Pillars of the Past Volume Three

By Charles Ginenthal

This volume of Pillars meshes Velikovsky’s chronological hypothesis with the short chronology presented in the previous two volumes. It connects the chronology of Egypt with that of the Hebrews as well as with the Assyrians, Greeks, Mitanni, Old Babylonians, and the civilizations of the Aegean. It correlates the movements of domesticated animals from different regions to and from Egypt to tie these chronologies together. It shows that Magan, Meluhha, and Dilmun can be identified with regions that historians have been unable to place, and it examines how the Sea Peoples, the Sealand people, and the Second Sealand Dynasty are all related directly to the Greeks.

It examines biblical history and the history of the surrounding regions as they fit into the short chronology based on multiple lines of evidence.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Lulu.com
• Release date: Dec 9, 2015
• ISBN: 9781329747005

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Pillars of the Past Volume Three

PILLARS OF THE PAST

Volume III

By Charles Ginenthal

EGYPT AND PALESTINE

COPYRIGHT

Copyright © 2015 Charles Ginenthal.

ISBN 978-1-329-74700-5

All rights reserved.  Other than as permitted under the Fair Use section of the United States copyright act of 1976, no part of this publication shall be reproduced or distributed in any form or by any means, or stored in a database or retrieval system without the prior written permission of the author.

Quoting of this work must be attributed to this book, and not in a manner which would indicate any sort of endorsement.  No derivative works are permitted without express permission of the author.  Reproduction of artwork contained in this book must be properly attributed to this book.

THE VELIKOVSKIAN

A Journal of Myth, History and Science

Quota pars operis tanti nobis committitur?

Charles Ginenthal

Editor-in-Chief

Associate and Contributing Editors:

Lynn E. Rose

Irving Wolfe

Clark Whelton

Copy Editor:

Birgit Liesching

Vol. VIII, Nos. 1, 2, 3, 4

Copyright © 2010

65-35 108th Street

Forest Hills, New York 11375

PREFACE

THE VELIKOVSKY PILLAR

In volumes I and II of Pillars of the Past, the scientific, technological, and other forms of evidence that support the short chronologies of Gunnar Heinsohn, Emmet J. Sweeney, and Lynn E. Rose were presented without reference to the great pioneering work of Immanuel Velikovsky whose historical reconstruction started these massive revisionist reconstructions of ancient Near Eastern chronologies. Since I am a proponent of their short chronologies, and of Velikovsky, parts of this final volume will be devoted to his theses. It will not cover all that might or should be included, because I have not, as yet, been able to find forensic evidence for these, or simply do not understand them. Nevertheless, the great chronological revision encompassed in these three volumes could not have been undertaken without Velikovsky’s earlier endeavors. Heinsohn, Rose, Sweeney, and I have each honored this great pioneer, even though we have partial or perhaps even strong disagreements with his chronology. To pay my debt of gratitude to Velikovsky, I cite historian Bruce G. Trigger as cited by Meres J. Weche, another Velikovskian revisionist, with whom I have profound disagreements:

"As I got more and more immersed into Velikovskian research, I soon realized that several other independent ‘new chronologists’ were continuously hard at work, long after Velikovsky’s death, to devise a revised chronological scheme for the ancient world. New chronologists hold among their ranks several bona fide historians and Egyptologists whom, whilst recognizing the validity of Dr. Immanuel Velikovsky’s call for a radical reshaping of the conventional chronology of the ancient world, often reject most of the latter’s solutions. Some of them have been labeled by strict Velikovskians as ‘the Peters of the revisionist movement’–for on the one hand working from Velikovsky’s foundations, and on the other hand failing to fully acknowledge their scholarly debt to him. Their principal motivation, it is often alleged, being to immune themselves from the Velikovskian stigma and ultimately shield themselves from the unavoidable backlash. New chronologists generally reply by saying that it isn’t fair to lump all chronological revisionists along-side the Velikovskian legacy. Currently, two of the most well-known of those new chronologists are British scholars Peter James [et al.] and David M. Rohl. …

"It is evident that their initial efforts have been sparked by Velikovsky’s Ages in Chaos [history] series. But from the late 1970’s on, there has been a general tendency for neo-catastrophists and new chronologists to go their own separate ways, after Immanuel Velikovsky’s attempts to make both revolutionary fields combine. The unfortunate result has been that Immanuel Velikovsky is being ignored, and even denounced, by those who owe a lot more to him than they are willing to admit. Given the circumstance, I wholeheartedly agree with Professor Bruce G. Trigger of McGill University who, in personal correspondence, related to me that any such attempts to enact a chronological revolution in ancient history, without acknowledging the central importance of Velikovsky, is tantamount to trying to ‘reinvent the wheel’."[1]

This volume will also present catastrophic evidence that clearly correlates with Velikovsky’s hypothesis as it relates to the short chronology. In this respect, I wish to cite this mentor as he relates to my own contributions to the work he began:

"I claim the right to fallibility in details and I eagerly welcome constructive criticism. However, before proclaiming that the entire structure [of Pillars of the Past, volumes I, II, and III] must collapse because an argument can be made against this or that [non-scientific, non-technological, historical] point, the critic should carefully weigh his argument against the whole scheme, complete with all its evidence. The historian who permits his attention to be monopolized by an argument directed against some [historical] detail, to the extent of overlooking the work as a whole and the manifold [scientific and technological] proofs on which it stands, will only demonstrate the narrowness of his [or her] approach to [forensic] history. He will be like that ‘conscientious scientist,’ Professor Twist, in Ogden Nash’s verse, who went on an expedition to the jungles, taking his bride with him. When, one day, the guide brought the tidings to him that an alligator had eaten her, the professor could not but smile. ‘You mean,’ he said, ‘a crocodile?’"[2]

With regard to these critics, Velikovsky also pointed out:

The attempt to reconstruct radically the history of the ancient world, … unprecedented as it is, will meet severe censure from those who, in their teaching and writing, have already deeply committed themselves to the old concept of history. And many of those who look to acknowledged authorities for guidance will express their disbelief that a truth could have remained undiscovered so long, from which they will deduce that it cannot be the truth.[3]

On the other hand, I paraphrase philosopher of science Del Ratzsch as his assertions relate to the historical community of scholars:

The traditional historians’ insistence that they and they alone possess the one and only valid understanding of ancient Near Eastern chronology and the history that flows from it is in itself intellectual imperialism. Their insistence that outsiders with revolutionary theories are to be seen through xenophobic filters, at best, or are to be barred from any serious consideration, at worst, reflects a form of academic isolation. Their insistence that we should be given little or no consideration and kept outside their deliberations is in itself a fortress mentality, bristling with defensiveness, constituting their underlying fear that all is not going well with their chronological paradigm, which may be vulnerable and inadequate.

