The Oera Linda Forum

I'll share some details about who I am and how I became interested in this subject.

I studied German in high-school and a bit in college. I would estimate my Deutsch is around the CEFR-B1 level, although it's not something I'm actively studying these days. I chose to study German because that's where my grandmother guessed our family had come from based on her maiden name (which she thought was an anglicized German surname). On both my father's side and my mother's side, no one knows who our ancestors were that immigrated to America; we've been here that long, apparently. When I got my DNA tested, it said that I was over half Anglo-Saxon, about a quarter "Northern European" broadly, about a tenth Swiss German, and the rest from Western Europe, with almost no Mediterranean or Eastern European. When I learned this, it only made my interest in the Germanic world more strong. Because American identity is so vapid and unwholesome these days, polluted by corporate control over culture and corrupt politics, I've taken an interest in trying to piece together what life was like whence my ancestors originated, both in the last few centuries but also the past few millennia.

I would say my ultimate goal is to develop some kind of syncretic Weltanschauung that "works" for me on a philosophical and even spiritual level. A lot of my interests during the past decade have been congruent with the idea of fixing society by determining what it would take to reboot it from scratch, i.e. from first-principles. While many of the extant world religions do a decent job at maintaining social harmony and solidarity, I think they also break down in critical ways that prevent a society from achieving its full potential. Because I believe spirituality, religion, and meaning are critical for a stable society, I've been very curious about how a truly modern neo-paganism (for lack of a better word) might look if were designed for a resilient, regenerative Information Age society.

I discovered the Oera Linda Book by watching Asha Logos' "Our Subverted History" series on YouTube from the beginning. Now, I can't stop thinking about it. So much of it seems congruent with some of my conclusions about how that hypothetical modern religion ought to work. I think even if it is only a masterpiece of forgery, it still contains some very important and timeless philosophical insights.

I'm very interested in investigating the veracity of it as a true historical account (granted, with perhaps a few legendary embellishments). Upon further deep research, if I do come to the conclusion that I can "have faith" in it, I would very much like to experiment with putting some of it to practice in my everyday life. If that goes well, I would also be interested in the next level of that: how the OLB could influence groups or organizations of people, particularly ones trying to create resilient communities.

Welcome to the forum, Phi. Thank you for taking the effort of describing what brought you here.

Your knowledge of German besides English will give you a head start in understanding the Fryas language of Oera Linda, and thereby understanding more of its 'Geist'.

Do you have concrete ideas of how OL's veracity could be further investigated?

ott wrote: ↑04 Nov 2023, 07:45Do you have concrete ideas of how OL's veracity could be further investigated?

Within the OLB, there are concrete things that could be considered empirical claims about history. I would love it if the wiki included a section that had a comprehensive list of cited empirical claims made by the OLB, with a page dedicated to each claim or group or claims and the respective research for or against them.

For example, whether the flood happened is a matter of geological record. The date given (2190 BCE) can be used to find geological evidence in that timeframe. As I've heard you mention, Jan, our Gregorian calendar could be skewed to have an extra several hundred years injected into our history, so such investigations should also take that into account (and possibly help prove that the calendar was indeed tampered with).

About the flood, the OLB says (049/11):

All summer long, Sun had hidden behind clouds, as if she did not wish to see Earth. Wind rested in his bags, causing smoke and steam to stand like pillars over houses and pools. Air thus became dreary and dim, and in the hearts of the people neither joy nor pleasure abode. In the midst of this stillness, Earth began to tremble as if she were dying. Mountains split asunder, spewing fire and flames, while others sank into Earth's bowels; and where she had once borne plains, she thrust up mountains. Aldland — that the steersmen call ‘Atland’ — sank down, and the roiling sea trod everywhere over mountain and valley, so that all was submerged. Many people were buried by landslides, and many who had escaped the fire later perished in the water.

Not only in the lands of Finda did mountains spew fire, but also in the Twiskland. Forests burned one after another and, when Wind came from there, our lands were covered in ash. Rivers changed their course and, at their mouths, new islands were formed of sand and drift. For three years Earth suffered like this, but when she had recovered, her wounds were clear to see. Many lands were submerged, others had risen out of the sea, and half of the Twiskland had been deforested.

The empirical claims from this could look something like this:

During the summer of the year that Altland sank, there was:

• an initial change in atmosphere that included overcast skies and less wind
• volcanism in Twiskland (and elsewhere)
• flooding
• submergence of a landmass
• earthquakes
• creation of new mountains
• changes in the courses of rivers
• some of these phenomena lasted for up to three years

Each one of these could be considered a separate claim and a separate line of investigation. Maybe some of these can be found in the geological record in the Bronze Age, or maybe an event that better fits these characteristics could be found earlier.

