A connection between ancient Egypt and Buddhist monasticism?

Plutarch, the well-known first century Roman historian, essayist, Platonist, and priest of Apollo at Delphi, wrote an extremely important description of the ancient Egyptian myths surrounding Isis and Osiris in his Moralia (a collection of various essays written throughout his life).

At the beginning of that section (which can be read online in a 1936 translation here), Plutarch takes up the question of why the Egyptian priests of the goddess Isis shave their bodies and wear only linen garments (as opposed to garments of wool, for example).

His explanation is quite illuminating:

It is true that most people are unaware of this very ordinary and minor matter: the reason why the priests remove their hair and wear linen garments. Some persons do not care at all to have any knowledge about such things, while others say that the priests, because they revere the sheep, abstain from using its wool, as well as its flesh; and that they shave their heads as a sign of mourning, and that they wear their linen garments because of the colour which the flax displays when in bloom, and which is like to the heavenly azure which enfolds the universe. But for all this there is only one true reason, which is to be found in the words of Plato: "for the Impure to touch the Pure is contrary to divine ordinance." No surplus left over from food and no excrementitious matter is pure and clean; and it is from forms of surplus that wool, fur, hair, and nails originate and grow. So it would be ridiculous that these persons in their holy living should remove their own hair by shaving and making their bodies smooth all over, and then should put on and wear the hair of domestic animals.

This is interesting in its own right, but also because Buddhist monks to this day shave their heads, and in some cases their eyebrows also. Is it possible that there is some connection, either by virtue of the spread of ancient Egyptian knowledge to ancient China, or (even more likely) the existence of a common ancestral civilization which imparted its knowledge to both ancient China and ancient Egypt?

On the surface, this possibility might seem rather remote. After all, it is certainly possible that the hair-removing habits of Buddhist monks in many parts of Asia (including Tibet) and those of the ancient devotees of Isis arose independently of one another and in complete cultural isolation. However, there are some clues which make this apparently far-fetched idea more plausible.

























First, there is a passage from Plutarch just previous to the passage cited above, in which Plutarch cites what were apparently ancient phrases for the devotees of Isis: "bearers of the sacred vessels" and "wearers of the sacred robes." These are the only two titles cited, and interestingly enough they reference two distinguishing marks of many ascetic Buddhist orders that exist to this day.

In fact, robes and an offering bowl are among the only things many Buddhist monks may own. There is a quotation attributed to Buddha which states, "Just as a bird takes its wings with it wherever it flies, so the monk takes his robes and bowl with him wherever he goes." The fact that these two items are so prominently associated with Buddhist monks and that they are the two titles mentioned by Plutarch to refer to the devotees of Isis appears to be significant (especially when we learn that the robes of many Buddhist monks are often of linen -- see this internet reference among others available).

Below is a surviving Roman statue of a priestess of Isis with shorn head, robes, and a bronze jug or situla.


























But this detail, while quite significant, is not the only evidence suggesting some ancient cultural connection between the ancient Egyptians and ancient China (and probably ancient India as well). The monastic orders of China are also well-known for the development of internal qualities in conjunction with physical activity -- most notably, the martial arts, but really with many other activities in which meditation or contemplation is accompanied by or conjoined to distinctive physical movement.

This combination is attributed in legend to the famous master Bodhidharma, who came to the Shaolin Temple in China from India in the sixth century AD and found that the monks could not meditate for protracted periods of time without falling asleep, and famously instituted a series of movements and poses to strengthen their endurance and their meditative powers. However, as John Anthony West has shown in his indispensable 1979 text Serpent in the Sky, there appears to be at least the possibility of a much more ancient Egyptian connection here as well.

On page 93 of that book, Mr. West includes a picture of an ancient Egyptian wall frieze from before 2150 BC showing men in various one-legged stances and poses. He says in his discussion, "These Old Kingdom ritual dance movements are curiously similar to those practiced today in certain groups devoted to 'inner development.'" The reader can visit the link at the beginning of this paragraph and scroll down to see the image. This does not mean that the ancient Egyptians developed actual "martial arts" as we think of them today (although it is certainly possible) but rather that they may have practiced some form of meditation with motion, which may have either influenced the development in China or (more likely perhaps) come from the same common ancient advanced civilization that imparted this knowledge to both Egypt and China.

Another clue, and one we have seen before on a world-wide scale, is the significant similarities in the metaphors selected for the celestial machinery of the heavens in both civilizations. Giorgio de Santillana and Hertha von Dechend spend much time in their master work Hamlet's Mill examining world-wide evidence that an advanced and unknown ancient civilization -- anterior to ancient Egypt -- bequeathed sophisticated astronomical understanding to later millennia in the form of myths which employ very similar imagery from one culture to another (even cultures which supposedly had no contact with one another).

There are clearly similarities in imagery which suggest cultural diffusion of some sort operating between ancient Egypt and ancient China. For example, the illustration below indicates that both cultures used bow-and-arrow symbology to refer to certain aspects of one part of the celestial realm, and de Santillana and von Dechend discuss others in their text.




















Finally, there is the very telling evidence of the precessional numbers discussed by many authors (including the authors of Hamlet's Mill) and relating to a very subtle astronomical phenomenon which conventional historians don't believe was understood by anyone until long after the mightiest era of ancient Egyptian civilization. We have seen previously that the monastic orders of China appear to have preserved these important astronomical numbers, including the number 108, which features prominently in many martial arts including Tai Chi and in the legendary trials established for monks in the Shaolin Temple as well. This evidence from the martial arts is discussed in more detail in the Mathisen Corollary book itself.

