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Early Human Civilization:

REGIONS:  
 
AFRICA; SUMER; CHINA; MESOAMERICA; INDUS-GANGES.  
 
COMPARISONS and CALENDARS
 

Modern Cro-Magnon humans were around about 35,000 years ago, 
and 
here are some notes about them during the Ice Age: 
 
AT THE END OF THE ICE AGE 11,600 years ago, 
the Younger Dryas cold snap temperatures 
were 14 degrees C below present-day levels, 
after which the Vela X supernova was seen on Earth 
and the Taurid/Encke comet fragmented, and 
a very sudden (50 years or so) warming event 
ended the Ice Age and marked the start of the HOLOCENE AGE 
of warm climate and glacial retreat.  

After the end of the Ice Age about 11,600 years ago, 
the glaciers melted and sea level rose about 35 meters 
to its present level, a process that took about 4,000 years.  
 
In the very early stages of the process, about 11,600 years ago, 
the northern Sunda Shelf near China, Korea, and Japan 
began to flood, forcing the Jomon people to move to 
the high ground of what is now the Japanese Islands, 
and disrupting the Jomon/Sunda Shelf part of Ice Age Civilization. 
 
In Africa, Arabia, and India, things were more gradual 
and displacements less severe. 
The African part of Ice Age Civilization had large lakes 
for another 1,000 years or so 
following the 4,000 year melting process, 
so that the Abyssinian/African Nile Lake area 
of the Ice Age Civilization was its most highly organized remnant, 
and the probable source of ways to cope with the changed 
circumstances of the post-Ice Age world, 
including agriculture, mining,written communication, 
and organized armies, thus forming a Global Early Civilization 
with a Global Early Language.  

After the end of the Ice Age Civilization, 
human civilizations were located

in the major river valleys of Earth.  
 
As the Ice Age glaciers melted, 
lakes filled up and the climate got wetter. 

 
From about 11,600 years ago to about 6,000 years ago, 
the early human river valleys had stable rainfall 
that supported productive agriculture 
and 
they extended their river water-based transportations systems 
to sea travel, forming a Global Early Civilization 
during the period 11,600 to 6,000 years ago.  
 
The Global Early Civilization probably had a common world-wide language, 
corresponding to English as the global language of today.  
Like English, such a Global Early Language 
may not have been everybody's first language, 
but it probably was at least everybody's second language.  

 
After the climate dried out about 6,000 years ago, 
 

 
the Global Early Civilization broke up 
to be replaced by several isolated civilizations 
located in the relatively small remnants of the 
River Valleys that had adequate water.  
 
As the Global Early Civilization broke up 6,000 years ago, 
Edo Nyland has pointed out that 
the Global Early Language broke up 
into regional languages.  
Egyptian hieroglyphics seem to have been a fully developed 
system of writing at least 5,000 years ago.  
Perhaps Egyptian and Mayan hieroglyphics are regional forms 
of a Global Early Language picture-writing, 
and Chinese characters are a simplified abstract version 
of the same Global Early Language picture-writing. 
Perhaps such languages as cuneiform Sumerian and 
the Sarasvati-Sindhu language of India 
are less sophisticated writings used in trade and commerce. 

The monotheistic Israelites left Egypt, 
and Moses received the Torah. The Torah was revealed 
to Moses over 3,000 years ago in a complete form, 
much as Egyptian hieroglyphics had appeared 
in a complete form over 5,000 years ago, 
suggesting that they may have already then 
been in existence for some time.  

The earliest alphabetical writing found so far is
from the Egyptian (Abydos-Luxor-Thebes region) of 1800-1900 BC. 

According to an article by John Noble Wilford in the 14 November 1999 New York Times: "... Egyptologists have found limestone inscriptions that they say are the earliest known examples of alphabetic writing. ... Carved in the cliffs of soft stone, the writing, in a Semitic script with Egyptian influences, has been dated to somewhere between 1900 and 1800 B.C., two or three centuries earlier than previously recognized uses of a nascent alphabet. The first experiments with alphabet thus appeared to be the work of ... people living deep in Egypt, not in ... the Syria-Palestine region, as had been thought. ... The previously oldest evidence for an alphabet, dated about 1600 B.C., was found near or in Semitic-speaking territory, in the Sinai Peninsula and farther north in the Syria-Palestine region occupied by the ancient Canaanites. These examples, known as Proto-Sinaitic and Proto-Canaanite alphabetic inscriptions, were the basis for scholars' assuming that Semites developed the alphabet ... From other, nonalphabetic writing at the site,

the Egyptologists determined that the inscriptions were made during Egypt's Middle Kingdom in the first two centuries of the second millennium B.C. ...If the early date for the inscriptions is correct, this puts the origins of alphabetic writing well before the probable time of the biblical story of Joseph being delivered by his brothers into Egyptian bondage, the scholars said. ... The other earliest primitive writing, the cuneiform developed by Sumerians in the Tigris and Euphrates Valley of present-day Iraq, remained entirely pictographic until about 1400 B.C. The Sumerians are generally credited with the first invention of writing, around 3200 B.C., but some recent findings at Abydos in Egypt suggest a possibly earlier origin there.The issue is still controversial. ...".

