Mysterious Malta

     In the Mediterranean Sea, just north of Libya and south of Sicily is the beautiful island nation of Malta.

     Biblically, we know about Malta because the Apostle Paul was shipwrecked there and founded a church among its people.

     The modern-day independent republic of Malta is made up of three larger islands and some smaller ones, the largest of which is called Malta.  It is one of the most densely populated areas in the world because, beside their exports of cotton and tobacco, their shipyards and docks have a very large level of traffic and their tourism trade is extensive.  Tourism, interestingly consists of two classes.  Vacationers enjoy the beauty and history of the island by itself  Medical tourists, mainly from the UK, are seeking treatment from Malta's burgeoning medical industry because they cannot get the treatment that they need from their government's socialized medicine.

     One of the greatest draws for the tourists are the enormous number of ancient megalithic structures.  The word "megalithic" (Greek for "big rock") refers to structures and buildings constructed of gigantic, multi-ton stones.  At places with exotic names like Hal Saflieni, Hagar Qim, Mnajdra and Tarxien, huge and amazing structures can be seen.
The structures have been there since time immemorial.

Hagar Qim

     They are called "temples" because there seem to be unique and characteristically fan-shaped shrine areas with flat altar stones and pedestals for statues.  There have even been fragments of statues found, such as The Sleeping Lady of Hal Saflieni. 

      Some of the stones are rough hewn.  Some are polished limestone.  Some are painted.  Some have carvings engraved into them.  One structure, on the island of Gozo, has a facade 26 feet tall.  The locals call it "Ggantija," or "The Work of the Giants."

Door or gateway to Hagar Qim

Altar in Haga Qim

     A lot of information has been lost and we are even unsure of the actual structure or layout of some of them. That's because, over the thousands of years during which Malta was inhabited and fought over by dozens of peoples and civilizations, some of the stone has been carried off to be used in other purposes, the fate of many archaeological sites. 


Doorway with pedestals of unknown purpose

     Then along came the archaeologists, who were people of varying degrees of knowledge and had varying agendas and theories.  They were going to "re-construct" the ancient stones in their previous order.  Who knows how accurate they were.
Certain facts are unassailable, however.



Hal Saflieni

Certain of the megalithic structures were used as tombs, ranging from tiny family vaults to the huge underground labyrinth at Hal Saflieni in which the bones of more than 7,000 bodies were interred.   This labyrinth, called the Hypogeum was carved into the rock below the "temple" - three stories down. 
There are characteristics of it that we are only now beginning to truly appreciate.  For example, the central room of the Hypogeum, called the Oracle Chamber, is so constructed that anybody standing in the center of the chamber and speaking in a normal voice can be clearly heard in any other chamber in the entire complex.   This is apparently accomplished by sonic wave guides, channels cut into the rock that are so precisely tuned that they carry the human voice.

Statue remains at Hal Saflieni

     This leads us to understand certain things.  First, a people lived on this island (if it was an island at the time) who existed so long ago that no record, or memory of them remains. 
 Second, they built large and complex structures that were both artistic and technologically sophisticated, when the materialistic scientists insist that we believe people were living in caves and wearing skins. 


Sleeping Lady of Hal Saflieni

     Third, let's ask the same question that we have asked before.  Why would any people construct these buildings in the most difficult way possible, by using gigantic multi-ton stones that they had to shape and lift into place with great precision?  Why were the stones not shaped into uniform sizes and shapes, making them easier to build with?  Why, instead, use stones of various sizes and shapes, fitting them together like a jigsaw puzzle?

Unless.....it just wasn't that hard....for them.


Model of the underground chambers (hypogeum) of Hal Saflieni

Take a look at some of the photos I've placed here of the various structures and details of the ancient stone works of Malta.  We'll talk further down.

     There are more mysteries to be discussed after you've examined the various illustrations.

One of the central chambers of the Hypogeum

 

The Hypogeum

Tarxien map

Tarxien gateway

Inner court at Tarxien

      Another of the mysteries of Malta are the many grooves in the stone covering the island.  The natives call these grooves "the cart tracks." 

Here are some facts about the cart tracks:

1.  There are hundreds of them all over the island.

2.  They are far older than any of the megalithic buildings because some of them run under the foundations of the buildings.  The buildings were built over the "cart tracks."









