10 Residents of the Capuchin Catacombs

10 Capuchin Catacomb Hallway
16th Century to 1920

The Capuchin Catacombs are located in the city of Palermo, which is the capital of Sicily. Interred in the Capuchin Catacombs are approximately 8000 corpses dating from the 1500’s to 1920. In the early 16th century, the church originally meant to preserve and make accessible the bodies of monks and friars in order to ask for their intercessions – face to face. The trend caught on, and soon the general populous also wanted to be preserved and buried in the catacombs so families can visit them.

9 Brother Silvestro of Gubbio
1599

Brother Silvestro is the oldest monk to be buried in the Capuchin Catacombs. It’s fascinating to observe his clothing. The simple headpiece, the humble brown robe. You can easily imagine him walking the monastery grounds, praying at the altar, drawing water, and eking out a living with his fellow brothers.

8 Priests

Priests, Bishops, and Cardinals have traditionally dressed themselves to the hilt! Alas, look at them now. Once powerful men, now powerful men of the catacombs. Dressed in opposite fashion of the humble monks and nuns, imagine the colors, the excitement, and the pomp and circumstance at the time when these church leaders ran about the city and cathedrals amidst the horse clops and aromas of incense and pasta sauce. Still today, especially in Rome, a person can observe ornate high ranking church officials in their colorful garb bustle about in the modern world.

7 Two Painting Brothers

As monks, nuns, and priests filled the catacombs, the common folk wanted in on the action. This photo is fascinating because these two corpses are brothers, painters, and just ordinary men. As I study their coats and headwear, I wonder what they painted. Frescoes? Eateries? Homes and fences and other popular demands? Did they do restoration work on prominent art? Regardless, a lot of beauty flowed through those hands. Who knows? Their handy work is probably still visible today!

6 Screamers

These corpses are not really screaming. This is the natural result of decaying muscle and ligaments with the help of gravity. Very shocking and eerie at first, but really very natural and scientific.

5 Woman and Child

Dusty, centuries old mummies may or may not muster much emotional feeling. But the woman and child shown here not only invoke feelings, but elicit curiosity to the histories they have to tell us. It was fashionable for a time to pose bodies as they were in life. Here the woman, maybe a mother with her daughter, are dressed very sharply for all to remember. Wonderfully preserved for generations in their beautiful dresses. Quite possibly victims of an illness or epidemic that struck it’s victims indiscriminately. A brutal reminder that there are forces beyond our control.

4 Teacher’s Department

Capuchin Catacomb has divisions for men, women, children, professionals, and more. Here is a group of teachers. They may have taught children reading, writing, arithmetic, or maybe they taught higher levels of education. Maybe they were liberal with rulers and switch sticks! But one thing is clear – though here they lay, even today we reap the rewards from their work done generations ago. They educated the masses in their time. Their pupils built on, worked from, and refined that education throughout the ages. Teachers of all ages are one of the most important and fundamental needs of civilization. Their bodies are temporal. Their work eternal.

3 Colonel Enea Di Giuliano
France – 1848

The Colonel, in a French Bourbon uniform, is an outstanding relic from the past. His uniform floods the imagination of what an officer’s life might have been like in the 1800’s. What code of conduct did he adhere to? Was he a formally educated noble or did he earn his rank through hard work and battle? I can easily imagine this proud man standing at attention, or demanding attention from subordinates. His hat atop his head, cradled in his arms, or sitting proudly in front of him at his desk.

2 Bartolomeo Megna
“the Giant”

Bartolomeo Megna’s hands are tied, not because he was a prisoner, but to keep them folded in front of him. Similarly, if you further pursue other mummies in the catacombs, you will notice many methods of fastening. Limbs have been known to fall off from time to time. Bartolomeo Megna was a big fellow. He may have had a few friends of smaller stature who looked up to him as friend and protector. Who knows?

1 Rosalia Lombardo
The Sleeping Beauty – 1920

This photo gets me down every time I see it. Rosalia was only two years old when she passed away to what is believed to be Pneumonia. But she has a special place in the hearts of visitors and caretakers. She was the last to be interred at the Capuchin Catacombs in 1920.

6 Insane Discoveries That Science Can't Explain

The Mystery:

The Voynich manuscript is an ancient book that has thwarted all attempts at deciphering its contents. And it's not like some idiot just scribbled a bunch of nonsense on paper and went, "Figure THIS out, ****wads." It is actually an organized book with a consistent script, discernible organization and detailed illustrations.

