I. Mythos to Cosmos

World-views from the Paleolithic through the (Aristarchan-)Copernican Revolution to Willem de Sitter (>3 Mya to the early 20th century)

In this journey into the long prehistory and history of humankind's cosmologies, those seekers for truth, freethinkers, and pioneers who lived from thousands of years to decades ago, most of them before I was born, have become my teachers, as well as friends and companions in that quest to understand our Universe.
—LFG

Ancient cosmologies

Chaco canyon  (American SW) Mythical cave painting, Les Trois-Freres, France: Perhaps of a shaman as a game animal, or of a 'lord of the beasts' deity (Aslan, 2017)

View from inside a megalithic portal dolmen toward the stars. "Looking out from inside West Kennet"  (c) CyberTigger. These Neolithic structures are found in NW Europe and in Britain and Ireland Similar megaliths are found all over the world.

(http://www.wfu.edu/Academic-departments/Anthropology/fieldschools/southwest/sw/days/05chaco/rockart.html;
http://www.mythinglinks.org/euro~west~prehistoric.html).

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Contents:

• I. Paleolithic & Ice Age humans, myths, goddesses, and cosmologies overview (>3 Mya - ~2,600 BCE)
• II. Megaliths: Prehistoric Cosmologies in Stone (upper Paleolithic-Neolithic: ~14,000 ya-1150 CE)
• III. The Origin and Evolution of our Constellations: Prehistory to History (~35,000 ya - IAU, 20th c CE)
• IV. Proto-Indo-European origins, the Proto-Indo-European creation myth, Body as Microcosm (~20,000 - 5,000 ya), then on to ancient Near Eastern '
• (i) Excursus on ancient Near Eastern Temples as Microcosms of Heaven & Earth with Microcosmic Concentricity (21st century BCE - 1st century CE);
  
• (ii) 7th-2nd c BCE: 10 creation myths in the Hebrew bible or Tanakh.
  
• V. From the mists of Mythos to the Ionian Dawn: The first Enlightenment (Greek), (8th-3rd centuries BCE)'
• The Greek Transition: From Mythogony to Cosmology
  
• VI. Darkening Age: The Great Western Retreat (3rd-17th centuries CE)
• VII. The (Aristarchan-)Copernican-Brunesian Revolution (16th-21st centuries CE)
• VIII. The (Aristarchan-)Copernican Revolution coming of age (19th-early 20th centuries)
• Thermodynamics, Electromagnetism, and Quantum atomism.
• (0) Precursors and Priority in Special and General Relativity.
• (i) Development of Special Relativity.
• (ii) Development of General Relativity.
  
• Willem de Sitter: Applying General Relativity to Cosmology.
  
• IX. Chapter I Epilogical Question?
  

I. Paleolithic & Ice Age humans, myths, goddesses, and cosmologies overview (>3 Mya - ~2,600 BCE)

Paleolithic times. From the dawn of prehistory, human beings have tried to make sense of the vast world and their relation to it. Some of the earliest obvious attempts at astronomical cosmology seem to combine ritual with sky-gazing and calendar making. Long before that, in the mists of the distant past most of humankind's journey, our cosmologies have been 'animated' with the numinous presence throughout nature (the product of our agency-detection mechanism), with spirits, ancestors, gods, and other mythical views of the numinous and of Nature itself. Our world-views at this time emerged from the story telling imaginations of our big evolved brains. This is mythos. As we began to observe natural regularities and eventually detected regularities and laws in Nature, we transitioned from mythos to the orderly world of cause and effect: Cosmos.

In this initial section, we will trace this in outline.

Africa, Birth and Homeland. The odyssey of humankind (our own genus Homo) originated in the varied landscapes of the geologically-active Rift Valley of Eastern to Southern Africa within the last ~2.5 Mya. Our hominin and hominid ancestry goes much further back in the same general fecund region of our tiny planet, but this is the time frame of the origin of humankind, the genus Homo. 

Early evidence of hominin bipedality in the human journey came from the Laetoli ash beds with the momentary group footprints of members of an Australopithecus species frozen in time from about 3.6 Mya (link). Scholarly Ref. to be added.


A representative fossil skull panorama of humans and human ancestors and sister taxa from the Miocene to the present, with the exception that I would classify our ancestral habiline hominin with the genus Australopithecus as Australopithecus habilis, which has also been documented with late contemporary hominin genera, Paranthropus (first user of fire) and congeneric species of our own genus Homo (link; Space imagery of the NE African Rift Valley, http://earth.imagico.de/views/eafrica_large.jpg).

Approximately 7 Mya of hominin and hominid evolution brought us from the forests to the plains through tool-making, climate drying adaptation, fire-making, symbolic thought, language, and finally the Ice Ages of the Pleistocene, anatomically modern humanity, and cosmology-making. The following panorama provides an artistic form that long meandering journey from "the sunflower forest," as Loren Eiseley called it, through to the paleolithic dawn of cosmology-making.

And phylogenetically, on the genomic 'fossil' as well as the physical paleoanthropological record, there is every reason to think that even our closest living relatives since the speciation / split within Hominoidaea to form the Hominidae, ~7 Mya, the way toward cosmology-making was already emerging: Suntsova, M.V., Buzdin, A.A. 2020. Differences between human and chimpanzee genomes and their implications in gene expression, protein functions and biochemical properties of the two species. BMC Genomics 21 (Suppl 7), 535. https://doi.org/10.1186/s12864-020-06962-8.

From lower right to left, and then up to upper left: From forest tree-dwelling facultative bipedal hominins through obligate bipedal hominins wandering out onto the African mixed landscapes, and ultimately migrating outwards through the late Pleistocene ice and the use of fire, discovering the world, and summarizing ~6-7 Mya (http://evolution-involution.org/images/lucys_world_invol.jpg).

Since that divergence, our hominin ancestors have acquired, modified, and utilized practical stone tools for up to ~3.3 Mya (Harmand et al. 2015. 3.3-million-year-old stone tools from Lomekwi 3, West Turkana, Kenya. Nature 521, 310. https://doi.org/10.1038/nature14464), and these magnificent tools have been found on every continent of the planet other than Antarctica. Aside from these practical tools, Manuports (L. manus 'hand' portare 'to carry') are natural objects which have been picked up from their natural context and carried away by hominids, while largely remaining unmodified (link) for even longer. These natural objects apparently acquired symbolic value in early hominid eyes, showing that hominids started 'classifying' and 'curating' unusual objects of interest or meaning to them (link). Two of the very earliest such symbolic objects are the nearly 3 Mya old reddish brown Makapansgat Jasperite Cobble [8.3 cm X 7 cm X 3.8 cm, reddish-brown; Bednarik, 1998. The 'Australopithecine' Cobble from Makapansgat, South Africa. The South African Archaeological Bulletin 53 (167), 4. https://doi.org/10.2307/3889256; https://www.jstor.org/stable/3889256], which was found a cave with Australopithecine bones and 4.8 km from its source rock. It resembles a reconstructed Australopithecine face, and characteristics indicating that it was held, carried, and worn from hand carry. The reason it was carried may be because it symbolized the empathic self-knowledge of an Australopithecine bipedal ape!

.

That most rapid increase in human brain size and symbolic representation accompanied the earliest spread of the genus Homo out of Africa and around the world with its changing Pleistocene climates. This was before there was an H. sapiens species. With these journeys of the H. erectus within and out of Africa, the earliest ventures into cosmology-making had arrived.

The largest brain increase in volume happened shortly before a million years ago. After that there was a catastrophic genetic bottleneck in our Homo ancestral population gene pool with an effective population size (N_e) of nearly 100,000, new research shows that the between about ~900 and ~800 kya, there was a critical period of about ~117 kyr when our ancestral population collapsed to ~1200 individuals before expanding out to about ~27,000. The African and non-African dispersals of Homo sapiens sapiens took place after ~100 kya: Hu et al. 2023. Genomic inference of a severe human bottleneck during the Early to Middle Pleistocene transition. Science 381 (6661), 979. https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.abq7487.

Early Homo facing extinction close to a million years ago, a chronological chart (link).

The Shanghai Institute for Health and Nutrition, CAS (Hu et al. 2023) researchers used the above formula estimates of phylogenetic predicted branch length to infer the existence of this ancient, extinction-threatening genetic bottleneck. The rock art from a cliff illustrates the concept of our beleaguered ancestors facing a danger back then but unknown to us today (link).

It would be informative and fascinating to see how this very much more distant genetic bottleneck may have affected the precursors of our Paleolithic mythologies and cosmologies. As we shall see, the much later extinction threat at the Younger-Dryas Pleistocene-Holocene boundary directly affected out mythologies and our cosmologies. 

Artistic expression of the cosmic brain. Some of the earliest evidence of human artistic representation, involving drilling small holes in mollusk shells of different types, and even creating geometric patters, a type of world-representation cosmology, were the representational engravings by Homo erectus at Trinil, Java, and dated by ⁴⁰Ar / ³⁹Ar to "0.54 +/- 0.10 million years and a minimum age of 0.43 +/- 0.05 million years" (Joordans et al. 2015. Homo erectus at Trinil on Java used shells for tool production and engraving. Nature 518, 228. https://doi.org/10.1038/nature13962). Trinil in Java is the original Homo erectus species discovery site, and is on the southern, pre-Homo sapiens, early human migration out of Africa. These Trinil representational artifacts on shells have been dated to the early last half million years:

The sequential order of the engraved line markings have been established, and also examine closely in certain sections (Joordens et al. 2015, extended data figure 5, excerpted legend).

The early mollusk shell hole-drilling along with geometric representational engraving found at Trinil has been echoed in early human artistic-representational development since then (cf. Joordens et al. 2015. Extended data fig 10). The fluctuating isotopic δ¹⁸O ratios, over 2 million years, and especially over the last 1 million years of the Pleistocene, reveal an indication of the climate crises and challenges our human forebears (H. erectus; spp. neanderthalensis, & sapiens) faced over the millennia. Our representational geometric skills grew, skills which are important in cosmology-making.

Another of the very earliest artistic and thus, representation human traces are of Acheulian age (lower Paleolithic before there was a local population of anatomically-modern H. sapiens), and they were found in the earlier southern route of human expansion out of Africa along southern Eurasian continental coastlines toward SE Asia, including Java, where Homo erectus was first discovered, and toward where anatomically-modern H. sapiens would later settle from a much more recent migration about ~50,000 (~50 Kya) years ago into Australia. This far older site, Chief's Rock, Auditorium Cave, Bhimbetka, (central India), dates from 700,000-290,000 BCE (~702-~292 Kya) contains some innutile cupules, one which still had traces of red ochre in it (Bednarik, 1996. The cupules on Chief's Rock, Auditorium Cave, Bhimbetka. The Artefact 19, 63. http://www.ifrao.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/02/Auditorium96.pdf). The site also had an Acheulian handaxe, a date-characterized cultural item known from other sites in Eurasia.

(cf. also photo excerpt with cupules 3, 4, 5, 6, & 7 above right, link; & link).

The evolving creative and artistic expression development by humans for abstraction, representational illustration, and reflective cognition serves as part of what is needed for cosmology-making, as part of human meaning-making. Another cupule location on the central Indian subcontinent showed evidence of likely specific representational pattern placement of cupules in a very early Lower Paleolithic context, perhaps even a cosmological placement? The DarakiChattan Cave contains a Lower Paleolithic human site in central India. See Bednarik, R. 2022. Lower Palaeolithic rock art of India and its global context. ResearchGate citation. The artwork pictured below is discussed by Livio Dobrez, 2011. Sex for its own sake. Rock Art Research 28 (2), 167, in discussion of Correa. Varella et al. 2011. Evolutionary aesthetics and sexual selection in the evolution of rock art aesthetics. Rock Art Research 28 (2), 153. ResearchGate publication).

(link).

An artistic summary from over half a million years to less than 50,000 years, prior to the Upper Paleolithic flowering of art.   (https://gingamegs.art/2020/06/05/creative-renderings-early-evidence-for-creative-minds/; cf. link; Nat'l Geography link).

>500 kya to <50 kya: Homo erectus: Engraved shells, Trinil ~540 kya Homo erectus: (representational) cupule manufacture and use, Chief's Rock ~290 kya Blombos Cave engraved ochre ~65 kya H. neanderthalensis La Pasiega gallery ~65 kya H. sapiens: Lubang Jeriji Saleh Cave painting of a bull ~44 kya Another even more abundant Paleolithic site with even more abundant cupules, Chandeshwar, India (above drawing).

The human African diaspora & our mythologies. Our species of Homo was not the first to migrate out of Africa. Congeneric species (also of the Genus Homo) of humans from the Homo erectus complex were the first, and then perhaps Homo heidelbergensis.

(link; link).

Whomever our forebears were and wherever they went, it is clear that our own younger species Homo sapiens sapiens also set forth from our native Africa and populated the world, the understanding of which has complexified over time with new discoveries anthropological, archaeological, and phylogenetic / phylogeographic.

The oldest known anatomically-modern human fossils documented so far were discovered in Jebel Irhoud (modern day Morocco) and dated at ~315,000 (+/- 34 kyr) years old:

Hublin, J. J., Ben-Ncer, A., Bailey, S. et al. 2017. New fossils from Jebel Irhoud, Morocco and the pan-African origin of Homo sapiens. Nature 546, 289. https://doi.org/10.1038/nature22336. (Image link).

Double-pronged Migrations of Anatomically-modern Homo sapiens & Two Cosmologies. Anatomically-modern humans appeared only about ~315 kya, and with the ending Pleistocene climate shocks began their renewed migrations as a new and restless species out of Africa, who emerged from and then did interact with remnant populations of earlier species / subspecies of the genus Homo, such as descendent species of Homo erectus, H. heidelbergensis, and such subspecies, H. sapiens denisova, and H. sapiens neanderthalensis. Their migration routes and patterned diffusion has been traced by DNA trail they left behind them (maternal mtDNA, paternal Y-chromosome DNA, and ordinary chromosome autosomal DNA), not only in living descendants but in ancient DNA (aDNA):

Matrilineal mtDNA (yellow migration routes) and patrilineal Y-chromosome (dark blue spread patterns): See van Oven, M. & Kayser, M. 2009. Updated comprehensive phylogenetic tree of global human mitochondrial DNA variation. Hum Mutat 30 (2), E386-E394. https://phylotree.org/ (which has the latest mtDNA tree builds). https://doi.org/10.1002/humu.20921. Ongoing research in human phylogeography continues to complexify this schema.

In the time encompassing the Last Ice (most recent Pleistocene glacial maximum or last glacial maximum, LGM; above The Genographic Project map link):

Ice Age: Maternal mtDNA and paternal Y-chromosome migration patterns; migration patterns together with continental glacial extents and climate conditions during the climate cycles of the late Pleistocene (link; link).

The encounters of anatomically modern Homo sapiens with the Neanderthal humans are understandable because of paleontological biogeography as well as phylogenetics.

(link).

And Neanderthal humans were human in every meaningful sense, including speech (Conde-Valverde, M., Martinez, I., Quam, R.M. et al. 2021. Neanderthals had and Homo sapiens sapiens have similar auditory and speech capacities. Nat Ecol Evol 5, 609. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41559-021-01391-6)) and art, including symbolic art (Pitarch Martí, Africa, Zilhão, J., d'Errico, F., & Ramos-Muñoz, J. 2021. The symbolic role of the underground world among Middle Paleolithic Neanderthals. PNAS 118 (33), e2021495118. https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.2021495118):

Inner ear bones and crania of modern H. sapiens and Neandertal H. sapiens: reconstructed Neandertal woman (link);

And so we can safely include art going back half a million years to Homo erectus, and since, summarizing all of that artistic creativity associated with our genus Homo across two species, and two likely subspecies, and summarize that to which we above referred, thus:

A geographical distribution of some of the oldest artifacts of hominin / human artistic expression from ~2 Mya to 25 kya, divided thus among Homo erectus (~2 Mya - ~540 kya), Homo sapiens neanderthalensis (~130-51 kya), and anatomically-modern Homo sapiens sapiens (~73-25 kya; link).

Neanderthal Homo sapiens carved these chevrons into deer toe bones (Unicorn Cave; link).

From ~45,500 ya, warty pig art from the Leang Tedongnge Cave, in the island of Sulawesi, Indonesia (link).

(https://www.livescience.com/archaeology/did-art-exist-before-modern-humans-new-discoveries-raise-big-questions).

Where there is story, there is mythos.... And so where there is art, there is story, because art is story! Where there is story, there is myth. And where there is myth, or mythos, there are world-views, and where there are world-views, there exists in those very world-views, cosmos (ordered human conceptions of the Universe), or cosmologies. That is the history we trace here. And yes, of course that includes also among the Neanderthal Homo sapiens of 75,000 years ago, as it does the Homo erectine humans of ~2 Mya to ~1.7 Mya to half a million years (540 kya) ago, and perhaps back to bipedal representatives of our subtribe Homininae >3 Mya. In recapitulation, the story of cosmology must begin with the first tool-makers, as summarized above.

Researchers now realize that this includes sculpted cave art by Neandertals from ~75 kya (link). 

In an important paper, we now have further evidence of art among Neanderthal human beings: Pitarch Martí, A. et al. 2021. The symbolic role of the underground world among Middle Paleolithic Neanderthals. PNAS 118 (33), e2021495118. https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.2021495118.

Pitarch Martí et al. (2021) Figure 2. Non-local red pigment imported into the cave by Neandertal human beings.

And where there are migrations, among human primates with stories and cosmologies, there is the blossoming of myth, and world-view construction and cosmology-making.

A comprehensive overview and approximate timeline of human global migrations over the last ~200,000 years to the present:
 
(link).

Why may we call Neanderthals, Homo sapiens? Because there has been direct introgressive, fertile hybridization events, meaning biologically they are the same species, without a reproductive barrier: Perhaps the evolutionary split (before extinction) should separate us all as Homo sapiens sapiens and Homo sapiens neandertalensis. Before the latest data from 2023, there was evidence of two genetic introgressive hybridization events between Homo sapiens sapiens and Neanderthals, Homo sapiens neandertalensis. Gene flow means that we were ultimately all the same species (cf. Ernst Mayr, biological species definition: Mayr, E. 1942. Systematics and the Origin of Species. New York, NY: Columbia University Press, discussed in de Queiroz, K. 2005. Ernst Mayr and the modern concept of species. PNAS 102 (suppl_1), 6600. https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.0502030102).

(link). The northern and southern migration patterns of Homo sapiens are also inferred and putatively hypothesized from evidence of encounters with Archaic humans.

Image derived from research associated with the Max Planck Institute (link).

To the ancient migrations above, we can now add that before 195 kya, there was an ancient introgressive hybridization between one group of Homo sapiens from sub-Saharan Africa with Neanderthals when they had migrated into Eurasia (Live Scinece link). The study is Harris et al. 2023. Diverse African genomes reveal selection on ancient modern human introgressions in Neanderthals. Current Biology Oct 13, S0960-9822(23)01315-5. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cub.2023.09.066.

Our major language groups and families with their myriad individual languages and dialects have evolved and co-spread with our human journeys.

The evolution of major groups of human language is congruent with human genetic phylogeography (link; link).

And with our human journeys, our languages and our myths and stories have also emerged, evolved, and traveled with us.

The earliest Mythologies and Cosmogonies: From more ancient Myth Motifs / Mythemes, Our Stories Begin.... Humans carried their stories with them. Human mythogenies are our begettings of our myths, which contain our even earlier myth motifs / mythemes, often the earliest phylogenetically-traceable units. Myths are elaborated from these traceable myth motifs or mythemes. Resources include the mythology and folkore database: https://www.mythologydatabase.com/ enables queries of a growing database with subsets including the Berezkin & Duvakin database of the thematic classification and distribution of folklore and mythological motifs by geographical area: https://www.mythologydatabase.com/bd/ (the original version being in Russian: https://www.ruthenia.ru/folklore/berezkin/, translated by mythologist Prof. Jon White of the Crecganford organization, curating / hosting "A collection of over 130 historical books and 4,800 folktales, including 3,600 motifs noted across 37,500 myths, covering over 7,000 stories in total," reported as of April 2023) summarizes the myth motifs / mythemes by code, and lists their origins and distributions;

Note also the GitHub mythological queries with code (link); authors index for the Electronic Journal of Folklore (link) linking also to Berezkin's page; for popular introductions well-annotated to the scholarly literature, see Prof. Jon White's Crecganford video channel (https://www.youtube.com/@Crecganford), reviewing the scholarly research of myth and mytheme origins and phylogenies. These are a few of the resources which we use and will cite in our history of cosmology and cosmology-making in this introductory chapter. Following the definitional lead of Creganford's Prof. Jon White, we essentially utilize William Bascomb's classification system for defining myth, legend, folktales, &c: Bascom, W. 1965. The forms of folklore: Prose narratives. The Journal of American Folklore 78 (307), 3-20. https://doi.org/10.2307/538099. See also Folklore: Electronic Journal of Folklore: https://www.folklore.ee/folklore/.  (For more on the history and developments within the far younger, specific Abrahamic religions, note the interviews of scholars on the Mythvision podcast channel).

