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Lost in the Bermuda Triangle: The Unexplained Disappearances (S4) | History's Greatest Mysteries

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The Real Story Behind the Loch Ness Monster | History

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https://www.bbc.com/travel/article/20170713-why-stonehenge-was-built

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We may have cracked the mystery of Stonehenge

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The more archaeologists study Stonehenge, the more mysteries unfold. But a coherent story is beginning to emerge.

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Although it's one of the world's most famous monuments, the prehistoric stone circle known as Stonehenge remains shrouded in mystery. Built on Salisbury Plain in Wiltshire, England, Stonehenge was constructed in several stages between 3000 and 1500 B.C., spanning the Neolithic Period to the Bronze Age.

Its massive scale suggests that Stonehenge was vitally important to the ancient peoples who built it, but the monument's purpose has been the subject of widespread speculation for centuries. In the 17th and 18th centuries, many believed Stonehenge was a Druid temple, built by those ancient Celtic pagans as a center for their religious worship. Though more recent scholars have concluded that Stonehenge likely predated the Druids by some 2,000 years, modern-day Druidic societies still see it as a pilgrimage destination.

One enduring hypothesis for Stonehenge's purpose comes from the initial observation, first made by 18th-century scholars, that the monument's entrance faces the rising sun on the day of the summer solstice. For many, this orientation suggests that ancient astronomers may have used Stonehenge as a kind of solar calendar to track the movement of the sun and moon and mark the changing seasons.

New excavations in recent years, however, have unearthed a different theory based on hundreds of human bones found at the site, dating across 1,000 years and showing signs of cremation before burial. The presence of these remains suggests that Stonehenge could have served as an ancient burial ground as well as a ceremonial complex and temple of the dead.

In 2010 archaeologists discovered a second stone circle located just over a mile away from the more famous landmark. Dubbed "Bluestonehenge" for the 25 Welsh bluestones that originally made up the site, this secondary monument provides more evidence that Stonehenge could have been part of a huge memorial complex where high-ranking individuals took part in elaborate rituals and ceremonies honoring the dead. Yet as no written records exist, this theory-like all those about Stonehenge's purpose-can only remain a matter of speculation.
READ MORE: Solving the Riddle of Stonehenge's Construction

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Although it's one of the world's most famous monuments, the prehistoric stone circle known as Stonehenge remains shrouded in mystery. Built on Salisbury Plain in Wiltshire, England, Stonehenge was constructed in several stages between 3000 and 1500 B.C., spanning the Neolithic Period to the Bronze Age.

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Debunked: Photos that "Prove" Stonehenge was Built in 1898 or 1954

A set of photos circulating online show "proof" that Stonehenge was built in modern times, with the years 1898 and 1954 often cited.

The claims are false.

Let's first take a look at some common captions and photos in circulation:

Historians and archaeologists have been speculating for years as to why Stonehenge was built: was it an astronomical observatory, a health spa, or a cemetery? Yet there are no definite answers. More recently, published photos showed that Stonehenge is a hoax, not built around 5000-years-ago, but in 1898! Could it be? What do you think is the truth behind this enigma of blue stones?

Below is a photo often included with captions like the one above, offered as "proof" that Stonehenge was constructed in modern times.

Excavation

The image above does not show construction of a new monument, but that of an excavation which occurred back in 1919 through 1920 by William Hawley. Additional restoration was headed by Sir Frank Baines, with Hawley retained in an "advisory capacity." It was believed at that time that portions of the monument were in danger of collapse.

There have been many excavations at the site over the centuries, dating back to the 1600's. For an excellent summary of the 1920 excavations, see No spin at Stonehenge in 1920 by Mike Pitts.

Below is an article from The Deseret News in 1920 which discusses the repair project:

Documentaries

For a more recent investigation into the age of Stonehenge, the BBC has several videos related to Stonehenge. At the 3:30 mark of the video, photos of past archaeological digs are shown, including the first photo which shows William Hawley from 1919. The documentary's conclusion on the age of Stonehenge summarizes:

"The first stones to arrive were the bluestones. We now know they were erected at the site in 2300 BC. We don't know why, but they were taken down 200 years later." The sarsen stones were put up around 2100 BC, followed by several rings of bluestones. Finally, the massive circle of sarsens "enclosed the whole thing." Over 4000 years, it fell into a slow decline due to neglect, theft, and time.

Another video (below) entitled "Digging For the Truth: Stonehenge Secreets Revealed" by the History Channel notes that radio carbon dating can be used to date the tools used to dig the ditches that formed Stonehenge, such as deer antler picks. Some of those picks were left at the bottom of the ditch, which can help date the dig site. "Because there were lots of them and we can get lots of radio carbon dates," Julian Richards said," then we know that this ditch was dug between 3,000 and 2920 BC."
Bottom Line
Stonehenge was not built in 1898 or 1954. Photos offered as "proof" of this are merely evidence of excavations which occurred at the site in the 20th century. Archaeologists agree the monument was built at least 4000 years ago.
Updated May 15, 2015
Originally published March 2014

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Debunked: Pics that "Prove" Stonehenge Built in 1898 or 1954

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Debunked: Photos that "Prove" Stonehenge was Built in 1898 or 1954 A set of photos circulating online show "proof" that Stonehenge was built in modern times, with the years 1898 and 1954 often cited.

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Stonehenge is a massive stone monument located on Salisbury Plain in southern England. It was built roughly 4,000 to 5,000 years ago and was part of a larger sacred landscape.

The bigger stones at Stonehenge, known as sarsens, weigh 25 tons (22.6 metric tons) on average and are widely believed to have been brought from Marlborough Downs, 20 miles (32 kilometers) to the north, according to English Heritage (opens in new tab), an organization that oversees Stonehenge.

The monument's smaller stones, referred to as "bluestones" (they have a bluish tinge when wet or freshly broken), come from quarries in the Preseli Hills in western Wales, about 140 miles (225 km) away from Stonehenge, a U.K. research team announced in a 2015 study in the journal (opens in new tab). The bluestones weigh between 2 and 5 tons (1.8 and 4.5 metric tons) each, according to English Heritage. Scientists are still unsure exactly how prehistoric people moved the stones over such long distances.

Sacred landscape

Stonehenge is just one part of a larger sacred landscape that contained many other stone and wooden structures, as well as burials.

Before the monument was erected, the area was a hunting oasis during the Mesolithic (which in Britain ran between 11,600 to 6,000 years ago), according to a 2022 study in the journal (opens in new tab).

The area also holds more than 3,000 pits near Stonehenge, the oldest of which dates back more than 10,000 years. Some of the pits were used for hunting while others may have been part of ceremonial structures.

As early as 10,000 years ago, three large pine posts were erected at the site Stonehenge now sits on, likely for ceremonial purposes, wrote Mike Parker Pearson (opens in new tab), a professor of British prehistory at University College London, in his book "Stonehenge: Making Sense of a Prehistoric Mystery (opens in new tab)" (Council for British Archaeology, 2015). "Hunter-gatherers are not generally known for building spectacular monuments, so these are something of a mystery," Pearson wrote.

Many other prehistoric structures of importance have been discovered at or near Stonehenge, including burials and burial mounds, as well as shrines - some in the shape of a circle - and a "House of the Dead" containing dozens of skeletons that date to between 3700 B.C. and 3500 B.C.

Around 3500 B.C. two rectangular earthworks now called "cursus" monuments were also built to the north of where Stonehenge would be erected, English Heritage notes.

Building Stonehenge

Stonehenge was built in several stages. In about 3000 B.C., a circular ditch was constructed around what would be Stonehenge along with a series of 56 holes - sometimes called "Aubrey holes" after their 18th-century discoverer John Aubrey. These holes may have held timber posts or bluestones, according to English Heritage. It's possible that the heel stone - a sarsen stone located outside the entrance to Stonehenge - was placed around this time, but this is also uncertain.

It's unknown how people at the time moved the bluestones to Stonehenge. Experiments conducted at University College London in 2016 showed that a 1-ton (0.9 metric ton) stone could be moved by 10 people on a wooden trackway, but whether this technique was actually used by the prehistoric builders is uncertain. It's possible that pig lard was used to grease any sleds that moved the stones.

In 2021, a team of archaeologists proposed in the journal (opens in new tab) that at least some of the bluestones were arranged in a stone circle in the Preseli Hills before they were moved to Stonehenge. This suggests that the bluestones already had symbolic significance before they were moved, the team wrote.

Around 2500 B.C., people erected a series of sarsen stones on the site in the shape of a horseshoe, with every pair of these huge stones having a stone lintel connecting them. A ring of sarsens surrounded the horseshoe, their tops connecting to each other, giving the appearance of a giant, interconnected stone circle around the horseshoe. The "altar stone" - a large slab of greenish red sandstone that was brought from Wales, according to English Heritage (opens in new tab) - was placed in the middle of the horseshoe. What exactly the altar stone was used for is uncertain.

Two circles of bluestones were placed between the circle of sarsens and the sarsens in the shape of a horseshoe. Also, people erected four "station stones," as they are now called, outside Stonehenge. Around 2300 B.C., Stonehenge underwent another change as the bluestones were rearranged. One circle of bluestones was placed between the outer circle of sarsens and the sarsens in the shape of a horseshoe, and another circle of bluestones was placed within the horseshoe. Around this time, an "avenue" was built connecting Stonehenge with the River Avon, according to English Heritage.

This would be the last major construction phase that took place at Stonehenge. As time went on, the monument fell into neglect and disuse; some of its stones fell over while others were taken away.

Stonehenge was likely positioned to align with existing structures in the area. For example, it has an interesting connection with the Cursus monuments. Archaeologists found that the longest Cursus monument had two pits, one on the east and one on the west. These pits aligned with Stonehenge's heel stone and a processional avenue.

"Suddenly, you've got a link between [the long Cursus pit] and Stonehenge through two massive pits, which appear to be aligned on the sunrise and sunset on the mid-summer solstice," University of Bradford archaeologist Vincent Gaffney (opens in new tab), who is leading a project to map Stonehenge and its environs, told Live Science in 2014.

Who built Stonehenge?

Researchers have unearthed a number of clues about the people who built the monument. Some of these people may have lived near the monument in a series of houses excavated at Durrington Walls, a nearby Neolithic settlement and that later sported a henge. According to food remains found at the site, the people who lived at Durrington Walls feasted on meat and dairy products, a 2015 study in the journal (opens in new tab) found. The rich diet of the people who may have built Stonehenge provides evidence that they were likely not slaves or coerced, the team wrote.

It's not clear which group or states the people who built Stonehenge were affiliated with. It was built long before writing was used in Britain, making it hard to determine exactly how the island was politically organized at the time.

Many people today associate Stonehenge with the - mysterious pagan religious leaders in ancient Britain. However, the druids probably did not build Stonehenge. The site was constructed roughly 4000 to 5,000 years ago, while the earliest records mentioning druids date back about 2,400 years.

Additionally, the surviving records do not indicate that the druids had an interest in stone circles, much less Stonehenge, Live Science previously reported.

Despite this evidence, modern-day druids often associate with Stonehenge, flocking to the site on the summer solstice. However, the ancient druids died out around 1,200 years ago and were not revived until about 300 years ago.

Why was Stonehenge constructed?

Stonehenge is probably the most famous prehistoric monument in the world. Despite its fame, the structure is still mysterious, with its prehistoric concentric rings garnering plenty of speculation as to why and how they were constructed. Many ideas have been put forward to try and explain why Stonehenge was constructed.

One theory posits that Stonehenge marks the "unification of Britain," (opens in new tab) a point when people across the island worked together and used a similar style of houses, pottery and other items.

It would explain why people at the time were able to bring stones from other regions of Britain and how they could marshal enough labor and resources for the construction. "Stonehenge itself was a massive undertaking, requiring the labor of thousands to move stones from as far away as west Wales, shaping them and erecting them. Just the work itself, requiring everyone literally to pull together, would have been an act of unification," Pearson said in the 2012 statement.

Archaeological finds found at other sites support the idea that people in Britain were sharing artistic ideas at the time Stonehenge was built, including bone pins and sculptures with enigmatic motifs that have been unearthed at several sites.

Another theory is that Stonehenge may have been used as a solar calendar, with the stones laid out to represent 365.25 days in a year. This was proposed by Timothy Darvill (opens in new tab), a professor of archaeology at Bournemouth University in the U.K, in a 2022 article published in the journal (opens in new tab).

Human burials have been found within and near Stonehenge, raising the possibility that Stonehenge may have been used as a burial ground, although most scholars think that it had a broader purpose than that. Another possibility is that it was a place of pilgrimage, where different groups could gather to perform ceremonies. It's also possible that it was used for a mix of different reasons that may have changed over time.

Ultimately Stonehenge's purpose remains a tantalizing mystery.

Additional resources

Stonehenge is overseen by English Heritage (opens in new tab) and information on visiting the site can be accessed on its website. English Heritage also offers a virtual tour of the monument (opens in new tab). Stonehenge and the surrounding area are a UNESCO World Heritage Site and information on its designation can be viewed on UNESCO's website (opens in new tab).

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Where is Stonehenge, who built the prehistoric monument, and how?

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Stonehenge is a massive stone monument located on Salisbury Plain in southern England. It was built roughly 4,000 to 5,000 years ago and was part of a larger sacred landscape.

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Seven Wonders of the Midieval World - Stonehenge

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Stonehenge, in many peoples' minds, is the most mysterious place in the world. This set of stones laid out in concentric rings and horseshoe shapes on the empty Salisbury Plain, is, at the age of 4,000 years, one of the oldest, and certainly best preserved, megalithic (ancient stone) structures on Earth.

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https://www.history.com/news/top-6-theories-about-atlantis

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1. Atlantis was a mid-Atlantic continent that suddenly sunk into the ocean.

The idea that Atlantis was an actual historical place, and not just a legend invented by Plato, didn't surface until the late 19th century. In his 1882 book, Atlantis, the Antediluvian World, the writer Ignatius Donnelly argued the accomplishments of the ancient world (such as metallurgy, language and agriculture) must have been handed down by an earlier advanced civilization, as the ancients weren't sophisticated enough to develop these advances on their own.

Assuming the Atlantic Ocean was only a few hundred feet deep, Donnelly described a continent flooded by shifting ocean waters that sank in the exact location Plato said it did: in the Atlantic Ocean just outside the "Pillars of Hercules," the two rocks that mark the entrance to the Straits of Gibraltar. Long after modern oceanography and a greater understanding of plate tectonics poked holes in his shifting-waters thesis, some continue to cling to Donnelly's theory, mostly due to its adherence to Plato's placement of Atlantis in the mid-Atlantic.

2. Atlantis was swallowed up by the Bermuda Triangle.

Inspired by Donnelly, many later writers expanded on his theories and added their own speculations as to where Atlantis may have been. One of these writers was Charles Berlitz, grandson of the founder of the well-known language schools, and author of many books on paranormal phenomena. In the 1970s, Berlitz claimed Atlantis was a real continent located off the Bahamas that had fallen victim to the notorious "Bermuda Triangle," a region of the Atlantic where a number of ships had supposedly disappeared under mysterious circumstances. Supporters of this theory point to the discovery of what look like man-made walls and streets found off the coast of Bimini, although scientists have evaluated these structures and found them to be natural beach-rock formations.

3. Atlantis was Antarctica.

Another theory-that Atlantis was actually a much more temperate version of what is now Antarctica-is based on the work of Charles Hapgood, whose 1958 book Earth's Shifting Crust featured a foreword by Albert Einstein. According to Hapgood, around 12,000 years ago the Earth's crust shifted, displacing the continent that became Antarctica from a location much further north than it is today. This more temperate continent was home to an advanced civilization, but the sudden shift to its current frigid location doomed the civilization's inhabitants-the Atlanteans-and their magnificent city was buried under layers of ice. Hapgood's theory surfaced before the scientific world gained a full understanding of plate tectonics, which largely relegated his "shifting crust" idea to the fringes of Atlantean beliefs.

4. The story of Atlantis was a mythical retelling of the Black Sea Flood.

This theory presumes Atlantis itself was fictional, but the story of its demise was inspired by an actual historical event: the breaching of the Bosporus by the Mediterranean Sea and subsequent flooding of the Black Sea, around 5600 B.C. At the time, the Black Sea was a freshwater lake half its current size. The flooding inundated civilizations known to flourish along its shore with hundreds of feet of seawater in a short period of time (perhaps less than a year). As inhabitants of the region scattered, they spread tales of the deluge and may have led-thousands of years later-to Plato's account of Atlantis.

5. Atlantis is the story of the Minoan civilization, which flourished in the Greek islands circa 2500-1600 B.C.

One of the more recent Atlantean theories concerns the civilization that flourished on the Greek islands of Crete and Thera (now Santorini) more than 4,000 years ago: the Minoans, named for the legendary King Minos. Believed to be Europe's first great civilization, the Minoans built splendid palaces, constructed paved roads and were the first Europeans to use a written language (Linear A). At the height of their power, however, the Minoans suddenly disappeared from history-an enduring mystery that has fueled belief in a link between this great, doomed civilization and Plato's Atlantis. Historians believe around 1600 B.C., a massive earthquake shook the volcanic island of Thera, triggering an eruption that spewed 10 million tons of rock, ash and gas into the atmosphere. Tsunamis that followed the eruption were large enough to wipe out Minoan cities throughout the region, devastation that may have made the Minoans vulnerable to invaders from the Greek mainland.

6. Atlantis didn't exist at all-Plato invented it.

Most historians and scientists throughout history have come to the conclusion that Plato's account of the lost kingdom of Atlantis was fictional. According to this argument, the Greek philosopher invented Atlantis as his vision of an ideal civilization and intended the story of its demise to be a cautionary tale of the gods punishing human hubris. No written records of Atlantis exist outside of Plato's dialogues, including in any of the numerous other texts that survive from ancient Greece. Furthermore, despite modern advances in oceanography and ocean-floor mapping, no trace of such a sunken civilization has ever been found.

HISTORY Vault: Ancient History

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Six of the most notable theories about the lost civilization of Atlantis, one of the most enduring legends in history.

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The Lost City of Atlantis - Hidden in Plain Sight?

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The legend of a sunken civilization has captivated imaginations for centuries.

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One theory, based on Plato, is that Atlantis was a bit south of Casablanca (above) in modern Morocco.

Photograph by Design Pics Inc., National Geographic

Type the word "Atlantis" into Google and 120 million results pop up. Like El Dorado or Shangri-la, the legendary sunken city of Atlantis hovers on the horizon of our imagination, tantalizing, mysterious, unreachable. Meet Me in Atlantis: My Obsessive Quest to Find the Sunken City pulls together the tangled web of conjecture-and sticks a new locator pin in the map.

Talking from his home in Pelham, New York, author Mark Adams explains why he thinks Atlantis may have been off the coast of Morocco; how an Irishman created the world's largest database of Atlantis lore; and how the parting of the Red Sea, in the biblical story in Exodus, may be connected to Atlantis.

You're best known as a travel writer who has covered real places like Machu Picchu. Why did you choose to write a book about a subject usually discussed in the same breath as UFOs and Bigfoot?

[Laughs] I was writing the Machu Picchu book, and I read this headline in the New York Times: "German discovers Atlantis in Africa." I was like, what? The fact that someone could actually search for Atlantis and be taken seriously was weird.

A year or two after that, I was working on a magazine story about the greatest philosophers of all time, so I started reading about Plato. And the one thing that came up again and again was that Plato is our sole reputable source for the story of Atlantis.

Your interest in Atlantis began with a series of movies you saw as a boy in the 1970s. Take us back in time.

You can tell from Machu Picchu that I have an interest in lost cities. [Laughs] I think a certain personality loves that type of thing. The germ for me was a series of movies that came out in the late 1970s. They were these super-cheapo pseudo-documentaries, like Beyond and Back or In Search of Noah's Ark. There was also this show called In Search Of... hosted by Leonard Nimoy. If you get two people in a room and one finds out the other one loves In Search Of... as well, they'll end up having this Vulcan mind-meld, and talking about it for the next three hours. [Laughs]

It was Plato's "Critias" that set people off thinking that Atlantis actually existed.

When is Atlantis first mentioned in the historical record?

The only mention of Atlantis by name is in Plato's Dialogues (written around 360 B.C.): " Timaeus," which was a very complicated attempt to explain the universe, and " Critias," which has dozens of precise details about what Atlantis looked like, and where it may have been located in relation to other landmarks in the ancient world. It was "Critias," in particular, that set people off thinking that Atlantis actually existed.

I am taken with the theory of Atlantis being in Morocco. Tell us why it could be right-or wrong.

One of the things I've found with people reading this book is that different people find themselves sympathizing with different theories. I have four main theories, and I talk to the people behind the theories and visit the locations.

In the case of Morocco, a German computer expert, Michael Hübner, became obsessed with "Timaeus" and "Critias" because he's mathematically inclined. He set up what's called a Hierarchical Constraint Satisfaction and looked at every one of Plato's clues in "Timaeus" and "Critias." He weighted them and came up with an area on the map that was within 3,000 miles (4,828 kilometers) of Athens, Greece.

What a lot of people forget is that the story of Atlantis is actually a war story where Athens defeats Atlantis. Hübner plugged in the clues-essentially it was like a game of Battleship, [in which] whatever area had the most pegs sinks the battleship, or in this case discovers Atlantis. He theorizes that Atlantis was a little bit south of Casablanca in modern Morocco.

One of the best clues that Plato gives about Atlantis is that there was a series of concentric circles around the city, black and red stone, and of course it was a seafaring society.

Michael Hübner and I walked across the desert and, sure enough, there was black and red striped stone. Then he took me to the edge of the Sahara desert, and walked me up the hillside. Lo and behold, there were these concentric circles on the edge of the desert, and just a few miles away was the Atlantic Ocean. He makes a really compelling case that Atlantis was located in Morocco, and that's a relatively new theory. Not a lot of people have come up with his hypothesis.

What are the other three front-runner locations?

The traditional front-runner and the only one so far that has gotten a lot of traction with mainstream academics is the island of Santorini in the Aegean Sea. There is real archaeological evidence there. The island has a bull's-eye shape with a ring around its center, and it has a relatively new volcano, which we know erupted in ancient times.

Santorini was also the site of an important maritime city called Akrotiri, which was discovered in 1967. There is a lot of evidence that it was a flourishing naval center. There were frescoes showing ships, very similar to the details that Plato gives about the Atlantis story. In the mid-1970s, Santorini was major news. Jacques Cousteau went to Santorini to look for Atlantis. It was taken pretty seriously.

