12,000 year old temple found

TURKEY: DISCOVERY OF 12,000-YEAR- OLD TEMPLE COMPLEX COULD ALTER THEORY
OF HUMAN DEVELOPMENT
* Nicholas Birch 4/17/08
As a child, Klaus Schmidt used to grub around in caves in his native Germany in the hope of finding prehistoric paintings. Thirty years later, representing the German Archaeological Institute, he found something infinitely more important -- a temple complex almost twice as old as anything comparable on the planet."This place is a supernova", says Schmidt, standing under a lone tree on a windswept hilltop 35 miles north of Turkey’s border with Syria. "Within a minute of first seeing it I knew I had two choices: go away and tell nobody, or spend the rest of my life working here."
Behind him are the first folds of the Anatolian plateau. Ahead, the Mesopotamian plain, like a dust-colored sea, stretches south hundreds of miles to Baghdad and beyond. The stone circles of Gobekli Tepe are just in front, hidden under the brow of the hill. Compared to Stonehenge, Britain’s most famous prehistoric site, they are
humble affairs. None of the circles excavated (four out of an estimated 20) are more than 30 meters across. What makes the discovery remarkable are the carvings of boars, foxes, lions, birds, snakes and scorpions, and their age. Dated at around 9,500 BC, these stones are 5,500 years older than the first cities of Mesopotamia, and 7,000 years older than Stonehenge. Never mind circular patterns or the stone-etchings, the people who erected this site did not even have pottery or cultivate wheat. They
lived in villages. But they were hunters, not farmers. "Everybody used to think only complex, hierarchical civilizations could build such monumental sites, and that they only came about with the invention of agriculture" , says Ian Hodder, a Stanford University Professor of Anthropology, who, since 1993, has directed digs at Catalhoyuk, Turkey’s most famous Neolithic site. "Gobekli changes everything. It’s elaborate, it’s complex and it is pre-agricultural. That fact alone makes the site one of the most important archaeological finds in a very long time." With only a fraction of the site opened up after a decade of excavations, Gobekli Tepe’s significance to the people who built it remains unclear. Some think the site was the center of a fertility rite, with the two tall stones at the center of each circle representing a man and woman. It’s a theory the tourist board in the nearby city of Urfa has taken up with alacrity. Visit the Garden of Eden, its brochures trumpet, see Adam and Eve. Schmidt is skeptical about the fertility theory. He agrees Gobekli Tepe
may well be "the last flowering of a semi-nomadic world that farming was just about to destroy," and points out that if it is in near perfect condition today, it is because those who built it buried it soon after under tons of soil, as though its wild animal-rich world had lost all meaning. But the site is devoid of the fertility symbols that have been found at other Neolithic sites, and the T-shaped columns, while clearly semi-human, are sexless. "I think here we are face to face with the
earliest representation of gods", says Schmidt, patting one of the biggest stones. "They have no eyes, no mouths, no faces. But they have arms and they have hands. They are makers." "In my opinion, the people who carved them were asking themselves the
biggest questions of all," Schmidt continued. "What is this universe? Why are we here?" With no evidence of houses or graves near the stones, Schmidt believes
the hill top was a site of pilgrimage for communities within a radius of roughly a hundred miles. He notes how the tallest stones all face southeast, as if scanning plains that are scattered with archeological sites in many ways no less remarkable than Gobekli Tepe. Last year, for instance, French archaeologists working at Djade
al-Mughara in northern Syria uncovered the oldest mural ever found. "Two square meters of geometric shapes, in red, black and white - a bit like a Paul Klee painting," explains Eric Coqueugniot, the University of Lyon archaeologist who is leading the excavation.Coqueugniot describes Schmidt’s hypothesis that Gobekli Tepe was meeting point for feasts, rituals and sharing ideas as "tempting," given the
site’s spectacular position. But he emphasizes that surveys of the region are still in their infancy. "Tomorrow, somebody might find somewhere even more dramatic."
Director of a dig at Korpiktepe, on the Tigris River about 120 miles east of Urfa, Vecihi Ozkaya doubts the thousands of stone pots he has found since 2001 in hundreds of 11,500 year-old graves quite qualify as that. But his excitement fills his austere office at Dicle University in Diyarbakir. "Look at this", he says, pointing at a photo of an exquisitely carved sculpture showing an animal, half-human, half-lion. "It’s a sphinx, thousands of years before Egypt. Southeastern Turkey, northern Syria - this region saw the wedding night of our civilization. "

*Editor’s Note*: Nicolas Birch specializes in Turkey, Iran and the
Middle East.

