M.J. Rose

Certainly this incredible place is the result of some serious hubris…

From Abandoned Spaces,
The Gods of Mount Nemrut – The most valuable monument of the Kingdom of Commagene

Mount Nemrut, also called Mount Nemrud, is a 2,134-metre-high (7,001 ft) mountain located in southeastern Turkey famous for the giant head statues scattered on the summit.

It is the site of extensive ruins of the tomb of Antiochus I (69-36 BC) of the Commagene Kingdom (163 BC – 72 AD).

This spectacular structure is made of large slabs of rock forming a pyramid-like configuration. The stone sculptures once stood nearly 10 meters high and depicted lions, eagles, various ancient gods.
Antiochus I himself is represented here as well. Sixty-two years before the birth of Christ, King Antiochus I ordered a huge tomb come sanctuary to be built for himself.

What was particularly notable about this king was his pride and his over-extended ego. Antiochus I claimed he had a special relationship with the gods and instituted a royal cult in the Greek form of the religion Zoroastrianism with the clear intention of being worshiped as a god after his death.
He wanted his sanctuary to be in a high and holy place, close to the gods in order to be in rank with them, and high enough that the whole kingdom could see it and remember him…”

For the rest, and many glorious photographs of these ruins, click here.

“Gobekli Tepe is not the Garden of Eden: it is a temple IN Eden…”

This article makes a pretty solid case for the location of “the Garden of Eden”…it also makes a case for what Eden was really all about and why it disappeared…

The Garden of Eden come to life: Is Gobekli Tepe where the story began?

From DailyMail,

Do these mysterious stones mark the site of the Garden of Eden?
By Tom Knox

“For the old Kurdish shepherd, it was just another burning hot day in the rolling plains of eastern Turkey. Following his flock over the arid hillsides, he passed the single mulberry tree, which the locals regarded as ‘sacred’. The bells on his sheep tinkled in the stillness. Then he spotted something. Crouching down, he brushed away the dust, and exposed a strange, large, oblong stone.

The man looked left and right: there were similar stone rectangles, peeping from the sands. Calling his dog to heel, the shepherd resolved to inform someone of his finds when he got back to the village. Maybe the stones were important.

They certainly were important. The solitary Kurdish man, on that summer’s day in 1994, had made the greatest archaeological discovery in 50 years. Others would say he’d made the greatest archaeological discovery ever: a site that has revolutionised the way we look at human history, the origin of religion – and perhaps even the truth behind the Garden of Eden.

A few weeks after his discovery, news of the shepherd’s find reached museum curators in the ancient city of Sanliurfa, ten miles south-west of the stones.

They got in touch with the German Archaeological Institute in Istanbul. And so, in late 1994, archaeologist Klaus Schmidt came to the site of Gobekli Tepe (pronounced Go-beckly Tepp-ay) to begin his excavations.

As he puts it: ‘As soon as I got there and saw the stones, I knew that if I didn’t walk away immediately I would be here for the rest of my life.’

Schmidt stayed. And what he has uncovered is astonishing. Archaeologists worldwide are in rare agreement on the site’s importance. ‘Gobekli Tepe changes everything,’ says Ian Hodder, at Stanford University…”

Read more here.

Is there life after death for our brains? The evidence says it depends.

From discovermagazine.com,

Brain Activity At The Moment of Death
By Neuroskeptic

What happens in the brain when we die?

Canadian researchers Loretta Norton and colleagues of the University of Western Ontario examine this grave question in a new paper: Electroencephalographic Recordings During Withdrawal of Life-Sustaining Therapy Until 30 Minutes After Declaration of Death.

Norton et al. examined frontal EEG recordings from four critically ill patients at the point where their life support was withdrawn.

What they found were post-mortem delta waves that the authors say are very hard to explain:

It is difficult to posit a physiological basis for this EEG activity given that it occurs after a prolonged loss of circulation. These waveform bursts could, therefore, be artefactual in nature, although an artefactual source could not be identified.

Another interesting finding was that the actual moment at which the heart stopped was not associated with any abrupt change in the EEG. The authors found no evidence of the large “delta blip” (the so-called “death wave“), an electrical phenomena which has been observed in rats following decapitation.

 

For the rest, click here.