Religion & Economy: The Evolution of Religion (Part 5)
The Lost Traditions (Africa and the Americas)
Most Paleoanthropologist will agree the oldest inhabited territory on earth is Africa. Central eastern Africa is widely regarded by the scientific community to be the origin settlement of humans. Afri was the name of several tribes of peoples that dwelt in North Africa near the province of Carthage. Carthage is a Greek word meaning “new town” and it refers to both an ancient city located in modern day Tunis and a civilization that developed within the city’s boundaries. The Greek word aphrike means without cold and the Latin word aprica means sunny. Human settlement in Ethiopia also has a very ancient history. Fossilized remains of the earliest ancestors to the human species were found in Ethiopia dating back to as far as 5.9 million years ago. Ethiopia along with Eritrea and southeastern areas of the Red Sea coast of Sudan is considered to be the most likely location of the land known to ancient Egyptians as “Punt” also known as “Ta Netjeru” meaning land of the gods. Archeological evidence has confirmed that the area of northern Sudan had been inhabited since at least 60 thousand years ago. A settled culture appears to have lived within a mud-brick fortified village as early as 8000BCE. Nubia was a region that consisted of south of Egypt along the Nile and into Northern Sudan. Nubia in ancient times held a large independent kingdom where people spoke at least two varieties of languages. Some of the most important evidence of early man in Nubia was discovered by an expedition of the Royal Ontario museum of Toronto under the direction of Dr. Kryzstof Grzymski on the east bank of the Nile about 70 miles south of Dongola (Sudan). In the early 1990s their team discovered several sites containing hundreds of Paleolithic hand axes. At one site it was identified as a stone tool workshop where thousands of sandstone axes lay on the ground around a row of large stones set in a line suggesting early humans used this place as a work shop to construct tools and possibly weapons. The earliest remains of habitation in Nubia dates as far back as 70,000 years ago and very little is known about the beliefs of the Ancient Africans, however links to astronomy and mathematics can be found to the true truth seeker.
A tribe known as the Hendendawa claims to be a tribe that has descended thousands of years and claim to have preserved their tribal knowledge of astronomy and diagrams of our solar system. The Dogon tribe was also reported to have certain traditional astronomical knowledge about Sirius that would normally be considered impossible information to acquire without telescopes. This topic is very controversial among the scientific community as some claim the tribes knowledge is not from documents from generation to generation but that the information leaked into the tribe recently from another community with modern technology. However it can be easily proven that ancient Africans had a superior knowledge of mathematics’ for their present day. To prove this we must look towards megalithic structures.
The very first stone workers were peoples known as the grooved ware people that had lived at least 9000 years ago in the regions of Northern Spain and Malta, Southern Scandinavia, France and the British Isles. The grooved ware people are more commonly known as the megalithic builders and history knows very little about these people because they did not have a style of writing that modern man can completely understand. The ancient system also pre-dates Sumerian cuneiform and Egyptian hieroglyphics. Some of the ancient proto-writing can be understood mainly because of its astronomical references and the system of their symbols are presently being studied by highly qualified members of different fields.
In the meantime there is more than enough evidence to support that many if not all megalithic structures were built using mathematical astronomical designs to align the sun-rises of solstices and equinoxes thousands of years ago. The megalithic structures were built to keep time, dates and used as early calendars and the people that built them used a sophisticated form of geometry to be able to know the coordinates of locations of astronomical alignments. These ancient structures were the foundations of how we understand time and seasons, among so many other things. For instance, one structure shows that in the summer the sun is in a higher position in the sky than at winter, so its shadow points to different locations at different times. Through this design the shadow’s position rises, which indicated that as the summer sun transfers to the winter sun, it “falls”.