*Posted April 17, 2008 © Eurasianet*
http://www.eurasian et.org

Just a little more information

Rare 5.4mag quake that has hit the New Madrid fault line seems to have caught people by surprise. What makes this moderate quake unique is area of which it occurred. It hit at the northern end of the "New Madrid Fault".Geographic coordinates: 38.520N, 87.872W. Magnitude: 5.4 Mw. Depth: 5 km. Universal Time (UTC): 18 Apr 2008 09:36:56.
A turn of the century earthquake, the New Madrid fault system was responsible for the 1812 New Madrid Earthquake and has the potential to produce damaging earthquakes on an average of every 300 to 500 years. On February 7, 1812, the New Madrid Earthquake measured a 7.9 magnitude; epicenter near New Madrid, Missouri. The area of New Madrid was destroyed. Near by St. Louis, Missouri, many houses were damaged severely, and their chimneys were thrown down. The meizoseismal area was characterized by general ground warping, ejections, fissuring, severe landslides, and caving of stream banks.
Large areas sank into the Earth, fissures opened, lakes permanently drained, new lakes were formed, and forests were destroyed over an area of 150,000 acres (600 km). Many houses at New Madrid were thrown down. "Houses, gardens, and fields were swallowed up" one source notes. But fatalities and damage were low, because the area was sparsely settled.The earthquakes were felt as far away as New York City and Boston, Massachusetts, where church-bells rang. It has been recorded this earthquake was so powerful; people witnessed the mighty Mississippi River rolled back on itself, then literally changed course. Because of the change in the course of the Mississippi River, land was cut off from counties by the river and wound up on the other side of the new riverbed, on the other side of the Mississippi. The settlement of Reverie, Tennessee, in Tipton County was cut off and placed on the western bank of the Mississippi River on the Arkansas side.
This happened in 1812. The next one is overdue. What will happen this time?

Something big's a foot

Earth Changes Media has been reporting a swarm of quakes since February which has increased along the Alaska Aleutian Chain. It is unusual to see such high magnitudes ranging in the 4's and 5's as it relates to 'swarms'. Usually they remain in the 2's and 3's. But there appears to be more to this story----
The earthquake swarm at Baja California continues as reported since February, along with the more recent swarm which occurred off the Oregon Coast. When you put this puzzle together, it is quite probable --- we are looking at a potential Cascadia Subduction Zone eruption.
The USGS recently came out with an announcement stating they expect with 99% assurance, a magnitude 6.7 or larger quake will occur in California ---- in 30 years. No one knows for sure why they came out with such a ridiculous statement leaving the geological and seismological community both laughing and embarrassed. Any geology 101 student can tell you with "100% assurance" there will be several large earthquakes hitting California over the next 30 years.
But the more serious question would be - are we seeing current signs telling of a coming large eruption along the west coast in the next "30 months" or even sooner than this.

