Back to the main page

This page updated 15 October 2014

Lost Worlds Reviews - Books and Music

Now available via Lost Worlds.

OST

Watch out for the destiny of the ballot box in former Communist Russia.
Music written on synthesizer by Melbourne musician Gerry Patterson for the fall of the Communist Empire in 1989.
Cassette 10 tracks only $5 plus post. Hope versus despair. Intriguing. Thought-provoking. Engineered at Dex Audio, Melbourne.

Review of New Dawn: A Journal of Radical Non-Conformity, presenting alternative news and information,. Published by New Gnosis Communications International Pty. Ltd., ABN: 8409 4017 642 Edited by David Jones, telephone Australia (02) 9475 0355. Published six times per year. Postal address: GPO Box 3126FF, Melbourne VIC 3001. ISSN 1036 8035.
Website: http://www.newdawnmagazine.com/

Review by DAN BYRNES

PayPal - safe and secure

If you value the information posted here, and the projects of these websites in general, you may like to consider making a donation to help reduce our production costs? It would be greatly appreciated. Options include: paying via PayPal which this website uses - Ed

INCREASINGLY in Australia, the mainstream news media, print, newspapers, radio and TV is owned-and-operated by fewer hands. The resulting symptoms include greater self-censorship on the part of journalists and writers, greater homogenisation of public opinion, and less incisive questioning of information that does arise. Naturally, with greater concentration of news management, and publishing, costs are reduced in ways which make it more difficult for publishers of "other persuasions" to operate successfully.

Although luckily in Australia, two now-traditional alternatives have not died off - public broadcasting radio stations and magazines such as New Dawn.

Lost Worlds recently had several copies come its way of New Dawn, a magazine which falls into the long tradition, since not long after World War I, of non-newspaper print media of a mostly left-politics or dissenting persuasion. The mostly-left political persuasion has often also tended to be more searchingly internationalist in outlook than our mainstream media, and here New Dawn often rouses up bases for a critique of the civilization Australia has drawn from European settlement.

Interestingly, intentionally or otherwise, New Dawn reminds us just how much Australian cultural life has been conditioned by the Judaeo-Christian tradition, and various strands of the thought of the Ancient Greeks, including Gnosticism, plus "the usual history of capitalism". Australia is now a heavily-multi-cultural country, but these traditions of outlook remain firmly embedded.

Given this, New Dawn remains refreshing, since its internationally-drawn articles, newsbriefs and sense of history range widely, intersecting with these Australian traditions in entertaining, unexpected and surprising ways.

I was quickly arrested by a New Dawn article (Issue No. 65) on "Big Brother's" plans for our privacy, as I've been thinking about this for months, collecting various viewpoints on this difficult topic. For the life of me, given new developments in computer technology, particularly the Internet, I don't how older definitions of, or feelings about privacy can survive much longer. But given the uneven spread of use of the technology, it seems likely that changes in views about privacy will also be uneven in society, and I suspect that many people will find this quite unsettling.

New Dawn is one of the few publications I'm aware of, treating these issues in a vaguely spiritual way, or even in terms of the question: what makes life worth living? Such thought provocation is valuable, more so when the articles and news briefs point the reader to a relevant website - which means that serious-minded people can continue being serious.

New Dawn emphasises its mission statement: "New Dawn is a journal devoted to publishing ideas and information that are dangerous, unusual and challenging. We are dedicated to breaking through the wall of delusion and disinformation. Moving beyond the subtle conditioning of "consensus reality" and the duality of left/right ideological dogmatism." The producers of New Dawn are enemies of thought control. How well do they maintain this outlook?

Well, very well indeed. The magazine among other virtues is well-proofread, which is increasingly rare these days.

This website (Lost Worlds) often wonders how people in future, whatever their religious outlook, will adapt to the expected onrush of new technologies we'll have in the future - including a vastly improved Internet. (?) There is always a tension between the application of ancient ideas (as in religion, or the New Age movement), and any technology of the day.

The story gets about that in France, when the wearing of women's panties were introduced (new technology? new attitude?), they were protested from the pulpit as a moral abomination. The problem, if one existed, was probably simply that visions of female private parts had risen freshly into the public imagination? Similarly with the introduction of the bikini swimsuit in the early 1960s. But any new technology or new attitude creates social ripples. In some ways, New Dawn surfs these ripples very helpfully for its readers, and surfs them across history as well.

In the New Dawn issue July-Aug 2001 is an article, "The Bible: A Coded text?" Susan Bryce writes on likely water wars of the future. Susan Bryce writes also on delusions of democracy (necessary illusions?) in Australia. James Wasserman presents a history of secret societies. (Such an article requires long preparation).

It seems clear by now, that already in his incumbency, new US president George W. Bush has failed to impress the more compassionate people around the world. The belief exists, presumably encouraging confidence in some quarters, and worry in others, that Bush speaks mostly for corporate America. (He might also wish to bring you to Jesus, but this does not concern us here.) Certain feisty US websites have already been analysing his background for some time.

None of this has discouraged New Dawn, which cheerfully in its March-April 2001 issue asks: "Who is George W. Bush? elite controllers and hidden agendas". Australian critics are at least keeping up.

In other New Dawn issues we find an article by Richard Heinberg, a regular contributor, treating the growing power of transnational corporations as unimpeded by the World Trade Organisation.

And, Robert Richardson's "comprehensive expose of the "Priory of Sion fraud" presented so elaborately, and by now so famously, in The Holy Blood and The Holy Grail, by Michael Baigent, Richard Leigh and Henry Lincoln.

In Richardson's rather passionate work, M. Pierre Plantard is exposed as a right-wing nobody - quite unknown to the De Gaulle regime - with astonishing pretensions to possessing the secret secrets of the meaning of being French since about 1AD. "The Grail is not a bloodline. This false story originated in reams of fraudulent documents... " Ringing words!

Also treated is Andrew Collins' new book on the Atlantis legend, Gateway to Atlantis. Fact checkers are welcome at New Dawn, it seems.

I particularly enjoyed Fiona Wilson's review of Robert Feather's new paperback edition of The Copper Scroll Decoded, as I've just read the book, and it's excited quite a lot of interest with friends.

New Dawn has also enthusiastically embraced the Internet revolution, taking every opportunity to provide relevant URLs so that interested parties can pursue information. If ordinary newspapers did that, we'd hardly know where we were, due to information overload, but New Dawn's leisurely touch makes URL consultation kindly and helpful.

In the issue of March-April 2001, is the Secret Power of Music Revealed. Susan Bryce looks at "Who is George W. Bush".

Most themes treated by New Dawn are multi-faceted - producing perplexity - (or, educating perplexity?) For example, the magazine is anti the hegemony of science (as most people tend to understand "science") presumably because often, "applied science" needs to be backed by big capital - no capital, much less application. This is an institutionalised disease that chronically afflicts Australian researchers to the national detriment. Of course, with science-plus-big capital comes big propaganda and big power plays - which is an excellent reason to continue to wonder why internal combustion engines can't yet run on water?

New Dawn also engages in a little mild futurism, wondering what the impact of new politics, new technology, new science will be, and giving opposing views, which are sometimes drawn from ancient wisdoms. All of which makes for a smorgasbord where you can take your pick, at least feeling that you (and/or your perplexities) have been well briefed, and entertained, too!

In an increasingly complicated society as Australia now has, New Dawn is a valuable magazine precisely because it clashes together views on ancient traditions and modern technology in entertaining ways - and in ways which mainstream media outlets refuse to do.

If one thing is clear about the human future, it is that clashes due to ancient traditions and the use of new technology will continue. Politics apart, New Dawn educates, informs, and if you like, advises, all with an entertaining sense of history, too. Whatever one's background, it's very thought provoking, and it comes highly recommended by Lost Worlds.

What goes on inside the Global Brain?

Lost Worlds review by Dan Byrnes of:
Howard Bloom, Global Brain: The Evolution of Mass Mind from the Big Bang to the 21st Century. New York, John Wiley and Sons, 2000.

With Global Brain, the question might be: before death, what happens to the human soul and its intellectual and emotional capacities, regarding free will? Historians taking Howard Bloom's theory seriously are going to have sleepless nights. Already, I fear that in the future, post-modernism may gain extra from Bloom, supplementing what it has gained already from Nietzsche! This is not a happy prospect. Yet Global Brain, a theory on socio-biology in human evolution, is vastly stimulating reading, and comes highly recommended here.

