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Plato's Atlantis My Theory

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julia
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« Reply #135 on: June 14, 2007, 07:16:15 pm »

Dear Qoais:
Whowere nodites? And The others??Anyway, I dont belive much to Urantia book (it could be true tho).But, TheNoah and his sons(if they came from Atlantis) It is possible They lived in mauritania..or in that island that you proposed..This structure of Richat .It is not clear if it is natural or not.they didnt
find out.This thing was obviously connected with the sea.because its surrounding is so unnatural So look Blue.Obviously It was sea there.And The Island that you said was connected to this richat structure(I never saw this thing before.It is in front of Our eyes and nobosy else but Ulf Richter says it is ATlantis.IT IS ATLANTIS>It is the same thingthat Plato described..Only the top is eroded may be the peoplelived there.but nobody dag around there..
I fi had alot of money, I would go and dig This  gobel errichats .area..What is underneath..I like to know..
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« Reply #136 on: June 14, 2007, 07:27:51 pm »

This map I mean: It was an island until mauritania.And Atlantis was In mauritania..The geology is changed..
http://i162.photobucket.com/albums/t267/Qoais/VeryancientAtlantis.jpg
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« Reply #137 on: June 14, 2007, 07:35:08 pm »

Look at the geology report:


 
 Christian Laroubine, Societe Astronomique de France, has described me: "I sampled breccias on the central zone of Richat. I do not think that we can say that this zone is the central peak of an impact crater, but there is a doubt about a tectonic origin. The components of my samples do not find their origin with a very great depth as could be to it a magma or nearby products. This breccia (left) is astonishing by its structure and its composition. Today, nobody can affirm without controversy if it is of tectonic or impact origin."
 
 
The Atlantis was a volcanic land....I really think now this is Atlantis..And Montexano made afight with me about it.He said It is a geographic structure..
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« Reply #138 on: June 14, 2007, 08:21:26 pm »

Hi Julia
Once a person reads the whole Urantia Book, it kind of stays in your head.  I've not seen anyone refute it yet for it's facts.  One can believe what one wishes of course; I just find a lot of it totally logical altho sometimes I find it frustrating too because it leaves details out that would be nice to know! 
Just read Paper 66 and you'll understand about the Nodites etc.
Regarding my map, I was reading some geological papers to see if I could figure out the shape of the land in the past.  The Urantia Book indicates that early on, the Med was way larger than now, and was open to the Indian Ocean, but closed at Gibralter.  It also covered a lot of Northern Africa.  When the land mass of Arabia was thrown up, it closed the Med., and gradually the Med. started drying up.  I suspected that Lake Tritonis was a remnant of the original Mediterranean Sea, which, way back in time, was part of the ocean thru being open at the eastern end.  I was trying to find out how long ago it had dried up and parts of it became a great plain.  I know there was a lot of seismic activity in the area over thousands of years, and finally a volcano and earthquake opened Gibralter and the Med. filled back up again.  However, the land bridge at Sicily took the brunt of the flood and tidal waves, while the eastern end didn't rise so quickly.  According to the Urantia Book, it was when the land bridge at Sicily finally gave way, that the eastern end of the Med had it's bottom sink, and wiped out the Edenic Peninsula (the garden of Eden was on a peninsula in the eastern end of the Med. sticking out westward.)  That's why Sarmast thinks it's Cyprus.  But if the Med was bigger at the time, and this peninsula is now under water, then Cyprus ain't it!!!!

Diodorus Siculus - in talking about the Amazons describes them living on a great island, at the western extremity of the known world, this island being rich in all things necessary for life and some gems as well.  Sounded just like Plato's Atlantis.  The Amazons attacked some Libyan Nomads, then built a city, then attacked their neighbors, the Atlantians.   Then they carried on across the rest of Libya attacking as they went, but made friends with the ruling Pharoah who I think was Horus, and then carried on their campaign around the eastern end of the Med. and ended up in the islands of Greece.  I believe it was the island of Lesbos where the Amazon Queen put up an alter to some goddess.  The point being, that somewhere in there, the land had to have been different than we think.  The Amazons had attacked the Atlanteans when they were still peaceful, so that had to be a looooong way back.  Then Heracles comes along, and he destroys the Amazonian city that they'd built in the Tritonis Marsh and then some time after that yet, he opens the Pillars at Gibralter.  The land changes again.