The 22 letters of the Hebrew alphabet of the Torah may have 
been derived from that alphabet. 

According to an article by Nicholas Wade in the 1 February 2000 New York Times:

"... In the beginning, there was one people, perhaps no more than 2,000 strong, who had acquired an amazing gift, the faculty for complex language. ... from their cradle in the northeast of Africa, they spread far and wide ... sailed to Asia, where some of their descendants turned westward, ousting the Neanderthal people of Europe and others east toward Siberia and the Americas. These epic explorations began some 50,000 years ago and ... adapted to the world's many climates in which they now lived, they no longer recognized one another as the children of one family. ... they had long forgotten the ancient mother tongue ...

... So might read one possible account of human origins as implied by the new evidence from population genetics and archaeology. ...

... Dr. Joseph H. Greenberg of Stanford University ... has classified most of the world's languages into just a handful of major groups. ... he has identified words and concepts that seem common to them all and could be echoes of a mother tongue. ...  

... "We have found a lot of significant correspondences between what he says and what we see genetically," said Dr. Luca Cavalli-Sforza, a leading population geneticist at Stanford. In his view, the majority of linguists are not interested in the evolution of language. They "have attacked Greenberg cruelly, and I think frankly there is some jealousy behind it because he has been so successful," Dr. Cavalli-Sforza said. ...

... In a 1955 article, he [Dr. Greenberg] described ... Afro-Asiatic, which includes the Semitic languages of Arabic and Hebrew, as well as ancient Egyptian, and is spread across Northern Africa; Nilo-Saharan, a group of languages spoken in Central Africa and the Sudan; Khoisan, which includes the click languages of the south; and Niger-Kordofanian, a superfamily that includes everything in between, including the pervasive Bantu languages. After a decade of controversy, Dr. Greenberg's African classification became widely accepted. ...

... Amerind is the vast superfamily to which, in his view, most native languages of North and South America belong. The other two clusters are Na-Dene, a group of languages spoken mostly in Alaska and northeast Canada, and Eskimo-Aleut, spoken across northern Alaska and Canada. ...

... In the course of classifying the languages of the Americas, Dr. Greenberg realized that their major families were related to languages on the Eurasian continent, as would be expected if the Americas had been inhabited by people migrating through Siberia. Na-Dene, for example, is related to an isolated Siberian language known as Ket. ...

... Dr. Greenberg has now classified most of the languages of Europe and Asia into the superfamily he calls Eurasiatic. Its seven living components are Indo-European (examples are English, Russian, Greek, Iranian, Hindu); Uralic (Hungarian, Finnish); Altaic (Turkish, Mongolian); the Korean-Japanese-Ainu group; Eskimo-Aleut; and two Siberian families known as Gilyak and Chukotian. ...

... [Stanford colleague and associate Dr. Merritt Ruhlen] believes that if the Eurasiatic grouping is accepted, the world's 5,000 languages can be seen to fall into just 12 superfamilies. How these in turn might be related to a single mother tongue remains to be seen. But several years ago, Dr. Greenberg identified a possible global etymology derived from the universal human habit of holding up a single finger to denote one. In the Nilo-Saharan languages the word tok, tek or dik means one. The stem tik means finger in Amerind, one in Sino-Tibetan, 'index finger' in Eskimo and 'middle finger' in Aleut. And an Indo-European stem deik, meaning to point, is the origin of daktulos, digitus, and doigt -- Greek, Latin and French for finger -- as well as the English word digital. ... ".

In areas that were isolated from the dynamic regional centers, 
the old Global Early Language was not changed much: 
Ainu-Jomon in Japan; 
Ge'ez in Abyssinia; 
Basque in the Pyrenees between Spain and France; 
Ogam script in Scotland, Ireland, and North America; and 
Olmec in Central America.  
 
To see how the Global Early Civilization 
formed and broke up, look at each major river valley: 
 

 
AFRICA
SUMER
CHINA
MESOAMERICA
INDUS-GANGES 
 
Comparisons and Calendars
 

 
AFRICA:
 
The African Nile River Valley region    
became a desert, except for the lower Nile area in Egypt.  
The Sphinx and Pyramids of Giza 
are outstanding examples of the Ice Age Civilization 
or the period from about 11,600 to 6,000 years ago, 
but none of its written records have been found there. 
The written records of the later lower Nile Egyptians 
only go back about 5,000 years. 
However, since hieroglyphics and Egyptian mathematics 
appeared highly developed about 5,000 years ago, 
it is likely that they came from an earlier civilization.  
 
There are two other written histories of African Nile people: 
the Old Testament, Jewish history of the past 5,800 years or so; 
and the Abyssinian Kbre Nege'st.  
 
