A tilt at Copernicanism

“After all, even Copernicus' own system was by his own admission (read his original,

i.e. the first edition of De revolutionibus orbium coelestium) nothing more than a synoptic rehash of the already-existing diverse (part geocentric, part heliocentric, fire centric,

animal centric...) ideas of men like Hicetas, Ecphantus, Heraclides and Aristarchus”.

  

 

 

An excerpt from: http://sites.google.com/site/abafte/geo

 

The "Rotating" Earth..

Theory, Fact or Fiction?

 

Oh what a tangled web we weave, when first we practice to deceive! --Sir Walter Scott

Throughout ancient times it was obvious that the moon went around the earth. This is still accepted today. But in the past it was just as obvious that the sun went around the earth as well. This was not because men in those days lacked fantasy and forgot to imagine non-existent movements of themselves and their surroundings. It is because they did their homework and examined all the evidence before them, that they came to the understanding that the earth was a firm, motionless sphere, neither in rotation around itself nor wandering through space around another body.

This geostatic and geocentric nature of the earth was repeatedly tested and verified as being factual for a quite some time (going back thousands of years) by knowledgeable, civilized, free people of all stripes, i.e. those who were supposed to know, like astronomers, natural philosophers (a.k.a. scientists), explorers, teachers, traders, seamen, navigators and various other free and educated men (as opposed to schooled, wage enslaved, homogenized, "experts" of modern times who wouldn't dare bite the hand that feeds them).

 

Then, all of a sudden, just 400 plus years ago, a band of court astrologers started pushing this idea that the earth was orbiting the sun this time, and that the sun was standing still at the center (hence the claim of the system being a 'solar' system). Nevertheless this new claim was not accompanied by any new proof. It was simply invoked and declarations were made that the fixed nature of earth needed to be disapproved.

 

Then, various kinds of earth movements were claimed to have existence and, subsequently abstract calculations were made of the speed and other attributes of these imaginary movements - presenting the results as if they have measured an actual motion. The major and in fact the only reason that was brought up for advancing this whole idea was that the then mainstream Ptolemaic model of the universe was deemed inconvenient in explaining and predicting the movements of the planets as they appear in the sky (especially one particular kind of movement: the retrograde motion of the planets in the sky).

 

But all along it was (and still is) a fact that a stationary earth, situated at the center of the universe also accounts for those retrograde motions, as shown by astronomer Tycho Brahe for example. And, although Ptolemy's epicyclical system was the long established one, it did not have exclusive monopoly. There were many ideas and models in circulation - like those of Pythagoras, Philolaus, Jean Buridan, Martianus Capella, Nicholas of Cusa and René Descartes to name a few.

 

After all, even Copernicus' own system was by his own admission (read his original, i.e. the first edition of De revolutionibus orbium coelestium) nothing more than a synoptic rehash of the already-existing diverse (part geocentric, part heliocentric, fire centric, animal centric...) ideas of men like Hicetas, Ecphantus, Heraclides and Aristarchus. So then, all those years - and right up to now - nobody has ever succeeded in showing or even detecting any movement of the earth in space.

 

However this complete lack of scientific evidence is not admitted. Instead a smokescreen of hearsays, popular opinions, organizational rulings, majority votes, superficial analogies, "expert" testimonies, personal convictions and such other means of persuasion (none of which qualify as scientific proof) are proposed and presented in order to support the heliocentric theory.

 

Heliocentricity is not a logically plausible (let alone irrefutable) theory that is based on scientific data but is actually, purely based on a series of assumptions that were built-up over the last 200 years. For example many (but not all) of the assertions regarding astronomical distances between celestial bodies are based on the necessary assumption that the earth must be revolving around the sun.

 

But at the same time, these assumed distances have another function whereby they are deployed as some sort of supportive argument for the "trueness" of the heliocentric hypothesis.

