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Recovering the Lost World,
A Saturnian Cosmology -- Jno Cook
Part 5: Saturn and archaeology.

[Table of Contents]

$Revision: 19.13 $
Contents of this chapter: [The Saturnian Planets] [Time line] [Neolithic Figurines] [Objections to Gimbutas] [Catal Huyuk] [The Peratt Column] [Lascaux] [The Hand Axe] [Endnotes]

Throughout the Upper Paleolithic and the Neolithic, from about 30,000 years ago, Saturn was seen by humans and recorded in sculptural artifacts, the so-called Venus Figurines. These were carved by the thousands during the Upper Paleolithic, and in many millions in the Neolithic. These hand-held sculptures were carved, I should point out, by the same people who decorated their spear throwers with realistic representations of horses, deer, fish, and birds. In western Europe these same people decorated 300 caves with images of herd animals, but there is not a single realistic presentation of humans from this period -- the only exception being the grossly fat or distorted Venus Figurines.

The Saturnian Planets

What was seen in the skies during these 30,000 years was not just the planet Saturn, but a grouping of four planets stacked one above the other -- Uranus, Neptune, Saturn, and Mars, from top to bottom. This stack stood 'upright' in the skies, so that in effect each of the planets traveled on an identical orbit around the Sun.

How did these planets become grouped together? Since all indications are that Saturn had been on an elliptical path close to the Sun for millions of years, sooner or later Saturn would have swept up the other planets traveling on close orbits around the Sun. I am, in fact, suggesting that this happened over the course of the last three million years. There are no human witnesses before that time, and no reliable artists recording strange objects in the skies before 32,000 years ago.

Initially the other planets would have been gravitationally attracted, but as soon as their plasmaspheres touched, they would also be repelled electrically. I have detailed the process for the subpolar orbit of Earth in the previous chapter. The same means would apply to a suprapolar orbit.

As suggested in Chapter 14, "Mechanics," Neptune was probably located 800,000 miles above Saturn, and Uranus was located another million miles further above. Mars was below Saturn some distance (I have no reasonable estimate). [note a]

The shaping of Saturn's electrical field by its magnetic field would have sufficed to relocate each of the planets into locations above or below Saturn's poles. Neptune traveled directly above Saturn, with its spin axis aligned with Saturn, and its south magnetic pole facing Saturn's north magnetic pole. Above this traveled Uranus, tipped down at 15 degrees from the horizontal so that its upper geographic pole (which is the magnetic south pole) was located directly above Neptune's north magnetic and geographic pole.

The magnetic alignment had nothing to do with holding the planets in position, as would otherwise be understood from the fact that the magnetic poles attracted, rather than repelled in this alignment. It probably has more to do with shaping the flow of plasma from planet to planet, but also the electrical fields experiemced by each of them. What kept the planets in position would be the gravitational attraction between them, balanced against an equal electrical repulsion, and, not to be neglected, their identical orbits around the Sun.

All four planets were surrounded by a glow mode plasma, due to the attempt at charge equalization by Saturn. The magnetic fields shaped the electrical fields, forcing a convergance (a pinching) of the glow mode plasma in the locations between the planets.

 

Images: Saturn with Neptune, Uranus, and Mars enclosed in plasma. Venus of Willendorf.

Seen from a low angle Saturn and its three planets would look like a fat woman. Saturn and its bulky coma constituted the belly and buttocks. The connecting coma surrounding Neptune, accentuated by the toriodial belts surrounding its equator, providing the imagery for two large breasts. Although these planets rotated, the image of two bulbous breast would remain the same, as did the view of the fat belly. The head was modeled by Uranus, which, because it rotated in the plane of the ecliptic (Uranus lies nearly on its side), did not seem to move except as a single rotation (as part of the figure) during the course of the Earth's year.

The Venus of Willendorf represents the archetype of Venus Figurines. Although it was found during excavation for a railroad bed, it was instantly dated to 28,000 years ago from its form. The face, typically, is covered with hair. This is an outstreaming of plasma in glow mode from Uranus. Just as typical is the 15 degree forward tilt of the head, which remains as a distinguishing feature for figurines for the next 25,000 years.

The legs are formed by a stream of plasma to Mars, far below Saturn, but the feet are never shown (or broken off on the Willendorf Venus). The plasma stream to Mars may have been bifurcated, which would make the dual streams look like legs. The coma at Mars is of a much smaller dimension, not only because Mars is small compared to Saturn, but because Mars has no magnetic field or an exterior layer of liquid or gas, and thus would not support a large coma.

How large was the image of the Saturn configuration in the sky? All the figurines are of a dimension which can be easily held in the palm of a hand, a few inches high at most. Held at arm's length such a figurine can be compared to Saturn as seen in the sky.

Time line

The progress of the location of Earth with respect to Saturn can be traced through the approximate dates of various forms of the millions of figurines over time. In the diagram below I have schematically placed Earth at various locations further away and closer to the Saturnian planets, and at various levels, in order to represent the view of Saturn from Earth. An important consideration is the foreshortening which at times condenses widely spaced planets to a view where they are effectively lumped together.

Image: Saturn depicted or recollected from various vantage points from the Upper Paleolithic and the Neolithic. The view is edge-on to the orbits of the planets. The 'path' of Earth is but to be understood as differeing vantage points over time.

The series of positions shown above is not the path of the planet Earth. There were probably periods of thousands of years where Earth's orbit did not come anywhere near Saturn. Only the last few positions (4 to 8) were sequential, and even these were spaced over 5000 years. It is also important to realize that, except for the last 5000 years of this diagram, Saturn was only seen in the skies periodically. If it had had the constancy of the Sun, there would have been no record made. The shapes mentioned here are described in more detail further below.

The end-points should be obvious. In the remote past Earth sees Saturn from a considerable distance. The slow progression of changes in the relative distance between Earth and Saturn ends with Earth positioned below the rotational axis of Saturn. Intermediate positions must follow the sequence of depictions of Saturn which can be ascertained archaelogically, and approximately dated.

Although the diagram above was made from archaeological considerations only, it would be of interest to compare this with concurrent glaciation and climatic conditions. Additionally, data derived from an investigation of some 4,000,000 petroglyphs worldwide by Anthony Peratt, published in 2007, will fit the archaelogically based chronology presented here (at least at a single date location), which was first derived in 2003. More on this further below.

• (1) 40,000 years ago: The "cup and tail" marks are found inscribed on rock faces worldwide. These are impossible to date, but seemed to have appeared at various times between 40,000 and 20,000 years ago.

  I have personally wondered at the earliest and one of the simplest rock carving -- the incised "cup and tail" marks which are found worldwide. This is a nearly closed inverted "U" shape, with a line scribed out of the center into the space outside the cup. When oblong-shaped rather than circular, these are often called "vulva" marks. Why would people, on every continent, carve the same figure on rock walls and horizontal rocks, and in such great profusion?

  The ubiquitous cup and tail carvings predate any other depictions of remote antiquity and are found absolutely everywhere throughout the world. These point to an earlier time before the Earth was captured by Saturn. The marks look like a distant planet in glow mode plasma discharge to a small planet below its south pole.

  This most likely was Saturn in plasma contact with Mars captured below, as it certainly was at a later date. I am suggesting this because most of what I have seen of the cup and tail marks have the tail pointing down. If the tail had represented a cometary-like plasma tail, it would have faced away from the Sun, and been seen sideways in the sky most of the time. The angle of view must have been oblique and from below, so that the Sun cast a shadow of the tail extending to Mars on the main coma of Saturn. That would define the mark coming out of the cup.

  Thus we are looking at a far distant and oblique view of the plasma (coma) surrounding Saturn with the 'tail' extending to Mars outlined partially by a shadow cast by the Sun on the main coma, with the remainer of the tail, which extended below the coma, seen against the night sky. [note 1]

• (2) 28,000 to 24,000 years ago: This is the era of the classical Venus Figurines of the Gravitian period of the western European Upper Paleolithic: a Fat Lady, footless and faceless. For some six to ten thousand years following this period, these disappear from western Europe. The painted caves of southwestern Europe, by the way, date from 32,000 years ago. [note 2b]

  The time when Cromagnon first shows up in Europe coincides with the start of the last significant glaciation, from 27,500 ya to about 14,500 ya. It is these people who have provided the first records of what the Fat Lady in the sky looked like.

• (3) 17,000 to 14,000 years ago: The figurines reappear in the Magdalenian period. They are elongated and distorted, although they still basically look female. I suspect at this time the Earth was in orbit such as to bring it nearly level with the Saturnian planets, thus showing the true separation between the planets.

  After 14,000 ya the glaciers retreat, although they do not disappear.

• after 9000 BC: After about 9000 BC (11,000 ya), as Earth starts to come closer to Saturn and falls below its equator, the imagery depicting Saturn as a Fat Lady in the sky again becomes important, with the number of sculptures increasing.

  This period coincides with a severe 'cold snap' lasting about 500 years, 11,000 ya to 10,500 ya, called the Younger Dryas. This may have been the effect of the Earth falling in the shadow of Saturn yearly.

• (4) after ca 6,700 BC: The squat figurines reappear, for now the Earth has dropped some distance below Saturn. In Catal Huyuk, in Anatolia, male figurines were created at earlier times, but after 6,700 BC no further male figurines are formed. Because of the lower perspective on the Saturnian planets, the figurines become fat and seated. The legs are lost as the coma tail extending to Mars disappears against the main coma of Saturn.

  At this point in time the glaciers are gone, having melted a thousand years ago, by 8,000 BC (10,000 ya). From 7,500 BC (9,500 ya) the climate in Europe warms.

• (5) after ca 5,600 BC: Even the perspective of a seated woman is almost entirely lost, and the figurines start to become entirely abstract over the next 1500 years. Earth was probably already within the plasmasphere of Saturn and in plasma contact at this time.

• (6) after ca 5,200 BC: What is now experienced is only a white cloud in the north skies, endlessly revolving about the Earth's polar axis. There are recollections of a tail extending to Earth from the cloud.

  By this time the Earth, in the process of a slow movement down and toward the center of rotation of Saturn, crosses the outer edge of the cone of plasma extending below Saturn. Earth would have been contained within its own plasmasphere, although of a different shape than today when Earth experiences only the Sun's electrical field. Now experiencing the electrical field of Saturn, the 'tail' of the plasmasphere would have extended away from the south polar region of Earth.

  This is an important concept because of the documentation by Anthony Peratt of what was seen, worldwide, of the streaming of bundles of electrons converging on the south pole of Earth and visually extending away from (up from) the south pole by some 400,000 miles. The streaming electrons were at times circularly aligned into 56 bundles (and lesser numbers) and were in arc mode density, thus they radiated in visible light, as well as in ultra violet and x-rays. The bundles were seen, from the perspective of Earth, as bright lines in the sky, converging far below the south pole into a plasmoid (a ball shape) before diverging again further away from the pole. I'll discuss this plasma column (the Peratt Column) further below. [note 2a]

• (7) after ca 5,000 BC: A giant circular shape shimmers through the cloud, or through the plasma streaming to Earth. Some people see the shape as an egg, other see it as a duck. This is the coma directly surrounding Saturn, or Saturn and Uranus.

  The bird shape derives from the fact that Uranus is offset from the rotational axis of Saturn but connected with a long stream ogf plasma to its south geographic and magnetic pole. Seen from below, as the Earth approached the position below Saturn, Uranus would have been seen on the right upper side of Saturn. The connecting neck of plasma is attached to a round head, slightly broader, with a beak-like protrusion at the other pole of Uranus. More on this further below.

• (8) ca 4,200 BC: The bird of creation has laid an egg, smaller than the surrounding coma, and initially white, but this turns to yellow or gold and the egg "breaks open."

  As Saturn went to arc mode discharge, the surrounding coma collapsed, and only the golden sphere is seen in the north sky. Mars appears clearly, and Uranus, offset from the axis of Saturn and Earth appears to one side, now disconnected from Saturn except for the remaining plume of plasma.

  A warmer climate is noted in archaeological records world-wide after 4,200 BC, over and above the warming after 9,000 BC (the Hypsithermal).