That the ancient Egyptians also preserved these same precessional numbers, including the important number 72 (clearly related to 108, which is 150% of 72) and 432 (which is four times 108). For evidence that the precessional number 432 is encoded in the Great Pyramid of Giza, see this previous post.

The fact that these prominent precessional numbers are also embedded in the martial arts so strongly associated with the monastic Buddhist tradition in China and other nearby lands suggests that the connection proposed at the beginning of this essay is not a mere fanciful speculation. It is a subject which deserves much more investigation.

The Kensington Runestone is back in the news

The long-debated Kensington Runestone is back in the news, with this recent post from the excellent blog of Swedish archaeologist Dr. Martin Rundkvist entitled "Kensington Runestone Faker's Signature Found." Dr. Rundkvist's blog Aardvarchaeology has been mentioned previously in the Mathisen Corollary blog in this previous post discussing the Winged Man of Uppaakra.

The Kensington Runestone is a 200-pound slab allegedly found in a field in rural Minnesota in 1898 by a Swedish immigrant named Olof Ohman. It contains a runic inscription on its face and one side which appear to commemorate a visit by a party of Scandinavian explorers in AD 1362, but which has been repeatedly dismissed by academics as a forgery, probably a hoax by Ohman and some of his associates.

The latest dismissal of the Kensington Runestone's authenticity, reported by Dr. Rundkvist, comes from the analysis done by Professor Mats G. Larsson, who points out that the amount of numbers mentioned in the runic inscription may be a key to a hidden message.

The translated inscription reads (in the 1950 translation of Sivert N. Hagen):

8 Gottlanders and 22 Norwegians on
[this] exploration-journey from
Vinland over the west. We
had camp beside 2 sheds, one
day's journey north from this stone.
We were [out] and fished one day; after
we came home, found 10 men red
with blood and tortured. Hail, Mary!
Deliver from evil!
Have 10 men by the sea to look
after our ships, 14-day journey
from this island. Year, 1362.

According to the analysis of Professor Larsson, if you take the numbers in the inscription above, which are (in order of appearance) 8, 22, 2, 10, 10, 14, and then 13 and 62 from the date 1362, you can find a simple ciphered message planted by Ohman himself, which would then clearly indicate that Ohman was the original author of the text and that it thus dates from the late 1800s and not from the fourteenth century at all (even if the stone itself was really dug up from under a tree as described by Ohman).

To find the message, Professor Larsson first reversed the order of the numbers as they appear (producing the series 62, 13, 14, 10, 10, 2, 22 and 8). He commenced at the first line and counted sixty-two words from the left, to find the word "öh." He then proceeded to the second line and counted thirteen words from the right, proceeding in this way to find an apparent hidden message. Dr. Lundkvist relates:

The inscription has twelve lines. Larsson counts the words from the left on odd-numbered lines and from the right on even-numbered lines, arriving at the following:

62: öh
13: mans (jumping up to the penultimate line when the end of the last line is reached)
14: fan
10: vi
10: ved
2: hade
22: ved (jumping down to the second line when the end of the first line is reached)
8: sten

Dr. Lundkvist explains that this message appears to correspond to the story Olof Ohmans gave about his initial discovery of the stone (that he found it under the roots of a tree he and his son had felled for firewood):

"Öh mans fan vi ved hade ved sten", or in English, "The Öhmans found. We kept/collected firewood at the stone."

So Olof Öhman probably told the truth when he said he found the stone while collecting firewood. And then he carved an inscription on it.

There appear to be a few problems with this method, one of which being the fairly arbitrary moves of reversing the number sequence in the first place, leaving out the two mentions of the number "one" (which, unlike the other numerals in the text, is "spelled out" which may indicate that it is not to be included in the cipher, although including them would obviously change the message), and then the somewhat arbitrary decision to count from the left on the first line and from the right on the second, and so on throughout to find a message.

A bigger problem than the rather arbitrary selections described above (which could be explained as part of the cipher, if Ohman did in fact decide to hide a message in a forged runic inscription) is the fact that the count does not really appear to work out very well. Starting from the very first number, 62, the count does not actually land on the word "öh" in the inscription, but rather on the preceding word, "þeno." A transliteration of the inscription can be found on the Wikipedia page for the Kensington Runestone, in the right-hand column, and the reader can count right there on the page and see. Start from the first word of the first line (which is actually the number 8) and count rightwards sixty-two words.

If the word at the beginning of the second line (which is apparently weathered or worn away, leaving only the letter "o" but which is surmised to have been the word "þeno" which is the dative singular feminine form of the demonstrative pronoun "this") is skipped, then the count of 62 would arrive at "öh," but there is no reason to skip that word even though only one letter remains, and doing so seems to compromise the theory being proposed by Professor Larsson.

From that word, however, counting 13 words to the left does indeed bring the reader to the word "mans" in the text (which is found in the third line from the bottom, not the "penultimate" line).

Proceeding to the third supposed hidden word in the message, a count of 14 from the word "mans" and going to the left does indeed land on the word "fan" (which is found in the seventh line of the text). However, this pattern is not "right-left-right" as described but actually right-left-left.

The count apparently continues to the left for the remainder of the "message." Continuing the count from "fan" to get to "wi" or "vi" one must continue counting to the left again, this time for ten words. The message appears to continue emerging until one reaches the count of 22, which is supposed to land on "ved" and contains the explanatory note "jumping down to the second line when the end of the first line is reached." However, going 22 words in either direction from the word "haþe" at the beginning of the fourth line does not bring one to the word "ved" or close to it (it appears to land on "skip" if one counts to the right and "fan" if one counts to the left).

