Arkhaim: No Idea Who What Or When - But Some Big Heads In The Mix

ancient-origins |  Arkaim is a mysterious site located in Russia. Experts believe the citadel, not necessarily the oldest feature of the site, was built between the 17th and 16th century BC. But there are several reasons why Arkaim stands apart from other Bronze Age settlements in the area, leading to the idea it was built by a separate group. There is controversy on exactly who the builders were and what they made the site for and that uncertainty has led to some fascinating, if unorthodox, claims. 

Although it is unknown who built Arkaim, archaeological evidence found at the site suggests that it was inhabited by people of the Aryan race. Specifically, it has been suggested that Arkaim’s residents once consisted of members of the Sintashta culture, Indo-Iranian people of the ancient Eurasian Steppe. 

The principal evidence for Aryans having lived at Arkaim is the discovery of horse burials following their style. This practice is described in ancient Indian texts and says that horses were buried with their masters. Being nomads, many Indo-European peoples had a strong connection to their horses and it’s not surprising for them to think that the deep connection would continue into the afterlife. Evidence of ritual horse sacrifices has been found in stone necropolises unearthed in the Arkaim Valley.

Apart from its creators, another mystery is why the site was suddenly abandoned. There is some evidence of a fire, however that may not have been the cause of desertion. Because the site was fortified, some people believe it was abandoned when the inhabitants lost a war. Skeletons have been found at Arkaim and in the expansive necropolises of the valley, but the human remains do not generally suggest death in battle.  

A particularly interesting find of human remains was made at Arkaim in 2013 - an individual with an elongated skull. The person may have belonged to the Sarmati tribe. Researchers believe that the alteration was intentional; it was, after all, a common practice amongst some groups who lived in the South Ural (it is also found worldwide). Nonetheless, the reasons behind this ritual deformation are unknown; leading some to see stronger ties between the curious site of Arkaim and extraterrestrials.

What Does Cave Art Have to do with Animation?

awn |  The first thing that strikes me when looking at the many reproductions (I have yet to see an original) is that there are no stories, at least so far as I understand a graphic story to be. Instead what appears are images of local fauna in full view, mid-view, and close-up.

Even though these paintings were created more than 10,000 years ago, the drawing style is highly accomplished. There's a strong sense of 3D form translated onto a 2D surface, the coloration is finely tuned, and the animals breathe life. So these artists could have told a story if they had chosen to.

But nothing is chronicled in the way that we structure narrative, with a beginning, middle, and end. Instead the artists have chosen to present these huge images (the bulls at Lascaux are 20 feet wide) singly or sequentially, on the rock wall deep inside these safe chambers well below the earth's surface.

Sequentially? What are sequential images doing on a cave wall painted tens of thousands of years ago? As an animator I recognize them immediately to be like the key frames of an animation.

It's one thing to enter a cave and be confronted with a huge still image, but how much more dramatic would be an image that reads as an animal in motion.

What finer way than this to present shock and awe from a safe vantage point. Perhaps the artists were seeking to recreate and thereby control these near overwhelming sensations, feelings certainly experienced above ground and probably often in dangerous if not deadly circumstances.

Did these artists want to recreate them in a controlled way so that while the audience's experience was akin to the real thing, the real dangers remained above ground and well outside the cave?

Think of experiencing a huge thunderstorm from the safety of a cozy cottage, or watching a horror film from the security of a movie theater. There's something deeply satisfying about being awed or terrified while knowing one is safe.

Were these paleolithic men and women our film artist ancestors?

How Old is Original Human Civilization?

holdmyark |  Located in south-western Arnhem land Australia is a stone monument that was created by the aboriginal Australians 50,000 years ago. A part of Jawoyn country, Nawarla Gabarnmung is an incredible example of engineering a rock shelter not seen elsewhere at this period of time in ancient history. Meaning, “hole in the rock”, “passageway”, or “valley open from the centre” by the Jawoyn people, Nawarla Gabarnmung is a sacred and protected site. Jawoyn Elder, Margaret Katherine, has the responsibility of safe guarding this very special place today. The Jawoyn people have only allowed ‘Gabarnmung’ to be studied in recent years. Margaret explains how sharing knowledge with blackfullas, and whitefullas is important.

The work completed at Gabarnmung by these ancient engineers may not have required the precise mathematics to build a great pyramid, but still valued math and the intelligent knowledge of working with stone for a great length of time. The shelter was constructed by tunneling into a naturally eroded cliff face. The roof is 1.75m to 2.45m above floor level, supported by 50 pillars created by the natural erosion of fissure lines in the bedrock. 36 pillars were painted. Some pre-existing pillars were removed, some were reshaped and some moved to new positions. In some areas ceiling slabs were removed and repainted by the ancient Jawoyn people who used the shelter.

This [hole in the wall] ‘monument’ contains a historical gallery of rock art and some of the oldest full paintings in the world. Also a historical recording of human history like many other sites in the Arnhem Land area of Australia. The Artwork at Gabarnmung rivals the paintings found in France and Spain. Noting that most dates for Rock Art are questionable, so are those greater dates now suggested for France and Spain[65,000 years]

The significance of the Gabarnmung rock art is in the amazing detail. These mystifying and intriguing images demonstrate the experience of the Jawoyn Artists. The people and culture still being here today to help tell the story is what makes the works of art much more alive. The many examples found in rock painting across Australia over the past 200 years explains how the Original people have been painting since the earliest times in human History. A few years ago Smithsonian wrote an article making these comparisons of Gabarnmung:

If science can offer something to the Jawoyn, the Jawoyn have something to offer science. “We don’t have anyone to explain Chauvet Cave to us. In France, these are sites with no memory, no life. With Gabarnmung, we are lucky. There is the living culture, the memories. The Jawoyn can help us build a new knowledge.” Jean-Michel Geneste

“ Like the Sistine Chapel, the ceiling of the expansive rock shelter was a mural of breathtakingly vivid and bold works of art – hundreds of them. And the paintings extended up and down 36 remarkable sandstone columns that, like the pillars of a temple, appeared to support the cave”

"Discovered" in 1963 - But Not a Single History Book Rewritten?

xinhua |  Sanliurfa Provincial Culture and Tourism Director Aydin Aslan said to the Anadolu Agency that Gobeklitepe was a huge excavation site that changed the world's archaeology history to a great extent, adding that excavations were continuing non-stop in the region.

The city is home to the world's oldest temple, which is believed to be twice as old as the Stonehenge and the Pyramids.

Ancient stone carvings and a tablet analyzed at this mysterious site could eventually confirm, even there are some critics to this new theory, that a comet struck earth around 11,000 BC. Experts at the University of Edinburgh, Scotland, analyzed mysterious symbols carved onto stone pillars at Gobeklitepe to find out that they could be linked to constellations.

