History and Celestial Time (cont.)
By Walter Cruttenden
Current theories of history generally ignore myth and folklore and do not consider any macro external influences on consciousness. For the most part, modern history theory teaches us that consciousness or history moves in a linear pattern from primitive to modern with few exceptions. Some of its tenets include:
- Mankind evolved out of Africa,
- People were hunter-gatherers until about 5000 years ago,
- Tribes first banded together for protection from other warring parties,
- Written communication must precede any large engineered structures or populous civilizations.
The problem with this widely accepted paradigm is that it is not consistent with the evolving interpretation of recently discovered ancient cultures and anomalous artifacts. In the last hundred years major discoveries have been made in Mesopotamia, the Indus Valley, the Asian plains, South American sites and in many other regions that break the rules of history theory and push back the time of advanced human development. Specifically, they show ancient man was far more proficient and civilized nearly 5000 years ago than he was during the more recent Dark Ages of just a thousand years ago. In Caral, an ancient complex on the west coast of Peru, we find six pyramids that are carbon dated to be 4700 years old, a date contemporaneous with Egyptian pyramids and rivaling the time of the first major structures found in the so called "Cradle of Civilization" in Mesopotamia. However, Caral is an ocean away from the "cradle", and we find no evidence of any writing or weaponry, two of the so-called necessities of civilization. At the same time we do find beautiful musical instruments, astronomically aligned structures and evidence of commerce with distant lands. Clearly, such sites defy the standard historical paradigm. But what is stranger still is that so many of these civilizations seemed to decline en mass.
In ancient Mesopotamia, Pakistan, Jiroft, Iran and adjacent lands we see knowledge of astronomy, geometry, advanced building techniques, sophisticated plumbing and water systems, incredible art, dyes and fabrics, surgery, medicine and many other refinements of a civilized culture that seemed to arise from nowhere yet were completely lost over the next few thousand years. By the time of the worldwide Dark Ages every one of these civilizations had turned to dust or nomadic ways of life. Near the depths of the downturn there were ruins and little else to be found. And in some areas where larger populations still remained, such as throughout parts of Europe, poverty and disease were often rampant and the ability to read, write or duplicate any of the earlier engineering or scientific feats had essentially disappeared. What happened?
While records of this period are still very spotty the archeological evidence indicates consciousness, reflected as human ingenuity and capability, was greatly diminished. We just seemed to have lost the ability to do the things we used to do. Ironically, this is just what many ancient cultures predicted. The world's foremost Assyrianologist, Stefan Maul, shed light on this phenomenon in his Stanford Presidential Lecture when he tells us that the Akkadians knew they lived in a declining era; they revered the past and tried to hang on to it but at the same time lamented and predicted the Dark Ages that would follow. His etymological studies of cuneiform tablets show the ancient words for "past" have now become our words for "future", whereas their words for the "future" have now become our words for the "past". It is almost as if mankind orients his motion through time depending on whether he is in an ascending or descending age.
We find this principle of waxing and waning periods of time depicted in numerous bas-reliefs found in ancient Mithraic temples. The famed Tauroctany or bull slaying scene, is often surrounded by two boys, Cautes and Cautopetes. One holds a torch up on one side of the zodiac, indicating it is a time of light, the other holds a torch down on the other side of the zodiac, indicating it is a time of darkness. As the accompanying chart will show, these time periods correspond with the Vedic description of when the Earth goes through periods of rising and falling consciousness.
Jarred Diamond, the well-known historian anthropologist and author of Guns, Germs and Steel makes a good case that it is primarily local geographic and environmental advantages on the planet Earth that determine which group of humans succeeds or fails versus another. Those that have the steel, guns and bad germs win. While this helps explain many regional differences of the last few thousand years it does not address the macro trends that seemed to have affected all cultures (including China and the Americas) as they slipped into the last worldwide Dark Age. The cyclical or Great Year model overlays and augments Jarred Diamond's observations giving a reason for the widespread downturn. It suggests that it is not just the geography and environment of man on Earth that determines his relative success but it is also the geography and environment of the Earth in space that affects mankind on a vast scale. Just as small celestial motions affect life over the short term so do large celestial motions affect us over the long term.
Understanding that consciousness may indeed rise and fall with the motions of the heavens gives meaning to ancient myth and folklore and puts anomalous artifacts such as the Antikythera device into an historical context that makes sense. It speaks to why so many ancient cultures might have been fascinated with the stars and it provides us with a workable paradigm in which to understand history. It could also help us identify the forces that propelled the renaissance and that may be accelerating consciousness in the current era. Myth and folklore, the scientific language of yore, provide a colorful look at consciousness throughout the different ages.