World Trade and Biological Exchanges Before 1492

This recently published book is reviewed in the Gavin Menzies newsletter and it is certainly welcome in putting scholarly flesh on the strengthening hypothesis of extensive and continuous contact between the old and new worlds.

I have strongly outlined the support for a global Bronze Age trading network that included all points accessible to the Atlantic and have also fingered the city of Altantis at Gibraltar by Seville as the natural entrepot for the exact same reasons Seville became the gateway to the Americas. Scholarly work has pinpointed the actual remains under deltaic mud.

I naturally assumed that plant transfer and the like would be extensive between around 6000 years ago to about 3000 years ago. It is reported here that hookworms travelled from SE Asia and Brazil 7000 years ago. I suspect that was an unlikely but possible accidental voyage, but any further such evidence could change that.

Importantly we have a huge influx of borrowed plants from the tropics of the Americas to similar environs in the old world. A few went the other direction, but the majority went East.

That strongly implies that this is an artifact of Bronze Age seamen originating from the old world and been continuously engaged for centuries as we have projected in previous postings.

We can go a lot further with this new data. We can assert that such efforts were much stronger than anything we have imagined and certainly discovered so far. Just as only a fraction of Bronze Age canters have been discovered in the Middle East, the same is true for the Atlantic seaboard of the Americas. Few built in stone unless it was handy to do so and any scrap bronze was never thrown out.

Our only way to confirm a site is to find the metal forge with signs of a large settlement. With native populations in their million and the settlements of traders and their retainers likely a thousand at most, it is looking for a needle in a haystack.

World Trade and Biological Exchanges Before 1492

We are pleased to announce the publication of a new book by Emeritus Professor John L. Sorenson and Emeritus Professor Carl L. Johannessen which seems to provide a series of smoking guns in relation to the subject of pre-Columbian trans-oceanic trade. In World Trade and Biological Exchanges Before 1492 they postulate that "...124 tropical plants and animals were transported across oceans to and from tropical continents by early tropical mariners. This encyclopaedic volume summarizes the research of Professors Sorenson and Johannessen, opening up new avenues of research and challenging the current ideas of how species were dispersed across the world oceans.

A plant, especially a domesticated one, cannot evolve twice on two opposite continents; they require a DNA source. It takes finite time for it to spread. Eighty-four tropical plants were transported from America to the tropical Old World used now by us. The early mariners selected crops from highlands and shorelines, wet and dry climates, took them to the Old World, and planted them in the appropriate ecological locations. Only 13 plants came to America from Old World locations.

The sailing that maintained medicinal plants in Egypt and Peru during two separate 1, 400 year periods implies continual maritime trade. The most ancient exchanges by mariners were two species of hookworms originating from Southeast Asia. They were found in mummies in Brazil but not in North America. This indicates that diffusion of various types occurred in order to bring these parasites to Brazil over 7,000 years ago.

This research will allow scientists and teachers to openly reassess their current notions of the history of civilization and the interaction between peoples in ancient times..."

To purchase this book please visit the following link:

http://www.amazon.com/World-Trade-Biological-Exchanges-Before/dp/0595524419

Bronze Age Collapse

I have posted extensively on the collapse caused by the 1159 BC Hekla blast and tsunami that destroyed the city of Atlantis at Gibraltar. This entry from Wikipedia gather together the known fallout from this single event as is known by today’s scholarship.

Of course, this scholarship continues to ignore the clear evidence of a huge copper trade between the Americas and the Old world. Bronze manufacturing required strong local sponsorship in the form of the palace economies described herein. These factories were the sub factories of a global copper trade that passed through the Atlanteans.

I suspect that the Atlantean fleet of perhaps a real ten thousand ships like they love to claim in Homer was making itself felt along the Egyptian coast in the years prior to the Hekla blast. They had unity and a system of confederate palace states. Recall that these were not particularly large cities so much a palace household and retainers. The surrounding population surely benefited and was certainly ruled by this caste of merchant princes who traded value for value. That all ended abruptly with the loss of the copper trade. These palaces were all then overthrown.

More critically, the surviving populations in Europe faced a twenty year collapse of their livelihoods and those that could took ship and joined in a sea borne migration into the Eastern Mediterranean. This was likely expressed as colonization including Gaza, Athens and Carthage, where already established factories were in position to absorb the refugees. We may never develop the details, but the advent of a surplus of desperate pirates surely explains the swift collapse of the many isolated trade palaces.

The other putative possibilities of causation are simply insufficient and were all easily handled in the course of business as usual. An influx of the desperate from the north was another matter and these guys were the original pro0viders of the best weapons. Is it any surprise that they were able to make the Egyptian state accommodate them? And recall that this was the single largest and strongest state in front of them.

Imagine a group of refugees landing in New Jersey and forcing the USA to make room for them? Pretty good trick even at a three thousand year remove.

This entry also confirms that iron was not seriously used until the loss of the copper trade. This clearly implies that the copper trade and its control was the road to wealth. Bronze made excellent weapons that were not likely surpassed by iron for centuries. They were simple to cast and work harden in the forge whereas iron needed to be laboriously converted into steel in very small batches.

In fact steel making did not change at all right into the industrial age which is why cannons were first made from bronze, then cast iron and then, very late in the day from steel. What this means is that had copper been available, the use of bronze would certainly have continued centuries more.

This item gives a really good snapshot of the time and place and is very consistent with the implied conjectures.

Bronze Age collapse --- From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

The Bronze Age collapse is the name given by those historians who see the transition from the Late Bronze Age to the Early Iron Age, as violent, sudden and culturally disruptive, expressed by the collapse of palace economies of the Aegean and Anatolia, which were replaced after a hiatus by the isolated village cultures of the Dark Ages period of history of the Ancient Near East. The Bronze Age collapse may be seen in the context of a technological history that saw the slow, comparatively continuous spread of iron-working technology in the region, beginning with precocious iron-working in what is now Romania in the 13th and 12th centuries.[1] The cultural collapse of the Mycenaean kingdoms, the Hittite Empire in Anatolia and Syria, and the Egyptian Empire in Syria and Canaan, bringing the scission of long-distance trade contacts and sudden eclipse of literacy, occurred between 1206 and 1150 BCE. In the first phase of this period, almost every city between Troy and Gaza was violently destroyed, and often left unoccupied thereafter (for example, Hattusas, Mycenae, Ugarit).

The gradual end of the Dark Age that ensued saw the rise of settled Neo-Hittite Aramaean kingdoms of the mid-10th century BCE, and the rise of the Neo-Assyrian Empire.

Regional evidence

Anatolia

Main article: Downfall of the Hittite Empire
Every site important during the preceding Late Bronze Age shows a destruction layer, and it appears that here civilization did not recover to the same level as that of the Hittites for another thousand years. Hattusas, the Hittite capital, was burned and abandoned, and never reoccupied. Karaoglan was burned and the corpses left unburied. Troy was destroyed at least twice, before being abandoned until Roman times.

Cyprus

The catastrophe separates Late Cypriot II (LCII) from the LCIII period, with the sacking and burning of the sites of Enkomi, Kition, and Sinda, may have occurred twice, before being abandoned. A number of sites, though not destroyed, were also abandoned. Kokkinokremos was a short-lived settlement, where the presence of various caches concealed by smiths suggests that none ever returned to reclaim the treasures, suggesting they were killed or enslaved.

