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Avebury in Wiltshire is best known as the world’s largest stone circle, but surrounding it is a wealth of ancient monuments. Captivated by its unique atmosphere, many visitors form a personal, often spiritual, connection to Avebury and its ‘sacred landscape’. What was it that first attracted people to the Avebury area more than 5,000 years ago? Why was Avebury built where it is? Where did the sarsen stones come from? How does Silbury’s ditch fill with water each winter? What was the Avebury landscape like in prehistory?  Sound engineer Steve Marshall explains the complicated but fascinating archaeoacoustics of the site, and invites us on a journey of discovery. For the first time the importance of water, light and sound is revealed, and we begin to see Avebury through the eyes of those who built it. Steve has found musical resonances, and an infrasonic resonance too low to be heard, but with the potential to produce altered mental states.

For 20 years, Steve Marshall was a busy and successful film composer and sound engineer. He worked for a time in the famous BBC Radiophonic Workshop, and co-curated an electronic music exhibition at the London Science Museum.

After taking a break from music he became fascinated by ancient monuments and landscape, eventually becoming a full-time independent writer, researcher and photographer. His best-selling book Exploring Avebury: The Essential Guide is the result of a decade spent living close to Avebury conducting his own research.

Eventually Steve combined his love of music and archaeology by delving into archaeoacoustics – particularly the acoustics of the West Kennet long barrow, near Avebury. Inside the stone monument Steve has found musical resonances, and an infrasonic resonance too low to be heard, but with the potential to produce altered mental states. This work resulted in his acclaimed album Avebury Soundscapes, where he combines music with 3-D recordings made in and around Avebury and its monuments.

For more, visit  www.exploringavebury.com

Experience 'Avebury Soundscapes' - A new album of music by Steve Marshall

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Can celestial electro-magnetic fields influence the rise and fall of civilization and man’s mental wellbeing?

Walter Cruttenden’s Great Year hypothesis* entails that subtle celestial influences, produced by the electromagnetic fields of planets and stars, can impact not only human consciousness but also the rise and fall of civilization. There is enough evidence that humans are affected by magnetic fields, exposure to light, and the ionization of the air we breathe. Solar flares of planets 45,000 light years away cause ionization changes on earth, and it has already been established that man is sensitive to negative ions (an anti-depressant) which can cause a change in consciousness.

The Conscious Electro Magnetic Information Field Theory (CEMI), shows that the brain’s weak, but complex, electromagnetic field (EM) allows each cell instant access to the information contained in every other cell in the brain. In essence, it suggests that consciousness is related to the EM fields that the body produces—especially those produced by the brain. The latest neuropsychological non-invasive therapy, Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation (TMS), involves an electrical current running through a coil placed on the scalp. Already research is indicating that it counters the effects of depression in 60% of patients for whom nothing else worked.

Arguably, TMS involves the use of a pulsed electromagnetics in close proximity to the brain, creating a much more intense localized field than we would experience from the Earth’s and Sun’s magnetic fields, but it is possible that the waves generated by celestial objects in distant space may also have a rhythmic or “pulsing” effect due to the resonant nature of orbital physics – the very mechanism that keeps space orderly and causes the cycles of nature.

Eastern philosophies about life and consciousness date to prehistory and are fundamentally different from those in the West, especially in the field of medicine. According to Eastern healing philosophy, man has an energy or spiritual body that supports and transcends the physical vehicle. This predates Western physical medicine and stretches far back into the distant past of the Asian cultures, with acupuncture and acupressure being two examples. The ancient Chinese 64 I Ching code is identical to the genetic code of DNA, which describes the entire living world and was discovered by the West less than 50 years ago.

 *Watch Walter’s previous interview on the Lost Cycle of Time and the Golden year theory HERE.

Walter Cruttenden is a financial markets innovator, an active founder investor in growth companies that serve a social need, and is incredibly passionate about human history and astronomy. Currently, Walter serves as Chairman of Acorns, a micro-investing company, which he co-founded with his son, Jeff Cruttenden, Jason Martell, and Mark Dru. Acorns is an app that enables people to save and invest in incredibly small increments, with high frequency, requiring little or no conscious effort. Walter also serves as CEO of Blast, a gamification company operating at the nexus of the Fintech and Game industries. Blast's app features a new game dynamic that improves the financial outcome for both gamers and game companies alike.

When he is not engaged in Fintech, Walter acts as the Director of the Binary Research Institute in Newport Beach, California, which researches the cause and consequences of solar system motion. As part of his cosmological work Walter authored the book Lost Star of Myth and Time, the award-winning documentary film, The Great Year (narrated by James Earl Jones) and the children's book, The Great Year Adventures: with Tommy the Time-Traveling Turtle.

