Ficino On Timaeus

All Things Natural: Ficino On Plato's Timaeus

"Near the beginning of this dialogue [Timaeus] Plato relates an account of the war that was once faught between the Athenians and the men of Atlantis. It is clear that Crantor, the principal expounder of Plato at the time, takes the account to be devoid of any allegory. Some, on the other hand, take it as pure allegory, but they are refuted by Platonists of the highest standing, who declare that it is an historical account because Plato has uttered it. The tale that follows is indeed amazing, but totally true." -- Marsilio Ficino, polymath, On Plato's Timaeus, Chapter 4, 15th century

"Here I ask you once more to remember that nine thousand years are calculated by Eudoxus as a thousand months; and that Phaethon, offspring of the Sun, consumed the Earth with thunderbolts, which, according to some, means that a huge comet [Venus], solar by nature and eventually disintegrating, provoked unbearable periods of heat and perhaps the fires which Moses says were sent by divine intervention." -- Marsilio Ficino, polymath, On Plato's Timaeus, Chapter 5, 15th century

Hieroglyphs On Saite Obelisks Require Translation

I have been able to find Athanasius Kircher's translation which he made before the discovery of the Rosetta Stone but I have not been able to find any other translation: Translation of the Minervan obelisk.

As well as the obelisk of Psamtik II

Cooper, W.R., and Chabas, F.J., A Short History of the Egyptian Obelisks, 1877

20,000 Year Old Ruins

The Site of Mount Padang is the Evidence of Architectural Masterpieces of Ancient The results of radiometric analysis of the content of the carbon element in some samples of cement in drill core from the depth of 5-15 meters which was conducted in 2012 at the prestigious Laboratory, BETALAB, Miami, USA in the mid-2012 shows its age with a range between 13,000 and 23,000 years ago. Previously, the results of carbon dating which carried out in the BATAN laboratory, the dominant quartz sand that fills the voids between the columns of andesite at the depth of 8-10 meters below the terrace of five also showed the same age range is about 13,000 years ago. Data from drilling conducted by DR. Andang Bachtiar and microscopic analyzes of rocks from drill core samples were carried out by DR. Andri Subandrio, geologist of volcanic rocks of the Petrology laboratory ITB, can be assured that the high resistivity body rock is andesite lava rock, the same rock type as the column of the site of mount Padang. Another thing that is interesting from petrological analysis is finding of many microscopic cracks in the thin section of andesite stone columns that allegedly non-natural because the cracks cut its constituent mineral crystals. Danny H. Natawidjaja states that mount Padang has same potency with Borobudur, even it is more meaningful because it can be a breakthrough of knowledge about "the craddle of civilizations" in this century, as a proof of the great monuments of the oldest civilizations in the glorious world that destroyed because of catastrophe thousands of years ago in the pre-history of Indonesia. "It is not impossible anymore if Indonesia as archipelago nation has civilization as advanced as the ancient Egyptian civilization, even in the much older," Danny said.

Why Should We Care About the Opinion of the Many?

"But why, my dear Crito, should we care about the opinion of the many? Good men, and they are the only persons who are worth considering, will think of these things truly as they happened." -- Socrates in Plato, Crito, 360 B.C.

Proclus: Commentary on the Timaeus of Plato

"That the design of the Platonic Timaeus embraces the whole of physiology and that it pertains to the theory of the universe, discussing this from the beginning to the end, appears to me to be clearly evident to those who are not entirely illiterate." -- Proclus, philosopher, 5th century

"Hence the fire which is there (in the heavenly bodies) is light; and it is not proper to disturb the discussion of it, by directing our attention to the gross and dark fire of the sublunary region." -- Proclus, philosopher, 5th century

"It is also evident that the middle elements should be in the heavenly bodies, but that different elements should abound in different parts of the celestial regions." -- Proclus, philosopher, 5th century

Democritus's Steady State Vs. Plato's Big Bang

There is not much new in cosmology as far as I can tell.

"... so far as time is concerned we see that all with one exception are in agreement in saying that it is uncreated: in fact, it is just this that enables Democritus to show that all things cannot have had a becoming: for time, he says, is uncreated. Plato alone asserts the creation of time, saying that it had a becoming together with the universe, the universe according to him having had a becoming." -- Aristotle, Physics, Book VIII, 350 B.C.

