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Recovering the Lost World,
A Saturnian Cosmology -- Jno Cook
Part 6: Creation and the Polar Sun.

[Table of Contents]

$Revision: 19.2 $
Contents of this chapter: [Starting from Chaos] [An Unexpected Flood] [The Egg] [The Creation] [The Eye of Ra] [The Stream from Heaven] [The City on the Horizon] [The Celestial Display] [The God Visits Earth] [The Start of Time] [The First Land] [Depicting the Past] [The Rule of the Gods] [Writing and Records] [The Gifts of the Gods] [Living in Paradise] [Endnotes]

This chapter will deal with the swirling cloud seen above the north horizon since about 6000 or 5000 BC, the appearance of an egg in the sky after 4900 BC, the 'creation' event of 4200 BC, and the following "Age of the Gods" which lasted to 3114 BC. Some of the material from the previous chapters (which you may have skipped) is repeated here.

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.

Starting from Chaos

By 6000 BC farming was already widespread in Europe, Asia, and Africa, and certainly in the Levant, Mesopotamia, and Egypt. That is when an amorphous white shape stood above Earth in the north, described as "mists" and "swirling clouds." Little was remembered of this period, and thousands of years later the claim is made that at the beginning there was no Sun and no stars, that the stars did not come into being until after the Gods had left, 3000 years later. It was universally held that the past before 'creation' was a long period during which the skies were in chaos and featureless turmoil.

In support of a long time during which the Earth was enveloped in clouds and mists, I suggest a perusal of any of the 'creation myths' from around the world. These all describe a swirling sky and specify that this condition lasted a very long time. The creation myths hold that there was, in effect, no history before the 'time of creation' when in 4200 BC Saturn went nova and started to blaze like a sun. Saturn was seen as the Creator God and it was universally held that humanity was witness to this creation event. [note 1]

Long before 6000 BC, there was apparently a continuous plasma discharge in glow mode from Saturn, for the descriptions of a "swirling cloud" in the sky is frequently accompanied by the description of a stream reaching Earth. This was certain after 5800 BC when the orbit of Earth became established well below the equator of Saturn, and progressively moved toward Saturn's south pole. Earth remained in this sub-equatorial and sub-polar orbit for over 2700 years. [note 2]

An indication that Earth was located below Saturn after 5800 BC, and in contact with a stream of plasma, is that a warm and moist period started in 5800 BC and extended through to the end of the "The Age of The Gods," 3100 BC. [note 3]

I would suggest that it was the plasma contact from Saturn to Earth which changed the climate favorably. This long period of warmth has never been equaled. The plasma arc in contact with the northern ocean would produce stupendous amounts of water vapor, resulting in the upstreaming of water vapor and the downpour of rain and snow from far above the stratosphere -- adding to the glaciation of Greenland as a secondary result. It would produce worldwide atmospheric weather conditions unlike anything experienced today. I suggest that a warm and wet climate would result. The plasma contact would change the wind direction, increase the moisture, and moderate the climate of Earth everywhere away from the plasma contact. It would only be later, after the arc has ceased, that the climate would become colder again. This is, of course, conjecture, and contrary to contemporary weather theories. [note 4]

In Europe the Neanderthals had lived through the glaciation of 42,000 to 39,000 years ago. Only the Cromagnon humans experienced the additional glaciations which started 32,000 years ago, the Neanderthals having gone extinct. The last extensive (and officially recognized) European glaciation stopped around 12,000 ya and had consisted of a period of nearly 2000 years when the climate became as cold as it had been in 35,000 years. But from about 10,500 BC the mean temperature had started to increase rapidly and by 9,500 BC the glacier in Europe had receded almost completely. By this time farming had been taken up on the highlands of Anatolia and Iran, while hunting continued as the mainstay in Europe and the Levant. [note 5]

The climate in southern Europe, north Africa, and the Middle East worsened again between 9600 and 9400 BC, and again from 6200 to 5800 BC, becoming cold and dry. The cold temperatures are open to question, but the lack of rain is certain. Much of the drop in temperature is today blamed on the release of fresh water into the North Atlantic from the melting North American glacier. This worsened climate affected farmers in the Middle East especially, for there the rains disappeared completely. Nearly all of the Levant was abandoned for periods for up to 400 years. The same drought depopulated large areas of southern Europe. [note 6]

The warmer and moister climate throughout the world after 5800 BC allowed farming to return to the Middle East. Europe was repopulated two hundred years later, by farmers fleeing a catastrophic flooding of the Black Sea.

An Unexpected Flood -- 5600 BC

Yet another indication that Earth had fallen into orbit below Saturn during this period was seen at the Black Sea. Along the margins of the Black Sea and its river valleys, farming had continued following the drought experienced in Europe and the Levant after 6200 BC, and had concentrated there. The Black Sea region was climatically isolated from the surrounding land areas because it formed a depression 500 hundred feet below the Mediterranean sea level and the adjacent land areas, and even more so because it was ringed on three sides by mountains. The region was thus unaffected by the dry winds from the west and south. The Black Sea was also, at that time, a fresh water lake, unconnected to the Mediterranean, fed by glacial runoff from northern Europe. The region provided fertile lands in the river valleys and deltas of the Danube, Dneister, Dnieper, and Don rivers on the north margins, and in additional river valleys on the south margins flanking the Anatolian highlands where, incidentally, grains were first domesticated. [note 7]

In ca 5600 BC, the Bosporus cracked open and the Black Sea was flooded with a fury of Mediterranean salt water dropping 500 feet into the depression, a process mostly completed in a few months. It is likely that externally-induced seismic activity caused the Bosporus to open up. Most likely the gravitational forces exerted by the arrival of Earth underneath Saturn were responsible. Once started, the flooding was unexpectedly rapid, moving miles per day in the low-lying river valleys. Details of this event will be incorporated much later into the story of a world-wide flood by the farmers and fisherman of the Black Sea. [note 8]

The Egg of Creation -- 4900 BC

By 5800 BC brighter skies had returned, although the Sun was not yet seen regularly. The swirling 'cloud' remained, but very slowly a gigantic circular object came to be discerned in the skies above the Earth's north polar regions. This was the actual physical shape of the planet Saturn in an enclosing coma. This is the egg of the creation myths. All the later tales recall that when, later, the first God emerged, it was as a smaller object from within the egg-like sphere. [note 9]

Thus after 900 years of the static fluffy cloud above the north horizon of Earth, in about 4900 BC, and at the location above the north pole of Earth, a circular shape became visible through the swirling clouds, a globe ten or twenty times the diameter of the Moon. The globe stood, inactive, for another 700 years. The globe looked white, but was the actual planet Saturn seen through the intervening plasma. [note 10]

Although in some legends of creation only the globe is remembered, other sources recall the figure as a duck or a goose, having noticed the planet Uranus, which was displaced from the central axis of rotation of the Saturnian planets (as noted in the previous chapter). Uranus still looked like the head of a bird -- with a beak and with a neck seemingly connected to the globe of Saturn. Thus any number of creation legends hold that the creator god was a duck or goose. The Egyptian heiroglyph for Ra, the creator God, is a goose. The sacred animal of Brahma, the Vedic creator God, is a goose. From about 5000 BC egg-shape designs are added to pottery decorations in eastern Europe. [note 11]

In Greek mythology, as in Egyptian mythology, the globe is the original creator God; Ouranus ("Father Sky") in Greece, Amun ("Hidden") in Egypt. Even before the Goose of Creation layed its egg, or before the Egg of Creation hatched, the imagery must have been understood as being alive -- even though nothing much happened for the next 700 years -- for it moved (in a circle around the pole star) on a daily basis and, additionally, the plasma connections would have grown and moved throughout the year as Saturn moved alternately closer and more distant from the Sun on its orbit. [note 12a]

Image: A polar alignment of Saturn, Mars, and Earth. The relative sizes are correct, but the distances between the planets should be at least double that which is shown. Uranus, the plasma surrounding Saturn, and the plasma connection to Earth are not shown.

Creation -- 4200 BC

After the initial period of chaos, when Saturn looked like an egg in the sky, Saturn flares up in 4200 BC, throwing out an enormous amount of matter in the form of one or more new satellites, and develops a corona, that is, it lights up like a sun. Initially the globe (egg) seems to split and light up, and bright circles appear at the periphery. The glow mode coma collapses and disappears. The mass ejection become the rings with which it remains adorned. Venus is expelled from Saturn and starts to rotate far beyond Saturn's rings. Lightning flashed continuously from the planet to the rings, as it still does today.

"The name of the water of chaos was Nun. It was from Nun that Ra created himself, rising up on the first piece of land - the primeval mound (Benben) out of the water lily (lotus) blossom, born from the world egg, or as a /bnw/ bird who then found and landed on the mound."

-- Gary Fletcher, "Zep Tepi" [http://www.users.bigpond.com/MSN/gary_fletcher/zeptepi.html]

Saturn was now seen clearly in the skies over the northern horizon, as were Uranus, Venus, and Mars. This event was recalled throughout the world as the start of "The Age of the Gods." The date when Saturn lights up can be derived from the Sumerian "King List," which I will detail in the next chapter. [note 12]

The plasma stream contacting Earth from above changed from glow mode to arc mode at this time. With a bang. The change to arc mode must have caused a tremendous noise to be heard throughout the world. A late Egyptian source of the Third Kingdom relates .. [note 13a]

"Amun initiated creation, in association with his sacred animal, the goose. He is called the Great Honker, who gave a great screech which stirred the inert cosmos into action. He is also called the Great Cackler -- the creative energy in the form of a goose which carried the cosmic egg from which all life emerged."

-- Ogdoad of Hermopolis, paraphrased

This is the sound of an electrical arc striking, followed by the sounds of a sustained electric discharge. In one of the Egyptian creation epics (as well as a large number of other tales) God creates himself by his own spoken word. Spoken words were capable of great power for the Egyptians. John 1:1 is one of the last evocations of this notion from antiquity. [note 13]

"In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was God."

Another source depicts the creator God in coitus with Mother Earth, penetrating her "fifty times" and eventually moving away, never to lie with her again. Read that as individual arcs, which are as likely as a sustained arc discharge. (Or this may sum up a thousand years of celestial events.) We see this today (on a larger scale) in pulsar stars -- acting as relaxation oscillators.

David Talbott has traced the sequence of events from Egyptian iconographic and literary sources. At first only a globe shows. At some point the globe splits -- that is, a line forms horizontally across the globe. "The egg cracked," say the records, and they go on to describe the further sequence of events, involving a change in color and a differentiation of the top and bottom half. It is the primordial Yin and Yang of Chinese creation myth. Vedic sources relate the same splitting of the egg.

The line which showed when 'the egg split' is the first of an equatorial mass expulsion which will create the rings of Saturn. As Saturn now goes nova, the glow mode coma collapses, and a smaller sphere, the actual planet in arc mode plasma discharge, appears. Many myths clearly differentiate between the egg form and the blazing planet as if these were two Gods with differing names.

It would be suspected that the line representing the rings of Saturn, located at its equator, was initially seen at an angle other than from directly below. Over time the view changes and the rings are seen from below their plane so that they now look like wings or like rivers of fire surrounding the globe. This implies that the alignment of Saturn and Earth changed over time. [note 14]

Image: Saturn with Mars and Earth

In its position below Saturn, the Earth now rotated around the Sun below the Sun's equator, so that the Sun continually remained in the northern hemisphere of Earth. Seasonal variation would have been slight, the days long, and, as was recalled at a later time, "fruit ripened all year long." This period constituted the "Age of the Gods."

The Eye of Ra

Mankind is now met with a gigantic circular shape in the heavens above the north pole, encircled in oval rings, with a stream connecting it to Earth. And the image reveals the darker shape of Mars as the pupil of what now looks like an eye staring down from above.

