once upon a time there was someone who lived and mattered

Once upon a time, a long long time ago, there was a mighty civilization situated on an island. These mighty people understood and used technology like no other before it or even after it. This technology was offered to the people of the island by great visitors beyond our Earth. The visitors saw this nation to be wise and provided them with crystal in the form of thirteen skulls, in which they had encrypted all the secrets of the human kind, so that one day they would be able to prevent a great disaster facing the feeble human kind.

Centuries passed and the mighty nation and its home island, which we know by the name Atlantis,perished in a turmoil of the oceans, never to be seen again in the glorious form it had once been. But some of their knowledge survived; the crystal skulls containing the data to save man kind survived. The knowledge was passed down to the Maya and the Aztecs, the successors of the great Atlantians.

Unfortunately, like Atlantis, these mighty civilizations mysteriously perished without a proper explanation. However, the knowledge has once again survived through the ages, the skulls still exist. Many have already been found and it has been discovered that these crystal skulls have truly great powers. It is said that when you bring together all of the thirteen skulls, they will reveal the secrets of the human kind and help prevent the apocalypse that has been predicted by the Maya to arrive in 2012.

And this is what I had my presentation on this week, during pseudo-archaeology classes. Lovely story, isn't it? Quite sadly, there is a whole bunch of people who actually believe it is true.

Conspiracy theories and mysteries have always intrigued people, it's only natural. It's much more compelling and exciting to think that, say, crystal skulls like the Mitchell-Hedges skull are really pre-columbian and the tests proving them to be a sham were by some dark figures working for the Illuminati, trying to hide the truth from people. It's not so glorious to think that a magnificent crystal skull was simply sculpted by some Mexican guy in the 60's, with a normal wheel-cutter used for jewellery-making.

Image of the Mitchell-Hedges skull, from http://www.mitchell-hedges.com/

The entertainment and intrigue value is really what makes pseudo-archaeology (especially popular among pseudo-scientists), other pseudo-sciences and pseudo-scientists themselves thrive. Television programming is practically bustling with pseudo-scientific documentaries because they are great for their entertainment value. I can understand the appeal, heck, even I would think it would be more interesting to live in a world with these kinds of mysteries. And I do enjoy watching these documentaries.

But one should stop to think about the things they believe, the things documentaries present as fact and what they might imply. A lot of archaeologists find it extremely frustrating to face people adamant on believing pseudo-scientific sources and their authors. It can of course be entertaining too, but often it's just plain frustrating or even disgusting when one has to really face it.

A friend of mine, after getting extremely frustrated with pseudo-archaeologists, stated something rather interesting. She said she was actually mad at these people because she feels that they are disrespecting the past and the people of the past. It seems that pseudo-archaeologists try to see conspiracies and turn past into some sort of a "more interesting" version of it, a version that appeals to them, because the past as what it was somehow isn't enough for them. This is offensive towards the people who truly lived through those times, people who did things, thought things and said things. It is as if their lives aren't enough, the way it really likely was isn't enough.

A Finnish pseudo-archaeologist theorized that there was some ancient kingdom in Finland before the Middle Ages, some civilization with mighty kings and the ability to understand complex geometrical data. A civilization that was the mightiest of its time. This view is more glorious than the likely truth of wandering groups of people here and there, acting as hunter-gatherers, occasionally trying out farming, living through their lives trying to survive.

It seems like this pseudo-archaeologist wants something more, he wants to find a history that would nudge the nation's ego upwards. History that would say that Finland was once mighty - mightier than Russia or Sweden, who once ruled over us. He wants there to be more than just hunter-gatherers. At the same time, one could think, he happens to undermine the real lives and actions of the people who lived here before Middle Ages, because it's not interesting enough for him. That does seem like something one could get offended over, doesn't it? Imagine if someone looked at you with a displeased expression and decided that you weren't enough, that your life wasn't interesting enough.They would then proceed to make complex connections enabling them to connect random dots into a story that is simply not true. You would be made a king but your real accomplishments would go unnoticed because they weren't interesting enough.

If this happened to me, personally, I don't think I would mind since I've yet to be particularly proud of my life and accomplishments (plus I would hopefully be dead by then). But it is a good point. We go poking around the past, don't we owe the people whose lives we poke to at least try to get it right, no matter how "dull" their life seems to us? Maybe it meant a whole lot more to them.

P.S: I'm sorry my entry is late again!