The popular journal Scientific American hosted an article following up on scholarship regarding one of the earliest northern myths, the Cosmic Hunt: Julian d'Huy. 2016. Scientists trace society's myths to primordial origins. Scientific American 315 (6), 62. Dec 2016: https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/scientists-trace-society-rsquo-s-myths-to-primordial-origins/?ref=longnow.org. 

Scientific American. December 2016 (link).

Scholarly exploration of one of the oldest stories of the Far North involves the myth of the Cosmic Hunt which often involves references to the constellations of the Big Dipper, Orion, and the Pleiades when the variants are included. In 2005, Yuri Berezkin published data regarding the origin of this myth of an ancient hunter in pursuit of large game like Elk or Bison, often also pursuing the Sun which was elusive in the Arctic: Berezkin (2005). The Cosmic Hunt: Variants of a Siberia - North American myth. Folklore 31, 70. https://www.folklore.ee/folklore/dat/fl031FX000186.htm.  Also note the further study of Ernits (2010). On the Cosmic Hunt in North Eurasian rock art. https://www.folklore.ee/folklore/vol44/ernits.pdf. Down near the equator, there are also African myths of the Cosmic Hunt focused on the constellation Orion: Vieira, V. 2009. The constellation of Orion and the Cosmic Hunt in Equatorial Africa. Anthropos 104 (2), 558. JSTOR, http://www.jstor.org/stable/40467194. The similarities and differences of this myth's distribution with the early imaginings of the constellations along with lunar calendrical dots, lunar calculations, Elk, Bison, and Bulls in the Paleolithic cave and rock art can be seen elaborated in the subsection: III. The Origin and Evolution of our Constellations (~35,000 ya - IAU, 20th c CE). 

Berezkin (2005).

The convergence of comparative mythology methods and phylogenetic algorithmic methods, such as are used in tracing evolutionary ancestries and phylogenetic trees with DNA, can be utilized in an interdisciplinary way to trace the origins and age of myths. A couple representative papers, and a monograph may be illustrative of the trend: d'Huy, J. 2013. A Cosmic Hunt in the Berber sky: a phylogenetic reconstruction of Palaeolithic mythology. Les Cahiers de l'AARS 16, 93. https://www.researchgate.net/publication/259193627, building on earlier work, d'Huy, 2012. Un ours dans les etoiles: recherche phylogenetique sur un mythe prehistorique. Prehistoire du Sud-Ouest 20 (1), 91. https://hal.science/hal-00825883. d'Huy (2013) found that the Paleolithic myth of the Cosmic Hunt involving the Bear or the Big Dipper could be phylogenetically traced spreading outward from Siberia / Central Asia, west toward ancient Greece, and eastward across to what is now British Columbia and northeastern North America (d'Huy, 2013; Figure 1).

d'Huy (2013).

d'Huy (2013) found convincing the localization of the protomyth in the Yenisei River basin in north central Eurasia as suggested by Berezkin 2005. The cosmic hunt: variants of a Siberian-North American myth. Folklore 31, 79-100. https://www.researchgate.net/publication/26484663.

This map of the Yenisei River basin shows one of the cultural dispersal origin sites for the Cosmic Hunt myth involving the Big Dipper out of Russian / N Central Asia as documented in d'Huy (2013), and discussed in a video, "The OLDEST story in the World - The Cosmic Hunt - An INCREDIBLE Discovery" by Prof. Jon D. White on the Crecganford academic myth channel (https://youtu.be/ANRw-3C_MYA).

Similar to the DNA data, the collected 93 mythemes in 47 versions in the (growing) database were analyzed by phylogenetic reconstruction methods for the ancestral states of mythemes and protomyth itself in the Eurasian root, using the majority of widely shared mythemes as the better root. In addition to the neighbor-joining algorithym (d'Huy, 2013; Fig. 1 above, citing d'Huy, 2012), the author also used maximum parsimony, maximum likelihood, and Bayesian inference, simulating DNA evolution on the phylogenetic tree using chosen models (Jukes-Cantor under a general time reversible [GTR] substitution model with gamma-distributed rate variation across variable sites and some proportion of invariant sites; see Methods). In reconstructing the first state of the (proto)myth, the parsimony treelength was calculated for the tree and matrix, using character matrices from the data files, where the branches of the tree branches were rearranged by subtree pruning and regrafting to make a majority consensus tree, where only clades (branches) in >50% of the trees present (200 trees; length of 213) were retained (d'Huy, 2013; Fig. 2). A high retention index (RI of 0.6966) and consistency index (CI >0.60) showed that most mythemes were shared by common descent and an inferred low horizontal transmission rate.

d'Huy, 2013, Fig. 2; Jay Coskey 2018 slideshare interpretation and discussion.

We return to the specifics in the pioneering work of Berezkin (2005). The Cosmic Hunt: Variants of a Siberia - North American myth. Folklore 31, 70. https://www.folklore.ee/folklore/dat/fl031FX000186.htm: 

 

Berezkin (2005).
 

Of the great northern Cosmic Hunt myth(s) and myth variants, Prof. John D. White (Crecganford) has made a reconstruction (in story form, adapted below) of perhaps an earliest traceable remnant, involving a solitary hunter and most likely an ungulate like an elk, taking into account the slightly different position of the Big Dipper in the sky ~40,000 ya (the 'Dipper bowl' representing the hunted animal):

One morning a Man is walking through the forest, and carries with him a spear and a pot, for he is hunting and hungry, as he hasn't eaten a substantial meal in a couple of days. And as he walks along a trail by the foot of the mountains, he sees, by a stream, and drinking from it, a Mother Elk. Man thinks he can hunt the Elk, and so he aims his spear, but as he throws it, the Elk notices him and is so startled that she runs up the mountain and jumps high in the Sky, catching the Sun in her antlers, and then so scared, she continues to run across the mountain tops, running away as fast as she can. Man picks up his pot and his spear, and chases the Elk, up the mountains, and all the time the Elk is moving the Sun. The Man knows he must stop the Elk, for the Sun can not be lost for there would be no more daytime. And Man gets close to the Elk once more, and throws his spear, his aim good. Again, the Mother Elk is aware of the hunter and jumps high in the Sky to avoid the spear, and the Sun falls from the antlers of the Elk, and falls behind the mountains. Day turns to Night as the Sun disappears. But the Mother Elk did not jump fast enough, and she is hit by the spear. And it releases the magic of the Sun which still lingers around the Elk, and as she dies she is turned into stars in the Night Sky. And the magic of the Stars consumes the man, and turns him into a star chasing her, pot to his side, and spear thrown. And if you look today you will see throughout the year the Man chasing the Elk in the Night's Sky, until the Winter, that is, when the Elk lays on the ground having been speared. But the Mother Elk is a special creature, and she has given birth to a calf during the days of the Hunt, a calf who will no doubt be seen wandering by the mountains when the days get longer again. And so allows the Hunt to carry on.

Adapted from the Crecganford video link, "The OLDEST story in the World - The Cosmic Hunt - An INCREDIBLE discovery" (>40,000 ya).

Within such a myth tradition, some original story gave birth to the many variants of the great northern Cosmic Hunt myth, documented above. Was there an even older story? Or more likely, a far older myth motif, surviving longer than any whole myth? And did those even older myth(s) / motifs originate with humankind itself in the global South? We will return to these questions.

By comparison, Aubert, M., Lebe, R., Oktaviana, A.A. et al. (2019. Earliest hunting scene in prehistoric art. Nature 576, 442. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41586-019-1806-y), point out that while paleolithic art with animals in Europe is relatively late in the European Paleolithic art expansion (starting ~40 kya), only appearing about 21-14 kya in the Lascaux Cave shaft in France (https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-019-1806-y/figures/3), their discovery of the earliest known Paleolithic art with a hunting narrative to date is from Liang Bulu'Sipong 4 (Sulawesi, Indonesia), dating to 43.9 kya. The authors comment, "The ability to invent fictional stories may have been the last and most crucial stage in the evolutionary history of human language and the development of modern-like patterns of cognition" (link). Or it could be far older just as Homo sapiens ourselves go back hundreds of thousands of years. A human cosmology is basically a story about the World / Cosmos.

A Paleolithic hunting representation from what is now Indonesia

The hunting tale tableau at Liang Bulu'Sipong 4 (Sulawesi, Indonesia, SE Asia; link).

Between the Paleolithic ages and the Ancient Near Eastern dawn of civilization times, one may find the central Asian dispersion of mythologies, as indicated in the myth of the Cosmic Hunt, which though later, parallels the data (Ernits, 2010) referencing in its summary discussion that some of the rock art may too readily have been assigned as representations of the Cosmic Hunt myth. However, some of the rock art of north Eurasia near the Arctic circle in the following (Ernits, 2010) figures does seem to be illustrative of the Cosmic Hunt myth and some not so much. (Compare with other the Paleolithic cave art cited later in this chapter):

Ernits, 2010. Figures 1-8 are further illustrations of the widespread myth of the Cosmic Hunt (see references above).

Further work on the phylogenetics of myth has been done in Tehrani, J.J., d'Huy, J. 2017. Phylogenetics meets folklore: Bioinformatics approaches to the study of international folktales. In: Kenna, R., MacCarron, M., MacCarron, P. (eds). Maths Meets Myths: Quantitative Approaches to Ancient Narratives. Understanding Complex Systems. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-39445-9_6. Studying myth origins or mythogeny in the light of scientific data from biogeography and DNA phylogenetics, historical linguistics, comparative mythology, archaeology, and enables us to combine harder sciences with the humanities including anthropology, oral tradition, and art history to start piecing together an objective history and the subjective-artistic stories of humankind.

(link).

The myths, mythogonies and their cosmogonies may be traced based on the geographic routes of migration out of Africa and across the globe, on an oversimplified (I) the southerly routes and (II) the northerly routes of myth and mytheme migration, i.e., a trace of human cosmology-making.

Broad Southern and Northern migrations within and out of Africa (link); P.B. Demenocal & C. B. Stringer. 2016. Human migration: Climate and the peopling of the world. Nature 538 (7623), 49. https://doi.org/10.1038/nature19471.

Neolithic art from the high cave of Llidoner in Valltorta (Castellon Province, Spain), used here as a symbol of our restless exploring human ancestors (link; link, cf. link & link; link; link on dating with tech reference to follow): Esther Lopez-Montalvo, Valentin Villaverde, Clodoaldo Roldan, Sonia Murcia, Ernestina Badal. 2014. An approximation to the study of black pigments in Cova Remigia (Castellon, Spain). Technical and cultural assessments of the use of carbon-based black pigments in Spanish Levantine Rock Art. Journal of Archaeological Science 52, 535. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jas.2014.09.017.

Two Competing Cosmologies. In his compilative metastudy combining historical, linguistic, and genetic research on indigenous mythologies around the world, Sanskrit scholar Witzel (2012, The Origins of the World's Mythologies. Oxford University Press) shows that through the origin and spread of anatomically modern Homo sapiens (what he called the so-called Pangaean or global mythology stage), between the Previous Glacial Maximum (PGM ~70-50 Kya) and the Last Glacial Maximum (LGM ~25-15 Kya) the major division in human migration led to a major division in mythologies and cosmogonies / cosmologies. The cosmological mythemes diverged between southern migration routes (Gondwanan; Afro-AustroMelanesian) with more steady climates, and the northern migration routes (Laurasian; Trans-Caucasian-Eurasian-Amerind) with more turbulent and alternating cold glacial and warming interglacial epochs. The stability or instability of their climatological worlds affected their mythologies and cosmologies, and the traditions which stemmed from each:

Marshaling the interdisciplinary data, Wetzel shows how earlier hypotheses of comparative mythology are lacking: (a) simple diffusional variation across geography, when myths do not show such clinal variation (Frobenius, Baumann, Thompson), but rather sharp differentiations even in commonalities, (b) supposed 'universal' psychological archetypes (Jungian, Campbellian), which are actually not universal, (c) outline, binary psychological structures (Levi-Strauss), when such binary 'universality' is lacking in comparative mythologies around the world. In short, mythologies are conditioned by human biological and cultural geography in the Pleistocene and Holocene, with gradual differentiation into local cultural specificities.

As anatomically modern Homo sapiens restlessly traveled outward exploring the planet which they have bequeathed to us, their conspecific descendants, they told mythological stories which fell into the two following main human biogeographic and cosmological categories.

Witzel's (2012) migrational mapping of the distribution of the two major world mythology lineages.

The latitudinal, human biogeographical mythemes: Contrasting mythogonies, myths, cosmogonies, & cosmologies summary.

I. Southern Cosmology: Gondwanan; Afro-Austro-Melanesian commonalities >315,000 ya - 50,000 ya, &c.  (distributed ancient sources, more eternal storyline)

II. Northern Cosmology: Laurasian; Afro-Transcaucasian-Eurasian-Amerind commonalities ~100,000 ya - 11,000 ya, &c.  (seems to come from a single source, following an overall story line, antecedent to stories of Vedic religions, Greeks, & captured later in the Abrahamic tradition, which evolved into the Judeo-Christian-Islamic traditions in the West)

Eternality of the World: Heaven, Earth, and Sea were already existing. No cosmogony appears High God: In heaven &/or ascending to heaven later; tends to be a deus otiosus, removed and not caring about events on Earth Series of lower deities, totems, tricksters, & cultural heroes, often children of the high god Primordial age: The Dreaming (Australia) Creation of humans by lesser deities from a tree, split bamboo, clay, rocks, or sometimes descending from gods or totems Humans / demigods show hubris and a Flood comes as punishment, from various sources, depending on the myth. Trickster deities bring culture (fire and food).  No apocalypsis: No end of the world Note. Comparisons between both streams of mythological traditions allows one, Witzel argues, (a) to test the younger Laurasian 'novel' mythology hypothesis, and (b) to search for primordial elements beyond the older Gondwanan and the younger Laurasian, such as the recurring ubiquity of the flood element, which is not surprising given the world-wide effects of the Pleistocene warming and melting episodes.

Chaos: Primordial waters / chaos / 'nonbeing' guarded by a dragon Heaven & Earth: Primordial egg / giant / hill / island 'Titans': Father Sky / Mother Earth have 4-5 generations of children (4 declining Ages, cf. Hesiod) 'Olympians' v 'Titans': Heaven is pushed up from Earth (& Milky Way originates) The light of the hidden Sun is revealed / NW eternal winter --> 4 seasons Primordial dragon killed (heavenly drink), Earth is fertilized Contemporary gods kill their predecessors Creation of humans: Somatic descendants of father Sun god = creation of humans (chieftains) from earth, from a tree (older), from maize, from an egg, from a gourd Descent of 'noble' lineages: First humans / demigods & first evil deeds / hubris: Origin of death / the flood The Flood: Punishment for hubris Trickster deities bring culture (fire / food); Cultural heroes / shamans; humans & their rituals spread (local nobilities arise) Local history begins: Local biogeographic-culturalisms Final destruction of the World (kosmos apocalypse)humans (&) the gods (cf. variant of Four Ages theme) New heaven and new earth arise: Cyclical creation & destruction Note. There is a sense that the world is a single organic being (emerging from incest) which is born, grows up, matures, and ages, dying at the end.

    

Two primal competing cosmologies. It is indeed fascinating that our earliest two major traceable streams of human mythology have contrasting cosmologies (I) an eternal world, and (II) a world in passing, from chaos to destruction. Furthermore, which cosmology was used depended on the biogeography of their ancestors migrations. It is worth noting that modern cosmology has undergone arguments between comparable analogs: (II) cosmologies with explosive beginning and apocalyptic ends vs (I) cosmologies with an eternal, persisting cosmos without beginning or end.

Cosmology-making is on the side of the aesthetic of the human brain, rather than strictly utilitarian for subsistence. As we have alluded before, human artistic and representational expression comprises indeed the first beginnings of cosmology-making, which eventually would become the science of cosmology. We must now set our two primal cosmologies against the long backdrop of our planet Earth's natural history.

Earth: Our Long Cosmic Planetary Natural History

(Search link from link).

(link).

Our Long Cosmic Planetary Natural History. As we will discuss more in a later chapter of this history, "Worlds aplenty: Evolution of Stellar Planetary Systems & the cosmic Origins of Life," our life-bearing planet Earth has a deep, eventful geological natural history of ~4.567 Gy which has been stratigraphically subdivided with increasing accuracy (https://stratigraphy.org/), one with an active planetary plate tectonic history (http://www.scotese.com/; https://www.ancient-earth.com/). Out of those ~4.6 Gy, life has been on Earth >4 Gy. It is this long backstory, this natural history of life on a geologically active and asteroidally-pelted planet which is the background of our species, our self-awareness, and our cosmology-making.
 
Because planetary climate cycles and variations are so critical to understanding human self-awareness and cosmology-making, we pause to glance at Earth's climate variation and transitions over the last half-billion years, essentially our current Phanerozoic Eon (538.8 +/- 0.2 Mya - Present; https://stratigraphy.org/chart#latest-version):

(Timeline not to scale; link).

One massive planetary transition long before us was the immense asteroidal impact in the Yucatan Peninsula which destroyed the Mesozoic world of the dinosaurs about 66.043 +/- 0.011 Mya {cf. Renne et al. 2013. Time scales of critical events around the Cretaceous-Paleogene boundary. Science 339 (6120), 684. https://doi.org/10.1126/science.1230492; cf. Cretaceous-Paleogene boundary}, opening the way for the rich adaptive radiation of the mammals. Since that catastrophe we may reconstruct through various stable isotope fractionizations serving as climate proxies, the global climate changes within the Cenozoic Era (~66 Mya - present). For the last 15 My, there has been an overall cooling trend.

δ¹⁸O stable isotope temperature proxies (link).

We may zoom in on the last ~5-7 My during the times when bipedal primates, including our ancestors and paleo-cousins of humankind, evolved in eastern rift-valley Africa to further trace the climate trends, where climate proxy isotopic fluctuations are hypothetically-modeled.

(link). Then came the Greenland and Antarctic ice cores which showed the recent cycles in the last few hundred thousand years:

The Vostok (Greenland) vs EPICA (Antarctica) ice records in stable δ¹⁸O isotopic temperature proxies (link)

In terms of human prehistory, we set the stage now to return to both the older 'southern cosmology' mythos and the 'northern cosmology' mythos, as it appeared in the most recently inhabited region of Eurasia, what we now call Europe.

Broad Southern and Northern migrations within and out of Africa (link); P.B. Demenocal & C. B. Stringer. 2016. Human migration: Climate and the peopling of the world. Nature 538 (7623), 49. https://doi.org/10.1038/nature19471.

Phylogenetically, the last major deep divergence within Homo sapiens sapiens in our native Africa occurred during Marine Isotope Stage 5 (MIS5; 130-80 kya), specifically 135-120 kya according to Ragsdale, A. P., et al. 2023. A weakly structured stem for human origins in Africa. Nature 617, 755. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41586-023-06055-y. Using human DNA, Ragsdale and colleagues utilized linkage disequilibrium and diversity-based statistics of population admixture to test two hypotheses about deep human genetic natural history in ancestral Africa. In keeping with the earliest divergence by 130,000 - 120,000 ya, they found a reticulated or network phylogeny for the population genetic demographic history. These basic demographic models are starting point, Ragsdale et al. (2023) Figure 1:

 

The best fit log likelihoods are compared between (a) the continuous migration hypothesis and (b) the merger hypothesis. The better log likelihood score favors hypothesis (b), the merger model. Here is Ragsdale et al. (2023) Figure 2 with the data and log likelihood statistics in Table 1:
 

To these deep African, ancestral human genetic data, one should compare recent results which also include human ancient or aDNA, Lipson, M., Sawchuk, E.A., Thompson, J.C. et al. 2022. Ancient DNA and deep population structure in sub-Saharan African foragers. Nature 603, 290. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41586-022-04430-9. This second paper, by incorporating sub-Saharan African aDNA samples, are able to infer some population demographic dynamics within the last 18-20,000 ya (Figure 2 of Lipson et al. 2022).

To these increased details about human DNA biogeography of the 'southern cosmology' mythos over the last 200,000 years in Africa, we are now able to show on the 'northern cosmology' front that anatomically-modern humans arrived into West Eurasia (Europe) in three waves, which have been documented and dated archaeologically as occurring at (a) ~54,000 ya, (b) ~45,000 ya, and (c) ~42,000 ya (link) according to Slimak, L. 2023. The three waves: Rethinking the structure of the first Upper Paleolithic in Western Eurasia. PLoS ONE 18 (5), e0277444. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0277444; Figure 9, illustrating by map diffusion and stone tool culture in the three waves (top to bottom): .

We return to the late Pleistocene-Holocene climate epochs, narrowing our focus from the last ~500,000 y to the last ~50,000 y to bring us through the Pleistocene-Holocene tumultous transition and its impact especially on 'northern cosmology-making.'

Both in the northern and southern isotopic and ice records of the last half million years and more, showing repeated ice ages with warming interstadials, including the latest warming / cooling / warming transition to the Holocene (link; link; Yim, 2009, link; link; see https://icecores.org/publications). Between ~13 and ~12 kya (lower right), the major rise, drop, and rise again of temperatures is associated with the Bølling-Allerød warming interstadial and Younger Dryas episodes.

Fleitman et al. 2009. Precise timing of Dansgaard-Oeschger events 1-13 in stalagmites from Sofular Cave, Northern Turkey. Geophysical Review Letters 36 (19), L19707. https://doi.org/10.1029/2009GL040050, over the last ~50 kya.