  Unlike the Peratt column, what happened above the north pole of Earth this will be remembered because it is an entirely different phenomenon, one which changes, interacts, and creates. The phenomenon would be amenable to a narrative.

It is obvious from the smaller number of female figurines in the Upper Paleolithic, that the view of Saturn and its companion planets was not the primary concern. The major concern were the herds of animals parading across the skies periodically. These reappear in Catal Huyuk and are still a concern during predynastic Egypt, where they are graphically depicted, and during the first Egyptian dynasties (3000 - 2700 BC) where the herds are attributed to Mars (Horus) and records of counts are kept. The last sightings may have been made during the 8th century BC.

As I noted above, only after 9000 BC, when the Earth has moved much closer to Saturn, do the figurines proliferate, eventually reaching into the millions on millions worldwide.

Below, I will start with the collection of Neolithic imagery of the northeastern Mediterranean region gathered by Marija Gimbutas for the period of 7,000 to 3500 BC, and backwards to the narrow transitional period represented by Catal Huyuk in Anatolia in 7400 to 6200 BC. This will be followed by the description of the Peratt Column at the south pole in ca 5000 BC. Next to the more remote time of the European Upper Paleolithic (10,000 to 40,000 years ago) to discuss cave art and early figurines in Europe. I will conclude with a suggestion of imagery of the Lower or Middle Paleolithic (500,000 to 2,500,000 years ago).

Neolithic Figurines

Of great importance in the field of artifacts and dateable archaeology in the Neolithic is the voluminous collation of archaeological findings collected and interpreted by Marija Gimbutas for the Balkans, Macedonia, Minoan Crete, and Anatolia. The dates of her studies range from 7000 BC to 3500 BC. [note 2]

I cannot adequately summarize Gimbutas' research here. Gimbutas presents pottery which shows motifs of eggs, dual eggs, snakes, water signs, birds, the double ax, and whorls. The last two are similar to the designs of the megalithic art of far-western Europe at the later dates of 3000 to 2400 BC. Animals are also depicted with the pottery decorations -- the domestic animals of Europe rather than the Mesopotamian and Egyptian lions and griffins.

But of special interest are the numerous figurines. Almost every one of the 100,000 small hand-held figurines of the period 7000 to 3500 BC is female, naked, and obese (or pregnant), especially among the earlier examples. Only in infrequent instances do faces appear incised on the figures, or are there hints of ornaments or clothing. In later forms they are often shown with outstretched arms (and legs), long phallic necks, and heads with "bird masks." They are shown at times giving birth or with children.

Gimbutas points out the obvious -- that the Venus Figurines were not new to the farmers of the European Neolithic (7000 to 3600 BC), but carry on the tradition of the 3000 or so female figurines of the Upper Paleolithic (40,000 to 10,000 BC) of Europe. Figurines have been found by the hundreds of thousands throughout Europe, and by the millions throughout the world. The figurines were first produced in about 27,000 BC. They disappear from the archaeological record of western Europe for some 10,000 years, and reappear again after 18,000 BC, long before the appearance of the related artifacts in Gimbutas' collection. [note 3]

The images are understood by Gimbutas as representing the Mother Goddess. However, they are congruent with the later 'Polar Configuration' imagery depicted in the Middle East and Egypt.

Image: Three figurines from the western European Gravettian culture, 27,000 to 24,000 ya. In buff or amber limestone; left to right: 3.5", 3.25", and 1.75" high. After Denis Vialou, "Prehistoric Art and Civilization" (1996)

I think the Venus Figurines of the Upper Paleolithic, consistently naked, fat, female, faceless, and footless, and later similar naked female figurines of the Neolithic, describe Saturn in glow level plasma discharging to a set of planets -- two above and one below the poles of Saturn. A plasma discharge in glow mode will form a bubble larger than the object that is discharging, and will look like a physical connection between close planets, which consists, however, only of an enclosing bubble of charged particles for each planet, with a pinched connection in the region between the planets.

The head with the missing face, often shown with what looks like braided hair covering the face, is a glow level plasma discharge to Uranus located above Neptune, but offset so that the head looks to be nodding forward. This is a consistent feature of the figurines. Uranus is offset to one direction, and, visually, remains fairly close for a very long time.

Eventually, as the accumulated charge of the secondary increases, so does the electric field, and the planet above Saturn slowly moves further and further away, elongating the necks of the figurines. This corresponds to the period from after 9000 BC up to about 6700 BC (or later) in Europe. From the looks of these later figurines with the long necks and 'bird mask' faces, it seems as if the main plasma discharge makes contact at a horizontal location (not at the bottom) of Uranus directly above Neptune, with a much lesser secondary flow at the opposite horizontal location of Uranus, thus forming the bird beak of the long-necked figurines. [note 4]

Uranus today still lies on its side with its poles placed 15 degrees above and below the horizontal (above and below the plane of the ecliptic). The plasma flow from Saturn would land mainly at the south magnetic pole of Uranus, which was the pole closest to the rotational axis of Mars, Saturn, and Neptune, the north geographic pole of Uranus which angled 15 degrees above the horizontal. Thus the main flow of plasma, the 'neck,' would connect to a 'head' which was tilted downward by 15 degrees and pointed away from the 'body' of the coma of the other planets.

Since Uranus lies on its side and its axis of rotation points along the plane of the ecliptic, the 'head' of the figure in the sky would seem to rotate only very slowly, once with each rotation of the Saturnian planets around the Sun.

The legs with the missing feet describe a plasma stream reaching to Mars far below the south pole of Saturn. The large belly or buttocks is probably the equatorial toroid surrounding the planet Saturn which shapes the exterior of the coma. The large breasts are the left and right extremes of a similar plasma toroid surrounding Neptune.

All four planets together would always be seen as a standing figure in the ecliptic of the sky, and, in effect, standing still because the beak of Uranus always pointed in the same direction of space. As the ring of the ecliptic wobbles throughout the year (and daily), the figure would seem to move up and down in the sky over the course of a year. Except when near the horizon, where the ecliptic dips below the equatorial seasonally, the figure would always be nearly upright -- like the 'face' in the Moon today.

The power of seeing an image of a woman in the sky during the Paleolithic and Neolithic, seen periodically rather than continuously, must have made an enormous impression since the humans anthropomorphised what they saw. Humans saw the Fat Lady approach and move through the night sky -- perhaps to deliver babies -- then disappear and return again in a year, in decades, or a thousand years.

During the early Neolithic, this image was seen more frequently, although probably still unpredictably. If it had been seen all the time, or with predictable movement, it would have had no more psychological impact than the ever-present Sun and Moon, neither of which have ever generated much in imagery or myth. The Sun is stable, and the Moon moves regularly. But Saturn as a figure in the sky would move unpredictably. The figure might have moved from the daylight skies to the night skies over the course of the year (or some unpredictable period) and certainly would move further up or down in the sky with the change in the respective orbital locations of Earth and Saturn.

The persistence of the imagery into the Neolithic and the subsequent proliferation of reproductions may be due to the culture specific to the first Neolithic farming communities. If the early farming and gathering communities were run by woman (as seems likely), the Fat Lady might have been their emblem and symbol. The bird figure of the Neolithic, with the rounded body and the long neck and single leg, remains in European iconography as the stork which delivers babies. [note 5]

After 4200 BC Saturn goes to arc mode discharge to Earth and the imagery in the sky changes. The change to arc mode happens as Uranus moves further away from Saturn, and the voltage drop between the two planets increases. At some point the glow mode plasma discharge to Uranus changes to dark mode between the planets, and Saturn, committed to a certain level of energy outflow, goes nova -- that is, it undergoes a mass expulsion (creating the rings and Venus), and switches to arc mode plasma discharge. The Earth now becomes the main contact point for the plasma discharge, via Mars. Earth is a newcomer to the group, and a fresh object to discharge to. [note 6]

There now appear a whole new set of images in the sky, but many of the figurines and related artifacts, while still replicating the earlier signs, are now embellished differently. The figurines have added outstretched arms, a depiction of the rings of Saturn. Conservative as humans are, the new images only reinforce old established interpretations. The persistence of goddesses (as opposed to gods) lasts well into the Classical era (thus lasting over 6000 years), even when nothing in the sky looked at all like the Fat Lady anymore. The idea of a goddess as the generatrix of humanity is expressed by the priests of Sais who talk to Solon -- as reported by Plato.

The figurines stop development after about 4000 BC. They either become reductively abstract or realistically humanized. By 3000 BC production of the figurines has stopped almost everywhere in the world, except in a few locations where they take on the status of amulets. Crete was still manufacturing the figurines wholesale in 1500 BC, as tourist souvenirs -- now acceptably slimmed down and painted.

Objections to Gimbutas

Gimbutas traced the Earth Goddess imagery forward to the goddesses of Classical Greece: Hekate, Artemis, Demeter, and the warrior goddess Athena. The multiplicity of goddesses in Classical times and the variation of local names suggests that the prototype goddess existed since very early times. Despite the variety of names, the rituals and mystical associations remained constant over large geographical areas.

The earlier status of the goddesses was not easily lost. Goddesses remained in the pantheon of early antiquity and in some cases retained their primacy. The Athenian Empire claims the warrior goddess Athena as its own. Isis remains the most popular goddess of Egypt, and her worship and veneration carries over into Roman times. (The imagery reaches India and eventually China.) The succession of the Egyptian pharaohs was matriarchal. However, many of the goddesses who might have been the supreme deities of earlier times are found to be married to male gods by classical times (as Gimbutas notes).

The advent of male gods, says Gimbutas, happens following the invasions of the Kurgan "Indo-Europeans" from west Central Asia after 4300 BC. This is a male-dominated nomad society, based on herding. These Indo-European invasions did not displace the original Europeans, but they brought many changes -- warfare, the feudal system, male domination, male deities, and probably new languages. The second or third wave of invaders apparently brought the horse. With nothing to trade, the later Kurgans herders developed an economy of piracy and raiding. [note 9]

Many critics have seen Gimbutas' theories as an affront to their closely-held views of prehistory and the primacy of males, especially her suggestion that a peaceful matriarchy was displaced by a war-like Kurgan overlord patriachy. The implication of Gimbutas' work was that the sculptures, figurines, model temples, and pottery decoration were the exclusive domain of women, and further, that the small farming communities were run by women.

I doubt if we can conclude that a matriachy existed on just this basis, even with the many remnants of matriarchy still extant today. Any mix could have been possible. We are seeing remnants of emblems, not the underlying philosophy or practices of a culture. Our Western Christian culture is based on a sacrificed God, yet little could be made of our icons and emblems if viewed in the archaeological context of a far-distant future if these icons were the only evidence of our culture. [note 10]

My disagreement with Gimbutas centers on her insistence in seeing nearly everything as symbolic, "...prehistoric art was symbolic art." I insist that it was representational. "Breasts symbolize the nurturing and regeneration of life." Breasts were shown because that is how the model for the figurines was seen in the sky. To her credit, but perhaps to bolster her thesis, Gimbutas also insists that the naked figurines were not meant as erotic depictions. Others have pointed out that there are no erotic images to be found anywhere in the world until the first millennium BC.

If Gimbutas' "cult of the Goddess" was generated by images in the sky then it was not a reflection of life, but a response to a whole other domain -- which today we blithely identify as 'spiritual' -- although in fact it was not a manifestation of the 'spiritual' but a response to the 'actual.' And we have no idea what the response was. We simply do not know if the object or person in the sky was thought to need placation or worship.

The Sky at Catal Huyuk

At this point I want to step back in time to the beginnings of the Neolithic, when the Earth's orbit had been lowered so that Saturn no longer obscured the Sun. This would be the period from 9000 BC to 6000 BC.

Before proceeding, however, I should here introduce the notion of the Absu again, which I mentioned in a previous chapter. There I suggested that the Earth would most likely have had rings of material around (above) its equator, much like all the outer planets, and which probably looked like the rings of Saturn. Later (much later) testimony supports this, and it is especially noted when, in 2350 BC, the rings disappear, dispersing or falling -- an event which was universally held to be a flood of the celestial 'ocean.' 'Absu' is the Mesopotamian word for the rings; it translates as 'Abyss.'

