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ANCIENT, FORBIDDEN KNOWLEDGE, LEGENDS AND LORE

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ANCIENT KNOWLEDGE, FORBIDDEN LORE & LEGENDS
Women as Manifestation of the Divine -- Female Godesses Were Always First
  From soldiers crying out on the battlefield, to Mother's Day being far more popular than Father's Day, women have been venerated back to the misty dawn of Humankind. 
Once females were the most ancient objects of religious and fertility veneration. Then something changed to dethrone our ancestral concepts of Mama from her lofty perch where Big Church bureaucracies were concerned. What happened is the subject of this "Reasons For Tha Seasons"...
     Where There Ancient African Wayfarers To The Americas?
Cristoforo Colombo was a latecomer, as a newly released study confirms there is tantalizing archeological and linguistic evidence that African explorers in antiquity may have reached parts of the Americas from the Carolinas to Brazil...
restingbymastaba.jpg

Getting around in the less developed areas in the Middle East sometimes means taking unorthodox but tried and true methods of transportation. Here Angel and I pause on a desert trip inside the portal of a mastaba on the Giza plateau, just west of the famous trio of Pyramids outside Cairo.

M'Dears' Place in History; Mother's Day Divine
By Kevin J Walker,
Netitor of the Word NetPaper

STAR HUSTLER PRESENTS:

THE REASONS FOR THA SEASONS --

MAY DAY, AND MOTHER'S DAY:

WOMEN AS MANIFESTATION OF THE DIVINE;
DAN BROWN'S "DAVINCI CODE" INVIGORATES DEBATE
ON (A) WOMENS' PLACE IN RELIGION

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We have another of our periodic Reasons For The Seasons as we do double duty concerning the May 1ro Cross Quarter Day, and Mother's day. In historical fact, the entire month of May has been set aside for the veneration of females, particularly mothers.

M'Dear has been venerated throughout millennia, and she has been exhibited in legend, myth, and song, and we find this even in astronomy.

In the past in the Word NetPaper we have generated articles about Groundhog Days, and other Cross Quarter days such as Midsummer's and May 1ro; and the Cruci-Fiction of the Easter/Ishtar Myths that were merged onto old Syrian and other regional Pagan holidays to rid early Christian church from their competition.

But the crafty heads of the heretical offshoot of Hebrew Judaism eventually called Christianity didn't stop there. They have been fighting a continuing battle against the natural inclination of Humanity to elevate Mother to Godhead. Biology, Medicine, Religion, Myth, Astrology and Astronomy all played their part in this eternal drama. Read on:

The Ancients who were deciphering the language of Mother Nature (!) noticed that three times 3, or that second Prime Number cubed, or 3 times itself led to 9, which is the same number of months for a woman to bring forth a creation of her own. Mirabile dicte!

“So, there you have it!” they reasoned.

“Doesn’t this show and prove that women are directly connected to the Divine One, He/She who created all?!”

BIG BOOTY ICONS IN ANTIQUITY

Indeed, the oldest representations of tribal peoples always depicted women as Divinities, such as prehistoric carvings in what is now France and Russia ( the big-booty "Venus" sculptures, thought to be hopeful fertility talismans); to the 68 or so Black Madonnas from Spain to Russia, all the way to the still evolving and competing Cult Of Mary.

The competing Cult of Virgin Mother Mary was dethroned by the eventually triumphant male hierarchies when the early Christian church was being set up. Once they were no longer in danger of extermination by the Romans, the Christian church turned their attention to the growing role of women in Christianity, and halted it with Extreme Prejudice.

This was ironic because it was the uncharacteristic allowance of women into the early church following the example of Yeshua/Jesus, the teacher and itinerant rabbi which accounted for adding to their numbers of adherents. Most religions didn't even allow women in more than inferior supportive roles, including its main competition at the time Mithraism from the followers of Mithridites.

The way many saw it, the Son was worthy of veneration to be sure, but then so was the Mother of the Son of God, or the human man who was most favoured by God as the one who Redeemed Humanity after Adam and Eves' transgression and the Fall, thereby proving that we were indeed Worthy and that the Creation Experiment should continue and not be scrapped.

BROWN'S DAVINCI CODE MAKES USE OF HISTORICAL FACTS

Sometimes, artifacts such as the too well-hidden Dead Sea and Egyptian Hag Namadi Scrolls pop up showing that under Gnosticism, a Greek word referring to Those in the Know/Knowledge, women were much greater involved in the establishment of early Christianity.

This is the basis for Dan Brown’s “The DaVinci Code,” about the search for the Holy Grail, which is not a large cup for holding Last Supper wine, which doesn’t even appear in DaVinci’s strange painting by the way. It is God’s universal repository which is the Wo-Man, through which She creates Humanity, or the Earth-bound mortal versions of the Divine.

