When Big Heads Collide....,

thinkingman  |  Have you ever heard of the Olmecs? They’re the earliest known civilization in Mesoamerica. Not much is known about them, but they have left behind one big thing—a few, actually. Their heads.

‘Olmec’ heads. Screenshot from grahamhancock.com, all photos by Santha Faiia

You may have seen one of the heads as the host of Legends of the Hidden Temple on Nickelodeon as a kid. Hancock and several others have mentioned the similarities between the features on the Olmec colossal heads and people from modern day Polynesia and Africa. The theory on this is that maybe the Olmecs, or the civilization which predated them, was started by seafaring Africans or Polynesians who crossed the ocean and settled in the area well before the other civilizations in Mesoamerica.

When Joe Rogan asked Dibble if he could at least agree that the Olmec heads had features similar to African or Polynesian people, Dibble still denied it. To me this showed us that he was not going to budge or get anywhere close to agreeing on a single thing Hancock had ever claimed.

Listen. I’m not saying that Hancock is 100% correct. Most of the evidence he had to show were megaliths which he claims look manmade. But I agree with his argument that it is possible for an ancient civilization to have existed, especially when he brings up how these megalithic structures seem to be built by a people with astounding knowledge of astronomy—we’ll get to that later.

The fact that Dibble could not even admit there being a possibility that there was a civilization predating anything we know is a testament to what is wrong with the experts today. He did bring some interesting evidence to the debate. His breakdown of how seeds have developed since the Ice Age was something I didn’t know, but I still didn’t think it ruled out Hancock’s theory. He explained that we can trace back exactly when agriculture first started by the evidence of seed development that suggests that humans didn’t start planting until after the Ice Age—which would rule out anything ever coming before then.

Another one of Flint Dibble’s arguments was the insistence of the evidence of hunter gatherers during the ice age. Since there is a bunch of evidence of hunter gatherers from the time period but none of Hancock’s civilization, it was enough for him to say that Hancock’s theory couldn’t possibly be true. But Hancock never said his civilization and hunter-gatherers couldn’t have both occupied the planet—there are hunter gatherer tribes alive today. But why the evidence of hunter gatherers and not Hancock’s civilization? Who knows—maybe they figured out a way to survive with a way of feeding themselves that was lost to time along with the rest of their culture. It’s possible.

The most fascinating thing about the civilization that Hancock discusses is their connection to astronomy. The sites he has discussed seem to have been built in orientations that line up with the solstices and equinoxes (like Serpent Mound in Ohio). Dive deeper and you’ll find theories on the orientation of the pyramids reflecting Orion’s Belt and the sphinx (which is possibly 12,000 years old).

Big Head Update In The News

studyfinds  |  Could another group of ancient humans have lived alongside Homo sapiens? A new study suggests that they did, and scientists are starting to piece together the clues of their forgotten past. A researcher from the University of Hawai’i at Manoa is revealing new insights into a group called the Julurens — meaning the “big head” people.

The new research is revolutionizing our understanding of human evolution, particularly in eastern Asia, where scientists have uncovered a far more intricate picture of our ancient past than previously thought.

For decades, researchers believed human evolution followed a relatively straightforward path. The dominant theories suggested either that humans gradually evolved in place across different regions or that a single group from Africa replaced all other human populations. However, the groundbreaking study published in the journal Nature Communications is turning those simplistic models on their head.

Paleoanthropologists Christopher Bae and Xiujie Wu introduce a potentially revolutionary concept: a new human species called Homo juluensis. This group, which may include the mysterious Denisovans — ancient human relatives known primarily through fragmentary DNA evidence — lived approximately 300,000 years ago, hunting and surviving in small groups across eastern Asia before disappearing around 50,000 years ago.

Moreover, they found that eastern Asia was home to multiple distinct human species during the Late Quaternary period, roughly 50,000 to 300,000 years ago. Instead of a linear progression, the human story looks more like a complex, branching network of different populations (including the Julurens) interacting, mixing, and coexisting.

The team identified four human species that existed during this time: Homo floresiensis, a diminutive human found on the Indonesian island of Flores; Homo luzonensis from the Philippines; Homo longi, discovered in China; and the recently named Homo juluensis, which includes fossils from various sites across eastern Asia.

“We did not expect being able to propose a new hominin (human ancestor) species and then to be able to organize the hominin fossils from Asia into different groups. Ultimately, this should help with science communication,” Bae says in a university release.

 

those big heads though..., (REDUX 4/1/14)

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wikipedia |  Judaism - In ancient Israel, the Kohen Gadol (High Priest) wore a headdress called the Mitznefet (Hebrew: מצנפת, often translated into English as "mitre"), which was wound around the head so as to form a broad, flat-topped turban. Attached to it was the Tzitz (Hebrew: ציץ), a plate of solid gold bearing the inscription "Holiness to YHWH"^[1] (Exodus 39:14, 39:30). Lesser priests wore a smaller, conical turban.

Byzantine empire - The camelaucum (Greek: καμιλαύκιον, kamilaukion), the headdress both the mitre and the Papal tiara stem from, was originally a cap used by officials of the Imperial Byzantine court. "The tiara [from which the mitre originates] probably developed from the Phrygian cap, or frigium, a conical cap worn in the Graeco-Roman world. In the 10th century the tiara was pictured on papal coins."^[2] Other sources claim the tiara developed the other way around, from the mitre. In the late Empire it developed into the closed type of Imperial crown used by Byzantine Emperors (see illustration of Michael III, 842-867).

Worn by a bishop, the mitre is depicted for the first time in two miniatures of the beginning of the eleventh century. The first written mention of it is found in a Bull of Pope Leo IX in the year 1049. By 1150 the use had spread to bishops throughout the West; by the 14th century the tiara was decorated with three crowns.