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Recovering the Lost World,
A Saturnian Cosmology -- Jno Cook
Chapter 11: Time Line and Gimbutas.


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Contents of this chapter: [The Hypsithermal] [Chaos and the Birds] [The Saturnian Planets] [Venus Figurines] [Neolithic Figurines] [Objections to Gimbutas] [Endnotes]

The Hypsithermal

From about 7000 BC (when the shadowed skies of the Younger Dryas had cleared) the Earth experienced a climatic condition known as the Hypsithermal (also called the Holocene climatic optimum). Warmer conditions prevailed everywhere. The Hypsithermal lasted to about 3000 BC, followed by a similar mild climate extending to about 2000 BC.

What had ensued was a truly strange situation. Earth's orbit was entirely below Saturn's orbit, and thus below the Sun for all of Earth's year. At first, this would have involved the relocation of the Earth some 10,000,000 miles (16,000,000 km) or more below Saturn and below the equator of the Sun. The Sun would not be at one of the two centers of the ellipse which normally defines a planet's orbit. The Sun would remain above the equator as the Earth traveled on an orbit below Saturn. The northern hemisphere would have received more sunlight year-round. The world would not have been exposed to the drastic changes in seasons we experience today. Thus, as the shadow of the Younger Dryas lifted, the climate would have improved. But not everywhere: the southern hemisphere would have remained in a fall and winter condition. [note 1]

The Hypsithermal is somewhat of an anomaly, for if Earth were only a few million miles below Saturn, there would have been only a few degrees difference in the dislocation of the Sun from the equator. But instead we see an apparent northerly relocation of climatic zones on the order of 10 to 15 degrees of latitude. This can be found from climatic descriptions during the initial few thousand years of the Hypsithermal. This presumes that the Sun stood some 10 or 15 degrees higher in the sky, so that the tropic zone in Africa was defined as the region of the Southern Sahara. To achieve this condition, the Earth would have had to have been some 10 or 11 million miles (16 million km) below the orbit of Saturn, a considerable amount. This might have been an initial condition at the start of the Younger Dryas. As time went on, the Earth would have lifted in latitude with respect to Saturn, so that by 4077 BC the separation might have amounted to only 2 or 3 million miles.

[Image: Saturn with Earth]
[Image: Saturn with Mercury, Mars, and Earth. Illustration by J. Cook.]

At the time of this writing I had already posited the movement of planet Earth from a location at an equatorial level of Saturn (or somewhere adjacent and below) to a position considerably below the south pole of Saturn, which would have changed the northern climatic zones. I then happened on Charles Ginenthal's essay "The Extinction of the Mammoth" (1997) and at once realized that the evidence he presented matched my expectations for the climate on Earth during the period after Earth had moved in its orbit below the Sun after 10,000 or 9000 BC. [note 2]

Ginenthal deals mainly with the Arctic climate, which, after 9000 BC, warmed enough that trees and grasses grew in the Arctic region and the polar and subpolar lands were populated with herds of mammoth and other large animals (rhinoceroses, horses, beavers, 12 species of elephants). The preceding ice ages had ended about 2000 years before the Younger Dryas and before it got cold again, and the Arctic had consisted earlier of frozen ground covered at best with tundra, as it does today.

There are parallel changes in the Earth's climate during this period, often presented as global, although they clearly are not global. Climatic changes have been studied in the context of today's condition, and it has thus assumed that the changes represent a general warming of the whole Earth. Investigations have also mainly concentrated on the northern hemisphere and the tropics. All of the available data on the climate during the Hypsithermal can be accounted for by understanding that, with the sun now continuously high in the skies of the northern hemisphere, the "tropic" zone moved north. I would estimate that the tropic zone moved between 10 and 15 degrees of latitude north. Thus the Southern Sahara received the moisture usually reserved for the tropical zone, a dry zone developed at about the level of the Northern Sahara and further north into the Mediterranean region, and the temperate zone moved up into the sub-arctic regions. [note 3]

[Image: Winter and Summer during the Hypsithermal]
[Image: Winter and summer during the Hypsithermal. Illustration by J. Cook.]

Data from the Hypsithermal period, in fact, indicates that the tropical regions of Africa and South America (the Amazon region) received between 30 and 70 percent less rain than today. However, most of the Sahara bloomed, except the far northern portion, with large lakes and flowing rivers, and was populated by a great variety of tropical animals (and humans). The period is known today as the "Green Sahara" period, starting in about 8000 BC. [note 4]

The Levant fell in the dry zone and was completely depopulated for periods of hundreds of years. Southern Europe fared only a little better. Northern Europe, Asia (Siberia), and Northern America (Canada) experienced a temperate climate which extended into the Arctic.

All the northern glaciers melted rapidly, except for the glaciers on high mountains. These mountain regions include all of Greenland, the mountains in the south of Alaska and Western Canada, some mountain regions in the far north of Norway, and some of the high Alps. The glacier in Antarctica did not melt, not just because Antarctica is mountainous, but because the South Pole remained in almost complete darkness.

Chaos and the Birds

The frequent depiction of seated birds in late antiquity (8300 or 6000 BC to perhaps as late as 4077 BC), culminating in the seated falcon on top of the Egyptian serekhs -- the name labels of the pharaohs.

Perhaps even long before 10,900 BC, Saturn would have been seen starting to drift toward the north side of the sky, from above the Earth's equatorial, to eventually be seen rotating in a 5 degree circle around the celestial North Pole. "Revolving without cease," as more than one creation myth records. The visual effect of this, at any rate, would have been to see a large object travel from east to west across the sky on a daily basis for thousands of years before 10,900 BC, and certainly thereafter. This is the Egyptian Horus the Hawk, as a seated bird seen in profile -- not with spread wings. We would expect many representations in miniature forms, and in fact there seems to be millions of seated bird forms throughout the world, some of which can be fairly closely dated. [note 5]

As Earth came closer to Saturn, the distinct form of a hawk would have been replaced by a swirling clouded sky. (The coma of Saturn may have come and gone periodically.) As Earth took up a station below Saturn, the "egg" (or first probably the duck, as the Egyptians identified it) appeared in the fluffy cloud above the north horizon. It has been noted repeatedly in mythological sources that the egg "rotated without cease." This describes the path of the egg in the sky, not its rotation about itself, which probable could not be discerned. This condition would have lasted some 700 years, says the Kalevala.

As the Finnish Kalevala records:

"Ilmatar, the virgin of the air,
leaves the loneliness of the sky
and moves down to the sea,
where the wind impregnates her.
She drifts upon the waters for 700 years."

The same ceaseless rotation is recorded for Saturn, after it lights up in 4077 BC, in Vedic and Mexican sources. The Maya Chilam Balam states:

"He shall walk abroad giving the appearance of one drunk, without understanding."