As she can, they can create and nurture life within themselves. Thus the argument shouldn't be whether women can be priests – since they were the first ones -- but how could men ever be admitted to such a select group considering their inferior status in the Creator's eyes?!

BAREFOOT, PREGNANT, AND OUT OF POWER

The elevation of the Wo-Men to the godhead didn’t last long in modern human history --despite their bodies being possible star maps-- and for the last 2000 years there has been a concerted effort to beat the Wo-Men down and prevent them from ascending to their rightful place as Nature must have intended.

There are some people who take issue with Dan Brown's premise of "The DaVinci Code", that Yeshua and Maryam married and produced offspring, and the Catholic Church has been fighting a centuries-long battle to keep it secret. It is clear to anyone who has studied religious history that women in general, and both Marys in particular, once held a greater role in early Christianity than they do now.

At Marquette University, which is a Jesuit (not a Catholic) institution -- there's a distinction we won't get into now -- we were required to take two things: A foreign language, and theology, and lots of both. I chose Latin because I shrewdly noted that since it isn't a spoken language there was no hated audio lab requirement, but you still got a full four credits. Georgia Marzette Brantley and Alfred Walker of Arkansas didn’t raise a fool!

For Theology, rather than be indoctrinated into Catholicism any more than what I was getting by campus osmosis, I chose an eclectic multicultural blend of Hindu, Yoga, Buddhism, Islam, and even tossed some Wiccan and Shamanism into the mix. This gave me a pretty good foundation for an overview of global religious practices, and also had the side effect of cementing my position as an Atheist! But I digress:

I saw the similarities in religions, noted how they were used by conquerors to control subject populations, such as Christianity for Enslaved Africans in the Western Hemisphere, and the eastern Arab invaders' Islam for Africans in their own land. I also saw how women were treated under different belief systems, and how Christianity went through evolutionary changes over two millennia.

My Latin allowed me to read parts of the pre-King James Bible when it was translated from the Greek. (Aramaic, the language of Yeshua and his Disciples of the Middle eastern people of the region was primarily a spoken dialect among the regular people. Much day to day commerce and business was transacted in the Latin of the Roman conquerors, and Greek for scholarly pursuits).

All around the Mediterranean, churches venerating the Virgin Mary started popping up in the early Christian church when it moved out of the Middle East, following the Roman Empire's holdings from England to Turkey when it turned from being persecuted and instead miraculously became the state religion!

The Roman capital was moved by Emperor Constantine to Constantinople in what became Turkey, its capital now called Istanbul under the Muslim invasion. Christianity re-transmitted itself into the soft underbelly of EurAsia that became Russia, and the Eastern Orthodox Church with a stronghold in Greece.

That faraway church considers itself the One True Church, unsullied by the numerous changes and illogical tinkering, omissions of Diets an conferences over centuries, and the later widespread corruption that caused the Protestant Reformation in Europe.

The Eastern Orthodox Church has intriguing differences with its Western counterpart, and could be disturbing to those who adhere to the King James version. They contend they are the One True Church, and have preserved the original mission and history of Christianity and saved it from the pollution, compromise and commercialism of the Roman Catholic Church.

[African American History note: If you look at the pictures of Martin Luther King, Jr., -- named after the leader of the Protestant Reformation, by the way -- you'll see a holy man with a squarish hat to King's left.

[That was a leader of the US Eastern Orthodox Church, who early on supported the Civil Rights struggle when mainstream and many Black preachers were telling King to be quiet and stop stirrin' things up so much, resulting in King's "Letter From A Birmingham Jail" on their hypocrisy and timidity in the face of power. I told you the Eastern Orthodox Church was different!

[Also, look at who were the bodyguards of King at the mass gathering of the National Mall. Those were the white-garbed men of the FOI, or Fruit of Islam, the specially trained operatives of the Nation of Islam].

BURN THE WITCH! --WOMEN'S EARLY CHURCH SUPPRESSION

The misogynistic vehemence of the Catholic Church chased down, suppressed, sequestered and sometimes burned all those who looked to the growing Cult of Mary which threatened their growing power. The favourite tool was to denounce strong-willed "Uppity" females as "Witches," especially those who used readily available natural remedies to cure and care for people in their village.

In the British Isles since it was the prevailing Wiccan and Druid culture based on nature which even drew in their males, they were singled out particularly when Christianity grew in power there as witches, Warlocks, and sorcerers. For an engaging fictional look at the transition from Paganism to Christianity and its effect on the power of women Brittany, read the 1990s book "The Mists of Avalon."

During my abbreviated foray into Pre Medicine at Marquette University I learned this technique was employed to eject and then keep women out of the Healing Arts, and made men into the predominate practitioners of medicine even to this day.

