Like my RMS Titanic page, this is just my fascination with the Ancient Wonders all in one place. I was searching one day for a book that would give me info on all of the Ancient Wonders. While this book is an action fiction thriller, I learned more about the Wonders by this book than any textbook. The following is an excerpt from Matthew Reilly's novel, Seven Ancient Wonders: America's leaders since George Washington have been Freemasons. Washington, Jefferson, Roosevelt, the Bushes. For over 200 years. You can see Masonic worship all over the U.S. The Freemasons have built replicas of each of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World. The French Freemason Frederic-Auguste Bartholdi replicates the Colossus of Rhodes almost exactly- she even holds a torch aloft just as the original statue did. The Woolworth Building in New York is disturbingly similar to the Lighthouse of Alexandria (Pharos) Fort Knox is built with the exact same floor plans as the Mausoleum at Halicarnassus. The Statue of Zeus, a great figure sitting on a throne, is the Lincoln Memorial. The Temple of Artemis would be the Supreme Court. While there are no Giant Pyramids in the U.S., when the Egyptians stopped building pyramids, they began building obelisks. America does indeed possess one giant obelisk: The Washington Monument. The Hanging Gardens of Babylon couldn't be exactly replicated because no one knows what they looked like, so a special rambling garden was built and tended in their honor at the White House, first by George Washington, then Thomas Jefferson, then Franklin Roosevelt. The Catholic President John F. Kennedy (the Freemasons have been known to be anti-Catholic) tried to rip the garden up entirely. And while he did not survive, the Garden did. It has had many names over the years, but we know it today as the Rose Garden. The Hanging Gardens of BabylonAn excerpt from "Seven Ancient Wonders": *Of all of the 7 Ancient Wonders, none retains more mystery than the Hanging Gardens of Babylon. It's the only one that have never been found. Not a single trace has been unearthed. The Babylonians were very careful record keepers, and not a single mention of the Hanging Gardens. But yet all historians agree: The Gardens were constructed by Nebuchadnezzar around 57 B.C. to please his homesick wife. They were built to the East of the Euphrates. The centerpiece was a shrine devoted to the Persian White Desert Rose, a species that has not survived present day. * When the Assyrian Empire was obliterated in 612, the city-state of Babylon created another huge empire. King Nebuchadnezzar built the hanging gardens of Babylon, one of the seven wonders of the ancient world. According to tradition, his wife, Amyitis, missed the mountainous terrain of her homeland so the king brought the mountain to her by building a stepped terrace garden. Man-powered pumps watered it. The city of Babylon, under King Nebuchadnezzar II, must have been a wonder to the ancient traveler's eyes. "In addition to its size," wrote Herodotus, a Greek historian in 450 BC, "Babylon surpasses in splendor any city in the known world." Herodotus claimed the outer walls were 56 miles in length, 80 feet thick and 320 feet high. Wide enough, he said, to allow two four-horse chariots to pass each other. The city also had inner walls which were "not so thick as the first, but hardly less strong." Inside these double walls were fortresses and temples containing immense statues of solid gold. Rising above the city was the famous Tower of Babel, a temple to the god Marduk, that seemed to reach to the heavens. Some stories indicate the Hanging Gardens towered hundreds of feet into the air, but archaeological explorations indicate a more modest, but still impressive, height. This chick has her theory: Mythology shrouds each of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World, but none has been more mysterious than the Hanging Gardens of Babylon. Archaeologists have never unearthed evidence of the soaring gardens, and scholars have questioned its very existence. Now, however, an Oxford University researcher says she knows why the Hanging Gardens of Babylon have proven so elusive. It’s because they weren’t in Babylon at all. The multiple Greek and Roman accounts of the Hanging Gardens, however, were second-hand–written centuries after the wonder’s alleged destruction. First-hand accounts did not exist, and for centuries, archaeologists have hunted in vain for the remains of the gardens. A group of German archaeologists even spent two decades at the turn of the 20th century trying to unearth signs of the ancient wonder without any luck. The lack of any relics has caused skeptics to question whether the supposed desert wonder was just an “historical mirage.” However, Dr. Stephanie Dalley, an honorary research fellow and part of the Oriental Institute at England’s Oxford University, believes she has found evidence of the existence of the legendary Wonder of the Ancient World. In her soon-to-be-released book “The Mystery of the Hanging Garden of Babylon: An Elusive World Wonder Traced,” published by Oxford University Press, Dalley asserts that the reason why no traces of the Hanging Gardens have ever been found in Babylon is because they were never built there in the first place. Dalley, who has spent the better part of two decades researching the Hanging Gardens and studying ancient cuneiform texts, believes they were constructed 300 miles to the north of Babylon in Nineveh, the capital of the rival Assyrian empire. She asserts the Assyrian king Sennacherib, not Nebuchadnezzar II, built the marvel in the early seventh century B.C., a century earlier than scholars had previously thought. According to Oxford University, Dalley, who is a scholar in ancient Mesopotamian languages, found evidence in new translations of the ancient texts of King Sennacherib that describe his own “unrivaled palace” and a “wonder for all peoples.” He also mentioned a bronze water-raising screw—similar to Archimedes’ screw developed four centuries later—that could have been used to irrigate the gardens. Recent excavations around Nineveh, near the modern-day Iraqi city of Mosul, have uncovered evidence of an extensive aqueduct system that delivered water from the mountains with the inscription: “Sennacherib king of the world…Over a great distance I had a watercourse directed to the environs of Nineveh.” Bas reliefs from the royal palace in Nineveh depicted a lush garden watered by an aqueduct, and unlike the flat surroundings of Babylon, the more rugged topography around the Assyrian capital would have made the logistical challenges in elevating water to the gardens far easier for an ancient civilization to overcome. Dalley explains that the reason for the confusion of the location of the gardens could be due to the Assyrian conquering of Babylon in 689 B.C. Following the takeover, Nineveh was referred to as the “New Babylon,” and Sennacherib even renamed the city gates after those of Babylon’s entrances. Dalley’s assertions could debunk thoughts that the elusive ancient wonder was an “historical mirage,” but they could also prove that the Hanging Gardens of Babylon are mislabeled and should truly be the Hanging Gardens of Nineveh. I remember watching this special on PBS, it was very interesting. Here is a Q&A that she did: Q&A with Dr. Dalley Ancient Greek historians, Strabo and Philo, gave us these description of the hanging gardens of Babylon: "The Garden is quadrangular, and each side is four plethra long. It consists of arched vaults which are located on checkered cube-like foundations.. The ascent of the uppermost terrace-roofs is made by a stairway..." "The Hanging Garden has plants cultivated above ground level, and the roots of the trees are embedded in an upper terrace rather than in the earth. The whole mass is supported on stone columns... Streams of water emerging from elevated sources flow down sloping channels... These waters irrigate the whole garden saturating the roots of plants and keeping the whole area moist. Hence the grass is permanently green and the leaves of trees grow firmly attached to supple branches... This is a work of art of royal luxury and its most striking feature is that the labor of cultivation is suspended above the heads of the spectators." The Colossus at RhodesFearing the gods who had felled it, the Rhodians declined Ptolemy II to rebuild it, and it was left to lie in ruins for 900 years until A.D. 654 when Arabs broke it up and sold it in pieces. A week after they declined to re-erect Colossus, the head, all 16 feet, went missing. It was never seen again.* The Colossus of Rhodes was a massive statue of a male figure built around 280 B.C. and erected on the Greek island of Rhodes. Much about the monument remains shrouded in mystery, as it was destroyed in an earthquake in 226 B.C. However, ancient accounts hold that the Colossus of Rhodes was created in honor of the sun god Helios and to commemorate the Rhodians’ successful defense of their island against a siege led by Macedonian leader Demetrius Poliorcetes in 305 B.C. Legend has it the people of Rhodes sold the equipment left behind by the Macedonians in order to bankroll the statue’s creation. The city of Rhodes, located on the island of Rhodes, had been under siege for a year. Caught up in the heated and bloody battle between the three successors of Alexander the Great (Ptolemy, Seleucus, and Antigonus), Rhodes was attacked by Antigonus’ son, Demetrius, for supporting Ptolemy. Demetrius tried everything to get inside the high-walled city of Rhodes. He brought 40,000 troops (more than the entire population of Rhodes), catapults, and pirates. He also brought a special corps of engineers that could make siege weapons specially geared to break into this particular city. The most spectacular thing these engineers built was a 150-foot tower, mounted on iron wheels, that hosted a powerful catapult. To protect its gunners, leather shutters were installed. To protect it from fireballs hurled from the city, each of its nine stories had its own water tank. It took 3,400 of Demetrius’ soldiers to push this mighty weapon into place. The citizens of Rhodes, however, flooded the area around their city, causing the mighty tower to wallow in mud. The people of Rhodes had fought back valiantly. When reinforcements came from Ptolemy in Egypt, Demetrius left the area in a hurry. In such a hurry, that Demetrius left nearly all of this weapons behind. To celebrate their victory, the people of Rhodes decided to build a giant statue in honor of their patron god, Helios. Funding is usually a problem for such a large project as the people of Rhodes had in mind; however, that was easily solved by using the weapons that Demetrius had left behind. The people of Rhodes melted down many of the leftover weapons to get bronze, sold other siege weapons for money, and then used the super siege weapon as the scaffolding for the project. Rhodian sculptor Chares of Lindos, the pupil of Alexander the Great’s sculptor Lysippus, was chosen to create this huge statue. Unfortunately, Chares of Lindos died before the sculpture could be completed. Some say he committed suicide, but that is probably a fable. Exactly how Chares of Lindos constructed such a gigantic statue is still up for debate. Some have said that he built a huge, earthen ramp that got bigger as the statue got taller. Modern architects, however, have dismissed this idea as unpractical. We do know that it took 12 years to build the Colossus of Rhodes, likely from 294 to 282 BCE, and cost 300 talents (at least $5 million in modern money). We also know that the statue had an exterior that consisted of an iron framework covered with bronze plates. Inside were two or three columns of stone that were the main supports for the structure. Iron rods connected the stone columns with the exterior iron framework. The statue was to stand about 110 feet high, on top of a 50-foot stone pedestal (the modern Statue of Liberty is 111 feet high from heel to head). Exactly where the Colossus of Rhodes was built is still not certain, although many believe it was near the Mandraki Harbor. No one knows exactly what the statue looked like. We know that it was a man and that one of his arms was held aloft. He was likely naked, perhaps holding or wearing a cloth, and wearing a crown of rays (as Helios is often portrayed). Some have guessed that Helios’ arm was holding a torch. For four centuries, people have believed that the Colossus of Rhodes was posed with his legs spread apart, one on each side of the harbor. This image stems from a 16th century engraving by Maerten van Heemskerck, which depicts the Colossus in this pose, with ships passing under him. For many reasons, this is very likely not how the Colossus was posed. For one, legs open wide is not a very dignified stance for a god. And another is that to create that pose, the very important harbor would have had to have been closed for years. Thus, it is much more likely that the Colossus was posed with legs together. For 56 years, the Colossus of Rhodes was a wonder to see. But then, in 226 BCE, an earthquake struck Rhodes and toppled the statue. It is said that the Egyptian King Ptolemy III offered to pay for the Colossus to be rebuilt. However, the people of Rhodes, after consulting an oracle, decided to not rebuild. They believed that somehow the statue had offended the real Helios. For 900 years, huge pieces of the broken statue lay along the beaches of Rhodes. Interestingly, even these broken pieces were huge and worth seeing. People traveled far and wide to see the ruins of the Colossus. As one ancient writer, Pliny, described after seeing it in the 1st century CE, Even as it lies, it excites our wonder and admiration. Few people can clasp the thumb in their arms, and its fingers are larger than most statues. Where the limbs are broken asunder, vast caverns are seen yawning in the interior. Within it, too, are to be seen large masses of rock, by the weight of which the artist steadied it while erecting it. In 654 CE, Rhodes was conquered, this time by Arabs. As spoils of war, the Arabs cut apart the remains of the Colossus and shipped the bronze to Syria to sell. It is said that it took 900 camels to carry all that bronze. Temple of Artemis at EphesusTemple of Ephesus . - It was more than 400 feet long and 200 wide , Ionic like all the other temples of Asia Minor. Its construction would last 120 years , according to some historians, 220 . Towards the middle of the century. VI ac , the conqueror Croesus financed in large part the construction of the first large Artemisium , forcing the Ephesians to pay a toll. The Temple of Artemis was a huge, beautiful place of worship, that was built around 550 BCE in the rich, port city of Ephesus (located in what is now western Turkey). When the beautiful monument was burned down 200 years later by the arsonist Herostratus in 356 BCE, the Temple of Artemis was built again, just as large but even more intricately decorated. It was this second version of the Temple of Artemis that was awarded a place among the Seven Ancient Wonders of the World. The Temple of Artemis was again destroyed in 262 CE when the Goths invaded Ephesus, but the second time it was not rebuilt. For 200 years, the Temple of Artemis was revered. Pilgrims would travel long distances to see the Temple. Many visitors would make generous donations to the goddess to earn her favor. Vendors would make idols of her likeness and sell them near the Temple. The city of Ephesus, already a successful port city, soon became wealthy from the tourism brought in by the Temple as well. Then, on July 21, 356 BCE, a madman named Herostratus set fire to the magnificent building, with the sole purpose of wanting to be remembered throughout history. The Temple of Artemis burned down. The Ephesians and nearly the entire ancient world were stupefied at such a brazen, sacrilegious act. So that such an evil act would not make Herostratus famous, the Ephesians banned anyone from speaking his name, with the punishment being death. Despite their best efforts, Herostratus' name has gone down in history and is still remembered more than 2,300 years later. Legend has it that Artemis was too busy to stop Herostratus from burning down her temple because she was helping with the birth of Alexander the Great that day. When the Ephesians sorted through the charred remains of the Temple of Artemis, it is said they found the statue of Artemis intact and unharmed. Taking this as a positive sign, the Ephesians vowed to rebuild the temple. It is unclear how long it took to rebuild, but it easily took decades. There is a story that when Alexander the Great arrived in Ephesus in 333 BCE, he offered to help pay for the rebuilding of the Temple as long as his name would be engraved on it. Famously, the Ephesians found a tactful way of rebuffing his offer by saying, "It is not fitting that one god should build a temple for another god." Eventually, the second Temple of Artemis was finished, equal or just a bit taller in size but even more elaborately decorated. The Temple of Artemis was well-known in the ancient world and was a destination for many worshipers. For 500 years, the Temple of Artemis was revered and visited. Then, in 262 CE, the Goths, one of the many tribes from the north, invaded Ephesus and destroyed the Temple. This time, with Christianity on the rise and the cult of Artemis on the decline, it was decided to not rebuilt the Temple. Sadly, the ruins of the Temple of Artemis were eventually plundered, with the marble being taken for other buildings in the area. Over time, the swamp in which the Temple was built grew larger, taking over much of the once-grand city. By 1100 CE, the few remaining citizens of Ephesus had completely forgotten that the Temple of Artemis ever existed. In 1864, the British Museum funded John Turtle Wood to excavate the area in the hopes of finding the ruins of the Temple of Artemis. After five years of searching, Wood finally found the remains of the Temple of Artemis under 25 feet of swampy mud. Later archaeologists have further excavated the site, but not much has been found. The foundation remains there as does a single column. The few artifacts that have been found were shipped to the British Museum in London. I went to the British Museum's website to try to find images of the collected relics, but the exhibition has been closed. This is what it says on their site: In 1869, a British railroad engineer & archaeologist, John Turtle Wood, discovered the remains of the Temple of Artemis 20ft under the sand. He was sponsored by the British Museum and the excavations continued until 1874. Although the temple was in ruins, he was able to find several numbers of precious sculptures and archaeological items and these were sent to British Museum. Today the archaic remains of the Temple of Artemis are displayed in room 82 at the British Museum in London, UK. In British Museum, there are several archaeological remains from the Ancient city of Ephesus and The Temple Artemis that are spread to different galleries according to their date and category. Early Ephesus (Room 82)The Wolfson Gallery 600 – 475 BC Closed until further notice Sad face. 1100 A.D.: A troop of Crusaders stops at a muddy little village in Asia Minor. Their leader looks around. Confused he dismounts. This place is not what he expected. He read in the ancient texts that this was a large seaport with many ships docked in its bay. It isn't. The sea is almost three miles away. The village is located in a swamp. There are no ships to be seen. The leader accosts a nearby man. Sir, is this the city of Ephesus?" "It was called that once. Now it is named Ayasalouk." "Well, where is your bay? Where are the trading ships? And where is the magnificent Greek temple that we have heard about?" Now it is the man's turn to be confused. "Temple? What temple, Sir? We have no temple here.. And so 800 years after its destruction, the magnificent Temple of Artemis at Ephesus, one of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World, had been completely forgotten by the people of the town that had once held it in such pride. So what happened to this great temple? And what happened to the city that hosted it? What turned Ephesus from a busy port of trade to a few shacks in a swamp? The Statue of Zeus at OlympiaThe Statue of Zeus at Olympia was a 40-foot-high, ivory and gold, seated statue of the god Zeus, king of all the Greek gods. Located in the sanctuary of Olympia on the Greek Peloponnese Peninsula, the Statue of Zeus stood proudly for over 800 years, overseeing the ancient Olympic Games and being acclaimed as one of the 7 Wonders of the Ancient World. Olympia, located near the town of Elis, was not a city and it had no population, that is, except for the priests that took care of the temple. Instead, Olympia was a sanctuary, a place where members the warring Greek factions could come and be protected. It was a place for them to worship. It was also the place of the ancient Olympic Games. This masterpiece was designed by famous sculptor Phidius, who had previously designed the large statue of Athena for the Parthenon. Unfortunately, the Statue of Zeus no longer exists and so we rely on the description of it left us by second century CE geographer Pausanias. According to Pausanias, the famous statue portrayed a bearded Zeus sitting upon a royal throne, holding a figure of Nike, the winged goddess of victory, in his right hand and a scepter topped with an eagle in his left hand. The entire seated statue rested upon a three-foot-high pedestal. It was not the size that made the Statue of Zeus unequaled, although it was definitely large, it was its beauty. The entire statue was made from rare materials. Zeus’s skin was made out of ivory and his robe was made up of plates of gold that were intricately decorated with animals and flowers. The throne was also made of ivory, precious stones, and ebony. The regal, godlike Zeus must have been amazing to behold. In 393 CE, Christian Emperor Theodosius I banned the Olympic Games. Three rulers later, in the early fifth century CE, Emperor Theodosius II ordered the Statue of Zeus destroyed and it was set on fire. Earthquakes destroyed the rest of it. The figure's skin was composed of ivory and the beard, hair and robe of gold. Construction was by a technique known as chryselephantine where gold-plated bronze and ivory sections were attached to a wooden frame. Because the weather in Olympia was so damp, the statue required care so that the humidity would not crack the ivory. It is said that for centuries the decedents of Phidias held the responsibility for this maintenance. To keep it in good shape the statue was constantly treated with olive oil kept in a special reservoir in the floor of the temple that also served as a reflecting pool. Light reflected off the pool from the doorway may also have had the effect of illuminating the statue. The first archaeological work on the Olympia site was done by a group of French scientists in 1829. They were able to locate the outlines of the temple and found fragments of the sculpture showing the labors of Heracles. These pieces were shipped to Paris where they are still on display today at the Louvre. The Mausoleum at HalicarnassusMausolus, with his queen Artemisia, ruled over Halicarnassus and the surrounding territory for 24 years. Though he was descended from the local people, Mausolus spoke Greek and admired the Greek way of life and government. He founded many cities of Greek design along the coast and encouraged Greek democratic traditions. In 353 B.C. Mausolus died, leaving his queen Artemisia, who was also his sister, broken-hearted (It was the custom in Caria for rulers to marry their own sisters). As a tribute to him, she decided to build him the most splendid tomb in the known world. It became a structure so famous that Mausolus's name is now associated with all stately tombs throughout the world through the word mausoleum. The building, rich with statuary and carvings in relief, was so beautiful and unique it became one of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World. The tomb was erected on a hill overlooking the city. The whole structure sat in the center of an enclosed courtyard on a stone platform. A staircase, flanked by stone lions, led to the top of this platform. Along the outer wall of the courtyard were many statues depicting gods and goddesses. At each corner stone warriors, mounted on horseback, guarded the tomb. At the center of the platform was the tomb itself. Made mostly of marble, the structure rose as a square, tapering block to about one-third of the Mausoleum's 140 foot height. This section was covered with relief sculpture showing action scenes from Greek myth/history. One part showed the battle of the Centaurs with the Lapiths. Another depicted Greeks in combat with the Amazons, a race of warrior women. On top of this section of the tomb thirty-six slim columns rose for another third of the height. Standing in between each column was another statue. Behind the columns was a solid block that carried the weight of the tomb's massive roof. Artemisa lived for only two years after the death of her husband. Both would be buried in the yet unfinished tomb. According to Pliny, the craftsmen decided to stay and finish the work after their patron died "considering that it was at once a memorial of their own fame and of the sculptor's art." The Mausoleum overlooked the city of Halicarnassus for many centuries. It was untouched when the city fell to Alexander the Great in 334 B.C. and was still undamaged after attacks by pirates in 62 and 58 B.C.. It stood above the city ruins for some 17 centuries. Then a series of earthquakes in the 13th century shattered the columns and sent the stone chariot crashing to the ground. By 1404 A.D. only the very base of the Mausoleum was still recognizable. Now I know more about the Great Pyramid of Giza than most people know about their spouses. That is why I saved it for last. But my favorite? The Lighthouse of AlexandriaIn the fall of 1994 a team of archaeological divers donned scuba equipment and entered the waters off of Alexandria, Egypt. Working beneath the surface, they searched the bottom of the sea for artifacts. Large underwater blocks of stone and remnants of sculpture were marked with floating masts so that an electronic distance measurement station on shore could obtain their exact positions. Global positioning satellites were then used to further fix the locations. The information was then fed into computers to create a detailed database of the sea floor. Ironically, these scientists were using some of the most high-tech devices available at the end of the 20th century to try and sort out the ruins of one of the most advanced technological achievements of the 3rd century, B.C.. It was the Pharos, the great lighthouse of Alexandria, one of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World. The story of the Pharos starts with the founding of the city of Alexandria by the Macedonian conqueror Alexander the Great in 332 B.C.. Alexander started at least 17 cities named Alexandria at different locations in his vast domain. Most of them disappeared, but Alexandria in Egypt thrived for many centuries and is prosperous even today. Alexander the Great chose the location of his new city carefully. Instead of building it on the Nile delta, he selected a site some twenty miles to the west, so that the silt and mud carried by the river would not block the city harbor. South of the city was the marshy Lake Mareotis. After a canal was constructed between the lake and the Nile, the city had two harbors: one for Nile River traffic, and the other for Mediterranean Sea trade. Both harbors would remain deep and clear and the activity they allowed made the city very wealthy. Alexander died in 323 B.C. and the city was completed by Ptolemy Soter, the new ruler of Egypt. Under Ptolemy the city became rich and prosperous. However, it needed both a symbol and a mechanism to guide the many trade ships into its busy harbor. Ptolemy authorized the building of the Pharos in 290 B.C., and when it was completed some twenty years later, it was the first lighthouse in the world and the tallest building in existence, with the exception of the Great Pyramid. The Lighthouse of Alexandria was the first lighthouse in the world. Construction began in 290 BC and took twenty years to complete. When it was done it was the tallest building in the world at the time, except for the Great Pyramid. It was built on the island of Pharos, to help guide trade ships into its busy harbor at Alexandria, Egypt. The lighthouse was damaged by several earthquakes and eventually became an abandoned ruin. The Lighthouse at Alexandria is also known as the Pharos of Alexandria. The city Alexandria was named by Alexander the Great. It was one of 17 cities that he named after himself, but Alexandria was one of the few to survive. It is still a prosperous city today. Alexander the Great Died in 323 BC. The Lighthouse at Alexandria was built beginning in 290 BC, many years after Alexander the Great's death. Ptolemy Soter was the ruler of Egypt who decided to build the lighthouse to guide sailors into the port. In today's money it would have cost about three million dollars to build. In 290 BC it cost 800 talents (the form of money in this time). It is thought to have been constructed of limestone blocks. The lowest level of the lighthouse was 100 feet square and 240 feet high. The second level had eight sides and was about 115 feet tall. The third level was a 60 foot high cylinder that had an opening at the top to allow a space where the fire burned to light the way for sailors in the night. On top of this was a statue in honor of Poseidon, the god of the sea. The Lighthouse at Alexandria was approximately 450 feet tall. Inside the lighthouse there were stairs that allowed people to climb to the beacon chamber. It was reported that there was a large mirror inside, possibly made of polished bronze. The purpose of the mirror was to project a beam of light from the reflection of the fire. It was damaged by three earthquakes. After the last earthquake it was abandoned and fell to ruins. This allowed sailors to see the beam at night. The smoke from the fire was important during the day as it guided sailors during the day. Both the beam of light and the smoke could be seen as far as 100 miles away. The Great Pyramid of Giza is the longest surviving of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World. The second is the Mausoleum at Halicarnassus and the Lighthouse of Alexandria was the third longest to survive. In 1480 the last the lighthouse's remaining stone was used to build the Citadel of Qaitbay by the sultan of Egypt Qaitbay. The citadel was built on the same island where the lighthouse once stood. Julius Caesar mentions the Lighthouse of Alexandria in his writings. Today the city of Alexandria uses the symbol of the lighthouse on the flag of the Alexandria Governorate as well as on their seal. It also appears on the seal of Alexandria University. Regarding the French 1995 expedition: The objective of the salvage operation was to delimit the archaeological zone and to determine its nature. We therefore plotted a topographic map and developed graphical and photographical documentation for each element. Obviously, even before the first dive, we already had some idea of the site, thanks to the pioneer work of Kamel Abul-Saadat in 1961 and a UNESCO mission in 1968, following which Honor Frost published a preliminary report with some drawings which revealed the importance of the site. It was, therefore, with surprise that we, in turn, discovered the extent of the site: over an area of 2.5 hectares (WHICH AFTER MUCH MUCH MATH, I GATHER TO BE 6.2 ACRES), 2,500 pieces of stonework of archaeological interest were scattered about: columns of all sizes, in their hundreds, column bases and capitals, sphinxes, statues, and some immense blocks of granite which, given where they lie, certainly came from the famous lighthouse. Hundreds of columns, mostly in pink granite from Aswan, but some of marble, range from the small modules of the small columns of Proconnesis up to the huge granite column shafts which reach 2.40 m in diameter; that is, the width of Pompey’s Column. This column was erected in honour of Diocletian and is one of the few monuments of [ancient] Alexandria still standing. This monolith is made of pink Aswan granite; it