HISTORY IN CRISIS: DEATH ON THE INFORMATION SUPERHIGHWAY
The author is a humble amateur scholar, a Canadian
Hungarian. During his research work of thirty-five years, since 1977, he has found that many of the human sciences have been built on a totally wrong foundation. The sciences of ancient history, archaeology and chronology – the latter does not even exist
officially –, religion and part of literary criticism (autobiography) have been distorted by the mainstream scholars so extensively during the last two centuries that some areas of those sciences are at the verge of collapse. (The leaning tower of Pisa
may come into your mind at this point.)
Their basic confusion and the lack of correct directions are the direct consequence of prejudice, short-sightedness and lack
of objectivity regarding the overall picture. The insufficient knowledge of geography and history of those authorities combined with their systematic disbelief in ancient records and traditions was a definite contributing factor to the fiasco and misguidance.
In general, the majority of the previous scholars downplayed, despised and completely ignored the legends, religions, cultural traditions and scientific achievements of such major nations as Chinese, Jewish, Aztec, Toltec, Greek, Irish-Scottish and Norse,
let alone the nations of the Near East, mainly Mesopotamia. Our ancestors, wherever your ancestors lived a few millennia ago, were much more intelligent than what you learn about them in the modern reference books of history and anthropology.
Therefore, this paper is a respectful challenge of the present direction of the humanities that our mainstream scholars have inherited from their predecessors. It is written in a “telegram style” because printing is costly in every country. There
are several complete studies available for publishers, with proper references and bibliography. The author contacted more than 2,450 editors, publishers, associations, and other authorities during the last decade.
ABSTRACT:
Mankind’s knowledge about the universe and our world is usually divided into natural and human sciences. Both of these divisions include numerous independent sciences. Each of these normally has a clearly defined and quite rigid borderline. This means
that professional scholars, in general, do not venture beyond their respective boundaries. For example, an average astronomer does not want to get involved in issues of cuneiform texts that belong to archaeology. Archaeologists do not dare to cross their border
and discuss the magnitude of ancient solar eclipses or the value of Delta-T (a.k.a. clock-time error).
This cautious approach results in the formation of several "black holes" or "no man's lands" in the universal knowledge. Sometimes there is a kind
of communication between the two groups of specialists or expert scholars. In this way, new interdisciplinary sciences have been born, like biochemistry or astrophysics. Nowadays the term "interdisciplinary studies" is often used by many people as an equivalent
for "catastrophism" between history and astronomy. The author disagrees with such a restricted definition. He is certainly not a catastrophist and does not support Velikovskyism.
In the broader sense, the author is calling the world's attention to the
problem of missing sciences. Sometimes legends, religions, and literary masterpieces are considered totally fictitious while a serious scholar could easily find good and valid scientific explanations for the formation of that belief, story, or tradition. The
present author is using the question of Robinson Crusoe's adventures as the best illustration for such universal misunderstanding.
The author’s original research is the no man's land between ancient history, archaeology and astronomy. Imagine
a triangle with these three disciplines at its points. This triangle is a simplified scheme because historiography, ancient legends and old traditions of many nations - related to ethnology and anthropology - have been involved as well. Let alone calendric
studies about ancient nations. The no man's land could be called "chronology," a forgotten and quite ignored science. Since officially there is no "professor of chronology" in any country, the task was shifted to the shoulders of amateur scholars. One of them
is the present author. A science cannot flourish without the work of paid professional scholars. The lack of chronology, resulting in lack of absolute dates in any culture, fettered the advancement of the neighbouring sciences: archaeology, history, astronomy,
etc. The negative effect rippled over to physical scientific fields such as radiocarbon dating or dendrochronology.
SOME CONTROVERSIES IN THE HUMAN SCIENCES
The modern scholars constructed their scientific palace on almost exclusively Egyptian foundations, despite of admitting the total lack of reliable astronomical records for Egyptian chronology. They claim is that their harmonized Egyptian-Assyrian chronology,
based on list of kings and pharaohs, is scientifically acceptable. In reality, they are living in a wishful dream world that is neither logical nor scientific. Their solutions are very arbitrary. They are unable to place many events and evidence into a proper
frame since they do not want to see a frame. Thus, hundreds of arguments, events, and data have been simply ignored by mainstream scholars. Whatever does not fit into their pre-fabricated conclusions and theories, those details have simply been silenced by
their peer-reviewed publications and media. Their reasoning and approach is based on extrapolating procedures of the details, instead of realizing a larger frame.
The backbone of history is chronology – a science that has no paid professional scholars. Now, how can you build a science and work on the advancement of the sciences without regular scholars of chronology, only by amateurs? It is impossible since no
publisher wishes to rely on amateurs. So far no scientific publisher has realized this basic failure and controversy.
