Tag: ostrich

Aswan, Egypt: The Mystery of the Ostrich Egg

Today’s archaeology profession estimates the Pyramids of Giza to be about 4,600 years old. However, because the pyramids are made of stone, traditional dating methods using carbon-14 can’t be used to estimate their age. There really aren’t any good ways to determine when stone structures were built by examining the structures themselves – it is necessary to rely on organic material such as human remains found inside or near the structures.

In the case of the three major Giza pyramids, bodies were not found inside, and therefore the carbon-14 dating has relied on artifacts found on the surrounding plateau, such as remains of bread in a fire pit.  It’s a reasonable methodology, but it relies on the assumption that the pyramids were built at the same time as the village that surrounded them. However, what if the three large pyramids were built before the village? What if the village was built on top of something older which hasn’t been excavated yet?

Photo copyright by Jewel, 2017. All rights reserved.

What if the Pyramids of Giza are Older Than Believed?

However, perhaps a clue lies elsewhere to the age of the pyramids?

An ostrich egg was found in a tomb near Aswan that shows 3 triangular structures side by side. According to carbon dating methods, the human remains found in that same tomb were 7,000 years old. Therefore it is reasonable to think objects found in that tomb, including the egg, were equally old. Could the triangles etched on that presumably 7,000-year-old egg represent the pyramids of Giza? Some people think so, while others are skeptics. Alongside the triangles, there’s a marking that some people think could represent the Nile river and the Fayoum Oasis. But again, others are skeptics.

I haven’t seen any debate questioning that the egg itself is 7,000 years old. That seems to be accepted. The debate I’ve seen centers around what the drawing represents. Ie, does it represent the Giza pyramids, Nile River, and Fayoum Oasis as the theorists claim? Or does it represent something else?

The photo at the top of this page shows the view of the egg that I photographed when I visited the Nubian Museum in 2018.  It sits inside a glass case with a wall behind it, so there’s a limit to what angle can be photographed.  In 2019, I noticed that the museum had changed the angle of the egg that was visible to me, so I took another photo showing a clearer view of the three triangles:

Photo copyright 2019 by Jewel. All rights reserved.

The Meroitic Pyramids Theory and Why It Doesn’t Fit

Some skeptics have suggested that the 3 triangles might represent the Nubian pyramids of Sudan in the Meroitic kingdom of Kush. However, the Sudanese pyramids marked tombs, and were built much more recently (4,600 years ago) than the tomb the ostrich egg was found in (7,000 years ago).

The Nubian pyramids are also much farther south than where the egg was found, in what (during ancient times) would have been a different kingdom from the one governing the Aswan area where the egg was found.

Seeing the Egg for Yourself

Today, the ostrich egg resides in the Nubian Museum in Aswan, Egypt. I had the pleasure of seeing it firsthand myself on May 6, 2018 while I was in Aswan. It’s fascinating to look at this 7,000-year-old object and try to come up with alternate theories for what the image is showing.  So far, I keep coming back to the conclusion that maybe it does prove that the Pyramids of Giza are older than what mainstream archaeologists currently believe.

I look forward to seeing how future discoveries enhance our insight into the past.

Photo Safari at Bandia Reserve in Senegal

The Bandia Reserve is a wildlife park about 65 kilometers from Dakar, Senegal which features a variety of animals from throughout Africa. Although some of Bandia’s animals are native to Senegal, others were transported in from South Africa and elsewhere.   The park isn’t big enough to accommodate the hunting needs of large predators such as lions; therefore, it features only herbivores such as giraffes, antelope, zebras, etc. The exception is that there is a hyena in a fenced area, and some crocodiles in a stream that’s some distance from where the rest of the animals live.

The Bandia Reserve offers trucks that can be rented, with drivers and guides. Our guide had been with Bandia ever since it opened 20 years ago, so he was able to share with us a large amount of information about the park’s origins and history.  The backs of the trucks are open-air and outfitted with benches which can accommodate up to 9 passengers. It was the perfect size for our group.

A network of gravel roads runs throughout the park. The drivers and guides are quite familiar with all the routes.  They use phones to stay in touch with other colleagues who are taking other trucks through the park, which is how they know where to find the various types of animals on any given day.

Dirt roads such as this one run throughout Bandia Reserve in Senegal.

