Yesterday while I was restoring my hard disk from a recent backup my CPU's temperature alarm went off. My CPU is a 3.2 GHz Intel Pentium 4 (Northwood). Listen to the alarm. The CPU also overheated a couple of days ago when I was running a link-checking program (CyberSpyder) for my Animal Pictures and More web site. Letting computer components get too hot shortens their lives. Dust reduces airflow and contributes to overheating. I decided I needed to clean my computer to make it run cooler.
I turned off the computer, vacuumed the top of the computer case and the surrounding table, and removed the cover. I vacuumed the front air filter, the rear fan grills, and the inside of the computer as best I could, gently, using my vacuum's furniture brush. I got an electric-shaver brush and brushed between all the fins of the CPU's heat sink. That was delicate work, fractionally turning the fan blades in order to reach all the fins. Then I brushed the fan blades on my rear case fan, especially the edges where there was accumulated dust. Finally, I brushed the heat-sink fins and fan blades on my video card. I made a cardboard cone and taped it to the end of my vacuum cleaner so that I had a small, non-conductive nozzle that sucked hard. I carefully vacuumed up the dust I had loosened with the electric-shaver brush. Then I put the cover back on, stood the computer upright, and turned on the power. The computer still worked. (grin)
I sometimes run a program called SpeedFan that shows temperatures from several sensors inside the computer. I think my CPU alarm goes off when SpeedFan says the CPU temperature is 147 degrees Fahrenheit (64 degrees Celsius). For weeks my CPU has been running between about 127 and 140 degrees F (53 to 60 degrees C). After cleaning, the CPU stayed between 96 and 100 degrees F (36 to 38 degrees C). That's a big improvement.
Jon
November 5, 2007
August 28, 2007
Eyes of an Angel by Paul Elder
Eyes of an Angel by Paul Elder is one of the best books in my collection of books about astral projection and related topics. The book confirms many of my spiritual understandings and offers some important concepts I have not encountered elsewhere. The book is not a "how to" book. It is Elder's personal account of his own spiritual journey, reluctantly written only after years of pressure from both the physical and nonphysical worlds. It is not a vanity book, but rather, a book filled with valuable spiritual information. Elder recounts near-death experiences, out-of-body experiences, conversations with his spirit helper, attending programs at The Monroe Institute, past-life experiences, missions to rescue stranded souls, meeting his soul group, waking visions, meeting his soul mate, and a visit to an astral library containing "the life records of all incarnated souls". (p. 137) The book's central message is the importance of love.
Elder's conversations with his spirit helper, Meldor, are by far the most meaningful parts of the book to me. Meldor explains to Elder what we are, why we incarnate, the role of our spirit helpers, and where we're going. The explanations complement my spiritual understandings from reading books about Edgar Cayce
, books by Robert Monroe, The Agashan Discourses by William Eisen, and other books.
I already believed we incarnate by choice, repeatedly, and that we purposefully choose each incarnation. Ironically our plan is lost to us during our transition from an energy being to a human being. The result is that most of us bumble through physical life trying to fulfill our unknown purpose. Sometimes nonphysical beings are able to help us achieve the goals we set for ourselves. The ultimate goal of our soul's journey is to lose its separateness and rejoin the energy from whence it came.
I will recap the book's major concepts that are new to me.
The only energy souls can feel while not incarnated is love. In order to grow, souls must experience negative emotions that are only available to them through being human. Souls choose miserable circumstances and lifestyles for the experiences those choices provide. Souls choose to be abused, deformed, murdered, poor, handicapped, etc. "…it is only the temporary physical body that is negatively affected. The soul is enriched and empowered by the experience…. You may also be surprised to know that many, many souls voluntarily choose to incarnate into bodies that will be born deformed or handicapped…. There is literally a waiting list of souls offering their love and energy to the experience itself, or to helping others in the experience." (p. 131)
Elder asked why his helper was giving him this knowledge. (I too wondered. I've been begging my helpers for explanations for twenty years or more, to no avail.) I can't find the page reference, but my recollection is that the explanation was something like this -- Meldor had agreed to help Elder meet the goals Elder had set for himself in this incarnation, and the knowledge Meldor conveyed was necessary for Elder to meet his goals.
At the time of its separation from The All, or God, each soul is further split into two beings for the purpose of instilling in them a "yearning for reunion". The two beings are what are popularly called "soul mates". (p. 155-156)
Souls form small groups that go through eternity together. The souls in a group help each other through their incarnations. Most groups contain more than 14 souls. Sometimes your energy can be so harmonious with another group member's that you can experience what the other person is experiencing. (p. 157-159) (I have experienced this phenomenon and wondered what was happening. During an out-of-body experience I entered someone else's body and experienced that person's thoughts and feelings.)
I found this book extremely thought-provoking and enlightening. It has filled in some gaps in my thinking and will serve as a stepping stone for me to move onto new questions. My only complaint about the book is that it has no index. The book would be much more valuable with an index.
Eyes of an Angel: Soul Travel, Spirit Guides, Soul Mates, and the Reality of Love, Paul Elder, 2005, Hampton Roads Publishing.
Elder's conversations with his spirit helper, Meldor, are by far the most meaningful parts of the book to me. Meldor explains to Elder what we are, why we incarnate, the role of our spirit helpers, and where we're going. The explanations complement my spiritual understandings from reading books about Edgar Cayce
, books by Robert Monroe, The Agashan Discourses by William Eisen, and other books. I already believed we incarnate by choice, repeatedly, and that we purposefully choose each incarnation. Ironically our plan is lost to us during our transition from an energy being to a human being. The result is that most of us bumble through physical life trying to fulfill our unknown purpose. Sometimes nonphysical beings are able to help us achieve the goals we set for ourselves. The ultimate goal of our soul's journey is to lose its separateness and rejoin the energy from whence it came.
I will recap the book's major concepts that are new to me.
The only energy souls can feel while not incarnated is love. In order to grow, souls must experience negative emotions that are only available to them through being human. Souls choose miserable circumstances and lifestyles for the experiences those choices provide. Souls choose to be abused, deformed, murdered, poor, handicapped, etc. "…it is only the temporary physical body that is negatively affected. The soul is enriched and empowered by the experience…. You may also be surprised to know that many, many souls voluntarily choose to incarnate into bodies that will be born deformed or handicapped…. There is literally a waiting list of souls offering their love and energy to the experience itself, or to helping others in the experience." (p. 131)
Elder asked why his helper was giving him this knowledge. (I too wondered. I've been begging my helpers for explanations for twenty years or more, to no avail.) I can't find the page reference, but my recollection is that the explanation was something like this -- Meldor had agreed to help Elder meet the goals Elder had set for himself in this incarnation, and the knowledge Meldor conveyed was necessary for Elder to meet his goals.
At the time of its separation from The All, or God, each soul is further split into two beings for the purpose of instilling in them a "yearning for reunion". The two beings are what are popularly called "soul mates". (p. 155-156)
Souls form small groups that go through eternity together. The souls in a group help each other through their incarnations. Most groups contain more than 14 souls. Sometimes your energy can be so harmonious with another group member's that you can experience what the other person is experiencing. (p. 157-159) (I have experienced this phenomenon and wondered what was happening. During an out-of-body experience I entered someone else's body and experienced that person's thoughts and feelings.)
I found this book extremely thought-provoking and enlightening. It has filled in some gaps in my thinking and will serve as a stepping stone for me to move onto new questions. My only complaint about the book is that it has no index. The book would be much more valuable with an index.
Eyes of an Angel: Soul Travel, Spirit Guides, Soul Mates, and the Reality of Love, Paul Elder, 2005, Hampton Roads Publishing.
July 25, 2007
The Romeo Error
Last week I reread The Romeo Error by Lyall Watson (Anchor Press/Doubleday, 1974). Watson is a South African doctor of biology who was educated in England. He is best known for his 1973 bestseller Supernature. In the introduction Watson says, "If Supernature was my 'life book,' then this is its companion volume on death." (p. viii) As a biologist Watson was embarrassed by the fact that biologists do not know when life begins or ends. "I believe that a student of life should know where it starts and have some idea of how it ends. Hence this book. It starts from first principles and develops along the lines of a debate, as much for the sake of my own sanity as for anyone else's edification." (p. viii) The nine chapters include: Life, Death, Dying, Personality, Enlightenment, Dissociation, Survival, Possession, and Miracles.
Here's a list of some of the many fascinating topics.
The inability of scientists to distinguish life from death.
The suggestion that death is a continuum rather than an event.
The concept that death should be treated as a disease, which is sometimes curable.
The unreliability of death tests that involve the heart, breath, temperature, pupil, brain waves, rigor mortis, and even putrefaction.
The fact that death is redefined whenever technological advances show that people who would have formerly been called dead, can now be called alive.
Evidence indicating the existence of a death cry at the cellular level, which can be received by other organisms at a distance.
Experiments that indicate a plant witnessing the murder of another plant can later identify the murderer by means of electrical responses.
The stages of dying.
Accounts of death by means of magic.
Studies showing that individuals are linked telepathically and that someone who is being thought about reacts with measurable physiological changes.
The suggestion that such phenomena as fainting, cataplexy, catalepsy, and seizures are biological survival mechanisms.
The idea that ceremonies for the dead are designed to keep the dead from bothering the living.
The possibility of the personality surviving physical death.
Clairvoyance.
Astral projection.
Embryonic cell behavior and how such cells can alter their purpose.
Psychokinesis.
Hauntings.
The suggestion that we are all psychic but psychic inputs are subtle and filtered out by our brains.
Possession.
Reincarnation.
Satya Sai Baba's miracles.
The psychic medical diagnoses of Jose de Freitas (Arigo).
Psychic healing and psychic surgery.
The Romeo Error is well-written and well-researched. More than three hundred bibliographic entries are cited throughout the text. There is also a good index enabling the reader to find those topics he finds the most interesting. Even now, over thirty years later, the book is filled with thought-provoking concepts, profound insights, and wonderful mysteries.
by Lyall Watson (Anchor Press/Doubleday, 1974). Watson is a South African doctor of biology who was educated in England. He is best known for his 1973 bestseller Supernature. In the introduction Watson says, "If Supernature was my 'life book,' then this is its companion volume on death." (p. viii) As a biologist Watson was embarrassed by the fact that biologists do not know when life begins or ends. "I believe that a student of life should know where it starts and have some idea of how it ends. Hence this book. It starts from first principles and develops along the lines of a debate, as much for the sake of my own sanity as for anyone else's edification." (p. viii) The nine chapters include: Life, Death, Dying, Personality, Enlightenment, Dissociation, Survival, Possession, and Miracles. Here's a list of some of the many fascinating topics.
The inability of scientists to distinguish life from death.
The suggestion that death is a continuum rather than an event.
The concept that death should be treated as a disease, which is sometimes curable.
The unreliability of death tests that involve the heart, breath, temperature, pupil, brain waves, rigor mortis, and even putrefaction.
The fact that death is redefined whenever technological advances show that people who would have formerly been called dead, can now be called alive.
Evidence indicating the existence of a death cry at the cellular level, which can be received by other organisms at a distance.
Experiments that indicate a plant witnessing the murder of another plant can later identify the murderer by means of electrical responses.
The stages of dying.
Accounts of death by means of magic.
Studies showing that individuals are linked telepathically and that someone who is being thought about reacts with measurable physiological changes.
The suggestion that such phenomena as fainting, cataplexy, catalepsy, and seizures are biological survival mechanisms.
The idea that ceremonies for the dead are designed to keep the dead from bothering the living.
The possibility of the personality surviving physical death.
Clairvoyance.
Astral projection.
Embryonic cell behavior and how such cells can alter their purpose.
Psychokinesis.
Hauntings.
The suggestion that we are all psychic but psychic inputs are subtle and filtered out by our brains.
Possession.
Reincarnation.
Satya Sai Baba's miracles.
The psychic medical diagnoses of Jose de Freitas (Arigo).
Psychic healing and psychic surgery.
The Romeo Error is well-written and well-researched. More than three hundred bibliographic entries are cited throughout the text. There is also a good index enabling the reader to find those topics he finds the most interesting. Even now, over thirty years later, the book is filled with thought-provoking concepts, profound insights, and wonderful mysteries.
July 8, 2007
Rootkits & Trojans
On June 26 my brother asked me to fix a problem on his computer. My brother's Windows XP Home had been crashing unexpectedly with a blue error screen (BSOD). His antivirus program was BitDefender 9.5 Standard.
The computer crashed soon after I analyzed the Startup items in msconfig. The file that caused the problem was Icbw49.sys. The error message was "Page_Fault_in_nonpaged_area". A Google search for the file name returned zero hits. If the file was a legitimate system file as indicated by it's "sys" name extension, there should have been many hits. Usually a Google search on a problem will find posts by people who have had the same problem. Often solutions can be found. I was disturbed that the file name was not in Google's index.
I went to Control Panel, Folder Options, View, and made changes to display the contents of system folders, show hidden files and folders, show extensions for known file types, and show protected operating system files. Then I searched C: (the only hard drive) for the file Icbw49.sys. The file was not found. Distrusting the XP search facility I manually searched several Windows folders where I thought the file might be. I found no file by that name. Wow. I speculated that the file was being assembled in memory by some form of malware.
I ran a BitDefender scan of C:. BitDefender found and quarantined the following four infections.
Rootkit.Agent.EG
Rootkit.Agent.GH
Trojan.Zapchast.CA
Generic.Malware.Bdld!!.C3B48A52
I had never encountered a rootkit before, although I had read about them. I know it's better to restore a hard disk from an image backup than it is to try to remove all the pieces of a rootkit, but there was no backup. I had no desire to reformat the drive, reinstall Windows, and reinstall every program. I hoped that the rootkit wasn't written very well; a position supported by two facts -- it caused page faults and BitDefender found pieces of it. I think the most competently written rootkits would neither crash the system nor be found by antivirus products.