A major problem is that the heartland 
of the African Nile River Valley region is desert, 
and many of its sites are probably buried under desert sand.  
 
We can, however, try to learn something from the legends of the area, 
such as the legends of Isis, Osiris and Horus, and of Thoth, 
who was called Hermes Trismegistus by the Greeks, 
who taught mathematics and music, 
who encoded the 78-leaf Book of Thoth as Tarot cards 
(which are represented by the design of the Temple of Luxor), 
and 
who said: 
"... the true knowledge of music 
is nothing other than this:  
to know the ordering of all separate things 
and 
how the Divine Reason has distributed them; 
for this ordering of all separate things into one, 
achieved by skilful reason, 
makes the sweetest and truest harmony with the Divine Song." 
 

 
SUMER:
 
Here too, written history does not go back much 
further than 5,000 years ago, but we can look to legends:  
 
The Sumerian myth of Enki, 
who was also know by the Akkadian name Ea and the Greek name Oannes, 
may be related to the time of the Vela X supernova 
that was seen to explode around 9,000 BC, or 11,000 years ago. 
 
Murals and paintings at Tell Ghassul may have represented Vela X 
by an eight-pointed 'star' within a larger eight-pointed 'star,' 
culminating in a burst of eight rays.   
 
As Richard Shand has noted, Ea 
was called the Fish of Heaven; 
was half man, half fish and taught mankind writing and math; and 
was said to have drained marshes by the Persian Gulf,  
to have replaced them with fertile agricultural land,  
to have supervised the construction of dams and dikes, and 
to have loved sailing and built ships in which to navigate the seas. 
 
I think that the Sumerian legend is consistent with 
the people of the African Sphinx-Giza region 
being the largest and oldest region of Early Human Civilization 
and 
bringing civilization to the other regions by world-wide sea travel.  
 
 
 
CHINA: 
 

In China also, written history does not go back much further than about 4,700 years.

However, according to an article by Andrew Lawler in Science, 300 (2 May 2003) page 723: "... a team of Chinese and U.S. researchers now proposes that writing in China went through a long, slow evolution that stretches back ... 8000 years ...".

 
However, on the Huang Loess Plateau, the cradle of Chinese civilization, 
is the settlement site of Banpo, near Xian, of 9,000 to 6,000 years ago. 
It shows a matriarchal society with a communal way of life, 
each individual grave of a female person being accompanied 
by three pieces of pottery utensils, 
without distinction to her status before death.  
 
I think that this shows that the Early Human Civilization 
had a good society in which people shared 
the benefits of their productivity.  
 
With only limited archaeological data, 
and no written history prior to 4,700 years ago, 
we must again look to legends:  
 

 
The supernova Vela X may have been represented by a Flaming Pearl, 
which in turn may have represented a Rock Crystal Burning Lens.  
 
As the I Ching, based on 64 pairs of 8 Trigrams, 
is less comprehensive than the FA of the Fon people, 
based on 256 pairs of 16 Tetragrams, 
the I Ching may have been brought to China during 
the Ice Age Civilization or the Global Early Civilization 
by sea-faring ships from the African Sphinx-Giza region. 
 
Childress, in Lost Cities of China... (Adventures Unlimited 1991), 
decribes a Great Pyramid in China near Xian, 
and also describes a legendary foundation 
of Taoism by people from Shen Zhou, or Spirit Ships. 
 
A number of Chinese Pyramids exist, 
which may be at least 4,500 years old, and perhaps much older. 
 
Spread of civilization by sea travel 
is part of Chinese history and legend, 
ranging from founding of Japan 
to contact with MesoAmerica.  
 
Near Japan, there are block structures under the sea 
that may be at least 12,000 years old.
 
 

 
MESOAMERICA: Olmec and Inca
 
By far the oldest possibly accurate historical reference on Earth 
prior to our present century is found in two Stelae at Quirigua: 
 

Stela D   Stela F

 
According to Morley, Brainerd, and Sharer, on page 559 
of The Ancient Maya, 4th ed, Stanford (1983), 
Stela D describes a date of 400,000,000 years ago, 
which was about 2 Galactic Years ago 
(since the Sun orbits the Milky Way Galaxy with a period 
of about 200 million years) and 
which is about when North America and Europe began to 
collide with Gondwanaland (including Africa) 
to form Pangaea (and the Appalachian Mountains),
while 
Stela F describes a date of 90,000,000 years ago, 
which is about when the breakup of Pangaea had advanced 
to the point at which the North Atlantic Ocean was formed.  
 
Much more recently, 
during the last Ice Age, Mesoamerica was a good place to live. 
The earliest known civilization in Mesoamerica was the Olmec. 

