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Recovering the Lost World,
A Saturnian Cosmology -- Jno Cook
Chapter 15: The Era of the Gods.


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Contents of this chapter: [The King List] [Dating the Age of the Gods] [Barrows] [Henges] [Temples and Platforms] [The Gods Destroy Earth] [Endnotes]

The Era of the Gods

This chapter will give further details of the "Era of the Gods." I will suggest some dates, discuss megalithic sites in Europe, and describe the flood of 3147 BC -- when the Gods left.

I will be using 3147 BC, as the "end" of the "Era of the Gods." This date is a correction of 3114 BC, the retrocalculated Maya "year zero," which is the start of the second Mesoamerican calendar round -- as understood by us and, in fact, by the Maya of the Classical era (AD 400 to 900). Any number of catastrophists have used the convenient date of 3114 BC, without looking into how correct or incorrect this might be.

The correction to 3147 BC is based on the institution of the Long Count by the Olmecs in 747 BC, and is detailed in the chapter "The Maya Calendar." The date of 3147 BC is probably much more correct than 3114 BC, although both dates generally match later chronologies, archaeological findings, and climatological information. The date also matches a massive setback in Middle Eastern civilization. The setback was caused by a catastrophe which will be recounted 800 years later in the Epic of Gilgamesh as "the flood" and retold much later yet in the Bible as "the flood of Noah" and placed in 2349 BC. [note 1]

The King List

The "Era of the Gods" ends in 3147 BC with the World Flood. Two questions are, How long did the Gods rule, and, When did this era begin?

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

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

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

The first of the 8 kings before the flood and the first king after the flood both "descend from heaven." It is the flood which separates our era from the "Era of the Gods." The King List simply ends the period of the kings before the flood with:

"And then the flood swept over."

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

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

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

The number of "turns" of the "kings before the flood" are all given as whole thousands, making it look suspiciously like they were made up. But, in fact, it seems that the "turns" represent days, likely retrocalculated from years. If the list was transcribed from other records after 3100 BC, the chroniclers must have been aware that the length of the year had changed and attempted to preserve accuracy by using days (turns) rather than years. Additionally, it should be noted that invoices and manifests in Mesopotamia always used the smallest units in recording transactions. Dividing all the numbers by 225 (what I will assume to be the number of days in the year before 3147 BC) makes all the "turns" into whole numbered years and reduces the total time span of the 8 kings from 241,200 "years" to 1072 years. [note 3]

The King List notes that Meskiaggasher, the first king (and founder) of the city of Uruk "was the first to write on clay." Meskiaggasher is dated to 2720 or 2740 BC and is the 24th king "after the flood." The "writing on clay" was actually well established much earlier in Northern Mesopotamia, yet for Sumer the credit went to the founder of Uruk. The previous 23 kings had held sway over the city of Kish, north of Uruk. Kish was the center of Sumerian politics for some 300 years.

In about 2700 Gilgamesh, the 5th king of Uruk and the literary figure at the center of the Epic of Gilgamesh, defies the king of Kish, and the center of Sumerian politics shifts to Uruk. It was at this time that the King List was probably first transcribed from older tallies and records. We probably owe the compilation of the King List, which was continued for hundreds of years into the future, to this gesture of independence by Gilgamesh. Independence of the individual cities became the political philosophy and practice of Sumer. [note 4]

With respect to accepting the validity of the King List, I think we need to overcome our chauvinism and not assume factual inaccuracy simply because these people precede us by 5000 years. They were not cavemen. The Sumerians showed amazing abilities -- agricultural production, the building and maintenance of massive irrigation projects, the manufacture of goods, widespread conduct of trade, and the ability to keep track of products numbering into the tens of thousands of units.

The tallies of farm products which date back to 8500 BC were initially represented with clay tokens. The use of the token system was extended to many differing trade goods -- barley, beer, cattle, sheep, wicker, cloth, and building materials. Representations of 10 and 100, plus 60, 600, and 3600 were in use. The far-flung trade of Sumer ranged from the Indus valley to the seacoast of the Levant, and, before 3000 BC, to Egypt. There are surviving temple records of trade accounts from 4000 BC. [note 5]

Dating the Age of the Gods

Together the eight "kings before the flood" account for 1072 years. Subtracting this from an ending date of 3147 BC, the "Era of the Gods" started in 4219 BC, a date I later corrected to 4077 BC. The "eight kings" seem to be the appearances of Mars, mentioned previously. Their "rulership" is established because Mars is seen descending from heaven. A version of the King List is given below:


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

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

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

The identities and locations of the "cities" mentioned above, in the quoted King List, are very uncertain. Based on linguistic rather than archaeological evidence, it would seem that Eridu (the first city of the King List) is thought to be Uruk or is located in the far south, Sippar (the fourth city) is thought to be Nippur, and Shuruppak (the fifth city) might be located near Fara. (The "Sumerian Noah" of the Epic of Gilgamesh is from Shuruppak -- "City of the Ship.") But linguists and archaeologists work from slim evidence, and I suspect, as others do also, that Eridu is not Uruk. Uruk was not founded until 350 years after the flood of 3147 BC. The last two cities have not been identified at all. It is suspected by some that they may be under the coastal waters of the Persian Gulf. Although Eridu tends to be thought of as real, many archaeologists hold that none of the cities have been identified.

When the King List was being compiled (after 3147 BC), there had been walled cities in Sumer for perhaps a thousand years and the cloud or plasma formation at the north horizon was thus recognized as a walled city. This was probably the formation and disappearance of the cup-shaped "mountain" at the base of the plasma stream near Earth, caused by instabilities in the plasma stream from Saturn (as could happen with changes in the separation of the planets). To the Sumerian chroniclers, compiling the records of the past, the equivalent of what had been seen at the north horizon was the existence of cities, kings, and changes in kingship. [note 7]

When The Egg Appeared

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

Subtracting 720 years from 4219 BC we arrive at 4939 BC as the first appearance of Saturn as an egg in the clouded sky. (Or, subtracting 720 years from 4077 BC, the result is 4797 BC.) I had suggested in the previous chapter, based on climatic data, that Earth originally arrived at a location below Saturn at circa 5800 BC. This is not correct, since Earth had been below Saturn since 10,900 BC. The cloud cover of the Younger Dryas may account for the lag in climate.

But we now make the additional suggestion that Saturn remained indistinct until 4077 BC -- shrouded in turbulent clouds or what looked like a sea of swirling water. In 4077 BC Saturn went nova, and all the surrounding glow mode plasma disappeared suddenly.

Thus we have the following sequence:

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

Barrows in Western Europe

The Egyptians and Mesopotamians, who were eventually to build gigantic stone and brick monuments, left nothing but a few postholes and wall foundations from the "Era of the Gods." It is in Western Europe, from Portugal to Sweden, that people start a frenzy of building very large grave mounds, called Long Barrows, followed by hollow megalithic mounds, called Passage Graves, and later yet open circular megalithic structures, called henges, during and after the "Era of the Gods." [note 10]

The Long Barrows are 100 to 200 feet (30 to 70 meters) long and half as wide, made at times with standing stones, often 8 to 10 feet (3 meters) tall and capped with stone slabs weighing up to 40 tons. These are covered with packed earth to form a large mound, often much larger than the internal space. The barrows have long passages in the interior with a single terminal chamber at the end. But not all Long Barrows do. Some, like West Kennet Long Barrow (England), are composed almost entirely of a mound of dirt, with very little dedicated as an enclosed burial space. The Long Barrows tend to be older, by thousands of years, than other structures, called Passage Graves.

