NWA 7034






































Yesterday, January 3, a paper was published online in Science Express entitled "Unique Meteorite from Early Amazonian Mars: Water-Rich Basaltic Breccia Northwest Africa 7034."  

The paper, by a team of NASA-funded scientists who have been studying this particular meteorite (known as NWA 7034, because it was found in Northwest Africa) for over a year, concludes based on the meteorite's mineral composition and other characteristics that it came to earth from Mars, and that based on its high water content it must have formed during Mars' distant past.  The paper's authors report that its water content is an order of magnitude greater than any of the other thirty or so meteorites collected on earth which scientists believe to have come from Mars.

The oxygen isotopes in the meteorite also differ from other meteorites thought to be from Mars.  This oxygen evidence leads the scientists to hypothesize that "oxygen reservoirs" may exist in some parts of Mars, in the thin Martian atmosphere.

All of these findings are consistent with the reports sent to Edgar Rice Burroughs from John Carter and other earth-men who had managed to make the leap to Mars (or Barsoom), which he published in his fantastic Mars series, beginning in 1912.  Readers of those books know that Mars once had mighty oceans (now all dry) and that the thin Martian atmosphere was enriched with oxygen from an oxygen factory, which kept the Barsoomians alive.  Some have argued that these works were science fiction stories made up by Burroughs himself, although they seem too real for that.

Readers of this blog will also know that there is actually abundant evidence that water once flowed on Mars in large quantities, and that this fact is explained quite well by the hydroplate theory of Dr. Walt Brown, while posing challenges for conventional theories (see the discussion in this previous post entitled "Let's Go to Mars").  

According to the hydroplate theory, the origin of all or almost all meteorites which land on the earth today is the earth itself, which explains a great many aspects of meteorites (including the water and oxygen in NWA 7034).  In this webpage from the online version of his book, Dr. Brown explains that the force of the water erupting from beneath the surface of the earth (the "fountains of the great deep" described in Genesis and recorded in the sacred traditions of numerous peoples around the globe) launched fragments into the air with such velocity that some of them escaped earth's atmosphere.  He explains that many meteorites are apparently pillar fragments from the subterranean pillars that existed before the catastrophic flood event, which explains the iron-nickel composition of many meteorites, a composition that is extremely difficult to explain using other theories of meteorite origin.

In his recent Christmas letter (sent out before the publication of yesterday's paper about NWA 7034, of course), Dr. Brown mentions this aspect of his theory in conjunction with a discussion of the Curiosity rover:
The 7th and 8th editions explained how, during the early weeks of the flood, the fountains of the great deep launched water, rocks, and vegetation; bacteria accompanied the vegetation.  Some of that material impacted Mars, our neighboring planet.  The bacteria's food source, primarily vegetation, came with them.  (I know many reasonably intelligent people, relying on intuition, who have balked at the thought that the fountains could have been that powerful.  The 9th edition clearly explains the physics.
The 9th edition is the edition which Dr. Brown graciously makes available for reading online for no charge on his website.  Other aspects of Dr. Brown's remarkable Christmas letter from last month are discussed in this previous post.

In spite of the fact that his theory provides a scientifically supportable explanation for water and oxygen on Mars long ago, Dr. Brown does not believe that any meteorites which have landed on the earth originated from Mars.  In spite of the confident declaration that NWA 7034 originated from Mars made in articles published about this meteorite in the media, such as this one, or on NASA's own website (here), the scientists themselves admit that they have to deduce the origin of the meteorite, just as they do with all other meteorites (no meteorite so far has come stamped with a "Made on Mars" label).  

Here is an earlier scientific paper written by five of the same scientists who wrote the paper linked above, entitled "Basaltic Breccia NWA 7034: New Ungrouped Planetary Achondrite," in which they discuss the characteristics of the meteorite that help them surmise its origin, and give their arguments for the conclusion that it came from Mars.  The paper argues that its characteristics in many ways resemble the other meteorites that have been determined by scientists to be from Mars, but concludes with a final paragraph that begins with the word "if" in the sentence beginning "If NWA 7034 is a martian meteorite [. . .]"  

The scientists are now more convinced that NWA 7034 is in fact from Mars, but in a different part of his book, Dr. Brown provides some strong arguments against the conclusion that any meteorites found on earth actually came from Mars, including the meteorites these scientists used for comparison as they tried to determine where NWA 7034 came from.  See his discussion entitled "Are some meteorites from Mars?" at the bottom of this webpage in his online book.

Some of the arguments Dr. Brown gives against the possibility of Martian meteorites include:
To escape the gravity of Mars requires a launch velocity of 3 miles per second. Additional velocity is then needed to transfer to an orbit intersecting Earth, 34–236 million miles away. Supposedly, one or more asteroids slammed into Mars and blasted off millions of meteoroids. Millions are needed, because less than one in a million111 would ever hit Earth, be large enough to survive reentry, be found, be turned over to scientists, and be analyzed in detail. Besides, if meteorites can come to Earth from Mars, many more should have come from the Moon—but haven’t.112 Furthermore, all the so-called Martian meteorites are magnetic,113 whereas Mars has no magnetic field.113

For an impact to accelerate, in a fraction of a second, any solid from rest to a velocity of 3 miles per second requires such extreme shock pressures that much of the material would melt, if not vaporize.114 All 30 meteorites should at least show shock effects. Some do not. Also, Mars should have at least six giant craters if such powerful blasts occurred, because six different launch dates are needed to explain the six age groupings the meteorites fall into (based on evolutionary dating methods). Such craters are hard to find, and large, recent impacts on Mars should have been rare. 
These are serious objections to the hypothesis that NWA 7034, or any other meteorite, came from Mars.  They are by no means all of the objections that Dr. Brown presents -- interested readers are invited to go to his website using the link above and read all of his arguments on this subject.

It is important to realize that many conclusions which are presented to us as "fact" or "settled science" in the media and on the webpages of government agencies such as NASA are actually based upon the analysis of evidence by people who are doing the best they can based on the evidence that they have available and the paradigms or models that they are using to understand the universe.  Those paradigms or models may be flawed, and they certainly employ assumptions when necessary.  Analysts approaching the evidence using a completely different paradigm or model (and different assumptions) may well come to an entirely different conclusion.

