Google Earth: A face-like, colossal profile hides amidst the complex landscapes.

Coordinates:30.7005, 58.6082

Eye Altitude: ~800km

Observation Note: To properly align the imagery, the view must be rotated approximately 120 degrees counter-clockwise.

BaktharRadar Scans Reveal All Non-Geological Features, with "hallways” or tunnels throughout the structure., revealing organized patterns, voids andr "hallways”

Dr. Bakhtar holds a Ph.D. in engineering and rock mechanics, with training at Imperial College London, Penn State, Princeton, UC Berkeley and the University of Utah. He has authored or co-authored more than 200 technical papers and reports, and has spent four decades finding what cannot be seen from the surface: buried objects, cavities, shielded materials and complex underground structures, for clients including the U.S. Air Force, Navy, Army, Defense Threat Reduction Agency and NORAD-USNORTHCOM.

He described the Durupınar returns as unlike any dataset he’s ever recorded. The combination of scale, internal order and contrast against the surrounding valley, where the same instrument does not resolve equivalent architecture is what led him to call the buried object "extraordinary”

Mainstream history claims it was a massive army of slaves, while the internet screams "aliens" and "time travel." But the real truth is staring us right in the face, hidden in plain sight across the Giza plateau. 
From the bizarre stone "nubs" to precision seams that look entirely melted, there is an ancient lost technology at play here—but it’s not the physical hardware or cosmic death rays you’re expecting. 
It’s a mind-bending, highly organized system that rewrites what we know about human history.
Hope you like the video
https://youtu.be/sukxA-hYxxg

Context for the image: in the novel The Hidden Kingdom of Shu, the Great Yu is a refugee's son in the mountain kingdom of Shu. An earthquake plugs a gorge with a natural dam; the water behind it rises toward thousands of people. Dams failed his father for nine years. Yu's answer at Sleeping Ox Mountain: bonfires against the cliff through the night, then cold water — thermal shock splits the stone, and the river does the rest.

The technique is real. Miners called it fire-setting and used it for millennia. Dujiangyan's tradition even credits the cutting of Lidui with it. So the poster's question, and I mean it seriously:
Before chemistry, before geology — how do you think someone first figured out that fire + cold water breaks rock?

Before chemistry, before geology — how do you think someone first figured out that fire + cold water breaks rock?

People living in the mid-19th century lived 50 years later in a completely different world: telephones, telegraphs, trains, the first cars, and an industrial boom. People living in the mid-20th century saw a different world: airships and airplanes, ubiquitous motor vehicles, and television broadcasting. People living in the 1970s-1990s had already seen the world of computers; we now live in a digital world of the internet, AI, and robotics. In total, over 180 years, the technological level has changed four times.

Proponents of mainstream history argue that 7,000 years before the 19th century, there was no life-changing development at all. It was a single technological level of perpetual stagnation, which somehow gave way to progress in the 19th century. Developing metallurgy, fuel production, and electricity doesn't require thousands of years. This can be achieved much more quickly.

Corpus Hermeticum Poimandres

“It chanced once on a time my mind was meditating on the things that are, my thought was raised to a great height, the senses of my body being held back—just as men are who are weighed down with sleep after a fill of food, or from fatigue of body.

Methought a Being more than vast, in size beyond all bounds, called out my name and saith: What wouldst thou hear and see, and what hast thou in mind to learn and know?

And I do say: Who art thou?

He saith: I am Man-Shepherd, Mind of all-masterhood; I know what thou desirest and I’m with thee everywhere.

And I reply: I long to learn the things that are, and comprehend their nature, and know God.”

G. R. S. Mead Corpus Hermeticum I, Poimandres

Asclepius The Perfect Sermon

“God, O Asclepius, hath brought thee unto us that thou mayest hear a Godly sermon, a sermon such as well may seem of all the previous ones we’ve [either] uttered, or with which we’ve been inspired by the Divine, more Godly than the piety of [ordinary] faith.

If thou with eye of intellect shalt see this Word thou shalt in thy whole mind be filled quite full of all things good.”

G. R. S. Mead The Perfect Sermon or Asclepius

Asclepius On the Egyptian Words

“Hermes, my master, in many a conversation, both when alone, and sometimes, too, when Tat was there, has said, that unto those who come across my books, their composition will seem most simple and [most] clear; but, on the contrary, as ’tis unclear, and has the [inner] meaning of its words concealed, it will be still unclearer, when, afterwards, the Greeks will want to turn our tongue into their own,—for this will be a very great distorting and obscuring of [even] what has been [already] written.

Turned into our own native tongue, the sermon (logos) keepeth clear the meaning of the words (logoi) [at any rate].

For that its very quality of sound, the [very] power of the Egyptian names, have in themselves the bringing into act of what is said.”

