Re: Mummified Dinosaurs / electric fossilization...?
Lloyd wrote: Mo, I don't think your theory will appeal to anyone as long as you can't show somehow that plasma columns, tornadoes etc are capable of transporting living things through space without killing them. Also, there needs to be evidence of life having existed on Mars. The so-called fossil microbes found in Mars rocks from Antarctica are said to be effects of preparing the rock for electron microscope viewing. So there's no solid evidence yet for former life there. You'll just have to wait till a Mars mission retrieves such fossils.
Evidence of life on Mars could be much more difficult than surviving the trip to Earth. After all this theory says that fossils only form in the big laminated flows. I'd have better chances of aliens going public or an ancient library being found. If dinosaurs were on Mars then they might have been visible from Earth during a near approach. Also some might still have been transported to Earth when humans lived here.
At this stage I'll write a summary and start a new topic "History of the Earth" or perhaps "Dinosaurs came from Mars", and leave a link in this topic. I'll also put this summary on my website. So thanks for your comments Lloyd - you are doing a terrific job for this forum. Mo
moses
Re: Mummified Dinosaurs / electric fossilization...?
Re: Mummified Dinosaurs / electric fossilization...?
* This is one of my favorite threads, so I reorganized and edited all of the posts from here and put them in book form at http://sci.lefora.com/forum/category/earth-2/page1 * I hope the TB team may like to make it and similar thread material available in online booklets on this website after it's polished up enough.
Brigit Bara
Re: Mummified Dinosaurs / electric fossilization...?
Lloyd, I dropped by your notebook and would have left a little greeting but it takes me awhile to figure out new sites. Anyway, hi!
I got interested in the myth side of this fossilization question during this thread. I thought it was so intriguing that some Aboriginal legends actually mentioned lightning in conjuntion with things being turned to stone. I wanted to find out what Native Americans had to say about fossils in their oral traditions, esp in the Colorado Plateau. I found a book called Fossil Legends of the First Americans by Adrienne Mayor. She has done invaluable research into the legends of Indians in North and Central America, and also the book has an illuminating perspective on the history of various attitudes towards Native myths displayed by the first paleontologists. It really is a terrific read.
I hope this is not a spoiler! :D 90% of the legends kept by the Indians relating to both fossils and the death of the megafauna and dinosaurs involve lightning and thunderbolts. I will say it is not a spoiler, but a "hanger" to tell you that, because now you will be wondering what happened in the other 10%!
I thought you would be interested in the incredible link betweed electrical discharges and fossilization found in the legends. I am coming around to the EU approach to myth. Now when I watch a DVD on a geological subject, I think, "Well why don't they ask what the local tribes say about that?"
Hope you are well, BB
Lloyd
Re: Mummified Dinosaurs / electric fossilization...?
* Hi Brigit. I haven't seen you around for quite a while. The book you mention sounds interesting. Do you have time to share any of the best excerpts? The myth side of fossilization sounds interesting in general too. I decided to see if there might be anything on the net about that. I found this. * Legends about ammonites etc. http://www.tonmo.com/science/fossils/my ... ythdoc.php * Gemstones and myth http://www.zianet.com/postpubco/stones.htm * There may be better ones at this search. http://www.google.com/#hl=en&q=legend+O ... ccc08a197a * I don't really expect anyone to leave comments at the lefora site. That's just a convenient place to put articles that I'm working on. It's better to comment here, I think.
Brigit Bara
Re: Mummified Dinosaurs / electric fossilization...?
* Hi Brigit. I haven't seen you around for quite a while. The book you mention sounds interesting. Do you have time to share any of the best excerpts? The myth side of fossilization sounds interesting in general too. I decided to see if there might be anything on the net about that. I found this.
I would be delighted.
First, though, I would like to say a little more in praise of Mayor's book. Her extensive research is always well- presented and the book contains many ineresting leitmotifs that make it worth having a copy:
1. the contrasting attitudes of early explorers, settlers, and scientists towards American Indian oral traditions. She gives quotes at the head of each chapter to illustrate, eg
"There is very little in any Tradition of the Savages to be relied upon." --Cotton Mather, 1712
This is their Tradition and I see no reason why it should not be received as good History, at least as good as a great part of ours. --George Rogers Clark, 1789
2. many Native American legends contain the theme of different eras, which are marked by changes in the size and kinds of animals
3. giant humans make quite a few appearances
4. she introduces the reader to the work of Georges Cuvier, a great paleontologist of Lyell's day, whose memory has been marginalized for his skepticism re. Darwin's theory and for his catastrophism
5. lightning and thunderbolts
6. Adrienne Mayor is always careful to maintain that the origins of the legends are to explain the existence of fossils and mummified animal remains, and not the result of any eye witness accounts of dinosaurs or megafauna, except perhaps mastodons
7. Mayor carefully tracks the location of specific fossils, and often uncovers the names, photos and fates of Indian Scout guides. Anyone who has ever done any local or family history research will delight in her sleuthing!
