YouTube Video Here: https://www.youtube.com/embed/U_REwdeweg4?feature=oembed&enablejsapi=1

It’s one of the most well-known stories from the Bible: Noah and his family were instructed by God to build an ark and load it with two of every animal. Noah did as he was instructed and the great flood came, destroying everything except Noah, his family, and the animals on the ark.

But did the great flood actually happen, or is the story of Noah just a myth?

The recent discovery in the Black Sea of a ancient ship graveyard may finally provide an answer to the mystery of Noah’s Ark, according to a fascinating article from Ancient Origins.

Mapping the Sea Floor

Maritime archaeologist, Zdravka Georgieva, along with a team of scientists from Bulgaria’s Center for Underwater Archaeology, in partnership with Professor Jon Adams from the University of Southampton, mapped the floor of the Black Sea using sonar technology and remotely operated vehicles (ROVs). The researchers happened upon a startling site: A Greek trading ship that turned out to be the oldest of its kind ever discovered.

Science vs. Scripture

At depths such as those the team was exploring, we know some facts with absolute certainty:

“There is so little oxygen that the timbers have hardly decayed and that some of these ancient boats are in such good condition that ‘individual chisel marks’ appear on the planks of the hulls. According to both the BBC and The Sun, further studies might help explain the origins of the biblical flood that was sent by God to wipe out corruption and violence in the story of Noah’s Ark.

Related: Before Noah’s Great Flood: Here Are 3 Flood Stories That Predate The Bible

Marine geologists William Ryan and Walter Pitman published a book in 2000 entitled Noah’s Flood in which they suggested that the real flood which may have inspired the story of the Biblical flood occurred about 20,000 years ago and took place in the Black Sea:

“The Black Sea was a small freshwater lake cut off from the Mediterranean by a land bridge. At the end of the last Ice Age, according to the authors, the Mediterranean began to rise and a seawater deluge ‘200 times stronger than Niagara Falls’ causing the Black Sea to ‘explode’ in size, flooding an area ‘the size of Ireland within months.’”

That theory, while intriguing, has more than its share of critics, many of whom say such a scenario is highly unlikely. But some evidence found on land does support the idea of a Black Sea flood that might have been seen as a sign from God:

“The foundations of ancient buildings were found along the Black Sea’s pre-flood shoreline, 12 miles (19.3 kilometers) off the Turkish Black Sea coast, somewhat adding credence to this idea.”

No Such Flood?

A closer look at the facts, however, and the Black Sea flood/Biblical flood theory falls apart. As a matter of fact, there’s even a very good likelihood that no flood of such proportions ever occurred.

“According to the scientists from Black Sea MAP, they ‘don’t believe’ any such flood happened. Dr. Zdravka Georgieva said very clearly ‘there’s no evidence to support this theory and believes that the seas changed over great periods of time.’”

Perhaps the best scientific proof that a worldwide flood never happened can be found in what are known as “raindrop prints,” which record the rain that has fallen over the Earth’s history because they’re preserved in fossils:

“Which could not possibly have been formed and preserved if the muds (now in shales) containing these prints were deposited under water during Noah’s flood, there are rain drops, trillions of them, each one’s geological story shadowed by a legend in the Bible.”

Noah’s Ark is a good myth that doesn’t stand up to scientific scrutiny, but its larger message may be more important now than it was when it was first written: We are expected to be stewards of the planet and the life that exists upon it. That lesson never gets old.

Here’s more on the Black Sea ship graveyard

Featured Image Via Pixabay

YouTube Video Here: https://www.youtube.com/embed/_egEdG9B2uU?feature=oembed&enablejsapi=1

What would happen if the First Lady of the United States disclosed that she believed she traveled with extraterrestrials to Venus? It would no doubt create quite the international media sensation, right? Well, that’s exactly what happened in the case of Japanese First Lady Miyuki Hatoyama. However, did you hear about it at all?

In 2009, then 62-year-old Miyuki Hatoyama, wife of Japan’s Prime Minister-elect, Yukio Hatoyama, came under scrutiny for what she wrote in a book entitled, entitled “Very Strange Things I’ve Encountered.”

