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Recovering the Lost World,
A Saturnian Cosmology --Jno Cook
Part 7: The Age of the Gods and the Flood.


[Table of Contents]

$Revision: 19.1 $
Contents of this chapter: [The King List] [Dating the Age of the Gods] [Barrows] [Henges] [Temples and Platforms] [The Gods Destroy Earth] [The Flood] [The Battle of the Gods] [The Absu and Duat] [The Gods Leave] [Return of the Axis Mundi] [A New Era] [Endnotes]

This chapter will give further details of the "Age of the Gods." I will suggest some dates, discuss megalithic sites in Europe, and describe the flood of 3114 BC -- when the Gods leave.

I will be using August 13, 3114 BC, as the 'end' of the "Age of the Gods." This date is from the Maya "year zero" which is the start of Mesoamerican calendars. It may not be exact, but it generally matches later chronologies, archaeological findings, and climatological information. The date also matches a massive setback in Middle Eastern civilization. The setback is caused by a catastrophe which will be recounted 800 years later in the "Epic of Gilgamesh" as "The Flood" and retold much later in the Bible as the "Flood of Noah." The Bible will place the flood in 2349 BC. [note 1]

Brief Chronology

-- 5800 BC: Saturn above Earth --

Saturn shows up above Earth and starts a plasma discharge to Earth. Earth is in a close orbit around the Sun, as are all the other planets. The stars are not seen for the next 1700 years. Saturn is mostly obscured, and only near the end of this period starts to show as a giant egg in the sky. This is the era before creation.

-- 4186 BC: Saturn lights up --

Saturn goes through a nova event -- a mass discharge which creates its rings and Venus -- and Saturn lights up. This is the moment of 'Creation.' The arc at the point of contact with Earth creates massive cloudbanks and glaciation. Venus is in orbit around Saturn and Mars hangs below. The "Age of the Gods" begins. Mars makes eight 'descents' to Earth.

-- 3114 BC: The Gods leave --

Saturn is in a near collision with Jupiter. The "Age of the Gods" ends with the "Flood of Gilgamesh." Plasma discharges between Jupiter and Saturn are seen as the "battle of the Gods." Earth, Mars, and Venus escape to eccentric orbits. Mars, on a slightly larger orbit, partly coincides with Earth's orbit and is seen visiting Earth as Horus ten times for 300 years after 3000 BC. The Gods leave as both Saturn and Jupiter move to orbits farther removed from the Sun. Jupiter stays active and develops a coma. He becomes the chief God in almost all societies.

-- 2300, 2200 BC: Noah's Flood --


- 2349 BC: Venus passes above Earth at a close distance causing "Noah's Flood" and changing Earth's orbit; the fall of the Absu. The Moon appears in orbit around Earth soon after.
- 2247 BC: A sudden extinction of Jupiter's coma. The death of Yâo. The Burning Tower, an event told worldwide in legends recalling how people lost language or memory.
- 2193 BC: (156 years after 2349 BC) Venus again passes close to Earth (the fourth time in this period). The Old Kingdom of Egypt ends and the Akkadian empire falls. The Earth changes orbits again.

-- 1500 BC: Exodus --


- 1492 BC: Venus passes close to Earth during the Exodus of Moses. An arc is struck which circles Earth at about 30 degrees latitude. The Earth's orbit changes. Skies are obscured by heavy clouds for 40 years.
- 1440 BC: (52 years later) Venus again comes close to Earth. The Middle Kingdom of Egypt ends. The sun stands still for Joshua. Mesoamerica is destroyed.

-- 8th, 7th Century BC: The Start of History --


- 776 BC: A simultaneous visit is made by Venus and Mars (the "ball game"). There continue to be repeated close calls by Mars over a period of 60 years.
- 747 BC: Mars jars Earth. The Earth's orbit changes. Calendar reforms are made worldwide.
- 686 BC: Mercury jars Earth.
- 685 BC: Venus goes nova. Jupiter bolts the Sun (the death of Quetzalcoatl). The polar axis and the equinox shift.
- 670 BC: Earth's orbit becomes circular.

The King List

The "Age of the Gods" ends in 3114 BC with the Flood of Gilgamesh. The question is, How long did the Gods rule, and, When did this era begin?

The beginning date of the "Age of the Gods" can be derived from the Sumerian "King List." Additionally, the span of time the "egg" stood in the sky, before creation, can be found from some variations of the "King List" and both can be partially verified against later Egyptian records. From climatological data we can even determine when the "chaos before creation" started. All of these bear up under archaeological evidence.

I will use the Sumerian "King List" because it provides actual year tallies. The Sumerians and people of northern Mesopotamia had been keeping extensive records of farm products since 8500 BC. Among the tallies and records which were kept was a summary list of the names and lengths of reigns of kings, along with the names of the cities they ruled.

The Sumerian "King List" is a text extant from remote antiquity. It was frequently recopied and seems to have had canonical status among the people of Mesopotamia. It was even used by the Bible editors after 600 BC as a record of the world since Creation. It lists 8 "kings before the flood" and then a long list of "kings after the flood," the first 23 at the city of Kish of Sumer, followed by hundreds more at other cities. The first of the 8 kings before the flood and the first king after the flood both "descend from heaven." It is the flood which separates our era from the "Age of the Gods." The "King List" simply reads..

"And then the flood swept over."

The earliest extant copies of the "King List" date from 2300 or 2200 BC, apparently transcribed from records of ca 2800 BC. There are variations among the 18 extant copies, but it is possible to suggest an earlier master copy and to reconstruct it. Accurate copies were known even in Classical times, long after the lands of Sumer and Akkad and the Babylonian Empire had been completely forgotten. While the length of the reigns of some individual kings vary among copies, the total length of all the reigns at individual cities always remains the same. [note 2]

The Sumerian "King List" is often held to be nothing more than political promotion and the large number of "years" for the reigns of the earliest kings, as extravagant bragging in the service of some regime. But if we recognize that the first kings are not human kings but represent celestial beings -- Saturn at first, and later the planet Mars who approaches Earth at regular intervals -- then the beginning portion of the "King List" will start to make sense.

The early kings, and especially the "kings before the flood," rule for impossibly long times -- reigns lasting up to 43,000 years. However, the word that is translated by us as 'year' actually means 'turn' or 'shuttle,' as in weaving. It also means 'rotation' and came to mean year (as in a 'rotation' in seasons) as well as a change in government.

The number of 'turns' of the "kings before the flood" are all given as whole thousands, making it look suspiciously like they were made up. But, in fact, it seems that the 'turns' were calculated as days, instead of years. If the list was transcribed from other records after 3100 BC, the chroniclers must have been aware that the length of the year had changed and attempted to preserve accuracy by using days (turns) rather than years. Dividing all the numbers by 225 (what I will assume to be the number of days in the year before 3114 BC) makes all the 'turns' into whole numbered years and reduces the total time span of the 8 kings from 241,200 "years" to 1072 years. [note 3]

The "King List" notes that Meskiaggasher, the first king (and founder) of the city of Uruk "was the first to write on clay." Meskiaggasher is dated to 2720 or 2740 BC and is the 24th king "after the flood." The "writing on clay" was actually well established much earlier in northern Mesopotamia, yet for Sumer the credit went to the founder of Uruk. The previous 23 kings had held sway over the city of Kish, north of Uruk. Kish was the center of Sumerian politics for some 300 years. In about 2700 Gilgamesh, the 5th king of Uruk and the literary figure at the center of the "Epic of Gilgamesh," defies the king of Kish, and the center of Sumerian politics shifts to Uruk. It is at this time that the "King List" was probably first transcribed from older tallies and records. We probably owe the compilation of the "King List," which was continued for hundreds of years into the future, to this gesture of independence by Gilgamesh. Independence of the individual cities became the political philosophy and practice of Sumer. [note 4]

With respect to accepting the validity of the "King List," I think we need to overcome our chauvinism and not assume factual inaccuracy simply because these people precede us by 5000 years. They were not cavemen. The Sumerians showed amazing abilities -- agricultural production, the building and maintenance of massive irrigation projects, the manufacture of goods, widespread conduct of trade, and the ability to keep track of products numbering into the tens of thousands of units. The tallies of farm products which date back to 8500 BC were initially represented with clay tokens. The use of the token system was extended to many differing trade goods -- barley, beer, cattle, sheep, wicker, cloth, and building materials -- and representations of 10 and 100, plus 60, 600, and 3600 were in use. The far-flung trade of Sumer ranged from the Indus valley to the seacoast of the Levant, and, before 3000 BC, to Egypt. There are surviving temple records of trade accounts from 4000 BC. [note 5]

Dating the Age of the Gods

Together the eight "kings before the flood" account for 1072 years. Subtracting this from an ending date of 3114 BC, the "Age of the Gods" started in 4186 BC. The 'eight kings' seem to be the appearances of Mars, mentioned previously. Their 'rulership' is established because Mars is seen descending from heaven. A version of the "King List" below...


"When kingship descended from heaven, the kingship was in Eridu.
- In Eridu Alulim became king; he ruled for 28,800 turns. Alaljar ruled for 36,000 turns. Eridu was abandoned.
- Kingship was taken to Bad-tibira. Ammilu'anna the king ruled 43,200 turns. Enmegalanna ruled 28,800 turns. Dumuzi the shepard ruled 36,000 turns. Bad-tibira was abandoned.
- Kingship was taken to Larak. En-sipa-zi-anna ruled 28,800 turns. Larak was abandoned.
- Kingship was taken to Sippar. Meduranki ruled 21,000 turns. Sippar was abandoned.
- Kingship was taken to Shuruppak. Ubur-tutu ruled 18,600 turns.
- Total: 8 kings, their turns: 241,200
- Then the flood swept over."

-- MS in Sumerian on clay, 2000-1800 BC

With 'turns' representing days in the "King List," the 8 kings ruled at 128 to 192 year intervals. The reigns have a repetitive regularity. Mars probably descended slowly at 120 to 190 year intervals. Because plasma flows tend to be self-limiting, and thus represent nearly identical flows of current over long periods of time, it is likely that the descent of Mars was very regular. A long interval also fits with the long time spans between the building and use of grave barrows (and henges) in western Europe (see below). The identification of five different cities probably implies that the strike point of the arc was interrupted and restarted in a new location periodically. [note 6]

Based more on linguistic than archaeological evidence, Eridu (the first city of the King List) is thought to be Uruk or is located in the south, Sippar (the fourth city) is thought to be Nippur, and Shuruppak (the fifth city) might be located near Fara. (The Sumerian 'Noah' of the "Epic of Gilgamesh" is from Shuruppak -- "the City of the Ship".) But linguists and archaeologists work from slim evidence, and I suspect, as others do also, that Eridu is not Uruk. Uruk was not founded until 350 years after the flood of 3114 BC. The last two cities have not been identified at all. It is suspected by some that they may be under the coastal waters of the Persian Gulf. Although Eridu tends to be thought of as real, many archaeologists hold that none of the cities have been identified.

When the "King List" was being compiled (before 3100 BC), there had been walled cities in Sumer for perhaps a thousand years and the cloud or plasma formation at the north horizon was thus recognized as a walled city. This was probably the formation and disappearance of the cup-shaped 'mountain' at the base of the plasma stream near Earth, caused by plasma instabilities. To the Sumerian chroniclers, compiling the records of the past, the equivalent of what had been seen at the north horizon was the existence of cities, kings, and changes in kingship. [note 7]

When The Egg Appeared

Now we take another step back in time. At the very beginning of some versions of the "King List," and preceding the eight "kings before the flood," is Alorus, a king who does not descend to Earth but rules in heaven for an inordinately long time -- 162,000 'turns.' Assuming again that a turn is a single day and using a year of 225 days, Alorus would have ruled 720 solar years. The reign of Alorus in Heaven must represent the condition before the 'creation event,' for there is no mention of his descent to Earth, whereas the next king is preceded with the phrase "When kingship descended from heaven...." Alorus must represent the time when the egg stood in the sky, and presumably before Saturn lit up and Mars started periodic descents. For a long time nothing happened -- 720 solar years (443 Julian years). Why this period of inactivity lasted so long is curious. Perhaps a certain level of charge had to accumulate before Saturn went nova and an arc would strike from Saturn to Earth. [note 8]

Subtracting 720 years from 4186 BC we arrive at 4906 BC as the first appearance of Saturn, as an egg, in the clouded sky. I had suggested in the previous chapter, based on climatic data, that Saturn originally arrived at ca 5800 BC, but thus remained invisible until 4906 BC -- shrouded in turbulent clouds or what looked like a sea of swirling water.

Thus we have the following sequence...

The details of the sequence of events when Saturn goes nova are given in the previous chapter. Note again that, as far as the humans are concerned, it is the nova event that determines 'creation.' There was no thought of the creation of humans or of anything dealing with Middle Earth. The only concern was to mark the creation of heaven and the self-creation of the Gods. [note 9]

Barrows in Western Europe

The Egyptians and Mesopotamians, who were eventually to build gigantic stone and brick monuments, left nothing but a few post holes and wall foundations from the "Age of the Gods." It is in western Europe, from Portugal to Sweden, that people start a frenzy of building very large hollow grave mounds (called barrows) and later megalithic structures (henges) during and after the "Age of the Gods." [note 10]

The barrows are 100 to 200 feet long and half as wide, made with standing stones often 8 to 10 feet tall and capped with stone slabs weighing up to 40 tons. These are covered with packed earth to form a large mound, often much larger than the internal passages. The barrows have long passages in the interior with a single terminal chamber at the end. Other structures, called Passage graves, have paired chambers left and right, up to six pairs. (I'll use the word 'barrows' for both types.) Most of the grave structures have an additional low exterior wall surrounding the mound of dirt. All have a clearly marked entrance with a doorway and closing stone, even in later designs which no longer allow access to the chamber. Many use a porthole as the entrance, either a single large stone with a round perforation two feet wide, or two abutted stones with semicircular cuts.

There are thousands of barrows along the east coast of Ireland, the west coast of Britain, and the coast of northern France, most often in areas with a clear view of the western sky. The east coast of Ireland and west coast of England were used to allow ocean access, directly from France, to the two islands while providing protection from Atlantic storms. This can be easily understood, since these were very large construction projects, much larger than a local population of farmers would have been able to support. Water was the highway of antiquity. It allowed large numbers of people to congregate easily, both during construction and for the intended ceremonies. The east coast of Ireland and west coast of England had easy access from the projecting tip of France.

The ocean travel reflected the attempt of the continental people of western Europe to come closer to the strike point of the arc or plasma stream in the northern atlantic.

There are barrows inland also, mostly in coastal France. The earliest are at Carnac, France, along the Brittany coast. Most date from after 4000 or 3800 BC. It is this northern European stone-age culture which apparently starts the fashion for barrows. The barrows spread elsewhere in western Europe, but mostly to coastal regions with river access. After 3000 BC they spread to the Mediterranean and the Middle East, and eventually to India. The building of barrows lasts until 2400 BC.

Building on this gigantic scale, especially for the dead, had never been done before. There are older cemeteries belonging to settled towns, as in Egypt and Mesopotamia. But generally, where we have cities and permanent houses, the burials were below the floors of houses, after excarnation. However, the northern Europeans at this time were hunters and slash-and-burn farmers. They had no cities, and at best only scattered housing. What did all this construction mean?

First let me outline the problems in understanding these constructions. The number of people buried in barrows do not add up to the size estimated for the workforce needed to build the barrows, and thus to the number of people who may have been expected to use the facilities when they died. This is an enigma which has frequently been noted by archaeologists. Except for a few instances of ossuaries for thousands of bones (as at Malta, for example), even a hundred skeletons would be insignificant in representing the dead of a spread-out community of a couple of hundred slash-and-burn farming families, especially for a period of a thousand years. But we do not find a hundred skeletons -- we find 27 at most, or numbers on that order. And there are other graves. Thousands of ground burials with small mounds still covered Denmark in the 19th century. These are the interments of Neolithic farmers and are contemporaneous with the larger barrows. The same grave goods appear in both. [note 11]

Most of the barrows show signs of infrequent use. It looks like many sites were reworked, or new interments were made in total disregard of older interments. In many instances old bones were merely swept aside to reuse the tomb.

The barrows may not have been graves at all. It is quite possible that the few skeletal remains actually are sacrifices performed at infrequent intervals. In some locations there are grave goods consisting of arrowheads, some found between the ribs of humans. In later locations there are collections of celts, certainly many more than would be required for the afterlife. The grave goods (including occasional domestic animals) may be gifts to the Gods, along with the bodies of the humans. The barrows may have simply represented attempts to pacify the Gods with sacrificed humans. I have no idea if this is correct, nor does anyone else.

Whatever their function, it seems clear that the barrows were built in imitation of the 'city of the Gods' seen on the northwest horizon -- the giant cloud bank, the polar plasma stream above it, and the globe of Saturn and its rings above this. The barrows are complete models of this structure. [note 12]

Many barrows have buttressed or scalloped exterior walls in imitation of the fluted water vapor cloud bank. In the interior there is a long passage leading up to an alcove with two rooms off to the side. The interior looks like a plan of the polar plasma stream, as a path terminating in the disk and wings of Saturn. The exterior entrances of the barrows often repeat the same design with porthole entrances often flanked by stones shaped like spread wings.

Later versions of the barrows (the passage graves) will feature additional rooms arranged left and right, but always at the end of a passage which is much too long to have any utility. The repeated branching of chambers in pairs off the main passage looks like a plan view of the "tree" form of the plasma instability which had shown up in earlier petroglyphs and as the later Mesopotamian seals of the lobe-leafed "tree of heaven" with a globe at the very top -- the terminal room of these graves. [note 13]

There are other hints that the barrows were built in imitation of what was seen at the far northwestern horizon. The barrows in Ireland and the west coast of England are almost always aligned to have entrances facing southeast. This is usually thought to have been done to allow the midwinter sunrise to enter the structure and a few late barrows do this accurately. However, most constructions miss the mark. The west-northwest by east-southeast orientation actually points the barrows to Greenland. A location near Greenland was the center of the plasma strike under way after 4200 BC. With few exceptions, all the monuments of France, England, and Ireland point to the center of the strike point of the plasma at the shifting location of the north magnetic pole, and thus to the center of the cloud banks seen in that direction. This accounts also for the fact that the alignments tend to wander from a single compass point. [note 14]

The most prominent feature of the barrows is the persistent doorway, and may yield an answer as to why these projects were undertaken. The doorway suggests an interior space, even when the interior space is no longer present, as in some later barrows. Because the western Europeans saw a dozen much smaller orbs following Mars like ducklings (identified as knots in the plasma stream) as Mars moved back toward Saturn, these people may have understood that the approaching God Mars had come to collect the dead. The cloud bank at the northwestern horizon was thus understood as a house -- perhaps a charnel house where corpses awaited transport to the upper home of the Gods. That certainly was the explanation at a much later time. Most likely the earliest barrows were simply intended to duplicate the mountain at the horizon, with the porthole as the entrance to a cave in the mountain. [note 15]

It could also be suggested that the lowering of Mars was seen as a threat, especially for the tribes of the northwest coasts of Europe -- which were in close proximity to the apparent landing point. It is likely that the approach of Mars could be seen in progress for years. The lowering of Mars to the vicinity of Earth, so that it looked like a giant red globe suspended in the sky, would have been accompanied by earthquakes, rising tides, storms, and massive lightning discharges. The barrows may have been a preventive measure which would induce the God to leave again with the bodies as sacrifices meant to appease the God. [note 16]

The portholes, flanked on occasion by wings cut into the same stone slabs, also suggest the circular disk of Saturn, with its flanking rings, just as the long interior passageways and the terminal room with the dual chambers on both sides duplicate the image seen in the sky. The places of sacrificial offerings were built on the only model at hand -- Saturn in plasma discharge to Earth.

We should expect most of the barrows to have been built between 4200 BC and 3100 BC, for it is only in this period that the God Mars descends to Earth at intervals. And in fact we see very few barrows constructed before 4200 BC (some of which might be misdated) and their construction falls off rapidly after 3100 BC. (Construction picks up again after 3000 BC, but I will describe this in a later chapter.)

The infrequent construction and infrequent use of the barrows would be the result of the 120 to 190 year interval between approaches of the God. The lack of bodies would make sense if the trip to Heaven were reserved only for selected people (leaders or priests) or sacrificial victims. The lack of respect for earlier remains in the barrows would be accounted for if some sort of transformation -- a stellation, for example -- were to be assumed for the dead, or if earlier sacrifices were meaningless at a later time. As time progressed (thousands of years), the use of later barrows (in the Neolithic and Bronze Age) seems to have been extended to larger groups. It became a funeral business. [note 17]

In the 1920s the idea of a "missionary" religious sect was proposed to account for the fact that the dolmen and megalithic barrow structures are almost identical throughout Europe and the Mediterranean. The suggestion was that the religious ideas were spread by proselytes from the eastern Mediterranean region moving west across France and around Spain to eventually reach England and Scandinavia. This idea has not held up under archaeological dating. I propose the opposite: the idea of a house of the dead spread from western Europe to the Mediterranean, at least as far as Malta, and may have influenced Egyptian graves and temples after 3000 BC. Within the area of western Europe it looks like the use of barrows moved from Portugal north to Carnac, and then west to England and further west to Ireland. Each move brought the ceremonies ever closer to the home of the Gods seen in the northwest.

Henges

Stone henges and causeways also precede any of the gigantic building projects of Egypt or Mesopotamia. Their construction starts in western Europe after 4000 BC and lasts to 3000 BC, thus spanning the "Age of the Gods." Henges are not grave sites. They are public structures, perhaps equivalent to the temple platforms constructed later in Sumer out of dried mud bricks. The only signs of activity at the henges are the remnants of occasional feasting. The material used in building henges varies with what was locally available -- trees in some Central European locations, large glacial boulders in western Europe, and, in some cases, dressed stone. Compared to the barrows, they are enormous undertakings, requiring a vast labor force. [note 18]

The henges are circles of wooden posts or standing stones, at times set in concentric circles and always with an exterior ditch. Again we seem to encounter an imitation of the planet overhead in plasma discharge. Anthony Peratt claims that the post holes of the original Stonehenge site (a circle of 56 posts) is an exact copy of a sphere in a state of stupendous plasma discharge (actually a tubular aurora). The posts (or stones in other henges) represent the streamers seen at the edge of the Saturnian disk (or, as likely, a view directly up into the plasma stream), which are, as Peratt has pointed out, the terminal points of the 56 bundles of concentrated plasma at the outer edges of the stream. The division of the plasma stream into 56 (or 28) bundles is an inherent feature of concentrated plasma discharges. [note 19]

Some henges have causeways which lead up to an entrance and are also edged in standing stones. These represent the column of plasma extending from Saturn to Earth -- the path leading to Heaven. Note that none of the causeways are straight, all include a curve, resembling the plasma stream between Saturn and Earth, which, on nearing Earth, curved away from the direction of the polar axis to make contact with the north magnetic pole. [note 20]

At Carnac in France are a series of causeways with 10 to 13 parallel lines of standing stones, dated from 4000 BC. At one or both ends of many of the causeways there are remnants of large circles of standing stones, often oval shaped. In all there are some 5000 stones standing in rows. Many causeways have a bend at the center, that is, they change direction slightly.

The two circular structures with the causeway in between are in imitation of the mountainous shape seen in the western sky near Earth and the globe of Saturn in the sky, connected to Earth with a plasma stream. The plasma stream would narrows near Saturn. The rows of standing stones also narrow at the west end.

The causeways near Carnac, composed of parallel rows of standing stones, however, point toward the northeast and southwest (thus suggesting a contact point for the plasma stream in the mid Atlantic), with a few alignments running southeast to northwest instead.

The Carnac causeways could possible by a representation of the Peratt Column seen extending from the south pole, except that the direction in which the causeways point in not correct if, as Peratt claims, the streams of electrons ran in a south to north direction past the Earth. The southwest direction, however, points to the south pole below South America. The change in the direction of the electron streams happened somewhere within 700,000 miles below the south pole. The existance of circular structures at both ends of the causeways would suggest that an additional plasmoid existed above the Earth's north pole (not identified by Peratt).

The Carnac 'Grand Menhir,' mentioned earlier, is a single 90 foot standing stone, also dated from 4000 BC. The larger circular henges in England and Ireland date as follows: New Grange 3200 BC, Avebury 3000 or 2800 BC. There are many more than are listed here.

What did the construction of stone henges (and rows of standing stones) mean? First of all, as I have noted, I believe they were made in imitation of what was seen in the sky, a round orb in plasma discharge. But it also looks as though efforts were being made to harness displays of Saint Elmo's fire.

The arc touching down in the north Atlantic after 4200 BC must have built up the Earth's charge of static electricity and caused an electrically charged atmosphere. Any tall pointed object would arc with Saint Elmo's fire under the right conditions. This was seen as the doing of the Gods and, in imitation of the arcing circle in the sky, structures were built that would blaze with a similar ring of fire.

Even today any high pointed object (like a ship's mast) will discharge with a flickering blue flame during an electrical storm. This is the result of introducing a ground potential into an atmosphere with a voltage differential easily measured in hundreds of volts per foot. The almost ubiquitous ditches surrounding the henges add to the effect since they increase the electrical potential difference and could be filled with water to wet the surrounding ground -- making the ground plane more conductive.

Location was everything, and in western Europe the location of henges and barrows seemed to have involved three factors. First, a clear view of the western or northwestern horizon was needed with visual proximity to (and visibility of) the strike point of the plasma arc in the north Atlantic.

Second, easy access from the sea, via a river, to allow for the arrival of people for the purposes of construction and the gathering.

The third factor was the existence of a conductive plane. This would be a matter of selecting a region which had sufficient (and proper) minerals to allow the ground to readily assume an induced positive charge with the occurrence of an overhead negative charge, as happens during thunder storms. The need for a conductive ground plane is most vividly demonstrated with the Saint Elmo's fire when it occurs on ships today, for they float on a highly conductive electrolytic solution -- the salt sea. [note 22]

The third factor also explains another reason why we see megalithic constructions clustered together on the west coast of France (near the ocean), in central England, and on the east coast of Ireland. Separate stone henges and causeways are at times dated a thousand years apart yet built in very close association. The locations are on the lee side of higher ground or mountain ranges or (as in France) a low coastal area. During westerly thunderstorms these areas would experience an electrically charged atmosphere overhead more frequently than other locations. Besides the Saint Elmo's fire, there would also have been many lightning strikes out of the clear blue sky.

The henges, like the barrows, seem to show very occasional, rather than continuous, use and are often abandoned for new constructions. This suggests that festivities were very infrequent, yet the work involved in the construction is enormous. Something very important was being celebrated.

However, after having been in disuse for a thousand years or more, the reasons for their construction were forgotten and they may have been seen only as some sort of holy place from antiquity and were used for occasional interments. After 3000 BC there are additional henges built, including many which served no purpose except to duplicate the past. The frequent reconstructions of Stonehenge extend over a period of 1500 years after 3100 BC.

The henges and causeways should be distinguished from the thousands of barrows and ossuaries, but since the graves are constructed both earlier and during the same time period in parallel with the public monuments, the combined effect can be very confusing. One author notes the variety of origins as "inspired by outside influences." I would suggest that nothing was built in prehistory which was not done in imitation and that a connecting thread can be seen in the variety of construction if we look towards the sky. The structures were built in imitation of the home of the Gods. [note 23]

After 3114 BC the static electricity in the atmosphere would decline enough to make wood and stone henges ineffective in triggering a display of heavenly fire. As air moisture lessened, ground water dropped, and wooden posts dried out, other means for these spectacular displays were required. At Stonehenge in England a late desperate effort includes changing the stones to a blue rock (transported from 200 miles away), on the presumption that blue rocks would cause blue flames, but they are soon discarded and much larger local gray sandstone slabs are substituted. [note 24]

The Egyptians resorted to massive stone pyramids for the lightning displays and the Mesopotamians built multi-storied ziggurats to achieve the same effect, both started after 2700 BC. The stone henges and causeways would remain sacred to future generations, but no new structures of that type were seriously attempted after 3000 BC. Their day was over.

Temples and Platforms

In Egypt and Mesopotamia, as elsewhere, the descent of Mars was understood as a visit to Middle Earth by the God. Temples and platforms were constructed to receive the God, with the courtyards and entrances facing north. Temples for the God faced north because Mars descended in line with the Earth's north pole, guided by gravitational attraction. The functions of temples were entirely different from the mastabas and grave sites which, even later, continued to be oriented toward the northwest.

Mars would have approached close enough to be seen as a giant globe above the north horizon, but we have no idea how close Mars reached before reversing and moving up again toward Saturn. Mars would stop in its descent when the electrical repulsion between the planets equaled the gravitational attraction. Mars would have stood still above Earth at its lowest descent because Mars rotates at the same speed as Earth. The plasma stream, which, late in the "Age of the Gods," was in glow mode, followed and enclosed Mars, bending away toward the Earth's north magnetic pole or dispersing.

The first temple buildings, made of wood, were constructed in Central Europe among the first Neolithic farmers, the people whom Gimbutas calls the "Old Europeans." Gimbutas also points to some 50 miniature temples which, like the figurines, were probably modeled on Saturn ablaze in the sky. The miniatures are almost always on short stilts, have open fronts, and include a wide porch like the lower rings of Saturn. Many include the furniture -- ovens, seats, fire pits, and tables -- which will later become the furnishings of full scale temples (these are the furnishings of houses also, of course). Many of the model temples are populated with tiny figurines -- probably representing the satellites of Saturn. [note 25]

There is clear evidence from Sumer and Egypt of platforms and temple enclosures (4500 BC for the Ubaid city of 'Eridu' in Mesopotamia). In Sumer the temple buildings start as large rooms equipped with niches and what looks like an offering table very similar to Central European designs, and soon become large compounds with enormous buildings apparently used for storage and as work areas.

The God is understood to be a local visitor living with the humans. In Egypt and Mesopotamia, as probably elsewhere in the settled world, local images or statues are kept as the presence of the God. These statues were not 'representations' of the God -- they were universally understood to be the actual God. People everywhere identify their local temple as the home of the God, and the name of the God varies widely from city to city. [note 26]

The columned porticos of the later Egyptian temples, facing north, are thought to represent the papyrus-forested Nile delta through which the God, or Gods, had entered the country and the temples. The Egyptian Gods were recognized even in antiquity as coming from the north, traveling via the Nile. We are told this at the time of the Greek occupation of Egypt after 315 BC, but the columns were as likely to have imitated the many-columned plasma path to the Upper Land. The plasma stream from the Upper Land was certainly equated with the Nile. [note 27]

The priesthood throughout Mesopotamia and Egypt establishes an economy based on maintaining the temple of the God or Gods. Food is offered and the statues are adorned. Far-ranging trade eventually results from the needs of the temples.

Among herders and dispersed farm populations, the offering altar consisted of one of the "high places" to which the Bible makes frequent reference. With the upper atmosphere supercharged with electricity, the effect could be impressive. The God would light the fires with a lightning strike and consume the smoke from the burning fat as it ionized to rise directly into the sky. The following is Elijah in action in about 900 BC...

"The opposition builds its fire, places its offering, dances about, and gets no response. Elijah builds an altar of stone, places his offering, and then pours twelve barrels of water upon the offering. He douses the offering thrice. He digs a trench around the altar and fills it with water."

"The time is approaching evening. The water soaks down and makes contact with the water table. The approaching thunderstorm is preceded by a heavy, moist, ionized, and charged lowering atmosphere. The fire of Yahweh descends upon the offering of Elijah. His triumphant followers escort the prophets of Baal to a nearby place and kill them."

-- III Kings 18, paraphrased by Alfred de Grazia "Gods Fire" (1983)

The Gods Destroy Earth

The theater in the sky comes to a sudden end shortly before 3100 BC. Earth experiences a violent disturbance which reduces the civilizations of the Middle East to rubble, except on highlands (as in Persia, Anatolia, and the foothills of the Himalayas) and in protected river valleys (as in Egypt). Floods, fires, and the return of a colder climate are noted in the archaeological and climatological records.

The year 3114 BC marks 'The Flood,' to be written about 800 years later in the "Epic of Gilgamesh." It is the flood which generates stories all over the world of survivors in arks or boats or canoes. In flood tales throughout the world, nearly all the boats or canoes moor to a high mountain peak. The "mountain" is a celestial apparition dominating the skies following immediately after the flood -- Jupiter in plasma discharge to its surroundings from its south polar region.

Among farmer populations, the stories tell of arks provisioned with seeds and farm animals, an event actually experienced earlier by the people fleeing the Black Sea flood of 5600 BC. The Black Sea flood story had been carried far afield with the diaspora of the survivors, who show up in Eastern and Central Europe, Central Asia (as far east as the borders of China), Mediterranean Europe, Anatolia, and of course in Mesopotamia between 5400 and 3000 BC. The Black Sea survivors were farmers and fishermen, and thus generated a hundred stories of family, farm animals, and seeds saved aboard a multiplicity of arks. It is only from the casual references in Mesopotamian documents to a "flood before the flood" that we know that the Sumerians understood the repeating nature of world-wide floods.

Yet another world-wide 'flood event' would happen in 2349 BC. These also were not minor floods. The Chinese Annals of Shu report that it took the Emperor Yu nine years to empty the mountain valleys of water from the "inundation which overtopped the hills." Yu is dated to around 2200 BC. [note 28]

The whole issue of 'flood' is complicated by the fact that similar events are likely to be collapsed in memory, especially when these happen at the infrequent interval of a thousand years or more. People will always think of the last flood as "The Flood," and the image will merge with previous memories into a composite.

This was true for the Hebrews, for whom the 'flood' of 2349 BC, the flood of Noah, was the only flood in their recorded experience. However, the Noachian flood story incorporates elements of the earlier flood of 3114 BC, and perhaps also the archetypal Black Sea flood, as does the story of the Flood of Gilgamesh.

This last is hinted at in the "Epic of Gilgamesh." Although nominally describing the flood of 3114 BC, the "Epic of Gilgamesh" clearly refers back to the spectacular flooding of the Black Sea basin in 5600 BC, with its descriptive references to the Black Sea (the "Sea of Death") and the Bosporus Strait (which Gilgamesh's ferryman navigates by hanging a basket of rocks over the edge of his boat). On the north shore Gilgamesh visits with the Sumerian Noah, Utnapishtim. [note 29]

Flood stories are ubiquitous, and, interestingly, none of them recall local events where only thousands died. The flood stories all claim to be about a universal deluge, a world-wide catastrophic event which killed nearly everyone and also decimated the plants and animals. [note 30]

"But Deucalion in the ark, floating over the sea for nine days and as many nights, grounded on Parnassus, and there, when the rains ceased, he disembarked, and sacrificed to Zeus.."

-- Apollodorus, 2nd century

"Tahiti was destroyed by a flood. A husband and a wife were saved. They had a chicken, dog, kitten, and a pig with them. They took refuge on Mount O Pitohito."

-- Tahiti, contemporary

"When the Moon did not yet exist, a bearded old man named Botschika taught the arts of agriculture, clothing, worship and politics to the people. His beautiful but malevolent wife was Huythaca. She caused a flood in which most people perished. Botschika then turned her into the Moon."

-- Columbia, contemporary [note 31]

At this point we have flood dates for ca 5600 BC, 3114 BC, and 2349 BC. But apparently the disturbance of 3114 was absolutely overwhelming. The "Epic of Gilgamesh" expresses the regrets even the Gods had for the utter destruction this flood caused.

"How could I do this!
Am I so stupid,
That I give life
Only to take it away,
So that people fill the sea like fishes?"

-- Inanna, in the Epic of Gilgamesh

The Flood

The Flood of Gilgamesh was an extraordinary flood, consisting of a series of world-wide tsunamis. The apparent cause was the removal of Saturn from above the north pole. The sea waters, which had been drawn north due to the gravitational attraction of Saturn, and held there for 2700 years, were suddenly released. Those waters must have stood hundreds of miles high in the polar sea, and to a lesser height, but in much greater volume, in the north Atlantic and the north Pacific. At the same time, the ocean level in the far south had dropped hundreds of feet. No other flood in later times would approach the devastation of the flood of Gilgamesh, and the retellings of all later floods refer back to the events of 3114 BC.

Many of the flood stories deal with rain. Certainly the Black Sea Flood of 5600 BC, which burst forth at a rate of over 50 billion gallons per hour, would have stirred up a lot of mist and, on hitting the warmer atmosphere of the lake region, would have resulted in continuous rains. To the victims it looked like rain caused the rising waters. It is more likely that the rains are associated with other, later catastrophes. The early Sumerian flood myths do not include rain.

A consideration of deposited layers of 'soil' worldwide would make it look like the flood of 3114 BC might have had the following sequence: [note 32]

Where was it safe for humans? Although the initial tsunamis overran coastal mountains and even land glaciers (Antarctica also shows evidence of flooding), inland away from the coasts and high ground would have provided safe places -- the north slopes of the Himalayas, the east side of the Andies, and the central regions of Asia, Europe, and Africa. Any coastal areas which stood in the path of the waves would be overrun by water. In some regions a wall of water ran for hundreds of miles across relatively flat land, building giant dunes, as in areas of Australia and the western United States. Remains of whales have been found in the Andies, in the Saharah, as in the state of Michigan.

The Mediterranean regions, surrounding an inland sea, were little affected, as were the upper reaches of Mesopotamia and Anatolia. The waters headed north from the south Indian Ocean for the Red Sea and the Persian Gulf would have battered Somalia and Oman respectively. But the Red Sea and the Persian Gulf are additionally protected by their pinched southern necks. The Sumerians certainly had flood myths, but the Egyptians do not.

Additionally the Earth may have been jolted, possibly sending the axis of rotation into a spin. A swinging axis would also cause sweeping tides and hurricanes in the east-west direction. The Celts remember that the sinking of the fortress Ys (the water-vapor cloudbank on the horizon) was accompanied by high seas and hurricanes.

Recent tsunamis due to submarine earthquakes have been one hundred feet high on reaching a coastline. The damage (in that case) is mostly limited to coastal areas and the waters flow back to the oceans immediately. They certainly would not "cover the Earth." But simultaneous gigantic world-wide tsunamis hundreds of miles high would be an extraordinary disaster. [note 33]

In a number of deluge tales the Gods felt remorse for the flood they had brought and set a sign in the sky as a promise not to do so again. In the "Epic of Gilgamesh" the Goddess Inanna (Venus) raises her necklace of lapis-lazuli so as to never forget the flood. Noah receives the sign of the rainbow. I have never thought that God would set a rainbow as a sign in the sky. With the later flood of 2349 BC (Noah's actual flood), the the sign in the sky might have been the Moon, but more likely it was the appearance of the south (and north) polar plasma plumes, which I will discuss below. [note 34]

It was Jupiter's approach which caused the flood -- by displacing Saturn away from the location of Earth. On the first instance after the flood, and as the flood was subsiding, the Earth was located at a considerable distance below Saturn as well as below the nearing Jupiter. The "mountain" of the flood stories, where Noah moored his ark after the waters subsided, is a stream of plasma from Jupiter, directed out from the region of Jupiter's south pole (which is the 'north' magnetic pole), and nearly opaque in the daylight sky. The mountain was colored green (as we know from Egyptian depictions of Osiris). On top of the mountain of plasma was Jupiter, lighted on its opposite side by the Sun. With the Earth located below the orbit of Jupiter, only the bottom crescent of this was seen. These were the mountain and the ship of Noah, recorded in hundreds of flood myths. [note 35]

After his ship landed on a mountain, Noah released a raven to test the waters but he just flys back and forth and does not return. Noah next released a dove. She returns the first two times, but not the third. The details occur in the Bible, attributed to the flood of 2349 BC. Nearly the same events were recorded in the Sumerian flood epic, written a few hundred years earlier. The raven is the release of the darker Uranus into a larger orbit. At this time the Earth was on an inner orbit, while Jupiter and Saturn, now completely outside the orbit of Earth, were receding from the Sun. Over the next few revolutions of the Earth around the Sun, Uranus would have been seen alternately on the east and the west of Jupiter, looking like a raven flying back and forth aimlessly, first approaching Jupiter (still looking like a mountain) toward the east, and then moving away, but on the other side of Jupiter.

The light-colored Venus, the dove, was initially seen moving on an outer orbit, moving past (understood as returning to) Jupiter (where Noah's ark had landed) a number of times, carrying a green olive branch to Noah the last time -- the plumage of Quetzalcoatl. The green olive branch, or quetzal plumage, is a plasma tail of ionized Hydrogen. On an inner orbit Venus soon disappeared from view. [note 36]

In the Sumerian "Epic of Gilgamesh," on the seventh day after the flood, Utnapishtim sent out successively a dove, a swallow, and a raven; only the raven found a resting place and did not come back. The dove (Venus) and the swallow (Mercury) do return, for they start to orbit the Sun. The raven (Uranus) eventually disappears into deep space.

The Bible and the "Epic of Gilgamesh" record that Noah and Utnapishtim, respectively, offered a sacrifice to God (or the Gods) after leaving the ark. This fire, located on the mountain, is probably the sight of the sun-lit side of Jupiter, but now seen from a much greater distance as the Earth continues to orbit the Sun, in red, with the smoke from the fire as the much less extensive wisps of plasma extending from the upper region of Jupiter. The Gods, records the "Epic of Gilgamesh," crowded like flies around the smoke of the fire. These were the satellites of Jupiter buzzing around the planet. Saturn at this time might have been located behind Jupiter, or obscured by plasma outpourings.

In Egypt, almost unaffected by the flood, and parts of Mesopotamia, the sight of the approaching Jupiter, seen as a crescent on a mountain in the north skies, and subsequently in the south skies, is understood as the "Bull of Heaven" who wrecks the city of the Gods. He is shown as bulldozing city walls on Egyptian cosmetic palettes between 3100 BC and 3050 BC.

The event of 3114 BC appears to have been an all-encompassing disturbance. The stories only attest to the flood, but there is also a sudden change in the climate and the start of a cooler and dryer period. The mild and wet days of the "Age of the Gods" never return and glaciation probably stopped suddenly. There is evidence of world-wide fires. There is also evidence that the length of the year changes. Civilization -- cultivation of grains, trade among regions, and even the development of writing -- comes to a sudden halt, and regresses.

What caused the catastrophe of 3114 BC?

The Battle of the Gods

The catastrophe of 3114 BC involved more than the disappearance of Saturn from the north sky. It involved the near collision of six planets. What most likely happened in 3114 BC is that Saturn, together with Earth, Mars, Venus, Uranus, and Neptune, ran into Jupiter, which was then located probably at 0.7 AU from the Sun. (See Chapter 14, "Mechanics.") Possibly some 3 million years earlier, Saturn had assumed a closer orbit around the Sun as a result of an earlier near-collision with Jupiter. The resulting new orbit of Saturn was an ellipse, with aphelion (the furthest distance from the Sun) beyond the orbit of Jupiter. Saturn would annually return to cross Jupiter's old orbit. In 3114 BC Saturn reached this location just as Jupiter also arrived.

What I have characterized as a 'collision' above, should be understood as an intersection of the plasmasphere of the two planets. It could readily be suggested that when the plasmaspheres of Jupiter and the Saturnian planets connected (at an estimated distance of 1.5 or 2 million miles), it instantly reformed to a different shape to include the giant planets, but in the process locked out the small planets Earth and Venus. Located far below the south pole of Saturn, Earth was not likely to have been within a million miles of Saturn when Jupiter it closed in, and escaped easily. (In Chapter 14, "The Celestial Mechanics," I estimate that Earth was located 3 million miles below Saturn, and an equal distance away from Jupiter.)

Earth, Mars, and Venus escaped from the encounter. They were each cast off by the near collision into separate but slightly different elliptical orbits. Earth and Venus would continue to return to the orbital location of the collision in the future.

It is uncertain how Venus managed to escape, but it is likely that Venus at the time of the collision was orbitting around the mass centroid of Uranus, Neptune, and Saturn, and was thus located far above Saturn, and most likely at the level of Neptune. If, at the time of the collision, Venus was located on the side downstream of the orbit of Saturn and Jupiter, it may have been locked out of the reformed plasmasphere.

Mars remained in the reformed plasmasphere sphere of Saturn (after 3114 BC), since it was close to Saturn and likely at a matching potential. Mars remained with Saturn and was released perhaps 30 years later.

Titan, larger than our Moon or Mercury, remained in orbit around Saturn, as did the other satellites of Saturn and Jupiter, and probably the satellites of Uranus and Neptune. The counts of satellites of Saturn and Jupiter noted in antiquity (as, for example, from Mesoamerican sources) match the counts of satellites today -- barring tiny rocks and extremely distant satellites discovered only in the 20th century or by space exploration. Many primitive people knew the number of satellites of Jupiter and especially of Saturn. They are depicted on Mesopotamian seals. Egyptian funeral practices identify seven large (visible) satellites of Saturn as the "Helpers of the King" or the "Sons of Osiris" known since before 3114 BC. Today Saturn still has seven large satellites which can be readily identified. [note 37]

Neptune and Uranus, the closest to Saturn, were cast into much larger orbits. Uranus is reflected on briefly in the Sumerian flood epic and then never taken note of again. Uranus is one of the Titans 'banished' by Zeus (Jupiter) in Greek mythology.

The report we have after 3114 BC is of extended combat between two Gods. As Jupiter passed Saturn, the planets could be seen to battle over supremacy, resulting in a massive fireworks display as streams of plasma played across the sky. Jupiter had developed a plasma tail outpouring at the first close approach to Saturn, which continued at Jupiter's removal away from the Sun. It is Jupiter who is the "Bull of Heaven" in the Mesopotamian "Epic of Gilgamesh," written 800 years later, and is similarly remembered elsewhere. On the front of the Egyptian "Palette of Narmer" (3050 BC), and other palettes from that era, Jupiter is shown as a bull attacking a walled city, which represent the home of the Gods.

The battle is likely to have occurred some safe distance from Earth, but close enough to have been clearly seen. There are detailed and accurate Mesopotamian depictions of the globes of Jupiter and Saturn -- Jupiter shown with its bands (and satellites) and Saturn with its rings. The number of visible satellites of Saturn and Jupiter are accurately counted as families of nine Gods. [note 38]

From Hesiod we have the account of Zeus (Jupiter) in a battle over supremacy with a generation of older gods, Kronos (Saturn) and the Titans, the giant trans-Saturnian planets Uranus and Neptune. When, in the 19th century AD, these two very large planets are discovered beyond Saturn, they are named according to Greek mythology. In Greek mythology Saturn and the Titans were banished to the outer reaches of the Underworld -- the zodiac in the south sky -- by the new Chief of the Gods. The losers in the battle could be seen diminishing in size, to eventually become mere pinpoints of light, and lost track of. Saturn, however, was tracked and accounted for during all of antiquity, on every continent, despite the fact that it is indistinguishable from a star and takes 30 years to circle around the zodiac. [note 39]

We should not underestimate the extent of the battle, much of it 'fought' with flung thunderbolts. Hesiod's description of Zeus is probably an understatement.