The AntiFems even declared war on Midwifery and female involvement in traditional healing arts and herbal medicine, such as Nature-loving, tree-hugging Wiccans and Druids from the British Isles, denouncing it as Witchcraft. Of course, the Salem Witch Trials are famous for showing how the Witch accusation and smackdown was used to keep women in their place.

It was a convenient means to pull uppity women down throughout Christendom, because did not the Bible itself declare that we “must not suffer a Witch to live?” This attitude plays a part in the entertaining movie "Silent Hill," a female-oriented horror movie about oppressing women which opens a town to unspeakable Evil.

Of course, without reading from the Hebrew's original spoken Aramaic dialect that itself was rewritten as ancient Greek before itself being rewritten down in Classical Latin, then to Medieval Vulgate Latin, then Old English, then Modern English, and now the "Good News" Bible with the Politically Correct gender changes, its hard to know what it really said or meant by "Witch," but we’re going too far afield. We continue:

The Male Doctor Cabal even got the Insurance industry to keep Midwifery practices out of favour for payment to make sure women must continue to look only to them as they essentially transformed the natural pregnancy process of women into a nine month long illness, to be treated by Males in the expensive hospitals they themselves ran! Only a few pitiful Nurse Practitioners have survived the onslaught.

But there is more to the business of numbers and women's bodies, but for this we must look up, and out .

WOMEN’S BODIES, AND ASTRONOMY

Dick Gregory used to say in his sometimes esoteric speeches that there was no coincidence that there were “nine lights in the sky, and nine holes in a woman’s body.” While an interesting observation, this has no correlation whatsoever to anything. But the Numerologists can find meaning in the most ordinary things, whether true or not. After all, "absence of evidence is not evidence of absence." Or vice-versa. Whatever.

Anyway, people did notice that there were some particular lights that moved about, and they were called “the Wanderers.” We now call them by a version of their Greek name “Planeta” -- the Greeks named lots of stuff, taking advantage of the leisure time allowed when you had lotsa slaves do all your work for you.

Now, the number Nine of planets is interesting, because there are some allowances that have to be made. Telescopes were in widespread use in the 1600s -- and don’t you believe that nonsense that Galileo of Fierenze, or "Florence," was “the first man” to point a 'scope at the heavens-- he was just the first who had a really good publicity operation, writing and distributing what he saw.

There are historical reports that school children in Holland in the 1300s would raid the garbage heaps behind the spectacle-makers shops for pieces of discarded lenses and look about with them, marveling that the pieces of curved glass “made the town church steeple appear closer, but upside down.” Do you think that people waited 300 years to put at least two of them together to make things right-side up, or took a peek at the sky at night? Puh-leese!

Even in the Kevin Costner movie “Robin Hood, Prince of Thieves” it is shown that Arabs had optical knowledge by the time of the Crusades of the 1100 to 1300s. And we can’t even go into the mysteries of the south-central African Dogon Tribe, and their noted observations in the late 1800s of the star Sirius and its dark companion. But we continue:

The only planets that could usually be seen went out from Mercury to Saturn, which is the limit of naked-eye observation. Uranus may have been visible in unpolluted rural skies to the eyes of healthy people back in tha day, but its hard to try that nowadays in cities.

There are nine planets in popular use. We’re on Terra, so that one doesn’t count. Luna, erroneously called “our Moon” is part of the Terra/Luna double planetary system. So, Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, but not counting Uranus (no scatological school boy jokes, please!).

But that’s only Seven Lights, so wassup? We now have to include the Moon, or as I prefer to call it by its non-Anglo Saxon and proper name of Luna. But that still leaves one. The other light in the sky, but not the nighttime sky, is of course Sol, or "the Sun."

I won’t detail the female orifices, for that you’re on your own. Besides, as a writer and science popularizer I couldn’t be expected to know about such things, since people think all we Academics and StarGazers do is read books and peer through either telescopes or microscopes. If they only knew! Believe it, we make ample use of that scientific knowledge, especially things we learned in Biology. But enough about that.

But much as the clues to female contributions in the formation of Christianity, there are some bread crumbs leading back to the hidden or covered up truth. Cassiopeia is still known as an African princess whose “W” or “M” shaped constellation is to the North.

They are called the Eternal Stars as her parent’s on the other side to the West/East in a slow, circular dance. Their stars do not set since they revolve around Polaris, the Polar Star that marks the North, and incidentally the tail star of the misshapen Little Dipper asterism. There’s a story about Cassiopeia's daughter Andromeda and her forced marriage to a king in another land, which must have been very affecting for people to still note it millennia later, and to survive the wholesale renaming and reordering of history to “His-Story.”

The Star Hustler says keep looking up – the price is free! --kjw

NEXT: Where there Ancient African explorers to the Americas? Archeology, genetics, maritime currents and linguistics point to the strong possibility.

