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History 104A, August 3l: Velikovsky (true or false?) and Geographical Determinism

We're on now. I did notice looking around the room that a few of

you do change your seats from time to time. Now, I won't recognize

you people, but most of you keep the same seats so it's pretty easy to

see who's here in those cases. I think starting next week I'll start

working on getting to know some of the names. I said three weeks.

This is our third week, yes, but not over yet. This has class has

done pretty good so far, not a lot of drops. I'm going to have make

give you a quiz so that maybe you get upset. Obviously I can't.

We had the group meeting, the first one on Velikovsky. And some

of you discussed it. Others are writing it up. I'd like to bring it

together a little and find out what struck you either from your own

reading or from what people said in the group that was interesting,

upsetting or whatever. Anybody want to share since I didn't hear a

lot

A It was hard to read.

THE PROFESSOR: Well, I said it was hard to read. That's not a

great thing there. Even though, as I said, glance through it and read

it rapidly. You're not going to be fully really tested on it. It's

one of those things for learning purposes. Some of you obviously or

most of you picked up some things that hit you during the reading.

Anybody want to share something that they found that they'd like the

discuss further.

A I just think it was interesting that he tried to explain Biblical

events because that's not something that scientists do. They kind of

steer away from religion. So having him just -- like it kind of seem

to me that he did believe in those events so he was trying to prove

how it could happen. I just found it interesting.

THE PROFESSOR: I guess there are a couple of things I would

comment on there personally and then I'll go into what you said

without being a wise ass. Scientists would say that he wasn't and

scientist. And then one of the things that

popped out -- It may be in one of the letters to the editor, the issue

being that Scientists insisted his books be removed from the science shelves on bookstores and placed

into Sci Fi section. Scientists said that he wasn't a

scientist and they threatened to no longer use Macmillan textbooks (his publisher)

unless they labeled the book sci-fi. And of course Worlds

and Collision being the first book, and when people questioned him

instead of screaming and yelling as I think I would have, he went ahead

and produced another book called Earth in Upheaval where he identified

more of the geological changes. He did not only use the Biblical

materials, he went into a lot of myths

throughout the world and using those to bring together the overall

theory. Now once again, one of the things scientists dislike and I'm not

necessarily attacking science. I'm trying to make a point here that

I've made all semester that there is a same kind of scientific dogma that

sometimes comes through. And with scientists their profession is

often based in their theories because at universities and else where

they get grants and promotions for heir creative unique studies. If somebody questions their theory, they become

incensed. So that what happens then is that scientists have something

to defend and often create a dogma where they want the ex communicate

people. The easiest way to excommunicate Velikovsky is that he was a

medical doctor, an MD and with a background in psychology and that is

not physical science in the sense of physics or biology or whatever.

And he was dealing with anthropology, archaeology, physics and

astronomy. And that of course also bothers scientists because they

believe like most people who teach at the university, you need to be

an expert in a narrow field. As soon as you go beyond a short period

of time in your area, they consider to be a non-expert and therefore

what you've done is literally worthless.

When I got my Ph.D. and I guess I haven't told you this before, I

don't think. My Ph.D. is in Mexican history. Did I mention that?

A No.

THE PROFESSOR: The period of my doctorate research was basically

between 1920 and 1935. I learned from a professor in graduate school

that you need to do something that you enjoy and have fun with. So I

found the topic from reading a book, the power and the glory by a name

named Graham Green and in reading the book it dealt with a governor in

the State of Tabasco which is little below the Yucatan for those of

you who have gone to Cancun upon graduation. How many of you

went to Cancun upon graduation? Nobody? No parents that spoil you?