In the case of the idea that meteorites could have somehow "broken free" from the surface of Mars and made the lonely voyage through space to land in Morocco in North Africa, it may be that more analysis is necessary by those who have reached this tentative conclusion. 

My recommendation would be to investigate the "Gridley wave" device described by Edgar Rice Burroughs, by which he was able to receive communications from Barsoom over a sort of ticker tape in Morse Code -- with such a device, we might be able to ask the Barsoomians if they know of any forces which might have been capable of launching rocks from Mars into space at a velocity sufficient to escape the Martian gravity and at a trajectory capable of intersecting Jasoom (their name for our planet).

Barring that, I would suggest that they consider the explanation -- backed by extensive evidence -- offered by Dr. Brown in his work.



An almost-entirely-positive review of the film Hungry for Change


I recently watched a popular documentary called Hungry for Change, which powerfully presents the evidence that the modern "Western diet" systematically destroys the human body.   This is an argument that has been explored in numerous previous posts on this blog, such as:
Hungry for Change contrasts the beneficial impact on the body of a healthy diet with the superficial and often temporary changes brought about by the usual attempts to counteract the impact of the modern diet.  
It also reveals the fact that the processed foods, often loaded with sugar as filler and more recently with high fructose corn syrup (which is in an astonishingly high percentage of foods and is almost entirely made from genetically-modified corn in the United States, as discussed in this previous post and this previous post), which were introduced into the American diet on a large scale during and after World War II (and from there spread to much of the rest of the world) appear to be almost deliberately engineered to wreak havoc upon the body's systems.  

We have already seen in yet another previous post a detailed discussion of what sugar and corn syrup do to the liver and the systems in the body that feed the cells through the blood stream in this previous post on the work of Dr. Robert Lustig.  Hungry for Change goes beyond that and reveals the extent to which other deleterious substances are inserted into a dizzying array of the foods we find for sale at our local grocery stores, substances such as monosodium glutamate (or MSG), another substance that entered common use in the US as a result of World War II.

While food industry literature declares that MSG has been found to be "generally recognized as safe" (GRAS) with only a few minor ill effects on a small percentage of the population that is overly sensitive to the substance, some doctors -- including Dr. Mercola, who is in Hungry for Change as one of the speakers -- argue that MSG may adversely affect the brain and nervous system, as well as the glutamate receptors "found both within your heart's electrical conduction system and the heart muscle itself ."

The Hungry for Change video alleges that MSG can be legally included in food under an astonishing fifty different names, which implies that most consumers are not even aware when a food product they are purchasing or consuming contains MSG.  This website provides a comprehensive list of ingredients that always contain the free glutamic acid that is one of the main distinguishing components of MSG, ingredients with innocuous-sounding names such as: "yeast extract," "yeast food," "yeast nutrient," "autolyzed yeast," "textured protein," "soy protein," "whey protein," "gelatin," and others.

It lists many other ingredient names which often contain free glutamic acid, including "carageenan," "maltodextrin," "pectin," and "malt extract."

Information like this is enough to make the movie worthwhile, but it touches on many other important subjects as well.  It can currently be watched via "watch instantly" (streaming) on Netflix, as well as rented from a variety of outlets or purchased from the Hungry for Change website.  

But, what does a blog concerned with the evidence for ancient civilizations have to do with a movie such as Hungry for Change, however interesting and informative and even potentially life-saving such a movie might be?  Well, if you followed any of the links above to previous posts on the subject of "diet and food," you will notice that I believe that erroneous theories can be very dangerous, and that many people mistakenly believe we are living in a "modern, scientific era" in which our level of knowledge about many important subjects is at a level that has far surpassed anything that the human race knew in the past.

Many people unquestioningly accept the fundamental paradigms that authority figures such as doctors or university professors declare with such confidence, and that our peers tell us that "everyone knows" or "everyone believes."  These paradigms include the diet paradigm, but they also include paradigms about geology (the current conventional paradigm is plate tectonics, which is almost certainly incorrect), paradigms about biology (including the almost certainly incorrect Darwinian paradigm), and paradigms about ancient human history (that mankind evolved from millennia as primitive hunter-gatherers, and in short order began creating enormous pyramids using seventy-ton blocks positioned hundreds of feet above ground level and aligned with incredible accuracy to the cardinal directions north, south, east and west).

Just as Hungry for Change shows that the conventional "modern western diet" paradigm is shockingly hazardous to our health, I believe that the other incorrect paradigms mentioned above are just as potentially unhealthy and dangerous.  In fact, my major criticism of Hungry for Change is that it overwhelmingly portrays the modern dietary disaster as a product of our supposed "hunter-gatherer instincts" all run amok in a modern wonderland of plenty!  The various experts interviewed in the documentary -- all of whom make excellent points and provide valuable insights, except when they start talking about the ancient history of the human race -- universally take this tack.  For example, beginning at about the four-minute mark in the film (in fact, at 4:06), five different quotations are presented to the viewer in machine-gun fashion, hammering home this view of ancient history and our primitive past as the cause of our modern diet dilemma:
speaker one: All through our history, as a species, the big challenge is to find calories.  And so, our bodies are biologically adapted to this, we seek calorie sources.  When I say that, I particularly -- what I’m talking about are fats, and sugars.   If we taste something fatty or something sweet, we get an immediate signal saying "Yes!  I want more of this!" because, for our hunter-gatherer ancestors – and that goes right up to a few hundred years ago – anywhere they could find fat or sugar meant survival for those people.  It meant carrying forth their genetics.

speaker two:  It’s not your fault – this is how we are as mammals.  I mean we’ve lived on the earth for millennia where there was a food shortage – you’re programmed to put on fat whenever there is food available.  But now, there’s a lot of food available, but it’s the wrong kind.  And so we’ve been programmed for millennia to store up for the winter, but the winter doesn’t come.

speaker three:  Thousands of years ago when we lived outdoors and we didn’t know where our next meal was coming from, if there was a famine because it was a cold winter, or whatever reason, your body is going to want to hold extra weight to protect you from that.  And a famine is a stress, and if you go through that stress, your body's going to say, "We need an extra ten pounds, to protect us against famines.”

speaker one again:  But, one of the really interesting things about hunter-gatherer people, a people who do a very moderate amount of agriculture – we could call them hunter-gatherer-gardiners – what we see in those people is that they have an extremely high amount of nutrition and an extremely low amount of calories in their food, compared to people in modern civilization which have a very high amount of calories and a very low amount of nutrition available to them.  Today we have a so many calorie sources, but we still have the same signal.  So somebody bites into a burger or they take a sip off a milkshake, and they get those fats and those sugars, and their body says "Yes, more!" because it’s used to behaving in an environment where there’s feast and there’s famine.  The problem is, we’ve got feast like it’s nobody’s business – we just don’t have any famine.

