X-Message-Number: 33333
Date: Mon, 14 Feb 2011 13:26:04 -0500
Subject: Re: Cosmism / Kosmismus
From: Robin Helweg-Larsen <>

Cosmism is interesting for its ideas on life extension and practical
immortality, but that hardly justifies our embracing purely
speculative ideas as a way of broadening the acceptance of cryonics.

For example, the two examples that Jens cites for possible "alien
civilization" on Earth, though fascinating artifacts, have simpler
possible explanations.

From Wikipedia:

"The Voynich manuscript author could also be a native of East Asia who
lived in Europe, or who was educated at a European mission.

The main argument for this theory is that it is consistent with all
statistical properties of the Voynich manuscript text which have been
tested so far, including doubled and tripled words (which have been
found to occur in Chinese and Vietnamese texts at roughly the same
frequency as in the Voynich manuscript). It also explains the apparent
lack of numerals and Western syntactic features (such as articles and
copulas), and the general inscrutability of the illustrations. Another
possible hint is two large red symbols on the first page, which have
been compared to a Chinese-style book title, inverted and badly
copied. Also, the apparent division of the year into 360 degrees
(rather than 365 days), in groups of 15 and starting with Pisces, are
features of the Chinese agricultural calendar (jie qi). The main
argument against the theory is the fact that no one (including
scholars at the Chinese Academy of Sciences in Beijing) could find any
clear examples of Asian symbolism or Asian science in the
illustrations.

In late 2003, Zbigniew Banasik of Poland proposed that the manuscript
is plaintext written in the Manchu language and gave a proposed
incomplete translation of the first page of the manuscript." (end
quote).


The Piri Reis map is more straightforward: it was created in 1513,
i.e. 21 years after the First Voyage of Columbus, by the Turkish
admiral and cartographer Piri Reis. Again, from Wikipedia:

"In the map's legend, Piri inscribed that the map was based on about
twenty charts and mappae mundi. According to Piri, these maps included
eight Ptolemaic maps constructed during the era of Alexander the
Great, an Arabic map of India, four newly drawn Portuguese maps from
Sindh, Pakistan and a map by Christopher Columbus of the western
lands. From Inscription 6 on the map:

    "From eight Jaferyas of that kind and one Arabic map of Hind
[India], and from four newly drawn Portuguese maps which show the
countries of Sind [now in modern day Pakistan], Hind and A in [China]
geometrically drawn, and also from a map drawn by QulA<nbA< [Columbus]
in the western region, I have extracted it. By reducing all these maps
to one scale this final form was arrived at, so that this map of these
lands is regarded by seamen as accurate and as reliable as the
accuracy and reliability of the Seven Seas on the aforesaid maps." "

Robin Helweg-Larsen

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