It is important to understand the importance of these structures and the mathematics connected to them. Stonehenge was a megalithic structure built anywhere between 7000BC and 3000BC in the country of Wiltshire in south central England. Humans now know the structure was built so that an observer of astronomical movements could record the cycles of full moons, along with other cosmic cycles. Recent astronomical recordings show the moon has 3 cycles of 18.6 years each before the moon returns to its original position in space. In order to get an accurate record of this an observer would have to record movements for 55.8 years. This had been explained by Steven Hawkins as he discovered the purpose for 56 pits where a stone would be placed that are equally spaced circling around the Stonehenge structure. Stonehenge was in fact one of the first clock, calendar and observatory, and was positioned where it was because if it were even off a few meters it would not have the same affect and would not be able to record the alignment’s of the sun, moon and Venus cycles.
Another one of the oldest known megalithic structures is a stone circle in the Nabta Playa region of southern Egypt. The structure consists of a circle of stones associated with five rows of standing and toppled megalithic stones. Some rows are oriented pointing south or east and some are oriented to point in the direction of the setting summer solstice. The structure itself is dated back to at least 6000 years ago, which would be the 4000BC time period.
Nabta Playa is located at a latitude of 22.5 degrees, which is just south of the tropic of Cancer. At the latitude of the tropic of Cancer, during noon in mid-summer the sun shines directly overhead which causes no shadows to be seen in any directions. Things like this could be what made ancient mankind fascinated with knowing the alignments.
The eastern side of the pyramid of Cheops also known as Khufu’s pyramid is noted to be oriented to true north with incredible precision as it reads to be within 3 arc minutes, which is 5% of a single degree of true north. The latitude of the pyramid is 29 degrees, 58 minutes and 51 seconds north of the equator, which is about one mile from the 30th parallel of latitude, which is exactly 1/3 the distance from the equator to the north pole. Now I know anyone that doesn’t study astronomy will find that confusing, but the short end of it is the structure suggest that ancient Egyptians placed this pyramid at a position defined by a geometrical point. Again in etymology, we see the Greek word for geometry gave birth to the phrase “to measure earth”.
A Greek philosopher named Eratosthenes of Alexandria in Egypt around 22BC had been curious as to why the sun shone directly over head and cast no shadows on the day of the summer solstice in a region in southern Egypt called Aswan. Through his study he realized the earth was on a tilt of about 23.5 degrees and that during the winter the northern hemisphere is tilted away from the direct rays of the sun and thus becomes colder. As the earth moves around its orbit the northern hemisphere that is tilted turns to face more directly towards the sun’s rays and receives maximum amount of sunlight on June 24th the summer solstice. Because of this a person standing at the location of the latitude of 23.5 degrees will see the sun directly overhead on the summer solstice. Aswan is located close to that latitude of 23.5 degrees.
During Eratosthenes study he paid workers to accurately pace off the distance between Aswan and Alexandria, which is about 489 miles, which was estimated to be 1/50th of the circumference of the earth. By multiplying 489 miles by 50 we get 24,450, which Steven Hawkins considered to be surprisingly close to modern day estimates, which is 40,075 Km or 25,046.875 Miles. The ancient Egyptians had only miscalculated by 596.875 miles.
