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


[Table of Contents]

$Revision: 23.23 $
Contents of this chapter: [The Saturnian Planets] [Time line] [Neolithic Figurines] [Objections to Gimbutas] [The Peratt Column] [Catal Huyuk] [Lascaux] [The Hand Axe] [Endnotes]

Throughout the Upper Paleolithic and the Neolithic, from about 40,000 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 40,000 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 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 could 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 Appendix B, "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, but I have no reasonable estimate of the distance.

Late in 2009 I finally realized that there were two planets below Saturn, and would identify the additional planet between Saturn and Mars as Mercury. David Talbott had always held this as a condition of the polar stack, but identified the planet between Saturn and Mars as Venus. My objection to identifying this in-between planet as Venus is that Venus at a later time is depicted with a plume-like connection to Saturn in what looks like an equatorial location. I would suggest from this, and from the extreme surface temperature of Venus, that it was created in the plasma outpouring of the nova event of ca 4200 BC.

Introducing Mercury into this configuration also solves numerous other problem conditions which would otherwise remain mysterious. I will touch on these as required in later text and later chapters. But at this point I should at least suggest that I think Mercury only became part of the stack of planets late during the Gravettian (ca 25,000 or 24,000 ya) or during the Magdalenian period (17,000 to 14,000 ya). Mars was probably located very close to Saturn initially and would have distanced by a few million miles by the time the first Venus figurines were carved (detailed below), for the feet of the figurines are located quit a distance below the trunk. If Mercury indeed was added to the polar cofiguration late, then it would have to have been 'inserted' between Saturn and Mars.

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 up at 10 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 other pole, away from the centerline of Saturn and Neptune, tilted down 10 degrees.

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 experienced 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.

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

[Saturn with the other planets; Venus of Willendorf]
Image: left: Saturn with Neptune, Uranus, and Mars enclosed in plasma; right: Venus of Willendorf.

Seen from a low angle Saturn and its three planets (at the Gravettian, 28,000 to 24,000 years ago) 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 10 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 as 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 or the other planets, but because Mars has no magnetic field or an exterior layer of liquid or gas, and thus could 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.

[Saturn depicted or recollected from various vantage points]

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 presents differing vantage points over time. The southern plasmoid (see later text) after 8300 BC is not shown.

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, even though these were spaced over 4000 years. It is also important to realize that, except since 10,500 BC of this diagram, Saturn was only seen in the skies periodically. If the sight of Saturn 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 saw 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 archaeologically from figurines, 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, fits the archaeologically based chronology presented here. More on this further below.

I have personally wondered at these incised "cup and tail" marks which are found worldwide -- the earliest and one of the simplest rock carving. 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 long 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 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 2]

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.

[figurines from the western European Gravettian]
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)

The images of woman simultaneously steatopygic and pregnant, or at least with bodyparts which jut out horizontally below the belly or trunk, suggests one or two planets off center below Saturn. As I suggested in the previous chapter, the rotational axis of the Earth probably never lined up with the rotational axis of Saturn, even though the interaction of the two planets lasted thousands of years.

What is seen in some of these images (but obviously not all of them), I suspect, is a planet which had recently been captured into a subpolar orbit and which would not assume a symmetrical location with respect to Saturn for thousands or tens of thousands of years. I would assume that this was Mercury. I would also suggest that at this time Mercury would likely still have had a substantial atmosphere, and thus capable of sustaining a large coma. [note 4b]

After 14,000 ya the glaciers retreat, although they do not disappear. From about 12,500 ya (10,500 BC) Earth reaches a position closer to Saturn and level with it. This is the start of the extreme cold period of the Younger Dryas, lasting to about 9,000 BC.

after 9,000 BC: After about 9,000 BC (11,000 ya), as Earth started to fall below the level of Saturn, the imagery depicting a Fat Lady in the sky again becomes important, with the number of sculptures increasing.

To have the Earth fall below Saturn will be equivalent to having Saturn moving from the region of the south skies to the north. Thus for a period of a thousand years (ca 9,000 BC to 8,300 BC), Saturn and the associated planets (likely with a coma) were seen traveling on a daily basis (during day or night, depending on the season) through the skies from east to west -- looking like an absolutely giant bird.

In about 8,350 BC, as will be developed further below, Earth entered the outer edge of the lower plasma plume of Saturn. The result was that Earth became part of the circuit which collected electrons from space. A ball-shaped plasmoid developed 400,000 miles below Earth's south pole, but offset at an angle (10 to 15 degrees), and connected to Saturn above the north pole with streams of electrons in arc mode. Two more plasmoids developed in the south, in line with the streaming electrons.

Away from Earth the streaming electrons were circularly aligned into 56 bundles (and lesser numbers) and 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 ball-shaped plasmoids before diverging again further away from the pole. I'll discuss this plasma column (the Peratt Column) below.

I should thus note that some of the figurines are likely to be representations of what was seen in the far south, and what we have from many sources is a god with the head of of fish, or a head with the body of a snake. For locations below the equator, where the Absu did not obscure the plasmoid, this became a smiling face surrounded with sun-like rays. More on this further below.

At this point in time the glaciers are gone, having melted a thousand years ago, by 8,000 BC. From 7,500 BC the climate in Europe warms because of the relationship of the northern hemisphere to the Sun.

Cardona notes that this apparition was known as "Hurricane" in Central America and the Caribbean. But the "Popol Vuh" makes it clear that "Hurricane" is one of the three Gods comprising "Heart of Earth, Heart of Sky" in the south, where the other two are called "Newborn Thunderbolt" and "Sudden Thunderbolt." "Hurricane" is also known as "Thunderbolt Hurricane."

"Thunderbolt Hurricane comes first, the second is Newborn Thunderbolt, and the third is Sudden Thunderbolt. So there were three of them, as Heart of Sky.."

-- Popol Vuh

This is an important concept because the documentation by Anthony Peratt of what was seen, worldwide, was exactly that: three ball plasmoids in the far south. By this time the Earth, in the process of a slow movement down and toward the center of rotation of Saturn, had already crossed the outer edges of the cone of plasma extending below Saturn, and the edge of the central plume. See the diagram further below.

Earth might 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.

The bird shape (duck) derives from the fact that Uranus is offset from the rotational axis of Saturn but connected with a long stream of plasma to its south magnetic pole (which is the north geographic pole of Uranus). Seen from below, as the Earth approached the position below Saturn, Uranus would have been seen on the right upper side (or off to the 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. Seeing a bird form in the north proved that the giant bird which had been seen in its movement from the south to the north over the last few thousand years, was now stationed above the north polar region. More on this further below.

In the south three large ball plasmoids stood in the sky, rotating into view on a daily basis. The attention of the petroglyph carvers was mainly directed to these forms, which were much more distinct than the clouded form in the north. Of prime importance in the depictions were the bright lines in the sky, the beams of electrons, which streamed past the Earth toward the north. Directly above at any location on Earth only four beams would show. These rotated with the Earth on a daily basis, and were thus stationary. (So claims Peratt, below). At Carnac in France the lines are represented by columns of standing stones, some with circular structures at both the southwest and northeast ends of the causeways.

I will discuss additional details of the world-wide interest in the figures below the south pole further below.

I suggested, above, that Mercury with its coma was probably understood as the egg. As Saturn went to arc mode discharge, its very large surrounding coma collapsed, and only the golden sphere is seen in the north sky. The ball plasmoids in the south would have disappeared as the Earth became the endpoint of an arc from Saturn. In the north, Mercury (with a coma supported by its atmosphere) and Mars appeared clearly, although Mars would have appeared only as a small dot against Mercury or Saturn, and, offset from the axis of Saturn and Earth, Uranus appeared to one side, disconnected from Saturn except for a remaining plume of plasma -- its neck. [note 4a]

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 (detailed in the previous chapter).

"Radiocarbon dating and analysis of pollen in buried soils, has shown that the environment of lowland Britain changed around 4,250-4,000 BC. The change to a grassland environment from damp, heavy soils and expanses of dense forest was mostly brought about by farmers, probably through the use of slash and burn techniques, although environmental factors may also have made a contribution." (Wikipedia, concerning the environment of Avebury.)
The same change is noted elsewhere, as, for example, in North Amnerica.

Unlike the Peratt column in the south, what happened above the north pole of Earth 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 (as figurines) was not the primary concern. The major concern were the herds of animals parading across the skies periodically. These are rendered 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) are counted. Ownership of the herds are attributed to Mars (Horus) in Egypt and records of the counts are kept. (The last sightings of these swarms were made during the 8th century BC.)

As I noted above, only after 9000 BC, when the Earth has moved much closer to Saturn, did the figurines again 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 move backwards to the description of the Peratt Column at the south pole in (or before) ca 5000 BC.

This will be followed by the narrow transitional period represented by Catal Huyuk in Anatolia in 7400 to 6200 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 4]

I cannot adequately summarize Gimbutas' research here. Gimbutas presents pottery which shows motifs of eggs, dual eggs, snakes, water signs, birds, the double axe, 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. [note 5]

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 6]

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.

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 much 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 the planet above Saturn slowly seems to move further and further away, elongating the necks of the figurines. But the change in how the figurines looked is likely due to a change in perspective, for at this time, up to 9000 BC, Earth passed through a position at an equatorial elevation to Saturn.

From the looks of these later figurines with the long necks and 'bird mask' faces, it seems as if the main plasma discharge made contact at a location about 10 degrees above the horizontal (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.

Today the magnetic pole of Uranus is located nearly perpendicular to the plane of the ecliptic, and thus perpendicular to the axis of rotation. This is an enigma for astrophysicists, who maintain that the magnetism of a planet is internally induced by a differential rotation of the core material. Plasma theorists maintain that the magnetic fields of planets are externally induced by the electrical field of the Sun. I see no reason for the magnetic poles of Uranus not to have been aligned closer to the axis of rotation during the time it was within the sphere of influence of Saturn.

Uranus today still lies on its side with its poles placed 10 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, but was the north geographic pole of Uranus which angled 10 degrees above the horizontal. Thus the main flow of plasma, the 'neck,' would connect to a 'head' which was tilted downward by 10 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. The ecliptic would wobbles throughout the year and daily (as today), and 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 early 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 (when the location of the figure had been more or less stabilized) 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 7]

After about 5800 BC the Earth fell into an orbit below Saturn and seemed to have moved closer. This in effect obliterated the figure in the sky, replacing it by the swirling cloud, which eventually formed into a giant white bird (and later an egg) standing above the horizon in the north. Because Uranus did not line up with Saturn, it was seen past the edge of Saturn as the head of a bird, and the whole was recalled, in the artifacts and pottery decorations of some people, in this foreshortened form, as the image of a bird in the sky or as the Goose of Creation.

After 4200 BC Saturn went to arc mode discharge to Earth and the imagery in the sky changed. Perhaps the change to arc mode happened as Uranus moves further away from Saturn, and the voltage drop between the two planets increased. At some point the glow mode plasma discharge to Uranus changed to dark mode between the planets, and Saturn, committed to a certain level of energy outflow, went nova -- that is, it underwent a mass expulsion (creating Venus and possibly the rings), and switched to arc mode plasma discharge. The Earth now became the main contact point for the plasma discharge, via Mars. Earth was a newcomer to the group, and a fresh object to discharge to. [note 8]

There now appeared 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. Athens claimed 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 reached 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. Art historians have pointed out that there are no erotic images to be found anywhere in the world until well into 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 Peratt Column

In papers published in "The IEEE Transactions on Plasma Science," in 2003 and 2007, Anthony Peratt demonstrated that about 40 percent 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 (apparently 10 to 15 degrees), which allowed it to be visible even at far northern latitudes on a daily basis. Three ball-shaped plasmoids in this stream were located at distances of 165,000, 190,000, and 435,000 miles below the south pole. Peratt has named the visible stream of plasma the "Peratt Column." [note 11]

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.