Syria

Syrian sites previously showed evidence of trade links with Egypt and the Aegean in the Late Bronze Age. Evidence at Ugarit shows that the destruction there occurred after the reign of Merenptah, and even the fall of Chancellor Bay. Letters on clay tablets found baked in the conflagration of the destruction of the city speak of attack from the sea, and a letter from Alashiya (Cyprus) speaks of cities already being destroyed from attackers who came by sea. It also speaks of the Ugarit fleet being absent, patrolling the coast.

Levant

Egyptian evidence shows that from the reign of Horemheb, wandering Shasu were more problematic. Ramesses II campaigned against them, pursuing them as far as Moab, where he established a fortress, after the near collapse at the Battle of Kadesh. These Shasu were problematic, particularly when during the reign of Merneptah, they threatened the "Way of Horus" north from Gaza. Evidence shows that Deir Alla (Succoth) was destroyed after the reign of Queen Twosret. The destroyed site of Lachish was briefly reoccupied by squatters and an Egyptian garrison, during the reign of Ramesses III. All centres along the sea route, now being called Via Maris, from Gaza north were destroyed, and evidence shows Gaza, Ashdod, Ashkelon, Akko, and Jaffa were burned and not reoccupied for up to thirty years. Inland Hazor, Bethel, Beit Shemesh, Eglon, Debir, and other sites were destroyed. Refugees escaping the collapse of coastal centres may have fused with incoming nomadic and Anatolian elements to begin the growth of terraced hillside hamlets in the highlands region, that was associated with the later development of the state of Israel.

Greece

None of the Mycenaean palaces of the Late Bronze Age survived, with destruction being heaviest at palaces and fortified sites. Up to 90% of small sites in the Peloponnese were abandoned, suggesting a major depopulation. The End Bronze Age collapse marked the start of what has been called the Greek Dark Ages, which lasted for more than 400 years. Other cities, like Athens, continued to be occupied, but with a more local sphere of influence, limited evidence of trade and an impoverished culture, from which it took centuries to recover.

Mesopotamia

The cities of Norsuntepe, Emar and Carchemish were destroyed, and the Assyrians narrowly escaped an invasion by Mushki tribes during the reign of Tiglath-Pileser I. With the spread of Ahhlamu or Aramaeans, control of the Babylonian and Assyrian regions extended barely beyond the city limits. Babylon was sacked by the Elamites under Shutruk-Nahhunte, and lost control of the Diyala valley.

Egypt

Main article: Third Intermediate Period of Egypt

After apparently surviving for a while, the Egyptian Empire collapsed in the mid twelfth century BCE (during the reign of Ramesses VI). Previously the Merneptah Stele spoke of attacks from Lybians, with associated people of Ekwesh, Shekelesh, Lukka, Shardana and Tursha or Teresh, and a Canaanite revolt, in the cities of Ashkelon, Yenoam and the people of Israel. A second attack during the reign of Ramesses III involved Peleset, Tjeker, Shardana and Denyen.

Conclusion

Robert Drews describes the collapse as "the worst disaster in ancient history, even more calamitous than the collapse of the Western Roman Empire".[2] A number of people have spoken of the cultural memories of the disaster as stories of a "lost golden age". Hesiod for example spoke of Ages of Gold, Silver and Bronze, separated from the modern harsh cruel world of the Age of Iron by the Age of Heroes.

Nature and causes of destruction

As part of the Late Bronze Age-Early Iron Age Dark Ages, it was a period associated with the collapse of central authorities, a general depopulation, particularly of highly urban areas, the loss of literacy in Anatolia and the Aegean, and its restriction elsewhere, the disappearance of established patterns of long-distance international trade, increasingly vicious intra-elite struggles for power, and reduced options for the elite if not for the general mass of population.

There are various theories put forward to explain the situation of collapse, many of them compatible with each other.

Earthquakes

Amos Nur shows how earthquakes tend to occur in "sequences" or "storms" where a major earthquake above 6.5 on the Richter magnitude scale can in later months or years set off second or subsequent earthquakes along the weakened fault line. He shows that when a map of earthquake occurrence is superimposed on a map of the sites destroyed in the Late Bronze Age, there is a very close correspondence. [3]

Migrations and raids

Further information: Sea peoples, Mushki, Aramaeans, and Ancient Iranian peoples

Ekrem Akurgal, Gustav Lehmann and Fritz Schachermeyer, following the views of Gaston Maspero have argued on the basis of the wide spread findings of Naue II-type swords coming from South Eastern Europe, and Egyptian records of "northerners from all the lands"[4]

The Ugarit correspondence draws attention to such groups as the mysterious Sea Peoples. Equally, translation of the preserved Linear B documents in the Aegean, just before the collapse, demonstrates a rise in piracy and slave raiding, particularly coming from Anatolia. Egyptian fortresses along the Libyan coast, constructed and maintained after the reign of Ramesses II were constructed to reduce raiding.

Ironworking

Leonard R. Palmer suggested that iron, whilst inferior to bronze weapons, was in more plentiful supply and so allowed larger armies of iron users to overwhelm the smaller armies of bronze-using maryannu chariotry.[5] This argument has been weakened of late with the finding that the shift to iron occurred after the collapse, not before. It now seems that the disruption of long distance trade, an aspect of "systems collapse", cut easy supplies of tin, making bronze impossible to make. Older implements were recycled and then iron substitutes were used.

On the other hand, technology cannot be so quickly dismissed as a factor. The invention of the technology of metallurgy is not generally regarded as a Paradigm Shift, in a class with the technologies of agriculture, city-building, industry and electronics. Yet metalworking had a profound impact on the course of mankind's development. Warfare on the scale with which we are familiar today was not possible when sharpened sticks and flint points and blades were the only weapons available. The first bronze swords and armor were surely regarded as "weapons of mass destruction" by the last inhabitants of stone age cities because of the carnage they made possible.

Still, the very nature of bronze, an alloy of copper and tin, forces at least a grudging equilbrium on man's violent nature. Deposits of copper ore and tin ore almost never occur in the same region. In order to make bronze, two cities a fair distance apart must maintain peaceful relations and trade raw materials with each other.

Iron metallurgy destroyed this equilibrium. Only one ore is required to make iron artifacts, and deposits of it are abundant. The only trick to smelting iron is the creation of hitherto unimaginably high temperatures, because the melting point of iron is hundreds of degrees higher than that of copper and tin. But once that information became well known, there was nothing to stop even the most uncivilized of the remaining Neolithic tribes from arming their warriors, proclaiming themselves "kingdoms," and attacking the cities. Even worse, the cities were no longer dependent on each other for complementary ores, and had no more reason to maintain peaceful relations.

The Iron Age may not have been the cause of the collapse of civilization in its first place of origin, but it is difficult to dismiss iron as a possible reason for its slow recovery.