This is troubling on a couple of levels.  First, notice that the final speaker just said, essentially, that "The problem is [. . .] we just don't have any famine," as if famines are somehow a good thing (this is false).  Speaker two seems to imply the same general line of thinking.

More troubling is the idea that civilization and the benefits it provides are the problem.  This is also false.  In fact, it can be demonstrated with ample evidence that the ancients -- going all the way back to ancient Egypt -- had excellent knowledge of the best diet for the human being, and wrote about it in the teachings of the great philosophers, for example (many of the previous blog posts cited above discuss this fact).  

In fact, this previous post on the Essenes and their studious avoidance of the expression of anger also touches on the ancient writings that suggest that the Essenes and other communities of philosophers understood not only the importance of healthy eating but also the importance of healthy breathing and of getting access to healthy air, and understood it to a degree no longer widely understood or taught in the "modern western world." 

Santos Bonacci, whose incredible and prolific teaching about the ancient Hermetic wisdom is available in numerous videos on the internet and whose astrotheology was discussed in this previous post, has discussed numerous aspects of diet known by the ancient Hermeticists or Hermetists which, if followed, would accord perfectly with most of the recommendations given by the experts in the Hungry for Change video, and in fact which go well beyond them because in addition to having a physical component for human health those ancient teachings added the spiritual component relating to consciousness and the chakra system and the fact that as human being we are composed of energy as well as matter.

The presence of such knowledge stretching all the way back to the beginnings of the most ancient Egyptian dynasties (and beyond it, as demonstrated by the research and analysis of John Anthony West and others) pretty much upends the argument that our "modern western diet" problem, and all its attendant ills including obesity and diabetes and the rest, are the result of a bunch of former hunter-gatherers who still haven't gotten the hang of this civilization thing.

It might be more appropriate to ask whether the problem isn't the end result of an abandonment of the ancient wisdom those philosophers seemed to know thousands of years ago.

Finally, any discussion of the transition of mankind from primitive hunter-gatherers (or "hunter-gatherer-gardiners," as one of the speakers in the film talks about) to agricultural civilizations of any sort (let alone high civilizations like ancient Egypt) almost always overlook the incredible problems with the idea that mankind somehow tamed herd animals such as the wild bovines or bred existing wild grains into domestic grains while they were continuing their hunter-gatherer lifestyles.  As this previous post discusses, that transition needs much more than the "hand-wave" explanation that it usually gets.

It is at least as likely that mankind started out with "millennia of advanced civilization," civilizations which sometimes destroyed one another and ended up as hunter-gatherers, than it is to assume that the hunter-gatherers came first and then figured out how to breed wild aurochs into cows and wild grasses into useful cereal grains.

However, setting this glaring historical failure aside (which we can hardly hold against the speakers in the video, since they have no doubt been indoctrinated like the rest of us to believe in these historical paradigms since childhood), Hungry for Change is an excellent video on food and health, and an excellent expose of the dangers of uncritically following a false paradigm.
   

An interesting New Year's Resolution


































 
The previous post discussed the important Nag Hammadi codices, discovered sometime during December 1945 according to the interviews and analysis conducted by Professor James M. Robinson.  

It is easy to confuse the discovery of the Nag Hammadi texts in 1945 with the (also extremely significant) discovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls, which were found in a cave in 1946 in Qumran near the Dead Sea.  The initial Dead Sea Scrolls were actually first discovered sometime between November 1946 and February 1947 by a Bedouin shepherd, and additional ancient collections of scrolls continued to be discovered in the caves in that area for the next ten years.  

Although these two transformative discoveries of ancient texts took place around the same time in modern history, and concerned texts from roughly the same period in ancient history (and an extremely important period of ancient history, at that), they are two very distinct archaeological and textual events and should not be confused.  The map below shows the different locations of the two finds:





The Dead Sea Scrolls contain altogether nearly a thousand ancient texts, including Hebrew Scriptures and other writings, and are thought to have been written between 225 BC and AD 50 (there is ongoing analysis and debate among scholars).  One of the most important aspects of their discovery is the fact that, prior to the Dead Sea Scrolls, the oldest Hebrew manuscripts of some of these same sacred texts had been written in the tenth century AD, and the oldest manuscripts in any language (in this case, Greek) of the same texts had been written in the fourth century AD.   The discovery of Hebrew versions of these same texts (including for example 39 scrolls of the Psalms, 24 with the book of Genesis, and 22 with the scroll of Isaiah) from the 2nd century pushed the earliest extant Hebrew versions of these texts back by a thousand years, and opened a window for comparison and analysis that had been undreamed-of previously.

Most analysts since their discovery have argued that the scrolls were probably the texts used by a community of a Judaic sect known as the Essenes, although this conclusion is still being debated.  

Joan E. Taylor, of the Department of Theology and Religious Studies at King's College, London writes in The Essenes, The Scrolls, and the Dead Sea that:
Ever since the discovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls in caves near the site of Qumran in 1947, this mysterious cache of manuscripts has been associated with the Essenes, a 'sect' configured as marginal and isolated. Scholarly consensus has held that an Essene library was hidden ahead of the Roman advance in 68 CE, when Qumran was partly destroyed. With much doubt now expressed about aspects of this view, the Essenes, the Scrolls and the Dead Sea systematically reviews the surviving historical sources, and supports an understanding of the Essenes as an influential legal society, at the centre of Judaean religious life, held in much esteem by many and protected by the Herodian dynasty, thus appearing as 'Herodians' in the Gospels.