CONTACT US:

Intrigued by all this, or have a beef? Write, fax, email :
Netitor of the NetPaper
walkernet@gmail.com

The Word NetPaper Science website is still under construction because it’ll have more stuff, like links to NASA, space astronomy pictures, and Space Science news sites. There will be an Astronomy calendar segment returning to The WORD NetPaper 511 as always for the Solstice and Equinox Seasons, and to keep you abreast of the approaching Lunar eclipsi and sunspot activity which may flare up this year with impacts on cell phone reception and other phenomena.

You can visit The Word NetPaper's new evolving websites on travel photography, social commentary. From here, you'll find links to the other sites featuring community news, Space Science, commentary, and now PICTURES and stories from Chronicles of The Travel Griot to the Gizeh Plateau, and Hawaii.

http://wordnetpaper.tripod.com Milwaukee, WI USA

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-- Kevin J. Walker, Netitor, The Word NetPaper
Milwaukee, WI USA

FREELANCER BIOGRAPHY

"Mr. Walker is a print journalist who often includes Science and Travel articles among his forays on political and societal observations. A past professor of Journalism at his Alma Mater of Marquette University, Walker has written extensively for several newspapers on urban issues, and is presently compiling his essays on the phenomenon of intractable trans-generational familial poverty into the book in progress "The Culture of Poverty."

"It is based on his observations on the effects of Welfare Reform in his hometown in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. He often writes from an Undisclosed Location in the Hidden Valleys retreat inland from the Mississippi River in western Wisconsin, where he indulges in his first intellectual loves, amateur Astronomy and stargazing."

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omec_dug-up.jpg

olmec_head10.jpg

One of the many African-like sculpted boulders found in Cental America that give evidence of possible ancient explorations and even trade. The tales inspired those such as Cristiforo Colombo, once posted in Africa where he heard the stories of a faraway land across the waters their ancestors once sailed.

Where There Ancient African Wayfarers To The Americas?

  • ¿Where There Pre-Colombian African Wayfarers To The Americas? ·
  • ¿What About The The 'Black Irish' and Brownies?'
  • The African-Celtic Connection In The North Atlantic

Included is an article posted by Reuters News Service on the Internet just as the finishing touches were being placed on this article on Ancient explorers to the Americas. It just further ratifies what many researchers have observed as mounting evidence shows this continent was criss-crossed by many different peoples over millennia.

by Kevin J. Walker, Netitor of The Word NetPaper

The following article was posted by Reuters News Service on the Internet just as the finishing touches were being placed on this article on Ancient explorers to the Americas. It just further ratifies what many researchers have observed as mounting evidence shows this continent was criss-crossed by many different peoples over millennia:

Experts doubt Clovis people were first in Americas

By Will Dunham Thu Feb 22, 6:42 PM ET Reuters Limited

The Clovis people, known for their distinctive spear points, likely were not the first humans in the Americas, according to research placing their presence as more recent than previously believed.

Using advanced radiocarbon dating techniques, researchers writing in the journal Science on Thursday said the Clovis people, hunters of large Ice Age animals like mammoths and mastodons, dated from about 13,100 to 12,900 years ago. That would make the Clovis culture, known from artifacts discovered at various sites including the town of Clovis, New Mexico, both younger and shorter-lived than previously thought.

Previous estimates had dated the culture to about 13,600 years ago. These people long had been seen as the first humans in the New World, but the new dates suggest their culture thrived at about the same time or after others also in the Americas.

Michael Waters, director of Texas A&M University's Center for the Study of the First Americans, called the research the final nail in the coffin of the so-called "Clovis first" theory of human origins in the New World. Waters said he thinks the first people probably arrived in the Americas between 15,000 and 25,000 years ago.

"We've got to stop thinking about the peopling of the Americas as a singular event," Waters said in an interview. "And we have to start now thinking about the peopling of the Americas as a process, with people coming over here, probably arriving at different times, maybe taking different routes and coming from different places in northeast Asia."

Waters and co-author Thomas Stafford, a radiocarbon dating expert, tested samples from various Clovis archeological sites to try to get a more accurate accounting of their age. Technological advances enabled them to more precisely pinpoint dates for some Clovis sites excavated in North America.

The theory has been that the Clovis people first migrated out of northeast Asia across the Bering land bridge from Siberia into Alaska and traveled through a ice-free corridor into North America, populating that continent while their descendants journeyed into South America.

Asked who were the first people in the Americas if not the Clovis, Waters answered, "That's a good question." "I think that's what we've got to work toward -- a new model for the peopling of the Americas, and I think we need to create a coherent model that's based on genetic data, geological evidence as well as archeological data."