The other two are Tartessus, in southern Spain, another lost city from antiquity, which is not too far from the modern-day city of Seville. Finally, there is Malta. Malta has the most ancient temples in the Mediterranean area, and Malta's culture was destroyed by a tsunami and earthquake.

Jose Maria Galan, a naturalist, says the real story of archaeology and Atlantis is that "no matter how big and powerful you get, you can disappear like that." Explain.

Jose Maria Galan worked at Doñana National Park [on the southern coast of Spain]. He took me out to the shore there and said: "In the summer, you'll see thousands of people lying out on the beach. Now imagine that there's a wave 60 meters high coming in, and you can see how a civilization could get wiped out right away."

Then he took me out to this area of dunes and we started digging into the hills, and Jose starts plucking out all these various pieces of pottery: Roman pieces, Muslim pieces from the Middle Ages, Greek, all the way back to Phoenician. It was amazing that so many cultures in this quiet spot had come and gone over the millennia. He says: "The only thing we know for sure is that everything gets wiped out in the end."

I think that is one of the main messages Plato was trying to get across: Time is cyclical, and even a very powerful, technically advanced civilization like Atlantis is going to get wiped out eventually.

You use the term "geo-mythology." Are there any reliable maps that show Atlantis?

No, though there have been people who have tried to place it on maps. There was a sort of odd, brilliant polymath named Athanasius Kircher, a Jesuit who lived in Germany in the 17th century. He did what's probably the most famous map of Atlantis, where he placed it in the Atlantic Ocean. But there's no way of knowing whether he based this on any reliable information or whether he just made it up. The oldest maps we have don't go back much past 1500. They're post Christopher Columbus.

Your search for Atlantis took you all over the world, even to Ireland. Tell us about Tony O'Connell and how he started Atlantipedia.

Tony is one of those wonderful people that I got to meet. He and his longtime partner, Paul Evans, moved to the country outside of Dublin to take care of Tony's ailing mother. Being a very intelligent busybody, Tony was looking for something to fill his time and started getting into serious Atlantis research. He realized there was no single compendium to look for information about Atlantis, so he started this thing called Atlantipedia online. There are thousands of entries-everything you could ever want to know about Atlantis is there! [Laughs]

He was crucial for my research because when I talked to archaeologists, historians, or philosophy professors, a lot of them didn't want to talk about Atlantis. The subject is like kryptonite for serious academics. You're not allowed to take it seriously. So I went to Tony, hat in hand, and asked if he could help me out. He said, "Come to Ireland and spend a week, and we'll talk about it." Basically, he played Socrates to my Plato. He talked me through all the possibilities; and at the end of the week, I had my four candidates.

I was intrigued by the explanation of the biblical story of the parting of the Red Sea being a tsunami and the Santorini explosion theory-can you tell us more about that?

A lot of the information from Exodus lines up with things that might have happened during the volcanic eruption: the ten plagues, the sky darkening, the sea turning to blood, locusts. If you compare what happens during a volcanic blast, you can see how the effect of a volcanic blast would get translated into the ten plagues that hit Egypt.

One of the more interesting points he makes is that what is commonly known as the Red Sea parting may have actually been the Sea of Reeds, which is a lagoon in northern Egypt. When a tsunami occurs, as we know from what happened in Thailand, the sea recedes. It can go out a half mile or so. This may be what happened when the Jews reached safety on the other side. Then the water came crashing back and wiped out the Egyptians in pursuit.

It would be an incredible coincidence if all these things happen to fall into place. But in ancient history things are often described as happening in a short period of time that may actually have transpired over hundreds of years. So we don't really know.

Socrates said, "Everything I had done hinged on the truth or falsity of a statement about truth or falsity." Explain.

Before Plato started writing about Atlantis, he mentions some of the things that are going on in The Republic. But Socrates says: There are stories that we use to teach children. Some of these stories are true; some of these stories are not true. And then there are stories that have some truth and some falsity. The falsity is put in for teaching purposes.

The problem with Atlantis is that we have to figure out whether it's all true or all false. Plato wrestled with the idea of what's true and what's not true. The question is: Does Atlantis actually exist or does it fall somewhere in between? Part true. Part false.

So, Mark, will we meet in Atlantis one day? Or is it all a lot of hooey?

If somebody found concentric circles and an ancient Egyptian inscription mentioning a story like Plato says he found about Atlantis-and those two things are by no means impossible-I think we'd have a pretty good case that there's a lot of truth in the story. And nobody would be happier than me if we did. I would be over the moon.
Follow Simon Worrall on Twitter or at simonworrallauthor.com.

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Does New Theory Pinpoint Lost City of Atlantis?

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An author's obsessive quest leads to a site off the coast of Morocco.

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The Lost Continent:

The capital of Atlantis as described by Plato. (Copyright Lee Krystek 2006)

The idea of a lost, but highly advanced civilization has captured the interest of people for centuries. Perhaps the most compelling of these tales is the story of Atlantis. The story appears again and again in books, television shows and movies. Where did the story originate and is any of it true?

Plato's Atlantis

The story of the lost continent of Atlantis starts in 355 B.C. with the Greek philosopher Plato. Plato had planned to write a trilogy of books discussing the nature of man, the creation of the world, and the story of Atlantis, as well as other subjects. Only the first book was ever completed. The second book was abandoned part way through, and the final book was never even started.

Plato used dialogues to express his ideas. In this type of writing, the author's thoughts are explored in a series of arguments and debates between various characters in the story. Plato often used real people in his dialogues, such as his teacher, Socrates, but the words he gave them were his own.

In Plato's book, Timaeus, a character named Kritias tells an account of Atlantis that has been in his family for generations. According to the character, the story was originally told to his ancestor, Solon, by a priest during Solon's visit to Egypt.

There had been a powerful empire located to the west of the "Pillars of Hercules" (what we now call the Straight of Gibraltar) on an island in the Atlantic Ocean. The nation there had been established by Poseidon, the God of the Sea. Poseidon fathered five sets of twins on the island. The firstborn, Atlas, had the continent and the surrounding ocean named for him. Poseidon divided the land into ten sections, each to be ruled by a son, or his heirs.

The capital city of Atlantis was a marvel of architecture and engineering. The city was composed of a series of concentric walls and canals. At the very center was a hill, and on top of the hill a temple to Poseidon. Inside was a gold statue of the God of the Sea showing him driving six winged horses.

About 9000 years before the time of Plato, after the people of Atlantis became corrupt and greedy, the gods decided to destroy them. A violent earthquake shook the land, giant waves rolled over the shores, and the island sank into the sea, never to be seen again.

So, is the story of Atlantis just a fable used by Plato to make a point? Or is there some reason to think he was referring to a real place? Well, at numerous points in the dialogues, Plato's characters refer to the story of Atlantis as "genuine history" and it being within "the realm of fact." Plato also seems to put into the story a lot of detail about Atlantis that would be unnecessary if he had intended to use it only as a literary device.

On the other hand according to the writings of the historian Strabo, Plato's student Aristotle remarked that Atlantis was simply created by Plato to illustrate a point. Unfortunately, Aristotle's writings on this subject, which might have cleared the mystery up, have been lost eons ago.

Location, Location, Location

If we make the assumption that Atlantis was a real place, it seems logical that it could be found west of the Straight of Gibraltar near the Azores Islands. In 1882 a man named Ignatius Donnelly published a book titled Atlantis, the Antediluvian World. Donnelly, an American politician, had come to the belief that Plato's story represented actual historical fact. He located Atlantis in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean, suggesting the Azores Islands represented what remained of the highest mountain peaks. Donnelly said he had studied zoology and geology and had come to the conclusion that civilization itself had begun with the Atlantians and had spread out throughout the world as the Atlantians established colonies in places like ancient Egypt and Peru. Donnelly's book became a world-wide best seller, but researchers could not take Donnelly's theories seriously as he offered no proof for his ideas.

As time went on it became obvious that Donnelly's theories were faulty. Modern scientific surveys of the bottom of the Atlantic Ocean shows it is covered with a blanket of sediment that must have taken millions of years to accumulate. There is no sign of a sunken island continent.

Are Pyramids a Clue?

Lewis Spence, a Scottish writer, published several books on Atlantis in the early 20th century. He was fascinated by the pyramids constructed by ancient races in different parts of the globe. Spence wondered if the creation of pyramids in diverse areas such as South America and Egypt indicated that these places had all been colonies of the Atlantis and if the Atlantians were the original pyramid makers. While the idea is interesting, most historians today believe the trend toward building pyramids occurred independently in different locations.

Are there any other candidates for the location of Atlantis? People have made cases for places as diverse as Switzerland, in the middle of Europe, and New Zealand, in the Pacific Ocean. The explorer, Percy Fawcett, thought that it might be located in Brazil.

Atlantis in Spain?

Recently a research team led by Professor Richard Freund at the University of Hartford, has claimed that they have found evidence that the city may be buried not under the ocean, but along the coast of Spain in marshlands of the Doana National Park. Geological studies have shown that at one time this marsh was a huge bay connected to the Atlantic Ocean. The team, using radar technology, digital mapping and satellite imagery believes that they can see signs of a ringed city that once occupied the bay with canals similar to those described by Plato. There is evidence that a number of tsunamis have swept this area over the centuries and Freund thinks that it is one of these destroyed the city. After the disaster survivors may have moved inland and created a number of what Freund thinks are memorial sites to Atlantis.

Other scientists that have explored the area do not agree with Freund's conclusion, though they admit that a city by the name of Tartessos occupied the area around the 4th century B.C.. Freund believes that Tartessos and Atlantis may just be different names for the same city. As far back as the 1920's historian Adolf Schulten had suggested that Plato had used the real city of Tartessos as the source for his Atlantis legend.

The strongest evidence for a real Atlantis, however, is not in Spain, but closer to Plato's home in Greece. This idea started with K.T. Frost, a professor of history at the Queen's University in Belfast. Later, Spyridon Marinatos, an archaeologist, and A.G. Galanopoulos, a seismologist, added evidence to Frost's ideas.

The Minoan Connection

Frost suggested that instead of being west of the Pillars of Hercules, Atlantis was east. He also thought that the catastrophic end of the island had come not 9000 years before Plato's time, but only 900. If this was true, the land of Atlantis might already be a well-known place even in Plato's time: the island of Crete.

Crete is now a part of modern Greece and lies just south of Athens across part of the Mediterranean Sea. Before 1500 B.C. it was the seat of the Minoan Empire. The Minoans dominated the eastern Mediterranean with a powerful navy and probably extracted tribute from other surrounding nations. Archaeological excavations have shown that Minoan Crete was probably one of the most sophisticated cultures of its time. It had splendid architecture and art. A code of laws gave women equal legal status to men. Agriculture was highly developed and an extensive irrigation system existed.

The island of Santorini in a satellite photo that clearly shows the ring left by the volcanos explosion.

Then, seemingly in a blink of an eye, the Minoan Civilization disappeared. Geological studies have shown that on an island we now know as Santorinas, located just eighty miles to the north of Crete, a disaster occurred that was very capable of toppling the Minoan state.

Santorinas today is a lush Mediterranean paradise consisting of several islands in a ring shape. Twenty-five hundred years ago, though, it was a single large island with a volcano in the center. The volcano blew itself apart in a massive explosion around 1500 B.C.

To understand the effect of such an explosion, scientists have compared it with the most powerful volcanic explosion in historic times. This occurred on the Island of Krakatoa in 1883. There a giant wave, or tsunami, 120 feet high raced across the sea and hit neighboring islands, killing 36,000 people. Ash thrown up into the air blackened the skies for three days. The sound of the explosion was heard as far away as 3,000 miles.

The explosion at Santorinas was four times as powerful as Krakatoa.

The tsunami that hit Crete must have traveled inland for over half a mile, destroying any coastal towns or cities. The great Minoan fleet of ships were all sunk in a few seconds. Overnight the powerful Minoan Empire was crushed and Crete changed to a political backwater. One can hardly imagine a catastrophe more like Plato's description of Atlantis' fate than the destruction of Crete.

A fresco from the Minoan palace at Knossos showing the sport of "bull leaping." The Minoan civilization is also the source of the legend of the haf man/half bull Minotaur.

Many of the details of the Atlantis story fit with what is now known about Crete. Women had a relatively high political status, both cultures were peaceful, and both enjoyed the unusual sport of ritualistic "bull leaping" (where an unarmed man wrestled and jumped over a bull).

If the fall of the Minoans is the story of Atlantis, how did Plato get the location and time wrong? Galanopoulos suggested there was a mistake during translation of some of the figures from Egyptian to Greek and an extra zero added. This would mean 900 years ago became 9000, and the distance from Egypt to "Atlantis" went from 250 miles to 2,500. If this is true, Plato (knowing the layout of the Mediterranean Sea) would have been forced to assume the location of the island continent to be squarely in the Atlantic Ocean.

Not everyone accepts the Minoan Crete theory of the story of Atlantis, but until a convincing case can be made for some other place, it, perhaps, remains science's best guess.

Was Atlantis located on the Island of Sardinia? Check Robert Ishoy's website.

According to Plato the temple in the center of Atlantis was dominated by a statue of Poseidon driving six winged horses (Copyright Lee Krystek, 2006).

Copyright Lee Krystek 1997-2006. All Rights Reserved.

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The UnMuseum - The Lost Continent of Atlantis

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The Lost Continent: The capital of Atlantis as described by Plato. (Copyright Lee Krystek 2006) The idea of a lost, but highly advanced civilization has captured the interest of people for centuries. Perhaps the most compelling of these tales is the story of Atlantis. The story appears again and again in books, television shows and movies.

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A U.S.-led research team may have finally located the lost city of Atlantis, the legendary metropolis believed swamped by a tsunami thousands of years ago, in mud flats in southern Spain.

"This is the power of tsunamis," head researcher Richard Freund told Reuters.

"It is just so hard to understand that it can wipe out 60 miles inland, and that's pretty much what we're talking about," said Freund, a professor at the University of Hartford who led an international team searching for the true site of Atlantis.

To solve the age-old mystery, the team analyzed satellite imagery of a suspected submerged city just north of Cadiz, Spain. There, buried in the vast marshlands of the Dona Ana Park, they believe that they pinpointed the ancient, multiringed dominion known as Atlantis.

The team of archaeologists and geologists in 2009 and 2010 used a combination of deep-ground radar, digital mapping and underwater technology to survey the site.

Freund's discovery in central Spain of a strange series of "memorial cities," built in Atlantis' image by its refugees after the city's likely destruction by a tsunami, gave researchers added proof and confidence, he said.

Atlantean residents who did not die in the tsunami fled inland and built new cities there, he added.

The team's conclusions are detailed in "Finding Atlantis," a National Geographic Channel special.

While it is hard to know with certainty that the site in Spain is Atlantis, Freund said the "twist" of finding the memorial cities makes him confident Atlantis was buried in the mud flats.

"We found something that no one else has ever seen before, which gives it a layer of credibility, especially for archaeology, that makes a lot more sense," Freund said.

Greek philosopher Plato wrote about Atlantis 2,600 years ago, describing it as "an island situated in front of the straits which are by you called the Pillars of Hercules," as the Straits of Gibraltar were known in antiquity.

Using Plato's detailed account of Atlantis as a map, searches have focused on the Mediterranean and Atlantic as the best possible sites for the city. Researchers have previously proposed that Atlantis was located on the Greek island of Santorini, the Italian island of Sardinia or on Cyprus.

Tsunamis in the region have been documented for centuries, Freund says. One of the largest was a reported 10-story tidal wave that slammed Lisbon in November 1755.

Debate about whether Atlantis truly existed has lasted for thousands of years. Plato's "dialogues" from around 360 B.C. are the only known historical sources of information about the iconic city. Plato said the island he called Atlantis "in a single day and night ... disappeared into the depths of the sea."

Experts plan further excavations at the site where they believe Atlantis is located and at the mysterious "cities" in central Spain 150 miles away to more closely study geological formations and to date artifacts.
This report includes information from Reuters and msnbc.com. "Finding Atlantis," a documentary about the search for the city's ruins, will air on Tuesday on the National Geographic Channel.

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Lost city of Atlantis believed found off Spain

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A U.S.-led research team may have finally located the lost city of Atlantis, the legendary metropolis believed swamped by a tsunami thousands of years ago, in mud flats in southern Spain.

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You've probably seen more than your fair share of stories about UFO sightings. An astronaut on the ISS just has to catch footage of a fireball shooting across Earth's skies, and conspiracy theorists have a field day. Whether it's clouds that look like spaceships or rogue meteors, the internet loves a good alien conspiracy.

But former NASA engineer James Oberg has taken it upon himself to trawl through all the sightings and stories out there and politely debunk them, using science.

The conclusion? Most of your "insane UFO sightings" are little more than 'space dandruff', or your brain misunderstanding of what space travel actually looks like, says Oberg.

As Cara Giaimo from Atlas Obscura reports, after working at NASA mission control in the late '90s, Oberg went on to become a space journalist and historian. It wasn't until a few years ago that he started to take UFO sightings seriously.

His goal isn't to simply crap all over true believers - he calls that " stomping on dormice" - instead he's interested in teasing out exactly what's going on in these images and videos, and trying to figure out why people are reacting so strongly to them.

His hypothesis? Our human senses are so used to focussing on relatively slow-moving objects, as well as certain light and atmosphere conditions, that when things change, our brains get confused.

"Our sensory system is functioning absolutely perfectly for Earth conditions," Oberg told Giaimo. "But we're still a local civilisation. Moving beyond our neighbourhood has been visually confusing."

Some of the most common sighting he has to debunk are to do with NASA astronauts reportedly seeing UFOS and being forced to keep silent, which Oberg says is a result of us watching too much sci-fi and not really understanding what space really looks like.

"I've had enough experience with real spaceflight to realise that what's being seen in many videos is nothing beyond the 'norm' from fully mundane phenomena occurring in unearthly settings," Oberg writes over on his site.

Here are some of the more common reports you might have seen on the interwebs, and Oberg's explanation of what's really going on:
UFO sightings at the International Space Station
The real story? Space dandruff, which are things that have shed off space vehicles during flight, like ice flakes, paint chips, or fragments of insulation. They're different to space junk, because they don't pose a real threat to spacecraft, Oberg explains on his site.

These flecks of dandruff are pretty common, but the reason they look so weird to us is that we're not used to the way these objects look when they fall while the space station is travelling through space.

It's the same reason why people see so many UFOs in the footage filmed by the cameras attached to NASA's old space shuttle missions.

In these videos, people usually freak out because the spots seem to dance in and out of view, or suddenly appear and disappear. Which is pretty creepy if you're sitting at your computer on Earth, but isn't that weird if you're on a space shuttle travelling 28,000 km/h (17,500 mph) - nothing's going to stay in your frame of vision very long.

And if the spacecraft is in the right position in relation to the Sun, it can also cast its shadow onto these objects to make them disappear and reappear, which is known as ' twilight shadowing'.
That weird Californian flare across the night sky
At the end of 2015, people in southern California freaked out when they saw a bright white light shoot across the night sky.

But, as was cleared up pretty soon after the incident, it was actually the result of a planned, unarmed missile test by the US Navy. That strange looking trail of light was the plume of particles blasted out by the rocket thruster.

So why did it look so creepy to everyone else? Because here on Earth, we're used to seeing thin vapour trails left by planes, or billowing smoke plumes. But most of us have rarely (if ever) seen anything so big and sharp as this.

"There were thousands of people who were absolutely processing their visual stimuli correctly if [the plume] was a mile away or 10 miles away [16 km]," Oberg told Atlas Obscura. "But it was 300 miles [482 km] away, up in space and sunlit, which never occurred to them, because this is not something within the normal range of human experience."

All of this isn't to say we should give up on sharing our UFO sightings, or assuming that everything is 'normal'.

"It's good to keep scanning space video for possible anomalies and reporting them quickly," Oberg told The Huffington Post back in 2013.

"The reason is, there is always a real chance that it could be a genuine anomaly, either a spacecraft malfunction or other threat, expected or unexpected. In the past, missions have failed because a clue that should have been seen out the window was overlooked."

Head over to Atlas Obscura to read the full interview, and more debunkings, with Oberg.

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This Former NASA Engineer Has Debunked Pretty Much Every Online UFO Sighting

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You've probably seen more than your fair share of stories about UFO sightings. An astronaut on the ISS just has to catch footage of a fireball shooting across Earth's skies, and conspiracy theorists have a field day. Whether it's clouds that look li

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Images

(alien face)

Â© Yegor Tsyba/iStockphoto

(Earth, Milky Way, meteorite, sci-fi city, sci-fi spaceship, Hubble deep field, radio telescopes)

Â© NASA; (Antarctica) Â© Liesl Clark for WGBH/NOVA;

(chimpanzee)

Courtesy of UNWF;

(octopus)

Courtesy of NOAA;

(equation, alien)

Â© WGBH/NOVA

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(alien face) Â© Yegor Tsyba/iStockphoto (Earth, Milky Way, meteorite, sci-fi city, sci-fi spaceship, Hubble deep field, radio telescopes) Â© NASA; (Antarctica) Â© Liesl Clark for WGBH/NOVA; (chimpanzee) Courtesy of UNWF; (octopus) Courtesy of NOAA; (equation, alien) Â© WGBH/NOVA

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UFOs entered popular consciousness as "flying saucers" the name an anonymous wire-service reporter gave to the silvery discs Americans were reporting by the thousands in the last week of June 1947. At 3 P.M. on June 24 private pilot Kenneth Arnold, passing over Mount Rainier, Washington, spotted nine shiny disc-shaped objects flying in formation at what he conservatively estimated to be 1200 mph. The worldwide publicity resulting from his sighting, plus the other sightings that came in its immediate wake, brought the UFO age into being.

Since then UFOs have been the focus of furious controversy. Many dispute their existence, claiming that unexplained reports exist only because of inadequate investigation or insufficient data. Proponents counter that some of the best cases have withstood the most thorough scrutiny. The debate that began in earnest in 1947 continues, with essentially the same arguments being recycled endlessly.

Early Reports of UFOs

The UFO phenomenon did not spring abruptly into being one summer afternoon in 1947. In fact, the first UFO book, Charles Fort 's The Book of the Damned, was published in 1919. An eccentric social critic and keen satirist, Fort collected accounts of anomalous physical phenomena, including extraordinary aerial objects, and poked fun at scientists' sometimes labored efforts to account for them in prosaic terms. In The Book of the Damned and two subsequent books, New Lands (1923) and Lo! (1931), he theorized that visitors from other worlds are observing Earth.