The Peratt column developed as Earth moved from a lateral location with respect to Saturn to below its south pole, for Earth would have traveled through the cone of incoming electrons (the flower shaped plasma plumes) below the south pole of Saturn. I suspect that the edge of the cone was reached well before 5000 BC, which is the only date offered by Peratt so far, although Lepinski Vir (see below) is dated from 6250 to 5500 BC, and mounds at Carnac date from 5800 BC. Maya stelae suggest a starting date for the "First Creation" of 8347 BC.

"(And then) there was an event /
(on) 4-Ahau / 8-Cumku /
were completed / 13 Baktuns"

"13 Baktun, 0 Katun, 0 Tun, 0 Uinal, 0 Kin,
4-Ahau 8-Cumku, was (first) seen
the image of the turtle."

The Maya have acknowledged in their sculptures that "13 Baktun" is equivalent to "zero Baktun." "4-Ahau 8-Cumku" are the names of the day. A Baktun is a period of 400 years of 360 days, by the accounting of the Olmecs since 747 BC, but probably represented a solar year in remote antiquity. On completing the 13th Baktuns, the cycle of counting days starts over. Thus to us "13 Baktun, 0 Katun, 0 Tun, 0 Uinal, 0 Kin" (13.0.0.0.0 for short) has been determined to represent August 13, 3114 BC on the Gregorian calendar.

But this is not when the turtle showed.

To the Maya, time was cyclical, and the 5200 year cycle of days which started in 3114 BC, is wholly equivalent to the previous cycle of 5200 years. Our calculated date of 3114 BC is actually 3147 BC in solar years. Thus the previous cycle of 5200 years started in 8347 BC.

It is obvious from Peratt that the southern plasmoid showed long before 3147 BC. In fact, he suggests dates as early as 10,000 BC. From the Maya, and their predecessors, we learn that the first showing of the "turtle" was in 8347 BC -- an event which the Maya called the "First Creation."

[Peratt Column at the south pole]
Image: Left: Peratt Column at the south pole, ca 5000 BC, a reconstruction. Right: A petroglyph rendering in Australia, ca 5000 BC. Dates are uncertain. Not shown clearly in this reproduction are the elements of a face in the center of the last ball plasmoid. Such details could generally not be seen in the northern hemisphere

Because of instabilities in the flow of plasma, the column below the plasmoids at various times assumed different shapes -- a ladder, a series of stacked toroids, the outline of a "squating man," and other forms. The self-illuminated 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, and often in a manner which blocked the direct view of the plasmoid, which would have been of startling brilliance.

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 beyond the south pole. Peratt concludes that it was shaped (in a more stable form) like a highly energized 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 -- at least, so it was assumed by the researchers. There were additional shapes above the north pole, as we will see, which would later completely eclipse the images seen in the south.

The finding 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 the perspective of my narrative, 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. 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. Nothing is said (in the papers) of what happened to the bundles of electrons above the north pole, although their passage past Earth is illustrated.

Some of the problems Peratt has with the form of this 'aurora' -- it's centering on the geographic pole, the lack of evidence for a similar northern aurora -- clearly derives from an attempt to integrate this display with the concept that, if this were an actual aurora, then the 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 gradient of the electrical field surrounding Earth pointed in the up-down direction, rather than more or less at right angles to the equator, as is the case today. The source of the incoming flux of plasma is clearly from the north, from Saturn. It is not destined for Earth but it is using Earth as part of a circuit, with the plasma headed for the boundaries of Saturn's coma. [note 12]

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. (In a later paper co-authored with W. F. Yao, Peratt reverses this condition, which would be correct if Saturn came into the Solar System with an excess negative charge.) 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. This constant change in the direction of travel causes the electrons to emit radiation in radio frequencies, x-rays, ultra violet, and visible light.

In that the flow of ions and electrons was 10 to 100 times as powerful as is today experienced with auroras, it is expected that the Earth's magnetic field was aligned with the rotational axis. This would 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.

[lower plasma plume]
Image: 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 as 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 where the rotational axis of Saturn points in the dome of the stars.

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, would angle up to some 30 degrees away from the rotational axis of the Earth -- if the slope of the edge of the plasma cone were parallel to the rotational axis of Saturn. Peratt suggested a bend in the stream of 10 to 15 degrees, based on his analysis of world-wide data.

[Earth enters the outer envelop]
Image: Earth enters the outer envelop of Saturn's lower plasma plume, ca 8300 BC. Rotational axis aligned with Saturn for graphical convenience. The three transitions of the plasma double layers are shown as #1, #2, and #3.

The most northerly petroglyphs are at 57, 61, and 70 degrees north latitude in eastern Europe (Norway). These latitudes have horizons which dip 33, 29, and 20 degrees below the equatorial plane of the Earth, and would 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 30 degrees. This is considerable more than the "10 to 15 degrees."

Peratt suggests that the bend in the column would be seen as existing east of the point of view of the petroglyphs in Australia, which means it was seen in the sky above (below) South America. The bend would have rotated into the sky, however, and I would think the view south of South America would be a night view -- when the streams of electrons stood out against the dark sky at nightfall. The orientation of the three causeways at Carnac places the far plasmoid of the column below South America also. Additionally, implied in a later text by Peratt and W. F. Yao, "Evidence for an intense solar outburst in prehistory," in Physica Scripta (2008), is that the plasmoid was seen directly south in northern South America and at the Nazca lines site in Peru.

[location of the Peratt Column downstream of Earth]
Image: Possible location of the Peratt Column downstream of Earth in the outer layer of Saturn's lower plasma. Earth axis shown up and down for convenience.

The bend in the columns of streaming electrons 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 13]

The Peratt column would thus approach the Earth's rotational axis at an inclination different from the Earth's axis, but would 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 Peratt claims that they passed by Earth toward the north, perhaps dispersing (or returning to glow mode). The construction of the Carnac causeways contradicts this, however, placing another circular object in the north for at least one causeway. Book 11 of the Maya "Chilam Balam" suggests the same, as does the "Popol Vuh." More on these sources below.

[View of Peratt Column from 70 degrees north latitude]
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 one thing: the thousands of indelible petroglyphs dating from 10,000 years ago -- left behind by an earlier population which had been swept off the islands enmasse in 3147 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 3147 BC and the compressive electrical impact of 1492 BC in the central Pacific.

... the Opossum

There should be tales and myths relating to the Peratt Column, even though these would date from memories of events 8000 years before the current era. With only a few exceptions, I was initially not aware of any -- although, once the imagery was identified, other references started to turn up. Of course, any tales of a man or creature at the south pole would tend to get lost in the plethora of myth which was to be generated by the northern polar column after 4200 BC. The Peratt Column never did anything significant.

One example initially stood out. It is from the Quiche Maya "Popol Vuh" document, written in the 16th century AD in Guatemala. The "Popol Vuh" 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 thousands of years old, and in some cases give descriptions 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 Vuh," for a more extensive analysis.

Hunahpu and Xbalanque, the twin hero characters of the "Popol Vuh," 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 later restored with a squash.

But that is the narrative. What is of interest is that Xbalanque next requests the delay of dawn from old man opossum, so they will have enough time to fashion a squash head:

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 Vuh" 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 American 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 White Beast would not have looked like a person with a mouth and eyes, as the Australians depicted the column (and also depicted in Venezuela, Brazil, and Peru). In southern Mexico, and seen through the screen of the Absu, the Peratt Column must have looked like a white opossum, its back turned to the viewers, its long tail stretched behind it. It may have seemed to be carrying its young on its back -- actually the two intermediate plasmoids. [note 14]

None of the opossum species is striped. So where do the stripes come from? Dennis Tedlock, translator of the "Popol Vuh" (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, but irrelevant here.

In the Dresden Codex, an illustration shows an opossum bringing in the new year, carried on his back like a trader's cargo.

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, it is the plasma flow and the size of Saturn's plasmasphere which would change over the year. There would be a consequent response in the shape and size of the south polar plasma stream -- also the very reason for the discontinuities. Thus the look of a full-fledged white beast might 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.

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 overhead, they would occupy 26 degrees of an upward view; four of 28 bundles would occupy 50 degrees of the sky -- quite a broad view. In these cases, some 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 overhead. 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.

Peratt writes...

"Two egg-shaped plasmoids are found at 306,000 and 266,000 km, respectively. The farthest limit of the reconstruction (the top) is located 701,000 km from Earth. The number of Birkeland currents is 56 at the top, converging to 28 at the plasmoids and eventually converging and twisting into four large filaments. If the current oscillates or is sporadic, the four can separate back to 56 filaments. Whether 56 or 4, or some number in-between, the filaments flow over and past the rotating Earth."-- Peratt, et al, (2007) [note 15]

Tedlock, and his Quiche informant Andres Xiloj, discuss the four cloud streaks at dawn in terms of charcoal black and red, but the "Popol Vuh" 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 Vuh" 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. [note 16]

In Australia, as in Peru and Equador, all below the equator, the details of what looked like a face could be seen. For regions north of the equator such detail were obscured by the Earth's equatorial rings. The image was reduced to an animal shape. In Portugal and France the ball plasmoid was understood as a giant mound, probably a burial mound.

... the Nasca lines

Peratt notes 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 probably represent the correct number seen in the sky. [note 17]

The Peratt column may have lasted hundreds of years or more. It completely fascinated and confounded humans, who for these reasons needed to draw representations in areas where the far south plasmoid 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 thousands of years, but the south column did nothing more during all of its existence than brilliantly light up the skies and change shapes. Only a curious saying, based on the events of the remote past, remained current among the Maya, "Possum is making streaks."

As I mentioned above, Peratt has noted that some petroglyphs were overdrawn or added to "two or three times." The most likely reason for going to the extremes of climbing vertical cliff walls to recarve the images would be the disappearance of the Peratt column. After years or decades of announcing the new year, if the column suddenly failed to appear, humans would have panicked, and climbed mountains to force the return of the Peratt column. Book 11 of the Maya "Chilam Balam" claims that God expressed himself with the plasmoids and the column three times. (See Chapter 17, "The Olmec Record.") There are three main stretches of causeways at Carnac pointing toward the southwest. The site of Lepenski Vir also went through three major remodeling over the course of its use. (This is discussed below.)

I should point out that the giant burial mound at Carnac, like the similar mound in Portugal, probably represent the large plasmoid in the south, which were used for burials perhaps at a later date.

... initial creation tasks from the "Popol Vuh"

The "Popol Vuh" also gives an account of the first visible tasks to be accomplished at the very beginning of time and before any 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, "Popol Vuh"

Here again we have "fourfold" operations, although this could refer to the survey of a rectangle. "Maker" and "Modeler" here are two of the northern Gods responsible for creation, collectively known as "Heart of Sea, Heart of Lake". Tedlock notes, through his informant Andres 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."

... a survey of the world from the Chilam Balam

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 considerably different from what we experience today. It would have been elongated in the north and south axial direction.

If the stripes overhead were stationary, 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 1, 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 trees are the three visible ball-plasmoids which are elsewhere identified as 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, which indeed does look like a lean-to. 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 16 and Chapter 17.) 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, no punctuation, and no indication of where sentences start or end. Roys sees the present page as standing alone, and starts the translation of the following page as Book 2, under the title of "The Rise of Hunac Ceel to Power." Book 2 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 is here placed in the south, in fact, beyond the nine rivers. The Itza came from the north, from the Valley of Mexico (as did the Toltecs).

Third, as I will quote further below, the first major task was a survey of the land, but this would be a land of mountains -- the Guatemalan Peten region. The flatland of the northern Yacatan was 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 17, "The Olmec Record."

Next comes the surveyor, 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 primarily action oriented, not time based. If an action happens, it has to be attributed to an actor. Additionally, as Roys points out, frequently the names are just puns.

Katun 11-Ahau is the name of a double decade period which is understood by the Maya as starting all history. All of history is always repeated every 13 Katuns, a cycle of about 250 years, where Katun 11-Ahau is always the first 20 year period in the list of 13. Any events at the beginning of time, or in remote antiquity, or before there were calendars, are always placed in Katun 11-Ahau.