________________________________

The idea of seafaring Africans exploring Europe, let alone the Americas, is something that traditional scientists don't give much credence. (Aside from the willful ignorance that the Phoenicians weren't North Africans, whose influence spread to our linguistic constructs, hence the name "Phonics").

But the close-minded historians or propagandists can't ignore what has been shown to be pervasive bi-coastal evidence of contact, as the Americas were traversed by many ancient explorers. Some stayed, some just got a peek, took some notes and specimens back, and left.

After the Ice Age ended that blanketed Europe in a mile-high and thick sheet of glacial ice, explorations north and south commenced with force. The "Black Irish" stories may be far older than the shipwrecked Spanish Armada in the 1800s that was said to be the source of dark-haired, dark skinned Irelanders.

The Celtic stories of "the Brownies" of the British Isles who have been given short shrift by the concentration on seemingly related magical Leprechauns, may have been the recordings of their culture encountering the first waves of exploring and migrating Africans who traversed the Straits of Gibraltar, or sailed from Western Africa.

The cryptic stories of antiquity have fueled many speculations, but also left many clues:

• There is a curious settlement remnant in the Carolinas that is said to contain pre-Slavery "Negroid bones" and armour

• Lost Settlements of various types are spoken of, including a tribe of red-haired Caucasian-resembling savages in the south American jungle. They may have been the remnants of a failed outpost who devolved into barbarism after losing contact with their European colonial bosses

• The large Olmec Heads of Mexico are undoubtedly depictions of flat-nosed, thick-lipped African explorers carved into boulders by tribes not known for their fanciful art; they tended to depict what they actually saw, like their versions of photographs.

• There have been coins and beadwork found in South and central America that have analogs in Western Africa, with tribal stories on both ends of not only contact, but trade that continued for years

In fact, its little known but the explorer Christofo Columbus was earlier posted in Africa where he supposedly came upon this knowledge, including the Central American coins and artifacts, which he used to convince the Queen and King of Spain to back his quest.

This is what really set him upon his search of the land that he was all but certain was across the vast ocean to the West. He thought it was the long-sought Sea Route to India, hence the enduring misnomer of the aboriginal peoples they encountered.

¿WAS GULF CURRENT ANCIENT SEA FREEWAY?

Interestingly, the stories of African Sailors coincides neatly with the known Gulf ocean currents that exchange the warm waters from South America up along the Eastern seaboard north to Ireland, and down again back to western Africa. This is phenomenon is also the spawning ground of Atlantic hurricanes, fed by the warm waters to the south where the sun is more stronger. All of our strong Atlantic hurricanes form from winds off the coast of Western Africa.

This is a "Free Energy "conducting system for sailors, although its a long way around. Its called the Humboldt Current.

In the global climactic disaster movie "The Day After Tomorrow" with Dennis Quaid and a pre-"Brokeback Mountain" Jake Gyllenhaal, this warm ocean current energy exchange was shut off, leading to the freezing of Europe which is kept much warmer by it despite its northern latitude. That last part is a fact; in my science studies we were told of this phenomenon.

Meanwhile, the Chinese in the early 1400s were also sending out expeditions and getting in on a piece of the action. Their extensive archives hold information about encountering a land far to the East that researchers have said point to landmarks in northern California, thanks to their detailed notations.

If you want to see something interesting, go search online and pull up a detailed map of northern California and Oregon. Many of the smaller settlements have Russian names! They came across the narrow Bering Straight across from Alaska, which they'd settled, and drifted southward to northern Oregon and points beyond.

This is an example of how contacts between peoples can be traced by place names, and terms for common items.

The Americas had long been traversed by many different peoples, over several millennia. Crossing the Bering Strait from Russian Siberia to Alaska wasn't an activity that was stopped when the Asiatic explorers chanced it during the various Ice Ages.

FURTHER LINES OF INQUIRY:

I know you're busy, but if this was easy everyone would be doing it. The college Professor in me can't resist assigning homework and extracurricular activities. These are easy though, especially if you have the Internet, cable service or a DVD player at home.

FOR MORE INFORMATION Jim Scherz of Wisconsin has considered Tolkien's "Lord of the Rings" saga as a story about cultures and historical events in the Mississippi region.

Jim is with the Ancient Earthworks Society in Madison, the state capital. Check out the Ancient Earthworks Society website for more of their Midwest explorations.

WEBSITES: Ancient Earthworks Society website:  

http://coasttocoastam.com

(Search for "John Anthony Smith and Sphinx")

Walker's Photos of Pyramids, Vatican Mummies and Hieroglyphs: [NEW LINKS COMING]

 

                                  4bidden Knowledge 
- by Kevin J. Walker,

Netitor of The Word NetPaper

     Lunar eclipses are useful for more than just something interesting to see. They advance humanity's knowledge of our planet, and thus our place in the cosmos. The historical connection is one that you yourself can see when you view a Lunar Eclipse, since there are quite a few Lunar eclipses, about a half dozen a year.

