Ancient knowledge of Precession

[Grey Cloud]

Hi Nick,
Re Thuban as Pole Star.
I'm not overly concerned as to whether it was or it wasn't. My confusion was due to your statement that it wasn't and the grounds upon which you made the statement. For instance are you positive that the Chinese didn't use it? Have you considered that an ancient star map may look nothing like a modern star map. What about the astronomical information embedded in The Iliad and the Bible, and presumably the Vedic literature? Have you eliminated all those? Is this your opinion or Velikovsky's?

Re the alignment of ancient buildings. The ancients went to great lengths to align their buildings. As I've stated elsewhere, the choices of constellations, asterisms and individual stars were not arbitrary, they were part and parcel of the philosophy.

Some of the Egyptian temples have been constructed in a way connecting to the star of Sirius when - each year in the summer after a period of invisibility of 70 days - it rose (i.e. its Heliacal rising) together with the sun that the light would travel down the temples' main
corridor. In that moment, Sirius would place its shining spot on the altar in the innermost sanctum of the temple.

......

In a similar way later in Greek temples - for instance in the very Parthenon - being constructed with the direction to the beams of the Stars of the Pleiades. Thus, when the temples were oriented geographically to receive these beams of light into the inner sanctums,
the light-rays were described in a symbolic way as being "transformed into seven women", i.e. "The Seven Sisters", The Pleiades.
http://www.moses-egypt.net/star-map/sen ... ory_en.asp

Re the tomb of Senmut. Velikovsky theorised wrongly. Scholarship has moved on since Velikovsky. Read the above linked article in its entirety, it's long but worth it. There is a navigation menu at the foot of the above link. The article also disagrees with you and the
Saturn theorists about the North celestial pole.

Your references to Plato, Heredotus et al about the planet flipping have no real bearing on precession because a) they may have happened in a previous cycle and b) the would still have been precession if the criteria for precessing were there; the zodiacal constellations would

have been different (to the residents of the former northern hemisphere) but the precessing would still have happened.

As to the question of knowledge of precession prior to Hipparchus, isn't that the central topic of Hamlet's Mill?

The problem Velikovsky and the Saturn theorists have is that they subscribe to Darwinian evolution and therefore, despite protestations to the contrary, view ancients as simple, primitives who couldn't possibly be smarter than moderns. And they all subscribe to the Jungian collective amnesia nonsense despite not having a shred of evidence that there is any such thing as collective amnesia let alone that people from thousands of years ago had it and passed it down to their offspring.

[Plasmatic]

The problem Velikovsky and the Saturn theorists have is that they subscribe to Darwinian evolution and therefore, despite protestations to the contrary, view ancients as simple, primitives who couldn't possibly be smarter than moderns.

You sure about that in regards to "saturn theorist"?I assume you meant the authors. Have you any references on that?

[Plasmatic]

On this topic of Sirius,there are several articles/papers on Ian Tresmans website. Heres one:

"Sun, Moon and Sothis by Lynn E. Rose [SIS C&C Review $]
... the relationship between the different time-scales in the remote past'. Lynn Rose does acknowledge this problem, however, when he writes (p. 254):'... might be slightly altered by improved retro-calculations. But not too much should be expected from that direction. The values for the arcus visionis in antiquity are not known with any precision, and probably never will be'. I see no reason to demur from this conclusion. Rose does also make rather a meal of the precise dates of heliacal risings of Sirius, which he analyses in terms of 'tetrads' and 'triennia', but precise dates are actually all but unobservable in practice. The proper definition of heliacal rising of Sirius is presumably 'simultaneous rising of the Sun and Sirius' but there is no possibility of this event ever being directly observed (primarily due to the extreme difference in brightness between the two but refraction and extinction are also involved); the more usual interpretation of the date of heliacal rising (as observed and reported by ancient observers) is 'first sighting of Sirius ...
Terms matched: 1 - Score: 120 - 05 Mar 2003 - 9k - URL: http://www.catastrophism.com/online/pub ... /48sun.htm"

[Grey Cloud]

I forgot this. The author is talking about the mathematical precision the Maya would have needed for the 2012 business:

Let's look at this in even more detail. Basically, what we have is a tolerance of one day over a period of 2,100 years. To calculate this as a percentage, we multiply this one day by 100 and divide by the total number of days in this period. This results in a tolerance of 0.000130 percent, which means that the Maya needed to know the length of the tropical year to a level of 99.99987 percent correct or better! Wow!