Plato's response is customary for Big Bangers:

"And Aristoxenus, in his Historic Commentaries, says that Plato wished to burn all the writings of Democritus that he was able to collect; but that Amyclas and Cleinias, the Pythagoreans, prevented him, as it would do no good; for that copies of his books were already in many hands. And it is plain that that was the case; for Plato, who mentions nearly all the ancient philosophers, nowhere speaks of Democritus; not even in those passages where he has occasion to contradict his theories, evidently, because he said that if he did, he would be showing his disagreement with the best of all philosophers...." -- Diogenes Laertius, historian, 3rd century

Atlantis Art of Nicholas Roerich

Star of the Hero, 1936


The Last of Atlantis, 1928


And We Do Not Fear, 1922

"I admire sincerely your art so much that I can say without exaggeration that never have landscapes made such a great impression on me." -– Albert Einstein, mathematician, 1931

Planetary Cause of Rapid Pole Shift

"...consider what impetuous force
Turns stars and planets in a diff'rent course.
I steer against their motions; nor am I
Born back by all the current of the sky.
But how cou'd you resist the orbs that roul
In adverse whirls, and stem the rapid pole?"-- Ovid, poet, Metamorphoses Book II: Phaeton, 8

"Have we of all mankind been deemed deserving that heaven, its poles uptorn, should overwhelm us? In our time has the last day come?" -- Lucius A. Seneca, philosopher statesman, Thyestes, 1st century

Greenland and Antarctica are currently in an ice age. But this has not always been the case. Formerly temperate green continents such as Greenland and Antarctica (see my post When Antarctica Was Green) weren't always located at the poles. So-called "ice ages" such as exist in Antarctica and Greenland today are only caused by axis shift. There was an astronomical catastrophe. Though some giants and megafauna survived, it should be called the P-H Extinction Event since it marked the end of the Pleistocene and the beginning of the Holocene.

Woelfli, W., and Baltensperger, W., A Link Between an Ice Age Era and a Rapid Polar Shift, Jul 2004

The striking asymmetry of the ice cover during the Last Global Maximum suggests that the North Pole was in Greenland and then rapidly shifted to its present position in the Arctic Sea. A scenario which causes such a rapid geographic polar shift is physically possible. It involves an additional planet, which disappeared by evaporation within the Holocene. This is only possible within such a short period, if the planet was in an extremely eccentric orbit and hot. Then, since this produced an interplanetary gas cloud, the polar shift had to be preceded by a cold period with large global temperature variations during several million years.

Either that or maybe there really isn't a global conspiracy spanning several millenia to convince us Venus is a new planet.

"As Zeus's daughter [Venus] she'll be immortal and live in heaven with her brothers, Pollux and Castor, the heavenly twins, an extra star for ships to steer their courses by." -- Euripides, playwright, Orestes, 408 B.C.

"Then, it was then that Zeus changed the radiant paths of the stars, and the light of the sun, and the bright face of dawn; and the sun drove across the western back of the sky with hot flame from heaven's fires, while the rain-clouds went northward and Ammon's lands [Egypt] grew parched and faint, not knowing moisture, robbed of heaven's fairest showers of rain." --Euripides, playwright, Electra, 408 B.C.

"Some of the Italians called Pythagoreans say that the comet is one of the planets [Venus]." -- Aristotle, philosopher, Meteorology, 350 B.C.

"...all the comets that have been seen in our day have vanished without setting, gradually fading away above the horizon; and they have not left behind them either one or more stars. ... Democritus however, insists upon the truth of his view and affirms that certain stars [Venus] have been seen when comets dissolve." -- Aristotle, philosopher, Meteorology, 350 B.C.

"Here you see the Morning Star [Venus]. Who sees the Morning Star shall see more, for he shall be wise." -- Black Elk, medicine man, August 1930

"... the morning star [Venus] lives to give men wisdom ...." -- Black Elk, medicine man, August 1930

"In an ancient Hindu tablet of planets, attributed to the year -3012 Venus among the visible planets is absent [Delambre, J.B.J., Histoire de l'astronomie ancienne I, Page 407, 1817: 'Venus alone is not found there.']." -- Immanuel Velikovsky, cosmologist, 1950

"These four-planet systems and the inability of the ancient Hindus and Babylonians to see Venus in the sky, even though it is more conspicuous than the other planets, are puzzling unless Venus was not among the planets." -- Immanuel Velikovsky, cosmologist, 1950

Phaeton, Comets, and The Impacts

Is science myth or is myth science? I'm so confused:

PNAS (Oct 07): Evidence for an extraterrestrial impact 12,900 years ago that contributed to the megafaunal extinctions and the Younger Dryas cooling.