People living in the northern hemisphere would have seen the rings in the southern skies at night. Egyptians describe the rings, which they called the 'Duat,' as composed of spoked rings, looking like reeds growing in a swamp. At the latitude of Egypt, Mesopotamia, or Anatolia, the rings would have stood some 40 or 50 degrees up in the sky, below the semicircle which defines the equatorial reaching from directly east to directly west, and standing up from the south at an angle determined by the latitude. The Absu was brilliant and clearly seen because the rings would have been lighted directly by the Sun (from the daytime side of Earth), except for the shadow of the Earth which fell on the Absu, and which created an arch or gap which traveled nightly from the east to the west horizon. Where the rings or the shadow were, few stars shone through. [note 12]

During the daytime the Absu would have disappeared from view for the Sun would light it from behind and the rings would have merged with the daytime sky. During part of the year when the Sun dipped low in the winter, it too would have been obscured by the rings. No rings were ever seen in the northern skies.

The description I have offered above can be verified from Mesopotamian, Egyptian, and Maya sources, and can even be suggested by the mound construction of some North American Indians. (See a later chapter for more details and size estimates.) Because they were always there, the rings were never specifically noted. They were a landscape feature, like mountains and rivers. The humans, as a result, thought of themselves as living in a valley bordered by a sea in the south. Since the rings were a constant feature of Earth, from remotest times to 2350 BC, an understanding of what else was seen in the skies in antiquity cannot be divorced from the sight of the rings.

A concrete hint at the constant nightly display of the rings is also to be found in the decorations of pottery in antiquity. Although potters would add crude drawings of animals and humans to pots, the ubiquity of circular wave-like designs is astounding. These were executed at times with enormous elegance and imagination, and only start to disappear from pottery after 2000 BC.

During the portion of the year when Earth occupied an inner position between Saturn and the Sun, Saturn would have been seen in the night skies only. Initially, at about 9000 BC, Saturn would be obscured from view by the Absu. Only the planets hovering above Saturn would have been seen. Saturn and its companion planets would only appear in complete view, but obscured, when the location of Saturn in the sky coincided with the gap in the Absu.

During the portion of the year when Earth occupied an outer position from the Sun beyond Saturn, the Saturnian planets would have been seen in the day sky, above the Sun, and probably looked like a large dark shape because Saturn would be backlighted by the Sun. The rings of the Absu would not show in the daytime sky.

Image: Catal Huyuk, central Anatolia, 7400 to 6200 BC. This artist's rendition represents the excavation of a few percent of the mound by Mellaart. Not shown is the mound of dirt behind this set of houses.

The site of Catal Huyuk

Catal Huyuk is a village in central Anatolia, which was partially excavated in the 1960s by James Mellaart. It is currently being excavated again. The occupation dates are from 7400 to 6200 BC, after which it was abandoned, for what reason we do not know.( There may have been a change in the climate in the Middle East.) The village lasted for over a thousand years. What is unique about Catal Huyuk is the decoration of houses with sculptures and murals, many of which have been reconstructed. Today Catal Huyuk is recognized as one of the primary archaeological sites in the world representing the early Neolithic. [note 14]

Catal Huyuk is of interest to the Saturnian cosmology thesis because of the date range of its existence, 7400 to 6200 BC. During this period Saturn and its coma no longer blocked the Sun. The imagery of Catal Huyuk could thus be expected to reflect what was seen in the skies as the Earth moved below the orbit of Saturn, and below the level of the Sun.

Image: Catal Huyuk, central Anatolia, 7400 to 6200 BC. City plan mural

In addition to murals, the houses in Catal Huyuk were outfitted with wall-mounted aurochs horns and freestanding 'horns of concentration.' Some of the skulls of the dead were also kept on display. Murals, as reported by Mellaart, depict excarnation of headless corpses, the hunting of red deer, and a plan view of the village with two volcanoes in the background. This last is actually a view of the twin peaks of the now inactive volcano of Hasan Dagi seen from the proximity of the village of Asikli Huyuk, some 100 miles away. Asikli Huyuk was abandoned a thousand years before the founding of Catal Huyuk. [note 15a]

Image: Catal Huyuk, central Anatolia, 7400 to 6200 BC. Wall mounted aurochs horns.

The Horns

The overwhelming display at Catal Huyuk is the profusion of six to ten foot wide spans of aurochs horns mounted horizontally on walls and also facing up on altars.

I would suggest that Jupiter is the source for the horns and bucrania (horns attached to skull tops) used as wall sculptures. As stated in the last chapter, Earth, traveling on an eliptical orbit (with Saturn), would alternately be located inside and outside the orbit of Jupiter. Whenever the orbit of Earth was outside the orbit of Jupiter, Jupiter would have been seen, in the day time, as a gigantic crescent moving through the skies. [note 19a]

Image: Catal Huyuk, central Anatolia, 7400 to 6200 BC. Wall mounted aurochs horns and freestanding 'horns of concentration.'

Like the crescent Moon, the remainder of the globe of Jupiter would not have been seen. If the crescent on Jupiter had been a regular phenomenom, it would not have been considered significant enough to be reproduced in sculptures and murals. Since there is no reason to think that the orbit of Earth and Jupiter had fallen into a harmonic relationship, the appearances of the horns might very well have been totally unpredictable. Jupiter might have been entirely absent for years. This is of course precisely the condition under which humans would make the image into an animal god. The unpredictable behaviour presumed that the object in the skies was alive.

The bucrania are not associated with either the vultures or the figurines, neither here in Anatolia nor anywhere else. Elsewhere, and later, bucrania appear as symbols associated with tombs, as in predynastic mastaba tombs in Egypt (ca 3000 BC), where aurochs horns are, in one instance, placed on the enclosing wall, and elsewhere, as for example, in Sardinia 4000 - 3000 BC, where horns are used to decorate the outsides of rock tombs. Their association with altars is still seen in Roman times. The horns were a contemporary image in the sky during the time of Catal Huyuk, and continued to be seen traveling across the day skies up to 3100 BC.

Crescents cannot be associated with Saturn during the early Neolithic period of Catal Huyuk. Only after ca 4200 BC (and long after Catal Huyuk) are horns used as a representation of the Sun-lighted crescent on the edge of the blazing planet Saturn. It is this last image, combined in form with a sphere, which became the inspiration for all the horned headdresses of the gods and goddesses of the Egyptians, as elsewhere, for the next 6000 years. During this later period, with Saturn dominating the sky, a sun-lighted crescent of Jupiter would no longer have been seen or taken note of.

The Vultures

Catal Huyuk had a fascination with vultures, shown in murals of giant birds, rendered in red, biting after headless corpses. Some vultures are depicted with human feet. There are wall sculptures of breasts which include vulture beaks breaking out to form the nipples.

Image: Catal Huyuk, central Anatolia, 7400 to 6200 BC. Vultures depicted reaching toward headless human bodies. The originals are drawn in red.

Where did all this imagery come from? Let me suggest that this represents what was seen of Saturn and its companion planets during the period when Earth's orbit was slowly falling below the equator of Saturn, from some time after 9000 BC to perhaps 5800 BC. Catal Huyuk was occupied for only a portion of this period.

Four conditions of viewing the Saturnian planets come to mind: night-time, day-time, a southern view, and a northern view. The imagery of the murals suggest only two conditions: an earlier view of Saturn seen in the gap of the Absu in the south skies at night, and a later view of Saturn seen either during the day or night, circling nearly overhead from horizon to horizon, when Saturn had risen above the Absu and perhaps had moved up enough in the sky to remain in view throughout the year.

Of course there would have been other combinations of different seasons and differing conditions. But we could perhaps expect the humans of the era between 9000 BC and ca 6000 BC to select a 'representative' display, from the progressively changing images in the skies, as the basis for a religious iconography. We could also expect a carryover of images from older traditions, which would confound attempts to date the phenomenon. Some images could have remained in use long after a celestial display had disappeared.

The night-time southern view is shown below. The stack of planets representing Saturn and his companions have been identified already. From top to bottom, as they relate to the earlier Venus Figurines, these are as follows: Uranus, identified as the head of figurines, often with a beak or bird mask; Neptune, representing the chest, upper body, or breasts; Saturn, representing the lower body, belly, or buttocks; and Mars, representing the legs. [note 15]

Image: Catal Huyuk, Saturn in the night skies, seen in the gap of the Absu. Earth is shown with its rings.

We can now identify the vulture images with the Saturnian planets as seen in the south during the night, when positioned in the middle of the gap on the Absu (the Earth's shadow).

The sky, that is, the dome of the stars, rotates to the west, and so does the gap in the Absu (as the Earth rotates toward the east). Initially, after ca 9000 BC, when Saturn was in the south skies at night, it would almost always be behind the Absu, and obscured by it. Only when the location of Saturn coincided with the shadow portion of the Absu would it shimmer through the dust and material of the rings. (The Earth's shadow would fall on the Absu but not on Saturn.) This would happen only seasonally, that is, for one short period of the year.

When that occurred, the vulture would have been seen rising in the east, traveling across the sky, and setting in the west. The stacked Saturnian planets would always be aligned approximately at right angles to the Earth's equatorial, thus the vulture would always travel across the sky in a nearly upright position, only leaning toward the horizon at the east and west limits of its travels. It would have been as if the 'vulture' revealed itself seasonally. This condition could have existed for hundreds of years. [note 17a]

The vulture's beak represents the planet Uranus. The notion of this image being a bird or bird-masked person dated back to the previous generation of Venus Figurines which show figurines with an extended neck and the beak of a bird. Even well over two thousand years later, after the 'figure' in the sky had disappeared, carved and molded figurines throughout the world continue to be depicted with beaks and bird masks.

Likewise the fact that the vulture frequently is shown with human legs and feet recalls the legs of the Venus Figurines, although these were never depicted with feet. The two lozenge shaped emblems on the breast and belly of the vulture might depict the planets Saturn and Neptune stacked above each other, and glimmering through the surrounding coma. [note 17b]

Most interesting, of course, are the wings of the vulture. The feathers hanging down from the wing bones are clearly the spoked rings seen on both sides of the gap in the Absu. The image might even suggest that the two sections of the rings connected across the gap, that is, that the shadow of the Earth produced an arc, rather than a gap in the rings, thus connecting the wing bones to the shoulder of the vulture. Interestingly, the vultures are rendered in red. The Absu is described, in 2350 BC, as blood red. See a later chapter for this. I cannot place the headless corpses at which the vultures of the murals are snapping. [note 17]

Conditions in the skies changed over time. I suspect that the vulture images we are looking at were recalled from a much earlier time. Whereas at first, soon after 9000 BC, only the beak and neck of the vulture appeared above the gap in the Absu, after some hundreds of years the body of the vulture would move progressively higher in the sky as the Earth slipped down from Saturn's equator. At some point the wings would be left behind as the grouped planets continued to move higher up in the night sky and the vision in the sky could no longer be identified as a vulture with widely spread wings. The image of the vulture would have become abstracted over time, as may be indicated by the fact that the vultures shown in the murals are mostly swooping sideways across the walls and seem to be graphically simplified. [note 18]

Hunting Deer

The mural depicting the hunting of deer seems out of place, like the vulture scenes, although perhaps it is not. It is likely to be an image remembered from the remote past, from long before Catal Huyuk was first occupied. There were few deer in the vicinity of Catal Huyuk, and their bones appear in the rubbish heaps very infrequently. There are more horse bones than deer bones, but horses have never appeared in a mural.

Image: Catal Huyuk, central Anatolia, 7400 to 6200 BC. Mural showing the hunting of deer.