Historians have unknowingly arrogated to themselves and their institutions a unique place in the world, namely that there can be no other major chronology of the ancient Near East, eliminating a priori the legitimacy of other possible perspectives. Historians who share this pretension assume that they are the only ‘rational,’ objective, empirical practitioners of this discipline, that they stand as the one exception to irrational, subjective thought in all society as related to historical knowledge, and that they alone have a privileged vantage point that sees and understands historical reality instead of being fallible human beings who hold to a fallible construction of the ancient world.[4]

It is hoped that this appeal will not fall on deaf ears so the contents of these volumes will be taken seriously and dispassionately. Having worked with emotionally involved young people and knowing something of human nature, I suspect that what is being requested is almost impossible or highly improbable. Nevertheless, parts of this book will be devoted to showing that the scientific and technological evidence upholds not only parts of Velikovsky’s coordination of catastrophes with the short chronology, but also elements of his own chronology as these fit inside that revision. As for those who still maintain that the chronology of the ancient Near East is rather well established, David Henige has suggested that there are problems; these supposedly minor problems when taken together are not a mole hill but a mountain of contradiction. His biting style well fits the problematic nature of the established chronology which admits of a profusion of different dates across its entire spectrum:

"R.S. Poole [in his 1851 book, Horae Egyptiacae: The Chronology of Ancient Egypt (London)] … was willing to consider dynastic overlaps and co-regencies, and he dated Menes, the first ruler, later [or closer to the present] than almost anyone since, as late as ca. 2640 BCE … His objective was to validate biblical and Herodotean chronology, and he [like Velikovsky, Heinsohn, Sweeney, Rose, and I] made dynasties contemporary that we [assume to] know not to be the case, even subsumed some dynasties into others …

Like Poole, early modern chronologists of the ancient Near East had only their credulity to guide them and this proved treacherous… it became clear that the easiest way to differentiate chronologies lay in deciding whether or not to accept Manetho’s implication that dynasties succeeded one another in linear fashion. If they did [as is still assumed], modern scholarship could establish the chronology of ancient Egypt by adding up the figures Manetho provided, subtract them from the date of Alexander’s visit [to Egypt] and determine the date of the accession of Menes.[5]

That is all that the historians/chronologists have been doing for the past 150 years, following Manethon and trying to fine-tune the documentary and archaeological evidence to make these parts mesh, to no avail. The results were disastrous. It was inferred that Egyptian history began as far back as the sixth millennium B.C. In this regard, W.M. Flinders Petrie in the 1890’s had to date Menes to 5546 B.C., and in his final work in 1934 moved him to 4320 B.C. Petrie adamantly held out against practically all other Egyptologists, who had reduced Menes’ date to around 3400 B.C. or even closer to the present. His approach, as Henige states, was peculiar and circular but revealing.[6] As Petrie explained, ‘the [ancient Egyptian] historian [Manethon] would not include a duplicate line, however great it was and [t]he principle therefore seems clear that, where there were contemporaries, only one line was selected [by Manethon] and others ignored, in order not to upset the continuous reckoning.’[7]

The discovery of such texts as the Palermo Stone naturally led to another flurry of confident reckoning. [Seymour] de Ricci captured this in 1917, when he wrote that ‘[t]he day when it will be possible to combine the six known fragments of this text, the chronology of the earliest rulers of Egypt will rest on bases as certain as those of the twelve [Roman] Caesars.’ Writing after more than eighty years of further work, however, the author of the most extensive analysis of this source could only write that ‘[i]t seems unlikely that a definitive, or even plausible reconstruction of the annals [of ancient early Egypt] will ever be possible, infuriating as that may be.’[8]

In fact, there exist today three dates for Menes. One group offers 3400 B.C., another suggests 2950 B.C. and the latest posits 3100 B.C., a range of 450 or more years.[9] Yet with an almost 500-year variation in their chronology for Menes, Egyptologists suggest that only a little tinkering around the edges is necessary to make the chronology work, and each group maintains that radiocarbon dating supports their contentions. They do so by simply using 5730 or 5568 years for the half-life disintegration of Carbon 14 so that science, properly manipulated, supports their three different dates.[10] Egyptologist Kenneth A. Kitchen, however, holds after 150 years of such debate [i]n Ancient Egypt the earliest fixed date is 664 BC.[11] As we will see below, even this date is spurious.

Thus, after a century and a half, the supposedly only fixed date for Egyptian history is 664 B.C., and so we revisionists, it is believed, have no proper cause to make a major amendment to that problematic chronology.

During the period between 1987 and 1997, many complete and/or partial chronologies were put forward, none of them agreeing with the others, and even in some cases the proponents of one chronology were arguing against the earlier position they had taken.[12] Jürgen von Beckerath presented three different dates for the New Kingdom between the years 1984-1997 (see Henige, p. 262). The disagreements were over dynastic lengths and the reign lengths of New Kingdom pharaohs as well. Henige explains why this chaos must exist:

"The reasons for this chaos are obvious: there are too many choices and too little independent evidence. For early periods there are few synchronisms with other parts of the ancient world, and authors must treat co-regencies, concurrent dynasties and lengths of reigns in virtual isolation.

The imputed chronology of the better-documented XVIII and XIX Dynasties (ca. 1550-1190 BCE) underscores the fragility of these exercises. Speaking of the former [18th Dynasty], Patrick O’Mara concludes rather wistfully: ‘Must we not be content with some sort of multiple [choice] solution conveying a grid of probabilities?’ He offers four dates … with some evidence in favor of each for Akhenaten’s first year. Modern scholars credit Seti I of XIX Dynasty with a reign from 10 to 19 years and Merenptah from 9 to 19 years and put forward five different years (1304, 1301, 1290, 1279, 1276 BCE) for the accession year of Ramses II, who intervened between them.[13]

The situation in Mesopotamia’s early chronology is even more problematic. Again, following Henige: H.C. Rawlinson in 1862 claimed he was glad to be able to announce to those who are interested in the comparative chronology of the Jewish and Assyrian kingdoms, the discovery of a cuneiform document [the limmu list] which promises to be of the greatest possible value in determining the dates of all great events which occurred in Western Asia between the beginning of the ninth and later [sic] half of the seventh century B.C.[14] Henige continues: Only a few of the dates and names that Rawlinson went on to propose are now accepted. In fact like W.F. Albright … Rawlinson went on to change his own mind several times before he finally ceased to conjecture.[15]

