Astronomy and catastrophes through myth and old texts. (original) (raw)
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Astronomy in the Origins of Religion
Astronomy and Religion Journal, 2020
Astronomy and religion have long been intertwined with their interactions resembling a symbiotic relationship since prehistoric times. Building on existing archaeological research, this study asks: do the interactions between astronomy and religion, beginning from prehistory, form a distinct religious tradition? Prior research exploring the prehistoric origins of religion has unearthed evidence suggesting the influence of star worship and night sky observation in the development of religious sects, beliefs and practices. However, there does not yet exist a historiography dedicated to outlining why astronomy and religion mutually developed, nor has there been a proposal set forth asserting that these interactions constitute a religious tradition; proposed herein as the Astronic tradition, or Astronicism. This paper pursues the objective of arguing for the Astronic tradition to be treated, firstly, as a distinct religious tradition and secondly, as the oldest archaeologically-verifiable religious tradition. To achieve this, the study will adopt a multidisciplinary approach involving archaeology, anthropology, geography, psychology, mythology, archaeoastronomy and comparative religion. After proposing six characteristics inherent to a religious tradition, the paper will assemble a historiography for astronomical religion. As a consequence of the main objective, this study also asserts that astronomical religion, most likely astrolatry, has its origins in the Upper Palaeolithic period of the Stone Age based on specimens from the archaeological record. The assertion is made that astrolatry is the original religion and fulfils the Urreligion theory. To end, the proposed characteristics of a religious tradition will be applied to Astronicism to ultimately determine whether it is a valid tradition that can stand alongside the established Abrahamic, Dharmic and Taoic traditions.
Catastrophism through the Ages, and a Cosmic Catastrophe at the Origin of Civilization
Archaeology & Anthropology: Open Access
Developments in the Earth Sciences over the last decade point towards a great cosmic catastrophe at the onset of the Younger Dryas period, towards the end of the Paleolithic. It has been suggested this event was caused by a collision with a swarm of comet fragments, consistent with the theory of Coherent Catastrophism. Earlier this year, it was shown how symbols at the ancient archaeological site of Göbekli Tepe can be interpreted as supporting this view. This convergence of geochemical, astronomical and archaeological evidence has potentially profound consequences for our understanding of the emergence of civilization and ancient history.
Astromorphism and the Influence of Prehistoric Astronomy on the Origin of Religion
Journal of Astronist Studies, 2024
Celestial bodies have long been a source of religious objectification and this article aims to convey the origin of the relationship between human religious belief and observations of the night sky. The academic search for the origin of religion commenced in the early nineteenth century and since then the debate of whether animism or pre-animism is the original religion has dominated this field. Until now, no unified theory has acknowledged the influence of primitive astronomy on the origin of religion. However, the theory of Astronicism supports the pre-animist hypothesis by proposing that early modern humans of the Upper Palaeolithic made simple associations between celestial bodies and their apparent capacity to determine human survival. This article asserts that these associations led to celestial deification long before humans animated astronomical phenomena with spirits. Archaeological specimens from Europe and beyond including astral rock art, cup marks and engravings are used in this article to assert that astrolatry and astromancy were crucial to the development of religion.
Cometan's Master's Dissertation Proposal about the Astronic religious tradition
Astronomy and Religion Journal, 2020
Since the formal academic study of religion commenced in the 19th century with scholars like Friedrich Max Müller (Abraham & Hancock, 2020), religions have been neatly categorised into three traditions; Abrahamic, Dharmic and Taoic (NowThis World, 2015). However, ignited by my personal interest in both astronomy and religion, I have realised that a fourth tradition exists that has not yet been formally accepted into academic nomenclature. This unestablished tradition of religion is characterised by the observation and worship of, devotion to, and divination by, the stars (Irvin & Rutajit, 2006). To acknowledge the existence of an entire religious tradition will clarify and affirm the central role of astronomy in the development of world religion, a role that has been undermined by established religions throughout the centuries (Martínez, 2019, p372-375; Valentinuzzi, 2019, p23-27). As such, these religious institutions have acted as knowledge gatekeepers. However, following on from the legacy of the Enlightenment, the freedoms it brought to scholarship and the development of the academic study of religion in the 19th and 20th centuries, now is perhaps the best time to propose the validity of a religious tradition based on astronomy. In turn, I propose that the historical background of astronomy and religion, particularly focusing on their prehistoric origins, need to be explored. Firstly, I feel that it is important to demonstrate creativity and my passion for this research area by introducing this collection of religions as the Astronic tradition. Proving the validity of this tradition will act as the nucleus of my dissertation, but explaining the reasons for studying this area will further illuminate the subject. My focus on this area was initially sparked by my interest in astronomy and religion, particularly due to my own personal beliefs. After investigating the current body of literature, there is a lack of specificity to the history of astronomy and religion, particularly from religious scholars. At present, the scholarship in this area of research is certainly dispersed across disciplines, hence the importance of my holistic approach to bring these dispersed works together when and where they become relevant. I also have ambitions that my work will ignite scholars of religion to research this area in the future to provide further testament to the Astronic tradition’s historicity. Furthermore, another macro-level reason for my choosing of this topic involves the ever-growing role of space exploration in society lead by entrepreneurs like Elon Musk, thus highlighting the need for greater comprehension of humanity’s religious connections to the stars. This involves establishing a coherent history for humanity’s religio-philosophical interactions with outer space and how the future of humanity in space will alter the religious landscape. Having now understood my rationale, it is essential that I explain how I intend to achieve my aims.
