David Ruaune saw a programme last night about Thera, arguably the real Atlantis, and fell in love with their art, frescos and pottery, which seemed like the art of a free society – all flowing, sensual, women seeming strong and expressive, love of nature – I know I’m evading lots of theoretical issues, but that was the feel. I’m not much on visual art, but this stuff leaped out at me as beautiful.

“Five days before the equinox” is meaningless as coincidence and although Spica is a bright star, it’s not eye-catching compared with its neighbors. Also, its heliacal rising is too late in the year to signify the start of the wine harvest. As far as I know, the major Minoan goddess was not solar but either chthonic, broadly defined (Ariathne, Potnia Theron: All-Holy, The Mistress of Animals — similar to Ishtar or Cybele), or stellar/marine (Dhiktynna, The Starry Net, similar to Yemanja or Stella Maris).

Authors: Marianna Ridderstad

(Submitted on 26 Oct 2009)

Abstract: In Minoan art, symbols for celestial objects were depicted frequently and often in a religious context. The most common were various solar and stellar symbols. The palace of Knossos was amply decorated with these symbols. The rituals performed in Knossos and other Minoan palaces included the alteration of light and darkness, as well as the use of reflection.

The Minoan primary goddess was a solar goddess, the ‘Minoan Demeter’. A Late Minoan clay disk has been identified as a ritual calendrical object showing the most important celestial cycles, especially the lunar octaeteris. The disk, as well as the Minoan stone kernoi, were probably used in relation to the Minoan festival calendar.

The orientations of the central courts of the palaces of Knossos, Phaistos, Mallia and Gournia were to the rising sun, whereas the Eastern palaces Zakros and Petras were oriented to the southernmost and the northernmost risings of the moon, respectively. The E-W axes of the courts of Knossos and Phaistos were oriented to the sunrise five days before the vernal equinox.

This orientation is related to the five epagomenal days in the end of a year, which was probably the time of a Minoan festival. One of the orientations of the Knossian Throne Room is towards the heliacal rising of Spica in 2000-1000 BCE. Spica rose heliacally at the time of vintage in Minoan times. The time near the date of the heliacal rising of Spica was the time of an important festival related to chthonic deities, the Minoan predecessor of the Eleusinian Mysteries.

The myths of Minos, Demeter and Persephone probably have an astronomical origin, related to Minoan observations of the periods of the moon, Venus and Spica. These celestial events were related to the idea of renewal, which was central in the Minoan religion.

Comments: 41 pages, 1 table, 14 figures

Subjects:

History of Physics (physics.hist-ph)

Cite as: arXiv:0910.4801v1 [physics.hist-ph]

Submission history

From: Marianna Ridderstad [view email]

[v1] Mon, 26 Oct 2009 12:31:24 GMT (1233kb)

http://arxiv.org/abs/0910.4801

Joan Breton Connelly

Winner of the 2008 James R. Wiseman Book Award, Archaeological Institute of America

Winner of the 2007 Best Professional/Scholarly Publishing Book in Classics and Ancient History, Association of American Publishers

One of New York Times Book Review’s 100 Notable books of 2007

464 pp. | 8 x 10 | 27 color illus. 109 halftones. 3 maps.

http://press.princeton.edu/titles/8368.html

All these histories, from the Greeks to the Mayans, are cautionary tales. But we never pay heed. At this point, both of these paradigms are poised to replay at a global level.

NASA Science News for October 6, 2009

Archeologists are using NASA satellites and supercomputers to crack the mystery of the ancient Maya. New findings suggest the Maya may have played a key role in their own downfall.

FULL STORY at

http://science.nasa.gov/headlines/y2009/06oct_maya.htm?list1094208

Check out our RSS feed at http://science.nasa.gov/rss.xml!

Jared Diamond wrote a sequel to his Guns, Germs and Steel bestseller titled Collapse, in which he discusses the fall of several civilizations from a relatively “holistic” viewpoint.

I suspect that human civilizations, at least, are cyclical. I don’t know if this is true of non-human sapients. It will partly depend on their biology and ecology, I suspect, which will largely dictate their technology and their responses to it.

http://philosophyofscienceportal.blogspot.com/2009/10/athens-and-current-historynew-book.html

I wish these books would better serve as warnings from history, but the people who need to know this stuff never read it or realize what is going on until it is too late, then we all suffer and just keep going through the same rises and falls over and over for millennia.

I wonder – are we unique when it comes to having continually cyclical societies, or is this the norm for any true civilization no matter where you go in the Cosmos? Is it perhaps even healthy overall for a society to grow and decline periodically, like hitting a refresh button on a video game, rather than allow a culture to stagnate over time due to age and complacency, leading to eventual extinction down the road?

Or am I just being way too humanocentric?