I decided the best thing to do would be to reload a restore point from before the infection and hope that whatever BitDefender had not quarantined would be eliminated by the restore. I had last performed maintenance tasks on the computer during my visit of May 9-15. We decided to restore the system back to May 17. The restore process completed with a message that said something like "Cannot restore system to May 17, 2007. No files were changed."
We knew the crashes had begun on June 11. So we tried to restore the system to any restore point created after May 17. Every attempt to restore to any date from May 17 through June 11 failed with the same message. Restoring to the June 12 restore point succeeded, but that was the first restore point after the system had been infected. At that point I knew we were dealing with something truly clever and devious. The malware (rootkit/virus/Trojan/key-logger/worm) was preventing restoration of the system to any pre-infection date. Wow.
I began to think the malware had won. I feared having to take drastic and time-consuming action. I thought of one last thing to try... a long shot. I rebooted the computer into Safe Mode, which limits the number of dlls, drivers, and other system files that are loaded. I tried to recover the system to the May 17 restore point, and it worked! The malware couldn't stop the recovery being run in Safe Mode. Whew!
Then I ran a complete scan using Spybot Search & Destroy. Of course the scan found many insignificant items like tracking cookies, but it also found the following five threats.
Backdoor.Win32.SdBot.gen
CurePCSolution
SurfSideKick
TagASaurus
Win32.Small.ddx
Spybot successfully removed each of the threats.
My brother and his wife know not to run executables attached to emails, so I guessed that the many infections were due to drive-by downloads while surfing with Internet Explorer. They had been using both Internet Explorer and Mozilla. I installed Firefox and suggested they use Mozilla or Firefox to avoid future infections.
The BitDefender 9.5 subscription was expiring and I didn't want to install BitDefender 10, so I installed AVG Free 7.5. A complete scan with AVG showed no threats. I then installed and ran AVG Anti-Rootkit, which also found no threats. Nothing significant was found by an Adaware scan either. Finally, I created a new restore point.
Hopefully the system is clean now and any undiscovered rootkit pieces will not be able to do anything bad. Also hopefully no personal data was transmitted to a hacker.
The computer crashed soon after I analyzed the Startup items in msconfig. The file that caused the problem was Icbw49.sys. The error message was "Page_Fault_in_nonpaged_area". A Google search for the file name returned zero hits. If the file was a legitimate system file as indicated by it's "sys" name extension, there should have been many hits. Usually a Google search on a problem will find posts by people who have had the same problem. Often solutions can be found. I was disturbed that the file name was not in Google's index.
I went to Control Panel, Folder Options, View, and made changes to display the contents of system folders, show hidden files and folders, show extensions for known file types, and show protected operating system files. Then I searched C: (the only hard drive) for the file Icbw49.sys. The file was not found. Distrusting the XP search facility I manually searched several Windows folders where I thought the file might be. I found no file by that name. Wow. I speculated that the file was being assembled in memory by some form of malware.
I ran a BitDefender scan of C:. BitDefender found and quarantined the following four infections.
Rootkit.Agent.EG
Rootkit.Agent.GH
Trojan.Zapchast.CA
Generic.Malware.Bdld!!.C3B48A52
I had never encountered a rootkit before, although I had read about them. I know it's better to restore a hard disk from an image backup than it is to try to remove all the pieces of a rootkit, but there was no backup. I had no desire to reformat the drive, reinstall Windows, and reinstall every program. I hoped that the rootkit wasn't written very well; a position supported by two facts -- it caused page faults and BitDefender found pieces of it. I think the most competently written rootkits would neither crash the system nor be found by antivirus products.
I decided the best thing to do would be to reload a restore point from before the infection and hope that whatever BitDefender had not quarantined would be eliminated by the restore. I had last performed maintenance tasks on the computer during my visit of May 9-15. We decided to restore the system back to May 17. The restore process completed with a message that said something like "Cannot restore system to May 17, 2007. No files were changed."
We knew the crashes had begun on June 11. So we tried to restore the system to any restore point created after May 17. Every attempt to restore to any date from May 17 through June 11 failed with the same message. Restoring to the June 12 restore point succeeded, but that was the first restore point after the system had been infected. At that point I knew we were dealing with something truly clever and devious. The malware (rootkit/virus/Trojan/key-logger/worm) was preventing restoration of the system to any pre-infection date. Wow.
I began to think the malware had won. I feared having to take drastic and time-consuming action. I thought of one last thing to try... a long shot. I rebooted the computer into Safe Mode, which limits the number of dlls, drivers, and other system files that are loaded. I tried to recover the system to the May 17 restore point, and it worked! The malware couldn't stop the recovery being run in Safe Mode. Whew!
Then I ran a complete scan using Spybot Search & Destroy. Of course the scan found many insignificant items like tracking cookies, but it also found the following five threats.
Backdoor.Win32.SdBot.gen
CurePCSolution
SurfSideKick
TagASaurus
Win32.Small.ddx
Spybot successfully removed each of the threats.
My brother and his wife know not to run executables attached to emails, so I guessed that the many infections were due to drive-by downloads while surfing with Internet Explorer. They had been using both Internet Explorer and Mozilla. I installed Firefox and suggested they use Mozilla or Firefox to avoid future infections.
The BitDefender 9.5 subscription was expiring and I didn't want to install BitDefender 10, so I installed AVG Free 7.5. A complete scan with AVG showed no threats. I then installed and ran AVG Anti-Rootkit, which also found no threats. Nothing significant was found by an Adaware scan either. Finally, I created a new restore point.
Hopefully the system is clean now and any undiscovered rootkit pieces will not be able to do anything bad. Also hopefully no personal data was transmitted to a hacker.
May 31, 2007
Global Warming is Good -- The HAB Theory
(Updated to replace broken links: July 15, 2017.)
I recently read The HAB Theory by Allan W. Eckert. The book presents a gripping theory about the Earth's history. I find the theory plausible and intuitively believable. It seems to be more deserving of belief than disbelief. The theory explains such scientific anomalies as how mammoths with warm-climate plants in their mouths and stomachs were quick-frozen in Siberia, how a manufactured metal cube was discovered inside a block of coal in Austria, how an ancient bison discovered in Russia appears to have been killed by a gunshot, and many others. More than half of the book is a romance which I found boring, but the rest of the book is mind-boggling. I have not found a compelling reason to disbelieve the HAB Theory, thus the title of this post. Global warming may be all that's enabling civilization to continue.
The purpose of this article is to increase awareness of the theory. I hope that by listing mysteries the theory seems to explain I will inspire others to seriously consider the theory and its implications. The rest of this article contains spoilers, so if you want to read The HAB Theory cold, you should stop reading here. I will describe the HAB Theory and list some of the mysteries presented in the book, together with links to relevant Internet pages. Page numbers cited refer to the 2001 Authors Guild Backinprint.com edition of The HAB Theory.
The HAB Theory is a 1976 novel based on a theory presented by an engineer named Hugh Auchincloss Brown in his 1967 book Cataclysms of the Earth. Although Brown's theory was ignored by the scientific community, Eckert believed the theory was valid and wrote The HAB Theory to warn humanity of the impending catastrophe. He also wanted to emphasize the dangers of scientists being so specialized that they are unable to synthesize knowledge from other fields with knowledge from their own fields. As of 1998 Eckert was still "thoroughly convinced" of the theory's validity. (1998 letter) In The HAB Theory the theory is developed by a fictional character named Herbert A. Boardman. The theory's name reflects the initials of the real-life theorist as well as those of the fictional theorist.
So what is the HAB Theory? Imagine a ball spinning around an imaginary vertical axis. Now imagine dripping melted wax on the top off to one side from the center. For awhile the gyroscopic effect will keep the ball's spin stabilized around the original axis, but at some point when enough off-set wax has accumulated, centrifugal force will cause the ball to capsize so that the heaviest accumulation of wax is now at the ball's equator. The axis around which the ball is spinning will still be vertical, but the ball itself will have shifted almost ninety degrees so that some areas that used to be along its equator are now at the top and bottom, and some areas that used to be near the poles are now near the equator.
The HAB Theory says the Earth capsizes periodically due to the accumulation of ice near the poles. Warm, water-filled air from near the equator is carried by normal and persistent currents to the poles, where the moisture falls as snow and ice. It never gets warm enough at the poles for much of the ice to melt, thus the polar ice caps grow. The weight of the water added to the ice caps is huge. Antarctica grows by almost eighty-five billion tons of ice every month, far more than is sloughed off from the edges in an entire year. (p. 201) The ice is not evenly distributed around the Earth's axis of spin. Over time the off-center weight of the ice causes the Earth to capsize similarly to the ball with wax on it in the example.
The engineer who developed the theory thought it was interesting but unlikely to be true. He spent decades trying to disprove the theory but only found evidence supporting the theory. Working backward from the present he identified at least nine previous Earth capsizes. The shortest period between capsizes was about 3,000 years; the longest was about 7,000 years. When a capsize occurs the entire shift only takes three to four hours. (p. 158) Polar ice moves close to the equator and begins melting. Tropical regions move close to the poles and quickly freeze. There are floods, high winds, and much of the Earth's surface is violently restructured. Mountain ranges are thrust upward, oceans are redistributed, and continents are reshaped. The climactic and geographical chaos destroys existing civilizations and most life on the planet. Then the slow process of building civilizations and growing ice caps begins again.
When the capsize occurs the two pivot points experience the least destructive forces. Sometimes remnants of civilization are preserved near these pivots. Working backward the theorist calculated previous pivot points and previous ice caps. Previous pivot points include the area where Egypt is now and an area in the South American Andes. Three examples of previous ice caps are the Sudan Basin in Africa, Hudson Bay in Canada, and the Caspian Sea in Asia. (p. 161) Since the shift is always less than ninety degrees, and since the shift doesn't move the same way each time, the former ice caps and pivot points are scattered throughout the world.
It has now been over seven thousand years since the last capsizing, which is longer than any previously-identified period between capsizes. It could be that our contribution to global warming is melting the polar caps and saving us from the capsize that would have destroyed civilization had the ice caps continued to grow. If the HAB Theory is correct, then preventing the ice caps from growing is also preventing a capsize of the Earth. Global warming has many horrible consequences, but those consequences are preferable to a capsized Earth.
I find the theory so believable that the apparent lack of public scientific support for the theory is disturbing. The author, Allan W. Eckert, provides some insight into the lack of scientific support in his 1998 letter. He says, I interviewed many professional scientists in the fields mentioned and found, to both my delight and dismay, that while many agreed with some, if not all of Brown's postulations, all of them, without exception, said in essence, "...but don't quote me; I don't intend to have my career ruined!"
No one can say with any certainty whether the weight of polar ice could cause the Earth to capsize. I daresay a flexible, non-solid, spinning ball like the Earth reacts to the forces involved differently than a solid ball would. No one can know the result of how the interacting forces would resolve themselves on a planetary scale. There are only theories.
Eckert presents a great deal of evidence -- both far-fetched and compelling -- in support of the HAB Theory. I do not believe Eckert fabricated evidence. Instead, he included mysteries the HAB Theory might explain. These mysteries are sometimes exaggerated in the book -- by Eckert to make a better story or by Eckert's sources for the same reason.
The remainder of this article is an informal survey of selected HAB Theory evidence together with one or more Internet references for each item. The Internet references are offered to show that Eckert did not invent the items as well as to provide additional information. Determining the truth of the items listed is beyond the scope of this article. My list is not comprehensive and the sites referenced are not definitive. None of the items listed can prove that the Earth capsizes every few thousand years. However, if the Earth does capsize every few thousand years then the mysteries listed cease to be mysterious.
Enjoy the list. I hope it piques your interest in the HAB Theory. I welcome your comments.
Jon Maloney
May 2007
Most of the evidence the book offers in support of the HAB Theory corroborates one or more of the following ideas:
1. There were advanced civilizations that disappeared along with their technology and knowledge;
2. The Earth's rotational orientation changed such that hot and cold areas switched positions, and the elevation of areas on the Earth's surface changed;
3. Man has existed for millions of years (many times longer than accepted timetables estimate), Man existed in places and times heretofore unknown, and Man has existed in previously-unknown forms.
I will repeat each idea and list selected items from the book related to that idea.
1. There were advanced civilizations that disappeared along with their technology and knowledge.
a. Ancient Peruvians made ornaments of smelted platinum. Platinum melts at over 3,150 degrees Fahrenheit, a temperature only achieved relatively recently using modern technology. (p. 254)
Platinum's melting point is 3221.6 °F. Goldandsilvermines.com says, Unlike gold and silver, which could be readily isolated in a comparatively pure state by simple fire refining, the platinum metals require complex aqueous chemical processing for their isolation and identification. Because these techniques were not available until the turn of the 19th century, the identification and isolation of the platinum group lagged behind silver and gold by thousands of years. In addition, the high melting points of these metals limited their applications until researchers in Britain, France, Germany, and Russia devised methods for consolidating and working platinum into useful forms. The fashioning of platinum into fine jewelry began about 1900....
Geotimes.org says, Because of platinum’s brittleness and high melting point, the Spaniards who colonized the area discarded platinum artifacts in favor of the tumbaga artifacts that could easily be melted and returned to Spain.
Encyclopedia Britannica Online says, In pre-Columbian America, gold, silver, and copper were the principal metals that were worked, with tin, lead, and platinum used less frequently.
Peru: Striking Facts says, Ornaments of melted platinum have been unearthed from the Peruvian plateaus in the north which remains a secret since the melting point of the precious metal is 1800°C.
b. A metal astronomical computer from 65 BC was found near the Greek island of Antikythera. (p. 254, 420)
This anachronistic device is known as the "Antikythera Mechanism". It has been studied extensively. Here are some articles about it.