With this evidence it not only shows that ancients used a highly developed sense of mathematics but it should seem clear that ancient Egyptians and Greeks knew the world was round and not flat, which was a secret kept from the average man up until the time of Columbus over one thousand years later. All megalithic sacred sites were used as time notifications, to know the tides, solstices and equinoxes. This knowledge was useful because it allowed rulers that understood its cycles to know when to plant crops and when to preserve food for the winter. This knowledge could make or break a king. An analysis of DNA of the indigenous people of the British Isles shows an extremely close connection to the people of North Africa, which suggest these people descended from North Africans. The question continues to remain as to what knowledge did the ancient African have? Sadly the true beliefs may never be known, yet through the documented clues some things can be interpreted. The first official European contact with Africans came in the year 332BC by Greeks and Romans. Earlier the Persian Empire had conquered much of North Africa and by the time Alexander the Great conquered the four corners of the ancient world many ancient traditions had been lost. During the Roman Empire ages Christianity had spread through Palestine, through Egypt and into African communities. In the 7th century the new Islamic culture had grown expanded their grip of power into North Africa. The first documented slave trade began in the 7th to 12th century and known as the Arab slave trade or slavery in the east as the Arabian Kingdom sold slaves from their conquered areas of North Africa. From the 15th to 19th century the Atlantic slave trade was carried out by European slave traders. Although the North of Africa had been conquered early, previous to colonization the mid-section and Southern areas of Africa had seen over thousands of individual civilizations each choreographed by a different set of ancient politics. During the 9th century dynastic kingdoms began to arise in Africa, one of the first kingdoms to arise was the Kingdom of Nri Lgbo or Yoruba, which was located in present day Nigeria. An Ancient city in the kingdom according to Yoruba mythology was called Ile-Ife and was believed to be the original settlement of humans. The Yoruba creation story is similar to the Abramic version with minor differences such as names, however it does state that mankind was created by two gods, a father and son duo, that mankind was created by mixing clay and that the god’s gave mankind three gifts. According to a lesser known Yoruba tradition, the origin of the Yoruba Kingdom began when invaders from the east arranged a marriage between members of the two groups. By the 7th century the kingdom began to become an Empire rising in industry and bronzed art, but by the 14th century the empire suffered from economical decline and the political structure collapsed. Many African dynasties had emerged and been influenced from the traditional culture of the city of Ile-Ife, but most of these dynasties would collapse before European colonization. Through these few centuries of invasions, imperialism and colonization most of anything that had been documented had been lost in destruction through war. Bits and pieces of ancient literature still exist, but it is hard to distinguish whether the ancient writers were writing fact or fiction, if they were writing fact in parables or fiction based on factual events and philosophies.
Atlantis or in its Greek meaning Island of Atlas is a legendary lost island first mentioned in Plato’s dialogues titled Timaeus and Critias, however there are earlier suggestions of Atlantis in Egyptian traditions. In Plato’s writing he describes an advanced utopian civilization that was beyond the pillars of Heracles that had a naval power that conquered many parts of Western Europe and Africa in approximately 10,000 – 9,500BC. Atlantis was also described to be in the Atlantic Ocean and was preparing to conquer the rest of Europe and then Asia.
Plato states;
“There lay an island which was larger than Libya and Asia together and it was possible for travelers of that time to cross from it to the other islands and from the island to the whole of the continent over against them which encompasses that veritable ocean.”
He goes on to say;
“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 rightfully be called in the fullest and truest sense, a continent. Now in this Island of Atlas there existed a confederation of kings, of great and marvelous power, which held sway over all the islands and over many other islands and parts of the continent”.
Geological experts have proven that South America and Africa were once part of a super continent and after thousands of Years broke off and began drifting west. If the human story begins in Africa then wouldn’t any intelligent information present in Africa as a super continent with South America continue to be present in South America as a drifting continent.
My theories were that the mythical Atlantis Plato described was South America along with its many Islands including the Caribbean. According to Plato’s writing Atlantis sunk into the Ocean, or at least the main governing Area did.
The Spartel Bank or Majuan Bank is a former Island located in the strait of Gibraltar near Cape Spartel. The top of the island is currently 56 meters below the surface and is dated to have vanished about 11,400 years ago due to rising ocean levels caused by melting glaciers from the ending of the last ice age and it has been suggested that an Earthquake around the same time caused Tsunami’s that could have possibly devastated any architecture on the Island. Collina Girard proposed that the disappearance of the island was recorded by pre-historic Egyptian clans for 5000 years until it was written down by the first Egyptian scribes around 4000-3000BC. To answer the questions of how the knowledge of Atlantis came to the indigenous peoples of the America’s is simple; they are the Atlantians and the descendents of the Atlantians. My theories are that as the Atlantis Empire faced natural disasters and fell, many of the survivors travelled to settle in Egypt, while the sub-sections of Atlantis (the remaining of the South American continent) were free to develop their own independent civilizations, and as populations grew people began to migrate north in search of new lands. The people of Atlantis were said to have an advanced knowledge over the rest of the ancient populated world of the time and this knowledge is often associated as the beginning of the end of the old historical knowledge.
