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The City and Its Uncertain Walls

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Haruki Murakami

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“Descriptions of a killer global flood that inundated the inhabited lands of the world turn up everywhere amongst the myths of antiquity. In many cases these myths clearly hint that the deluge swept away an advanced civilization that had somehow angered the gods, sparing 'none but the unlettered and the uncultured' and obliging the survivors to 'begin again like children in complete ignorance of what happened ... in early times'. Such stories turn up in Vedic India, in the pre-Columbian Americas, in ancient Egypt. They were told by the Sumerians, the Babylonians, the Greeks, the Arabs and the Jews. They were repeated in China and south-east Asia, in prehistoric northern Europe and across the Pacific. Almost universally, where truly ancient traditions have been preserved, even amongst mountain peoples and desert nomads, vivid descriptions have been passed down of global floods in which the majority of mankind perished.”

FloodApocalypseSurvivorsMythsDeep Human HistoryDeluge
Book:Underworld: The Mysterious Origins of Civilization
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“One could imagine that a group of anthropologists and scientists sent off to study a previously uncontacted Amazon tribe today might be bound by similar strictures [not to reproduce with natives]. But suppose some of them disagreed? Suppose some of them "went native"--as used to be said of colonialists in the days of the British Empire who allowed themselves to get too close to indigenous populations they interacted with. Is that perhaps what happened to the troop of two hundred "Watchers" on Mount Hermon? Somewhere around 10,900 BC, did they break the commandments of their own culture and "go native" among the hunter-gatherers of the Near East? And were the first chance encounters with the fragments of a giant comet a century later in 10,800 BC--encounters that devastated the world--somehow blamed upon their moral lapse?”

AnthropologyReproductionWatchersCataclysmDelugeHunter GatherersComet
Book:Magicians of the Gods: The Forgotten Wisdom of Earth's Lost Civilization
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“Figurines of Apkallus were buried in boxes in the foundation deposits in Mesopotamian buildings in order to avert evil ... The term massare, Watchers, is used of these sets. Likewise the Apkallus were said to have taught antediluvian sciences to humanity and so, too, were the Watchers. As one scholar concludes, however: 'The Jewish authors often inverted the Mesopotamian intellectual traditions with the intention of showing the superiority of their own cultural foundations. [Thus] ... the antediluvian sages, the Mesopotamian Apkallus, were demonised as the 'sons of God' and ... appear as the Watchers ... illegitimate teachers of humankind before the flood.”

ScienceJudaismWatchersDelugeMesopotamiaSagesApkalluAntediluvian
Book:Magicians of the Gods: The Forgotten Wisdom of Earth's Lost Civilization
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“The Younger Dryas impacts, and subsequent sustained cataclysm, changed the face of the earth completely and wrought particularly significant havoc across North America. We have considered the question of huge volumes of meltwater released into the Arctic and Atlantic Oceans from the destabilized ice sheet and looked at the effects on global climate. But keep in mind that those enormous floods also devastated the rich North American mainland to the south, perhaps the best and most bounteous real estate then available anywhere. This immense and extraordinary deluge, 'possibly the largest flood in the history of the world,' swept away and utterly demolished everything that lay in its path. Jostling with icebergs, choked by whole forests ripped up by their roots, turbulent with mud and boulders swirling in the depths of the current, what the deluge left behind can still be seen in something of its raw form in the Channeled Scablands of the state of Washington today--a devastated blank slate [...] littered with 10,000-ton 'glacial erratics,' immense fossilized waterfalls, and 'current ripples' hundreds of feet long and dozens of feet high. If there were cities there, before the deluge, they would be gone. If there was any evidence of anything that we would recognize as technology there, before the deluge, it would be gone.”

ApocalypseDemolishCataclysmDelugeYounger DryasFloodsCosmic ImpactIce Sheet
Book:America Before: The Key to Earth's Lost Civilization
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“The Noah figure in this version of the story is named Xisouthros (instead of Zisudra). A god visits him in a dream, warns him that humanity is about to be destroyed in a terrible deluge, and orders him to build a huge boat of the usual dimensions in the usual way. So far this is all very familiar, but then comes a feature not found in the other versions of the tradition. The god tells Xisouthros that he is to gather up a collection of precious tablets inscribed with sacred wisdom and to bury these in a safe place deep underground in 'Sippar, the City of the Sun'. These tablets contained 'all the knowledge that humans had been given by the gods' and Xisouthros was to preserve them so that those men and women who survived the flood would be able to 'relearn all that the gods had previously taught them'.”

