"All that mankind has done, thought, gained or been: it is lying as in magic preservation in the pages of books."
-Thomas Carlyle

by Daniel Morgan

The Middle Ages certainly held some fairy-tale notions when it came to the universe. And I mean that as the highest honor. They thought the cosmos teemed with life in every niche, nook, and cranny. There were ethereal beings not unlike angels to guide the dancing planets, submarine creatures to mirror their opposite types on land, and even hybrid-chimeras such as sphinxes, centaurs, and sirens. Not only that, but each species was arranged hierarchically in a gradient of value, a type of celestial ladder strung down from God’s throne to the ranks of angels, men, beasts, plants, and minerals. Each rank was interconnected with the whole to the point where even the innards of creatures or certain flora yielded properties conducive to sexual potency, healing, or even immortality.

If to the ears of modern man the Middle Ages appear crude, superstitious, and — gasp — unscientific, one must be historically accurate and give credit to whom credit is due. It was first the Greeks and Romans who came up with such romantic pictures of the heavens, their planetary influences, and the way they mirror the constitution of our bodies. Tillyard in The Elizabethan World Picture says, “The world picture which the Middle Ages inherited was that of an ordered universe arranged in a fixed system of hierarchies but modified by man’s sin and the hope of redemption. The same energy that carried through their feats of architecture impelled them to elaborate this inherited picture.”

However, the pantheists are somehow passed over in excuses, hardly ever charged with superstition and stupidity, the worst of all modern heresies that are so readily thrown upon their Christian successors. That is, there is a distinct prejudice against the beliefs found in the erroneously-called “Dark Ages,” while the same traits found in classical Greece and Rome are hardly mentioned or put down to nascent philosophy. It is as if we expect the pagans to be so ignorant and barbaric. Consequently, though the Judeo-Christian religions are considered out of bounds, schools can blithely teach the Greco-Roman pantheons without fear of children taking such deities seriously.

There are two reasons for this bias against ancient man and especially the medieval age. The first reason for regarding the Middle Ages as the “Dark Ages” is somewhat excusable from a secular humanist standpoint. It is the Christians of today, not the pagans of yesteryear, who threaten their ongoing Enlightenment experiment to usher in the Age of Academia, which will solve all the world’s problems via money and education. Therefore, any meddling notions about supernatural providence or hope for other than the here-and-now are most bothersome and any low jab against the stubborn armor of Christendom is a strike for progress. Again, that is perfectly understandable for the indoctrinated mind of today’s no-nonsense atheist.

However, the more insidious and inexcusable reason for this double standard between the medieval and the classical age is not a religious, but a historical bigotry variously called “temporal chauvinism”, “temporo-centrism”, or more famously “chronological snobbery.” And this can be found in all strata of society today. Through an odd twist of reasoning, this view posits that our modern age is rather like the older brother to earlier time periods, more advanced and mature and therefore without need of the counsel of those who have gone before. So here in context, the ancients are excused for their superstitions on the grounds that they were obviously more primitive and infantile than the Middle Ages, who with all their adolescent and sophomoric learning should have known better.

What we don’t understand is that evolution, not observable facts, has conditioned our thinking to denigrate the intellect of our ancestors. Either God made us or we are the products of irrational chance and amoral processes. This is not religion versus science, but rather opposing philosophical, historical, and, yes, scientific worldviews. Once the view of inevitable progress is exposed and debunked, there stands a whole new world uncovered before our eyes, like the marvels of Atlantis newly arisen, and we shamefacedly find that is it our own modern age that must wear the dunce’s cap. In The Puzzle of Ancient Man: Advanced Technology in Past Civilizations, Dr. Donald Chittick shows that, like the various species of the earth, these ancient technologies appear fully formed in the archaeological record. For instance, there are no antecedents or experimental mounds leading up to the great pyramids. In fact, the first ones were the best ones and we still cannot match their millennia-old efforts. If evolution is true, then we should expect to see the past as a tale of the slow, arduous progress of mankind, with each generation making the last one obsolete, and the oldest ones as hardly distinguished from primates. Archaeology, alas, does not bear this out, instead recording prehistoric brain surgery as a common medical practice as far back as 6,000 B.C. It is not a technological progression, but a regression that has taken place from ancient to modern times so that the word “primitive” means oldest rather than dumbest.