Drought

Barry Weiss [6], using the Palmer Drought Index for 35 Greek, Turkish, and Middle Eastern weather stations, showed that a drought of the kinds that persisted from January 1972 would have affected all of the sites associated with the Late Bronze Age collapse. Drought could have easily precipitated or hastened socio-economic problems and led to wars. More recently Brian Fagan, has shown how the diversion of mid-winter storms from the Atlantic were diverted to travel north of the Pyrenees and the Alps, bringing wetter conditions to Central Europe, but drought to the Eastern Mediterranean, was associated with the Late Bronze Age collapse[7]

General systems collapse

Main article: Societal collapse

A general systems collapse has been put forward as an explanation for the reversals in culture that occurred between the Urnfield culture of the 12-13th centuries BCE and the rise of the Celtic Hallstatt culture in the 9th and 10th centuries.[8] This theory may, however, simply beg the question as to whether this collapse was the cause of or the effect of the Bronze Age collapse being discussed. General Systems Collapse theories have been pioneered by Joseph Tainter[9] who shows how social declines in return to complexity leads often to collapse to simpler forms of society.

In the specific context of the Middle East a variety of factors - including population rise, soil degradation, drought, cast bronze weapon and iron production technologies - conceivably could have combined to push the relative price of weaponry compared to arable land to a level that ultimately proved to be beyond the control of traditional warrior aristocracies.

Changes in warfare

Robert Drews argues[10] that the appearance of massed infantry, using newly developed weapons and armor, such as cast rather than forged spearheads and long swords, a revolutionizing cut-and-thrust weapon,[11] and javelins, the appearance of bronze foundries itself suggesting "that mass production of bronze artifacts was suddenly important in the Aegean". Homer uses "spears" as a virtual synonym for "warrior" suggesting the continued importance of the spear in combat. Such new weaponry, furnished to a proto-hoplite model who were able to withstand attacks of massed chariotry, destabilized states that were based upon the use of chariots by the ruling class and precipitated an abrupt social collapse when raiders and/or infantry mercenaries were able to conquer, loot, and burn the cities.[12][1][2](-5-)

References

^ See A. Stoia and the other essays in M.L. Stig Sørensen and R. Thomas, eds., The Bronze Age—Iron Age Transition in Europe (Oxford) 1989, and T.H. Wertime and J.D. Muhly, The Coming of the Age of Iron (New Haven) 1980.
^ Drew 1993:1 quotes Fernand Braudel's assessment that the Eastern Mediterranean cultures returned almost to a starting-point ("plan zéro"), "L'Aube", in Braudel, F. (Ed) (1977), La Mediterranee: l'espace et l'histoire (Paris)
^ Nur, Amos and Cline, Eric; (2000) "Poseidon's Horses: Plate Tectonics and Earthquake Storms in the Late Bronze Age Aegean and Eastern Mediterranean", Journ. of Archael. Sc. No 27 pps.43-63 - http://srb.stanford.edu/nur/EndBronzeage.pdf
^ Robbins, Manuel (2001) Collapse of the Bronze Age: the story of Greece, Troy, Israel, Egypt and Peoples of the Sea" (Authors Choice Press)
^ Palmer, Leonard R (1962) Mycenaeans and Minoans: Aegean Prehistory in the Light of the Linear B Tablets. (New York, Alfred A. Knopf, 1962)
^ Weiss, Barry: (1982) "The decline of Late Bronze Age civilization as a possible response to climatic change" in Climatic Change ISSN 0165-0009 (Paper) 1573-1480 (Online), Volume 4, Number 2, June 1982, pps 173 - 198
^ Fagan, Brian M. (2003), "The Long Summer: How Climate Changed Civilization (Basic Books)
^ http://www.iol.ie/~edmo/linktoprehistory.html - a page about the history of Castlemagner, on the web page of the local historical society
^ Tainter, Joseph (1976)"The Collapse of Complex Societies" (Cambridge University Press)
^ Drews pp192ff.
^ The Naue Type II sword, introduced from the eastern Alps and Carpathians ca 1200, quickly established itself and became the only sword in use during the eleventh century; iron was substituted for bronze without essential redesign (Drews 1993:194.
^ Drews, R. (1993) The End of the Bronze Age: Changes in Warfare and the Catastrophe ca. 1200 B.C. (Princeton 1993).
Oliver Dickinson, The Aegean from Bronze Age to Iron Age: Continuity and Change Between the Twelfth and Eighth Centuries BC Routledge (2007), ISBN 978-0415135900.

Bronze Age Disaporia

Those who have followed my postings for some time know that I am interested in mapping the extent of Bronze Age global trade. Where are we at?

The fully mature Bronze Age ended with the 1159 BCE blast that smashed Northern Europe back into a herding culture and ended the sea trade centered on the city state of Atlantis. This mature phase had lasted for at least a millennia and had been preceded by a millennia long expansion of the technology.

The core technology is believed to have originated in Mesopotamia, but I am rather skeptical about that. We have an excellent locale in the Mekong highlands where both metals were richly available literally across the river from each other.

Another issue that I think is under appreciated is the use of copper likely had a very long history that is not visible in the archeological record. The reason for this invisibility is that it represented a convenient medium of exchange and was way too valuable to bury with the dead or even lose track of. Besides that raw copper does rot away pretty well in a few hundred years in any environment that permits water movement.

Think how sharply our understanding of European copper age improved with the recovery of Oetzi with his handy copper axe head and palette of choice stone tools and weapons. This alone ended most of the controversy over the lifeways of the copper age. Scholars have been afraid to use their imaginations and common sense in describing these worlds when all the real evidence simply rots away.

I cannot prove that the natives of New Guinea have been using hardened wood arrows for thousands of years. But the real question needs to be why where they not? A friend of mine has such a bow and arrow set acquired there in the highlands.

The bow is too obvious an invention to not have been made just as soon as someone figured out how to make a bowstring, a much more difficult trick.

The production of copper from a fairly rich ore has been known since antiquity. It takes heat, but not extreme heat and is well within the range produced by charcoal to produce a quality product.

To emphasize this point, the method used by prospectors to evaluate a copper ore in the field was to crush a charge of the ore with some flux in a steel pipe (or pottery retort?) and stick it in the camp fire. This would roast off the sulphur and produce a crude copper slag separation. It is hardly efficient but great for qualifying an ore.

It is pretty obvious that an ancient campfire set with a ring of ore would generate obvious beads of copper in the ash. And just how much of a clue do you need? Again the question needs to be why were they not using copper?

The point that has to be made is that copper is useful and a convenience but not a replacement for an obsidian weapon. It was currency. And that is why so little is found in the archeological record. Just how many present day coins would you find if you chose to dig up a present day graveyard? I have no doubt that outside local barter, copper and then bronze was the principal currency. Homer speaks first of the number of bronze tripods captured. If there ever was an unnecessary luxury usage that is it. Yet it kept your wealth conveniently traveling with you.

Bronze Age culture was rich and palace centered. There is no sense in Europe of a centralized state as in Mesopotamia. There is a sense of a sea borne commonwealth that traded actively with the Americas and there is a sense of advanced antique Indian cultures responding to the influence of these contacts.

We can say that this global trading phenomenon brought about by the necessities of the advent of a bronze based economy, spread a common advanced concept of religion and palace ruler ship around the world. That any of this happened in true isolation is nonsense and reflects only the difficulty in finding actual proof in a background of local artifacts.

What did not particularly happen throughout the Bronze Age was actual colonization. The best recent comparable was the colonization of West Africa. It simply never happened. The only modest attempt appears to have been in New England and it was swiftly overwhelmed and/or absorbed when the trade ended in 1159 BCE.