The Long Barrows date from 4000 BC through about 3400 BC. There can be little question that these barrows are in imitation of the giant ball plasmoids seen in the far south, last seen in 8347 BC. They are also generally oriented with the long axis pointing to the south or southwest. The concept that a huge mound of dirt, or a hollowed out barrow is required for depositing the bones of the dead will extend far into the future. The idea will be modified a number of times, but the "barrow" idea will remain, even after 2400 BC, when large constructions have stopped almost everywhere.

The Passage Graves appear a thousand years after the Long Barrows, after 3400 BC and 3100 BC, and continue to be built until circa 2400 BC. If the Long Barrows seem to be modeled after the ball plasmoids in the south, so the Passage Graves seem to be modeled after Saturn in the north sky.

Then, after about 2500 BC (I would suggest after 2350 BC), the large communal barrows are replaced by single graves under heaped-up soil, called Round Barrows.

[Image: Megalithic architecture]
[Image: Megalithic architecture; after Tharkun Coll, Wikipedia.]

Ron Wilcox writes about the confusion of barrows (originally at http://www.archtext.co.uk/onlinetexts/britains_past/):

"... barrows are frustrating to archaeologists because they are so varied that they defy classification except in very broad (and probably rather meaningless) categories. The mounds might be long, trapezoidal, ovate, rectangular, or oval while the chambers underneath can be made of wood or megaliths (large stones) and constructed in a variety of plans. Entrances can be at the sides or at the ends or in the case of the earthen long barrows entirely obliterated by the heaping up of the mound."

This should be extended to dates also. Although I have indicated a range of dates for "types" of barrows, these are not at all hard and fast. The confusion of dates extends to the mixing of calibrated and uncalibrated Carbon-14 dates.

The Passage Graves have paired chambers left and right, up to six pairs. Most of these grave structures have an additional low exterior wall surrounding the mound of dirt. All have a clearly marked entrance with a doorway and closing stone, even in later designs which no longer allow access to the chamber. Many use a porthole as the entrance, either a single large stone with a round perforation two feet (2/3 meter) wide, or two abutted stones with semicircular cuts.

There are over a thousand barrows along the east coast of Ireland, the west coast of Britain, and the coast of Northern France, most often in areas with a clear view of the western sky. There are about 2400 in total in Western Europe. The concentration of barrows in Ireland and England is unusual. The east coast of Ireland and west coast of England were used to allow ocean access, directly from France. This can be easily understood, since these were very large construction projects, much larger than a local population of farmers would have been able to support. Water was the highway of antiquity. It allowed large numbers of people to congregate easily, both during construction and for the intended ceremonies. The east coast of Ireland and west coast of England had easy access from the projecting tip of France while providing protection from Atlantic storms.

The ocean travel reflected the attempt of the continental people of Western Europe to come closer to the strike point of the arc or plasma stream in the Northern Atlantic.

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

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

First let me outline the problems in understanding these constructions. The number of people buried in barrows do not add up to the size estimated for the workforce needed to build the barrows, and thus to the number of people who may have been expected to use the facilities when they died. This is an enigma which has frequently been noted by archaeologists. Except for a few instances of ossuaries for thousands of bones (as at Malta, for example), even a hundred skeletons would be insignificant in representing the dead of a spread-out community of a couple of hundred slash-and-burn farming families, especially for a period of a thousand years. We do not find hundreds of skeletons. The very large West Kennet Long Barrow, near Avebury henge, built around 3700 to 3600 BC, contained 46 burials (individuals of all ages) when investigated in the last century. West Kennet was in use for a thousand years before the "Beaker People" closed it up during the construction of the nearby Avebury henge (the Avebury ditch dates to after circa 3300 BC; the standing stones to circa 2600 BC).

There are other earlier European locations of barrows: Portugal 4500 BC; Barnerez, France 4700 BC; some Carnac mounds are dated at 5800 BC. Early barrows in Portugal and France face (or parallel) the Atlantic ocean, and are thus aligned to the southwest, pointing to South America. I have other estimates for the first Carnac mounds at 4500 BC, with two larger mounds dating from 4000 BC and 3500 BC.

Some of the very large Long Barrows are of early dates, 5800 BC and 4500 BC (as at Carnac and Barnerez, France), and likely represent the ball plasmoid above the South Pole during an earlier era, especially when these seem to face or parallel the Atlantic, rather than being oriented to the northwest. That means that the ball plasmoid was understood as a destination for the dead, something I have suggested in the chapter "The Peratt Column," with respect to the "sweepers" of the beams of electrons.

And there are other graves. Thousands of ground burials with small mounds still covered Denmark in the 19th century. These are the interments of Neolithic farmers, some of which are contemporaneous with the larger barrows. The same grave goods appear in both. [note 11]

Most of the barrows do not show signs of frequent use. It looks like many sites were reworked, or new interments were made in total disregard of older interments. In many instances old bones were merely swept aside to reuse the tomb.

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

Wilcox is able to suggest that the burial practices involved excarnation, after which the skull and long bones were deposited in a barrow. All the small bones of the body would have been carried off by scavengers. Wilcox writes:

"Remains of what is thought to have been an excarnation platform where dead bodies were exposed ... have been discovered at Stoney Middleton in Derbyshire [and other locations]. The platform ... was surrounded by a semi-circular wall with three standing stones by the entrance. Hundreds of human teeth and bones have been found at the site together with the tiny bones of small animals such as frogs and rodents, which are thought to have been deposited at the site in the droppings of owls and other birds of prey attracted to the decaying human flesh. The excavators suggest the site was built circa 3000 BCE and remained in use for some 1000 years."

Wilcox suggests that ultimately the barrows are territorial markers.

"Associated with causewayed enclosures [not the giant cursuses] and perhaps constructed by groups of people (septs or small clans) who cleared and farmed in adjacent small areas are mortuary enclosures and barrows. Professor Colin Renfrew, who has studied megalithic stalled cairns (barrows) on the island of Rousay, identifies each barrow with an adjoining territory belonging to an individual sept. The cairns not only served as places where excarnated remains (skulls and long bones) could be deposited after exposure but also as markers of the sept territories on which dwelt the people whose ancestral remains were stored within them."

It seems excessive, and "ownership" seems like a contemporaneous notion. This is of course pointed up by the fact that almost universally the barrows get very little use. Some are in use only a decade, some others last a few generations. Yet even for this last case, the number of inhumations falls far short for a clan which could have built the barrow and farmed near by.

To undertake building a Long Barrow or Passage Grave, a crew would need to be fed. The farmed plots adjacent to barrows remind me of the circumnavigation of Africa in about 600 BC by a Phoenician crew, who:

"... every autumn put in at some convenient spot on the Libyan [African] coast, sowed a patch of ground, and waited for next year's harvest. Then, having got in their grain, they put to sea again...." --Herodotus, Histories 440 BC.

It seems very likely that the islands of Malta in the Mediterranean, Bahrein (Dilmun) in the Persian Gulf, and Cozumel in the Caribbean were each used as island cemeteries equated to the original ball plasmoid of the south which had been seen in the ocean of the Absu. Britain and Ireland may similarly have functioned conceptually as island cemeteries, after 8347 BC. Apparently the 10,000 BC site of Gobekli (Göbekli) Tepe in Anatolia, currently under excavation, was also a mortuary. [note 12]

Whatever their function, it seems clear that the later barrows (the Passage Graves) were built in imitation of the "city of the Gods" seen on the northwest horizon -- the giant cloud bank, the polar plasma stream above it, and the globe of Saturn and its rings above that. The barrows are complete models of this structure.

