Recovering the Lost World - Part 4: Ice Ages and Humans

Recovering the Lost World,
A Saturnian Cosmology -- Jno Cook
Part 4: Ice Ages and Humans.

[Table of Contents]
$Revision: 23.3 $
Contents of this chapter: [Recent Glaciations] [Ice Ages and Humans] [Homo Erectus] [Homo Sapiens] [In the Shadow] [The Dark Before the Chaos] [The Hypsithermal] [Ice Age Orbits] [Endnotes]
In the two previous chapters I have offered some measure of the size of the Solar System, told of the creation of planets, and suggested a long history of the repeated interactions of Saturn with our Solar System and with Earth.
In this chapter I will present some information on the most recent glaciation, for this is the condition under which our species -- Homo sapiens sapiens -- eventually appeared. Glaciation, as I will suggest below, is one of the manifestations of a plasma contact from Saturn. The series of glaciations, which started some 3 million years ago (mya), continued intermittently until very recently, indicating that Saturn had remained in the neighborhood of the inner planets during that time. This period gave rise to a dozen species of hominids, of which we are the last survivors.
NOTE: If you are not interested in such technical matters, skip this Chapter and go to [Chapter 5], "Saturn and Archaeology."
Recent Glaciations

As I have noted in the previous chapter, repeated extinctions mark all biological life on Earth at least since the Cambrian, 560 mya. The interval between major extinctions has been estimated to be on the order of 26 to 27 million years. The only two glaciations the Earth has experienced since the Permian (200 mya) also seem to fit the pattern of 26 or 27 million year intervals. These are the Antarctic glacier of 30 mya (some have this as 40 million) and the northern glaciation which started 3 mya -- actually 2.7 mya.
Based on the likelihood that long-term plasma contacts with Saturn were responsible for the glaciation, it looks as if Saturn arrived again in the vicinity of the inner planets of the Solar System about 2.7 mya, when the cycles of northern glaciation start. But this time the evidence indicates that Saturn not only returned, but stayed. After some 20 previous entries into the Solar System since the Cambrian, Saturn probably met up with Jupiter, and was forced into a much shorter orbital period -- certainly much shorter than the previous 26 million year period.
The indication that Saturn may have remained among the inner planets is the record of a series of intermittent glaciations, accompanied with sporadic speciation. Included in the new species are the first set of six hominids, followed at a later date with three more. All of these except the very last one, which is us, have become extinct.
The intermittent glaciations of the last three million years would suggest that these plasma contacts were made in passing -- as Saturn passed by -- rather than in a configuration where Saturn would be close to Earth and deliver a stream of plasma over an extended period of time. With 80 percent of Earth covered by oceans, it is likely that many earlier strikes were never recorded, although there are land strikes (always identified as 'meteor impacts') of uncertain ages. One much earlier plasma strike to land, which has been dated with some certainty, is the absolutely gigantic circular Chicxulub 'cometary' depression in the Yucatan, made 65 mya, resulting in the (eventual) demise of the dinosaurs. But even land strikes of plasma in arc mode, if made at various intervals in the past in multiples of 27 million years, are unlikely to leave much of a dateable record today. [note 1]
It is thus unusual that there were plasma strikes which were close enough to land areas and of an extended duration to leave a record in land glaciers. The last two strikes (of 30 mya and 3 mya) were perhaps qualitatively different from contacts in the more remote past. What was different is that the last two series of plasma contacts (30 mya and 3 mya) extended over a long period of time and contacted the Earth from above or below or both (rather than laterally), concentrating at the magnetic poles. The past strikes, like the one that formed the Chicxulub crater (plus 5 additional 'craters'), instead were gigantic single bolts of interplanetary lightning -- plasmoid lightning bolts -- not a constant streaming of plasma. [note 2]
Again, however, glaciations, although they may indicate Saturn's visits, are not a reliable index. Glaciers, which end up marking up the landscape with their movements, require a continuous fall of snow over an extended period of time. Thus, a brief plasma contact, or a plasma contact in dark mode which might disperse upon reaching the Earth's ionosphere, would leave no visible record on the Earth's surface.
The plasma stream has to be at least in glow mode, and has to last a long time in order to boil off large quantities of ocean waters. In glow mode the plasma stream would attempt to follow the curvature of the Earth's magnetic field and contact the Earth's surface at the magnetic poles (both the north and the south). At a magnetic pole the plasma stream would increase in density to become visible in arc mode. The arc would vaporize ocean water, raise stupendous clouds, and drop snow in an area maybe a thousand miles in diameter.
But, still, we would have no glaciation record if the magnetic poles were located in oceans away from land. That, as a matter of fact, seems to have happened repeatedly in the past. Anytime in the past when the magnetic pole of Earth was located in the mid latitudes of the Pacific or Atlantic ocean there would have been no glaciation at all. [note 3]
... Geological Record

There are three sets of data which bear on glaciation and thus provide secondary data for plasma contacts. The first is the geological record. This consists of the scars and sediment left behind at each advance and retreat of the edges of land glaciers. This is the most reliable record of glaciation. The geological records include those of northern Europe, Canada and the northern USA. From this data three (or four) recent major land glaciations have been identified, starting at 2.7 mya in Europe, and followed at intervals by the Illinois and Wisconsin glaciations of Canada and the USA. The glaciers have different names in Europe and America. [note 4]
However, the usefulness of the geological record is limited. The glaciations repeatedly built up and retreated and there are long periods during which nothing seems to have happened. Also, a study of where the edges of the glaciers appeared (and retreated) tells nothing of the central areas, and in fact it is still not even agreed if there were three or four glaciers (or five) or how they overlapped. [note 5]
... The Greenland Ice Cores

Another set of data which bears on glaciation is provided by the Greenland ice cores, from holes bored 9000 feet into Greenland's nearly two mile thick glacier. These provide a record of temperatures of the fallen snow in the past (gauged from the chemical makeup of the ice), but not over nearly as long a period as, for example, the data from Oceanic Oxygen Isotopes cores (see below). The ice cores reach bedrock after 120,000 layers -- assumed to represent 120,000 years.
In fact, the date of 120,000 years ago, when the bottom of the glacier is reached, corresponds to an interglacial warming period, the Eemian, dated from 130,000 to 120,000 years ago, and corresponding to stage 5e in the Oceanic Oxygen Isotope Series (see below). Greenland was apparently clear of glaciers at that time. Antarctic ice cores also reach bedrock in as many layers.
However, there is something wrong here. The interpretation of the data of the ice cores is based on two questionable assumptions. The first assumption is that the glaciation was continuous over long spans of time. But if we accept the idea that intersections with the orbit of Saturn were the cause of the temperature swings and the less frequent land glaciation, we must conclude that the actual periods of glaciation were intermittent and possibly very short. It is only the snow fall in the mountains of Greenland that is continuous. [note 6]
The second assumption is that glaciation is associated with the north pole. Yet the region of northern Asia, which, like Greenland, lies within the arctic circle, was never glaciated. The glacier layers of Greenland were assumed to represent a year-by-year record of deposition which would vary little from one location to another. Since the center of glaciation moved over time, even over short periods of time (as the north magnetic pole does today), we could expect the deposition layers of snow and ice in different locations of Greenland to be different. This has proven to be so; the discrepancy between ice cores bored at different locations has been noted and a concept of discontinuity is being woven into the current analysis by the researchers.
The last boring brought up organic material -- in defiance of the fact that a glacier would have scoured the surface clean (noted by the researchers). Stuck to the bottom of the drill bit was what looked like a pine needle.
It should also be noted that despite much bragging to the contrary, little data has actually been obtained from the ice cores which correlates to other world-wide events, like volcanic eruptions. Only a single late worldwide event has been correlated, and not with any certainty. [note 7]
... Oceanic Oxygen Isotopes

A third set of data bearing on glaciation is the data of Oceanic Oxygen Isotope cores (from the sludge of sunken skeletons of surface foraminifera) which is understood as an index of ocean temperatures near the surface and thus should indicate the existence of glaciation, or at least glacial melting. The data is used as an index of ocean volume compared to the amount of water locked up as land glaciers.
Oceanic oxygen isotope analysis gives results which extend back 65 million years, and is thought to represent a measure of world-wide climatic conditions. The record during the last few million years is extremely variable. The cooler periods during the last three million years have an interval of about 100,000 years (and intermediate intervals at 50,000 years). The standard explanation is that the cold periods correspond to periods of glacial buildup. I will suggest other causes in the second half of this chapter, below.
During the last 200,000 years there are even shorter intervals (20,000 years) between cooler periods. Then at about 60,000 years ago, the variation becomes almost impossibly chaotic, so that in the most recent period we encounter temperature swings at intervals as short as 3,000 years. The "fine detail" of the Greenland cores record shows swings in temperature as short as 70 years. Some geological records for the same period show even shorter intervals between glacial build-up and retreats -- as short as 20 years. [note 8]
The data from oceanic oxygen isotopes is problematic in that there is likely to be a time lag between glacial buildup and changes in the mix of oxygen isotopes. Melt waters after a glaciation ends may give the indication of 'cold,' even though there is no current glaciation. The melts may have lasted thousands of years. The oceans may not have responded as we would expect them to react under current conditions. For example, based on lake-bottom pollen studies, paleontologists have noted the continuity of plant species indicating warm climatic conditions which carry through periods marked as cold by the oceanic oxygen isotopes studies.
What can be said of all three of these records (geology, ice cores, and oceanic oxygen) is that they represent a lengthy period of glaciations of indeterminate lengths and a wildly chaotic climate -- which may represent the existence of glaciers, or which may have yet other or additional causes. [note 9]
A solution should be sought in the possibility of intermittent plasma contacts with Saturn at the magnetic poles, which would build glaciers on adjacent land areas, which will in turn melt, or at least partially, before another contact is made at a different location, because the magnetic pole has had thousands of years to drift to a new location.
Although elaborate theories have been brought forward to account for the temperature swings, it would be difficult to estimate global conditions if they were due to an unimaginable billion ampere arc boiling away an ocean at its contact point, resulting in a continuous snowfall over a region a thousand miles in diameter. And, as I note elsewhere, I seriously think 'warm' climatic periods should be associated with glaciation, and 'cold' with the intermediate periods -- rather the reverse of what is held today.
To this should be added the possibility that the plasma contacts could have lasted for years or even hundreds of years and that the contacts could radically change the climate of Earth (for the better or worse) in ways which are totally beyond our comprehension today because we have never experienced anything like it in our stable modern world.
Additionally I would suggest that the proximity of the huge planet Saturn (as well as the proximity of Jupiter) would frequently displace Earth in its orbit so that the climatic effect of the Sun would vary for long periods. And, based on scant information from some creation myths, there exists the real possibility that the Earth might have fallen into an orbit which would place it in Saturn's shadow for months at a time. This last, in fact, seems to have ended only about 9,000 BC, when the climate of Earth suddenly improved. The cessation of northern glaciation in Greenland was not at cause, for the Greenland ice cores continue to count layers of snowfall to the present day. But all of northern Europe and Canada was cleared of ice in a matter of a few hundred years. I will get back to this further below.
Image: Extent of all glaciation over the last three million years superimposed on each other. On the map above, not all of the indicated area was glaciated at the same time. The stars are three estimated center-points of glaciation over the last 60,000 years. "X" is the current location of the magnetic north pole.