Image: "Wedjat" -- the Eye of Ra

An image from Egypt, called the "Eye of Ra," captures what was seen in the sky -- Saturn as an eyeball with a pupil (Mars) and with the eyelids and eyebrow defined in almond shaped lines above and below (the rings as seen from below at an angle) with plasma in glow mode shaped to a point away from the Sun by the Solar Wind. It is a well known image, with what looks like an triangular leaf-like form hanging from below the eye, and a feather-like swirl drawn sideways from the lower lid away from the nose, ending in a ball. The plasma discharge from the equatorial region of Saturn (in effect from the region of the rings), stretching away from the Sun, becomes the line of makeup drawn from the outside corner of the eye across the cheekbones in the later depictions of pharaohs and gods. (This last effect might be recalled from a much later time.) [note 15]

Talbott and Thornhill suggested that the leaf-form is Mars with a plasma discharge shaped as a sword or knife. I don't agree with this. I think the pupil of the eye is Mars. I think the leaf-form is the planet Uranus. In the Upper Paleolithic (27,000 BC to 10,000 BC) this was the head of the Venus figurines, initially close to Saturn, but receding from Saturn between 6000 and 4000 BC with a change in perspective. This resulted in the long-necked figurines of that era with the beaked "bird mask."

Uranus has its spin axis nearly in the plane of the ecliptic -- that is, the planet is on its side, with its north pole dipped 15 degrees below the ecliptic. The axis of the magnetic pole of Uranus would probably have been in nearly the same position, although today is is about 60 degrees away from the spin axis. Since the north magnetic pole of Neptune, located above Saturn, lined up with the south magnetic pole of Uranus, the head of the figurines always tilted forward. The plasma discharge from Saturn would have landed at the south pole, with the north pole receiving only a secondary stream of plasma, accounting for the 'beaklike' bird mask of the later figurines. If seen from a distance, Uranus would have seemed to rotate only very slowly, once with each circuit around the Sun.

As the orbit of Earth changed to fall entirely below Saturn, the planet Uranus would be seen from a changed perspective, looking as if placed next to Saturn, still with its plasma stream from its south pole pointed down toward Saturn. Seen from Earth, the plasma streaming from Uranus was understood as hair. In classic predynastic images, about 3100 BC, it is the hair of the captive held by the pharaoh who is about to club him (using Venus and its tail as a mace). The Maya "Chilam Balam" calls Uranus the older sister of Oxlahun-ti-ku, Saturn.

The pointed plasma outflow extending from Uranus to Saturn becomes the model for the celt -- the polished stone axe -- of western Europe during the European Neolithic (after 4200 BC) and into the Bronze Age (to 1500 BC). These axes are next to useless for cutting down trees although they would hold their own as maces or curmudgeons. Archaeologists call their owners the "battle-axe people," even though we have no evidence of battles. (The tomahawk does not appear until late in the Bronze Age.) It looks like the celts became 'must-have' luxury articles and an index of wealth. A thriving business in the manufacture of very pretty celts develops in late Neolithic England and the polished stone axes are often included in senseless abundance as gifts to the Gods among grave goods. The same leaf-like symbol of Uranus is used for the head-dress insignia of some of the Gods of Egypt -- as a feather ending in a circular shape at the top.

Image: The Narmer Palette of 3050 BC, Egypt. This is a dedicatory cosmetic palette found buried beneath the floor of the temple of the Falcon at Heirakonpolis (Nehken) in Upper Egypt. The back side is shown. This was at one time thought to represent the unification of predynastic Egypt.

The swirl and ball of the "Eye of Ra" represents Venus, expelled from Saturn at the moment of creation, and still connected with a plume-like swirling plasma stream. This will become the cobra form (the 'uraeus'), always part of the crown of the pharaoh. It is also represented as the mace with which the pharaoh 'smites his enemies,' as in the Palette of Narmer dating from 3100 BC. The 'enemy' obviously is Uranus. [note 16]

This image of Venus with a broadening plume of plasma extending toward Saturn, also becomes depicted as an ibex with wildly spiraling horns enclosing an egg -- the globe of Saturn -- seen as pottery decoration in eastern Europe and the Levant, and much later in Scythian ornaments.

The swirling Venus and its tail may also be the model for that strange Bronze Age personal ornament, the torque. Torques are composed of twisted strands with balls at the ends. They are worn around the neck, just as Venus and its swirl of plasma encircled the head or neck of the God in the skies above. We know these primarily from the European Bronze Age of ca 1500 to 800 BC (made of twisted gold wires). They may have had an earlier counterpart of organic material. [note 17]

Image: The plow and ibex, carved in a section of the 90 feet tall Grand Menhir at Carnac, 4000 to 5000 BC. The dotted portions continue on other segments of the broken menhir.

The two symbols external to the eye -- Venus with its swirl and the hanging sword of Uranus -- also show up early in European iconography as the ibex and the plow (or celt) carved on the face of the Grand Menhir at Carnac (dated to 5000 to 4000 BC).

To the Egyptians the "Eye of Ra" represents the completeness at the beginning of time -- the "one-ness" at creation. The symbol first appears in the fifth Dynasty (ca 2300 BC, among the "pyramid texts") of the Old Kingdom. By 1100 BC the constituent parts of the symbol (the corner of the eye, the pupil, the swirl of Venus, etc) will come to represent a fractional notation (1/2, 1/4, 1/8, etc) as the 'parts' of the 'one-ness.' Egyptian mathematics of multiplication and division will remain imbedded in a cumbersome fractional notation for the next two thousand years.

The Stream from Heaven

What did the Polar Configuration look like to the humans below?

From the vantage point of Egypt or Mesopotamia, Saturn would have represented a blazing globe about 30 degrees up from the northern horizon, with a diameter of about 10 degrees -- twenty times larger than the Moon. (At a later time, when the Earth has receded from Saturn, the globe in the sky will be much smaller.) A continuous series of flares could be seen rising from the edge of the globe. Surrounding the globe there were a number of rings, probably also ablaze. These rings were likely seen as ovals, crossed by lighting flashes, and interrupted by the moving shadow of Saturn. (For the first time in thousands of years the Sun was seen.)

Well outside the rings, to the left of Saturn and 'above' (in the standardized image), a white globe hung suspended and attached to Saturn with a swirl of plasma. This was Venus, and would (with its own coma) have had a diameter somewhat smaller than the Moon. I suspect that Venus may have rotated about Saturn in a synchronous orbit and in the same direction as the Earth, so that it too would seem to stand still in the skies.

From the vantage point of Earth the planet Uranus was seen to the right and 'below' Saturn, because it was displaced from being directly above Saturn. Uranus looked close to Saturn, and no larger than Venus, even though in actuality the planet was located a considerable distance above and is nearly four times as large as Venus.

Centered on Saturn was a dark spot about equal in diameter to the Moon. This was Mars looking like the pupil of the eye, but in actuality located a quarter of a million miles below Saturn. Impinging on Mars were four bundles of plasma in arc mode, seemingly from the edges of the Saturnian globe. At times the four bundles would change to three or to five. At other times changes in the electrical field of Saturn (and the Sun) would cause discontinuities in the streams, causing them to look like a swastika. At times of extreme electrical conditions the streams would divide into 28 bundles.

The plasma stream continued from below Mars to Earth. The plasma stream thus looked like the stem of a plant, with Saturn looking like a sunflower on top. On nearing Earth the stream took a bend to land at the north magnetic pole. The stream looked like a river connecting Saturn to Earth, looking almost the same width for most of its length, because it broadened near Saturn.

The whole apparition, initially separated from Earth by a half million to a million miles (two to four times as far as the Moon is from Earth today), looked much closer than it was in reality, especially because it was relatively low on the horizon. Details of Saturn and Mars could be clearly seen. The satellites of Saturn could be distinguished and seen traveling around the planet, and were counted by a number of peoples. The satellites of Mars also could be seen, even though they were quite small. Details of Venus were shrouded by a coma or by its dense atmosphere, as is still true today. Uranus, also with a liquid exterior, was featureless.

The plasma stream connection between Saturn and Earth represented the most impressive display because it showed the most variability and often reshaped itself into geometric patterns, looking like a leafed tree, a puffy beard, or a standing stick-figure man. Where the plasma stream touched Earth a gigantic cloudbank arose in the North Atlantic and enormous auroras played at the edges.

The millions of petroglyphs -- of very complex shapes -- throughout the world, initially carved in around 5000 BC to depict the southern Peratt Column (see the previous Chapter), might have been augmented with the views of the plasma column in the north. Or not. The new entity in the north did not require a vantage point high up on a cliff face.

Petroglyphs have a remarkable identity over such diverse areas as the southwestern United States, Northern Europe, Saharan Africa, and Australia. Although the rock carvings had long been identified with the plasma discharge of Saturn by Talbott and others, the involvement of Anthony Peratt (of Los Alamos National Laboratory) with the Saturnians eventually allowed clear identification of the images. Peratt has investigated some 4,000,000 petroglyphs from worldwide sources and claims about half of the petroglyphs do not represent any known imagery except plasma instabilities.

A plasma instability is a deformation of the plasma stream, which otherwise has the simple form of a conduit. In arc mode this might consist of a circular bundle of continuous electrical arcs. An instability looks like a shockwave traveling through the bundles, deforming the stream into a series of stacked toroids or a number of other forms.

An instability results from a change in the current level being carried by the plasma stream. This would occur as Saturn moved further away from the Sun and back, as would happen if the planets were on elliptical orbits around the Sun. Instabilities would also result if the distance between Saturn and Earth changed over the course of an orbit about the Sun. In either case the instability might last for months, certainly giving the petroglyph artists plenty of time to execute a design.

Peratt has identified the cliff-side petroglyphs as representations of a south pole plasma stream dated to around 5000 BC. There is every reason to believe that a plasma stream from the north would be subject to all the same forms of instabilities as the earlier Peratt Column in the south, but there would now be no reason to climb cliffs to get a view. Starting in 4200 BC, we would expect to see an entirely additional set of rock carvings to appear worldwide, mostly the same forms as before, but with new details. Unfortunately more than half of the petroglyphs have not been equated to plasma instabilities, and the petroglyphs have not yet been accurately dated yet. As long as Peratt holds that the petroglyphs represent a plasma inpouring from the Sun, these additional petroglyph forms may not be identified correctly, if at all.

The arc to Earth might also have extinguish and restarted again, with a sustained connection in glow mode during the intermediate intervals. I'll suggest in a later chapter that the re-ignition of the plasma in arc mode was understood in Mesopotamia as the heavenly assignment of new rulers of Earth.

The connection to the Earth looked like a stream of water, entwined snakes, rotating twisted ropes (Birkeland currents), or a circle of bright columns (in arc mode). In the nature of a plasma stream, it was always alive, always changing. As the flow of current varied, it assumed many different shapes, looking at times like a stairway or even a set of stepped arrow heads. The 'stairway' form and the related 'arrow head' form have been observed in experimental discharges (lasting only milliseconds) and can reliably be scaled up in size and extended to much longer periods of time. The images show up in myths (and in petroglyphs) on all the continents. The plasma stream connected to Earth at the magnetic pole, not at the geographical north pole. Thus it looked like a tree rooted on a mountain at the Earth, but swayed away from this location further away from Earth. [note 19]

The differing shapes were due to instabilities lasting for months and were probably only infrequently identical. The instabilities were caused by the changing response of Saturn to the Sun's electrical field as Saturn moved closer to the Sun and further away again over the year. (Saturn and the Earth were probably on elliptical orbits.) The plasma stream from Saturn probably represented 1,000 million amperes and may have delivered fifty trillion kilo-watts per second for a thousand years. [note 20]

We should distinguish between the plasma contact in arc mode and in glow mode. The contact with Earth started in glow mode, and seems to have lasted a very long time. Then came the stupendous arc, with the flare-up of Saturn. We have no idea of how many years the arc lasted, although it may have been hundreds of years. But most likely the current density decreased progressively over time as the electrostatic charge of Earth built up and Earth relocated further from Saturn. As the current density decreased, at some point the plasma stream suddenly switched back from arc mode to glow mode. The Mayan "Book of Chilam Balam," written in Colonial times, notes the order of events:

"Then it was that fire descended, then the rope descended, then rocks and trees descended."