According to a Clyde A. Winters web page:

"... The first civilization of Mexico is called Olmec. ... The Olmec people came from Africa. The ancestors of the founders of Mexico's first civilization were Malinke-Bambara speakers. The Olmec people called themselves Xi (pronounced Shi). ...[ Clyde A. Winters says, on another web page: "... The first dynasty of China was Xia (She-ya). The Xia civilization of ancient China. lasted from 2205 to 1766 B.C. ...". ]... The Olmec civilization is chracterized by large stone heads ...

... In 1979 the Olmec writing was deciphered by Clyde A. Winters ... To understand Olmec religion we must look to the pre-Islamic religion of the Malinke-Bambara (Mande speaking people). ... The Proto-Manding worshipped Amon or Amma. ...".

According to a May 1997 Sinorama web article:

"... the Olmec has been described as a "mother culture" which gave birth to the other ancient Mesoamerican civilizations including the Maya and the Aztec. ... Last year [1996], in a book entitled Origin of the Olmec Civilization, Professor Mike Xu, a Chinese who teaches in the foreign languages department at the University of Central Oklahoma, proposed a hypothesis which aroused a storm of controversy in archeological circles. In Xu's view, the first complex culture in Mesoamerica may have come into existence with the help of a group of Chinese who fled across the seas as refugees at the end of the Shang dynasty. The Olmec civilization arose around 1200 BC, which coincides with the time when King Wu of Zhou attacked and defeated King Zhou, the last Shang ruler, bringing his dynasty to a close. ... he has found some 150 glyphs on photographs of and real specimens of Olmec pottery, jade artifacts and sculptures. As well as himself leafing through dictionaries of ancient Chinese, he has also taken his drawings of these markings to be examined by mainland Chinese experts in ancient writing, and most have agreed that they closely resemble the characters used in Chinese oracle bone writings and bronze inscriptions. ... As well as looking for links between writing systems of the Olmec and the Shang, Xu also looked for similarities in such areas as religion, agriculture, astronomy and calendar systems. In his view, both peoples venerated their ancestors, practiced human sacrifice and worshipped the sun and rain spirits. Furthermore, the Olmec worshipped the cougar, the eagle and the snake, while the Chinese regarded the tiger as a symbol of strength, the people of the Shang used birds as clan totems, and wasn't the dragon, which Chinese people venerate, also derived from the snake? In terms of astronomy, the settlements excavated at La Venta are arranged facing eight degrees west of north, while Shang sites face five degrees east of north. What is remarkable about that? In one of his articles Mike Xu writes that the "eight degrees" and "five degrees" are actually with reference to the magnetic north indicated by compasses, and not the true north pole. Thus both actually face true north. He believes that for both peoples to have known how to determine true north as long ago as 1200 BC is no coincidence. ...".

According to a web page by John Major Jenkins:

"... The Olmec are considered to be the Mesoamerican Mother Culture. Their civilization was centered in the Gulf Coast heartland, but the Olmec style stretches from Guerrero State in Central Mexico southward into Central America. Gulf Coast area Olmec centers like San Lorenzo and La Venta flowered between 1500 BC and 900 BC. The Latter day Olmec town of Tres Zapotes produced one of the earliest Long Count dates (32 BC). ... The Olmecs were rooted in shamanism. They apparently utilized traditional vision-producing tools, such as DMT extracted from the Bufo marinus toad (Furst 1981) and tobacco. They also had a sophisticated interest in astronomy (Hatch 1971) which I believe ultimately led to the discovery and calibration of precession. ... many Olmec concepts are antecedant to the ones found at Izapa. In other words, Olmec prototypes are genetically related to later Mesoamerican ideas, including very important astronomical and mythological concepts. For example, the concept of the pyramid as a sacred Creation Mountain. ... the major Olmec deities and motifs include:

• The Olmec Dragon
• The Olmec Supernatural
• The Three Cosmic Realms: Terrestrial, Sky, and Underworld
• The World Tree, Cosmic Mountain, and Maize.

... the Olmec cleft-head symbolizes the dark-rift in the Milky Way. ... the crossband symbol represents, on a very deep level of Mesoamerican thought, the crossroads formed by the Milky Way and the ecliptic. Of course, the Mayan Sacred Tree or Cross is now understood to represent this astronomical crossroads ... since 1200 BC, the efforts of Olmec and Izapan skywatchers were trained upon that moment when precession was accurately calibrated and the Long Count was set in place. The placement of the Long Count calendar was determined by fixing the end of the 13th baktun on December 21st, 2012 AD. As such, Mayan time stretches backwards from the astronomically compelling "Zero Point" of the end-date alignment. We might even say that the Mayan calendar comes from the future. ...".

The Olmec were succeeded by the Maya. 
Maya Mathematicians developed a system of mathematics 
using the symbol ___ for 5 and  .  for 1, 
with a stack of four ___ representing 20, and an eye as a zero symbol, 
so that they could calculate efficiently in base 20.  
 
The mathematical system was good enough 
to be used effectively by Maya Astronomers. 
 