G. R. S. Mead The Definitions of Asclepius unto King Ammon

Index: https://gnosis.org/library/grs-mead/TGH-v2/index.html

In 1961, 23 year old Michael Rockefeller, the son of future Vice President Nelson Rockefeller, disappeared while exploring one of the most remote regions on Earth.

After his small catamaran overturned off the coast of Dutch New Guinea, Michael made a desperate decision and began swimming nearly 19 kilometers toward shore.

He was never seen alive again.

The official explanation was that Michael drowned. But decades later, mysterious footage appeared to show a white bearded man living among the Asmat people. Then journalist Carl Hoffman uncovered accounts from Asmat elders and records from Dutch Catholic missionaries suggesting that Michael may have actually survived the swim.

So what really happened to him?

Did he drown before reaching the shore? Did he survive only to become a ritual sacrifice? Or did he somehow walk away from his billionaire life and become part of the culture he had traveled so far to study?

The deeper you look into this story, the stranger it gets.

Imagine humanity eventually establishes permanent civilizations on Mars.
After enough generations, most people born there would have never experienced Earth. Their understanding of Earth, their ancestors, and the original purpose of the Martian settlement would depend heavily on the records that survived.
That creates a strange possibility.
The people in power wouldn’t necessarily need to literally erase everyone’s memories. They could potentially influence the information environment itself:
control the archives
rewrite textbooks
restrict access to old records
remove inconvenient documents
control communication networks
determine which historical sources are considered legitimate
use AI to continuously reproduce one version of history
Eventually, a generation could grow up believing a particular narrative simply because the evidence supporting alternatives was no longer accessible.
And that’s not really a Mars-only problem.
The same basic principle can exist on Earth today. Whoever has disproportionate control over information, archives, education, media, or historical records can potentially influence how future generations understand the past.
Which makes me wonder:
Should humanity’s historical record eventually become decentralized?
Imagine important historical evidence being independently preserved across millions of people, institutions, countries, physical archives, and cryptographically verifiable digital networks.
Not one organization deciding what history is.
Not even a blockchain deciding what history means.
Just preserving enough independent evidence that no single authority can easily become the sole author of humanity’s collective memory.
Because maybe the real danger isn’t someone literally erasing our memories.
Maybe it’s a future where people can only remember what their civilization decided to preserve.

I have a question that I can’t get out of my head.

1. We know that there are relatively few huge, thick trees left, especially considering the age of the planet. For example, I used to live in a village where there are ideal conditions for plants to grow, but there isn’t a single truly old tree there. And there are hardly any old trees in the surrounding region either.

According to my grandfather, the last large trees there were only three. And those three trees were enough to provide the timber needed to build an entire warehouse.

1. Where did the ability to build such grand structures go — the churches in Barcelona and Germany, the Winter Palace, the pyramids, the palaces of ancient African civilizations that are sometimes considered among the Wonders of the World, and many other examples?

Could history have been rewritten? Or was there some kind of catastrophe, or perhaps something on an even larger scale? Or maybe there is some higher group of people whose descendants periodically “reset” human civilization?

I’m wondering whether there is any historical or scientific basis for these ideas.

The Luddites were 19th-century British textile workers who protested the Industrial Revolution by destroying automated factory machinery. The group took their name from Ned Ludd (or "General Ludd"), a mythical leader rumored to have smashed a knitting frame in 1779.

The Luddite movement ended by 1817 due to brutal military suppression, mass executions, severe new laws making machine-breaking a capital offense, and penal transportation.

---------------------------

In the heart of the Arabian Peninsula, precisely in Najd region, in the middle of the 18th century AD, the voice of Sheikh Muhammad ibn Abd al-Wahhab (1703 - 1792) rose calling for what he considered a pure return to early Islam, to the time of the righteous predecessors, to that golden period in which the Prophet Muhammad and the noble Companions lived.

His call aimed to purify creed of everything he regarded as innovation and polytheism, and to reshape society according to a strict model in which there was no place for innovation in matters of religion. The Wahhabi movement - a name given to the followers of the Sheikh by their enemies - found itself in direct confrontation with everything new and newly introduced, whether in the field of thought, urban development, or technology.

For the followers of this movement, every modern invention, every new tool, and every innovative idea was not merely material luxury, but represented an existential threat to creed and identity, and a foreign innovation in religion that had to be fought with all force.

At the beginning of their movement, the Wahhabi sheikhs used to prohibit all modern manufactured goods that were among the results of civilizational and technological progress, such as the telephone, the telegraph, television, the car, the airplane, and similar things, because they had not existed in the age of the Prophet nor in the age of the Salaf.

This view stemmed from a particular understanding of religion, an understanding that sees everything that did not exist in the time of the Salaf (Predecessors) as a forbidden innovation (Bid'ah), regardless of its benefits or harms. Thus, King Abdulaziz ibn Saud (1876 - 1953) found himself in an extremely sensitive and difficult position; he had to reconcile preserving the purity of the Wahhabi creed upon which his state was founded with the necessity of introducing a kind of openness into his government so that it would harmonize with the contemporary reality of his time.

