Unearthed Easter Island Statue

I came across this picture of a moai on Easter Island unearthed.  They already looked big, but after being dug out they look so much bigger!

via

What happened to the records of the 'gods'?

I was listening to Jim Harold's Paranormal Podcast episode titled "Lost Secrets of the Gods" and my mind wandered off on ancient mythology and what might have happened to the secrets of the 'gods' that have since been lost.  To understand where I'm coming from, let me explain how I tend to view ancient mythology.

Before doing that though, let me first describe the other three main viewpoints for interpreting ancient mythology.

1. Fiction - This camp views mythology as nothing more than fairy tales and fantasy.
2. Supernatural - This camp views mythology as stories about actual supernatural beings and events.
3. Aliens - This camp views mythology as stories about advanced alien beings that the human observers simply described the best way they knew how.

The 4th camp, which is the one I would typically associate with, view mythology as something based on real people and events that the observers described (or embellished) the best way they knew how.  

For me personally though, I figure mythology is a mixture of fiction and stories about real people and events.  The people and events in the stories may be embellished or described in a fantastic way, but are nonetheless stories about people and events someone observed.  I view the stories of the 'gods' of mythology as probably stories about ancient or prehistoric aristocratic families.  Families who were somehow able to set themselves up as rulers over other people.  Maybe they were charismatic.  Maybe they looked different or were even members of another species of human from the prehistoric era.  Maybe they were just smarter and were able to gain the respect of others, or, if they were of a more sinister nature, they may have used their wits to manipulate others.  Maybe it was a combination of those things. 

Anyway, the point is I think that at least some of the 'gods' of ancient mythology were real people (and just to be clear, I recognize that some, maybe even most, could be pure fiction).  But if the 'gods' were real people, what happened to their own personal records?  We have stories about them.  But what about their own stories?  Why has no one found the journal of Zeus?  Or the memoirs of Thor?  What about the diary of Venus?

If you look at most of the mythology we have, it's told from the perspective of someone observing the 'gods' and supernatural events.  Sure, sometimes you might have something that was supposedly dictated to someone by a 'god', but that kind of material is usually laws or advice on how to live your life.  It's not really an insight into the day to day activities of the 'gods'.  

When I think back over the various myths that I know, I'm starting to notice they seem one sided.  They seem to be from the perspective of people observing the 'gods'.  But what about the perspective of the 'gods'?  

To get a bit more specific, I started thinking about the story of Krishna in the Indian epic known as the Mahabharata where he pursues an enemy and attacks him with some seemingly supernatural weapon.  The story also mentions aircraft called vimanas and some kind of super weapon that sounds as destructive as a modern nuclear weapon.   I don't know if the story is fiction or if it's a description of an actual event.  But if it is a description of an actual event, where is Krishna's side of the story?  Who was flying the vimanas?  Did the pilots leave no record of that day in battle?  Why is there only one version of the story?

I feel like the explanation is simple for the first three camps I mentioned above.  If you think mythology is fiction, then no further explanation is needed.  If you think it's a supernatural event, then it's easy to explain as something we aren't meant to fully understand or just simply cannot comprehend.  If you think it's aliens doing battle, then you can simply say the aliens have chosen not to give us their side of the story.  

But if we are to assume mythology is based on real people and events, why did those people not leave any records?  At first, I thought the explanation may be difficult.  But the more I thought about it, the more I came up with.

The simplest explanation is that the 'gods' chose to leave no records.  Whereas the stories we have about them were public knowledge and written down, the 'gods' may have preferred to keep their private lives a secret from their subjects.  Perhaps the biggest secret they wanted to keep was that they were really no different from the people that worshiped them.  By keeping their personal lives private, any records from their personal lives have since been lost.  

Another possibility is that their records were destroyed.  Another set of 'gods' may have come and took over and destroyed any records of the 'old' gods in hopes that people would eventually forget them (and for all we know, there may be quite a lot of stories of 'gods' we've never even heard of because of something like that happening).  

One other possibility is that some sort of personal record of a 'god' may have once been known, but was since lost in a fire or something.  Who knows what all was lost when the library of Alexandria burned.  

So I'm not really sure what the answer to the question is.  For that matter, I'm not even sure that ancient mythology is based on real people; it's just that I think it's very possible.  But if any of them were real people, their own stories of their lives seem to have been lost.

If we found evidence of a digital age in prehistoric times, would we even realize what we found?

When I get coupons in the mail, I tend to just drop them in a little container by my front door and figure I will look through them later.  I don't really do a lot of shopping, so I don't really do much couponing, so by the time I get around to going through the pile of coupons I do have, a lot of them are already expired.  As I was going through them today, I was thinking how much nicer it would be to just have all the coupons saved digitally instead of on paper that just creates clutter.

After that, I got to thinking about what it would be like if we eventually went to just having everything we get on paper saved digitally.  A lot of things are already available digitally -- books, bank statements, receipts, etc -- but paper versions of all those things still exist.  But what if the time comes when there are no paper versions?

My next thought after that was what if a long lost advanced civilization had developed to the point of a digital age and kept all of their records on some sort of digital recording devices?  Would we even be able to find evidence of such sophistication if they no longer kept records on paper (or stone) and had not done so for a long time prior to the fall of their civilization?

If you've been reading my blog for a while, you probably already know the topic of lost civilizations fascinates me.  Some people who are interested in the topic tend to have rather grandiose views on the subject, oftentimes imagining some highly advanced civilizations equal or beyond our own today, with things like advanced flying machines and nuclear technology (you can just search Google for fantastical interpretations of stories from the Mahabharata or of Atlantis).  But I tend to think that any prehistoric advanced civilization that has been lost to time would probably be something more along the lines of a Renaissance Italy, but thousands or even tens of thousands of years earlier.  In other words, a high level of architectural skill, formal government, and sophisticated culture (and, to be fair, I think it may be possible they could have had some sort of aircraft, but probably something more simplistic like a glider or balloon).  

But just to have some fun with conjecture, lets go with one of those more fantasy-like lost civilizations.  Let's say some advanced prehistoric culture not only had flying machines, but digital archives.  If we unearthed evidence of those digital archives, would we even know what we had found?

Imagine an ancient Roman farmer tilling his land and then finding something like one of our modern USB drives.

What would he do with it?  Well there's a chance he might think it to be some small, insignificant rock and just continue to do his work.  There's also a chance he might stop and think it to be something fascinating and take it to show to a priest.  The priest may say it is something from the gods, or he might take it and show to some great magister.  Or he might just say it's a rock.  But no matter how many people saw it, I think it is doubtful that it would cross anyones mind at the time that the funny little rock they had found potentially contained someones tax records and photos of their trip to Spain.  They just wouldn't have even had the concept that all of that information could somehow be contained in that funny little rock.  