For a thousand years at least, the sea peoples lived a robust healthy live that allowed them to rove the Atlantic littoral to its fullest. The evidence fully supports that even while it has been studiously ignored. Once again, they could, they should and they did it in far greater strength than I or anyone else originally thought. Once again lack of specific evidence is not evidence of lack and here we have a mountain of specific evidence in every likely prospective location and a few unlikely ones.

I would love to have a European dig come up with an occurrence of maize preferably in southwest Spain just to make that point.

Bronze Sword Manufacture

I plucked this copy from the site of a craftsman who is making Bronze Age swords using the methods as best reconstructed. We learn something very important. It is that Bronze swords are and were superior to Iron Age swords for a thousand years or so. There was no good reason to switch except in terms of availability.

That means that a long accepted idea that the transition represented technical progress is rubbish. It represented nothing of the kind. What the transition represented was a dramatic loss of supply of top quality copper.

As I have already posted, the primary supply came by the end of the Bronze Age from the native copper mines of Lake Superior. Ample evidence supports mining activity there coincident with the thousand year history of the European Bronze Age that removed at least 5,000,000 pounds of copper. That suggests that the shipping rate toward the end perhaps approached several tons per year. That is volume that is completely believable for the time.

That it then reached Atlantis at the Straits of Gibraltar and was there alloyed with tin from Britain and forged into trade goods is mere mercantile sense. This also meant that all the shipping and skilled artisans concentrated there making it all completely vulnerable to the Hekla Tsunami in 1159 BCE. Not only the head but the arms and legs of this Bronze Age civilization was cleanly wiped out and unable to start over.

The copper supply from Lake Superior was unique inasmuch as it was in the form of native copper without the problem of sulphides and their related metals. It was also in the form of high grade ores which is unusual for copper. A typical grade would be around a hundred pounds to the ton. A good sulphide ore is usually around twenty pounds to the ton and includes iron and other base metals.

My conjecture is that the copper route was up the Hudson River to the Mohawk River and then transitioning over to the east end of Lake Ontario into the portage route through the Canadian Shield to Georgian Bay on Lake Huron. Archeological sites follow this route and include so called controversial sites in the Hudson Valley and a major site at Peterborough in Ontario.

Several tons of copper is well within the haulage capacity of a canoe based transport system.

The rest of the route would be directly to Isle de Royal in Lake Superior which was one of the major Bronze Age mining locales with hundreds of mining pits. I discuss this more extensively in my manuscript Paradigms Shift. I obviously need to add an addendum on the crucial role of the not so legendary Atlantis.

The original difficulty that everyone had with Plato’s tale of Atlantis was that no one could understand a reason for such a civilization to even exist. Egypt and Mesopotamia is obvious. The agricultural surpluses of the Atlantic coast were surely minimal and founded on cattle culture. This was not conducive to the building of Bronze Age cities.

That objection is clearly moot and Rainer Kuhne has shown us the actual location of the city itself. Once excavated, we will surely find plenty of evidence of the Bronze trade.









http://www.bronze-age-craft.com/swords_for_sale.htm

Apart from the design, the three qualities that you would look for in a bronze sword are, weight, balance and alloy, the level of skill Bronze age sword makers achieved with clay casting technology is stunning, and the fact that no one can match them today, is even more humbling.

WeightBronze swords rarely exceeded 800 grams, if it is over 1 kilo it is way to heavy "(it's a lemon"). Due to the difficulty of casting swords in sand, most foundries will cast on the heavy side, and although the end results would look good in a glass case, they bare no comparison to a genuine Bronze Age weapon.

BalanceIt is interesting that if you were to look at the balance point on bronze age swords, its much nearer the handle than you would expect, the blades taper evenly toward the point, and are not end heavy.

AlloyThe alloys used in the bronze age for swords, on average, vary from 8% to 12% tin and in later swords the lead content varies 1% to 5% depending on the tin content. My personal feelings are that the hardness of sword alloys could not exceed the hardness of the tools used in the process of edge hardening.All bronze age sword edges were hardened and sharpened at the same time, the edges were forged down to a thin, hard wafer. The work is so neat, its not easy to understand how they achieved it.

Over the past couple of years I have had some interesting interactions with archaeologists researching bronze swords. Subsequently I have come to the conclusion that we only see bronze swords in drawings in one dimension, and have little understanding of their weight, balance and how they were used.The first thing we would all say, when a bronze age sword was paced in are hands is, "it's so small", and they were small! It is only by the end of the bronze age that swords were getting any thing like the size we imagine, so 67cm would be a very big sword, and would probably weigh around 700 grams.

"What’s so good about, my swords?"

I hear you ask. I cast my swords vertically in very hot stone moulds. This means I can cast swords at the right weight, it also means I get a better structure to the bronze. As the casting method is nearer the bronze age method, I use a 12% tin/copper alloy which is at the top end for tin content for a bronze age sword. This casts well and gives a nice stiff blade. I mix all my own alloys and never use soft silicon bronzes.

Hardened Edges

One of the most beautiful things about the bronze age swords are the recasso edges, which are forged in. All my swords come with hardened edges, done in the (forged in) bronze age method. The forging is quite time consuming and I believe I am the only person able to do this at the moment. I cast all my blade as near to a sensible weight for bronze age sword as possible, and tuning a mould might take me many days and up to nine castings until I am happy.

In recent television programme for the BBC, one of my bronze swords was repeatedly stuck against a reproduction of an early iron sword, in a test to show the advantages of iron over bronze. Even though both myself and Hector Cole (the iron sword maker) had advised the programme makers the that the bronze sword would do better than expected, they were very surprised. The bronze sword was more than a match for the iron, both blades received heavy damage. The ability of bronze to rapidly work harden under impact, and the lack of carbon in early iron swords must have created a bit of a technological stand off around 700bc. At this time the art of the bronze caster was at its height and iron working was in its infancy.

In my work as a bronze sword maker i try to catch the essence of sword making in the bronze age and get as close as possible to the originals.

Collision Earth

I recently came across this interesting article that tackles a number of anomalies in the climatic record. The 1159 BCE event we have already associated with a volcanic event Hekla and the 12900 BCE impact event in Northern Canada. This article isolates from cultural referents these dates:

7640 BCE, 3195 BCE, 2354 BCE, 1628 BCE, 1159 BCE, 207 BCE, 44 BCE, and 540 CE.

We have Thera to apply to the 1628 BCE event. As a warning the apparent exact nature of this date and the later dates are controversial at the least but are typically associated with carbon dates and an independent Chinese record for 1618 BCE. I have associated 1159 BCE with the inundation of Atlantis and the resulting collapse of their seaborne mercantile civilization. We surmise that the Thera drove the collapse of Minoan civilization and this event was the foundation of the tale of the exodus. The tale itself could well have already been legend at the time of actual historic biblical event and could clarify a two hundred disparity. I have found that these ancient records never fail to include a good story even if the actual linkage is a stretch. And why not? This was their only way to transmit cultural history.

You will have followed my recent pursuit of the possibility that the little ice age was triggered by a major volcanic event in Alaska. It certainly looks promising and explains the reoccurrence of cooling in the Arctic over the past two to three millennia without having to call upon other even less provable sources like solar variation. It is also one of the nastiest places on earth for this type of volcanic activity with no lack of candidates.

To this we now should add cosmic events. We should also get much more serious about their potential for damage. Science has understated and actually misled us all on the potential for damage from this source. Perhaps we need to respect ignorance instead.