The Maya Astronomers used that mathematical system 
to devise a year of 18x20 = 360 days even though 
they knew that Earth's solar year is about 365 days.  
From that, they formed a 20-year K'atun and other time periods.  
 
Venus was important to the Maya.  
Venus, Earth, and the Sun form a system that is linked 
similarly to the way the Moon, Earth, and the Sun 
are linked so that total and annular solar eclipses occur. 
The  rotational period of Venus is about 243 Earth days. 
The orbital period of Venus is about 225 Earth days. 
Venus always turns the same face to Earth 
when Venus is lined up between the Earth and the Sun, 
something that happens about every 584 Earth days, or 8/5 Earth years.  
The Solar day on Venus is about 117 Earth days, 
and, since 225 is less than 243, the Sun rises in the West on Venus.  
 
The 8/5 ratio is represented at Chichen Itza on a Venus Platform 
in the plaza north of the Pyramid of Kukulcan. 
The Pyramid of Kukulcan represents the 365 days of the year 
by 91 steps on each of its 4 sides, 
plus the one platform at the top. 
(See two books by E. C. Krupp: 
Skywatchers, Shamans and Kings (Wiley 1997) and  
Echoes of the Ancient Skies (Oxford 1983).) 
 
On Venus, 2 solar days are 234 Earth days are 2 solar days. 
 
In the Earth's sky, Comet Hyakutake appeared to be near Venus, 
an "evening star", during the month prior to perihelion on 1 May 1996. 
 
The ACOUSTICS of MESOAMERICAN and ANDEAN STRUCTURES are quite interesting: 
 
The Castillo at Chavin De Huantar in Peru was a ceremonial center 
with drains where water could be pushed through and 
the roar of the water could be heard through vents and 
chambers within the center itself. 
When this was done, the center literally roared.
 
Ancient Peruvian Whistling pottery vessels made a sound 
when you poured water from them. 
They were tuned fairly precisely, if you blew into them. 
Two vessels blown simultaneously produced difference tones.
 
Chichen Itza has a series of cones that produce musical tones 
when tapped with a wooden mallet. 
 
At Tulum on the Yucatan coast there was a temple 
which gave a clear and long-range whistle or howl 
when the wind velocity and direction were correct. 
 
At the Mayan Pyramid I at Tikal 

a person standing on the top step speaking in a normal voice 
can be heard by those at ground level for some distance. 
 
At the 3 pyramids of the Group of the Cross at Palenque 

a three-way conversation can be held at the tops of the three pyramids. 
 
The Tikal and Group of the Cross pyramids all have flat tops 
on which are placed temples with roof combs, as shown in 
this cross section of the Pyramid of the Cross:  

Note the similarity between the construction of the roof combs 
and the Grand Gallery of the Great Golden Pyramid of Giza.  
 
Since the Great Golden Pyramid also has a flat top, 
a similar temple with roof comb could have been there originally.  
 
Under many Maya Temple Pyramids are Caves, both natural and artificial, 
where Maya Shaman mathematicians, astronomers and healers 
"...communicated with gods and ancestors ... gazed into crystals -
a gift of the Earth found in caves -
to peer into the future or to diagnose sickness ...[and also] ...
to draw illnesses and curses out of those struck ill....". 

Stalactitic Ore was formed in Caves near
Hurricane Hollow and Pine Mountain,
along the Etowah River upstream from the Etowah Mounds. 
 
In China, 
Daoist Immortal creatures of light use mirrors in mountain Caves  
to show wise humans their secrets. 
 
Under the Great Golden Pyramid of Giza are Cave chambers.  
 
Another connection between Ancient Egypt and Mesoamerica may be 
the use, in art and architecture, of 19-line grids, 
just as a Chinese Wei-Qi board is a grid of 19 lines.  
 
 
A MAYAN QUANTUM NANOMACHINE is described 
in New Scientist (20 July 96, p. 17):   
"... Nanoparticles 
[mostly iron, some manganese, chromium, titanium] 
scatter light in a nonlinear, quantum fashion.   
In Maya blue paint, the atoms in the metallic particles 
vibrate near the wavelength of the re-emitted light.  
This resonance amplifies the light, helping give the 
paint its brilliance. 
...
When boiled with indigo .. the clay [palygorskite] 
turned to Maya blue.  The microstructure [nanoparticles 
inside cage-like structures of the clay] exactly 
matched the ancient paint. ..." 

(See also Science 273 (12 July 1996) 223.)
If the Maya blue pigment is basically a scattering phenomenon, 
then the Mayans used Quantum Nanotechnology to recreate 
the blue of the sky from the clay of the earth. 

