NASA Adds to Evidence of Mysterious Ancient Earthworks | Hacker News Reader

NASA Adds to Evidence of Mysterious Ancient Earthworks

nytimes.com

254 pointsigonvalue63 comments

The 'swastika' one is interesting to me-with the curved entranceways they look kind of like funnels. Could it have been used as a place to herd and trap animals? For example people have used naturally occurring box canyons to trap horses-could the natives of this region, lacking natural canyons, been doing the same thing?

A great idea, you could look at structures that are in use today to herd reindeer.

http://www.rky.fi/read/asp/hae_kuva.aspx?id=111600&ttyyppi=j...

If you do it in the same place for a thousand years, what kind of mounds will form?

My first thought was that it would be a simple way to position key items while structuring a village. Perhaps points for sentries to watch over the village, for traders/shops to operate, etc.

They seemed to be spaced within shouting distance of one another.

Alternatively I wonder if they may be some sort of primitive surveying technique.

EDIT: primitive meaning different and not western tech, it's out of my league.

If the dating is correct (~6000 BCE), this would still be 2000 years before the earliest estimations of the domestication of horses.

People were eating horses long before they domesticated them. :-)

I think horses were just an example. Hominids were trapping prey animals and enemies using things like canyons.

>Could it have been used as a place to herd and trap animals?

Horses was just one of the examples. I dont think they used box canyons to trap animals only meant for domestication.

This is of course a classic "swastika as a building" pattern controversy:

http://www.dailykos.com/story/2007/09/28/391393/--Accidental...

It comes along controversy, conspiracy theories, and insinuations of Nazi infiltrations into the US govt., a fun read altogether.

No it isn't, though this particular figure really shouldn't be called a swastika.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Triskelion

The use of swastikas is thousands of years old.

That building from the article I posted doesn't look like Triskelion.

Most people today associate it with Nazi's, but it's much older than that.

Define "most". All of India, All of China, All of Japan, and every related country does not associate that symbol with Nazis. They are on every map as they mark hospitals in those countries.

I was in China recently and went into a temple with several Buddhas with swastikas on them. My Chinese wife turned to me and said, in a confused way, "isn't that the Nazi symbol?"

I have no idea how representative that is, of course.

I was just pointing out it was an interesting controversy. It ranged from "it is an efficient building design", to happened by accident, to deliberate agenda due to some conspiracy theory.

It was originally a symbol of good fortune.

It still is, to those the symbol's meaning was stolen from.

There wouldn't be any "controversy" here even if it was an actual swastika, which it isn't.

Well the interesting fact was that there was a controversy. I remember reading about it back then.

Google Maps link to one of the figures: https://goo.gl/maps/sFgt17ZiYhF2

I'm really interested in the fact it is in Kazakstan -- watch "the botany of desire" where it talks about how modern humans came really from that region as well as some significant agricultural discoveries...

Apples are originally from there IIRC...

Great doc regardless.

This stone circles are pretty interesting to me: https://www.google.com/maps/place/25%C2%B038'08.5%22S+30%C2%...

If you fly around this coordinates you can also find a lot of them:

  25 55′ 53.28″S, 30 16′ 13.13″E
  25 47′ 33.45″S, 30 40′ 38.76″E
  25 38′ 07.82″S, 30 21′ 18.79″E
  25 39′ 22.42″S, 30 17′ 03.25″E

There have been a lot of cool discoveries in the last few years, particularly since google earth became available but generally with the easy availability of satellite imagery. It's even got a name now - satellite archaeology. From what I've read - at the high end it includes some cool processing using non-visible wavelengths (e.g. infrared). But my understanding is that so far, it is still a lot of people looking at pictures and saying "that looks like people did it!".

Does anyone know of any efforts to automate via image/pattern recognition - something like (off the top of my head) Comparing features that meet a certain regularity threshold to maps of "known things" and flagging places that might be significant and unknown? Seems like a fun project to devote some time/effort to.

I remember reading an article in Archaeology magazine. Some researchers from some school automated the search for settlements. I can't remember if they were successful or not.

Edit #1 - That was the most useless comment that I've ever either written or read, so I did some digging. Here's the article that I remember:

http://archive.archaeology.org/1207/features/aster_satellite...

