CURIOSITY
Signs of Ancient Advanced Civilizations
Holy numbers, Batman!
This article is a part of Introspection, Exposition’s new ‘Curiosity’ section, where our writers share stories of the subjects they obsess over.
In another article, I revealed the surprising finding that the moon’s equatorial circumference is 12x12x12x12x12x12x12x12 inches while the earth’s mean radius is 7x12x12x12x12x12x12x12 inches to within very small margins of error. Sock! Pow!
Furthermore, I showed the linkage that twelve feet and seven cubits are equal and this measure should be called a reed.
I wondered when I discovered this if the influence of some antediluvian civilization could still be seen today.
I use the word antediluvian non-biblically to mean before the end of the last ice age when major destructive forces, like comets or cosmic rays melted the glaciers and exiled Mr. Freeze to the poles.
This catastrophe raised sea levels a few hundred feet and killed off all of the cool wooly beasts that used to roam around your neighborhood. So, don’t blame Noah’s oversight that you don’t have a giant ground sloth trimming your hedges; blame whatever wiped them out 12,000 years ago.
In fact, I should say Utnapishtim instead of Noah — the Epic of Gilgamesh, which is the oldest surviving work of literature dating from over 4000 years ago, describes all the same elements as the biblical flood story but the animal-love-boat builder has a much tougher name to pronounce.
In any case, Gilgamesh and his side-kick Enkidu, are the first dynamic duo we have in literature. It’s quite a sophisticated and symbolic story, not the “ugh, me want eat dog” narrative some people might expect from the first civilization to have writing.
In this oldest epic, the super-hero wanders twelve days through darkness as one of his trials, but also crosses seven mountains and fells seven cedar trees and could become immortal if he could just stay awake for seven days — oh and by the way, this story is recorded on twelve clay tablets. The numbers seven and twelve were already symbolically meaningful. Huh.
If this postulated society existed in pre-history, the natural question is “did they have six or seven fingers?”
Sorry, but not much evidence of either. But it does beg the question of what kind of nuts would use base twelve instead of base ten.
Then I realized, well, we all do in a way. It is so embedded in our words and traditions we don’t even think about it. In English and other Germanic languages the compound words for numbers start at thirteen. We have twelve hours on our clock, twelve inches in a foot, twelve months in the year, twelve signs of the zodiac, a dozen, a gross…but why?
The earliest civilizations who left any written records either used based twelve or base sixty (which is divisible by twelve) for time keeping. We have kept these approaches for at least 4000 years since the Sumerians and ancient Egyptians.
There isn’t any evidence for base twelve being widespread in the cultures we know except for this context, though a few languages scattered around the world use unique identifiers up through twelve. And base seven? Only the Joker would use base seven — it’s almost completely intractable in terms of fractions, but there it is — the cubit.
At the risk of being redundant, there were seven original Gods of the Sumerians, twelve Greek gods, there are seven chakras, twelve tribes of Israel, twelve disciples of Jesus, and seven days to create the world (holy fast work, Batman). It turns out the ancient Chinese also used twelve for their clocks, and they have their own twelve zodiacal signs.
In summary, the numbers twelve and seven appear all over myths and religions as far back as is recorded. The original source is lost to history. If we have carried down the significance of these numbers for at least 4000 years without knowing why, is it really a stretch to believe they originated another 8000 years before that?
“Hold the bat-chariot, Gilgamesh,” you may be saying. A culture over twice as old as the Sumerians?
That’s not as batty as it sounds. This article covers some evidence for antediluvian civilizations. As a teaser, I have seen, with my own eyes, ivory figurines and flutes in the Museum of Prehistory Blaubeuren (Germany) that were made 40,000 years ago and heard the notes they could play. And our cousins, the Denisovans, made plenty of jewelry at least that long ago.
Consider the advances in our own civilization in only 1000 years. Humans did nothing between making jewelry and music 40,000 years ago and the onset of the Sumerian civilization 5000 years ago?
I don’t believe it, but it is one for the Riddler as to why there is so little evidence to support it.
But…there is one place that clearly breaks these long-held beliefs on the beginnings of civilizations — Gobekli Tepe, the remains of an actual antediluvian temple in Turkey.
You can read my article about it here:
In case you missed it, here’s the last article I wrote on a similar subject:
If you’d like to get to know more about me as a person, feel free to check out my ‘about me’ story:
