Scientia Press

New evidence and interpretation at the intersection of planetary science and religion can help us better understand the history of the Ancient Near East and of the origins of Islam.

A Revised Venus Theory corrects Immanuel Velikovsky’s original theory that the planet Venus first entered the inner solar system as a comet with a bifurcated tail around 1500 BC (new evidence indicates around 2525 BC).  Now we have a much better explanation of the origin of Venus (rather than fissioning off of Jupiter, it was pulled from the outer solar system by Jupiter’s gravity and, via tidal heating, became a comet with a long tail).  Venus interacted with the Earth on a 52-year cycle during the Late Bronze Age, causing catastrophes worldwide.  And we now have a framework theory of the terrestrial planets into which these phenomena neatly fit and for which there is telling evidence.  For Comet Venus, there is also newly interpreted, compelling iconographic and linguistic evidence.  The names of both Athena (A Fena, the Phoenician) and Poseidon (Bos eidon, the Bull of Heaven), for instance, referred to the double-tailed Venus.

So with new-found confidence that the Ancients and Velikovsky were right about Venus, we can ask how can we use this to decipher aspects of the culture of the Ancient Near East and of the background of Islam.

One of the world’s most famous monuments, Stonehenge abounds in mysteries and anomalies.

Why was Stonehenge built in the first place?  Why was it radically transformed shortly before 2500 BC into a masterpiece of megalithic architecture?  What explains the intricate, changing patterns of the stones over time?   Why the extraordinary effort?

We now have answers to these and other questions, but to get to them we need to set aside preconceptions and come to terms with something that isn’t simple.

There are two sides to every story. Judges rightly admonish juries to check out both sides before coming to a conclusion. Our entire system of adversarial justice is built on this principle. But under surveillance by FBI in the 2001 anthrax mailings case, U.S. Army scientist Bruce Ivins committed suicide. So only one side got to tell its version of the story.

Upon closing the case on February 19, 2010, FBI issued an Amerithrax Investigative Summary that concludes that Ivins was the anthrax mailer. The Summary contains serious errors as well as minor ones. It also omits crucial information. So, to ensure a fair outcome, we need to look at it through the eyes of a defense attorney, to make sure that the American people can check out both sides of the story before coming to a conclusion.

The apparent misdeeds and cover-ups of the administration of George W. Bush related to the terrorist attacks of 2001 remain in historical limbo.  Neither presidents, nor the Congress, nor the media have gotten to the bottom of these tragic events.  The 9/11 Commission Report, while providing hundreds of useful details, egregiously and unpardonably failed to examine the doings of senior government officials in the run-up to 9/11 and so must be considered a cover-up.  As a result, the American public has not come to closure on the 9/11 attacks or on the anthrax mailings of 2001, nor is there a shared understanding of such a critical issue as the real reasons that the US attacked Iraq in 2003.

These failures have left the field open to wild speculations regarding these events, generally termed “conspiracy theories”, though this term obscures the crucial distinction between elaborate prospective plots involving many actors (silly in the context of an open society) and retrospective cover-ups that government officials who have made embarrassing mistakes are all too prone to engage in (very realistic and plausible).  However, it is also true that simple prospective plots involving two or three individuals can occur.

Failure to reach a full, shared understanding of major events that led to interminable wars and occupations in the Middle East and Southwest Asia as well as to the undermining of civil liberties has helped to alienate Americans from their government and media, a  triumph for America’s enemies.  So we must make every effort to establish a clear common interpretation of what actually happened.

The famous spiral disk found in Phaistos, Crete in 1908 has long defied efforts to translate it or even to identify the language in which it is written or what kind of a document it might be (it is here in color to aid analysis). Though many scholars and amateurs have proposed theories and even translations, none has seemed persuasive to the great majority of observers. A skeptical view holds that the disk is a forgery, but most scholars reject this. Many scholars agree that the small sample of language in the disk makes a breakthrough very unlikely unless and until other samples of the writing are found.

If we could accurately interpret ancient myths, they might give us insight into celestial and Earthly events that could revise our views of the history of the solar system.  In turn, they could teach us about the forces at work and explain anomalies bequeathed to us by a long-hidden past.  But how can we interpret these myths, the products of minds so far removed from ours?  Are we doomed to speculate without ever achieving certainty?

Here we will interpret two Bronze Age myths that show how difficult it is to interpret them correctly and illustrate the high value such myths might contain.  We will also explain why we should consider the interpretations correct, and note how simple it can be to understand a myth once the right interpretation becomes available.

What caused ancient China’s gigantic floods?  Who was the real Yellow Emperor?  Who was Archer Yi, what was his vermilion bow, how did he target and shoot down nine of ten suns, and why were there ten suns in the first place?

We now know the answers to these and other questions about ancient China.  These answers can lead us to a new understanding of Chinese history, of the worldwide Bronze Age catastrophes, and of the history of climate change.