The Book ASTROARCHAEOLOGY Existential Contexts of Astronomy
ASTROARCHAEOLOGY - Existential Contexts of Astronomy, 2024
This book argues that astroarchaeology emerges from the story of both human history and the evolution of our planet. As the Sun moves through the Milky Way, it drags the entire solar system along with it, and of course our planet along with the humans that have accompanied it for about 2.5 million years. The survival of the Earth, and therefore of humans, depends primarily on the consequences of the physical interactions and orbital dynamics of the astronomical bodies that constitute the solar system. Humans who watch the sky have tried to understand this dependency and determine its rules since the earliest times. This effort to express between the Earth and sky connection has shaped the human perception of the universe and the way of life on the planet, and is the most fundamental data source of astroarchaeology. On the other hand, our planet bears traces of its interaction with the nearby universe in its atmospheric, geological and ecological features. Astronomical information can be extracted from these traces thanks to various scientific methods. These methods are used with increasing efficiency today. As a result, astroarchaeology benefits from every science that focuses on humans and the planet, and contributes to them in the same way. Therefore, astroarchaeology should be considered as an interdisciplinary field that obtains astronomical data not only from traces of human origin but also from traces originating from our planet. From this perspective, the book redraws the outlines of astroarchaeology and attempts to convey the broad scope of this science, which combines social and scientific fields, to the curious and eager reader.
Myths and motifs as reflections of prehistoric cosmic events: some methodological considerations
In: Ivan Šprajc and Peter Pehani (eds), Ancient cosmologies and modern prophets. Proceedings of the SEAC 2012 conference. Ljubljana: Slovene Anthropological Society (= Anthropological Notebooks year XIX, supplement), 67-83., 2013
The last three decades have seen a growing awareness that the planet Earth and human civilizations might be much more threatened by extraterrestrial objects than previously thought. It has been suggested on many occasions that the course of human prehistory has been remarkably shaped by big meteorite impacts, airbursts of meteoroids, or the load of the atmosphere with cosmic dust. Myths and motifs are interpreted to encode information of such events. This article brings to the fore a series of essential methodological steps which may strengthen such interpretations.
B. Mak - E. Huntington (eds), Overlapping Cosmologies in Asia: Transcultural and Interdisciplinary Approaches (Leiden: Brill, 2022), pp. 75-97, 2022
The belief that celestial dragons are the cause of eclipses was widespread in antiquity and the Middle Ages. In the astral sciences of premodern Eurasia these evil beings were often identified with the astronomically computable lunar nodes, allowing for the prediction of eclipses and the astrological interpretation of their effects. After an introductory section which offers a brief historical and methodological survey on this subject, the main part of the chapter discusses the reception of the eclipse-dragon theory in early Iranian and Coptic Manichaeism. As a close reading of the Middle Persian Šābuhragān and other related sources indicates, Mani’s understanding of eclipses resulted from the intentional overlap of two different views on eclipses, both of which were useful in addressing key issues in the Manichaean system: the divinity of the two luminaries and the effects of eclipses and other phenomena on the seasonal cycle and on plant life in particular. This concern can only be explained within the framework of Manichaean soteriology, according to which the divine light-elements that mixed with darkness at the beginning of creation are imprisoned in matter and have to be redeemed through a cosmic purification process. The last section analyzes the Coptic Kephalaia and explores how the Manichaean communities in Late Roman Egypt adapted Mani’s ideas as a result of their encounter with Ptolemaic astrology.
