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Recovering the Lost World,
A Saturnian Cosmology -- Jno Cook
Chapter 23: Destruction by Mars.


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Contents of this chapter: [The Ballgame] [The Ragings of Mars] [Calendar Reforms] [A Blast From Heaven] [The Death of Quetzalcoatl] [Endnotes]

In mainland Greece, of 150 cities noted before the 8th century BC, only 13 survived to 650 BC. The same scale of destruction was experienced in Anatolia, the Middle East, and Italy. The period of 800 BC to 600 BC also saw the largest overseas colonization by the Greeks, as well as the virtual depopulation of the Eastern Mediterranean region and parts of Europe. De Grazia in The Iron Age of Mars (2009) estimates that of a Mediterranean population of 200,000,000 before 800 BC, only 5 million survived. The earlier level would not again be reached until AD 1900. [note 1]

This decline in population presents a serious problem to a reconstruction of history, for not only were there few survivors to write history, but they would have been largely uneducated and illiterate. We only have the braggadocio records of the Assyrians, and the jeremiads of the prophets of Judah. There are some later (a century later) recollections by the Persians which reach back over the previous hundred years. We also have the accumulated clay tablets of the fortune-tellers and astrologers of Babylon, who concerned themselves more with celestial forecasting than actual history (and mostly dated to after 650 BC).

It is thus with difficulty that history between 800 BC and 650 BC is extracted from incomplete and unserviceable records. Even the books of the Biblical prophets were written or rewritten at later dates from older records, to be put in the service of prophecy and monotheism, and are often not at all helpful. Very little of the writing looks to be contemporaneous with the events.

This chapter deals with events during the 8th and 7th centuries BC: what looked like a visit from Venus, the repeated close calls by Mars and Mercury (closing in to within perhaps 30,000 miles), and a blast from heaven which removed Venus from traveling high in the sky. The close calls by Mars span the period of 806 BC through 687 BC, and happened at 15-year intervals.

In order to establish a chronology we need to address some iffy testimony and make some educated guesses. Much of this will be imbedded initially in the previous behavior of the planets, later to be modified by the testimony from Mesoamerica. Bear with me -- the text gets confusing initially, but will clear up after a dozen pages.

The Ballgame

Between 2349 BC and 2193 BC, in the age of Noah, Venus had made four alignments with Earth, each 52 years after the previous visit. Only during the first and last of these was an electrical contact made with Earth, in both cases increasing the orbit of Earth, and, as detailed in previous chapters, destroying the Absu with the first "contact" of 2349 BC. The approaches at 52-year intervals (solar years) likely continued, but without interfering with Earth. We know the appearances of Venus continued because some 800 years later, in 1492 and 1440 BC, during the age of Moses, two destructive electrical contacts were again experienced, and again nearly 52 years apart (actually 50 years). In Mesoamerica these last two disturbances might have been more severe than they were for the Middle East. After 1440 BC Mesoamerica continued to expect complete destruction at 52 Tun-year intervals. That fear continued to the time of the Spanish invasion of Mexico, 3000 years later. [note 2]

The interference by Venus might have repeated yet again another 700 or 800 years after 1440 BC, but Earth and Venus were since then on considerably different orbits. With the electrical contact of 1492 BC the orbit of Earth had increased by a large amount, so that the Earth's orbit fell entirely outside the orbit of Venus. In one instance, 700 years after the post-Exodus date of 1440 BC, Venus was seen streaking across the daytime skies and was recorded, apparently in 776 BC, but only because Mars also appeared near Earth at the same time, making it look like the planets were in a race.

With the change in the Earth's orbit in 1492 BC, the balance which had been achieved with respect to Mars and its crossings of Earth's orbit, was disrupted. Although since 1492 BC the orbit of Earth fell entirely outside the orbit of Venus, the orbit of Earth had now enlarged to where it crossed the orbit of Mars at two locations. It wasn't until the eighth century BC, however, that we have any certain indications that in crossing Earth's orbit Mars now periodically came close to Earth -- very close, in fact.

In the 8th century, not only did Mars come close to Earth, but on at least one occasion, as I noted above, this happened at the same time that Venus was "near Earth" -- but likely only visually so. Venus could not have come close to the Earth without causing the destruction of the Earth. But Venus, a much larger planet with a very large coma, might have looked perhaps half the size of the Moon if it was seen from 10 million miles away. Thus both Venus and Mars were seen on the day side of Earth, and the two planets seemed to chase each other across the sky towards the west (due to the Earth's rotation). If Mars passed Earth at a distance of one-quarter to one-half million miles, Mars would have looked the size of the Moon. Because Mars was much closer to Earth, it might indeed have looked as if Mars was gaining on or overtaking Venus. This may have played out over a number of days.

It has been suggested by Velikovsky that the Earth's Moon seemed to cross the path of the two planets (as if they were near) in its normal rotation around the Earth, but in the opposite direction. Velikovsky proposed that the Moon may have started to change its orbit in response to gravitational forces from three directions. I seriously doubt this. The globes seen in the sky were identified as a "ballgame" between Venus and Mars, with the Moon playing the part of the ball. In fact, a problem with this identification is that the idea of a "ballgame" is a Mesoamerican notion, which is here being transferred to the Eastern Mediterranean, where there was no such thing as a "ballgame."

Additionally, it is much more likely that Mercury played the part of the ball, although from Greek sources (the Odyssey) the Moon certainly was involved in an electrical contact with Mars (but this was not the ballgame). Traveling faster than the Earth, Mars and Venus, or Mars and Mercury, both eventually disappeared into the celestial east, but not before one overtaking the other. This race, of course, was seen from the day side of the rotating Earth, so the planets would seem to be moving to the west. [note 3]

The Popol Vuh records the interactions as the "ballgame" of One-Hunahpu and Seven-Hunahpu, the father and uncle of the celestial twins, Hunahpu and Xbalanque. The father and uncle were Venus and Mars, most likely using Mercury as their ball (or, again, Mars and Mercury, using the Moon as a ball). In the Popol Vuh the father and uncle (as later with Hunahpu and Xbalanque) are said to travel west to reach the ballcourt of the Gods of the Underworld.

The exact year in the eighth century BC of this race between Venus and Mars (or the ballgame involving Mercury) has never been certain, although a date (780 or 776 BC) can be inferred from the date of the first Olympic Games in Greece which were in 772 BC. [note 4]

Venus and Mars may have met "near Earth" (visually) at other times in addition to 776 BC, for in 742 BC Isaiah declared a prophetic sign "in the height above," to King Ahaz of Israel, saying:

"Behold, the Virgin shall conceive and bear a son, and shall call his name Immanuel ["God is with us"]. Butter and honey shall he eat... ." -- Isaiah 7:12-14

"The Virgin" is Venus. "Virgin" is a Greek translation of the Hebrew word "the maid" (Ha'almah, per Fritzius, below), that is, "young woman," as Isis/Astarte (Venus) had been known for 2500 years. The date of 742 was derived by Ussher.

Bob Fritzius contends that the "child" is Mars appearing from behind the coma of Venus, and moving though the tail. See the website at [http://www.datasync.com/~rsf1/vel/ha-almah.htm]. A later addition to his webpage suggests that what may have been seen was an aborted fissioning of Venus (but I think this is suggested because the phenomenon cannot be tracked to any particular dated event from antiquity). Fritzius believes there is support for this from Greek mythology. Fritzius is a published astronomer and an electrical engineer, but has yet to find mythological support.

There are some problems with the "Immanuel" prophecy. I cannot find anything in Greek mythology that refers to this except a very brief mention of the parentage of Phaethon (who is Mercury) by Hesiod, which Marinus van der Sluijs has pointed out in an article, and which I will address in a later endnote.

I think the prophecy by Isaiah refers to 685 BC, not 742 or 747 BC. The "fissioning event" recalled in mythology is more likely a recollection of the blazing of Venus and Mercury after June 15 (Gregorian) of 685 BC (the astronomical year), when Venus and Mercury are visually within a degree of each other, but so bright that their comas seemed to merge. Over the following weeks Mercury would be seen as distancing from Venus, as if Mercury had just been born. And this planet, somewhat smaller than Venus, had never before been seen in the daytime sky. (I will discuss this particular event in following text.) I think that this later element was written into the warning issued much earlier by Isaiah.

This would not be the event predicted by Isaiah sixty years earlier. Whatever it was that Isaiah used as "a sign," it ended up being embellished with the "fissioning" of Venus in 685 BC. The political circumstances prophesized by Isaiah do not match expectations for the year 685 BC and later. What Isaiah (7:15) said, was:

"Butter and honey shall he eat, that he may know to refuse the evil, and choose the good."

Considering the evil done by Mars in the company of Mercury during this period, I am inclined to think that Immanuel is Mercury, who never (as far as we know) made electrical contact with Earth -- until the very last time in 686 BC, and then in North America, well out of sight and away from the Eastern Mediterranean. That is how he knows "to refuse the evil, and choose the good." This is an interesting emendation to the misapplied and anachronistic "fissioning" simile.

Now to the "butter and honey." Ronald Knox has the following for his translation (based on the Vulgate, the Septuagint, and Hebrew originals, 1954) of this Bible passage:

"[The] Maid shall be with child, and shall bear a son, that shall be called Emmanuel. Of butter and honey shall be his striving, till he is of age to know good from harm; already, before he can tell this from that, king they shall have none, the two kingdoms that are thy rivals."

Knox notes, despite what Fritzius writes, that the Hebrew text would admit "a maid" whereas the Greek text would allow a reading of "the maid." Knox also points out that "butter and honey" are a measure of a starvation diet, not the luxury we might associate with it. It implies that the fields will not raise crops. This might still be applicable as a condition to 687 BC (Mars contact), 686 BC (Mercury Earth shock), or 685 BC. The extended translation, however, deals with telling Ahaz what to expect of two rival kings (Syria and Israel) who threatened him in 742 or 747. Ussher paraphrases:

"Therefore at that time Judah need not fear the destruction of the house of David or the nation of the Jews. However, 65 years later this happened to the Northern Kingdom as predicted by Isaiah. Isaiah 7:1-8:22"

Sixty-five years later, however, and probably not by coincidence, takes us to 682 BC (Isaiah writes, "within 65 years Ephtaim will be a people no longer." Isaiah 7:8), the time of Phaethon, but also to the end to the harassment by Mars. It is possible to substitute Mars and Mercury for the "two kings." During the 65 years there were four additional destructions by Mars, but they may have been localized at a different latitude, of which Anatolia and Greece are most likely.

Mars also appears as "Horus the Child" in Egyptian sculpture at about this time (actually, after 747 BC), an inexplicable third Horus. This is possibly Mercury, although it is unlikely that the Egyptians misidentified Mars. The child Horus is originally shown trampling snakes and scorpions, and his image is a charm against snakebites and scorpion stings, but he is soon depicted at the breast of Isis. (What a change in imagery!) This "Mother and Child" image spreads to the Middle East and the Roman empire, and eventually, through Greek influences in Buddhist India, is introduced to China. For the Egyptians of the New Kingdom, the second Horus had been assumed dead since circa 2700 BC when he last passed close to Earth, but at this time Mars is recognized again as Horus.

Seen (initially) in proximity (visually adjacent) to Venus, Mars (or Mercury) is very small and the "Horus the Child" image may have derived from this comparison. The snakes being trampled are described in Vedic literature in the 7th and 8th century BC as contemporaneous companions of Mars. The Vedic hymns, as well as Bible passages and Mesopotamian documents, describe the furious rotation of Mars's satellites accompanied by moving plasma streams, looking like scorpions with waving tails. Vedic literature equates the satellites also with chariot wheels. This last places the description well after 1500 BC, in the age of chariots. The furious rotation of the satellites of Mars were in a direction transvers to the visual travels of Mars past the Earth. Once inside Earth's plasmasphere, the satellites would have trailed sweeping tails as plasma in glow mode, likely composed of the extended dust of Mars.

Olmec sculptures of this era are of a full-sized adult jaguar or were-jaguar (a half human, half jaguar form), which probably represented Venus (although it may have been Mars), carrying a baby jaguar (depicted as a small adult) who also probably is Mercury.

In the Quiche Maya Popol Vuh of the 16th century AD we again meet these characters. The Popol Vuh takes liberties with history in order to come up with a smooth narrative, although the core of the narrative was well established nearly two thousand years earlier as can be seen from murals and inscribed scenes.