Of course, the ancients (classical and medieval both) also had a more poetic mind than is common among us and it is this metaphorical approach to the world that causes us to misinterpret their leafy beliefs according to our own concreteness. Today one looks at the rainbow as either a sign of a homosexual political power or the phenomenon of scattering light particles by water, but never the magical bridge to Asgard or God’s promise to Noah. In other words, it is acceptable dinner conversation to champion political or scientific ideas, but never the mythological or allegorical. The wonder has gone out of the world.

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Let us then approach some of these antiquated beliefs with our dusted lenses and see just what primitive man has to offer us. Myths, folktales, and legends shared the world over must have some basis in fact. It was not until recently that reports of the giant panda, mega-mouth shark, giant squid, Komodo dragon, or the mountain gorilla were scientifically verified, stamped, and approved. Tales of monsters are rather troublesome to moderns, but once the lugubrious time scale of evolution has been discarded from our preconceptions, it is a simple matter to understand how dinosaurs might be alive today amidst the more secluded Avalons of the world. The countless reports of dragons are then not the ravings of morons who had never seen a crocodile and proceeded to exaggerate wings and fire breathing in the telling for good measure, but sightings of pterodactyls and sauropods still alive in this Post-Flood world. We owe a deep apology for insulting the intelligence of these early observers just because since the recent population explosion billions of people have not been privy to witness the dragons so attested just a few hundred years ago. Because of our presuppositions we are forced to forever see windmills.

Moderns scoff at creatures like the dragon, unicorn, basilisk, gryphon or other fabulous animals in bestiaries, yet those catalogues were first given by authorities such as Aristotle and Herodotus. We listen to old poetry about the planets being moved by love for God, yet Aristotle gave us this quaint idea. As the planets spin they are said to make a heavenly music too fine for our sublunary ears. That romantic concept belongs to Pythagoras. Or how about how all space is filled with every type of life? The Principle of Plenitude is Apuleius’, which orthodox Christians still believe in today. Instead of sylphs and undines, we have angels. Instead of daimons, we have demons. An older word for superstition is deisidaimonia, meaning “fear of demons.” So Christians see that it is an excess of these views, not their true content, which leads to eccentric beliefs, or an exceeding fear of the supernatural rather than customary respect.

In looking only at the physical, we miss the metaphorical meanings. We all talk about the fabled Philosopher’s Stone that brings eternal life and gold out of base metal, not realizing the spiritual significance represented by alchemy. A scientist no less than Isaac Newton wrote more on alchemy and religion than he did on the mechanical laws of gravity. And there is no surprise. Medieval man was not ignorant that things fell down and rested at the center; he just had more poetic ways of describing it.

Francis Bacon compared alchemists to a father, who on his deathbed told his lazy sons of a sum of money that was hidden underground in his garden. After digging and digging, they did not find a single coin. Yet all their tilling made the soil rich and produced a bountiful crop. And the ancients reaped plenty. Alchemy goes back to ancient Egypt, Greece, the Middle East, and India. How ironic that throughout two millennia of scientific and philosophical contributions, that alchemy could be so shunned by the 19th century. You see, they had to make room for their rational, mechanized systems like phrenology, mesmerism, and Darwinism — that is, pseudo-sciences.

At any rate, we can speak of the absurdity of unicorns all day long but in truth they were written of a thousand years before the first medieval might have sighted one. Whether or not the unicorn actually exists is immaterial. When the platypus was first discovered, men cried hoax. Now we can look at a platypus on TV and change the channel without batting an eye, but the idea of a horse-like creature with a single horn? Heresy! The point is this: it does not matter whether the giraffe or elephant or narwhal ever existed, but simply that they might have, that it is not outside the bounds of possibility. What made the unicorn so special was what it stood for. Its horn could purify any poisonous water. Like Christ, the unicorn brought healing to a world well acquainted with sorrow and sickness. Christ, however, went even further, not only purifying water but also changing it into wine, exchanging the lovely for the sublime.