... The Last Glaciation

The accepted last interglacial period in Europe, but not elsewhere (or worldwide), stretched from 60,000 to 25,000 years ago. It is a period which saw both the Neanderthals and Cromagnon populations in Europe. The Cromagnon people are us. The last glaciation followed between 25,000 to 12,000 years ago. The Neanderthals had disappeared by this time, although 'pockets' of Neanderthals persist late in Spain and the Levant, perhaps as late as 8000 BC.
The following is the record of glaciation and interglacials for central England for the last half million years. Some of the periods correspond in name from one country to the next. The "Windermeer" interglacial, for example, does, but many of the names and date estimates are local. For example, the "Anglian" glaciation in England, shown below, will not match glaciation names (or dates) for Switzerland. Interglacials -- periods of warmer climate -- are shown in parenthesis below.

glaciation period (interglacials) Years Before Present Notes on hominids ---------------- -------------------- ------------------ Anglian 480,000 -- (Cromerian) (480,000 - 426,000) H.heidelbergensis (Hoxmian) (425,000 - 375,000) H.erectus (?) Wolstonian 330,000 - 135,000 - tools (Ipswichian) (135,000 - 35,000) - tools Devensian 70,000 - 10,000 H.neanderthalis - maximum at.. 25,000 and 10,000 English channel dry (Chelford) (65,000 - 59,000) - H.n tools (Upton Warren) (42,000 - 38,000) (H.sapiens in Europe) (25,000 - 8,000) large mammals disappear - cold - 27,650 (last H.n in Europe) - ice retreat - 14,500 (in England) (Windermeer) (13,800 - 12,000) - tools - colder - 12,500 - cold snap 10,500 - 9,000 (Younger Dryas) - glacier gone - 10,000 - warming - 9,000 and after channel flooded - cooling 6,500 - 4,500 6,500 - after (4500 BC) farming established

I have shown the above to give some scope to the variability of glaciation, as well as to indicate the presence of hominids only miles from the glacier. [note 10]
Ice Ages and Humans

What the data of the oceanic oxygen isotopes record and the ice cores reveal is a long series of interactions with Saturn. Some of the interactions are of short duration, all are sporadically weaker or stronger, with long periods of thousands of years where nothing happened. The only certainty is that the hominids of the northern hemisphere were repeatedly and (in geological time spans) unremittingly exposed to bursts of plasma.
There ought to be a coincidence between the 'evolving' hominids (or speciation, as I have pointed out in the previous chapter) and the plasma strikes of the last three million years, or, as our only evidence of the plasma strikes, the glaciations. The following chart compares hominids and estimates of glaciation. The table is based on an illustrator's interpretation, done for a popular book, with the various species fading in and out as bar graphs. I'm sure the creation of the chart was supervised and critiqued by 'experts' (Meave Leaky was involved in some of the editing), and is probably as close to actuality as we can expect given the lack of solid data and the imprecision of date ranges.
What struck me, perhaps from the perspective of the bias of my thesis, was that the data of first appearances and extinctions of hominids appear in clumps, so that the appearance and demise of various species happen at roughly the same time period (although often with a lag of 50,000 to 200,000 years).

A.afarensis------------------------ --A.africanus------------------ -Aa----- -Hr------- -Ab--------- -Ha------- -Ar---- -He----------------- -Hh- -Hn- Hs 6..-..-..-..5..-..-..-..4..-..-..-..3..-..-..-..2..-..-..-..1..-..-..-..0 - millions of years ago - xxxxx?x?x?x.x.x?x?x?x.x.x.xxxx.xx. x?x?x -- uncertain glaciation x.x.x -- sporadic glaciation xxxxx -- persistent glaciation Australopithecus Homo Aa -- A.aethiopicus Hr -- H.rudolfensis Ab -- A.boisei Ha -- H.habilis Ar -- A.robustus He -- H.erectus Hh -- H.heidelbergensis Hn -- H.neanderthalis Hs -- H.sapiens -- from Robin McKie "The Dawn of Man" (2000)

I have shown both the Australopithecus and Homo hominid species above. Australopithecus (a hominid species originating 6 mya or more) has no issue after 1.2 mya. I have added the "glaciation record" as an utter simplification. I should note that the "persistent glaciation" is based on temperature records, and may not correctly represent glaciation.
Most interesting is how we are represented by only two species for a span of over 3 million years. However, as the northern glaciation of Earth starts up about 2.7 mya, Australopithecus Africanus disappears, to be replaced in a short time (geological short time) by six new species of Australopithecus and Homo hominids. [note 11]
For nearly 30 to 60 million years primates had existed throughout the world. They were very common in the northern hemisphere, including North America, 35 mya. But the species disappear from the northern regions everywhere by 30 mya and are reduced to the tropics. It looked like the primates outside of the tropics of Africa and Asia did not survive the changes at the end of the Eocene, 30 mya. At that time we see glaciation in Antarctica, extinctions, and a drop in global temperatures.
"Following the terminal Eocene extinction which took out the Dinocerata, Archeoceti, and most of the Titanotheres and Creodonts, new kinds of mammals evolved and expanded in an evolutionary radiation of many new types. These included the prehistoric ancestors of dogs, cats, rhinoceroses, and horses."
-- [http://www.palaeos.com]

Nothing much happens with the primates anywhere following the extinctions of 30 mya, except for the bipedalism of Australopithecus in Africa. That appears to have happened 6 or 5 mya. Bipedalism is important, yet paleontologists cannot figure out why this change occurred. It is a major change in the bone structure of the legs, hips, knees, and neck. The thinking initially was that bipedalism evolved to release the arms to make tools and carry food. But no tools have been found from this remote time. It would be more likely that the arms were used to carry babies, which could no longer travel on mom's hairy back. (But as usual, this confuses causes and effects.) Bipedal walking, however, is amazingly efficient compared to the knuckle walking of our predecessors. And, as the central African jungles shrank, walking needed to be done to gather food. A better suggestion has been that the bipedalism is part of a well-developed running ability. We don't sprint any better than other carnivores, but we can run forever.
Australopithecus thus appears adapted to a changing environment -- he is no longer confined to the jungles of Zaire (Congo), as his (and our) nearest relatives, the Chimpanzees, continue to be. He could become a creature of the savanna and expand his territory as environmental changes continue to occur in Africa after 5 or 4 mya.
About 2.7 mya the northern glaciation starts. Shortly thereafter (in geological time spans) we see a proliferation of Australopithecus and the first two Homo species. H.rudolfensis and A.aethiopithecus appear at about 2.5 mya, while A.africanus disappears. This is followed at 2.25 mya by the appearance of A.boisei and H.habilis.
Diversification and disappearances continued another half million years with the appearance of A.robustus and H.erectus (2 mya), and then the almost simultaneous disappearance of five out of the six species of Australopithecus and Homo at 1.75 to 1.5 mya. Only H.erectus survives.
If these extinctions had happened in the more remote past it would have entered the biological record as another mass extinction. But because these changes happened so near our time, and especially since they involve our predecessors, the tendency is to think of it as 'evolutionary changes,' where some species are fit and some are not -- in Darwin's parlance, "natural selection."
But in fact we should be impressed by the fact that, after a period of nearly 30 million years during which no 'evolution' occurs, we are suddenly confronted by the appearance of six species, all of whom, except one, disappear again after a "mere" million years. I would suspect a visit by Saturn as the speciation event, 2.7 mya, and a return visit about two million years later. That means that, for the first time in 500 million years, the orbit of Saturn had been reduced from 27 million years to a very short orbit of a million years or perhaps even much less.
Only a single species, H.erectus, carried through the long 2 million year period only to disappear in turn about 200,000 to 50,000 years ago. This is a long stretch where nothing happened, and it is thought to represent a long interglacial periods or only sporadic glaciation. Only towards the end of the 2 million year span, 500,000 years ago, do we see the appearance of other Homo species -- H.heidelbergensis, H.neanderthalensis, and later H.sapiens. Glaciation had definitely started up again in earnest by then (about 600,000 years ago).
Homo Erectus

"The suite of discovery, innovation, and increasing intelligence that gave some australopithecine a better ability to hunt, prepare food, and so on, happened perhaps around 2.5 Ma [mya] at a brain size that was typically australopithecine. That suite changed the diet toward meat, higher protein, less chewing, etc, and at some point the evolving jaw reached a morphology [more] typically [of] Homo. The larger brain [of Erectus] came later, but it perhaps came more easily because the jaw musculature was smaller."
-- Richard Cowen, at [http://www.geology.ucdavis.edu]

In the million years after H.erectus became the sole surviving hominid, he spread everywhere -- into all of Africa, Asia, Europe (apparently), and possibly into the Americas (although there is only slim evidence of this). H.erectus is our only connection to the remote past, the single link to the earlier diversity. [note 12]
Erectus was most likely naked, and had a very thick skull, like the later Neanderthals. Unlike the later Neanderthals, he did not bury his dead. He ate fruit, vegetables, and road kill; but also hunted down antelope, used fire to roast meat and burn down prairies, and made tools... well, he made one tool.
In the following, Noel Boaz, a paleontologist, reacts appropriately to this long lineage in detailing a single outstanding fact. This is from his book "Eco Homo" (1997). He is writing about H.erectus, who ranged over East Africa and Asia (into China) from 1,800,000 to maybe 200,000 years ago (50,000 ya in southeast Asia) -- a very long time, more than one and a half million years. H.erectus had a brain case (after a half million years) only a little smaller than ours, and likely was a lot smarter than dogs, apes, or chimps. But did he 'think?' Noel Boaz writes...
"The available archaeological data on Homo Erectus reveals that one type of tool was used for about a million years -- one type of stone tool, for a million years, all over Africa wherever Homo Erectus is found after 1.4 mya. For some reason it is not associated with Asian Homo Erectus."

Actually they are also found in Europe and into the western part of Asia.
"This stone tool is the Acheulean hand ax."
"It is not an easy tool to make and modern Homo Sapiens graduate students are not able to fashion a very good one even after an entire academic term of practical experience."
"The implication is that Homo Erectus would have expended a tremendous amount of time and energy -- years -- laboriously learning how to make hand axes. The technique must have been passed on by rote repetition. Hand axes stayed the same for untold generations."
"This method of cultural transmission is entirely foreign to us. Nothing that we Homo Sapiens learn and internalize stays the same. We have to change it, improve it, make it look better, modify it to fit our specific needs -- be it a chair, an art form, or our own language. But this never occurred to Homo Erectus, not in a million years."
-- Noel Boaz, "Eco Homo" 1997

Erectus made additional tools of stone, but these are at best described as crude, consisting mostly of split pebbles. The Acheulean hand axe is so unusual, and so clearly a finished product of a very specific design, that it almost looks like an import from the future. It is flat, carefully chipped (and sharp) along all edges, almond shaped with the pointed end always displaced to one side of the central axis, and consistently modeled to a shape which does not vary over an enormous span of time and geography. Since it apparently did not enter central or eastern Asia or the Americas, we would have to assume a cultural transmission originating in central Africa.
What Boaz fails to note is that the Acheulean hand axe is a very hefty device, weighing over 20 pounds, and requiring at least two hands to lift, if not two people. It is useless as a tool for working wood, preparing hides, cutting meat, or pulverizing roots. It looks more like an assault weapon for taking down hooved animals by splitting open their skulls.
Image: Acheulean hand axe of classical design. Neanderthals in Europe, after about 300,000 BC, reduce the design to look more like a oversized triangular arrow head with a rounded bottom.

William H. Calvin, in "The Ascent of Mind, Ice Age Climates and the Evolution of Intelligence" (1990), suggests that the Acheulean hand axe is indeed an assault weapon. When tossed en masse by a group of Erectus hominids at a closely packed herd of antelope at a watering hole, the axes would cause deep cuts in the skin of the animals, because the aerodynamics of the axes cause them to spin and always exit from the fall with its edge down. The eccentric point of the axe would rotate and cause a rip in the skin. Calvin writes, about experiments performed by Eileen O'Brien..
"The replica indeed spun well; that flattened shape and bilateral symmetry are very useful for setting a spin. O'Brien and her two athletic friends discovered a totally unsuspected aerodynamic property of their hand-ax replica: in mid-flight, it would turn on edge and land that way. Indeed, the hand ax would usually slice into the ground and bury its point."
"..the tendency to land edge-on matches up with a previously puzzling aspect of the archaeology: hand axes are often found in dried-up ponds and lakes and creeks, sometimes standing on edge!"

