Connecting a Global Flood with the Mystery of Mankind's Ancient Past (cont.)
By David Warner Mathisen
The preponderance of legends, legends, and sacred writings around the
world appear to preserve knowledge of such a flood, indicating that
(as difficult as it may be to believe for some) this catastrophe may
have taken place within human memory. Interestingly enough, many of
these ancient texts speak of the floodwaters coming up from under the
earth, consistent with the hydroplate theory (Genesis of course
speaks of the “waters under the earth” and the “fountains
of the great deep,” and the book of Job speaks of it breaking
forth as if it had “issued out of the womb,” but other
traditions seem to maintain similar memories, such as the legends of
the Cuna people of Central America – modern Panama – who
spoke of the flood as being due to great jars of the underworld being
broken up by a god).
If human beings were present during the rotation of the entire globe
that took place as one consequence of that flood (due to the
formation of the Himalayas and their impact described above), then it
would certainly have radically altered the view of the heavens and
the constellations, putting an entirely different set of stars along
the line of the ecliptic. Many who study alternative theories for
mankind’s ancient past are aware that myths and legends from
around the world indicate a connection between the “chopping
down of the axis” of heaven and the initiation of the flood –
Giorgio de Santillana and Hertha von Dechend discuss much of this
evidence in their indispensable 1969 text Hamlet’s Mill: an
essay on myth and the frame of time. My book discusses that and
other mythological evidence of a connection between the two events.
The unhinging of the axis of heaven, of course, is also connected
with the phenomenon of precession. If the earth did indeed
experience a “Big Roll” during human memory, then the
constellations on the ecliptic that enable us to perceive the effects
of precession would have changed (to the now-familiar zodiac
constellations we have today). It is certainly likely that those who
lived through that event and afterwards would have paid great
attention to the new markers of the celestial phenomena and it may
explain why they were so careful to preserve their knowledge of it in
myth and monument. It is certain that myths around the world
describe this great unhinging of the axis as something that took
place at a distinct point in time (often due to the chopping down of
a tree by a god or a hero) and never as “the way things have
always been.”
Of course, the conventional timeline of human history does not allow
for the possibility that mankind was capable of understanding
sophisticated processes such as precession at the early dates that
myth and monument indicate that they understood it. Again, the
connection between geological theory and theories of mankind’s
ancient history is evident. The conventional view posits long
geological ages, a view which corresponds to a vision of biological
life that moves slowly but steadily from very primitive to more and
more complex and advanced. Anthropologically, this view proposes
“early humans” which are not far removed from apes, who
then become more and more modern, eventually arriving at modern
humans who still behave in very primitive hunter-gatherer fashion for
well over a hundred thousand years before discovering the benefits of
agriculture and then settling down into villages which evolve into
the first cities.
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