Flood Myths and Lost Underwater Forests and Cities

At the end of the last Ice Age, which occurred between 17,000 years ago and 7000 years ago, the ice caps of northern Europe and North America melted causing huge flooding across the earth. This caused a rise of more than 100 meters in the sea-level and about 25 million square kilometrres of land being swallowed up by the rushing waves.

The sea levels around Britain were about 100 meters lower than they are today and as recently as the 10th century, a forest of submerged trees could be observed at low tide, at various places along Britain's coastline. In Cornwall, the remains of a petrified forest can be seen at certain times of low tide. Britain, in fact, only became an island properly in 5500 BCE.

Submerged forest at Mount's Bay, Cornwall

The Altai Flood, which resulted from the emptying of two interconnected lakes on the Chuya River, was one of the largest of these megafloods, which swept through what is today central Russia, creating terraces and strandlines, where the exceptional events took place.  The various megafloods of the last Ice Age not only created odd landscapes and altered the circulation of the oceans, and changing Earth’s climate, but also caused the loss of some cities to the sea.

The flood myth of Mahabalipuram, were written down by British traveller J. Goldingham, who visited the Indian town in 1798. These stories told by local fishermen told of a great flood consuming a city over 1,000 years ago in one day.

The British television presenter Graham Hancock took the stories of an underground city off Mahabalipuram, India, seriously and his interest led to the English-based Scientific Exploration Society, teaming up with India’s National Institute of Oceanography. An amazing discovery was the result. Submerged structures were found off the coast of Mahabalipuram, such as sandstone walls, a grid of streets and remains of a seaport, some 70 feet beneath the sea. Pottery, at the site, has been dated to 3528 BC.

Interestingly, Australian Aboriginal storytelling also tells of the rise of sea levels which reached their present level about 7,000 years ago. Some of these stories are factual and relate to the loss of kangaroo hunting grounds and others involve myth, magic and ancestral beings. Never-the-less, if these stories have been passed down from the times the great sea level rises 7000 years ago, this means that about 300 generations have continued the storytelling tradition from that time. Amazing!

The Odd Mental Breakdowns of Japanese People in Paris

Japanese visitors to Paris are especially susceptible to Paris syndrome, a psychiatric condition which is the result of finding out that Paris is not the city of their expectations.

Almost always, Paris syndrome is experienced by Japanese tourists who have an over romanticised concept of how Paris will be. The shock these Japanese tourists experience can result in acute delusional states, hallucinations, anxiety, dizziness, and sweating.

Professor Hiroaki Ota, a Japanese psychiatrist working in France, is believed to be the first person to diagnose Paris Syndrome in 1986. According to the Japanese embassy in France, about 20 Japanese tourists a year are affected by Paris syndrome.

Paris syndrome stems from the frequent idealisation of the city of Paris by the Japanese, especially, by the media, which can result in a mental breakdown. Many Japanese tourists are expecting Paris to be a place of cobblestone streets, beautifully dressed people who look like models, superb patisseries and the style and sophistication of Chanel and Louis Vuitton. So, it comes as a shock when theses tourists encounter the real Paris, which includes frequent rudeness, dirt and rubbish and the many homeless and begging people.

The Japanese Embassy runs a 24-hour helpline for expatriates experiencing the syndrome.

The Surprising Origins of The Days of the Week and Those Russians

The seven day week was in use right back with the ancient Babylonians, around 700BC, when the Babylonians associated seven gods they worshipped, with celestial bodies visible to them in the sky; they then associated these gods with days of the week. The ancient Egyptians and Chinese, however, had a 10 day week, probably related to having 10 fingers. The ancient Babylonian system won.

The Greeks also adopted the seven day week but translated the Babylonian names into Greek names from their astrology and religion, such as Ares, Hermes, Zeus, Aphrodite, and Cronus.

The Birth of Venus, Sandro Botticelli

Then, along came the conquering Romans, who adopted the same seven day system but translated the celestial bodies into Latin names: Sol, Luna, Mars, Mercury, Jupiter, Venus and Saturn. Names which are still evident in the French days of the week, used today.