It is doubtful that the mural shows humans hunting deer. It is more likely to represent a translation from something seen in the sky as a celestial apparition. The fact that deer are shown might be totally coincidental if the image reflects conditions which had first appeared and 'represented' perhaps thousands of years earlier. At an earlier time, herds of deer might have been the logical simile for large objects transversing the sky periodically -- or, more likely, sporadically. Certainly anything seen as animated in the skies would be understood as an extension of what was normally experienced on Earth. I'll suggest further below that these were asteroids in plasma discharge -- in effect a display of comets bunched together in a group traveling into the region of the inner planets (as we still experience today) to leave and return at an unpredictable later date. Thus the depiction of hunted deer may be an icon from a long ago time when celestial hunters shot celestial lightning bolt arrows at herds of celestial deer. If asteroids were still periodically traversing the Earth's night skies at the time of Catal Hutuk, then the deer hunting scene would make sense as the 'appropriate' image for depicting this.

Consider also that, with the Earth already enclosed in the plasmasphere of Saturn (which is true for the time period of Catal Huyuk), any asteroids on a path of near approach to Earth would have started to arc violently when they came in contact with or entered the Saturnian plasmasphere. Traveling within the Saturnian plasmasphere they would have formed individual comas.

Image: Catal Huyuk, central Anatolia, 7400 to 6200 BC. Seated figurine.

Figurines

Today hundreds of animal, male, and female statues have been found at Catal Huyuk, most often retrieved from garbage heaps. Because of the strange distortions, many are simply called "humanoid." The distortions are probably the result of seeing Saturn from a changing perspective. As Earth lowered in orbit, which is the period during which Catal Huyuk was occupied, Mars would have became indistinct against the larger coma of Saturn. As a result, the figurines became seated rather than standing. The head of a baby being delivered by a few of the figurines is probably Mars seen against the larger coma representing the lower body of the figure seen in the skies. [note 19]

What is of interest about Catal Huyuk is that after the period of 6700 to 6600 BC, no male figurines are made. James Mellaart, in his 1967 book "Catal Huyuk," mentions a corresponding change in the interior wall decorations, noting, for example that the vultures appear only in the archaeological levels VIII and VII, thus before 6700 BC.

Bleda Düring, of Leiden University, has addressed the transition from the Early Ceramic Neolithic period to the Late Ceramic Neolithic period at Catal Huyuk, identified as level VIA, which falls in the era of 6700 BC to 6600 BC. This time saw changes in house building and city planning and, Düring writes, "changes in the ceramics, obsidian industries, figurines and wall paintings." Neglecting Düring's comments on ceramics and obsidian manufacture, it is interesting to note what is said about the figurines.

"After Level VI no males are portrayed in the figurines, whereas `large' women occur mainly after this level."

Murals and wall paintings change also.

"the famous `hunting scene' wall paintings of Catal Huyuk all date after Level VI [references deleted]. Some older motifs might have been abandoned during the transition; no figurative mouldings later than Level VI are known [ref]."

To Düring the changes speak to a cultural transition, but I would also suggest a change in the interpretation of celestial phenomena. The cultural transition might pinpoint the time when the vulture image in the night-time sky no longer alternated with the dark shaped coma in the day-time skies. Eventually the Saturnian figure would have been seen rotating above the horizon throughout the year. The transition would have involved desperate attempts at new conceptualization of the being in the skies, and we could expect a radical change in the iconography at Catal Huyuk.

There is little certainty to be derived from the dates of artifacts, however, since religious iconography tends to outlast its sources by thousands of years. Initial dates would be more certain. But the cultural change noted by Düring may have involved the influx of new people (as she suggests). The emphasis on depicting only fat woman may have been imported. On the other hand, if the cultural change did not involve a large influx of new people from elsewhere, it is at least of interest that we see the transition in the figurines from male and female to only depicting "large" females at this time. It would indicate a date at which the perspective of Saturn as seen from Earth changed so that the elongated, standing body became compressed because it was being viewed from further below.

This means that, seen from Anatolia at about 38 degrees latitude, the Saturnian figure in the sky had already cleared the rings of the Absu and most likely had cleared the Earth's equatorial and possibly the zenith of the sky. At the latitude of 38 degrees the equatorial stands 52 degrees up from the south horizon. By ca 6000 to 5800 BC, Saturn would have been in the skies constantly, day and night, Saturn would have moved another 50 degrees up into the sky, moving past the zenith and into the northern skies, so that the apparition would be placed among the circumpolar stars, revolving through the skies between the north horizon and 76 degrees up from the north horizon, and always in view throughout the year.

Image: Travel of Saturn through the skies, between ca 9000 BC and ca 5800 BC, seen from 38 degrees latitude, showing the horizon in all directions. Rings of the Absu are shown. Note that this is a schematic representation. Both wings would not show at the same time, but in sequence as the night progressed.

Obviously some of the above is speculative, although I consider it congruent with expectation of what would be seen with a lowering of the Earth's orbit to eventually fall entirely below the orbit of Saturn. I have suggested a progression of images, but execution dates of objects, sculptures, and murals at Catal Huyuk might reveal more of an actual progression of images in time. However, dates resulting from the present excavation, started in 1993, may not be forthcoming for decades.

Later Figurines

As Earth moved further below the level of Saturn, but still well away from directly below (which will happen near 4200 BC), the change in perspective would have distorted the 'figure' in the sky progressively to become all but unrecognizable. And apparently what we start to see in other locations, is not only a seated lumpy figurine (as at Catal Huyuk), but ones with strange fleshy appendages in all the wrong places. The Fat Ladies of remote antiquity, the Venus Figurines, have now assumed the amorphous shape of a snowman or a gingerbread woman. Facial features, which were never distinct when Saturn and Uranus were seen from a greater distance, now seem to have disappeared altogether, or the head is entirely missing, except for a long neck. If a face is shown at all, it is wearing a mask. These aspects of the figurines are duplicated by the millions worldwide -- the figurines have become amorphous, misshapen, long-necked, headless or masked, and steatopygic. The ladies are either shown as seated or have huge buttocks and breast -- which jut out sideways nearly as much as the buttocks.

Uranus, which at an earlier period had been seen as a bird masked head, retains those features, but since Uranus was displaced from the axis of Saturn, it would have looked shifted in one direction. That might, on the one hand, explain the large rear-end of many of the late Neolithic figurines crafted after 6000 BC, or on the other hand, might account for the exceedingly long-necked figurines from the same late period. These later figurines were produced from the memories of old traditions in locations from the Balkans through Greece and Anatolia, as elsewhere.

As others have pointed out, the first transition from naturalistic to stylized figurines can be placed at about 5600 BC. At a later time -- after 4200 BC -- the figurines become even more stylized, with huge buttocks and breasts, and a spindle for a head. Many are now rendered as flat plaques, perhaps to function as amulets to be worn. They are no longer conceived of as a three dimensional figure; they no longer look like a fat woman.

What are we seeing here? It is the flat triple snow-ball plaque which is especially interesting. Here is a figure which exists only as an age-old tradition of what these objects were expected to look like. My inclination, however, is to suggest that the 'snow man' woman clearly represents the three planets, Uranus, Neptune, and Saturn -- surrounded with an enclosing plasma, and with Mars having all but disappeared from view.

Further above in this chapter I had surmised that Neptune was one of the planets of the Saturnian collection. It is mainly based on matching the inclination of the orbit of Neptune to the equator of the Sun in comparison with the orbital angle of Saturn and Uranus. This is developed in Chapter 14, "Mechanics." But we have no mythological record of a God which could be identified with Neptune (except a references by Hesiod about the battle of the Titans with Zeus). This is to be expected, since rather than manifesting as a separate deity, Neptune was only a body part of a larger image.

If Neptune had hovered directly above Saturn, and the enclosing plasma were reduced to a pinch surrounding the actual physical dimensions of the toroidal plasma of the planets (the plasma surrounding their equatorial regions), Neptune would have been seen as the grossly enlarged breasts of a woman jutting out sideways. And then, after 5800 BC, it would have disappeared from view from the perspective of Earth far below Saturn.

Whereas at first, and as long as this misshapen image in the sky was visible, it would be sculpturally translated to a realistically fat woman, when it was no longer seen, only the recalled attributes would be rendered. This certainly would account for the iconized forms which start to show up after 6000 BC.

The sight of the wooly figure in the skies was not everywhere interpreted as a seated woman. For various other people throughout the world, the Saturnian coma after 5800 BC was understood only as the chaos before creation. Dwardu Cardona, in "God Star" (2006), presents descriptions which suggest that the 'chaos' consisted of a cloud-like mass floating either in the sky or on an ocean (which may be how the sky was understood). Associated with this hovering cloud shape was a twisted column of clouds or vapor reaching down to Earth at the north horizon. This 'creation god' column was named Hurakan in parts of Central America.

The chaos was called a "swirling cloud" by some people, and "fluffy, like cotton" by others. It is consistently described as turning, but this is not Saturn and its coma turning about itself (which would not be seen), but describes the whole mass turning in a circle about the Earth's north star in the sky. This continued to happen after 5800 BC.

The 'turning in the skies' is almost certain, and not just from the descriptions which come down to us from remote antiquity. The Saturnian 'cloud' turned in the skies about the north pole on a daily basis because it is unlikely that the rotational axis of Earth and Saturn lined up, even with the Earth directly below Saturn after 5800 BC. The coincidence of rotational axes would have happened only much later as a result of the constant torque of the surrounding electrical field at the location of the Earth in the cusp of Saturn's plasmasphere.

In fact, the turning of Saturn in a circle about the pole star in the sky lasted to well after 4200 BC (when Saturn went nova). We have recollections of this from Mesoamerican and Vedic Indian sources.

What I have attempted to plot in this section are the long-range changes in the image in the skies. It started with the chubby Venus Figurines of 27,000 years ago. These represent a view of the Saturnian planets from afar and seen from a low perspective. After 18,000 years ago the figurines elongate and take on slimmer dimensions. I suspect this is the view at the level of Saturn. Earth had moved up in its orbit, and the planets were seen in a perspective which revealed the true separation between them. Then, after about 9000 BC, as Earth started to lower its position in relation to Saturn, the figurines become foreshortened and again assume the dimensions of a Fat Lady in the sky. As I have suggested, the Earth was also much closer to Saturn at this time than it was 27,000 years ago. After about 7500 BC, as the Earth continued to move further down from the level of Saturn, the foreshortening increases and the figurines are now rendered as seated Fat Ladies. But by 5600 BC the original form is lost from sight altogether, and the figurines assume abstract features recalled from earlier times. By about 5000 or 4500 BC Earth is well below Saturn and moving up to come closer. In the skies Saturn had now relocated to the north sky and increased enormously in size. The image of a woman has completely disappeared, and what is seen instead is a nebulous cloud of constantly moving plasma in glow mode.

Throughout almost all this very long period the figurines maintain certain features -- the nodding head, the bird mask, the lack of a face, the nakedness, and the missing feet. But for thousands of years the figurines are as often shaped by expectations of classical models as by the transcription from real life.

For thousands of years, also, the Fat Lady in the sky demonstrated that she was alive by changing her form. On an elliptical path around the Sun, the coma of Saturn and its planets would change over the course of each orbit to match the changes in electrical field of the Sun. Her belly and breasts would grow for months and then diminish in size. Her body parts would relax and retract. She would grow new appendages and withdraw them again. The constant change in the form proved to the human observers that the apparition was alive. The variation between individual figurines cannot be attributed only to differences in skill among the fabricators, but must reflect the fact that the image in the sky seldom looked quite the same from one month to the next.

The Peratt Column

As Earth moved from the equatorial region of Saturn to below its south pole, it would have traveled through the cone of incoming electrons below the south pole. I suspect that happened at about 5000 BC. The result of Earth finding itself in a concentrated stream of electrons, would have resulted in a massive aurora (as it turns out) at the south pole. This has been identified by Anthony Peratt.

In papers published in "The IEEE Transactions on Plasma Science," in 2003 and 2007, Anthony Peratt demonstrated that about half of the millions of petroglyphs carved worldwide are representations of plasma column instabilities. This column of plasma stretched away from the south pole, and at some distance from the pole took a turn away from the Earth's axis of rotation, which allowed it to be visible even at far northern latitudes. Peratt writes, "The number of millennia or centuries involved remains unknown," and offers a broad estimate of 10,000 BC to 2,000 BC. In only one instance, for petroglyphs in the southwest of the USA, does he use a more specific date, "these objects stretched back some 7000 years in time." Thus we have an estimate here of about 5000 BC. He also notes that some petroglyphs were overdrawn or added to "two or three times." This would suggest a period of decades or centuries.

