Red Ice Radio: Klaus Dona - Unsolved Mysteries, Giants & Out of Place Artifacts

Klaus Dona joins us from Vienna, Austria to discuss his "Unsolved Mysteries Tour," a rare collection of out-of-place artifacts and incredible objects. Some of these objects and statuets are millions of years old and some of them display other unique properties that place them in an unknown category.

Where do they come from and who made them?

We talk about some of Klaus's favorite artifacts. Then we talk about the giant skeletons found in La Mana in Ecuador. Klaus talks about the world map stone and a pyramid stone with thirteen steps crowned with an eye that glows under black light. Later we move on to talk about a pre-Sanskrit language, the Vikings, Vinland, the Kensington Runestone and Knights Templar in America, pre-Columbus, the Conquistadors, invasion of South America, ancient sea-faring cultures, and much more.

RED ICE CREATIONS

B©SNIAN-PYRAMID.COM 2011

Megalithomania South Africa 2011: Klaus Dona's "Unsolved Mysteries"

Klaus Dona has been organizing cultural exhibitions since 1991 in Austria, Japan, and Korea. An art curator and artifacts researcher, his attention was soon drawn to "Ooparts" -- out-of-place artifacts. Ooparts are artifacts that, according to current science, should not exist.

Dona has been researching these types of artifacts for over a decade and has set up an exhibition of 470 of these Ooparts pieces -- from places such as Colombia, Bolivia, Peru, Ecuador, Mexico and many other countries. Dona appropriately named his exhibition "Unsolved Mysteries."

Museums often "bury" out-of-place artifacts in their basements to avoid the uncomfortable questions they raise. A large number of these unusual pieces are also held in private collections, out of the public eye.

Klaus Dona has been able to exhibit more than 3500 pieces, none of which have a conventional explanation.

MEGALITHOMANIA

B©SNIAN-PYRAMID.COM 2011

The Uncontacted Indians of Brazil

At risk of extinction from disease and land loss In the depths of the Amazon rainforest in Brazil live tribes who have no contact with the outside world.

Illegal loggers and cattle ranchers are invading their land and bringing disease. They won’t survive unless this stops.

Brazil’s Amazon is home to more uncontacted tribes than anywhere in the world. There could be up to 70 isolated groups in this rainforest, according to the government’s Indian affairs department FUNAI.

Their decision not to maintain contact with other tribes and outsiders is almost certainly a result of previous disastrous encounters and the ongoing invasion and destruction of their forest home.

SURVIVAL.ORG

UNCONTACTED TRIBES

B©SNIAN-PYRAMID.COM 2011

World's oldest Copper Age settlement found!

Artifacts from Choka Oknji mine shafts: sacrificial altar and mining tools (5,000 B.C.)A "sensational" discovery of 75-century-old copper tools in Serbia is compelling scientists to reconsider existing theories about where and when man began using metal.

Belgrade - axes, hammers, hooks and needles - were found interspersed with other artefacts from a settlement that burned down some 7,000 years ago at Plocnik, near Prokuplje and 200 km south of Belgrade.

The village had been there for some eight centuries before its demise. After the big fire, its unknown inhabitants moved away. But what they left behind points to man's earliest known extraction and shaping of metal.

"It really is sensational," said Ernst Pernicka, a renowned archaeology professor at Germany's Tuebingen University who recently visited the Ploce locality.

Scientists had previously believed that the mining, extraction and manipulation of copper began in Asia Minor, spreading from there. With the find in Plocnik, parallel and simultaneous developments of those skills in several places now seem more likely, Pernicka said.

Archaeologists unearthing a copper furnace in Plocnik, Serbia (Archive Photo)Indeed, the tools discovered in southern Serbia were made some 75 centuries ago - up to eight centuries older than what has been found to date.

The site at Plocnik, believed to cover some 120 hectares in all, is buried under several metres of soil. Serbian archaeologists have so far exposed three homes - the largest of them, measuring eight by five metres, discovered this year.

