The earliest ancient Egyptians buried their dead in small pits in the desert. The heat and dryness of the sand dehydrated the bodies quickly, creating lifelike and natural 'mummies'.
Later, the ancient Egyptians
began burying their dead in coffins to protect them from wild animals in
the desert. However, they realised that bodies placed in coffins
decayed when they were not exposed to the hot, dry sand of the desert.
Mummification has been a real Mystery for the whole world, Till date many theories have been regarded for the same. In this blog we will highlight some of the theories.
An important man has died and his body needs to be prepared for burial.
The process of mummification has two stages. First, the embalming of the body. Then, the wrapping and burial of the body.
Embalming:-
First, his body is taken to the tent known as 'ibu' or the 'place of purification'. There the embalmers wash his body with good-smelling palm wine and rinse it with water from the Nile.
One of the embalmer's men makes a cut in
the left side of the body and removes many of the internal organs. It
is important to remove these because they are the first part of the body
to decompose.
The liver, lungs, stomach and intestines are washed and packed in natron
which will dry them out. The heart is not taken out of the body because
it is the centre of intelligence and feeling and the man will need it
in the afterlife.
A long hook is used to smash the brain and pull it out through the nose.
The body is now covered and stuffed with
natron which will dry it out. All of the fluids, and rags from the
embalming process will be saved and buried along with the body.
The body is now covered and stuffed with
natron which will dry it out. All of the fluids, and rags from the
embalming process will be saved and buried along with the body. The dehydrated internal organs are wrapped in linen and returned to the body. The body is stuffed with dry materials such as sawdust, leaves and linen so that it looks lifelike.
Finally the body is covered again with good-smelling oils. It is now ready to be wrapped in linen.
In the past, when the internal organs were removed from a body they were placed in hollow canopic jars.
Over many years the embalming practices changed and embalmers began
returning internal organs to bodies after the organs had been dried in
natron. However, solid wood or stone canopic jars were still buried
with the mummy to symbolically protect the internal organs.Each jar has its own properties. Imsety the human-headed god looks after the liver.
Hapy the baboon-headed god looks after the lungs.
Duamutef the jackal-headed god looks after the stomach.Qebehsenuef the falcon-headed god looks after the intestines. The body has been cleaned, dried and rubbed with good-smelling oils. Now it is ready to be wrapped in linen. Wrapping:- This is the main part of mummification. Wrapping the corpse in the linen to complete its procedure of afterlife. First the head and neck are wrapped with strips of fine linen. Then the fingers and the toes are individually wrapped. The arms and legs are wrapped separately. Between the layers of wrapping, the embalmers place amulets to protect the body in its journey through the underworld. .
The arms and legs are wrapped separately. Between the layers of wrapping, the embalmers place amulets to protect the body in its journey through the underworld.The arms and legs are tied together. A papyrus scroll with spells from the Book of the Dead is placed between the wrapped hands.
A cloth is wrapped around the body and a picture of the god Osiris is painted on its surface.
Finally, a large cloth is wrapped around
the entire mummy. It is attached with strips of linen that run from the
top to the bottom of the mummy, and around its middle.
A board of painted wood is placed on top of the mummy before the mummy
is lowered into its coffin. The first coffin is then put inside a
second coffin. The funeral is held for the deceased and his family mourns his death.
A ritual called the 'Opening of the Mouth' is performed, allowing the deceased to eat and drink again.
Finally, the body and its coffins are placed inside a large stone sarcophagus in the tomb. Furniture, clothing, valuable objects, food and drink are arranged in the tomb for the deceased.
Now his body is ready for its journey through the underworld. There his
heart will be judged by his good deeds on earth. If his heart is found
to be pure he will be sent to live for all eternity in the beautiful
'Field of Reeds'.
In Next Post we will inspect the Coffin with scientific methods. Till then Mystery Continues...