is 29.7 m high with a diameter between 2.7 m at its base and 2.4 m at its peak. The capitals belonging to these columns are of composite-Alexandria style, with floral volutes, sometimes in white marble or black granite. There were also several large bases of Ionic form in white marble. Alongside these architectural elements of Greek style, there were some pieces from pharaonic monuments, notably six papyriform columns, of which one bears Ramses II’s insignia. There were four obelisks; three were consecrated by Sethi I and the other is from a much later period, belonging no doubt to one of the Ptolemies. The first three thus date from the XIX dynasty, near the end of the 14th century BC, and the latter, from the early 3rd century BC. The lighthouse was built on the island of Pharos and soon the building itself acquired that name. The connection of the name with the function became so strong that the word "Pharos" became the root of the word "lighthouse" in the French, Italian, Spanish and Romanian languages. The interior of the upper two sections had a shaft with a dumbwaiter that was used to transport fuel up to the fire. Staircases allowed visitors and the keepers to climb to the beacon chamber. There, according to reports, a large curved mirror, perhaps made of polished bronze, was used to project the fire's light into a beam. It was said ships could detect the light from the tower at night or the smoke from the fire during the day up to one-hundred miles away. There are stories that this mirror could be used as a weapon to concentrate the sun and set enemy ships ablaze as they approached. Another tale says that it was possible to use the mirror to magnify the image of the city of Constantinople, which was located far across the sea, and observe what was going on there. Both of these stories seem implausible, however. The structure was said to be liberally decorated with statuary including four likenesses of the god Triton on each of the four corners of the roof of the lowest level. Materials recently salvaged from the sea by archeologists, including the stone torso of a woman, seem to support these stories. The lighthouse was apparently a tourist attraction. Food was sold to visitors at the observation platform at the top of the first level. A smaller balcony provided an outlook from the top of the eight-sided tower for those that wanted to make the additional climb. The view from there must have been impressive as it was probably 300 feet above the sea. There were few places in the ancient world where a person could ascend a man-made tower to get such a perspective. How then did the world's first lighthouse wind up on the floor of the Mediterranean Sea? Most accounts indicate that it, like many other ancient buildings, was the victim of earthquakes. It stood for over 1,500 years, apparently surviving a tsunami that hit eastern Mediterranean in 365 AD with minor damage. After that, however, tremors might have been responsible for cracks that appeared in the structure at the end of the10th century and required a restoration that lowered the height of the building by about 70 feet. Then in 1303 A.D., a major earthquake shook the region that put the Pharos permanently out of business. Egyptian records indicate the final collapse occurred in 1375, though ruins remained on the site for some time until 1480 when much of the building's stone was used to construct a fortress on the island that still stands today. There is also an unlikely tale that part of the lighthouse was demolished through trickery. In 850 A.D. it is said that the Emperor of Constantinople, a rival port, devised a clever plot to get rid of the Pharos. He spread rumors that there was a fabulous teasure buried under the lighthouse. When the Caliph at Cairo, who controlled Alexandria at this time heard these rumors, he ordered that the tower be pulled down to get at the treasure. It was only after the great mirror had been destroyed and the top two portions of the tower removed that the Caliph realized he'd been deceived. He tried to rebuild the tower, but couldn't, so he turned it into a mosque instead. As colorful as this story is there does not seem to be much truth in it. Visitors in 1115 A.D. reported the Pharos intact and still operating as a lighthouse. Did the divers actually find the remains of Pharos in the bottom of the harbor? Some of the larger blocks of stone found certainly seem to have come from a huge building. Statues were located that may have stood at the base of the Pharos. Interestingly enough, much of the material found seems to be from earlier eras than the lighthouse. Scientists speculate that these may have been recycled in the construction of the Pharos from an even older building. The area is now an underwater archaeological park. Tourists with diving gear can swim about the remains of the great Pharos lighthouse while they wonder what it would have been like to climb to its ancient heights a thousand years ago. The Great Pyramid of GizaThe Great Pyramid a true masterpiece and has rightly earned the title of a “Wonder”. It was built with such precision that our current technology cannot replicate it. Historical analysis shows that the Pyramids were built between 2589 and 2504 BC. There are so many interesting facts about this Pyramid that it baffles archaeologists, scientists, astronomers, and tourists. Here are the facts:
The Great Pyramid of Giza, located about ten miles southwest of Cairo, was built as a burial site for Egyptian pharaoh Khufu in the 26th century BCE. Standing at 481 feet high, the Great Pyramid was not only the largest pyramid ever built, it remained one of the tallest structures in the world until the late 19th century. Impressing visitors with its massiveness and beauty, it's no surprise that the Great Pyramid at Giza was considered one of the Seven Ancient Wonders of the World. Amazingly, the Great Pyramid has withstood the test of time, standing for over 4,500 years; it is the only Ancient Wonder to have survived to the present. Khufu (known in Greek as Cheops) was the second king of the 4th dynasty in ancient Egypt, ruling for about 23 years in the late 26th century BCE. He was the son of Egyptian Pharaoh Sneferu and Queen Hetepheres I. Sneferu remains famous for being the very first pharaoh to build a pyramid. Despite fame for building the second and largest pyramid in Egyptian history, there's not a lot more that we know about Khufu. He also is known for having the smallest Egyptian royal sculpture ever discovered. The ivory statue of Pharaoh Khufu (AKA Cheops) found at Abydos is 3 inches high. But you wouldn’t call Khufu a small guy in real life, in fact he is known as a big and cruel leader. As described by Herodotus: “Cheops moreover came, they said, to such a pitch of wickedness, that being in want of money he caused his own daughter to sit in the stews, and ordered her to obtain from those who came a certain amount of money (how much it was they did not tell me) and she not only obtained the sum appointed by her father, but also she formed a design for herself privately to leave behind her a memorial, and she requested each man who came in to give her one stone upon her building: and of these stones, they told me, the pyramid was built which stands in front of the great pyramid in the middle of the three, each side being one hundred and fifty feet in length.” Khufu was 20 when he came to the throne and at once began building his “Stairway to Heaven”. Khufu was the first pharaoh who build a pyramid at Giza. The entire project took about 23 years to complete, 2,300,000 building blocks, weighing an average of 2.5 tons each (Although some weigh as much as 16 tons) were used to build the great pyramid. The length of each side of the pyramid at the base is 755 feet. They rise at an angle of 51 52′ to a height, originally, of 481 feet but nowadays 451 feet. Some believe that Khufu’s pyramid at Giza was built by slaves, but modern Egyptologists accept that it was built by many tens of thousands of skilled workers rather than slaves. It is known that Khufu’s nephew Hemiunu was appointed head of construction for the Great Pyramid and that Khufu provided good food and clothing for his workers. According to Herodotus: “On the pyramid it is declared in Egyptian writing how much was spent on radishes and onions and leeks for the workmen, and if I rightly remember that which the interpreter said in reading to me this inscription, a sum of one thousand six hundred talents of silver was spent…” Experts have talked a lot about the methods by which stone blocks were raised into position, it is usually assumed that wooden and bronze levers were used to put the blocks into position. “This pyramid was made after the manner of steps which some called “rows” and others “bases”: and when they had first made it thus, they raised the remaining stones with machines made of short pieces of timber, raising them first from the ground to the first stage of the steps, and when the stone got up to this it was placed upon another machine standing on the first stage, and so from this it was drawn to the second upon another machine…” – describes Herodotus. About 600 years ago, beautiful smooth blocks known as Casing Stones covered the entire exterior of the pyramid, encasing the whole structure, before the Arabs began to tear the stones off. The ancient writer, Strabo, said: “It seemed like a building let down from heaven, untouched by human hands.” It has been calculated that the original pyramid with its casing stones would act like gigantic mirrors and reflect light so powerful that it would be visible from the moon as a shining star on earth. At the present, only a few of these are left in position on each side at the base. One of the largest remaining Casing stones is nearly 5 feet high by 8 feet at the bottom, and weighs about 14 tons. There are three known chambers inside the Great Pyramid – King’s chamber, Queen’s chamber and unfinished chamber. A team of French Egyptologists (Gilles Dormion and Jean-Yves Verd’hurt) claims that an undiscovered room lies underneath the pyramid’s Queen’s Chamber and insists that it is the actual burial chamber for Khufu and not the one known as the King’s chamber. However, even those who believe that the King’s chamber was never put to use believe that Khufu may have been buried elsewhere rather than in another, hidden chamber. Well, there are still lots of mysteries concerning Khufu’s burial to be.. or never to be revealed. One of the most mysterious parts of the Great Pyramid is the empty coffer in the King’s Chamber, it is made from a solid block of chocolate-colored granite and is even harder than the granite walls of the King’s Chamber. For thousands of years, researchers have wondered about its purpose. Ancient legend says that it came from Atlantis or even from America. It was