For example we are told that sun is too big to revolve around the earth, despite the fact that the sun's size was determined in the first place by assuming how big it must have to be in order to allow a heliocentric premise! Go figure. Other needed assumptions include:

 

■ the bendover earth (alleged 'tilt' of the earth's axis - a desperately needed heliocentric variable that has no basis in the physical world where the sun simply spirals from the Tropic of Cancer to the Tropic of Capricorn annually. Both of these tropic latitude lines are not tilted - they are at a 0° angle (= parallel) to the equator. The word "tropic" itself comes from the Greek term tropos, meaning turn, referring to the fact that the sun "turns back" at these lines that aren't tilted in any way,

■ the earth supposedly jittering around the sun at various speed levels (it orbits at a faster speed at one time, and then it goes relatively slower at another - then back faster again) but somehow, all this alleged speed-change remains unnoticeable),

■ the moon also being dragged along exactly at those same speed levels (100% complete synchronization with the wobbly earth despite being hundreds of thousands of miles away from it(!) Now how about that?,

■ even atmospheric gas (the air) being attached to the earth's surface (again completely synchronized but somehow (simultaneously) free-flowing enough to blow in every direction). These are just samples of the never shown, never detected, never scientifically observed absurdities that are required to save the appearances of the heliocentric model.

 

Facts are facts

 

Heliocentrists have been known to point to certain geophysical and astronomical features as arguments which they claim supports their sun-centered view. For example they claim that the Cape Canaveral area in Florida is chosen as a site for NASA's rocket launch center because it is one of the more southern points on the U.S. mainland and therefore closest to the equator. The same argument comes up regarding the reason why Europe's rocket launch center is located in French Guyana (in South America). There is supposed to be an advantage to being close to the equator when the goal is to get a vehicle into orbit: the "rotating" earth supposedly creates a centrifugal force that supposedly "lifts" the missiles. Well, the truth is that there is no real advantage: China's Jiuquan space center is found all the way up in the far north of the country (Inner Mongolia province). Why did the Chinese choose this site, when they have vast territory much further south which is closer to the equator? In fact, portions of southern China are closer to the equator than to the northern cosmodrome, from where they toss their taikonauts into orbit. The Russians are also reported to be developing a new space launch facility, which will be located much north of the current Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan. This all means that a rocket launched tangentially from the Earth's equator doesn't really provide a more advantageous escape-velocity!

 

Getting closer to the supposed existence of an "equatorial centrifugal force" on the surface of the "rotating" earth (and other bogus heliocentric claims) is like getting closer and closer to an apparent pool of water in the desert: it dissolves and disappears right before your eyes in a spectacular fashion! Another bogus argument that some solar system advocates bring up from time to time is inertia and momentum. What is it that the moving-earth theorists believe is the substance (or the vector field) that supposedly exerts a huge gravitational force on air molecules which prevents the atmosphere around the earth from trailing behind the allegedly speeding earth (as is the case for comets)? Their answer?: Nothing. Instead, heliocentrists usually propose a fraudulent analogy of how the earth's motion is comparable with some person walking inside a moving train.

They claim that since the walker inside the train feels more or less the same as he or she feels when walking on the ground that somehow is supposed to reassure us that the earth could also be moving without we feeling it.

 

The problem with this analogy is of course the fact that once the person inside the train opens a window and faces the elements, he or she will feel it soon enough what the real speed is that the train is traveling at! Therefore the only correct analogy for someone walking on the ground of earth is someone walking in an open train or better yet - on the roof of a moving train. What will [happen] … then?

 

Well, the person will instantly encounter a force that is proportional and in opposite direction to the moving train. But why? Isn't the surrounding air supposed to be following the train, just as we are told the atmosphere is allegedly doing so by keeping-up with the supposedly faster-than-bullet rotating earth? Looks like heliocentrists have decided to suspend the laws of physics (aerodynamics) just for this case of a badly needed moving earth theory!