In 1884 a number of cuneiform tablets giving the names of many kings from different dynasties were discovered. And, as with the case in Egypt, it was taken as fact that these kings ruled one after another and that these, as in Egypt, could be used, by backdating from that period into the past, again to build a firm chronology. However, a number of different dates were then found in the first two decades after analysis and nearly all analysts accepted the possibility that these kings reigned at the same time.[16] But worse was to come. The hoped-for solidity of these dates crumbled when further tablets were discovered that created other correlations of these kings, which was seen as not at all possible, given the then established chronology. This excursion into Mesopotamian chronology ended when Leonard W. King carefully examined the various documents for that period that suggested 15 different dates between 1888 and 1903 for Hammurabi.[17]

King’s work suggested that there were three early dynasties called Dynasty I, Dynasty II, and Dynasty III: the Hammurabi Dynasty, followed by the Sealand Dynasty, followed by the Kassite Dynasty, one coming after the other for 304, 368, and 576 years. Back-dating these from the middle of the twelfth century B.C. required that the Hammurabi Dynasty began 2400 B.C. Because this could not be accommodated within the established chronology, the Sealand Dynasty was shoved aside, which lowered the Hammurabi Dynasty to around 2100 B.C. This reduction continued and momentarily arrived at a point in time where Sargon of Agade was placed more than 1000 years closer to the present.[18] Henige concludes his analysis of Mesopotamian chronology thus:

"In 1921 Stephen Langdon and A.T. Olmstead expressed wildly divergent opinions about our grasp of early Mesopotamian chronology. Langdon was confident: ‘[We] now possess, in almost complete form, trustworthy material for reconstructing the chronology of the early history of Mesopotamian civilization.’ Olmstead was feeling quite the opposite: ‘… [new discoveries] force a complete re-writing of almost every page in the earlier Assyrian history.’ The differing opinions are not surprising; that they were expressed within a few months of each other is not very surprising either.

"Three years later the new Cambridge Ancient History summed up matters: ‘[a]lthough the discovery that the first three dynasties are not be [sic] reckoned consecutively has narrowed the extent of the divergence in modern computations, the chronological schemes that have been proposed vary according to their reliance upon trustworthiness’ of the later inscriptional durations ‘and of the figures in the Royal Lists and other summaries.’ The number of schemes approximately matched the number of scholars proposing them. Ernst Weidner’s bibliography covered less than nine years but included over 1800 items. In 1946 Böhl reported that in the preceding seven years ‘as many as eighteen treatises’ on the date of Hammurabi had appeared. There was also a constant thread that sought to base the chronology of the ancient Near East on the chronographic data in the bible, Herodotus, Berosus, Eusebius, and others. The presumption was that there must have been good reasons why these ancient chroniclers offered the numbers they did."[19]

In his chapter titled We’re Changing Everything … Again Henige states:

"The study of ancient Near East chronology is an epistemological purgatory. It is not possible even to capture the latest orthodoxy in toto, nor to claim finality in even a single case before ca. 700 BCE, if not later. Despite two centuries of ebb and flow, assertion and retraction, hope and despair, despite the tremendous accretion of evidence, the editor of an inventory of ancient Mesopotamian inscriptions, could still make the chastening observation that ‘[o]f the nearly sixty rulers represented by inscriptions in this volume, we are certain of the length of reign of only one … Since the accumulation of evidence is responsible, it allows progress toward a final solution, even if that will remain a chimera barring the most miraculous of eventualities. One consequence is that authors routinely use one chronological system or another with no hint that there are differences of opinion, and carry out non-chronological arguments wielding different dates.

"Discussions of ancient Near East chronologies resemble panels in a geodesic dome. Sometimes, changing opinions have little ripple effect, but most are interconnected and proposed changes need to meet global as well as local specifications. Perhaps the first footnote of any article in which dates appear should carry an appropriate warning, however tiresome this might seem to the combatants. The phase of the study ending in 1940 now seems like prestidigitation. We encounter hundreds of textual and astronomical calculations, culminating in Pallis’s efforts to fix datings in the third millennium. This posturing took place in contexts where authors were either suggesting or reporting rectifications of previous chronological systems, sometimes their own. Yet not a single conclusion regarding absolute chronology from that period is deemed correct today.

In sum, it is easy to agree in principle with Manning when he writes that ‘[a] fixed correlation is all that is necessary. However, when available, it is quite likely we will find neither the High, Middle nor Low chronologies to be right; instead a new chronology will begin to emerge independent of the unsatisfactory Venus Tablets, and the contradictory king-lists’.[20]

Henige hopes that things will get better. But this is so much wishful thinking:

Despite this, will we continue to assert confidently time and again that certain dates are incontrovertible? The number of dogmatic assertions that pepper the literature of the past century or so–of which the examples cited here are but a tiny fraction–serves only to remind us that assurance is not a trait lacking in those interested in this subject. Still, and despite the aura of déjà vu all over again, evidence for ancient Near East chronology continues, if often fitfully, to converge, but not quite on a single focal point. The astigmatism remains uncorrected, but the prescription is getting better.[21]

For this tiny degree of progress, Henige has given us nothing but words. The evidence in these three volumes of Pillars of the Past shows that the chronographic patient is blind, and that corrective glasses will not help. What is required is major surgery! But things being what they are, historians will be Changing Everything Again and again and again for centuries to come. Like the blind men examining the elephant, they will never get that job done right.

The short chronology argues that there was contemporaneity of many Egyptian dynasties over the 800-900 years from ca. 1200-330 B.C. That concept was also discussed in a cautionary note by Dame Kathleen Kenyon regarding prehistory:

In trying to fit into place the cultures these communities represent, we should learn a lesson from the progress of research in European prehistory. Early European scholars tried to place each culture observed into a regular [serial] sequence. Now it is recognized that many cultures represent regional developments, and several may have existed side by side. The older sequence method tended to produce very inflated chronologies, which have had to be considerably reduced now that the picture has become more coherent. This we shall bear in mind in trying to piece together the jigsaw puzzle which our present state of knowledge in Palestine [and Egypt] represents, and in fact some of the new pieces of the jigsaw which almost every year emerge … do suggest that the whole picture will eventually portray a number of groups of [prehistoric] people living side by side each with their own culture, but with just enough links with other groups to suggest contemporaneity.[22]

This is what will be undertaken in the next chapter–and Chapter 9. However, the evidence employed to outline these connections of Egyptian history with prehistory and its peoples will be based on forensic historical foundations–the only foundations that matter.

