At http://troyatbergama.blogspot.com we have a development on the ideas of John Lascelles and news of a two volume book shortly to be published by a former member of the SIS, John Crowe. Basically, it is all about redating the Trojan War and relocating the site of Troy. Interesting ideas that deserve to be aired in the public areana.
At www.emmetsweeney.net we have a new web site by Emmet Sweeney, another member of the SIS. He has written a number of controversial articles in SIS over the years and you either like what he writes – or you don’t. The ideas he has put forwards in the four books of his Ages in Alignment series take pride of place on the web site – and these will be developed over a period of time. A flavour of what is on offer can be deduced from his treatment of Queen Hatshepsut whose mummy was recently identified by a team under the auspices of Zahi Hawass. In this instance Sweeney strongly identifies with the Velikovsky claim she was in effect the Queen of Sheba – and he goes on to relate the expedition of Hatshepsut to the Land of Punt (the subject of a talk at the SIS 2010 AGM). However, it is clear that Sweeney does not intend to restrict himself to chronology – in a historical sense. He is also after bigger game. The beasts in this respect are the mammoths and he has posted quite a long article on their extinction which a lot of members will find of interest. He begins by bringing up something that I too have found frustrating – the decision by scientists and academics in the 20th century to ignore evidence of a catastrophic demise as if they were frightened of Biblicists claiming the Flood was responsible. A strange attitude to take as it meant ignoring the scale of mammoth remains – not just the frozen carcasses in the Siberian permafrost but the many disarticulated and broken bones found in various other locations, even in the British Isles. Mammoth remains are everywhere. For example, some huge specimens of mammoth tusks can be found on display in Aylesbury Museum (and in virtually every geological display in museums up and down the country). In this instance they were dug up by workers at a quarry and cement works – but the bones appear to lie in a wide vein that stretches for many miles and quite recently the same deposit was dug into by JCBs at the site of a new housing and warehouse development. The deposit can be seen cutting accross fields but how far it extends nobody knows because nobody looks. Museums have plenty of mammoth remains – where could they put them all if they did excavate them. They are dredged up from the floor of the North Sea, and everywhere a Pleistocene layer is struck – there are mammoths. The same situation prevails over a large part of the northern hemisphere – from Europe to Asia to North America. They were not of course all laid down at the same time but neither could they have been hunted into oblivion by small groups of human hunters. Hence, Sweeney is on to a winner here – and no doubt he’ll be picking on thorny subjects such as this as the web site develops.