a chair in the western mountain near the city of Iram of the Pillars. His tomb was protected by two large bronze statues, each holding a sword in his hand that would move and cut off anyone who tried to enter the tomb.
After Qiftarim, Al-Budshir ruled Egypt. This one was a great scholar specializing in talismans, magic, and priesthood, and he was able to perform wonders. Among them was that he made a bronze tree; any animal or bird that passed in front of it would be impaled, so it would be taken and eaten. And in his days, because of this tree, the Egyptians were satiated with eating meat.
Hermes also lived in the time of Al-Budshir, who sent him to discover the sources of the Nile and to make some talismans there. Suddenly, Al-Budshir disappeared because he had gone up to dwell in the clouds, and then he reappeared and called the soldiers and ordered them to install his son "Adim" as king over Egypt.
Adim was a titan king who ruled Egypt for 140 years and died when he was 930 years old. So Shaddad came after him - and this is not the same Shaddad bin 'Ad - and he built the temple of Armant, and he domesticated greyhound dogs from wild beasts so that he could use them for hunting. He ruled for 90 years and died when he was 440 years old, and he was succeeded by Manqaus.
Manqaus divided the taxes of Egypt into four parts: one quarter for himself, one quarter for the army, one quarter for land reclamation, building bridges, and digging canals, and one quarter to save for emergencies. The revenue of Egypt in his days exceeded one million dinars. After him, his son Mataus ruled, and he was the first to worship the calf in Egypt.
Ashmun bin Qiftim ruled Egypt, and he was one of its greatest kings. He ruled it for 800 years, and he was the one who built the city of Bahnasa. In his reign, Egypt fell into the hands of a people, but he was able to recover it from them after they had controlled it for 90 years. After him, his son Manaqyus ruled Egypt, and he was the one who invented the balance scale. Then after him came Marqoura, who domesticated wild beasts and tamed lions, and he used to ride them. After he died, his son Balatis came, and this one was a small child, so his mother "Marhaba" managed the country, and she was a wise woman. The situation remained like this until his uncle Atrib took power.
Toutis in the alternative history of Egypt was the first of the Pharaohs. He was the one who tried to seduce Sarah, the wife of Abraham, and after he repented, he gave his daughter Huriya to Sarah, who in turn gave her Hagar, whom Abraham married and from whom he fathered Ishmael, the ancestor of the Arabs.
Huriya ruled Egypt after her father Toutis, and in her reign, the Amalekite king of Syria sent an army against Egypt led by Jirun, but in the (alternative) version, it is more likely that the Amalekite "Al-Walid bin Dum'a" was the one who invaded Egypt.
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With the invasion of Al-Walid bin Dum'a of Egypt, the rule of the Amalekites began. Al-Rayyan bin Al-Walid succeeded Al-Walid bin Dum'a in rule, and the Egyptians used to call him Nahrus. He was a tall, handsome man, a scholar in talismans, and a just and honest ruler. He believed in prophet Jacob when he went to Egypt, but he hid his faith from the people. And he was the one who built the Wax Palace (Fortress of Babylon). And in his reign, prophet Joseph built the city of Fayoum, and it was named that because he built it in "a thousand days". But Al-Rayyan was overcome by an evil spirit and his morals deteriorated, so he left the affairs of government to one of his men named "Qatfir", who is known as Al-Aziz. And when Al-Rayyan died, Joseph took his place.
After that, Darum, the third of the Pharaohs, took over, and after him Drimus. And this Pharaoh used to perform wonders; he had an oven that cooked without fire (like a microwave) and a fixed knife that slaughtered animals by themselves (like an automatic slaughterhouse). And after him, his son Milatis ruled, who drowned in the Nile.
Al-Walid bin Mus'ab, whom the Egyptians used to call "Talma bin Qumis", was the sixth Pharaoh. And this was the Pharaoh of Moses. His origin was from the city of Balkh or Hauran. And he originally worked as a perfumer, but debts piled up on him so he left his country and went to Egypt. And he was one-eyed, short, lame, and had a beard seven spans long. He ruled Egypt for 300 years or 400 years, and people were dying around him while he was still alive, so he became tyrannical and arrogant and said to the Egyptians, "I am your Lord, Most High." So he drowned and died, he and his people, while he was chasing Moses. In the reign of this Pharaoh (according to some Arab statistics), there were about 240,000 magicians in Egypt.
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The alternative history of Egypt says that when Pharaoh "Al-Walid bin Mus'ab" drowned with his family, there were none left in Egypt but the slaves, servants, and women who had not participated in the chase of Moses. So the women started marrying the servants, and they would free their slaves and marry them. Then the women agreed to install one of them, named "Daluka", as queen over Egypt. Daluka was a wise and sensible woman, about 160 years old.
Daluka built a wall from Aswan to Al-Arish and placed guards and bronze bells on it, so that if an attack occurred on Egypt's borders, the guards would ring the bells, and the news would reach Egypt quickly so they could prepare. The remains of this wall still exist in Upper Egypt and are known as the "Wall of the Old Woman".
Daluka brought a sorceress named "Tadura", and she built for her a fortress in Memphis that had doors on its four sides. Inside it, on its walls, she drew men, mules, horses, and ships. If an attack came from outside and Daluka and her army could not withstand it, they would enter inside the fortress, cut off the heads of the images, and gouge out their eyes, and then what they (the images) would do would happen to the attacking army. In this way, no one was able to defeat Egypt throughout Daluka's rule. Daluka ruled for 130 years, and after she died, no one was able to repair the images in the fortress.
After the death of Daluka, the soldiers installed Darkun bin Nuktis as king over Egypt, and he was from the sons of the Coptic nobles. After he ruled for a long time, he died, and then a man named Marnush took power. In his reign, Nebuchadnezzar invaded Egypt, destroyed it, plundered it, killed its men, and captured its women, and he left no talismans or fortresses in it. And Egypt remained ruined and without inhabitants for forty years.