In any case, the story was about a drunken priest, an alcoholic priest

who stayed in Tabasco even though all priests were banned. All priests had

to leave the State. He stayed to perform the sacraments. And he had

to hid for fear of his life. Well, the fear of the life might have

been a little exaggerated but the banning of priests in the state of

Tabasco fit within the Mexican revolutionary period basically because

the Catholic church owned over 50 percent of the arable land in

Mexico, not the land itself, it owned the good land and was very much

involved in politics, preached, controlled dominated. And to what

this individual Tomas Candido Canval (Mark) was he banned priests by

ordering them all to marry. If you're going to preach

in Tabasco you have to marry. When he was asked by the press

why did he want them to marry, he said, Because he wanted to

legitimatize their children. And he came from a fairly wealthy family. They had fairs like

the Pleasanton fair where they show their animals. And so he named

his pet ass Jesus Christ, his favorite cow that did well in the show

was named the Virgin Mary. His pet bull was name the Pope. His

brother named his son Lucifer. He had a group of red shirts who entered people’s home and removed all religios items. My dissertation was translated and published

by the Mexican government through the Ministry of Education, but

that's irrelevant really to the story. The point being of course he

had a group of Red Shirts that was breaking into people's houses, take

their religious artifacts and create what he called auto de fe

now, an auto de fe is what? A burning of faith. That is when they

burned the people under the inquisition, when Joan of Arc was burned for

witchcraft, it was called an A-U-T-O D-E, or in Portuguese D-A, F-E.

And so this auto de fe is where they burned all the religious artifacts

in the state. He later became the Minister of Agriculture in Mexico.

And when he took the wrong side in the party dispute in the PRI—the Party of the Revolution Institutionalized—the main party in Mexico. He was expelled from Mexico to Costa Rica.

This work

meant that my expertise was Mexican history between 1920 and 35. And

any other work or research I did was considered immature. I was only to teach course basically in that narrow area

of Mexican history when I taught at the university. I did teach Latin

American colonial and national periods in those days. But spending

your life in a narrow field was not for me. In fact at one point we

invited a person in for a job interview for a place in the Latin

American history department at the university and he had done research on the

border lands between the United States and Mexico, Caribbean and Chile

and he they decided that they didn't want to higher him because his

scholarship was too immature. He hadn't dealt settled down into what

area he wanted to do research in.

When you went to conferences, the point was to attack other

people to defend your own work or for them to attack you to prove that you

could defend your own. Which is what happens if you get your Ph.D. in

any case because your dissertation which has got to be absolutely

original research is going to be attacked whether they want to or not

by five different professors who will sit there and test your

knowledge as well as argue your positions. Now, that's not in a

science. That's in the social sciences. So that kind of animosity

certainly in 1950 was confronted by Velikovsky. He went out and

wrote Earth in Collision to try and defend his points of view.

Obviously it didn't help a lot, but the controversy helped produce a movie that, of

course, has been redone recently right afterwards in part called War of

the Worlds. That's another story-- obviously HG Wells story written in the 1890s, but

that's -- in any case in response more directly to your commentary on

his dealing with the Bible.

At Ohlone College, about a year or two into being here

originally, I thought about producing a special book of readings for

western civilization which would deal with controversial history by

historians who did research. Who were within limitations people who

just didn't speculation, but even with a little speculation and allow

for critical thinking and inquiry questions. To find out whether or

not there was a market for it, we had a great Dean of Instruction

at the time. He was willing the pay for the research which meant

sending out letters to other professors at the community college and

some universities to find out if they were interested. And one of the

letters I got back attacking the whole sense of Velikovsky was from a

professor and I don't remember what community college it was now or

university -- he -- I'm not sure it was a university or a CC, but he

said using Velikovsky was promoting religion that he was nothing but a

theologist. Because of his use of trying to identify why events

occurred in the Bible. Yet, he also admitted to never having read it

because it wasn't be worth reading because it was only theology. And

that kind of close mindedness in the historian having getting numerous

letters from people who didn't want to touch on controversy in the

classroom. So yes I agree it is somewhat unique for is to say hey, as

a historian, forgetting even being a scientist, hey look, the Bible

may have some validity to it as a story but there may be other

explanations. There were those who felt that he was questioning faith

with his explanation for the parting of the Red Sea.

You notice I don't answer questions in little simple answers.

Hopefully we provided you a little future because I know there are a

couple of you here that plan to go to graduate school here in the

future where professors will often try to turn you into doctors. So

if you're taking his classes, you should come out researching in the

same narrow area that he did, so he can steal your research and put it

in his own name. Notice we're dealing with a little elements of

history here because this is more of an advanced class than just the

basic American history course, I would think.