The layer of earth it stood on is still blackened from the scorching heat that destroyed the village. It is unclear what caused the fire, but no damage that would indicate an outside attack has been found.

The huts collapsed on their contents, with mud bricks and ashes burying all that was inside - pottery, statues, tools and a worktable. After dusting the still embedded artefacts off, archaeologists began extracting them, most of all hoping to find more precious copper tools.

Scientists are debating whether the Plocnik village led the world to the Copper Age in the 6th millennium BC, particularly as remains of primitive copper smelters were recently found not far away, near today's mines and smelters in Majdanpek and Bor.

Dusan Sljivar, one of the archaeologists involved into the excavations, say early metal workers very likely experimented with colorful minerals that caught their eye, among others blue azurite, bright green malachite and red cuprite, all containing copper, as evidenced by malachite traces found on the inside of a pot (Archive Photo)The find, which stems from "certainly very, very early in the Copper Age", was a very lucky one, said another expert from Tuebingen, Raiko Kraus.

The Ploce locality was discovered by railroad builders in 1927, but was largely disregarded until 1996, when serious excavations began, eventually yielding the sensational finds.

According to Krause, old settlements may similarly surface in eastern Anatolia when Turkey launches some massive earth-moving project, such as building a dam.

It remains unclear why a comparatively large quantity of copper tools were found at Plocnik. The head archaeologist on site, Julka Kuzmanovic-Cvetkovic, said that the village may have been a tool-making or trading centre. There is also much more to be learned about the ancient inhabitants, apart from the key question of how man developed his tools.

"These people were not wild," Kuzmanovic-Cvetkovic stressed, pointing to fine pieces such as statuettes. "They had finely combed hair and adorned themselves with necklaces."

One statue of a woman shows her wearing some sort of a mini skirt. Others wore long and broad scarves. Kuzmanovic-Cvetkovic actually helped a Serbian fashion designer set up a show inspired by the clothes of the people who lived there millennia earlier.

Whatever remains to be found at Ploce and elsewhere, "mankind took a major step toward the modern era" during that time, Pernicka said.

hindustantimes.com

Archaeologists Find Tunnel Below the Temple of the Feathered Serpent

The picture shows the site that leads to what archeologists describe as a mysterious, 100-meter, 100 yard, tunnel found in Teotihuacan, Mexico, Tuesday, Aug. 3, 2010. Archeologists say the tunnel was probably closed intentionally about 200 A.D. and it may well hold chambers with tombs of the rulers of the city founded 2,500 year ago, where the Teotihuacan culture blossomed starting around 100 B.C. (AP Photo/Alexandre Meneghini)

Mexico City

After eight months of excavation, archaeologists from the National Institute of Anthropology and History (INAH) have located, 12 meters below, the entrance to the tunnel leading to a series of galleries beneath the Temple of the Feathered Serpent, in the Archaeologcial Area of Teotihuacan, where the remains of rulers of the ancient city could have been deposited.

In a tour made by to site today with the media, archaeologist Sergio Chavez Gomez, director of the Tlalocan Project went below the ground and announced the advances in the systematic exploration undertaken by the INAH of the underground conduit, which was closed for about 1,800 years by the inhabitants of Teotihuacan themselves and where no one has gone in since then.

INAH specialists hope to enter the tunnel in a couple of months and will be the first to enter after hundreds of years since it was closed. This excavation, which represents the most profound that has been done in the pre-Hispanic site, is part of the commemorations for the first 100 years of uninterrupted archaeological explorations (made in 1910) also called the City of Gods. Gómez Chávez explained that the tunnel passes under the Temple of the Feathered Serpent, the most important building of the Citadel, "and the entry was located a few meters from the pyramid.

Access is by a vertical shaft of about five meters per side down to a depth of 14 meters from the surface, the entrance leads into a long corridor with an estimated length of 100 meters which ends in a series of underground chambers excavated in the rock.