So what would happen to that funny little rock?  Well, assuming the farmer didn't just ignore it, it might have ended up in a temple or maybe even the Emperor's personal collection.  This could be particularly likely if it was a novelty usb.

Realistically though, there's probably a better chance the farmer would have ignored it.  If the civilization that developed the USB had existed 10,000+ years before the farmers time, there's a good chance the USB would have deteriorated to the point of not really being recognizable as anything, perhaps even to the point of essentially being non-existent as an artifact at all.  So if we found something like that today, would we even know what we found?  

Considering the academic community that would study such an artifact today is generally of the opinion that prehistoric civilizations consisted primarily of hunter-gatherers and farmers, it's unlikely it would even cross their minds that an artifact could potentially contain some prehistoric person's bank statements and videos.  

We do, however, have the story of the Dropa stones.  As the story goes, the allegedly 12,000 year old circular stone discs known as the Dropa stones were said to have been found decades ago and that a Chinese researcher determined that grooves in the discs were actually very tiny hieroglyphs.  It is said he eventually deciphered the hieroglyphs and determined that they told the story of an alien people known as the Dropa whose spacecraft crash landed on earth and, because they could not fix their spacecraft, they had to learn to adapt to living on earth.  

Ridiculed for his research, the Chinese researcher exiled himself in Japan and the stones were allegedly sent to Russia to be studied.  It is said the Russian researchers determined that when the discs were placed on a special turntable, they would hum in an unusual rhythm like an electrical charge was passing through them.

After that, it is said the stones ended up in some Chinese museum, but have not been seen since at least 1994.  If the story were true, then it would appear to be evidence of a prehistoric advanced civilization (albeit, an alien one) that potentially had some sort of digital archive...or at least something of that nature that was different from the usual rock art of prehistoric times.  The problem is the story of the Dropa stones is probably, at best, wishful thinking about some unusual artifacts, and at worst, an outright hoax.

But true story or fabrication, I find the story of the Dropa stones interesting either way because it makes me wonder what we would do if we actually found something like that.  If someone found a prehistoric digital archive, would anyone even be able to figure out how to view the contents of the archive?  Would it even occur to anyone that an artifact could potentially be a digital archive?

Prehistoric digital age or not, sometimes I wonder if we find stuff that is so old, and become so unrecognizable, that we don't even know we've found something interesting at all.

This is why we need an open mind about our prehistoric history

The recent discovery of sauropod dinosaur fossils in South America were found not only in a location they were not expected to be found in, but from a time period they were not expected to be found in.  The evidence suggests the Leinkupal laticauda lived millions of years after it was thought to have gone extinct.




While this dinosaur still lived long before the time the last dinosaurs are typically said to have died off 65 million years ago, it's still proof that new discoveries can rewrite the history books.

But what about the history of human civilization?  We're basically taught that the first humans were hunter-gatherers and that they lived that way for much of history until some started to settle down as farmers.  And it was still a while after that before humans began engineering large cities.  I remember being taught about the "cradle of civilization" in the fertile crescent of the middle east when I was young.  It was said that was when writing first began, and history could be recorded.  That goes back over 6000 years.

But is the "cradle of civilization" really the cradle of civilization?  There is evidence that civilization existed long before the time of the first recorded civilizations in the middle east.  One of the best examples is Gobekli Tepe.

The site of Gobekli Tepe was discovered in 1963 but was not excavated until that 1990's.  Massive stone monuments with elaborate carvings of animals have been found at the site and dated to being at least 10,000 years old.

There is no written record of what the purpose of the site was, who built the site, or how they built the site.  But it was obviously built by skilled engineers and at some point appears to have been deliberately buried thousands of years before the rise of civilization in the fertile crescent.  It is thought only a small percentage of the site has even been excavated, but what they have found so far is proof enough that civilization existed thousands of years before the earliest recorded civilizations in the fertile crescent.


In 2001, it was announced the ruins of an ancient city were found underwater in the Gulf of Khambat in India.  The civilization found there was dated to being 9500 years old.  Whoever built the city obviously built it when the land it is own was above ground.  It is my feeling that there could be many civilizations that existed thousands of years ago prior to the Great Flood (or the end of the ice age) that are now underwater.  The ruins in Gulf of Khambat are just one example.  I elaborate more on my thoughts about lost civilizations and underwater archaeology here.

My feeling is that we need to be more open minded about our prehistoric history.  These are but two examples of prehistoric ingenuity (see more here).  While I am not a dogmatic creationist who believes the world is only 6000 years old, I also do not simply accept "scientific" dogmas about prehistory as fact.  I'm comfortable with my worldview being viscous and shaped by what is discovered instead of just being set in stone.  I don't try to make new discoveries fit into some long held beliefs.  If a new discovery fits with what is known historically, great.  But if it doesn't, then maybe it is time to rethink that part of history.  If a new discovery can rewrite when a dinosaur lived, then new discoveries should be able to rewrite how old civilization is.  And the discoveries at Gobekli Tepe and the Gulf of Khambat are evidence that human civilization existed thousands of years prior to the records of civilization that we have.

Why did we start eating meat?

That's been the question on my mind today.  I am a meat eater, although sometimes I do eat a meatless meal.  But I'm wondering why humans ever started eating meat in the first place?  Or have humans always eaten meat?

It's kind of a difficult question.  This article gives opposing views.  One side points out how humans are more similar to herbivores than carnivores (ex. herbivores have longer intestinal tracts than carnivores, and human intestinal tracts are closer in length to herbivores), but the other side points out  reasons that indicate humans are omnivores (ex. the stomach's production of hydrochloric acid, which isn't found in herbivores).

So were humans always omnivores?  Some of the ancient Greeks believed there was once a Golden Age where humans were non-violent and there was no hunting or livestock breeding.  I don't think there would have been any meat eating in the Garden of Eden in the Bible either.  So perhaps there was a time when humans didn't eat meat?  According to this article, "hominins" (early humans) have been eating meat for 2.6 million years.  That's a pretty long time, but it sort of leaves open the possibility that "hominins" living before that time may have been herbivores.

According to this National Geographic article, eating meat triggered a genetic change in humans that enabled a better processing of fats.  The great apes, for example, cannot handle high fat diets like humans can.  Crooked teeth is also blamed on eating meat.  Apparently our jaws have gotten smaller and supposedly our teeth are too big for our jaws now which is why people end up with crooked teeth (and oftentimes have their wisdom teeth removed).

