Our Progress on Deciphering the Megaliths of Gobekli Tepe - LexiLine Journal 544

The history of civilization is a wrongly neglected topic at our educational institutions, and yet, that history exerts a POWERFUL influence on modern affairs -- just look at the political cesspool of the Middle East in our modern day an age, which is a direct consequence of events, long ago, in the Ancient Near East. Worse, we do not even have that ancient history right at all, so that modern happenings are greatly formed by erroneous views of ancient times -- this applies particularly to the history of the Jews and their impact on the development of advanced human culture in the Fertile Crescent.

I myself am working hard on my Gobekli Tepe decipherment and it has proven to be a hard nail to chew because of the lack of a comprehensive map with individual photos of the exact location of megaliths at that archaeological site. That is typical for the dilettantic "professionalism" in archaeology.

I am using Klaus Schmidt's book -- which does have a barely usable map at page 76 of that book -- as also online materials posted by others.

I can report to you unequivocally in advance of publication of my ideas that the megaliths of Gobekli Tepe were erected by the predecessors of the Biblical Abraham and that they represent stars viz. star groups (asterisms viz. constellations as the ancients saw them -- this of course is my discovery) and that these date to ca. 3800 BC. This is where the Hebrew Calendar began, as currently dated to a starting date of ca. 3761 B.C. I am refining the accuracy of that date a bit in my current research.

The dating of these megaliths by Schmidt and others -- based apparently on false radiocarbon dating of debri found covering the site -- as allegedly being much older is incorrect -- and that is quite logical actually.

People did not work stone to this degree of sophistication thousands of years prior to the dawn of megalithic culture in the 4th millennium, only to see that technology disappear from the face of the earth, only to resurface miraculously thousands of years later.

Technology development and technology transfer do not work that way.

Wherever the megalith makers went after leaving Gobekli Tepe, they took their stone technology with them. Indeed, there are great similarities between numerous sculptures of animals at Gobekli Tepe and later similar cultures.

From Teosinte to Maize : The Single Domestication of Corn in the Balsas Valley of Southern Mexico 9000 Years Ago - LexiLine Journal 543

Tracking the Ancestry of Corn Back 9,000 Years - NYTimes.com

This is a delightful article by Sean B. Carroll tracing the history of maize as it developed out of a single domestication of teosinte in ca. 7000 B.C. in the Balsas Valley of southern Mexico.

For the scientific article at the root of the story, see A single domestication for maize shown by multilocus microsatellite genotyping by Yoshihiro Matsuoka, Yves Vigouroux, Major M. Goodman, Jesus Sanchez G., Edward Buckler, and John Doebley, where the Abstract reads:

"There exists extraordinary morphological and genetic diversity among the maize landraces that have been developed by pre-Columbian cultivators. To explain this high level of diversity in maize, several authors have proposed that maize landraces were the products of multiple independent domestications from their wild relative (teosinte). We present phylogenetic analyses based on 264 individual plants, each genotyped at 99 microsatellites, that challenge the multiple-origins hypothesis. Instead, our results indicate that all maize arose from a single domestication in southern Mexico about 9,000 years ago. Our analyses also indicate that the oldest surviving maize types are those of the Mexican highlands with maize spreading from this region over the Americas along two major paths. Our phylogenetic work is consistent with a model based on the archaeological record suggesting that maize diversified in the highlands of Mexico before spreading to the lowlands. We also found only modest evidence for postdomestication gene flow from teosinte into maize. "

See also Rio Balsas most likely region for maize domestication by Christine A. Hastorf who writes, inter alia:

"It is curious that with so much interest in the topic of plant domestication in archaeology, geography, and botany, it took until 2005 to include this region of Mexico in our search for the roots of domestication. This investigatory blind spot is most probably because visible early plant evidence was uncovered in dry conditions. Following the data, scholars pursued domestication where they could easily find the evidence, ignoring the regions where the interactions were more likely to occur."

In other words, without the genetic evidence, mainstream archaeology would still be looking for evidence of domestication in the WRONG places because that is where "drilling" for the truth was the easiest.

