What do we know about the past? How people learned about the past: material sources, excavations. Immortalized in legends

The topic of time travel excites minds. Admit it, have you also fantasized about this topic? Where would you like to visit, past or future? There are suspicions that such travel is available to some, in any case, we know stories that are difficult to explain otherwise.

Several years ago, a certain Andrew Karlsin was arrested in New York on charges of fraud. Having invested less than a thousand dollars in shares, after 2 weeks he earned 350 million bucks on the stock exchange.

It is noteworthy that the trading operations he carried out initially did not promise winning at all. State authorities accused Karlsin of obtaining information that was profitable for himself through illegal means, since they found no other reasons for such an astonishing result.

Although all experts agree that even with complete information about the companies where he invested money, it is impossible to earn so much and in such a period. However, during interrogation, Karlsin unexpectedly stated that he allegedly appeared from 2256 and, having information about all banking transactions over the past years, decided to enrich himself.

He categorically refused to show his time machine, but made a tempting offer for the authorities - to inform several upcoming important events that will happen soon in the world... including the whereabouts of Bin Laden and the invention of a cure for AIDS... According to unverified information, someone posted bail for him a million dollars to get him out of prison, after which Karlsin disappeared, apparently forever...

2. Old lady

A strange incident occurred in a small California town in the summer of 1936. A frightened old woman, unknown to anyone, appeared on his street, dressed in an old-fashioned way. She literally shied away from passers-by offering her help. Her unusual outfit and strange behavior attracted curious people: after all, everyone in this town knew each other, and the appearance of such a colorful figure did not go unnoticed. When the old woman saw people gathering around her, she looked around in despair and confusion and suddenly disappeared in front of dozens of eyewitnesses.

3. Submarine

Time plays nasty tricks not only on individuals; it can also play tricks on very impressive objects. American parapsychologists claim that the Pentagon has classified a striking incident that occurred with one of the submarines. The submarine was in the waters of the notorious Bermuda Triangle, when she suddenly unexpectedly disappeared, literally moments later a signal from her was received from... the Indian Ocean. However, this incident with the submarine was not limited to just moving it in space over a huge distance; there was also quite a significant time travel: the crew of the submarine literally aged 20 years in tens of seconds

4. Airplane from the past

And sometimes worse things happen to airplanes. In 1997, W magazine W. News spoke about a mysterious DC-4 plane that landed in Caracas (Venezuela) in 1992. This plane was seen by airport employees, although it did not give any mark on the radar. Soon we managed to contact the pilot. In a surprised and even frightened voice, the pilot announced that he was operating charter flight 914 from New York to Miami with 54 passengers on board and was scheduled to land at 9:55 a.m. on June 2, 1955, at the end he asked: “Where are we?”

Stunned by the pilot's message, the air traffic controllers told him that he was over the airport in Caracas and gave him permission to land. The pilot did not answer, but during landing everyone heard his surprised exclamation: “Jimmy! What the hell is this! The American pilot was clearly surprised by the jet plane taking off at that time...

The mysterious plane landed safely, its pilot was breathing heavily, and finally he said, “Something is wrong here.” When informed that he had landed on May 21, 1992, the pilot exclaimed, “Oh God!” They tried to calm him down and said that a ground team was already heading towards him. However, seeing airport employees next to the plane, the pilot shouted: “Don’t come closer! We're flying out of here!"

The ground crew saw the astonished faces of the passengers through the windows, and the DC-4 pilot cracked open the window in his cockpit and waved a magazine at them, demanding that they not approach the plane.

He started the engines, the plane took off and disappeared. Did he manage to get there in due time? Unfortunately, the further fate of the crew and passengers of the plane is unknown, since the magazine did not report any historical investigation into this case. As evidence of this unusual incident, a recording of conversations with DC-4 and a calendar for 1955, which fell out of the magazine that the pilot was waving, remained at the Caracas airport...

5. Japanese military

A resident of Sevastopol, retired naval sailor Ivan Pavlovich Zalygin has been studying the problem of time travel for the last fifteen years. The captain of the second rank became interested in this phenomenon after a very curious and mysterious case which happened to him in the late 80s of the last century in the Pacific Ocean, while serving as deputy commander of a diesel submarine.

During one of the training trips in the La Perouse Strait area, the boat was caught in a severe thunderstorm. The submarine commander decided to take a surface position. As soon as the ship surfaced, the sailor on watch reported that he saw an unidentified aircraft straight ahead.

You will soon find out that a Soviet submarine stumbled upon a rescue boat located in international waters, in which the submariners found a half-dead frostbitten man in... the uniform of a Japanese naval sailor from the Second World War. When examining the personal belongings of the rescued man, an award parabellum was found, as well as documents issued on September 14, 1940. After the report to the base command, the boat was ordered to go to the port of Yuzhno-Sakhalinsk, where counterintelligence was already waiting for the Japanese naval sailor. GRU officers signed a non-disclosure agreement to not disclose this fact for the next ten years.

6. Story six

In 1966, three brothers were walking early on New Year's morning along a Glasgow street. Suddenly, 19-year-old Alex disappeared in front of his older brothers. All attempts to find him were unsuccessful. Alex disappeared without a trace and was never seen again.

7. Story seven

Photo in the Bralorne Pioneer Museum virtual museum with the rather boring title “Reopening of the South Fork Bridge after flood in Nov. 1940. 1941 (?)” became a minor sensation. The public claims that it shows a time traveler. The reason for this was some features of his clothes and a portable camera in his hands: on him sunglasses, something that was not worn in the 40s, a T-shirt with an advertising logo, a sweater in the fashion of the 21st century, a hairstyle that was not done in those days and a portable camera.

8. Time Traveler

John Titor is a man from the future who has appeared on the Internet on forums, blogs and various websites since 2000. John claimed that he was a time traveler and arrived here from 2036. He was originally sent in 1975 to collect information about the IBM-5100 computer, as his grandfather worked on the creation of this computer and programmed on it, but he stopped in 2000 for personal reasons.

On forums he talked about future events. Some of them have already happened: the war in Iraq, the conflict in the US presidential elections 2004 and 2008. He also talked about the third world war. This is the bleak future of our planet: the second Civil War will split America into 5 factions with a new capital in Omaha. Third World War will break out in 2015 World War, the result of which will be losses of three billion people.

Then, to top it all off, there will be a computer crash that will destroy the world as we know it. That is, it will be so unless a brave time traveler crosses the space-time continuum to change the course of history. This was at the end of 2000.

The poster on various forums took on the online aliases “TimeTravel_0” and “John Titor,” and claimed to be a soldier sent from the year 2036, the year a computer virus destroyed the world. His mission was to return to 1975 to find and capture the IBM 5100 computer, which had everything he needed to fight the virus (and he went to 2000 to meet his 3-year-old self, ignoring the paradox of the very fabric of time from the stories about time travel).

Over the next four months, Titor answered all the questions that the other participants had, describing future events in the spirit of poetic phrases, and always pointing out that there are other realities and our reality may not be his own. In between grim calls to learn first aid and not eat beef - in his reality, mad cow disease was a serious threat - Titor, using extremely difficult algorithms, revealed some technical aspects about how time travel works and provided grainy photographs of his time machine.

On March 24, 2001, Titor gave his last piece of advice (“Take a gas can with you when you abandon your car on the side of the road”), logged out forever, and headed back. Since then he has not appeared again. Today, everything posted online is viewed with a healthy dose of skepticism.

Titor's story is from a time when we were all so innocent, a time less than 15 years ago, just before everything started to change. And the legend of Titor persists partly because no one has ever claimed to be its creator. Since the mystery has not been solved, the legend continues. "The John Titor story is popular because some stories just get popular," says writer and producer Brian Denning, who specializes in the Titor story.

Among all the stories about ghosts, demonic voices, hoaxes or rumors floating around the Internet, something is becoming popular. Why shouldn't the story about Titor become so popular? Although there is (tiny, almost scientifically impossible) another possibility.

“One of the keys to unlocking Titor,” Temporal Recon wrote in an email, “is accepting the possibility that time travel may be true.” The great thing about time travel is that history cannot be disproved. If events do not happen as the time traveler said, it is because he changed the course of history.

And yet...if this man John Titor wanted to promote himself, then why did he disappear forever?! Whether the special services took him away or whether he went back is a mystery. If all the previous described cases can somehow be suspected of unreliability, exaggeration or delusion, then the facts mentioned below cannot in any way be classified as such. We are talking about the so-called chronal artifacts - things, objects clearly made by man, found during archaeological excavations and in geological layers dating back to a time where neither man nor the things themselves should have existed.