According to a 23 June 2003 article by Steve Connor in the Independent:

"... the Inca ... dominions at their height covered almost all of the Andean region, from Colombia to Chile, until they were defeated in the Spanish conquest of 1532. ... Gary Urton, professor of anthropology at Harvard University, has re-analysed the complicated knotted strings of the Inca - decorative objects called khipu - and found they contain a seven-bit binary code capable of conveying more than 1,500 separate units of information. ... there are, theoretically, seven points in the making of a khipu where the maker could make a simple choice between two possibilities, a seven-bit binary code. For instance, he or she could choose between weaving a string made of cotton or of wool, or they could weave in a "spin" or "ply" direction, or hang the pendant from the front of the primary string or from the back. In a strict seven-bit code this would give 128 permutations (two to the power of seven) but Professor Urton said because there were 24 possible colours that could be used in khipu construction, the actual permutations are 1,536 (or two to the power of six, multiplied by 24). This could mean the code used by the makers allowed them to convey some 1,536 separate units of information, comparable to the estimated 1,000 to 1,500 Sumerian cuneiform signs, and double the number of signs in the hieroglyphs of the ancient Egyptians and the Maya of Central America. If Professor Urton is right, it means the Inca not only invented a form of binary code more than 500 years before the invention of the computer, but they used it as part of the only three-dimensional written language. ...".

According to Johnny Z's Place - Khipu on the Web and in Print:

"... Robert and Maria Ascher made all the big breakthroughs in khipu study before Urton came along, and they're still pluggin' away. They are the ultimate authority regarding math of the khipu, a subject I lectured on once or twice. They conveniently list all their writings that deal with quipu ...

Well, now, this is just ridiculously amazing: they have descriptions of 206 quipus online! Every cord is described! What a great contribution to the study of khipus -- they have put their whole Databook out there for the world to analyze. Too bad this is all at Cornell ...

... The Spaniards who came with Pizzaro and afterward destroyed many khipus, but some have survived to the present, mainly in dry, sealed burial caves. Unfortunately, we do not have a full understanding of how khipus were used. Many were essentially mathematical, recording accounting concerns such as tax information, cencus information, et cetera. This has been my primary area of exploration, as the implied numerical system is decimal (base 10) and there are suggestions of large prime numbers and use of ratios, two key elements of advanced arithmetic. The Inca had no written language, so the ability to interpret the non-mathematical khipus that survive would be invaluable in itself and for understanding of the Incan civilization. ... One quick note about spelling: traditional spellings are 'Inca' and 'quipu' -- modern spellings favor the 'k', as in 'Inka' and 'khipu'. I [Johnny Z] have switched over in the case of 'khipu', but the Incan Empire is too strongly ensconsed in common usage to succumb to the modification. ... Professor Gary Urton, formerly of Colgate University (where I [Johnny Z] met him as a student) and currently at Hahvahd University, was awared a MacArthur Fellowship in 2000 to continue his study of the khipu. He's an Illinois grad so they did a big profile on him (part way down the page); Colgate's is even better. Three of Prof. Gary Urton's books dealing with khipu are profiled at University of Texas Press: Signs of the Inka Khipu ... The Social Life of Numbers ... Narrative Threads: Accounting and Recounting in Andean Khipu ... The Society for American Archaelogy summarizes the arguments advanced in Prof. Urton's June 2001 submission to their journal of Latin American Antiquity: "A Calendrical and Demographic Tomb Text from Northern Peru". ... What is a khipu? If my [Johnny Z's] explanation didn't grab you, here's another ...".  

 
 
 
INDUS-GANGES: 
 
Here we find a record 
of the Early Human Civilization of 11,600 to 6,000 years ago: 
 
the Rig-Veda.
 
Although current written versions of the Rig-Veda are 
written in Sanskrit or later languages, the earlier 
versions were transmitted orally.  
Perhaps the first versions were in the Global Early Language, 
or its earliest variant in the Indian region, 
the Sarasvati-Sindhu language. 
As Feuerstein, Kak, and Frawley have noted in their book 
In Search of the Cradle of Civilization (Quest 1995), 
the Rig-Veda mentions star patterns of 9,000 to 8,000 years ago, 
so the Rig-Veda is of that age.  

According to a 22 May 2001 BBC article by Rajyasri Rao: "... Marine experts have discovered a clump of archaeological structures deep beneath the sea off India's western coast.

... The group was routinely investigating the Gulf of Cambay to monitor pollution levels, using devices able to penetrate at least 10 metres deep beneath the sea bed ... The Gulf of Cambay is one of the largest tidal areas in the world - with a current of very high velocity ... they first noticed the huge structures while examining acoustic images collected from under the sea bed ... the structures are said to resemble archeological sites belonging to the Harappan civilisation ... a series of well-defined geometric formations were clearly seen, spread irregularly across a nine-kilometre (five-mile) stretch, a little beneath the sea bed. Some of them closely resemble an acropolis - or great bath - known to be characteristic of the Harappan civilisation. ...". According to a 19 January 2002 BBC article by Tom Housden: "... Marine scientists say archaeological remains discovered 36 metres (120 feet) underwater in the Gulf of Cambay off the western coast of India could be over 9,000 years old. The vast city - which is five miles long and two miles wide - is believed to predate the oldest known remains in the subcontinent by more than 5,000 years. ... Using sidescan sonar - which sends a beam of sound waves down to the bottom of the ocean they identified huge geometrical structures at a depth of 120ft. Debris recovered from the site - including construction material, pottery, sections of walls, beads, sculpture and human bones and teeth has been carbon dated and found to be nearly 9,500 years old. ... The city is believed to be even older than the ancient Harappan civilisation, which dates back around 4,000 years. Marine archaeologists have used a technique known as sub-bottom profiling to show that the buildings remains stand on enormous foundations. ... It is believed that the area was submerged as ice caps melted at the end of the last ice age 9-10,000 years ago ...".