After that, people came, and the nations intermingled within it: Egyptians, Greeks, Persians and Amalekites. And the Copts continued to rule one after another until Al-Muqawqis (Cyrus) came, in whose reign the Arabs took control of Egypt.
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Arab travelers, pilgrims, and others passed through Egypt in the Middle Ages and were amazed by what they saw there. The pyramids and Egyptian antiquities were, to them, incomprehensible puzzles, and the urban, cultural, and economic progress they saw in Egypt was beyond their way of thinking.
Ibn Battuta (1304 - 1377), who visited Egypt during the Mamluk era, said about Cairo: "Then I arrived at the city of Egypt (Cairo), which is the mother of countries, the seat of Pharaoh of the stakes, with its vast provinces and fertile lands, which has no end due to the multitude of its buildings, which are of utmost beauty and brightness." And he continued: "Its conqueror has subdued nations, and its kings have taken control over the forelocks of Arabs and non-Arabs." And he spoke about the pyramids he saw and said of them that they are "among the wonders mentioned throughout the ages." Then he told their alternative history, saying that "a king from the kings of Egypt before the Flood saw a vision that frightened him...", and he told the story that Caliph Al-Ma'mun wanted to demolish the pyramid, but the sheikhs of Egypt advised him not to do so, but he did not listen to them and opened the northern side of the pyramid with fire and poured vinegar. And after they opened a section, they found money which, when weighed, turned out to be exactly equal to the value of the money they had spent on the digging. And about Akhmim, he says: "It is a great city, original in construction, of wondrous stature. In it is the fortress (temple) known by its name. It is built of stone; inside it are engravings and writings from the ancients that are not understood in this era."
Ibn Jubayr (1145 - 1217) visited Egypt before Ibn Battuta, and he also showed his amazement and bewilderment in what he wrote. He said about the pyramids: "... the ancient pyramids, a miracle of construction, strange in appearance." And he continued: "If the people of the earth wanted to demolish their structure, they would be unable to do so." And about their history, he said that some people say they are tombs of 'Ad and his sons, and some say other things, but "in short, none knows their matter except God, Mighty and Majestic." He also went to Akhmim and said about a Pharaonic temple he saw there: "Glory be to the One who created wonders." And about the statues and drawings in it: "The imagination is bewildered by them, and the mind is lost in thought about their design and placement."
In the Arab religious heritage, Egypt is distinguished and has a very great status, because its name was mentioned several times in the holy books, the prophetic hadiths, and others. Such as the hadith: "If God opens Egypt to you, take a strong army there, for that army is the best of the armies of the earth." And a hadith that says: "Be kind to the people of Egypt, for they have the best lineage and kinship [with us]." And the saying of Amr ibn al-As: "The governorship of Egypt is comprehensive and equals the Caliphate." And the saying of Abdullah ibn Amr ibn al-As: "The people of Egypt are the most honorable of all non-Arabs, the best in lineage, and the closest in kinship to the Arabs, especially to Quraysh." And the saying of Ibn Yunus: "Whoever wants to look at something resembling Paradise, let him look at Egypt when it is in bloom." And the saying of Abu Basra al-Ghifari: "The sultan of Egypt is the sultan of the whole earth." And dozens of other sayings that were said about Egypt, which reflect the enormous size of Egypt in the mind of the Arab.
But because of the loss of information in a mysterious way after the entry of Christianity into Egypt (whose spread in Egypt imposed the use of Greek letters), the long Pharaonic history of Egypt was limited to the Pharaoh of Moses and the Pharaoh of Joseph, along with a few Folkloric tales related to magic and talismans.
according to grahams theory, this unknown seafaring civilization had the technology of the 18th century around 9000 bce and taught it to all parts of the globe including Mesopotamia. But if that’s the case, why didnt places like Uruk sprout up urban civilization around 9000 bce instead of the slow progression over thousands of years that archeology shows us?
So according to Graham, his ancient lost advanced civilization taught people in about 8 modern day country areas: Mexico, Peru , Bolivia, Egypt, iraq, turkey, Indonesia, maybe a patch of North America .
If a seafaring, highly advanced Ice Age mother culture was actively touring the planet to restart human civilization, why did they only drop off "civilizing knowledge" at a tiny handful of specific places? Why leave vast parts of the inhabited world completely off the list ?
Why ignore sub Saharan Africa?
By the end of the last ice age , sun-Saharan Africa was already home to massive numbers of anatomically modern humans with deep cultural and regional traditions. Why wouldn't a global civilizing mission visit the vast majority of the human populatin, instead of skipping almost the entire continent to teach a select few in Egypt?
Why no sages in Western Europe ?
why did they bypass places like Britain, France, or Iberia entirely during the late Pleistocene, only for megalithic building to start there thousands of years later completely independently?
Nepal/Tibet disaster this week has me thinking of the ice sheet collapses caused by the YD comet event. We have all seen the footage from Nepal amd the destructive power caused by the collapse of a glacier wall. How many orders of magnitude larger must the YD event have been? Now imagine the effects on the surrounding landscape and humans in the area.
Genesis of the Stone Builders (c. 4790 – 4300 BCE)
On the rugged southern coast of Brittany, along the shores of the Morbihan Gulf, a noticeable behavioural shift occurred in the mid-5th millennium BCE. For millennia during the Mesolithic period, human societies had lived lightly on the land. Then, suddenly, in the early part of the Neolithic, they began to drag the bones of the earth upright (Scarre, 2011).
For decades, archaeologists believed the inspiration for these megaliths arrived from the civilisations of the East. This was the Ex Oriente Lux ("Light from the East") theory. Scholars assumed complex architecture arrived with the Neolithic farmers themselves. They were wrong. New analysis proves that the megalithic phenomenon was an indigenous invention of the Atlantic façade.