It appears to be a real language--just one that nobody has seen before. And it really does appear to mean something. But nobody knows what.



Translation: "...and when you get her to put the tennis racket in her mouth, have her stand in a fountain for a while. Then draw pictures of her."

here is not even a consensus on who wrote it, or even when it was written. And we sure as don't know why.


Why Can't They Solve It?

Could you? Look at this



Don't even try. Expert military code-breakers, cryptographers, mathematicians, linguists, people who get paid to find and decipher patterns, have all been left unable to decipher a single word.

As you can imagine, proposed solutions have been all over the board, from reasonable to completely clownshit. Some say it's an unbreakable code that requires a key to solve. Some say it's a hoax, and a damned fine one if we do say ourselves. Some say it's glossolalia, which is the fine art of speaking or writing something you don't understand but that is being channeled to you by God or aliens or whatever (note that the word was chosen specifically to make you sound retarded when saying it).

Our Guess:


It's written in English, by a person who was extremely shitty at writing in English.


The Antikythera Mechanism



The Mystery:

The Antikythera mechanism is an ancient, intricate machine found in a shipwreck near Greece that dates back to about 100 BC. The Antikythera mechanism contains gears and structures that were not found in devices again for 1000 years, and only then when the Muslims and Chinese were busy inventing shit while the Europeans were busy killing each other.

Why Can't They Solve It?

First, no one can agree on where the Antikythera mechanism was made or who designed it. Popular belief was that it was made by the Greeks due to its instructions all being in Greek (about a million of our tax dollars were probably spent arriving at that genius conclusion) but serious research published in serious places suggested the design came from Sicily.



And a billion parts with indecipherable instructions suggest it comes from Ikea. Ba-zing!

The mechanism, aside from placing you at serious risk for severing a finger, was supposedly used to figure out astronomical positions. The problem with that is that at the time this thing was made, no one had yet discovered laws of gravity or how heavenly bodies moved.

In other words, the Antikythera mechanism appears to have functions that no one alive at that time would have understood, and no single mechanical purpose of that era (such as navigating ships) explains the crazy number of functions and settings this machine has

Our Guess:



It's a scrap from a time machine that exploded the moment it arrived in the past.



The Baigong Pipes



The Mystery:

In an area of China not known to ever contain people, let alone industry, there are three mysterious triangular openings on top of a mountain containing hundreds of ancient rusty iron pipes of unknown origin. Some of the pipes go deep into the mountain. Some of them go into a nearby salt water lake. There are more pipes in the lake, and more still running east-west along the lake shore. Some of the larger pipes are 40 cm in diameter, are of uniform size and are placed in what seems like purposeful patterns.


Hey, vagina caves.

So what's the big deal? Well, archaeologists have dated the pipes to a time when people were still trying to figure out how to cook meat without setting their back-hair on fire, let alone casting iron.

Why Can't They Solve It?

Oddly, the pipes are clean of debris despite being older than Zeus. This suggests that they were not simply shoved into the ground for the hell of it, but actually used for something. Oh, and did we mention the mountain is completely inhospitable to human life?

As usual, a faction of nutjobs believes the Baigong Pipes to be an ancient astronomy lab or even spacecraft launching site left by extraterrestrials. This is possible, since the pipes contain a proportion of silica close to what occurs on Mars. Of course, the manhole cover outside your house does also, so take that with a grain of salt.



Some say they are a hoax. We must politely remind those people that you can't wipe your *** in China without the government knowing, let alone set up a iron forge and start burying pipes in the ground for the purpose of confusing passers-by.

Our Guess:

Long ago, a group of frustrated fishermen with lots and lots of spare time spent their whole lives building a plumbing system to drain that nearby lake. Then they figured they'd just walk right down there with wheelbarrows, scoop up the fish and eat like kings.




The Baigong Pipes



The Mystery:

In an area of China not known to ever contain people, let alone industry, there are three mysterious triangular openings on top of a mountain containing hundreds of ancient rusty iron pipes of unknown origin. Some of the pipes go deep into the mountain. Some of them go into a nearby salt water lake. There are more pipes in the lake, and more still running east-west along the lake shore. Some of the larger pipes are 40 cm in diameter, are of uniform size and are placed in what seems like purposeful patterns.


Hey, vagina caves.

