Slitherine

An addition to the above. There is also, in the same region of Anza Borrego, an effing enormous "dancing thunderbird" laid out on a hillside near the Old Marshall South Home.

The thunderbird is a bit odd to talk about. The wingspan I would estimate at 120-130 yards/meters. It is horribly eroded, and in one spot has been damaged slightly by a landslide or rockfall.

Indeed, I would describe it as the remains of something, because you cannot always see it.

In the Autumn of the year, the sun hits at just the right angle for about an hour each afternoon, and it is right there, plain as day, plain as the nose on your face. Everyone we've ever taken to out there to see it, (roughly a dozen people including family members), has seen it. Nobody has ever said, "No, there's nothing there but your imagination".

Now, I have hiked all over that hillside, which is not an easy task. It's steep as hell, and covered in broken rock, loose sand, prickly pear, barrel cactus, spiny yucca and several dozen other varieties of thoroughly inhospitable cacti. But I've hiked it all over, and there's nothing to be seen close-up.

Yet in the Autumn, in that one hour or so of late afternoon sunlight, it's there. It could be natural. I've gone back and forth and back and forth in my opinion.

But there have been important archaeological finds made because low-angle light picked out the remains of foundations that were invisible to the naked eye from close-up. Usually this has involved aerial photography, but the principle remains the same.

So, justification for Von Danikenites, or over-active cannabis-fueled Southern California imaginations...you decide

possum wrote:

DaiSho wrote:

philqw78 wrote:Wow, something 2500 years old you can touch and let the kids climb on.

In this country you wouldn't be allowed within 500m (meters for the imperialistic). Unless you had made up a religion, claimed it had been around for 2500 years, and practised it at the wrong time of year. Or ...... best I stop

Well, in this country if you came across something 2500 years old you'd know its a fake anyway

Ian

Not entirely true, assuming you're American.

Here in San Diego county, out in the Anza-Borrego Desert State Park, there were cave paintings, known by their Spanish name of Los Mortaderos, and generally dated to roughly 1000 BC.

Unfortunately, they were accessible to the public, and totally unmonitored by authority. Somewhere in the early 1990's, a group of unknown vandals with cans of spraypaint covered most of the paintings with graffitti. In a typically American case of "closing the barn door after the cow is gone", the cave has now been blocked off and is not accessible to anyone, with or without permission.

I guess that's life in the post-literate age, (especially here in the Great Republic); we have met the New Barbarians, and they are us. Sic Transit Gloria Mundi.

Well, my location clearly says Australia so the only 2500 artifact we can 'climb over' is where someone has spit on their hands with mud added into the mix

Oi Richard, when are you doing "Dingo's and the Long White Cloud", Aboriginal and Maori ?

Ian

OK, fine, well color me stupid then

possum wrote:OK, fine, well color me stupid then

Ignorant Americans (said totally tongue in cheek without malice)

Actually, I lived in Canada for a number of years. I expected to be living there for the rest of my life so didn't make a priority of visiting some similar sites to the ones you mentioned. I'm so very sorry, because it may be several years before I manage back to the Americas, and the 'Ancient' history of the Americas is one that interests me a great deal.

Ian