The drunk walk is best explained by suggesting that, although Earth was located below the pole of Saturn, the rotational axis of Earth and Saturn did not coincide. Thus from Earth's perspective, Saturn wobbled about in the sky on a daily basis. The Quiche Maya Popol Vuh maintains a daily rising and setting of Saturn out of the sea. Ilmatar also is noted as moving in a giant circle. The interaction of the magnetic fields of Saturn and Earth might have been sufficient to eventually move the spin axis of Earth to be coincident with the spin axis of Saturn. However, this apparently never happened. What seems more likely is that Saturn, Mars, and Earth all had the same period of rotation before 3147 BC.

After Earth joined Saturn on an elliptical orbit, the planet Jupiter would have been seen periodically in the night sky, as when Earth was on the part of the orbit which took it inside the orbit of Jupiter. Jupiter, when it was seen in the sky, remained at the level of today's ecliptic, although, as seen from Earth, this would have been in the skies well above the equatorial. Jupiter would have looked like a Moon, a full lighted (or nearly so) round globe, somewhat smaller than the Moon looks today. Since Earth traveled below the ecliptic, Jupiter would have looked like an egg. When Earth was outside Jupiter's orbit only the lower portion of Jupiter would be seen (in the day sky), consisting of two upfacing horns like cattle. This last image is the "bull of heaven." [note 6]

There are ample sources in mythology which confirm this confusion of Jupiter with the Moon. Hesiod, one of the first writers in Greek, in circa 650 BC places the genesis of the Moon even before that of Venus and Mars. The actual Moon's birth, from out of the bloodied foam of the "sea" where the genitals of Uranus ("father sky") had been tossed, happened in 2349 BC, when the Absu turned blood-red, and the Earth moved out to the orbit of the Moon. Hesiod wrote that the genitals of Uranus "were swept away over the sea a long time." Egyptian myth also talks of the loss of the genitals of Osiris directly after the collapse of the Polar Configuration. Similarly, the semi-historical script at the Temples of the Cross in Palenque, Mexico, in AD 700, notes that the Moon was born before the beginning of the current era, before 3114 BC. This last, however, was Jupiter seen in the neighborhood of Earth and about the size as the later Moon. This is also what Hesiod has reference to.

The Saturnian Planets

This model of planetary interactions, as it has been developed thus far, is obviously speculative. The locations and orbits are imagined possibilities, constrained by the laws of physics, and matched against the very few pieces of data we have from the past (which are all too easily misunderstood). The plasma interactions, even if they did not happen exactly as suggested here, were real, nonetheless. This model would exist entirely within the imagination, one among other cosmological postulates, if it did not lead directly to the imagery Talbott took as evidence for the Saturnian Polar Configuration, and the prior work by Santillana and von Dechend.

Talbott's Saturnian Polar Configuration was, as a matter of fact, largely ignored for some 20 years, mostly because no physical system seemed to answer the demands of the imagery. But since the involvement of Thornhill in the 90's, much has changed. Despite objections from some astrophysicists, a model held together by electric conditions works to explain Talbott's imagery. That is not to say that there have not been many other alternative models suggested.

I should also point out that Anthony Peratt's investigations of petroglyphs worldwide, the results of which were presented in technical papers in 2003 and 2007, largely substantiated the positioning of Earth in the lower coma of Saturn in the period of 10,900 BC to 8347 BC (my dates) -- substantiated, that is, by the scenario developed here, not by Peratt. The information on petroglyphs was presented by Peratt as a massive aurora, although "aurora" represented a simile with admitted discrepancies, as he has noted.

Meanwhile, the imagery of the polar configuration itself has remained unchallenged and the documentation has been continuously expanded with information from additional sources. In fact, this imagery worldwide stretches back in time to 6000 or 7000 BC, and ultimately into the European Upper Paleolithic of 40,000 BC.

Venus Figurines

Throughout the Upper Paleolithic and the Neolithic, from about 40,000 years ago, Saturn was seen by humans and recorded in sculptural artifacts, the so-called Venus Figurines. These were carved by the thousands during the Upper Paleolithic, and in hundreds of millions in the Neolithic. These hand-held sculptures were carved, I should point out, by the same people who decorated their spear-throwers with realistic representations of horses, deer, fish, and birds. In Western Europe these same people decorated 300 caves with images of herd animals, but not a single realistic representational painting or carving of a human -- the only exception in all this being the grossly fat or distorted Venus-Figurine sculptures.

What was seen in the skies during these 40,000 years was not just the planet Saturn, but a grouping of four (initially) planets stacked one above the other -- Uranus, Neptune, Saturn, and Mars, from top to bottom. This stack stood "upright" in the skies, so that each of the planets traveled on a nearly identical orbit around the Sun. [note 7]

How did these planets become grouped together? Since all indications are that Saturn had been on an elliptical path close to the Sun for perhaps as long as ten million years, sooner or later Saturn could have swept up the other planets traveling on close orbits around the Sun. I am, in fact, suggesting that this happened over the course of the last two and a half or three million years. There are no human witnesses before that time, and even before about 34,000 years ago there were no reliable artists recording strange objects in the skies.

The other planets would be electrically attracted to Saturn as soon as their plasmaspheres touched -- because all the Solar System planets were effectively negative in relationship to the large positive charge of Saturn. This condition would soon be acted upon with a charge equalization in the form of a thunderbolt -- of which the earth shows a number of instances, among them the Grand Canyon, the Mediterranean Sea, and a series of lakes and deserts stretching across Asia.

It is not at all clear how these extra planets could remain in subpolar or suprapolar locations with Saturn, except to suggest that each formed its own protective plasmasphere, and thus became electrically isolated from Saturn. Despite the isolation, a flow of plasma (electrons) would still spread over the outer surface of the plasmasphere of the secondary planets and made its way to the planets via their magnetic poles.

As suggested in Appendix B, "Celestial Mechanics," Neptune was probably located 800,000 miles (1,300,000 km) above Saturn, and Uranus was located another million miles further above. Mars was below Saturn some distance, but I have no reasonable estimate of the distance. These separation distances can be found with good accuracy from today's orbital inclinations.

Late in 2009 I finally realized that there were two planets below Saturn and above Earth, and could identify the additional planet between Saturn and Mars as Mercury. David Talbott had held this as a condition of the polar stack, but had identified the planet between Saturn and Mars as Venus. (He has also remained unaware of the planets above Saturn.) My objection to identifying the lower in-between planet as Venus is that Venus was always depicted outside of Saturn with a plume-like connection to an equatorial or polar location. At one time Talbott had also identified Venus as circling Saturn at the edge of its ring system or beyond. I certainly agree with this. I would suggest from this, and from the extreme surface temperature of Venus, that it was created in the plasma outpouring of the nova event of 4077 BC.

Introducing Mercury into this configuration at a later date solves numerous problem conditions which would otherwise remain mysterious. I will touch on these as required in later text and later chapters. But at this point I should at least suggest that I think Mercury only became part of the stack of planets late during the Magdalenian period (17,000 to 14,000 ya).

Mars was probably located very close to Saturn initially and would have moved away by a few million miles by the time the first Venus figurines were carved (detailed below), for the feet of the figurines are located an appropriate distance below the trunk. If Mercury indeed was added to the polar configuration late, then it would need to have been inserted between Saturn and Mars.