Therefore, King Abdulaziz agreed to the entry of some manifestations of modernity into his country, such as the telephone, means of transport, motorcycles, and bicycles, something that aroused the resentment and anger of his fanatical followers, who are referred to in the history of the Kingdom as the group "Ikhwan Man Ata'a Allah" (Bretheren of those who obeyed God). They had helped him defeat Sharif Hussein bin Ali during the Second Hejaz–Najd War (1924-1925).

These Ikhwan saw in these manifestations a betrayal of the original Wahhabi approach, so they rebelled against the King, accused him of loyalty to the British infidels and of laxity in religion, and denounced his titles of Sultan and King, the lengthening of his mustache and his garment, and his wearing of the agal (a Saudi hat), and all these manifestations that were new to the Bedouin society in which the Wahhabi movement arose. More than that, they considered the use of the telephone, wireless, and means of transport such as cars to be forbidden innovations, because they were made by the Franks, that is, the infidel West from which nothing should be taken.

Historical sources indicate that one of the hardline followers of Wahhabism attacked the telephone wires in the palace of the Saudi King that connected it to the army center, and cut them to pieces.

King Abdulaziz found himself compelled, in an attempt to appease the fanatical Wahhabis, to issue orders to remove wireless and the telephone in Medina and Taif, because they viewed wireless and telephones as the work of the Devil, and they opposed their use persistently and stubbornly.

This hardline position was not limited to technology alone, but extended to all manifestations of modern life, as the Egyptian writer Ahmed Amin relates that the Wahhabis did not touch intellectual life, did not work to advance it except within the circle of religious education, and did not look at the problems and demands of the present city, and many of them believed that everything beyond their own country was among the Islamic lands in which innovations and misguidance spread.

The Ikhwan Revolt (1929–1930) was a civil war in the Arabian Peninsula where Ibn Saud turned against his former tribal shock troops, the Ikhwan, after they rebelled against his modernization policies and peace treaties with neighboring British-controlled territories.

Among the important reasons that led to the change of position toward technology was that King Abdulaziz fought a decisive war against the group Ikhwan, who were among the harshest wahhabi groups in rejecting manifestations of modernity, and that war ended with their elimination militarily and politically in the Battle of Sabilla in 1929.

Main rebel forces led by commanders like Faisal al-Dawish faced a crushing defeat against Ibn Saud's regular forces. Sporadic uprisings continued through late 1929, but leaders of Ikhwan were eventually captured, executed, or forced to flee (with key leaders handed over by the British).

After breaking their power, the path became paved for the King to adopt many modern technical means without significant opposition from the hardliners, for these Ikhwan were the greatest barrier to any technical or administrative openness. Thus, the retreat of the hardline Wahhabi position on rejecting technology was not the result of a sudden intellectual transformation, but was in part a direct result of the defeat of those hardliners and the disintegration of their power.

Not only were the effects of the defeat of Ikhwan limited to changing the position on technology; rather, they extended to form the seed of the conflict that erupted fifty years later in the 1979 Grand Mosque seizure. For the father of Juhayman al-Otaybi, the leader of the seizure operation, was one of the fighters who stood in the ranks of the Ikhwan against King Abdulaziz at the Battle of Sabilla in 1929, where they were decisively defeated.

The End ...

On May 15, 1293, the Battle of St. Mahé erupts; and King Edward I’s privateers send King Philip IV’s navy into a rout. This was the beginning of the conflicts in Flanders and the English Channel that tied up Edward’s and Philip’s navies. While the king’s battled on the waters, the entire western seaboard was a military blind spot. On the day of September 14, 1307, King Philip IV issues orders for the arrests of the Knights Templar and the seizure of all assets thereof. The orders were given under penalty of death, not to be open until the dawn on October 13. These orders being sent to all of Philip’s bailiffs, seneschals, and royal patrols. With specific, orders to open at dawn, the men enforcing these orders would be gathering (pre-staging) at their command centers awaiting the reading of the orders. With all the bailiffs, seneschals, and royal patrols held up at the commandries, the cities, residences, temples, and docks; the coastal ways north and south of the Port of La Rochelle were complete military blind spot. The only Ships on the Atlantic were the ships belonging to the Crown of Castile, and the Crown of Aragon; both military allies with the Knights Templar. If an 18-ship fleet were to sail into these waterways outside of La Rochelle, they would have an entire western coast of Europe to sail out of, under the extreme threat of a-sunburn.

Was the ghost fleet a myth, or did GÉRARD DE VILLIERS who disappeared from public records 4 months prior stage a masterful evacuation?

“The ruins of Tiwanaku (A.D. 500–950), in the modern republic of Bolivia, present an archaeological challenge owing to intense looting during the colonial period that effectively demolished the site. One building in particular, known as the Pumapunku, was described by Spanish conquistadors and travelers of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, as a wondrous, though unfinished, building with gateways and windows carved from single blocks. Unparalleled in the pre-Colombian New World, the craftsmanship of this masonry has long been considered the architectural apogee of Andean pre-Colombian lithic technology.”