We don't really know the time line of the original story told by the priest.  Plato says "9000 is the number of years since the war".  But how long before the war was the Atlantean culture developing?  For quite some time since "boats were not as yet" when Posideon married Clieto. Some say it wasn't 9000. Some say it was 9000 months, or 9000 seasons or that a zero was misplaced, whatever.  BUT according to the Urantia Book, which leaves out a lot detail, humans HAD developed quite a bit and I see no reason why there couldn't have been a civilization that had grown in power.  Not necessarily in technology although that is debatable as well, since we have the Indian Vedas talking about Vimanas (flying machines).  We have carvings or paintings or whatever, found in a pyramid of 4 different flying machines.  So if the Egyptians or Atlantians didn't have these flying machines themselves, they had certainly seen them to be able to depict them on the walls.  Someone tried to tell me that those depictions are just a co-incidence.  That the "pictures" had been "erased" and new pictures put over top and since the original picture wasn't completely erased, the new picture looked like space craft.  Crap!  A co-incidence I could accept if it was kind of iffy or if there was only one.  But there's four - and to me that is intentional not co-incidence.  That's why I'm still hanging in there, thinking Atlantis just MAY have existed (maybe by another name).  If the priest had told Solon about the Atlanteans and if the Atlanteans had flying machines, can you imagine what they would have done to Solon if he tried to tell about that?  Or Plato?  He would then have had to say the Atlanteans were GODS and he couldn't do that because the war he talked about, wouldn't have been a fair fight at all, and the Greeks wouldn't want to hear about their ancestors fighting the gods for heavens sake.  You don't fight gods, you worship them. 
So - maybe Solon was carrying around a big secret, and maybe Plato stumbled upon it. 
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« Reply #139 on: June 14, 2007, 08:23:13 pm »

Julia - George is going to fight anyone who believes Atlantis was anywhere other than Spain. 
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« Reply #140 on: June 14, 2007, 08:32:44 pm »

What I'd like to know, is where these "gods" came from, that they just show up on earth and divide it amongst themselves.  They weren't here first, obviously, since Cleito had to have a family history somewhere.
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julia
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« Reply #141 on: June 14, 2007, 08:48:06 pm »

Dear Qoais :
my post didnt arrive I think ..This structure is gelogic or not is not clear..Ok/there is no clear geology report.Ulf Richter was right and You are right about that Island..It extends from Spain to mauritania and Algeria..SOo Big.the borders are still bluegreen lookat Google earth and everywhere it conncted to africa is Bluegreen like algea??Why is it bluegreen.because it was SEA.remember in Sahara in the caves thay found some pictures about the drowning people from where the saharan know about an ATlantis in spain?? It was In  mauritania.Before our eyes.And everybody misses.My god..Lets write in the Atlantis Rising forum heh heh..
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« Reply #142 on: June 14, 2007, 10:39:00 pm »

Look: http://www.superstock.co.uk/search/Marmar%20Tassili

http://outdoors.webshots.com/photo/1443109279077741972vMwztp

http://outdoors.webshots.com/photo/1446360459077741972hkSPWJ                                                                                                                                Water damage in the rocks..this is a relatively rescentdried up And Some hotels became wet in Libya abd algeriasuddenly.WHat does it mean.It was Sea there..
look:

http://www.cru.uea.ac.uk/~e118/WS/sahara14/sahara14.pdf
http://www.superstock.com/search/Caves/nature
http://www.h4ppy.com/blog/archives/2006_04_01_h4ppy.html


http://www.bearfabrique.org/Catastrophism/floods/mfloods.html

Egypt and North Africa
The evidence for such a flood is clear. If such an oceanic flood poured onto the African continent, it would have left clear traces and would have raised the ground water level immediately. Over hundreds of years, the ground water level would fall. This has been documented. In 1988, Joseph Davidovits and Margie Morris reported the following:
Geological studies of the Sphinx have kindled more than debate over [its] attribution and age. The established history of the evolution of civilization has been challenged.
A study of the severe body erosion of the Sphinx and the hollow in which it is situated indicates that the damaging agent was water. A slow erosion occurs in limestone when water is absorbed and reacts with salts in the stone. The controversy arises over the source of the vast amount of water responsible.
Two theories are popular. One is that ground water slowly rose into the body of the Sphinx. This theory produces irreconcilable problems: A recent survey carried out by the American Research Center in Egypt (ARCE) determined that three distinctly separate repair operations were completed on the Sphinx between the New Kingdom and Ptolemaic rule, that is, during a period of roughly 700 to 1,000 years. The study also indicates that the Sphinx was already in its current state of erosion when these early repairs where made. No appreciable erosion has occurred since the original damage, nor is there further damage on the bedrock of the surrounding hollow, an area that never underwent repair.

Knowing this, one must consider that the inundating Nile slowly built up levels of silt over the millennia, and this was accompanied by a gradual rise in the water table. During Khafra's time, the water table was about [30] feet lower than it is today. For the rising ground water theory to hold, an unbelievable geological scenario would have to have taken place. It would mean that from [30] feet lower than today's water table, water rose to about two feet into the body of the Sphinx and the surrounding hollow, where it caused erosion for roughly 600 years, and then stopped its damaging effects.