"Hurling his lightning:
The bolts flew thick and fast
From his strong hand
Together with thunder and lightning,
Whirling an awesome flame."

-- Hesiod, 800 BC

Hesiod's writings are a recollection made 2200 years later. But even later than this there are Greek and Roman writers inquiring into the mechanics involved in these interplanetary lightning strikes. The last lightning strikes between planets (between Mars and Earth and between Venus and Mars and the Moon), were witnessed in the 8th century BC (followed by one more massive bolt from Jupiter to the Sun in 685 BC), and were still being discussed by philosophers in 300 BC.

Hesiod describes two distinct battles, the first with the Titans, the second with assorted monsters. The first battle is frequently recast in mythology as a conflict between the chief God and a dragon or snake. Jupiter (Zeus, Marduk, or other primary God) hurtles a spear (or trident) down the throat of the snake to kill it. The attacking snake might have been Saturn with an enormous tail of plasma streaking away from Jupiter, and thus seen horizontally, that is, in the plane of the ecliptic.

I think this event, involving a snake or dragon, might be misplaced, but mythology tends to fuse separate celestial experiences into singular events. I think the battle with a snake or dragon should be placed in 2349 BC when Venus makes a close approach to Earth. At that time Earth and Venus were well beyond the reach of Jupiter. The thrown trident, however, should be assigned to the era following directly on the end of the "Age of the Gods" when Jupiter hurdles plasmoid thunderbolts (described below) at the retreating Titans and obliterates objects in the asteroid belt. The Egyptians name one of their predynastic kings after the thunderbolt, Narmer, "Catfish-chisel," which precisely describes both the plasmoid bolt and the effect as it strikes an object. The 'serekhs' (name labels) for Narmer at times are drawn with the twisted rope-like body, ball ends, and tridents of a plasmoid thunderbolt. [note 53]

The snake or dragon would have had an enormous head. David Talbott summarized the curious worldwide fusion of a wildly maned lion and snake imagery as..

"Why did ancient symbolists so frequently combine serpent and leonine features in a single monster? We see this juxtaposition in the Greek Chimera, with the head of a lion and a tail in the form of a serpent. The Chinese "lion" has the countenance of a dragon, while the Chinese "dragon" possesses a distinctively leonine mane. The Egyptian goddess Tefnut appears as the Uraeus serpent, but in her terrible aspect becomes a giant lion head, with "smoking mane." The Mesopotamian dragon Labbu was a snake, but its name means "lion". The Sumerian goddess Inanna was the "lioness" of heaven, but in her rage became a fire-spitting serpent or dragon devastating the land. In Orphic theology, the god Phanes was born from an egg as a winged snake, though he grew the head of lion. "Snake of the Lion" was the name of a Mixtec creator god."

-- Thoth Newsletter, Kronia.com (2002)

Talbott also lists other recurring features, including beards, horns, and entwined tails. The lion-serpent image, described as consisting simultaneously of water and fire, is a plasma discharge in glow mode. The plasma exchanges were diffuse enough to leave the rings and satellites of both planets intact through the confrontation. But the solid-looking shapes must have struck terror into the hearts of the humans watching the battle from the vantage point of Earth.

The subsequent movement of the two planets through the asteroid belt, and the further electrical discharges from Jupiter to the asteroids, represents the second battle. This is the battle with the monsters described by Hesiod. Evidence of the conflict is shown in the scars, burns, and 'impact craters' covering every side of the thousands of remaining asteroids. Every asteroid (and comet) that has been inspected by a space satellite has been found to be pockmarked with these craters, sometimes nearly equal to the diameter of the target bodies. The same circular 'impact craters' exist by the millions on the Moon, Mars, Mercury, and virtually every satellite of every planet. The electrical arcs must have launched millions of tons of dust into the surrounding space, making all of the ecliptic glow with light reflected off dust, and causing many of the thousands of asteroids to start exhibiting cometary comas and tails in the suddenly altered electrical conditions of the asteroid belt. [note 40]

It has been proposed by some that the asteroid belt is the remnant of the battle between Jupiter and Saturn. However, the breakup age of the asteroid belt dates from 3.2 million years ago with a spread of values dating to 40 million years ago. Some date to 300 million years ago, or more. Thus the belt existed long before 3114 BC when Jupiter and Saturn started to move through the asteroid belt enroute to their present locations at 5 AU and 9.5 AU. [note 41]

The 'impact craters' are anode burn marks caused by plasma discharges and by interplanetary lightning bolts -- electrical discharges in arc mode. With an increased level of dust in the ecliptic, due to the initial violent interaction between Saturn and Jupiter, plasmoid lightning bolts were hurtled and traveled very long distances. The plasmoid bolts (which disconnect from the originating body, and then contract to look like a contained object hurtling through space) cause circular depressions of molten rock. The shapes of these plasmoid bolts are depicted in statuary and as objects worldwide as late as the beginning of the current era. They are shown as twisted shafts with a ball and trident at both ends.

Continuous plasma arcs, composed of rotating rope-like electrical currents (Birkeland currents), on the other hand, leave flat bottomed round 'craters' generally with raised centers and perforated edges. Nearly all the 'impact craters' were created five thousand years ago by the "thunderbolts of the Gods" and by plasma discharges in arc mode. [note 42]

In later Egyptian mythology the planetary interactions after 3114 BC are understood as the battle between Seth (Jupiter) and Osiris (Saturn). One late Egyptian source off-handedly lists the battle (and periods of 'negotiations' among the Gods) as lasting for 80 years. Another account has the battle lasting 89 years. By one account the 'pupil of the eye' is lost; by another Osiris loses his genitals in the turmoil, reminiscent of a passage in Hesiod's Theogony. The 'negotiations' are the sight, from Earth, of the known planets bunching together in the same location of the ecliptic, which would happen periodically, and more frequently than today. [note 43]

It is likely that Mercury (Thoth of the Egyptians) also survived the encounter between Saturn and Jupiter, and was first noticed at this time. Mercury is the size of our Moon, represented in Greek iconography as Hermes with winged sandals and a winged hat, carrying the Caduceus -- two snakes entwined on a staff below a winged disk. Mercury, because of its smaller size and weak magnetic field, would have had only a limited plasma tail -- certainly not the waving 30 million mile plasma tail identified as the hair of Venus (Isis). We have no idea if Mercury might have been part of the stack of Saturnian planets at one time. The only suggestion for this is the fact that Mercury obviously was on a very elliptical orbit, as it still is today, and in remote antiquity probably overrode the orbit of Earth. [note 44]

The coma outlining the equatorial plasma belt of Jupiter, seen in the distance, might have looked like an owl, with its immobile staring eyes and a plasma tail body extending below the planet. This is a motif which becomes the owl totem of Athena and shows up as a talisman in the design of horse bridles and pectorals (at a later date). The same configuration might have led to the later suggestion that Osiris lost his genitals in the battle with Seth. But the loosened Mercury, with its wings and erect plasma tail, could also have served better as a model for the severed genitals. [note 45]

To most of the world Saturn is the loser and Jupiter is clearly the victor. He is a younger God, never seriously noticed before, and also held by many peoples to be a resurrection of the older God Kronos. Widely named "the younger," he replaces the older God of Time and Beginnings, Kronos or Saturn. He is Zeus, "youth" of the Greeks, or Jupiter, "father youth" (Jove Pater) of the Romans.

The Absu and Duat

This was the first time humans had seen anything of interest in the south sky. The battle had started in the northern skies, but as the Earth spun away from Saturn and Jupiter, the battle scene would have shifted to the ecliptic in the southern skies.

At first it is the sight of two globes of equal size and a separation of a few diameters, surrounded with sheets of plasma and the massive outpouring of plasma below Jupiter. Egyptian 'myths' suggest that the two planets at some point drifted away from each other. In effect the coffin of Osiris floated down the 'river' of the ecliptic -- north toward Biblos.

From representations in Mesopotamia is appears as if the plasma in glow mode at the bottom of Jupiter was absolutely huge, and deserves to be called a 'mountain.' The coma of Jupiter may have completely obscured whatever changes Saturn was undergoing, for we hear very little of Saturn after this period.

The rotation of the night sky would move the battle from east to west, the change of seasons would move it further up and down in the sky, and the rotation of the year would bring it closer in and move it further away. Most likely the spectacle could also be seen when it occurred on the other side of the Sun and was seen in the day sky. But as the receding planets diminished in size, the battle had moved into the night sky to the region of the Absu or the Duat -- the ocean in the southern sky. Sumerian Absu translates as "abyss" or "the deep." In Egypt this region is known as the Duat.

The destruction wrought by Jupiter with plasma bolts in the asteroid belt (Hesiod's second battle) would have left dust and debris strewn along the ecliptic, causing the "path of the Gods" to be marked like a highway, defining the road of the Sun and the planets -- the zodiac. The lighted zodiac (the ecliptic) was last seen from Earth in AD 1840. [note 46]

Because of the disappearance of the planets into the far reaches of the Zodiac, the southern skies become known as "Lower Earth," eventually designated as the "Underworld" - the graveyard for dead Gods and soon, by extension, as the place to which humans go at their death. By the time of the "Iliad," the Underworld has moved below ground. [note 47]

Some of the debris in the vicinity of Earth fell toward the planet. This would have been gasses, ionized dust particles, particulate matter, or even larger rocks and stones. There might have been a continuous infall from the particles near Earth or it could have been periodic as the earth swept through the clouds of this matter which may have orbited the Sun. The falls of material into the upper atmosphere caused patterns of concentric circles and spirals to appear during the nighttime, which were recorded in profusion on the boulders of megalithic barrows after 3100 BC. Similar spirals and concentric circles have been recorded in modern times in the night skies from disturbances of the upper atmosphere by high altitude rockets -- perhaps from the exhaust gasses. [note 48]

Some of the debris would remain as part of a series of rings around the larger planets. Earth also would have ended up with its share of dust and suspended rocks. The bands (rings) above the equator of the Earth might have reached 8000 miles high -- the Absu. But the Absu probably existed already long before 3114 BC. The Egyptian word for the rings ("Duat") is very old and was never defined in antiquity. Seen from the ground at a location in the northern hemisphere, the rings would have filled the southern night sky from east to west in a semicircle standing at an angle almost equal to the compliment of the latitude -- about 50 degrees up from the south horizon in Mesopotamia and 60 degrees in the Yucatan. The Egyptians and Sumerians recorded that seven rings could be seen. The Olmecs in Central America, located closer to the equator, noted nine rings. India, at 10 or 20 degrees north latitude, also counts nine rings. [note 49]

The rings of material would have obscured the southern stars, and probably became organized into distinct bands and broken up into a pattern resembling waves (as was seen for the rings of the planet Saturn in the 1980s). The nearest bands moved to the west, faster than the rotation of the Earth (which seems to move the night sky to the west). Bands further up from the horizon moved slower. The wave pattern filling the southern sky is the 'sweetwater ocean' of the Sumerians and, for the Egyptians, the entry to the "Underworld." Much later the Greeks will claim that Earth is surrounded by a river called "Ocean." [note 50]

Each night the shadow of the Earth would sweep across the rings from east to west. In effect a large portion of the rings would not be seen, leaving only two pillars at the left and right. But this was capped by the bright band of the ecliptic which was too far removed from Earth to be effected by the Earth's shadow. The effect looked like a portal or gate. This became the gateway to the "other world" of the Egyptians, located in the western sky -- the direction in which the doorway rotated each night. [note 51]

In Akkadian times (after 2335 BC), in Mesopotamia, the name for the village of Babylon is misunderstood by the invading Akkadians as "The Gate of the Gods" -- that is, the doorway through the Absu. Subsequently, Babylon becomes the most important ceremonial center in all of the lands of Akkad and Sumer.