The markings, according a research published in Mediterranean Archaeology and Archeometry, suggest that a swarm of comet fragments hit earth at the time that a mini ice age struck, changing the course of human civilization.

Researchers believe the images on the pillars were intended as a record of cataclysmic event, and a further carving showing a headless man could possibly indicate human disaster and massive loss of life.

This site is contemporary with the Greenland ice core samples, which are dated to around 10,900 BC of the sites may features, none are more famous than the many standing pillars that dot the excavated grounds.

This is because of the extensive programs and animal reliefs that decorate these pillars, which include various representations of mammal and avian species. One of the pillars, known as the "vulture stone," was of particular interests to archaeologists, as it is suspected that its representation which is associated with death could have been intended to commemorate a devastating event, like a cataclysm.

The Turkish official Aslan said the roof works are expected to be finished on July 15. "As of July 15, the roof project will be finished and the area will be open to visitors. The priority of works is the protection of Gobeklitepe. The cost of this work is nearly 600,000 euros, provided by the Turkish state and the European Union," he added.

The head of the Gobeklitepe excavations team, Celal Uludag, said for his part that the excavations will be delayed because of the roof project in the field.

He said the protection of the field of historical artifacts is as important as the protection of the artifacts, and that new findings can also be unearthed during upcoming excavations. He said they have been planning to start excavations in the region for long years.

"We will start excavations after the roof project. We believe that we can continue excavation works in the settlement for long years. So far, seven temples have been unearthed in the region and many of them are waiting to be discovered. It is important to protect and display the findings. Now we give priority to the protection of the current findings," he added.

Gobeklitepe was discovered in 1963 as a Neolithic settlement, during the surface surveys realized as a part of a Joint Project named "Prehistoric Research in Southeastern Anatolia" by Istanbul University in cooperation with Chicago University.

5% Excavated, No Idea Who Built It, No Idea Why, No Effect on the Mainstream Narrative...,

smithsonian |  Six miles from Urfa, an ancient city in southeastern Turkey, Klaus Schmidt has made one of the most startling archaeological discoveries of our time: massive carved stones about 11,000 years old, crafted and arranged by prehistoric people who had not yet developed metal tools or even pottery. The megaliths predate Stonehenge by some 6,000 years. The place is called Gobekli Tepe, and Schmidt, a German archaeologist who has been working here more than a decade, is convinced it's the site of the world's oldest temple.

"Guten Morgen," he says at 5:20 a.m. when his van picks me up at my hotel in Urfa. Thirty minutes later, the van reaches the foot of a grassy hill and parks next to strands of barbed wire. We follow a knot of workmen up the hill to rectangular pits shaded by a corrugated steel roof—the main excavation site. In the pits, standing stones, or pillars, are arranged in circles. Beyond, on the hillside, are four other rings of partially excavated pillars. Each ring has a roughly similar layout: in the center are two large stone T-shaped pillars encircled by slightly smaller stones facing inward. The tallest pillars tower 16 feet and, Schmidt says, weigh between seven and ten tons. As we walk among them, I see that some are blank, while others are elaborately carved: foxes, lions, scorpions and vultures abound, twisting and crawling on the pillars' broad sides.

 

Schmidt points to the great stone rings, one of them 65 feet across. "This is the first human-built holy place," he says.

From this perch 1,000 feet above the valley, we can see to the horizon in nearly every direction. Schmidt, 53, asks me to imagine what the landscape would have looked like 11,000 years ago, before centuries of intensive farming and settlement turned it into the nearly featureless brown expanse it is today.

Prehistoric people would have gazed upon herds of gazelle and other wild animals; gently flowing rivers, which attracted migrating geese and ducks; fruit and nut trees; and rippling fields of wild barley and wild wheat varieties such as emmer and einkorn. "This area was like a paradise," says Schmidt, a member of the German Archaeological Institute. Indeed, Gobekli Tepe sits at the northern edge of the Fertile Crescent—an arc of mild climate and arable land from the Persian Gulf to present-day Lebanon, Israel, Jordan and Egypt—and would have attracted hunter-gatherers from Africa and the Levant. And partly because Schmidt has found no evidence that people permanently resided on the summit of Gobekli Tepe itself, he believes this was a place of worship on an unprecedented scale—humanity's first "cathedral on a hill."

The First Americans: What Do You Do When You Realize EVERYTHING You've Been Taught Is a Lie?

bbc |  The programme, Ancient Voices, shows that the dimensions of prehistoric skulls found in Brazil match those of the aboriginal peoples of Australia and Melanesia. Other evidence suggests that these first Americans were later massacred by invaders from Asia.

Until now, native Americans were believed to have descended from Asian ancestors who arrived over a land bridge between Siberia and Alaska and then migrated across the whole of north and south America. The land bridge was formed 11,000 years ago during the ice age, when sea level dropped.

However, the new evidence shows that these people did not arrive in an empty wilderness. Stone tools and charcoal from the site in Brazil show evidence of human habitation as long ago as 50,000 years.

The site is at Serra Da Capivara in remote northeast Brazil. This area is now inhabited by the descendants of European settlers and African slaves who arrived just 500 years ago.

But cave paintings found here provided the first clue to the existence of a much older people.

Images of giant armadillos, which died out before the last ice age, show the artists who drew them lived before even the natives who greeted the Europeans.

These Asian people have facial features described as mongoloid. However, skulls dug from a depth equivalent to 9,000 to 12,000 years ago are very different.

Walter Neves, an archaeologist from the University of Sao Paolo, has taken extensive skull measurements from dozens of skulls, including the oldest, a young woman who has been named Lucia.

"The measurements show that Lucia was anything but mongoloid," he says.

The skull dimensions and facial features match most closely the native people of Australia and Melanesia. These people date back to about 60,000 years, and were themselves descended from the first humans, who left Africa about 100,000 years ago. 

But how could the early Australians have travelled more than 13,500 kilometres (8,450 miles) at that time? The answer comes from more cave paintings, this time from the Kimberley, a region at the northern tip of Western Australia. 

Here, Grahame Walsh, an expert on Australian rock art, found the oldest painting of a boat anywhere in the world. The style of the art means it is at least 17,000 years old, but it could be up to 50,000 years old. 

And the crucial detail is the high prow of the boat. This would have been unnecessary for boats used in calm, inland waters. The design suggests it was used on the open ocean.

