Totally new to the forum, convalescing after an illness, and having meandering thoughts after watching a random YouTube selection of Graham Hancock videos and books. You have been warned.
So I was ruminating on the idea of Gobekli Tepe as a knowledge dispersal site of various glacial minimum domesticated animal species; the Nazca lines and the species portrayed; and domestication of species during the glacial maximum; and megaliths.
My assumptions are: 1) the Ancients were good at animal husbandry, breeding, and behavioral training; 2) they domesticated many of the extinct mega fauna of the glacial maximum; 3) they had excellent pharmacological knowledge of their environment; 4) they had at least as much math and mechanical know-how as the Victorians; and 5) their power generation and transportation was centered on animal power rather than fossil fuel. Now let's speculate on what they could do with the species available during the glacial maximum.
Most obvious to me is that moving megaliths becomes a lot easier and requires fewer people if you are using mammoth and mastodon power. What about other mega fauna like giant sloths and various rhino, hippo, and horse species?
If you have Victorian technology, you could have air-ships and sea-going ships. Did giant condors and whale species provide the power-steering?
Are the Nazca lines the South of the Border signs on the air-ship highway? "Stop at the Andes rest-stop without losing your high altitude acclimatization. Here are our list of services: spiders, monkeys, humming birds, parrots, condors, high altitude protection gear. Access to whale network for crossing the Pacific."
Why would they advertise these species? Is this breed of spider cultivated for its web fiber properties for fabrics and cordage, and/or its venom for medicine? Are humming birds specially trained pollinators, mosquito control, or just tasty? Are monkeys for fetch and carry, the 'trunk monkeys' of their day? Are parrots for communication, like an 'owl post'?
Graham said that the spider species represented in the Nazca lines is very rare today and found in a limited range. Are these the feral survivors of past industrially cultivated species? Without care and feeding, did they just die out anywhere else?
Does Gobekli Tepe represent the efforts of a dying species of hominids to pass on knowledge and tools to a related subspecies? What if the survivors are beyond breeding age due to their ability to artificially extend their lives through specialized pharmacopeia whose production facilities and stock species have been wiped out cosmic bombardment? "Here, throw a kegger for these small brained apes and we can teach them to do tricks that will help us survive and pass on our knowledge." Do the species domesticated around Gobekli Tepe represent the Eurasian attempt to recreate their food stock, power, and fabric out of what surviving species are available?
Anyway, I'm just putting these ideas out there to be pondered and expanded on, or shot down and dismissed with "here are the problems" or with "yeah, we already covered that, so-and-so proposed something similar ages ago."
So I was ruminating on the idea of Gobekli Tepe as a knowledge dispersal site of various glacial minimum domesticated animal species; the Nazca lines and the species portrayed; and domestication of species during the glacial maximum; and megaliths.
My assumptions are: 1) the Ancients were good at animal husbandry, breeding, and behavioral training; 2) they domesticated many of the extinct mega fauna of the glacial maximum; 3) they had excellent pharmacological knowledge of their environment; 4) they had at least as much math and mechanical know-how as the Victorians; and 5) their power generation and transportation was centered on animal power rather than fossil fuel. Now let's speculate on what they could do with the species available during the glacial maximum.
Most obvious to me is that moving megaliths becomes a lot easier and requires fewer people if you are using mammoth and mastodon power. What about other mega fauna like giant sloths and various rhino, hippo, and horse species?
If you have Victorian technology, you could have air-ships and sea-going ships. Did giant condors and whale species provide the power-steering?
Are the Nazca lines the South of the Border signs on the air-ship highway? "Stop at the Andes rest-stop without losing your high altitude acclimatization. Here are our list of services: spiders, monkeys, humming birds, parrots, condors, high altitude protection gear. Access to whale network for crossing the Pacific."
Why would they advertise these species? Is this breed of spider cultivated for its web fiber properties for fabrics and cordage, and/or its venom for medicine? Are humming birds specially trained pollinators, mosquito control, or just tasty? Are monkeys for fetch and carry, the 'trunk monkeys' of their day? Are parrots for communication, like an 'owl post'?
Graham said that the spider species represented in the Nazca lines is very rare today and found in a limited range. Are these the feral survivors of past industrially cultivated species? Without care and feeding, did they just die out anywhere else?
Does Gobekli Tepe represent the efforts of a dying species of hominids to pass on knowledge and tools to a related subspecies? What if the survivors are beyond breeding age due to their ability to artificially extend their lives through specialized pharmacopeia whose production facilities and stock species have been wiped out cosmic bombardment? "Here, throw a kegger for these small brained apes and we can teach them to do tricks that will help us survive and pass on our knowledge." Do the species domesticated around Gobekli Tepe represent the Eurasian attempt to recreate their food stock, power, and fabric out of what surviving species are available?
Anyway, I'm just putting these ideas out there to be pondered and expanded on, or shot down and dismissed with "here are the problems" or with "yeah, we already covered that, so-and-so proposed something similar ages ago."