KnowledgeTraditionPreservationGodsSurvivorsDelugeUnderground
Book:Underworld: The Mysterious Origins of Civilization
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“Sumerian myths and legends of the antediluvian world do much more than speak of the five cities. They also tell an extraordinary story of how their ancestors, who lived in the 'most ancient times', were visited by a brotherhood of semi-divine beings described as half men, half fish, who had been 'sent [by the gods] to teach the arts of civilization to mankind before the Flood' and who had themselves 'emerged from the sea'. The collective name by which these creatures were known was the 'Seven Sages' and the name of their leader was Oannes. Each of them was paired as a 'counsellor' to an antediluvian king and they were renowned for their wisdom in affairs of state and for their skills as architects, builders and engineers.”

KnowledgeCivilizationMythsTeachingsDeep Human HistoryDelugeSeven SagesSumeria
Book:Underworld: The Mysterious Origins of Civilization
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“If we accept the generally agreed date of between AD 350 and 550 for the end of the -- at least semi-historical -- 'Third Sangam', then this gives us a fixed reference point on which to anchor the chronology of the myth [...]. The date of 9600 BC for the formation of the First Sangam (or 9800 BC or 9400 BC for that matter) coincides closely enough with Plato's date for the inundation of Atlantis -- also 9600 BC -- to raise the hairs on the back of my neck. And the question continues to be this: how could Plato less than 2500 years ago, or Nakirar less than 1500 years ago, have managed by chance to select the epoch of 9600 BC in which to set, on the one hand, the sinking under the waves of the Atlantic Ocean of the great antediluvian civilization of Atlantis and, on the other, the foundation of the First Sangam in Kumari Kandam -- a doomed Indian Ocean landmass that was itself destined to be swallowed by the sea? If Plato and Nakirar were pure 'fabulists' working independently of any real tradition or real events, then isn't it much more likely that they would have chosen different imaginary epochs in which to set their flood stories? Why didn't they choose 20,000 or 30,000 years ago -- or even 300,000 years ago, or three million years ago -- instead of the tenth millennium BC? And was it just luck that this slot turns out to have been in the midst of the meltdown of the last Ice Age -- the only episode of truly global flooding to have hit the earth in the last 125,000 years?”

AtlantisCataclysmDelugeLost CivilizationsIce Age CivilizationsMeltdown
Book:Underworld: The Mysterious Origins of Civilization
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“جاءَ طوفان نوحْ. ها همُ الجُبناءُ يفرّون نحو السَّفينهْ. بينما كُنتُ.. كانَ شبابُ المدينةْ يلجمونَ جوادَ المياه الجَمُوحْ ينقلونَ المِياهَ على الكَتفين. ويستبقونَ الزمنْ يبتنونَ سُدود الحجارةِ عَلَّهم يُنقذونَ مِهادَ الصِّبا والحضاره علَّهم يُنقذونَ.. الوطنْ! .. صاحَ بي سيدُ الفُلكِ قبل حُلولِ السَّكينهْ: "انجِ من بلدٍ.. لمْ تعدْ فيهِ روحْ!" قلتُ: طوبى لمن طعِموا خُبزه.. في الزمانِ الحسنْ وأداروا له الظَّهرَ يوم المِحَن! ولنا المجدُ نحنُ الذينَ وقَفْنا (وقد طَمسَ اللهُ أسماءنا!) نتحدى الدَّمارَ.. ونأوي الى جبلٍِ لا يموت (يسمونَه الشَّعب!) نأبي الفرارَ.. ونأبي النُزوحْ!”

DelugeNoah
Author:أمل دنقل
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“I hear the soldier’s footsteps right outside From Roman legions that are hunting me— A mother, warrior, Boudica, queen. That swarm of angry hornets aims to sting My skin with fire, piercing me with pain. I will never accept an end like that. Now happily spared the brutality Since you opened up the door to hide me, Anam Cara, you prove to be a friend, To help in my hour of direst need Just as we had previously agreed.”

WarriorQueenCeltsBoudiccaBoadiceaBoudicaIceni
Book:The Bones of the Poor
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“Very soon, I will be travelling there With the great heron out to the North Sea To dance with the deep, where I will just be; Roaming the headwaters and tidal flats Liminal as light upon the surface, In waves that crash on rounded marshy coasts. Think of me as the sun rises each dawn When you feel that surge of an inner strength With each ephemeral moment of time. I know I will be there eternally, Immersed, one with the great estuary.”

DeathWarriorQueenCeltsBoudiccaBoadiceaBoudicaIceni
Book:The Bones of the Poor
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