Hatoyama wrote about an experience that happened to her two decades before.

“While my body was asleep, I think my soul rode on a triangular-shaped UFO and went to Venus,” she explains in the tome she published last year.

“It was a very beautiful place, and it was very green,” she wrote.

The retired actress and author of cookbooks also claimed to recognize the actor Tom Cruise from another life.

“I believe he’d get it if I said to him, ‘Long time no see,’ when we meet,” she said in an interview.

When she told her now ex-husband at the time, he told her it was probably just a dream. However, she said that her new husband, Yukio Hatoyama, would no doubt have reacted differently. The divorced singer and dancer met the multi-millionaire while working in a Japanese restaurant in San Francisco. They married in 1975.

“My current husband has a different way of thinking,” she wrote. “He would surely say ‘Oh, that’s great.’”

Stanford University-educated Yukio Hatoyama, also 62 at the time, is the grandson of a former prime minister. According to Reuters, he earned the nickname “the alien” for his prominent eyes.

According to the Independent, the nickname comes from the couple’s unconventional approach:

“Though Mr Hatoyama is a multi-millionaire and the fourth generation of his family to rise to the top of the Japanese political world, his appearance is unconventional by rigid Japanese standards: his hair is unruly and he rejects the navy uniform of the political world in favour of suits of brown and moss green.”

“It is this refusal to bow to convention, as well as his tendency to drop conversation-stopping remarks – like his call, during the election campaign, for a ‘politics full of love’ – that long ago led other Japanese politicians to dismiss him as an uchujin, an alien. Though not, presumably, the one who took Miyuki to Venus.”

One would think that this story about travels to Venus might have been more prominent in world news, but it seems to have barely made a blip on the radar. One reason may be that Japan’s approach to the idea of extraterrestrials is so different from western countries.

From the beginning, ancient stories tell of alien-like beings, including the ancient Dogu, alien-like figurines representing gods from the sky.

Ancient Aliens Season 12, Episode 14 explored this, and the primary religion of Japan called Shintoism. The beliefs connect Japan to a mystical past involving celestial beings called Kami. (see below)

UFOs and the Japanese government

In 2007, the Japanese government stated it “has not confirmed the existence of unidentified flying objects believed to have come from anywhere other than Earth.” Then Japan’s defense minister said there were “no grounds” to deny outright the existence of alien-manned UFOs.

BBC News reported that despite a lack of evidence “Chief Cabinet Secretary Nobutaka Machimura later told reporters he believed they [UFOs] were definitely real.”

However, despite that admission that article noted:

“Japan has not yet planned what to do should aliens arrive here.”

“*A member of the opposition asked the government what its policy was to deal with UFOs.

*He said work should begin urgently to try to confirm whether or not they exist because of what he called “incessant” reports of sightings.

*The Japanese civil service swung into action.

In a statement it said that should a flying saucer be spotted in the country’s airspace, a fighter would be scrambled to attempt visual confirmation.”

Related: An 800-ton monolith from Japan and its similarity to tales of strange otherworldly visitors

By 2015, Defense Minister Gen Nakatani answered a question about UFOs during a budget session. He had a very different answer.

“When the Air Self Defense Force detects indications of an unidentified flying object that could violate our country’s airspace, it scrambles fighter jets if necessary and makes visual observation,” Nakatani responded earnestly.
“They sometimes find birds or flying objects other than aircraft but I don’t know of a case of finding an unidentified flying object believed to have come over from anywhere other than Earth,” he said.

You can see more about this story and other UFO-related stories from Japan in Ancient Aliens Season 12, Episode 14, “Masuda-no-Iwafune.”

More about Miyuki Hatoyama from Al Jazeera English:

YouTube Video Here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Kk6hugyNXGg

Featured image: Amaterasu, one of the central kami in the Shinto faith via Wikimedia Commons Public Domain with an image of Miyuki Hatoyama and Yukio Hatoyama via AP

YouTube Video Here: https://www.youtube.com/embed/9k2XudjhCSk?feature=oembed&enablejsapi=1

This is part two about Ancient Aliens, season 12, episode 7, titled “City of the Gods.”