Opposed to the Hasmoneans, the Essenes combined sophisticated legal expertise and autonomy with an austere regimen of practical work, including a specialisation in medicine and pharmacology. Their presence along the north-western Dead Sea is strongly indicated by two independent sources, Dio Chrysostom and Pliny the Elder, and coheres with the archaeology. The Dead Sea Scrolls represent not an isolated library, quickly hidden, but burials of manuscripts from numerous Essene collections, placed in jars in caves for long-term preservation. The historical context of the Dead Sea area itself, and its extraordinary natural resources, as well as the archaeology of Qumran, confirm the Essenes' patronage by Herod, and indicate that they harnessed the medicinal material the Dead Sea zone provides to this day.  [quoted here].
The descriptions of the Essenes in the works of ancient writers are often cited as supporting arguments for the identification of the Dead Sea Scrolls with the Essenes, and indeed the archaeological finds at Qumran do include chambers large enough to house communities that match the descriptions of communal living found in the texts of ancient writers such as Philo of Alexandria, Pliny the Elder, and Josephus, along with other archaeological evidence which seems to match the ancient descriptions of the Essenes.  



However, as Professor Taylor argues in a different essay on the subject, one must be very careful in analyzing the descriptions of the Essenes left to us by those ancient authors, as each of them had distinct agendas and goals of their own, which they furthered with their not-inconsiderable rhetorical skills and mastery of rhetorical devices.  If you are interested in a detailed examination of the rhetorical devices employed by Philo in his description of the Essenes, Professor Taylor's essay "Philo of Alexandria on the Essenes: A Case Study in the Use of Classical Sources in the Qumran-Essene Hypothesis" makes fascinating reading, and shows why arguments for a Dead Sea Scroll-Essene connection based upon ancient authors is more complicated than it might appear at first blush.

In spite of the fact that the ancient authors (like any author) had biases and agendas in their descriptions of the Essenes, and in spite of the fact that these biases and agendas complicate our ability to use their descriptions to draw a simple line between the ancient Essene communities of the Dead Sea region and the discovery in 1946-1956 in the same region of the scrolls known today as the Dead Sea Scrolls, it is clear that the accounts of the Essenes left to us by those three ancient authors (Philo, Pliny the Elder, and Josephus) ascribed great virtue to the Essenes and the ideals that they pursued, describing them as pursuing a communal life of simple work in agricultural pursuits or peaceful and beneficial works craftsmanship, as well as the arts of healing and works of compassion and mercy.

Many of the virtues ascribed to the Essenes by these three authors are similar to virtues commonly ascribed to the classical philosophers or philosophical schools, including the seeking out of locations with pure air to breathe for their communities (since the practice of deliberate breathing was considered important by ancient wisdom schools, and the quality of the air breathed was critical to this practice), as well as the pursuit of the ideals of the Pythagorean order which usually implied a vegetarian diet and an abstention from the killing of animals for either food or sacrifice.

There is, however, a line in one of the descriptions of the Essenes from Josephus which is somewhat remarkable and which strikes me as something which modern philosophers might aspire to emulate in the ideals of the Essenes, and that is the assertion that the Essenes strove to never show anger or express it outwardly.  

In book II of his text The Wars of the Jews or, The History of the Destruction of Jerusalem, in chapter 8, Josephus writes: 
They dispense their anger after a just manner, and restrain their passion. They are eminent for fidelity, and are the ministers of peace; whatsoever they say also is firmer than an oath; but swearing is avoided by them, and they esteem it worse than perjury for they say that he who cannot be believed without [swearing by] God is already condemned. They also take great pains in studying the writings of the ancients, and choose out of them what is most for the advantage of their soul and body; and they inquire after such roots and medicinal stones as may cure their distempers.  [Book II, chapter 8, section 6].
The above is from the William Whiston translation of 1737.  The same description of their abstention from the expression of anger is translated by a more modern author (on this website) in this way:
They are very careful not to exhibit their anger, carefully controlling such outbursts.  They are very loyal and are peacemakers.
Whatever modern analysts may argue about the possible biases or over-generalizations in the descriptions they have left us of the ancient Essenes, we can at least acknowledge that the above description is certainly admirable and something to consider adopting to some degree.  It also brings to mind the wise words of the Dalai Lama in his essay "Compassion and the Individual" (which has been linked-to before, in this previous post), in which he discusses whether anger is ever beneficial, and concludes that it is not, while simultaneously arguing that avoiding anger does not mean that we cannot forcefully stand up for fairness and the prevention of harm to ourselves or to others.  

In that essay, he writes:
it is useful to investigate whether or not anger is of value. Sometimes, when we are discouraged by a difficult situation, anger does seem helpful, appearing to bring with it more energy, confidence and determination.

Here, though, we must examine our mental state carefully. While itis true that anger brings extra energy, if we explore the nature of this energy, we discover that it is blind: we cannot be sure whether its result will be positive or negative. This is because anger eclipses the best part of our brain: its rationality. So the energy of anger is almost always unreliable. It can cause an immense amount of destructive, unfortunate behavior. Moreover, if anger increases to the extreme, one becomes like a mad person, acting in ways that are as damaging to oneself as they are to others.

It is possible, however, to develop an equally forceful but far more controlled energy with which to handle difficult situations.

This controlled energy comes not only from a compassionate attitude, but also from reason and patience. These are the most powerful antidotes to anger. Unfortunately, many people misjudge these qualities as signs of weakness. I believe the opposite to be true: that they are the true signs of inner strength. Compassion is by nature gentle, peaceful and soft, but it is very powerful. It is those who easily lose their patience who are insecure and unstable. Thus, to me, the arousal of anger is a direct sign of weakness.

So, when a problem first arises, try to remain humble and maintain a sincere attitude and be concerned that the outcome is fair. Of course, others may try to take advantage of you, and if your remaining detached only encourages unjust aggression, adopt a strong stand, This, however, should be done with compassion, and if it is necessary to express your views and take strong countermeasures, do so without anger or ill-intent.