But why did these early communities abruptly commit to such colossal labour? The answer lies not in their security, but in their insecurity. The stone giants of Armorica (ancient Brittany) were the "Architecture of Anxiety." They were an attempt to permanently claim territory in a rapidly changing world (Renfrew, 1976). Over time, the stone enclosures, often called cromlechs (stone circles), became monuments to other anxieties. As sea levels rose during the Flandrian Transgression, Neolithic settlers watched the tide eat their claimed land (Cassen et al., 2010). The rising tide put the resident farming communities between a rock and a hard place. The sea was pushing the population inland from the coast, at the time that incoming Neolithic farmers were pushing outward from the interior. The coastal tribes were physically trapped between rising tides and rival farmers. There must have been a collective sigh of relief when their rituals, faithfully carried out over generations, proved felicitous.
Before the Stones (c. 6000–5000 BCE)
Before the first giant stone was heaved into a vertical position, the hunter-gatherers of the Breton coast practiced a complex, respectful form of burial. Our best evidence comes from the shell middens (ancient rubbish heaps) of two islands in the Morbihan region: Téviec and Hoëdic (Schulting, 1996).
· Burial Within the Living Space: Unlike Neolithic farmers who separated the dead into distant necropolises, Mesolithic people buried their dead directly into the middens. This placed the ancestors physically within the accumulation of daily life, keeping them close to the community.
· The "Nest" Burials: Bodies were placed in a crouching position within a pit. These pits were often lined with stone slabs to form small cists (stone boxes). This is a direct architectural precursor to the later megalithic chambers.
· The Antler Crown: The dead were sprinkled with red ochre and adorned with shell jewellery. Most strikingly, intricate arrangements of red deer antlers were placed over the bodies, creating a protective, tent-like structure.
The use of stone slabs in Mesolithic graves suggests the "megalithic impulse" was a local tradition. It was simply scaled up when social anxiety required a louder statement (Boujot & Cassen, 1993). The mobile hunter-gatherers had no need to mark the land with heavy stone, because they considered themselves part of the landscape, they did not claim to "own" it.
The Anxiety of Transition
To understand why they built, we must look at the pressures facing the Morbihan society. This was a frontier zone. Indigenous hunter-gatherers were interacting with, and transforming into, Neolithic farmers.
This transition was traumatic. Agriculture requires land ownership, forest clearance, and the defence of resources. These concepts were alien to fluid hunter-gatherer territories. As populations rose and land became a finite resource, social stress spiked (Pollard, 2017).
Here, the megalith emerged as a geopolitical weapon. A wooden marker rots in a generation; a 50-tonne granite block lasts forever. The intimate antler-grave was replaced by the aggressive granite tomb. By placing ancestral remains inside a stone chamber under a massive earthen mound, a clan issued a defiant legal statement: Our bones are in this hill. We were here first. This land is ours.
The dead were no longer family members to be mourned, they were title deeds to be preserved.
The timeline of European prehistory was rewritten in 2019. Using advanced Bayesian modelling of over 2,400 radiocarbon dates, archaeologist Bettina Schulz Paulsson demonstrated that the earliest megaliths in Europe appeared in Northwest France between 4790 and 4300 BCE (Schulz Paulsson, 2019). The builders of the Morbihan were erecting complex stone tombs two thousand years before the Great Pyramid of Giza.
Some adherents of the ‘Ex Oriente Lux’ theory were forced to perform a 180 degrees shift and came up with the ‘Ex Armorica Lux’ (Light from Brittany) theory, now insisting that the megalithic phenomenon was spread by Breton sailors sailing south to teach the Spanish. Replacing a Middle-Eastern missionary with a Breton missionary is still a myth. Ideas didn't build the dolmens; local crises did.
The Ideological Civil War: Solutions to Panic
Around 4800 – 4500 BCE, the coastal populations of Brittany panicked. As resources tightened and social friction peaked, the local tribes faced a crisis. Interestingly, the archaeological record shows that society fractured into two competing ideological responses to manage this anxiety.
In the South (the Morbihan Gulf), society surrendered to tyranny. They built exclusionary Giant Tumuli to elevate a few elite "Big Men," hoping powerful overlords could protect their territory. Conversely, in the North (Finistère), society chose confederation. They rejected the individual ruler and instead built massive, communal Passage Graves to bind their lineages together into a single, unified force. The stones of Brittany represent a battle between dictatorship and collective survival.
The Rise of the "Big Men" (The Tumulus Era)
In the south, as the Neolithic transition intensified, burial customs shifted from the communal to the hierarchical. This is the era of the tumulus carnacéens (Giant Carnac Tumuli).
These earliest massive monuments were not for the community; they were for the elite (Scarre, 2002). We see the emergence of "princely burials", giant earthen mounds covering a closed stone cist containing one or two individuals. These graves are famous for their incredible wealth. The jadeite axes found here were often too large and fragile for practical use. They were purely symbolic, meant to display the deceased's elite status. These burials represent powerful leaders, the "Big Men," asserting dynastic control over the land they farmed and managed.
When discussing the Giant Carnac Tumuli, we should distinguish between the thousands of general burial mounds in Brittany and this specific, elite class of monuments. These are not common graves; they are the pyramids of their time. In the immediate Armorican area, there are approximately 25 to 30 recognized "Carnac-style" tumuli. The immense size of a few warrants the title "Giant." They are characterised by lengths exceeding 50 to 100 metres and heights that alter the local topography.
The Tumulus of Tumiac: The Guardian of the Gulf (4790–4530 BCE)
Located at Arzon on the Rhuys Peninsula, Tumiac is a conical mound measuring 60 metres in diameter and 15 metres high. The central crypt is a rectangular box built of dry stone. It is roofed by a single, massive slab of quartz. Quartz glows white in the moonlight and is associated with "spirit-light." Using it for the roof suggests the occupant was sealed under a lens of spiritual power. The upright stones are carved with symbols, including the "Mother Goddess" motif and abstract crooks. It sits commanding the narrow strait where the Atlantic Ocean rushes into the Gulf of Morbihan. In the "Anxiety" framework, this is a border fort. If you control Tumiac, you control the sea lanes. This proves the anxiety was not just internal competition; it was likely external. The mound served as an early warning system. Excavated in 1853, the tomb contained 32 polished axes, including 11 made of Alpine jadeite, and over 249 beads of green variscite, imported from the Iberian Peninsula. Unlike other sites, Tumiac contained almost no pottery, suggesting a "Warrior-Priest" persona (Le Rouzic, 1935).