Images: Left: Peratt Column at the south pole, ca 5000 BC, a reconstruction. Right: A petroglyph rendering in Australia, ca 5000 BC. Dates are uncertain.

Because of instabilities in the flow of plasma, the column at various times assumed different shapes -- a ladder, a series of stacked toroids, the outline of a "squating man," and other forms. The visual experiences, never seen before on Earth, were recorded in millions of petroglyphs and pictographs (Peratt collected data on 4,000,000 petroglyphs), always carved or painted in large scale on rock cliffs high above ground, and always with a view of the south or south polar regions. An analysis of the locations, points of view, and visual elevations of the millions of petroglyphs has allowed reconstruction of the shape of the entity seen at and beyond the south pole. Peratt concludes that it was shaped (in a more stable form) like a typical tubular aurora, but not concentric with the south magnetic pole, which surprised Peratt, but concentric with the south geographic pole. Nothing of interest was seen at the Earth's north pole at this time. What would come later -- in the north -- would completely eclipse the images seen in the south.

The findings by Peratt, that this display was exclusively seen above the south polar region, has confounded Saturnian catastrophists, for it was never expected. All expectations were of a plasma display only seen in the north skies. From my perspective the display in the south came as no large surprise. It fits in well with the chronology I had already established from the forms of figurines in remote antiquity over time. The presence of Earth within the coma (plasmasphere) of Saturn, and located below Saturn, would explain the travel of massive amounts of electrons past the Earth in a northerly direction toward Saturn (the flow of electrical current is in the apposite direction, away from Saturn). Peratt, in fact, suggests that Earth was surrounded by a tube of plasma which only converging upon itself (pinching) below the south pole of Earth, and there going to arc mode in separate bundles.

Some of the problems Peratt has with the form of this aurora -- it's centering on the geographic pole, the lack of a northern aurora -- clearly derives from an attemp to integrate this display with the concept that an inflow of particles from the Sun should have reached Earth laterally and divided up to cause auroras at both poles. But the Sun is out of the picture at this time, electrically invisible to Earth. The source of the incoming flux of plasma is clearly from the north, from Saturn. It is not destined for Earth as much it is using Earth as part of a circuit, with the plasma headed for the boundaries of Saturn's plasmasphere.

Electrons would travel north, while positive ions would travel south. This bi-directional streaming of particles, by convention, defines an electrical current as headed south. The visibility of the column is caused by electrons in the flow spiralling about local magnetic field lines at speeds approaching the speed of light, called synchrotron motion. The constant change in the direction of travel causes the electrons to emit radiation in radio frequencies, x-rays, ultra violet, and in visible light.

In that the flow of ions and electrons was 10 to 1000 times as powerfull as is today experienced with auroras, it could be expected that either the Earth's magnetic field was mostly neglected by the flow, or that the Earth's magnetic poles were aligned with the rotational axis. This last could certainly be the case if, as I have suggested, the Earth's magnetic field is externally induced.

The column stretching away from the south pole included a bend at some distance away from Earth, which allowed it to be seen also in the northern hemisphere of Earth, in fact, from as high as 70 degrees north latitude. My first guess was that the bend would be based on the angular difference between where in the dome of the stars the rotational axis of Saturn pointed and where the rotational axis of Earth pointed.

Images: Left: Jupiter's plasma plume, ivory talisman from a stash in Anatolia, ca 3000 BC (the 'eyes' are the edges of an equatorial toroid); center and right: artist's rendering of conical plasma plumes from plasmoids, typical of an extrusions from the coma of a planet with a magnetic field.

In Chapter 12, "The Start of History," it will be developed that before 685 BC the rotational axis of Earth pointed to a location in the pan of Ursa Major. This location is approximately 30 to 32 degrees away from the (later) rotational axis of Saturn. Thus the bend, which would represent a change in the column of plasma from alignment with the magnetic field of Earth, to an alignment with the up-directed magnetic field of Saturn (assuming, as I have, that Earth was located a considerable distance below Saturn), would bend some 30 degrees away from the rotational axis of the Earth.

Image: Earth enters the outer envelop of Saturn's lower plasma plume, ca 5000 BC. Rotational axis aligned with Saturn for graphical convenience.

The most northerly petroglyphs are at 57, 61, and 70 degrees north latitude in eastern Europe (and Norway). These latitudes have horizons which dip 33, 29, and 20 degrees below the equatorial plane of the Earth, and would thus be adequite for viewing the Peratt column if the bend in the column similarly angled away from the vertical (the Earth's rotational axis) by about 15 to 30 degrees. We can reasonably assume that the edge of Saturn's lower plasma cone would be inclined at 15 to 30 degrees from Saturn's rotational axis. Peratt suggests that the bend in the column would be seen as existing (primarily) below South Africa. The bend would have rotated, however, thus the view south of South Africa would be a night view. This certainly does not preclude viewing possibilities from almost all other locations on Earth. The three northerly-most petroglyphs noted above are at the corresponding longitude of South Africa.

Image: Possible location of the Peratt Column downstream of Earth in the outer layer of Saturn's lower plasma.

This then suggests that the Peratt column followed the magnetic field lines of Saturn at the edge of Saturn's lower plasma cone, and changed direction near Earth to follow the magnetic field lines of Earth. At this time the Earth's plasmasphere was shaped in response to the electrical field of Saturn, so that a shadow (tail) would extend far below the Earth's south pole. Since the plasmasphere of the Earth is the result of Saturn's electrical field, not its magnetic field, the angle of the Earth's southern plasmasphere tail would not coincide with the direction that electrons traveled along Saturn's magnetic field lines. [note 20b]

The Peratt column would thus approach the Earth's rotational axis at an inclination different from the Earth's axis, but realign to the tubular edges of the Earth's plasmasphere shadow, in effect realigning to the axis of the Earth. The electrons were not destined for Earth, and would have passed by, perhaps dispersing (and returning to glow mode) once past the northern limits of the Earth's plasmasphere.

Image: View of Peratt Column from 70 degrees north latitude. This would represent the maximum view from most locations on Earth.

The Pacific Islands

The date of 5000 BC given by Peratt, or even the range of "10,000 BC to 2,000 BC," contradicts what we know of the colonization of the islands of the Pacific. There is not a single sign of human occupation on any islands east of the Solomon Islands before 1200 BC. After 1200 BC, Fiji, Samoa, and Tonga are reached, but the Cook, Society, and Marquesas islands are not reached until AD 600. Hawaii is settled later and Easter Island not until AD 900. There are no signs of humans on any of the central or eastern Pacific islands except for the thousands of indelible petroglyphs left behind by an earlier population which had been swept off the islands enmasse in 3114 BC and again in 1492 BC. The petroglyps appear by the thousands throughout the Pacific islands, including Hawaii and Easter Island. In later chapters I'll discuss the flood of 3114 BC and the compressive electrical impact of 1492 BC in the southern Pacific.

The Opossum

There should be tales and myths relating to the Peratt Column, even though these would date from memories of events 7000 years before the present. With two or three exceptions, I am not aware of any. Of course, any tales of a man or creature at the south pole would tend to get lost in the plethora of myth which would be generated by the northern polar column after 4200 BC. The Peratt Column never did anything significant.

One example stands out. It is from the Quiche Maya "Popol Vu" document, written in the 16th century AD in Guatemala. The "Popol Vu" is a recounting, in European script, of the tales of creation of the world and the genesis of the Quiche tribes. The authors make reference to old glyphic books still in their possesion, and recount (and mix) events over 2000 years old, and in some cases give descriptions, although in narrative form, which can be placed to 14,000 BC on the basis of what was seen in the sky at that remote time, as can be surmised from European archaeological artifacts. See Chapter 20, "The Popol Vu," for a more extensive analysis.

Hunahpu and Xbalanque, the twin hero characters of the "Popol Vu," are in Bat House in the Underworld, sleeping inside the barrels of their blowguns as protection against snatch-bats. Xbalanque inquires of Hunahpu how long it will be before dawn arrives. As Hunahpu peeks out of his blowgun, a snatch-bat removes his head. Hunahpu's head is then restored with a squash.

But that is the narrative. What is of interest is that Xbalanque next requests the start of dawn from old man opposum:

And this is when it was trying to dawn, reddening along the horizon.

"Now make the streaks, man," the possum was told.

"Yes," said the old man. When he made the streaks he made it dark again; the old man made four streaks.

"Possum is making streaks," people say today, ever since he made the early dawn red and blue, establishing its very being.

The "Popol Vu" is full of such explanations. The opossum would not have meant anything to me if I had not recalled that "opossum" is a North American Indian word, literally meaning "white beast," and if I had not seen Peratt's reconstruction of the column at the south pole. There are 66 species of opossum in the Americas; none are white, although one species has a white face. The common North American species is gray. Opossums are marsupials with a squat body and a very long hairless prehensile tail. As marsupials, they carry their young on their backs.

From a latitude above the equator, the great white beast would not have looked like a person with a mouth and eyes, as the Australians depicted the column. In southern Mexico the Peratt Column must have looked like a white opossum, facing the southern horizon, its long tail stretched behind it. It may have seemed to be carrying its young on its back -- actually the intermediate plasmoids.

None of the opossum species is striped. So where do the stripes come from? Dennis Tedlock, translator of the "Popol Vu" (1996), suggests it signifies the four solar year-names of the Maya calendar, which all start on one of only four day-names. He also suggests that the stripes represent striated clouds seen at dawn in the east. Both are likely to be true.

The plasma column's discontinuities are likely the result of Saturn's movement on an elliptical orbit which would bring it closer to the Sun and further away over the course of a year. The plasma stream would change with the changing potential of the Sun's electrical field at the different locations. Actually, the plasma flow and the size of Saturn's plasmasphere would change over the year. There would be a consequent response in the shape and size of the south polar plasma stream -- the very reason for the discontinuities. Thus the look of a full-fledged white beast would occur annually, perhaps as Saturn and Earth approached perihelion with the Sun. Since the Sun itself was probably only dimly seen from Earth, because of the enclosing coma of Saturn, this might have been the first indication of a renewal of the year since before 9000 BC. Certainly a cycle of seasonal changes would have been noticed anyway, even without the delivery of the new year by an opossum, since the Earth's axis was tilted (as today) to the Sun. But the annual appearance of the opossum may, in fact, be the genesis of the solidly embedded concept among the people of Mesoamerica, that time is delivered as if it were a cargo carried on the back of a trader. In the Dresden Codex, an illustration shows an opossum bringing in the new year, carried on his back like a trader's cargo.

Peratt suggests that the streams of plasma in distinct bundles of light-emitting electrons would have continued past the Earth, on all sides, traveling north from the south pole -- and beyond. These would have been seen as brilliant white streaks against the black sky, passing overhead, but, like the remainder of the Peratt Column, may have been intermittent over the course of the year. Polar auroral plasma tubes tend to divide up into 56 or 28 bundles of light emmiting electrons. If four of the 56 bundles showed in the sky, they would occupy 26 degrees of an upward view; four of 28 bundles would occupy 50 degrees of the sky. In these cases, some 1800 or 3600 miles of the circumference of, for example, the ionosphere (300 miles overhead), or a region further away from the surface of the Earth, would have to have been seen. It is uncertain if a view much beyond a width of 1800 miles would be possible, since the perspective toward the east and west horizon would have condensed additional streaks and the atmosphere would have obscured any additional stripes.

Tedlock, and his Quiche informant Andres Xiloj, discuss the cloud streaks at dawn in terms of charcoal black and red, but the "Popol Vu" specifically calls the streaks of Possum as red and blue. "Blue" is an ill-defined word in English, since, although blue is a very dark blue-purple color, in reference to the sky, the color cyan is meant. The Maya, during the Classical Era, developed the chemistry of a Prussian Blue colorant, for which they gained some fame. Red, on the other hand, is easily produced from iron oxide or from Cochineal insects, found in subtropical America. Thus the authors of the "Popol Vu" may have reached the conclusion that the streaks were "red and blue" on the basis of the inspection of ancient painted codexes, which in turn had been recopied and reillustrated for thousands of years. Peratt, however, also references the sight of intense auroras, seen in historical times, as composed of white bands on a red field.