That Which Wiped Out the Megafauna, Wiped Out the Clovis...,

nature |  The Younger Dryas (YD) impact hypothesis posits that fragments of a large, disintegrating asteroid/comet struck North America, South America, Europe, and western Asia ~12,800 years ago. Multiple airbursts/impacts produced the YD boundary layer (YDB), depositing peak concentrations of platinum, high-temperature spherules, meltglass, and nanodiamonds, forming an isochronous datum at >50 sites across ~50 million km² of Earth’s surface. This proposed event triggered extensive biomass burning, brief impact winter, YD climate change, and contributed to extinctions of late Pleistocene megafauna. In the most extensive investigation south of the equator, we report on a ~12,800-year-old sequence at Pilauco, Chile (~40°S), that exhibits peak YD boundary concentrations of platinum, gold, high-temperature iron- and chromium-rich spherules, and native iron particles rarely found in nature. A major peak in charcoal abundance marks an intense biomass-burning episode, synchronous with dramatic changes in vegetation, including a high-disturbance regime, seasonality in precipitation, and warmer conditions. This is anti-phased with northern-hemispheric cooling at the YD onset, whose rapidity suggests atmospheric linkage. The sudden disappearance of megafaunal remains and dung fungi in the YDB layer at Pilauco correlates with megafaunal extinctions across the Americas. The Pilauco record appears consistent with YDB impact evidence found at sites on four continents.

We'll Be Right Back After A Brief Message About What Really Matters

theconversation |  Research we have just had published sheds new light on this Younger Dryas Impact Hypothesis. We focus on what platinum can tell us about it.

Platinum is known to be concentrated in meteorites, so when a lot of it is found in one place at one time, it could be a sign of a cosmic impact. Platinum spikes have been discovered in an ice core in Greenland as well as in areas as far apart as Europe, Western Asia, North America and even Patagonia in South America. These spikes all date to the same period of time.  

Until now, there has been no such evidence from Africa. But working with two colleagues, Professor Louis Scott (University of the Free State) and Philip Pieterse (University of Johannesburg), I believe there is evidence from South Africa’s Limpopo province that partly supports the controversial Younger Dryas Impact Hypothesis.

The new information has been obtained from Wonderkrater, an archaeological site with peat deposits at a spring situated outside a small town to the north of Pretoria. In a sample of peat we have identified a platinum spike that could at least potentially be related to dust associated with a meteorite impact somewhere on earth 12,800 years ago. 

The platinum spike at Wonderkrater is in marked contrast to almost constantly low (near-zero) concentrations of this element in adjacent levels. Subsequent to that platinum spike, pollen grains indicate a drop in temperature. These discoveries are entirely consistent with the Younger Dryas Impact Hypothesis. 

Wonderkrater is the first site in Africa where a Younger Dryas platinum spike has been detected, supplementing evidence from southern Chile, in addition to platinum spikes at 28 sites in the northern hemisphere. 

We are now asking a question which needs to be taken seriously: surely platinum-rich dust associated with the impact of a very large meteorite may have contributed to some extent to major climatic change and extinctions?

#YouToo: Capitalism is Socialist Rape-Culture

eand |  Capitalism is produced by socialism. It socializes losses. It privatizes gains. It needs social investment and support to keep doing both, in fact. Why? And why do we let it? Why does capitalism always seem to need capital from society to plow on, and losses to socialize right back — which also means that a noble laissez faire state of capitalist nature is an old wives’ tale? Whether it’s armies to enforce slaves, bailouts for banks, or loans for the American Dream (no blacks allowed, please)?

“Capitalism” is really just a way to say that “governments support private ownership of things.” Sometimes, those things are factories, sometimes they’re bonds, and sometimes, quite terribly, they’re even other people. But note the wrinkle. The job of a “government”, as far as “capitalism” is concerned, is to keep privately owned things running, going, operating — and yet that alone says that capital can’t really exist by itself. Who’ll do the work of quelling the slave rebellion? Of funding the frontier? Of bailing out the hedge funds? Who’ll pipe that house and pave those roads? Yet without those, capitalism would have ceased to function in the blink of an eye, time after time. Without social investment and support, capitalism would stop overnight — even in America. Imagine if the skies turned black, or the phone lines went down, or the internet became gobbledygook, or the trees attacked us, instead of stood there pleasantly, giving us air to breathe.

That means that “capitalism” is a system of a very specific kind. One where those who have the least capital are always subsidizing those who already have the most of it — and hoping for a little bit in return. And that means that those already who have the most capital will always win. Imagine that you have a hundred times more money than me. Won’t you have the power to demand all kinds of concessions from me? Imagine you have a hundred times more social capital than me. Won’t that make your power over me even greater? And so on. And yet here I am, not just begging you for a job — but subsidizing you while I’m doing it, paying for that bailout, paying back that extortionate interest, paying for the democracy which keep your contracts worth a dime while you wreck it, and so forth.

The problem, then, is a kind of paradox. “Capitalism” means the job of a government is that society supports and nurtures, protects and subsidizes, the capitalist, not vice versa. But the capitalist is the one who already owns the most, by definition. He has the least to lose. He has the most information. He can buy up all your alternatives. So this idea of governance itself means the capitalist always wins — because the government is enforcing his rule now: those who have the most capital receive the most capital, and those who have none receive none.

That is why the history of capitalism seem always to be those who already have the most capital amassing the most, and those who have the least amassing the least. Not any specific individual — but certainly amongst social groups. It’s not a coincidence that American billionaires are mostly white men — and white men were slaveowners, not slaves. Whites amassed so much capital thanks to slavery that they still hold ten times more, on average, than blacks. So of course it’s vastly more likely that whites will be billionaires, or even millionaires. Capitalism is a construction of socialism — a system in which society subsidizes those who own the most, not vice versa.

Isn’t that what’s happened in America today? Late on your bills? We’ll hunt you down. Bad credit? Kiss a home goodbye. Can’t afford your deductible? Too bad, I guess the cancer’s going to get you. The government is enforcing the capitalist’s rule — whomever has the most capital receives most, and whomever has the least loses the most, or at best, wins the least.

#MeToo: Is Western Culture Fundamentally Rape Culture?

strategic-culture |  The AP headlined on July 27^th "#MeToo reaches Vatican as nuns denounce abuse from priests” and reported that the Vatican has continued to tolerate rape by its priests, and: Revelations that a prominent US cardinal sexually abused and harassed his adult seminarians have exposed an egregious abuse of power that has shocked Catholics on both sides of the Atlantic. But the Vatican has long been aware of its heterosexual equivalent — the sexual abuse of nuns by priests and bishops — and done little to stop it, an Associated Press analysis has found.

More people receive their morality from the Roman Catholic Church than from any other (or from any scientific basis); and, so, it is remarkable that this sort of exploitation is allowed to continue on, for decade after decade, and the pews not to be emptied-out by these and other ongoing church-scandals. However, if those congregants will then go to different denominations, will the results be any different? Many, if not most, faiths (especially the most conservative ones) have been revealed to be equally exploitative and tolerant of exploitation. Obviously, the problem here isn’t only the Roman Catholic Church. It goes far deeper than that. Throwing stones from glass houses against glass houses can’t help anyone but will only make things worse for everybody. The problem here is the supremacist culture, which exists everywhere, and which oppresses everywhere.

It is reflected in the politics of every nation; and it is especially reflected in the essentially lawless “Wild West” that constitutes the relations between nations — the field where wars and mass-killing, and military invasions and occupations, occur and are accepted by the perpetrator-countries, the invading and occupying nations, as if there were some sort of ‘right’ to perpetrate such things, for example, as was the invasion and occupation of Iraq in 2003 on the part of the invading and occupying nations.

The deeper problem is that there is no right by anyone to invade anywhere. There is no right that any clergy-person has to deceive or violently to force any person to do anything, and there also is no right that any nation has to rape another.

My July 19th article, “Vladimir Putin’s Basic Disagreement with The West” presented that “disagreement” as being between Putin’s commitment to the idea that only the residents in a given land-area can ever rightfully have sovereignty there, versus The West’s commitment to the idea that foreigners can have a right — maybe even a higher right — to sovereignty over that land.

Two representatives of the view that controls in The West were quoted there, at length, in defense of the asserted right of foreigners to control a government: Cecil Rhodes during the 1800s, and George Soros during the 21^st Century. 

Bone-in-the-Nose Medicine "Discovers" System That Taoist Chi-Kung Develops...,

universal-tao | An introduction to the ancient Kung Fu practice designed to unify physical, mental, and spiritual health:

• Describes the unique Iron Shirt air-packing techniques that protect vital organs from injuries
• Explains the rooting practice exercises necessary to stabilize and center oneself
• Includes guidelines for building an Iron Shirt Chi Kung daily practice

Long before the advent of firearms, Iron Shirt Chi Kung, a form of Kung Fu, built powerful bodies able to withstand hand-to-hand combat. Even then, however, martial use was only one aspect of Iron Shirt Chi Kung, and today its other aspects remain vitally significant for anyone seeking better health, a sound mind, and spiritual growth.

In Iron Shirt Chi Kung Master Mantak Chia introduces this ancient practice that strengthens the internal organs, establishes roots to the earth’s energy, and unifies physical, mental, and spiritual health. Through a unique system of breathing exercises, he demonstrates how to permanently pack concentrated air into the connective tissues (the fasciae) surrounding vital organs, making them nearly impervious to injuries--a great benefit to athletes and other performers. He shows readers how once they root themselves in the earth they can direct its gravitational and healing power throughout their bone structure. Additionally, Master Chia presents postural forms, muscle-tendon meridians, and guidelines for developing a daily practice routine. After becoming rooted and responsive, practitioners of Iron Shirt Chi Kung can then focus on higher spiritual work.  Full Text. 

DopamineHegemony |  The team behind the discovery suggest the compartments may act as “shock absorbers” that protect body tissues from damage.

Mount Sinai Beth Israel Medical Center medics Dr David Carr-Locke and Dr Petros Benias came across the interstitium while investigating a patient’s bile duct, searching for signs of cancer.

They noticed cavities that did not match any previously known human anatomy, and approached New York University pathologist Dr Neil Theise to ask for his expertise.

The researchers realised traditional methods for examining body tissues had missed the interstitium because the “fixing” method for assembling medical microscope slides involves draining away fluid – therefore destroying the organ’s structure.  

Instead of their true identity as bodywide, fluid-filled shock absorbers, the squashed cells had been overlooked and considered a simple layer of connective tissue.

Having arrived at this conclusion, the scientists realised this structure was found not only in the bile duct, but surrounding many crucial internal organs.

“This fixation artefact of collapse has made a fluid-filled tissue type throughout the body appear solid in biopsy slides for decades, and our results correct for this to expand the anatomy of most tissues,” said Dr Theise.

Open Thread IQ Test REDUX: Is This About The Money Power?

Fist tap Dale

Be Ye Wise As Serpents, Gentle As Doves...,

gurdjiefflegacy |  In 1888 the 16-year-old Gurdjieff witnessed a strange incident: he saw a little boy, weeping and making strange movements, struggling with all his might to break out of a circle drawn around him by other boys. Gurdjieff released the boy by erasing part of the circle and the child ran from his tormentors. The boy, Gurdjieff learned, was a Yezidi. He had heard only that Yezidis were "a sect living in Transcaucasia, mainly in the regions near Mount Ararat. They are sometimes called devil-worshippers." Astonished by the incident, Gurdjieff made a point of telling us that he felt compelled to think seriously about the Yezidis.(1) Inquiring of the adults he knew, he received contradictory opinions representative of the usual, prejudiced view of the Yezidis. But Gurdjieff remained unsatisfied. 

This story is embedded in the narrative of Meetings with Remarkable Men, like one of the monuments in Turkestan which Gurdjieff said helps people find their way through regions in which there are no roads or footpaths. In chapter five Gurdjieff placed another such marker, an echo of the earlier story. There, he and Pogossian set off to find the Sarmoung Brotherhood, even if they must travel, as Gurdjieff says, "on the devil's back." Enroute, far from any city, Pogossian throws a stone at one barking dog in a pack, and he and Gurdjieff are immediately surrounded by fifteen Kurdish sheepdogs. Like Yezidis, the two men cannot leave the circle of dogs until they are released by the shepherds who own the dogs.(2)

 

Where does this incident happen? If we set out Gurdjieff's journey with Pogossian on a map and, following Gurdjieff's instructions, draw a line from Alexandropol through Van, we see it passes through the Lalish Valley, location of the tomb and shrine of Sheikh Adi, the principal saint of the Yezidi religion. Extending the line further, it reaches Mosul, the major town in the region and a center of Yezidism.(3) By setting such markers, is Gurdjieff advising that we too should "think seriously" about the Yezidis? 

Gurdjieff has said that the teaching he brought is completely self-supporting and independent of other lines, was completely unknown up to the present time, and its origins predate and are the source of ancient Egyptian religion and of Christianity. Why then, has he as much as asked us to look into Yezidism? Some, swayed in a superficial sense by the subtitle of Ouspensky's book, Fragments of an Unknown Teaching, went hunting for the "missing link" in Gurdjieff's supposedly incomplete teaching. They tried to find this or that source from which he put it together, little realizing that it was they who were fragmentary, not the teaching. 

The questions become instead: what ideas do we encounter in a study of the Yezidis—and do these tell us anything? As we acquaint ourselves with the Yezidis and their beliefs, we may see that Gurdjieff has led us to materials for a deeper understanding of the nature of an esoteric teaching, of the implications of a teaching transmitted "orally," and of the reasons for his unlikely choice of Beelzebub as the hero of the First Series.

