Initially there were
two cultures with the skill of writing, next door to each other in the upper
reaches of the Persian Gulf: Sumer, the Biblical 'land of Shin`ar'
at the confluence of the Tigris and Euphrates rivers, and Elam, across the
marshes to the east, between the Zagros mountains and the sea. Each was not so
much a state as a gathering of towns and villages of people speaking a common
language. The origins of Sumerian are quite unknown; Elamite, however, appears
to be related to Dravidian, and also linked with Brahui, still spoken by over 2
million in the west of Pakistan, and many more languages spoken in central and
southern India.
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In the Beginning The
combined impact of orbital change and amplifying mechanisms has been the
see-sawing of climate from glacial to interglacial and back every 100,000 years,
often with an extraordinarily rapid switch from one state to another. The
global warming that brought the ice age to its close created localities of
abundant resource which people claimed as their own and were prepared to
fight for, such as in the Nile valley at 14,000 Bc,
northern Australia at 6000 Bc and southern
Scandinavia at 5000 BC. Click to enter:
Twenty thousand years B.C., from left to right
excavations at: Nile valley (1980), Kenia (1993) Sea of Galilee (1999) If we
have reached a point at which we can live within Earth's carrying capacity,
we can eliminate warfare in the same way we can eliminate infectious disease:
not perfectly, not immediately, but slowly and surely. Climatic desiccation
centered around 5000 years BP played a major role in the emergence
of civilizations. The rise of Dynastic civilization in Egypt coincided
with the onset of widespread Saharan desiccation, and the northward
expansion. And while Mesopotamia was experiencing fragmentation at a time of
unity in early Dynastic Egypt, complex urban societies emerge in other parts
of the world in the early fifth millennium, for example in the Indus Valley
region and the Supe Valley of Peru. But there is more. The
Archeology of Worldwide War and Peace. They Built the First Temples? |
The Earliest States The
following section grew out of the observation that neo-evolutionists
erroneously restricted comparisons to finding representative of stages of
organizations (e.g. of chiefdoms), and archaeologists justified their choice
of comparisons by linking these explicitly to the analysis of data within a
structure of archaeological theory. And although it is important to include
comparisons of developmental sequences, such investigations must include
appraisals of what social changes occurred, and most importantly understand
the past on its own terms, insofar as this can be imagined:
Archaeology
has often been used in different parts of the world to support nationalist,
colonialist, and imperialist claims, with horrifying results. There does not
seem to be a way to exclude religion and politics from archaeology, which is
after all a social science and hence political and partial. We will start
with a particularly example, the Middle East and the Holy Land, where
Archaeology has been used to serve modern political goals, including laying
claims to the land and denying the claims and narratives of the other side. Case Study: Archeology of the Middle East Today Levantine
Neandertals and the Skhul/Qafzeh
humans, Figurines in the Middle East, Mesopotamia, and the Bible as
narrative. Imperial Ideas, Critical Evaluation of Hypotheses, Concepts of
Time, Mounts, Texts and Representations. |
Nationalism: Ancient Egypt, Judea, Armenia, Japan?
When did the nation first become a political factor?:
Although
we know that ‘King Arthur’ was the fictional creation of an overimaginative
Welsh patriot who, frustrated by the absence of a good history of his people,
took a few disjointed Welsh legends and turned them into a coherent and
majestic narrative covering almost 2000 years and the reigns of 99 Celtic kings
(The Truth About History, 2003, p. 302), the full story has never been told
until now:
Click to enter:
Japan-Atlantis
Legend Revisited. Fringe Archeology Update
For more Fringe Archeology see below
Recently The New York
Times became the latest
(although becoming more skeptical now) major newsmedia,
to cover the pyramids in Bosnia.The genius of Mr.Osmanagic's discovery may turn out to be that it is
difficult to disprove without a large and costly excavation, allowing an
enduring and alluring mythology to grow up around the hill. For this and
other recent 'Archeological Fantasies' continue:
Media reports reflect
the ebb and flow of the Bosnia pyramid story. *May 17* Reuters (left): an
Egyptian geologist says it's a primitive pyramid.* June 9* (right): Anthony
Harding drops by and leaves unimpressed, telling the Associated Press that “
there's no evidence it's an archaeological site. UNESCO director-general
Koichiro Matsuura however promised to send a group of UNESCO archaeological
experts to investigate the "find."
The Mother of all Theocratic States: Lemuria
The Secret Doctrine, the foundational narrative for
modern occultism, claimed to be a commentary on the "Archaic Records"
contained in the Stanzas of Dzyan. As occult place
making gathers momentum over the course of the century, other such fantasies of
Lemuria's landscape follow. Although they lack the intimacy of the ancestral
homeland of the Tamil devotee in Sri Lanka.