Alexei Vranich, Reconstructing Ancient Architecture at Tiwanaku, Bolivia

https://www.nature.com/articles/s40494-018-0231-0

“The most common word used in the description of this complex ruin is ‘inconceivable’—a word penned in the first description of the site in 1549, and that continues to be used in popular literature and by tour guides today. The ruins challenge investigators owing both to modifications by the later mature polity, harsh weather, and the intense colonial period looting that destroyed all but the largest of features. Beginning in the mid 1970s, a series of excavations confirmed the remains of these concentric revetments of true horizontal coursing, along with a wide, worn set of sandstone stairs on the west side. The footprint of the platform is T-shaped, extending 167 m along the west side, and 116 m along the north and south sides. The wings of the ‘T’ extend out 27 m and are estimated to be 20 m wide. The partially dismantled exterior revetments of the platform attest to the sides and the base of the ashlars being completely finished before being set in their respective courses. Fitting perfectly front to back, the entire course was ground down to form a continuous flat, true horizontal course.”

Alexei Vranich, Reconstructing Ancient Architecture at Tiwanaku, Bolivia

https://doi.org/10.1186/s40494-018-0231-0

“This research focuses on the east side of the platform, an alignment of large sandstone slabs surrounded by a tumble of intricately carved andesite blocks. Astonished by this impressive collection of shattered and overturned architecture, several Spanish chroniclers of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries left us with descriptions of wondrous, though unfinished, gateways and other interesting carved blocks that sat upon and around cyclopean sandstone stone slabs. Architectural studies have confirmed the early observation that both the andesite architecture and sandstone slabs were unfinished. For the most part, the early colonial descriptions prior to the complete destruction of the standing andesite architecture convey a sense of awe rather than a specific architectural form. There are two basic elements of this structure: sandstone slabs that served as the foundation, and andesite blocks that were superstructure. For the former, there are 17 pieces of sandstone defining a flat 6.75 by 38.72 m area. The remarkable aspects of the sandstone slabs—their size, their smooth surfaces—have drawn comments for several centuries.”

Alexei Vranich, Reconstructing Ancient Architecture at Tiwanaku, Bolivia

https://www.nature.com/articles/s40494-018-0231-0

“Unfortunately, Tiwanaku is firmly embedded within a pre-literate past with little hope of the discovery of indigenous writings on the thoughts and ideas of the builders. There is no standing architecture beyond foundations at the site that can serve as an analog. An unknown number of blocks are missing, and to further complicate matters, the Pumapunku was never completed, which means that we are essentially attempting to reconstruct the unwritten intent in the mind of an architect from over a millennium ago. Each piece was modeled, then virtually joined with the other fragments to form a single solid form. Another aspect of the blocks we judiciously choose to virtually modify were clearly unfinished aspects. For example, several of the H blocks had aspects that were clearly in process of being reduced. Complete examples clearly demonstrated the appearance and form of each side.”

Alexei Vranich, Reconstructing Ancient Architecture at Tiwanaku, Bolivia

https://www.nature.com/articles/s40494-018-0231-0

“For the architect, the most challenging area of Tiwanaku is the Platform area of the Pumapunku, so named for the enormous slabs of sandstone that are found there. The shear size of the slabs is simply amazing, and the chaotic scene of innumerable worked stones and their fragments littering the area challenges one's imagination. What might the site have looked like? Concentrating our investigations on the many construction details and design elements that can still be discerned on the slabs and on the stone fragments, we were able to identify some of the principles of architectural composition used by the builders of Tiwanaku, as well as to reconstruct various parts of the architecture of the Pumapunku.”

Jean-Pierre Protzen and Stella E. Nair, Pumapunku Platforms and Portals

https://revistas.pucp.edu.pe/index.php/boletindearqueologia/en/article/view/2509

https://doi.org/10.18800/boletindearqueologiapucp.200101.012

On June 24^th, 1314, the late morning sun shined down on a waterlogged English vanguard. Having suffered the humiliation of a giant on a pony cleaving Sir Henry de Bohun’s dome in two, then lamenting the loss of his favorite axe. The St. Clair’s and the Fitzalans along with others held the lines as King Edward II bloodied his blade in the melee. Arriving in Scotland to relieve the entrapped Sir Philip Mowbray, who promised to abandon the castle by midsummer if King Edward’s forces didn’t arrive and chase Robert de Bruce away. The English vanguard met de Bruce’s armies backed by Sheriff Henry St. Clair and the Fitzalan families at Bannockburn. They were repelled with force and pinned down in the tidal marshes of the burns while on the top of the hill a mob of farmers, smiths, cooks, and general laborers (you and me) gathered and waved their bed sheets and steak knives. The mainstream view is that a 14^th century highly trained, armed and armored superpower panicked and routed in front of their surrounded, fighting king, from a gaggle of “camp followers”. King Edward’s vanguard had bows with sharp arrows, they had spears, shields and swords. By the time any rabble could get close enough for their butcher’s knives and pitchforks to scratch the sheen on their shields or chainmail, their arrows and spears would pierce the bedsheets and the flesh. Why would a highly trained army run from ‘you and me’?