Will We Vanish From the Record Like the Watchers Did?

andrewcollins | Is civilisation the legacy of a race of human angels known as Watchers and Nephilim? Andrew Collins, author of FROM THE ASHES OF ANGELS, previews his history of angels and fallen angels and traces their origin back to an extraordinarily advanced culture that entered the Near East shortly after the end of the last Ice Age.

Angels are something we associate with beautiful Pre-Raphaelite and renaissance paintings, carved statues accompanying gothic architecture and supernatural beings who intervene in our lives at times of trouble. For the last 2000 years this has been the stereotypical image fostered by the Christian Church. But what are angels? Where do they come from, and what have they meant to the development of organised religion?

Many people see the Pentateuch, the first five books of the Old Testament, as littered with accounts of angels appearing to righteous patriarchs and visionary prophets. Yet this is simply not so. There are the three angels who approach Abraham to announce the birth of a son named Izaac to his wife Sarah as he sits beneath a tree on the Plain of Mamre.

There are the two angels who visit Lot and his wife at Sodom prior to its destruction. There is the angel who wrestles all night with Jacob at a place named Penuel, or those which he sees moving up and down a ladder that stretches between heaven and earth. Yet other than these accounts, there are too few examples, and when angels do appear the narrative is often vague and unclear on what exactly is going on. For instance, in the case of both Abraham and Lot the angels in question are described simply as `men', who sit down to take food like any mortal person.

Influence of the Magi

It was not until post-exilic times - ie after the Jews returned from captivity in Babylon around 450 BC - that angels became an integral part of the Jewish religion. It was even later, around 200 BC, that they began appearing with frequency in Judaic religious literature. Works such as the Book of Daniel and the apocryphal Book of Tobit contain enigmatic accounts of angelic beings that have individual names, specific appearances and established hierarchies. These radiant figures were of non-Judaic origin. All the indications are that they were aliens, imports from a foreign kingdom, namely Persia.

The country we now today as Iran might not at first seem the most likely source for angels, but it is a fact that the exiled Jews were heavily exposed to its religious faiths after the Persian king Cyrus the Great took Babylon in 539 BC. These included not only Zoroastrianism, after the prophet Zoroaster or Zarathustra, but also the much older religion of the Magi, the elite priestly caste of Media in north-west Iran. They believed in a whole pantheon of supernatural beings called ahuras, or `shining ones', and daevas - ahuras who had fallen from grace because of their corruption of mankind.

Although eventually outlawed by Persia, the influence of the Magi ran deep within the beliefs, customs and rituals of Zoroastrianism. Moreover, there can be little doubt that Magianism, from which we get terms such as magus, magic and magician, helped to establish the belief among Jews not only of whole hierarchies of angels, but also of legions of fallen angels - a topic that gains its greatest inspiration from one work alone - the Book of Enoch.

The Book of Enoch

Compiled in stages somewhere between 165 BC and the start of the Christian era, this so-called pseudepigraphal (ie falsely attributed) work has as its main theme the story behind the fall of the angels. Yet not the fall of angels in general, but those which were originally known as 'Œrin ('Œr in singular), `those who watch', or simply `watchers' as the word is rendered in English translation.

The Book of Enoch tells the story of how 200 rebel angels, or Watchers, decided to transgress the heavenly laws and `descend' on to the plains and take wives from among mortal kind. The site given for this event is the summit of Hermon, a mythical location generally association with the snowy heights of Mount Hermon in the Ante-Lebanon range, north of modern-day Palestine (but see below for the most likely homeland of the Watchers).

The 200 rebels realise the implications of their transgressions, for they agree to swear an oath to the effect that their leader Shemyaza would take the blame if the whole ill-fated venture went terribly wrong.

After their descent to the lowlands, the Watchers indulge in earthly delights with their chosen `wives', and through these unions are born giant offspring named as Nephilim, or Nefilim, a Hebrew word meaning `those who have fallen', which is rendered in Greek translations as gigantes, or `giants'.

andrewcollins |   In both the book of Genesis (chapter six) and the book of Enoch, the rebel Watchers are said also to have come upon the Daughters of Men, i.e. mortal women, who gave birth to giant offspring called Nephilim. For this transgression against the laws of Heaven, the renegades were incarcerated and punished by those Watchers who had remained loyal to Heaven. The rebel Watchers' offspring, the Nephilim (a word meaning "those who fell), were either killed outright, or were afterwards destroyed in the flood of Noah. Some, however, the book of Numbers tells us, survived and went on to become the ancestors of giant races, such as the Anakim and Rapheim.

I wrote that the story of the Watchers is in fact the memory of a priestly or shamanic elite, a group of highly intelligent human individuals, that entered the Upper Euphrates region from another part of the ancient world sometime around the end of the last Ice Age, c. 11,000-10,000 BC. On their arrival in what became known as the land or kingdom of Eden (a term actually used in the Old Testament), they assumed control of the gradually emerging agrarian communities, who were tutored in a semi-rural life style centred around agriculture, metal working and the rearing of animal live stock. More disconcertingly, these people were made to venerate their superiors, i.e. the Watchers, as living gods, or immortals.

The precise same region of the Near East, now thought to be the biblical Garden of Eden, has long been held to be the cradle of civilization. Here a number of "firsts" occurred at the beginning of the Neolithic revolution, which began c. 10,000-9000 BC. It was in southeast Turkey, northern Syria and northern Iraq, for example, that the first domestication of wild grasses took place, the first fired pottery and baked statues were produced, the first copper and lead were smelted, the first stone buildings and standing stones were erected, the first beautification of the eyes took place among woman, the first drilled beads in ultra hard stone were produced, the first alcohol was brewed and distilled, etc., etc. In fact, many of the arts and sciences of Heaven that the Watchers are said to have revealed to mortal kind were all reported first in this region of the globe, known to archaeologists as Upper Mesopotamia, and to the people of the region as Kurdistan.

Sean Thomas acknowledges my help at the beginning of the The Genesis Secret, which follows exactly the same themes as From the Ashes of Angels (and my later book Gods of Eden, published in 1998), including the fact that the Watchers and founders of Eden were bird man, i.e. shamans that wore cloaks of feathers, and that local angel worshipping cults in Kurdistan, such as the Yezidi, Yaresan and Alevi, preserve some semblance of knowledge regarding the former existence of the Watchers or angels as the bringers of civilization. Their leader, they say was Azazel, known also as Melek Taus (or Melek Tawas), the "Peacock Angel". Azazel is a name given in the book of Enoch for one of the two leaders of the rebel Watchers (the other being Shemyaza).

