Plutarch, Demeter, and genetically-modified food

We have been examining together the arguments of Plutarch in his two (now fragmentary) discourses entitled "On the Eating of Flesh" (here is a link to part one and here is a link to part two). 

Some of Plutarch's arguments include the assertion that the eating of flesh is unnatural, that it is cruel, that it is unnecessary, that a large amount of the meat which cost another being its life is routinely wasted and left uneaten, that it is unhealthy and leads to grossness of body and mind and spirit, that animals raised for food are sometimes degraded and tortured in most inhumane fashion, and finally that we should be cautious of killing and eating animals in case there is any truth to doctrine of reincarnation or what he calls the possibility of "the migration of souls from body to body" (even if we are not convinced of this teaching, he says, the uncertainty should urge us to err on the side of caution).

In addition to all of the above arguments, one argument which comes quite early in the first discourse is the argument that the slaughter of animals for food betrays a lack of faith and gratitude to the gods responsible for the provision of bread and wine: Demeter and Dionysus.  Plutarch writes:

Why slander the earth by implying that she cannot support you? Why impiously offend law-giving Demeter and bring shame upon Dionysus, lord of the cultivated vine, the gracious one, as if you did not receive enough from their hands?

This is a very interesting argument, and one which should give us pause even in our jaded modern world.   While many modern readers might wonder how this argument carries any weight with moderns who do not believe in the existence of beings named Demeter and Dionysus, we should be careful not to dismiss this argument too quickly.  

First, it is quite possible that the ancients had a much more sophisticated understanding of the "powers" responsible for the production of bread and wine, which they named gods (or, in ancient Egypt, the neters or neteru).  Second, it is very possible to translate this argument of Plutarch's into whatever personal faith one may happen to believe and see that his caution about having a lack of faith and a lack of gratitude might indeed be worth considering on many levels.

Even setting aside for the moment the central thesis of Plutarch's argument, which questions the necessity and morality of killing animals for food, this "faith-based" portion of his argument would seem to apply quite fittingly to the debate surrounding genetically-modified plants for food.  We might modify Plutarch's argument somewhat and update it for this very important modern issue and imagine him asking:

Oh blessed and beloved of the gods, you who live now, what an age has fallen to your lot wherein you enjoy and assimilate a heritage abounding in good things! How many plants grow for you! What vintages you gather! What wealth you may draw from the plains and what pleasant sustenance from trees! Why, you may even live luxuriously without the alteration of plants in order to more readily spray them with insecticides and herbicides. But you who live now, what madness, what frenzy drives you to the pollution of mixing bacterial DNA and viral triggers into your corn and your canola, you who have such a superfluity of necessities? Why slander the earth by implying that she cannot support you? Why impiously offend law-giving Demeter, as if you did not receive perfectly good natural corn and soybeans from her hands? Are you not ashamed to mingle domestic crops with bioengineered monstrosities?

As we approach the holiday of Thanksgiving, in which we remember the fact that we should not and must not take our food for granted, and in which we reflect with thankfulness upon the abundance that we have been provided by a power that works through nature to meet our physical needs, the questions of Plutarch seem startlingly appropriate.

Interestingly enough, the authors of Hamlet's Mill find an ancient connection between the goddess Demeter and the mythological cornucopia, which is also a common Thanksgiving motif in the United States.  They write:

And here there is a proposition to be made.  In order to evaluate it, one has to consider the fact that alpha Aurigae is Capella, the Goat.  This remarkable figure was the nurse of infant Zeus in the Dictaean Cave, and out of her skin Hephaistos was later to make the Aegis: Amaltheia.  Capella-Amaltheia's Horn was the Horn of Plenty for the immortals, and the source of Nectar and Ambrosia.  Mortals called it "second table," dessert so to speak.  But there are two shreds of Orphic tradition which seem to be revealing, both handed down to us by Proclus.  The first says that Demeter separated the food of the gods, splitting it up, as it were, into a liquid and a solid "part," that is, into Ambrosia and Nectar.  The second declares that Rhea became Demeter after she had borne Zeus.  And Eleusis, for us a mere "place name," was understood by the Greeks as "Advent" -- the New Testament uses the word for the Advent of Christ.  Demeter, formerly Rhea, wife of Kronos, when she "arrived," split up the two kinds of divine food having its source in alpha Aurigae.  In other words, it is possible that these traditions about Demeter refer to the decisive shifting of the equinoctial colure to alpha Aurigae.  259.

