Thanks to the wonder of Microsoft’s Synth technology, we can explore haunted cities of the dead from the safety of your own home and avoid any avenging mummy unpleasantness.

Check out this Synth of the Necropolis of Saqqara, an Egyptian burial site dating back to the First Dynasty. (Microsoft Silverlight plugin required.)

link Photosynth – Necropolis of Saqqara

Travelet.com has this fun tourist destination known as Rookund in the Himalayas. It’s a lake filled with skeletons:

Roopkund is better off known as “The skeleton lake” due to the presence of an enormous grave that holds about 300 to 600 skeletons. This discovery has revolutionized the world of ancient history ever since 1942, when a park ranger came across this mass deposition of bones. It probably is an in-accessible frozen lake that requires about four day travel to reach from the nearest locality. Recently, it has become an important spot for the visitors as they learn and conjecture this advent of science.

link: Roopkund – Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
link: Roopkund The Mysterious Skeleton Lake | Travelet

Newsweek has an interesting article about an ancient monument located in the middle of a golf course in Southern Ohio. Before you get upset about this suburbification of a historic site, it’s important to remember that if they hadn’t put a golf course there, there would be a subdivision there and nothing to see. Newsweek

In fact, the Earthworks have become something of a dwarf star within the golf course’s universe. Carts zip over sacred embankments. A cherished mound doubles as the ninth tee. The Earthworks are a National Historic Landmark, and they are under consideration for the UNESCO World Heritage list of cultural and natural wonders.

Here’s a view from Google Maps:

Getting a little weirder, in 1860 explorers claimed to have found an artifact there with the following Hebrew inscription:

Remarkable Archaeological Discovery in Ohio. – Article Preview – The New York Times

50 meters off the coast of Laconia in Greece archeologists are mapping the oldest submerged city in the world.

From ScienceDaily:

Possibly one of the most important discoveries has been the identification of what could be a megaron — a large rectangular great hall — from the Early Bronze Age period. They have also found over 150 metres of new buildings including what could be the first example of a pillar crypt ever discovered on the Greek mainland. Two new stone built cist graves were also discovered alongside what appears to be a Middle Bronze Age pithos burial.

The University of Nottingham’s video on the expedition:

Pavlopetri – Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
World’s Oldest Submerged Town Dates Back 5,000 Years

In this video, CNN investigate Mirador, the cradle of the Mayan civilization and home to the largest pyramid (by volume) in the world. Mostly covered by jungle, it’s in the middle of a threatened region rampant with grave robbers and drug traffickers. Because of it’s remote location it’s not as explored and well understood as other ancient cities.

From Wikipedia:

The civic center of the site covers some 10 square miles (26 km²) with several thousand structures, including monumental architecture from 10 to 30 meters high. There are a number of “triadic” structures (around 35 structures), consisting of large artificial platforms topped with a set of 3 summit pyramids. The most notable such structures are three huge complexes; one is nicknamed “El Tigre“, with height 55 metres (180 ft); the other is called “La Danta” (or Danta) temple. Depending on calculation techniques, the Danta temple is considered as tall as 72 meters, and considering its total volume (2,800,000 cubic meters) is one of the largest pyramids in the world¹.

According to Carlos Morales-Aguilar, a Guatemalan archaeologist, the city appears to have been planned from its foundation, as extraordinary alignments have been found between the architectural groups and main temples, which were possibly related to solar. The study reflects an importance of urban planning and sacred spaces since the first settlers.

The photo below shows a pyramid covered in vegetation.

link: El Mirador – Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
link: Video – Breaking News Videos from CNN.com

As the Hollywood and occult hype machines spin into overdrive about the proposed end of the world on December 21st, 2012, at least one person who may or may not know something about it says it’s all bunk. According to an AP story, Chile Pixtun, a Guatemalan Indian Elder had this to say:

Definitely not, the Mayan Indian elder insists. “I came back from England last year and, man, they had me fed up with this stuff.”

Another person who should know points out:

“If I went to some Mayan-speaking communities and asked people what is going to happen in 2012, they wouldn’t have any idea,” said Jose Huchim, a Yucatan Mayan archaeologist. “That the world is going to end? They wouldn’t believe you. We have real concerns these days, like rain.”

He goes onto suggest this doomsday thing is a Western concept we’re projecting onto the Maya. So if the Maya say it’s bunk, who should we believe? Them or the folks who remade Godzilla?

link: Mayan Year 2012 Stirs Doomsday Theories – International News | News of the World | Middle East News | Europe News – FOXNews.com

Researchers now speculate that an island chain once inhabited by the Minoan’s may have been a much larger island that was wiped out in a volcanic eruption that sent tidal waves as far as Israel.