The transition from the glacial advance / interstadial warming climate regime of the Pleistocene to the warming Holocene was epochal in affecting the story of cosmology-making among late Paleolithic humans. The rapid fluctuations of warming, cooling, and then rewarming involved in the loss of continental glaciation and consequent flooding, deeply impressed the human myth-making psyche.

(Representation of the Lake Missoula flood, Pickering; link).

When continental glaciers extended further south, tundra with unique wild flowers, including of the genus Dryas, as well as boreal forests also extended much further south, in a nested order continental glacial boundaries, tundra, and boreal forests (link; link).

 

After the great Ice Melt: The Younger Dryas divide (12.8 - 11.7 kya). Although anatomically modern humans have been on Earth for >300 kya, surviving through the many climatic episodes of the Pleistocene Epoch (2.58 Mya - 11.7 kya; Subcommission on Quaternary Stratigraphy: http://quaternary.stratigraphy.org/major-divisions/), there was a catastrophic end-of-Pleistocene transition which not only shaped our environment, but also deeply affected our cosmology-making, particularly in the more northern parts of our planet, a source of our "Northern Cosmology." This most recent catastrophic transition involved massive climate change, and as we shall see includes emerging evidence of an impact event of cosmic proportions to humans on our little planet. We have re-learned about this transition in recent years—re-learned because our ancestors witnessed it.

The causes of the megafaunal extinctions at the end of the last Pleistocene Ice Age has been a matter of controversy. Cooper et al. 2015. Abrupt warming events drove Late Pleistocene Holarctic megafaunal turnover. Science 349 (6248), 602. https://doi.org/10.1126/science.aac4315, have shown, using ancient or aDNA and ¹⁴C dating, from "31 detailed time series of megafaunal extinctions and replacements over the last 56,000 years" that rapid interstadial warming episodes are strongly correlated with rapid replacement or extinction of megafaunal species and major phylogenetic branches (link, cf. link).

Climate change versus megafaunal extinctions: Temperature proxies are shown along the bottom; the faunal black and red bars represent 95% confidence intervals. Most animals went extinct during warm interstadial episodes (shaded tan), and the last ice age, the last glacial maximum (LGM, shaded blue) had essentially no effect on extinctions (link, link).

Examples of skeletons of Pleistocene mammalian megafauna (image link; see Martin Sweatman's general research group blog as well as his personal blog on the Younger Dryas & Gobekli Tepe; and note also Ahmed Kabil's site on Goebekli Tepe and the Younger Dryas comet).

This shows more evidence that the final warming transition to the Holocene really was a time when those mammalian megafauna populations see to have irrevocably collapsed, as observed by Cooper et al. (2015).

It is interesting that we do have independent confirmation from ancient DNA (aDNA) genetics that some of the Pleistocene megafauna could survive the repeated glacial cooling and interglacial warming cycles of the epoch and still not face extinction until the climate turmoil at the Pleistocene-Holocene transition. In Pečnerova et al. 2017. Mitogenome evolution in the last surviving woolly mammoth population reveals neutral and functional consequences of small population size. Evolution Letters 1-6, 292. https://doi.org/10.1002/evl3.33, the authors showed by Bayesian phylogenetics from the mitochondrial aDNA (maternally-inherited) genomes of populations of woolly mammoth remains found across the Siberian Arctic, including a population refugium on Wrangel island which lasted until ~4,000 ya before going extinct, that female effective (mating) population sizes (N_ef) estimates while holding steady over the Pleistocene began to collapse at the transition point. In general N_e estimates are measures of the genetic health and viability of a population.

The Pleistocene had been a colder epoch, punctuated with temporary rapid warming Dansgaard-Oeschger Events (see the Cooper et al. 2015 figure above). During the Last Glacial Maximum (LGM, ~27-~20 kya) lower temperatures had been relatively steady for an extended interval followed by gradual warming. Until the unsmooth Pleistocene-Holocene transition unfolded with a very rapid warming to the last glacial interstadial (the  ), ended by a decline and steep return to a severe cold episode (the Younger Dryas; references), which ended with another very rapid warming ushering in the Holocene.

Temperature stable-isotope proxies over the last 40 kya compared between Arctic and Antarctic ice cores records (link).

As one considers the temperature proxies over the last 40,000 years, its important to note that the rapid fluctuations, such as the Dansgaard-Oeschger Events, including the Bølling-Allerød warming interstadial and the Younger Dryas 'cold snap,' are far more pronounced in the Northern hemisphere (GRIP, Greenland) than in the southern hemisphere (Vostok & EPICA, Antarctica). That fact is correlative with, if not causally-foundational to, the stark differences in emphasis on epochal apocalyptic catastrophe in the Paleolithic "northern cosmology" compared with the more eternal, pacific, and less apocalyptic storyline of the older "southern cosmology" in our mythologies. The overall profile of the Bølling-Allerød warming interstadial / Younger Dryas whiplash in global temperatures can be summarized visually with these figures:

 
The Younger Dryas cold period following the Bølling-Allerød warming interstadial (link); and climate models predict more gradual transitions (red line) than the actual steep, rapid transitions (blue temperature reconstruction) reconstructed from the Greenland GRIP δ¹⁸O proxy, along with other climate trends, including cold periods highlighted in yellow (figure from Christo Buizert; link).

These illustrate precisely-timed global events by several proxies, reflecting late Pleistocene / early Holocene transitional climatic events, including continental glaciation rapid melting / catastrophic flooding, for which anatomically modern humans (any humans at all) were actually present. The Dansgaard-Oeschger Events of rapid temperature warming, were heightened even further by the special circumstances in the transition.

The approximate dating of the three Dryas episodes, cold stadials within the overall late Pleistocene warming trend: The Oldest Dryas (~18-14.7 kya), the Older Dryas (~14.4-14 kya), and the Younger Dryas (~12.9-11.6 kya; discussion on the Sundaland submergence during the end of the Pleistocene, link).

All three of the Dryas episodes are based on the biostratigraphic distribution of the Arctic-Alpine flowering plant species known as the "mountain avens" or Dryas octopetala (L). (link; link).

In one general locality, multiple ¹⁴C datings provide timings for a late glacial advance in that area: Young et al. 2020. Evidence for a late glacial advance near the beginning of the Younger Dryas in western New York State: An event postdating the record for local Laurentide ice sheet recession. Geosphere 17, 1. https://doi.org/10.1130/GES02257.1. In western New York state, they took samples for testing which were part of formations resulting from the shorter glacial advance corresponding on the divider between the Bølling-Allerød warming interstadial warming and the Younger Dryas stadial cooling.

Bølling-Allerød warming and Younger Dryas (B-A/YD) intervals modified from Williams and Farrigno (2012, figure 21) with generalized Greenland paleotemperature curve and additional data as discussed in text from Rasmussen et al. (2014). Red GI-1b marks approximate location of Greenland Interstadial-1b cold interval of Killarney Oscillation in Canadian Maritimes (Levesque et al., 1993) that closely parallels the proposed timing of the B-A/YD event ca. 13.3-13.1 k.y. B.P. (link).

Those timings bracket the important climate transitions at the end of the Pleistocene Epoch:

• Meltwater Pulse 1A: ~14,700 ya = start of the Bølling-Allerød warming interstadial (references);
• Rapid onset of the Younger Dryas cooling = 12,900-12,800 ya (references); What event triggered this cold snap, plunging much of the northern hemisphere into the cold of the Younger Dryas or Younger Dryas Boundary (YDB)? (references);
  
• Meltwater Pulse 1B: ~11,700 ya = end of the Younger Dryas, start of Holocene (references).
  

The changes in coastlines in Eurasia from the eustatic low stand at the Last Glacial Max (LGM), about 400 feet below current sea levels.

(Image link defunct, cf. link and link; see also Atlantis in the Java Sea site and the connection with the LGM, the Younger Dryas, and the Pleistocene-Holocene transition).

 

Locations where biomass burning residues have been found in cores (link).

The fiery dragon: Cometary / Bolide end of the Pleistocene. The hypothesis of a cosmic impact of cometary / bolide origin effecting ice ages and other disasters in the setting of Cenozoic natural history perhaps started scientifically with Hoyle & Wickramasinghe. 1978. Comets, ice ages, and ecological catastrophes. Astrophys. Space Sci. 53, 523. https://doi.org/10.1007/BF00645040. The linking of such a hypothesized event to the onset of the Younger Dryas has developed over the years into a major dissident-at-first research program of a growing number of workers who display their published scientific papers and their outreach at https://cometresearchgroup.org/.

First proposed in 2007 and controversial, Firestone and colleagues published (2007), Evidence for an extraterrestrial impact 12,900 years ago that contributed to the megafaunal extinctions and the Younger Dryas cooling. PNAS 104 (41),16016. https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.0706977104. Figures 1 and 2 below.

Summarizing and synthesizing the work and dating of other workers (incl. Haynes, C. V. 2005. Paleoamerican Origins: Beyond Clovis. Eds. R. Bonnichsen, B. T. Lepper, D. Stanford, M. R. Waters. College Station, TX: Texas A&M University Press; pp. 113-132) at about 50 sites in North America, Firestone and colleagues found that at the ~12.9 kya horizon, at what they described as the abrupt onset of the Younger Dryas, or the Younger Dryas Boundary (YDB), there is / are (along with what other authors contributed to the list):

• A carbon-rich thin black layer, or black mat, with in situ fossil bones of extinct Pleistocene megafauna together with Clovis culture tool assemblages, below but never within or above the black mat horizon. Within the black mat, there are abundance peaks of...
  
• Magnetic grains enriched with iridium
• Magnetic microspherules
  
• Charcoal and soot from biomass burning
  
• Carbon spherules
• Glass-like carbon containing nanodiamonds
• Fullerenes ('bucky balls') containing more extraterrestrially-common helium isotope, ³He
  
• High-temperature, rapidly quenched microspherules and scoria-like objects (SLOs)
• Corundum, mullite, and suessite (Fe₃Si), a rare meteoritic mineral formed at high temperatures
• Melted SiO₂ glass, or lechatelierite, with flow textures (or schlieren) forming at >2,200 ^oC
• Particles marked by high-energy interparticle collisions
• so-called YDB spherules, dumbbells, gourds, and so on.
  

The work of others contributed to that list of evidence. Bunch et al. (2012. Very high-temperature impact melt products as evidence for cosmic airbursts and impacts 12,900 years ago. PNAS 109 (28), E1903. https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1204453109) added a number of data points from 18 YDB dated sites in North America, Europe, and Asia, which show transient very high temperature phenomena occurred, such as would be generated by a cosmic impact, but not other terrestrial phenomena (see table above after 'fullerenes').

Below: Bunch et al. 2012 figures 1, 2, 7, supplementary figure 1, and supplementary table 1.

	Supplementary Table 1. Comparing high temperature proxies from the Younger Dryas Boundary (YDB), Trinity atomic fission detonation, 1945 (TRIN), Meteor Crater, AZ (METC), Australasian Tecktite Field (AUST), and the 1908 Tunguska Event (TUNG).

Bunch et al. (2012) also discussed a number of papers dealing with 'black mats' of that general time frame (cf. Haynes. 2008. Younger Dryas "black mats" and the Rancholabrean termination in North America. PNAS 105 (18), 6520. https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.0800560105, opposed to the YDIH, and other papers), but only found one carbon mat, the YDB black mat, which had the predicted impact enrichment residues described. The others from evident other causes.

A refined YDB dating of ~12.8 kya by stratigraphy, ¹⁴C dating, and paleo-Indian cultural transitions. The next year, Wittke et al. (2013. Evidence for deposition of 10 million tonnes of impact spherules across four continents 12,800 y ago. PNAS 110 (23), E2088. https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1301760110) used x-ray spectroscopy for geochemical analysis and electron microscopy for structural analyses, formational inference on ~700 spherules from 18 YDB archaeological sites dated to 12.8 +/- 0.15 kya. The dating corresponds also with the end of the Clovis point culture in N. America and the post-YDB rise of other cultural arrowpoints.
 

Wittke et al. 2013. Figures 1-3; supplementary figures 2, 4, and 11.

YDB layer with spherules and nanodiamonds, 'black mat' bounding mammoth tooth and Clovis culture point.

YDB layer with nanodiamonds and Holocene post-YDB cultural artifacts.

The refined dating was furthered by Kinzie et al. (2014). Nanodiamond-rich layer across three continents consistent with major cosmic impact at 12,800 cal BP. J Geol. 122 (5), 475. http://www.jstor.org/stable/10.1086/677046.In 2015, along with showing an impact proxy nanodiamond dispersion across the northern hemisphere west. 

Kinzie et al. 2014. Figure 1. Dispersal of a nanodiamond-rich layer in the YDB impact proxy field (color link).

In 2015, Kennett et al. summarized the data leading to a refined dating of the end of the Younger Dryas to ~12,800 ya using Bayesian statistical analyses of available dates: Bayesian chronological analyses consistent with synchronous age of 12,835-12,735 Cal B.P. for Younger Dryas boundary on four continents. PNAS 112 (32), E4344. https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1507146112.

Figure S3 of site locations along with a summary of the Bayesian synchroneity analyzed ¹⁴C dates in the review by Powell (2022), figure 11.

Right:

Adapted image from Powell review (2022) of calibrated radiocarbon dates of the Younger Dryas rapid onset.

The climate-catastrophic results of the YDB impact event were elaborated by and debated in followup on the work of Wolbach et al. (2018a, 2018b). Extraordinary biomass-burning episode and impact winter triggered by the Younger Dryas cosmic impact ∼12,800 years ago. 1. Ice cores and glaciers. J Geol. 126 (2), 165. https://doi.org/10.1086/695703. Part 2 in the same journal issue had the same title with this addendum: 2. Lake, marine, and terrestrial sediments. J Geol. 126 (2), 185. The distribution of anomalous biomass burning and 'impact winter' cooling of the climate into the Younger Dryas.

Wolbach and colleagues also cited papers which discussed the dangers of the Taurid complex of meteoroids, some of which are larger, as well as the general proposal of connecting ice ages and ecological catastrophes with cosmic impact: Hoyle & Wickramasinghe. 1978. Comets, ice ages, and ecological catastrophes. Astrophys. Space Sci. 53, 523. https://doi.org/10.1007/BF00645040. An important paper linking potentially disastrous cosmic impacts to the Taurid complex includes the work of Dubietis & Arlt, 2007. Taurid resonant-swarm encounters from two decades of visual observations. MNRAS 376 (2), 890. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1365-2966.2007.11488.x. These authors confirmed over a number of years that there is an excess of fireballs during Taurid resonant meteoroid swarms, which in resonant swarm years could lead to dangerous meteorite impacts.

Taurid stream swarm resonance, Dubietis & Arlt (2007).

Napier (2010) made a connection between the Taurid meteor complex and paleolithic mass extinctions: Palaeolithic extinctions and the Taurid Complex. MNRAS 405 (3), 1901. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1365-2966.2010.16579.x, postulating that dangerous debris (50-100 km in diameter) from a short-period comet during the Late Paleolithic could have led to the catastrophic downturn 12.9 kya returning to Ice Age conditions for about 1300 years during the Younger Dryas. This proposal was followed up by a generalization of the possibility of cometary streams from the Oort cloud being diverted into Earth-crossing orbits during epochs when mass extinctions are more likely: Napier, 2015. Giant comets and mass extinctions of life. MNRAS 448 (1), 27. https://doi.org/10.1093/mnras/stu2681. Napier in his analyses found a strong correlation between dating of confirmed impact structures and significant mass extinctions, including major geological epochal transitions.

Napier (2015) summary of datings of impact structures in geological natural history, extinction episodes, and geological epoch boundaries.

In 2017, Spurný and co-workers put forward evidence for the Discovery of a new branch of the Taurid meteoroid stream as a real source of potentially hazardous bodies. A&A 605, A68. https://doi.org/10.1051/0004-6361/201730787, (cf. figures link). Following are the Spurný figures 2, 8, 14, and 15 showing evidence of some of 115 Taurid fireballs with trajectories and orbits characterized by visual and radio intereferometry during the Taurid meteor shower.

The reddish-pinkish coloring marks the fireball members of the Taurids. 

The Spurný et al (2017) results show that perturbing resonances can shift orbits of this dangerous stream of the southern Taurids with its many fireballs into hazardous Earth-crossing orbits. Further summarizing work has been done by Egal et al. 2021. A dynamical analysis of the Taurid Complex: evidence for past orbital convergences. https://arxiv.org/pdf/2108.00041.pdf.

This hypothesis (like the K-T impact boundary theory of Alvarez) has been steadily growing in support as the data have accumulated. By 2022, J. L. Powell, could adequately argue, Premature rejection in science: The case of the Younger Dryas Impact Hypothesis. Science Progress 105 (1), 1-43. https://doi.org/10.1177/00368504211064272. Figs. 1, 9, 11, 12, Table 3. Powell also wrote the historical 2015 work, Four Revolutions in the Earth Sciences: From Heresy to Truth. (New York, NY: Columbia University Press), which discusses how the geological sciences struggled and eventually came to terms with the discoveries of

• (a) deep time, including the acknowledgment of catastrophes, while benefiting from uniformitarianism and yet escaping the clutches of too constrained a version, a process which started in 1805 (and continued, we might point out well into our time, including Harlan Bretz work in the 1920s on the Cordilleran Ice Sheet meltwater flood episodes & their eventual acceptance, including their linking to the end of the Younger Dryas, see below). 
• (b) continental drift and plate tectonics,
  
• (c) the importance of meteoritic impacts on Earth history, and finally,
  
• (d) the impact of modern anthropogenic emissions on climate warming. 

Progress Note: The eventual successful faring of the Younger Dryas Impact hypothesis is an advance of the geological sciences to continue to embrace and integrate both deep time and catastrophism into a growing actualistic reconstructing of Earth's natural history. This general integration trend will greatly facilitate more advanced correlations between Earth's episodic natural history and the paleontological, anatomical, and genomic natural history of the evolution of life and life forms on Earth.

Interestingly we do have independent historical-legendary confirmation of a catastrophic event coinciding with Meltwater Pulse 1B (~11.7 kya) in a report in Plato's Timaeus 21a-26a (written ~360 BCE; https://archive.org/details/timaeuscritiascl00plat/page/36/mode/1up, Greek text & translation from Bury, R.G. 1929. Plato, Vol. 7, LCL. Cambridge, MA: Plato Volume IX, Timaeus. Critias. Cleitophon. Menexenus. Epistles, link; cf. critique of Solon's Egypt journey in Timaeus).

Plato recounts a journey by his ancestor, Solon (c 630 - c 560 BCE) an important Athenian lawgiver to Egypt where he encountered an aged Egyptian priest (keeper of temple records) who told of prior destructions of civilization beyond the Nile to the north and elsewhere, including "an old tale" of an advanced and fierce nation of warriors on an island, Atlantis, to the west beyond the "pillars of Heracles" (Strait of Gibraltar) who made war and attempted to subjugate the Mediterranean world, including the ancient Greeks, but who were resisted. Proud and immoderate beyond their means, a great disaster came and their island submerged beneath the ocean, and this was the most recent destruction of the world. Solon asked for details and was told that it occurred ~9,000 years ago

(link).

	Solon asked for details, and the aged priest told him ~9,000 years ago.
Ancient Greek Report of Plato in Timaeus 21a-26a (~360 BCE) Solon (c630 - c560 BCE) +9000 = 9630 BCE - 9560 BCE 11,630 - 11,560 ya: Destruction of the kosmos / "world" and the submergence / subsidence of "Atlantis."	The Paleo-climatological data Meltwater Pulse 1A: ~14,700 ya = start of the Bølling-Allerød warming interstadial; Rapid onset of the Younger Dryas cooling = 12,900-12,800 ya; Meltwater Pulse 1B: ~11,700 ya = end of the Younger Dryas

A summary timeline of catastrophic events in the last 13,000 ya, and possible mythic / symbolic representations of cometary cataclysm.

Illustration by Arthur Koopmans (https://www.secretsofthenorse.com/tag/catastrophism/page/2/), who wrote blogs parts 1, 2, and 3 about "comets and catastrophism" on his Secrets of the Norse website on Norse mythology.

"Plato meets the meteorite: Solon, Egypt, and Atlantis" (blog link).
"Akhenaten and Nefertiti worshiping the multi-rayed Aten, 18th Dynasty. Notice how they're holding what seems like hallucinogenic blue lotus flowers? Perhaps they were tripping while basking in the light of a giant comet! - source"; blogger Koopmans freely speculates that "winged disc" and "monotheism" such as that of Aten or Ahura Mazda may have arisen because of cometary imagery c1500 BCE (link).	"The Ragnarok myth explicitly mentions the falling of stars from heaven - screenshot from the Mind Escape Podcast" (link).
"A Zoroastrian winged disk symbol with what appears to be a deity or king on it. [Faravahar relief in Persepolis]" (link).	"'Medusa' by Jacek Malczewski (1900) - source" (link).
"Excerpt from 'Phaeton' by Gustave Moreau (1878) - source. The artist depicts Phaeton with long, disheveled hair."	"'The Primeval Giant Ymir' by Emil Doepler (1900)" (link).
"Thor's hammer was originally not a hammer, but a whetstone or grindstone, possibly meteoric in origin. [Thor's Hammer, Skane]" (link).	"Left: a symbol of the Sumerian goddess Inanna. Right: Engraving of a comet with tail" (source; link).