In higher amperage arc mode the stream took the shape of lighted bundles arranged in a circle. In low level arc mode and high level glow mode it took the form of a twisted rope. The "rocks and trees" were part of the displays in glow mode (rocks) and arc mode (trees).

A common shape assumed by the plasma stream was a shaft with a series of seven or nine disks, initiated as toroids (doughnut shaped rings) which flattened out and turned up at their outer edges. These are the seven heavens of the Bible and Chinese mythology and the djed pillar of Egypt. The steps to heaven are frequently reflected in the design of stepped pyramids in Egypt, Mesopotamia, and Mesoamerica, and in Chinese pagodas. The "tree" form shows up in petroglyphs and, in the earliest Mesopotamian seals and sculptures, as the "pillar of heaven" or the leafed "tree of heaven" surmounted with a globe. [note 21]

The interpretation of the display in the sky in antiquity depended in part on the viewing perspective of people at differing latitudes on Earth, and how close they were to the termination of the plasma stream where it made contact with Earth. It is the snake which will gnaw at the roots of the tree to bring down Valhalla, and the snake which nests in the Sumerian Goddess Inanna's Huluppu tree. It is the entwined serpent-necked animals of the Palette of Narmer (called 'serpopards'). It is the Peach tree of Chinese mythology, seen in the northwest. Here too is the image of the Caduceus: two snakes climbing to a circular Heaven -- a Heaven with outstretched plasma wings on either side. The winged disk becomes a later Egyptian image representing Horus, and elsewhere for Mercury. One Indian source at a later date calls the plasma column a swizzle stick, "stirring up creation." Nordic tales identify it as a tree atop of which the Gods live.

To the people living much further north than the Mediterranean, the contact of the plasma stream near Earth would have looked different. Both Celtic mythology and the Eddas often describe the plasma stream as a bridge between Earth and the 'Other World.' [note 22]

Norse legends call it an "inverted tree" with the roots at the top and branching near the Earth. This is very probable because, on hitting the cloudbank above the contact point, or perhaps even on hitting the atmosphere, the plasma stream would most likely have broken up into separate strings -- not unlike lightning. [note 23]

High density plasma streams tend to separate out into 28 or 56 bundles (even seen at galactic levels). The stone henges of northern Europe, which reproduced the separate bundles of the plasma stream in arc mode, clearly indicates that the builders were located close to the earthly contact point. The same count of 56 separate bundles of the arc are represented in petroglyphs world wide.

The plasma stream from the heavens was accompanied by endless celestial noise as the Earth's atmosphere and crust produced a calliope of sounds in feedback to vibrations from the column. "The Gods taught us music," people will later declare. Chinese legends hold that music derives from thunder.

The Egyptians used the distinctly different shapes assumed by the plasma column as the shapes of a number of hieroglyphs. These are first seen on pottery fragments before 3000 BC. [note 24]

As Talbott has pointed out, the 'bowling pin' shape of the White Crown of Upper Egypt and the Red Crown of Lower Egypt were suggested also by the descent of Mars within the plasma stream (discussed below). Both shapes represent the pharaoh's head as Mars, with the widened bulbous plasma stream crowning his head, especially prominent where it widened to surround Mars. The White Crown is the stream in daylight, with Mars hidden completely in the white glow-level plasma which is lit by the Sun. The Red Crown is Mars seen at night, with the sunlight from behind making the red globe visible. As the Sun shines from an angle, a shadow falls on the column. This is the peculiar cutout in the Red Crown.

The City on the Horizon

Where the arc meets the salt water of the North Atlantic, water is turned to steam in large quantities. This mass of steam must have risen up to stratospheric levels (helped perhaps by the tidal pull of Saturn at the pole) and been forced to spread away as more steam and clouds were generated beneath it. Here it cooled and fell back as snow.

But the cloudbank composed of water vapor was of much smaller dimension than the 'cloudbank' seen as a mountain by people in Egypt, Sumer, and China. This 'cloudbank,' seen from afar, is a dome of plasma -- the bell-shaped bottom portion assumed by the plasma stream under certain instabilities.

One of the semi-stable forms of the plasma stream is a series of three toroids. The center toroid flattens out to become just a cross bar. The top and bottom toroid develop bell shapes, facing up and down. This chalice form becomes the Holy Grail of Arthurian tales. The lower portion would have looked like a steep bell-shaped mountain and would have been seen from very far away. It shows also as a recalled figure, carved on later megalithic tombs, called a 'shield' by archaeologists, and looking like an inverted medieval short shield.

This plasma 'cloudbank' or 'world mountain' may be seen today in the stupas of India or the 'omphalos' of Delphi and other sacred locations in antiquity. The plasma dome at the horizon likely rose up thousands of miles. Eventually the giant aurora or vaporous plasma might have covered perhaps 30 degrees of the circumference of the Earth. It would have been visible from 10,000 miles away -- nearly half the circumference of the Earth. [note 25]

The upper portion, when seen in outline, where the edges of the plasma is most dense, will be recognized as the Ankh held by the pharaohs, as the cartouche of Egyptian hieroglyphics, and as a similar device held by the God depicted in Sumerian seals. [note 26]

Along the edges, fluted areas develop, as is typical of auroras, and would show in relief in sunlight. Such a continuously generated figure standing up to the high heavens, surrounding the strike point of the arc, must have looked like the walled cities described in Sumer, and the primordial mound of creation described by the Egyptians. Numerous records recall the "cloudbank," as it built up and broadened, as the City of the Gods. In later ages it is claimed that the Gods showed mankind how to build walled cities and temple enclosures. [note 27]

"The great gods created the structure of Unug, the handiwork of the gods, and of E-ana, the house lowered down from heaven. You watch over the great rampart, the rampart which An founded," (one manuscript has instead: "its great rampart, a cloudbank resting on the earth"), and continues, "the majestic residence which An established."

-- "Gilgamesh and Aga" Sumerian, ca 2800 BC

The quotation above is from the Gilgamesh sagas. The "majestic residence" described here is actually the E-ana, the name of the temple of An at Uruk. 'An' is the primary creation God. A connection is here made between the founding of the celestial city before the Flood to the city walls of Uruk (Unug), built 300 years after the Flood -- as if they were interchangable. The address, "You watch," is in reference to Gilgamesh waiting, at the city walls of Uruk, for the approach of King Aga of the city of Kish.

Mastabas in Egypt and China, with their exterior buttresses or regular indentations, recall the giant mountainous shape near the pole. In Egypt this kind of wall, enclosing pyramids and temple compounds, is today called the "palace wall facade." Even common house walls in Iran during this period have regular exterior recesses which have no structural function. [note 28]

China also records a giant mountain in the northwest which supported the celestial Peach Tree. In China the 'cloudbank' is also interpreted as the shell of a tortoise which supports Earth -- that is, Heaven. Central and South America see the plasma 'cloudbank' as a mountain of caves -- from which the first humans came. [note 29]

Along the coast of western Europe, the bell shaped plasma instability might have been only a mist to the Celts looking out on the North Atlantic, and only the much smaller water vapor cloudbank, composed of steam from the sea, would have been seen. The western Europeans had a clear view of this local mass of expanding steam clouds, and above-ground megalithic 'barrow graves' are built after 3800 BC in imitation of the furrowed water vapor shape at the northwestern horizon. Beside the overall shape of a pudding, the grave barrows of Ireland and England frequently also have regular indentations at the exterior edges. Barrow graves proliferated along the Irish and English coasts, and are found from Portugal through Scandinavia. Fewer are found further east into Europe. The cloudbank of water vapor certainly was seen as an apparition of substance -- the fortress of Ys floating on the ocean, as the Celts recalled. [note 30]

The Changing Celestial Display

Over the course of the next thousand years of Saturn's rule, 4200 BC to 3114 BC, the images in the sky differentiate into a family of Gods. New details develop from the appearances of intervening planets, changes in the plasma column, and displays of plasma discharges into the space surrounding the upper sphere. The rings seen above Saturn become the Goddess Nut upholding the sky above Geb, the God of the first land (the lower rings), where the Gods live. During all this time the companions of Saturn are also visible -- the planets Uranus, Venus, Mars, and the larger satellites. With the satellites milling about the original creator God, this scene becomes the model for Upper Earth as the 'home' of the Gods. [note 31]

In both Mesopotamia and Egypt, records of the genealogies of the Gods were kept. Male and female deities were identified. However, the gender of the Gods varied over time and by location. Names and roles were frequently interchanged, as political contingencies required. I should also note that the Gods were not initially identified with specific planets. There was, at that time, no concept of a planet at all. There were only the Gods. [note 32]

The skies may also have been crowded with other planets. It seems reasonable to assume that all the other planets of the current Solar System circled the Sun in very close orbits, only to achieve their wide dispersion at a later date. Over the millennium of the "Age of the Gods," plasma displays and planetary objects rage across the sky as Gods with bodies, eyes, tails, claws, and feathers. These are both the Gods of old and the later dragons of mythology. [note 33]

The images in the sky became symbolic objects in later developing civilizations, only to become unreferenced emblems at the remove of several thousand years. The scepter, crown, and throne of kings, the altar, the cross, and church steeple, the haloes of saints, the sword in the stone, the swastika, and hundreds of architectural details, still in use today, all derive from the initial forms in the sky. The symbols are kept, even when the original associations are lost.

Writing about the auroral displays as experienced today, one author states,

".. waving curtains of riotous greens and reds ... shimmering crazily across the entire heavens, producing new scenes every fraction of a second ... blotches, rays, bands, arcs, or curtains.... It can appear to float motionless, or pulsate leisurely, or flicker rapidly with five entirely new scenes every second.... "

-- Bob Berman, "Cosmic Adventure" (1998)

Where the stream of plasma connected with Earth, the outstreaming of electrons would have produced auroras adjacent to the lower part of the stream, probably of a circular pattern and thus seen from afar as matching left and right. These are perhaps the lions or goats standing up against both sides of the tree of heaven as depicted in Sumerian art. At a later time these are griffins. The Egyptians use the same or similar images. Paired animals appear in the Palette of Narmer in ca 3000 BC, and other earlier palettes.

The God Visits Earth

Mars descends the polar column a number of times during the "Age of the Gods." Located between Saturn and Earth, Mars changes location, moving down from Saturn, and coming closer to Earth, while remaining enclosed in the stream of plasma connecting Saturn to Earth, looking larger and larger in the process, until Mars hovered above the north pole of Earth as a giant red sphere. In effect, it is seen as the God visiting Earth. The humans are delighted and build temples to receive and house the God. The visits to Earth happened repeatedly, at intervals of 120 years or more.

Mars, located below the south pole of Saturn, acted as a short circuit across part of the electrical discharge between Saturn and Earth. Mars' northern hemisphere is marked with gigantic electrical blisters, but is otherwise devoid of the thousands of scars and craters which pockmark the southern hemisphere (traditionally attributed to 'meteor' impacts). The blisters on the top half are clear signs of repeated massive lightning strikes, although they are traditionally held to be the largest 'volcanoes' in the Solar System. There are, however, no signs of lava flows. The central depressions and the surrounding swollen ground take the same form as more modestly sized lightning strike blisters to non-conductive surfaces on Earth. [note 35]

About the movements of Mars, the "Chilam Balam" reads..

"Then the heart of the flower came forth to set itself in motion"

When located in the chain of the conducting stream, Mars would increase in charge and be electrically repelled from Saturn toward Earth. After losing its surplus charge to Earth, Mars would move back up again along the plasma stream toward Saturn. Mars' mass is only one-tenth of one percent of the mass of Saturn. In the vocabulary of electrical measurements, Mars is the gold leaf in an electroscope.

