Mohenjo-Daro

Geodesy

Published August 28, 2012

Geodesy is usually defined as the me asurement and mapping of the Earth. James R. Smith, the author of Introduction to Geodesy ^[^1947] has conflated several definitions to produce “Geodesy, from the Greek, literally means dividing the earth, and as a first objective, the practice of geodesy should provide an accurate framework for the control of national topographical surveys. Thus geodesy is the science that determines the figure of the earth and the interrelation of selected points on its surface by either direct or indirect techniques. These characteristics further make it a branch of applied mathematics, one that must include observations that can be used to determine the size and shape of the earth and the definition of coordinate systems for threedimensional positioning; the variation of phenomena near to or on the surface, such as gravity, tides, earth rotation, crustal movement, and deflection of the plumb line; together with units of measurement and methods of representing the curved earth surface on a flat sheet of paper.”

Geodesy as a science can be traced back to Pythagoras (6^th cent. BC), who was thought to be the first to propose the sphericity of the Earth. Aristotle & Archimedes were apparently the first the offer a figure for the diameter of the Earth, suggesting 400,000 and 300,000 stades respectively. The difference might be partly explained by the use of a different length of stade.

Later, Eratosthenes (276 BC– 195 BC) offered another early attempt to determine the dimensions of our Earth and succeeded with remarkable accuracy.

A controversial aspect of modern geodesy is the claim that many ancient sites were deliberately established at locations that had a specific geodetic relationship to each other and/or the dimensions of the Earth. For example^(a)in ancient Egypt, the distance from Giza to the Equator was calculated to be 1/12^th the circumference of the Earth, Amarna to the Equator is 1/13^th, Luxor 1/14^th and Philae 1/15^th!

Graham Hancock in his Heaven’s Mirror^[855] pointed to similar relationships around the globe suggesting a possible world grid. This idea of a world grid has a number of supporters but is often classified as a ‘fringe’ interest due to the attempt by some to link gridlines with UFOs and their use of the grid as a power source^(w). Hancock’s various claims regarding the dimensions of the pyramids and their association with a suggested world grid has been challenged in great detail by a Hall of Maat article by Thomas W. Schroeder^(ah), concluded that “Graham Hancock’s assertion that the Great Pyramid’s dimensions reveal knowledge of earth’s dimensions certainly lacks proof but also fails to hold up to any scrutiny as a viable theory. Each step argued by Hancock; that the Great Pyramid was built to a specific scalar, that the value of the scalar can be definitively demonstrated, that the scalar indicates precession, that the only way ancient Egyptians could estimate precession is to leverage or borrow knowledge from earlier advanced and unrecognized civilizations, are each filled with flaws when taken individually, let alone when strung together to complete his narrative.”

>>The idea of a global grid has been pursued by a number of investigators, often with conflicting results. In the 1980s William Becker and Bethe Hagens published their widely referenced Planetary Earth Grid^(aj). They “discussed the code of the Platonic Solids’ positions on Earth, ascribing this discovery to the work of Ivan P. Sanderson, who was the first to make a case for the structure of the icosahedron at work in the Earth. He did this by locating what he referred to as Vile Vortices refer to a claim that there are twelve geometrically distributed geographic areas that are alleged to have the same mysterious qualities popularly associated with the Bermuda Triangle, the Devil’s Sea near Japan, and the South Atlantic Anomaly.”^(ak)<<

Possibly related features may be the ley lines identified by Alfred Watkins in Britain^(c)(g), the Alesia alignments in France discovered by Xavier Guichard^(b)and/or the Heilige Linien of Germany claimed by Wilhelm Teudt^(aa).

Heinz Kaminski claimed to have discovered a megalithic grid system that stretched from Stonehenge across Europe with an east-west and north-south orientation and referred to as the Stonehenge/Wormbach System^(h).

Even more exotic is the ancient Raetiastone navigation system rediscovered by Gerhard Pirchl (1942-2013) and outlined in a book by ^[1831] Thomas Walli^(ae).

Ashley Cowie has published a paper^(ac) related to Alesia and the work of Guichard and others, as well as his own investigations.