"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 necessary task before settlement of a land after a migration from the south. (The "Popol Vuh" 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 18]

What is particularly important in the above is the "sweeping" of the lines and the "pulling of the weeds." This strange activity is duplicated in Neolithic England, as I will describe below.

... Ley lines

There seems to have been a propensity in the Neolithic to forming long absolutely straight pathways, often over difficult terrain, going over steep hills when it would have been easier to go around, and then locating important landmark to them, which has become very obvious in England, and since been discovered in other parts of the world -- North and South America, Australia, and China (where prohibitions against straight line paths are invoked under the Feng-shui philosophy). They are called 'ley lines' today. The first awareness, and first book on these (for England) was penned by Alfred Watkins in 1922, "Early British Trackways, Moats, Mounds, Camps and Sites" and is still clearly more meaningful than the present day submersion of this topic in New Age speculation. Of course, by the late Neolithic there no longer was any coherent reflection of the original north-south paths seen in the sky, and pathways were plotted in all directions. This is true of the Nasca lines also.

It might be suggested that the 'sweepers' who cleared the lines in the sky in the text quoted from the "Chilam Balam," above, were smaller nodules, small plasmoids, or electrical discharge patterns, seen traveling along the lines toward the south. Alfred Watkins in his book writes about town names along ley lines..

"'Broom' occurs with great persistence on leys, with its variations brom and bram. Bromley and Bramley, Bromton and Bramton, Bromfield (where is the Old Field with a number of tumuli), Broomsgreen, Broomsberrow, and the many Broomy Hills are examples. It is not confined to one form of sighting point, and I surmise (from a faint line of evidence) that a component part of our modern broom was an essential working implement of the skilled ley man, and was continued as the staff of the medieval pilgrim. Whether the plant broom was the original root word or a derivative I cannot say."

The word 'broom' is a cognate of 'bramble,' a thorn bush. This suggests that a series of electrical discharges traveled south along the lines, looking like a moving dendrite pattern, directed toward Earth's mesosphere or stratosphere (40 to 100 miles above the surface) and in constant motion. If the tendrils of the 'brambles' were directed down from the streaks of electrons, this would indeed have looked like brooms were sweeping the lines, or, as the "Chilam Balam" has, that weeds were being removed. As a household implement, the broom probably dates from the Upper Paleolithic. [note 19]

This answers the question, why people throughout the world would scale high cliffs to record the apparition in the south. I would suggest that they needed to find out where the sweepers, or the objects seen traveling along the lines of electrons, were going.

... God speaks to Job

The Book of Job is reputed to be one of the oldest books of the Bible. God, in a dialog with Job, speaks of the "chambers of the south," which is the Egyptian phrasing for the Duat. He speaks also about the creation of the Earth, and asks Job, "Where were you when I founded the earth? Tell me, if you have understanding, who determined its size; do you know? Who stretched out the measuring line for it?"

Then the Lord addressed Job out of the storm and said: "Who is this that obscures divine plans with words of ignorance? Gird up your loins now, like a man; I will question you, and tell me the answers! Where were you when I founded the earth? Tell me, if you have understanding, who determined its size; do you know? Who stretched out the measuring line for it? Into what were it's pedestals sunk, and who laid the cornerstone, while the morning stars sang in chorus and all the sons of God shouted for joy?"

-- Job 38:1-8

The "pedestals" are likely are the four pillars at the cardinal points which hold up the canopy of the sky. These, which I suspect are two polar plasma plumes and two similar forms in the east and west, I will illucidate in a later chapter.

... the stones at Carnac

In Brittany in France at Carnac are a series of causeways with 10 to 13 parallel lines of standing stones, dated from before 4000 BC. (The giant grave mounds date from 5800 BC.) There are three distinct causeways running from northeast to southwest (Le Menec, Kermario, Kerlescan), in line with each other, plus a number of others (Crucono, Saint Barbe). At one end, the southwest, or at both ends (Le Menec) of the causeways there are remnants of large circles of standing stones.

The existence of circular structures at both ends of the causeways would suggest that an additional circular object existed above the Earth's north pole, which has not been identified by Peratt. I would suggest that this was Saturn as the anode for the streams of electrons. Saturn thus was visible at this time, as the "Popol Vuh" also claims (discussed below).

In all there are some 4000 stones still standing in rows. Originally there were perhaps 10,000. The causeways near Carnac point toward the southwest (thus initially suggesting a contact point for a plasma stream in the mid Atlantic), with a few shorter alignments running almost at right angles to these, pointing to the northwest instead as at Kerzerho, which likely represent the new stream of plasma seen in the northwest after 4200 BC. Kerzerho uses the largest stones.

The main Carnac causeways are representations of the Peratt Column seen extending from the south pole. The standing stones start at four rows in the northeast portion (which would represent the view directly overhead), increasing to 11 or 13 rows in the southwest -- the southern view beyond the Earth (one fourth of a bundle of 56 streams of electrons would be represented by 14 rows). The rows of standing stones narrow at the southwest end, as if to suggest a diminishing perspective, however, the stones increase in height. The southwest end of the causeways also tends to run uphill slightly, in effect pointing to something in the sky. Many causeways have a bend at the center, that is, they change direction slightly. The change in the direction of the electron streams of the Peratt Column happened somewhere within 435,000 miles below the south pole (700,000 km).

The direction in which the causeways point is not correct if, as Peratt claims, the streams of electrons ran strictly in a south to north direction past the Earth. The southwest direction points to the south pole below or west of South America.

"In South Australia, a bend in the plasma column far above the Earth was noted. Nearly normal to Antarctica, the column bends eastwards as seen from Australia and presents an increasingly "stretched" columnar profile for New Zealand and more so for South Africa."-- Peratt, et al (2007). [note 20]

The observations in Australia place the main body of the White Beast toward the east, and thus below South America. The direction of the electron streams seen in France, that is, the direction of the causeways, also points to South America. The far plasmoid of the Peratt Column was stationary with respect to the location of the planet Saturn. Only as the Earth rotated would the far end of the column alternately come into view and disappear again, nightly.

Over the course of a solar year, with both Saturn and Earth on equal but displaced orbits around the Sun (and the Earth below the Sun as well as below Saturn), the Peratt Column might have entirely disappeared from view in the daylight sky. Or the Peratt Column could have ceased to exist annually as the conditions of Saturn with respect to the electrical field of the Sun changed on its elliptical orbit. This would not be reason enough for the constantly renewed recording of the phenomena in petroglyphs, causeways, and standing stones. I would think that only the complete disappearance of the Peratt Column for decades of hundreds of years at a time would be cause for new carvings, paintings, and constructions.

... Manu towed to safety

There are suggestions based on linguistic analysis for the creation of the "Rig Veda" in northeast India (Pakistan) in 1700 BC -- in the foothills of the Himalayas. Importantly, this location is also recognized for the earliest plant domestication in Asia, perhaps as early as 9000 BC. In fact, there seems to be no sign of a hunter-gatherer phase in low-land India prior to 7000 BC when plant domestication appears in central Pakistan, as at Mergharh in Baluchistan. The Harrapan civilization of Pakistan dates to after 3000 BC. But although folklorists only begrudgingly attribute the creating of the Indian "Rig Veda" to 1200 BC, the "Rig Veda" clearly describes events dating back to before 8000 BC.

A curious and inexplicable events is the rescue of Manu, "Man," equivalent to "Adam," the first man, and thus representing Saturn (more on this in Chapter 6, "Creation and the Polar Sun"). A fish offers to tow Manu to the Himalayas, "to avoid the flood."

Tow lines are hooked over the horn of the fish. Manu is advised to bring his seven wise men, and plants and seeds of every kind. It is certain that Manu is Saturn, and the seven sages are its satellites. (The concept of seven sages appears also in early legends of Sumer.) The 'flood' is probably the inundation of the south coast of India in 3147 BC, when the level of the Indian ocean increased precipitously, and where today man-made structures are found off shore under 90 or 120 feet of water. The world-wide flood of 3147 BC is described in Chapter 7, "The Age of the Gods and the Flood."

The tow lines are the beams of electrons connecting Saturn and the Peratt ball plasmoids in the south. The actual movement (towing) of Saturn, north to the Himalayas, might have appeared in the skies between 9000 BC and ca 8300 BC. This change in the location of Saturn in the sky is perhaps also noted for Catal Huyuk, further below in the text. If by the 'fish' is meant the southern plasmoid, then it seems as if Manu and the fish have reversed roles.

As likely we are seeing some diverse events in time brought together. The primary god first appeared in the south after 8300 BC. At some point in time, he reappeared in the north, as Saturn hidden in a coma, after the apparition in the south had disappeared along with the tow lines -- the electron beams. That likely happened before 4200 BC. Although the flood of 3147 BC was a thousand years later, a knowledge of the temples and structures which had disappeared under the waters of the Indian ocean along the south coast of India was combined with the travels of Manu. I should also point out that, although the Himalayas clearly represent 'the north' for the people of India, the mountains did not achieve their current heights until after 2349 BC -- by my estimate. Geologists date the final raising of the Himalayas to after the end of the ice ages, thus after 10,000 BC to 8000 BC. [note 21]

A more revealing link to the remote past is what Graham Hancock, in his review of India in "Underworld" (2002), describes as follows..

"In the 'Rig Veda,' Vishnu's principal exploit, recounting and celebrated again and again, is the taking of 'three steps'. Although it is agreed that these steps must symbolize something of profound importance, scholars have as yet reached no consensus as to their underlying meaning."

Hancock quotes from the "Rig Veda" as follows..

"I will declare the mighty deeds of Vishnu, of him who measured out the earthly regions...."

"He who for man's behoof in his [man's] affliction trice measured the earthly regions."

Hancock continues with quoting various measures from the "Rig Veda," attempting to segue this with the erroneous notion expressed by Giorgio de Santillana and H. von Dechend in "Hamlet's Mill" (1969) that the precession of the equinox was known since remote antiquity. (There was no precession before 685 BC.) What he fails to note is that what is being expressed is exactly what happened: the Earth was being surveyed with cords strung through the skies -- three times -- once for each passage through the conducting edges (the double layers) of the parts of the circular outer plasma plume and the central plasma plume below Saturn.

Peratt has suggested that some petroglyphs were overdrawn or added to "two or three times." The three groups of standing stone causeways at Carnac definitely suggest "three times," as does the "Chilam Balam" and this quoted passage from the "Rig Veda."

... the Heart of Sky

The "Popol Vuh" lists two sets of creation Gods under collective names, separating the Gods of the south from the Gods of the north, and calling the southern apparitions the "Heart of Earth, Heart of Sky" while calling the northern apparition the "Heart of Sea, Heart of Lake." North and south are not identified, but it becomes obvious that the streams of electrons arising from the plasmoids in the south, as I have already pointed out for the standing stones at Carnac, connected to another entity in the north. The entity in the north is identified as Saturn and its companion planets mainly through the mention of one of the gods who is clearly identified as Quetzalcoatl or Venus from the name "Sovereign Plumed Serpent." [note 22]

As seen from Central America or northern South America, Sovereign Plumed Serpent and his companions are seen at the north horizon rotating out of the sea ("Heart of Sea") on a daily basis and rotating into the sky supported on the rings of Saturn ("Heart of Lake"). At this time the view of Saturn might still have been at an angle to the plane of the rings. I should note that the mention of "Heart of Sea, Heart of Lake" at this point in the "Popol Vuh" narrative may be from a much later apparition, when Saturn had gone nova. It is then associated with the north to form a dialog between the northern and southern gods.

"Heart of Earth, Heart of Sky" in the south is identified as three members, Hurricane (also known as Thunderbolt Hurricane), Newborn Thunderbolt, and Sudden Thunderbolt. These clearly are the three plasmoids of the Peratt column seen at the south horizon which rotated out of the land ("Heart of Earth") on a daily basis and rotated into the sky ("Heart of Sky"). The names "Newborn Thunderbolt" and "Sudden Thunderbolt" are appropriate for plasma displays, which will switch from dark mode to glow mode (or arc mode) suddenly. "Thunderbolt" is also appropriate, considering the arc mode bundels of electrons eminating from the ball plasmoids, which, if they were sporadic could be seen approaching and flashing across the sky like a traveling lightningbolt.