The natural reflex of an antelope, writes Calvin, to an impact by a tossed boulder, is to set out its legs on the side opposite the impact. But the reflex to a tear in the skin of its back is to flex its knees, as when the back catches on overhanging branches as happens in walking through brush. In the next moment the herd, stampeding in flight to the attack, would have trampled and killed the unbalanced animals.
This reasoning, along with other evidence, suggests group action not unlike the group hunting tactics of chimpanzees today. It requires only the coordination of underhand tosses of the group. But to lob this device at individual animals would require quite a bit more hand-eye coordination. Calvin suggests that this may be one of the evolutionary circumstances which quadrupled the brain of Erectus over the course of two million years.
Considering the failure of Erectus to evolve the design of the Acheulean hand axe, I wonder how they conceived of the design and its use in the first place. The Acheulean hand axe includes three required design elements: It has to be flat, it has to be sharpened on all edges, and it has to have an almond shape. This last item, the pointed shape at one end, is such a fine design detail, yet so logically useful (for it is the rotating point which rips the skin), that it is amazing it ever came into being.
There is, however, a fourth design element which seems to have no useful function. This is the offset of the pointed end from the central axis of the axe. Yet it is copied from one hand axe to the next on three continents over the course of a million years. Every hand axe is lopsided in design, and they all copy from each other. I will try to answer this question further below.
In the African Great Rift Valley, at a site known as Olorgesaille, in Kenya, there is a ten acre site littered with thousands of Acheulean hand axes. The materials were sorted into groups -- raw materials, finished axes, and blunted axes (apparently for resharpening) -- suggesting a factory. Raw materials were carted from 6 miles away. The factory remained in use for one million years. [note 13]
The only possible users of the site (there are no bones found) would have been Homo Erectus. We can ask the question, "Are these humans or smart animals?" They certainly are not us, and there is no indication that we, Homo Sapiens, slowly evolved from these hominids. When we do finally appear, it is complete and with astounding suddenness.
Homo Sapiens

We are preceded, however, on the European continent by Homo Neanderthalis. The later Erectus and the following Neanderthals developed the method of making cutting blades by knapping pre-shaped flint nodules. This was a development which may have derived from the Acheulean hand axe. For 300,000 years the blades are consistently the same size. Clive Gamble notes that it was the process of knapping which was culturally carried forward. The Neanderthal mind was on the technique, not on the end product. Only this explains how the blades remain the same for such an unimaginable long time, and how no variations are ever developed. Yet the Neanderthals were effective predators and scavengers.
However, for 100,000 years the Neanderthals never once dug a trench to sleep in, set up tent poles, placed rocks in a circle for a fire, pierced shells or pretty stones, carved a representative image, or buried their dead. We, H.sapiens, did. And we made art as well. [note 14]
Only during the last 20,000 years, when contact is made with the Cromagnon H.sapiens, who had invaded Europe from the east, does the repertoire of the Neanderthals start to include other cutting tools, as well as ornaments. There are even some Neanderthal burials. Not all groups interchanged ideas and materials with the Cromagnon. Some remained separate for upward to 10,000 years. Meanwhile, Cromagnon groups are painting cave walls.
About the explosive material culture, which is seen to arrive in eastern and western Europe at the beginning of what (as a result) is defined as the Upper Paleolithic (45,000 to 35,000 ya), James Shreeve, in "The Neanderthal Enigma" (1995), writes..
"New types of stone tools proliferate, taking on regional style where before there was global monotony. In Africa as well as Europe, elegant implements carved from bone, antler, and ivory appear in abundance. Change replaces stasis."
"In France new industries rush in and disappear again like Paris fashions -- the Aurignacian, the Gravettian, the Solutrean, the Magdalanian -- each with technological styles and innovations all but unknown in the period preceding it. From Spain to the Urals, site lists begin to read like proto-Sears catalogs: sewing needles, barbed projectile points, fish hooks, rope, meat-drying racks, stone lamps, temperature-controlled hearths, complex dwelling structures."

The Neanderthals had appeared in Europe a few hundred thousand years ago, preceded by 100,000 years by H.heidelbergensis. In Europe, also, H.erectus disappears after the Neanderthals show up. H.erectus remains throughout central Africa and southeast Asia to 50,000 years ago and maybe later. Later finds of skulls in Asia tend to show a combination of features of H.erectus and H.sapiens, suggesting to some paleontologists an 'evolution' of H.sapiens.
By many estimates H.erectus is our progenitor because portions of mitochondrial DNA extracted from some H.neanderthalis do not match ours. Before these determinations, H.neanderthalis was our favored grandparent. But there are problems with H.erectus also. In addition to the fact that H.erectus seemed to have had the brains of a gnat, the skull thickness does not match. Erectus and Neanderthals both have thick skulls, at one time suggested as a defense against club attacks by members of the same species; we definitely do not. Since the identities of various species shift with the identification of additional specimens, and as a result also their temporal and geographic distribution, there is no telling exactly where we (H.sapiens) came from.
By the time we are established as the single surviving species of hominid, our ancestors had passed through three bottlenecks. The first was the disappearance of primates almost everywhere some 30 mya at the end of the Eocene. The second was the disappearance of all except one of the six species of hominids about 1.5 mya.
The third was the return of Saturn 120 thousand years ago. Three of the four species of hominids in existence at that time become extinct at about 100,000 to 50,000 years ago, although H.erectus may have disappeared earlier in Europe. We seem to have speciated at about this time. Perhaps we developed a certain immunity to radiation from the continued plasma strikes. Among paleontologists the typical thinking is that we rose to prominence by wiping out the competing Neanderthals (which mainly existed only in Europe). It is certainly possible, but it is as likely that we either outbred the Neanderthals or interbred. That might also be true for any groups of H.erectus, and certainly H.erectus traits show up among modern humans. We are very closely related species, and interbreeding would most likely have produced results.
Analysis of our mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA), taken from populations throughout the world, places our genesis at about 100,000 to 200,000 years ago -- by mathematical theories of spontaneous changes -- and in East Africa, popularly known as the "out of Africa" thesis. But as noted by R. A. Fonda, one among many,
"The putative common source of all human mtDNA is probably neither chronologically nor causally related to the origin of H.sapiens."

What Fonda is saying is, that the "out of Africa" thesis does not add up. The physical barriers are immense, and the mtDNA trail (the biological inheritance relationship between humans) points to derivations from diverse and long separated H.erectus groups. Fonda suggests a genesis of H.sapiens in eastern Asia as much more likely, followed by the subsequent interbreeding with Asiatic and African H.erectus populations. Since Asiatic H.erectus can be biologically traced to Africa, the data is easily misread or misinterpreted as concluding that all modern humans came originally from Africa.
The 'moderns' (H.sapiens.sapiens) show up in Australia by 65,000 years ago (as Cromagnon types, today dated to 40,000 ya), in central Asia and the Levant by 50,000 years ago (currently estimated at 100,000 years ago), in South Africa by as long as 75,000 years ago, and in Europe by 40,000 years ago. We are likely between glaciations during this time. By the time glaciation starts up again sporadically we are established nearly everywhere. [note 15]
If H.erectus was a traveler who could spread thoughout all of Asia in a few hundred thousand years, H.sapiens, by comparison, races across the globe. After having been sighted in southeastern Asia (Australia) 65,000 years ago, H.sapiens has spread to southern Europe by 40,000 years ago, the edge of the Arctic Sea by 30,000 years ago, and to the Americas by 35,000 to 30,000 years ago. Estimates vary, but the coincidence of dates is remarkable. About the same time H.neanderthalis and H.erectus disappear (H.heidelbergensis having disappeared earlier); we are everywhere. [note 16]
How did we get there, and especially, how did we get to the Americas? Someone suggested that Native Americans could easily have walked from Alaska to Patagonia in 1000 years at a pace of a mile per day, with frequent rest stops. This assumes humans spread to Alaska from Asia via the Bering Straits. But that discounts the intermediate barriers of the glaciated mountains south of Alaska, the jungles of Central America, and the high Andes. And, also, who would want to walk a mile a day for a thousand years?
There is another route, both to Alaska as well as the entire Pacific coast of the Americas, and that is by boat. However, that notion is something almost totally unthinkable to archaeologists who contemplate today's wooly oceans and additionally hold our ancestors as inept. I'll get back to that in a following chapter, for it also involves the spread of languages. [note 17]
In the Shadow of Saturn

I suspect that Saturn was seen and experienced by humans long before the "Age of the Gods" (4200 to 3100 BC) -- in fact, for all of the 100,000 years of our existence as a species. In the following sections I wish to trace some of the earliest references to conditions in the sky found in 'creation myths.' These probably date to before 9000 BC.
Certainly by 3 million years ago (long before the existence of modern humans), Saturn had become a regular visitor, still perhaps on a wildly eccentric orbit but with a period (at that time) so much reduced as to be counted in thousands rather than millions of years. With Saturn now coursing past the orbit of Jupiter much more frequently, there was a much greater likelihood of additional adjustments to the orbit. Sooner or later Saturn would have to pass close to Jupiter. Depending on how close the two came to each other, there might be an exchange of charge, but more likely Saturn, with a mass of only one third that of Jupiter, would have its orbit altered. [note 18]
I suspect that by the time of the appearance of Cromagnon, 40,000 years ago, and probably much earlier, the period of Saturn's orbit had again been greatly reduced, possibly on the order of one year; that is, Saturn had become a captured close planet of the Sun.
If Saturn's orbit indeed had shortened, there would have again been more frequent interactions between Saturn and the inner planets, including Earth. The Earth's wildly sporadic climatic changes, strange glacial and interglacial periods, and sudden retreats of the northern glaciers over the last 120 thousand years, at times over a period as short as 20 years, seem to speak to such increased activity.
There is some cyclical regularity within the Oceanic Oxygen Isotope record. I would suspect, therefore, that some sort of orbital resonance had been achieved between Saturn and Earth, which most likely also involved Jupiter, if, as I have assumed, Jupiter was in orbit close to the Sun, that is, within one AU. Most likely the Earth had become a companion to Saturn. [note 19]
If we assume that Earth, during the Upper Paleolithic and the first few thousand years of the Neolithic (say from 40,000 BC through 9000 BC), was located on an orbit very near Saturn ('near' being measured in millions of miles) and, especially if the Earth was located alternately inside and outside the orbit of Saturn, then several things might all find an explanation -- the obsession with aurochs horns at Catal Huyuk (Çatal Hüyük) in Anatolia (ca 6000 BC) and elsewhere, the cold periods of the Upper Paleolithic, but especially the cold snap known as the Younger Dryas, 10,500 to 9,000 BC, and the oldest myths which recall a period of darkness at the very beginning of creation. [note 20]
The Darkness Before the Chaos

The oldest recollections of mankind, throughout the world, are descriptions of a lasting darkness before the advent of a chaos in the skies and before the 'creation' event. Our tendency, because of the structure of our language, is to assume that 'the darkness' represented a unique period which preceded the chaos -- first the darkness, then the chaos, then creation. It is difficult to disagree with the uniqueness of 'creation,' for too many details after 4200 BC posit this as a unique event. But it is much more difficult to justify the 'darkness' (or even the 'chaos') as being a single event. These recollections come from people who differed from us in not distinguishing between present and future, and who had little sense of chaining events together as a chronological series. And at the time when the first narratives were recorded, after 2000 BC and later, the 'darkness' was only dimly recollected. It had occurred in a period which at that time lay 7,000 years in the past, about 12,000 years before the present.
"..and darkness was on the surface of the abyss."
-- Genesis

Ancient 'mythical' records, like the Bible passage quoted above, do not record details of the darkness, so that we do not know if it was cyclical. However, we cannot assume that Earth was cast in darkness for an extended period in the remote past. If that had been the case, the Earth would have cooled and all of life would have ceased. The period of darkness has to be understood as a repeating series of events although perhaps of long durations, most likely months. This suggests that Earth would have been on an orbit such that Saturn (or Saturn and its coma) would periodically cast its shadow on Earth, occluding the Sun for months at a time. [note 21]
The shadow cast on the Earth by Saturn would depend, of course, on the vertical (up and down) location of Earth with respect to Saturn and on the distance between the two planets. It is likely that Earth and Saturn (before about 10,000 BC) would have had orbits differently inclined to the Sun (as all planets have today), but, with each close passage of Saturn, the orbit of Earth would be gravitationally adjusted to become progressively closer vertically to the orbit of Saturn, until both planets traveled in nearly identical orbits around the Sun, but separated from each other by a distance of maybe 10 million miles. If the planets were close enough to have the plasmaspheres touch and merge, the result would be an electrical repulsion countering the simultaneous gravitational attraction, and a set of orbits would form which would not be unlike the coincident orbits of the Earth and the Moon today.
Image: Coincident orbits of Saturn and Earth.