never inscribed or decorated. Also, since it is too large to pass through the low passages leading into the King’s Chamber, it is considered to be placed in the chamber before the chamber was closed and passages were sealed. Another discovery in the Great Pyramid is a spectacular ancient cedar-wood boat, which was found sealed in a pit at the base of the Great pyramid. This boat was interred in pieces and has since been reassembled, restored and preserved in a climate controlled museum over the site of the original pit. The name “Djedefre”, who was Khufu’s son and successor, is found on some of the slabs of stone that sealed the pit, indicating that probably the boat was put there by Khufu’s son. The Grand Gallery continues the slope of the Ascending Passage, but is 28 ft high and 153.1 ft long. At the base it is 6.8 ft wide, but after 7.5 ft the blocks of stone in the walls are corbelled inwards by 3.0 in on each side. There are seven of these steps, so, at the top, the Grand Gallery is only 3.4 ft wide. It is roofed by slabs of stone laid at a slightly steeper angle than the floor of the gallery, so that each stone fits into a slot cut in the top of the gallery like the teeth of a ratchet. The purpose was to have each block supported by the wall of the Gallery rather than resting on the block beneath it, which would have resulted in an unacceptable cumulative pressure at the lower end of the Gallery. At the upper end of the Gallery on the right-hand side there is a hole near the roof that opens into a short tunnel by which access can be gained to the lowest of the Relieving Chambers. The other Relieving Chambers were discovered in 1837-1838 by Colonel Howard Vyse and J. S. Perring, who dug tunnels upwards using blasting powder. The floor of the Grand Gallery consists of a shelf or step on either side,20 in wide, leaving a lower ramp 3.4 ft wide between them. In the shelves there are 54 slots, 27 on each side matched by vertical and horizontal slots in the walls of the Gallery. These form a cross shape that rises out of the slot in the shelf. The purpose of these slots is not known, but the central gutter in the floor of the Gallery, which is the same width as the Ascending Passage, has led to speculation that the blocking stones were stored in the Grand Gallery and the slots held wooden beams to restrain them from sliding down the passage. This, in turn, has led to the proposal that originally many more than 3 blocking stones were intended, to completely fill the Ascending Passage. At the top of the Grand Gallery, there is a step giving onto a horizontal passage some metres long and approximately 3.3 ft in height and width, in which can be detected four slots, three of which were probably intended to hold granite portcullises. Fragments of granite found by Petrie in the Descending Passage may have come from these now-vanished doors. If we were to visit the location of the great pyramid when it was just finished, it would look very different than we see it today. Originally, the pyramid itself was encased in highly polished white limestone with a smooth surface which is now gone. At the very top of the structure would have been a capstone, which is also now missing. Some sources suggest that the capstone might have been sheathed in gold. Between the white limestone and the golden cap the pyramid would have made an impressive sight shining in the bright Egyptian sun. The top or capstone is traditionally thought to be the last piece added when constructing a pyramid. Some have speculated that the Great Pyramid’s capstone was made of solid gold, or in some theories, at least gold-plated. Of course presently undetermined, some have stated this was for an aesthetic purpose, boasting the wealth and power of the Pharaoh Cheops, for whom it was supposedly built. Others have offered a more functional explanation such as The Great Pyramid is actually a machine and its design, including a massive gold capstone, was intended for harnessing and transmitting energy, not just for showing-off. Since the capstone is absent, rumors abound as to why it’s missing or where it has gone. Egyptologists tend to stick by their guns–namely, that the pyramid was a tomb built for Cheops around 2500 BC and that the capstone is missing because it was looted, similar to other ancient Egyptian relics and tombs. Archaeologists, geologists, and researchers have been poking holes in this mainstream theory for decades. If you want the official version of The Great Pyramid and its missing capstone, go read the first paragraph of any encyclopedia entry. We will explore some of the “other” theories for those who find it hard to swim in the mainstream. Readers familiar with the work of Edgar Cayce, Graham Hancock, or Erich von Daniken have undoubtedly heard of Atlantis or of the prehistoric civilizations whose technological advancement is claimed to rival or surpass our own. The location of this mysterious land has never been proven, though most tend to agree that Atlantis was somewhere in the Atlantic Ocean. Some researchers propose that our modern era of civilization began with the destruction of the old era, or Atlantis. Across the globe, nomadic peoples and primitive cultures seemed to experience advancements in sudden bursts. One theory is that these cultures were infiltrated by refugees from the Atlantean culture. They brought with them the knowledge for advancing technology and thus seeding a modern civilization. In this theory, many believe that The Great Pyramid (with its capstone) is much, much older than commonly suggested. In fact, some believe it was built to preserve the Atlantean legacy. Others suggest that it was built after the cataclysm, using the knowledge that the refugees had preserved. Either way, the precision and technology necessary to build this massive structure eludes even the cutting-edge of modern science. Who built The Great Pyramid, and when it was built remains a mystery, however, the mathematics that are so ubiquitous in its design are not. Contrary to popular belief, there are no inscriptions or hieroglyphs inside the pyramid. The only clues we have are measurements, ratios, and proportion. Some believe that the pyramid is a geometric representation of the Earth. The length of the bases, the height, and the slope of the sides correspond to the circumference of the Earth, its diameter, and its surface area. This data is essential to travel, astronomy, and cartography, among other things. The imaginary numbers Pi and Phi, though often attributed to Greek astronomers, are also prevalent in the much older Great Pyramid. Unlike the mathematical hypothesis above, the “machine” theory looks to the inner parts of the pyramid, such as its rooms and chambers. The inner-workings of the pyramid were designed in a very odd, but specific way. The Queen’s Chamber and The Grand Gallery, in particular, are designed in such an elaborate manner that it casts doubt onto their “official” functions as simply a tomb and a passageway. The peculiar nature of the inside of the pyramid has inspired a number of studies and speculations as to the acoustical properties of these rooms, the specific material chosen for their construction, the relationship of the rooms to one another, and the type of energy that The Great Pyramid was built to manipulate. Sub-theories and possible explanations are many, but the verdict is still out on what kind of machine this pyramid really was, or is. The common theme among these sub-theories is that the pyramid does not function without the capstone. The capstone completes the pyramid and is considered the most important part. Without it, we’re left with a 13-acre, six-million ton mystery. The golden capstone has been missing for as long as history seems to remember. Could it be the missing piece to the most advanced machine on our planet? The Egyptian Government had plans to put a gold-plated capstone on The Great Pyramid at the turn of the century to celebrate the beginning of its seventh millennium, but scrapped its plans at the last minute, with no real explanation. Whether this was to restore the energetic function of the pyramid, or simply a gesture to promote tourism and Egyptian history, we may never know. And so, tomb, puzzle, or machine, The Great Pyramid remains incomplete, like the symbol found on the back of every American one-dollar bill. I leave you with Andrej Ciesielski.
Much braver than I ever will be.
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You can blame the book "Through Gates of Splendor" for my extreme curiosity with the land and people of South America. I remember reading it probably 28 years ago and I was mesmerized with not only their tribe, but the idea of undiscovered people and lands. A few years ago, one of the desk clerks at work asked to be off for several weeks to go on a mission trip in Ecuador. I started telling her all about this book, and how through all the years I kept up with the families that were left behind, and the books and documentaries that were made, and also about how the man that was a part of the killing of the missionaries that were there is currently close friends with one of the deceased men's son. She looked at me wide-eyed and said , "yeah, we are staying in his house". And then I died. Any time that a NatGeo, Smithsonian, or Discovery Channel has anything based on the Amazon, the land, their cultures, I am glued to the TV. I remember reading a book that touched on the subject and life of an explorer that went missing in the '20's and neither he or his party were ever found. A week or so ago I saw a movie trailer for "The Lost City of Z", and I remembered that was the dude that I read about! I found the book the movie was based on with the same title, and I have been all up in it for days. In true Lisa-fashion, I can't just read a book. I have notes. I have note pads. I have sticky notes. Now I am elbow-deep in all of this, and I can't find a place to keep it all together, and I thought Hey! I have a blog! I can attach it to all the other crap I have on there! What Started It All For Me: Operation AucaNate Saint's aircraft was discovered in 1994, buried in the sand along the Curaray River. The frame was reconstructed and is now on display at the headquarters of the Mission Aviation Fellowship in Nampa, Idaho. Operation Auca was an attempt by five Evangelical Christian missionaries from the United States to bring Christianity to the Huaorani people of the rain forest of Ecuador. The Huaorani, also known by the pejorative Aucas (a modification of awqa, the Quechua word for "savages"), were an isolated tribe known for their violence, against both their own people and outsiders who entered their territory. With the intention of being the first Christians to evangelize the previously uncontacted Huaorani, the missionaries began making regular flights over