Although it is often claimed that the phenomenon has been part of human history for many centuries, reports of anything resembling modern UFOs do not appear in print until the early decades of the nineteenth century. UFOs, in other words, seem to be a product of the modern age. In the twentieth century UFOs were called, successively, "airships," "foo fighters," and "ghost rockets" before "flying saucers" and (starting in the late 1940s, in U.S. Air Force memos), "unidentified flying objects" and (in the early 1950s) "UFOs."

Postwar UFO Investigations

Between 1947 and 1969 the U.S. Air Force ran three successive public UFO projects. The first was code-named Sign, followed by Grudge (1949-52) and Blue Book (1952-69). A faction within Project Sign concluded by mid-1948 that UFOs were extraterrestrial spacecraft, but air force Chief of Staff Gen. Hoyt S. Vandenberg rejected its report. Reorganized as Grudge, the project took a pronounced anti-UFO line. Except for a period between 1951 and 1953, when Capt. Edward J. Ruppelt, neither pronor anti-UFO but committed to open-minded inquiry, directed the project (renamed Blue Book in March 1952), Air Force UFO investigations sought to debunk sightings and to explain them, if not always persuasively, as arising from misidentifications and hoaxes.

In 1966 the Air Force entered into a contract with the University of Colorado ostensibly to conduct an independent investigation under the leadership of physicist Edward U. Condon but in fact to find a way of ridding itself of its UFO albatross. The Condon committee, as it was called informally, soon became embroiled in controversy as Condon's view, which echoed the Air Force's in dismissing UFOs as nonsense, were known. Released in January 1969, the Condon Report (formally titled Scientific Study of Unidentified Flying Objects ) declared the phenomenon nonexistent and further research pointless. The National Academy of Sciences endorsed the report's conclusions, and in December 1969 the Air Force cited them when it announced it was closing Blue Book. To many it appeared as if the UFO controversy had ended.

Yet the Condon Report had its critics, including University of Arizona atmospheric physicist James E. McDonald and Northwestern University astronomer (and longtime Blue Book consultant) J. Allen Hynek, who pointedly observed that fully one-third of the cases in the report were listed as unsolved. They also contended that even some of the "explained" cases had been inadequately accounted for. In November 1970 a UFO subcommittee of the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics, explicitly rejecting Condon's conclusions, remarked on the "small residue of well-documented but unexplainable cases which form the hard core of the UFO controversy." Hynek's 1972 book The UFO Experience argued for renewed inquiry into what he thought might prove to be "not merely the next small step in the march of science but a mighty and totally unexpected quantum leap."

A wave of sightings in the fall of 1973 served to revive popular interest. By the 1980s much of the fascination focused on abduction stories, reported in such widely read books as Budd Hopkins's Missing Time (1981) and Whitley Strieber 's Communion (1987), and on alleged official cover-ups of UFO secrets, including the crash of an unidentified object near Roswell, New Mexico in 1947. In 1994 the Air Force acknowledged its coverup of the so-called Roswell incident but said authorities at the time had been trying to conceal a classified project, Mogul, in which balloons were sent aloft to monitor possible Soviet nuclear tests. Three years later, in a follow-up study, it theorized that the humanoid bodies associated with the crash were "anthropomorphic test dummies that were carried aloft by U.S. Air Force high altitude balloons for scientific research"though such tests had not commenced until six years later.

Though polls have consistently found that a significant plurality of Americans "believe" in UFOs, the scientific establishment continues to treat the phenomenon as illegitimate. In the fall of 1997, however, an international panel of scientists met in Tarrytown, New York, to examine a body of UFO evidence, mostly cases involving physical evidence, presented by a small group of ufologists. The panel's report, released in June 1998, cautiously stated that "unexplained observations" exist though it distanced itself from extraterrestrial theoriesand that further evidence of the best cases is worth science's time.

Nonetheless, UFOs remain a fringe subject. Most scientific investigations of the phenomenon since the Condon period have been conducted by individuals acting on their own or in concert with such civilian groups as the J. Allen Hynek Center for UFO Studies (CUFOS), the Mutual UFO Network, and the Fund for UFO Research. CUFOS, founded by Hynek in 1973 (Hynek died in 1986), publishes the Journal of UFO Studies, the one refereed scientific journal devoted exclusively to the subject.

Schism: Science vs. the Occult

The controversy about UFOs and their meaning has generated innumerable books, scientific papers, popular articles, specialist periodicals in many languages, and Internet websites. Much of this writing, especially in mainstream magazines, newspapers, and journals, has been from a skeptical perspective. Active UFO proponents worldwide probably number no more than several thousand, and they range from the intellectually careful to the wildly credulous. The literature they have produced since the 1940s documents a variety of approaches to the questions raised by UFO reports.

Early on, active proponents divided themselves into two camps. The first, who in the 1950s started calling themselves "ufologists," held a relatively conservative view. In their reading of the phenomenon, UFOs were unexplained occurrences that merited conscientious study. Scientific procedures and logical analysis of the evidence would eventually yield a solution, which probably would validate the notion of extraterrestrial visitation. Ufologists thought communication with UFO intelligences might occur in the future but rejected claims that such contacts were already taking place.

The second camp consisted of individuals sometimes called "saucerians." Saucerians typically were enthusiasts of occultism and the paranormal. Many had backgrounds as active Theosophists, Spiritualists, or followers of other esoteric doctrines. Some believedeven before the Arnold sighting put flying saucers on the world stagethat contact with otherworldly beings not only was possible but already had been accomplished. Such beings, who lived on other planets, in the spirit realm, or in the astral world (or all of these), were on the whole advanced and benevolent, concerned about the fate of the lowly, violent human race and engaged in efforts to guide our spiritual evolution in positive directions. Believers also acknowledged, however, that evil space and spirit entities, operating in concert with terrestrial allies, sought to exert malevolent influences over life on Earth.

Charles Fort's books, especially the collective omnibus The Books of Charles Fort (1941), influenced many individuals who would go on to become ufologists. If Fort had alerted them to reports of unusual aerial phenomena, he had also piqued their interest in other mysteries of the physical world: falls from the sky, monsters, archaeological anomalies, and more. The Fortean Society continued to collect and chronicle accounts of "Fortean phenomena" after Fort's death. In the early UFO age a few ufological theorists, most notably Morris K. Jessup (in The Case for the UFO, [1955], and The Expanding Case for the UFO, [1957]), sought a sort of unified field theory of anomalistics. Jessup wrote that spillage from "celestial hydroponic tanks" in alien spacecraft causes falls of fish, frogs, and other organic matter, and in his view archaeological evidence indicates that earth once housed an advanced civilization which has now returned to its ancestral home in flying saucers.

Both ufologists and saucerians read Fate magazine, the first issue (Spring 1948) of which featured a long article by Kenneth Arnold. A digest-sized pulp quarterly which went bimonthly in 1949 and then monthly in 1952, Fate became the only national magazine to cover UFOs on a regular basis. It also reported on Fortean occurrences. Its main interest, however, was the psychic. Even ufologists who initially had no particular interest in such matters could not help being exposed to material on ghosts, poltergeists, ESP, and psychokinesis.

The most important early saucerian theorist was California occultist N. Meade Layne, founder of the Borderland Sciences Research Foundation. To Layne, who tied the old occult idea of an "etheric world" to the new phenomenon of flying saucers, UFOs were "ether ships." They and their occupants, the "ethereans," come from a fourth dimension of existence or atomic vibration. They enter our realm by lowering their vibratory rates. Their realm exists as an etheric counterpart of our universe. Its inhabitants are also our ethereal counterparts, but they are far more advanced than we are. In the Borderland publication Round Robin and in his book The Ether Ship and Its Solution (1950), Layne brings forth an eclectic mix of Theosophy, Swedenborgianism, Spiritualism, and Fortean events. Much of the material came from San Diego medium Mark Probert, who channeled teachings from alleged discarnates, among them the 500,000-year-old Himalayan philosopher Yada Di' Shi'ite.

Saucerians embraced Layne's ideas, and favorite Layne phrases such as "mat" (materialization) and "demat" (dematerialization) quickly entered their vocabulary. To southern California's contactee subculture, which arose in the early 1950s in the wake of claimed contacts (physical and telepathic) with space people by George Adamski, George Van Tassel, and others, Layne was an intellectual hero. To ufologists, who despised the contactees and all they stood for, he was just another crackpot. Yet a modified version of his idea, called the 4D (fourth-dimensional) theory, found favor among some ufologists. Here science fiction, another important influence on firstgeneration ufologists, was at least as much an inspiration as watered-down Borderland doctrine.

Generally speaking, ufologists and saucerians existed in separate universes, the former as would-be (and sometimes actual) scientists, the latter as more or less open occultists. In the 1960s, however, the lines began to blur, and occultism became a major force in ufology. Before then, ufologists had assumed that they were dealing with a reasonably straightforward issue. As they saw it, the UFO phenomenon consisted of credible observations of anomalous lights and structured objects in the sky. A number of prominent ufologists went further and included reports of humanoid occupants (later called "close encounters of the third kind") in their definition of the phenomenon. Unlike the golden-haired, angelic "space brothers" of contactee lore, these entities were both uncommunicative and strange enoughaliento frighten those who encountered them. Such reports were consistent with the conservative version of the extraterrestrial hypothesis ufologists championed.

By the mid-1960s, however, new developments challenged ufology's dominant view that UFOs are space visitors. For one thing, UFO encounters seemed to be getting weirder. Persons of ostensible sanity and sincerity claimed to have been abducted into UFOs and communicated with their crews, who gave odd, conflicting accounts of themselves, their motives, and their origins. Monstrous creatures showed up in areas where UFOs were being seen. UFO witnesses sometimes complained of postsighting visits by odd-looking, dark-suited individuals like the menacing "men in black" in saucerian literature. Some close-encounter percipients told investigators of poltergeistlike infestations in their homes.

Ultraterrestrials: A Malevolent Genesis

Many of these claims seemed incompatible with extraterrestrial theories, which started to fall out of favor in some circles of ufology. The principal figure in this revisionist ufology, at least initially, was writer John A. Keel, whose investigations in New York, West Virginia, and Ohio elicited scores of incredible tales that could not be shrugged off as the creations of lunatics and charlatans. On the other hand, these were extraordinary claims without extraordinaryor even ordinaryproof. Someone more cautious would have hesitated to use such material, which existed only in testimony (admittedly, for all its fantastic qualities, at times compelling testimony), to construct a phantasmagorical explanatory scheme. Brash and opinionated, Keel had no such reluctance.

Keel credited Layne with having "worked it all out in the early 1950s;" unfortunately, Keel added, "nobody would listen to him." But ufologists, Forteans, and psychic enthusiasts were listening to Keel, whose writing and pronouncements excoriated traditional ufology as the domain of "buffs" who lacked the courage, the imagination, or even the mental health to face the truth. The truth according to Keel was that "ultraterrestrials" from the "superspectrum" (Keel's term for the etheric realm) are entering our world and doing terrible things to us. "We are biochemical robots helplessly controlled by forces that can scramble our brains, destroy our memories and use us in any way they see fit," he wrote. "They have been doing it to us forever." Here he parted radically from Layne, who believed the ethereans to be largely benevolent.

To Keel the contact claims loved by saucerians were not the hoaxes suspected by ufologists; they were actual experiences, but not the sort contactees thought they were. According to Keel, "The quasi-angels of Biblical times have become magnificent spacemen. The demons, devils, and false angels were recognized as liars and plunderers by early man. These same impostors now appear as long-haired Venusians."

He holds that Homo sapiens came into existence because of a war waged between ultraterrestrial factions. One faction took on human form so that it could more easily communicate with Neanderthals, whom this ultraterrestrial group wanted to enlist in its "physical army." An unintended consequence of this assumption of physical form was erotic desire. Sexual intercourse between the ultraterrestrials and the protohuman Neanderthals created the modern human race. As Keel tells the tale in Our Haunted Planet (1971), "This produced strange responses in [the offspring's] materialized nervous system. Emotions were born. Frequencies were changed. The direct control of the superintelligence was driven from their bodies. They were trapped on Earth, unable to ascend the electromagnetic scale and reenter their etheric world. With the loss of control they became animals, albeit highly intelligent animals."

The other ultraterrestrials continue to torment us, their former adversaries, and effectively control the world, manipulating our social, political, scientific, and religious beliefs, creating all paranormal phenomena and destroying the lives of individual human beings who interact with them.

Jacques Vallee and Magicland

A more restrained, erudite occult ufology is expressed in a series of books by an equally influential theorist, Jacques Vallee. A French American educated in astronomy and computer science (with a Ph.D. in the latter), Vallee worked at Northwestern University with Allen Hynek in the mid-1960s. His first two books, Anatomy of a Phenomenon (1965) and Challenge to Science (1966, with Janine Vallee), were hailed as seminal works of scientific UFO literature. But soon Vallee's thoughts had gone elsewhere, back to an early fascination with the esoteric. In Passport to Magonia (1969) Vallee holds that UFOs are a modern manifestation of a supernatural otherworld long ago known as Magonia ("Magicland," according to one controversial translation), whose inhabitants other ages experienced as angels, demons, and fairies.

Passport was misread by some as an effort to depict the UFO phenomenon as a modern folklore (folklore here being equated with delusion). More careful reading reveals Vallee's true meaning: an unknowable "other intelligence" plays to human dreams and manifests accordingly; it manipulates human consciousness and seeks to affect human affairs. Though Vallee sees nothing inherently evil in this, his idea is strikingly like Keel's.

If Vallee at first looked less paranoid than Keel, elements of paranoia would show up soon enough. In such subsequent books as Messengers of Deception (1979) and Revelations (1991), Vallee speculates that a shadowy human group, intent on manipulating societal consciousness (for reasons Vallee never explains), may be producing fraudulent UFO encounters and paranormal occurrences. It is even conceivable, Vallee hints, that this group has some kind of link with Magonia itself. This group or the UFO phenomenon or bothagain Vallee is unclearcomprise a "control system" which communicates with us on a subliminal level, employing a symbolic language of "metalogic" as well as a "schedule of reinforcement." In his view, "UFOs can never be analyzed or conceived because they are the means through which man's concepts are being rearranged."

In time, Vallee persuaded his friend and onetime mentor Hynek that the quest for nuts-and-bolts extraterrestrial UFOs was doomed to certain failure. Particularly in his later years, Hynek's pronouncements took on an increasingly occultish coloration, even to the extent of references to the astral world and to elementals. While such talk provided ammunition for his critics and made many of Hynek's friends and colleagues uncomfortable, it also reflected a longtime, privately held interest in the occult.

Journalism on the Fringe

Under Charles Bowen's editorship Flying Saucer Review ( FSR ), published in England, carried some of the best ufological writing of the 1960s and became for a time the world's most influential UFO magazine. Two or three years into Bowen's stewardship, FSR 's contents turned more and more to extraordinary claims and extreme speculations. Eventually, as Bowen's health began to fail, Gordon Creightontemperamentally much like Keelassumed de facto (then, in 1982, actual) editorship. Sober material continued to appear, but increasingly Creighton's openly supernaturalist approach dominated the pages of FSR. According to Creighton, the jinn, the demonic spirits of Middle Eastern mythology, are the cause of UFO, Fortean, and paranormal phenomena, and they are doing all manner of harm to the human race. Among other atrocious acts they are responsible for the AIDS epidemic. (Comparable views figure in the writings of Salvador Freixedo, sometimes called the Latin American John Keel, and of California ufologist Ann Druffel.)

By 1984 Creighton's extremism had so alienated more conservative ufologists that one of them, John Rimmer, was led to observe, "No journal espousing the bizarre beliefs that are now emanating from [ FSR 's] pages can be considered worthy to be the literary flagship of British ufology. From now on, it seems, it will be of interest largely to paranoid cultists, conspiracy-mongers, and students of fringe literature." FSR 's readership and influence have declined markedly during Creighton's tenure.

More UFO Theories

Not all proponents of occult ufology and anomalistics went as far as Creighton, but the notion that UFOs and other strange phenomena may be related, and all the product of paranormal forces, continued to have a wide appeal. Two popular British writers, Janet and Colin Bord, argued the case for a unified paranormal theory in a number of books. In Alien Animals (1981) they chronicle worldwide reports of anomalous creatures. All such reports, in their view, "have features in common which suggest they are all aspects of a single phenomenon, together with UFOs and other weird apparitions." These otherworldly entities may feed on electrical power and "earth energies."

Another theorist in what may be termed the paracrypto-zoological school, the late F. W. Holiday (author of The Dragon and the Disc, 1973), held that all through history good and evil entities have fought for the soul of the human race. To the ancients the disc represented the benevolent forces, the dragon the destructive ones, and the two have a sort of symbiotic relationship. Creatures such as the Loch Ness Monster are dragons in the literal sensesupernatural and evil. Discs, of course, are flying saucers. On June 2, 1973, accompanied by Holiday, the Rev. Dr. Donald Omand exorcised Loch Ness and subsequently other British and European lakes in which serpent-like beasts traditionally are believed to dwell.

Parapsychologist D. Scott Rogo offered a different sort of paranormal theory to explain UFO and Fortean occurrences. They are, he wrote, the product of mass psychic energy. If the psychokinetic energy emanated by the unconscious of a single individual can produce something so dramatic as a poltergeist, what might the psychokinesis of the entire human race produce? Rogo speculated in The Haunted Universe (1977) that "our entire culture may be projecting UFOs psychically" in response to our "needs and expectations."

Psychologist Michael Grosso calls these psychokinetically generated entities "psychoterrestrials." Their function is to affect the evolution of human consciousness, specifically to break down modern humanity's excessive focus on materialism and rationalism. Grosso borrows here from the prominent Swiss psychologist-philosopher Carl G. Jung who, in Flying Saucers: A Modern Myth of Things Seen in the Skies (1959), characterizes the appearance of UFOs as indicative of "psychic change which may be expected when the spring-point enters Aquarius." According to Grosso the UFO image inspires fantasies and dreams and, more profoundly, draws archetypal material from deep within the collective unconscious. Symbolically the disc shape of the flying saucer represents psychic wholeness, a resolution of the conflict between rational (conscious) thought and intuitive (unconscious) feeling.

To Jung, however, the notion of a "materialized psychism"Grosso's "psychoterrestrial""opens a bottomless void under our feet" and "surpasses our comprehension." It is absurd to propose that "psychic projections throw back a radar echo." Since some UFOs seem to do just that, Jung wrote it is more probable that the "appearance of real objects affords an opportunity for mythological projections." These "real objects" may be spacecraft whose presence only now is being noticed because our "earthly existence feels threatened [and] unconscious contents have projected themselves on these inexplicable heavenly phenomena and given them a significance they in no way deserve."

But in Grosso's more radical version of Jung's hypothesis, psychic projections do show up on radar. "If UFOs are mythic constructs," he writes, "it is not surprising that their physical effects fit the UFO construct. To look like real spaceships, they obligingly affect radar." Psychoterrestrials also manifest as religious visions, monsters, men in black, angels, and moreall "forces of rebirth" in the service of the consciousness transformation that will save us from otherwise certain self-destruction.

Unlike Jung, but in common with Grosso and other occult-oriented theorists, folklorist Peter M. Rojcewicz rejects extraterrestrial UFOs in favor of the psychoterrestrials Grosso describes. "In the narrative accounts born of the ongoing human interaction with other worldliness," he writes in The Boundaries of Orthodoxy (1984), "we see the articulation over time of a mental argument, both for a more cooperative and harmonious existence on the one hand, and on the other, [for] a transcendent dimension of human will and imagination." Rojcewicz defines "UFO phenomenon" as virtually any sort of encounter with paranormal entities. He argues, "The 'UFO Phenomenon,' so Other, so here and now, reveals to us ourselves triggered by the intensity of unanswered longing and passionate collective desire."

As UFO abduction stories came into prominence in the 1980s, they inspired a new round of both extraterrestrial and occult hypotheses. Among proponents of the latter, Grosso, Rojcewicz, and Dennis Stillings quickly identified the abducting entities as psychoterrestrials, while Whitley Strieber, Kenneth Ring ( The Omega Project, 1992), and John E. Mack ( Abduction, 1994) believed them to be genuine otherworldly supernatural intelligences bent on human betterment. In this view, abduction experiences were a variety of contact claim. The aliens may be odder-looking than the ones who figure in classic contact tales, and they may not come from outer space, and their methods may be bizarre and even cruel in the short term, but their mission is the same.

Not all ufologists have embraced occultism. Indeed, occult ufology reached its peak in the 1970s, and by the turn of the century, with Keel and Vallee growing less active and publishing little, it was no longer a significant element of mainstream ufology. Meantime, extraterrestrial theories underwent something of a revival.

Just as significantly, by the late 1970s and early 1980s some disillusioned proponents of paranormal ufology had radically altered the occult model in a way that made it possible for them to deal with extreme experiential claims without also having to embrace unverifiable supernatural explanatory schemes. Thus was born the "psychosocial" school, which proposed what were represented as psychological solutions to entity encounters. Though these solutions were themselves often speculative, they were certainly not occult-based; yet they borrowed ideas from Vallee, Grosso, and Rojcewicz, especially the relationship between alleged human needs and encounter experiences. Essentially the psychosociologists disagreed with the occults on only one point, albeit a crucial one: they did not believe dreams and visions could have physical properties.

Over time the psychosocial approach has evolved into more conventionally defined skepticism. It is more popular in Britain and the European continent than in the United States. Criticisms of occult ufology within the UFO literature have focused on its speculative nature and unfalsifiability. Beyond that, Keel and Vallee have been accused of using dubious material, including rumors and claims later exposed as hoaxes, to argue their cases. Critics have also objected that the evidence linking UFOs to other anomalous and paranormal manifestations is slight. In the Journal of UFO Studies Thomas E. Bullard writes of Rojcewicz and others:

"Claims about reality demand proof on the same terms that we treat other scientific claims. What do we find instead? The phenomenological theories of alternate realities handicap themselves with a well-nigh fatal combination of poor comparative methodology and unsound structural components, and no algebra of apologetics can transform these two minuses into a plus. Speculations about the psychoid properties of archetypes will not explain the physical effects of UFOs. If those physical effects are genuine, then prove to me first that archetypes exist and can have physical effects, or I will look for simpler and more direct solutions elsewhere. Using one unproven theory to support another is just a more sophisticated tautology, more verbose but ultimately no more informative about the physical world than identifying a bald man as hairless. In one sense this tack is even less informative. It clouds the basic questions with confusing masses of theory, distracting participants in the dialogue to talk only about theories and forget the real issues. The very proliferation of phenomenological theories with no way to sort out the right from the wrong simply underscores the danger that we may become more deeply mired in sophistry than the Athenian Academy."