---

[1] Meres J. Weche, Planet of the Greeks (Amun-Ra Publishing, 2000-2003), p. XXII

[2] Immanuel Velikovsky, Ages in Chaos (NY 1952), pp. VIII-IX

[3] ibid., p. VII

[4] paraphrased from Del Ratzsch, Science & Its Limits (Downer Grove IL/Leicester UK 2000) pp. 55-56

[5] David Henige, Historical Evidence and Argument (Madison WI 2005), pp. 135-136

[6] ibid., p. 136

[7] loc.cit.

[8] loc.cit.

[9] loc.cit

[10] loc.cit.

[11] loc.cit.

[12] loc.cit.

[13] ibid., pp. 136-137

[14] ibid., p. 137

[15] loc.cit.

[16] loc.cit.

[17] loc.cit.

[18] ibid., p. 138

[19] loc.cit.

[20] ibid., pp. 146-147

[21] ibid., p. 147

[22] Dame Kathleen Kenyon, quoted in Donovan A. Courville, The Exodus Problem and its Ramifications, vol. 2 (Loma Linda CA 1971), p. 169

PART I – EGYPT

CHAPTER 1, EGYPTIAN PREHISTORY, CHRONOLOGY, CLIMATE, AND CATASTROPHISM

In the course of a single century’s research, the earliest date in Egyptian history – that of Egypt’s unification under King Menes – has plummeted from 5876 to 2900 BC, and not even the latter year has been established beyond doubt.

Johannes Lehmann, The Hittites: People of a Thousand Gods (London 1977), p. 204

Having established in Volume I of Pillars of the Past, based on Sothic and lunar dating, that the 12th Dynasty ended with the coming of Alexander the Great (which will be discussed again below), it is time to turn to the beginnings of Egyptian history and chronology to scientifically establish the period when it began. In this way the chronology of Egypt will be scientifically sandwiched between these two anchor points! This, it is suggested, cannot be done without integrating Velikovsky’s catastrophic thesis as it affected the tilts of the Earth’s axis and the climatic changes that these tilts brought with them. These parameters are also based on scientific evidence and will further establish the relationship of his catastrophic theory with the short chronologies of Heinsohn, Rose, and Sweeney, as well as that of this author, based on all their work.

Velikovsky’s analysis of ancient myths and legends led him to suggest that there were two major pole shifts during the Hypsithermal dated ca. 6000-1000 B.C. Of these the first occurred around 1500-1400 B.C. and will be the focus of our attention now, while the 800-750 B.C. pole shift/climate shift accompanying it will be discussed toward the end of this volume. These events had to have profound effects on the climate of North Africa and therefore should also be reflected in Egypt. Nevertheless, based on Heinsohn, Sweeney and Rose’s chronologies, there were no advanced civilizations in existence during this first major global catastrophe. Sweeney, however, places this event at around 1100 B.C., thus moving this catastrophe into historical times [Emmet Sweeney, Chapter Two, The Pyramid Age (NY 2007)]. On the other hand, keeping that catastrophic pole shift/climate shift in Velikovsky’s timeframe suggests it should still be moved closer to the present, but only into late Egyptian history to perhaps between 1450-1350 B.C. Precision in this respect is presently not attainable.

If Velikovsky’s hypothesis is valid, there had to be a second shift around 800-750 B.C. and there should be scientific evidence for a two-step climate shift caused by an in-tandem two-step pole shift. The evidence for this I also treated in my book, The Extinction of the Mammoth (Forest Hills, NY 1997), pages 202-252 and other parts of that volume. It must be admitted here that, at the time I wrote that book, I had not made a serious, prolonged analysis of ancient Near Eastern history and chronology, so that it was difficult to determine which pole shift/climate shift was represented by the evidence. In terms of the chronology presented in these three volumes, it is suggested that Velikovsky’s first pole shift/climate shift occurred in late prehistory just before the dawn of civilization, while the second occurred, just as Velikovsky claimed, around 800-750 B.C. To explain this, it is necessary to turn to scientific evidence; the arbiter for this thesis is plant biogeography.

Plants can only live in biomes where seasonally they receive the proper amount of sunlight and the proper amount of rainfall, etc. Trees outside oases in the Sahara, for example, do not thrive, and, more importantly in terms of the hypothesis presented here, cannot reproduce in that highly arid environment because the necessary conditions for them to do so do not exist there. Thus, if Velikovsky is correct, the types of flora and to a great extent fauna associated with such vegetation, should show a direct two-step change brought about by this two-step pole shift/climate shift. And this is exactly what scientists have found to be the case as reported by Georg Gerster:

"Professor [P.] Quézel showed me pollen-seeds [from the Sahara] under the microscope … he explained that one was from an Aleppo pine, another from an evergreen oak. He [also] found pollen from the following species and varieties of plants: cypress, sandarac cypress, juniper, Aleppo pine, Atlas cedar, corn [tree], black or grey alder, evergreen oak, southern nettle tree, Italian daphne, lime and possibly winter lime, French tamarisk, the jujube tree, ash or jasmin and olive …

"The pollen-seeds came from the heart of a desert which more than any other on this planet comes nearest to being completely barren.

‘Such evidence as we have,’ said Professor Quézel, ‘is too slight to warrant any far-reaching conclusions, but it does seem a fair assumption that in the strata which represent the most recent periods, conifers and particularly cypress predominate. On the other hand, we can trace an extremely interesting qualitative change in the general picture. Lime and alder are essentially northern trees. There are no limes in North Africa today and the black alder is only found in certain well-watered areas of the Riff and Eastern Algeria. We found traces of lime and alder pollen only in the lowest stratum, which, to judge by the early paleolithic stone implements it contains, goes back some eight to fifteen thousand years. [In this short chronology analysis it goes back 8000 or more years before the present.] And this pollen is mixed with typical Mediterranean plants, Aleppo pines and evergreen oaks. This seems to me to indicate a humid but changeable climate. Trees fond of warm dry weather–olive, jujube and cypress–are only found in the topmost stratum, which is certainly no more than five thousand years old. [In this short chronology, about 3500–3300 years old.][23]

In essence we have, just as Velikovsky’s thesis requires, two distinct climate regimes in which two distinct forms of trees, requiring two distinct biomes, grew in the Sahara. The first was a very wet, cool period which allowed essentially northern type trees such as lime and alder to thrive with typical Mediterranean flora. During the second period closer to the present, trees fond of warmer and dryer conditions such as olive, jujube and cypress are found very tentatively dated to around 1000 B.C. Thereafter climatic conditions became so arid that none of these trees could germinate from seeds and take root in the Sahara.