Huaorani settlements in September 1955, dropping gifts, which were reciprocated. After several months of exchanging gifts, on January 3, 1956, the missionaries established a camp at "Palm Beach", a sandbar along the Curaray River, a few kilometers from Huaorani settlements. Their efforts came to an end on January 8, 1956, when all five--Jim Elliot, Nate Saint, Ed McCully, Peter Fleming, and Roger Youderian—were attacked and speared by a group of Huaorani warriors. The news of their deaths was broadcast around the world, and Life magazine covered the event with a photo essay. The deaths of the men galvanized the missionary effort in the United States, sparking an outpouring of funding for evangelization efforts around the world. Their work is still frequently remembered in evangelical publications, and in 2006 was the subject of the film production End of the Spear. Several years after the death of the men, the widow of Jim Elliot, Elisabeth, and the sister of Nate Saint, Rachel, returned to Ecuador as missionaries with the Summer Institute of Linguistics (now SIL International) to live among the Huaorani. This eventually led to the conversion of many, including some of those involved in the killing. While largely eliminating tribal violence, their efforts exposed the tribe to increased influence from the outside. The Huaorani People: The Huaorani, Waorani or Waodani, also known as the Waos, are native Amerindians from the Amazonian Region of Ecuador who have marked differences from other ethnic groups from Ecuador. The alternate name Auca is a pejorative exonym used by the neighboring Quechua natives, and commonly adopted by Spanish-speakers as well. Auca – awqa in Quechua – means "savage". They comprise almost 4,000 inhabitants and speak the Huaorani language, a linguistic isolate that is not known to be related to any other language. Their ancestral lands are located between the Curaray and Napo rivers, about 50 miles south of El Coca. These homelands – approximately 120 miles wide and 75 to 100 miles from north to south – are threatened by oil exploration and illegal logging practices. In the past, Huaorani were able to protect their culture and lands from both indigenous enemies and settlers. In the last 40 years, they have shifted from a hunting and gathering society to live mostly in permanent forest settlements. As many as five communities – the Tagaeri, the Huiñatare, the Oñamenane, and two groups of the Taromenane – have rejected all contact with the outside world and continue to move into more isolated areas. In traditional animist Waodani worldview, there is no distinction between the physical and spiritual worlds, and spirits are present throughout the world. The Waodani once believed that the entire world was a forest (and used the same word, ömë, for both). The Oriente’s rain forest remains the essential basis of their physical and cultural survival. For them, the forest is home, while the outside world is considered unsafe: living in the forest offered protection from being attacked and enslaved by Spanish Conquistadors, cultural deprivation from Jesuit and Franciscan Missionaries and Inquisition tribunals. In short, as one Waodani put it, “The rivers and trees are our life.” In all its specificities, the forest is woven into each Waodani life and conceptions of the world. They have remarkably detailed knowledge of its geography and ecology. The Waodani believe that all life exists spiritually and physically and do not observe a separation between these states of being. To the Waodani as many other cultures the directions North, South, East and West are sacred. They believe that a person who dies walks a trail to the afterlife from the West to the East, which has a large anaconda snake lying in wait. Those who have not led a good life will not escape the snake and not be able to travel east, instead they will journey to the West and return to Earth to become animals, often termites. This underlies a mix of practices that recognize and respect animals, but does not shield them from harm for human use. Hunting supplies a major part of the Waodani diet and is of cultural significance. Before a hunting or fishing party ensues the community Shaman will often pray for a day to ensure its success. Traditionally, the creatures hunted were limited to monkeys, birds, and wild peccaries. Neither land-based predators nor birds of prey are hunted. Traditionally there was an extensive collection of hunting and eating taboos. They refused to eat deer, on the grounds that deer eyes look similar to human eyes. While a joyful activity, hunting (even permitted animals) has ethical ramifications: “The Guarani [Waodani] must kill animals to live, but they believed dead animal spirits live on and must be placated or else do harm in angry retribution.”To counterbalance the offense of hunting, a shaman demonstrated respect through the ritual preparation of the poison, curare, used in blow darts. Hunting with such darts is not considered killing, but retrieving, essentially a kind of harvesting from the trees. While never hunted, two other animals, the snake and the jaguar, have special significance for the Waodani. Snakes are considered "the most evil force in the Guarani [Waodani] cosmology", particularly the imposing (though nonvenemous) anaconda, or obe. A giant obe stands in the way of the forest trail that the dead follow to an afterlife with the creator in the sky. Here on earth, snakes are a bad omen, and killing them is traditionally considered to be taboo. Mincaye (left) has become especially close with Nate Saint's son Steve, who lived in the tribe for many years. Because he had killed Steve Saint's father, Mincaye felt a special responsibility in raising him. A kinship bond was developed, and Mincaye adopted Saint as his tribal son. After the Saint family came to live permanently with the Huaorani in 1995, Mincaye considered the Saint children his grandchildren Colonel Percy Harrison FawcettSince the film "The Lost City of Z" just came out, you can find all shorts of shenanigans on the internet right now. I'll just stick to the books and accounts of the people that knew Colonel Fawcett personally, his diaries, and I am still currently reading "The Lost City of Z" by David Grann. The movie review I read said that it is very watered down, nothing at all like the first hand accounts of the book. Here is some stuff that I found: This was written by Leighton Gage- Paramount has chosen Brad Pitt to play Percy Fawcett in an upcoming version of David Grann’s non-fiction book The Lost City of Z. It’s going to be, according to them, an Amazonian mystery/thriller. (The part of Colonel Fawcett is actually played by Charlie Hunnam, Brad Pitt is a producer of the film) And that virtually guarantees to muddy the waters still further about the death of the English explorer who was swallowed up by the Brazilian jungle back in 1925. Grann, in his book, doesn’t really solve the mystery of what happened to Fawcett. But he does reject the account of Orlando Villas-Bôas. Orlando, who died in 2002, was a sertanista, a kind of wilderness explorer peculiar to Brazil, and the country’s Indian expert par excellence. He spent many years living among the tribes, spoke their languages, established first contact with many of them, and was instrumental in determining a just government policy toward all the indigenous peoples. I knew Orlando Villas-Bôas personally. He was neither a liar nor a boaster, and his life was packed with more adventure than that of anyone I ever knew. Why, then, should he make things up? Orlando claimed (and I believed him) to have heard the true story of what happened to Fawcett from one of the murderers, a member of the Kalapalos tribe. Grann visited the Kalapalos in 2005 and got an “oral account” of the incident. Orlando was there 54 years earlier, in 1951, and spoke to people who were there at the time. Both accounts agree in some regards: They agree that Fawcett and his men stayed in the village of the Kalapalos. They agree that Fawcett and his companions had a mishap on the river and lost most of the gifts they’d bought to placate the Indians. They agree that most of the members of Fawcett’s expedition were sick by the time they contacted the Kalapalos. (And, therefore, a danger to the tribe.) Then the two accounts begin to differ. According to Grann, the expedition set off to the eastward. The tribesmen, he said, warned Fawcett not to go that way, because the region was inhabited by “fierce Indians”. But Fawcett decided otherwise. And disappeared. End of story. (And this is going to make a mystery/thriller?) Grann, however, does not relate, and perhaps never discovered, three additional precipitating incidents. And those incidents, for Orlando Villas-Bôas, were of more moment than sickness and/or the absence of gifts. According to Orlando:
That final incident, according to Orlando, sealed the fate of Fawcett and his men. The Indians waited until the next morning, allowed the expedition to get some distance down the trail and then ambushed and killed them all. Orlando told me one thing more: in those days, he said, the Kalapalos didn’t lie. They dissembled, but they never told an untruth. He’d asked a direct question, for which he didn’t receive a direct answer. Thus he knew from the get-go there was something afoot. It took him, he said, hours and hours of conversation to extract a frank account of what had really happened. Colonel Percy Fawcett was one of the most famous British explorers of his day, a friend of writers Arthur Conan Doyle and H. Rider Haggard. He had a strong interest in Atlantis and the occult, and after years of exploring South America, speculated that the ruins of a lost ancient city called Z laid somewhere in the unmapped territory of the Amazon. Fawcett believed the city was built by an advanced civilization, once writing to his son Brian that he expected “the ruins to be monolithic in character, more ancient than the oldest Egyptian discoveries. Judging by inscriptions found in many parts of Brazil, the inhabitants used an alphabetical writing allied to many ancient European and Asian scripts.” He even heard rumors that a strange source of light would illuminate the insides of the buildings, “a phenomenon that filled with terror the Indians who claimed to have seen it.” After two previous expeditions in the early 1920s that ended in failure, Fawcett set out for a third expedition with his 21-year-old son Jack and Jack’s friend Raleigh Rimell in 1925. Fawcett suspected that Z was located somewhere in the jungles of Mato Grosso, a little-explored region full of dangerous insects, unfriendly Indian tribes, and piranha-infested rivers. By May 29th, about 5 weeks into the expedition, Fawcett and his two young companions arrived at the outpost where Fawcett had left off in his last search. He gave their native guides a letter written for his wife, and then dismissed them back to the state capital of Cuiaba. 