Bloop was an ultra-low-frequency and extremely powerful underwater sound detected by the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) in 1997.The sound is consistent with the noises generated by icequakes in large icebergs, or large icebergs scraping the ocean floor, then by 2002 was believed to also be consistent with large marine animals. The NOAA believes it has solved the mystery and now thinks the noise was ice-related.
In the summer of 1997, the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration picked up a sound from deep beneath the Pacific. The sound seemed to come from an animal far larger than any we've ever seen. This was the Bloop.
The Bloop is one of about a half-dozen unexplained sounds that the NOAA's Acoustic Monitoring Project has picked up in its more than twenty years listening to the noises of the Pacific. While some of these sounds seem to have relatively obvious explanations, a few really are baffling, and they represent one of science's great unanswered mysteries. Let's now take a closer listen to the Bloop and five other strange underwater sounds.
Back in the Cold War, the US Navy set up a series of massive arrays of microphones throughout the world's oceans. these, unsurprisingly enough, meant as a way to listen in on Soviet submarines, and they took advantage of a phenomenon known as the deep sound channel, an ocean layer where the speed of sound becomes virtually nothing and low-frequency soundwaves that enter the channel can become trapped, bouncing around in this layer for thousands of miles.
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This phenomenon allowed the arrays of the Sound Surveillance System, or SOSUS, to be able to detect even relatively weak sounds from hundreds of miles away. With the end of the Cold War around 1990, the arrays' original 30-year mission came to an end and was replaced with a new civilian function of just generally monitoring the sounds the ocean. For the last twenty years, the NOAA and its Equatorial Pacific Ocean autonomous hydrophone array have been doing just that.
For the most part, it's not hard to identify the sounds that are emitted. Whales are a frequent source of low frequency noises, as are volcanic activity and iceberg movement, plus all the human-made devices still at work under the sea. These all have their own distinctive soundprint, so that there's rarely any question of where a sound came from. But every so often, the Acoustic Monitoring Project picks up a sound that defies explanation. Here are the six sounds that the NOAA officially considers unexplained. All of these have been sped up between 16 and 20 times their real speed so that we actually hear them.
The most famous of these sounds is this one, known as the Bloop. It was recorded in 1997 originating from a point about 1,500 miles west of the southern Chilean coast. It was powerful enough to be picked up on sensors located up to 3,000 miles away, making it one of the most powerful noises ever recorded underwater. The sound lasted for just over a minute and has not been detected since. It should be pointed out now that the NOAA has checked with the Navy and other groups to rule out human-made sources in this and the rest of these cases. We'll come back to other possible explanations for the Bloop in a little bit but let's first examine the other sounds.
This is Upsweep, which was first recorded in August 1991. Unlike most of the other sounds on this list, it can still be heard. While the noise is strongest in the spring and fall, it appears to be getting generally weaker over time. It's located somewhere deep in the South Pacific near Antarctica, located about 2,500 miles due west of the very southern tip of South America. It was initially thought that this sound might be created by fin whales, but in 1996 researchers Emile Okal and Jacques Talandier argued that there wasn't enough variation in the tone for it to be biological - whales wouldn't be able to communicate much if they only used these same tones over and over. They argued that this was some unusual acoustic phenomenon linked to volcanic activity in the region, perhaps the result of seawater and volcanic gas interacting and creating a resonance pattern. Sure enough, a French research vessel found volcanic seamounts in the region, which makes this the most likely explanation.
Let's move on to Slow Down, which was first recorded on May 19, 1997. Like Upsweep, the sound can still be heard several times each year. The sound was detected about 2,000 miles west of Peru, but its actual origin is much more southerly, and it's possible that the sound actually originates in the Antarctic. Its basic sound profile matches the sound of objects rubbing together in a massive friction event, such as icebergs calving or a sudden glacial movement. These seem like the most likely explanations for Slow Down, but as yet we haven't been able to identify any specific sources for these noises, so the mystery remains.
