Humans and Their Earthly Environment

 

For us humans, inhaling with a deep breath is taken for granted by most of us, most of the time. When we start our car, most of us don’t even consider for a second that the car pollutes the same air that we breathe. Yet, three minutes without air is enough to cause death. This essential air is provided to us by the Earth, a precious gift.

If we had to pay only one single cent for every breath that we take we wouldn’t be so careless with it. We would be much more careful with the product that we “purchase”. But because it is free, we ignore it, take it for granted, and readily pollute it. We waste our environment while making profits a priority. This thoughtless habit probably leaves many traces that future civilizations might be wondering about.

All life on Earth is so intimately connected that it doesn’t stop only at breathing. The connections that life has with our planet leaves many traces and some of these we are not even aware of. For example, consider tree rings. Tree rings leave markers of past climate changes that are another form of entanglement with our planet. Tree rings are also used to calibrate the 14C curves, the technique that archaeologists like to use to estimate the age of ancient structures.

 

Fig. 1: The orientations of 392 contemporary buildings that we have verified point almost exactly to our current geographic pole. In the above image, the weighted sum of the building orientations on the left side of the vertical axis and on the right side of the vertical axis are practically equal. The more data we gather, whether in a particular region, a certain country, a continent, or the whole world – the more obvious it becomes that contemporary buildings have an average collective orientation toward the geographical pole. There is no contemporary culture that seems to prefer a specific orientation other than a cardinal orientation. Yet, the large deviation alone between contemporary buildings and ancient buildings proves mathematically that ancient buildings were oriented to another geographical pole location. To our knowledge, nobody has ever done this kind of research, in this manner, and on this scale. | © Mario Buildreps.

 

Homo sapiens Oriented themselves to Ancient Cardinal Systems

Humans, for example, appear to massively orient their major structures to the Cardinals. The Cardinals are the four wind directions. Climate change is recorded as varying thicknesses of tree rings, showing the slowly changing cardinal directions. If you have read the contents on this website you will know what we are talking about.

It is not overrated to say that Humans and Earth are entangled, every split second. We depend on the Earth for our very survival and it does not end there. We are much more entangled than most of us realize. And this entanglement goes much further back in time than just a few thousand years. It goes back a few hundred thousand years and beyond.

As we have proven, Homo sapiens has been around for more than 420,000 years and they left many traces of which structure orientation is one of the most powerful tools that we have discovered so far. It appears that Homo sapiens have been building impressive structures right from the start, and that is much, much longer ago than archaeologists claim.

Have you ever been on the search for a new house? You don’t just scan the surrounding for its ‘habitability’ and the distance between this house to your work and back. If you take your search seriously, most of us will also consider the orientation of a home, i.e. where are North and South? How is the garden oriented? Where does the sun rise?

 

City Orientations Around the World

Fig. 2: 10 out of 25 cities spread around the world apply a clear cardinal system to their city street orientation (they are marked with an asterisk). This cardinal system is ultimately derived from the position of our current geographical pole. Cities like Hong Kong, London, Moscow, Paris, Rio de Janeiro, Rome, and Seoul show a chaotic street network pattern. These large cities seemed to have grown chaotically without a street grid planning. Other cities like Barcelona, Budapest, Dubai, Melbourne, Mexico City, Sydney, Tehran, and Toronto show a pattern to their street orientation while they are clearly non-cardinal. The choices that led to this system of planning are often lost in the mist of time or are in some cases caused by the orientation of very ancient structures in the center of the city, like for example in Mexico City. That means that the city street grids trace their foundations back many hundreds of thousands of years. If the street grids of the 10 cities marked with an asterisk are cardinally-oriented as the result of a coincidental process, there is only a 0.000201% chance (1 to 496,567) that this is so – that these 10 cities are mainly cardinally oriented “just because”. They clearly follow the cardinal system and therefore ultimately the position of our current geographical pole and therefore for these 10 cities this was the main consideration that influenced their city planning. This is a good example of a deep-rooted entanglement between Humans and the Earth. | Source: https://geoffboeing.com

 

Ancient Orientations

During our research, we discovered many things regarding ancient orientations that are not yet published on our website. One of these examples is that ancient structures have a profound influence on the direct contemporary city planning, road planning, or even the direction of agricultural plots.