2 years passed without anybody hearing from the team again, and some began to fear that they were dead. The Royal Geographical Society’s George Miller Dyott organized an expedition to find the Fawcett party in 1928, but they came up with nothing. There were rumors that the trio was still alive, either the captives of hostile Indians or volunteers who had given up civilization and gone native. In the 90 years that have passed since their disappearance, over 100 people have been killed trying to look for them. Missionaries in the early 1930s reported hearing stories about a tall, blue-eyed white man in the area who was forced to marry an Indian chief’s daughter. There were also sightings of a white baby boy said to be the son of either Fawcett or Jack. Fawcett’s wife believed that the men were still alive, and claimed to have received a psychic message from her husband in 1934. Psychic Geraldine Cummins also reported receiving a telepathic message from Fawcett in 1936, and received four more communications until 1948, when he told her that he was dead. Further venturing into inanity, some people in the theosophist and flying saucer communities believed that Fawcett really did find Z, which was actually a subterranean city full of UFOs and beautiful red-haired people. Moving onto more “plausible” rumors, there were also stories of Fawcett being killed. One man in 1949 claimed that Fawcett and Rimmell were dead, and he had seen their shrunken heads. Author Harold Wilkins in 1952 heard that another man was shown Fawcett’s shrunken head by an Indian chief. The same year, Brazilian indigenous activist Orlando Vilas Boaz reported that the party was killed by the Kalapalo Indians. He discovered some bones in the area, but later examination showed that the remains weren’t Fawcett. Another theory suggests that Fawcett intentionally went missing so he could establish a remote theosophist-influenced commune. Fawcett’s son Brian made several trips to Brazil in the 1950s to search for his father and brother himself, but he was unable to find any more information about what happened to them. (Article and photos by bizarreandgrotesque.com/2015/08/16/british-explorer-percy-fawcett-and-the-ancient-lost-city-of-z/ By Randall Floyd Special Columnist The forest in these solitudes is always full of voices, the soft whisperings of those who came before.... With those words, written in 1925, Col. Percy Harrison Fawcett embarked on a mission to find a city he believed was part of legendary Atlantis. The British explorer's expedition pushed into the heart of Brazil's Mato Grosso where, on May 30, he proudly boasted in a letter to supporters back home: ``You need have no fear of failure.'' That was the last anyone heard from the colonel. His disappearance shocked and saddened millions around the world who were cheering on his attempt to find ``Z,'' the name he had given the lost city. The quest had begun five years earlier when Col. Fawcett read an 18th-century document at Brazil's National Library in Rio de Janeiro. The document supposedly revealed how a Portuguese explorer had found an ancient, walled city constructed in the style like those of ancient Greece. A military engineer by trade, the 53-year-old Briton had sought lost cities in the jungles of Ceylon as well as South America. Like other adventurer-explorers of his day, Col. Fawcett believed in the legend of Atlantis. It seemed likely to him that survivors of this doomed continent reached South America, where they built cities and temples in an attempt to re-create their destroyed civilization. The old Portuguese document was the proof he needed to confirm the existence of the Atlantean city of Z. Later that year he set out to find the city, but the expedition was cut short by his companions, who quickly had their fill of aggressive insects, deadly snakes, blood-sucking bats, exotic diseases and tangled undergrowth. In 1925, Col. Fawcett, now 58, tried again, this time financed by newspaper companies hungry for his story and by England's Royal Geographical Society. On April 20, he marched from the town of Cuyaba, taking his son, Jack, his son's 18-year-old friend Raleigh Rimell, and two Mufuquas Indians, who deserted him seven months later. A search party in 1928 found a small trunk believed to belong to the missing explorers but nothing else. They were told that hostile natives had killed the three white men soon after they entered the heavy forest. Indians drove the rescuers out of the region before they could confirm the stories. Col. Fawcett's fate remained a mystery. In 1930, American reporter Albert de Winton tried to track Col. Fawcett down, but he, too, vanished in the jungle. A year later, a Swiss trapper, Stefan Rattin, reported that he had come upon an old Englishman living as a well-cared-for prisoner for a group of Indians. Although the man had not given his name, Mr. Rattin's description and the man's circumstances raised hopes that Col. Fawcett had at last been found. But when Mr. Rattin returned to rescue the putative Col. Fawcett, he and two partners also disappeared. For decades afterward, Mato Grosso travelers reported meeting gaunt, English-speaking oldsters along the jungle paths. But no real trace of the British explorer or his two companions was ever found. There have been reports of blue-eyed, white-skinned Indians in the rain forest, said to be offspring of the young Jack Fawcett. Bones unearthed in 1950 and identified as Col. Fawcett's did not, in fact, match the descriptions of any of the three explorers. And there has been speculation that Col. Fawcett's supposed route of march was entirely fictitious - that he had taken quite another path to Z and vanished. In all probability, the fate of the intrepid explorer and his two companions will forever remain a mystery (From phfawcettsweb.org/) James MurrayJames Murray (21 July 1865, Glasgow – February 1914) was a biologist and explorer. In 1902, he assisted the oceanographer, Sir John Murray, with a bathymetric survey of Scottish freshwater lochs. Murray undertook both biological and bathymetric surveys. In particular, he contributed to tardigrade and bdelloid rotifer science: describing 113 species and forma of rotifer and 66 species of tardigrade. In 1907, at the age of 41, he served under Shackleton on the Nimrod Expedition where he was in charge of the base camp. In 1913, he co-wrote a book about the expedition, titled Antarctic Days, with George Edward Marston (1882–1940), a fellow member of the expedition. In 1911, at 46, he joined with the explorer Percy Fawcett, Henry Costin and Henry Manley to explore and chart the jungle in the region of the Peru-Bolivian border. Murray, unused to the rigors of the tropical regions, fared poorly. Eventually Fawcett diverted the expedition to get Murray out, such was his condition. He briefly dropped out of sight, having been recovering in a house in Tambopata. He reached La Paz in 1912, learning that he was thought to have died. Murray, angry at perceived mistreatment at Fawcett's hands, wanted to sue, however friends at the Royal Geographical Society advised him against it. In June 1913, he joined a Canadian scientific expedition to the Arctic aboard the ill-fated Karluk as oceanographer. The ship became trapped in the Arctic ice in August 1913. Eventually, Murray mutinied against the captain and departed across the ice with three others, none of whom were seen or heard from again. All of the Titanic images that I have accumulated over the years. These are in no particular order. I add them to the top as I find something new. As high as an eleven story building and nearly four city blocks long, the Titanic was one of the largest and most magnificent ships in the world (photographed in 1912). Source Titanic at the fitters quay with the three working funnels installed. The fourth funnel on the Olympic class ships was a dummy intended to make the ship look more impressive and safer to the public. The public feeling was that the more funnels a ship had the safer it was. Also, since Cunard's newest ships, Mauretania and Lusitania, had four funnels it was thought that White Star ships should not have less. Aft grand staircase dome: Decorated like the forward grand staircase dome featured in the movie Titanic, the aft grand staircase led down to the deluxe a la carte restaurant, allowing patrons to arrive in style. (Copyright 2012 RMS TITANIC, INC; Produced by AIVL, Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution) According to the claims for compensation filed with Commissioner Gilchrist, following the conclusion of the Senate Inquiry, the single most highly valued item of luggage or cargo was a large neoclassical oil painting entitled La Circassienne au Bain by French artist Merry-Joseph Blondel. The painting's owner, first class passenger Mauritz Håkan Björnström-Steffansson, filed a claim for $100,000 ($2.4 million equivalent in 2014) in compensation for the loss of the artwork. Dorothy Gibson in a promotional photo for Saved From the Titanic (1912), wearing the clothes she wore the night of the sinking. Dorothy Gibson's most famous screen role was that of herself in Saved From the Titanic (1912), based on her experiences in the legendary disaster, released a month after the sinking, was the first of many films about the event. The Titanic is the best known aspect of Dorothy's life. After a six-week vacation in Italy with her mother, she was returning on the Titanic to make a new series of pictures for Eclair at Fort Lee. The women had been playing bridge with friends in the lounge on the night of the ship's fatal collision with the iceberg. With two of their game partners they escaped in Lifeboat #7, the first lifeboat launched. After arriving in New York on the rescue ship Carpathia, Dorothy was persuaded by her manager to appear in a film based on the sinking. She not only starred in the one-reel drama but also wrote the scenario. She even appeared in the same clothing she had worn aboard the Titanic that night—a white silk evening dress topped with a cardigan and polo coat. Although Saved From the Titanic was a tremendous success in America, Britain, and France, the only known prints were destroyed in a 1914 fire at the Eclair Studios in New Jersey. The loss of the motion picture is considered by film historians to be one of the greatest of the silent era. Dorothy Gibson's other accomplishments in early cinema included starring in one of the first feature films made in the United States (Hands Across the Sea, 1911), co-starring in the first American-produced serial or chapter play (The Revenge of the Silk Masks, 1912), and making one of the first-ever public appearances by a movie personality (January 1912). Isidor and Ida Straus, who refused to