The book by Feuerstein, Kak, and Frawley is the main source 
for most of the rest of this section:  

Perhaps about 6,000 years ago, the Sarasvati River dried up, and the Indus-Sarasvati region (with Indra as principal god) declines. Then, the Ganges region (with Shiva and Ganesha as principal gods) became dominant. The ancient course of the Sarasvati River is described on a web page with a satellite image of the Indus-Sarasvati area

a chart of the ancient river courses

and details of the courses near the Sarasvati River mouth.

During a Maha Kumbh Mela, on 26 January 2001, a 7.9 magnitude Earthquake hit India at the mouth of the Sarasvati.

The Rig-Veda has about 250 hymns to Indra.  
Indra's Net is a net with a jewel at each intersection, 
each jewel reflecting all the other jewels of the net. 
Indra's Net is a symbol of the internet, 
and can symbolize other interconnected systems, 
even Many-Worlds of lattice spacetime.
 
As the being whose thunderbolts reveal the light of the sun 
and release waters to flow to the ocean, 
Indra could symbolize the Vela X supernova. 
 
The Rig-Veda has about 100 hymns to Soma, 
who has the nectar of immortality, also called soma.  
The soma nectar is used to stimulate visions.  
As it is produced by pressing and filtering the soma plant, 
so the Rig-Veda describes the yoga practice of 
purification of the mind by three filters, 
so that higher-level truth can be perceived.  
 
About one-fourth of the verses in the Rig-Veda 
are in the gayatri meter: 
3 sections of 8 syllables each; 
the first 4 syllables free and the last 4 in fixed cadence.
 
To me - with respect to physics - 
each of the 3 sections represents 
one of the three 8-dimensional representations of Spin(8), 
and the fixing of the last 4 syllables 
of the section representing 8-dimensional spacetime 
represents dimensional reduction to 4-dimensional spacetime.  
In that way, 
I see the music of the Rig-Veda reflecting fundamental physics.  
 
The gayatri meter is named from the mantra: 
 
tat savitur varenyam,          
bhargo devasya dhimahi, 
dhiyo yo nah pracodayat.
 
(English:  
Behold the beautiful splendor of Savitri - 
the Sun-God of the swastika - 
to inspire our visions.)
 
As to whether all these things originated in the Indus-Ganges 
region, or whether some were brought in by contact with 
other regions of the Early Human Civilization, I do not know. 
 
However, there are a some interesting similarities, such as:  
 
Egyptians used both binary and decimal mathematics. 
The Indus-Ganges region used both 
a binary system of weights 
1, 2, 4, 8, 16, 32, ... units (unit = 0.85 gram), 
and 
a decimal system of length measure (unit = 0.264 inches), 
as well as 
a second system of length based on Egyptian cubits.  
 

 
If you look at the map of the Earth at the top of this page, 
you notice a couple of things:  
 
FIRST: 
There are at least 3 major river valleys WITHOUT 
high-level Early Human Civilization:  
the Congo; the Amazon; and the Mississippi-Missouri.  
What do they all have in common? 
They drain to the Atlantic Ocean, not the Pacific or Indian Oceans.  
The Early Human Civilization of 9,000 to 6,000 years 
ago was primarily centered on the Indian and Pacific Oceans, 
although there probably was some travel to the Atlantic, 
perhaps to get such things as Lake Superior copper, 
although it could have been obtained from MesoAmericans, 
who in turn got it by overland trade (maybe that is the earliest 
use of the Mississippi River).  
 
SECOND: 
Since the Indian Ocean was central to the Early Human Civilization, 
the Dravidian Civilization of South India would have been 
a high-level civilization that was based, not on a river valley, 
but on being centrally located for the sea-faring commerce of 
the Early Human Civilization.  
 
 

In my opinion, about 11,000 to 6,000 years ago was the latest reasonable time for construction of the Giza Sphinx and Pyramids. After about 6,000 years ago, the level of technology of the Great Pyramid at Giza could not be maintained by the economic and social structure of the indigenous population.

From about 11,000 to 6,000 years ago the Abyssinian Highlanders of the African Nile Lake were the most highly organized remnant of the Ice Age Civilization. They were the probable source of ways to cope with the changed circumstances of the post-Ice Age world, including agriculture, mining,written communication, and organized armies, thus forming a Global Early Civilization with a Global Early Language.