We find a very similar climate change in Israel wherein two distinct types of trees grew before the region became highly arid, as reported by A. Issar and Mattayah Zohar:

"A. Horowitz … in 1971 concluded from pollen assemblage found in cores from the Lake Hula Basin in Northern Israel … the climate changed from cold and humid to warm and dry … the percentage of oak pollen was reduced because of climate deterioration. The sediment of the Sea of Galilee shows a remarkable reduction of oak and pistachio pollen with a parallel increase in olive pollen … and followed by a [climatic] reversal … Issar et al. interpreted these changes as an indication of human response to climate change; i.e. during the humid phase of the Early Bronze Age, the inhabitants had cut [down] the natural forest and replaced it with olive [trees], but once the climate [completely] deteriorated and the olives gave no profit, they were abandoned and replaced by natural vegetation [common to that region today which is that which grows in a highly arid climate]."[24]

That is, there were first forest-type trees which gave way to olive trees, as in the Sahara, which gave way to desert-like vegetation. Israel is north of the Sahara and its vegetation is of more northerly-type trees.

In terms of fauna associated with the trees and other vegetation of the earlier, wetter period, Marq de Villiers shows:

Once, there was plenty of water in the Sahara, which was covered in verdant grasslands. The evidence is everywhere; not just the cave paintings or the occasional hippo fossils, but the middens [feces] of cattle, bones and signs that grazing animals [which need copious amounts of vegetation to live] had once roved here in large numbers. So did elephants, giraffes, rhinoceroses, gazelles, and ostriches. Crocodiles and fish stirred the water of lakes and rivers …[25]

With respect to the size of the shift of this vegetation from Europe and the Mediterranean basin south into Africa, Alessandra Nibbi, speaking of Professor Quézels research, reports:

His study of core samples from a limited area confirmed what many scientists have been saying for some time. At the time of this highest precipitation, the Mediterranean climate moved southward into North Africa for approximately 1250 miles [2000 kilometers], thus bringing the Mediterranean vegetation in the Sahara as far south as Hoggar and Tibesti…[26]

Here we have an entire suite of European and Mediterranean trees moving south by about 1250 miles which indicates a change in latitude of about 16 to 17 degrees. Trees do not normally move such distances unless there is a great change in the position of the Earth’s axis. Also significant to the chronology presented here, Nibbi gives evidence that this highly rainy period ended not around 5000 years ago, as we were told, but about 3000 years ago, just as Velikovsky suggested. Nibbi speaks of

"G.E. Wickens in his study of the climate and vegetation of the Sudan in the last 20,000 years.

Wickens quotes from an impressive number of specialists who show that there is now a great deal of evidence for large regional climate changes across the whole of north Africa in the comparatively recent past which must have affected the paleo-biology of the region as late as perhaps the Middle Kingdom of Egypt [conventionally dated to ca. 2000-1800 B.C.]. Much of this work is based on a study of lake-levels in Africa … This shows both dry and wet fluctuations in the climate, including a moist period, which may have extended almost into the New Kingdom [conventionally dated to ca. 1500-1300 B.C.], according to their dating using climatic, geomorphic and biological evidence. Wickens concluded that there was a wet phase during this Period IV in the Sudan which extended from 6000 BP [= Before the Present] until 3000 BP [1000 B.C.]. After that time, the climate though fluctuating became gradually drier and finally attained the conditions that prevail today. This seems to agree with Quézel from whom we quoted above.[27]

That is, based on climatic, geomorphic, and biological evidence as all of these relate to lake levels in the Sudan and the rest of the Sahara, the final drying out of the Sahara, when the Sahara changed from a verdant environment, happened about 1000 B.C.; Velikovsky dates this change to 800-750 B.C. This evidence we will go into more deeply below to show that this is the case.

In terms of the lakes and rivers across north Africa, Elizabeth Isichei outlines the scope of the evidence which indicates the size of the lakes and the rivers that were flowing across these regions as well as the life in these:

"From about 10,000 BCE, rainfall increased with dramatic consequences. Lake Chad became a vast inland sea, fed by rivers rising in what is now the Sahara Desert, and flowing through the Benue to the sea. The Riff Valley lakes expanded, and Lake Turkana flowed through the Pibor river into the Nile.

"There was a second, less extreme period of aridity later, which has usually been placed about 6000 BCE, though recent research suggests a later date (4400-3400 BCE).

"Along the ancient shorelines of once enlarged lakes many relics of past aquatic civilizations have been found–bone harpoons, stone weights for fishing nets (or lines), and pottery decorated with [actual] catfish spines [embedded]. Bone harpoons … have been found near Khartoum and Lakes Victoria, Nyasa, Nakura and Chad, as well as many parts of the Sahara.

"[According to H. Lhote][28], ‘Right in the heart of one of the ergs (sand dunes) … I have come across the remains of fisher’s encampments marked by formidable collections of fish bones (enough to fill several farm carts), of hippopotamus and elephant bones … Over three hundred miles farther south I discovered in more than ten camp sites, fish bones, tortoise shells, and those of mollusks, bones of hippopotamus, giraffe and antelope amid which lay human skeletons … delicate arrowheads in gagues for fishing nets and also superb bone harpoons.’

In about 2500 BCE, a final period of desiccation began…[29]

Not only does the Sahara west of the Nile show that it was verdant but this condition was prevalent throughout the ancient Near East, from Africa to Asia as noted by Bruce G. Trigger, B.J. Kemp, D. O’Connor, and A.B. Lloyd:

The rock pictures which occur along the Nile Valley and the deserts on either side are a further important product of the [nomadic herding] peoples, but the problem of dating them makes them difficult to use historically. There seems to be widespread agreement, nevertheless, that a large portion of the cattle drawings, which predominate in the rock art of Nubia and the eastern desert and are found widely spread in the deserts to the west as well, are contemporary with periods under consideration and attest to the existence of a widespread cattle-orientation …[30]

This cattle culture spread from the Sahara across into Arabia. For the eastern Sahara, Robert Schoch with R.A. McNally informs us:

"Recent research in the Eastern Desert of Upper Egypt–now a forbidding region between the Nile and the Red Sea–has uncovered a series of elaborate rock paintings. Dated to circa 4000 B.C., the paintings have been called ‘the Sistine Chapel’ of predynastic Egypt by Toby Wilkinson, the Cambridge University archaeologist who made the discovery. The paintings show a wetter, more abundant land, and they use a number of [painted] symbols, such as a boat for the voyage through the underworld and figures with plumes in their hair later known in Dynastic Egypt.