The Midewiwin society is a secretive religion practiced among a few aboriginal groups and originates with the people of the Anishinaabeg.
The Anishinaabeg is a type of related languages most often used by the Odawa, Ojibwe and Algonquin tribes. The definition of Anishinaabeg is “first or original people’s”.
The Midewiwin society translates to “grand medicine society” and is believed to have a deep knowledge of sacred plants and healing. Members are called midewinini meaning “shaman or medicine man”. The word mide is translated to mean mystery, mysterious, spiritual and/or sacred.
According to Anishinaabeg traditions, in the beginning “Gichi Manidoo” made the “mide manidoog”. He created two men and two women, but they had no power of thought or reason. Then “Gichi Manidoo” made them rational beings. He took them in his hands, so that they should multiply. He paired them and from this sprung the first Anishinaabeg. When there were people, he placed them upon the Earth, but soon observed that they were subjected to sickness, misery and death and that unless he provided them with sacred medicine they would soon become extinct. The Midewiwin society was also responsible for the recording of the Anishinabeg people’s and kept a sacred document known as wiigwaasabak, also known as the birch bark scrolls of the Native Americans.
The Midewiwin or medicine society is very similar to Qigong as it also has four levels of mastership also associated with the four elements of alchemy. What is known to the Midewiwin as the Manitou or manidoods is exactly like Qigong’s relation to Qi.
I wondered if it were possible that the Midewiwin and Qigong were the same teachings. I decided to look for possible evidence that Native peoples of the Americas had any contact with nations across the Atlantic or Pacific oceans. Popular belief still somewhat teaches us that Christopher Columbus was the first to colonize the new world, however historians in recent years have uncovered that Viking settlements existed previous to Columbus, and I wondered what other ancients had traveled across the oceans. One popular belief was that early Asians that lived about 12,000 years ago crossed from Asia to North America at a point known as the Beringia land bridge during the ending of the ice age. Researchers try to prove these people were the first initial founders of the new world and populated it from the north and then migrating south. However, although people may have crossed the beringia land bridge, I do not believe that Asians were the initial founders of the new world for a number of reasons.
One problem with the Beringia land bridge theory was that human remains had been found in North America dating between the era of 15,000BC and 50,000BC, which is a time period where the Beringia land bridge routes were blocked by massive sheets of ice. On top of that and geologist recently discovered, Africa and South America used to be a connected super-continent. It is also known that the oldest human remains can be found in Africa and many ancient artifacts found in South America suggest a connection to African traditional cultures. It is a more plausible theory to think that Ancient South American descendents migrated north when populations grew just as what had happened on the eastern side of the Atlantic Ocean. There are also so many clues that suggested early ocean crossing, such as Kumara, better known as the sweet potato, which is a native plant of the Americas and had been found in the Polynesia areas when early Europeans first reach the Pacific. Kumara from Cook Island has been radio-carbon dated to only 1000AD, but known to be in existence in the Americas for hundreds of thousands of years.
Chicken bones analyzed by the national academy of science stated chicken bones found in Chile strongly suggest an Oceania to America contact. Chickens seem to have originated in southern Asia. The ‘araucona’ species of chickens of Chile were once thought to have been brought by Spaniards in the 1500s. However the bones found in Chile were radiocarbon dated to have arrived as early as the 1300s.
Some even believe that ancient African civilizations and the Olmec culture of South America had contact. The Olmec culture existed roughly between 1200BC to 400BC. In 1862 Jose Melgar discovered the first colossal head in what is now known as Tres Zaotes and stated the features resembled an African race. Some also believe that the stone imagery carved on Olmec and Mayan artifacts depicts relations between Africans and Native Americans, as do some statues that resemble Asians. The bottle gourd is a Native plant of Africa that has also been found in Mesoamerica.