Another critic complained (in International UFO Reporter, January/February 1994) that occult theories turn the UFO argument on its head. The extreme experiential claims on which occult ufologists have been fixated comprise the least compelling evidence for the existence of UFOs. The best evidencein the form of radar trackings, landing traces, photographs suggests that at least some UFOs may be technological devices. The extreme claims, even when related by apparently sincere persons, amount only to stories. He went on:

"The fantastic entities describedfairies, merfolk, Blessed Virgins, apparitions of all kindsdo not bless us with physical evidence or even coherent pictures of themselves, their behaviors, and their missions. Of such things we can say only that experiences of them are possible, but the question of whether these experiences are events is another matter altogether. If eventsin other words, occurrences amenable to incorporation into consensus acceptance via traditional methods of scientific documentationthey would force us to reinvent the world, and they would give us real reason to believe fourth dimensions, ethereal realms, superspectrums, and Magonias are more than words without meaning or attempts to redefine God. Nothing we have seen so far calls on us to embark on so daring an undertaking."

Meanwhile, the saucerian movement, which in its present form began in 1952 with contactees Adamski and Van Tassel, goes on. The flamboyant figures of the early years, often suspected (and often with reason) of conscious charlatanry, are gone, but channelers and visionaries in the thousands still claim to commune with space and extradimensional personalities. An enormous literature of contactee lore and philosophy circulates in books and newsletters and now on the Internet.

Sources:

Bord, Janet, and Colin Bord. Alien Animals. Harrisburg, Pa.: Stackpole Books, 1981.

Bullard, Thomas E. "Fresh Air, or Air Castles in Folklore Theories?" Journal of UFO Studies 4 (n.s., 1992): 165-73.

Clark, Jerome. The UFO Encyclopedia, Second Edition: The Phenomenon from the Beginning. 2 vols. Detroit: Omnigraphics, 1998.

Gillmor, Daniel S., ed. Scientific Study of Unidentified Flying Objects. New York: Bantam Books, 1969.

Grosso, Michael. Frontiers of the Soul: Exploring Psychic Evolution. Wheaton, Ill.: Quest Books, 1992.

Holiday, F. W. The Dragon and the Disc: An Investigation Into the Totally Fantastic. New York: W. W. Norton, 1973.

Jacobs, David M. The UFO Controversy in America. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1975.

Jung, C. G. Flying Saucers: A Modern Myth of Things Seen in the Skies. New York: Harcourt, Brace, 1959.

Keel, John A. The Eighth Tower. New York: Saturday Review Press, 1975.

Layne, N. Meade. The Ether Ship and Its Solution. Vista, Calif.: Borderland Sciences Research Associates, 1950.

Mack, John E. Abduction: Human Encounters with Aliens. New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1994.

Reeve, Bryant, and Helen Reeve. Flying Saucer Pilgrimage. Amherst, Wis.: Amherst Press, 1957.

Ring, Kenneth. The Omega Project: Near-Death Experiences, UFO Encounters, and Mind at Large. New York: William Morrow, 1992.

Rojcewicz, Peter M. "The Boundaries of Orthodoxy: A Folklore Look at the UFO Phenomenon." 2 vols. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania, Ph.D. dissertation, 1984.

Rogo, D. Scott. The Haunted Universe: A Psychic Look at Miracles, UFOs and Mysteries of Nature. New York: New American Library, 1977.

Stillings, Dennis, ed. Cyberbiological Studies of the Imaginal Component in the UFO Contact Experience. St. Paul, Minn.: Archaeus Project, 1989.

Stupple, David M. "Historical Links Between the Occult and Flying Saucers." Journal of UFO Studies 5 (n.s., 1994): 93-108.

Sturrock, Peter A. The UFO Enigma: A New Review of the Physical Evidence. New York: Warner Books, 1999.

Vallee, Jacques. Messengers of Deception: UFO Contacts and Cults. Berkeley, Calif.: And/Or Press, 1979.

. Passport to Magonia: From Folklore to Flying Saucers. Chicago: Henry Regnery, 1969.

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Unidentified Flying Objects and the Occult UFOs entered popular consciousness as "flying saucers"- the name an anonymous wire-service reporter gave to the silvery discs Americans were reporting by the thousands in the last week of June 1947. At 3 P.M.

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The National UFO Reporting Center receives, corroborates, and publishes reports from individuals who have witnessed unusual, possibly UFO-related events from around the globe.

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NOVA Online presents 'Kidnapped By UFOs?'

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Some say it's obvious we're not alone, others scorn the very idea and still others yet will hauntingly report their own experiences of alien probings following their casual night-time stroll through the fields of small town America. But with everything from increasingly bizarre reportings from increasingly credible sources, to basic mathematical probability suggesting the likelihood of alien life, these days, scepticism is harder won. Whatever your opinions, you may well find that the following examples have some impact on them.

It's easy enough to write off much recent phenomena, quoting anything from wayward weather balloons to the perpetuation of the legend and UFO sightings in pop culture providing a cohesive image of extra terrestrials for eye witnesses to draw on should someone cry alien. But what's slightly harder to dismiss is the ancient evidence (i.e. pre the National Enquirer). Enter the 'The Madonna with Saint Giovannino', otherwise known as the UFO painting.

Created in the 15th century, it depicts the Virgin Mary and in the backdrop of the painting, a man and his dog staring up at a hovering disk-like object that is suspiciously familiar. And this painting isn't alone either, with everything from ancient cave paintings to Sanskrit Scrolls all depicting alien life. A sighting even crops up in the Bible in The Book of Ezekiel. Either this is compelling evidence, or humanity has a rich tradition of conspiracy theorists.

Back in 1961, astronomer Frank Drake devised an equation by which he could estimate the likelihood of the existence of alien life, taking into account a number of factors including the average number of planets able to support life and the fraction that could go on to support intelligent life. This was then implemented in 2001. The result: statistically, hundreds of thousands of such planets should technically exist.

There are more registered sightings of UFOs than there is the word count here to deal with them and the majority of the time, there's a thorough debunking accompanying them. But throughout history there have been a number that have been harder to explain away, from the to 1853 sighting by a number of students and professors at the Tennessee College campus, to the oft quoted Stephenville Lights case from 2008, with over 200 witnesses spotting the UFO including three policemen who remained anonymous. Consider these compelling cases unsolved.

If you're going to believe any reports of UFOs, you might as well trust those coming from the men who have actually been to space (who usually also come with all their teeth and a P.H.D.). The list of those who have made claims of sightings includes Edgar Mitchell, Cady Coleman and Dr. Brian O'Leary, many also referencing government knowledge of alien existence and cover-ups. Buzz Aldrin has also spoken of his own experience on board the Apollo 11 when they saw something flying alongside them. At first they thought it was the final stage of the detached rocket, until mission control confirmed it was 6000 miles away from them...

While some US presidents have released classified files on the subject of UFOs, with Jimmy Carter famously describing his own encounter, others still have been denied access to classified information on the subject altogether, Bill Clinton claiming to be among them. This has led many believers to suggest there's a cover up afoot. Clinton has been consistently vocal on the existence of aliens and it's worth noting his opinions on an 'Independence Day' situation too. You know, just in case...

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Do aliens exist? Most compelling evidence of alien existence

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Some say it's obvious we're not alone, others scorn the very idea and still others yet will hauntingly report their own experiences of alien probings following their casual night-time stroll through the fields of small town America.

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Researchers say they've solved one of the mysteries behind the statues on Easter Island.

A study published in the peer-reviewed journal PLoS One found the Rapa Nui, the ancient people who lived on Easter Island, built the location's iconic monuments near freshwater sources along the coast.

Researchers used quantitative spatial modeling to study the monuments, called moai, and the ahu, the platforms supporting the statues. The study explored how the statues' location related to resources the island's inhabitants might require, such as agricultural gardens.

The results of the study showed access to freshwater and the location of the monuments were "tightly linked together," Carl Lipo, an archaeologist with Binghamton University and one of the study's authors, said in a statement.

"It wasn't obvious when walking around - with the water emerging at the coast during low tide, one doesn't necessarily see obvious indications of water," Lipo said in a statement. "But as we started to look at areas around ahu, we found that those locations were exactly tied to spots where the fresh groundwater emerges."

Researchers say they only have freshwater data for the western side of the island, which sits off the coast of Chile. Additional surveying is planned to explore the connection between the statues and the location of fresh water sources.
Follow Brett Molina on Twitter: @brettmolina23

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Researchers may have solved a mystery of the Easter Island statues

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Researchers say they've solved one of the mysteries behind the statues on Easter Island. A study published in the peer-reviewed journal PLoS One found the Rapa Nui, the ancient people who lived on Easter Island, built the location's iconic monuments near freshwater sources along the coast.

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NOVA Online | Secrets of Easter Island | Explore the Island

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The Easter Island mysteries have stumped scientists for ages.

One of the world's greatest unsolved mysteries surrounds the famous statutes that are located on the island. Considered to be one of the most remote locations on Earth, this island sits in the southern area of the Pacific Ocean. The next closest island when it comes to land proximity is estimated to be an amazing 1,400 miles from Easter Island. Interestingly enough, that island is completely uninhabited by humans. It is an estimated 2,300 miles from the Chile coast. However, in the year of 1722, a Captain of Dutch origin discovered the island on Easter. At this point in time, the land - which is only 10 miles in width and 15 miles in length - was nearly uninhabited, apart from the massive stone structures for which it is known.

The statues are perhaps the main subject when it comes to Easter Island mysteries. These weigh many tons a piece and a good portion of them extend the height of 30 feet. There are numerous theories that have been played with regarding the amazing stone structures. The total count of structures that have currently been discovered on the land has reached the number of 887. However, a great number of these structures were never put in place as they were damaged in the transition from the volcano area of the land to where the upright statutes currently stand. Those that were successfully put into place are not facing the ocean as many believe, but they are facing the very center of the land.

Of course, there are many that contribute the Easter Island mysteries to aliens from another planet. This is a theory that has been expounded on for a large part of history because of the fact that the faces of the amazing statutes do not have eyes. These structures are often referred to as "Moai". The largest structure on Easter Island is called "Paro". It is believed that a spacecraft landed on the island at one point and that the aliens that were left as survivors of the craft were stranded on the island. It is believed that until they were finally discovered by the "Mother Ship" they spent their time carving the pieces. It is also believed that the statutes could have even been a means of signaling their fellow aliens.

Could it be that the statutes were created by a small tribe of Polynesian people? That could be - but there is nothing to validate this fact. It is known that there are hardly any trees on the island. Could it be that the trees were used to transport the rock structures to where they are currently located? That is possible. The fact remains, though, that the Easter Island mysteries have yet to be completely solved. Until a theory is actually validated, these immense structures will continue to be one of the world's greatest unsolved mysteries.

Return To Easter Island Mysteries Top Of Page

Return To Ancient Mysteries Main Page

Return To Greatest Unsolved Mysteries Home Page

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The Easter Island mysteries have stumped scientists for ages. One of the world's greatest unsolved mysteries surrounds the famous statutes that are located on the island. Considered to be one of the most remote locations on Earth, this island sits in the southern area of the Pacific Ocean.

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Stone Giants

On average, they stand 13 feet high and weigh 14 tons, human heads-on-torsos carved in the male form from rough hardened volcanic ash. The islanders call them "moai," and they have puzzled ethnographers, archaeologists, and visitors to the island since the first European explorers arrived here in 1722. In their isolation, why did the early Easter Islanders undertake this colossal statue-building effort? Unfortunately, there is no written record (and the oral history is scant) to help tell the story of this remote land, its people, and the significance of the nearly 900 giant moai that punctuate Easter Island's barren landscape.

What do they mean? The moai and ceremonial sites are along the coast, with a concentration on Easter Island's southeast coast. Here, the moai are more 'standardized' in design, and are believed to have been carved, transported, and erected between AD 1400 and 1600. They stand with their backs to the sea and are believed by most archaeologists to represent the spirits of ancestors, chiefs, or other high-ranking males who held important positions in the history of Easter Island, or Rapa Nui, the name given by the indigenous people to their island in the 1860s.

Archaeologist Jo Anne Van Tilburg, who has studied the moai for many years, believes the statues may have been created in the image of various paramount chiefs. They were not individualized portrait sculptures, but standardized representations of powerful individuals. The moai may also hold a sacred role in the life of the Rapa Nui, acting as ceremonial conduits for communication with the gods. According to Van Tilburg, their physical position between earth and sky puts them on both secular and sacred ground; secular in their representation of chief and their ability to physically prop up the sky, and sacred in their proximity to the heavenly gods. Van Tilburg concludes, "The moai thus mediates between sky and earth, people and chiefs, and chiefs and gods."

What is an ahu? The word "ahu" has two meanings in Easter Island culture. First, an ahu is the flat mound or stone pedestal upon which the moai stand. The ahus are, on average, about four feet high. The word 'ahu' also signifies a sacred ceremonial site where several moai stand. Ahu Akivi, for example, is an ahu site with seven standing moai.

Moai Stats The following statistics on Easter Island's moai are the results of Van Tilburg's survey in 1989. She reported, "A total of 887 monolithic statues has been located by the survey to date on Easter Island...397 are still in situ in quarries at the Rano Raraku central production center.....Fully 288 statues (32% of 887) were successfully transported to a variety of image ahu locations....Another 92 are recorded as "in transport," 47 of these lying in various positions on prepared roads or tracks outside the Rano Raraku zone."

Number of Moai

Total number of moai on Easter Island: 887

Total number of maoi that were successfully transported to their final ahu locations: 288 (32% of 887)

Total number of moai still in the Rano Raraku quarry: 397 (45%)

Total number of moai lying 'in transit' outside of the Rano Raraku quarry: 92 (10%)

Less than one third of all carved moai actually made it to a final ceremonial ahu site. Was this due to the inherent difficulties in transporting them? Were the ones that remain in the quarry (45%) deemed culturally unworthy of transport? Were they originally intended to remain in place on the quarry slopes? Or had the islanders run out of the resources necessary to complete the Herculean task of carving and moving the moai?

Size and weight of moai Measuring the size, weight, and shape of the 887 moai on Easter Island has been a 15-year process for Van Tilburg. The most notable statues are listed below:

Largest moai:
Location: Rano Raraku Quarry, named "El Gigante"
Height: 71.93 feet, (21.60 meters)
Weight: approximately 145-165 tons (160-182 metric tons)

Largest moai once erect:
Location: Ahu Te Pito Kura, Named "Paro"
Height: 32.63 feet (9.80 meters)
Weight: approximately 82 tons (74.39 metric tons)

Largest moai fallen while being erected:
Location: Ahu Hanga Te Tenga
Height: 33.10 feet (9.94 meters)

Smallest standing moai:
Location: Poike
Height: 3.76 feet (1.13 meters)

Van Tilburg's painstaking effort to inventory and carefully measure the nearly 900 moai statues on Easter Island has enabled her to construct a digital version of an average moai. This digital statue has informed her hypothesis for a potential transport method for moving the moai; the statue which Van Tilburg's team will attempt to move and erect for the NOVA program has been made to the exact dimensions of this digital moai. The dimensions are as follows:
Statistically average moai:
Height: 13.29 feet (4.05 meters)
Width at Base: 5.25 feet (1.6 meters)
Width at Head: 4.86 feet (1.48 meters)
Depth through body at midpoint: 3.02 feet (92 cm.)
Total volume: 210.48 cubic feet (5.96 cubic meters)
Center of gravity: 4.46 feet (1.36 meters)
Total weight: 13.78 tons (12.5 metric tons)

First Inhabitants | Ancient Navigation | Stone Giants | First Contact

Photos: Liesl Clark

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NOVA Online | Secrets of Easter Island | Stone Giants

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Move a Megalith | Editor's Picks | Previous Sites | Join Us/E-mail | TV/Web Schedule About NOVA | Teachers | Site Map | Shop | Jobs | Search | To print PBS Online | NOVA Online | WGBH © | Updated November 2000 Dispatches | Explore the Island | Lost Civilization Resources | E-mail | Table of Contents | Easter Island Home Stone Giants On average, they stand 13 feet high and weigh 14 tons, human heads-on-torsos carved in the male form from rough hardened volcanic ash.

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Archaeologists have long debated how the ancient inhabitants of Easter Island managed to balance a separate piece of stone on top of the heads of the famous moai statues that are dotted across the island. Now a team of researchers claim to have the answer.

Easter Island, or Rapa Nui as it is known in the Polynesian language, is a small remote island a few thousand miles west of South America. One of the most interesting features of this island is its 887 giant monolithic statues named moai. While the initial name of the island was considered to be 'Te Pito O Te Henua', which means the Navel of the World, it was renamed in 1722 when the Dutch explorer Jacob Roggeveen arrived there and has been known as 'Easter Island' since.

The moai statues of huge male figures on average are 13 feet high (3.9624 m) and weigh 14 tons (12,700 kg). They are made of compressed volcanic ash. Many believe the statues held a sacred role in the Rapa Nui people's lives and may have been ceremonial conduits for contact with the gods.

A number of the moai statues found on the island also have pukao, the name given to the hats or topknots placed on top of the heads, which may have represented dressed hair or headdresses of red feathers worn by chiefs throughout Polynesia. They are cylindrical in shape with a dent on the underside to fit on the head of the moai and a boss or knot on top. The pukao was balanced as a separate piece on top of the head of a moai. For many years it has not been known how they were raised and placed but theories include them being raised with the statue or placed after the statue was erected.
A moai statue on Easter Island wearing a Pukao ( Pablo Garbarino / Flickr ) The first known painting of Easter Island in 1775 by William Hodges, showing moai statues with their distinctive red headgear. ( Wikipedia)
According to a new study, the pukao were rolled up ramps into place. Live Science reports that researchers used "simple physics to model the force and torque required to place the pukao atop the moai via different techniques, such as rolling the objects up a ramp to the top of the statues, building a giant tower and using a pulley system, or erecting the pukao and moai simultaneously."
Featured image: Maoi statues of Easter Island with Pukao ( (Follow the egg) )
Co-author of the study Sean Hixon, an undergraduate student in archaeology and geology at the University of Oregon, who presented his findings at the 80th Annual Meeting of the Society for American Archaeology, said that rolling the headgear "would have been a relatively easy matter" and could have been done by less than ten people.

Hixton added that other features support the rolling theory of placement, including indentations at the bases of the hats and their oblong shape. The shape would have had an advantage over a circular cross-section as it would have prevented the pukao from rolling down the ramp by accident. Many of the pukao also have ring-shaped indentations and vertical scratches on the sides, which could have provided traction as the hats were being rolled up a ramp.

Nevertheless, Hixton admitted that the research is far from conclusive and that any of the other theories regarding their placement could also be valid, as research showed that all the proposed methods were theoretically possible with enough people.

Easter island was settled around AD 300 by Polynesians and between the 10th and 16th centuries the island community expanded steadily, settlements being set up along practically the entire coastline. However, following this period, the population took an extremely rapid decline dropping from 15,000 to approximately 2,000. For many years it was believed that this was due to an economic and social crisis in the community caused by environmental deterioration. However, more recent research has drawn this belief into question and has demonstrated that population decline only occurred after the arrival of Europeans.

By April Holloway

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Study Claims to Have Solved Mystery of Giant Easter Island Hats

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Archaeologists have long debated how the ancient inhabitants of Easter Island managed to balance a separate piece of stone on top of the heads of the famous moai statues that are dotted across the island. Now a team of researchers claim to have the answer.

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Easter Island - Faces of Mystery

It is one of the most isolated islands in the world but 1200 years ago a double-hulled canoe filled with seafarers from a distant culture landed upon its shores. Over the centuries that followed a remarkable society developed in isolation on the island.

For reasons still unknown they began carving giant statues out of volcanic rock. These monuments, known, as "moai" are some of the most incredible ancient relics ever discovered. The people of Easter Island called themselves the Rapa Nui. Where did they come from and why did they disappear? Science has learned much about the enigma of Easter Island and has put to rest some of the more bizarre theories, but questions and controversies remain.

Explore this site to get the latest information on the island's history and current research.

The Story & History

Wild speculation about UFO's, Atlantis, and vanished advanced ancient races has always been a part of the Easter Island debate. Science has made great strides in understanding who made the giant statues of Easter Island and has put to rest these bizarre stories. This short pictorial essay will hopefully clear up continuing misconceptions about Easter Island and perhaps will get you thinking about how the story of Easter Island relates to what we as humans are currently doing to our planet. This is a story everyone should read.

Easter Island-Rapa Nui is a tiny speck of land in the South Pacific. Formed by a series of massive volcanic eruptions, the island was only easter island from spaceinhabited by sea birds and dragonflies for millions of years. Its steep slopes, however, stood out like a beacon to a weary group of Polynesian seafarers. How long their voyage took or their reasons for leaving their home country are questions that we'll never have the answer to, but we can imagine their joy at seeing this sight after what must have been months at sea.

Lava tubes and pounding waves have created hundreds of sea caves and a treacherous coastline. There are only a few small areas that are safe for anchorages. Located in the South Pacific between Chile and Tahiti, Easter Island is one of the most isolated inhabited islands in the world. Roughly triangular and covering only 64 square miles, it formed when a plume of hot material rose from deep within Earth's interior, burned through the crust and erupted onto the surface as lava.

Today, volcanic cones are found at each point of the island. The largest, Rano Kau is easily visible from space. The highest is Terevaka, which rises to 11674 feet above sea level. There are over 70 eruptive centers on the island but none has known activity since the island was colonized 1300 years ago.

This sheltered sand beach is close to Anakena, where the legends say King Hoto Matua landed his double hulled canoe, thus beginning the occupation of Easter Island.

Anakena, a beautiful white sand beach stands out from the rest of the coastline, which is either sharp black lava rock or vertical cliff faces hundreds of feet tall.
It is at Anakena that the legends say Hotu Matua landed and began the colonization of the island. Excavations of this area have discovered that it was an important site and it boasts one of the best collections of erected moai on the island, Ahu Naunau.

The voyagers started constructing villages and houses made in an unusual elliptical shape. It has been speculated that this style of construction started when the new arrivals turned their boats upside down for quick housing. There were literally hundreds of remains of these foundations on the island in the 1800's, but most were destroyed by the missionaries to make fences.

