Hi Cindy. Addressing your points, and why I think this pseudo-science pyramids doesn't hold.
Regarding continental drift, there is nothing to say.. The Azores are located on top of the rift between the North American, Eurasian and the African plates. There's no drift involved here. The rift is where the mantle is moving apart, and because of that, the mantle is thinner at that point, with lots of magma chimneys almost up to the surface. From time to time, one of those has enough pressure to release the magma into the surface, in the form of volcanoes that when dormant look like peaceful beautiful green islands. The geological time scales here are not compatible with continental drift being a factor. If you study the DNA evidence, you'll see that mankind started in Africa, moved into Europe and Asia, and only moved into North America (and then South) during a time when it was possible to walk from Siberia to Alaska (search for Aleutian land bridge). That's measured in tens of thousands of years. Continental drift is measured in much wider timescales (millions of years). As to early discoverers, you have two options: 1. Early discoverers, that find the place based on pure chance, and then leave, never coming back. There's evidence that such processes occurred with Europeans in North America at different points in time (Vikings, Portuguese and others). Granted, these are nice footnotes, but amount to nothing. They didn't populate the land, so the same land is up to be re-discovered by others. The same process may have happened to the Azores, as proven by their appearance in maps in the 1300s. 2. Settlement efforts based on know-how on getting there. For something like this, the discoverers have to go prepared, taking with them some supplies for the trip and early settlement, and most important men AND women :) To get to the Azores you need to have either repeatable random luck or the ability to know your location when sailing far from land. Ruling out the first one (which apparently enabled the Polinesians to settle Hawaii), you're left with having to wait for Prince Henry to found his sailing school in Sagres. Also, the Atlantic is not the Pacific. there's a reason for the latter's name. A place like the Azores, once settled would remain settled. You have lots of fresh water, fertile earth, trees to build shelter and fishing boats. It's undisputed from the recorded history that the Azores islands were not populated at the time of their discovery by the Portuguese in the 1400s. Even if they were discovered before, those people didn't stay, they either turned back or went on and were lost somewhere else. The Canary islands, which can be seen while still seeing the African coast were settled before this time. Madeira and the Azores require more advanced sailing techniques and remained uninhabited until their settlement by the Portuguese. Note that apart from some references in 14th century (early 1300s maps), there's no evidence at all in the ground that those places were settled before. Even discounting that anything useful left would have been cleared by later settlement efforts, there's no trace of any Phoenician, Greek or Roman presence there. It seems idiotic to you, but you need to explain why the island wasn't inhabited by 1000s of native Azoreans on the arrival of the Portuguese and why they had to recruit settlers from mainland Portugal to colonize the Azores. You have a choice between two puzzles: why no one settled them (easy to explain) or why did all the pre-1400 settlers build only a couple of pyramids and then vanished without a single trace. The last scenario is so complex to explain that the simple explanation is that it never existed in the first place. I'm fairly certain that these pyramids were investigated by the UNESCO scientists that declared them to be World Heritage monuments, and their association with the wine culture is well known. Those pyramids were built to protect the wine culture which was started by the early settlers. Unfortunately, these pyramids are made of volcanic rock.. The carbon-14 dating would only tell from which volcano eruption they originated from. The good thing is that wine is the sort of stuff you grow only when you've already taken care of a lot of other needs, and you moved from survival to civilized mode. Unfortunately, certain people see a pyramid, and they immediately start thinking of ancient cultures and aliens, deeper meanings and conspiracy theories. The only problem is when they call themselves scientists and manage to get their crazy ideas published in normal newspapers. If you're waiting for further evidence on this case, you'll probably find them all coming from this one source. They probably started by searching for Atlantis and now stumbled on this crazy hypothesis. I'd say their next step is to claim that these pyramids are proof that Atlantis was in the Azores, because if they were growing wine, they had to have a larger settlement in the vicinity. How unfortunate for the Atlantes that their only remains was a couple of vineyards. Joao C. Ventura On Sunday, September 8, 2013 3:25:11 AM UTC+2, Cindy D wrote: > > I find this article fascinating as well Elaine. I can't look away until > all the evidence is in which I may never live to see. I've read about > science people quibbing and even murdering over things since the dawn of > time. Prove this, prove that. So I'll be curious to see what comes of > this. > > I know this seems idiotic, but at no time can I buy it that no humans > prior to the 1500's ever inhabited any of the Azores. As the article > claims, it's a puzzle. A puzzle is something to be solved. Historically > people seemed to want to move in a westerly fashion, so I would think, or > at least hope, seafaring peoples stumbled upon the beautiful islands. Even > the ancient Egyptians had giant barges they sailed on, and Romans as well > who stretched their conquering arms all the way to England in the first > century. No one ever ran into an Azorean island and stayed? That's a > head-scratcher. And I have no clue how the islands shuffled around for > thousands of years with the continental drift. > > I suppose someone must have done testing on the recovered artifacts to > determine age, either radiocarbon 14, or potassium-argon or uranium-lead or > fire up the mass spectrometry accelerator and get some geotimelines > going. There are answers to this puzzle. I'm going to go look some stuff > up on this to see what I can find. > > And yet, In the dark recesses of my dreams, it gives me great joy to think > that the Azorean islands could be vestigages of the possible lore of > Atlantis. Anything is possible. > > CindyD > > > > On Friday, September 6, 2013 6:19:25 PM UTC-5, E Sharp wrote: > >> This is REAL interesting. >> >> http://www.algarveresident.com/0-54889/algarve/azores-pyramids-puzzle >> >> "E" >> >> >> > -- For options, such as changing to List, Digest, Abridged, or No Mail (vacation) mode, log into your Google account and visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/Azores. Click in the blue area on the right that says "Join this group" and it will take you to "Edit my membership." --- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Azores Genealogy" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to azores+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. 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