Next up is Train, so named because it recalls the sound of a distant train. This one was recorded on March 5, 1997, although we don't know exactly where the sound came from. The most likely explanation for this one, according to Christopher Fox, is the movement of ocean currents, as he explained in 2002: "Moving fluids generate vibrations, just like blowing air through a clarinet. If you have moving ocean water and the right conditions coming around a seamount or something, that could generate sound."
Finally, we have Whistle, which was recorded on July 7, 1997. This one was only picked up by a single hydrophone located about 1,700 miles west of Costa Rica, and the precise origin of the sound is unknown. There aren't currently any preferred explanations for this sound.
So, where does this leave us? We've got a pretty decent handle on the origins of Upsweep, Slow Down, and Train, although none of these can be considered confirmed explanations. Julia and Whistle are harder to pin down with a specific explanation, but they don't baffle scientists or inflame the imagination in quite the same way that Bloop has.
It's worth noting as a general principle that there's a big difference between things that are full-on unexplainable and others that are simply unexplained. While the former might force us to consider some pretty out there hypotheses in an attempt to make sense of what's going on, the latter is a more mundane kind of mysterious. We don't know what caused these sounds, but that's more a product of having precious little data to work with and the Pacific Ocean being a very, very big place. Indeed, the depths of the Pacific constitute the largest unexplored frontier on the planet. It would be amazing if we could explain everything we encounter in it.
But if there's one noise that is dangerously close to tipping over from unexplained to unexplainable, it's the Bloop. While ice calving has been thrown around as a possible explanation - its southerly location does make that a decently likely possibility - the profile of the sound far more closely matches that of an animal. And that's where the whole thing gets really strange.
If the Bloop was made by an animal, then it seemingly must be larger than any other known organism. Even the blue whale, whose record length is about 110 feet, would not be nearly big enough to account for the Bloop. Could such a leviathan exist? It's possible, and the Bloop might be considered the strongest evidence for such a beast...but it's also pretty much the only such evidence. There's not a shred of evidence to support the existence of what we might call a supergiant whale, and even with the entire Pacific Ocean to hide in, it's difficult to credit that a species that must continually come to the surface to breath could completely hide its existence.
The other possibility is some sort of massive squid. These creatures do serve as a catch-all for all that's still mysterious about the ocean depths, and our extremely limited firsthand knowledge of them makes it easier to believe a gigantic Blooping squid could maybe be hiding deep in the Pacific. There's a couple problems with this though.
That doesn't leave us with much room to maneuver. It may be worth splitting a hair and pointing out the animal in question wouldn't necessarily have to be larger than any other - just far, far better at making low frequency sounds. That doesn't get us any further to identifying the Blooper, but at least it relieves a bit of the pressure in having to find a 200-foot whale or something like it. Still, all we have to work on is a single, poorly understood noise from 1997, so unless we hear a new Bloop, all we're likely to have is speculation and guesswork.
Of course, I'd be remiss if I didn't mention the preferred fanciful explanation for the Bloop. It just so happens that the origin of the Bloop noise is located in the same general part of the southern Pacific Ocean as the location H.P. Lovecraft gave in his 1928 short story The Call of Cthulhu for the underwater, extra-dimensional city of R'lyeh. The coincidence isn't that spooky - the two locations are about a thousand miles apart - but the two are close enough together that Lovecraft fans have suggested the Bloop might well be the sound of a snoozing Cthulhu.
Honestly, at this point, it seems roughly as believable as any other explanation. It's really just nice to know the oceans are still keeping at least a few seriously hardcore mysteries.
The Bermuda Triangle, also known as the Devil's Triangle, is a loosely defined region in the western part of the North Atlantic Ocean, where a number of aircraft and ships are said to have disappeared under mysterious circumstances. According to the US Navy, the triangle does not exist, and the name is not recognized by the US Board on Geographic Names.Popular culture has attributed various disappearances to the paranormal or activity by extraterrestrial beings.
Documented evidence indicates that a significant percentage of the
incidents were spurious, inaccurately reported, or embellished by later
authors. In a 2013 study, the World Wide Fund for Nature identified the world’s 10 most dangerous waters for shipping, but the Bermuda Triangle was not among them.