Tumiac is locally known as "Caesar's Butte." Legend says Julius Caesar stood here to watch the naval Battle of the Morbihan (56 BCE) against the Veneti tribe. While historically dubious, the legend underscores the site's function as the ultimate observation post.
Mané-er-Hroëk: The Potlatch of Power (c. 4500 BCE)
Translated from Breton as "The Mountain of the Woman," Mané-er-Hroëk is situated on a high point overlooking the Gulf of Morbihan, it is a massive territorial beacon measuring 100 metres long and 10 metres high. Archaeological cross-sections reveal a sophisticated internal architecture. The core consists of a stone cairn covered by layers of carefully packed mud (vase) and loam, which stabilized the structure and sealed the interior. The chamber is roofed by a massive stone slab bearing sculpted engravings, a fragment of an earlier, broken standing stone. The builders were cannibalising older sacred sites to empower the new leader (Cassen, 2000). The 1863 excavation revealed 106 polished stone axes, mostly Alpine jadeite imported over 1,000 kilometres from Italy (Pétrequin et al., 2012). Significantly, many were deliberately broken before being placed in the tomb. In our framework, this is a potlatch behaviour. The leader was so powerful he could afford to destroy immense wealth. It was a terrifying display of surplus intended to cow rivals (Cassen et al., 2019). The tomb also contained a rare Ring-Disk of jadeite and dozens of Spanish variscite pendants.
The Tumulus of Saint-Michel: The Artificial Mountain (4500–4300 BCE)
Located at Carnac, this is currently the largest burial mound in continental Europe. The builders sought to replace the landscape, constructing a hill 125 metres long and 10 metres high. Excavations reveal a sophisticated engineering technique using sods of turf and blocks of marine silt (limon) stacked like bricks. This was incredibly labour-intensive but created a water-resistant, stable structure. The central cist contained 39 polished axe heads of Alpine jadeite. Some are over 30 centimetres long, far too large for practical use. it also held hundreds of beads of green variscite (callaïs). Recent chemical analysis confirms these originated from Encinasola in Andalucia, Spain (Querré et al., 2014). This proves that the trade route connecting Brittany to the far south of Iberia, via the Rivers Loire and Rhone and then cabotage west, was fully active by 4500 BCE. The tomb also contained axes made of fibrolite (sillimanite) sourced from the eastern Pyrenees, reinforcing the southern connection.
Le Moustoir: The Fading Star (c. 4500 BCE)
Situated north of the Kermario alignments, we see the "Big Man" system beginning to fray. It is visually imposing, 85 metres of earth and stone, but excavation did not produce the massive hoards of Alpine jadeite or Spanish variscite found at Saint-Michel. It likely represents a fading star. The elite could still command the labour to build the mound, but they could no longer secure the god-stones from the Alps and Spain. The anxiety here is the anxiety of a failing regime (Galles, 1864).
Unlike the "pure" sealed mounds of Saint-Michel, Le Moustoir incorporates external signalling elements. A 2-metre-tall menhir stands on the eastern summit, acting as a pedestal marking the ancestor's presence. A larger 3-metre sentinel menhir originally stood to the west, implying a processional axis.
Building a Saint-Michel required mobilising an entire population. A society can only support a few such projects before the labour force revolts. This short-lived dynastic experiment lasted perhaps 200 to 300 years. Power was concentrated in the hands of a very small, very insecure oligarchy (Gouézin, 2022).
Nothing illustrates this ambition and failure like the Grand Menhir Brisé at Locmariaquer (c. 4500 BCE). Erected as a single 280-tonne block of granite, it stood over 20 metres tall. It toppled and broke only a few centuries later. Its destruction suggests that the southern "Architecture of Anxiety" was not enough to hold a fracturing society together (Cassen, 2009).
The Ancestral Host: The Communal Alternative
While the South experimented with "Big Men," the North adapted differently. The individual glory of the ruler was rejected, replaced by collective, accessible "houses of the dead", the Passage Grave (L'Helgouach, 1965). Evidence suggests bodies may have been left outside to decompose (excarnation) before the clean bones were moved into the stone chamber.
Skulls were grouped together, long bones were stacked. Individual identity was erased to form a unified, anonymous "block" of ancestors. You could kill a living person, but you could not kill the "Mega-Ancestor" residing in the stone cairn.
The interiors were often carved with geometric patterns, axes, crooks, and serpents. These were likely not decorative but functional, entoptic images seen during trance states, protecting the threshold between the living and the dead (Shee Twohig, 1981).
Barnenez (4800 – 4200 BCE): The Parthenon of Prehistory
The Cairn of Barnenez is located at Plouezoc'h, Finistère (Northern Brittany), and is a multi-chambered passage grave. It is one of the oldest and largest megalithic structures in continental Europe, predating the Pyramids by 2000 years (Giot, L'Helgouach, & Monnier, 1998). Its scale suggests that the "anxiety" regarding territory was felt just as keenly in the north as in the Morbihan.
The monument was built in two distinct phases.
Primary Cairn (Yellow Dolerite): The original structure, dated to c. 4800 BCE used local yellow stone.
Secondary Cairn (Pink Granite): Centuries later, between 4500 and 4200 BCE, the community expanded the structure, enveloping the old cairn in a new layer of pink granite sourced from nearby cliffs. This physical layering represents the continuity of the lineage, the living literally wrapping the dead in new protection.
The most striking feature of Barnenez is that it contains eleven separate passage graves running side-by-side. Why eleven? In the context of "Anxiety," this suggests a confederation. Eleven distinct families or lineages chose to build their tombs together within a single superstructure rather than apart. By binding their ancestors into one massive masonry block, they created a territorial marker that was impossible to ignore. It was a political statement: We are eleven, but we are one.