I will try to share the legends soon as time allows. Thanks Lloyd, great links.
Brigit Bara
Re: Mummified Dinosaurs / electric fossilization...?
Ch 1 Iroquois, Shawnee, Delaware in New England, the Mid-Atlantic and the Ohio Valley
"An Iroquois tradition recorded in 1825 by the Tuscarora historian David Cusick is especially striking. Some two thousand years before Columbus, a great horned monster killed by thunderbolts appeared on the shore of Lake Ontario, and its stench brought disease." pg 38
"Other Iroquois tales describe dragons or serpents and water monsters with horns like giant buffalo's, destroyed by Thunder Beings and by the Little People..." p40
"Many Iroquois stories tell of Stone Giants, ferocious men and women called Ot-ne-yar-heh, who lived about 1,250 years before Columbus....They were destroyed by rock slide or trapped in marshy pits...In Seneca lore the Stone Giants were destroyed en masse by fire and earthquake..." pg 41
"Fossilized footprints of mammals and dinosaurs, known to the Iroquois as uki prints (uki means sky powers, such as thunder and lightning) also drew intense interest."
"According to the Delaware tradition, the monster was trapped in a mountain pass and destroyed by lightning." pg 49
"Found several bones of a Prodigious size," [Cresswell] noted. "What sort of animals these were is not clearly known. All the Traditionary accounts by the Indians is that they were White Buffalos, that killed themselves by drinking salt water." pg 53
"This place was a landmark of long standing...The Shawnees believed that the five creatures had died at the same time, struck by lightning." pg 53
"Notably, [the Shawnee] information not only included fossil measurements and estimates of the animal's size when they had been alive; it also attempted to account for the extinction of huge beasts and giant men in a distant era before modern humans. After the great men had died out, they said, 'God had Kill'd' the mighty animals with lightning bolts, so that they could 'not hurt the present race of Indians.'" pg 54
"Lightning was also the agent of extinction in the Delaware traditions about mastodon fossils, as Thomas Jefferson learned a few years after Wright interviewed the Shawnee men." pg55
A Delaware elder to Thomas Jefferson:
"'In ancient time a herd of these tremendous animals came to the Bigbone Licks' and destroyed the smaller game...which had been created for Indians to hunt. The 'Great Man above' was 'so enraged that he seized his lightning, descended on the earth, seated himself on a neighboring mountain.' He 'hurled his bolts til the whole were slaughtered.'" pg 59
"The Shawnee related that...the good Spirit had destroyed these immense animals with lightning..." pg 65
"In old Delaware traditions, the name Yah Qua Whee was used for unknown monsters. In 1905 however, Adams translated Yah Qua Whee as 'mastodon.'
'...The valleys ran in blood. The battlefield became a great mire, and many of the mastodons, by their weight, sank in the mire and were drowned.' There was 'a terrible loss' of the smaller game animals, too. Adams describes the Great Spirit hurling lightning bolts to destroy the mastodons." pg 66
Lloyd
Re: Mummified Dinosaurs / electric fossilization...?
* Thanks for submitting those. They're very good excerpts, Brigit. Are those probably about all of the good quotes? Or are there a whole lot more? I suppose a lot of ancient myths may have similar stories that could indicate that lightning typically did fossilize animal bones. If you remember the fossilized foot in the cowboy boot, that apparently shows that flesh can fossilize. So, I'm wondering why dinosaurs and most animals did not have fossilized flesh, along with the bones. It's very interesting that Natives claimed that lightning killed the large animals. I'll try to mention this on a related thread.
Brigit Bara
Re: Mummified Dinosaurs / electric fossilization...?
Lloyd:
Are those probably about all of the good quotes? Or are there a whole lot more?