Lundi moon day

Mardi 'Mars day'

Mercredi 'Mercury day'

Jeudi 'Jupiter day'

Vendredi 'Venus day'

Samedi 'day of the Sabbath'

Dimanche 'day of the Lord'

The seven-day week system spread to Britain and the Anglo-Saxons translated the planetary names but used the names of their own deities, which is why in English we have days of Tiw, Woden, Thor and Freya; but they kept Saturn.

Monday moon day

Tuesday Tiu's day

Wednesday Woden's day

Thursday Thor's day

Friday Freya's day

Saturday Saturn day

Sunday Sun's day

The seven day system spread around the world and was translated in terms of local religious deities and customs.

Japanese

月曜日 (getsuyōbi) 'moon day'

火曜日 (kayōbi) 'fire day'

水曜日 (suiyōbi) 'water day'

木曜日 (mokuyōbi) 'wood day'

金曜日 (kinyōbi) 'metal day'

土曜日 (doyōbi) 'earth day'

日曜日 (nichiyōbi) 'sun day'

in AD 321, the Emperor Constantine decreed that the "dies solis" (Sunday) would be the day of rest for Christians; this also served to separate the Christians from the Jews, as the Jewish rest day, called Shabbat, is observed from a few minutes before sunset on Friday evening until the appearance of three stars in the sky on Saturday night.

The Soviet Union under Stalin got rid of the seven day week for a period of 11 years. Called the nepreryvka, this “continuous working week” was five days long, with rest days staggered during the 5 week days. There were two main reasons for the nepreryvka: to increase productivity and to make religious worship too difficult. The seven day week was reinstated in 1940.

The Founding Father Who Cut Up The Bible

Thomas Jefferson is one of America's most important and beloved Founding Fathers. He was the principal author of the Declaration of Independence, and the third President of the United States. But imagine if the conservatives of the times in which he lived, knew that he had very unusual religious views, different to almost everyone around him. He once wrote, “I am a sect by myself.”

Jefferson was born into the Church of England, which was also Virginia’s official religion. He was taught at school and college by Anglican clergymen and attended church services all his life. But, Jefferson did not accept the dogma of religion unthinkingly, he was critical and questioning.

Thomas Jefferson, 1791

“Question with boldness even the existence of a God,” he advised his nephew, Peter Carr in 1787, “because, if there be one, he must more approve the homage of reason, than that of blindfolded fear.”

Scan of the title page of original copy of The Life and Morals of Jesus of Nazareth (Jefferson Bible; c. 1820) 

In 1804, on one winter's evening, Jefferson took two Bibles from the shelf and opened them to the story of Jesus. Then he grabbed a knife, or maybe a razor, and extracted those parts of the Bible that he believed in and pasted them into a blank folio. He called the newly created book, “The Philosophy of Jesus of Nazareth.” The remaining parts of the two Bibles would have been unusable and were probably relegated to the rubbish pile. Afterwards, in a letter to John Adams, Jefferson wrote, "The worthy parts of the Bible were easily distinguishable from the worthless—“as distinguishable, as diamonds in a dunghill.”

In 1820, at the age of seventy-seven, Jefferson had retired from politics and was living at Monticello. This time, using six Bibles: two in English, two in French, and two containing both Latin and Greek, Jefferson cut up his bibles again, to create another edited version of the New Testament, in four languages.

Calling the book, “The Life and Morals of Jesus of Nazareth”, Jefferson left out the Bible's miracles, any reference that Jesus is God, the virgin birth and Jesus walking on water, or, multiplying loaves and fishes, and raising Lazarus from the dead. Jefferson’s book ends with Jesus being buried on Good Friday. No mention is made to the resurrection or Easter Sunday.

In a letter to his friend, William Short, Jefferson said that he wanted to separate the “lovely benevolence” from the “absurdity.” He also wrote to another friend, in regard to his bibles, that he was “in the habit of reading nightly from them before going to bed.” 

Monticello was the primary plantation of Thomas Jefferson

Jefferson was a deist, which means that while he believed that God was responsible for the creation of the universe, he did not believe that this god interfered directly with the created world. Jefferson also rejected beliefs in the supernatural and miracles. Jefferson, however, did believe in Jesus as a philosopher and great moral teacher.

The Temple to The The God Mithras Under London

Mithraism was a mystery religion practised by the Romans during the Roman Empire; especially, from the 1st to the 4th century CE.  This religion, which involved the worship of the god Mithras, had many common elements with Christianity and it was also a rival of early Christianity.