You should realize that even though your opponents appear to be harming you, in the end, their destructive activity will damage only themselves.
This discussion from the Dalai Lama on the avoidance of anger in turn calls to mind previous examinations of this same topic in posts entitled "Master Po on nonviolence" and also "Reflections on Simone Weil's 'The Iliad, or the Poem of Force' and the question of consciousness."

This striking aspect of the Essenes, as described by the ancient authors, of endeavoring to be very careful not to exhibit their anger, controlling such outbursts, seems to be an outstanding trait to consider on the start of a new calendar year (a time when many people come up with "New Year's Resolutions").  

One could hardly do worse than to consider it for inclusion in such a list of resolutions, I think.

Happy New Year!  Wishing you health and joy in 2013.



The discovery of the Nag Hammadi library





It was sometime in December of 1945 when three brothers, fellahin from the village of al-Qasr (see detailed map below) unearthed an ancient jar at the foot of the cliffs of the Jabal al-Tarif west of the village of Hamrah Dun.  Although they could not know it at the time, it was a discovery of enormous import.

The jar contained texts written on papyrus and bound into codex form, and the contents of those codices turned out to be texts that were most likely declared to be heretical in the fourth century AD and were thus buried to escape detection and destruction -- destruction that was so thorough that the teachings in these texts were almost completely eradicated and could only be pieced together by inference from writings by those who were on the side of those ordering their destruction and who were denouncing the doctrines that were preserved in the codices inside this ancient jar.

The discovery, then, opened a window onto a part of the ancient world that had been sealed off for centuries, an imperfect window to be sure, but since all the other windows onto that view had been deliberately smashed and bricked over (so to speak), it was an important window indeed.

These texts would come to be called the "Nag Hammadi library," and they would take a rather circuitous path to publication and translation, but they are now available to the public (since 1975) and can be found online in various places, such as here.  







































The story of their discovery has been told by Professor James M. Robinson, who was responsible for tracking down the discoverers and determining the approximate date of their discovery (which had not been previously specified beyond a range of years), as well as for much of the analysis of the texts and their significance.  He spoke in person with the field hand who discovered the texts, and in an essay entitled "Nag Hammadi: the First Fifty Years" published in the Proceedings of the 1995 Society of Biblical Literature Commemoration, explains that the three brothers, named Muhammad Ali (the eldest brother), Khalifa Ali, and Abu al-Magd, were digging for fertilizer in the talus at the foot of the Jabal al-Tarif.  From his interviews with Muhammad Ali, Professor Robinson discovered:
When the local sugarcane harvest was over and the land lay fallow during the brief winter, he regularly dug soft earth at the foot of the cliff that served as fertilizer for the fields.  He had been digging fertilizer, he recalled, just a few weeks before the Coptic Christmas, which is January 7, when he made the discovery.  [. . .]

Muhammad Ali at first feared to open the jar (sealed with a bowl attached with bitumen to the mouth of the jar) lest it contain a jinn.  But then it occurred to him it might contain gold.  This gave him courage enough to break it with his mattock.  Out flew, into the air, what he thought might be an airy golden jinn, but which I suspect was only papyrus fragments.  He was very let down to find only worthless old books in the jar.  

He tore some up to share with some of the other camel drivers who were present, which explains some of the damage and loss which does not fit the pattern of what one would expect from the gradual deterioration of the centuries.  Since the other camel drivers, no doubt out of fear of Muhammad Ali, declined his insincere offer to share, he stacked it all back up together, unrolled his turban from around his head, put the codices in it, slung it over his shoulder, unhobbled his camel, drove back home, and dumped the junk in the enclosed patio in his house where the animals and their fodder were kept.  His mother confirmed to me that she had in fact burnt some along with straw as kindling in the outdoor clay oven.
We will probably never know what was on those texts that helped light the outdoor clay oven.  However, scholars have since determined that the jar contained thirteen codices (the twelfth was probably sacrificed as kindling, according to the analysis done by Professor Robinson, and only one text and the opening of another text from the thirteenth survive, having anciently been stuffed inside the cover material of the sixth codex), and that the surviving library of texts number forty-seven (not counting additional fragments and duplicates).  They have been given the name "the Nag Hammadi texts" or the "Nag Hammadi library" after the largest village near the cliffs where they were found (circled in green in the map above and notable for a bridge there across the Nile; the jar itself was found closer to Hamrah Dum, which is circled in red and has a red arrow pointing toward the cliff area one kilometer west, where Muhammad Ali told Professor Robinson he and his brothers discovered the jar; they were from the village of al-Qasr south of Hamrah Dum and circled in blue).

Nag Hammadi is located near the dramatic bend in the Nile just north of Luxor, which in ancient Egypt was called Thebes, the mighty ancient capitol of Upper Egypt (southern Egypt, the "upstream" and thus "upper" portion of Egypt, since the Nile flows south-to-north).  The map below shows the region and its terrain, along with a red arrow indicating Nag Hammadi and a blue arrow indicating the Jabal al-Tarif below whose cliffs the jar was buried.




Note that the terrain of Egypt shows clear geological evidence of massive water movement which shaped the severe terrain in the vicinity of Nag Hammadi and Luxor.  The deep gullies and wadis with their serpentine branches were probably formed by outrushing groundwater erupting and pouring out into the channel that would later hold the Nile River, when the entire area was covered by water that was trapped after the global flood described in the hydroplate theory of Dr. Walt Brown.  When this trapped water was rapidly and violently released and drained into the Mediterranean (probably due to the Mediterranean's breaching of the Dardanelles and Bosporus and the rapid filling of the area now covered by the Black Sea -- as that water flowed east, the water that had covered Egypt flowed out and into the now-lower Mediterranean; this aspect of the hydroplate theory is discussed on this page of Dr. Brown's book, towards the bottom of that web page, just above the inset entitled "Prediction 3").  