It is an honour for my work to be acknowledged in this manner by Sean Thomas, especially as The Genesis Secret has become a bestseller (as was From the Ashes of Angels in 1996). I won't spoil the plot, so will not reveal Sean's conclusions, or indeed the climax of the book, although I must warn you that it is extremely gory in places!

The Book of Enoch

wikipedia |  The Book of Enoch (also 1 Enoch;^[1] Ge'ez: መጽሐፈ ሄኖክ mätṣḥäfä henok) is an ancient Jewish religious work, ascribed by tradition to Enoch, the great-grandfather of Noah, although modern scholars estimate the older sections (mainly in the Book of the Watchers) to date from about 300 BC, and the latest part (Book of Parables) probably to the first century BC.^[2]

It is not part of the biblical canon as used by Jews, apart from Beta Israel. Most Christian denominations and traditions may accept the Books of Enoch as having some historical or theological interest, but they generally regard the Books of Enoch as non-canonical or non-inspired.^[3] It is regarded as canonical by the Ethiopian Orthodox Tewahedo Church and Eritrean Orthodox Tewahedo Church, but not by any other Christian groups.

It is wholly extant only in the Ge'ez language, with Aramaic fragments from the Dead Sea Scrolls and a few Greek and Latin fragments. For this and other reasons, the traditional Ethiopian belief is that the original language of the work was Ge'ez, whereas non-Ethiopian scholars tend to assert that it was first written in either Aramaic or Hebrew; Ephraim Isaac suggests that the Book of Enoch, like the Book of Daniel, was composed partially in Aramaic and partially in Hebrew.^[4]:6 No Hebrew version is known to have survived. It is asserted in the book itself that its author was Enoch, before the Biblical Flood.

Some of the authors of the New Testament were familiar with some of the content of the story.^[5] A short section of 1 Enoch (1:9) is cited in the New Testament, Epistle of Jude, Jude 1:14–15, and is attributed there to "Enoch the Seventh from Adam" (1 En 60:8), although this section of 1 Enoch is a midrash on Deuteronomy 33. Several copies of the earlier sections of 1 Enoch were preserved among the Dead Sea Scrolls.

Younger Dryas Impact Hypothesis

wikipedia |  The Younger Dryas is a climatic event from c. 12,900 to c. 11,700 calendar years ago (BP). It is named after an indicator genus, the alpine-tundra wildflower Dryas octopetala, as its leaves are occasionally abundant in the Late Glacial, often minerogenic-rich, like the lake sediments of Scandinavian lakes.

The Younger Dryas saw a sharp decline in temperature over most of the Northern Hemisphere, at the end of the Pleistocene epoch, immediately before the current, warmer Holocene. The Younger Dryas was the most recent and longest of several interruptions to the gradual warming of the Earth's climate since the severe Last Glacial Maximum, c. 27,000 to 24,000 calendar years BP. The change was relatively sudden, taking place in decades, and it resulted in a decline of 2 to 6 degrees Celsius and advances of glaciers and drier conditions, over much of the temperate northern hemisphere. It is thought to have been caused by a decline in the strength of the Atlantic meridional overturning circulation, which transports warm water from the Equator towards the North Pole, in turn thought to have been caused by an influx of fresh cold water from North America to the Atlantic.

The Younger Dryas was a period of climatic change, but the effects were complex and variable. In the Southern Hemisphere and some areas of the Northern Hemisphere, such as southeastern North America, there was a slight warming.^[1]

The presence of a distinct cold period at the end of the Late Glacial interval has been known for a long time. Paleobotanical and lithostratigraphic studies of Swedish and Danish bog and lake sites, like in the Allerød clay pit in Denmark, first recognized and described the Younger Dryas.^[2][3][4][5]

wikipedia |  The Younger Dryas impact hypothesis or Clovis comet hypothesis originally proposed that a large air burst or earth impact of one or more comets initiated the Younger Dryas cold period about 12,900 BP calibrated (10,900 ¹⁴C uncalibrated) years ago.^[1][2][3] The hypothesis has been contested by research showing that most of the conclusions cannot be repeated by other scientists, and criticized because of misinterpretation of data and the lack of confirmatory evidence.^[4][5][6][7]

The current impact hypothesis states that the air burst(s) or impact(s) of a swarm of carbonaceous chondrites or comet fragments set areas of the North American continent on fire, causing the extinction of most of the megafauna in North America and the demise of the North American Clovis culture after the last glacial period.^[8] The Younger Dryas ice age lasted for about 1,200 years before the climate warmed again. This swarm is hypothesized to have exploded above or possibly on the Laurentide Ice Sheet in the region of the Great Lakes, though no impact crater has yet been identified and no physical model by which such a swarm could form or explode in the air has been proposed. Nevertheless, the proponents suggest that it would be physically possible for such an air burst to have been similar to, but orders of magnitude larger than, the Tunguska event of 1908. The hypothesis proposed that animal and human life in North America not directly killed by the blast or the resulting coast-to-coast wildfires would have likely starved on the burned surface of the continent.

 

The Moon: A Natural Satellite Cannot Be a Hollow Object

disinfo |  Between 1969 and 1977, Apollo mission seismographic equipment registered up to 3,000 “moonquakes” each year of operation. Most of the vibrations were quite small and were caused by meteorite strikes or falling booster rockets. But many other quakes were detected deep inside the Moon. This internal creaking is believed to be caused by the gravitational pull of our planet as most moonquakes occur when the Moon is closest to the Earth.

An event occurred in 1958 in the Moon’s Alphonsus crater, which shook the idea that all internal moonquake activity was simply settling rocks. In November of that year, Soviet astronomer Nikolay A. Kozyrev of the Crimean Astrophysical Observatory startled the scientific world by photographing the first recorded gaseous eruption on the Moon near the crater’s peak. Kozyrev attributed this to escaping fluorescent gases. He also detected a reddish glow characteristic of carbon compounds, which “seemed to move and disappeared after an hour.”

Some scientists refused to accept Kozyrev’s findings until astronomers at the Lowell Observatory also saw reddish glows on the crests of ridges in the Aristarchus region in 1963. Days later, colored lights on the Moon lasting more than an hour were reported at two separate observatories.

Something was going on inside the volcanically dead Moon. And whatever it is, it occurs the same way at the same time. As the Moon moves closer to the Earth, seismic signals from different stations on the lunar surface detect identical vibrations. It is difficult to accept this movement as a natural phenomenon. For example, a broken artificial hull plate could shift exactly the same way each time the Moon passed near the Earth.