The Earth would be in the shadow of Saturn (or Saturn and its coma) for some months every year. The shadow of Saturn would have two components: a central area, called the umbra, where full darkness would be experienced, and a much larger cone of half shadow, called the penumbra. The umbra gets smaller with distance from Saturn and the cone of the penumbra gets larger. If Saturn and Earth were simply passing by each other in space, the shadow of Saturn (the umbra) would only last a short time. The penumbra, although much larger than the dark area of the umbra, might hardly be noticed. [note 22]
What this simple eclipse process does not take into consideration is the coma of Saturn probably extending more than 20 planet diameters from its center. This would in effect represent a sphere 40 times 72,000 miles, or nearly 3 million miles across -- three times the width of the Sun. It is uncertain how opaque the coma might have been, although we have some notions of the impenetrability of the coma's surface from later recollections concerning the Goose of Creation.
In combination with some sort of close orbits of Earth and Saturn, an impenetrable coma which extended 3 million miles across the sky, would certainly be capable of extended eclipses or at least a considerable diminuation of the amount of light reaching Earth from the Sun.
Additionally an eclipse of the Sun by Saturn would be different from an eclipse of the Sun by the Moon today in a number of ways. The Moon moves east across the Sun, and thus the eclipse seldom lasts longer than two hours. A solar eclipse by the Moon is seen only on a small portion of Earth, for the umbra of the Moon (at a distance of a quarter of a million miles) consists of only a small dark shadow. Saturn, ten times the width of the Earth, would cast a significantly larger shadow. With an opaque coma 40 times the diameter of Saturn, Earth would meet up with an object 360 time the width of the Earth. If the orbits of Earth and Saturn were nearly equal, the darkness or partial darkness would have lasted a much longer time. And Saturn, on an inner orbit, would move to the west (celestial west), and thus the shadow would in actuality catch up with the travel of Earth and overtake it, which would have lengthened the period of darkness.
The only way to achieve extended periods of darkness -- later to be remembered as the darkness before the chaos -- is to assume Earth had indeed become a companion planet to Saturn. The two would then travel in close proximity, with both planets moving at about the same orbital speed.
This would assume that the Earth operated equivalently to how the Moon operates with respect to the Earth. Earth and the Moon share an orbit, and as a result seem to revolve around each other. The Moon certainly is not a satellite, for it travels in the ecliptic, not at the Earth's equatorial. Such was probably the relationship between Saturn and Earth. It is a condition which could easily have been achieved. Earth would, in effect, have become a Moon to Saturn -- but, let me point out, not a satellite.
Such an orbit is shown in the diagram above. Earth would not be required to rotate around Saturn, if Earth's orbit were inclined at a different angle from the orbit of Jupiter (as the Moon is with respect to the orbit of Earth). As long as the two planets occupied approximately the same orbit (but displaced from each other), Earth would find itself for part of the year on one side or the other of Saturn. Part of the year Earth would face the Sun directly, and part of the year Saturn would fall between Earth and the Sun. The Earth would, of course, keep rotating on a daily basis. Both planets would also have the Sun at the focus (actually one of the two centers) of their orbits.
This makes the diagram of suggested orbits, shown above, somewhat problematic. For both planets to keep the Sun at one focus of their orbits, it might be suggested that Earth in effect did act like the Moon does in orbitting Earth. The simplest solution would be rotate the (eliptical) orbit of Earth so that Saturn would fall on the inside of Earth's orbit twice in every rotation of the planets around the Sun. This is of course one solution from among many, and neither orbit discussed above fulfill the implicit suggestion that the time spent in the shadow (as the "Chilam Balam" calls it) was continuous.
Image: Coincident orbits of Saturn and Earth in 2 to 1 ratio.

The shadow of Saturn -- the darkness before the chaos -- might have occurred in different seasons for hundreds of years (and would have varied with the vertical location of Earth with respect to Saturn's equator). There would have been periods when the shadow was cast during the winter months, and the effect on the climate of Earth would not have been all that adverse. But of course some hundreds of years later this might have happened during the summer months.
If, as I have suggested, the Earth lowered in moving past the equatorial region of Saturn, then the severe cold of the Younger Dryas would have been experienced sooner by hundreds of years in South America and South Africa. This is indeed the case.
The time when the Earth (at least, the northern hemisphere) seems to have fallen in the shadow of Saturn occurred in the period of ca 12,500 to 11,500 ya (uncalibrated C14 dates, 10,500 to 9,000 BC), known as the Younger Dryas, when Earth chilled extremely. It has seldom been that cold before, and never since, yet there was no glaciation during this period. This is the period which is probably the remembered "darkness before the shrouded skies," since shortly thereafter the climate improves as Earth started to slip below the equatorial level of Saturn.

Image: The plasmaspheres of Earth and Saturn touch, some time around 12,000 to 9000 BC. The extensions of the plasmasphere away from the Sun is not shown.

To be traveling in the shadow of Saturn, Earth would have to be on an orbit at or near the equatorial level of Saturn, and would have fallen also within the electrical shadow of Saturn -- the tail of Saturn's plasmasphere, directed away from the Sun. The result of being within the plasmasphere of Saturn would have been two-fold. First, Saturn would immediately make electrical contact with Earth -- a plasma stream would be established. Second, the Earth would now experience the electrical field of Saturn in full force, and start to move away from the equatorial region of Saturn, for the location of Earth near the equatorial level of Saturn would have been relatively unstable. [note 23]
The Guatemalan "Popol Vuh," a 16th century native book in western script, which was obviously derived from older sources, recalls the period of darkness and cold extensively. The complaints, for a people living in the tropical region of northern Brazil, was of darkness and cold rains. It is perhaps amazing that humans survived the 1500 years of the Younger Dryas. Large animals did not, unable to switch to different food sources, as humans would have done. It is during the Younger Dryas that most of the large herd animals of the northern and southern temperate zones went extinct. The tropics would remain relatively warmer and thus able to support plants for grazing. India and central Africa were thus less effected as a result. The loss of so many species in North America has led archaeologists to suggest an influx of humans around 10,500 BC (and during the time when the Earth was colder than it had ever been) who hunted the herds to extinction. This notion is no longer accepted as a viable theory.
The 'die-off' of the large North American animals happened progressively over this period, without any apparent evidence of cataclysmic exterminations. Parallel extinctions happen in Asia (and South America) at about the same time, and up to 2000 years earlier in Australia. The North American extinctions stand out because of the great variety of species which still existed, mostly undisturbed by humans. Small animals, marine animals, and plants survived. The 'die-off' cannot be blamed on the start of an ice age, for these had already occured many times without causing extinctions. There was no glaciation at this time.
... Moving South

The electric field of the plasmasphere of Saturn is shaped like a doughnut or an apple (as all plasmaspheres of planets with magnetic fields are), with distinct dimples above and below the magnetic poles, whereas the gravitational field is spherical. The electrical field experienced within the plasmasphere would be graded so that there would be less repulsion at a level further below (or above) the equator of the plasmasphere of Saturn, due to the pinching effect of Saturn's magnetic poles -- the 'hole' region of the doughnut. The plasmasphere of Saturn would be dimpled at both magnetic poles due to the distorting influence of the magnetic field. [note 24]
Over a period of some thousands of years, Earth would slowly have moved further and further away from the position near the equator of Saturn and, as we now know, in the downward direction. By 9000 BC the Earth had dropped enough to permanently clear Saturn's shadow, as seen in the radical change in climate worldwide. Over the next 3000 years (to ca 6000 BC), Earth's orbit lowered even further and eventually rounded the bottom of the toroidal bulge of Saturn's plasmasphere.

Image: Earth travels along equipotential lines to below Saturn. An extension of the plasmasphere away from the Sun is not shown.

Earth now found itself at the edge of the dimple at the bottom of the toroid, where the electrical field diminished in the 'up' direction toward Saturn. Still gravitationally attracted, the Earth fell into the indentation of the plasmasphere below Saturn's south pole. [note 25]
That condition was reached probably about 4200 BC. The dimple below the pole of Saturn would result in a plausible balance point, so that keeping the two planets in position would not be like trying to balance two ball bearings. The Earth would have had to climb out of this depression against a surrounding increasing electric potential to be removed from below Saturn. At that point Earth was directly below the central rotational axis of Saturn.
As Earth took up a station below Saturn, the 'egg' appeared in the fluffy cloud above the north horizon of Earth. It was noted that the egg "rotated without cease." This describes the path of the egg in the sky, not its rotation about itself, which probable could not be discerned. This is an indication that the axes of Saturn and Earth had not lined up yet, or that the orbit of the Earth had not yet relocated to make the orbits of the two planets coincide.
The same ceaseless rotation is recorded for Saturn, after it lights up ca 4200 BC, in Vedic and Mexican sources. The Maya "Chilam Balam" states...
"He shall walk abroad giving the appearance of one drunk, without understanding."

The effect is better explained by suggesting that, although Earth was located directly below the pole of Saturn, the rotational axis of Earth and Saturn did not coincide. Thus from Earth's perspective, Saturn wobbled about in the sky on a daily basis. The interaction of the magnetic fields of Saturn and Earth might be sufficient to eventually rotate the spin axis of Earth to be coincident with the spin axis of Saturn. However, this apparently never happened.
The Hypsithermal

What now ensues is a truly strange situation. Earth's orbit would be entirely below Saturn's orbit, and thus below the Sun for all of Earth's year. The Sun would not be at one of the two centers of the ellipse which normally defines a planet's orbit. The northern hemisphere would have faced the Sun year-round, although the Sun was probably partially occluded by the surrounding coma of Saturn. In the northern hemisphere there would not have been the drastic changes in seasons we experience today. The climate would improve (but not everywhere). And, in fact, from about 9000 BC the Earth experiences a climatic condition known as the Hypsithermal. Warmer conditions prevailed everywhere. The Hypsithermal lasted to about 2500 BC. [note 27]
At the time of this writing I had already posited the movement of planet Earth from a location at the equatorial level of Saturn to a position below the south pole, but without a clear explanation or a chronology. But I then happened upon Charles Ginenthal's essay "The Extinction of the Mammoth" (1997) and at once realized that the evidence he presented matched my expectations for the climate on Earth during the period after Earth dropped its orbit below the Sun after 9000 BC. [note 28]
Ginenthal deals mainly with the Arctic climate, which, after 9000 BC, warmed enough that trees and grasses grew in the Arctic region and the polar lands were populated with herds of mammoth and other large animals. During the preceding ice ages, the last half million years ending by 9000 BC, the Arctic consisted of frozen ground covered at best with tundra.
There are other changes in the Earth's climate during this period, often presented as global, although they clearly are not global. The climatic changes have been studied in the context of today's condition, and thus it is assumed to represent a general warming of the whole Earth. Investigations have also mainly concentrated on the northern hemisphere and the tropics. However, all of the available data on the climate during the Hypsithermal can be accounted for by understanding that, with the sun now higher in the skies of the northern hemisphere, the 'tropic' zone had moved north. I would estimate that the tropic zone moved between 10 and 20 degrees of latitude north. Thus the Sahara received the moisture usually reserved for the tropical zone, a dry zone developed at about the level of the mediterranean and further north, and the temperate zone moved up into the sub-arctic regions. [note 29]

Image: Winter and Summer during the Hypsithermal. The south polar regions never receive sunlight. The north polar region remains in sunlight year round.