Revisited: Neandertal Man Rediscovered by Mainstream Science as Us - LexiLine Journal 542

In spite of unequivocal genome-based evidence that the Neandertals*** did not die out but left their traces in modern man, the nay-sayers in the long-deluded archaeological profession are apparently not easily giving up their totally erroneous theories.

As written by David Perlman, Science Editor at the San Francisco Chronicle in Neanderthal in all of us, DNA study indicates:

"... Richard G. Klein, a noted archaeologist at Stanford who has long worked on the evolution of Neanderthals and humans, has serious reservations about the work. He is known for his research into the fossil record showing how modern humans replaced the Neanderthals throughout Europe thousands of years ago.
The Pääbo group's report, he said, "contradicts everything we know about the archaeological record. Their evidence is really wobbly and it bothers me a lot. But it's very important stuff if it's right - and I really do hope it's right."

One of the main problems that I have found in dealing with mainstream archaeology over the years in fact has been the archaeologists' hopeless reliance on their own home-spun theories, whatever their origin, regardless of the actual probative evidence.

The Neandertal issue is only one very representative example of the absolute evidentiary follies which pervade mainstream archaeology, and which have in many areas of archaeological study become so entrenched that no voice of reason challenging those theories is heard.

Thankfully, genetic studies are changing and will continue to change many of the totally nonsensical notions published by archaeologists over the last centuries, decades and years.

There is no probative evidence in archaeology or elsewhere -- and there never has been such evidence -- that Neandertals died out as a separate species, to be replaced by modern man.
Rather, it is equally compelling to argue that Neandertal man in one way or another evolved into viz. merged into modern man, either by the path of evolution or by the path of interbreeding with another human primate form.

The details, of course, will remain a conundrum for many years to come, but we can at long last bury the useless theory that Neandertal man occupied all of Europe and western Asia, only to be fully replaced by newcomers from Africa. That theory was always based on sand.

Neandertal Man Rediscovered by Mainstream Science as Us - LexiLine Journal 541

Neandertal is a location in Germany and I have been there. The popular spelling Neanderthal is incorrect. But, that is a minor matter. The Neandertal Genome right now is a blockbuster story, as headlined by the New York Times, Signs of Neanderthals Mating With Humans.

But first, let us ask a serious question. What in world is wrong with a good deal of the people in mainstream science, especially those in the humanities-related professions? Is your average alleged "mainstream scientist" just a well-educated but otherwise uncritical and unthinking "yes man" running like a lemming to the sea blindly following whichever theory or professor in authority happens to be in vogue at the moment??

The above question has surfaced again as relates to "new" genetic research findings just published in Science magazine concerning Neandertal Man in A Draft Sequence of the Neandertal Genome.

The team of researchers under the direction of Svante Paabo at the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig, Germany, but involving numerous universities throughout the world, relate findings which -- totally contrary to the established faith in mainstream science -- now suggest that Neandertal Man did not just "die out", never to be seen again, but in fact left significant genetic traces in our modern human heritage, as normal logic would have expected. The Abstract to the May 7 publication provides:

"Neandertals, the closest evolutionary relatives of present-day humans, lived in large parts of Europe and western Asia before disappearing 30,000 years ago. We present a draft sequence of the Neandertal genome composed of more than 4 billion nucleotides from three individuals. Comparisons of the Neandertal genome to the genomes of five present-day humans from different parts of the world identify a number of genomic regions that may have been affected by positive selection in ancestral modern humans, including genes involved in metabolism and in cognitive and skeletal development. We show that Neandertals shared more genetic variants with present-day humans in Eurasia than with present-day humans in sub-Saharan Africa, suggesting that gene flow from Neandertals into the ancestors of non-Africans occurred before the divergence of Eurasian groups from each other."