The recent excavation of the Nabta Playa archaeological site, located … 65 miles west of Abu Simbel in southernmost Egypt’s Western Desert, shows that more was going on in predynastic Egypt than we previously suspected. Beginning in about 9000 B.C., nomadic cattle herders brought their animals to the playa during the wet season and let them graze until water and grass dried up. By 7000 B.C. the nomads had settled in the area digging deep wells to allow year-round habitation in the desert and building organized villages of small huts arranged in straight lines. Following a major drought the people disappeared to be replaced circa 5500 B.C. by a people with a social system more complex than any yet seen in Egypt. Their religion centered on sacrificing young cows and interring them in roofed chambers marked by burial mounds. By the fifth millennium B.C. they were erecting large stone alignments, building a calendar circle to mark the summer solstice … and constructing over 30 complex structures. Nabta [Nubia] grew into a ceremonial center that drew people from all over the Western Desert.[31]

Although I disagree with the dates given by Schoch, it should be pointed out that these people sacrificed cattle and built calendar circles. These suggest, yet do not prove, that, in terms of Velikovsky’s thesis, they had previously experienced an event where they observed a bull-like body in the sky that affected them, and that the seasons were deranged so that they needed to rearrange their calendar. On this assumption, it is suggested that the event they experienced and survived was a major celestial catastrophe. The evidence for this will be discussed in the unit below titled Catastrophe. In terms of climate change in the southern Sahara, Fekri A. Hassan reports similar climatic evidence but dates the climate change to about 1000 B.C.

"Around this period there was an acute dry episode in the Sahara. It was particularly marked in its southern part … this arid period … seems to have provided radical changes in the organization of human settlement.

"This was the last [pluvial] Holocene Optimum. It was associated with an exceptionally high population in the southern Sahara and the northern Sahel [the strip of land just south of the Sahara that does get some yearly rainfall, but is still desert-like]. For the last time, hydrological networks [rivers, small streams, brooks, lakes, ponds, and swamps] expanding from Saharan basins were functional …

Here are a few examples from Sudan [south of Egypt]. Between 3800 and 3300 bp [1800-1300 B.C.] in Kerma … statistics regarding the percentage of cattle and ovicaprines [sheep and goats] diverge radically … The same observation is valid [for other areas] … Property was gradually reduced to the vicinity of Wadi Howar’s permanent pools where there are still giraffes around 3800 [B.P. or 1800 B.C.] and cattle towards the end of the millennium, confirming the progressive character of desertification, as well as suggesting that the vegetation cover remained dense in the wadi [up to … ] 3000 bp [1000 B.C.].[32]

In terms of rock art across the Sahara and into Arabia, it has been assumed that the dates for the peoples living in these regions follow the older dates and not those of P. Quézel and G.E. Wickens dating the final drying out to 2300 B.C., or over a millennium farther back in time. The older dates place the drying out to 2300 B.C. or over a millennium farther back in time. This older date requires that these early peoples existed over 1300 years before the onset of Egyptian civilization and therefore they should not share highly similar or identical practices. The problem is that these nomadic desert people who supposedly lived over a millennium prior to Egyptian civilization did share highly similar arts and practices. Above, we pointed out that they employed the symbol of the boat for voyages through the underworld, a symbol found in Egypt, and figures with plumes in their hair later known in Dynastic Egypt. With respect to the western Sahara, Harry Thurston informs us that among the rock drawings there was found:

Anubis … [the Egyptian] jackal-headed god who presided over the embalming procedure. Mask-wearing priests also assumed the roles of ibis-, falcon- and lion-headed gods. The image of the sun/ram with a disc on its head appears in Saharan rock art long before it becomes a stock image in pharaonic art.[33]

I will present more on this below to show how close in time these links between Saharan art and practice were to those of dynastic Egypt. What is being maintained here is that these various aspects of the Saharan people which appear in ancient Egypt did not go back as far into the past as is generally assumed but came about the same period as the onset of Egyptian civilization. In terms of climate change in Arabia, Michael Rice, as cited in volume II of this series, described the Arabian Desert for this same period as being comparable to that of the green Sahara. To repeat:

… one of the least anticipated results of [a] recent archaeological survey of Saudi Arabia, [is] the discovery of widespread and large-scale domestication of cattle. This is apparent in the western region of the peninsula and in the north. Large herds of bovines could only be supported by climatic conditions much more hospitable than is the case today. The cattle herds were evidently numerous and the people who herded them created an elaborate form of art which celebrated the animals; on what seems to be every available rock surface in northern and in parts of western Arabia representations of cattle are pecked and engraved on rock surfaces.[34]

That is, there was a period just prior to and overlapping Egyptian civilization when people from the western Sahara across to the Arabian desert moved as pastoralists with their cattle etc. throughout this vast region, painting and carving pictures of their world on rock surfaces. As will be shown below they evidently spoke a common language or dialects of it which can be traced throughout this stretch of the Afro-Asiatic world, which strongly indicates their similar background and origin.

The dating of these peoples to the older period rather than closer to the onset of Egyptian civilization has been invoked to date this rock art that survives. In this respect Isichei unequivocally states: Rock art is difficult to date.[35] More emphatically, Douglas J. Brewer and Emily Teeter state these rock drawings are notoriously difficult to date.[36] The entire problem of dating ancient rock art has been analyzed in Robert G. Bednarik’s Logic in direct dating of rock art, in the journal Sahara for July 1995. Here Bednarik provides a healthy dose of science and logic to show how highly improbable and deeply flawed it is. I would also recommend to the interested reader Bednarik’s review article Only Time Will Tell: A Review of the Methodology of Direct Rock Dating in Archaeometry, vol. 38, no. 1 (1996). In short, he and others maintain that unless rock art engravings and paintings have been dated by solidly based scientific methods, which he maintains has not yet been accomplished, all determinations of the ages of these representations are subjective, contentious, dubious and must therefore be rejected or at least accepted with a great deal of skepticism.