Matrix-style virtual worlds

I put this article in, in it's entirety even though the technical parts are somewhat beyond me. The picture it paints is a mind blowing reality. So, are we just holograms ourselves as some scientists are starting to think? What is our reality? What is general reality? Questions, questions....
Matrix-style virtual worlds 'a few years away'
* NewScientist. com news service
Are supercomputers on the verge of creating /Matrix/-style simulated
realities? Michael McGuigan at Brookhaven National Laboratory
in Upton, New York, thinks so. He says that
virtual worlds realistic enough to be mistaken for the real thing are
just a few years away.
In 1950, Alan Turing, the father of modern computer science, proposed
the ultimate test of artificial intelligence – a human judge engaging in
a three-way conversation with a machine and another human should be
unable to reliably distinguish man from machine.
A variant on this "Turing Test
" is the "Graphics Turing
Test", the twist being that a human judge viewing and interacting with
an artificially generated world should be unable to reliably distinguish
it from reality.
"By interaction we mean you could control an object – rotate it, for
example – and it would render in real-time," McGuigan says.
Photoreal animation
Although existing computers can produce artificial scenes and textures
detailed enough to fool the human eye, such scenes typically take
several hours to render. The key to passing the Graphics Turing Test,
says McGuigan, is to marry that photorealism with software that can
render images in real-time – defined as a refresh rate of 30 frames per
second.McGuigan decided to test the ability of one of the world's most powerful
supercomputers – Blue Gene/L
at Brookhaven National Laboratory in New York – to generate such an
artificial world.Blue Gene/L possesses 18 racks, each with 2000 standard PC processors that work in parallel to provide a huge amount of processing power – it
has a speed of 103 teraflops, or 103 trillion "floating point
operations" per second. By way of comparison, a calculator uses about 10
floating operations per second.In particular, McGuigan studied the supercomputer' s ability to mimic the interplay of light with objects – an important component of any virtual world with ambitions to mimic reality.He found that conventional ray-tracing software could run 822 times faster on the Blue Gene/L than on a standard computer, even though the software was not optimised for the parallel processors of a
supercomputer. This allowed it to convincingly mimic natural lighting in real time.
Not there yet "The nice thing about this ray tracing is that the human eye can see it
as natural," McGuigan says. "There are actually several types of ray-tracing software out there – I chose one that was relatively easy to port to a large number of processors. But others might be faster and even more realistic if they are used in parallel computing."Although Blue Gene/L can model the path of light in a virtual world both rapidly and realistically, the speed with which it renders
high-resolution images still falls short of that required to pass the
Graphics Turing Test.But supercomputers capable of passing the test may be just years away, thinks McGuigan. "You never know for sure until you can actually do it,"
he says. "But a back-of-the- envelope calculation would suggest it should
be possible in the next few years, once supercomputers enter the
petaflop range – that's 1000 teraflops."But others think that passing the Graphics Turing Test requires more than photorealistic graphics moving in real-time. Reality is not 'skin deep' says Paul Richmond at the University of Sheffield, UK. An
artificial object can appear real, but unless it moves in a realistic
way the eye won't be fooled. "The real challenge is providing a
real-time simulation that includes realistic simulated behaviour," he says.
Fluid challenge
"I'd like to see a realistic model of the Russian ballet," says Mark
Grundland at the University of Cambridge. "That's something a
photographer would choose as a subject matter, and that's what we should
aim to convey with computers."Grundland also points out that the Graphics Turing Test does not specify what is conveyed in the virtual world scene. "If all that is there is a diffusely-reflectin g sphere sitting on a diffusely-reflectin g surface,
then we've been able to pass the test for many years now," he says. "But
Turing didn't mean for his vision to come true so quickly."
McGuigan agrees that realistic animation poses its own problems.
"Modelling that fluidity is difficult," he says. "You have to make sure
that when something jumps in the virtual world it appears heavy." But he
remains optimistic that animation software will be up to the task.
"Physical reality is about animation and lighting," he says. "We've done
the lighting now – the animation will follow."

Radiation from mobile phones

Radiation from cell phones is too weak to heat biological tissue or break chemical bonds in cells, but the radio waves they emit may still change cell behavior.

Scientists exposed 10 female volunteers to radiation at 900 megahertz from GSM phones to simulate an hour-long phone call.

They screened 580 different proteins in their skin cells and found that the numbers of two proteins were altered in all of the volunteers: one protein increased by 89 percent, the other decreased by 32 percent.

This study shows that even without heating, molecular level changes take place in response to exposure to cell phone frequency electromagnetic radiation.