The hero twins, Hunahpu and Xbalanque, are clearly meant to represent Venus and Mercury, although by the story of their birth they would be Venus and Mars. But they are twins, and as twins most likely they are Mars and Mercury. The "twins" are a celestial phenomenon; a feature which occurs throughout the world at this time -- Italy, Greece, the Middle East, India, China, Australia, and Mesoamerica. In the Popol Vuh one twin, Hunahpu, is identified by the Tzolkin day-name of the first day of the Venus cycle. (The Popol Vuh is a symphony orchestrated to the day-names of the Tzolkin.) The second twin's name, Xbalanque, could be translated from Quiche as "Little Jaguar of the Night." This is a transliteration from the notes of the book by Dennis Tedlock, Popol Vuh (revised 1996), but not his choice. Xbalanque may be equated to the Egyptian Horus the Child and is most likely Mercury.

In the Popol Vuh the appearance of Venus and Mars a hundred years earlier was understood to represent their father and uncle, who were put to death by the Lords of Xibalba, the Underworld. Both Venus and Mars had simply disappeared into the night sky after the incident of the 8th century BC.

The activities of Hunahpu and Xbalanque are thus modeled both on the simultaneous appearance of Venus and Mars (and the Moon) in about 776 BC and on the flaring-up of Venus and Mercury in the day sky in 685 BC (see later text).

During the various encounters of the 8th and 7th centuries BC, plasma interactions occurred between Venus and Mars, and between Mars and the Earth's Moon. These are described in the Iliad and the Odyssey. The Homeric Poems, which follow closely in time to Homer's epics, have similar descriptions. The Iliad retells the events of the 8th and 7th century BC as the interaction between the Olympian gods in the skies above Troy. The action is between the warrior goddess Athena (Venus), and the bloodstained god of war Ares (Mars), with Aphrodite (the Moon) as a bystander. To keep Ares from aiding the Trojans in the battle over Troy, Athena drives a spear into Ares's "lower belly, below his belt." The scar still shows as a 3000-mile-long gash below the Martian equator. As Aphrodite approaches to help Ares, Athena bashes her in the breast. "And her heart bled [or melted]," reads the Iliad. [note 5]

Velikovsky notes that Roman historians for the 8th century BC record wildly erratic "months" which remain unresolved for a century (V). Despite the descriptions from the Iliad and the Odyssey, it is unlikely that the orbit of the Moon changed because of plasma strikes. Plasma strikes will wear away the crust of a planet before "moving" it in space. [note 6]

In the Odyssey, Demodocus, one of the fictional characters (and a poet), recites a poem dealing with a tryst of Ares (Mars) and Aphrodite (the Moon in this case). In this poetic interpretation, Ares's repeated arc mode plasma discharges to the smaller Moon are his ejaculations. Ralph Juergens mentions that, as Mars closed in, the display would have changed from long-range single arcs to much smaller arcs encompassing the whole sphere of the Moon. This is the net devised by the smith Hephaestus (played by Venus) which falls on the lovers and holds them captive. [note 7]

Seen traveling across the skies, and visually at close range, Venus is here known as the smith Hephaestus, who otherwise cannot be related to a planet. Alfred de Grazia, in The Burning of Troy (1984), wrote about Hephaestus: "whose name Robert Graves says means hemerophaistos (he who shines by day)."

De Grazia also discusses at length what is thought to be the event, in The Disastrous Love Affair of Moon and Mars (1984), under the assumption that the love affair, which is presented in comic form, is a disguise for the actual terror it produced in the watching humans.

To put all of this together: Venus and Mars appear in the sky, Venus drives a spear into Mars, and bashes the Moon, Mars makes love to the Moon and is caught in a net. Suddenly the Greeks start up the Olympic games at a location as far removed from almost all of the Greek nations as can be imagined: the west end of Peloponnesus, although I have no idea what this last means. (It could be suggested, that beside a high mountain, it was a location toward the northwest, and thus in the direction of the earlier contact point of a Saturnian plasma stream connecting with Earth.)

The Olympic Games in Greece were instituted in 772 BC to commemorate interactions between the planets Venus, Mars, and the Moon four or eight years earlier. Originally the games consisted of just one foot race. With each of the following Olympics at 4-year intervals, the activities were expanded to include additional foot races. Other types of athletic contests did not enter the Olympics until many decades later. [note 8]

We would need to ask, Why the celebration of the Olympic Games? It would follow directly from the logic of the ancients: that Mars showed the people what had to be done in his honor to avoid his wrath in the future. At least in the short run that was an efficacious solution, good for 15 years. Like recasting of the terrifying event as a comedy in the Odyssey, the exciting "celebration" of the Olympic Games might be another anti-celebration of the experience of terror. The dating of the event to four-year intervals would bring Venus back into the same region of the sky as 4 years earlier, but not Mars. Venus was definitely a part of the celebrations. I should point out that the sequence of Olympic Games became the chronology of all the Greek history.

In Mesoamerica the "ballgame" event receives an entirely different interpretation from the "foot race" in Greece. The Olmecs engaged in a game involving a large rubber ball. In Mexico the ballcourt comes into use, although possibly not until some 800 years later. The shape of the ballcourt seems to be based on the look of the equatorial rings in the south night sky at the time of the equinoxes before 2349 BC when the shadow of the Earth opened up the center of the rings in an inverted equilateral rhomboid. The ballcourts, which were ubiquitous in Mesoamerica and in use for 2000 years, consisted of two sloped surfaces between which a giant rubber ball was in play between contestants. In later versions there were enclosed end zones at each end of the alley, giving the overall plan view the shape of a capital letter "I."

We know next to nothing of how the game was played. I'll propose for this narrative that, when played ceremonially, the ballgame was the religious re-enactment of the adventures of the ball-playing twins mentioned in the Popol Vuh -- mimicking the planets Venus and Mars playing ball with the much smaller Mercury (or a similar event in 685 BC; see later text). Mercury was at this time still on an elongated orbit, similar to Mars's orbit, both of which had been overrunning Earth's orbit after 3067 BC, when Mars and Mercury were both released from below Saturn at about the location of the start of the asteroid belt.

The ballcourt is a feature which came to be in near-universal use throughout Mexico and the game, in typical Mesoamerican style, was (apparently or occasionally) a deadly affair. It is today suspected that the loser (or the winner, some say) was decapitated. It is also, as ever and everywhere in antiquity, in imitation of what was seen in the sky. [note 9]

The concept of a celestial ballcourt becomes an architectural feature of many (but not all) Mesoamerican ceremonial centers, such that the ceremonial center and the setting location of the Sun along the horizon, become the two bouncing walls of the ballcourt. The ceremonial centers thus controlled the travels of the Sun. This is the case at Teotihuacan where there are no ballcourts.

Early excavators at the Olmec site of La Venta (900 BC to 400 BC) thought they had discovered a ballcourt (the area between two berms, directly north of the pyramid), but it turned out not to be so. One of the discovered sculptures, however, is still known today as "the football player." They did find rubber balls, to be expected, since the Olmecs cultivated the rubber tree. Apparently ballgames were played at La Venta and the earlier San Lorenzo (1450 BC to 900 BC), for sculptures of the gear and accessories have been identified. Additionally, the colossal heads found in the surrounding jungles all have "helmet" head wrappings, also suggestive of later ballcourt players elsewhere in Mesoamerica (but the original suggestion for this is based on American leather football helmets of the 1920s).

The head wrap may represent a means by which the Olmec people identified themselves with Mars, whose smooth upper half was seen on the close approaches in the 8th and 7th century BC, but this does not explain its use with the 10 heads found at San Lorenzo, which, as I will suggest later, most likely represent Venus. Of course in both cases (Mars and Venus) the planets jolted the Earth like a ball in play between contestants.

See also Linda Schele and David Freidel Maya Cosmos (1993), which discusses three ballcourts at the Maya site of Yaxchilan. The ballcourts were named "First Creation," "Second Creation," and "Third Creation," and have, in addition to the dedication date, appended time intervals pointing to earlier (or first) manifestation of these events (to which these ballcourts were dedicated), all of which can be placed, as suggested by Schele and Freidel, in the 7th century BC. And all of which are the wrong dates by thousands of years -- a complete misreading of the daybooks which were inherited by Yaxchilan. As I will point out in a later chapter, the historical references are to "creation" celebrations involving the large "altars" found at La Venta, not to celestial ballgames.

The Ragings of Mars

Do not let the languid descriptions of timing details presented above detract from the utter devastation that Mars caused in India, the Middle East, the Mediterranean, and in Central America. Because of the destruction of cities and the dispersal of people, but also primarily because Mars appeared at 15-year intervals, we have virtually no written records. Velikovsky never managed to determine the complete scope of the events, except to suggest the 15-year interval. The only suggestion of an actual time span are the sparse notes of the Maya Chilam Balam, and even here the record has to be reconstructed from inferences. (Although the last events involving Mars, Mercury, and Jupiter are well dated.)

The appearances of Mars was like bad weather, and it took considerable time before astrologers of the Middle East could even determine that the events repeated at regular intervals, and could be predicted. What is generally known for sure today, is that starting in 747 BC with an Earth shock, and for 60 years thereafter, Mars passed close to Earth five times -- very close. The prophets of Israel had started their warnings long before 747 BC, however. From the suggestions incorporated in the Chilam Balam and less so from the archaeological records of destructions of citadels in the Middle East, it could be suggested that the first strike by Mars was in 806 BC. The complete period of the ragings of Mars thus probably extended over 120 years -- 806 BC to 687 BC. [note 10]

Alfred de Grazia, in The Iron Age of Mars (2009), writes:

"Planet-Mars is tightly bound in ancient peoples' minds with gods who are paramount warriors, destructive heroes, crushers of towns and armies, dispatchers of plagues, and depicted as red in color. Many, if not all, nations worshiped the planet-Mars and the god-Mars, under their national names for both of them. In Babylonia he was Nergal, in Mexico Tezcatlipoca, for example. Hundreds of Mars identities around the world came into prominence at the same time."

Mars was seen on the day side of Earth as many of the descriptions make clear, although the night sky is invoked in some instances. Mars would have crossed Earth's orbit at an acute angle either in front of or behind Earth, moving in the spring from the night side to the day side, and in the opposite direction in the fall -- but 15 years later.

The Popol Vuh, in one instance where the celestial twins disappear into the night sky, identifies two stars and a nebula (see later text). This allows placing the event both at a seasonal date and at a location in the sky.

Entry of Mars at an angle into Earth's plasmasphere would have removed the shadow portion of Mars's plasmasphere due to the Sun and replaced it with a shadow due to the Earth's electric field, and thus pointing away from Earth. It seems unlikely to suggest that for this reason there were no repulsive forces between Mars and Earth in these instances. In fact, we have no records of any instances of a sudden Earth shock except in 747 BC. It might therefore be suggested that the askew approach of Mars to the Earth's surface generated repulsive forces which might have slid mountains over, but which did not cause a worldwide shock. The attractive forces subsequently initiated by induction certainly were exhibited with the continuous electrical arcing.

Thus it might be suggested that Mars missed a sideways contact with Earth's plasmasphere entirely in 747 BC, and moved to the day side of Earth to cause then a sudden massive repulsive shock which changed Earth's orbital period by 5 days.

There are also records of solar eclipses during this period caused by Mars -- a phenomenon completely inexplicable to later researchers of Mesopotamian astronomical records. The fact that Mars was repeatedly seen in the day sky, and at times must have blocked the Sun, might explain the obsession of Assyrian kings with eclipses after 747 BC, since it could be suggested that such eclipses were accompanied with destructive interactions.

Prayers and pleadings to Mars proliferate in Mesopotamia and India during this period. The Book of Joel (in the Bible) also records the threat of Mars. A troop of warriors travel with Mars, called Maruts in Vedic sources, the "Terrible Ones," carrying gleaming spears and throwing fire, lightning bolts, and bolides to Earth. Joel, of course, identifies them as the "hosts of the Lord." He also calls them Ariz, "Terrible Ones," the name for Mars adopted by the Greeks, Ares.

The Maruts are the companions of Mars, asteroids which had accompanied Mars since the time of the first dynasty of Egypt, when the Egyptians duly counted them as the herds of small and large cattle of Horus. They will now also show up in the tales of Hercules as his stolen cattle or as the armies he raised for various exploits. [note 11]

In the Bible the "hordes" which accompany Mars could be equated to the various enormous groups of warriors supposedly slain in battles at that time. From Ussher:

All the above dates and the quoted text are from Bishop Ussher, The Annals of The World, Chapter 4, "The Fifth Age of the World." The size of these armies, even if half or three quarters were camp followers, is astounding. And they all die.

