Humanity's ancient history is mainly encoded in oral stories and artifacts, which were created by a culture that either hadn't invented or saw no need to encode their stories into writing.
There are some overlapping patterns in these oral stories and artifacts, the loudest of which is a recurrence of golden ages and dark ages -- a rising and falling of human civilizations.
There are common, shared-across-the-world stories and symbols that are recorded in oral traditions and artifacts.
One of these is the Flower of Life symbol, which can be found in diverse locations around the world and dated back to at least 6,000 years:
"It can be seen in temples within the Forbidden City of China, in ancient synagogues in Israel, in the Buddhist temples of India and Japan, in the City of Ephesus in Turkey, carved into rock in Assyria, in Italian art from the 13th century, and in Cordoba, in ‘la Mezquita’ in Spain." - Source
The Flower of Life represents creation energy, it has some similarities to the scientific concept of zero point energy. Why can this symbol be found in ancient China, ancient Egypt, and ancient Israel?
These are a few different ways to answer this question:
1) The data is wrong, the artifacts are wildly misdated or misunderstood.
2) The symbol is part of some sort of genetic memory, an idea for which there is little to no scientific basis.
3) The symbol is part of knowledge that was known and understood widely across wide parts of the ancient world, and was turned into symbolic form around the same time that writing was developed.
Answers #1 and #2 have little evidence to support them, while there are fragments of history that point to answer #3 being the correct one.
When we go into the deep past beyond 8,000 years, it becomes difficult to contextualize and date artifacts with precision.
Gobekli Tepe is at least 12,000 years old. It is a massive structure in southern Turkey that is much larger and more complex than Stonehenge.
What we Know About Gobekli Tepe:
1) Gobekli Tepe is located in the northern end of the fertile crescent. During the time the structures were built, the climate was very mild and wildlife was abundant.
2) The site is huge. There are around 20 groups of pillars, each group ranging from 30 to 90 feet across. The largest of the stone pillars are 16 feet tall, weighing nearly 10 tons. The site was constructed over several hundred, perhaps several thousand years.
3) Radiocarbon dating places the age of these buildings at around 12,000 years old, which is several thousand years older than any previously discovered complex structures (the Egyptian pyramids and Stonehenge are dated to around 5,000 years old).
4) The symbols on the pillars “are decorated with carved reliefs of animals and of abstract pictograms … very carefully carved reliefs depict lions, bulls, boars, foxes, gazelles, asses, snakes and other reptiles, insects, arachnids, and birds, particularly vultures and water fowl.” - Source
5) It was buried under 15,000 cubic feet of soil, which is the area displaced by the Big Ben clock tower. Clearly, the burial of these structures was as much of a ‘team effort’ as their construction.
Click Here to Read the Rest of the Article, which I wrote in 2010.
The hardest-to-answer question for me is, who built Gobekli Tepe and why did they deliberately bury it ~12,000 years ago?
Gobekli Tepe isn't the only example of ancient building complexity that confuses our modern conceptions of ancient human beings and their capabilities:
"Marine scientists say archaeological remains discovered 36 m (120 ft) underwater in the Gulf of Cambay off the western coast of India could be ... nearly 9,500 years old, making it older than the Sumerian civilization by several thousand years. It is also older than the Egyptian and Chinese civilizations. It is said that (the ancient city of Dwarka) was submerged in the big flood 9,000 years ago." -- Source
The concept of a great flood is common throughout the ancient world, a flood that changed the geography of the world in a profound way.
Ancient Vedic texts also record a rising and falling of civilizations, in cyclical patterns that represent a rising and falling of various types of human capability.
There are many interpretations on the dating/timing of these cyclical patterns, just as there are difficulties dating artifacts as old as those found at Gobekli Tepe and Dwarka.
When correlated with Earth disaster cycles in the geological record, a pattern in the noise begins to emerge.
There appears to be a roughly 12,000 year geological record of major disasters that affected the Earth's magnetic field, its potential for vulcanism and earthquakes, rapid climactic changes and the survival of species on the planet going back at least 75,000 years.
These events go by the names Younger Dryas / Gothenburg, Lake Mungo, Mono Lake, Laschamp, Vostok, and Lake Toba Supervolcano. The last event was so severe that human beings almost became extinct as a species.
Smaller (but still quite consequential) shifts in climate seem to be common at other intervals within this larger ~12k year cyclical pattern.
This pattern/cycle shares similarities with Vedic stories of a Yuga Cycle.
The Vedic civilization's ancient history was shared via oral traditions, which were eventually written down in the form of stories and detailed encyclopedic descriptions.
These stories and texts describe a cyclical creation and destruction of the universe, and a smaller-scale Yuga Cycle within this larger creation and destruction cycle.
In the lower/darker ages, human capability awareness and intelligence is more limited. Human beings become more focused on the material/physical, and more neglectful of the meaning-bearing and nontangible aspects of life.
Essay is incomplete/unfinished.
See video below for additional ideas/theory development on the ~12,000 year / ~24,000 Yuga Cycle.
“The man who is striving to solve a problem defined by existing knowledge and technique is not just looking around. He knows what he wants to achieve, and he designs his instruments and directs his thoughts accordingly.
Unanticipated novelty, the new discovery, can emerge only to the extent that his anticipations about nature and his instruments prove wrong. . . . There is no other effective way in which discoveries might be generated."
Source: Kuhn, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions
Wikipedia Summary of Kuhn's Theory:
"Kuhn explains the process of scientific change as the result of various phases of paradigm change.
Phase 1: It exists only once and is the pre-paradigm phase, in which there is no consensus on any particular theory. This phase is characterized by several incompatible and incomplete theories. Consequently, most scientific inquiry takes the form of lengthy books, as there is no common body of facts that may be taken for granted. If the actors in the pre-paradigm community eventually gravitate to one of these conceptual frameworks and ultimately to a widespread consensus on the appropriate choice of methods, terminology and on the kinds of experiment that are likely to contribute to increased insights.
Phase 2 – Normal science begins, in which puzzles are solved within the context of the dominant paradigm. As long as there is consensus within the discipline, normal science continues. Over time, progress in normal science may reveal anomalies, facts that are difficult to explain within the context of the existing paradigm. While usually these anomalies are resolved, in some cases they may accumulate to the point where normal science becomes difficult and where weaknesses in the old paradigm are revealed.
Phase 3 – If the paradigm proves chronically unable to account for anomalies, the community enters a crisis period. Crises are often resolved within the context of normal science. However, after significant efforts of normal science within a paradigm fail, science may enter the next phase.
Phase 4 - Paradigm Shift, or scientific revolution, is the phase in which the underlying assumptions of the field are reexamined and a new paradigm is established.
Phase 5 – Post-Revolution, the new paradigm's dominance is established and so scientists return to normal science, solving puzzles within the new paradigm.
A science may go through these cycles repeatedly, though Kuhn notes that it is a good thing for science that such shifts do not occur often or easily."