The tunnel was discovered in late 2003 by Sergio Gomez and Julie Gazzola, but its exploration has required several years of planning and managing the financial resources necessary to carry out research at the highest scientific level. The team is composed of more than 30 people and has advisors renowned nationally and internationally.

Before starting the excavations, the archaeologists from INAH had the collaboration of Dr. Victor Manuel Velasco, from the Institute of Geophysics of the UNAM, through a the use of a GPR it was determined that the tunnel has a length of about 100 meters, and has large chambers inside

Another of the technologies used in the exploration has been the laser scanner, a sophisticated device with high resolution, facilitated by the National Coordination of Historical Monuments (CNMH). INAH made the three-dimensional record of the archaeological finds.

Contextual image of the tunnel found in front of the Temple of the Feathered Serpent. Photo: CNMH INAH

Just a couple of weeks ago, archaeologists corroborated that the tunnel entrance was located in the place they had anticipated, then opened a small hollow hole at the top of the access, and using the scanner took the first images from inside the tunnel to a length of 37 meters, of the 100 it is estimated to have in length.

"Although we need to excavate two more meters to reach the floor of the tunnel, having the first images of the inside will allow us to better plan how to enter. Even so, we will have to withdraw a large amount of soil and a heavy block of stone that blocks the access. The whole process could take two more months of work, as we continue with the same systematic exploration that we have done from the start to avoid losing important information that lets us know what activities the citizens of Teotihuacan performed thousands of years ago and why they decided to close it," said archaeologist Sergio Gomez.

So far, 200 tons of earth have been withdrawn, he said, while doing this we have found about 60,000 pieces of artifacts and pottery.

Angel Mora, who belongs to the Technology Support Unit of the CNMH, and engineer Juan Carlos Garcia, who operates the scanner, said that by introducing the laser, which has a range of 300 meters, through the small hollow opening the archaeologists made, there was only a length of 37 meters. Mora noted that this reading is because the laser beam "runs into something, maybe with some collapsed stones or because the tunnel has a gap."

Sergio Gomez reported that it has not yet been precisely determined the time of construction of the tunnel, however it he has a better idea of when it was closed by the people from Teotihuacan. "Several indications suggest that access to the underground passage was closed between 200 and 250 AD, probably after depositing something inside. One of the hypotheses postulate that, within the large chamber detected by the GPR, we could locate the remains of important people in the city."

The investigations have led to know with certainty that this tunnel was made prior to the construction of the Temple of the Feathered Serpent and the Citadel. The tunnel is contemporary with a large architectural structure, which could be a ball game court, according to theform of the ground, said the archaeologist.

"Unfortunately..., the INAH researcher said, ..when the tunnel was closed, large stones were thrown which blocked access, and the court was also destroyed and razed by the people of Teotihuacan, only small remnants remain. Locating the entrance to the tunnel fulfills one of the most important objectives of the Project Tlalocan, to precisely confirm that the main entrance was located in the exact spot where the excavation is planned. We must continue the excavation of the vertical shaft until it reaches the floor level to thereby start scanning the tunnel towards the East."

According to the hypothesis about the meaning and symbolism of the tunnel, archaeologist Sergio Gomez, said the tunnel had to be linked to concepts related to the underworld, hence it is possible that in this place were carried out initiation rituals and the divine investiture of Teotihuacan rulers, since the power was acquired in these sacred spaces.

Also, it is known that rulers were buried in the holiest places. "For a long time local and foreign archaeologists have attempted to locate the graves of the rulers of the ancient city, but the search has been fruitless.

"That's why every day our expectations are increasing, as there are many chances that they are sitting inside a large tomb or offering. However, it is not something we are obsessed with, the discovery and systematic exploration of the tunnel is something of great significance for archaeological research and a unique opportunity to approach the cosmogonic and religious thought of ancient Teotihuacan."

National Institute of Anthropology and History | Mexico | Archaeologcial Area of Teotihuacan | Sergio Chavez Gomez |