Indeed, the missionaries did more damage to the island's history than even the Peruvian slave traders, which carted off most of the island's population. Those who escaped by hiding in the island's many caves were "saved" by these missionaries, who proceeded to destroy all the islanders' wooden sculptures, religious artifacts and most importantly, the Rongo-Rongo tablets, which contained a record of the lost language of the Rapa Nui. So few of these tablets remain that no one has been able to decipher them.

The first islanders found a lush island, filled with giant palms which they used to build boats and housing. The plants they brought with them did well in the rich volcanic soil and by AD 1550 population on the island hit a high of between 7000 and 9000.

Distinct clans formed as the population increased and various population centers grew up in different areas of the island. One thing tied them all together however - the statue construction and the cult that formed around it.

2. Statue Construction

It is unclear why the Easter Islanders turned to statue construction on such a massive scale. Their obsession with it ultimately brought about their downfall as they depleted more and more of the forests for use in the process of moving the giant moai. While the why is a mystery, where it happened and to a large degree how it happened is fairly clear. Each moai was born from the massive caldera of Rano Raraku. (right)

The soft volcanic tuff was perfect material for statue carving. Using harder volcanic rock implements they were able to first sketch out the moai's outline in the rock wall and then systematically chip away at it until the moai was held in place by a thin "keel."

The moai carvers were master craftsmen who had risen through the ranks of a "carver's guild." The production of the statues was most likely through conscripted labor with many rituals and ceremonies performed throughout the process. The stone carvers were ingenious in making the most out of sections of rock. moai can be seen carved in all directions in the cliff face. If a defect would appear in the rock the statue would be abandoned and they moved on to another area. They took advantage of fissures in the volcanic walls and also variations in colors. In short they were true artists.

Finally when a statue was finished, it was broken off its keel and slid carefully down the slope using ropes tied to giant palm trunks which were sunk in specially prepared holes in rim of the crater. At the base of the crater they were raised up and final decorations were carved into its torso and back. Coral and obsidian eyes were placed in as a final touch, although some suggest these were only placed in the statues on special occasions. Preparation was then made for transport across the island to various ahu.

The ahu were the ceremonial platforms built to support collections of moai. As evidence of the difficulty moving the moai, many can be seen along the paths of ancient roadways where they broke along the way and were abandoned.

It is believed that the statues were commissioned commemorative images of lineage heads. However, the moai are not portraits of specific individuals although some may have inscriptions or other markings that linked them with specific chiefs. Why they chose the stylized design of the angular face and long phallus shaped bodies is unclear and is one of the greatest mysteries of the Rapa Nui.

While there are some other stone sculptures made by Polynesians, none is similar to the moai. In parts of South America, some statues have been found which resemble the "kneeling" statue on Rano Raraku, but nothing anywhere else resembles the standardized moai design that the Rapa Nui carved over a thousand times.

3. Erecting the Moai

Once the statues were reasonably complete, they then had to be transported across the island to the platforms prepared for them. This involved a trek of 14 miles in some cases. How were these massive Moai moved to the sites? Barring any extraterrestrial influence it seems likely that they were rolled along the ancient roads that crisscrossed the island on logs lubricated with the oils from palm trees. Some suggest that they were moved in an upright position and kept stable by crews manning ropes. This mode would verify the island legends of the statues "walking" to their sites. From a distance seeing one of these great Moai moving along the road bobbing up and down as the logs moved underneath would surely have looked like a statue moving under its own power with a procession alongside it. What a sight that would have been!

However, recent computer simulations by Jo Anne von Tilburg at UCLA have shown that it would have been much simpler to position the Moai in a horizontal position on two large logs and then roll the whole unit along on other logs placed perpendicular to it. Using this method Van Tilburg calculated that an average moai could have been moved from the quarry to Ahu Akivi in less than 5 days, using approximately 70 men. Her theories were recently put to the test in a successful experiment to move a moai replica on Easter Island sponsored and filmed by Nova (see Resources section)

Once the journey was complete the Moai were positioned atop great platforms called ahu. Built at the edge of the ocean, the ahu required just as much engineering know-how and raw labor as the statue construction itself. It is here that the Easter Islanders' stonework skills can fully be appreciated. As seen in the images to the right of Ahu Naunau and Ahu Tahai, massive blocks and tons of fill were required to build the supports for the moai. Although they were an incredible engineering feat, most of the ahu built were less than elegant constructions. At one mysterious site, however, it was much different.

The stonework of Ahu Vai Uri (right) is compared to that of Ahu Vinapu (below) on the southern shore near Rano Kau. The detail shot shows the incredible precision in the stone fittings. It was this precision, so similar to the stonework done by the Incas, that gave Thor Heyerdahl the idea that the Easter Islanders had come from South America in reed boats on the prevailing currents. Stonework of this complexity had not been seen in Polynesia, but it was common in Peru. It's impossible to look at that site and not think of the exact type of stone fitting which is so common in sites like Machu Picchu. Most archaeologists consider the similarities a coincidence. If so, it is a remarkable one.

Soon ahu with erected moai were installed on all corners of the island, until over one thousand had been carved, and the population of the island also continued to grow. For decades the competition to build the biggest and best moai went on, and different ahu - each belonging to a different clan - formed an almost unbroken line along the coast of Easter Island. The culture had reached its zenith. And then something went terribly wrong . . .

4. Conflict: The Fall of the Moai

A chilling story of resource exploitation and destruction on Easter Island is beginning to come to light. The first westerners to discover the island wondered how any one could have survived on such a desolate, treeless place. Indeed, this was a mystery until recent core samples taken from the crater lakes showed that the island was heavily forested with a giant now-extinct palm while the Easter Island culture was active.

Apparently the islanders were greeted with a lush tropical paradise when they first discovered it. It must have seemed inexhaustible. The trees were cut for lumber for housing, wood for fires, and eventually for the rollers and lever-like devices used to move and erect the moai.

As the deforestation continued the moai building competition turned into an obsession. The quarry was producing moai at sizes that probably could never have been moved very far (one unfinished moai in the quarry is 70 feet tall!) And still the trees came down. With the loss of the forests, the land began to erode. The small amount of topsoil quickly washed into the sea. The crops began to fail and the clans turned on one another in a battle for the scarce resources. The symbols of the islanders' power and success, the moai, were toppled. Eyes were smashed out of the moai and often rocks were placed where the statues neck would fall so it would decapitate the moai. The violence grew worse and worse. It was said that the victors would eat their dead enemies to gain strength, bones found on the island show evidence of this cannibalism. With the scarce food supplies it may have been a question of hunger as well as being ceremonial. A spooky cave (right) at the southwest corner of the island, Ana Kai Tangata, is translated to "cave where men are eaten." Inside are pictographs painted in ochre and white of ghost like birds flying upwards. With no wood left to build boats, all the Rapa Nui people could do was look enviously at the birds that sail effortless through the sky. The Rapa Nui culture and community, which had developed over the past 300 years, collapsed.

Their island was in shambles, and their villages and crops destroyed. There was no wood left on the island to build escape boats. The few survivors of the conflict, perhaps numbering as low as 750, began to pick up the pieces of their culture. One thing they left behind, however, were the moai....

5. A New Cult Rises

The Easter Islanders were more cut off from the world then ever before. Any dreams of escaping the destroyed island were dashed by the lack of wood. The only boats they could build were small rafts and canoes made of tortoro reeds. Even fishing must have become extremely difficult at this point. The island was a wasteland, the eroded soil just barely producing enough food for the meager population to survive. It was under these conditions that the Birdman Cult arose.

Above: The rim of Rano Kau became the center of the Easter Island Birdman Cult

It's possible that the Birdman practices had been going on during the reign of the statue cult; however, it eventually took over as the predominate religion on the island and was still in practice up untill 1866-67. High on the rim of the crater known as Rano Kau was the ceremonial village of Orongo. Built to worship the god of fertility, Makemake, it became the site of a grueling competition.

Each year leadership of the island was determined by the individual who could scale down the vertical slopes, swim out to one of three small islets in shark-infested waters, and bring back the egg of the nesting sooty tern unbroken. The one who did this successfully was considered the Birdman of the year and was bestowed with special honors and privileges.

One of the most fascinating sights at Orongo are the hundreds of petroglyphs carved with birdman and Makemake images. Carved into solid basalt, they have resisted ages of harsh weather. It has been suggested that the images represent birdman competition winners. Over 480 Birdman petroglyphs have been found on the island, mostly around Orongo.

As Birdman images transformed the rocks, so too were the islanders transformed. It seemed that the culture was beginning to rebuild itself. We will never know whether the Rapa Nui would have survived and prospered, because in 1862 wave after wave of slave traders landed on Easter Island and took away all healthy individuals. In the space of one year, a level of injury, death and disease was inflicted on the population leaving a broken people, bereft of leadership. As their culture lay in disarray a new force entered the scene whose actions would forever deny the world of a true understanding of the Rapa Nui culture.

The missionaries arrived on Easter when the people were at their most vulnerable. With their society in ruins it did not take long to convert the population to Christianity. First to go was the islanders style of dress, or lack thereof. Tattooing and use of body paint were banned. Destruction of Rapa Nui artworks, buildings, and sacred objects, including most of the Rongo-rongo tablets - the key to understanding their history - was swift and complete. Islanders were forced off their ancestral lands and required to live in one small section of the island while the rest of the land was used for ranching.

Eventually all pure Rapa Nui blood died out. Annexation with Chile brought new influences, and today there are only a few individuals left with ties to the original population.

6. A Lesson from the Past

A jewel of an island floating in an endless sea. A seemingly never-ending supply of raw materials. Technological advances. Population growth. Depletion of resources. War. Collapse. Sound familiar? The Easter Island story is a story for our times. We too are on an island floating on an endless sea. There are differences, of course. It could be said that Easter Island is tiny and that it was only a matter of time before the resources in such a closed system were used up. But there are parallels between the islanders' attitude towards their environment and our own, and this is the most frightening part of the story.

On an island as small as Easter, it was easy to see the effects of the deforestation as it was taking place. But the inhabitants continued their destructive actions. They probably prayed to their gods to replenish the land so they could continue to rape it, but the gods didn't answer. And still the trees came down. Whatever one did to alter that ecosystem, the results were reasonably predictable. One could stand on the summit and see almost every point on the island. The person who felled the last tree could see that it was the last tree. Nonetheless, he (or she) still felled it.* This is the really scary part. As our own forests fall to the bulldozers, there are many who are valiantly trying to save them. It is obvious, now that we have satellites showing us the massive deforestation, that there is a serious problem. And yet our leaders - and even the majority of individuals - look on, unconcerned. They appear willing to bulldoze the last trees to build the moai of our time - technology & development. Will we have the sense to reconcile our lifestyles with the well-being of our environment, or is the human personality always the same - as that of the person who felled the last tree?*

*from the book Easter Island-Earth Island

A Tour of the Island

Almost everyone has seen the iconic images of the Easter Island statues staring silently out from the hillsides. For years I thought these were the only Moai on the island. I knew nothing of the statues erected on ahu or the fallen moai at the other sites. Seeing these pictures many people have come to believe that all Moai faced the ocean while it is the exact opposite that is true. With the exception of Ahu Akivi all erected Moai face inland. It is believed they were positioned that way to watch over the villages.

At Rano Raraku the statues face away from the crater.The fact is these statues were not meant to have stayed in this place. The Moai that you see half buried on the sides of the volcanic cone of Rano Raraku were pieces waiting to be transported to ahu around the island. The Moai that you see sticking up out of the ground have bodies that extend down underground 20 - 40 feet, all the way to the waist. Centuries of erosion from the slopes above have covered all but the tops of these giants - the largest Moai ever constructed. One of the unfinished moai, completely carved but not removed from the crater wall, is a staggering 70 feet in length. Many doubt this statue could ever have been raised successfully. Giving their ingenuity and obsession, I believe they would have eventually. The slopes of Rano Raraku are filled with eye-less moai - several hundred circle the crater in various stages of construction.

Many have a more detailed and finished look than the moai erected on the island's ahu. There are some that disagree that these statues were finished pieces waiting for transport and believe that they were never meant to be move from the slopes surrounding their birth place. Perhaps it was a "Moai Showroom" of sorts where local leaders could come and pick out their favorite design!The Statue shown on the left is my personal favorite. It's thin deeply chiseled features make it unique among the Moai. At over 45 feet tall it must have been extremely difficult to carve and move.

Thor Heyerdahl's team was given one day in 1987 to excavate and measure the full length of the moai. Its regal head tapers into a long thin body with carved tattoo and loin cloth relief's on its surface. It has a distinctly phallic shape to it and some have proposed that all the moai were purposely designed around a phallus shaped form.

The interior of the caldera contains many finished and unfinished moai as well. Erosion has covered many nearly completely and it's possible more lay beneath the ground, covered by hundreds of years of erosion. The potmarked walls from which the moai where carved can clearly be seen in this photo taken of the interior of the Rano Raraku caldera just above the crater lake. Right: Statues located on the interior slopes of Rana Raraku. Centuries of erosion have buried many of the Moai around the rim of the caldera.

Finally the strangest Moai ever found on Easter Island. The odd "kneeling" statue. Found by archaeologist Thor Heyerdahl's team in 1955 on a part of the Rano Raraku quarry near no other statues it stands, hauntingly. It is a very realistic piece compared to the traditional moai and it is unclear whether this was a very early piece or a later development. Its location, away from the other carved moai is also unusual. One legend says that this is a representation of a famous moai carver, erected to watch over future generations of the craftsmen

There is something about this statue that makes the hair on the back of my neck stand up. I can't put my finger on what it is but as I stood there looking at it with the howling tradewinds blowing through my ears, I knew there was a story here that had not been told. It's as if the statue is trying to scream out, to tell us what happened. But it's mouth is solid basalt and winds block out any sound.

2. Ahu Tongariki

Ahu Tongariki, on the south coast of Easter was the site of one of the largest of the ahu. The large flat plain below Rano Raraku provided easy access to the quarry and as a result the largest of the moai where erected here.

However, in 1960, a massive tidal wave generated by an earthquake off the coast of Chile hit Ahu Tongariki and destroyed the platform and swept the massive moai hundreds of yards inland.

Right is a rare picture of one of Ahu Tongariki's moai against the backdrop of its birthplace - the Rano Raraku volcano. The photo is rare because in 1992 a team from Japan brought in cranes and other heavy equipment. Their mission: restore Ahu Tongariki. Working under the direction of Chilean archaeologist, Claudio Cristino the task took five years. Now all 15 of the moai stand proudly once more at what is arguably Easter Island's most impressive site.

While the new restoration is impressive there was a stark beauty to the site in its demolished state that has now been lost. While it is tempting to raise all the moai that have been toppled due to the war on the island or natural events, part of the history is altered by doing so. Due to the harsh weather conditions some statues are better protected in their fallen state.

3. Ahu Vinapu

Ahu Vinapu is not as spectacular as some of the other sites on Easter Island. There are no erected moai, no giant craters to peer into, and it's views include the airport fuel tanks. But at Ahu Vinapu, to some, stands evidence that flies in the face of what modern archaeologists want us to believe about the people that built the ruins.

At Ahu Vinapu we see a style of stonework not found at any other Polynesian site. This is the only site on Easter where this level of workmanship is shown as well, however, other sites had existed but were torn down by the missionaries to build houses.

While this type of precise stone fitting is nonexistent in Pacific Island cultures, it is common among South American cultures that occurred before and during Easter's occupation. It is this striking similarity that has lead some, most notably, Thor Heyerdahl, to suggest that it is evidence that South Americans colonized, or at least were present on Easter Island, and influenced the culture. (see the controversies section) One other mystery is that Ahu Vinapu is considered to be a fairly early site. Generally you would assume that an earlier site would have less craftsmanship involved than a later site, yet, in this case we see the reverse.

Although all that remains visible at Vinapu now are the broken remains of an ahu, reports from as late as 1816 say moai where standing at the site. There are several buried around the ahu with only their faces visible.

Largely unrestored, there is an erie feeling at this place. The blood red scoria column, the half buried faced peering at you from the grass, and a small broken wall from what was obviously a massive structure, all combine to really strike home the failure of this unique culture.

Clearly, Ahu Vinapu was an important site. Captain Cook's logs tell of up to 20 moai erected in this area. The remains of red scordia monuments have also been found on the site including a rare column-like monument whose carvings and meaning have eroded forever.

Are these walls the proof of South American influence or just as one archeologist put it: "there are only so many ways to carve a rock."

Built in 1460 this site was one of the later constructions built, probably at a time when the statue cult was beginning to unravel. Unlike other sites, Akivi is inland and has a commanding view of the western part of the island. Its 7 moai, all about 14 feet tall and approx. 12 metric tons each, are remarkably similar. When UCLA archeologist Jo Anne Van Tilburg documented all the statues on the island the Ahu Akivi statues were found to be the statistical average of all the moai.

The statues were raised and the site restored in the 50's by famed archeologist William Mulloy. Studies suggest that the ahu itself was begun around 1442 and lasted until 1600. Van Tilburg has postulated that during that time 8 chiefs of this region could have ruled. It is thought that perhaps the statues where build by the 8th chief who was most likely a direct descendant of the others. As statue construction stopped about this time this 8th chief never got his due after building such an austere and beautiful monument. I found myself returning again and again to this site during my visit to Rapa Nui. After photographing it in every possible light I realized that night a full moon would be rising in the area.

I didn't know exactly where it would rise but I stayed at Akivi in the hopes I could get a shot of it alongside a moai. As I sat directly in front of the center of the line of moai the moon rose up and over the ahu perfectly aligned with the center. Little has been written about any relation between celestial events and the positioning of the ahu although it is suspected that in at least 12 sites there was some connection.

As I sat and watched the moonlight illuminate the moai I tried to imagine what would have been happening at this site 400 years ago.

5. Ahu Naunau

The legends of Easter Island say that Hotu Matua came first came ashore here at Anakena Beach and that this was the island's first settlement. Excavations of the site have confirmed that it had been occupied for a very long time. The current ahu is built upon the remains of several others and the same precise stone work is found in the buried ahu as that of Ahu Vinapu. Again, this is curious because one would expect the more advanced stonework work have been done during later periods of the island's development.

What is striking about the statues at Ahu Naunau are the red scoria headdress's (known as Pukao) that fit on the moai heads. These were carved from a different quarry than those of the moai that contained a large quantities of the red lava rock. Many of the moai on the island originally had pukao and they are found alongside the fallen statues in many sites. It is believe that they where installed by building a ramp of stones up the side of an erected moai and then rolled up where they could be placed on the top. Afterwards the ramp was disassembled.

As for why the Rapa Nui began putting the pukao on selected moai remains a mystery. Heyerdahl, referring too the mysterious red headed race that was reported on the island concluded that they represented topknots of red hair. Other archeologists point to the tradition of placing a large stone on the image of a dead leader as a sign of death and mourning.

The statues at Ahu Naunau are also known for the detailed carvings on their backs. Along with traditional loin cloth reliefs are fishhook patterns that are found on none of the other statues.
The detail work in the statues at Ahu Naunau is truly remarkable. Precisely chiseled facial features, the now familiar long ears and thin lips are all carved on the Ahu Naunau statues to a degree not seen at other sites. Although, not the biggest of the moai, they are clearly the most refined. A fitting tribute if this is, indeed, the site of Rapa Nui's first settlement.

It was at Anakena that one of the island's secrets was finally discovered. Archeologist long puzzled over the deep eye sockets of the moai that had been erected. Could it be that the moai had in fact had eyes?

In 1978, a student named Sonia Haoa found fragments of worked coral and a red disk made out of scoria, the same material used to make the pukao. When fitted together they made an unmistakable eye. She brought the fragments to archeologist Segio Rapu who discovered they fit precisely in the eye socket of a moai. So, the moai did have eyes, although, it is unclear if they were permanent fixtures of the statues or placed in them only on ceremonial occasions as is done now on the island with replicas of the eyes.
The most complete eye found to date, on view at the museum on Easter Island

6. Ahu Tahai, Ahu Vai Uri

On the island's western shore lay the ruins of a very unique ahu. It is unique in that the statues erected on it are all very different from each other both in scale and shape. There is a the large figure in the center, with two figure of similar size on its left. Then to the right we have a smaller, squatter figure and the remains of an even smaller statue. Why is there variation of the moai at this ahu and not at the others.

This site seems to clearly show an attempt to create some individualism in the statues while keeping the basic stylistic design. Whether this is depiction of a group of leaders of a clan as is generally assumed at other sites or represents an actual family unit is a matter of debate. One could look at these figures and see a king with two sons on his left, and his wife and another child, perhaps a female on the left. Due to its incomplete condition the smaller statue will remain a mystery forever. Perhaps it was a leader that died young like King Tutankhamen of Egypt.

This place had a haunted feeling to it. I was drawn to it again and again and I produced some of my best photographs of the trip.

7. Rano Kau and Orongo

Our final site is not known for its giant moai or dramatic ruins but for its natural beauty. It is not until you get to the very top of the trail that you see the view. And what a view it is. I literally fell to my knees in awe when I first saw it. A giant caldera stretched out before me. Glistening lakes and marshes dotted the floor of the crater. Hawks rode thermals along its green and brown streaked walls. With the tradewinds trying to left me up - and myself almost willing to let them - I peered over the other side. The knife edge crater wall drops 1000 feet to the deep blue sea. Between the curvature of the earth and the circular edge of the caldera one gets a strong sensation of vertigo. This was the final setting for Rapa Nui culture. It was here on the crater's rim that they built the village of Orongo. Up until the 1878 the islanders practiced ancient rights and tests of skill. Most famous was the ritual whereby Rapa Nui would scale down the sheer cliffs, swim through shark infested water and then fast on the tiny islets off shore waiting for the first sooty tern to lay her eggs. The winner of the competition had special rights and privileges granted them for the duration of the following year.

The rocks at Orongo are carved with hundreds of petroglyphs of birdman. The sea birds, especially the frigate bird, became an important symbol for the Rapa Nui. As frigates nested in trees, they became more and more scarce due to the deforestation on the island. Changing weather conditions as well as over hunting also contributed to decrease in the number of other bird species. Although the birdman cult seems to have overtaken the statue building cult there are ties between the two. In on of the houses at Orongo was found an 8′ high moai, complete with sacred loin cloth bas relief carved on it. But superimposed over the moai body are birdman and other symbols of the Orongo practitioners. So it appears that the two groups had some how come to terms with the differing beliefs that were present on the island.

