The hydroplate theory and the lunar surface

In previous posts, we have presented extensive evidence which supports Walt Brown's hydroplate theory, which argues that most of the geological features found on earth are best explained by the events surrounding a catastrophic global flood rather than by tectonics and other "uniformitarian" theories which argue that most geological features were formed by the same processes which are going on today, working over tremendous lengths of time.

Previous evidence which we examined included the shape of deep ocean trenches, the gravity readings found above those ocean trenches, many aspects of earthquakes, many aspects of the Grand Canyon, the existence of fossils and geological strata, submarine canyons, the locations of volcanic activity, the case of the frozen mammoths, the fossil evidence found in Antarctica and the Canadian Arctic Archipelago, the origin of petrified wood, and the apparent lack of impact from continental drift on megalithic monuments of great antiquity.

Going beyond evidence found on earth alone, Dr. Brown points out aspects of other bodies in the solar system which would also have been affected if the hydroplate theory is correct. He argues that the violence of the escaping water that caused the flood during the initial rupture event would have flung some water and rocks out of earth's orbit and into space. As the water burst out, not only would it have flung spray high into the atmosphere and even into space, but it would also have eroded the sides of the continental plates as it jetted out, filling the waters that covered the earth with tons of sediments and flinging a lot of it high into the atmosphere as well.

Additionally, the mass of the miles-high cliff faces created by this rupture would have caused huge blocks of earth and rock to collapse -- some of these giant chunks would have been forcefully jetted out into space. Most of those that were caught by earth's gravity would have burned up in the atmosphere, but the moon is not protected by an atmosphere and some of these huge pieces of earth would have struck it full force. You can see the scar left by this violent rupture and read more about the hydroplate theory in this previous post.

Dr. Brown argues that this theory provides a better explanation for the features on the surface of earth's moon than do other theories. For one thing, scientists know that the side of the moon that is always turned towards the earth has far more of the largest craters, which is very difficult to explain unless the source of the impacts was from the earth. Large space objects would be unlikely to circle around to the earth side of the moon and then turn around and dive onto the moon's surface instead of continuing on towards earth.

Even more mysterious, the dark patches on the moon's surface, which are visible from earth and are called the maria (or "seas") -- such as the Sea of Tranquility, or Mare Tranquillitatis -- are acknowledged by conventional scientists to have been formed by lava flows which have now cooled and hardened, and the vast majority of these are also on the earth-facing side of the moon as well. Why would almost all of them be on the earth-facing side? The few that are located on the far side are very small and are close to the few large craters on that side.

Dr. Brown explains on his site:

Some have proposed that the Moon’s crust must be thinner on the near side, so lava can squirt out more easily on the near side than on the far side. However, no seismic, gravity, or heat flow measurements support that hypothesis. The Moon’s density throughout is almost as uniform as that of a billiard ball, showing that little distinctive crust exists. Not only did large impacts form the giant basins, but much of their impact energy melted rock and generated lava flows. This is why the lava flows came after the craters formed. These impacts appear to have happened recently.
[. . .]
If the impacts that produced these volcanic features occurred slowly from any or all directions, all sides would be equally hit. Only if the impacts occurred rapidly from a specific direction would large impact features be concentrated on one side of the Moon. Of course, large impacts would kick up millions of smaller rocks that would themselves create impacts or go into orbit around the Moon and later create other impacts—even on Earth. Today, both sides of the Moon are saturated with smaller craters. Were the large lunar impactors launched from Earth?

Even conventional theorists admit that whatever caused the craters and the lava appears to have taken place in a relatively concentrated window of time in the past. In other words, uniformitarian processes (processes that are going on now, acting over very long periods of time) do not satisfactorily explain the features of the lunar surface. Some unusual event must have caused them.

We might point out as an aside that if this is true of the features on the moon, it appears to be even more true for the features of the earth. The events described in Dr. Brown's theory would provide a very good explanation for these puzzling aspects of the lunar surface.

Great time of year to erect a menhir

Now is a great time to begin tracking the sun's path where you live, if you haven't done so already. You can erect a gnomon or a menhir in a part of your property where the shadows from other objects (such as trees, hedges, fences, or your house) will not interfere with its shadow during the day.

A gnomon is the general term for the central "fin" or obelisk in a sundial, designed to cast a shadow which has a definite point that can be tracked across the ground or the sundial surface. The word is derived from the Greek word "to know" and is related to the word "gnosis."