[Saturn with the other planets; Venus of Willendorf]
[Image: left: Saturn with Neptune, Uranus, and Mars enclosed in plasma; right: Venus of Willendorf; Venus after a photo by Don Hitchcock. Illustration by J. Cook.]

The shaping of Saturn's electric field by its magnetic field might have been sufficient to relocate each of the planets into positions above or below Saturn's poles. Neptune traveled directly above Saturn, with its spin axis aligned with Saturn, and its south magnetic pole facing Saturn's north magnetic pole. Above this traveled Uranus, tipped up at 10 degrees from the horizontal so that its upper geographic pole (which is the magnetic south pole) was located directly above Neptune's north magnetic and geographic pole. The other pole, away from the centerline of Saturn and Neptune, tilted down 10 degrees. This downward tilt will show up in the tipped-down heads of millions of "Venus figurines" throughout the world over a period of more than 25,000 years.

The magnetic alignment had nothing to do with holding the planets in position, as might be suggested from the fact that the magnetic poles attracted, rather than repelled in this alignment. It probably has more to do with shaping the flow of plasma from planet to planet, and thus the electric fields experienced by each of them.

The planets were surrounded by a glow mode plasma, due to the attempt at charge equalization by Saturn with its surroundings. The magnetic fields shaped the coma, forcing a pinching of the glow mode plasma in the gaps between the planets.

Seen from a low angle Saturn and its three planets (at the Gravettian, 28,000 to 24,000 years ago) would look like a fat woman. Saturn and its bulky coma constituted the belly and buttocks. The connecting coma surrounding Neptune, accentuated by toroidal belts surrounding its equator, providing the imagery for two large breasts. Although these planets rotated, the image of two bulbous breasts would remain the same, as did the view of the fat belly. The head was modeled by Uranus, which, because it rotated in the plane of the ecliptic (Uranus lies nearly on its side), did not seem to move except as a single rotation (as part of the figure) during the course of the Saturn's path around the Sun.

The Venus of Willendorf represents the archetype of Venus Figurines. Although it was found during excavation for a railroad bed, it was instantly dated to 28,000 years ago from its form. The face, typically, is covered with hair, with the head tilted forward. The hair is an outstreaming of plasma in glow mode from the north magnetic pole of Uranus. The 10-degree forward tilt of the head remains as a distinguishing feature for nearly all of the Venus-figurines for the next 25,000 years.

The legs are formed by a stream of plasma to Mars, far below Saturn, but the feet are never shown (or broken off as on the Willendorf Venus). The plasma stream to Mars may have been bifurcated, which would make the dual streams look like legs. The coma at Mars is of a much smaller dimension, not only because Mars is small compared to Saturn or the other planets, but because Mars has no magnetic field nor any exterior layer of liquid or gas, and thus could not support much of a coma.

How large was the image of the Saturn configuration in the sky? All the figurines are of a dimension which can be easily held in the palm of a hand, 3.5 inches high. Held at arm's length such a figurine can be compared to Saturn as seen in the sky. The Saturnian planets would be about 29,000,000 miles (47,000,000 km) away under the condition of comparing the hand-held figurine to a stack of planets at least 2.8 million miles high. [note 8]

Time line

The progress of the location of Earth with respect to Saturn can be traced through the approximate dates of various forms of the millions of figurines over time. In the diagram below I have schematically placed Earth at various locations further away and closer to the Saturnian planets, and at various levels, in order to represent the view of Saturn from Earth. An important consideration is the foreshortening which at times condenses widely spaced planets to a view where they are effectively lumped together.

[Saturn depicted or recollected from various vantage points]
[Image: Saturn depicted at various vantage points during the Upper Paleolithic and the Neolithic. The view is edge-on to the orbits. Illustration by J. Cook.]

The series of positions shown above is not the path of planet Earth. There were probably periods of thousands of years where Earth's orbit did not come anywhere near Saturn. Only the last few positions (4 to 8) were sequential, even though these were spaced over 4000 years. It is also important to realize that Saturn was only seen in the skies periodically. Only since about 9,000 BC was Saturn seen continuously. If the sight of Saturn had the constancy of the Sun, there would have been no record made at all. The shapes mentioned here are described in more detail further below.

The end-points should be obvious. In the remote past Earth saw Saturn from a considerable distance, and probably only periodically. The slow progression of changes in the relative distance between Earth and Saturn ends with Earth positioned somewhere below the rotational axis of Saturn. Intermediate positions must follow the sequence of depictions of Saturn which can be ascertained archaeologically from the shape of the figurines, and at least approximately dated. [note 9]

Although the diagram above was made from archaeological considerations only, it would be of interest to compare this with concurrent glaciation and climatic conditions. Additionally, the data derived from an investigation of some 4,000,000 petroglyphs worldwide by Anthony Peratt, published in 2007, fits the archaeologically based chronology presented here. My chronology was originally derived from a website in Turkey. Overall it has held up well.

I have personally wondered at these worldwide incised "cup and tail" marks -- the earliest and one of the simplest rock carvings. This is a nearly closed inverted "U" shape, with a line scribed out of the center into the space outside the cup. When oblong-shaped rather than circular, these are often called "vulva" marks. Why would people, on every continent, carve the same figure on rock walls and horizontal rocks, and in such great profusion?

The ubiquitous cup and tail carvings predate any other depictions of remote antiquity and are found absolutely everywhere throughout the world. These point to an earlier time long before the Earth was captured by Saturn. The marks look like a distant planet in arc mode plasma discharge to a small planet below its south pole.

This most likely was Saturn in plasma contact with Mars below, as it certainly was at a later date. I am suggesting this because most of what I have seen of the cup and tail marks have the tail pointing straight down or at a small angle, but never directed up or horizontal. If the tail had represented a cometary-like plasma tail, it would have faced away from the Sun, and been seen sideways in the sky.

As seen and depicted, the imagery would define the mark as coming out of the cup. Thus we are looking at a far distant view of a plasma (coma) surrounding Saturn with a brilliant "tail" extending to Mars below. The same arc mode extension to Mars would especially be noticed against the dark night sky, of course. [note 10]

The Cro-Magnon first show up in Europe 35,000 ya in Carbon-14 dates, which is 45,000 ya in calendar years (Romania). The finds at Cro-Magnon in France were dated (Carbon-14) to 28,000 ya. It is these people who have provided the first records of what the Fat Lady in the sky looked like (and who decorated the limestone caves). It is followed shortly (more or less) with the start of the last significant glaciation, from 27,500 ya to about 14,500 ya. This suggests that Earth might have been carried along by Saturn for an extended period of time. Possibly during a very long portion of this Saturn simply could not be seen because of an enclosing coma which also enveloped Earth.

The images of women simultaneously steatopygic and pregnant, or at least with body parts which jut out horizontally below the belly or trunk, suggests one or two planets off center below Saturn. As I suggested earlier, the rotational axis of the Earth probably never lined up with the rotational axis of Saturn, even though the interaction of the two planets lasted thousands of years. This would be true for other planets also.

