Don't mix up your implausible aliens. The Zetans from Zeta Reticuli are a creation of Nancy Leider.

__________________
"A witty saying proves nothing" Voltaire.
"All your bias are belong to us" Ara Pacis.

A.dim,

dont know if you've allready read this but anyway. its interesting to realize that the scientific experiences EN.KI went trough in the past might have its reflection in humanities state of the art genetic research.
history repeats itself.

http://news.nationalgeographic.com/n..._chimeras.html

Outcast, that's what I mean by irrelevant posting. The fact that we are capable or incapable of doing something has nothing to do with the claims about ET's, the description of those in ancient myths, and the origin of man, agriculture, civilization, and sex. I'ld rather have posts about the trustworthiness of Sitchin's writings, the mistakes made in mainstream archaeology and paleonthology, the reasons why H erectus could not have evolved into H Sapiens as it is normally accepted, or the evidence (even circumstantial) of the visits of aliens outside of myths. I think there are topics enough in this thread already...

__________________
Knowledge is a curse, but ignorance is worse

Fram wrote:
in your opinion.

well, its what you mean. so what? in MY opinion its relevant and A.dim surely will understand why.

this is not a discussion, this is witch hunting.

want dead end replies? how about this:

and this comes from only this page.

yeah, i wonder why you cant understand (and you do not need to read Sitchin for this) that the scholarly interpretation of Enuma Elish's characters is that they represent astronomical figures. in fact most of the Sumerian pantheon gods have an astronomical symbol. ex: SHAMASH = the Sun; SIN = the Moon; TIAMAT = the Earth

Outcast, let me know when you're ready to answer those questions you still haven't answered, K?

__________________
"A witty saying proves nothing" Voltaire.
"All your bias are belong to us" Ara Pacis.

Outcast, could you please include the names of the original posters in your quotes? It makes it easier to answer and follow, and it is more obvious then that you are mixing quotes of different people.
What's is your problem with e.g. the next to last quote (about the ice ages)? That was to the point and relevant as an answer to a claim A.DIM (I think) made.

It's not because you can read the Enuma Elish as an allegorical astronomical text (and this can be discussed as well) that you can read it as a literal astronomical text. The Lord of the Rings can be read as an allegorical antiwar text (although Tolkien despised this), but you would be hard pressed to read it as a literal description of either WW1 or WW2.
And A.DIM claimed that it should be read as a literal astronomical text.

__________________
Knowledge is a curse, but ignorance is worse

Of course in my opinion, I wrote it. But I presume that you mean that you disagree? Then what does it have to do with those claims, apart from showing once again that humanity on its own is capable of discovering / inventing amazing things?

__________________
Knowledge is a curse, but ignorance is worse

Disinfo Agent wrote:
Whoops, silly me. I thought Nancy was all about Nibiru.
I really need to check my mythology...

Outcast wrote:
Not much point getting into a quoting competition about who made more irrelevant posts. Yours alone would fill many a pages.

Outcast wrote:
I've no doubt.

Now this isn't a witch hunt, you made very outlandish claims and can't come up with any real proof. Old myths are no more evidence than any fictional book these days.

ok, taking the risk of repeating myself let me state this again: despite what Rich said in ealier pages and the current insistance that old "myths" are fictional stories the fact is noone truly knows. what matters, in my opinion, is that they were never considered, by those who meticulously wrote and copied down those texts, to be fiction.

thousands of tablets were safe guarded in ancient librarys, as the Sumerian and later the Akkadian scribes were trained in the scholarly work of copying and maintaning them. according to the scribes own written records, those texts represent human history from the time when the "gods" roamed the Earth.

no scholar who has studied these texts in detail can claim or prove that they represent fictional events. in fact from the 19th century and earlier to this day they are still used as reference for archeological discoveries. the tomb of Gilgamesh was discovered after a literal interpretaion of the Epic of Gilgamesh, for example.

the problem of failling to understand the importance of these texts comes more from misinformation and misunderstanding than from a close and detailed examination of their origins. so, comparing the "Lord of the Rings" with the Enuma Elish which was the story of creation venerated for thousands of years, and the inspiration of the Biblical genesis, is at best a naive attempt at downgradding the level of the conversation.

if this whole thread served no purpose i hope at least it inspired some lurker out there to go search and read about about the amazing Sumerian civilization. to understand and witness how they wrote with such amazing detail about their gods. to find the similarities between those gods and the gods of other ancient civilizations and to ultimately recognize the same archetypical struggle between the two brothers EN.KI and EN.LIL propagated through civilizations and history to our own days.

its a monumental work, no doubt. but i think it goes beyond the cinicism of the nay sayers and the reward is a deep understanding of human nature and history.

you're not interested in answers, every post of yours is a testament to this fact. you hand wave away everything and every reference provided by those you do not agree with. so, to me you're nothing but an armchair debunker with too much time on your hands and a taste for offending and attacking strangers in the anonymous world of the internet.