I have presented this information on the Absu (more will follow) because it is an important concept. Once the reader knows of the Absu, many statements and descriptions from remote antiquity, which have reference to an ocean, a sea, or a number of rivers, all of a sudden take on meaning and start to make sense. The concept of an ocean in the south skies remained even after the Absu disappeared.

The rings disappeared, rained down upon Earth or more likely drifted out to space, shortly after 2350 BC, in what will later be known as the 'Flood of Noah', with the last and most distant rings remaining, I suspect, to perhaps AD 400. More on this in the next Chapter.

The Gods Leave

The battling Gods in the sky started to retreat after 3000 BC, and Saturn and Jupiter eventually moved to their current orbits, although it would take 860 years for Jupiter and may have taken over a thousand years for Saturn and the Titans. As the Gods retreated into the far sky, Jupiter at first continued to bolt objects in the asteroid belt through which it was moving, as it was receding from the Sun. The displays enter the mythology of the Gods as the magical weapons of the chief God -- the bolt of Zeus that never misses, the hammer of Thor.

Jupiter looked very large initially, with a gigantic mountain-shaped plasma stream below the globe (also surrounded by a coma). The large outpouring was at Jupiter's north magnetic pole, which is located at its south geographic pole. From a number of source it is clear that it was colored green. At a much later date this will be red instead.

A much smaller plasma shaped funnel appeared above the globe, suggesting horns where the edges were most dense. In this form, this is the "Bull of Heaven" who had destroyed the home of the Gods. Colored green and mostly immobile (as an outer planet, Jupiter would have moved through the skies only slowly) Jupiter was identified as the mummified body of Osiris.

On reaching the asteroid belt Jupiter would not likely have had an extensive coma or tail. A large coma would only develop again as Jupiter exited the asteroid belt and was no longer in proximity to the conductive material of asteroids and dust. Jupiter exited the asteroid belt in about 2550 BC at a distance from the Sun of 3.1 AU.

While Jupiter was in the asteroid belt, its massive mountain-shaped coma was replaced by horizontal streams of plasma from its south pole, directed left and right into the dust and objects of the asteroid belt. In about 400 years, after clearing the asteroid belt, Jupiter would again develop a mountainous lower plasma outpouring in an attempt to reach equilibrium with the electrical field of the Sun in far outer space (between 3.5 and 5.2 AU from the Sun).

I will get back to this in a following chapter, but it might be of interest to quote Plutarch's brief description, from Zoroastrianism (Mazdaism) sources, of the God Ahura-mazda (who is Jupiter). In "Isis and Osiris," (AD 200) he writes..

"Then Oromazes [Ahura-mazda, Jupiter] enlarged himself to thrice his former size, and removed himself as far distant from the Sun as the Sun is distant from the Earth, and adorned the heavens with stars."

"One star he set there before all others as a guardian and watchman, the Dog-star [Venus]."

The comment about 'distance' suggests that eventually Jupiter's coma was the visual size of the Sun or Moon, subtending 1/2 degree in diameter. At the distance of 5.2 AU, the final location of Jupiter, the coma can be estimated at 3.5 million miles in diameter. [note 54]

The "Dog-star" mentioned in the quoted text above is translated from Greek use of the Egyptian word "Sothis," which was used both for the star Sirius (the Dog Star) and the planet Venus, and meant something like "bright" or "shining." In Egyptian it takes the masculine form for Sirius and feminine for Venus, the difference being an ending d or t. The Greeks didn't differentiate, or didn't care. There is the additional confusion in the practice in antiquity of appointing stars as the 'spirits' of the planets, like every person (in Egypt) would be stellated after death. Sirius was the brightest star and Venus was the brightest planet. Sirius was 'the star of Venus.'

The word "Dog-star" is used in the English translation of Plutarch, who used "Sothis" as a translation of "Tishtrya" from his source, the Zoroastrian Zend-Avesta scriptures. "Tishtrya" could also be translated as "shining." "Tishtrya" is Venus.

As noted above by Plutarch, the planet Venus remained after the battle to course across the sky. In antiquity Venus is variously called Neith, Isis, Hathor, Athena, Inanna, and other names, and is often identified as a warrior goddess. [note 55]

After 3114 BC, Venus circled the Sun as a planet, and for the next 2500 years displayed a gigantic plasma tail, stretching some 30 or 50 million miles away from the Sun. Because Venus is an inner planet, the full extent of its plasma tail would be seen from the vantage point of Earth most of the time. Today the tail has dropped to dark mode. Today Venus also still shows its youth by its excessive heat radiating away, continuously erupting volcanoes, continuous lightning strikes, and curious sparsity of craters. [note 56]

Venus was alternately represented as a charmer and a terror. That she remained venerated, despite occasional destructive near-approaches with Earth, is probably due to the fact that Venus was the most spectacular object in the sky between 3100 BC and 685 BC, an image intermittently reinforced by being seen at various distances and various parts of the sky and drawing closer every two years or so. She must have been seen as everyone's friend and companion throughout life. In Babylonian (Chaldean) records Venus is not recognized as a 'planet' until after 600 BC, as also in Hindu records.

And a minor planet, Mercury, with wings and a tail (or a beak, in some Egyptian iconography) continues to scurry back and forth as a messenger of the removed Gods. The orbit of Mercury is the most displaced in angle from the ecliptic, and would have been understood as flying off the ecliptic (the path of the Gods) at times, often disappearing in the portion of the sky where the Sun rose. Mercury became the God of the air in Mesopotamia.

Another loose cannon, Mars, will start to appear close to Earth about 30 years after 3114 BC. Mars will become the most important God, Horus, of the Egyptians over the next 300 years. More on that in the next chapter.

The Titans (the two giant planets Uranus and Neptune) are banished to the Underworld -- the far reaches of the Solar System -- to be rediscovered by telescope nearly 5000 years later, and named in accord with Greek mythology. Saturn takes up his station as Lord of the Underworld. He eventually becomes just a faint speck among the stars of the sky, taking 30 years to orbit the Sun, however, he will be recognized and tracked worldwide throughout antiquity.

If, as a reader, you wonder at the movement of these planets seemingly out of concert with the celestial harmony of today, I should first remind you that any of the suggested orbits are only slightly different from today. But also, the Solar System is hardly as stable as is generally accepted. The orbits of some of the outer planets are today observed to be changing inclination to the ecliptic, although minutely, which is as likely to be the result of electrical interactions with the Sun as being caused solely by gravitational interactions. All the repeating comets have likewise been observed to change orbits for reason which cannot be attributed to gravitational forces alone. [note 57]

The Return of the Axis Mundi

As the Earth assumed a new orbit further from the Sun after 3114 BC, it would have to equalize its charge to match the new location in the increasing negative electrical field of the Sun. This was accomplished through an influx of electrons, concentrated at the magnetic poles. Plumes of plasma in glow mode would have extended soon after 3114 BC from both poles, rising straight up from the north and the south, and then bending toward the tail end of the magnetosphere, away from the Sun. These would be seen at night throughout the world, broadening at the top, like trees. To be seen, the plumes would have had to extend 4 or 5 Earth diameters up (40,000 to 50,000 miles) along the magnetic field lines, and another 4 or 5 diameter into the tail of the Earth's plasmasphere where they broadened out to become transparent. The two trees would seem to wave in the wind, although in actuality this is the nightly change in perspective resulting from the rotation of the Earth, for the tops would continue to follow the direction of the extension of the plasmasphere away from the Sun. [note 58a]

[Image: Plasma plumes at the poles]
Image: Plasma plumes at the poles extending into the magnetosphere in the direction away from the Sun.

There were also two trees associated with the east and the west. These are without a doubt the leading edges of the Absu, lit by the Sun, and seen rising up and widening directly from the east cardinal point and from the west. The four trees are the pillars which are though to hold up the sky, perhaps the daytime sky, but certainly the nighttime sky. They occur in the 'mythology' of the Egyptians, the Chinese, and the Olmecs of Mesoamerica.

Both China and Mesoamerica assign colors to the four trees, and as a result to the four cardinal points. The colors assigned in Mesoamerica can be traced to the celestial phenomena involved. The tree at the north is white, as would be appropriate to a glow-mode plasma. The tree of the south is yellow, which might be a coloration due to looking south through an extensive Earth atmosphere and the Absu. The tree in the east is red. The tree in the west is black. So reads the Maya "Book of the Chilam Balam."

The colors of the inverted spikes of the leading edges of the Absu, standing up in the east and west, were most likely determined as the night passed and dawn came (Mesoamerica defined events at their completion). At dawn the east tree would reflect the light of the rising Sun, or its red color may have been intrinsic, for the red color was definitely an aspect of the the Absu. The west tree is in the shadow of the earth at dawn, so it is always black.

The north tree would be the largest since the north magnetic pole would be most effective in gathering electrons. The formation of this tree was a monumental event, recorded in specifics not only in the "Chilam Balam" but also in casual reference in the "Popol Vu" narrative. The event of the establishment of the tree in the north was monumentalized in AD 700 in the sculptured texts of the Temple Inscriptions at Palenque in the Yucatan. The central temple relates in part,

"On August 13, 3114 BC, 13 Baktuns were completed.
1 year, 9 months, and 2 days after the new epoch began,
GI' [Saturn] entered the sky.
On February 5, 3112 BC, GI' dedicated it.
'raised-up-sky north-eight-house GI [Venus]' was its name.
It was his house of the north."

The raised-up-sky north-eight-house (edifice) was dedicated a year and a half after the start of the current era, as retrocalculated by the Maya. It is within expectations that it would take perhaps a year to develop a plasma stream in glow mode in response to a change in the electrical field surround the Earth's plasmasphere. The event is noted here (and in other records) because the raised-up-sky north-eight-house was much larger than anything else ever seen in the skies up to this point in time. It rose far above the previous polar location of Saturn. Seen from Mesoamerica, the Saturnian planets had hovered only some 20 degrees above the north horizon. "Saturn entered the sky," is noted because the planet had now moved (within a year and 9 months) across the sky and to the south. This had to be established first (in this text) because otherwise Saturn (GI') would not have been able to construct his edifice. Mesoamerican languages are action based. [note 58b]

[Image: Jupiter after 2490 BC. The south polar plume rises above Jupiter. A small figure controls the rotation of the southern stars.]
Image: Jupiter with his banded head wrap, seated on his temple seat and holding a 'shen.' The 'shen' dates the imagery to after 2490 BC. The south polar plume rises above Jupiter (and thus the ecliptic). A small figure at the end of the plume controls the rotation of the southern stars. The table and pillar are architectural details.

There is a "green tree of the center" defined at this time also (in the "Chilam Balam"), but the location is probably the whole range of the southern sky. This is Jupiter on his green mountain receding into the distance. It would appear first in the east and look small. The green shape would increase in size as the Earth overtook Jupiter, and diminish again in size as Earth passed Jupiter. This movement through the south skies would allow the judgement that the green tree was located somewhere between the trees of the east and the west but in front of the yellow tree of the south.

The trees would fade with time, then suddenly disappear, except for the fan-shaped edges of the Absu in the east and the west. As a result the trees will reappear again, as the "Chilam Balam" makes clear, with each major change in the Earth's orbit -- in 2349 BC and 1492 BC. I will address these changes in following chapters.

A New Era

Humans who had observed the celestial drama narratized the events with some difficulty and with considerable confusion, which shows in the later accounts which have come down to us. Both in Egypt and Mesopotamia, the stories involve repeated councils by the Gods where agreements are reached and then broken and tradeoffs are made. It seems to have taken many years before matters in the sky were settled.