There are a lot more, and I would like to transcribe passages from at least two more chapters. It will run about as long as the Chapter One post, however, because I want to be careful to preserve the context; that is, I want to keep the non-electrical catastrophes with the others.
I suppose a lot of ancient myths may have similar stories that could indicate that lightning typically did fossilize animal bones.
That is an interesting point. The Indian legends in this book describe how the animals died. If I remember (I read the book during the summer months) there were only two that could possibly be interpreted as actually referring to how they were fossilized. One says that the creatures were both killed and buried by the thunderbolt. That fits the Electric Universe geology (what precious little there is) that
Geologists cannot decipher the history of the Grand Canyon because their training never envisaged electrical erosion as a result of interplanetary thunderbolts. Nor did it teach that thick strata and anomalous deposits can be dumped from space in hours. Interplanetary electrical forces can raise mountains, twist and overturn strata, dump oceans on to land, preserve shattered flora and fauna in the rocks - all in a geological instant. holoscience
I had the occasion to visit a place with a long record of fossil strata. There is one trail that features fossils left in the ground and covered by plexiglass. This is an entirely different experience than seeing them cleaned and pieced together in a museum. I was struck by the contorted and dramatic positions of the bones. There is also an awe in looking at the animal in the place of its demise. I will share what one Indian said about leaving the fossils in the ground and viewing them that way--it's one of my favorite parts of the book.
Lloyd
Re: Mummified Dinosaurs / electric fossilization...?
I look forward to that, Brigit.
Brigit Bara
Re: Mummified Dinosaurs / electric fossilization...?
From Fossil Legends of the First Americans, by Adrienne Mayor
When I emerged from my muddy car, Morris Chee, Jr., a laconic guide from [Navajo village] Moenave, expressed surprise that anyone would stop in the cold rain and slog through puddles to see the footprints. But on sunny, dry days, it's hard to make out the tracks unless one pours a canteen of water into a single impression to see its shape. Today was the perfect weather for tracking dinosaurs: every footprint, big and small, was brimming with rainwater, and the wet bedrock was teeming with the traces of monsters.
Keeping his hands in his pockets, and gazing off to the stormy horizon, Chee walked up to each track and nodded down at it to be sure I noticed it (gesturing by pointing with the finger, as well as eye contact, is avoided by traditional Navajos)....A circle of stones marked off "the only bones we got left here. See the ribs and backbone and the jaws?"
Then Chee indicated several places where large slabs of rock with tracks had been chipped out and hauled away. "They took away all our bones, too, back in the '40's, before I was born," he said with resignation, referring to Jesse Williams's Dilophosaurus find now in Berkeley. "We don't ask for them back any more, that was a long time ago. Why don't they make a cast for taking away and leave the bones here? It's better to keep it in the ground right where it is. I wish we could have a museum for the bones here, then people would come to see it." pg 141
I liked this passage so much, I just had to fit it in. Now I shall be back on task.
Brigit Bara
Re: Mummified Dinosaurs / electric fossilization...?
Chapter 3: The Southwest Zuni, Navajo, Apache, Hopi, Ute, and Pit River
The Twin Children of the Sun realized that the world needed to be dried out and solidified before the "unfinished" humans succumbed to the monsters. Wielding a magic shield, a rain-bow, and arrows of cosmic lightning, the Twin Heroes ignited a tremendous conflagration. The fire raged over the face of the earth, scorching it dry and hardening the ground. Humans emerged from their mud-cave existence into blinding sunlight.... pg 111
But now, on dry land, predatory animals multiplied. With their powerful talons and teeth, these giant creatures devoured weaker human beings. So the Twin Heroes stalked across the world, blasting all the land monsters--enormous mountain lions and bears and other huge creatures--with lightning. "Thlu!" Instantly immolated, these dangerous beasts were "shriveled and burnt into stone." Pg 111
We have changed you into rock everlasting, said the Twin Heroes, as they struck the huge animals with lightning. "Now you will be good for men rather than evil." pg 112
Figure 31. Belemnite fossils, used for protection in battle by the Zuni. These marine fossils were called "lightning or thunder stones" by Plains Indians.