3.  They always occur in pairs.

4.  Some run off of sheer cliffs.










5.  Some run into the sea.  Divers have found them in the shallow sea beds around the island.


6.  The pairs are almost always about four and a half feet wide from center of track to center of track.  The variation may be because of differences in the tracks or because of erosion. The depth varies, probably for similar reasons.

7.   If the tracks were caused by the wear from a two wheeled vehicle, such as a cart, the bottom would be worn in a rounded U shape, as in the top figure above. That isn't the case.  Rather, like the lower drawing above, the outer edge of the track slopes gently down until it reaches an abruptly deeper cut on the inside of the rut.  The inner wall of the channel is much deeper.  There is one kind of wheel that would fit such a channel perfectly.

     The kind of wheel that we currently use for railroad engines and cars.  

These wheels have a flange on its inner edge to keep it stable on its track.

     So, here's the final kicker.  I've previously told you that the Mediterranean Sea has over 200 cities on the sea floor and that these tracks run under the water, out into the deeper channels.  We know of one place where they come out onto land again.

     Portugal.

     The materialistic scientists refer to anything from ancient times as being from a Stone Age.  What they mean is that people were evolving from a animal-like state and the first tools that they were able to make were from stone and wood and bone. 

     It wasn't a Stone Age, any more than we live in such a culture now.  Stonework was just the only category of their artifacts that was durable enough to survive the cataclysms that they endured, allowing us to see them today.

     If the artifacts of our culture were subjected to the pounding of tidal waves and the resulting rubble was then put through a year long submersion in deep seawater (Yes, I'm talking about the Great Flood from the Bible here), hardly any of the great technological feats that we are so proud of (buildings, cars, planes, powerplants, dams) would be recognizable either  ......except the megalithic stone monuments that we have created.  Considering how far inferior our structures are to the megalithic monuments, I really doubt that any of them would survive at all.

     Why do I think that the civilization that produced the temples and the cart ruts were destroyed by The Deluge?   

     Remember that megalithic structures found on Malta were constructed of stone weighing multiple tons and were as large as a car or larger?  When the first researchers began examining the buildings, it became readily apparent that a large number of the stones had been swept, as though by a tidal wave, always from the west side of the building to the east. 

     Let me make the summation for you.  A densely populated, urban, industrialized civilization lived in the basin of what became the Mediterranean Sea.  Malta was probably a mountain-top at that time.  People very often build religious sanctuaries of various kinds on high places.  These people endured a tidal wave that came from the west, through the straits of Gibraltar.   It destroyed them and almost all traces of their civilization.....

     .....but not quite. 

     I'll tell you about some traces that did survive in my next posting.

WARNING!!

This blog has been written with the sole purpose of using the ample evidence available to verify and support the biblical record, while refuting the copious propaganda that is shoved down our throats daily by materialistic uniformitarians.

It is my contention that the Bible describes God's original creation of people with extraordinary capabilities who subsequently built an advanced civilization that exceeds our own. That civilization was destroyed in the Great Flood and we have spent the last 5,000 years trying to re-build that civilization. I contend that science supports all this in multiple disciplines, but this information is ignored or suppressed by various people who have an opposing agenda.

      Nothing that you see on this blog is original. Any fact that you see here is obtainable on a dozen different websites and books. I use these facts and photos, without violating their copyrights, under the legal principle of fair use practice. That is, I use them one time, for educational purposes only.

      The point is, nothing here is made up. The only thing that I do (or need to do) is assemble this information in a discernible pattern.

     You might want to read through the first entry posted on this blog (Past Remembering: Thoughts toward a coherent view of our ancient past, our present and our future) in order to understand my theoretical and theological underpinnings more clearly.

      The truth is there. You just have to see it.

Ecclesiastes 1:9-10 (NASB)

That which has been is that which will be,

And that which has been done is that which will be done.

So there is nothing new under the sun.

Is there anything of which one might say,

“See this, it is new”?

Already it has existed for ages

Which were before us.

 

Mt. Baigong and the Chinese pipes

Qinghai province of China

Toson Lake

      In the Qinghai province of northwest China, 25 kilometers southeast of Qinghai’s Delingha city, located in the depths of the Qaidam Basin, is Toson Lake. 

On the shore of this lake are hundreds of strange post-like rock out-croppings.  



Mt. Baigong

     Two hundred and sixty feet from the shore of this lake (which is salt water and has a nearby twin that is fresh) lies Mt. Baigong, a pyramid shaped mountain with a smaller mountain that you can see on the far right of this photo.