Anyone familiar with the old stories of the world knows that these beasts are no less historical for being legends. Indeed, with archaeological support, the Bible speaks freely of fire-breathing dragons (dinosaurs), unicorns, giants, and an eerie bronze-age race of Nephilim.

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In touching some of these beliefs in depth, we can learn much of how “in the know” ancient man was. As far as such things are written down and preserved, we know the Great Chain of Being was not some medieval game developed in some remote monastery, but was the expression of one of mankind’s greatest thinkers: Aristotle. In his correspondences between the celestial spheres and human affairs, he compared the heavenly bodies to a free household who had their course mapped out for them. It is the predestined, unoriginal, and perfectly harmonious paths of the stars that give families their glory, just as the perfect lines of an army arrayed in echelons according to station please us with their majestic dignity. Conversely, and somewhat paradoxically to moderns, while the stars are superior by their set orbit, the Greek slaves are inferior precisely because they have free will. Perhaps in a serendipitous turn of Greek, the word for heretic comes from the verb “to choose.” The independently-minded idol of the modern age would be blasphemous to a Greek or any other traditional culture that believed wisdom came from above and was sought among the elders. To deviate from truths far older than oneself is not only reckless, but unnatural. For a planet to fall from orbit would be catastrophic; but for a star to fall from orbit would be impossible.

All of this talk about the stars is bound to leave us uncomfortable about the astrological implications. After all, astrology is something moderns know to be false and patently unscientific as statistical analysis has shown. Or rather such beliefs are by nature unable to be totally disproved by the bounds of science – a different duck altogether. For human love, UFOs, classic literature, the Tooth Fairy, and Christianity fall under the same category. Ancient man may not have subjected his magnificent pagan doctrines to a scientific review board, and yet his was an awareness of a greater power than man. The universe to him was not a mere academic matter of protons and electrons. Even with protons, electrons, and all the sub-atomic particles discovered so far, if modern man were honest with himself he would have to admit that ninety to ninety-nine percent of the known universe has yet to be accounted for, hence the dubious designation: “dark matter.”

But all is not dark about astrology. Otherwise, what can we do with the astrologers seeking the Christ child via the star of Bethlehem? There is much evidence to suggest that since God created, ordered, and named each star (Isa 40:26, Psa 147:4) and appointed them for signs (Gen 1:14) as well as telling the seasons, then there are lessons to be learned today. When something in creation is named (that is, given a character) and ordered (given degrees of value) almost like a genealogy, that certainly demands our attention.

Just as Satan is the perverter of truths, so the hidden meaning of the zodiac, the “gospel of the stars,” or “biblical astrology” has been long gone from modern eyes (Psa 19:1-3, Rom 1:20; 10:17-18). One interpretation is that the gospel which has gone out to all the Gentiles by the night sky was implicitly preached by God to Abraham about His Seed in Gen 5:15. For instance, the word used for Hercules (Strong Man or Gibbor) is found in Psa 19:5, the Bruise (Saiph) in Orion’s foot is Gen 3:15, and Seed itself (Spica) is found in Virgo. The ancients knew the night stories well. Paul even quoted from a famous Greek poem about the zodiac the Diosemeia in Acts 17:28, reminding us that the created order is not up for grabs to demonic forces, but able to be redeemed and ransomed with a biblical worldview.

Have you ever stopped to wonder how on earth so many cultures could look up at that same scrabble of randomness and see the same star patterns and even the very same images? And yet they have: forty-eight constellations in the same order. Obviously, such imagined images were not by happenstance, but were passed down from a common source (tradition says Seth and Enoch) and corrupted here and there by pagan stories since Babel. Thus we have Scorpio striking Ophiuchus’ heel, who in return crushes his head. Similar scenes are found with Hercules and Drago, Aries and Cetus, Leo and Hydra, Orion and Lepus (which was once seen as a serpent instead of a rabbit) — all prefigurements of the first Messianic prophecy (Gen 3:15) and the “strong man” (Psa 19:5).