I should also point out that Marcel Mestdagh also identified a form of a road system, laid out in giant ovals with radials in France. At the centre of these ovals was the ancient city of Sens. Philip Coppens informs us ^[1275.184] that a further strange discovery by Mestdagh was that this ancient road network, centred on Sens, was mirrored by a similar network of roads in England centred on Nottingham!

‘The Way of Virachoca’ in the Andes which runs through Tiwanaku and is oriented exactly 45° west of true north and runs for over 1000 miles, has been studied by Maria Scholten d’Ebneth ^[¹²³⁶^] in the 1970s and expanded on by a number of Spanish speaking commentators and is now the subject of an article by Dave Truman^(x).

In 1973, three Russians, engineers Valery Makarov and Vyacheslav Morozov along with Nikolay Goncharov, an artist, published in Russian an article with the eye-catching title of Is the Earth a Giant Crystal?^(y) This was probably the earliest presentation of an earth grid based on ancient historical sites. A brief history of the earth grid theories that emerged around this time is available online^(z). There is now a Russian geodesy website with an English translation^(ab).

David Hatcher Childress published his Anti-Gravity and the World Grid ^[1303] in 1993, with the modest claim that he “proves that the earth is surrounded by an intricate electronic grid network offering free energy.” Obviously, Childress’ understanding of ‘proof’ is different to mine, as the only proof required is the production of some of this free energy, which he has not done.

Tom Brooks^(ai) entered the fray with a study of 1500 prehistoric sites and his conclusion that the inhabitants of ancient Britain had designed a navigation system based on a grid of isosceles triangles⁽ⁱ⁾. Brooks has gone a step further and speculatively claimed that the accuracy of this geometry-based system could only have been designed through “extraterrestrial intervention”^(r). This concept is explored more fully in his latest book, Seeing Around Corners: Geometry in Stone Age Britain ^[863]and in a series of video clips^(s). A more critical view of Brooks’ ideas is also available on the Internet^(j).

Some years ago a former employee of a NASA sub-contractor, Maurice Chatelain claimed that within a 450-mile radius of the Aegean island of Delos that 13 mystical sites, when connected by straight lines formed a perfect Maltese Cross^(u)!

Others such as Livio Stecchini^(d) and Jim Alison^(e)using geodetic calculations have identified São Tomé and Cape Verde respectively as the location of Atlantis. I must also include Hugo Kennes, a Belgian researcher with a passionate interest in global grids and sacred geometry^(l). Kennes has also informed me of a new Facebook group^(q) dealing with all aspects of the subject, as well as another^(v) that includes submerged cities and other features.

Anyone interested in pursuing a study of this subject might like to look over James Q. Jacobs’ archaeogeodesy website^(f) as well as the BioGeometry website ^(m).

If you have pursued all the links so far, you can pamper yourself further with a paper^(k) by William Becker and Beth Hagens⁽ⁿ⁾.Another researcher in this field is Dan Shaw whose website^(o) gives a good overview of the subject.

Jean-Pierre Lacroix added his weight to the debate with his 1998 paper entitled The Mapmakers from the Ice Age^(t).

A global network of sacred sites was also put forward by Rand Flem-Ath & Colin Wilson in The Atlantis Blueprint ^[⁰⁶³^]. This book was intended as a sequel to When the Sky Fell ^[⁰⁶²^], but generally wandered off into other areas after the first couple of chapters.

I am somewhat sceptical about certain aspects of geodesy, particularly some of the claims of a world grid. However, it does raise many questions that require further study and explanation. In this connection, I would recommend John Sase’s Curious Alignments ^[1589]as a good starting point. He confirms the work of Guichard and also offers a range of his own discoveries in the Great Lakes region.

In February 2020, Frank Maglione Nicholson, Ken Phungrasamee & David Grimason, collectively known as The Nazca Group^(ad), published The Nazca Great Circle Map Hypothesis. Their claim is that “The lines and geoglyphs carved into the Nazca plateau represent a map of the Earth. The map is a Great Circle Map: a gnomonic projection with the center of the Earth as its cartographic viewpoint. Each line on the Nazca Plateau represents a great circle of navigation centred at the centre of the Earth and encircling the entire planet. The majority of the lines on the Nazca Plateau radiate from five loci of origin called radial centres.” I found this rather esoteric proposition difficult to absorb.