"List of suspected comet symbols in Norse mythology - screenshot from the Mind Escape Podcast" (link).

"The deadly beauty of long-haired stars" by Arthur Koopmans (above); (right:) "Notable comets of the period 1577-1652" [1688] (link).

"A vintage print from 1860 showing comets that have appeared in a variety of shapes" (link).

"The 'Great Comet of 1861,' drawing by E. Weiss [Comet C/1861 J1]" (link).

Goebekli Tepi
(9500-8000 BCE = 11,500-10,000 ya)

(link).


(link).

"Depictions of comets compared with the constellations Scorpio and Coma Berenices. Experiences with large and bright comets were likely passed on in the form of star myths" (link).	"Screenshot[s] from Martin Sweatman's blog, showing a collage of comet illustrations - source" (link).
	Vulture Stone (Goebekli Tepe) a commemoration of the time of the Younger Dryas impact? (link).
The Vulture Stone is a "datestamp: World's oldest monument [Goebekli Tepe] memorializes the Younger Dryas impact" event (link).	"The constellation Ophiuchus as a spear-wielding god, with Scorpio and the golden-red Antares beneath it" (link). "Screenshot from Martin Sweatman's blog, showing a collage of suspected comet symbols - source" (link).

The most dramatic effects of the Younger Dryas Impact Event (YDIE) have been found in North America. One of these may well be evidences of the massive melt in the rapid Missoula Flood in the Columbia River Valley in what is now eastern Washington State, known first via Harlan Bretz' pioneering research in the early 20th century: Bretz, J. H. 1925. The Spokane flood beyond the channeled scablands. The Journal of Geology 33 (2), 97. https://doi.org/10.1086/623179. For a more recent reference, see Waltham, T. 2010. Lake Missoula and the Scablands, Washington, USA. Geology Today 26 (4), 152. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1365-2451.2010.00763.x. The melting of the Cordilleran Ice sheet led to the formation of glacial Lake Missoula and kindred lakes. A catastrophic event such the YDIE might have been just enough to break the 2,000 foot ice damn holding back the Cordilleran melt waters. The ferocity of the Cordilleran Ice Sheet meltwaters could well tie with the YDIE's likely focal region on the North American continental glaciers associated with the end of the Pleistocene Epoch.

North America continental glaciation near the LGM (link).

The Cordilleran Ice Sheet meltwater flood episodes in the basinal region of what is now eastern Washington state and the NW states as a microcosm of the Pleistocene-Holocene transition and the effect it must have had on human cosmology-making.

	(link).
(link).	(link).
The 'channeled scablands' involved thousands of square miles of vegetation washed away.	Channeled Scablands of what is now eastern Washington state.
Giant boulder in eastern Washington carried by ice during the Lake Missoula Flood; cf. human on left for scale. Dry Falls, eastern Washington; once a falls for a mighty cataract.	Drumheller Channels, eastern Washington.
Giant ripples (~24' high) in the Washington Scablands.	Camas Prairie giant ripples, Washington.

Links: https://humanoriginproject.com/younger-dryas-flood-prehistoric-earth/; https://humanoriginproject.com/evidence-younger-dryas-forged-human-prehistory/; cf. https://humanoriginproject.com/evidence-global-warming-end-of-last-ice-age/.

Potholes Cataract, Dry Falls, Washington (link).

With the apparently drastic effects of the YDIE and the climate change whiplash of the end of Pleistocene to Holocene climate regime transition, especially near the effect epicenter of the YDIE, it is not surprising that the appearance of civilizations immediately thereafter, such as Goebekli Tepe, and so forth should excite the kind of controversial claims such as appear in Graham Hancock's work, such as that the Sphinx may be older and may remember in body form the constellation location of the Sun at spring equinox at the time of the disaster.

(Old link).

Now the particular Hancock-speculated scenario regarding 'Atlantis' may well be questioned as the reality often may be more complex, as Crecganford's Prof. John White has summarized in "Atlantis: The TRUTH behind Plato's Story" (video link).

Anthroecology: Human anthromes show human curation of Earth's land ecosystems for millennia. There's a long persisting myth that humans have not affected natural biomes, except destructively and in very recent centuries. Research has now shown that this is very likely wrong: Ellis et al. 2021. People have shaped most of terrestrial nature for at least 12,000 years. PNAS 118 (17), e2023483118. https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.2023483118; (since with updated figures 1-4), in ways which were not destructive. The old Greek myths told of a primordial golden age. While that was myth, there is an element of truth in that humans have lived quite harmoniously with the lands of Earth for untold millennia. A whole database on the advances in anthroecology has been published and is expanding: https://anthroecology.org/, including an interactive guide to anthromes (link). Concepts such as 'domesticated forest' have arisen to describe human-shaped ecology, including in the Amazon Basin: Levis et al. 2018. How people domesticated Amazon forests. Front. Ecol. Evol., Sec. Agroecology 5. https://doi.org/10.3389/fevo.2017.00171, which is one of a whole set of 21 Frontiers papers on the 'Ecology and evolution of plants under domestication in the Neotropics,' frontiers link: 

Ellis et al. (2021). Updated Figures 1-4. A further elaboration of the database is further referenced in
Ellis, E. & Nicolas Gauthier, N. (2023). Anthromes 12K DGG v1 shapefile. https://doi.org/10.7910/DVN/SZFCPX.

If we move back further in time into the Pleistocene (~2.58 Mya to 11.7 kya; link), we also find, as another study shows that even on island archipelagos where extinctions are more likely, and where extinctions have been interpreted as anthropogenic, the arrival of hominins and of Homo sapiens usually did not cause the Pleistocene faunal extinctions: Louys, J. et al. 2021. No evidence for widespread island extinctions after Pleistocene hominin arrival. PNAS 118 (20), e2023005118. https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.2023005118; (cf. Livescience link), along with Supplementary information, containing tables with dates of hominin and Homo sapiens arrivals usually long-predating faunal extinctions, and mostly showing no association between hominin and Homo sapiens arrival times and faunal extinctions.

Louys et al. (2021); Figures 1-4.

In summary, the arrivals of hominins (~1.3 Mya-<500 kya) including Homo erectus, Homo heidelbergensis, Homo antecessor, and the island diminutive Homo floresiensis and Homo luzonensis, as well as of our own species Homo sapiens (~100-14 kya) were not associated with but rather mostly preceded the widespread megafaunal extinctions by hundreds of thousands and tens of thousands of years respectively (cf. dates in Supplementary tables). The extinctions were rather associated with climactic changes, volcanic eruptions, &c., and only later modern human cultural and technological colonization since the 'age of exploration.' The implications are that hominins / humankind are not ecological intruders but rather healthy migratory participants in the Pleistocene-Holocene ecosystems of Earth, even in sensitive island ecosystems.

Mythos & Personification: And then came the Goddesses and Gods (~500 kya - 200 CE). One of the most striking set of symbolic emblems of the sacred or ultimate for tens of thousands of years (~< 300 kya) were the so-called "Venus" or "Venus impudique" exaggerated and stylized female figurines found across Paleolithic Eurasia. Over 200 of them have been found. The very earliest of them is putatively the quartzite "Venus" of Tan-Tan, north bank of the Dray River, Morocco (between 500 - 300 kya) and the next oldest, the scoria "Venus" of Berekhat Ram, Golan Heights (280 - 250 kya) respectively, both of which have been argued to have indications of hominin / human alterations.

"Venus 4" from Kostenkyi (25 - 20 kya).

Although on the apparent wane, the "Venus" cult continued into the Mesolithic (20-8 kya SW Asia), the Neolithic (12-6.5 kya), and later:
"Venus" of Halaf culture, Mesopotamia (8 - 7.1 kya); "Venus" of Mehrgahr, Indus Valley (~5 kya).

 

  

And in detail:

And pulled out for possible juxtaposition of meaning & reproduced in color:

 

).

Decor and divinity iconography on the Bull's head lyre: Note that almost all of the figures are mythological composites from the "Master of the beasts" to the beasts, and on down the panel. Of the 4 panels, we see interesting empirical hierarchy: 1. Master of the beasts, which also have human faces or rather a composite, brings to mind the composite cherubim of later Near Eastern lore. 2. Composite lion-human deities serving meat (having a knife) and possibly wine (having a cup or ladle for serving). 3. Composite deer-human (?) and bear-human playing a bull-adorned lyre, like on the very piece here, with a baby deer-human making an offering to the bull's head(?). 4. Scorpion-human and goat-human composites also rendering service of some kind to the royal deity retinue.

Other samples predating Ur sweeping from ancient prehistoric to late antiquity representations of the "Master / Mistress of the beasts" with "confronted beasts" are found below. One of the most fascinating syncretic contacts between the Paleolithic Mother Goddess and the Neolithic emerging "Master of beasts" cultus is the seated Mother Goddess from Çatal Höyük giving birth, supported on either side by female lions or leopards, as the Mistress of beasts (6000 BCE; 8 kya). Such representations (succeeding more primordial animist traditions of the numinous) more unified mythogonies perhaps allow us to espy some of the very early first inklings of the trend toward unified cosmologies, integrated mythological world-views from closer to the dawn of human time.

There is an even older such set of possible 'Master of beasts' in the so-called narrative reliefs found at Sayburc, in the Pre-Pottery Neolithic of Asia Minor, not far from the famous Goebekli Tepe site, due to the work of Professor Eylem Ozdogan. 2022. The Sayburc reliefs: a narrative scene from the Neolithic. Antiquity 96 (390), 1599. https://doi.org/10.15184/aqy.2022.125. This region of Anatolia is rich in artifacts from the 12-10,000 y interval.

Sayburc Reliefs: What many failed to notice was that these figures resemble powerful figures confronting animals, rather like the 'master of beasts' motif.
 

Perhaps dancing figure holding an object, charming a massive bison? Sayburc Reliefs, 9th millennium BCE ~11,000 ya	Central figure with lion's head (?) grasping his member and confronting two leopards Sayburc Reliefs, 9th millennium BCE ~11,000 ya
Mistress of Beasts giving birth, Çatal Höyük, 6000 BCE = 8 kya (Museum of Anatolian Civilizations)	Stamp seal with 'twined serpents/creatures, or rotated, a tree of life motif from the Halaf culture, 6100-5100 BCE = ~8-7 kya, northern Mesopotamia (Louvre Museum)
Master of Animals, Susa I, 4200-3800 BCE = 6200-5800 ya (Persia)	Stamp Seal with Master of Animals motif, Tell Tello, ancient Girsu, end of Ubaid period, Persia; c4000 BCE = c6 kya (Louvre Museum)
Ancient Levantine God, Gebel el-Arak Knife c 3450 BCE = 5400 kya	Narmer Palette, side with entwined serpopard, Egypt, c5000 kya
Master of Beasts, Sumerian Bulls, Ur, 2600 BCE = 4600 ya	Another motif with a sacred tree in the place of a Master of beasts, Ur Royal Cemetery, Early Dynastic III, Royal cemetery 2600 BCE = 4600 ya (British Museum)
Master of Beasts, Bronze Age I chlorite object, Jiroft, Kerman, c2500 BCE = c4500 ya (National Museum of Iran) Gilgamesh seal of Master of Beasts, Indus valley civilization, 2500-1500 BCE = 4500-3500 ya	Shiva, Pashupati seal, 2350-2000 BCE = 4350-4000 ya
Caduceus: Serpent god Ningishzida on the libation vase of Gudea, Mesopotamia, c2100 BCE = ~4100 ya	Ningishzida, with snakes emanating from his shoulders, on a relief of Gudea c2000 BCE
Sun disc on tree with two bull-men, Old Babylonian, ~2000-1600 BCE = 4000-3600 ya (link).	Bearded deity of the underworld with small figures (perhaps dead souls), Old Babylonian, ~2000-1600 BCE = 4000-3600 ya (link)
Θεά των Όφεων, Minoan snake goddess, ~1600 BCE = ~3600 ya	Lions Gate, Mycenae 13th c BCE = ~3300 years ago
Greek Minoan pendant (British Museum) with an ornate gold Master of Beasts, 1700-1500 BCE = 2700-2500 ya	Cylinder seal, Greek Minoan Master of Animals, c 1400 BCE = c 3400 ya.
Mistress of Animals (a pyxis lid of African elephant ivory), found in trade center of Ugaritic city of Minet el-Beida, 14th-13th c BCE = c 3300 - 3200 ya (link). Artistically a Greek Mycenaean image of Potnia, mistress of animals, and a forerunner of Asherah, a West Semitic sea goddess adored in Syro-Palestine, consort of high god 'El, later considered to be consort of Ba'al the god of storm, rain and harvest who battled the god of desolation, Mot, and died then rose again every year, often depicted with an upraised right arm and hand (see next Baal bronzes); who supplanted 'El. Asherah later yet became the consort of Yahweh, southern Edomite desert deity of ancient Israel (link), to which was also associated the upraised right arm and right hand numerous times in the Tanakh (Hebrew scriptures). Ba'al statuette:	Asherah in Ugaritic texts (link); 'El, Canaanite creator high god (El Elyon, El Shaddai, El Olam, &c.) who had 70 sons-deities by Asherah (cf. 70 nations of later religious tradition in Judaism), bronze with gold leaf, Megiddo (1400-1300 BCE = 2400-2300 ya; link; myth net) during the Mesopotamian early dynastic period (2900-2350 BCE = 4900-4350 ya); Asherah, Syro-Palestine Mistress of Animals (from before the 10th century down to the 7th century BCE; link; cf. link); Bronze Baals with upraised right hands (Tel Megiddo, ~15th c BCE; Ugarit, Ras Shamra, 14th-12th c BCE).
Master of Beasts harness ring, Iran, Luristan bronze collection (LA County Museum, link) 10th-9th centuries BCE = 3000-2900 ya	Master of Beasts with winged lions, horse bit cheek piece, Iran, Luristan bronze collection, (Cleveland Museum of Art), ~700 BCE = ~2700 ya
Winged hybrid Master of Beasts (cf. Les Trois Freres) with 2 panthers, Iran, Luristan bronze collection, c1000-c650 BCE = c3000 - c2650 ya	Mistress of Beasts giving birth, Luristani Fibula, Iran, Luristan bronze collection c1000-c650 BCE = c3000 - c2650 ya
Master of Beasts with winged felines, cheek piece on a horse bit, Iran, Luristan bronze collection, c1000-c650 BCE = c3000 - c2650 ya	Master of Beasts with winged felines, ring for chariot pole?, Iran, Luristan bronze collection, (Honolulu Academy of Arts), 8th-7th c BCE = 2700 - 2600 ya
Master of Animals, Finial, Iran, Luristan bronze collection (LA County Museum of Art) c1000-c650 BCE = c3000 - c2650 ya	Master of Animals, openwork pinhead, Iran, Luristan bronze collection (LA County Museum of Art), c1000-c650 BCE = c3000 - c2650 ya
Master of Beasts, openwork jewelry pins, Iran, Luristan bronze collection, (LA County Museum of Art), c1000-c650 BCE = c3000 - c2650 ya	Master of Beasts, whetstone socket, tools & equipment, (LA County Museum of Art), c1000-c650 BCE = c3000 - c2650 ya
Master of beasts with reptiles and vultures, Luristan, Iran (LA County Museum of Art), c1000-c650 BCE = c3000 - c2650 ya	Double master of beasts, standard finial, Luristan, Iran (LA County Museum of Art), c1000-c650 BCE = c3000 - c2650 ya
Double Master of Beasts (reflective), Iran, Luristan bronze collection c1000-c650 BCE = c3000 - c2650 ya	Triple Master of Beasts, standard finial, Lorestāni bronze, (LA County Museum of Art), c1000-c650 BCE = c3000-c2650 ya
Asherah through the centuries in the Levant (link)	Kuntillet 'Ajrud, Palestine (link)
Blessing inscription from Yahweh of Shomeron and by Asherah (~850-760 BCE = 2850-2760 ya); Kuntillet 'Ajrud, Palestine (link).	Blessing inscription from Yahweh of Teman and by Asherah (~850-760 BCE = 2850-2760 ya); Kuntillet 'Ajrud, Palestine (link; cf. Hab. 3:3).
Blessing inscription of Uryahu by Yahweh for the sake of Asherah, Khirbet el-Qom (~750-700 BCE = ~2750-2700 ya; link).	In Hebrew religion, the covenant ark, chariot, or throne of Yahweh was over-covered by confronting cherubim or winged creatures (link); myth imagery from the Levantine culture & ultimately the "Master of Beasts" motif, especially the Phoenicians and Egyptians: Tutankhamun cherubim throne (c1332-23 BCE); confronted Egyptian winged beings, Samaria, Palestine (10th-9th c BCE); cf. Greek griffons.  Cherubim throne, Ahiram sarcophagus, Phoenician Byblos (c850 BCE); sphinx-cherub chariot, Phoenicia (c 8th c BCE) Imaginative reconstruction of the 'ark of the covenant.' Was an Asherah hidden in it? (link).
Artemis, Parian pottery plate, 675-600 BCE; AM Mykonos, Paros Artemis 675-600 BCE = 2675-2600 yaa	Gorgon Kameiros terracotta, Kameiros, Rhodes 2600 ya
Pithos, Potnia theron Pithos, 625-600 BCE = 2625-2600 ya	Pithos, Potnia theron Pithos 625-600 BCE = 2625-2600 ya
Cylinder Seal, Achaemenid, modern impression, 5th c BCE = 24 centuries ago	NAMA Artémis Orthia, pre-classical Spartan before 480 BCE = before 2480 ya
Egyptian cippus, Ptolemaic period; 305-30 BCE = 2305-2030 ya (Ancient Collection MfA, Boston: 0751; link)	Zeus / Yahweh, Persian province of Yehud Medinata, 4th c BCE = ~2300 ya
Gundestrupkedlen Gundestrup cauldron - silver, Denmark, antlered figure 150-1 BCE	Coin (Sardis, Asia Minor) Münze aus Sardes mit Hermesstab, 140-144 CE

 Slotten, R. L. 1965. The Master of Animals: A study in the symbolism of ultimacy in primitive religion. Journal of the American Academy of Religion XXXIII (4), 293. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Master_of_Animals; https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Luristan_bronze; https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Potnia_Theron; https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yahweh; https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeline_of_ancient_Greece#Classical_Greece)).

II. Megaliths: Prehistoric Cosmologies in Stone (upper Paleolithic-Neolithic: ~14,000 ya - 1150 CE)

Externsteine megaliths (link).

Argimusco (link), a natural formation of rocks in Sicily, which may have played megalithic cosmological significance for Late Paleolithic people (~10,500 BCE and since) by resembling (to human eyes and imagination, modern and ancient) certain mythological figures and traditional constellations, such as Serpens, Ophiuchus, Sagittarius, Leo, Corvus, Cygnus, Virgo, and Aquila. Aquila, the Eagle, is one. These may rank as some of the earliest zodiacs - a type of unification of mytho-cosmology.

The paleolithic standing megalithic circles and megalith juxtapositions may be considered as Earth surface representations of the cosmos for our early human forebears.

 
Here are is La Rocchia dell'Aquila.
 

Stonehenge:
 

Stonehenge in the sun, and at summer solstice along with some modern adherents of Hengian ways
(https://betterbe.co/life/unbelievable-drone-photos/7/; ;http://www.backpackeurope.com/images/England/Stonehenge.jpg;
 http://archeoastronomo.blogspot.com/2015/06/il-significato-del-solstizio-destate.html).

In 2022, Timothy Darvill published, Keeping time at Stonehenge. Antiquity 96 (386), 319-335. https://doi.org/10.15184/aqy.2022.5 (cf. link), where he argued that the 30 standing sarsen stone marked a 30-day month, with the semicircular Trilithon Horseshoe of lintel-ed standing stones accounted for the intercalary days needed to make a 365 1/4 solar year, to keep track of festivals and important seasonal events. The first stage of construction he argues fitted a lunar calendar, but that the offset of 15 degrees in the second stand of construction corrected this to a solar calendar. He argues that cultural diffusion through trade, travel, and networking with the Mediterranean world replaced the lunar calendars common on the 4th millennium BCE with the solar calendar, first developed in Egypt and then diffusing into Mesopotamia by the late 3rd century BCE.

Darvill (2022), Figure 8.

Since the questions are far from answered, it was not surprising that Darvill's paper would be disputed by other scholars, who would argue the opposite: No, Stonehenge is not a solar calendar but a sacred burial ground with astronomical features (cf. link). Magli, G. & Belmonte, J. A. 2023. Archaeoastronomy and the alleged ‘Stonehenge calendar.’ Antiquity 97 (393), 745-751. https://doi.org/10.15184/aqy.2023.33, argue that Davill has made astronomical errors, analogies, and numerology. They also doubt that the cultural diffusion connection with the Ancient Near East can be established. Davill replies that nothing they write really undermines what he found (link). Comment. What's wrong with both being plausible as uses of Stonehenge?

(link).

Other standing stone circles and archaeoastronomy sites of Neolithic age are found widely in the hinterlands of northern Europe. There are a number of them in Ireland.