Nature.com: In search of lost time by Jo Marchant
Wikipedia: Antikythera mechanism
BBC News: Ancient Moon 'computer' revisited by Jonathan Fildes
c. Chinese General Chow Chu (316 AD) was entombed wearing an aluminum girdle. The western world did not isolate aluminum until 1825. (p. 254)
Sophisticated Metallurgical Skills in Ancients says, The tomb of the Chinese general Chow Chu (A.D. 265-316) presents a mystery. When analyzed by the spectroscope, a metal girdle showed 10 percent copper, 5 percent manganese, and 85 percent aluminum. But according to the history of science aluminum was obtained for the first time by Oersted in 1825 by a chemical method. We are Not the First, by Andrew Tomas, 1971 is cited as the source.
d. Ancient Egyptians and Babylonians of 3,000 years ago knew about the moons of Jupiter and Saturn, which can't be seen without a telescope. Galileo invented the telescope in 1610. (p. 254)
The Naked Eye Planets in the Night Sky confirms that neither Saturn's nor Jupiter's moons can be seen with the naked eye. [This citation was corrected on July 2, 2007. See first comment below. - Jon Maloney]
I found several references to the Dogon people of Mali knowing of the moons of Jupiter, although the allegation is controversial. The Sirius Mystery by Paul Roland says The connection with the Dogon comes about through separate independent studies by various anthropologists who have traced the Dogon line back to these ancient civilisations [Babylon, Sumeria and Egypt]. The Sirius Mystery (at Amazon)
e. An obviously-manufactured iron cube weighing 785 grams, with two convex sides, four perfectly-square sides, and with a precise groove traversing the edges was discovered in 1877 in lower Austria inside a block of coal. In 1885 a smaller, but otherwise identical, cube was discovered in a block of coal in upper Austria. (p. 269)
Strange Relics from the Depths of the Earth by J.R. Jochmans says, In the fall of 1885, at an iron foundry owned by the sons of Herr Isidor Braun located in Schondorf near Bocklabruck, Upper Austria, a workman named Riedl was breaking up a block of Tertiary brown coal that had been mined from the pits at Wolfsegg, near Schwannstadt, and was about to be used to heat the foundry's giant smelters. As the block disintegrated into several pieces, out dropped a strange cube-like object. In 1886, mining engineer Dr. Adolf Gurlt made a report to the Natural History Society at Bonn, Germany and noted that the object, coated with a thin layer of rust, is made of iron, measures 2.64 by 2.64 by 1.85 inches, weighs 1.73 Ibs., and has a specific gravity measurement of 7.75. Four of the iron 'cube's' sides are roughly flat, while the two remaining sides - opposite each other - are convex. A fairly deep groove was incised all the way around the object, about mid-way up its height. Other early studies on the iron artifact were in scientific journals of the day as Nature (London; November 11, 1886, page 36) and L'Astronomie (Paris; 1886, page 463). A plaster cast was also made before the turn of the century -important because the original object subsequently suffered from handling, and from being disfigured by samples having been cut from it by investigators for research. The cast is kept in the Oberosterreichisehes Landesmuseum in Linz, Austria, where the original object was also exhibited from 1950 to 1958. The iron cube is presently in the custody of Herrn O.R. Bernhardt of the Heimathaus Museum in Vocklabruck.
In 1966-67, the iron "cube" was carefully analyzed by experts at the Vienna Naturhistorisehes Museum, using electron-beam microanalysis. They found no traces of nickel, chromium or cobalt in the iron - which means the object was not of meteoric origin. No sulfur was detected either, ruling out the chance of it being a pyrite, a natural mineral that sometimes forms geometric shapes. Because of a low magnesium content, Dr. Kurat of the Museum, and Dr. R. Gill of the Geologisehe Bundesanstalt of Vienna, are of the opinion that the object was made of cast-iron. In 1973, Hubert Mattlianer concluded from yet another detailed investigation that the object had been made from a hand-sculptured lump of wax or clay pressed into a sand base, this forming the mold into which the iron had been poured.
The final conclusion, then, is that the strange object is definitely man-made. What is not explained is what it was doing encased in coal dating to the Tertiary - 60 million years old.
f. In 1921 a human skull was unearthed in a Rhodesian mine 60 feet beneath the surface. The skull has been carbon-14 dated to be 38,000 years old. The skull has two holes consistent with a bullet's entry and exit. An analysis of the holes indicated whatever made them is what killed the man. They could not have been made after death. (p. 271, 415)
Strange Finds says, In 1921 the discovery of a Neanderthal skull in Rhodesia revealed an astonishing mystery. The skull had been pierced by a high velocity projectile, similar to a bullet. Mysterious, because it was disclosed that this injury must have occurred at the moment of death, and not afterwards. It meant that whoever fired the fatal bullet must have fired it many thousands of years ago. In his book Secrets of the Lost Races, author Rene Noorbergen had the following to say: 'A German forensic authority from Berlin has positively stated that the cranial damage to Rhodesian man's skull could not have been caused by anything but a bullet'.
The fact that the skull was found fully 60 feet below the surface of the ground attested to the fact that this was no recent injury, and experts were baffled. Even so certain conclusions seemed obvious: The most apparent of these was that in times considered too remote for intelligent life, this creature had been gunned down by a high velocity weapon. The neat entry point of the wound testified to the great speed of the projectile, which had created a perfectly rounded hole.
Broken Hill Rhodesian Man New insight into an old skull refutes the theory that the item is a Neanderthal skull with a bullet hole.
Evolution Encyclopedia Vol. 2, Chapter 18, Ancient Man also refutes the above theory.
g. The powerful, highly-cultured civilization of ancient Egypt has no known foundation. It was already an advanced civilization at our earliest recordings of human history. We trace its history through thirty-one dynasties, from 332 BC back to 3188 BC. There are no records of stories or mythologies prior to 3188 BC. In what is called the first dynasty, under King Menes, Egypt is at its zenith in painting, sculpture, and architecture. From its earliest known existence to 332 BC the civilization was in decline. It's as if the Egyptians inherited a great civilization but could not improve or maintain it. (p. 378)
Egyptian History: Dawn of Egyptian Culture says, Remarkably the structure of the writing system was almost finished in the first dynasty and thus was a product of a development that had been going on for an unknown period of time. Remnants from the earlier stages has not been found and several attempts to derive hieroglyphs from the so called "pot marks" made on ceramic vessels, has not been successful so far. The options are two: writing can in the earliest times have been made on material that has decayed, or the system has been imported from abroad. No traces outside or inside Egypt can confirm any of these suggestions.
h. The skeleton of an ancient bison-like animal called an auroch was discovered in Russia. The auroch has what appears to be a bullet hole in the center of its forehead. The hole is the size of a .44 caliber bullet. (p. 415)
OOPARTS (out of place artifacts) says, An Auroch is an large, extinct "buffalo like" animal. Many skeletons of this extinct type have been found in Europe.
What is remarkable about one in particular in the Moscow Museum of Paleontology is that it has a bullet hole in its skull. The hole is round, without radial cracks that would result from slower projectiles like spears and arrows. The only known projectile that leaves this kind of smooth, round hole without radial cracks is a bullet because of its velocity.
I mention the auroch first because of a possible objection that can be raised. If it is indeed a bullet hole, perhaps the skeleton was shot many, many years after the animals' death. The problem here is that the auroch survived the wound and lived long enough for unmistakable calcification to appear at the site of the injury.
i. In 1938 a German archaeologist named Wilhelm Konig discovered urns used as batteries at the site of ancient Babylonia, near Baghdad, Iraq. In 1946 Willard Gray, a scientist at General Electric, studied Konig's find, replicated it, and had working batteries. (p. 421)
Wikipedia: Baghdad Battery is a good article on the subject.
j. Ancient Indian writings called Agastya Samhita describe how to build a battery, translated as follows, Place a well-cleaned copper plate in an earthenware vessel. Cover it first by copper sulfate and then by moist sawdust. After that, put a mercury-amalgamated zinc sheet on top of the sawdust to avoid polarization. The contact will produce an energy known by the twin name of Mitra-Varuna. Water will be split by this current into Pranavayu and Udanavayu. A chain of one hundred jars is said to give a very effective force. (p. 422)
Ankur Learning Solutions says, An interesting procedure, that gives proof for the usage and preparation of the battery cell is recorded in Agastya Samhita. The following lines from Agastya Samhita illustrate the electrical cell.
“Place copper plates in an earthern pot, cover it with copper sulphate and moistened saw dust. Spread zinc powder and cover it with mercury. Due to the chemical reaction, +ve and –ve electricity is produced. This water is decomposed in to Oxygen and Hydrogen.”
k. Ancient Egyptian pyramids and tombs often have detailed, intricate paintings on the walls far from any available natural light, yet there is no smoke or soot residue that would have been left by torches or lamps. Archaeologists wonder if the Egyptians used electric lights. (p. 220)
Hesire’s Flashlight by Bill McNulty says, Some Egyptologists have theorized that sunlight was bounced off crude mirrors to see while pyramid and tomb chambers were built. These large ancient Egyptian mirrors have never been found. These mythical mirrors supposedly could bounce light into chambers up to 120 metres long as workers moved in and out during construction.
Ancient Egyptian tombs do not have accumulated soot on their ceilings you’d expect if torches or candles were used during construction. Some have suggested oil lamps with a little bit of salt added to the oil kept the lamps from discharging soot. A more likely explanation of how the Ancient Egyptians lighted dark tomb chambers is a light source which has been lost to history.
l. The 3,500 year old Indian book called Sactya Grantham describes how to vaccinate against smallpox. It says, Take on the tip of a knife the contents of the pox inflammation and inject it into the arm of a well man, mixing it with his blood. A fever will follow, but the malady will pass very easily and will create no complications. Thereafter, the second man will forever be rendered invulnerable to the same disease. Edward Jenner is credited with discovering how to vaccinate against smallpox in 1796. There are references to the use of penicillin in ancient Thebes. References have also been found of medical x-rays in China in 206 BC and use of a fluoroscope in India in 500 BC. The Indian physician Jivaka wrote, placed before a patient, it illuminated his body as a lamp illuminates the objects inside a house; it revealed the nature of maladies. These advanced medical practices were old knowledge in ancient times. Rather than being new discoveries then, they appear to be the remnants of much greater medical knowledge that was dying out. (p. 426)
Hindu Wisdom references the same quotation about smallpox vaccinations.
Dead Men's Secrets by Jonathan Gray mentions both the ancient Chinese x-rays and the ancient Indian fluoroscope. Dead Men's Secrets (at Amazon)
m. A tunnel complex was discovered in the Andes in 1965 by an Argentinean archaeologist named Juan Moricz. There are thousands of miles of tunnels at different depths -- 250 feet, 500 feet, and 750 feet. Only a few hundred miles have been cursorily explored. There are countless chambers containing artifacts. One chamber measures 492 x 459 feet and has a large table in the center. The table is surrounded by seven chairs made of an unknown material. Fifty feet from the table is a library of thousands of metal pages, each page standing on a block made of the same material from which the chairs were made. Each page measures about 38 x 19 x 0.24 inches. In a special niche there's a thicker page that appears to be a key of 56 different characters. Only a few random pages were translated and their contents were kept secret. (p. 402-406)
The thousands of miles of artificially-made tunnels and the metal library have never been proven to exist. There are several Internet articles about the tunnels and the library:
The Quest For The Metal Library,
Magyars, Moricz and Mother Language,
Wikipedia: Cueva de los Tayos.
2. The Earth's rotational orientation changed such that hot and cold areas switched positions, and the elevation of areas on the Earth's surface changed.
a. Mammoths and rhinoceroses have been found quick-frozen in northern Siberia, some still in standing positions with tropical plants in their mouths and stomachs. (p. 159, 254) Mammoth remains have been found in the Canadian Arctic, Alaska, Siberia on both sides of the Bering Strait, on the New Siberian Islands, and on Wrangel Island. These areas are only connected by frigid seas. There's no present way mammoths could have moved among these points. (p. 381-382)
Center for Scientific Creation lists details about the frozen mammoth and rhinoceros finds, including a map and photographs.
Frozen mammoth carcasses in Siberia by Michael Oard discusses mammoth finds in detail (from Frozen in Time: The Woolly Mammoth, the Ice Age, and the Bible by Michael Oard, 2004).
Other good information.
OOPARTS (out of place artifacts) The Boneyards: The Beresovka Mammoth Problem...
The extinction of the woolly mammoth: was it a quick freeze? by Michael Oard.
The Antiquity of Man: Tracing Graham Hancock's Shifting Cataclysm by Mikey Brass disputes that mammoths were quick-frozen.
b. Ocean floors are covered with ancient river beds that could not have been created by ocean currents. (p. 254)
Glaciation of North America mentions ancient river beds and forests on ocean floors.
Sweeping the Ocean's Floor also mentions ancient river channels on the floor of the ocean.
Ask A Scientist: Ocean River Beds says that apparent river beds on the ocean floor are not river beds.
c. An ancient Chinese book, The Story of the Ten Stems, tells how the country made a flying leap to the Arctic and remained there for 3,000 years. There was death and destruction and most people died, but 3,000 years later the country made another flying leap to its present location.