 

But still somehow, this law of motion is supposed to apply in all other cases of moving things in the universe?! This contradiction is quietly adopted in order to hide the fact that there is a force that is causing an air drag or friction that wasn't there before the train arrived. The friction with the earth's surface wasn't there because, unlike the train, the earth didn't move!

 

Getting to the top (and bottom) of it

 

The star whose location is closest to the point vertically above north pole (= celestial pole) is Polaris, a.k.a. the North Star, around which all the other stars appear to rotate (as visible during the night). Now, why is it that only one single star is a pole star throughout the whole year? All kinds of other stars should have taken turn to become pole stars if the earth was slinging around the sun. But since that is not the case and Polaris remains the most northerly of the stars all year round, as seen on photographs of star-trails (see below), it can only mean that the earth is not orbiting the sun. Moreover, a moving and orbiting earth would have caused the paths of stars to appear as (spiral) lines instead of fully circular tracks that we observe night after night, and consequently the shapes of the constellations would have changed considerably over the course of a single year. So what we're looking at is what is real - WYSIWYG: stars orbiting the Earth once a sidereal day, i.e. the time it takes for a celestial object to rotate 360°. For the stars around the Earth this is: 23 hours, 56 minutes and 4.091 seconds.

 

Truth has a way of being indestructible. It may or may not be popular at any given time, it may even be barely noticeable, but it is always there. And it turns out that the truth actually gets in the way of "science"! Modern theoretical (non-applied a.k.a 'pure') physics is not really science-driven but agenda-driven. It is populated with heavily politicized academia. It has become nothing much more than a sham propaganda-exercise of empty eloquence with false authority. The inventor of the electric world we live in, Nikola Tesla was spot-on when he remarked that modern non-applied science has become nothing more than manipulative indulgence in fancy "thought experiments" and abstract, fuzzy math which have no relation to reality. Instead of the theories being made to fit reality, what we have is the opposite: reality being adjusted or in fact completely overthrown, in order to fit agenda-driven theories and models. ….

Lost Culture of the Chaldeans. Part Two (ii)

 

Part Two (ii):

A reader’s “different” version

 

 

by

 

Damien F. Mackey

 

 

 

 

“… as we extrapolate the observations into the past we immediately step out of the scientific method and into the area of historical assumption. This is not science but mere reasoned conclusions, however acceptable they may be to one’s reason”.

 

Dr. John Osgood

 

 

 

 

In response to my article:

 

Lost Culture of the Chaldeans. Part Two: Related to Sinites (Chinese)?

 

https://www.academia.edu/23543490/Lost_Culture_of_the_Chaldeans._Part_Two_Related_to_Sinites_Chinese_

 

arguing for the origins of the Chinese with the (Hamitic-Canaanite) “Sinites” of Genesis 10:17, a reader has offered his alternative (‘book’), “different [heretical] account”, as he calls it. “The lords made the two Great Lights but before turning them on they instructed everyone to disperse to the ends of the earth..as far away as possible from Babylon”.

 

The ‘book’ is a presumed “history of man from 10,000 BCE”, which date the author sets as “the Pleistocene-Holocene boundary”.

I take this ‘book’ to be largely humorous, playful and light-hearted.

But since it follows the usual evolutionary-based dating system for supposed prehistory and even for Egyptian dynastic history, some comments may be in order.

 

It is this sort of methodology that I would query.

 

Whether or not the ‘book’ is “heretical”, it is, I believe, inherently incredible. It follows a typically evolutionary a priori pattern of approach, in which human history is stretched out in an ‘Indian file’ fashion, which does not accord with how things really are.

