World travel: Impossible places that exist

(WillNE) I investigated impossible places that actually exist

Massive block: natural, manmade, ETs?

I found colossal, impossible geometry with Desert Drifter

(thePOVchannel) Sept. 19, 2024: An incredible coincidence resulted in Desert Drifter and I standing atop a mysterious and gargantuan block (stone cut cube) in the middle of a forest. This cube has many secrets, but one stands out above everything else. The history of this block is truly puzzling. Had I not seen it with my own two eyes, I would not believe it to be real.

#impossible #megalith #unknown #hiking #exploring #ancientdiscoveries #camping #geometry #geology #history #mystery

• Why the world's oldest feats of engineering are so impressive

The Badlands Guardian geoglyph: ETs

Ancient Aliens: Cosmic communication system carved into Earth (S14, E2) | full episode

Who is she, this Guardian?

(HISTORY) Aug. 14, 2024: Satellite images [on Google Earth] have revealed a giant Indigenous face that appears to be carved into the Earth in Alberta, Canada, which has now become known far and wide as "The Badlands Guardian."

See more in Season 14, Episode 2, "The Badlands Guardian." Watch all new episodes of Ancient Aliens, Fridays at 9/8c, and stay up to date on all favorite shows on The HISTORY Channel website at history.com/schedule.

It's like the big Buddha of Bamiyan with shoulders

• Discovery of arrowheads suggests human achievements occurred much earlier than believed (msn.com)

Wadi Faynan 16, Jordan, 12K-y-o temple site

Wadi Faynan 16 — a 12,000-year-old ancient site you probably never heard of

Excavations of the site revealed, to the surprise of archaeologists, a dense cluster of half-buried oval structures that have been dated back to between 12,000 and 10,000 years ago.

Of all the truly ancient sites on Earth, most are familiar with Göbekli Tepe, an ancient site believed to date back about 12,000 years, located in present-day Anatolia (Turkey, the Fertile Crescent).

• Why is Turkey so important with so many extraordinary things like Noah's Ark or Sumerian Ark of Atra-Hasis, from the Epic of Gilgamesh, or the underground worlds of caves, corridors, and caverns carved into rock where tens of thousands survived cataclysms, the oldest human body in...

The archeological site is unprecedented for more reasons than one, but primarily because of its complexity and size. Although Gobekli Tepe was discovered more than three decades ago, we have only managed to excavate only around 5% of the entire complex.

• [And as reported by Bright Insight's Jimmy Corsetti, that will not be continuing so we will not be shown any more than we have already seen of this extraordinary site, by no means the oldest. The pyramids in Mexico, which includes the largest (Cholula), the Americas, Egypt (the most famous), Syria (the largest number and the least known), the staggeringly large ones in Bosnia and Indonesia, China and Antarctica, Mars and elsewhere.]

But this isn’t about Göbekli Tepe. It is about an ancient site also discovered almost three decades ago, dating back to around 12,000 years ago. Unlike Göbekli Tepe’s catchy name, this site is known as WF16 or Wadi Faynan 16.

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• New discoveries that have stunned archaeologists

The 12,000-year-old ancient site you probably never heard about

In 1996, archeologists stumbled across the site when they identified flint tools and large stone mortars on the surface of a knoll.

The site is located in present-day Jordan, not far from a steep climb to the Jordanian Plateau. Its importance resides in the fact that it is home to some of the most ancient development of the Neolithic, featuring a clear separation from hunting and gathering food to the production of food [farming], a sedentary lifestyle, and a community.

Excavations eventually revealed numerous workshops, houses, and public spaces for communal activities such as religious or ceremonial rites.

Dense cluster of semi-subterranean structures

Excavations of the site revealed, to the surprise of archaeologists, a dense cluster of half-buried oval structures which have been dated back to between 12,000 and 10,000 years ago. The site is believed to have reached its peak around 11,200 years ago.

The structures were intricately covered with a mud and plant mixture, which helped keep the structures firmly in place. This material was used for the walls that supported flat wooden roofs and other buildings at the site.

The structures at WF16 vary in size, suggesting specific uses for each building. Some were used for domestic activities and others for storage and workshops. But one structure stands out. It is perhaps one of the first amphitheater-like structures ever found. More: Wadi Faynan 16

• Ivan Petricevic, curiosmos.com, Feb. 7, 2023; Pat Macpherson, Dhr. Seven, Sheldon S. (eds.), Wisdom Quarterly

Cosmic time: How long is an aeon (kalpa)?

Dhr. Seven, Pat Macpherson, Wisdom Quarterly

Finally, to suggest that the Buddha may have known what he was talking about, thousands of years ago he was asked to define an "aeon," a kalpa.

His practical answer suggests he was defining a great aeon, an unimaginable length of time, the duration of a universe or longer. We cannot imagine such timespans, except that now science throws around the idea of our universe being 13 billion years or more (given that older light is sometimes spotted by new space telescopes like Hubble and that newest one). How does a teacher of Truth begin to define a thing that cannot be imagined? He uses his imagination to stagger his audience with the otherwise inconceivable. The Buddha answered by saying:

• Imagine a piece of flawless marble or granite one yojana (seven miles) long, one yojana tall, and one yojana wide. Now further imagine a person coming by every hundred years and wiping this great mass of flawless stone without crack or crevice with a piece of soft Kasi cloth (the finest muslin). That entire mass of rock would be worn down to nothing, and yet a single kalpa would still not have elapsed ("The Mountain," Pabbata Sutta, SN 15:5, Dhr. Seven translation).

The strange thing about Sanskrit and Pali terms is that, while kalpa means "aeon," it can also mean "lifespan" and so be as short as one human lifespan, which is variable duration between 80,000 years and less than 120. At that time, females reach puberty after 500 years. (But here "500" does not really mean a literal half of a millennium. It means "many," like when we in modern American English hyperbolically say, "There was a million of them" and there was nowhere near an actual million (as in acne pustules on a teenager's face) or there were many more than a million, but we stopped counting (as with the number of stars visible in the night sky not beset by light pollution).

That is not all the Buddha said because he was making a point about the insidious nature of rebirth. We all want to live, to pursue new stimuli and indulge in sensual pleasures, so much so that we cling to life, but we eventually die. This unsatisfied craving -- which can never be satisfied except that we think, "Oh, sure it can, with the next thing," because each thing obtained ultimately disappoints -- engenders another rebirth. How many rebirths? Countless, too many to count, because it's been going on for unimaginable kalpas. So the Buddha made his point: 

"And we have all wandered on through many such aeons -- many hundreds, many thousands, many hundreds of thousands of them. Why? Birth has no known beginning.

"Long enough has one experienced disappointment, experienced pain, experienced loss, swelling up the cemeteries, long enough to become disenchanted with all things, long enough to become dispassionate, long enough to be free [of clinging to] all things." Let go and be free.

• See SN 15:5  Pabbata Sutta | "A Mountain" (dhammatalks.org)
  

Secret Places on Earth

Googe Earth mystery sites and secret places (link)