Astronomy/Astrology, the Ancients, and the Rocky Path to Civilization
The “ancients” were vitally concerned with the Summer (and Winter) Solstice. The Equinoxes told them when it was time to plant, and when it was time to prepare for Winter, information of vital importance to an agrarian community. Without it, they’d be reduced to starvation, very soon. “Prophets”, in the Old Testament (and the Hebrew Bible), were probably early astronomers who knew to watch the skies. Their “prophecies” were early warning alerts, for those fortunate enough to hear, and heed, the warnings.
The various “observatories”, like Stonehenge, and dozens of “medicine wheels” scattered across the eastern-facing foothills of the Canadian Rockies, as well as “sunstrikes” in Chaco Canyon, and other Anasazi communities, testify to their importance. Ancient peoples all over the world were concerned by events in space, by things that happened because of bodies in the Solar System that threatened Earth.
Why? Simply because Earth was subjected to a siege almost two millennia long, during which Earth’s poles were dislodged and shifted, a number of times. We know some of this story from the Bible stories of II Samuel, II Kings/Chronicles/I Isaiah, and Ezekiel, the events that profoundly affected the 12th Century BC. The events of that century so scared the Israelis, they became monotheistic
Religionists edited the stories, to remove anything that would detract from the idea of an omnipotent God, fist, in the 7th Century BC, when Jews assembled the Torah and Tanakh, the books of the Hebrew Bible. The stories were further redacted, in the 3rd Century BC, when it was written in old Hebrew, and again, when Christians took their first whack, in the 3rd Century AD.
The “clock of Ahaz was shifted 10 degrees, and “returned”, on the “day of Ahaz’ funeral”, the Mycenaean fight with the Trojans (half of Homer’s story was taken from the earlier conflict, featuring Greek heroes), the Fall of Empires (the Mycenae, the Hittites, and the Egyptians, among them), and the arrival of the Boat People made that century-plus-four a living nightmare.
Jews became monotheistic, in the 12th Century. BC. Zoroaster created his religion, still going strong, 3,250 years later. Akhenaten was probably a part of that era, also, not living in the backwater 14th Century BC Egyptologists relegate him. These groups created the “new” concept of a single, all-powerful God, one with immense powers, and the answers to the questions that had plagued men since the beginning of time. It was a tall order, but if one looks at photographs of the BDR, one sees “faces”, and shapes that appear human, lending credibility to the beliefs of people who lived through the events.
We can sympathize with ancients, for assuming the terrible events were the actions of an angry God. The tempestuous seas, beyond-gale-force winds, teeth-chattering earthquakes, and belching volcanoes were responses from a planet tortured to its limits, by the close approach of another body. To mere mortals, only “God” could so rattle and shake the planet. However dim the concept of “planet” might have been, “world” was an immediate idea familiar to everyone. Home, village, city-state, or tribe, all were affected.
The Temple at Jerusalem was razed to its foundations, and rebuilt, 7 times (the city announced as Troy by Schliemann, in 1918, turned out to be Troy VI) because a door on the easterly wall opened on another door, and that one on another, until finally a door opened on the altar. When the light of the rising Sun shone thru all those doors, to light up the altar, Jews knew it was the Spring Equinox, time to plant. A door on the westerly wall opened on a series of doors, that when opened, let the light shine on the altar, informing the community it was time to get ready for Winter.
The Temple acted as an observatory, for the community. Something “big” happened, at least 7 times, to interfere with its function. What could do that? Due to its position, it could only be a shift in the location of the poles, some movement that changed the relationship between Earth and the Sun! Something of the sort happened in those ancient times, if not during the time of Noah, then certainly in the time of Babel, in Exodus, and Joshua, and again, in the triple-whammy of the 12 Century BC. It would be all over, in the late 8th Century, everything in its modern location, by that time.
Mostly. The length of the year had changed, at least twice, with Joshua, and again in the fateful 12th Century BC. Continents were shaped into their modern forms, nestled in the oceans, following the patterns we know, today. The weather patterns would take another millennium to sort out, but life went on, resuming once again. After the “Trojan War” that was witnessed by Homer, in the late 8th Century BC (circa 736BC), civilization resumed its upward course. The horrors of the past would slowly recede, as humans went about rebuilding, again, but this time, hopefully, for the last time.
In the next century, Jews wrote the Hebrew Bible, leading with the Torah (Books of Moses), about the events of the Exodus, and then, the Tanakh (all the rest). Greeks began building toward their Golden Age, Romans emerged from the background clutter, Persians rose, and the beginnings of our modern civilizations began to assemble. Less than three thousand years later, we stand on a pinnacle of Mankind’s achievements. At least, as far as we know.
In the Americas, descendants of the same Proto-Indo-European people (who authored most European languages, some Levant, and Sanskrit Indian) arrived in north central Utah, at the confluence of the Wasatch Fromt, and Uinta Mountains. They’d become Anasazi, by the time of Jesus, creating “sunstrikes”, their versions of the “medicine wheels” built by their ancestors, over the centuries.
Why? The events of the time between Noah and Homer, 1,700 years of darkness, terror, and destruction, superceded memory. They “knew” what happened, viscerally, but they had no vocabulary to process and understand what it meant. Fear ruled, in ways great and small, forever coloring the human psyche, however distant or removed. The stories left to us by survivors are indelibly imprinted on us, the stories not only repeated in the Jewish Bible, but the “Old Testament” of the Christian Bible, and in the Koran, used by Muslims.
Everyone agrees they happened, but Religionists pretend it was “God”, not a natural force, acting a natural manner, something we should be on the watch for, today. According to a recent NASA report, “rogue planets” are more common than stars, in the Milky Way Galaxy. The chances of one “popping out” are much higher than we know. It could have happened 100,000 years ago, for all we know.