Throughout the park are a variety of trees that are native to West Africa.  These acacia trees have vivid reddish bark, which contrasts beautifully with the surrounding vegetation.  Senegal lies just south of the Sahara desert with a dry climate whose rainy season runs about 3 months.  The acacia trees and other local vegetation are adapted to these dry conditions.

The acacia trees inside Bandia Reserve have a vivid reddish bark.

When Bandia Reserve was first started 20 years ago, the owners brought in 4 giraffes from South Africa to start their herd: two male, two female. Today, the herd contains about 50 giraffes.  The guide told us they occasionally bring in males from the outside for breeding, to add some diversity to the gene pool. The giraffes are surprisingly comfortable with the truckloads of camera-toting tourists that pass through. Our truck was able to get rather close to them.

There were several mother giraffes in the park with their babies.  I found myself wishing that my late college roommate, Tammy Dudley, could be alive to see those with me.  She had always loved giraffes, and owned a collection of over 100 giraffe figurines.

This mother giraffe and her calf brought a taste of family life to Bandia Reserve.

Many of the giraffes stayed together in a herd as they moved through the trees, snacking on the leaves.

There are a variety of species of gazelles in Bandia Reserve.  We didn’t get close enough for me to snap good photos of all of them, but here are the ones I was able to capture.

The giant eland living in the park were rather spectacular to look at!
This is one of the species of gazelle that lives inside Bandia Reserve.

There are a few small monkeys living inside of Bandia. I only saw this one.

This small monkey near the entrance of Bandia Reserve is near a giant baobab tree.

We saw a group of about 3 ostriches near the herd of giraffes.

The day we visited Bandia Reserve, the ostriches were gathered near the giraffe herd.

It was surprising to see how close these zebras allowed our truck to get to them.

A family of zebras lives inside the park.

When Bandia Reserve first started 20 years ago, a pair of white rhinocerous (one male, one female) were brought in from elsewhere in Africa to populate it.  However, they never produced any young, so today they remain the only two rhinos in the park.  The guides and truck drivers use their mobile phones to keep each other informed of where in the park the rhinos are relaxing on any given day.  It took some time for us to find the corner of the park where they were the day we visited.

A pair of white rhinocerous live in the park.

Bandia Reserve contains many large baobab trees.  These and the acacias are both very representative of the African landscape.  Near the end of the tour we saw this massive baobab tree. It is estimated to be 1,000 years old.

Mauricio Andrade and Marcel Furumoto explore the area around the base of the baobab tree’s trunk. Note how small these full-grown adult men look compared to the tree’s trunk.

The insides of baobab trees are hollow, and this one has been used for many years as a graveyard for the griots (storytellers).  The tree is known as the tombeau de griots. The griots were the elders of a tribe, the keepers of its oral history.  When they died, their bones were carefully placed inside this large baobab tree.

These skulls are actual human remains. They were griots (storytellers), and were honored as the keepers of the oral histories of their tribes.

This photo, taken from a bit of a distance, shows the large size of the baobab tree.

This 1,000-year-old baobab tree serves as the tomb of the griots (storytellers). Look carefully, and you’ll see the skulls under the tree to the left.

At the end of the tour is a restaurant and a gift shop.  In the water next to the restaurant lives a family of Nile crocodiles.  They were shy the day we visited, but we did manage to catch a glimpse of one.

The crocodiles at Bandia Reserve were brought from Egypt.

We visited Senegal in October, which is typically a very hot time of year.  The day we visited Bandia Reserve, temperatures hovered around 93 F (34 C). By the end of the trip, we all wanted to take a siesta.  Our friend Mario Villalobos decided to go ahead and do so while others shopped or picked up snacks at the restaurant!

Mario Villalobos has the right idea.

All in all, I was very enthusiastic about our visit to Bandia Reserve. I’ve been told by people who went on photo safaris in South Africa and Kenya that Bandia is smaller and less impressive.  However, I have never been to these other countries, and Bandia impressed me a great deal!  I’m very glad I went.  For me, it was well worth the time, money, and effort!

In case you’re wondering why I was in Senegal for a month, I was there as part of the IBM Corporate Service Corps.   You can read more about that here: https://roaming-jewel.com/2017/10/17/ibmcsc/