As this review is pondered, the world has just been elated by the Sydney 2000 Olympic Games and repeated sights of magnificent, physical, human dedication and excellence, and quite some joy. British Conservatives are bobbing up increasingly chirpy. In Yugoslavia, the genocidally-inclined Milosevic may unleash his troops on a populace wanting him removed from power (he didn't). Jews and Palestinians are inflicting old/new violence on each other - underlife of the Holy City of Jerusalem - and a 12-year-old boy is killed in crossfire. Also killed are two men trying to help him. The contrasts are immense. We have progress, and we don't.

Justice versus injustice in human affairs? And as a pop singer told us, "it's a fine line between pleasure and pain" - which is hardly a new remark. Today, and as seen prominently in Australian life, many forms of positive discrimination are applied under nation-legislations cast in terms originally proposed by United nations charters on human rights. Much such legislation is intended to work deliberately against the hints or dictates of the "global brain" as posited by Bloom. A result is that political correctness is widespread - and it is much criticised as hypocritical by those who feel that such legislation works against much that we know to be true about human behaviour.

In this context, Bloom seems to ask: how and why is so much of what we think we cynically "know" to be true about people, actually true? Many answers to this are as pretty as being eaten by a shark; a lot worse than the trials of tolerating mere hypocrisy.

After 20 years' research, Howard Bloom is uttering warnings about prospects for humanity in coming centuries. The warnings are derived from findings on many cross-species, socio-biological scenarios drawn from the Big bang, from millions of years ago, to now... and how such scenarios help explain human evolution from Neolithic times to now.

In his earlier book, "The Lucifer Principle", based on socio-biological propositions, Bloom outlined the paradoxical nature of evil as we often see it, group-to-group, city-to-city, man-to-man, woman-to-woman, woman-to-man, man-to-woman, through and down from the social substrates of royalty, to the governors and the governed; from on-high and from below.

The final picture is rather bleak, and suggests that visions of human virtue and ability are but a comforting umbrella held over waves of human evils that stem less from moral (or immoral) intents, necessarily, than from the inheritances we have from our primate origins. Evils such as genocide, deliberated massacre of the helpless victims of military defeat, the injustices resulting from forms of concerted social control; that is, unforgiving ideology.

But we also have the fruits of our own wisdoms, gained from our experience and intelligence, in the interests of offsetting the limiting negativities inherent in our heritages. We seem to remain in the territory outlined in the doctrine in the Judaeo-Christian heritage, of The Fall of Man, somewhat irredeemable. Translation: the Fall of Adam and Eve is an archaic literary picture of the results of our evolution from primates.

Global Brain is Bloom's follow-up to The Lucifer Principle, abandoning individuals to their individual fates, moving on over the wide horizons which the individual, as part of various-size groups, has to look at, face up to, deal with. There is a mass mind, and its contents and meanings influence smaller-size groups and individuals. Those who are fans already of the work of the Santa Fe Institute on complexity will feel refreshed, here. Presumably, these fans will be also wondering: What are the prospects that the Internet might encourage a positive human evolutionary trend?

In terms of Bloom's warnings, humans, as shown by the history of religion, have the capacity to generate ideas which usefully over-ride many basic impulses of the "global brain". And sometimes not, as with the history of the Crusades. Maybe, the more we become aware of what we share via global brain with other life forms, the less we will feel uniquely human?

Bloom's kind of socio-biology could have an invasive - and/or stimulating - effect on various disciplines, including history. He is very entertaining on the evolutionary/social impacts of "world trade", or long-distance trade, in prehistory (trade in flint, or lapis lazuli, salt or purple dye) - and later. His theory could invade, in its own bacterial sort of way, a great many kinds of sub-disciplines in history; economic history, social (particularly the history of child care), psycho-history, etc.

One wonders if his theory can be applied to the history of stock markets? The history of the human use of sugar is staggering for human pain, given the use of chattel slavery in the Caribbean. And why from 1600AD didn't Europeans import sugar from Bengal, as it was grown there from before 1600? One of the great absurdities of world economic history is statistically-dry, learned discussion of spice and condiment haulage to Europe in relatively small ships, over centuries, with never a mention of improvements in European diets! For many reasons, I baulk at any idea of trade practices as "genetics of trade", since in history, merchants can often be surprisingly creative people. More to the point, useful trade requires peace. It is paradoxical in human affairs that normal trade has so often been interrupted by wars, ruining production and later normal trade, and that those who complain are ignored by historians. Rather, what happens in more modern history is that bankers are blamed, more than warmongers, and the effects of interruptions to normal trade are not registered; historians somehow cannot get the gumption to commit heresy against the apparent "sacredness" of government. (Is this because historians are individuals, and governments are collectives, while the readers of historians are also collectives?)

Refining his theory over twenty years, across wide reading, Bloom retains a prize ability to play with ideas old and new, scientific, social, or drawn from the humanities; about conformity versus creativity (divergent thinking) versus orthodoxy/truth. With his new model about the evolutionary process, he has also an ability to dramatise the issues the theory raises not about individual selection, but group behaviour within the context of evolution. His updates may give historians quite some problems, especially about destructive patterns which repeat in history - such as genocide as encouraged by Milosevic, referred to above. The sheer range of old and new ideas Bloom treats is a rare treat. (Many of the newer ideas have probably been canvassed since the 1970s in magazines such as Psychology Today, Science, Nature and so on). Bloom either loves paradox, or, perhaps, like Shakespear, any thinker, he simply can't avoid it.

He is concerned with determinism versus human creativity, and as a psychologist, he has great sympathy for the area psychologists call "individual differences". But there is a risk also that socio-biology becomes a self-limiting explanation, inhibiting human hope and idealism. Questions are vexed.

Progress? We already have a world where over-choice in lifestyles along with globalisation - and unemployment - is causing anxieties in the westernised world, and Bloom himself knows that these anxieties will only encourage fundamentalism. Paradoxes litter the mental pathways here, like intellectual road kill on the usual way to hell that is paved with good intentions.

Bloom's theory embraces analysis of learned helplessness, co-operative learning networks, a sociality of bacteria, memes, pecking orders, how species pool information in adaptive ways; the human body chemicals released by success and failure. There is also a hint of Teilhard de Chardin and his idea of an evolutionary-culminating "noosphere". We see the lethal effects of "inner-judges" such as shame, which might cloud perception so the sufferer is even worse off. Humans have innately-promoted self-destruct mechanisms. Yes, people can die of a broken heart. There is nothing new in that observation; what is new is the possibility that we can be more systematic about helping the sufferer.

We can ask again: Has the West emphasized individuality too much? Probably, yes. The ultimate elder of humanity is "the global brain". We fit ourselves, see ourselves, between group versus individual selection. Bloom is very good on the paradoxical issue of the too-close ideological proximity of the hard left and the hard right, their shared propensity for violently downing individuality, a matter much discussed in the 1970s with no useful conclusion evident then. Humanity can be especially dangerous to itself at the extremes when the mass mind rules, as the casualty rates of world wars I and II demonstrate.

We (do we learn as individuals or part of a group?) learn of the five elements of the operation of a collective learning machine. We are reminded that Malthus circa 1800 argued for the political status quo with his views on population growth versus non-expanding food supply; and also that Malthus unexpectedly forced the candid discussion of sexuality in ways that established churches found embarrassing. Some issues Bloom stresses arose especially pointedly with the British industrial revolution, 1760-1830. (Above me lives a biologist with hard-line views on world over-population, somewhat Malthusian.)

We are shown again "the selfish gene", and issues of how altruism is adaptive or not, roles for self-sacrifice. "Superorganismic intelligence" and "collective data-processing". How information can unexpectedly follow channels. (This reminded me of mystified Westerner discussions encountered five years ago, about mysterious but culturally-native Japanese ways of decision-making at high levels of commerce and government.) Bloom raises problems that socio-biology, with an uncanny ease, injects into usual worries about determinism, and the lack/provision of human freedom. Does all this reduce the meaning of life? If there is truth, what is truth for? (Is this merely a post-modernist-type question?) Does truth create imperatives, or not? What if "the global brain" reduces the spiritual space usually occupied by God?