[The following few paragraphs are quoted from the later Chapter 15.] In "Maya Cosmos" Freidel and Schele present the imagery of a painted pot showing six Gods in council with a seventh older God. They are advising the seventh god to "bring into existence" and "put in order" the place called "black is its center" -- a fit description of the deep shadow at the center of the Absu which changed size and shape over the year. [But currently understood as the dark gap in the Milky Way by archaeologists.]

This scene illustrates what the "Popol Vuh" recounts at great length, the negotiation of the southern and northern gods leading eventually to the creation of Earth and man. The negotiations in fact actually lasted nearly 4000 years, from 8300 BC to 4200 BC.

The presiding elder God (God L) is easily identified as Jupiter as well as First Father. The six Gods have various names, of which some are easily identified. God "Three Born Together" is obviously the three plasmoids of the south and God "Nine Footsteps" is Mars. Subtracting God "Three Born Together" of the south leaves five Gods all associated with the polar configuration of the north. This is the same number as listed in the "Popol Vuh" (see Chapter 20, "The Popol Vuh" for details). These are Uranus, Neptune, Saturn, Mercury (but identified as Venus), and Mars, all of which were easily distinguished in the earliest time after 9000 BC, although some disappeared behind (or above) each other by 5800 BC, and Venus probably did not exist as early as this council is meant to depict. God L (Jupiter) is distinguished from the polar configuration planets, and we are given a rare insight: the suggestion that at the time of the council, some time before 4200 BC, Jupiter had been known and seen for eons, and therefore was properly represented as old.

This illustrated pot again points up the Mesoamerican concept of the simultaneity of time. The council of the six Gods happens after the First Creation of 8347 BC (discussed below) as far as the narrative of the "Popol Vuh" is concerned, resulting eventually in the creation of the Sun -- the lighting up of Saturn. But the disposition of the dark spot in the Absu, in fact, the whole of the Absu, is not tackled until the "third creation" of 2349 BC (discussed in Chapters 8 and 9). The six Gods had long since disappeared from view by that time. [end]

The "Popol Vu" recounts the three appearances of the Peratt Column as three attempts by the Gods at creation, the first two of which (mud people and wooden people) were failures. The third attempt, when people are made from maize mush, has to be dated to after 4200 BC (when the maize mush mountain showed up in the north). This might be good reason also to suggest that the Peratt Column disappeared at that time (See Chapter 20, "The Popol Vu").

The apparition at the south pole can be equated with the God Geb of the Egyptians, who impregnates the Goddess Shu of the north via the bundles of electrons seen reaching the north skies beyond Earth. This would account also for the enormously long penis of Geb.

... Lepinski Vir

[Lepenski Vir, Serbia]

Image: Headstones at Lepenski Vir, Serbia.

The oldest cemetery in Europe is a site facing the raging Danube river at Lepenski Vir in Serbia, and dating from 6250 to 5500 BC in calibrated C14 dates (using the latest corrections).

Archaeologist Dragoslav Srejovic, who first excavated the site, believed it to be a village. But the site has some major drawbacks. It is located on a shelf a few feet above the river, which at this location is a whirlpool (a 'Vir'). The site was flooded twice a year.

There are about 50 or 60 grave platforms built over the span of 750 years. The floor plans are roughly trapezoidal, and covered with calcined limestone (plaster). The structures each include a centrally located rectangular hearth, and a circular stone pit (a stone with a circular depression), and an 'altar' stone level with the floor. The plaster floor is only an inch thick at the edges, but as much as 8 inches near the hearth, and covers all the stones defining the hearth.

The structures are 12 to 27 feet wide at the front and have a depth of about 9 to 20 feet from the front. Only the largest of these, of which there are very few, would allow walking upright past the center which was occupied by the hearth and hollowed stone. There was little room in these structures because the sides were constructed as leaning roofs, as determined by the posts-holes found in the platform plaster. Archaeologists insist that these would accommodate five people easily. Later platforms are smaller. But none of the smaller structures would do so. It looks more like these were no bigger than what would be required to accommodate a body.

I have seen book illustrations suggesting that the platforms were a village campsite (occupied for 750 years!), but most of the platforms are not large enough to accommodate even two crouching persons. It is also hard to imagine why a one-person hut would require a stone and hard plaster floor, and a hearth which was certainly not used extensively over the hundreds of years of occupancy. The same illustration showed canoes pulled up at the adjacent beach of the Danube. There is no beach, the site is on a low cliff, and the river is unnavigable here because of the Vir -- a whirlpool.

The graves are oriented with the narrow (back) end toward the west and southwest, but a view of the west sky is everywhere restricted by high cliffs and mountains.

There are occasional skulls and bones under the stone slabs or in the ground adjacent to them. The platforms look more like excarnation floors. The platforms are thought to have been covered with thatching. They were open at the wide end and toward the narrow end, and some have a standing stone carved in representation of a fish-headed woman, naked, with clawed hands opening up her vulva. At times this is reduced to just the genitalia. The standing stones at times remain uncarved. The figurative stones (and the uncarved ones) are always off-center of the structure.

The imagery here is obviously modeled on what is seen in the sky at this time -- the Opossum of the south, the far plasmoid of the Peratt Column after ca 8000 BC. The two closer plasmoids probably could not be seen from ground level. Only in one late platform are two additional fish faces added, in front of the hearth, for a total of three. The sculptures might also represent the Fat Lady in the north sky, certainly seen at earlier times, who is the model for the Venus Figurines, but I doubt that. The trapezoidal shape of the flat floor stones perhaps reflect the trapezoidal plan of many of the Nasca lines reported on by Peratt.

... Sheela Na Gig

The standing stones at the narrow end of the slabs at Lepinski Vir are the oldest stone sculptures in Europe, and possibly anywhere, made by what would be postulated to be the 'Original Europeans' -- preceding the 'Old Europeans' identified by Marija Gimbutas and before the later Kurgan invaders. I would postulate that the farmers who invaded Europe after 5600 BC crowded the 'Original Europeans' ever further westward, to end up in western France, England, and Ireland. And, in fact, it is in Ireland, England, and Normandy that we again meet up with these images, known in Ireland as the 'Sheela Na Gigs' -- carved stones set in church and monastery walls and looking almost identical to the menhirs at Lepenski Vir. They date from at least AD 1200, but are relocated from earlier sites. This is a continuity of images spanning over 8000 years. The concept behind the depictions, however, has been totally lost.

... Mari the spinner

Besides the inhabitants of western France and Ireland, the Basque of northern Spain could be identified linguistically as 'Original Europeans.' The major deity of the Basque, to this day, is the goddess 'Mari,' an old woman who spins. She does not weave, only spins out threads. Her husband is a snake. She is (among other things) known as the Goddess of the oven (or hearth). Like Oannes (in the next section of the text), she is associated with wild animals. This again looks like the plasmoid of the Peratt Column in the south.

... the Fish-Man Oannes

In about 280 BC, Berossus, a priest of Babylon, brings to Greece the oldest authentic historical documents of Mesopotamia -- the "King List" and the myth of the Fish-Man Oannes, a God who preceded all the other Saturnian (and Sumerian) Gods. The "King List" as presented by Berossus was quoted by the Greeks of antiquity and remained the only version in use until the 19th century AD.

Oannes, related Berossus, had the face or head of a fish, and arose from the sea each day to teach mankind. This is an older mythology than the better known tales of Marduk based on the Babylonian "Enuma Elish," written after 1800 BC. Alfred de Grazia, in "Chaos and Creation" (1983), paraphrases Berossus from other sources..

"The Fish-Man, Oannes -- goes the legend -- came ashore among the first and savage people of Babylonia, and he taught them the human arts. He also told them the history of the world from its beginnings."

"There was a time in which there was nothing but darkness and an abyss of waters, wherein resided most hideous things..." (Another translation of the same passage says: "In the early days, before the Earth was yet made, a number of terrible beasts were the masters of the heavens.")

Interestingly, another detail is that the fish-head of Oannes was carried above his normal human head. The fish-head defines the last plasmoid of the Peratt Column, clearly drawn as a face in Australia. The other, more human head, is the middle plasmoid from the end. It is surprising that the mythology does not involve the stick-figure "squating man." The Oannes myth was Ubaid in its source, not Akkadian or Sumerian. It remained in the background, for it never found duplication in other eastern Mediterranean sources. The ocean from which Oannes rose daily is either the Persian Gulf, or, as likely, the Indian Ocean. [note 23]

... the magic mountain islands

In 219 BC Hsu Fu, with the blessing of the emperor of China, sets out with ships to discover, as his petition read..

".. the three magic mountain islands, Pheng Lai, Fang-Chang, and Ying-Chou, inhabited by immortals.. in the midst of the Eastern Sea.

Paraphrasing from the original Chinese source, the "Shih Chi" ("Records of the Grand Historian") of ca 90 BC, a compilation of history from 2600 BC through 100 BC, Joseph Needham, in "Science and Civilization in China" (1979), writes..

"These three holy mountain isles were reported to be in the midst of Po-Hai [the near Pacific], not so distant from human habitations ... Many immortals live there, and the drug which will prevent death is found there, but the difficulty is that .. before you have reached them .. these three holy mountain isles sink down below the water...." [note 24]

We know better. We know that the three islands sank below the waves on a daily basis. We know that from a perspective above the equator the islands floated in the celestial sea of the Absu, and as they sank below the waves, they in effect sank from sight below the horizon.

... the Kojiki

The first compilation of myths and history was made in Japan in AD 628 and published on imperial orders, and named the "Kojiki" -- "The Record of Ancient Matters." Unlike the Chinese "Shih Chi," this history starts much earlier. The opening lines identify the names of three Gods, and two additional deities born next from "a thing that sprouted up like unto a reed-shoot," at a time when the Earth "drifted about medusa-like."

"The names of the deities that were born in the Plain of High Heaven when the Heaven and Earth began were the deity 'Master of the August Center of Heaven,' next, the 'High August Producing Wondrous' deity, next, the 'Divine Producing Wondrous' deity."

"These three deities were all deities born alone, and hid their persons."

"The names of the deities that were born next from a thing that sprouted up like unto a reed-shoot when the earth, young and like unto floating oil, drifted about medusa-like, were the 'Pleasant Reed Shoot Prince Elder' deity, next the 'Heavenly Eternally Standing' deity. These two deities were likewise born alone, and hid their persons."

"The five deities in the above list are separate Heavenly deities."

-- The Kojiki, B.H. Chamberlain, tr 1882

The three gods of the "Kojiki" have to be the three plasmoids mentioned in numerous other mythical histories, and identified as three in number by Peratt. The two "next" gods "sprouting unto a reed shoot" are likely the appearance of Saturn, the "Heavenly Eternally Standing" deity, and Uranus, the "Pleasant Reed Shoot Prince Elder" deity. The sequence suggests that Uranus appeared before Saturn clearly showed.

... Cerberus, the guard dog of Hades

Cerberus is the dog who guards the gates of Hades, letting the dead in, but not out. His name may have derive from the name of one of the dogs of Yama, and translates as "spot." Yama is an early Vedic god of death. About the use of Cerberus in Greek literature of antiquity, Wiki writes..

"The depiction of Cerberus is relatively consistent between different works and authors, the common theme of the mane of serpents is kept across works, as is the serpent's tail. Most literary works of the era describe Cerberus as having three heads."-- Wiki

The reader will at this point recognize the three ball plasmoids as the three heads, the congestion of lines of electrons crossing over the plasmoids as the mane of snakes, and the extended lines pointing to Earth as the serpent tail.

Hades, of course, is where the dead go.

... dates for the plasmoid

Dates from these sources, unfortunately, are almost entirely missing, and Peratt has yet to publish any estimates of dates. Only Book 11 of the "Chilam Balam" suggests an initial date of 8347 BC, based on assuming that there was a reason for interrupting the count of years at 13 Baktuns in 3147 BC, when Mesoamerica claimed a "second creation" event. Thirteen Baktuns before 3147 BC brings us to 8,347 BC. See Chapter 17, "The Olmec Record of the Past."