Data from the Hypsithermal period, in fact, indicates that the tropical regions of Africa and South America (the Amazon region) received between 30 and 70 percent less rain than today. However, all of the Sahara bloomed, except the far northern portion, with large lakes and flowing rivers, and was populated by a great variety of tropical animals (and humans). The period is known today as the "Green Sahara" period, starting in about 8000 BC. [note 30]
The Levant fell into the dry zone, however, and was completely depopulated for periods of hundreds of years. Southern Europe fared only a little better. Northern Europe, Asia (Siberia), and northern America (Canada) experienced a temperate climate which extended into the Arctic.
All the northern glaciers melted rapidly, except for the glaciers on high mountains. These mountain regions include all of Greenland, the Rocky Mountains in the south of Alaska and western Canada, some mountain regions in the far north of Norway, and some of the high Alps. The glacier in Antarctica did not melt, not just because Antarctica is mountainous, but because the south pole remained in almost complete darkness.
Ice Age Orbits

It was cold on Earth while in the shadow of Saturn during the 1500 years of the Younger Dryas, 10,500 to 9,000 BC, but it had been cold before, although not as severely. Although I have suggested that the prior periods of cold (and glaciation) were probably caused by the chaotic orbit of Saturn, the interactions with Jupiter should also be considered. But to simply suggest that the earlier periods of cold were due to the Earth falling in the shadow of Jupiter is not an viable solution, since falling in the shadow of Jupiter would also place Earth in the Jupiter's plasmasphere tail, resulting in a displacement of Earth to a new orbit. In fact, this is what I think happened, although why this did not happen before about 3 million years ago seems inexplicable. [note 31]
In Appendix A, "Notes on Chronology," I have listed a comparisons between calculated year lengths based on solar years (as developed in this text) and the difference between corrected C14 years and standard chronology (based on years of 365.25 days). The comparison is made to suggest that the changes in the length of the solar year (not recognized by C14 science), due to changes in the Earth's orbit, ought to be sufficient to explain the difference between the C14 dates and elapsed time.
The comparison assumes that from the present to about 4200 BC the differences can be found from a knowledge of the length of the solar year as postulated in these pages. Since this seems to be about correct, it could then be further assumed that the C14 difference for the prior period should also reflect solar years of different lengths -- different from today's assumption that the year has always been 365.25 days long.
Although I have only selected a few of the values from the C14 correction table (which currently does not extend back further than 40,000 BC), it shows the possibility that the year could have been much longer at various times before 4200 BC, with values of 300 to 400 days. (See Appendix A, "Chronology Notes," for details.)
If the orbit of Earth were elliptical, the winters could have been longer and located further from the Sun. Chances are that the Earth orbit was continuously modified over time, and on occasion abruptly. After every modification, and especially after being bounced to a larger orbit, the orbit of Earth would probably circularize again rapidly, being under the gravitational influence of the two largest planets in the Solar System, Saturn and Jupiter.
That Earth was not entirely expelled from the Solar System with the infrequent contacts is a mystery unless we keep in mind that Saturn on an elliptical orbit might have provided a constantly available source of orbital correction for Earth. Thus the cold periods of the ice ages probably do not have a single cause. They are the result of a number of long-term slowly repeating cycles and rapid changes superimposed on each other. [note 32]
Image: Greenland ice core temperatures (degrees Celcius) since 40,000 ya.

After Earth joined Saturn on an elliptical orbit (sometime around 10,000 BC), then Jupiter would have been seen periodically in the night sky, as when Earth was on the part of the orbit which took it inside the orbit of Jupiter. Jupiter would have looked like the Moon, a full lighted (or nearly so) round globe, somewhat smaller than the Moon looks today. [note 33]
... Preliminary to the Polar Model

After 9000 BC Saturn would have started to drift toward the north side of the sky, and would eventially have been seen rotating in a circle about the polar axis on a daily basis -- "revolving without cease," as more than one creation myth records. Jupiter, when it was seen in the sky, remained at the level of the ecliptic.
This model is obviously speculative. These are imagined possibilities, constrained by the laws of physics, and matched against the few pieces of data we have from the past. This model would exist entirely within the imagination, one among other cosmological postulates, if it did not lead directly to the imagery Talbott took as evidence for the Saturnian Polar model, and the prior work by Santillana and von Dechend. It also answers to the repeated depictions of horns in the early Neolithic.
Talbott's Saturnian Polar model was, as a matter of fact, largely ignored for some 20 years, mostly because no physical system seemed to answer the demands of the imagery. But since the involvement of Juergens, Grubaugh, Jueneman, Peratt, and Thornhill in the 90's, much has changed. Despite objections from some astro-physicists, a model held together by electrical conditions works to explain Talbott's imagery. That is not to say that there have not been other alternative models to account for Talbott's imagery. [note 34]
I should also point out that Anthony Peratt's investigations of petroglyphs worldwide, the results of which were presented in technical papers in 2003 and 2007, largely substantiated the positioning of Earth in the lower plasma stream of Saturn in the period a few thousand years before and after 5000 BC -- although Peratt presents this information, despite admitted discrepancies, as a massive aurora generated by the Sun. I will discuss the 'Peratt Column,' as it has become known, in the next chapter.
Meanwhile, the imagery of the polar configuration itself has remained unchallenged and the documentation has been continuously expanded with information from additional sources. The imagery worldwide stretches back in time to 7000 BC, and ultimately into the European Upper Paleolithic of 40,000 BC.
The model proposed above exhibits an elegance in line with what we expect from the movements of planets: only slow and minute changes, spread progressively over long time periods. And, in addition, it allows a reasonable approach to the sub-polar model of Talbott and resolves many issues dealing with climatic changes on Earth since 10,000 years ago. I will take up the progression of changes, as recorded by our ancestors, in the next chapter.

Endnotes

Note 1 --
The Chicxulub crater is the result of a lateral strike to the Earth (probably as a series of pulses). Saturn and Earth must have been at about the same elevation at the time of the strike. See the information by Tom Van Flandern, in an endnote of the previous chapter.
The Chicxulub strike fits the series of regular extinctions. The next extinctions would then be expected at 39 or 40 mya and at 13 or 11 mya and this actually matches the early date of 40 mya for Antarctic glaciation and recent (2007) reports of evidence that the most recent northern glaciations may have first started 11 or 9 mya. Starting dates for glaciation are not easy to determine. I have used 30 mya and 3 mya as the dates since the Antarctic and northern glaciations.
It took the dinosaurs some 10 million years to die out, as estimated by Robert Bakker.
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Note 2 --
A plasmoid is a disconnected 'spurt' of plasma, a thunderbolt traveling as a discrete object. These have been observed experimentally. The disconnection of the arc from the source is due to a lowering of the driving potential after discharge. On release the extended arc tends to condense back upon itself (while traveling) to form a shortened 'object' of a distinct shape -- a twisted body with balls and three tines at each end. The plasmoids are also known from sculptural records in antiquity (as late as Roman times), especially in relation to Jupiter, and closely resemble the shapes of the experimental laboratory discharges. Depictions of the Egyptian 'serehk' (the name symbol for a temple, a God, or a pharaoh) for the predynasic pharaoh Narmer ("catfish-chisel"), dating to 3100 BC, are obviously plasmoids, complete with a rope-twisted body (in one case), a tripartite tail, and a snout with two whiskers. Models of plasmoids, as seen by humans in later antiquity, still exist in Tibet and Japan today. The European Fleur-de-lis is a late remnant of this design, which is first depicted on coins in antiquity, although the form is one of a foreshortened plasmoid.
For Tom Flandern's comments on the Chicxulub crater, see endnotes in the previous chapter. See also [http://geoweb.princeton.edu/people/faculty/keller/] for recent geological and dating studies which suggest a 300,000 year interval between the creation of the Chickxulub Crater and the KT boundary.
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Note 3 --
The location of the magnetic pole at any specific time in the past can be triangulated from the direction in which low level magnetism of rocks point at the time the rocks cools from a molten state (as for example, lava flows). If the rocks can be dated, then a record of the dates and locations of the magnetic pole can be derived.
The magnetic pole was located in the mid Pacific in the remote past. Over an extended time period it moved north. There is also a record showing the magnetic pole traveling north in the mid-Atlantic ocean. The large displacement of the magnetic pole from the geographical pole of a planet is not unusual.
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Note 4 --
The glaciers, in historical order, are known in Europe as the Günz, Mindel, Riss, and Würm. These correspond to the German names, Weichsel, Saale, Elster, and Weybourne, and the North American names, Nebraskan, Kansas, Illinoian, and Wisconsin. This nomenclature has largely been abandonded in favor of a dating based on the Oceanic Oxygen Isotope record.
The last glaciation, the Würm, started up 70,000 to 60,000 ya. Alpine glacier records suggest that the Würm consisted of four separate glaciation periods.
The Greenland ice core data of the last 120,000 years, which tends to exaggerate temperature fluctuations, suggests 6 long periods of cold (as long as 4000 years) and a greater number of short periods (lasting less than a thousand years). Temperature estimates (the coldest month of winter) from drill cores of a bog in northern Italy mostly support this, but shows less rapid variation in terrestrial temperatures. Charts are shown below.
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Note 5 --
There is evidence of very early glaciation (2 billion years ago), some hundreds of million years (900 to 650 mya) before the Cambrian, during the Ordovician (450 mya), and at the end of the Permian (250 mya).
The last glaciation of 3 mya may have started earlier than 2.7 mya. Mark Maslin and Jonathan Adams, in "The Onset of Northern Hemisphere Glaciation during the Tertiary and Quaternary" (Environmental Sciences Division, Oak Ridge National Laboratory, 1998), report..
"The earliest recorded glaciation in the Northern Hemisphere is between 10 and 6 Ma [mya] during the late Miocene. [references deleted] This involved a significant buildup of ice on Southern Greenland. However, the process did not gain much momentum until 3.5-3 Ma [mya], when the Greenland ice sheet expanded to include Northern Greenland."