For part one: Abundant liquid mercury, mica, and pyrite found in tunnels beneath the pyramids

At the pre-Aztec city of Teotihuacán, archaeologists found a river of liquid mercury and the minerals mica and pyrite. Ancient astronaut theorists suspect this was not merely part of a ritual for a glittery effect. Instead, they think these elements were in place as part of advanced technology we have yet to understand. Were the elaborate tunnels and structures truly part of some an electromagnetic power plant that tapped into the natural energies of the planet?

A massive fire

Although the mysterious city of Teotihuacán thrived, home to 200,000 people at one point, it collapsed around the time of a giant fire that left burn marks across wide areas of the site. Ancient astronaut theorists think the hypothetical power plant caused the blast. The fires cover an extensive area of the city.

Mainstream archaeologists, however, believe the fires came deliberately during an uprising of the people. The poor rose up against the elite of the city, leading to the downfall of Teotihuacán until the Aztecs found it abandoned much later.

Before the ‘explosion’ or uprising if you prefer, the city flourished between 100 B.C. and A.D. 650. However, we must note the culture was a brutal one. Many people and animals were sacrificed in rituals. Remains of decapitated people, as well as wolves, jaguars, pumas, rattlesnakes, and eagles, were discovered under the Temple of the Moon in 2004.

Related: Archaeologists uncover secret ‘passage to the underworld’ at Pyramid of the Moon in Teotihuacan

A city aligned with the stars

The city features two enormous structures, the 213-foot-tall Pyramid of the Sun, the third-largest Pyramid in the world. Next comes the 147-foot-tall Temple of the Moon and the Temple of Quetzalcoatl, the feathered serpent, and a large thoroughfare, the Avenue of the Dead.

The layout of the city, covering over 20 square kilometers, is carefully planned, and scholars note that it is intricately aligned with celestial bodies.

According to Ancient History Encyclopedia:

“The positioning of temples and pyramids in alignment with the sun on the June solstice and the Pleiades suggests calendar dates were important in rituals, and the presence of buried offerings and sacrificial victims illustrates the belief in the necessity to appease various gods, especially those associated with climate and fertility.”

The place is extremely impressive and one wonders how it would even be possible to build at all, much less in ancient times.

Secret passageways

In 2003, a heavy rainstorm opened up a three-foot-wide sinkhole at the Temple of Quetzalcoatl and researchers have been excavating the site since. They discovered entrances to a 338-foot corridor sealed off with boulders 2,000 years ago. The tunnel was nearly 60 feet below the temple.

By 2009, they could use advanced radar, 3D scanning, infrared cameras, and even remote-controlled robots to lead the explorations.

Before that, archaeologists found a tunnel underneath the Temple of the Sun, looted before archaeologists entered in the 90s.

Despite so many finds, there was no evidence at all of any tombs, thus no evidence of who ruled the city. Try as they might to find out who created this place, we just don’t know yet.

However, the archaeologists had found a treasure trove of over 100,000 + artifacts, and they were only beginning. Some of what they found: statues of jaguars, sparkling jade statues, boxes of beetle wings, rubber balls used in an ancient ball game, balls of amber, necklaces, twin carved black stone statues, bones from bears, birds, and jaguars, and ancient jars of corn. Also, Discovery described a “six-level pyramid decorated with snake-like creatures.”

YouTube Video Here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C8ZEKp85dwk

Liquid mercury, yellow orbs, and mica

Then they found something bizarre: Mercury and the mineral pyrite hand-embedded into the tunnel. Also, hundreds of mysterious yellow orbs that range from four to 12 centimeters across. Scientists remain baffled as to what their purpose could be.

Lead archaeologist Sergio Gómez reacted in the Smithsonian article.