The Nasca lines

It should be noted that the "Nasca Lines," lines of paths of cleared pebbles running in straight lines for miles in the high plains of Peru (made by removing pebbles to reveal the lighter colored ground), can also be recognized as images of the same north-south lines seen in the sky. Surface lines like these occur at a number of other locations in the Americas. By means of an illustration, Peratt shows that only a few lines would have been seen overhead in Peru. Thus the four streaks made by the opossum may represent the correct number seen in the sky.

The Peratt column may have lasted hundreds of years or more. It completely fascinated humans, who for some reason needed to draw representations in areas where the far south column was visible -- mostly high up on mountain cliffs with a southern view, but also on seashore cliffs. But nothing came of the Peratt Column. Petroglyphs continued to be carved and images based on what was seen may have recurred for hundreds of years, but the south column did nothing more during all of its existence than brilliantly light up the skies and change shapes. A curious saying, based on the events of the remote past, remained current among the Maya, "Possum is making streaks."

Initial Creation Tasks from the "Popol Vu"

The "Popol Vu" also gives an account of the first visible tasks to be accomplished at the very beginning of time and before any of the activities resulting in the creation..

"the four-fold siding, fourfold cornering,
measuring, fourfold staking,
halving the cord, stretching the cord
in the sky, on the earth,
the four sides, the four corners, as it is said,
by the Maker, Modeler,
mother-father of life, of humankind.."
-- Tedlock

"Maker" and "Modeler" here are two of the 13 Gods responsible for creation. Tedlock notes, through his informant Andrés Xiloj, that what is being described here is the measurement of the sky as if it were a cornfield or a house. It is also reminiscent of one of the sacred duties of even the earliest Egyptian Pharaohs, the "stretching of the cord."

Another Report From America

Although very little detail has been released of the visual effects of the Peratt Column, we could make some guesses. I would propose, therefore that the brilliant lines of electrons which passed over the Earth were stationary, that is, they followed the Earth's magnetic field lines, and thus the lines rotated as the Earth rotated, in effect they would be seen as stationary above any location on Earth. This presumes that the Earth's magnetic field was vastly different from what we experience today.

That would perhaps account for the fact that at Nasca people could spend the considerable time needed to clear the miles-long paths as representations of the lines. It would also answer to another recollected memory, among the Maya, of a survey of the land.

In the 16th century Maya "Books of the Chilam Balam" there is a curious references to a large surveying task, undertaken long ago, before the present "creation." This occurs in Book I, titled by the translator Antonio Mediz Bolio "The Book of the Lineages" and by Ralph L. Roys as "The Ritual of the Four World-Quarters." (Both translated "The Book Of Chilam Balam Of Chumayel," Bolio into Spanish in 1930, Roys into English in 1933.)

Roys starts the translation with a note that apparently the previous page is missing. So he starts in mid sentence, as follows:

"... the first man [idol] of the Canul family. The white 'guaje', the 'ixculun' (and) the gumbo-limbo [three tree species] are his little hut, ... The logwood tree is the hut [lean-to, temporary shelter] of Yaxum, the first of the men of the Cauich family."

"The lord of the people of the south is the first of the men of the Noh ["South"] family. Ix-Kan-tacay is the name of the first of the men of the Puch family. They guard nine rivers; they guard nine mountains."

NOTE: () insertions by Roys; [] from Roys' footnotes.

"Nine mountains," Roys suggests, is from "Bolonppel-uitz," which is, he writes, "probably a place-name in the south."

What is being described here? Let me propose that the three bushes are the three visible ball-plasmoids of the 'great white opossum' seen in the far south. The logwood shelter is composed of the overlaid nearby lines closer at hand, near the south pole, from where the incoming streams of electrons diverged to ride over the Earth. (Peratt offers a convincing graphic of this, from the perspective of Peru.) The nine rivers, I would propose, are the nine rings of the Absu which were seen from the Yucatan, or anywhere close to the equator. The nine mountains I cannot place.

Bolio's translation, here rendered in English by Suzanne D. Fisher, is easier to read, but takes some liberties with the original text, as noted by others. (The "Chilam Balam" is discussed in more detail in Chapter 18.) Bolio writes:

"The Lord of the South is the root of the lineage of the great Uc. Xkantacay is his name. And it is the stock of the lineage of Ah Puch."

"Nine rivers guarded them. Nine mountains guarded them."

There are no titles in the original, nor is there any punctuation. Roys sees the present page as standing alone, and starts the translation of the following page as Book II, under the title of "The Rise of Hunac Ceel to Power." Book II is a long piece, mostly coherent except for two interruptions which describe migrations of the Itza into the Yucatan in the 9th or 10th century AD (which may have been Toltecs, but were remembered as the later Itza). Hunac Ceel is a 12th century Itza ruler. Bolio, on the other hand, takes the present page to be part of the Itza history, but separates out the last page of the history of the Itza as dealing with a different topic (correctly so, I think).

I am making note of the context here because the page of the "Chilam Balam" under consideration stands out in three distinct ways from the 'history of the Itza.' First of all, if this description is part of the history of the Itza, it starts out far too early -- some 6000 years before the Itza arrive in Maya territory.

Second, the origin of a people are here placed in the south, in fact, beyond the nine rivers. The Itza came from the west and the north, from the Valley of Mexico (as did the Toltecs).

Third, as I will quote further below, the first major task is a survey of the land, but this would be a land of mountains, as in the Guatemalan Peten region. The flatland of the northern Yacatan is not occupied by humans until quite late, although certainly by Toltec and Itza times.

I will skip here a list of the directional colors and properties of the cardinal points -- east, north, west, and south, always in this order, and always assigned the colors red, white, black, and yellow, in order, and jump to the survey of the land. The mention of the directional colors, and certain other details confirm to place the descriptions in remote antiquity. I have expanded on this in Chapter 18, "The Chilam Balam."

Next comes the surveyer, who probably needs to be directly associated with the great white opossum. Roys writes..

"11 Ahau was the katun when they carried (burdens) on their backs. Then the land-surveyor first came; this was Ah Ppizte [Measuring Man] who measured the leagues. Then there came the 'chacté' shrub for marking the leagues with their walking sticks."

"Then he came (to) Uac-hab-nal to pull the weeds along the leagues, when Mizcit Ahau came to sweep clean the leagues, when the land-surveyor came. These were long leagues that he measured."

Bolio has, not altogether different..

"With the 'Eleven Ahau Katun' appears the retinue of their servants."

"And Ah Ppisté [Measuring Man] began to come. This Ah Ppisté [Measuring Man] was the measure of the earth. And then came Chacté Abán, to prepare the measurings of land to be cultivated."

"And Uac Habnal came to mark the measurings with signs of the herb; while Miscit Ahau came to clean the marked out lands and Ah Ppipsul, the measurer, came, who measured wide areas.

The names upon names should not worry the reader. Mesoamerican languages, like most American Indian languages are action oriented, not time based. If an action happens, it has to be attributed to an actor. Additionally, as Roys frequently points out, some of the names are puns.

Katun 11-Ahau is the name of a double decade period, which is understood by the Maya as starting all history, if all of history is always repeated every 13 Katuns, a cycle of about 250 years.

"These were long leagues that he measured" and "who measured wide areas" both show that the survey was no small project. I would suggest that we are looking at a recollection of the white stripes in the sky. To the later scribes of the Olmecs, and other peoples who came before the Maya, the recorded events suggested that the survey was done for humans, and possibly by humans, and was a neccesary task before settlement of a land after a migration from the south. (The "Popol Vu" will suggest a migration from the east.) To use this information as the opening page of the "Chilam Balam" would make sense, as would its use at the beginning of the history of the later Itza migration. It localized the information from remote antiquity to the time and conditions of AD 1000 in the Yucatan. [note 20a]

The Earth would have increased its coulomb charge during this period, causing it to continue to drop further below Saturn and displace to a position further below the south pole of Saturn. As the Earth exited the dense plasma of the outer shell of Saturn's lower plasma cone, the Peratt Column display would have ceased. Less than a thousand years later Earth would be below the south pole of Saturn, and a new plasma column would start up, now in the north, seen almost directly up from the north pole. For people of the northern hemisphere this would be plainly visible, no longer requiring a perspective on the skies high up a mountain cliff, which had to be some 20 degrees up from the horizon and which would be cut off by other mountains at 30 degrees in elevation. Many of the earlier images would recur. The images, again as discontinuities in a plasma column, would mostly be the same, with some exceptions.

Lascaux

Gimbutas documented the Neolithic (7000 to 3600 BC), the first period to have small villages and communities in Europe which in turn provided accumulations of discarded pottery and sculpture in concentrated locations. The Upper Paleolithic (roughly 40,000 to 10,000 BC), in contrast, is the era of wandering hunters in Europe and Asia. These people left nothing behind for us to find except infrequent kill sites, occasional rock shelters, a few figurines, and -- by chance -- some 300 painted below-ground caves throughout Europe and into Asia. One of the best known of these is the decorated cavern of Lascaux.

Image: The cave at Lascaux. An aurochs and horses.

In 1960 André Leroi-Gourhan and Annette Laming, in an analysis of the cave of Lascaux (15,000 BC - 10,000 BC), concluded that, invariably, the drawn figures of animals in alcoves face each other and are paired by types -- a horned animal (aurochs or bison) against a horse -- and suggested a male-female dichotomy. What was the meaning of this? Neither of these animals were hunted and, although Lascaux and some 300 other caves are overflowing with images of wild animals, the execution of new images could not have been all that frequent for the caves were apparently in use for extremely long periods. The occasion to execute another 'aurochs and horse' scene must have been very infrequent. [note 20]

Folklore and Thesis

Leroi-Gourhan writes..

"To take what is known about prehistory and cast for a parallel in the life of present-day people does not throw light on the behavior of prehistoric man." [note 21]

Of course, this -- reconstructing prehistory on the basis of contemporary behaviour and thinking -- is exactly what has been done anyway. The reconstruction was started by the Abbe Breuil, early in the 20th century, who (as Leroi-Gourhan notes) formulated the whole of the folklore tradition of Stone Age big-game hunters -- hunting magic, initiation ceremonies, dancing shamans, pregnant horses, nubile naked women -- and even an art-historical development of imagery. Leroi-Gourhan, despite his own warning, does the same by assigning symbolic meaning to the images, expounding a "dualistic concept of the universe, governed by two complementary principles, male and female." (Paraphrased by Denis Vialou) [note 22]

The folklorish elements can be readily dismissed and, in fact, Leroi-Gourhan has done so in his book. Countering Leroi-Gourhan's own thesis of a universal duality, however, will take some additional consideration.

To begin with, these people were not 'big-game' hunters, despite the fact that the animals depicted in the caves consist almost exclusively of large herbivores -- aurochs, mammoths, rhinoceroses, horses. (There are also a few bears and lions.) And in addition to the herd animals, fish (salmon) and birds are also to be found. Plants are never depicted. From the evidence of bones at camp sites, however, the diet of these hunters consisted almost entirely of deer -- red deer, reindeer, elk, and ibex -- which would have been a lot easier to hunt than the giant aurochs or mammoth. And who would want to go up against a bear for a meal?

The idea of 'hunting magic' can thus be disposed of immediately. This, despite the fact that a number of the animals are shown with spear wounds. Leroi-Gourhan notes that these represent 15 percent of the images. If the images were meant as magic to aid hunting, we should probably expect a much higher percentage of animals being attacked.

The idea of 'initiation ceremonies' was derived from one set of small heel prints, supposedly of children, in one alcove in one cave. This is the sort of single data point through which any number of lines could be drawn. It begged to be equated with initiation rites of contemporary primitives by anthropologists and archaeologists.