Firstly a sea based impact has never been studied. We do not understand the possibilities. All the energy will surely be absorbed by the water, just as all the energy of the stony meteorites is typically absorbed in the atmosphere up to a fairly large size. So although a fair range of small to mid sized objects are packing huge amounts of energy, those two blankets will discharge the energy fairly well.

I add to this the 12900 BCE impact of the Canadian Ice sheet which hurled ice into the Carolinas and likely the Atlantic. It also delivered entrained material into the Ohio Valley recently identified. The bulk of the energy was still absorbed by the crust and surely left a crater now flooded with water. Happy hunting.

To affect climatic temperature, the event has to hit land and sent a vast amount of dust into the atmosphere or itself be a massive source of dust. Tunguska shows us how this could be. That means that a huge scar must exist that would be discernable even today if the event took place in the last 10,000 years.

Recall that the big volcanic events threw twenty to fifty cubic miles of rock into the atmosphere. An asteroid needs to be that large or at least a reasonable fraction thereof to have the same impact. Again the atmosphere will break it up on the way in. The fact is, is that we lack observational evidence to make proper predictions except by analogy.

What this article does bring home is that the energy is out there and has certainly been felt. Whether it applies to this sequence of climatic anomalies is only prospective when we have the alternatives of the Indonesian volcanoes and those of Alaska. And even for the protracted Little Ice Age, I am more inclined to chase volcanoes than a major cosmic event whose effect should have dissipated very quickly, if only because of the lack of chemical aerosols.

I have every reason to think that as our dating of the eruptive periods of all the world’s volcanoes improves so will the correlation with global climate. We only need to remember that an Arctic chill affects the northern portion of the northern hemisphere, while a much larger chill at the equator hits us all.


Collision Earth:

The Threat From Outer Space (2004)

BY JASON JEFFREY

Over a century ago Ignatius Donnelly summed up our precarious existence: We are but vitalized specks filled with a fraction of God’s delegated intelligence, crawling over an egg-shell filled with fire, whirling madly through infinite space, a target for the bombs of the universe.

By bombs Donnelly meant the untold number of asteroids and comets that fill the heavens around us which on perhaps not a few occasions have smashed into Earth itself, and may do so again.

Through revolutionary new techniques in observation, detection and photography, modern astronomers and astrophysicists have now identified two new classes of celestial objects which could pose a real danger to our planet within the foreseeable future, called NEA’s (Near Earth Asteroids) and ECC’s (Earth-Crossing Comets).

On September 29, asteroid “4179 Toutatis” passed within 1.6 million kilometres of Earth. Its approach was the closest in this century of any known asteroid the size of Toutatis, which measured around 4.6 kilometres in length. If it had struck the Earth, we could have faced what scientists have dubbed “a mass extinction event.”

Scientists believe the asteroid poses no risk at least through 2562, when Toutatis will pass within 400,000 kilometers of Earth – but astronomers admit there are forces in the solar system that can alter an asteroid’s orbit and put it on a collision course with Earth.

Earlier this year, on March 31, an asteroid skimmed past the Earth at a distance of just 6500 kilometres above the ground. Object “2004 FU162”, which spans 5-10 metres across, would have burned up as a fireball ending with a smaller explosion, had it ventured into the Earth’s atmosphere. The problem was astronomers did not discover it until after its passing. Scientists have since calculated the asteroid’s orbit was shifted by a whopping 20 degrees because of the Earth’s gravity.

The previous record for the closest asteroid approach to Earth was set on 18 March by an object called “2004 FH” which missed the Earth by about 40,000 kilometres. That was a much larger object, around 30 metres in diameter, but big enough to produce a one-megaton explosion in the atmosphere.

NASA calculates objects in the 100-200 metre range hit Earth about once every 700-1,000 years. Such an object did hit the Earth in 1908, over Tunguska in Siberia.

In the ECC (Earth-Crossing Comet) category, a very serious future candidate for an Earth grazing is comet Finlay, due to pass on October 27, 2060 – perhaps as close as 150,000 kilometres.In 1993, astrophysicist Brian Marsden announced that comet Swift-Tuttle could possibly strike Earth in the 22nd century. It is scheduled to pass the Sun incoming from deep space on July 11, 2126, and on August 14 will come very close to our world. Should the slightest irregularity occur in its long periodic path during the intervening one and a half centuries, it could hit the planet dead-centre, and with a force equivalent to 100 million megatons of TNT.

Over the past few years we have often heard about the discovery of new asteroids and comets. This is the result of NASA’s 25-year survey of the sky to find objects wider than a kilometre that could have a devastating impact if they collided with Earth.

Fortunately, nothing of a dangerous size has been spotted heading our way for at least a century – or so they tell us. According to a US government advisor, secrecy would be the best option if scientists discovered a giant asteroid was on course to collide with Earth.Speaking to a meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, Geoffrey Sommer, of the Rand Corporation, said:

“If an extinction-type impact is inevitable, then ignorance for the populace is bliss. As a matter of common sense, if you can’t intercept it and you can’t move people out of the way in time, there’s nothing you can do in terms of reducing the costs of the potential impact.”

Deep Impact

For one week in July 1994, astronomers watched a planetary body under attack, when two dozen pieces of the disintegrated comet Shoemaker-Levy 9 plunged into Jupiter with explosive results, equivalent to 40 million megatons of TNT going off in a chain reaction. As several scientists warned, this was Earth’s wake-up call for a similar event to happen to us.

Recent computer simulations reveal that if a comet or asteroid hit the Earth on one side, the seismic waves generated would be transmitted through the planetary interior. By being focused on account of the Earth’s curvature, the waves would meet together at the location directly on the opposite side where the impact took place, and the high stress energy released could disrupt the surface area, causing a tremendous outpouring of volcanic activity.

The air blast resulting from an impact would lead to large-scale and worldwide pressure shock waves oscillating the entire atmosphere and ionosphere, creating winds greater than the most powerful hurricanes ever recorded.

Fragments of the asteroid and earth hurled into space by the impact would rain down all over the planet, setting forest fires. The resulting smoke would further darken the atmosphere, plunging the world into permanent night. The temperature would plummet.

Calculating the amount of dust, water vapour and smoke injected into the sky from a kilometre wide object hitting the Earth, scientists estimate a drop of world temperatures by about 15 degrees Celsius lasting for about 15 days.

By far the worst-case scenario is an asteroid or comet striking one of the world’s deep oceans. Some researchers worry the sudden displacement of such large volumes of water across thousands of kilometres of ocean would affect the axis spin and polar stability of the Earth, like adding an off-balancing weight to a spinning gyroscope. Even more disastrous would be a celestial object furrowed into the ocean at a more oblique angle. In this case the energy of the mass dissipates by pushing a titanic amount of water over a large surface area, creating a tsunami wave so high and large in size as to defy imagination.As a tsunami wave reaches nearer to a coast with a shallower continental shelf, its speed slows down, but its height is increased by a factor of 10 to 40. Thus a deep ocean wave of 100 metres might break ashore with a height of 1,000 to 4,000 metres.

