09-27-2025, 10:27 AM
(09-27-2025, 07:21 AM)Kurokage Wrote: I went to a few conventions on different subjects in my youth, and am willing to admit I got caught up in a lot of the hype, but with age and all that....
I think Graham suffers from the same problem a lot of these 'self-educated' experts suffer. They form a hypothesis before understanding the issue and then mould the evidence to fit that idea or hypothesis.
Very true.
I started going to that conference when I discovered carved rocks on my property. The native Americans were very helpful with explaining what they were. a few of the elders told me I was living on an old ceremonial site when I explained what I was finding and showed them some of the rocks. Rocks lined up in rows about five to eight feet apart identified the paths, and some of those rocks had been sculpted ot form images and others had mosiaced stones cemented onto them made of little rocks. I found a bunch of rocks that had a sort of cement on them that were once glued to a flat stone. When assembled the pieces look like a Turkey...no other stones in the loam were present. I assembled the little pieces of rocks trying to align them to the stone but some had lost their cement, so I am not exactly sure if it was a turkey, but the native American guy who knew lots about these things said it was probably a turkey as I had figured.
My avatar on here is one of the stones. It is made from either a bone or a fossilized bone someone found at least five hundred years ago. It had a wood handle that fit into it, there was a plug in the marrow hole that still had wood fibers embedded in clay in the hole. I brought it to a butcher, and he said it is similar to the marrow hole in the front leg of a cow....but way bigger. I asked him if it could be a buffalo, but he said he did not know...he had never butchered a buffalo, just cows and pigs and the like. But said it is doubtful it was shaped or ground from a buffalo. I found this in the clay layer, but not sure how deep, because it was tossed in the woods when I back filled the house...I would guess about two feet deep but the clay layer is at least five feet deep here. I made a new handle for it. The front face has some marks under the patina, they must have used it for pounding something. The carving seems to be some sort of animal that wraps around the handle...but not sure what it is. Multiple people looked at it and said what it appeared to be. They saw what they knew, some said a puppy, others said a kitten, others said a cub and one person who owned salamanders said it looked like a salamander that lost it's tail. Funny how so many people see what they know...it taught me that people who have beliefs or knowledge about something see things in a way to fit their beliefs and knowledge they hold. This is important as it made me look into interpretations of evidence in science more closely...people interpret things in a way to reinforce their beliefs and knowledge....a human trait. It is probably made from a permineralized mastadon bone someone dug up long ago. I thought about bringing it to MTU to have it checked out, but know people who had their stuff confiscated and told they were not allowed to dig there again...one of those artifacts is on display at a local university that was confiscated..but only for students to view.
If you do not agree with consensus of the time, your opinion is discounted as pseudo science or craziness by professionals in the field. That does not mean that it is not true. It just mean that a lot of people who were trained to believe a certain way cannot see things that do not fit their knowledge.
Everyone knows that cigarettes cause cancer, they will not accept the evidence that smoking cigarettes in most people causes specialized B and T immune cells in the body that fight cancer to increase...which kill cancer of multiple types. Now I am not going to say that cigarettes are good for you, just that there are chemistries they call carcinogens that actually boost immune response that can help to fight cancer. Only a small percent ...maybe five....can get cancer from cigarette smoke, but five percent is actually a lot of people in a country of three hundred odd million people. And smoking has other bad effects on health too, so I am not saying cigarette smoking is good. But in peer review the medical experts rejected that research which I think was done in Norway or one of those countries based on their beliefs, they did not even consider it even though the method of action was found. Now they will not go against the consensus of the time because it might destroy their reputation....this whole paragraph is related to the rocks, lots of things not accepted by the archeologist groups are discounted because they do not fit consensus of the time.
So I decided I was not going to get my site and rocks officially verified...didn't want to pay ten grand minimum to do that and then have the government say I can't dig here anymore since it was a burial site even though the native American historians said it was a ceremonial site or special campsite where the people there liked to make things of stone.
I brought my rocks to an old mason friend of mine...cement mason who came from Italy long ago. He told me they were just rocks, the fields in Italy are full of rocks that look like carvings. I told him...that is where some of the best old sculptures worked with rocks in ancient times...people probably practiced grinding down stones as a hobby and to practice to make stone carvings. He chuckled and said I was probably right, he just never even thought about it that way when he saw stuff in the fields full of tomatoes and in rock piles by orchards. I also showed him some old dinosaur bones, and when talking to a guy at a rock show who sells slabs of polished dino bones he said he gets them from around here. Lots of fossil bone pieces here in rock piles or sitting on side of roads. He looked at a few stones I brought that looked like bone and said they were and said they are everywhere here, crushed up and pieces moved by glaciers scattered around everywhere. Ants like to eat those rocks he told me. They contain calcium and other nutrients. The Chinese make soups out of dragon bones...think about that. Meat of an animal can also permineralize in clay, The shape can be there yet, but the chemicals of the meat is altered to a stone mix by the clay which elements of the clay can come from ancient life too.
I have a clay rock somewhere that looks like a fish. There may actually be a fish inside, many cultures coated meats with clay and made a pottery coating on them to preserve them. This was a practice before clay pots were invented, the clay actually preserves the food in it. but then again, maybe that is just a fish platter someone carved and coated with a patina...only the creator of it knows for sure what it is.
From studying rocks I found I began studying medicine intensely after I found a stone made of clay that all sorts of weeds were sprouting out of that were not present here in my yard before. I guess seeds stored in clay can be viable for millions of years. The rock sprouting the seeds had a color painted on the outside it appeared. My Indian friend who was taking saunas with the elderly indian medicine men asked them about it...he was in training I guess...and they told him they had heard about trading clay rocks with medical plants seeds or other seeds in them. The particular plant I was pulling out and tossing in the woods I thought was stinging nettle. Good thing I did not use any of it. My granddaughter took a picture of it with an app, and it was not stinging nettle...it was a very similar looking plant that was used for arrow heads by Indians that would kill the animal by poisoning it. Kind of explains all of the stone flaked rocks buried in certain areas here made from a kind of shale that is in the hills. A rock that was used to make arrow heads from what I learned, a little quick acting poison on it would kill a live animal on an arrow. The plant looked a real lot like stinging Nettle, but the blob is different with the stinging part on it on the stems.
You need to know a real lot about foraging for medicines and food in the wilderness, We have lots of mushrooms here, but I buy mine from the store. I only know morels...but beware, there are false morels too...and I know oyster mushrooms and chicken of the woods. I'll stick to getting mushrooms from the store.