The Bermuda Triangle is a large area of ocean between Florida, Puerto Rico, and Bermuda.
The Bermuda Triangle’s bad reputation started with Christopher
Columbus. According to his log, on October 8, 1492, Columbus looked down
at his compass and noticed that it was giving weird readings. He didn’t
alert his crew at first, because having a compass that didn’t point to
magnetic north may have sent the already on edge crew into a panic. This
was probably a good decision considering three days later when Columbus
simply spotted a strange light, the crew threatened to return to Spain.
This and other reported compass issues in the region gave rise to the
myth that compasses will all be off in the Triangle, which isn’t
correct, or at least is an exaggeration of what is actually happening as
you’ll see. Despite this, in 1970 the U.S. Coast Guard, attempting to
explain the reasons for disappearances in the Triangle, stated:
First, the “Devil’s Triangle” is one of the two places on
earth that a magnetic compass does point towards true north. Normally
it points toward magnetic north. The difference between the two is known
as compass variation. The amount of variation changes by as much as 20
degrees as one circumnavigates the earth. If this compass variation or
error is not compensated for, a navigator could find himself far off
course and in deep trouble.
Intersted, We will look more into it in Next Blog.
6000 Year Old Man Still Alive! Believe it or Not But its Interesting.
India is full or varied heritage and its mysterious culture. Life Span of a Normal Person is Maximum 80 Years to 100 Years Average in India. But what will you say to a person whose age is More then 6000 Years. Don't Believe it ? Read more you will know.
Ashwatthama was the son of guru Dronacharya. Dronacharya did many years dhyan and penance of Bhagwan Shiv Shankar in order to obtain a son who possesses the same valiance as of Lord Shiva. Aswatthama is the avatar of one of the eight Rudras and he is one of the seven Chiranjivi’s or the immortal ones. Aswatthama is the lone survivor still living, who actually fought in the kurukshetra war.
Aswatthama was born with a gem in his forehead which gave him power over all living beings lower than manav yoni. This gem protected him from any attacks of ghost, demons ,poisonous insects, snakes, animals etc. The gem was later removed from his forehead.
Aswathama was cursed to roam in Kaliyuga due to his sinful deed of killing innocent 5 sons of Draupadi, wife of Pandavas.
There have been various accounts of People seeing Him.Below are few of them.
Incident 1 – Ashwathama seen by Railway Employee
A more than a decade old newspaper article ran about a railway employee on leave. During his wanderings in the jungles of Navsari (Gujarat) he had reported a very tall man of about 12 feet with a wound on his head. He claimed to have conversation with him and learnt that Bheem was much taller and stronger than him.
Incident 2 – Ashwathama met Pilot Baba ?
The last record of his existence came to my notice while reading a book called “Himalaya kah raha hai” by Pilot Baba. you can also go to his website to read the excerpts. The temple where he stayed was washed away in the floods a few years back. But before that he had interesting encounters with Aswathama which he shared and we have detailed as incident 9.
Incident 3 – Prithviraj Chauhan Hindu King Meeting Ashwathama
When in 1192, Prithveeraaj Chauhaan lost the battle from Mohammad Gauree, he left for jungle. There he met one old person with a scar on his head. Being a very good doctor Prithveeraaj Chauhaan confidently asked him that he can cure his scar. The old man agreed. But even after week’s medication it remained as it is. Prithveeraaj was surprised and understood the details. He asked old man if he is Ashwatthaamaa. Because only the scars that is created through taking up the “MANI” the gem from forehead cannot be cured. The old man told that he was Ashwatthaamaa and then he went away. This description is given in “Prithviraj Raso” the book written in 12th century on him.