Jason Ur (one of the researchers) has a list of pubs available. Looks like a few of these would be of value to you:

http://scholar.harvard.edu/jasonur/node/93931

"Jason Ur" is such a cool name for an archeologist, it wouldn't be out of place in a movie or a book about immortals hiding among humans.

Edit: Wikipedia for the uninitiated: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jason and https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ur

Cool, thanks for the links!

The large square with the diagonals is an interesting puzzle mathematically (or culturally?). The square is 17 hills on a side (or 16 units of distance). The diagonals are 11 hills from corner to center (or 10 units of distance) or 21 hills corner to corner (20 units of distance). You wouldn't build something this big and this regular without planning it, so those numbers made sense to someone at the time.

yes, i immediately counted the hills too. The number 17 or 16 doesn't seem like a coincidence. According to the wikipedia list of number 17 has some intruiging properties. If the number 16 wasn't one of the factors involved in the design perhaps one of the mathematical or religious properties of the number 17 was (the 7th prime) or "For example, the patriarch Jacob lived 17 years after his son Joseph went missing and presumed dead, and lived 17 years after their reunion in Egypt, and the lifespans of Abraham aged 175, Isaac aged 180, and Jacob aged 147 are not a coincidence. "(The sum of the factors in all three cases is 17; of what possible significance this is, I have no idea.)" Leon Kass, The beginning of wisdom: reading Genesis,(Simon and Schuster, 2003), ISBN 978-0-7432-4299-8, p. 413 n. 10 (citing Genesis 47:28), quote from p. 629 n. 18

The sum of the factors in the prime factorization of 180 is 15: 2+2+3+3+5=15. 2x2x3x3x5=180. Pretty useless comment from my side, but I couldn't resist. :-)

Given that the history channel believes the stone walls in New England could only have been built by aliens, I can't wait to see what they come up with for this.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o6tpLjyx-_g

Well it's the History channel which defaults to 3 things, Aliens, Nazi's and Rednecks.

Sadly NG isn't that far behind either, tho i have to admit that the random episode of Rocket City Rednecks I watched at the gym was amusing.

If the universe truly is infinite, that means it's a statistical certainty that somewhere out there is the trifecta: Redneck Alien Nazis.

The History Channel should team up with SpaceX and start looking for them. Imagine the ratings!

not that I want to be the guy defending ancient aliens(just kidding i kindof do), but lots of accepted history and archaeology is based on just as many assumptions and leaps of faith as you'd find on that show, they just aren't as patently absurd at face value.

> they just aren't as patently absurd at face value

Isn't that the entire point? It's not like all assumptions are equivalent.

Compare with the petroglyphs and geoglyphs discussed in Dr. Anthony Peratt's 2003 paper, Characteristics for the Occurrence of a High-Current, Z-Pinch Aurora as Recorded in Antiquity:

http://plasmauniverse.info/downloadsCosmo/PerattTPSv31-2003c...

The timeframe (8,000 years old) mentioned in the article generally fits with the timeframes given in Peratt's paper. So perhaps these earthworks are further evidence of ancient peoples recording (in some sense) a stupendous "light show" that defied explanation and ordinary human experience.

Additional publications on the same theory, by Peratt and other researchers:

http://plasmauniverse.info/NearEarth.html

I wish they'd list the coordinates. I think I found some formations, searching for the "swastika" near Urpek village. In the upper left corner there is a bunch of green dots similar in size to the ones in the square, etc. They look like gardens.

https://www.google.com/maps/@50.0857785,65.2126098,636m/data...

(edit window passed) These seem unusual because of the assumption that these were exclusively nomad lands. Take that away and agriculture/irrigation/livestock of some kind seems a lot more likely and a lot less mysterious. There is no information about contemporary techniques in the area either. While I'm curious about these, there are some clear red flags of cultural superimposition in the original research.

It's really surprising to me that these are big enough to be seen from space but are only now just getting recognition. Looking forward to hearing about what we can discover from these earthworks!

"Big enough to see from space" is pretty meaningless when we have cameras up there that can zoom in and pick out an ant on a sidewalk.

"Spotted on Google Earth in 2007 by a Kazakh economist and archaeology enthusiast, Dmitriy Dey, the so-called Steppe Geoglyphs remain deeply puzzling and largely unknown to the outside world."