Politically, Bloom argues for pluralistic democracy as the best way to mitigate the ill-effects of the global brain on our future. Therefore he is against dictatorships, also theocracy, and this makes him critical/fearful of the Islamic world. As a religion, where the behaviour of larger groups of people are concerned, Islam offers too-few ways to deflect the "natural impulses" of the global brain. One imagines, an enormous number of Moslems will disagree here. But going along with Bloom, species are mindful of resources, especially food and territory. So what is today's globalisation, basing on an ideology of free trade, but an onslaught from culture-killing "resource shifters" - more so where the enforced use of genetically modified foodstuffs is concerned? These are serious concerns, if only because high-tech "civilization" flattens simple folk with no apology, and there is nothing new about this outcome in history either. The Hyksos did it to the Egyptians. The Romans did it everywhere. Christianity tried it and failed with Islam with the Crusades. The Spanish did it in South America. The British did it to India. Europe and the US did it in China. Germany tried twice in 1914 and 1939. The Japanese tried it in Asia to 1945 till they were high-teched out of the game. When will humanity tire of such games? Just what can be learned in 3200 years?

Bloom has several pet hates found in historical scenarios, though few can be objected to. Such as... invading Aryans developing the caste system in Northern India to keep themselves on top of the heap, surprisingly, somewhat analogously to certain behaviour of bacillus colonies. Will "the history of civilization" get a fillip or a caning from this? Moving down the intellectual ladder, Bloom sees pecking orders in poultry and people; if animals have status-relations, does the higher being need to bother? (Yes.) Human hierarchies might be less than deliberate organization, more a natural outcome. And now with IVF, we'll have hatcheries for people and poultry. Well, somehow, free-range eggs still taste better, at least in Australia.

Global Brain bulges with unexpected conceptual mixes about human virtues, human barbarities, quaintnesses of animals and plain oddities. Rats avoid a strange food till it is tested; we are reminded of Roman emperors fearing poison, using foodtasters. It seems, the best form of advertising will remain, as of old, word-of-mouth. The larger the size of a social group of mammals, the larger their cortex. (Is this the reason that intelligent or hopeful people flock to cities - such as the world's rudeness capital, New York?)

Why, in human experience, such a late "discovery" as of sibling rivalry, not noted till 1893-1926 (roughly in the same timeframe in which psychologists found it was possible, and useful, to be systematic about individual differences!). Reality is a fabrication arising from the way we perceive. Well, belief in the value of money is certainly a matter of general belief - and a pity right now for the blighted Australian dollar. What of war as an institution? In archaic India, a ruler had a duty to make war "when able to afford it and with any chance of winning". Is there progress in views? Was it only in the late 1980s that a contrary term was invented - and is it merely political correctness - "the peace process".

Human oddities are manifold, not just in Bloom's book... Oddly, in Tasmania, the Aboriginals did not define fish as food, so famine was as frequent as unnecessary. The erroneous ideas of Galen (died 200AD) on anatomical, medical and surgical matters persisted irrationally for centuries, allowing health promotion to daily make odd and painful escapes from the blessings of empirical philosophy - and it is hard to find a record of a university in the western world complaining to about 1750AD! On it goes. Child sacrifice of old (but what about police slayings of street kids in certain South American cities in recent years?). The genetic roots of cruelty in children. Detestation of deformity (see John Lennon's well-known fear of cripples, known on film footage). The presumably effective Byzantine custom of disfiguring the nose of a rival to render them impotent. In olden days, a king might blind a rival to keep him powerless (see Frazer's Golden Bough). Murders of chimpanzee by chimpanzees, not unlike human murders - and more so, vice versa. Problems of the group slowdown of faster workers. (Facts on this topic were surveyed dismally only recently in Australian newspapers. A recent newspaper report suggests that sexual harrassment regularly bothers one third of workers in New Zealand - the statistics are tediously convincing).

Conflict forces diversity, while in different scenarios, diversity might produce conflict. A dominant group (as with the Ancient Egyptians) see group outsiders as sub-human: xenophobia. We are reminded of Hitler, almost in reverse, though. There are repeated scenarios in the history of civilization, from Sumerian times, with monotonously-regular irregularity, of barbarian hordes over-running city-based civilisation. But with Hitler, city-based barbarians rose megalomaniacally from a formerly-civilized nation and over-ran their own country and amazed neighbours. Aspects of the social forces unleashed by Bloom's global brain seem like the instincts of humanity, although here, we lack incisive vocabulary. A variety of psycho-social forces can be seen as the results of human instincts, or, vice versa, according to your taste. Bloom speaks of "mental modules". Jung spoke of archetypes of the collective unconscious. Author of The Territorial Imperative, Robert Ardrey, is ambivalent, and not, about "human instincts". Julian Jaynes (historian of human consciousness, taken a little out of context here) has a possibly useful phrase, "aptic structures", which could apply aptly to human instincts, or to positive human traits; but less aptly (or more worryingly) to a regular human problem such as systemic rape of women in war as a means of domination; if not a way of permanently disturbing a conquered gene pool.

For Bloom, we live in "nested hierarchies". There is a socio-biology of subcultures, as with Pythagoras' academy for introverts (read thinkers). And presumably, explanations for the current western-world fad for body art will have a strongly socio-biological basis?

We have random fluctuations in normal populations, but diversity generators appear unexpectedly. Should new technology be counted here with diversity, since new technology always changes the rules of a given game? (One reason the Mongols won so often was because they used tents-on-wheels, "tent-cities on the move".) What is the explanation, however, for the amazing number of human languages which have been used, and will humanity be worse off if it uses fewer languages as times goes by - a diversity reduction?

An old and influential idea about history, arising from the Middle East, is that there is a meaning and direction to history, presumably since a monotheistic, more or less omnipotent god indicates this. There have been many deaths due to faith in this idea, but millions of lives have also been supported by belief in it. What, really, is this idea's final usefulness? After all, this idea has never been cherished in China! Here, we could ask: Can Bloom's theory identify new social or historical problems not earlier treated well in history, or, psycho-history? In a context where one of the consolations of history is varied surprise at how human beings, alone or in groups, can escape apparent inevitabilities. The facts of such, socio-biology often cannot handle well. Deprived of any notion that history has no inner direction, many Christians and Moslems we might fear will feel, simply, directionless. (Though one doubts that the Chinese would care to care.)

Perhaps, an Australian can intervene here? Bloom is a non-Australian who could perhaps contribute a great deal to the current debate in Australia on reconciliation. (In Australia, the genocide of the Tasmanian Aboriginals should never be forgotten.)

If there is as Bloom suggests a "mass mind", question arise about the history of populations new to world history. I propose that Bloom (or his critics) would be well-advised to study Australasia in search of evidence for his theory. On the scales of world history, Australia and New Zealand - both plural democracies of British origin - are settled by Europeans surprisingly recently, just after the first "scientific" applications in England of inoculation against smallpox.

Australia during and after its use for convict colonies (or prisoner rehabilitation) has often been regarded as a social laboratory. (And recently, the most successful Olympic Games in modern history were staged at Sydney, which might say something for some surviving idealism?)

As "social laboratory", complete with their quite different indigenous peoples who arose in different timescales, Maoris and Aboriginals, Australia and New Zealand present a grand opportunity for testing Bloom's global brain theory. One might predict that the region won't be regarded this way by either Bloom's critics or defenders - Australasia is not an attention-getting region. This is a pity, since some claims exist that millions of years ago, "life" stirred first in pools in what is now seen as the south of Western Australia (though this was not in Australia, but in Gondwanaland). And down unimaginable lengths of time, modern Australia offers views on the use of population and territories as "social laboratory", from a mass experiment in prisoner rehabilitation from 1788... To destination for war-torn refugees after 1945. To present-day success with multiculturalism - which multiculturalism has been developed with a model borrowed from Canada, greatly inflected by idealistic United Nations charters.

The intriguing-but-negative situation might arise, where the proofs of Bloom's theory are not searched for in an ideal region of the world for finding proofs in both modern and ancient history, because Australasia remains too far off today's mental world map, at least as far as people in the Northern Hemisphere are concerned.

This might be small-minded on the part of countries which have produced, or might produce, an excess of global-brain type problems. It remains the case that the mystery of the origins of Australian Aboriginals remains an affront to every explanation yet offered for human migration across our planet. So an Australasian may as well base a view of Bloom's theory on such propositions...

Sometimes, modern Australia is viewed as "a melting pot". This metaphor is drawn ineptly, it is too close to the term as used regarding the history of the USA, and it disguises unique aspects of Australian socio-political history. Such as an early adoption of wide and free female suffrage; and the world''s first system for voting secretly in major elections which prevents voters being intimidated by anybody - including their spouse - a very useful invention not yet adopted around the world - and why not?

Australia is far more aptly termed, "a social laboratory". And so if the anthropology of Australia's Aboriginals - and more so their history since 1788 - can be regarded as proofs of Bloom's theory, he can probably be more satisfied with his views. And if not, then not.