I found few references to anything resembling this story. On the page Chapter Eleven: Mythologies of the World I found the following, The Chinese legend of the "Ten Stems," tells us of the earth in this chaotic condition. At the Sixth Stem, Darkness and the Light unite with injurious effects-all things become solid, (frozen) and the Darkness destroys the growth of all things (the beginning of the ice age). At the Seventh Stem, the Darkness nips all things. At the Ninth Stem, the Light begins to nourish all things in the recesses below (the sun reappears).
d. The Greek historian Herodotus (about 450 BC) journeyed to Memphis and Thebes. The Memphis priests told him their records went back 11,000 years. The priests in Thebes told him their records went back 17,000 years. Some of what Herodotus recorded has been dismissed as nonsense, but some of those writings might make sense in light of the HAB theory. If you were near one of the pivot points at the time the Earth capsized, the sun would not rise and set normally. It could rise in the east and set in the north for example. Or it could rise and set in the same direction if the Earth capsized and shifted in certain ways during the capsize. According to Herodotus, the priests in Memphis told him that during their 11,000 year history the sun had set where it had risen twice. (p. 383-384)
The History by Herodotus says, During this time, they said, there were four times when the sun rose out of his wonted place---twice rising where now he sets, and twice setting where now he rises---and, say the priests, nothing became different among the Egyptians, for all these disturbances, neither products of the Earth nor products of the river, nor yet in respect of diseases or death.
e. In Yellowstone National Park mountainsides reveal seventeen layers of vertical trees, with rock between each layer. (p. 160)
The Yellowstone petrified forests by Jonathan Sarfati describes these tree layers.
f. Fossils of sea creatures have been found high in the Rocky Mountains, the Andes, and the Himalayas. (p. 160)
Such fossils are mentioned on these pages:
Famous Fossils from a Mountaintop by Harold G. Coffin,
Seashells on Moutaintops, and
Crinoids on Mount Everest?
g. In 1938 a Chinese archaeologist, Professor Chi Pu Tei made a discovery in the Bayan Kara Ula Mountains of China near the Tibetan border. He discovered a series of artificial tunnels and storerooms. The tunnels are perfectly squared and the walls, ceilings, and floors are highly glazed as if the rock was melted, similar to the effect you would get if you stuck a red-hot nail into a block of wax. He discovered many large chambers, strange implements, and stone disks of uniform size and features. Each disk was 22.7 cm in diameter and 2 cm thick (about 9 inches in diameter and ¾ of an inch thick). Each disk had a circular hole in the center 2 cm across. Each disk had regular indentations all around the edge and a twin groove that spiraled out from the center in an ever-widening circle until it reached the edge. The actual grooves were slightly different from disk to disk. There were 716 disks found and taken to the Peking Academy of Prehistory for study. The disks were found to contain a high cobalt content and a high metallic content. They appeared to be part of a sophisticated electrical system. The grooves were discovered not to be sound recordings but writing so tiny as to be almost microscopic. The disks are 11,500 to 7,500 years old, making them the oldest known writings. Although studied intensely no progress was made on translating the writing until 24 years later in 1962. In 1965 a Russian philologist, Vyacheslav Saizev, published an article in Sputnik magazine about the disks including the translated content from one disk. It told a story of people called the Dropa who landed in spaceships. They cut the tunnels into the mountains, warned the inhabitants of a huge flood coming, and left to go to "the other safe place". A later disk said the Dropa's space ship was severely damaged in the "turning of the earth" and could not be replaced. (p. 397-400)
I was sorry Eckert introduced space aliens in support of the HAB Theory, but I guess he had to since their alleged message offers such strong support -- namely, that in the coming flood there was one other safe place (which would correspond to the second pivot point), the fact that their ship was damaged in the "turning of the earth", and the fact that the most recent stone disk dated 7,500 years old (the time of the last capsize). Of course the whole story about the tunnels, implements, disks, and Dropa is quite controversial. A Google search for -- Dropa stone disks -- yields 139,000 hits. Here are a few pages:
Dropa Stone Discs,
The Strange Stone Discs of Baian-Kara-Ula,
Wikipedia: Dropa.
h. A map in the National Museum of Turkey was drawn by Piri Ibn Haji Memmed (called Piri Re'is), and presented to Sultan Yavuz Selim in 1517. The map shows the southwestern coast of Europe, the western coast of Africa, the Atlantic Ocean, and part of North America, South America, and Antarctica. The map shows South America's inland river systems and other details as far as the eastern slopes of the Andes. Between 1492 and 1498 Columbus only visited the Bahamas, Puerto Rico, and Haiti. The only other known explorer who visited the Americas prior to the map's being drawn was Amerigo Vespucci who sailed down the Brazilian coast in 1501, however he made no inland explorations. The map shows northern Antarctica without ice, including interior rivers and mountains. According to accepted scientific timetables the Antarctic ice cap is over thirteen million years old, yet the Piri Re'is map shows Antarctica without ice. Another map by the same man, drawn in 1528, shows the north Atlantic. It shows Greenland as two islands with no ice cap. The scientific world did not know that Greenland was two islands until a Frenchman, Dr. Paul-Emile Victor proved it with seismic readings on an expedition in 1947-1949. Accepted scientific timetables show the Greenland ice cap is just as old as the Antarctic ice cap. A Swedish scientist, Dr. Adolf Erik Nordenskjold studied the Piri Re'is maps and discovered that they were not original, but copies of much older maps. Nordenskjold believed they were copies of maps drawn by Ptolemy, and he believed Ptolemy's maps were copies of even older maps. The Piri Re'is map had notes written in the margins. One note said that Antarctica was a very hot place inhabited by large snakes. Other notes say the map was drawn using a map from the period of Alexander the great plus twenty other maps of great antiquity. The evidence suggests that the maps from which the Piri Re'is map was made, were drawn prior to the last capsizing when Antarctica was tropical. Other scientists have studied the map and believe it is based on high-altitude aerial photography from at least 100 miles up. The map matches satellite photographs even to the point of continental distortions around the edges due to the curvature of the Earth. (p. 448-462)
The source of data for the Piri Re'is maps and what the maps show are the subject of much controversy. Here are some articles.
Strange Artifacts: The Piri Reis Map.
Internet Sacred Text Archive: The Piri Re'is Map.
Wikipedia: The Piri Reis Map.
Greenland, a territory apart says, In fact, it is only very recently that the discovery was made that underneath the icecap, Greenland is made up of THREE ISLANDS.
i. In 1949 Dr. Jack Hough accompanied Admiral Byrd on his Antarctic expedition and took core samples from the bed of the Ross Sea. Analysis of the core samples at the Carnegie Institute by W. D. Urry showed that Antarctica's last warm period with flowing rivers was 6,000 years ago, about 1,500 years after the last capsize estimated by the HAB Theory, indicating that it took about 1,500 years for Antarctica's ice cap to form. (p. 457-458)
Fingerprints of the Gods: Exhibit 7 confirms that an Antarctic river flowed into the Ross Sea as recently as 6,000 years ago. Fingerprints of the Gods (at Amazon)
Fingerprints of the Gods: Exhibit 7, The Ross Sea Cores says that Exhibit 7 is inconclsuive.
j. Another Turkish map drawn by Hadji Ahmed in 1559 from different ancient maps, show Alaska and Siberia as being a solid land mass a thousand miles wide. The implication is that the map Ahmed copied had been made prior to the last capsizing of the Earth. (p. 461)
Ancient Maps More Accurate Than Ours by JC Ryan says, The Hadji Ahmed map of 1559 shows Antarctica and the Pacific coast of the United States of America with extreme accuracy. It also depicts the land bridge that once existed between Siberia and Alaska.
k. In 1968 scientists at the Alert weather station on Ellesmere Island, Canada, 475 miles from the North Pole, discovered a huge magnetic object seismologically measured to be 65 miles long and 64 miles thick whose nearest edge is 15 miles deep. (p. 428)
Destiny Matrix says, In his book Atlantis Rising (Dell, 1976), renowned paranormal and UFO researcher Brad Steiger mentioned a 1965 paper presented by Canadian geophysicist John M. DeLaurier of the Dominion of Canada Observatory. According to this scientist, there was something strange going on beneath the ground at Ellesmere Island, a barren location mostly covered by glacial icecap and roamed by herds of caribou and musk oxen. Professor DeLaurier's paper discussed the existence of a structure so vast that it defied imagination—a quasi-cylindrical loaf of an object measuring 65 miles long by 65 miles thick at a staggering depth of 80 miles. The huge structure had been detected by seismic equipment located at Alert, one of the U.S.-Canadian Distant Early Warning (DEW) stations in the Arctic wilderness. Studies showed that the object, which straddled the earth's mantle and crust, was the source of some sort of disturbance—similar to the situation encountered at Lake Vostok 30-odd years later—affecting the magnetic field at the Alert facility and inducing a strong flow of electricity.
3. Man has existed for millions of years (many times longer than accepted timetables estimate), Man existed in places and times heretofore unknown, and Man has existed in previously-unknown forms.
a. Footprints imprinted in 15-million-year-old sandstone were found in Nevada. The shoe imprint is so detailed that the stitching threads around the sole are visible. (p. 254)
Nevada Shoe Print? analyzes the print and says the fossil's identification as a shoe print is inconclusive.
b. In 1833 soldiers in California discovered the skeleton of a twelve-foot tall human. The skull contained double rows of both upper and lower teeth. (p. 254)
Giant Human Remains - From records and sources all over the world says, In 1833,soldiers digging a pit for a powder magazine at Lompock Rancho, California, hacked their way through a layer of cemented gravel and came up with the skeleton of a giant man about twelve feet tall. The skeleton was surrounded by carved shells, huge stone axes, and blocks of porphyry covered with unintelligible symbols. The giant was also noteworthy in still another respect. He had a double row of teeth, both upper and lower. When the natives began to attach some religious significance to the find, authorities ordered the skeleton and all the artifacts secretly reburied and, of course, lost to the scientific study they deserved. (This site lists dozens of discoveries of giants.)
c. Several giant human footprints were discovered in granite near Brayton, in Bledsoe County Tennessee. The granite is hundreds of millions of years old. One footprint's bare heel is 13 inches wide. (p. 270)
OOPARTS (out of place artifacts) says, Near Braytown, on the headwaters of the Tennessee river, were found some remarkable footprints impressed in what is now solid rock. The tracks included those of a human heel ball thirteen inches wide! The marks clearly showed that the fellow whose stride in that distant day turned to stone had six toes on each foot. Stranger than Science, by Frank Edwards.
d. In 1952 an ancient amphitheater containing many anachronistic sculptures was discovered in Peru by Dr. Daniel Ruzo. There were sculptures of camels, lions, elephants and other animals never known to have lived in South America. There were also finely carved heads of Semites, Caucasians, and Negroes, all of whom arrived in South America less than 500 years ago. One sculpture is of an amphicelydia, a prehistoric ancestor of the turtle, which has been extinct for over 180 million years. There is also a horse, although horses became extinct in South America over 9,000 years ago, and were reintroduced in the 1500s. (p. 270)
This claim appears to be true but exaggerated. The stone images are so worn that the images must be interpreted. The desription of a documetary video called The Mysterious Stone Monuments of Markawasi Peru says, High atop a remote plateau in Central Peru, hundreds of illusive shapes can be seen in the living rock. Are they merely natural erosion, or were they carved, as some think, by the hand of man?
e. Luther Cressman of the University of Oregon discovered Lamos Cave in Nevada, which contained 200 pairs of neatly-stacked woven sandals dated to be from 7,030 BC by carbon-14 dating. (p. 413)
Some facts in this item seem to be wrong, but the main facts are correct -- that Cressman discovered many pairs of sandals that were about 9,000 years old. The site Pre-Indian Caucasoids in America by Colin, Son of Þeedrich says, The Fork Rock Cave in Oregon has been in the middle of ongoing new discoveries. The cave itself is small -- only thirty-five feet wide and sixty-five feet long. It was here in 1938 that about seventy pairs of sandals made of sagebrush were discovered by Luther S. Cressman. Radio-carbon dating technology dated the sandals at nine thousand years old (fortunately, the sandals were preserved until radio-carbon dating was invented).
f. In the 1920s vases were found near Pisco, Peru that were painted with five-toed llamas, yet modern-day llamas have only two toes. (p. 413)
Mysterious Creatures: A Guide to Cryptozoology by George M. Eberhart states, Pottery fragments showing animals that look like llamas with five toes were discovered in the 1920s in the pre-Incan Paracas culture area near Pisco, lea Department, Peru, by Julio C. Tello.
Are the Ica Stones Fake? Skeptics Under Fire by Dr. Dennis Swift says, On two separate occasions, engraved stones were excavated from Pre-Hispanic Indian tombs dating from 400 B.C. to 700 A.D. The engraved stones were embedded in the side of the mortuary chamber of the tombs and next to mummies. Alejandro Pezzia Asserto was an archaeologist from the National Archaeology Department of Peru. In 1968, Alejandro Pezzia Asserto published his work with drawings and descriptions of the stones with a five-toed llama that was supposed to be extinct for over forty million years.
g. The scientific community (geologists, anthropologists, archaeologists) agree that Man did not live more than 1.7 million years ago. In 1924 the Doheny Scientific Expedition discovered an ancient painting in Arizona, depicting a Tyrannosaurus rex attacking a human being. (p. 429)
Walking Amidst the Dinosaurs by Bert Thompson and Dr. Brad Harrub says, In the late 1800s, Samuel Hubbard, honorary curator of archaeology at the Oakland, California, Museum of Natural History, was excavating ancient Indian dwellings in the Hava Supai Canyon in Arizona. On the walls of the canyon where the Indians’ ancestors once lived, Dr. Hubbard found elegant drawings of an elephant, an ibex, a dinosaur, and other animals. He stated concerning the dinosaur drawing: “Taken all in all, the proportions are good.” He further suggested that the huge reptile is “depicted in the attitude in which man would be most likely to see it—reared on its hind legs, balancing with the long tail, either feeding or in fighting position, possibly defending itself against a party of men” (as quoted in Verrill, 1954, pp. 155ff.).