Further, there is no word "ved" eight words away from the final word "sten" -- in either direction. The final number in the reversed series used by Professor Larsson is 8, but a count of 8 to the word "sten" in the text can only be launched from the number "2" in the fourth line of the inscription or from the word "wi" at the beginning of the eighth line of the inscription.

It is still, of course, possible that the Kensington Runestone is a hoax, but it does not seem that the supposed hidden cipher discovered by Professor Larsson is an open-and-shut case confirming the fact.

On the contrary, there still appear to be some fairly strong arguments for continuing to entertain the possibility that the Kensington Runestone may be an authentic inscription left by fourteenth-century Scandinavian visitors, as discussed in this excellent online document written by anthropological linguist Dr. John D. Bengtson.

That article contains the text of the inscription as well (where readers can count out the ciphers alleged by Professor Larsson) in both runes and modern Roman alphabetical letters, and it also contains some answers to arguments that have been put forth in the past hundred or so years alleging that the runic text contains errors and anachronisms that reveal it to be simply a clumsy forgery. In fact, many of the details that were once argued to be errors have over time turned out to be supported by other early runic texts that are not thought to be forgeries, and reveal a sophistication and level of understanding that is remarkable if the stone was a simple hoax by a Minnesota farmer and some friends, even if those friends were academics.

Dr. Bengtson also cites some historical details preserved among the Native Americans of the Dakota people and told to an anthropologist in 1935 by a 90-year-old Dakota woman, details which appear to support the possibility that Scandinavian explorers visited the Dakota lands centuries ago, staying over one winter before returning the way they had come, never to return.

As we have discussed previously in this blog and in the Mathisen Corollary book itself, individual data points -- whether the Kensington Runestone in Minnesota or the Ruamahanga skull in New Zealand -- do not matter so much by themselves. If the Kensington Runestone did turn out to be a hoax, or the Ruamahanga skull did turn out to have belonged to a misplaced medical skeleton (a ridiculous speculation, but a possibility that most conventional historians appear to accept, rather than admitting the possibility that voyagers could cross the great oceans long before the conventional timeline says they could or did), that is not as important as the fact that there is an enormous pile of other evidence which all appears to point to the fact that the conventional timeline of human history is inadequate.

While an artifact such as the Kensington Runestone might be relatively easy to forge (although the apparent sophistication of some of the runic details indicates that it is not a simple or clumsy forgery, even if it does turn out to be a forgery), other forms of evidence we have examined, such as the hundreds of red-haired and auburn-haired mummies that have been found in Peru, are not so easy to dismiss.

To those who declare that the Kensington Runestone cannot possibly be an authentic memorial of a European visit to Minnesota during the 1300s, we would offer a quotation which Thor Heyerdahl singled out about such matters, by Edgar Smith Craighill Handy (speaking in this case of the continent of origin of the Polynesians): "There is such a variety of possibilities open in the matter of relationships and derivations that my own feeling is that there is only one sure way of being in the wrong, and that is by asserting dogmatically what is not true" (cited in American Indians in the Pacific 8).

This would appear to be an excellent attitude to adopt in this matter. Professor Larsson's creative analysis is commendable, in that it is approaching the Kensington Runestone from a different direction, and trying to find some evidence that others have overlooked. It may be that I am misunderstanding the methodology he used when I find that the numbers he uses do not appear to land on the words of the alleged hidden message. But even if such a message can be teased out of the text, there is ample evidence elsewhere that there have been many other visitors to these shores than we are currently taught in our schools and universities.

The geology of Uluru and Kata Tjuta

One of the most distinctive and well-known geological features in Australia -- and in fact the world -- is the massive sandstone mound known as Ayers Rock, now more often referred to by its name in the Western Desert Language of the Anangu, Uluru. The formation rises to heights of over 1,100 feet, and its perimeter is more than five and half miles.

It is sacred to the Aboriginal people of the land and they request that visitors do not climb it, remove rocks from it, or photograph certain portions of it.

Conventional geologists account for this impressive massif by describing waters flowing off of the granite mountains to the south and depositing eroded arkose sand in a mighty alluvial fan, which later tipped due to the upward-thrusting tectonic forces which they believe created most of the mountains and basins of central Australia, between roughly 450 million and 300 million years ago. A typical description of the alleged forces which shaped Uluru -- and the related formation about twenty miles away known as Kata Tjuta in the langauge of the Anangu, which is similarly sacred -- can be found at this website, along with an amazing aerial photo.

There are some problems with this conventional explanation, however. Chief among the problems would seem to be a clear mechanism to explain why these mighty formations (Uluru and the multiple "heads" of Kata Tjuta) resisted erosion when all around them did not -- in other words, what could explain why these incredible geological features rise up so abruptly from the Amadeus Basin when everything else around them was apparently carried away by erosion over millions of years?

Another problem, as Dr. Walt Brown points out in the section of his online book which discusses these majestic Australian landmarks, is the composition of the sand grains which comprise Uluru. He points out that they are very angular, which is a characteristic not consistent with being washed down by rivers and deposited into alluvial fans, nor with being eroded for thousands of years:

The sand grains comprising Ayers Rock are jagged but, if exposed to rapid currents, would have become rounded. Had the grains been weathered for thousands of years, they would have become clay. Instead, these grain characteristics are consistent with the gentle currents produced by liquefaction and the rapid cementing in the years after the flood.

The angular nature of these coarse-grained arkose sand particles are noted in the Wikipedia entry discussing Uluru as well.