So what's the big deal? Well, archaeologists have dated the pipes to a time when people were still trying to figure out how to cook meat without setting their back-hair on fire, let alone casting iron.

Why Can't They Solve It?

Oddly, the pipes are clean of debris despite being older than Zeus. This suggests that they were not simply shoved into the ground for the hell of it, but actually used for something. Oh, and did we mention the mountain is completely inhospitable to human life?

As usual, a faction of nutjobs believes the Baigong Pipes to be an ancient astronomy lab or even spacecraft launching site left by extraterrestrials. This is possible, since the pipes contain a proportion of silica close to what occurs on Mars. Of course, the manhole cover outside your house does also, so take that with a grain of salt.



Some say they are a hoax. We must politely remind those people that you can't wipe your *** in China without the government knowing, let alone set up a iron forge and start burying pipes in the ground for the purpose of confusing passers-by.

Our Guess:

Long ago, a group of frustrated fishermen with lots and lots of spare time spent their whole lives building a plumbing system to drain that nearby lake. Then they figured they'd just walk right down there with wheelbarrows, scoop up the fish and eat like kings.



The Baghdad Batteries



The Mystery:

The Baghdad Batteries are a series of artifacts found in the area of Mesopotamia dating from the early centuries AD. This was the approximate time when Gozer the Gozarian was roaming the lands, morphing into whatever you thought of and then devouring you [source].

When archaeologists stumbled upon the batteries, they assumed they were just regular old clay pots for storage, but that theory quickly went out the window since they each contain a copper rod that shows evidence of acid corrosion. Now, in case you weren't the biggest nerd in school, this means that the pots probably contained a liquid that would interact with the copper and produce an electrical charge. If true, they predate the first known modern battery by hundreds of years.



And that's all well and good, but what were they using batteries for?

Why Can't They Solve It?

Well, it's not like we keep digging up ancient camcorders over there. Some stone reliefs called the "Dendera light" depict what some believe to be electrical arc lights, which would require something like the Baghdad Batteries to power. Others believe that theory is incredibly retarded.

More reasonable types say the batteries may have been used to electroplate items with gold. Others say medicine men could have used the batteries to shock people (giving the impression they had mystical powers or whatever).

It doesn't help that the batteries are currently located in the Baghdad Museum, which means potential researchers have a sporting chance of being blown to shit on any given day.

Our Guess:

Take them to Egypt. Somewhere inside the Sphinx, they'll find several holes. Plug these batteries in there and the Sphinx's eyes will light up. Then it will start scooting around the desert floor making a mechanical barking sound.


And then someone forms the head.


The Bloop


The Mystery:

Tired of having its mind blown by the guys in the archeology department, in 1997 modern science's mind pulled itself up off the mat and triumphantly blew itself.

In that year, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration recorded a strange sound in the ocean. Strange and LOUD. So loud that it was picked up by two separate microphones 3,000 miles apart. The sound, dubbed "The Bloop," doesn't sound like anything at normal speed. However, the NOAA did us the favor of speeding up the recording to 16 times the normal speed, causing it to sound like a turd dropping into the toilet. Bloop! Except, you know, awesomely loud.



Scientists determined that its wave pattern indicates it was made by an animal, and not a giant electromagnet of a plane out of the sky, as the creators of Lost were no doubt hoping.

Why Can't They Solve It?

There is no animal big enough or loud enough to make that kind of noise, not by a long shot. Not a blue whale, not a howler monkey, not a startled teenage girl.

Not long after the NOAA posted the sound to their web site, some HP Lovecraft fans on the internet quite reasonably decided that The Bloop must have been made by Lovecraft's Cthulhu, a giant, murderous squid-dragon-thing.

Our Guess:

Yeah, we're also going with Cthulhu.

The age of humankind and its origins

Skeletons of these “creatures” are in the same layers of soil as the dinosaurs, so they have at least the same age.
Darwinists claim that man descended from apes, then from who had these giants descended from? Perhaps the mythology doesn’t just tell stories
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Incredible Astronomical Clocks ...

Incredible Astronomical Clocks ...

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Antique and Medieval Technology Blended With Art

Many believe early man saw the universe as a living thing: each flash of lightning, every star in the sky, the rain that fell, the ground beneath their feet – everything around them was part of some huge, living and breathing creature.