Dr. John Osgood has a lot to say about the fallacy of this sort of approach and of the so-called “Dating Techniques” (“A Better Model for the Stone Age”: https://creation.com/a-better-model-for-the-stone-age):

 

The scientific method can only work in the present, for it only has its artifacts in the present with which to experiment and to investigate. Reasonable scientific conclusions can be reached about those artifacts in the framework in which we find them, whether these be tools or cities or fossils. However, as we extrapolate the observations into the past we immediately step out of the scientific method and into the area of historical assumption. This is not science but mere reasoned conclusions, however acceptable they may be to one’s reason.

 

It follows naturally that if the scientific method cannot work in the past and conclusions about the past must rest on assumptions, then there is not today a dating method that can be scientifically substantiated as being correct, for every method will have built into it an assumption. Now when we come to the practical application of this theory we discover in fact that this holds true. ….

 

In reality, a primitive desert, or forest, people can be contemporaneous with – but perhaps even unknown to – a highly sophisticated modern civilisation.

 

Now, an evolutionary-minded palaeontologist or archaeologist in, say, a 1000 years’ time, would instinctively separate these two contemporaneous societies by tens, or even hundreds, of thousands of years in time.

Osgood again:

 

A society that is forced to hunt and gather because of insufficient time to plant crops will then be called a hunter/gatherer society. It will exhibit the tools of that trade. It is likely, therefore, in most cultures in new places, that the first stage would be a hunter/gathering society in order to gather whatever is available to survive and live. As they were able to come to terms with their environment, they would begin to farm and to herd animals. It would be assumed by the archaeologists later excavating such a site that there had been a development of culture. But this is not necessarily the case, for this particular society would have had all that culture available to them right from the start. The difficulties would simply have been those of making it a reality in their environment, until sufficient leisure allowed them to do so.

….

However, if a person or society had been driven only a short distance from Mesopotamia and had sufficient ability to take many of their cultural niceties with them, such as the implements and tools for metal making and metal culture, then they would possibly be able to enjoy culture from a much earlier time. This would result in the later excavation of a Chalcolithic type of culture. It would, of course, be assumed to be later than the Paleolithic hunter/gatherer society or the Neolithic farming society discovered in a more outlying region. However, this would not necessarily be the case. The Paleolithic, Neolithic and Chalcolithic could well be contemporary, and might simply be an indication of the different conditions and the different environment and distance from the centre point available to each of the different [cultures]. ….

 

Evolution, of necessity, needs long periods of time.

That a priori mentality has affected the arrangement of the Geological Ages; the Stone Ages; the Archaeological Ages. The sort of mentality has even affected ancient Chinese and Egyptian history, whose dynasties have been stretched out in a single file that does not accord with reality, or with such ancient testimony that - in the case of Egypt - tells of some simultaneous dynasties.

Dr. John Osgood will give evidence for at least the late Stone Ages to have overlapped.

And the same may need to be done for the Geological Ages, with the great Flood being a handy unifying factor, I would suggest, for the geology of the Fertile Crescent region of the world.

 

The massive Black Sea Flood had originally been dated to 5600 BC, but today 7400 BC is the preferred date.

That is a big shift.

But it is nothing compared to palaeontological shiftarounds.

For supposed pre-history, ‘Mungo Man’ in Australia, initially dated to 60,000 BC, was soon shifted (about a week later, in fact) to 40,000 BC. No one seemed to bat an eyelid about such an extraordinary situation. The unthinking just seem to fall in line with the new ‘expert’ dating.

What does this all mean?

It means that palaeontologists, in this regard, don’t have a clue!

 

The over-extension of the Egyptian dynastic history has made of it such an unwieldy beast that, for it now to be compatible with other nations, such as the Hittites or the Greeks, centuries of ‘Dark Ages’ (1200-700 BC) must be fudged in to the latter histories to force them to fit - even though these other civilisations exhibit a perfect sequential progression in art, architecture, laws, etc. either side of the supposed ‘Dark’ divide.

See e.g. P. James et al., Centuries of Darkness, 1990, for further enlightenment on all of this.

