intelligent people—these astronomers, these ancient scientists—who
worked behind the stage of prehistory?
Let us start with some basics.
The wild celestial dance
The earth makes a complete circuit around its own axis once every
twenty-four hours and has an equatorial circumference of 24,902.45
miles. It follows, therefore, that a man standing still on the equator is in
fact in motion, revolving with the planet at just over 1000 miles per
hour.2 Viewed from outer space, looking down on the North Pole, the
direction of rotation is anti-clockwise.
While spinning daily on its own axis, the earth also orbits the sun (again
in an anti-clockwise direction) on a path which is slightly elliptical rather
than completely circular. It pursues this orbit at truly breakneck speed,
travelling as far along it in an hour—66,600 miles—as the average
motorist will drive in six years. To bring the calculations down in scale,
this means that we are hurtling through space much faster than any
1 Hamlet’s Mill, pp. 57-8.
2 Figures from Encyclopaedia Britannica, 1991, 27:530.
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bullet, at the rate of 18.5 miles every second. In the time that it has taken
you to read this paragraph, we have voyaged about 550 miles farther
along earth’s path around the sun.3
With a year required to complete a full circuit, the only evidence we
have of the tremendous orbital race we are participating in is the slow
march of the seasons. And in the operations of the seasons themselves it
is possible to see a wondrous and impartial mechanism at work
distributing spring, summer, autumn and winter fairly around the globe,
across the northern and southern hemispheres, year in and year out, with
absolute regularity.
The earth’s axis of rotation is tilted in relation to the plane of its orbit
(at about 23.5° to the vertical). This tilt, which causes the seasons,
‘points’ the North Pole, and the entire northern hemisphere away from
the sun for six months a year (while the southern hemisphere enjoys its
summer) and points the South Pole and the southern hemisphere away
from the sun for the remaining six months (while the northern
hemisphere enjoys its summer). The seasons result from the annual
variation in the angle at which the sun’s rays reach any particular point
on the earth’s surface and from the annual variation in the number of
hours of sunlight received there at different times of the year.
The earth’s tilt is referred to in technical language as its ‘obliquity’, and
the plane of its orbit, extended outwards to form a great circle in the
celestial sphere, is known as the ‘ecliptic’. Astronomers also speak of the
‘celestial equator’, which is an extension of the earth’s equator into the
celestial sphere. The celestial equator is today inclined at about 23.5° to
the ecliptic, because the earth’s axis is inclined at 23.5° to the vertical.
This angle, termed the ‘obliquity of the ecliptic’, is not fixed and
immutable for all time. On the contrary (as we saw in Chapter Eleven in
relation to the dating of the Andean city of Tiahuanaco) it is subject to
constant, though very slow, oscillations. These occur across a range of
slightly less than 3°, rising closest to the vertical at 22.1° and falling
farthest away at 24.5°. A full cycle, from 24.5° to 22.1°, and back again to
24.5°, takes approximately 41,000 years to complete.4
So our fragile planet nods and spins while soaring along its orbital path.
The orbit takes a year and the spin takes a day and the nod has a cycle of
41,000 years. A wild celestial dance seems to be going on as we skip and
skim and dive through eternity, and we feel the tug of contradictory
urges: to fall into the sun on the one hand; to make a break for the outer
darkness on the other.
3 Ibid.
4 J. D. Hays, John Imbrie, N.J. Shackleton, ‘Variations in the Earth’s Orbit, Pacemaker of
the Ice Ages’, Science, volume 194, No. 4270, 10 December 1976, p. 1125.
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Recondite influences
The sun’s gravitational domain, in the inner circles of which the earth is
space, almost halfway to the nearest star.5 Its pull upon our planet is
therefore immense. Also affecting us is the gravity of the other planets
with which we share the solar system. Each of these exerts an attraction
which tends to draw the earth out of its regular orbit around the sun. The
planets are of different sizes, however, and revolve around the sun at
different speeds. The combined gravitational influence they are able to
exert thus changes over time in complex but predictable ways, and the
orbit changes its shape constantly in response. Since the orbit is an
ellipse these changes affect its degree of elongation, known technically
as its ‘eccentricity’. This varies from a low value close to zero (when the
orbit approaches the form of a perfect circle) to a high value of about six
per cent when it is at its most elongated and elliptical.6
There are other forms of planetary influence too. Thus, though no
explanation has yet been forthcoming, it is known that shortwave radio
frequencies are disturbed when Jupiter, Saturn and Mars line up.7 And in
this connection evidence has also emerged
of a strange and unexpected correlation between the positions of Jupiter, Saturn
and Mars, in their orbits around the sun, and violent electrical disturbances in the
earth’s upper atmosphere. This would seem to indicate that the planets and the
sun share in a cosmic-electrical balance mechanism that extends a billion miles
from the centre of our solar system. Such an electrical balance is not accounted
for in current astrophysical theories.8
5 The Biblical Flood and the Ice Epoch, pp. 288-9. Fifteen trillion miles is equivalent to
fifteen thousand billion miles.
