Located on the western slope of Mount Lawu we can find the Javanese-Hindu temple of Sukuh believed to date back to the 15th century and a fifth-century Javanese-Hindu temple called the Cetho temple.
The Sukuh is a unique temple very distinctive to other temples in the region and its main monument is a pyramid structure that has several reliefs and statues in the vicinity.
According to history, these temples were built by the Majapahit Empire, a vast archipelagic empire based on the island of Java from approximately 1293 to 1500, reaching its peak during the Hayam Wuruk era from 1350 to 1389 when the empire extended through southeast Asia. It was one of the last major empires of the region and is also considered the most powerful in the history of Indonesia and Southeast Asia.
The theory regarding the time the temples of Cetho and Sukuh were built is questionable among archaeologists. Scholars point toward the fact that the Cetho temple was built with river stone; a strange thing when you compare the classical construction material used by the Majapahit Empire which was red sandstone. Both the Cetho and Sukuh temples are very distinctive; the lack of records of Javanese ceremonies and beliefs has made it difficult for historians and archaeologists to learn more about the culture, and antiquities in general.
Ancient erotic pyramid Candi Sukuh-Hindu Temple on central Java, Indonesia. Image Credit: Shutterstock.
What is very interesting is that even though in the Majapahit Empire hundreds of temples were erected throughout the kingdom, these two are nothing like those others. The temples of Sukuh and Ceto do not resemble traditional Majapahit architecture as they have very few details that can be attributed to the construction styles of that period, yet they seem to resemble construction methods of another civilization, located thousands of kilometers in another direction, the Maya civilization.
After looking at the images of the Sukho temple and the Cetho temple we cannot help but notice how beautiful these ancient constructions are, but furthermore, when compared to the construction styles of the ancient Maya civilization, they have incredible similarities that you cannot overlook. With the stone stairway that rises through the middle of the pyramid towards its summit, a characteristic element of design of many Mayan pyramids and temples, strangely, the same characteristics can be found in Indonesia. Archaeologists have not been able to determine why the builders of the temples of Sukho and Cetho chose to build pyramids that are very similar to the ones in the Americas.
A comparison of the Pyramids of Cetho and Sukuh (above) and the Maya temples of Tikal and Chacchoben (below)
The ancient structure of Candi Sukho can hardly be compared to any other ancient building but has an incredible similarity to pyramids reminiscent of a Maya monument; furthermore, the surrounding decorative items found in the vicinity of the temple seem to strangely resemble some of the decorative items that are found next to Maya temples.
Is this just a coincidence? Possibly it is, but there are temples all over the world that have what appear to be characteristic traits, that are constantly repeated in different monuments.
Not only is it strange that the temples in Indonesia resemble temples of the ancient Maya civilization, but there are several statues that can be found in Indonesia in the vicinity of the temples of Sukho and Cetho that are unlike other usual native statues.
Some scholars believe that this statue does not represent a native Javanese person.
The attacker fired at New Orleans officers from behind an airbag after crashing into revelers on Bourbon Street; two officers were wounded during the exchange
A whitish, gray patch that sometimes appears in the night sky alongside the northern lights has been explained for the first time by researchers at the University of Calgary.
Researchers have finished equipping the Subaru Telescope with a new special “compound eye,” culminating several years of effort. This new eye is an instrument featuring approximately 2,400 prisms scattered across the extremely wide field of view available at the Subaru Telescope’s primary focus, allowing for simultaneous spectroscopic observation of thousands of celestial objects.
This NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope image reveals a tiny patch of sky in the constellation Hydra. The stars and galaxies depicted here span a mind-bending range of distances. The objects in this image that are nearest to us are stars within our own Milky Way galaxy.
As part of its Artemis campaign, NASA is developing a series of increasingly complex lunar deliveries and missions to ultimately build a sustained human presence at the moon for decades to come. Through the agency’s CLPS (Commercial Lunar Payload Services) initiative, commercial provider Firefly’s Blue Ghost lander will head to the moon’s Mare Crisium for a 14-day lunar lander mission, carrying NASA science and technology that will help understand the lunar subsurface in a previously unexplored location.
