The concept that once-upon-a-time, a time long, long ago, an extraterrestrial civilization’s beings held sway and had influence over humanity has gained stature. We call those ancient beings the ‘gods’, even ‘God’. Collectively, they are now known by the popular phrase ‘ancient astronauts’. While that concept has just about zero credibility with scholars (vested interests perhaps), the general populace has had a far more open mind on the issue, at least judging from the popularity of books, movies, TV shows, documentaries, etc. that discuss the issue.
When it comes to mythology, my basic premise is that anytime you have near universal themes between wildly dispersed in space and/or time cultures, ethnic groups, nationalities, whatever, then you sit up and take notice that something more than just human imagination is at work. Last time the extraterrestrial ‘gods’ had arrived on Planet Earth and set up shop – a sort of home-away-from home.
*Our advanced extraterrestrials set up shop on Planet Earth as an R&R home-away-from-home, sort of taking dominion over this paradise / nature reserve / national park, perhaps with a view towards eventual long-term colonization.
*In much the same way as British colonizers of Australia brought with them reminders of home, from plants and crops to cattle and sheep, not to mention rabbits, cats and dogs, so to did the aliens bring with them their menagerie, like say the hydra, chimera, unicorns, Pegasus, and of course dragons.
*This would certainly explain why nearly every pre-Christian human culture independently had dragons as part of that culture. Dragons could be good (The East), or bad (The West) but regardless ‘here be dragons’. So, I suspect that at one time, thanks to the aliens, dragons were anything but mythical.
*There are many other common themes that cut across several cultural mythologies involving the extraterrestrial ‘gods’. One is that you can be turned to stone (or in the Biblical sense, a pillar of salt perhaps?). ‘Global’ floods are common in the mythological literature, not just in the Bible. Nearly all cultures have trickster ‘gods’. And in creation myths involving the cosmos, there’s nearly always a subdivision between attic (the sky or heaven, etc.); the basement (the underworld); and ground level (Planet Earth). That trilogy is probably not too surprising however since wherever we are there’s always an up, a down, and a sideways. However, the importance of near universal mythological themes between cultures with no contact between them is relatively obvious in an ‘ancient astronaut’ context.
*Speaking of alleged ‘global’ flood myths (actually local disasters separated in time and space), humans, not knowing any better when subjected to various natural disasters like these local, but intense, floods, were prone to blame the ‘gods’ for being pissed off at humanity – maybe they were!
*Such extraterrestrial beings became known collective as the gods or as deities to humans as soon as humans evolved sufficiently to develop (or were given a) language and a reasonable level of intellect. The gods are really an advanced race(s), representing a Type-II civilization(s), but to more simplistic humans, such advanced extraterrestrials were interpreted as deities.
*These advanced extraterrestrial beings will be hereafter often be referred to as the ‘gods’, because that’s they way humanity perceived them.
*The polytheistic extraterrestrial ‘gods’ divided up the Earth into various regions each patch under the administration of one of the senior ‘gods’.
*God, as just one of the numerous polytheistic gods (or ‘gods’ since they’re alien beings) had as His chosen people or patch of geography to lord over was the Middle East , the Israelites. Zeus / Jupiter had the Mediterranean region (Greece , Italy and surrounding regions); Odin’s chosen people were the Norsemen and his patch the Norse lands (Scandinavia); Atum and Ptah shared parts of Ancient Egypt, Indra covered India
*There are numerous creation myths surrounding the ‘gods’. The ‘gods’ created heaven and Earth; living things; other ‘gods’ – you name it, they probably created it.
*The ’gods’ are of course usually held responsible throughout our mythologies for creating human beings and human races.
*Humans may have evolved from ‘lesser’ primates, but the ‘gods’ did some artificial selection (genetic engineering) to assist the process so as to provide the ‘gods’ ultimately with a labour force. This is how the ‘gods’ ‘created’ humanity. That the ‘gods’ created humans is one very common creation tale among many differing cultures. “Genesis” has no monopoly on how the ‘gods’ breathed life into man and woman.
*This is akin to humans establishing a horse farm say, stocking same with say wild horses and then artificially breeding them for the trait(s) you want.
*Based on these universal mythological themes, there’s the belief that not only did the ‘gods’ create humans, but often for the purpose of ultimately serving the ‘gods’ as in doing their ‘housework’, and serving as sex objects, and of course serving the ‘gods’ through worship. The ‘gods’ are the masters; humans are their servants.
*The ‘gods’ created humans to do the hard yakka (one good reason why humans, not aliens, built the pyramids and other monumental stoneworks such as cities, as temples, as buildings, as massive statues, etc).
*Ultimately, the ‘gods’ (now called ‘ancient astronauts’ in our modern times), again based on universal mythologies shared by all cultures, gave modern humans the gifts of knowledge and culture and tools required for our domestication and transition from primitive unsophisticated hunter-gatherers to advanced sophisticated urbanite. This is, in fact, what archaeology confirms – our very rapid turnabout from the one lifestyle to the other.
*The ‘gods’ brought culture, arts and crafts, trades, fire, agriculture and all the other civilized products (i.e. science, writing, language) to early human societies. That might be one reason why the transition from primitive hunter-gatherers to sophisticated settlements and ‘civilization’ was apparently reasonably quick in many, but not all parts of the world.
*Some ‘gods’ were more generous in gift-giving than others; some geographical areas were better suited to these godly gifts, so not all humanity’s geographical cultures transformed from ‘primitive’ to ‘civilized’ equally. Some African and Pacific cultures (i.e. the Australian aborigines) remained nomadic, but their ‘gods’ and mythologies are also hard to mesh with the European, the Subcontinent and Asian cultures. This might be another case of division of labour – this lot of ‘gods’ took sole responsibility for this geographical area; this other lot of ‘gods’ looked after another geographical area. The styles of these differing collections of ‘gods’ might have differed enough to account for why some parts of the world developed ‘civilization’ and some didn’t, even though all parts had ‘gods’.
No comments:
Post a Comment