Incident 4 – Ashwatthama Ecounter with Saint Naranappa
In late 14th, early 15th century there lived in Gadag, Karnaatak, a poor Braahman called Naranappa. Later, because of the Mahabharata epic “Karnata Bharata Kathamanjari” that he wrote in Kannada, he came to be called as Kumara Vyasa. His greatest desire was to write Mahaabhaarat based on original sources, and to this end he prayed day-in and day-out in the Temple of Veera Naaraayan, temple of Trikooteshwar. One day the Almighty decided to answer his prayers and appeared in his dream and said: “Attend the forthcoming Dwaadashee Paaran (Dwaadashee feast) in the Veera Naaraayan Temple. Watch out for one lone Braahman who would leave the feast earliest. He is none other than Ashwathaamaa of MBH. Fall at his feet and ask him to narrate the MahaBharat as it happened. You can record it in writing and claim your share of fame”. Promptly Naranappa (Narayanappa) attended the following Dwaadashee Paaran at the Veera Narayan Temple, and then followed the Brahmin who finished his feast the earliest and started walking out of the Temple. He approached him and fell at his feet saying, “I know who you are, you are the very same Ashwatthaamaa of MahaBharat, please help me”. At this Ashwathaamaa was taken aback and asked him how do you know this? Naranappa responded saying “The Veera Naaraayan Swamy” appeared in his dream and told me so. Ashwatthaamaa was mightily pleased hearing this and asked Naranappa, OK, tell me what can I do for you. Naranappa responded saying he would like to write the Mahaabhaarat in Kannada as it happened.
To this Ashwatthaamaa agreed under two conditions. He said that Naranappa should start writing the Mahaabhaarat everyday after he finished his bath, wearing a wet Veshti (Dhotee). Ashwatthaamaa said – “You can keep writing till such time your Veshti is wet and the MahaBharata would flow from your pen as it happened. The moment your clothes dry up, the flow would stop. He also put a condition that he should not disclose this secret to anyone failing which the flow would stop forever. Needless to say, our Naranappa, was immensely excited about the project, and he kept his secret till the time he reached the “Gadaa Parv” (the time when Duryodhan and Bheem fought the duel of the mace fight). At this moment it is believed that Ashwatthaamaa appeared before Naranappa and he was in tears — remembering his friend Duryodhan and the A-Dhaarmik (unjustified) way in which Bheem defeated Duryodhan. Naranappa overcome with excitement disclosed this secret to his wife, and his writing flow stopped immediately. That is why his Mahaabhaarat ends with Gadaa Parv only. Later someone might have added up from Vyaas’ MahaBharat, but our Kumara Vyaas’s MahaBharata ended only with Gadaa Parv. End of Mahabharat and Beginning of Kaliyuga further suggest that Dronacharya’s son is very much alive and is bound to roam in India to serve the curse bestowed on him. The curse that “Ashwatthaamaa would roam the world carrying his own sins, with people shunning him, and suffering the pain of the wound on his forehead from where the “Mani” was removed by force”, 5000 years ago. Or Vikram Samvat 2070** years, since Mahabharata is now long passed, and I am sure, Ashwatthaamaa is there somewhere in the Himaalaya, performing Tapasyaa.
Curse of Krishna to Ashwathama
Incensed over the cowardly act of Ashwathama, the Pandavas went after him to sage Vyasa’s ashram. Seeing this, Ashwathama, as a last resort, used his sacred knowledge of the Vedas to devise a Bramhastra from a blade of grass and invoked it against the Pandavas and Krishna, although he was strictly forbidden to do so by his father Dronacharya for any purpose. Krishna asked Arjuna to invoke the same. Arjuna invokes Bramhastra, which he received by Dronacharya itself, towards Ashwathama.
On seeing the two powerful astras heading for a head on catastrophic collision that would result in the total devestation of the entire Earth, sage Vyasa stopped these divine weapons from colliding with each other by using his yogic power. He asked both these warriors to withdraw their respective weapons. Arjuna was able to withdraw his Brahmastra, while Ashwatthama could not do so as Dronocharya did not teach his son how to withdraw it. An archer who is able to invoke and withdraw any Divyastra (Divine Weapon) can invoke it as many times as he wishes. Dronacharya taught Arjuna to withdraw Brahmastra but he did not do so to Ashwathama, thus limiting the power of Ashwathama to invoke Brahmastra for only one instance. However, Ahswathama was given the option of deviating his weapon towards one single isolated object in a place that was not inhabited by any form of life. But Ashwathama, out of spite, directed the weapon towards the womb of Uttara (wife of Abhimanyu) who was carrying Abhimanyu’s son (Parikshit) in an attempt to end the lineage of the Pandavas. Krishna used his Sudarshan Chakra to stop the Brahmashirastra and save Uttara’s unborn child.