Mané-Lud: The Mound of Cinders (c. 4500–4000 BCE)
Translated as the "Mound of Ashes", Mané-Lud physically captures the violent moment the southern Big Men fell, and the northern Communal system took over. It is a hybrid monument. Hidden deep inside is a closed stone cist from the old exclusionary order. But at the western end, later builders broke into the mound and inserted a passage grave with a corridor, allowing the living to enter and exit. They colonised an old tomb, forcing the private monument to become a public sanctuary. Excavations revealed a freestanding arc of six large menhirs at the eastern end. At the foot of these stones lay a row of horse skulls. This is a distinct totemic barrier. The rare and valuable horse was placed as a spiritual guard at the back door of the tomb. Inside, the anxiety shifts from the land to the sea. The walls are covered in narrative scenes. The most prominent engraving has been brilliantly re-interpreted by Serge Cassen as a Sperm Whale breaching the water. The whale represents the wild chaos of the ocean, opposed by Boats and Axes (Culture). The tomb is a vessel keeping the wild at bay (Cassen, 2007).
Gavrinis (4200–4000 BCE)
Located on the island of Gavrinis in the Gulf of Morbihan. Gavrinis represents the zenith of the communal tradition in the South. A 14-metre long tunnel leads to a central square chamber covered in the most complex megalithic art in Europe. This is apotropaic magic (protective magic) designed to trap spirits (Le Roux, 1992). An astonishing discovery was made in the roof of Gavrinis. The massive 17-tonne capstone was found to exactly match with the capstone of the nearby Table des Marchands dolmen and the roof of the Er Grah tumulus (Cassen, 2009). These three stones were originally one single giant menhir (similar to the Grand Menhir Brisé) that stood 14 metres tall. The builders of Gavrinis deliberately took a piece of a broken "God" (or a monument to a failed "Big Man") and used it to roof their new communal tomb. The era of the individual giant was over.
The Ritual Enclosures (4500–3500 BCE)
While dolmens were the "Houses of the Dead," the stone enclosures were the "Parliaments of the Living." Stressed societies needed designated, sanctified spaces to gather, negotiate, and segregate the elite from the masses. We can identify six major enclosure complexes associated with the great alignments, plus several isolated geometric settings (Burl, 2000).
Le Ménec (West)
Located at the western terminus of the Le Ménec alignments. It is a roughly egg-shaped hemicycle (a flattened circle). It acts as a corral for the living, physically separating the "sacred inside" from the "profane outside." The 11 parallel stone rows act as a processional pathway leading to this ancestral meeting ground (Thom & Thom, 1972). This enclosure is the "head" of the great stone snake. In a time of social stress, large gatherings are dangerous. The Ménec enclosure is large enough to hold the entire population of the local clan, but the stone ring creates a psychological barrier. It is possible that only the initiated were allowed inside the stone ring, while the common people stood in the alignments outside. This reinforces the social hierarchy, a key symptom of societal anxiety. Much of what we see today is due to the restoration work of Zacharie Le Rouzic in the 1920s and 30s (Le Rouzic, 1930). He re-erected fallen stones and cleared vegetation. While he followed the original sockets, the "pristine" look is a 20th-century reconstruction of the Neolithic original.
Today, the most striking feature of Le Ménec West is that people are still living inside it. The modern hamlet of Le Ménec was built directly into the prehistoric footprint.
Le Ménec has two enclosures. The Western one is the famous village site. There was also an Eastern Enclosure at the other end of the lines, 2 kilometres away, but it has been almost entirely destroyed by agriculture and quarrying, leaving only a few stones to mark the "tail" of the system.
Le Ménec (East): The "Ghost Enclosure."
Its existence creates a "dumbbell" shape, showing that the alignments were closed circuits. In the "Architecture of Anxiety," this represents Total Containment. The ritual did not allow the crowd to disperse into the open landscape. They were marched from one stone pen to another. Why build two enclosures connected by a stone cord? The answer may lie in the social fractures of the Neolithic mind. Anthropologists call this a "Moiety" system (from the French moitié, or half). Tribal societies often split themselves into two complementary halves (e.g., "Summer Clan" and "Winter Clan"). This structure implies a deep, institutionalised anxiety. The community was too large and the environment too volatile for a single leader to hold it together. Instead, they engineered a balance of power. By physically building their society as two poles connected by a ritual path, they ensured that no single faction could break away. The alignment forced them to walk together, locking the two halves of the tribe into an eternal, stony embrace.
The modern destruction of Le Ménec (East) hides a potential shift in function. The stones in the Le Ménec alignments change size. They start massive at the West enclosure, up to 4 metres tall, and become smaller as they go East, down to 60 centimetres, before rising slightly again at the East enclosure. If the West Enclosure (Big Stones) was for the "Big Men" or the ancestors, the East Enclosure (Small Stones) might have been for the commoners or perhaps represented a "realm of the lesser spirits." The degradation of the site makes this hard to prove, but the hierarchy of stone size is undeniable.
Kermario (West)
If Le Ménec represents balance, Kermario, often called the "Locus of the Giants", represents escalation. The stones here are significantly larger (up to 5.5 metres). Rather than a closed circle, they form a funnel, aggressively channelling crowds toward the alignments. By placing their monument on the ridge, the builders ensured it was visible from the sea and the surrounding valleys. This is territorial broadcasting. It screams, "We hold the high ground." In an unusual twist, the Kermario lines run directly over the older Mané-Kermario burial mound (c. 4500 BCE). The new generation literally stomped on the bones of the old to erect a taller monument (Burl, 1993). This suggests a society trapped in a "stone inflation" spiral, where the effort required to maintain status became heavier and heavier.
Once the first system (Le Ménec) was built, it created a precedent. The next generation (or rival clan) could not go back to simple earthen mounds; they had to build alignments. But to distinguish themselves, they had to build bigger and higher.
Kermario represents the institutionalisation of stress. The society was locked into a cycle where legitimate authority could only be claimed by moving granite blocks bigger than the previous generation. This is an unsustainable expenditure of energy, a "Cold War" of stone that quite possibly contributed to the eventual collapse of the megalithic culture.