The same article says, An article in the January 1993 National Geographic boldly proclaimed: “No human being has ever seen a live dinosaur” (“Age of the Dinosaurs,” 1993, 183[1]:142).
h. An ancient rock carving on a cliff overlooking the Big Sandy River in Oregon depicts a stegosaurus. (p. 429)
The Doheny Scientific Expedition to the Hava Supai Canyon, Northern Arizona has a supplement that contains an illustrated discussion of the carving.
i. A painting on ancient ceramic pottery discovered in Panama depicts flying pterodactyls. (p. 429)
Ancient Pterosaur Depictions says, The native American Coclé culture of Panama was discovered by A. Hyatt Verrill. He noticed the oddly pterosaur-like representations on Coclé pottery and suggested it was so realistic that these native Americans must have been influenced by fossil discoveries. He describes the depiction (see right) as having “beak-like jaws armed with sharp teeth, wings with two curved claws, short, pointed tail, reptilian head crest or appendages, and strong hind feet with five-clawed toes on each.” The Coclé civilization dates from AD 1330-1520. But Verrill theorizes that this artwork was based on “accurate descriptions, or even drawings or carvings, of fossilized pterodactyls.” (Verrill, A. Hyatt, Strange Prehistoric Animals and their Stories, 1948, pp. 132-133.)
j. A stone calendar from Peru has the sculptured heads of toxidons, mammals that have been extinct for over 13 million years. (p. 429)
This item must be referring to the Gateway of the Sun in Tiahuanaco, Bolivia. The Crystalinks page Tiahuanaco, Bolivia says, The 10 ton Gateway of the Sun is monolithic, carved from a single block of Andesite granite, and is broken right down the center. Its upper portion is deeply carved with beautiful and intricate designs, including a human figure, condors, toxodons, elephants and some symbols.... This huge monument is hewn from a single block of stone, and some believe that the strange symbols might represent a calendar, the oldest in the world.
I recently read The HAB Theory by Allan W. Eckert. The book presents a gripping theory about the Earth's history. I find the theory plausible and intuitively believable. It seems to be more deserving of belief than disbelief. The theory explains such scientific anomalies as how mammoths with warm-climate plants in their mouths and stomachs were quick-frozen in Siberia, how a manufactured metal cube was discovered inside a block of coal in Austria, how an ancient bison discovered in Russia appears to have been killed by a gunshot, and many others. More than half of the book is a romance which I found boring, but the rest of the book is mind-boggling. I have not found a compelling reason to disbelieve the HAB Theory, thus the title of this post. Global warming may be all that's enabling civilization to continue.
The purpose of this article is to increase awareness of the theory. I hope that by listing mysteries the theory seems to explain I will inspire others to seriously consider the theory and its implications. The rest of this article contains spoilers, so if you want to read The HAB Theory cold, you should stop reading here. I will describe the HAB Theory and list some of the mysteries presented in the book, together with links to relevant Internet pages. Page numbers cited refer to the 2001 Authors Guild Backinprint.com edition of The HAB Theory
. The HAB Theory is a 1976 novel based on a theory presented by an engineer named Hugh Auchincloss Brown in his 1967 book Cataclysms of the Earth. Although Brown's theory was ignored by the scientific community, Eckert believed the theory was valid and wrote The HAB Theory
to warn humanity of the impending catastrophe. He also wanted to emphasize the dangers of scientists being so specialized that they are unable to synthesize knowledge from other fields with knowledge from their own fields. As of 1998 Eckert was still "thoroughly convinced" of the theory's validity. (1998 letter) In The HAB Theory the theory is developed by a fictional character named Herbert A. Boardman. The theory's name reflects the initials of the real-life theorist as well as those of the fictional theorist.So what is the HAB Theory? Imagine a ball spinning around an imaginary vertical axis. Now imagine dripping melted wax on the top off to one side from the center. For awhile the gyroscopic effect will keep the ball's spin stabilized around the original axis, but at some point when enough off-set wax has accumulated, centrifugal force will cause the ball to capsize so that the heaviest accumulation of wax is now at the ball's equator. The axis around which the ball is spinning will still be vertical, but the ball itself will have shifted almost ninety degrees so that some areas that used to be along its equator are now at the top and bottom, and some areas that used to be near the poles are now near the equator.
The HAB Theory says the Earth capsizes periodically due to the accumulation of ice near the poles. Warm, water-filled air from near the equator is carried by normal and persistent currents to the poles, where the moisture falls as snow and ice. It never gets warm enough at the poles for much of the ice to melt, thus the polar ice caps grow. The weight of the water added to the ice caps is huge. Antarctica grows by almost eighty-five billion tons of ice every month, far more than is sloughed off from the edges in an entire year. (p. 201) The ice is not evenly distributed around the Earth's axis of spin. Over time the off-center weight of the ice causes the Earth to capsize similarly to the ball with wax on it in the example.
The engineer who developed the theory thought it was interesting but unlikely to be true. He spent decades trying to disprove the theory but only found evidence supporting the theory. Working backward from the present he identified at least nine previous Earth capsizes. The shortest period between capsizes was about 3,000 years; the longest was about 7,000 years. When a capsize occurs the entire shift only takes three to four hours. (p. 158) Polar ice moves close to the equator and begins melting. Tropical regions move close to the poles and quickly freeze. There are floods, high winds, and much of the Earth's surface is violently restructured. Mountain ranges are thrust upward, oceans are redistributed, and continents are reshaped. The climactic and geographical chaos destroys existing civilizations and most life on the planet. Then the slow process of building civilizations and growing ice caps begins again.
When the capsize occurs the two pivot points experience the least destructive forces. Sometimes remnants of civilization are preserved near these pivots. Working backward the theorist calculated previous pivot points and previous ice caps. Previous pivot points include the area where Egypt is now and an area in the South American Andes. Three examples of previous ice caps are the Sudan Basin in Africa, Hudson Bay in Canada, and the Caspian Sea in Asia. (p. 161) Since the shift is always less than ninety degrees, and since the shift doesn't move the same way each time, the former ice caps and pivot points are scattered throughout the world.
It has now been over seven thousand years since the last capsizing, which is longer than any previously-identified period between capsizes. It could be that our contribution to global warming is melting the polar caps and saving us from the capsize that would have destroyed civilization had the ice caps continued to grow. If the HAB Theory is correct, then preventing the ice caps from growing is also preventing a capsize of the Earth. Global warming has many horrible consequences, but those consequences are preferable to a capsized Earth.
I find the theory so believable that the apparent lack of public scientific support for the theory is disturbing. The author, Allan W. Eckert, provides some insight into the lack of scientific support in his 1998 letter. He says, I interviewed many professional scientists in the fields mentioned and found, to both my delight and dismay, that while many agreed with some, if not all of Brown's postulations, all of them, without exception, said in essence, "...but don't quote me; I don't intend to have my career ruined!"
No one can say with any certainty whether the weight of polar ice could cause the Earth to capsize. I daresay a flexible, non-solid, spinning ball like the Earth reacts to the forces involved differently than a solid ball would. No one can know the result of how the interacting forces would resolve themselves on a planetary scale. There are only theories.
Eckert presents a great deal of evidence -- both far-fetched and compelling -- in support of the HAB Theory. I do not believe Eckert fabricated evidence. Instead, he included mysteries the HAB Theory might explain. These mysteries are sometimes exaggerated in the book -- by Eckert to make a better story or by Eckert's sources for the same reason.
The remainder of this article is an informal survey of selected HAB Theory evidence together with one or more Internet references for each item. The Internet references are offered to show that Eckert did not invent the items as well as to provide additional information. Determining the truth of the items listed is beyond the scope of this article. My list is not comprehensive and the sites referenced are not definitive. None of the items listed can prove that the Earth capsizes every few thousand years. However, if the Earth does capsize every few thousand years then the mysteries listed cease to be mysterious.
Enjoy the list. I hope it piques your interest in the HAB Theory. I welcome your comments.
Jon Maloney
May 2007
Most of the evidence the book offers in support of the HAB Theory corroborates one or more of the following ideas:
1. There were advanced civilizations that disappeared along with their technology and knowledge;
2. The Earth's rotational orientation changed such that hot and cold areas switched positions, and the elevation of areas on the Earth's surface changed;
3. Man has existed for millions of years (many times longer than accepted timetables estimate), Man existed in places and times heretofore unknown, and Man has existed in previously-unknown forms.
I will repeat each idea and list selected items from the book related to that idea.
1. There were advanced civilizations that disappeared along with their technology and knowledge.
a. Ancient Peruvians made ornaments of smelted platinum. Platinum melts at over 3,150 degrees Fahrenheit, a temperature only achieved relatively recently using modern technology. (p. 254)
Platinum's melting point is 3221.6 °F. Goldandsilvermines.com says, Unlike gold and silver, which could be readily isolated in a comparatively pure state by simple fire refining, the platinum metals require complex aqueous chemical processing for their isolation and identification. Because these techniques were not available until the turn of the 19th century, the identification and isolation of the platinum group lagged behind silver and gold by thousands of years. In addition, the high melting points of these metals limited their applications until researchers in Britain, France, Germany, and Russia devised methods for consolidating and working platinum into useful forms. The fashioning of platinum into fine jewelry began about 1900....
Geotimes.org says, Because of platinum’s brittleness and high melting point, the Spaniards who colonized the area discarded platinum artifacts in favor of the tumbaga artifacts that could easily be melted and returned to Spain.
Encyclopedia Britannica Online says, In pre-Columbian America, gold, silver, and copper were the principal metals that were worked, with tin, lead, and platinum used less frequently.
Peru: Striking Facts says, Ornaments of melted platinum have been unearthed from the Peruvian plateaus in the north which remains a secret since the melting point of the precious metal is 1800°C.
b. A metal astronomical computer from 65 BC was found near the Greek island of Antikythera. (p. 254, 420)
This anachronistic device is known as the "Antikythera Mechanism". It has been studied extensively. Here are some articles about it.
Nature.com: In search of lost time by Jo Marchant
Wikipedia: Antikythera mechanism
BBC News: Ancient Moon 'computer' revisited by Jonathan Fildes
c. Chinese General Chow Chu (316 AD) was entombed wearing an aluminum girdle. The western world did not isolate aluminum until 1825. (p. 254)
Sophisticated Metallurgical Skills in Ancients says, The tomb of the Chinese general Chow Chu (A.D. 265-316) presents a mystery. When analyzed by the spectroscope, a metal girdle showed 10 percent copper, 5 percent manganese, and 85 percent aluminum. But according to the history of science aluminum was obtained for the first time by Oersted in 1825 by a chemical method. We are Not the First
, by Andrew Tomas, 1971 is cited as the source.d. Ancient Egyptians and Babylonians of 3,000 years ago knew about the moons of Jupiter and Saturn, which can't be seen without a telescope. Galileo invented the telescope in 1610. (p. 254)
The Naked Eye Planets in the Night Sky confirms that neither Saturn's nor Jupiter's moons can be seen with the naked eye. [This citation was corrected on July 2, 2007. See first comment below. - Jon Maloney]
I found several references to the Dogon people of Mali knowing of the moons of Jupiter, although the allegation is controversial. The Sirius Mystery by Paul Roland says The connection with the Dogon comes about through separate independent studies by various anthropologists who have traced the Dogon line back to these ancient civilisations [Babylon, Sumeria and Egypt]. The Sirius Mystery
(at Amazon)e. An obviously-manufactured iron cube weighing 785 grams, with two convex sides, four perfectly-square sides, and with a precise groove traversing the edges was discovered in 1877 in lower Austria inside a block of coal. In 1885 a smaller, but otherwise identical, cube was discovered in a block of coal in upper Austria. (p. 269)
Strange Relics from the Depths of the Earth by J.R. Jochmans says, In the fall of 1885, at an iron foundry owned by the sons of Herr Isidor Braun located in Schondorf near Bocklabruck, Upper Austria, a workman named Riedl was breaking up a block of Tertiary brown coal that had been mined from the pits at Wolfsegg, near Schwannstadt, and was about to be used to heat the foundry's giant smelters. As the block disintegrated into several pieces, out dropped a strange cube-like object. In 1886, mining engineer Dr. Adolf Gurlt made a report to the Natural History Society at Bonn, Germany and noted that the object, coated with a thin layer of rust, is made of iron, measures 2.64 by 2.64 by 1.85 inches, weighs 1.73 Ibs., and has a specific gravity measurement of 7.75. Four of the iron 'cube's' sides are roughly flat, while the two remaining sides - opposite each other - are convex. A fairly deep groove was incised all the way around the object, about mid-way up its height. Other early studies on the iron artifact were in scientific journals of the day as Nature (London; November 11, 1886, page 36) and L'Astronomie (Paris; 1886, page 463). A plaster cast was also made before the turn of the century -important because the original object subsequently suffered from handling, and from being disfigured by samples having been cut from it by investigators for research. The cast is kept in the Oberosterreichisehes Landesmuseum in Linz, Austria, where the original object was also exhibited from 1950 to 1958. The iron cube is presently in the custody of Herrn O.R. Bernhardt of the Heimathaus Museum in Vocklabruck.
In 1966-67, the iron "cube" was carefully analyzed by experts at the Vienna Naturhistorisehes Museum, using electron-beam microanalysis. They found no traces of nickel, chromium or cobalt in the iron - which means the object was not of meteoric origin. No sulfur was detected either, ruling out the chance of it being a pyrite, a natural mineral that sometimes forms geometric shapes. Because of a low magnesium content, Dr. Kurat of the Museum, and Dr. R. Gill of the Geologisehe Bundesanstalt of Vienna, are of the opinion that the object was made of cast-iron. In 1973, Hubert Mattlianer concluded from yet another detailed investigation that the object had been made from a hand-sculptured lump of wax or clay pressed into a sand base, this forming the mold into which the iron had been poured.
The final conclusion, then, is that the strange object is definitely man-made. What is not explained is what it was doing encased in coal dating to the Tertiary - 60 million years old.
f. In 1921 a human skull was unearthed in a Rhodesian mine 60 feet beneath the surface. The skull has been carbon-14 dated to be 38,000 years old. The skull has two holes consistent with a bullet's entry and exit. An analysis of the holes indicated whatever made them is what killed the man. They could not have been made after death. (p. 271, 415)
Strange Finds says, In 1921 the discovery of a Neanderthal skull in Rhodesia revealed an astonishing mystery. The skull had been pierced by a high velocity projectile, similar to a bullet. Mysterious, because it was disclosed that this injury must have occurred at the moment of death, and not afterwards. It meant that whoever fired the fatal bullet must have fired it many thousands of years ago. In his book Secrets of the Lost Races
, author Rene Noorbergen had the following to say: 'A German forensic authority from Berlin has positively stated that the cranial damage to Rhodesian man's skull could not have been caused by anything but a bullet'.The fact that the skull was found fully 60 feet below the surface of the ground attested to the fact that this was no recent injury, and experts were baffled. Even so certain conclusions seemed obvious: The most apparent of these was that in times considered too remote for intelligent life, this creature had been gunned down by a high velocity weapon. The neat entry point of the wound testified to the great speed of the projectile, which had created a perfectly rounded hole.