Of the later barrows, many have buttressed or scalloped exterior walls in imitation of the fluted water vapor cloud bank. In the interior of the earlier Passage Graves there is a long passage leading up to a room, but at times to two rooms side by side. The interior looks like a plan of the polar plasma stream, as a path terminating in the disk and rings of Saturn. The exterior entrances of the barrows often repeat the same design with porthole entrances flanked by stones shaped like spread wings.

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

There are other hints that the barrows were built in imitation of what was seen at the far northwestern horizon. The barrows in Ireland and the west coast of England are almost always aligned to have entrances facing southeast. Archaeologists think this was done to allow the midwinter sunrise to enter the structure. But only a few late barrows do this, although perhaps by accident. Most constructions clearly miss the mark. The west-northwest by east-southeast orientation actually points the barrows to Greenland. A location near Greenland was the center of the plasma strike under way some time after 4077 BC. With few exceptions, all the monuments of France, England, and Ireland point to the center of the strike point of the plasma at the shifting location of the north magnetic pole, and thus to the center of the cloud banks seen in that direction. This accounts also for the fact that the alignments tend to wander from a single compass point. [note 14]

Most (but not all) of the parallel rows of stones in Brittany, which apparently precede any of the other stone henges and their access causeways in Western Europe, are aligned to the southwest, but almost all the passage graves, some of which are also assigned early dates, are aligned to the northwest, and dated from 4410 BC to 3360 BC. Only the earliest barrows at Carnac are aligned to the southwest.

This change in alignment is a change in the direction in which the primary objects of interest were seen. First the plasmoids in the southwest direction, then the cloud bank and Saturn in the northwest.

The barrows may represent the first association between death and an afterlife, where an afterlife is guaranteed through proper burial. It is interesting that in early Roman times the people of Western Europe (and throughout Central Europe in Roman times) believed in a return to life after death, whereas the Romans and Greeks did not.

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

It could also be suggested that the lowering of Mars was seen as a threat. The lowering of Mars to the vicinity of Earth, so that it looked like a giant red globe suspended in the sky, would have been accompanied possibly by earthquakes, certainly by changes in the tides, and of course massive lightning discharges. It is likely that the approach of Mars could be seen in progress for decades.

If Mars came close to Earth, it would approach along the axis of the Earth's North Pole, not the location of the cloudbank in the Atlantic. The plasma stream from Saturn would most likely follow the upper path of Mars, and bend to strike Earth at the north magnetic pole. Mars would remain above or behind the cloud bank. The Maya Chilam Balam suggests "behind." But this is from the perspective of 15 degrees north latitude in Central America and 90 degrees further west in longitude.

The barrows may have been a preventive measure meant to induce the God to leave again with the bodies as sacrifices meant to appease the God. [note 16]

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

We should expect most of the barrows to have been built between 4077 BC and 3147 BC, for it is only in this period that the God Mars descends to Earth at intervals. And in fact we see very few barrows constructed before about 4000 BC -- some might be misdated, but others would be copies of the southern plasmoid at the end of the Peratt column, rather than the form in the northwest. Construction falls off rapidly after 3147 BC. (But construction picks up again after 3000 BC; I will describe this in the next chapter.)

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

In the 1920s the idea of a "missionary" religious sect was proposed to account for the fact that the dolmen and megalithic barrow structures are almost identical throughout Europe and the Mediterranean. The suggestion was that the religious ideas were spread by proselytes from the Eastern Mediterranean region moving west across France and around Spain to eventually reach England and Scandinavia. This idea has not held up under archaeological dating. I propose the opposite: the idea of a house of the dead spread from western Europe to the Mediterranean and may have influenced Egyptian graves and temples after 3000 BC. Based on archaeological dating, it looks like the use of large barrows moved from Portugal north to Carnac, and then west to England and further west to Ireland. Each move brought the ceremonies ever closer to the home of the Gods seen in the northwest sky. [note 18]

I should add a note on cursuses. These are absolutely giant enclosures of land, marked off by dikes and exterior ditches. The dikes consist of two parallel banks about a foot (1/3 meter )high, but 20 feet 6 or 7 meters wide, with a ditch outside of these. From Ron Wilcox:

"Cursuses are a type of monument that is not at all well understood and have remained an enigma for many years. We know they date from the Neolithic period and that they are one of the most common of Neolithic monuments, with over 150 so far identified [in England]. Some excavation has been carried out on a few of the best-known. The Stonehenge Cursus which, like other examples, is a lengthy enclosure, measuring some three kilometres long [two miles] with enclosed ends where the banks are at their most obvious, varies in width from 100 metres to 150 metres [325 to 480 feet]. Its bank is about 6.5 metres across and 0.4 metres high [20 feet by 1 foot] dug out of a ditch of comparable size and is dated to between 3600 and 3300 BCE. A smaller cursus lies not far off."

All the cursuses are very long and narrow tapered enclosures, generally with the dikes at one end closer together than at the other end. In general this seems like a purposeful adoption of a diminishing perspective, yet for many cursuses the far end cannot be seen from the near end. Many cursuses also change direction abruptly at some center location, or start to curve away from their initial direction.

"The largest-known cursus is the Dorset Cursus running for 9.6 km [6 miles] from Bokerley Down to Thickthorn Down (Atkinson). Its banks are about 91 metres [296 feet] apart and, like the Stonehenge example, has enclosed ends. Investigations have shown that it was built in two sections and this seems to be a feature of cursuses that they are constructed in incremental additions, not all at the same time, rather like a medieval church. Incorporated into the Dorset Cursus are long barrows that suggest to some that the monument may have had a relationship with the ancestor cult."

I should point out also that there is no apparent dominant orientation. Even cursuses close together will point to odd compass directions. A few point to large standing stones; some are associated with long barrows; more than a few have interments at the bank of the slimmer end. All of them were also augmented -- lengthened -- from time to time.

"Dates for cursuses seem to range from circa 3600 BCE to circa 3000 BCE," writes Wilcox. The early dates, plus the complete lack of any primary orientation, relates the cursuses to the Ley lines, which also lack any coherent orientation. If the cursuses are indeed dated to 3600 BC (most date from between 4000 BC and 2500 BC), then they date from the 4077 BC nova event of Saturn, and extent to the end of the period during which barrows were built.

Ley lines, on the other hand, seem to be later in the Neolithic, for they are all too frequently associated with monuments (standing stones), graves, graveyards, even Christian churches. And Ley lines seem to relate specifically to the landscape, as if at that point in time the landscape is occupied and owned.

What becomes clear in all this is that the British Isles must have been known in Western Europe as the Islands of the Dead. (Procopius, in Gothic Wars AD 565, confirms Britain as "the home of dead souls.")

Henges

Henges and causeways also precede any of the gigantic building projects of Egypt or Mesopotamia. Their construction starts in Western Europe after 4000 BC (only a few) and lasts to 3000 BC (and later), thus spanning the "Era of the Gods." Henges are not grave sites. William Stukeley, in Stonehenge, A Temple Restored to the British Druids (1740), notes at least 50 barrows in sight of Stonehenge. To have barrows near other Neolithic monuments is true almost everywhere in the British Isles.

