“I think (Atlantis, as a kind of creation myth, for racists) is a great topic. I’ve been posting about it quite a bit. My best advice is to look at Donnelly’s original 1882 and 1883 texts and then look at how they were used. I don’t read German, but I’m curious about how the German translation of Donnelly’s 1882 book was used, especially by Nazi authors like Alfred Rosenberg. Apparently, his 1883 book, “Ragnarok,” wasn’t translated into German until after the Welteislehre nuttiness based on the work of Hanns Hörbiger had died down. The Nazis loved Hörbiger. The role of Manly Palmer Hall in promoting Atlantis mythology is also significant. I think that’s pretty good. Some Atlantis authors—perhaps even Donnelly (I can’t remember and will have to check)—thought the Garden of Eden was on Atlantis. I think Robert Sepehr—a blatant racist—presents it in contrast to the “Out of Africa” model.” – John Hoopes
Manly Palmer Hall
“Manly Palmer Hall (18 March 1901 – 29 August 1990) was a Canadian author, lecturer, astrologer and mystic. Over his 70-year career he gave thousands of lectures and published over 150 volumes, of which the best known is The Secret Teachings of All Ages (1928). In 1934, he founded the Philosophical Research Society in Los Angeles. By 1928, Hall had become sufficiently known and respected as an interpreter and lecturer of many ancient writings. He utilized print and word-of-mouth advertising to solicit public funding to finance his book The Secret Teachings of All Ages (1928), and hired John Augustus Knapp to create full color illustrations, and black and white drawings. The HS Crocker Company of San Francisco agreed to publish his work if he could secure the interest of book designer John Henry Nash, who had worked as a printer for the Vatican.” ref
“After The Secret Teachings of All Ages circulated, Hall became increasingly influential on the metaphysical movement sweeping the United States. His book challenged assumptions about society’s spiritual roots making readers view their spirituality in new and diverse ways. He subtitled his book to “the proposition that concealed within the emblematic figures, allegories and rituals of the ancients is a secret doctrine concerning the inner mysteries of life, which doctrine has been preserved in toto among a small band of initiated minds.” As one writer put it: “The result was a gorgeous, dreamlike book of mysterious symbols, concise essays and colorful renderings of mythical beasts rising out of the sea, and angelic beings with lions’ heads presiding over somber initiation rites in torch-lit temples of ancestral civilizations that had mastered latent powers beyond the reach of modern man.
The fake story of Atlantis gave rise to much pseudo-scientific/pseudo-historical/pseudo-archaeological speculation.
The “Fake” Island of Atlantis
The lost city of Atlantis rises again to fuel a dangerous myth
The Strange and Dangerous Right-Wing Freakout Over Ancient Apocalypse
The Harmful Pseudoarchaeology of Mythological Atlantis
Why Archaeologists Are Not Looking For Atlantis
The legend of Atlantis has a dark, terrible history
Blog: Archaeology and Aliens: Teaching the Myth of Atlantis
Sun Ra, Pseudoarchaeoogy, and Atlantis
Ignatius Donnelly and the Politics of Atlantis
Atlantis and the Nazis | The Link Between the Legend & the Third Reich | Debunking Atlantis Ep. 3
Hidden Knowledge and Mythical Origins: Atlantis, Esoteric Fascism, and Nordic Racial Divinity
Atlantis, Expertise, and Utopia
Feedback on Stephanie Halmhofer’s The Harmful Pseudoarchaeology of Mythological Atlantis
American Antiquities And Discoveries In The West By Josiah Priest (1834)
Bible defense of slavery: and origin, fortunes, and history of the negro race
The Anti-universalist: Or History of the Fallen Angels of the Scriptures: Proofs of the Being…
Atlantis. Remarks on the political history of a myth
“The political contents of books concerning the myth of Atlantis are analyzed. Between the 19th and the 20th centuries, books on Atlantis became very popular in Europe and in the United States of America. Authors of these books believed that Atlantis had really existed in a very remote age of gold, which they identified with the origins of the human race. Authors of books on Atlantis were followers of irrationalism, a philosophical movement that emphasized instinct and will over and against reason. As a consequence, while exalting racism and preindustrial society, books on Atlantis strongly oppose progress, the industrialization process, and capitalism, which are, on the contrary, supported by Positivism and Darwinism. The present article demonstrates that books focusing on Atlantis contributed to the spread of the ideology later expressed by totalitarian regimes.” ref
Plato’s “Fake Story” of Atlantis
A History of Slavery: Plato, Aristotle, Slavery and the Birth of Racism
“Plato saw a marked difference between slaves and freemen, warning that an admonition is insufficient when they do wrong but proper punishment is necessary. They lack the reasoning powers of ordinary people, having doxa but not logos. Belief not reason. Although a slave can learn by experience, he (Plato always referenced men, not women, although he found active roles for them in his Republic) cannot communicate what he learns. He is susceptible to persuasion. 1 Inevitably perhaps slave’s psychology and susceptibility to emotion is also discovered in women, providing reasons why they could not in Athens assume responsibility. Malcolm Schofield insists 2 that Aristotle’s views on slavery are embarrassing, poorly argued and not truly philosophy. Schofield’s work demonstrates a determination to find out why Aristotle held that the master and slave relationship was (is?) natural, but concludes it is not ideological. At the same time, why did Athenians hold that women are inferior to men when the evidence for their general efficacy was clear in Spartan society? This article will show that such concepts remain with us, but are less associated with oppression, and constitute the relationships between owner of a company and its workers, professional roles in society, religion, and medicine-doctors and patients where the doctor is custodian of reason and knowledge and the patient subject to irrationality. The divisions of humans into occupying areas and degrees of power has its format, if not its origins, in Athens. Superiority An assumed state that can be justified through actions, history, epistemology and genetic arguments. The last two can meld together with acquired traits, such as education or profession, assuming pivotal importance through wealth and identity. It constitutes an acceptance of a status quo and the individual’s place in it: the descriptive result of accepted, usually public, opinions that form ideologies that preference the superiority of the person or group holding such opinions.” ref
Greek Assumptions of Superiority
“Although the views of Plato and Aristotle were based on cultural superiority, expressed in Greek relationships with Persia, it was given authenticity through success in war, or propaganda to that effect, against the Persians. It was constructed upon fear of the Persians. Greek claims on the effete, feminine nature of Persian men were an expression of that fear. Greek superiority was thereby an expression of fear, through a sense of inferiority and awe. Herodotus claims that before the Battle of Plataea (479 BCE or around 2,479 years ago), Pausanias, the Spartan Commander in Chief of the Greek Allies, communicated his fear of the Persian military. The historian admitted that until Marathon, when an Athenian army pushed a Persian army back into their ships, the Persians had been a source of immense fear for the Greeks. The Persians ran an immense empire, the largest seen in the ancient world, well organized and profitable. The Persians were a seemingly unstoppable military power whose forces had long demonstrated the efficacy of both their cavalry and foot soldiers. Their population was huge, even in their highland bases in Iran.” ref
“Although dismissed by Greek writers as barbarians, many Persians, including Xerxes, were followers of Zarathustra, probably the originator of Abrahamic monotheism. As such, they had specific ethical beliefs they commonly adhered to, with concepts of Falsehood (allied to Evil) and Truth (allied to goodness). Although they appear not to have enjoyed Athenian-type literature, they had the considerable Zarathustra text, largely destroyed during the Islamic invasions a thousand years and more later. The loss of this extensive text has probably affected our understanding of the Achaemenids, the original Persian empire builders. They enjoyed tolerance of other religions, unlike the offspring of their belief system. Xerxes was something of an exception to this happy orientation and took the Hebrew attitude to Polytheism setting out to uproot it in Egypt. It is indeed from the Persian king that the Hebrews may have learned their own version of hostility to pagans.” ref
“Nevertheless, it may have been the political power of Egyptian cults, distributed within the different Egyptian nomes, that bothered him most as Egyptian religion laid claims through creator gods to the status of qualified monotheism. Xerxes has come down through history as a religious fanatic, his hand turned against multiple gods, and those who did not worship Ahura Mazda. It is possible that Xerxes disapproved of Greek polytheism but he tended to be exceptional amongst the Persians for his intolerance. There is proof that Xerxes was devoted to Ahura Mazda. It is possible that his devotion was fanatical in nature.” ref
“‘RACISM’ IN PLATO’S REPUBLIC: “Among the criticisms commonly made of the Republic is that Plato’s just city favors a certain biological human type over others, that Plato is, in short, a racist. The charge appears in its most celebrated form in Karl Popper’s The Open Society and its Enemies, which has prompted detailed rebuttals from Plato’s supporters. In this paper I review the grounds of the controversy. I believe that there is some merit to the charge of ‘racism’, though most of its inflammatory connotations are unwarranted. The precise sense in which Plato is — and others in which he is not — a ‘racist’ can be clarified if we carefully examine the concept of ‘racism’ before turning to Plato. The concept of ‘racism’ is discussed in Section I, with special attention to the distinction between what I call ’empirical’ and ‘normative’ aspects of racism or racist theories.” ref
White Racism and Plato’s “Allegory of the Cave”
“The great Greek philosopher Plato’s “Allegory of the Cave” describes a group of people who have lived in a deep cave since birth, never seeing the light of day. The shadows of puppets being manipulated are all they can see. These shadows become their truth and, in essence, their reality, until finally, one of the prisoners escapes and is exposed to a world he never knew existed. Scholars and intellectuals have interpreted the meaning of the allegory in many different ways. The interpretation most inviting to me, is that the allegory is about human ignorance and a people who are not capable or willing to seek the truth. That is most intriguing, because it is applicable to a specific segment of the population in the United States.” ref
“Throughout this country’s history, the most difficult struggle has been between the races. The problem stems from the fact that for a very long time, white America was much like Plato’s prisoners living in an underground cave. Trapped in a two to three century lie, they were taught that there was something very special about them; and that they were the cream of the earth. Their white skin made them superior to all other people. And they were ecstatic about their status. Just like no one could have gone down into Plato’s cave, and convinced the caged people that what they saw were only mere shadows until they actually experienced the reality themselves, no one could even suggest to white America that what they were taught was not the truth. They were the superior race, and all others must always remain subservient to them. And that was especially true of the black race. After all, one of the first lessons they were taught imbued them with the belief that black was and always would be inferior to white.” ref
Critical Philosophy of Race
“Phenomenological approaches to race also helped to disaggregate the experiences of diverse racial identities as well as expose the diverse forms of racism. Liberalism generally defines racism as the result of an illegitimate racial consciousness or racial awareness, in which the race of an individual is noted and taken to be significant, setting aside the question of who is noting who or how the significance is understood. By decontextualizing racism in this way, it is rendered a uniform practice that could be philosophically treated in the abstract, with generic solutions. By contrast, phenomenological approaches have suggested that white practices of racial consciousness, among others, need a distinct analysis. White racial consciousness often involves self-attributions of innocence, willful ignorance about race-related social realities, and a sense of spatial entitlement that Sullivan names “ontological expansiveness.” While there are some similarities in racist habits—such as forms of group-based antipathy, denigration, and essentialism—there are also differences important in understanding our experiences. The very term “anti-black racism” Gordon developed indicated that his analysis was not meant to be generic but specific, attending to the manifestations of racism that emerge from the specific histories of slavery, Jim Crow, and the ongoing colonization of Africa. Even when racism involves a negative projection, there is also always a positive ideal against which the negative projection is identifiable. The criminal black person is contrasted with the compliant black, the lazy Mexican is contrasted with the hard-working Mexican, and so on. In general, Critical Race Philosophers have started with the view, following Alain Locke, that race, even though it is signified by physical attributes, is basically a social kind rather than a natural kind (Harris 1989). Locke wrote: “The best consensus of opinion then seems to be that race is a fact in the social or ethnic sense, that it has been very erroneously associated with race in the physical sense…that it has a vital and significant relation to social culture, and that it must be explained in terms of social and historical causes…” ref
“Plato (428-423 BCE to 348 BCE or around 2,428/3 to 2,348 years ago), was a member of an aristocratic and influential family and was an ancient Greek philosopher of the Classical period who is considered a foundational thinker in Western philosophy and an innovator of the written dialogue and dialectic forms. He raised problems for what became all the major areas of both theoretical philosophy and practical philosophy, and was the founder of the Platonic Academy, a philosophical school in Athens where Plato taught the doctrines that would later become known as Platonism. Plato never speaks in his own voice in his dialogues; every dialogue except the Laws features Socrates, although many dialogues, including the Timaeus and Statesman, feature him speaking only rarely. Leo Strauss notes that Socrates’ reputation for irony casts doubt on whether Plato’s Socrates is expressing sincere beliefs.” ref
“During the early Renaissance, the Greek language and, along with it, Plato’s texts were reintroduced to Western Europe by Byzantine scholars. Some 250 known manuscripts of Plato survive. In September or October 1484 Filippo Valori and Francesco Berlinghieri printed 1025 copies of Ficino’s translation, using the printing press [it] at the Dominican convent of San Jacopo di Ripoli [it]. The 1578 edition of Plato’s complete works published by Henricus Stephanus (Henri Estienne) in Geneva also included parallel Latin translation and running commentary by Joannes Serranus (Jean de Serres). It was this edition which established standard Stephanus pagination, still in use today. No one knows the exact order Plato’s dialogues were written in, nor the extent to which some might have been later revised and rewritten. The works of Plato were again revived at the times of Islamic Golden ages (8th century to the 13th century) with other Greek contents through their translation from Greek to Arabic.” ref
“The Islamic Golden Age was a period of scientific, economic and cultural flourishing in the history of Islam, traditionally dated from the 8th century to the 13th century. This period is traditionally understood to have begun during the reign of the Abbasid caliph Harun al-Rashid (786 to 809) with the inauguration of the House of Wisdom, which saw scholars from all over the Muslim world flock to Baghdad, the world’s largest city by then, to translate the known world’s classical knowledge into Arabic and Persian. The period is traditionally said to have ended with the collapse of the Abbasid caliphate due to Mongol invasions and the Siege of Baghdad in 1258. There are a few alternative timelines. Some scholars extend the end date of the golden age to around 1350, including the Timurid Renaissance within it, while others place the end of the Islamic Golden Age as late as the end of 15th to 16th centuries, including the rise of the Islamic gunpowder empires. During this period, the Muslims showed a strong interest in assimilating the scientific knowledge of the civilizations that had been conquered. Many classic works of antiquity that might otherwise have been lost were translated from Greek, Syriac, Middle Persian, and Sanskrit into Syriac and Arabic, some of which were later in turn translated into other languages like Hebrew and Latin.” ref
“Atlantis is a fictional island mentioned in Plato‘s works Timaeus and Critias as part of an allegory on the hubris of nations. In the story, Atlantis is described as a naval empire that ruled all Western parts of the known world, making it the literary counter-image of the Achaemenid Empire. After an ill-fated attempt to conquer “Ancient Athens,” Atlantis falls out of favor with the deities and submerges into the Atlantic Ocean. Since Plato describes Athens as resembling his ideal state in the Republic, the Atlantis story is meant to bear witness to the superiority of his concept of a state.” ref
“Despite its minor importance in Plato’s work, the Atlantis story has had a considerable impact on literature. The allegorical aspect of Atlantis was taken up in utopian works of several Renaissance writers, such as Francis Bacon‘s New Atlantis and Thomas More‘s Utopia. On the other hand, nineteenth-century amateur scholars misinterpreted Plato’s narrative as historical tradition, most famously Ignatius L. Donnelly in his Atlantis: The Antediluvian World. Plato’s vague indications of the time of the events (more than 9,000 years before his time around 2,400 years ago or so. Thus, adding it to 9,000 equals around 11,400 years ago) and the alleged location of Atlantis (“beyond the Pillars of Hercules“) gave rise to much pseudoscientific speculation. As a consequence, Atlantis has become a byword for any and all supposed advanced prehistoric lost civilizations and continues to inspire contemporary fiction, from comic books to films.” ref
“While present-day philologists and classicists agree on the story’s fictional nature, there is still debate on what served as its inspiration. Plato is known to have freely borrowed some of his allegories and metaphors from older traditions, as he did with the story of Gyges. This led a number of scholars to suggest possible inspiration of Atlantis from Egyptian records of the Thera eruption, the Sea Peoples invasion, or the Trojan War. Others have rejected this chain of tradition as implausible and insist that Plato created an entirely fictional account, drawing loose inspiration from contemporary events such as the failed Athenian invasion of Sicily in 415–413 BCE or the destruction of Helike in 373 BCE. The only primary sources for Atlantis are Plato’s dialogues Timaeus and Critias; all other mentions of the island are based on them. The dialogues claim to quote Solon, who visited Egypt between 590 and 580 BCE; they state that he translated Egyptian records of Atlantis.” ref
“Plato introduced Atlantis in Timaeus, written in 360 BCE: For it is related in our records how once upon a time your State stayed the course of a mighty host, which, starting from a distant point in the Atlantic ocean, was insolently advancing to attack the whole of Europe, and Asia to boot. For the ocean there was at that time navigable; for in front of the mouth which you Greeks call, as you say, ‘the pillars of Heracles,’ there lay an island which was larger than Libya and Asia together; and it was possible for the travelers of that time to cross from it to the other islands, and from the islands to the whole of the continent over against them which encompasses that veritable ocean. For all that we have here, lying within the mouth of which we speak, is evidently a haven having a narrow entrance; but that yonder is a real ocean, and the land surrounding it may most rightly be called, in the fullest and truest sense, a continent. Now in this island of Atlantis there existed a confederation of kings, of great and marvelous power, which held sway over all the island, and over many other islands also and parts of the continent.” ref
“The four people appearing in those two dialogues are the politicians Critias and Hermocrates as well as the philosophers Socrates and Timaeus of Locri, although only Critias speaks of Atlantis. In his works Plato makes extensive use of the Socratic method in order to discuss contrary positions within the context of a supposition. The Timaeus begins with an introduction, followed by an account of the creations and structure of the universe and ancient civilizations. In the introduction, Socrates muses about the perfect society, described in Plato’s Republic (c. 380 BCE), and wonders if he and his guests might recollect a story which exemplifies such a society. Critias mentions a tale he considered to be historical, that would make the perfect example, and he then follows by describing Atlantis as is recorded in the Critias. In his account, ancient Athens seems to represent the “perfect society” and Atlantis its opponent, representing the very antithesis of the “perfect” traits described in the Republic.” ref
Critias (an ancient Athenian poet, Greek philosopher, and political leader) and Atlantis
“According to Critias (460-403 BCE), the Hellenic deities of old divided the land so that each deity might have their own lot; Poseidon was appropriately, and to his liking, bequeathed the island of Atlantis. The island was larger than Ancient Libya and Asia Minor combined, but it was later sunk by an earthquake and became an impassable mud shoal, inhibiting travel to any part of the ocean. Plato asserted that the Egyptians described Atlantis as an island consisting mostly of mountains in the northern portions and along the shore and encompassing a great plain in an oblong shape in the south “extending in one direction three thousand stadia [about 555 km; 345 mi], but across the center inland it was two thousand stadia [about 370 km; 230 mi].” Fifty stadia [9 km; 6 mi] from the coast was a mountain that was low on all sides … broke it off all round about … the central island itself was five stades in diameter [about 0.92 km; 0.57 mi].” ref
“In Plato’s metaphorical tale, Poseidon fell in love with Cleito, the daughter of Evenor and Leucippe, who bore him five pairs of male twins. The eldest of these, Atlas, was made rightful king of the entire island and the ocean (called the Atlantic Ocean in his honor), and was given the mountain of his birth and the surrounding area as his fiefdom. Atlas’s twin Gadeirus, or Eumelus in Greek, was given the extremity of the island toward the pillars of Hercules. The other four pairs of twins—Ampheres and Evaemon, Mneseus and Autochthon, Elasippus and Mestor, and Azaes and Diaprepes—were also given “rule over many men, and a large territory. Poseidon carved the mountain where his love dwelt into a palace and enclosed it with three circular moats of increasing width, varying from one to three stadia and separated by rings of land proportional in size.” ref
“The Atlanteans then built bridges northward from the mountain, making a route to the rest of the island. They dug a great canal to the sea, and alongside the bridges carved tunnels into the rings of rock so that ships could pass into the city around the mountain; they carved docks from the rock walls of the moats. Every passage to the city was guarded by gates and towers, and a wall surrounded each ring of the city. The walls were constructed of red, white, and black rock, quarried from the moats, and were covered with brass, tin, and the precious metal orichalcum, respectively. According to Critias, 9,000 years before his lifetime a war took place between those outside the Pillars of Hercules at the Strait of Gibraltar and those who dwelt within them. The Atlanteans had conquered the parts of Libya within the Pillars of Hercules, as far as Egypt, and the European continent as far as Tyrrhenia, and had subjected its people to slavery. The Athenians led an alliance of resistors against the Atlantean empire, and as the alliance disintegrated, prevailed alone against the empire, liberating the occupied lands.” ref
“But afterwards there occurred violent earthquakes and floods; and in a single day and night of misfortune all your warlike men in a body sank into the earth, and the island of Atlantis in like manner disappeared in the depths of the sea. For which reason the sea in those parts is impassable and impenetrable, because there is a shoal of mud in the way; and this was caused by the subsidence of the island. The logographer Hellanicus of Lesbos wrote an earlier work entitled Atlantis, of which only a few fragments survive. Hellanicus’ work appears to have been a genealogical one concerning the daughters of Atlas (Ἀτλαντὶς in Greek means “of Atlas”), but some authors have suggested a possible connection with Plato’s island.” ref
“John V. Luce notes that when Plato writes about the genealogy of Atlantis’s kings, he writes in the same style as Hellanicus, suggesting a similarity between a fragment of Hellanicus’s work and an account in the Critias. Rodney Castleden suggests that Plato may have borrowed his title from Hellanicus, who may have based his work on an earlier work about Atlantis. Castleden has pointed out that Plato wrote of Atlantis in 359 BCE, when he returned to Athens from Sicily. He notes a number of parallels between the physical organisation and fortifications of Syracuse and Plato’s description of Atlantis. Gunnar Rudberg was the first who elaborated upon the idea that Plato’s attempt to realize his political ideas in the city of Syracuse could have heavily inspired the Atlantis account.” ref
Ancient Interpretations of Plato’s Atlantis
“Some ancient writers viewed Atlantis as fictional or metaphorical myth; others believed it to be real. Aristotle believed that Plato, his teacher, had invented the island to teach philosophy. The philosopher Crantor, a student of Plato’s student Xenocrates, is cited often as an example of a writer who thought the story to be historical fact. His work, a commentary on Timaeus, is lost, but Proclus, a Neoplatonist of the fifth century CE, reports on it. The passage in question has been represented in the modern literature either as claiming that Crantor visited Egypt, had conversations with priests, and saw hieroglyphs confirming the story, or, as claiming that he learned about them from other visitors to Egypt.” ref
“Proclus wrote: As for the whole of this account of the Atlanteans, some say that it is unadorned history, such as Crantor, the first commentator on Plato. Crantor also says that Plato’s contemporaries used to criticize him jokingly for not being the inventor of his Republic but copying the institutions of the Egyptians. Plato took these critics seriously enough to assign to the Egyptians this story about the Athenians and Atlanteans, so as to make them say that the Athenians really once lived according to that system. The next sentence is often translated “Crantor adds, that this is testified by the prophets of the Egyptians, who assert that these particulars [which are narrated by Plato] are written on pillars which are still preserved.” But in the original, the sentence starts not with the name Crantor but with the ambiguous He; whether this referred to Crantor or to Plato is the subject of considerable debate.” ref
“Proponents of both Atlantis as a metaphorical myth and Atlantis as history have argued that the pronoun refers to Crantor. Alan Cameron argues that the pronoun should be interpreted as referring to Plato, and that, when Proclus writes that “we must bear in mind concerning this whole feat of the Athenians, that it is neither a mere myth nor unadorned history, although some take it as history and others as myth”, he is treating “Crantor’s view as mere personal opinion, nothing more; in fact he first quotes and then dismisses it as representing one of the two unacceptable extremes.” ref
“Cameron also points out that whether he refers to Plato or to Crantor, the statement does not support conclusions such as Otto Muck’s “Crantor came to Sais and saw there in the temple of Neith the column, completely covered with hieroglyphs, on which the history of Atlantis was recorded. Scholars translated it for him, and he testified that their account fully agreed with Plato’s account of Atlantis” or J. V. Luce’s suggestion that Crantor sent “a special enquiry to Egypt” and that he may simply be referring to Plato’s own claims.” ref
“Another passage from the commentary by Proclus on the Timaeus gives a description of the geography of Atlantis: That an island of such nature and size once existed is evident from what is said by certain authors who investigated the things around the outer sea. For according to them, there were seven islands in that sea in their time, sacred to Persephone, and also three others of enormous size, one of which was sacred to Hades, another to Ammon, and another one between them to Poseidon, the extent of which was a thousand stadia [200 km; 124 mi]; and the inhabitants of it—they add—preserved the remembrance from their ancestors of the immeasurably large island of Atlantis which had really existed there and which for many ages had reigned over all islands in the Atlantic sea and which itself had like-wise been sacred to Poseidon. Now these things Marcellus has written in his Aethiopica.” ref
“Marcellus remains unidentified. Other ancient historians and philosophers who believed in the existence of Atlantis were Strabo and Posidonius. Some have theorized that, before the sixth century BCE, the “Pillars of Hercules” may have applied to mountains on either side of the Gulf of Laconia, and also may have been part of the pillar cult of the Aegean. The mountains stood at either side of the southernmost gulf in Greece, the largest in the Peloponnese, and it opens onto the Mediterranean Sea. This would have placed Atlantis in the Mediterranean, lending credence to many details in Plato’s discussion.” ref
“The fourth-century historian Ammianus Marcellinus, relying on a lost work by Timagenes, a historian writing in the first century BCE, writes that the Druids of Gaul said that part of the inhabitants of Gaul had migrated there from distant islands. Some have understood Ammianus’s testimony as a claim that at the time of Atlantis’s sinking into the sea, its inhabitants fled to western Europe; but Ammianus, in fact, says that “the Drasidae (Druids) recall that a part of the population is indigenous but others also migrated in from islands and lands beyond the Rhine” (Res Gestae 15.9), an indication that the immigrants came to Gaul from the north (Britain, the Netherlands, or Germany), not from a theorized location in the Atlantic Ocean to the south-west. Instead, the Celts who dwelled along the ocean were reported to venerate twin gods, (Dioscori), who appeared to them coming from that ocean.” ref
Jewish and Christian Interpretations and Atlantis