Dr. Brown's hydroplate theory, however, proposes a very different explanation for the formation of both Uluru and Kata Tjuta, and one which is consistent with geological evidence around the world. He explains that the liquefaction which created the layered strata during the global flood would have sorted the sediments into layers. During the compression event in which the massive plates carrying the continents drifted and then ground to a halt due to friction, these layers, still infused with water, would have experienced massive compression and deceleration, much the way a human body strains forward against the seatbelt of a car when it decelerates rapidly.

The sand layers in the strata, Dr. Brown explains, would have had the greatest water content, with up to 40% of their mass being water. This high water content would have made this layer extremely bouyant, and during the violent compression event the lighter liquified sand would have erupted upwards through heavier overlying layers in many places, resulting in sand plumes which can still be seen in many places on earth, such as the one shown in the photograph below from Kodachrome Basin State Park in Utah, in the US.

This tendency for the lighter layer to spill upwards, Dr. Brown explains, can be understood by filling a jar with a lighter liquid and then pouring a heavier liquid on top of it (such as water over oil). If the jar is given a jolt, the lighter liquid "will float up in plumes through the denser fluid."

Dr. Brown calls these remnants of the plumes that penetrated up through overlying layers "liquefaction plumes." In places where conditions were right, the same phenomenon created more massive and bowl-shaped "liquefaction mounds" -- and the enormous geological features discussed above are two of the most prominent examples remaining on the surface of the earth today. He describes the formation of liquefaction mounds in this way:

Some plumes, especially those rising from thick, laterally extensive sand layers, spilled onto the earth’s surface. This spilling-out resembled volcanic action, except water-saturated sand erupted, not lava. Small liquefaction mounds, as they will be called, appear when liquefaction occurs during earthquakes. Hundreds of liquefaction mounds are found in basins in the southwestern United States.

Dr. Brown explains that most of these mounds did not survive for long, but that those which formed in basins which were filled with water that did not drain away (carrying the mounds with them) after the flood would have had the chance to survive. Notably, both Uluru and Kata Tjuta are found in an enormous basin in Central Australia. Dr. Brown explains:

Why basins? During the compression event, liquefied water-sand mixtures in many places erupted like small volcanoes. Being surrounded and permeated by water, they would have quickly slumped into the shape of an upside-down bowl—a liquefaction mound. As the flood waters drained at the end of the flood, most liquefaction mounds were swept away, because they did not have time to be cemented. However, mounds inside postflood lakes (basins) were cemented as each lake cooled and its dissolved silica and calcium carbonate were forced out of solution. If a lake later breached and dumped its water, the larger cemented mounds could resist the torrent of rushing water and retain their shapes.

Note that the liquefaction mounds which remain in the US are also found in basins that were filled with water after the flood, perhaps for centuries, during which time the water cooled, the mounds hardened, and they were able to survive when those lakes breached (many of them are found on the floors of the two enormous post-flood of dissolved silica in the standing post-flood water basins in conjunction with the flakes that breached to form the Grand Canyon). We have discussed previously the concept of dissolved silica in an examination of the formation of petrified wood, which is also found today primarily where water was trapped after the flood, cooled, and the silica precipitated out.

Regarding Uluru or Ayers Rock, and the neighboring formation of the Olgas or Kata Tjuta, Dr. Brown says:

Ayers Rock has characteristics of both a broad liquefaction plume and a liquefaction mound. Its surface layers (bedding) are nearly vertical, and they connect to a horizontal sandstone layer underground. It formed in the Amadeus Basin, whose contained waters covered and protected it while the flood waters drained from the earth. Probably most soft sediments, through which the plume rose, were swept away when the basin’s lake finally discharged. The many large holes in the sides of Ayers Rock show where water drained out. (Almost 20 miles away, this same, deep horizontal sandstone layer also connects to a series of liquefaction eruptions called the Olgas.)

Note that his explanation also takes into account the characteristic holes in the side of true liquefaction mounds, which he refers to as "water vents" because they were formed by internal water escaping (just as water drains from a heavy sponge when it is lifted from a lake, he says). Most conventional explanations (including the web page linked above) attribute these caves to "rainstorm after rainstorm" for "millions of years," but Dr. Brown notes that wind and rain would tend to smooth out holes rather than make them, and that these holes are typically found on the sides of liquefaction mounds, not their tops, where external water would be most expected to create bowls or caves.

Those interested can examine Dr. Brown's discussion of the important phenomenon of liquefaction in greater detail on his website, and compare the strengths of the different explanations for the origin of Uluru and Kata Tjuta for themselves. The theory of rising liquefaction plumes and liquefaction mounds appears to be far more satisfactory than the mechanisms offered by conventional explanations (note as well that Dr. Brown elsewhere discusses a similar phenomenon which produced salt domes and noted that the sedimentary layers next to the upward-rising dome can be prime places where oil is trapped -- the Amadeus Basin where these enormous Australian liquefaction formations are found happens to be a major oil and natural gas producing region of Australia, which tends to support Dr. Brown's explanation).

The very comprehensive nature of Dr. Brown's theory is an extremely powerful and compelling aspect of his overall thesis. The fact that the catastrophic events he describes would explain geological phenomena around the world that are so varied and so far apart lends tremendous force to his analysis. For a list of other features on our planet -- and into the solar system beyond -- which all appear to be better explained by the hydroplate theory than by conventional tectonic or uniformitarian explanations, see the lists of links in this previous post and this previous post, as well as his book itself, which he graciously makes available to anyone for free online.

Important new discoveries about the mysterious Garamantes

Here is a link to a remarkable article in National Geographic today entitled "'Lost' Fortress of Sahara Revealed by Satellite." The subtitle reads: "Well-preserved settlements of mysterious civilization discovered in Libya."