Makes me wonder what else exists that we know nothing of. Specifically I wonder what can be found in the Amazone region, the Sahara (well all of Africa really), and now uninhabited parts of Russia.

PS. Can't we get some archeological Kickstarter (platform) going?

As most of the other comments here, I do believe these are footprints from villages and structures that have worn away with time. The ones with circles were probably areas where huts and other dwelling units were placed.

Hi Heather, which 'most of the other comments' are you referring to? If you are talking about the geoglyphs only the top comment speculates they could have been remains trappings for animals. The article itself talks about a neolithic settlement nearby which is not part of the geoglyph. What makes you think they were huts and dwelling units there? If that were the case one would presume there would be remains of that. In the article there is link to how the geoglyphs were made intentionally - so they didn't seem to have been be villages or structures http://e-history.kz/en/contents/view/1562

I've seen very similar ground constructs on the valley of Palpa (next to the Nazca lines in Peru )

The most popular theory is that they were used as ceremonial places.

TL;DR People in the old days got bored as fuck and made cool shit.

Sure we often put it down to religion, but the reality is we can chose to do what ever we want to worship our gods and some people chose to do stuff that's interesting and cool.

People are people, who doesn't want to make cool big things that last a long time.

I like it.

Those amazed by this discovery may find these other mounds also interesting: http://www.thequantummachine.com

Is this the discovery of the Indo-European homeland at long last?

Ah, if only Szukalski were alive to enjoy this.

I got lost a the word "space-age". I don't mean to be the pedantic one. Sorry. But why would an outlet like the NYTimes use a word that means 1976 when they don't mean it. Meh.

returns to article

Because it's a valid and appropriate term? Here's Oxford Dictionary:

    space-age, adj. very modern; technologically advanced: a space-age control room.

8000 years old is already nonsense.

Why?

Because claims of having some human settlements must be supported by other factors to sustain assumed population. Without sustainable agriculture, domestication of anals, established trade routes, developed tools and what we would call 'best practices' no 'ancient settlement', leave alone 'ancient civilization' is possible. It must be a very favorable place. This logic applies to debunk nonsensical claims about inventd by pundits Tibetan kingdoms, it applies here too.

The Discovery (or History) channel, I forget which, has a facinating series of shows on Ancient Aliens.

This story reminds me of a story in the above mentioned series about a group of researches who appeared to have been killed by some force in Siberia. Upon further investigation, there appears to be some domes buried in the ground in Siberia.

The domes are theorized to have killed the researchers. In the show, they said an autoposy was done and some of the researchers were killed from the inside out. In other words, there was no visible trauma to their skin but their rib cage bones had been shattered.

http://www.abovetopsecret.com/forum/thread544351/pg1 https://soipost.wordpress.com/2013/12/29/what-is-the-purpose... http://www.utaot.com/2013/02/27/scientists-prove-ancient-ali...

I don't get much of an opportunity to talk about these things at work or within my family. They think I'm nuts. But this really fascinates me too.

Why is it so difficult to imagine neolithic cultures built these things? The pyramids were designed without computers and built with stone tools, why couldn't people ancient have made earthworks without the help of alien technology? All it takes is some manpower and lots of time.

> Why is it so difficult to imagine neolithic cultures built these things

In fact it's incredibly insulting to everyone involved, and basically everyone who has ever lived, that without the use of modern tools they couldn't possibly do anything of note.

'Ancient Aliens' is a big fuck you to those who actually did the work.

> 'Ancient Aliens' is a big fuck you to those who actually did the work.

The majority of whom were brown, if not black.

A lot of the Ancient Aliens bullshit is founded on a core of racism about a millimeter beneath the surface. The rest is just simple ignorance about pre-modern engineering and mathematical techniques.

Aliens of the gaps.

Unfortunately, the modern History channel gets people into that line of thinking. "Not saying it was aliens, but it was aliens."

> The pyramids were designed without computers

Technically, they were designed by human computers.

I thought the Ancient Aliens series was interesting. A group of friends showed it to me and some believed in it. However, we started following the logic they use and it basically boils down to this:

We don't know how this was done so therefore Aliens did it.

So the most honest thing they can actually say is they don't know.

It's bunk. Watch this:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j9w-i5oZqaQ

Interesting stuff, thx for the links.

Watch this:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j9w-i5oZqaQ

Well thats depressing. Just shows me the importance of "trust but verify".

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