“During the early first century, the Hellenistic Jewish philosopher Philo wrote about the destruction of Atlantis in his On the Eternity of the World, xxvi. 141, in a longer passage allegedly citing Aristotle’s successor Theophrastus: … And the island of Atalantes [translator’s spelling; original: “Ἀτλαντίς”] which was greater than Africa and Asia, as Plato says in the Timaeus, in one day and night was overwhelmed beneath the sea in consequence of an extraordinary earthquake and inundation and suddenly disappeared, becoming sea, not indeed navigable, but full of gulfs and eddies.” ref
“The theologian Joseph Barber Lightfoot (Apostolic Fathers, 1885, II, p. 84) noted on this passage: “Clement may possibly be referring to some known, but hardly accessible land, lying without the pillars of Hercules. But more probably he contemplated some unknown land in the far west beyond the ocean, like the fabled Atlantis of Plato …” Other early Christian writers wrote about Atlantis, although they had mixed views on whether it once existed or was an untrustworthy myth of pagan origin. Tertullian believed Atlantis was once real and wrote that in the Atlantic Ocean once existed “[the isle] that was equal in size to Libya or Asia” referring to Plato’s geographical description of Atlantis. The early Christian apologist writer Arnobius also believed Atlantis once existed, but blamed its destruction on pagans.” ref
“Cosmas Indicopleustes in the sixth century wrote of Atlantis in his Christian Topography in an attempt to prove his theory that the world was flat and surrounded by water: … In like manner the philosopher Timaeus also describes this Earth as surrounded by the Ocean, and the Ocean as surrounded by the more remote earth. For he supposes that there is to westward an island, Atlantis, lying out in the Ocean, in the direction of Gadeira (Cadiz), of an enormous magnitude, and relates that the ten kings having procured mercenaries from the nations in this island came from the earth far away, and conquered Europe and Asia, but were afterwards conquered by the Athenians, while that island itself was submerged by God under the sea. Both Plato and Aristotle praise this philosopher, and Proclus has written a commentary on him. He himself expresses views similar to our own with some modifications, transferring the scene of the events from the east to the west. Moreover he mentions those ten generations as well as that earth which lies beyond the Ocean. And in a word it is evident that all of them borrow from Moses, and publish his statements as their own.” ref
More Modern Interpretations
“Aside from Plato’s original account, modern interpretations regarding Atlantis are an amalgamation of diverse, speculative movements that began in the sixteenth century, when scholars began to identify Atlantis with the New World. Francisco Lopez de Gomara was the first to state that Plato was referring to America, as did Francis Bacon and Alexander von Humboldt; Janus Joannes Bircherod said in 1663 orbe novo non-novo (“the New World is not new”). Athanasius Kircher accepted Plato’s account as literally true, describing Atlantis as a small continent in the Atlantic Ocean.” ref
“Contemporary perceptions of Atlantis share roots with Mayanism, which can be traced to the beginning of the Modern Age, when European imaginations were fueled by their initial encounters with the indigenous peoples of the Americas. From this era sprang apocalyptic and utopian visions that would inspire many subsequent generations of theorists. Most of these interpretations are considered pseudohistory, pseudoscience, or pseudoarchaeology, as they have presented their works as academic or scientific, but lack the standards or criteria.” ref
“The Flemish cartographer and geographer Abraham Ortelius is believed to have been the first person to imagine that the continents were joined before drifting to their present positions. In the 1596 edition of his Thesaurus Geographicus he wrote: “Unless it be a fable, the island of Gadir or Gades [Cadiz] will be the remaining part of the island of Atlantis or America, which was not sunk (as Plato reports in the Timaeus) so much as torn away from Europe and Africa by earthquakes and flood… The traces of the ruptures are shown by the projections of Europe and Africa and the indentations of America in the parts of the coasts of these three said lands that face each other to anyone who, using a map of the world, carefully considered them. So that anyone may say with Strabo in Book 2, that what Plato says of the island of Atlantis on the authority of Solon is not a figment.” ref
Early influential literature
“The term “utopia” (from “no place”) was coined by Sir Thomas More in his sixteenth-century work of fiction Utopia. Inspired by Plato‘s Atlantis and travelers’ accounts of the Americas, More described an imaginary land set in the New World. His idealistic vision established a connection between the Americas and utopian societies, a theme that Bacon discussed in The New Atlantis (c. 1623). A character in the narrative gives a history of Atlantis that is similar to Plato’s and places Atlantis in America. People had begun believing that the Mayan and Aztec ruins could possibly be the remnants of Atlantis.” ref
Sir Francis Bacon’s New Atlantis
“New Atlantis is an incomplete utopian novel by Sir Francis Bacon, published posthumously in 1626. It appeared unheralded and tucked into the back of a longer work of natural history, Sylva Sylvarum (forest of materials). In New Atlantis, Bacon portrayed a vision of the future of human discovery and knowledge, expressing his aspirations and ideals for humankind. The novel depicts the creation of a utopian land where “generosity and enlightenment, dignity and splendor, piety and public spirit” are the commonly held qualities of the inhabitants of the mythical Bensalem. The plan and organisation of his ideal college, Salomon’s House (or Solomon’s House), prefigured the modern research university in both applied and pure sciences.” ref
“New Atlantis first appeared in the back of Sylva sylvarum, a rather thorny work of natural history that was published by William Rawley, Bacon’s secretary, chaplain and amanuensis in 1626. When Sylva was entered into the Stationers’ Register of July 4th, 1626 (three months after Bacon’s death), no mention was made of New Atlantis, and it was not until 1670 that it was included on Sylva‘s letterpress title page (unlike Historia vitae et mortis which received that accolade in 1651). It was not until 1676 that the two works were published with continuous signatures, with the first edition of the Sylva being ‘printed for J. H. for William Lee’, while New Atlantis was, according to McKerrow, ‘perhaps printed by Mathewes.” ref
“After New Atlantis was a two-page piece called Magnalia naturae, which most commentators tend to ignore, probably because it is difficult to link it to either Sylva or New Atlantis with any surety. It was published as an individual text by Thomas Newcomb in 1659, but in general New Atlantis appears to have been a text that no-one quite knew what to do with. Certainly Rawley’s letter To The Reader indicates that he was less than clear as to its purpose, even though he later published it in Latin translation within the collection Operum moralium et civilium tomus (1638). In 1659 Thomas Bushell referred to the work in his Mineral Prosecutions, while in 1660 a certain R. H. published a continuation of New Atlantis and in 1662 an explicitly Rosicrucian version appeared as the preface to John Heydon’s Holy Guide.” ref
“The novel depicts a mythical island, Bensalem, which is discovered by the crew of a European ship after they have lost their way in the Pacific Ocean somewhere west of Peru. The minimal plot serves the gradual unfolding of the island, its customs, but most importantly, its state-sponsored scientific institution, Salomon’s House, “which house or college … is the very eye of this kingdom.” ref
“Many aspects of the society and history of the island are described, such as the Christian religion – which is reported to have been born there as a copy of the Bible and a letter from the Apostle Saint Bartholomew arrived there miraculously, a few years after the Ascension of Jesus; a cultural feast in honour of the family institution, called “the Feast of the Family”; a college of sages, the Salomon’s House, “the very eye of the kingdom”, to which order “God of heaven and earth had vouchsafed the grace to know the works of Creation, and the secrets of them”, as well as “to discern between divine miracles, works of nature, works of art, and impostures and illusions of all sorts”; and a series of instruments, process and methods of scientific research that were employed in the island by the Salomon’s House.” ref
“The interlocutors include the governor of the House of Strangers, Joabin the Jew, and the Head of Salomon’s House. The inhabitants of Bensalem are described as having a high moral character and honesty, as no official accepts any payment from individuals. The people are also described as chaste and pious, as said by an inhabitant of the island: But hear me now, and I will tell you what I know. You shall understand that there is not under the heavens so chaste a nation as this of Bensalem; nor so free from all pollution or foulness. It is the virgin of the world. I remember I have read in one of your European books, of an holy hermit amongst you that desired to see the Spirit of Fornication; and there appeared to him a little foul ugly Aethiop.” ref
“But if he had desired to see the Spirit of Chastity of Bensalem, it would have appeared to him in the likeness of a fair beautiful Cherubim. For there is nothing amongst mortal men more fair and admirable, than the chaste minds of this people. Know therefore, that with them there are no stews, no dissolute houses, no courtesans, nor anything of that kind. In the last third of the book, the Head of the Salomon’s House takes one of the European visitors to show him all the scientific background of Salomon’s House, where experiments are conducted in Baconian method to understand and conquer nature, and to apply the collected knowledge to the betterment of society. Namely: 1) the end, or purpose, of their foundation; 2) the preparations they have for their works; 3) the several employments and functions whereto their fellows are assigned; 4) and the ordinances and rites which they observe.” ref
“He portrayed a vision of the future of human discovery and knowledge. The plan and organisation of his ideal college, “Salomon’s House”, prefigures the modern research university in both applied and pure science. The end of their foundation is thus described: “The end of our foundation is the knowledge of causes, and secret motions of things; and the enlarging of the bounds of human empire, to the effecting of all things possible”. In describing the several employments and functions to which the members of the Salomon’s House are assigned, the Head of the college said: “For the several employments and offices of our fellows, we have twelve that sail into foreign countries under the names of other nations (for our own we conceal), who bring us the books and abstracts, and patterns of experiments of all other parts. These we call merchants of light.” ref
“We have three that collect the experiments which are in all books. These we call depredators. “We have three that collect the experiments of all mechanical arts, and also of liberal sciences, and also of practices which are not brought into arts. These we call mystery–men. “We have three that try new experiments, such as themselves think good. These we call pioneers or miners. “We have three that draw the experiments of the former four into titles and tables, to give the better light for the drawing of observations and axioms out of them. These we call compilers.” ref
“We have three that bend themselves, looking into the experiments of their fellows, and cast about how to draw out of them things of use and practice for man’s life and knowledge, as well for works as for plain demonstration of causes, means of natural divinations, and the easy and clear discovery of the virtues and parts of bodies. These we call dowry–men or benefactors. “Then after diverse meetings and consults of our whole number, to consider of the former labors and collections, we have three that take care out of them to direct new experiments, of a higher light, more penetrating into nature than the former. These we call lamps.” ref
“We have three others that do execute the experiments so directed, and report them. These we call inoculators. “Lastly, we have three that raise the former discoveries by experiments into greater observations, axioms, and aphorisms. These we call interpreters of nature.” Even this short excerpt demonstrates that Bacon understood that science requires analysis and not just the accumulation of observations. Bacon also foresaw that the design of experiments could be improved. In describing the ordinances and rites observed by the scientists of Salomon’s House, its Head said: We have certain hymns and services, which we say daily, of Lord and thanks to God for His marvellous works; and some forms of prayer, imploring His aid and blessing for the illumination of our labors, and the turning of them into good and holy uses.” ref
“And finally, after showing all the scientific background of Salomon’s House, he gave the European visitor permission to publish it: And when he had said this, he stood up; and I, as I had been taught, kneeled down, and he laid his right hand upon my head, and said; “God bless thee, my son; and God bless this relation, which I have made. I give thee leave to publish it for the good of other nations; for we here are in God’s bosom, a land unknown.” New Atlantis is a story dense with provocative details. There are many credible interpretations of what Bacon was attempting to convey. Below are a couple that give some sense of the rich implications of the text.” ref
“Early in the story, the governor of the House of Strangers relates the incredible circumstances that introduced Christianity to the Island: “About twenty years after the ascension of our Savior it came to pass [c. CE 50], that there was seen by the people of Renfusa (a city upon the eastern coast of our island, within sight, the night was cloudy and calm), as it might be some mile in the sea, a great pillar of light; not sharp, but in form of a column, or cylinder, rising from the sea, a great way up toward heaven; and on the top of it was seen a large cross of light, more bright and resplendent than the body of the pillar. Upon which so strange a spectacle, the people of the city gathered apace together upon the sands, to wonder; and so after put themselves into a number of small boats to go nearer to this marvellous sight. But when the boats were come within about sixty yards of the pillar, they found themselves all bound, and could go no further, yet so as they might move to go about, but might not approach nearer; so as the boats stood all as in a theatre, beholding this light, as a heavenly sign.” ref
“It so fell out that there was in one of the boats one of the wise men of the Society of Salomon’s House (which house, or college, my good brethren, is the very eye of this kingdom), who having awhile attentively and devoutly viewed and contemplated this pillar and cross, fell down upon his face; and then raised himself upon his knees, and lifting up his hands to heaven, made his prayers in this manner: “‘Lord God of heaven and earth; thou hast vouchsafed of thy grace, to those of our order to know thy works of creation, and true secrets of them; and to discern, as far as appertaineth to the generations of men, between divine miracles, works of nature, works of art and impostures, and illusions of all sorts. I do here acknowledge and testify before this people that the thing we now see before our eyes is thy finger, and a true miracle.” ref
“And forasmuch as we learn in our books that thou never workest miracles, but to a divine and excellent end (for the laws of nature are thine own laws, and thou exceedest them not but upon great cause), we most humbly beseech thee to prosper this great sign, and to give us the interpretation and use of it in mercy; which thou dost in some part secretly promise, by sending it unto us.’ “When he had made his prayer he presently found the boat he was in movable and unbound; whereas all the rest remained still fast; and taking that for an assurance of leave to approach, he caused the boat to be softly and with silence rowed toward the pillar; but ere he came near it, the pillar and cross of light broke up, and cast itself abroad, as it were, into a firmament of many stars, which also vanished soon after, and there was nothing left to be seen but a small ark or chest of cedar, dry and not wet at all with water, though it swam; and in the fore end of it, which was toward him, grew a small green branch of palm; and when the wise man had taken it with all reverence into his boat, it opened of itself, and there were found in it a book and a letter, both written in fine parchment, and wrapped in sindons of linen.” ref
“The book contained all the canonical books of the Old and New Testament, according as you have them (for we know well what the churches with you receive), and the Apocalypse itself; and some other books of the New Testament, which were not at that time written, were nevertheless in the book. And for the letter, it was in these words: “‘I, Bartholomew, a servant of the Highest, and apostle of Jesus Christ, was warned by an angel that appeared to me in a vision of glory, that I should commit this ark to the floods of the sea. Therefore I do testify and declare unto that people where God shall ordain this ark to come to land, that in the same day is come unto them salvation and peace, and good-will from the Father, and from the Lord Jesus.” ref
“There was also in both these writings, as well the book as the letter, wrought a great miracle, conform to that of the apostles, in the original gift of tongues. For there being at that time, in this land, Hebrews, Persians, and Indians, besides the natives, everyone read upon the book and letter, as if they had been written in his own language. And thus was this land saved from infidelity (as the remain of the old world was from water) by an ark, through the apostolical and miraculous evangelism of St. Bartholomew.” And here he paused, and a messenger came and called him forth from us. So this was all that passed in that conference.” ref
“The traditional date for the writing of St. John’s Apocalypse (the Book of Revelation) is the end of the 1st century CE. It is not only the presence of the full canon of Scripture long before it was completed or compiled, but also the all-too-convenient proximity of the scientist who will attest to its miraculous nature of this wonder that lends the story an air of incredibility. Later the Father of Salomon’s House reveals the institution’s skill at creating illusions of light: “We represent also all multiplications of light, which we carry to great distance, and make so sharp as to discern small points and lines. Also all colorations of light: all delusions and deceits of the sight, in figures, magnitudes, motions, colors; all demonstrations of shadows. We find also divers means, yet unknown to you, of producing of light, originally from divers bodies.” ref
“He also boasts about their ability to fake miracles: “And surely you will easily believe that we, that have so many things truly natural which induce admiration, could in a world of particulars deceive the senses if we would disguise those things, and labor to make them more miraculous.” Renaker points out in the Latin translation of the second passage (which was published as part of Operum moralium et civilium tomus in 1638 by William Rawley, Bacon’s amanuensis, secretary and chaplain, who was also behind the publication of New Atlantis in 1626) is stronger and literally translates to “we could impose on men’s senses an infinite number of things if we wanted to present these things as, and exalt them into, a miracle.” ref
“While this has been read as Bacon’s suggesting that the story if not the “miracle” itself was an invention emanating from Salomon’s House, this is perhaps not a safe inference. The relevance of the Brother of Salomon’s House to the story of the island’s conversion to Christianity is more an indication that the institution itself has reached a point in its knowledge from which it can ascertain whether an occurrence is natural or not. It is this knowledge (and its humble application) that allows for the revelation itself to be delivered. The skill of creating illusions coupled with the incredibility of the story of the origin of Bensalem’s Christianity makes it seem that Bacon was intimating that the light show (or at least the story of its occurrence) was an invention of Salomon’s House. The presence of “Hebrews, Persians, and Indians” in Bensalem at the time implies that Asian people were already in the first century engaged in sailing across the Pacific—which is historically inaccurate, but might have seemed plausible at the time of writing.” ref
Who rules Bensalem?
“The Father of Salomon’s House reveals that members of that institution decide on their own which of their discoveries to keep secret, even from the State: “And this we do also: we have consultations, which of the inventions and experiences which we have discovered shall be published, and which not; and take all an oath of secrecy for the concealing of those which we think fit to keep secret; though some of those we do reveal sometime to the State, and some not.” This would seem to imply that the State does not hold the monopoly on authority and that Salomon’s House must in some sense be superior to the State.” ref
“In the introduction to the critical edition of New Atlantis, Jerry Weinberger notes that Joabin is the only contemporary character (i.e., living at the time of the story) described as wise—and wise in matters of government and rule at that. Weinberger speculates that Joabin may be the actual ruler of Bensalem. On the other hand, prejudice against Jews was widespread in his time, so the possibility cannot be excluded that Bacon was calling Joabin wise for the same reason that he felt the need elsewhere to call him “the good Jew”: to make clear that Joabin’s character was benign.” ref
Social ritual of the Bensalemites
“While Bacon appears concerned with the House of Salomon, a portion of the narrative describes the social practices of the Bensalemites, particularly those surrounding courtship and family life. An example of these rituals is the Adam and Eve pools. Here betrothed send surrogates to observe the other bathing to discover any deformities. Here Bacon alludes to Sir Thomas More’s Utopia (1516), where More describes a similar ritual. However, the crucial difference is rather than surrogates, the young couple observe each other naked. Bacon’s character Joabin remarks on this difference: “I have read in a book of one of your men, of a Feigned Commonwealth, where the married couple are permitted, before they contract, to see one another naked.” ref
“New Atlantis and other writings of Bacon inspired the formation of the Royal Society. Jonathan Swift parodied them both in book III of Gulliver’s Travels. In recent years, New Atlantis influenced B. F. Skinner‘s 1948 Walden Two. This novel may have been Bacon’s vision for a Utopian New World in North America. In it he depicted a land where there would be freedom of religion—showing a Jew treated fairly and equally in an island of Christians. It has been argued that this work had influenced others reforms, such as greater rights for women, the abolition of slavery, elimination of debtors’ prisons, separation of church and state, and freedom of political expression, although there is no hint of these reforms in The New Atlantis itself. His propositions for legal reform (which were not, however, implemented in his lifetime), are considered to have formed one of the influences behind the Napoleonic Code, and could therefore have exercised an indirect influence upon the drafting of other liberal constitutions – most notably the American Constitution – that came into being after Bacon’s death.” ref
“Francis Bacon played a leading role in creating the English colonies, especially in Virginia, the Carolinas, and Newfoundland in northeastern Canada. His government report on “The Virginia Colony” was submitted in 1609. In 1610 Bacon and his associates received a charter from the king to form the Tresurer and the Companye of Adventurers and planter of the Cittye of London and Bristoll for the Collonye or plantacon in Newfoundlandand sent John Guy to found a colony there. In 1910 Newfoundland issued a postage stamp to commemorate Bacon’s role in establishing the province. The stamp describes Bacon as “the guiding spirit in colonization scheme” of 1610. Moreover, some scholars believe he was largely responsible for the drafting, in 1609 and 1612, of two charters of government for the Virginia Colony. Thomas Jefferson, the third President of the United States and author of the Declaration of Independence, wrote: “Bacon, Locke and Newton. I consider them as the three greatest men that have ever lived, without any exception, and as having laid the foundation of those superstructures which have been raised in the Physical and Moral sciences.” ref
“Historian and biographer William Hepworth Dixon considered that Bacon’s name could be included in the list of Founders of the United States of America. It is also believed by the Rosicrucian organisation AMORC that Bacon would have influenced a settlement of mystics in North America, stating that The New Atlantis inspired a colony of Rosicrucians led by Johannes Kelpius to journey across the Atlantic Ocean in a chartered vessel called Sarah Mariah, and move on to Pennsylvania in the late 17th century. According to their claims, these Rosicrucian communities “made valuable contributions to the newly emerging American culture in the fields of printing, philosophy, the sciences and arts.” ref
Impact of Mayanism
“Much speculation began as to the origins of the Maya, which led to a variety of narratives and publications that tried to rationalize the discoveries within the context of the Bible and that had undertones of racism in their connections between the Old and New World. The Europeans believed the indigenous people to be inferior and incapable of building that which was now in ruins and by sharing a common history, they insinuated that another race must have been responsible. In the middle and late nineteenth century, several renowned Mesoamerican scholars, starting with Charles Étienne Brasseur de Bourbourg, and including Edward Herbert Thompson and Augustus Le Plongeon, formally proposed that Atlantis was somehow related to Mayan and Aztec culture.” ref
“The French scholar Brasseur de Bourbourg traveled extensively through Mesoamerica in the mid-1800s, and was renowned for his translations of Mayan texts, most notably the sacred book Popol Vuh, as well as a comprehensive history of the region. Soon after these publications, however, Brasseur de Bourbourg lost his academic credibility, due to his claim that the Maya peoples had descended from the Toltecs, people he believed were the surviving population of the racially superior civilization of Atlantis. His work combined with the skillful, romantic illustrations of Jean Frederic Waldeck, which visually alluded to Egypt and other aspects of the Old World, created an authoritative fantasy that excited much interest in the connections between worlds.” ref
“Inspired by Brasseur de Bourbourg’s diffusion theories, the pseudoarchaeologist Augustus Le Plongeon traveled to Mesoamerica and performed some of the first excavations of many famous Mayan ruins. Le Plongeon invented narratives, such as the kingdom of Mu saga, which romantically drew connections to him, his wife Alice, and Egyptian deities Osiris and Isis, as well as to Heinrich Schliemann, who had just discovered the ancient city of Troy from Homer‘s epic poetry (that had been described as merely mythical). He also believed that he had found connections between the Greek and Mayan languages, which produced a narrative of the destruction of Atlantis.” ref
Utopias and dystopias
“The creation of Utopian and dystopian fictions was renewed after the Renaissance, most notably in Francis Bacon’s New Atlantis (1627), the description of an ideal society that he located off the western coast of America. Thomas Heyrick (1649–1694) followed him with “The New Atlantis” (1687), a satirical poem in three parts. His new continent of uncertain location, perhaps even a floating island either in the sea or the sky, serves as background for his exposure of what he described in a second edition as “A True Character of Popery and Jesuitism.” ref
“The title of The New Atalantis by Delarivier Manley (1709), distinguished from the two others by the single letter, is an equally dystopian work but set this time on a fictional Mediterranean island. In it sexual violence and exploitation is made a metaphor for the hypocritical behaviour of politicians in their dealings with the general public. In Manley’s case, the target of satire was the Whig Party, while in David Maclean Parry’s The Scarlet Empire (1906) it is Socialism as practised in foundered Atlantis. It was followed in Russia by Velimir Khlebnikov‘s poem The Fall of Atlantis (Gibel’ Atlantidy, 1912), which is set in a future rationalist dystopia that has discovered the secret of immortality and is so dedicated to progress that it has lost touch with the past.” ref
“When the high priest of this ideology is tempted by a slave girl into an act of irrationality, he murders her and precipitates a second flood, above which her severed head floats vengefully among the stars. A slightly later work, The Ancient of Atlantis (Boston, 1915) by Albert Armstrong Manship, expounds the Atlantean wisdom that is to redeem the earth. Its three parts consist of a verse narrative of the life and training of an Atlantean wise one, followed by his Utopian moral teachings and then a psychic drama set in modern times in which a reincarnated child embodying the lost wisdom is reborn on earth.” ref
“In Hispanic eyes, Atlantis had a more intimate interpretation. The land had been a colonial power which, although it had brought civilization to ancient Europe, had also enslaved its peoples. Its tyrannical fall from grace had contributed to the fate that had overtaken it, but now its disappearance had unbalanced the world. This was the point of view of Jacint Verdaguer‘s vast mythological epic L’Atlantida (1877). After the sinking of the former continent, Hercules travels east across the Atlantic to found the city of Barcelona and then departs westward again to the Hesperides. The story is told by a hermit to a shipwrecked mariner, who is inspired to follow in his tracks and so “call the New World into existence to redress the balance of the Old”. This mariner, of course, was Christopher Columbus.” ref
Verdaguer’s poem was written in Catalan, but was widely translated in both Europe and Hispano-America. One response was the similarly entitled Argentinian Atlantida of Olegario Víctor Andrade (1881), which sees in “Enchanted Atlantis that Plato foresaw, a golden promise to the fruitful race” of Latins. The bad example of the colonising world remains, however. José Juan Tablada characterises its threat in his “De Atlántida” (1894) through the beguiling picture of the lost world populated by the underwater creatures of Classical myth, among whom is the Siren of its final stanza with her eye on the keel of the wandering vessel that in passing deflowers the sea’s smooth mirror, launching into the night her amorous warbling and the dulcet lullaby of her treacherous voice!” ref
“There is a similar ambivalence in Janus Djurhuus‘ six-stanza “Atlantis” (1917), where a celebration of the Faroese linguistic revival grants it an ancient pedigree by linking Greek to Norse legend. In the poem a female figure rising from the sea against a background of Classical palaces is recognised as a priestess of Atlantis. The poet recalls “that the Faroes lie there in the north Atlantic Ocean/ where before lay the poet-dreamt lands,” but also that in Norse belief, such a figure only appears to those about to drown.” ref
“Root races, epochs and sub-races