But, in fact, the influence of Neandertals is surely far greater on modern man  than the above abstract suggests, especially for the dawn of modern man in Europe and western Asia.  We need only to examine a National Geographic News article of October 25, 2007 by Brian Handwerk titled Some Neandertals Were Pale Redheads, DNA Suggests, which points to the Neandertal DNA test results of Carles LaLueza-Fox of the University of Barcelona, whose team:

"[F]ound an unknown mutation in a key gene called MC1R.
Also present in modern humans, the gene regulates a protein that guides the production of melanin, which pigments hair and skin and protects from UV rays.
Variations in this gene's sequence limit melanin production in people with pale skin and red hair, although the particular mutation found by the researchers is not known to occur in modern humans.
The team tested the gene in living cells to see what effect the previously unknown variant would have had on the Neandertals who carried it. The test tube experiment showed that the variant suppressed the production of melanin, and thus likely gave the Neandertals who carried it red hair and pale skin."

Handwerk also has an article at National Geographic News on Odd Skull Boosts Human, Neandertal Interbreeding Theory where he writes:

"A human skull from a Romanian bear cave is shaking up ideas about ancient sex.
The Homo sapiens skull has a distinctive feature previously found only in Neandertals, providing further evidence of interbreeding between the two species, according to a new study....

Recently the fossil was radiocarbon dated to 33,000 years ago and thoroughly examined, revealing the controversial anatomical feature.
The otherwise human skull has a groove at the base of the back of the skull, just above the neck muscle, that is ubiquitous in Neandertal specimens but has never been seen in the remains of a modern human, argues study leader Erik Trinkaus, an anthropologist at Washington University in St. Louis, Missouri."

Accordingly, there is far more yet to be found as concerns the relationship of Neandertal man to modern humans, especially in Europe and western Asia, you can be sure.

So why have the majority of mainstream scientists and, unforgivably, the mainstream news media, been comfortable with accepting the position that seemed the most illogical, i.e. that the Neanderthals died out without leaving a trace? I presume that this must be either a kind of Rorschach test into the minds of many of those professing to be independent scientists, or it shows that many scientists are merely "followers" and not independently-thinking researchers. Similarly and unfortunately, much of the news media has merely a parrot function.

At LexiLine -- the discussion group on the History of Civilization -- I wrote in the year 2005 as follows in connection with my thoughts on Human Migration and the Rh Blood Protein:

"It is true that the current Neanderthal discussion is vexing. What I myself have seen written about the Neanderthals in past and present writings seems mostly to consist of overly broad conjectures based on very little evidence. I am of the impression that neither laymen, nor the news media, nor even mainstream scientists know enough about this yet. See in this regard also Michael P. Germano and his posting on Neanderthals Again? Has the Media Got It Right?

What is significant is the geographic area in which we have thus far found Neanderthal remains, which largely corresponds to what we would today call Europe. See http://anthro.palomar.edu/homo2/mod_homo_2.htm

A number of years ago, before it became fashionable, I suggested that humans formed from an interbreeding of two primate groups, based upon blood types. See http://www.lexiline.com/lexiline/lexi9.htm, see in this regard also http://www.dadamo.com/wiki/wiki.pl/Related_blood_group_factors_in_animals where it is written:

"In the ABO blood group system, humans and chimpanzees both have A blood group antigens, but the DNA nucleotide sequences are different. The differences are not minor.

Surprisingly, humans and gorillas both have blood group B, and their DNA nucleotide sequences are pretty much identical, with only minor differences."

However, I would imagine that such interbreeding, if it occurred, would have to have taken place before Man arrived in Europe. Indeed, where the territories of gorillas and chimpanzees in Eastern Africa meet is where we find the first evidence of human skulls. How the Neanderthals fit into this picture is still anybody's guess and will ultimately have to be decided by deciphering their human genome, as is being done."

You don't find any mainstream scientists quoting my work because they only quote people they know, whether they be right or wrong, the main thing being that they are considered "authorities" in their field. The "correctness" of the science of such authorities is beside the point.

However, I am at least gratified to read at BBC that one of the people, John Hawks, who I sometimes read for his apparent openness of mind in this field, is quoted at the BBC in Neanderthal genes 'survive in us' as follows:

"John Hawks, assistant professor of anthropology at the University of Wisconsin-Madison in the US, told BBC News: "They're us. We're them. ""

At his john hawks weblog Hawks has a longish posting titled "Neandertals Live!" which is well worth reading to consider some of the new fascinating issues beyond the normal news hype.