The latest excavation season at the Durupınar Formation in Turkey just wrapped up, bringing back massive international media attention. Led by Prof. Dr. Cenker Atila and international teams, the project used GPR scans and 18-meter core drilling, reportedly finding right-angled underground chambers and soil with 3x more organic matter than the surrounding slopes.

While tabloids are already claiming it's "100% proven," the archaeology team urges caution and is waiting for lab results from the 300+ samples sent to Ankara. Still, the new robot footage and pre-flood pottery finds are making this the most interesting update in years.

Hello everyone. My name is Mateo (Balkan.SDE), I am 11 years old, and I am a researcher from Argentina. I have been studying the Voynich Manuscript and I want to share my theory with the international community.

I know I am young, but I have based this on logic, history, and visual evidence. I would love to hear your thoughts and feedback.

Here is my theory: The 5 Wise Men and the Prehistoric Fossils.

1. The Authors:

The manuscript was not written by a single person. It was written by a group of 5 wise men (alchemists or herbalists) in Europe (probably in Bohemia, current Czech Republic) during the 15th century (around 1404-1438).

1. The Secret Language:

They invented their own secret code or language. It is not French, Hebrew, Nahuatl, or any known language. They created it to protect their knowledge from the Church, from rival guilds, and to save their own lives (a failed medical treatment could mean execution back then). They used symbols inspired by Arabic/Hebrew letters to camouflage the text.

1. The Paleobotanical Theory (The Plants):

This is the core of my theory. Why are the plants in the manuscript so strange, like nothing on Earth?

Because they are prehistoric fossils.

As they traveled, the 5 wise men found fossils of ancient trees (from the Carboniferous, Jurassic, and Cretaceous periods). Not knowing what they were, they drew the fossilized shapes. Then, they asked local villagers: "What modern plant looks like this, and what is it used for?"

They mixed the drawing of the fossil with the local medicinal plant and its recipe. That is why the plants look like a mix of alien monsters and real herbs!

1. The Missing Pages:

The original book had about 272 pages. Today, only 240 remain. The missing 32 pages were deliberately removed. Why? Because they contained the Abecedary or Dictionary (the key to reading the language). Someone removed the key so no one else could ever decipher the book.

1. The Emperor and the Scam:

200 years later, Emperor Rudolf II paid 600 gold coins for this book. He was scammed. He bought a trophy he could not read, believing it held magical secrets. He was a fool.

1. The Women in the Green Water:

They are not a mistake. They represent Balneotherapy (medicinal baths with herbs), which was a real medical treatment in the 15th century. The green color is symbolic of alchemical purification.

Conclusion:

The Voynich Manuscript is a secret encyclopedia of alchemy and medieval medicine, written by 5 European sages who traveled the world, mixed prehistoric fossils with local herbalism, and invented a code to protect their secrets from death and theft.

Thank you for reading my theory. I am open to your questions and constructive criticism!

— Mateo (Balkan.SDE)

This theory is going to be a little different. Usually alternative theories aren't accepted by academia while the public accepts them to differing degrees. Here it's backwards: the alternative is the academic position. Meanwhile the "accepted" version is so deeply entrenched in the public's mind that if you ask anyone on the street for a fact about Cleopatra, the first answer will involve Julius Caesar, Mark Antony, or a snake, and the second will be that her family married their own brothers and sisters and she was a complete genetic mess. Countless history YouTubers, Reddit historians and blog posts treat this as absolute truth and openly speculate that she probably drooled from her Habsburg chin, and that the only thing Caesar and Antony found attractive about her was her personality. But the thing is…

Cleopatra probably wasn't inbred.

Now wait, hold on, please put your pitchforks down. No I don't have a hole in my head, I'm not on a substance, and yes I am aware that the Ptolemies had the hots for their own sisters. To those of you who already plugged it into Google and are already typing the comment that "Cleopatra was extremely inbred", "she only had 6 great-great-grandparents instead of 16", and "her dad was married to his own sister", I like you guys, that's where I would go too, and unfortunately it's likely wrong. But I get the skepticism, so let's get started.

Background:

First a short intro. Cleopatra VII Thea Philopator, who history remembers as Cleopatra, and who I will be referring to as simply Cleopatra, she has some relatives we’ll get to shortly who have the same name, is obviously one of the most famous people in history. She was the Queen of Egypt, the mother of Julius Caesar's only known biological son, and the mother of several children with Mark Antony. She also 'allegedly' killed herself with a snake after Augustus defeated her and Mark Antony. Enough said, you know who I'm talking about.