Any other comments or issues you come across or dealt with?

A Reading it, I thought he was just some crazy guy. But then wow,

he got some of the things right as well as Venus was really hot and

wasn't cold and a few other things and that surprised me.

THE PROFESSOR: One of the things to note is one of the theories

that I came up in developing his complete theory came from other so

ass. But the putting it together into the concept that Venus was

basically a comet that settled into orbit and that it pull between

Mars and the Earth created these upheavals was certainly

controversial. I guess that's the term. And while much of it has,

much of the means to what he was developing has proven to have some

validity, the reality is that it does not make the theory correct.

And Carl Sagon who I think died a few careers ago perhaps one of the

best known astronomers who popularized astronomy in the United

States -- how many of you have heard of Carl Sagon? Wrote a couple of

books. And his expertise was Venus and he really hated Velikovsky.

He did two chapters attacking Velikovsky because in a sense he touched

on things perhaps that Carl Sagan not only disagreed with but some of

the things that Velikovsky hit on were things that Sagan had proven

and wanted credit for. So there was a combination of quote/unquote

egos that were involved. Crazy, well, that's another term. Certainly

that's a general term. And how far out really was he?

A I thought that he was rather a genius almost to speak of because

his ideas or his theories caused the scientific community to think

outside of the boundary that they were so well into thinking for a

number of years. He caused them to go outside of their boundaries.

Of course they attacked him because as you pointed out they wanted to

be the originators of this thought, the originators of this theory.

They wanted to have their name attached to some type of a theory about

Venus or Mars or the circumstantial amount of events that happened

around the Bible and so on and so forth, but because he does it and

was not a quote/unquote Ph.D. it was not valid. He was looked at

crazy or should have in the cuckoo how or whatever. His ideas were

really really substantial and caused an up error.

THE PROFESSOR: Caused at least some scientists to think and

analyzed, not all.

A Of courses not.

THE PROFESSOR: Many of them just locked it and didn't bother

reading it. I think that was the issue identified in the reading. I

said I couldn't understand a lot of it either. I think the point is,

it did open -- not only did it open up some scientists this to

thinking about it, but social scientists and scientists ban to produce

works on Velikovsky's theory. And there's still one journal out there

that deals with attacks and support of Velikovsky's view. So there is

a video tape in the library by a gentlemen who lives in Newark who

knew Velikovsky which means that he's actually a little bit older than

me, I think, not a lot. And I had him come to class and to discuss

and answer questions. Well actually I think I did it for two years

and we video taped it and it was very interesting to deal with. There

were things in the theory that he disagreed with in the overall

picture, but he edited one of the journals and he himself was a

chemist, retired chemist. So again, yeah, sometimes they did project

it and of course he did write a number of books most of which if any

of you ever have time which is difficult to time as students, I know.

I put years ago in the library. We have I think all of cell cuff

ski's book in the library. The journals I think I still have in my

office. I don't think I put those in the library.

Anyone else? I think the thing as a historian that interested me

the most was his redating of history. And arguing that we dated

ancient history and ancient history has been controlled by

Egyptologists. That somewhere in the early CE period and Egyptian

historian created 30 dynasties. What's a dynasty? Anyone?

A dynasty is a group of kings or queens royal families and

they're of the same heritage and family. So when a new dynasty comes

in, it means somebody from a different bloodline. So the dynasties

can change from a short period of time to hundreds of years. So with

these ruling dynasties, they created 30 of them up through the CE

period, meaning AD for those that haven't yet followed the book's

approach from the common era or year of our Lord depending on how you

want to look at it. And what he argued is that ancient history from

Mesopotamia to Greece to roam, that they tied it to dynasties that

were perhaps invented or not there or not there as long. And

therefore the dating of ancient history can be off by as much,

according to Velikovsky and a few years, as 600 years. And one of the

things he does identify which is interesting is that we have a gap in

Greece Greek history between the Trojan war -- you've all herd of

Trojan, prophylactics. Yeah, I got the laugh. You've all heard of

the Trojan war. Did you see that bad movie?