Mithras, it was believed, was born from the earth, out of a broken rock. He had a torch in one hand and a sword in the other, which represented his two roles as sun god and war god.

Replica of the head of Mithras, London.

In 55 BCE the Roman general, Emperor Julius Caesar invaded Britain, with two Roman legions. The second invasion of Britain occurred in the following year. Then the Romans left the Britons in peace for almost a century.

In 43 A.D, the Emperor Claudius organised the final and successful Roman invasion of Britain, with the major battle, fought close to Rochester, on the banks of the River Medway. Thirty years later, the West Country of England, as well as much of Wales, had been conquered by the Romans.

The Romans brought new plants, animals, religions and the idea of reading and counting, to the Celtic Tribes of Britain. They also built roads.

Londinium was the Roman name given to the settlement the Romans established on the River Thames, about 43 AD. Now the city of London. By the later decades of the 1st century, Londinium had a population of between 30,000 or 60,000 people.

Christianity did not arrive in Britain until the second century. But before this, both the native Britons and Romans practised a variety of Pagan religions.

In 1954, a Roman-era Temple of Mithras was found under London, in Walbrook, which was built about 240AD. The Mithras god’s head found at the site was sent to the Museum of London; but the original and irreplaceable timber benches were simply thrown away.

Ruins of the Temple of Mithras from Roman times, London (2010)

This Roman Temple of Mithras has now been restored to its original Roman ground level, seven metres below the streets of modern London and it can be found underneath the new Bloomberg London office, in Walbrook.

London's Roman-era Temple of Mithras

By 391AD, Christianity was the official Roman religion. In 410 AD, the Romans left Britain to defend the collapse of Rome and its empire. 

Artifacts found at the London, Roman Temple of Mithras, on display at Museum of London

Roman Emperor Honorius sent a goodbye letter to the people of Britain. He wrote, “fight bravely and defend your lives...you are on your own now.”

The American Heiress Who Built a Home For Ghosts

In 1862, Sarah Pardee married William Wirt Winchester, the only son of Oliver Winchester, who had invented the famous Winchester “repeating” rifle. This invention allowed the Winchester's family to amass a vast fortune. Sarah and William, however, only had one child who sadly, died in infancy.

Hand-tinted ambrotype of Sarah Winchester taken in 1865

Sarah's husband, William, died of tuberculosis in 1881and Sarah inherited the estate of about $20 million (equivalent to $521 million in 2017 or $25,000 a day).

In 1884, Sarah moved to the San Francisco Bay area, to be closer to her relatives. Later she bought an eight-room farmhouse owned by Dr Robert Caldwell, in the Santa Clara Valley (now San Jose). Sarah then hired about 20 carpenters and began a vast, building project creating a Queen Anne revival mansion until an earthquake in 1906 caused so much damage that she moved to another of her many houses, for the last sixteen years of her life..

Sarah Winchester, circa 1920

Soon Sarah became a recluse, as her 8 room home morphed into a 160 room, seven-story mansion, with 2000 doors and 40 staircases; some that went nowhere -one set of stairs ending abruptly at the ceiling. One door led to an 8-foot drop into a kitchen sink and another opened onto a 15-foot drop into bushes. One room has a normal-sized door, next to a child-sized door; one cupboard extended through 30 rooms in the house. One. of the builders who worked on the house once recalled, “Sarah simply ordered the error torn out, sealed up, built over or around, or … totally ignored.” Eventually, the house had 13 bathrooms and 6 kitchens. Sarah also had a preoccupation with the number 13, throughout the house, most notably in the panels of the distinctive "spider web" windows.

According to an article in The New York Times, dated, June 1911, Sarah's building mania was motivated by "a message from the spirit world warning her that all would be well so long as the sound of hammers did not cease in the house or on the grounds."

And whether fact or fiction, who can say, but the story goes that Sarah felt haunted by the ghosts of those that had been killed with Winchester rifles and that she was trying to appease these spirits. One of Sarah's relatives later said that Sarah was “under the thrall” of a medium who warned her about evil spirits. Others claim that Sarah was merely depressed and grieving and building the house, disorienting, monstrous and strange as it was, was simply an outlet for her loneliness and grief.