Spirit and Stardust

I don't normally post speeches from American congressmen but this particular speech warrants such an action. I have posted it in its entirety

As one studies the images of the Eagle Nebula, brought back by the Hubble Telescope from that place in deep space where stars are born, one can imagine the interplay of Cosmic Forces across space and time, of matter and Spirit dancing to the music of the spheres atop an infinite sea of numbers.Spirit merges with matter to sanctify the Universe. Matter transcends to return to Spirit. The interchangeability of matter and Spirit means the starlit magic of the outermost life of our Universe becomes the soul-light magic of the innermost life of our self. The energy of the stars becomes us. We become the energy of the stars. Stardust and Spirit unite, and we begin: One with the Universe-whole and holy from One source, endless creative energy bursting forth, kinetic, elemental-we, the earth, air, water and fire, source of nearly fifteen billion years of Cosmic spiraling.We begin as a perfect union of matter and Spirit. We receive the blessings of the Eternal from sky and Earth. In our outstretched hands, we can feel the energy of the Universe. We receive the blessings of the Eternal from water, which nourishes and sanctifies life. We receive the blessings of the Eternal from the primal fire, the pulsating Heart of Creation. We experience the wonder of life, multidimensional and transcendent. We extend our hands upwards, and we are showered with abundance. We ask and we receive. A Universe of plenty flows to us, through us. It is in us. We become filled with endless possibilities.We need to remember where we came from, to know that we are One, to understand that we are of an undivided whole: race, color, nationality, creed, gender are beams of Light refracted through one great prism. We begin as perfect and journey through life to become more perfect in the singularity of 'I' and in the multiplicity of 'we,' a more perfect union of matter and Spirit. This is human striving. This is where, in Shelley's words, '. . . hope creates from its own wreck the thing it contemplates.' This is what Browning spoke of, our 'reach exceeding our grasp.' This is a search for Heaven within, a quest for our eternal Home.In our souls' Magnificent, we become conscious of the Cosmos within us. We hear the music of peace; we hear the music of cooperation; we hear music of love. We hear harmony, a celestial symphony in our souls' forgetting; we become unconscious of our Cosmic Birthright, plighted with disharmony, disunity, torn asunder from the stars in a disaster well described by Matthew Arnold in Dover Beach: '. . . the world, which seems to lie before us like a land of dreams, so various, so beautiful, so new, hath really neither joy, nor love, nor Light, nor certitude, nor peace, nor help for pain. And we are here, as on a darkling plane, swept with confused alarms of struggle and flight where ignorant armies clash by night.'Today Dover Beach is upon the shores of the Potomac River in Washington, D.C. Our leaders think the unthinkable and speak of the unspeakable inevitability of nuclear war, of a nuclear attack on New York City, of terrorist attacks throughout our nation, of war against Iraq using nuclear weapons, of biological and chemical weapon attacks on civilian populations, of catastrophic global climate change, of war in outer space.When death, not life, becomes inevitable, we are presented with an opportunity for great clarity, for a great awakening, to rescue the human spirit from the arms of Morpheus through love, through compassion and through integrating spiritual vision and active citizenship to restore peace to our world. The moment that one world is about to end, a New World is about to begin. We need to remember where we came from because the path HOME is also the way to the future.In Ohio, the city I represent in the United States Congress, there is a memorial to Peace, named by its sculptor, Marshall A. Fredericks, the 'Fountain of Eternal Life.' A figure rises from the flames, his gaze fixed to the stars, his hands positioned sextant-like as if measuring the distance. Though flames of war from the millions of hearts and the dozens of places wherein it rages may lick at our consciousness, our gaze must be fixed upward to invoke universal principles of unity, of cooperation, of compassion, to infuse our world with peace, to ask for the active Presence of Peace, to expand our capacity to receive it and to express it in our everyday life. We must do this fearlessly and courageously and not breathe in the poison gas of terror. As we receive, so shall we give.as citizen-diplomats of the world, we send Peace as conscious expression wherever, whenever and to whomever it is needed: to the Middle East, to the Israelis and the Palestinians, to the Pakistanis and the Indians, to Americans and to al-Qaida and to the people of lraq and to all those locked in deadly combat. And we fly to be with the bereft, with those on the brink, to listen compassionately, setting aside judgment and malice to become peacemakers, to intervene, to mediate, to bring ourselves back from the abyss, to bind up the world's wounds.As we aspire to universal brotherhood and sisterhood, we hearken to the cry from the heart of the world and respond affirmatively to address through thought, word and deed conditions which give rise to conflict: economic exploitation, empire building, political oppression, religious intolerance, poverty, disease, famine, homelessness, struggles over control of water, land, minerals and oil.We realize that what affects anyone anywhere affects everyone everywhere.
