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Old 04-02-2018, 11:37 PM
 
Location: UK
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This post is not religious or spiritual in nature because it questions the use of various implements or devices found in the hands of ancient statues.
It also makes reference to the shape of the heads of ancient ones as depicted in the Buddhist and Taoist temples, so I have not posted it in the religion/spiritual forum.
However, if the mods think it would be better there, please move it.

I have just been on a trip in the South and while I was there I visited some Buddhist and Taoist temples, not for any religious reasons, but just for interest.
These often had large rooms dedicated to gods and enlightened ones, some of which had devices they were carrying which looked as if they might be more than just ornaments perhaps.
I have no proof of this obviously, apart from the fact that we see the same kind of implements in the images within the Indian religious texts as well.
These days, we dont see top monks holding similar implements which caused me to wonder what they might have been used for in those ancient days.

The first image has a long stick-like device in his hand.
We have seen the same shape in many devices held by these types of statues.



The second has a strange ball-thing in his hand which must be for some use.

Third - detail:


The fourth & fifth are photos of a strange skull-shapes which is seen on a number of the enlightened ones.
Humans generally dont have this skull shape with a ridge along the top, do they? (well, not my friends anyway)


This one is almost an elongated skull.
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Old 04-17-2018, 05:42 AM
 
Location: UK
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Really?? no-one got anything to say on this? How strange.

We all know about the elongated skulls found in Peru, well here are examples of them and it is unlikely these guys had their head bound to make them that funny shape. Besides, I am not sure you could make the skull with a ridge and a frontal protrubance if you wanted to anyway.

The skeptics are very quiet, where are they?
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Old 04-17-2018, 08:16 AM
 
Location: Swiftwater, PA
18,754 posts, read 17,969,850 times
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OK; I'll give it a shot.

The first picture could be of a multi-purpose cane. Just like we make today: Night Watchman Adjustable Self Defense Cane - Virtually Indestructible | BUDK.com - Knives & Swords At The Lowest Prices!. Maybe it was meant to be swung as a mace? It would be hard to tell from just looking at the picture. It could have been fashioned simply to show off wealth and power?

Would an alien race, that had to travel countless light years to get to Earth; waste time and weight on creating ornate walking canes?

The second picture could have been the first cherry bomb firecracker? It is simply a picture and would be hard to determine without further study.

With the third and final picture: Some humans had elongated heads and some have bound their heads for different tribal customs. Here is one link on elongated heads: Elongated Skulls from Europe. Two days ago I was in a store and spotted one human with an egg shaped head. It could have been because of medical reasons or an accident; I don't know. But I would not run around telling the world I saw an alien!
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Old 04-17-2018, 11:05 AM
 
Location: State of Transition
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Paul, I can't believe how gullible you are. Sorry. That ball in the hand of the second figure is obviously planted there. If you knew anything about Buddhist iconography, you'd know that normally, those figures have nothing in in the upraised hand, or if they do, it's a certain ritual object.

You live in China; could you tell us, were you raised there? Educated there? Are you a locally-grown guy, or a foreign transplant? Or the child of missionaries who settled there? Just curious as to your background. I guess somebody could have been raised there, and not be familiar with the religious iconography, considering the anti-religious policies of the government in the past.
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Old 04-17-2018, 10:30 PM
 
Location: UK
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Ruth - No need to be sorry. It is not about being gullible but about asking questions which lead to answers. Sometimes the questions are not obvious ones. If you like to live in a world where everything is cut and dried and you are told what to believe, then that is fine - for you, but not for me.

You know as well as I do that gods are worshipped and symbols or devices ere placed in the pictures painted or carvings created of them. These symbols often have a basis in reality, so for example, the enlightened one who had an affinity with nature and who could speak with animals and birds would have a bird on his shoulder or a deer at his feet. The halo around Christ's head is what the psychics see around the head of enlightened ones. Egyptian gods often have strange unknown devices in their hands which currently we have no idea what they were for.

Are you telling me these were merely symbols too because I dont think so. As I said, the middle piece/shape in the 'walking stick' in image 1 of the god, has a corresponding similar shape in Indian gods and features in images of 'thunderbolts' and is often seen as a device wielded by war-gods. There is a story of inter-alien wars in the skies above Earth, which although you may not believe, many people do believe this really happened. There is a layer in the ground in some parts of the world which indicates an ancient nuclear blast which would support this idea.