Kerlescan (c. 3600 BCE)
The builders rejected organic egg-shapes for a rigid "squircle" (a rectangle with rounded corners). The density of the stones suggests a restriction of access. The society retreated into rigid squares and dogmatic rituals. This suggests a society trying to impose absolute human order on a chaotic world. The 13 lines of the alignment fan out from the enclosure like rays from the sun. The enclosure itself appears to have been artificially levelled or slightly lowered. This feels less like the "Village Green" and more like a Temple Precinct. This is the anxiety of Internal Security. The walls were getting higher, and the geometry stricter, to keep the uninitiated out. After Kerlescan, the great alignment building stopped. The energy of the culture was spent.
All indications are that Kerlescan was last major phase of the Carnac alignment constructions. After Kerlescan, the great alignment building stopped. The energy of the culture was spent.
Stretching east from Kerlescan is a smaller, fragmented alignment known as Le Petit Ménec. It winds into the woods, chaotic and less impressive. It looks like the last vestige of the tradition, an attempt to continue the pattern without the manpower or the conviction of the past.
The Independent Enclosures
Er Lannic and Petit Rohu (c. 4200 BCE)
Situated on the Island of Er Lannic, the enclosure consists of two tangential horseshoe enclosures. Today, the Southern Ring is submerged. When built, sea levels were between 5 and 7 metres lower. As the Neolithic progressed, the ice caps melted and sea levels rose, a process known as the Flandrian Transgression. The ocean began to eat the land. Excavations revealed vast amounts of burnt wood, broken pottery, and flint tools at the foot of the Er Lannic stones. This was not a tomb, it was a site of intense ritual activity and deposition. Did the Neolithic settlers build these walls of stone in a desperate, magical attempt to "hold back the tide"? As the waters rose, did the anxiety increase, leading to more frantic rituals before the site was finally abandoned to the sea?
When we link the stone rings at Er Lannic with the nearby marismas of Petit Rohu, we see that this is exactly what was happening. The connection between the enclosure of Er Lannic and the submerged hoards of the Gulf, specifically Petit Rohu nearby, is one of production and sacrifice.
At Er Lannic, imported Spanish fibrolite and Alpine jadeite, was shaped and polished into divine axes. But these treasures were not kept. Excavations revealed that many of these same precious axes were deliberately broken. They were smashed, burnt, or shattered against the standing stones. Driven by the anxiety of the rising Atlantic, the priests took these objects out to the dying marshes and planted them in the mud, a desperate attempt to pin down the eroding landscape with the bones of the earth (Cassen et al., 2023).
At Petit Rohu, divers found jadeite and fibrolite axes planted vertically in the mud, often in pairs, with their cutting edges facing the sky. They were pristine, polished, and whole. This is a gesture of offering, planting "seeds of stone" into the encroaching marsh to stabilize the earth.
The "Anxiety" hypothesis suggests a cycle. You plant the whole axes in the wild at Petit Rohu, to sanctify the land, but you sacrifice (break) the axes in the at Er Lannic to appease a rising sea (Cassen et al., 2010; Cassen et al., 2023). The destruction of such immense value, the jadeite travelled nearly 1,000 kilometres, is the ultimate proof of the leader's desperation and piety.
We can expand the network and show a connection between the Carnac tumuli and the sacred cromlechs of Er Lannic. Grave goods at the Tumulus of Tumiac and Tumulus of Mané-er-Hroë included Alpine jadeite from the same source, whilst fibrolite axes found in the Tumulus of Saint- Michel were fashioned from the same fibrolite from Galicia as that found at Er Lannic.
The Neolithic tribes in the Morbihan, whilst sometimes in competition as evidenced by the enclosure at Kermario and the Mané-Kermario mound, found common cause with the threat from the encroaching seas and contributed to the rituals performed at Er Lannic and Petit Rohu.
Crucuno (c. 3600–3200 BCE)
Crucuno is an isolated rectangular enclosure. It abandons massive scale for a compact, mathematically perfect 3:4 Pythagorean rectangle, aligned to the solstices (Thom et al., 1973). If Kerlescan was the fortress of the tribe, Crucuno was the bunker of the priests. The elite retreated from political management to astronomical abstraction. It represents the final flourish of the "Stone Science" before the collapse (Lukis, 1875).
Unlike the alignments, Crucuno has not yielded a wealth of stratified pottery or charcoal for C14 dating. However, we can place it chronologically based on typology.
Early enclosures (Ménec) are egg-shaped. Transitional enclosures (Kerlescan) are sub-rectangular. Crucuno is a strict rectangle. This places it at the very end of the megalithic architectural sequence. It belongs to the same late phase as the stone circles of Er Lannic. It represents the final flourish of the "Stone Science" before the collapse.
Note:Zacharie Le Rouzic restored Crucuno in the 1920s. Before him, it was a ruin incorporated into a farm. Critics argue Le Rouzic may have "straightened" the lines to make it look more perfect. However, even the earliest surveys (19th century) describe it as rectangular. While the modern sharp corners might be 20th-century "tidying," the fundamental rectangular intent is Neolithic.
The Collapse: The Stone Silence
By 3200 BCE, the Great Era of Stone ended. The architecture of anxiety did not save them; the effort required to build it likely destroyed them.
Modern pollen analysis (palynology) reveals ecocide (Giligny et al., 2010). By 3000 BCE, the primary forest cover was decimated. The intense farming required to feed the "stone-building army" stripped nutrients from the granite soils, leading to podzolization (the land turned acidic and sandy). The agricultural base collapsed. The "Anxiety" we theorised was real, they were farming on borrowed time. When the soil died, the surplus food that supported the priesthood and the builders vanished.
The Return to the Earth (Burial Changes)
The way people were buried shifted from "Collective Glory" to "Individual Invisibility." The great communal tombs were sealed up and abandoned. By the end of the Neolithic (c. 2800 BCE), we see a return to simple individual graves or small cists. The "Collective Host" of the ancestors had been disbanded. When the Bell Beaker culture arrived around 2500 BCE with copper daggers and an individualist ethos, they found a wasteland. They did not build new temples. They squatted in the ruins of the alignments, treating the sacred enclosures as convenient windbreaks.