Crossposted from LawPundit.

Roman Calendration, Sosigenes and Numa Pompilius - LexiLine Journal 540

Happy Easter! (this is a bit late, but I have been traveling)
A movable calendric feast!
It is thus time again write a bit about calendration, this time, about the Roman Calendar:

"The Roman Calendar was a curious conglomeration of historical inputs, and yet, our own modern calendar in the Western world - with our non-astronomical months of varying durations and strange numerically disjointed names - was inherited directly from that Roman system as the Julian Calendar (Wikipedia), reflecting calendric reform made under Julius Caesar, who called upon the Egyptian astronomer priest Sosigenes of Alexandria (see also e.g. the Encyclopaedia Britannica) to correct the Roman calendar:

"[The Julian Calendar] has a regular year of 365 days divided into 12 months, and a leap day is added to February every four years. Hence the Julian year is on average 365.25 days long."

Pliny the Elder, Book 18, 210-212 wrote:

"... There were three main schools, the Chaldaean, the Egyptian, and the Greek; and to these a fourth was added in our country by Caesar during his dictatorship, who with the assistance of the learned astronomer Sosigenes (Sosigene perito scientiae eius adhibito) brought the separate years back into conformity with the course of the sun. (Wikipedia translation - source unknown)

(or, from Perseus at Tufts, translation by John Bostock)

"There have been three great schools of astronomy, the Chaldæan, the Ægyptian, and the Grecian. To these has been added a fourth school, which was established by the Dictator Cæsar among ourselves, and to which was entrusted the duty of regulating the year in conformity with the sun's revolution, under the auspices of Sosigenes, an astronomer of considerable learning and skill."

A history of that Early Roman Calendar is found at WebExhibits.org in their Calendars through the Ages.
The Roman system of calendration prior to calendar reform was described by Plutarch in "Numa Pompilius," C.E. 75, Sanctum Library: 8th-7th Century B.C.E., in a translation by John Dryden as follows (from WebExhibits.org):

"During the reign of Romulus, they had let their months run on without any certain or equal term; some of them contained twenty days, others thirty-five, others more; they had no sort of knowledge of the inequality in the motions of the sun and moon; they only kept to the one rule that the whole course of the year contained three hundred and sixty days.

"Numa, calculating the difference between the lunar and solar years at eleven days, for that the moon completed her anniversary course in three hundred and fifty-four days, and the sun in three hundred and sixty-five, to remedy this incongruity doubled the eleven days, and every other year added an intercalary month, to follow February, consisting of twenty-two days, and called by the Romans the month Mercedinus...

"Many will have it, that it was Numa, also, who added the two months of Januarius and Februarius; for in the beginning they had a year of ten months...

"That the Romans, at first, comprehended the whole year within ten, and not twelve months, plainly appears by the name of the last, December, meaning the tenth month; and that Martius was the first is likewise evident, for the fifth month after it was called Quintilis, and the sixth Sextilis, and so the rest; whereas, if Januarius and Februarius had, in this account, preceded Martius, Quintilis would have been fifth in name and seventh in reckoning.

"It was also natural that Martius, dedicated to Mars, should be Romulus’s first and Aprilis, named from Venus, or Aphrodite, his second month; in it they sacrifice to Venus, and the women bathe on the calends, or first day of it, with myrtle garlands on their heads.

"But others, because of its being p and not ph, will not allow of the derivation of this word from Aphrodite, but say it is called Aprilis from aperio, Latin for to open, because that this month is high spring, and opens and discloses the buds and flowers.

"The next is called Maius, from Maia, the mother of Mercury, to whom it is sacred; then Junius follows, so called from Juno; some, however, derive them from the two ages, old and young, majores being their name for older, and juniores for younger men.