What is seen in some of these images (but obviously not all of them), I suspect, is a planet which had recently been captured into a subpolar orbit and which would not assume a symmetrical location with respect to Saturn for thousands of years. I would assume that this was Mercury. I would also suggest that at this time Mercury would likely still have had a substantial atmosphere, and thus be capable of sustaining a coma. [note 12]

[figurines from the Western European Gravettian]
[Image: Three figurines from the Western European Gravettian culture, 27,000 to 24,000 ya. In buff or amber limestone; left to right: 3.5", 3.25", and 1.75" high. After Denis Vialou, Prehistoric Art and Civilization (1996)]

After 14,000 ya (12,000 BC) the glaciers retreated, although they did not disappear. Earth did get considerably warmer. Then in 10,900 BC Saturn passed Earth at a position somewhat below its equatorial level, and Earth received a tremendous electric field shock which destroyed most of North America. North America burned down and the large grazing animals disappeared worldwide. This started the 1500-year extreme cold and shadow period of the Younger Dryas, lasting to about 9,000 BC. During this period Earth ended up located somewhere below Saturn. Because of the shadowing cover of dust in the stratosphere, it would not be until well after 9000 BC before Saturn would reappear, and then Saturn was mostly obscured by its coma.

The figurines of the period after 10,900 BC are likely to be representations of what was seen in the far south. What we have in this period from many sources is a god with the head of a fish, or a head with the body of a snake. The descriptions are found everywhere in the world among the earliest mythologies -- China, the Eastern Mediterranean, Greece, Western Europe, and South America. These are the ball plasmoids described in the previous chapter.

"The 'Acropolis of Athens' was in ancient times known as the Cecropia, in honour of the legendary serpent-man, Cecrops, the founder and first Athenian king. Cecrops means 'face with a tail', and though often said to have the bottom half of a serpent, some sources say it was a fish-tail -- thus bearing some resemblance to Oannes of Babylonian fame." -- Philip Coppens

For locations below the equator, where the Absu did not obscure the ball plasmoids, this became a smiling face surrounded with sun-like rays or snake hair.

By about 9000 BC the carbon material had cleared out of the Earth's stratosphere. The result was that Earth became the sources of electrons for Saturn and Saturn may have been more clearly seen. Now it appeared in the north skies all the time, although likely enshrouded by plasma in glow mode.

After circa 6,700 BC squat figurines appear, for now the Earth has moved to a location directly below Saturn. In Catal Hoyuk, in Anatolia, male figurines were created at earlier times, but after 6,700 BC no further male figurines are formed. All the figurines are equipped with breasts. Because of the lower perspective on the Saturnian planets, the figurines become fat and seated. The legs are lost as the coma tail extending to Mars disappears at times against the main coma of Saturn.

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

There are many abstract forms found which can reasonably be dated to this period. They look like snow men, or have headless body shapes with long necks. Possibly these represent the southern plasmoid of the "Peratt Column" rather than Saturn in the north, although we could be viewing these as inverted.

The shape in the north would not be seen clearly when the layers of plasma in glow mode obscured the view. At this point we have recollected descriptions, but no figurines.

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

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

-- Popol Vuh

The bird shape (duck or goose) derives from the fact that Uranus was offset from the rotational axis of Saturn but connected with a long stream of plasma to its south magnetic pole (which is the north geographic pole of Uranus). Seen from below, as the Earth approached a position below Saturn, Uranus would have been seen on the right upper side of Saturn. The connecting neck of plasma is attached to a round head, slightly broader, with a beak-like protrusion at the other pole of Uranus. I am basing this primarily on the early iconography of the Eastern Mediterranean, as presented by Marija Gimbutas (detailed further below).

Seeing a bird form in the north proved that the giant bird, which had been seen spiraling to the north over the last four or five thousand years (or perhaps for a longer period), was now stationed above the north polar region. More on this particular topic in a later chapter.

I suggested above that Mercury with its coma might have been understood as the egg. But when Saturn went nova, it was as if the egg appeared out of the large shape of the duck or goose body. When Saturn went to arc mode discharge in 4077 BC, all of its glow mode and the surrounding coma collapsed. Only the much smaller golden sphere remained in the north sky.

In the north, Mercury (with a coma supported by its atmosphere) and Mars below Mercury appeared clearly, although Mars would have appeared only as a small dot against Mercury or Saturn, and frequently offset from the axis of Saturn and Earth. Uranus appeared to one side, disconnected from Saturn except for a remaining plume of plasma -- originally its neck, but now its hair. [note 13]

Changes

A warmer climate is noted in archaeological records worldwide after 4077 BC, over and above the warming after 9,000 BC, the Hypsithermal.

"Radio-carbon dating and analysis of pollen in buried soils, has shown that the environment of lowland Britain changed around 4,250-4,000 BC. The change to a grassland environment from damp, heavy soils and expanses of dense forest was mostly brought about by farmers, probably through the use of slash and burn techniques, although environmental factors may also have made a contribution." (Wikipedia)
The same change is noted elsewhere, as, for example, in the archaeology of North America. It is an indication of a completely new era in the history of the Earth and its humans, known as "The Era of the Gods."

As I noted above, only after 9000 BC, at the end of the obscuring dust in the stratosphere, did the figurines again proliferate, eventually reaching into the millions on millions worldwide. Below, I will start with the collection of Neolithic imagery of the Northeastern Mediterranean region gathered by Marija Gimbutas for the period of 7,000 to 3500 BC, and then this discussion will move backwards in time: Over the next two chapters I will start with a suggestion of imagery of the Lower or Middle Paleolithic (500,000 to 2,500,000 years ago). Then to cover the European Upper Paleolithic (10,000 to 40,000 years ago) to discuss cave art and early figurines in Europe, followed by the narrow transitional period represented by Catal Hoyuk in Anatolia in 7400 to 6200 BC.

Neolithic Figurines

Of great importance in the field of artifacts and dateable archaeology in the Neolithic is the voluminous collation of archaeological findings collected and interpreted by Marija Gimbutas for the Balkans, Macedonia, Minoan Crete, and Anatolia. The dates of her studies range from 7000 BC to 3500 BC. [note 14]

I cannot adequately summarize Gimbutas's research here. Gimbutas presents pottery which shows motifs of eggs, dual eggs, snakes, water signs, birds, the double axe, and whorls. The last two are similar to the designs of the megalithic art of far-western region of Europe at the later dates of 3000 to 2400 BC. Animals are also depicted with the pottery decorations -- the domestic animals of Europe rather than the Mesopotamian and Egyptian lions and griffins. [note 15]

Of special interest are the numerous figurines described by Gimbutas. Almost every one of the 100,000 small hand-held figurines of the period 7000 to 3500 BC is female, naked, and obese (or pregnant), especially among the earlier examples. Only in infrequent instances do faces appear incised on the figures, or are there hints of ornaments or clothing. In later forms they are often shown with outstretched arms (and legs), long phallic necks, and heads with "bird masks." They are shown at times giving birth or with children.