Stone circles (Beaghmore, Co. Tyrone, N. Ireland)
(http://chrisc16.dyndns.org/web_ireland_2000/101000_ireland_pages/beaghmore_rear_circle.html).

Newgrange, ca. 5200 ya, is a 250 foot in diameter Neolithic structure in Ireland (left), designed so that a ray of sunshine penetrates it at the winter solstice (right).

Summer Solstice on the plateau of Giza amidst the pyramids, including the Great Pyramid of Khufu, 2613-2577 BCE
(Ramsey et al. 2010, link; http://archeoastronomo.blogspot.com/2015/06/il-significato-del-solstizio-destate.html).

New World excursus: Cosmologies of the American Southwest, Chaco Canyon (900-1150 CE) & the ancient Anasazi, ancestral Puebloan peoples (link).

Marked the solar calendrical observations of the people there (http://www.jqjacobs.net/southwest/chaco_meridian.html).

(https://www.photoawards.com/winner/zoom.php?eid=8-79505-14).

Chaco Canyon at night aligned facing the North Star, Polaris

(link).

(link).

Chaco Canyon: The Spring (Vernal) Equinox, the Summer Solstice, the Autumnal Equinox, and the Winter Solstice marked mid-day by the appearance of sunlight through the rock cracks falling in "sun daggers" on the rocks in relation to the complex of carved spirals there, and an inverted image of the petroglypic animals, figures, and spirals (; Archaeoastronomia; ; ).

There is suggestive evidence that the people of Chaco Canyon may have recorded the total solar eclipse 11 July 1097.
The stylized humanoid figure "above" the solar eclipse petroglyph is curiously juxtaposed.
 

These petroglyphs are reminiscent of active mass coronal ejection (MCE) events. That time (1097 CE) saw a very active period of the Sun's 11 year cycle (https://phys.org/news/2017-08-chaco-canyon-petroglyph-ancient-total_1.html; https://www.exploratorium.edu/ancientobs/chaco/HTML/TG-petroglyphs.html).

Before we leave Chaco Canyon, we should note that like the Chinese, the Puebloan Anasazi also seem to have recognized two other major astronomical events of their time: (a) On the 5th of July 1054, the supernova (remnant now expanding known as M1 or the Crab Nebula) in Taurus was only 3 degrees away removed from the waning crescent moon (link), with an apparent magnitude of −7; (b) the appearance of Comet Halley in 1066.

M1, the Crab Nebula, supernova remnant of SN 1054, has a spinning neutron star in the center, a pulsar which flashes our direction every 33 milliseconds (Images:

Night sky with Milky Way over some of the Chaco Canyon ruins (https://fizzytravel.com/stunning-places-in-us-for-stargazing/).

III. The Origin and Evolution of our Constellations: Prehistory to History (~35,000 ya - IAU, 20th c CE)

The constellations are human-perceived (angular) projected groupings of stars or asterisms visible to the unaided eye to which human imagination added different mythological figures and events in many tales from around the world in almost every culture, which also served as a practical map for the science of naming, measuring, and navigating by the stars (IAU constellations summary). The heritage of the constellations is a combination of imagination, myth, story, art, and the early science of astronomy and astrometry, i.e., the naming and angular measuring of the distant stars, thus creating a diurnal and sidereal time and calendar system.

Some of the very earliest astronomical observations were carved mostly portable objects, including bone, with engraved or painted rows of dots as lunar observations in the long Paleolithic (~3.3 Mya - 11,650 ya, link). One of these is the bone-carved representation of the waxing and waning Moon in a serpentine form found by Abri Blanchard in Dordogne (France) and dated to about 30 kya.

Waxing and waning lunar cycle etched as a serpent.

One of the very earliest constellation representations may have come from a worked baboon fibula (~35,000-32,000 BCE; 37-34 kya) from the KwaZulu Border Cave (NE South Africa), a site with a stratigraphic record of human habitation over ~200,000 years. On one side of the carved bone is an array of 86 knotches equaling the average number of days to be subtracted from a year to equal the average number of day of human gestation. On the other side of the carved bone is a posing human figure, which Prof. Rappenglueck attributes as a representation of Orion the Hunter, the number of knotches again also equaling the number of days a year when the bright star Betegeuse in Orion is visible from KwaZulu. Astronomical observations and human fertility are linked. The sophistication of this earliest astronomical observation from the eastern African rift valley cradle of humankind is breathtaking.

(KwaZulu Border Cave; knotched Orion engraving; BBC 'oldest star chart' found).

Another early one speculatively suggested by Bernie Taylor encapsulates, he argues, allusions to a number of constellations may be found within the rock gallery with an enigmatic set of red ochre discs in the El Castillo Cave, Cantibria (Spain; ~40.8 kya; ~37.6 kya; ~34 kya), and other designs including hand imprints and even some dots resembling arrangements of stars, asterisms. The Taylor hypothesis remains highly imaginative and speculative, although that can be said about all human attempts to see tales and mythic drama in the apparent groupings or constellations of the 'fixed stars':

Location of the El Castillo Cave in the northern Iberian peninsula (Spain).	Speculative deciphering of some of the earliest painted images (2017).
The panel of the hands (one dot dating to 40,800 ya, and one hand stencil dating to 37,600 ya) has a set of about 30 hands, and patterns of dots, one set of which resembles the later Greek constellation Corona Borealis (Northern Crown), shown here with Bayer Greek alphabetic magnitude designation (link).	Gallery of disks (U series dated to >34,000 ya, Pike et al. 2012 [Pike, A. W. G., Hoffmann, D. L., Garcia-Diez, M., Pettitt, P. B., Alcolea, J., De Balbin, R., Gonzalez-Sainz, C., de las Heras, C., Lasheras, J. A., Montes, R., Zilhao, J. 2012. U-Series Dating of Paleolithic Art in 11 Caves in Spain. Science 336 (6087), 1409. https://doi.org/10.1126/science.1219957]. Taylor finds multiple images within the rock formations in the Gallery of Disks, exhibiting perhaps the same type of creative human imagination which gave us the constellations in the first place :).
Interpretation of a depiction of a cluster of three bears, a proposed hand gesture, compared with the Greek constellation Ursa Major (the large bear).	Interpretation of an aquatic creature, a proposed hand gesture, compared with the Greek constellation Pisces (the fish).

(Before Orion link).

To return to the ancient mother goddess cult of the 'Venuses,' we find that one of the earliest lunar calendars is associated with the famous 'Venus of Laussel' figurine dated to ~25 kya. She holds a crescent perhaps bison horn with 13 carved knotches, the number of lunar cycles, menstrual cycles in a year, as well as the number of days between ovulation and menstruation, again a linkage of astronomical observations and human fertility.

The 'Venus of Laussel' and her crescent lunar / fertility calendar horn.

 

Among the rich panoply of upper Paleolithic cave art, there are the paintings in Lascaux (present day France) which have been dated to the range of 17,000-15,000 BCE (19,000-17,000 ya; link), there is evidence of representations of some of our constellations, which are still remembered today, showing that the representational memory of these mythological figures as imagined and seen by early humans in the stars has persisted for millennia, perhaps longer than just about any unaltered part of any specific oral tradition. The Lascaux Cave not only contains splendid paintings of Ice Age fauna, it also contains early artistic-knowledge-based cosmologies or representations of the Universe, as seen in the Paleolithic world, including possible Paleolithic versions of asterisms or constellations.

Lascaux (France).

(link).
Lauscaux paintings of bison, aurochs, horses, deer, and Megaloceros (Irish Elk)
(Lascaux paintings; oldest lunar calendar?; Ice Age star maps).

Among those paintings were a number of them which hinted at astronomical phenomena, one of a possible lunar calendar of 13 dots and an empty square below the Irish Elk image, which could be interpreted as half a lunar cycle, from new moon to full. In addition to the half calendar, it may also be that there is a full lunar calendar with 29 dots beneath a dappled horse, next to a reddish cow.

 

And possibly recognizable are asterisms and constellations, such as the open star cluster the Pleiades and also the Hyades in what we know as Taurus the Bull, facing Orion the Hunter, as suggested by Rappenglueck (1996). The Pleiades in the "Salle des Taureaux" Grotte de Lascaux (France). Does a rock picture in the cave of Lascaux show the open star cluster of the Pleiades at the Magdalenien Era, ca. 15,300 B.C.? In C. Jaschek & F. Atrio Barandela (eds.). Actas del IV Congreso de la SEAC / Proceedings of the IVth SEAC Meeting 'Astronomy and Culture.' Salamanca, New York; pp. 217-225.

(link; IAU origin of constellations; link; Orion-Taurus sketch; Taurus in Lascaux Caves; Lascaux constellations, Society for Interdisciplinary Studies, cf. prehistorian blog; no bull—Taurus is in the Lascaux caves).

It is especially haunting that one of the earliest images should be of humankind as hunter facing the wild imbalance of Ice Age mammals, with danger and death accompanying, embodied in what since the Greeks, we have called Orion and Taurus. That is, before humankind could in any sense be considered "master of the beasts"! This slain hunter is in stark contrast with the Bhimketka portraying a pastoral goatherd / shepherd scene, showed the difference in climate and dangers between the two Paleolithic sites. 

(A slain hunter before the bull bison (Orion & Taurus?) in Lascaux; Bhimbetka shepherd).

The earlier, more northerly Cosmic Hunt(er) myth versus the later and more southerly Pastoral Shepherd motive can be seen in the juxtaposition above. See also Rappenglueck, M. 2013. Palaeolithic Stargazers and today's astro maniacs - Methodological concepts of cultural astronomy focused on case studies of earlier prehistory. In Ivan Sprajc and Peter Pehani (eds), Proceedings of the SEAC 2012 conference: Ancient Cosmologies and Modern Prophets. Ljubljana, Slovenia: Slovene Anthropological Society. www.academia.edu; cf. Researchgate.net.

Recent research has also shown that stereographic photography reveals how ancient humans took advantage of the 3D shape of cave walls and ceilings to re-create animal scenes in their rock art: Asiain, R., Ontanon, R., & Saura, P. 2023. Animals hidden in plain sight: Stereoscopic recording of Palaeolithic rock art at La Pasiega cave, Cantabria. Antiquity 1-16. https://doi.org/10.15184/aqy.2023.122. And these people may well have been Neanderthals.

The dimensional genius of Paleolithic rock art. 

(link; cf. also, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cave_of_La_Pasiega).

At this point, we leap forward over much that is unknown in our account of the known constellations to the Ancient Near East.

The Near Eastern Sumerians (~4500-1900 BCE; 6500 - 3900 ya) were among the earliest peoples engaged in ancient astronomy. Their very name Shumer from shem or 'points to sky' or also a 'pointed stone marker' emerges from their sky-watching ways.

Ancient Sumer in the Near East (maps).

Sumerians in Mesopotamia measured the year from the time in Spring when the Sun's path in the ecliptic crosses the celestial equator (the vernal equinox). Using a base 6 numerical system, they divided the year into 12 months, the day into 24 hours, and the circle / sphere into 360 degrees, each degree subdivided into 60 arc-minutes, each arcminute further subdivided into 60 arc-seconds. The Sumerians in their fertile river valley civilization also made use of astronomical calendar observations to guide their agriculture:

Their basic imaginative identification and naming of the constellations through the sky about 2500 BCE which the ecliptic passes (the zodiac) has been transmitted down to us (via the ancient Greeks thousand of years later).

Reconstruction of the Sumerian sky from 2500 BCE with superimposed Mesopotamian images of the constellations from cylinder seals:

(A Mesopotamian zodiac; Mesopotamian representations of the constellations superimposed on a reconstruction of the sky from 2500 BCE).

Some examples include Aquarius, the Water-bearer, adopted from >3000 years ago directly into the Greco-Egyptian Hellenistic culture nearly a millennium later.

Another example is Sagittarius, the chimeric archer-human-winged horse:

A third example is the chimeric Capricornis, the goat-fish:

The Sumerians not only knew about the basic patterns of fixed stars through which they Sun travels in the course of the year, they also knew about the 'wandering stars' or planets, and furthermore seemed to have pictured the Sun at the center of the system of the wandering planets, according to a  Sumerian seal.

Furthermore, the Sumerians also apparently knew about the planets all the way out to Saturn, and that Saturn has rings:

Egypt. On the plateau of Gizeh, the great pyramids have direct evidence of being built in part for astronomical observations of Sirius to indicate the timing of the annual Nile flooding. There is also another speculative hypothesis, suggesting that the placement of the pyramids matches the three stars in Orion's belt, suggesting that the constellation of Orion was important in their early cosmology-making.

One of the oldest known maps of the skies is the Nebra sky disk (~30 cm) from Nebra, Germany (~1750 BCE or ~3750 years ago), found in 1999 along with Bronze Age weapons, on the Mittelberg hill, near Nebra, and is now stored in the Landsmuseum in Saxony-Anhalt (link; cf. link), as a UNESCO world heritage document.

The sky disc itself is considered to date from ~1750 BCE or ~3750 years ago, and from artifact dating to be buried about 1600 BCE or 3600 years ago after several stages of development. There is evidence that northern European Bronze Age peoples were in communication with each other, not only between what is now Germany and the British Isles, but also with the Middle East. The sky disc seems to include the Pleiades, the Sun, and the Moon at first glance. However, it actually contains a diagrammatic representation of significant celestial objects, and the changes in seasons of the year, along with a representation of a boat with historical parallels to other water-faring peoples of the time. (See also Nebra sky disk map, the Unetice culture in https://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap180319.html).

However, there's more there than one might think. There may be a sky calendar there, the transitions of the seasons, and reference to particular celestial objects including significant 'fixed stars' including reference to a boat among the stars, multicultural evidences of which may have contributed to the notion of the Greek constellation Argo Navis (as discussed below):

The 82 degree separated and crossing lines may point toward the summer solstice (upper left and right) and the opposing winter solstice (lower left and right; link), while the other axis points to the vernal (lower left) and autumnal equinoxes (lower right; link; cf. link, and also link).

The Sun and its location was critical to the life of northern European peoples of the Bronze Age, and other possible interpretations may be made of the stars in the disc:

It is quite likely that the sky disc was used to mark the seasons from the Mittelberg hill (see above right). This shows that these northern peoples were using the stars as part of their orientation in their world and in their world-views. (For more see here).

One of the earliest known representations of the recognizable constellations came from ancient China (4th century BCE, ~2400 ya):

Image from British Library (https://history.aip.org/exhibits/cosmology/ideas/astrology.htm).

During the same time frame and even earlier, the ancient Sumerians in Mesopotamia were also among the earliest makers of star maps and calendars. In the later subterranean tablet library of Assyrian king Ashurbanipal (668-627 BCE) in Nineveh, a fragment of a circular Babylonian star calendar has been found, with important stars and angular measurements of degrees, signed by a scribe Nab-Zuqup-Kenu (link), during the reigns of Sargon II (720-704 BCE) and Sennacherib (703-680 BCE).

 
Star calendar (cf. link).

Even more important a find from the Assyrian library is a 7th century BCE reproduction of a more ancient Sumerian astrolabe (>5,000 ya), a 13 cm in diameter clay tablet which which was called "the planisphere," (K-8538 in the British Museum), translated to reveal it's ancient origin.

(link).	(link).
(link).	(link).

Here are a couple hypotheses features worthy of note in attempts to understand this ancient planisphere (Left A; Right B): (link). Hypothesis A: The location of the celestial equator and the ecliptic crossed paths within the Milky Way in 3300 BCE (~5,300 ya). That rarely recurring event is hypothesized to be memorialized in this planisphere. Or, there is a more catastrophic hypothesis. Bond & Hempsell (2008). Abingdon, UK: Reaction Engines.

Hypothesis B: A startling event on the early morning of 29 June 3123 BCE, Julian Calendar, observed by Sumerian astronomers (link). Bond & Hempsell (2008) identified and examined 8 sectors of the tablet: North, 5 prominent constellations, postulated cloud cover / cloud banks at the time, the path of arrival or trajectory of the incoming Aten asteroid which crashed far away in Koefels, and a persisting post-impact plume. (Drawing by L. W. King, 1912, British Museum).  Reconstruction of what may have been observed ~5,200 years ago: (link).

Another likely ancient star map documenting asterisms associated some of our known constellations as well as a possible novel celestial event like a nova or supernova has been found on a ~0.5 m stone disk at a proto-protohistoric hill fort rampart called Castelliere di Rupinpiccolo, one of several such Bronze Age-Iron Age proto-historic hill forts found in the Adriatic, Aegean, and Anatolia. Archaeologist Frederico Bernardini et al. (incl. astronomer Paolo Molaro). 2022. Prehistoric stone disks from entrances and cemeteries of North-Eastern Adriatic Hillforts. Documenta Praehistorica 49, 300-317. https://doi.org/10.4312/dp.49.7, explored 4 such stone disks, one of them dated to the Middle Bronze, ~3,000 ya, found at two proto-historic hill fort sites in the Adriatic, Castelliere di Rupinpiccolo (near Trieste, Italy) and Gradina on Veliki Brijun (on the Croatian coast). Some of these stone disks have semi-circular cuplike depressions, which are not randomly placed, most notably Rupinpiccolo disk 1, which has 29 such depressions carved into it.

(link).

Archaeologist Bernardini and astronomer Molaro went on to do an in-depth statistic analysis of Rupinpiccolo disk stone 1 depressions with known stars: Molaro, P. & Bernardini, F. 2023. Possible stellar asterisms carved on a protohistoric stone. Astron. Nach. [Astron. Notes] 344, e220108. https://doi.org/10.1002/asna.20220108. Of the 29 engraved depressions on the Rupinpiccolo disk stone 1,

The Greeks (a cultural alliance in the Aegean) imported most of constellations from earlier cultural traditions in Mesopotamia and Egypt, and apparently an ancient oral set of traditions in Eurasia. 

Although reproduced in the 2nd century CE, the Farnese Atlas is likely a copy of a 2nd century BCE sculpture of the mythical Titan, Atlas, holding aloft the celestial sphere. This celestial globe contains the basic constellations compiled by the Greeks. 

Interestingly, the view of the celestial sphere is just the reverse of what you'd see looking up. It portrays a god's eye view of the celestial sphere, as if one were looking into the celestial sphere from the outside. This unusual perspective built into the globe, may infer that this globe was actually an astronomical instrument, a planisphere. (Farnese Atlas sculpture; image of the celestial globe).

When Farnese globe image is inverted, we see the constellations as they appear when looking up into the sky.

The basic transmission of the ancient constellations into the canonical Greek constellations happened over this period with these key figures in the history of our constellations.

Eudoxus of Cnidus (Εὔδοξος ὁ Κνίδιος), c408 - c355 BCE His works are lost, although their main content including the transmission of the constellations is preserved in a 4th century BCE poem by Aratos of Soli.	Aratos of Soli, Άρατος ο Σολεύς c315/310 BCE - 240 BCE. Wrote the poem Phaenomena (link) which described the constellations along with alluding to their mythological origins.
Hipparchos, Ἵππαρχος, (c190 - c120 BCE), a Greek astronomer, geographer, mathematician, has been considered the founder of trigonometry (link).	Claudius Ptolemaeus, Κλαύδιος Πτολεμαῖος (c100 - c170 CE) The Almagest: 44 Constellations (link).

Constellations included in Ptolemy's Almagest (link), containing the line of constellations along the ecliptic (path of the Sun through the year):

The Dendera Zodiac, ~1st century BCE (image adapted from Wilson, 1980); cf. link.

Reconstruction of the putative original colors of the Zodiac, with the constellations identified, as well as the sky being upheld by 4 equidistant female figures and 4 pairs of falcon-headed figures, surrounded by 36 figures of asterisms, representing the 36 (40 minute) "hours" of the Egyptian night, and also the 36 decans or 10 day "weeks" plus 5 extra days of the Egyptian year (link).

(link).

Arabic advances in Astronomy. Long after Hipparchos; Ἵππαρχος (c190 - c120 BCE), the Dendera Zodiac (1st century BCE), and also after the later times of Claudius Ptolemy; Κλαύδιος Πτολεμαῖος (c100 - c170) with his Almagest (the accuracy and integrity of some of which has been a matter of dispute by modern scholars), and also long before the early modern period of the Scientific Revolution, there was an important intervening period of preservation as well as advances in astronomy during the time of the Arab Islamic Enlightenment, also known as the 'Islamic Golden Age' (8th-13th centuries CE; link), which we will discuss further elsewhere. During this time, arising from the Qu'ranic and Hadithic promotion of knowledge, learning, and education, there were significant advances in state-sponsorship of scholarship, openness to prior cultural knowledge transmission from earlier civilizations, law, branches of philosophy, branches of mathematics, and of course, for this section, astronomy—including the naming of the stars. Open to the Greek science of ἀστρονομία (link) which is etymologically rooted in ἀστρον or 'stars' and νομία coming from νόμος, 'law,' i.e., 'law of the stars' and also a cognate of όνομα or 'naming of the stars.' And name them, the Arab-Islamic astronomers did, giving them Arabic names, many of which, even when corrupted by non-Arabic transcribers were transmitted to us: List of Arabic star names. Certain of these Arabic star names have persisted are are included in modern astronomical star atlases, while also being included in the astronomical knowledge cited for Islamic religious purposes: https://astronomycenter.net/star.html. In modern times, the International Astronomical Union (IAU; cited below) has adopted conventions for naming stars.

