A [Table of Contents] of all the chapters in HTML here.
A [Table of Contents] of all the chapters as PDF here.

For Claudia George, who said,
"Write a history of everything."

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Recovering the Lost World,
A Saturnian Cosmology -- Jno Cook
Preface.


[table of contents] [Chapter 1]

$Revision: 31.3 $ 3/02 3/27/2012
Contents of this Preface: [About This Book] [Who I Am] [Why This Text Is Presented] [What Others Say]

About This Book

This book presents a cosmology based entirely on the supposition that our coherent worldwide mythology is history rather than creative fiction writing in antiquity.

As a result, this text is about the catastrophes experienced by Earth in remote antiquity and also in more recent times. Some have been unbelievably destructive, which has been recognized by archaeologists recently in their investigation of the event at the start of the Younger Dryas period.

The text will also tell what in remote antiquity suggested to humans the idea of an afterlife, why the gods of more recent times were conceived of as real, and how phenomena experienced thousands of years ago are still reflected today in the theology of current religions. It will also tell how the length of the year changed repeatedly, and how the axial inclination of the Earth changed.

What we will not suggest here are alien intervention, exploding meteors, the Earth turning over, or collisions with other planets. This text is also not about religion or theology. It's about history. It is a history that mainstream academics will not deal with, in spite of the fact that all the information presented here is readily available, and remains within the scope of physics and accepted chronology. It simply needs to be reconstructed. That is the task I have undertaken.

The first section will assert the thesis that worldwide mythology is history and give the philosophy behind this alternative cosmology. The next section deals with accepted archaeology. The third section deals with the most ancient history -- the oldest records of Mesopotamia and ending with the pyramids of Egypt. After that we are into modern history. The last section starts with the Flood of Noah and ends with the destructions in the 8th and 7th century BC.

Yes, there was a flood. In fact, there were two massive floods, and a third metaphorical flood with a lot of rain. It is this last which is known as the Flood of Noah.

This text was written continuously over a ten-year period between 2001 and 2011, although often in short pieces and bursts of inspiration as data was fit to an established chronology. The text is somewhat longer than War and Peace, and it can be read in 40 or 50 hours or in as many evenings, perhaps by reading a chapter per night. The narrative themes are developed one at a time and are presented mostly in historical order.

It is a long book, because the events of the last 10,000 years are complex, and because I needed to set them out one by one against the story of the past as it has been handed down to us. If you are looking, for example, for evidence of the Noachim Flood, you will find the information spread over four chapters, and alternately denied and asserted. The real history of this world is not simple.

You can skip some chapters and return to them later. The text is clearly divided between what is based on Mediterranean and related sources, and what is based on Mesoamerican sources. These latter are almost entirely from post-invasion documents, although based on very old codexes which are now lost to us.

The Mesoamerican sources are radically different from the oldest history of Egypt and Mesopotamia and yet they entirely validate the Mediterranean sources. It is almost beyond belief to think that the records from Central America could completely verify the chronology derived from Mediterranean sources, and provide additional details such as seasonal calendar dates.

Who I Am

I should mention who I am, and what drove me to write this text.

First, I am a visual artist (sculpture, installations), living in Chicago where I have taught photography for years. But I also have a background in electrical engineering, cinematography, public administration, and programming, and a curiosity dating back a lifetime. More information is available at my website [http://jnocook.net].

Second, I researched and wrote this text mainly because there was a lack of a comprehensive narrative of events among the literature of catastrophism and alternative cosmologies. This is a void I have been attempting to fill over the last decade, initially for my own benefit. The text of the narrative is based on a carefully derived chronology and a celestial mechanics which has remained within accepted boundaries of physics.

Why This Text Is Presented on the Internet

This text is presented on the internet as webpages. The advantage of a web site is that it is completely malleable -- it can be easily changed, added to, corrected, and expanded -- while simultaneously having all of the ideas publicly available. The alternative of publishing this in printed book form would delay the availability, limit distribution to a select few, and allow no updates. Also, by going public, I have been forced to complete the investigation and have been under pressure to make all of it coherent. Amazingly, additional details have kept coming forward as the edits have continued.

What Others Say

A few comments from readers, via infrequent emails.

-- Portland, Oregon,
January 21, 2012

____
Special thanks for editorial assistance and word editing to Claudia George, Danford Vander Ploeg, Natan Rothstein, and Kevin Widen.

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A [Table of Contents] of all the chapters in HTML here.
A [Table of Contents] of all the chapters as PDF here.

[table of contents] [first chapter]

URL of this page: http://saturniancosmology.org/index.php
This page last updated: Friday, May 4th, 2012
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Copyright © 2001 - 2012 Jno Cook

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