Some research on Volcanism in Deutschland

Volcanism in Twiskland/Deutschland is one claim that should be relatively well documented by geologists. I've done some cursory research on this; while not conclusive by any means, it loosens a few threads that could be pulled for future research. Maybe all of this is old news to OLB researchers. Unfortunately I've discovered the OLB only recently, so I'm not familiar with everything that has been researched thus far about its veracity.

While I can't find any evidence of volcanism in Deutschland around the time that the OLB suggests, I did happen to find some interesting evidence for volcanism around the time that Atlantis is said to have sunk. This would give some credence to what we could call the "Atlantean Origin Theory of the Fryans". Maybe this isn't a viable theory, but addressing the evidence for and against it could be useful for posterity and deep researchers.

Around the start of the Younger Dryas period, in the Vulkaneifel region of Deutschland (between Koblenz and Luxembourg, near the Rhine), a cataclysmic volcanic eruption happened called the Laacher See Eruption (LSE). Recent papers have given it a date of about 13,079 years ago (source), putting its date so close to the start of the Younger Dryas that it's considered to be a plausible candidate for the cause of the Younger Dryas.

Here is an excerpt from the Wikipedia page about the Laacher See Eruption. I've underlined parts that comport with the OLB's description.

The initial blasts of Laacher See, which took place in late spring or early summer at around 11,000 BC, flattened trees up to four kilometres away. The magma opened a route to the surface that erupted for about ten hours, with the plume probably reaching a height of 35 kilometres. Activity continued for several weeks or months, producing pyroclastic currents that covered valleys up to ten kilometres away with sticky tephra. Near the crater, deposits reach over fifty metres in thickness, and even five kilometres away they are still ten metres thick. All plants and animals for a distance of about sixty kilometres to the northeast and forty kilometres to the southeast must have been wiped out. An estimated 6 km3 (1.4 cu mi) of magma erupted, producing around 16 km3 (3.8 cu mi) of tephra. This 'huge' Plinian eruption thus had a Volcanic Explosivity Index (VEI) of 6.

Tephra deposits from the eruption dammed the Rhine, creating a 140 km2 (50 sq mi) lake. When the dam broke, an outburst flood swept downstream, leaving deposits as far away as Bonn. The fallout has been identified in an area of more than 300,000 square kilometres, stretching from central France to northern Italy and from southern Sweden to Poland, making it an invaluable tool for chronological correlation of archaeological and palaeoenvironmental layers across the area.

So here we have an event that...

• Happened within a conceivable margin of error (about a millennium or two) of the date the Plato gives for the sinking of Atlantis
• Included a cataclysmic flooding event from the dammed Rhine River that wiped out a large part of the areas downstream of the Rhine. This flood occurred during the time that the volcanic activity was still happening (source)
• caused the Earth to tremble
• split mountains asunder, spewing fire and flames
• caused forests to burn
• caused ash to be blown all over the region
• caused rivers to change course
• (probably) caused the sea to roil from seismic activity
• caused "new mountains" to form in the Eifel range (cinder cones and lava domes)

The main problem with this theory is that other events in the OLB are timed relative to the date that Atland sank, for example interacting with the Phoenicians ("PHONISIVS") occurred 193 years later. This date is already suspect however because it describes trading "iron weapons" with them about a millennium before the actual Iron Age began. If the Fryans did have iron smelting knowledge that much earlier than everyone else, then that might actually give more credence to the "Atlantean Origin Theory of the Fryans" and somehow the dating relative to Atland's sinking is incorrect.

Anyway, maybe this is all just a red herring, but it seems to be the only explanation for the claim that there was serious volcanic activity in or near Deutschland, unless there's some geological evidence I am missing. There are some details I haven't included in the above research just due to time constraints, but I could keep going down the rabbit hole if it's useful to anyone.

Back to my original point and your original question: I would love it if there were some kind of central clearinghouse for all research of this kind on the wiki. Asha Logos includes so much awesome work in his videos, and this forum has great work too, although this information isn't collated in one spot, to my knowledge.

– Φ

Welcome!

The Authenticity Debate sub-forum has many topics available for your perusal, of which texts I have written many. I make the case that core OL narratives can be dated with 100 % certainty to at least 1800 BC (select narratives already present in Weld-Blundell Prism) and there was no way for the otherwise assumed mid-1800s AD Dutchmen to forge those details. Then there is this blog on OL.

I have pondered extensively on the chronological issue of confusion between the older Atlantis and later Aldland in old sources, please see here.

For evidence of catastropic geological upheavel in post-2200 BC era, please see online the works of Nils-Axel Mörner (d. 2020) and Bob Lind. I have written here a little about their findings on the Jol stones, but they extend the theme further by noting evidence of ground burning etc. Please see here, here, here and here. On how the Frisian-German areas could have burned in ancient times, please see Lower Saxony Basin.

