THE FIRST CIVILIZATIONS :
The age of the first humanoids :
About 400 millions years ago, life left its watery womb and began to develop by selective mutation on terra firma. 165 million years ago, the era of the dinosaurs began, some were vegetarians, others dangerous carnivores !
After 100 million years of supremacy, the dinosaurs disappeared from our planet, at the end of the Cretacean era. Their disappearance coincided with the first period of glaciation. This is thought to have been precipitated by collision with an asteroid, the shock shifting the earth away from its usual orbit, and moving it further away from the sun.
Actually we do not know a lot about the tenth planet, which was between Mars and Jupiter in the solar system. All that is left is a belt of asteroids which turns in the former orbit of the disintegrated planet ! Now each one of these small asteroids could one day escape from its present orbit to go wandering in space as a huge meteorite, presenting as large a threat to our planet as the explosion of several thermonuclear bombs !
Because of the existence of the dinosaurs we know that the Earth moved for hundreds of millions of years in an orbit which assured an equable climate. Suddenly the cold weather appeared and it caused the extinction of the dinosaurs, they were incapable of adjusting to the abrupt changes of temperature.
We must go back four million years in order to find the "cradle of humanity." This was located in the heart of the tropical forests of Africa. There the oldest human bones have been found, those of one of our forebears - the "australopitecus afarandis". It is a female skeleton, and was found in Ethiopia close to the dried up riverbed of the river Adar; the scientists have called her "LUCY." She is the first human skeleton to have small legs mounted on to a large horizontal pelvis, which allowed her to run holding herself erect, on only two legs. That detail differentiates us from our cousins the proconsul monkeys who retained a small narrow vertical pelvis.
Another interesting point, the monkeys kept their rigid thumbs, while the first humanoids could bend theirs in order to pick fruit or go hunting. Lucy is about 3.5 million years old ! A Frenchman discovered a male skeleton, called ABEL, who is contemporary with LUCY. His bones were found in the North of Chad. This means we must re-examine some theories which claim that man (and woman) left the African bush at the same time as the appearance of a chain of mountains which transformed the bushland into savanna. According to this hypothesis, our forebears then had to run on their hind legs in order to escape quickly from any animals who threatened them.
The place where Abel’s bones were recovered shows that man could also adapt to other surroundings than the bush. The discussion about the legs of the first hominids will continue for a long time!
The last known glacial eras :
About 950 000 years ago, humanoids in groups of about ten people crossed the straits of Gibraltar (which were then attached to continental Europe) and went into the south of the European continent. These were HOMO ERECTUS and settled in the Alps precisely at the place where the Guntz glacier began.
About 650 000 years ago,the humanoids enjoyed a warm interglacial period and moved up towards Abbeville and settled in the area of the Somme.
About 400 000 years ago, there was a new glacial period called Mindel.
About 280 000 years ago, there was an interglacial period, then a rapid glaciation called the RISS phase, which lasted until yet another "warming" period which occurred 40 000 years ago. Then 5 000 years later, there was a new glaciation which lasted until 9 000 years before recorded history. This new glaciation was so strong that 30% of the earth was covered with a mantle of ice. To compensate for this, the level of the oceans sank between 100 and 120 meters below their previous level.
We hope this review of the glacial eras will help to shed some light on that "dark age", starting when men and women first existed on Earth, right up to the period of the first recorded history, at about 5 000 B.C.
Archeologists have found tombs dating back 33 000 years, showing the daily life of Neanderthal man, who buried their dead in pits, adding some food and weapons in order to help the dead to make their "great journey into the beyond." This shows the beginning of a belief in another life after death. Also, in some drawings found in the underground paleolithic caves in south-west France, we can see proof that a cult was already worshipping a mother goddess, the source of life and protection.
The oldest statue of a woman (probably a goddess) is called "the Venus of Brassempouy", which is 24000 years old. At Brassempouy, there are also many anthropomorphic sculptures, and statuettes of moons, snakes and doves. The Moon, the partner of the Earth, is the symbol of feminine fertility. Discrete and unobtrusive, it illuminates our night by transmitting the light of the hidden sun. The snake is a metaphor for our body, which after leaving its mother’s womb, creeps around the Earth. The dove symbolizes innocence, purity, love and the flight of the soul (to heaven?) after death.