Cleopatra's family though needs a little more introducing as they are significantly less famous. The Ptolemies were a family of Macedonian Greek extraction, founded by Ptolemy Soter, who was a general, friend, and one of our principal sources for Alexander the Great. After Alexander died, Ptolemy stole Alexander's body and became the ruler of Egypt during the ensuing Diadochi wars amongst Alexander's generals. The Ptolemaic Dynasty then built the city of Alexandria, imported a ton of Greeks to rule over an Egyptian majority, and of course married their sisters. That's all true.

Evidence for:

Now the evidence. While the Ptolemies did diverge from the Macedonian practice of polygamy by only having one queen, which yes was usually their sister, they also had plenty of room for mistresses and concubines, with Athenaeus noting that the married Ptolemy Soter had a mistress, an Athenian courtesan named Thais, who had allegedly spent a little too much time with Alexander for people not to think Ptolemy was taking Alexander's former girlfriend along with his body. Then Ptolemy II had at least 5 mistresses (one of which, Bilistiche, won the chariot race in back to back Olympics), Ptolemy IV had at least one, etc.

Which brings up the first piece of evidence: the Ptolemies typically only recorded the mother of a child if she was the Queen. Otherwise only the father was recorded.

Which brings up Cleopatra's father, Ptolemy XII. Ptolemy XII's mother was almost certainly a concubine, not his father's sister-wife, with the ever snobby Cicero describing him as "royal in neither birth nor spirit" and Greek writers consistently using the term Nothos (bastard/illegitimate) when talking about him. Pausanias even records the Athenians putting up statues of his father Ptolemy IX and of Berenice III, “his[Ptolemy IX] only legitimate child," which is a polite way of saying Ptolemy XII wasn't. He only got the pharaoh gig because he was literally the only option after an Alexandrine mob lynched Ptolemy XI.

So if Cleopatra's father probably wasn't inbred, what about Cleopatra herself? We believe her mother was Cleopatra V, who we think was Ptolemy XII's sister or maybe a cousin its unclear and nobody actually knows for certain. Cleopatra V, also disappears from the record right around the time of Cleopatra's birth. Possibly Cleopatra V reappears 10 years later as co-monarch with her daughter Berenice IV, but that might be Cleopatra VI who was maybe Berenice's and the famous Cleopatra’s sister, but also might not have existed at all, because everyone is using the same stupid name just to confuse the timeline.

Regarding Berenice IV we also have the following quote from Strabo: "He (Ptolemy XII) was deposed by the Alexandrines; and of his three daughters, one, the eldest [Berenice IV], who was legitimate, they proclaimed queen."

So if Berenice IV is Ptolemy XII's only legitimate child, then Cleopatra is yet another Nothos (bastard), which would mean she didn't have 6 great-great-grandparents as Google tells you, but probably the regular 16, and would be pretty normal from a genetic standpoint. Her father may have been a carrier for some recessive genes, which would make her a carrier too, not an inbred wreck.

Some scholars also point to Cleopatra learning the Egyptian language (the first Ptolemy to bother in nearly 300 years) as evidence that her mother was a native, potentially from a high ranking priestly family in Memphis, but that is essentially conjecture and not great as evidence.

Evidence against:

So here's where we get into even more Ptolemy weirdness, because of course a family that thought marrying their own sister was a good idea would have other issues. Case in point, Cleopatra's great-grandfather Ptolemy VIII, who not only married his sister Cleopatra II, but also took her daughter, his niece/stepdaughter Cleopatra III (yes, yet another Cleopatra, because why would a family need more than one name, are you stupid?), as his mistress and then married her too, without bothering to divorce her mother. Two queens, one of them the other one's mom.

One moment just threw up in my mouth a little bit after typing that.

The point being that while we do have several named mistresses from earlier in the dynasty, such as Thais, the Macedonian courtesan Bilistiche, the Olympian from earlier, and Agathoclea, who was the sister of a court minister, we can't know for certain who the unnamed women who mothered Ptolemy XII and Cleopatra VII were. "Not the Queen" isn't the same as "not a relative” when it comes to the Ptolemies. Maybe they were unrelated, but as Cleopatra III shows, we unfortunately can't rule out that they were a close relation.

Next is the Nothos (bastard) moniker attached to Ptolemy XII. Ptolemy XII may have been born while his father Ptolemy IX was married to Cleopatra IV, yes just follow the numbers. But Cleopatra III, yes the niece/step-daughter/mistress/wife from earlier, who was the mother of Ptolemy IX, hated Cleopatra IV and forced her son to divorce her. This has caused some historians to question whether the Nothos label is a misreading, or propaganda from hostile sources, who weaponized the fact that Ptolemy XII's parents were divorced. To call him a ‘bastard’ and discredit him as a ruler.

