Gee, that's tough... Carl Sagan explained it by saying (paraphrased) that "hunter-folk" (hunter-gatherers) would gather around their fires at night, and some of them would be inspired by the stars - some to curiosity, some to artistry, and some to storytelling in order to explain what they didn't actually understand.
In short, they made it up. No space aliens or UFOs required. They told stories about what they saw. Some were fantastically imaginative. But it didn't mean they were right.
They made up the same stories? Maybe the Tower of Babel happened and there was a 'recent' dispersal of people with a shared cosmology following the massive flooding when the ice age ended. Otoh, the case for diffusion is supported by evidence of a circumpolar ice age culture when ice sheets and shelves made crossing oceans easier. A Ponca woman told me her people were brought here with their dogs on great birds, I saw one about 40 miles south of Green River Utah. Its visible from a road following the west side of the Green River. It was white and big. Plane big.
Anyway, I'm interested in comparative cosmology so I fully expect much of it to reflect the things we can see in the sky. There's a book called Hamlet's Mill I recommend, it shows how the revolving night sky and precession formed the basis for much of our mythology. The problem is the peoples who gave us these stories also told us they couldn't see Heaven and God, or God comes and goes, or came and went. They made a point of telling us that. The ways of the lord are mysterious. I'm surprised the Sun plays such a small role, I'd think Earth would be a Sun worshiping world but we worship something else. Maybe something that appears once every few thousand years.
As for the outer planets... GMAB. The ancients made up gods and goddesses to explain various aspects of life - love, war, harvest, death, volcanoes, seas... They didn't name the god Pluto after a planet. The planet was named after Pluto. Ditto Neptune. Neptune was the Roman name for the god of the sea. When the MODERN astronomers confirmed discovery of Neptune, they continued the tradition of naming the planets after the Roman gods.
That was nice of the Romans to leave us Neptune and Pluto for names. But why would they save the brother of Jupiter for a planet they couldn't even see? Did the other gods sit around ridiculing Neptune for having no planet to call his own? The Romans were following a tradition the Greeks had followed, one practiced in Mesopotamia long before. A pantheon of 12 celestial gods.
Now why would Neptune play such an important role in mythology when people couldn't see the planet? According to the Enuma Elish it was Ea/Nudimmud/Neptune who gave 'birth' to Marduk, the text describes how Marduk's encounters with the outer planets 'destined' him for battle with Tiamat and the 1st was with Neptune.
And thats what we would expect from a rogue planet invading our solar system, it would pass Neptune, Uranus, Saturn, and Jupiter before slamming into Tiamat at the asteroid belt.
Is there evidence the outer planets were subject to something unusually large whipping by? Yeah, Neptune's large moon Triton follows a retrograde orbit, Uranus sits on its side, Saturn has its rings, and Jupiter got fat gobbling up debris released by the collisions.
I think thats amazing, the Enuma Elish describes what happened when Heaven and Earth were born of an older world and it matches the Fremont rock art right on down to the number of planets described in the text. Thats surprisingly accurate for two peoples supposedly separated by 20-30 thousand years.
I think it's quite likely that they don't think about Sitchin at all.
They should... They're following in his footsteps
It's hilarious how you believe in this mythical planet when you don't even believe in the Oort Cloud, where we KNOW the long-term comets spend most of their time.
I guess we disagree on what a 'cloud' means. How many long term comets with aphelions in this cloud have we recorded? Did you know Oort himself thought comets originated near Jupiter? Course the argument would be Jupiter propelled them out there, but the cloud didn't produce the comets. I think what propelled them was a series of collisions that left behind an asteroid belt as the gravestone to the primordial world described in Gen 1:2.
A dark water covered world before God's wind sent Tehom's earthly remains closer to the Sun with 2 great lights to rule day and night. Thats why the Sun and Moon dont show up in Genesis until the 4th day. Before the Sun and Moon could take their positions in our sky other things happened, the dark water covered proto-Earth was carved up and the seed of life was planted by the collision.
The new world called Earth (dry land) was no longer in the same place, Heaven was somewhere in our sky but unseen and the Sun ruled our daytime sky and the Moon ruled the night. Why didn't these rule day and night before God created Heaven and Earth? Because its darker at the asteroid belt. Researchers are looking for a '9th' planet, if they haven't read Sitchin I think they'll lose the race to someone who has.
Do you see a warrior because you thought of it, or do you see a warrior because you were taught about the Greek myths in school (or wherever; most of what I know of astronomy was learned through private study because the school system here cares zip-all about astronomy)? Different cultures created different constellations, or had different explanations if they came up with sky pictures for the same stars.
The brightest stars in Orion are used as guides to find other stars. I'm sure you know how to use the Belt stars to find Sirius, which was critical to the ancient Egyptians for agricultural purposes.
Yes, ancient peoples transposed the sky onto the ground with their monuments, towns, etc. To excess imo. They had a deeper reason to do that, an actual connection to the sky peoples who were here. A desire to bring Heaven and Earth together. They didn't need to build 3 pyramids to mimic Orion's belt to find Sirius, but I do believe someone has been looking into identifying the rest of Orion based on Giza being the belt.
Since time travel hasn't been invented yet (wishful thinking on my part admittedly, since current scientific thought is that time travel might be fun science fiction, but it's not really possible), it's nonsensical to say we "did" anything to the ancients.
You did it... You said they couldn't know about the outer planets. You've limited them to the knowledge of 5 planets, Sun and Moon, and ignored them when they said there were more.
It's also nonsense to say they "knew" about planets we can't see. They did NOT have telescopes, and you've never provided one shred of absolute, definitive proof of aliens at all, let alone aliens who told both the Babylonians and North American Indians about Pluto.
I've posted images of Pluto from Utah and Sumer along with a description of Pluto's role in creation according to the Enuma Elish. If it turns out Pluto was orbiting Saturn in the distant past that will be more evidence Sitchin is right.
Y'know, I bet if we managed to bring those ancient hunters forward in time, they'd probably laugh themselves silly and say, "Dude, it was a hunting trip. We had good luck and brought back more meat than usual, and wanted to remember it."
The horned deity and the archer with the erection indicate a creation story, they are the focus of the panel.
I read that Saturn's rings aren't going to be around forever. The ring system is going to vanish (gravity works), so what will "point" at Pluto then?
Saturn's equatorial plane, Titan's orbit around Saturn. When Pluto gets closer to Saturn Titan and Pluto conjunct.
If you took two churches of the same denomination of Christianity (for example), put them side-by-side, and reviewed the sermons over a period of a decade or so, you'd find them to be different (assuming the same clergymen didn't run both of them and they had unique congregations).
So why would you expect everyone on Earth to have the same interpretation of the night sky?
I wouldn't expect them to have the same interpretation of the night sky they cant see with their eyes. Imagine a conversation with an ancient priest or shaman while insisting there are only 5 planets and they keep telling you there are 9 worlds.
Exactly. It's elitist, really, to assume that ancient civilizations needed aliens to help them achieve remarkable things. The Egyptians, for instance, had a fantastically sophisticated culture, with knowledge of literacy, math, engineering, medicine, and while I'm not fond of bureaucracy, it does indicate a complex culture.
You're denying those achievements, they made it up!
You raise an interesting point, granted population density is a factor in technological development but a number of cultures believe god told them to live austere simple lives while the Sumerians and other cultures attribute their 'recent' advancements to god. The gods didn't want man becoming a nuisance or threat. Keep your slaves ignorant... What was Adam's sin? Knowledge. But eventually civilization was bestowed upon man.