I wouldn't keep asking for them, if I weren't. Let's hear 'em.

__________________
"A witty saying proves nothing" Voltaire.
"All your bias are belong to us" Ara Pacis.

V-Ger,
as the author of the following comment you should really think twice before accusing others of making irrelevant posts. besides, if you keep this rate of irrelevancy and this taste for disinformation you'll soon also fill many pages of irrelevant babbling.

That doesn't mean what you think it means though. Did the Sumerians believe their religion was true? Absolutely. Does that mean the events described in their religious texts were actually true? Not necessarily.

By way of comparison, one of my favorite historical sources, the Vita Sancti Anselmi by Edmer of Canterbury, talks about various miracles worked by Anselm of Bec. For instance, he supposedly once frightened off some ghost wolves by spitting fire at them. Edmer probably believed that actually happened - but that's not good enough for an historian. To prove that Edmer was talking about something real you would have to prove that ghost wolves exist and that humans can spontaneously breathe fire. Or, put another way, Nancy Leider is probably sincere in her beliefs that she's in telepathic communication with aliens and she has written extensively about the subject. That doesn't mean she actually is.

So taking this back to the Sumerians, you can't simply say that something was true just because they wrote it down - espescially if they were writing about something that violates known science or is contradicted by other texts. Taken a step further, whether you believe the texts should be taken literally or not you need corroborating evidence.

Then where is the evidence for these beings? Show me something - anything - that corrborates this.

It doesn't work that way. You're claiming that the texts should be taken literally, therefore the burden of proof is on you to prove your case. You can't shift the burden to someone else just because he or she asks how you know the texts aren't fictional.

That's fallacious reasoning. Just because one story is true doesn't mean that all of them are true. Moreover, all that find proves is that Gilgamesh existed. It does not necessarily prove that he did the things described in the epic, that Enkidu existed, etc.

Either way, you can't rely on ancient texts as infallable sources. To use a different example, Heinrich Schliemann relied on The Iliad to locate the city of Troy. On one level, this suggests that we shouldn't automatically disregard texts. However, the reality is a bit more complex. Homer was very specific about what the city looked like - specifically that its walls were angled. Schliemann, blinded by his desire to treat Homer as Gospel, kept digging until he found walls that matched that description destroying several layers of ruins in the process. Eventually he found a layer with the right walls, but that city was far, far too small to have been involved in a war on the scale Homer described. The archaeological evidence showed - conclusively - that the textual evidence was contradictory, at best.

Where Schliemann went wrong was to trust his texts more than the physical evidence. You're running into the same problems here. If the Sumerian gods actually existed, where's the evidence that corrborates their religious texts? If they lived in the sky, like the texts say they did, how do you account for things that seem to violate the known laws of science? These aren't trivial objections - these are calls for evidence that directly corrborates your theory and for proof that your theory is physically possible.

Not really. It's a fair summary of the argument at hand since all we have is a mythological corpus that we're supposed to take at face value - the texts are true because they were written down and believed to be true. The first counterargument you need to overcome is how you decided that these texts aren't fictional - and whether you compare that to Lord of the Rings, Atlantis, The Amazing Spider-Man #365, or Dick and Jane to make that argument is irrelevant. The only way to get past these comparisons is to produce some corroborating evidence.

Detail is not necessarily a sign that something is true - and, like it or not, Lord of the Rings is an excellent comparison. Tolkien put an amazing amount of work into detailing the geography and languages of Middle Earth. That does not mean that you once had a bunch of Sindarin speakers living in a city called Imladris.

This also doesn't prove that the texts are literally true since fictional texts can influence cultures as well. There's evidence that Boccaccio's Decarmeron influenced Chaucer's Canterbury Tales. That doesn't mean that either of those were true stories.

Then show me the corroborating evidence.

Outcast wrote:
Emphasis on also eh?

If you then consider these texts to be a depiction of real events, persons and godlike beings, how do you then explain the inconsistancies in the texts from different era's?For example Sumerian Gilgamesh poems say that Enkidu is Gilgamesh's servant and the later, Akkadian Gilgamesh epic tells that they are intimate companions? This is just one grude example but it shows that there are different versions made over time. Which texts are the real ones then? This is very relevant since we're supposed to consider the myths as real history.

