Canada's Stonehenge: scientist says Alberta sun temple has 5,000-year-old calendar

[Dannyalcatraz]

But the more crackpoty things...yeah.

Things like "the Ancient Egyptians came over to America to mine copper" require that said Egyptians were able to sustain an expedition over here with not-terribly-seaworthy ships (Mediterranean, yes, Atlantic, not likely) while ignoring the fact that they could buy almost all the copper they wanted from local sources at vastly cheaper rates (once you take into account how much everything costs, including the time and labor of your miners), and managing to keep all the evidence of their passage hidden. While it's not impossible that some power-mad and paranoid entity decided to have an expedition to have a secret source of copper in case the Cypriots and other sources turned off the spigot, it's really, really, really, really unlikely.

OTOH, Thor Heyerdahl's Kon-Tiki expedition proves that you can go quite a ways on some nasty seas with a pretty rudimentary ship (as such things go.

While you're absolutely right that extended periods of trade (say, more than a couple of decades worth) were extremely unlikely, I'm not ruling it out entirely. Never underestimate the power of humanity to convince itself that something completely unnecessary or overpriced is quite desirable.

Mined copper might just have been the secondary cargo...there may have been a quite lucrative trade in the feathers of exotic birds from South American rain forests.

(Yes, I know none such have been found, I'm just using that as an exemplar of a rare good that might make pursuing such trade more likely, despite the costs.)

 

[genshou]

My kook radar is going off, and I'm tempted to toss this onto the same rubbish pile that the "pyramids" in Bosnia were tossed onto. It's well outside of his area of study, and he's obsessed about it, and apparently willing to give the place magical healing powers... I'm loathe to grant him much benefit of the doubt that he's onto something that the mainstream archaeological community has ignored.

I'm seeing less Schliemann and more Von Daniken.

http://www.jox.hu/cikk/0409/0917Gordon_Freeman.jpg
Gordon Freeman doesn't need credentials. He just needs a crowbar!

Back to seriousness, I think in this case it's unfair to say he's a kook just because of his credentials. Sometimes it takes an outsider to look at something and see what should be completely obvious, but everyone else won't listen just because you aren't an "expert" like them. A memorable monologue from Kate & Leopold comes to mind:

It is no more crazy than a dog finding a rainbow. Dogs are colourblind, Gretchen. They don't see colour. Just like we don't see time. We can feel it, we can feel it passing, but we can't see it. It's just like a blur. It's like we're riding in a supersonic train and the world is just blowing by, but imagine if we could stop that train, eh, Gretchen? Imagine if we could stop that train, get out, look around, and see time for what it really is? A universe, a world, a thing as unimaginable as colour to a dog, and as real, as tangible as that chair you're sitting in. Now if we could see it like that, really look at it, then maybe we could see the flaws as well as the form. And that's it; it's that simple. That's all I discovered. I'm just a... a guy who saw a crack in a chair that no one else could see. I'm that dog who saw a rainbow, only none of the other dogs believed me.

I think he needs to be given the benefit of the doubt for a while to see what he can find out. Besides, if it makes him happy to be there, that's all that should matter.