The article explains that ancient mud-and-brick compounds deep in the Libyan desert some 620 miles south of Tripoli were identified by researchers including Dr. David Mattingly, Professor of Roman Archaeology at the University of Leicester, using satellite and aerial photos. An expedition to the area confirmed that the complex was built by the Garamantes, an ancient civilization described by Herodotus and many later authors, but the investigation had to be suspended due to the civil war which eventually ousted Libyan dictator Moammar Qadafi.

Now, the removal of the Qadafi regime may open the door to further exploration of this important site. Professor Mattingly explains that the Garamantes were an extremely sophisticated North African civilization:

We've built up a picture of them as being a very sophisticated, high-level civilization. They've got metallurgy, very high-quality textiles, a writing system ... those sorts of markers that would say this is an organized, state-level society.

This article from Science Daily notes that the sophistication and importance of the Garamantes was obscured by the ancient Roman description of them as barbaric nomads. That story also quotes Professor Mattingly, in this case refuting the ancient description of this nearly-forgotten civilization:

In fact, they were highly civilised, living in large-scale fortified settlements, predominantly as oasis farmers. It was an organised state with towns and villages, a written language and state of the art technologies. The Garamantes were pioneers in establishing oases and opening up Trans-Saharan trade.

The articles explain that the well-preserved ancient buildings are extensive, orderly mud-brick complexes with a castle-like appearance. Some walls still standing are over thirteen feet in height.

This discovery is extremely significant in the quest for the truth about mankind's ancient past. In chapter seven, "Origins of the Dogon," of his book The Sirius Mystery (first published in 1976), Robert Temple advanced the argument that the Dogon people of Mali are descended from . . . the Garamantes! He cites extensive evidence compiled by anthropologist Eva Meyerowitz and cited by prolific author, playwright and scholar Robert Graves which suggests that the Garamantes emigrated southward in ancient times to the region where the Dogon are found today, arriving there by the eleventh century AD.

Mr. Temple believes that this ancient migration is the original source of the remarkable knowledge preserved by the Dogon, which is discussed in several previous posts including "The knowledge of the Dogon," "Berossus and the Oannes," "The conjunctions of Jupiter and Saturn," and "Supernatural or extraterrestrial?"

Note that the impressive mud structures preserved in Dogon country -- some of them centuries old and in some cases attributed to people who were the "forerunners" or "predecessors" of the Dogon -- appear to bear a remarkable resemblance to the well-preserved mud castle-complexes which have recently been discovered in the original land of the Garamantes! See the image from the Bandiagara Escarpment in Dogon land shown above.

This provides a compelling new piece of confirmatory evidence for the thesis published by Robert Temple in 1976, and for the analysis of Robert Graves before him (on which Mr. Temple based his assertions) and Eva Meyerowitz before him (on whose extensive studies in Africa Robert Graves based some of his assertions).

This is a very important aspect of these new discoveries and worth further examination in light of the new evidence.

The alleged advanced astronomical knowledge of the Dogon appears to confirm the fact that the ancient Garamantes were extremely sophisticated as well. In fact, there may have been a connection with ancient Egypt, as Robert Temple points out in the same chapter that the ancient Egyptians were one of only a very few ancient societies practicing circumcision, and the Dogon not only practice circumcision but make it central to their entire religious cultus. (We have already discussed in the posts linked above that conventional historians and anthropologists are loath to admit even the remote possibility that the documented astronomical knowledge of the Dogon could possibly be real, because such an admission would threaten the framework of their entire foundational paradigm, and threaten the zealously guarded tenets of Darwinism as well).

Note that Robert Graves asserted that the Garamantes may well have been the source of much of ancient Greek and even Minoan civilization and culture. In his 1955 text The Greek Myths, he describes extensive evidence buried in myth that the goddess Athena appears to have come from the region of Libya, and that in fact Plato had identified her with the Libyan goddess Neith. Graves points out that goat-skin motifs accompany Athena in many ancient myths (including an association with the powerful Aegis, discussed in this previous post), and that goat-skin aprons are the traditional garments of Libyan maidens.

Graves goes on to assert that:

Pottery finds suggest a Libyan immigration into Crete as early as 4000 BC; and a large number of goddess-worshiping Libyan refugees from the Western Delta seem to have arrived there when Upper and Lower Egypt were forcibly united about the year 3000 BC. The First Minoan Age began soon afterwards, and Cretan culture spread to Thrace and early Helladic Greece.

This chronology would appear to suggest that the civilization of the Garamantes, or their predecessors, was responsible for the flowering of the Minoan civilization and the later glory of Greece. More on the importance of Libya can be found in the Mathisen Corollary book itself (particularly the final chapter). Note that numerous pre-Columbian artifacts allegedly inscribed with ancient Libyan writing have been reported in the Americas (described although not pictured in this previous post).

Finally, note that the Garamantes are not the only advanced ancient civilization who appear to have been relegated to the status of "primitive barbarians" due to that kind of characterization by certain ancient Roman authors. We have seen evidence that the ancient Celts were extremely advanced, and that the accounts of Julius Caesar describe their knowledge of astronomy and science in terms of great respect, and describe their ships as superior to those of the Romans and quite probably capable of blue-water ocean navigation. However, they also received a label of primitive barbarians from antiquity, and are thus most often remembered and depicted as such today.

The accounts of Herodotus (484 BC - 425 BC) do not depict the Garamantes as barbarians. To the contrary, he describes them as "a very powerful people" and possessed of a unique technology in sowing their crops (not an activity typical of nomadic barbarians) -- and that was centuries before the Romans encountered the Garamantes.