The coincidental astronomical backbone of ancient world history
The coincidental backbone of ancient world history
Through a new comprehensive analysis of the astronomical evidence, including records and traditions of solar and lunar eclipses and planetary conjunctions, we confirm Peter J. Huber's High Chronology for the Near East. After making minor changes in his framework, one may call our proposed system "Extended High Chronology." Numerous illustrations elucidate the eclipses listed, made by Kerry Shetline's Sky View Café software. 54 of them depict historical eclipses of the Sun, while 12 shows historical lunar eclipses. The scope covers Europe (Greece, Rome, and Ireland), Africa (Egypt), Asia (Near East, China), and America (Mexico and Aztlan-Bahamas). The time frame of this paper is from 2400 B.C.E. (the approximate date for Sargon's accession to the throne) to the final days of the Toltec rulers in Mexico (1177 C.E.) Our aim here is to consider the dozens of ignored records related to astronomical dates and assist the open-minded researchers that wish to reconstruct a true absolute chronology of the ancient world. In particular, the astronomical time frame has been accurately established for the 108 years of Ur III (2178-2070 B.C.), enabling scholars to begin their "dead reckoning" down from the fall of Ur. A second aim is to assist astronomers in to confirm (or find better and more reliable) Delta-T values.
Astronomy in the Ancient near East
Journal for the History of Astronomy, 2014
ASTRONOMY IN THE ANCIENT NEAR EAST Poetic Astronomy in the Ancient Near East: The Reflexes of Celestial Science in Ancient Mesopotamian, Ugaritic, and Israelite Narrative. Jeffrey L. Cooley (Eisenbrauns, Winona Lake, Indiana, 2013). Pp. x + 396. $54.50. ISBN 978-157506-262-4.It is perhaps difficult to imagine the impact the recovery of ancient Mesopotamian culture had on the Western world in the late nineteenth century. In 1872 when George Smith, then an assistant in the British Museum, discovered the Assyrian version of the biblical flood story, it is said he "jumped up and rushed about the room in a great state of excitement, and, to the astonishment of those present, began to undress himself".1 Equally momentous was the discovery of Babylonian astronomy, first made public in 1881 by the Jesuits Joseph Epping and J. N. Strassmaier.2 Each of these discoveries fuelled cultural diffusionist ideas about Babylonian origins, not only of stories in the Bible, but of world mythology, astronomy and astrology. Such ideas had a temporary but widespread influence through the school of Pan-Babylonism, a short-lived sport (in the botanical sense) of mostly German nineteenth-century Orientalism.Jeffrey Cooley's Poetic astronomy in the ancient Near East begins and ends with discussion and critique of the Pan-Babylonists, who read Near Eastern mythology as astronomical allegory and anachronistically attributed to those stories great astronomical knowledge, supposedly dating to c. 3000 b.c., but in fact only emerging either in the latter half of the first millennium b.c (the zodiac) or not at all (precession). Some participants in the school (Hugo Winckler) were also involved in the so-called Bibel-Babel controversy which inflamed scholarly opinion and found a formidable opponent in F. X. Kugler, s.j., one of the founding fathers of Babylonian mathematical astronomy. Kugler published an article entitled "On the ruins of Panbabylonism",3 a clever pun on Claudius James Rich's important memoir On the ruins of Babylon (1818), and followed it up with a monograph, Im Bannkreis Babels: Panbabylonistische Konstrucktionen und religionsgeschicltliche Tatsachen (1910), which demolished all credibility of the pan-Babylonists regarding the history of astronomy.One of the detrimental effects of Pan-Babylonism, besides the dissemination of highly fanciful and erroneous interpretations of natureand star-mythology and claims of the diffusion of such ideas from Babylonia to the rest of the world, was to drive a long-lasting wedge between scholars of Babylonian astral science and those of cuneiform literary texts. After Kugler's demolition of pan-Babylonist claims, the very idea that mythology and astral science might have some intertextual resonance became virtually anathema and no Assyriologist in his or her right mind would touch the subject for nearly one hundred years. This division has been slowly eroding in the last generation, and Cooley's study can be viewed as a culmination of this change in attitude. Poetic astronomy in the ancient Near East removes that wedge, provides a corrective to Pan-Babylonism (p. 87), and considers the cultural continuities between narrative and technical literatures, not only of the cuneiform world, but those of ancient Ugarit and Israel as well. The book's thesis is that contemporary knowledge concerning the heavens is indeed found in ancient Near Eastern literature, thus reflecting a cultural matrix in which science and literature are not separate.Taking up Mesopotamian, Ugaritic, and Israelite traditions in turn, as is laid out methodologically in the first chapter, Cooley surveys each and discusses what is now known about celestial science in these distinct yet not unrelated cultures, and analyses their narrative texts in the light of their particular intellectual backgrounds. Chapter 2 usefully surveys the various classes of astronomical/astrological cuneiform sources, from divinatory to astronomical texts, making critical use of David Brown's PCP (prediction of celestial phenomena) paradigm and EAE (Enuma Anu Enlil) paradigm to bring historiographic structure to the long chronological span of the sources. …