For example Christian Züchner, in dealing with radiocarbon dates of micro-organisms that have been extracted from engraved crusts overlaying these, shows they cannot be accepted

… because dates from beneath lichen colonies [growing on rock art] give a significantly younger age than those directly adjacent to them [that should date older]. Everyone working in the Sahara will confirm that one and the same rock may have a different desert varnish at its opposite faces and that it may weather [erode away some or all the lichen in the varnish] and form anew.[37]

We are further informed in the Encyclopedia of the Archaeology of Ancient Egypt, Kathryn A. Bard., ed. (London 1999), p. 197:

A … problem in the Western Desert is that there now are large numbers of radiocarbon dates, but ‘geological’ and ‘archaeological’ dates are difficult to separate, creating a circularity of reasoning in regard to the interrelationship between paleoenvironment and settlement: sites are commonly dated by clusters of age assays on materials that also date sediments, and dispersal dates on geological sediments such as playa beds typically lead to searches for some artifact scatters that may or may not be contemporary. Systematic study of good stratigraphic sequences [at one site] has yielded comparatively little direct archaeological association with the critical sedimentary units, while the model sequence at [another site] lacks settlement evidence entirely … Furthermore, plotting all radiocarbon dates from the Egyptian Western [Desert] together suggests above-average settlement density for the period 7,100-6,600 BP [5100-4600 B.C.] when the climate was relatively dry in most areas [and securing a living from the land by a large population was therefore difficult], and a low density 6,200-5,800 [4200-3800 B.C.] when it was wetter [and the land would support a larger population]. The large number of radiocarbon dates from the Western Desert creates an illusion that the archaeology and prehistoric settlement ecology are firmly established. In fact, given the time spans and distances [between these dated sites] involved, research is still in an exploratory phase.

It thus becomes clear that the dates given for the peopling of the Sahara and the climate shifts and ecology associated with these settlement periods is far from secure at best. It is, in general, based on circular reasoning and ignoring dates contradictory to the generally accepted chronology.

Again we encounter how archaeologists manipulate dates or ignore them to support the established chronology. Now the dating method largely employed to achieve this chronology is that of radiocarbon. As shown in volumes I and II of this series, it is clear that this method is riddled with problems. However, one final analysis of radiocarbon needs to be exposed. The technique was invented in the mid-twentieth century by W. Libby and has been refined over the next 40 years; hundreds/thousands of dates based on it were published in journals, books etc. that in large measure tended to support the established chronology, albeit with a great deal of culling of data. Nevertheless, those involved in this research were evidently uncomfortable with all that was going on and wanted to determine if the method was not only reliable but accurate from laboratory to laboratory. Thus they proposed and carried out a blind test to determine this. Frank Wallace kindly sent me the following material related to this test.

Scientific testing is one of the great cornerstones of the scientific method, and to that end a major experiment was carried out to determine the validity of radiocarbon dating. Over a period from 1982 to 1989, 51 of the world’s 130 radiocarbon laboratories performed this test. The results were published 1990 in the premier dating journal, Radiocarbon. Austin Long, the editor of Radiocarbon, reports:

"On a bright September day in Scotland, 50 producers, consumers and analysts of 14C dates began a workshop to ponder a darker topic: the results of a series of intercomparisons among radiocarbon laboratories … Beginning in 1982 Marian Scott and colleagues distributed a series of samples to willingly participating 14C labs. The 14C activities [actually known as dates] of these samples were unknown to the labs. The purpose of the study was to obtain a quantitative appraisal of how reliable 14C dates are throughout the world, and, if inaccuracies exist, what are the causes …

"All classes of [radiocarbon] counting technologies [gas counting, liquid-scintillation and accelerator ion counting] participated in the intercomparison, as did well-established and newer labs. Representatives of all of the above attended the workshop.

It is clear that an accuracy problem pervades all technological classes of 14C labs.[38]

Long does show that there was close agreement between the laboratories, but gives us no evidence that the dates achieved were accurate; that was far from the case, as will be shown below. He concludes, It may be yet a few years before the radiocarbon community can repolish its somewhat tarnished image. The authors of the study admit:

Preliminary reports presented by organizers of this study … lead us to the conclusion that the present status of the 14C dating is unsatisfactory. The observed scatter in five sets of duplicate samples significantly exceeds 1000 yr. and in the other 500 yr. Values of correlation coefficients of 14C dates obtained on duplicate samples are greater than 0.9 in four cases [90 percent off] indicating significant systematic biases.[39]

The results in fact were so bad the authors were driven to say:

The results of the ICS, if evaluated on the basis of ranges [of dates] listed … may lead to extreme opinions that after 40 years of improving the radiocarbon method, we are still at the starting point of Libby’s solid carbon counter with an accuracy of 300-500 yr … In any case, future, systematic projects are urgently needed.[40]

This first double blind test of radiocarbon conducted after 40 years of dating materials and publishing these results was an abject failure. The researchers say it would take years to correct these problems, which moves the possible corrections well into the late 1990s. That means that up until and into the late 1990s radiocarbon dating was quite unreliable. Nevertheless, it was this admittedly unreliable dating technique during all the four and more decades that created the established chronology that, based on several other dating grounds or criteria, has been shown in these three volumes to be in a state of disarray, or more accurately in a state of collapse.

In terms of dating rock we are further told:

"In the 1950s and 1960s, efforts were made by Henri Lhote … and F. Mori … to refine and date the development of the art. Development stages in the material were established by detailed typological studies, based on analyses of style and technique augmented by inferences from patina, overlay, and archaeological and historical correlations, and occupation deposits in decorated caves or rock shelters were excavated for material for radiocarbon dates …

"These studies indicated five main styles or periods: (1) Big Game, with incised pictographs of animals such as elephant, buffalo, crocodile, hippopotamus, giraffe and rhinoceros, a savannah fauna indicating a period of much greater moisture in the Sahara than today; (2) Round Heads–paintings of round-headed humans; (3) Pastoral or Cattle-paintings and engravings of humans herding cattle; (4) Equid–incised and painted scenes with horses; and (5) Camel–incised and painted scenes with camels. Radiocarbon dates in the Lybian Tadrart Acasus indicated dates of c. 7000 [uncalibrated] B.P. for the Round Head style and c. 5000 [uncalibrated] for the Pastoral style … The Horse and Camel styles also included depictions of chariots and other motifs indicating contact with the Egyptian and classical civilizations."[41]

It is well-known, as we pointed out in volume II, that the camel did not come to Egypt before about 600 B.C. or later. The question is: do these five artistic styles represent great depth in time or do they all fall closer to the present as all the other evidence presented above indicates? The authority we just cited shows there was contemporaneity of these forms with one another and thus the dates of these must be moved closer to the present:

The validity of these typological sequences, however, is now very doubtful. Muzzolini, in particular, has argued in a series of studies that the Big Game motifs … form a style or school of design, not an initial phase of rock art, secondly, that they were in fact contemporary with the Pastoral or Cattle Motif along with many of the ‘Round Head’ paintings, and thirdly that the main corpus of early rock art in general was contemporary with the transition from hunting to herding in the Sahara … The Equid and Camel motifs are certainly late in the rock art tradition, but here again there are many indications of contemporaneity, and there is general agreement that most of them probably date about 1500 B.C. onward …[42]

That is, the dates of most of these fall about 1500 B.C. or just after the first catastrophe. The contradiction is that the camel was not known in the Sahara around 1500 B.C. but about 1000 or more years closer to the present, which also moves the other styles 1000 or more years closer to the present as well. Even the style of the rock art shows that the climate of Egypt became arid around 1500 to 800 B.C. Interestingly we are told The period of the transition from hunting to herding in the Sahara was characterized by significant climate fluctuations, with increasing aridity over time.[43] Prior to the 1500-1400 B.C. pole shift/climate shift, the people were hunter-gatherers and after it nomadic herders, again in good agreement with Velikovsky’s chronology which I support. But there is a great deal more along dating lines that confirms the short chronology.