9. Ninth story

In the 80s of the 19th century, while drilling a well in one of the US states, a metal object, clearly of artificial origin, was discovered. The age of the find was about 400 thousand years. It was a coin of an unknown alloy and with hieroglyphs on both sides that could not be deciphered. It is known that man modern type appeared on our planet about a hundred thousand years ago, and on the American continent even later.

10. Tenth story

Around the same time, an elegant ceramic sculpture of a woman was found at great depths in Idaho. Its age was about two million years.

11. Incident on the train

Five years ago, Mexican newspapers described a mysterious story that happened on a train traveling from Mexico City to Acapulco. In the compartment where there were a young surgeon and a woman with a child, a disheveled, deathly frightened man, dressed in a long camisole, suddenly appeared. On his head was a powdered wig. In one hand he held a quill pen, in the other a large leather wallet.

“I am Minister Jorge de Balenciaga,” he shouted, trembling with fear. - Where I am? The surgeon ran after the conductor. Returning to the compartment, he saw that the man who called himself the minister had disappeared. The conductor decided that they wanted to play a joke on him and was indignant for a long time that he was being taken away from his work, until material evidence was found on the floor - a pen and a wallet.

The surgeon picked up both objects and showed them to historians, who determined that they belonged to the 18th century. In the archives we managed to find documents with a curious note from the then bishop, from which it followed that Minister de Balenciaga, already an elderly man, allegedly falling into madness, told everyone how one day, returning home late at night, he saw an iron one right in front of him. long, like a snake, “the devil’s carriage,” bursting with fire and smoke.

Then, according to the minister, he inexplicably found himself inside a monstrous vehicle, where strangely dressed people were sitting, whom he mistook for the minions of Satan. Seriously frightened, de Balenciaga read a prayer to the Lord, calling on Him for help. Suddenly he found himself again on one of the streets of Mexico City. Despite the fact that the devil was repeatedly cast out of him, he did not return to sanity until his death.

12. Road accident in Tokyo

An equally mysterious incident occurred in 1988 on one of the streets of Tokyo, where a car hit an unknown man who died on the spot. The driver and witnesses claimed that the victim “appeared on the road suddenly, as if he had fallen from the sky.” The police noticed that the deceased was wearing a suit of clearly antique cut. They were even more surprised by the passport issued... exactly 100 years ago. In the man's pocket, they also found business cards indicating his profession - artist of the Tokyo Imperial Theater. It turned out that the street in question has not existed for more than 70 years.

The police interviewed all residents of Tokyo with the same surname. After days of searching, they found an old woman who reported that her father had disappeared under mysterious circumstances. He went to a friend's house to play a game of GO and did not return. The woman showed the police a photograph in which a young man, remarkably similar to the man who was hit by the car, was holding a little girl in his arms. There was a date on the photo. May 1902.

13. See Paris and...

Last week, Pierre Dupre, a resident of Rouen, received a call from his sick aunt living in Paris and asked him to urgently come to her. The nephew did not force himself to ask twice and, getting into the car, rushed to her. He absolutely did not recognize the road, besides, for some reason the lights were not on, and the asphalt suddenly changed to gravel. He was also surprised by the fact that he did not meet a single car along the way. Pierre decided that he was lost, and, seeing a two-story building, stopped to ask how he could get to Paris. An elderly man with a candle in his hand opened the door for him. Staring at Pierre, he asked what he needed. Pierre explained. Two women (apparently the man’s wife and daughter) ran out of the house and, calling him a hillbilly, replied that he was in Paris itself.

Only then Pierre noticed that his interlocutors were dressed in medieval clothes. They, in turn, looked at his leather jacket and jeans with amazement. Suddenly the clatter of hooves was heard. Catholics,” the man shouted. We need to save ourselves, and turning to Pierre, he expressed the hope that he was a Huguenot. Pierre realized with horror that he had fallen into a time loop, which he had previously only known about by hearsay.

He was always interested in the past, but the last thing he wanted was to go back to the era of the famous religious wars. Without hesitation, he pushed his casual acquaintances into the car and pressed the gas. Pierre brought the Huguenot family to his place in Rouen. Numb with fear, they did not react to anything. After spending the night with Pierre, they left in the morning without even waking him up, and disappeared from his life forever.

14. Old lady

Last year, 48-year-old Giovanna Cavolini, together with her daughter Loretta, walking along the street of her native Palermo, noticed an old woman walking, having difficulty moving her legs. The women wanted to help her cross the road. However, for some reason she was frightened and, as best she could, quickened her pace. The mother and daughter were struck not only by her clothes - a long dress, made in the fashion of the 19th century, and a large black hat - but also by her snow-white face with skin tight to the skull, on which huge blue eyes stood out.

Her crooked fingers, adorned with ancient gold rings, her delicate facial features and her arrogant gaze spoke of her high origins. The old woman limped towards the alley, then looked around helplessly - apparently not knowing where to go. Seeing that a crowd of townspeople were watching her, she stopped in confusion and immediately disappeared.

15. Future of the Earth

There are many known cases of our contemporaries penetrating into the future. In April 1992, Italian Bruno Leone went for a walk with his wife and disappeared into thin air right before her eyes. When she reported the incident to the police, she was advised to see a psychiatrist. However, two days later Bruno returned home safely. True, he looked confused. According to him, he found himself in the 25th century. Outlandish people in identical clothes looked at him like an exotic animal. When they heard that he arrived from Italy, they rolled their eyes in surprise, claiming that a country with that name had disappeared from the face of the earth in the 21st century.

He was surprised that, walking through the city of the future, he did not see a single building of the 20th century and not a single tree. The “descendants” kindly took Bruno, who was hungry, to a cafe where only one dish was served - a colorless, cloudy jelly that resembled a melted jellyfish. It tasted disgusting, but it instantly satisfied my hunger. Having warned him about impending cataclysms, the hospitable hosts opened geographical map, to show places where they could escape, but as soon as they pointed a finger at Mongolia, Bruno suddenly found himself at home.

16. 2245

Last summer, 17-year-old Frenchwoman Florence Dunoy was returning from a disco at 3 am. There were only 50 meters left to the house when she turned the corner and found herself on a completely unfamiliar street, on which identical houses of a bizarre cone shape rose in even rows. There were no passers-by at such a late hour, and she felt scared. Finally noticing the two guys, Florence rushed to them in the hope of salvation. After carefully examining her fashionable, chic toilet, they asked which museum she stole her junk from.

They themselves were dressed in gray, rubber-like sweaters and tight-fitting pants. Her questions puzzled the young people, since this was the first time they had heard the name of the street where the stranger lived. And when the girl asked where she could get a taxi, they almost fell over laughing. “You apparently came from afar,” said one of the guys. Would you like to come with us? Florence was incredibly tired, and she really wanted to go to the toilet, so she accepted the invitation. There was no furniture in the room where they brought her, except for a soft mattress that covered the entire floor.

Light was shining through from under the lamp built into the ceiling. Next to it, also on the ceiling, a green flashing light illuminated a clock - a calendar showing September 23, 2245... The guys, having heard from which century Florais came to them, handed her a clock that had appeared from somewhere. glass with bluish liquid. An unfamiliar acrid smell hit the girl’s nostrils, but after drinking one sip, she lost consciousness...

When she came to, the boys were not around. Looking at the clock and calendar, she found out that she had slept for three days, her lower abdomen hurt. Rising from the floor, she wandered towards the doors, which swung open by themselves. Obeying a thought that suddenly dawned on her, she followed the road that led her to that wonderful neighborhood, turned the “fatal” corner and... found herself on the very street along which she was returning from the disco.

Soon, Florence lost her period and was craving salty foods, which she was extremely surprised by, since she had not had sexual intercourse with anyone for six months. Then she remembered how much her lower abdomen hurt after she woke up in a 23rd century apartment, and realized that the guys who had sheltered her had knocked her unconscious and then raped her. The doctor who examined Florence confirmed the pregnancy. To her parents, tired of proving anything, she began to say that she had sinned with an alien. A month and a half later, Florence had an abortion...

17. Gluttonous old lady

People of the future are also not immune to falling into the “time corridor” and sometimes visit their distant ancestors. In January in summer cafe An elderly, completely bald woman with a face disfigured by deep scars and ulcers, and dressed in a translucent plastic suit, walked into Cape Town. The gluttonous old lady ate a dozen cups of ice cream, drank two liter bottles of Coca-Cola and devoured a hefty bunch of grapes. Having refreshed herself, she got ready to leave without showing the slightest desire to pay.

