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The Mystery of the Tumuli


Hanslune

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https://popular-archaeology.com/article/the-mystery-of-the-tumuli/

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Over 400 mounds on an island near New Caledonia in the southwest Pacific may mark a human presence predating the current earliest generally accepted dates by thousands of years.

This link showed up at ATS and is actually quite interesting. I had read something about it in the 60's perhaps in Corliss or Forts' material.

Does anyone have any more useful data or ideas?

Map showing the location of  new Caledonia and the tumuli on the island:

290px-New_Caledonia_on_the_globe_(small_

 

tumuli1a-768x787.png

 

tumuli7a.jpg

tumuli5-768x377.jpg

So what might they be? What natural function might cause this? Cultural? Que pasa?

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1 hour ago, Hanslune said:

https://popular-archaeology.com/article/the-mystery-of-the-tumuli/

This link showed up at ATS and is actually quite interesting. I had read something about it in the 60's perhaps in Corliss or Forts' material.

Does anyone have any more useful data or ideas?

Map showing the location of  new Caledonia and the tumuli on the island:

290px-New_Caledonia_on_the_globe_(small_

 

tumuli1a-768x787.png

 

tumuli7a.jpg

tumuli5-768x377.jpg

So what might they be? What natural function might cause this? Cultural? Que pasa?

Warren Aston?

One may wish to consider the Washington State (US) tumuli. Photographs, etc. are readily available. Gophers.

Such rodent activity, combined with soils structure and climatological conditions, may be a more reasonable explanation when combined with the apparently limited and later intrusive burials.

One would, of course, also wish to consider investigating the relevant faunal record. There may be some form of parallel.

.

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Look, dogs like to bury things. Including Big Dogs. 

...but this might well be a latrine for those giant cat things you heathens reference from time to time.

—Jaylemurph 

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Cool - some interesting info is out there on this.. and it actually appears to be {gasp} a genuine mystery.. woohoo!

 

My initial uninformed suspicion is that each group of mounds needs to be looked at separately, as I think some locations do appear to be biological/geophysical while others are human activity..

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3 hours ago, Swede said:

Warren Aston?

One may wish to consider the Washington State (US) tumuli. Photographs, etc. are readily available. Gophers.

Such rodent activity, combined with soils structure and climatological conditions, may be a more reasonable explanation when combined with the apparently limited and later intrusive burials.

One would, of course, also wish to consider investigating the relevant faunal record. There may be some form of parallel.

.

Look a lot like termite tumulus made of excavation soil, like the ones in Brazil

The Largest Structure on Earth wasn't Created by Humans, it's 4,000 Years  Old, and Visible from Space — Curiosmos

https://curiosmos.com/the-largest-structure-on-earth-wasnt-created-by-humans-its-4000-years-old-and-visible-from-space/

After a while, when the colony dies off,  cavities fill up with water making strange mineral deposit.

Edited by Jon the frog
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6 hours ago, jaylemurph said:

...but this might well be a latrine for those giant cat things you heathens reference from time to time.

Sacrifices from prairie dog worshipers. :yes:

 

IMG_5762.jpg

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Yes it is an actual archaeological/geology mystery - they are rather rare these day.

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42 minutes ago, jaylemurph said:

What do you expect, what with all the geniuses here independently solving mysteries every day. We get about two Atlantises, one Gobleki Tepe and eight "my country really invented all art, culture and technologies" a week.

--Jaylemurph

Yes but those are just intellectual trash (except for GT) while this is actually a real mystery -not a great one but at least we cannot debunk it by looking at Wikipedia.

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32 minutes ago, Hanslune said:

Yes but those are just intellectual trash (except for GT) while this is actually a real mystery -not a great one but at least we cannot debunk it by looking at Wikipedia.

I can't believe you'd call [redacted] "intellectual trash."

--Jaylemurph

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22 minutes ago, jaylemurph said:

I can't believe you'd call [redacted] "intellectual trash."

--Jaylemurph

Redacted? Atlantis, supernationalism, New Age fancy ideas, etc, etc. Give me a newly found oopart, a burial with an unknown script and pottery, a city of unknown origin or a bronze sword with a map on the tang

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DATING

The results of two chemical analyses of the components of the concrete (one from the Isle of Pines, one from a Paita tumulus) appeared in Chevalier’s 1963 report and are quite comparable; the primary disparity evident in the Fe and Si amounts reflecting the two very different environments of origin. The dating of the mortar and snail shells from a core excavated on Paita by Chevalier was published in a 1966 paper in Radiocarbon. This gave radiocarbon dates for surface and interior mortar (7070 ± 350 and 9600 ± 400 BP respectively), plus a date for Placostylus snail shells on the surface of a cylinder (12,900 ± 450 BP). Echoing Chevalier’s belief that the tumuli “testify to an important human activity completely extinct today…” the report’s authors noted that if the cores were really man-made “…they are by far the most ancient mortars known.”20 Radiocarbon dating by others since have served to confirm Chevalier’s very early dates. For example, a 1972 dating of tumulus cement yielded ages ranging from 4120 ± 90 to 7710 ± 70 BP.21

On 8/28/2020 at 7:50 PM, Hanslune said:

Yes it is an actual archaeological/geology mystery - they are rather rare these day.