     By definition, they occur when the moon is full, when its opposite the sun, but the angle has to be right. Our angle this time almost didn't cut it, which is why the totality time is so short. (I was filled with pride some years ago when I predicted just by extrapolation that a solar eclipse was coming, when I read in the daily almanac that there was an upcoming new moon in the east during the day).
     As you can see by this latest lunar eclipse the slight curvature of the Earth's shadow is upon the moon. Now, the Ancients more than anybody could see that Luna was round, as was the Sun and everything else in the heavens worthy of note.
     They didn't see any particular reason why the place they were on was any different, except they didn't have any Ocular Proof. After all it could just as well be a flat disk, and the sun a hole in the Crystal Sphere. And those stars? Those were little breaks in the bowl, that allowed the light of Heaven to peek thorough.
Don't laugh! When was the last time you looked at your Horoscope, or thought about aliens in flying saucers, or angels who interceded in your business, didn't split a pole, tossed salt over your shoulder, or blamed evil spirits or gremlins for messing things up? One day future people will laugh at the things we once held dear and never questioned. But I digress:
     Now, though the Thinkers could see the shadow of the curve on the face of the moon. Using Geometry (translation: "Earth Measure") they used compasses to show what the rest of the shadow would be like. Employing some straightforward math, they deduced not only how big the shadow had to be reduced to cover the Moon -- which gave them the size of the Earth -- but in a connected way, in math and logic called a corollary, they also figured out how far away the target object, the Moon, had to be!
     This was before computers, mind you, using geometric techniques developed in Northeast Africa, called by some Egypt and Kemet (written as KMT -- the Egyptians' High Graphics Speech or "hieroglyphics" didn't use vowels).
Actually they were way off. Their figure for the Moon's distance was 300,000 miles, a lot farther than the farthest in its elliptical orbit of 257,000 miles in the summer months. This was because they made an assumption that was understandable but still wrong. In their search for perfect symmetry they assumed the Earth was round, when In fact it is not and it through their figures off.
     The planet we call home is not a sphere but an Oblate Spheroid, because it is slightly orange shaped, and flattened at the poles. I guess that's what happens when you spin at around 1,000 miles per hour (that's why there are 24 hours, 24 time zones of 1,000 miles each or thereabouts. We will get into that more when we discuss the solstices, and Daylight Savings Time). Jupiter the gas giant is even worse, its many times bigger but rotates in 9.5 hours! It is visibly flattened through even cheap telescopes or binoculars, as is Saturn.
Later on came the institution of the lines of Longitude and Latitude as Europeans added to and reconstituted the ancient knowledge that was lost through history, as when the Great Library of Alexandria in North Africa was burned by Playah Hating hordes, and more than once.
     Maps, discoveries and books of lore of explorations went up in the flames, although it has been discovered that many scrolls were spirited out, as the keepers of knowledge in Baghdad museum before America's invasion of Iraq who knew of the risks to the collected wisdom of Humanity, and kept them safe. Far to the west, in Chad and the Sudan private citizens have had them for millennia. As soon as European descended researchers "discover" them the world will have them again.
The Admiral Piri Reis Map is a bit of ancient knowledge that as far reaching ramifications.
     It is renown among cartographers because of what little it does show: it includes rosettes, those-star like symbols which were used to help correct the depiction of a three dimension globe on a 2D flat piece of paper. Which also means the makers of the map knew the Earth was round, and were using rosettes long before Europeans discovered they'd even need the technique! The Mercator Projections are used, although it distorts the middle portions. If you want a good map, get one of the Geographic, which has much less distortion.
     Oh, by the way the Reis map was already old before its tattered remnants were "discovered" almost a thousand years ago during the Middle Ages, once called the Dark Ages of Europe.
Although his works are at its heart even if unintentional, White Supremacist-based because they rest upon the assumption that dark-skinned peoples couldn't have possibly done what they in fact did, Eric Von Danneken's works such as "Chariots of the Gods?" and "Gold of the Gods" were instrumental in pointing out the existence of these artifacts. That was where I first saw a depiction of the Admiral Piri Reis map.
     Danneken used it to buttress his point that aliens in spaceships visited our planet, having sex with Terran women (Bible: "There were giants on the earth in those days…") and did feats of technology that became part of our lore, such as carving giant figures of people and organisms onto hillsides and landing lanes on plateaus. As if space-faring anythings would need giant pictographs or artificial landing lanes instead of using library CD-ROMS, their version of the Internet, guiding radar and beacons. But I digress.
Danneken's point of using the Piri Reis map is that on the southern border before its cut off the map shows the coastline of Antarctica, but without its mile-thick coating of ice. Now Antarctica has had ice as long as there have been people around, as far as we know.