Below is a map depicting the region of Libya inhabited by the ancient Garamantes -- note that it corresponds quite directly with the location of these remarkable new archaeological discoveries. The evidence discussed above indicates that this advanced ancient civilization may hold important clues to a revised understanding of the timeline of mankind's ancient past.

Cygnus and Aquila in the Milky Way

Although they are rising earlier and earlier and therefore are rotating farther and farther towards the western horizon during the prime viewing hours after sundown, the majestic constellations of the Swan and the Eagle are worth mentioning this time of year, due to some of the associations of these celestial birds with enduring traditions and celebrations.

The stars of the constellation Cygnus (the Swan) form a distinctive shape in the night sky, which strongly resembles a soaring bird. The brightest four stars in the Swan make up the two triangular outstretched wings. Perhaps the easiest way to locate Cygnus is to go to a very dark area where you can view the starry band of the Milky Way ascending from one horizon and arcing across the sky: both the Swan and the Eagle will be found within its pathway, as diagrammed above.

Another method for locating the Swan is to use the two stars at the back of the bowl of the Big Dipper as pointers (the forward two stars of the Big Dipper's bowl are traditionally known as "the pointers" because they point the way to the North Star if one uses them to create a mental line; the rearward two stars of the bowl can be used the same way, and they point to Deneb, the brightest star in the Swan -- this trick comes from page 38 of H.A. Rey's superlative book on the stars, a book which is discussed here and here).

The brightest star in the swan, Deneb, makes up one of the points in the famous "Summer Triangle," along with Altair in the Eagle and Vega in the Lyre, as shown below. The reason this triangle is associated with summer is that, in the northern hemisphere, the position of earth on its orbital path in the summer brings these constellations and their bright stars to a prominent place in the center and highest part of the dome of the sky during the hours after sunset. As stated before, they are now sinking lower into the west each night as the earth continues on its orbit, causing them to be in the eastern skies earlier and earlier and thus sink westward much earlier than they did during the summer.

























Stargazers desiring to see the Summer Triangle more easily might try squinting at these constellations, which has the effect of blotting out all the fainter stars and leaving only the three brightest stars to be visible (that is, Deneb, Altair and Vega).

Cygnus has a long neck, outlined in the top diagram (the diagram which shows the outline of the Milky Way), and the line heading towards the neck makes up a grouping called the Northern Cross for obvious reasons. However, the stars of the head and neck are quite faint, and it is perhaps most easy to picture Cygnus as outlined below. This is not the full outline shown in the books by H.A. Rey, which include the fainter stars of the feet, as well as fainter stars which extend the wings of the swan to a wider and even more majestic wingspan, but it is perhaps the easiest way to spot Cygnus if you're not familiar with the constellation, and it is quite magnificent and large in the sky, even in this "core" or abbreviated outline.

























Soaring towards the Swan as if to make a head-on collision is the constellation of Aquila the Eagle, easy to make out using the three stars of the Eagle's head, with bright Altair in the center. The Eagle's wings are marked by fairly bright and readily visible stars as well, and his mighty wingspan is very impressive once you locate him. We discussed the Eagle and the three stars including Altair (the others are Alshain and Tarazed) in this previous post describing Comet Garradd. The delightful little constellation Sagitta the Arrow is near the Eagle's head, and its stars are depicted in the diagrams above, although the shape of the Arrow itself is not outlined (we're just concentrating on the two heavenly birds right now).

The constellations of Cygnus and Aquila are very important mythologically. The mighty protective eagle atop Yggdrasil the World-Tree is very likely related to Aquila, especially as he has a "bright-eyed hawk" perched upon his beak, which could be a way of describing the brilliant stars at the head or beak of this constellation.

Further, as explored in more detail in the Mathisen Corollary book, the goddess Isis disguised herself as a bird and flew around the tree in which Osiris was entombed after he was slain, an event with many echoes in other mythologies. Author Andrew Collins believes that Isis is closely associated with the constellation Cygnus, and he explores the importance of Cygnus extensively in his book The Cygnus Mystery: Unlocking the Ancient Secret of Life's Origin in the Cosmos. Without necessarily agreeing with every conclusion that he reaches, it is clear that he has uncovered extensive evidence for the importance of this constellation and echoes to myths and traditions around the world.

Below is a depiction of Isis with wings from the tomb of Pharaoh Seti I (the father of Rameses II) which bears a very striking resemblance to the arrangement of the stars of the celestial Swan. We have also explored some of the important myths of gods and goddesses who wore winged bird-suits in the discussion of the recently-discovered artifact known as the "Winged Man of Uppaakra." Mr. Collins points out that the Valkyries of Norse myth also were associated with swan-wings and at least one important Valkyrie with a full swan-suit.



















His theory also explores the importance of the shamanic ability to turn into a bird-form in order to ascend to the heavens.

Interestingly, Mr. Collins notes that the constellation Cygnus is associated with both geese and swans in many myths and traditions (he even has a chapter in his book entitled "The Swan-Goose of Eternity"). He notes that the feast of St. Martin, which falls on November 11, often featured a roasted swan or (in more recent times when eating swans became less popular) a roasted goose. Note all the associations with geese in the traditions surrounding the life of St. Martin described here, as well as the tradition of eating a Martinsgans (or "Martin Goose") on November 11.

In the chapter of his book entitled "The Waters of Life," Mr. Collins describes the Martinmas feast of the ancient London livery company of the Vintners (the Worshipful Company of Vintners). According to Mr. Collins, their patron is St. Martin of Tours, and on his holy day (November 11),

they performed a swan feast, during which a roasted swan was ceremoniously paraded about the banqueting room before being eagerly consumed by all present. Although this tradition continues, today the Vintners eat a goose on Martinmas, while instead of a roast swan being paraded around its place is taken by a stuffed bird. When not in use it is kept in the Swan Room at Vintners' Hall.