The following is a list of additional elements that should be considered:

• Jan Ott has produced subtitled presentations in which he examines physical evidence, the hoax theory, and related topics. These presentations are likely to pique your interest. (1st link, 2nd link, 3rd link)
• In his book Chronicles from Pre-Celtic Europe, Alewyn J. Raubenheimer examines a multitude of pieces of physical evidence and their correlation with other historical accounts. He also investigates the overlap between these pieces of evidence and the narratives presented in the Oera Linda book.
• In the publication Anno Domini: A Short History of the First Millenium AD, Laurent Guyénot offers a comprehensive exploration of the so-called "phantom years," a term denoting a period of uncertainty and ambiguity in the historical record. Guyénot's insights can be further delved into through his articles, accessible on The Unz Review. However, it is recommended that readers interested in a more in-depth exploration of the subject consult the aforementioned book, which serves as a foundational text on the topic.
• Gunnar Heinsohn's research has examined the layers of sediment and demonstrated that the 3rd, 6th, and 9th centuries AD of official history exhibit significant overlap. Heinsohn's findings have served as a foundational basis for Guyénot's subsequent work.

Thanks Nordic and Coco for the links and resources. Some of them I'd discovered but some are new to me. There's a lot to catch up on, but fortunately this subject is very fascinating!

I see that the wiki is locked to new account registration. This is understandable since it's mainly for the actual text of the OLB. I'll start collecting my own notes as I do further research and then, if I have enough that's worth sharing, maybe I can post here on the forum about how best to share the info. I know other newcomers would probably appreciate a digest of what's been established about the text (beyond what the footnotes mention).

Nordic wrote: ↑05 Nov 2023, 11:10 For evidence of catastropic geological upheavel in post-2200 BC era, please see online the works of Nils-Axel Mörner (d. 2020) and Bob Lind. I have written here a little about their findings on the Jol stones, but they extend the theme further by noting evidence of ground burning etc. Please see here, here, here and here. On how the Frisian-German areas could have burned in ancient times, please see Lower Saxony Basin.

The mega-tsunami event in Sweden around 1171 BCE from the meteor fragment hitting Estonia is definitely very interesting. So is the Methane Venting Techtonics (MVT) discovery in Sweden dated to around 1000 BCE. I'd like to ask a few followup questions about this if you don't mind, because I consider the specific geological claims about the cataclysm (in Twiskland specifically) to be one of the most verifiable/deniable details in the OLB that I've found.

• Do we know that the Fryans considered Sweden to be part of Twiskland? If not, the flares' locations I see on their map don't seem to match up with the described cataclysm in Twiskland.
• I couldn't find any information about the mega-tsunami in the Baltic Sea hitting Netherlands/Denmark/Deutschland. Is there any geological evidence of this?
• The OLB describes the flooding, fires, and earthquakes as occurring concurrently or at least within three years of each other. Are you suggesting these two things happened at the same time?
• Do you suppose that calendar skew is what accounts for the difference of time between the OLB's date for the cataclysm (2190 BCE) and the geological dates of the mega-tsunami and MVT (1171 BCE and 1000 BCE)?
• Are the MVT and mega-tsunami events the most widely accepted explanations for the geological phenomena described as the "Bad Times"?
• About the Lower Saxony Petroleum Basin, is there any geological evidence that the crude oil has come to the surface and burned in the past?

phi wrote: ↑06 Nov 2023, 05:19 I see that the wiki is locked to new account registration.

I created an account for you to add and edit pages on the wiki. Login details have been sent to the mailaddress you used for forum subscription.

General note: I will try to catch up reading and perhaps commenting on what has been posted recently in the forum.

ott wrote: ↑07 Nov 2023, 20:10I created an account for you to add and edit pages on the wiki.

Thanks, Jan! I created a page on the wiki namespaced under my user account about my proposal to organize a collaborative validation effort.

I didn't want to go on an editing frenzy without stating my thoughts on what to do so that you and others can comment. Please let me know if something doesn't make sense or if you have any concerns!

This is wonderful, Phi! I hope other forum participants will join this project.

Again, some personal notes:
For some time, I have been (and will be) distracted from the project in general. I much hoped that enthousiasts would take initiatives. In the last few months I have felt mostly drawn to getting ever more familiar with (varieties in) spelling and grammar of OL and have thus been in a phase of new study (hence not active sharing ideas or participating in discussions). I think this new (exploratory) study can eventually lead to strong arguments for authenticity of (at least) the language in which OL was written. It will also make it easier for me (and others) to explain/teach this language.