Broken Hill Rhodesian Man New insight into an old skull refutes the theory that the item is a Neanderthal skull with a bullet hole.
Evolution Encyclopedia Vol. 2, Chapter 18, Ancient Man also refutes the above theory.
g. The powerful, highly-cultured civilization of ancient Egypt has no known foundation. It was already an advanced civilization at our earliest recordings of human history. We trace its history through thirty-one dynasties, from 332 BC back to 3188 BC. There are no records of stories or mythologies prior to 3188 BC. In what is called the first dynasty, under King Menes, Egypt is at its zenith in painting, sculpture, and architecture. From its earliest known existence to 332 BC the civilization was in decline. It's as if the Egyptians inherited a great civilization but could not improve or maintain it. (p. 378)
Egyptian History: Dawn of Egyptian Culture says, Remarkably the structure of the writing system was almost finished in the first dynasty and thus was a product of a development that had been going on for an unknown period of time. Remnants from the earlier stages has not been found and several attempts to derive hieroglyphs from the so called "pot marks" made on ceramic vessels, has not been successful so far. The options are two: writing can in the earliest times have been made on material that has decayed, or the system has been imported from abroad. No traces outside or inside Egypt can confirm any of these suggestions.
h. The skeleton of an ancient bison-like animal called an auroch was discovered in Russia. The auroch has what appears to be a bullet hole in the center of its forehead. The hole is the size of a .44 caliber bullet. (p. 415)
OOPARTS (out of place artifacts) says, An Auroch is an large, extinct "buffalo like" animal. Many skeletons of this extinct type have been found in Europe.
What is remarkable about one in particular in the Moscow Museum of Paleontology is that it has a bullet hole in its skull. The hole is round, without radial cracks that would result from slower projectiles like spears and arrows. The only known projectile that leaves this kind of smooth, round hole without radial cracks is a bullet because of its velocity.
I mention the auroch first because of a possible objection that can be raised. If it is indeed a bullet hole, perhaps the skeleton was shot many, many years after the animals' death. The problem here is that the auroch survived the wound and lived long enough for unmistakable calcification to appear at the site of the injury.
i. In 1938 a German archaeologist named Wilhelm Konig discovered urns used as batteries at the site of ancient Babylonia, near Baghdad, Iraq. In 1946 Willard Gray, a scientist at General Electric, studied Konig's find, replicated it, and had working batteries. (p. 421)
Wikipedia: Baghdad Battery is a good article on the subject.
j. Ancient Indian writings called Agastya Samhita describe how to build a battery, translated as follows, Place a well-cleaned copper plate in an earthenware vessel. Cover it first by copper sulfate and then by moist sawdust. After that, put a mercury-amalgamated zinc sheet on top of the sawdust to avoid polarization. The contact will produce an energy known by the twin name of Mitra-Varuna. Water will be split by this current into Pranavayu and Udanavayu. A chain of one hundred jars is said to give a very effective force. (p. 422)
Ankur Learning Solutions says, An interesting procedure, that gives proof for the usage and preparation of the battery cell is recorded in Agastya Samhita. The following lines from Agastya Samhita illustrate the electrical cell.
“Place copper plates in an earthern pot, cover it with copper sulphate and moistened saw dust. Spread zinc powder and cover it with mercury. Due to the chemical reaction, +ve and –ve electricity is produced. This water is decomposed in to Oxygen and Hydrogen.”
k. Ancient Egyptian pyramids and tombs often have detailed, intricate paintings on the walls far from any available natural light, yet there is no smoke or soot residue that would have been left by torches or lamps. Archaeologists wonder if the Egyptians used electric lights. (p. 220)
Hesire’s Flashlight by Bill McNulty says, Some Egyptologists have theorized that sunlight was bounced off crude mirrors to see while pyramid and tomb chambers were built. These large ancient Egyptian mirrors have never been found. These mythical mirrors supposedly could bounce light into chambers up to 120 metres long as workers moved in and out during construction.
Ancient Egyptian tombs do not have accumulated soot on their ceilings you’d expect if torches or candles were used during construction. Some have suggested oil lamps with a little bit of salt added to the oil kept the lamps from discharging soot. A more likely explanation of how the Ancient Egyptians lighted dark tomb chambers is a light source which has been lost to history.
l. The 3,500 year old Indian book called Sactya Grantham describes how to vaccinate against smallpox. It says, Take on the tip of a knife the contents of the pox inflammation and inject it into the arm of a well man, mixing it with his blood. A fever will follow, but the malady will pass very easily and will create no complications. Thereafter, the second man will forever be rendered invulnerable to the same disease. Edward Jenner is credited with discovering how to vaccinate against smallpox in 1796. There are references to the use of penicillin in ancient Thebes. References have also been found of medical x-rays in China in 206 BC and use of a fluoroscope in India in 500 BC. The Indian physician Jivaka wrote, placed before a patient, it illuminated his body as a lamp illuminates the objects inside a house; it revealed the nature of maladies. These advanced medical practices were old knowledge in ancient times. Rather than being new discoveries then, they appear to be the remnants of much greater medical knowledge that was dying out. (p. 426)
Hindu Wisdom references the same quotation about smallpox vaccinations.
Dead Men's Secrets by Jonathan Gray mentions both the ancient Chinese x-rays and the ancient Indian fluoroscope. Dead Men's Secrets
(at Amazon)m. A tunnel complex was discovered in the Andes in 1965 by an Argentinean archaeologist named Juan Moricz. There are thousands of miles of tunnels at different depths -- 250 feet, 500 feet, and 750 feet. Only a few hundred miles have been cursorily explored. There are countless chambers containing artifacts. One chamber measures 492 x 459 feet and has a large table in the center. The table is surrounded by seven chairs made of an unknown material. Fifty feet from the table is a library of thousands of metal pages, each page standing on a block made of the same material from which the chairs were made. Each page measures about 38 x 19 x 0.24 inches. In a special niche there's a thicker page that appears to be a key of 56 different characters. Only a few random pages were translated and their contents were kept secret. (p. 402-406)
The thousands of miles of artificially-made tunnels and the metal library have never been proven to exist. There are several Internet articles about the tunnels and the library:
The Quest For The Metal Library,
Magyars, Moricz and Mother Language,
Wikipedia: Cueva de los Tayos.
2. The Earth's rotational orientation changed such that hot and cold areas switched positions, and the elevation of areas on the Earth's surface changed.
a. Mammoths and rhinoceroses have been found quick-frozen in northern Siberia, some still in standing positions with tropical plants in their mouths and stomachs. (p. 159, 254) Mammoth remains have been found in the Canadian Arctic, Alaska, Siberia on both sides of the Bering Strait, on the New Siberian Islands, and on Wrangel Island. These areas are only connected by frigid seas. There's no present way mammoths could have moved among these points. (p. 381-382)
Center for Scientific Creation lists details about the frozen mammoth and rhinoceros finds, including a map and photographs.
Frozen mammoth carcasses in Siberia by Michael Oard discusses mammoth finds in detail (from Frozen in Time
: The Woolly Mammoth, the Ice Age, and the Bible by Michael Oard, 2004). Other good information.
OOPARTS (out of place artifacts) The Boneyards: The Beresovka Mammoth Problem...
The extinction of the woolly mammoth: was it a quick freeze? by Michael Oard.
The Antiquity of Man: Tracing Graham Hancock's Shifting Cataclysm by Mikey Brass disputes that mammoths were quick-frozen.
b. Ocean floors are covered with ancient river beds that could not have been created by ocean currents. (p. 254)
Glaciation of North America mentions ancient river beds and forests on ocean floors.
Sweeping the Ocean's Floor also mentions ancient river channels on the floor of the ocean.
Ask A Scientist: Ocean River Beds says that apparent river beds on the ocean floor are not river beds.
c. An ancient Chinese book, The Story of the Ten Stems, tells how the country made a flying leap to the Arctic and remained there for 3,000 years. There was death and destruction and most people died, but 3,000 years later the country made another flying leap to its present location.
I found few references to anything resembling this story. On the page Chapter Eleven: Mythologies of the World I found the following, The Chinese legend of the "Ten Stems," tells us of the earth in this chaotic condition. At the Sixth Stem, Darkness and the Light unite with injurious effects-all things become solid, (frozen) and the Darkness destroys the growth of all things (the beginning of the ice age). At the Seventh Stem, the Darkness nips all things. At the Ninth Stem, the Light begins to nourish all things in the recesses below (the sun reappears).
d. The Greek historian Herodotus (about 450 BC) journeyed to Memphis and Thebes. The Memphis priests told him their records went back 11,000 years. The priests in Thebes told him their records went back 17,000 years. Some of what Herodotus recorded has been dismissed as nonsense, but some of those writings might make sense in light of the HAB theory. If you were near one of the pivot points at the time the Earth capsized, the sun would not rise and set normally. It could rise in the east and set in the north for example. Or it could rise and set in the same direction if the Earth capsized and shifted in certain ways during the capsize. According to Herodotus, the priests in Memphis told him that during their 11,000 year history the sun had set where it had risen twice. (p. 383-384)
The History by Herodotus says, During this time, they said, there were four times when the sun rose out of his wonted place---twice rising where now he sets, and twice setting where now he rises---and, say the priests, nothing became different among the Egyptians, for all these disturbances, neither products of the Earth nor products of the river, nor yet in respect of diseases or death.
e. In Yellowstone National Park mountainsides reveal seventeen layers of vertical trees, with rock between each layer. (p. 160)
The Yellowstone petrified forests by Jonathan Sarfati describes these tree layers.
f. Fossils of sea creatures have been found high in the Rocky Mountains, the Andes, and the Himalayas. (p. 160)
Such fossils are mentioned on these pages:
Famous Fossils from a Mountaintop by Harold G. Coffin,
Seashells on Moutaintops, and
Crinoids on Mount Everest?
g. In 1938 a Chinese archaeologist, Professor Chi Pu Tei made a discovery in the Bayan Kara Ula Mountains of China near the Tibetan border. He discovered a series of artificial tunnels and storerooms. The tunnels are perfectly squared and the walls, ceilings, and floors are highly glazed as if the rock was melted, similar to the effect you would get if you stuck a red-hot nail into a block of wax. He discovered many large chambers, strange implements, and stone disks of uniform size and features. Each disk was 22.7 cm in diameter and 2 cm thick (about 9 inches in diameter and ¾ of an inch thick). Each disk had a circular hole in the center 2 cm across. Each disk had regular indentations all around the edge and a twin groove that spiraled out from the center in an ever-widening circle until it reached the edge. The actual grooves were slightly different from disk to disk. There were 716 disks found and taken to the Peking Academy of Prehistory for study. The disks were found to contain a high cobalt content and a high metallic content. They appeared to be part of a sophisticated electrical system. The grooves were discovered not to be sound recordings but writing so tiny as to be almost microscopic. The disks are 11,500 to 7,500 years old, making them the oldest known writings. Although studied intensely no progress was made on translating the writing until 24 years later in 1962. In 1965 a Russian philologist, Vyacheslav Saizev, published an article in Sputnik magazine about the disks including the translated content from one disk. It told a story of people called the Dropa who landed in spaceships. They cut the tunnels into the mountains, warned the inhabitants of a huge flood coming, and left to go to "the other safe place". A later disk said the Dropa's space ship was severely damaged in the "turning of the earth" and could not be replaced. (p. 397-400)
I was sorry Eckert introduced space aliens in support of the HAB Theory, but I guess he had to since their alleged message offers such strong support -- namely, that in the coming flood there was one other safe place (which would correspond to the second pivot point), the fact that their ship was damaged in the "turning of the earth", and the fact that the most recent stone disk dated 7,500 years old (the time of the last capsize). Of course the whole story about the tunnels, implements, disks, and Dropa is quite controversial. A Google search for -- Dropa stone disks -- yields 139,000 hits. Here are a few pages:
Dropa Stone Discs,
The Strange Stone Discs of Baian-Kara-Ula,
Wikipedia: Dropa.
h. A map in the National Museum of Turkey was drawn by Piri Ibn Haji Memmed (called Piri Re'is), and presented to Sultan Yavuz Selim in 1517. The map shows the southwestern coast of Europe, the western coast of Africa, the Atlantic Ocean, and part of North America, South America, and Antarctica. The map shows South America's inland river systems and other details as far as the eastern slopes of the Andes. Between 1492 and 1498 Columbus only visited the Bahamas, Puerto Rico, and Haiti. The only other known explorer who visited the Americas prior to the map's being drawn was Amerigo Vespucci who sailed down the Brazilian coast in 1501, however he made no inland explorations. The map shows northern Antarctica without ice, including interior rivers and mountains. According to accepted scientific timetables the Antarctic ice cap is over thirteen million years old, yet the Piri Re'is map shows Antarctica without ice. Another map by the same man, drawn in 1528, shows the north Atlantic. It shows Greenland as two islands with no ice cap. The scientific world did not know that Greenland was two islands until a Frenchman, Dr. Paul-Emile Victor proved it with seismic readings on an expedition in 1947-1949. Accepted scientific timetables show the Greenland ice cap is just as old as the Antarctic ice cap. A Swedish scientist, Dr. Adolf Erik Nordenskjold studied the Piri Re'is maps and discovered that they were not original, but copies of much older maps. Nordenskjold believed they were copies of maps drawn by Ptolemy, and he believed Ptolemy's maps were copies of even older maps. The Piri Re'is map had notes written in the margins. One note said that Antarctica was a very hot place inhabited by large snakes. Other notes say the map was drawn using a map from the period of Alexander the great plus twenty other maps of great antiquity. The evidence suggests that the maps from which the Piri Re'is map was made, were drawn prior to the last capsizing when Antarctica was tropical. Other scientists have studied the map and believe it is based on high-altitude aerial photography from at least 100 miles up. The map matches satellite photographs even to the point of continental distortions around the edges due to the curvature of the Earth. (p. 448-462)
The source of data for the Piri Re'is maps and what the maps show are the subject of much controversy. Here are some articles.