Islamic sources also describe journeys to the new world as some traditions believe that in 1311 a fleet of 400 mail ships set sail, but had been blown off course and discovered new lands west of Africa. According to traditional stories only one ship returned and the captain reported his findings to prince Abubakari 2nd. According to other related stories it is believed that Christopher Columbus was told by some Natives of Hispaniola that black skinned visitors had preceded the Europeans.
According to some Chinese reports peanuts were found at a 4000 year old archaeological site. Peanuts are also native to South America. Other similarities to the Native Americans and Asians are connected through craft work and the importance or high value both these cultures placed on jade.
Explorers from the Al-andalus are also suggested in stories to have traveled to the new world. The Al-andalus comprised of Spain, Portugal and northwest Africa. Khashkhash ibn Saeed ibn Aswad in 889AD is said to have sailed to the new islands and found vast amounts of gold. Ibn Farrukh from Granada is also allegedly said to have sail across the Ocean around the same time.
Culdee Monks originated in Ireland and Scotland and according to the sagas of the Norse men of Scandinavia; Iceland was described to have people that followed Culdee traditions. It is also believed that the Culdee Monks of Iceland and later Greenland fled southward to avoid the Vikings.
It is also believed that ancient of Egypt and Mesopotamia shared a core secretive advanced mathematical knowledge with ancients of Mesoamerica. This belief was put forth because of the similarities of Egyptian pyramids, ziggurats of Mesopotamia and the ziggurat type pyramids found in the Americas that are believed to be built by the Mayans, Aztecs and Incas. Other claims of contact with Egypt were based on the reports of Egyptian mummies that had been preserved with tobacco and coca. Both are native plants to the Americas.
According to references made by King Solomon he believed that another body of land existed that was rich in natural minerals and unknown to the common man of Europe. He referred to the places he called Ophir and Tarshish. *If this is true, that would mean that at the time of the Jewish revolt, Jewish members of the secret societies knew new unknown lands existed.
In India there is a temple in the southern part of the country that depicts a goddess holding maize, which is a crop native to only the Americas. In India it was believed to be an imaginary fruit bearing pearls known in Sanskrit as “maktaphala”. There is also believed to be a reference to the Mayan civilization in the Indian epic known as “Mahabharata”. Along with this claim some suggest a similarity between Mayan carvings and designs in early Hindu temples, including depictions of the postures of lions.
After all this it seemed very possible that early contact had occurred and suggested that a core knowledge between the Midewiwin and Qigong existed.
Going through the evidence and clues accumulated the story appeared to show that natives of the Americas held legitimate claims as first peoples of the Americas and as first peoples of Earth sharing the title with Africans. Also if Atlantis was the floating continent of South America then that would place the natives of the Americas as the mythical gods and the origins of the Thoth’s knowledge.
The Midewiwin society’s most sacred known scrolls are the wiigwaasabak otherwise known as the birch bark scrolls. The scrolls are also known as mide-wiigwaas and consist of complex geometrical patterns and shapes and are associated with symbols that were used long ago. The complex writings also include understandings of astronomy, rituals, family linage and genealogies, poems, music, mapping of lands and migration routes. Birch bark scrolls used by the Midewiwin were usually inscribed with either bones, metal or wood and then filled in using black charcoal. The scroll was later rolled up and put inside a wiigwaasi-makak also known as the birch bark box for safety keeping. Scrolls were re-copied after so many years and hidden in dry locations, often underground or in caves. Most of the birch bark scrolls found in North America predates European contact showing that a great knowledge existed way before European colonization.
There have been other birch bark scrolls that have been found around the world as well. For instance some ancient Buddhist text exist on birch bark scrolls that were preserved in clay jars found in Asia. Also in 1951 a Soviet led expedition in Novgorod found the first Russian birch bark scrolls with writing dated to 1400BC and since then over 1000 scrolls on birch bark have been found in Russia.