Lord Krishna then placed a curse on Ashwathama that “he will carry the burden of all people’s sins on his shoulders and will roam alone like a ghost without getting any love and courtesy till the end of Kaliyuga; He will have neither any hospitality nor any accommodation; He will be in total isolation from mankind and society; His body will suffer from a host of incurable diseases forming sores and ulcers that would never heal”. Ashwathama was asked to surrender his gem which was on his forehead. Lord Sri Krishna further states that “the wound caused by the removal of this gem on his forehead will never heal and will suffer from leprosy, till the end of Kaliyuga”. It is believed that in Kaliyuga, his name will be “Suryakant”. Thus, Ashwathama will be in search of death every moment, and yet he will never die. At the end of Kali Yuga, Ashwatthama is to meet Sri Kalki, the tenth and final avatar of Lord Vishnu.
We don't know whether this accounts are real or Not. But this mystery is Interesting isn't it?
Also If Any of you Meet Ashwatthama please let me know as seeing the Person who is 6000 years old is itself a honor.
Mermaid found at Porbandar and Karachi beach, oh really?
For those of you who grew up following the conventional wisdom of ‘you believe only when you see’, these images could be startling! In today’s day and age when computer imagery and special effects are employed to make any visual jazzy, and exciting, if you believe only because you see, and then spread the information, you could possibly lead to more confusion and chaos.
These pictures, supposedly of a mermaid (or Jalpari), apparently found in Karachi, Pakistan, and subsequently spotted in Porbander, Gujarat, has caught many eyeballs in the internet space. Here’s she, the angelic Ariel, the in-flesh version of the cutesy mermaid of Disney’s TheLittle Mermaid series. But is she for real? Or are these some leaked out pictures straight from the sets of a Hollywood movie? Or is this just a prank to elicit ‘look- how-I-made-em-fools’ reactions? We, for sure, have no clue!
What we do know, for sure, is that while Miss M’s fin and her axial appendages may make the visual look real, her sharp facial features, her carved lips and high cheekbones make her the glamorous beauty of the underwater world. “Oh, she must be the sexiest mermaid around,” squealed someone. Maybe the ‘mermaid’ has just taken a leap of faith, after realising her rare beauty, landed on our shores, perhaps to participate in our de rigueur beauty pageants!
PS: Though Miss M’s shiny diving suit looks pretty impressive, we wonder where her oxygen mask is.
A mermaid is a legendary aquatic creature with the upper body of a female human and the tail of a fish. Mermaids appear in the folklore of many cultures worldwide, including the Near East, Europe, Africa and Asia. The first stories appeared in ancient Assyria, in which the goddess A targatis
transformed herself into a mermaid out of shame for accidentally
killing her human lover. Mermaids are sometimes associated with perilous
events such as floods, storms, shipwrecks and drownings. In other folk
traditions (or sometimes within the same tradition), they can be
benevolent or beneficent, bestowing boons or falling in love with
humans.
Mermaids are associated with the mythological Greek sirens as well as with sirenia, a biological order comprising dugongs and manatees. Some of the historical sightings by sailors may have been misunderstood encounters with these aquatic mammals. Christopher Columbus
reported seeing mermaids while exploring the Caribbean, and supposed
sightings have been reported in the 20th and 21st centuries in Canada,
Israel, and Zimbabwe.
In mythology, mermaids — or mermaid like creatures — have existed for thousands of years.