“According to Blavatsky’s writings, there are seven root races assembling for our Earth; each root race is divided into seven subraces. Only five root races have appeared so far; the sixth is expected to emerge in the 28th century. Francis Bacon (whom theosophy considers to be the legendary Count of St. Germain) in his work The New Atlantis (1627) describes a potential future civilization which lives on a land called Bensalem. The first root race was “ethereal“, i.e. they were composed of etheric matter. They reproduced by dividing like an amoeba. Earth was still cooling at that time. The first mountain to arise out of the stormy primeval ocean was Mount Meru. The second root race lived in Hyperborea. The second root race was colored golden yellow. Hyperborea included what is now Northern Canada, Greenland, Iceland, Scandinavia, Northern Russia and Kamchatka. The climate was tropical because Earth had not yet developed an axial tilt. The esoteric name of their continent is Plaksha; they called themselves the Kimpurshas. They reproduced by budding.” ref
“The third root race, the Lemurian lived in Lemuria. The esoteric name of Lemuria is Shalmali. Lemuria, according to Theosophists, existed in a large part of what is now the Indian Ocean including Australia and extending into the South Pacific Ocean; its last remnants are the Australian continent, the island of New Guinea, and the island of Madagascar. Lemuria sank gradually and was eventually destroyed by incessantly erupting volcanoes. In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, it was thought by geologists that the age of the Earth was only about 200 million years (because radioactive dating had not yet come into use), so the geological epochs were believed to have occurred at a much later time than is thought to be the case today. According to traditional Theosophy, the Lemurian root race began 34½ million years ago, in the middle of what was then believed to be the Jurassic; thus, the people of Lemuria coexisted with the dinosaurs.” ref
“The Lemurian race was much taller and bigger than our current race. The first three subraces of the Lemurians reproduced by laying eggs, but the fourth subrace, beginning 16½ million years ago, began to reproduce like modern humans. As Lemuria was slowly submerged due to volcanic eruptions, the Lemurians colonized the areas surrounding Lemuria, namely Africa, Southern India and the East Indies. The descendants of the Lemurian root race, according to traditional Theosophy, include the Capoid race, the Congoid race, the Dravidians, and the Australoid race.” ref
“The fourth root race, the Atlantean, according to Theosophy arose approximately 4,500,000 years ago in Africa from the fourth subrace of the Lemurians in a part of Africa that had been colonized by that subrace in the area now inhabited by the Ashanti. According to Theosophists the first Atlantean subrace was the result of the last, or seventh Lemurian subrace, Chankshusha Manu, which migrated first to the south of the Atlantean continent and, from there, migrated further north. The esoteric name of Atlantis is Kusha. The descendants of the Atlanteans according to traditional Theosophy include those of the Mongolian race, the Malayan race, and the American Indian race as well as some people of what in the late 19th and early 20th centuries was called the “olive-skinned” Mediterranean race. The Atlantean root race had Mongolian features; they began with bronze skin and gradually evolved into the red American Indian, brown Malayan, and yellow Mongolian races, because some Atlanteans eventually migrated to the Americas and Asia.” ref
“The seven subraces of the Atlantean root race were
- the Rmoahal
- the Tlavati (Cro-Magnons)
- the Toltec (a term which Theosophists use as a synonym for the Atlantean ancestors of the American Indians)
- the Turanian
- the original Semites (i.e. Phoenicians)
- the Akkadians, and
- the Mongolian, which migrated to and colonized Central Asia, East Asia, and Southeast Asia.” ref
The claimed civilization of Atlantis
“According to Powell, the long period of time when Atlantis was ruled by the Toltecs (the ancestors of the Amerindians), the civilization of Atlantis was at its height. This was the period between about 1,000,000 and 900,000 years ago, called the Golden Age of Atlantis. The Atlanteans had many luxuries and conveniences. Their capital city was called The City of the Golden Gates. At its height, it had two million inhabitants. There were extensive aqueducts leading to the city from a mountain lake. The Atlanteans had airships that could seat two to eight people. The economic system was socialist like that of the Incas. Atlanteans were the first to develop organized warfare. The military deployed air battleships that contained 50 to 100 fighting men. These air battleships deployed poison gas bombs. The infantry fired fire-tipped arrows. The Toltecs on Atlantis worshipped the Sun in temples as grand as those of ancient Egypt that were decorated in bright colors. The sacred word used in meditation was Tau (this was the equivalent of the Aryan sacred word AUM). As noted above, the Toltecs colonized all of North America and South America and thus became the people we know as the Amerindians.” ref
“The downfall of Atlantis started when some of the Toltecs began to practice black magic about 850,000 BCE, corrupted by the dragon “Thevetat”, remembered as Devadatta, the opponent of Buddha. The people began to become selfish and materialistic. Soon thereafter, the Turanians (the ancestors of the people we now know as the Turkic peoples) became dominant in much of Atlantis. The Turanians continued the practice of black magic which reached its height about 250,000 BCE and continued until the final sinking of Atlantis, although they were opposed by white magicians. The Master Morya incarnated as the Emperor of Atlantis in 220,000 BCE to oppose the black magicians. The black magicians used magical spells to breed human-animal chimeras. They possessed an army composed of chimeras that were composites composed of a human body with the heads of fierce predators such as lions, tigers and bears, that ate enemy corpses on the battlefield. The war between the white magicians and the black magicians continued until the end of Atlantis. The Masters of the Ancient Wisdom telepathically warned their disciples (the white magicians) to flee Atlantis in ships while there was still time to get out before the final cataclysm. As noted above, the final sudden submergence of Atlantis due to earthquakes occurred in 9,564 BCE.” ref
The fifth root race (Aryan) and claimed Early beginnings of the Aryan
“Blavatsky asserted humanity is now in the fifth or Aryan root race, which Theosophists believe to have emerged from the previous fourth root race (Atlantean root race) beginning about 100,000 years ago in Atlantis. (According to Powell, when Madame Blavatsky stated the Aryan root race was 1,000,000 years old, she meant that the souls of the people that later physically incarnated as the first Aryans about 100,000 years ago began to incarnate in the bodies of Atlanteans 1,000,000 years ago. However, another way of interpreting this is that Nature began to create the Aryan race before the final cataclysms.) Theosophists believe the Aryan root race was physically progenerated by the Vaivasvatu Manu, one of the Masters of the Ancient Wisdom (compare and contrast with Vaivasvata Manu of Hinduism) .” ref
“The present-day ethnic group most closely related to the new race is the Kabyle. The small band of only 9,000 people constituting the then small Aryan root race migrated out of Atlantis in 79,797 BC. The bards of the new white root-race poetically referred to the new race as being moon-colored. A small group of these Aryan migrants from Atlantis split from the main body of migrants and went south to the shore of an inland sea in what was then a verdant and lush Sahara where they founded the “City of the Sun”. The main body of migrants continued onwards to an island called the “white island” in the middle of what was then an inland sea in what is now the Gobi desert, where they established the “City of the Bridge”. (The “City of the Bridge” was constructed directly below the etheric city called Shamballa where Theosophists believe the governing deity of Earth, Sanat Kumara (compare and contrast with Sanatkumaras of Hinduism), dwells; thus, the ongoing evolution of the Aryan root race has been divinely guided by the being Theosophists call “The Lord of the World”).” ref
“The esoteric name of the whole of the present land surface of Earth, i.e. the World Island, the Americas, the Australian continent and Antarctica taken as a whole is Krauncha. Blavatsky connects physical race with spiritual attributes constantly throughout her works: The intellectual difference between the Aryan and other civilized nations and such savages as the South Sea Islanders, is inexplicable on any other grounds. No amount of culture, nor generations of training amid civilization, could raise such human specimens as the Bushmen, the Veddhas of Ceylon, and some African tribes, to the same intellectual level as the Aryans, the Semites, and the Turanians so called. The ‘sacred spark’ is missing in them and it is they who are the only inferior races on the globe, now happily – owing to the wise adjustment of nature which ever works in that direction – fast dying out. Verily mankind is ‘of one blood,’ but not of the same essence. We are the hot-house, artificially quickened plants in nature, having in us a spark, which in them is latent.” … Esoteric history teaches that idols and their worship died out with the Fourth Race, until the survivors of the hybrid races of the latter (Chinamen, African Negroes, &c.) gradually brought the worship back. The Vedas countenance no idols; all the modern Hindu writings do.” ref
“Generally speaking, a large percentage of the people who live in the time of the period of the fifth root race are part of the fifth root race. However Blavatsky also opines that some Semitic peoples have become “degenerate in spirituality”. She asserted that some peoples descended from the Lemurians are “semi-animal creatures”. These latter include “the Tasmanians, a portion of the Australians.” There are also “considerable numbers of the mixed Lemuro-Atlantean peoples produced by various crossings with such semi-human stocks — e.g., the wild men of Borneo, the Veddhas of Ceylon, most of the remaining Australians, Bushmen, Negritos, Andaman Islanders, etc.” All these aforementioned groups mentioned by Blavatsky, except the Borneians, are part of what in the late 19th and most of the 20th century was called the Australoid race (except for the Bushmen, part of the Capoid race), both of which races, as noted above, were believed by traditional Theosophists to have been descended from the Lemurians.” ref
Subraces of the Aryan root race
“Blavatsky described the fifth root race with the following words: The Aryan races, for instance, now varying from dark brown, almost black, red-brown-yellow, down to the whitest creamy colour, are yet all of one and the same stock – the Fifth Root-Race – and spring from one single progenitor, … who is said to have lived over 18,000,000 years ago, and also 850,000 years ago – at the time of the sinking of the last remnants of the great continent of Atlantis.” ref
“She also prophesies of the destruction of the racial “failures of nature” as the future “higher race” ascends: Thus, will mankind, race after race, perform its appointed cycle-pilgrimage. Climates will, and have already begun, to change, each tropical year after the other dropping one sub-race, but only to beget another higher race on the ascending cycle; while a series of other less favoured groups – the failures of nature – will, like some individual men, vanish from the human family without even leaving a trace behind.” ref
“The subraces (which Steiner renamed “Cultural Epochs” as a more adequate expression for our times) of the Aryan Fifth Root Race include the first subrace, the Hindu, which migrated from the “City of the Bridge” on the white island in the middle of the Gobi inland sea to India in 60,000 BCE; the second subrace, the Arabian, which migrated from the “City of the Bridge” to Arabia in 40,000 BCE; the third subrace, the Persian, which migrated from the “City of the Bridge” to Persia in 30,000 BCE; the fourth subrace, the Celts, which migrated from the “City of the Bridge” to Western Europe beginning in 20,000 BCE (the Mycenaean Greeks are regarded as an offshoot of the Celtic subrace that colonized Southeast Europe); and the fifth subrace, the Teutonic, which also migrated from the “City of the Bridge” to what is now Germany beginning in 20,000 BCE (the Slavs are regarded as an offshoot of the Teutonic subrace that colonized Russia and surrounding areas) .” ref
The emergence of the sixth subrace of the Aryan root race
“According to Blavatsky the sixth subrace of the Aryan root race will begin to evolve in the area of the United States in the early 21st century. This sixth subrace of the Aryan root race will be called the Australo-American subrace and is believed by Theosophists to be now arising from the Teutonic subrace of the Aryan root race in Australia and in the Western United States (many individuals of the new subrace will be born in California) and its surrounding nearby areas (i.e., the Australo-American subrace is in arising from the Anglo-American, Anglo-Canadian, Anglo-Australian and presumably also the Anglo-New Zealander ethnic groups). The sixth or Australo-American sub-race will “possess certain psychic powers, and for this the pituitary body will be developed, thus giving an additional sense, that of cognising astral emotions in the ordinary waking consciousness. We may say that in general the sixth sub-race will bring in wisdom and intuition, blending all that is best in the intelligence of the fifth subrace and the emotion of the fourth.” ref
“According to C. W. Leadbeater, a colony will be established in Baja California by the Theosophical Society under the guidance of the Masters of the Ancient Wisdom in the 28th century for the intensive selective eugenic breeding of the sixth root race. The Master Morya will physically incarnate in order to be the Manu (“progenitor”) of this new root race. By that time, the world will be powered by nuclear power and there will be a single world government led by a person who will be the reincarnation of Julius Caesar. Tens of thousands of years in the future, a new continent will arise in the Pacific Ocean that will be the future home of the sixth root race. California west of the San Andreas Fault will break off from the mainland of North America and become the Island of California off the eastern coast of the new continent.” ref
Victor Skumin elaborated on the theosophical conceptions of spiritual evolution and proposed (1990) a classification of Homo spiritalis (Latin: spiritual man), the sixth root race, consisting of eight subraces: HS0 Anabiosis spiritalis, HS1 Scientella spiritalis, HS2 Aurora spiritalis, HS3 Ascensus spiritalis, HS4 Vocatus spiritalis, HS5 Illuminatio spiritalis, НS6 Creatio spiritalis, and HS7 Servitus spiritalis. According to Skumin:
- Anabiosis spiritalis is spirituality in the potential of unmanifest accumulations of personality, the charge of the fires of spiritual creation;
- Scientella spiritalis is the cordial presentiment of the presence and demands of the spirit, spiritualization of the fire of centers, glimpses of self-consciousness of a spiritual person;
- Aurora spiritalis is the imperative of the spirit, the action of the spiritual fire of the centers in the heart, the kindling of the fire of the spirit, the formation of the orientation of the personality to the spiritual improvement of life;
- Ascensus spiritalis is the dawn of spiritual aspirations, the action of the fire of the spirit in the heart, searching spiritual work, aspiration of self-consciousness to merge with the One Spirit;
- Vocatus spiritalis is the maturation of spiritual accumulations, the purposeful spiritual creation, self-awareness and realization of a person as a warrior of the spirit;
- IIluminatio spiritalis is the beginning of the fiery transmutation, the lighting of the achievement fire; revealing the identity of man – the earthly carrier of the Thoughts of the One Spirit;
- Creatio Spiritalis is the beginning of fiery creation, the action of the fire of achievement in the heart, the revealing self-consciousness of man as the earthly carrier of the Light of the One Spirit;
- Servitus Spiritalis is the carrying a consciously accepted duty-commission, the synthesis of spirituality in the clarity of knowledge of a fiery man.” ref
“The seventh root race will arise from the seventh subrace of the sixth root race on the future continent that the sixth root race will be living on that will arise from the Pacific Ocean. The continent they will inhabit is esoterically called Pushkara. This root race will be the last race to appear on planet Earth. Theosophist Scott Ramsey predicts that any sexual difference among humans will cease to exist, and both conception and birth will become entirely spiritual.” ref
“He also writes humanity will have a great spiritual development, and he describes this development in the following words: “Everything that is irredeemably sinful and wicked, cruel and destructive, will have been eliminated, and that which is found to survive will be swept away from being, owing, so to speak, to a Karmic tidal-wave in the shape of scavenger-plagues, geological convulsions and other means of destruction.” ref
Ignatius Donnelly’s Atlantis: The Antediluvian World
“From Sykes’ introduction to his 1949 edition of Donnelly’s “Atlantis.” – John Hoopes
“Atlantis: The Antediluvian World is a pseudoarchaeological book published in 1882 by Minnesota populist politician Ignatius L. Donnelly. Donnelly considered Plato‘s account of Atlantis as largely factual and suggested that all known ancient civilizations were descended from this lost land through a process of hyperdiffusionism.” ref
“Hyperdiffusionism is a pseudoarchaeological hypothesis that postulates that certain historical technologies or ideas were developed by a single people or civilization and then spread to other cultures. Thus, all great civilizations that engage in what appear to be similar cultural practices, such as the construction of pyramids, derived them from a single common progenitor. According to proponents of hyperdiffusion, examples of hyperdiffusion can be found in religious practices, cultural technologies, megalithic monuments, and lost ancient civilizations. The idea of hyperdiffusionism differs from trans-cultural diffusion in several ways. One is the fact that hyperdiffusionism is usually not testable due to its pseudo-scientific nature. Stephen Williams uses the phrase “Fantastic Archaeology” to describe the archeological theories and discoveries which he defines as “fanciful archaeological interpretations”. These interpretations usually lack artifacts, data, and testable theories to back up the claims made. Alice Beck Kehoe says that diffusionism is a “grossly racist ideology”. Although she agrees that diffusion of culture can occur through contact and trading, she disagrees with the theory that all civilization came from one superior ancient society.” ref
“Also, unlike trans-cultural diffusion, hyperdiffusionism does not use trading and cultural networks to explain the expansion of a society within a single culture; instead, hyperdiffusionists claim that all major cultural innovations and societies derive from one (usually lost) ancient civilization. Ergo, the Tucson artifacts derive from ancient Rome, carried by the “Romans who came across the Atlantic and then overland to Arizona;” this is believed because the artifacts resembled known ancient Roman artifacts. One common hyperdiffusionist hypothesis states that the similarities among disparate civilizations were inherited from the civilization of a lost continent, such as Atlantis or Lemuria, which has since sunk into the sea. Egypt is also commonly featured in hyperdiffusionist narratives, either as an intermediate civilization that inherited its culture from such a lost continent and in turn passed it on to other civilizations or as a source of hyperdiffused elements itself.” ref
With some of Damien Marie AtHope’s Art
“The Four Representatives of Mankind’ frontispiece illustration from ‘Bible Defence of Slavery; or the Origin, History, and Fortunes of the Negro Race…’ by Josiah Priest (1788–1861). Originally published in 1843 under the title ‘Slavery, As It Relates to the Negro’ the book was revised many times in the 1850s as pro-slavery and abolitionists writers battled it out before the American Civil War 1861-65, leading to 4 million slaves being given their freedom.” ref
Overt Racist Josiah Priest
“Josiah Priest is an important part of the story. I don’t think he ever emphasized Atlantis, but his extremely racist hyperdiffusionism because a persistent part of the Atlantis mythology.” – John Hoopes
“Josiah Priest (1788–1861) was an American polemicist of the early 19th century. His books and pamphlets, which presented both standard and speculative history and archaeology sold in the thousands. Although Priest appears to have been poorly educated, he attempted to portray himself as an authority in his books. Priest is often identified as one of the creators of pseudoscientific and pseudohistoric literature. Although his work was widely read and several of his works were published in multiple editions, his books were characterized by theories that were used to justify the violent domination over both the Native American and African-American peoples. Priest’s works were among the most overtly racist of his time. Priest’s works help set the stage for the Trail of Tears and the defense of slavery that contributed to the conflicts of the American Civil War.” ref
“Priest decided to give up his profession as a leather worker and become a writer. His first book, in a genre now identified as cryptozoology was The Wonders of Nature and Providence, Displayed, compiled from Authentic Sources, Both Ancient and Modern, Giving an Account of Various and Strange Phenomena Existing in Nature, of Travels, Adventures, Singular Providences, &c. (1826). His other major publications were American Antiquities and Discoveries of the West (1833) and Slavery, As It Relates to the Negro (1843), each of which was published in multiple editions.” ref
“His writing about American prehistory—and this comment is not made entirely to be humorous—might be classified as science fiction or fantasy as well as a subgenre of American Romanticism, the elements of which are pronounced in the early products of popular culture. Winthrop Hillyer Duncan writes, “This author is thought by some to have been the creator or forerunner of the popular dime and nickel novels of the sixties, seventies and eighties.” ref
Josiah Priest’s American Antiquities (1833)
“This 400-page publication centered around Priest’s own study of the Bible and antiquarian journals, supplemented by information from his travels. After visiting earthworks in Ohio and New York, Priest concluded that these mounds could be traced back to a lost race that had inhabited America even before the Native Americans. This idea is now referred to as the “mound builder myth” and still has supporters in society today. The book grew in popularity because of Priest’s views on Native Americans. “It tapped into the widely accepted view of those times that Native Americans were merely bloodthirsty savages, bent on the destruction of all but their own race. It was inconceivable to Priest and like-minded men that a race so lazy and inept could conceive and build such huge, elaborate structures.” Priest speculated that the original dwellers could be the Ten Lost Tribes of Israel.” ref
“The reasoning Priest gives for his conclusion that there was an even earlier settler than the Native Americans relies upon his own Biblical interpretation of the flood story. According to Josiah, after the great flood disappeared, Noah and his ark landed on America. While surveying the land, Noah also discovered mounds that had been constructed before the waters rose up. Upon seeing this, Noah questioned where these agricultural phenomena came from. “Surveying the various themes of mound builder origins, he could not decide whether the mounds were the work of Polynesians, Egyptians, Greeks, Romans, Israelites, Scandinavians, Welsh, Scotts, or Chinese, although he felt certain the Indians had not built them.” Priest’s clear bias against Native Americans probably derived from stories he heard during the American Indian Wars. Immediately following the American Revolution, Native Americans who were engaged in bloody and violent battles were frequently represented by the dominant culture as savages and threats to peace.” ref
Josiah Priest’s Slavery, As It Relates to the Negro (1843)
“Another work in which Priest uses Biblical interpretation as a central theme is Slavery, As It Relates to the Negro, Or African Race (1843). In this overtly racist book, Priest seeks to use references from the Bible to prove that God created black people to be slaves. Priest claims that Noah’s three sons were each a different color. The black offspring was named Ham, which Priest says was a word Egyptians used to identify objects that were black. He goes on to assert that Ham was cursed from birth to be a servant. As a consequence of his sins, all his people would also suffer the fate of slavery. Priest writes, “The appointment of this race of men to servitude and slavery, was a judicial act of God, or in other words was a divine judgment.” Multiple revised editions of this book were republished in the 1850s under the title, Bible defence of slavery or, The origin, history, and fortunes of the Negro race.” ref
“Priest provides three pieces of evidence for why the Bible justifies the enslavement of black people. He says that the blacks were created with lower intelligence and more irrational behavior than other colors of man, suiting them as servants. He cites a verse in the Book of Genesis that states that Ham and all of his descendants were destined to be slaves. He argues that, due to the black’s inferior attributes, they possessed a need to be enslaved. His book discusses how a black man’s physical stature and skin, as opposed to those of a white man, are designed to be more durable and therefore intended for hard manual labor.” ref
Josiah Priest’s Pamphlets and historical profiles
“In addition to his books, Priest wrote several pamphlets focusing on heroes of the American Revolution. His narratives suggest a preoccupation with racial conflicts, since they focus mainly on soldiers who had been held in captivity by Native Americans. Frank H. Severance (1856-1931), a noted author-historian, defended Priest’s style of writing, saying, “I’m aware that Priest is not altogether trustworthy as a historian; yet he concedes to his works “a large amount of historic material obtained at some pains from sources more or less authentic.”… Priest is least trustworthy in his more ambitious work; whereas his unpretentious pamphlets… contain true narratives of individual undertakings in the Revolution, Indian captivities and other pioneer experiences, gathered by the writer direct from the hero whose adventures he wrote down, without literary skill… but also without apparent perversion or exaggeration.” Priest recorded stories of Native American atrocities against white settlers that otherwise may have been forgotten. However, his selection of stories was biased towards portrayals of Native Americans as violent.” ref
Criticisms of Priest and His legacy
Critics dismiss Priest’s books as compilations of poorly supported theories motivated by racism. Robert Silverberg notes, “The argument he constructs is built on literal interpretations of Biblical passages mixed with popular pseudo-scholarly views and gross misreadings of related texts.” Priest argued that the descendants of Ham were cursed, but in the actual Biblical text, only Ham’s son Canaan is cursed. This undercuts his argument that “Ham” meant “black” in Egyptian.” ref
“Priest was known for integrating many types of sources into his writings, seeking to create a semblance of authority and credibility for a popular audience. Priest’s fantastic assertions persist today in the works of pseudoscience, pseudohistory, and New Age pop culture. In this respect, he can be considered a pioneer in popular but highly erroneous publishing. The popularity of his works allowed Americans of his time to indulge in romantic fantasies about the past that encouraged their own racism.” ref
“The 1882 publication of Atlantis: the Antediluvian World by Ignatius L. Donnelly stimulated much popular interest in Atlantis. He was greatly inspired by early works in Mayanism, and like them, attempted to establish that all known ancient civilizations were descended from Atlantis, which he saw as a technologically sophisticated, more advanced culture. Donnelly drew parallels between creation stories in the Old and New Worlds, attributing the connections to Atlantis, where he believed the Biblical Garden of Eden existed. As implied by the title of his book, he also believed that Atlantis was destroyed by the Great Flood mentioned in the Bible.” ref
“Donnelly is credited as the “father of the nineteenth century Atlantis revival” and is the reason the myth endures today. He unintentionally promoted an alternative method of inquiry to history and science, and the idea that myths contain hidden information that opens them to “ingenious” interpretation by people who believe they have new or special insight.” ref
“Many of its theories are the source of many modern-day concepts about Atlantis, including these: the civilization and technology beyond its time, the origins of all present races and civilizations, and a civil war between good and evil. Much of Donnelly’s writing, especially with regard to Atlantis as an explanation for similarities between ancient civilizations of the Old and New Worlds, was inspired by the publications of Charles Étienne Brasseur de Bourbourg and the fieldwork of Augustus Le Plongeon in the Yucatan. It was avidly supported by publications of Helena Blavatsky and the Theosophical Society as well as by Rudolf Steiner.” ref
“Donnelly discusses many aspects of his proposed theory in extreme detail. He includes many illustrations as well as charts with lingual similarities. With his book he states that he is trying to prove thirteen distinct hypotheses:
- There once existed in the Atlantic Ocean, opposite the Mediterranean Sea, a large island, which was the remnant of an Atlantic continent, and known to the ancients as Atlantis.
- That the description of this island given by Plato is not fable, as has been long supposed, but veritable history.
- That Atlantis was the region where man first rose from a state of barbarism to civilization.
- That it became, in the course of ages, a populous and mighty nation, from whose emigrants the shores of the Gulf of Mexico, the Mississippi River, the Amazon River, the Pacific coast of South America, the Mediterranean, the west coast of Europe and Africa, the Baltic, the Black Sea, and the Caspian were populated by civilized nations.
- That it was the true Antediluvian world: the Garden of Eden; the Gardens of Hesperides; the Elysian Fields; the Gardens of Alcinous; the Mesomphalos, the Olympos; the Asgard of the traditions of the ancient nations. That it represented a universal memory of a great land, where early mankind dwelt for ages in peace and happiness.
- That the gods and goddesses of the ancient Greeks, the Phoenicians, the Hindus, and the Scandinavians were simply the kings, queens, and heroes of Atlantis; and the acts attributed to them in mythology are a confused recollection of real historical events.
- That the mythology of Egypt and Peru represented the original religion of Atlantis, which was sun-worship.
- That the oldest colony formed by Atlantis was probably Egypt, whose civilization was a reproduction of that Atlantic island.
- That the implements of the “Bronze Age” of Europe were derived from Atlantis. The Atlanteans were also the first manufacturers of iron.
- That the Phoenician alphabet, parent of all the European alphabets, was derived from an Atlantis alphabet, which was also conveyed by them from Atlantis to the Mayans of Central America.