This works out to knowing the value of the year to within about 40 seconds, which can be stated as plus or minus 20 seconds. In other words, a small error of a few seconds for one year would build up as we add together all 2,100 years and the resultant total error needs to be such that we still land on the correct calendar date of the winter solstice. If you multiply 40 seconds by 2,100, you see that it is just under one day so we are on the right track.

...

But there is even more to this. If the winter solstice for 2012 was at noon, then our evenly split tolerance would be fine. But since the solstice is at 5:11 AM central time for the Maya, calculations that are just 5 hours and 12 minutes too early would result in the wrong calendar date. So the level of precision required is even higher.

And you probably already realize that the 0.599 day fraction from the total number of days in the 2,100 year period also needs to be considered since it amounts to over 14 hours and this can easily push the time of the winter solstice across the boundary of a calendar date. Indeed, if this factor were ignored, the winter solstice for 2012 would be calculated as being at about 3 PM on December 20th central time, which is the wrong calendar date.

...

In addition to an accurate value for the length of the year, the Maya also need to know an accurate value for the rate of precession and an accurate value for the number of degrees the sky needed to shift during the 2,100 year period in order to bring forth the special alignment with the dark rift in 2012. I should further point out that the value of precession is not a constant. It is getting shorter by about 36 days every year. But even this rate will change! Did the Maya know about all of this and properly take it into consideration?

...

As a side note, consider that in about 130 B.C., the same time frame as the creation of the Maya calendar, the Greek astronomer Hipparchus estimated precession to be 36,000 years or less. He was off by 10,000 years! Even so, Hipparchus is very famous for his work on precession and he wrote two books on the subject. He is considered by some people to be the greatest astronomer of antiquity. I can only add that it's a good thing he was not in charge of creating the Maya calendar!

...

2,100 years ago, the sun was about 30 degrees away from an alignment with the dark rift on the day of the winter solstice. To find the correct year to restart the calendar, they would have needed to accurately measure this angle and also accurately measure how much this angle changes from one year to the next. This rate of change is the rate of precession: 360 degrees divided by the total number of years in the precessional cycle. Once you know the angle and the rate of change, it is trivial to calculate when the angle will become zero. While it is easier to measure the angle than it is to measure the rate of change, you still need to measure both with a fair degree of precision.
http://www.infinitelymystical.com/essay ... onomy.html

[nick c]

hi Grey Cloud,

I'm not overly concerned as to whether it was or it wasn't. My confusion was due to your statement that it wasn't and the grounds upon which you made the statement. For instance are you positive that the Chinese didn't use it?

The grounds for the statement are that there is no ancient reference (so far as I know) to Thuban being the pole star, China or otherwise. If you know of such a map I would be interested in a reference. If one existed, you could be sure that it would have been cited in the numerous assertions in mainstream literature which state that Thuban was the pole star.

Have you considered that an ancient star map may look nothing like a modern star map.

I wouldn't think that it would be the same. The question is whether or not we can interpret it. Either we can translate the positions or not. Actually, the star map of Senmut's tomb is the oldest known and it (southern ceiling) does not make sense when related to the sky of today.

What about the astronomical information embedded in The Iliad and the Bible, and presumably the Vedic literature? Have you eliminated all those?

I am sure that they contain much valuable information pertaining to many things, including ancient astronomy/astrology, however, I don't think that you will find any references to Thuban ever having been the North Star or any proof that precession was then proceeding at modern calclulated rates.

Is this your opinion or Velikovsky's?

The Thuban material and statements were my own, but they are consistent with Velikovsky. I don't know, off hand, of any his writing in which he addresses Thuban as the pole star. Velikovsky postulated that at some point in ancient times the celestial pole was located in the constellation of Ursa Major. This constellation is not located on the path of the precession as observed today. Yet there are numerous ancient references to the pole having been located in Ursa Major. After a catastrophe the pole was radically changed, later uniformitarian scholars would interpret this as knowledge of (slow, ie presently observed) precession.