Although I have suggested that Saturn started to blaze in ca 4200 BC, I would suggest that another, earlier, event initiated the first count of years. Although the return of sunlight (the end of the time of being "in the shadows" as the "Popol Vu" describes it) at the end of the Younger Dryas period in about 9,000 BC, or the start of the Hypsithermal after 9,000 BC, could be suggested for the event, the first appearance of the southern plasmoid in 8,347 BC would seem much more significant.

The other significant indication, long overlooked, is the fact that any number of Maya stelae, which proudly display their important local event dates, start out by first introducing the 'start of creation' with..

"13 Baktun, 0 Katun, 0 Tun, 0 Uinal, 0 Kin, 4-Ahau 8-Cumku, was (first) seen the image."

The texts vary somewhat. At times the reference is simply to 'an event' or the fact that 13 Baktuns were completed. At times only the day names of "4-Ahau 8-Cumku" are used. Some stelae reference the setting of the three celestial hearth stones, an event which may describe the aftereffect of the fall of the Absu in 2349 BC (the "third creation").

But a number of stelae spell out what the 'image' was -- it was the "image of the turtle" which was first seen at the start of creation. Sculptures of turtles are also frequently seen in the archaeology of sites along the Pacific coast of Guatemala, some of which predate the first Olmec sites of Mexico.

The Maya conflated the "first creation" with the "second creation," as is typical for a people who considered time as rotating and repeating. Under this condition the first appearance of the turtle is the first appearance of the southern plasmoid. We can thus place the first showing of Peratt's southern plasmoid in 8347 BC. This date also seems reasonable in allowing Earth to drop sufficiently below the equatorial level of Saturn to enter the cone of the lower plasma inpouring.

In the iconography of the Maya, the 'turtle,' which appeared in 8347 BC, at the time of the 'first creation,' is often combined with the appearance of Jupiter ("Hun-Nal-Ye") as the "First Father" in 3147 BC, the time of the 'second creation,' or, more likely at the time of the 'third creation,' in 2349 BC . For the 'third creation,' which was probably the most important event of the past to be endlessly celebrated in Mesoameric, it was understood that, just like the second and third southern plasmoids would seem to have appeared out of the carapace of the "first turtle" some time after 8300 BC, so the First Father was known to have risen out of a split turtle carapace in 2349 BC (representing also the gap in the Absu at the time of the equinox), assisted by Hunahpu and Xbalanque (displaced from the era of the 7th century BC). This scene is repeatedly shown on bowls and vases.

As I will expand on in following chapters, in about 4200 BC Saturn went nova and lit up to be the 'sun' for the next thousand years. At that time Saturn connected to Earth with a stream of electrons -- rather than bypassing Earth. That would have been the end of the southern plasmoids.

... the End of the Peratt Column

As the Earth entered the region of the inner spike 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 or 30 degrees up from the horizon 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. But these images remained consistently in place. They did not disappear periodically. The very obvious result being that they were not carved and painted as the Peratt Column in the south had been. (The exception is the plasma outpouring of Jupiter after 3147 BC, which was seen in the south. The first image of this was the two-eyed staring 'owl mask.')

Although I suggested "a thousand years later" above, this is not at all certain. The standing stones at Carnac take a sudden and radical turn in the direction in which they point, from southwest to northwest, with the construction of two shorter causeways. This would have happened perhaps sometime after 4200 BC. The continuity of construction would make more sense if there were only a minimal period of time between the disappearance of the south polar column and the new north polar column.

The Sky at Catal Huyuk

Catal Huyuk is a village in central Anatolia, which was partially excavated in the 1960s by James Mellaart. It is currently (since 1993) being excavated again. The occupation dates are from 7400 to 6200 BC, after which it was abandoned, for what reason we do not know (although the abandonment coincides with a severe drought 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 25]

[Catal Huyuk, central Anatolia, 7400 to 6200 BC]

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.

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 -- Sunlight was no longer blocked by dust in the stratosphere. 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.

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 2349 BC, the rings disappear, dispersing or falling -- an event which was universally held to be a flood of the celestial 'ocean,' and the 'flood of Noah.' '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 rings would all meet at the cardinal points of the horizon directly east and west. 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 where the shadow of the Earth 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 26]

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, just as the shadowed portion of the Moon disappears today during daytime. 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 from the mound construction of some North American Indians. (See a later chapter for more details and size estimates for the rings.) 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 2349 BC, an understanding of what else was seen in the skies in antiquity cannot be divorced from the sight of the rings.

At the time of Catal Huyuk, three sights would have appeared in the skies above. The first of these would be the Saturnian planets, positioned above the equatorial, and progressively moving further north in the skies. (This could have been accomplished already by 8000 BC, a thousand years before Catal Huyuk.) The second would be the streams of electrons connecting the southern ball plasmoid and Saturn. (This could have happened for short periods, like a few hundred years, between 8300 to 4200 BC.) The third would be the crescent of Jupiter during the day, still close by the orbit of Earth, but viewed from below as the Earth dropped below the level of Saturn. Each of these seem to be presented in the murals and sculptures of Catal Huyuk.

Some of the imagery is out of place chronologically. I would suggest that some renditions might be very old iconography, dating to one or two thousand years before the founding of Catal Huyuk, but kept alive through tradition.

[City plan mural]

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

One hint at this is what appears to be a remembered image of a plan view of a village with two volcanoes in the background. This 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, although the two volcanoes were, of course, still in existence.

... 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, actually a close approximation of vulture feet. There are wall sculptures of breasts which include vulture beaks breaking out to form the nipples.

[Catal Huyuk, Vultures]

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

Where did 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.

It is uncertain how Saturn was seen in the era of the occupation of Catal Huyuk. Saturn might have been seen in the night skies or the day skies. Initially, at about 9000 BC, when sunlight appeared again for Earth, Saturn would have been seen at the height of the equatorial, with the lower portion obscured by the Absu (if seen at night). Only the planets hovering above Saturn would have appeared above the rings. But Saturn and its companion planets would only appear in complete view when the location of Saturn in the sky coincided with the gap in the Absu.

Thus an early view (shortly after 9000 BC) of Saturn might have been as 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. Only this last would have been experienced at Catal Huyuk.

Thus the image of Saturn as a giant bird would not be unexpected. At an earlier time the upper edge of the rings of the Absu would conform to the wing bones of the vulture, with the striations of the rings as feathers. But we could perhaps expect the humans of the era two thousand years after 9000 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 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 27]

After Saturn had traveled higher in the sky, it could still be equated to a giant bird. During the daytime it would consist of a large dark shadow traveling on a daily basis from east to west.

A bird form with spread wings, as a vulture, eagle, or hawk, is a religious icon which retains significance, throughout the world, far into the future. Although it has been noted by others that the source for this might be Saturn with its rings after 4200 BC, I would suggest that it was earlier. In Egypt the name-serekhs of the pharaohs are surmounted with a hawk. Heirakonpolis (Nekhen) in Egypt, an early religious center, is known as the City of the Falcon. Although equated with Horus in Egypt it is likely that the hawk originally represented an image of Saturn seen in the skies in its slow transit from about the equatorial of Earth to a position near the north pole of Earth. Then every day for 3000 years (9000 BC to about 6000 BC) it would have been seen moving through the skies from east to west -- as a shadow during the day or as a lighted object at night. [note 28]

The falcon'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 vultures at Catal Huyuk might depict the planets Saturn and Neptune stacked above each other, glimmering through the surrounding coma.

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 Absu. I cannot place the headless corpses at which the vultures of the murals are snapping, except the worlwide notion that corpses moved south along the electron beams.

Conditions in the skies changed over time. I suspect that the vulture images we are seeing at Catal Huyuk 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. I do not know if at some point the wings would be left behind as the grouped planets continued to move higher up in the night or day 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 30]

... electron streams

What is missing are any repeated reference to the tow lines used to move the Indian Manu of the Vedas to the Himalayas or the survey cords recorded in the "Popol Vuh" or the "Chilam Balam." In only one clear instance is some sort of vertical graphic depicted, although there are a number of other similar depictions.

[Vertical designs]

Image: Vertical designs against a background of bricks.

I have suggested, however, that the lines of streaming electrons (which would have connected the plasmoid in the south with Saturn in the north) only appeared three times over the span of what would have been thousands of years. If the image above does indeed represent the 'tow lines' then the 'bricks' shown above could represent the Absu. [note 31]

... the aurochs horns

The overwhelming display at Catal Huyuk (as found by Mellaart, and since by the current excavators), however, is the profusion of six to ten foot wide spans of aurochs horns mounted horizontally on walls and also facing up on 'altars.'

[Wall mounted aurochs horns]

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

I would suggest that Jupiter is the source for the horns and bucrania (horns attached to skull tops) used for these wall sculptures. As stated in the last chapter, Earth, traveling on an elliptical 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 and below the level of Jupiter, Jupiter would have been seen, in the day time, as a gigantic crescent moving through the skies. [note 32]

[Wall mounted aurochs horns and freestanding horns]

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

A crescent would be seen because Earth at this time was at a location below the orbit of Saturn, and thus below the ecliptic on which Saturn and Jupiter traveled. Only the bottom of the area of Jupiter facing the Sun would be seen, looking like two upturned cattle horns. 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 Saturn) 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 a god or 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 (described below), 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 (as opposed to Jupiter) 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 4000 years. During this later period, with Saturn dominating the sky, a sun-lighted crescent of Jupiter would no longer have been seen as an important emblem.

... hunting deer

There is a fourth mural, depicting the hunting of deer. It is likely also to be an image contemporaneous with the occupation of Catal Huyuk, rather than remembered from the remote past. But the iconography of deer herds is out of place, for there were few deer in the vicinity of Catal Huyuk, and their bones seldom appear in the rubbish heaps. There are more horse bones than deer bones, but horses have never appeared in a mural.

[hunting deer]

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. I'll note further below that the representation of herds of animals was also the obsession of the Cromagnons who painted the caves in southern France and in Spain. [note 33]

We can be reasonably certain that asteroids were still periodically traversing the Earth's night skies at the time of Catal Huyuk. Imagery like this, large herds, is shown also on Egyptian predynastic artifacts (knife handles and palettes) and, during the first and second dynasty, the herds were counted and recorded. 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, and appeared much larger than they actually were.

... figurines

Today hundreds of animal, male, and female hand-held sized 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 34]

[Seated figurine]

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

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, as 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."

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 north horizon throughout the year. The transition would have involved 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 much 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 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 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.

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 in Anatolia

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 may have been produced from the memories of older 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. Only at a later time -- after 4200 BC -- do 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 even 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 represented the triple ball plasmoids seen in the far south. The date of the appearance of the triple snow-ball plaque (5600 BC), matches the dates at Lepinski Vir (6500 to 5500 BC), and the single date offered by Peratt (5000 BC). It is also possible that this represents fall-back imagery -- in effect suggesting that the forms in the north sky could no longer be distinguished.

With respect to the northern skies, various people throughout the world describe the Saturnian coma as the "chaos before creation." 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.

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.

The magic of the year 5800 BC was assigned, first, because of a noted change in climate, minor perhaps, but a definite improvement. Secondly, there is a clear change in the depiction of figurines (at least, in Anatolia). It is mainly on the basis of these that I have been willing to assign the arrival of Earth directly below the south pole of Saturn in 5800 BC.

The turning of Saturn in a circle about the pole star in the sky lasted, perhaps for all of the time that Saturn stood in the skies. 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 equatorial 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. It looks, in fact, that the plasmoids of the southern Peratt Column has become the model for figurines. By about 5000 or 4500 BC Earth is well below Saturn and perhaps moving up to come closer. In the skies Saturn was now located in the north sky and had 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 of this very long period the figurines (except for the snow-man figurines) maintain certain features -- the nodding head, the bird mask, the lack of a face, the slit eyes, the nakedness, and the missing feet. But for thousands of years the figurines were likely as often shaped by expectations of classical models as by 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 effect of a slow rotation as seen from Earth). 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.