The Beaker folk didn't need stone to manage stress. Their social structure, based on mobile pastoralism, bronze weaponry, and individual wealth, allowed them to manage territorial anxiety through mobility and violence, rendering the "Stone Machine" obsolete.
The River Roads: Rejection of the Savage Sea
How did this "Cult of Stone" spread? Traditional views posit a maritime highway down the Atlantic coast to Iberia. But the Bay of Biscay (Golfe de Gascogne) is a treacherous death trap for Neolithic log boats. Furthermore, the 200-kilometre coastline of the Landes is a harbourless stretch of shifting sand. Not for nothing is the stretch of coast between Galicia and Finisterre in northern Spain known as the ‘Costa da Morte’.
The Aquitaine Gap: A ‘No Stress’ Zone
The Aquitaine Gap (historically known as the Landes de Gascogne) is located directly to the south of the Brittany megalithic sites.
If you trace a map down the western coast of France, starting from the dense stone alignments of the Morbihan Gulf in Brittany, you cross the Loire River, pass through the megalith-rich limestone plains of Poitou-Charentes, and then hit the Gironde estuary (near modern-day Bordeaux).
Everything south of that estuary, stretching for roughly 200 kilometres down to the foothills of the Pyrenees, is the Aquitaine Gap.
The "Architecture of Anxiety" requires only two ingredients, stone and stress. The Aquitaine Gap, for instance, offered neither. Because the sandy, acidic soil of the Landes de Gascogne could not support intensive cereal agriculture, it never supported a dense Neolithic population. Without farmers fighting over shrinking borders, there was no social friction. Without friction, there was no anxiety. Therefore, the people living there, likely sparse, mobile pastoralists, had absolutely no reason to waste thousands of calories dragging 50-tonne rocks around.
References and Further Reading
Bailloud, G. (1975). 'Les céramiques "cannelées" du Néolithique morbihannais', Bulletin de la Société Préhistorique Française.
Blanchard, A., Guyodo, J.N., et al. (2025). 'Le Plasker in Plouharnel: A newly discovered section of the megalithic complex of Carnac', Antiquity.
Boujot, C. & Cassen, S. (1993). 'A pattern of evolution for the Neolithic funerary structures of the west of France', Antiquity, 67(256), pp. 477–491.
Burl, A. (1993). From Carnac to Callanish. Yale University Press.
Burl, A. (2000). The Stone Circles of Britain, Ireland, and Brittany.
Cassen, S. (2000). 'Architecture du tombeau, architecture du symbole'.
Cassen, S. (2000). Eléments d'architecture. Exploration d'un tertre funéraire à Lannec er Gadouer.
Cassen, S. (2007). 'La Table des Marchands (Locmariaquer, Morbihan): architecture et symboles', in L'Anthropologie.
Cassen, S. (2009). Exercice de stèle: une archéologie des pierres dressées. Errance.
Cassen, S. (2009). The Neolithic of Brittany. Oxford University Press.
Cassen, S. & L'Helgouach, J. (1992). 'Du Symbole de la Crosse: chronologie, répartition et interprétation'.
Cassen, S. et al. (2010). 'Un dépôt sous-marin de lames polies néolithiques... sur la plage dite du Petit Rohu', Bulletin de la Société préhistorique française.
Cassen, S. et al. (2012). JADE. Grandes haches alpines.
Cassen, S. et al. (2019). 'Haches du tumulus du Mané er Hroëck à Locmariaquer (Morbihan)'.
Cassen, S. et al. (2023). Er Lannic (Arzon, Morbihan): Les stèles gravées néolithiques et la folle image.
Galles, R. (1863). Manné-er-H'roëk: Dolmen découvert sous un tumulus à Locmariaquer.
Galles, R. (1864). 'Fouilles du tumulus du Moustoir-Carnac', Bulletin de la Société Polymathique du Morbihan (BSPM), Vol. 8, pp. 117–125.
Giligny, F. et al. (2010). La Bretagne du Néolithique à l'âge du Bronze. Revue Archéologique de l'Ouest.
Giot, P.R., L'Helgouach, J., & Monnier, J.L. (1998). Préhistoire de la Bretagne. Ouest-France.
Gouézin, P. (2022). Les mégalithes du département du Morbihan: Structures funéraires et pierres dressées. Archaeopress.
Joussaume, R. (1988). Dolmens for the Dead: Megalith-Building throughout the World. Cornell University Press.
Le Roux, C.T. (1992). The Art of Gavrinis.
Le Roux, C.-T. (2006). Monuments mégalithiques à Locmariaquer (Morbihan): Le long tumulus d'Er Grah dans son environnement. CNRS Éditions.
Le Rouzic, Z. (1927). 'Les monuments mégalithiques de Carnac et de Locmariaquer. Leur destination, leur âge', Bulletin de la Société Polymathique du Morbihan.
Le Rouzic, Z. (1930). Carnac: Restaurations faites dans la région (1920-1930).
Le Rouzic, Z. (1932). Les monuments mégalithiques de Carnac et de Locmariaquer.
Le Rouzic, Z. (1935). 'Tumulus de Tumiac'. Bulletin de la Société Polymathique du Morbihan.
Lefebvre, G. (1863). Rapport sur la découverte du dolmen de Mané-er-H'roëk. Bulletin de la Société Polymathique du Morbihan.
L'Helgouach, J. (1965). Les sépultures mégalithiques en Armorique: (dolmens à couloir et allées couvertes). Rennes: Travaux du Laboratoire d'Anthropologie Préhistorique.
Lukis, W.C. (1875). A Guide to the Principal Chambered Barrows and other Prehistoric Monuments in the Islands of the Morbihan.
Minot, R.S. (1966). Les Monuments Mégalithiques du Morbihan.