 

 

Sumerians merge into Chaldeans

Lost Culture of

the Chaldeans

 

Part One (ii):

Sumerians merge into Chaldeans

 

 

by

 

Damien F. Mackey

 

“Why Berossos [Berossus] would draw on sources of the “Sumerians” to tell

Chaldean history remains as mysterious as the bewilderingly wanting scholarly and astronomical/astrological texts of the Chaldaeans whose erudition is famous all over Antiquity and “from whom the Greek mathematicians copy” (Flavius Josephus)”.

 

Gunnar Heinsohn

 

 

 

In this series, I am following Dr. John Osgood’s most helpful synchronization of the ‘erudite’ Chaldean people, “famous all over Antiquity”, with the ‘Ubaid culture of archaeology.

Dr. Osgood wrote tellingly, in “A Better Model for the Stone Age Part 2”:

https://creation.com/a-better-model-for-the-stone-age-part-2

 

1.     Arphaxad - Al Ubaid, the Early Chaldees

 

Josephus¹³ identifies the descendants of Arphaxad as the Chaldeans and this seems to be consistent with the biblical statements concerning them, for Abraham was a descendant of Arphaxad (Genesis 10 verse 24 and 11 verses 10-31). Abraham left Ur of the Chaldees to eventually travel to the land of Canaan.

 

Now Ur of the Chaldees, that is, the southern Ur found in the region south of the Euphrates River, has been excavated by Woolley. Woolley found that the earliest layers in Ur were built by the Al Ubaid people. (Al Ubaid is the early pottery culture of this region.)

 

Now if the Al Ubaid people built Ur, then Ur would be an Al Ubaid city originally, and as it was known as Ur of the Chaldees, this allows us to equate the Chaldees with the Al Ubaid people. This fits what we know of the Chaldean people. Certainly, it was in that region of the world that the later Chaldeans were known to live. It is also clear that this area had an influence on the north by the naming of such cities as Harran associated with the same religions that were known in the region of Ur of the Chaldees.

 

It is certain that Joan Oates has shown the contemporaneity of northern Halaf and southern Ubaid, a fact that bears well with the Table of Nations in Genesis 10.¹⁴

 

The Al Ubaid culture of Southern Mesopotamia was centred around the cities of Ur and Eridu, and its earliest [manifestation] … the Hajj Muhammad pottery, appears to be the first culture on the soil of this area of southern Iraq:

 

‘At all sites so far investigated in the South the Ubaid rests directly on virgin soil, and there seems little doubt that the people who bore this culture were the first settlers on the alluvium of whom we have any trace.’¹⁵

 

From this region at a later epoch came the now famous Nebuchadnezzar II of Babylon, the Chaldean. ….

[End of quotes]

 

Professor Gunnar Heinsohn has added a further important (cultural) dimension to the Chaldean peoples by identifying them with the most ancient, and enigmatic, Sumerians:

http://www.cais-soas.com/CAIS/History/empires_lost_found.htm

  

Classical Historiography confirmed

 

The Chaldaean priest Berossos, around 278-290 B.C.E., writes, in Greek, a history of his homeland for the Macedonian/Seleucid king Antiochus I Soter (281 -261). The work becomes known under the title Babyloniaka of which fragments are preserved in ancient Greek writings. In his section on the Deluge, Berossos, surprisingly, calls the flood hero Xisuthros (Alexander Polyhistor) or Sisithrus (Abydenus). This is a Greek transliteration of Ziusudra. Yet, Ziusudra is the protagonist of the “Sumerian” version of the Flood. That Berossus does not leave us the Chaldean name of the flood hero has never stopped to stun Orientalists. After all, Berossos tells us nothing about the “Sumerians” who, since Jules Oppert’s coining of the term 1868, are thought to have created mankind’s first civilization in his very homeland. All ancient Greek writers who cite Berossos take him for a Chaldaean expert of Chaldean history.