But I'm not really questioning whether or not humans should or shouldn't eat meat now.  I'm just wondering why humans ever started eating it in the first place?  The Nat Geo article linked above suggests hominins may have started eating meat for ecological reasons -- competition from other species, perhaps.  I guess it's possible, but is it also possible that they just observed carnivores doing it and decided to try it for themselves?  Is there any chance it could have been for religious purposes?

Throughout recorded history, there are records of animals being sacrificed to the gods (or God, in the case of ancient Judaism).  The supposed purpose of the sacrifice was to win favor or make amends with the gods.  But the meat would still be eaten.  So an animal sacrifice was basically like a big barbecue or pig pickin'.  Some might say that very early hominins probably wouldn't have had any religion.  Maybe not, but there is plenty of evidence for prehistoric sophistication, so who knows?  But I doubt humans started eating meat for religious purposes anyway.  I think it is more likely that early accounts of animal sacrifices to the "gods" were an excuse for the priestly class to have free meat brought to them.

So there may not be a definite answer as to why hominins started eating meat.  Competition for food is one possibility.  Sheer curiosity as to what it might taste like is another possibility.  But maybe the bigger question here is where did carnivores come from?  What was the first species to become an aggressive predator?  Why did that species feel the need to hunt down another species and eat it?  From a symbiotic point of view, I could see where there may be a need for scavenging carnivores -- plants get energy from the sun, herbivores get energy from the plants, and carnivores get energy from the herbivores.  A scavenging carnivore could eat other dead animals, so from a symbiotic perspective, they could be cleaning up the dead carcasses they come across.  But is there really a need for predatory hunter in that symbiosis?  What is that need?  Is it to stop overpopulation?  If so, what came first, the predator or the overpopulation?  And who got to decide what "overpopulation" was for a certain species?  Did overpopulation of a certain species really exist?  Or could it be that herbivores who were victims of predators only started to reproduce more often because the predators limited their numbers?  In other words, did overpopulation lead to predatory animals or did predatory animals lead to an increased rate of reproduction in other species?  Was there ever a time where there was a symbiosis of life on earth that didn't include predators?  Did that non-violent golden age the Greeks spoke of ever really happen?

I may be a meat eater, but I like the idea of getting back to a non-violent golden age.  And I guess that is what this post was really all about.

How many men does it take to move a pyramid stone?

I'm not sure, but 80 Amish men picked up a house and moved it on their own (apparently these are the kind of Amish people who don't mind being recorded).


Granted, a single pyramid stone is smaller but denser than this house, but I thought it was interesting because it really shows what men can do with a little bit of elbow grease.  Ancient men wouldn't necessarily need elaborate technology or aliens to build a pyramid.

A simple experiment in anti-gravity

I came across a video today with a guy experimenting with making a 42 pound flywheel seem relatively light...light enough to hold it over his head easily.  The technique involves spinning the wheel up to a few thousand RPMs which makes the wheel seem lighter than it really is.  Check out the video below.


What really fascinates me about this is the simplicity of it.  Because it is so simple, it makes me wonder if the ancients could have utilized a simple method like this in their megalith building.  Not necessarily what was portrayed specifically in this video since, you know, being able to spin a wheel over your head doesn't exactly get a pyramid built, but what other methods of making objects light could have once existed?  The ancients might not have had a power drill to spin a wheel up to a few thousand RPMs, but what if they didn't really need that?  Perhaps they had another way of spinning it up or maybe it wouldn't have needed to be quite that fast (maybe just fast enough to make it light enough for two people to life instead of one).

I like stuff like this because it shows how you can make a seemingly difficult task very simple.

The Dark Skies of 536 AD

The fifth angel sounded his trumpet, and I saw a star that had fallen from the sky to the earth. The star was given the key to the shaft of the Abyss.  When he opened the Abyss, smoke rose from it like the smoke from a gigantic furnace. The sun and sky were darkened by the smoke from the Abyss.  -Revelation 9:1-2

I find Biblical prophecy fascinating.  I think it is remarkably accurate from a historic perspective.  There are different views on how to interpret Biblical prophecies though.  I'm not sure what the statistics are on how many people adhere to one or the other viewpoints, but I think the futurist view is probably the most popular and well known.  Simply put, the futurists view many Biblical prophecies as events that have not yet happened.  This type of view is what the popular Left Behind book series is based on.  It's a very faith based view point, and at one point in time, it was the viewpoint I took.

But there are a couple of other interpretations too.  Preterists view Biblical prophecies as historical events that already happened a long time ago around the time the books were written.  Historicists, on the other hand, view the prophecies as events that have occurred throughout history.  As a history buff, I've come to realize the futurist view just doesn't seem accurate anymore.

For instance, many futurists are expecting a new pagan temple to be built on the site of Temple Mount in Jerusalem with a statue of the anti-christ in it.  But it's known that Emperor Hadrian already built a pagan temple to Jupiter on the site of Temple Mount back in the 2nd century.  It's a prophecy that has already been fulfilled.

So it seems the futurist view may not be all that accurate.  History has taught me the other two views have more merit.  And although I think the preterists have made some good arguments for their case, it's the historicist view that I find most accurate.  The prophecy at the beginning of this post is one of the reasons why.

In the year 536 AD, a dry fog or veil of dust darkened the skies of Europe and Asia minor for around 12 to 18 months.  This event brought decreased temperatures, drought, and food shortages.  Contemporary reports indicate the effects of the event extended to Africa, Mesopotamia, and China.

It's not certain what caused the persistent fog or dust, but it's speculated it was the result of either a volcanic eruption or cometary impact (or even a near miss by a comet).  In the prophecy above, it almost sounds as if both of those events could have happened.  The star falling from the sky could have been a comet and the abyss smoking like a furnace could have been a volcanic eruption.  Could both of those events have happened around the same time?  I'm not sure what the odds are, but I think it's certainly possible.  They could have been separate, unrelated events, or it could be that the cometary impact set in motion a chain reaction under the earth that cause a volcano to erupt.  I think it's also possible that the impact alone could have achieved the description of the prophecy.  The impact could have created an "abyss" and fires could have occurred that caused the smoke.  Regardless of the cause though, reports indicate the skies were darkened for at least a year in 536 AD.

I only recently heard about this historic event.  But in my mind, this is just another example of why I consider the historicist interpretation of Biblical prophecy to be the most accurate.  The event doesn't fit with the preterist view because it happened long after the Bible was written, but it has already happened, so it's not a future event either.

A UFO Battle over Nuremberg or an Atmospheric Phenomenon?