Of course, this method of finding proof would also suffer from a philosophical problem found with the social sciences - the risk of contaminating the evidence simply by virtue of examining it. That however is also a social problem for any thinking socio-biological human animal. As Groucho Marx once smartly said, he wouldn't like to be in any club that would accept him as a member. So Bloom's book is dismally encouraging - it tends to make us once again distrust our human club a little, while we have no choice but to be members.

Maybe now for a lift we need a follow-up book? Close-in analysis, a socio-biology of the human sense of humour? Or, would the world-wide institution of the secret ballot for major elections be more useful? In fact, so far in world politics, finding generally useful outcomes from the widespread use of the secret ballot is an untested hypothesis. Is this also a useful proposition about the exercise, or not, of human free will?

Why did the invention of a secret ballot take so long in human history? This does not seem like a purely socio-biological question.

Finis

Bill McGuire's Apocalypse

By Gerry Patterson

I have just finished reading a book loaned to me by my geologist father; Apocalypse, by Bill McGuire, a recognised authority on volcanoes and Earth Sciences. It purports to be a natural history of global disasters. His thesis is that the world is ultimately headed for disaster, which will take one of four manifestations (predictably enough he chooses the number four). These are:

Volcanoes: McGuire is a vulcanologist and what he doesn't know about volcanoes is probably not worth knowing. He summarises plate tectonics in terms easily understood by the general reader. He introduces us to the VEI (Volcanic Explosive Index), an open-ended logarithmic index, like the Richter Scale. This index is used to measure the explosive power of volcanoes. He discusses the chemical composition of magma and the effect it has on the explosive potential of volcanic caldera. He gives a good summary of pyroclastic flows, lahars and medium-sized eruptions like Krakatoa -- arguably the loudest sound heard in recorded history. So powerful, in fact, that it blasted the entire island to dust (a considerable amount of it ended up in the stratosphere), and darkened the skies around the world for the next decade. The sound was so loud it was heard quite clearly in Alice Springs, Australia, over 3000 kilometres away. And the sound wave is reputed to have travelled around the world four times. The resulting tsunami, over 30 metres in height, was driven onto shores, hundreds of kilometres away, at over a hundred metres per second, resulting in catastrophic loss of life and damage.

According to McGuire, this was a medium-sized eruption, that rated 6 on the VEI. The big ones, which he describes as super-eruptions, occur on average every 50 million years. Since the last one occurred over 70 million years ago, it could be said that the next super-eruption is overdue.

He goes to pains to explain that technically, terms like "overdue" do not apply to events with a poisson distribution and such a long return period. He does however identify some likely candidates, and writes some colourful, imaginary disaster scenarios. Needless to say, despite this sensible disclaimer in the text of the book, the blurb on the jacket trumpets in bold capitals: WE ARE LIVING ON BORROWED TIME!

Earthquake: You thought you knew all of the places on earth that are earthquake-prone? No doubt you thought of Japan, China, Turkey, California etc. McGuire introduces us to intra-plate faults as well as inter-plate boundaries. These have much longer return periods, can be more intense, and much more devastating (mainly because they are unexpected).

Tsunami: Naturally with his knowledge of vulcanism, McGuire is a full-bottle on tsunami. Events like the Krakatoa tsunami sound serious enough. It was merely a ripple compared to some of the really serious tsunami occurring in pre-historic times. The most powerful ones were over 300m high and travelled at speeds in excess of 200 metres/per/second. I tried to envisage a wave taller than the Rialto Building in Melbourne, or the Centre Point Tower in central Sydney, travelling faster than a jet aeroplane arriving at Port Melbourne (or Sydney Harbour), and I think the word catastrophic may not be quite big enough to describe the event.

Obviously, all three of these events, volcanoes, tsunami and earthquakes are connected. They can and usually do occur simultaneously. And they may all be caused by the last type of disaster.

Impact: McGuire deals with this last. The Fourth Horseman is impressive indeed. McGuire comes up with the interesting statistic that the danger from impacts is equal to the danger from air-travel. He reasons that air-disasters happen every year or so and kill hundreds when they occur. A major impact, on the other hand, has never occurred since humans evolved. However when an impact does occur the death toll will be billions, and hence the risk is roughly double that of air- travel. His final scenario, entitled Armageddon, depicts a highly plausible impact event with an object about 1km in diameter, and several smaller objects less than 100m in diameter. In his scenario, humanity is blasted back into the stone-age.

McGuire does not consider what might happen to the human race if we should be hit with another object like the dinosaur-killer that struck at Chicxulub 65 million years ago. He goes into considerable detail about this event, and the prospect for survival is very unlikely for any animal species larger than a rat. In my childhood I can recall that many scientists clung to the theory that craters on the moon were formed by volcanic activity. The reason? Because they were perfectly circular. They reasoned that circular craters would only result when a meteor fell perpendicular to the surface, and that it was extremely unlikely that all impacts would be so.

Since those days, there has been distinct paradigm shift in the Astronomical and Earth sciences. It is now believed that parabolic comets have such high velocities that they explode on impact. The explosive impacts always result in circular craters. It was, in fact, World War II and observations from the air of the damage done to Europe, which started people thinking along these lines. So in the fifties and sixties, the change in thinking was already underway.

The Tunguska event (Siberia 1908), has now been re-appraised. It is no longer considered an extraordinary event, but a regular impact event, in terms of what one should expect when an object with a parabolic orbit (small comet) of about 50m in diameter strikes the earth. Of course devotees of The X-files might have you believe that it was caused by a malfunctioning interstellar drive in an alien space-craft. Certainly the blast (about a 1000 times larger than the Hiroshima bomb) was of these proportions.

However, this explosion can be explained by the sudden dissipation of kinetic energy. If we needed further convincing, comet Schumaker-Levy in 1994 provided an impressive display of the scale of these explosions. The after-glow from these impacts dazzled observers on earth and produced spectacular corona almost the size of our planet. These little packages pack a helluva punch.

Catastrophism was vehemently denounced by scientists in the early 20th Century, and even as the evidence began to build against uniformitarianism, Catastrophism was resisted, particularly by palaeontologists, who had built up an impressive evolutionary fossil record. It was physicists, Luis Alvarez and colleagues, who have sealed the fate of uniformitarianism. As if the mere existence of the K/T (Cretaceous) boundary was not enough, they actually discovered Iridium in the actual boundary. The fact that below the K/T boundary dinosaurs abound and above the K/T boundary not one can be found, has been dismissed by uniformitarianists as a hiatus. The presence of an obviously alien element was a smoking gun.

Like Richard Muller (co-creator of the Nemesis or Death Star theory), McGuire gives a graphic description of what the Chicxulub impact was like. The 10km-sized comet would have been instantly vaporised by the explosion which would have been thousands of times more powerful then entire combined nuclear arsenal on earth and billions of times more powerful than the Hiroshima bomb. The blast crater was 180km wide and 15 km deep, exposing white-hot boiling rock and magma underneath. The heat from the explosion would have cauterised an area almost half the size of Australia. Trillions of tons of molten rock would have been blasted high up into the atmosphere, some of it into outer space never to return, most of it falling in a ruinous rain on half the planet.

Most animals in this hemisphere would probably have been already killed by the super-sonic shock wave. Giant tsunami higher than our tallest buildings would have swept the planet at almost the speed of the sound, etc, etc. I think you get the picture, it is as close to hell on earth as you could imagine.

Most devastating of all was the aftermath. Hundreds of super-eruptions, earthquakes and fires. The sun disappeared from the sky, not to be seen for millennia. It is not surprising that only mammals (the smallest creatures in the world), survived. It is probably as close as the earth ever came to losing all the higher life forms in a single catastrophic event.

Also, in this book, is a quick summary of some of the theories that predict periodicity in impact events. These theories are the Galactic Plane Theory, The Nemesis Theory, Planet X Theory and Coherent Catastrophism. The Galactic Plane Theory proposes that the solar system is actually undulating in the Galactic Plane with a 60-million-year period. As the solar system passes though the Galactic plane every 30 million years or so, comets are precipitated from the Oort Cloud and rain down on the inner Solar System. You already know about the Nemesis Theory, which argues for periodic disturbance of the Oort cloud by an undiscovered companion star.

The Planet X theory is similar, except that it postulates an undiscovered planet (beyond Pluto) that also disturbs the Oort cloud. As far as I am concerned, the interesting thing about these theories is that they could all be right. The Sun could have a companion star. And the interstellar dance that the stars perform could be dragging our solar system through the galactic plane, in the process, disturbing an as yet undiscovered Planet X, beyond Pluto.

