Click here to support the Daily Grail for as little as $US1 per month on Patreon

News Briefs 27-01-2014

By Grail-seekeron

Has the ghost ship of cannibal rats floated off yet?

  • American Botanical Council publishes revolutionary analysis unlocking mysteries of 500-year-old Voynich Manuscript.
  • A 4000-year-old tablet from ancient Mesopotamia contains the specifications for an ark pre-dating the story of Noah.
  • Nurse provides evidence for near-death experiences in new book.
  • Physicist develops mathematical formula in quest to solve the mystery of how life came from matter.
  • How social psychologists are gathering evidence of the Hive Mind.
  • Why is National Geographic lying about ESP, and at the same time, promoting the idea of birthstones to kids? Balance?
  • Ball lightning’s optical spectrum revealed – matches soil.
  • Review of Ronald Hutton’s Pagan Britain. Buy it on Amazon US/UK
  • Interplanetary dust particles could deliver water and organics to jump-start life on Earth.
  • No evidence of aliens helping ancient cultures.
  • How alchemists’ breakthroughs were pillaged by the forefathers of modern science.
  • Scotland’s last glacier discovered.
  • Stephen Hawking wants to redefine black holes.
  • Popular Twitter account @HistoryinPics run by 2 teenagers ignores copyright and creative credit and many of its photos are fake.

Thanks to Rick and Greg.

Quote of the Day:

Adventure lies lurking in these lines where I point the way for younger feet than mine … who will strike the trail?
Alfred Watkins (Happy Birthday!)

Grail-seeker
Related

5 Comments

  1. Pre-Ark Ark…….
    Since i was a teenager I have believed that a good portion of the Old testament was written during and/or after the Babylonian Exile of the Jews. It makes absolute sense that being immersed in that culture, while maintaining their own religion, they would take the ancient stories and modify them to fir their own needs. It has been thus since the first story was told.

    Having said that, I should note that I am a very religious man. I don’t accept the Biblical translations as being literal, for the most part, as some do. Rather, I view the Old Testament as the story of a group of nomadic tribes coming together to create a nation. Their stories, like those of Noah, Jonah, Daniel, etc are apocryphal, are parables, are tales designed to teach certain morals and ethics, concepts of how life should be.

    I will also come out and say I have some “out-of-the-box” theories there too. Not the “Ancient Aliens” sort of stuff, though that is always fun to contemplate and discuss.

    No, I’m more and more leaning towards the belief that the story of Exodus, of Moses and all that, is the story of the people of Amarna, the subjects of Akhnaten and Nefertiti, and what happened to them after the Pharohs death.

    There are hints all through Exodus about it, and unanswered questions from Amarna and Egyptian records. Were I a younger man, I’d set myself to seeing what I could discover there, but I’m not so I’m slowly putting together a theory about it all.

    Anyway, enough rambling today. I need more coffee so I’ll leave things at this.

  2. $44k a month…
    …$44k a month being thieves of other peoples work and making designers like me who use photo editing software for the right reasons a bad name. Nice Job a**holes. Until you’ve had your own work stolen and come close to going to court over only a few grand and had to throw a lot of hard work, time and money away, you don’t know what it’s like to be an artist. This story pisses me off.

    1. The pruning knives are out
      Existing Voynich scholars seem to be very down on it, though.

      Here, the two authors found themselves driven towards a post-New Spain New World origin by a single apparently persuasive piece of evidence, and then rippled through the consequences of what that would have to mean for that portion of the rest of the evidence they allowed themselves to consider.

      What they didn’t consider: the demonstrably 15th century vellum in play (radiocarbon dating), 15th century digit shapes (in the quiration), 15th century number forms (in the quiration), 15th century contractions (on the zodiac roundel hand) and 15th century parallel hatching (in several drawings). So, that’s evidence from the domains of codicology, palaeography, and Art History immediately consigned to their great big wastepaper basket of Not Examined Here Stuff.

      (Link via WP.)

      1. rebuttal, of a sorts…….
        [quote=anonymist]Existing Voynich scholars seem to be very down on it, though.

        Here, the two authors found themselves driven towards a post-New Spain New World origin by a single apparently persuasive piece of evidence, and then rippled through the consequences of what that would have to mean for that portion of the rest of the evidence they allowed themselves to consider.

        What they didn’t consider: the demonstrably 15th century vellum in play (radiocarbon dating), 15th century digit shapes (in the quiration), 15th century number forms (in the quiration), 15th century contractions (on the zodiac roundel hand) and 15th century parallel hatching (in several drawings). So, that’s evidence from the domains of codicology, palaeography, and Art History immediately consigned to their great big wastepaper basket of Not Examined Here Stuff.

        (Link via WP.)[/quote]

        My reply would be that this proves nothing. There are literally thousands of people in the US alone who have an excellent hand with copperplate writing, a style 200 years old.

        It’s not that difficult to find 19th century blank paper, even today. It is also possible to obtain ink matches to that in use in past centuries. A skilled forger (not that I am claiming this manuscript is forged) can easily defeat carbon-testing with boiled and distilled water, especially if it is boiled in an ceramic or iron container from that period.

        Handwriting style, like armour, covers a much wider period of time than historians would like to think. The penmanship I was taught in school is the exact same method taught when the 20th century began. Some cavalry helmets from the English Civil War were found to be made from earlier helmets of the 14th & 15th century. Not everything is used up when produced. A surprising amount of product remains in use for decades, even centuries after manufacture.

        I think that the early scholars here have their collective knickers in a twist because someone might have usurped their work, and that means the possible loss of status and funding. Blood has been spilled for less, sadly.

        So, Hurray for the Botanists! Let the games begin!

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.

Mobile menu - fractal