When the waiter caught her at the exit of the cafe, she stared at him as if he were crazy, and... Scolding with the last words, she promised to complain to the International Committee, the old woman, called by phone to the police, explained that all survivors of the nuclear disaster that broke out 30 years ago enjoy the right to free food in all cafes and restaurants in the world. Sweet Tooth presented a phosphorescent card with her holographic photograph. On it was the year of her birth - 2198. To find out the circumstances of the appearance of a guest from the future, the police invited the old woman to go with them. However, heading to the car, the granny disappeared into thin air.

18. Clock through time

One of the archaeological finds confirming time travel took place in China. In 2008, archaeologists working on a burial site in Guangxi Province hoped to discover the remains of a Chinese Ming Dynasty emperor. whose reign was at the turn of the 15th century. Sealed 400 years ago, the tomb is being opened for the first time. With utmost care, scientists remove the fossilized layers of soil and get to the tombstone. And then their first discovery awaits them. As soon as they begin to remove dust from the stove, it breaks off strange object, looks like a ring.

But having cleared away the traces of time, rust and fossils, archaeologists freeze. In front of them are real Swiss watches! The back cover contains Swiss engraving. It is quite clear that in the 15th century there were no Swiss watches, and there was no technology for making wristwatches. A strange artifact, and there is no other way to call it, is sent to Beijing for study. Where the authenticity of the origin of the watch is established. And according to the serial number and date of manufacture, a hundred years ago.

The results of the study are somewhat shocking to the researchers. How could a watch end up in a tomb that was sealed four hundred years before it appeared! This find baffles researchers. It is impossible to explain this from the point of view of our usual science. At first it was assumed that the watch was placed in the tomb along with other jewelry. But the reign of the Ming Dynasty fell on the 14th-16th centuries. Then, watchmakers began to create wrist watch only towards the end of the 17th century.

According to scientists, only one version can explain the appearance of the clock in the tomb, several centuries before its manufacture. The watch has traveled back in time! But then, we must admit the fact that someone owns the technology of time travel.

Scientists have been able to prove that it is possible to travel through time... Thus, according to the research of Israeli scientist Amos Ori, time travel is scientifically substantiated. And at present, world science already has the necessary theoretical knowledge to be able to claim that in theory it is possible to create a time machine.

The mathematical calculations of the Israeli scientist were published in one of the specialized publications. Ory concludes that to create a time machine, gigantic gravitational forces must be present. The scientist based his research on the conclusions made back in 1947 by his colleague, Kurt Gödel, the essence of which is that...

The theory of relativity does not deny the existence of certain models of space and time.

According to Ori's calculations, the ability to travel into the past arises if a curved space-time structure is shaped into a funnel or ring. Moreover, each new turn of this structure will take a person further into the past. In addition, according to the scientist, the gravitational forces necessary for such temporary travel are probably located near the so-called black holes, the first mention of which dates back to the 18th century.

One of the scientists (Pierre Simon Laplace) put forward a theory about the existence of cosmic bodies that are invisible to the human eye, but have such high gravity that not a single light ray is reflected from them. The beam must overcome the speed of light in order to be reflected from such a cosmic body, but it is known that it is impossible to overcome it.

The boundaries of black holes are called event horizons. Every object that reaches it falls inside, and from the outside it is not visible what is happening inside the hole. Probably, the laws of physics cease to apply in it, time and space coordinates change places.

Thus, spatial travel turns into time travel.

Despite this very detailed and significant research, there is no evidence that time travel is real. However, no one has been able to prove that this is just a fiction. At the same time, over the entire history of mankind, a huge amount of facts have been accumulated that indicate that time travel is still real. Thus, in the ancient chronicles of the era of the pharaohs, the Middle Ages, and then the French Revolution and world wars, the appearance of strange machines, people and mechanisms was recorded.

To be clear, here are a few examples:

***

In May 1828, a teenager was caught in Nuremberg. Despite a thorough investigation and 49 volumes of the case, as well as portraits sent throughout Europe, it turned out to be impossible to find out his identity, just like the places where the boy came from. He was given the name Kaspar Hauser, and he had incredible abilities and habits: the boy saw perfectly in the dark, but did not know what fire or milk was. He died from an assassin's bullet, and his identity remained a mystery. However, there were suggestions that before appearing in Germany, the boy lived in a completely different world.

***

In 1897, a very unusual incident occurred on the streets of the Siberian town of Tobolsk. At the end of August, a man of strange appearance and equally strange behavior was detained there. The man's last name is Krapivin. When he was taken to the police station and began to be interrogated, everyone was quite surprised by the information that the man shared: according to him, he was born in 1965 in Angarsk, and worked as a PC operator.

The man could not explain his appearance in the city in any way, but according to him, shortly before that he felt a strong headache, after which he lost consciousness. When he woke up, Krapivin saw an unfamiliar town. A doctor was called to the police station to examine the strange man and diagnosed him with “silent insanity.” After this, Krapivin was placed in a local insane asylum.

***

The tourists asked for directions, but instead of helping, the men looked at them strangely and pointed in an uncertain direction. After some time, the women met strange people again. This time it was a young woman and a girl, also dressed in old-fashioned clothes. This time the women did not suspect anything unusual until they came across another group of people dressed in ancient clothes.

These people spoke an unfamiliar dialect of French. Soon the women realized that their own appearance caused amazement and bewilderment of those present. However, one of the men pointed them in the right direction. When the tourists reached their destination, they were amazed not by the house itself, but by the appearance of the lady who was sitting next to it and making sketches in an album. She was very beautiful, in a powdered wig, long dress, which was worn by aristocrats of the 18th century.

And only then did the English women finally realize that they had gone back in time. Soon the landscape changed, the vision disappeared, and the women swore to each other not to tell anyone about their journey. However, later, in 1911, they jointly wrote a book about their experiences.

***

In 1924, British Royal Air Force pilots were forced to make an emergency landing in Iraq. Their footprints were clearly visible on the sand, but soon they broke off. The pilots were never found, although in the area where the incident occurred there were no quicksand, no sandstorms, no abandoned wells...

***

In 1930, a country doctor named Edward Moon was returning home after visiting his patient, Lord Edward Carson, who lived in Kent. The lord was very ill, so the doctor visited him daily and knew the area very well. One day, Moon, going outside the estate of his patient, noticed that the area looked a little different than before. Instead of a road there was a dirt path that led through deserted meadows.

While the doctor was trying to understand what happened, he met a strange man who was walking a little ahead. He was dressed somewhat old-fashioned and carried an antique musket. The man also noticed the doctor and stopped, clearly in amazement. When Moon turned to look at the estate, the mysterious wanderer had disappeared and the entire landscape had returned to normal.

***

During the battles for the liberation of Estonia, which were fought throughout 1944, near the Gulf of Finland, a tank reconnaissance battalion commanded by Troshin came across a strange group of cavalrymen dressed in historical uniforms in the forest. When the cavalrymen saw the tanks, they fled. As a result of the pursuit, one of the strange people was detained.

He spoke exclusively French, so he was mistaken for a soldier of the Allied army. The cavalryman was taken to headquarters, but everything he told shocked both the translator and the officers. The cavalryman claimed that he was a cuirassier of the Napoleonic army, and that its remnants were trying to get out of encirclement after retreating from Moscow. The soldier also said that he was born in 1772. The next day, the mysterious cavalryman was taken away by special department officers...

***

Another similar story is connected with the Kola Peninsula. For many centuries there was a legend that the highly developed civilization of Hyperborea was located there. In the 1920s, an expedition was sent there, supported by Dzerzhinsky himself. The group, led by Kondiaina and Barchenko, went to the area of ​​Lovozero and Seydozero in 1922. All materials upon the return of the expedition were classified, and Barchenko was later repressed and shot.

***

No one knows the details of the expedition, but local residents say that during the search a strange hole underground was discovered, but an incomprehensible fear and horror prevented scientists from getting there. Local residents also do not risk using these caves, because they may not return from them. And besides, there is a legend that either a caveman or a bigfoot was repeatedly seen near them.

This story might have remained secret if, as a result of intrigue, it had not ended up in Western publications. One NATO pilot told reporters about a strange story that happened to him. It all happened in May 1999. The plane took off from a NATO base in Holland on a mission to monitor the actions of parties conflicting in the Yugoslav war. As the plane flew over Germany, the pilot suddenly saw a group of fighters heading straight towards him. But they were all somehow strange.