Coco wrote: ↑10 Nov 2023, 00:15 Phi, your proposal is commendable, yet it entails a substantial amount of work. Therefore, it is imperative that we deliberate on the rationale behind the aggregation of such extensive information.

I agree about the scale of the project being quite daunting and that we should be as economical as possible with our effort for the maximum benefit. The work done previously by Ottema, Raubenheimer, Ott, forum members, et al. are scattered enough that many people who are interested in the research aren't ever going to find it. People will want to self-educate on the subject, watch videos that benefit from all the collated research, or find matters that haven't been explored previously by anyone to go do some research on. Having one central digest of everything, even if it includes only cursory summaries with citations, would help newcomers and hardcore researchers a lot, I think.

Coco wrote: ↑10 Nov 2023, 00:15The creation of a separate page for each theory would result in an excessive accumulation of content, which would consequently clutter the wiki.

I think you are imagining a single Claims page for each Section, e.g. there would be a "14d Claims" page. In my proposal page on the wiki, I was imagining keeping all the claims lists on one page so that the content of the page remains a pure distillation of what's in the book without any extraneous "third-party" information other than links to Theory pages. This by itself could be useful as a kind of "cliff-notes" version of the book and could make finding specific things throughout the book easier with the browser Find feature.

I suggested decoupling the Theory pages from the Claims because...

• I was imagining a single Claims page
• A Theory might be relevant beyond just one set of Claims from one Section. There might be some theories that are cited from many sets of claims across many sections.
• I'm imagining some Theory explanations growing to include quite a lot of text, images, video embeds, counter-arguments, sub-theories, etc
• the organization of Arguments (e.g. into Theory pages or into sections on a Claims page) should account for the fact that there may be 10 different mutually exclusive ways to explain a set of claims and each one would need its own "space" to stand or fall on its own. Having five half-baked ideas next to two really good ideas causes some of the half-baked ideas to "drown out" the good ideas, and might hasten an editor to say "These ideas just take up too much space, so they're hereby verboten", a slippery slope.
• Having many Theory pages (I would guess 50-250 for the whole project) doesn't seem like a huge problem to me, especially if we use MediaWiki's organizational features like namespaces, categories or sub-pages. If it's on-topic content, I think the wiki can accommodate scaling up for it.

The reason I suggested having Claims be exhaustive (i.e. everything that can be gleaned from a text, even the mundane or obvious) is because some Arguments might not account for something that is obvious. For example, we might say "rivers changed course" is too obvious because the text says exactly that; however, if a Theory is presented that has no way of explaining that Claim, then the Claim can be cited as problem for the Theory. In my proposal, I suggested each Theory page describing which Claims specifically it addresses, however it might be beneficial to have each Theory also list which Claims contradict the Theory (or are not addressable by the Theory alone). It's a much more formalized, structured, data-driven kind of way of doing it, but I think the benefit for the reader would outweigh the effort needed to curate a list of related Claims for the Theory.

I agree that some Theories might be very brief - only a sentence or two. In this schema I proposed, these would still get their own page and own Theory name. If the Theory is named well, the whole two-sentence argument could probably be summarized sufficiently with just the name itself, preventing someone from having to click to read more. Alternatively, having a dedicated page could encourage people to expand on a brief idea in the future with more findings or even write a "Steelman Disputing Argument" against it.

Coco wrote: ↑10 Nov 2023, 00:15The arrangement of subheaders in a chronological sequence would enhance the clarity of the comparison with other sources, thereby reducing the potential for confusion.

I agree this is probably the better way to organize the Claims.

Coco wrote: ↑10 Nov 2023, 00:15 The plausibility of a claim is often contingent upon the probability of other claims, rendering them inextricable from their interrelated context. Consequently, a comprehensive evaluation necessitates an examination of these claims in conjunction with their interrelated counterparts.

In my proposed schema, this would be accounted for by the creation of a nested Sub-Theory on the same page as the parent Theory. If nesting doesn't make sense, they can just link to each other in a "Related Theories" section on their respective Theory pages.

Coco wrote: ↑10 Nov 2023, 00:15 The proposal of a new numbering scheme is not necessary, as a previous system is already in place.

You're right. I was thinking about something similar to the Bible where each verse has a number (23:4) rather than a line number. Sometimes you might need to reference a single sentence that spans multiple lines. I guess you could just cite the line number on which that sentence starts, or you could give a span of a line numbers (e.g. OLB 07b/1-18). I was imagining something more like a "verse" number that encompassed a whole sentence.
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I'm still wide-open on how this validation effort could be organized. Hopefully I've clarified some of the rationale for why I suggested structuring it the way I did. I'd love to hear any responses about the proposals. I do worry that inlining all Arguments on a Claims page for a particular Section will break down when accounting for a lot of content. When I get the time, I'll try to create some example pages that might show the structure in a more tangible way.