[continued]

[nick c]

Re the alignment of ancient buildings. The ancients went to great lengths to align their buildings. As I've stated elsewhere, the choices of constellations, asterisms and individual stars were not arbitrary, they were part and parcel of the philosophy.

Where did I say or imply alignments were arbitrary?

Re the tomb of Senmut. Velikovsky theorised wrongly. Scholarship has moved on since Velikovsky. Read the above linked article in its entirety, it's long but worth it. There is a navigation menu at the foot of the above link. The article also disagrees with you and the
Saturn theorists about the North celestial pole.

The Senmut ceiling star map has nothing to do with the Saturn myth as it depicts the sky at a much later time.
I am familiar with that link and you are wrong, it is not worth it. Apparently scholarship has moved on since Velikovsky by ignoring the information contained within the map. The map depicts a very different sky. (This is repeated in the map in the Ramesseum. See the link in my last post.) No amount of scholarship can reconcile those maps with the present sky, that is, no retrocalculation can explain them. For example, the Senmut tomb shows Ursa Major at the center, just where one would expect to find the north celestial pole. No one even asks the question, why is the Great Bear in the position where the pole should be?

The northern one shows constellations of the northern sky with the Great Bear (Ursa major) at the centre.

http://www.aob.bg.ac.yu/paob/85/pdf/019-023.pdf

This is consistent with V's contention that the pole once was pointed at Ursa Major. No amount of retrocalculation of precession can put the pole in Ursa Major.

Your references to Plato, Heredotus et al about the planet flipping have no real bearing on precession because a) they may have happened in a previous cycle and b) the would still have been precession if the criteria for precessing were there; the zodiacal constellations would

have been different (to the residents of the former northern hemisphere) but the precessing would still have happened.

Yes that is correct, precession would have occurred, only it would have been rapid and possibly erratic, not at the present calculated rate.

As to the question of knowledge of precession prior to Hipparchus, isn't that the central topic of Hamlet's Mill?

Yes, however we must keep in mind that De Santillana and Von Dechend were limited by their uniformitarian interpretation. They could not come to any conclusions that were inconsistent with that paradigm. In fact the authors marveled at the connection between various Saturn deities around the world and the Pole, of course in today's sky Saturn travels no where near the pole.
from Hamlet's Mill:

For all the titles and attributes here listed, there is justification in archaic myth. Right here, only one point is of importance. The Lord of the Mill is declared to be Saturn/Kronos, he whom his son Zeus dethroned by throwing him off his chariot, and banished in "chains" to a blissful island, where he dwells in sleep, for being immortal he cannot die....
highlight added

The authors interpreted this as a reference to precession, but the evidence was right before them, Saturn was the Lord of the celestial pole. Again, that refers to an earlier period. After the dissolution of the Saturnian system the new solar system went through a period of adjustments until the present order was achieved.

The problem Velikovsky and the Saturn theorists have is that they subscribe to Darwinian evolution and therefore, despite protestations to the contrary, view ancients as simple, primitives who couldn't possibly be smarter than moderns.

Grey Cloud, tsk, tsk, tsk! That is fundamentally wrong! Darwinism is the polar opposite of Velikovsky's theories. (Same for the Saturnists.) Velikovsky wrote a book, Earth In Upheaval, the last half of which is devoted to refuting Darwinism, and psychoanalyzes Darwin in Mankind In Amnesia. In the preface to Worlds In Collision he wrote: "If these two men [Newton and Darwin] of science are sacrosanct, this book is heresy."
As far as how advanced the ancients were, it depends on who, what, when, and where. "Ancient" is a big umbrella covering many civilizations.
They knew many things that we do not because they saw them first hand.

nick c

[Grey Cloud]

Hi Nick,
I don't see anything in the writings of the Saturn theorists to make me change my mind but I will hold my hands up with regard to V and Darwinism. Stupid error by me, given that V was Jewish and therefore a Creationist. Don't have a problem with that though I'm not a Creationist (in the American sense of the word).

I'm going to have to bow out of this one as my eyes are giving me severe grief at the present and I need to employ their limited mileage on other things.

[nick c]

hi Grey Cloud,
One more correction:

Stupid error by me, given that V was Jewish and therefore a Creationist.