A menhir is a more specific term for the unhewn standing stones found throughout the world (and especially in western Europe and the British Isles), some of them of great size. The word is derived from French by way of Breton, a language spoken in Brittany and related to Brythonic (a Celtic language). It is composed of two words, men meaning stone and hir meaning long.

The fact that most menhirs found around the world are unhewn or undressed stone is another clue in the discussion found in the post "Who were the ancient Celts and Druids?" in which allegations of a connection between the ancient Hebrews and Phoenicians and the ancient Celts are examined. The Hebrew Scriptures stipulate in Exodus 20:25 "And if thou shalt make me an altar of stone, thou shalt not build it of hewn stone: for if thou lift up thy tool upon it, thou hast polluted it." We also find in Genesis 28:18 "And Jacob rose up early in the morning, and took the stone that he had put for his pillows, and set it up for a pillar, and poured oil upon the top of it."

In any event, if you set up a gnomon or a menhir on your property (or in some open space near your home), you can observe the changing shadows cast by the sun throughout the year. This phenomenon is caused by the tilt of the earth's axis, which causes the path taken by the sun (the "ecliptic") to change its angle as the earth goes around the sun (for this reason the tilt of the earth's axis is also known as "the obliquity of the ecliptic").

This tilt of the earth's axis causes the sun to rise and set in the northern hemisphere from a point furthest north at the summer solstice (where earth is now), which makes sense if you think of a globe with an axial tilt and its north pole pointed most directly towards the sun. During the opposite solstice, when the earth has moved around its path such that its north pole is pointed most directly away from the sun, the sun's rising and setting will be furthest south in the northern hemisphere.

This phenomenon is depicted in the rough sketch above. The earth's surface (with a menhir or gnomon) is drawn as a rectangle, with the east edge and west edge labeled. The unlabeled north edge is of course the one to the left and the unlabeled south edge the one to the right. Along the east edge, where the sun rises each morning, the rising points of the summer solstice, winter solstice, and both equinoxes are marked with the letters SS (for summer solstice), E (for the point at which the sun rises on both equinoxes), and WS (for winter solstice).

Note that the ecliptic path traveled by the sun looks like a "tilted rainbow" or arch in this diagram. The arch is more tilted at winter solstice (that is, its apex is closer to the horizon) than at summer solstice (when its apex is further from the horizon). This also makes sense if you imagine again the globe with an axial tilt going around the sun.

The differences in the tilt of the sun's path will create a different shadow length throughout the year. If you think about it for a moment, you will realize that the sun traveling along the more upright arc traveled by the sun at summer solstice will cast a shadow that is much closer to the gnomon or menhir than will the sun when it is traveling along the more tilted arc of winter solstice, which will cast a much longer shadow.

The path of the shadow will actually make a tight arc around the gnomon or menhir on summer solstice, which will gradually uncurl into a straight line at the equinoxes, and then begin to curve outward as it begins to approach winter solstice. The three lines approximating shadow paths made on the solstices and the equinox are sketched into the drawing above*.

This pattern was discussed previously in the post entitled "What are cross-quarter days?" and again in greater detail in the post on "The Solar Double Spiral," which included a link to an excellent site by artist Charles Ross illustrating this principle (to see the animation of the shadow field, follow the link and then click the link for "Solar Pyramid and Shadow Field" and then click the link for "Shadow Field"). That post also explains how this curling and uncurling shadow pattern is related to the ancient double spiral that represented the sun's path from one solstice to the other throughout the year.

So, if you don't have a sundial or menhir, today is a great day to set one up and begin tracking the shadows through the year. It takes only a small bit of commitment to set up a good one (certainly much less commitment than it takes to get a solar double spiral tattooed across the bridge of your nose).

* Note that this pattern is that which is found in between the tropics and the arctic or antarctic circles in either hemisphere. North and south of the arctic and antarctic circles, respectively, the sun will not rise at all during the winter, and will not set during the summer. From the equator to the lines of the tropics north and south of the equator, the sun will actually cast a shadow on either side of the gnomon or menhir depending upon the time of year. This is an important piece of information to know if you are ever stranded on a desert island like Robinson Crusoe or Tom Hanks: observation of the shadow of a gnomon or menhir can help you determine north and south, and whether you are within the two tropics or outside of them.

Who were the ancient Celts and Druids?

The June solstice is here (summer solstice in the northern hemisphere), and ancient solar monuments such as Stonehenge are the site of all kinds of solstitial revelry, as is increasingly common in recent years.