Now, you can tell me this is just pure symbolism and has no basis in reality, but I feel you are mistaken and I suspect some of these items DID have some kind use beyond the symolic.
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Old 04-18-2018, 07:26 AM
 
Location: Swiftwater, PA
18,754 posts, read 17,969,850 times
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Back then, when these statues and paintings were made; they selected artist to create 'gods'. If their creations were not what the hierarchy wanted; the artist could face death. The 'creations' had to demonstrate some powers that the average citizens did not possess. It could be tremendous wealth, anatomical abnormalities, or even weapons or gizmos nobody was familiar with - they had to be more than human.

The science fiction writers today come up with amazing stories and pictures. Think of how we operate; we build on the imagination of others. Back then, if one artist portrayed a god as having four arms; the next would make theirs better with six arms. Of course nobody ever speculated that weight of the extra arms might slow these gods down! We have seen paintings and statues with twelve and sixteen arms; each artist had to be more impressive than the last artist. The artist did not even have to travel to far away lands; all they had to do is hear about the amazing stories and gods of other cultures.
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Old 04-18-2018, 07:28 AM
 
Location: Maine
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Quote:
Originally Posted by ocpaul20 View Post
These symbols often have a basis in reality.
And they often don't.

Long before humans were very good at reasoning (and many of them still aren't) we were very good at imagining. When reason and imagination meet, we can truly work wonders.

But I wouldn't read too much into religious or other cultural imagery. Churches often have murals or stained glass imagery of angels with wings and fiery swords, or floating baby heads, or bearded men on thrones floating on clouds while holding fiery orbs.

None of that means ancient Christians once witnessed winged warriors with fiery swords or floating baby heads. It means human beings have a rich imagination and often bring that into their religious imagery.

And sometimes, we do the same thing just for fun. What if someone digs up my Darth Vader collector's statue in 15,000 years? Will they assume 21st century humans worshiped a dark helmeted warrior a glowing red sword and odd hieroglyphs on his chest? Maybe. And they'll be wrong.

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Old 04-18-2018, 11:50 AM
 
Location: Greenville, SC
6,219 posts, read 5,897,451 times
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Anyone who's lived in New England has seen many soul effigies on the old tombstones. Apparently New England was full of flying skulls and flying disembodied heads, complete with wings in those days.

In Egyptian murals and carvings, people are almost always portrayed standing sideways rather than front on; apparently most Egyptians inhabited Flatland.

In Orthodox Christian iconography there are a whole set of artistic conventions used to this day that go back 1500 years or so that have spiritual connotations. Some of these, interestingly, are very similar to conventions used in Tibetan Buddhist iconography.

Quote:
The second has a strange ball-thing in his hand which must be for some use.
In icons of the archangel Michael (and I think, Gabriel) the angel is represented holding a "strange ball-thing" in the one of his hands. The orb represents the world. In icons of St John the Forerunner (Baptist) he's shown with wings, holding his severed head on a plate. No one, including the writers of the icons, ever believed St John actually had wings or held his severed head in his hand. That's because icons are intended to be mystical representations of a spiritual reality, outside our ordinary space and time.

These are all artistic conventions that make sense in the context of the cultures that produced them. When ocpaul writes that the orb "must be for some use", he's reading a modern interpretation of objects (that they must be "useful") into a cultural artifact that was made with a different set of assumptions.
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Old 04-18-2018, 12:10 PM
 
28,122 posts, read 12,423,732 times
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I dont think its coincidence that so many ancient civilizations depicted 'the gods' as being what we would call a grey alien today, large black eyes, large head, small hairless body. They drew, carved and sculpted what they saw, trying to emulate their 'gods', (the sky people or star people)
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Old 04-18-2018, 03:47 PM
bg7
 
7,694 posts, read 10,498,360 times
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[quote=ocpaul20;51638608]Really?? no-one got anything to say on this? How strange.

We all know about the elongated skulls found in Peru, well here are examples of them and it is unlikely these guys had their head bound to make them that funny shape. Besides, I am not sure you could make the skull with a ridge and a frontal protrubance if you wanted to anyway.

The skeptics are very quiet, where are they?[/quote]

Eye roll emoji.
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