One of the improved astrolabes of the Arabic-Islamic Enlightenment epoch (link; for more examples of Arab-Islamic astrolabes, see link).

The Bahrain blog site points out that about 1000 named stars were given Arabic designations, stars that guided Arab travelers across the desert and the sea.

The Arab Islamic Golden Era / Enlightenment scholars also transmitted Ptolemy's Almagest or the Μαθηματικὴ Σύνταξις ('Mathematical Syntaxis'), in Latin, Syntaxis Mathematica, and later called Ἡ Μεγάλη Σύνταξις ('The Great Treatise') or in Latin, Magna Syntaxis. Working from the Greek for μεγίστη ('greatest'), the Arab Islamic scholars called the work, اَلْمَجِسْطِيّ, transliterated al-majisṭī, i.e., 'the greatest,' or what we know as the Almagest (link).

Pages from the Arabic Almagest with astronomical tables (Bodleian Library, University of Oxford; image).

See also the exhibit, "Arabic in the Sky: Astronomy a Thousand Years Ago" (link). On the Arabic-Islamic advances in astronomy, see Lebling, R. (2010). Arabic in the sky. Saudi Aramco World Magazine (September-October): https://www.academia.edu/2324827/Arabic_in_the_Sky.

Some of the brightest stars in our skies with their Arabic names (see link above).

A few centuries later, during the Scientific Revolution, Johannes Bayer published his Uranometria (1603, 1661; 'Bayer's drawings') star maps running through two editions in the years of the so-called Age of Exploration, based on accounts of travelers, added 12 more southern constellations in the celestial Southern Hemisphere.

Dutch cartographer Frederik de Wit's Planisphaerium coeleste (1670) not only portrays the constellations as viewed in 1670, after Bayer's epochal combining of artistic brilliance with his scientific magnitude classification of stars in Greek letters, but de Wit's planisphere also summarizes the contending 'war of the world-views' clash of cosmologies in the early Enlightenment: The Copernican and Tychonic systems vs the Ptolemaic system. This again shows that a time of real intellectual ferment includes controversy over competing cosmologies, a vital situation again achieved in the mid-20th century, before the new Ptolemic system began to shut down debate (as we discuss in the next chapter).

References on the origin & etiology of the Constellations IAU Constellations (88). The Sky Tonight: The cultural archaeology of the stars. https://skytonight.org/index.php/iau. The 88 constellations with their 1922 established boundaries by the International Astronomical Union (IAU), as well as historical constellation star maps, including high resolution images of the most beautifully artistic of them all, the Uranometria (1603, 1661) of Johannes Bayer (1572-1625) with artist-engraver Alexander Mair (1559-1617). https://doi.org/10.3931/e-rara-309. (archived facsimile). Archaeoastronomy overview: http://www.ancient-wisdom.com/astronomy.htm. Barentine, J. C. 2016. The Lost Constellations: A History of Obsolete, Extinct, or Forgotten Star Lore. Heidelberg / New York / Dordrecht / London: Springer Praxis Books. de Lacaille, N.-L. 1763. Coelum Australe Stelliferum. H.L. Guerin & L.F. Delatour. LINKS.... Kanas, N. 2019. Star Maps: History, Artistry, and Cartography (3rd edition). Chichester, UK: Springer, Praxis Publishing. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-13613-0. Motz, L. & Nathanson, C. 1988. The Constellations: An enthusiast's guide to the Night Sky. New York, NY / London, UK / &c.: Doubleday. Olcott, W. T. 1911. Star Lore of All Ages: A Collection of Myths, Legends, and Facts Concerning the Constellations of the Northern Hemisphere. New York, NY / London, UK: G. P. Putnam's Sons. The Knickerbocker Press. Rappenglueck, M. A. 1996. The Pleiades in the "Salle des Taureaux" Grotte de Lascaux (France). Does a rock picture in the cave of Lascaux show the open star cluster of the Pleiades at the Magdalenien Era, ca. 15.300 B.C.? In C. Jaschek & F. Atrio Barandela (eds.). Actas del IV Congreso de la SEAC / Proceedings of the IVth SEAC Meeting "Astronomy and Culture". New York: Salamanca; pp. 217-225. Ridpath, I. 1988, 2018. Star Tales (revised and expanded 2nd edition). Cambridge, UK: Lutterworth Press. Supplementary material online: Star Tales: Myths, legends, and history of the constellations: http://www.ianridpath.com/startales/contents.html. Astronomy writer and broadcaster: http://www.ianridpath.com/. Schilling, G., Tirion, W. (star maps creator). 2019. Constellations: The Story of Space Told through the 88 Known Patterns in the Night Sky. New York, NY: Black Dog & Leventhal Publishers. Seddon, C. 2020. Astronomy from the Beginning: A History of Skywatching and early Astronomers from Cave Paintings and Stone Circles to the Renaissance and the First Telescopes. London, UK: Glanville Publications. Taylor, K. 2012. Celestial Geometry: Understanding the Astronomical Meaning of Ancient Sites. London, UK: Watkins Publishing. The de Wit 1670 planisphere which around the sidereal map, published in the midst of the Copernican Revolution, the various featured rival cosmologies and cosmic schemata of then and of yesteryear, on the margins (image).

Argo Navis. The gift of the systematizing legacy of the sky-observing Greeks in augmenting and transmitting the ancient constellations to us, and of the astronomer-uranographers or cartographers of the heavens since who have together bequeathed to us a joint legacy of science and art, artistic mythology in the service of knowledge (scientia). A beautiful heritage they've given to us in trust. Although de-recognized in the International Astronomical Union's (IAU) constellations (the only one of Ptolemy's 48 constellations mistreated in this way), the ancient constellation Argo Navis illustrates their magnificent bequeathal to posterity.

Sailing through the Milky Way, Argo Navis, the ancient constellation recognized by the Greeks, but rooted in earlier traditions (image from SkySafari 5 Pro from Beguerra Island, off the coast of Mozambique, as per the Alpha Lyrae blog of M. Hodgson).

Argo Navis beautifully picture in Johannis Bayer's Uranometria (1661; link), following the tradition of sternward motion by Aratos (; see below).

 
Long known by the Greeks, Argo Navis was indeed not one of the constellations invented in their systematizations (link). In fact, a water-faring boat in the stars has been imagined by various, geographically-dispersed peoples for millennia (4000 BCE - 1500 BCE; 6000 ya - 3500 ya), long before the Greeks, in ancient Egypt, in Sweden and in what would become Germany.

Celestial boat from the Nebra sky disk (Germany), ~1750 - ~1500 BCE; 3750-3500 ya (link; link).

The Greeks derived Argo Navis from the ancient Egyptians around ~1000 BCE (~3,000 ya). Greek Middle Platonist Plutarch or Πλούταρχος (46-119 CE) attributed Argo to the ancient Egyptian "Boat of Osiris"[Orion] which plied the heavenly waters, perhaps depicted in this colored relief from the Temple of Hathor (Denderah, a prehistoric oasis site, Pepi I built here ~2250 BCE or ~4250 ya; temple evidence from the 18th dynasty, ~1500 BCE or ~3500 ya; a mammasi chapel to the temple 360-343 BCE, and finally the current structure began during the Ptolemaic period, July 54 BCE; link; cf. https://treasuresegypt.com/temple-of-hathor/). Comparable are the drawing representations of Osiris-Orion from the shrine of Mentuemhat (700-650 BCE), a priest-official from Thebes.

(https://pantip.com/topic/37225476/story; link; link; cf. Mentuemhat; cf. also here).

If we go back further, we may even have a cultural link between the sea-faring ancient Aegean Greeks of Minoa in the Phaistos Disc (~1850 - ~1550 BCE; i.e., 2nd millennium BCE) and the ancient Egyptians possibly connecting Argo Navis and the ship of Khufu, for whom was built the Great Pyramid. The story starts with a Minoan site on Crete being buried and preserved by effects of the massive eruption of the volcano Thera, Θήρα (isle of Santorini, Σαντορίνη) sometime before 1500 BCE (~3500 ya), thus preserving an ancient disc of symbols from the Minoan palace at Phaistos (Φαιστός, link), called the Phaistos Disc (link). The date eruption of Thera remained disputed as sometime in the mid-2nd millennium BCE, until a paper was published, Pearson et al. (2022. Geochemical ice-core constraints on the timing and climatic impact of Aniakchak II (1628 BCE) and Thera (Minoan) volcanic eruptions. PNAS Nexus 1 (2), 1. https://doi.org/10.1093/pnasnexus/pgac048) used geochemical traces in ice-core climate proxies to anchor the Alaskan volcano Anackchuk II eruption to 1628 BCE, and thus calibratively constrain the possible dates for the Thera eruption, corroborated with predicted ejecta levels.

Left to Right: Aniakchak II (Alaska) & Thera (Santorini): link.

Their calibrated dating results tend to support a mid-1500s BCE dating for the Thera eruption.

Pearson et al. (2022), Figure 1 (left) & Figure 2 (above): link. By pulling together the calibrated eruption signatures in the Greenland and Antarctic ice-cores with the radiocarbon (14C) dating probability (with plateaus) and the archaeological dating ranges, we are left with some best candidate dates for a mid-latitude eruption to leave an ice proxy record in both Greenland and Antarctica. With an unknown volcano (V1) tied to 1654 BCE and Aniakchak II (V2) anchored to 1628 BCE, the three best candidates for the Thera eruption date follows, keeping in mind possible cultural exchange with the Egyptian 'New Kingdom' (~1560 to ~1500 BCE): V3: 1611 BCE V5-6: 1561/1558/1555 BCE (geochem. pattern consistent with mid-latitude eruption & correlates with tree rings in the Mediterranean). V7: ~1538 BCE. This makes the 1561-1555 BCE interval a very likely dating for the eruption of Thera, and the preservation of the Phaistos Disc.

The Phaistos Disc was found in a temple complex which had collapsed from an earthquake, possibly connected with the Thera eruption.

Phaistos archaeological site with sides A and B of the Disc (link).

For a long time, there have been several attempts to interpret the symbols / pictograms on the Phaistos Disc (sometime from ~1850 to ~1600 BCE). One evocative theory by C. G. Watson (images link) suggests that the Disc contains hidden geometric patterns and symbols in the pictograms coding for various constellations in the heavens, notably here, Argo Navis, Minoan mariners, and possible references to ancient Egypt.

It is interesting to note that, if these stellar patterns are indeed discerned for the ancient Argo constellation through connecting the 15 pomegranate{-star} pictograms (below), then the ideogram of Argo Navis is depicted from an outside view (and inverted upside down) rather than the view from Earth, similar to the star map on the replica Atlas of Parnese. Also, the inversion makes celestial south 'up' rather than celestial north.

These hypothesized patterns may also allude to the stellar arrangements, including the stars and their light paths through air shafts cut into the Great Pyramid (Giza), when the light of Sirius is at the correct alt-azimuth to enter down into its pyramid chamber. An inverted ancient Argo arrangement may have mimicked the truss rope arrangements of the MInoan and the Egyptian ships during the Bronze Age (3300-1200 BCE; 5300-3200 ya), such as for example the great boat of Khufu, pharoah of the Great Pyramid. Minoan flotilla (above left) & Khufu burial ship (above right)

Watson suggests that the Phaistos Disc may memorialize marine cultural exchange between Minoa and Egypt. For comparison we may consider Phoenician ships which plied the Mediterranean during the same approximate time frame also, c 14th century BCE (link).
 

That is at least a highly speculative but evocative hypothesis. We return to the traditional Greek Argo Navis, with sails (Vela) to the celestial north, rather than rope truss structure to the celestial south.

The later classical Greek Argo Navis constellation is to be found in this region of the Southern skies which includes the thick Milky Way prominent on the left (with Crux, the Southern Cross) and Canis Major with Orion on the right, the bright star in the center right, Sirius in Canis Major and the other bright star in the lower center, Canopus in Argo. The same region has been broken up into IAU's modern constellations, the region of Argo Navis subdivided in green outline: Carina (Keel), Puppis (Poop deck; Stern), Vela (Sail), and later Pyxis (the compass), following the proposals of de Lacaille's Coelum Astrale Stelliferum (1763). I remember my own thrill when from the high desert I first saw in the sky and recognized the keel star, Canopus (Carina), and stars framing Argo's billowing sail (Vela):

Argo Navis, the ancient Greek constellation ship of the Argonauts, along with Pyxis (de Lacaille, 1756), the Compass (link).

Argo Navis region (https://davidmalin.com/fujii/image/)	Argo Navis region with IAU constellation boundaries (https://davidmalin.com/fujii/image/)
Aratos of Soli, Άρατος ο Σολεύς c315/310 BCE - 240 BCE; Phaenomena (link). "[v342] Beside the tail of the Great Dog the ship Argo is hauled stern-foremost. For not hers is the proper course of a ship in motion, but she is borne backwards, reversed even as real ships, when already the sailors turn the stern to the land as they enter the haven, and every one back-paddles the ship, but she rushing sternward lays hold of the shore. Even so is the Argo of Jason borne along stern-foremost. Partly in mist is she borne along, and starless from her prow even to the mast, but the hull is wholly wreathed in light. Loosed is her Rudder and is set beneath the hind feet of the Dog, as he runs in front."	Claudius Ptolemy, Κλαύδιος Πτολεμαῖος c100-c170 CE, oriignal title, Μαθηματικὴ Σύνταξις or Mathematica Syntaxis, later from Arabic Almagest (link), p. 403, VIII 2. Location of the Milky Way, paragraph H177.      "After that the milk {Milky Way} passes through Argo. The western rim of the belt is defined by the northernmost and most advanced of the stars in the little shield in the poop [XL 5]. The star in the middle of the little shield [XL 6], the two stars close together under it [XL 8, 9], the bright star at the beginning of the deck near the steering-oar [XL 17] and the midmost of the three stars in the keel [XL 38] are just short of touching the same [western] edge. The northernmost of the three stars in the mast-holder [XL 22] defines the eastern rim, while the bright star in the stern-ornament [XL 2] is 1o within the same [eastern] edge, and the bright star under the rearmost little shield in the deck [XL 31] is the same amount, 1o outside the same [eastern] edge. The southernmost of the two brilliant stars in the middle of the mast [XL 27] touches the same edge, and the two bright stars at the point where the keel is cut off [XL 35, 36] are about 2o inside the advance rim. At that point the milk {Milky Way} joins the belt through the legs of Centaurus. The consistency in this area too. throughout Argo, is somewhat rarefied, but the sections of it around the little shield, the mast-holder and the point where the keel is cut off are more dense."
	Let us sail in the Argo Navis! James G. Brennan (A free verse poem; link) Dear Argo Navis Let us sail Across the Universe In your ship of stars, Let us resurrect you To make you whole again! Let us raise up Vela your sails! Together with Carina's Keel And stern of Puppis to Glide us through the Celestial sea. Guided by Pyxis your compass As we gladly man your ship With your celestial crew, Gamma Velorum, Zeta Naos and Alpha To name but just a few Of your shimmering stars. Some with planets, Some with many star systems In your ship of wonder, Let us set sail Dear Argo Navis. Canopus the pilot Is your brightest star, The pilot of a Spartan King No less! who's Monument stands tall At the mouth of the Nile, Inspiring the name Of the village resting At the foot of his legacy. Volans the flying fish Carrying Beta Volantis Will join us on our journey Across the galaxy beyond our Milky Way to the far reaches Of our vast expanding Universe. Maybe we will never reach its edge, Dear Argo Navis. Do Take us with you Dear Argo Navis, It is only with you We would feel so safe, Sailing through dust clouds Interstellar gas clouds, Meteor showers and comets Around our galaxy Full of constellations. Let us visit Sagittarius and The lagoon nebular, Skip across to Taurus To see the crab nebula, I hear it has a pulsar At its centre so small Yet more dense than the Sun! In the solar system I call home. Let's visit Pleiades the seven sisters, Then on to Andromeda With her trillions of stars! Before heading off to The billions of galaxies Way out beyond To the edge of our Universe. Let's skip a black hole we don't need An event horizon! Our journey eventful enough Sailing into the unknown With a mighty constellation Such as you dear Argo Navis. You the one To safely see Jason and the Argonauts In their quest For the golden fleece, This, in turn, saw you Take your place within the heavens Our dear friend, the Argo Navis.
(Image of Argo across from Brennan poem generated by StarTrackerLite app {24 Dec. 2022}; ; ; Argo visualization with modern constellation lines, cf. link & link, right above 2 Argo paintings; ; Pyxis region to the unadded eye, upper left; Pyxis region with constellations visualized, upper right, dual image link; https://skytonight.org/pyx; Pyxis location in Galaxy; cf. link).	Another gift of the ancient Greek constellation of Argo Navis is that Abbe Nicolas Louis de Lacaille created another new constellation from Argo, Pyxis [box] or Pyxis Nautica, the Compass or Mariner's Compass in 1765 (one of 17 constellations which he added to our current 88). On a Christmas Eve morning in the wee hours, while I was sky-watching in the high desert, and looking south at Argo Navis prow and sail above the southerly horizon, I saw Pyxis Nautica and realized that Pyxis pointed generally up over my head toward the northern celestial pole to my rearward celestial view, like a magnetic compass, with its own magnetic declination. Obviously, Abbe Lacaille must have noticed that too!

Poem: https://medium.com/share-the-love/let-us-sail-in-the-argo-navis-dcb25964aff3; image from link on recurring nova T Pyxidis.

In 1791, Constantin François de Chassebœuf, Comte de Volney (his contraction of Voltaire and Ferney, now the village of Voltaire-Ferney) in his 'philosophy of history' masterpiece, Les Ruines, ou Méditations sur les Révolutions des Empires, included his chart "A view of the Astrological Heaven of the Ancient, to explain the Mysteries of the Persian, Jewish, & Christian Religions" as part of a Radical Enlightenment attempt to explain the origins of the given religions:

(1796 facsimile).

By 1922, the International Astronomical Union (https://www.iau.org/) finalized recognition of 88 Constellations: https://skytonight.org/index.php/iau.

(link).

For a modern view of the skies, see the Tycho Catalog Skymap version 2.0, which includes star imaging data from the Tycho and Hipparcos star catalogs. This one shows down to magnitude 5. One can also see alternative sky views from other times and places (newer site).

Tycho Catalog Skymap 2, magnitude 5 (Note the north and south polar projection distortion: The light of Polaris is projected and spread out along the top, center left).

Now in pursuit of the history of 'mythos to cosmos' / cosmology we must return briefly to the time between about 20,000 years ago before the Pleistocene-Holocene transition and the Younger Dryas, and Meltwater Pulse 1B, to find the DNA, linguistic, cultural-mythogenic, and archaeological evidences for our cultural background which gave rise to our cosmologies over the last 5,000 years and the cultural and religious settings of modern cosmologies, &c., to bring us to and prepare for the Ionian Dawn of the Greeks (6th-3rd c BCE). This gaping interval from 20,000 ya to 6th c BCE covers some major, specific linguistic-mythic-religious-archaeological transitions essential to understanding the setting in the West for our story of cosmology, not covered under other sections in this chapter I.

Part of what fills in this interval is the history of the Proto-Indo-European (PIE) language and cultural group which spread across much of Eurasia and the Near East from as early as the Early Neolithic (7,500-5,500 BCE ~ 9,500-7,500 ya), the Middle Neolithic (5,500-4,500 BCE ~ 7500-6500 ya) down through the Late Neolithic (6,400-3,500 BCE ~8,400-5,500 ya). There are a number of hypotheses as to how and in which where PIE development took place (link). There is a large and development scholarship and evidence mounting on PIE origins, but a good introduction is found in Anthony, D. W. 2007. The Horse, the Wheel, and Language: How Bronze-Age Riders from the Eurasian Steppes Shaped the Modern World. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.  

Excursus on a paleolithic European 'dragon-slaying' ritual from 17,000 ya. We might here take a brief, and possibly significant excursis, on a late Paleolithic ritual of dragon slaying from central Europe, introduced by the Crecganford channel of Professor Jon D. White, "The 17,000 year old European dragon ritual, and its ancient mythological origins, link," which provides a background for what follows. In the 'northern cosmology' we find creation from primordial chaos and a conflict between opposites, &c.

In 2016, Julian d'Huy published a Premiere reconstruction statistique d'un rituel paleolithique: Autour du motif du dragon. Nouvelle Mythologie Comparee / New Comparative Mythology, No. 3. Published online. https://www.researchgate.net/publication/313569680, we find material remnants of such a dragon-slaying ritual, carved in bone, near one of two headless snake skeletons (another in another paleolithic site) near clay sculptures of bison.

Fig. 5 has a consensus evolutionary tree; Figs. 7-8 show the dragon / serpent-slaying; Fig. 9 may show a triple-joined now headless serpent bundle in the upper left, followed by game animals and hunter like figures (d'Huy, 2016), perhaps making their world safe for hunting(?). See also the very important bibliography of d'Huy (2016).

A question: Could this Paleolithic 'dragon-slaying' ritual also be a re-enactment of a 'northern cosmology' myth of the primordial conquest of chaos, which is a recurring theme in later Indo-European mythologies, and thus antecedent to the original Proto-Indo-European (PIE) creation myth? 

