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Chronology & Catastrophism Review 1996 Abstracts

Chronology & Catastrophism REVIEW1996:1 Click here for cost

Uniformitarianism, Catastrophism and Evolution, by Trevor Palmer

Trevor Palmer reconsiders Darwin, Lyell and the great Victorian catastrophists. 

 ………… Natural Theology ……… Evidence of Noah’s Flood? ………. British Catastrophism in the 1830s ……….. The Catastrophism-Uniformitarianism Debate ………… Idealist Philosophy …….. Darwin’s Secret Thoughts ………. After theOrigin [of Species] …………..

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The Homeric Question, by Benny Peiser

When were Homer’s epics written? Benny Peiser looks at Greek history.

………. Homer’s date: An ancient riddle ……….. The Enlightenment: first serious assaults on the conventional chronology ………… The interpretation of the ‘Interpolation Theory’, or how to escape the inevitable conclusion …….. A call for the return to a 6th (or even 5th) century BC Iliad  …………..

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Hazor and Anachronisms in Chronology of the Near East, by Gunnar Heinsohn

 ……….. Kempinsky was especially interested to find Iron Age archives from the time of the Kingdom of Israel in the upper city [of Hazor] (1200 to 300 BC) whereas Ben-Tor seems to have given up hope and focuses instead on finding archives for the Amarna (Late Bronze) period ……. which saw the Mitanni rule of Asia, and also for the Old-Babylonian period which he …….. believes to have preceded the Mitanni by about half a millennium. ……………. individual tablets inscribed in cuneiform were indeed found in Hazor’s upper layers. They bewildered the excavators for chronological reasons. [The tablets] did not ………. belong to the 1st millennium BC but were written in Old Babylonian Akkadian from the time of the enigmatic Martu/Amurru/Amorites who had ruled the ancient Near East between 2000 and 1700 BC …………. and in Late Bronze Mitanni/Amarna period Akkadian dated between the 16th and 14th centuries BC. How did tablets fromthe early second millennium end up in a stratum reaching its peak in the period of the Persian empire (500 to 330 BC)? ……………………iE

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Shamir, by Phillip Clapham

Phillip Clapham asks whether this legendary substance was really ‘something upstairs’?

The actual contents of the Ark of the Covenant are a bit of a mystery and the subject has aroused a fair amount of speculation. ……….In fringe literature the Ark was a crude apparatus designed to give electric shocks, to incinerate uninitiated interlopers and anyone foolish enough to touch it ………..

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Einstein and Relativity, by Alasdair Beal

Alasdair Beal looks at the strange world of relativity theory.

…………. A new spin on an old experiment ……….. Special Relativity …………. The ‘Physical’ Dissidents ………… Experiments ……….. The Ether ………… The Mathematics ………Where do we go from here? …………..

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Chronology & Catastrophism REVIEW 1996:2 Click here for cost

Towards an Astronomical Dating of the Pyramids, by Michael G. Reade

A detailed study of the claim that the pyramids of Giza were planned to mirror the constellation Orion on the ground supports this hypothesis but reveals that the ancient Egyptians cannot have been quite such precise surveyors as is frequently claimed and that the era when the plan was conceived was probably around 800 BC.

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Relation Between the Perpetual Calendar Based on the 128 Years Cycle and the Central American Calendar, by Flavio Barbiero

It is demonstrated that the Central American Calendars, based on a vague year of 365 days and a ceremonial year of 260 days, belong to a family of calendars derived from the 128 years cycle. It is then demonstrated that the stone calendars known as ‘sun discs’, the best example of which is the Aztec ‘Piedra del Sol’, carved at Tenochtitlan [in] 1492, are probably representations of mechanical astronomical clocks, based on that cycle.

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Planetary Observations of the T’ang Dynasty, by Charles B. Raspil 

Astronomers such as Victor Clube have now focused attention upon episodes of celestrial catastrophism that may have occurred during the period from the beginning of the European Dark Ages to the era of the Black Death in the 14th century and maybe beyond that. In explanation of such episodes, astronomers such as Clube have suggested that periodic terrestrial encounters with meteoric maelstroms – perhaps engendered by comets – have induced such catastrophes. In my researches of astronomical observations of the time, I have found evidence that may suggest other scenarios. Here, I will introduce a significant portion of this evidence[:] anomalous observations of Saturn, Jupiter, Mars, Venus and Mercury made during the T’ang Dynasty in China. To my knowledge no-one has yet compared these observations with retrocalculated positions of the planets or critically analysed them. …………….. 

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The Genesis of Israel and Egypt, by Emmet J. Sweeney

David Rohl’s book A Test of Time and TV series [of the same name] have publicised the New Chronology, which subtracts 2-300 years from pharaonic history to synchronise it with Israel’s history. This is in contrast to Gunnar Heinsohn’s reconstruction which subtracts at least a 1,000 years. The author does not agree with all the details of Heinsohn’s reconstruction but he demonstrates that Heinsohn is on the right track. A look at the very beginnings of Egyptian and Hebrew history reveals contemporary characters and events unnaturally separated in textbooks by 1,000 years.

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