Myths & Facts

The "lost city" of Gelanggi or Linggiu, claimed to have been hidden in the jungles of Johor for more than a thousand years, does not exist, said an archaeologist in the National Heritage Department. Khalid Syed Ali, the curator of archaeology in the department's research and development division, said a team of researchers carried out a study over a month in July last year but found no evidence of the "lost city".The 15-strong team was headed by the Director-General of Museum andAntiquity Datuk Dr Adi Taha, he said in a working paper presented at a forum organised by the National Museum here.The search was launched following a claim made by an independent researcher Raimy Che Ros that he had found evidence of the "lost city" after 12 years of research.The claim, published in a newspaper in February last year, created public excitement because Linggiu was said to be older than the Borobudur Buddhist temple in Indonesia built between 750 and 842 A.D.

and Cambodia's Angkor Wat built 300 years later.Khalid said Raimy was believed to have come up with his claim based on his research ofliterature on Malay history and did not discover any physical traces of the "lost city".The search team led by Adi comprised researchers from his department, Malaysian Centre for Remote Sensing, Universiti Sains Malaysia, Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia, Universiti Malaya, Universiti Perguruan Sultan Idris and Malaysian Archaeology Association.

View: Full Article | Source: Bernama.com

Roman gladiators were overweight vegetarians and not the muscle-bound men protrayed by actors like Russell Crowe, anthropologists say. Austrian scientists analysed the skeletons of two different types of gladiators, the myrmillos and retiariae, found at the ancient site of Ephesus, near Selsuk in Turkey."Tests performed on bits of bone taken from the skeletons of some 70 gladiators buried at Ephesus seem to prove that they ate mainly barley, beans and dried fruit," said Dr Karl Grossschmidt, who took part in the study by the Austrian Archaeological Institute "This diet, which has been mentioned in the oralhistory, is rather sad but it gave the gladiators a lot of strength even if it made them fat," said Grossschmidt who is a member of the University of Vienna's Institute of Histology and Embryology.

The Austrian palaeoanthropologists relied on a method known as elementary microanalysis that allows scientists to determine what a human being ate during his or her lifetime. With the help of a sonar, they could establish the chemical concentrations inside cells in the bone samples taken from the skeletons at Ephesus. From this, they could deduce how much meat, fish, grains and fruit made up the diet of the Roman fighting machines. A balanced diet of meat and vegetables leaves equal amounts of zinc and strontium in the cells, whilea mainly vegetarian diet would leave high levels of strontium and little zinc, Grossschmidt said. Fabian Kanz, from the university's department of analytical chemistry, said the gladiators' bone density gave us clues to how they lived."The bone density here was higher than usual, as is the case with modern athletes," he said. This line of testing allowed the scientists to debunk another myth, that gladiators wore strappy Sparticus sandals in the arena.

View: Full Article | Source: ABC.net.au

By Tim Callahan

Like The Exorcist in the 1970s, The Da Vinci Code has become so popular (it has for weeks been number one on the New York Times bestseller list) that the mythic elements within it have given energy to a set of beliefs about the real world, beliefs that do fall under the scope of skeptical investigation.

The popularity of The Exorcist was owed to its novelty, to its well researched material on the whole culture of the Roman Catholic church, and its approach to the subject of demonic possession and exorcism. It was, of course, a well-crafted work of fiction. But a deeper reason for the success of The Exorcist is that it tapped into a basic human fear of mind control from within. Possession would amount to the ultimate violation of one's integrity, and the paranoid fear that unseen intelligences have specifically targeted one for such an invasion is sufficient to override rational objections against its likelihood. The popularity of The Da Vinci Code likewise owes something to the novelty of its central idea, the soundness of its supporting research, and the professional crafting of its plot and characters. However, it also owes much of its success to the provocative religious theory and mythic theme at its core...

A Review by Philip Gardiner

The Da Vinci Code and the madness that surrounds it is indicative of one thing – the fact that in the 21st century mankind is still in the dark about a great many things. We may have sent rockets into space; we may be able to develop nano-technology and we can even heat up food with micro-wave radiation, but we are still no closer to the truth about our own religions and the secretive organisations that surround them. The most powerful of them all is of course the Catholic Church and it is this Empire building religion that lies at the heart of the book.

The Da Vinci Code and the madness that surrounds it is indicative of one thing – the fact that in the 21st century mankind is still in the dark about a great many things. We may have sent rockets into space; we may be able to develop nano-technology and we can even heat up food with micro-wave radiation, but we are still no closer to the truth about our own religions and the secretive organisations that surround them. The most powerful of them all is of course the Catholic Church and it is this Empire building religion that lies at the heart of the book. To begin with we do need to take a look at the claims made in the Da Vinci Code in relationship to the Holy Grail in-order to understand what the reality of the matter really is.

The Da Vinci Code Fiasco: One question regarding the Holy Grail that the early medieval writers asked was "who does it serve?" Well, let's have a look at the current Grail world and see if it is serving us, or are we serving it? Very briefly and for those among us who have been on the planet Sanity for the last few of years, the Da Vinci Code is a fiction based around a man who discovers a code that reveals the true identity of the Holy Grail to be nothing more than the very bloodline of Jesus Christ and Mary Magdalene. Unfortunately the author, Dan Brown, claimed his now infamous book to be based upon real factual organisations and events. This however could not be farther from the truth.Lets take it apart starting with the:

 Priory of Sion: This supposedly ancient and enigmatic group allegedly once had Leonardo da Vinci himself as a Grand Master, not to mention several other notables such as Nicolas Flamel and Isaac Newton. However, there is no truth in it at all. Sion was the name of a hill nearby the residences of Pierre Plantard and Gerade de Sede – two of the original creators of the Priory of Sion hoax. The documents of the Priory secreted in the Biblioteque Nationale in Paris have been proven to be forgeries...