In 1814, a hypothetical ancestral family of languages (not ethno-cultures) called 'Indo-European' was proposed, and in 1905 its hypothetical ancestral language, 'Proto-Indo-European' (PIE) was proposed; PIE supposedly being, by the summary lights of historical linguists, to be about 5,500 years old, according at least to Etymology Online (see entries under 'Indo-European' and 'Proto-Indo-European'). But now interdisciplinary research, using not only historical linguistics, but also comparative mythology, human DNA phylogenetics / biogeography and mythemes / mythmotifs shows that to show that the age is older and the development more complex. [For an accessible specialist in PIE, Indo-European mythology, and more, complete with lectures, illustrations, and most importantly academic references and databases, see Prof. Jon D. White of the Crecganford podcast / video channel, introduced and cited earlier].

Since the 'northern cosmology' (cf. Witzel, 2012) in its later PIE rendition is found in some form from west-central Eurasia, the Norse (Northern Europe), central & Southern Europe, the Greeks, the Middle East, the Iranians, and India, it is from within the Indo-European language group, and more ancient hypothetical PIE language that the Proto-Indo-European creation myth emerges which is the origin of these widespread myths (see the Crecganford link). Two word examples illustrate PIE influence on later languages and their evolution for the moment.

The 'fatherhood' of the Proto-Indo-European ancestral language is illustrated by the Proto-Indo-European root word for 'father'
(maps below from link; derived from https://indo-european.eu/).

One could add, of course, Latin 'pater' (patr from where we get pattern, paternity, patron, patriotic, &c.; link), Italian 'padre,' Spanish 'padre,' French 'pere,' Catalan 'pare,' Portuguese 'pai,' Galician 'pai,' Danish 'far,' and modern Hindi 'pita,' &c., &c., (link). See also Etymology Online for 'father' (https://www.etymonline.com/word/father?ref=etymonline_crossreference#etymonline_v_1154).

The Proto-Indo-European word for deity, here a 'sky god' or 'sky father' also makes itself manifest in descendant languages, not only as a male but also a female deity, e.g., deva. Note: The Proto-Indo-Europeans were of course neither mono- nor henotheistic. They were polytheistic, but did include a 'sky god' as well as 'goddesses' in their language group pantheon like many indigenous and ancient human cultures both north and south. 


Of course, one could also add, Greek 'theos,' Latin 'deus,' Portuguese 'deus,' Galician 'deus,' Spanish 'dios,' Italian 'dio,' French 'dieu,' Corsican 'diu,' Catalan 'deu, {dewu}' Irish Gaelic 'dhia,' Scots Gaelic 'dhia,' Welsh Gaelic 'dwu,' Kannada 'devaru,' and maybe even Khazakh 'quday' [?], Finnish 'jumala' [?] (link). This of course all comes from a verb, a Proto-Indo-European root verb 'dyeu-' = "to shine," in derivatives, "sky, heaven, god" (quoted from Etymology Online https://www.etymonline.com/word/*dyeu-?ref=etymonline_crossreference, where a multitude of derivative words may be found).

So what is the multidisciplinary dating for the Proto-Indo-European putative language, in effect along with its creation myth? In 2011, R. D. Gray, Q. D. Atkinson, & S. J. Greenhill published, Language evolution and human history: what a difference a date makes. Phil. Trans. R. Soc. B 366 (1567), 1090. https://doi.org/10.1098/rstb.2010.0378. Combining linguistics, anthropology, archaeology, and human genetics, they applied the methods of computational phylogenetic systematics (part of my own discipline) to generate this date-scaled evolutionary phylogeny or family tree, along with 4 different molecular clock statistical tests using the BEAST (Bayesian Evolutionary Analysis Sampling Trees) program (link):

As Gray et al. (2011) point out, the phylogenetic tree puts the PIE origin about ~8700 ya, and a major diversification by ~2,000 years later, which continued.

Four estimates emerged, which we are color-coded above as frequency peaks for heuristic display.

These dates around ~8700 ya have been further supported and both the Anatolian and steppe sources of the Indo-Europeans have found support. See, Lazaridis, I., Patterson, N., Mittnik, A. et al. 2014. Ancient human genomes suggest three ancestral populations for present-day Europeans. Nature 513, 409. https://doi.org/10.1038/nature13673. and also Haak, W., Lazaridis, I., Patterson, N. et al. 2015. Massive migration from the steppe was a source for Indo-European languages in Europe. Nature 522, 207. https://doi.org/10.1038/nature14317.

From Proto-Indo-European to the Indo-European languages, we have this overall evolutionary family tree with citation:

(link).

And here we take a look back at the earliest PIE origins post-Younger Dryas:

Maps from link; derived from https://indo-european.eu/.

And what was that PIE Creation Myth? Comparative mythology strongly suggests that under the large umbrella of the 'northern cosmology' background (tens of thousands of years) the Proto-Indo-European creation myth (~8,000-6,000 ya) from which the creation myths in our Indo-European mythologies and surviving religions descend with modification, including Vedic religion (later, Hinduism), Greek myth, Norse myth, Sumerian, Babylonian, Hittite, Egyptian, and the much later Abrahamic faiths, including the late-captured 10 creation myth versions textualized in our Hebrew bible (as we shall see below). The Proto-Indo-European creation myth has been reconstructed thus in concise form by D. W. Anthony, 2010. The Horse, the Wheel, and Language: How Bronze-Age Riders from the Eurasian Steppes Shaped the Modern World. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press; as described with many more academic references by Jon White in the Crecganford channel ("The family tree of religion - Finding the Creation Myth of the proto Indo Europeans;" link).

The PIE Creation Myth reconstruction with its battle of primordial opposites
resulting in the origin of sky, earth, & ocean gods; also featuring mothering cattle,
and ritual sacrifice to guard against primordial chaos:

In the beginning of the cosmos two beings were created, Manus and Yemo, meaning man and twin, and also a giant cow on which they suckled. Manus wanted to stop wandering through the cosmos, and to have a home, and so sacrificed Yemo, and from his body created the Sky god, the Ocean god, and the Earth. He traveled down to the Earth, and became a priest, teaching that through ritual sacrifice he would keep the world in order {from chaos}.

Anthony, 2010; link; see also link on the Proto-Indo-European (PIE) creation myth.

In Southwest Asia, what we refer to as the Ancient Near East, the PIE creation myth was transmitted down a lineage of descent as illustrated:

(link). The Enuma Elish has a geneology of gods descending from the primordial parents of Father Sky Apsu and Chaos Mother Tiamat (which is reflected in the allusions to the primordial chaos of waters, Tehom, and other monsters of chaos in the much later editions of creation myths in the Hebrew bible), as well as sibling rivalry and fratricide among gods and humans (see Derek Lambert's Mythvision podcast channel discussion of "The origin of Cain and Abel is insane;" link; as well as antecedent gods such as 'El, Ba'al, and Yhwh in the "Religion and literature of ancient Palestine," link; as well as also see the main homepage on scholarly and archaeological advances in Palestine: https://www.religionofancientpalestine.com/).

Proto-Indo-European creation myth from the Russian Steppe and outward ~9,000 - 7,000 ya West Asiatic peoples traveled south from the Steppes and ultimately a group speaking what became Sumerian settled in Mesopotamia, bringing their own version of the PIE creation myth ~5,500 - 4,000 ya The old Babylonians settled and they had their own version of the PIE myth: ~4,200 - 4,100 ya The Enuma Elish "When on high...." ~3,900 - 3,600 ya (link).

Later representation of the Babylonian creation myth with the Monster of Chaos facing off against the Sun God (link).

 

Even in an age of basic geocentric / anthropocentric conception, these ancient Near Eastern and Mediterranean world temples achieved an early conceptual breakthrough in that they focused the concentric cosmos not on humankind on Earth but on a divine space / spaciousness / emptiness in Heaven. This was inadvertently a step toward the Epicurean-Copernican-Brunesian Revolutions of a truly Universe-centric world-view to come. In that, despite the myth-as-literalism of later fundamentalists and political establishments in the later Abrahamic religions, they constituted a step forward in that Mythos-to-Cosmos process we are tracing in the history of cosmology and cosmogony. Exposing this extended story continues the Enlightenment legacy project of stepping behind the later and modern myths to trace our history. 

Ancient Mesopotamian tri-partite cosmos or world-view

Oldest known world map, excepting the older temples described below: The Babylonian Imago Mundi (6th century BCE; Wikipedia).
 

Tri-partite cosmos or world-view (image from Wilson, 1980)

Mesopotamian Babylon / Ur. The Babylonian world system was adapted from an earlier Sumerian cosmology (image from Wilson, 1980). There is some evidence that the earlier Mesopotamian world-views sought to include naturalistic explanations of the Universe, before succumbing to the appeal to capricious deities and their strife in the origin of the world, which is normally associated with Sumerian, Akkadian, and Babylonian cosmologies (Sagan, 1985).

The tri-partite cosmos of the Mesopotamian cosmology and creation myths (link).

The much later Hebrew world system (known in the West from the Bible) developed from the older Mesopotamian and Mediterranean world-views, including the local indigenous Canaanite cosmologies in Syro-Palestine:

Tri-partite cosmos: From Harper's Bible Dictionary (digitalcolorbydoctrbill)
(cf. http://www.class.uidaho.edu/ngier/commoncosmos.htm).

Tri-partite cosmos or world-view: A somewhat more naturalistic representation in the late recension book of Job
(http://cstl-csm.semo.edu/gathman/ui415/cosmology.htm).

A brief comparison & contrast between the older Mesopotamian and the younger Israelite / Judahite cosmologies

The ancient Near Eastern temples across the centuries and across cultures prior to the Common Era were actually tripartite microcosms of the ancient cosmos / world-views: the outer courts representing Earth and the subterranean world, the inner courts representing the skies, and the inner sanctum representing the heavens beyond the skies, the heaven of heavens (Walton, 2010. The Lost World of Genesis One: Ancient Cosmology and the Origins Debate. Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press). Aside from archaeology, because of the biblical tradition we have some familiarity in our day about ancient temples from the 2nd Temple period of Judaism. We start with other older ancient temples which exhibit such concentric microcosm reflection of the cosmos as the temple dwelling of the gods, represented in microcosm by the temple architecture.

The paradigmatic Near Eastern microcosm Temple of Amon-Re complex at Karnak in Thebes was built up during the "New Kingdom" (1550-1070 BCE), with site being first developed during the "Middle Kingdom" (2055-1650 BCE) apparently in a previous sacred site the Egyptians knew as "The Most Select of Places" (Ipet-isut).

(link).

"Tent pole" columns, Festival Temple of Thutmoses III (c 1479-25 BCE) at Karnak, Luxor, Egypt (link).

Temple as [micro]Cosmos, i.e., microcosmic concentricity "Conceptually, temples in Egypt were connected to the idea of zep tepi, or 'the first time,' the beginnings of the creation of the world. The temple was a reflection of this time, when the mound of creation emerged from the primeval waters. The pylons, or gateways in the temple represent the horizon, and as one moves further into the temple, the floor rises until it reaches the sanctuary of the god, giving the impression of a rising mound, like that during creation. The temple roof represented the sky and was often decorated with stars and birds. The columns were designed with lotus, papyrus, and palm plants in order to reflect the marsh-like environment of creation. The outer areas of Karnak, which was located near the Nile River, would flood during the annual inundation—an intentional effect by the ancient designers no doubt, in order to enhance the temple's symbolism." (Ref. Wilkinson, R. 2000. The Complete Temples of Ancient Egypt. New York, NY: Thames & Hudson; p. 77. Link; image link below).

. 
The Hypostyle Hall (c 1250 BCE) referenced in Elizabeth Cummins, "Temple of Amun-Re and the Hypostyle Hall, Karnak," in Smarthistory, November 27, 2015,
accessed February 16, 2023, https://smarthistory.org/temple-of-amun-re-and-the-hypostyle-hall-karnak/.

Floor plans of various Ancient Near Eastern temples (Al-Jameel, 2008. link; Fig. 2).

'Ain Dara (1300-740 BCE). This ancient site contains a late Bronze Age to Iron Age Neo-Hittite temple in northern Syro-Palestine: Monson, J. M. 1999. The temple of Solomon: Heart of Jerusalem. In Hess, R. S. & Wenham, G. J. (eds.). Zion, city of our God. C. The Ain Dara Temple: A New Parallel from Syria. Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing; pp. 12-19. And Monson, 2011. first published in 2000. In Shanks, H. (ed.). Biblical Archaeology Review (BAR); cf. Stone, E. C. & Zimansky, P. E. 1999. The Iron age Settlement at ʻAin Dara, Syria: Survey and Soundings. BAR International: J. & E. Hedges; 146 pp. Monson then republished a paper, in 2011: https://web.archive.org/web/20110714084050/. It has attracted increased interest because the 'Ain Dara temple is built on an ancient plan, familiar to us from the later Judahite legendary tales of a biblical 'solomonic temple' (I Kings 1, 6-7; II Chronicles 3), which was likewise described as being dedicated in a '7-day week' suzerainty covenant dedication interval. This was reflected much later in the 7-day cultic creation-dedicatory myth form within the later rescended Genesis 1 cultic retelling of the creation myth, that is, spatially and temporally both exhibiting microcosmic concentricity, respectively.

 

View of the 'Ain Dara basalt-on-limestone temple with the base mythical winged-lion creatures or cherubim, before it's criminal destruction by the Turkish Army in the criminal western proxy war against Syria (2011-present).	Another view of the magnificent pre-2018 'Ain Dara temple.
Again, an obligatory pair of winged lion mythical creatures or cherubim, in basalt.	Bas reliefs of cherubim at the base, upon the top of which are the feet and legs of outward facing mythical creatures, most likely also cherubim—all in magnificent basalt.
This largely intact (at the time) basalt mythological winged lion with eagle's claws, i.e., a cherubim, helps us reconstruct how the outward walls above bas relief consisted of outward facing cherubim. Of great significance in our history of cosmology-making are the giant engraved footprints (each about 1 meter long, 3'3") entering the 'Ain Dara temple from the courtyard portico (see God: An Anatomy....). These seem to be the footprints of the deity, god or goddess, entering the divine microcosmic concentricity of the temple space. I've put them in negative inverse image to capture the cosmic significance of this proto-Copernican steps forward in these ancient temples, centering their temples on a divine cosmos space, guarded by myth—an important step indeed of the Mythos to Cosmos journey.

(link).

Above: Note the microcosm concentricity, and the portico pillars at the courtyard. Right: Note the mythological creatures, including winged cherubim.
This figure resembles the 'master of beasts' motif.

Monson (2011) figures 3-8, 12, 14, 15. The temple at Hazor (above lower right) is included by the author for comparison (link).

Tell Ta'yinat ( c1000-738 BCE). This Bronze IV site is an important center of Kinalua in the Neo-Hittite city-kingdom of Palistin ( c1000-738 BCE) in Syro-Palestine, which had an Iron Age II temple, built with the same microcosmic concentricity of the ancient Near Eastern cosmological temple-conceptions of the Universe. See Harrison et al. 2009. Neo-Hittites in the 'Land of Palistin.' Renewed Investigations at Tell Ta'yinat on the Plain of Antioch. Near Eastern Archaeology 72 (4), 174-189, 2009; and Before and After the Storm: Crisis Years in Anatolia and Syria between the Fall of the Hittite Empire and the Beginning of a New Era (ca. 1220-1000 BC). 2012. A Symposium in Memory of Itamar Singer. University of Pavia; pp. 7-8.

Left: The layout of the Tell Ta'yinat Iron II temple. Above: A pair of the obligatory winged mythological creatures, or cherubim.

(link).

From Batiuk et al. in Yener (ed.). 2005 (link).

See Osborne et al. 2019. Urban built environments in Early 1st Millennium BCE Syro-Anatolia: Results of the Tayinat Archaeological Project, 2004-2016. Bulletin of the American Schools of Oriental Research (BASOR) 382 (1), 261. https://dro.dur.ac.uk/29754/2/29754.pdf. See also Batiuk et al. 2005. The Ta'yinat Survey, 1999-2002, in The Amuq Valley Regional Projects, Volume 1: Surveys in the Plain of Antioch and Orontes Delta, Turkey, 1995-2002, Oriental Institute Publications 131, 171. Oriental Institute, which may be found in Yener, K. A. (ed). 2005. The Amuq Valley Regional Projects Volume 1: Surveys in the Plain Of Antioch and Orontes Delta, Turkey, 1995-2002. Chicago, IL: Oriental Institute Publications. https://isac.uchicago.edu/sites/default/files/uploads/shared/docs/OIP_131.pdf. 

Tel Motza (10th - 6th c BCE). Also in the southern reaches of Syro-Palestine, a younger Iron Age temple has been unearthed at Tel Motza about 7 km NW of the Jerusalem 'old city' (https://www.telmoza.org/). The tell was apparently an important site far earlier in the pre-pottery Neolithic of the 8th-7th millennia BCE. The name Motza is mentioned in later biblical myth (Joshua 18, 25). There is evidence of settlement of the site during Iron Age II (10th-6th centuries BCE). The temple complex itself was constructed in the late Iron IIA (late 10th-early 9th c BCE) and involves a temple (exposed to about 20 m x 13 m) and a temple courtyard, with evidences of cultic use in different phases down to the late 7th - early 6th centuries BCE. The Tel Motza temple is similar to other temples in ancient Syro-Palestine such as in Ain Dara and Tell Ta'yinat, discussed above. It has an E to W orientation. It is highly significant that this is an actual Iron Age temple from near the location where the legendary 'solomonic temple' was supposed to have been, thus illustrative of how later Judahite myth-making in post-Exilic times created an ideal in a legendary Davidic-Solomonic past, departing from historical realities.      

(cf. link).

The ancient Greek mythology had a god Chaos who was conquered in primordial ordering of the Cosmos / World.

"Creation" (1875) by George Frederic Watts (1817-1904; link).

The Greek Parthenon (built between 447-438 BCE upon on an older temple site for Athena and destroyed by the Persians in 480 BCE) also exhibits the same microcosmic concentricity.

The Parthenon in 1978 (link); scale and details of the floor plan (link).

The same temple microcosm of the primordial cosmology creation myths of microcosmic concentricity can be seen in Egyptian temples, including in the late Temple of Horus at Edfu (constructed 237-57 BCE).

Floor plan of Temple of Horus, Edfu (link).

The reconstruction of the Judahite so-called '2nd temple' in Jerusalem (c 586 BCE - 70 CE) also illustrates the more ancient patterns of temples as microcosm of the cosmos, i.e., microcosmic concentricity. As indicated the temple dedications in the ancient Near East also reportedly took place in 7 day time periods, the creation week in the latest recension of the Genesis 1 creation myth reflects a cultic tour through the temple patterned in Torah.

Reconstructed floor plan of the so-called '2nd temple' (Herodian) in Jerusalem (link).

Temple plan of Ezekiel hoped for in exile (based on words of a Hebrew prophet in the Babylonian exile, 593-571 BCE, probably written down later by scribes as stated in the Babylonian Talmud, Baba Batra 15a; link; referenced); a temple of religious vision still sacred in the faith of modern religious Zionists, Jewish and Christian.

The original PIE creation myth and its descendants entails the primordial conquest of Chaos:
Pictured here in this biblical engraving as "The destruction of Leviathan" (link).

Because ancient Near Eastern temples have influenced Western thought as well as cosmology, we should pause briefly to note that the first of about 10 creation myths which have ended up in our Hebrew bible, or the Tanakh. All of them have some mythic and / or temple microcosm references, so we list them and their likely dates of capture and composition in what became the Hebrew bible:

• "One stretching out the heavens" an oral fragment from the Babylonian captivity and probably of Babylonian origin, captured late in various literary forms & settings (5th-4th centuries BCE). Note: This author, in an exuberant youthful, thrilling, apologetic stage of faith, before personal knowledge of historical exegesis and scholarship, inspired by the thoughts of Robert Jastrow then in a Reader's Digest article, distilling his book, God and the Astronomers (1978. 2nd ed. New York, NY: W. W. Norton), hypothesized that the ancient Tanakh had somehow foreseen modern Big Bang cosmology. Jastrow had ended his volume with these words: "For the scientist who has lived by his faith in the power of reason, the story ends like a bad dream. He has scaled the mountains of ignorance, he is about to conquer the highest peak; as he pulls himself over the final rock, he is greeted by a band of theologians who have been sitting there for centuries." This apologetic encounter was one of the major triggers of this author's interest in cosmology.
  
• Job 9:8 (7th-4th c BCE): Cited as a part of the 'wisdom of the ancients' likely Babylonians.
  
• Psalm 104:1-2 (~10th?-5th c BCE putative origins, final edition in Hellenistic period: 312-63 BCE): Part of the 150 psalm anthology embedded in a suzerainty-form creation myth, alluding to primordial conflicts with gods of chaos; cf. later dispute between polytheism and henotheism. See Alter, R. 2007. The Book of Psalms. New York, NY: W. W. Norton; pp. xiv-xv.
  