The oldest zodiac temples show a sphinx pointing forward to the woman and ending with the lion indicating the Zodiac did not start with Aries, but from Virgo (Eve or Mary) to Leo (The Lion of Judah in Revelation). The maiden shows fertility with a branch in one hand (Zec 6:12; 3:8, Isa 4:2, Jer 23:5) and a sheaf in the other. Each of the twelve houses of the zodiac have three decans. The first decan for the maiden is the Coma or “Desired One” (Haggai 2:7) which depicts a woman holding a child, who was traditionally known as the Christ as told by such astronomers like Albumazar. In Egyptian, the name is Shes-nu or “Desired Son.” The third decan, Bootes, means “To come” (Rev 14:5) with the stars Arcturus (“He comes”) and Nekkar (“The Pierced”), and so on. Many other stars mean pierced, bruised, wounded, etc.

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But what technology did the ancients possess to be so concerned with the intricate stories of the night sky? With the Tower of Babel we are told of a “tower whose top may reach unto heaven,” something Chittock points out would be architecturally absurd, but metaphorically possible with an observatory. The capabilities of man at that time far exceeded ours of today (Gen 11:6) enabling men to build the monoliths and wonders of the world, far more fantastic than those that have survived to the present. The modern claim of calling the Houston’s Astrodome the Eighth Wonder attests to our pride. Indeed, decades afterward, it is already overshadowed and made obsolete by Reliant Stadium. The Pyramids of Giza, aligned according to Orion’s belt, or the 50-ton stones of Stonehenge, with their marking of the heavens, trump the Reliant Stadium any day of the week.

In fact, the very days of the week were more accurately known to the ancients than our calendars today, which require leap years. The Mayan observatory at Chichan Itza measured the length of a solar day to seven figures, off by only .0002 from the actual 365.2422. Their calendar conveniently enough starts at creation, marking it at 3948 B.C., a mere 56 years off from Ussher’s 4004 B.C. Such knowledge of the heavens via observatories was there to inform Job (~2150 B.C.) of gravitationally-bound star groups thousands of years before they were supposed to be discovered by our modern astronomers (Job 38:31-33). Who is modern man to argue with such precision when our carbon-dating methods are so inaccurate as to date the shells of living snails as having been dead for 27,000 years?

But how was it the Mayans knew of Uranus, Neptune, and the rings of Saturn? Incan stones and Greek pottery (500 B.C.) portray telescopes, as do stories of the Carthaginians, Strabo, Nero, and Julius Caesar. In all, 450 lenses have been uncovered worldwide. Some from A.D. 300 are almost perfectly elliptical, not duplicated until the twentieth century. Those backward Vikings even yielded 100 elliptical lenses of 20-power magnification. U.S. forces in Iraq discovered a reflecting telescope in Babylon dating back to 600 B.C. and beyond that the Emperor Chan of China apparently had one in 2283 B.C.

The Nazca are another pre-Columbian culture famous for their advanced technology. Their zodiacal desert figures maintain astonishing linearity for miles even across mountain ranges and are only viewable from the sky. There are some 13,000 of these geoglyph formations. Recently, a cloth weave has been found of 150 threads per centimeter, impressive evidence for the fabric of hot air balloons. The conquistadors claimed to have seen the Incans and their Aztec neighbors to the north gliding overhead. Vases from A.D. 80-600 depict men with wings strapped on. The Smithsonian holds one such artifact revealing air travel: a 1,000 year-old insect figurine fashioned like an airplane with elevators and rudders. Even more strange is one of their desert drawings of a spider, curious by its extra long leg. Not until recently has the extended leg been found on that species of Amazon spider … by microscope! Indeed, Varro (116-27 B.C.) wrote of germs unable to be seen with the eye and ancient Greek and Roman coins were often imprinted with microscopic letters perhaps used to foil counterfeiters.