While these celebrations are often associated with neo-paganism and other forms of nature-worship, it is appropriate to ask if the builders themselves may have intended them to represent something quite different. In particular, it is perhaps worthwhile to look at some alternative theories regarding the ancient Druids and Celts which were put forward in previous centuries, which are largely ignored or ridiculed today.

We venture into this territory only very tentatively and with sensitivity for the fact that the subject is a very living and personal issue to many individuals around the world today. In fact, members of the order of Druids may still be said to exist, and so any discussion of the subject must maintain respect for this fact.

While some may vigorously disagree with their conclusions, it is clear that many scholars in the seventeenth, eighteenth and nineteenth centuries believed that the Druids, and the Celts in general, appeared to have strong connections to the ancient Hebrews and Phoenicians, and may well have shared their religious beliefs to some extent which is difficult to determine today.

To begin with, many ancient historians including Josephus, Posidonius, and the more recent 12th-century Byzantine scholar John Zonaras believed that the people the Greeks called the Celtae and the Romans most often the Gauls were descended from Gomer the son of Japhet the son of Noah in Genesis, and that the names Comerian, Kumero, Kumeri, Cymero, Cimmerian, Cimri, Cymbri, Cambria, and other ancient names for these people were all derivations of the name Gomer. The traditional name for Wales is Cymru ("the land of the Cymry").

Eustathius of Antioch, who was a participant in the Council of Nicaea in AD 325, wrote that "Gamer [as the name Gomer was written in the Septuagint] was the founder of the Gamerians, whom we now call Galatians or Gauls" (cited in Godfrey Higgins [1772 - 1833], Celtic Druids [1829], page 55). St. Jerome voiced a similar opinion.

Ancient Phoenician and Hebrew culture shared many similar aspects, including language and style of writing (from right to left and without vowels in the earliest forms), and eighteenth-century scholar Charles Vallancey (1721 - 1812) argued that "the Celtic, Punic, Phoenician and Hebrew languages" share "the strongest affinity (nay a perfect identity in very many words)" (in An Essay on the Antiquity of the Irish Language, page 21). He points out that the ancient Irish assumed to themselves "the name of Feni or Fenicians, which they have retained through all ages," and gave the name Bearla Feni ("the Phoenician tongue") to one of their languages (19).

Vallancey also lists numerous words from ancient Hebrew and Phoenician that correspond to Irish words, such as gan and gan-gamel (Hebrew and Phoenician words for a hovel or small enclosure) and Irish gan, gan-ail, and gan-gamuil for the same concept, or the ancient Phoenician term shac for a king or ruler, corresponding to Irish seadh for the same concept (17). He alleges that the ancient Phoenician word suren and Hebrew sar, for next in power to the king, became Irish saor and saoi, and is related to the modern word "sir."

In speaking of the ancient Druidic religion, Vallancey maintains that it was preserved in its purest form in the British Isles (probably because Roman conquest ignored Ireland)(55). He declares that "The pagan Irish never admitted the modern Deities of the Greeks and Romans into their worship; even to the days of St. Patrick their worship was pure Assyrian, and consisted of the heavenly host alone, as I have described elsewhere" (65). He notes that they did not make idols or representations of the deity (and that if they had it would have certainly attracted the attention of St. Patrick) and that there is ample evidence that they maintained a Sabbath on the seventh day, a system of tithes, and used the term Beith-Al to refer to the "House of God" (55-56, 64). Other historians have noted that the Druids, like the Levitical priests of the ancient Hebrews, were exempted from military service.

Julius Caesar noted that the Druids were extremely learned, declaring in Book IV of the Gallic Wars that:

They have, also, much knowledge of the stars and their motion. They hold long discussions about heavenly bodies and their movements, the size of the universe and the earth, the physical constitutions of the world and the powers and properties of the gods, and they instruct the young men in all these subjects.

Is it possible that these very learned students of nature, the heavens, and the movements of the celestial bodies, who shared so many linguistic and cultural affiliations with both the ancient Hebrews and Phoenicians, whom Vallancey alleges "believed the Deity to be infinite and omnipresent, and thought it ridiculous to imagine that he whom the Heaven of Heavens cannot contain, should be circumscribed within the narrow limits of a roof" (55-56) were practicing some form of the Hebrew religion, and that the deities and sun and moon worship attributed to them is related to the encoding of celestial motions within myths and legends as discussed in this previous post on "God and the gods"? That there was a long-running tension between those who began to worship the heavenly bodies themselves and those who worshiped the one who created and set in motion those heavenly bodies is quite clear from the Hebrew Scriptures.