The city of Nuremberg was founded in Medieval times and was once a meeting place of the Imperial Diets (Reichstag) and courts during the time of the Holy Roman Empire.  It's more recently been known as the site where the Nazis held huge conventions known as the Nuremberg rallies.  After the Nazis lost World War II, the city was where Nazi war criminals were brought before an international tribunal to be judged for their crimes.

But Nuremberg is also a city that reportedly had a UFO battle over it on April 4, 1561.  The woodcut below is a report of the battle, complete with an illustration by Hans Glaser.

The "battle" was a mass sighting, reportedly lasting around an hour.  Residents reported seeing cylindrical objects from which red, black, orange, and blue-white disks and globes emerged.  Crosses and tubes were also seen.  Even today, people report seeing "cigar" shaped UFOs and flying saucers (or discs).  A cross shaped object could even be a description of what a modern airplane looks like.  The picture above also depicts a spear shaped object that could almost pass as a silhouette of a Star Destroyer from Star Wars.  So could there have really been a UFO battle over Nuremberg in 1561?

Some skeptics have suggested the event was a hoax, but that's unlikely since there were multiple witnesses.  Others have suggested it was a mass hallucination brought on by ergotism.  While that might not be impossible explanation, I think it's probably unlikely as well.  I find the mass hallucination explanation is typical of a skeptic who doesn't have a better explanation for something, so I don't put a lot of stock in it.

The website ancientaliensdebunked.com explains the "battle" away as nothing more than an atmospheric phenomena known as a "sundog" (also known as a parhelion).  Sundogs are commonly made by the refraction of light from plate-shaped hexagonal ice crystals in high and cold cirrus clouds.

In the above image, you can actually see a resemblance between the phenomena and the artwork (but note that the artwork depicted is not from the illustration of the event depicted in the image near the top of the page, but of something else).

I looked over other images and videos in the debunking article linked above, and, if you accept that Glaser took some artistic licensing in depicting the event (I mean, he did draw a face on the sun, so he must have taken some artistic licensing), it could be a plausible explanation.  But what about the objects that crashed?  It was reported that the objects fell to the ground producing a lot of steam (or a big smoke).  Can atmospheric phenomena fall to the ground?  No, not really, but it might look like it's falling to the ground.  Despite the "objects" reportedly falling to the ground, there are not reports of anyone finding any crashed objects.  It's possible they observed another atmospheric phenomena known as "fall streaks."  Like sun dogs, fall streaks are also made with ice crystals.

Fall Streak

In the image above, you see a fall streak that appears to be black and somewhat triangular in shape...could it be an explanation for what the spear shaped object depicted in the top image is?

My guess is atmospheric or celestial phenomena is the most likely explanation for the event.  Although the description of the "objects" could match the description of some modern day UFO sightings, how often do people report space battles of UFOs that last for an hour?  I'm not aware of any, and if there were any today, you'd think someone would have video footage of it.  If people witnessed multiple UFOs crashing, you'd think someone would have probably found them and documented them.  So I think it's more likely the "objects" were not objects at all, but atmospheric phenomena.  The witnesses probably reported what they thought they were seeing because they weren't sure of what they were really seeing.  And Glaser, who illustrated the event, didn't actually witness the event himself; he was only going by what someone else reported to him.

If only we had video footage of the event.  Even if it wasn't a UFO battle, it sounds like it was a pretty awesome sight to see.

Sources: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5

The Ghost Blimp of World War II

On August 16, 1942 at 6:03 AM, the US Navy Blimp L-8 lifted off from Treasure Island in San Francisco Bay with its two man crew consisting of Lieutenant Ernest Dewitt Cody and Ensign Charles Adams.  It was Adam's first time piloting a blimp, but Cody had experience and had flown the L-8 before in a mission crucial to the success of the Doolittle raid in Japan.  The mission Cody and Adams were on August 16 was to look for Japanese submarines.

A little over an hour and a half into the mission at 7:42 AM, Cody radioed to base that they had spotted an oil slick and were going to investigate.  That would be the last transmission from the crew.

At 11:15 AM, the L-8 was seen returning from sea by beach goers.  Caddies at the Lake Merced Golf and Country Club observed the blimp disappear behind two hills and then rise again after a brief snag on a cliff.  It drifted for a while longer after that and eventually crashed in Daly City in a residential area.

William Morris, a volunteer firefighter who lived in the house in front of where the L-8 crashed, was the first person on the scene.  He assumed the crew would still be inside the cabin and rushed to help them, but as he approached, he noticed the doors were open and no one was inside.  A team of salvagers from the Navy arrived within an hour of the crash and found that two of the three life jackets were missing (which would follow regulations that the crew wear lifejackets), but the parachutes and the life raft were still in place and the radio was still operational.  One of the crew member's caps was found on the controls and a locked briefcase with secret codes was found in place.  The engines were still switched on, but there was no fuel left to power them.  Aside from rips in the dirigible's fabric from tearing across roofs in Daly City, the helium gas valves were still set as they should be and it was determined the dirigible was still airworthy.

The coastline and sea was immediately searched for the crew, but they were never found.  They searched the entire ground area that the L-8 had covered and found no trace of the men and determined that they must not have been on board at any point when the blimp traveled over land.

A later investigation determined that two fishing vessels in the area of the observed oil slick witnessed the L-8 descend to about 300 feet and circle the slick and then rise skyward again.  The fishing crews didn't witness anything fall or drop from the ship.  The L-8's crew were declared missing and pronounced dead a year later.  The L-8 was repaired and used as a training vessel after that.  Goodyear used the blimp after the war and it was retired in 1982.  Goodyear donated the control car the National Museum of Naval History in 2003.

So what happened to the crew?  Were they captured by the Japanese?  Did they go AWOL?  Did UFOS abduct them?  Most likely, it's none of those scenarios.  Despite the fishing crews seeing nothing fall from the blimp, the most probable scenario is they crew just fell out at some point.  The safety bar on the door of the control car was missing, indicating they either opened the door or the door opened accidentally.  If so, they must have fallen out of the blimp at some point over the ocean and were just never seen again.

Sources: 1, 2, 3

The First UFO Photo

A lot of the "early" UFO photos that we're familiar with come from the mid 1900's.  However, the earliest known photo of a UFO actually dates back to the 1800's.

The image below was shot at Mount Washington, New Hampshire in 1870 or 1871 (although some sources have dated it to 1880 or as late as 1896).  As you can see, there's a picture of what appears to be cloud formation...with what appears to be a cigar shaped UFO flying in front of it!

Here is a zoomed in image of the UFO.