There is evidence to indicate the Moon may be hollow. Studies of Moon rocks indicate that the Moon’s interior differs from the Earth’s mantle in ways suggesting a very small, or even nonexistent, core. As far back as 1962, NASA scientist Dr. Gordon MacDonald stated, “If the astronomical data are reduced, it is found that the data require that the interior of the Moon be less dense than the outer parts. Indeed, it would seem that the Moon is more like a hollow than a homogeneous sphere.”

Apollo 14 astronaut Dr. Edgar Mitchell, while scoffing at the possibility of a hollow moon, nevertheless admitted that since heavier materials were on the surface, it is quite possible that giant caverns exist within the Moon. MIT’s Dr. Sean C. Solomon wrote, “The Lunar Orbiter experiments vastly improved our knowledge of the Moon’s gravitational field … indicating the frightening possibility that the Moon might be hollow.”

Why frightening? The significance was stated by astronomer Carl Sagan way back in his 1966 work Intelligent Life in the Universe, “A natural satellite cannot be a hollow object.”

The most startling evidence that the Moon could be hollow came on November 20, 1969, when the Apollo 12 crew, after returning to their command ship, sent the lunar module (LM) ascent stage crashing back onto the Moon creating an artificial moonquake. The LM struck the surface about 40 miles from the Apollo 12 landing site where ultra-sensitive seismic equipment recorded something both unexpected and astounding—the Moon reverberated like a bell for more than an hour. The vibration wave took almost eight minutes to reach a peak, and then decreased in intensity. At a news conference that day, one of the co-directors of the seismic experiment, Maurice Ewing, told reporters that scientists were at a loss to explain the ringing. “As for the meaning of it, I’d rather not make an interpretation right now. But it is as though someone had struck a bell, say, in the belfry of a church a single blow and found that the reverberation from it continued for 30 minutes.”

It was later established that small vibrations had continued on the Moon for more than an hour. The phenomenon was repeated when the Apollo 13’s third stage was sent crashing onto the Moon by radio command, striking with the equivalent of 11 tons of TNT. According to NASA, this time the Moon “reacted like a gong.” Although seismic equipment was more than 108 miles from the crash site, recordings showed reverberations lasted for three hours and 20 minutes and traveled to a depth of 22 to 25 miles.

Subsequent studies of man-made crashes on the Moon yielded similar results. After one impact the Moon reverberated for four hours. This ringing coupled with the density problem on the Moon reinforces the idea of a hollow moon. Scientists hoped to record the impact of a meteor large enough to send shock waves to the Moon’s core and back and settle the issue. That opportunity came on May 13, 1972, when a large meteor stuck the Moon with the equivalent force of 200 tons of TNT. After sending shock waves deep into the interior of the Moon, scientists were baffled to find that none returned, confirming that there is something unusual about the Moon’s core, or lack thereof.

To Understand the Moon Do We Need to Study Venus?

nature |  Lunar-origin studies are in flux. No current impact model stands out as more compelling than the rest. Progress in several areas is needed to rule out some theories, support others or direct us to new ones.

First, a better understanding of what happened between the formation of the disk and the accumulation of the Moon from the disk is essential, because this phase established the Moon's properties. Did mixing homogenize the composition of the disk and the planet before the Moon formed? Were volatile elements lost from the disk, and, if so, did the pattern of loss vary with the disk's temperature? Canonical impacts produce a mostly liquid disk whereas in the high-angular-momentum impacts, the disks are initially largely vapour. Such disk-evolution models are technically challenging and will require a multidisciplinary approach incorporating both dynamics and chemistry.

Second, the likelihood that a resonance altered the Earth–Moon angular momentum needs to be assessed for a variety of physical states of the early Earth and Moon and using state-of-the-art models for the tidal interactions between them.

Finally, further isotopic comparisons of lunar and terrestrial materials would be extremely valuable. They should include highly refractory elements, such as calcium, to test the equilibration model. Finding that an element that could not have mixed in a vapour phase in 100 years is the same in the Moon and Earth but different in Mars would argue against equilibration; finding Earth–Moon isotopic differences in such a highly refractory element would support it.

Oxygen provides arguably the most important isotopic constraint on lunar formation. The distinct oxygen isotopic compositions of the Earth–Moon system, Mars and most meteorites reflect different initial compositional reservoirs in the inner Solar System. This simplifies the interpretation of oxygen compositions compared with elements such as silicon, whose isotopic abundances are affected by later planet-forming processes (such as crustal extraction). Increasing the precision of oxygen isotope measurements could potentially rule out some impact scenarios.

It remains troubling that all of the current impact models invoke a process after the impact to effectively erase a primary outcome of the event — either by changing the disk's composition through mixing for the canonical impact, or by changing Earth's spin rate for the high-angular-momentum narratives.

Sequences of events do occur in nature, and yet we strive to avoid such complexity in our models. We seek the simplest possible solution, as a matter of scientific aesthetics and because simple solutions are often more probable. As the number of steps increases, the likelihood of a particular sequence decreases. Current impact models are more complex and seem less probable than the original giant-impact concept.

A clue may lie in Venus. The assumption that the Moon-forming impactor had a composition very different from that of Earth is largely based on what we know about Mars. We do not know the isotopic composition of Venus, the planet most similar to Earth in both mass and distance from the Sun. If Venus's composition proves similar to that of Earth and the Moon, Mars would then seem to be an outlier, and an impactor composition akin to Earth's would be more probable, removing many objections to the canonical impact.

Determining the isotopic composition of Venus's key elements will probably require a mission to the planet. Such a tantalizing prospect reminds us how much there is still to learn in our Solar System backyard.

Worlds in Collision

bibliotecapleyades |  The ancient civilization of Egypt was nearly destroyed in a cosmic catastrophe that endangered the entire planet, according to Velikovsky. Everywhere, huge resources were devoted to study of the skies. It's widely known that ancient civilizations in Asia, the Americas, Europe and the Middle East were highly advanced in astronomy.

 

While we accept this as a common feature of our past,

• Why were so many people interested in the study of the movements of the planets?
• Why is the alignment of astronomical instruments found in Babylon 2.5 degrees out from the present alignment of the Earth?
• Why did calendars constructed between the middle of the second millennium BCE * and 800 BCE have 360 days and months of thirty days?
• Why do even earlier calendars have days, months and years of different lengths again?

* Before the Common Era

Velikovsky's answer was that the Earth and Mars had been involved in repeated near collisions with a gigantic comet since our recorded history began. The events described in the Exodus and in Egyptian papyri are a vivid description of an age in chaos—plagues, turmoil and darkness, and the flight of the Hebrews from Egypt toward a "column of fire" in Sinai.

The Earth was momentarily slowed down and its axis slightly altered as the comet passed by. Electrostatic forces caused discharges to arc between the Earth and the comet turning the skies to fire and the forests to flame. The crust was rent, volcanoes erupted, earthquakes rocked and darkness enveloped the world—the time of the Exodus.