We have found many examples in all countries around the world that the orientation of ancient sites has influenced contemporary spatial planning, i.e. the spatial planning was influenced by the choices that ancient cultures have made many millennia ago. Most people are completely unaware of this fact.

The reason why agricultural plots or roads are running in a seemingly arbitrary direction is caused by the fact that way back in time, ancient civilizations chose to orient their structures cardinally. But their former cardinal directions were different from what ours is today; at that time, their geographic pole was on Greenland. Our daily lives are not only intimately entangled with Earth’s history, but they are also intimately entangled with Humanity’s ancient past.

 

Most experts believe that the best way to orient garden rows in the Northern hemisphere is north to south. This gives the most sun exposure and allows for ample air circulation. When crops are planted east to west, the rows tend to shade each other.

Gardening Know How

 

How Orientation of Ancient Pyramids Influence Spatial Planning

Fig. 3: The very large, very ancient pyramid (denoted as “19”) in the middle is located in China. Notice how the orientation of the surrounding spatial planning is oriented in the same direction as the foundational direction of this pyramid. That is no coincidence. The contemporary spatial planners are even unaware that the directions they have set out are very ancient: between 210,000 and 225,000 years old. They are of the same age as the city of Teotihuacan in Mexico. The entanglement between ancient Human civilizations, even our contemporary one, and Earth’s geological history goes much deeper than just a few roads and plots surrounding an ancient site. Note: the map is exactly cardinally oriented, where North is above etc. | source: Google Earth

 

Ancient Orientations in Mexico

When we look around in Mexico we see the same thing happening but in most cases in the other direction, the clockwise orientation. Ancient sites of long-lost civilizations still influence the cities’ orientations. When we broaden our radius from the ancient site we see that the cities’ orientations slowly start to diffuse into chaotic patterns or adapt to another ancient site or geographic feature.

While scientists have never looked into this phenomenon, as we have done, it shows clearly a relation between ancient orientations and contemporary city planning.

 

How the Orientation of an Ancient Pyramid can Influence City Planning

Fig. 4: In this example, you see clearly that this part of the heart of Mexico City has been adapted to the orientation of the ancient pyramid Templo Mayor. Even the nearby cathedral is oriented in the same direction as the ancient pyramid. The most probable explanation for this phenomenon is that city planning adapts around ancient structures in a natural way, i.e. it wraps around an ancient site. Even if we think our ancient past hasn’t influenced us, the contrary is clearly visible. It influences the way, and at what time, the Sun shines through the streets, shines through the windows, and so on. Note: the map is exactly cardinally oriented, where North is above etc. | source: Google Earth

 

If You Still Doubt…

Fig. 5: If you still doubt that ancient structures influenced the orientation of contemporary cities streets, you can take a look where the massive pyramid of Cholula is located. The orientation of the pyramid influenced the city street orientation, no doubt about it. The foundations of the pyramid of Cholula are between 240,000 and 270,000 years old. This pyramid has been renovated many times on top of these very ancient foundations. There was even a church built on top of this pyramid by the Spanish invaders. The city grid orientation follows the choices that were made by a lost civilization when they followed THEIR cardinal directions, a very long time ago. | source: Google Earth

 

Americans Are Cardinally Very Aware

When we look at the young American culture, we see that they are hardly influenced by ancient orientations. Most of their roads, plots, borderlines, and cities are cardinally oriented. It is logical that, when the first settlers came to America, they were very aware of North-East-South-West. The only rational thing to do is to build a cardinally-oriented country, build a grid, a matrix of roads, plots, and cities that all follow the only logical orientation open to their choice: a cardinally-oriented grid.

It is not a matter of taste whether this way of planning is aesthetic – it is above all rationale – it makes it easy to navigate through a very large country.

Planning in non-cardinal directions, when there are no obstacles in your way, is a very irrational thing to do. In fact, this is what you see in cities like Charlotte where cognitive navigation through the city does not work because the city plan looks more like spaghetti.

If you plan to build a road North-South or East-West, and there are no geographical obstacles, why would you then direct this road in an arbitrary, non-cardinal direction? The only logical reason could be the shortest distance between two cities, as the crow flies. Of course, when a compass was used, the compass direction could have deviated a bit from the cardinal directions due to the wandering magnetic pole, but this is relatively easy to track by following the route the magnetic pole has followed over the centuries.

