Ancient Knowledge: Astronomy
A thorough analysis of ancient civilizations often embarrasses "orthodox" scholars, who are increasingly faced with elements and evidence suggesting particular relationships of "cultural kinship" even among peoples separated not only by land borders but even by water boundaries in the form of oceans. Often, no ancient civilization can be precisely identified as the "source of origin" for such extraordinary similarities. This could all be explained by positing the existence of a civilization that was a common base for all others, a hypothesis certainly hated and repudiated by orthodox scholars, who consider it merely the fruit of imaginative alchemy.
Yet, both across and along the Atlantic, in the Americas as in Europe, Asia, and Africa, something wonderful happens about 12,000 years ago, if we are to believe the so-called "cultural coincidence" hypothesis, dear to orthodox scientists, but which, upon closer analysis, stands up like the chance of winning at football pools without knowing the exact order of the matches.
According to this theory, after hundreds of millennia of slow, very slow, and almost irritating evolution, suddenly, at the end of the period known as the Pleistocene (about 12,000 years ago), something seems to take possession of all the minds of men of that period, as if at a certain point in Paleolithic history someone had turned on a lamp whose light spread throughout the world. Very diverse peoples, separated by seas and mountains, embark on the great cultural adventure that would lead them to invent and improve livestock and agriculture, and associated with it, new work tools; at the same time, on both sides of the Atlantic as in other parts of the world, human ingenuity merges into one in the creation of architectural, political, and social structures alike.
As if that wasn't enough, peoples far distant from each other perceive and elaborate myths and heroes quite similar to each other.
Is it really just a cultural coincidence? Or is there something else beneath it? Perhaps a great disaster, an element present in ALL world mythologies, could have annihilated a civilization superior to those present in the Paleolithic and scattered its remnants, via small groups of survivors, around the world, similarly to what happens with pollen and flowers?
Does it seem like a utopia? It could be, but surely no less so than the so-called "cultural coincidence" theory. The theory of "cultural diffusion," much cherished by other scholars, seems to be more grounded.
One might object that similar technical, agricultural, architectural, and mythological knowledge among various peoples of the world could be the product of exchanges of ideas during exploratory and commercial voyages, but this would not explain the temporal similarity of events, especially considering the Americas. However, the problem of deciding which culture gave birth to the other remains unresolved: a chicken or the egg type of question?
Yet the similarities between some Amerindian peoples such as the Maya, Aztecs, and Incas with peoples of Middle Eastern origin such as the Sumerians, Assyrians, and Babylonians, or from the Nile area, such as the Egyptians, raise more than a few doubts about such hypotheses.
All these peoples have some elements in common:
- A) They are builders of pyramids or pseudo-pyramids: the first step constructions of the Egyptians, the numeric ziggurats and the stepped temples of the Maya share the pyramidal shape, albeit truncated in the last two cases;
- B) All these peoples love megalithic constructions, achieved using stones of limestone, granite, or other, in gigantic blocks, thus imposing an unexplainable additional burden of labor, even defying normal rational standards when such works are compared with the means available to such peoples. The blocks of Baalbek, the walls of Sacsahuaman in Peru, Tiahuanaco in Bolivia, and the Sphinx and the Great Pyramid of Cheops testify to the success of challenges that even today, with all our available technology, seem impossible to match;
- C) Identical astronomical knowledge, so advanced as to allow them to know the sky above their heads as precisely as man has not reached again until the beginning of this century, with the discovery, through powerful telescopes, of the last planets. Knowledge that led these peoples to conceive calendars of equal duration and even more precise than the one we use today.
And it is precisely on this astronomical knowledge that I would like to dwell, as I believe it is irrefutable proof of a common matrix to all these civilizations, but at the same time, alien to them.
The astronomical knowledge possessed by the great civilizations of the past is almost always relegated by scholars to needs related to the religious field and the need to date time to address some strictly agricultural needs, aimed at determining the time of sowing, harvesting, or the arrival of the dry season or the rainy season, or even, as in the case of ancient Egypt, the approach of the Nile floods.
In my modest opinion, this astronomy-agriculture connection is very tenuous and quite incongruent.
We mentioned earlier that agriculture seems to establish itself simultaneously around the world about 12,000 years ago, thus leading to the birth of the first stable centers of human communities, hence the birth of the first settlements which would later become the future cities that would give birth to true civilizations.
Before then, Paleolithic man had lived in a semi-wild state, surviving on hunting and nomadism, in small scattered groups, whose scantiness would not have allowed the birth of various trade specializations.
The study of astronomy and the path in the sky, during the year, of various constellations, involves an appropriate knowledge of mathematical notions and even spherical trigonometry, as well as the capacity for scientific observation and instrumentation pertaining to it.