Having flown closer, the pilot saw that it was a German Messerschmitt. The pilot did not know what to do, because his plane was not equipped with weapons. However, he soon saw that the German fighter was targeted by a Soviet fighter. The vision lasted a few seconds, then everything disappeared. There is other evidence of penetrations into the past that occurred in the air.

***

Thus, in 1976, the Soviet pilot V. Orlov said that he personally saw ground military operations being conducted under the wing of the MiG-25 aircraft he piloted. If the pilot's descriptions are to be believed, he was an eyewitness to the battle that took place in 1863 near Gettysburg. In 1985, one of the NATO pilots, taking off from a NATO base located in Africa, saw a very strange picture: below, instead of the desert, he saw savannahs with big amount trees and dinosaurs that grazed on the lawns. Soon the vision disappeared.

***

In 1986, the Soviet pilot A. Ustimov, during a mission, discovered that he was over Ancient Egypt. According to him, he saw one pyramid that was completely built, as well as the foundations of others, around which many people were swarming. At the end of the 80s of the last century, captain of the second rank, military sailor Ivan Zalygin found himself in a very interesting and mysterious story. It all started when his diesel submarine was caught in a severe thunderstorm.

The captain decided to surface, but as soon as the ship took the surface position, the watchman reported that an unidentified craft was directly ahead. It turned out to be a rescue boat, in which Soviet sailors found a military man in the uniform of a Japanese sailor from the Second World War. During a search of this man, documents were found that were issued back in 1940. As soon as the incident was reported, the captain received an order to proceed to Yuzhno-Sakhalinsk, where counterintelligence representatives were already waiting for the Japanese sailor. The team members signed a non-disclosure agreement for a period of ten years.

***

A mysterious story happened in 1952 in New York. In November, an unknown man was hit and killed on Broadway. His body was taken to the morgue. The police were surprised that the young man was dressed in antique clothes, and in his trouser pocket they found the same antique watch and a knife made at the beginning of the century.

However, the surprise of the police knew no bounds when they saw a certificate issued about 8 decades ago, as well as business cards indicating the profession (travelling salesman). After checking the address, it was possible to establish that the street indicated in the documents has not existed for about half a century. As a result of the investigation, it was possible to find out that the deceased was the father of one of the centenarians of New York, who had been missing for about 70 years during a regular walk. To prove her words, the woman presented a photo: it had the date on it - 1884, and the photo itself depicted a man in the same strange suit who died under the wheels of a car.

***

In 1954, after civil unrest in Japan, a man was detained during passport control. All his documents were in order, except that they were issued by the non-existent state of Tuared. The man himself claimed that his country is located on the African continent between French Sudan and Mauritania. Moreover, he was amazed when he saw that Algeria was in the place of his Tuared. True, the Tuareg tribe did live there, but it never had sovereignty.

***

In 1980, a young man disappeared in Paris after his car was covered in a bright glowing ball of fog. A week later he appeared in the same place where he had disappeared, but at the same time he thought that he had been absent for only a few minutes. In 1985, on the first day of the new school year Second-grader Vlad Heineman played war with his friends during recess. To throw the “enemy” off the scent, he dived into the nearest gateway. However, when the boy jumped out a few seconds later, he did not recognize the school yard - it was completely empty.

The boy rushed to the school, but was stopped by his stepfather, who had been looking for him for a long time to take him home. As it turned out, more than an hour and a half had passed since the moment he decided to hide. But Vlad himself did not remember what happened to him during this time. No less strange story happened to the Englishman Peter Williams. According to him, he found himself in some strange place during a thunderstorm. After being struck by lightning, he lost consciousness, and when he came to, he discovered that he was lost.

Walking along a narrow road, he managed to stop the car and ask for help. The man was taken to the hospital. After some time, the young man’s health improved, and he could already go for a walk. But since his clothes were completely ruined, his roommate lent him his. When Peter went out into the garden, he realized that he was in the place where the thunderstorm had overtaken him. Williams wanted to thank the medical staff and a kind neighbor.

He managed to find a hospital, but no one there recognized him, and all the clinic staff looked much older. There were no records of Peter’s admission in the registration book, nor was there any roommate. When the man remembered the trousers, he was told that they were an outdated model that had not been produced for more than 20 years!

***

In 1991, one railway worker saw that from the side of the old branch, where there were not even rails left, a train was coming: a steam locomotive and three cars. It was very strange-looking, and clearly not made in Russia. The train passed the worker and went in the direction in which Sevastopol was located. Information about this incident was even published in one of the publications in 1992. It contained information that back in 1911, a pleasure train left Rome, in which there was a large number of passengers.

He walked into thick fog and then drove into a tunnel. He was never seen again. The tunnel itself was blocked with stones. Perhaps this would have been forgotten if the train had not appeared in the Poltava region. Many scientists then put forward the version that this train somehow managed to pass through time. Some of them attribute this ability to the fact that almost at the same time, when the train set off, something happened in Italy. powerful earthquake, as a result of which large cracks appeared not only on the surface of the earth, but also in the chronological field.

***

In 1994, a ten-month-old girl was discovered in the northern Atlantic waters by the crew of a Norwegian fishing vessel. She was very cold, but she was alive. The girl was tied to a lifebuoy that had the inscription “Titanic” on it. It is worth noting that the baby was found exactly where the famous ship sank in 1912. Of course, it was simply impossible to believe in the reality of what was happening, but when they raised the documents, they actually found a 10-month-old child on the Titanic passenger list.

***

There is other evidence associated with this ship. So, some sailors claimed that they saw the ghost of the sinking Titanic. According to some scientists, the ship fell into a so-called time trap, in which people can disappear without a trace and then appear in a completely unexpected place. The list of disappearances can be continued for a very, very long time.

***

There is no point in mentioning all of them, because most of them are similar to each other. Almost always time travel has irreversible nature, but sometimes it turns out that people who have disappeared for a while then return safely. Unfortunately, many of them end up in insane asylums, because no one wants to believe their stories, and they themselves do not really understand whether what happened to them is true.

Scientists have been trying to solve the problem of temporary movements for several centuries. It may well happen that soon this problem will become an objective reality, and not the plot of science fiction books and films.

They say that history is cyclical and everything gradually repeats itself in a circle. Therefore, what came before us has always interested human minds. What did the people look like? What were they doing? What did you wear and what did you think about the future? Gradually, a number of methods were developed to help learn about the past of mankind.

Stories from older generations

Surely, your grandparents and parents talked about their lives. And in these stories there were not only descriptions of their youth, but also some information about historical events of that time, living conditions, historical figures. Depending on the conditions and time of life, the stories of older people differ from each other. Moreover, they are associated with personal feelings and experiences, and therefore cannot be objective. However, this is one way of obtaining information about the past. For example, we learned about living conditions in concentration camps mainly from the words of prisoners.

Folklore

This way of learning something about the past follows from the previous one. Oral folk art, or folklore, includes folk songs, proverbs, ballads, fairy tales and everything that does not have a specific author. Of course, it is impossible to find exact historical dates and chronology of events in folk songs. However, from this you can learn a lot about the life of the people: traditions, rituals, beliefs, perception of the world, some important events (historical songs about Peter I serve as an example).

Archaeological investigations

The science that studies the past is called archaeology.

Since ancient times, people have tried to record important events from their lives, as evidenced by cave paintings, Egyptian writing, chronicles and other records. Scientists can only decipher what is written and compare the information received with the knowledge that already exists.

In addition, everything that is made by man does not disappear anywhere. Sometimes intentionally, sometimes completely by accident, people find things that were made centuries ago. And many artifacts don’t even need to be looked for, they are right in front of our noses: a seemingly ordinary building also attracts the attention of scientists and is subject to study.

In books and films, the work of archaeologists is portrayed as quite romantic: you travel around the world, look for old things and make world discoveries. IN real life everything looks a little different and more diverse.

Archaeological investigations can be divided into two large groups:

• theoretical work;
• field archeology.

Theoretical work includes working with documents and artifacts. This includes the study of texts, deciphering languages, comparing facts and events.

Field archeology is something that is often shown in films: archaeological surveys and excavations.

Since the study of history is a complex matter in which literally every detail is taken into account, there are many types of archaeological work that deal with only one “part of history”. For example, Egyptology is archeology, which deals with the history of ancient Egypt.

Fiction

Another way to get acquainted with the history of our ancestors is from fiction. As well as folk art, they do not provide complete information about the past, but they can tell a lot about historical events and the life of a particular people. Fiction, so to speak, complements the work of archaeologists.