Arturo Villamarin has published many books ^[1864] and papers^(af)(ag) in which the geometry and astronomy of archaeological monuments; Göbekli Tepe, Stonehenge, Teotihuacán and Mohenjo Daro, among others, are discussed.

^(a) http://www.ancient-wisdom.com/geodesy.htm

^(b) http://www.ancient-wisdom.com/xavierguichard.htm

^(c) http://www.ancient-wisdom.com/leylines.htm

^(d) http://www.metrum.org/mapping/atlantis.htm (link broken Dec. 2020)

^(e) http://home.hiwaay.net/~jalison/concl.html

^(f) https://web.archive.org/web/20200917015056/http://www.jqjacobs.net/index.html

^(g)https://liminalthresholds.blogspot.ie/2008/04/earth-energy-ley-lines.html

^(h)https://atlantisforschung.de/index.php?title=Die_%22ganzheitliche_Atlantisforschung%22_des_Prof._Heinz_Kaminski

⁽ⁱ⁾ See: https://web.archive.org/web/20160628154229/https://www.prehistoric-geometry.co.uk/

^(j) https://www.badscience.net/2010/01/voices-of-the-ancients/

^(k) https://www.bibliotecapleyades.net/ciencia/antigravityworldgrid/ciencia_antigravityworldgrid02.htm

^(l) https://web.archive.org/web/20210518205346/http://users.telenet.be/kenneshugo/alternative history sciences.htm

^(m) https://web.archive.org/web/20170328094319/https://www.biogeometry.org/page34.html

⁽ⁿ⁾ Bethe Hagens – Geometry, Anthropology anf the Arts of Consciousness (archive.org)

^(o) https://www.vortexmaps.com/grid-history.php

^(q) https://www.facebook.com/groups/175027289350368/

^(r) https://www.prehistoric-geometry.co.uk/ [See (i)]

^(s) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R35A80kV0AU&feature=relmfu

^(t) https://ancientcartography.net/geoAN.html

^(u) https://www.mail-archive.com/ctrl@listserv.aol.com/msg28306.html

^(v) https://www.facebook.com/groups/493298404177687/

^(w) https://predictionsmargiekay.blogspot.ie/2014/08/lines-of-latitude-and-ufoparanormal-hot.html

^(x) https://grahamhancock.com/trumand1/

^(y) https://atlantipedia.ie/samples/archive-3193/

^(z) https://www.vortexmaps.com/grid-history.php

^(aa) https://www.cantab.net/users/michael.behrend/repubs/teudt_hl/pages/index.html

^(ab) http://geolines.ru/eng/

^(ac) Solstice Axis Of The Ancient Gauls — ASHLEY COWIE (archive.org)

^(ad) The Nazca Solution – The final solution to what the Nazca Lines represent (archive.org)

^(ae) https://www.megalithic.co.uk/article.php?sid=2146413597

^(af) (99+) (PDF) THE GEOMETRY AND ASTRONOMY OF ARCHAEOLOGICAL MONUMENTS | Arturo Villamarin – Academia.edu

^(ag) (99+) (PDF) THE GEOMETRY AND ASTRONOMY OF GOBEKLI TEPE | Arturo Villamarin – Academia.edu

^(ah) https://www.hallofmaat.com/numerology/a-critique-of-graham-hancocks-forced-numerical-relationship-between-the-great-pyramid-of-giza-and-earths-dimensions-1/

^(ai) Prehistoric man ‘used crude sat nav’ | Stonehenge Stone Circle News and Information (stonehenge-stone-circle.co.uk) *