The last extensive (and officially recognized) European glaciation stopped around 12,000 ya (10,000 BC) and had consisted of a period of nearly 2000 years when the climate became as cold as it had been in 35,000 years. But from about 10,500 BC the mean temperature had started to increase rapidly (except for one extreem cold period, the Younger Dryas) and by 9,500 BC the glacier in Europe had receded almost completely. By this time farming had been taken up on the highlands of Anatolia and Iran, while hunting continued as the mainstay in Europe and the Levant.
There is currently still no consensus on the dates, ranges, or the number of glaciations over the last 3 million years. The earliest glaciers may have completely melted before the most 'recent' glaciations appeared, dating roughly to after about 60,000 ya.
"The problem is that glaciers act like giant erasers. Each advance eradicates almost all traces of what's come before."
-- Wallace S. Broecker "Glaciers That Speak in Tongues and other tales of global warming" (2001) Natural History

Three or four of the recent glaciations have been identified, covering parts of northwestern Europe, eastern North America, and central Canada. In each case the areas covered by ice are roughly circular and cover an area of about 25 to 30 degrees radius of the sphere of the Earth.
The earliest of these recent glaciations, the European glacier, seems to be centered west of Norway. Two later glaciations are centered on the sea west of Greenland near Baffin Island and at Hudson Bay. The very last glaciation was located in the north Atlantic east of Greenland and south of Iceland. In all instances, all or part of Greenland would fall within about a 30 degree radius of the center points.
Because the diameter of the glaciations coincides with what we would expect if glaciation were centered on the north pole, that is, at the center of the Arctic Circle of 23.5 degrees radius, the locations of the centerpoints these glaciations are often held as evidence that the poles shifted. But this is not required at all. Glaciation is related to the magnetic pole, not to the geographic pole.
The centerpoints of the glaciations follow the moving location of the north magnetic pole. The north magnetic pole moves in large circles over long time periods and, since the 16th century, has moved southwest from a location near Spitsbergen (west of Norway), through the Atlantic, and across Greenland. It is currently moving north from a location west of Baffin Bay (and thus west of Greenland).
We have additional clear evidence of the fact that the glaciers have nothing to do with the north pole. The portion of Greenland closest to the north pole was never glaciated, while the remainder of Greenland is covered with 6000 feet of ice. The movement of the Greenland glacier is towards the north as well as the south.
We also have the evidence of the limited extent and the peculiar pattern of glaciation, both in Europe and the Americas. It used to be held that the last European glaciation (ending about 10,000 BC) had extended south from the north pole over Europe (where evidence was found) and throughout Russia and Siberia (where no geologist had ever been). But today we know better. Siberia and almost all of Russia have never been glaciated. The limit of the European glacier, the Wurm, extended across France, ran northeast through Central Europe, and met the Arctic Sea in northwestern Russia. It is part of a circle which certainly does not have the north pole as its center.
The American Illinois glacier likewise followed a circular pattern, covering the region from New York State through Illinois or Wisconsin and most of eastern Canada, but none of the western states, not even northern Alaska, and certainly not the north pole. (There is an exception in that increased moisture is also responsible for mountain glaciation -- as in the Rocky Mountains south of Alaska which often look to be part of a traditional 'polar' glacier.) The Wisconsin glacier also deposited snow in a circular pattern, further west than the Illionoian, and somewhat further north, to include most of western Canada.
It has been suggested that most of Russia and all of Siberia was never glaciated because the eastward moving air masses had already discharged the moisture they received over the Atlantic on the west coast of Europe. But the opposite seems to be true for the Americas. It is the east of North America which was glaciated, not the far west, except for mountainous terrain. Yet North America also experiences predominantly eastward moving air masses.
Lastly, in southern Europe, between 40,000 and 10,000 years ago, you see a compression of climatic zones, with a sub-arctic zone only a few hundred miles away from a sub-tropical zone. It is the strange mix of sub-arctic and tropical animals which is often simultaneously represented in the 300 painted caves in southern France and Spain (dated 30,000 to 10,000 BC). This is not evidence of a frozen world. It looks instead like a moderate, if not warm, climate. Knowing today that the European 'polar' glacier centered on some location off the coast of Norway, we can understand how it was that a temperate zone extended diagonally east and north through Eastern Europe and into Asia to reach almost to within the Arctic circle. Archaeological investigation in Siberia is spotty because it is cold there today, but hunting camps have been found in northeastern Siberia, dating to 30,000 BC, and close enough to the Bering Straits to suggest that fishermen and hunters could have easily expanded into the Americas long ago. Log cabin villages have been found north of Anchorage, Alaska, and within the Polar Circle.
During the time of the last glaciation, the climate was much milder than imagined by geologists, and mankind thrived and reached every continent. Only US archaeologists still hold that the American Indians arrived after 10,500 BC by walking across the Bering Straits while ocean waters were locked up in massive glaciation on a global scale. See the book by Vine Delorian "Red Earth, White Lies" (1995) where he makes a clear case for why a 10,500 BC 'invasion' of the Americas by Asiatics is unlikely, but also especially why the notion is held with such tenacity in the USA. Virtually everywhere else throughout the world it is acknowledged that the Americas were occupied, although sparsely, by 30,000 BC. A more recent book by Charles Mann, "1491, New Revelations of the Americas before Columbus" (2006), also presents evidence against the '10,500 BC invasion.'
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Note 6 --
My original take on the Greenland ice core data followed the critique of the followers of Velikovsky, but their objections cannot be sustained. See, for example, Charles Ginenthal "Ice Core Evidence" in 'The Velikovskian' (1995?). This article was heavily disputed by Sean Mewhinney, in "Minds in Ablation" (1998). I cannot support either side of the arguments.
Alfred de Grazia wrote, in "The Burning of Troy" (1984), with respect to the Greenland ice cores..
"There is a certain grim quality to the confrontation of uniformitarians and catastrophists. The antagonists prowl in the jungle of natural history seeking the one definitive test that will finally discomfit and silence the other."

That has been the case for the Greenland ice cores. And nothing has been proven -- we could almost say, either way.
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Note 7 --
The more recent ice core temperature records are continuous through today, as determined, for example, by traces of lead, which represents Bronze Age smelting practices, the Industrial Revolution of the 18th century, and the use of leaded gasoline in the 20th century. With the introduction of unleaded gasolines the lead traces have dropped.
On the 'signature' of the Thera explosion, Peter James, author of "Centuries of Darkness" (1991), writes..
"We have always remained sceptical of the case for a high date for Thera [the 16th century BC volcanic explosion], suspecting that the whole thing would eventually fall through. Unfortunately, our position recently led an otherwise favourable reviewer to remark that we took a "sceptical view of the new scientific dating techniques" (Gerding 1997/8, 160), which is far from the truth. Proxy dating is not to be confused with the scientific techniques themselves."
"As it happens, we have now been vindicated. When further work was published on the Greenland ice-cores the real reason why the 1620s date looked so conspicuous became clear. Due to budgetary constraints, a thorough search measuring the sulphuric acid from each year had never been undertaken! When this was done, the 1620s BC 'event' ceased to be special. Similar peaks of sulphuric acid are now known to exist in the 16th, 15th, 14th and 13th centuries (Zielinski et al. 1994)! Any of these (for example those from the ice-core years 1594, 1454, 1327 and 1284) might represent the Thera eruption. Worse still, small particles of volcanic ejecta have now been found in one of the very ice-levels from Greenland. Analysis has shown that their chemical composition does not match that of Thera (Zielinski & Germani 1998a). Clearly miffed, Manning (1998) published a "correction" to the geologists' conclusions, arguing that they had misinterpreted their data and that the particles came from Thera after all. The geologists' response (Zielinksi & Germani 1998b) stated, in as many words, that Manning was out of his depth and simply did not understand the methods involved."

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Note 8 --
Over the last 250,000 years there were some 17 reversals of the temperature, some representing very short jogs (and thus 8 interglacial periods followed by glacial periods). This represents my inspection of a published chart. Clive Gamble (below) counts 8 complete interglacial/glacial cycles since 787,000 ya, but counts the last five periods since 127,000 ya as one. Other published results have noted 24 interstadials since ca 120,000 ya.
Some of the coldest temperatures are recorded at about 18,000 to 10,000 years ago, and represent a slow gradual decline from a warmer period 120,000 years ago, which followed another cold period of 200,000 to 130,000 years ago (186,000 to 127,000 ya, per Gamble, below).
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Note 9 --
Tables of chronological correlations are shown by Clive Gamble, in "The Palaeolithic Societies of Europe" (1999). These include Oxygen-16 and Oxygen-18 ratios from a Pacific Ocean Core, to 787,000 ya (page 103); another oceanic isotope core, to 350,000 ya, presented as the ratio of ice and ocean levels (page 185); and Greenland ice core and a pollen record (an Italian bog), to 80,000 ya, presented as mean (actually the mid-winter mean) temperatures of the pollen site and the ice core, along with ratios for tree and grass pollen (page 187). Reduced versions of these are shown below, with the temperature ordinate flipped to show temperature increasing to the top. Note that the units of the abscissa cannot be compared.
Image: Oxygen-16 and Oxygen-18 ratios from the Pacific Ocean Core, shown as representing oceanic water temperature, from 787,000 ya to the present. After Gamble (103).

Image: Oxygen-16 and Oxygen-18 ratios from an Oceanic Core, shown as representing ocean and ice cap levels (equivalent to oceanic temperature), from 340,000 ya to the present. After Gamble (185).

Image: Upper chart: Temperature of the coldest month of an Italian bog. Lower chart: Ice Core temperature; From 80,000 ya to the present. The Heinrich events are marked. After Gamble (186).

Gamble notes the chaotic nature of the records, and comments on the fact that there is, as yet, little agreement among researchers on absolute dates, or, for that matter, the mechanism which gave rise to the repeated cycles of glacial and interglacial periods.
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Note 10 --
Some of the interglacial periods listed for England do not match Oceanic Oxygen Isotope records which are suggested to represent worldwide temperatures.
The existence of Homo erectus in Europe is not well established. Erectus is today held to have a genesis in Africa. At an earlier time he was assumed to have first shown up in southeast Asia and in China.
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Note 11 --
I have radically abbreviated the whole course of hominid fossils. If you are interested in more details, look at the following two recent books (plus Gamble, above) which describe the developmemt of paleoanthropology and archaeology of the Paleolithic.
Ian Tattersall, in "The Fossil Trail" (1995), describes the workings of the discipline from the perspective of an insider. He has coauthered articles with Niles Eldredge (who developed the concept of 'puctuated equilibrium' with Stephen Gould). Especially interesting are the details of how the researchers remained stuck with received wisdom, and only slowly adopt new concepts.
James Shreeve, in "The Neandertal Enigma" (1995), spends more time on the European and Middle Eastern Neanderthal fossils. As a science reporter, his book is eminently readable, but as inconclusive as Tattersall's. Nothing really is conclusively resolved, yet all the data is presented, generally from discussions with the researchers at the source sites. Only in the last two chapters does he attempt a resolution, but it is entirely based on applying a contemporary perspective to the remote past.
What will strike you, in both books, is, first, that far ranging conclusions are based on enormously sparse data, and, second, that the conclusions which are reached are strongly imbedded in contemporary philosophical constructs. Over the past century these last have included, for example, the belief that brain volume related to advanced modernity, that there is some innate push toward progress (read, "us") in the changes of fossil forms over time, that only one species of 'humans' would have existed at any one time over the last 5 or 6 million years, that all changes in body structure were gradual, that is, evolutionary, and that our forebears were like us in the many guessed-at aspects of behaviour. All of these notions, as these two books point out, are baseless or wrong.
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Note 12 --
Clive Gamble notes that hominids (H.erectus) did not invade Europe until after 500,000 BC, and suggests a combination of the prior existence of large African predators and a very variable climate as responsible for their absence. The climate was the result of repeated extensive glaciation in northwestern Europe. The cats disappeared after a half mya, but the variability of the climate in western Europe, compared to the rest of the world, did not improve.
In western Europe H.heidelbergensis appears after 500,000 BC, followed in about 300,000 BC by H.neanderthalensis. Both of these are indigenous to Europe. H.sapiens (Cromagnon) is a foreigner who invades western Europe after 40,000 or 50,000 BC from the east.
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Note 13 --
Information on the Olorgesaille site is related by Bill Bryson in "A Short History of Nearly Everything" (2004)
Every Acheulean hand axe looks like every other Acheulean hand axe, although there is some variation in overall size. Because of the consistent shape, it has been suggested by some people (I cannot source) that these were religious objects.
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Note 14 --
The 300,000 year range includes H.heidelbergensis and signs of H.erectus. H.neanderthalis, as a fossil of distinct morphology, dates from 100,000 to 150,000 ya. The date range is from Gamble, who does not distinguish between the three subspecies.
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Note 15 --
We are H.sapiens.sapiens. Erectus is officialy H.sapiens.erectus; Neanderthal is H.sapiens.neanderthalis.
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Note 16 --
For the more recent speciation date of H.sapiens, see Ronald A. Fonda in "Age and Origins of the Human Species" Mankind Quarterly (2000). Other pages at [http://www.rafonda.com/] expand on this. The studies border on Eurocentrism. Throughout his writings, Fonda identifies the primary H.sapiens as "Eurasians," despite definitive differences between the two groups.
Fonda suggests northeast Asia for the location of the speciation event. He also suggests interbreeding with H.erectus in southeast Asia and Africa. He shows that the chromosomes of the population (of current humans) in these last two regions are further apart than any other two human groups. He suggest that this is due to the million year separation of H.erectus in southeast Asia from its ancestors in Africa. Physical characteristics of Erectus show up among H.sapiens, as, for example, in the thick skulls of Australian Aborigines.
If the magnetic pole, where a plasma arc from Saturn would touch down, rotated around Greenland, as it seems to have done over the last 60,000 years, then it would have been likely for H.sapiens to have speciated (and in a number of varieties) in northeastern Asia or North America. But North America was unpopulated 60,000 years ago.
The dates of the appearance of H.sapiens.sapiens suggest movement from east or northeast Asia in the direction south and west into western Asia, Europe, and Africa. The Americas may have been populated fairly early from east Asia and Africa may have been populated (invaded) at nearly the same dates as Europe. Along with the early 'archaic' H.sapiens in South Africa (at 100,000 and 75,000 years ago), the dates suggest travel by boat along the east and west coasts of Asia, the east coast of Africa, and the west coast of the Americas.
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Note 17 --
The concept of the ice-free corridor between the Canadian Rockies and the Wisconsin glacier which covered much of Canada, which would form a route of entry between Alaska and the northwestern states of the US, has been rethought. "Even when the ice-free corridor existed it was utterly inhospitable," writes Charles Mann, in "1491, New Revelations of the Americas before Columbus" (2005). He also reports that the parallel concept of people streaming through the corridor as big game hunters and the extermination of all the large animals of North America (known as the "Overkill Hypothesis"), has been demolished by paleontologists. Most of the animals disappeared before any sign of humans. Mann quotes Knut Fladmark of Simon Fraser University, as providing an alternative for the population of the Americas, based on migration by (fishing) boats from the northeastern coasts of Asia to the northwestern coasts of Alaska and North America..
"Even primitive boats could traverse the entire Pacific coast of North and South America in less than 10-15 years."