6 Ice Ages, pp. 80-1.
7 Earth in Upheaval, p. 266.
8 New York Times, 15 April 1951.
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The obliquity of the ecliptic varies from 22.1° to 24.5° over a cycle of
41,000 years.
Inner planets of the solar system.
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The New York Times, from which the above report is taken, does not
attempt to clarify matters further. Its writers are probably unaware of just
how much they sound like Berosus, the Chaldean historian, astronomer
and seer of the third century BC, who made a deep study of the omens he
believed would presage the final destruction of the world. He concluded,
‘I Berosus, interpreter of Bellus, affirm that all the earth inherits will be
consigned to flame when the five planets assemble in Cancer, so
arranged in one row that a straight line may pass through their spheres.’9
A conjunction of five planets that can be expected to have profound
gravitational effects will t
ake place on 5 May in the year 2000 when
Neptune, Uranus, Venus, Mercury and Mars will align with earth on the
other side of the sun, setting up a sort of cosmic tug-of-war.10 Let us also
note that modern astrologers who have charted the Mayan date for the
end of the Fifth Sun calculate that there will be a most peculiar
arrangement of planets at that time, indeed an arrangement so peculiar
that ‘it can only occur once in 45,200 years ... From this extraordinary
pattern we might well expect an extraordinary effect.’11
No one in his or her right mind would rush to accept such a
proposition. Nevertheless, it cannot be denied that multiple influences,
many of which we do not fully understand, appear to be at work within
our solar system. Among these influences, that of our own satellite, the
moon, is particularly strong. Earthquakes, for example, occur more often
when the moon is full or when the earth is between the sun and the
moon; when the moon is new or between the sun and the earth; when the
moon crosses the meridian of the affected locality; and when the moon is
closest to the earth on its orbit.12 Indeed, when the moon reaches this
latter point (technically referred to as its ‘perigree’), its gravitational
attraction increases by about six per cent. This happens once every
twenty-seven and one-third days. The tidal pull that it exerts on these
occasions affects not only the great movements of our oceans but those
of the reservoirs of hot magma penned within the earth’s thin crust
(which has been described as resembling ‘a paper bag filled with honey
or molasses swinging along at a rate of more than 1000 miles an hour in
equatorial rotation, and more than 66,000 miles an hour in orbit’13).
The wobble of a deformed planet
All this circular motion, of course, generates immense centrifugal forces
and these, as Sir Isaac Newton demonstrated in the seventeenth century,
9 Berossus, Fragments.
10 Skyglobe 3.6.
11 Roberta S. Sklower, ‘Predicting Planetary Positions’, appendix to Frank Waters, Mexico
Mystique, Sage Books, Chicago, 1975, p. 285ff.
12 Earth in Upheaval, p. 138.
13 Biblical Flood and the Ice Epoch, p. 49.
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cause the earth’s ‘paper bag’ to bulge outwards at the equator. The
corollary is a flattening at the poles. In consequence, our planet deviates
slightly from the form of a perfect sphere and is more accurately
described as an ‘oblate spheroid’. Its radius at the equator (3963.374
miles) is about fourteen miles longer than its polar radius (3949.921
miles).14
For billions of years the flattened poles and the bulging equator have
been engaged in a covert mathematical interaction with the recondite
influence of gravity. ‘Because the Earth is flattened,’ explains one
authority, ‘the Moon’s gravity tends to tilt the Earth’s axis so that it
becomes perpendicular to the Moon’s orbit, and to a lesser extent the
same is true for the Sun.’15
At the same time the equatorial bulge—the extra mass distributed
around the equator—acts like the rim of a gyroscope to keep the earth
steady on its axis.16
Year in, year out, on a planetary scale, it is this gyroscopic effect that
prevents the tug of the sun and the moon from radically altering the
earth’s axis of rotation. The pull these two bodies jointly exert is,
however, sufficiently strong to force the axis to ‘precess’, which means
that it wobbles slowly in a clockwise direction opposite to that of the
earth’s spin.