In the walls surrounding the city of Jericho, archeologists found a number of figurines representing the goddess of the city, she protected hearth and home and ensured abundant crops. Jericho is one of the oldest cities known; it dates back to the year 7000 B.C!
In what period did the last "Great deluge" occur ?
We now know that the Earth underwent more than twenty periods of glaciation, alternating with periods of warming. During the long glacial periods, we know that northern Europe and North America were covered with ice that was sometimes more than 3000 meters thick.
It is therefore more than likely that there was not one deluge, but several deluges of water caused by the periods of warming, rapidly alternating with abrupt eras of glaciation. Jacques Cousteau has filmed some underground caves which are now 60 meters below sea-level, allowing us to see for ourselves those magnificent stalagmites and stalactites which took thousand of years to form.
At the university of Stuttgart-Hohenheim, a German professor is studying trees ten thousand years old that he has retrieved from the silt of a former course of the river Danube. Some underground currents prevented them from rotting. By studying the age rings in these trees, this professor has noted an increase of deuterium and carbon 13 which would coincide with an elevation in temperature of our atmosphere of 5 to 7°C, which heralded the end of the last glacial era. Professor Becker calculates this to have been :
in the year 8975 B.C.
This has been confirmed by another method in GREENLAND in the ICE CORE PROJECT. They drill through a layer of ice over 3100 meters thick in order to get samples containing flakes of snow which fell 120 000 years ago! These flakes of snow analyzed in the electronic microscope reveal minuscule bubbles of air which tell us that the temperature of each layer of ice rose every year during the last two glaciations.
Some samples of this ice were sent to Professor Bernard Stauffer of the University of Bern in Switzerland, where examination in the electronic microscope confirmed a drastic melting of snow 9000 years ago, due to a warming effect of our climate. Even though this period of warming didn't last more than twenty years, the melting of the glaciers had a kind of greenhouse effect, which unleashed diluvian rains, which in turn, caused the sea- and river-levels to rise, and tremendous loss of life. As we noted previously, these two methods indicate the same date for the deluge.
Here is a review of the main periods around the time of the deluge :
* According to Genesis chap. 6 : "When men had begun to multiply on the surface of the Earth and daughters had been born to them, the sons of gods (or of the god Elohim), saw that the daughters of men were beautiful, and they took for themselves such women as they chose," (for their beauty!)
These sons of gods must have left before the deluge. According to the Bible these beings (who looked like humans), would have created a race of men of great strength and virtue. Alas we have few sources on the period just preceding the deluge, but Plato gives us the testimony of Solon who learned from the priests of Saïs information about a former civilization : a kingdom which was led for a long time by "some wise men and good," but who later were "overgrown by corruption (!) " to the point that many people were killed / drowned in civil war.
At first, the word " drowned " makes one think of the great deluge, but the "dark age" (of 6000 years) between the deluge and the reign of Imhotep of Egypt around 2750 BC doesn't exclude the possibility that other disasters may have intervened in this time of which we know so little.
The aftermath of the Great Deluge :
The experts estimate that before the deluge (in 8 975 BC), ice and glaciers covered all of northern Europe down to Provence. Also, most of North America was covered with snow and glaciers as far down as Florida! If he one holds to scientific principles, the mass of water frozen on earth could not return as usual to the oceans, thus the sea levels dropped during this time in to arrive to about 110 meters beneath the present level, (and maybe even further!)
Consequently all the beaches and islands beneath 110 m. were above water! This included the coasts of the Pacific, of northern Europe, of America and Asia.
Some more mysteries :
Before 11 000 B.C., one could cross the English Channel on foot across the ice, from France or Belgium to England. But numerous coastal areas of Belgium, Holland, Germany, Denmark, Spain, Italy, Greece, Turkey, Egypt, Libya, the Persian Gulf (including Mesopotamia), India, Pakistan, China, and the Philippines. were once again submerged and also underwent all kinds of climatic phenomena, such as storms, cyclones and huge tides all associated with the Great deluge.
So during the glacial era most of the earth from the Atlantic to the Urals was frigid under a thick mantle of ice. The Orient and all the Mediterranean Basin did not suffer as much cold and the people probably could have farmed normally. The great deluge of water didn't last just 40 days and 40 nights (as the writer of Genesis has it - he mentions a number which had a symbolic value at that time for the Jews,) but this time of monsoons was spread out for months or maybe years, drowning and starving the people and animals in all the zones affected.