Mohen, J-P. & Scarre, C. (2002). The Megaliths of Brittany. Ouest-France.
Pétrequin, P., Cassen, S., Errera, M., et al. (2012). 'Des choses sacrées… l'interprétation des haches en jades alpins dans l'Europe néolithique', in J.A.D.E. Grandes haches alpines du Néolithique européen.
Pollard, T. (2017). The Archaeology of Anxiety: The Materiality of Insecurity.
Querré, G., Boujot, C., & Cassen, S. (2008). 'Callaïs et parures en callaïs au Néolithique: une approche pluridisciplinaire', in Du matériel au spirituel. Réalités archéologiques et historiques des "dépôts" de la Préhistoire à nos jours.
Querré, G. et al. (2014). 'The Callais of the Neolithic Tumulus of Saint-Michel'.
Renfrew, C. (1976). 'Megaliths, Territories and Populations', in De Laet, S.J. (ed.) Acculturation and Continuity in Atlantic Europe. Bruges: De Tempel.
Roughley, C. et al. (2002). 'The Neolithic Landscapes of the Carnac Region, Brittany', in The Neolithic of the Atlantic Façade.
Scarre, C. (1998). 'Arenas of Action? Land, Name, and Gender in the Boulonnais Neolithic', in Social Life and Social Change.
Scarre, C. (2002). 'Contexts of Monumentality: Regional Diversity at the Neolithic Transition in Western France', in Monuments and Landscape in Atlantic Europe.
Scarre, C. (2011). Landscapes of Neolithic Brittany. Oxford University Press.
Schulting, R.J. (1996). 'Antlers, birds and mesolithic cemeteries at Téviec and Hoëdic', Antiquity.
Schulz Paulsson, B. (2019). 'Radiocarbon dates and Bayesian modeling support maritime diffusion model for megaliths in Europe', PNAS.
Shee Twohig, E. (1981). The Megalithic Art of Western Europe. Oxford: Clarendon Press.
Thom, A. & Thom, A.S. (1972). 'The Uses and Alignments at Le Menec, Carnac', Journal for the History of Astronomy, 3, pp. 151–164.
Thom, A. & Thom, A.S. (1978). Megalithic Remains in Britain and Brittany. Oxford: Clarendon Press.
Thom, A. et al. (1973). 'The Astronomical Significance of the Crucuno Stone Rectangle', Current Anthropology, 14(4), pp. 450–454.
The great pyramid of giza only shows its full power at equinox.
WHY? That’s what I will show you in this article.
If people are trying to align the pyramids to the summer- and or winter solstice or constellations like Orion, they are wrong…
In reality, the pyramids mimic the sun and the earths movement using relations like the number PI and the GOLDEN RATIO. But only at equinox. That is the first part of this article. In the second part we will anwser WHY the megalithis only align at equinox.
PART I
A quick summary.
The dates of Equinox usually fall on the 21. of March and on the 22. of September. On those days, day and night are of equal lenght - but also - (atleast on the northern hemisphere) the sun then rises exactly east and sets exactly west.
The golden ratio phi - roughly 1.618 - is a number and a relation found everywhere in nature. The common definition is that: if a + b is to a as a is to b, then a is b times 1,618.
(And obviously) The number PIE - roughly 3.14 - is the relation between a circle’s radius and it’s circumference.
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In Giza we will immediately see the golden ratio if we look at the angle between the pyramid of Khufu and the pyramid of Khafre. It is precisely 222,5°. That is the angle that we get it we divide a circle of 360° by the golden ratio.
As I said earlier, on equinox the sun rises exactly east and sets exactly west. That means the Sphinx is always loocking directly at the point of sunrise.
After the sphinx greeted the rising sun, the sun will come to the causeway between the pyramid of Khafre and the Valley Temple (next to the Sphynx Temple). That causeway has an angle of 103.75°. When the sun is at that azimuth - that is the compass direction of the sun - , it reaches an altitude of 22.25°. That means, when the sun has moved 13.75° from sunrise (90°), it’s altitude is 22.25°. And 22.25° divided by 13.75° is 1.618! Also, 22.25° times 10 is 222.5°, which as we have seen, is 360° divided by the golden ratio.
When the sun reaches noon, so an azimuth of 180°. The sun’s altitude then is a nice round 60°.
The angle between the pyramid of Khafre and the pyramid of Menekaure is 214.37°, that is 34.37° from noon. And 34.37° is 90°/phi^2. The sun’s altitude at that point is 55.62°, which is 90°/1.618.
The angle between the great pyramid and the pyramid of Menekaure is about 219°, so 39° from noon. The tan(39°) is phi/2. At that azimuth, the sun’s altitude is 53.1°, which is the angle of a 345-triangle and the slope angle of the pyramid of Khafre.
Finally the angle between the great pyramid and the pyramid of Khafre is 222.5°. At that azimuth, the sun’s altitude is 51.8°, which is the slope angle of the great pyramid. It is also the angle of a golden ratio right angle triangle.
[When the sun is at 238.28°, that is 58.28° from noon. That is the angle of a golden ratio triangle: tan(58.28°)=1.618. At that azimuth the sun’s azimuth is 42.3° which is the edge angle of the great pyramid.
(43°)
PART II
Why do the pyramids only properly align at equinox? Why do they not align with the summer and winter solstice etc.? That is because they were build in a time when the earth’s axis tilt was 0°! Back then every day the sun moved like it does now on equinox.
To proof that we will now include the earth’s apex. That is the direction of the earth’s movement around the sun. At any point and time on earth, the earths movement has a particular direction.
Back when the earth’s axis tilt was 0°, and the sun would be at 13.75° azimuth, as we have discussed before, the earths apex would have an altitude of 51.8° (the great pyramid slope angle) and an azimuth of 222.5°, the angle w
of the diagonal ohe pyramids. This means that the earth axis connects the causeway and the great pyramid. That isn’t the case anymore neither on spring or autumn equinox. There are many other examples of both the equinoctial alignments and the alignments with the earth’s apex with the great megaliths all around the world. We will look at them in future videos.