- That Atlantis was the original seat of the Aryan or Indo-European family of nations, as well as of the Semitic peoples, and possibly also of the Turanian races.
- That Atlantis perished in a terrible convulsion of nature, in which the whole island sunk into the ocean, with nearly all its inhabitants.
- That a few persons escaped in ships and on rafts, and carried to the nations east and west the tidings of the appalling catastrophe, which has survived to our own time in the Flood and Deluge legends of the different nations of the old and new worlds.” ref
Legacy of Donnelly’s work on Atlantis
“In 1883, a sequel or companion, Ragnarok: The Age of Fire and Gravel, was published. Donnelly’s work on Atlantis inspired books by James Churchward on the lost continent of Mu, also known as Lemuria. Graham Hancock’s Fingerprints of the Gods proposes, like Donnelly, that civilizations in Egypt and the Americas had a common origin in a civilization lost to history, although in Hancock’s book the civilization was not located in the northern Atlantic.” ref
Madame Blavatsky and the Theosophists
“Helena Petrovna Blavatsky, the founder of the Theosophists, took up Donnelly‘s interpretations when she wrote The Secret Doctrine (1888), which she claimed was originally dictated in Atlantis. She maintained that the Atlanteans were cultural heroes (contrary to Plato, who describes them mainly as a military threat). She believed in a form of racial evolution (as opposed to primate evolution). In her process of evolution the Atlanteans were the fourth “root race“, which were succeeded by the fifth, the “Aryan race“, which she identified with the modern human race.” ref
“In her book, Blavatsky reported that the civilization of Atlantis reached its peak between 1,000,000 and 900,000 years ago, but destroyed itself through internal warfare brought about by the dangerous use of psychic and supernatural powers of the inhabitants. Rudolf Steiner, the founder of anthroposophy and Waldorf Schools, along with other well known Theosophists, such as Annie Besant, also wrote of cultural evolution in much the same vein. Other occultists followed the same lead, at least to the point of tracing the lineage of occult practices back to Atlantis. Among the most famous is Dion Fortune in her Esoteric Orders and Their Work. Drawing on the ideas of Rudolf Steiner and Hanns Hörbiger, Egon Friedell started his book Kulturgeschichte des Altertums [de], and thus his historical analysis of antiquity, with the ancient culture of Atlantis. The book was published in 1940.” ref
Biblical Terminology for Race?
“Since early modern times, a number of biblical ethnonyms from the Table of Nations in Genesis 10 have been used as a basis for classifying human racial (cosmetic phenotypes) and national (ethnolinguistic cultural) identities. The connection between Genesis 10 and contemporary ethnic groups began during classical antiquity, when authors such as Josephus, Hippolytus, and Jerome analyzed the biblical list. The early modern equation of the biblical Semites, Hamites, and Japhetites with “racial” phenotypes was coined at the Göttingen school of history in the late 18th century – in parallel with other, more secular terminologies for race, such as Blumenbach’s fivefold color scheme.” ref
“The 1st-century Jewish-Roman historian Josephus, in Antiquities of the Jews Book 1, chapter 6, was the first known author who assigned known ethnicities to some of the names listed in Genesis chapter 10. His assignments became the basis for most later authors, and were as follows:
- Gomer: “those whom the Greeks now call Galatians, [Galls,] but were then called Gomerites”.
- Aschanax (Ashkenaz): “Aschanaxians, who are now called by the Greeks Rheginians.”
- Riphath: “Ripheans, now called Paphlagonians.”
- Thrugramma (Togarmah): “Thrugrammeans, who, as the Greeks resolved, were named Phrygians“.
- Magog: “Magogites, but who are by the Greeks called Scythians.”
- Madai: “the Madeans, who are called Medes, by the Greeks”.
- Javan: “Ionia, and all the Grecians“.
- Elisa: “Eliseans… they are now the Aeolians“.
- Tharsus (Tarshish): “Tharsians, for so was Cilicia of old called.” He also derives the name of their city Tarsus from Tharsus.
- Cethimus (Kittim): “The island Cethima: it is now called Cyprus.” He also derives the Greek name of their city, which he spells Citius, from Cethimus.
- Thobel (Tubal): “Thobelites, who are now called Iberes.”
- Mosoch (Meshech): “Mosocheni… now they are Cappadocians.” He also derives the name of their capital Mazaca from Mosoch.
- Thiras (Tiras): “Thirasians; but the Greeks changed the name into Thracians“.
- Chus (Cush): “Ethiopians… even at this day, both by themselves and by all men in Asia, called Chusites“.
- Sabas (Seba): Sabeans
- Evilas (Havilah): “Evileans, who are called Getuli.”
- Sabathes (Sabta): “Sabathens, they are now called by the Greeks Astaborans.”
- Sabactas (Sabteca): Sabactens
- Ragmus (Raamah): Ragmeans
- Judadas (Dedan): “Judadeans, a nation of the western Ethiopians”.
- Sabas (Sheba): Sabeans
- Mesraim (Misraim): Egypt, which he says is called Mestre in his country.
- “Now all the children of Mesraim, being eight in number, possessed the country from Gaza to Egypt, though it retained the name of one only, the Philistim; for the Greeks call part of that country Palestine. As for the rest, Ludieim, and Enemim, and Labim, who alone inhabited in Libya, and called the country from himself, Nedim, and Phethrosim, and Chesloim, and Cephthorim, we know nothing of them besides their names; for the Ethiopic war which we shall describe hereafter, was the cause that those cities were overthrown.”
- Phut: Ancient Libya. He states that a river and region “in the country of Moors” was still called Phut by the Greeks but that it had been renamed “from one of the sons of Mesraim, who was called Lybyos.”
- Canaan: Judea, which he called “from his own name Canaan.”
- Sidonius (Sidon): The city of Sidonius, “called by the Greeks Sidon.”
- Amathus (Hamathite): “Amathine, which is even now called Amathe by the inhabitants, although the Macedonians named it Epiphania, from one of his posterity.”
- Arudeus (Arvadite): “the island Aradus”.
- Arucas (Arkite): “Arce, which is in Libanus.”
- “But for the seven others [sons of Canaan], Chetteus, Jebuseus, Amorreus, Gergesus, Eudeus, Sineus, Samareus, we have nothing in the sacred books but their names, for the Hebrews overthrew their cities”.
- Elam: “Elamites, the ancestors of the Persians”.
- Ashur: “Assyrians, and their city Niniveh built by Ashur.
- Arphaxad: “Arphaxadites, who are now called Chaldeans“.
- Sala
- Heber (Eber): “from whom they originally called the Jews Hebrews“.
- Phaleg (Peleg): He notes that he was so named “because he was born at the dispersion of the nations to their several countries; for Phaleg among the Hebrews signifies division.”
- Joctan
- “Elmodad, Saleph, Asermoth, Jera, Adoram, Aizel, Decla, Ebal, Abimael, Sabeus, Ophir, Euilat, and Jobab. These inhabited from Cophen, an Indian river, and in part of Asia adjoining to it.”
- Heber (Eber): “from whom they originally called the Jews Hebrews“.
- Sala
- Aram: “Aramites, which the Greeks called Syrians.”
- Uz: “Uz founded Trachonitis and Damascus: this country lies between Palestine and Celesyria.”
- Ul (Hul): Armenia
- Gather (Gether): Bactrians
- Mesa (Mesh): “Mesaneans; it is now called Charax Spasinu.”
- Laud (Lud): “Laudites, which are now called Lydians.” ref
“Joseph Arthur de Gobineau (14 July 1816 – 13 October 1882) was a French aristocrat who is best known for helping introduce scientific race theory and “racial demography” and for developing the theory of the Aryan master race and Nordicism. Known to his contemporaries as a novelist, diplomat, and travel writer, he was an elitist who, in the immediate aftermath of the Revolutions of 1848, wrote An Essay on the Inequality of the Human Races. In it, he argued that aristocrats were superior to commoners and that aristocrats possessed more Aryan genetic traits because of less interbreeding with inferior races.” ref
“Gobineau’s writings were quickly praised by white supremacist, pro-slavery Americans like Josiah C. Nott and Henry Hotze, who translated his book into English. They omitted around 1,000 pages of the original book, including those parts that negatively described Americans as a racially mixed population. Inspiring a social movement in Germany named Gobinism, his works were also influential on prominent antisemites like Richard Wagner, Wagner’s son-in-law Houston Stewart Chamberlain, the Romanian politician Professor A. C. Cuza, and leaders of the Nazi Party, who later edited and re-published his work. Gobineau’s ideas were influential in a number of countries, especially Romania, Ottoman Empire, Germany, and Brazil, both during his lifetime and after his death. He was a main influence to the first modern elaboration of Zionism by Moses Hess.” ref
“In 1879, Gobineau attempted to prove his own racial superiority over the rest of the French with his pseudo-family history Histoire de Ottar Jarl. It begins with the line “I descend from Odin” and traces his supposed descent from the Viking Ottar Jarl. As the de Gobineau family first appeared in history in late 15th century Bordeaux, and Ottar Jarl—who may or may not have been a real person—is said to have lived in the 10th century, Gobineau had to resort to a great deal of invention to make his genealogy work. For him, the Essai, the Histoire des Perses, and Histoire de Ottar Jarl comprised a trilogy, what the French critic Jean Caulmier called “a poetic vision of the human adventure,” covering the universal history of all races in the Essai, to the history of the Aryan branch in Persia in Histoire des Perses to his own family’s history in Histoire de Ottar Jarl.” ref
An Essay on the Inequality of the Human Races
“An Essay on the Inequality of the Human Races (originally: Essai sur l’inégalité des races humaines), published between 1853 and 1855, is a racialist work of French diplomat and writer Arthur de Gobineau. It argues that there are intellectual differences between human races, that civilizations decline and fall when the races are mixed, and that the white race is superior. It is today considered to be one of, if not the earliest example of scientific racism.” ref
“Expanding upon Boulainvilliers‘ use of ethnography to defend the Ancien Régime against the claims of the Third Estate, Gobineau aimed for an explanatory system universal in scope: namely, that race is the primary force determining world events. Using scientific disciplines as varied as linguistics and anthropology, Gobineau divides the human species into three major groupings, white, yellow, and black, claiming to demonstrate that “history springs only from contact with the white races.” Among the white races, he distinguishes the Aryan race, specifically the Nordic race and Germanic peoples, as the pinnacle of human development, comprising the basis of all European aristocracies. However, inevitable miscegenation led to the “downfall of civilizations.” ref
“Gobineau was a Legitimist who despaired at France’s decline into republicanism and centralization. The book was written after the 1848 revolution when Gobineau began studying the works of physiologists Xavier Bichat and Johann Blumenbach. The book was dedicated to King George V of Hanover (1851–66), the last king of Hanover. In the dedication, Gobineau writes that he presents to His Majesty the fruits of his speculations and studies into the hidden causes of the “revolutions, bloody wars, and lawlessness” (“révolutions, guerres sanglantes, renversements de lois”) of the age. In a letter to Count Anton von Prokesch-Osten in 1856 he describes the book as based upon “a hatred for democracy and its weapon, the Revolution, which I satisfied by showing, in a variety of ways, where revolution and democracy come from and where they are going.” ref
Gobineau and the Bible
“In Vol I, chapter 11, “Les différences ethniques sont permanentes” (“The ethnic differences are permanent”), Gobineau writes that “Adam is the originator of our white species” (“Adam soit l’auteur de notre espèce blanche”), and creatures not part of the white race are not part of that species. By this Gobineau refers to his division of humans into three main races: white, black, and yellow. The biblical division into Hamites, Semites, and Japhetites is for Gobineau a division within the white race. In general, Gobineau considers the Bible to be a reliable source of actual history, and he was not a supporter of the idea of polygenesis.” ref
“Steven Kale argues that Gobineau’s “influence on the development of racial theory has been exaggerated and his ideas have been routinely misconstrued.” Gobineau’s ideas found an audience in the United States and in German-speaking areas more so than in France, becoming the inspiration for a host of racial theories, for example, those of Houston Stewart Chamberlain. “Gobineau was the first to theorize that race was the deciding factor in history, and the precursors of Nazism repeated some of his ideas, but his principle arguments were either ignored, deformed, or taken out of context in German racial thought.” ref
“German historian Joachim C. Fest, who wrote a biography of Hitler, describes Gobineau, in particular his negative views on race-mixing as expressed in his essay, as an eminent influence on Adolf Hitler and Nazism. Fest writes that the influence of Gobineau on Hitler can be easily seen and that Gobineau’s ideas were used by Hitler in simplified form for demagogic purposes: “Significantly, Hitler simplified Gobineau’s elaborate doctrine until it became demagogically usable and offered a set of plausible explanations for all the discontents, anxieties, and crises of the contemporary scene.” However, Professor Steven Kale has cautioned that “Gobineau’s influence on German racism has been repeatedly overstated.” ref
“Although cited by groups such as the Nazi Party, the text implicitly criticizes antisemitism and describes Jews in positive terms, the Jews being seen as a superbly forged race of “ancient Greek-like strength” of cohesion. Implicitly, the folk of Judah merely represented a wandering, semi-austral variation of Ur-Aryan blood-stock. Gobineau stated, “Jews… became a people that succeeded in everything it undertook, a free, strong, and intelligent people, and one which, before it lost, sword in hand, the name of an independent nation, had given as many learned men to the world as it had merchants.” Philo-Judaic sentiment was intermixed with ethnological theories concerning the primally Indo-Iranian/Indo-Aryan archeogenetic matrix whence sprang the Jews. In these lines of speculative anthropology, the Jews were anciently (supposedly) primordially interpreted as of atypical Indo-European ethnicity: Judaic racial typology emerged from Iranid–Nordid founders, the details considered inessential, possessors of compatibly “white” “Aryan” blood being the main point.” ref
“The latter-day “Hamiticized” Jewish folk came into existence from non-Afro-Asiatic Hurrian (or Horite), Jebusite, Amorite or early-Hittite, Mittani-affiliated racial nuclei, the “consensus science” of the time asserted. The blatantly, ironically almost aggressive pro-Jewish attitude of Gobineau, akin to Nietzsche in sheer admiration and lionization of the Jews as one of the “highest races,” proved ideologically vertiginous to the Nazi propagandists and Procrustean thinkers—here Gobineau unmistakably contradicted perhaps the main pillar of Nazi political ideology, which has been described as the schizoid, neo-Gnostic dualism of “Jewish demonology.” Incompatible with Nazi ideology, the Count’s fervent Judaic positivity, and total dearth of antisemitism, the Nazis could only attempt to ignore or minimize away in the silence of hypocrisy. The book continued to influence the white supremacist movement in the United States in the early 21st century.” ref
With some of Damien Marie AtHope’s Art
“The Dark Link Between the Nazis and the Legend of Atlantis, The Nazi racial doctrine found a homeland in the fictional Lost Continent. “We find anything that has been lost, forgotten or hidden, with pin-point accuracy,” whether on land or in the sea, the high-tech company Merlin Burrows boasts. The U.K.-based firm employs historians, archaeologists, security and salvage experts, and others who, with the aid of satellites, locate sunken ships, buried treasure, and ancient sites. One of the latter, according to the company, is the most famous “lost” city in the world – more acclaimed than Shambhala, more coveted than El Dorado, and more mysterious than Shangri-La – and which, prosaically enough, lies off the coast of Spain, the company says.” ref
Nazism and occultism
See also: Nazism and occultism
“To many Nazis, the Aryan race descended from Nordic “God Men” who came straight down from Heaven and created the lost civilization of Atlantis.” ref
“Blavatsky was also inspired by the work of the 18th-century astronomer Jean-Sylvain Bailly, who had “Orientalized” the Atlantis myth in his mythical continent of Hyperborea, a reference to Greek myths featuring a Northern European region of the same name, home to a giant, godlike race. Dan Edelstein claims that her reshaping of this theory in The Secret Doctrine provided the Nazis with a mythological precedent and a pretext for their ideological platform and their subsequent genocide. However, Blavatsky’s writings mention that the Atlantean were in fact olive-skinned peoples with Mongoloid traits who were the ancestors of modern Native Americans, Mongolians, and Malayans.” ref
“The idea that the Atlanteans were Hyperborean, Nordic supermen who originated in the Northern Atlantic or even in the far North, was popular in the German ariosophic movement around 1900, propagated by Guido von List and others. It gave its name to the Thule Gesellschaft, an antisemite Münich lodge, which preceded the German Nazi Party (see Thule). The scholars Karl Georg Zschaetzsch [de] (1920) and Herman Wirth (1928) were the first to speak of a “Nordic-Atlantean” or “Aryan-Nordic” master race that spread from Atlantis over the Northern Hemisphere and beyond. The Hyperboreans were contrasted with the Jewish people. Party ideologist Alfred Rosenberg (in The Myth of the Twentieth Century, 1930) and SS-leader Heinrich Himmler made it part of the official doctrine.” ref
“The idea was followed up by the adherents of Esoteric Nazism such as Julius Evola (1934) and, more recently, Miguel Serrano (1978). The idea of Atlantis as the homeland of the Caucasian race would contradict the beliefs of older Esoteric and Theosophic groups, which taught that the Atlanteans were non-Caucasian brown-skinned peoples. Modern Esoteric groups, including the Theosophic Society, do not consider Atlantean society to have been superior or Utopian—they rather consider it a lower stage of evolution.” ref
“The Myth of the Twentieth Century (German: Der Mythus des zwanzigsten Jahrhunderts) is a 1930 book by Alfred Rosenberg, a Nazi theorist and official who was convicted of crimes against humanity and other crimes at the Nuremberg trials and executed in 1946. Rosenberg was one of the principal ideologues of the Nazi Party and editor of the Nazi newspaper Völkischer Beobachter. In 1941, history professor Peter Viereck wrote: “In molding Germany’s ‘psychology of frightfulness’ Rosenberg wields an influence as powerful as that of the much publicized Goebbels and the much feared Himmler and his secret police.” ref
“Thanks to Nazi support, the book sold more than one million copies by 1944. Hitler awarded a State Prize for Art and Science to Rosenberg for the book in 1937. The document accompanying the prize “praises Rosenberg as a ‘person who has, in a scientific and penetrating manner, laid the firm foundation for an understanding of the ideological bases of National Socialism'”. The content of the book is a mix of racist pseudo-science and mysticism which makes the claim that the “Nordic race” originated in Atlantis and that their nobility justified the enslavement and even mass murder of non-Aryan races.” ref
“During the Nuremberg Trials, Justice Robert H. Jackson referred to the book as a “dreary treatise[s] advocating a new and weird Nazi religion”. “Mythus” is written as an imitation of a scholarly book and Viereck notes that “Rosenberg bores both the uneducated and the well educated, but is the god of the semi-educated, whom earnest dullness and obscure grandiloquence impress as scholarly and authoritative”. In his Nuremberg Trials testimony, the extermination camp commandant Rudolf Höss said that this book was one of the sources of his own anti-Semitism. Some members of the Nazi leadership found some of this material embarrassing, but it was also publicly praised, often by the same Nazi leaders who disparaged the work in private.” ref
“Rosenberg followed a long line of European racist authors, including Arthur de Gobineau (author of An Essay on the Inequality of the Human Races) but his most important “source” was Houston Stewart Chamberlain. Rosenberg conceived of his book as a sequel to Chamberlain’s 1899 book The Foundations of the Nineteenth Century. Other influences included a dubious reading of Friedrich Nietzsche, Richard Wagner‘s Holy Grail romanticism (Chamberlain was Wagner’s son-in-law), Haeckelian mystical vitalism, the medieval German philosopher Meister Eckhart and the heirs of his mysticism and Nordicist Aryanism in general.” ref
“Racism substituted myth for reality; and the world that it created with its stereotypes, virtues and vices, was a fairytale world, which dangled a utopia before the eyes of those who longed for a way out of the confusion of modernity and the rush of time. It made the sun stand still and abolished change. All evil was blamed on the restless inferior races who lacked appreciation of the settled order of things. — George L. Mosse, Towards the final solution: A history of European Racism (1978).” ref
“Rosenberg’s Nazi racial theories involve a mix of made up biology and invented history about the putative negative influence of the Jewish race in contrast to the Aryan race. He equates the latter with the Nordic peoples of northern Europe and also includes the Berbers from North Africa (this story apparently deriving from the Kabyle myth invented by French colonists) and the upper classes of Ancient Egypt (all presumably migrating from Atlantis). According to Rosenberg, modern culture has been corrupted by Semitic influences (cf. anti-Semitism), which have produced degenerate modern art, along with moral and social degeneration. Rosenberg believed that the higher races should rule over the lower and not interbreed with them. He argues that the Nazis must purify the race soul by eliminating non-Aryan elements in much the same ruthless and uncompromising way in which a surgeon would cut a cancer from a diseased body. These arguments were used to justify Nazi crimes, crimes against humanity, and the Holocaust.” ref
“In Rosenberg’s mythological take on world history, migrating Aryans founded various ancient civilizations which later declined and fell due to inter-marriage with lesser races. These civilizations included the Aryan, ancient pre-Islamic Persia, Greece, India, and Rome. He saw the ancient Germanic invasions of the Roman empire as saving its civilization, which had been corrupted both by race mixing and by Judaized-cosmopolitan Christianity. Furthermore, he claimed that the persecutions of Protestants in France and other areas represented the wiping out of the last remnants of the Aryan element in those areas, a process completed by the French revolution. In contemporary Europe, he saw the northern areas that embraced Protestantism as closest to the Aryan racial and spiritual ideal, however referred to both Catholicism and Protestantism as Negative Christianity, seeing Protestantism as only half a protest. He held much higher regard for pre-Christian Germans and the earlier Arian Christian church.” ref
“Following H. S. Chamberlain and other völkisch theorists, Rosenberg claimed that Jesus was half German which he extended to Aryans and half Jewish, and that original Christianity was a German-Aryan (Iranian) religion admixed with the Jewish cult of Jehovah, but had been corrupted by the followers of Paul of Tarsus. The Mythus is both anti-Catholic and anti-Protestant, seeing the Church’s cosmopolitanism and Judaised version of Christianity as one of the factors in Germany’s spiritual decline. Rosenberg particularly emphasizes the supposedly anti-Judaic teachings of the heresies Marcionism and Aryo-Persian Manicheanism as more representative of the true, anti-Judaic Jesus Christ and more suited to the Nordic world-view. Rosenberg saw Martin Luther and the Reformation as merely step toward reasserting the Aryan spirit but still opposed Protestantism as not going far enough, equating it with an invasive form of Christianity from Charlemagne unsuited to the German spirit.” ref
“When he discussed the future of religion, he suggested that a multiplicity of forms be tolerated, including Positive Christianity. He stated that both the cult of Jehovah and the cult of Wotan were dead, but respected Wotan due to being German and equated him with later German philosophers. This angered the Catholic Church which falsely claimed Rosenberg had converted to Germanic Heathenism. Rosenberg rejected this claim and in his defence merely respected Wotan as an historical figure. Rosenberg wrote anti-Indian racist statements regarding Hinduism, but respected the earlier forms of it which he saw as not being racially admixed with the natives of India.” ref
“Another myth, to which he gave credence, was the idea of Atlantis, which he claimed might preserve a memory of an ancient Aryan homeland: And so today the long derived hypothesis becomes a probability, namely that from a northern center of creation which, without postulating an actual submerged Atlantic continent, we may call Atlantis, swarms of warriors once fanned out in obedience to the ever renewed and incarnate Nordic longing for distance to conquer and space to shape. Johannes Steizinger writes “Rosenberg clearly played a major role in the establishment of Nazi ideology” and that “Ideology is regarded as a necessary, but not sufficient cause for participation in genocide.” ref
“Despite Nazi support for The Myth of the Twentieth Century and Rosenberg’s prominent role in promoting Nazi ideology, in private, some of the Nazi leaders had reservations about its mysticism. Adolf Hitler declared that it was not to be considered official ideology of the Nazi Party and he privately described the book as “mysticism” and “nonsense”. Albert Speer claimed that Goebbels mocked Alfred Rosenberg. Goebbels also called the book a “philosophical belch”. Hermann Göring said: “if Rosenberg was to decide … we would only have rite, thing, myth and such kind of swindle.” Gustave Gilbert, the prison psychologist during the Nuremberg Trials, reported that none of the Nazi leaders he interviewed had read Rosenberg’s writings.” ref
“However, Gilbert’s notes from the Nuremberg trials repeatedly show Rosenberg’s influence. At lunch von Papen commented, “Dodd asked him if he knew that Hoess, the Commandant of Auschwitz, had read his works. That was, of course, the crux of the whole thing. Rosenberg just gave an evasive answer.” Although he did take very high-level positions within the Nazi state in managing propaganda, looting artworks, and overseeing Nazi rule in the Baltics and Soviet territories, the overt anti-Christian sentiment in Rosenberg’s book made it awkward to give Rosenberg positions of prominence when the Nazis ascended to power.” ref
“Even in their stronghold Hamburg only 0.49% of the inhabitants identified as belonging to the anti-Christian neopagan faith movement (in 1937), whereas the German Christians and their Positive Christianity had a strong standing. Many of the attacks on the book after its 1930 publication came from its explicit anti-Christian message. Rosenberg wrote two supplements to the work, replying to Catholic and Protestant critics. In the first, On the Dark Men of Our Times: A Reply to Critics of the Myth of the Twentieth Century, he accused Catholics of attempting to destroy the national character by promoting separatism within Catholic parts of the country. His second reply, Protestant Pilgrims to Rome: The Treason Against Luther and the Myth of the Twentieth Century, argued that modern Lutheranism was becoming too close to Catholicism.” ref
Edgar Cayce
“The clairvoyant Edgar Cayce spoke frequently of Atlantis. During his “life readings”, he claimed that many of his subjects were reincarnations of people who had lived there. By tapping into their collective consciousness, the “Akashic Records” (a term borrowed from Theosophy), Cayce declared that he was able to give detailed descriptions of the lost continent. He also asserted that Atlantis would “rise” again in the 1960s (sparking much popularity of the myth in that decade) and that there is a “Hall of Records” beneath the Egyptian Sphinx which holds the historical texts of Atlantis.” ref
Recent times
“As continental drift became widely accepted during the 1960s, and the increased understanding of plate tectonics demonstrated the impossibility of a lost continent in the geologically recent past, most “Lost Continent” theories of Atlantis began to wane in popularity. Plato scholar Julia Annas, Regents Professor of Philosophy at the University of Arizona, had this to say on the matter: The continuing industry of discovering Atlantis illustrates the dangers of reading Plato. For he is clearly using what has become a standard device of fiction—stressing the historicity of an event (and the discovery of hitherto unknown authorities) as an indication that what follows is fiction. The idea is that we should use the story to examine our ideas of government and power. We have missed the point if instead of thinking about these issues we go off exploring the sea bed. The continuing misunderstanding of Plato as historian here enables us to see why his distrust of imaginative writing is sometimes justified.” ref
“One of the proposed explanations for the historical context of the Atlantis story is that it serves as Plato’s warning to his fellow citizens against their striving for naval power. Kenneth Feder points out that Critias’s story in the Timaeus provides a major clue. In the dialogue, Critias says, referring to Socrates’ hypothetical society: And when you were speaking yesterday about your city and citizens, the tale which I have just been repeating to you came into my mind, and I remarked with astonishment how, by some mysterious coincidence, you agreed in almost every particular with the narrative of Solon. … Feder quotes A. E. Taylor, who wrote, “We could not be told much more plainly that the whole narrative of Solon’s conversation with the priests and his intention of writing the poem about Atlantis are an invention of Plato’s fancy.” ref
“In order to give his account of Atlantis verisimilitude, Plato mentions that the story was heard by Solon in Egypt, and transmitted orally over several generations through the family of Dropides, until it reached Critias, a dialogue speaker in Timaeus and Critias. Solon had supposedly tried to adapt the Atlantis oral tradition into a poem (that if published, was to be greater than the works of Hesiod and Homer). While it was never completed, Solon passed on the story to Dropides. Modern classicists deny the existence of Solon’s Atlantis poem and the story as an oral tradition. Instead, Plato is thought to be the sole inventor or fabricator. Hellanicus of Lesbos used the word “Atlantis” as the title for a poem published before Plato, a fragment of which may be Oxyrhynchus Papyrus 11, 1359. This work only describes the Atlantides, the daughters of Atlas, and has no relation to Plato’s Atlantis account.” ref
“In the new era, the third century CE Neoplatonist Zoticus wrote an epic poem based on Plato’s account of Atlantis. Plato’s work may already have inspired parodic imitation, however. Writing only a few decades after the Timaeus and Critias, the historian Theopompus of Chios wrote of a land beyond the ocean known as Meropis. This description was included in Book 8 of his Philippica, which contains a dialogue between Silenus and King Midas. Silenus describes the Meropids, a race of men who grow to twice normal size, and inhabit two cities on the island of Meropis: Eusebes (Εὐσεβής, “Pious-town”) and Machimos (Μάχιμος, “Fighting-town”).” ref
“He also reports that an army of ten million soldiers crossed the ocean to conquer Hyperborea, but abandoned this proposal when they realized that the Hyperboreans were the luckiest people on earth. Heinz-Günther Nesselrath has argued that these and other details of Silenus’ story are meant as imitation and exaggeration of the Atlantis story, by parody, for the purpose of exposing Plato’s ideas to ridicule.” ref
With some of Damien Marie AtHope’s Art
Edmund Kiss
“Edmund Kiss (1886 – 1960) was a German pseudoarchaeologist and author best known for his books about the ancient settlement of Tiwanaku in the Andes mountains of Bolivia. Edmund Kiss was born in Germany in 1886 and later studied architecture. He claimed to have also studied archaeology, but there is no evidence that this is true. He was a soldier during the First World War. After the Treaty of Versailles, he started writing a series of novels of adventure fiction in the prestigious German collection Der Gute Kamerad and with other publishing houses. He also wrote non-fiction works that adhered to the tenets of pseudo-scientist Hanns Hörbiger. In the 1920s and early 1930s, he worked as a municipal officer responsible for the construction of public buildings.