Mann adds..
"Native Americans may have been in the Americas for twenty thousand or even thirty thousand years. .. If [the archaeological date of] Monte Verde [in Chile] is correct, as most believe, people were thriving from Alaska to Chile while much of northern Europe was still empty of mankind and its works."

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Note 18 --
From the breakup age of the chondrite meteorites 3.2 mya, it might be suggested that a near collision between Saturn and an earlier Solar System planet ("Krypton") may have radically altered the orbit of Saturn 3 mya. Three million years (or some large fraction of that) is certainly enough time to round an orbit under the influence of the Sun and the nearby planet Jupiter.
Chondrites meteorites make up the largest percentage of fallen asteroids (meteorites). A chondrite is an inclusion of bubbles of the minerals olivine and pyroxene within the main body of the meteorite, looking rather like raisins in a muffin. Chondrites do not occur on Earth.
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Note 19 --
In Appendix B, "Celestial Mechanics," I have taken data from asteroid belt gaps and suggested that Jupiter was in orbit around the Sun at 0.7 AU.
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Note 20 --
I suspect that the painted aurochs of the decorated caves of France and Spain (and other locations) have nothing to do with images of crescents seen in the sky in remote antiquity. See the following chapter for more.
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Note 21 --
An exception to the lack of information on the possible cyclical nature of periods of darkness in the remote past is a Christianized version of the "creation of the world" found in Book 11 of the Maya "Books of the Chilam Balam of Chumayel" of the 16th century AD. The "Chilam Balam" needs to be taken seriously, for the descriptions of remote antiquity closely matches both the mechanics and the chronology developed in these pages, which I only discovered after completion of most of this text. Perhaps it was the Mesoamerican obsession with cataloging events and a culture which remained uniform until the invasion of the Spanish, which allowed these records to be maintained.
The Chilam Balam proposes that there had been thirteen periods of 400 years of an "endless night" before the first creation -- 5200 years. This is, of course, much too long, since the Younger Dryas period (10,500 BC to 9,000 BC), which the "endless nights" probably have reference to, only lasted about 1500 years. More likely the 13 periods of 400 days is a poetic device. See Chapter 17, "The Olmec Record of the Past," where '13 Baktuns of 400 years' is clearly meant to poetically signify a full rotation of the 5200 year Maya calendar. One period of 5200 years would take history back from 3147 BC (my estimate of the end of the "Age of the Gods") to 8347 BC, only roughly matching the end of the period of darkness, that is, the end of the Younger Dryas (9,000 BC).
This may be a complete coincidence. The Younger Dryas effected different areas of the world unequally and out of sync. South America cooled far too early to match the supposed influx of meltwaters from the north American glacier into the north Atlantic, which today is held as the cause for the cooling in northern Europe. If, as I had assumed earlier, the Earth "fell" into the shadow of Saturn, then the southern hemisphere would, in fact, enter the shadow first.
In fact, the "collapse of the Gulf Stream," due to the supposed influx of North American meltwaters, is today dated to about 6200 BC, and lasted a thousand years, thus to 5200 BC. This clearly is well after the end of the Younger Dryas. It more likely represents a large tidal system rotating around Earth in the North Atlantic and North Pacific as Earth started to draw closer to Saturn, but still positioned off center from the south pole of Saturn. This could have disrupted the northern end of the Gulf Stream. A thousand years later it was over; Earth had repositioned to more or less directly below Saturn, although I have identified this as 5800 BC.
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Note 22 --
If the Earth and Saturn were on independent orbits which simply passed each other, the darkness or semi-darkness would not have lasted very long. As long as the two planets are passing each other, even on orbits placed close together, the eclipse would not extend over more than a few days.
It is instructive to find the effect of the passage of Saturn between the Sun and the Earth. I will present a case illustrated by the following diagrams.
Image: Umbra and penumbra of Saturn. Showing location of the angle of the penumbra.

As a sample calculation, let Earth be placed at one AU (as it is today), with Saturn in an orbit of 0.9 AU, thus still 9.3 million miles away. We need to know the angle of the penumbra shadow, so that we can find what portion of the orbit of Earth would be occluded. In the diagram above, "a" and "b" can be found from the ratio of the diameters of the Sun and Saturn (the two triangles are complimentary). "b" is 1/13 of the total distance between the Sun and Saturn.
Image: Shadow of Saturn falling on the orbit of Earth.