This movement easily explains the apparent increases and decreases in the size of Mars. In mythology Mars (under various names) frequently transforms into a dwarf or a giant. As Mars moved down the plasma stream, it would not only increase tremendously in size, but it might have moved away from its location centered on Saturn, for the strike point of the plasma stream was displaced away from the north pole of Earth.

The Start of Time

When Saturn went nova, the surrounding coma disappeared and the skies of Earth clear to show the Sun. But the creation of the Sun and light are attributed to the God Saturn, and Saturn is called "the Sun", not only in Egypt, but almost everywhere else on Earth. With the (real) Sun lighting the side of Saturn, a bright crescent starts to rotate around the central globe of Saturn, looking much like the crescent Moon today. The crescent is part of the Sun-lit half of the Saturnian globe. From the perspective of Earth, only a small section of this is seen. As the Earth rotates, the crescent appears to move counterclockwise around the outer rim of the globe on a daily basis. The crescent dimmed as it moved up toward the 'top' of Saturn during daylight hours, and brightened as it dipped down to the bottom at night. The first experience of time has started for humanity.

The crescent is not only experienced as a marker of the passage of day and night hours, but it is also seen as a boat -- the Barge of Heaven. It is the "ship of the Sun," depicted with a raised prow and stern, and resembles the ships which did commerce up and down the Nile. However, the 'celestial ship' also clearly shows the use of oars in its movement around the edge of the overhead globe, despite the fact that Egyptian commercial vessels seldom used oars for rowing. The 'oars' are streamers of plasma rising from the surface of Saturn. Seen from below, the ship would seem to rotate on a daily basis. [note 36]

Nearly identical images appear as rock carvings in Bronze Age Northern Europe, complete with the oars (and never with sails, although sails were in common use in the North Sea) and, like many late Egyptian images, often carrying the "Sun" as a globe in transport at the center of the ship. [note 37]

The First Land

The Saturnian globe had developed encircling rings of light, the brightest at the edge of the globe, and four 'rivers' meeting at the center and quartering the globe. The area enclosed by the circles shimmers like a field of grain in sunlight. It is understood to be the first land to have risen out of the waters, the home of the Gods -- Olympus, Upper Earth, Paradise, but often just called "Earth" or "The Land." [note 38]

The streams quartering the 'fields' of the upper land were actually plasma flows at arc level encroaching on Mars when it was centered on Saturn. The plasma originating from Saturn divided into three, four, or five streams at various times. When there were four of these, they are the four rivers of Paradise of the Bible. When seen behind Mars these form what looked like a star. This bright form was understood at times as constituting a separate god or goddess. A star within a crescent (the Sun-lit edge of Saturn) is still used as a symbol in Islam.

Together, the image of an eye, the broad crescent below it (at midnight), the outstretched wings, and the column to Earth looked like a giant one-eyed person astride the Earth on the north horizon with arms outstretched. The apparition moved. It changed shape and color, and formed appendages -- arms or wings -- which moved and waved. Venus may have moved like a snake around the central eye. As Mars approached Earth and retreated again, it grew larger and smaller. [note 39]

Having no concept of the size of the Earth, no concept of space, having not seen the stars for the last 1600 years, and having no reference other than plants and animals and the elements of their own stone-age society and limited localities, the Neolithic humans anthropomorphize the vision in the sky and take the apparition to be a giant person. Taken all together it was not seen as a celestial phenomenon, but as a God, or more properly as an overlord, a political term just entering the agricultural lands of the Mesopotamia and Egypt. [note 40]

Most of the southern sky of Earth was shrouded by bands of particulate matter which had formed in the plane of the Earth's equator from earlier plasma strikes by Saturn. This series of bands or rings extended out perhaps 8000 miles from Earth, and was called the 'Absu,' the "sweetwater ocean," by the Sumerians. The Earth's rings were individually disturbed by wave patterns, making the south sky look as if it were filled with a gigantic ocean. Like the rings of Jupiter or Saturn the nearest (lowest) bands moved faster than the Earth's rotation. The furthest bands moved slower than the rotation of the earth. (Both moved to the east.) Visually the effect of these bands moving at differential speeds was quite like looking out on a sea. [note 41]

Image: Pots with wave designs.

Humans conceived of their limited Universe as consisting of a bowl-shaped depression (where they lived), with the south sky filled with a sea, and the north sky now occupied by a new land which had risen out of the swirling waters of the north (another sea), and connected to Earth -- Middle Earth -- with a river of plasma. Away from the globe of Saturn and its rings, the northern stars could probably be seen. They would end up being called the "imperishable stars" by the Egyptians.

Depicting the Past

In Egypt and Mesopotamia, images of the polar configuration of the "Age of the Gods" (4200 to 3114 BC) do not show up until the cosmic display has disappeared from view. In Egypt the images show up almost immediately, with a lag of perhaps only a few decades. In Mesopotamia it will take longer. In both locations, the imagery remains stable after it first appears and changes very little over thousands of years. The stability of the imagery is an important indication of the factual basis underlying the depictions. The images were guarded and authenticated, but 'created' from divergent recollections, descriptive in noting that it was a giant 'person' but with only some of the recalled attributes actually translated to a depiction of the God.

In the era after 3100 BC we are dealing with attempts to graphically depict many differing recollections, all of which were true at one time or another and had become fixed in the imagination, even though the original forms may have changed in appearance over time. I find it reasonable to assume that once an abstract image is given a familiar identification, in terms of "it looks like..," it will remain the same, even when the original changes considerably.

Unlike the European representations, which continued to hold the image in the sky as a female figure or a house, in Egypt and Mesopotamia the interpretation of Saturn and the plasma stream was of a person, a supreme being -- which in Egypt is now (or soon) assumed to be the pharaoh. It is a head seen in profile, to which the puffy beard is added (as in Mesopotamia also). Intermittent aspects of the plasma stream, the discontinuities noted by Peratt, become the magic or fetish symbols of the pharaoh -- the Ankh, Djed Pillar, and the Was Sceptre. In Egypt everything is retained and assigned a purpose in a plan where the pharaoh now is the God that was.

In Mesopotamia the tree to heaven, complete with a globe at the top, is placed on seals next to the very human-looking image of the God, who is seated on a throne. On the other side, facing both the tree and the God is the king, the caretaker of the God's fields. The tree and globe, which originally was the God, is now a separate form shown next to the throne of the God.

In Mesopotamia, God is a person with a fluffy beard, with wing-like projections from his shoulders, and is seated. To have the God seated on a throne, rather than standing, probably is a reference to the fact that the celestial image was fixed in space. God did not walk around the heavens. In many seals God holds in his hand a device, the shen, which also shows up in Egypt both as a magical object and as the form of the cartouche used to contain the names of pharaohs or deities. [note 42a]

In Mesopotamia, the seated person is actually the next God to take over rulership of the world, after 3114 BC -- Jupiter. He is clearly identified by his twisted turban head dress. He sits on a throne which represents the plasma tail extending below Jupiter, from the south pole. The rays shown at his shoulder is the much smaller plasma extending from the north pole. (The magnetic poles of Jupiter are reversed from what is encountered for other planets. More on this in the next chapter.)

In some representations he is seated on a symbol for 'temple' which in turn is set on a layer of bricks. The God is thus now assigned to a specific location on Earth, his home and temple.

The device held by the God, called a 'shen' in Egypt, represents a plasma outpouring from the south pole of Jupiter, at a later date, to the debris of the asteroid belt.

In Egypt, where the pharaoh is held to be the God, he stands and is seen in profile. The pharaoh also wears a fluffy beard, and later sports the cobra form of Venus (connected to Saturn with a stream of plasma in glow mode) on the headband to his striped 'nemes' head covering. This last item may be equivalent to the projecting rays at the shoulder of God in Mesopotamia. On the Egyptian dedicatory Cosmetic Palette of Narmer (dated to 3000 BC), the king (who is the God) wields a club to smite his enemies, even though short swords had long been in use in Egypt. The club is Venus and its plasma tail. The unfortunate enemy is Uranus, grabbed by his long hair.

King Narmer also wears a long fluffy tail (held to be a bull's tail by Egyptologists) from his belt, reaching to his ankles, which is another depiction of the plasma outflow from Saturn in glow mode -- the rope. The Palette of Narmer, which shows the pharaoh with captured enemies, is already almost unreadable in the density of its symbols. Only the fact that the symbols will stay the same for the next 3000 years has allowed us to read them.

The Rule of the Gods

When Saturn went nova and started to blaze like a sun (about 4200 BC), humans universally called this event "creation," despite the fact that mankind had existed from much earlier times. Why is it that this event was called "creation" by the first humans to write records, when obviously they themselves must have been created much earlier?

First of all, 'creation' deals with the creation of 'Heaven' or 'the Land,' not with the mundane world of Middle Earth which had always existed. Secondly, 'creation' dealt with the self-creation of the Gods, not mankind. Mankind never reflected on its own genesis, and held itself as insignificant in the face of the stupendous prodigies in the skies -- the visits of the God, the auroral displays, unexpected strikes of lightning from an electrically overcharged upper atmosphere, and the play of Saint Elmo's fire among tree tops. There was no thought of a creation of everything out of nothing -- the only concern was to mark the creation of heaven and the self-creation of the Gods.

The creation event was preceded by the first appearance of the egg, Saturn surrounded by a coma, and thus a shape much larger than the actual planet Saturn. At a later time the egg was understood as the earlier primary God who was to cause creation when Saturn went nova. Ablaze in the sky, Saturn was much smaller than the egg had been. The rings above and below Saturn were similarly held to be separate creation gods. Many people considered that 'Earth' was created from the lower half of the egg shell. 'Earth,' of course, was the 'land' in the sky where the Gods lived, the base of rings on which Saturn rested.

And there were certainly more Gods than a single one. Mars, seen central to Saturn, was initially held to be the pupil of the eye of God or his heart. But as Mars started to move away, and move toward Earth, it was understood as a separate God, as another member of the family of the Gods, which soon also included Venus, connected to Saturn with her swirl. Other elements, such as the satellites of Saturn, took on a similar status.

Writing and Records

In Mesopotamia and Egypt, graphical references to these images in the sky abound. Egyptian priests felt it their duty not to discard any information, for all of it was considered part of the genealogy of the Gods and, by extension, the genealogy of the pharaohs. The details of the symbols constitute a welter of confusion for us today. The world would recall the stories of creation as 'mythical' histories. That these are actual histories, however, and not imaginative narratives, stands out from the fact that, not only are the same tales told around the world, but all the varied 'myths' generate neither explanations nor morals -- they are simply descriptive. [note 42]

The Mesopotamian and Egyptian textual records of these phenomena (spells and later histories) are sparse and late. Two factors might account for this. First, writing, although initially invented before 3000 BC, only slowly develops from initial commercial uses -- invoices and bills of lading -- to the proclamations of kings and dedications of temples. Narrative use takes an even longer time to develop. The tales and histories that we so urgently want to hear were not considered fit material for letters and scripts.

Second is the fact that common experiences are not recorded at the time they occur. Histories are written after the fact -- when things have changed or when the need exists to justify the present in terms of the past. This often has to wait 300 to 1000 years. [note 43]

The Gifts of the Gods

During the "Age of the Gods" mankind was given many gifts. Writing was universally held to have been taught by the Gods, not only in the Near East but also in China. As I have mentioned, for the Egyptians, the changing column above the north pole became the model for many hieroglyphics, with some signs used on pottery predating 3000 BC.

Humans similarly insisted that agricultural practices were shown to them by the Gods. The 'canals' seen crossing Paradise became the model for the irrigation canals constructed in Mesopotamia. Even though irrigation canals probably predated the design of the Gods, the concept was attributed to them. The column which rose from the north pole was seen as a river flowing from Paradise, and the Nile, Euphrates, Tigris, Indus, and Sarasvati were understood to be extensions of this river. The bright anode tufts on the Saturnian surface are seen as golden grain waving in the light. Four thousand years later, the Incas mold gold into stalks of corn to stand before the temples of their Emperor God.