Most ancient African or Native American texts or documents have all been lost or destroyed. Some are believed to have survived but are under the closed supervision of secret societies and private collectors. From the little recorded information that remains the best information can be attributed to the Mayan culture. The Mayan civilization was a technological advanced civilization for their time and they had developed a calendar that has proven to be more accurate than our modern day calendars. The Mayan calendar is a system of distinct calendars and almanacs. An almanac refers to astronomical data recordings such as timings of the sun, moon and Venus cycles, eclipses, hours of full tide, good and bad harvest periods, etc… The calendar is rounded and synchronized to interlock in complex ways with their combinations giving rise to patterns of cycles. The calendar is still considered to be the most sophisticated and most accurate calendar even up to today. It has an interesting sequence based on the number 20 or in their reality 19, but have periods in the “0” point. The Tzolkin or astronomical calendar part consists of 13 months each with 20 days. 13 times 20 is 260 days and some believe is in connection to birth, as 260 days is equal to 9 months. This part of the calendar pairs the numbers 1 through 13 with a sequence of 20 day names. The Haab or earth calendar part has 18 months with 20 days including 5 rest or unlucky days. 18 times 20 equals 360 plus 5 more days is 365 days totaled. Both cycles interlock with each other showing many patterns of cycles. Every 52 years the cycles restart from the beginning point, however over many cycles of 52 years more patterns emerge. The entire process was simply a formula put together from compiled recordings, and by using geometry they were able to locate the positions of celestial objects without telescopes, and it all began with only five shapes known as the Platonic Solids.
For instance, take a blood cell. It begins as a single cell then multiplies into two. (two circles), those two multiply each making four cells and so on, four makes eight, then sixteen, thirty-two, sixty-four. On each position the blood cells collectively form one of the five shapes. By understanding how these shapes worked ancients where able to map out the position of earth to other planets in the solar system and keep trace of their movements. Potentially following the same formula with the understanding of the planetary positions in our solar system the entire universe could be mapped out. I wish I could explain this better. It is much easier to understand when seeing a diagram. I suggest looking up the flower of life and understanding how it is just a pattern of circles inside one circle that collectively create other shapes and patterns. For instance three circles connected could create a triangle. By continuously adding circles equally different patterns and shapes emerge.
In Mayan traditional stories Itzamna was the founder of civilization and taught his people to grow maize and Cacao among many other forms of vegetation. He also taught them to write, construct calendars and medicine. He is known as a god of the sky, night and day which may refer to his knowledge of Astronomy.
Throughout history, throughout the world, all religions have had secrets known only to the highest sectors of their followers. As we can see the true secret to religion is mathematics, from that science like chemistry and astronomy arose. These things were once known long ago before our chapter of mankind began, and what gives our rulers the advantages is the recorded information that is documented over time and passed along through family dynasties.
Recent discoveries have proven the technological understanding of certain cultures that existed thousands of years ago were more advanced than our experts have been telling the general public for years.
In South America a tiny golden design of what was first believed to be a model of a bug is now believed to be an early model of an ancient aircraft. The golden model has delta shaped wings among many other features all found on present day aircraft and space rockets and yet the golden model was designed over 1000 years before modern planes existed. It’s unknown how these crafts were powered or if they were just used as gliders from mountain tops, never the less the design itself is believed to have been ancient to our ancients that were just beginning to re-understand aerodynamics. The ancient Egyptians did engage in glider technology with a device known as the Sahara Bird, an Egyptian discovery scientifically and aerodynamically proven to be able to fly as a glider.
The Baghdad battery is an ancient 4000 year old battery found in Baghdad that works to create a charge of 1 volt. The reality of it all is, many ancient technologies exist, many are of superior designs for their times and have been suppressed for hundreds of years. Earlier mankind realized that they could exploit natural resources to create alternative creations and uses; they then merged the needs of these resources with the system of work. Through this system teachers that understood the methods would elevate themselves over their peers to be served in replace for their knowledge. This would evolve into a system of warfare for land and a need for an economical system of dependency.