Historians find the second theory...offered more unthinkable. It suggests that the source of water stemmed from the wet phases of the last Ice Age--c. 15,000 to 10,000 BC--when Egypt underwent periods of severe flooding. This hypothesis advocates that the Sphinx necessarily existed before the floods. If it could be proven, well-established theories about prehistory would be radically shaken. The world's most mysterious sculpture would date to a time when historians place humanity in a Neolithic setting, living in open camps and depending largely on hunting and foraging.3 (Emphasis added.)

Richard C. Hoagland discussed the Sphinx and John A. West's analysis of the evidence for its geological age:

On researching a book in the mid-seventies about the philosophies and cosmologies of Ancient Egypt, West came upon a comment from another scholar, R. A. Schwaller de Lubicz: "The Great Sphinx shows evidence of severe water erosion...." To which West internally responded with the obvious question:
"In a desert?!"

West's curiosity, prompted by de Lubicz' casual reference to the "anomalous erosion" of the Sphinx, was based on the following hard facts:

To create "severe water erosion" on the Sphinx, the Sahara Desert must at one time NOT have been a desert. Readily available climatological data for Ancient Egypt make it abundantly clear that the Sahara has been in place from [7 to 10,000 years]...since the end of the last Ice Age. Meaning that both the carving of the Sphinx and its "severe water erosion" had to have taken place sometime before...!

Such an age, if established, would, of course, automatically preclude an Egyptian Pharaoh by the name of Chephren from ordering the carving of the Sphinx only 4,500 years ago--if the Sphinx's current state of weathering could a) be traced unambiguously, geologically to a period of massive rainfall on the Gizeh Plateau (as opposed to wind or sand erosion), and b) that period could be independently dated by geological (as opposed to "Egyptological") techniques, to before Chephren's reign during Egypt's so-called "Old Kingdom."

In 1991, both of these results came together for West's privately-funded Sphinx Project Team--resulting in the Team's highly significant, radical conclusions:

Based on this chain of reasoning...we can estimate that the initial carving of the Great Sphinx (i.e., the carving of the main portion of the body and the front) may have been carried out c. 7,000 to 5,000 BC. This tentative estimate is probably a minimum date; given that weathering rates may proceed non-linearly...the possibility remains open that the initial carving of the Great Sphinx may be even older than 9,000 years ago....

Privately, West's geologists suspect an even greater age for this remarkable Egyptian effigy....

This is required to produce the "advanced state of water weathering" they detect (in part, via seismological techniques)--not merely on the Sphinx--but in the walls, and under the "floor," of the carved "ditch" which separates the Sphinx from the limestone of the Gizeh Plateau proper. This pronounced state of deep erosion is also readily visible in the "Sphinx Temple"--the massive construction...a few hundred yards from the Sphinx, composed of 100-ton limestone blocks. It has long been presumed that these were excavated from the "ditch" at the time of the carving of the Sphinx itself.

All these features...show evidence of such severe water weathering that eroded fissures 12 feet in depth are visible inside the ditch; similar manmade excavations (to the ditch), in similarly hard limestone on other parts of the Plateau (for Old Kingdom tombs, dated by other methods to 5,000 years), show literally no erosion....

The remarkable conclusion?

According to John [A.] West: If the Sphinx predates dynastic Egypt,...we would have to rewrite the history of when advanced civilization began....4 (Author's emphasis.)

It is a well-established fact that, during the Ice Age, the amount of rainfall was much greater than at present. Historians believed and accepted that the Egyptian civilization emerged long after the Ice Age ended. Under these circumstances, it is clear that, after the Ice Age ended (supposedly 10,000 years ago), the amount of rainfall over Africa decreased and, therefore, the ground water level would have also decreased. However, the damage to the Sphinx indicates that the water table rose more than 30 feet and remained high for about 600 years. Geologically, an immense amount of water would have had to flood Africa after the Sphinx was constructed. Water tables simply do not rise over 30 feet and remain at a high level under the present gradualistic or uniformitarian conditions. This clearly indicates that a flood of extraordinary magnitude inundated Africa during the time of Egyptian civilization.
A temple was uncovered at Abydos, over 250 miles south of Gizeh, in the 19th century. The main temple complex, built of red granite, is located in a swamp 30 feet beneath the surface. According to David H. Childress, "[its] foundations are cut many feet below the current level of the water table, which has risen some [20] feet since the temple was built."5

When the Egyptians built this temple in the desert and laid its foundation, it seems obvious that the water table was at least 20 feet lower. The water table would not have risen 20 feet since then unless an enormous amount of water had, somehow, been added to the desert region and had, thus far, not subsided fully. Whale bones discovered in the Sahara Desert offer even more evidence of a flood in Egypt.