Human forms are counted in the hundreds, whereas the herds of animals count in the thousands. The humans include 'dancing shamans' and naked headless women. They are interspersed with the animal sketches. As a generalization, it could be said that when the figures are male, most, but not all, have the heads of animals. If they are female, they are headless and shown only as a trunk with hips, thighs, legs, and breasts. The human bodies are badly articulated. They show none of the elegance of the drawings and engravings of the animals.

"At most one or two faces could pass as realistic; the profiles or the full face heads with animal features are even less realistic."

"The outlines [of human figures] are equally improbable and resemble puppets or simple ghostlike silhouettes. The bodies generally lack anatomical shapes, the limbs are poorly joined or out of proportion."
-- Denis Vialou

The naked (female) human figures, coupled with occasional pregnant horses or bison, would, from our modern perspective, suggest the fecundity of nature, but I really doubt if the Cromagnon cave painters had anything like this in mind, and certainly not as a universal concept or a symbol, for there are no calving scenes and no copulation scenes.

To art historians, the drawings initially suggested a progression from primitive depictions to more developed forms. This last concept was shattered with the discovery of Chauvet Cave in 1994. The cave has without a doubt images of the highest "aesthetic quality, [and] technique" (Vialou), yet it is the oldest decorated cave, dated to 31,000 years ago.

To Leroi-Gourhan the very slow progression in depiction, attributed to the paintings and engravings, similarly suggested a continuity of developing mythical concepts. He observed that over the course of 20,000 years the Cromagnon never "reinvented" (and this is astounding) the symbols for their rituals, but only evolved them.

"The first thesis that we shall defend here is that the evolution of European Paleolithic art is homogeneous and continuous and that it implies a cultural continuity and homogeneity of the human groups that produced it."

I would agree. There is a continuity of tool fabrication and inovations, including many instances of regional 'fashions' which often spread elsewhere, and which only stops at about 10,000 years ago -- seemingly, as others have notes, evaporating and disappearing. [note 23b]

But to Leroi-Gourhan this becomes evidence for a single mythology and a single symbolic expression. And it is here that I disagree. The very fact that the methods of depiction and the compositional model remain the same over an extremely long period -- although there are regional differences -- is what makes Leroi-Gourhan's thesis fail. As I will develop in later chapters, these people simply were not like us in their thinking. We cannot attribute to Cromagnon a level of abstraction comparable to modern humans, whose abstract thinking spins wildly, changing constantly to evolve to something completely different in the course of a single lifetime. If there is an error in attempting to understand the 20,000 years of cave art, it is in attributing to Cromagnon the ability to think abstractly.

Thus I disagree with giving these people credit for "universal concepts" or for a developed mythological system and an attendent symbolism. Over the following chapters I will argue, based on the work of Julian Jaynes, that our ancestors were incapable of extending their imagination to metaphorical thinking until perhaps 1500 BC. The Sumerian, Akkadian, and Egyptian languages were "concrete from first to last," says Jaynes. So was their thinking. Only after about 1500 to 1000 BC do we see the use of similes, and with that the rise of the symbolic use of language and the use of metaphors. [note 23a]

The possibility of a people without the imagination (subjective consciousness) to conceive of symbolic equivalents or formulate a mythology to explain their existence -- as Leroi-Gourhan holds -- will be hard for most readers to comprehend, for all of our reasoning is by metaphors and we simply cannot imagine any other way of thinking. Symbols for us are the shorthand of abstract thought. [note 23]

Cromagnon humans couldn't conceive of any abstractions; they were capable of comprehending only specifics. They were certainly resourceful, inventive, curious, creative, friendly, chatty, capable of extensive dialogues on relationships, plants, animals, and geography, but otherwise of a mind totally defined by the visible environment. And, to our benefit, they had a singular urge or need to paint caves at long intervals, which they did for a span of 20,000 years without once reconsidering what they were doing. The cave painting stops only when the climate changes in southwestern Europe to that of a near desert after about 8000 BC, and Cromagnon migrates away from the limestone caves.

If the drawings in the caves cannot to be understood as symbols, then they need to be seen as transcriptions from the specifics of reality. But what were these people seeing that needed to be recorded? And why did this need to be recorded at all? Before attempting to answer these two questions, I need to supply a few more details about the caves and the drawings.

Cave Art Details

There are, in all, about 300 decorated caves in France and Spain (with a few elsewhere), mostly located in regions which are filled with limestone caves. The dates span almost the whole of the time since the first arrival of Cromagnon in western Europe (40,000 to 35,000 ya), starting in about 31,000 ya and ending a little more than 10,000 ya (thus about 8000 BC). The selection of new caves to decorate happened regularly, with some clustering at the Gravettian culture (28,000 to 23,000 ya) and at the Magdalenian culture (17,000 to 14,000 ya), which include Altamira and Lascaux.

Thus, on average, a new cave is selected for decoration every hundred years, or a little less frequently, and then it is left behind. At least, this is true for the earlier caves. For a few caves we have accurate dates for when they were revisited. Chauvet Cave (31,000 ya) was reentered 4000 years later. Cosquer Cave (27,000 ya) was revisited 8500 years after it was first marked up with lines and finger scrawls, to draw animal figures. On the other hand, some 100 'lost' oil lamps have been found at the relatively late Lascaux Cave (17,500 ya), suggesting repeated visits to the cave by numerous people. [note 24]

The same form of depiction is used for the animals for 20,000 years. They are shown as herds. There is a cave of elephants. There is a cave of reindeer. Elsewhere it is a mix of animals, but always they are on the march. Even bears and panthers are shown following each other in lines. They are seldom in groups larger than a dozen in any particular location in a cave, even though the drawings and engravings may cover every available surface. Drawings are often separated by species. The animals move in both directions, often overdrawn on each other. Animals of different species are indiscriminately mixed and all the figures vary in sizes, as if to suggest a receding perspective for some animals, although this is reversed for superimposed images (small drawings in front of larger ones). All the animals are shown in profile.

"Palaeolithic cave art, the art of the big-game hunter, depicts neither hunting, the hunter, nor the hunted animal. The protagonists are close, and touch, but they do not see each other. Animals and humans completely ignore each other on the walls, as if they were floating in space, in a purely imaginary universe."
-- Denis Vialou

"Floating in space" is an apt description, for none of the drawings are grounded. The animals look like cutouts pasted to cave walls.

"They appear to be suspended in midair with no base line depicted, outside any context -- no landscape, no housing, no scenes involving people and animals." [note 25]

Other have additionally noted that many of the animals, if hooves are shown, have the hooves turned back, so that the animals certainly are not standing. They appear to be lying down or dead.

In addition to the figures, there are symbols, something which is entirely absent from rock face carvings and depictions of animals in rock shelters throughout the same region and throughout the same period of time. The symbols are of four types:

Images: Geometrical graphical markings; left, hut like signs: Font-de-Gaume Cave; right, rectangles: Altamira Cave.

• Hut-like signs which were earlier thought to represent housing, called "tectiforms." About 50 have been found, generally using the same form for a particular cave. (See image above.)

• Single chevrons (inverted V) shown on the flanks or shoulders of animals, at times with a long central line, making it look like a spear thrust into the animal.

• Dots and bars, in groups or in a line, almost always associated with animal images. These appear by the hundreds.

• Strange lines with loops, described at "claviforms." These consist of a vertical line with a circle touching it near the top, or a second line which angles up from near the bottom and loops across the straight line. About 50 have been found, in widely separated regions in six caves.

Except for Leroi-Gourhan's questionable thesis of the symbolic depiction of the male-female dichotomy of the Universe -- a Cromagnon Universe limited to people and game animals -- there is no other current explanation of the painted animals or the markings. Descriptions tend to be augmented with formalist analysis in the vein of art criticism and appeals to vague desires used today to explain the urge to create graffiti. Denis Vialou writes, about the depictions of humans, "..there seems to be a deliberate desire to move away from [..] visual objectivity." About the early scribed finger marks of Cosquer Cave, Clottes and Courtin write, "the intention [...] can only have been the appropriation of underground space," and about hand marks, "The hand expresses personality, the presence of an individual. ...these hand stencils are no doubt filled with the deepest significance." ('Individuality' is a very late philosophical concept, entering common thinking only in the last few hundred years.)

It is apparent that no one knows what to make of all this. And indeed it is a giant puzzle. How and why did these people persist for 20,000 years in the same process of cave depictions at intervals separated on average by a hundred years?

Signs in the Sky

What I will suggest here is that the Cromagnon people were recording the display of an infrequent and absolutely astounding celestial event. As an approximation of how frequently these events happened, we could divide the time span of 31,000 ya to 11,000 ya (20,000 years) by the number of caves (about 300), and suggest that at the most these events happened every 66 years. But in the whole of the area where the caves are found -- from the Rhineland to southern Spain -- there are perhaps four (or more) geographically isolated regions. This suggests that perhaps four or more separate 'ceremonial centers' might have existed at any one time, and possibly the event was only celebrated once every 100 years or more at each center. Additional caves continue to be found every year, however. [note 26]

Today we would not consider an extensive journey by foot across half of Europe -- complete with families, baskets, nets, and kitchen tools -- as a particularly desireable undertaking, even if this were only done once every other lifetime. We would prefer to have a local 'ceremonial center.' On the other hand, it might be fun. And in the Upper Paleolithic, as in all of antiquity, distance was never an obstacle. So it is possible that people from a large area traveled to and congregated in one place. Food was also not likely to be a problem. Considering that today the Kung of the Kalahari desert spend only 12 hours a week foraging for their families, there is good reason to believe that large crowds could be supported with locally gathered food in some single region of France.

How these people organized their cave decoration efforts, and how frequently this happened, is mostly speculation. Cromagnon occupied western Europe for 30,000 years without having their numbers diminished or being displaced by other peoples. From the archaeological records of rock shelters in southern France, which were occupied for brief periods or only seasonally, we can be certain that people indeed moved around quite a bit. As nomads they would have had an awareness of large geographical areas, and we can be reasonably sure that there was active communications between tribes and families. Trade items (stones and shells), which traveled vast distances, also document the existence of interactions between separate tribes. [note 27]

What we know for certain is that new caves were decorated every few lifetimes or so. We also know that there was a continuity of the formal aspects of the images, and that many of the graphic signs moved from cave to cave. This points to a cultural continuity between family members across a generation or two. It also starts to suggest that it was the activity of decorating a cave which was the most important thing, rather than the display of images or the ownership of a decorated cave. In this respect, the cave-decorating activity would be little different from what we see of the constant construction and reconstruction of ceremonial centers in western Europe at a much later date -- the barrows and henges. None of the cave art work was ever destroyed. Thus the second entry into Chauvet Cave, 4000 years after it had been painted, might have been exploratory -- people looking for another cave to use as a 'ceremonial center.' Cosquer Cave, entered again 8500 years after it was first marked up with finger lines, was considered a prime location, for there were no animals depicted as yet, and was filled with animal images in about 18,500 ya.

At this point we have to consider some sources for the images, assuming as always, that the humans were imitating something they saw, and casting it in terms familiar to them from their own environment. I'll suggest three possibilities, based on what might have been seen in the skies during the Upper Paleolithic.

• The sight of Jupiter in the day skies when seen as an inner planet (between the Earth and the Sun). Jupiter which would display a crescent, produced by the light of the Sun on Jupiter's Sun-side portion.

• The sight of Saturn in the skies -- seen as a combination of three or more planets stacked up above each other, and the whole enclosed in a coma shaped to the globes and to their equatorial toroids.

• The sight of an assembly of comets traveling into the inner reaches of the Solar System and crossing earth's orbit, wildly lighted by their individual comas and the plasma connections between them.

Of these three, the first seems least likely. I cannot really identify a crescent on Jupiter among the cave images. It is possible to suggest that the images of giant aurochs, with their enormous sets of horns, might represent Jupiter's crescent, but aurochs only appear in some locations. The various menageries seen in individual caves reflect the wildly divergent climatic conditions of Europe over the course of 20,000 years. During Cromagnon's occupation of western Europe, the fauna changed with climatic conditions for periods of 500 years to as long as 4000 years.