It is quite unthinkable that Paleolithic man, forced into a life marked by the need to procure food and shelter, and forced to defend the little he had, as well as himself, from other humans and from fierce beasts, would have had the time to conceive such thoughts and ideas, nor can we think that one or more individuals, in the world, would have had the possibility and the constancy to follow, day by day, month by month, year after year, all the various movements of the stars, large and small in the sky.
Even today, our farmers (and I believe it was the same in the past) draw their informational models on everything related to agriculture from the surrounding environment. The times for sowing and harvesting, the approaching of winter and summer, are "felt" in advance and determined by the careful observation of the surrounding environment, such as the blooming of plants and trees, the color taken on by the earth itself, the migratory behavior of some species of birds, and more. Even today, the floods of the Nile, in Egypt, are marked, in advance, by the nomadic behavior of some animal species also inhabiting the banks of the river usually.
Certainly, the farmer also observes celestial phenomena like the various lunar and solar phases, but these are daily or biweekly observations, which do not involve observation problems given the visibility of such stars (sun and moon), nor do they require lasting attention throughout an entire year.
And so, you may ask, what is the use of astronomy?
Astronomy, that is, the knowledge of the position and motion of celestial bodies in the sky, over a time of observation even spanning a year, is a prerogative of an art that is indeed ancient, but until now not considered much older than the great civilizations known to us: deep-sea navigation.
In the open sea, without seeing any coast, the only means for the sailor to orient himself and to hope for a return home was (and still is) to rely on the observation of the celestial bodies. Since, due to the motion of our planet, the stars are never in the same place, it is necessary for every sailor, in addition to a perfect locative knowledge in the celestial vault of the star itself, to know the apparent motion and the positioning of the star over the course of a year. Anyone who knows a bit about sailing is well aware that an indispensable tool for navigation is the so-called Nautical Ephemeris, a register in which the declination of various stars is marked day by day, throughout the year, providing a perfect observation tool for nautical surveys. This register is compiled year after year.
A seafaring civilization cannot do without such knowledge and, conversely, such knowledge is the lifeblood of such a civilization.
Unfortunately for us, what we know is that neither the Sumerians, Egyptians, Maya, Aztecs, nor Incas were certainly great navigators. Perhaps the Egyptians, under Pharaoh Necho, managed to circumnavigate Africa, but their nautical and astronomical "ignorance" (always referring to navigation) is evidenced by the fact that these inexperienced sailors were not believed because they claimed that at a certain point the sun was on the opposite side!
So how do we explain such astronomical knowledge?
We can only imagine, until other evidence arises, an ancient civilization, highly advanced compared to the rest of the Paleolithic world at that time, possessing seafaring knowledge and thus astronomy, considerably advanced in agriculture, livestock, metallurgy, as well as in the strictly social and political spheres: the mythical Atlantis, or Mu or Lemuria, whatever you want to call it!
A terrible catastrophe strikes the entire world (the mythical flood) and primarily this great civilization, which disappears unexpectedly. Small scattered groups, led by men of great wisdom (the various Viracochas, Quetzalcoatls, Kukulkans, Oannes, Osirises, Hotu Matuas, and all the other semi-gods bearers of knowledge) land in various parts of the world, coming into close contact with the sparse representations of local indigenes. Together they face the post-flood challenges, and the new arrivals, the Atlantean survivors, teach the first rudiments of agriculture and livestock, key elements for the future survival of such groups, which, later in the years, or perhaps in the centuries, will give birth to the first great civilizations.
Unfortunately, due to the not high number of people who survived from Atlantis, and conditioned by the lesser intellectual and knowledge contribution of the local populations, not all knowledge could be preserved. Not knowing where, in the new places, mineral deposits are, metallurgy is soon forgotten. Forced to fight against a new and hostile environment and to prioritize problems, such as those of survival and food, things previously elementary, such as writing, are abandoned. The first habitable centers, due to a general rise in water levels worldwide, are created inland, and as the waters recede, these settlements become primarily terrestrial in character, no longer making navigation and the knowledge applied to it so necessary. Astronomy becomes the use and knowledge of a few initiates (the future priestly class) who soon forget its main use, relegating it to a strictly divinatory or oracular role. Perhaps the sky is observed in order to discover, in advance, the signs, in the future, of a new disaster.
These seafaring knowledge might also explain the presence of the famous Egyptian boats, found buried under the sand, at Giza, or the perfect hydrodynamic knowledge applied to the boats of the inhabitants of Lake Titicaca, in Bolivia.
This is a fairly reliable picture of what might have happened, and, I believe, gives a much more plausible explanation of the astronomical knowledge of various ancient peoples.
Moreover, if this were true, it would indirectly explain the presence of various mysterious ancient cartographic maps.
I close with a simple observation, dedicated to lovers of the extraterrestrial hypothesis of human genesis: astronomy is not only a foundation of maritime navigation but also, and above all, of space navigation.
Does this tell you anything?