Derek Ager argued against Velikovsky's concept of a flood by saying, "The idiocy of some of [Velikovsky's] dogmatic pronouncements is illustrated, for example, in the transport of vast numbers of large vertebrates from the tropics to the Arctic by a great wave that did not, apparently, carry with it a single marine organism."6

The following descriptions about marine organisms found under Egyptian sand dunes and all over the Earth answer Ager's dogmatic pronouncement:

According to James Trifil, some 243 fossilized whale skeletons and loose bones were discovered in a large valley 150 miles southwest of Cairo (100 miles inland from the Mediterranean Sea and more than 200 miles from the Red Sea). These skeletons are of Zeuglodon whales, like those found all over the southeastern United States. The Egyptian whale bones were scattered among the sand dunes; when the wind exposed them, the paleontologists rapidly dug out as much of the fossilized whale as possible because windborne sand erodes exposed bones.7
It is generally accepted that the Sahara Desert was created only after the Ice Age ended and the climate became arid. Therefore, whales had to have embedded themselves into the desert sand after the Ice Age ended and sand formed to cover them. The whales must have been left there recently. If Zeuglodons were lying on or near the surface for about 40 million years, as some paleontologists submit, their bones would have eroded away. If they were encased in rock, over time, and the rock became sand, their bones would have become sand.
Thus, two pieces of information point to a recent oceanic flood in Egypt: water damage on the Sphinx, its surrounding niche and temple, and the presence of whale bones both 100 miles inland from the Mediterranean Sea and 200 miles inland from the Red Sea. Whale bones were also found in other regions of North Africa. Allan O. Kelly and Frank Dachille said, "In Tunisia and Algeria, there are a number of salt lakes, some of them below sea level, which show elevated shorelines of Pleistocene age. The University of California's expedition of 1947 [to] 1948 found the bones of whales along with those of present-day mammals in these old lake beds."8

Presently, whales are not found in landlocked inland lakes in Africa. If Zeuglodons lived 50 million years ago and became extinct soon thereafter, they would never be found in strata containing present-day mammals. The implication is that Zeuglodon whales were deposited into these lakes, along with mammals, by an enormous flood. The trapped whales died alongside the mammals that were swept into the salt lakes with them.
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« Reply #143 on: June 15, 2007, 12:01:02 am »

Excellent article Julia - very facinating. 

I had read a long time ago about the Sphinx being under water and that theory would certainly explain it.  I had tried to imagine what it could have been like for such a disaster to happen, but couldn't even picture it.  The whale bones gives one something to imagine with!  When we were young my brother tried to tell me that the shells high up in the mountains were dropped by birds.  Boy, they must have been some big birds to drop whale bones!!!  Very busy birds too by the sound of it!! Grin

I know I keep repeating myself, but I don't believe scientists on dating things.  I've always believed that the Sphinx was 10,000 years old or older, (and I believed that the Norse Men had been to Canada long before Columbus.)  I believed that the Sphinx and the GP were specifically built where they are so that they WOULD endure for a very long time.  Until we know exactly what they were for, we won't know why they were supposed to last such a long time.  Maybe as markers in case all of mankind was wiped out and ET's eventually landed here, they'd know that there had been civilization on this planet at one time.  If Lobsang Rampa's book is true, then most definitely there was an advanced culture, wiped out in a horrendous cataclysm.  He said the earth tilted, stood still, and then started revolving in the opposite direction.  The few remnants of humanity were almost insane with fear.

I do believe there was an advanced race, otherwise there would be no Indian Vedas talking about flying machines.  There would be no pictures on a tomb wall depicting flying machines.  There would be no Nasca lines or gigantic art works on cliff sides.  In the Vedas, it talks about building these flying machines, and how some are really different - made of wood - while the advanced ones can move up, down, sideways, and at an angle at great speeds.  Then the one "Lord" had a flying machine that could cloak itself.  It would disappear from sight while you were looking at it.  Others were like flying cities.  These were not "gods" flying them, but an advanced race.  They died in war and were not immortal.

I don't know what the Richat Structure is, and it sounds like the scientists that have looked at it don't know either.  They say it's not an impact crater.  No one even knew it was there until we had space flight, so who knows?  It may have been submerged for years, and that being the case, the erosion would not be so great as if it had been in the open air for hundreds of years.  Therefore, to me, it would be hard to date the thing.  At one time, the Med. was part of the ocean, then Arabia was thrown up and the Med was closed off.  Libya was once a green belt.  The Urantia Book too says that with the different changes in the topography of the earth, the winds changed and no longer brought the moisture laden clouds to rain on the fertile areas, and they became deserts.