A Troy.

A I liked that movie.

THE PROFESSOR: God a controversy even on movies. I love the way

Brad Pitt can jump.

Q Did you see his butt?

THE PROFESSOR: :0) I'm trying to see if I've seen the new Alexander

or not. I think I saw the old one. The movie that was -- in fact I'm

blocking that one. The one what was the name of it, the one with King

Arthur, the new one that they did.

A King Arthur.

THE PROFESSOR: Was it called King Arthur?

A Yeah.

THE PROFESSOR: That one was really off the history. I don't

mind them going a little off the history. But this was too much!

Back to the subject. Between the Trojan war and Homer, the so

called blind poet who finally put it into writing, this is a gap of is

within the range of 400 years. And we call that period because

there's so little knowledge known about it, the dark ages of Greece.

And what Velikovsky argued is that actually Homer was fairy close to

the Trojan war and we didn't have that trucks of the Greek Mycenaean

culture. The Mycenaean culture of the era of the Trojan war matched

into what we later called the archaic Greece. It really wasn't a gap.

It just never existed and they had to fit into the Egyptian dynasties.

Therefore not only do we have questions on some of the dating of the

ancient history but the translation of when events occur become

deficit. And so you will see if you read beyond the textbook that you

have, you will often see times 100 or 200 years in the difference of

the dating given. And you'll see different spellings sometimes in the

names as well of the people of the leader, because they're being

translated from the cuneiform or hieroglyphics that are not our

alphabet. And so there may be an A. There could be a U. This can be

an E. They're are values. Perhaps the most difficult ancient

language was translate was the hue brew because in Hebrew in its

writing, there were no vowels. They were all consonants and people

new which vowels to put in there. For years, for example, we thought

that God's name as translated was Jehovah. And the term Jehovah was

used up until 50 years go as a translation for the name used in the

Bible. And today of course the more common usage putting in a

different variation of vowels with the consonants is anybody? I can't

way. How many of have heard the use of Yahweh for God? Okay.

Y-A-H-W-E.

A E-H.

THE PROFESSOR: Again, please bear with me. My spelling is bad

as it is. Sometimes it's not that it's just a different have

difference that you may see in the textbook. We are now going into,

which I suspect you're aware of, the more settled civilizations, river

valley civilizations, specifically of Mesopotamia and Egypt. With

that, we have at least written records as I identified in the last

lecture. We were able to translate the languages because of stones

that were found or inscriptions that were found that included

languages that we presently know. For example, we had the Rosetta

stone that was translated I think it was about 1830, but picked up at

the turn of the 19th century by Napoleon's forces while they were

there and it had a rudimentary form of Greek on it so they were able

to translate the hieroglyphics into the Hieratic which was the more

alphabet kind of Egyptian writing. And then in the Mesopotamia reason

they have the Behistun B-E-H-I-S-T-U-N found with the Acadian

cuneiform and it had another language Elamite I guess it was

called and Persian. So that translation gave us at least the

fundamental ability to read those languages.

Q Were these languages the same languages by the time era of linear

A and B?

THE PROFESSOR: Within the same basic range. Linear A and linear B

for those of you are not aware of it was the language used by the

ancient Greeks and Crete. We didn't know that. But linear B was --

was it linear B? Linear B was translated and came out to be the Greek

based language from the island of Crete or the Minoan civilization.

The cuneiform and hieroglyphics were basically earlier. There has not

been a common stone found. And linear A, I understand they're

beginning to get some translation out of it but at the present time

has not been fully translated.

A Yeah.

THE PROFESSOR: So in response directly to the question, same

time period? We're dealing with about 2,000 to about 1200 with linear

A and B. In the cuneiform and hieroglyphics we begin to see the

beginnings of those writings at about 4,000 BCE to. Some people would

say within 3300, three how, but within that range. And again what we

have learned as well is that the cuneiform is mostly record keeping,

but a few fours have been found T Egyptian hieroglyphics had far more

dealing with people's every day lives and details of it, not just

record keeping. So we do know perhaps a bit more about the Egyptian

civilization from the translations. We've made a lot of assumptions

about the Minoan civilization from the rear view mirror rooms as well

and from the drawings on the walls.