Notice the fenced off cave entrance
in the center of this photo.  
Also notice the soldier on guard in the lower left.

     Within that smaller hill lie three caves.  Two have collapsed and cannot be entered.  One is still open, but is very small, only about eighteen to twenty feet deep.  

     Within that remaining cave can be seen rusty red pipes coming out of the wall of the cave and going into the ground.  There are about a dozen pipes in the cave, measuring anywhere from four to sixteen inches in diameter. 

     Locals have known about the pipes for centuries.  Dozens of pipe openings have been discovered in the mountains far above the caves.

   On the beach of Toson Lake, many more iron pipes run in unlikely patterns and in a variety of diameters, toothpick-sized at the thinnest. More pipes are in the lake, some protruding above the water surface, others buried beneath the lake’s bed.  They’re uniform in size and seem to have been created in an intentional pattern.  They run in the east-west direction with a diameter between 2 and 4.5 centimeters. They are of various strange shapes and the thinnest is like a toothpick, but not blocked inside after many years of sand movement, shifting that would normally break pipes in the ground.
 

      This is in an area that is completely inhospitable to man – no civilization is ever known to have lived there.

Most of the information you can find online about the Baigong Pipes appears to be originally sourced from a 2002 article from the 'Xinhua News Agency', talking about preparations by a team of scientists about to embark to this remote area to study the pipes. According to Qin Jianwen, head of the publicity department of the Delingha government, scraps of the mysterious pipes were once taken to a local smeltery for analysis.

     The result shows that they are made up of 30 per cent ferric oxide with a large amount of silicon dioxide and calcium oxide (which is basically sand or glass). Eight per cent of the content could not be identified. "The large content of silicon dioxide and calcium oxide is a result of long interaction between iron and sandstone, which means the pipes must be very old," said Liu Shaolin, the engineer who did the analysis. "This result has made the site even more mysterious," Qin said. "Nature is harsh here. There are no residents, let alone modern industry in the area, only a few migrating herdsmen to the north of the mountain."

 

WARNING!!

This blog has been written with the sole purpose of using the ample evidence available to verify and support the biblical record, while refuting the copious propaganda that is shoved down our throats daily by materialistic uniformitarians.

It is my contention that the Bible describes God's original creation of people with extraordinary capabilities who subsequently built an advanced civilization that exceeds our own. That civilization was destroyed in the Great Flood and we have spent the last 5,000 years trying to re-build that civilization. I contend that science supports all this in multiple disciplines, but this information is ignored or suppressed by various people who have an opposing agenda.

Nothing that you see on this blog is original. Any fact that you see here is obtainable on a dozen different websites and books. I use these facts and photos, without violating their copyrights, under the legal principle of fair use practice. That is, I use them one time, for educational purposes only.

The point is, nothing here is made up. The only thing that I do (or need to do) is assemble this information in a discernible pattern.

You might want to read through the first entry posted on this blog (Past Remembering: Thoughts toward a coherent view of our ancient past, our present and our future) in order to understand my theoretical and theological underpinnings more clearly.

The truth is there. You just have to see it.

Ecclesiastes 1:9-10 (NASB)

That which has been is that which will be,

And that which has been done is that which will be done.

So there is nothing new under the sun.

Is there anything of which one might say,

“See this, it is new”?

Already it has existed for ages

Which were before us.

Submerged urbanization: The World's Underwater Cities

     I love underwater archaeology and oceanography.  I think that the deep sea is the last frontier that we will get to explore.  It is much more exciting to me than outer space.  

     With over 70% of the earth's surface covered by water, we have successfully explored only one to two percent of the floor of the ocean. Every time someone goes down there, they wind up finding something new, whether unknown sea creatures, unknown geological features on the ocean floor or something from the world of man.  

Ships.  

Artifacts.

Cities.

Cities?!!

     Scientists tell us that over 10 MILLION SQUARE MILES ( that's the size of China and Europe combined) of land, all previously above water, is now underwater.  Is it any real wonder that we would find submerged cities?  The areas that we now call the continental shelves (comparatively shallow areas that surround the continents, in some cases for several hundred miles), the Mediterranean and the Black Sea were all dry land at one point.  

