The Ancient Stargazing Origins of Timekeeping and Navigation : Celestial Chronology, Land Survey, and Mapmaking (Cartography) by Astronomy

Prehistoric Mankind's Primary Technologies Were Rooted in Astronomy and the Prevailing Economies Were Based on Land and Property, Mapped via the Stars

To understand the development of human civilization, it is important to recognize that mankind's first "scientific" technologies were arguably based on primitive "stargazing", i.e. what we modernly call "astronomy".

No less a thinker than Bertrand Russell wrote in Human Knowledge: Its Scope and Limits (Simon and Schuster, Clarion Books, New York, 1948) that:

"Astronomy is the oldest of the sciences, and the contemplation of the heavens, with their periodic regularities, gave men their first conceptions of natural law."

Furthermore, there is a direct connection to astronomy in terms of both land survey and land or sea navigation, as written at the Wikipedia under Surveying:

"The primary way of determining one's position on the earth's surface when no known positions are nearby is by astronomic observations. Observations to the sun, moon and stars could all be made using navigational techniques. Once the instrument's position and bearing to a star is determined, the bearing can be transferred to a reference point on the earth and which can then be used as a base for further observations. Survey-accurate astronomic positions were difficult to observe and calculate and so tended to be a base off which many other measurements were made. Since the advent of the GPS system, astronomic observations are rare as GPS allows positions to be determined adequately over most of the surface of the earth."

Since human survival has at all times depended on either ownership or control of actual physical territory on our planet Earth, that same astronomy served as the simplest way to map out that territory, with maps made to mirror the ever-present and ready-made sky map of the heavens, "as above, so below".

At our Megaliths.net website on megalithic cultures we have written:

"As observed by Alice Cunningham Fletcher (Alice C. Fletcher) in her 1902 publication in the American Anthropologist, there is ample evidence that some ancient cultures, e.g. the Pawnee in Nebraska, geographically located their villages according to patterns seen in stars of the heavens. Fletcher, A. C. (1902), Star Cult Among the Pawnee – A Preliminary Report, American Anthropologist, 4:730–736. doi:10.1525/aa.1902.4.4.02a00050."

To the importance of astronomy for ancient peoples we can add timekeeping, as written some time ago at Curious About Astronomy:

"In ancient times, the practical need for timekeeping and navigation was one of the primary reasons for the study of astronomy. The celestial origins of timekeeping and navigation are still evident."

In spite of the above observations, anthropologists and archaeologists worldwide generally proceed in their academic work as if the ancients knew more or less nothing of astronomy and, furthermore, placed little or no importance upon it for land survey, navigation, timekeeping and chronology, whereas the probative evidence that we have increasingly found presents exactly the opposite picture.

Astronomy DOMINATED the ancient world.

The Study of the History of Civilization : The Battle Against Monopolistically-Inclined Thinking

The Study of the History of Civilization: The Battle Against Monopolistically-Inclined Thinking
 

The "History of Civilization" is a concept which many people in academia misunderstand, thinking the study of the history of culture and technology to be the realm of specialized vested-interest historians or monopolist-like professions.

 

Alternatively seen, when we speak of the history of civilization, we must consider that the actual progress of mankind may have been substantially different than currently portrayed in over-creative, oft unsubstantiated documentaries on television or other media. Indeed, it is very likely that the "priests" of ancient cultures were, above all, less interested in pots and pottery, the realm of modern Archaeology, but were rather stargazers and land surveyors, comparable in their day to our astronomers and mapmakers.

 

As written by John Bedell at Bensozia in Aztec Surveying:

 

"The two things that drove mathematical progress in ancient civilizations were land surveying and astronomy."

 

"Civilization" thus may encompass a broader perspective than that presented to us by current science, and we need to grant such a possibility a greater audience.

We quote Winston S. Churchill, “Civilization,” Chancellor’s Address, University of Bristol, July 2, 1938, via Niall Ferguson in Civilization: The West and the Rest and Michael Kaplan at The New Jacksonian Blog, citing to Winston S. Churchill, Blood, Sweat, and Tears, Randolph S. Churchill, ed. (New York: G. P. Putnam’s Sons, 1941), pp. 45-46:

 

"There are few words which are used more loosely than the word “Civilization.” What does it mean?

 

It means a society based upon the opinion of civilians. It means that violence, the rule of warriors and despotic chiefs, the conditions of camps and warfare, of riot and tyranny, give place to parliaments where laws are made, and independent courts of justice in which over long periods those laws are maintained.

 

That is Civilization—and in its soil grow continually freedom, comfort and culture. When Civilization reigns, in any country, a wider and less harassed life is afforded to the masses of the people. The traditions of the past are cherished, and the inheritance bequeathed to us by former wise or valiant men becomes a rich estate to be enjoyed and used by all.

 

The central principle of Civilization is the subordination of the ruling authority to the settled customs of the people and to their will as expressed through the Constitution.

 

In this Island [Great Britain] we have today achieved in a high degree the blessings of Civilization. There is freedom: there is [the rule of] law; there is love of country; there is a great measure of good will between classes: there is a widening prosperity. There are unmeasured opportunities of correcting abuses and making further progress."