The henges are public structures, perhaps equivalent to the temple platforms constructed of dried mud bricks later in Sumer. There are some 120 known henges in Britain. The only signs of activity at the henges are the remnants of occasional feasting. The material used in building henges varies with what was locally available -- trees in some Central European locations, large glacial boulders in Western Europe, and, in some cases, as at Stonehenge, dressed stone. Compared to the barrows, they are enormous undertakings, supposedly requiring a vast labor force. [note 19]

The henges are circles of wooden posts (frequently two or three feet in diameter, up to a meter) or standing stones, at times set in concentric circles and always with an exterior ditch. Again we seem to encounter an imitation of the planet overhead in plasma discharge. Anthony Peratt claims that the postholes of the original Stonehenge site (a circle of 56 posts) replicates a stupendous plasma discharge -- presented as a sort of tubular "aurora" of a very limited diameter which extended millions of miles into space. These were electron bundles in arc mode, not excited Oxygen ions, as is typical of auroras.

The count of 56 posts or stones or markers is found repeatedly in almost all other henges, pecked cliff markings, and even the Big Horn Medicine Wheel in the Big Horn Mountains of Wyoming, in the USA. The posts (or stones in other henges) represent a view directly up into the plasma stream at the location of the bend in the stream, away from the north magnetic pole, which was, as Peratt has pointed out, the terminal point of the 56 bundles of concentrated plasma at the outer edges of the stream. The division of the plasma stream into 56 (or 28) bundles is an inherent feature of concentrated plasma discharges.

The view of the plasma stream -- looking like a circle of blazing lights -- was afforded anywhere where a view directly up into the plasma stream was likely. This might be a view of the plasma column as it left the overhead planets, or a view at the bend in the stream where it realigned its direction of travel to meet the magnetic pole. There would be a bend because the connection between Earth and Saturn rotated in the sky on a daily basis -- "like a swizzle stick" reads Vedic sources. [note 20]

Some henges have causeways which lead up to an entrance and are also edged in standing stones. These represent the column of plasma extending from Saturn to Earth -- the path leading to Heaven. The concept of a "path" from Earth to some objects in the sky had been established long ago. Note that none of the causeways are straight, all include a curve, resembling the plasma stream between Saturn and Earth, which, on nearing Earth, curved away from the direction of the polar axis to make contact with the north magnetic pole. [note 21]

There is no doubt that the three long causeways at Carnac represented the Peratt Column seen extending from the South Pole. This was discussed in the chapter "The Peratt Column." The fact that some shorter causeways are aligned toward the northwest, rather than the southwest, suggests that the first sight of the polar apparition above the North Pole of Earth followed directly after the south polar column disappeared. (This may not be true.)

The two largest henges in England and Ireland date as follows: Avebury 3300 BC (the ditch; the stones followed 700 years later), New Grange 3200 BC. The Carnac "Grand Menhir," mentioned earlier, is a single 90-foot standing stone, also dated from 4000 BC. It is probably the largest stone ever set up.

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

The arc touching down in the North Atlantic after 4077 BC must have built up the Earth's static electricity and caused an electrically charged atmosphere. Any tall pointed object would arc with Saint Elmo's fire under the right conditions. This was seen as the doing of the Gods and, in imitation of the arcing circle in the sky, structures were built that would blaze with a similar ring of fire.

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

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

Second, easy access from the sea, via a river, to allow for the arrival of people for the purposes of construction. [note 22]

The third factor was the existence of a conductive plane. This would be a matter of selecting a region which had sufficient (and proper) minerals to allow the ground to readily assume an induced (negative) charge with the occurrence of an overhead positive charge (or the exact reverse). The need for a conductive ground plane is most vividly demonstrated with Saint Elmo's fire when it occurs on ships today, for they float on a highly conductive electrolytic solution -- the salt sea. [note 23]

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

The henges, like the barrows, seem to show very occasional, rather than continuous, use and are often abandoned for new constructions. This suggests that festivities were very infrequent, yet the work involved in the construction was enormous. Something very important was being celebrated. [note 24]

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

The henges and causeways should be distinguished from the thousands of barrows and ossuaries, but since the graves are constructed both earlier and during the same time period in parallel with the public monuments, the combined effect can be very confusing. One author notes the variety of origins as "inspired by outside influences." I would suggest that nothing was built in prehistory which was not done in imitation and that a connecting thread can be seen in the variety of construction if we look towards the sky. The structures were built in imitation of the home of the Gods. [note 25]

After 3147 BC the static electricity in the atmosphere declined enough to make wood and stone henges ineffective in triggering a display of heavenly fire. As air moisture lessened, ground water dropped, and wooden posts dried out, other means for these spectacular displays were required. At Stonehenge in England a late desperate effort included changing the stones to a blue rock (transported from 200 miles away), on the presumption that blue rocks would cause blue flames, but they were soon discarded and much larger local gray sandstone slabs were substituted. [note 26]

The Egyptians resorted to massive stone pyramids for the lightning displays and the Mesopotamians built multi-storied ziggurats to achieve the same effect, both started after 2700 BC. The stone henges and causeways would remain sacred to future generations, but no new structures of that type were seriously attempted after 3000 BC with some exceptions. Their day was over. (I'll deal with later barrows, the endless reconstruction of Stonehenge, and further henges in the next chapter.)

Temples and Platforms

In Egypt and Mesopotamia, as elsewhere, the descent of Mars was understood as a visit to Middle Earth by the God. Temples and platforms were constructed to receive the God, with the courtyards and entrances facing northwest. The first temple at Jerusalem, built by Solomon, faced 6 degrees west of north. [note 27]

Temple orientations are not at all uniform, partially because most of the archaeological records date from antiquity. The functions of temples were entirely different from the mastabas and grave sites which, even later, continued to be oriented toward the northwest.

Mars would appear to get larger as it dropped below Saturn, and would follow the centerline between Saturn and Earth, being governed by gravitational forces, and would not be electrically or magnetically nudged. Visually, Mars would therefore travel in a spiral in dropping closer to Earth, looking as if it escaped Saturn altogether.

Mars would not follow the path of the plasma stream to the Earth's north magnetic pole, but rather the plasma stream would follow the location of Mars. Plasma streams do not move objects. Talbott has recorded how Mars would have looked when it went off axis (moved away from the center of Saturn).

Although the plasma stream took a bend in its travel to make contact with Earth's magnetic north pole (starting maybe some 30 or 40 Earth diameters above Earth), Mars would not slip away from the Saturn-Earth axis. It is also doubtful if Mars approached any closer than 20 Earth diameters (160,000 miles -- somewhat closer than the Moon). At that location all of its features would have been clearly visible. From anywhere in the world Mars would also have looked to hover over the location of the Earth's North Pole. Any object located above the north geographic pole of the Earth would visually be seen as standing still at the pole star. This location is considerably displaced from the circle in which Saturn revolved around the pole.

As I have pointed out, it took a minimum of 120 years to complete a lowering to Earth and a return to Saturn. Humans had plenty of warning that Mars was about to visit again. As Mars stopped in its travel toward Earth and reversed direction after some months, the efforts on the part of humanity were rewarded with this apparent warding off of the planet.

Mars would have approached close enough to be seen as a giant globe above the north horizon, but of course we actually have no idea how close Mars came before reversing and moving up again toward Saturn. I don't know why this happened. No one does. It certainly is not due to Mars stopping in its descent when the electric repulsion between the planets equaled the gravitational attraction.