There are other pieces of evidence that historians of previous centuries have noted, such as the possibility that the Goidels or Goidelic Celts took their name from the Hebrew tribe of Gad, or that the phrase Tuatha de Danann may be related to the Hebrew tribe of Dan.

This subject is taken up in the final chapter of the Mathisen Corollary book as well.

In closing this brief foray into a very deep and complicated subject, it is important to stress that these clues and the interpretations offered for them by scholars of previous centuries are just that: scattered clues and the analyses of those clues offered by admittedly imperfect human beings, each of them with various gaps, biases, and possibly agendas of their own. It is probably important not to become too dogmatic on this subject, since very little is really known for certain about the most ancient origins of the Druids and Celts of twenty-three or even twenty-eight centuries ago. These clues are important to examine and not to simply dismiss, and it is probably best to adopt the attitude that those who look into these matters should be open to looking at the strengths and weaknesses of all the possible explanations, and ways in which those explanations fit or do not fit the various pieces of evidence that remain to us today.

The Hobbit and Summer Solstice

The earth is rapidly approaching the point of June solstice -- summer solstice for the Northern Hemisphere, the point at which the north pole points most directly at the sun, which will take place on June 21 shortly after 10 am California time.

Of course, this is a very important point in the annual cycle of the sun, and was duly marked and encoded in various ways by ancient civilizations. Readers are encouraged to revisit the previous post entitled "The Solar Double Spiral" for a discussion of one important representation of the sun's annual path in ancient art.

It is very likely that this particular symbol is represented by the double Uraeus found on the mask of Tutankhamun, for example. While conventional historians often declare that the Egyptian Uraeus featuring both an asp and a vulture represents political symbolism -- the uniting of the earthly geographic realms of Upper and Lower Egypt -- the authors of Hamlet's Mill argue that celestial imagery is "continuously mislabeled" in political terms, and that the mislabeling of celestial imagery as the Uniting of Upper and Lower Egypt is one of the most common examples of this confusion (see for example pages 162 and 163).

The serpentine path of the sun throughout the year discussed in the post on the solar double spiral also suggests the form of a dragon, and likely also relates to the Norse myth of a serpent that encircles the entire earth (the Midgard Serpent). In the works of J.R.R. Tolkien (which take place in "Middle Earth," an English translation of the Norse word "Midgard"), the concept of an encircling "ring" is of course very prominent, as are dragons (especially in The Hobbit). William Lasseter has written a very insightful discussion of some of the themes in The Hobbit (including the hospitality theme, which is central to Beowulf, which Tolkien analyzed extensively in his professional life as a literary and linguistic scholar), which can be found on his blog ScribbleBibble here. He argues that Tolkien's "dragon-imagery embodies the action of self-reflection that emerges in serious intellectual inquiry" -- that Bilbo's confrontation with Smaug is in many ways a confrontation with himself (as is the encounter with Gollum).

Interestingly, the summer solstice plays a role in the entrance into this encounter with the dragon in The Hobbit. At the beginning of the book, Gandalf reveals a map which indicates the existence of "a closed door which has been made to look exactly like the side of the Mountain" (26).

Then, in Rivendell, where the party stays until the night of midsummer (summer solstice and the period of three days surrounding the solstice), Elrond discovers "moon-letters" which give the clue to opening this mysterious door: "Stand by the grey stone when the thrush knocks, and the setting sun with the last light of Durin's Day will shine upon the key-hole" (52). Elrond is able to see this message only because he looked for them on precisely the right day, as he explains:

"Moon-letters are rune-letters, but you cannot see them," said Elrond, "not when you look straight at them. They can only be seen when the moon shines behind them, and what is more, with the more cunning sort it must be a moon of the same shape and season as the day when they were written. The dwarves invented them and wrote them with silver pens, as your friends could tell you. These must have been written on a midsummer's eve in a crescent moon, a long while ago." 52.

The next morning, midsummer's morning, the party sets off from Rivendell -- a place of safety and song and assistance, after which there is the wild and a series of increasingly dangerous incidents leading up to the encounter with the dragon. Thus, it is appropriate that Tolkien has his party leave there at the summer solstice, after which the year begins to decline towards winter, and the days grow shorter and shorter.