Blue Hue thinks Atlantis was in the Gulf of Aden.  Plato's story says that when Atlantis sunk, the eastern Med. peoples could no longer navigate the ocean.  How does the sinking of a land in the south end of the Red Sea, affect the people in the Eastern Med.?  They never had access to that route in the first place. UNLESS THEY LIVED 400,000 YEARS AGO BEFORE ARABIA WAS THROWN UP AND THEY WERE CUT OFF THAT WAY.  (Urantia Book time line for Arabia).

I don't believe an advanced society lived 400,000 years ago, but if the oldest Veda is 11,000 years old, and it had been an oral tradition for hundreds of years before that, then obviously there had to be an advanced civilization somewhere within the last 50,000 years.  The Vedas and writings if the East Indians are the oldest there are, and the only ones to actually talk in detail about flying machines.  So perhaps the Atlanteans WERE from there originally or Plato DID make the story up.  Altho it is a possibility that the Egyptian priest indicated to Solon, such things as flying machines.  Solon may not have believed it, but then again, if these were "gods" flying around, he might have.  I can see why the priests of Egypt guarded their knowledge with their lives.  If there IS an ancient flying machine under the Sphinx, it would the most indcredible find in all of history!  And most definitely, history would have to be re-written.
« Last Edit: June 15, 2007, 01:03:11 am by Qoais » Report Spam   Logged

An open-minded view of the past allows for an unprejudiced glimpse into the future.

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julia
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« Reply #144 on: June 15, 2007, 10:24:08 am »

Qoais;     
look:
Prehistoric rock art of the Sahara

Extensive paintings and engravings of wild animals, domesticated cattle, sheep and goats, humans and abstract symbols are found in many areas of the Sahara. These images give a fascinating insight into a lost world that is geographically and archaeologically unexpected.

They are found in remote, inhospitable regions of the desert so arid that any form of sustained human or animal existence is untenable today.

They document prehistoric cultures that apparently thrived in these regions, hunting wild animals and herding domesticated cattle, that have subsequently vanished leaving little trace of their presence or of the richness of their cultures.

The rock-art here was created during at least the past 7,000 years against a backdrop of climatic instability and dramatic oscillations in rainfall and vegetation cover.
Profound changes in the climate in North Africa over the last 12,000 years have had a massive impact on the environment and, consequently, on human occupation and subsistence.

In particular, two 'wet' phases with increased rainfall and surface water enabled vegetation, animals and humans to flourish deep in the desert of today.
These wet phases have been dated between about 12,000-8,000 years ago and 7,000-5 000 years ago.

Periods of increased aridity, one punctuating these two wet phases and the other beginning around 5,000 years ago and becoming more pronounced towards the present, produced an expansion of desert conditions and the abandonment of immense areas of the Sahara.

The earliest rock-art, much of which represents large wild animals such as elephant, giraffe, rhinoceros and a species of buffalo that is now extinct, is believed to have been created by hunter-gatherers more than 7,000 years ago and possibly as early as 10,000 BP (before present).

Domesticated cattle are thought to have been widespread across the Sahara by 6,000-7,000 BP, but were possibly present earlier in certain areas, and representations of them are thought to date to this time.

Subsequent styles of rock-art document the introduction of domesticated sheep and goats, horses and chariots (from around 3,000 BP), and camels (from around 2,000-2,500 BP). More recently, inscriptions in the Tuareg script, tifinagh, have been engraved at many rock-art sites.
Distinct regional differences in the rock-art styles across the Sahara may indicate regional cultural differences, although other explanations for alterations in style and content in different locations should also be entertained.

Acacus is a natural museum that offers a gorgeous desert scenery of cave paintings and drawings up to 10,000 years old. The engravings on the rocks representing animal life around 12,000 B.C and figures of horses and carts dated to 1500 B.C are all scattered throughout Acacus mountains and valleys.

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« Reply #145 on: June 15, 2007, 10:35:10 am »

little-known - or poorly-known - heritage, preserved partly by the absence of tourism and offering an array of treasures, has observed the rise and fall of brilliant and sophisticated civilizations on this vast territory. Dating from prehistory to Islamic civilization, the five sites added to the World Heritage List between 1982 and 1986 provide a clear illustration that Libya has a heritage whose incalculable value belongs to all humanity.
Three sites, Cyrene, Leptis Magna and Sabratha, bear witness to the life that flourished in Libya during the Punic, Greek, Roman and Byzantine eras. These sites - and particularly Leptis and Cyrene - are attracting attention from many foreign archaeologists, including teams from France, Italy and the United Kingdom.

Unfortunately, the prehistoric site of Tadrart Acacus, a continuation of Tassili n'Ajjer in Algeria, is deteriorating because of tourists or specialist photographers who wet the cave paintings to make the drawings stand out better, or because of vandalism. Although difficult to get to, this site is not guarded and has no protective mechanisms to keep visitors to keep away.