Coherent Catastrophism attempts to explain the behaviour of Parabolic Comets upon entry into the inner solar system. The Coherent Catastrophists believe that large comets will be broken up into several smaller comets by the gravitational stresses of Jupiter or the Sun. Having broken, the pieces continue on their original orbit in a group, more less like a swarm of bees or more accurately like a bunch of racing cars going around a circuit. This has serious implications for the planets in the inner solar system, and for how this might effect the probabilities of collision. The most compelling evidence in support of Coherent Catastrophism is the behaviour of the Schumaker-Levy comet which fitted this model exactly. Fortunately for us denizens of the inner solar system, Schumaker-Levy did not make past Jupiter after it broke up.

Over all this is an excellent book, very readable and accurate. Cranks and cult followers should not read this book, however.

Finis

Act of God: stunning ingenuity about Ancient Egypt's arch heretic, Akhenaten

Review by Dan Byrnes: Graham Phillips, Act of God: Tutankhamun, Moses and the Myth of Atlantis. London, Sidgwick and Jackson, 1998.

WITH Phillip’s book, Act of God, proposing answers for a 3,000-year-old mystery, the first question arising is: he has done it, really solved the mystery? By Phillip’s dating, Akhenaten died in 1347BC, about three years after the death of his his probably-Minoan wife, Nefertiti. The career of Akhenaten, monotheist, the great heretic Pharaoh of Egypt, is a relatively recent discovery for history, and Phillips hopes to make great strides in explaining his career.

This book is so ingeniously conceived, it reads like a detective story. So, the reviewer must remain on guard against giving away essential elements of the plot. But ingenious it is. For a book so intricate, where the research has evidently been conducted so fastidiously (some by Andrew Collins), Act of God is also remarkably well-paced. The evidence is unfolded clearly, the tone of voice remains even, a certain logic rolls on until we know much more about why Tutankhamun, who returned the traditional Egyptian religion, was buried in such amazing splendour.

Still, even good plots sometimes have flaws of logic. Philips finds it necessary to treat problems with radiocarbon dating, and he has not entirely solved knotty problems with chronologising Egyptian history. Again, I can't say more here for fear of revealing elements of plot.

Phillips in particular relies heavily on his interpretation of the structure of Akhenaten’s family history. If this interpretation is awry, much of the logic of his arguments will suffer. And so, reading eagerly, I wondered if Phillips could actually last to the end, convincingly. He does, satisfyingly, at least in terms of the evidence he chooses to explore.

Akhenaten horrified the Egyptian establishment by giving honour to a formerly minor sun deity, Aten, abandoning traditional polytheism, and becoming a monotheist. Thus, Aten now surpassed the formerly-respected sun god, Re (Re-Herakhte). Since the pharaoh was the embodiment of many divine manifestations, Akhenaten (Amenhotep IV) also recast the role of the Egyptian king. (Here, we still do not know what Akhenaten imagined what would happen to his, or the Aten's, religion when he himself died.)

Akhenaten also wrote many superb prayers, all new, which, read as poetry, are lucid and moving, also oddly innocent and idealistic. This is noteworthy, since Akhenaten’s new religion was naive regarding the problem of evil, which all religions should try to explain.

A complete original, Akhenaten also seems to have been some kind of hermaphrodite, perhaps as a kind of public relations in the way he presented himself as prophet of this new religion, perhaps due to suffering Frolich's Syndrome. He is depicted in artwork with odd looks, with spindly shanks, enlarged thighs, with a chin so protuberant it is almost grotesque.

Since artists would never have dared make a pharaoh or aristocrat look strange or different, without a permission, or a direct instruction, it seems Akhenaten wished to emphasise oddities of his appearance. This was to emphasise hermaphroditism, or, androgyny, for Aten was a different god, abstract, beyond the restrictions of male or female gender. The Aten can regenerate himself - he is "often described in the masculine", but has both male and female characteristics, so perhaps an imagery of powerful androgyny had to be created for Aten’s prophet. The Aten after all had to transcend or compete with an old pantheon of strongly male or female Egyptian gods.

Along with creating a new religion from scratch, which suggests he possessed great charisma, Akhenaten also built an entirely new city, Armarna, which must have been astoundingly expensive. As new city, Armarna was sited about halfway along the Nile, on a sandy plain on the east bank. Architectural schema of the more important city layouts speak of confidence, great scale, a terrific sense of purpose: Akhenaten was playing for keeps. Given that Akhenaten was no warmonger, how on earth did he pay for his new city during the 5th-8th years of his reign?

There is also from Phillips, talk of a great evil stalking Akhenaten’s land during the building period. Phillips regards Akhenaten as a real religious visionary, but a sole prophet of the Aten, which in effect was the beneficence of sunlight, as distinct from the sun itself. The Aten was the visible manifestation of the sun. No warmonger, Akhenaten enjoying being depicted as relaxing with his family in a loving, normal way, not leading armies to smite his enemies. But which evils stalked the land? Before Akhenaten’s reign began, hundreds of new statues had been erected in Egypt to Sekhemet, for no obvious reason. Sekhemet was the goddess of devastation, the scorching power of the sun, and a daughter of Re, "the eye of Re". (The naivete of Akhenaten's religion regarding evil was a major flaw in Akhenaten’s own plot).

Phillips also associates a role for Heliopolis, where the people of Moses and Abraham, monotheists, might have influenced the religious views of the younger Akhenaten, prior to evils stalking the land as claimed. If the influence of the Hebrew monotheists on Akhenaten's ideas was as Phillip's claimed, then Akhenaten may even have developed his alarmingly revisionist religion as a new coping mechanism for society-at-large?

Akhenaten reigned 1364-1347 according to Phillips’ chronology, and to say more here about evil stalking the land might be to give Phillip’s plot away, about why he mentions Atlantis in his subtitle. It is enough to say that Akhenaten and/or his new god were seen to fail to stem the evils. (A symbol pertaining to the Aten was the ankh, which is new information to me, but the ankh at least has evidently survived from Atenism). After Akhenaten died, great effort was put into erasing, destroying, removing or defacing information on his regime and his enormous heresy.

Most of all, Act of God tussles ingeniously and intricately with archaeological detail, the meanings of elements of Egyptian religion, all satisfyingly. Phillips also turns many ideas on their head. Sigmund Freud in Moses and Monotheism suggested that Akhenaten influenced Moses. Phillips sees Moses’ people as influencing Akhenaten concerning monotheism. In all, Phillips' book is so intricately, smoothly constructed, I was left with a feeling of balancing probabilities. (But it will not spoil anything if I also reveal, that Phillips regards the legend of the curse of the tomb of Tutankhamun as hokum.)

Balance of probabilities… a fine sense of doubt arises here, just where questions of the historical accuracy of Egyptian and Jewish reports can be raised, and often are. From my own reading, I am bound to say that if some great evil was indeed stalking Egypt before or during Akhenaten’s time, which the Aten failed to curb, other areas, other populations besides those under the control of Egypt would have also been affected. If so, better, more wide-ranging and more coherent explanations for the situations of those populations might arise in future? Especially if Phillips’ research is well-based.

For Act of God of course also made me remember Velikovsky's theories about great and universal catastrophes occurring about the time of Moses’ Exodus from Egypt. How can Phillips fail to mention Velikovsky, since he mentions Ian Wilson’s influential book, The Exodus Enigma? This is fascinating as a matter of focus.

 The "evil" which Phillips says stalked Egypt was probably confined to the Eastern Mediterranean area. Whereas Velikovsky’s catastrophes were universal for the planet. Once again here, Phillips’ book leads to consideration of the balance of probabilities. If Phillips is even half right with Act of God, it will do us no harm to look beyond Egypt in the timeframe considered, with his version of the balance of probabilities in mind. Because if he is even half-correct, much else will fall into place regarding non-Egyptian histories and archaeologies, and that is something to look forward to.

Another interesting facet is, how abstract a god the Aten was, beyond male and female, but also a solar deity like Re and Sekhemet. How much more abstract was the god of Moses, like the Aten, never to be directly represented, but a god beyond even nature - a god who is the very creator of nature!