Speculation has abounded as to whether the Santorini eruption inspired the legend of Atlantis, which Plato said drowned in the ocean. Although the isle is often regarded as just an invention, the explosion might have given rise to the story of a lost empire by helping to wipe out the real-life Minoan civilization that once dominated the Mediterranean, from which the myth of the bull-headed ‘minotaur’ comes.

link: Real Tsunami May Have Inspired Legend of Atlantis – Yahoo! News

link: Google Maps

The recent discovery of another megalithic site near Stonehenge has added yet another layer to the mystery.

The presence of “Blue Stonehenge” approximately a mile away suggests that it was part of a larger scheme. What these stone age land developers had in mind is still a matter of debate.

Sheffield University’s Professor Mike Parker Pearson, Director of the project, said: “It could be that Blue Stonehenge was where the dead began their final journey to Stonehenge. “Not many people know that Stonehenge was Britain’s largest burial ground at that time. Maybe the bluestone circle is where people were cremated before their ashes were buried at Stonehenge itself.”

link: ‘Blue Stonehenge’ Discovered By UK Archaeologists

No one is all bad. Weird Things Cultural Researcher Matt Finley takes a look at the silver lining in famous fictional monsters.

Two weeks ago, Weird Things took a look at the cooler-than-you clique of vampiric adolescent rapscallions in “The Lost Boys” and flirted with the possibility that they were, you know, from like a socio-political standpoint, maybe not all that bad. Today, the site looks at a group of gainfully employed, adult vampires from the 1996 film “From Dusk ‘Til Dawn,” and the positive ramifications of their self-made debauched corner of Mexican heaven, the Titty Twister.

A Boon to the Trucking Industry

More than just a vampire strip club, the Titty Twister is essentially the corporate headquarters of a consulting firm that evaluates the work ethic, morality and efficacy of big rig truckers. No trucking company wants its employees delaying shipments and spending their company allowances drinking bottom-shelf tequila off vampires’ feet while jabber-jawing with Danny Trejo. The staff of the Titty Twister weeds out los huevos malos to ensure that North America’s economy isn’t further damaged by shipping delays, and, in doing so, creates the legend of a vampire strip club, which subsequently terrifies other potential slackers while popularizing new CB radio warnings, such as “fanged beaver” and “drac muff.”

Preservation of an Historic Landmark

By ensuring that the ancient, evil pyramid that the Titty Twister is constructed upon stays in the hands of the grotesque, undead monsters that it was presumably built to honor, it’s guaranteed that one of Mexico’s most impressive and sinister National landmarks doesn’t get demolished to make way for a just-over-the-border human cloning facility or a just-over-the-border human cloning facility that also sells fireworks.

A Boon to Tourism

Imagine that the Titty Twister didn’t exist and all the vampire strippers, musicians and bar tenders had to fan out across the country, finding employment at various different taverns and strip clubs, and then murdering patrons indiscriminately at all of them. College spring breakers and middle-aged resort hoppers would pack up their Spanglish and alcoholism and take them somewhere that didn’t boast a blood-drinking killer in every pub. The Titty Twister ensures that blue collar vampires with experience in the service industry can find gainful employment and a healthy quantity of unwitting victims without disrupting the influx of binge-drinking Americans that Mexico depends on to keep their hospitals open.

For years enthusiasts of the weird have dredged and searched Loch Ness for a monster and come up empty handed. Little did they know that a real ancient oddity was standing right behind them. Archaeologists in Scotland believe that a boulder on a hill overlooking Loch Ness was carved and used as a marker by ancient farmers to track the spring and autumn equinoxes and thus know when to plant their crops. This civilization has long since vanished, apparently their knowledge of astronomy did little to save them from being devoured by Nessy.

When you think stone henge cannibalism isn’t the first thing that comes to mind. But according to a new National Geographic News article the Druids may have ritualistically and zealously practiced cannibalism. This shouldn’t come as a major shock. After all, Historical Roman accounts didn’t have much favorable to say about them:

Julius Caesar, who led the first Roman landing in 55 B.C., said the native Celts “believe that the gods delight in the slaughter of prisoners and criminals, and when the supply of captives runs short, they sacrifice even the innocent.”

They sound like cheery London gents. Mmmmm….that’s good Druid.

-Link to the article

Ok, it didn’t start underwater….The ancient artificial harbor at Limantepe in Turkey is believed to have been submerged during a massive earthquake in 700 BC. The section of the settlement being excavated is a whopping one kilometer beneath the ocean’s surface. Artifacts found date all the way back to the 7th century BC!

-Archaeologists take to the water at Limantepe site

A 1909 edition of the Phoenix Gazette describes the discovery by the Smithsonian Institute of a mammoth cave system with the remnants of a civilization numbering 50,000 people. Granaries, tombs and even idols reminiscent of Buddha were allegedly found.

Of course there’s the problem that the Smithsonian claims to have never launched the expedition and no record of any of the explorers can be found. Was it a hoax? Or is there another Anasazi city waiting to be found somewhere in the Grand Canyon?

The original article
An investigation into the facts of the article
The Anasazi in Wikipedia