     The Mediterranean is one of the shallower seas and has been the site of a great deal of archaeological, professional and sport diving and exploration.  Over 200 cities have been located on the bottom of the Mediterranean.  They're not just around the shorelines, either, where they could have fallen off the coast as the result of erosion.  They are distributed all across the seabed, at varying depths.

      Not surprisingly, the Darwinian academics are not in the least interested in investigating these cities.  Their historical investigations are confined strictly to sunken ships and the like. 
    That's to be expected.  Cities at the bottom of the sea would be too hard to explain and would disrupt  the fairy tale that they call "the scientific reconstruction of history."

      Let's look at the Americas. 

     Some commercial oceanographers were working for the Cuban government in the sea region between the far western tip of Cuba and the Yucatan peninsula, off what the Cubans call the Guanahacabibes peninsula.

Side scan sonar image taken off the coast of Cuba


     While mapping the sea floor in that area with side scan sonar (which is apparently a really cool technology, because they keep finding all kinds of things with it), the scientists started getting indications of straight lines and regular features - about a half a mile below the surface of the water (2,200 feet).

      Divers can't operate at such crushing depths, so they sent down remotely operated submersible vehicles (R.O.V.'s).  These are little robots that can move around like little submarines, equipped with lights and cameras that can send images to a ship on the surface.

Artist's rendition of the Guanahacabibes site

     What they found were huge constructions of megalithic sized stones, some 40 to 50 tons, stacked one atop the other.  There were right angles and corners and straight lines and smooth curves that don't exist without the hand of man being involved - at least not all together, over and over again. 

Guanahacabibes again

     After a great deal of detailed scanning and mapping, the explorers have located some 30 structures with broad avenues between them.  As you can tell by their reconstructions, the site looks very much like the Mesoamerican cities that we see all over Mexico and the Yucatan, built by the Mayans, the Aztec, the Toltec and other peoples.

Guanahacabibes once more

     You can see in the oceanographers' illustrations all the architectural features that we recognize from places with ancient names like Chichen Itza or Teotihuacan or Palenque.  There are the blocky buildings stepping progressively higher to huge display combs at the rear. There are the uniquely tall, thin pyramids and the broad, open plazas.  

     Obviously, they are constructions that are linked to the buildings and structures that we see in so many of the ruined Native American cities of Central America, but they are a half a mile below the sea.  There are no records or legends in any of the Native American cultures that speak of any such city, so this was apparently a place that was submerged in the ocean long before the memory of any of the peoples we know - and their records and stories go back thousands of years.

A side scan sonar image from the sea floor off the Gulf of Khambhat.

     The nation of India has also had some exciting finds.   In 2001, the Indian Oceanic Institute was doing oceanographic surveys in the Gulf of Khambhat to study the effects pollution may be having on the ocean environment there.

Another sonar image

     Seven miles off shore, while scanning the sea floor with (again!) side scan sonar, at a depth of 170 feet, they started picking up images that were both regular and repetitive - straight lines forming grids.  It was something significant, because it covered five square miles of the sea floor.

     The Indian government immediately dispatched exploratory and survey teams to investigate.  Underwater work at the site is very difficult and dangerous for divers, because there are very powerful cross currents in that region.

     Even so, they were able to locate many of the features that had produced the grid shaped images on their sonar screens. Long stone walls are clearly visible on the sea floor, obviously made of cut, shaped and stacked stones.

     Two distinct cities were located, both situated on the banks of a former riverbed.  The cities were both large and well-formed.  The grid maps of their streets are reminiscent of Mohenjo-Daro, Harrapa and the other cities of the Indus Valley culture (which we have discussed in the first blog entry).


     Even more exciting, they have been able to bring up dozens of artifacts and evidences of human habitation. Objects of stone, pottery, metal and wood have been retrieved. There have even been fragments of bone found.

     Western scholars tend to routinely dismiss Indian culture and history as subordinate to, and derivative from, other cultures. They say that the Indian people migrated to India from the Middle East. They even call them Indo-Europeans.  Indian tradition and history, however, portrays a long and rich history, thousands of years old. Indian scholars were called in to analyze the information available on the new Khambat Gulf sites and that analysis is still in process.