“In the 1920s, Edmund Kiss started writing his first books on alternative archeology and ancient mysticism. In his book entitled The Last Queen of Atlantis (Die letzte Königin von Atlantis) he equated the mythical northern land Thule to the origins of humanity. According to Kiss ‘The inhabitants of Northern Atlantis were led by their leader Baldur Wieborg, a native of the mythical Thule who migrated all across the world’. He later described the return journey of the Nordic Thulians to their mythical homeland in The Swans of Thule.
“Edmund Kiss was a follower of the pseudoscience Welteislehre (World Ice Theory). Welteislehre was a pseudoscientific hypothesis created by Hanns Hörbiger and Philipp Johann Heinrich Fauth during the 1890s.[2] Welteislehre suggests that the Earth and all other cosmic planetary bodies were made out of ice. One of the claims made in Hörbiger’s book Glacial-Kosmogonie was that the Earth once had six satellite moons and that sometime in the ancient past, five of these moons were destroyed. According to Hörbiger, this event would have caused global flooding and the formation of continent-spanning glaciers. According to Hörbiger, flora and fauna could only survive at high altitudes such as those found in the Himalayas and the Andes. Kiss was attracted by the claim of global ice and wanted to explore the Andes for evidence to prove Hörbiger’s theory.
In 1927, Kiss made contact with an Austrian writer and amateur archaeologist Arthur Posnansky. Posnansky informed Kiss about the ruins of Tiwanaku. Posnansky had been undertaking research at Tiwanaku since the early 1900s and suggested that the temples built on the site predated the traditionally accepted date of 200 C.E. and were instead constructed around 17,000 B.C.E. Posnansky used pseudoscientific astronomical calculations on one of the walls at the site to obtain this date. In 1928, Kiss used a 20,000 Mark reward he received in a writing contest to fund an expedition to Tiwanaku. Kiss generally agreed with Posnansky’s findings and came to the conclusion that the ruins were not Andean in origin. These findings were based on Kiss’s personal opinion that the ruins were “European” in design.
“He later stated in a letter translated by Heather Pringle, “The works of art and the architectural style of the prehistoric city are certainly not of Indian style…Rather they are probably the creations of Nordic men who arrived in the Andean Highlands as representatives of a special civilization.” Kiss theorized that the original builders of Tiwanaku were Nordic peoples who had begun construction of Tiwanaku almost one million years ago. Kiss claimed that the same Nordic race that he claimed built Tiwanaku had been the inhabitants of the mythical lost continent of Atlantis.
Kiss’s research was discussed in several publications that appeared after his 1928 expedition to Tiwanaku, in 1930, published an article for the architecture magazine Zeitschrift für Bauwesen, titled Die Rekonstruktion des Mausoleums Puma Punku und der Sonnenwarte Kalasasaya in Tihuanaku in Bolivien. From 1930-1933 Kiss, published Das Gläserne Meer, Die Letzte Königin von Atlantis, and Frühling in Atlantis. These novels were presented as historical fiction and were based on his archaeological theories. The novels portray the Atlanteans as Nordic Aryans with access to advanced technology and the builders of Tiwanaku. Kiss did not publish a comprehensive work detailing his findings at Tiwanaku until 1937, when he published Das Sonnentor von Tihuanaku und Hörbiger’s Welteislehre.
“The title makes a reference to the Gateway of the Sun, a monolithic carved gateway located at Tiwanaku. The Gateway of the Sun is known for its intricate carvings, with the central figure known as the front-facing figure or Staff God. One of Kiss’s theories for the Gateway of the Sun was that the monolith was a celestial calendar, according to Heather Pringle. “He felt certain he could see symbols for twelve months of the year, each possessing either twenty-four or twenty-five days…each of the days had thirty hours.” Kiss claimed about a notable artifact from the site found at Kalasasaya that it resembles a Nordic man. The interpretation as a “Nordic Man’s Head” is an interpretation based on racist assumptions.
Fascism?
“Fascism is a far-right, authoritarian, and ultranationalist political ideology and movement, characterized by a dictatorial leader, centralized autocracy, militarism, forcible suppression of opposition, belief in a natural social hierarchy, subordination of individual interests for the perceived good of the nation or race, and strong regimentation of society and the economy. Opposed to anarchism, democracy, pluralism, egalitarianism, liberalism, socialism, and Marxism, fascism is at the far right of the traditional left–right spectrum. Fascism rose to prominence in early-20th-century Europe. The first fascist movements emerged in Italy during World War I, before spreading to other European countries, most notably Germany. Fascism also had adherents outside of Europe.” ref
“Fascists saw World War I as a revolution that brought massive changes to the nature of war, society, the state, and technology. The advent of total war and the mass mobilization of society erased the distinction between civilians and combatants. A military citizenship arose, in which all citizens were involved with the military in some manner. The war resulted in the rise of a powerful state capable of mobilizing millions of people to serve on the front lines, providing logistics to support them, and having unprecedented authority to intervene in the lives of citizens. Fascism rejects the view that violence is inherently negative or pointless but rather views imperialism, political violence, and war as means to national rejuvenation.” ref
“Fascists often advocate for the establishment of a totalitarian one-party state, and for a dirigiste economy (a market economy in which the state plays a strong directive role through economic interventionist policies), with the principal goal of achieving autarky (national economic self-sufficiency). Fascism’s extreme authoritarianism and nationalism centers around the own group, but that can manifest as a belief in Manifest Destiny, revival of historical greatness (like Mussolini seeking to restore the Roman Empire), or in the case of Nazism, racial purity or a master race which blended with some variant of racism or discrimination against a demonized “Other“, such as Jews, homosexuals, transgender people, ethnic minorities, or immigrants.” ref
“These ideas have motivated fascist regimes to commit massacres, forced sterilizations, deportations, and genocides. During World War II, the genocidal and imperialist ambitions of the fascist Axis powers resulted in the murder of millions of people. Since the end of World War II in 1945, fascism has been largely disgraced, and few parties have openly described themselves as fascist; the term is often used pejoratively by political opponents. The descriptions neo-fascist or post-fascist are sometimes applied to contemporary parties with ideologies similar to, or rooted in, 20th-century fascist movements. Some opposition groups have adopted the label anti-fascist (often shortened to antifa) to signify their stance.” ref
White Supremacy?
“White supremacy has ideological foundations that date back to 17th-century scientific racism, the predominant paradigm of human variation that helped shape international relations and racial policy from the latter part of the Age of Enlightenment until the late 20th century (marked by decolonization and the abolition of apartheid in South Africa in 1991, followed by that country’s first multiracial elections in 1994).” ref
“White supremacy is the belief that white people are superior to those of other races and thus should dominate them. The belief favors the maintenance and defense of any power and privilege held by white people. White supremacy has roots in the now-discredited doctrine of scientific racism and was a key justification for European colonialism. As a political ideology, it imposes and maintains cultural, social, political, historical, or institutional domination by white people and non-white supporters.” ref
“In the past, this ideology had been put into effect through socioeconomic and legal structures such as the Atlantic slave trade, European colonial labor and social practices, the Scramble for Africa, Jim Crow laws in the United States, the activities of the Native Land Court in New Zealand, the White Australia policies from the 1890s to the mid-1970s, and apartheid in South Africa. This ideology is also today present among neo-Confederates.” ref
“White supremacy underlies a spectrum of contemporary movements including white nationalism, white separatism, neo-Nazism, and the Christian Identity movement. In the United States, white supremacy is primarily associated with the Ku Klux Klan (KKK), Aryan Nations, and the White American Resistance movement, all of which are also considered to be antisemitic. The Proud Boys, despite claiming non-association with white supremacy, have been described in academic contexts as being such. In recent years, websites such as Twitter (known as X since July 2023), Reddit, and Stormfront, and the campaign and presidency of Donald Trump, have contributed to an increased activity and interest in white supremacy.” ref
“Different forms of white supremacy have different conceptions of who is considered white (though the exemplar is generally light-skinned, blond-haired, and blue-eyed — traits most common in northern Europe and that are viewed pseudoscientifically as being traits of an Aryan race), and not all white-supremacist organizations agree on who is their greatest enemy. Different groups of white supremacists identify various racial, ethnic, religious, and other enemies, most commonly those of Sub-Saharan African ancestry, Indigenous peoples of the Americas and Oceania, Asians, multiracial people, Middle Eastern people, Jews, Muslims, and LGBTQ+ people. In academic usage, particularly in critical race theory or intersectionality, “white supremacy” can also refer to a social system in which white people enjoy structural advantages (privilege) over other ethnic groups, on both a collective and individual level, despite formal legal equality.” ref
Scientific Racism?
“Scientific racism, sometimes termed biological racism, is the pseudoscientific belief that the human species is divided into biologically distinct taxa called “races,” and that empirical evidence exists to support or justify racial discrimination, racial inferiority, or racial superiority. Before the mid-20th century, scientific racism was accepted throughout the scientific community, but it is no longer considered scientific. The division of humankind into biologically separate groups, along with the assignment of particular physical and mental characteristics to these groups through constructing and applying corresponding explanatory models, is referred to as racialism, race realism, or race science by those who support these ideas. Modern scientific consensus rejects this view as being irreconcilable with modern genetic research.” ref
“Scientific racism misapplies, misconstrues, or distorts anthropology (notably physical anthropology), craniometry, evolutionary biology, and other disciplines or pseudo-disciplines through proposing anthropological typologies to classify human populations into physically discrete human races, some of which might be asserted to be superior or inferior to others. Scientific racism was common during the period from the 1600s to the end of World War II, and was particularly prominent in European and American academic writings from the mid-19th century through the early-20th century. Since the second half of the 20th century, scientific racism has been discredited and criticized as obsolete, yet has persistently been used to support or validate racist world-views based upon belief in the existence and significance of racial categories and a hierarchy of superior and inferior races.” ref
“During the 20th century, anthropologist Franz Boas and biologists Julian Huxley and Lancelot Hogben were among the earliest leading critics of scientific racism. Skepticism towards the validity of scientific racism grew during the interwar period, and by the end of World War II, scientific racism in theory and action was formally denounced, especially in UNESCO‘s early antiracist statement, “The Race Question” (1950): “The biological fact of race and the myth of ‘race’ should be distinguished. For all practical social purposes, ‘race’ is not so much a biological phenomenon as a social myth. The myth of ‘race’ has created an enormous amount of human and social damage. In recent years, it has taken a heavy toll in human lives, and caused untold suffering”. Since that time, developments in human evolutionary genetics and physical anthropology have led to a new consensus among anthropologists that human races are a sociopolitical phenomenon rather than a biological one.” ref
“The term scientific racism is generally used pejoratively when applied to more modern theories, such as those in The Bell Curve (1994). Critics argue that such works postulate racist conclusions, such as a genetic connection between race and intelligence, that are unsupported by available evidence. Publications such as the Mankind Quarterly, founded explicitly as a “race-conscious” journal, are generally regarded as platforms of scientific racism because they publish fringe interpretations of human evolution, intelligence, ethnography, language, mythology, archaeology, and race.” ref
“White supremacists talking about the usefulness of Graham Hancock theories for white supremacists talking about Graham Hancock’s work. I thought you might get a kick out of it. The discussion starts at :58 and runs to about 1:08. https://www.bitchute.com/video/JaKq2unoa2ub/ Hardy Lloyd recommends white supremacists use Hancock’s “Fingerprints of the Gods” to recruit people to the cause. He’s currently serving a six-year sentence in federal prison for threatening jurors and witnesses—especially Jewish ones—in the Tree of Life mass homicide case in Pittsburgh. That blog post has a wealth of information and links. Thanks! By the way, I learned about that white supremacist video because Stephanie Halmhofer cited in her recently published book chapter. (Conspiracy Theories and Extremism in New Times: Conspiracy Theories and Extremism in New Times outlines a cadre of alt-right groups, conspiracy theories, and other forms of stigmatized knowledge threatening our society.)” – John Hoopes (in a message to me)
Here is a sample of the racist trash explaining their thinking from the video:
Main racist commentor: “I am a creator, whatever the scientific data is, whatever makes the logical sense. Even if there is not a lot of data to back it up, if it is logical, I am going to tend to believe that. Some people believe this Aryan mythos: basically white people, basically the master race, evolutionary, we create things others don’t create, such as the pyramids… That is the only mythos I need; people like to dress it up.”
Other racist commenter: “I want to get back to Graham Hancock”
Main racist commentor: “Graham Hancock made a Netflix series, that the libtards hated, oh know, white people are the master race…”
Other racist commenter: “20 years ago, I saw a video he did. Graham Hancock’s claim in the video, which I agree with, great stuff. Is that there was a group of people the navigated the globe, 12,000 years ago. I always felt he was saying/implying it was a group of Aryans or proto-Aryans, but never says it, he secretly thinks it was a master race.
Main racist commentor: “Long story short, Hancock basically says, Aryan without saying Aryan. He constantly recites ancient texts, saying white-skinned people, white skin people with beards, white-skinned people with blue eyes, or white people with gold or red beards, and he will write that. To tell you the truth, I am surprised, it has taken this long to slander the guy. Because as soon as Handcock came out with this Netflix documentary, all of a sudden, the Jew media, started bashing Handcock. Interesting that he was saying this stuff like 20 or 30 years ago. When he first published, “Fingerprints of the Gods”, he is basically saying, yes, it was white people, ancient white men created everything. I am surprised it took so long for people to attack him, Handcock is basically a mouth pace for the SS, read his books, it is like reading something from the third Reich. I read Fingerprints of the Gods, five times, and I use it as a resource all the time, I think it a great tool (for white supremacists). I like Handcock, it’s like listening to some third Reich archaeology, without any of the baggage. So, I can watch it with somebody else (not white supremacists), it is a good way to introduce people to white superiority. Here, check out this Handcock book, and if they agree with it, then maybe they are open to reading, more clearly white supremacist stuff. Handcock books are a nice intro to (white supremacist thinking) racialism, at least that is my thinking.
Other racist commenter: “Yeah, I have been looking for a source like that, something more mainstream, granted it is mainstream alternative, Handcock does not have the stigma of right-wing, but rather more left-wing conspiracy thinking. So, you can use him to get to people.
Main racist comment: “I sometimes post his stuff on my (white supremacists) blog; it’s good stuff, it is all science, and since he cites every reference, it is all fact-based, and it is kind of racialism without the stigma. For anyone watching this and you are racial and you want them to think about racialism, give them a copy of Handcock’s Fingerprints of the Gods. Use that as an opening, saying hey, what do you think about this. Then it opens them up because Handcock says all the time that the Inca said white people built this. Aztecs said, white people built this. Ancient Hindus said, white people built this. Throughout the whole book, it is like this (racialized), but it is not in your face. So, I think Handcock is good to use, on people that are fence sitters, or maybe they are not racial at all.”
To me (Damien Marie AtHope), Pseudoscience and Pseudoarchaeology are true enemies of humanity, as well as attack truth, trying to replace it with errors. I know for a long time, I thought Pseudoarchaeology was harmless nonsense. But I have come to understand, just how much harm Pseudoarchaeology truly is. I now see the often hidden harms of Pseudoarchaeology, such as racism and other kinds of hate, including mistrust or hate of historians, anthropologists, and archaeologists, as well as all manner of others in science-related topics. I am always amazed at how “Pseudo-History-Thinkers” make up nonsense about history, when the real history is already amazing, and doesn’t need lies added.
From Twitter/X
John Hoopes @KUHoopes, “One of the most annoying things about Graham Hancock is how he actively perpetuates willful ignorance among his fans. For example, he will imply that almost nothing is known about Tiwanaku, a culture that archaeologists have been investigating for decades.”
Digging Up Ancient Aliens @DUAncientAliens, “The ancient alien crowd has done the same for years. What I find a bit amusing is that they always want to separate Pumapunku from Tiwanaku as if these are two different locations:
The non-mystery of Puma Punku and Tiwanaku https://diggingupancientaliens.com/episode-45-pumapunku-tiwanaku.html
Paul Barford @PortantIssues, “Perpetuates with confidence”, because he knows for sure that 97% of them are shallow-minded gullible buffoons who’ll never so much as lift a mouse-clicking finger to check for themselves…”
Sam Leeming @SamLeeming, “Jordan Peterson uses the same obfuscating techniques to sidestep any direct questions that require a definite answer. We don’t know anything…. Everything’s just too mysterious. “weaponized relativism,” undermines trust in reliable sources of information. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C2CuAVAERjs“
Justine “That Woman” Warren @adancingferret, “If they go looking for information they might start to question his interpretations. Can’t have that! Best to imply there isn’t much more than what he’s telling them.”
P J @PJ11819211, “Graham Hancock and co have created this weird strain of conservative glue eaters convinced archeology rigor is a conspiracy by the (((elites))) to prevent everyone else from being Indiana Jones.” And “No one of these clowns even have done the necessary work or anything, all they do is point at a site and then throw a tantrum, when internet rando, states, “You can’t dig the site willy nilly, without permission, or oversight from academic institutions.”
P J @PJ11819211, “There is a good reason why Graham Hancock has become more explicitly partisan and right-wing recently, because he needs to draw the most gullible, stupid, and tribalistic foot soldiers for his grift. The silliest bit honestly is the fact that you can actively engage with archeology research, the only roadblock is having an expert or specialist to guide you in the literature, but if you know how to navigate this stuff, you can find out about sites in smallest details. But these factors matter very little, when you really don’t care about the actual archeology itself, and are more obsessed with a pathetic loser persecution complex, about how the evil elites are trying to hurt your little tribe.”
Juli Ruth Emry @Parodyite, “This is another misunderstanding (misrepresentation?) of how science works. Scientists don’t say “this IS the way it is”. Most scientists say, “this is the way we think it is based on the data we HAVE.” Hypotheses/ideas evolve all the time with new data/studies. I’m a poster child for challenging a long-held interpretation/hypothesis in my PhD research. Some scientists are resistant to change & new ideas (whoo boy, believe you me), but not most. The important thing is the preponderance of evidence based on multiple studies. Um….scientists prove things (hypotheses) false or “not to be the case” all the time. This is the basis of hypothesis testing – make a hypothesis, collect & analyze data, and accept or reject the hypothesis. The preponderance of evidence (or lack thereof) across different studies is key. Philosophically maybe not, but at any specific time, someone might find evidence in the future. But, as of now, based on decades of research/studies on thousands/10’s of thousands of Ice Age sites – no evidence exists. Therefore, practically, as of now, based on the data we have, the hypothesis of an advanced Ice Age civilization has been rejected. That’s how science works. The “lost & then found” metric for an advanced Ice Age Civilization is a classic red herring. Quite a few Pleistocene sites have been ID’d & studied. It’s probability – if it existed it’s unlikely that we wouldn’t have seen SOME kind of verifiable data for it. Typically, sites aren’t found “just by accident” b/c humans are dependent on necessary resources that occur in certain environments. Looking for a Pleistocene archao site in an ancient river floodplain deposits is more reasonable than looking in a granite batholith. ”
Joseph A P Wilson @JosephAPWilson1, “Speculation must be grounded in reality for it to be taken seriously by scholars. Hancock wants to be judged on a sliding scale, and given a free pass for a zillion errors on the grounds of his amateur status, while still taken seriously as a critic on matters not yet proved.”
Paul Barford @PortantIssues, “In a realm where facts are not as powerful as narratives, it is not enough to just debunk pseudo-archaeological content. We must also dismantle the harmful narratives pseudo-archaeology is used to support”. @DeDunkingPast, @Graham__Hancock, and @BrightInsight6“
Steph Halmhofer, Verklempt Archaeologist @Cult_Archaeo, “A comment from a far-right website that I quoted, demonstrating the idea of faith over proof: “I can not prove Atlantis. I don’t need proof. I believe in National Socialism, and . . . Atlantis makes sense if I accept National Socialism. Evidence only adds to my conviction.”
Liminalitytv @liminalitytv, “Despite this evidence that he is, in fact, an Atlantis believer; he thinks me calling him one is disrespectful, and that by pointing out that he believes in Atlantis theories, that I was personally attacking him. All I did was call a horse a horse. ‘If you cared about the material, you’d engage with argument, not personal attacks’. And in the same post he attacks my appearance. I’m sorry I don’t have blue hair and a nose ring, maybe that would have been better material for you? @ill_Scholar, You seem to think I believe I’m some kind of elite PhD grant-getting globe-trotting archaeologist. I don’t have a PhD either, lol. You don’t need one to be an archaeologist in Australia. With regard to your video; this is about maritime archaeology. I am not a maritime archaeologist. I have never practiced maritime archaeology. Other than what’s relevant to the important sites and cultural heritage management in Australia, my knowledge is limited. I would never come on your show and pretend to be an expert in something I’m not, unlike some people. Archaeologists aren’t out there in the shadows waiting to get you mate, we’re not part of some academic elite. Most of us breathe dirt, sleep in tents, and wear the same clothes for weeks at a time. Lastly, you said I would never call you an ‘Atlantis believer’ to your face. Yes, I would. And we’d have a good laugh arguing about it over a beer. I called this guy an ‘Atlantis believer,’ and he’s had a full-scale meltdown. His response was, ‘You couldn’t even check the evidence on my profile to know you’re wrong.’ when I said he believed in Atlantis. He talked about Atlantis ‘…I don’t think I’ve ever claimed to think it definitely exists’. But look at his profile.”