Surely you are jesting? You should use a smily face or such so we know that there is a joke. There is no creationist (no matter what the definition) philosophy in V's writing. I have read everything I could by V over the years and I frankly don't know what were his personal religious beliefs, they simply do not enter into his writing. There is no hidden religious, fundamentalist, or creationist agenda, that is one of the fabrications made for the sole purpose to discredit the man.

Biographer Duane Vorhees writes:

"Whenever establishment figures wished to make a statement about pseudoscience or the occult, or later to castigate the Scientific Creationists, they usually deemed it necessary to include Velikovsky in their denunciations -- even though Velikovsky shared their abhorrence for religious fundamentalism"[11]

http://www.velikovsky.info/Fundamentalism

nick c

[Grey Cloud]

Hi Nick,
If V was Jewish, i.e. he believed in the Jewish god, then he was de facto a Creationist. It's no big deal over here in the UK.

[StevenJay]

Hi Nick,
If V was Jewish, i.e. he believed in the Jewish god, then he was de facto a Creationist. It's no big deal over here in the UK.

Wow, GC, that has to be some of the most bizarre rationale ever posted on this forum! C'mon, just because a person is born into a specific ideology doesn't necessarily mean that person subscribes to it. I was born into a Protestant home, but I never subscribed to it, nor any other religious ideology - even as a kid. I tried to once, as a teenager, but I just couldn't gag it down! I chose gnosis over dogma.

I really don't get - why do you have such a hard-on for Velikovsky, anyway? Is it because he simply didn't have all of his ducks in a perfect row? Do you know anybody who does?

[Grey Cloud]

Hi Steven,
I used the caveat 'believed in the Jewish god' to a differentiate between those Jews who follow the Jewish faith and those Jews who do not. Just to spell it out. If anyone beileves in the Jewish god or the god of any of the Abrahamic religions, then they are de facto Creationists because, according to the tenets of those three religions, god created the Universe. Now, is there any part of that you can't understand?

[nick c]

Baptist evangelist John R. Rice,[9] wrote:

"Velikovsky, a Jew, is not a fundamentalist, does not believe the Bible is inspired, and is an evolutionist. But he believes that the Old Testament is historically accurate in the matter of the flood, of the sun standing still, of the plagues in Exodus, etc."[10]
http://www.velikovsky.info/Fundamentalism

GC,
You are way off the mark. V did not interpret the book of Genesis as the story of the creation of the universe by a deity. Therefore you are incorrect.

nick c

[StevenJay]

If anyone beileves in the Jewish god or the god of any of the Abrahamic religions, then they are de facto Creationists because, according to the tenets of those three religions, god created the Universe.

Well, to use your own words, "that's a big if" in V's case. And, just for the sake of argument, let's suppose he actually did believe that the universe was created by a deity. Would it make a bit of difference to you if he shared your particular flavor of creation? Besides, you already said that it's no big deal there in the UK. So, why are you making such a big deal out of it here?

For what it's worth, I have zero problem with divine creation. But, when I say "divine," I'm obviously not talking about the typical modern Christian notion of some petulant, judgemental, old white guy with a long gray beard who lives up in the sky. And when I say "creation," I'm not referring to a hands-on creation of every aspect of this physicality. I'm referring to a primary consciousness that "thought" this construct of all-that-is into what we perceive as existence. For me, there is no clash between that and the electric universe, or between that and the Saturn Theory. But, that's irrelevant.

The part I can't figure out is, what bearing any of this actually has on V's work?

[Grey Cloud]

What is it with you people?
I said if believed in the Jewish god he was de facto a creationist. Therefore, by extention, if he did not believe in the Jewish god he was not a Creationist.
Whatever V was, and I don't give a toss either way, there is nothing wrong with my statement, only your prejudiced interpretations of it.

[Plasmatic]

What is it with you people?
I said if believed in the Jewish god he was de facto a creationist. Therefore, by extention, if he did not believe in the Jewish god he was not a Creationist.
Whatever V was, and I don't give a toss either way, there is nothing wrong with my statement, only your prejudiced interpretations of it.

Before you said "if" you said:

given that V was Jewish and therefore a Creationist