In Mesopotamia, and elsewhere, humans tended the fields and flocks of the Gods believing that they were the slaves of the Gods, as, for example, even the late creation myth of the "Enuma Elish" recounts. Kingships of the next age were understood as stewardships in the service of the Gods.

Worship was performed as directed by the Gods. It included music, dance, and gifts of food to the Gods, and a decor derived from the colorful displays in the sky. Modeled on the battles in the sky seen after 3114 BC, worship also involved human sacrifice almost everywhere. [note 44]

The architecture of mastabas and the temple-enclosure walls of Egypt and Mesopotamia were modeled after the buttressed wall seen erected by the Gods (the cloudbank seen at the northwest horizon). Later pyramids and temples faced north to receive the God (the visits of Mars), but all the early mastaba graves faced the strike point of the plasma arc in the northwest. [note 45]

The early civilizations took the events in the sky not only as mandates for their activities, but also as the analog for all heroic and religious narratives, from the Epic of Gilgamesh to the Egyptian, Near Eastern, Celtic, and Christian resurrection theologies of later antiquity. The 'history' of the lives of the Gods will become the model for story-telling which runs from Sumerian epics through Greek mythology, on through the medieval Arthurian cycles and later fairy tales, and into the present. [note 46]

Living in Paradise

In summary, for a thousand years during the "Age of the Gods," from about 4200 BC to 3100 BC, it was Paradise on Earth. The climate in the Middle East was mild and wet. With Earth in an orbit below Saturn, the Sun would not have been at the center of the orbit. The northern hemisphere would have faced the Sun year-round, and there would not have been the drastic changes in seasons we experience today. Mankind lived in harmony with the Gods, who supplied the techniques of agricultural cultivation, the plans for cities and temples, and the knowledge of the wheel, writing, and music. And for a thousand years the images in the sky provided a spectacular show.

The interplanetary plasma flow must also have built up an enormous amount of static electric charge in the upper atmosphere, to the point where mountain peaks would have been under continuous lightning discharges. And in addition to the electrostatic charges of the atmosphere, mankind was subjected for a thousand years to a varying magnetic field, a by-product of the rotating Birkeland current. If this arching was even occasionally of the right amplitude and frequency, this could have had a long-term ameliorating effect on the psyches of the humans. I have long suspected some such secondary results from an arc discharge. Research at Harvard's McLean Psychiatric Research Hospital has demonstrated the effects of an oscillating low level magnetic field. To quote from the patent application, the use of a localized magnetic field is indicated for subjects with symptoms of "anxiety, moodiness, depression, lethargy, sleepiness, learning difficulties, and memory impairments." [note 47]

Imagine then, humans -- content, cheerful, outgoing, energetic, alert, intelligent, and enjoying a mild climate, living with the Gods, quick to learn, inventing everything from the wheel to writing, forming egalitarian groups to build massive irrigation projects in a desert wasteland, engaging in the manufacture of ceramics and metals, and trading these far and wide. It must have been a millennium of optimism which supported each and every effort. This certainly was the "Age of the Gods."

But then, after a thousand years, the same Gods decided that the humans were too loud, and that they would shut off the electricity and drown them all. That happens in 3114 BC.

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Endnotes

Note 1 --

See especially the work by Dwardu Cardona, in "God Star" (2006), which traces these ideas from mythological sources.
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Note 2 --

Dwardu Cardona presents descriptions which suggest that the 'chaos' consisted of a cloud-like mass floating either in the sky or on an ocean. Associated with this hovering cloud shape was a twisted column of clouds or vapor reaching down to Earth to the north horizon. This 'creation god' column was named Hurakan in parts of Central America. Thus the initial plasma contact by Saturn was in glow mode.

I think, however, that Saturn was not exactly above the north pole of the Earth at the earliest time, that is, there was not a single line extending through the axes of rotation of Saturn and Earth, and certainly not initially. Even after Earth was relocated to below the pole of Saturn it would probably take hundreds of years before the spin axis of Earth and Saturn were lined up. Additionally, considering the variations in the plasma stream ('instabilities') which will show up over the next few thousand years, the Earth might have been rocked about like a little boat in a storm in response to a changing electrical field. Over time the location in space to which the spin axis of Earth pointed would probably rotate to match the rotational axis of Saturn.
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Note 3 --

The Hypsithermal, a period of warmer climate throughout the world from about 9000 BC to 2500 BC, is subdivided into additional smaller periods. The "climatic optimum" period from 6000 BC to 3000 BC is one of these. Because the Earth's orbit is at this time placed entirely below the level of the Sun, the inclination of the Earth's axis to the Sun also adds to the improved climate, especially for the northern hemisphere.
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Note 4 --

Traditional thinking is that cold winds sweeping off the continental glaciers condensed water vapor to rains on meeting the warmer zone south of the glaciers. This is a contemporary attempt to explain the temperate climate south of the glaciers. But cold winds do not carry moisture.

Traditional geological and climatological estimates are based on contemporary conditions, and do not consider an alternate orbit for Earth, with the Sun at a different angle, or the effects of a plasma contact. The overall operation of a global weather system under the condition of a billion ampere arc in the north Atlantic is outside of our current experience.
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Note 5 --

There is currently still no consensus on the dates, ranges, or the number of glaciations over the last 3 million years. The earliest glaciers may have completely melted before the most 'recent' glaciations appeared, dating roughly to after about 60,000 BC.

"The problem is that glaciers act like giant erasers. Each advance eradicates almost all traces of what's come before."

-- Wallace S. Broecker "Glaciers That Speak in Tongues and other tales of global warming" (2001) Natural History

Three or four of the recent glaciations have been identified, covering parts of northwestern Europe, eastern North America, and central Canada. In each case the areas covered by ice are roughly circular and cover an area of about 25 to 30 degrees radius of the sphere of the Earth.

The earliest of these recent glaciations, the European glacier, seems to be centered west of Norway. Two later glaciations are centered on the sea west of Greenland near Baffin Island and at Hudson Bay. The very last glaciation was located in the north Atlantic east of Greenland and south of Iceland. In all instances, all or part of Greenland would fall within about a 30 degree radius of the center points.

Because the diameter of the glaciations coincides with what we would expect if glaciation were centered on the north pole, that is, at the center of the Arctic Circle of 23.5 degrees radius, the locations of the centerpoints these glaciations are often held as evidence that the poles shifted. But this is not required at all. Glaciation is related to the magnetic pole, not to the geographic pole.

As I have pointed out in another chapter, the centerpoints of the glaciations follow the moving location of the north magnetic pole. The north magnetic pole moves in large circles over long time periods and, since the 16th century, has moved southwest from a location near Spitsbergen (east of Greenland), through the Atlantic, and across Greenland. It is currently moving north from a location west of Baffin Bay (and thus west of Greenland).

We have additional clear evidence of the fact that the glaciers have nothing to do with the north pole. The portion of Greenland closest to the north pole was never glaciated, while the remainder of Greenland is covered with 6000 feet of ice. The movement of the Greenland glacier is towards the north as well as the south.

We also have the evidence of the limited extent and the peculiar pattern of glaciation, both in Europe and the Americas. It used to be held that the last European glaciation (ending about 10,000 BC) had extended south from the north pole over Europe (where evidence was found) and throughout Russia and Siberia (where no geologist had ever been). But today we know better. Siberia and almost all of Russia have never been glaciated. The limit of the European glacier, the Wurm, extended across France, ran northeast through Central Europe, and met the Arctic Sea in northwestern Russia. It is part of a circle which certainly does not have the north pole as its center.

The American Illinois glacier likewise followed a circular pattern, covering the region from New York State through Illinois or Wisconsin (and most of eastern Canada), but none of the western states, not even northern Alaska, and certainly not the north pole. (There is an exception in that increased moisture is also responsible for mountain glaciation -- as in the Rocky Mountains south of Alaska which often look to be part of a traditional 'polar' glacier.) The Wisconsin glacier also deposited snow in a circular pattern, further west than the Illionoian, and somewhat further north, to include most of western Canada.

It has been suggested that most of Russia and all of Siberia was never glaciated because the eastward moving air masses had already discharged the moisture they received over the Atlantic on the west coast of Europe. But the opposite seems to be true for the Americas. It is the east of North America which was glaciated, not the far west, except for mountainous terrain. Yet North America also experiences predominantly eastward moving air masses.

Lastly, in southern Europe, between 40,000 and 10,000 years ago, you see a compression of climatic zones, with a sub-arctic zone only a few hundred miles away from a tropical zone. It is the strange mix of sub-arctic and tropical animals which is often simultaneously represented in the 300 painted caves in southern France and Spain (dated 30,000 to 10,000 BC). This is not evidence of a frozen world. It looks instead like a moderate, if not warm, climate. Knowing today that the European 'polar' glacier centered on some location off the coast of Norway, we can understand how it was that a temperate zone extended diagonally east and north through Eastern Europe and into Asia to reach almost to within the Arctic circle. Archaeological investigation in Siberia is spotty because it is cold there today, but hunting camps have been found in northeastern Siberia, dating to 30,000 BC, and close enough to the Bering Straits to suggest that fishermen and hunters could have easily expanded into the Americas long ago. Log cabin villages have been found north of Anchorage, Alaska, and within the Polar Circle.

During the time of the last glaciation, the climate was much milder than imagined by geologists, and mankind thrived and reached every continent. Only US archaeologists still hold that the American Indians arrived after 10,500 BC by walking across the Bering Straits while ocean waters were locked up in massive glaciation on a global scale. See the book by Vine Delorian "Red Earth, White Lies" (1995) where he makes a clear case for why a 10,500 BC 'invasion' of the Americas by Asiatics is unlikely, but also especially why the notion is held with such tenacity in the USA. Virtually everywhere else throughout the world it is acknowledged that the Americas were occupied, although sparsely, by 30,000 BC. A more recent book by Charles Mann, "1491, New Revelations of the Americas before Columbus" (2006), also presents evidence against the '10,500 BC invasion.'
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Note 6 --

The two worstening of climate in the Middle East (where we have reasonable records) suggest that the plasma contact with Saturn was not continuous, but was interupted during these periods. Only after 5800 BC does the plasma contact remain, eventually going to arc mode.
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Note 7 --

The cultivation of grain apparently spread through all of the Black Sea basin during the two dry periods of 9600 to 9400 BC and 6200 to 5800 BC. After 5600 BC, it is the Black Sea basin which becomes the source of the spread of agriculture to eastern Europe and, within another 200 years, to western Europe.
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Note 8 --

See William Ryan and Walter Pitman "Noah's Flood" (1998). This describes the evidence for the sudden flooding of the Black Sea through the Bosporus in 5600 BC, and the diaspora of the mixed-farming (farming, hunting, fishing) peoples and languages, including (probably) Indo-European languages, to Europe and Central Asia, and (possibly) Semitic languages to Asia Minor and Mesopotamia. By 5400 BC the farmers are as far as Paris. Parts of the initial waves of people spread to Anatolia, the Levant, and Mesopotamia. Those who dispersed to Central Asia return on horseback a thousand years later, as the armed Kurgan nomads and herders, and establish themselves throughout Europe. After 2000 BC there are additional movements (of Indo-European speakers) from the Indus valley into the Middle East (Anatolia and Iran).
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Note 9 --

We don't really know when the obscured skies set in, but we know that they lasted a long time based on the creation myths. In all likelihood, Saturn was located in the sky above Earth from about 5800 BC, and made contact with Earth in a plasma discharge, clouding up the skies. But the stars had probably disappeared three thousand years earlier, as suggested in the previous chapter. This period, when the skies of Earth were occluded by "swirling" mists and vapors, is universally recalled as the "chaos" before creation. However, despite what most creation myths tell, it may be that something was seen even during this period, because the fabrication of figurines continues.
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Note 10 --

The notions of misted skies and of endlessly churning water overhead, which we have from almost all sources, might reflect experiences covering thousands of years, or may be an abbreviation of selected elements which led eventually to sighting the globe overhead and the subsequent lighting up of the egg within.