If we talk about linguistic analysis of literary texts, they can tell a lot about the past. So, you can analyze when approximately a certain word for designating objects appeared and draw conclusions about when these objects appeared in people’s lives.

Continents are split and sunken. Origin of life. Human brain. Death of the dinosaurs. Global flood.

01/30/2017 / 13:34 | Varvara Pokrovskaya

Continents split and sunken

If you look at a map, you can easily notice the amazing similarity between the coastlines of Africa and South America, Australia and Africa, Australia and the Hindustan Peninsula - as if the fragments of a single whole were taken away by an unknown force and separated by ocean expanses...

Probably the first person to notice the similarity of the outlines of the western coast of Africa and the eastern coast of South America was the English philosopher Francis Bacon. In 1620, he published his observations in the book “New Organon”, without, however, giving them any explanation. And in 1658, Abbot F. Place hypothesized that the Old and New Worlds were once one continent, but separated after the Flood. This point of view was accepted scientific world Europe. And two hundred years later, in 1858, the Italian Antonio Sin der Pellegrini tried to reconstruct the original position of the continents and drew a map where African-America was united into one continent.

The idea of ​​“continental drift” was finally formulated by the German scientist Alfred Wegener, a meteorologist by profession. In 1915, after five years of research, he published a work entitled “The Origin of Continents and Oceans,” in which, on the basis of geological, geographical and paleontological data, he proved that there once existed only one continent on Earth, composed of granite rocks, to which Wegener gave the name Pangea (from the Greek words “pan” - universal and “Gaia” - Earth), and only one ocean - Panthalassa (“thalassa” in Greek - sea). According to A. Wegener, about 250-200 million years ago, Pangea, under the influence of the force of the Earth’s rotation, split into separate blocks, and the further action of the Earth’s rotational forces “pushed” them, as a result of which these blocks made of granite “drifted” along denser layers earth's mantle - basalts.

"Wild Fantasy"! This was the verdict of the majority of scientists in the world on Wegener's hypothesis. According to opponents, the movement of continental masses has not been recorded by science; Wegener was unable to explain the causes of continental drift and the nature of the moving forces. Hoping to find new evidence for his hypothesis, Wegener went to Greenland in 1930 and died there...

...Forty years later, at the Tokyo United Oceanographic Assembly, the hypothesis of continental drift was officially recognized by the overwhelming majority of geologists and geophysicists of the world.

As later studies showed, Wegener was absolutely right. He even managed to accurately name the date of the collapse of Pangea - 225 million years ago. Initially, Pangea broke up into two supercontinents - Laurasia (northern) and Gondwana (southern), which divided the single Panthallassa ocean into the Pacific Ocean and the Tethys Ocean. If the first one still exists, then Tethys died about 6-7 million years ago, and its remains today are the Mediterranean, Black, Azov, Caspian and Aral seas. Further fragmentation of the continents, caused by violent tectonic processes, led to the emergence of modern continents and oceans.

Were there other continents besides the existing ones?

...“The young man Tea Waka said:

Our land used to be a big country, a very big country.

Kuukuu asked him:

Why did the country become small?

Tea Waka replied:

Uwoke lowered his staff on her. He lowered his staff onto Ohiro's terrain. The waves rose and the country became small..."

This story of the natives of Easter Island, given in A. Kondratov’s book “Riddles of the Great Ocean,” is considered by some to be an indirect confirmation of the fact that the Pacific continent existed on the site of the present Pacific Ocean and died millions of years ago. Its remains today can be found in America, Australia, New Zealand and Antarctica.

But why do the inhabitants of the Polynesian islands still remember legends about the land that went under water? Why do the same legends exist about two other hypothetical continents - Atlantis and Arctida?

It is possible that the process of the destruction of the ancient continents ended relatively recently and was preserved in the historical memory of mankind...

“The chief noticed that his land was slowly sinking into the sea. He gathered his servants, men and women, children and old people, and put them on two large boats. When they reached the horizon, the chief saw that the whole land, with the exception of a small part called Maori, had gone under water.

There are many such stories, and they were recorded not only on Easter Island. By the way, the opinion has been repeatedly expressed that the colossal buildings of Easter Island are the remains of a civilization that once existed on the Pacific. The famous Soviet geologist Academician V.A. Obruchev wrote in 1956: “It can be argued that in the warm equatorial belt of the Earth, humanity, already at a time when both circumpolar regions were still covered with snow and glaciers, achieved high cultural development, beautiful temples were built for deities; pyramids served as tombs for kings, and on Easter Island stone statues were erected to protect them from some enemies. And it arises interest Ask: Was the death of other cultures and their structures caused by some kind of catastrophe? We have to remember that the Ice Age, which created huge masses of snow and ice on Earth in both polar zones, gradually weakened under the influence of the Sun and could not help but cause some disasters.”

In 1997, American geologists discovered new traces of the Pacific. It has long been noticed that some geological fragments of Alaska, California, and the Rocky Mountains do not correspond in their composition to the structure of the American continent. The same atypical forms are found in Australia, Antarctica and other continents and islands adjacent to the Pacific Ocean.

These geological anomalies are associated with the breakup of the southern supercontinent Gondwana, which once included Africa, South America, Australia, Antarctica, as well as Hindustan and Madagascar. Another part of this continent was the Pacific, which broke up into small fragments. Parts of the Pacifida “nailed” to other continents in a wide fan. Geological studies have shown that about a hundred million years ago, quite large fragments of the Pacific were attached to the western coast of North and South America - in the areas of Alaska, California and Peru. Other fragments of the Pacific Islands were submerged, and some of them merged with Australia, Antarctica and New Zealand.

Geologists believe that the Pacifida was the first to “break away” from ancient Gondwana, and the collapse of the Pacifida was facilitated by active geological processes that took place on globe in the area of ​​what is now the Pacific Ocean about 150-100 million years ago.

Studies of the dead Pacifida shed light on the problems of evolution and the “drift” of continents, as well as on the mechanism of the formation of oceans.

The origin of life: blind chance or intelligent design?

The mystery of the origin of life on Earth has been revealed! - This motto for a long time flew on the banners of science. The origin of life on Earth was considered quite obvious. Researchers of this problem have outlined a magical biochemical circle, within which they have built a simple model, according to which about 4 billion years ago on Earth, as a result of natural chemical processes The first living cells arose from nonliving matter. Based on the scripts of the Soviet academician A.I. Oparin and the Englishman J.B.S. Haldane, these cells were formed in the primordial earth's ocean, which was a real chemical soup. The Earth's atmosphere at that time was practically oxygen-free and consisted of methane, ammonia, hydrogen and carbon dioxide.

True, over time, studies of outer space have shown that it itself is a real chemical soup and there is no need at all to invent a hypothetical ocean: all the components necessary for the emergence of life existed in space long before the Earth was formed from a cloud of cosmic dust circling around Sun. And in 1984, a group of Dutch scientists experimentally in a helium cryostat, providing cosmic cold and vacuum, obtained complex organic molecules (carboxylic groups of acids, amino groups, urea, etc.) - that is, such compounds can be formed without any oceans...

But the point is not even where, in the end, the first appeared living cell, but why this happened. It is generally accepted that the emergence of life is the result of some special combination of circumstances, absolutely random, due to which certain biochemical processes occurred that led to the formation of a living cell from inanimate matter.

Well, let's see if this is possible. Nobel laureates Watson and Crick, who discovered the existence of the genetic code, proved that the content of this code is an abstract record. But we still have no idea, for example, by what laws the “alphabet” and “words” of the genetic code are formed and how the chemical types of proteins “recorded” by them were formed. To put it simply, we are faced with the following problem: we have the simplest amino acids - adenine (A), thymine (T), guanine (G) and cytosine (C). From these “letters” (the simplest amino acids) three-letter “words” are made, for example ATT, CGA, GAG, and so on. Each of these “words” designates a molecule of one of those two dozen complex amino acids that form a protein molecule. A chain of several hundred or several thousand such three-letter combinations is the “record” that sets the rules for the formation of this protein molecule. And here’s the question: are these rules formulated by chance?

After many years of research, this question was answered probably by the person who knows the problem best - Francis Crick himself, the discoverer of the genetic code, a recognized authority in world biology: “No! This is impossible!" And it is also impossible to imagine that a living cell could accidentally arise on its own, as a result of random chemical reactions.

Okay, a cell has formed. But where does such a variety of life forms come from, apparently arising from a single cell?