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.

[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 36]

... folklore and thesis

Leroi-Gourhan, in "The Art of Prehistoric Man in Western Europe" (1968), 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."

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," as paraphrased by Denis Vialou in "Prehistoric Art and Civilization" (1996).

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.

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, drawn in a few cursory strokes. 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 copulation scenes and no calving 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 after 10,000 years ago (8000 BC) -- seemingly, as others have notes, evaporating and disappearing. [note 37]

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 absolutely astoundingly long period of time -- 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 abstract 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 BC do we see an extensive use of similes, and with that the rise of the symbolic use of language through the use of metaphors. [note 38]

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 many 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 39]

But 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 includes 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 (dated 31,000 ya) was reentered four thousand years later. Cosquer Cave (dated 27,000 ya) was revisited eight thousand five hundred 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 (dated 17,500 ya), suggesting repeated visits to the cave by numerous people. [note 40]

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 41]

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:

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

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 to explain the urge to create graffiti today. 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." The objection to this is that '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 42]

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 43]

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.

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 44]

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 45]

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 -- or dead. [note 46]

The drawings are totally modern by our standards, with a sophisticated feeling for outline and shading -- unequalled again 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. The claviform marks could be added to the counts also.

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 in one year 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 thus might not have been seen 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 47]

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.

Additional speculation might suggest that we see in this imagery the first suggestion of an after-life place for dead animals among the stars, which over the course of 30,000 years will include humans. Although the Egyptians democratize this concept, it never catches on among the Greeks and Romans and the northern European tribes until the advent of the salvation religions. In the "Odyssey," Hades is described as a place of the walking dead.

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.

[cutting pebbles and scrapers]
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 (with 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 seen 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 48]

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.

Endnotes

Note 2 --

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.) It is likely, however, that this region was occupied by an ocean -- signs if which have been detected. If there had ever been any life on Mars it would have been completely obliterated during the 30,000 years of the electrical arc (partially witnessed by humans), a condition which may, in fact, have extended much further back in time.
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Note 3 --

The archaeological record of eastern Europe (at Dolni Vestonice in the Czech Republic) looks as if there were a continuity of figurines through the 10,000 year hiatus of western Europe, although many of the archaeological dates, determined early in the 20th century, and without the aid of C14 methods, may not be all that accurate.
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Note 4b --

The Maya "Popol Vuh" identifies five planets in the north, calling one of them "Sovereign Plumed Serpent" which will be recognized as Venus. But at the time of the narrative, the era before the 'first creation,' Venus did not exist yet. Shrouded in a white coma, Mercury could have passed for the later Venus.
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Note 4a --

That there were two smaller planets below Saturn may have been remembered and indicated with the construction of the gigantic Avebury henge in England (1400 feet in diameter), located about 15 miles north of Stonehenge. Within the circle of stones are two additional smaller circles of standing stones.

[Avebury henge]
Image: Avebury henge, artist reconstuction looking northwest, after drawings by William Stukeley (ca AD 1720).

The two smaller circles are offset about 10 or 20 degrees from the north cardinal direction (NNW and SSE), as is the entrance at the SSE edge of the larger circle. With the exception of Stonehenge and nearby Durrington Walls, no other henge (that I have been able to ascertain) has these details. Stonehenge has two small mounds in the same locations. Stonehenge was thus likely modeled after the earlier Avebury henge. The structures within the henge area of Durrington Walls are less defined, but the locations are approximately the same.

If these two circles represent two planets below Saturn, then one of them is much too large, for Mars is not likely to have supported a large coma, on the order of 30 planet diameters, although Mercury, because it likely had a considerable atmosphere, probably would have. The fact that these 'planets' are offset from each other is not a conceptual problem if Mercury indeed was a late addition to the stack of planets.

Additionally, if the henge was modeled after the looks of Mars descending during the later period when Saturn still stood at the north horizon, Mars might have been enclosed in a plasma connection in glow mode which reached to Earth, and thus would have looked larger, especially on a close approach to Earth. This assumes that the iconography of the Egyptian White Crown is a nearly accurate depiction of what was seen in the sky. The White Crown is discussed in a later chapter.

The two circles could be dismissed as some symbolism which is obscured to us, except for the fact that the causeway leading out toward the southeast and the additional henge of the Sanctuary at its terminal are accurate. The causeway out to the southwest, and to the vicinity of two long barrows, is a poor memory of the conditions before about 4200 BC, however. The dates of construction for Avebury are as yet uncertain. (See later text of this chapter for a description of the Peratt column and the southern plasmoids.)
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Note 4 --

See Marija Gimbutas, "The Civilization of the Goddess, European Neolithic Communities, 7000 to 3500 BC" (1991), and a number of other books through 1999. Since Gimbutas read a dozen European languages, she was able to muster resources which remained unavailable to other researchers.
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Note 5 --

Along with seeing an upturned crescent on Jupiter after about 9000 BC, when Jupiter was inside the orbit of Earth and Earth was below the 'ecliptic path' of the planets Jupiter and Saturn, Jupiter would have been seen as an brightly lit disk, similar to the full Moon when the orbit of Earth would place it inside the orbit of Jupiter. Because of Earth's lower position with respect to the Sun, the lighted half of Jupiter would have looked more like an oval (an egg shape) than a circle, since a portion of the upper and lower part of the lighted hemisphere of Jupiter would not be seen.

Because of its travel on its outer orbit, the lighted face of Jupiter would not have had the distinct phases like the Moon does today. Additionally, when Jupiter was seen through the obscuring equatorial rings of the Earth, refraction of the light would have created large adjacent left and right crescents. This easily accounts for the prevalent double axe imagery of the early Neolithic which shows up in Gimbutas' collection of images.
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Note 6 --

Figurines occur in Europe, throughout Asia, Africa, and in Central and South America. Japanese Dogu figurines of the Neolithic, also naked and female, have the same flat-faced bird-beak features as many eastern European figurines. Figurines are found in the Mexican Neolithic to about 2500 BC. These are also naked and female, and have been described as having "strange hair-do's."

As I have stated, in western Europe the Venus Figurines are first seen in 29,000 to 21,000 BC (centering at 27,000 BC), and then disappear until the period of 17,000 to 14,000 BC. If it were not for this enormous gap in time (longer than all of recorded history) I would have never made an association between the image in the sky and the small hand-held figurines. It is inconceivable that these figurines could disappear from cultural transmission for a period of some 5,000 to 10,000 years. The nearly identical icons had to have a source other than age-old memories.
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Note 7 --

Other reasons for the proliferation of the figurines in the European Neolithic are that there were more people, and pottery and baked figurines were being made at that time. Because these people were farmers, there were now agricultural settlements, which resulted in the concentration of archaeological artifacts. Farmers arrived in Central Europe after about 5500 BC. The arrival of farmers (and herders) in Macedonia, Greece, Italy, and Spain is somewhat earlier.

I would not propose that these figurines were "fertility symbols" as many others have. Foraging humans of the Upper Paleolithic didn't need or want fertility, especially if traveling in hunting groups. It is more likely that the figurines represent an "infertility" symbol -- a prohibition against coitus unless commanded by the Fat Lady in the sky. That would have served women better throughout the Paleolithic and early Neolithic.

Perhaps the arrival of the Fat Lady announced the time for reproduction and child bearing. Then the infrequent appearances of Saturn might account for the slow rate of growth of farming communities before 3000 BC -- as indicated by the length of time some early villages remained the same size.
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Note 8 --

The current of a plasma flow is higher in arc mode than in glow mode. When the discharge path to Uranus was lost (or, more likely, reduced), the effective discharge area decreases, and only a change to arc mode would keep the overall discharge rate (current density) the same. This is a rather simplistic solution to the question of why Saturn suddenly went nova, which does not take into account the possibility of some internal reason, or external electrical stresses induced because of Saturn's close location to the Sun.

From descriptions and imagery throughout the world, although the plasma streaming from Saturn effectively disappeared from view after 4200 BC, it remained in glow mode as the plasma stream concentrated on reaching the vicinity of Uranus. After 4200 BC Uranus thus took on an image of a head with long hair flowing in a downward direction. This shows up in early Egyptian iconography as the captive held by his hair who is about to be clubbed by the pharaoh. In the Maya "Chilam Balam" Uranus is identified as Saturn's "older sister."
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Note 9 --

It was Gimbutas who developed the idea of the Kurgan invasions. She dates these to three periods, 4400 -- 4200 BC, 3400 -- 3200 BC, and 3000 -- 2800 BC. Indo-European speakers may have occupied a large region of central Asia. I think the Indo-European languages were probably first introduced by the invading Neolithic farmers from the Black Sea region, called "Old Europeans" by Gimbutas, heading directly west into central Europe, rather than by the later Kurgan herders. This happened probably soon after 5600 BC, and included migrations into Italy and Spain.

Tribes speaking an Indo-European language reached as far east as the western borders of China. The Kurgan invasion north into Russia, Germany, Lithuania, Latvia, Britain, and Ireland happened separately from the first wave which, like the earlier farmers, also headed west into Europe. There are later Indo-European incursions (after 2500 BC) into India from Central Asia, followed by entry into Persia (apparently from India), and into Greece by people who are linguistically closely related to each other, but less so to other, older Europeans.
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Note 10 --

See Cynthia Eller "The Myth of Matriarchal Prehistory" (2000). But like Gimbutas, Eller argues from the symbolic (that is, metaphorical) meaning of artifacts rather than their basis in representing an aspect of reality, and imposes modern attitudes on a radically different people and era. However, I agree with the following (I have broken up a long paragraph, below)...

"This symbolic code [she is talking about scratches and scrawls] leads feminist matriarchalists to speak as though there were no relevant difference between the essential focus of religion in Siberia in 27,000 BCE and Crete in 1500 BCE. They usually treat all of prehistoric Europe and the Near East as if it were a single cultural complex, viewing cultural variations as an epiphany of the multiplicity of the goddess rather than as evidence of distinctive religious beliefs or systems of social organization."

"This is a very long time and a very large area for a single religion to dominate. The repetition of a few symbols in the imagery of these different cultures cannot by itself support the notion that these cultures progressively, and in concert with one another, developed an iconography of a single deity. In fact, the cultures from which feminist matriarchalists draw their symbolic examples of goddess religion do not overlap either chronologically or geographically."

Eller makes the case that these few artifacts cannot be extended to institutions or religious practices of which we know nothing. Her statement, above, certainly represents the strongest claims against a unified prehistoric religion or mentality. But on the other hand, it is precisely the existence of a single world-wide phenomenon that produced the remarkable similarity of imagery, not just from Siberia to Crete, but from end to end on every continent, and strung out over a period of 30,000 years. The spectacularly consistent iconography, which may have expressed widely divergent religious beliefs and practices, takes its unity from actual celestial events.
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Note 11 --

Anthony Peratt, "Characteristics for the Occurrence of a High-Current, Z-Pinch Aurora as recorded in Antiquity," in Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, Transactions on Plasma Science (2003), and "Characteristics for the Occurrence of a High-Current Z-Pinch Aurora as Recorded in Antiquity Part II: Directionality and Source" in IEEE Transactions on Plasma Science (August 2007).

The first paper matches some 83 catagories of petroglyphs in form to known instabilities of laboratory produced plasma streams. The second paper records the universal southerly field of view for the petroglyphs and the minimum elevation required for observation.
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Note 12 --

In a publication co-authored with W. F. Yao, "Evidence for an intense solar outburst in prehistory," in Physica Scripta (2008), Peratt and Yao claim petroglyphs in Venezuela as representing "mankind's visual observations of ancient aurora as might be produced if the solar wind had increased at times between one and two orders of magnitude, millennia ago," after a suggestion by T. Gold in 1962.

Although hinting that this might represent a coronal mass ejection 10 to 100 times as strong as has been experienced in recent times, neither the missing evidence nor the logic stand up to such a peculiar and long lasting event. Yet by the time the authors reach the 'conclusion' of this paper, the 'coronal mass ejection' is held as fact.