Mr. Collins also points out that the Vintners are one of only two livery companies which participate in the annual ritual of "swan-upping" along the Thames each July.

Ever since the end of World War I, November 11 has of course also been known as Armistice Day, Veterans Day and Remembrance Day. On this important day of the year, after the sun goes down and if you have a clear sky, you may wish to go out and spend some thoughtful time contemplating the beautiful and important constellations of Cygnus and Aquila in the Milky Way.

Copernicus, Proclus, and the lost knowledge of the ancients

Yesterday, NPR aired a review of Dava Sobel's latest book, A More Perfect Heaven: How Copernicus Revolutionized the Cosmos, on the life and work of Copernicus, and the dynamics of his own struggle over his discovery that the earth revolves around the sun rather than the other way around.

The book itself, by an author who is clearly fascinated by the motions of the spheres and the turning of the earth, and who has written several acclaimed books about the interaction of human culture with these concepts including The Planets, Longitude, and Galileo's Daughter (and who has further authored books about taking control of your health, a subject which is also close to our heart here at the Mathisen Corollary blog, as evidenced by previous posts such as this one), does acknowledge that the idea that the earth goes around the sun had been put forward before, by Aristarchus of Samos (310 BC -c.230 BC) over a thousand years earlier.

Ms Sobel explains that "Copernicus had no idea that Aristarchus of Samos had proposed much the same thing in the third century BC" -- and for all intents and purposes, it made no difference to the society in which Copernicus lived or in the human drama of his struggle in releasing his theory, or in the revolution that it eventually caused, because it is true that when Copernicus lived, virtually everybody believed that the heavens revolved around a stationary earth. It takes nothing away from his achievement to realize that mankind may have known the truth many centuries earlier and thrown that knowledge away.

The NPR examination of Ms Sobel's new book (which can be heard online here) doesn't even mention the fact that a heliocentric theory had been published in ancient times, implying that Copernicus was the first to ever come up with the idea (it also compares the current debate over global warming to the Copernican debate, implying that anyone who disagrees with "the scientific community" is akin to those who would deny that the earth goes around the sun).

But the fact that ancient authors discussed the possibility that the earth and the other planets go around the sun is not a trivial one, and should not be lightly glossed over (even though it is correctly outside the scope of Ms Sobel's examination of the personal struggle Copernicus himself faced in the early 1500s). In fact, there is substantial evidence that Aristarchus was not the first to suspect that the earth orbited the sun -- many readers will be surprised to learn that ancient authors attested that Plato (424 BC - 238 BC) may well have believed the same thing, and he was born over a hundred years before the birth of Aristarchus.

In the first appendix to his book The Sirius Mystery, which we have discussed at some length in these previous posts (here, here, and here), Robert Temple explains that Plato's Timaeus appears to hint at the possibility that the earth turns around its axis and that the planets have axes and orbits as well. He points out that the evidence suggests that Plato was not really a well-versed astronomer, and that it appears quite likely that Plato "inserted someone else's treatise into his dialogue without being completely au fait with the material." However, he notes that several ancient sources attest that late in his life, Plato changed his earlier opinion regarding the earth being at the center of the universe (among these ancient sources is Theophrastus, who lived from 371 BC to 287 BC and was the successor to Aristotle, who was the successor to Plato, and another source later on was Plutarch himself, who disagreed with Plato's conclusion).

Mr. Temple also presents compelling evidence that a much later Platonic philosopher and careful student of Plato's works, Proclus Lycaeus(AD 412 - AD 485) concluded from his careful reading of the Timaeus (and his study of other works) that the earth rotated on an axis, that the planets had orbits of their own (rather than moving as part of transparent crystal spheres), that epicycles were a clever idea but incorrect (disagreeing with the work of the earlier Plutarch, whose theories would continue to hold sway all the way up until the days of Copernicus, Galileo and Kepler), and of the possibility that the earth orbits the sun (Proclus asserted that Heracleides Ponticus, who lived from 390 BC to 310 BC had asserted such a theory, although scholars today do not agree with Proclus that Heracleides actually did so).

Mr. Temple also notes that Johannes Kepler (1571 - 1630) held Proclus in very high esteem, and wrote of the impact his work had upon him, saying:

I have recently fallen upon the hymn of Proclus the Platonic philosopher, of whom there has been much mention in the preceding books, which was composed to the Sun and filled full with venerable mysteries in the context of speculation about 'what did the ancient Pythagoreans in Aristotle mean, who used to call the centre of the world (which they referred to as the "fire" but understood by that the sun).

In fact, all of these references seem to hint that the knowledge which the early Greek philosophers and astronomers were groping for came from a far more ancient source

-- Kepler mentions "the ancient Pythagoreans" and it is an ancient tradition that Pythagoras (c. 570 BC - 495 BC) traveled to Egypt and learned from the priests of Heliopolis.

The Mathisen Corollary book explores extensive evidence that the most ancient civilizations we know -- the ancient Egyptians, Sumerians, and Babylonians -- had an understanding of the almost imperceptible phenomenon of precession, and even that they understood it to be related to the "bending," the "chopping down," or the "uprooting" of the celestial axis (which implies some understanding of the rotation of the earth).

Even further, it appears quite likely that some of the earliest ancient monuments, including both Stonehenge and the Great Pyramid, function as precise scale models of a spherical earth, with diameters and perimeters relating to the circumference of the circular equator to within 1% when multiplied by the important precessional number 432.