So what is it?  Airships already existed by 1870, but they weren't common until the 1900s.  Could it be an image artifact?  Or could it be something even more mundane?  The list below is supposedly a list of pictures that includes this particular picture (it's suggested that number 17 is the picture above).

Nowhere on the list is a UFO mentioned though.  You would think the photographers would have noted that if they saw a UFO...even if they didn't see it until after the photo was developed.  It's also been said that the image is actually a bit of an illusion, not a distant image of a cloud but a close up image of a frost formation.  So what is it really? Who knows for sure.  There's a lot of recent UFO photographs that have debatable authenticity.  This is just the earliest photo of debatable authenticity.

Treasure in Great Pyramid Awaits Discovery says Zahi Hawass

A news article came out today that says famed Egyptologist Zahi Hawass is free of legal charges and is launching a worldwide lecture tour hoping to boost tourism in Egypt.  He's apparently making a pretty big claim too -- he says the Great Pyramid may still have undiscovered treasure.

From LiveScience:

Hawass also said that he believes there are some fantastic discoveries waiting to be made, including more tombs in the Valley of the Kings and a secret burial chamber, containing treasure, which he believes to be inside the Great Pyramid built by the pharaoh Khufu (also known as Cheops).

How awesome would it be to find hidden treasure in the Great Pyramid?  Maybe even the real burial chamber?  I've heard people claim a lot of different things about the Great Pyramid including hidden chambers, but until now, I don't know if I've ever heard Zahi Hawass make such a bold declaration.  Sure, he's the one behind the robot investigation of the two mysterious shafts in the Queen's chamber, but those investigations, while interesting, have been inconclusive.  So where do the hidden treasure claims come from?  Well, the article quotes Zahi has saying this: 

"I'm traveling the whole world. I'm going to Brazil, going to Argentina at the end of the month, going to Australia, New Zealand, everywhere to promote tourism to Egypt and to bring the tourists back because, I think, I'm the only one who can really bring the tourists back to Egypt," he told LiveScience.

Hmm...tourism.  The article goes on to say this:

Tourism plummeted after Egypt's revolution, resulting in lower ticket sales at ancient sites, a situation that has the antiquities ministry strapped for cash.  

"We don't have any money at all for excavation or preservation," he told the audience.

Hmm...and they're short on cash.  Could this just be a marketing ploy to increase tourism and funds coming into the country?

I'd like to think there is hidden treasure in Great Pyramid.  The idea that there is hidden treasure waiting to be discovered is not a new idea.  But I can't help but wonder if Zahi Hawass is only now hyping it in an attempt to increase tourism.

The White Indians of Panama

I came across a scanned page from a book titled Blond Indians of the Darien Jungle on a blog today.

The blogger didn't know if it was legit or an elaborate hoax though, so I decided to look up more about it.  I came across this blog posting that had more information, apparently using the book mentioned above as the primary source.  Here is an excerpt from it:

When Mr. Marsh began his search he did in fact use two army planes in the process, unfortunately they had only one flight. Upon their return the new Army General in the Canal Zone refused further usage of his planes for such a worthless and dangerous venture.

Up until this time Mr. Marsh was a pure skeptic, he had heard the rumors of White Indians, of course but gave them the same validity as the rumors of a Man-Ape beast in the jungle as well. Eventually he charters a boat and his team travels up the inner river to the town of Yavisa, which consisted of only 50 ramshackle bamboo huts. While he was talking to the head man of Yavisa Mr. Marsh had his paradigm change before his eyes. "Across the narrow clearing were walking three young girls, perhaps fourteen to sixteen years old. They wore nothing but small loin-clothes. And their almost bare bodies were as White as any Scandinavian's. Their hair, falling loosely over their shoulders, was bright gold! Quickly and gracefully they crossed the open space and disappeared into the jungle. I turned to the negro headman in amazement. White Indians! The one tale of Latin America in which no respectable explorer dare to believe! The headman did not seem to to consider the sight unusual. "They come from a tribe which lives in the mountains up the Chucunaque," he said in explanation. "Before this they haven't come so far down the valley. But a little time ago they built a house above our village, and families of them come down to trade with us. Some are white, Some are dark like other Indians."
"Take me to their house," I asked. The negro shook his head with great decision. "No. They would kill me," he said. "They will kill any black man if he goes near their house. But perhaps they will not kill you. You are white. Just follow the trail the girls took."

The blog posting goes on to describe the rest of Mr. Marsh's exploration and subsequent return with scientists and notes that the book indicates that black and white explorers in the area had treated the natives poorly in the past, thus the poor history between them.  Click here if you want to read more.  It also goes into some interesting stuff about hidden modern Mayan cities.

I don't think it is an elaborate hoax.  The Smithsonian has pictures of the Marsh-Darien Expedition here, so it obviously really happened.

I think the bigger question here is are the "white indians" white because of a genetic mutation or because they have European ancestry?  Interestingly, the linguists researching their language indicated the language of the "white indians" was Sanscrit or Aryan in structure, and they discovered over 60 words that were identical with early Norse.  With that information in mind, it would seem there is a strong possibility that there was a Norse presence in Pre-Columbian Panama.  I guess the next questions to ask would be how did they get there and why did they go?  Those questions are harder to answer though.

This isn't the first I've heard of blond haired natives though.  I actually wrote a short post about a video mentioning blond haired people living on different continents around the world back in 2009.

Vintage UFO Sightings chart

I came across this UFO sightings chart from the 60's in the UK National Archives Flickr.

I thought it had some interesting designs and interesting that they had it and posted it!

I also saw this artwork sent to the Air Ministry depicting a UFO sighting experienced by a member of the public.

Check out more photos on The National Archives UK Flickr page.

The Hairy Man of the 16th century

I came across this image of Petrus Gonsalvus, a 16th century man with hypertrichosis (also called Ambras symdrome).  Hypertrichosis causes excessive hair growth on the face.  Informally, the condition is also called werewolf syndrome, because the condition causes a person to look similar to legendary depictions of werewolves.

In the mid-to-late 1500s, the Flemish miniaturist Joris Hoefnagel (1542-1600) “set out to capture the variety and perfection of the natural world on the folios of a miniature manuscript.” Above is his portrait of “the Hairy Man” Petrus Gonsalvus, with his wife.

 Some have wondered if people may have once thought people with the condition were actually werewolves.  But I have to wonder if that is true when taking Gonsalvus into consideration.  He lived at a time when many people were probably still superstitious about legends such as werewolves, so maybe people thought that someone with the condition was a werewolf based on their appearance?

Apparently not in Gonsalvus case.  He hobnobbed with royalty and even had a wife, who is painted in the picture with him above.  He also had children, who were said to have hypertrichosis as well.