Peratt and Yao also describe the phenomenon as, "an intense Z-pinch whose relativistic electrons were directed towards Antarctica and hypervelocity protons [traveling] towards the Arctic." Peratt has earlier stated that there was no apparent coincidence with the south magnetic pole, and also noted that the beams of electrons passed by the Earth. Curiously, the attraction of electrons to a magnetic pole seems in this case reversed from expectations.

Peratt and Yao also discuss the Nazca lines. This is somewhat confused by the statement that "The intense synchrotron light [above Nazca] from the Birkeland filaments cast white light onto the ground surface." That would be true of course, but it seems suggested here that images of the lines were projected onto the Earth's surface, from the following: "The synchronization [of the overhead lines with the rotation of Earth] lasted long enough for the synchrotron radiation lines shone on the Earth to allow kilometer long lines to be marked and constructed." Of course this would be true -- unless the Earth's magnetic field slipped in its rotation with the Earth, which it does not do. But the light of the lines of electrons would obliterate any 'projected' lines, creating only diffuse light with no pattern. Contrast, a measure of the sharpness of shadows, depends only on the size of the light source, not on the intensity.

"Long enough" here probably means months or decades. Like ley lines, the Nazca lines were overdrawn for thousands of years after they no longer showed in the sky, and aligned to all points of the compass.
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Note 13 --

Saturn and Earth have about the same magnetic field strength.
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Note 14 --

Typically the 'face' is found on decorated objects south of the equator, like the mug below.

[Plasmoid face]
Image: Plasmoid face and engraved cup from Peru. After Peratt and Yao

North of the equator the details of the plasmoid would have been obscured by the Earth's equatorial rings. The Olmecs, or their predecessors, would report on a different images -- a turtle, an opposum, or three stones.
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Note 15 --

The wording is not at all clear. I presume the references to 56 and 28 Birkeland currents relates to what existed in space, below the south pole of Earth, and the reference to four streams relates to what was seen overhead at any location on Earth. This is congruent with the four stripes of the opossum, but not with the construction of the causeways in Carnac, which number 10 to 13 parallel rows, although they start at four rows in the northwest.

Additionally I assume that "the filaments flow over and past the rotating Earth" does not mean that the Earth rotated within the filaments, but that both rotated together. This seems to imply that the filaments away from the Earth (below the south pole or above the north pole) also rotated with the Earth's magnetic field lines.
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Note 16 --

The red background is from excited low level Oxygen molecules at levels in excess of 300 miles above the Earth.
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Note 17 --

The Nasca lines have been augmented with additional lines and figures into historical times.
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Note 18 --

There is a similar mention about measuring the land in Book 11 of the "Chilam Balam." Book 11 details the world before the creation of God the Father, and ends with a paragraph which clearly describes the creation event of 4200 BC. The mention of the White Beast, rendered totally obscure through an effort to Christianize the original text, reads as follows..

"Bolay [beast] was the name of the serpent of the second [other] heaven. He was in the dust at the feet [that is, below] of Sustinal Gracia [sustinal grace, Saturn in the north], as he was called. Then Lonmias was formed. The sharp stone was his stone within the night. Zihontun was his stone, when these stones were fixed in their places."

"Three times [or three] they were set at the foot of Sustinal Gracia. These stones were born, they were beneath the one stone, the mighty pointed stone [Saturn], the stone column, the mighty pointed clashing stone. They were manifested [shown or seen] all over the world (by) God the Father, the first ruler."-- Roys (1933)

The count of stones "below" Saturn, that is, at the other end of the sky, are three: Bolay, Lonmias, Zihontun. They were set "three times."

Bolio's translation abbreviates the sense of "three times" with..

".. the three Stones that were to be seated at the feet of the Sustinal Grace. The stones that were born were beneath the First Stone. And they were equal sisters."-- Bolio (1930)

"Bolay" is a Mayan word meaning "beast," reminiscent of the "White Beast" -- Opossum -- of North American Indians.
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Note 19 --

The occurrences of "fractal, dendritic structure(s)" in compressed streams of excited electrons is mentioned by Peratt, attributed to A. B. Kukushkin and V. A. Rantsev-Kartinov, in "Self-similarity of plasma networking in a broad range of length scales: From laboratory to cosmic plasmas," in "Review of Scientific Instruments" (1999). The patterns are identified as "heteromacs." Peratt notes that "heteromacs can include filamentary, cellular, and bubble-like clusters." These would certainly qualify as looking like people and animals moving toward the grave mound in the far south.

See also [http://www.pauldevereux.co.uk/new/html/body_leylines.html] and also [http://www.forteantimes.com/features/articles/491/where_the_leylines_led.html] for articles by Paul Devereux on ley lines.
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Note 20 --

The phrase "and more so for South Africa" does not make much sense as it is used here. This is perhaps in error, and should perhaps have been written as "South America."
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Note 21 --

Graham Hancock, in "Underworld" (2002), attributes the flooding of the coastal plain of India to glacial meltwaters after about 10,000 BC. This seems far too early for hewn stone structures and walls.
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Note 22 --

Although I do not think Venus made an appearance until ca 4200 BC. But both in the "Popol Vuh" and in depicted mythological subjects, the Maya, because of their well established concepts of a repeating cycle of time, tended to lump together events from distinct eras. It is more likely that the planet identified as "Sovereign Plumed Serpent" is Mercury. Except for the plume, they would have looked the same with their comas. The retelling of creation was from graphical codexes, as the authors make clear.
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Note 23--

The Oannes fish-man or woman occurs repeatedly among other sources most often as a water god or goddess. Philip Coppens writes the following..

"The 'Acropolis of Athens' was in ancient times known as the Cecropia, in honour of the legendary serpent-man, Cecrops, the founder and first Athenian king. Cecrops means 'face with a tail', and though often said to have the bottom half of a serpent, some sources say it was a fish-tail -- thus bearing some resemblance to Oannes of Babylonian fame. Like Oannes, Cecrops was identified as a bringer of culture, teaching the Athenians marriage, reading and writing, and ceremonial burial."
-- http://www.philipcoppens.com/athens_heights.html

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Note 24--

From Sima Qian, "Shih Chi" ("Records of the Grand Historian") (ca 90 BC), a compilation of history from remote (legendary) antiquity through about 100 BC, cited in Joseph Needham, "Science and Civilization in China" (1979).
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Note 25 --

James Mellaart "Catal Huyuk" (1967). Considering the later antics of Mellaart, I cannot quite trust the content of this book.

See [http://www.catalhoyuk.com] for reports on the current excavation which started in 1993. After 10 years of a multimillion dollar excavation, the current task force, which is adding buildings, a museum, permanent covers, etc, to the site, has found almost nothing. (See [http://www.catalhoyuk.com/newsletters/index.html].) Contrary to the claims made in Mellaart's book, it is slowly becoming clear that these people subsisted on plants and domestic sheep, with some goats. Only at a later date are grains (barley and emmer wheat) found at Catal Huyuk. The domestication of the aurochs has not been proven yet. It looks more like females were culled from wild herds (which was the practice at other locations). Mellaart's suggestion of excarnation as the burial practice is contradicted by the finds, except in a few instances. No particular trading industries have been found, and it looks like the cache of obsidian which was found was imported in finished form. The 'deer hunting scene' mural found by Mellaart seems to reflect wishful thinking or a long forgotten tradition, since almost no deer bones have been found. Additional figurines which have been found are crude to the extreme.

Mellaart was lucky in his excavations and may have extended the finds to overly-imaginative renderings of the building interiors, which is the practice among archaeologists anyway, although generally more subdued. (Mellaart is from a family of visual artists.) Mellaart also excavated a large area, whereas the current excavators have limited themselves to tiny areas, and only after ten years of digging realized that such methods were not going to find anything on a par with Mellaart's finds.
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Note 26 --

Radial spokes have been noted for the planet Saturn. The spokes only show up sporadically in the middle set of rings, and have remained incomprehensible to astronomers. The plasma explanation is that the spokes represent outward electrical discharges. Thus spokes could be expected for Earth's rings, since the planet was under continuous electrical stresses perhaps since the Paleolithic.
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Note 27 --

[Teddy Bear wall sculptures]

Image: Teddy Bear wall sculptures, Catal Huyuk, central Anatolia, 7400 to 6200 BC.

There are also some "Teddy Bear" wall sculptures, plus a number of geometric designs. The "Teddy Bear" forms might represent the southern plasmoid. These might also represent plasma stream discontinuities of the 'stick man' variety. The "Teddy Bears" might also represent a transitional image of the Saturnian planets as they moved past the zenith.
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Note 28 --

The vulture image appears on pottery at many unrelated sites throughout the Middle East and southeastern Europe. It is probably also identified as the 'Thunderbird' of the North American Indians.

Absolutely huge shapes of birds with spread wings are constructed as mounds at a number of locations in antiquity, as, for example, as a mound at San Lorenzo in Veracruz, Mexico, dating to 1450 BC, and at Poverty Point, Louisiana, North America, dated to ca 1350 BC, and as a marked up landscape at Nasca, Peru, dated (perhaps) to about 5000 BC.

Old World vultures are the largest of birds. At least four (current) species which range in or near the eastern Mediterranean have wing spans of 9 feet. Coloration varies from black to red-brown, but a number of species have white down on their breast. Most vultures also have large distinct feet with flat toes, made for walking. This may relate to the human feet of the celestial vulture.
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Note 30 --

There is reputed to be another mural which depicts a (horned) person holding two vultures by the neck, one in each hand. I would have suggested that this might appear as an image of Saturn and its companion planets after they had risen partway above the extreme last rings of the Absu, so that the rings on either side of the gap might represent the vultures held by their necks.

The image, others have remarked, is reminicent of much later Sumerian images (ca 2500 BC) of Gilgamesh holding two lions by their necks. It also could be equated to Sumerian depictions of the Enki, God of the Absu and of water, shedding fishes and water from his shoulders. On Sumerian seals, Enki, in effect, frames a doorway, the arch of the Absu. The Absu continued to exist until 2349 BC.

However, the horned person image is suspect. It appears only in a much later text by Mellaart (et al), "The Goddess from Anatolia" (1989). This book was published by a dealer in Anatolian rugs (kilims). The book was not entirely well-received. A scathing critique by Marla Mallett, a professional weaver, appeared in "Oriental Rug Review, (August/September, 1990), as "A Weaver's View of the Catal Huyuk Controversy."

Mallett identifies the horned deity holding the vultures as a "modern kilim pattern of geometricized carnations [which] should be turned upside down." Mallett opens her critique with ..

"It is logical to believe that vestiges of deeply rooted prehistoric cult mythology appear in modern Anatolian kilim imagery. Theories as unorthodox, however, as those presented in the new Mellaart/Hirsch/Balpinar publication, "The Goddess from Anatolia, 1989," must endure close scrutiny of all the arguments and evidence. Neither the work's hefty price tag nor its padding with archaeological references and lessons in ancient history ensures credibility. The elegant prose of supporters' reviews should certainly not secure automatic endorsements."

"Fascinated by archaeological findings at Catal Huyuk in south central Turkey, but skeptical because of problems encountered in earlier articles, I was eager to see the new book. It was a shock. I was stunned by stylistic inconsistencies between the Neolithic wall paintings shown in photographs or scale copies, and the new group of 44 'reconstruction' drawings by James Mellaart. Here were elaborately detailed, panoramic works said to be 'reconstructed' from fragments, but with no verifying photos. Here were stylistically garbled sketches displaying irreconcilable design concepts. Here, placed alongside modern kilims, were purported copies of their Neolithic counter-parts -- but with warp and weft directions jumbled. From my weaver's perspective, questions of iconography, design diffusion, and historical continuity became incidental. Basic issues needed attention first. Were the drawings credible? Could slit-tapestry weaving actually have occurred in Neolithic Anatolia? Was there proof? Or indeed, any evidence of such production?"