Similarly, the ancient city of Ghadames, known - like Shibam in Yemen - as the 'pearl of the desert', is gradually falling into ruin because its fragile clay houses are not being maintained. The covered streets are becoming unusable and only a few inhabitants are struggling to pass on to future generations this architectural heritage with its unique style of construction and internal decoration.

All these sites deserve special attention, both from researchers (Théodore Monod, a well-known French biologist, went to the Libyan desert in 1991) and from conservation experts. CRATerre, a department of the Grenoble (France) School of Architecture, specializing in clay architecture, could suggest effective ways of saving the Ghadames houses. UNESCO's Division of Water Sciences could devise a project with local experts to protect Leptis Magna against flooding when the Lebda wadi bursts its banks. The technological sponsorship unit of the EDF (the French electricity company) could take an interest in the problem of Sabratha's deteriorating stones.

The sites are listed below in chronological order, as they entered into the history of the country:


TADRART ACACUS
The mountainous region of Tadrart Acacus is situated near the country's southwest border, east of the city of Ghat. The site also includes the Murzuch desert which bears traces of the different phases of the palaeolithic era, during which hunters lived surrounded by flora and fauna similar to those that today thrive in tropical regions. Tools have been unearthed across an area covering thousands of kilometres. In the Tadrart Acacus mountains, cave paintings and carvings of various styles are scattered throughout almost all the valleys, representing the various cultural groups that lived there during those long periods of prehistory. This cave art, discovered in the Libyan desert of Fezzan, bears witness to marked climatic changes resulting from the gradual encroachment of the desert. Various European experts have studied these paintings and carvings, but it was Professor Fabrizio Mori who succeeded in clearly distinguishing the different periods represented:

carvings on the rock face depicting the outline of large animals from the African savannah (around 12,000 B.C.),
stylized paintings using yellow, green and red pigments of asexual figures with rounded heads, shown by using carbon-14 to have been produced some 8000 years B.C.,
polychromatic representations of bovine animals and Mediterranean-type human figures (around 4000 B.C.),
representations of horses and carts dated at 1500 B.C., believed to refer to the Garamantes tribes mentioned by Herodotus,
monochromic paintings corresponding to the introduction of camels into North Africa at the beginning of the Christian era.
Although the carvings have so far withstood the ravages of time and human intervention, the paintings are disappearing.


CYRENE
This site, located in the Gebel Akhdar region, was founded in the seventh century B.C. in an area where Carthaginian influence was predominant. From the fifth to fourth centuries B.C., this Greek trading post, situated inland, knew its most prosperous period and was able gain the goodwill of Alexander the Great, without falling under his sword. Then in 321 B.C. the satrap of Egypt, Ptolemy, easily gained control of the region. In 96 B.C., one of his descendants relinquished the city to the Romans until the start of its decline, after the tidal wave of 365 A.D.. However, between the third and seventh centuries A.D. the building of churches in Cyrenaica, by then a Christian region, the city of Cyrene and especially its port, Apollonia, testified to the prosperity of the area. This wealth was produced by stock raising, agricultural production and considerable maritime trade.
Cyrene, a city steeped in history and legends for a thousand years, is one of the most complex archaeological sites in the Mediterranean region. Like the other Greek cities of Libya it provides an outstanding example of prosperity in the Mediterranean and African worlds, whose attributes it managed harmoniously to combine.

Monument after monument, the relics found by archaeologists illustrate an extremely clear aesthetic ambition and the religious fervour that inspired the people, focused on their protector, Apollo.

The site of Cyrene, which has not yet been fully explored, contains some remarkable relics from the Greco-Roman period. Among the most important are:


The Sanctuary and Temple of Apollo, the city's oldest cultural building. During the Imperial Roman era, from Trajan to Hadrian, the abundance of water from Apollo's spring led to the building of baths that contains the site's most impressive statues. The sanctuary included a large number of buildings -including temples, porticos and fountains. Not all of them have been identified yet, nor even excavated.
From the Greek theatre to the Roman amphitheatre - west of the Sanctuary of Apollo a huge theatre, a shrine to the Greek god Dionysus, was enlarged during the Roman era and turned into an arena for combats between animals and gladiators.
The city itself comprises the Acropolis, which has hardly been explored. At the centre of the Agora, a circular building has been identified as a shrine to Demeter and Persephone; statues of these two goddesses were discovered within the enclosure. This shrine, which lies outside the city walls, was recently excavated by a group of American archaeologists.
To the east, on a nearby hill, the Cyrenians built the biggest Greek Doric temple in Africa in the sixth century B.C. - the Sanctuary of Zeus, which is comparable to the Temple of Zeus at Olympia.
Finally, the wealth of funerary monuments lends an unforgettable mood to the Cyrenian landscape. A major excavation project in the region has been proposed to the Libyan government by the University of Leicester. The aim of the project would be to identify the links existing between Cyrene and the surrounding area in ancient times.