This recalls the much earlier Egyptian counts of the Followers of Horus, or the contemporary (8th century BC) spear- and rock-throwing Maruts in the company of Indra (Mars) of the Vedas, or even, as pointed out by Isaiah, the attacks by fiery hot sand which entered through windows and under doors.

Greek legendary history holds the Dorian invasion of Greece to be the "return of the Heraclids," when the banished third-generation offspring of Hercules returned to lay claim to the Peloponnesus. The dates are very uncertain (but 761 or 762 BC could be suggested). Thucydides dates the invasion to 80 years after the Trojan war, where the Trojan war was assumed to have happened as early as 1200 BC. The invaders included the Spartans, who at best can be dated as an organized community to 750 BC. The two ruling families both trace their descent from Hercules (Mars).

Except for these, there is no evidence of a "Dorian invasion." The Heraclids are the sons of Hercules which is Mars. They were seen in the sky, not on Earth.

All nations watched Mars during these years with great anxiety. Most notable among the destructive effects of these close passes are the frequency of earthquakes, due to gravitational and electrical forces on the crust, and a moving electrical arc which burned forests -- and lifted the material along with soil ahead of itself in a tornado the size of a hurricane. In an era of city walls, built as a measure against rampaging tribes, and most frequently built on hilltops, Mars becomes known as the "stormer of walls." The seven- to ten-foot cover of burnt matter and soil, which buried fortified hilltop citadels, far exceeds the amount ever deposited by any forest fires or volcanic eruptions.

Alfred de Grazia, in The Disastrous Love Affair of Moon and Mars (1984), notes both the imagined devastations by Mars and the archaeological record. He has reference to the event of 776 BC, the ballgame, but it probably more accurately reflects any of the events from 806 BC through 687 BC. De Grazia describes the destruction of Pylos, one of the destroyed locations, one of hundreds:

"Tidal waves wipe out nearly all coastal settlements (where perhaps 80% of the Greek-speaking population was contained in 800 B.C.). Chasms are opened; volcanoes are created and activated. Surface soils are ripped off by winds traveling at hundreds of miles per hour. Communities are obliterated or disrupted by showers of ash and debris, winds, water, fire, and famine."

At 35 degrees latitude, the Earth would zip by an exterior planet at about 500 miles per hour. At hilltop citadels the electrical arc would pause, and the hurricane winds would drop the burnt soils and ashes. This, in fact, is the strange specificity experienced by archaeology. De Grazia continuous:

"The Palace [of Nestor at Pylos] was destroyed in a 'holocaust' which 'consumed everything that was inflammable within it, and even melted gold ornaments into lumps and drops of metal.' The flames melted brick and stone into 'a solid mass ... as hard as rock.' In one room two large pots were fused 'into a molten vitrified layer which ran over the whole floor.' Everything that a human invader might desire was reduced to shapelessness. Stone was burned into lime. No human hands and hand-set fires could have wreaked such ruin. Only blasts from the sky-electrical, gaseous or both."

He follows this with an exploration of Greek society in mainland Greece and Asia Minor, based partially on the content of the Iliad and the Odyssey. His analysis of Homer is without a doubt the most cogent I have encountered. The reader should be aware that, along with many others, I hold that the "dark ages" of Greece do not exist. Mycenaean Greece came to an end in 806 BC, not at the start of the 400-year gap of the Greek "dark ages" following 1200 BC: [note 12]

"The Homeric heroes, Odysseus and Achilles among them, typified the bands of survivors of the extensive Mycenaean civilization that was largely destroyed in the catastrophic interventions of the planets Mars and Venus in the Earth-Moon system in the 8th century. The plots of the Iliad and Odyssey, despite 2700 years of trying to make something else of them, clearly point to the skies as the source of the disruptive and awful events that produced the crazed heroes of the dark times. Western civilization has treasured and imitated the posturings of these mad warriors, hardly ever realizing what they were and how the docile mind of later generations would be affected when this madness was presented to it as normality and for inspiration."

Greece and Anatolia represented the epicenter of the repeated destructive close passes of Mars after 806 BC. Although Venus was "seen" near Earth in 776 BC, Venus was not involved in the destructions. De Grazia continues as follows. I have abbreviated the text and added in some of his quoted sources.

"The heroes boasted in the names of their parents, some of their grandfathers, and usually stopped at this point; some lapsed into claims of divine forebears in the second generation. ... The absence of 'family trees' among self-assertive 'nobles' raises doubts that they either knew their ancestors or, if they did, could claim any distinction on their behalf. ... This is exceedingly strange. It is not at all like 'primitive peoples' whose lives are bound into communities of blood served by totems. Nor like a bureaucratic society."

"The warriors stayed away from their 'homes' so long that we could question whether they had any. They remind us of Vandals and Vikings who left home never to return. Of all of Ithaca's warriors, only Odysseus ever reached home. Odysseus played the pirate -- looting, killing, raping. Marauding was frequent, if not from one's neighbors then from pirates and foreign warriors."

"It was a society where every man's hand was raised against his neighbor. ... 'The bearing of arms, particularly lance and sword, on all solemn occasions of civil life, was the distinguishing feature which, more than any other, marked the separation of classes in Homer's time.' [Emile Mireaux Les Poems Homériques et l'Histoire Grecque (1948)]"

"In battle one encounters a frenzied behavior whereby fear is whipped up in order to gain courage. Eliade's words apply to the heroes: 'The frenzied beserker, ferocious warriors, realized precisely the state of sacred fury ... of the primordial world.' [Mircea Eliade Cosmos & History: The Myth of The Eternal Return (1959)]"

"A frank, hollow, extreme braggadocio characterized the best and the worst of the fighters. The glorification of destructiveness seems interminable. ... There is a pervading sense of splendors of the past being gone and citations of armies, cities, and wealth appear to be grossly exaggerated. This pretentiousness is not that of nobles, [but] of a people who had lost something they once knew, did not own, but had given them their character."

"They depended upon the seas but were bad sailors. There was no class of specialized sailors. Everyone was a 'sailor.' Maritime ventures were not materially distinguishable from piratical excursions."

"They were meat-eaters: cattle, sheep, and wild game, animals of the uplands. 'For Homer fish is a detestable food, while Hesiod does not even deign to mention it. Never is fish eaten at the Homeric repasts.' [Mireaux]"

"Gift-giving was often a spectacular affair. ... The things given seem often to be for re-giving, to be untouched and unused, even homely objects like linens, and the metal gifts seem all too frequently to have semidivine or divine 'makers' which, as false pedigrees conceal humble origins, may have concealed their origins in loot and theft. Their description, too, conveys an awesomeness, as if they were not familiar objects to the childhoods of the gift exchangers. They are described as pirates would speak of their misunderstood loot of pots and laces."

"Chariots are used, not as battle-wagons, but to convey warriors to places where they would descend and fight. Their use was partly forgotten or had not been familiar to the types who owned them."

"The Greeks of Homer, to conclude, did not come as an invasion from afar. They consisted of all kinds of Greeks. They were survivors, largely from the rural areas and the interior high lands. From personal experience and hearsay, they knew of the centers of their societies that had been destroyed. They often lacked kith and kin; they lacked communal security; they lacked law and order; they lacked education; they trembled upon the trembling earth."

The analysis by Alfred de Grazia covers only Homer, and the collapse of the Mycenaean Civilization. De Grazia thus places the composition of the Iliad and the Odyssey after 650 BC.

"For a grandly disciplined, informed, and stylized poet like Homer to write so sympathetically of his subjects, he had to be of their age, and to be of their age required that their age be the eighth century." [note 13]

But despite the destruction and dislocations, the Olympic Games continued. The attacks of Mars were at 15-year intervals, and not always at the same locations. Attempts at rebuilding destroyed cities (as for example, at Troy) continued, although this was very infrequent.

If Homer was "of their age," as de Grazia suggested, then the poetic response would have been to conditions localized and particular to himself -- the attacks by Mars would have been experienced in his lifetime. De Grazia suggests a composition date of 650 BC.

From the terse information of the Maya Chilam Balam we know there were five close passes by Mars between 747 BC and 687 BC (thus with 15-year periods in between). But, from the same source, we know that there were a total of nine contacts, thus there were an additional four passes before 747 BC, starting in about 806 BC also at approximately 15-year intervals. Some locations likely were only touched once.

The condition of a gigantic arc traveling across the surface of the Earth would have been distinctly localized, although the fall of airborne debris could have covered large areas, and the earthquakes would have spread even further away from the path of destruction. What is peculiar, but not unexpected, is that in some instances the same locations were struck repeatedly.

Only after rereading the essay by Ralph Juergens's "Moon and Mars" did I realize that Mars would most likely have approached to within the plasmasphere of Earth, thus within a distance of 20 Earth diameters -- 160,000 miles. Juergens suggests a relatively close distance between Mars and the Moon for their interaction. Patten and Windsor suggest 27,000 miles for the closest approach to Earth. Maya iconography suggest a lightning tail extending from Mars by 4 or 5 diameters -- thus a distance of 21,000 miles from Mars to the surface of Earth. [note 14]

At a surface-to-surface distance of 20,000 to 30,000 miles, Mars would have lifted the Earth's crust below its path, creating (as Patten and Windsor claim) ridges of mountains. The Earth crust which was lifted would not have subsided back entirely, since the land area of the Earth is only material floating on a heavier substrate, and this last would have filled the hollow left below the lifted mountains. Mars could have remained in place laterally next to Earth perhaps for some days, since in crossing Earth's orbit it would be traveling at nearly the same speed as the Earth. However, since the Earth rotates, the location below Mars would have moved past at some 500 miles per hour (for a 30- to 40-degrees latitude). [note 15]

Patten and Windsor suggest any number of curved north-south mountain ranges as being due to the lifting forces of Mars, including the Andes and Rockies. I am not at all in agreement with such a north-south path for Mars, since, as a planet orbiting the Sun, it could only approach Earth laterally, although this could be at any latitude, and would not need to be the same latitude or even the same hemisphere every time. I also disagree with the Patten and Windsor notion of "crescent shaped" mountain ridges. Any ridges which were formed in this process of a close approach would have been entirely parallel to the Earth's latitudinal lines. That also means that Mars was seen in a side view, that is, with the north pole of Mars directed more or less parallel to the Earth's North Pole, and seen rotating.

All indications from references in antiquity is that Mars represented a distended and distorted image -- perhaps wildly flaying like a bat, which is how some Mesoamerican sculptures represents Mars. In Europe, Asia, and China, Mars is represented as a dog, a wolf, a sword, a gruesome giant, and a diseased person. The shapes of the imagery are likely the Martian dust extending into the Earth's magnetosphere. The disease probably derives from the looks of pockmarked lower hemisphere. Mars is frequently noted also for its bloodstains and fire.

The center of the Aztec "Calendar Stone" shows a face with a tongue lolling out. This is Mars. The same tongue appears on images of the Gorgon of Greece, the dreadful snake-haired woman whose gaze would turn to stone anyone who looked. Add together the snakes, the tongue, the Mesoamerican mention of Mars smoking a cigar (only seen as such by cigar-smoking Olmecs), or with a smoking celt lodged in his forehead, and you end up with a varied and frightening apparition flying by in the skies overhead. In Mesoamerica Mars is also described as carrying a smoking mirror on its forehead, which clearly is the northern ocean (or the remnant of the included deeper ocean, Deuteronilus) steaming water into space. The 13th century AD Icelandic Younger Edda also recounts Thor (who is Mars) with an axe lodged in his head after an encounter:

"Thor went home to Thrudvang, but the flint-stone still stuck fast in his head."

In passing over Earth' surface Mars would have induced an opposite charge below it. The result would have been a continuous lightning strike in an attempt at charge equalization. From the evidence of fire, the melting of metals, and the calcination of building stone, as at Troy (Hisarlik), Pylos, and any number of other places, it would seem likely that Earth was the anode for the lightning strikes.

This is exactly how lightning occurs under "normal" conditions: negatively charged clouds chase away electrons at the ground below the clouds, resulting in a high potential difference, which leads to lightning strikes. And like a "normal" lightning strike, the Earth surface would have been the anode in the strike.

But the passage of Mars is also (or especially) noted for fire, and flames of extreme temperature. An electrical arc would certainly qualify, but as likely, or more likely, it was the impinging of Martian dust and sand grains which would have been propelled toward Earth along with the electric arc, and arrived in incendiary form -- burning sands, as Isaiah at one point suggests. Disassociated silicate dust, generated at the Martian surface, ionized as anions, would very likely be transported as part of the plasma contact with Earth. Under chemical analysis, none of this would ever show its origins.