*****************Finis***************

A review of: Laurence Gardner, Genesis of the Grail Kings: The Pendragon Legacy of Adam and Eve. London, Bantam, 1999. ISBN 0593 044304

By Dan Byrnes

A PUBLICITY statement for Gardner's first book, Bloodline of the Holy Grail: The Hidden Lineage of Jesus Revealed, reads in part: "Gardner offers real proof of the survival of the descendants of Jesus throughout the centuries". That is, to read Gardner, one has to accept that Jesus had progeny by Mary Magdalene, that the descendants of those children became members of Europe's royal families.

The book, Bloodline, traced matters for the reader from the present day to several generations prior to Jesus' birth, back to King David of Israel. Some strong themes in Bloodline were connected with the powerful romances represented by the Arthurian or Grail legends.

With Genesis of the Grail Kings, Gardner takes us back before the time (a time?) of Adam and Eve to a probable series of genocidal conflicts between our forebears, that is, between versions of humanity appearing before homo sapiens.

The attempt to accomplish this, alone, is an indication of how daring Gardner be. So for those willing to suspend belief, prejudices, etc., Gardner with two books hopes to explain many matters taken to be serious in European history, from 100,000 years ago, and before, to the present day. Genesis of the Grail Kings is by turns, intriguing, daring, plausible, implausible, fanciful, highly romantic, revisionist history, startling revisionist as a critique of standard Bible history, controversial, entertaining, and thought-provoking.

In Bloodline, Gardner provided many genealogical tables providing proof of his wider remarks. In Genesis, he continues similar work, providing information which update lists of the descendants of Adam and Eve as we are used to from standard exposition of Biblical matters, before and after the Flood of Noah. Also, lists on Egyptian Pharaohs, and more importantly, lists of the Sumerian kings and dynasties, kings of Mesopotamia, and especially, the Hyksos Delta Kings of Egypt, who are generally regarded as mysterious.

The book's flyleaf says, so we are giving nothing away, "when the Israelites made their exodus from Egypt, their spiritual leader was not Moses, but Miriam - a queen and high priestess of the pharonic succession. The Pendragons of the title are the matriarchalist predecessors, and their consorts, of the Sumerian dynasties.

And at this point, the reader has some advice - this review will tackle Gardner's daringness, his implausibilities, and also where he differs with other revisionists. So firstly, what is a Pendragon? The dragon was an ultimate symbol of sovereignty, that is, legitimacy of rule, for the Celtic races of Europe. In the Dark Ages, Pendragons were Head Dragons or Kings of Kings. Awe, or fear, of the dragon arose with the royal crocodile, or "sea-serpent".

In Sumer, the words for dragon or serpent implied praise for a god or king. "The Cainite kings of Mesopotamia - the first Pendragons of the Messianic bloodline" - were of the Anunnaki, much prior to the flood of Noah, dated around 4000BC.

Who were The Anunnaki? They were descendants of Apsil and Tiamat (The Dragon Queen), who included Anu (Great Father of the Sky, or Anum), Enki, Lord of the Earth and Waters, Enlil, Lord of the Air and Earth, Inanna, or Ishtar, and Lilith, Handmaiden of Inanna. It is at this point that Gardner moves in and out of humanity's old dream of "a golden age", when homo sapiens (we presume) enjoyed a civilization far more advanced than we can mostly imagine, today, for those times.

It is in this dream-shifting that Gardner has to cope with what are called in Bible-comment tracts, The Nephilim, or, The Watchers. Whether we accept references to these beings in Genesis, or take account of various Mesopotamian accounts, the problems are these: to account for the relatively sudden eruption on the earth of an intelligent homo sapiens, able to refine agriculture and build cities, and view legends about "sons of gods" laying with earthly women and begetting troublesome families.

Where does it come from, the notion that some superior beings used earthly women to beget a new race? The answer is: genetic engineering, and no, not shades of Alford's Gods of the New Millennium, which also treats The Watchers, and genetic engineering, and is not listed in Gardner's bibliography.

Lost in antiquity, the Anunnaki were the basis for what the later Sumerians called gods. (One of them became Jehovah). Since Gardner does not propose any extra-terrestrial origin for the Anunnaki, he leaves us hanging in the dream of the golden age, unconvinced.

Rather more plausible is the possibility of genocidal conflict between earlier versions of homo sapiens, a violent cleanout leaving winners claiming legitimacy, but here, prehistory is not clear about which peoples were involved. It is unclear where the Sumerians came from before they refined urban organisation, a Pendragon tradition, wrote legends of their gods, and a system of the aristocratic legitimation of rulership that later washed over to Egypt.

Mixed in here, however, is a daring reinterpretation of Biblical genealogies, from Adam and Eve. Cain (as with the Cainite legacy noted above) never deserved his bad press, and much that Gardner provides cannot be understood unless we grant that Cain gained his legitimacy from his mother Eve. Adam was not Cain's father, some more superior being was, given that "Adam and Eve" are subjects of experiments in genetic engineering. (Whether humanity was "developed" to provide a slave labour force in Sumeria for dynasties of superior beings is a subsidiary question.)

Next, given further information on Adam's descendants, it becomes clearer how and why Abraham's family departed Ur, their descendants to end not merely influential in Egypt, but ruling or helping to rule from time to time. At this point, we have a startling rewrite of the career of the Egyptian "heretic" monotheistic Pharaoh, Akhenaten, who disappeared from Egypt to become Moses, with his half-brother Aaron and half-sister, Miriam. It was the descendants of Abraham's Mesopotamians, mixed with Egyptian royalty, who formed the royal line of Israel - the rest is in Gardner's Bloodline. At this point it is necessary to note than an earlier issue of Lost Worlds carried a review of Graham Phillips' book, (also not cited by Gardner), Act of God, in which it was noted, that Phillips' ingenious theory on why Tutankhamun was buried in such splendour, having to do with deep-seated religious fear in the Egyptian establishment, relied greatly on his intriguing interpretation of Akhenaten's family history.

Gardner sees Akhenaten as becoming Moses (and the rest is a different history), Phillips sees Akhenaten's monotheism as influencing Moses, who is a quite different person.

Here, it came as no surprise to see Gardner and Phillips with very different views of Akhenaten's family history. (Questions arise which are so arcane, they cannot be discussed here even in a long website production - we leave it up to the Egyptologists).

We should say, Gardner here has greatly lengthened Akhenaten's alleged family history, since he is also concerned to align "Hebrew" chronology with Egyptian dates.

About this time, questions arise for Gardner of alchemy, The Philosopher's Stone, and a mysterious white powder, first developed by "Mesopotamian technology", used by Egyptian rulers, which might have even have possessed anti-gravity properties (aiding the building of the pyramids?).

Some magical /psychic / philosophical elements in Gardner's arguments here become entwined not only with some elements related to earlier genetic engineering (such as familiarity with consciousness-raising via artificial stimulation of the pineal gland), but with the problem of finding a date for the Exodus.

Gardner dates Exodus at 1330BC. No strictly historical problem I'm aware of with any given date for Exodus is solved by fixing on 1330BC, or not; the point here is to appreciate the argument, or not. But that is a matter with earlier stories in earlier issues of Lost Worlds.

The "dragon" or Pendragon symbolism meanwhile had first surfaced into a courtly set of legitimations concerning rulership, a code backed by secret knowledge and wisdom, backed with the reputation of none other than Lilith, "for she held the matrilineal heritage of the sovereignty of the dragon".

Once the career of Akhenaten was over, the Pendragon symbolism, requiring legitimation by matrilineality, was driven underground by the descendants of Moses' extended family, monotheists and patriarchalists. It did not surface, quite, until "instigated by Sigisimund von Luxembourg, King of Hungary, a descendant of the Lusignan Dragon Kings of Jerusalem", after he had inherited the legacy in 1397.

So given that he moves from antiquity, through the Old and New Testament, and Mesopotamian and Egyptian as well, treating alchemy on the way through, Gardner has moved through jungles of symbolism, legend, and tradition. At these levels, of the appreciation of symbolisms, and provided critiques of Judaism and Christianity, (also, what he calls, churchianity), lambasted the results of our ignorance of Sumerian dynasties, rewritten the careers of key figures in Bible history, and drawn the sangreal, the Holy Grail, out of antiquity, so that we can better appreciate how it became connected with Arthurian legend. That may be at some romantic levels.

Meanwhile, there are many legitimate historical questions to ask: what is the best dating for the entire set of Egyptian dynasties, what is the origin of the Trojans (Gardner says the Hyksos came from Troy)? Can we actually think about the distant past without falling victim to resorting to proposing some golden age which produced wisdom we can only approach in wooly ways today; when life before 1333BC was so often so short, sharp and brutal, so primitive and unrelieved of suffering, for so many? (The Old Testament is filled with stories of bouts of genocidal furies.)