I understand your point.

It is kind of hard to post something entirely unknown, and then have to wade through posts by those whose only objective is to score likes, because they are addicted to being considered as 'popular'.

 

Edited by Abramelin
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Okay, you had me at "concrete."  There haven't been any ancient (pre-Roman) civilizations or cultures that had concrete.  And I'm dubious of this one.

I see that the island was a former penal colony; the description of the tumuli foundation seems more consistent with construction from that era: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Isle_of_Pines_(New_Caledonia) 

 

Have they analyzed the concrete?  Anyone know?

 

 

Edited by Kenemet
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But what do you think those tumuli are? Graves for dead prisoners?

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I’d venture that the soil of the tumuli is of a different and perhaps more fertile variety to that of the area around them, the grass is greener on the mounds than that around them. That suggests at least that the ground has been disturbed changing it’s composition enough that Things grow at different rates there. 

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21 minutes ago, Sir Wearer of Hats said:

I’d venture that the soil of the tumuli is of a different and perhaps more fertile variety to that of the area around them, the grass is greener on the mounds than that around them. That suggests at least that the ground has been disturbed changing it’s composition enough that Things grow at different rates there. 

Aerating it's called. 

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1 hour ago, Piney said:

Aerating it's called. 

Exactly, something that has, I posit intentionally, disturbed that soil so as to make it more fertile (possible as a side effect). 

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13 minutes ago, Sir Wearer of Hats said:

Exactly, something that has, I posit intentionally, disturbed that soil so as to make it more fertile (possible as a side effect). 

Fluffed it. Made it more "airy" and less compact. 

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38 minutes ago, Piney said:

Fluffed it. Made it more "airy" and less compact. 

Precisely, it had to be intentional. 

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I remember a detail from a penal colony. To clear an area of vegetation, trees etc., so as to making it suitable for cash crops. They would bring prisoners in put in/up a pole to which long chains were attached so the men could work in a certain radius - with no hope of them running off and cutting down the number of guards needed it they were able to roam freely. As an area was finished they moved the 'restraining' pole. That might explain the concrete, the hole and random locations.

Just a speculation based on something from a 19th century French book i believe.

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20 hours ago, Hanslune said:

I remember a detail from a penal colony. To clear an area of vegetation, trees etc., so as to making it suitable for cash crops. They would bring prisoners in put in/up a pole to which long chains were attached so the men could work in a certain radius - with no hope of them running off and cutting down the number of guards needed it they were able to roam freely. As an area was finished they moved the 'restraining' pole. That might explain the concrete, the hole and random locations.

Just a speculation based on something from a 19th century French book i believe.

Interesting point, but it doesn't explain the mounds.

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In terms of geology:

The Isle of Pines southeast of New Caledonia is an almost completely peneplained lateritized peridotite massif, surrounded by uplifted flat reefs down to sea-level. A sample of coral, picked up in the oldest part of the reef aiid measured by the Io/U method was 118,000 5 8,000 years B.P. old (radio- metric age measured by M. Bernat, I.P.G. Laboratory Paris, in Launay and Recy, 1972). The average uplift computed for the top of the flat reef appears very slow at 1-2.lO-4m/y if we accept (for the age of this reef) a sea-level close to the present one or somewhat higher (Veeh and Chappel, 1970).



https://core.ac.uk/download/pdf/39882909.pdf

See also, this geological map of the island

I would need to see the exact location of these mounds. . But my money is on them being either entirely natural or else connected with early agriculture (see, for example this paper)

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  • 2 weeks later...

Just speculstion, but the actual mound may have just been to hold the "concrete", form. Which may have only been created to hold a large pole. Then they could build a structure off of the pole. 

Perhaps when the pole rotted out, they were unable to fix the structure and so would move over a bit and build another one.

The heaped up dirt would also be better for growing things near their hut.

They should completely dig a site and see if there are human artifacts around the edge/bottom of each mound.

I suppose it would depend on if they were able to dig down 3 m, rather then heaping up a lot of dirt.

Edited by DieChecker
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There is a difference between cement and concrete.

 

I don’t think it’s an incredible leap of faith to believe ancient man might have stumbled upon something like tabby concrete by accident. The island needs and deserves some legitimate modern study.

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On 9/13/2020 at 8:09 PM, Nobu said:

There is a difference between cement and concrete.

 

I don’t think it’s an incredible leap of faith to believe ancient man might have stumbled upon something like tabby concrete by accident. The island needs and deserves some legitimate modern study.

Yes, the two words have come to mean the same thing while in fact they are different one being an ingredient in the other.

Quote

Although the terms cement and concrete often are used interchangeably, cement is actually an ingredient of concrete. Concrete is a mixture of aggregates and paste. The aggregates are sand and gravel or crushed stone; the paste is water and portland cement.

 

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