Here, the so-called “theory of evolution,” developed in the 19th century by Charles Darwin, served as a lifesaver for daring natural scientists for a long time. According to this theory, the diversity of plant and animal species inhabiting the Earth is the result of frequent, completely random mutations, which, cumulative over millennia, through the so-called “transitional links” lead to the emergence of new species. Then comes into play natural selection. Interspecific struggle exterminates or pushes to the periphery species that are unadapted to living conditions in a given biological “niche” under given conditions. external conditions, while at the same time allowing the rapid development of species that, by pure chance, were better equipped to survive.

This model, which suited most scientists quite well a hundred years ago, is today bursting at all the seams, unable to withstand the flow of new discoveries. Thus, paleontology, after many years of studying thousands of fossilized skeletons, has not found a single example of “transitional links.” Modern science does not know of a single fossil creature about which it could be said that at the next stage another creature developed from it. All known organisms, both fossil and living, differ significantly from each other. If evolution proceeded according to Darwin - small steps of random changes, then now we could admire the most amazing monsters: for example, a turkey with webbed feet, like a goose - what can you do, it accidentally mutated, it will suddenly come in handy in the event of a global flood...

Not everything is smooth for Darwinists with interspecific competition. For example, it recently became known that the forest has its own communications network, a kind of Internet, through which information and sometimes food are exchanged between plants.

This discovery finally changes the image of the forest as a place of quiet struggle, where each blade of grass lives its own own life, constantly trying to take away some of the moisture, light and air from their neighbors. In fact, according to British and Canadian researchers, trees “communicate” with each other through a single underground communication network, only instead of copper or optical cables, a fungus called mycorrhiza is used, which grows on the fibers of the roots.

Scientists have been able to establish that with the help of mycorrhiza, even the transfer of nutrients is carried out, and trees in which the photosynthesis process is more intense (deciduous trees, for example, birch), give “excess” to trees in which the photosynthesis process is slower (conifers).

Thus, instead of the “struggle for survival,” which Darwin imagined as one of the driving forces of evolution, harmony reigns in the plant world, based on the cooperation of independent units.

Today there is not a single fact confirming Darwin’s thesis about the origin of new species as a result of the quantitative accumulation of gradual changes. Among scientists, the thesis that the formation of species occurs spasmodically is becoming increasingly popular, as a result qualitative change within a very short time. But this theory also raises a lot of difficult questions. How can it be used to explain, for example, the fact of the transformation of an antelope into a giraffe? This is not only a process of lengthening the neck and front legs, increasing muscle mass, strengthening of the skeleton. This also includes a restructuring of the vestibular apparatus, so that at the minute when the animal sharply raises its head from the ground to a height of about six meters, the blood does not drain from the brain. How can such a complex transformation occur in a short time, if we consider it “random”? Rather, we can talk about a purposeful and programmed transformation.

The role of “blind chance” in evolution was finally eliminated by the recent discovery of the fact that the bulk of genetic mutations are carried out with a clear direction, and the few facts of random mutations, as a rule, are disturbances in the body and do not carry anything constructive! So, instead of “blind chance,” intelligent design comes to the forefront of evolution.

The world around us ceases to be understandable - understandable from the point of view of natural science of the 19th century, which is the foundation modern science. Over the last century, a huge number of new facts have been discovered, but science is not able to explain many of these facts and build any coherent theories on their basis. In other words, the more we learn, the less we know. But since ancient times, people have known that the Truth is hidden from people, and can only be comprehended by intuition...

Brain and Universe

Researchers of paranormal phenomena have no doubt that the mysterious sudden disappearances of people, cars, planes, ships, as well as the appearance of UFOs, are associated with the transition from our world to another, parallel one (or to a parallel Universe). The mystery of a large number of “paranormal” mysteries is connected with this transition.

Official science is inclined to ignore such an explanation, since the parallel existence of several independent worlds does not fit into the existing physical models of the Earth and the Universe. But research human brain suddenly gave stunning results...

For centuries, it was believed that the human brain functions as a single unit, which loses its abilities in the event of any violation of its structure. Later it turned out that, if necessary, some parts of the brain take over the functions of the damaged areas. But this did not cause any revolutionary changes in views on the functioning of our central nervous system. However, great surprise was the discovery that in some cases a person can live, even in the case of atrophy or removal of the pineal gland: it turns out that part of our brain is a kind of “brain within a brain.”

But where did this same Homo Sapiens come from? The easiest way is to assume (and they do) that Homo sapiens is the result of the evolution of one of the branches of hominids. But with the evidence of this hypothesis, alas, things are bad: among the string of fossilized remains of hominids, there is missing that very decisive link that would connect together the living Homo sapiens and his distant ancestors.P

search for this " missing link"has long been a stumbling block for paleoanthropologists. Probably, with regularity, once a year, news agencies around the world report another sensation: here it is! Finally found! But after some time, disappointment sets in: no, that’s not it again... Some desperate minds even resort to forgery, as was the case with the so-called “Piltdown Man,” which, of course, only brings harm to science. Enormous and useless efforts have been spent on searching for the “missing link”, and it is not surprising that the voices of skeptics are becoming louder: they say that there is no “missing link” in nature at all, and the mystery of the origin of man lies on a completely different plane...

“Studying differences in the DNA structure of people living in different countries, allowed us to conclude that humanity descended from one common female ancestor. Modern man descends from a single foremother who lived about 350 thousand years ago.”

This message, published in 1983 in the journal Science News, caused a real shock: so, the biblical Eve has been found, and all that remains is to find Adam? There could be no mistake: geneticists from Berkeley studied many DNA samples from mitochondria. Each macromolecule of such DNA contains 35 genes, transmitted to the offspring only from the mother, without the influence of paternal genetic material. Changes in such DNA are possible only under the influence of mutations.

As a result, the hypothesis was confirmed that approximately 350 thousand years ago a decisive leap in evolution took place, after which the humanization of man accelerated many times over. The decisive event for this could be the appearance of a mutant female hominid with a disrupted cycle of reproduction of offspring, a female capable of conceiving not two or three times a year, as in the entire animal world, but year-round, with the monthly generation of active eggs in her body. Aren't we all still carrying her genes in our mitochondria?

But what (or who?) caused the mutation? For now, one can only guess and name a lot of reasons - God, intervention of aliens from outer space, radiation... But this was not an accident! Even the strict materialist Friedrich Engels, one of the founders of Marxism, argued that “nature created man in order to know itself” - that is, Engels recognized that the creation of man was not an accidental, but a purposeful act. But then is nature intelligent?

...They say that there are as many hypotheses about the origin of man as there are people on Earth. Those who believe in God are convinced that God created man in his own image and likeness. Others believe that man descended from apes. Well, everyone has the right to represent their ancestors in their own way.

Death of the Giants

Dumb, heavy, inactive, clumsy... This is how the German scientist Friedrich Theodor Fischer characterized dinosaurs back in the 18th century. Ever since their first fossils were discovered, dinosaurs have had a rather poor reputation: huge creatures, weighing about half a ton, with miniature brains, completely incapable of adapting to climate change, although they inhabited our planet for one hundred and forty million years. It is not surprising that they were doomed to death in accordance with the laws of their own selection and disappeared without leaving a trace.

Is that how it all happened? Paleontologists are pondering this question more and more often. For example, the notorious slowness of dinosaurs. The English scientist R. Alexander from the University of Leeds, having measured fossilized traces left by some types of dinosaurs, found that dinosaurs on four legs moved at a speed of four kilometers per hour, and the speed of dinosaurs moving only on their hind legs reached thirteen kilometers per hour. And paleontologist Robert Becker from the University of Baltimore believes that the speed of movement of some types of dinosaurs could even reach fifty kilometers per hour.

The dynamism of dinosaurs convinced many paleontologists that these animals, classified since ancient times as reptiles, were... warm-blooded! They did not feel the need to periodically lie in the sun to maintain the required body temperature.

To prove this hypothesis, Yale University scientists argue that the ability of dinosaurs to easily assume a vertical position is very characteristic of warm-blooded animals. Another argument is the way of eating. If dinosaurs were cold-blooded animals with a very slow metabolism, then their need for food would have been limited. At the same time, a study of dinosaur fossils in the Canadian province of Alberta showed that carnivorous dinosaurs had a very enviable appetite. This is evidenced, in particular, by the structure of their teeth.

The physiology of dinosaurs also confirms the fact that they were warm-blooded animals. For example, pumping blood to the Barosaurus's head, which sat on a six-meter-long neck, required circulatory system, significantly more developed compared to cold-blooded animals.