Dr. Brown discusses similar canyons to those seen in the terrain map above, but in the vicinity of the Grand Canyon.  There, many deep canyons are also seen which he describes in the section entitled "Side Canyons" a little less than halfway down this page, saying, "These side canyons also have their own side canyons, all connected like branches on a big, bushy tree. Surprisingly, most side canyons, at least today, have no source of water that could have carved them—or basins above that could have held much water."  On this later page, also dealing with the geology in and around the Grand Canyon in Arizona, Dr. Brown explains that the side canyons and barbed canyons there were most likely carved by water from the water table that had previously been much higher (before the trapped inland seas or giant lakes breached and lost all their water) erupting out of the flanks of the cliffs that today are high and dry (see his sections called "Side Canyons of Marble Canyon and Grand Canyon" and also "Barbed Canyons," both about halfway down the web page). 

To see where this particular Nag Hammadi and Luxor portion of the Nile fits into the larger picture of Egypt, see the map below.  Similar geological signs of catastrophic water outflows can be seen further east, where the outflowing water ended up in the Red Sea and connected ultimately with the Arabian Sea and Indian Ocean:



Getting back to the incredibly important texts found buried in that ancient jar at the base of the Jabal al-Tarif, they have been generally categorized as reflecting a "gnostic" understanding of the origin of mankind and our purpose here in this life, a perspective that is at odds with the understanding that would become the teaching of orthodox Christianity and which would therefore be violently declaimed against and apparently was stamped out.  The texts are described by Marvin Meyer in his 2005 book The Gnostic Discoveries: The Impact of the Nag Hammadi Library as follows: 
Research on the Nag Hammadi library and the Berlin Gnostic Codex [also found in Egypt but in the late 1800s, which appears related in its contents to the Nag Hammadi texts and which contains four texts] has disclosed a broad spectrum of perspectives among the texts that may be identified as gnostic or gnosticizing, and the texts seem to fall roughly into five groups.  These five groups may reflect, for several of the groups, gnostic schools of thought embraced by teachers and students in communities.

The first group of gnostic texts in the Nag Hammadi library consists of the Thomas texts: the Gospel of Thomas, the Book of Thomas, and probably the Dialogue of the Savior. [. . .]

The second group of texts derives from the Sethian school of thought.  Sethian texts reflect traditions of Seth, son of Adam and Eve, as a paradigmatic human being. [. . .]

The third group of gnostic texts represents the Valentinian school of thought.  Valentinus was a second-century Egyptian who became a Christian gnostic teacher and preacher in Alexandria and Rome. [. . .]

The fourth group of gnostic texts in the Nag Hammadi library comes from the Hermetic heritage.  The Hermetic tradition has been known for a long time, and Hermetic texts, collected in the Corpus Hermeticum, have assumed a prominent place in discussions of mystical religion in antiquity and late antiquity. [ . . .]

[. . .]  Within the texts of the Nag Hammadi library there are three Hermetic texts, two previously known, an excerpt from the Perfect Discourse and the Prayer of Thanksgiving, and one new Hermetic text, the Discourse on the Eighth and Ninth.  

The fifth group of gnostic texts in the Nag Hammadi library and the Berlin Gnostic Codex is hardly a definable group, but instead consists of those gnostic texts that defy classification.  These texts seem to incorporate leading gnostic themes, as suggested above, and may show similarities to other gnostic texts and traditions, but they do not fit neatly into the other groups of gnostic texts.  48 - 52.
Such is the categorization suggested by Marvin Meyer and other scholars.  Others may perhaps organize or categorize them differently.  However they are categorized, their significance is profound on many levels and for many reasons.  First, as Marvin Meyer explains elsewhere in the same book, "Prior to the discovery of the Nag Hammadi library, 'gnosticism' typically was considered to be an early and pernicious Christian heresy, and much of our knowledge of gnostic religion was gleaned from the writings of the Christian heresiologists, those authors who attempted to establish orthodoxy and expose heresy in the early church. [. . .]  Since the discovery of the Nag Hammadi library and related texts, the study of gnostic religion and its impact upon ancient and modern religion has been fundamentally transformed" (1-6).

Second, the deliberate burial at the base of a cliff after sealing the texts into a jar suggests that those who valued these texts were hiding them from those who wanted to suppress or even destroy them, and this brings up the entire theme of the destruction of ancient knowledge which has appeared in previous posts such as this one and this one.   Marvin Meyer provides evidence that these texts may have been buried upon the publication of the Festal Letter of Athanasius, Archbishop of Alexandria, in AD 367 (also known as the 39th Festal Letter (Meyer 30-31).  This letter lists the texts considered canonical and condemns as heretical those that are "an invention of heretics."

Finally, the texts have great importance to us on their own merit, for the light they may shed upon the meaning of human existence and the nature of human consciousness.  For this, the reader is encouraged to examine them for himself or herself (again, they can be searched and read here).

There is also the matter of that mysterious report from the discoverer of the long-lost jar containing the library, who said that when he broke open the jar, out flew what "might be an airy golden jinn," but which Professor Robinson says he suspects was "only papyrus fragments."  I wonder . . .

Are you ready for genetically-modified salmon?






































This week, the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) made public its environmental assessment (EA) on the material submitted in support of a new animal drug application (NADA) for a genetically-modified Atlantic salmon, the AquAdvantage Salmon.  

The FDA's "finding of no significant impact" (or FONSI) advances the process of ultimate approval for sale and human consumption of this genetically-modified salmon in the US.  According to this article published in the Independent (in the UK) on December 24th, 2012, "The verdict clears one of the last remaining hurdles for GM salmon to be lawfully sold and eaten in the US and will put pressure on salmon producers in Britain and Europe to follow suit."

Oddly enough, that article notes that the FDA completed its assessment in May of 2012, but decided not to publish its findings at that time, deferring instead until December 21, 2012.  That seems to be a strange choice of a date, coinciding as it does with the conclusion of the Maya Long Count and thus one of the most anciently-anticipated dates known, as well as one with a tremendous amount of popular apocalyptic hype, partially inflamed by sensationalist videos over the years (such as this one from National Geographic). 