[Birdman mural]
Image: Birdman mural from Mellaart (et al), "The Goddess from Anatolia" (1989), discussed by Marla Mallett.

Specifically about the mural of the person (deity), above, holding two vultures, she writes..

"A second conflict is apparent in Mellaart's 1967 comment, 'vultures occur only in levels VIII and VII.' A look at the Goddess 'reconstructions' shows, however, that in the 22 intervening years a plentiful supply of vultures has materialized -- nearly all in paintings supposedly from later shrines, levels VI through II. For example, one much touted motif, a 'deity holding two vultures' (or 'bird carrier'), is from one of the panoramic paintings (Fig. 9) allegedly from Shrine A.III-11. This detail, from an already suspicious work, is the basis for Mr. Mellaart's argument that a common modern kilim pattern of geometricized carnations should be turned upside down and reinterpreted as 'deities with vultures.'"

Mallett notes that the weavers in Anatolia are Turks. Their oldest traditions are from central Asia, not Anatolia. They arrived in Anatolia in the 13th century AD. See [http://www.marlamallett.com/ch.htm].
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Note 31 --

Two other instances are shown below. The left image was understood as an excarnation scene by Melaart.

[excarnation scene]
Image: Left: Catal Huyuk excarnation scene, after Melaart, 1967. Right: Catal Huyuk, vertical design, after Melaart, 1967.

Ladders were in use at Catal Huyuk for access to the roof-top doorways to the housing.
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Note 32 --

The Celestial Bull will be identified and named in Mesopotamian legend (the Epic of Gilgamesh) and Egyptian iconography (the Palette of Narmer) as the Bull of Heaven.

Gimbutas has shown some goddesses of the Neolithic with horns, which she equates with phases of the Moon. But these clearly date from the time when Saturn went nova, after 4200 BC.

The only figure from the Upper Paleolithic which is shown with a horn is the Gravettian "Venus of Laussel" (27,000 to 24,000 BC), in southern France, a naked fat woman holding up an ibex horn in her right hand, carved on a rock face. The ibex was widely hunted in Europe.

In Greek and Roman times, in a tradition derived probably from Asia Minor and Anatolia, the bucrania are equated with altars and sacrifices. It had become a symbol of an acceptable sacrifice of a bull to a deity.
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Note 33 --

The image is somewhat suspect, in that the 'style' does not reflect the blocky, graphic geometric designs used in other murals. It looks more like a cliff-face rendition from the northern Sahara of about the same date or later.
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Note 34 --

A seated figurine originally appeared on the last day of excavation by Mellaart. It shows a grossly fat woman seated with her arms resting on two panthers, and reminded other archaeologists of images of the much later Anatolian goddess Cybele, who is also associated with wild animals, and depicted in the same manner. The figurine found by Mellaart was headless, but a reconstruction of an upright head with a face and a rolled cap has been added. This figurine has become a cultural icon with 'Mother Goddess' worshippers. I doubt the authenticity of the reconstruction, however. There were few, if any, figurines found at Catal Huyuk which had heads with which to compare, and I would expect, on the basis of the thousands of figurines from other parts of the world, including Anatolia, to see a typical forward nodding faceless head, perhaps with slit eyes, and the beak of a bird, rather than the upright head with a face and cap.

The slit eyes are a peculiar feature of figurines worldwide, which carries through an enormous timespan. It is inconceivable that this feature, which spans all the continents and tens of thousands of years, would be a worldwide graphic convention.

The first clear instance of slit eyes actually dates to the Upper Paleolithic, a figurine excavated in Moravia at Dolni Vestonice (Dolní Véstonice) dated to 30,000 to 24,000 ya. Slit eyes are still being added after 3000 BC, and represented by the millions upon millions of figurines.

Is it possible that one or more of the satellites of Uranus, which would revolve around Uranus in a circle at a right angle to the plane of the ecliptic, managed to extend beyond the enclosing plasma coma? The four outer satellites of Uranus are large, and rotate at periods of a few (Earth) days to thirteen days.

The outer and largest satellite, Oberon, orbits at 600,000 km from Uranus, far outside of the rings. At a rotational period of 13 days, Oberon would be visible for about three days in any quadrant of its rotation. This still does not constitute a 'slit,' nor would it represent two eyes. The slit might be a tailing plasma of Oberon, perhaps shadowed by the Sun, as Oberon and its tail broke through the enclosing coma at one quadrant. We could assume a bilateral symmetry for the coma, so that if this happened in one quadrant, it would be repeated at an adjacent quadrant (seen on the upper left, then seen at the upper right quadrant). The 'front' of the 'face' of Uranus could only be viewed for a few weeks during the Earth's solar year, so that the existence of two eyes might have to be an assumption made by humans on the basis of profile viewing of the planet. The partial visibility of Oberon has implications for the size of the coma surrounding Uranus. Nothing like this has been assumed in the reconstruction of the Cybele-like figurine.

I had wanted to use another image with the text of this chapter for the purpose of illustration, a mural, shown below and reproduced in color in the later book by Mellaart "The Goddess from Anatolia" (1989) and by Gimbutas as a line drawing ten year later in "The Living Goddess" (1999).

But I found the iconography curious, and out of style with what I would have expected. It would be the only instance of which I was aware where a crescent is associated with the pubic area of figurines. Although in outline the forms were congruent with figurines of a thousand years later, after 5600 BC, from southeastern Europe as well as Anatolia (and elsewhere), at the time of Catal Huyuk, before 6200 BC, figurines worldwide were rendered more or less realistically, not as snow-men.

[Fat Lady with crescent mural]
Image: Catal Huyuk, central Anatolia, 7400 to 6200 BC. The Fat Lady with crescent mural. On the left: a 'reconstruction' by James Mellaart, from Mellaart (et al), "The Goddess from Anatolia" (1989). On the right: a line drawing from Gimbutas, "The Living Goddess" (1999).

I later discovered that Marla Mallett, in "An Updated View of the Catal Huyuk Controversy," in "Oriental Rug Review" (December 1992/January 1993), had also pointed out the suspect nature of this image, which supposedly is derived from room (shrine) AIII-11, although in the 1963 report by Mellaart this room was dismissed as containing only fragments of a hunting scene. To quote Mallett..

"Mellaart has now [1989] claimed that this building had 'some ten successive layers of painting, all differing from each other.' He has not explained this latest contradiction, nor has he told us why such extensive paintings were ignored in the 1963 report."
-- [http://www.marlamallett.com/chupdate.htm].

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Note 36 --

Caves were decorated only at long intervals. For two recently discovered caves, untrampled by modern humans, we have C14 dates from carbon of fires on the floors and torch relighting sites. Cosquer cave, discovered in 1991, was first entered 27,000 years ago and then not again visited (to add animal murals) until 8500 years later. Chauvet cave, discovered in 1994, was decorated about 31,000 years ago (the C14 data spans 1500 years) and entered again 4000 years later for an inspection tour.

It should also be noted that the painted areas of the caves (mostly located deep underground) were never used as occupation sites.
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Note 37 --

The disappearance of the Cromagnon cultures in Europe coincide with the advent of a dry climate in southern Europe, ca 9000 to 8000 BC, but vastly improved conditions at latitudes further north. In northern Europe there are no limestone caves.
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Note 38 --

Comparing changes in the philosophy, practice, and iconography of the major religions to the implied 'world view' of Cromagnon, you may note that, despite the conservatism of the modern religions, the changes in the last 2000 years far exceed any noticeable change in cave decor, figurines, or even tools among the Cromagnon over a period ten to twenty times as long.
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Note 39 --

To repeat an endnote from the introductory chapter..

The concept of subjective consciousness was developed by Julian Jaynes in "The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind" (1976). Subjective consciousness involves the ability to recognize yourself as seen by others -- an analog 'I' -- which is internalized and placed into the space of the imagination. This represented a new mental space, based on a metaphorical displacement of the self, and was not seen in use before about 1500 or 1000 BC.

You can look through the 'eyes' of this substitute 'I' or even observe yourself from afar in your mind. Biologically, it involves the functional separation of volition and consciousness in the speech centers of the brain. 'Memory' and 'self-awareness' are not subjective consciousness.

Some people never achieve subjective consciousness, yet they appear fully functional. Pre-conscious people are almost indistinguishable from subjectively conscious people. Pre-subjectively-conscious people can learn anything, including mathematics, and certainly they can joke, experience emotions, and carry on convoluted dialogues with each other. However, they rely heavily on the learned admonitions of parents and authority figures ('oughts' and 'shoulds') and have difficulty with novel situations.

The concepts are more fully developed in the text. See also Chapter 14, "Language and Subsective Consciousness."
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Note 40 --

Dates for the initial drawings in Chauvet Cave, 31,000 ya, span a range of 1500 years. This might represent the variation in C14 dating, or it may mean that the drawings were in production for that long.
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Note 41 --

Jean Clottes and Jean Courtin, in "The Cave Beneath the Sea: Paleolithic Images at Cosquer" (1996). The quoted statement in the text is about Upper Paleolithic cave art in general. One cave shows reindeer swimming through a river. The river is probably the Absu, already introduced earlier in the text.
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Note 42 --

It has been suggested that most of the caves have eroded and that we have only discovered a small percentage of them. Implicit in this suggestion is that those few caves which have lasted to the present day experienced unusually stable climatological conditions which resulted in preserving images from as long as 31,000 years ago. I doubt this, for although the cool below-ground environment may help to reduce the growth of fungus (which attack the animal fats used as pigment carriers), it is probably much more significant that the artists used two of the most stable and chemically inert substances, red iron oxide and manganese dioxide, and also carbon black. Other colors were mixed from these, with the exception of white, for which a clay was used (and which is also a stable pigment).
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Note 43 --

Cromagnon ranged over eastern and western Europe, North Africa, the Black Sea region, and southwestern Asia, and earlier in Australia. "Cromagnon" might be understood as a body type among the great variety of Homo sapiens sapiens.
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Note 44 --

The methods of graphic depiction on two dimesional surfaces in antiquity differs markedly from our practice. Egyptian graphics are based, for example, on rendering recognizable features, with little regard to physical relationships, not unlike Cubism. Thus eyes are shown as seen frontally even though drawn on the profiles of faces. Breasts and nipples are both drawn as seen from the front, resulting in turning the top of the trunk (and the shoulders and arms) sideways from the face in profile. The navel takes an intermediate location, slightly turned away from a profile view, and the legs are again turned back to a side view. That is how humans looked in the overall; all the parts were there.
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Note 45 --

The linear extrapolation based on the fact that in Roman Republican times some 50 comets were seen each year, and today we see almost none, is..

number seen 30,000 years ago = 30000 * 50 / 2000 = 750
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Note 46 --

Comets are rocks, and should be classified with asteroids. See the separate page [Deep Impact] at this site.
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Note 47 --

In Mesopotamia, spells, prayers, and magical incantations are certainly of a late date, after 1200 BC. The earlier attitude toward the Gods was one of direct communication on a one-to-one basis.

Egyptian funeral spells date from 2350 BC, and perhaps earlier. The content reflects a great antiquity, but their magical use probably dates to after 1500 BC. The early spells reflect the Egyptian attitude toward language and naming of things as actual, that is, not metaphorical or symbolic.
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Note 48 --

Neanderthal, and the later Erectus, develop a method of splitting uniformly sized cutting blades from the edges of a preshaped core of flint (with a flattened top and bottom surface). This method changes very little over 300,000 to 500,000 years. This was a vast improvement over the Erectus Acheulean hand axe industry, but it is crude compared to the complete lithic tool-kit of Cromagnon or compared to their carefully shaped knives and spear points.
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----
Special thanks to E Boettger for suggesting that I add these chapters before the "Age of the Gods."

Calculations are in Unix bc notation, where ^ denotes exponentiation; the functions (a)rctangent, (s)ine, and (c)osine use radians; angle conversions to radians or degrees by the divisors rad=.017+ and deg=57.2+; other functions are shown as f( );
units: million == 1,000,000; billion == 1,000,000,000;
one AU == 93,000,000 miles.

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