Mars would have been seen to stand still above Earth at its lowest descent because Mars rotates at the same speed as Earth. The plasma stream, which at various times in the "Era of the Gods" was probably in glow mode, followed and enclosed Mars (this shows in the white and red crown of the pharaohs of Egypt), then bent away toward the Earth's north magnetic pole. From the earliest Egyptian iconography we could thus guess that late in the "Era of the Gods" the plasma stream was in glow mode rather than arc mode. [note 28]

The previous chapter described how the plasma streamers from Saturn, when impinging on Mercury would form a star within the crescent of Saturn. If Mercury deviated from being directly below Saturn, the star pattern would be offset to make it look more like a seashell instead. The change in the look of Mercury is not due to a change in perspective, because the distances involved are just too great. It is more likely that Mercury (as with Mars) periodically deviated from its position directly below Saturn.

The first temple buildings, made of wood and built as houses, were constructed in Central Europe among the first Neolithic farmers, the people whom Gimbutas calls the "Old Europeans." Gimbutas also points to some 50 miniature temples which, like the figurines, were probably modeled on Saturn ablaze in the sky. The miniatures are almost always on short stilts, have open fronts, and include a wide porch like the lower rings of Saturn. Many include the furniture -- ovens, seats, fire pits, and tables -- which are the furnishings of houses and became the fittings of full-scale temples. Many of the model temples are populated with tiny figurines -- probably representing the satellites of Saturn. [note 29]

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

The God is understood to be a local visitor living with the humans. In Egypt and Mesopotamia, as probably elsewhere in the settled world, local images or statues were kept as the presence of the God. These statues were not "representations" of the God -- they were universally understood to be the actual God. People everywhere identify their local temple as the home of the God. The name of the God varied widely from city to city. [note 30]

The localization of the Gods is a direct response to what was seen in the skies. In that the image above the North Pole mostly remained in one location, even with Mars periodically lowering, it was visually seen as "directly above." Thus any occupied space on Earth was understood as "directly below."

The columned porticos of the later Egyptian temples, facing north, are thought to represent the papyrus-forested Nile delta through which the God, or Gods, had entered the country and the temples. The Egyptian Gods were recognized even in antiquity as coming from the north, traveling via the Nile. We are told this at the time of the Greek occupation of Egypt after 315 BC, but the columns were as likely to have been intended to imitate the many-columned plasma path to the Upper Land. The plasma stream from the Upper Land was certainly equated with the Nile. [note 31]

The priesthood throughout Mesopotamia and Egypt establishes an economy based on maintaining the temple of the God or Gods. Food was offered and the statues were walked, washed, and dressed. Far-ranging trade eventually results from the needs of the temples.

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

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

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

-- III Kings 18, narrated by Alfred de Grazia in God's Fire (1983)

The Gods Destroy Earth

The theater in the sky comes to a sudden end in 3147 BC. Earth experiences a violent disturbance which brought the civilizations of the Earth to a stop with a massive flood, except on highlands in Mesopotamia (as in Persia and Anatolia), the foothills of the Himalayas, and in protected river valleys (as in Egypt). Floods and the return of a colder climate are noted in the archaeological and climatological records.

The year 3147 BC marks the worldwide flood. It is the flood which generates stories all over the world of survivors in arks or boats or canoes. In flood tales throughout the world, nearly all the boats or canoes moor to a high mountain peak. The "mountain" is a celestial apparition dominating the skies directly after and for an additional 280 years. It is Jupiter in plasma discharge to its surroundings from its south polar region.

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

Yet another worldwide "flood event" would happen in 2349 BC. This also was understood as a major flood. The Chinese Annals of Shu report that it took Yu, in the service of the emperor Yao, nine years to empty the mountain valleys of water from the "inundation which overtopped the hills." Yu is dated to around 2200 BC. The "legendary" Yu is traditionally placed as reaching the throne of the Xia dynasty in 2205 BC. The Xia lasted to about 1750 BC. The Chinese "flood event" is dated to approximately the same time as the Noachian flood of the Bible, but neither of these were floods. It was a period of extreme rains and hurricanes. More on this in a following chapter.

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

This was true for the Hebrews, for whom the "flood" of 2349 BC, the flood of Noah, was the only flood in their recorded experience. However, the Noachian flood story incorporates elements of the earlier World Flood of 3147 BC, and perhaps also the earlier Black Sea flood, as does the story of the flood of Gilgamesh.

This last is hinted at in the Epic of Gilgamesh. Although nominally describing the flood of 3147 BC, the Epic of Gilgamesh clearly refers back to the spectacular flooding of the Black Sea basin in 5600 BC, with its descriptive references to the Black Sea (the "Sea of Death") and the Bosporus Strait (which Gilgamesh's ferryman navigates by hanging a basket of rocks over the edge of his boat). Gilgamesh, in an impulsive gesture reminiscent of Hercules, cuts the ropes to the basket. On the north shore Gilgamesh visits with the Sumerian Noah, Utnapishtim. [note 32]

Flood stories are ubiquitous, and, interestingly, none of them recall local events where only thousands died. The flood stories all claim to be about a universal deluge, a worldwide catastrophic event which killed nearly everyone and also decimated the plants and animals. [note 33]

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

-- Apollodorus, 2nd century

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

-- Tahiti, contemporary

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

-- Columbia, contemporary [note 34]

At this point we have flood dates for circa 5600 BC, 3147 BC, and 2349 BC. But apparently the disturbance of 3147 was absolutely overwhelming. The Epic of Gilgamesh expresses the regrets even the Gods had for the utter destruction this flood caused.

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

-- Inanna, in the Epic of Gilgamesh

Endnotes

Note 1 --

See the chapter "The Maya Calendar," for how reasonable the date of 3147 BC is if solar years are used rather than years of 365.24 days. In 747 BC, the Olmecs added 6 Baktuns of 400 Tuns to have a Long Count starting date of 6.0.0.0.0 on February 27th -- where a "Tun" was a solar year, at that time understood as representing 360 days. (See "The Maya Calendar," also for the concept of the Long Count, Baktuns, and Tuns.) If we understand that the Olmecs assumed that the year had always been 360 days, then we can extend this concept to say that the Olmecs counted in Tun years, where a Tun was a solar year -- without regard to the actual number of days in the year. Thus, subtracting 2400 solar years (6 Baktuns) from 747 BC, the date of the end of the "Era of the Gods" would be 3147 BC.

Hindu sources identify a number of calendars. A Kali era started on February 18, 3102 BC. In Kashmir, the Laukika era starts in 3076 BC. A third, the Brhaspaticakra era, starts in 3116 BC (15th Encyclopaedia Britannica). In China the date which comes closest to the beginning of the third millennium BC is the starting date of the first of the "Legendary Emperors" Fu Shi dated at 2953 BC.
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Note 2 --

The King List was brought to Greece by Berossus, a priest of former Babylon, in circa 280 BC and published. Until the 19th century AD, when cuneiform copies were found during archaeological excavations in Mesopotamia, this was the only extant record.

The Dynastic Chronicle from Babylonia lists 9 kings before the flood. This per A.K. Grayson, Assyrian and Babylonian Chronicles (1975), where the opening text is the pre-flood list of the Sumerian King List. Berossus lists ten kings, one of which was the founder of the city of Babylon (which did not exist yet at that time).
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Note 3 --

In fact, the documents from Sumer list the numbers in "sars" which is 3600, that is, 60 times 60, and in "ners" which represents 600, 10 times 60. The Sumerians used the decimal numbering system, but large numbers were expressed in sexagesimal. In the 7th century BC, the Assyrians still used "sarus" specifically to mean 3600 days, that is, a decade of years of 360 days.