Diodorus of Sicily, author of Bibliotheca Historica, lived in the time of Julius Caesar and Augustus (Encyclopaedia Britannica). Richard Poe, in Black Spark, White Fire (Prima 1997), quotes Diodorus as saying:

"Now the Ethiopians ... were the first of all men. ...
... the Egyptians are colonists sent out by the Ethiopians, 
Osiris having been the leader of the colony ... 
... Osiris ... gathered together a great army, 
with the intention of visiting all the inhabited earth 
and teaching the race of men how to cultivate ... 
... for he supposed that if he made men give up their 
savagery and adopt a gentle manner of life 
he would receive immortal honors. ..." 
 
Diodorus said that Osiris then went from Egypt and Ethiopia 
to Arabia, Greece, and India.  
 

Poe also cites linguists who think that AfroAsiatic Languages originated in the Abyssinian Highlands, and radiated out therefrom about 12,000 to 10,000 years ago, which is consistent with the Abyssinian Highlanders being the repository of a Global Early Language which they reintroduced to the post-Ice Age world.

Since the Early Human Civilization broke up about 6,000 years ago, 
there has been no global Earth Civilization until now. 
 
 
The breakup of the Early Human Civilization about 6,000 years ago 
approximately coincides with the Vedic beginning of the Kali-yuga era. 
The Kali-yuga era began about 5,000 years ago, in 3102 BC, 
about the same time as the Mayan calendar cycle began in 3114 BC, 
and 
about the same time as the beginning of the traditional 
Jewish (year 5757 beginning 13 September 1996) calendar, 
Chinese (year 4694 beginning 8 February 1997) calendar, 
and 
Egyptian (year 6237 in 1997) calendar, beginning at a 
coincidence of the Egyptian 365.25 day Sothic year based on Sirius 
and the Egyptian 365 day moving civil year of 12 30-day months 
plus 5 days, which coincidence occurs every 1,461 years.  
The coincidences of about 2780 BC and later are probably too late 
to have been the beginning of the calendar, as the Pyramid Texts 
of about 2500 BC indicate that the calendar began long before then, 
so the coincidence of about 4240 BC is the likely beginning, 
at a time about half-way through the era of rule of mortal humans 
on Earth beginning 36,525 - 24,925  = 11,600 years before 340 BC, 
or about 14,000 years ago, according to the Egyptian historian Manetho.  
About 5,100 years ago, Menes, the ruler of Southern Upper Egypt, 
conquered Northern Lower Egypt and so created a united Egypt. 
The event 6,237 years ago commemorated by the beginning of the 
Egyptian calendar was probably the end of the Global Early Human 
Civilization, and the beginning of a regional civilization in 
the southern part of the African Nile River Valley region, 
    
The Vedic view is that 
"...prior to the beginning of Kali-yuga about 5,000 years ago ... 
all living beings were on a higher average level than they are at present, and 
advanced beings such as demigods and great sages regularly visited the earth. 
... Once the Kali-yuga began, demigods and higher beings 
greatly curtailed communications with people on the earth, 
and the general sensory level of human beings also declined. 
... due to the lack of feedback from higher sources and 
the natural cheating propensity of human beings, 
the traditions ... became more and more garbled ... 
the present stage of civilization was reached, 
in which old traditions are widely viewed as useless mythology, 
and people seek knowledge entirely through 
the use of their current, limited senses." 
 
Spain and Portugal began European world-wide oceanic exploration and 
colonization around 1500 AD, 
but they did not combine exploration and colonization 
with industrialization.   
After England, Cymru (Wales), and Scotland united around 1707 AD 
(about the time of Comet Sarabat of 1729
and the beginning of increased Solar sunspot activity) 
unifying the Island of Great Britain 
as a protected island with ocean trading ports and 
with sufficient population and natural resources, 
Great Britain initiated the Industrial Revolution and 
colonized much of the Earth.  
 
Now Great Britain's successor as dominant Earth power 
is its former colony, the United States of America (USA), 
which was protected by ocean barriers from 
damage in World War II, about 50 years ago.  
 
The same World War II gave the USA the technology 
of rockets, nuclear power, and electronics 
necessary to control the entire Earth.  
 
The only nations that might be able to influence 
the direction of Earth Civilization independently 
of the USA might be a resurgent China, 
or possibly Russia. 
 
The global Earth Civilization of the USA 
now faces a major political decision:  
 
Should its global Earth Civilization 
continue to advance,  
or should it 
protect its profitable (for the USA ruling class) status quo? 
 
Can the history of the Ice Age Civilization 
and the global Early Human Civilization 
tell us what we ought to do now, 
 
particularly in view of the possibility that 
they may have been more advanced, 
especially in social structure and 
relations with higher intellectual/spiritual levels, 
than any later civilization 
including our present one? 
 
 

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