We pointed out earlier that the settlements along the river

valleys came about in part because -- well, maybe I didn't clarify

before as well -- because the first growth of acknowledge culture and

settlements took place on the plateaus where the melting of the ice

betters began to provide a more fertile land. But as the plateaus

began to dry up as well as climatic change at around 5,000 from where

we now know the Egyptians came from, the Libyan desert -- I'm looking

for my little pointer here. We know that this area was extremely

fertile and probably these hire lands here produced the first elements

of what was and going to be ancient Egypt. And as the land dried up

and of course there's a lot of oil there to indicate that this was

forested at one time, people moved into the nail river valley and from

the plateaus of Persia they moved into the Tigress and Euphrates and

Tigress river veil. Now, this little section here wasn't really here.

The Euphrates and Tigress entered correct directly into the Red Sea.

This is a development with the settlement of the soil that's brought

down over the few thousand years since then.

Somewhere at around 5,000 we begin to see the settlements in the

river valleys and the use of agriculture and domestication of animals.

What I want to do today is talk about geographic determinism

translates to the belief that our culture, our lives, the way we look

at thing is largely determined by the topography, the climate, the

environment, the physical environment around us. Even our religions

and personalities, the way we look at things, as is often said that

when the sun comes out in Seattle become depressed because they know

it's going to rain again soon. I don't know how true that is. I've

been to Seattle, but -- all the people there seem depressed all the

time. And certainly there's got to be certain fears when you live in

a city that's below sea level protected by levies. I don't know.

There's a certain fear that we have in our lives pertaining to

earthquakes. Again we tend to dominate our environment or at least

believe we do. Obviously there are questions about whether or not we

are changing the environment with global warming and other kinds of

things. And in fact there are those now blaming the hurricane

increase in the last 10 years on global warming. And with the Bush

administration as a going attacked right now for not taking global

warming seriously and they're being blamed or hurricane Katrina. I

think we're pushing there personally. Democrats are getting very

very -- they're looking for any excuse perhaps to blame Bush,

especially in these quote/unquote red states. A little off, but back

to the world.

In the times of ancient Egypt and Mesopotamia, the environmental

control was limited. And in the early settlements near nonexistent.

There's no doubt that dramatic change has taken place because of such

things as air conditions. I talked about that later. But we have

difference have differences in the two river valleys. And it is

argued by many many historians that the cultures of the two areas

differed so dramatically because of the physical land and the climate

of the two regions to bring about two very distinctive river valley

civilizations that also had many things in common because they were

both civilizations built on river valleys.

Obviously the river valleys produced fertility. And part of that

fertility came from blooding. And as we know both areas controlled

some of that by producing canals, dams, and of course irrigation

ditches. But they also, both civilizations, developed calendars in an

attempt to deal with the seasons. The difference being that the

floodings were fairly regular in the Nile River valley and extremely

irregular in the Tigress few 48 tease Mesopotamian river valleys.

Translation, well example first.

I come from the East Coast. When I first came to cam California

I saw the weather change or saw fog in the morning. And on the East

Coast that could mean we were going to have rain because rain could

come at any time of the year. Out here, you have a rainy season You

basically know when it's going to rain. Last year was a little

different thanks to the Bush administration and global warming.

What we found here is that the rains came irregularly up in the

mountains here. And of course this became snow up in the Armenian and

Caucasian mountains and the melting varied. And so while they were

somewhat seasonal flooding, they were far more unpredictable and

depending on the amount of know melting would depend on how much

flooding too many. Meaning more quote/unquote insecurity of life

about when the floods were going to come and how the control the

harvests, well better said the planting.

In Egypt or the Nile river valley, the flooding took place

because of the highlands of the Congo region. And there basically

they were brought on by the rain forest storms. And the floodings

were very regular because there was basically a rainy season and a dry

season. And so in Egypt there was greater security because they

pretty well knew not only when it was going to flood, but how much

because they were very very consistent. And therefore again brought

on a certain level of security.