board a lifeboat while there were younger people still waiting to board. Ida Straus, wife of New York merchant Isidor Straus, was asked to join a group of people preparing to board but refused, saying, "I will not be separated from my husband. As we have lived, so will we die – together." The 67-year-old Isidor likewise refused an offer to board on account of his age, saying: "I do not wish any distinction in my favor which is not granted to others." They were last seen alive on deck arm in arm. Edward John Smith, 27 January 1850 – 15 April 1912) was a British Merchant Navy officer. He served as master of numerous White Star Line vessels. Captain Smith was an experienced seaman who had served for 40 years at sea, including 27 years in command. This was the first real crisis of his career, and he most certainly would have known that even if all the boats were fully occupied, more than a thousand people would remain on the ship as she went down with little or no chance of survival. As Smith began to grasp the enormity of what was about to happen, he appeared to have become paralyzed by indecision. He had ordered passengers and crew to muster, but from that point onward, he failed to order his officers to put the passengers into the lifeboats; he did not adequately organize the crew; he failed to convey crucial information to his officers and crew; he sometimes gave ambiguous or impractical orders and he never gave the command to abandon ship. Even some of his bridge officers were unaware for some time after the collision that the ship was sinking; Fourth Officer Joseph Boxhall did not find out until 01:15, barely an hour before the ship went down, while Quartermaster George Rowe was so unaware of the emergency that after the evacuation had started, he phoned the bridge from his watch station to ask why he had just seen a lifeboat go past. Smith did not inform his officers that the ship did not have enough lifeboats to save everyone. He did not supervise the loading of the lifeboats and seemingly made no effort to find out if his orders were being followed. Bow of the RMS Titanic, photographed in 2004. The wreck is located 370 miles south-southeast of Newfoundland, North Atlantic Ocean. The wreck lies in two main pieces about a third of a mile apart. The bow is still largely recognizable, despite its deterioration and the damage it sustained hitting the sea floor, and has a great deal of preserved interiors. The stern is completely ruined due to sinking 12,000 feet and hitting the ocean floor, and is now only a heap of twisted metal, which may explain why it has barely been explored during expeditions to the Titanic wreck. A substantial section of the middle of the ship broke apart and is scattered in chunks across the sea bed. A debris field covering about 5 by 3 miles around the wreck contains hundreds of thousands of items spilled from the ship as she sank, ranging from passengers' personal effects to machinery, furniture, utensils and coal, as well as fragments of the ship herself. The bodies of the passengers and crew would have also been distributed across the debris field, but have since decomposed and been consumed by other organisms. Exploration of the wreckage found a pair of boots together on the sea floor where a passenger's body had lain. More than two miles down, the ghostly bow of the Titanic emerges from the darkness on a dive by explorer and filmmaker James Cameron in 2001. The ship might have survived a head-on collision with an iceberg, but a sideswipe across her starboard side pierced too many of her watertight compartments. PHOTOGRAPH BY WALDEN MEDIA Two of Titanic’s engines lie exposed in a gaping cross section of the stern. Draped in “rusticles”—orange stalactites created by iron-eating bacteria—these massive structures, four stories tall, once powered the largest moving man-made object on Earth. PHOTOGRAPH © 2012 RMS TITANIC, INC. PRODUCED BY AIVL, WHOI THE FIRST COMPLETE VIEWS OF THE LEGENDARY WRECK Ethereal views of Titanic’s bow offer a comprehensiveness of detail never seen before. The optical mosaics each consist of 1,500 high-resolution images rectified using sonar data. As the starboard profile shows, the Titanic buckled as it plowed nose-first into the seabed, leaving the forward hull buried deep in mud—obscuring, possibly forever, the mortal wounds inflicted by the iceberg. PHOTOGRAPH © 2012 RMS TITANIC, INC. PRODUCED BY AIVL, WHOI Titanic’s battered stern, captured here in profile and overhead, bears witness to the extreme trauma inflicted upon it as it corkscrewed to the bottom. Making sense of this tangle of metal presents endless challenges to experts. Says one: “If you’re going to interpret this stuff, you gotta love Picasso.” PHOTOGRAPH © 2012 RMS TITANIC, INC. PRODUCED BY AIVL, WHOI With her rudder cleaving the sand and two propeller blades peeking from the murk, Titanic’s mangled stern rests on the abyssal plain, 1,970 feet south of the more photographed bow. This optical mosaic combines 300 high-resolution images taken on a 2010 expedition. PHOTOMOSAICS © 2012 RMS TITANIC, INC, A SUBSIDIARY OF PREMIER EXHIBITIONS, INC. PRODUCED BY AIVL, WOODS HOLE OCEANOGRAPHIC INSTITUTION (WHOI) This porthole is among more than 5,500 objects retrieved from the ocean floor around the wreck of the Titanic. Steel hull plates flexed on impact with the seabed, popping out the rigid portholes PHOTOGRAPH BY MARK THIESSEN, NGM STAFF ALL ARTIFACTS COURTESY RMS TITANIC, INC. A gentleman’s pocket watch in a sterling silver case may have been set to New York time in anticipation of a safe arrival. PHOTOGRAPH BY MARK THIESSEN, NGM STAFF ALL ARTIFACTS COURTESY RMS TITANIC, INC. A hat of felted rabbit fur likely belonged to a businessman. In an era when dress defined the man, the bowler marked the professional class. PHOTOGRAPH BY MARK THIESSEN, NGM STAFF ALL ARTIFACTS COURTESY RMS TITANIC, INC. From left to right: First Officer William M Murdoch, Chief Officer Joseph Evans, Fourth Officer David Alexander and Capt. Edward J. Smith seen on the Olympic. Outside of the Officer's Quarters. Paintings by Ken Marschall© Ken Marschall Prints and Posters Available at transatlanticdesigns.com I have tried to find information on this photo. I used Google Lens, and it takes me to several "click here for Titanic photos", so I am not 100% sure if it's from the wreckage. That same site had a photo floating around (no pun intended) of the intact Grand Staircase underwater, knowing that it broke apart and floated out of the top before the ship even hit the sea floor. The richest passenger on the Titanic was John Jacob Astor IV, and was thought to be among the richest people in the world at that time, with a net worth of roughly $87 million (equivalent to $2.64 billion in 2022) when he died. He was last seen smoking a cigarette on deck with an American journalist and mystery writer Jacques Heath Futrelle. Every engineer went down with the ship. They stayed behind to run the power so others would have a chance to escape. The first newspaper to release the story of the Titanic reported that no lives were lost. It took two days for an accurate report to be released. .Over at the Retronaut they’ve highlighted some early, overly-optimistic newspaper reports that came out after the Titanic sank in the frigid waters of the North Atlantic Ocean on April 15, 1912. The World reported “Titanic Sinking; No Lives Lost.” The Vancouver Daily Province declared “The Titanic Sinking, But Probably No Lives Lost.” Meanwhile, The New York Times got closer to the truth with its lengthy headline: “Titanic Sinks Four Hours After Hitting Iceberg; 866 Rescued By Carpathia, Probably 1,250 Perish; Ismay Safe, Mrs. Astor Maybe, Noted Names Missing.” The real death toll climbed to 1,514. Last year, on the 100th anniversary of the maritime tragedy Director James Camron released a video depicting how the Titanic sank. A passenger who lived through the traumatic fire and sinking of a ship in 1871 faced his fears and boarded the Titanic in 1912. He sank with the ship. On 24 December 1871 Ramon Artagaveytia survived the fire and sinking of the ship America, close to the shore of Punta Espinillo, Uruguay. Newspapers reported that the America had been racing another ship into Montevideo harbor and high boiler pressures had led to a fire. There were 114 first class, 20 second class and 30 "popular" class. Only 65 passengers survived. Ramon escaped by jumping into the sea and swimming for his life. Many of the passengers were horribly burned, and the episode left Ramon emotionally scarred. He boarded the Titanic in Cherbourg (ticket number PC 17609, £49 10s 1d) on April 10, 1912, his cabin number remains a mystery as it was never designated on the stateroom assignment list found in the pocket of steward Herbert Cave whose body was later recovered and little is known about Mr Artagaveytia during the voyage. A new rust-eating bacteria, Halomonas Titanicae, will consume of what is left of the Titanic. The attack by the bacteria, added to sea currents and weather conditions, have led many experts to predict that by 2050 The Titanic will be devoured in its entirety, leaving only a story of tragedy around it. The Titanic musicians played 2 hours and 5 minutes as the ship sank. After the Titanic hit an iceberg and began to sink, Band Leader Wallace Hartley and his fellow band members started playing music to help keep the passengers calm as the crew loaded the lifeboats. Many of the survivors said that Hartley and the band continued to play until the very end. Reportedly, their final tune was the hymn "Nearer, My God, to Thee". One second-class passenger said: Many brave things were done that night, but none were more brave than those done by men playing minute after minute as the ship settled quietly lower and lower in the sea. The music they played served alike as their own immortal requiem and their right to be recalled on the scrolls of undying fame. All eight musicians died in the sinking. William Brailey (London, England. Age 24. Pianist) Roger Bricoux (Cosne-sur-Loire, France. Age 20. Cellist) John Clarke (Liverpool, England. Age 28. Bassist) Wallace Hartley (Lancashire, England. Age 33. Bandmaster, violinist) Jock Humes (Dumfries, Scotland. Age 21. Violinist) Georges Krins (Spa, Belgium. Age 23. Violinist) Percy Taylor (London, England. Age 40. Cellist) John Wesley Woodward (West Bromwich, England. Age 32. Cellist There were 13 couples that were on their honeymoon when the Titanic sank. Chief Baker Charles Joughin reportedly swam for two hours in freezing waters before he was rescued. He attributed his survival to the generous amounts of whisky that he drank before the sinking. |
Lisa DoddI enjoy sports, binge watching TV, food, reading, and slightly bearded men. Most popular blog posts from my previous Blog:
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