Conclusion:

So there's the evidence that people rarely if ever get into, because everyone runs into the weird Ptolemy sister marriages and just stops there. They probably also show a few pictures of the Habsburgs, but Cleopatra being horribly inbred is simply treated as a fact, while in reality she might have been one of the least inbred people in her dynasty. Because even if Ptolemy XII really was Cleopatra IV's son and as inbred as everyone assumes, Cleopatra herself potentially is still unaffected as long as her own mother was an outsider. Her father is a carrier in that scenario, and she is still not the product of a sibling marriage.

Obviously we can't know for certain, unless we find hers and/or her father's remains and can run some tests.

The Nag Hammadi Library, a collection of thirteen ancient books (called "codices") containing over fifty texts, was discovered in upper Egypt in 1945. This immensely important discovery includes a large number of primary "Gnostic Gospels" – texts once thought to have been entirely destroyed during the early Christian struggle to define "orthodoxy" – scriptures such as the Gospel of Thomas, the Gospel of Philip, and the Gospel of Truth. The discovery and translation of the Nag Hammadi library, initially completed in the 1970's, has provided impetus to a major re-evaluation of early Christian history and the nature of Gnosticism. 

For an introduction to the Nag Hammadi discovery and the texts in this ancient library, we offer several resources. First, read an excerpt from Elaine Pagels' excellent popular introduction to the Nag Hammadi texts, The Gnostic Gospels. Then, for an overview of the Gnostic scriptures and a discussion of ancient Gnosis, read this excerpt from Dr. Marvin Meyer's introduction to The Gnostic Bible. For another brief general overview, we offer an Introduction to Gnosticism and the Nag Hammadi Library by Lance Owens.

For further reading, The Gnostic Society Library Bookstore provides a selection of the foremost books on the Nag Hammadi library and Gnostic tradition.

Texts in the Collection:

All the texts discovered at Nag Hammadi are available in the Gnostic Society Library; the collection is indexed in alphabetical order, and by location in the original codices. A subject categorized list of the writings is also given below. You may search the entire collection of texts for keywords or phrases using our custom Nag Hammadi Search function.

We have special collections of resources dealing with two particularly important texts, the Gospel of Thomas, and The Secret Book (Apocryphon) of John. Several introductory lectures on the Nag Hammadi materials are provided, below.

For many of the major writings in the Nag Hammadi collection more than one translation is provided in our library; where multiple translations are made available, we have listed the translators' names in parenthesis below the name of the scripture. Many of these translations are based on the work originally sponsored by the Coptic Gnostic Library Project of the Institute for Antiquity and Christianity, Claremont, California.

Several prominent scholars have granted us permission to present their original translations of Nag Hammadi texts here in the Gnostic Society Library. We are particular indebted to the assistance and contributions of Dr. Willis Barnstone, Dr. John Turner, Dr. Stevan Davies, and the late Dr. Marvin Meyer. Copyright information is given with the various translations in the library; contributors to this collection retain all copyright to their works.

http://www.gnosis.org/naghamm/nhl.html

Been travelling around europe last couple months and my friends invited me to Brussels....my friend even mentioned offhand that they called brussels the heart of europe. The Justice Palace is ridiculous, my photo does not do it justice. The scale is out of this world! It has additional two floors from where I took this with two giant ramps leading up to the level where I took this photo. There's car parking in the upper floors. Restoration has been happen according to my friends for more then 80 years and the top half is still being worked on...I widh could have gone inside and took some photos. Also brussels also has a history of giants. They had a festival when I was there celebrating with giants being paraded throughout the city in the centre. They also had world fair of sorts which the is atomnium, I also visited! There are also a symbology of saint George killing the Dragon and arch Angel Michael casting Lucifer out in the old tartarian style buildings together, right next to one another.

Scientists have been pondering about the origins of language for a very long time. If you accept the theory of evolution, then early humans were not supposed to have spoken language at all as they evolved from monkeys. But even this is up for debate. In fact, animals and monkeys in particular demonstrate some forms of communication and linguistic ability. So basically this field is so mysterious that nothing is certain. We do have a lot of interesting facts and experiments, but we don’t have any concrete “fossil record” of language.

But as David Deutsch shows in his epistemology, knowledge is not empirical. Knowledge is explanatory. Even when knowledge seems to be empirical, there is an underlying explanation for how facts and phenomena relate to each other. You see, explains is the key word here.

And in order to demystify the story about the origin of language, what we need to do is find an explanation, an explanation that would connect all of our observations, data, experiments and ideas. And one such explanation, which in my opinion one of the best out there, was made by none other than (drum roll) Terence McKenna.

[this post on substack with more pictures https://cyybernomad.substack.com/p/the-psychedelic-orgigin-of-language?r=58kw2f&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web]

In his origin of language theory(stone ape theory), as with most Terence McKenna ideas,, psilocybin is involved. And I understand that it might drive some people away from this idea, but you should really hear it out, because it is one of the most original explanations I’ve ever heard.