By the way, I should point out, that one of the things problems I

have when I used to teach high school. The Nile River does not flow

up, no matter how you look at the map. And Tigress/Euphrates doesn't

flow down. They're flowing from highlands to low lands. High school

students look at the map and how does a river flow up? It doesn't.

And by the way, one of the things we'll touch on, when we speak of

upper Egypt, we're talking about down here on the lower part of the

map because upper Egypt is where the rivers are starting and upper

Egypt the lower part of the. Sorry to have to do that, but just in

case when you get into some of the readings. The land along the Nile

River in basically dry outside the Nile River valley. As I identified

the other day in the British museum there was a body buried around

5,000 BCE that still has its skin and hair on it because of the

dryness. Therefore, they saw preservation of life. The area around

the Tigress Euphrates is much more humid. When burying things in the

soil around that region -- it's dryer today -- meant that it would

disintegrate very rapidly. It did not last. So this is a sense of

more permanence in ancient Egypt, less permanence in the Mesopotamian

region.

Egypt has natural boundaries that protected it from outside

invaders. The mediterranean sea was not easy to transverse,

especially since in the early years of ancient Egypt they did not have

massive boats to move armies with. The Sinai desert, Sinai peninsula

here made it difficult specially for armies until the modern Israeli

movements based on the new technology and the airplanes. It was very

difficult to cross from what we call the levant L-E-V-A-N-T. The

levant is the area referred to as Palestine, Phoenicia here in part,

Lebanon, and Syria. This area hear here is called the levant. It was

difficult for invaders to move through until a group of Indo-European

people who supposedly we think came from this area of central Asia

into eastern Europe moved through all of the regions even into India

and these Aryan people as they were called we're not too sure where

they originally came from, came into Egypt on horse drawn chariots

around -- and I'm going to give you a date again that might differ

from others -- 1780 BCE. They're known as the Hyksos H-Y-K-S-O-S.

The Hyksos and Indo-European people were able to conquer Egypt because

they could move across the desert and masters but in the early years

of Egypt protected. And of course to the West, the Libyan dessert.

Now, what about the south? Here we had what is known as

cataracts. Rapids, very difficult to come through the planes and more

so to come up the Nile because of the flowing rapid movement and the

sort of small rocks that cause the -- what do they call, a five. I

think for those people that go crafting a five. It was very dangerous

to use the Nile River the from the south. Egypt had basically a

unifying civilization culture. It didn't have many foreigners coming

in to change it's culture over almost 3,000 years. It remained very

very common -- that's not the word I'm looking for -- very

homogeneous. It stayed pretty much the same. It was not a

heterogeneous civilization as Mesopotamia. Was. Mesopotamia was open

flat plains. From all over invaders came in, battles took place.

They were constantly at war and there were constantly did different

cultures moving in, fighting conquering and interbreeding. Where is

in see I didn't wants the one main culture. Yes, there is some

diversity that is going to come in as the Bantu the more direct

African people and the Hamitic people are moved in from the plains of

Ethiopia and of course some Hamitic people moving in, as the story

goes, with Joseph, his brothers, the Biblical story. So there are

some mixtures. And of course the Egyptians do though large numbers of

Nubians N-U-B-I-A-N-S which come from southern Africa and are

basically Bantu peoples.

The insecurity then you are not lies the culture of Mesopotamia

and security and stability is the basis for the culture of the Nile

River valley. And what I want to do Friday when I start out is talk

about how the religions differed based on the geography, how they're

outlook on like differed based on the geography. And another element,

I almost forgot it. Egypt had especially in the south lots of rock to

build with, to move. The pyramids were built from stone, rock that

was moved from south Egypt. There is very little rock and most of the

building in the Mesopotamia area is clay. As I indicated the other

day talking about Joshua, the fact of the matter is that clay

disintegrates unless of course it's baked. Hard to bake a building.

Where rock also provides stone provides permanence. And so that whole

sense of permanence versus impermanence. We're going to see in the

differences in the cultures. Okay. See you Friday.

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