At Mars the plasma stream was possibly as wide as the planet -- 4000 miles diameter. This is likely the dimension of the plasmasphere of Mars, a condition resulting from lacking an atmosphere and a magnetic field. Within the plasmasphere of Earth, Mars would only have sported a limited plasmasphere, with a double layer a few hundred miles above the surface, and constituted entirely of ferrous and ferric cations (Fe2+, Fe3+) plus the requisite electrons as the negative charges. At the Earth's surface the stream of plasma would concentrate to a much smaller dimension, possibly only tens of miles wide -- and in arc mode. [note 16]

The lightning strikes of the 8th and 7th centuries BC traveled west across the surface of the Earth (because Earth rotates to the east). The lightning strikes may have ignited, extinguished, and restarted numerous times, preferring high ground to land on. The lighting bolts must have been enormous and mostly continuous, or might have traveled in groups. They could probably be seen coming from over the far horizon, for in a number of instances we have evidence of people evacuating hilltop locations only minutes before being struck. At Pylos we have written (clay tablet) records of "watchers" posted at the shoreline.

As a continuous arc, the bolts would have left behind a path of incinerated trees and grasses and upturned soil. The arc would have resulted in tornado-like forces (at hurricane levels) which would have lifted loose soil and ashes into the air. If a bolt lingered or extinguished on a hilltop, the suspended material would have been dropped.

Mars came close enough to Earth to have its two peculiar satellites observed and described. Both are very small and they circle Mars on extremely tight orbits. To Homer they are Ares's dogs of war, Deimos and Phobos -- Fear and Panic -- rushing madly about his chariot. They are the horses of his chariot, says Hesiod. Dean Swift describes the satellites of Mars quite accurately in Gulliver's Travels in 1726, apparently on the basis of sources from antiquity, for they are only discovered by telescope one hundred and fifty years after its publication, and 2400 years after they were first seen. [note 17]

In the Iliad, Ares, "the bloodied stormer of walls," always loses. Yet a number of belligerent nations take Mars as their primary God. Mars is the chief God of Rome. Their calendar year starts with the month of March in his honor and the founding of Rome is dated to the middle years of the eighth century BC -- coincident with a major disturbance of Earth by Mars in 747 BC which altered the length of the year. The Cimmerians and Scythians, Eastern European steppe peoples, also take Mars as their chief god and start destructive raiding expeditions into Anatolia in the 8th century BC. In the middle of the 8th century BC, coinciding with the return of Mars, Assyria, a small nation in Northern Mesopotamia, models its army after Mars's "horsemounted" hordes, and with similar tactics of speed and utter destruction, expands its conquests over a region from the Persian Gulf to the Mediterranean and to Aswan in Egypt.

The Aztec's chief god is Huitzilopochtli, "destroyer of cities and killer of people," and the Aztecs proceed (at a much later date) to terrorize the other nations of Mexico. Huitzilopochtli is Mars. (There are other Mesoamerican gods associated with Mars, such as the "flayed god" and the "scarfaced god.") [note 18]

Mars caused a disturbance of the Earth's orbit on February 26th in 747 BC. A second significant disturbance probably happened in 686 BC, on March 23 (some catastrophists suggest 702 or 701 BC). But this second shock was due to Mercury, not Mars. Subsequent events verify this notion. [note 19]

The events of 747 BC and 686 BC stand out, for the Earth experienced a seismic shock and the axis of the Earth was disturbed. During the gyroscopic reaction which swung the axis through a loop, the day was temporarily lengthened or shortened. In the Iliad, Hera sends the Sun unwillingly into the ocean, that is, she is shortening the day. In the Odyssey, Athena holds back the dawn at the edge of the ocean, thus lengthening the night. [note 20]

[Image: Two planets in line with the Sun]
[Image: Two planets in line with the Sun. When the inner planet's plasmasphere tail, directed away from the Sun, intersects the leading edge of the other planet's plasmasphere there will be an electrical interaction.]

The reaction to having the plasmaspheres of two planets touch would be a sudden experience of each other's electrical fields. This would result in an instantaneous repulsive force -- an Earth shock. As the planets would both move away from each other (in the direction radial with the Sun), the force would decrease, and stop as suddenly when the planet with the larger negative charge would have induced an opposing charge in the facing hemisphere of the second planet. Since this involves the movement of electrons through the crust or atmosphere, it would take some time, perhaps minutes, or even only seconds. The increased localized difference in charge would, of course, result in arcing from one planet to the other in an attempt to achieve charge equalization. [note 21]

Because of the initial repulsive electrical force, the crust would be depressed over a large area, resulting in an uplift at the margins. As the Earth rotated, the center of the compressive forces would rotate toward the west or southwest but would diminish very rapidly with the change of the induced charge and as the planets distanced from each other.

The shock would be transmitted to all of the globe of the Earth, and both move the Earth in space, and, if the center of the impact was off-center to the Earth's equator, tilt the rotational axis. A gyroscopic reaction torque would result if the Earth's axis were tilted -- a second twist which would attempt to bring the Earth's axis back to its original position. The Earth's crust would react to the initial shock for a long time. Mesopotamian records indicate earthquakes on an almost daily basis during these two centuries and, even four hundred years later, Rome still records over 50 earthquakes per year. Hurricanes and tsunamis would sweep the Earth. (See Appendix B, "Celestial Mechanics" for the mechanics of the interactions.) [note 22]

Calendar Reforms

After the Earth shock of 747 BC, the year lengthened by five days, six hours, and 20 minutes to become 365 1/4 days -- nominally a change of 5 and 1/4 days. Calendar reforms were instituted worldwide, some in 747 BC but a few much later. Egypt attempts an additional correction to the calendar in 239 BC when the priests issue a decree which adds one day to the civil calendar every four years. [note 23]

"... that the case shall not occur, that all the Egyptian festivals, now celebrated in winter, shall not be celebrated some time or other in summer, on account of the precession of the rising of the Divine Sothis by one day in the course of 4 years."

-- Canopus Decree, 239 BC, found at Tanis.

However, the Egyptian Venus calendar, based on the heliacal rising of Venus (Sothis in this case) every 8 years, remained in use until Julius Caesar's calendar was introduced 200 years later under Roman occupation. [note 24]

Between 2193 and 1492 BC there probably were ten lunar months of about 28 days in the year. Shang dynasty oracle records indicate months of 27 and 28 days. I have used a year of 270 or 280 days for this earlier period, but think it was probably 273 days. This is reason enough why Shang records seem to use both 27-day months and 28-day months.

In the following era, from 1492 BC to 747 BC, the year was 360 days, and the Moon on an orbit of 30 days. Both of these periods are well established.

When, after 747 BC, the period of the Moon (the month) was no longer a whole-number interval of the year, the previous religious feast days started to wander around the year, and efforts were made throughout the world to rectify this. Here is a list of how the ancients took notice of the new celestial order of 365 and one-quarter days:

Before 747 BC there had been 12 lunar months of 30 days during a year of 360 days. Since, during this period, an exact multiple of lunar months coincided with the solar year, a lunar calendar was in use to govern the dates when religious observations were to be held. The phases of the Moon would represent a very visible public calendar, which everyone could understand.

The change to a new year of an odd number of days, with a fractional day left over, and with a month no longer composed of an even fraction of the year, brought religious observances into total confusion. Attempts at corrections were made worldwide, resulting in many very complex calendars. All of these reforms are obvious attempts to bring a lunar religious calendar into conformity with a new solar year, because following a strict lunar calendar during the new era would continuously displace all celebrations by many days over the year.

It should be noted that there is worldwide disagreement on which day constituted the start of the new era. As Hera sent the Sun into the ocean, shortening the day in the Mediterranean region, the Indians of Mesoamerica experience a night which lasted four nights -- thus equal to two full days. Just as in the Mediterranean region we have the Era of Nabonassar starting on February 26th (after nightfall) and the Roman calendar starting after February 28th (the changes to new calendars were independently arrived at), so in Mesoamerica we have a similar disagreement over when the new era started.

In the case of Mesoamerica, the question of dates has become an issue among scholars, and deals with the retrocalculated initial date of the Maya (Olmec) Long Count. John E. Thompson first suggested in 1927 that the Maya Long Count of days starts on August 13, 3114 BC. In 1935 Thompson revised his calculation to August 11, validating the opinion of another scholar who also arrived at the date of August 11, 3114 BC.

This last date (the "August 11" correlation) has become the accepted archaeological standard and is generally used today, although any number of researchers think that the date of August 13, 3114 BC, is more likely to be correct, because a calendar based on August 13 correctly dates many known recorded eclipses. A calendar based on August 11, however, is still used by some people in Mexico and Guatemala. [note 34]

There have been suggestions that the Maya made a two-day correction at some time in the past, but this assumes an absolute and uniform use of the calendar since remote antiquity. Considering the widespread adoption of the Olmec religious practices among the diverse tribes of Southern Mexico, the Yucatan, and Guatemala, as well as the universal use of the (now) 4300-year old Tzolkin calendar, it can be assumed that in 747 BC, when the Long Count was devised, there were some diverse regional opinions on the concept of where one era ended and another started, as well as questions about the existence ("completion") of two days which had not been seen in progress.

A Blast From Heaven

Another strange incident at the time of the last disturbance (the second Earth shock in this era) was widely known in the Middle East. In 687 (or 686) BC the Assyrian army of Sennacherib, on its way to quell a revolt in Egypt, camps some distance from Jerusalem and demands its capitulation on threat of a siege. The prophet Isaiah urges Hezekiah, the king of Jerusalem, to resist, telling him that Sennacherib's army would never arrive. Apparently Sennacherib had been similarly warned by his advisors. [note 35]

"The very same night God sent his angel to their camp. He destroyed every man of valour, every commander, and chief man in the Assyrian army. The next morning there were found 185,000 dead men. After this Sennacherib shamefully broke camp and returned into his own land to rest at Nineveh. Isaiah 37:36-38 2-Kings 19:35-37 2-Chronicles 32:21 All this was foretold by the prophet. Isaiah 38:1-22 31:8,9"

-- paraphrased by Bishop Ussher

Since antiquity there has been endless speculation as to what really happened, starting with Herodotus (fifth century BC), who attributes it to mice. Josephus (first century AD), along with modern historians, suggested a plague. But Biblical and Egyptian sources plainly state that it was Ignis Coelis -- "a blast of fire from the heavens." Such would be one of the effects of an electrical interaction with another planet. [note 36]

There are two independent records of this event from China. The following is quoted from the Bamboo Books:

In the tenth year of the Emperor Kwei, "... the five planets went out of their course. In the night, stars fell like rain. The earth shook."

-- Annals of the Bamboo Books

The Bamboo Books were found in China in a grave in AD 279. The Spring and Autumn Annals, compiled for the state of Lu by Confucius and completed about 480 BC, reads almost identically, but does not recognize the Earth shock.

"In the seventh year of the Duke [Chwang] ... In summer, in the fourth month, on Sin-maou, at night, the regular stars were not visible. At midnight, there was a fall of stars like rain.

-- James Legge, translator, The Ch'un Ts'ew and The Tso Chuen (1872)

The seventh year of the Duke Chwang of Lu is identified as 686 BC by Legge. The quote from the Bamboo Books lists the date (-687) in astronomical notation, which is equivalent to 686 BC, Julian. [note 37]

These terse Chinese historical notes, which have been dated to March 23, 686 BC, can be interpreted as a swing of the spin axis of the Earth as it underwent a gyroscopic reaction to an external torque induced by the Earth's plasmasphere contact with the plasmasphere of another planet. The other planet, in this case, was Mercury -- not Mars, as every researcher expected.

[Image: Mercury crosses over Earth's orbit]
[Image: Mercury in 686 BC. The distance between Earth and Mercury was probably on the order of 50,000,000 miles, placing Mercury's aphelion at about 43,000,000 miles.]

The first effect of the sudden electrical repulsive forces experienced from Mercury, as the plasmaspheres connected, was a shock felt worldwide. The stars would seem to fall, or, on the day side of Earth, the Sun would move away from its normal path.

Sennacherib returned to Assyria, did not record this nighttime disaster (or the campaign) among his records, and spent the next 8 years in seclusion. Two of his sons kill him while he is at prayers in the temple of Negral (Mars).