Taibak wrote:
Taibak, i do not entirely disagree with the points raised in your post, that is why, contrary to what others have done before in this and other threads on the subject, i do not insist that the AAT or ETH has got to be true. it doesnt really, its an hypothesis that in my opinion, and in the opinion of many others, explains many things. the problem is, its a monumental work that crosses many sciences from ancient history to astronomy and it deals with current human knowlledge of events that happened thousands of years ago. its a different interpretation of the facts and is of course debatable to the smallest detail.

now, its curious that you accuse me of fallacious reasoning when you use the exact reasoning (though oposite) to state your case. that is, you apriori assume that the ancient texts are fictional therefore the hypothisis that the incredible feats of the Sumerian and Vedan gods cannot be possibly true. that is most disingenuous.

Biblical archeology has been for years unearthing physical evidence based on the Biblical texts. so, a literal interpretation of the texts is and should be taken as a possibility.

i disagree. i do not base my assumption in apriori judgements. those who kept the records from the beginning of time never considered their gods to be metaphysical. why should we?

Robert Graves (Graves 1968) writes, "Mythology is the study of whatever religious or heroic legends are so foreign to a student’s experience that he cannot believe them to be true; hence the English adjective ‘mythical’ meaning ‘incredible’; hence the omission from standard European mythologies of all Biblical narrative even when closely paralleled by myths from Persia, Babylonia, Egypt and Greece."

incredible does not mean untruthfull or fictional. those are Western's men preconceptions in action.

Fram said earlier: "It's not because you can read the Enuma Elish as an allegorical astronomical text (and this can be discussed as well) that you can read it as a literal astronomical text."

just because it seems allegorical or even worst, nonsensical to some, it doesnt mean there isnt a hidden truth. it doesnt mean that the allegorical expression doesnt have an underlying interpretation which conveys a more profound truth. in an earlier post i've shown how specific allegorical texts can be misinterpreted and misunderstood, as they have been, if one analyses them with preconceived notions or missing the context.

interesting, the way you inserted the "religious" word in that sentence as a way to reinforce the negative. is it not possible that the "religious" twist, that is the metaphysical interpretation, was added by modern men to real events they had no way to explain? either way, there's no doubt that physical evidence of some sort is necessay.

what do you mean? since when living in the sky violates the known laws of science? if that is so then human astronauts have been doing that for years. besides, from accounts such as the Book of Enoch, the Mahabaratta, the Myth of Etanna, etc, we can understand that the gods lived in an orbital space city. the description of it by Indra is amazing, going to the detail of describing how the aerial chariots that were lunched from Earth docked in the space facilities. simply imagination? maybe, but to me the doubt still stands even if i cant provide physical evidence for the presence of an Earth orbital space ship in ancient times. i dont think anyone can. the only evidence is the description of a similar apparatus across cultures and history. its means what it means and its worth what its worth.

even cultures which suposedly never met each other? i find it incredible that reminiscences of the winged disk or the second sun of the Sumerians, from whence the Anunnaki came, appears in so many cultures. coincidence?

maybe someday physical evidence will be unearthed but, in my opinion, there are good reasons why such evidence, even if it has allready appeared, will probably remain hidden.

http://www.mystae.com/streams/science/russcrew2.html

yes, its called irony.

there is no question there are fragmentary "myths". allthough i wouldnt consider that example as a major inconsistency. Enkidu, better yet, EN.KI.DU means the creature of EN.KI, the creator god. Enkidu is described as a human to which was taught civilization by the gods. after that he was certainly put at the command of Gilgamesh, two thirds god and King among early humans. not happy with his mortal destiny on Earth, and conscient to the fact that he was part god, he went on a journey with Enkidu to meet Utnapishtin, the Sumerian Noah, in order to ask the gods for immortality.

Taibak responded earlier and said it better than I can, so I'll leave the most unanswered.

Emphasis mine. So you agree that to find that meaning, you don't read the text literally, but you interpret it?
I would have loved to emphasize the next line, but that would have been too harsh...

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Knowledge is a curse, but ignorance is worse

Ah, a new tangent. I don't see how this shows that any evidence would remain hidden? This "evidence" is published and available on the internet, so what is there hidden about it?

I have searched a bit more about this doscovery, and apparently one of the discoverers is Valery Mikhailovich Uvarov (referenced in your link a well), as can be read on this site.
He has some amazing things to say on other subjects as well, like Planet X.