A major earthquake triggered off the coast of Chile in May 1960 generated waves in the deep water of the Pacific travelling a full 150 degrees around the globe, or more than 16,000 kilometres distance, landing ashore in Japan at a height of up to 4.5 metres, and killing over 200 people. Earlier, in 1946, a similar event took place when a tsunami originating in the Aleutians killed a handful of people along the nearby Alaskan shores, yet also went on to take the lives of 150 people in Hawaii 8,000 kilometres away. Computer projections indicate that a 9-metre asteroid impacting the ocean between Australia and New Zealand would produce tsunamis breaking on the southern Japanese coastline at 38 to 50 metres high.

That large asteroids have hit the Pacific before is evident from geological remains on the islands within its perimeter. Deposits of unconsolidated corals have been found almost a thousand feet above the present coasts on Lanai, Hawaii, Oahu, Molokai and Maui, indicating they were washed up to that height by a tremendous wave of water in the distant past. Ordinary tsunamis generated by earthquakes along the Ring of Fire do not produce waves of that magnitude – only a major displacement of ocean waters from an impact event would fit the findings.

The Atlantic Ocean is also in danger. Estimates are an impact anywhere in the Atlantic by an asteroid 365 metres wide would devastate coasts on either side with tsunami waves 60 metres high. Major cities either on the coast or with river, bay or harbor accesses such as New York, Boston, Washington, London, Amsterdam and Copenhagen are in danger of being completely obliterated.

A computer simulation of an asteroid impact tsunami developed by scientists at the University of California shows waves as high as 120 metres sweeping onto the Atlantic Coast of the United States.
The researchers based their simulation on a real asteroid known to be on course for a close encounter with Earth eight centuries from now.

March 16, 2880, is the day the asteroid known as “1950 DA”, a huge rock 1.2 kilometres in diameter, is due to swing so close to Earth it could slam into the Atlantic Ocean at 60,000 kilometres per hour.
“From a geologic perspective, events like this have happened many times in the past. Asteroids the size of 1950 DA have probably struck the Earth about 600 times since the age of the dinosaurs,” warns researcher Steven Ward.

Impact Events Linked to Evolution of Life on Earth

It is known the Earth was pummelled by asteroids, comets and other massive heavenly bodies in the early days of its formation – over 3 billion years ago. But, until recently, most scientists thought this was an event limited to Earth’s distant past. They also believed the ancient celestial pounding eventually gave way to billions of years of gradual, non-catastrophic evolution.

In the 1950s, astronomer Gene Shoemaker sent shock waves through the scientific community by suggesting various craters on our planet (and the Moon) were formed by asteroids or comets, rather than volcanic eruptions, which was what most scientists believed at the time.

There doesn’t appear to be one square kilometre of the lunar surface that is not pockmarked with impact craters. While some craters are undoubtedly very ancient, they also contain within their rims a myriad of newer craters from more recent impacts.

The reason why craters do not remain visible on Earth is due to their swift erosion by rain, snow, and wind, whereas on the Moon they remain for eons until a new projectile strikes the scar zone.

Using the Moon’s potholed surface as a reference point, Shoemaker tried to determine how often celestial objects smashed into the Moon and, by extension, struck the Earth. With the help of modern satellite and aerial surveillance, Shoemaker and other scientists soon identified over 200 impact sites around the planet.

In 1980 scientists Luis and Walter Alvarez claimed they had found evidence of a huge impact event 65 million years ago. This age corresponded with the demise of the dinosaurs at the end of the Cretaceous Period. The evidence included a worldwide layer of clay with high levels of the rare element iridium, usually the signature of an impact.

In 1990, the buried remains of a 180-kilometre-diameter crater were discovered near the town of Chicxulub on the Yucatan Peninsula in Mexico. A crater this size would have been blasted out by a 16-kilometre-wide comet or asteroid colliding with the Earth at some 80,000 kph.

Some scientists now believe this crater as the long sought-after “smoking gun” responsible for the demise of the dinosaurs and more than 70 percent of Earth’s living species 65 million years ago.

In June 2003 Science published a report about a team of scientists who believe a massive object from space smashed into what is now the Moroccan desert 380 million years ago. Dates for the impact coincide with the “Kacak/otomari” extinction, when up to 40% of all animals living in the sea perished. Fossils found in rock layers just above the impact layer suggest many new species appeared after the disaster.

And in November 2003, another team of scientists reported on evidence for a massive asteroid colliding with the Earth 251 million years ago which may have killed 90 per cent of all life.

The study, based on meteorite fragments found in Antarctica, suggests the Permian-Triassic event, perhaps the greatest extinction in the planet’s history, may have been triggered by a mountain-sized space rock that smashed into a southern land mass.

“It appears to us that the two largest mass extinctions in Earth history... were both caused by catastrophic collisions” with asteroids, the researchers say in their study in Science.

The evidence indicates asteroid impacts are the key factors in the development of life on this planet. In wiping out a large proportion of life on the planet periodically, the asteroids have played a more important role in evolutionary development than previously thought.More pertinent is the question of cosmic impacts on the rise and fall of mankind’s ancient civilisations. Is there any evidence backing up the stories of ancient apocalypse and hell fire from the sky that are preserved in mythology and some of the world’s religions?

Collapse of Civilisation

...and the seven judges of hell ... raised their torches, lighting the land with their livid flame. A stupor of despair went up to heaven when the god of the storm turned daylight into darkness, when he smashed the land like a cup.

– An account of the Deluge from the Epic of Gilgamesh, circa 2200 BCE

Biblical stories, apocalyptic visions, ancient art and scientific data all seem to intersect at around 2350 BCE, when one or more catastrophic events wiped out several advanced societies in Europe, Asia and Africa.

Archaeological findings show that in the space of a few centuries, many sophisticated civilisations disappeared. The Old Kingdom in Egypt fell into ruin. The Akkadian culture of Iraq, thought to be the world’s first empire, collapsed.

Around the same time apocalyptic writings appeared. The Epic of Gilgamesh describes the fire, brimstone and flood of possibly real, not mythical, events. Omens predicting the Akkadian collapse preserve a record that “many stars were falling from the sky.” The “Curse of Akkad,” dated to about 2200 BCE, speaks of “flaming potsherds raining from the sky.”

In 1650, the Irish Archbishop James Ussher mapped out the chronology of the Bible – a feat that included stringing together all the “begats” to count generations – and put Noah’s great flood at 2349 BCE.

All coincidence? A number of scientists don’t think so.

Mounting hard evidence collected from tree rings, soil layers and even dust that long ago settled to the ocean floor indicates there were widespread environmental nightmares in the Near East during this period: Abrupt cooling of the climate, sudden floods and surges from the seas, huge earthquakes.

In 1999 geologist Dr. Sharad Master spotted a 3-kilometre-wide crater in southern Iraq after studying satellite images. Scientists now believe this circular depression bears all the hallmarks of an impact crater, one that caused devastating fires and flooding. They are now attempting to date the time of the impact, with some of the main researchers estimating an age of around 6,000 years – placing it in the close vicinity of the sudden decline in Middle East civilisation around 2300 BCE.

Mike Baillie, professor of palaeoecology at Queens University in Belfast and author of Exodus to Arthur: Catastrophic Encounters with Comets, figures it would have taken just a few bad years to destroy societies.

Even a single comet impact large enough to have created the Iraqi crater, “would have caused a mini nuclear winter with failed harvests and famine, bringing down any agriculture based populations which can survive only as long as their stored food reserves,” Baillie says. “So any environmental downturn lasting longer than about three years tends to bring down civilisations.”