Gardner throughout his book also provides commentaries on root words with symbolic importance in terms of the developments of religions in several cultures, traces the use of various symbols, and explains how alchemy has been misunderstood. (At least, Carl Jung would not now appear to have done so well with his views on alchemy.)

For myself, I began to wonder about a certain reticence concerning human sacrifice in ancient days, customs which the Hebrews began to outlaw. About a lack of viewpoint on Isis and Osiris in the book. About coagulations arising from long-range interpretation of ancient practices, mingled with what we know from modern science, how little we know about the movements of peoples before 1000AD. About the Eurocentricity of the book.

It is hard to imagine today's Confucian Chinese, India's Hindus, or South Americans finding that this book has an explanation of where their people came from, although the Chinese will recognise dragons, and the Hindus will recognise Lilith as Kali.

What no one knows quite is how humanity became separated into different races. The symbolisms in this book are very much a Middle Eastern and European inheritance, but even here, although he mentions the notion of covenant as an element in social organisation, Gardner has no mention of the role of the idea of covenant as it appeared in Mithraism, which originated in Persia, relatively close to Mesopotamia - and Egypt, Greece and India.

As an Australian, I find it necessary to mention the mystery of the origins of New Guineans, Australian Aboriginals, and New Zealand Maoris, all of whom generated complex symbolisms within different time spans as explanations for their existence.

Were they too, the product of genetic engineering "in the time of Adam and Eve"? We do not know, and it seems, we have not yet asked. Still, Gardner does fleetingly allude to notions of "the simultaneous arising" of homo sapiens in different places, a theory yet unproven.

But as far as a revision of "Bible history" goes, Gardner's book is remarkable! This book should remain on your shelves for future reference, because books on these topics will remain an industry, there are still many veils covering antiquity, waiting to be pulled aside. This time around, we discover The Pendragon...

*****************Finis**************

New locations for Atlantis and Eden
Stephen Oppenheimer's startling book reviewed

By Dan Byrnes

EDEN IN THE EAST promises to provide a major shake-up for aficionados of mythology around the world. But whether the promise will last is also an intriguing question.

Notably, author Stephen Oppenheimer closes his radical discussion with the suggestion that he has only provided a glimpse of where Eden once was. That glimpse, however, is remarkable, stirring, fascinating and thought-provoking.

I chanced on this book only a few weeks after a gentleman writing a book on languages asked me to keep an eye out for books which might provide information for anyone trying to trace linkages in our knowledge of the prehistory of human languages, mythology, and mass genealogy. That is, if myths are to any extent, any kind of family history, inspection of such information might provide useful clues which can be cross-referenced with evidence on the diffusion of peoples, beliefs, forms of social organization, use of technology, or languages. In this context, Eden in the East would be the book to start with!

Some radical propositions (not given in any particular order of importance here) are that: Eden (as in the Garden of Adam and Eve) was located on a sunken continent now known as Sundaland, or, The Sunda Shelf. Basically, the Indonesian archipelago is the survivor. This area was flooded after the melting of ice-caps.

To approach even this aspect of his theory, Oppenheimer studied the distribution of major flood myths world-wide, and followed this up with a new-wave interpretation of the diffusion of other major myths, myths of human origins (with or without the direct intervention of gods), of a "garden of eden" as a cradle of human origins, fatal conflict between brothers (Cain and Abel, Osiris and Seth), incest, tree spirits in the context of a tree of life, or a tree of knowledge, the separation of earth and sky. Also, the quest for immortality, the dying and rising tree god.

This all started when Oppenheimer, a medico in various parts of South East Asia, especially Papua-New Guinea, found a tribal elder on New Guinea's northern coast remarking on the origins of certain people. Oppenheimer had found these people had genetic differences in their blood. The elder's view on these people's origins took Oppenheimer on a great journey in search of better evidence on genetic markers, on the cradle of civilization, a flooded Southeast Asian landmass, through a study of the diffusion of myths, and through whatever he could muster on relevant archaeology.

That archaeology includes marine archaeology, and this proposes striking reasons for some of Oppenheimer's originality.

In Eden in the East, Oppenheimer suggests that the Straits of Molucca (Malacca) need to be given special attention. This I found fascinating, since as a maritime historian interested in European trade in the East since 1600, or earlier, I know the Straits of Malacca had a fiercely important role for European spice-seekers seeking to profit from improving European diets. Oppenheimer seeks to convince us that the Straits of Malacca were of utmost importance in human history long before the time of Magellan.

Oppenheimer's views on many important "Western" or Middle Eastern myths suggest that Southeast Asian mythology proposed, but predated, the terms and subject matter of many myths now usually located, at origin, in the Middle East; especially in Mesopotamia. A central myth here is the Great Flood of Noah, with Turkey taken to be a landing spot. Here, analytical questions are: did Noah's flood top mountains, or was it a quieter flood, about five metres deep? Also an important question: were there any tsunamis, the result of some catastrophe(s), which terrified humanity?

Oppenheimer's views suggest a long, slow, shallow flood as vast sheets of ice melted, which gave people time to move, although a local catastrophe or two might have occurred in the interim.

In turn, this suggests which kinds of boats might have been used. Oppenheimer is perhaps the first student of myth to link "maritime history", and reasons for it, to information on the diffusion of myths, more so if the Mesopotamians are regarded as a land-based peoples with little maritime history. That is, any suggestion that the descendants of "Adam and Eve" were sailors seems entirely new - and raises new and serious questions about human migration patterns.

Using his remarkably wide range of evidence, some geological, some genetic, some medical, some mythic, folkloric, or literary (in the case of Old Testament commentary), Oppenheimer delves into pre-Neolithic, Neolithic and Neolithic/Bronze Age times, recodifying myths and additions to their complexity, as people moved by flood dispersed to populate the Neolithic cultures of China, India, Mesopotamia, Egypt and the eastern Mediterranean. The Polynesians did not come from China or Taiwan, but from Southeast Asian islands. (Lately have been some suggestions that New Zealand's Maoris were originally aboriginals of Taiwan. Oppenheimer also gives more space and significance to the aboriginals of Vietnam than I have ever read of before).

Interestingly, Oppenheimer chooses to use the formulations of Sir James Frazer (author of The Golden Bough), though for decades, Frazer's methodology has been sidelined or discredited by archaeologists and anthropologists.

Here, if the Frazer/Oppenheimer view is useful, the balance of probabilities concerning views on the Middle East/Egypt as the cradles of civilization, in terms of the development of urban culture, the linkages between deities and kingship, methods of population management via religion, may have to be radically revised. (Oppenheimer sees royal incest, as in Egypt, as an attempt to preserve male lines in a matriarchal system, a matriarchal system arriving via Southeast Asia .)

In Oppenheimer's view, tree myths, tree spirits, are important, since they are associated (in ways I have not read of before), with some myths of human origin which originated in Southeast Asia/Sunda.

The crucial East-West cultural linkages here will be seen as around 8000-5000 years old, which is interesting, since, along with an emphasis on maritime history, the linkages also pre-date human use of the horse. (The horse seems to have moved from south of Siberia, or, Mongolia, gradually south-west into Persia, then throughout the Middle East, its movement partly driven by battle history.)

In short, Oppenheimer's book is fascinating. On my first reading, I wondered: where might the flooding or loss of Atlantis fit in? When was rice first cropped? What about the origins of the Japanese people? Concerning Atlantis, Oppenheimer suggests, that Westerners' first conceptions of their origins stress two basic points: a catastrophe, and a movement of people from East to West. The flooding of a landmass such as Sunda fits the later history - except that the relevant maritime history has been lost (except for the career of Noah). Here, fresh questions arise from Oppenheimer's work. What did the fleeing Sunda people know of navigation, or, of astronomy, and hence, of the prehistory of mathematics?

Most readers of this book will lack some specialty, necessary background, in geology, or genetics, in the study of languages, human migration, Middle-Eastern prehistory, cultural history generally, whatever. For this reason, Oppenheimer's book will be slow to be contradicted by specialists in any given field, since they cannot speak with authority on areas outside their discipline. This will probably mean that enthusiasm for Oppenheimer's book will live on in the popularist area. But the views of specialists should remain interesting for decades to come in the light of Oppenheimer's syncretist theory.