The latest argument in favor of the hypothesis that dinosaurs were warm-blooded was the study of their bones. On the surface of dinosaur bones there are many depressions, indicating the presence of a well-developed circulatory system, while the bones of ordinary reptiles are completely smooth. In addition, the lower jaw of a dinosaur consists of a single bone, while the lower jaw of reptiles consists of several individual bones.

But the biggest mystery remains the mysterious disappearance of dinosaurs at the end of the Upper Cretaceous period. 65 million years ago something difficult to explain happened on Earth. As a result of some terrible and, apparently, sudden event, entire species of the animal world became extinct. Dinosaurs and flying lizards have disappeared forever. The era of extinction lasted about 200 years. Sedimentary rocks of the oceanic deposits formed at that time provide us with documentary evidence of the transience of those dramatic events - entire cemeteries of dinosaurs.

Hypotheses explaining the cause of such an unusual catastrophe piled up one on top of another - from the quite plausible to the most fantastic. This is the sudden onset of the ice age, and the reversal of the poles magnetic field Earth, and pathological causes - for example, changes in the anatomy or physiology of animals.

There are three known “climate” hypotheses. The first suggests that at the end of the Cretaceous period there was a significant cooling to low temperatures that were destructive for dinosaurs due to their lack of thermal insulation cover - fur, feathers, fat and other “devices” that modern animals and birds use to escape the cold. According to another version, the cause of the disaster was a sharp change in the oxygen regime in the atmosphere. The extinct giants consumed large amounts of atmospheric oxygen, and a sudden decrease in its content in the atmosphere led to the fact that the dinosaurs died from suffocation. The third “climate” hypothesis is about increased cosmic radiation, which caused the death of animals.

Several versions try to explain the extinction of dinosaurs as a result of external biological factors - for example, a change in food resources. A disruption in the diet of dinosaurs could have been caused by a sharp change in the Earth's vegetation cover. And the “mammalian competition” hypothesis suggests that the mammals that had bred simply ate the clutches of dinosaur eggs, preventing them from reproducing.

A very interesting hypothesis is the death of dinosaurs due to a supernova explosion. The observation of such a phenomenon is relatively rare. Supernova explosions are explosions of such monstrous force that their luminosity increases billions of times! Supernova explosions generate powerful streams of gamma radiation, which are fatal to living organisms. Thus, if 65 million years ago, somewhere near the solar system, a supernova explosion occurred and the Earth’s atmosphere failed to cope with its protective functions and let some of the deadly radiation reach the earth’s surface, then not only dinosaurs, but also most other inhabitants of the planet.

A group of American scientists put forward such a hypothesis. When examining a layer of clay dating back to the era of the described disaster, it was discovered increased content iridium. There is extremely little iridium on Earth, so any vein in a rock with an excess of iridium is chronologically comparable to the era of the arrival of this rare metal from outer space. Asteroids are rich in this chemical element, and therefore it is quite legitimate to assume that the source of iridium during the period of the catastrophic extinction of the dinosaurs could have been an asteroid. Moreover, meteorites - fragments of asteroids always contain iridium. Perhaps an asteroid about 10 kilometers across crashed into the Earth, and as a result of a monstrous explosion, thousands of cubic kilometers of resulting dust rose into the Earth's atmosphere. This cloud blocked access for several years sun rays, and as a result of the ensuing universal darkness on Earth, the process of photosynthesis was interrupted. World famine has arrived. Almost all vertebrates more massive than 20-30 kilograms died of starvation.

But maybe there was no instant extinction? More and more evidence is emerging that the extinction of many groups of dinosaurs did not occur instantly, but lasted for millennia. And it is possible that some groups of dinosaurs disappeared already in “historical” times, within the memory of mankind - let’s remember the notorious dragons. And some of the dinosaurs could have survived to this day... One way or another, dinosaurs will present more than one surprise to science.

global flood

One of the most bright episodes The Bible is undoubtedly the legend of the Flood. This legend, striking the imagination like no other, has served as an eternal theme for artists of all times. It is interesting that references to the Flood are found in the oral literature and epics of many peoples of our planet. Scientists have found that similar myths exist in Australia, India, Tibet and Lithuania; they also existed in pre-Columbian America. The content of these legends is very similar. The Spaniards, who at one time explored the New World, were amazed at the amazing coincidence in the details of all the stories about the global flood among different Indian tribes.

The description of the biblical Great Flood, which occurred about 5 thousand years ago, is not the very first mention of this disaster. An earlier Assyrian myth, recorded on clay tablets, tells of Gilgamesh, who escaped in an ark with various animals and, after the end of a seven-day flood, strong winds and rain, landed on Mount Nitzir in Mesopotamia. By the way, many details coincide in the accounts of the flood stories: in order to find out whether the earth appeared from under the water. Noah sent out a raven and twice a dove; Ut-Napishtim - dove and swallow. The methods of building arks are also similar. What is this - a free presentation of the same event, a story about different regional floods, or facts from the history of a real global flood, in which several representatives of different nations, independently of each other, were warned (or guessed, felt themselves) about the impending danger ?

According to ethnologist Andre's calculations, in 1891 about eighty such legends were known. There are probably more than a hundred of them, and sixty-eight of them are in no way connected with the biblical source.

Thirteen myths, different ones at that, have come to us from Asia; four are from Europe; five are from Africa; nine from Australia and Oceania; thirty-seven - from the New World: sixteen - from North America; seven from Central and fourteen from Southern. The German historian Richard Hennig noted that among different peoples “the duration of the flood varied from five days to fifty-two years (among the Aztecs). In seventeen cases it was caused by rainfall; in others - snowfalls, melting glaciers, cyclones, storms, earthquakes, tsunamis. The Chinese, for example, believe that all floods are caused by evil spirit Kun-Kun: “In a fit of anger, he hits his head against one of the pillars that support the sky, and the heavens bring down giant waterspouts to the earth.”

The mythology of the flood is worldwide. But was it really global? Some researchers have tried to prove this. Some spoke of the Mongolian Sea, which once covered Central Asia and supposedly suddenly disappeared as a result of an earthquake, which caused a flood from east to west. Others believed that the Earth's axis shifted, as a result of which the waters of the seas and oceans rushed from the Northern Hemisphere to the Southern. Still others argued that the Earth was surrounded for millions of years by a moist, gaseous atmosphere, like that of Venus; at a certain moment, the cloud masses thickened and fell to the ground in the form of heavy, prolonged rains.

None of these hypotheses have ever been confirmed. But the traditions of reporting the events of the flood indicate that a catastrophe associated with a short-term general flooding of the land actually occurred on all continents.

This fact is most clearly confirmed in the Middle East. The peoples of Palestine and Mesopotamia still have a terrible memory of the terrible flood. Undoubtedly, all these descriptions - Assyrian, Babylonian, Sumerian, Palestinian - were connected by a common memory of the same event. The earliest description - the Sumerian version - dates back to approximately 2000 BC. But after the cataclysm described in the Bible and in the Tale of Gilgamesh, traces should have remained on the earth. It would even be strange if they were not preserved. And they... were discovered!

In 1928-1929, Dr. Simon Woolley carried out large excavations in the places where the Chaldean city of Ur once stood. The deeper he penetrated into the ground, the more surprising were his observations. Soon he came to a clay layer three to four meters thick. However, it would be better if we give the floor to Dr. Woolley himself:

“We dug deeper and deeper and suddenly the nature of the soil changed. Instead of empty rock formations with traces ancient culture we came across a completely smooth layer of clay, uniform throughout its entire length; judging by the composition of the clay, it was applied by water. The workers suggested that we had reached the muddy bottom of the river... I told them to dig further. Having dug more than one and a half meters, they kept coming across pure clay. And suddenly, just as unexpectedly as before, layers of empty rock appeared on their way again... Consequently, huge clay deposits represented a certain milestone in the continuous course of history. From above there was a slow development of pure Sumerian civilization, and from below there were traces of a mixed culture... Not a single natural river flood could have deposited so much clay. A one and a half meter layer of clay could only have been deposited here by a gigantic water flow - a flood such as these places had never known before. The presence of such a layer of clay indicates that once upon a time, a very long time ago, the development of local culture was abruptly interrupted. An entire civilization once existed here, which then disappeared without a trace - apparently, it was swallowed up by a flood... There can be no doubt about this: this flood is the very historical Flood that was described in the Sumerian legend and which formed the basis of the story of the misadventures of Noah... »

Dr. Woolley's arguments sound quite categorical and therefore produce quite a strong impression. Around the same time, Stephen Langdon discovered exactly the same alluvial deposits - that is, "material traces of the flood" - in Kish, the region Ancient Babylon. Subsequently, similar layers of sedimentary rocks were found in Uruk. Fara, Tello and Nineveh...