Professor Mike Baillie is an authority on dendrochronology, the science of studying tree growth rings. His decades long collaborative effort with many scientists has developed a worldwide record of climate modulated, annual tree growth as recorded in tree growth rings. That effort has produced a reliable timeline from the present back to several thousand years BCE.

Occasionally environmental conditions are so extreme that trees all over the world are affected. Certain of these patterns imply weather conditions leading to local or worldwide catastrophes, including crop failures, famine and flooding.

As described in Exodus to Arthur, the dates linked to extreme events are: 3195 BCE, 2354 BCE, 1628 BCE, 1159 BCE, 207 BCE, 44 BCE, and 540 CE.

The significance of the date 2354 BCE has been noted. The other date to stand out is 540 CE, with the extreme weather events actually starting in 536 CE.

Until recently, historians had little notion dramatic climatic events had occurred. The accounts left by contemporary observers were poorly understood and overshadowed by later historical events. In fact, those later events, it turns out, may have been caused, directly or indirectly, by the weather of the time.

The Praetorian Prefect Magnus Aurelius Cassiodorus Senator, who lived between 490 and 585 CE, wrote a letter documenting the conditions. “All of us are observing, as it were, a blue coloured sun; we marvel at bodies which cast no mid-day shadow, and at that strength of intensest heat reaching extreme and dull tepidity... So we have had a winter without storms, spring without mildness, summer without heat... The seasons have changed by failing to change; and what used to be achieved by mingled rains cannot be gained from dryness only.”

In the wake of this inexplicable darkness, crops failed and famine struck. Then a new disease swept across the entire continent of Eurasia: bubonic plague. It ravaged Europe over the course of the next century, reducing the population of the Roman empire by a third, killing four-fifths of the citizens of Constantinople, reaching as far east as China and as far northwest as Great Britain.

Other reports about the weather conditions from Byzantine and Constantinople record the same environmental phenomena such as dry fog, darkness, cold, drought, and famine.In 1984, Mike Baillie proposed that the climatic event of 536 CE (and by extension, all six of the others) could have been caused by “an asteroid, a comet, cometary fragment(s), or cosmic swarms.”

Perhaps one of the most fascinating and well researched theories is offered by authors Christopher Knight and Robert Lomas in their book Uriel's Machine: The Prehistoric Technology That Survived The Flood.

They present recent geological evidence showing that in 7640 BCE Earth was hit by seven comet fragments causing gigantic tidal waves. These findings are derived from the work of Austrian geologists Alexander and Edith Tollmann of Vienna University's Geological Institute.

By combining evidence from various disciplines (including the global distribution of tektites and a study of worldwide myths and legends), the Tollmanns propose that a comet approached the Earth from the south-east and fragmented into seven pieces which fell subsequently into the oceans causing mass destruction on all continents. One piece is believed to have landed in the North Atlantic, while another is considered to have fallen into “the Central Atlantic south of the Azores” creating a direct hit on “Atlantis”.

According to the authors of Uriel's Machine, there is a Masonic tradition that the biblical character Enoch constructed a machine to predict comets on an Earth collision course. They believe the ancient Book of Enoch describes how this machine should be constructed, and how this secret technology has been preserved since ancient times in Freemasonic lore.

ConclusionThe fall of ancient civilisations may now come to be viewed not as a failure of social engineering or political might but rather the product of climate change and, possibly, heavenly happenstance.

The Bible and other ancient texts have kept alive the memory of ancient catastrophes whose scientific analysis and understanding might now be vital for the protection of our own civilisations from future impacts.

These concerns are probably why the European Space Agency’s chief scientist wants a “Noah’s Ark” on the Moon, in case life on Earth is wiped out by an asteroid or nuclear holocaust.“If there were a catastrophic collision on Earth or a nuclear war, you could place some samples of Earth’s biosphere, including humans, [on the Moon],” said Dr. Bernard Foing. “You could repopulate the Earth afterwards, like a Noah’s Ark.”

At this point, only two things are certain: The Earth could be hit at any moment by a roving asteroid or comet, and we will be hit, again, unless something is done to prevent it.

Jason Jeffrey holds an interest in a wide range of subjects including geopolitics, the "New World Order", Big Brother, suppressed technology, psychic/spiritual development, ancient civilisations and esotericism.

He can be contacted at:

jasonjeffrey33@yahoo.com.au© Copyright New Dawn Magazine,

[link to www.newdawnmagazine.com.] Permission granted to freely distribute this article for non-commercial purposes if unedited and copied in full, including this notice.

[link to www.newdawnmagazine.com]

Bronze Age Musings

Bronze Age Musings

These two snippets are rather instructive and call for comment. Recall that I have posted extensively here on the European Bronze Age and the clear two thousand year impact of its emergence prior to its collapse triggered by Hekla in 1159 BCE and the advent of iron.

This was also the era of the destruction of the Sahara by widespread goat husbandry and ending the climatic optimum of the Bronze Age.

My first comment is that it is important that it is possible to link 3000 year old DNA to local residents. This was also done over an even greater time span in Western England. Possibly with bog bodies, though I do not now recall. The classic interpretation of history has been one in which tribes fought their way into other tribal lands on what appears to be an ongoing basis. Yet this says just the opposite.

The proper interpretation is to understand that agricultural communities are tied to their ancestral lands and do not move enmass except in very extraordinary circumstances. What happens instead is that in times of production success, the number of men increases far beyond the number of available women. Recall that twenty five percent of women die in childbirth. This surplus marches off looking for trouble. In fact the first natural response of a tribe on short rations would be to send off their surplus men.

My second comment is that a reconstruction of Bronze Age religious thought should be undertaken afresh. We have been informed somewhat through the Greeks, but I cannot help but feel that cult of Poseidon and Atlas anchored the Atlantean mercantile confederacy, whereas the cult of Athena was a derivative sideshow. How druidism emerged from all this is yet another interesting question. The sources give us glimpses and far too much imagination is filling in the rest.

The first article gives us a bit of the flavor of the breathless enthusiasm that tries to extend the Atlantean mythos around the world. Just embedding it properly in the world of the European Bronze Age is more than good enough. What I have been trying to explore is the actual richness of that culture.

Recall that the currency of the day was copper in all its forms. That is why tripods are mentioned almost first when plunder is discussed in Homer. For the record, the events of Homer occurred one generation before 1159 BCE and were obviously retained at the temple in Athens upon transcription. It was also that generation that would have been in active contact with both the Egyptians and the Levant leading eventually to the adoption of a modified alphabet to replace the previous unsatisfactory runic system of the priesthood.

The currency and trade collapsed after been brutally pushed by the Hekla tsunami and did not recover even partially for three hundred years. The post Atlantean world needed to find a new currency and that is the genius of the Midas myth.