See the Appendix A, "Chronology," for the basis of a year of 225 days, and an analysis of the King List. I will use solar years (a rotation around the Sun) rather than our 365.24-day years. It would make little sense to do otherwise, since even "calibrated" Carbon-14 dates have been unwittingly adjusted to solar years.
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Note 4 --

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

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

A schema of notation is used for the long-lived "kings after the flood," which is different from the "turns" used for the "kings before the flood" and not at all clear. The literary style of the initial portion of the King List, the "kings before the flood," also differs from the remainder of the list in using archaic language. Near the end of the list, for the last of the records at the time of the fall of the Akkadian Empire, this style is used again.
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Note 5 --
"Remarkable organizing ability was required to administer huge estates, in which, under the 3rd dynasty of Ur, for example, it was not unusual to prepare accounts for thousands of cattle or tens of thousands of bundles of reeds. Similar figures are attested at Ebla, three centuries earlier."

-- Encyclopaedia Britannica, 15th edition.

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

-- John Alan Halloran, [www.sumerian.org]
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Note 6 --

If the arc from Saturn to Mars started up and extinguished eight times over the thousand years of the "Era of the Gods" and perhaps lasted over a hundred years each time then we should expect the upper hemisphere of Mars to have been severely burned. The top hemisphere is actually some three miles lower, but for no clear reason, unless it was originally an ocean. What is more interesting is the lack of craters in the north and the existence instead of five very large fulgamite lightning blisters (Olympus Mons, Arsia Mons, Pavonis Mons, Ascraeus Mons, and Elysium Mons) and three smaller ones (Hecatus Tholus, Albor Tholus, and Tharsis Tholus), clearly the mark of eight stupendous electric lightning strikes. Olympus Mons shows six separate strike marks (circular molten areas). The blisters are hundreds of times larger than any volcanoes on Earth. The caldera of Olympus Mons is 40 miles in diameter. These are not volcanoes.

The Chilam Balam book of the Maya calls this first Mars (actually calling it "first" as the Egyptians do) "Bolon Dzacab" which translates as "Nine-Lives" or "Nine Generations." The Olmecs thus perhaps counted occurrences of Mars when it was centered on Saturn, rather than counting the number of times it lowered to Earth. Mesoamerican languages count the existence of an event on completion, not at the start, as we do. The title "Nine-Lives" is typical of suggesting that the God appeared nine times. It is also very likely that the name "Bolon Dzacab" was given to Mars in the 8th and 7th century BC, when it damaged Earth nine times. See the chapter "The Chilam Balam" for details.
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Note 7 --

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

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

The first written record of the construction of city walls in Sumer is the description of the walls of Uruk. The building of Uruk's city walls is attributed to Gilgamesh (circa 2700 BC), although archaeological indications are that he repaired the walls rather than built them. The first Sumerian kingship, however, was at the city of Kish, 300 years earlier. This dates the earliest composition of the oldest portion of the King List, including the "kings before the flood," to a 300-year period after 3147 BC at the city of Kish. The next portion, representing the addition of the kings of Kish and Uruk, probably dates to shortly after 2700 BC -- the time of Gilgamesh.

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

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

The listed dates also show up in readings of texts of North American archaeology as dates marking long-term changes in climate, moisture, and vegetation, except for the appearance of the egg in 4939 BC. Thus the dates 5800 BC, 4219 BC, and 3147 BC, which are detailed in this narrative, may be compared with the approximate archaeological dates of 6000 or 5800 BC, 4300 BC, and 3100 or 3000 BC when changes in climatic conditions are noted.

For the year of 4219 BC I have two alternatives. From Josephus, the first century AD historian, a year of 4077 BC can be derived (already noted). From the Turin Canon, a Egyptian papyrus document, we can derive a year of approximately 4300 BC. I will use 4077 BC as the year that Saturn went nova.
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Note 10 --

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

The Neolithic farming communities had reached Central and Southern France by 5400 BC, but did not reach Northern and Western France until 5000 BC, the British Isles in 4300 to 4200 BC, and Scandinavia in 4100 BC.

A summary of Neolithic funeral practices follows:

Note 12 --

The fill of Gobekli Tepe in Turkey was carbon dated to 8,500 BC when first investigated, which is the date (8,347 BC) of the last appearance of the "turtle" as recorded in stelae by the Maya. Today the official construction dates vary, and tend toward a variety of ages -- 9600 BC to 7300 BC -- and as early as 10,000 BC.

The noted enigma of Gobekli Tepe is that archaeologists cannot imagine a hunter-gatherer society capable of such extraordinary construction efforts. The frequent depiction of wild animals on the pillars of the site is reminiscent of the Goddess Mari of the Basque, the Goddess of animals.

Perhaps archaeologists forget a few things. First, that Cro-Magnon humans had been around for 35,000 years in that territory. Second, they forget that hunting in this region left an enormous amount of free time. Anatolia at that time was a paradise. The constructions did not require an extensive agricultural base for the labor force. They also forget that limestone, when first exposed in a quarry, is quite soft and very easy to cut and carve. After all, limestone is created under seawater. It hardens after exposure to the atmosphere.

Last, archaeologists, growing up in a society where God has become a philosophical concept, underestimate the important concept of life after death in remote antiquity.

Others have suggested that the Gobekli Tepe "temples" might have been mortuaries (but few bones have been found). When in 8347 BC the ball plasmoids disappeared, the site was officially (and with a coordinated group effort) abandoned by backfilling the space with garbage and loose dirt. (Although some of this has been dated to a much earlier time.) We don't know what happened to the bones, if there were any. At Malta, all the bones of the various "temples" were dug up, and stored in a large underground space under one of the temples -- disarticulated and mixed with black dirt, to be found 10,000 years later.

Following from the original proposal of three ball plasmoids seen in the far south, as described by Peratt, the display would have disappeared a number of times, thus requiring reconstructions of the temples.

A hilltop location would be fully appropriate to the southern celestial display which would only be seen from an elevation. At present it is becoming suggested that there may have been three levels of the Gobekli Tepe "temples" excavated so far. But there are some 16 additional circular structures. The T-shaped posts have been used at other locations in Anatolia at approximately the same dates.
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Note 13 --

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

See Maximillian Ottmar Baldia "A Spatial Analysis of Megalithic Tombs" (Doctoral Dissertation, Southern Methodist University, 1995), which reports on the average orientation of all 2385 tombs in Western Europe. Most chamber alignments are on compass directions of roughly west-northwest and east-southeast, with entrances on the southeast side. These are median figures, that is, there are also some north-south and east-west orientations.
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Note 15 --

The smaller orbs following Mars were identified as seven in number by Talbott -- overheard as an off-hand comment by others at a Saturnian conference. Anthony Peratt notes that the number of nodules developed in Birkeland currents is almost always seven or nine in number. On reaching Saturn they are seen as surrounding Mars (but at that point these are the seven satellites of Saturn). This is reminiscent of Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, or any number of similar narratives, involving the theme of death, a red orb, and a far-away residence. Snow White is Mercury.
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Note 16 --

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

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

The oldest aboveground temple at Malta is Gigantija, on the island of Gozo, dated to 3600 BC, and has its major axis aligned northwest and southeast, with the entrance in the southeast. The temple is the prototype for all the later Malta temples -- 30 to 40 of them -- and used the largest megaliths.
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Note 19 --

We may be overestimating the size of the workforce needed to move stones, but a great deal of labor was required to build the ditches around the henges. Thus, specifically for Stonehenge, the suggestion that this structure was built by a non-indigenous force, the "Beaker People," then accounts for the fact that the shallow ditch was never maintained, and additionally that the bank was placed on the wrong side of the ditch.