In order to follow this line of argument (the authors of Hamlet's Mill are somewhat famous for leaving out some of the "stepping stones" that might help their readers to follow them from one side of the river to the other side, so to speak), it is helpful to understand what a "colure" is (this is explained, with numerous diagrams, in my actual Mathisen Corollary book), as well as to understand the mechanism of precession (which is described in this video using a metaphor of a dining room, which should be helpful). 

The short translation of their argument (I believe) is the assertion that the myths linking Demeter to Rhea (the wife of Kronos or Saturn, who ruled the Golden Age, and who is associated with Orion which is the constellation associated with Osiris) help explain her connection to the constellation of Auriga the Charioteer.  As this previous blog post explains (and shows with some diagrams), the action of precession slowly replaced Gemini and Orion (the rulers of the Golden Age) with Auriga and Taurus (who are located ahead of them in the sky -- preceding them, which is the origin of the word "precession), and this is why the authors of Hamlet's Mill spend so much time on chariot myths (such as the myth of Phaethon), which also relate to the end of the Golden Age brought about by the action of precession.

Thus the tradition that Rhea became Demeter who was then associated with the brightest star in Auriga must point to this transformation as taking place at the end of the Golden Age.  Demeter is associated with "separating" or "splitting up" the food of the gods -- she divides things up (note that in the most well-known myth about Demeter, she is responsible for "dividing up" the year into winter and summer).  She divides and she measures out (her name De-meter incorporates both of these functions, as the prefix di- has to do with division or "two-ness" and the word "meter" has to do with measuring; note that her former husband Kronos is also associated with "giving the measures").

Thus, through a rather esoteric line of reasoning, we can see the importance of Demeter's connection with the brightest star of Auriga, the star that was associated with the cornucopia or Horn of Plenty.  So Plutarch's argument (where we note that he calls Demeter "law-giving Demeter," which could also be translated as "rule-giving Demeter" or "measure-giving Demeter") that eating unnatural foods represents lack of faith and gratitude to Demeter, the giver of the Horn of Plenty, carries even more significance and symbol.

It is certainly an argument that bears careful consideration.  Happy Thanksgiving!

Where did domestic grains and domestic animals come from in the first place? (Atlantis)

In the previous post, we examined Plutarch's twin discourses "On the Eating of Flesh," in which the ancient philosopher and priest put forth several powerful arguments (in vivid and graphic language) against the consumption of animal meat for food.  

We saw that in his opening sentences, Plutarch "turns the corner" on those who ask what could have inspired Pythagoras (who was famously vegetarian according to tradition and according to the Pythagorean school of philosophers who followed his hallowed teachings) to abstain from eating plants, by asking (and I paraphrase) "you should instead ask what came over some deluded and misguided human to begin eating meat in the first place!" 

Such a response argues that it is the eating of meat which is the aberration, and the plant-based diet which is the norm.  It was certainly designed to startle Plutarch's ancient listeners, just as it startles modern readers, who take the consumption of meat for granted much like Plutarch's audience apparently did, although perhaps for different reasons.

According to modern dogma, mankind evolved from primitive "hunter-gatherers," whose nomadic lifestyle involved following game animals from one place to another, until mankind finally figured out agriculture and settled down to enjoy the consistent diet of grains that it produced to supplement the original meat-based plan.  Believers in this modern orthodoxy would probably say that Plutarch was woefully ignorant of the fact that hunting for meat came first, and that his rejoinder to the question of eating flesh is completely incorrect.  

They would say that eating meat was part of the earlier diet, and that vegetarianism (such as Pythagoras taught) was a more recent development, in contrast to Plutarch's assertion that vegetarianism is normal and eating meat a later abnormality.  He was too ignorant to be aware of mankind's long history of primitive hunter-gatherer existence.

Had Plutarch possessed a way of accessing Wikipedia, he could have seen the entry for hunter-gatherer, where we read that:

A hunter-gatherer or forager^[1] society is one in which most or all food is obtained from wild plants and animals, in contrast to agricultural societies which rely mainly on domesticated species.