For various distances ("a" plus "b") between the Sun and Saturn the angle of the cone of the penumbra can be found from the arctangent, angle = arctangent((13*72000) / (a+b)). For a location of 0.9 AU (a+b) this is .011 radians, approximately 0.64 degrees.
The width of the shadow of the cone of the penumbra which falls on the orbit of Earth can be found from the tangent of the angle (the apex of which is located 1/13th of 0.9 AU beyond Saturn)..
width = (0.10 + 0.9/13) * AU * sin(0.64/deg) / cos(0.64/deg)
Using 149,750,000 km for an AU, this results in a penumbra which stretches across 283,000 km of the Earth's orbit.
The orbital speed of Earth is 29.8 km/sec. The orbital speed of Saturn at 0.9 AU can be found from Kepler's third law, (T{Saturn} / T{Earth})^2 = (r{Saturn} / r{Earth})^3, as 31.4 km/sec. The time for the transit of the penumbra of Saturn past Earth can be found from t * 31.4 = t * 29.8 + 'width'. This turns out to 176,800 seconds, or 49 hours.
The effect of a closer distance can be computed. Again, as above, Earth is placed at 1 AU, but now Saturn is placed at 0.99 AU, thus still separated from Earth by 0.01 AU, 930,000 miles. The angle of the penumbra changes a little, to 0.58 degrees, angle = arctangent((13*72000) / (a+b)), where (a+b) is 0.99 AU.
The width of the shadow falling on Earth's orbit decreases because Earth is closer to Saturn, width = (0.01 + 0.99/13) * AU * sin(0.58/deg) / cos(0.58/deg), to 130,000 km. However, the transit time is longer, because Earth and Saturn would be traveling at nearly the same speed. Saturn now moves at 29.96 km/sec. The transit time thus now is 130,000 / (29.96 - 29.8), 812,000 seconds or 9 days. The separation distance is still nearly a million miles (930,000 mi).
Neither of these would qualify as periods of extended darkness.
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Note 23 --
It is unstable because the electrical field and the gravitational field are not linearly related. Additionally, during every period of darkness, Earth would be subjected to completely different electric field conditions in Saturn's plasmasphere tail extending away from the Sun.
Velikovsky had suggested that Earth was a satellite of Saturn at some time in the past, before 6000 or 10,000 BC. Cardona at one time speculated that the Earth might have been in a close orbit about Saturn, that is, an orbit within one or two million miles from Saturn, and phase-locked to Saturn so that the same side of Earth would always face Saturn.
Cardona required a close orbit to develop a theory that Earth could be kept warm by the radiation of Saturn instead of the Sun. This would probably be so if Earth were to be located within the coma of Saturn and Saturn were radiating in the red region of the spectrum of visible light. The phase-lock is not required, but happens to be the condition of all the equatorial satellites of all the planets. Mercury exhibits this behaviour with respect to the Sun.
For the 'moon of Saturn' model of this text, I would initially suggest a distance from Saturn of perhaps 10 million miles, but if Earth was at that time within the plasmasphere of Saturn, it might be much less. To be captured into a satellite orbit is extremely unlikely, since the captured body would have to radically change its speed and direction. Earth thus probably remained on an independent orbit, paralleling the movement of Saturn around the Sun.
A periodic Moon-like circling of Saturn would guarantee that Earth would go into shadow on a 'monthly' basis. But we do not know how long the 'month' might have been. The 'falling into the shadow' cannot be compared to the current Earth and Moon system, for the Moon travels most of the year either far above or below the Earth, thus avoiding Earth's shadow. Below is an estimate for a four month shadow period (thus one-third of a year) for a single revolution about Saturn over the course of a Saturnian year.
As a matter of convenience I will use today's values of a year and the current orbit of Earth, and circular orbits. The proportionality of the results remains the same. We are still talking about a third of a year, whatever the year might actually be, and separation distances well within an order of magnitude of what they would be the two planets were located closer to the Sun.
To have a shadow of Saturn fall on Earth for an extended period of perhaps 4 months, we would need to have Earth experience a transit of about ten million seconds -- 4*30*24*60*60 = 10,368,000 seconds. This suggests a separation of Saturn and Earth which might well be under a million miles. At such a lesser separation distance the width of Saturn's shadow on the orbit of Earth will start to approach the width of Saturn as a limit. Thus some things need not be computed: Saturn's diameter of 72,000 miles could be used as the width of the shadow.
But a width of 72,000 miles for the occluding object is hardly likely. We have to account for the coma of Saturn also. I'll here suggest that Earth experienced the whole of Saturn's plasmasphere as the form which blocked the Sun, using a most conservative estimate of twenty planet diameters -- 20*72,000 = 1,440,000 miles.
Using this measure for an impenetrable coma to block the Sun, the difference in speed v{Saturn} - v{Earth} would be, converting mi to km, (1440000/mi) / (10 exp 7) = 0.23188 km/sec.
For Earth I will use an orbital speed based on an identical calculation as will be used for Saturn, (2*pi*AU/mi) / (365.24*24*60*60) = 29.818 km/sec. (The current mean orbital velocity of Earth is 29.78 km/sec.) The orbital speed of Saturn would have to be 29.818 + 0.23188 = 30.04988 km/sec.
Based on (2*pi*0.99851*AU/mi) / (sqrt((0.99851)^3)*365.24*24*60*60) = 30.0426, where sqrt((0.99851)^3) is from Kepler's third law (and using the Earth's orbital radius and period at a unit radius and unit measure), this represents a separation from Earth of 0.0149 AU = 1,385,700 miles.
My estimate of the separation distance for the date of 3147 BC, at the end of the "Age of the Gods," is 2.83 million miles (below Saturn). An estimate based on the first use of the "White Crown" image of Egypt, is a placement of Earth at 2.75 million miles below Saturn. Both of these are developed in Appendix B, "The Celestial Mechanics." The estimate of 1,385,700 miles at the equatorial level is short of my other estimates of 2.8 and 2.7 million miles at a subpolar location, but definitely of the same order of magnitude.
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Note 24 --
Although planets are spheres, the electrical field away from the surface is defined by the exterior shape of the coma, the plasmasphere, and will be doughnut-shaped if the planet has a magnetic field. The electrical field gradient within the plasmasphere is determined by the distance between the surface of the planet and the double layer at the boundary of the plasmasphere. The surface of the planet and the double layer are both at a constant electrical potential; the gradient is the voltage difference divided by the separation distance. Of course this is modified by the potential of Earth if it were within Saturn's plasmasphere, and modified also by the Earth's magnetic field. The Earth, in fact, might be contained within a separate plasmasphere. In a simplified reduction of this complex situation to an electrostatic model, the Earth would move down from the equatorial location of Saturn because this would allow it to get closer gravitationally without increasing the electrical repulsion significantly.
The coma of a comet is a sphere because comets do not have a magnetic fields. The comas of both planets and comets have a 'tail' pointing away from the Sun because the electrical field of the Sun is distorted in that direction by the electrical field of the planet or comet -- in effect forming an electrical shadow.
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Note 25 --
The conservative estimate of the distance from Saturn to the edge of its plasmasphere, 20 planet diameters, would be 1.4 million miles. Since Saturn had come in from remote outer space, and would not be likely to discharge its surplus charge even in the next 1000 years, it is likely that in actuality the plasmasphere was much larger, and even an estimate of 8,000,000 miles does not seen preposterous.
Since the earth was at the local potential within the Sun's electric field, the first, most likely, and non-violent interaction between Saturn and Earth would have been at this location. (A violent interaction would have repulsed Earth away from the Sun.) Since the charge of a planet does not change radically in short, or relatively short, time spans, it is likely that Earth, in it's progress to a position below the south pole of Saturn, would remain at about this distance, which would only decrease as the dimple below the pole was reached. Thus it might be suggested that Earth eventually was separated by half or one fourth of that distance -- 2 to 4 million miles.
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Note 27 --
During the time when Earth found itself periodically in the shadow of Saturn, the Earth was probably some 10 million miles further from the Sun during the time of the darkness, and closer by as much during the periods of normally lighted days. Although this seems to argue for a case of extremes in seasons, it does not. The seasons of the Earth are determined primarily by the inclination of the spin axis, not the distance from the Sun. Today the Earth is 5 million miles closer to the Sun during winter in the northern hemisphere than in the summer.
The extension of the Hypsithermal to 2500 BC (other suggestions today are for 2000 BC) might suggests that, after the polar alignment broke up in 3147 BC, it took Earth about 600 years to rectify its orbit around the Sun so that the Sun would again be one of the nodal points of the ellipse of the orbit. But that is unlikely. As soon as Earth was released from Saturn it would have corrected its orbit to have the Sun again at the center.
The mild climate which continued after 3147 BC was due in part to the fact that the climatic zones would take some hundreds of years to revert to earlier conditions of vegetation and fauna. What is more interesting is the recollections of the "Age of the Gods" as a time without seasons, which is nearly correct. The seasons were immediately felt in the first year after 3147 BC.
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Note 28 --
See Charles Ginenthal, "The Extinction of the Mammoth" (The Velikovskian, V3, No 2 and 3, 1997, available as a reprint), which lists a compendium of sources on the effect of the Hypsithermal in the subarctic regions. Ginenthal, however, is out to prove the extermination of the mammoth in Siberia in conformity to Velikovsky's claim that this happened, and happened only once, in 1500 BC. The evidence is thus selective, and in places Ginenthal is more interested in disproving established data, as, for example, in bringing in evidence of discrepancies in C14 dates.
Ginenthal writes about glacial till deposited in the north Atlantic, called Heinrich layers. These are identified as debris carried out to sea by land glaciers skidding into the ocean, and may represent melting conditions. (Glaciers melt from the bottom.) Ginenthal asks, "... why are there no such layers [of deposited continental debris] in the oceans in the southern hemisphere closer to Antarctica?"
He answered his question with, "The ancient ice cap in Antarctica did not exist at this time." But in fact, the Antarctic glacier existed, and there is no evidence that the Antarctic glacier ever melted (since 120,000 ya). The south pole was in almost total darkness during the Hypsithermal, and thus we should not expect glacial melting. Additionally, the most recent Heinrich layer in the north Atlantic dates from about 15,000 ya, well before the start of the Hypsithermal.
The mammoth, and other large grazers, including dozens of species of elephants, rhinoceros, giant beaver, and billions of trees were destroyed in 3147 BC, when the polar high tide swept inland and rolled broken carcasses and splintered trees back to the Arctic ocean basin. The mammoth herds re-established themselves over the next two thousand years, as did the plants, for the climate had not degraded all that much. There was a change in climate near 2500 or 2000 BC, when the Hypsithermal ended and the effect of the long Arctic night was felt again. This may have been the effect of the interaction with Venus in 2349 BC, when the Earth's orbit enlarged. But the final change in the climate of Siberia -- a return of frozen ground and a cover of tundra -- happened in 1492 BC, when the mammoth herds were swept off the land by immense hurricane winds. At this time the Earth's orbit became some 20 percent larger, a value close to what we experience today.
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Note 29 --
On the basis of orbital considerations, I had estimated 10 or 20 degrees for the northern migration of climatic zones. Ginenthal estimates 13 degrees based on climatological considerations. He presents this in terms of the rotational axis of Earth being inclined only 9 or 10 degrees to the orbital plane of Earth, rather than the 23.5 degrees experienced today. The two estimates are equivalent except that, under my proposal, the Arctic land region would have long summers of continuous daylight and experience little if any of the dark Arctic winter. Under Ginenthal's proposal the south pole would also have been lit by the Sun. Under my proposal the Antarctic region would remain completely in the dark for 6000 years. Of southern land regions, only the tip of South America would experience this continuous darkness.
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Note 30 --
The period is also known as the Holocene wet phase, which allowed occupation of the desert area west of the Nile valley after 9300 BC, a region where no-one had lived for a thousand years. The Nile valey itself was unoccupied from about 9000 BC to 6000 BC. It has been suggested that the Nile was reduced to a trickle during this time, the result of less rain falling in central Africa and Ethiopia. The Nile normally fills a very deep and narrow gorge, apparently created 15 million years earlier, when the Mediterranean had dried up.
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Note 31 --
If the glaciation can be blamed on the entry of Saturn into the domain of the inner planets, Saturn might also be blamed for the chaotic changes in orbits during the last three million years.
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Note 32 --
I have seen claims by oceanographers that a Fourier Analysis of the oceanic core data accurately reflects the Milankovich climatic cycles -- the climatic response of the Earth to the inclination of the axis, the precession of the polar axis, the precession of the orbit, and other factors. Fourier Analysis is a method of resolving an arbitrary wave form (or time series) into an approximate set of sinusoidial frequencies.
"When Fourier analysis was applied to deep-sea records in 1975, it emerged that the oxygen-isotope series contained strong cycles with periods near 100,000 years, 41,000 years, and 23,000 years. These are precisely the periods expected if Earth's orbital elements (eccentricity, obliquity, and precession) govern ice-age climates, as proposed by Milankovitch Theory. Thus, there could be no more doubt that orbital elements had to be considered as important drivers of climate on long time scales."
-- http://earthguide.ucsd.edu/virtualmuseum/climatechange2/03_1.shtml

Other researchers are far less convinced. It is as easy to say that evidence for the Milankovich climatic cycles exist, as it is to suggest that it might. The highs and lows in climatic conditions would have to appear at times equal to the sums and differences of the three cycles listed above. They do not. That is not to say that there are not some very large time cycles involved, but these would, as I pointed out in the text, change over time.
In fact, one does not need Fourier Analysis to pick the intervals mentioned above (100,000, 41,000, and 23,000 years) from the data. The periodicity can be visually identified, but the intervals only approximate the current estimates of eccentricity, obliquity, and precession. The Fourier Analysis also does not explain the series of cold and warm periods of the last 100,000 years and does not explain why all such variation completely disappears from the data after 10,000 years ago. Also left unexplained is the wild variation in slope during the transition from a cold period to a warm period (and the reverse).
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Note 33 --
The distance between the orbit of Earth and the orbit of Jupiter when Jupiter is outside the orbit of Earth is from information developed in Appendix B, "Celestial Mechanics."
Image: Distance between the orbits of Jupiter and Earth in ca 10,000 ya.

Jupiter is at 0.7 AU from the Sun; Earth is at 0.54 AU at its closest distance to the Sun. The difference is 0.16 AU. The angle subtended by Jupiter, as seen from Earth, can be found from the arctangent and is 0.34 degrees, a little smaller than the angle subtended by the Moon.
arctangent(88700/(.16*au))/rad = .34 degrees
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Note 34 --
Examples of other models include Clube and Napier's Taurids comet model, Ashton's polar hologram, and Alfred de Grazia's binary star formation.
However, these models represent a desperate unwillingness to accept the obvious, that is, that a large planet stood above the north pole of Earth for a very long time. That this was the case has become obvious from the mass of data which continues to accumulate from mythological sources, petroglyphs, and realistic postulates about the mechanics.
Invoking meteors (Clube and Napier "The Cosmic Serpent" 1982; "The Cosmic Winter" 1990), in addition to falling in line with the immensely popular notions that meteorite strikes are the cause of all things abnormal, removes the causes from any determinable physics. We know virtually nothing about comets, and Clube and Napier's book procedes entirely by suggestions and inuendoes. Diverse views are given on astronomical topics, yet any opinion ("study") of a single individual which conforms to the direction intended for the book is then offered as fact.
The polar hologram (Roger Ashton "The Bedrock of Myth" an essay of 1987) requires an undetermined source of plasma and very peculiar magnetic conditions.
The binary star creation model (Alfred de Grazia) suffers from an unwillingness to allow for the enormous time scale required for the energy transfer under plasma conditions, and then flips planet axes, changes rotational momentum, and initiates orbits at will. It might work, given another few billion years, but with a foreshortened time scale it looks more like a 'young earth' creationist concept. See Alfred de Grazia in "Solaria Binaria" (1984)
All three of these are discussed in the file ["Other Cosmologies"].
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Calculations are in Unix bc notation, where ^ denotes exponentiation; the functions (a)rctangent, (s)ine, and (c)osine use radians; angle conversions to radians or degrees by the divisors rad=.017+ and deg=57.2+; other functions are shown as f( );
units: million == 1,000,000; billion == 1,000,000,000;
one AU == 93,000,000 miles.

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Recovering the Lost World, A Saturnian Cosmology -- Jno Cook Part 4: Ice Ages and Humans.

Recent Glaciations

... Geological Record

... The Greenland Ice Cores

... Oceanic Oxygen Isotopes

... The Last Glaciation

Ice Ages and Humans

Homo Erectus

Homo Sapiens

In the Shadow of Saturn

The Darkness Before the Chaos

... Moving South

The Hypsithermal

Ice Age Orbits

... Preliminary to the Polar Model

Endnotes

Recovering the Lost World,
A Saturnian Cosmology -- Jno Cook
Part 4: Ice Ages and Humans.