Because a lot of people were refugees on mountains, they died not only because of the water, but of hunger, cold and illness caused by the absence of the sun. Therefore we should not be surprised that the Egyptians and a lot of other civilizations had the Sun as their god, their symbol of life. It has been shown that before the deluge the Sahara was bush and mixed savanna, watered by several streams and having a tropical climate where many fruits grew in abundance!
According to some scientists one could also go on foot from North Africa directly to Spain via the rock of Gibraltar, which was connected to the Iberian peninsula. But more importantly, some scientists believe that around that period, the Mediterranean was a sea divided in two at the center by a chain of active mountains, from Sicily to the northern tip of Tunisia.
The Mediterranean was composed therefore of two basins until this mountain chain collapsed. Were there then several breaks in the earth’s crust, volcanic eruptions, causing the dislocation of continents ? Maybe the weight of huge tides moved the continental plates, which in turn collided with volcanic magma. The isthmus probably collapsed in a fault in the Mediterranean. Some believe that these events caused a change in the axis of rotation of our planet. (Greenland’s name may well have been accurate in its description then!)
Thus there was disaster, but there were several great deluges accompanied by several earthquakes. This was also affirmed by the old priest of Saïs to the Greek SOLON:
" You remember only one deluge, whereas there were many!" And think of the declaration of the Assyrian invader Assurbanibal, who robbed and destroyed the holy city of Thebes in 664 B.C., and bragged that he could understand the words engraved on the stones of Egyptian temples which had been there since the time preceding the deluge!
From books and peoples of Ancient Times :
Why does the Book of Enoch speak of an abduction into the sky? In India, the Mahàbhàrata, a book forming part of the Indian Vedic tradition, describes a thermonuclear - like explosion which had the heat equivalent to that of 10,000 suns (!)
The explosion killed all the Vrishni and Andaka peoples. Their bodies were burned as to be hardly recognizable, their hair and nails fell out, and for some time all the food was spoiled and bad! This " fatal javelin " shot three cubits and six feet into the air (the Greek cubit measured 48 cm, and a foot 30.8 cm.). It also decimated the Samsaptakas along with their horses, their elephants, their chariots and weapons.
Then the author describes the people trying in vain to wash away the burns, but this was a curse that no-one could escape! The explosion sounds like that of a bomb, but elephants (trained for warfare) would place the time between 3000 B.C., and 2000 B.C. In the same way " the chariots" suggest the use of wheels, that the Hyksos did not bring to Egypt until about 1750 B.C. (?) However, we have always been led to believe that atomic explosions were unheard of and unrecorded until 1945, and that no weapon had existed before with such effects, now these texts describe to us the explosion and effects of a real atomic bomb (!)
Is it just coincidence that in India they have found bodies irradiated like those in Hiroshima? And why is the important Vedic god INDRA considered to be the god of thunder and lightning ? (He could knock down walls!) This is not the only reference, since the Bible gives us two descriptions of strange events on Mount Sinai :
Is it also a coincidence that God appeared to Moses on Mount HOREB in the Sinai desert, and that in this same place, Moses received the tablets of the Law while disappearing twice into the clouds of the mountain for 40 days and 40 nights? It is again on Horeb that Moses finds the spring of water in the rock (Exodus 17-6). We mustn't forget that Abraham lived for a while in Egypt and that Moses grew up in the court of Pharaoh where he was given knowledge of ancient texts, and it was he who gave the Hebrew people the laws that they keep to this day. Actually even in the time of Jesus there were already two opposing beliefs among the Jewish people :
a) the Pharisees who believed in the resurrection of the dead.b) the Saduccees (the noble families of Jerusalem) who believed in and clung more to earthly possessions.
Nowadays more people are studying early civilizations, and one in particular, which was very advanced technologically:
ATLANTIS :
The word "Atlantis " finds its roots in "Atlantic". Maybe it existed around the time of Solon, but let us try to reconstruct its history, which in theory has four different periods :
1st period : This advanced civilization had TEN KINGDOMS. At an unknown date, the "entente" of the ten kingdoms ended in internal conflict.
The word "Atlantis" came much later. Some men thrived on the Mediterranean BASIN (which escaped the effects of glaciation), and maybe the same thing happened in the Orient and in Africa.
But one day the last glaciation melted, creating a deluge which caused the sea-level to rise a hundred meters, and the island which was " Atlantis ", ( we think it was near the peninsula of Sinai) was submerged, drowning some of the inhabitants, and the others finding shelter on Mt Sinai (altitude 2 637 m.). This place became the center of regrouping of the Atlanteans who had survived the disaster.
