Out of the Waters
May 10th 2007 11:36
OUT OF THE WATERS
Some Observations about African Mega Lakes and Egyptian Creation Myths.
There is a scinece called palaeoclimatology and over the last couple of decades palaeoclimatologists have made many stunning and surprising discoveries about climate change in Northern and Central Africa.
One of the latest discoveries was the announcement of a new megalake or rather traces of its ancient shoreline. This lake covered the area between the Ennedi Plateau and the Darfur Massif in what is now Northwestern Sudan edging with Chad.
We know know there was a whole string of megalales spreading east and west across what is now the Sahel and Sahara. Most of Chad was an inland surrounded by lush growth with Mediterranean type foliage to the north and semi tropicla savanna to the south. The Congo basin was probably a lake too and the swamplands of southern sudan.
Rivers flowed from and into them thru vast grasslands that are now desolate waste.
What have these scientific discoveries to do with Egyptian Creation Myths.
The Egyptian Creation myths speak of the "beautiful west" an odd belief given the sahara to the west of the nile and they also speak of a primordial mound or hill rising form the chaotic waters. Scholars used to think that was a reference to flood waters receding from the dleta lands but this myth appears along the whole length of the Nile Valley with little known variation except the claim a goddess created the NILE.
Myth and science have strange interactions.
Current archaeology suggest that people moved into the Nile Valley from the Sahara as it dried up as ironically desertification drained the Nile Valley limiting the ancient marshs to the shores of the river.
It rather looks like the belief in the "beautiful west and the mound rising from the waters is a myth based on a distant memory of a time when the ancestors of the egyptians lived on islands in the megalakes of Chad and Darfur?
What do you think?
Some Observations about African Mega Lakes and Egyptian Creation Myths.
There is a scinece called palaeoclimatology and over the last couple of decades palaeoclimatologists have made many stunning and surprising discoveries about climate change in Northern and Central Africa.
One of the latest discoveries was the announcement of a new megalake or rather traces of its ancient shoreline. This lake covered the area between the Ennedi Plateau and the Darfur Massif in what is now Northwestern Sudan edging with Chad.
We know know there was a whole string of megalales spreading east and west across what is now the Sahel and Sahara. Most of Chad was an inland surrounded by lush growth with Mediterranean type foliage to the north and semi tropicla savanna to the south. The Congo basin was probably a lake too and the swamplands of southern sudan.
Rivers flowed from and into them thru vast grasslands that are now desolate waste.
What have these scientific discoveries to do with Egyptian Creation Myths.
The Egyptian Creation myths speak of the "beautiful west" an odd belief given the sahara to the west of the nile and they also speak of a primordial mound or hill rising form the chaotic waters. Scholars used to think that was a reference to flood waters receding from the dleta lands but this myth appears along the whole length of the Nile Valley with little known variation except the claim a goddess created the NILE.
Myth and science have strange interactions.
Current archaeology suggest that people moved into the Nile Valley from the Sahara as it dried up as ironically desertification drained the Nile Valley limiting the ancient marshs to the shores of the river.
It rather looks like the belief in the "beautiful west and the mound rising from the waters is a myth based on a distant memory of a time when the ancestors of the egyptians lived on islands in the megalakes of Chad and Darfur?
What do you think?
| 32 |
| Vote |
Add To: 
subscribe to this blog
