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Posted

Was skimming thru the channels and settled on History Channel while an ep of History's Mysteries was on; the ep is "Japan's Mysterious Pyramids." Apparently covers some recently discovered ruins off the coast of a Japanese island at Yonaguni, that could pre-date "established" civilization by at least 5,000 yrs. One of the experts, when referring to the strong ties/similarities found in ancient Pacific folklore, spoke of how "....the culture this lore refers to could be thought of as a 'proto-civilization' or a 'proto-culture' that predates all other recorded civilizations that we know of..."

Just thought it was funny, this guy slipping "protoculture" in there, given the context. LOL, he must have seen Mac and/or Mac 0... :p

Posted

Was skimming thru the channels and settled on History Channel while an ep of History's Mysteries was on; the ep is "Japan's Mysterious Pyramids." Apparently covers some recently discovered ruins off the coast of a Japanese island at Yonaguni, that could pre-date "established" civilization by at least 5,000 yrs. One of the experts, when referring to the strong ties/similarities found in ancient Pacific folklore, spoke of how "....the culture this lore refers to could be thought of as a 'proto-civilization' or a 'proto-culture' that predates all other recorded civilizations that we know of..."

Just thought it was funny, this guy slipping "protoculture" in there, given the context. LOL, he must have seen Mac and/or Mac 0... :p

All I know about those pyramids is whenever my archeology friend saw a book about them in the book store he would grab it and reshelve it in fiction instead. Randy Sasaki did not brook nonsense...no he did not.

Posted

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yonaguni

Follow the links at the bottom of the page for pictures and/or if you have doubts about the content in wikipedia pages.

It is fascinating stuff. And the person being interviewed is quite correct - the Polynesian world-creation myth/story is very, very similar to the Shinto world-creation myth/story.

Though interestingly, the Japanese language has some linguistic similarities to Altaic languages*, though other scholars claim it is a language onto itself**. (Though, my experience with Japanese, is that it is similar to English - in that it is a mix of languages from different groups, with it's own dialect mixed in as well.)

* http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Altaic_languages

** http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Japonic_languages

Posted

considering that early japanese have many many similiarities to polynesians, any correlation between the two wouldn't be terrbily surprising...

saw the same show today, I think those "ruins" are really reaching. There's no sense of design or rational thought to the placement of shelves and ledges nor was there any sense of measuring or consistancy. Looks like to me people trying to force rational design on something which was not man made and random.

Posted

Agreed that it may be reaching to conclude that they are structures akin to Egyptian pyramids. However, there are a lot of features in the ruins that hint at manmade origins - what I have heard on the subject is that the structures are not found in nature. An allegory could be made to the Greek ruins that, due to time and the movements of the Earth's crust, have sunk underwater.

Though, as the structures have most definitely been reshaped by earthquakes - possibly having been partially or completely formed by them, it's hard to determine exactly what they are without further study. The fact that they are underwater further complicates things...

Posted

yeah, without actually analyzing what the underlying rock is underneath all that coral, talking about what they look like now is almost pointless. It could very well be that the rock is/was some sort of crystaline based metamorphic rock that natural fractures in sheets and planes... very possible considering japans volcanic origins.

Posted

The pictures that I have seen (some available as links off of the link I provided above) do not have coral on them, and are of the base rocks.

Posted

The pictures that I have seen (some available as links off of the link I provided above) do not have coral on them, and are of the base rocks.

hmm, the show showed divers chipping off layers of coral to expose the base rock and were even commenting that the coral growth makes the rock look much more even surfaced than they actually are.

Posted (edited)

I think it would be cool if history books had a section on protoculture. When will people realise that it was genetically modified giant alien clones created as bioweapons in a lab by a superior civilisation, that actually built all the pyramids and that we are descendants of the PC who fought them in all the legends?

I think Kawamori should make a religion similar to scientology out of macross. :D

Edited by 1/1 LowViz Lurker
Posted

I think it would be cool if history books had a section on protoculture. When will people realise that it was genetically modified giant alien clones created as bioweapons in a lab by a superior civilisation, that actually built all the pyramids and that we are descendants of the PC who fought them in all the legends?

I think Kawamori should make a religion similar to scientology out of macross. :D

haha... I supposed the pyramids would be a fair sight easier for zentradi to build than humans...

Posted

haha... I supposed the pyramids would be a fair sight easier for zentradi to build than humans...

Could carve the stones with laser rifles too. Beats the hell out of chisels.

Posted (edited)

Umm, sorry but Macross/Robotech has no monopoly on the word protoculture. Like Proto-civilization, proto-society, proto-human, etc. these are all common words which can be found in scholarly writing by academics long before Macross was ever created. Shoji probably got the word from some textbook or english-japanese dictionary.

Protoculture afterall is in the bloody Oxford English Dictionary guys. It's common in social anthropology or archeological jaron and probably dates to the 18th century or something.

To think that this History Channel guy is a Macross fan is a little short-sighted. This is like watching a show on vikings or norse mythology and hearing "Valkyrie!" and getting excited.

Edited by ComicKaze

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