This recent article by Jon Entine of the Genetic Literacy Project suggests that the delay by the FDA was due to the anticipation of the 2012 presidential election, and fears of alienating the voters in the incumbent's base, who generally oppose genetically-modified food in plant form and probably would not be too thrilled about the approval of the first genetically-modified animal for human consumption, as well as the potential impact on the natural ecosystems and existing salmon populations should genetically-modified salmon somehow escape into the wild.  

Note that the Genetic Literacy Project is a non-profit organization dedicated to advancing the public acceptance of and increased use of genetically-modified organisms; the organization's website declares in its mission statement the assertion that "genetics is our future" because genetic modification can be "a source of dramatic innovations to improve food security, the environment and public health."  They also state that they exist to combat the ignorance of "people who don’t understand risk and complexity" (that would appear to be anyone who doubts that "genetics is our future" or who don't believe that the potential risks of genetically-modifying living organisms using the rDNA of other organisms are necessarily outweighed by the supposed gains in "food security, the environment and public health").

Several previous posts have argued that the question of genetic modification of organisms is far more problematic than the "fear and misunderstanding" that arises among "people who don't understand risk and complexity," and that there may be excellent reasons to be very concerned about the creation and consumption of genetically modified foods.  At the very least, it is an area that demands extensive analysis and the realization that there are many arguments on both sides that are worth hearing, rather than simply calling names and demeaning anyone who opposes your position on the subject.

Previous posts on this topic include:
The FDA's recently-published examination of the merits of genetically-modified salmon for human consumption explain that the AquAdvantage salmon (which is referred to as "the construct") is created by introducing the recombinant DNA (rDNA) of three organisms into an Atlantic salmon: the anti-freeze protein gene (AFP) of the ocean pout, the coding sequence (cDNA) of the growth hormone (GH) of the Chinook salmon found in its pituitary gland, and two synthetic DNAs introduced as "synthetic linkers" (pages 18-19).

The FDA's literature confirms that these genetic modifications cause the construct to grow at rates that are from 2- to 6-fold the growth rates of a natural Atlantic salmon. Not only do they grow faster, but the introduction of the foreign DNA causes them to grow in cold waters, whereas normal Atlantic salmon only turn on their growth hormone in warm waters.  The average size after an equal number of "degrees celsius days" of the construct versus a control group was 261.0 grams versus 72.6 grams!  That's a big difference.  At the end of that same period, only 4.9% of the control population had reached the 100 gram threshold, while 98.6% of the construct population had met or exceeded that size!  (See page 41 of this FDA document).

The same FDA document explains that recently-issued changes to US Dietary Guidelines (published in 2010) "specifically recommend that Americans increase the amount and variety of seafood consumed by choosing seafood in place of some meat and poultry" and that "these recommendations are expected to further contribute to increased demands for seafood in the future" (page 20).  

Putting aside the question of the advisability of having governments telling people what to eat (there is evidence that this advice has been quite harmful and often may have been based on completely erroneous analysis in the relatively short period of time since governments began interfering in the diet of the citizenry), does it necessarily follow that just because demand for seafood is expected to increase, it is advisable to introduce the DNA of other fish (along with synthetic DNA) into Atlantic salmon, and then to sell the meat of such "constructs" to satisfy the demand for seafood?

This article from the New York Times raises the question of whether increased levels of hormones in food animals might be linked to increased cancer risk in those who consume those animals.  The article notes that some studies appear to indicate such a link.

There is also the question of the ethics of creating these genetic "construct" organisms, and the possible negative repercussions for the fish themselves.  The FDA's recently-released study indicates that farm-raised salmon (and trout) appear to suffer from numerous ailments at much higher rates than their wild cousins.  In a footnote beginning on page 27 of this FDA document and continuing onto the bottom of page 28, the FDA writes:
Morphologic irregularities do occur in non-transgenic salmonids, most commonly affecting cartilaginous and boney structures (Brown and Nunez, 1998), and are often associated with the development of new commercial lines or husbandry techniques and culture conditions.  Developmental malformations of cartilage and bone have been observed quite commonly in association with intensive commercial farming of salmon (Salmo) and trout (Oncorhynchus) species [. . .].  These malformations include irregularities of the head, jaw, and operculum, and twisting or compression of the spine.  [. . .]  Veterinary field studies have identified the periodic occurrence of spinal compression (humpback) in 70% of salmon in Norwegian farming operations (Kvellestad et al., 2000), and jaw malformation in 80% of salmon at commercial sites in Chile (Roberts et al., 2001).
The report indicates that these irregularities appear to be caused by "suboptimal culture condition (e.g., nutrition, water quality, and environmental stressors)."  It also notes that about 69% of salmon currently consumed in the US is farmed.

These are very sad statistics and should raise some ethical questions about farmed salmon, let alone about the creation of new "constructs" of salmon to be farmed (the genetically-modified constructs will be grown from eggs in Canada and then shipped to heavily-secured farm pens in the highlands of Panama, to prevent their escape into the wild, and they will be designed to be all-female and "triploid" or having triple the genes of a fertile female salmon, so that they will be infertile just in case one or more do escape).

The conditions described above also bring to mind the two previous posts (here and here) which examined two texts by the ancient author (and priest of Apollo) Plutarch, entitled "On the eating of flesh."  In those essays, Plutarch asks "what madness, what frenzy drives you to the pollution of shedding blood, you who have such a superfluity of necessities?"  He argues that, when so many plants grow for our nourishment and enjoyment, we cannot justify the slaughter of other creatures merely for taste.  He further argues that the fear that the increase of the earth cannot feed us indicates a lack of faith in the divinities that provide the food (he names Demeter and Dionysus in his essays).  His final argument is that animals are conscious beings, and there is the added possibility of the survival and reincarnation of the consciousness, which should tip the scales against the horrible mistreatment of animals that are kept for slaughter and consumption.

These arguments should be carefully considered before humanity rushes to begin creating and consuming genetically-modified animals on a mass scale, starting with salmon.



On December 27, watch some of the movies starring Lam Ching-Ying (1952 - 1997)



December 27 is the birthday of the late Lam Ching-Ying, who starred in such famous Hong Kong films of the 1980s as Prodigal Son (Bai Ga Jai in Cantonese) and Mr. Vampire.  

Last year's post on this day has some detail on his life and filmography.