In short, the majority of the modern
scholars in critical areas of the humanities do not believe many of the achievements of the ancients. Whatever the experts do not understand today about the remote past they simply call “legendary”. This is a simplified or streamlining approach.
To keep claiming that our ancestors two or five millennia ago must have been much more primitive than our last few generations is a very superficial conclusion.
The
first honorary recipient of one of the author’s books was President Reagan. (His secretary wrote me that the President liked his book.) It contained a chapter about the Transylvanian runic inscription of the Yarmouth Stone in Nova Scotia. The runic text
of Tyrkir, Leif Ericson's "Southerner" foster father, reads from right to left: "[Erik]son have been at this place too, with many of his com[panions]". Canada’s ambassador to Hungary, Mr. Derek T. Fraser, sent a thank you letter to the decipherer lady
who did the work in 1984, at age 89.
The writer has an unpublished book manuscript proving that Robinson Crusoe was a real person. His island is still uninhabited,
near Costa Rica. Even the few recorded words of his cannibal man Friday can be found in an old Spanish-Térraba dictionary. Prof. Thor Heyerdahl described Crusoe's cornfield exactly as the hero did in his autobiography by Defoe's edition. The extremely
large number of B & W and colour illustrations would make it a bestseller book, the world’s most beautifully illustrated edition of Crusoe’s adventures. It would be a dream of ESL teachers and young readers in every country.
The publishers were uninterested as well in the manuscript of a polyglot dictionary of 116 languages of the world, based on 555 words.
Also, the revised chronologies
of the ancient world are waiting for a publisher. It is proven that Rome was not founded in 753 but in 745 BC, based on three solar eclipse records during the life of Romulus who was born in 762 BC and died in 709 BC. Or, one of the fix points of Chinese history
is 18 December 1119 BC when Wu Wang began his punishing expedition against the Shang Dynasty. Then, five years after an invisibility of the five planets (1035 BC), the pheasants and hares were scared by a major solar eclipse on 29 April 1030 BC in northern
China. The Bamboo Annals tell that the sun rose twice in (Xin)Zheng during the first regnal year of King Yi: it rose for the second time about 2 p.m. on March 21, 926 BC, with a magnitude of 81.77%. Finally, a pair of lunar of solar eclipses took
place in 776 BC, according to the Book of Odes. Although the solar eclipse was minor, the cyclic day of the record is matching.
In the earliest Jewish
records, one can fix the special days of Joshua when the Sun and Moon stopped on the sky during the battles of Joshua, due to a unique pair of solar and lunar eclipses two weeks apart. Centuries later, an invisible "angel was holding a sword in the sky" over
Jerusalem that was actually a long, sword-shaped comet. For comparison, Daniel Defoe, in “A Journal of the Plague Year” (Paula R. Backscheider, editor, W. W. Norton & Company, New York and London, 1992: 22) wrote, “Here they
told us, they saw a Flaming-Sword held in a Hand, coming out of a Cloud, with a Point hanging directly over the City” (London).
Of course, the rare double
eclipse of Joshua is well identifiable, just like the comet: the lunar eclipse took place over the Aijalon Valley (on the western horizon from Gibeon) while a minor solar eclipse in the middle of the sky, near noon. There were two weeks between them but both
may have happened during the same battle or siege at Gibeon. It is better not to mention the year at this point because it would make many scholars of the low chronologies quite unhappy. Thus, the biblical wording is quite accurate regarding the Sun and the
Moon that “stood still” almost on the selfsame day, instead of “almost for a full day.” Languages were much more primitive 3500 years ago. Also, they always have been dynamic and changing since the days of the Exodus. The expression
“the Sun stopped on the sky” was often used for eclipses by European authors, even as late as c. 1600 CE.
Modern mainstream
scholars place the Exodus of the Israelites out of Egypt under the reign of Pharaoh Ramesses II. In reality, the Pharaoh of the Exodus was Akhenaten. His widely accepted seventeen regnal years seem incorrect since an Amarna letter (from the town of Tunip)
refers to Akhenaten’s silence of twenty years. Another Amarna letter (EA 296) mentions Yahtiru, high priest of Midian. The latter corresponds with Yethro, the priest of Midian, the father-in-law of Moses.
The Egyptian, Greek, Jewish, Hittite, Assyrian and Irish genealogies support an astronomy-based long chronology. While the dominating modern theories of the mainstream authorities are usually based only on one or two astronomical fix points, the present author
can demonstrate dozens of supporting astronomical data. Such reliable absolute dates come primarily from ancient observations of solar and lunar eclipses, or recorded planetary conjunctions. [Lately several scholars of radiocarbon dating and dendrochronology
declared that the high chronology is harmonious with their results while the low or middle chronologies are not.]