Gimbutas points out the obvious -- that the Venus Figurines were not new to the farmers of the European Neolithic (7000 to 3600 BC), but carried on the tradition of the 3000 or so female figurines of the Upper Paleolithic (40,000 to 10,000 BC) of Europe. Figurines have been found by the hundreds of thousands throughout Europe, and in the Neolithic expand to millions on millions throughout the world. The figurines were first produced in about 27,000 BC. They disappear from the archaeological record of Western Europe for some 10,000 years, and reappear again after 18,000 BC, long before the appearance of the related artifacts in Gimbutas's collection. [note 16]

The images are understood by Gimbutas as representing the Mother Goddess. However, they are congruent with the later "Polar Configuration" imagery depicted in the Middle East and Egypt.

I think the Venus Figurines of the Upper Paleolithic, consistently naked, fat, female, faceless, and footless, and later similar naked female figurines of the Neolithic, describe Saturn in glow level plasma discharging to a set of planets -- two above and two below the poles of Saturn. A plasma discharge in glow mode will form a bubble much larger than the object that is discharging, and will look like a physical connection between close planets, which consists, however, only of an enclosing bubble of charged particles for each planet, with a pinched condition in the region between the planets.

The head with the missing face, often shown with what looks like braided hair covering the face, is a glow level plasma discharge from Uranus located above Neptune, but offset so that the head looks to be nodding forward. This is a consistent feature of the figurines.

In the later period of the Magdalenian the planets above Saturn seems to have moved further apart, elongating the necks of the figurines. This change in how the figurines looked is likely due to a change in perspective. At some time Earth passed through a position at an equatorial elevation to Saturn.

The "bird mask" faces of Gimbutas are likely the plasma discharge to Saturn, via Neptune, which started at a location about 10 degrees above the horizontal (not at the bottom) of Uranus directly above Neptune, with a much lesser secondary flow from the opposite horizontal location of Uranus, thus forming the bird beak of the long-necked figurines.

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

Uranus today still lies on its side with its poles placed 10 degrees above and below the horizontal (above and below the plane of the ecliptic). The plasma flow to Saturn would start mainly at the south magnetic pole of Uranus, which was the pole closest to the rotational axis of Saturn and Neptune, and is today identified as the north geographic pole of Uranus -- angled 10 degrees above the horizontal. Thus the main flow of plasma, the "neck," would connect to a "head" which was tilted downward by 10 degrees and pointed away from the "body" of the coma of the other planets.

Since Uranus lies on its side and its axis of rotation points along the plane of the ecliptic, the "head" of the figure in the sky would seem to rotate only very slowly, once with each rotation of the Saturnian planets around the Sun. It was as if she was standing still in the sky.

Along with the bird mask face another peculiar feature of the figurines worldwide is the slit eyes which almost all of them have, even at locations thousands of miles (or continents) apart, and which carry through enormous spans of time. It is inconceivable that this feature, which spans all the continents and tens of thousands of years, would be a worldwide graphic convention.

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

It is likely that one or more of the satellites of Uranus, which would revolve around Uranus in a circle at almost a right angle to the horizontal, managed to extend beyond the enclosing plasma coma. The four outer satellites of Uranus are large, and rotate at periods of a few (Earth) days to thirteen days.

The outer and largest satellite, Oberon, orbits at 600,000 km from Uranus, far outside of the rings. At a rotational period of 13 days, Oberon would be visible for about three days in any quadrant of its rotation. This still does not constitute a "slit," nor would it represent two eyes. The slit might be a trailing plasma of Oberon, perhaps shadowed by the Sun, as Oberon and its tail broke through the enclosing coma at one quadrant. We can assume a bilateral symmetry for the coma, so that if this happened in one quadrant, it would be repeated at an adjacent quadrant (seen at the upper left of the face, then seen at the upper right quadrant). The "front" of the "face" of Uranus could only be viewed for a few weeks during the Earth's solar year, so that the existence of two eyes might have to be an assumption made by humans on the basis of profile viewing of the planet. The partial visibility of Oberon has implications for the size of the coma surrounding Uranus.

The legs with the missing feet describe a plasma stream reaching to Mars far below the south pole of Saturn. The large belly or buttocks is probably the coma surrounding the planet Saturn. The large breasts are the left and right extremes of a similar plasma toroid surrounding Saturn or (more likely) Neptune.

All four or five planets together would always be seen as a standing figure in the ecliptic of the sky, and, in effect, standing still because the beak of Uranus always pointed in the same direction of space. The ecliptic would wobble throughout the year and daily (as today), and the figure would seem to move up and down in the sky over the course of a year. Except when near the horizon, where the ecliptic dips below the equatorial seasonally, the figure would always be nearly upright -- like the "face" in the Moon today.

The power of seeing an image of a woman in the sky during the Paleolithic and early Neolithic, seen periodically rather than continuously, must have made an enormous impression. Humans anthropomorphized what they saw. Humans saw the Fat Lady approach and move through the night sky -- perhaps to deliver babies -- then disappear and return again in a year, or, at an earlier time, in decades, or a thousand years. The bird figure of the Neolithic, with the rounded body and the long neck and single leg, remains in European iconography as the stork which delivers babies.

During the early Neolithic, this image was seen more frequently, although probably still unpredictably. If it had been seen all the time, or with predictable movement, it would have had no more psychological impact than the ever-present Sun and Moon, neither of which have ever generated much in imagery or myth. The Sun is stable, and the Moon moves regularly. But Saturn as a figure in the sky would move unpredictably. The figure might have moved from the daylight skies to the night skies over the course of the year (or some inexplicable period) and certainly would move further up or down in the sky with the change in the respective orbital locations of Earth and Saturn.

The persistence of the imagery into the early Neolithic (when the location of the figure had more or less stabilized) and the subsequent proliferation of reproductions may be due to the culture specific to the first Neolithic farming communities. If the early farming and gathering communities were run by woman (as seems likely), the Fat Lady might have been their emblem and symbol. [note 17]

After 10,900 BC, with the onset of the Younger Dryas, there was nothing to be seen in the skies because of the shadow of that era.

When the skies cleared considerably in about 9,000 BC, there again was little to see except endless swirling skies. Then, after about 5800 BC, the Earth had fallen into an orbit below Saturn and seemed to have moved closer. This in effect obliterated the figure in the sky, replacing it by a swirling cloud, which eventually transformed into a giant white bird (and later an egg) rotating above the horizon in the north. Because Uranus did not line up with Saturn, it was seen past the edge of Saturn as the head of a bird, and the whole was recalled in the artifacts and pottery decorations of some people as the image of the Goose of Creation.

What is amazing is that in Eastern Europe and Anatolia, the figurines shifted effortlessly from the naked fat woman to a bird-masked figure (as it did in Japan), despite a definitive lack of anything of form in the skies for a period of a few thousand years. It is possible that between 10,900 BC and 8347 BC the southern ball plasmoids substituted for the Fat Lady (resulting in a spate of snowman figurines). And if today we possess 100,000 recovered figurines for a portion of the Eastern Mediterranean, then there were likely millions more originally. That would constitute a social force, like a religion, which determines its own continuity.