     But this map also showed the region of southern Africa and the south polar regions as if from a great height, which is what Danneken's interest in it was for, saying alien survey craft gave it to ancient peoples.
     Now you don't need to be up high up to see the contours of the land to make maps, although it helps. Usually people used mountains, plateaus or ridges. We made maps for a long time before the Montgolfier Brothers of France and their hot air balloons in the mid-1800s was combined with photography. There is even some evidence that the North Africans experimented with Heavier Than Air flight, and may have used man-sized kites for some surveying, pulled aloft for a time by chariots. Egypt is mountain deficient -- except for notables ones such as Mount Sinai -- which is why they used Geometry a lot, especially since the kite-thing seems not to have worked out too well.
     Nowadays, Astrophysicists are in the same position, using Analytical Trigonometry and Calculus to figure out distances to far away stars and galaxies with the Earth's position six months apart to give them an observational baseline of 600 million miles, since we don't have any other vantage point. Some things never change.
We've wandered far from the original premise about how the Ancients used the curvature of the Earth's shadow on the face of the eclipsed moon, but that's how these things go. Knowledge connects other things, which is why it's good to have. Read the Almanac portion of the local paper, its usually in the Weather section, where they often have astronomical notices. Remember the price is free, all you have to do is keep looking up! --kjw
     Have a science story to tell? Write or email The Star Hustler, Brotha Science at:

walkernet@gmail.com
Milwaukee Wisconsin USA

And be sure and visit the websites at:

 

Kevin Walker

 

 

SHORT FREELANCER BIOGRAPHY

Mr. Walker is a print journalist who often includes Science and Travel articles among his forays on political and societal observations. A past professor of Journalism at his Alma Mater of Marquette University, Walker has written extensively for several newspapers on urban issues, and is presently compiling his essays on the phenomenon of intractable trans-generational familial poverty into the book in progress "The Culture of Poverty," based on his observations on the effects of Welfare Reform in his hometown in Milwaukee, Wisconsin.
He often writes from an Undisclosed Location in the Hidden Valleys retreat inland from the Mississippi River in western Wisconsin, where he indulges in his first intellectual love, amateur Astronomy and stargazing.

THE NEW STAR HUSTLER REVEALS

Reasons For Tha Seasons:

May Day, The April Fools, Math Lovers; Ground Hog Day and Other Cross Quarter Days;

Also: Show Me The 'Intelligent Design'

We have the custom of celebrating many things of which we have lost the knowledge of their ancient origins. These rituals, seasonal celebrations and other calendar conundrums will be explored in this latest of occasional articles on things astronomical and historical.

by Kevin J. Walker, The New Star Hustler

The Word NetPaper Netitor,

We have another of our periodic Reasons For The Seasons as we do double duty this week concerning the May 1ro Cross Quarter Day, and upcoming Mother's day.

We have the custom of celebrating many things of which we have lost the knowledge of their ancient origins. These rituals, seasonal celebrations and other calendar conundrums will be explored in this latest of occasional articles on things astronomical and historical. The topic this time out:

                     CROSS QUARTER DAYS

Most of the observations of Cross Quarter days have vanished, except for Groundhog Day on February 2, the midpoint between the Winter Solstice of Dec. 21-22 and the Spring Equinox of March 21-22. Groundhog Day is a minor holiday with astronomical connections.

You surely notice now how the days are staying brighter and for longer in the evening, perhaps you even feel more energetic and invigorated. Ancient peoples who lived and died at the whim of a cruel Nature certainly noticed, and made rituals based on their observations. We still celebrate their origins, but its good to know why we do so.

A Cross Quarter celebration that is still hanging on is the annual May Day celebrations that are mostly big in Europe, after being softened from the ancient practice of having the village maidens parade butte-naked around a giant phallus, hoping to be made a fertile wife for the young men of the nearby villages in a sort of erotic debutante exposition.

                     MAY DAY WAS A GAY DAY

It was also hoped that the sexual power of Creation would be transmuted into the land, so that it too would give birth in the form of a mighty harvest. This was also seen in some African tribal rituals. Young women walk around with their breasts open to be seen and judged National Geographic style, but after marriage the no-longer Maidens must cover them up.

Children were substituted in our prudish times, and would gather ‘round the Maypole with streams of ribbons leading back to the now G-rated pole. Quite lost are the origins of the Pagan fertility holiday, which was the whole point of a successful suppression.

The once big-time pagan holiday of May Day has since been appropriated by workers groups and Socialists in Europe such as the Green Party to agitate for whatever, with their fellow travelers having antigovernment celebrations on this side of the Atlantic. This time it is for Illegal Mexican border-hoppers to flex their muscles, trying to force America to capitulate to their demands, much like France. Boy, are they ever in for a big surprise! But I digress.