Tolkien's work, which is familiar to many modern readers, is an example of the way in which celestial imagery can be encoded in memorable stories. To say that there are celestial themes working alongside the other themes in a piece of literature does not take anything away from the other themes of human existence which are usually present as well (such as the theme of self-confrontation and identity which Bilbo must wrestle with). On the contrary, they add to it. This appears to be what is going on in ancient myth as well (see for example the discussion in this previous post).

As summer solstice approaches, it is appropriate to consider the events in The Hobbit as an accessible modern window into the way that ancient myth encodes truths about celestial events, and is thus linked not only to literature but also to science. Considering the role of the summer solstice in The Hobbit may also reveal a hidden door for us to enter into our own "action of self-reflection" or confrontation with ourselves, as it does for Bilbo.

References to page-numbers in The Hobbit are from the 1978 hardbound Houghton Mifflin edition, reprinted in 1998.

The Mathisen Corollary blog now available for Kindle subscription

The Mathisen Corollary blog has recently been made available for subscription on Kindle. Now readers who keep up with their favorite news and blogs via their Kindle device can have the Mathisen Corollary blog delivered automatically to their Kindle whenever a new post is published. The service costs $1.99 per month, and comes with a fourteen-day trial period.

Of course, you can also read the Mathisen Corollary blog for no charge right here on the web, and subscribe to it via RSS feed in a web "reader" or subscribe to receive email notification whenever a new post is published, using the links in the right-hand column of this page.

However, for those readers who prefer to use their Kindle to keep up with news and other web content, perhaps because they are constantly traveling by airplane or otherwise on-the-go all the time, this option is now available.

Vindication for Thor Heyerdahl

Here is a link to a recent story in the Telegraph UK entitled "Kon-Tiki explorer was partly right -- Polynesians had South American roots." It reports that new genetic research by a University of Oslo professor has discovered genes in blood samples taken from Easter Islanders in 1971 and 2008 that were previously only found in indigenous American populations.

Norwegian explorer and author Thor Heyerdahl (1914 - 2002) put forward the thesis that the original settlement of the Pacific islands of Polynesia most likely came from the east (North and South America) than from the west (Asia and Malaysia), providing extensive evidence to back up his argument which filled an 821-page book, and famously venturing out himself across the Pacific in the Kon-Tiki raft to prove that the currents from South America supported his theory.

These stories about the genetic research concerning Easter Island first began to surface in some news outlets around June 6 and June 7, only a week after this blog published a post entitled "A Memorial Day Meditation on the mystery of Easter Island" on May 31, in which we argued for Heyerdahl's theory.

We noted then that it continues to be fashionable to ridicule Heyerdahl's theory and cited an article by author Jared Diamond who declared that Heyerdahl "brushed aside overwhelming evidence that the Easter Islanders were typical Polynesians derived from Asia rather than the Americas and that their culture (including their statues) grew out of Polynesian culture."

Here is a link to an article published in the San Francisco Chronicle back in April (just over a month before this new genetic evidence was released) about Easter Island which mentions Thor Heyerdahl and Easter Island, calling him the "author of a few wildly popular (and even more wildly speculative) books about the place." Perhaps this article's author, Spud Hilton of the Chronicle, and Jared Diamond will soon be publishing apologies for their dismissive words about Heyerdahl.

Far from "brushing aside overwhelming evidence" or floating "wildly speculative" theories, Heyerdahl amassed overwhelming evidence in support of his argument, the vast bulk of which is never directly addressed by his critics. Now, modern science appears to have added new genetic evidence to Heyerdahl's pile of data about the origins of the Polynesian cultures of the Pacific ocean.

Heyerdahl noted that the prevailing currents (see map above) support migration from the Americas rather than from the west. In his 1953 work American Indians in the Pacific: The Theory behind the Kon-Tiki Expedition he noted that the Polynesians themselves in their oral history and legends always identified their ancestors came from the east to the west, and that the first land settled by their ancestors was a group of islands known as Hawaiki or Hawai'i. Heyerdahl notes that these traditions are held "quite independently on widely separated Polynesian islands" and also notes that the first islands that would be encountered by mariners sailing from the direction of the Americas would be Hawai'i and Easter Island (41).