In terms of an image, if the globe subtends 10 degrees in the sky (a measure sourced by Talbott, perhaps from an analysis of the perspective of some images), it will be located at a distance of..

Image: distance to Saturn, based on a 10 degree angle of view.

(71600) * c(10/deg) / s(10/deg) = 406,064 miles

For comparison, the distance to the Moon is ...

(2160) * c(.5/deg) / s(.5/deg) = 247,511 miles

These calculations are based on Saturn being the same diameter as today, and there is little reason to suggest a change in size. Ten degrees is 20 times the diameter of the Moon today. Thus the 'globe above,' would have been immense. As time went on, and Earth's accumulated charge increased, the Earth would have receded further from Saturn and the image would have reduced in size. It is also possible that the initial egg shape was larger than the physical size of Saturn.

Seen from any latitude up to the equator, Saturn would appear at a location in the sky normally occupied by the Pole Star. The amount it might be off from this exact location, as seen at various latitudes, would be very slight if the axis of the two planets coincided.

As has been stated previously, the spin axes of Saturn and Earth would not have had any reason to be aligned initially, and only subsequently became nearly aligned. Thus the apparition was seen from below the Earth's equator. The 'day' would have also been determined by the apparent circling of the giant white orb about the north pole. This movement, even after Saturn went nova, seems to be described in Mesoamerican Michoacan creation myths. Mexicans still play a football game with a flaming ball.

"The ancient sun was a huge celestial orb batted about by the dark, unpredictable powers of the cosmos"

-- Bernardino Verastique "Michoacan and Eden" (2000)

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Note 11 --

There is an obvious problem from both mythology and modeled artifacts, namely the fact that there are no references to the imagery turning upside down. This suggests that Earth and Saturn rotated at the same speed, probably the 24 hour day we experience today. That the day of Earth remained mostly the same for 8000 years can be suspected from the fact that the orbit of Earth never changed radically. To suggest that the day of Saturn changed from 24 hours to 11 hours after 3114 BC, when Saturn moved to a far greater orbit around the Sun, is also not unreasonable if this is understood as interchange of spin momentum for orbital momentum (actually, kinetic energy).

However, the rotation of Saturn around itself has nothing to do with how it would be viewed from Earth located below its south pole, since Saturn is a sphere, and differential rotation would not effect the view from Earth. What we are concerned with here is the fact that, to have the apparition look like a goose, Uranus would have to be seen above Saturn, not below. But Uranus would not rotate with Saturn. This would suggest that the "goose of creation" might have been seen rotating backwards, that is counterclockwise as seen from Earth in the north sky. Considering the distance between Earth and Saturn, Uranus could not have disappeared behind Saturn for any part of its daily rotation. The view also would not change with different latitudes of Earth.

There are actually some indications that Uranus might have been seen in different locations with respect to the globe of Saturn. The Egyptian Palette of Narmer (ca 3050 BC) depicts Uranus as a long-haired captive on the lower right from the pharaoh (who represents Saturn). Even by this time, however, this has already become a standardized iconography which will remain the same for thousands of additional years.

An early Mesopotamian glyph for "king" is a stomach or placenta with a tubular extension (the esophagus or umbilical cord) to the lower left. The same imagery is used for one the banners representing the previous 'kings' of Buto, carried before the pharaoh in the Palette of Narmer. This may also reference the puffy cloud seen earlier with its plasma connection to Earth.

The "Eye of Ra" is another image which places Uranus 'below' Saturn. See the text for details.
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Note 12a --

"How things look," or what they seemed to look like, is an abstract mental process, strongly influenced by habit, and thus by cultural transmission. Once an identification is made, it will remain, despite changes. Cultural transmission of 'what things look like' can be seen in the concept of what is seen in the face of the Moon. China and Mesoamerica hold that the Moon represents an image of a rabbit; Western Europe take it to be the face of a man.
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Note 12 --

The 'mythology' of Mesopotamia is similar to that of Egypt, as is that of China. Hundreds of additional stories, retellings, and legends from around the world all consistently include the same elements.

From India:

"As stated in the Puranas, there was only water all over at the dawn of creation. This water gradually began to circumambulate in a circular motion, which in turn produced bubbling foams. Besides, one kind of white element emanated from the water out of which the creator created an egg. This egg bisects into two parts and the Brahmma appeared out of this egg from where the name Brahmanda or the Universe is derived. One part of this broken egg constituted the earth and the other space. According to the Purana, the tiny parts that scattered all over at the time of bursting of the egg produced rains."

Following is a paraphrase of part of the first verse of the Finnish "Kalevala," transcribed from verbal recollections in the 19th century AD.

"Ilmatar, the virgin of the air, leaves the loneliness of the sky and moves down to the sea, where the wind impregnates her. She drifts upon the waters for ages, pregnant but unable to give birth. A magical bird flies by and lays several eggs on Ilmatar's upraised knee. As the bird sits brooding in the nest, the heat makes Ilmatar jerk her knee, and the eggs begin to change. One breaks open and the lower half becomes the earth, the upper part becomes the sky, the yolk becomes the Sun, and the white becomes the Moon."

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Note 13a --

Book 11 of the Maya "Chilam Balam" seems to suggest that the arc did not start until Mars started to lower itself from Saturn.
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Note 13 --

The goose form seen in the sky, which would be seen with wings and a neck and head, occurs in the fairy tale of the Golden Goose. The egg is the smaller form of Saturn as it suddenly blazes up while going nova within the much larger coma originally surrounding it, the body of the goose.

The body shape of the bird results from the misshaping of the coma due to the solar wind. The tail feathers of the bird would face away from the direction of the Sun. The head of the bird was the remainig glow mode plasma discharge to Uranus above Saturn. The bird of creation is universally understood to be a duck or a goose because the coma was white.

From Hindu myths we have the following, quoted by Kelley L. Ross, and with his added comments..

"The eternal ones, Brahmâ, Hari, and Shambhu approached him, each mounted on his own vehicle: [The sacred animals of the Gods] the bull Nandi for Shiva, the eagle Garud.a for Vis.n.u, and a goose for Brahmâ.

-- Wendy Doniger O'Flaherty "Hindu Myths" (1975)

Ross notes, "There is a more dignified vehicle for Brahmâ, however, the lotus." Kelley L. Ross, at [http://www.friesian.com]. The lotus will be recognized as the outpouring of an equatorial disk, which constitute the rings of Saturn. The same lotus is the seat of the "Companions of Osiris," the four large satellites of Saturn, in Egyptian funeral practices.
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Note 14 --

The tale of the egg which splits open (supposedly along a horizontal line) implies that Saturn was initially seen 'edge-on' or nearly so. With Saturn anywhere 'above' the Earth in the northern hemisphere of the sky, this could happen if Earth were not located directly below Saturn, from which vantage point the rings would have looked much flatter.

The suggestion that Earth started out at about the level below the equator of Saturn, and, over an extended period of time, was forced to slip lower (that is, to assume an orbit which was wholly below the orbit of Saturn), is suggested from the description provided by a number of sources. One of these is a section of the Maya "Chilam Balam" books, which note that Uranus, initially seen above Saturn, "lowered itself into the center" of Saturn (described as a "flower") and that subsequently Saturn lit up like the Sun.

The description above was seen as the movement of Saturn and Uranus, but actually represents a changing perspective due to the movement of Earth from a location of a higher vantage point to a more central location below Saturn. This would date probably to after 4200 BC. It is astounding to think that the predecessors of the Maya could have records reaching back that far into prehistory, but the description which I ran across, after already having settled on the movement of Earth during this time, is visually accurate.

The description also suggests that Saturn and the attendant planets, specifically Uranus and Mars, were in full view, rather than shrouded in mists. We have no similar sequence of events, that I am aware of, from other sources. But it is very possible that the Maya or Olmecs had a completely different view of what was happening overhead. This suggests that the "clouded skies" was composed mainly of the plasma stream in glow mode from Saturn, and encompassed only a portion of the northern hemisphere, but were not significant below 20 degrees latitude.

That the above description is accurate can be gleaned from additional text of the Chilam Balam, which continues with, "His heart was on fire; the Sun was within, and his name could be read." In transcribing information from ancient illustrated glyphic records, the copyist was confusing the illustration with what at a later time would become the glyph for "sun." As Saturn lit up, a blazing ball would be seen, with Mars in the center as a much smaller orb, connected with four plasma streams to the edges of Saturn, as described by many other mythological sources. This configuration, looking like a four-petal daisy from below, became the glyph for "sun." Thus "his name could be read within."

It is also when we run into statements that the egg "moved without slackening in a vast circle" that we obtain a modification of the concept that Saturn just simply stood directly above the Earth. It describes what would have to have been true in the capture of Earth by Saturn, namely that the Earth was captured through slow gravitational and electric interactions which eventually forced the Earth into an orbit below the south pole of Saturn. Thus initially Saturn was seen above the Earth, but not directly above the pole, and would be seen (at least partialy in its daily circle of rotation in the north sky) from a latitude below the equator.

"The rings of Saturn were known also to the aborigines of America before Columbus discovered the land; this means also before the telescope was invented at the beginning of the seventeenth century. An ancient engraved wooden panel from Mexico shows the family of the planets: one of them is Saturn, easily recognizable by its rings."

"Nor were the Maoris of New Zealand ignorant of them: 'One of the great mysteries connected with Saturn is the still unanswered question of how the ancient Maoris of New Zealand knew about her rings -- for there is evidence that they did have a Saturnian ring legend long before the days of Galileo.'"

-- Immanuel Velikovsky, unpublished document, "ring.txt" at [http://www.varchive.com]

The Maoris, however, did not arrive in New Zealand (from the Solomon Islands just below the equator) until about AD 1200.

In the Maya "Chilam Balam" the equatorial rings of Saturn are seen as the petals of a flower. About Saturn (Oxlahun-ti-ku), the text reads, "The flower was his mat, the flower was his chair."

Some other sources claim that Saturn's rings (as we know them today) were generated later after a cataclysmic contact between Saturn and Jupiter. In the Isis and Osiris story they are the mummy wrapping for the body parts of Osiris which Isis gathers before his body is sent to the underworld.
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Note 15 --

The image might rotate in the sky on a daily basis, making the rings look like flapping wings. The eye of Ra is the only image I am aware of that actually attempts to represent the extension of the rings into the space away from the Sun.

The "eye" -- and later a removed and traveling eye -- is a constant in both Egyptian and Chinese sources, and elsewhere.

A circle with a dot (or small circle) in the center (representing the darker Mars in front of the globe of Saturn) was the hieroglyph for 'sun' in Egypt (the God Ra) and the glyph for 'sun' in China, and is still in use today as the symbol for the Sun in astronomy. The Maya use a four-petalled flower as the glyph for Sun -- a larger circle with a small circle at the center.
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Note 16 --

See Wal Thornhill, "Thoth" Vol 8, No 2, (July, 2004) on the "Eye of Ra." This is the most convincing evidence that Venus was expelled by Saturn when it lit up like a Sun, ca 4200 BC. The iconography of the Eye of Ra or the Eye of Horus had previously eluded me.

There are obviously problems with the iconography, for the rotation of Venus around Saturn will change direction depending on whether a left or right eye is depicted. Shown as a left eye, Saturn would appear to be rotating retrograde, shown in counterclockwise rotation as seen from below. The right eye of Ra is thus probably the original. But in both cases Venus is rotating about itself in a direction opposite to the rotation of Saturn.

Image: An aurora on Jupiter, showing a connection to a satellite. Presumably the north pole.

