When they severed earth from sky

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1. 082349872349872Mar 2024
   When They Severed Earth From Sky (2004); see https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38761574
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2. 082349872349872Nov 2023
   On those topics I prefer Barber & Barber, "When They Severed Earth from Sky".

   If Josephson-Storm's thesis be true, at least given the existence proof that humanity has at least once decided that (a) the problem with studying inconsistent things is that it is too easy to make contradictory claims*, and therefore (b) we would be better off to study consistent things, allowing claims to be built upon claims, and hence at least ephemeral progress, we should expect the same process to remain possible after any future dark ages, whether it were to be carried out once more by humans, or —given our current level of destructive technology— perhaps even by remote descendants of the cockroaches.

   * were I to write a DD, my topic would be: "The Rapture occurred on schedule, in 1000 AD", and so few (they who would have been There to witness the 2nd coming in 1007) were taken and so many were Left Behind, that we the remanent have no historical record.

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3. 082349872349872Dec 2023
   A question for someone who already knows how to wrangle Skyfield: what is its answer for the "dawning of the age of Aquarius" ca. 2150?

   (see Chap.16 "Of Sky and Time" in "When They Severed Earth From Sky", esp. Table 2, for the prevalence of —or at least ascription to— mentions of precession of the equinoxes in ancient mythology)

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4. aebtebetenDec 2023
   H A Rey The Stars (1952) had a nice series of cartoons depicting a caveman, a grey-flannel-suit man, and a futuristic man all looking at their respective versions of the big dipper.

   The Barbers' When They Severed Earth From Sky (2004) hypothesises that the various kingship changes in heaven of several ancient mythologies correspond to the precession of the solstices and equinoxes through the zodiac. Eg, for Greek mythology, they give:

       Head God    Summer    Spring
       CHAOS       Libra     Cancer
                 ~6480 BC
       OURANOS     Virgo     Gemini
                 ~4320 BC
       KRONOS      Leo       Taurus
                 ~2160 BC
       ZEUS        Cancer    Aries            
                   

   along with parallel tables for Babylonian, Hittite, Phoenician, and Norse mythologies, and reference a different work which should give Germanic, Finnic, Iranian, Indian, and Chinese mythological shifts.

   According to this hypothesis, when the fall equinox moved into Virgo and Saturn and Jupiter came into conjunction with Pisces in 6 BC, many ancients took it as marking the advent of a new Kingdom of Heaven ruling a New Age, making them more susceptible to picking up new religions emanating from the middle east around that time, eg Mithraism.

   Does Virgil, writing ca 40 BC, predict the New Age? [Fourth Eclogue 4-10]

   > Now is come the last age of Cumaean song; the great line of the centuries begins anew. Now the Virgin returns, the reign of Saturn returns; now a new generation descends from heaven on high. Only do you, pure Lucina, smile on the birth of the child, under whom the iron brood shall at last cease and a golden race spring up throughout the world!

   (but note that by this counting the "Age of Aquarius" wouldn't be due to start until ca 2160; rather far off in human lifetimes from the 1960s)

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5. 082349872349872Nov 2023
   > Imagination and suspicion had a field day.

   Chapter 9 (p.93) of When They Severed Earth From Sky introduces the (Popperian?) trope

   Zone-of-Convenient-Remove Syndrome: People can perpetuate a vivid and seemingly plausible story by telling it of a third party who can't be consulted for verification

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