September 2004, Cult Archeology: Civilization One Book (excerpt)
Megalithic pint,
anyone? Although it is true that peoples had contacts through trade, and
therefore the sharing of ideas, however megalithic structures on Malta most
likely are not connected to the British Isles and vice versa. Instead
Christopher Knight and Alan Butler create a new myth: ”Like the British Isles
and Brittany, Malta and Israel have Megalithic structures scattered across them
and the Old Testament gives detailed evidence of how the Canaanite rituals were
adopted for king-making. The memory of these prehistoric secrets was
transmitted by the remnants of the Order of the Knights Templar who took their
rituals to Scotland at the beginning of the 14th century.”
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Case Study 1: Cult
Archeology Neo-Paganism |
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Editor: Like other
ideas under discussion on this web site also Neo Paganism’s doctrinal and
ritual elements are taken from the most diverse sources. From Mircea
Eliade to Carlos Castaneda One of the first
signs of our fascination with all things 'shamanic' in the second half of the
twentieth century, is Mircea Eliade ‘s 1964 “Shamanism: Archaic Techniques of
Ecstasy”. The Truth About Carlos Castaneda "Increasing
speculation, based on mounting evidence, leads me to the conclusion that the
five women who left Los Angeles shortly after Carlos' death have committed
suicide. Daniel Pinchbeck is
not the first who might be responsible for a popularization of mind altering
substances, in fact and earlier "Noble Savage" popularization of
native drugs took place during the second half of the 20th century by Carlos
Castaneda. Reader Comment: The Myth of the Noble Savage J: When I was
running a spiritual type bookstore in a good sized city, Marol Morgan's book
Mutant Message Down under was still a self-published book that was doing
quite well. Although for
example many South American shamans incorporate elements of Catholicism,
astrology, mesmerism, Kardecism, etc. to enhance
their power and authority. |
From N. Pennick to Celtic/Northern Literature Nigel Pennick's work and other similar writers today, give the
impression of presenting a singular 'truth' about the past, but maybe the
more obvious aim of such writers is more concerned with the present than the
past, and how the past can be used to empower current ideas. The Temple of a Nation, Stonehenge Stonehenge has been
a site of political contest. On 25 March 1997, Kevin Carlyon 'illegally'
entered the stones of Stonehenge to raise a Union Jack; he stated this was in
reaction to the suggestion by archaeologists that Stonehenge was built by
migrating people from what is now France 4,500 years ago. Reburial' has been
a central issue for archaeologists and anthropologists in the USA, Australia and
elsewhere where the lobbying of indigenous communities for the repatriation
and/or reburial of human remains and artefacts held by museums (and other
institutions) has met increasing successes. Neo-Shamanists and Pagans Today First, the FSS
portrays its core-shamanism as 'shamanism' to indigenous people, when it is,
as argued, a Western construction - indeed its appeal to 'core' features is
reminiscent of Buhner's universalist approach. |
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Case Study : Cult
Archeology, Atlantis |
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Numerous attempts
have been made to rationalise Plato's myth and find
a kernal of historical truth in it. Noble attempts
to find this reality have been made by amongst others, J.V. Luce (1969) and
Peter James (1996). All have failed. Atlantis started with
Plato and in his hands it was never a supercivilization of the sort
conjectured by later authors; perhaps in strictly Greek terms it was no
civilization at all but rather a fatally luxurious elaboration of an
essentially barbarian way of life, for all its inception by a god. Earlier the Theosophical,
and next the Nazi ideology, horribly romantic, has been the most extreme and
pernicious expression of the myth of the divinely sanctioned elite to date,
and a far cry you might think from ideas of some secret brotherhood of wise
old priests struggling to carry the torch of learning and spirituality down
all the dark ages of prehistory and history. The Atlantologists frequently present themselves as hurt and
affronted by the rejection - or worse still the indifference - of the
professionals. (Their hurt on occasions can take an oddly childish turn, like
a schoolboy sulking over a low mark.) They put the professionals'
attitude down to, at best, an unadventurous conformism that blinds them to
the insights of the "alternative" camp. |
Cuba's Gateway To Atlantis P.1 The search for
Atlantis will never end. And not all its searchers will wind up in outer
space. Cuba's Gateway To Atlantis P.2: Cocaine For Collins the
considerable distance between the Sargasso and the Bahamas is accommodated by
the suggestion that "in singling out the Sargasso Sea" (which is a
huge assumption on Collins' part since there is nothing at all to suggest
Plato was talking about the Sargasso) Plato was just trying to indicate the
general location of his sunken island. Gateway to Atlantis P.3: Seven Cities, El Dorado There follows in
Collins Gateway to Atlantis, a detour into pre-Columbus legends of Antilia and the Seven Cities, El Dorado and the like. Gateway to Atlantis P.4: Urheimat der Arier In Collins’ Gateway
to Atlantis an unusual landscape feature of the region, called the Carolina
Bays in the Bahamas, is brought on as possible evidence of some antique
commentary impact, rather like the Tunguska event of Siberia. An October 2002
poll among cult archeologists revealed the majority today, believe that if
Atlantis is not a fictional account by Plato (as historians and archeologists
worldwide claim) it should in the Bahama Banks area. |
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