Dec 18, 2012 Science and folk tradition are supposed to be strictly separate domains of knowledge, but in practice they often shade into each other. The image shown above right attempts to map the entire visible universe. The galaxies tend to collect into vast sheets and superclusters of galaxies surrounding large…
Dec 06, 2012 In parts of the Amazonian rainforest, traditional costume included a headdress consisting of a circular arrangement of feathers. The ring of 36 feathers, most of which are white, lacks an obvious counterpart in the skies we see above us. The above example was collected in c….
August 31, 2012 Leaving no stone unturned, some thunderstones may have acquired their association with lightning in still other ways. As mentioned in part three of this article, a future realisation that the Australites may actually have precipitated within the past 10,000 years would certainly hit hard. Yet even this…
August 29, 2012 ‘Thunderstones’ in the form of tektites – Did human beings watch them falling? As an additional possibility of no small importance, the concept of the thunderstone may have been sparked by a conflation of lightning with meteors which, on occasion, do deposit rocks onto the surface of…
August 27, 2012 That many a thunderstone earned the sobriquet by virtue of its exposure during a thunderstorm strikes one as correct to a degree. Intellectual lassitude perfuses the attempts of those who blamed the conception of the thunderstone on sheer stupidity or, one notch up, a rebarbative belief that…
August 24, 2012 The thunderstone is familiar from the folklore of virtually every culture, but plays no ‘roll’ in the serious sciences. In the eyes of most, the proposition that thunderbolts deposit rocks is an asinine artefact of superstitious belief – an antiquated theme that epitomises an infant stage in…
Aug 15, 2012 Even the lonely monuments left behind have a story to tell. Chavín de Huantar, in the Peruvian Andes, is one of many civilisations to have preceded the mighty Inca empire. The occupants of the ruins have no name; lacking a script, their cultural identity is…
Aug 14, 2012 Why are animals used so widely in coats of arms? The familiar red dragon of Wales and the double-headed eagle of the House of Habsburg exemplify a widespread and familiar practice to embed animal figures in heraldic devices, both in the Old and New Worlds, but…
July 26, 2012 ‘Plasma mythology’ may be defined as the study of plasmas, specifically near-earth plasmas, in human traditions, such as mythology and proto-scientific records. If this is a discipline, one of its most notable pioneers must be the French savant, Jean-Jacques d’Ortous de Mairan (1678-1771). De Mairan was a…
From left to right: F. Gutekunst, Ignatius Loyola Donnelly (c. 1898). Courtesy Minnesota Historical Society, Saint Paul, Minnesota. Anonymous, William Comyns Beaumont (date unknown). Bob Kobres, Immanuel Velikovsky (1978) July 23, 2012 In bestsellers published in 1882 and 1883, the American politician and amateur scientist Ignatius Loyola Donnelly (1831-1901)…