Strange Artifacts: The Piri Reis Map.
Internet Sacred Text Archive: The Piri Re'is Map.
Wikipedia: The Piri Reis Map.
Greenland, a territory apart says, In fact, it is only very recently that the discovery was made that underneath the icecap, Greenland is made up of THREE ISLANDS.
i. In 1949 Dr. Jack Hough accompanied Admiral Byrd on his Antarctic expedition and took core samples from the bed of the Ross Sea. Analysis of the core samples at the Carnegie Institute by W. D. Urry showed that Antarctica's last warm period with flowing rivers was 6,000 years ago, about 1,500 years after the last capsize estimated by the HAB Theory, indicating that it took about 1,500 years for Antarctica's ice cap to form. (p. 457-458)
Fingerprints of the Gods: Exhibit 7 confirms that an Antarctic river flowed into the Ross Sea as recently as 6,000 years ago. Fingerprints of the Gods
(at Amazon)Fingerprints of the Gods: Exhibit 7, The Ross Sea Cores says that Exhibit 7 is inconclsuive.
j. Another Turkish map drawn by Hadji Ahmed in 1559 from different ancient maps, show Alaska and Siberia as being a solid land mass a thousand miles wide. The implication is that the map Ahmed copied had been made prior to the last capsizing of the Earth. (p. 461)
Ancient Maps More Accurate Than Ours by JC Ryan says, The Hadji Ahmed map of 1559 shows Antarctica and the Pacific coast of the United States of America with extreme accuracy. It also depicts the land bridge that once existed between Siberia and Alaska.
k. In 1968 scientists at the Alert weather station on Ellesmere Island, Canada, 475 miles from the North Pole, discovered a huge magnetic object seismologically measured to be 65 miles long and 64 miles thick whose nearest edge is 15 miles deep. (p. 428)
Destiny Matrix says, In his book Atlantis Rising
(Dell, 1976), renowned paranormal and UFO researcher Brad Steiger mentioned a 1965 paper presented by Canadian geophysicist John M. DeLaurier of the Dominion of Canada Observatory. According to this scientist, there was something strange going on beneath the ground at Ellesmere Island, a barren location mostly covered by glacial icecap and roamed by herds of caribou and musk oxen. Professor DeLaurier's paper discussed the existence of a structure so vast that it defied imagination—a quasi-cylindrical loaf of an object measuring 65 miles long by 65 miles thick at a staggering depth of 80 miles. The huge structure had been detected by seismic equipment located at Alert, one of the U.S.-Canadian Distant Early Warning (DEW) stations in the Arctic wilderness. Studies showed that the object, which straddled the earth's mantle and crust, was the source of some sort of disturbance—similar to the situation encountered at Lake Vostok 30-odd years later—affecting the magnetic field at the Alert facility and inducing a strong flow of electricity.3. Man has existed for millions of years (many times longer than accepted timetables estimate), Man existed in places and times heretofore unknown, and Man has existed in previously-unknown forms.
a. Footprints imprinted in 15-million-year-old sandstone were found in Nevada. The shoe imprint is so detailed that the stitching threads around the sole are visible. (p. 254)
Nevada Shoe Print? analyzes the print and says the fossil's identification as a shoe print is inconclusive.
b. In 1833 soldiers in California discovered the skeleton of a twelve-foot tall human. The skull contained double rows of both upper and lower teeth. (p. 254)
Giant Human Remains - From records and sources all over the world says, In 1833,soldiers digging a pit for a powder magazine at Lompock Rancho, California, hacked their way through a layer of cemented gravel and came up with the skeleton of a giant man about twelve feet tall. The skeleton was surrounded by carved shells, huge stone axes, and blocks of porphyry covered with unintelligible symbols. The giant was also noteworthy in still another respect. He had a double row of teeth, both upper and lower. When the natives began to attach some religious significance to the find, authorities ordered the skeleton and all the artifacts secretly reburied and, of course, lost to the scientific study they deserved. (This site lists dozens of discoveries of giants.)
c. Several giant human footprints were discovered in granite near Brayton, in Bledsoe County Tennessee. The granite is hundreds of millions of years old. One footprint's bare heel is 13 inches wide. (p. 270)
OOPARTS (out of place artifacts) says, Near Braytown, on the headwaters of the Tennessee river, were found some remarkable footprints impressed in what is now solid rock. The tracks included those of a human heel ball thirteen inches wide! The marks clearly showed that the fellow whose stride in that distant day turned to stone had six toes on each foot. Stranger than Science
, by Frank Edwards.d. In 1952 an ancient amphitheater containing many anachronistic sculptures was discovered in Peru by Dr. Daniel Ruzo. There were sculptures of camels, lions, elephants and other animals never known to have lived in South America. There were also finely carved heads of Semites, Caucasians, and Negroes, all of whom arrived in South America less than 500 years ago. One sculpture is of an amphicelydia, a prehistoric ancestor of the turtle, which has been extinct for over 180 million years. There is also a horse, although horses became extinct in South America over 9,000 years ago, and were reintroduced in the 1500s. (p. 270)
This claim appears to be true but exaggerated. The stone images are so worn that the images must be interpreted. The desription of a documetary video called The Mysterious Stone Monuments of Markawasi Peru says, High atop a remote plateau in Central Peru, hundreds of illusive shapes can be seen in the living rock. Are they merely natural erosion, or were they carved, as some think, by the hand of man?
e. Luther Cressman of the University of Oregon discovered Lamos Cave in Nevada, which contained 200 pairs of neatly-stacked woven sandals dated to be from 7,030 BC by carbon-14 dating. (p. 413)
Some facts in this item seem to be wrong, but the main facts are correct -- that Cressman discovered many pairs of sandals that were about 9,000 years old. The site Pre-Indian Caucasoids in America by Colin, Son of Þeedrich says, The Fork Rock Cave in Oregon has been in the middle of ongoing new discoveries. The cave itself is small -- only thirty-five feet wide and sixty-five feet long. It was here in 1938 that about seventy pairs of sandals made of sagebrush were discovered by Luther S. Cressman. Radio-carbon dating technology dated the sandals at nine thousand years old (fortunately, the sandals were preserved until radio-carbon dating was invented).
f. In the 1920s vases were found near Pisco, Peru that were painted with five-toed llamas, yet modern-day llamas have only two toes. (p. 413)
Mysterious Creatures: A Guide to Cryptozoology by George M. Eberhart states, Pottery fragments showing animals that look like llamas with five toes were discovered in the 1920s in the pre-Incan Paracas culture area near Pisco, lea Department, Peru, by Julio C. Tello.
Are the Ica Stones Fake? Skeptics Under Fire by Dr. Dennis Swift says, On two separate occasions, engraved stones were excavated from Pre-Hispanic Indian tombs dating from 400 B.C. to 700 A.D. The engraved stones were embedded in the side of the mortuary chamber of the tombs and next to mummies. Alejandro Pezzia Asserto was an archaeologist from the National Archaeology Department of Peru. In 1968, Alejandro Pezzia Asserto published his work with drawings and descriptions of the stones with a five-toed llama that was supposed to be extinct for over forty million years.
g. The scientific community (geologists, anthropologists, archaeologists) agree that Man did not live more than 1.7 million years ago. In 1924 the Doheny Scientific Expedition discovered an ancient painting in Arizona, depicting a Tyrannosaurus rex attacking a human being. (p. 429)
Walking Amidst the Dinosaurs by Bert Thompson and Dr. Brad Harrub says, In the late 1800s, Samuel Hubbard, honorary curator of archaeology at the Oakland, California, Museum of Natural History, was excavating ancient Indian dwellings in the Hava Supai Canyon in Arizona. On the walls of the canyon where the Indians’ ancestors once lived, Dr. Hubbard found elegant drawings of an elephant, an ibex, a dinosaur, and other animals. He stated concerning the dinosaur drawing: “Taken all in all, the proportions are good.” He further suggested that the huge reptile is “depicted in the attitude in which man would be most likely to see it—reared on its hind legs, balancing with the long tail, either feeding or in fighting position, possibly defending itself against a party of men” (as quoted in Verrill, 1954, pp. 155ff.).
The same article says, An article in the January 1993 National Geographic boldly proclaimed: “No human being has ever seen a live dinosaur” (“Age of the Dinosaurs,” 1993, 183[1]:142).
h. An ancient rock carving on a cliff overlooking the Big Sandy River in Oregon depicts a stegosaurus. (p. 429)
The Doheny Scientific Expedition to the Hava Supai Canyon, Northern Arizona has a supplement that contains an illustrated discussion of the carving.
i. A painting on ancient ceramic pottery discovered in Panama depicts flying pterodactyls. (p. 429)
Ancient Pterosaur Depictions says, The native American Coclé culture of Panama was discovered by A. Hyatt Verrill. He noticed the oddly pterosaur-like representations on Coclé pottery and suggested it was so realistic that these native Americans must have been influenced by fossil discoveries. He describes the depiction (see right) as having “beak-like jaws armed with sharp teeth, wings with two curved claws, short, pointed tail, reptilian head crest or appendages, and strong hind feet with five-clawed toes on each.” The Coclé civilization dates from AD 1330-1520. But Verrill theorizes that this artwork was based on “accurate descriptions, or even drawings or carvings, of fossilized pterodactyls.” (Verrill, A. Hyatt, Strange Prehistoric Animals and their Stories, 1948, pp. 132-133.)
j. A stone calendar from Peru has the sculptured heads of toxidons, mammals that have been extinct for over 13 million years. (p. 429)
This item must be referring to the Gateway of the Sun in Tiahuanaco, Bolivia. The Crystalinks page Tiahuanaco, Bolivia says, The 10 ton Gateway of the Sun is monolithic, carved from a single block of Andesite granite, and is broken right down the center. Its upper portion is deeply carved with beautiful and intricate designs, including a human figure, condors, toxodons, elephants and some symbols.... This huge monument is hewn from a single block of stone, and some believe that the strange symbols might represent a calendar, the oldest in the world.
May 30, 2007
Bats, Bat Removal, Bat Behavior
For the last few years the building I live in has been home to a large colony of bats. Hopefully readers will find my experiences of removing the bats and my observations of bat behavior helpful and educational. For brevity I have omitted many events and details.
I live in a multifamily condominium in the northwestern part of South Carolina. My unit consists of two floors at one end of the building. For two summers I heard noises in my outer wall. I assumed the noises were made by birds, since birds getting into the attic has been a recurring problem here. One evening in late August 2006, neighbors noticed bats emerging from under the vinyl flashing at the roof's peak. I went out and watched. There were hundreds of bats. Neighbors contacted the company that manages the condominiums. The management company hired a local pest-control company that wanted to hang bags of BAT-A-Way (i.e. naphthalene, moth balls) in the attic.
I am sensitive to moth balls. Whenever I am exposed to moth balls I get a bad headache, my eyes burn, and my stomach feels queasy. I would not allow the pest-control company to put naphthalene in the attic. I researched naphthalene and discovered it not only causes headaches and nausea, but it can also damage the liver and kidneys, and may cause cataracts. Here are two material safety data sheets on Naphthalene: MSDS 1, MSDS 2. Many Internet sites sell naphthalene bat repellent, however they list the states to which they can not legally ship the product, which seems to confirm the hazardous nature of the product. I found several sites that say bat repellents do not work. One such site, Bat Repellent - Does It Work? says the following, "There is no such thing as an effective bat repellent. Period.... The internet is full of bat deterrent products, but none of them work.... I've seen people dump OVER 50 POUNDS of mothballs in an attic where bats are living, and they don't care in the slightest. They keep using the area."
There is an effective and humane way to get rid of bats (sometimes called "bat exclusion"). The beauty and cleverness of getting rid of bats through exclusion is that the bats leave on their own. There's no attempt at bat removal. You make it so bats can't get back in after they have left. The next time the bats go out to feed on insects they can't get back in.
Exclusions should not be attempted if there are baby bats in the building. Like all baby mammals, baby bats are nursed by their mothers until they can fly to hunt for insects on their own. In this part of the United States the nursery period seems to be late May to late August. You should wait until all the babies can fly before excluding the bats.
Bat Exclusion Steps
1. Discover all the openings bats can use to get in and out of the building.
2. Seal all the openings except for the most-used opening.
3. Make it so bats can exit the most-used opening, but can't get back in.
4. Wait until all the bats have left.
5. Permanently seal the last opening.
Hundreds of bats left a couple of days after we discovered them. In the following days only 20-30 bats left to feed each night. A man came and hung sheets of black plastic attached to the flashing with duct tape. The plan was that the bats would drop from behind the flashing and not be able to find their way back in. It didn't work. More often than not the plastic was standing out from the building due to the breeze, then it blew onto the roof so that it wasn't hanging at all, then the duct tape came loose and the plastic fell to the ground. There continued to be 20-30 bats every night. Hundreds of bats returned during the last week of September. I watched and counted for a half hour before dark one night and counted 1,409 bats exit. A neighbor whose night vision is better than mine said at least as many bats emerged after dark as before dark. That meant our colony had close to 3,000 bats. The next night I took pictures with my digital camera as the bats flew out.