Another image of Petrus Gonsalvus

This makes me wonder if someone with this condition had ever really been mistaken for a werewolf.  If this guy could get married and hobnob with royalty in the superstitious 16th century, perhaps people even then could tell the difference between a hairy man and a legendary werewolf.

On the other hand though, maybe we can't go by just this one example.  Just because this one guy managed to live a pretty normal life with a hairy face in the 16th century doesn't necessarily mean that anyone anywhere in the 16th century could have done the same.  Afterall, even among most of the population without the condition, some people managed to become royalty while others were peasants and some were outcasts.  Someone with the condition living somewhere else at a different time may have lived in different circumstances.  He could have been an outcast who became a depressed alcoholic and behaved like a madman.  Under those circumstances, people may have thought he was werewolf.

So has anyone with hypertrichosis ever really been mistaken for a werewolf?  We may never really know for sure.

Atlanteans in America?

Is it possible people from Atlantis visited prehistoric America?  That probably depends on what your view of who the Atlantean people were.  If you take the more traditional view of the Atlantean legend, which places Atlantis as a now lost continent in the Atlantic ocean over 10,000 years ago, then it is hard to say, because if that is true, we don't have any of their records or a conclusive archaeological record either.

However, if you consider the possibility that the Atlantean civilization that Plato wrote about was actually a civilization that existed more recently than that, then there is evidence that it may be possible -- perhaps even likely -- that Atlanteans did visit prehistoric America.

So who am I actually talking about?  The Minoans.  The Minoans were a prehistoric bronze age culture that lived on Crete.  They were remarkably advanced for an early bronze age culture.  They had sophisticated architecture that included hot and cold running water as well as sophisticated art and culture.  The legend of Atlantis says it was destroyed by being submerged by water.  And like the legend of Atlantis, the Minoans were likely wiped out by a tsunami after the volcano Thera erupted around 1600 BC.  Not only does the Minoan civilization match Plato's description of Atlantis well, I think it is important to note that we don't actually know what the Minoans called themselves.  The term "Minoan" was coined by archaeologist Arthur Evans after the mythic King Minos.  So in ancient times, they would have probably been called something else.  I think the evidence suggests they were called Atlanteans.  This isn't just a theory I came up with own my own either.  Some archaeologists now believe that the people we call the Minoans were actually the Atlanteans.

So what's this about Atlanteans in America?  If they lived in Crete, how would they have gotten to America?  Well, they were a seafaring culture known to travel the Mediterranean Sea as far as Spain.  But what if there was evidence that they actually traveled much further than that?  There may be evidence that they mined copper on Isle Royale in Lake Superior.

Isle Royale was once home to some of the world's largest copper deposits.  But sometime prior to Columbus coming to America, much of the Great Lakes copper disappeared.  Native Americans were known to use copper, but it is said that there was once billions of pounds of copper in the area, yet no one has found anything approaching that much copper in Native American artifacts.  So where did it go?  According to Scott Wolter of the H2 show America Unearthed, the Minoans must have mined it.

In the first episode of the series, he presents the evidence he has found that Minoans may have visited prehistoric America and mined copper in Lake Superior, which he thinks may have been the copper that actually fueled the bronze age (bronze is made by combining copper and tin).  Although copper can be found in Europe, it has been questioned if there was ever enough in Europe to accommodate the massive amounts used during the bronze age.

The Newberry tablet is a tablet that appears to be ancient in origin and was found in Newberry, Michigan in 1896.  The script on the tablet appears to be written in Minoan script.  It is unlikely the the tablet is faked because it was actually found before the Minoan civilization was discovered in 1900.  To take the investigation a step further, Wolter had the purity of Michigan copper tested to see if it matched the purity of the copper found in a Minoan shipwreck.  It matched.

This revelation doesn't just rewrite the history of America.  His findings not only show that ancient Europeans may have visited America, but it also lends more credence to the theory that the Minoans were actually Atlanteans.  If the Minoans were capable of crossing the Atlantic in the prehistoric bronze age, then they must have been a very advanced civilization -- perhaps advanced enough to match Plato's description of Atlantis.

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View the Great Lakes Copper heist episode of America Unearthed below.



H2 Episode Link

What if time travelers from the future actually came from the past?

Time travel has long been a staple of the science fiction genre.  But the traditional view of time travel from the science fiction perspective seems rather far-fetched.  I try to be open-minded about things, but it just seems unlikely to me that someone could develop a machine that has a dial they could turn that would physically take them to another time period.  Even if someone did somehow develop a machine that could physically take them to another time period, there are so many potential time travel paradoxes out there that I still don't see how it would ever work.

Time Dilation

On the other hand, there may be another kind of time travel that actually fits in with modern physics -- time dilation.  In the theory of relativity, time dilation is an actual difference of elapsed time between two events as measured by observers either moving relative to each other or differently situated from gravitational masses.  Here's an excerpt of the Wikipedia entry on the subject:

An accurate clock at rest with respect to one observer may be measured to tick at a different rate when compared to a second observer's own equally accurate clocks. This effect arises neither from technical aspects of the clocks nor from the fact that signals need time to propagate, but from the nature of spacetime itself.

It goes on to provide a more specific example:

A case of time dilation in action is that astronauts return from missions on the International Space Station (ISS) having aged less than the mission control crew that remained on Earth. Such time dilation has been repeatedly demonstrated (see experimental confirmation below), for instance by small disparities in atomic clocks on Earth and in space, even though both clocks work perfectly (it is not a mechanical malfunction). The laws of nature are such that time itself (i.e. spacetime) will bend due to differences in either gravity or velocity—each of which affects time in different ways. 

In theory, and to make a clearer example, time dilation could affect planned meetings for astronauts with advanced technologies and greater travel speeds. The astronauts would have to set their clocks to count exactly 80 years, whereas mission control—back on Earth—might need to count 81 years. The astronauts would return to Earth, after their mission, having aged one year less than the people staying on Earth. What is more, the local experience of time passing never actually changes for anyone. In other words, the astronauts on the ship as well as the mission control crew on Earth each feel normal, despite the effects of time dilation (ie. to the traveling party, those stationary are living "faster"; whilst to those stood still, their counterparts in motion live "slower" at any given moment). 

With technology limiting the velocities of astronauts, these differences are minuscule: after 6 months on the ISS, the astronaut crew has indeed aged less than those on Earth, but only by about 0.007 seconds (nowhere near the 1 year disparity from the theoretical example). The effects would be greater if the astronauts were traveling nearer to the speed of light (approximately 300,000 km/s), instead of their actual speed—which is the speed of the orbiting ISS, about 7.7 km/s. 