When I asked Mearl about dinosaur fossils, she replied, "In the story of the coming of This World, the twin Monster Slayers killed the monsters one by one. But they couldn't destroy their bodies. These are the fossils. This is a short story but I think you get the idea." pg 117
As in the Zuni myth, the earlier, wet and muddy worlds were dominated by monsters, which were created before human beings and preyed on them. Some monsters even persued people into successive worlds. But the Sun gave special lightning bolts to the twin sons of Changing Woman, so that they could overcome the monsters. pg 119
The first, most dreaded monster was Yeitso (also called Big Monster or Big Gray Monster--gray is associated with evil)....The monster's face was striped (stripes are associated with terror), and its stupendous body was covered with scaled armor. Approaching with earthshaking footsteps, Yeitso attacked, but the Twins destroyed it with lightning. Pg 119
As the monster plowed up the earth with its horns, they [Monster Slayers] killed it with lightning arrows. A little gopher assured them the monster was dead by running out along one of its horns. pg 122
Brigit Bara
Re: Mummified Dinosaurs / electric fossilization...?
Chapter 3: The Southwest Zuni, Navajo, Apache, Hopi, Ute, and Pit River cont'd
...[T]he Yup'ik people of southwestern Alaska tell of a tusked creature called Quugaarpaq, said to "travel underground, turning to stone when it came in contact with air. pg 124
The Gray Monsters were a variety of evil creatures of the earlier worlds. The Monster Slayers killed some, while others were done in by hail and windstorm. Pg 126
Big Centipede was another species of Navajo monster. This huge millipede, humped with many legs, leapt suddenly on its victims. The largest of these were slain by Monster Slayer. Zuni myth also featured a giant centipede who was shriveled by a bolt of lightning by the Twin Heroes--that's why today's centipedes look like burnt bits of fringed buckskin.
Was Big Centipede inspired by the sight of a fossil impression of Arthropleura, a six-foot-long centipede of the Corboniferous era? pg 127
According to Navajo myth, all the "slain monsters were beaten into the earth." pg 130
Real humans appeared only after the "Great Change," an extinction and evolutionary event ushered in by a great flood. Many First People were drowned, by others were transformed into modern mammals, reptiles, birds, fish, and insects. These retained some characteristics of their primal ancestors. pg147
According to Paiute tradition, a race of redheaded cannibals called Si-Te-Cahs once dwelled in the area around Lovelock, north of Reno, until the Paiute ancestors exterminated them with fire and smoke.... pg 151
The Paiutes told Powell that the stone logs were the enormous shafts of arrows unleashed by the Wolf-Thunder god, Shinarav, or Shinarump, an important force in the Ute origin myth. pg 159
Pikes Peak, for example, was created when Shinarump hurled gigantic rocks down to Earth, and many of his great battles occurred in the Petrified forest. pg 159
Hegewald explained that the "Great Father in Washington needed the specimens," and recorded the Navajos' "mystified" reaction: "Why would he want the bones of the Great Giant that their forefathers had killed years ago when taking possession of the country?" Pg 160
Lloyd
Re: Mummified Dinosaurs / electric fossilization...?
* Those are very interesting stories. I hope Rens will read them. He has the http://mythopedia.info website. I'll email him. * It's interesting that some of the Indians called petrified trees = arrows = stone logs. Their ancestors may have witnessed the lightning arrows and then saw the petrified trees soon afterward and concluded that they were the remains of the arrows from the sky. * The other stories of large animals killed by lightning arrows and leaving only their fossils sure seems to give great credence to our theory that lightning transmuted bones into fossils. * However, we still have to explain why flesh sometimes fossilized but most of the time did not. * Have you come across mention of a great flood in any of these stories?
Brigit Bara
Re: Mummified Dinosaurs / electric fossilization...?
Yes, I think it is an exciting discovery that the legends in North America have so much about thunderbolts.
It doesn't prove anything; but upon finding such an agreement at the "substructure of myth" (as Dave Talbott says) it is safe to start asking whether the myths are based on some common experience. And notice that I took the legends from widely separated geographic areas, the east and the Southwest. Add to the mix the fact that there were as many as 2,000 Native American languages here on this continent when the Europeans arrived. That is a considerable barrier to extensive sharing of oral tradition, one would think. So that may make the continuous theme of lightning killing the dinosaurs and megafauna that much more remarkable.
I would like to add the legends from the Central and South American Indians sometime soon, just for good measure.
For the question about soft tissue not fossilizing, I will make a couple of guesses, if it's open season. Perhaps the process is too hot for the flesh to survive, or maybe the atoms in flesh are just too far apart in soft tissue to transmute. ????