“Fingerprints of the Gods: The Evidence of Earth’s Lost Civilization is a 1995 pseudoarcheology book by British writer Graham Hancock, which contends that an advanced civilization existed in prehistory, one which served as the common progenitor civilization to all subsequent known ancient historical ones. The author proposes that sometime around the end of the last ice age this civilization ended in cataclysm, but passed on to its inheritors profound knowledge of such things as astronomy, architecture, and mathematics. And the book was followed by Magicians of the Gods.” ref
“Magicians of the Gods: The Forgotten Wisdom of Earth’s Lost Civilisation is a 2015 book by British pseudoarchaeology writer Graham Hancock, published by Thomas Dunne Books in the United States and by Coronet in the United Kingdom. Macmillan Publishers released an “updated and expanded” paperback edition in 2017. A sequel to Hancock’s Fingerprints of the Gods (1995), the book builds on the premise that a highly advanced “lost civilisation” operated in prehistory but was destroyed in a global catastrophe. Hancock seeks an explanation for his catastrophe in the controversial Younger Dryas impact hypothesis, suggesting that around 10,800 BCE, the fragments of a large comet struck the earth, causing widespread destruction, climate change, and sea-level rise. He then recounts that the survivors of this catastrophe, the titular “Magicians”, dispersed across the world to pass on the knowledge of their lost civilisation. He links this to the construction of various ancient monuments, including Göbekli Tepe, Baalbek, the Great Sphinx, and the Pyramids of Giza, some of which Hancock claims to be much older than mainstream archaeologists determined.” ref
“Literary reviewers found the book ludicrous but entertaining, whilst sceptic and mainstream academic reviewers criticised Hancock for a litany of factual errors, for selective use of evidence, and for logical fallacies. However, some tempered their skepticism as further evidence came out in support of the impact hypothesis. The book appeared on the New York Times Best Seller list in the category “Religion, Spirituality and Faith” in December 2015. Literary reviewers have described the book as ludicrous but entertaining. Michael Taube of The Washington Times wrote, “Obviously, I don’t believe in Mr. Hancock’s creative fairytale […] but if a little magic is your cup of tea, this phantasmagorical book will do the trick.” Kirkus Reviews concluded that it is “risible and sure to sell.” Conversely, sceptic author Jason Colavito considered it “not a good book by either the standards of entertainment or science”, describing it as derivative of previous works of catastrophist pseudoarchaeology, and saying that it showed “Hancock at his worst: angry, petulant, and slipshod.” ref
Fingerprints of the Gods: Thesis
“Hancock argues for a civilization centered on Antarctica (which lay farther from the South Pole than today) that supposedly left evidence (the “fingerprints” of the title) in Ancient Egypt and American civilizations such as the Olmec, Aztec, and Maya. Hancock discusses:
- creation myths describing deities like:
- Osiris, Thoth (Egypt)
- Quetzalcoatl (Mesoamerica)
- Viracocha (Andes)
- a range of archaeological sites, such as Tiwanaku in Bolivia. Tiwanaku was a planned city which, according to UNESCO, reached its peak between 400 CE and 900 CE, but is assigned an earlier date by Hancock. Tiwanaku is also featured in other works of “alternative archaeology“, including Von Däniken‘s Chariots of the Gods?. Von Däniken suggested that it provides evidence of an extraterrestrial civilization, whereas Hancock does not argue for “ancient astronauts“; he proposes Atlantis as the origin of a lost civilization.” ref
“Hancock suggests that in 10,450 BCE, a major pole shift took place. Before then, Antarctica lay farther from the South Pole than today, and after then, it shifted to its present location. The pole-shift hypothesis hinges on Charles Hapgood‘s theory of Earth Crustal Displacement. Hapgood had a fascination with the story of Atlantis and suggested that crustal displacement may have caused its destruction. His theories have no supporters in the geological community, where the accepted model is plate tectonics, but they were adopted by Rand and Rose Flem-Ath‘s When the Sky Fell: in Search of Atlantis (1995/2009) in which they expand the evidence for Charles Hapgood’s theory of earth-crust displacement and propose Antarctica as the site of Atlantis.” ref
“Members of the scholarly and scientific community have described the proposals put forward in the book as pseudoscience and pseudoarchaeology. Canadian author Heather Pringle has placed Fingerprints specifically within a pseudo-scientific tradition going back through the writings of H.S. Bellamy and Denis Saurat to the work of Heinrich Himmler‘s notorious racial research institute, the Ahnenerbe, and the “crackpot theories” of Nazi archaeologist Edmund Kiss. Pringle draws attention to Fingerprints’ “wild speculations” on the origins of Tiwanaku and describes Hancock as a “fabulist.” ref
“Kenneth Feder said that the book reads like the “Victorian travelogue” of a writer untrained in archeology, who credits a mysterious white people for the achievements of the ancient civilizations he visits, Hancock notably referring to the Maya as “jungle-dwelling Indians” who could not possibly come up with a sophisticated calendar. Feder finds Hancock’s synthesis of a variety of fringe writers, such as Ignatius Donnelly, Charles Hapgood, Arthur Posnansky, Robert Bauval, and Anthony West, “very hard to swallow, indeed.” Fingerprints of the Gods has been translated into 27 languages and is estimated to have sold five million copies around the world. Hancock responded to some of his critics with an updated edition of the book published in 2001 with a new introduction and new appendices, Fingerprints of the Gods: The Quest Continues.” ref
Graham Hancock’s Atlantis
“Graham Hancock’s Fingerprints of the Gods proposes, like Donnelly, that civilizations in Egypt and the Americas had a common origin in a civilization lost to history, although in Hancock’s book, the civilization was not located in the northern Atlantic.” ref
“Graham Bruce Hancock (born 2 August 1950) is a British writer who promotes pseudoscientific ideas about ancient civilizations and hypothetical lost lands. Hancock proposes that an advanced civilization with spiritual technology existed during the last Ice Age until it was destroyed following comet impacts around 12,000 years ago. He speculates that survivors of this cataclysm passed on their knowledge to primitive hunter-gatherers around the world, giving rise to all the earliest known civilizations (such as ancient Egypt, Sumeria, and Mesoamerica).” ref
“Hancock’s pseudoarchaeological work is based on cherry picked information, and strident opposition to “mainstream archaeology”. It superficially resembles investigative journalism, but is neither accurate, consistent nor impartial. His ideas are built with references to myths, pseudoscience, outdated scientific models, and cutting-edge science depending on what suits his claims. Hancock aims to erode trust in known facts and archaeological expertise, and responds to criticism with accusations of censorship. Many of his supporters echo his rhetoric and label critics as disinformation agents.” ref
“[I]t’s not my job to be “balanced” or “objective.” On the contrary, by providing a powerful, persuasive single-minded case for the existence of a lost civilization, I believe that I am merely restoring a little balance and objectivity to a previously unbalanced situation…. [I]t’s my job—and a real responsibility to be taken seriously—to undermine and cast doubt on the orthodox theory of history in every way that I can and to make the most eloquent and persuasive case that I am capable of making for the existence of a lost civilization.— Graham Hancock.” ref
- “Pseudoarchaeologists mislead their audience by misrepresenting the current state of knowledge, take quotes out of contexts, and withhold countervailing data. Garrett G. Fagan pointed out two typical examples in Hancock’s book Fingerprints of the Gods (1995): Hancock wrote that “the best recent evidence suggests that” large regions of Antarctica may have been ice free until about 6,000 years ago, referring to the Piri Reis map and Hapgood‘s work from the 1960s. What is left entirely unmentioned are the extensive studies of the Antarctic ice sheet by George H. Denton, published in 1981, which showed the ice to be hundreds of thousands of years old.
- When discussing the ancient city of Tiwanaku, Hancock presents it as a “mysterious site about which very little is known” and that “minimal archaeology has been done over the years” suggesting it dates to 17,000 years ago. Yet in the years prior to these statements dozens of studies had been published, major excavations were conducted and the site was radiocarbon dated by three sets of samples to around 1500 BCE. .” ref
“Hancock’s main thesis throughout most of his work is that there was an advanced civilization during the last Ice Age, which was destroyed as a result of a widespread natural disaster, causing the small number of survivors to travel the world, spreading their knowledge and giving rise to the earliest known civilizations. He does not accept that these civilizations could have arisen independently or that faraway peoples developed the same ideas, arguing that they all came from one advanced ice-age civilization. It is a form of hyperdiffusionism based on Ignatius Donnelly‘s book Atlantis: The Antediluvian World (1882), an influence Hancock has cited. The idea lacks concrete evidence, is biased towards western civilization, and oversimplifies complex cultural developments.” ref
“To explain the disappearance of his ice age civilization, Hancock embraces the Younger Dryas impact hypothesis, which has little support in the scientific community. He argues that the civilization was destroyed around 12,000 years ago by sudden climate change during the Younger Dryas cool period, which he attributes to an impact winter caused by a massive meteor bombardment. Hancock claims that the few survivors of the catastrophe arrived in places like Egypt, Mesopotamia, and Mesoamerica, where they shared their knowledge and superior technology with primitive hunter-gatherers; introducing them to agriculture, monumental architecture, and astronomy.” ref
“He believes the monuments they built encode astronomical data to warn future humans. The narrative assumes that the advanced civilization lacked a writing system that enabled them to leave a less ambiguous message. Hancock does not explain why this warning is not uniform across different cultures and so hard to decode that generations of researchers missed it. Hancock believes that these events are preserved in various myths, such as Plato‘s story of Atlantis, and that the Atlanteans were remembered as “magicians and gods.” ref
“Hancock has accepted the fringe theories of other Atlantis proponents regarding several historic sites. For example that of Robert M. Schoch, who contests that the Great Sphinx of Giza was carved over 11,500 years ago, based on claims of the Sphinx having been eroded by water or that of Danny Hilman Natawidjaja, who believes Gunung Padang to be a 27,000 year old Atlantean structure. Scholars Olav Hammer and Karen Swartz write that Hancock’s works are “based largely on an imaginative reinterpretation of artifacts and myths that divorces them from their immediate cultural and religious contexts.” ref
Spiritual technology and Ice age civilization as myth
“…in my view the science of the lost civilization was primarily focused upon what we now call psi capacities that deployed the enhanced and focused power of human consciousness to channel energies and to manipulate matter. — Graham Hancock, America Before (2019), p. 479.” ref
“Hancock believes that the technology his lost Ice Age civilization possessed was primarily spiritual. According to anthropologist Jeb Card, in America Before (2019) Hancock describes his advanced Ice Age civilisation as a “global-sea based society comparable with the late pre-industrial British Empire” with knowledge “that would seem like magic even today”, with this knowledge suggested by Hancock to include psychic capabilities. Hancock suggests that the teachings of Atlanteans to later civilizations were “geometric, astronomical and spiritual” in nature, which were faciltated by the use of psychotropic plants (such as ayahuasca and peyote) used to access the Otherworld, allowing them to commune with souls and “powerful nonphysical beings.” ref
“He also proposed that they were able to move and shape large stones with the help of meditation and psychoactive plants, and asserted that granite blocks of the Great Pyramid of Giza were moved by “priests chanting”, suggesting a form of acoustic levitation.” ref
“Archaeologist John Hoopes has described Hancock’s claims as effectively religious in nature and rooted in New Age beliefs. Jeb Card stated that attempts to critique Hancock’s work “using the criteria of professional archaeology is doomed to failure, as his goals are outside the goals of the materialist practice of scientific archaeology”, describing Hancock as part of the paranormal milieu, and the idea of the Ice age civilization as a mythic narrative rooted in opposition to materialism, describing Hancock as “not a failed version of an archaeologist” but a “successful mythographer of a post-science age”. Olav Hammer and Karen Swartz, both primarily scholars of new religious movements, have also concurred with interpretation of Hancock as a creator of myths, describing him as a “bricoleur who creates a myth from a motley selection of cultural elements.” ref
Racist implications
“Archaeologists and the author Jason Colavito have criticised Hancock for the origins of some of his claims being drawn from racist sources. For instance, Hancock draws from the work of Donnelly, a proponent of the racist “mound builder myth“, with Donnelly suggesting that the Indigenous peoples of the Americas were not capable of creating sophisticated structures, attributing their creation instead to white Atlanteans. Hancock has distanced himself from this claim, yet failed to explain how a fully competent local population could serve as evidence for a lost civilization that transferred superior science and technology to them.” ref
“Although Hancock has identified the Atlanteans as indigenous Americans, he stated in Fingerprints of the Gods that Atlanteans were “white [and] auburn-haired”. Hancock has based some of his work on outdated race science and has argued for the presence of indigenous “Caucasoids” and “Negroids” in the Americas prior to 1492, which he claims are depicted in indigenous American art and mythology. The Maya were described by Hancock as only “semi-civilized” and their achievements as “generally unremarkable” to support the thesis that they inherited their calendar from a much older, far more advanced civilization. Hancock has denied that he is racist, and has expressed support for native rights.” ref
Ancient Apocalypse (2022)
Main article: Ancient Apocalypse
“Hancock’s theories are the basis of Ancient Apocalypse, a 2022 documentary series produced by Netflix, where Hancock’s son Sean is “senior manager of unscripted originals”. In the series, Hancock outlines his long-held belief that there was an advanced civilization during the last ice age, that it was destroyed following comet impacts around 12,000 years ago, and that its survivors introduced agriculture, monumental architecture and astronomy to hunter-gatherers around the world. He attempts to show how several ancient monuments and natural features are evidence of this, and repeatedly claims that archaeologists are ignoring or covering-up this alleged evidence.” ref
“Archaeologists and other experts say that the series presents pseudoscientific claims that lack evidence, cherry picks, and fails to present the counter-evidence. Other commentators criticized the series for unfounded accusations that “mainstream archaeology” conspires against Hancock’s ideas. Archaeologists linked Hancock’s claims to “white supremacist” ideologies from the 19th century, which they say are insulting to the ancestors of indigenous peoples who built the monuments. A Maltese archaeologist who appeared in an episode said her interview had been manipulated. The Society for American Archaeology (SAA) objected to the classification of the series as a documentary and requested that Netflix reclassify it as science fiction.” ref
“The SAA also stated: the series repeatedly and vigorously dismisses archaeologists and the practice of archaeology with aggressive rhetoric, willfully seeking to cause harm to our membership and our profession in the public eye; … the theory it presents has a long-standing association with racist, white supremacist ideologies; does injustice to Indigenous peoples; and emboldens extremists. … After more than a century of professional archaeological investigations, we find no archaeological evidence to support the existence of an ‘advanced, global Ice Age civilization.” ref
“In 2009, Roland Emmerich released his blockbuster disaster movie 2012, citing Fingerprints of the Gods in the credits as an inspiration for the film, stating: “I always wanted to do a biblical flood movie, but I never felt I had the hook. I first read about the Earth’s Crust Displacement Theory in Graham Hancock’s Fingerprints of the Gods.” ref
“Hancock gave a TEDx lecture titled “The War on Consciousness”, in which he described his use of ayahuasca, an Amazonian brew containing a hallucinogenic compound DMT, and argued that adults should be allowed to responsibly use it for self-improvement and spiritual growth. He stated that for 24 years he was “pretty much permanently stoned” on cannabis, and that in 2011, six years after his first use of ayahuasca, it enabled him to stop using cannabis. At the recommendation of TED’s Science Board, the lecture was removed from the TEDx YouTube channel and moved to TED’s main website where it “can be framed to highlight both [Hancock’s] provocative ideas and the factual problems with [his] arguments.” ref
“Hancock has appeared on The Joe Rogan Experience podcast several times. In JRE episode #2136, uploaded in April 2024, Hancock debated Flint Dibble, a professor of archeology at Cardiff University. Both Hancock and Dibble agreed that continuing archeological research would be a great benefit to humanity.” ref
Racist Robert Sepehr
“I think Robert Sepehr—a blatant racist—presents it in contrast to the “Out of Africa” model. He has a YouTube channel called “Atlantean Gardens.” He thinks all ancient civilizations were founded by white, blonde or red-headed, blue- or green-eyed superior Aryans from Atlantis. Sepehr claims to be an anthropologist, but he’s not. He now has over 100K followers on X, but just a few years ago, had been banned by both Facebook and Twitter for his racist posts.” – John Hoopes
But is Atlantis real?
No. Atlantis (an allegory: “fake story” interpreted to reveal a hidden meaning) can’t be found any more than one can locate the Jolly Green Giant that is said to watch over frozen vegetables. Lol
May Reason Set You Free
There are a lot of truly great things said by anarchists in history, and also some deeply vile things, too, from not supporting Women’s rights to Anti-Semitism. There are those who also reject those supporting women’s rights as well as fight anti-Semitism. This is why I push reason as my only master, not anarchist thinking, though anarchism, to me, should see all humans everywhere as equal in dignity and rights.
We—Cory and Damien—are following the greatness that can be found in anarchist thinking.
As an Anarchist Educator, Damien strives to teach the plain truth. Damien does not support violence as my method to change. Rather, I choose education that builds Enlightenment and Empowerment. I champion Dignity and Equality. We rise by helping each other. What is the price of a tear? What is the cost of a smile? How can we see clearly when others pay the cost of our indifference and fear? We should help people in need. Why is that so hard for some people? Rich Ghouls must End. Damien wants “billionaires” to stop being a thing. Tax then into equality. To Damien, there is no debate, Capitalism is unethical. Moreover, as an Anarchist Educator, Damien knows violence is not the way to inspire lasting positive change. But we are not limited to violence, we have education, one of the most lasting and powerful ways to improve the world. We empower the world by championing Truth and its supporters.
Anarchism and Education
“Various alternatives to education and their problems have been proposed by anarchists which have gone from alternative education systems and environments, self-education, advocacy of youth and children rights, and freethought activism.” ref
“Historical accounts of anarchist educational experiments to explore how their pedagogical practices, organization, and content constituted a radical alternative to mainstream forms of educational provision in different historical periods.” ref
“The Ferrer school was an early 20th century libertarian school inspired by the anarchist pedagogy of Francisco Ferrer. He was a proponent of rationalist, secular education that emphasized reason, dignity, self-reliance, and scientific observation. The Ferrer movement’s philosophy had two distinct tendencies: non-didactic freedom from dogma and the more didactic fostering of counter-hegemonic beliefs. Towards non-didactic freedom from dogma, and fulfilled the child-centered tradition.” ref
Teach Real History: all our lives depend on it.
Damien sees lies about history as crimes against humanity. And we all must help humanity by addressing “any and all” who make harmful lies about history.
My favorite “Graham Hancock” Quote?
“In what archaeologists have studied, yes, we can say there is NO Evidence of an advanced civilization.” – (Time 1:27) Joe Rogan Experience #2136 – Graham Hancock & Flint Dibble
People don’t commonly teach religious history, even that of their own claimed religion. No, rather they teach a limited “pro their religion” history of their religion from a religious perspective favorable to the religion of choice.
Do you truly think “Religious Belief” is only a matter of some personal choice?
Do you not see how coercive one’s world of choice is limited to the obvious hereditary belief, in most religious choices available to the child of religious parents or caregivers? Religion is more commonly like a family, culture, society, etc. available belief that limits the belief choices of the child and that is when “Religious Belief” is not only a matter of some personal choice and when it becomes hereditary faith, not because of the quality of its alleged facts or proposed truths but because everyone else important to the child believes similarly so they do as well simply mimicking authority beliefs handed to them. Because children are raised in religion rather than being presented all possible choices but rather one limited dogmatic brand of “Religious Belief” where children only have a choice of following the belief as instructed, and then personally claim the faith hereditary belief seen in the confirming to the belief they have held themselves all their lives. This is obvious in statements asked and answered by children claiming a faith they barely understand but they do understand that their family believes “this or that” faith, so they feel obligated to believe it too. While I do agree that “Religious Belief” should only be a matter of some personal choice, it rarely is… End Hereditary Religion!
Animism: Respecting the Living World by Graham Harvey
“How have human cultures engaged with and thought about animals, plants, rocks, clouds, and other elements in their natural surroundings? Do animals and other natural objects have a spirit or soul? What is their relationship to humans? In this new study, Graham Harvey explores current and past animistic beliefs and practices of Native Americans, Maori, Aboriginal Australians, and eco-pagans. He considers the varieties of animism found in these cultures as well as their shared desire to live respectfully within larger natural communities. Drawing on his extensive casework, Harvey also considers the linguistic, performative, ecological, and activist implications of these different animisms.” ref
We are like believing machines we vacuum up ideas, like Velcro sticks to almost everything. We accumulate beliefs that we allow to negatively influence our lives, often without realizing it. Our willingness must be to alter skewed beliefs that impend our balance or reason, which allows us to achieve new positive thinking and accurate outcomes.
My thoughts on Religion Evolution with external links for more info:
- (Pre-Animism Africa mainly, but also Europe, and Asia at least 300,000 years ago), (Pre-Animism – Oxford Dictionaries)
- (Animism Africa around 100,000 years ago), (Animism – Britannica.com)
- (Totemism Europe around 50,000 years ago), (Totemism – Anthropology)
- (Shamanism Siberia around 30,000 years ago), (Shamanism – Britannica.com)
- (Paganism Turkey around 12,000 years ago), (Paganism – BBC Religion)
- (Progressed Organized Religion “Institutional Religion” Egypt around 5,000 years ago), (Ancient Egyptian Religion – Britannica.com)
- (CURRENT “World” RELIGIONS after 4,000 years ago) (Origin of Major Religions – Sacred Texts)
- (Early Atheistic Doubting at least by 2,600 years ago) (History of Atheism – Wikipedia)
“Religion is an Evolved Product” and Yes, Religion is Like Fear Given Wings…
Atheists talk about gods and religions for the same reason doctors talk about cancer, they are looking for a cure, or a firefighter talks about fires because they burn people and they care to stop them. We atheists too often feel a need to help the victims of mental slavery, held in the bondage that is the false beliefs of gods and the conspiracy theories of reality found in religions.
Understanding Religion Evolution:
- Pre-Animism (at least 300,000 years ago)
- Animism (Africa: 100,000 years ago)
- Totemism (Europe: 50,000 years ago)
- Shamanism (Siberia: 30,000 years ago)
- Paganism (Turkey: 12,000 years ago)
- Progressed organized religion (Egypt: 5,000 years ago), (Egypt, the First Dynasty 5,150 years ago)
- CURRENT “World” RELIGIONS (after 4,000 years ago)
- Early Atheistic Doubting (at least by 2,600 years ago)
“An Archaeological/Anthropological Understanding of Religion Evolution”
It seems ancient peoples had to survived amazing threats in a “dangerous universe (by superstition perceived as good and evil),” and human “immorality or imperfection of the soul” which was thought to affect the still living, leading to ancestor worship. This ancestor worship presumably led to the belief in supernatural beings, and then some of these were turned into the belief in gods. This feeble myth called gods were just a human conceived “made from nothing into something over and over, changing, again and again, taking on more as they evolve, all the while they are thought to be special,” but it is just supernatural animistic spirit-belief perceived as sacred.
Quick Evolution of Religion?
Pre-Animism (at least 300,000 years ago) pre-religion is a beginning that evolves into later Animism. So, Religion as we think of it, to me, all starts in a general way with Animism (Africa: 100,000 years ago) (theoretical belief in supernatural powers/spirits), then this is physically expressed in or with Totemism (Europe: 50,000 years ago) (theoretical belief in mythical relationship with powers/spirits through a totem item), which then enlists a full-time specific person to do this worship and believed interacting Shamanism (Siberia/Russia: 30,000 years ago) (theoretical belief in access and influence with spirits through ritual), and then there is the further employment of myths and gods added to all the above giving you Paganism (Turkey: 12,000 years ago) (often a lot more nature-based than most current top world religions, thus hinting to their close link to more ancient religious thinking it stems from). My hypothesis is expressed with an explanation of the building of a theatrical house (modern religions development). Progressed organized religion (Egypt: 5,000 years ago) with CURRENT “World” RELIGIONS (after 4,000 years ago).
Historically, in large city-state societies (such as Egypt or Iraq) starting around 5,000 years ago culminated to make religion something kind of new, a sociocultural-governmental-religious monarchy, where all or at least many of the people of such large city-state societies seem familiar with and committed to the existence of “religion” as the integrated life identity package of control dynamics with a fixed closed magical doctrine, but this juggernaut integrated religion identity package of Dogmatic-Propaganda certainly did not exist or if developed to an extent it was highly limited in most smaller prehistoric societies as they seem to lack most of the strong control dynamics with a fixed closed magical doctrine (magical beliefs could be at times be added or removed). Many people just want to see developed religious dynamics everywhere even if it is not. Instead, all that is found is largely fragments until the domestication of religion.
Religions, as we think of them today, are a new fad, even if they go back to around 6,000 years in the timeline of human existence, this amounts to almost nothing when seen in the long slow evolution of religion at least around 70,000 years ago with one of the oldest ritual worship. Stone Snake of South Africa: “first human worship” 70,000 years ago. This message of how religion and gods among them are clearly a man-made thing that was developed slowly as it was invented and then implemented peace by peace discrediting them all. Which seems to be a simple point some are just not grasping how devastating to any claims of truth when we can see the lie clearly in the archeological sites.
I wish people fought as hard for the actual values as they fight for the group/clan names political or otherwise they think support values. Every amount spent on war is theft to children in need of food or the homeless kept from shelter.
Here are several of my blog posts on history:
- To Find Truth You Must First Look
- (Magdalenian/Iberomaurusian) Connections to the First Paganists of the early Neolithic Near East Dating from around 17,000 to 12,000 Years Ago
- Natufians: an Ancient People at the Origins of Agriculture and Sedentary Life
- Possible Clan Leader/Special “MALE” Ancestor Totem Poles At Least 13,500 years ago?
- Jewish People with DNA at least 13,200 years old, Judaism, and the Origins of Some of its Ideas
- Baltic Reindeer Hunters: Swiderian, Lyngby, Ahrensburgian, and Krasnosillya cultures 12,020 to 11,020 years ago are evidence of powerful migratory waves during the last 13,000 years and a genetic link to Saami and the Finno-Ugric peoples.
- The Rise of Inequality: patriarchy and state hierarchy inequality
- Fertile Crescent 12,500 – 9,500 Years Ago: fertility and death cult belief system?
- 12,400 – 11,700 Years Ago – Kortik Tepe (Turkey) Pre/early-Agriculture Cultic Ritualism
- Ritualistic Bird Symbolism at Gobekli Tepe and its “Ancestor Cult”
- Male-Homosexual (female-like) / Trans-woman (female) Seated Figurine from Gobekli Tepe
- Could a 12,000-year-old Bull Geoglyph at Göbekli Tepe relate to older Bull and Female Art 25,000 years ago and Later Goddess and the Bull cults like Catal Huyuk?
- Sedentism and the Creation of goddesses around 12,000 years ago as well as male gods after 7,000 years ago.
- Alcohol, where Agriculture and Religion Become one? Such as Gobekli Tepe’s Ritualistic use of Grain as Food and Ritual Drink
- Neolithic Ritual Sites with T-Pillars and other Cultic Pillars
- Paganism: Goddesses around 12,000 years ago then Male Gods after 7,000 years ago
- First Patriarchy: Split of Women’s Status around 12,000 years ago & First Hierarchy: fall of Women’s Status around 5,000 years ago.
- Natufians: an Ancient People at the Origins of Agriculture and Sedentary Life
- J DNA and the Spread of Agricultural Religion (paganism)
- Paganism: an approximately 12,000-year-old belief system
- Paganism 12,000 years old: related to “Anarchism and Socialism” (Pre-Capitalism)
- Shaman burial in Israel 12,000 years ago and the Shamanism Phenomena
- Need to Mythicized: gods and goddesses
- 12,000 – 7,000 Years Ago – Paleo-Indian Culture (The Americas)
- 12,000 – 2,000 Years Ago – Indigenous-Scandinavians (Nordic)
- Norse did not wear helmets with horns?
- Pre-Pottery Neolithic Skull Cult around 11,500 to 8,400 Years Ago?