The stones are much easier to move if balanced at the center on short pieces of wood, cut across the grain. Wood has high compressive strength in the direction of the grain. The use of rollers, often suggested, is just an insane idea and will not do. The logs would be bruised and crushed, and rollers allow almost no control over the direction the stones will move unless the ground is dead flat and the logs are very even. Angled-up sleds are much more likely to get any serious dragging done.

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

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

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

There is, in fact, a suggestion by Herodotus that the blocks of the pyramids at Giza were moved with some unidentified devices, requiring thousands of components. The best interpretation has been to suggest that these devices were short stubs of wood. A walked megalith can be moved with minimal effort, requiring only a few workers, since the momentum of the block of stone will aid in movement. See for example the website of W.T. Wallington, at [www.theforgottentechnology.com]. Wallington writes:

"I have found that ancient legends from around the world are true. Some megaliths could have been set in place by as few as one man. I could build The Great Pyramid of Giza, using my techniques and primitive tools. On a twenty-five year construction schedule, (working forty hours per week at fifty weeks per year, using the input of myself to calculate) I would need a crew of 520 people to move blocks from the main quarry to the site and another 100 to move the blocks on site. For hoisting I need a crew of 120 (40 working and 80 rotating). My crew can raise 7000 pounds [at] 100 feet per minute. I have found the design of the pyramid is functional in its own construction. No external ramp is needed."

What is amazing about Wallington's "methods" is that these duplicate my own experience in moving huge machinery, yet every "expert" in the world will attempt to drag the blocks. This is even true of recent attempts, where people have forgotten how this could have been done. I have "walked" refrigerators up flights of stairs, and moved 40-ton machines with a pinch bar (pry bar) and a can of oil.

See also Gordon Pipes's article at [www.world-mysteries.com/gw_gpipes.htm].
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Note 20 --

Some of the earliest henges are the Central European wood henges, called "roundels," supposedly dating from 5000 BC. Roundels are closely spaced two-foot diameter tree trunks set up in a large circle with four open entrances. No signs of interior structures or burials are associated with these. The only activity seems to have been feasting. That is generally true for stone henges also.

Peratt in his 2003 article in IEEE Transactions on Plasma Science separates the plasma stream display from the source (the anode) -- which (for us) would be the planet Saturn. He notes that the stream most often tends to divide itself into 56 or 28 discrete streams at the anode, and compares this to the henges and the circular designs pecked into vertical rock walls, worldwide. He notes that he has found "hundreds" of these coincidences, on separate continents: the Americas, Europe, Australia. All use 56 posts or megaliths (or pecked depressions) in the outermost circle. The coincidence of design includes a secondary interior ring of plasma streams, and a flow from the outer to the interior rings (representing a substantial increase in current of the plasma stream). When these designs are presented high up on cliffs with a clear view of the south, they obviously represent the plasma stream from the south, the "Peratt Column." But this would be true for an object blazing in arc mode plasma discharge above the north polar regions also.

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

The henges refer to an object in the northwest on a sight-line from near England and Ireland where these henges were constructed. The dates of the henges do not coincide with the estimated dates of the three ball plasmoids seen in the south. The people in the northern hemisphere no longer needed to climb up mountain sides to get a good look at the object in the sky. It was adjacent and almost directly above them.
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Note 21 --

A Roman author of the first century BC, Diodorus, makes note of "a temple to Apollo" in use with the "Hyperboreans" (presumably England), where "the God appears every 19 years." This is obviously in reference to Stonehenge, which was reconstructed in 2100 BC, with an entrance aligned by coincidence to match a midsummer sunrise, in fact, the current midsummer sunrise.

The axis of Stonehenge into the causeway leading away, when estimated on the basis of some fallen stones in the causeway with romantic names like "Slaughter Stone," is at an azimuth of 49.95 degrees, measured by Alexander Thom in 1976. The axis was measured from one of the original postholes, which had been backfilled with chalk. Postholes have not relocated, but none of the standing stones are in their original locations, so this measure of 49.95 degrees might have meaning, or not.

It would be off from today's sunrise location at the solstice (50 degrees azimuth) by less than half the width of a finger held at arm's length, but of course by much more if compared to the uniformitarian retrocalculated midsummer sunrise in 2100 BC (when the causeway was apparently added) of 53.3 degrees azimuth -- it would be off by 3 and a half fingers, a fist. Wikipedia claims "the summer solstice sun rose close to the Heel Stone, and the sun's first rays shone into the centre of the monument between the horseshoe arrangement." That seems OK for today, but does not fit the original constructions undertaken in 3100 BC, 2400 BC, or 2100 BC. The idea of celebrating the solstice seems to be a peculiarly British concept.

Diodorus may have presumed that the 19-year cycle marked lunar eclipses, which already before Diodorus's time were known to occur on a 19-year "Metonic cycle." The number 56, the number of postholes at Stonehenge, is three Metonic cycles of 19, 19, and 18 year intervals. The circle of blue stones at Stonehenge also numbers 19. An interesting coincidence.

The Iliad takes place over 56 time periods, 55 days and one night. The night event is the logical center of the book, and all the other events rigorously match each other about this center. The main actors take on animal characteristics for the night raids at the center of the book, and the next morning things start to go better for the Greeks. See Guy Davenport, Geography of the Imagination (1981).
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Note 22 --
[Image: Henge areas in Southern England]
[Image: Henge areas in Southern England. Source unknown.]

Location of Avebury, Stonehenge, and other megalithic sites in Southern England. All have access via rivers.
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Note 23 --

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

Mereaux investigated the electric properties of the granite menhirs at Carnac, as well as the properties of the geological subsurface of the region. One conclusion is that the standing stones would readily attract lightning (and of course Saint Elmo's Fire). There were no stones erected where the subsurface was not composed of quartz-bearing rock. Where the menhirs stand, the soil is very shallow, and thus the menhirs are in contact with the subsurface rock. I do not accept Mereaux's thesis that the alignments represent a megalithic seismic detector. Who ever needed that?
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Note 24 --
[Image: Ouachita mounds, circa 3400 BC. Artist's rendition.]
[Image: Ouachita mounds, circa 3400 BC. Artist's rendition. Ouachita river bank, Louisiana. Watson Brake diagram by Martin Pate.]

In North America an oval of mounds (11 of them) at Ouachita in Louisiana, dated to 3400 BC, stands out. This also was not a burial or occupation site.

In Mesoamerica (Mexico) there is no record of monuments before about 1500 BC, although there are in Guatemala. In South America there are many constructions dating to the "Era of the Gods" or shortly after.

The next serious mound building phase in North America is the Adena culture, located throughout the Ohio valley, and dating from circa 700 BC. This is followed by the much wider distributed Hopewell mound culture. The mounds of both of these cultures were graves.
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Note 25 --

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

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

Some of the symbols in the sky changed after 3100 BC. Circular monuments are no longer constructed after another 300 years (with some exceptions), but, in imitation of the mountain-like glow level plasma discharge from Earth to Mars, pyramidical structures come into use (but only after 2600 BC, about a hundred years after the last of the 10 "visits" by Mars). The causeway remains in use in Egypt as the access to the desert grave sites, mastabas and later pyramids, always placed on the east or southeast side of the pyramid or mastaba -- reflecting the visible location of the plasma stream -- and always including a bend in the road. In Egypt boats are buried beside the pyramids. The symbolism of access to heaven via a heavenly river also dates, of course, from the "Era of the Gods," as does the use of a valley building where the body is prepared before travel up the causeway to the grave site, reflecting the mound or mountain seen at the northwest horizon.

[Image: Avebury, sketch by William Stukeley]
[Image: Avebury, sketch by William Stukeley, AD 1720.]