The present reviewer, an Australasian, has to confess to one set of nagging doubts about the Oppenheimer theory, regarding unanswered questions (some unasked questions) about the origins of Australia's Aboriginals, who remain mysterious in terms of scientific explanations. I have read some views on migration-linkages between Australian Aboriginals and New Guineans, views rather academic and too heavily qualified to be convincing. Here, Oppenheimer does cite some views of Arnhem Land Aboriginals on their own origins, views which point to a maritime history, views also which fit with views on successive waves of people occupying Australia, although timeframes mentioned here - 40,000 years ago or longer - tend not to fit Oppenheimer's views. But here, I also wonder, if Australia was occupied 40,000 years ago, or previous, and there were indeed ship-landings on Australia's northern coasts, then those people might have been from Sunda, and might have been religious refugees more than anything else? Since their arrival in Australia predated anything we know in the history of catastrophism, including flood catastrophism caused by whatever? This might help explain the unique aspects of Australian Aboriginal religion and mythology, which are also mysterious, but it does nothing at all for some views, that these Aboriginals came from south-east India. Here, perhaps, we need to simply wait for reactions from Australian researchers on Oppenheimer's views.

Eden in the East comes highly recommended by this reviewer, and should be kept nearby for reference to a host of fascinating questions that are unlikely to go away. One also imagines, that a convincing rebuttal of Oppenheimer's cross-discipline theories, or even just one of his theories, would be just as interesting as Eden in the East. There is high suspense then - what will we find out next?

From LOST WORLDS Issue Three.

-Finis-

************************************************

< /center>

LILITH is the patron deity of ruins, the mirror opposite of Innana. In the Hebrew midrash, Lilith is the woman who knows how to "recite the fearful name of God to work calamity". She is: "The shadow which our technological civilization casts is that of Lilith, `The Maid of Desolation', who dances in the ruins of cities."
..."Lilith has returned. To effect a reconciliation with her, man must not seek to rape the feminine and keep it down under him. If he seeks to continue his domination of nature through genetic engineering and the repression of the spiritual, he will ensure that the only release from his delusions can come from destruction. Lilith will then dance on the ruins of Western civilization."

William Irwin Thompson, The Time Falling Bodies Take to Light: Mythology, Sexuality and the Origins of Culture. London, Rider/Hutchinson, 1981., pp. 183-184, pp. 250-251.

Australian poet Yve Louis with Kardoorair Press has just had published Lilith's Mirror, a new sequence of over thirty poems. Here she talks with Lost Worlds about her preoccupations with Lilith, which have arisen partly from her personal experience.

WITH a considered appreciation of the deeps of life, poet Yve Louis has set herself the task of helping to rehabilitate a reviled figure in Western cultural life - Lilith.

Yve: Lilith arises, or rather, she is traditionally exiled, due to the clash between archaic matriarchy, of which we know little, and patriarchy, of which we know rather more. [Editor: Actually, we tend to be able to define Lilith only in terms of the insults she is given.]

Lilith is not subversive. She is open; she is "in your face". It was the Jewish fathers who "discovered Yahweh", who needed to suppress and discredit her as an aspect of the rebellious feminine.

Lilith has many names in many old Semitic cultures, and was originally worshipped, for millennia, as Supreme Goddess (in Paleolithic/Neolithic times?). But when the "father god" arrived, Lilith was demonised. She was abolished, wiped from the canon. So that for centuries, she was worshipped underground. Mostly however, she refused to go away.

Still, her bad press began and the campaign against her was maintained. She was viewed as the evil seductress, who wanted to suck men's juices from them. She is succubus, and was thought to cause men's wet dreams.

Lilith might also tempt women with vanity when they gaze into the mirror. Lilith was discredited as a seductress or a child-slayer, and she was inculcated into women's consciousness, especially Jewish women, as a child-stealer. Among the many insults, Lilith has been known as a screech-owl, a long-haired demon of the night, as dame donkey legs (due to her supposedly hairy legs).

Lilith is found in ancient Arabic, Babylonian, Sumerian and Jewish mythology - the list is long. She is the non-mothering aspect of the feminine and it is necessary to rehabilitate her so women are no longer spiritual outcasts.

Here, Yve has applied a mostly Jungian outlook. Her poems are psychological aspects of the human self, male-and-female. In terms of Jewish or Old Testament mythology, Lilith represents Adam's lost feminine self (anima). Eve, however, is also part of Adam's lost feminine self. Eve represents the mothering, caring, nurturing aspects of the feminine, which have long been worshipped or respected. Lilith is rebellious, strong and wilful. She will not be dominated. Lilith is not only wilful but sensual and instinctual.

Seeing Lilith within a poetic context, Yve redefines her in terms of a new, open mythology, one refined for present-day uses.

Lilith to an extent has already been rehabilitated...

Lilith: her evolution:
Stage One: In early Semitic cultures, Lilith was a mother goddess, eg, Hecate, Innana, Ishtar-Astarte, Lilitie (or in India, Kali). There are many names for the same figure. Lilith means night, with connotations of the waxing-waning light of the moon.

In Stage Two, with the appearance of Yahweh, a sun god for a patriarchal culture, Lilith had to be exiled or abolished. She was made the subject of heresy, about 3000 years ago, or, from Old Testament times.

In Genesis, the first talk is of Adam... He is vaguely aware that he has lost something, or misses something/someone. Lilith, Adam's first wife, is created equal to Adam in the first, later revised, version of The Book of Genesis, in which there are two Creation stories.

In V1 of Genesis, Lilith is referred to, but not named, but she and Adam are created equal from the matrix of Chaos. Here, Lilith is Adamah, the female/feminine of Adam (man of earth), whereas Eve is made from Adam's rib... We find that as first wife, Lilith rebels and leaves Adam. Angels are sent to retrieve her, but she refuses to go back, so Lilith in Genesis VI is Adam's lost half (not entirely replaced by Eve?).

Stage Three: To the present time, Yve Louis' time, Lilith appears within in a more psychological context, and is given a psychological recognition. She becomes a Twentieth Century psychological force representing women's strength, the strong side, the strong sister, of the Eve figure.

Yve herself resonates to the archetype, without any religious point of view, but within a more psychological and mythological area.

Who has written about Lilith? Yve has noticed (the Australian poet) Christopher Brennan's long poem, and sees Brennan, as with many other male writers, as concerned about "their other side", their feminine side. But such writers have also written about her as evil, a seductress sucking male energy, a view which is often offensively generalised to all of womankind.

At times, women also have written about Lilith, revelling in the evil she can accomplish as a way of wreaking their own vengeance, using the archetype destructively.

In Yve's new book, she starts with Eve and Lilith as separate, but they merge, and finally can't be disentangled. Yve feels, that women have been suppressing Lilith and promoting Eve as models, because they are reluctant to unleash the positive powers of Lilith. Today, many women remain unaware of their Lilith powers.

Given the three stage evolution of Lilith, Yve sees a three-sided picture... Adam plus Lilith plus Eve as reflections of each other. That is, Lilith (in her own right, with her own strengths) has some masculine attributes, such as, the strength in not being put down, she has her Jungian animus. Lilith however does need (or will often inevitably have) some contact with Eve, before she re-enters the fulness of feminine life. Lilith is part of the secret life of humanity, having been split off and exiled.

Yve Louis says that we don't need Lilith to overtake Eve, as mother. Rather, we do need to realise what aspects of humanity are being discussed here. But with the advent of any sun-god, we should not seek light at the expense of darkness. Lilith as an archetype can be used positively, in synthesis with the Eve and Adam archetypes.

With Yve Louis, it's all been a slowly-growing feeling, Jungian-based, and in Yve's 30-odd poems, Lilith and Eve become more aware of each other, conscious of the other's aspect in themselves. Yve says, her preoccupation with Lilith began about her 40th year.

She says: "I think that in terms of human development, generally, Lilith may still have the capacity to alienate 20-year-old-women, who with social pressures, and biologically, must focus on the Eve aspect of womanhood. Yve says, "I don't think Lilith could ever stamp out women's desires to mate and raise children."

"On the other hand, you will find Lilith appearing when a woman walks out of a marriage, for example. When she realises that in the context of life's many challenges, her needs go far beyond child-rearing. Just how far beyond, is perhaps the question, but isn't it provoking a lot of talk?

-Finis-

Yve Louis, Lilith's Mirror, ISBN 0 908244-36-3 Available from Tony Bennett, Publisher, Kardoorair Press, PO Box 478, Armidale NSW 2350 Australia.

Check Website:
http://ccat.sas.upenn.edu/~humm/Topics/Lilith/

Bibliography and URLs (Other) - Review materials

Now return to the Index

Stop Press: For late entries

View these domain stats begun 18 December 2005