In 4077 BC Saturn went to arc mode discharge to Earth and the imagery in the sky changed. Saturn went nova -- that is, it underwent a mass expulsion (creating Venus and possibly the rings), and switched to arc mode plasma discharge. The Earth now became the main contact point for the plasma discharge, via Mercury and Mars. Earth was a newcomer to the group, and a fresh object to steal electrons from. [note 18]

There now appeared a whole new set of images in the sky, but many of the figurines and related artifacts, while still replicating the earlier iconography, are now embellished differently. The figurines have added outstretched arms, perhaps representing a depiction of the rings of Saturn. Conservative as humans are, the new images only reinforce old established interpretations. The persistence of Goddesses (as opposed to Gods) lasted well into the Classical era (thus lasting some 6000 years to the start of our era), even when nothing in the sky looked at all like the Fat Lady anymore. The idea of a Goddess as the generatrix of humanity is expressed by the priests of Sais who talked to Solon -- as reported by Plato.

Actually, the figurines stopped development after about 4000 BC. (There were some worldwide exceptions.) They either became reductively abstract or realistically humanized. By 3000 BC production of the figurines had stopped almost everywhere in the world, except in a few locations where they take on the status of amulets. Crete was still manufacturing the figurines wholesale in 1500 BC, as tourist souvenirs -- acceptably slimmed down and painted.

Objections to Gimbutas

Gimbutas traced the Earth Goddess imagery forward to the Goddesses of Classical Greece: Hekate, Artemis, Demeter, and the warrior Goddess Athena. The multiplicity of Goddesses in Classical times and the variation of local names suggest that the prototype Goddess existed since very early times. Despite the variety of names, the rituals and mystical associations remained constant over large geographical areas.

The earlier status of the Goddesses was not easily lost. Goddesses remained in the pantheon of early antiquity and in some cases retained their primacy. Athens claimed the warrior Goddess Athena as its own. Isis remains the most popular Goddess of Egypt, and her worship and veneration carries over into Roman times. (The imagery reached India and eventually China.) The succession of the Egyptian pharaohs continued to be matriarchal. However, many of the goddesses who might have been the supreme deities of earlier times are found to be married to male gods by classical times (as Gimbutas notes).

The advent of male gods, says Gimbutas, happens following the invasions of the Kurgan "Indo-Europeans" from West Central Asia after 4300 BC. This was a male-dominated nomad society, based on herding. These Indo-European invaders did not displace the original Europeans, but they brought many changes -- warfare, the feudal system, male domination, male deities, and probably new languages. The second or third wave of invaders apparently brought the horse. With nothing to trade, the later Kurgans herders developed an economy of piracy and raiding. [note 19]

Many critics have seen Gimbutas's theories as an affront to their closely held views of prehistory and the primacy of males, especially her suggestion that a peaceful matriarchy was displaced by a war-like Kurgan overlord patriarchy. The implication of Gimbutas's work was that the sculptures, figurines, model temples, and pottery decoration were the exclusive domain of women, and further, that the small farming communities were run by women.

I doubt if we can conclude that a matriarchy existed on just this basis, even with the many remnants of matriarchy still extant today. Any mix could have been possible. We are seeing remnants of emblems, not the underlying philosophy or practices of a culture. Our Western Christian culture is based on a sacrificed God, yet little could be made of our icons and emblems if viewed in the archaeological context of a far-distant future if these icons were the only evidence of our culture. [note 20]

My disagreement with Gimbutas centers on her insistence in seeing nearly everything as symbolic, "... prehistoric art was symbolic art." I insist that prehistoric art was representational art. "Breasts symbolize the nurturing and regeneration of life." Breasts were shown because that is how the model for the figurines was seen in the sky. To her credit, but perhaps to bolster her thesis, Gimbutas also insists that the naked figurines were not meant as erotic depictions. Art historians have pointed out that there are no erotic images to be found anywhere in the world until well into the first millennium BC.

If Gimbutas's "cult of the Goddess" was generated by images in the sky then it was not a reflection of life, but a response to a whole other domain -- which today we blithely identify as "spiritual" -- although in fact it was not a manifestation of the "spiritual" but a response to the "actual." And we have no idea what the response was. We simply do not know if the object or person in the sky was thought to need placation or worship.

Endnotes

Note 1 --

About the Holocene climatic optimum, Wikipedia reads, "While temperatures in the Northern Hemisphere were warmer than average during the summers, the tropics and areas of the Southern Hemisphere were colder than average."

Today the Earth is 5 million miles (8 million km) closer to the Sun during winter in the northern hemisphere than in the summer, but that has little to do with the climate, although distance from the Sun is a factor.

The seasons of the Earth are determined primarily by the inclination of the spin axis. During the Hypsithermal period, with the Earth below the Sun year round, there would be relatively little change in the angle of the Sun in the sky. Thus summer lasted year round.

As Earth started to draw closer to Saturn after about 6000 or 5000 BC, the climatic zones relocated to their proper place on the globe. The Nile filled with water again, and the Nile valley was occupied again.

The continuation of the mild climate after 3147 BC was primarily due to an orbit which was much closer to the Sun than today. The further extension of a milder climate to 2500 BC (others claim 2000 BC or even 500 BC) may have ended with the advent of the darkness of 2193 BC -- a 200-year shadow condition like the shadow of the Younger Dryas period.
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Note 2 --

See Charles Ginenthal, "The Extinction of the Mammoth" (The Velikovskian, V3, No 2 and 3, 1997, available as a reprint), which lists a compendium of sources on the effect of the Hypsithermal in the subarctic regions. Ginenthal, however, is out to prove the extermination of the mammoth in Siberia in conformity to Velikovsky's claim that this happened, and happened only once, in 1500 BC. The evidence is thus selective, and in places Ginenthal is more interested in disproving established data, as, for example, in bringing in evidence of discrepancies in Carbon-14 dates.

Ginenthal writes about glacial till deposited in the North Atlantic, called Heinrich layers, which have been identified as debris of land glaciers as they skidded into the ocean. The Heinrich layers represent melting conditions for land glaciers. Ginenthal asks: "... why are there no such layers [of deposited continental debris] in the oceans in the southern hemisphere closer to Antarctica?"

He answered his question with, "The ancient ice cap in Antarctica did not exist at this time." That is one answer, but, in fact, the Antarctic glacier most likely existed. There is no evidence that the Antarctic glacier ever melted (in the last 120,000 years). The South Pole was in almost total darkness during the early Hypsithermal, and thus we should not expect glacial melting. And the South Pole is very mountainous, a geology which always retains glaciers. The most recent Heinrich layer in the North Atlantic (named "H0") dates from about 12,000 ya, well before the start of the Hypsithermal.