While opponents of his theory argue that Hawaiki must refer to Java in Indonesia and that the Polynesians were simply mixed up about the direction of their ancient origins, Heyerdahl points out numerous problems with this theory, beginning with the direction of the prevailing winds and currents. He notes that the Polynesians were outstanding mariners, and could and did complete successful voyages against the wind and the currents over great distances, but argues that the first men to reach the scattered islands of the Pacific were not necessarily as skilled as their descendents later became. Of those first settlers of the vast Pacific, he says:

If they had come from the east, from America, they could have reached Polynesia even against their own will and intention, merely by clinging to any buoyant coastal craft that was driven to sea and carried west by the prevailing winds and currents. But, if they had come from the west, from Asia, they could have reached Polynesia only if they were already, before departure, expert mariners with a keen insight into navigation and highly developed craft with rigging capable of forcing an eastward journey against the prevailing wind. 41.

Those who argue that the ancestors of the Polynesians came from the direction of Asia and Malaysia or Indonesia must also explain where such a group came from, who were simultaneously expert mariners but whose descendents in Polynesia did not use technologies that were present in Indonesia and Melanesia from very ancient times, technologies such as the loom for weaving (Polynesians made bark cloth instead of woven cloth, while the loom was well known in Asia, Indonesia and Malaysia), iron (Captain Cook noted that the islanders he encountered appeared totally unaware of the value of the iron ore he saw deposited in streams when he first reached their islands), alcohol, shell currency, kite fishing techniques, and numerous other developments present in Indonesia and Malaysia from a very early period.

On the other hand, the Polynesian level of seafaring ability was far beyond anything displayed by any of the cultures or locations in Asia, Indonesia, or Malaysia where conventional theorists believe that they originated.

Again, those who hold the conventional theory must argue that these impressive seafaring people were so confused about direction that they got east and west reversed in their own legends, and thought their forefathers came from the east when they actually came from the west, and that when they said Hawaiki was to the east they were mistakenly referring to Java, which was to the west. And they maintain this despite the widespread oral traditions among the islanders that the early generations of Polynesian seafarers made numerous return voyages back to Hawaiki. He notes that:

During the first generations after the dispersal of the Maori-Polynesian people from Hawaiki, courageous mariners, from all the major islands, made return voyages to this first discovered island, to visit their relatives and the earliest Pacific abode of their sacred ancestors. A lively contact existed between the central Polynesian islands and Hawaiki, and even between New Zealand and Hawaiki, until this great maritime activity gradually ceased. The historical traditions of the New Zealand Maori are especially rich in detailed accounts of the arrival of their ancestors from Hawaiki and subsequent return voyages to the same islands. 41.

Heyerdahl also cites an ancient Maori chant, documented by the prolific researcher of Maori culture Dr. Peter H. Buck (born 1880, whose Maori name was Te Rangihiroa, and who achieved the rank of Major and earned the combat valor award of the DSO in World War I, where he served in Gallipoli and in France), in 1938. This traditional Maori chant concerned the voyage back to Hawaiki, and clearly indicates that that homeland was to the east, in the direction of the rising sun:

Now do I direct the bow of my canoe
To the opening whence arises the sun god,
Tami-nui-te-ra, Great-son-of-the-sun.
Let me not deviate from the course
But sail direct to the Homeland. Cited in Heyerdahl 58-59.

Are we to understand that the Maoris sailed to Java to visit Hawaiki but did not realize that it was in the direction of the setting sun instead of the rising sun? And yet this is the position that critics must maintain who argue that Hawaiki was really in Indonesia. It is also very strange that if numerous return voyages were made to Indonesia, no record exists in Indonesia of such contact, and the Polynesians who went there did not pick up the techniques for making alcohol, iron, woven fabric, or the others mentioned above from the people that they found there when they returned to their supposed Asian homeland. He also notes that there is no trace of influence of Buddhism or Hinduism in Polynesian culture, in spite of the very strong cultural influence of both in Indonesia and Asia stretching back to centuries BC (43).

In addition to all this evidence against the idea that the people of Polynesia came originally from the west and Asia to the east, Heyerdahl also presents voluminous evidence which argues for connections with peoples of North and South America, including the accomplished builders of the spectacular pyramids and statues of Peru, and that the stone sculptures of Easter Island and the megalithic "arch" and pyramids of Tonga resemble those of Peru, Bolivia, and elsewhere in the Americas more than anything from Asia.