The first myths of mermaids may have originated around 1000 B.C. —
stories tell the tale of a Syrian goddess who jumped into a lake to turn
into a fish, but her great beauty could not be changed and only her
bottom half transformed.
Since then, many other mermaid stories have appeared in folklore from
various cultures around the world. For instance, the African water
spirit Mami Wata is mermaid in form, as is the water spirit Lasirn, who
is popular in folklore in the Caribbean Islands.
Throughout history, various explorers have reported sightings of mermaids, the most famous of which was Christopher Columbus.
Columbus claimed to have spotted mermaids near Haiti in 1493, which he
described as being "not as pretty as they are depicted, for somehow in
the face they look like men," according to the American Museum of
Natural History.
Captain John Smith is described in Edward Rowe Snow's "Incredible
Mysteries and Legends of the Sea" (Dodd Mead, January 1967) as seeing a
big-eyed, green-haired mermaid in 1614 off the coast of Newfoundland;
apparently Smith felt "love" for her until he realized she was a fish
from the waist down.
Experts believe Columbus, Smith and other mermaid-spotting explorers
really caught glimpses of human-sized marine mammals called manatees and
dugongs.
Indeed, despite past and recent "sightings" of the mythical sea
creatures, mermaids, like the Lock Ness Monster, may just be a case of
mistaken identity.
With nearly three-quarters of the Earth covered by water, it's little
wonder that, centuries ago, the oceans were believed to contain many
mysterious creatures, including sea serpents and mermaids. Merfolk
(mermaids and mermen) are, of course, only the marine version of
half-human, half-animal legends that have captured human imagination for
ages.C.J.S. Thompson, a former curator at the Royal College of Surgeons of England, noted in his book "The Mystery and Lore of Monsters"
(Kessinger, 2010), "Traditions concerning creatures half-human and
half-fish in form have existed for thousands of years, and the
Babylonian deity Era or Oannes, the Fish-god, is represented on seals
and in sculpture, as being in this shape over 2,000 years B.C. He is
usually depicted as having a bearded head with a crown and a body like a
man, but from the waist downwards, he has the shape of a fish covered
with scales and a tail."
Greek mythology contains stories of the god Triton, the merman messenger
of the sea, and several modern religions, including Hinduism and
Candomblé (an Afro-Brazilian belief), worship mermaid goddesses to this
day. In folklore, mermaids were often associated with bad luck and
misfortune. They lured errant sailors off course and even onto rocky
shoals, much like their cousins, the sirens — beautiful, alluring
half-bird, half-women who dwelled near rocky cliffs and sung to passing
sailors. The sirens would enchant men to steer their ships toward the
singing — and the dangerous rocks that were sure to sink them. Homer's
"Odyssey," written around 800 B.C., tells tales of the brave Ulysses,
whose naked ears were tortured by the sweet sounds of the sirens. In
other legends — from Scotland and Wales, for example — mermaids
befriended, and even married, humans.
Scientific Proof
In 1997, the Bloop was
heard on hydrophones across the Pacific. It was a loud, ultra-low
frequency sound that was heard at listening stations underwater over
5,000km apart, and one of many mysterious noises picked up by the
National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA). Several articles in
the years that followed popularised one suggestion that the Bloop might
have been the sound of an unknown animal due to the "organic" nature of
the noise, a theory that elevated the Bloop to the level of a great
unsolved mystery.
However, the NOAA is pretty sure that it wasn't an animal, but the sound
of a relatively common event -- the cracking of an ice shelf as it
breaks up from Antarctica. Several people have linked to the NOAA's website over
the past week excitedly claiming that the mystery of the Bloop has been
"solved", but as the information on the NOAA website was undated and
without a source, Wired.co.uk spoke to NOAA and Oregon State University
seismologist Robert Dziak
by email to check it out. He confirmed that the Bloop really was just
an icequake -- and it turns out that's kind of what they always thought
it was. The theory of a giant animal making noises loud enough to be
heard across the Pacific was more fantasy than science.
In Next Blog will show some real proofs to explain this mystery more deeply.