The famous French orientalist Dorme wrote: “It is now quite clear that the cataclysm, as Langdon suggests, occurred in 3300 BC, as evidenced by the traces discovered at Ur and Kish.”

Of course, it cannot be a mere coincidence that identical layers of sedimentary rocks were discovered at many excavation sites in Mesopotamia. This proves that a gigantic flood really took place. So, archaeological finds, literary and epigraphic works prove that the flood described in ancient texts is a very real event.

What caused the disaster? And where did so much “extra” water come from on Earth? After all, even if all the ice melts, the ocean level will still not rise by kilometers.

All world legends about the flood have one common detail. Legends say that in those days there was no... Moon in the sky. Those who lived in antediluvian times were called “dolunniks” (the ancient Greeks called them “proto-selenites”, from the Greek Selene - Moon).

So maybe this is the answer to the mystery of the Flood? Our only satellite, due to its significant mass, causes small floods and tides on Earth twice a day. The moon attracts more strongly the point on the earth's surface that is closest to it, and a hump “grows” at the sublunar point. The soil rises by half a meter, the ocean level by a meter, and in some places - up to 18 m (Bay of Fundy in the Atlantic). And although we humans have long been accustomed to this seemingly ordinary phenomenon, it is unique in our Solar System. Astronomers do not know of another such example of the existence of such a heavy satellite on a relatively light planet like ours. It would be more correct, scientists believe, to call the Earth and the Moon not a planet and its satellite, but a double planet. The formation of such a system at the same time from the point of view of cosmology is impossible, from which it follows that the Moon is not the “sister” of the Earth, but, how to put it, a spouse who once came from the dark depths of space. They even call it a “maiden name”; before, Selena was supposedly the core of the deceased Phaeton.

As you know, the Moon is moving away from the Earth. And just imagine that there was a time when she hung below us. The closer, the larger the tidal waves should be and the slower the speed of the apparent movement of the star across our sky. If the height of the Moon’s orbit is reduced exactly 10 times, then it will hang over one point of the Earth like a geostationary satellite. The height of the tide in the open ocean will exceed a hundred meters. Few.

Let’s “lower” the Moon a little lower, and it will again move very slowly in the sky, only now not from east to west, but vice versa. In this case, a tidal wave from the west will rush into a huge funnel onto the eastern coast of America, Africa, the Baltic, and the Mediterranean. The wave should reach its peak when it hits a barrier on the eastern shore of the Mediterranean and especially the Black Sea. Here, a multi-kilometer tidal wave, almost standing in one place, will easily cover the Caucasus, and in a few days it will reach the Caspian Sea and the Aral Sea (isn’t this the reason for the formation of these drying up inland seas?). Needless to say, the peak of Ararat should be the first to appear from under the water in the Caucasus...

Depending on the height of the Moon, the duration of such a flood can vary from a month to a year. In just a few years, a giant tidal wave will make a full revolution around the Earth, visiting all countries. In general, word for word. Everything is like in the legends! One mystery remains - how did the Moon manage to quickly approach the Earth, and then just as quickly move away? But maybe if we understand why the Moon is still slowly “running away” from us, then we can deal with its sharp jerk in the past?

Ecology of life. Psychology: Man is confined to three temporary categories of existence: past, present and future. Oddly enough, it is the past that is the basis of our lives.

What is the past for us and is it possible to get lost in it? What is the attraction and danger of memories?

Man is confined to three temporal categories of existence: past, present and future. Oddly enough, it is the past that is the basis of our lives. We are unable to stop time flowing in reality, so our present is already the past. Every second of time that we observe has already passed. This is the paradox of human existence. In existential philosophy, the “present” is sometimes identified with pure “Nothing.”

The present is a moment that cannot be stopped. The only way to capture the present is to photograph it. Photography is the frozen reality of the past. The captured moment itself no longer exists, there is only its reflection.

There is no past, but it is

The past has already passed - this is the undeniable advantage of other temporary categories of existence. The present no longer exists, but there is a feeling of it, being in the current moment, and this can be felt. Unlike the present, the past can only be comprehended by the transcendental method.

The future does not exist yet, it exists as long as we think about it. We try to model the future based on experience, desires, and dreams. This is how we plan our lives, never knowing exactly what awaits us. In fact, the future is unattainable, because when the time of the future comes, it becomes the present and, therefore, the past. So, if you delve deeply into philosophizing, it turns out that we all exist only in the past, in which we recognize ourselves in the past.

“Time is like a child led by the hand: it looks back...” Julio Cortazar

Time is an amazing thing, unknowable in its essence. Everyone is given their own period of time and their own paths of life. The longer we live, the more past we have, it fills us like water fills an empty vessel. The amazing property of the past is that, although initially unchanged, it constantly undergoes metamorphoses in our consciousness. The psychophysical state of a person is always different, therefore, the perception of memories is also different. As you know, with age many things are perceived differently, we begin to see new meanings of the past. So, year after year, our future, dissolving in the present, turns into the past.

The variability of perception of the past also applies to general human history, individual chapters of which are the reason for endless discussions. It is also known that history can be reshaped to suit political system, which certainly should not be allowed.

The past can be a refuge

Some people live in the past. These could be past events, relationships, feelings, warmth of communication - anything. In those past times, a person felt good, and he constantly tries to immerse himself in memories dear to his heart, without accepting the insurmountability of reality. This state of affairs saves for some time, but the connection with the real world is lost. For a conceivable future to exist, one must let go of the past, no matter how difficult it may seem.

When talking about the past, we cannot ignore childhood. It is known that the basic qualities of a personality are laid down during the period of formation. An unhappy childhood is a tragedy that remains with a person for the rest of his life, embodied in various complexes and phobias. Childhood memories are so important because they can never be duplicated even remotely. After a person has matured, he does not change radically, his essence is always the same; Only experience and wrinkles are added.

Still, as a rule, memories of childhood make us happy. The fact is that a child’s picture of the world is different from an adult’s. There is no high degree of understanding of what is happening in it: awareness occurs without experimental knowledge related to the structure of the world. The child is only interested in the current reality, in which it is good, warm, satisfying and fun. He is not bothered by global disasters, death, rising prices, lies and other attributes of adult life. As children, we enjoy life in its purest form.

Over time, childhood difficulties and experiences no longer seem so significant to us simply because they were contained in childhood. Simple things make a child happy, since he is in a “childish” reality with his own laws established by adults. The child perceives the world only the way he sees and feels it. When a person grows up, he realizes how happy he was in childhood.

The past can drive you crazy

The killer's past. Traitor's past. The past of a prostitute. The past of a woman who had an abortion. Each of us contains actions or events that we would like to correct or forget. But it is impossible to change what has already happened, and there is no point in worrying about it. Unfortunately, knowledge of the fact that something is meaningless does not always save you from engaging in this very meaninglessness - such is the complex structure of human nature, which is prone, among other things, to self-destruction.

Often we return to our past and wander in it. We model past situations in different ways: “if you had acted differently from what you did, what would have happened then?” But the problem is that when we mentally return to past events, we are not the same as we were then. If we had acted differently, then our entire subsequent life would have turned out differently. It is especially difficult to realize that a tragic mistake could have been avoided. In this regard, you must always remember that life does not rewind like a movie. Every decision must be weighed. There are situations in which there is no time to think, and often these are the turning points.

You can be jealous of the past. You can get lost in someone else's past, like in a black labyrinth, and never find a way out. You can get bogged down in reflection so much that your current reality becomes unbearable. The past determines the value of a relationship: the more past people have together, the closer they are to each other. Without the past, we cannot know ourselves; it manifests itself in our character, actions, work and creativity. We store and carry within us the past of our ancestors, which is contained in genes.

Is it worth regretting the past? Probably not. Because time cannot be turned back. But you should remember your mistakes, if only so that you never repeat them in the present. Bad memories poison life. Fortunately, human memory is designed in such a way that everything negative is forgotten. In this way, our psyche hides from stress.

We all experience tragic losses that leave lasting scars. Sooner or later a person calms down even in grief. The people we were close to eventually pass away, continuing to exist in our fragmented memories. Someday, each of us will become part of someone's past. published