Do you mind if I don't take any of this serious (it was a good laugh though), and by consequence regard the claims about prehistoric nanotechnology with some skepsis as well?

This page as well deals with these finds. Again the institute in Helsinki remains unnamed (what a pity), but the artifacts have been dated!
What tests? Ah, that remains a mystery... How you can find something with a size of 1/10000 of an inch is intriguing as well, but as I'm not a geology expert, I'll leave that to others. And it's of course too bad that there seems to have not been any further articles about the finds since 1998. I can find no other references to scientific assistant Matveyeva, and it's even hard to find out i the ZNIGRI really exists. So all we have are two articles, 6 and 7 years old, from a German scientist (?), citing an unnamed Helsinki institute, an unknown Russian scientist, another Russian who is clearly woowoo, a dating method which remains unknown, and some insinuations by you that if any evidence is or was found, it would remain hidden somehow. :roll:

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Knowledge is a curse, but ignorance is worse

Fair enough, but without anything to corrborate this hypothesis it can never be anything more.

That's hardly insurmountable. There are plenty of historians with broad training. In fact, most historians (at least most good ones) have at least rudimentary training in anthropology, archaeology, literature, and linguistics. A good amount of them have science training as well.

Ah... the joys of history.

Except it's an assumption that I'm more than willing to change. I'm perfectly willing to accept that these people may have existed but only if I see some evidence that confirms it. I also do not think that the mythology in question is strictly fictional - elements of it were most likely based in fact.

However, that does not mean I can't (rightly) take a skeptical approach to my sources. From that point of view, supernatural beings are (rightly) generally dismissed as fictional. Granted, you've claimed that the gods probably weren't supernatural but that only gets us past the initial skepticism check. It plants the burden of proof firmly on your shoulders to show that these people existed.

Yes, but be careful - otherwise you're back to the fallacy I mentioned above. The Book of Joshua mentions the Battle of Jericho and yes, there is evidence that there was one. However, there's no reason to take Joshua literally when it says that the city's walls fell thanks to some coordinated trumpet playing and shouting.

Because what you're arguing is, essentially, that we should believe everything that they're telling us without question. The Sumerians believed that their religion was true. Big deal. Everyone believes their religion was true; that's sort of the point. The question I'm asking is how you, as an historian, distinguish between belief and fact within your sources. How do you know that these things actually happened, regardless of whether or not the Mesopotamians believed they did?

That's why I keep asking for evidence. Simply put, not all mythologies can be literally true. For instance, the Mesopotamian, Shinto, Judeo-Christian, Egyptian, Hindu, Norse, and Greco-Roman texts all contain different accounts of creation. Even though each culture believed that their respective religions were true, it's not possible for all of them to have been 100% accurate accounts. As an historian, what have you done to decide that the Mesopotamian account is true? What makes their version special? What evidence corrborates that position?

This is true, BUT, keep in mind that nowhere in that quote does Graves imply that those mythologies are true. He's saying that the Bible should be treated like any other mythology. Leaving one's beliefs aside for the moment, that's a perfectly good bit of historiography.

But if you go hunting for a 'hidden truth' or 'allegorical expression' you're no longer taking a text literally which you've claimed we should do. How do you determine when you use each approach?

No, I'm just picking out the religious texts from other texts that might mention the gods (the Epic of Gilgamesh, for instance). If you prefer, I can rephrase the question as 'Where's the evidence that corrborates their mythology?'

Okay, fair point. But keep in mind that this thread has seen claims that the Mesopotamian gods did quite a few things that violate known science.

Ah, but what you've just described would be an EXCELLENT source of corrborating evidence. Space stations are fast-moving, naked-eye objects that are visible along their entire orbits. In other words, they stick out like a sore thumb particularly in a sky with no other artificial satellites. Does this facility show up in any astronomical texts, particularly those from other cultures?

I don't follow you here.

Actually, yes, it is possible. Thor Heyerdahl based his theories, in part, on similar artistic styles between various cultures BUT there's still no solid evidence that those cultures were in contact. The aforementioned St. Anselm's theories sound a lot like Plato, but there's no evidence that Plato's writings were available in western Europe at the time. Synchronicity can, and does, happen. Again, you need corroborating evidence to prove contact.

Then what good is a theory without any evidence?

I have to agree with Fram on this one. Your source is not credible.


Edited to insert the word 'can't.'

Outcast wrote:
Didn't realize you knew the word...


Put certainly at the command of Gilgamesh?Why certainly?According to which version? Inconsistancies are hardly minor; Sumerian poems and the Akkadian epic are separated by a millenia. Why EN.KI.DU instead of Enkidu? I've only seen the "normal" spelling.