But then that changed. The Greeks, and their intellectual ancestors, looked at the world and while they saw life they also began to see a mechanism to it all, a precise and ordered regularity

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The Antikythera Device

Alhough we know the ancient Greeks were extremely intelligent, just how smart was hinted at in 1901 – and then confirmed many years later. At first the hunk of rusted iron that was pulled from the sea near the Greek island of Antikythera was just a curiosity, a bit of archeological weirdness. It was only decades and decades later that modern science was finally able to pry apart the secrets of ancient science. Very, very ancient science

The Antikythera Mechanism, as it’s called, is a meticulous and precise assembly of 72 gears – a simply staggering work of craftsmanship. What’s even more astounding is that scientists think the device was an astronomical calculator: an elaborate, incredibly accurate computer that was built in 150 to 100 BC.

A model of the mechanism by Tatjana van Vark

Other Antikythera Mechanism reconstruction projects and working models





All the instructions of the mechanism are written in Greek. This is the case when you can say "this manual is all Greek to me" and be entirely correct. Surprising details about this artefact are still being uncovered, for example, the various back dials of theAntikythera Mechanism - including a dial dedicated to the four-year Olympiad Cycle of athletic games in ancient Greece





What’s even more chilling -- as well as exciting – isn’t that the Antikythera device existed but that it could very well be the first hint at how technologically advanced the ancient engineers were. The device is certainly miraculous but it was also a common working machine; not a rarity but instead what could be something that navigators used everyday. Who knows what other mechanisms and devices have yet to be found?


Beautiful Astronomical Clock in Prague

A few hundred years later the universe was still a mechanical place but the engineering that went into creating machines to predict and understand it became even more complicated and elaborate. Clocks got a shot in their developmental arm because they – when used with star charts and sextants – were essential navigation tools. It wasn’t long until clock mechanisms were used to track not just the hours, minutes and seconds of commerce and shipping but also the stars and planetsin the sky.

One of the more incredible astronomical clocks is the legendary Prague Astronomical Clock. To say that it’s elaborate would be a ridiculous understatement. The clock is an insanely complicated instrument to not only tell the time but also to track the movements of the stars and planets – at least the ones they knew about in the 1400s when the clock was built. It's easy to think that making something as complicated as the Prague clock was a one time, supremely rare thing.










Although the clock wasn’t a common working gizmo like the Antikythera device, it also used technology and craftsmanship that existed in many other Medieval cities – and even, a century or so later, insanely miniaturized to the point where, if you were rich, you could carry what was basically a tiny version in your pocket. Read this article about the grim fate of the clockmaster... which is only a tale, but an atmospheric one at that.





While complicated, one of the greatest things about the Prague clock is that it isn’t just a working clock; it almost deserves to be called a monumental kinetic sculpture. It ticks and tocks and ticks and tocks in ways, to quote from the Bible, that are “a wonder to behold.” So wondrous, in fact, that you can find computer models online demonstrating just how elegant and beautiful the mechanism is – which says a lot that we use 21st century technology to appreciate the skill of a 1400 clock maker.


Wells Cathedral Astronomical Clock

Another beautiful example of astronomical clock engineering is the famous Wells Cathedral Clock. Begun a few years before Prague’s, the clock is another accurate and heavenly (literally as well as figuratively) mechanism. Like its Prague kin, the clock is a beautiful as well as accurate view of the world as an enormous clockwork machine, a carefully assembled, meticulously crafted, creation.














Unfortunately, the growing ubiquitousness of these clocks’ technology spelled their doom. As more and more people could afford to carry watches there was less and less of a need for a huge, central – and, naturally, elaborate, town hall clock. It simply didn’t make financial sense to keep building them – which is a sign that humanity's evolvingview of the world was mechanical: tocks and tocks as well as dollars and sense.

What’s ironic is that with the coming of the 21st century – and, living in a world ruled by the careful calculations of software -- humans are starting to understand, and even plan to use, the uncertainty of a quantum universe: an existence where things are never quite what they seem and chaos is part of How Everything Works

Still, the incredible Antikythera device, the Prague and Wells Cathedral clocks, are beautiful in their antique mechanisms – as well as the nostalgia of when the world was as precise and orderly as the back and forth swing of a pendulum.

Astronomical Clock at Hampton Court Palace, London, UK (1540):





Zimmertoren Astronomical Clock on Zimmer Tower in Lier, Belgium (left) and Strasbourg's Cathedral Astronomical Clock (right image):





Lund's Cathedral Astronomical Clock, 1424:














Lyon's Cathedral Astronomical Clock