The above image, of an aurora at the north pole of Jupiter (taken in UV light) shows a similar outside connection of a stream of plasma to a satellite. The satellites of Jupiter revolve slower than the planet.
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Note 17 --

The description of a figure called the "Ancient of Days" in the "Zohar" of the literature of the Kabbalah (13th century AD) is an obvious description of the Saturnian polar imagery. It is a head, or multiple heads (skulls), with or within a strong light source, a beard, no body, but with testicles and a penis which exudes some magical liquid equated to the dew source of manna during the time of Moses. There is also "a strong right arm," which has to represent Venus with its swirl connection to Saturn and seen on the left. The "strong right arm" also suggests that Venus was stationary as seen from Earth, that is, it revolved around Saturn in an Earth day.

The Kabbalah dates from about 200 BC and is a mystical reaction to the more staid mainstream theology of Israel since 500 BC. The "Zohar" was written in Spain in the 13th century AD, in badly done Aramaic (including Spanish words). Although possibly based on the Egyptian image of the Eye of Ra, it more likely represents a Celtic oral traditions.
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Note 19 --

The plasma connection would show as twisted ropes only in low level glow mode. As the current increases on approaching the arc level, the plasma starts to look more like a solid column. In arc mode the column would divide up into a circle of 28 or 56 separate very bright streams, at times arranged as concentric circles of these bundles.

Anthony Peratt, in "Characteristics for the Occurrence of a High-Current, Z-Pinch Aurora as recorded in Antiquity," (Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, Transactions on Plasma Science, December 2003), discusses the large number of petroglyphs found worldwide. For the casual reader, this is high obfuscation typical of journal papers. Most of the tie to reality is with respect to current auroral phenomena. Peratt divides the plasma stream up into three sections, and discusses two of them. The lower section, where contact is made to Earth, is not discussed.

In a second paper, "Characteristics for the Occurrence of a High-Current Z-Pinch Aurora as Recorded in Antiquity Part II: Directionality and Source" in IEEE Transactions on Plasma Science (August 2007), Peratt makes note of the fact that all the petroglyphs are created in locations with an unobstructed view of the south. A suggestion is made that the aurora should have encircled the magnetic pole, but it did not. From his research he also concludes that nothing like the south polar plasma column was seen in the north, or did not require access to high cliffs to make a record of. See Chapter 5, "Saturn and Archeology."
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Note 20 --

Current flow in electricity is measured as amperage and represents the amount of electricity which moves from one location to another (like the amount of water flowing in a pipe or out of a faucet), and actually can be counted as the movement of electrically charged particles. If no particles (like, for example, electrons) move, or if they cannot move, there is no current. Voltage is the pressure behind the flow of current (like water pressure in a pipe). It is actually the difference in voltage from one location to another that causes the current flow.

The total amount of electricity delivered per unit time is measured in watts or kilo-watts (1000 watts). This can be found by multiplying the voltage difference by the amperage, w = v * a. The total energy delivered is found by multiplying the wattage by time, and typically expressed as, for example watt-hours, or kilowatt-hours.

There is very little information in Peratt's article to allow a sense of the magnitude of the electrical discharge of the "stupendous" plasma stream. He mentions that amperage of an auroral display scales to brightness, and suggests a level of 5 lamberts as a minimum for the former plasma stream. The auroras currently brighten only to 0.05 lamberts, at an estimated amperage of 5 to 10 million amperes.

Since Peratt speaks of a minimum brightness of 5 lamberts for the plasma stream, we could estimate the current flow of the plasma stream by scaling up. This would result in a current flow of 500 to 1,000 million amperes. I will use the figure of 1,000 million amperes. (In a later paper Peratt mentions "giga-amp" auroras. My estimate of 1,000 million amperes is one giga-amp.)

We have no idea what voltage difference drove the flow. At an estimated voltage difference of 300,000 volts between Earth and the ionosphere, the auroral display today delivers up to about 3,000 kilo-watts.

The Sun today is estimated to present a potential difference of 100 billion volts to the surrounding exterior space. However, V. Bailey calculated 100 million trillion volts -- 100 x 10 exp 18 volt -- in Nature (1961). If we assume that the potential difference with respect to deep space is proportional to the volume of a planet, then Saturn might have been at 58 million volts. That would not be an unlikely figure to use, and leads to an estimate of 58 thousand trillion watts (58 x 10 exp 15 watt). The Sun puts out an estimated 4 x 10 exp 26 watts (Juergens, Pensée ca 1972). (Another source estimates the Sun at 3.8 x 10 exp 20 watt.)

The world's annual use of electricity today is 15 thousand trillion watt-hours (15 x 10 exp 15 watt-hours). (from the CIA World Factbook, estimate for 2002).

Where did all that energy go? If the Earth had no atmosphere or oceans, the energy of the plasma stream would have scoured the surface, loosening the bonds of molecules making up the rocky surface, ionizing them, and electrostatically launching them into space. But the Earth's surface is buffered with an atmosphere and oceans. The energy would have gone to alter some of the atmosphere and ocean waters, but probably mainly ended up electrostatically charging the Earth's atmosphere and ionosphere. Soon the surplus would have flowed out to the space surrounding the Earth, for it is doubtful if the Earth could have remained the end terminal of the plasma flow.

Saturn did not, even over a thousand years, discharge itself completely to the Earth (or the other planets). The discharge happened later, when Saturn met up with the giant planet Jupiter, 100 times the diameter of Earth, and three times the mass of Saturn. 'Discharge' is a misnomer; actually the process is one of charge equalization, a reduction in the voltage of Saturn to match conditions in the space near the Sun.
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Note 21 --

The "Tree of Heaven" on Mesopotamian seals has never been identified as a botanical species.

It should be pointed out that the Chinese pagodas, like the stupas of India, are originally Buddhist architectural forms. The pagoda form was introduced into China after 200 BC.

The geometry of plasma instabilities tends to certain numerical repetitions, as with the 9 toroidal flattenings of the column (which become seven when the top and bottom disappear), and the 28 and 56 exterior bundles of plasma surrounding the column.

The illustrations by Peratt pertain to a plasma column at the south pole, seen partially in broadside, so that the recession of the images toward the top cannot be used to gage physical dimesions of a northern plasma column.
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Note 22 --

North of the plasma contact point in the Atlantic, the stream would have looked like an arch spanning the heavens from a location to the south to Saturn seen almost directly overhead.
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Note 23 --

The plasma currently impinging on the poles of the outer planets (not Mars) and Venus produces a depression in the atmosphere, looking like the caldera of a volcano. It is thus likely that the arc to Earth struck directly through to the ocean surface by means of a similar hole in the Earth's cloudbank.

There are no volcano-like 'cones' surrounding the polar depressions for the planets with heavy atmospheres. For the Earth, however, there would have been a 'cone' at the location of the arc's impingement at an ocean, consisting of rising water vapor.
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Note 24 --

The trigrams of the Chinese "I Ching" (the "Book of Changes" used for telling fortunes) seem to derive from the sight of the rings of Saturn seen from below. A shadow would be cast by the Sun alternately on parts of the bottom and the top rings -- which would change throughout the day.

The diagrams were taken from a nearby tribe by the Chou dynasty, and texts were assigned in the 8th century BC, although the practice of fortune telling clearly dates from the Shang dynasty a thousand years earlier. All the trigrams are identified as landscape elements -- sky, lake, lightning (sun), thunder, wind, rain, mountain, and earth -- as if we are watching a land above the Earth.

About its own origins, the "I Ching" reads,

"Anciently, when the rule of all under heaven was in the hands of Pâo-hsî, looking up he contemplated the brilliant forms exhibited in the sky; and looking down surveyed the patterns shown on the earth. ... On this he devised the eight lineal figures of three lines each...."

-- James Legge, translator, "The I Ching" (1882).

Pâo-hsî is the first legendary emperor.
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Note 25 --

Depictions of the 'world navel' (at various locations in antiquity) each represented the center of the Earth with a dome shaped rock, at times with an entwined snake, representing a twisted Birkeland plasma stream. Each was considered to have been attached -- at one time -- to a placenta in the sky with a twisted umbilical cord.

The inflow of plasma at the south pole of Saturn (today), is seen to bore a hole in the cloud cover, however. This argues against a plasma stream 'snake' slithering down the exterior of the dome of the world navel. We would expect similar phenomena for the Earth. The point of electrical contact was the conducting salt sea. The cloud dome of stream contained no salt and represented a much higher resistivity to the plasma flow.
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Note 26 --

A cartouche is a shape made up of a rectangle with rounded corners, looking like rope which is tied or twisted at the bottom. It is a graphic form used to record the names of pharaohs. The name is written in hieroglyphics inside the cartouche shape. The cartouche first came into use with Huni, the last king of the third dynasty, before 2613 BC. It is likely to represent the 'shen' form of Jupiter, a disk on a bar, actually a plasma outpouring from the south pole of Jupiter which diverted left and right to the objects and dust of the asteroid belt. I have estimated in another chapter that this probably ended around 2655 BC, some decades before Huni.

The "Was Scepter," another device often depicted as being held by the pharaoh (representing his authority), looks like a putting iron with a two-tined fork at the other end, or, as someone stated, a "municipal water shut-off key." After seeing some of Peratt's plasma instabilities, it seems to represent the same image as the curious Kokopelli (a Hopi word) petroglyph figure otherwise known as "the flute player."
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Note 27 --

The information below is from elements developed in following chapters, and is used here to estimate the height of the cloudbank, both the water vapor clouds and the dome of plasma or aurora seen from further away.

The sight lines for the aurora or plasma dome as seen from Egypt (based on the orientation of mastabas and the first few pyramids), China -- or more likely Mongolia -- (based on the recorded location of "the mountain at the center of the Earth"), and Ireland (based on the orientation of grave mounds) all intersect in the Atlantic somewhere near southern Greenland and south of Iceland. In northeastern Siberia the 'world mountain' is held to be located directly east. This also leads directly to the north Atlantic. The orientation of Mesoamerican monuments is too divergent to be included as data -- recollections of the remote past probably suffered from the discontinuity of history in 1500 BC when much of Mesoamerica was destroyed.

...Height of the Water Vapor Cloudbank

I doubt if the actual water vapor cloudbank exceeded 15 degrees (in width) of the circumference of the Earth in diameter, which is a circle with a diameter of 1000 miles. And I doubt if the cloudbank extended more than a few degrees above the horizon. I am basing this on descriptions of the walled fortress of Ys seen by the European coastal Celts, that is, I am assuming the walled city floating on ocean water would not have subtended such a large angle as to make it appear significantly different from a city or fortress, so that, for example, it would not have been identified as a mountain or island.

It is interesting to make some estimates of how high this cloudbank might have been. Placed in the north Atlantic towards southern Greenland, at about 30 degrees longitude and 60 degrees latitude, this would be 800 miles from England and the coast of France, and about 1200 miles from Portugal. I'll use one thousand miles as an average of the distance between the edge of the cloudbank and the location of England and France. This represents about 15 degrees of the Earth's circumference.

To be just barely visible above the horizon, we can start with the sightline tangent to the Earth at the viewing location (normal to the radius of the Earth) extended to the top of the cloudbank. This is a right triangle whose two legs are an Earth radius at the viewing location and the sightline. The hypotenuse is the radius of the Earth plus the height of the cloudbank.

Image: height of cloudbank seen from 1000 miles away.

The height can be found from cos()=r/(r+h), where r is the radius of Earth. To subtend 15 degrees the apparition would have been..

4000/c(15/deg)-4000 = 141 miles high.

To be seen above the horizon, the cloudbank would have to be higher than this. The angle above the horizon can be found from tan()=height/distance. The distance in this case is the sightline, which is the base of the right triangle we were using.. b=sqrt((r+h)^2-r^2), 1071 miles.