“Fifty feet in, we stopped at a small inlet carved into the wall. Not long before, Gómez and his colleagues had discovered traces of mercury in the tunnel, which Gómez believed served as symbolic representations of water, as well as the mineral pyrite, which was embedded in the rock by hand. In semi-darkness, Gómez explained, the shards of pyrite emit a throbbing, metallic glow. To demonstrate, he unscrewed the nearest light bulb. The pyrite came to life, like a distant galaxy. It was possible, in that moment, to imagine what the tunnel’s designers might have felt more than a thousand years ago: 40 feet underground, they’d replicated the experience of standing amid the stars.”

A river of mercury

While the mainstream archaeologists note that mercury and pyrite have “known associations with the supernatural among ancient Mesoamericans,” one has to wonder. Mercury is the first known superconductor, but would that be known to these ancient people?

Pyrite, known as “Fool’s Gold,” would have given the tunnels a sparkling appearance. The mineral is also used to start fires by creating sparks.

Although Smithsonian seemed to downplay the find of mercury, the Guardian later reported in 2017 that there were large quantities of liquid mercury found. It was reported as the first time the toxic substance was found in an ancient site in Mexico, and it may have been used to create a silvery underground river. 

Archaeologists from the University of California, Berkeley say the dangerous substance was also found at three other sites around Central America. They believe the shimmering quality alone was why it was used, as it appeared “somewhat magical … there for ritual purposes or symbolic purposes.”

“In 2014, archaeologists found three large chambers at the end of the tunnel, almost 20 meters beneath the temple. Excitement mounted with the Discovery the following year that the Earth appeared to have been sculpted into elegant miniature landscapes depicting mountains and valleys, with drops of mercury deposited to symbolize sacred rivers or lakes.”

Annabeth Headreck, a professor at the University of Denver, made a comparison to mythology from across the planet in Greece:

“The shimmering, reflective qualities of liquid mercury may have resembled “an underworld river, not that different from the river Styx,” Headrick said, “if only in the concept that it’s the entrance to the supernatural world and the entrance to the underworld.”

Thermal insulators and superconductors

The archaeologists suggest they heated cinnabar, which was used for a blood-red pigment. This process produces mercury ore, but as we know, it can be deadly to handle.

In addition to mercury and pyrite, the archaeologists found mica, which often used in today’s electronics as a superior thermal insulator.

According to Curiosmos:

“Most of the mica at Teotihuacan was found and removed from the Pyramid of the Sun in the 1900s. Because of its value, it was consequently sold.”

According to Sacred Sites, there used to be quite a lot of mica, and it covered the Pyramid of the Sun:

“There are several fascinating mysteries about the grand city and its pyramids. One of the most interesting concerns the massive, one-foot thick, sheet of granulated mica that until recently covered the entire top level of the Pyramid of the Sun. Removed and sold for profit by an unscrupulous site-restorer in the early 1900’s, the mica had long ago been transported from a mine thousands of miles away in South America. How had the great quantity of mica been brought from such a distance and, equally important, for what purpose had the pyramid been covered with the rare stone? One scientist has suggested that the mica, being a highly efficient energy conductor, could have been used as part of a receiving device for long wave-length celestial radiations. The incoming celestial energy would have been captured by the massive bulk of the pyramid and its sacred geometrical construction, and focused into the snake-like cave beneath the pyramid. This energy, available for human use at any time of the year, would be specially concentrated at certain periods within solar, lunar and stellar cycles. These specific periods were noted by using astronomical observation devices which exist in different places around the geomantically aligned city of Teotihuacan.”

Fool’s Gold

After watching this show, one can’t help but ask more questions. Was mercury simply part of a ritual, chosen because it was shimmering and beautiful, like Fool’s Gold? Or was it part of some ancient technology? If it were merely part of a ritual, why was there so much of it? Why were tunnels lined with minerals, similar to the way the pyramids of Egypt have tunnels lined with granite?

Is it foolish to think that this giant city was built with help from extraterrestrials who came with advanced technology? Or is it foolish to think that these massive complex structures were created by ordinary humans practicing rituals with shiny minerals and toxic elements?

For the rest of the story, be sure to watch the full episode 7 on the History Channel.

For part one of this article: Abundant liquid mercury, mica, and pyrite found in tunnels beneath the pyramids

YouTube Video Here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MPviHpnfDns

Featured images: Screenshots via YouTube