From: Hal Finney (hal@finney.org)
Date: Sat May 04 2002 - 11:33:18 MDT
Damien Broderick forwards:
> 2002-04-30 THE MAP OF "THE CREATOR"
>
> A find of Bashkir scientists contraries to traditional notions of human
> history: stone stabs which is 120 million years covered with the relief map
> of Ural Region.
I found a URL for this which has a couple of pictures of the slab,
http://english.pravda.ru/main/2002/04/30/28149.html. It's hard to make
anything out on them, though.
Unfortunately Russia has been a hotbed of pseudoscience for decades, and
from what I read it has gotten even worse since the fall of communism.
This story seems to be heavy on the dramatics and light on the evidence.
There is a thread on sci.archaeology under the subject heading, "Russians
Claim to have found 120Mill year old Map" which has some good commentary.
In particular, the claim that the map is 120 million years old because
it had some snails emedded in it of that age is bogus, and in fact at
that time the Urals were just beginning to be formed so the whole idea
is preposterous.
Apparently the claim to validation by a supposed "Centre of Historical
Cartography" in Wisconsin was denied by the History of Cartography project
in Wisconsin, which had never heard of that group or of the Bashkir find.
Hal
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