Why Did Cartographer Atlas Son of Poseidon (Sidon) Hold Up the Sky Shoulder the Earth Worldwide Atlantean Columns Architecture Pillars Latte Stones of Guam and Mariana Islands Were Temples of Astronomy Astrology and Ancestor Worship Star Navigation by Polynesian Catamaran Outrigger Captains Like Precession Mapping Scheme of Atlanteans with Maui’s Tanawa Antikythera Mechanism and Celtic Cross Archaeometers Used for Geometry of Atlas’ Scheme to Master Ocean Travel

The ancient atlantean columns which held up the roofs of the archaic temples of the bronze age world were the namesake of Atlas, the map man, as was the Atlantic ocean, Atlantis (Aztlan), and the word for water in spanish, african berber, and hebrew, atl, as in Atlit, Israel, which is on the water. And this Atlas, a son of Sidon (a son of Canaan), who obviously was an ocean navigator and cartographer, was said to have held up the sky (or the earth on his shoulder), meaning that he had mastered the sky and earth, which is to say, he knew how to measure and map the earth by the stars, with the method described in article #2 at http://IceAgeCivilizations.com, the same method used to survey the dimensions of the Great Pyramid of Giza, and the City of Sidon (Poseidon), described by Plato in the Timaeus and Critias accounts about the Atlantean empire.

Some of the atlantean ruins have been discovered on the seafloor, such as off north Bimini island, Alexandria, Egypt, and Nan Madol of Pohnpei island, Micronesia, which indicates that they were built during the Ice Age, to then have been submerged when the sea level rose when the Ice Age ended; bronze age buildings consumed by the sea, when also, vast swaths of prime pasture and forest land became the deserts of the world, with the greatly decreased precipitation when the Ice Age ended (see category Catastrophic Climate Change).

Some of the atlantean columns submerged off Nan Madol, of the ancient city called Khanihmweiso, are still upright, rising up from the bottom to 20 feet, encrusted with much coral growth through 3,500 years, and with bulbous heads on the top, much like the atlantean columns found onshore on Guam, Tinian, and Rota islands, called Latte Stones, erected by the ancient navigators of the Pacific, who utilized the same method as Atlas, measuring precession with instruments such as Maui’s Tanawa and the Celtic Cross (archaeometer), to locate positions on earth, like a global positioning system, but according to the slow wobble of the earth’s axis.

German villagers share DNA with cavemen

Last Updated: 12:01am BST 15/07/2008

Local people in a small German village share the same rare DNA pattern as the bones of cavemen who lived in the area 3,000 years ago.

The Bronze Age remains were discovered by archaeologists in the Lichtensteinhohle cave in the foothills of the Harz Mountains in Lower Saxony, near the village of Nienstedt in 1994.

The bones of 40 people were shielded from the elements by calcium deposits that formed a protective skin around the skeletons.

All the remains turned out to be from the same family group who had a distinctive - and rare - DNA pattern.

When people in the local area were tested with saliva swabs, two nearby residents turned out to have the same distinctive genetic characteristic.

Manfred Huchthausen, a 58-year-old teacher, and Uwe Lange, a 48-year-old surveyer, now believe they are even more local than either of them thought.

"We used to play in these caves as kids," said Mr Lange. "If I'd known that there were 3,000-year-old relatives buried there I wouldn't have set foot in the place."

Pleistocene nonconformity - 3 - Atlantis legend

This excerpt deals with the informative Atlantis legend. There was no room to stuff in a chart made up by Arysio that strongly supports a South China sea homeland for modern man Intriging at least, but so is Bronze Age Ireland. I do think it is well worth going to his site.

We will first discuss the famed Atlantis legend, which is best described as a possible antediluvian antique civilization with extensive maritime trading activities operating on a global scale. This is a great tale that was first told by Plato by way of Egyptian provenance that has since launched 10,000 books.

The salient difficulty that we must face with Atlantis is the simple fact that this putative civilization lived so deep in time that artifacts would now be extremely few in number and probably be unrecognizable in general. On top of that these artifacts are underwater in their heartland. This means that for now we can satisfy ourselves only to the extent of showing that it might have been.

What I will do now is introduce a chart generated by Arysio Nunes dos Santos on his website www.atlan.org. He has done a splendid job of reinterpreting and assembling the known information showing the compelling case to be made for the Indonesian Archipelago. I personally had come to similar conclusions regarding the importance of this region for unrelated reasons long before I was aware of the areal extent of the submerged plains. His work takes what is likely the most accurate report (Egypt is about the only place that an accurate report might have been retained) and checks it against the many proposed locations of Atlantis.

In this checklist he compares the requirements of Plato with the characteristics of some of the proposed locations. He shows that only the plains of the South China Seas and its environs meet the requirements imposed by the cultural sources.

I consider that the most compelling evidence in support of the early emergence of an antique civilization is the huge areal extent of the tropical coastal plains now submerged. As in the Yucatan, a huge homogenous population could have slowly emerged and become stable enough to support the type of infrastructure such a civilization needs, as happened independently in Yucatan.

Arysio also makes clear that from the Mediterranean perspective, all the oceans, as we know them today, outside the Pillars of Hercules were one and the same. The holy mountains referenced would be those volcanic peaks in and around northern Java. These are some of the most violent volcanoes on earth. The checklist also emphasizes the depth of information provided by Plato. Whatever we make of the myth itself, the original informant was telling a tale describing the East Indies, rather than some Mediterranean locale.

Thus, if we are prepared to accept the existence of a huge, well developed and a probably still antique civilization with a global maritime reach prior to the Pleistocene nonconformity, we have clearly given it a viable homeland.

This is also a civilization that would have been hugely vulnerable to a large tsunami coming in from the northeast out of the Pacific. And the rise in sea levels from the ice melt would have forcibly driven the populations out onto the far less hospitable Chinese and Indian plains provided they had the time and shipping. With or without tsunamis, the one hundred and fifty-foot lift in sea level at this time forced the bulk of all lowland populations globally to move to higher ground. They were probably rushed. The one hundred and fifty foot lift that occurred about two to three thousand years later with the additional collapse of the Laurantide ice sheet was also just as catastrophic in shifting any large civilized areas out of their homelands. We are probably looking at a ten to one reduction in available land.

It is hardly a coincidence then that these great sub tropical plains of India and China and the Sumerian delta, as well as other locales worldwide suddenly and simultaneously developed agriculture. Refugees with plant growing skills would have moved into previously poorly exploited river valleys that were now becoming open to the seas and would have struggled vigorously to reestablish the agricultural economy and civilization that they were familiar with. Our own historical experiences of the difficulties involved in poorly supported colonization give us a pretty good sense of just how difficult this would have been even if the transition took 3,000 years.

I think every schoolchild should read some of the original accounts of pioneers who wintered over with Native Americans during periods of poor hunting. Even with all the skills available, the conditions become absolutely fearsome. It also becomes utterly clear why agriculture was adopted so enthusiastically where possible.

We can be pretty sure, however, that our putative original civilization on the South China Sea plains was itself never truly global in the first instance and that their knowledge base was never internally distributed throughout their civilization. We do not know how advanced their science was, although some cultural sources suggest that they reached technology levels we would recognize as modern. In any event it went unshared and became utterly lost in the exact way that Mayan science and engineering became lost. More likely, they perfected their limiting antique mathematica and applied it brilliantly. Mathematical innovation is the one piece of knowledge that was capable of surviving a holocaust. Try and imagine us losing the use of the zero or the meter stick.

A number of commentators have pointed to cultural evidence in India as support for advanced technology derived from this epoch. In practice, even if it did exist, and we do have suggestive physical anomalies that require explanation, there was a complete failure to preserve the knowledge and pass it down. Our entire knowledge base today is completely regenerated from recognizable antecedents within the past several thousand years, including even our agriculture. If such a civilization existed, it disappeared just as totally as the Mayan civilization in which no successor population could read the old glyphs.