He also presents startling similarities between Polynesian culture and many aspects of the culture of the Northwest Indians (Native Americans) such as the Kwakiutl, the Nootka and the Haida. He was not the first to note these similarities -- many early European explorers who visited Polynesia and then the Northwest (including Captain Cook) were struck by these amazing similarities, and remarked upon them in their logs and records. They especially noted the similarities to aspects of the Maori culture, many of which Heyerdahl lists and which are too numerous to include in detail here.

One of the most obvious similarities was the similarity between the magnificent oceangoing canoes of the Northwest Indians and those of the Polynesians. Below is a photograph from 1910 of an ocean canoe of the Kwakiutl (which apparently is an Anglicized version of the true name of this people, which is Kwakwaka'wakw).




















These canoes were extremely seaworthy, capable of slicing their way over the mammoth ocean swells of the Pacific, and were the defining cultural artifact of those Northwest tribes, as described by an officer of the US Navy, A.P. Niblack (who achieved the rank of Admiral but made contact with the tribes of the Northwest as a young ensign) who in 1888 wrote:

The canoe is to the Northwest coast what the camel is to the desert. It is to the Indian of this region what the horse is to the Arab. It is the apple of his eye and the object of his solicitous attention and affection. It reaches its highest development in the world among the Haida of Queen Charlotte Islands. Cited in Heyerdahl 95.

Admiral Niblack was not the only observer to rate these canoes the finest ocean canoes in the world; American geologist and anthropologist William Henry Holmes (1846 - 1933) said of them, "These dugout canoes are often of great size, beauty, and seaworthiness, and are probably the world's highest achievement in this direction," and New Zealand professor and scholar John Macmillan Brown (1846 - 1935) said of the Northwest tribes, "Their canoes are large and roomy, capable of accommodating scores of men; they are made with great skill and artistic talent; they are of all primitive craft the most fitted for meeting the conditions of oceanic voyaging, and have a great resemblance to the Maori war canoe . . ." (cited in Heyerdahl 95).

The remarkable similarity to the wakas, or war canoes of the Maori, can be seen by comparing the photograph above to the beautiful waka in the photograph below:




















Heyerdahl's book provides evidence of many further similarities beyond their shape and appearance (even though the similarities in shape and appearance, and their seaworthiness, are striking enough by themselves). Note also that the prevailing currents indicated on the map at the top of this post are quite favorable for a voyage from the islands of the Northwest tribes to Hawaii and the Pacific islands of Polynesia.

Finally, Heyerdahl offers what may be the most significant and amazing evidence that is rarely mentioned anywhere today, and that is the tradition of a culture hero who came among the Northwest tribes on foot, performing wonderful works and doing supernatural feats, and then went away over the ocean to be seen no more. An early visitor to the Kwakiutl, G. M. Dawson, who in 1888 published "Notes and Observations on the Kwakiool People of the Northern Part of Vancouver Island and Adjacent Coasts" (which contained a dictionary of about seven hundred Kwakiutl words, and which can be read in a sometimes very poor transcript from a microfiche online here) said, "The name of this hero, like other words in the language, is somewhat changed in the various dialects. After hearing it pronounced by a number of individuals in the northern part of Vancouver Island and on the west coast, I adopted 'Kan-e-a-ke-luh' as the most correct rendering" (Heyerdahl 148). Dawson records:

No one knows his origin or whence he came. He never travelled in a canoe, but always walked. He is regarded as a diety and as the creator.

and also:

At last Kan-e-a-ke-luh left Cape Scott finally, going very far away and disappearing altogher from mortal ken, so that the people supposed the sun to represent him. 148-149.

Heyerdahl notes the well-attested fact that a very similar legendary culture hero in Hawaii was named Kane, and in New Zealand among the Maori he was known as Tane (and that the Hawaiian letter "K" is consistently rendered in Maori by the letter "T")(149).

Even more startling is the fact that these legends are almost identical to the now-famous legends of a culture hero who moved among the ancestors of the ancient high civilizations of Central and South America, the Maya, the Inca, and the Aztecs, and that he was known as Viracocha but also as Conn or Kon-Tiki (and sometimes as Kon-Tiki Viracocha). Graham Hancock chronicles this legend in great detail in Fingerprints of the Gods, but Heyerdahl does as well in American Indians in the Pacific.

All of this evidence is perhaps even more conclusive than the recent genetic tests announced by the Telegraph yesterday. Nevertheless, even after this new vindication of Heyerdahl's thesis, the articles on the subject say that he was only partly right -- or even (in the less charitable description of the Norwegian professor who conducted the DNA tests themselves, cited at the end of the Telegraph article) that "Heyerdahl was wrong but not completely." The conventional theory that the Polynesians came from Asia appears to be very difficult to shake, and this new evidence is being seen as supporting a very small and unimportant contribution from the Americas.

