Friday, January 10, 2025
There’s a place in a remote part of Indonesia called Gunung Padang. It’s an ancient site. Four or six terraces that have rocks shaped in long rectangles and six or eight sided long blocks. Many of these have been arranged to describe larger recatngular areas, including opening with the blocks stuck in the ground like gate posts. Many blocks are lying around, randomly.
When I was there our guide held his hadns near a stone, but didn’t touch it. “You can feel the energy,” was his comment.
People wanted to know how these blocks came to be and how they got there.
Fortunaltely, we had in our group a geologist. He was recently retired from the U.S. Park Service and had spent much of his time on the big island of Hawaii, studying the volcano. He was also brought in when Mount Saint Helen’s blew and spent several days after its eruption trying to figure out what happened. Interestingly, he said there was so much smoke they really couldn’t see much.
When you are looking at rocks it really helps to have a geologist, because that’s what geologists do – study rocks. I know this may come as shocking news to some folks – that geologists study rocks. And it may follow for some that if you want to know about rocks you can ask a geologist and they may know more than you do about the rocks you are looking at.
In this case our geologist on tour glanced at these rocks and said that the kind of shapes we saw were created by volcanos. Period. End of analysis. Okay, wait. This just in. These rocks were created when lava flowed out of a volcano. When lava cools under certain conditions it forms rocks in four or six sided shapes.
In the last few days a report has surfaced claiming that possibly the mountain (or is it a hill?) on which these rocks are strewn could be a pyramid. A few years ago there was a claim that this might be the site of one of the oldest examples of a civilization. It seems the same fellow made both claims.
Okay, let’s analyze these claims. But first, let’s deal with the energy feel from the rocks. I remember reading in Turn Right at Machu Picchu that a person claimed the large rock perched there had energy. The local guide said, well yeah. If you are sitting out in the sun absorbing the sun’s rays all day you will have energy. Wow! Who knew?
What about the claim of ancient people being at this site? Well, what was this based on? Apparently, they did core samples and found carbon. They dated it and it was old. Their report concluded that it was an ancient civilization. Some scientists (and others) pointed out that just because you have old carbon doesn’t mean that people were there. I’d say especially if you’re on the edge of a volcano. I mean a volcano could erupt, burn some trees and – ta-dah – you have carbon. That doesn’t mean people were around. In fact, there was no evidence that people artifacts were around in the carbon they found.
Now, let’s look at the claim of this place might be a pyramid. Well, okay, is there any evidence that it’s a pyramd? Well, apparanently not. Well, there’s a high mountain like thing. It could be a pyramid. But is it? Or let me be so bold to suggest that it’s a volcano?
It seems every two years one person makes a claim to try and bring pulicity to this site.
Jan 11 – We got a thin blanket of snow. It makes everything so silent. It’s lovely.