- 10,400 – 10,100 Years Ago, in Turkey the Nevail Cori Religious Settlement
- 9,000-6,500 Years Old Submerged Pre-Pottery/Pottery Neolithic Ritual Settlements off Israel’s Coast
- Catal Huyuk “first religious designed city” around 9,500 to 7,700 years ago (Turkey)
- Cultic Hunting at Catal Huyuk “first religious designed city”
- Special Items and Art as well as Special Elite Burials at Catal Huyuk
- New Rituals and Violence with the appearance of Pottery and People?
- Haplogroup N and its related Uralic Languages and Cultures
- Ainu people, Sámi people, Native Americans, the Ancient North Eurasians, and Paganistic-Shamanism with Totemism
- Ideas, Technology and People from Turkey, Europe, to China and Back again 9,000 to 5,000 years ago?
- First Pottery of Europe and the Related Cultures
- 9,000 years old Neolithic Artifacts Judean Desert and Hills Israel
- 9,000-7,000 years-old Sex and Death Rituals: Cult Sites in Israel, Jordan, and the Sinai
- 9,000-8500 year old Horned Female shaman Bad Dürrenberg Germany
- Neolithic Jewelry and the Spread of Farming in Europe Emerging out of West Turkey
- 8,600-year-old Tortoise Shells in Neolithic graves in central China have Early Writing and Shamanism
- Swing of the Mace: the rise of Elite, Forced Authority, and Inequality begin to Emerge 8,500 years ago?
- Migrations and Changing Europeans Beginning around 8,000 Years Ago
- My “Steppe-Anatolian-Kurgan hypothesis” 8,000/7,000 years ago
- Around 8,000-year-old Shared Idea of the Mistress of Animals, “Ritual” Motif
- Pre-Columbian Red-Paint (red ochre) Maritime Archaic Culture 8,000-3,000 years ago
- 7,522-6,522 years ago Linear Pottery culture which I think relates to Arcane Capitalism’s origins
- Arcane Capitalism: Primitive socialism, Primitive capital, Private ownership, Means of production, Market capitalism, Class discrimination, and Petite bourgeoisie (smaller capitalists)
- 7,500-4,750 years old Ritualistic Cucuteni-Trypillian culture of Moldova, Romania, and Ukraine
- Roots of a changing early society 7,200-6,700 years ago Jordan and Israel
- Agriculture religion (Paganism) with farming reached Britain between about 7,000 to 6,500 or so years ago and seemingly expressed in things like Western Europe’s Long Barrows
- My Thoughts on Possible Migrations of “R” DNA and Proto-Indo-European?
- “Millet” Spreading from China 7,022 years ago to Europe and related Language may have Spread with it leading to Proto-Indo-European
- Proto-Indo-European (PIE), ancestor of Indo-European languages: DNA, Society, Language, and Mythology
- The Dnieper–Donets culture and Asian varieties of Millet from China to the Black Sea region of Europe by 7,022 years ago
- Kurgan 6,000 years ago/dolmens 7,000 years ago: funeral, ritual, and other?
- 7,020 to 6,020-year-old Proto-Indo-European Homeland of Urheimat or proposed home of their Language and Religion
- Ancient Megaliths: Kurgan, Ziggurat, Pyramid, Menhir, Trilithon, Dolman, Kromlech, and Kromlech of Trilithons
- The Mytheme of Ancient North Eurasian Sacred-Dog belief and similar motifs are found in Indo-European, Native American, and Siberian comparative mythology
- Elite Power Accumulation: Ancient Trade, Tokens, Writing, Wealth, Merchants, and Priest-Kings
- Sacred Mounds, Mountains, Kurgans, and Pyramids may hold deep connections?
- Between 7,000-5,000 Years ago, rise of unequal hierarchy elite, leading to a “birth of the State” or worship of power, strong new sexism, oppression of non-elites, and the fall of Women’s equal status
- Paganism 7,000-5,000 years old: related to “Anarchism and Socialism” (Capitalism) (World War 0) Elite & their slaves
- Hell and Underworld mythologies starting maybe as far back as 7,000 to 5,000 years ago with the Proto-Indo-Europeans?
- The First Expression of the Male God around 7,000 years ago?
- White (light complexion skin) Bigotry and Sexism started 7,000 years ago?
- Around 7,000-year-old Shared Idea of the Divine Bird (Tutelary and/or Trickster spirit/deity), “Ritual” Motif
- Nekhbet an Ancient Egyptian Vulture Goddess and Tutelary Deity
- 6,720 to 4,920 years old Ritualistic Hongshan Culture of Inner Mongolia with 5,000-year-old Pyramid Mounds and Temples
- First proto-king in the Balkans, Varna culture around 6,500 years ago?
- 6,500–5,800 years ago in Israel Late Chalcolithic (Copper Age) Period in the Southern Levant Seems to Express Northern Levant Migrations, Cultural and Religious Transfer
- KING OF BEASTS: Master of Animals “Ritual” Motif, around 6,000 years old or older…
- Around 6000-year-old Shared Idea of the Solid Wheel & the Spoked Wheel-Shaped Ritual Motif
- “The Ghassulian Star,” a mysterious 6,000-year-old mural from Jordan; a Proto-Star of Ishtar, Star of Inanna or Star of Venus?
- Religious/Ritual Ideas, including goddesses and gods as well as ritual mounds or pyramids from Northeastern Asia at least 6,000 years old, seemingly filtering to Iran, Iraq, the Mediterranean, Europe, Egypt, and the Americas?
- Maykop (5,720–5,020 years ago) Caucasus region Bronze Age culture-related to Copper Age farmers from the south, influenced by the Ubaid period and Leyla-Tepe culture, as well as influencing the Kura-Araxes culture
- 5-600-year-old Tomb, Mummy, and First Bearded Male Figurine in a Grave
- Kura-Araxes Cultural 5,520 to 4,470 years old DNA traces to the Canaanites, Arabs, and Jews
- Minoan/Cretan (Keftiu) Civilization and Religion around 5,520 to 3,120 years ago
- Evolution Of Science at least by 5,500 years ago
- 5,500 Years old birth of the State, the rise of Hierarchy, and the fall of Women’s status
- “Jiroft culture” 5,100 – 4,200 years ago and the History of Iran
- Stonehenge: Paganistic Burial and Astrological Ritual Complex, England (5,100-3,600 years ago)
- Around 5,000-year-old Shared Idea of the “Tree of Life” Ritual Motif
- Complex rituals for elite, seen from China to Egypt, at least by 5,000 years ago
- Around 5,000 years ago: “Birth of the State” where Religion gets Military Power and Influence
- The Center of the World “Axis Mundi” and/or “Sacred Mountains” Mythology Could Relate to the Altai Mountains, Heart of the Steppe
- Progressed organized religion starts, an approximately 5,000-year-old belief system
- China’s Civilization between 5,000-3,000 years ago, was a time of war and class struggle, violent transition from free clans to a Slave or Elite society
- Origin of Logics is Naturalistic Observation at least by around 5,000 years ago.
- Paganism 5,000 years old: progressed organized religion and the state: related to “Anarchism and Socialism” (Kings and the Rise of the State)
- Ziggurats (multi-platform temples: 4,900 years old) to Pyramids (multi-platform tombs: 4,700 years old)
- Did a 4,520–4,420-year-old Volcano In Turkey Inspire the Bible God?
- Finland’s Horned Shaman and Pre-Horned-God at least 4,500 years ago?
- 4,000-year-Old Dolmens in Israel: A Connected Dolmen Religious Phenomenon?
- Creation myths: From chaos, Ex nihilo, Earth-diver, Emergence, World egg, and World parent
- Bronze Age “Ritual” connections of the Bell Beaker culture with the Corded Ware/Single Grave culture, which were related to the Yamnaya culture and Proto-Indo-European Languages/Religions
- Low Gods (Earth/ Tutelary deity), High Gods (Sky/Supreme deity), and Moralistic Gods (Deity enforcement/divine order)
- The exchange of people, ideas, and material-culture including, to me, the new god (Sky Father) and goddess (Earth Mother) religion between the Cucuteni-Trypillians and others which is then spread far and wide
- Koryaks: Indigenous People of the Russian Far East and Big Raven myths also found in Tlingit, Haida, Tsimshian, and other Indigenous People of North America
- 42 Principles Of Maat (Egyptian Goddess of the justice) around 4,400 years ago, 2000 Years Before Ten Commandments
- “Happy Easter” Well Happy Eostre/Ishter
- 4,320-3,820 years old “Shimao” (North China) site with Totemistic-Shamanistic Paganism and a Stepped Pyramid
- 4,250 to 3,400 Year old Stonehenge from Russia: Arkaim?
- 4,100-year-old beaker with medicinal & flowering plants in a grave of a woman in Scotland
- Early European Farmer ancestry, Kelif el Boroud people with the Cardial Ware culture, and the Bell Beaker culture Paganists too, spread into North Africa, then to the Canary Islands off West Africa
- Flood Accounts: Gilgamesh epic (4,100 years ago) Noah in Genesis (2,600 years ago)
- Paganism 4,000 years old: related to “Anarchism and Socialism” (First Moralistic gods, then the Origin time of Monotheism)
- When was the beginning: TIMELINE OF CURRENT RELIGIONS, which start around 4,000 years ago.
- Early Religions Thought to Express Proto-Monotheistic Systems around 4,000 years ago
- Kultepe? An archaeological site with a 4,000 years old women’s rights document.
- Single God Religions (Monotheism) = “Man-o-theism” started around 4,000 years ago with the Great Sky Spirit/God Tiān (天)?
- Confucianism’s Tiān (Shangdi god 4,000 years old): Supernaturalism, Pantheism or Theism?
- Yes, Your Male God is Ridiculous
- Mythology, a Lunar Deity is a Goddess or God of the Moon
- Sacred Land, Hills, and Mountains: Sami Mythology (Paganistic Shamanism)
- Horse Worship/Sacrifice: mythical union of Ruling Elite/Kingship and the Horse
- The Amorite/Amurru people’s God Amurru “Lord of the Steppe”, relates to the Origins of the Bible God?
- Bronze Age Exotic Trade Routes Spread Quite Far as well as Spread Religious Ideas with Them
- Sami and the Northern Indigenous Peoples Landscape, Language, and its Connection to Religion
- Prototype of Ancient Analemmatic Sundials around 3,900-3,150 years ago and a Possible Solar Connection to gods?
- Judaism is around 3,450 or 3,250 years old. (“Paleo-Hebrew” 3,000 years ago and Torah 2,500 years ago)
- The Weakening of Ancient Trade and the Strengthening of Religions around 3000 years ago?
- Are you aware that there are religions that worship women gods, explain now religion tears women down?
- Animistic, Totemistic, and Paganistic Superstition Origins of bible god and the bible’s Religion.
- Myths and Folklore: “Trickster gods and goddesses”
- Jews, Judaism, and the Origins of Some of its Ideas
- An Old Branch of Religion Still Giving Fruit: Sacred Trees
- Dating the BIBLE: naming names and telling times (written less than 3,000 years ago, provable to 2,200 years ago)
- Did a Volcano Inspire the bible god?
- Dené–Yeniseian language, Old Copper Complex, and Pre-Columbian Mound Builders?
- No “dinosaurs and humans didn’t exist together just because some think they are in the bible itself”
- Sacred Shit and Sacred Animals?
- Everyone Killed in the Bible Flood? “Nephilim” (giants)?
- Hey, Damien dude, I have a question for you regarding “the bible” Exodus.
- Archaeology Disproves the Bible
- Bible Battle, Just More, Bible Babble
- The Jericho Conquest lie?
- Canaanites and Israelites?
- Accurate Account on how did Christianity Began?
- Let’s talk about Christianity.
- So the 10 commandments isn’t anything to go by either right?
- Misinformed christian
- Debunking Jesus?
- Paulism vs Jesus
- Ok, you seem confused so let’s talk about Buddhism.
- Unacknowledged Buddhism: Gods, Savior, Demons, Rebirth, Heavens, Hells, and Terrorism
- His Foolishness The Dalai Lama
- Yin and Yang is sexist with an ORIGIN around 2,300 years ago?
- I Believe Archaeology, not Myths & Why Not, as the Religious Myths Already Violate Reason!
- Archaeological, Scientific, & Philosophic evidence shows the god myth is man-made nonsense.
- Aquatic Ape Theory/Hypothesis? As Always, Just Pseudoscience.
- Ancient Aliens Conspiracy Theorists are Pseudohistorians
- The Pseudohistoric and Pseudoscientific claims about “Bakoni Ruins” of South Africa
- Why do people think Religion is much more than supernaturalism and superstitionism?
- Religion is an Evolved Product
- Was the Value of Ancient Women Different?
- 1000 to 1100 CE, human sacrifice Cahokia Mounds a pre-Columbian Native American site
- Feminist atheists as far back as the 1800s?
- Promoting Religion as Real is Mentally Harmful to a Flourishing Humanity
- Screw All Religions and Their Toxic lies, they are all fraud
- Forget Religions’ Unfounded Myths, I Have Substantiated “Archaeology Facts.”
- Religion Dispersal throughout the World
- I Hate Religion Just as I Hate all Pseudoscience
- Exposing Scientology, Eckankar, Wicca and Other Nonsense?
- Main deity or religious belief systems
- Quit Trying to Invent Your God From the Scraps of Science.
- Archaeological, Scientific, & Philosophic evidence shows the god myth is man-made nonsense.
- Ancient Alien Conspiracy Theorists: Misunderstanding, Rhetoric, Misinformation, Fabrications, and Lies
- Misinformation, Distortion, and Pseudoscience in Talking with a Christian Creationist
- Judging the Lack of Goodness in Gods, Even the Norse God Odin
- Challenging the Belief in God-like Aliens and Gods in General
- A Challenge to Christian use of Torture Devices?
- Yes, Hinduism is a Religion
- Trump is One of the Most Reactionary Forces of Far-right Christian Extremism
- Was the Bull Head a Symbol of God? Yes!
- Primate Death Rituals
- Christian – “God and Christianity are objectively true”
- Australopithecus afarensis Death Ritual?
- You Claim Global Warming is a Hoax?
- Doubter of Science and Defamer of Atheists?
- I think that sounds like the Bible?
- History of the Antifa (“anti-fascist”) Movements
- Indianapolis Anti-Blasphemy Laws #Free Soheil Rally
- Damien, you repeat the golden rule in so many forms then you say religion is dogmatic?
- Science is a Trustable Methodology whereas Faith is not Trustable at all!
- Was I ever a believer, before I was an atheist?
- Atheists rise in reason
- Mistrust of science?
- Open to Talking About the Definition of ‘God’? But first, we address Faith.
- ‘United Monarchy’ full of splendor and power – Saul, David, and Solomon? Most likely not.
- Is there EXODUS ARCHAEOLOGY? The short answer is “no.”
- Lacking Proof of Bigfoots, Unicorns, and Gods is Just a Lack of Research?
- Religion and Politics: Faith Beliefs vs. Rational Thinking
- Hammer of Truth that lying pig RELIGION: challenged by an archaeologist
- “The Hammer of Truth” -ontology question- What do You Mean by That?
- Navigation of a bad argument: Ad Hominem vs. Attack
- Why is it Often Claimed that Gods have a Gender?
- Why are basically all monotheistic religions ones that have a male god?
- Shifting through the Claims in support of Faith
- Dear Mr. AtHope, The 20th Century is an Indictment of Secularism and a Failed Atheist Century
- An Understanding of the Worldwide Statistics and Dynamics of Terrorist Incidents and Suicide Attacks
- Intoxication and Evolution? Addressing and Assessing the “Stoned Ape” or “Drunken Monkey” Theories as Catalysts in Human Evolution
- Sacred Menstrual cloth? Inanna’s knot, Isis knot, and maybe Ma’at’s feather?
- Damien, why don’t the Hebrews accept the bible stories?
- Dealing with a Troll and Arguing Over Word Meaning
- Knowledge without Belief? Justified beliefs or disbeliefs worthy of Knowledge?
- Afrocentrism and African Religions
- Crecganford @crecganford offers history & stories of the people, places, gods, & culture
- Empiricism-Denier?
I am not an academic. I am a revolutionary that teaches in public, in places like social media, and in the streets. I am not a leader by some title given but from my commanding leadership style of simply to start teaching everywhere to everyone, all manner of positive education.
To me, Animism starts in Southern Africa, then to West Europe, and becomes Totemism. Another split goes near the Russia and Siberia border becoming Shamanism, which heads into Central Europe meeting up with Totemism, which also had moved there, mixing the two which then heads to Lake Baikal in Siberia. From there this Shamanism-Totemism heads to Turkey where it becomes Paganism.
Not all “Religions” or “Religious Persuasions” have a god(s) but
All can be said to believe in some imaginary beings or imaginary things like spirits, afterlives, etc.
Paganism 12,000-4,000 years old
12,000-7,000 years old: related to (Pre-Capitalism)
7,000-5,000 years old: related to (Capitalism) (World War 0) Elite and their slaves!
5,000 years old: related to (Kings and the Rise of the State)
4,000 years old: related to (First Moralistic gods, then the Origin time of Monotheism)
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Low Gods “Earth” or Tutelary deity and High Gods “Sky” or Supreme deity
“An Earth goddess is a deification of the Earth. Earth goddesses are often associated with the “chthonic” deities of the underworld. Ki and Ninhursag are Mesopotamian earth goddesses. In Greek mythology, the Earth is personified as Gaia, corresponding to Roman Terra, Indic Prithvi/Bhūmi, etc. traced to an “Earth Mother” complementary to the “Sky Father” in Proto-Indo-European religion. Egyptian mythology exceptionally has a sky goddess and an Earth god.” ref
“A mother goddess is a goddess who represents or is a personification of nature, motherhood, fertility, creation, destruction or who embodies the bounty of the Earth. When equated with the Earth or the natural world, such goddesses are sometimes referred to as Mother Earth or as the Earth Mother. In some religious traditions or movements, Heavenly Mother (also referred to as Mother in Heaven or Sky Mother) is the wife or feminine counterpart of the Sky father or God the Father.” ref
“Any masculine sky god is often also king of the gods, taking the position of patriarch within a pantheon. Such king gods are collectively categorized as “sky father” deities, with a polarity between sky and earth often being expressed by pairing a “sky father” god with an “earth mother” goddess (pairings of a sky mother with an earth father are less frequent). A main sky goddess is often the queen of the gods and may be an air/sky goddess in her own right, though she usually has other functions as well with “sky” not being her main. In antiquity, several sky goddesses in ancient Egypt, Mesopotamia, and the Near East were called Queen of Heaven. Neopagans often apply it with impunity to sky goddesses from other regions who were never associated with the term historically. The sky often has important religious significance. Many religions, both polytheistic and monotheistic, have deities associated with the sky.” ref
“In comparative mythology, sky father is a term for a recurring concept in polytheistic religions of a sky god who is addressed as a “father”, often the father of a pantheon and is often either a reigning or former King of the Gods. The concept of “sky father” may also be taken to include Sun gods with similar characteristics, such as Ra. The concept is complementary to an “earth mother“. “Sky Father” is a direct translation of the Vedic Dyaus Pita, etymologically descended from the same Proto-Indo-European deity name as the Greek Zeûs Pater and Roman Jupiter and Germanic Týr, Tir or Tiwaz, all of which are reflexes of the same Proto-Indo-European deity’s name, *Dyēus Ph₂tḗr. While there are numerous parallels adduced from outside of Indo-European mythology, there are exceptions (e.g. In Egyptian mythology, Nut is the sky mother and Geb is the earth father).” ref
Tutelary deity
“A tutelary (also tutelar) is a deity or spirit who is a guardian, patron, or protector of a particular place, geographic feature, person, lineage, nation, culture, or occupation. The etymology of “tutelary” expresses the concept of safety and thus of guardianship. In late Greek and Roman religion, one type of tutelary deity, the genius, functions as the personal deity or daimon of an individual from birth to death. Another form of personal tutelary spirit is the familiar spirit of European folklore.” ref
“A tutelary (also tutelar) in Korean shamanism, jangseung and sotdae were placed at the edge of villages to frighten off demons. They were also worshiped as deities. Seonangshin is the patron deity of the village in Korean tradition and was believed to embody the Seonangdang. In Philippine animism, Diwata or Lambana are deities or spirits that inhabit sacred places like mountains and mounds and serve as guardians. Such as: Maria Makiling is the deity who guards Mt. Makiling and Maria Cacao and Maria Sinukuan. In Shinto, the spirits, or kami, which give life to human bodies come from nature and return to it after death. Ancestors are therefore themselves tutelaries to be worshiped. And similarly, Native American beliefs such as Tonás, tutelary animal spirit among the Zapotec and Totems, familial or clan spirits among the Ojibwe, can be animals.” ref
“A tutelary (also tutelar) in Austronesian beliefs such as: Atua (gods and spirits of the Polynesian peoples such as the Māori or the Hawaiians), Hanitu (Bunun of Taiwan‘s term for spirit), Hyang (Kawi, Sundanese, Javanese, and Balinese Supreme Being, in ancient Java and Bali mythology and this spiritual entity, can be either divine or ancestral), Kaitiaki (New Zealand Māori term used for the concept of guardianship, for the sky, the sea, and the land), Kawas (mythology) (divided into 6 groups: gods, ancestors, souls of the living, spirits of living things, spirits of lifeless objects, and ghosts), Tiki (Māori mythology, Tiki is the first man created by either Tūmatauenga or Tāne and represents deified ancestors found in most Polynesian cultures). ” ref, ref, ref, ref, ref, ref, ref
Mesopotamian Tutelary Deities can be seen as ones related to City-States
“Historical city-states included Sumerian cities such as Uruk and Ur; Ancient Egyptian city-states, such as Thebes and Memphis; the Phoenician cities (such as Tyre and Sidon); the five Philistine city-states; the Berber city-states of the Garamantes; the city-states of ancient Greece (the poleis such as Athens, Sparta, Thebes, and Corinth); the Roman Republic (which grew from a city-state into a vast empire); the Italian city-states from the Middle Ages to the early modern period, such as Florence, Siena, Ferrara, Milan (which as they grew in power began to dominate neighboring cities) and Genoa and Venice, which became powerful thalassocracies; the Mayan and other cultures of pre-Columbian Mesoamerica (including cities such as Chichen Itza, Tikal, Copán and Monte Albán); the central Asian cities along the Silk Road; the city-states of the Swahili coast; Ragusa; states of the medieval Russian lands such as Novgorod and Pskov; and many others.” ref
“The Uruk period (ca. 4000 to 3100 BCE; also known as Protoliterate period) of Mesopotamia, named after the Sumerian city of Uruk, this period saw the emergence of urban life in Mesopotamia and the Sumerian civilization. City-States like Uruk and others had a patron tutelary City Deity along with a Priest-King.” ref
“Chinese folk religion, both past, and present, includes myriad tutelary deities. Exceptional individuals, highly cultivated sages, and prominent ancestors can be deified and honored after death. Lord Guan is the patron of military personnel and police, while Mazu is the patron of fishermen and sailors. Such as Tu Di Gong (Earth Deity) is the tutelary deity of a locality, and each individual locality has its own Earth Deity and Cheng Huang Gong (City God) is the guardian deity of an individual city, worshipped by local officials and locals since imperial times.” ref
“A tutelary (also tutelar) in Hinduism, personal tutelary deities are known as ishta-devata, while family tutelary deities are known as Kuladevata. Gramadevata are guardian deities of villages. Devas can also be seen as tutelary. Shiva is the patron of yogis and renunciants. City goddesses include: Mumbadevi (Mumbai), Sachchika (Osian); Kuladevis include: Ambika (Porwad), and Mahalakshmi. In NorthEast India Meitei mythology and religion (Sanamahism) of Manipur, there are various types of tutelary deities, among which Lam Lais are the most predominant ones. Tibetan Buddhism has Yidam as a tutelary deity. Dakini is the patron of those who seek knowledge.” ref
“A tutelary (also tutelar) The Greeks also thought deities guarded specific places: for instance, Athena was the patron goddess of the city of Athens. Socrates spoke of hearing the voice of his personal spirit or daimonion:
You have often heard me speak of an oracle or sign which comes to me … . This sign I have had ever since I was a child. The sign is a voice which comes to me and always forbids me to do something which I am going to do, but never commands me to do anything, and this is what stands in the way of my being a politician.” ref
“Tutelary deities who guard and preserve a place or a person are fundamental to ancient Roman religion. The tutelary deity of a man was his Genius, that of a woman her Juno. In the Imperial era, the Genius of the Emperor was a focus of Imperial cult. An emperor might also adopt a major deity as his personal patron or tutelary, as Augustus did Apollo. Precedents for claiming the personal protection of a deity were established in the Republican era, when for instance the Roman dictator Sulla advertised the goddess Victory as his tutelary by holding public games (ludi) in her honor.” ref
“Each town or city had one or more tutelary deities, whose protection was considered particularly vital in time of war and siege. Rome itself was protected by a goddess whose name was to be kept ritually secret on pain of death (for a supposed case, see Quintus Valerius Soranus). The Capitoline Triad of Juno, Jupiter, and Minerva were also tutelaries of Rome. The Italic towns had their own tutelary deities. Juno often had this function, as at the Latin town of Lanuvium and the Etruscan city of Veii, and was often housed in an especially grand temple on the arx (citadel) or other prominent or central location. The tutelary deity of Praeneste was Fortuna, whose oracle was renowned.” ref
“The Roman ritual of evocatio was premised on the belief that a town could be made vulnerable to military defeat if the power of its tutelary deity were diverted outside the city, perhaps by the offer of superior cult at Rome. The depiction of some goddesses such as the Magna Mater (Great Mother, or Cybele) as “tower-crowned” represents their capacity to preserve the city. A town in the provinces might adopt a deity from within the Roman religious sphere to serve as its guardian, or syncretize its own tutelary with such; for instance, a community within the civitas of the Remi in Gaul adopted Apollo as its tutelary, and at the capital of the Remi (present-day Rheims), the tutelary was Mars Camulus.” ref
Household deity (a kind of or related to a Tutelary deity)
“A household deity is a deity or spirit that protects the home, looking after the entire household or certain key members. It has been a common belief in paganism as well as in folklore across many parts of the world. Household deities fit into two types; firstly, a specific deity – typically a goddess – often referred to as a hearth goddess or domestic goddess who is associated with the home and hearth, such as the ancient Greek Hestia.” ref
“The second type of household deities are those that are not one singular deity, but a type, or species of animistic deity, who usually have lesser powers than major deities. This type was common in the religions of antiquity, such as the Lares of ancient Roman religion, the Gashin of Korean shamanism, and Cofgodas of Anglo-Saxon paganism. These survived Christianisation as fairy-like creatures existing in folklore, such as the Anglo-Scottish Brownie and Slavic Domovoy.” ref
“Household deities were usually worshipped not in temples but in the home, where they would be represented by small idols (such as the teraphim of the Bible, often translated as “household gods” in Genesis 31:19 for example), amulets, paintings, or reliefs. They could also be found on domestic objects, such as cosmetic articles in the case of Tawaret. The more prosperous houses might have a small shrine to the household god(s); the lararium served this purpose in the case of the Romans. The gods would be treated as members of the family and invited to join in meals, or be given offerings of food and drink.” ref
“In many religions, both ancient and modern, a god would preside over the home. Certain species, or types, of household deities, existed. An example of this was the Roman Lares. Many European cultures retained house spirits into the modern period. Some examples of these include:
- Brownie (Scotland and England) or Hob (England) / Kobold (Germany) / Goblin / Hobgoblin
- Domovoy (Slavic)
- Nisse (Norwegian or Danish) / Tomte (Swedish) / Tonttu (Finnish)
- Húsvættir (Norse)” ref
“Although the cosmic status of household deities was not as lofty as that of the Twelve Olympians or the Aesir, they were also jealous of their dignity and also had to be appeased with shrines and offerings, however humble. Because of their immediacy they had arguably more influence on the day-to-day affairs of men than the remote gods did. Vestiges of their worship persisted long after Christianity and other major religions extirpated nearly every trace of the major pagan pantheons. Elements of the practice can be seen even today, with Christian accretions, where statues to various saints (such as St. Francis) protect gardens and grottos. Even the gargoyles found on older churches, could be viewed as guardians partitioning a sacred space.” ref
“For centuries, Christianity fought a mop-up war against these lingering minor pagan deities, but they proved tenacious. For example, Martin Luther‘s Tischreden have numerous – quite serious – references to dealing with kobolds. Eventually, rationalism and the Industrial Revolution threatened to erase most of these minor deities, until the advent of romantic nationalism rehabilitated them and embellished them into objects of literary curiosity in the 19th century. Since the 20th century this literature has been mined for characters for role-playing games, video games, and other fantasy personae, not infrequently invested with invented traits and hierarchies somewhat different from their mythological and folkloric roots.” ref
“In contradistinction to both Herbert Spencer and Edward Burnett Tylor, who defended theories of animistic origins of ancestor worship, Émile Durkheim saw its origin in totemism. In reality, this distinction is somewhat academic, since totemism may be regarded as a particularized manifestation of animism, and something of a synthesis of the two positions was attempted by Sigmund Freud. In Freud’s Totem and Taboo, both totem and taboo are outward expressions or manifestations of the same psychological tendency, a concept which is complementary to, or which rather reconciles, the apparent conflict. Freud preferred to emphasize the psychoanalytic implications of the reification of metaphysical forces, but with particular emphasis on its familial nature. This emphasis underscores, rather than weakens, the ancestral component.” ref
“William Edward Hearn, a noted classicist, and jurist, traced the origin of domestic deities from the earliest stages as an expression of animism, a belief system thought to have existed also in the neolithic, and the forerunner of Indo-European religion. In his analysis of the Indo-European household, in Chapter II “The House Spirit”, Section 1, he states:
The belief which guided the conduct of our forefathers was … the spirit rule of dead ancestors.” ref
“In Section 2 he proceeds to elaborate:
It is thus certain that the worship of deceased ancestors is a vera causa, and not a mere hypothesis. …
In the other European nations, the Slavs, the Teutons, and the Kelts, the House Spirit appears with no less distinctness. … [T]he existence of that worship does not admit of doubt. … The House Spirits had a multitude of other names which it is needless here to enumerate, but all of which are more or less expressive of their friendly relations with man. … In [England] … [h]e is the Brownie. … In Scotland this same Brownie is well known. He is usually described as attached to particular families, with whom he has been known to reside for centuries, threshing the corn, cleaning the house, and performing similar household tasks. His favorite gratification was milk and honey.” ref
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“These ideas are my speculations from the evidence.”