Further, Charles Hapgood (and later authors following his work) demonstrated that the portolan maps such as the Piri Re'is map

are almost certainly based on much more ancient knowledge of the globe, from an ancient civilization that knew much more about it than was typical even in the golden age of Greece and Plato. In his book Maps of the Ancient Sea Kings: Evidence of Advanced Civilization in the Ice Age, Mr. Hapgood explains that the circular or polar radii typical of the portolan maps were apparently based on plane geometry, causing the "parallel meridians to deviate further and further from True North the farther they were removed from the center of the map," but that "the portolan design could compensate for this" by the conscious use of "different Norths" in different parts of the map (designating one radial line as a north-south meridian in the center portion of a map, and selecting a different radial line as a north-south meridian for regions nearer the periphery of the map, with the coastlines bent around appropriately to conform to the new north-south orientation -- see footnote on page 17).

The use of such a system, in addition to the accuracy of the New World coastlines depicted in some of the portolans, and the depiction of Antarctica in more than one of the portolans, points to the possibility that they are based upon the knowledge of an ancient civilization or civilizations capable of sailing around the globe and aware of its size and shape.

If very ancient civilizations long before the time of Plato and Aristarchus knew that the earth was a globe (and crossed its oceans consciously and regularly), then it is certainly possible that they were aware that the earth went around the sun (since it is almost positive that they knew about the subtle phenomenon of precession).

All of this is important for many reasons, not least of which is the importance of shattering the smug confidence in mankind's steady and nigh inevitable upward progress which permeates NPR's discussion of the Copernican revolution. If such levels of science and learning have been erased before in human history, we should be aware of the possibility that such a catastrophe could happen again.

There are literally piles of evidence from around the world suggesting that the earliest civilizations we know of (and indeed, perhaps a lost predecessor to the earliest civilizations known to history today) were the most advanced, and that their science and knowledge were lost and almost forgotten for millennia, passed along only in secret by select groups of initiates (of whom Plato's unknown source was no doubt a member). The knowledge that the earth travels around the sun, which Copernicus and the other Renaissance astronomers would rediscover so many years later, is just another data point suggesting that almost everything we have been taught about mankind's most ancient history is wrong.

Asteroids, earthquakes, and lions -- oh my

There's a lot of interesting "Mathisen-Corollary-related" news lately, most of which you've probably already noticed and been thinking about, if you spend much time reading this blog.

First up, taking place on November 8, is a fly-by of an asteroid named Asteroid 2005 YU55. It will be daytime in California for much of the asteroid's closest passage, but even for those observers in parts of the globe where it will be dark, this asteroid will be somewhat difficult to detect.

It will require a telescope trained to the correct portion of the sky, but since it is a "dark object" that doesn't reflect much light, 2005 YU55 may still be hard to pick up. Here are a couple of articles that can help if you're in the position to give it a shot: from Universe Today and from Sky & Telescope.

As we have discussed previously, certain details about asteroids appear to provide powerful evidence which supports the hydroplate theory of Dr. Walt Brown (see also the discussion of Trojan asteroids, here).

Elsewhere in the news, Oklahoma was rocked over the weekend by an unusually strong 5.6 earthquake (part of a series of quakes including a 4.7 that hit the same part of Oklahoma this weekend, building up to the 5.6 quake Saturday night) -- another example of earthquakes far from so-called "tectonic plate boundaries" that are supposed to be the major triggers for quake activities. This article states that "scientists are puzzled by the recent seismic activity." Here is a link to a previous discussions about the earthquake in Virginia earlier this year, far from plate boundaries.

More interesting are the allegations being discussed that perhaps the process of hydraulic fracturing might have triggered the recent earthquakes in Oklahoma (which are raised in the same article linked previously). A spokesman for the Oklahoma commission that oversees oil and gas production in the state revealed that there are 181 injection wells in the county that experienced most of the weekend quakes. We have written before that the hydroplate theory clearly predicts that activity involving injection of water deep into the ground can trigger earthquakes (see the discussions here and here).

Finally, the planet Mars is passing through the constellation Leo the Lion, and is now very close to Leo's brightest star, Regulus (or alpha Leonis). To find Mars in Leo in the pre-dawn sky, check out the diagram for the eastern part of the sky (fairly high up, almost overhead) one hour before sunrise which is located in this Sky & Telescope article (scroll down through the page to find the pre-dawn diagram, rather than the post-sunset diagram that is higher up in the article).

If you are unfamiliar with the constellation Leo, it may help to think of the "rhino's tail" from the Panel of the Wounded Man at Lascaux. Use the familiar constellations of Orion and Auriga to locate the Twins, and the Lion will be following the Twins (this previous post shows Orion, Auriga and the Twins, and this previous post explains how to find Auriga).

We have previously discussed the theory in some detail, put forward most extensively in Hamlet's Mill by Giorgio de Santillana and Hertha von Dechend in 1969, that the familiar myths of ancient gods and goddesses may actually be vessels used to transmit very scientific understanding of the earth and the heavens. See, for instance, this previous post explaining why the story of Ares and Aphrodite being caught in a net may represent the passage of the planets Mars and Venus through the Pleiades.

The passage of the planet Mars through the constellation Leo the Lion may well appear in myths around the world of a supernaturally strong man slaying a lion (such as the famous episode with the Nemean Lion in the Twelve Labors of Hercules).

This alone is reason enough to get up early to look for Mars near Regulus in the pre-dawn sky. Just watch out for earthquakes and asteroids if you do.