There was an Egyptian monument in the eastern delta (at Letopolis, "Mouse City," also known as the "City of the Thunderbolt") to a "mouse god" (per Herodotus), erected in commemoration (apparently) of the defeat of Sennacherib's army which had left Egypt in 686 BC (or never reached Egypt). There are also extant temple inscriptions bearing on this.

I would suggest that it was Mercury which was involved in the incident of 686 BC. Mercury is Hermes among the Greeks, but known as Smintheus or Apollo Smintheus ("mouse god") in Asia Minor at the time when Mercury was still known as Apollo, the Archer God, among the Greeks, as in the Iliad. The name Apollo is transferred to the Sun at a later date.

Mercury, which is only a little larger than our Moon, certainly might have looked like a mouse with its plasma tail, just as it might have looked like a bow and arrow with the bow shock and tail. Although the date, supposedly March 23, 687 BC (Julian), would seem to argue for Mars as the agent, this second Earth shock by Mars is not at all well supported. (The first shock was experienced 61 years earlier, in 747 BC.) I would opt for Mercury as the agent, and I would place the event in 686 BC rather than 687 BC. For more information bearing on this see Appendix B, "The Celestial Mechanics."

The Earth shock event was experienced at night in Peking and Jerusalem. Chinese sources read "at night" and "at midnight," as does the Bible. Although Mercury was not seen during the daytime in Asia or the Middle East, it was seen by North American Indians in the daytime. To paraphrase from various legendary North American Indian sources, this is what transpired:

The Sun was in the day sky a few hours before or after noon when it turned black and started to move down, that is, moving directly toward the horizon and additionally toward the southeast. The Sun was choking, and as it dipped down in the sky, the sky darkened and Coyote (Mars) was noticed in the east. Coyote had just crossed over the Earth's orbit in the last few days. Obviously Coyote had snared the Sun, and was dragging it backwards. Only after an hour did the Sun brighten again and return to its path across the sky. Then it was seen what had happened. A mouse had chewed through the lasso. It could still be seen just west of the Sun, with its tail pointing away. [note 38]

The tale of a mouse in the sky is known throughout the world in various forms, as De Santillana and Von Dechend point out in an appendix to Hamlet's Mill. Some of these are not accurate for an involvement with the Sun, however. Most of daylight during this incident spread only from far Western Europe to the middle of the Pacific. Thus tales of winged mouse Gods from India are suspect. The Polynesians have myths dealing with a rat God that gnawed through the nets of the Pleiades. Mercury was within a few degrees of the Pleiades on March 23, 686 BC. This is correct if it is considered that at this time the dome of the stars had not yet shifted (that would happen in 685 BC) so that the Sun stood directly below the Pleiades at the spring equinox.

As I have previously noted, this event also represents the Tower of Babel incident: a plasma cone in glow mode extending from Earth to Mercury and ignited Mercury's atmosphere. The plasma connection may have lasted a day or more. Everyone saw it, and certainly everyone saw the flaming planet. The reason this story is known worldwide is because it came so late in the history of antiquity. The loss of memory and speech may have been associated with this specific incident, or may reflect the changed condition of the Sun's electrical field the following year. More on this last later. [note 39]

The Death of Quetzalcoatl

The shock which cast Mercury into an orbit close to the Sun may have changed the eccentricity of Earth's orbit (which would not change the length of the year), because soon after the encounter with Mercury, Earth seemed to have moved its orbit away from intersecting the orbit of Mars and was thereby removed from the threat of Mars. Shortly after Earth was removed from the vicinity of Mars, Venus, too, fell from the sky. [note 40]

"How art thou fallen from heaven, O Lucifer, son of the Morning?"

-- Isaiah.

What happened to Venus? From what little we know, it looks like Venus was suddenly involved in a massive plasma discharge. The flare-up also involved Mercury. But less notice was taken of Mercury, for at the start of the nova event Mercury was very close to Venus in the sky. Most peoples recognized Venus, but not Mercury. The starting and ending dates of this event are developed in the chapters "Modern History" and "Olmec Alignments." [note 41]

In Mesoamerica, Quetzalcoatl, who is Venus, is represented as the bearded man or God, who had come from the east to deliver all the benefits of civilization. In their recycling of all history, the Mesoamericans make Quetzalcoatl into the last king of the abandoned and famed city of Tula, already an ancient ruin at the time of the Mesoamerican authors of the 15th century AD. To paraphrase, "Quetzalcoatl, the last King of Tula, traveled east, and set himself on fire. Eight days later he arose in the sky as the Morning Star (Venus)." Both the Popol Vuh and the Annals of Cuauhitlan, two documents independently written a thousand miles apart, agree on this. In the Codex Borgia the mythical hero Quetzalcoatl is burned while his heart ascends to heaven as the Morning Star. [note 42]

The "burning of Quetzalcoatl" happened far from Earth, since it did not involve any noticeable geological disturbance on Earth, although we have many notices of the "Ignis Coelis" during this period. It may very well be that the condition of electric charge for Venus had mounted to the point where only a plasma discharge or a mass ejection could balance forces. At any rate, after its last passage behind the Sun, Venus seems to have undergone a massive plasma discharge, and, at some later time, assumed a circular orbit. It must have been an enormous energy outpouring, for Venus lost its coma, its talons, its feathers, and the tail or flowing hair. It assumed the looks of a star. But it took months.

If, as I have suggested, Mercury was involved in the March 23, 686 BC, plasma contact with Earth, then it might also be suggested that we are not seeing Venus involved in a nova event, but that this was a nova-like event of the Sun, involving both Mercury and Venus. When Mercury changed its orbit to fall well within the orbit of Venus, it disturbed electrical conditions close to the Sun. Today the Sun still reacts to comets which come close by hurling coronal mass ejections toward them into space. That would make more sense of the description, from China, that two suns were seen battling in the sky at this time. The two Suns do not imply that one of them was the actual Sun. But since Mercury remains close to Venus at first, and within a month was close to the Sun, it is certain that for many observers the display involved only Venus and the Sun. The sudden brightening of Venus was recorded in extensive references to "a prodigy in the sky" and of Venus "blazing through the day sky brighter than the Sun," as well as references relating the changes in the sky. [note 43]

We do not know exactly when this happened, but my suspicion is that it occurred during the year 680 BC in Eastern Mediterranean chronology, which is 685 BC in absolute astronomical chronology (to be discussed below). There are a number of reasons why we have no certain date for this event. First, because the flare-up of Venus spanned a considerable amount of time. It was not an event lasting only a day. In fact, it lasted a month and a half, 40 days. Second, the event was not associated with any cataclysmic changes on Earth. And third, the effects were not noticed until the following year, or later. Only later were the lasting changes recognized: Spring started two weeks later, the constellations had moved in the sky, and the polar axis no longer pointed to a location in Ursa Major. When later attempts were made to understand the changes, it came as a massive shock to ideas about the Gods, about knowledge, and about the workings of the Universe -- which will be the subject of the following chapter.

The flare-up must have represented a cataclysm equivalent to a supernova. The event should have been noted in Chinese records as a nova. It was not. The earliest Chinese record of a supernova (a "guest star") is for AD 185. The flare-up of Venus was not considered a "guest star" because the display was immense and happened during daytime. It was not a star, it was obviously the planet Venus, which, because of its coma and tail, would have readily been seen in the daytime in antiquity, and the planet Mercury.

For both the Mediterranean region and Mesoamerica, the blazing of Venus became the end of mythical and divine history. No new Gods enter the pantheon after this -- with the exception of the personification of Venus as the savior of mankind (as Quetzalcoatl, Mazda, Mithra, and Christ). Saved, that is, from 120 years of harassment by planets and planetary Gods. Mars shows up nine times during this period, delivering a shock the fifth time, which changed the orbit of the Earth, and landing continuous lightning strikes the other times. Mercury closed in on Earth nine times, delivering a shock to Earth the last time, which did not alter the Earth's orbit. (For the Earth shock by Mercury see Appendix B, "Celestial Mechanics." For the nine visits of Mercury, see the chapter "The Chilam Balam Books.") In addition the region of Mesopotamia, the Near East, and Egypt were subjected to constant warfare during this time, as was China. These would have effectively masked the records of visits by Mars.

When Venus and Mercury started to blaze in the skies, it must have seemed as if the end of the creation was at hand. But it ceased, on July 25th, 685 BC, suddenly, when a massive plasmoid lightning strike by Jupiter stopped the blazing planets. I'll discuss this in the next chapter.

----
Special thanks S Borruso for the note on Josephus.

Endnotes

Note 1 --

The destruction was in fact much worse than presented here. Whole cities and islands disappeared, others rose out of the sea. The destruction extended into Northern Europe. See in particular Velikovsky's unpublished documents at varchive.org, "The Dark Ages of Greece," the particular chapters ["Changes in Land and Sea"] for Roman recollections, and ["Closing the Gap"] for Greek, Egyptian, European, and Mesoamerican notes.
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Note 2 --

After 2193 BC the repeating period for Venus changed to a smaller value. See Appendix B, "The Celestial Mechanics" for details. Of course, the 52-year intervals were in solar years, not in current years. Mesoamerica counted in "Tun years" of 360 days until 747 BC, and counted in "Haab years" of 365 days after that. Today one of the two Sun transit periods of Venus, when the Sun, Venus, and Earth are directly in line, is still a double interval of 52 years.
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Note 3 --

It had been assumed by Velikovsky that the "ball" in the celestial ballgame of 776 BC was the Moon. This was partially based on reports from the Romans that the "month" varied greatly around the time of the founding of Rome, circa 747 BC. But the Roman "month" was a calendar measure, not the orbital period of the Moon. It was an attempt by the Romans to adjust the calendar to the new length of the year after 747 BC. It is just doubtful that the orbit of the Moon would be affected, especially repeatedly. There is also no information on this from any other sources.

Considering that Mercury shows up repeatedly during the period of 806 BC to 686 BC (as it had in 3067 BC to circa 2750 BC), it is more likely that it was Mercury which was understood as the ball. Of course only the Olmecs make note of this, because the Olmecs had been playing games with a large rubber ball since perhaps 1400 BC (at San Lorenzo).
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Note 4 --

The Olympic Games were said to have been founded by Hercules (Mars) at Pelop's tomb at Olympia. There is evidence from ephemeris information that a near conjunction of Earth with Mars and Venus happens in 776 BC. Notes on this may be found in Appendix B, "Celestial Mechanics."

The Chinese Book of Shih King, the Book of Odes, lists a "celestial event" for 776 BC. In the 19th century it was reputed to only be an eclipse of the Sun. As a book of collected poetry, the Shih King is not concerned with celestial events. It is the only "celestial event" which entered the book. Since the Moon was on a slightly larger orbit at that time, it is unlikely that the eclipse was caused by the Moon. Thus it might have been a planet on an inner orbit.

Another source for celestial phenomena during this period of time, the Spring and Autumn Annals, compiled by Confucius and completed about 480 BC, lists some 35 eclipses, almost all of which were verified in the 19th century, but includes no dates significant to conjunctions with Venus or Mars.
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Note 5 --

In the 5th century BC Herodotus placed the Trojan war in 1200 BC, a date later taken up by Eratosthenes. However, the date has been in controversy since the time of Herodotus. The Trojan War should be placed in the ninth or tenth century or in the seventh century -- not in the 11th century BC. The testimony of the Asiatic Greeks, who traced their ancestry to the heroes of the Iliad, agrees on this. Velikovsky also makes a good case for placing the war in the middle of the 8th century BC, after 747 BC.

Following is a footnote from an unpublished document by Velikovsky on the later dating of the Trojan war. The footnote was added by Jan Sammer. The actual document expands on this considerably:

A. R. Burn, Minoans, Philistines, and Greeks: B.C. 1400-900 (London, 1930) pp. 52-54: "It cannot be too strongly emphasized that the traditional date of the Trojan War, 1194-84, adopted by Eratosthenes and more or less tentatively accepted in so many modern books, is absolutely worthless" being based on Eratosthenes's "wild overestimate of the average length of a generation." Cf. idem, "Dates in Early Greek History," Journal of Hellenic Studies 55 (1935) pp. 130-146. Cf. also D. Page, History and the Homeric Iliad (University of California Press, 1959) p. 96, n. 159: "(the date) given by Eratosthenes is nothing but a guess proceeding from flimsy premises which could not possibly have led to a scientific calculation." Another writer adds: "sober historical judgment must discard the ancient chronological schemes in toto; they are nothing more than elaborate harmonizations of myths and legends which were known in later times and have no independent value whatever for historical purposes." (G. Starr, The Origins of Greek civilization: 1100-650 B.C. (New York, 1961) p. 67.