A carbon-rich black layer, dating to ≈12.9 ka, has been previously identified at ≈50 Clovis-age sites across North America and appears contemporaneous with the abrupt onset of Younger Dryas (YD) cooling. The in situ bones of extinct Pleistocene megafauna, along with Clovis tool assemblages, occur below this black layer but not within or above it. Causes for the extinctions, YD cooling, and termination of Clovis culture have long been controversial. In this paper, we provide evidence for an extraterrestrial (ET) impact event at ≅12.9 ka, which we hypothesize caused abrupt environmental changes that contributed to YD cooling, major ecological reorganization, broad-scale extinctions, and rapid human behavioral shifts at the end of the Clovis Period. Clovis-age sites in North American are overlain by a thin, discrete layer with varying peak abundances of (i) magnetic grains with iridium, (ii) magnetic microspherules, (iii) charcoal, (iv) soot, (v) carbon spherules, (vi) glass-like carbon containing nanodiamonds, and (vii) fullerenes with ET helium, all of which are evidence for an ET impact and associated biomass burning at ≈12.9 ka.

New Scientist (May 07): Firestorm from space wiped out prehistoric Americans.

THE Clovis people of North America, flourishing some 13,000 years ago, had a mastery of stone weaponry that stood them in good stead against the constant threat of large carnivores, such as American lions and giant short-faced bears. It's unlikely, however, that they thought death would come from the sky.

According to results presented by a team of 25 researchers this week at the American Geophysical Union meeting in Acapulco, Mexico, that's where the Clovis people's doom came from. Citing several lines of evidence, the team suggests that a wayward comet hurtled into Earth's atmosphere around 12,900 years ago, fractured into pieces and exploded in giant fireballs. Debris seems to have settled as far afield as Europe.

Jim Kennett, an oceanographer at the University of California, Santa Barbara, and one of the team's three principal investigators, claims immense wildfires scorched North America in the aftermath, killing large populations of mammals

New Scientist (Dec 07): Ancient flood brought Gulf Stream to a halt .

It was the biggest climate event of the last 10,000 years and caused the most dramatic change in the weather since humans began farming. And it may yet hold important lessons about climate change in the 21st century.

Just over 8000 years ago, a huge glacial lake in Canada burst, and an estimated 100,000 cubic kilometres of fresh water rushed into the North Atlantic. Researchers now say they know for sure that this catastrophic event shut down the Gulf Stream and cooled parts of the northern hemisphere by several degrees for more than a hundred years.

They say the findings show modelling studies are right to suggest that something similar could happen with equal abruptness

Science (Jan 09): Nanodiamonds in the Younger Dryas Boundary Sediment Layer.

We report abundant nanodiamonds in sediments dating to 12.9 ± 0.1 thousand calendar years before the present at multiple locations across North America. Selected area electron diffraction patterns reveal two diamond allotropes in this boundary layer but not above or below that interval. Cubic diamonds form under high temperature-pressure regimes, and n-diamonds also require extraordinary conditions, well outside the range of Earth's typical surficial processes but common to cosmic impacts. N-diamond concentrations range from 10 to 3700 parts per billion by weight, comparable to amounts found in known impact layers. These diamonds provide strong evidence for Earth's collision with a rare swarm of carbonaceous chondrites or comets at the onset of the Younger Dryas cool interval, producing multiple airbursts and possible surface impacts, with severe repercussions for plants, animals, and humans in North America.

National Geographic (Jan 09): Diamonds Link Comets to Killer Freeze 13,000 Years Ago.

Diamond dust found in 12,900-year-old sediments at six North American sites boosts evidence of Earth's impact with a swarm of comets at that time, researchers reported today.

The discovery supports the theory that an impact with an extraterrestrial object may have contributed to the disappearance of large mammals and the Clovis culture of prehistoric humans, the scientists say.

Scientists proposed in 2007 that a cosmic impact, possibly by multiple airbursts of comets, set off a 1,300-year-long cold spell known as the Younger Dryas, fragmented the prehistoric Clovis culture and led to the extinction of a large range of animals, including mammoths, across North America.