"To the other months they gave denominations according to their order; so the fifth was called Quintilis, Sextilis the sixth, and the rest, Septembris, Octobris, Novembris and Decembris. Afterwards, Quintilis received the name of Julius (July), from Caesar, who defeated Pompey; as also Sextilis that of Augustus, (August) from the second Caesar, who had that title...

"Of the months which were added or transposed in their order by Numa, Februarius comes from februa; and is as such a Purification month; in it they make offerings to the dead, and celebrate the Lupercalia, which, in most points, resembles a purification. Januarius was also called from Janus, and precedence given to it by Numa before Martius, which was dedicated to the god Mars; because, as I conceive, he wished to take every opportunity of intimating that the arts and studies of peace are to be preferred before those of war."

When did Numa institute this calendar reform?
Six years ago in my posting at 31 LexiLine Newsletter 2004 I gave the following chronology based on 480-year intervals from the time of what I consider to be the official calendric founding of "dynastic" Egypt (see also Ancient Calendric Stele Newly Discovered in Egypt):

"3117 BC start of the calendar
2637 BC reform of the Calendar by Khasekhemwy for the tropical year
2157 BC First Intermediate Period
1677 BC Second Intermediate Period
1197 BC Rule of King David (Sethos) begins - whence his Hall of Records
717 BC Start of the reign of Numa Pompilius, the 1st calendric king of Rome, begins
237 BC Restoration of the Etruscan "Secular (calendric) Games" in Rome - whence the building of Edfu" [emphasis added]

I have since then considered moving the start of the modern calendar even further back to an earlier date at Göbekli Tepe, perhaps having a close relationship with the start of the Hebrew Calendar, but although that is relevant to the question of the date of the start of the calendar in Egypt, I am not yet finished with that ongoing analysis.
For purposes of demonstration only of the multiple intervals of 240 years and 480 years in a calendric system going back (at least) to Göbekli Tepe -- we can turn the clock back a couple of years as follows to get round BCE numbers - the astronomical year would however not change:

""3840 BCE start (?) of the calendar at Göbekli Tepe near Urfa, i.e. Ur, the birthplace of Abraham (the Hebrew Calendar starts by current calculation on October 7, 3761 BC according to the Julian Calendar and on September 7, -3760 according to the Gregorian Calendar - see the instructive Calendar Converter at Fourmilab.com from John Walker)
3600 BCE ??
3360 BCE start of the "calendric predynastic period" in Egypt
3120 BCE start of the dynastic calendar in Pharaonic Egypt - actually -3116 by astronomy
2640 BCE reform of the Calendar by Khasekhemwy for the tropical year
2160 BCE First Intermediate Period in Pharaonic Egypt
1680 BCE Second Intermediate Period in Pharaonic Egypt
1200 BCE Rule of King David (Sethos) begins - whence his Hall of Records
720 BCE Start of the reign of Numa Pompilius, the 1st calendric king of Rome, begins
240 BCE Restoration of the Etruscan "Secular (calendric) Games" in Rome - whence the building of Edfu - this is the same date as the ancient Ancient Calendric Stele Newly Discovered in Egypt which the archaeologists date to 238 BC....
0 BC viz. 0 AD The start of the modern method of calendration and the alleged birth of Jesus

Just what year BC or BCE is correct depends on when one puts the birth of Christ viz. the alleged birth of Jesus.

Originally I set the 3117 BC date near what my astronomy software program identified as a solar eclipse at the Winter Solstice at that time, whereas more recent tentative results indicate that it may in fact have been a solar eclipse near the Summer Solstice -- this is a calendric calculation problem caused by academic dispute on the matter of the variable Delta T, the change in the rate of the spin of the earth over millennia -- which determines the location of ancient solar eclipses -- about which there is a great deal of uncertainty, but this matter is not critical for the 480-year interval dates, although all will ultimately require some calibration.
At any event, there is in my opinion strong evidence in the ancient sources that a ca. 480-year interval was used for calculation in ancient Egypt [this was 479 years plus 120 days as inscribed on the statue of Khasekhemwy (my discovery)]:

"The casualties that are portrayed at the side of the pedestal to Khasekhemwy’s statue symbolize the dead, expired years. It is quite clear that the first nail-formed hieroglyph, written four times consecutively, stands for four 100’s and not for four 10000’s. The seven middle flower-shaped hieroglyphs represent seven 10’s. This is not disputed. The nine left "stick" hieroglyphs represent nine 1’s. This is also not disputed. The number represented here is thus the number 479 and not, as the Egyptologists would have us believe, he number 40079. A study of the magnified hieroglyphs confirms our analysis.