Since the management company wasn't getting rid of the bats, and since I was the one who forbade them to use naphthalene, I decided to take action. On September 29 I went to Lowe's and Home Depot in search of ¼-inch polypropylene screen. Neither store had it, nor anything close. Both stores had window screen and bird netting (to protect fruit trees), but no screen size in between. The holes in the bird netting were too large (at least ½-inch), plus the netting was so light and flimsy I was afraid it would work like a fish net and entangle the bats. I settled for the cheapest nylon window screen. I designed and partially built my screen before going onto the roof. I straightened out metal clothes hangers and threaded them along the bottom of the screen for weight. I covered the hanger ends with duct tape to prevent slippage. During the nightly watches neighbors had seen bats exiting from the base of a chimney. I inspected the base of the chimney and discovered a metal plate had popped up leaving a large opening into the attic through which I could smell bats. I got nails and hammered the plate down securely. I installed my screen. Duct tape does not adhere to screen well. So I put duct tape along the upper screen edges and stapled the duct tape to the screen. Duct tape sticks to vinyl flashing well and it sticks to itself. I used duct tape to hold the screen to the flashing. (I stapled the top edge of the screen to narrow wooden boards which I laid along the edge of the roof and duct-taped to the shingles. I didn't want to make holes in the shingles with nails. Duct tape doesn't hold well through wind and rain. Later I used one screw in the center of each wooden board affixing it to the flashing.) The screen concept was good, but I hadn't made it wide enough. The next day I added an extension and wedged duct tape into the crevice under the flashing on both sides of the screen.
The screen worked! The nightly bat count went from over 1,400 to 2 bats in one day. The two bats that continued to come and go were seen landing on the brick wall below the screen and crawling up the wall behind the screen to the opening. I don't know if those two bats were a different species, smarter, or just the most persistent. A few days later those two bats appeared to be gone too. We decided to wait for cold weather, remove the screen, and seal the crevice.
On January 17, 2007 men came, removed my screen, and hammered the flashing. I alerted management that the crevice still looked too wide. Men came and hammered the flashing again. The crevice still looked too wide. During February a few bats returned and on March 3 I counted 27 bats come out from under the flashing. I had gotten rid of the bats only to have the management company remove my screen, not seal the crevice, and let the bats back in! If 27 bats could get in, so could 3,000.
Men came and installed a new exclusion screen, but they didn't make it hang straight, they didn't weight it, and they didn't seal the crevices on either side of the screen. More bats came until there were hundreds again. On March 9 a man came and removed the flashing, in order to install new flashing and seal the attic. Neighbors saw what he was doing, knew there were hundreds of bats in the attic, and made the man leave without sealing the opening. With the vinyl flashing gone I could see the opening the bats had been using. It was perhaps eight inches by one inch. The bats had been coming out of that hole and crawling behind the flashing to drop out from behind the flashing.
Finally the management company did what should have been done the previous summer. They hired a company that knows how to get rid of bats, Critter Control. The two guys that came from Critter Control were great. They examined the roof for other possible openings and asked me a lot of questions. They understood the problem, knew exactly what to do, and had the right tools. They sealed the narrow crevices between the wood and the brick with a polymer foam resin. They left one hole at the peak to which they attached an exit pipe. They said the bats would exit through the pipe but not be able to find their way back in through the pipe.
That night some bats discovered they could squeeze out from under a roof shingle at the corner. After four days all the bats had found their way out, either through the pipe or the corner. The following week the Critter Control guys sealed the corner under the shingle and decided to leave the pipe up a few more days in case bats had been getting back in through the corner. All the bats are gone now. The Critter Control guys came and removed the exit pipe on April 10. On May 8 new flashing was installed along the roof's edge.
Bat Behavior
I watched the bats almost every night for several months. I made several interesting observations. I do not know if these observations were true only for the spiecies I watched, or if other species of bats act the same way.
The colony contained at least two distinct groups, possibly different species. Each group had its own preferred exit time. One group exited 30-40 minutes before the second group. The second group exited for about ten minutes right before dark. In February I noticed the bats began their exit each day about three minutes later than the previous day.
Bats do not feed every night. During an exclusion the exclusion device should be left up for several days to make sure all the bats have exited.
Bats come and go all night. During the nights when there were only two bats I noticed they would feed for two to three hours, return, wait a few hours, and leave again.
Bats do not only feed at night. During February when the nights were cold bats left to feed in broad daylight and returned around sundown before the temperature dropped.
Bats often urinate immediately after they exit. I was hit several times during my first few bat watches and wore a wide-brimmed hat thereafter.
Bats can fly and feed in the rain. Some days when it was drizzling I assumed the bats wouldn't feed. I assumed the rain would interfere with their echolocation navigation. I assumed the rain would down the flying insects on which bats feed. My assumptions were wrong. I saw bats leaving to feed several times during gentle rains.
I read on at least one web site that bats don't fly when the air temperature is below 45 degrees Fahrenheit. That's not true. I saw bats leaving and returning several times when the temperature was about 40 degrees Fahrenheit.
Bats are programmed to enter a structure exactly where they exited. This behavior became apparent to me as I fine-tuned my exclusion screen. When I put the screen up the bats didn't want to exit through the opening behind the screen because they couldn't get back in that way. Even though there was a wide opening for them to drop through behind the screen they crawled behind the flashing until they found a spot where they could drop out from behind the flashing. Later, they returned to the spot where they had dropped out of the flashing rather than to the opening behind the screen. When Critter Control installed the exit pipe the bats refused to exit through the pipe for hours. Instead, the bats searched for another way out. That's when they discovered they could push up a corner shingle to get out.
With the occasional rare exception bats land directly on the opening from which they exited. If the opening is difficult to get into, a bat may make many landing attempts before successfully entering the hole. A bat will try to land on the hole, fail, fly another loop, and repeat the landing attempt. In general a bat will not land near a hole and crawl to the hole.
I live in a multifamily condominium in the northwestern part of South Carolina. My unit consists of two floors at one end of the building. For two summers I heard noises in my outer wall. I assumed the noises were made by birds, since birds getting into the attic has been a recurring problem here. One evening in late August 2006, neighbors noticed bats emerging from under the vinyl flashing at the roof's peak. I went out and watched. There were hundreds of bats. Neighbors contacted the company that manages the condominiums. The management company hired a local pest-control company that wanted to hang bags of BAT-A-Way (i.e. naphthalene, moth balls) in the attic.
I am sensitive to moth balls. Whenever I am exposed to moth balls I get a bad headache, my eyes burn, and my stomach feels queasy. I would not allow the pest-control company to put naphthalene in the attic. I researched naphthalene and discovered it not only causes headaches and nausea, but it can also damage the liver and kidneys, and may cause cataracts. Here are two material safety data sheets on Naphthalene: MSDS 1, MSDS 2. Many Internet sites sell naphthalene bat repellent, however they list the states to which they can not legally ship the product, which seems to confirm the hazardous nature of the product. I found several sites that say bat repellents do not work. One such site, Bat Repellent - Does It Work? says the following, "There is no such thing as an effective bat repellent. Period.... The internet is full of bat deterrent products, but none of them work.... I've seen people dump OVER 50 POUNDS of mothballs in an attic where bats are living, and they don't care in the slightest. They keep using the area."
There is an effective and humane way to get rid of bats (sometimes called "bat exclusion"). The beauty and cleverness of getting rid of bats through exclusion is that the bats leave on their own. There's no attempt at bat removal. You make it so bats can't get back in after they have left. The next time the bats go out to feed on insects they can't get back in.
Exclusions should not be attempted if there are baby bats in the building. Like all baby mammals, baby bats are nursed by their mothers until they can fly to hunt for insects on their own. In this part of the United States the nursery period seems to be late May to late August. You should wait until all the babies can fly before excluding the bats.
Bat Exclusion Steps
1. Discover all the openings bats can use to get in and out of the building.
2. Seal all the openings except for the most-used opening.
3. Make it so bats can exit the most-used opening, but can't get back in.
4. Wait until all the bats have left.
5. Permanently seal the last opening.
Hundreds of bats left a couple of days after we discovered them. In the following days only 20-30 bats left to feed each night. A man came and hung sheets of black plastic attached to the flashing with duct tape. The plan was that the bats would drop from behind the flashing and not be able to find their way back in. It didn't work. More often than not the plastic was standing out from the building due to the breeze, then it blew onto the roof so that it wasn't hanging at all, then the duct tape came loose and the plastic fell to the ground. There continued to be 20-30 bats every night. Hundreds of bats returned during the last week of September. I watched and counted for a half hour before dark one night and counted 1,409 bats exit. A neighbor whose night vision is better than mine said at least as many bats emerged after dark as before dark. That meant our colony had close to 3,000 bats. The next night I took pictures with my digital camera as the bats flew out.
Since the management company wasn't getting rid of the bats, and since I was the one who forbade them to use naphthalene, I decided to take action. On September 29 I went to Lowe's and Home Depot in search of ¼-inch polypropylene screen. Neither store had it, nor anything close. Both stores had window screen and bird netting (to protect fruit trees), but no screen size in between. The holes in the bird netting were too large (at least ½-inch), plus the netting was so light and flimsy I was afraid it would work like a fish net and entangle the bats. I settled for the cheapest nylon window screen. I designed and partially built my screen before going onto the roof. I straightened out metal clothes hangers and threaded them along the bottom of the screen for weight. I covered the hanger ends with duct tape to prevent slippage. During the nightly watches neighbors had seen bats exiting from the base of a chimney. I inspected the base of the chimney and discovered a metal plate had popped up leaving a large opening into the attic through which I could smell bats. I got nails and hammered the plate down securely. I installed my screen. Duct tape does not adhere to screen well. So I put duct tape along the upper screen edges and stapled the duct tape to the screen. Duct tape sticks to vinyl flashing well and it sticks to itself. I used duct tape to hold the screen to the flashing. (I stapled the top edge of the screen to narrow wooden boards which I laid along the edge of the roof and duct-taped to the shingles. I didn't want to make holes in the shingles with nails. Duct tape doesn't hold well through wind and rain. Later I used one screw in the center of each wooden board affixing it to the flashing.) The screen concept was good, but I hadn't made it wide enough. The next day I added an extension and wedged duct tape into the crevice under the flashing on both sides of the screen.
The screen worked! The nightly bat count went from over 1,400 to 2 bats in one day. The two bats that continued to come and go were seen landing on the brick wall below the screen and crawling up the wall behind the screen to the opening. I don't know if those two bats were a different species, smarter, or just the most persistent. A few days later those two bats appeared to be gone too. We decided to wait for cold weather, remove the screen, and seal the crevice.
On January 17, 2007 men came, removed my screen, and hammered the flashing. I alerted management that the crevice still looked too wide. Men came and hammered the flashing again. The crevice still looked too wide. During February a few bats returned and on March 3 I counted 27 bats come out from under the flashing. I had gotten rid of the bats only to have the management company remove my screen, not seal the crevice, and let the bats back in! If 27 bats could get in, so could 3,000.
Men came and installed a new exclusion screen, but they didn't make it hang straight, they didn't weight it, and they didn't seal the crevices on either side of the screen. More bats came until there were hundreds again. On March 9 a man came and removed the flashing, in order to install new flashing and seal the attic. Neighbors saw what he was doing, knew there were hundreds of bats in the attic, and made the man leave without sealing the opening. With the vinyl flashing gone I could see the opening the bats had been using. It was perhaps eight inches by one inch. The bats had been coming out of that hole and crawling behind the flashing to drop out from behind the flashing.
Finally the management company did what should have been done the previous summer. They hired a company that knows how to get rid of bats, Critter Control. The two guys that came from Critter Control were great. They examined the roof for other possible openings and asked me a lot of questions. They understood the problem, knew exactly what to do, and had the right tools. They sealed the narrow crevices between the wood and the brick with a polymer foam resin. They left one hole at the peak to which they attached an exit pipe. They said the bats would exit through the pipe but not be able to find their way back in through the pipe.
That night some bats discovered they could squeeze out from under a roof shingle at the corner. After four days all the bats had found their way out, either through the pipe or the corner. The following week the Critter Control guys sealed the corner under the shingle and decided to leave the pipe up a few more days in case bats had been getting back in through the corner. All the bats are gone now. The Critter Control guys came and removed the exit pipe on April 10. On May 8 new flashing was installed along the roof's edge.
Bat Behavior
I watched the bats almost every night for several months. I made several interesting observations. I do not know if these observations were true only for the spiecies I watched, or if other species of bats act the same way.
The colony contained at least two distinct groups, possibly different species. Each group had its own preferred exit time. One group exited 30-40 minutes before the second group. The second group exited for about ten minutes right before dark. In February I noticed the bats began their exit each day about three minutes later than the previous day.
Bats do not feed every night. During an exclusion the exclusion device should be left up for several days to make sure all the bats have exited.
Bats come and go all night. During the nights when there were only two bats I noticed they would feed for two to three hours, return, wait a few hours, and leave again.
Bats do not only feed at night. During February when the nights were cold bats left to feed in broad daylight and returned around sundown before the temperature dropped.
Bats often urinate immediately after they exit. I was hit several times during my first few bat watches and wore a wide-brimmed hat thereafter.
Bats can fly and feed in the rain. Some days when it was drizzling I assumed the bats wouldn't feed. I assumed the rain would interfere with their echolocation navigation. I assumed the rain would down the flying insects on which bats feed. My assumptions were wrong. I saw bats leaving to feed several times during gentle rains.
I read on at least one web site that bats don't fly when the air temperature is below 45 degrees Fahrenheit. That's not true. I saw bats leaving and returning several times when the temperature was about 40 degrees Fahrenheit.
Bats are programmed to enter a structure exactly where they exited. This behavior became apparent to me as I fine-tuned my exclusion screen. When I put the screen up the bats didn't want to exit through the opening behind the screen because they couldn't get back in that way. Even though there was a wide opening for them to drop through behind the screen they crawled behind the flashing until they found a spot where they could drop out from behind the flashing. Later, they returned to the spot where they had dropped out of the flashing rather than to the opening behind the screen. When Critter Control installed the exit pipe the bats refused to exit through the pipe for hours. Instead, the bats searched for another way out. That's when they discovered they could push up a corner shingle to get out.
With the occasional rare exception bats land directly on the opening from which they exited. If the opening is difficult to get into, a bat may make many landing attempts before successfully entering the hole. A bat will try to land on the hole, fail, fly another loop, and repeat the landing attempt. In general a bat will not land near a hole and crawl to the hole.
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