Why is the sea situated in the area IS of Sinai called the gulf of AQABA. The same name as the city of AQABA between Sinai and Saudi Arabia! When one knows that in Egyptian spirituality (introduced by IMHOTEP), the three words: Akh- Ka- Ba form 3 elements of the triangle of Egyptian spirituality. AKH represents the top and the KA the base. Between the two circulates the BA energy (shown as a figure with a man's head on the body of a bird ready to the take flight). This BA could take the soul up to its Creator, or make it reincarnate in a new earthly body to enable it to learn until its consciousness reached perfection and sublimation in the divine AKH.
The two words KA and KHA, which have a similar pronunciation, have different meanings and hieroglyphics :
The KHA word is symbolized by a migratory bird (stork) which represents the earthly body, while the hieroglyphic KA is composed of two human arms raised toward the sky in the attitude of prayer.
The notion of reincarnation is not new, and is found in several texts in the royal tombs in the pyramids. Strange also is the fact that the famous black stone that Abraham and Ishmael bequeathed to the Moslems bears the two consecrated words KA and BA!
In this tangle of mysteries we note that there are some common points in all these different cultures, so maybe all this did not happen at random!
Actually in the 4th century before our time, a Greek named RHETOR placed the country of Atlantis "between Europe and Africa." An ancient map shows us a peninsula surrounded on three sides by two Oceans: one is called the Oriental Sea (it was the arm Is of the Red Sea beside Akaba), the second sea was the Turquoise Sea. Since the books by the first Christians in Egypt were burned (during the two fires in the great library of Alexandria) it is very difficult to determine these things accurately. According to Solon and Plato all the Mediterranean basin: Greece, Egypt, Libya and part of Asia (Turkey, Lebanon, and Canaan) were at one time governed by ten wise and good kings, guarded by courageous warriors. Suddenly some wicked men tried to take power and started a civil war, which killed a lot of the then known world and maybe much of the kingdoms became uninhabitable. The priest of Saïs speaks of disasters "of water and of fire!"
When and why did the island in the Turquoise Sea change its name or become extinct? To the west of Mount Horeb in the Wâdi Maghâra, they have found ancient mines containing turquoise, copper and manganese, as well as the royal seals of several kings of the ancient Empire, including those of Djoser and Snefrou.
If the mountain in the center of the peninsula (was it Mount Horeb in the Sinai?) allowed the first inhabitants to escape the great deluges of water, what about the great "fire" which caused their exile to other lands? Many mysteries persist!
2nd period : Between 9000 B.C. and 3000 B.C. This is a DARK AGE where humanity returned to barbarism and a primitive life, living essentially by hunting and fishing. Greece and Minor Asia became idolatrous countries, and there is little trace of them in recorded history. We think there were cults who worshipped idols which were half men and half animal.
3rd period : Between 3000 B.C and 2750 B.C there was some contact between these two civilizations : Egypt and Atlantis. This is because one sees the appearance of new divinities. But it was when IMHOTEP and DJOSER met, that everything changed with lightning speed. Imhotep appointed Chief priests, physicians, chief scribes, architects and mathematicians.
Such work could not be accomplished by one MAN...
If therefore one knows the beginning of this third period, there is again the difficulty of determining the transition to the fourth period, because of a lack of data. How long did the colleagues and descendants of IMHOTEP remain in Egypt, and when did they leave ? Were they obliged to leave? Are they another group who sailed past the Canary Islands and also the Azores to Bermuda? Because in the Canaries there are some strange structures which are shaped like a scarab! The Egyptians associated a symbol of a winged golden scarab (the species is extinct today), with the rising sun!
4th period : Some survivors of Atlantis, (maybe not the most civilized, considering how long they had continued the practice of the ritual of human sacrifice), sailed toward the New World and contacted (in the millennium before our era) the tribes of Mexico, Peru and Colombia, who believed them to be gods. They constructed pyramids in their honour similar to those in Egypt under the third dynasty.
Even though this theory is at present rather fragile, hopefully the scientists of tomorrow will be able to explain the things we cannot understand today!
For the moment some questions wait to be answered :
Another question comes to mind: as the prophets of the Bible used similar language to the Atlanteans, did they have some ties with them ?
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