^(aj) Microsoft Word – antigravity.doc (montalk.net) *

^(ak) https://www.crystalinks.com/grids.html *

Tagged Alesia, Alfred Watkins, Andes, Archimedes, Aristotle, Arturo Villamarin, Ashley Cowie, Beth Hagens, Bethe Hagens, Cape Verde, Colin Wilson, Dan Shaw, Dave Truman, David Grimason, David Hatcher Childress, Delos, Eratosthenes, Facebook, Frank Maglione Nicholson, Geodesy, Gerhard Pirchl, Giza, Gobekli Tepe, Graham Hancock, Hall of Maat, Heilige Linien, Heinz Kaminski, Hugo Kennes, James Q. Jacobs, James R. Smith, Jean-Pierre Lacroix, Jim Alison, Ken Phungrasamee, ley lines, Livio Stecchini, Maltese Cross, Marcel Mestagh, Maria Scholten d’Ebneth, Maurice Chatelain, Mohenjo-Daro, Nikolay Goncharov, Nottingham, Philip Coppens, Pythagoras, Rannd Flem-Ath, Rasetiastone, Sao Tome, Sens, Stades, Stonehenge, Teotihuacan, The Nazca Group, The Way of Virachoca, Thomas W. Schroeder, Thomas Walli, Tiwanaku, Tom Brooks, UFO's, Valery Makarov, Vyacheslav Morozov, Wilhelm Teudt, William Becker, Wormbach, Xavier Guichard

Dholavira *

Published June 2, 2010

Dholavira is a recently discovered city of the Indus Valley civilisation, and is now estimated to be one of the five largest (out of 700) Harappan sites, covering an area of up to 100 hectares. It is known locally as Kotada. Only 10% of the site has been excavated, leaving a promise of further important discoveries still to come.

Its foundation is dated to around 3000 BC and it flourished until approximately 1500 BC⁽^a⁾. 2010 saw the first discovery in Dholavira of an inscription on natural stone in the Indus script. 2011 produced a report⁽^b⁾ that what may be the world’s oldest theatrical stage had been found on the Dholavira site.

In October 2014 it was reported that a stepwell, dated to 3000 BC, had been discovered at Dholavara that was three times the size of the ‘Great Bath’ at Mohenjo Daro^(c).

The city has number of special features outlined on a Pakistani website in 2015. The same posting^(f) suggests that “the Indus Valley civilisation. Ideally it should be called Indus-Saraswsati civilisation, but the work to trace the path of saraswati is still in progress.”

At least two writers have claimed Dholavira as the source of Plato’s Atlantis story. Radek Brychta who has already written^(d)(e) on the subject of an Atlantean connection and Yashwant Koak who is planning to publish in the near future, although, as of May 2018 nothing further has been heard of this.One claim is that “the archaeological discoveries at the site of Dholavira matches 90% of the description of the Atlantis city.”

Brychta wrote an article on his Atlantean Dholavira for the Atlantisforschung.de website^(d)..

^(a)https://www.worldatlas.com/articles/dholavira-ancient-wonder-of-gujarat.html

⁽^b⁾ https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/city/rajkot/Will-Dholavira-ruins-rewrite-history-of-ancient-theatre/articleshow/7400422.cms

^(c⁾5,000-year-old Harappan stepwell found in Kutch, bigger than Mohenjodaro’s | India News – Times of India (archive.org) *

^(d)https://atlantisforschung.de/index.php?title=Die_Entdeckung_von_Platons_Atlantis_VII_b (German)

^(e) https://atlantis.brychta.org/en7.htm (English)

^(f) https://defence.pk/threads/dholavira-the-zenith-of-harappan-town-planning.372591/

Also See: Dilmun

Tagged Atlantis, Dholavira, Indus Valley, Mohenjo-Daro, Plato, Radek Brychta, Saraswsati, Yashwant Koak

Indus Valley

Published May 28, 2010

The Indus Valley civilisation is dated to 2600-1900 BC (preceded by the Mehrgarh People) is now referred to as the Harappan civilisation. To date, over a thousand settlements and five cities have been identified, but only 10% have been excavated^(v).

The origins of the Indus people has been debated for some time, but a DNA study of four skeletons discovered, some years ago, at Rakhigarhi, in India, may offer some clues. However, three years later (2017) the results have still not been made public^(z)(aa)! A September 2019 report in Live Science highlighted the fact that gathering usable DNA from the Indus Valley is extremely difficult as the climate there degrades it rapidly. Attempts to extract DNA from 61 individuals in the cemetery in Rakhigarhi were successful in only one instance. Unfortunately, only limited information was gleaned from this study, namely that “about two-thirds to three-fourths of the ancestry of all modern South Asians come from a population group related to that of this Indus Valley individual.” according to Vagheesh Narasimhan, one of the authors of the report.