I remember the "spiral" being brought up by finnish woo-woo's in a television debate (typically about one minute before the ending so no one could reply). Living right next to Helsinki I would be interested to know which was this "independent institute" and what they concluded. The local woo-woo's not so surprisingly didn't mention it again even though they were quite vocal in the mid 90's.

Let me clarify this a bit. In hindsight, I don't think it's as clear as I intended.

Whenever one sits down with an historical source, the first thing to ask is whether or not the text is talking about something plausible. The standard here is pretty low; the only things I would rule out are things that either violate scientific laws or things that contradict a number of other sources. To go back to the Vita Sancti Anselmi, Edmer's claim that Anselm spit fire can be safely dismissed as impossible. By the same token, if Edmer claimed that Anselm spent Christmas in 1096 in Paris when a dozen other independent, contemporary sources say he was in London at the time, then it's safe to conclude that Edmer would, again, be wrong. Whether Edmer believed that his version of events was the correct one is essentially irrelevant.

After that, one should (generally) give the source the benefit of the doubt. After all, whoever wrote it was probably much better placed to know what was going on than any of us are. However, you still need corroborating evidence, whenever possible. More importantly, as the claims get bigger, the persons involved become more prominant, and the events in question become more important the more evidence you need. The monk Anselm saved from the ghost wolves I mentioned earlier isn't all that important and doesn't seem to have been involved in anything besides this one miracle story. In that case, it doesn't really matter whether he actually existed or not - it wouldn't change the big picture.

Getting back to Mesopotamia and the argument at hand, we're talking about beings that were revered as gods in multiple cultures and who lived in a space station. To say that's a big claim would be an understatement. For starters, it raises more questions than it answers. What happened to the space station? Did it crash? If so, where's the wreckage? Did it leave orbit? If so, where did it go and how? Why didn't anybody notice it in the skies? What happened to Enki and Enlil?

On top of that, leaving aside the question of whether or not they were gods and whether or not the Mesopotamians had religion, we're talking about people who were extremely important within their societies. Why don't we find any evidence of them having been real people? Where are their tombs? If they had the kind of control over the societies that Outcast has argued, where are the monuments to their rule? How long were they alive? In addition, Enki and Enlil were supposedly active outside of Mesopotamia. If that was so, the questions I just asked need to be asked for every culture involved. Indeed, the more active these people were the harder it becomes to believe that they did so much without leaving behind any evidence.

Fram wrote:
reading what i wrote before, followed by my quote from mystae i can understand the reason for these questions. but my intention when providing that link was not as evidence for the previous comment. i just wanted a skeptic opinion on this subject.

not at all. i sure would like to see some evidence for those alien technologies in russia. :-?
anyway, it appears that Dr. Valerii Ouvarov did further analysis of the evidence and is not responsible for the discovery, so i dont think that Ouvarov's personal out of the box ideas should be responsible for casting doubt on other peoples work. case in point:

at the bottom of the page, Hausdorf makes the following comment:

so i dont think the information was presented in bad faith even if it deserves a skeptical view. and i mean a skeptical view, not a swift debunking based on things other than the work in question.

i'll search the net for more information about this.

sumerian is an agglutinative language and a word is sometimes formed by other compound words to derive a meaning. it could also be spelled EN-KI-DU, either way it would be correct. some scholars use the dot character when rendering sumerian words.

I didn't claim Hausdorf was in bad faith, but the fact that the only source I was able to trace on the Net is clearly a very unscientific professor, doesn't give a good impression of the critical skills of Hausdorf. Your last quote comes from the same source, so that might explain why there is nothing to be found about it (in my search). There is very little to be found about the ZNIGRI and nothing about the assistant featured in the article, and there has been no follow-up on these two articles as far as I can find. Every other page about these finds is clearly only based on Hausdorfs articles. So I see no reason to approach this any other way than very sceptical until more information comes around.

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Knowledge is a curse, but ignorance is worse

Outcast wrote:
By all means do so, but I can pretty safely assure you that if a scientific institute in this country dated a microscopical artificial object to be prehistoric or anything that constitutes as ancient it would have made the headlines at least here and I would have heard about it. The only time I've ever heard about the "spirals" was as I said earlier, on TV years ago.

i found two geological institutes in Moscow:

VNIIZarubezhGeologiia (All-Russian Research Institute for Overseas Geology) Moscow

and

VNIIGeosistem (All-Russian Research Institute for Geological Systems)