An artist's reconstruction of Dwaraka

     About 200 miles north the Khambat Gulf site, lies the current living city of Dwarka or Dwaraka.  Excavations under the city uncovered traces of a far more ancient city that had been underwater at one time.  
     Carrying the search into the sea, divers found ruins just off-shore, in only seventy feet of water.  Indian scholars determined that this was very likely the ancient city of Dwaraka, which the ancient Sanskrit writings said was a large and powerful city that fell when it was covered by the sea.  Dwaraka figures prominently in many ancient Hindu stories, so this was very exciting to the Indian people.  For perspective, imagine our excitement, in the Christian culture, if the Garden of Eden or Noah's Ark were found! 



     In addition, a short way further north, near the city of Shrivardhan, a wall that was obviously constructed by human hands has been found on the sea floor.  It is 1.18 kilometers long.  That's about 7/10's of a mile - say seven city blocks long.

     It is interesting to note that Indian stories clearly describe dry land (whole countries, in fact) stretching out for many miles into the regions that are now called the Arabian and Indian Seas.

The main islands of Japan are in the 1 o'clock position on this map.  Taiwan is at 8 o'clock.

     If we turn our eyes further east to the Pacific, you can see a small island that is on the very southern tip of the Japanese archipelago or island chain. 

Yonaguni Island

     The small island, which almost touches the island of Taiwan or Formosa, is called Yonaguni.  Yonaguni is well known to have many stone constructions on the island itself - constructions that are very old, made by an unknown people.

     In 1987, Kihachiro Aratake, a man who owns a sport diving business on Yonaguni, was searching for new and interesting sites to take his clients. 




     He found in 70 to 100 feet of water a huge, complex structure made of stone, the size of two football fields.  Other divers and scientists by the hundreds have since scoured the site.

     While the stone of the structure is known in the area and does naturally form in rectangular layers or crystals, this was much more than some naturally occurring formation.

   There are perfectly rectangular lanes, tunnels and passages with steps at the end.

     There are triangular structures that cut diagonally across the "grain" of the stone.
 















     There is one place where two megalithic pillars have been placed side by side, in a manner that is far too regular to say that they just fell there. 







     And then, there are the faces carved into the stone, some of them 23 feet tall.

     The divers above are floating in front of a large carved face.  Its eyes are beside the middle diver's head and are looking to your left.  The mouth is between the two divers'

hips.  The face is looking to your left and is sporting

a sweeping headdress that swoops to your right and down (somewhat like an Native American war bonnet).

Tell me these are just holes in the rock that just eroded that way by chance
and not artfully carved human eyes.

     Besides the faces, carvings have been found on the rock, depicting turtles, fish, boats, the sun and other less interpretable images.  The chart to the right records many of the carvings. 

     After the first find, about a half-dozen other sites have been found nearby that are obviously related, but none are as large and complicated as the first one.  In addition to all this, explorers and scientists have found numerous human tools and artifacts. 

     In a side note, it is recorded that Ashurbanipal (668 – c. 627 BC), an Assyrian king, was known for having gathered a copy of every known text from his time into his library.  He left records boasting that he could read writings from before the flood, and describes cities and civilizations that existed before the deluge, but which were wiped out by that flood.  

     What else is under the sea that we need to know about?  Let's all learn to scuba and find out, because I seriously doubt that the universities and museums will ever tell us.

WARNING!!

This blog has been written with the sole purpose of using the ample evidence available to verify and support the biblical record, while refuting the copious propaganda that is shoved down our throats daily by materialistic uniformitarians.

It is my contention that the Bible describes God's original creation of people with extraordinary capabilities who subsequently built an advanced civilization that exceeds our own. That civilization was destroyed in the Great Flood and we have spent the last 5,000 years trying to re-build that civilization. I contend that science supports all this in multiple disciplines, but this information is ignored or suppressed by various people who have an opposing agenda.

Nothing that you see on this blog is original. Any fact that you see here is obtainable on a dozen different websites and books. I use these facts and photos, without violating their copyrights, under the legal principle of fair use practice. That is, I use them one time, for educational purposes only.

The point is, nothing here is made up. The only thing that I do (or need to do) is assemble this information in a discernible pattern.

You might want to read through the first entry posted on this blog (Past Remembering: Thoughts toward a coherent view of our ancient past, our present and our future) in order to understand my theoretical and theological underpinnings more clearly.

The truth is there. You just have to see it.
  
 Ecclesiastes 1:9-10 (NASB)

That which has been is that which will be,

And that which has been done is that which will be done.

So there is nothing new under the sun.

Is there anything of which one might say,

“See this, it is new”?

Already it has existed for ages

Which were before us.