Figure 20 (ab0ve):
Khasekhemwy and his Numbers (slightly magnified).


Figure 21 (above):
Khasekhemwy and his Numbers (strongly magnified)

The individual numbers from the right to the left are 4-7-9 = 479 years, plus 120 days intercalated (2x 60), the @-shaped hieroglyphs. These numbers are clear. The Pharaohs would never have written the number 40279 this way, with 100's between the 10's and 1's, above the 1's."

This interval is also reflected in Biblical chronology, e.g. we can read in the Book of Kings, Chapter 6:1, King James Version of the Bible:

"And it came to pass in the four hundred and eightieth year after the children of Israel were come out of the land of Egypt, in the fourth year of Solomon's reign over Israel, in the month Zif, which is the second month, that he began to build the house of the LORD."

That date too will have been a calendric construction.
Sosigenes, as an astronomer priest of Egypt will also have utilized the 240-year and 480-year calendric intervals for his secret and expert calculations for the Romans.
In this manner, our modern calendar, strangely enough, is also a direct descendant of the Pharaonic system, thanks to the astronomer priests of Pharaonic Egypt working with the Romans.

Ian Hodder: All Our Theories Were Wrong - LexiLine Journal 539

Göbekli Tepe is featured at Newsweek online in an article from the March 1, 2010 issue of Newsweek magazine. At History in the Remaking: A temple complex in Turkey that predates even the pyramids is rewriting the story of human evolution, Patrick Symmes writes: "

"The new discoveries are finally beginning to reshape the slow-moving consensus of archeology. Göbekli Tepe is 'unbelievably big and amazing, at a ridiculously early date,' according to Ian Hodder, director of Stanford's archeology program. Enthusing over the 'huge great stones and fantastic, highly refined art' at Göbekli, Hodder -- "who has spent decades on rival Neolithic sites" -- says: 'Many people think that it changes everything…It overturns the whole apple cart. All our theories were wrong.
[Klaus Schmidt - chief archaeologist at Göbekli Tepe -  theorizes that] it was the urge to worship that brought mankind together in the very first urban conglomerations. The need to build and maintain this temple, he says, drove the builders to seek stable food sources, like grains and animals that could be domesticated, and then to settle down to guard their new way of life. The temple begat the city."

All of THEIR theories (the theories of mainstream archaeology and astronomy) were wrong.

OUR megalithic archaeological and astronomical theories, on the other hand, are looking better all the time.

We have always linked the stones to astronomy and both to ancient belief.
There is more to these stones than just having an ancient sundial in your backyard.
The ancients were doing important things with these ancient megalithic sites.

Schmidt's rather esoteric idea that the temples were the reason for human urbanization and agricultural domestication is of course far-fetched. Forget that.

A hat tip and thank you to Boris of our LexiLine group for calling this Newsweek article to my attention.

Why Study Ancient Mankind and the Past? - LexiLine Journal 538

I just wrote this to someone interested in my work who themselves was studying mankind's ancient past:

"In this field, the fun is in the doing.

I for example work almost entirely for myself, beacuse I am sincerely interested in what actually happened in ancient history.
It is my way of uncovering and tracing - for me - what I think to be the tracks of mankind.

Whether others agree with me or not or whether one is "correct" or not in some future "court" that decides these things,
I doubt very much that it matters."

I hope we have a lot of members in our group who share that view.

WANTING to know is the first prerequisite to learning new things
and making new discoveries,
especially for ourselves,
but we seldom have any guarantees
that we are right in our conclusions
about any of these things.