-- Velikovsky (Sammer) unpublished document at [http://www.varchive.org]

But the actual dates of the war do not matter. The war was probably a fiction. It is the retelling by Homer and others which weave into the tale the doings of the planets in the 8th century BC that is of interest. Authorship of the Iliad can definitely be placed in the 8th century BC, and more likely the composition dates to the 7th century.

Alfred de Grazia, in The Disastrous Love Affair of Moon and Mars (1984), makes a cogent case for placing the composition of the Homeric epics to after 650 BC (which he did with no knowledge of the event of 685 BC). He suggests that the characterization of the heroes as berserkers, pirates, and incompetent warriors and sailors correspond to the expected reaction of survivors of calamities of enormous scope, which removed all prior institutions of government, religion, history, and literacy.
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Note 6 --

The new period of the Moon after 747 BC did not fit evenly into a solar year of 365.25 days. In the previous period 12 months of 30 days had equaled a year of 360 days. Actually, it is my suspicion that the Roman people of Italy were still using a 10-month calendar cycle, left over from the calendar of an earlier epoch (when two 10-month periods exactly matched the synodic period of Venus). Romulus, mythological founder of Rome, instituted a 10 month calender, says Ovid (de Grazia). There is also a claim by Roman historians, however, that one of the first kings of Rome, Numa, before 747 BC, added two months, January and February, at the end of the ten-month civil year, whose original names ended in October, November, and December, which translate as eighth, ninth, and tenth.
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Note 7 --

See "Of The Moon And Mars, The Origins Of The Lunar Sinuous Rilles" Ralph E. Juergens, Published in Pensee Journal, 1974, in two parts and available locally as [Part One] and [Part Two]

[Image: plasma impinging on the Moon]
[Image: Plasma contacts between Mars and the Moon, 8th century, BC. Illustration from Ralph E. Juergens, "Of The Moon And Mars," Pensee Journal (1974)]

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Note 8 --

There is a clear reference to the Olympic Games in the Iliad, about a chariot race, recounted by Nestor, which was recognized as an anachronism by the Greek editors in the sixth century BC. This anachronism, one of a number of instances, would date the authorship to after 680 BC, when chariot racing was added.
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Note 9 --

Despite the universal use of the ballgame by many diverse societies in Mesoamerica over a 2200-year time span, we do not have a single description of how it was played. It was banned by the invading Spanish. All the information which has been gathered is inferential.
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Note 10 --

During the 8th and 7th century over 300 cities in the Middle East were destroyed by earthquakes and fire. The Mycenaean Greek culture came to an end at this time (although conventionally dated 1200 BC). Mesoamerican farming villages, originally established after 1500 or 1200 BC, also suddenly disappear after about 800 BC.

In Chaos and Creation (1983), Alfred de Grazia writes about the book by Claude Schaeffer, Stratigraphie Comparée et Chronologie de L'Asie Occidentale, IIIe-IIe millénaires (1948):

"Certain outstanding events ... struck simultaneously a definite number or even the totality of urban centers of Western Asia. ... Not only is this conclusion persuasive as originally inscribed, but many locations can now be added to the doomsday list."

De Grazia notes the dates of about 2350, 2100, 1700, 1450, 1365, and 1235 BC, and adds:

"all that Schaeffer "automaticaly" consigns to the end of the Middle Bronze Age, at around 1750 BC I assign to the same time, but dated at about 1450 BC. The many destructions that he consigns to 1200-1300 BC, I assign to 800-700 BC."

"The results are remarkable. Suddenly, the vast 'hiatus' between '13th century' destruction and 6th century proto-classical times becomes only a brief hiatus. It is clear that the vast movements of 'the peoples of the seas' were a fiction employed by scholars to explain the widespread natural disasters of the 8th and 7th centuries, the Mars disasters of our calendar."

In 1961 de Grazia contacted Schaeffer about updating the 1948 information. The project was cut short by Schaeffer's death.

De Grazia's suggested dates are only "more or less" correct for the lapses in chronology of the Eastern Mediterranean region. First, 2350 BC and 2100 BC can be left to stand for my dates for changes in the Earth's orbit in 2349 BC and 2193 BC.

Schaeffer's date of 1750 BC is 300 years earlier than de Grazia's date of 1450 BC (as representing the Exodus), but Schaeffer is here probably correct. I should note, however, that except for Schaeffer's collected data, there is little other indication of destruction anywhere else in the world, with the exception of the inception of periodic abandonments of primary ceremonial centers by the Pre-Olmecs of Guatemala.

The dating hiatus of the Greek "Dark Ages" starts in about 1200 BC, when the last of the Mycenaean structures are today dated. Thus Schaeffer's dates of 1365 and 1235 BC are probably correctly moved by de Grazia to the period of 806 BC to 686 BC.

Extending the close passes of Mars backwards from 747 BC (-746), give the following set of dates extending to 806 BC, based on the simple supposition of an interval of 15 years. The change in the length of the year in 747 BC would not significantly alter these dates, although more accurately I could have used a 14.5-year interval for the period before 747 BC. 


        year time of the year
        ---- ----------------
        806 BC spring
        791 fall
        776 spring, ballgame
        761 fall (return of the Heraclids?)
        747 spring, February 26-28 (Gregorian)
        732 fall
        717 spring
        702 fall
        687 spring, February 22 (Gregorian)

Patten and Windsor, in The Mars-Earth Wars (1996), assume that Mars alternately showed up at the spring equinox and in October. I have included the alternations between spring and fall suggested by Patten and Windsor, but at an interval of 15 years, as initially suggested by Velikovsky, and as can be verified from the Maya Chilam Balam. This series makes much more sense in terms of Bible chronology, and especially the series of prophets who warned of these events. The date of 702 BC also matches the suggestion by Patten and Windsor that the length of the year changed in -701 (but which actually happened in 747 BC).

The archaeological record at Olmec La Venta only records the last five events, including 687 BC, although this might be the Earth shock by Mercury in 686 BC. The Guatemalan Popol Vuh also records a mythology of five contacts. It is possible that Mesoamerica was differently affected by the first four or five contacts by Mars, since the Earth's orbit changed in 747 BC, although the archaeology of Central America records the disappearance of many villages in the 8th century BC.

More likely, the lack of daybooks based on the Long Count (instituted in 747 BC), kept the previous four contacts with Mars from showing up in later transmitted record books. The Popol Vuh thus only recounts details of the last five contacts recorded in the Day Books.
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Note 11 --

Mercury, which apparently accompanied Mars, and was known at that time as Apollo, also steals cattle.

Velikovsky quotes from Vedic hymns and from Joel. Inadvertently many of the descriptions match plasma effect and interactions with Earth's plasmasphere of the asteroids closely following Mars.

The Maruts number seven, writes Cardona, from information gathered from Indian sources. Away from the mass of Earth the gravitational sphere of influence for Mars would have been about 400,000 miles (100 times the diameter of Mars, per Van Flandern). This is twice as far as the Moon is from Earth, and well within the gravitational sphere of influence of Earth. We can only assume that the Maruts remained with Mars because their velocity never matched the required speed needed to become Earth satellites or escape.
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Note 12 --

Plato in Timaeus, recalls what Egyptian priests told Solon:

"... you and your whole city are descended from a small seed or remnant of them which survived. And this was unknown to you, because, for many generations, the survivors of that destruction died, leaving no written word."

And again, told by the priests of Sais:

"For when there were any survivors ... they were men who dwelt in the mountains; and they were ignorant of the art of writing, and had heard only the names of the chiefs of the land, but very little about their actions."

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Note 13 --

The linguistic analysis by de Grazia and others exemplifies the impact that Homer's writings and language had in subsequently unifying the geographically widely separated Greeks. Alfred de Grazia writes:

"Homer used metaphors of the clearest and most ordinary kind, to the exclusion of far-flown and fancy comparisons. His poetry seems to be addressing audiences of low verbal ability; or they might have understood a melange of dialects and phrases, a lingua greca like a lingua franca or both. On the other hand, his similes are prolonged and complicated, dealing with rural and pastoral comparisons."

"More significant is the non-use of a sacred, liturgical language. If there had been a Mycenaean dead language, like classical Greek is to modern Greek, or Latin to Italian, then would not that have been the basis for portions of the epic poems? But it was not, not even for prayers. Therefore it did not exist. Mycenaean Greek was probably a living and related set of dialects whose standard expression had disappeared with its ruling class and scribes."

"The linguistic melange (with its numerous catch-phrases of all Greek sub-cultures), which was Homeric Greek, was 'instant prosody.' There had been no time, no more than a couple of generations, to build an epic language. Yet such an epic language would surely have evolved smoothly and uniformly over the several centuries of any 'Dark Ages.' What emerges therefore is a people and culture exploding in space and time, whose language, that of Homer, had not yet caught up with its expanding front."

By 600 BC the Greeks of Asia Minor make a concordance of Homer's vocabulary and are unable to place or define many of his words. It should be noted that Homer probably reintroduced the alphabet to the Greeks, since it seems clear that his works were not recited for 400 years, as conventionally understood, but written down.
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Note 14 --

The iconography of the Maya, as well as the Quiche Popol Vuh, describe a direct connection between Mars and Earth by having Mars (K'awil, in Mayan; Tohil in Quiche) stand on a single leg, often a snake, which is a representation of lightning, reaching down four or five diameters from the bulbous body (or head) of Mars.

Mars, lacking a magnetic field and atmosphere, would have shown with a surrounding dust-laden plasma coma which would have been very little larger than the actual planet.
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Note 15 --

Only where Mars came closest to Earth would mountain ridges be generated. The mountain ridges would be formed in strips parallel to latitudinal lines. Similarly, as the Earth rotated, the electrical arc of Mars would travel at the same latitude around all of the Earth. The seasonal tilt of the Earth has no influence on this, despite the claims to arc-shaped mountain ridges made by Patten and Windsor,
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Note 16 --

De Grazia suggests the deposition of iron ores (iron oxides) at the time of these close approaches of Mars. But disassociated ferrous and ferric iron ionize positively, and would have remained at Mars, under the assumption that Mars represented the cathode during lightning strikes. De Grazia bases much of this on the association of the start of iron smelting and forging -- the start of the "Iron Age" -- with the two centuries when these events happened. Iron ore is not confined to a band in the northern hemisphere.
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Note 17 --

There is a third companion or satellite of Mars mentioned by Homer ("Discord" or "Strife"), which is missing today. However, the description is closer to a rising stream of plasma, reading, "Strife, whose fury never tires, sister and friend of murderous Mars, who, from being at first but low in stature, grows till she uprears her head to heaven, though her feet are still on earth."

Jonathan Swift wrote the following in Gulliver's Travels (AD 1726):

"They [the Laputans] have likewise discovered two lesser Stars of Satellites, which revolve about Mars, whereof the innermost is distant from the Centre of the Primary Planet exactly three of his Diameters, and the outermost five [Diameters]; the former revolves in the Space of ten hours, and the latter in twenty-one and a half."

He follows this with some mathematical information. The information is nearly correct, and involves both Keplerian and Newtonian mechanics. Swift knew both Isaac Newton and Edmund Halley. But no telescope could resolve the satellites until 1877, 150 years after Swift. The actual distances are 0.4 and 3.5 diameters and the periods of rotation are 7.5 hours and 30 hours. Patten and Windsor make the following observation in The Mars-Earth Wars (1996):

"At that time, in 1725 and 1726, astronomers did not know the diameter of Mars. Laputans disclosed the distance of Phobos and Deimos from Mars not in English miles but rather in Mars diameters. Astronomers in the early 1700's did not know the accurate value for the length of the astronomical unit, or how far the Earth is from the Sun. And they didn't know how far Mars was from the Sun. This unit of measurement in the satire suggests a very ancient sketch was involved, or a copy thereof from the Catastrophic Era."

Isaac Asimov, in The Kingdom of the Sun (1960), dismisses Swift's claims as a lucky guess, but then writes:

"However, his guess that Phobos would rise in the west and set in the east because of its speed of revolution is uncanny, it is undoubtedly the luckiest guess in literature."

Others have suggested that the information came from China or Japan during the 18th century. Swift places Laputa as a small island off the coast of China.
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Note 18--

Although the Aztec arrive very late to Central Mexico (AD 1100) they derive the qualities of their war God (Huitzilopochtli) from the Toltecs (since circa AD 800) whose war-like God (initially Xipe Totec) had been imported into the region. The people of the earlier classical phase, as at the ceremonial city of Teotihuacan, lasting from circa 200 BC to circa AD 700, had worshipped more benign deities (as far as we know).