In Tiahuanaco, Peru, we can observe some of great earth-moving capabilities of ancient cultures. Large stones were cut and placed with precision to form the city. By large I mean over 100 tons, including at least one estimated at 20,000 tons. Again, this is almost eight times the maximum load modern machines can lift. There are even walls there and in Mexico showing the races of the earth, Negroid, Oriental, and Caucasian, long before the Renaissance waves of European explorers.

Ancient Incan irrigation techniques utilizing fluid dynamics have proven a crop yield seven times that of modern farming techniques. How can these aberrations be accounted for? Quite simply. Evolution would have us believe primitive man was some primate swinging in the trees. In reality, Neanderthal, without the rickets and less biased articulation, is nearly identical to Western Europeans today. Neanderthal and Cro-Magnon had larger brain capacities than modern man. The only rational and naturalistic explanation for moderns being that Neanderthal were obviously advanced humans from the future with temporal displacement capabilities that allowed them to travel back in time to appear to be older than modern man. Or you could just believe the Bible.

Imagine a generation of da Vincis or Edisons having 900 years to experiment and build and one begins to form an idea of the time when a whole world of super-advanced civilization suffered the fate of Atlantis. Just a few of their inventions are staggering. An analog computer found on a first century B.C. Aegean ship built for calendrical purposes attest to the sophistication of the Minoans. Electric batteries with copper and iron electrodes have also been uncovered in Baghdad. If you haven’t heard of man-made artifacts like the hammer in Cretaceous rock (of greater casting than modern capabilities), a human sandal print with trilobite in Cambrian rock, human footprints and a handprint in Cretaceous rock, and, of course, the prints of human and dinosaurs together, you have been reading the wrong government-sponsored textbooks with their neatly constructed and nonexistent geologic column. As far as modern fairy tales go, I will admit evolution is rather imaginative in its dating systems and genetic theories, but nonetheless makes for poor bedside reading.

If evolution is wrong and the Bible is right, then we can expect the status of mankind before the Flood to far exceed our own with longer and more robust lives. Today the conditions of a Pre-Flood earth can be roughly imitated by a hyperbaric chamber, which increases the oxygen, atmospheric pressure, and magnetic fields and reduces harmful ultraviolet radiation. This results in fish that grow three times bigger, flies that live many times longer, and snake venom that is neutralized. This helps explain the 11 ½-foot human skeletons found in Italy, the biblical account of Goliath being nine feet tall, and King Og of Bashan at just under thirteen feet. We can smirk at fairy tales about giants roaming the earth or take seriously the biblical account of how man once was in his golden age. That is, every prehistoric creature was a physical and mental giant compared to one’s modern, genetically diluted self.

G.K. Chesterton, referring to the medieval worldview (and for him, specifically Catholicism) said it was like a cathedral, bigger on the inside. We already know Greek, Roman, and Egyptian architecture were not the bone white ruins we have today, but were once thriving in color. If we would examine the medieval times more closely, like the restoration of the original Sistine Chapel ceiling, we might begin to scab away some of the pollution of prejudiced past ages and find the world not so dark, but with bright colors all along.

For further reference see:

Peter James and Kick Thorpe, Ancient Inventions.
Charles Hapgood, Maps of the Ancient Sea Kings: Evidence of Advanced Civilizations in the Last Ice Age.
Charles Berlitz, Mysteries From Forgotten Worlds.
William R. Corliss, Ancient Man: A Handbook of Puzzling Artifacts.
Rene Noorbergen, Secrets of the Lost Races: New Discoveries of Advanced Technology in Ancient Civilizations.
Charles Michael Boland, They All Discovered America.
Barry Fell, America B.C.: Ancient Settlers in the New World.
O. Neugebauer, The Exact Sciences in Antiquity.
Graham Hancock, Fingerprints of the Gods.
Michael A. Cremo and Richard L. Thompson, Forbidden Archeology.
Bill Cooper, After the Flood: The Early Post-Flood History of Europe.
William Banks, The Heavens Declare.
E.W. Bullinger, Witness of the Stars.

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