I am still researching the “god‘s origins” all over the world. So you know, it is very complicated but I am smart and willing to look, DEEP, if necessary, which going very deep does seem to be needed here, when trying to actually understand the evolution of gods and goddesses. I am sure of a few things and less sure of others, but even in stuff I am not fully grasping I still am slowly figuring it out, to explain it to others. But as I research more I am understanding things a little better, though I am still working on understanding it all or something close and thus always figuring out more.
Sky Father/Sky God?
“Egyptian: (Nut) Sky Mother and (Geb) Earth Father” (Egypt is different but similar)
Turkic/Mongolic: (Tengri/Tenger Etseg) Sky Father and (Eje/Gazar Eej) Earth Mother *Transeurasian*
Hawaiian: (Wākea) Sky Father and (Papahānaumoku) Earth Mother *Austronesian*
New Zealand/ Māori: (Ranginui) Sky Father and (Papatūānuku) Earth Mother *Austronesian*
Proto-Indo-European: (Dyḗus/Dyḗus ph₂tḗr) Sky Father and (Dʰéǵʰōm/Pleth₂wih₁) Earth Mother
Indo-Aryan: (Dyaus Pita) Sky Father and (Prithvi Mata) Earth Mother *Indo-European*
Italic: (Jupiter) Sky Father and (Juno) Sky Mother *Indo-European*
Etruscan: (Tinia) Sky Father and (Uni) Sky Mother *Tyrsenian/Italy Pre–Indo-European*
Hellenic/Greek: (Zeus) Sky Father and (Hera) Sky Mother who started as an “Earth Goddess” *Indo-European*
Nordic: (Dagr) Sky Father and (Nótt) Sky Mother *Indo-European*
Slavic: (Perun) Sky Father and (Mokosh) Earth Mother *Indo-European*
Illyrian: (Deipaturos) Sky Father and (Messapic Damatura’s “earth-mother” maybe) Earth Mother *Indo-European*
Albanian: (Zojz) Sky Father and (?) *Indo-European*
Baltic: (Perkūnas) Sky Father and (Saulė) Sky Mother *Indo-European*
Germanic: (Týr) Sky Father and (?) *Indo-European*
Colombian-Muisca: (Bochica) Sky Father and (Huythaca) Sky Mother *Chibchan*
Aztec: (Quetzalcoatl) Sky Father and (Xochiquetzal) Sky Mother *Uto-Aztecan*
Incan: (Viracocha) Sky Father and (Mama Runtucaya) Sky Mother *Quechuan*
China: (Tian/Shangdi) Sky Father and (Dì) Earth Mother *Sino-Tibetan*
Sumerian, Assyrian and Babylonian: (An/Anu) Sky Father and (Ki) Earth Mother
Finnish: (Ukko) Sky Father and (Akka) Earth Mother *Finno-Ugric*
Sami: (Horagalles) Sky Father and (Ravdna) Earth Mother *Finno-Ugric*
Puebloan-Zuni: (Ápoyan Ta’chu) Sky Father and (Áwitelin Tsíta) Earth Mother
Puebloan-Hopi: (Tawa) Sky Father and (Kokyangwuti/Spider Woman/Grandmother) Earth Mother *Uto-Aztecan*
Puebloan-Navajo: (Tsohanoai) Sky Father and (Estsanatlehi) Earth Mother *Na-Dene*
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Hinduism around 3,700 to 3,500 years old. ref
Judaism around 3,450 or 3,250 years old. (The first writing in the bible was “Paleo-Hebrew” dated to around 3,000 years ago Khirbet Qeiyafa is the site of an ancient fortress city overlooking the Elah Valley. And many believe the religious Jewish texts were completed around 2,500) ref, ref
Judaism is around 3,450 or 3,250 years old. (“Paleo-Hebrew” 3,000 years ago and Torah 2,500 years ago)
“Judaism is an Abrahamic, its roots as an organized religion in the Middle East during the Bronze Age. Some scholars argue that modern Judaism evolved from Yahwism, the religion of ancient Israel and Judah, by the late 6th century BCE, and is thus considered to be one of the oldest monotheistic religions.” ref
“Yahwism is the name given by modern scholars to the religion of ancient Israel, essentially polytheistic, with a plethora of gods and goddesses. Heading the pantheon was Yahweh, the national god of the Israelite kingdoms of Israel and Judah, with his consort, the goddess Asherah; below them were second-tier gods and goddesses such as Baal, Shamash, Yarikh, Mot, and Astarte, all of whom had their own priests and prophets and numbered royalty among their devotees, and a third and fourth tier of minor divine beings, including the mal’ak, the messengers of the higher gods, who in later times became the angels of Judaism, Christianity and Islam. Yahweh, however, was not the ‘original’ god of Israel “Isra-El”; it is El, the head of the Canaanite pantheon, whose name forms the basis of the name “Israel”, and none of the Old Testament patriarchs, the tribes of Israel, the Judges, or the earliest monarchs, have a Yahwistic theophoric name (i.e., one incorporating the name of Yahweh).” ref
“El is a Northwest Semitic word meaning “god” or “deity“, or referring (as a proper name) to any one of multiple major ancient Near Eastern deities. A rarer form, ‘ila, represents the predicate form in Old Akkadian and in Amorite. The word is derived from the Proto-Semitic *ʔil-, meaning “god”. Specific deities known as ‘El or ‘Il include the supreme god of the ancient Canaanite religion and the supreme god of East Semitic speakers in Mesopotamia’s Early Dynastic Period. ʼĒl is listed at the head of many pantheons. In some Canaanite and Ugaritic sources, ʼĒl played a role as father of the gods, of creation, or both. For example, in the Ugaritic texts, ʾil mlk is understood to mean “ʼĒl the King” but ʾil hd as “the god Hadad“. The Semitic root ʾlh (Arabic ʾilāh, Aramaic ʾAlāh, ʾElāh, Hebrew ʾelōah) may be ʾl with a parasitic h, and ʾl may be an abbreviated form of ʾlh. In Ugaritic the plural form meaning “gods” is ʾilhm, equivalent to Hebrew ʾelōhîm “powers”. In the Hebrew texts this word is interpreted as being semantically singular for “god” by biblical commentators. However the documentary hypothesis for the Old Testament (corresponds to the Jewish Torah) developed originally in the 1870s, identifies these that different authors – the Jahwist, Elohist, Deuteronomist, and the Priestly source – were responsible for editing stories from a polytheistic religion into those of a monotheistic religion. Inconsistencies that arise between monotheism and polytheism in the texts are reflective of this hypothesis.” ref
Jainism around 2,599 – 2,527 years old. ref
Confucianism around 2,600 – 2,551 years old. ref
Buddhism around 2,563/2,480 – 2,483/2,400 years old. ref
Christianity around 2,o00 years old. ref
Shinto around 1,305 years old. ref
Islam around 1407–1385 years old. ref
Knowledge to Ponder:
Stars/Astrology:
- Possibly, around 30,000 years ago (in simpler form) to 6,000 years ago, Stars/Astrology are connected to Ancestors, Spirit Animals, and Deities.
- The star also seems to be a possible proto-star for Star of Ishtar, Star of Inanna, or Star of Venus.
- Around 7,000 to 6,000 years ago, Star Constellations/Astrology have connections to the “Kurgan phenomenon” of below-ground “mound” stone/wood burial structures and “Dolmen phenomenon” of above-ground stone burial structures.
- Around 6,500–5,800 years ago, The Northern Levant migrations into Jordon and Israel in the Southern Levant brought new cultural and religious transfer from Turkey and Iran.
- “The Ghassulian Star,” a mysterious 6,000-year-old mural from Jordan may have connections to the European paganstic kurgan/dolmens phenomenon.
“Astrology is a range of divinatory practices, recognized as pseudoscientific since the 18th century, that claim to discern information about human affairs and terrestrial events by studying the apparent positions of celestial objects. Different cultures have employed forms of astrology since at least the 2nd millennium BCE, these practices having originated in calendrical systems used to predict seasonal shifts and to interpret celestial cycles as signs of divine communications. Most, if not all, cultures have attached importance to what they observed in the sky, and some—such as the Hindus, Chinese, and the Maya—developed elaborate systems for predicting terrestrial events from celestial observations. Western astrology, one of the oldest astrological systems still in use, can trace its roots to 19th–17th century BCE Mesopotamia, from where it spread to Ancient Greece, Rome, the Islamicate world and eventually Central and Western Europe. Contemporary Western astrology is often associated with systems of horoscopes that purport to explain aspects of a person’s personality and predict significant events in their lives based on the positions of celestial objects; the majority of professional astrologers rely on such systems.” ref
Around 5,500 years ago, Science evolves, The first evidence of science was 5,500 years ago and was demonstrated by a body of empirical, theoretical, and practical knowledge about the natural world. ref
Around 5,000 years ago, Origin of Logics is a Naturalistic Observation (principles of valid reasoning, inference, & demonstration) ref
Around 4,150 to 4,000 years ago: The earliest surviving versions of the Sumerian Epic of Gilgamesh, which was originally titled “He who Saw the Deep” (Sha naqba īmuru) or “Surpassing All Other Kings” (Shūtur eli sharrī) were written. ref
Hinduism:
- 3,700 years ago or so, the oldest of the Hindu Vedas (scriptures), the Rig Veda was composed.
- 3,500 years ago or so, the Vedic Age began in India after the collapse of the Indus Valley Civilization.
Judaism:
- around 3,000 years ago, the first writing in the bible was “Paleo-Hebrew”
- around 2,500 years ago, many believe the religious Jewish texts were completed
Myths: The bible inspired religion is not just one religion or one myth but a grouping of several religions and myths
- Around 3,450 or 3,250 years ago, according to legend, is the traditionally accepted period in which the Israelite lawgiver, Moses, provided the Ten Commandments.
- Around 2,500 to 2,400 years ago, a collection of ancient religious writings by the Israelites based primarily upon the Hebrew Bible, Tanakh, or Old Testament is the first part of Christianity’s bible.
- Around 2,400 years ago, the most accepted hypothesis is that the canon was formed in stages, first the Pentateuch (Torah).
- Around 2,140 to 2,116 years ago, the Prophets was written during the Hasmonean dynasty, and finally the remaining books.
- Christians traditionally divide the Old Testament into four sections:
- The first five books or Pentateuch (Torah).
- The proposed history books telling the history of the Israelites from their conquest of Canaan to their defeat and exile in Babylon.
- The poetic and proposed “Wisdom books” dealing, in various forms, with questions of good and evil in the world.
- The books of the biblical prophets, warning of the consequences of turning away from God:
- Henotheism:
- Exodus 20:23 “You shall not make other gods besides Me (not saying there are no other gods just not to worship them); gods of silver or gods of gold, you shall not make for yourselves.”
- Polytheism:
- Judges 10:6 “Then the sons of Israel again did evil in the sight of the LORD, served the Baals and the Ashtaroth, the gods of Aram, the gods of Sidon, the gods of Moab, the gods of the sons of Ammon, and the gods of the Philistines; thus they forsook the LORD and did not serve Him.”
- 1 Corinthians 8:5 “For even if there are so-called gods whether in heaven or on earth, as indeed there are many gods and many lords.”
- Monotheism:
- Isaiah 43:10 “You are my witnesses,” declares the LORD, “and my servant whom I have chosen, so that you may know and believe me and understand that I am he. Before me no god was formed, nor will there be one after me.
Around 2,570 to 2,270 Years Ago, there is a confirmation of atheistic doubting as well as atheistic thinking, mainly by Greek philosophers. However, doubting gods is likely as old as the invention of gods and should destroy the thinking that belief in god(s) is the “default belief”. The Greek word is apistos (a “not” and pistos “faithful,”), thus not faithful or faithless because one is unpersuaded and unconvinced by a god(s) claim. Short Definition: unbelieving, unbeliever, or unbelief.
Expressions of Atheistic Thinking:
- Around 2,600 years ago, Ajita Kesakambali, ancient Indian philosopher, who is the first known proponent of Indian materialism. ref
- Around 2,535 to 2,475 years ago, Heraclitus, Greek pre-Socratic philosopher, a native of the Greek city Ephesus, Ionia, on the coast of Anatolia, also known as Asia Minor or modern Turkey. ref
- Around 2,500 to 2,400 years ago, according to The Story of Civilization book series certain African pygmy tribes have no identifiable gods, spirits, or religious beliefs or rituals, and even what burials accrue are without ceremony. ref
- Around 2,490 to 2,430 years ago, Empedocles, Greek pre-Socratic philosopher and a citizen of Agrigentum, a Greek city in Sicily. ref
- Around 2,460 to 2,370 years ago, Democritus, Greek pre-Socratic philosopher considered to be the “father of modern science” possibly had some disbelief amounting to atheism. ref
- Around 2,399 years ago or so, Socrates, a famous Greek philosopher was tried for sinfulness by teaching doubt of state gods. ref
- Around 2,341 to 2,270 years ago, Epicurus, a Greek philosopher known for composing atheistic critics and famously stated, “Is God willing to prevent evil, but not able? Then he is not omnipotent. Is he able, but not willing? Then he is malevolent. Is he both able and willing? Then whence cometh evil? Is he neither able nor willing? Then why call him god?” ref
This last expression by Epicurus, seems to be an expression of Axiological Atheism. To understand and utilize value or actually possess “Value Conscious/Consciousness” to both give a strong moral “axiological” argument (the problem of evil) as well as use it to fortify humanism and positive ethical persuasion of human helping and care responsibilities. Because value-blindness gives rise to sociopathic/psychopathic evil.
“Theists, there has to be a god, as something can not come from nothing.”
Well, thus something (unknown) happened and then there was something. This does not tell us what the something that may have been involved with something coming from nothing. A supposed first cause, thus something (unknown) happened and then there was something is not an open invitation to claim it as known, neither is it justified to call or label such an unknown as anything, especially an unsubstantiated magical thinking belief born of mythology and religious storytelling.
While hallucinogens are associated with shamanism, it is alcohol that is associated with paganism.
The Atheist-Humanist-Leftist Revolutionaries Shows in the prehistory series:
Show two: Pre-animism 300,000 years old and animism 100,000 years old: related to “Anarchism and Socialism”
Show tree: Totemism 50,000 years old: related to “Anarchism and Socialism”
Show four: Shamanism 30,000 years old: related to “Anarchism and Socialism”
Show five: Paganism 12,000 years old: related to “Anarchism and Socialism”
Show six: Emergence of hierarchy, sexism, slavery, and the new male god dominance: Paganism 7,000-5,000 years old: related to “Anarchism and Socialism” (Capitalism) (World War 0) Elite and their slaves!
Prehistory: related to “Anarchism and Socialism” the division of labor, power, rights, and recourses: VIDEO
Pre-animism 300,000 years old and animism 100,000 years old: related to “Anarchism and Socialism”: VIDEO
Totemism 50,000 years old: related to “Anarchism and Socialism”: VIDEO
Shamanism 30,000 years old: related to “Anarchism and Socialism”: VIDEO
Paganism 12,000 years old: related to “Anarchism and Socialism” (Pre-Capitalism): VIDEO
Paganism 7,000-5,000 years old: related to “Anarchism and Socialism” (Capitalism) (World War 0) Elite and their slaves: VIEDO
Paganism 5,000 years old: progressed organized religion and the state: related to “Anarchism and Socialism” (Kings and the Rise of the State): VIEDO
Paganism 4,000 years old: related to “Anarchism and Socialism” (First Moralistic gods, then the Origin time of Monotheism): VIEDO
I do not hate simply because I challenge and expose myths or lies any more than others being thought of as loving simply because of the protection and hiding from challenge their favored myths or lies.
The truth is best championed in the sunlight of challenge.
An archaeologist once said to me “Damien religion and culture are very different”
My response, So are you saying that was always that way, such as would you say Native Americans’ cultures are separate from their religions? And do you think it always was the way you believe?
I had said that religion was a cultural product. That is still how I see it and there are other archaeologists that think close to me as well. Gods too are the myths of cultures that did not understand science or the world around them, seeing magic/supernatural everywhere.
I personally think there is a goddess and not enough evidence to support a male god at Çatalhöyük but if there was both a male and female god and goddess then I know the kind of gods they were like Proto-Indo-European mythology.
This series idea was addressed in, Anarchist Teaching as Free Public Education or Free Education in the Public: VIDEO
Our 12 video series: Organized Oppression: Mesopotamian State Force and the Politics of power (9,000-4,000 years ago), is adapted from: The Complete and Concise History of the Sumerians and Early Bronze Age Mesopotamia (7000-2000 BC): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=szFjxmY7jQA by “History with Cy“
Show #1: Mesopotamian State Force and the Politics of Power (Samarra, Halaf, Ubaid)
Show #2: Mesopotamian State Force and the Politics of Power
Show #3: Mesopotamian State Force and the Politics of Power (Uruk and the First Cities)
Show #4: Mesopotamian State Force and the Politics of Power (First Kings)
Show #5: Mesopotamian State Force and the Politics of Power (Early Dynastic Period)
Show #6: Mesopotamian State Force and the Politics of Power
Show #7: Mesopotamian State Force and the Politics of Power (Sargon and Akkadian Rule)
Show #9: Mesopotamian State Force and the Politics of Power (Gudea of Lagash and Utu-hegal)
Show #12: Mesopotamian State Force and the Politics of Power (Aftermath and Legacy of Sumer)
The “Atheist-Humanist-Leftist Revolutionaries”
Cory Johnston ☭ Ⓐ Atheist Leftist @Skepticallefty & I (Damien Marie AtHope) @AthopeMarie (my YouTube & related blog) are working jointly in atheist, antitheist, antireligionist, antifascist, anarchist, socialist, and humanist endeavors in our videos together, generally, every other Saturday.
Why Does Power Bring Responsibility?
Think, how often is it the powerless that start wars, oppress others, or commit genocide? So, I guess the question is to us all, to ask, how can power not carry responsibility in a humanity concept? I know I see the deep ethical responsibility that if there is power their must be a humanistic responsibility of ethical and empathic stewardship of that power. Will I be brave enough to be kind? Will I possess enough courage to be compassionate? Will my valor reach its height of empathy? I as everyone, earns our justified respect by our actions, that are good, ethical, just, protecting, and kind. Do I have enough self-respect to put my love for humanity’s flushing, over being brought down by some of its bad actors? May we all be the ones doing good actions in the world, to help human flourishing.
I create the world I want to live in, striving for flourishing. Which is not a place but a positive potential involvement and promotion; a life of humanist goal precision. To master oneself, also means mastering positive prosocial behaviors needed for human flourishing. I may have lost a god myth as an atheist, but I am happy to tell you, my friend, it is exactly because of that, leaving the mental terrorizer, god belief, that I truly regained my connected ethical as well as kind humanity.
Cory and I will talk about prehistory and theism, addressing the relevance to atheism, anarchism, and socialism.
At the same time as the rise of the male god, 7,000 years ago, there was also the very time there was the rise of violence, war, and clans to kingdoms, then empires, then states. It is all connected back to 7,000 years ago, and it moved across the world.
Cory Johnston: https://damienmarieathope.com/2021/04/cory-johnston-mind-of-a-skeptical-leftist/?v=32aec8db952d
The Mind of a Skeptical Leftist (YouTube)
Cory Johnston: Mind of a Skeptical Leftist @Skepticallefty
The Mind of a Skeptical Leftist By Cory Johnston: “Promoting critical thinking, social justice, and left-wing politics by covering current events and talking to a variety of people. Cory Johnston has been thoughtfully talking to people and attempting to promote critical thinking, social justice, and left-wing politics.” http://anchor.fm/skepticalleft
Cory needs our support. We rise by helping each other.
Cory Johnston ☭ Ⓐ @Skepticallefty Evidence-based atheist leftist (he/him) Producer, host, and co-host of 4 podcasts @skeptarchy @skpoliticspod and @AthopeMarie
Damien Marie AtHope (“At Hope”) Axiological Atheist, Anti-theist, Anti-religionist, Secular Humanist. Rationalist, Writer, Artist, Poet, Philosopher, Advocate, Activist, Psychology, and Armchair Archaeology/Anthropology/Historian.
Damien is interested in: Freedom, Liberty, Justice, Equality, Ethics, Humanism, Science, Atheism, Antiteism, Antireligionism, Ignosticism, Left-Libertarianism, Anarchism, Socialism, Mutualism, Axiology, Metaphysics, LGBTQI, Philosophy, Advocacy, Activism, Mental Health, Psychology, Archaeology, Social Work, Sexual Rights, Marriage Rights, Woman’s Rights, Gender Rights, Child Rights, Secular Rights, Race Equality, Ageism/Disability Equality, Etc. And a far-leftist, “Anarcho-Humanist.”
I am not a good fit in the atheist movement that is mostly pro-capitalist, I am anti-capitalist. Mostly pro-skeptic, I am a rationalist not valuing skepticism. Mostly pro-agnostic, I am anti-agnostic. Mostly limited to anti-Abrahamic religions, I am an anti-religionist.
To me, the “male god” seems to have either emerged or become prominent around 7,000 years ago, whereas the now favored monotheism “male god” is more like 4,000 years ago or so. To me, the “female goddess” seems to have either emerged or become prominent around 11,000-10,000 years ago or so, losing the majority of its once prominence around 2,000 years ago due largely to the now favored monotheism “male god” that grow in prominence after 4,000 years ago or so.
My Thought on the Evolution of Gods?
Animal protector deities from old totems/spirit animal beliefs come first to me, 13,000/12,000 years ago, then women as deities 11,000/10,000 years ago, then male gods around 7,000/8,000 years ago. Moralistic gods around 5,000/4,000 years ago, and monotheistic gods around 4,000/3,000 years ago.
To me, animal gods were likely first related to totemism animals around 13,000 to 12,000 years ago or older. Female as goddesses was next to me, 11,000 to 10,000 years ago or so with the emergence of agriculture. Then male gods come about 8,000 to 7,000 years ago with clan wars. Many monotheism-themed religions started in henotheism, emerging out of polytheism/paganism.
Damien Marie AtHope (Said as “At” “Hope”)/(Autodidact Polymath but not good at math):
Axiological Atheist, Anti-theist, Anti-religionist, Secular Humanist, Rationalist, Writer, Artist, Jeweler, Poet, “autodidact” Philosopher, schooled in Psychology, and “autodidact” Armchair Archaeology/Anthropology/Pre-Historian (Knowledgeable in the range of: 1 million to 5,000/4,000 years ago). I am an anarchist socialist politically. Reasons for or Types of Atheism
My Website, My Blog, & Short-writing or Quotes, My YouTube, Twitter: @AthopeMarie, and My Email: damien.marie.athope@gmail.com