In recent years, the Indus region has received several nominations as the source of the Atlantis story. Dr Ashok Malhotra has identified the submergence of the city of Dwarka as the inspiration for the story, which was then brought to Sumeria and later Egypt before transmission to Greece.

However, Radek Brychta has opted^[²⁰³^] for the ancient city of Dholavira as a more likely candidate, while independently Yashwant Koak arrived at the same conclusion and intends to publish soon.

A 2014 blogger offered similar ideas with a paper⁽ⁿ⁾ entitled ‘Atlantis was Indus Valley plateau?’ but then proceeds to describe Indonesia as the hyperdiffusionist source for the great civilisations “such as those of the Egyptians, the Greeks, the Cretans and the Mesopotamians. These also included the Jews, the Phoenicians, and the Aryans, driven away from their ancestral lands in Indonesia and Southeast Asia.”

In Thorwald C. Franke’s Newsletter No.119 he draws attention to a review by Professor Heinz-Günther Nesselrath of a new over-priced book by Erika Daniels-Qasim. Although the book is published in German^[¹⁵⁸⁰^], Nesselrath’s highly critical review is in English^(ac), Nesselrath reveals that this is just another useless attempt to link Plato’s Atlantis with the Indus Valley civilisation. Franke describes it as a ‘sad book’.

Although the ‘ancient alien’ idea has nothing to back it up, the claim that a very ancient nuclear war destroyed the Indus civilisation has had some support^(ad). However, Jason Colavito has also debunked the story of the ‘radioactive skeleton’ there^(ab). A decade ago (2013) Dale Drinnon also published a blog refuting the ancient atomic war claims^(aj).

In 2012, the Spanish researcher, José Angel Hernández, proposed that the Tarshish of the Bible was to be found on the coastal region of the Indus Valley, but that Tartessos was a colony of the Indus city of Lhotal and had been situated on both sides of the Strait of Gibraltar! He also compared the bull cult of Plato’s Atlantis with that of the Indus civilisation^(f)(g).

The central Indus city of Mohenjo-Daro was only rediscovered in 1922^(m) and a curious more recent discovery there, was that 10% of artefacts found there related to play! Clusters of game pieces suggested the use of communal social centres. Unrelated, but perhaps more relevant to our study is the fact that there is a dearth of weaponry fortifications or evidence of warfare in the Indus culture^(d), which is in sharp contrast to the belligerent Atlantean society described by Plato. More details of the city and the Indus culture can be read on the Italian larazzodeltempo.it website^(ag)(ah).

A frequently referred to anomaly at Mohenjo-Daro is evidence of vitrification and radioactivity that some have attributed to atomic warfare or attacks by ancient aliens^(af). A more balanced view^(k)(l) can be found online. A 2015 article on this subject is also worth a look^(o). Jason Colavito has unearthed^(ab) the origin of this claim, tracing it back to the 1960s and an unreliable Russian writer, Alexander Gorbovsky, compounded by later distortions by ‘fringe investigators.

A 2012 conference on Harappan archaeology saw the origins of that culture pushed back to the 7^th millennium BC, contemporary with that of Sumer^(j). The same conference saw linguistic connections between the two cultures under discussion. However, despite numerous attempts over the past century the Indus Valley script remains undeciphered^(p), although there are regular claims of successful decipherment, 2007^(q), 2009^(r), 2011^(s), 2013^(t), to date totalling nearly 100, somewhat reminiscent of the constant flow of Atlantis theories. Now linguists are turning to computer technology to finally solve the problem^(x).

A radical theory regarding Mohenjo-Daro has been proposed by an Indian researcher, Jeyakumar Ramasami, in which he claims that the city was a necropolis and not a metropolis. His book on the subject can be downloaded as a free Word file^(e). A similar theory was proposed by Hans Georg Wunderlich regarding the Minoan ‘palace’ of Knossos on Crete.