Time dilation is caused by differences in either gravity or relative velocity. Both factors are at play in the case of ISS astronauts (and are actually opposing one another). 

So in other words, if astronauts left earth and traveled far enough away at a fast enough speed, when they returned, more time would have elapsed on Earth than had elapsed for them on their spacecraft...although it wouldn't seem like more time had passed to them.

Now let's move on here.

Lost Civilization

If you've read my blog for a while, you probably know that I'm interested in the topics of lost civilization and the possibility of lost advanced prehistoric civilizations.  I've written about or mentioned the topics in various posts from the past.  Here's links to some of those posts if you haven't read them before and would like to:

Forgotten Civilization: The Science of Questioning or the Questioning of Science?

Did the 'gods' forget how to be 'gods'?

Civilization Lost Documentary

So to sum up here, I like to consider the possibility that there were once advanced civilizations on Earth that have long since been gone...possibly highly scientifically advanced civilizations.

Now let's put these two topics together.

Time Dilation plus Lost Civilization

There's a theory in the UFO research community that has been tossed around before that suggests that (some) UFOs may not be aliens from another planet, but time travelers from the future.  But what if they were actually "time travelers" from the past?  Lets say for a moment that there was once a highly advanced scientific civilization that existed in the distant prehistoric past of the Earth.  Let's say they developed space travel and the ability to fly near, maybe even exceed, the speed of light.  Taking time dilation into consideration, if prehistoric astronauts left Earth sometime in the distant past and traveled far enough away at a certain speed, is it possible that they would return to Earth at a much later time than they left?  I'm not a physicist and math is not my best subject, but lets say some prehistoric astronauts left Earth to embark on a mission that would take them away for several years.  Is there a distance they can travel and speed (theoretical or not) that they could travel at that would have them returning to Earth several hundred or even several thousand or several 10s of thousands of years later on Earth?  I don't know what that speed or distance would have to be, but if the theory of relativity is accurate, then I would assume it must at least be theoretically possible.

So if prehistoric astronauts left Earth for a few years and when they returned a few thousand years had passed on Earth, they might find the civilization they left was gone and new civilization had developed that may have seemed both foreign and primitive to them.  The question then would be did they know they would be returning to Earth thousands of years after they left?  Did they understand time dilation?  For that matter, do we really even understand time dilation?  If they did understand time dilation and our understanding of it is accurate, then why would they leave knowing they wouldn't return for thousands of years?   Since I'm only speculating here, I can think of a few possibilities.

-They knew they wouldn't return for thousands of years and knew they would be leaving their old lives behind, but chose to do so anyway either because they wanted the adventure or they wanted to learn more about the universe.

-They were expecting some catastrophic event and wanted to avoid it by leaving Earth and returning after the event had long been over.

-They didn't actually plan to be gone that long, but ran into a problem that delayed their return.

Maybe you can think of some other possibilities.

So what would the world they returned to be like?  That all depends on what year it is when they returned.  Maybe there were multiple teams of astronauts leaving on multiple missions that would have them returning at different times.  If so, then various UFO sightings throughout history may have been prehistoric astronauts returning to Earth.  If they are human, then it would be easy enough for them to blend in with the populace.  Except the world they returned to would probably seem foreign to them and they wouldn't understand the language.  So even though they may be able to fit in by their appearance, they might not understand the customs or know how to communicate effectively.  Because of that, they may avoid making direct contact.  On the other hand, maybe they would contact the people and set themselves up as 'gods'.  It could be that prehistoric astronauts returning at different time periods may handle their situation differently.  Even if two teams left around the same time, if their missions were different lengths, one team may end up returning many years after the other team returned.  So with no way to contact others from their time period anymore, they may have no choice but to do whatever they see fit.  Perhaps some would choose to avoid contact, perhaps others would choose to rule over the more primitive people they returned to find.  Maybe others would just say screw this and leave again.

Concluding Thoughts

While time dilation may not be quite as cool as driving a Delorian at 88 miles to travel through time, it is something that is based in actual science and not science-fiction.  The idea that some UFOs may be time travelers from the past is, of course, based on the possibility that advanced scientific civilizations may have existed in the distant prehistoric past, which is a debatable topic.  Mainstream academia doesn't typically consider such a possibility, and even though I do feel that advanced prehistoric civilizations probably once existed, even I doubt they had advanced space travel.  But I do like to consider possibilities.  So what if time travelers actually came from the past instead of the future?

Poor Menkaure and Khafre get left out of Pyramid Power Plant theory

The Great Pyramid in Egypt is one of the biggest enigmas of the ancient world.  There are different theories as to how it was built and what it's true purpose was.  One theory is that the Great Pyramid was not a tomb, but a giant power plant.  This is a popular theory among supporters of the ancient astronaut hypothesis and is evident in a recent episode of Ancient Aliens named Alien Power Plants.

This theory is not new and there's no shortage of information about it on the internet.  If you haven't seen the Ancient Aliens episode and don't feel like watching the whole thing, you can watch the video below for a shorter summary of it.



You can also read about it here or here.

That's some elaborate stuff there.  But aren't they ignoring a very large elephant in the room?  There's more than one pyramid at Giza!  And there's a whole lot more than that scattered around Egypt!  This power plant theory seems to primarily focus on the Great Pyramid.  So what is the purpose of the other two pyramids at Giza according to this theory?  Not only do they seem to mostly ignore the other pyramids, but they also ignore the fact that the other pyramids aren't laid out the same way on the inside.  Here is the layout of the Great Pyramid.

You'll notice that Khafre's pyramid below has a different layout on the inside.

Menkaure's is different as well.

You can also check out an interactive walkthrough of the Giza pyramids here.

As you can see, they are all different.  And those are just the pyramids at Giza.  If the theory is partially based on the design of the Great Pyramid, then how do the other pyramids work if they are built differently?

The theory goes on to suggest that there may have been some sort of worldwide power grid in antiquity.  There are pyramids in the Americas and China as well, but those pyramids are not even the same kind of design!  Plus they weren't all built during the same time period!  The American pyramids are not as old as the Egyptian pyramids.  And if it is ever confirmed whether or not the alleged Bosnian pyramids are genuine pyramids, it's possible they may turn out to be even older than the Egyptian pyramids.

I'd love to think that the pyramids may have once been a part of some ancient power grid, but unless proponents of this theory quit ignoring the other pyramids and can come up with an explanation as to how the other ones worked, I'll probably remain skeptical.