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

A second causeway leads out of Avebury toward the southwest (more or less, the end is not well defined) ending near two large long-barrows, which were apparently closed up by the builders of Avebury. Together these may have represented the earlier Peratt column and two of the southern ball plasmoids. The southwest causeway is today only half the length of the southeast causeway. We would actually expect the southwest causeway to be much longer. William Stukeley visited the site in the 1720s and recorded (or at least suggested) a much longer southwest causeway. Almost all the stones were destroyed and removed by Christians.

There is a third and fourth long-barrow directly south of the Avebury henge (West Kennet and East Kennet), and further south than the two mentioned above. Also directly south of Avebury is Silbury hill, a huge man-made hill of chalk.

The remnants of a secondary circle of stones has been found at the east terminal of the causeway leading out from Stonehenge at the river Avon, today called Bluehenge. The impressions of 27 (not 28!) of the blue stones, later moved to Stonehenge, have been unearthed.
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Note 26 --

Considering how slowly an electric charge "leaks away" to space, it might not be correct to say that the atmospheric electric charge dropped considerably after 3147 BC. It is more likely that the Earth experienced a large drop only in 2349 BC, when Venus made electric contact. More on that in the following two chapters.

The blue stones of Stonehenge were re-installed at a structure at the end of the causeway (called Bluehenge) leading out from Stonehenge toward the northeast, which bends to continue east and then southeast, meeting the river Avon. This has only recently been detected through stone chips left behind. The blue stones were later returned to Stonehenge.
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Note 27 --

The first temple at Jerusalem, built in about 950 BC, was oriented 6 degrees west of north, which is equivalent to 6 degrees north of east in the chart below. For Jerusalem the second temple (525 BC) was correctly oriented east-west.

Temple orientations, although admittedly late in antiquity compared to the date of 3147 BC, were tabulated by Rafael Kazmann, in "On the Orientation of Ancient Temples and Other Anomalies," in Aeon (1990), from published data. Kazmann was convinced that these temples were meant to have the first sunlight on the equinox fall into the center of the temple (as was reputed to be the case for the first temple at Jerusalem, by Solomon). From this Kazmann proposes various shifts of the east cardinal direction and thus the North Pole. But the first light of the Sun on the equinox will always be from directly east, anywhere on Earth.

Following is the published list sorted by angles north or south of east as follows: 

 location    temple     deg:min  direction  date 

 Olympia     Jupiter       7:22   N of E    790 BC
 Jerusalem   Jehovah       6:0    N of E    925
 Girgentl    Juno Lacinia  6:0    N of E    690
 Megalopolis Castor        4:0    N of E    400
 Olympia     Juno          3:16   N of E   1445
 Megalopolis Hercules      0:0    N         470
 Tegea       Minerva       1:23   S of E   1650
 Rhamnus     Nemesis       1:24   S of E    787
 Rhamnus     Themis        1:29   S of E   1092
 Lycosura    Despoina      2:11   S of E    650
 Corfu       Kadarki       4:39   S of E    875
 Selinus     Unknown       4:52   S of E    795?
 Ephesus     Diana         5:21   S of E    715
 Athens      Nike Aptersos 5:43   S of E   1130
 Thebes      Cabeiron      6:27   S of E   1160
 Athens      Minerva       9:05   S of E   2020
 Megalopolis Jupiter Sot.  9:42   S of E    605

The orientations listed above might represent the minor axis of temples. North of east is then the same as west of north. The small deviation of one or two degrees listed for south of east can be taken as wholly equivalent to a true north-south axial direction. The measures of four to nine degrees south of east obviously point to South America.

The Ka'aba at Mecca is also oriented to the northwest.
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Note 28 --

Book 11 of the Chilam Balam suggests that Mars, in its descent, appeared adjacent the vapor dome seen in the far north (to "drill holes in the mountain"). Another text states that Mars well-warmed the pedestal -- the base -- of the mountain.
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Note 29 --

[Image: Vinca temple]
[Image: Vinca temple, Serbia, 3800 BC. After "European Neolithic Temple Buildings" (in Finnish) jumalasuomi.tripod.com. ]

A collapsed (burned down) second story temple room has been found and identified among Vinca archaeology in Serbia (dated to about 3800 BC).
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Note 30 --

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

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

-- [www.mythopedia.info]
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Note 31 --

Egyptian temple plans are a reflection (a mirror image) of the signs in the sky, rather than a "projection." A plan based on a projected image is used in the construction of henges in Europe. This disconnects Egyptian culture from Western European Neolithic culture, except for the causeway design of European henges and Egyptian mastabas and pyramids, which are in all cases on the southeast side.
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Note 32 --

The reputation as the "Sea of Death" apparently dates from remote antiquity. The mass of decaying plant material at the bottom of the Black Sea still releases bursts of methane gas today, which dissolves into the water on rising. This reduces the density of the seawater at the surface -- enough to suddenly sink ships.

The surface current of the Bosporus flows toward the Mediterranean. A much lower current carries salt water into the Black Sea. A weighted basket hung off the boat into the lower current will drag the boat toward the Black Sea. This also seems to have been known since remote antiquity.
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Note 33 --

Gunnar Heinsohn writes:

"The first truly comprehensive compilation of flood sagas was written a hundred years ago. From Babylonia to Haiti, it listed eighty-eight texts. Forty appeared to be genuine pieces created independent of each other. Only twenty myths of this collection seemed to have traveled, that is, were borrowed via diffusion. The rest were duplicates only exhibiting minor variations from other stories found in the same era. A decade later, seventy three genuine stories could be reported. Soon, the number of flood stories swelled to two hundred and sixty eight. Ten years later, five hundred deluge myths coming from two hundred and fifty nine peoples or tribes were estimated. Special studies were devoted to parts of the world of which the flood myth was claimed to be absent by the pioneering researchers: Northern Asia, eventually, yielded twenty one texts. In Africa, two dozen myths could be located."

-- Gunnar Heinsohn, at the Conference CATASTROPHISM 2000, University of Toronto, Ontario, 1990.

Egyptian references to a massive flood are found in the Pyramid Texts as threats made by the dead pharaoh after he reaches the northern stars. Actually, as Leonard King wrote in circa 1917:

"The nearest Egyptian parallel to the Deluge story is the "Legend of the Destruction of Mankind", which is engraved on the walls of a chamber in the tomb of Seti I. The late Sir Gaston Maspero indeed called it "a dry deluge myth."

"The narrative ... betrays undoubted parallelism to the Babylonian and Hebrew stories, so far as concerns the attempted annihilation of mankind by the offended god, but there the resemblance ends. For water has no part in man's destruction, and the essential element of a Deluge story is thus absent."

-- Leonard King Legends of Babylon and Egypt (1918)

The Egyptians recorded a flood-like event, but it involved the slaughter of men by the Goddess Hathor. She is calmed down by the Gods with the application of 7000 jars of red dyed beer, simulating human blood. The stories are found in New Kingdom tombs, after 1500 BC, and reflect the event of 2349 BC, not of 3147 BC.
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Note 34 --

The rains mentioned by Apollodorus equate his flood recollection to 2349 BC, not 3147 BC.

The Columbian "bearded man" is Saturn with a plasma instability of a series of toroids, looking like a puffy beard. This is the same fake beard also worn by the pharaohs of Egypt, and found on images in Mesopotamia (although the beard is added to a God who is obviously Jupiter). This Columbian snippet, which ties the Moon to a flood, also describes the flood-like event of 2349 BC. The Moon showed up near Earth at that time.
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