Therefore, they list his records under headings like “Chaldaean History” (Alexander Polyhistor), “Of the Chaldaean Kings” (Apollodorus) or “Of the Chaldaean Kings and the Deluge” (Abydenus).

 

Like Berossos, ancient Greek authors never give the slightest hint of a “Sumerian” civilization though Greek transliterations of cuneiform texts, called “Sumerian” by modern scholars, are produced as late as the 2^nd or even 3^rd century AD (so called Graeco-Babyloniaca). Thus, ancient Greeks are able to read and write “Sumerian” for nearly half a millennium but fail to recognize the “Sumerian” people not to speak of a “Sumerian” cradle of civilization. What they know is a Chaldean civilization with some 900 larger and smaller settlements which supposedly did not leave a single grave, brick or even potsherd.

 

Why Berossos would draw on sources of the “Sumerians” to tell Chaldean history remains as mysterious as the bewilderingly wanting scholarly and astronomical/ astrological texts of the Chaldaeans whose erudition is famous all over Antiquity and “from whom the Greek mathematicians copy” (Flavius Josephus). This enigma is aggravated by the fact that the “Sumerians” themselves, who have left countless astronomical/astrological texts, never employ the word “Sumer” or “Sumerians”. In their own cuneiform writing they call their country Kalam (e.g., Sumerian Kinglist) and its inhabitants people of Kalam (e.g., the Nippur poem Praise of the Pickax).

 

Yet, not only the term Kalam fits Chaldea well—as do the Mitanni fit the Medes or the Martu the Mardoi­—but also its stratigraphic location just two strata groups below Hellenism where one would look for the predecessors of the Akhaemenids in Babylonia. ….

 

Damien Mackey’s comment: For my own take on Medo-Persian (or Achaemenid) archaeology, see my article:

 

Persian History has no adequate Archaeology

 

https://www.academia.edu/31113083/Persian_History_has_no_adequate_Archaeology

 

Professor Heinsohn continues:

 

Therefore, beginning in 1987, this author has been suggesting that certain empires of the ancient near east did not really exist, and should therefore be removed from modern textbooks (in English see Heinsohn 1991. 1996 and 1998).  At the same time realms and empires well-known since antiquity should be restored to the place they once held in the history and chronology of the ancient world.   

 

Damien Mackey’s comment: Sometimes Heinsohn goes rather too far in all this I believe.

He continues, here beginning with a very true and important statement:

 

The logical basis for this proposal is that in order for great empires and civilizations that appear in modern textbooks to be accepted as genuine there must be evidence of their existence in the archaeological layers of the earth. 

If textbook empires are without such layers, then there are two possibilities: (1.) these empires should disappear from the pages of modern textbooks. (2.) the existence of these empires must be affirmed by using archaeological layers that are currently assigned to other empires, thus causing these latter empires to disappear.  

 

The author prefers a conservative solution, i.e. possibility 2. Otherwise we would have to throw out teachings and empires that have dominated historical writings for two and a half millennia.  We would have to punish thus countless authors of antiquity—Jews, Greeks, Romans and Armenian—by calling them liars, without being able to explain why, in their own time, they had no doubt that the realms described by them were real.  Despite their rather quarrelsome dispositions they were united in agreement about the imperial succession—starting, quite in tune with proven Chinese chronology, around -1000—of Assyrians, Medes (with Chaldeans and Scythians), Persians and Macedonians: "Assyrii principes omnium gentium rerum potiti sunt, deinde Medi, postea Persae, deinde Macedones” (Aemilius Sura, -2^nd century). ….

 

…. The 2nd option produces the following results:

 

….

(C)  The more than 900 cities and towns of Chaldaea, known to the Greeks as "the cradle of civilization" but seen as non-retrievable by modern Assyriologists, returns to the textbooks.  To Chaldaea are given the archaeological layers that not until 1868 began to be called "Sumer" (albeit Kalam in its own language), which disappears accordingly.

…..