 

Despite those wonderful words of wisdom by Winston Churchill more than 80 years ago, we today live in an allegedly "modern" era where the cardinal virtues of Civilization are greatly under siege and where we can only view the future with a certain amount of trepidation. World news is still dominated daily by conflict and strife rather than by progress and peace. Science still suffers from great and colossal failings, despite heroic efforts, as the current pandemic teaches us all.

It may of course be argued that Civilization always wins in the end and moves onward or even forward, but it is always a battle against the forces of yesteryear and against various monopolistically inclined nations, groups, religions, organizations, and schools of thought, that always have -- and today continue -- to strive to bind mankind in the chains of blindered ignorance and superstition.

 

It is our duty, especially the best and most capable of us, to counter the selfish voices of despots and tyrants, small and large, whether in politics or academia.

 

We must lead positively into the future.

 

That is always the pioneer spirit behind our own work.

 

Scientific Research and the Role of Memes and Memetics : What Defines the Real Truth?

As a Stanford University Law School graduate, the present author was pleased to read in the Scientific American at Science Research Needs an Overhaul, that John P. A. Ioannidis some years ago co-founded a new center at Stanford University called METRICS ("the Meta-Research Innovation Center at Stanford") to deal with the costly problem that much mainstream research is wasted.

Ioannidis cites to leading medical periodical, The Lancet, which avers that this "waste" applies even to 85% of medical research, a so-called "hard" science.

How bad are things then in the soft sciences, where the standard of proof is likely lower than in medical research?

Ioannidis writes that the METRICS center:

"[W]ill seek to study research practices and how these can be optimized. It will examine the best means of designing research protocols and agendas to ensure that the results are not dead ends but rather that they pave a path forward. The center will do so by exploring what are the best ways to make scientific investigation more reliable and efficient."

We enthusiastically applaud this development.

We have been confronted for years by gullible, uninformed, and opinionated people in and out of science proclaiming the near infallibility of mainstream ideas and research methods and we really have little patience for such follies.

Having taught research ourselves at the university level, we know from experience that exactly the opposite of what is claimed by science is true...

and what is true is that much of what is researched in science and that is peer-review published as a result of that research is a costly waste of time and often leads science in the wrong directions. The peer-review process exists in part to fluff the feathers of the reigning authorities. "Truth" is a secondary matter.

One main reason for these follies of "scientific research", as we have written time and time again, is that science in the past has been predominantly "authority-based", i.e. it is not the "what" but the "who" that determines truth in science, and this outdated practice has led to massive errors. Before the dawn of the modern age, "authority-based" science was necessary since authorities were the key repositories of knowledge. But that has greatly changed in the modern era.

Just look at the COVID-19 coronavirus pandemic where the established sciences have had their difficulties the past two years, despite heroic efforts. "Science" should have been better prepared for the pandemic than it was. Why was it not?

A shift in the focus of science is absolutely necessary. The prevailing standards of the past, when so-called "authorities" ruled the roost in science, are currently often misplaced in our digital age when anyone who wishes can look up nearly anything they want online. In the last analysis, one authority today is just one more opinion. In order to insure a more secure human future, the science of tomorrow must be based upon known facts, not upon known authorities.

"Evidence-Based Research" must be given top priority in our digital age.

Outdated memes must be slowly abandoned.

But what are memes?

Meme is a term coined by Richard Dawkins, emeritus Professor for Public Understanding of Science at Oxford University in England.

Memes are defined generally as "replicated ideas, symbols or practices".

We view memes as describing the state of mainstream science at any given time and to explain many of its aberrations. Memes act like viruses (or genes).

A meme is defined at the Wikipedia as:

""[A]n idea, behavior, or style that spreads from person to person within a culture." A meme acts as a unit for carrying cultural ideas, symbols, or practices that can be transmitted from one mind to another through writing, speech, gestures, rituals, or other imitable phenomena with a mimicked theme. Supporters of the concept regard memes as cultural analogues to genes in that they self-replicate, mutate, and respond to selective pressures.... The word meme was coined by British evolutionary biologist Richard Dawkins ... as a concept for discussion of evolutionary principles in explaining the spread of ideas and cultural phenomena. Examples of memes given [in The Selfish Gene] included melodies, catch-phrases, fashion, and the technology of building arches."

In our view, what is normally called a "school of thought" in academia is more accurately defined as being a "meme", because "thought" often has nothing to do with it. Rather, ideas, rightly or wrongly, become entrenched in various disciplines of science and propagate themselves as if they had a life of their own. The same is true for politics and religion. People believe things out of habit, nothing more.

Truth is not at all the issue.

Rather, as written at Wikipedia about Memetics: 

"Memetics is a theory of mental content based on an analogy with Darwinian evolution.... Proponents describe memetics as an approach to evolutionary models of cultural information transfer.... As with genetics, particularly under a Dawkinsian interpretation, a meme's success may be due to its contribution to the effectiveness of its host."

Accordingly, and contrary to the notion that "truth" is the objective in science or elsewhere, people thus actually adhere to a given idea, school of thought, cultural practice or religion because the adherents of a particular meme perceive it as providing the holders of that meme with advantages. 

That essential understanding helps to explain many aberrations that can be discovered in science whereby presumably "rational" people hold fast to long-outdated ideas and ways of looking at things, often at odds with the available probative evidence.

We look to the probative evidence! 

That is what defines our work.