Late Egyptian legends speak of battles and periods of negotiations among the Gods as they determine the winner and who, between Seth and Osiris, is to rule which territory -- Upper Earth (Heaven) or Lower Earth (the Underworld of the south skies). But the story is cast in terms of a division between Upper and Lower Egypt, rather than Upper and Lower Earth. As the planets Jupiter (Seth, and later as Re) and Saturn (Osiris) move further away from Earth, and Horus (Mars) starts to show up near Earth, the claims on territories change. Horus ends up as ruler over all of Egypt, Osiris receives the Underworld of the dead in deep space, and Seth gets nothing. When early pharaohs make statements about the conflicts or peace between the "two lands," they are speaking about Heaven as Upper Earth and the Underworld as Lower Earth. Over time these terms come to mean Upper and Lower Egypt -- the river region of the south and the delta region of the north. There are some parallels between the two Egyptian territories and the two celestial domains, because Seth was worshipped in parts of the delta and Horus in Upper Egypt before Upper Egypt extended its cultural and religious influences to the delta. [note 58]

In the end, among the Egyptians, it is agreed that Saturn (Osiris) gets the Underworld and remains there, swaddled in strips of cloth like a mummy. He never again disturbs other planets. Jupiter (as Re) remains active, zapping any stray asteroids which come near. Egypt is awarded to Horus, who is held to be the resurrected Osiris, but in actuality is Mars now on an orbit which periodically overrides the orbit of Earth.

Within a hundred years of the disturbance, both Mesopotamia and Egypt rebound to achieve the most stupendous growth in civilization ever seen. This rebound stands as one of the most amazing facts of prehistory, a blooming of civilization often noted as "unsurpassed" by historians and archaeologists. This is duplicated in other places, as if the world suddenly woke up. Large scale cultivation starts up right after 3000 BC in West Africa, the Indus valley (Pakistan), China, southeast Asia, Mesoamerica, and South America. Agricultural production in Mesopotamia increases as never before, monumental stone architecture soon takes a leap forward in Egypt, trade is expanded, and writing suddenly proliferates. [note 59]

In spite of this progress, however, both Mesopotamia and Egypt remain conservative and rooted in the past. The temple religions and economies are now more tightly integrated into society than ever and become the justification for the kings and pharaohs who rise to fill the void left by the departed Gods.

The universal lack of an elite before 3100 BC is an outstanding and inexplicable difference between the culture before and after the flood of 3114 BC. Today we simply cannot imagine the existence of the large egalitarian society which somehow accomplished the extensive irrigation projects, food production, and trade which existed before 3100 BC. We are much more comfortable with conditions after 3100 BC, when kings, pharaohs, and emperors show up to lead the people. [note 60]

We are a gregarious species and we look for leadership. Anyone who reached out to lead the people, after the removal of the leadership of the powerful Gods, would have been willingly accepted. The first kings in Sumer are known as the "shepherds of the people." The new leaders take on the role of the Gods.

Again, I have to point to the sky for the example of the behavior of those who assume the leadership as kings and pharaohs. The new leaders all derive from the established priesthood, and are often the primary servants of the local God. The new leadership understands dynastic succession as legitimate. It had been seen among the Gods. The new leadership sees battle and the death of others as a means of achieving power. This too could be inferred from the activities depicted in the skies. In Mesopotamia the new leaders remain as the kings of distinct theocracies. In Egypt the new leadership unifies the individual districts, with their individual Gods, and assumes for itself the identity of the one ruling God, Horus.

Endnotes

Note 1 --

See the notes on the Maya calendar in Chapter 17, "The Maya Calendar," for how reasonable this date is if solar years are used rather than years of 365.25 days. Allowing for the error made by the Olmecs in 747 BC (the presumption that the 360 day year before 747 BC extended back indefinitely), the date of the end of the "Age of the Gods" should be placed in 3080 BC (in solar years, not Gregorian or Julian years).
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Note 2 --

The "King List" was brought to Greece by Berossus, a priest of former Babylon, in ca 280 BC and published. Until the 19th century AD, this was the only extant record.
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Note 3 --

In fact, the documents from Sumer list the numbers in "sars" which is 3600, that is, 60 times 60, and in "ners" which represents 600. The Sumerians used the decimal numbering system, but large numbers were expressed in sexagesimal. In the 7th century BC, the Assyrians use "sarus" specifically to mean 3600 days, that is, a decade of years of 360 days.

See Chapter 13, "Chronology," for the basis of a year of 225 days, and an analysis of the "King List." I will use Solar years (a rotation around the Sun) rather than our 365.25 day years. It would make little sense to do otherwise, since 'calibrated' Carbon-14 dates have been unwittingly adjusted for Solar years.
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Note 4 --

It is also from this time that the lengths of rulership become reasonable. The previous kingship at Kish and Uruk had included some 20 long-lived kings. Gilgamesh himself -- fiction or not -- is attributed a reign (or life span) of 126 years. It has frequently been suspected that some of the figures for the "kings after the flood" represent how long a king lived, rather than the length of his reign. At 126 years of 240 days, Gilgamesh would have lived to the age of 82.

The very early poem "Gilgamesh and Aga" recounts the defiance of Gilgamesh as he stands up against Aga the King of Kish over a matter of digging wells. The poem has no literary conclusion as we would like, although there is what looks like a later ending added which tells of Gilgamesh's capture and release of Aga.

A schema of notation is used for the long-lived "kings after the flood," which is different from the 'turns' obviously used for the "kings before the flood" and not at all clear. The literary style of the initial portion of the "King List," the "kings before the flood," also differs from the remainder of the list in using archaic language. Near the end of the list, for the last of the records at the time of the fall of the Akkadian Empire, this style is used again.
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Note 5 --

"Remarkable organizing ability was required to administer huge estates, in which, under the 3rd dynasty of Ur, for example, it was not unusual to prepare accounts for thousands of cattle or tens of thousands of bundles of reeds. Similar figures are attested at Ebla, three centuries earlier."

-- Encyclopaedia Britannica, 15th edition

"There are samples of the clay counters used in the Near East from about 9,000 BC to 1500 BC. There were about 500 distinct types, although not in all times and places. Tokens start to be found at widely separated sites as of 8,000 BC (Carbon-14 dated), such as Level III of Tell Mureybet in Syria and Level E of Ganj Dareh in western Iran. Tokens were used at sites throughout the Near East, from Israel to Syria, Turkey, Iraq, and Iran, with the exception of Central Anatolia. The farthest extent of their use was from Khartoum in the Sudan to the pre-Harappan [in Pakistan]."

-- John Alan Halloran, [http://www.sumerian.org/]


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Note 6 --

If the arc from Saturn to Mars and Earth started up and extinguished eight times over the thousand years of the "Age of the Gods" and perhaps lasted over a hundred years each time then we should expect the upper hemisphere of Mars to have been severely burned. The top hemisphere is actually some three miles lower, but for no clear reason. What is more interesting is the lack of craters in the north and the existence instead of five very large fulgamite lightning blisters (Olympus Mons, Arsia Mons, Pavonis Mons, Ascraeus Mons, and Elysium Mons) and three smaller ones (Hecatus Tholus, Albor Tholus, and Tharsis Tholus), clearly the mark of eight stupendous electrical lightning strikes. These are far larger than any volcanoes on Earth. The caldera of Olympus Mons is 40 miles in diameter, an area of 1200 square miles -- large enough to contain the city of Chicago, 243 square miles, plus NY city and LA -- but shows no lava flow. It has the shape of a pancake, and is three times the height of Mount Everest. These are not volcanoes.

The "Chilam Balam" book of the Maya calls this first Mars (actually calling it "first" as the Egyptians do) "Bolon Dzacab" which translates as "Nine-Lives" or "Nine Generations." The Olmecs thus counted occurrences of Mars when it was centered on Saturn, rather than counting the number of times it lowered to Earth. Mesoamerican languages count the existence of an event on completion, not at the start, as we do. The title "Nine-Lives" is typical of suggesting that the God appeared close to Earth eight times. See Chapter 17, "The Maya Calendar," for details.
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Note 7 --

There are early Ubaid (5600 - 4000 BC) walled cities in the same region. Walls were originally built as dikes and used to prevent flooding. The Ubaid culture represents the first settlers of lower Mesopotamia between the Tigris and Euphrates and precedes the Sumerians. But the model of a 'city' comes from much older established cities of Anatolia (some listed below), which were frequently at war with each other, as shown by the collections of baked clay throwing balls at some locations.

The text of the "King List," where each city is attacked or sacked in turn, reflects the political conditions in Sumer at a later time, when the cities of Sumer constantly attacked each other to remove kings and city gods.

The first written record of the construction of city walls in Sumer is the description of the walls of Uruk. The building of Uruk's city walls is attributed to Gilgamesh (ca 2700 BC), although archaeological indications are that he repaired the walls rather than built them. The first Sumerian kingship, however, was at the city of Kish, 300 years earlier. This dates the earliest composition of the oldest portion of the "King List," including the "kings before the flood," to some 300 years after 3100 BC at the city of Kish. The next portion, representing the addition of the kings of Kish and Uruk, probably dates to shortly before 2700 BC -- the time of Gilgamesh.

The Vedas list the number of times Mars approaches Earth as "a hundred," but the number is clearly meant as "a lot of times." Although some of the 'mythological' content of the Vedas reflects a history of the world from the "Age of the Gods," the Vedas were only written down after 500 BC. A number of people have based complete cosmologies on the Vedic information, for example, Donald W. Patten and Samuel R. Windsor "The Mars-Earth Wars" (1996), and John Ackerman "Firmament: Recent Catastrophic History of the Earth" (1996).
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Note 8 --

At this time, the Sun was probably visible, and if not, then at least it got light and dark in rotation, and days could be counted in this manner. As I have noted elsewhere, the rotation of the egg, "without cease," in a circle around the north pole would also have indicated the rotation of the Earth.
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Note 9 --

The listed dates show up in readings of North American archaeology as dates marking long-term changes in climate, moisture, and vegetation, except for the appearance of the egg in 4906 BC. Thus the dates 5800 BC, 4186 BC, and 3114 BC, which are detailed in this narrative, may be compared with the archaeological dates of 6000 or 5800 BC, 4300 BC, and 3100 or 3000 BC when changes in climatic conditions are noted.
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Note 10 --

There are also some impressive early city sites in the Levant, Anatolia, and Pakistan: Eynan in Palestine, the earliest farming town (with houses), dated about 9000 BC; Jericho in Palestine, a farming and herding town, with its tower and enclosing wall, dated from 8000 BC (abandoned by 6800 BC); Catal Huyuk, in central Anatolia, dated from 7400 BC (abandoned 6200 BC); Hamoukar in eastern Anatolia (near present Mosul), founded 5000 or 4500 BC and destroyed in 3500 BC; Mehrgarh, in the south of Pakistan (Baluchistan), also started as a village around 6000 BC, lasting to 2500 BC.
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Note 11 --

The "Neolithic" (farming) has reached central and southern France by 5400 BC, but does not reach northern and western France until 5000 BC, the British Isles in 4300 to 4200 BC, and Scandinavia in 4100 BC.

A summary of Neolithic funeral practices and graves follows:

[Image: Lepenski Vir]
Image: One of the headstones at Lepenski Vir, Serbia.

The prototype grave is probably seen at a site facing the raging Danube river (thus oriented west and southwest) at Lepenski Vir in Serbia, and dating from 6500 to 5500 BC. The graves each consist of a single large flat stone slab used as the floor, roughly trapezoidal in plan, and no bigger than what would be required to accommodate a body. There are occasional skulls and bones under the stone slabs or in the ground adjacent to them. These look like excarnation floors. The platforms are thought to have been covered with thatching. They are open at the wide end, and at the narrow end have a standing stone carved in representation of the Mother Goddess, naked, with a large fish-like head and clawed hands opening up her vulva. At times this is reduced to just the genitalia. There are about 50 grave platforms like this. The imagery here is obviously modeled on what is seen in the sky at this time -- the Fat Lady (who is also the model for the Venus Figurines).