In today's issue of the journal Science, a team led by the University of Oregon's Douglas J. Kennett, a member of the 2007 research team, reports finding billions of microscopic-size diamonds in sediments in the six locations (see map below) during digs funded by the National Science Foundation.

"The nanodiamonds that we found at all six locations exist only in sediments associated with the Younger Dryas Boundary layers, not above it or below it," said Kennett, a University of Oregon archaeologist, in a university press release.

Kennett and colleagues say the only obvious explanation for the concentration of nanodiamonds (seen in the image on the left) is that they were created in the high-energy environment of an impact by a comet or other extraterrestrial object.

"These discoveries provide strong evidence for a cosmic impact event at approximately 12,900 years ago that would have had enormous environmental consequences for plants, animals and humans across North America."

Washington Post (Jan 09): Gems Point to Comet as Answer to Ancient Riddle.

Something dramatic happened about 12,900 years ago, and the continent of North America was never the same. A thriving culture of Paleo-Americans, known as the Clovis people, vanished seemingly overnight. Gone, too, were most of the largest animals: horses, camels, lions, mammoths, mastodons, saber-toothed cats, ground sloths and giant armadillos.

Scientists have long blamed climate change for the extinctions, for it was 12,900 years ago that the planet's emergence from the Ice Age came to a halt, reverting to glacial conditions for 1,500 years, an epoch known as the Younger Dryas.

In just the last few years, there has arisen a controversial scientific hypothesis to explain this chain of events, and it involves an extraterrestrial calamity: a comet, broken into fragments, turning the sky ablaze, sending a shock wave across the landscape and scorching forests, creatures, people and anything exposed to the heavenly fire.

Now the proponents of this apocalyptic scenario say they have found a new line of evidence: nanodiamonds. They say they have found these tiny structures across North America in sediments from 12,900 years ago, and they argue that the diamonds had to have been formed by a high-temperature, high-pressure event, such as a cometary impact.

The Wisdom of Plato

"A marvellous forgetfulness of the former destruction would appear to have come over them." -- Plato, Laws: Book III, 360 B.C.

"There did really happen, and will again happen, like many other events of which ancient tradition has preserved the record, the portent which is traditionally said to have occurred in the quarrel of Atreus and Thyestes. ... how the sun and the stars once rose in the west, and set in the east, and that the god reversed their motion, and gave them that which they now have as a testimony to the right of Atreus. " -- Plato, The Statesman, 360 B.C.

But Plato was only the Scholarch of the Greek Academy so what did he know?

The Wisdom of Egypt and Solon In Plato's Timaeus

In Plato's Timaeus (360 B.C.), Critias, an elderly relative of Plato, tells Socrates the story of his grandfather, also named Critias, and his great grandfather Dropides who was friends with Solon. The speaker is an Egyptian priest (according to Plutarch, "Sonchis the Saite, the most learned of all the priests") and the listener is Solon, one of the Seven Wise Men of antiquity.

The Jowett translation sucks but whatever (it's free...:P): Timaeus.

Critias: Then listen, Socrates, to a tale which, though strange, is certainly true, having been attested by Solon, who was the wisest of the seven sages. He was a relative and a dear friend of my great-grandfather, Dropides, as he himself says in many passages of his poems; and he told the story to Critias, my grandfather, who remembered and repeated it to us. There were of old, he said, great and marvellous actions of the Athenian city, which have passed into oblivion through lapse of time and the destruction of mankind, and one in particular, greater than all the rest. This we will now rehearse. It will be a fitting monument of our gratitude to you, and a hymn of praise true and worthy of the goddess [Athene being "grey-eyed" might be the Moon or else Venus], on this her day of festival.

Socrates: Very good. And what is this ancient famous action of the Athenians, which Critias declared, on the authority of Solon, to be not a mere legend, but an actual fact?

Critias: I will tell an old-world story which I heard from an aged man; for Critias, at the time of telling it, was as he said, nearly ninety years of age, and I was about ten. Now the day was that day of the Apaturia which is called the Registration of Youth, at which, according to custom, our parents gave prizes for recitations, and the poems of several poets were recited by us boys, and many of us sang the poems of Solon, which at that time had not gone out of fashion. One of our tribe, either because he thought so or to please Critias, said that in his judgment Solon was not only the wisest of men, but also the noblest of poets. The old man, as I very well remember, brightened up at hearing this and said, smiling: Yes, Amynander, if Solon had only, like other poets, made poetry the business of his life, and had completed the tale which he brought with him from Egypt, and had not been compelled, by reason of the factions and troubles which he found stirring in his own country when he came home, to attend to other matters, in my opinion he would have been as famous as Homer or Hesiod, or any poet.