 

Seven hundred years later Isaiah, Joel and Amos described another series of upheavals; the Sun appeared to stand still in the sky. Although slightly dislodged from its axis and orbit again, the Earth fared better this second time.

 

These were, in fact, the last two acts of a cosmic drama; the earliest act of which we have records is called The Deluge.

All cosmological theories assumed that the planets have evolved in their places for billions of years... Venus was formerly a comet and joined the family of planets within the memory of mankind... We claim that the Earth's orbit changed more than once, and with it the length of the year; that the geographic position of the terrestrial axis and its astronomical direction changed repeatedly and that at a recent date the polar star was in the constellation of the Great Bear.
—Worlds in Collision, p. 361

Velikovsky believed that the origin of the comet that was responsible for changes in the Earth's orbit was in the proto-star we know as Jupiter. This idea outraged the scientific community. But his theories about the natures of Jupiter and Venus have not yet been proven wrong. He said that because Venus was younger than the other planets, its surface temperature would be much hotter and its atmosphere denser than astronomers believed; these predictions were proven correct.

He predicted Venus would be found to have orbital anomalies in relation to the other planets; Venus has since been found to rotate on its axis in reverse direction to the other planets, and its day is longer than its year. We now know that parts of the atmosphere of Venus rotate in 4 days (with winds of up to 400 km/h) while the planet itself rotates in 243 days. Both these rotations are retrograde.

 

One of Velikovsky's hypotheses for the slowing of the Earth's rotation which made the Sun appear to stand still was that the planet was engulfed in the extended atmosphere of the comet Venus. Some of the diurnal rotation of the Earth was imparted to this dust-cloud according to Velikovsky, which fits the eccentric characteristics of the Venusian atmosphere.

The comet spiraled past the Earth in an ever-decreasing path around the Sun before taking up its present orbit as the planet Venus. He further cites evidence to show that the Earth interacted with Mars on a number of occasions when writing was better developed than during the Venusian encounters, after Venus flipped Mars out of its orbit.

What Destroyed Advanced Ancient Human Civilization? Open Thread IQ Test Continued...,

bibliotecapleyades |  As mentioned in the beginning of this book, I have been for many years interested in the work of George Gurdjieff. A series of articles written by William Patrick Patterson for Telos Magazine entitled “Gurdjieff in Egypt” and a subsequent video released by Patterson with the same title rekindled my interest in Gurdjieff’s work. In his second book, Meetings With Remarkable Men, Gurdjieff had stated that he once had seen a map of “pre-sand Egypt” in the possession of an Armenian monk. This map had stimulated Gurdjieff to go to Egypt and search for teachings about human origins in ancient wisdom schools.

Patterson had also been fascinated with Gurdjieff’s travels to Egypt and had done extensive investigations of his work. Patterson is convinced that Gurdjieff had seen an image of the Sphinx on the map of “pre-sand Egypt” and went to Egypt to investigate for himself. Of course, I contend that if the map was indeed of a “pre-sand Egypt”, it would have contained the pyramids as well as the Sphinx at ancient Giza before the current desert conditions. According to Patterson, Gurdjieff had stated that his teachings had come from a complete system of “Esoteric Christianity” that originated in ancient Egypt many thousands of years before the time of Jesus. I met Patterson at a talk he gave in Denver, Colorado in July of 1999. Both Patterson and I agreed that Gurdjieff might have come in contact with the indigenous tradition over 100 years ago, especially in his extended stay in Ethiopia. Gurdjieff adamantly maintained that the source of all modern esoteric systems had their origins in predynastic Egypt, essentially supporting our paradigms of ancient Khemit.

However, Patterson also mentioned other statements of Gurdjieff that stimulated further investigations on my part. Gurdjieff had stated in his writings and discussions that he had found inscriptions on the walls of the Temple of Horus in Edfu, which is in the south of Egypt, that mentioned the myth of Atlantis. In his articles Patterson mentioned a book by British Egyptologist E. A. Reymond, The Origins of the Egyptian Temple, in which translations of the texts of Edfu were given. Reymond called these inscriptions “The Building Texts” and claimed they were the myths of the origins of ancient temple buildings.

I found Reymond’s translations of the Edfu texts to be incoherent and poorly done and decided to discuss these texts with Abd’El Hakim in Egypt. On our tour in October of 1999, we went to the Temple of Horus at Edfu and found the inscriptions on the walls ourselves. It became apparent to us that the texts at Edfu were copies of much older texts, the temple having been built in the Ptolemaic period ca. 200 BC, and were discussing events that had taken place in ancient Khemit many thousands of years before the temple was built. Gurdjieff had stated that the texts spoke of an advanced people, whom Reymond referred to by the standard Orthodox translation of the term Neter, as “Gods” who had come from an island that had been destroyed by a flood and had brought their wisdom to the ancient Khemitians. However, Hakim’s interpretation was vastly different. I believe the texts are referring to the time of the ancient Ur Nil over 30,000 years ago when the vastness of the river had turned all of Northern Africa into a series of large islands.

As the Khemitians became united, they moved from island to island, erecting temples and pyramids and creating the ancient Khemitian civilization. Once again, this became a basis for the future myth of Atlantis. Hakim was definite that the texts were not referring to a more advanced non-Khemitian people coming from outside Africa, and teaching the Khemitians how to build in stone. I propose that the ancient people followed the river from the south and the west and formed the union of the 42 tribes in the Land of Osiris, Bu Wizzer, and other ancient sites in the south, such as Edfu and Abydos.

The texts are therefore describing the Khemitian’s ascension into higher consciousness, becoming “one” with the Neters, opening their senses and creating high civilization. The texts discuss how the “Neters arrived” from different islands, and began the process of erecting large--scale edifices in stone. We did not find any references to cataclysms, but even so, the ancient Khemitians may have “island hopped” until the 42 tribes united and coalesced into a coherent civilization.

There may have been an advanced island civilization in the Atlantic (or Antarctica, as has been claimed) that perished as a result of the great cataclysm proposed around 11,500 years ago. But it may also be that there were large islands in Northern Africa as a result of the ancient Ur Nil around this same time that were populated by an advanced civilization of ancient Khemitians. The Myth of Atlantis may have referred to the entire Global Maritime Culture that existed in many parts of the world prior to 10,000 years ago, much of which was almost completely destroyed by cataclysmic events. I believe ancient Khemit should be included in that mythology.

Ancient Khemitian priests may have entertained Greek travelers with stories of cataclysms destroying island civilization as an oral history of the Global Maritime Culture that once existed, knowing full well that ancient Khemit was part of that past glory, but not revealing the complete story to the “barbarian” Greeks.

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