Related to the dating of rock art in the Sahara is the fact that a black mummy was discovered in the western Sahara which was reported on the Discovery Channel in a program titled The Mystery of the Black Mummy that was aired Friday, May 2nd, 2004. The contents of this program were later reported on the Internet. On page 1 of that report we read about:

… the discovery of the black mummy, [named after the place it was found] Uan Muhuggiag. It soon became obvious that these people [in the Libyan Sahara] were responsible for an extraordinary array of innovations which later became famous under the Egyptians [such as animal burials, the symbol of the boat for voyages through the underworld; figures with plumes in their hair; Anubis, the jackal-headed god; the ibis-, falcon- and lion-headed gods; and the image of the sun/ram with a disc on its head]. Their presence re-writes the history of Egypt ... By the time the culture reached its pinnacle around 6000 years ago [4000 B.C.] these people had invented rituals which indicate a fairly complex world view. They were communicating with the heavens and using funerary rituals like mummification to treat their dead.[44]

What is being suggested here, however, is that there was a close overlapping of these supposedly predynastic desert cultures with that of Egypt around 1300-1100 B.C. or even somewhat closer to the present. Hence we should find desert cultures that supposedly came well prior to Egyptian civilization that were actually contempo-raneous with each other and therefore shared many cultural as well as artistic traits and affinities. Charles S. Finch III and Bruce Williams, a research associate at the Oriental Institute of the University of Chicago who worked in the Sudan, tell us that

"… the Ta-Seti Kingdom was discovered at Qustul. The site was excavated for the first time in 1962 by Keith Steele who, even then, thought that the size and wealth of the tombs marked them [as] royal … Systematic analysis of the artifacts, however, did not take place until 15 years later by Bruce Williams … adding a hitherto unknown chapter to Nile Valley history. In one sense, however, the artifacts confirmed what Egyptian annals had already attested: there were whole dynasties that immediately preceded the 1st Dynasty under Menes.

Qustul lies in Nubia, more than 100 miles [160 km] south of Aswan and the first cataract, and is now covered over by [the waters of] Lake Nasser. Qustul was a well-known site for what is known as A-group Nubian culture, contemporary with and related to the Gerzean pre-dynastic complex of Upper Egypt. The archaeological context of the tombs found in a burial spot known as ‘Cemetery L’ showed clearly [presumably] that they were older than the 1st Dynasty. When the tombs were opened, a startling variety of goods and materials were present including five different kinds of pottery [and] expensive, finely crafted jewellery.[45]

What is further significant, and which I claim shows that this culture and early Egyptian culture do overlap and are contemporary, is explained by Ivan Van Sertima:

About a dozen black kings reigned at Ta-Seti and all the major religious and political symbols of later Egypt were found in this kingdom … On a stone incense burner … were carvings of the falcon-god Horus, the uniquely-shaped crown that was to adorn the later Egyptian kings, the sacred boat-litter of the pharaohs, the elaborate palace serikhs and façades–everything already in place among these royal blacks. Most important, the excavators found inscriptions–the earliest in the hieroglyphic system–in the tombs of Qustul, a system … to be the mother of [the] Egyptian [language] …[46]

As proof that Ta-Seti was contemporary with the Old Kingdom Van Sertima elsewhere shows: Moreover, some of the [black and red ware] vases in the [Ta-Seti] tombs were of Syro-Palestinian manufacture.[47] There is absolutely no evidence to prove that at 3300 B.C. and earlier Syria and Palestine were trading with Egypt and vice versa. This evidence clearly shows that there was overlap of the Old Kingdom with this Nubian culture at Ta-Seti and that there was no long period separating these cultures. As Molefi K. Asante and Ama Mazama [Marie-Josée Cérol] point out: The people of Ta-Seti had the same funeral customs, POTTERY, musical instruments and related artifacts as the Egyptians. [Bruce] Williams (1987 173, 182).[48]

Bruce Williams, the excavator of Ta-Seti, in arguing with William Y. Adams who held that the A-Group culture at Qustul was either contemporary with early pharaonic Egypt or came after it[49], suggests the A-culture was closely related to dynastic Egypt and states:

Adams appears to believe that Pharaonic iconography and the appearance of Monarchy were contemporary. In fact, specifically Pharaonic motifs occur well before the monumental development of the early Thinite Period, including, for example, features of the Hierakonpolis Painted Tomb and a red crown shown in relief on a black-topped vessel of earlier Naqada II times.[50]

It is evident, nevertheless, that the Ta-Seti culture was closely related in time with dynastic Egyptian development. According to historians the same forms of pottery have always been taken to mean that the cultures in which these forms are found were contemporary. In this respect the climatological, rock art, cultural, and pottery evidence all concur with a great shortening of Saharan African/Egyptian chronology.

A further way to correlate these matters with the short chronology is the migration of the humble goat from Mesopotamia across northern Africa and into the western Sahara. Since the goat came from Mesopotamia, to reach the western Sahara it should have first crossed the Sinai desert into Egypt before migrating farther west. The problem is that, based on the established chronology of Egypt and of these desert cultures, the goat supposedly arrived in the western desert long before it seemingly arrived in Egypt. Thurston informs us that among the fossils found in that desert region:

"… the majority of bones … beginning about 6500 years ago [4500 B.C.] belong to cattle and goats …

"Cattle were native to North Africa, but goats were not, their wild ancestors being indigenous to the Near East (namely Mesopotamia). This raises the troubling question: where did the domestic goat come from in the Western [Sahara] Desert? Until recently, it was assumed that goats arrived in Egypt by a route across the northern Sinai to the Nile Delta, then along the Mediterranean [coast westward] and southward up the Nile Valley. The problem with this theory is that goats appear in the Western Desert around 7000 years ago [5000 B.C.] … a thousand years