• Deutero (ii)-Isaiah (ch. 40-55; 6th c BCE, anon. author during Exile) covenant identifier of Yhwh in oracular formula (40:22; 42:5; 44:24; 45:12; 48:12-13; 51:12-13; cf. Kline, 1963)‏; fragment not found in Proto(i)-Isaiah (ch. 1-39; 8th c BCE), nor in post-exilic
  
• Trito(iii)-Isaiah (ch. 56-66; ~4th c BCE). It is fascinating that this fragment only appears in Exilic time within the Isaiah compilation. The precise relative dating of the fragment's appearance and disappearance in Isaiah may constrain a late Exilic date for Psalm 104.
  
• Jeremiah 10:12 (ch. 1-25, 627-586 BCE; followed by later chapters put together by post-Exilic Deuteronomists, with final edition in 2nd c BCE), i.e., a covenant identifier of God (Anderson, 1993)‏.
• Zechariah 12:1 (1st Zech. 1-8 in 520-518 BCE, 6th c BCE; 2nd Zech. 9-14 in 5th c BCE) - covenant identifier of God (Ibids.)‏
• Alluded to elsewhere: Job 26; 36; Gen. 1; Isa. 40:12; &c.  (written 7th-4th c BCE; Kugler & Hartin, 2009).
• Job 26 (7th-4th c BCE) 'El's warrior-king conquest of the Rephaim (mythological titans, underworld; cf. 'northern cosmology' > Proto-Indo-European myth > Sumerian > Babylonian > Hebraic, &c.), Rahab (primordial sea monster), and 'the primeval serpent' conquest over chaos. Alluded to numerous times in Hebrew scripture, cf. Tiamat-Tehom parallel, etc. (cf. Gilgamesh, Atrahasis, Enuma Elish, etc.; cf. Heidel, 1942; D Baldwin, 2006; Kikawada & Quinn, 1985; Clausen & Wheeler, 2006; &c.)‏.
  
• Job 28 (7th-4th c BCE): Canaanite high god El's primordial quest for wisdom, in making the world, God finally finds wisdom! (Kugel, 1999)‏.
  
• Job 38-40 (7th-4th c BCE): Yhwh as suzerain summons / questions vassal (Job) about how he established his domain as heaven & earth (cf. Kline, 1963; Anderson, 1993), making free use of the mythological monsters and conflicts.
  
• Psalm 104 (~10th?-5th c BCE putative origins, final edition in Hellenistic period: 312-63 BCE). Yhwh's primordial conquest of Earth as ancient NE suzerain chieftain-king on behalf of vassal king, mankind.
• Psalm 74 (~10th?-5th c BCE putative origins, final edition in Hellenistic period: 312-63 BCE): Yhwh as warrior-king in the primordial creation-conquest of the Leviathan (mythological titans, underworld), Rahab (multiheaded primordial sea monster), a conquest over chaos.
• Genesis 2-3 (written 500-400 BCE). J source portraying Yhwh as a Mesopotamian 'great king' planting a vassal kingdom for mankind (cf. Kline, 1963; Anderson, 1993)‏.
  
• Genesis 1 (written 500-400 BCE). E source: Order out of chaos in covenant form, thematic order: (i) forming & separating / filling & (ii) adorning the formless & empty (cf. Kline, 1963)‏ Vanquishing 2 ancient Near Eastern deities per each creation day. Hebrew temple layout, also, forming & separating / filling & adorning. 6 days even-morn; 7th does not; cf. 7-day dedications of temples.

Genesis 1, the so-called "creation week" is actually a temple microcosm dedication ritual lasting 7 days, which is a topically-organized, rather than a chronologically organized, tour of the Near Eastern cosmos-view and the Near Eastern patterned Hebrew temple (described in Torah) as a memorial to the creation by high sky god 'El, a Canaanite deity in Palestine, which was supplanted by Yahweh in later Hebrew religion, an imported southern Edomite desert deity, south of Palestine, adopted over time into the Canaanite pantheon under 'El, until post-exile, and adapted until eventually supplanting and becoming the one god of Hebrew religion (henotheism to monotheism transition) in the Persian period.   

 7-day Temple-Microcosmos dedication: Days 1-3 forming & separating; Days 4-6 filling & adorning.

Prologue ('Day 0'): Chaos formless & mixed darkness

Day 1 Day 4

Day 2 Day 5

Day 3 Day 6

Epilogue (7th day): Cosmos formed & set apart illuminated

Schematic conceptual organization (table above) corresponds to the pictorial illustrations (below) of the entrance into the Hebrew temple & of the passage through the topical, cultic-dedicatory 'creation week.' Stanhope (2020; see reference in the box below) has summarized data on the multiples of 7 in the numerology of these myths. The topical(-mythic) rather than chronological-literal organization of the cultic 'creation week' has been recognized for centuries among Judeo-Christian scholars (cf. Walton, 2010; &c.). Arises from the Northern Cosmology myths associated with Afro-Transcaucasian-Eurasian-Amerind more northerly migrations in the late Pleistocene-Holocene transition.

  

Hebrew temple entrance from outer court (bottom) beyond which is wilderness 'chaos' up through the Holy, and into the Holiest (top) corresponds to creation week days 1-3 (top right) and days 4-6 (bottom left). (Link).

Some of the latest research strongly suggests that our current version of the latest of the creation myths in the Hebrew bible, those in Genesis 1 and 2 may actually proceed from the Greeks, namely Plato's Timaeus (written about 360 BCE: https://classics.mit.edu/Plato/timaeus.html). As a part of a school of biblical scholars called the Copenhagen International Seminar  (22 volumes; link), Russell Gmirkin has published a number of books arguing for literary dependence in the Hebrew bible on Greek and Hellenistic texts: Gmirkin, R. with Mein, A., & Camp, C. V. (series eds.). 2006. Berossus and Genesis, Manetho and Exodus: Hellenistic Histories and the Date of the Pentateuch (The Library of Hebrew Bible/Old Testament Studies, 433). Edinburgh, Scotland: T & T Clark; 2019. Plato and the Creation of the Hebrew Bible (Copenhagen International Seminar), Oxfordshire, UK: Routledge, which compares the law codes of the Pentateuch with the Greek sources; and his forthcoming, 2024. Plato's Timaeus and the Biblical Creation Accounts (Copenhagen International Seminar). Oxfordshire, UK: Routledge. Gmirkin argues controversially that the Pentateuch would have been written about 270 BCE, using Greek sources in the Great Library of Alexandria.

Comparison table between events in Plato's Timaeus and Genesis 1 and 2.
(Image from the Mythvision documentary, "Shocking Greek origins to Genesis," link, reviewing Gmirkin's work and the advances made in Greek & Hebrew bible comparative studies).

Whatever the dates of final redaction of these Hebrew scriptures, they build upon a long, multi-layered set of traditions and mythology going back to the proto-Indo-Europeans. Ultimately, they are part of the great Northern Mythology / story, and cosmology.

Judeo-Christian fundamentalists have forgotten, without ever apparently knowing, the original cultic-dedicatory-topical mythos meaning of those mythic traditions which became the Genesis 1 and 2-3 creationary myths, and have heralded instead a literal creation week ~5,700 years ago or less than 6,000 years. In fact there are at least 10 creation myths captured late in the Tanakh (Hebrew bible), and many more allusions to ancient myth. Post-Enlightenment, this counter-Enlightenment trend has been set in a literalist framework in conservative religious circles which has adversely affected the advances of scientific cosmology in cosmology-astronomy (as we shall see in later pages), geology, paleontology, and the biosciences. Furthermore, the fundamentalist literalism has also often included a persistence of numerology and numerological typology which has unfortunately contributed to malign dualistic mysticism and apocalypticism over the centuries, and sadly has too often been wedded to a covenantal ingroup-outgroup amorality (CIAO). The relevance to the actual advance of scientific cosmology is negligible, having generated heated controversies but very little light (other than some historical understanding of how cosmology has developed in the West over the last few centuries within one specific tradition stream), and therefore, we note it as the relic of modern misinterpretation which it is.

Fundamentalism can overlay what is essentially the old Babylonian myth of (the Sun) god triumphing over primordial Chaos
& superimposes it on a modern photograph / understanding of a galaxy, a star system (link). Fundamentalism too often mixes mythos with cosmos, and can end up understanding neither.

However, we should remember that these ancient Mediterranean and Near Eastern temples were really (if one isn't sidetracked by the myth-as-literal or Abrahamic-political sectarian agendae of our disturbed age) that they were early, small steps toward a Universe-centered world-view, the Epicurean-Copernican-Brunesian Revolution, first pioneered by the pre-Socratic Greeks, furthered with the Enlightenment, and modern cosmology, to the extent that it has and is freeing itself from any New Ptolemaic System paradigm. In the rest of this website's chapters, we will continue exploring that.

Select References on Ancient Near Eastern Temple Concentric Microcosms and their dedications, and creation in the Hebrew Bible  Ahlstrom, G. 1975. "Heaven on Earth" at Hazor and Arad. Religious Syncretism in Antiquity, ed. B. A. Pearson. Missoula, MT: Scholars Press, pp. 67-83. Blenkinsopp, J. 2011. Creation, Un-Creation, Re-Creation: A Discursive Commentary on Genesis 1-11. Edinburgh, Scotland, UK: T&T Clarke International. Clifford, R. 1994. Creation Accounts in the Ancient Near East and in the Bible, Catholic Biblical Quarterly Monograph Series 26. Washington, DC: Catholic Biblical Association. Horowitz. W. 1998. Mesopotamian Cosmic Geography. Winona Lake, IN: Eisenbrauns. Hurowitz, V. 1992. I Have Built You an Exalted House: Temple Building in the Bible in Light of Mesopotamian and Northwest Semitic Writings. Journal for the Study of the Old Testament Supplement Series 115. Sheffield, UK: JSOT Press; pp. 260-61, 275-76. Kingsbury, E. C. 1963. A Seven Day Ritual in the Old Babylonian Cult at Larsa. Hebrew Union College Annual 34, 1-34. Kugler, R. & Hartin, P. J. 2009. An Introduction to the Bible. Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans. Levenson, J. 1984. The Temple and the World. Journal of Religion 64, 275-298. ____. 1998. Creation and the Persistence of Evil. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Stanhope, B. 2020. (Mis)interpreting Genesis: How the Creation Museum Misunderstands the Ancient Near Eastern Context of the Bible. Louisville, KY: Scarab Press. See especially chapters 8-9 on Eden as "the cosmic mountain of god" and "the meaning of the seven days of creation," respectively. Vogels, W. 1997. The Cultic and Civil Calendars of the Fourth Day of Creation (Gen 1,14b). Scandinavian Journal of the Old Testament 11, 163-80. Walton, J. H. 2010. The Lost World of Genesis One: Ancient Cosmology and the Origins Debate. (The Lost World Series). Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press. Image link.

After that excursus on the Mediterranean-Mesopotamian-Levantine gods and their temple-microcosms in Near Eastern mythogony, and the cultural after-effects on the development of cosmology, we return back to the Ancient Greeks in the early times before when they first made a real transition from mythology to cosmology, from Mythos to Cosmos, in their pioneering attempts to understand the cosmos and its origins in naturalist terms. Naturally all of the deities of humankind are analogical in nature, falling within the purview of human inventiveness, and should never be confused with the ineffableness of Being, from which we see the Universe, not to be confused with our cosmos-models (see 'Canis Major' / Spinozista analogical table below).

Following on the legacy of the monistic Ionian-Milesian Greek Enlightenment philosophers, such as Epicurus, transmitted down to us via Lucretius' De Rerum Natura, and further by Giordano Bruno, one of the founding early modern natural philosophers who reinvisioned cosmology within in their path in our Western culture was Benedict de Spinoza (1632-1677) who in his extended Note to I Ethica Prop. XVII, wrote concerning difference between our conceptions and the reality of that unified Deus sive Natura (God or the Universe): "...For intellect and will, which should constitute the essence of Deity, would perforce be as far apart as the poles  from the human intellect and will, in fact, would have nothing in common with them but the name; there would be about as much correspondence between the two as there is between the Dog [Canis Major], the heavenly constellation, and a dog, an animal that barks." But first we must cross from myth to cosmos. For that we turn explicitly to the ancient Greeks.

Canis Major photo from Australia (50 mm lens; link).

Canis Major visualization (with globular cluster M41; modified from link).

In his Note on I Ethica Prop. XVII, Spinoza wrote concerning the difference between our conceptions and intellect / will and the reality of that unified Deus sive Natura (God or the Universe): "...For intellect and will, which should constitute the essence of Deity, would perforce be as far apart as the poles from the human intellect and will, in fact, would have nothing in common with them but the name; there would be about as much correspondence between the two as there is between the Dog [Canis Major], the heavenly constellation, and a dog, an animal that barks." We think that Spinoza said "the least of it," writing cautiously, rather than expansively, in the spirit of his chosen motto, "Caute" or caution, a caution necessary in his unfree times!

(link).

The Greco-Aegean world

The cultural milieu stage for the Greek Transistion is the Greek colonization of the Mediterranean world (8th-6th centuries BCE):

Greek colonies in red; Phoenician in yellow (link).

The ancient Greek (Homeric) world-vew very much resembles the scattered islands and maritime home in the Aegean of the Greek peoples of these centuries before the common era. From this simple beginning emerged the first scientific revolution in the 6th through the 3rd centuries BCE. 

Legendary epic poet, Homer (8th century BCE), author of the masterpiece epic poems, the Ἰλιάς or Illiad (8th century) and the Ὀδύσσεια or Odyssey (8th century) based on the heroic times of the Trojan War ( c 1260-1180 BCE). In the heroic Greek world of Homer's epic poems, the traditional gods regularly interfere in the world, in human affairs, causing events and eventualities in the affairs of men and their fortunes.

Homeros, Ὅμηρος , epic poet (8th century BCE) grants us a view of the traditional Greek mythological view of the Cosmos.

Hesiodos (~750-650 BCE). Ἡσίοδος Hēsiodos, 'he who emits the voice' (link). In his long didactic Ἔργα καὶ Ἡμέραι (Works and Days), he opined on the nature of the world and human life within it. In one of the great transitions from mythogony to cosmology and historical cosmology (historicized account of the world), Hesiod posited a transition from myth to history with his 'ages of man' (lines 109-201, cf. link): Golden Age: Fell within the reign of Cronus, Humans created by the gods on Olympus lived and walked among the gods, were good and noble, and had to do no work because Nature provided her bounty. Men were wise and beneficent beings on earth, δαίμονες from δαήμονες. Silver Age: This age and since is within the reign of Zeus, son of Chronos. Men lived 100 years under the dominion of their mothers, and spent time in strife with each other. But upon death, they became "blessed spirits" in Tartaros. Bronze Age: Men hardened by war, their central passion, and thus undone by their violent ways. Their armor and tools were forged of bronze. Their spirits were left with no name, and dwelt in the "dark house of Hades." This age ended with the flood of Deucalion. Heroic Age: The age of heroes was the exception in getting better than the previous age. These heroes fought at Thebes and Troy, and upon death went to Elysium. Iron Age: Hesiodos writes here. Humans live in toil and misery, children dishonoring their parents, brother wars with brother, and the social contract between host and guest is forgotten. Might makes right, and the bad lie to be thought good. Shame or anger against wrong doing is lost. Babies will be born with gray hair, and the gods will have completely forsaken humans. Adapted from link.

The Greek pioneers in mythology, history, and science may be thought of as starting with the early poet and philosopher Hesiodos, who wrote Θεογονία, Theogonia or Theogony (origin of the World and the gods): "Chaos was first of all, but next appeared broad-bosomed Earth [Gaia]." The Cosmos (κόσμος) emerged in order (link): (a) χάος or Chaos (b) Γαῖα or Gaia (Earth) (c) Τάρταρος or Tartaros (the Underworld), and (d) Ἔρως or Eros (Love). "The very first to exist is Chaos, then Gaia, whose expansive lap is the ever-safe foundation of the immortal gods who live on the snowy peak of Olympos; and then dark Tartaros, deep in the earth with its expansive paths; and then Eros, the most beautiful of the gods...." Theogony translated in Leonard & McClure. 2004. Myth and Knowing: An Introduction to World Mythology. McGraw-Hill Co.; p. 63. Hesiodos' Theogony is a milestone in transitioning from myth to metaphysics to cosmology to history (cf. link), however, it is important to note that it fits well into the II. Northern Mythos-Cosmology of the early Homo sapiens 'out of Africa' migrations: As 5th century BCE historian Heroditos said of Homer and Hesiod: "It was these who constructed a divine genealogy for the Greeks amd wjp gave the gods their titles, allocated their powers and privileges to them, and indicated their forms" (Stenudd, 2007; p. 26).

The apotheosis (or translation up into heaven among the gods) of Homer illustrates how mythology developed during and after the Greek Heroic Age. In fact, many of the constellations which the Greeks transferred from ancient antiquity to post-classical Greco-Roman 'modernity' indeed incorporated apotheosis or translation into the stars / asterisms with the very mythical figures memorialized there. Classicist Richard Miller showed in his history of the creative effect of the Greco-Roman apotheosis or 'translation fable' evolving mythology on early Christian belief in the resurrection (Miller, 2015. Resurrection and Reception in Early Christianity. New York, NY / London, UK: Routledge, Taylor & Francis Group) gives many references to the classical sources on the transfiguration and apotheosis of not only Greco-Roman mythical figures but also cultural heroes / heroines of yore and of state into catasterisms, associated with our canonical constellations—a uniting of cosmos above with world beneath.

Apotheosis of Homer, in the 3rd century BCE Archelaos sculpture relief with Zeus at the top, various figures described in detail, and Homer being seated and laurel-crowned at the lower left (cf. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iliad; https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Odyssey;https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Bust_of_the_poet_Homer,_replica_from_the_Archaelogical_museum_of_Naples,_Neues_Museum,_Berlin_(8169127839).jpg).

Of all the ancient peoples who in their various cultures engaged in astrology, mathematical and calendrical calculation, engineering, and early science, the Greeks were the first (aside from perhaps the Indian subcontinent materialist Cervaka movement) to begin the transition from myth-generating or mythogony to seeking natural cause and effect explanations (cosmology) for accounting for the Universe in which we find ourselves. This transition is of great interest in our history of cosmology in the western world. We are indebted in part to the pithy, précis-like conciseness of Stefan Stenudd's 2007 history, Cosmos of the Ancients: The Greek Philosophers on Myth and Cosmology. North Charleston, SC: BookSurge). To show how far this natural philosophy Revolution went, we also cite historical summary of Margaret O'Leary (2008. Anaxagoras and the Origin of Panspermia Theory. Bloomington, IN: iUniverse) and the many historical sources, including the classical sources, she references. The first Greek Enlightenment ignited in the 6th century BCE. By the 5th century, some of the Greek Enlightenment philosophers even naturalized the origin of life (and biological evolution) by arguing that life itself is a natural production of the Universe, ubiquitous from the Cosmos with Earth not even central, the theory of panspermia. The earliest surviving source on the ancient Greek philosophers was the Epicurean Diogenes Laertius or Διογένης Λαέρτιος (3rd century CE) Lives of the Eminent Philosophers (translated).

Like other ancient peoples, the Greeks transmitted their mythologies, revered their gods and built temples and shrines to them, and manufactured / forged their cosmologies and world-views from these mythologies. The Greek literary tradition began in the Mycenaean period, c 1600-1100 BCE; ~3600-3100 ya (Stenudd, 2007). That tradition included and in many ways was founded in the epic poetic and dramatic tradition of Homeros (8th century BCE) in Illiad and the Odyssey which may have simply arisen from the textualization of an oral tradition, as well as Hesiodos (8th c - ~700 BCE) in the Theogony and Works and Days and their discussion of the origins of the Greek gods and myth, and the start of the tradition (pp. 26-39) to move from mythos toward cosmos. In this the milieu background was laid for how in the 6th century BCE, a small cadre of naturalistic seekers / searchers and doubters of the myths and the gods began to arise. We turn to their story.

The first Greek naturalistic philosopher was Thales of Miletus.  

The early Ionians

Ἀναξιμένης ὁ Μιλήσιος Anaximenes of Miletos (c586 - c526 BCE) (link) Like the other natural philosophers of Ionia & Miletos, he sought unifying causality in the cosmos, rather than isolating and / or personifying natural phenomena. Similar to his monism, among the Pythagoreans, Aristotle indicated that they held that there exists "boundless breath... outside the heavens, which was inhaled by the world" (Physics Δ, 6. 213 b22).

Anaximenes was a student of Anaximander in the Milesian school Material monist also, with air being the original primary substance, ex arche ( ἐξ ἀρχῆς) Some surviving words of his: "Just as our soul (psyche; ψυχή), being air (aer; ἀήρ), holds us together, so do breath of life (pneuma; πνεῦμα) and air (aer; ἀήρ) encompass the whole Universe": First to equate air and breath of life (pneuma). Held that substance changes forms (states) through rarefaction (hot, dry air) and condensation (cold, wet air) learning from the water cycle May have been among the first to distinguish between planets and 'fixed stars' Used analogies when speaking of the world of man on Earth and that of the Cosmos out there implied that the same natural laws observed on Earth apply out in the Universe, a powerful insight shown to be true by Sir Isaac Newton >2000 years later. Through reason and natural observations he also sought  natural causal explanations of earthquakes, lightning, rainbows.

The Pythagorean Revolution and Regression (5th century BCE)