LEPTIS MAGNA
This site, located on the coast 120 kilometres east of Tripoli, is one of the most extensive archaeological sites in the Mediterranean, measuring 2.5 by 1.5 kilometres.
The little Phoenician port of Leptis, founded at the start of the first millennium B.C. to trade with the Garamantes people, like the other trading posts on the Gulf of Sirte, such as Sabratha, had a distinguished destiny in the second century A.D. when a Libyan, Septimus Severus, became the Roman Emperor. Thanks to him, Leptis became one of the most beautiful cities in the Roman world and remained the best example of 'Severan' urban development.

The city was a megalomaniac's dream, for which nothing seemed too big, too beautiful or too grand - marble replaced stucco, granite took the place of sandstone and basalt was replaced by porphyry. Walls resembled ramparts; streets turned into esplanades.

Leptis was similar to Palmyra and Ephesus: a provincial city with a rural role, like the two other Tripolitanian cities, Sabratha and Oea (now Tripoli).

Under Roman influence from the fall of Carthage in 146 B.C., Leptis was finally annexed to the Empire in the first century A.D. and a thriving grain trade grew up there.

In 193 A.D., after a brilliant political and military career both in Rome and within the Empire, Septimus Severus became emperor.

However, Leptis reached the height of its glory when the Empire started to decline with the first incursions by Vandals in 429. After the Arab invasion, the desert sand once again took possession of the site. In the period between the two world wars, the Italian government paid for a major excavation - 500 men cleared tonnes of sediment and discovered relics that defied imagination.

The city was intact, preserved for centuries by the sand. After the Second World War, French and British archaeologists joined the Italians in their efforts, but it was only when the site was added to the World Heritage List in 1982 that the work really started. Today, a total of 30 major monuments -Hadrian's baths, the Forum covering a hectare of land, the Severan basilica, the port, the main temples, the marketplace, the theatre - have been restored, along with many minor ones. Renovation of the 15,000-seat amphitheatre is almost complete. Hundreds of sculptures and mosaics have been transferred to the museums of Tripoli and Lebda.

Unfortunately the civil engineering structures built by the Romans to protect the city from flooding when the Lebda wadi rose have vanished or are no longer effective.

The site suffered devastating flooding in 1987 and 1988. UNESCO provided emergency aid in the form of equipment to clear the site. Several years were needed to restore this huge site. A flood protection project was proposed by UNESCO in 1990 to put a stop to the problem. However, since September 1994 a British team has started new excavations in the outlying area to the west of the theatre. The team is headed by a professor of Libyan origin, Haled Walda of King's College, London. Meanwhile Professor Buonacasa's Italian teams and the French archaeological expedition led by Professor André Laronde are continuing their excavations in the city centre and the port respectively.


SABRATHA
Located on the coast 60 kilometres east of Tripoli, this city formed a maritime trading triangle with Leptis and Oea between North Africa and the rest of the Mediterranean from Phoenician times until the decline of the Roman Empire. It was a provincial city with a rural role, linking Africa with the Gulf of Sirte via the caravan routes coming from Ghadames.
An integral part of the ephemeral Numidian kingdom of Massinissa, Sabratha was swallowed up by the Roman province of Africa Nova in 46 B.C.

The major monuments were built at the height of the city's prosperity in the second and third centuries A.D. The theatre is the most remarkable of these, with its colonnaded stage wall on three levels and its low reliefs in pink and white marble, directly facing the sea.

The theatre was reconstructed by Italian archaeologists and is now used during the summer for cultural entertainment. However, all the site's pink sandstone structures have been weakened by the ravages of time, especially erosion by sea spray and breezes. The theatre's structural elements were often shored up hastily with the materials available, and the houses on the beach are gradually disappearing, leaving the sea to regain possession of the shore.

Two museums on the site house objects found during the excavations, such as mosaics from the Byzantine period, statues from the Roman era and Phoenician relics. Some of these objects, most of which were unearthed by Italian archaeologists, are believed to require the attention of experienced conservationists working in suitably equipped laboratories. As with the other sites, it is important to define clearly the boundaries of the Sabratha site and to stop people entering it from the beach.