A comprehensive website^(a) with many photos and diagrams relating to the Indus Valley civilisation is available. A related article by Patrick Chouinard is also of interest^(b).

A recent discovery off the Konkan Coast in the State of Maharashtra in western India has revealed a remarkable structure that is based on sea-level changes that may be 8,000 years old^(c). A wall 24 km long, 2.7 metres high and 2.5 metres in width was discovered in just three metres of water. Speculation has centred on the possibility of it being evidence of a completely unknown civilisation that could pre-date that of the Indus Valley. A second site, thought to be pre-Harappan, located in Rakhigarhi village in Haryana’s Hisar district, over 200 km from Chandigarh, is now under investigation.

A 2008 article⁽ⁱ⁾ adds further information about the Indus Valley, which includes a reference to the Neolithic site at Mehrgarh a precursor to the Indus civilisation and dated to 7000 BC, a date that has now been pushed back to 8000 BC according to a paper published^(u) in the May 25th, 2016 edition of Nature.

A recent paper^(w) has revealed how the Indus people coped with the consequences of climate change when their civilisation was at its height around 2500-1900 BC. Another paper suggests that the demise of the Indus Valley civilisation was the result of climate change caused by changing monsoon patterns. The author, Nishant Malik, assistant professor at the Rochester Institute of Technology’s School of Mathematical Sciences, used mathematical modelling to support his claim^(ae).

Until now it was thought that many of the Indus settlements had been dependent on a major Himalayan river, the Ghaggar-Hakra, now dried up. However, recent studies^(y) indicate that this river changed course over 8,000 years ago suggesting that “when the Indus people settled the area, there was only an abandoned large river valley occupied by seasonal monsoon river flow instead of a large Himalayan river.” So it seems that, unlike the Egyptian and Mesopotamian civilisations the Indus people did not require a substantial permanent river!

Joanna Gillan published an article giving a potted history of Mohenjo Daro and including a critical review of those, including David Davenport, who have tried to prove that the site was the location of an ancient atomic war. Supporters of this idea have pointed to quotations from the Mahabharata in support of this idea. However, Gillan revealed that “Rather than being entirely fictitious, the passage is composed of a merging together of various unrelated passages scattered throughout the 200,000-verse epic, some of which are also questionable English translations of a questionable French translation of the original Sanskrit. When viewed in their original context, they are a little less convincing”^(ak).

Another article on the Ancient Origins website, also by Gillan, in January 2022 reviews the history of Mohenjo Daro and unfortunately highlights that “Although it has survived for five millennia, Mohenjo Daro now faces imminent destruction. While the intense heat of the Indus Valley, monsoon rains, and salt from the underground water table is having damaging effects on the treasured site, it is the visitors that flock in their thousands to the site that are the biggest threat. Adding to the problem is a lack of funding, public indifference, and government neglect. The government even approved a festival being held at the site back in 2014, where tents, lights and stages were hammered into the walls of the delicate ruins.

Mohenjo Daro is already in an incredibly fragile condition. It is estimated that at its current rate of degradation, the World Heritage-listed site could be gone within 20 years^(ai).

^(a) https://www.harappa.com/

^(b)https://newagearchaeology.weebly.com/the-indus-valley.html

^(c)A civilisation as old as Indus valley? (archive.org)

^(d)Indus Valley Civilization: The Demise of Utopia (archive.org)

^(e) https://archive.org/details/NewInterpretationsOnIndusValleyCivilization

^(f) https://joseangelh.wordpress.com/category/mito-y-religion/

^(g) https://joseangelh.wordpress.com/category/arqueologia-e-historia/

^(h) https://www.business-standard.com/article/news-ians/is-haryana-home-to-older-larger-harappan-era-site-113062400485_1.html

⁽ⁱ⁾ https://wondersofpakistan.wordpress.com/2009/02/21/mehrgarh-the-lost-civilisation-2/

^(j) Archive 2329

^(k)Mohenjo Daro – The Thunderbolts Project™ (archive.org) (new link)

^(l) See: Archive 3516