This important motion is our planet’s characteristic signature within the
solar system. Anyone who has ever set a top spinning should be able to
understand it without much difficulty; a top, after all, is simply another
type of gyroscope. In full uninterrupted spin it stands upright. But the
moment its axis is deflected from the vertical it begins to exhibit a
second behaviour: a slow and obstinate reverse wobble around a great
circle. This wobble, which is precession, changes the direction in which
the axis points while keeping constant its newly tilted angle.
A second analogy, somewhat different in approach, may help to clarify
matters a little further:
1 Envisage the earth, floating in space, inclined at approximately 23.5°
to the vertical and spinning around on its axis once every 24 hours.
2 Envisage this axis as a massively strong pivot, or axle, passing
through the centre of the earth, exiting via the North and South Poles
and extending outwards from there in both directions.
3 Imagine that you are a giant, striding through the solar system, with
orders to carry out a specific task.
4 Imagine approaching the tilted earth (which, because of your great
size, now looks no bigger to you than a millwheel).
5 Imagine reaching out and grasping the two ends of the extended axis.
6 And imagine yourself slowly beginning to inter-rotate them, pushing
14 Figures from Encyclopaedia Britannica, 1991, 27:530.
15 Ibid.
16 Path of the Pole, p. 3.
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one end, pulling the other.
7 The earth was already spinning when you arrived.
8 Your orders, therefore, are not to get involved in its axial rotation, but
rather to impart to it its other motion: that slow clockwise wobble
called precession.
9 To fulfill this commission you will have to push the northern tip of the
extended axis up and around a great circle in the northern celestial
hemisphere while at the same time pulling the southern tip around an
equally large circle in the southern celestial hemisphere. This will
involve a slow swivelling pedalling motion with your hands and
shoulders.
10 Be warned, however. The ‘millwheel’ of the earth is heavier than it
looks, so much heavier, in fact, that it’s going to take you 25,776
years17 to turn the two tips of its axis through one full precessional
cycle (at the end of which they will be aiming at the same points in the
celestial sphere as when you arrived).
11 Oh, and by the way, now that you’ve started the job we may as well
tell you that you’re never going to be allowed to leave. As soon as one
precessional cycle is over another must begin. And another ... and
another ... and another ... and so on, endlessly, for ever and ever and
ever.
12 You can think of this, if you like, as one of the basic mechanisms of
the solar system, or, if you prefer, as one of the fundamental
commandments of the divine will.
17 Jane B. Sellers, The Death of Gods in Ancient Egypt, Penguin, London, 1992, p. 205.
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Precession.
In the process, little by little, as you slowly sweep the extended axis
around the heavens, its two tips will point to one star after another in the
polar latitudes of the southern celestial hemisphere (and sometimes, of
course, to empty space), and to one star
after another in the polar
latitudes of the northern celestial hemisphere. We are talking here, about
a kind of musical chairs among the circumpolar stars. And what keeps
everything in motion is the earth’s axial precession—a motion driven by
giant gravitational and gyroscopic forces, that is regular, predictable and
relatively easy to work out with the aid of modern equipment. Thus, for
example, the northern pole star is presently alpha Ursae Minoris (which
we know as Polaris). But computer calculations enable us to state with
certainty that in 3000 BC alpha Draconis occupied the pole position; at
the time of the Greeks the northern pole star was beta Ursae Minoris; and
in AD 14,000 it will be Vega.18
18 Skyglobe 3.6.
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A great secret of the past
It will not hurt to remind ourselves of some of the fundamental data
concerning the movements of the earth and its orientation in space:
• It tilts at about 23.5° to the vertical, an angle from which it can vary by
as much as 1.5° on either side over periods of 41,000 years.
• It completes a full precessional cycle once every 25,776 years.19
• It spins on its own axis once every twenty-four hours.
• It orbits the sun once every 365 days (actually 365.2422 days).
• The most important influence on its seasons is the angle at which the
rays of the sun strike it at various points on its orbital path.
Equinoxes and solstices.
Let us also note that there are four crucial astronomical moments in the
year, marking the official beginning of each of the four seasons. These
moments (or cardinal points), which were of immense importance to the
ancients, are the winter and the summer solstices and the spring and
autumn equinoxes. In the northern hemisphere the winter solstice, the
shortest day, falls on 21 December, and the summer solstice, the longest
day, on 21 June. In the southern hemisphere, on the other hand,
19 Precise figure from The Death of Gods in Ancient Egypt, p. 205.
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everything is literally upside down: there winter begins on 21 June and
summer on 21 December.
The equinoxes, by contrast, are the two points in the year on which