And what was the tale about, Critias? said Amynander.

About the greatest action which the Athenians ever did, and which ought to have been the most famous, but, through the lapse of time and the destruction of the actors, it has not come down to us.

Tell us, said the other, the whole story, and how and from whom Solon heard this veritable tradition.

He replied:-In the Egyptian Delta, at the head of which the river Nile divides, there is a certain district which is called the district of Sais, and the great city of the district is also called Sais, and is the city from which King Amasis came. The citizens have a deity for their foundress; she is called in the Egyptian tongue Neith [Nit is either the Moon (Tanit in Carthage) or else Venus (Ashtarte in Phoenecia).], and is asserted by them to be the same whom the Hellenes call Athene; they are great lovers of the Athenians, and say that they are in some way related to them. To this city came Solon, and was received there with great honour; he asked the priests who were most skilful in such matters, about antiquity, and made the discovery that neither he nor any other Hellene knew anything worth mentioning about the times of old. On one occasion, wishing to draw them on to speak of antiquity, he began to tell about the most ancient things in our part of the world-about Phoroneus, who is called "the first man," and about Niobe; and after the Deluge, of the survival of Deucalion and Pyrrha; and he traced the genealogy of their descendants, and reckoning up the dates, tried to compute how many years ago the events of which he was speaking happened. Thereupon one of the priests, who was of a very great age, said: O Solon, Solon, you Hellenes are never anything but children, and there is not an old man among you. Solon in return asked him what he meant. I mean to say, he replied, that in mind you are all young; there is no old opinion handed down among you by ancient tradition, nor any science which is hoary with age. And I will tell you why. There have been, and will be again, many destructions of mankind arising out of many causes; the greatest have been brought about by the agencies of fire and water, and other lesser ones by innumerable other causes. There is a story, which even you have preserved, that once upon a time Paethon, the son of Helios, having yoked the steeds in his father's chariot, because he was not able to drive them in the path of his father, burnt up all that was upon the earth, and was himself destroyed by a thunderbolt. Now this has the form of a myth, but really signifies a declination of the bodies moving in the heavens around the earth, and a great conflagration of things upon the earth, which recurs after long intervals; at such times those who live upon the mountains and in dry and lofty places are more liable to destruction than those who dwell by rivers or on the seashore. And from this calamity the Nile, who is our never-failing saviour, delivers and preserves us. When, on the other hand, the gods purge the earth with a deluge of water, the survivors in your country are herdsmen and shepherds who dwell on the mountains, but those who, like you, live in cities are carried by the rivers into the sea. Whereas in this land, neither then nor at any other time, does the water come down from above on the fields, having always a tendency to come up from below; for which reason the traditions preserved here are the most ancient.

The fact is, that wherever the extremity of winter frost or of summer does not prevent, mankind exist, sometimes in greater, sometimes in lesser numbers. And whatever happened either in your country or in ours, or in any other region of which we are informed-if there were any actions noble or great or in any other way remarkable, they have all been written down by us of old, and are preserved in our temples. Whereas just when you and other nations are beginning to be provided with letters and the other requisites of civilized life, after the usual interval, the stream from heaven, like a pestilence, comes pouring down, and leaves only those of you who are destitute of letters and education; and so you have to begin all over again like children, and know nothing of what happened in ancient times, either among us or among yourselves. As for those genealogies of yours which you just now recounted to us, Solon, they are no better than the tales of children. In the first place you remember a single deluge only, but there were many previous ones; in the next place, you do not know that there formerly dwelt in your land the fairest and noblest race of men which ever lived, and that you and your whole city are descended from a small seed or remnant of them which survived. And this was unknown to you, because, for many generations, the survivors of that destruction died, leaving no written word. For there was a time, Solon, before the great deluge of all, when the city which now is Athens was first in war and in every way the best governed of all cities, is said to have performed the noblest deeds and to have had the fairest constitution of any of which tradition tells, under the face of heaven.

Solon marvelled at his words, and earnestly requested the priests to inform him exactly and in order about these former citizens.