It was visitors from Teotihuacan, however, who introduced a magic shield consisting of a flayed human face to the Maya, along with a considerable less effective dart thrower. The genesis of the flayed face, as a mask or shield is clearly seen in earlier Olmec sculptures.
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Note 19 --

The year 687 BC is four 15-year periods after 747 BC, thus suggesting 5 close passes of Mars. The year 702 BC is three 15-year periods after 747 BC, equivalent to four close passes.
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Note 20 --

From the timing of the effects on dawn and dusk, it seems clear that the episode of the Iliad recounts a shock by Mars in Northern Asia in 747 BC. The episode of the Odyssey recounts a shock by Mercury in North America in 686 BC, and thus experienced at nightfall in Greece. The electrical contacts happen at about noon local time, and thus would have a location of Earth facing the Sun. The Iliad and Odyssey recount what happened at dawn and dusk, a quarter turn away from the location of the noon sun.
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Note 21 --

See the article by [Ralph Juergens]. From this, by the look of the rilles of craters of the Moon, it might only take seconds instead of minutes for electrons to course through crustal material, that is, if some of these craters were caused by Mars as Juergens suggests.
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Note 22 --

I have proposed elsewhere that, from 3100 BC through circa 2700 BC, the orbit of Mars was elongated so that at perihelion it would be at a distance from the Sun which would be coincident with, but elevated above, the orbit of Earth. Thus "visits" by Horus lasting a day or some days could be assured. I also suggested that, on the basis of Mesopotamian and Egyptian records, this happened at 30-year intervals, on average, due to the cyclical nature of planetary orbits. This periodicity still exists today between Earth and Mars.

Coincident orbits do not cause a collision between planets, because planetary orbits are differently inclined to the ecliptic, and easily remain tens of millions of miles apart. Additionally the electrical repulsion of planets would overcome the gravitational attraction at even closer distances. It is quite possible that Mars missed coming anywhere near Earth after about 2700 BC just due to some minor tick in its travels -- perhaps coursing along or outside of Earth's elliptical orbit while Earth was not anywhere near, or at an elevation far above.

When the Earth assumed a larger orbit in 1492 BC, Earth would again cross over Mars's orbit -- an event which would be over in a day or so. But Mars might not have come close to Earth (that is, met up with Earth at the crossing location) for hundreds or thousands of years after 1440 BC. But after 806 BC it started to come close at regular intervals. The prophet Amos had already experienced two or more passes and predicted the disturbance of 747 BC by two years.

Mars would have looked like a giant orb repeatedly whizzing past Earth at close range on the day side, before diminishing in size to return in reverse order years later on another orbital cycle. The look of repeated passes is caused by the rotation of Earth. Predicting a later close passage of Mars would not have been all that complicated for Amos, and could have been done on the basis of minimal records and contemporaneous observations.

Donald W. Patten and Samuel R. Windsor, in The Mars-Earth Wars (1996), have noted that the Roman feast days of Tubulustrum (March 20) and Armilustrum (October 24) might have been the dates on which Mars arrived to cross Earth's orbit -- but not in the same year. These dates correspond approximately to the Hebrew "Passover" (originally after the vernal equinox) and "Day of the Lord" (a month after the autumnal equinox). Note that these dates are based on an "equivalent Gregorian year."

Combining the suggestion of Patten and Windsor with what I have from other sources, the close calls of Mars would have occurred as follows. (I have added the 686 Mercury event, and the 685 Venus and Mercury nova -- to be discussed later.) 


        year    date
       Julian  Gregorian                notes
      -------- ---------------    --------------------
       806 BC  Spring 805 BC
       791+    October
       777     February 776 BC?   the 'ballgame'
       762+    October            lesser impact
       748     Feb 28 747         Earth shock, year changes
       733     October            lesser impact
       718     March
       703     October 702        lesser impact
       688     March 687
    additional data:
       687     Mar 23 686         Sennacherib; shock by Mercury
       686     Jun-Jul 685        Venus and Mercury in nova

As noted in an earlier endnote, contacts of 806 BC and 791 BC are likely, and have been added. If the last Earth shock involving Mars happened in 747 BC, then the current synodic period of Mars can be used with an ephemeris for the dates after 747 BC, since there would have been no further changes in the orbit of Mars, except for a change in ellipticity (which does not change the orbital period). That means that the "contacts" of Mars with Earth before 747 BC might have involved a slightly different synodic period for Mars. I originally used a 14-year interval to calculate the synodic period, based on an orbital period (suggested by Patten and Windsor) of 720 days for Mars (currently 687 days). I have since found that Velikovsky suggested a 14.5-year interval in "the reign of King Hezekiah" among unpublished documents. I used a 14.5-year interval for the table above. The last few calendar dates are accurate, and can be verified from Chinese and Mesoamerican sources. The "Sennacherib event" was likely on March 23, 687 BC (Julian). See endnotes of the following chapter for additional details plus Appendix B, "The Celestial Mechanics."
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Note 23 --

With the second Earth shock in 686 BC the length of the year was not changed at all, since we have no record anywhere of additional calendar reforms. Also significant is the fact that the Olmec Long Count shows no discrepancies greater than one day if the calendar dates derived from the Chilam Balam for the year 685 BC are calculated backward to 747 BC. This suggests that the ellipticity of Earth's orbit changed in 686 BC.
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Note 24 --

More details and ephemeris calculations may be found in the Appendix "The Canopus Decree."
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Note 25 --

The "Era of Nabonassar" actually starts on February 27th of the Julian calendar. Ussher relates:

"From twelve o'clock, on the first day of the Egyptian month Thoth, from Wednesday, February 26th, in the evening, in the year 747 BC, all astronomers unanimously start the calendar of Nabonassar."

Ussher is here supposedly using the Julian calendar. The date matches the starting date of the Roman calendar (which we use today) as starting on March 1, the day after February 28th. The Olmec Long Count starts on February 28, 748 BC (-747), but on the Gregorian calendar. I suspect that in all these cases the actual dates are on a seasonal calendar, a Gregorian equivalent calendar.
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Note 26 --

Before 747 BC, when the Moon's orbit was 30 days, the Moon would have been on an orbit around the Earth which was considerably larger than today. There would not have been any eclipses (lunar or solar) seen on Earth, for the hard shadow of the Moon, the umbra, decreases in size with distance, and at some distance completely disappears. This happens on occasion today because the distance between Earth and the Moon varies somewhat over time.

Ptolemy does not list all the eclipses which might have been available to him, even though certainly by AD 200 these could have been retrocalculated. Ptolemy lists ten lunar eclipses between 721 BC and 381 BC, from Babylonian sources, 5 eclipses from 201 BC to 141 BC, from Greek sources, and four between AD 125 and AD 136, from his own observations (at Alexandria). The number is certainly much less that the 400 or more eclipses which might have been visible in Mesopotamia (although, eclipses are visible only in limited and variable portions of the world).

Robert R. Newton, in The Origin of Ptolemy's Astronomical Tables (John Hopkins, 1985) (also, The Crime of Claudius Ptolemy 1977), questions the validity of many of these eclipses. Others are of a different opinion, although John M. Steele, in "A Re-analysis of the Eclipse Observations in Ptolemy's Almagest" in Centaurus 42 (2000), also questions the validity of some dates.

The point, however, is that both in Alexandria and China, records of eclipses start to appear only after 747 BC, although the earliest in both instances are in 721 and 720 BC. Some of the first eclipses of the Sun experienced in the 8th century BC were at times produced by Mars, and would have been associated with the destructive contacts by Mars. These solar eclipses would have struck terror in the people of the Mesopotamian region.

Alfred de Grazia has noted, "When Velikovsky's Worlds in Collision appeared in 1950, many a critic leaped at it claiming that eclipses of the times before 700 B.C. were known and hence the skies had been orderly for long before then. Over the years he and his supporters put to rest this claim. No such historical record exists; there is no anomaly present." -- from The Burning of Troy (1984)
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Note 27 --

In the previous era, 1492 to 747 BC, the year had been 360 days and the period of Venus was 225 days. The synodic period of Venus (the time of an apparent revolution around the Sun as seen from Earth) would be (360*225)/(360-225) = 600 days.

The continued use of a 10-lunar-month calendar (from the previous era of 2193 BC to 1492 BC), after the year had changed to 360 days (and 12 lunar months of 30 days), would match the 600-day synodic period of Venus. Two rotations through 10 months would bring the year around to another helical rising of Venus. After six rotations through 10 months the helical rising of Venus (which, I should point out, was absolutely spectacular in antiquity) would again fall on the same solar year day as 5 years earlier, 5*360 - 3*600 = 0. Five 360-day years is 1800 days; six rotations of 10 months of 30 days is also 1800 days.

This explains why after 747 BC, when the period of the Moon no longer divided the Earth's year into equal and repeating segments, the "Venus calendar" was readily adopted. Even though it fell behind a day every four solar years it was much more useful than a calendar based on the Moon.
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Note 28 --

Ussher states:

"748 BC -- Rome was founded by Romulus according to the reckoning of Fabius Pictor, the most ancient of all Roman writers. This date is confirmed according to the account of the secular games held by the ancient Romans most religiously. This happened shortly before the beginning of the 8th Olympiad, on the feast of their goddess Pales, on the 10th day of April."

The 8th Olympiad is 776 - 8*4 = 744 BC, shortly after 747 BC.

Velikovsky suggests that the changes in the Roman months were made following 747 BC, but this is not likely to be correct. Because it is certain that before 747 BC there were 12 months of 30 days in the year, the only reason to add two months to the year would be to correct the 10-month calendar held over from the previous era, when there were 10 months in the year.

Before 747 BC, all the months were 30 days, adding up to a 360-day year. In 747 BC the decision was made to start the year (March first) after the 28th day of February, since that day coincided with the disturbance (or the end of the disturbance) by Mars. But with the month of February now short by two days, and the new year five days longer, seven extra days had to be distributed over the 12 months of 30 days.

The extra days of the year were distributed to the first, third, and fifth months of the first five months of the old 10-month calendar (March, May, July) and in the same manner to the second five months (August, October, December), with the last additional day going to January.

Later Roman historians, noting the nearly symmetrical distribution of extra days to alternate months of the 12-month calendar, suggested that the emperor Augustus stole a day from February to be added to the month named after himself (August), so that it would be as long as the month named after Julius Caesar (July).
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Note 29 --

Assuming a 584-day synodic period for Venus based on the canonical values of the Venus calendar of the Dresden Codex (dating at the earliest to AD 700), when the Earth's year changed to 365.25 days after 747 BC, the coincidence of an Earth/Venus calendar would have been (5*584) - (8*365.25) = 2 days -- representing a slippage of two days over 8 Earth years. A half period (4 years) would only displace the calendar by one day. This calendar was in use throughout the world -- as for example, among the Egyptians and the Inca. It was used nominally also by the Greeks, who base their "Olympiads" on 4- or 8-year intervals, starting in 772 BC. Actual local calendars of the Greek city-states varied enormously, being based on local religious feasts and later on civil tax collection needs.

The Romans, by the first century BC, had done something similar, repeatedly shifting the start of the year by edict of the Senate so as to increase tax collection. Julius Caesar's reform in 40 BC was welcomed universally as a return to sanity. This is also why he was allowed to move the start of the year from March 1 to January 1, breaking a 700-year-old religious tradition.
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Note 30--

In Mesoamerica only the Zapotecs of Monte Alban in West Central Mexico added a leap day. Apparently this was done in 607 BC, when a switch could be made to the Zapotec annual calendar without missing a day of the traditional Tzolkin calendar. See the chapter "The Day of Kan" for details.
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Note 31--

The Mesoamerican Long Count calendar "completed a Baktun" on February 28, -747 (Gregorian), going to a count of six Baktuns, zero Katuns, zero Tuns, zero Uinals, and zero days (6.0.0.0.0 in Long Count notation), on day 11-Ahau, 8-Uo.

The year is the astronomical year of -747, which is actually 748 BC on the Gregorian calendar. (Astronomical dates include a "year zero," which is not used in BC/AD calendar notation.) I have quoted (as elsewhere) an astronomical date (like -747) as a historical date (747 BC, instead of 748 BC).