The mammoth, and other large grazers, including dozens of species of elephants, rhinoceros, giant beaver, and billions of trees were destroyed in 3147 BC, when high tides (probably from the south initially) swept inland and rolled broken carcasses and splintered trees to the Arctic ocean basin. The mammoth herds re-established themselves over the next two thousand years, as did the plants, for the climate had not degraded all that much. There was a considerable change in climate circa 2200 BC, however, when the Hypsithermal ended and the effect of the long Arctic night was felt again. This may very well have been the effect of the interaction with Venus in 2193 BC, when the skies darkened due to dust in the stratosphere (it ended the Akkadian Empire and the Egyptian Old Kingdom also). But the final change in the climate of Siberia -- a return of frozen ground and a cover of Tundra -- probably happened in 1492 BC, when the mammoth herds were subjected to a catastrophic winter condition, lasting more than a year as the Earth nearly tipped over. Directly after, the Earth's orbit became some 30 percent larger, a value close to what we experience today.
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Note 3 --

I estimated 10 to 15 degrees from climate data. Ginenthal estimates 13 degrees, also based on climatological considerations. He presents this in terms of the rotational axis of Earth being inclined only 9 or 10 degrees to the orbital plane of Earth, rather than the 23.5 degrees experienced today. The two estimates are equivalent except that, under my proposal, the Arctic land region would have long summers and experience less of the dark Arctic winter. Under Ginenthal's proposal the South Pole would also have been lit by the Sun. Under my proposal the Antarctic region would remain completely in the dark for 3000 years. But of southern land regions, even the tip of South America, which is at 50 degrees south latitude, would not experience continuous darkness.
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Note 4 --

The period is also known as the Holocene wet phase, which allowed reoccupation of the desert area west of the Nile valley (and south of the Mediterranean) after 9000 BC, a region where no one had earlier lived for a thousand years. The Nile valley itself was unoccupied from about 9000 BC to 6000 BC. It has been suggested that the Nile was reduced to a trickle during this time, the result of less rain falling in Central Africa and Ethiopia. The Nile normally fills a very deep and narrow gorge, apparently created 5 million years earlier, when the Mediterranean had dried up.
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Note 5 --

The book "North American Indian Stone Bird Effigy; Field Guide, Finding and Identifying" (2010), by Dennis Moore, presents a collection of Paleoindian artifacts of a central region of the state of Michigan. This area was occupied by hunters (presumably using the Clovis spearpoints) after the Laurentide Ice Sheet melted in this location in about 13,000 to 12,000 BC. But then in 10,900 BC the electric field impact force centered on Hudson Bay brought all life to a halt.

Reoccupation took a thousand years and was by a different people. The stone artifacts found at this location represent a snapshot of the last few thousand years of a chipped-tool (Mousterian) tradition. The sitting stone bird forms are found above the sand fill deposited after 10,900 BC in Michigan, and thus likely date to after 9000 BC, that is, after reoccupation of the region when the cold snap of the Younger Dryas had ended.

Moore's collection of stone bird effigies are crude and unfinished except for hammering and chipping, and the scoring of lines. This is unlike the "birdstone" Neolithic artifacts of later dates which are found south of the Great Lakes and along the east coast, which are shaped by a neolithic grinding process.

The scored lines drop down from the eye of the birds. It most likely is the plasma trail of Oberon, one of the satellites of Uranus as it broke through the coma weekly. Slit-shaped eyes are ubiquitous among the Venus figurines also, often making them look like they have the faces of snakes.
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Note 6 --

[Image: Distance between orbits in circa 10,000 ya.]
[Image: Distances between the orbits of Jupiter and Earth in circa 10,000 ya. Illustration by J. Cook.]

The distance between the orbit of Earth and the orbit of Jupiter when Jupiter was outside the orbit of Earth is from information developed in Appendix B, "Celestial Mechanics," and based on an average orbit of Earth of 225 days (at 0.72 AU) and an estimated eccentricity of 0.25.

With Jupiter at 0.7 AU from the Sun, the Earth (with Saturn) would be at 0.54 AU at its closest distance to the Sun. The difference is 0.16 AU. The angle subtended by Jupiter, as seen from Earth, can be found from the arctangent and is 0.34 degrees, a little smaller than the angle subtended by the Moon: arctangent(88700/(.16 * AU)) = .34 degrees
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Note 7 --

I apologize to the reader for presenting conclusions (such as the planets in the Saturnian stack) long before all the details on which these are based can be presented and especially the details which will establish them as certain. But bear with me, all the data will be presented over the next 34 chapters and 15 appendixes.
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Note 8 --

The ratio is from similar triangles, as follows: A distance of 3 feet (1 meter) for holding a 3.5 inch (9 cm) high figurine; the actual distance to Saturn to the actual height of Saturn, where I am assuming the two planets above Saturn occupied 1.8 million miles (2.9 million km) as detailed in Appendix B, and I am allowing another million miles from Saturn to Mars:
(distance to Saturn) / (3 * 12 ") = (2.8 million miles) / (3.5 ")
Distance to Saturn = (3 * 12 * 2.8)/(3.5)
Distance to Saturn = 28.8 million miles
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Note 9 --

Book 11 of the Maya Chilam Balam details seven sightings of Saturn, which must have been separated by spans of time of 3000 to 8000 years. The recap of the original book, written in the 16th century AD, complains of the vast in-between periods where nothing happened. One translator (from the Mayan) suggests that the seven "stones" are described as "on fire."

Corresponding to similar periodic peaks in the changes of the levels of background Carbon-14, this would take the Mesoamerican record back to either 38,000 or 41,000 before the present. A record like this is not as radical as it looks, for the decoration of European limestone caves similarly dates back almost that long, and continued with the same aesthetic for some 20,000 years, until Southern Europe turned to a desert, and the Cro-Magnon population moved away.

I should point out that any tribal people who kept records of events would, after some thousands of years, recognize the repeating nature of the events. These would certainly stand out from all other mundane and contemporaneous events, and it is likely that only these were retained. There was little else to record or talk about for thousands of years. In that Mesoamerica and the prior people where not invested in kings or heroes but remained an egalitarian society, they did not take notice or record kings or heroes. Book 11 interprets the oldest records only in terms of the eventual birth of a Christian "God the Father" from the stones in the sky. This long period is equivalent to the seven days of creation of the Bible.
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Note 10 --

The tail is thus an electric arc from Saturn which struck the northern hemisphere of Mars, lasting from before an estimated 30,000 years ago. The arc must have been absolutely gigantic, for it completely etched away the northern hemisphere of Mars to a depth of three miles (5 km), leaving only a smooth surface. (The Grand Canyon of the Colorado is one mile deep.)

It is quite possible, however, that this region was occupied by an ocean -- signs of which have been detected. If there had ever been any life on Mars it would have been completely obliterated during the 30,000 years of the electric arc (described by humans, as I'll detail later), a condition which may, in fact, have extended much further back in time. Boiling off an ocean would have caused gigantic billows of steam. As these likely condensed to rains everywhere else on Mars away from the northern hemisphere, there should be evidence of torrential floods and water damage. Except as this evidence is confused with the much later damage from electric arcing, this is indeed the case.

The cup and tail marks (some of which appear in European caves dating to 32,000 years ago) should not be confused with the concentric circles (often also with a tail emanating from the center) and swirls found inscribed on megalithic constructions after 3100 BC. The concentric circles are a phenomenon of burning gases entering the stratosphere or upper atmosphere of Earth. These have been identified from rocket launches in the 1960s. More details on this later.
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Note 11 --

The archaeological record of Eastern Europe (at Dolni Vestonice in the Czech Republic) looks as if there were a continuity of figurines through the 10,000 year hiatus of Western Europe, although many of the archaeological dates, determined early in the 20th century, and without the aid of Carbon-14 methods, may not be all that accurate.