Civilization Lost Documentary

I watched a DVRed documentary last night called Civilization Lost on H2 (History Channel 2) that I thought was excellent and fit in well with my recent post Did the 'gods' forget how to be 'gods'?

It covers lost civilization locations such as the 11,000 year old  Gobekli Tepe site in Turkey (which I mentioned in my post Prehistoric Sophistication) and Knossos, which I feel may have once been a part of -- and possibly the capital of -- Atlantis.

More than that, it also goes into what could possibly cause the demise of once great civilizations that have been lost to time and become the things of legends.  It cites examples of modern disasters such as the 2011 Japanese earthquake and tsunami that caused massive devastation and showed how mother nature can inflict destruction swiftly.  Asteroids and climate change are considered as well.

It also questions whether entire civilizations can essentially be erased and forgotten by such disasters and if it's possible our own modern civilization could be erased in a similar fashion.

Definitely a good watch if your interested in the topic of lost civilizations or ancient and prehistoric history in general.  You can watch the documentary below or get it from the History channel's website here.  It's about an hour and half, so if you want to watch it and don't have time now, you can just click the little "watch later" clock button in the video on the bottom right and go back to it another time (this is especially useful if you have a way to watch it on your television, such as with the YouTube app on an Xbox 360).

Did the 'gods' forget how to be 'gods'?

I was listening to the latest episode of the Paranormal Podcast, where Jim Harold interviews Dr. Rita Louise about ancient aliens, and I began to think about my preferred explanation for who the ancient pagan 'gods' were -- humans from a lost advance civilization.  I've written about this idea before in my post Give our ancestors more credit, but after listening to the Paranormal Podcast today, I started thinking more about what might have happened to the pagan 'gods'.

Questions raised on the Ancient Aliens TV show about the ancient astronaut hypothesis include where did they (the aliens) go and will they return?  And those are good questions to consider if you follow the ancient astronaut hypothesis.  All you can really do is speculate as to where they went and if they will come back.  Other questions to consider are why did they leave in the first place?  And if they are coming back, why have they been gone so long?

I feel these questions are more easily answered by replacing the aliens from space with humans from Earth.  Like I said before in the post I mentioned above, the so-called 'gods' may have just been a prehistoric class of aristocrats.  Maybe we can take it a step further and consider the possibility that these prehistoric aristocrats were the remnant of a highly advance civilization that existed prior to some sort of prehistoric cataclysm.  Perhaps it was a civilization with technologies similar to what we have today.  Maybe they had cars, flying machines, and laser technologies.  Dr. Louise speculated that when 'gods' smote people with lightning, maybe they were using laser weapons and the people just called it lightning.  What if that were true....except it wasn't aliens but advanced humans instead?

It's easy to replace ancient aliens with advanced prehistoric humans, but what about the questions I mentioned above?  Where did the 'gods' go?  Will they return?

If the ancient pagan 'gods' were the remnant of a highly advanced prehistoric civilization, they may have been able to attain the position of 'god' in a post-apocalyptic society by saving or scavenging technologies from the time before the cataclysm.  They may have impressed less developed populations with flying machines and charm, or scared them into obedience by threatening them with their advanced weapons...possibly some kind of laser weapons.  The problem for the 'gods' would come when they could no longer maintain their old technologies.

Let's take a look at our technologies today.  If you are reading this, then you must know how to operate a computer or tablet or smartphone.  But if you survived some sort of massive cataclysm on the Earth, would you know how to build a computer from scratch?  If, by chance, you just so happen to be a computer hardware engineer, do you know where you would get the parts to build one from scratch?  And if you do, do you also know how to program the software for it too?  You can probably see where I'm going with this.  You may know how to use a computer, but can you build one?  You may know how to drive a car, but can you build one?  You may know how to fly a plane, but can you design and manufacture one?  Not everyone has the same skill set.  Not everyone has the same level of education.

Now let's go back to the possibility of an advanced prehistoric civilization remnant living in a prehistoric post-apocalyptic world.  Perhaps a prehistoric pilot flew his flying machine somewhere and was able to impress some people with his fancy gadgets or maybe they feared his laser.  Maybe those people would begin to worship and serve him.  Maybe his knowledge gave him leverage and he didn't want to pass it along because he liked being worshiped and served.  Maybe being served was as close as he could get to a life of luxury he had had before.  Or maybe his life wasn't all that luxurious in the first place, and he saw his technology as an opportunity to have the life he couldn't have before.  It's also possible that the first generation of people living after the prehistoric cataclysm understood that he wasn't actually a 'god', but a leader.  Later generations may have perpetuated a myth that he was a 'god' because they were so far removed from the time before the cataclysm that they had no recollection of the way things were or they technologies that had existed.

The problem would come for this 'god' when he could no longer maintain his old technologies.  Maybe he had some mechanical knowledge and was able to MacGuyver some repairs for a while, but eventually the engine would probably fail and he may not have known how to build another one.  His days of flying would be over.  As for his laser, maybe he no longer had the appropriate power source to charge it.  After a few generations, no one would even have any memory of the old world and without proper maintenance, the technologies of the old world would no longer work.

So where did the 'gods' go?  They simply died.  Let's take a look at Greek mythology for a possible example.  Cronus was the original leader of the gods of Greek mythology.  He was eventually overthrown by his son Zeus.  What if Cronus was actually from an advanced prehistoric civilization?  Maybe he flew to ancient Greece and was worshiped by the ancient Greeks already living there.  His son Zeus may have been able to maintain the old technologies for a while, but would the next generation still know how to do that?  What if there were no engineers?  Is this why there were no more generations of 'gods' after the Olympians?  Did the 'gods' simply die off, and with no more technologies, their offspring eventually just merged with the rest of the society, only to be replaced by a preisthood that claimed to have a continued connection with them?  Is this why the 'gods' also had children with 'mortals'?  Did the 'gods' and 'mortals' merge together after that because the 'god' families no longer knew how to build the technologies of their ancestors?  Did they forget how to be 'gods'?

So, if the 'gods' were real humans, will they ever return?  Maybe the question should be, have they already returned and no one has noticed?  Obviously the original 'god's won't be returning if they were human and are now dead, but have we built what they lost?  The technologies that are attributed to ancient aliens such as space ships and lasers are things we have today in one form or another.  Granted, we don't have long distance space craft capable of carrying people to other star systems, but if the 'gods' were actually prehistoric humans, maybe they didn't either.  Maybe they just had flying machines capable of flying in the atmosphere, and those without flying machines just saw them as magical people coming from the sky.  Maybe they never really came from space at all.  Maybe we now have all that they ever had...or more.  With that in mind, could the 'gods' have returned in us?