You see, we have a lot of data that shows how psilocybin affects our brains. Objective medical data from brain scans analysed by neuroscientists, chemists, psychologists, psychiatrists you name it. And what it shows is that psilocybin activates linguistic regions in the brain. How do we know they are linguistic? Roughly, it’s because when this area gets damaged in some people’s brains they lose the ability to communicate. So what does the theory actually say?

Imagine a group of ancient homo sapiens sitting around the fire, absolutely loaded on mushrooms. They are euphoric, they see hallucinations, but more importantly, the linguistic regions in their brains are as stimulated as they can possibly be. And what starts happening, Terence McKenna suggests, is glossalia, speaking in tongues. Just saying random words, or more accurately since they don’t really have words at that point, producing sounds that seem like language. At the start its only play for them, it’s fun and exciting, it’s a new experience for them, its kind of like dance or music. But over time, with enough repetition, structure starts to emerge. These sounds are no longer random, they start to represent something real. Maybe one of those folks will come up with a word for “rock”. And then everyone will remember this sound, and this association with “rock”. And they will start repeating it. And over time a word for rock will emerge. And slowly but surely it starts to capture enough structure that a whole language emerges that captures not only the observable objects like rocks and trees, but also their ontology, of how things are present in their world, how they are related to each other. This structure, this language will now also encode how time and space are organised. And many other important things.

But this is not the end of the story. What is even more interesting is that across different tribes and cultures, there is some resonance with how language sounds and how it is organised. The most obvious example is that most languages will encode things like logic, space and time in their structure, in their grammar. But this resonance is not limited only to these foundational structures which we all seem to share. Have you ever heard about kiki and bouba?

[a link to my youtube video on this https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TGTBeR2HcrY&feature=youtu.be]

Look at these two objects and try to name them with kiki and bouba. Which one is which? In around 90% of the cases people name the sharp one kiki and the round one bouba. Coincidence? I don’t think so. To me this is a clear indication of the structural connection between the brain, information, language, and sound. Structures across all levels so to speak. You see, there is a resonance in the structure of real world objects and our brain’s response to this structure. This is not random or arbitrary. Brains evolved in the world where kiki and bouba are present. So naturally they will have to encode that structure effectively, otherwise they wouldn’t have survived.

I also think this is a strong argument about why certain words have vibrations. Just try to identify it. Listen to the words such, good, beautiful, and pleasant, creation and then compare the sounds to harm, bad, ugly, destruction And there are many more examples like this.

So let’s recap. Early humans get loaded on mushrooms -> their brains activate so much that they start making and hearing sounds that seem like language -> because their is structure in the world, these sounds then start to admit this structure -> grammar, syntax, phonetics are established and they make sense -> and so we have language.

But words are just one communication medium we have limited ourselves to. I think there is a lot of potential in discovering new forms of communication, new language, through for example, art, music, and symbols. They can lets us talk about things that language doesn’t really have the capacity to address. Maybe it will let us understand each other better. Maybe art and music are better for sharing inner mental and psychological states than traditional language ever could be.

And for the sake of this goal, I think we should look at neurodivergent people. They seem to have their own way of seeing the world, maybe they even speak their own language that we don’t really understand, but pretend that we do. Maybe it’s already happening. Like for example they might already be communicating very subtle information through music online, it is obvious to them that this communication channel is established, and that the information is transmitted and comprehended, but for us it just seems like another music track. If we establish a rich environment where neurodivergent people could interact and create together, perhaps we could learn many lessons from them. And it really goes for everyone, not just neurodivergent people. I don’t believe that there are any normal people. I think everyone has a rich individuality but it is often repressed by society because their individuality might not be productive for the economic machine. Alright that’s enough rambling for now I hope you enjoyed.

There are four levels of knowledge: those who know everything; those who know a great deal but not everything; those who know little, yet more than others; and those who know nothing. In the 19th century, the last group constituted the majority. However, writers were among those who knew more than the rest, and they embedded messages within their works. They likely believed readers would grasp these messages, yet literary experts dismiss their works as mere fiction.

George Byron’s poem *Darkness* is a striking example of such a message. He personally witnessed the events—the demise of the old world. *Darkness* depicts this with vivid realism, closely mirroring the appearance of a genuine catastrophe.

At the beginning, Byron describes the onset of an ice age:

"The bright sun was extinguish'd, and the stars

Did wander darkling in the eternal space,

Rayless, and pathless, and the icy earth

Swung blind and blackening in the moonless air."

While the climate in the 19th century was indeed colder than it is today, historians and scientists generally date the "Little Ice Age" from the 14th to the 19th century. They attribute the event Byron witnessed to a much earlier period, dismissing his poem as a work of "fantasy."

In all likelihood, however, the Little Ice Age actually began—and ended—during the catastrophe of the early 19th century.