Pyramid Mysteries - and more

Fig. 1: Sundown seen from the citadel in Cairo

Pyramids? Old and uninteresting heaps of stone. That was my opinion when I left school, and, when I visited them after my graduation, I saw them as little more than platforms enabling me to get a good view of the rest of the landscape.
In my opinion history was the most boring class in school. Instead of arousing our interest in the ancient cultures the teachers asked us to learn by heart dates of kings, battles and the numbers of fallen soldiers. We learned nothing at all about ancient civilisations, their daily life or their art and inventions. And when I asked questions outside the box, for example how the Egyptians built their pyramids with primitive tools and a few ropes, it was regarded as disturbing the class.
No wonder that I was more interested in the exiting "history" presented by Erich von Däniken or Zecharia Sitchin, because they had answers to questions that our teachers didn't.

Whereas our teachers would pace unemotionally through the centuries, one of them "entertaining" us with his "funny" stories from the eastern front in WWII, Däniken & Co. would look behind the official streamlined answers of "school"science. And they had answers...
The answers were simple: Gods - in the form of alien visitors from outer space or as missionaries from now sunken former civilisations - brought the necessary knowledge to the people. And helped to do things which were impossible with the primitive technology of our forefathers. Because history as taught at school is wrong!

But do these answers make sense? Can they really explain everything better than traditional science? I will investigate this on the following pages.

In very general terms, there are three different alternative history hypotheses:

Paleo-SETI (PS) or Ancient Astronauts (AA) is a hypothesis based on the idea that Earth had visits from outer space in its past (SETI = Search for Extra Terrestrial Intelligence). These aliens helped in planning and building the great monuments which could not have been built by the supposedly primitive people living then. These aliens and their technical devices were depicted by the native people, but since they didn't understand what they saw the pictures got somewhat distorted - the so called "Cargo cults". The most popular proponents of this thesis are Erich von Daeniken and Zecharia Sitchin.
Lost Civilisation (LC) is the second of these theories. The proponents of LC theories believe that, in a much earlier era, Earth was home to one (or more) high civilisations which subsequently disappeared in cataclysms. But some of these people survived and taught the other primitive people on earth some of their lost knowledge. And, as with PS, the natives misunderstood what they saw and and and... (yes, it sounds familiar)
The most prominent supporter of this idea nowadays is surely Graham Hancock.
Hidden Knowledge (HK) is a variation on the conspiracy theory concept. According to the HK theory, ancient cultures were technically far more advanced than science (for whatever reason) would have us believe. The Egyptians not only had light bulbs and electricity, also giant pumps and nuclear reactors. Erdogan Ercivan is a well known German author proposing this idea.

There is no very clear distinction between these subjects, and so, in many derivative works by other authors, and on various internet websites, we find jumbled mishmashes of occupied LC pyramids illuminated by HK light bulbs and built with the help of PS-aliens.
The following pages examine some of these topics from every angle, in attempt to see if science really does not have any has no answers, or if those answers are reallly as deficient as people claim.

Archaeology, travels, diving and more...

Fig. 2 - FS in front pyramids

In addition to those Mysteries of the Past I have a second site which deals with more "serious" topics. There are some reports about diving spots and archaeological sites, including a large picture gallery with several thousand images of pyramids and more: "NUN" - Diving and Egyptology.