An extra 20 miles in height would show the cloudbank at one degree above the horizon -- using arctan(20/1071)/rad for a distance of 1071 miles to the location of the cloudbank. Twenty additional miles added to 141 miles is very high, considering that the stratosphere is currently only 40 miles high. This height produces an image which has a 25 to 1 ratio of width to height (for an assumed width of 15 degrees of Earth circumference). This may be too low as an image of a fortified castle. One degree above the horizon would show the cloudbank at a height of twice the diameter of the Moon.

...Height of the Plasma Dome

In northern Egypt, southern Sumer, Siberia, Mongolia, and Olmec Veracruz, the aurora or plasma dome was seen instead. Each of these locations is about 60 degrees of Earth circumference from the contact point of the arc.

Allowing 15 degrees as the radius of the aurora, each of the far locations needs to subtend only 45 degrees of the Earth's circumference in order to see the top of the aurora. I am here only making estimates for what would be the lower portion of a complete three-toroid disturbed plasma flow.

Image: The inverted plasma dome seen from other locations on Earth.

The two legs and the hypotenuse of the right triangle are defined as above, but the sight line is only extended to the edge of the aurora. As above, the height would be found from cos()=r/(r+h). For a 15 degree radius (30 degrees diameter) the apparition would only have to be..

4000/c(45/deg)-4000 = 1656 miles high.

Certainly exceedingly high, but not at all unlikely, especially since we are looking at the inverted cup-like lower toroid which represents the lower quarter to lower third of a 250,000 mile to 500,000 mile long plasma stream.

If the 'serpopards' shown on the Palette of Narmer (ca 3050 BC, Egypt) represent the demise of the twisted polar column in 3114 BC, as I will elsewhere suggest, it would represent an upwelling of plasma (or water vapor) surrounding the strike point of the plasma stream from Saturn (in glow mode) which at that time would have reached high enough to be seen from Egypt, and represented as the body of a long necked animal. That would suggest a cloud bank -- not just a inverted plasma discontinuity -- reaching over 3000 or 4000 miles above Earth.
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Note 28 --

Mohenjo-Daro and Harappa in the Indus valley both have elevated platforms with crenelated walls on the west side of the city. These are most likely temple platforms. The founding of both cities are dated, with some uncertainty, to after 3000 BC.

Image: Left: Temple wall from the predynasic temple at Heirakonpolis (ca 3050 BC). Right: Enclosing wall to the compound of Djoser's pyramid (ca 2655 BC).

The buttressed mound appears in China during the Chou dynasty, after 1000 BC, but is modeled after Central Asian forms of burials.
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Note 29 --

When the Incas construct a mythology of their tribe in AD 1200, they insist that their ancestors first appeared from some local caves, as did many of the Mesoamerican tribes at earlier dates.
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Note 30 --

Celtic legends describe the fortress of Ys. The city was walled, with brass gates or walls, floated on oceanic waters, and sank at the end of the "Age of the Gods" when the plasma stream ceased. There are dozens of variations on this theme, with the city under various names, but all with details matching aspects of the Polar Configuration. The Celts were by all accounts the people of the west coast of Europe, bordering the Atlantic, and would have had a direct view of the plasma contact which they preserved in their legends.
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Note 31 --

Ancient sources list seven 'companions' of Saturn. Nine satellites could be counted if the very small satellites and those on very close orbits are neglected. The nine were all discovered before the twentieth century by telescope. The small satellites were spotted in the twentieth century, or seen by space craft imaging since the 1970s.

However, two of the nine satellites, Iapetus and Phoebe, are on extremely distant and irregular orbits (3,561,300 km and 12,952,000 km). That leaves some seven satellites which are easily seen, and could be understood as 'companions.' The God of the Bible is also accompanied by seven archangels.

The current largest satellites of Saturn, and their radiuses and orbits, are as follows:

Moon # Radius (km) Mass (kg) Distance (km) Discoverer Date Titan VI 2,575 1.35e+23 1,221,850 C. Huygens 1655 Rhea V 765 2.49e+21 527,040 G. Cassini 1672 Tethys III 530 7.55e+20 294,660 G. Cassini 1684 Dione IV 560 1.05e+21 377,400 G. Cassini 1684 Enceladus II 250 8.40e+19 238,020 W. Herschel 1789 Mimas I 196 3.80e+19 185,520 W. Herschel 1789 Hyperion 205x130x110 1.77e+19 1,481,000 W. Bond 1848 Iapetus VIII 730 1.88e+21 3,561,300 G. Cassini 1671 Phoebe IX 110 4.0e+18 12,952,000 W. Pickering 1898

The seven satellites known as the "Companions of Osiris" guarded Osiris' coffin. Four of them, perhaps the four large satellites (perhaps Tethis, Dione, Rhea, Iapetus, but not the giant Titan), remain as the "Sons of Osiris" (originally the "Helpers of the King") in funeral practices. They are shown as seated mummy forms, often seated on a lotus blossom (the rings of Saturn), and they guard the four canopic jars containing the viscera of the body.
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Note 32 --

Many of the Gods, especially the initial Gods, are born as twins, identified as brother and sister, who then marry to generate children, frequently in groups of seven or nine. Many Gods also come into being as deifications of the elements of the celestial display. The Gods Nut and Geb, were initially the upper and lower rings of Saturn.

William Mullen, in 1994, suggested that Isis and Nephtys (her helpful sister) were originally assigned to the two outer satellites of Saturn, Lapetus and Phoebe. But in terms of size, Venus and Titan are more likely candidates. Neith was also identified with Venus (by Plato).
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Note 33 --

The planets involved also had satellites, which would have added to the movement and change seen in the sky. In later times, first Mercury (through Greek classical times), and later the Sun, are known as "Apollo" which translates as "without (or 'not') many." Mercury and the Sun at no time had any visible companions. This is of course true for the Moon also, but the Moon does not show up near Earth until after 2350 BC. It is less certain for Venus which, when identified as Isis (in Egypt) or Inanna (in Mesopotamia), often is accompanied by a sister goddess, which might have been a satellite.

Thirty-three telescopic observations were made of what looked like a moon of Venus by fifteen reputable astronomers between AD 1672 and AD 1761. The object looked like a moon because it showed the same phases as Venus, and therefore must have been close to Venus. Movement was noticed and some calculations were made of its period (11 or 12 days), size (one quarter the diameter of Venus), distance from Venus, and orbital inclination and eccentricity (0.195). It has not been seen since, except for once more in 1892, by Edward Barnard of Lick Observatory, who had set out to prove that there was no companion satellite to Venus. Space age exploration has found nothing. From Patrick Moore, "Venus" (2002).
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Note 35 --

"The most curious aspect of the map [of Mars] is the striking difference between the planet's low, smooth Northern Hemisphere and the heavily cratered Southern Hemisphere, which sits, on average, about three miles (five kilometers) higher than the north."
-- GSFC/NASA

It could be suggested that the northern hemisphere was entirely removed due to an even larger plasma contact -- simply machined away. It might be suggested that this was the display in the skies seen by humans early in the Paleolithic, say 30,000 years ago, and recorded as the 'cup and tail' petroglyphs (as mentioned in a previous chapter). It would mean that Mars would have been very close to Saturn. And it suggests that Mars has been a 'dead' planet for a very long time.

As noted by Thornhill, the poles also look like plasma strike points. If this is so, these would have these would have been strikes of an absolutely astounding size.
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Note 36 --

Egyptian river commerce depended on the current to move north, and on prevailing southerly winds to move south. The large oars often depicted in images of Egyptian ships are for steering.

David Talbott, in "The Ship of Heaven" Aeon (1988), describes aspects of the ship from Egyptian sources, both from early iconography and from later depictions and descriptions where the original elements are kept alive, but are confused. He also points to other descriptions of the ships of the gods worldwide, excepting only Mesoamerica. I think some of the descriptions he brings forward would fit a later model as well -- where the Gods move along the edge of the Absu sea of the southern sky rather than being towed along the 'river' at the edge of Saturn.
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Note 37 --

These Bronze Age images probably represent Jupiter as the Midnight Sun at a later date. The image created in this instance would be almost identical to the earlier Egyptian images of a globe resting on a crescent. The location in the skies would be different. See later texts.
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Note 38 --

The home of the Gods moves from an 'upper land' to a mountain after 3114 BC. This mountain, seen by the ancients, at first was Mars on close passes above Earth for 300 years after 3114 BC, but during the same period could also represent the plasma outpouring from below Jupiter, which probably only lasted 100 to 150 years. Much later (from about 2595 to 2250 BC) the mountain is without question the plasma expulsion from the south magnetic pole of Jupiter. More on this in later chapters.
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Note 39 --

Venus is obviously the uraeus (the rearing cobra form) used with the crown or head dress of the pharaoh. From this image (which is already in use in 3000 BC), and some other considerations, I would suggest that the rotation of Venus might have been synchronous with the rotation of Earth (and Saturn), so that, as seen from Earth, Venus was always seen as placed to the left and 'above' Saturn. If the uraeus then ends up being used at the front of the pharaoh's head dress, then the Egyptians may have conceived of Saturn as a 'head in the sky' seen in profile, facing left. It is possible that this underlies the consistent depiction of Egyptian sacred figures in profile. However, the Egyptian iconography of flat images (discussed in a previous Chapter) may have nothing to do with this. Even the earliest images of the pharaoh 'smiting his enemies' have the figure facing to the right.
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Note 40 --

The idea of a person (man or god) standing at the north horizon is very strong and occurs in many mythologies. "With the face of a mirror" reads one Mesoamerican description. With distance from the initial event, and for people less inclined to make a big fuss over the images in the sky, this giant man becomes the first man to have been created, as Adam ("man") of the Hebrews, and Manu ("man") of the Hindus.

The Kurgan invasions into Europe, and possibly into the Near East, were in progress during this time (4400 to 4200 BC and 3400 to 3200 BC). The Kurgans were sheep and cattle herders from the steppes of Russia and Central Asia. Later waves include horse nomads. Related tribes arrive in Anatolia and Iran within the next few thousand years, although some are obviously from India. The areas they infiltrate are introduced to weapons, the feudal system, the horse, and probably the Indo-European languages. Where they superimpose themselves on a native population, the native people are segregated into classes within a few hundred years with the invaders as the overlords.
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Note 41 --

The Absu extended as a set of inclined bands in the southern sky below the equatorial. The equatorial is an imaginary extension of the Earth's equator into the sky, from directly east to directly west, but set at an angle above the south horizon equal to the compliment of the latitude on Earth from which it is seen (90 degrees less the latitude). Thus at 30 degrees latitude (Mesopotamia and Egypt) the obscured southern skies stood up from the southern horizon somewhat short of 50 degrees.
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Note 42a --

The Mesopotamian seals described here actually depict Jupiter at a later date, and the tree with the globe on top could be depicted separately, for these were separate entities.
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Note 42 --

"That conservatism so noticeable in Egyptian art is even more emphasized in matters of religion; elements which had once been admitted into the canon continued side by side with later innovations, even though they were logically superfluous and sometimes irreconcilable."

-- I.E.S. Edwards "The Pyramids of Egypt" (1972).

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Note 43 --

Egypt does not produce narratives until very late, apparently during the Middle Kingdom (2050 - 1492 BC). The first we hear of the Egyptian story of Isis and Osiris is when it is told by a Greek in the first century AD.

Sumer and Akkad produce a literature. The earliest copies may date from 2300 and 2400 BC, although frequently attributed to much earlier dates. Most date from after 2000 BC. The narratives have little sense of the linear historical perspective that we would require. As in Egypt, only the past mattered, and of the past, only the beginning. However, Sumer kept extensive records of commercial transactions and contracts, from much earlier times.

In China the earliest documents are very late recollections. The Annals of Shu is a collection of disconnected records from 2300 BC to 600 BC, collated some time after 500 BC, destroyed in 213 BC, and recovered some 50 years later. This was during the Chou dynasty, 1027 to 221 BC,