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How on earth did whales come to swim in the deserts of Egypt?

Join Professor Fanie Vermaak, archaeologist and expert on Ancient Egypt and the Near East on a walk-through of Wadi-al-Hitan and explore how the fossils of these whales landed up in the desert.  Surprisingly, there are also a larger number of shark fossils with them!

The ‘Valley of the Whales’ — often called the ‘Bay of Whales’ — has a large number of fossilized whales (more than 500 fossil skeletons and five different species) in a relatively small area at different strategic levels roughly 60 kilometres south-west from the Fayum, in the Western Desert of Egypt.  

Wadi al-Hitan was declared a World Heritage Site in 2005. The number, concentration and quality of the fossils from the Eocene era in this protected area have no comparison across the globe. The fossils of the Basilosaurus and Dorudon are only some of the species from around 40 million years ago.

Besides the abundant mangrove and several crystal logs of beached shipworm-bored wood, a large variety of sawfish, bony fishes, several kinds of turtles, sea snakes were also found in the area. Scholars have now been questioning whether it should rather be called the “Whales in the Valley of the Sharks” because the remains of the whales have tremendous bite marks from shark and even shark teeth remained on the skeletons of the whales!

Discover how this happened and the current research in this fascinating In-Depth interview with Fanie Vermaak.

Dr Fanie Vermaak is a professor in Ancient Near Eastern Studies at the University of South Africa. With an initial background in theological studies (also ordained minister of the Dutch Reformed Church) he focuses on various cultural activities in the Ancient Near East, specializing in Sumerian and Egyptology.

Vermaak studied Theology and various Semitic Languages at the Universities of the Free State (Bloemfontein) and Stellenbosch, South Africa.  He specialized (PhD) in the cuneiform (Sumerian) studies of the Ur III period (2100-2000 BC) on the activities of the temple administrators of Southern Mesopotamia and published also extensively in this regard. He extended further studies with the various ancient gateways of the Near East towards also the outside world so far as the Indus Valley. Vermaak is also the chairperson of the Ancient Egypt and Near Eastern Society (AENES) who is responsible for the monthly evening lectures for the public sector (15 years). He served eight years on the national academic society called Southern African Society for Near Eastern Society. He is a founding member of International Society of Cuneiform Studies. Fanie often acts as a Middle East analyst on various media and has a special interest in the ancient and modern Near East or Middle East.

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‘O my prophetic soul!’, cries Hamlet when he encounters the ghost of his murdered father in Shakespeare’s play.

31 October marks Halloween, All Hallows' Evening or All Saints' Eve, originally a three-day observance dedicated to remembering the dead, including saints, martyrs, and all the faithful departed.  The roots of Halloween may be traced back to the Pagan Gaelic harvest festival of Samhain which had been transformed by the church to commemorate the deceased.

Whatever its origins, the festival has morphed into a fanfare of ghosts, witches, goblins, zombies and other macabre underworld creatures roaming the streets begging for sweets. During the Middle Ages, churches that were too poor to display the relics of martyred saints at All Hallows’ Evening invited parishioners dress up as saints instead and from there came the custom to dress up in costume. Globally the dead are celebrated on this night, and haunted places attract the brave and the curious like moths to a candle.

Paranormalist Mark Rose-Christie takes an In-Depth look at the phenomena of paranormal manifestations and especially their activities in South Africa. Join us for the night and share Mark’s encounters with residual ghosts, crises ghosts, single apparitions and everyone’s favorite, the poltergeist. He also discusses some of South Africa’s most famous haunted historic homes, like the Erasmus Castle, St Aidan’s Jesuit College and a Feather Baron’s Palace in Oudtshoorn.

Mark Rose-Christie is academically a sociologist, a professional TV/film-maker, theatrical producer/director, entertainer and illusionist, as well as being South Africa's leading paranormalist, his work appearing in several ghost books.

As a sociologist he lectured at the University of Port Elizabeth (today NMMU), and continued studying at Rhodes University, whilst also producing the shark movie “White Death” (a parody of the movie “Jaws”), plus magazine programs for the launch of the SATV-2 Xhosa-Zulu channel back in its day in South Africa, under the mentorship of the late Bill Faure. 

Mark prematurely launched the Mystery Ghost Bus of South Africa, a 'Theatre-On-Wheels' production which remains unparalleled to date in that it offers more than any other known ghost production in the world. It has become the longest running ‘production-on-wheels’ in the country, winning the esteemed International Luxury Travel Guide Awards three years in a row. |

Join us for a spooky and thrilling In-Depth Interview, and get a sneak-peek at Mark’s paranormal investigations in the Ancient Origins article, “Former Home of South African Statesman Rumored To Be Haunted”!
 

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