Prehistory Decoded

Ancient Sumerians knew about precession too The Uruk Vase (from Wikipedia) In recent weeks I have shown how the Ancient Egyptians must have known about our ancient zodiac and precession of the equinoxes. I've now begun to look at ancient Mesopotamia. There are many obvious links between them which I'll present in the coming weeks. However, in this first look at ancient Sumer I want to focus on one of its oldest and most important artefacts, the Uruk Vase. A series of Stone-Age cultures inhabited the Euphrates and Tigris river valleys after the Younger Dryas period. This region includes much of present-day Iraq and Syria to the west of the Zagros Mountains. After the 8.2 kiloyear event archaeologists have labelled these people the Halaf, Samarra, Hassuna  and Ubaid cultures, which combined take us up to around 3800 BC. After this, in southern Mesopotamia, we have the Uruk period which then takes us into Bronze Age Sumer around 3100 BC. Uruk is thought to be ...

Talking about Prehistory Decoded with Mike And Maurice https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UqDExxEX8j0

A note on Precession of the Equinoxes (now on YouTube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rAen0kZly78&t=39s) A few people have contacted me about an error in my calculations for precession of the equinoxes using Stellarium. In each case, it appears they are making the same mistake I made when I set out on this journey, as described in Prehistory Decoded. So, in this post I want to explain how to use Stellarium to do these calculations. But before I begin, I should also point out that Stellarium is perfectly capable of making these calculations without any significant inaccuracy over the timescales we are interested in, i.e. 40,000 years or so. Gobekli Tepe's archaeologists have claimed that Stellarium might not be suited to this task. But they are wrong. I certainly agree that I would not use Stellarium to back-calculate the position of the moon (for visualising ancient eclipses, for example) over this timescale. But this problem does not apply to calculation of preces...

New paper from the Comet Research Group confirms comet impact Distribution of sites at which the Younger Dryas boundary layer has been found (Pino et al., Scientific Reports, vol. 9, p4413 (2019)). The latest paper, published in Scientific Reports here , from the Comet Research Group and colleagues in Chile provides yet more evidence the Younger Dryas event was a comet impact. Like their others, this new paper is extensive and detailed, this time providing 10 different streams of evidence for the Younger Dryas boundary layer at Pilauco, Chile. It means severe effects from this event were felt across nearly half the world's land surface, and perhaps more. These new results are especially interesting for a couple of reasons, in my view. We already knew the Younger Dryas event happened - there is no doubt about that. We also know it caused the Younger Dryas mini ice-age - a period of around 1,300 years from 12,900 to 11,600 BC - when northern hemisphere temperatures plummet...

Comets in ancient myth Figure 1 from Balaji Mundkur's 'The Cult of the Serpent' In Prehistory Decoded I make the case that much of the world's mythology, ancient and modern (known as religion), is connected by an ancient system of astro-mythology, largely focussed on comets - their appearance and catastrophic effects. If true, we should see comet symbolism throughout myth and religion, from before Gobekli Tepe into modern Christianity. So where is it? It should be everywhere. If you Google 'ancient comets' you'll see a wide variety of shapes and depictions for comets through the ages. There is the standard 'menat'-shaped comet through to fox-tail shapes, scimitars, rosette shapes, tridents, and so on. They come in all sorts of shapes, sizes and colours. So how would this translate into religious symbolism? Moreover, their catastrophic effects, such as a massive explosive airburst, would take on different symbolism. Mike Baillie, a leadin...

Clube and Napier's Coherent Catastrophism, and Wikipedia My new book is founded on Clube and Napier's coherent catastrophism. They are both formerly Professors of Edinburgh (where I am now - complete coincidence) and Oxford. Bill Napier is an astronomer specialising in cometary science while Victor Clube is an astrophysicist. They first published on this subject, to the best of my knowledge, in 1979. But it was not until the early 1980s that they developed their 'terrestrial theory of catastrophism'. It was later, in the early 1990s I think, that their collaborator, Duncan Steel, coined the term 'coherent catastrophism', and that's how their theory is now popularly known. Together with David Asher and Mark Bailey, these five scientists have pioneered research into their alternative view of cosmic catastrophism on Earth - one based on comets rather than asteroids. The evidence they have accumulated is compelling, but controversial. I give some of the ...

The prehistory of Ancient Egypt The Narmer Palette (from Wikipedia) History became legend. Legend became myth. Not sure who said this first, but Galadriel was spot-on when it comes to Ancient Egypt. The history of Ancient Egypt is fairly well known. The various king lists tell us about the royal dynasties, and there are plenty of temples, monuments, tombs and other remains with their hieroglyphs to piece together a coherent story. Beginning with the Ptolemaic period around 300 BC, and going backwards, it is generally agreed that Ancient Egypt has nearly 3000 years of history, comprising over 30 dynasties. These dynasties are divided into Kingdoms interrupted by 'intermediate' periods, probably caused by war, famine or another catastrophe. The precise dates of these dynasties are still contested by some, who prefer to shoehorn Ancient Egyptian history into a timeline that agrees with biblical scripture, or astronomical events, or some other uncertain clue. Nonethele...

Another nail in the coffin of the Scorpion King The above image is a copy of some rock graffiti found by John and Deborah Darnell, Egyptologists at Yale University, in the Egyptian desert, about 25 miles north west of Thebes. In Prehistory Decoded, I partially decode the lower portion of this scene. Now, I want to show how the whole scene can be decoded. We begin with the falcon-scorpion pair on the bottom right. As shown in an earlier post, the falcon-scorpion pair likely indicate the autumn equinox is transitioning between the Sagittarius and Scorpius constellations, and therefore represent the date 3500 BC, to within a few hundred years. Darnell, suggests this pair represents the name of the Scorpion King, because the falcon (the symbol for Horus) often means 'King', or pharaoh, when followed by another symbol in hieroglyphics. The problem is that this scene, along will all supposed 'Scorpion King' inscriptions, predate the invention of hieroglyphics by hundr...