This is a direct link to the just completed Equinox, based on the life-giving Sun's return to the Northern hemisphere, and the hopeful breaking of winter's icy grip and lengthening warmer days and inauguration of a bountiful growing season.

There are four astronomical CROSS QUARTER DAY days, although two aren't celebrated much. There is May Day, our New Star Hustler topic this week ;and Groundhog Day which we discussed in February. The one between the September Equinox and the Winter Solstice is celebrated for a different reason, and is the basis for the old Pagan European New Year.

WALPURGIS NIGHT is Oct. 31, All Hallow's Eve, or now corrupted to Hallowe'en. That continued Pagan holiday received an article of its own which will be posted when the time draws nigh

   The most forgotten of the four Cross Quarter Days is Midsummer, August 1st between June 22 and September 22, the Summer Solstice and Autumnal Equinox. Maybe its because in the middle of long days and good weather there is no foreboding, or memory of the harsh winter or the loss of its grip.

The memory of "MIDSUMMER'S NIGHTS EVE" much like Brotha playwright William Shakespeare's "Twelfth Night" about the days after the Solstice / Christmas holiday that lead to January 6 and MICHAELMAS, or the EPIPHANY as the Catholics call it, would be even more distant except for the popularity of his plays of the 1600s. (The linguistic subtleties of Shakespeare's plays and sonnets are even better enjoyed in their original Swahili).

The four Equinoxes and Solstices that chart the Sun’s progress and determine the seasons on our sorta rounded globe were further divided, with May 1st the marker between March 21 and the Summer Solstice on June 21. The peasants were all for that too, as they had more time off from tilling and hoeing the land.

It is known that the early Church tried in vain to get the populace to stop celebrating these old Pagan holidays and ways with little success. When they instituted their own competing holidays it only doubled the off days for the peasants, and that was all good!

Then, they hit upon the one idea that worked, but it would take centuries: the Catholic church just put the holidays right on top of the old Pagan ones, patiently knowing that they would in time whither away and the original meanings become lost to the hearts and minds of humanity. This is the reason there are so many different symbols for the Easter and Christmas holidays, from the patchwork of nations and Pagan societies from the lands that were converted from the British Isles to the Middle East.

There is a connection to Easter of the May Pole celebration. Remember as kids during Easter when you thought it was odd for the mixture of rabbits and eggs? Rabbits didn't lay eggs; we were only kids but we were pretty sure of that. Then we dismissed it, grew up, taught our own kids about the Tooth Fairy and Father Christmas, that a patsy named Lee Harvey Oswald Killed President John F. Kennedy, and moved on with our lives.

                       GROUNDHOG DAY

German immigrants in the Pennsylvania Dutch ("Deutsche") region imported the celebration with them. Since everybody likes a party we American mutts -- mixed with everybody and everything and darn proud of it -- clasped it to our bosom, much like what's happening to Kwanzaa, St. Patrick's Day and Cinco De Mayo, which has been adopted by the fun-loving Irish in Dublin it has been reported, who don't need to search overmuch for any reason to throw a party.

TV stations gather without fail every year to see if the various large rodents such as Pennsylvania's Punxatawney Phil see their shadows, without even delving into the real reasons why the Sun’s angle and the shadows are such a big deal in the first place!

I actually had a family of groundhogs near the south-facing some property I rented for a few years, which was a stroke of luck for a Star Hustler. I only had to look out of my south-facing kitchen window on Feb. 2 to see if the scampering squirrels on steroids noticed their shadows, which is only of passing interest to an amateur astronomer/Stargazer.

I also know from direct experience that most groundhogs have such bad eyesight -- and hearing -- that whatever it is that people think groundhogs see doesn’t count for very much. The “six weeks more of Winter” doesn’t mean much to us here in Wisconsin, where we’d be only too happy to have only six more weeks of below-freezing temperatures and snowstorms that aren’t unknown in early May!

           MOVIES OF MATH:

Contact

Pi

Proof

Rainman

LINKS:

Art Bell/George Noori/Ian Punnett listeners know to go to the Coast To Coast AM syndicated radio showgram, with frequent guest Richard C. Hoagland, the former NASA contractor and CBS science news frontman with Walter Cronkite during the Apollo missions.

More space news and pictures by large telescopes be seen at

http://Stardate.org website, and

 http://CNN.com/scitech

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INTERACTING WITH LOCAL CAIRO STUDENTS ON HOLIDAY
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Meeting other people and their cultures is much a part of travel

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Your Place to Go to For First World Wisdom, Ancient Knowledge, Astro Events, and Forgotten and Forbidden Lore