Additionally, because of the Mesoamerican concepts that a day does not exist until it is completed, the Long Count use of "day zero" actually signifies the first day of the new era, so that the actual era-ending date is February 27th. I should also note that I am using the Thompson "August 11" correlation for conversion to the Gregorian calendar in this instance. See the chapter "The Maya Calendar" for additional details. The "August 13" correlation was, I suspect, instituted in the Valley of Mexico some time around 600 BC or later. It spread to the coastal Olmec region, and most of the Maya in the Peten and the Yucatan, but not to coastal Guatemala where the "August 11" Long Count was retained.
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Note 32--

The "Post Classical" Maya, after about AD 900, reduced their dating to a repeating cycle of 13 Katuns. This is the Maya "Short Count" calendar, where years rotate through a series of 13 Katuns (20-year periods of 360-day years), before repeating again (thus representing about 256 years). The 13 Katun periods are named after the name of the last day of the Katun (on the Tzolkin day calendar). The series rotates, in turn, through the Katun names of 11-Ahau, 9-Ahau, 7-Ahau, 5-Ahau, etc., followed by a decreasing series of even numbered days, and ending in 13-Ahau.

The texts of The Book Of Chilam Balam of Chumayel, translated by Ralph L. Roys (1933), insistently claims that Maya history starts with Katun 11-Ahau. The Chilam Balam is a collection of post-colonial (16th century AD) native manuscripts in the Mayan languages, using European script, which recorded histories and prophesies, many dating back with certainty for hundreds of years, while others recollect events dating back thousands of years before we have any archaeological inkling of the Maya.

A Katun 11-Ahau ended on February 28, -747, Gregorian, thus starting a new era. Although we would hold that Katun 9-Ahau would be the start of the new era, in the languages of Mesoamerica it is the completion of a previous time period which marks a beginning. (See the chapters "The Maya Calendar" and "The Chilam Balam" for more details.)
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Note 33--

As a comment on the validity of the date of February 26, 747 BC, for the Earth shock by Mars, Velikovsky wrote, "It is worth noting ... that the ancient inhabitants of Mexico celebrated their New Year on the day which corresponds, in the Julian calendar, to the same date [of February 26]." He quotes from J. de Acosta The Natural and Moral History of the Indies, which was translated in AD 1604 and re-edited in AD 1880. "The Mexicans" are the Aztecs, since the Maya celebrated New Year on July 26th when the Sun passed directly overhead in Central Yucatan. However, the quoted date is on the Gregorian calendar, not on the Julian calendar. In about AD 1550 there was a ten-day difference between the Julian and the Gregorian calendars. The date may have been converted from Julian calendar notation to Gregorian calendar notation by the translator or editor.

The information attributed to J. de Acosta does not match other sources for the start of the Aztec new year. Vincent Malmstrom writes, "the Spanish clerics Sahagún and Durán, disagreed: The first cited a beginning Julian calendar date of February 2; the second, March 1."
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Note 34--

Linda Schele and David Freidel used the August 11 correlation in their 1990 book A Forest of Kings, but switch to the August 13 correlation with the publication in 1993 of Maya Cosmos.
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Note 35--

Patten and Windsor quote from Louis Ginzberg, The Legends of the Jews (1928):

"When Rabshakah [the Assyrian commander in chief] heard the singing of the Hallel he counseled Sennacherib to withdraw from Jerusalem, as on this night -- the first night of Passover -- many miracles were wrought for Israel. Sennacherib however did not accept the wise counsel given him."

Egypt had been under Assyrian control for a number of years, an event not much recorded by Egyptians, when a revolt aided by the Sudanese king Tirhaka ousted the Assyrians shortly before 686 BC. Sennacherib's campaign was meant to retake Egypt.
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Note 36 --

More than a "blast from heaven," the incident of this year (held to be either 686 BC or 687 BC) also has to be recognized for simultaneous worldwide earthquakes.

Dwardu Cardona, in "Velikovsky's Martian Catastrophes" (Aeon 1990) wrote about this incident:

"If the sources are to be believed, the suddenness of the slaughter as the army lay resting during the night plus the 'burned' nature of the victims, with their garments remaining intact, do not imply the effects of a hurricane. But with so many contradicting reports, including that given by Herodotus, all of which invoke 'miraculous' phenomena, should any of these bizarre details be given credence? And if so, which?"

"Thus the aura of mystery remains attached to Sennacherib's last campaign but, as matters stand at present, the issue cannot be resolved by attributing any of this to a close Martian flyby which was apparently noted by no one."

The blast of wind happened almost directly opposite the location of the North American contact site of Mercury, not antipodal, but certainly in the northern hemisphere and at roughly the same latitude. No wonder no one in the Middle East saw anything.
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Note 37 --

Eric Miller, at the Saturnian Conference "Velikovsky -- Ancient Myth and Modern Science" (1994, Portland, OR), introduced his talk with the following:

"I was going to go through Velikovsky, show that his dating of 687 B.C. for the second catastrophic event is probably an error, that Velikovsky's sources are incorrect as to his Chinese sources."

The "sources," however, are competent 19th century European astronomers.
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Note 38 --

The source is from Velikovsky and attributed to the Menominee Indians of North America. The Menominee are indigenous to Wisconsin, and thus located well away from the area of destruction. Velikovsky has, as an added detail from an original Ute source (S. Thompson Tales of the North American Indians, 1929), "... a huge conflagration enveloped the American prairies and forests as soon as the sun, frightened off by the snarer, returned a little on its way." The timing is absolutely correct. The event was also noted by Hawaiians and Polynesians, who recall (from their perspective) that at the onset the Sun rose and reversed itself before appearing again.

[Image: Semi-circle of compressed mountains centered on Northern Alabama]
[Image: Semi-circle of compressed mountains centered on Northern Alabama. Source: Google Maps, courtesy of Dennis Cox, http://sites.google.com/site/dragonstormproject/]

The particular shape of the compressed mountains follows the form predicted by consideration of the application of the initial compressive forces. The "burning prairies and forests" were due to a path of electrical arcing which traveled west from the "impact" location, and were thus noted by Plains Indian tribes.

It is quite possible that Venus played the role of Coyote in this tale. Venus was in the day sky west of the Sun. As the skies darkened, Venus would have been seen with the cord of a snare (its plasma tail) in hand, extending away from the Sun.

Consideration of the applied torque (the force due to the electrical contact with Mercury), in the northern hemisphere in North America, and the gyroscopic reaction torque, will support the movements of the Sun and Mars described in the text. (See Appendix B, "The Celestial Mechanics" for additional details.)
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Note 39--

Velikovsky was initially uncertain about the date of the second close approach, but in the chapter "The Later Campaigns of Sennacherib," of the later unpublished text "The Assyrian Conquest," Velikovsky notes:

"In the last century scholars became aware that there were two invasions of Palestine by Sennacherib and that it is possible to discern in the scriptural record an early and a late campaign against Hezekiah. The first campaign to Palestine took place about -701. The second campaign is dated by modern historians to -687 or -686."

He sources Henry Rawlinson and, more recently, William Albright (1956) (?), John Bright (1962), and Edwin R. Thiele (1951).

Likewise Donald W. Patten and Samuel R. Windsor, in The Mars-Earth Wars (1996), use 701 BC as the year of Sennacherib's disaster, based on the chronology developed by Edwin R. Thiele in The Mysterious Numbers of the Hebrew Kings (1965, as 1951 above).

I am not at all convinced that either 687 BC or 701 BC should be used for a second Earth shock. The selection of dates hinges on the supposition that the catastrophe which befell Sennacherib at the gates of Jerusalem needs to be identified directly with an Earth shock by Mars. This is simply not so, since Sennacherib's army obviously was afflicted with a localized Ignis Coelis. Earth shocks are not required for that to happen, as subsequent history -- into the 20th century AD -- testifies. See Appendix B, "The Celestial Mechanics."

The Chilam Balam only has reference to the first and the last appearance of Mars. The first recorded appearance of 747 BC produced the Earth shock, and changed the orbit of the Earth. Earlier close passes of Mars (before 747 BC) were not recorded as significant, or were missing from the day books of the Long Count which was started in 747 BC.

Additional text of the Maya Chilam Balam states that some other planet showed up 9 times ("Bolon Mayel" -- Nine Fragrances), bringing flowers and perfumes. To show "flowers" the planet had to have a magnetic field. As I point out in Appendix B, "Celestial Mechanics," this was Mercury. Mars has no magnetic field. I will insist on the date of 686 BC, not 687 BC, and suggest that Mercury, not Mars, was the agent for the second Earth shock. Two independent Chinese sources confirm the date.
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Note 40 --

I will later suggest that the interactions with Mars stopped in 670 BC, when Earth's orbit became nearly circular (as noted by Rose and Vaughan), and thus Earth no longer came near the orbit of Mars -- which even today is still quite elliptical. See following text for details.
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Note 41 --

It is likely that Isaiah addresses Mercury, that is, Phaethon, not Venus. Phaethon can be placed in 685 BC as Mercury. "Helel ben-Shahar," which is how Isaiah addresses Mercury, reads then as "Shining son of Dawn" (Eos), which is exactly how the Greeks addressed Phaethon.
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Note 42 --

The Popol Vuh actually shrouds this in a narrative of the ball-playing twins Xbalanque and Hunahpu, and reads, "And then the boys ascended this way, here [that is, toward Earth], into the middle of the light, and they ascended straight on into the sky. ..."

The "eight days" of the inferior conjunction mentioned in the text -- the time after which Quetzalcoatl rose as the Morning Star -- are from the canonical Venus calendar. The Maya values are from the Dresden Codex, and were last recopied in circa AD 1200, from manuscripts dating to AD 700. The Maya values and today's values (from first eastern visibility through the following inferior conjunction) are as follows: 


    236 90 250 8 (Maya canonical values)
    263 50 263 8 (Current Values)

...both add up to a total of 584 days.

The values above represent, in order:
-- the visibility of Venus after first rising in the east
-- the days Venus disappears after setting in the east
-- the visibility of Venus after first rising in the west
-- the days Venus disappears after setting in the west

After setting in the west, Venus reappears in the east. Neither the 8 days or the 50 days are hard and fast, since they vary somewhat with the elevation of Venus above or below the Sun, and the relative elevation of Earth. The total, which represents the synodic orbit of Venus, remains the same. The only difference is in the ellipticity of the orbit -- which will not change the orbital period. The critics of Velikovsky should have understood that, but remained ignorant of basic astronomy.

The canonical Venus calendar of Mesoamerica is only marginally different from current observations. Of note is the longer time of the superior conjunction. The finely tuned tables of Venus predictions of the Dresden Codex, for which the Maya have gained some fame as astronomers, consist entirely of observational corrections to this chart. From this we could guess that the canonical values were derived at an earlier time -- before AD 700.

William Douglas, in Kronos (1982), supplied the visibility and disappearance of Venus in the seventh century BC from the Tablets of Ammizaduga, as follows: 


    240.2 90 249 7 (total 586.6) (Section I of Ammizaduga)
    245 90 245 7 (total 587) (Section II of Ammizaduga)

As the data shows, the synodic period of the orbit of Venus has decreased by 3 days since the 7th century BC. Since at that time the Earth's period was 365.25 days, the orbital period of Venus was only slightly longer than today, 225.1 days, as can be found from the formula for the synodic period, (365.25 * 225.1)/(365.25 - 225.1) = 586.6.

Also note that the Maya canonical values are close to the 7th century BC values. It would suggest that Venus was still on an elliptical orbit at the time when the Maya (or their Olmec predecessors) first collected this observational data.
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Note 43 --

See for instance the collection of references to "a prodigy in the sky," and other notable displays of Venus, by Velikovsky in Worlds in Collision. Velikovsky, however, often places events in the wrong era and at times he also identifies celestial bodies as Venus and Mars, when it is obvious from the quoted texts that the references are to Venus and Mercury or Venus and the Sun.

If the events of Venus and Mercury flaring up was a massive plasma expulsion by the Sun (as seems very likely from the later reaction by Jupiter), then the Earth also would have ended up flaring up, but because of the Earth's magnetosphere and enclosing atmosphere, the Earth might have been spared the creation of thousands of electrical burn craters. There is the contemporaneous statement by Assurbanipal, king of Assyria, about Ishtar (Venus) "raining fire over Arabia" (quoted in the text). Later Roman writers make the same claim of the Earth burning up because of the close approach of Phaethon, as does Plato.
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Calculations are in Unix bc notation, where ^ denotes exponentiation; the functions (a)rctangent, (s)ine, and (c)osine use radians; angle conversions to radians or degrees by the divisors rad=.017+ and deg=57.2+; other functions are shown as f( ); tan()=s()/c()
units: million == 1,000,000; billion == 1,000,000,000;
one AU == 93,000,000 miles.

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