The chart "Fraction of Global Radiocarbon" which covers the period of 50,000 ya to today, was presented in an earlier chapter (Chart due to A.H.L. Voelker et alii, 1998, and presented by Firestone and Topping in 1991). I pointed up three peaks of excess levels in Carbon-14 (above the current value) as possible contacts with Saturn, especially since the Earth's magnetic pole changed location, either turning upside down or "wandering" about. In two instances these dates were also related to massive extinctions of megafauna.

On the chart below some 7 or 8 peaks can be counted. These have been numbered in correspondence to the seven attempts, listed in Book 11 of the Maya Chilam Balam, to have God the Father be born from the rocks in the sky -- which were periodically seen (the 8th attempt is not counted as completed in antiquity, and not numbered by me).

[Image: Fractional global radio-carbon since 50,000 bp]
[Image: Fractional global radio-carbon since 50,000 bp. After Firestone; from A.H.L. Voelker (1998).]

If we can suggest that the peaks in Carbon-14 levels represent electric field contacts with Saturn (or close sightings), then it is clear that there is a period of approximately 8,000 years where nothing was seen of Saturn and Mars. This 8,000-year period, from circa 24,000 ya to circa 17,000 ya (5 to 6), coincides with the period of the absence of Venus Figurines. See Chapter 31 for estimates of intervals.
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Note 12 --

The Maya Popol Vuh identifies five planets in the north during this time, calling one of them "Sovereign Plumed Serpent" which will be recognized as the Mayan name for Venus -- which it is not. At the time of the narrative, the era before our creation (4077 BC), Venus did not exist yet. Shrouded in a white coma, Mercury could have easily passed for the later Venus.
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Note 13 --

That there were two smaller planets below Saturn may have been remembered and indicated with the construction of the gigantic Avebury henge in England (1400 feet, 450 meters, in diameter). There are two smaller circles inside the henge.

[Image: Avebury henge]
[Image: Avebury henge, artist reconstruction looking northwest, after drawings by William Stukeley (circa AD 1720). After Alan Sorell. ]

The two smaller circles are offset about 10 or 20 degrees from the north cardinal direction (NNW and SSE), as is the entrance of the larger circle at the SSE edge. With the exception of Stonehenge and nearby Durrington Walls, no other henge (that I have been able to ascertain) has these details. Stonehenge has two small mounds in approximately the same locations, but closer to the edge of the original circle of 56 holes. Stonehenge was thus likely modeled after the somewhat earlier Avebury henge. The structures within the henge area of Durrington Walls are less defined, but the locations are approximately the same.

If these two circles represent two planets below Saturn, then one of them is much too large, for Mars is not likely to have supported a large coma, on the order of 10 or 20 planet diameters, although Mercury, because it likely had an atmosphere, probably would have. The fact that these "planets" are offset from each other is not a conceptual problem if Mercury indeed was a late addition to the stack of planets.

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

The two circles could be dismissed as some symbolism which is obscured to us, except for the fact that the causeway leading out toward the southeast and the additional henge of the Sanctuary at its terminal are accurate. The causeway out to the southwest to the vicinity of two long barrows, is a poor memory of the conditions before 8347 BC, however. These last are models of the earlier "burial mounds" in the south sky, and apparently predate (circa 3600 BC) Avebury henge. Whoever constructed Avebury backfilled the burial mounds and blocked their entrance (in circa 2200 BC).

Ron Wilcox, at [www.archtext.co.uk/onlinetexts/britains_past], suggests that the use of West Kennet barrow ended in 3625 BC. The dates of construction for Avebury are as yet uncertain. Archaeologically it is held to be constructed only very late, 2,900 to 2,600 BC, but other dates place the earliest carbon traces of the ditches (which are cut into a chalk base) at 3,400 BC. The Avebury form and the related causeways, including the one to West Kennet mound suggest it is either very old, or recalls much older forms.
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Note 14 --

See Marija Gimbutas, The Civilization of the Goddess, European Neolithic Communities, 7000 to 3500 BC (1991), and a number of other books through 1999. Since Gimbutas read a dozen European languages, she was able to muster resources which remained unavailable to other researchers.
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Note 15 --

Along with seeing an upturned crescent on Jupiter after about 9000 BC, when Jupiter was inside the orbit of Earth and with Earth below the "ecliptic path" of the planets Jupiter and Saturn, Jupiter would have been seen as a brightly lit disk, similar to the full Moon when the orbit of Earth would place it inside the orbit of Jupiter. Because of Earth's lower position with respect to the Sun (3 million miles, 5 million km), the lighted half of Jupiter would have looked like an oval (an egg shape) rather than a circle, since a portion of the upper and lower part of the lighted hemisphere of Jupiter would not be seen.

Jupiter was at that time on an orbit somewhat less than Earth's current orbit. Saturn and Earth were most likely on an elliptical orbit which alternately moved inside and outside of Jupiter's orbit. Because of its travel on its outer orbit, the lighted face of Jupiter would not have had the distinct phases like the Moon does today.

Additionally, when Jupiter was seen through the obscuring equatorial rings of the Earth, refraction of the light would have created large adjacent left and right crescents. This easily accounts for the prevalent double axe imagery (the labrys) of the early Neolithic which shows up in Gimbutas's collection of images.
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Note 16 --

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

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

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

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

Perhaps the arrival of the Fat Lady announced the time for reproduction and child bearing. Then the infrequent appearances of Saturn might account for the slow rate of growth of farming communities before 3000 BC -- as indicated by the length of time some early villages remained the same size.
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Note 18 --

With a change to arc mode the resistance drops. Once in arc mode, additional current decreases the resistance, so that the change to arc mode in effect represents a run-away condition.

Uranus visually disappeared behind Saturn as the Earth moved closer to the center of rotation of Saturn. (Uranus fits exactly above Saturn, even though offset from the center of rotation.) In very early (and predynastic) Egyptian iconography Uranus shows up as the captive held by his hair who is about to be clubbed by the pharaoh. He is placed on the lower right side of the image, so at the lower left of the pharaoh (grabbed with the left hand). In actuality Uranus had disappeared from view (the Chilam Balam records Uranus sinking into Saturn), and the imagery of being clubbed would be legitimate of describing Uranus's fate. It is presented in the past tense.
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Note 19 --

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

Tribes speaking an Indo-European language reached as far east as the western borders of China. The Kurgan invasion north into Russia, Germany, Lithuania, Latvia, Britain, and Ireland happened separately from the first wave which, like the earlier farmers, also headed west into Europe. There are later Indo-European incursions (after 2500 BC) into India from Central Asia, followed by entry into Persia (apparently from India), and into Greece by people who are linguistically closely related to each other, but less so to other, older Europeans.
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Note 20 --

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

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

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

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

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