As we help others to heal, we heal ourselves. Our vision of interconnectedness resonates with new networks of world citizens in non-governmental organizations linking from numberless centers of energy, expressing the emergence of a new organic whole, seeking unity within and across national lines. New transnational, web-based e-mail and telecommunications systems transcend governments and carry within them the power of qualitative transformation of social and political structures and a new sense of creative intelligence. If governments and their leaders, bound by hierarchy and patriarchy, wedded to military might for legitimacy, fail to grasp the implications of an emerging world consciousness for cooperation, for peace and for sustainability, they may become irrelevant.As citizen-activists merge the world over, they can become an irresistible force to create Peace and protect the planet. From here will come a new movement to abolish nuclear weapons and all weapons of mass destruction. From here will come the demand for sustainable communities, for new systems of energy, transportation and commerce. From here comes the future rushing in on us.How does one acquire the capacity for active citizenship? The opportunities exist everyday. In Cleveland, citizens have developed the ability to intercede when schools are scheduled to be closed and have kept the schools open. Citizens can rally to keep hospitals open, to save industries which provide jobs, to protect neighborhood libraries from curtailment of service, to improve community policing, to meet racial, ethnic and religious intolerance openly and directly.Active citizenship begins with an envisioning of the desired outcome and a conscious application of spiritual principles. I know. I have worked with the people in my own community. I have seen the dynamic of faith in self, faith in one's ability to change things, faith in one's ability to prevail against the odds through an appeal to the Spirit of the world for help, through an appeal to the Spirit of community for participation, through an appeal to the Spirit of cooperation which multiplies energy. I have seen citizens challenge conditions without condemning anyone while invoking principles of non­opposition and inclusion of those who disagree.I have seen groups of people overcome incredible odds, as they become aware they are participating in a cause beyond self and sense the movement of the inexorable, which comes from unity. When you feel this principle at work, when you see spiritual principles form the basis of active citizenship, you are reminded once again of the merging of Stardust and Spirit. There is creativity. There is magic. There is alchemy.Citizens across the United States are now uniting in a great cause to establish a Department of Peace, seeking nothing less than the transformation of our society, to make nonviolence an organizing principle, to make war archaic through creating a paradigm shift in our culture for human development, for economic and political justice and for violence control. Its work in violence control will be to support disarmament treaties, peaceful coexistence and peaceful consensus building. Its focus on economic and political justice will examine and enhance resource distribution, human and economic rights and strengthen democratic values.Domestically, the Department of Peace would address violence in the home, spousal abuse, child abuse, gangs, police/community relations conflicts and work with individuals and groups to achieve changes in attitudes that examine the mythologies of cherished world views such as 'violence is inevitable' or 'war is inevitable.' Thus it will help with the discovery of new selves and new paths toward peaceful consensus.The Department of Peace will also address human development and the unique concerns of women and children. It will envision and seek to implement plans for Peace education, not simply as a course of study but as a template for all pursuits of knowledge within formal educational settings.Violence is NOT inevitable. War is NOT inevitable. Nonviolence and peace ARE inevitable. We can make of this world a gift of Peace, which will confirm the presence of universal Spirit in our lives. We can send into the future the gift, which will protect our children from fear, from harm, from destruction.Carved inside the pediment, which sits atop the marble columns, is a sentinel at the entrance to the United States House of Representatives. Standing resolutely inside this 'Apotheosis of Democracy' is a woman, a shield by her left side, with her outstretched right arm protecting a child happily sitting at her feet. This child holds the Lamp of Knowledge under the protection of this patroness.This wondrous sculpture by Paul Wayland Bartlett is titled 'Peace Protecting Genius.' Not with nuclear arms, but with a loving maternal arm is the knowing child genius shielded from harm. This is the promise of hope over fear. This is the promise of love, which overcomes all. This is the promise of faith, which overcomes doubt. This is the promise of Light, which overcomes darkness. This is the promise of Peace, which overcomes war.For more information on how you can participate in the Department of Peace, you may E-mail Representative Kucinich at: Dkucinich@aol.com or info@thespiritoffreedom.com