 

Most American Cities Are Cardinally Oriented

Fig. 6: 19 out of 25 (76%) American cities are cardinally oriented. They are not even oriented to the magnetic pole, no, mainly to the geographic pole. We all know that is not something that happened just coincidentally. It was done on purpose and is, in fact, the only logical thing to do when nothing obstructs city planning. Charlotte has a chaotic European-like city planning with streets running in all directions. Cities like St. Louis and Philadelphia were oriented by using magnetic compasses; the cities’ foundation period clearly coincides with the position of the magnetic pole at that time. The orientation of Manhattan is due to geographic reasons, the street grid is laid out in the direction of the long, narrow island. Most cities are organized around our current cardinal system. Most ancient civilizations, like the Mayans, had the custom to orient their cities cardinally, but their geographic North was quite different from what ours is today. | Source: https://geoffboeing.com

 

Many Agricultural Plots in India and Pakistan Are Cardinally Oriented

Many of the agricultural plots in the Midwest of the US are laid out in a strict cardinal grid. The same level of organization is also visible in the Northern regions of India like Haryana and Punjab and the Northeastern region of Pakistan where the agricultural plots and street grid across the country show an extraordinarily high level of cardinal orientation.

Although their cities are often messy in their grid orientation, provinces are neatly organized. That sounds quite logical when nothing in these regions obstructs a cardinal planning.

We have discovered that the ancient Indus Valley Civilization around Harappa left many ruins that are cardinally oriented while the deeper excavated ruins are oriented towards the more ancient geographic poles, like pole II. Pole II has been stable between 130,000 and 155,000 years ago. The deeper excavated part of Harappa is much older than anyone ever imagined. This civilization’s high degree of cardinal awareness prompted them to reoriented their plots and structures when the crust deformed over the millennia. Here again, we find a clear pattern – the deeper you excavate, the more counterclockwise the structures are oriented.

The entanglement between Humans and the Earth left many traces and the more we become aware of this, the easier it becomes to make new discoveries regarding our true ancient history. Homo sapiens has left many traces throughout their whole existence.

 

© 2015 – by Mario Buildreps

https://mariobuildreps.com

 

Proofreading and editing: J.B.

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7 Responses

  • K.P.

    i recently discovered your work thanks to The Brothers of The Serpent pod cast. I’m blown away by the logic of your theory. Keep up the Excellent work. Too bad science will probably be a hundred years behind, if they ever catch up. Thanks for keeping an old man engaged.

    Reply
  • zam

    hi Mario….

    wud you be able to define the identity of the builders of these fantastic structures and monuments we use today…

    for instance, in India either its from the vedic period (ancient India) or then if its similar to greco-roman or gothic then its the British…or then the Mughals..

    who built the Taj Mahal…the Taj Palace Hotel in bombay….etc

    the taj hotel is said to be built in 1903….but was it

    Reply
    • Mario Buildreps

      Hi Zam, everything that is cardinally oriented like the pyramids of Giza and the Taj Mahal is between 0 and 26,000 years old. That’s it. We cannot narrow down this time frame further.

      Reply
      • zam

        ok….tks Mario..

        so what happened to.the structures in the Arabian peninsula…
        they must have been built there as well but of you look at a place like Dubai…only sand…

        what happened in this region that structures just got crushed to sand….literally

  • Barbara Fidanque

    Mario
    My friend, please write your book soon, remember there are many here among us who are getting old quickly.
    So much is coming together for me quite quickly now, books, experiences of my lifetime on the earth, lucid dreams and “almost” glimpses that seem like memories but feel ancient and don’t really fit in to my life.
    I’m obsessed with your research,
    the information feels SO right to me.
    Please take this old woman’s plea into account Mario! I’m dying for the answers!
    I’m kind of kidding but not totally.
    Thanks for all your amazing, inspirational and difficult work.
    Gratefully,
    Desert Bird

    Reply
    • Mario Buildreps

      Thank you, Desert Bird. Your voice is heard. I hope you will still live a long and prosperous life. 🙂

      Reply
  • F.P.

    I was always wondering why I instinctively turn my head to the north when thinking, wishing, praying… 🙂
    Thank you for your inspiring work!

    Reply

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