Sarah Winchester is portrayed by Helen Mirren in a supernatural horror film called Winchester (2018). You can also visit the real Winchester Mystery House, located in San Jose, California; the house which grew and grew and grew, so that it could house the ever-increasing number of Winchester rifle victims. Or, so it is said.

Winchester House, 525 S. Winchester Blvd. San Jose

Winchester-Mystery-House spider-web windows

Stairs to nowhere

The toilet doors replaced with glass windows

Where Two or More Brothers Are Married to The Same Wife

Monogamy is probably the most common system of marriage throughout the world; it involves one man married to one woman. Polygyny, however, is the marriage of one man to more than one woman (like some Mormon sects), and polyandry, is the marriage of one woman to more than one man.
Fraternal polyandry is the most common type of polyandry. This is a type of marriage in which several brothers share one wife. This social practice has, and still sometimes does, occur in certain villages in Tibet, Nepal, and Northern India.

The custom of fraternal polyandry is believed to have come about as a way to make the inheritance of property easier and to prevent the break up of plots of land into smaller portions, by preserving large parcels of land. In doing this, families have a means to maintain resources, wealth and social standing, by a group of fathers passing a farm to a group of sons. If the farm was divided between all the sons, the land would become smaller and smaller and poverty would be the result.

The South American Yanomamö people who live in the Amazon Rainforest along the borders of Venezuela and Brazil practice polyandry as well as monogamy and polygyny. 

In the Himalayan regions of Tibet and Nepal, Fraternal polyandry is a solution to the lack of land available to some of these communities. Here a woman's husbands, who are usually brothers, will share the wife and the property and also share the children, with each brother being expected to treat all the offspring of the marriage as his own. 

In India, fraternal polyandry exists among various groups like the Khasa of Dehradun. Non-fraternal polyandry exists among some other groups, like the Kota people of the Nilgiri Hills in South India. In this society, a man’s brothers are free to have sexual relations with his wife, and when the husband is ill or incapacitated, or in any way unable to fulfil his duties as a husband, his brothers take his place. Basically, the brothers become secondary husbands.

If a husband from the Kota tribe is away overnight, he will appoint one of his brothers to sleep with his wife so that sorcerers from a nearby tribe cannot take advantage of the lone woman. Husbands from this tribe also learn not to be jealous of the relationship between their brothers and their wife.

No, You Don't Really Have Blue Eyes

Light from the sun is made of all the colours of the rainbow.

Light dispersion

Your eye colour is determined by the amount of melanin present in the iris of your eye. Melanin is a brown pigment that controls the colour of our skin, eyes and hair. There is no blue or green pigment,however. Only brown.

In dark eyes, the iris contains pigment granules, while blue eyes and the eyes of albinos lack pigment.
So, Blue eyes don't contain any blue pigment at all and the colour that we see is actually caused by the Tyndall effect, which is similar to the Rayleigh effect, which makes the sky look blue.

In our eye, longer wavelengths of light tend to be absorbed by the dark underlying epithelium, while shorter wavelengths are reflected and undergo Tyndall scattering in the stroma, which is the upper layer of two in the iris. People with blue eyes have a completely colourless stroma and no excess collagen deposits. This means that all the light that enters the stroma it is scattered back into the atmosphere, resulting in a blue eye colour.

Research shows that people with blue eyes are all related to a single, common ancestor, who lived 6,000-10,000 years ago when a genetic mutation took place.
Also, there are no blue birds. Blue-coloured birds such as the blue-and-yellow macaw, appear blue because nanochannel structures on the feathers of birds, alter their light-reflective properties and scatter light strongly at specific frequencies. Some birds also get their colour from pigments in the foods they eat. Which means that the colour of flamingoes comes from eating prawns (shrimps).

“Why is the sky blue?”. When light hits the particles of nitrogen and oxygen in our atmosphere, it scatters in all directions. Blue light has a smaller wavelength than red light, so it scatters to a greater extent than red light. So, It is this scattered light that gives the surrounding sky its brightness and its colour.

“Why are sunsets red?” When the Sun appears lower in the sky, the light that reaches us has already travelled through a lot more of the atmosphere, as sunlight travels a long way through the atmosphere to reach our eyes, which means that much of the blue has scattered out long before the light reaches us, so the sky appears redder.

Clouds appear white because the water droplets are much larger than the wavelengths of light and so all wavelengths of light are equally scattered in all directions.