GHADAMES
'An outstanding example of a traditional human settlement which is representative of a culture and which has become vulnerable under the impact of irreversible change.' Unfortunately, the old city has become practically a ghost town. Its fragile houses of clay and unfired brick, decorated inside with whitewash and preserving a degree of coolness in the height of summer, are not being maintained, which means this remarkable example of the traditional housing of Ghadames is slowly disappearing. Ghadames and its oasis cover an area of 225 hectares, 10 hectares of which are occupied by houses in the old city. The site of the houses was determined by the location of the Ain-el-Fras spring.
Roughly circular in shape, the old city is composed of a cluster of houses; those on the outside, with their reinforced external walls, protect the city. This rudimentary enclosure includes gates and projecting bastions. All the houses are built on at least two main levels - the ground floor, reached through a single door opening onto a rectangular room, and the first-floor living quarters linked up over the covered walkways that criss-cross the city like galleries.

The lessening flow of the Ain-el-Fras spring was partly to blame for the desertion of the old city in favour of the modern town, which was built entirely between 1975 and 1983, as well as for the decline of trade and agriculture. Some inhabitants have kept their homes in the old city for the summer months and the celebration of certain festivals.

In 1983 a UNESCO intersectoral mission observed the alarming deterioration of some of the houses, and proposals were made to the Government to revive the old city and install modern amenities to encourage former residents to move back into their old homes. So far no follow-up has been given to the proposals.

In 1990 a feasibility study was presented to UNDP by the United Nations Centre for Human Settlements (Habitat). Its findings gave serious cause for concern - Habitat made it clear that if conservation work on the houses did not start in the next few years, Ghadames would become an archaeological site.

In less than ten years, Ghadames has turned into a ghost town visited only by a few lost tourists. It only comes to life during the hot summer months, when the air conditioning in modern homes is unable to cope with the torrid heat of the Sahara and only the clay houses of the old city maintain a degree of coolness.

The revival of the oasis and its irrigation system is one of the vital conditions for making the gardens of Ghadames bloom again - and for bringing back the inhabitants to maintain the houses and irrigation channels on a regular basis. A national organization to protect the city has authority over any restoration projects and aims to find the resources required to relaunch the city financially, as part of a master plan to develop Libyan cultural sites for tourism.

Nevertheless, people who have visited Ghadames recently report that the situation in 1995 appears desperate. They say an appeal to the international community could be launched by the Libyan government as soon as possible to prevent the city from disappearing completely.

With the prospect of opening up the country to cultural tourism to encourage sustainable development and to make its cultural sites better known, a concentrated and concerted effort by the various national bodies responsible for this heritage is needed to make it possible to appeal effectively for expertise and resources from the international community. The Sabratha Theatre, the Forum of Severus at Leptis, the Sanctuary of Zeus at Cyrene, and the houses and covered streets of Ghadames, as well as the cave paintings of Tadrart Acacus, should be preserved for future generations as an outstanding example of Mediterranean culture.

http://ourworld.compuserve.com/homepages/dr_ibrahim_ighneiwa/libher.htm

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julia
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« Reply #146 on: June 15, 2007, 10:41:01 am »

The cave of swimmersdiscoveredby count Almasy(English patient)
http://www.fjexpeditions.com/frameset/rockart.htm
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Qoais
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« Reply #147 on: June 15, 2007, 12:09:54 pm »

Beautiful Rock Art Julia
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An open-minded view of the past allows for an unprejudiced glimpse into the future.

Logic rules.

"Intellectual brilliance is no guarantee against being dead wrong."
julia
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« Reply #148 on: June 15, 2007, 04:46:45 pm »

Dear Qoais I looked for the painting which some Swimming and drowning people on it..I saw somewhere in the internet some saharan pcave or rock painbtings which have drowning people on the,,And they were saying It descibes the big flood.but, I couldnt find now.I think it was either Libya or Algeria.may be in the west sahara..But, the people painted there the big flood.Thats why I thought they must came from Atlantis.And This berber people or Tuaregs are supposedly mostly people withblond and blue eyed..I think those people could have been migratedfrom the Atlantis..But, This Structure is really worth it to dig there and research I dont know why somebody dont do that..Instead of looking anywhere else/you knew Ulf Richters work didnt you??
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Qoais
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« Reply #149 on: June 15, 2007, 04:58:14 pm »

No Julia, I'd never heard of Ulf until after he'd passed away.  I had just started posting on the AR site when it was mentioned.  I understood everyone there had high respect for him, but I didn't know who he was.  I haven't read his work either.  Sounds like maybe I should.  Do you have any links to his work?  I typed in his name and everything came up in German.  Then I clicked on English Only and there was a lot of Richters but not him.  Am I spelling it right?
« Last Edit: June 15, 2007, 05:04:50 pm by Qoais » Report Spam   Logged

An open-minded view of the past allows for an unprejudiced glimpse into the future.

Logic rules.

"Intellectual brilliance is no guarantee against being dead wrong."
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