Repost of solar cycle starting april 2008

Several reports, analysis, and latest research statistics have been released over the last 7 days telling us of the coming solar cycle and its potential damaging consequences.
It is known as Cycle 24 and is expected to be as much as 50% stronger than its predecessor. Most solar scientists agree Cycle 24 began on July 1st 2006 when the first sunspot distributed a 'reverse' magnetic field. Over the last several months, the sunspot and solar activity have been extremely mild. This is known as 'solar minimum'. From this point on, solar activity will begin to ramp up with more significant activity becoming noticeable by the end of this year.
To present a frame work of just what "50% stronger" might look like, lets go back to Cycle 23. In this cycle we witnessed sunspot counts into the 400's. The prediction for Cycle 23's 'apex' or maximum issued by NASA was 150. The count had more than doubled. We also witnessed the largest solar flare every recorded on November 4th 2003 know as the "Halloween Flare". This solar flare and following CME was so large, it literally pegged the needles on all gages. It buried all the instruments which measure magnetic flux and charged particles. It literally shocked the science community.
At the time, the measuring instruments to measure the strength of a solar flare/CME and its effect on our (Earth's) magnetic field only went to 9. Until this day, an X-9 was the largest flare recorded. On November 4th 2003 a solar flare and following CME (coronal mass ejection) exploded just as it began rotating over the western limb of the Sun. If it had been just 48 to 72 hours earlier, the flare would have Earth directed and we would have experienced a direct hit. The strength of this event measured an X-45, of which such strength had never been witnessed or anticipated. Even to this day we can only speculate the damage it would have caused to our power grids, satellites, GPS, and any number of devices which depend of communication or directional satellites.
I was there right in the middle of it and I have never forgotten the exhilaration of the moment. I have never experienced such a moment in "live" radio as this one, and probably never will again. As the event was unfolding right in front of our eyes, I had Dr. Ernest Hildner, Director of the NASA/NOAA Space Weather Center on the phone doing an interview. At that moment the solar flare exploded and the information was coming in as we were talking. Hearing Dr. Hildner saying "oh my gosh, the instruments are off the charts. I've never seen this before". We were getting first hand information from the world's hub on space weather. Nothing, and I mean nothing hits the news services without going across Hildners desk. Earth Changes Media was in the right place; at the right time and we have never stopped perusing the most recent cutting edge breaking news since.
You can hear this breath-taking interview on our "Audio Archives" page and select the year 2003 and Day Nov.3rd http://www.earthchangesmedia.com/secure/olderaudio.php
Dr. Hildner reminded us of the luck we had by this sunspot region just passing over the western limb before it exploded. Even with this, an emergency call to the FAA was placed, and commercial and military aircraft was ordered to lower altitudes to avoid solar radiation hazards. The electrical charge was so strong, the 'Aurora Borealis' (northern lights) had dropped down to the 36 parallel. This would include Texas, New Mexico, Arizona, and Oklahoma. This is a very rare event. Usually the Aurora's are only seen in Alaska and occasionally Washington State, Wyoming, Montana, and Maine.
NOTE: The new 'Cycle 24' has been predicted to be up to 50% stronger. I don't think you need a scientific degree to understand the possible outcomes as a result of this escalation. In fact, the news of this prediction was 1st to broadcast on Earth Changes Media prior to any other news agency in the world.