I am often asked if I felt anything mystical while on Easter. Often, alone and with the ever-present tradewinda howling in my ears, I felt a deep sense of loss on the island. One feeling kept rising up in me again and again as I climbed among the unfinished moai on the barren walls of Rano Raraku. It was the feeling of failure. I believe the Rapa Nui knew they were special people and in the end they knew they had only themselves to blame.

Controversies

For reasons still unknown they began carving giant statues out of volcanic rock. These monuments, known, as "moai" are some of the most incredible ancient relics ever discovered. The people of Easter Island called themselves the Rapa Nui. Where did they come from and why did they disappear? Science has learned much about the enigma of Easter Island and has put to rest some of the more bizarre theories, but questions and controversies remain.

Darwin pointed out how groups of animals living in remote places eventually take on unique characteristics and eventually turn them into distinct species. Such is the case with the people of Easter Island. As unique as a culture as they had become, the Rapa Nui left clues as to their origins in their language, art, and beliefs. Contemporary archeologists think it's an open and shut case - the first and only people ever to live on Easter Island were from an individual group of Polynesians that, once finding Easter, then had no contact with any other races.Until of course, that fateful day in 1722 when, on Easter Sunday, Dutch commander Jacob Roggeveen, became the first European to "discover" the island. What his crew witnessed and recorded once on the island has fueled speculation about the origins of the Rapa Nui ever since. Explore this site to get the latest information on the island's history and current research.

They reported a mixed race island with both dark skinned and light living together. Some were even described as having red hair and being sun-burnt looking! This does not fit well in the Polynesian only scenario and despite recent evidence that backs up a migration from another island in the South Pacific, archeologists still must argue the claims of the most well-known, but now, outcast archeologist/explorer Thor Heyerdahl.

Roggeveen's notes tell of the islanders being organized into several classes. The light skinned islanders wore large disks in extended earlobes. Their bodies were heavily tattooed and they worshipped the giant statues and performed ceremonies before them. How could light skinned people be living amongst Polynesians on such a remote island? According to Heyerdahl Easter Island was settled in stages over a period of years by at least two different cultures. One from Polynesia and the other from South America, possibly Peru, where mummies of red -headed individuals have been found along side those of black hair.

Heyerdahl also points to similarities between stone monuments in Bolivia that resemble the "kneeling" statue found on Rano Raraku. In Heyerdahl's view, the sea was alive thousands of years ago with large ocean going canoes that discovered and colonized islands far earlier than history suggests. He points to stories of an advanced Redheaded race in South America and currents that swept from Peru to Easter Island and his own famous trip in 1947 on a reed raft known as the Kon-Tiki expedition.

Contemporary archeologists will have none of it. They point to the long history of Polynesian settlement in the South Pacific and linguistic evidence that they say places origins most likely in the Marquesas or Pitcarn Island.

Heyerdahl, they say, dismisses Easter Island legends that speak of an origin from the west. Occording to them botanical and anthomorphic data collected clearly back up their view that the island was colonized only once from the west.

The attacks against his beliefs have been almost universal from the archeological community which will not even refer to Heyerdahl as an archeologist anymore. Heyerdahl has made it clear the feeling is mutual. Both sides in the debate accuse each other with making the evidence fit their own beliefs.

But there is a third origin story that as far fetched as it seems has scientific proof behind it. Around 1536 a Spanish ship, the San Lesmems was lost near Tahiti. Legends tell of the Basque survivors intermarrying with the Polynesians. Either they or their descendants set off from Tahiti to try and return home in the 1600's and were never seen again. Interestingly, genetic testing of pure blood Rapa Nui revealed the presence of Basque genes.

Could Easter Island have been settled by a lost crew of Polynesian and Spanish seafarers? Perhaps science will eventually give us a definitive answer on who the Rapa Nui were. Where ever they came from, the Rapa Nui were an amazing people. They built a highly organized and efficient society on a tiny island out of little or nothing and in the few short years it existed created an enigma that has puzzled the world ever since.

How were the Moai Moved?
Did the Rapa Nui move the moai upright, like giant refrigerators?
A Dutch drawing from 1728, right, seems to show natives moving an Easter Island statue in an upright position. Although it is unclear in this image whether what is being depicted is moving or erecting, Thor Heyerdahl was told by village elders that the statues walked from the quarry to the ahu. While this seems fanciful some have considered that it meant the statues where moved in an upright position.

Several experiments were carried out and although it was proven that the statues could have been moved by rocking and rolling their bases similar to the way we would move a refrigerator or large piece of furniture, the method would have caused so much damage to the base of the statue that it would seem an unlikely method except when the statue was at the end of its journey and ready for final positioning.

In the Dutch illustration, the statue is clearly on a base of some sort and workers are in the process of doing something underneath the base while others pull. American Geologist Charles Love, in a series of experiments, successfully moved a replica moai by placing it on two logs cut to fit into the bottom of the statue. When raised onto a track of wooden rollers he found that his 10 ton moai could be moved 145 feet in just a few minutes using 25 men and two ropes. Of course it would not be as easy over rough terrain and hills but the idea was plausible and fit with the "walking moai" stories.

One archeologist has a different idea. Jo Anne Van Tilburg of UCLA has become one of the premier scientists studying the Easter Island mystery. Her work has led to a complete cataloging of all know moai on Easter with measurements of every element the statue.

Using computer models that took into account manpower, available materials, type of rock, and the most efficient route for transport of the statues across the island to the various locations which they had been erected in the past, and even how much food the workers would need to eat, Van Tilburg has created a convincing scenario for the most probable mode of statue transport. In her view the statues were move in a prone position.

The statue was lain prone on two long logs positioned vertically. Under these were placed smaller logs upon which the carrying logs were rolled. After plugging in all her data the result was that a standard size moai cut be moved from Rano Raraku quarry to Ahu Akivi (a distance of 10.1 km) by 70 individuals in 4.7 days. But how would this theory play in the real world? To find out, Van Tilbert set out for Easter Island with a team from the PBS show NOVA in April 1999. Her successful tests proved that the moai could have been moved by her methods. They did not prove, however, that this was they way they were moved.

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It is one of the most isolated islands in the world but 1200 years ago a double-hulled canoe filled with seafarers from a distant culture landed upon its shores. Over the centuries that followed a remarkable society developed in isolation on the island. For reasons still unknown they began carving giant statues out of volcanic rock.

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A new discovery has revived an old theory about ocean water gobbling up ships in the Bermuda Triangle-if, that is, the Bermuda Triangle even exists. Researchers from the Arctic University of Norway say they've spotted large craters apparently created by methane buildups off Norway's coast, Atlas Obscura reports. "Multiple giant craters exist on the sea floor in an area in the west-central Barents Sea ... and are probably a cause of enormous blowouts of gas," they tell the Sunday Times. "The crater area is likely to represent one of the largest hotspots for shallow marine methane release in the Arctic." Other experts have said gas blowouts from such craters, which measure 150 feet deep and up to a half-mile wide in Norway, could explain the sinking of ships in a region between Puerto Rico, Miami, and Bermuda dubbed the Bermuda Triangle.

"There is a version that the Bermuda Triangle is a consequence of gas hydrates reactions," Russian scientist Igor Yeltsov said last year, per the New Zealand Herald. Ice-like underwater methane can break away and form gas that bubbles to the surface, Live Science explained in 2014; Yeltsov says it erupts "like a nuclear reaction, producing huge amounts of gas." Research has shown that such eruptions could sink sea vessels, as NBC News reported in 2003, and this YouTube video appears to confirm that. But it's not clear these blowouts even occur in the Bermuda Triangle, the notes. And skeptics say the Gulf Stream's many tropical storms would better account for the Triangle's lost ships and planes. The very term "Bermuda Triangle" is questionable: Still dismissed by the US Navy, it was invented in a dramatic 1964 article that probed the "mysterious menace" behind ships and airplanes lost in the area. (A teacher may have found "the key" to finding Amelia Earhart's plane.)

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Is the Bermuda Triangle Mystery Finally Solved?

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A new discovery has revived an old theory about ocean water gobbling up ships in the Bermuda Triangle-if, that is, the Bermuda Triangle even exists. Researchers from the Arctic University of Norway say they've spotted large craters apparently created by methane buildups off Norway's coast, Atlas Obscura reports.

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Researchers attempt to determine what has caused hundreds of planes to mysteriously disappear in what is known as the Bermuda Triangle.

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A vaguely defined expanse of the Atlantic Ocean triangulated between Puerto Rico, Florida and Bermuda has enjoyed a rather sinister - though perhaps largely unearned - reputation for decades.

Dubbed the Bermuda Triangle, this area has been linked to a number of mysterious disappearances dating back to 1945, when a squadron of five U.S. Navy aircraft on a training mission vanished without a trace.

What, exactly, happened to those planes - and to the ships and aircraft that supposedly went missing in the Triangle since then - is a matter of much speculation, with popular theories that run the gamut from the supernatural to science fiction. [ Gallery: Lost in the Bermuda Triangle]

However, records kept by the Aviation Safety Network and the U.S. Coast Guard (USCG) indicate that many of these disappearances can be linked to storm activity in the area, or to unsafe conditions on the vehicles themselves.

On the USCG website, the answer to the frequently asked question, "Does the Bermuda Triangle really exist?" is the statement, "In a review of many aircraft and vessel losses in the area over the years, there has been nothing discovered that would indicate that casualties were the result of anything other than physical causes."

In other words, normal ocean processes and simple human error are the likely culprits, and the Bermuda Triangle is no more mysterious, suspicious or dangerous than any other stretch of open ocean.

Down in the depths

Earth's seas cover approximately 70 percent of the planet, reaching depths of about 12,100 feet (3,700 meters), on average, and up to 36,200 feet (11,000 m) at the deepest point, according to the National Ocean Service.

The seas contain approximately 321 million cubic miles (1,338 cubic kilometers) of water, so it's no wonder that boats and airplanes can seemingly disappear into them and leave no sign of their passing.

In 1964, a reporter named Vincent Gaddis dubbed the roughly 500,000-square-mile (1.3 million square kilometers) zone off the southeastern U.S. Atlantic coast "the Bermuda Triangle." Gaddis came up with the title for a story that appeared in the pulp magazine Argosy describing the unexplained 1945 disappearance of Flight 19 - five Navy planes with 14 crewmembers aboard.

Another Navy aircraft with a 13-person crew that was sent to search for the missing Flight 19 also never returned, according to reporter and U.S. Navy veteran Howard L. Rosenberg, who wrote about the Bermuda Triangle in an article for the Naval History and Heritage Command (NHHC).

Rosenberg said the Flight 19 pilots likely became lost and then ran out of gas. If they crashed, the heavy planes probably would have broken up on impact and sank, and the water would have been too cold for the crew to last very long, even if they survived the crash.

And the rescue plane was a PBM Mariner, an aircraft model commonly referred to as a "flying gas tank" because it was so flammable. The possibility that the rescuers met a fiery accident of their own is high, Rosenberg suggested.

Since then, rumors about the Triangle have grown significantly, but the number of disappearances in the high-traffic area is not notably higher than in other well-traveled parts of the ocean.

"The triangle area happens to be one of the most heavily traveled regions in the world, and the greater the number of ships or planes, the greater the odds that something will happen to some," Rosenberg wrote. [ 5 Real Hazards of Air Travel]

Stormy weather

Tropical storms and hurricanes are also common in this region of the Atlantic, which could account for many of the reported disappearances that have happened over the years in the Bermuda Triangle, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA).

Ships passing through the area in the past would have been more vulnerable to sudden and extreme changes in the weather than vessels today, which have access to more accurate forecasts, NOAA officials said in a statement.

Brief yet violent thunderstorms called meso-meteorological storms, which can also spring up at sea without warning, could have also played a part, disrupting ship communications and stirring up enormous waves, Rosenberg said.

The presence of many islands dotting the Caribbean Sea creates expanses of shallow water that could also spell trouble for large ships, the NOAA statement added. And if an accident were to occur, sharks and barracuda would make short work of bodies in the water, while the swiftly flowing Gulf Stream would quickly disperse any evidence of wreckage from the site of a crash or explosion.

"The ocean has always been a mysterious place to humans, and when foul weather or poor navigation is involved, it can be a very deadly place," NOAA officials said in a statement. "There is no evidence that mysterious disappearances occur with any greater frequency in the Bermuda Triangle than in any other large, well-traveled area of the ocean."

Maybe methane?

Still, superstitions about the Triangle's "powers" have proven to be remarkably resilient and continue to loom in the public imagination. Some superstitions have even taken root recently, based on new geological discoveries.

In March 2015, research detailed a collection of craters in the Barents Sea off the coast of Norway. The study's authors suggested that these craters might have been caused by ancient methane explosions released after the end of the last ice age, 11,700 years ago. These "blowouts" happened when warming ocean temperatures led pressure to build up and methane to be released from gas hydrates, the solid icelike substance formed by gases combined with frozen water.

Some media coverage of the research suggested a link to the Bermuda Triangle, proposing that sudden and violent methane blasts could create sinkholes or form gas bubbles that would swiftly disable and sink ships. However, according to Carolyn Ruppel, a research geophysicist and chief of the U.S. Geological Survey's Gas Hydrates Project, that explanation is highly improbable.

"We do know that you see methane coming from the seafloor now that's pretty widespread," Ruppel told Live Science. But while slow methane leakage is common in the ocean, large-scale blowouts like those that may have taken place when the ice age wound to a close haven't been recorded since, she said.

When gas hydrates break down, Ruppel added, they don't break down explosively unless there's a buildup of extreme pressure - of the type that can happen as a result of dramatic climate change, and then only in parts of the ocean where the water is shallow enough that the gas hydrates would be affected by changes in water temperature, such as the area in the Barents Sea where the craters were found.

In fact, most of the methane that's seeping into the ocean today is processed by microbes into carbon dioxide long before it reaches the surface. "So don't expect any big catastrophes in the next few centuries," Ruppel said.

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Is the Bermuda Triangle Really Dangerous?

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Superstitions have dogged the Bermuda Triangle for decades, blaming it for a number of mysterious disappearances. But its story isn't really all that mysterious.

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Unsolved Mysteries of the World - Step 4: Use of Information

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The Bermuda Triangle, also called the Devil's Triangle, is an imaginary area that can be roughly outlined on a map by connecting Miami, Florida; San Juan, Puerto Rico; and the Bahamas, an island chain off the coast of the United States. Within that triangular area of the Atlantic Ocean have occurred a number of unexplained disappearances of boats and planes. Additionally, readings on directional devices do not operate normally inside the triangle.

Unusual events in that area date back in recorded history to 1493 and the first voyage of Christopher Columbus (1451-1506) to the New World. In his log, Columbus noted that his compass readings were askew within the area now called the Bermuda Triangle, and he and his crew were confused by shallow areas of sea with no land nearby.

The term "Bermuda Triangle" was first used in an article written by Vincent H. Gaddis for Argosy magazine in 1964. Gaddis claimed that several ships and planes had disappeared without explanation in that area. The article was expanded and included in his book, Invisible Horizons: True Mysteries of the Sea (1965), where he described nine mysterious incidents and provided extensive detail. Many newspapers carried a story in December of 1967 about strange incidents in the Bermuda Triangle after a National Geographic Society news release brought attention to Gaddis's book. The triangle was featured in a cover story in Argosy in 1968, in a book called Limbo of the Lost (1969) by John Wallace Spencer, and in a documentary film, The Devil's Triangle, in 1971. Charles Berlitz's 1974 bestseller The Bermuda Triangle marked the height of the disaster area legend, but some of its sensationalized claims were quickly proved inaccurate.

As early as 1952, George X. Sands had noted in a report in Fate magazine that an unusually large number of strange accidents had occurred in the region associated with the Bermuda Triangle. That many of the accidents in the area are intriguing, and that the area does have some natural conditions that sailors and pilots need to be aware of, has not been challenged. However, neither statistics nor documented evidence indicates that the number of accidents is unusually high or without explanation.

In March 1918, during World War I, the USS Cyclops vanished in the Bermuda Triangle. That ship may have been a casualty of war, but the December 1945 disappearance of Flight 19, a training squadron of five U.S. Navy torpedo bombers, became the most notorious of disappearances associated with the Bermuda Triangle. The squadron left Fort Lauderdale, Florida, with 14 crewmen and disappeared after radioing in several distress messages. A seaplane sent in search of the squadron also vanished. Those two airplane disappearances were frequently cited as the Bermuda Triangle legend grew during the 1960s and 1970s.

Few of those stories included telling details. All of the crewmen of Flight 19 were in training, for example, except for their patrol leader, who had tried to withdraw from his flight duty that day because he was feeling ill. After his compass malfunctioned soon into the flight, the flight leader decided to navigate by land-marks below on the islands of the Florida Keys, with which he was familiar. Visibility became a problem because of a sudden storm, and the leader became disoriented. Flight 19 was still in radio contact with the Fort Lauderdale air base, but after some mechanical difficulties they failed to switch to an emergency frequency. Radio recordings indicate that some of the crew believed they were heading out over the Atlantic Ocean, instead of the Gulf of Mexico as their leader reported.

A search plane took off and was claimed to have disappeared into the Bermuda Triangle with Flight 19. The plane actually blew up 23 seconds after takeoff. Wreckage from Flight 19 has never been recovered.

Other aircraft that have disappeared in the area include a DC-3 carrying 27 passengers in 1948 and a C-124 Globemaster with 53 passengers in 1951. Among the ships often listed among the mysteriously disappeared are the Mary Celeste (1872), the Marine tankership Sulphur Queen with 39 men aboard (1963), and the nuclear-powered submarine Scorpion with a crew of 99 (1968). The Mary Celeste entered the list of supposed Bermuda Triangle mysteries many decades after its odd tragedy. The ship set sail from New York to Genoa, Italy, but was found sailing unmanned some 400 miles off course, off the coast of Africa. Personal articles of the crew were found and food storage areas showed no sign of upheaval. A tattered sail and a missing lifeboat suggested the boat had encountered a storm, but the ship's log, in which information was recorded as late as nine days before the ship was found, made no mention of any kind of catastrophe.

There is no evidence, however, that the Mary Celeste ever entered the area of the Bermuda Triangle. Still, the eerie, unanswered questions concerning its fate are often cited by those who attribute a malevolent force as being responsible for odd and tragic events of the triangle.

Nevertheless, there are many documented disappearances that occurred within the triangle. They include a four-engine Tudor IV air-plane lost in 1948, with 31 aboard; an American freighter, the SS Sandra (1952), which sunk without a trace; a British York transport plane, disappeared in 1952, with 33 aboard; a U.S. Navy Lockheed Constellation airplane, vanished in 1954 with 42 aboard; a U.S. Navy seaplane, 1956, with a crew of 10; a French freighter in 1970; and a German freighter, Anita, lost in 1972 with a crew of 32.

Theories about why so many air and water ships disappeared in the Bermuda Triangle involve strange magnetic fields, time warps, the lost continent of Atlantis, and alien abduction. Other proposed explanations include physical forces unknown to science, a "hole in the sky," and an unusual chemical component in the region's seawater. Several books have suggested that an intelligent, technologically advanced race living in space or under the sea has been responsible for jamming equipment and leading ships and planes to disaster.

Many books and articles play up mystery angles concerning vanished ships by depicting the disappearances as having occurred in calm weather and daylight. Such particulars of Flight 19 as an inexperienced crew, a faulty compass, a squadron leader who failed to follow instructions, and conditions of deteriorating weather and visibility are often not mentioned. Larry Kusche, a librarian at Arizona State University, examined claims of mysterious disappearances and recorded evidence from each example. The results, published in The Bermuda Triangle-Mystery Solved, showed that many of the accidents happened during raging storms, or were later explained.

The area known as the Bermuda Triangle is one of the two places on Earth where a magnetic compass does point towards true north, a phenomenon called compass variation. Navigators must compensate the amount of variation or the craft they are on will go off course. A region commonly called the "Devil's Sea" in the Pacific Ocean is the other area of compass variation.

The Gulf Stream that runs through the Bermuda Triangle area is swift and turbulent, and can quickly erase evidence of a disaster. The unpredictable Caribbean-Atlantic weather can suddenly change into thunderstorms or create waterspouts. Many short and intense storms build up quickly and dissipate quickly, undetected by satellite surveillance. The ocean floor has shoals around islands as well as some of the deepest marine trenches in the world. The interaction of the strong currents over reefs promotes a constant flux and the development of new, uncharted navigational hazards.

These factors can confuse even experienced sailors. A large number of pleasure boats travel the waters between Florida's coast and the Bahamas. The U.S. Coast Guard receives more than 8,000 distress calls per year, averaging more than 20 per day from that area, often from sailors who have run out of gas.

The Bermuda Triangle claimed more than 1,000 lives during the twentieth century. That averages to about 10 per year, a figure similar to other areas of high water traffic or volatile natural conditions. Scientific evaluations of the Bermuda Triangle have concluded that the number of disappearances in the region is not abnormal and that most of the disappearances have logical explanations. Paranormal associations with the Bermuda Triangle persist, however, in the popular imagination.

Delving Deeper

Berlitz, Charles. The Bermuda Triangle. New York: Doubleday and Co., 1974.

Gaddis, Vincent H. Invisible Horizons: True Mysteries of the Sea. Philadelphia: Chilton Books, 1965.

Gordon, Stuart. The Encyclopedia of Myths and Legends. London: Headline Books, 1993.

Kusche, Lawrence D. The Bermuda Triangle Mystery- Solved. New York: Harper and Row, 1975.

Spencer, John Wallace. Limbo of the Lost. New York: Bantam Books, 1973.

An area of the Western Atlantic between Bermuda and Florida where ships and planes are said to have vanished without a trace. During the late 1960s, inspired largely by the volume by Vincent Gaddis, Invisible Horizons: True Mysteries of the Sea (1965), a popular controversy erupted around claims that since 1945 over 100 ships and planes and more than 1,000 people have disappeared in the Bermuda triangle. The area was also termed "the Hoodoo Sea," "the Devil's Triangle," "Limbo of the Lost," "the Twilight Zone," and "Port of Missing Ships." Charles Berlitz, who wrote several books on the triangle, speculated on the possibility of time warps, electromagnetic impulses from vanished civilizations, and extraterrestrial activities in UFOs.

The controversy was largely put to rest by Lawrence David Kusche in his book The Bermuda Triangle MysterySolved. Kusche destroyed the mystery in a case-by-case discussion of the alleged disappearances. Many had been solved, but popular writers were unaware of the relevant literature. Others happened outside of the triangle. Many had perfectly normal explanations. Since Kusche's book appeared, discussion of the Bermuda triangle has been confined to the fringe, though a few writers like Berlitz have tried to perpetuate interest.