Like all forms of human expression, films and theater can have many layers of meaning. 

Above is a link to Prodigal Son (1982, Cantonese with English subtitles).  Below is a link to Mr. Vampire (1985, the first in the Mr. Vampire series; Cantonese and in order to turn on English subtitles you may need to click on the "cc" button and then select "Translate Captions" and then select "English - English," unless you understand Cantonese).



Respect.



Were the strata of the earth laid down all at once, or over hundreds of millions of years?























I recently received Dr. Walt Brown's Christmas letter, and as always it is filled with remarkable insights, as well as some updates and new photographs and diagrams that are going into his newest edition of his comprehensive book on his hydroplate theory, In the Beginning: Compelling Evidence for Creation and the Flood.

One of the updated photos is a very recent picture of the strata of the Grand Canyon, taken just after Thanksgiving of this year, and showing his two grandsons standing next to a quartzite block embedded in the layers of the Grand Canyon -- a quartzite block that acts as a very important clue about the strata that geologists use to try to understand the ancient history of our globe and its geological features.

That updated photo of the quartzite block can be seen on this page of Dr. Brown's hydroplate theory book, which he graciously makes available for free to everyone online in its entirety.  The photo is labeled "Figure 1" and it shows the location of the quartzite block in the wall of the Grand Canyon (the image to the left) as well as a close-up of the block and the strata around it.

The reason this block, which Dr. Brown estimates to weigh between five and ten tons, is so significant is the fact that it is made of quartzite from the strata of the Grand Canyon below the "Great Unconformity" which are usually designated as the "Pre-Cambrian" strata, but this huge block is embedded in the layers above the unconformity, which geologists say formed about a billion years later!  Further, as the interested reader can easily see by looking at the close-up of the block in the "later" strata, the layers around the block are clearly deformed in smooth-flowing lines around the mighty block, almost as if these layers were soft and pliant when the block was in their midst, and then hardened later!

But such a suggestion, that the layers were all soft and pliable, goes against all the assumptions upon which modern geology and stratigraphy are founded!  Conventional geologists confidently tell us that the various layers of the Grand Canyon (and all the other layers found in the geological strata around the world) were laid down over many millions of years.  In fact, they will tell you with great precision the date range of each of the layers of the Grand Canyon -- you can see them in this previous discussion in a blog post entitled "The Strata and the Great Flood."

If the quartzite block is from the "Pre-Cambrian" layers of the Grand Canyon "Supergroup" dated by conventional geologists as being laid down between 740 million to 1.8 billion years ago, how did it "float" upwards into the layers above which are dated between 525 million and 505 million years ago?  How did those layers oblige by bending around it so gracefully?  Perhaps that quartzite block was floating in the air for hundreds of millions of years while it waited for the other strata to be laid down around it.

This quartzite block and its intriguing location argues strongly for the possibility that the strata of the Grand Canyon were laid down rapidly, rather than hundreds of millions of years apart.  As discussed in previous posts, and in much greater detail in his book, Dr. Brown has provided extensive evidence that this is exactly what did take place: the strata were laid down rapidly during a flood event, the result of a massive outpouring of sediments when the "fountains of the great deep" erupted with cataclysmic violence, abrading millions of tons of earth as they did so.  He has explained that the hydrodynamic forces of liquefaction sorted these sediments into layers during the flood.  Afterwards, some of these layers were still soft and pliable for some time, before hardening into sedimentary rock.  This explains the graceful folds seen in some places where great pressures (also during the events surrounding the global flood) acted on them while they were still able to bend.  

Regarding this particular quartzite block, Dr. Brown provides this explanation (again, be sure to check out his full discussion in his book itself):
Geology professor Arthur V. Chadwick brought this block to my attention in 197824 and later in a visit to my office. The block—a very hard material called quartzite—was lifted, transported from right to left, and deposited on layers which, at the time, were soft mud. Other mud layers then blanketed the block. (See the deformed layers below and above the block.) Professor Chadwick correctly identified the lifting force: a very dense, rapidly-flowing, sand/mud/water slurry, which plucked the block off the lower quartzite layer upstream (far to the right of these pictures). Part of that “pink” quartzite layer is seen in the first picture (lower right). The easiest way to lift and transport such a heavy block is in a dense liquefied (and therefore, very buoyant), sediment/water mixture. 

This rapid transport, which was immediately above the Cambrian-Precambrian interface, occurred during the compression event. Below the sliding slurry, a sand layer decelerated and compressed first. That compression squeezed up water that lubricated the slide and heated the quartz sand, so it became quartzite.25 Compression also tipped the layers up, causing them to be beveled by the overriding, sliding layers. The camera is looking north; therefore the slurry slid from east to west, which is consistent with the direction the Americas hydroplate slid away from the Mid-Atlantic Ridge.
This explanation is much more consistent with the location of this block and the appearance of the layers around that transported quartzite block than any explanation which tries to argue that the layers around the block were successively laid down over many millions of years.
There are many other places around the globe where the geology appears to provide evidence that the strata were laid down rapidly rather than over the course of many successive aeons of time the way that conventional geologists tell us in school.  Take a look at the photograph at the top of this post showing graceful curving strata in the Gasteretal in Switzerland (south of Bern).  Or the photograph below from the Chikmagalur in southwest India (Karnataka region, formerly Mysore). 
Ask yourself whether, if you had to bet on it, you would say these layers appear to have been bent into these shapes while the strata were still partially wet and pliable (because they were all laid down during the same event) or whether it looks like they were laid down over millions of years and then somehow bent into these shapes when they were dry as a bone?

The question of whether the strata of the earth were laid down all at once, or over hundreds of millions of years, is a crucial question for the conclusions one draws from the various geological formations around the world.  If one is looking at the geological clues, and working from a thesis or framework of thought in which the strata must have been laid down over successive ages spanning more than a billion years, then the evidence will be interpreted very differently than if one is open to the possibility that these layers were all laid down in a relatively short period of time.

The majority of conventional geologists absolutely refuse to even entertain the possibility that the strata may have all been laid down in a relatively short period of time.  They should, however, reconsider that possibility.