I have seen book illustrations suggesting that the platforms were a village campsite (occupied for a thousand years!), but 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 floor cut from one single piece of stone. The same illustration showed canoes pulled up at the adjacent beach of the Danube. There is no beach, the site is on a cliff, and the river is unnavigable here.

The standing stones at the narrow end of the slabs 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' farmers 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.
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Note 12 --

[Image: Ouachita mounds, ca 3400 BC. Artist's rendition.]
Image: Ouachita mounds, ca 3400 BC. Artist's rendition. Ouachita river bank, Louisiana.

In Mesoamerica there is no record of monuments before about 1500 BC. In South America there are many constructions dating to the "Age of the Gods" or shortly after. In North America an oval of mounds (11 of them) at Ouachita in Louisiana, dated to 3400 BC, stands out. This also was not a burial or occupation site. Similar sites, nearby, date to 1500 BC.

The next serious mound building phase in North America is the Adena culture, located throughout the Ohio valley, and dating from ca 700 BC. This is followed by the much wider distributed Hopewell mound culture. The mounds of both of these cultures were graves.
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Note 13 --

Single chamber barrows disappear after about 3500 BC. This may be an indication of the time at which multi-lobed plasma discontinuities become prevalent in the stream of plasma from Saturn.
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Note 14 --

See Maximillian Ottmar Baldia "A Spacial Analysis of Megalithic Tombs" (Doctoral Dissertation, Southern Methodist University, 1995), which reports on the average orientation of all 2385 tombs in Western Europe. Most chamber alignments are on compass directions of roughly west-northwest and east-southeast, with entrances on the east-southeast side. These are median figures, that is, there are also some north-south and east-west orientations.

Most (but not all) of the parallel rows of stones in Brittany, which apparently precede any of the other stone henges and access causeways in western Europe, are aligned southwest, but almost all the passage graves, some of which are also assigned early dates, are aligned northwest, and dated from 4410 BC to 3360 BC. Most of the stone alignments at Carnac also point southwest. I think only the earliest barrows at Carnac are aligned southwest. The oldest barrows in Portugal (4500 BC), facing the Atlantic, and are aligned east-west. This suggests that the earliest location of the plasma contact was in the middle of the Atlantic at perhaps 45 degrees latitude.

Peratt has suggested that the plasma images over the Atlantic represent an auroral inflow to the south magnetic pole. But the parallel rows of standing stones in Brittany and Carnac could be held as equivalent to the Nasca lines of South America, representing the overhead passage of streams of electrons from the Peratt Column which existed below the south pole in ca 5000 BC. This lends credence to some of the very early dates at Carnac.
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Note 15 --

The concept of a cave or caves where humanity was originally generated is repeatedly expressed in Mesoamerican mythology, and even enters the very late creation myths of the Incas.

The smaller orbs following Mars were identified as thirteen in number by Talbott. Anthony Peratt notes that the number of nodules developed in Birkeland currents is almost always seven or nine in number. On reaching Saturn they are seen as surrounding Mars (but may have been the satellites of Saturn). This is reminiscent of Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, or any number of similar narratives, involving the theme of death, a red orb, and a far-away residence.
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Note 16 --

You wonder why the population did not simply move away from the coasts of the north Atlantic. On the other hand, maybe they did. From artifacts and occasional pottery, it looks like the people building the barrows were not indigenous to this region.
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Note 17 --

Some barrows in Europe date well into the Middle Ages, but many of these are fake and were constructed to claim land ownership. Barrows were still under construction in India in the 19th century AD.
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Note 18 --

We may be overestimating the size of the workforce needed to move stones, but a great deal of labor was required to build the ditches around the henges.

The stones are much easier to move if balanced at the center on two pieces of wood, cut across the grain. Wood has high compressive strength in the direction of the grain. Rollers, often suggested, just will not do. The logs would be bruised and crushed and rollers allow almost no control over the direction the stones will move unless the ground is dead flat and the logs very even.

There have been many efforts to duplicate the dragging of large boulders in France, Holland, Germany, and England. They all demonstrate that a very large workforce is required, and that the boulders never move as expected when placed on rollers. Descriptions of some of these efforts may be found in Jean-Pierre Mohen, "The World of Megaliths" (tr 1990). Included as an anecdote, is the following statement..

"The old Breton quarrymen knew how to manoeuvre [sic] moderately sized blocks [of stone] by using wedges, rollers, levers, and ropes to move them sideways on their points of balance and imbalance close to the center of gravity. Thus even small groups of men could roll and shift blocks sideways by working first one side and then the other"

The stones can be walked and raised by two people in a few hours by rocking and inserting wood left and right near the center. Rocking involves people walking from one end to the other on the top of the stone. We tend to think in terms of dragging giant boulders, which has to be the most inefficient way of working; we don't think in terms of vast quantities of available lumber. Large stones can also be moved relatively easily by using a track of wooden rails as supports and shuffling the stones along with pinch bars. This apparently was the method used in Malta.

There is, in fact, a suggestion by Herodotus that the blocks of the pyramids at Giza were moved with some unidentified devices, requiring thousands of components. The best interpretation has been to suggest that these devices were short stubs of wood. A walked megalith can be moved with minimal effort, requiring only a few workers, since the momentum of the block of stone will aid in movement. See for example the website of W.T. Wallington, at [http://www.theforgottentechnology.com] or Gordon Pipes' article at [http://www.world-mysteries.com/gw_gpipes.htm].
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Note 19 --

Some of the earliest henges are the Central European wood henges, called 'roundels,' and dating from 5000 BC. Roundels are closely spaced two-foot diameter tree trunks set up in a large circle with four open entrances. No signs of interior structures or burials are associated with these. The only activity seems to have been feasting. That is generally true for stone henges also. One of the last wood structures is built near Silbury Hill in England (ca 3000 BC), and seems to have had either a circular or a figurative shape (mostly destroyed). Nearby are a number of very large stone henges and causeways dated much earlier.

Peratt in his 2003 article in "IEEE Transactions on Plasma Science" separates the plasma stream display from the source (the anode) -- which (for us) would be the planet Saturn. He notes that the stream most often tends to divide itself into 56 or 28 discrete streams at the anode, and compares this to the henges and the circular designs pecked into vertical rock walls, worldwide. He notes that he has found "hundreds" of these coincidences, on separate continents: the Americas, Europe, Australia. All use 56 posts or megaliths (or pecked depressions) in the outermost circle. The coincidence of design includes an interior ring of plasma streams, and a flow from the outer to the interior rings (representing a substantial increase in current).

Peratt claims Stonehenge is an exact model of "a plasma discharge, a lightning stroke that must have been unprecedented in intensity and duration." He certainly is not talking about an aurora. Presented in a paper at The University of Pennsylvania Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology "Celestial Catastrophes in Human Prehistory?" on 17 October, 2001. Peratt has avoided stating the obvious -- that the "lightning stroke .. of unprecedented intensity and duration" is a planet in arc mode plasma discharge with Earth.
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Note 20 --

A Roman author of the first century BC, Diodorus, makes note of "a temple to Apollo" in use with the "Hyperboreans" (presumably England), where "the God appears every 19 years." This is obviously in reference to Stonehenge, which was reconstructed in 2400 BC and 2100 BC to be aligned to midsummer sunrise, and may have been presumed (by Diodorus) to mark lunar eclipses, which since late antiquity were known to occur on the 19 year Metonic cycle (the approximate repeating cycle of lunar eclipses). The number 56, the number of post-holes at Stonehenge, is actually three Metonic cycles, which occur at 19, 19, and 18 year intervals. The circle of blue stones at Stonehenge also numbers 19. An interesting coincidence.

The "Iliad" takes place over 56 time periods, 55 days and one night. The night event is the logical center of the book, and all the other events rigorously match each other about this center. You will wonder why an author of 700 BC feels the need for this numerical organization. See Guy Davenport, "Geography of the Imagination" (1981).
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Note 22 --

See for example Pierre Mereaux, in "Carnac: Des Pierres Pour Les Vivants" (1992), who rejects the suggestion of an astronomical alignment proposed earlier by Alexander Thom. As paraphrased in a review by Roslyn Strong in the NEARA Journal (2001), "there seemed to be no reason to erect thousands of stones to verify certain risings and settings of the sun or moon." Nor does Mereaux accept the 'cult of the dead' proposed by Roger Joussaume in "Dolmens pour les Morts" (1985?).

Mereaux investigated the electrical properties of the granite menhirs at Carnac, as well as the properties of the geological subsurface of the region. One conclusion is that the standing stones would readily attract lightning (and of course Saint Elmo's Fire). There are no stones erected where the subsurface is not composed of quartz-bearing rock. Where the menhirs stand, the soil is very shallow, and thus the menhirs are in contact with the subsurface rock. I do not accept Mereaux thesis that the alignments represent a megalithic seismic detector.
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Note 23 --

The iconography of the structures includes the circle, the wings at the edges (seen in some 300 Irish barrows), the hill or mound (often crenelated, common in barrows from Ireland to China), and the connecting stream (as causeways). The interior structure of barrows is remarkably similar over a large geographic area and a time span of a thousand years or more.

A double armed cruciform shows up as the plan for the interior space in barrows from Ireland, England, France, Portugal, and the temples of Malta. Changes in construction, such as the use of slabs instead of megaliths, are due to availability of local materials or improvement in construction techniques. Some of the changes in the form and interior plan of the barrows, as in going from a cruciform to a galley arrangement, might be due to actual changes in the signs in the sky or due to local interpretations. But I would suggest that once a rational association is made to an arbitrary symbol in the sky, it remains in use -- despite changing evidence -- for a long period of time.

Some of the symbols in the sky changed after 3100 BC. Circular monuments are no longer constructed (with some exceptions), but, in imitation of the mountain-like glow level plasma discharge from Earth to Mars, pyramidical structures come into use (but only after 2600 BC). The causeway remains in use in Egypt as the access to the desert grave sites, mastabas and later pyramids, always placed on the east or southeast side of the pyramid or mastaba -- reflecting the original northwest location of the plasma stream -- and always including a bend in the road. In Egypt boats are buried beside the pyramids. The symbolism of access to heaven via a heavenly river also dates, of course, from the "Age of the Gods," as does the use of a valley building where the body is prepared before travel up the causeway to the grave site, reflecting the mound or mountain seen at the northwest horizon.

A wood-post building located within the smaller henge, known as "The Sanctuary," located at the far southeast end of the causeway to Avebury henge, is completely equivalent to the valley buildings of the Egyptian pyramids. Within a circle of standing stones was a wood structure which was replaced up to five times with a building of the same dimensions. Described in "British Archeology" (Feb 2000).
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Note 24 --

Considering how slowly an electric charge 'leaks away' to space, it might not be correct to say that the atmospheric electrical charge dropped considerably after 3114 BC. It is more likely that the Earth experienced a large drop only in 2349 BC, when Venus swept near. More on that in a later chapter.
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Note 25 --

A collapsed (burned down) second story temple room has been found and identified among Vinca archaeology in Serbia (about 3800 BC).
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Note 26 --

Marinas van der Sluijs notes the following with respect to the localization of mythology:

"The fact that people made so much effort to locate the gods of a mythical past in their own lands points to the suggestion that the gods were no longer present at the moment the transfer was made. And this is a conclusion rarely made, if not never before, but nevertheless quite much in line with the whole idea of localisation 'überhaupt.' In identifying the nearest mountain as the cosmic mountain of the gods, the nearest river as the river of the gods, and any tree similar to the cosmic tree as the tree of life, the ancients literally 'brought the gods down to earth' and would have succeeded, to their own satisfaction, in recovering the age of the gods."

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