Ancient Technology

By Colin Mulligan

Is it really possible that the Ancient Indians had the capacity to deploy devastating nuclear weapons against their enemies? Moreover is it really possible, as many Ufologists claim, that awesomely powerful nuclear weapons were actually given to the ancient Indian warriors by extraterrestrials, highly advanced spacemen from other planets? well passages from ancient Indian national epics certainly Appear to be evidence of such astonishing claims.

It is in ancient Indian epic poems such as such The Mahabarata and The Ramayana that we can read what appear to be references to an otherwise relatively primitive people having the capacity to wield highly destructive nuclear weapons. Not surprisingly it is as a direct consequence of such compelling passages that many Ufologists like Erich Von Daniken and W. R. Drake (See for I.E. According to The Evidence – Souvenir, 1977 and Gods & Spacemen In The Ancient East - Sphere, 1976 ), have argued that the highly advanced capacity to use (and misuse) nuclear weaponry must have being handed down to these ancient people by the Gods or, in other words, highly-advanced extra-terrestrial spacemen. How else, these proponents of ancient astronauts say, could such an ancient people manage to develop the extremely advanced technological status necessary to make such complex and destructive weaponry that could ‘scorch the universe’ and make ‘inauspicious winds’ blow? Surely even the crude but ultimately terribly destructive nuclear device dropped on Hiroshima demanded an highly advanced science to develop and deliver it, they say. Reading through the various passages of The Ramayana and The Mahabarata with an eye to references of destructive nuclear type weapons certainly does lend itself to believing such claims, too. The evidence does appear to be highly compelling. For instance on p.383 of the Drona Parva we come across the following lines which certainly could be construed as evidence of the loathsome effects of detonating a nuclear weapon of some sorts...

Caravaggio used an early form of photography to create his masterpieces - 200 years before the invention of the camera, a researcher has claimed. Roberta Lapucci said the Italian artist - noted for his chiaroscuro (light and shadow) paintings - used "techniques that are the basis of photography". It was already known he worked in a "darkroom" and illuminated his models through a hole in the ceiling. But Ms Lapucci believes the image was also projected on a canvas and "fixed".Light-sensitivesubstances applied to the canvas would have "fixed" the image for around 30 minutes, allowing Caravaggio to paint the image with broad strokes using white lead mixed with chemicals and minerals that were visible in the dark.

Ms Lapucci, who is a teacher at the prestigious Studio Art Centers International in Florence, is the first researcher to suggest the 16th century painter treated the canvas with light-sensitive substances.She believes he could have used a photoluminescent powder from crushed fireflies, which was used at the time to create special effects in theatre productions. "There is lots of proof, notably the fact that Caravaggio never made preliminary sketches. So it is plausible that he used these 'projections' to paint," she said. Noting that "an abnormalnumber of his subjects were left-handed," Lapucci said: "That could be explained by the fact that the image projected on the canvas was backwards." She added: "This anomaly disappears in the artist's later works, a sign that the instruments he used were improving. Also thanks to technical progress, his paintings gain a lot in depth of field over the years." Ms Lapucci said the use of such techniques did not detract from the artist's work. "His mastery of certain techniques before his time in no way diminishes his genius. "To the contrary, clearly, you can't just project images on a canvas and copy them to become a Caravaggio."

Copyright:

Has the grand Roman Pantheon been keeping a secret for nearly 2000 years? An expert in ancient timekeeping thinks so, arguing that it acts as a colossal sundial. The imposing temple in Rome, completed in AD 128, is one of the most impressive buildings that survives from antiquity. It consists of a cylindrical chamber topped by a domed roof with an oculus in the top which lets through a dramatic shaft of sunlight. It boasts a colonnaded courtyard at the front.When Robert Hannah of the University of Otago in Dunedin, New Zealand, visited the Pantheon in 2005, researching for a book, he realised that the Pantheon may have been more than just atemple.During the six months of winter, the light of the noon sun traces a path across the inside of the domed roof.

During summer, with the sun higher in the sky, the shaft shines onto the lower walls and floor. At the two equinoxes, in March and September, the sunlight coming in through the hole strikes the junction between the roof and wall, above the Pantheon's grand northern doorway. A grille above the door allows a sliver of light through to the front courtyard - the only moment in the year that it sees sunlight if its main doors are closed. Hannah reckons this is no coincidence. A hollowed-out hemisphere with a hole in the top was a type of sundial used in Roman times, albeit on a much smaller scale, to show the time of year. While the Pantheon's dome is quite flat on the outside, it forms a perfect hemisphere inside. "This is quitea deliberate design feature," says Hannah. Pantheon means "all of the gods" and the building's roof represented the dome of the sky, where Romans believed the gods resided. At equinox, the sun is on the celestial equator - where Earth's equator would lie if projected into space - which was seen as the most stable part of the sky, a perfect eternal home for the gods. Hannah thinks that by marking the equinoxes, the Pantheon was intended to elevate emperors who worshipped there into the realm of the gods. James Evans, a historian of astronomy at the University of Puget Sound in Washington state, is intrigued: "The architect of the Pantheon would certainly have been aware of the symbolic connections between the cosmos and the empire, and between the sun and the emperor." He doesn't believe the case is proven, however, as no markingssurvive in......

An academic maverick is challenging conventional wisdom on Canada's prehistory by claiming an archeological site in southern Alberta is really a vast, open-air sun temple with a precise 5,000-year-old calendar predating England's Stonehenge and Egypt's pyramids.Mainstream archeologists consider the rock-encircled cairn to be just another medicine wheel left behind by early aboriginals. But a new book by retired Universityof Alberta professor Gordon Freeman says it is in fact the centre of a 26-square-kilometre stone ``lacework" that marks the changing seasons and the phases of the moon with greater accuracy than our current calendar."Genius existed on the prairies 5,000 years ago," says Freeman, the widely published former head of the university's physical and theoretical chemistry department. Freeman's fascination with prairie prehistory dates back to his Saskatchewan boyhood.

He and his father would comb the short grasses of the plains in search of artifacts exposed by the scouring wind. That curiosity never left him and he returned to it as he prepared to retire from active teaching. Looking for a hobby, he asked a friend with an interest in history to suggest a few intriguing sites to visit. On a warmlate-August day in 1980, that list drew him to what he has come to call Canada's Stonehenge, which is also the title of his book. A central cairn atop one of a series of low hills overlooking the Bow River, about 70 kilometres east of Calgary, had been partially excavated in 1971 and dated at about 5,000 years old. But as he approached it, Freeman strongly felt there was much more there than previously thought. "As we walked toward the hilltop, I saw all kinds of patterns in the rocks on the way up. As I walked around the hilltop, I could see patterns that I doubted very much were accidental." Freeman photographed what he saw and showed the images to archeologists. They told him the rocks, some of which weigh up to a tonne, had been randomly distributed by melting glaciers. But those rocks androck pil......