One is tempted to consider the destruction of Thera
(Santorini) as the source of the ten plagues just before the Exodus out of Egypt, or, at least for some of them. It would be very logical except that the mainstream scholars – mainly geologists – find it too high to be associated with the Exodus
if the latter was historical at all.
Without discussing the Thera eruption and the consequent tsunami in the Eastern Mediterranean, there is another approach to
fix the chronologies of the region. The skeleton is as follows:
(a) The royal scribe Moses, recorded as Meri-mose in the Egyptian inscriptions, had a victory over the Nubians at Ibhet (or Ibhat) in Year 5 of Amenhotep
III. The Internet shows several web sites about that conquest. One of the web sites is http://www.touregypt.net/merimose.htm which is harmonious with the details given by Josephus Flavius and the Old Testament.
I.e., Moses married a Nubian princess after his victory, and after the Exodus some Israelites murmured against her.
(b) About 35 years later, a few years after the death of Pharaoh Amenhotep III, the Exodus
took place. Within a few months Moses met Yethro. The latter was high priest of the Midianites as supported by the letter EA 296. Yethro may have been ten or twenty years younger than Moses. There were plagues after the death of Amenhotep III roughly till
the death of Tutankhamun, during the Amarna Age. More than ten years after the death of Tutankhamun a major solar eclipse was seen at Hattusha. The queen of the Hittites died due to that bad omen.
(c) The Israelites
settled in Heshbon, Aroer and the banks of the Arnon that all belonged to the Ammonites.
(d) Forty years after the Exodus the walls of Jericho collapsed and buried parts of the town in which the latest Egyptian
scarabs bore the name of Amenhotep III. (Amenhotep IV = Akhenaten was a loser and he did not rule over that region.)
(e) In the 41st year a rare and identified pair of (lunar and solar) eclipses took place at Gibeon,
during the battles of Joshua.
(f) The judge Jephthah – 300 years after the Israelites’ settlement at Heshbon, Aroer and the Arnon Valley mentioned above – defeats the Ammonites again.
(g) King Solomon, in his fourth regnal year, begins the construction of the Temple in the 480th year after the Exodus.
(h) The Hittite king Arnuwanda III, a contemporary of Pharaoh
Merneptah, had troubles with the Greek (Achaean) ruler Attarshiyash, better known as King Acrisius of Argos. Acrisius was the fifth ancestor of Hercules. The latter was conceived in Alcmena’s womb during a solar eclipse at daybreak, on 14 April 1281
BC in Thebes.
Mainstream scholars date the Amarna Age is dated around the mid-14th century BC. Hendrik J. Bruins and Johannes van der Plicht (“Tell
es-Sultan (Jericho): Radiocarbon Results…” (1995) wrote, “Calibration of the above Jericho dates is a bit premature, because several groups are currently testing the accuracy of both the 1986 and 1993 calibration curves. Nevertheless,
preliminary calibration results are presented for comparison, based on 4 different calibration curves and 3 different computer programs. Wiggles in the calibration curves translate the precise BP dates into rather wide ranges in historical years. The final
destruction of MBA [Middle Bronze Age] Jericho occurred during the late 17th or the 16th century BC.”
The present author was lucky enough to find the exact day of the "legendary Fifth Sun" of the Mexicans on a "4-Earthquake" day. (The Aztecs began their days at noon. They introduced the intercalary days only a few decades before the fall of their empire.)
It is easy to demonstrate that the Aztecs left their homeland (Aztlan, now Grand Bahama Island) in 1064. They spent 28 years (1065-1092) at the "Great Serpent Mound" in Ohio, etc.
Summarizing the conflict and the present crisis in the human sciences, we can describe the approach of the mainstream scholars as follows. Aztlan was a legendary island; the Aztec and Toltec “suns” or ages are pure legends; Vinland of the Norse
sagas was only legendary; the Norsemen may have reached America but had no means to return [note: these scholars perhaps did not know of the Gulf Stream]; the Yarmouth Stone is a freak of nature; the Yale Vinland Map is a fake; King Arthur was fictitious;
the travels of St Brendan are fictitious; the legend of the “Island of Seven Cities” is unscientific; the ancient Jewish traditions – that ended up in the Old Testament – are unreliable fiction; the patriarchs from Abraham to Moses
were invented; the Exodus of the Israelites took place between 1200 and 1100 BC; the events and emperors in the ancient Chinese classics are legendary before the Zhou Dynasty and they are reliable only after the 8th century BC; the solar eclipse of Hsi and
Ho is legendary only; the foundation of Rome – like Romulus and Remus – was legendary because the twin babies could not have been suckled by a female wolf; there was no Troy or Trojan War at all and the poet Homer was a liar; the Odyssey
is totally fictitious; Hercules was a legendary hero only; the voyage of the Argonauts was fictitious; the battles of Thermopylae and Salamis took place in 480 BC, Herodotus was a liar or teller of fancy stories; there is a scientific fault line (through
Greece) in the radiocarbon data between Europe and the ancient Near East; the Adventures of Robinson Crusoe was pure fiction – the first English novel – written by Defoe, based on his interview with Alexander Selkirk.