The second, the image of Saturn in the skies as the body of a woman, is also unlikely as a cave image, although this image appears as sculptures. The Venus Figurines of the Gravettian (28,000 to 23,000 years ago) -- bulbous, fat, and very female -- and again in the Magdalanian (17,000 to 14,000 years ago) -- skinny, malformed, but still female -- attest to the fact that Saturn was seen, but this image was almost entirely divorced from the cave paintings. There are, however, numerous figures of naked, headless (and disarticulated) human females scratched into the cave walls, notably without coloration or shading (except for occasional cross-hatching). It would seem that Saturn was thus recognized among the cave art, but was not an important part of the celestial scenery that was being celebrated.

The crudeness of these renderings -- and this extends to figures of males -- is a particular ineptitude which extends far into the future. As these people were not subjectively conscious, they never formed concepts of themselves in their minds. The same strange disarticulation of limbs and body parts is seen in all the two-dimensional renditions of humans of remote antiquity in the Near East. [note 28b]

Our modern day 'image' of ourselves is based on a mirror-like concept of how we think other see us (Jaynes). We conceive of other humans in a like manner. Surprisingly, this does not seem to apply to three-dimensional representations, either in the European Gravettian or much later in Sumer or Egypt. The failure to make changes in the cave-art depictions -- over a period of 20,000 years -- is an additional sign of the lack of subjective consciousness. As Leroi-Gourhan suggested, the cave drawings were never reinvented.

Because there is a 10,000 year gap (from 27,000 to 17,000 years ago) in the carving of the figurines, it would seem that Saturn remained unseen for an extended period. Because there was no gap in the cave drawings and because of other reasons listed above, I would thus not attribute any of the herds of cave animals to Saturn.

That leaves, very simply, the possibility of a display of a concentrated group of asteroids in plasma discharge -- that is, comets. It must have been absolutely spectacular, an event only sporadically repeated, and thus always unexpected.

To the Cromagnon the question must have occurred, What are these? There were only a few answers available from among their environment of mountains, rocks, rivers, plants, animals, and other humans, and only the concept of animal herds would answer to all the details of what was seen. The objects moved across the night sky like a herd of horses, bison, or deer, they were of diverse sizes and shapes, some had horns, others did not, some had tails -- and some were obviously in front of others.

Comparing the record of the frequency of comets seen today against the frequency during, for example, Roman times, shows that comets have appeared less and less frequently during the last two thousand years. Rome recorded 50 comets per year. Today we seldom see a comet. A linear extrapolation from this data, backwards to 30,000 years ago (the time of the first painted caves), results in an estimate of 750 comets per year at that time -- two per day. If the frequency of comets has fallen off exponentially over time, there might have been hundreds of thousands 30,000 years ago. [note 28]

I am not proposing that the skies were filled with comets on a daily basis, although this might have been true. But anything seen all the time would not have been noted as spectacular and would thus not have required commemoration. What I am suggesting is occasional overwhelming displays -- like repeating "meteor showers" which we still have today. The "meteor showers" seen today are microscopic dust from prior disintegration of comets which only show when they electrically brighten on hitting the Earth's ionosphere.

Some of the "swarms" of meteor dust, which the Earth passes through currently, only become spectacular at long intervals. The Leonids, for example, is a cloud of meteor dust which the Earth passes through between November 13 and November 21 each year. In most years, the display amounts to only a few streaks in the sky every couple of minutes. In AD 1833 there was a spectacular display of 100,000 to 200,000 per hour -- at that time it was the largest meteor shower seen in modern times. This repeated 33 years later in AD 1866-1867 but was not seen in AD 1899-1900. The spectacular displays of the Leonids otherwise repeat every 33 years, returning again in AD 1933, 1966, and in 1999. The dust and particles travel with comet Temple-Tuttle -- which enters the near reaches of the Sun every 33 years. There are a dozen well-known meteor showers.

The meteor showers, today, are the last remnants of larger, earlier swarms of asteroids travelling on elliptical paths which crossed the Earth's orbit. Today the 'showers' are created by the dust of single comets entering the Earth's upper atmosphere. In the past, the plasma discharge between large concentrations of asteroids would have been spectacular. Moving across the sky, but stationary with respect to each other, the only analog for Cromagnon would have been a herd of animals seen from afar. This is why the species depicted in the caves change over time and by location. The cave drawings were not made to depict species which could be hunted (and they were not), but to depict the slow passage of immense herds of celestial animals. All are shown in profile because they are on the move.

The drawings are totally modern by our standards, with a sophisticated feeling for outline and shading -- unequalled for thousands of years. At the age of ten, Picasso crawled into one of the caves in the company of his father, a painter, and the Abbe Breuil. It changed modern art.

Cromagnon applied all of their science, which wasn't much, to the depictions. Probably their most advanced intellectual accomplishment, aside from their social skills, their lithic industry, and their knowledge of the environment, was an ability to count. The many dots and bars, found adjacent to and on the animals, likely represent just that.

Five thousand years after the last cave was painted, the Egyptians of the first dynasty, 3050 to 2850 BC, do the same, counting the small and large cattle of the God Horus, and recording the counts, which at that time added up to 400,000 large and 1,200,000 small animals, plus 120,000 "captives" -- figures far in excess of anything that either warfare or the economy of Egypt could have supported if these reflected earthly animals and people.

The cattle of Mars are noted again in the 8th century BC, when Mars again cruises close enough to Earth to be clearly seen and delivers devastating electrical charges to regions of Earth. In India these are the warrior companions of Indra (Mars), called Maruts, the "terrible ones." The Bible calls them the "heavenly hosts of the Lord" (Joel and Isaiah). They are not seen again for 2600 years. Only in the 20th century AD have telescopic studies revealed the last, and presumably the largest, of the Maruts still following Mars in its orbit.

When asteroids interacted with each other, it would have been with streams of plasma. Comet Biela in 1846 sent a lance of light at right angles to its path to a companion comet, across 155,000 miles. In 1852 a brief bridge of light connected the heads of the same two comets over a distance of over a million miles -- four times the distance between the Earth and the Moon. Cromagnon recognized the streams of plasma from one comet to another as a spear thrown to wound some of the animals. But since animals do not throw spears, he invented celestial humans, often with the heads of animals, as the agents. Wounded animals are shown with chevrons, some are shown with imbedded spears.

Still we have no idea why the caves needed to be painted. It is very likely that the close passage of streams of blazing asteroids (comets) would have been accompanied by meteor inpacts, detonations like the AD 1918 Tunguska event, or fire falling from heaven (with dust from the decay of the comets which might have entered the Earth's atmosphere). It is difficult, however, to see the cave painting activity as some means of warding off evil -- that is, as magic. A belief in the efficacy of such preventive activities is a very late cultural development, clearly dating to after 1200 BC. [note 29]

None of the caves were occupation sites; apparently the Cromagnon painters did not even bring a bag lunch. But the images in the caves, when seen by others, lighted by fires, oil lamps, or torches, would have recalled the night sky during the few days, years earlier, when large 'herds of animals' roamed the skies.

At this point I have drifted the speculation as far from the data as Breuil did earlier in the 20th century, but I have gone in a different direction, assuming that these people were not at all like us and cannot be compared to contemporary 'primitives' like the Eskimo, Bushman, or Australian Aborigines.

If fear did not motivate the Cromagnon, if appeasement of celestial herds was not an issue, then what drove these people to repeatedly create the cave art work? I have absolutely no idea. But the pride and sheer joy of making images, which we also see in the spear throwers decorated with carved animal figures, is an appealing concept.

For 'public art,' as opposed to portable objects, pride in the creations would sooner or later require that the work be identified with the creators. A suggestion, made by the researchers of the early 20th century, but which has since fallen into disfavor, is that the "tectiforms" symbols found in some of the caves represent housing -- and thus the signs would have the value of a signature particular to a clan or family. These appear late, in the Magdalenian after 18,000 years before the present, at Altamira and other locations. It is a suggestion which might again be entertained.

The Hand Axe Revisited

Having suggested above that Saturn appeared (and was recorded) in the Upper Paleolithic and in the Neolithic as a composite set of four planets, it is time to extend this idea backwards in time with some additional speculation.

As I mentioned in a previous chapter, the Acheulean hand axes of the Lower Paleolithic (from roughly 1.5 million ya to 40,000 ya) -- which had appeared over the course of more than a million years in Africa, Europe, and western Asia -- look so much alike that they seem to have been manufactured from blueprints which were universally available for a million years. I will now suggest that this blueprint was seen in the skies near Earth, and, in fact, the model object was seen launched through the skies, just as hand axes were meant to be thrown.

Image: Cutting pebble, naturally backed end scraper or cutting tool, Acheulean hand axe. All from the Oldowan culture, Africa. Shown in order of historical development. After Jacquetta Kawkes, "Prehistory" (1965)

What hints at this is the off-center location of the almond point of the Acheulean hand axe, clearly shown above. The offset serves no purpose in its use, yet it is always there. It looks like we are seeing Saturn (and Neptune?) and Uranus locked in the usual position of having their magnetic poles located together, so that an extensive coma, enclosing both, is rounded at the bottom, peaked at the top, and offset in one direction. The rotation of Uranus in the plane of the ecliptic would cause the figure in the sky to look three dimensional yet flattish. All sides of it would be seen over the course of a year or with a number of passes.

Erectus did not add or subtract anything from the original design. The sharp edges on all sides of the hand axe were the inadvertent result of chipping the stone to shape. The large size was mandated by what was seen at arm's length, which suggests that Saturn and Uranus were relatively close to Earth, although it is as likely that instead we are seeing a much more extensive coma. The centers of the two masses constituting the Acheulean hand axe, the rounded main portion and the peaked upper part, are in the same proportions as the much later body and head of the Venus figurines.

What argues against Erectus having thought up, designed, and tested this assault weapon on his own, is not only the small size of his brain, but also the fact that no further inventions (at least, in stone) were ever made. When Homo Neanderthalis appears, nearly two million years later, he develops stone cutting tools in the blink of an eye. [note 30]

Erectus kept the off-center almond point dictated by the original blueprint, but also kept the unwieldy size. A hand axe of half the size would have weighed one quarter as much, could have been thrown further and more accurately, yet would have done nearly the same damage. Did anyone ever think to test this idea? Did any Erectus ever think? Erectus did, however, have the mammalian facility for imitation, and the cultural structure to spread this idea everywhere. At least, everywhere in the world where antelopes congregated at watering holes. (The tool is missing from the jungles of eastern Asia.)

If my speculations are correct, it means that Saturn, as I already suggested, remained within the inner domain of the Solar System after its re-entry three million years ago, at least, periodically. One and one half million years ago Saturn was seen for an extended period of time by our remote ancestors.

Mars was not part of the Saturnian planet system at that remote time, for otherwise Erectus would have developed the stone dagger instead.

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Thanks to E Boettger for suggesting that I add the chapters on the development of the Solar System before the arrival of Saturn.

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Endnotes

Note a --

From early imagery I would suggest that Mars was located very close to Saturn initially, but may have distanced by a half million miles by the time the first Venus figurines are carved.
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Note 1 --

The cup and tail marks (some of which appear in European caves dating to 32,000 years ago) should not be confused with the concentric circles (often also with a tail eminating from the center) and swirls found inscribed on megalithic constructions after 3100 BC. The concentric circles are a phenomenon of burning gasses entering the stratosphere or upper atmosphere. These have been identified from rocket launches in the 1960's.

The tail is likely an electrical arc from Saturn which struck the northern hemisphere of Mars, lasting from before 40,000 years ago. The arc must have been absolutely gigantic, for it completely etched away the northern hemisphere of Mars to a depth of three miles, leaving only a smooth surface. (The Grand Canyon of the Colorado is a mile deep.) If there had ever been any life on Mars it would have been completely obliterated during the 30,000 years of the electrical arc (witnessed by humans), a condition which may, in fact, have extended as much as three million years back in time.
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Note 2b --

The archaeological record of eastern Europe (at Dolni Vestonice in the Czech Republic) looks as if