Sumer,
the Constellations
and Draco the Dragon
It seems we can thank the ancient Sumerians for our constellations and
the zodiac. Hugh Thurston described three scientific methods by
which the date and latitude at which the
original 48 constellations were established can be determined, in a
book,
'Early Astronomy' (New York:
Springer-Verlag, 1994) p. 135-137.
All three methods indicate, independently, that the heavens were
divided up
into
constellations by a people who lived at a latitude of 36 degrees
roughly 5000 years ago. This is summarized in an article by John
P. Pratt, 'Scientifically Dating the Constellations':
http://www.johnpratt.com/items/docs/constellations_date.html
The most compelling of the three arguments concerns an "empty" part of
the sky in the southern hemisphere which is devoid of any of the
original
48 constellations.
From Pratt's article:
| The Empty Part of the sky.
There is
a circle of about 36° radius in the southern part of the sky which
does not contain any of the original 48 constellations. That implies
that the originators of the constellations lived at about 36° north
latitude because at that location, exactly such an area of southern sky
would be invisible to them. Moreover, the center of that circle moves
very slowly through the sky because of the motion of the earth's axis.
The location of the center of the empty part of the sky implies an
origin date of about 2900 B.C. |
As Pratt points out, 36° is too far north to have been Egypt, and
too far south to indicate the Greeks. It is exactly the latitude at
which Sumer lied. Sumer is widely thought to have
been one of, if not the, earliest civilizations and the Babylonians
inherited much of their science from the Sumerians.
When the ancient Sumerian astronomers looked at the center of the
northern night sky,
they saw what they decided was a mythical serpent, a dragon, around
which the other constellations appeared to revolve. This is
the constellation 'Draco'.
The incredible thing about Draco is that it doesn't appear quite at
what
would have been the northernmost point in the sky at the time the
Sumerian culture was thriving. It lies at true theoretical
north, within a circle traced by the earth's axis over thousands of
years as it slowly wobbles.
The North Star is presently Polaris, but a few thousand years ago it
was Thuban. It will change again as the earth's axis slowly
continues to shift. This wobbling of the earth causes what
is known as
the 'precession of the ages', from the age of Taurus when the
Sumerians, Akkadians and Egyptians thrived, to the biblical age of
Aries, to Pieces (the
age we are in now), and next to the age of Aquarius, which we will
enter around the
year 2150. Draco the dragon creates an 'S' shape within a circle
traced by earth's axis as it precedes through the zodiac, the entire
cycle of which takes around 26,000 years. Incredibly, the
ancient Sumerians apparently understood all of this.
What evolved in Sumer that was so successful and became so ubiquitous
was a hierarchical (pyramid-shaped) societal structure whereby a small
group of elite priests and kings ruled over the rest of the
populace. These ruling priest-kings claimed
descendency from the gods and propogated myths to support their claim,
thereby
insuring for themselves and their
progeny a secure place at the top of society.
Just as the dragon ruled the heavens, these priest-kings adopted the
dragon as a mark of their own royal status. This concept, along
with other hallmarks of Sumerian culture, notably the idea of an elite
embued with a divine right to rule, spread - to the Indus Valley
and from there to China, to Egypt and to the Levant (modern
Israel-Lebanon-Syria) and northern Mesopotamia, to places as far
flung as Ireland (although Michael Tsarion apparently believes that the
Sumerians inherited their dragon-culture from the Irish), and
eventually to Anatolia (modern Turkey), Thrace, Greece, and the Black
Sea region. One major branch on this tree appears to have
migrated
northwest from the Black Sea into
Germania and Scandinavia giving us such conquering tribes as the Franks
and the Vikings, while another group went east as far
as Mongolia (where they were known as the Xiongnu) before turning back
and
pushing west into Europe as the Huns. A third branch on this tree
appears to have spread from Egypt to Greece and to the Levant, a
sub-branch of which being the Israelites. There is plentiful
evidence for all this, the clues are strewn about in all sorts of
literature, myths,
artifact finds and even in names printed on old maps.
|
| Dragon
statue on Fleet Street |
One of the of the most discernable of these clues is the dragon
itself. The Vikings
decorated the
bows of their ships with dragons. In Norse mythology Sigund
gains knowlege from eating the heart of a dragon. While the
plundering Huns left little evidence of their culture behind, the
Xiongnu who
appeared along their
anscestral line venerated the dragon and a
powerful
family among them were the Liu, a number of whom show up early in the
available
genealogy charts of Hunnic kings. The name Liu
meant dragon in the Xiongnu tongue (which is confirmed by the
fact that the word for dragon in Japan is 'Ryu' - 'L' and 'R' being
equivalent in Japanese).
Sigismund, a
Holy Roman Emperor and long reigning king of Hungary had his own Order
of the Dragon for his most venerated knights, and many European family
coats of arms display dragons or griffins. Dragons fill the Greek
myths as well as many Medieval legends, as do sea-serpents and mermaids
which are simply a variant on this same theme. Clovis, the first
king of the Merovingian Franks (the subject of 'The D'aVinci Code')
claimed descent from a sea-monster. One of the primary gods
in
the
pantheons of the Amorites and other early pagan civilizations which
thrived around Ugarit and Phoenicia thousands of years ago was
'Dagon'. The Egyptians meanwhile
annointed
their Pharoahs
with the oil of a holy crocodile called the 'messeh', which
is probably where our word messiah comes from. In
Asia,
the dragon was long the symbol of the Chinese emperial throne, and the
mausoleam in Nikko of Tokugawa Ieyasu who united Japan is awash in
dragon images. The red cross featured on the Templar banner and
the flag of England is named for St. George the dragon-slayer, the
current British Pound coin displays a dragon, and in London's financial
center, smack dab in the middle of Fleet Street near the Crown Temple
Church (built by the Templar knights) stands a large statue of a
dragon. Dragons are, if you
care to look, literally everywhere. |
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