On the other hand, in our opinion, the correct situation is as follows: Aztlan was Grand Bahama Island where the Fifth Sun was the Sun’s rebirth after a total eclipse; The Aztec and Toltec “Suns” were real ages in two different accounts and
locations (in the Bahamas and Mexico); the northern promontory of Vinland was found and excavated by Prof. Helge Ingstad; the Norse sagas were true; Tyrkir’s runic inscription on the Yarmouth Stone is the earliest surviving Hungarian script (from America,
not from Europe!); the name of King Arthur and his death was recorded in the nearly contemporary British Easter Annals; St Brendan’s expedition may have reached the Bahamas and made a drawing depicting the Great Inagua Island’s shoreline;
The Island of the Seven Cities was Aztlan in the Bahamas where some Portuguese refugees, fled from the Moors, settled in seven towns.
The Jewish traditions are correct,
forming the most reliable and unbroken historical and genealogical data for ancient times; the Exodus took place under Pharaoh Akhenaten; the Xia and Shang dynasties are historical and datable by early Chinese astronomical records; the recorded eclipse of
Hsi and Ho was real and took place on October 22, 2137 BC; Romulus and the foundation of the City are securely datable by three eclipses; “female wolf” [like the names Lupe or Lupita] was the name of a woman who suckled Romulus and Remus.
Troy and the Trojan War are real history; the tenth year of its siege was dated by a pair of solar and lunar eclipses in 1183 BC; Homer knew many details of the Trojan
War from early Greek inscriptions; most of the Odyssey is true, so the return of Odysseus provides the firmest historical date due to a total solar eclipse at Ithaca in 1178 BC; Hercules, a historical person, was born in 1280 BC a few months after
a major eclipse at daybreak when Zeus extended the nuptial night of Alcmena; the voyage of the Argonauts took place in 1261 BC, fixed by a Greek and a Persian eclipse record; the battles of Thermopylae and Salamis took place in 478 BC (and not in 480) that
is matching with the two solar eclipse reports of Herodotus; the radiocarbon fault line is totally unscientific, caused by an error of about 150 years in the traditional Egyptian chronology in the days of the Exodus. Finally, the story of Robinson Crusoe has
nothing to do with Selkirk. It is Robinson-Kreutznaer’s true autobiography, only edited by Defoe. The story took place on Cocos Island that is an uninhabited Island of Costa Rica.
One can see without much difficulty how a few missing interdisciplinary sciences have a cumulative negative effect on the advancement of the human sciences. The domino effects are enormous, even if we reduce our scope to the formation of religions. Simply,
the modern authorities always believed that every truth recorded by the ancients was only a myth. Mankind has lost its previous ability to separate truth from fiction. The consequences are tragic on the long run. Humanists universally have lost their compass
showing the true north. Worse, all these intriguing issues are interdisciplinary and do not belong to anyone's job description – just like the solution of a global financial and economical crisis.
Many of the world’s book publishers form a barrier between useful news and the universal readership. (One can understand why so many publishers disappear because they fail to serve the readership.) None of them showed interest even to read the author’s
manuscripts. During the last decade he contacted by his cover letters 2,450 editors or publishers worldwide, some of them twice. What he is trying to tell you that there is a huge and wonderful other world beyond our dull dogmas in every science, or between
those fields. One may call the title of his book “Death on the Communications Superhighway in No Man’s Land.”
You may suggest that the author should
submit these articles to a publisher specialized in such fields but there is no such publisher or editor. The problems are usually shifted to another publisher and another science – that simply do not yet exist. The few publishers that try to cover the
ignored area of archaeoastronomy do not seem to get enough funds that would enable them to survive. So far, during the last decade, the author submitted detailed cover letters to 2,450 editors, publishers and scholarly authorities of the world, without much
result: the offered manuscripts did not belong to their publishing plans or profiles.
Of course, the present writer would be willing and glad to participate in an
open round-table debate on television. (Immanuel Velikovsky was part of such open discussion as well. He was – rightfully – defeated but his theory and lay followers seem to be stronger than ever.)
Our point and main argument is expressed vividly in the words of the great Arctic explorer Fridtjof Nansen, “The history of the human race is a continuous struggle from darkness toward light. It is therefore of no purpose to discuss the use of knowledge;
man wants to know and when he ceases to do so he is no longer man.”