However, as noted above, Heyerdahl presented far more evidence than he is given credit for -- evidence that should be sufficient to cause us to reconsider the assumptions of conventional history, and to believe that there may well have been contact across the oceans far earlier than conventional theorists would like to admit.

This new evidence should provide some vindication for the work of Thor Heyerdahl, although if his other evidence does not cause modern researchers to reconsider their opinion of his work and his theory, we should probably not be surprised if the gene tests do not either.

Stunning video and the significance of the Milky Way and Scorpion

Here is a link to an amazing new video by Daniel Lowe entitled "Night Motion Timelapse: Outer Banks," showing the skies from North Carolina's Outer Banks in the vicinity of Cape Hatteras.

The video contains stunning images of the Milky Way, and to the right of it the constellation of the Scorpion (Scorpio or Scorpius) with the red star Antares at its heart. If you are unfamiliar with the Scorpion, it is a beautiful and important constellation, most prominent during the summer (it is opposite to Orion and each is absent from the sky when the other is present due to the process described in this post).

The constellation can be traced out by looking to the right of the Milky Way in the video, facing upwards from the horizon, its claws forming an arc perpendicular to the line of its body (somewhat like the capital-letter "T") above the red Antares, its long serpentine body stretching out below Antares and curling to a stinger below (the direction of the stinger's curve is like a capital-letter "J").

Sagittarius the Archer guards the other side of this portion of the Milky Way (stationed on the left side of the milky band, just as the Scorpion is stationed on the right). It is a little more difficult to trace out, but is also a spectacular constellation and once recognized quite easy to see -- check out H.A. Rey's superlative books on finding the constellations, linked in this previous post.

The Milky Way and the constellation Scorpio played a very important role in the ancient mythology encoding the ancients' understanding of precession. Giorgio de Santillana and Hertha von Dechend devote an entire chapter to the Milky Way in Hamlet's Mill. They tell us that the Milky way:

was not only the most spectacular band of heaven, it was also a reference point from which the Precession could be imagined to have taken its start. This would have been when the vernal equinoctial sun left its position in Gemini in the Milky Way. When it was realized the sun had been there once, the idea occurred that the Milky Way might mark the abandoned track of the sun -- a burnt-out area, as it were, a scar in heaven. 245.

The reference to the equinoctial sun once rising in Gemini in the passage above refers to the Age prior to the Age of Taurus (the shifting Ages are mentioned in this previous post, and are caused by the celestial mechanics of precession, discussed in the Orion post and in the Red Ice Radio interview, where it is described in a way that should be fairly understandable).

De Santillana and von Dechend go on to explain that this image of the Milky Way as an abandoned road gave rise to a formula "by which the Milky Way became the way of the spirits of the dead, a road abandoned by the living" (246). We have seen that myths encoding knowledge of the celestial realm often describe it as the landscape of "the other world" or the "underworld" (see this post on Socrates' description of the hereafter just before his death in Plato's Phaedo, and the assertion that the rivers of the underworld such as Acheron and Styx actually relate to the windings of the planets). There are many legends around the world in which a scorpion figure (usually a scorpion-goddess) receives the souls of the dead -- Hamlet's Mill details several such legends on page 295: from Egypt (the scorpion goddess Selket), the ancient Hurrians (the scorpion goddess Ishara), and the anceint Mayans (the "Old Goddess with a scorpion's tail," who is also depicted in the Maya codex Tro-Cortesianus).

The idea that the Milky Way is the burned-out path of a "former sun" (a former sun meaning a sun that once rose equinoctially there but has since moved on due to precession) is also encoded in the critically important legend of Phaethon, the son of Helios who begged to drive his father's sun-chariot and lost control, causing disasters on earth and who was finally thrown down from heaven by Zeus in order to save the sun and the world. Ancient myths said that the ashes of his reckless path remain as the Milky Way. Phaethon is also an extremely important figure, and receives a chapter of his own in Hamlet's Mill.

Enjoy the gorgeous time-lapse video above from Daniel Lowe of Daniel Dragon Films. Postcards and still images from this and other videos by the artist are available via the links below.

Night Motion Timelapse: Outer Banks from Daniel Dragon Films on Vimeo.