Among the more interesting theories put forward to solve the alleged mystery was proposed by Russian oceanographer Vladimir Azhazha. In articles published in reputable scientific journals in the U.S.S.R. and the United States, Azhazha suggested that storms in the triangle area generate "infrasound" low-frequency waves that are inaudible to human beings but that can be magnified by special conditions to become a force powerful enough to destroy ships and planes. Infrasound is a frequency lower than 16 cycles per second. In an interview in Moscow published in the National Enquirer (November 15, 1977), Azhazha stated that he believed infrasonic waves in the Devil's Triangle are amplified by such factors as changes in water temperature and a powerful undersea river running in an opposite direction to ocean currents.

Scientists at the Wave Propagation Laboratory of the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) confirm that the power of infrasonic vibrations does increase in a storm and that sound can be carried thousands of miles. A NOAA research oceanographer stated that there are very sharp changes in the temperature of the water in the Devil's Triangle because of the Gulf Stream, and that different temperatures in water could cause differences in the intensity of infrasound, either increasing it or decreasing it.

In the National Enquirer, Azhazha stated: "An infrasonic sound wave can travel thousands of miles to find its victim in a calm sea. If the wave is gigantic enough, a crew can perish almost instantly. Death will come from stopping of the heart or destruction of the cardiovascular system." In the resulting panic, a ship's crew might even abandon ship. Azhazha claimed that the hull and masts of the ship would begin to vibrate in tune with the infrasound, cracking the ship and breaking it up.

Azhazha's theory was published in the Soviet magazine Science and Life, and a similar theory was also put forward by Soviet science writer I. Boyetin. Tests conducted in France have supported the theory that infrasound can damage ships, and Dr. Freeman Hall, chief of the atmospheric acoustic program at NOAA Wave Propagation Laboratory, Boulder, Colorado, confirmed that severe storms can generate such a phenomenon, and that it can also be dangerous to human beings. The theory has not been tested, however, because the mystery was largely accounted for by other means.

(See also Devil's Jaw , another area of claimed mysterious disappearances.)

Sources:

Berlitz, Charles F. The Dragon's Triangle. New York: Wynwood Press, 1989.

Berlitz, Charles, and J. Manson Valentine. The Bermuda Triangle. Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, 1974.

The Bermuda Triangle: An Annotated Bibliography. Buffalo, N.Y.: Buffalo and Erie County Public Library Librarians Association and Buffalo and Erie County Library, 1975.

Kusche, Lawrence D. New York: Harper & Row, 1975.

Kusche, Lawrence David, and Deborah K. Blouin. Bermuda Triangle Bibliography. Tempe, Ariz.: Arizona State University Library, 1974.

Winer, Richard. The Devil's Triangle. New York: Bantam Books, 1974.

BERMUDA TRIANGLE, the best-known of a variety of folk names given to a triangular region of the Atlantic Ocean whose apexes are Miami, Florida; San Juan, Puerto Rico; and the island of Bermuda. Numerous ships and aircraft have disappeared in the area, the most famous being a flight of five U.S. Navy Avenger torpedo bombers that failed to return from a routine training mission in December 1945. Other losses range from small pleasure boats to the 542-foot U.S. Navy collier Cyclops, lost with all hands in 1918. Since the 1960s, some commentators have attributed these disappearances to powerful, mysterious forces that include UFOs, time warps, and the "lost continent" of Atlantis. Scientific and maritime authorities have consistently rejected these explanations in favor of naturalistic ones such as turbulent seas, rapidly changing weather conditions, and the errors of inexperienced sailors and pilots.

The name "Bermuda Triangle" first appeared in a 1964 Argosy Magazine article by Vincent Gaddis. A widely reprinted 1967 National Geographic Society press release gave it national prominence. Charles Berlitz's sensationalistic book The Bermuda Triangle (1974) and Steven Spielberg's references to the Avengers' Flight 19 in his film Close Encounters of the Third Kind (1977) bracketed the peak of the legend's popularity.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Kusche, Larry. The Bermuda Triangle Mystery-Solved. New York: Harper and Row, 1975. Buffalo, N.Y.: Prometheus Books, 1995. Debunks the legend in detail.

See also Unidentified Flying Objects .

Bermuda Triangle an area of the western Atlantic Ocean where a large number of ships and aircraft are said to have mysteriously disappeared; the name is recorded from the 1960s.

More From encyclopedia.com

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The Bermuda Triangle [1] The Bermuda Triangle [2], also called the Devil's Triangle, is an imaginary area that can be roughly outlined on a map by connecting Miami [3], Florida [4]; San Juan [5], Puerto Rico [6]; and the Bahamas [7], an island chain off the coast of the United States [8].

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Table of Contents

1. Legend of the Bermuda Triangle

2. Bermuda Triangle Theories and Counter-Theories

The Bermuda Triangle is a mythical section of the Atlantic Ocean roughly bounded by Miami, Bermuda and Puerto Rico where dozens of ships and airplanes have disappeared. Unexplained circumstances surround some of these accidents, including one in which the pilots of a squadron of U.S. Navy bombers became disoriented while flying over the area; the planes were never found. Other boats and planes have seemingly vanished from the area in good weather without even radioing distress messages. But although myriad fanciful theories have been proposed regarding the Bermuda Triangle, none of them prove that mysterious disappearances occur more frequently there than in other well-traveled sections of the ocean. In fact, people navigate the area every day without incident.

Legend of the Bermuda Triangle

The area referred to as the Bermuda Triangle, or Devil's Triangle, covers about 500,000 square miles of ocean off the southeastern tip of Florida. When Christopher Columbus sailed through the area on his first voyage to the New World, he reported that a great flame of fire (probably a meteor) crashed into the sea one night and that a strange light appeared in the distance a few weeks later. He also wrote about erratic compass readings, perhaps because at that time a sliver of the Bermuda Triangle was one of the few places on Earth where true north and magnetic north lined up.

Did you know? After gaining widespread fame as the first person to sail solo around the globe, Joshua Slocum disappeared on a 1909 voyage from Martha's Vineyard to South America. Though it's unclear exactly what happened, many sources later attributed his death to the Bermuda Triangle.

William Shakespeare 's play "The Tempest," which some scholars claim was based on a real-life Bermuda shipwreck, may have enhanced the area's aura of mystery. Nonetheless, reports of unexplained disappearances did not really capture the public's attention until the 20th century.

An especially infamous tragedy occurred in March 1918 when the USS Cyclops, a 542-foot-long Navy cargo ship with over 300 men and 10,000 tons of manganese ore onboard, sank somewhere between Barbados and the Chesapeake Bay. The Cyclops never sent out an SOS distress call despite being equipped to do so, and an extensive search found no wreckage. "Only God and the sea know what happened to the great ship," U.S. President Woodrow Wilson later said. In 1941 two of the Cyclops' sister ships similarly vanished without a trace along nearly the same route.

A pattern allegedly began forming in which vessels traversing the Bermuda Triangle would either disappear or be found abandoned. Then, in December 1945, five Navy bombers carrying 14 men took off from a Fort Lauderdale, Florida, airfield in order to conduct practice bombing runs over some nearby shoals. But with his compasses apparently malfunctioning, the leader of the mission, known as Flight 19, got severely lost. All five planes flew aimlessly until they ran low on fuel and were forced to ditch at sea. That same day, a rescue plane and its 13-man crew also disappeared. After a massive weeks-long search failed to turn up any evidence, the official Navy report declared that it was "as if they had flown to Mars."

Bermuda Triangle Theories and Counter-Theories

By the time author Vincent Gaddis coined the phrase "Bermuda Triangle" in a 1964 magazine article, additional mysterious accidents had occurred in the area, including three passenger planes that went down despite having just sent "all's well" messages. Charles Berlitz, whose grandfather founded the Berlitz language schools, stoked the legend even further in 1974 with a sensational bestseller about the legend.

Since then, scores of fellow paranormal writers have blamed the triangle's supposed lethalness on everything from aliens, Atlantis and sea monsters to time warps and reverse gravity fields, whereas more scientifically minded theorists have pointed to magnetic anomalies, waterspouts or huge eruptions of methane gas from the ocean floor.

In all probability, however, there is no single theory that solves the mystery. As one skeptic put it, trying to find a common cause for every Bermuda Triangle disappearance is no more logical than trying to find a common cause for every automobile accident in Arizona.

Moreover, although storms, reefs and the Gulf Stream can cause navigational challenges there, maritime insurance leader Lloyd's of London does not recognize the Bermuda Triangle as an especially hazardous place. Neither does the U.S. Coast Guard, which says: "In a review of many aircraft and vessel losses in the area over the years, there has been nothing discovered that would indicate that casualties were the result of anything other than physical causes. No extraordinary factors have ever been identified."

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Bermuda Triangle - Location, Disappearances, Flight 19

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Legend of the Bermuda Triangle Bermuda Triangle Theories and Counter-Theories The Bermuda Triangle is a mythical section of the Atlantic Ocean roughly bounded by Miami, Bermuda and Puerto Rico where dozens of ships and airplanes have disappeared. Unexplained circumstances surround some of these accidents, including one in which the pilots of a squadron of U.S.

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BBC NEWS | Science/Nature | BBC 'proves' Nessie does not exist

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What we would like to believe A BBC team says it has shown there is no such thing as the Loch Ness monster. Using 600 separate sonar beams and satellite navigation technology to ensure that none of the loch was missed, the team surveyed the waters said to hide Scotland's legendary tourist attraction but found no trace of the monster.

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Unsolved Mysteries of the World - Step 4: Use of Information

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This much-debated photo from 1934 may be iconic, but the legend of the Loch Ness Monster dates back to before the Roman invasion of the region.

birth of a legend

When the Romans first came to northern Scotland in the first century A.D., they found the Highlands occupied by fierce, tattoo-covered tribes they called the Picts, or painted people. From the carved, standing stones still found in the region around Loch Ness, it is clear the Picts were fascinated by animals, and careful to render them with great fidelity. All the animals depicted on the Pictish stones are lifelike and easily recognizable-all but one. The exception is a strange beast with an elongated beak or muzzle, a head locket or spout, and flippers instead of feet. Described by some scholars as a swimming elephant, the Pictish beast is the earliest known evidence for an idea that has held sway in the Scottish Highlands for at least 1,500 years-that Loch Ness is home to a mysterious aquatic animal.

In Scottish folklore, large animals have been associated with many bodies of water, from small streams to the largest lakes, often labeled Loch-na-Beistie on old maps. These water-horses, or water-kelpies, are said to have magical powers and malevolent intentions. According to one version of the legend, the water-horse lures small children into the water by offering them rides on its back. Once the children are aboard, their hands become stuck to the beast and they are dragged to a watery death, their livers washing ashore the following day.

The earliest written reference linking such creatures to Loch Ness is in the biography of Saint Columba, the man credited with introducing Christianity to Scotland. In A.D. 565, according to this account, Columba was on his way to visit a Pictish king when he stopped along the shore of Loch Ness. Seeing a large beast about to attack a man who was swimming in the lake, Columba raised his hand, invoking the name of God and commanding the monster to "go back with all speed." The beast complied, and the swimmer was saved.

The Loch Ness Monster has been headline news all over the world for more than 60 years.

When Nicholas Witchell, a future BBC correspondent, researched the history of the legend for his 1974 book The Loch Ness Story, he found about a dozen pre-20th-century references to large animals in Loch Ness, gradually shifting in character from these clearly mythical accounts to something more like eyewitness descriptions.

a 20th-century sensation

The modern legend of Loch Ness dates from 1933, when a new road was completed along the shore, offering the first clear views of the loch from the northern side. One April afternoon, a local couple was driving home along this road when they spotted "an enormous animal rolling and plunging on the surface." Their account was written up by a correspondent for the Inverness Courier, whose editor used the word "monster" to describe the animal. The Loch Ness Monster has been a media phenomenon ever since.

Public interest built gradually during the spring of 1933, then picked up sharply after a couple reported seeing one of the creatures on land, lumbering across the shore road. By October, several London newspapers had sent correspondents to Scotland, and radio programs were being interrupted to bring listeners the latest news from the loch. A British circus offered a reward of £20,000 for the capture of the beast. Hundreds of boy scouts and outdoorsmen arrived, some venturing out in small boats, others setting up deck chairs and waiting expectantly for the monster to appear.

The excitement over the monster reached a fever pitch in December, when the London Daily Mail hired an actor, film director, and big-game hunter named Marmaduke Wetherell to track down the beast. After only a few days at the loch, Wetherell reported finding the fresh footprints of a large, four-toed animal. He estimated it to be 20 feet long. With great fanfare, Wetherell made plaster casts of the footprints and, just before Christmas, sent them off to the Natural History Museum in London for analysis. While the world waited for the museum zoologists to return from holiday, legions of monster hunters descended on Loch Ness, filling the local hotels. Inverness was floodlit for the occasion, and traffic jammed the shoreline roads in both directions.

The bubble burst in early January, when museum zoologists announced that the footprints were those of a hippopotamus. They had been made with a stuffed hippo foot-the base of an umbrella stand or ashtray. It wasn't clear whether Wetherell was the perpetrator of the hoax or its gullible victim. Either way, the incident tainted the image of the Loch Ness Monster and discouraged serious investigation of the phenomenon. For the next three decades, most scientists scornfully dismissed reports of strange animals in the loch. Those sightings that weren't outright hoaxes, they said, were the result of optical illusions caused by boat wakes, wind slicks, floating logs, otters, ducks, or swimming deer.

Saw Something, They Did

Nevertheless, eyewitnesses continued to come forward with accounts of their sightings-more than 4,000 of them, according to Witchell's estimate. Most of the witnesses described a large creature with one or more humps protruding above the surface like the hull of an upturned boat. Others reported seeing a long neck or flippers. What was most remarkable, however, was that many of the eyewitnesses were sober, level-headed people: lawyers and priests, scientists and school teachers, policemen and fishermen-even a Nobel Prize winner.

In the 1950s, a local doctor named Constance Whyte began collecting these eyewitness accounts, along with sketches of what the people had seen, finally publishing them in 1957 as a book entitled More Than a Legend. Noting that many of her friends had been subjected to ridicule and contempt, Whyte said her goal in writing the book was "the vindication of many people of integrity who had reported honestly what they had seen in Loch Ness." (To hear recent personal anecdotes, see Eyewitness Accounts.)

Whyte's book inspired a new generation of monster hunters, including Tim Dinsdale, who on his first visit to the loch in 1960 took an intriguing film of something moving across the loch-and promptly gave up his career as an aeronautical engineer to devote his life to pursuing the monster. The next year, a group of dedicated amateurs formed the Loch Ness Investigation Bureau, keeping a constant vigil on the loch from an observation post on the northern shore.

But perhaps the most important effect of Whyte's book was to turn the tide of public opinion. Long dismissed as fodder for "silly season" press reports, Nessie was finally considered a subject worthy of serious scientific investigation. In the span of a decade, beginning in 1958, four separate expeditions were launched, first by the BBC, then by three respected British universities: Oxford, Cambridge, and the University of Birmingham. Rather than scanning the surface with binoculars and cameras, as the amateur investigators had, these expeditions came equipped with sonar, a military technology that used sound to search the underwater environment. Though the expeditions found nothing conclusive, in each case the sonar operators detected large, moving underwater objects they could not explain. (To learn how sonar works, see Experiment with Sonar.)

high-tech searches

The use of technology to search the loch reached a new level in the 1970s, when a series of expeditions was sponsored by the Boston-based Academy of Applied Science, whose members included many technically skilled people with ties to MIT. The Academy's approach was to set a trap for the monster by combining sonar and underwater photography for the first time. Under the leadership of Robert Rines, a lawyer trained in physics, the team pointed a sophisticated form of sonar, called side scan sonar, out into Loch Ness from a point near the shore. Nearby they placed an underwater camera taking pictures every 45 seconds as a strobe light illuminated the depths with a bright flash. The system paid off one night in 1975. At the same moment the sonar was registering a large, moving object, the underwater camera was taking pictures of an object that looked, after development and computer enhancement, like the flippers of an aquatic creature.

Rines' discovery won the support of two reputable scientists: Harold "Doc" Edgerton, the legendary MIT scientist who had invented side scan sonar and strobe photography; and Sir Peter Scott, one of Britain's most respected naturalists. With Edgerton and Scott behind him, Rines was given an opportunity to present his evidence at a hearing at the House of Commons in London. Never had the possibility of the Loch Ness Monster been taken so seriously.

Almost immediately, however, critics began to raise questions about the evidence. Could the suggestive sonar traces be the result of human error? Had the flipper photos been altered to improve their appearance? Just as damaging to Rines' case was Peter Scott's bold pronouncement about the identity of the creature. Based on the flipper photos and the eyewitness sightings, Scott concluded that Nessie was a plesiosaur, an ancient reptile that was thought to have gone extinct along with the dinosaurs some 65 million years ago. The idea was just too far-fetched for professional zoologists to take seriously.

Although zoologists have yet to conduct the full-scale investigation Rines hoped to trigger, the loch continues to yield intriguing sonar hits. In 1987, an expedition called Operation Deep Scan used a flotilla of 20 sonar-equipped boats to sweep the loch with a curtain of sound; the operation yielded three underwater targets that could not be explained. In the early 1990s, the BBC's Nicholas Witchell helped organize Project Urquhart, the first extensive study of the loch's biology and geology. Although they weren't looking for monsters, the expedition's sonar operators detected a large, moving underwater target and followed it for several minutes before losing it. And during the 1997 expedition featured in NOVA's Loch Ness film, Rines and his longtime colleague Charles Wyckoff detected yet another puzzling underwater target. According to the expedition's sonar expert, marine biologist Arne Carr, it was a moving target, appeared to be biological in nature, and was about 15 feet long-the size of a small whale.

Famous Photo Falsified?

In the 65 years since the birth of the modern legend, dozens of people have come forward with photographs purporting to show the monster. Most were quickly dismissed as either outright frauds or images of ordinary objects mistaken for monsters. But one photo stood above the rest. Taken in 1934, it shows what appears to be the slender neck of an animal rising from the surface of the water. From the moment it was published in the London Daily Mail, it became the very image of the Loch Ness Monster and, for many, the strongest evidence that Nessie actually exists.

One reason the photograph had such an impact on the Loch Ness legend was that it came from such a credible source. The photo was sold to the Daily Mail by a London physician named R. Kenneth Wilson, who said he had taken the picture when he noticed a commotion in the water as he was driving up from London to photograph birds with a friend near Inverness. Few believed that such a respected doctor could be party to a deception.

But in 1994, 60 years after the photo was first published, newspapers around the world reported the claim that the "surgeon's photo" was a fake, part of an elaborate plot to dupe the Daily Mail. The man behind the story was a former English art teacher named Alastair Boyd, who had become an avid student of Loch Ness lore after he and his wife had had their own sighting of a large animal in the loch in 1979. Years later, a friend of Boyd's named David Martin discovered an old newspaper clipping in which Ian Wetherell (the son of Marmaduke Wetherell of hippo foot fame) claimed the surgeon's photo was a hoax. The article had attracted little attention when it was published in 1975, but two details caught Boyd's eye.

First, Wetherell said the plot had involved a man named Maurice Chambers-the very same man that Dr. Wilson said he had driven up from London to visit in 1934. Second, Wetherell mentioned that the surgeon's photograph included the scenery of Loch Ness in the background. In fact, the familiar Nessie photo includes only the protruding neck and the water around it. Boyd knew that the original photo had included a bit of the far shoreline in the background, because he had rediscovered the uncropped version in the late '80s. But that full photo had been published only once, in 1934. So how could Wetherell have known this detail? "Either he had a very long memory, or he took the picture," Boyd says.

Ian Wetherell had died by the time Boyd and Martin read the article, but they were able to track down his step-brother, Christian Spurling, in the south of England. Spurling, 93 and near death, confessed. Unhappy with the way he was treated by the Daily Mail after the hippo foot fiasco, Duke Wetherell had set out to get his revenge, enlisting his son and step-son in the plot. First Spurling built a model monster by grafting a head and neck onto the conning tower of a toy submarine. Then Wetherell and his son Ian drove up to the loch and staged the photograph, taking care to include the actual Loch Ness scenery in the background. Finally, to conceal his own role in the hoax, Wetherell persuaded Dr. Wilson, through their common friend Chambers, to have the photo developed and sell it to the Daily Mail as his own. The plot worked better than any of them could have imagined.

Not everyone accepts the Spurling story. American journalist Richard Smith, for example, notes that toy experts question whether the toy submarines of the 1930s could have performed as described, and he wonders why Boyd waited until after Spurling's death to reveal his confession. But in the aftermath of Boyd's 1994 bombshell, most people now believe the surgeon's photo was yet another Loch Ness hoax.

Does that finally disprove the monster's existence? Not at all, says Boyd. One of the great ironies of the Loch Ness story is that the man who brought down the most famous piece of evidence remains a firm believer in Nessie. "I am so convinced of the reality of these creatures that I would actually stake my life on their existence," he told NOVA. "I trust my eyesight ... I used to make my living teaching people how to observe, and I know that the thing I saw was not a log or an otter or a wave, or anything like that. It was a large animal. It came heaving out of the water, something like a whale. I mean, the part that was actually on the surface when it stopped rolling through was at least 20 feet long. It was totally extraordinary. It's the most amazing thing I've ever seen in my life, and if I could afford to spend the rest of my life looking for another glimpse of it, I would."

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The legend of the Loch Ness Monster dates back well over a thousand years. Why has it persisted so long?

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The Loch Ness Monster is a mythical animal that allegedly lives in Loch Ness, a large freshwater lake near Inverness, Scotland. Although accounts of an aquatic beast living in the lake date back 1,500 years, all efforts to find any credible evidence of the animal have failed. That hasn't dampened the public's enthusiasm, however, for any news about "Nessie."

Earliest References

Loch Ness, located in the Scottish Highlands, has the largest volume of fresh water in Great Britain; the body of water reaches a depth of nearly 800 feet and a length of about 23 miles.

Scholars of the Loch Ness Monster find a dozen references to "Nessie" in Scottish history, dating back to around A.D. 500, when local Picts carved a strange aquatic creature into standing stones near Loch Ness.

The earliest written reference to a monster in Loch Ness is a 7th-century biography of Saint Columba, the Irish missionary who introduced Christianity to Scotland. In A.D. 565, according to the biographer, St. Columba was on his way to visit the king of the northern Picts near Inverness when he stopped at Loch Ness to confront a beast that had been killing people in the lake.