On December 24th, AES Andes, a subsidiary of the US power company AES Corporation, submitted a project for a massive industrial complex for environmental impact assessment. This complex threatens the pristine skies above ESO’s Paranal Observatory in Chile’s Atacama Desert, the darkest and clearest of any astronomical observatory in the world.
Molecular crystals with conductivity and magnetism, due to their low impurity concentrations, provide valuable insights into valence electrons. They have helped link charge ordering to superconductivity and to explore quantum spin liquids, where electron spins remain disordered even at extremely low temperatures.
Alexander Hartmann, a physicist at the University of Oldenburg, in Germany, has introduced a new model to explain a common word puzzle phenomenon. In his paper published in the journal Physical Review E, he suggests that instances where a puzzle solver experiences a sudden insight that allows them to begin finding solutions that seemed hidden are similar in some respects to the type of percolation seen when water percolating through a teabag suddenly makes its way out of the bottom of the bag. He has developed what he describes as a percolation model for word puzzles.
Multiterminal Josephson junctions, nanoscale devices with unique electronic properties, comprise non-superconducting metallic material coupled to three or more superconducting leads. These devices have proved to be promising platforms for the exploration of topological phenomena in condensed matter physics.
Countless archaeological missions tried finding the road that leads to the Great Pyramid of Giza but all searches ended in failure, until a local resident living near the Giza Plateau, made one of the most important discoveries in the last decade.
During an illegal excavation beneath his home he discovered a tunnel leading to the Pyramid of Khufu, the largest of the three pyramids in Giza.
According to the news report released by Ahram.org and Albawaba News, the discovery was made thanks to a resident, living near the pyramids, while conducting an illegal drilling 10 meters deep beneath his home. The individual fled the scene shortly after.
Archaeologists observed that the walls of this incredible tunnel that leads to one of the most important landmarks on our planet; is actually made of large stone blocks.
Colonel Walid el-Sharkawy, Head of Detectives of Giza Antiquities, said that the charlatan was digging for months under his home near the pyramids where it is forbidden to dig or construct any building.
The archaeological complex where the Great Pyramid had a walkway connecting the gigantic tomb to the Temple of Cheops. The finding suggests that this temple located near the Nile River lies buried beneath a small village, in close proximity to the pyramids of Giza.
The discovery of this secret corridor could be categorized as one of the most important discoveries directly connected with the Great Pyramid of Giza; Archaeologists hope to find out detailed information regarding the purpose of the tunnel and the connected areas.
Herodotus a Greek historian who was born in Halicarnassus, Caria modern-day, Turkey, widely referred to as “The Father of History”; describes the mentioned causeway in detail, having approximately a kilometer in length;
There passed ten years while the causeway was made by which they drew the stones, which causeway they built, and it is a work not much less, as it appears to me, than the pyramid; for the length of it is five furlongs and the breadth ten fathoms and the height, where it is highest, eight fathoms, and it is made of stone smoothed and with figures carved upon it. For this, they said, the ten years were spent, and for the underground chambers on the hill upon which the pyramids stand – Herodotus: Second book of the Histories.
“Unfortunately for this particular drug dealer, TCSO had 20+ deputies, multiple K9’s, and multiple grappler equipped vehicles on patrol tonight,” Thurston County Sheriff Derek Sanders said
The development of sustainable energy sources that can satisfy the world energy demand is one of the most challenging scientific problems. Nuclear fusion, the energy source of stars, is a clean and virtually unlimited energy source that appears as a promising candidate.
Few places in the solar system are better suited to a balloon than Titan. The combination of low gravity and high atmospheric density makes Saturn’s largest moon ideal for a lighter than “air” vehicle, and the idea to put one there has been around for at least two decades.