Seeing a large beast about to attack another man, St. Columba intervened, invoking the name of God and commanding the creature to "go back with all speed." The monster retreated and never harmed another man.

1933 Sightings

In 1933, a new road was completed along Loch Ness' shore, affording drivers a clear view of the loch. On May 2, 1933, the Inverness Courier reported that a local couple claimed to have seen "an enormous animal rolling and plunging on the surface."

The story of the Loch Ness Monster became a media phenomenon, with London newspapers sending correspondents to Scotland and a circus offering a 20,000 pound reward for capture of the beast.

After the 1933 sighting, interest steadily grew, especially after another couple claimed to have seen the beast on land, crossing the shore road. Several British newspapers sent reporters to Scotland, including London's Daily Mail, which hired big-game hunter Marmaduke Wetherell to capture the beast.

After a few days searching the loch, Wetherell reported finding footprints of a large four-legged animal. In response, the Daily Mail carried the dramatic headline: "MONSTER OF LOCH NESS IS NOT LEGEND BUT A FACT."

Nessie

Scores of tourists descended on Loch Ness and sat in boats or decks chairs waiting for an appearance by the beast. Plaster casts of the footprints were sent to the British Natural History Museum, which reported that the tracks were that of a hippopotamus, specifically one hippopotamus foot, probably stuffed. The hoax temporarily deflated Loch Ness Monster mania, but stories of sightings continued.

A famous 1934 photograph seemed to show a dinosaur-like creature with a long neck emerging out of the murky waters, leading some to speculate that "Nessie" was a solitary survivor of the long-extinct plesiosaurs. The aquatic plesiosaurs were thought to have died off with the rest of the dinosaurs 65 million years ago.

Loch Ness was frozen solid during recent ice ages, however, so this creature would have had to have made its way up the River Ness from the sea in the past 10,000 years. And the plesiosaurs, believed to be cold-blooded, would not long survive in the frigid waters of Loch Ness.

More likely, others suggested, it was an archeocyte, a primitive whale with a serpentine neck that is thought to have been extinct for 18 million years. Skeptics argued that what people were seeing in Loch Ness were "seiches"-oscillations in the water surface caused by the inflow of cold river water into the slightly warmer loch.

The Search Continues

Amateur investigators kept an almost constant vigil, and in the 1960s several British universities launched expeditions to Loch Ness, using sonar to search the deep. Nothing conclusive was found, but in each expedition the sonar operators detected large, moving underwater objects they could not explain.

In 1975, Boston's Academy of Applied Science combined sonar and underwater photography in an expedition to Loch Ness. A photo resulted that, after enhancement, appeared to show the giant flipper of a plesiosaur-like creature. Further sonar expeditions in the 1980s and 1990s resulted in more tantalizing, if inconclusive, readings.

Revelations in 1994 that the famous 1934 photo was a hoax hardly dampened the enthusiasm of tourists and professional and amateur investigators to the legend of the Loch Ness Monster.

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Loch Ness Monster - Real vs Myth, Location & Lake

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Loch Ness expert Adrian Shine discusses his involvement with the Loch Ness Project and recaps his decades spent working to uncover the truth behind the Loch Ness monster.

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Loch Ness monster, large marine creature believed by some people to inhabit Loch Ness, Scotland. However, much of the alleged evidence supporting its existence has been discredited, and it is widely thought that the monster is a myth.

Reports of a monster inhabiting Loch Ness date back to ancient times. Notably, local stone carvings by the Pict depict a mysterious beast with flippers. The first written account appears in a 7th-century biography of St. Columba. According to that work, in 565 ad the monster bit a swimmer and was prepared to attack another man when Columba intervened, ordering the beast to "go back." It obeyed, and over the centuries only occasional sightings were reported. Many of these alleged encounters seemed inspired by Scottish folklore, which abounds with mythical water creatures.

In 1933 the Loch Ness monster's legend began to grow. At the time, a road adjacent to Loch Ness was finished, offering an unobstructed view of the lake. In April a couple saw an enormous animal-which they compared to a "dragon or prehistoric monster"-and after it crossed their car's path, it disappeared into the water. The incident was reported in a Scottish newspaper, and numerous sightings followed. In December 1933 the commissioned Marmaduke Wetherell, a big-game hunter, to locate the sea serpent. Along the lake's shores, he found large footprints that he believed belonged to "a very powerful soft-footed animal about 20 feet [6 metres] long." However, upon closer inspection, zoologists at the Natural History Museum determined that the tracks were identical and made with an umbrella stand or ashtray that had a hippopotamus leg as a base; Wetherell's role in the hoax was unclear.

The news only seemed to spur efforts to prove the monster's existence. In 1934 English physician Robert Kenneth Wilson photographed the alleged creature. The iconic image-known as the "surgeon's photograph"-appeared to show the monster's small head and neck. The Daily Mail printed the photograph, sparking an international sensation. Many speculated that the creature was a plesiosaur, a marine reptile that went extinct some 65.5 million years ago.

The Loch Ness area attracted numerous monster hunters. Over the years, several sonar explorations (notably in 1987 and 2003) were undertaken to locate the creature, but none were successful. In addition, numerous photographs allegedly showed the beast, but most were discredited as fakes or as depicting other animals or objects. Notably, in 1994 it was revealed that Wilson's photograph was a hoax spearheaded by a revenge-seeking Wetherell; the "monster" was actually a plastic-and-wooden head attached to a toy submarine. In 2018 researchers conducted a DNA survey of Loch Ness to determine what organisms live in the waters. No signs of a plesiosaur or other such large animal were found, though the results indicated the presence of numerous eels. This finding left open the possibility that the monster is an oversized eel. Despite the lack of conclusive evidence, the Loch Ness monster remained popular-and profitable. In the early 21st century it was thought that it contributed nearly $80 million annually to Scotland's economy.

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Loch Ness monster | History, Sightings, & Facts

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Loch Ness monster, large marine creature believed by some people to inhabit Loch Ness, Scotland. However, much of the alleged evidence supporting its existence has been discredited, and it is widely thought that the monster is a myth. Learn more about the Loch Ness monster.

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DNA readings from dozens of hair samples linked to sightings of Bigfoot, Yeti and other legendary monsters show that the hairs came instead from run-of-the-mill animals such as bears and cows - but the researcher behind the project says Bigfoot hunters needn't give up hope just yet.

"I don't think this finishes the Bigfoot myth at all," Oxford geneticist Bryan Sykes told NBC News. "What it does do is show that there is a way for Bigfoot enthusiasts to go back out into the forest and get the real thing."
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Sykes' findings, published in this week's issue of the Proceedings of the Royal Academy B, follow up on a yearlong effort to bring in and analyze samples collected by monster-hunters and fringe-science researchers known as cryptozoologists.

One of his key findings was revealed last year, when Sykes reported that two hair samples attributed to the mysterious Himalayan monster known as the Yeti (or "Abominable Snowman") were a genetic match for a 40,000-year-old jawbone from a polar bear that lived in the Norwegian Arctic.

Sykes is writing a book about that case, titled "The Yeti Enigma," and he's organizing an expedition to the Himalayas next year to look for a live specimen of the anomalous bear. "That's the next logical step," he said. "We need a live 'Yeti.'"

Bigfoot, Yeti and beyond
Most regions of the world have their legends of menacing but elusive monsters - hulking, hairy beasts that investigators call "anomalous primates." Sykes received dozens of samples of hair and tissues purportedly linked to such creatures, including the Yeti as well as the Almasty "wild man" from Russia and the orang pendek from Sumatra.

More than half of the 30 samples that underwent DNA analysis were linked to sightings of Bigfoot (aka Sasquatch) in the United States, ranging from Texas and Minnesota to Arizona and Washington state.

Sykes and his team focused on a snippet of mitochondrial DNA code that's passed down from a mother to her progeny. That code was matched to species signatures stored in the GenBank database of DNA sequences.

The Bigfoot samples were matched to black bears, cows, a porcupine, horse, raccoon, sheep, deer, canines (which could have been dogs, coyotes or wolves) and one undetermined human. The Russian samples correlated with bears, horses, cows and a raccoon. Two of the Yeti samples matched up with that long-gone polar bear, and a third was linked to a goatlike animal called a serow. The orang pendek sample was traced to a Malaysian tapir.
21st-Century Monster Hunt
Even though the project provided no evidence for the existence of a legendary monster, Sykes said it proved that scientific methods could be brought to bear on the search for anomalous species. There have been previous claims for the detection of Bigfoot-human hybrid DNA, but those findings were thought to have been the result of contamination and have not been widely accepted.

"It just wasn't science," Sykes told NBC News. "A lot of Bigfoot enthusiasts thought that this was how science worked, [but] it was dreadful."

Loren Coleman, director of the International Cryptozoology Museum in Portland, Maine, said he wasn't disappointed that Sykes failed to confirm Bigfoot. In an email to NBC News, Coleman said Sykes' method was "the correct way to do cryptozoology science."

"Gone are the Victorian days of stomping about jungles and forests to shoot animals to prove they exist," Coleman said. "We can do verifications through testing for the DNA in hair, fecal and other physical samples found in conjunction with sightings of and encounters with possible new animals. Follow-ups then can be made in the field to obtain photographic evidence and further blood samples from living animals."

Norman MacLeod, a paleontologist at London's Natural History Museum, struck a similar tone in a commentary published by the Proceedings of the Royal Society B - and in an email sent to NBC News.

"Science is not biased against the identification of cryptid species," MacLeod said. "It simply suspends judgment until unambiguous positive evidence is produced."

For his part, Sykes said he hoped Coleman and other cryptozoologists would be taken more seriously. "They have been, I think, quite badly treated by scientists over the past 50 years," he said.

Sykes took it as an honor that he was named Cryptozoologist of the Year as well as Bigfooter of the Year for 2013, thanks to his Yeti report. "The next step is the Nobel Prize," he joked.
In addition to Sykes, the authors of "Genetic Analysis of Hair Samples Attributed to Yeti, Bigfoot and Other Anomalous Primates" include Rhettman Mullis, Christophe Hagenmuller, Terry Melton and Michel Sartori.

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Was It a Yeti? Bigfoot? Hair DNA Reveals Monsters' True Identity

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DNA readings from dozens of hair samples linked to sightings of Bigfoot, Yeti and other legendary monsters show that the hairs came instead from run-of-the-mill animals such as bears and cows - but the researcher behind the project says Bigfoot hunters needn't give up hope just yet.

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Bigfoot is real. At least that's what veterinarian Melba S. Ketchum claims after a five-year study of more than 100 DNA samples that she believes comes from the elusive hairy beast.

Under Ketchum's direction at DNA Diagnostics in Nacogdoches, Texas, a team of researchers has concluded that the creature may be a human relative that somehow developed around 15,000 years ago as a result of a hybrid cross between Homo sapiens with an unknown primate.

Ketchum's research has yet to stand the scrutiny of independent researchers. While many people have claimed to have seen the creature, its existence has never been confirmed, despite a plethora of photos and footprints. The ongoing search is the subject of Animal Planet's "Finding Bigfoot" television series.

"Well, it came to me, I didn't go after it, that's for sure," Ketchum said of the evidence of Bigfoot's existence in an exclusive interview with The Huffington Post. "I did not believe in these creatures. But my lab did a lot of animal testing, and we did species identification. We didn't have any hits on anything interesting until five years ago."

Ketchum's professional work includes nearly 30 years in genetics research and forensics. After her team attempted DNA sequencing of hair samples from an alleged Bigfoot encounter, they found some unusual things in the hair. But there wasn't enough DNA to conclusively verify what they were seeing.

DNA Diagnostics received more samples to investigate -- including hair, blood, saliva and urine, all reportedly from various Bigfoot sightings.

Watch this "Finding Bigfoot" promo about a reported Sasquatch in a Vermont apple orchard

Ketchum's team consists of experts in genetics, forensics, imaging and pathology. The researcher said she believes that over the past five years, the team has successfully found three Sasquatch nuclear genomes -- an organism's hereditary code -- leading them to suggest that the animal is real and a human hybrid.

Ketchum's study showed that part of the DNA her team sequenced revealed an unknown primate species, she said, which suggests that Bigfoot is a real creature that resulted from this primate "crossing with female Homo sapiens."

"They're not any of the large apes -- they branch off as a separate lineage," Ketchum said. "My personal theory is that it probably branched off and evolved in parallel with the rest of the primate lineage."

The overall results of Ketchum's study will soon be revealed, she said, after a peer-reviewed journal is published. But skeptic Benjamin Radford is dubious about the outcome of this latest attempt to give credibility to the existence of Bigfoot.

"If the data are good and the science is sound, any reputable science journal would jump at the chance to be the first to publish this groundbreaking information," Radford, the deputy editor of Skeptical Inquirer magazine, wrote in LiveScience.com.

Radford suggests that if the mitochondrial DNA is identical to Homo sapiens (modern humans), it could mean one of two things.

"The first, endorsed by Ketchum, is that Bigfoot ancestors had sex with women about 15,000 years ago and created a half-human hybrid species currently hiding across North America.

"There is, however, another, simpler interpretation of such results: The samples were contaminated. Whatever the sample originally was -- Bigfoot, bear, human or something else -- it's possible that the people who collected and handled the specimens accidentally introduced their DNA into the sample, which can easily occur with something as innocent as a spit, sneeze or cough," Radford wrote.

Not so, counters Ketchum.

"Early on, we started getting human results on the mitochondrial DNA -- that's maternally inherited and it can show where you're from," Ketchum said. "Different labs had already tested alleged Sasquatch samples, and all of these labs were getting human results, so they just threw it out.

"We split the samples with another forensic lab -- one worked on it manually while the other did it robotically, extracting the DNA -- and we ran several tests to confirm there was no contamination. And we ended up getting human sequences on many samples."

In LiveScience.com, Radford pointed out that since "There is no reference sample of Bigfoot DNA to compare it with, by definition, there cannot be a conclusive match."

Ketchum's work isn't the only ongoing research project aimed at trying to confirm, through DNA, the existence of Bigfoot.

In the U.K., researchers from Oxford University and the Lausanne Museum of Zoology are examining alleged Bigfoot remains to test for unusual DNA. Their results will be submitted to a peer-reviewed scientific journal.

One theory about a possible explanation for Bigfoot or Sasquatch is that it could turn out to be a large primate called Gigantopithecus, 9-foot-tall apes that presumably went extinct around 100,000 years ago.

"My working hypothesis has always been that this is very likely Gigantopithecus extant -- that we have a species that's in the right place at the right time, the right size and some of the right characteristics in the form of Gigantopithecus in East Asia during the late Pleistocene [era] to have expanded into North America," said Jeff Meldrum, a professor of anatomy and anthropology at Idaho State University.

"It's not a matter of belief or wishful thinking -- it's a matter of the preponderance of the evidence, be it eyewitness accounts, footprints or hair that defies identification or attribution to known species," Meldrum told HuffPost.

"We're waiting for the results in studies that are ongoing, looking at potential DNA evidence -- DNA sequences extracted from samples of hair and blood and tissue. All of these things are the basis and motivation for undertaking this kind of approach," he said.

Meldrum, author of Sasquatch: Legend Meets Science, is skeptical of most Bigfoot videos that show up on YouTube.

"In this day and age of cellphones, smartphones and Handycams, why aren't there more pictures? And there are, but it's also a testament to the fact that most people are lousy photographers, even if they're composed long enough to snap a picture in that brief instant of an encounter with something strange and unusual like this."

Watch this news report featuring anthropologist Jeffrey Meldrum

If a peer review of Ketchum's findings eventually confirms Bigfoot's existence to the satisfaction of the scientific community, she's adamant about what the next step should be.

"I'd like to see them have the same protections as any other human as far as the right to life, liberty and the pursuit of their own happiness, meaning that they be left alone and not put under a microscope, not hunted, not harassed, not chased through the woods -- leave them alone," she said. "They've existed for thousands of years this way and don't need habitats set aside. They've lived under our noses all this time."

Check out these reported Bigfoot images through the years

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Bigfoot DNA Tests Prove The Hairy Beast Exists, Genetic Researcher Says

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Bigfoot is real. At least that's what veterinarian Melba S. Ketchum claims after a five-year study of more than 100 DNA samples that she believes comes from the elusive hairy beast.

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What are the undisputed facts about the bigfoot / sasquatch mystery?

It's a fact that for more than 400 years people have reported seeing large, hair-covered, man-like animals in the wilderness areas of North America.

It is a fact that sightings of these animals continue today. Real or not, these reports are often made by people of unimpeachable character.

It is a fact that, for over seventy years, people have been finding, photographing, and casting sets of very large human-shaped tracks. Most are discovered by chance in remote areas. These tracks continue to be found to this day.

It is a fact that the cultural histories of many Native American and First Nation peoples include stories and beliefs about non-human "peoples" of the wild. Many of these descriptions bear a striking resemblance to the hairy man-like creatures reported today.

These are some of the facts. There is, however, much disagreement as to what these facts mean.

To many, these facts, taken together, suggest the presence of an animal, probably a primate, that exists today in very low population densities. If true, this species, having likely evolved alongside humans, became astonishingly adept at avoiding human contact through a process of natural selection.

To others, these same facts point to a cultural phenomenon kept alive today through a combination of the misidentification of known animals, wishful thinking, and the deliberate fabrication of evidence.

The BFRO, and its members, take the former view.

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What are the undisputed facts about the bigfoot / sasquatch mystery? It's a fact that for more than 400 years people have reported seeing large, hair-covered, man-like animals in the wilderness areas of North America. It is a fact that sightings of these animals continue today.

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It's been the subject of campfire stories for decades. A camera-elusive, grooming-challenged, bipedal ape-man that roams the mountain regions of North America. Some call it Sasquatch. Others know it as Bigfoot.

Thousands of people claim to have seen the hairy hominoid, but the evidence of its existence is fuzzy. There are few clear photographs of the oversized beast. No bones have ever been found. Countless pranksters have admitted to faking footprints.

Yet a small but vociferous number of scientists remain undeterred. Risking ridicule from other academics, they propose that there's enough forensic evidence to warrant something that has never been done: a comprehensive, scientific study to determine if the legendary primate actually exists.

"Given the scientific evidence that I have examined, I'm convinced there's a creature out there that is yet to be identified," said Jeff Meldrum, a professor of anatomy and anthropology at Idaho State University in Pocatello.

Thousands of Sightings

Sasquatch stories go back centuries. Tales of mythical giant apes lurk in the oral traditions of most Native American tribes, as well as in Europe and Asia. The Himalaya has its Abominable Snowman, or the Yeti. In Australia, Bigfoot is known as the Yowie Man.

Bigfoot advocates hypothesize that the primate is the offspring of an ape from Asia that wandered to North America during the Ice Age. They believe there are at least 2,000 ape men walking upright in North America's woods today.

An adult male is said to be at least 8 feet (2.4 meters) tall, weigh 800 pounds (360 kilograms), and have feet twice the size of a human's. The creatures are described as shy and nocturnal, and their diets consist mostly of berries and fruits.

Matt Moneymaker had been searching for Bigfoot for years. In the woods of eastern Ohio, he claims he finally came eye to eye with the elusive primate.

"It was 2 o'clock in the morning and the moon was a quarter full," recalled Moneymaker. "Suddenly, there he was, an eight-foot-tall creature, standing 15 feet away, growling at me. He wanted to let me know I was in the wrong place."

Moneymaker, who lives in Dana Point in southern California, is a lawyer who runs his own marketing agency. In his spare time, he leads the Bigfoot Field Researchers Organization, a network of more than 3,000 people who claim to have seen the Sasquatch.

Unfortunately, no one has been able to snap a clear picture of the beast.

Perhaps the most compelling photographic evidence of Bigfoot is a controversial short film shot by Roger Patterson in 1967, which appears to document a female Bigfoot striding along a riverbank in northern California.

"It certainly wasn't human."

Now, Bigfoot advocates are increasingly turning to forensic evidence to prove the existence of the giant creature.

Investigator Jimmy Chilcutt of the Conroe Police Department in Texas, who specializes in finger- and footprints, has analyzed the more than 150 casts of Bigfoot prints that Meldrum, the Idaho State professor, keeps in a laboratory.

Chilcutt says one footprint found in 1987 in Walla Walla in Washington State has convinced him that Bigfoot is real.

"The ridge flow pattern and the texture was completely different from anything I've ever seen," he said. "It certainly wasn't human, and of no known primate that I've examined. The print ridges flowed lengthwise along the foot, unlike human prints, which flow across. The texture of the ridges was about twice the thickness of a human, which indicated that this animal has a real thick skin."

Meldrum, meanwhile, says a 400-pound (180-kilogram) block of plaster known as the Skookum Cast provides further evidence of Bigfoot's existence. The cast was made in September 2000 from an impression of a large animal that had apparently lain down on its side to retrieve some fruit next to a mud hole in the Gifford Pinchot National Forest in Washington State.

Meldrum says the cast contains recognizable impressions of a forearm, a thigh, buttocks, an Achilles tendon and heel. "It's 40 to 50 percent bigger than a normal human," he said. "The anatomy doesn't jive with any known animal."

A few academics believe Meldrum could be right.

Renowned chimpanzee researcher Jane Goodall last year surprised an interviewer from National Public Radio when she said she was sure that large, undiscovered primates, such as the Yeti or Sasquatch, exist.

The Skeptics

But the vast majority of scientists still believe Bigfoot is little more than supermarket tabloid fodder. They wonder why no Bigfoot has ever been captured, dead or alive.

"The bottom line is, they don't have a body," said Michael Dennett, who writes for Skeptical Inquirer magazine and who has followed the Bigfoot debate for 20 years.

Bigfoot buffs note that it's rare to find a carcass of a grizzly bear in the wild. While that's true, grizzlies have not escaped photographic documentation.

Hair samples that have been recovered from alleged Bigfoot encounters have turned out to come from elk, bears or cows.

Many of the sightings and footprints, meanwhile, have proved to be hoaxes.

After Bigfoot tracker Ray Wallace died in a California nursing home last year, his children finally announced that their prank-loving dad had created the modern myth of Bigfoot when he used a pair of carved wooden feet to create a track of giant footprints in a northern California logging camp in 1958.

Dennett says he's not surprised by the flood of Bigfoot sightings.

"It's the same kind of eyewitness reports we see for the Loch Ness Sea Monster, UFOs, ghosts, you name it," he said. "The monster thing is a universal product of the human mind. We hear such stories from around the world."

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We've all heard the stories of the large, hairy ape-man that lives elusively among the woods, but is he fact or fiction? Experts weigh in.