Hunting and gathering was the ancestral subsistence mode of Homo, and all modern humans were hunter-gatherers until around 10,000 years ago. Following the invention of agriculture hunter-gatherers have been displaced by farming or pastoralist groups in most parts of the world. Only a few contemporary societies are classified as hunter-gatherers, and many supplement, sometimes extensively, their foraging activity with farming and/or keeping animals.  The earliest humans probably lived primarily on scavenging, not actual hunting. Early humans in the Lower Paleolithic lived in mixed habitats which allowed them to collect seafood, eggs, nuts, and fruits besides scavenging. Rather than killing large animals themselves for meat, they used carcasses of large animals killed by other predators or carcasses from animals that died by natural causes.  [Wikipedia, "hunter-gatherer," as accessed on November 19, 2012].

Of course, the above assertions describe one possible theory of mankind's ancient past, and the evidence in their favor should be carefully considered and weighed against other possibilities, but they are by no means completely certain, regardless of the confident (or even arrogant) tone in which they are usually presented to the reader of college or high-school textbooks (and online encyclopedia services).  

If all modern humans were hunter-gatherers until around 10,000 years ago, then Plutarch is completely incorrect in saying that the one who first "touched his mouth to gore and brought his lips to the flesh of a dead creature" was the aberrant one.  According to the above assertions, domesticated grains and animals came later, but they only replaced the consumption of wild plants and animals, whether those animals were the scavenged carcasses killed by other predators, or fresh kills hunted down by the humans themselves.  

Plutarch implies that the first taste of meat was an "accident" introduced into the normal diet of abundant grains and fruits offered by Demeter and Dionysus, but those who accept the hunter-gatherer dogma concerning mankind's ancient past must believe that Plutarch was sadly ignorant and therefore completely deluded and mistaken.

In fact, there is now an entire lifestyle and dietary plan built around returning to the eating habits of this imagined pre-agricultural human past, called the "Paleo Diet," which is billed as the "healthiest diet" and one which "mimics the diets of our caveman ancestors."  Based on the supposed food supply of those "hunter-gatherer ancestors" who lived between 2.6 million years ago and the beginning of the agricultural revolution, it embraces fresh meats and "fresh fruits, vegetables, seeds, nuts, and healthful oils."

Since those who believe in this evolutionary narrative of mankind's past do not typically believe in the reincarnation of the soul (if they believe in the existence of the soul at all or its continuation after the death of the body), they are probably not greatly swayed by Plutarch's concerns (citing other ancient philosophers) that the possibility of reincarnation (or, as Plutarch puts it, "the migration of souls from body to body") should make us hesitant to slay other sentient creatures for food when we have abundant plant-based food available that does not involve the shedding of blood to obtain.  

The supporters of this newly-popular "Paleo diet" also do not seem to consider the possibility that the entire "hunter-gatherer" narrative might be a mistaken fabrication of modern Darwinian mythology.  In other words, there is at least as much evidence that suggests that ancient civilizations did not arise through a process of stumbling towards domestic plant and animal foods but rather by a process that completely confounds the entire foundation of modern evolutionary anthropology.

For example, in her book Approaching Chaos (discussed in previous posts such as "The shamanic tradition in ancient Egypt," "Stonehenge acoustics, and beyond," and "Arkaim, gold, and the ancient shamanic rituals") Lucy Wyatt presents arguments that domesticating crop grains and cattle, sheep and goats would have taken so many years of deliberate and sophisticated and directed breeding that hunter-gatherers would probably have abandoned the project long before they ever got to a workable semblance of domesticated plants or animals.  She also presents convincing evidence that the neolithic lifestyle would have been significantly more difficult than nomadic hunter-gathering, not less.

Beginning on page 48 of her book, she writes:

It would be interesting to know whether anyone has recently tried to naturally 'evolve' wild grasses into something approaching modern cereals.  How many seasons would you have to wait before einkorn (a form of early wheat) began to taste vaguely of wheat and become useful as a food staple?  Even more suspicious is the fact that what defines a cereal as domesticated is not so much the taste but the hallmark of civilization, namely convenience in harvesting and sowing. 

In terms of cereal, the genetic change is in the germination of the seed and in the rachis, the hinge between the seed head and the stalk.  In the wild plant the rachis is brittle and breaks easily in the wind, allowing the plant to spread its seeds as soon as it is ripe.  A domestic version with a stronger rachis waits for the harvester to pick it.  Likewise, a domestic seed waits to be sown before germinating.  [. . .]  One expert in this area, Gordon Hillman, has calculated that the rare genetic mutant, the seed head without a brittle rachis, has a probability of occurring only once or twice for every '2-4 million brittle individuals' and that it would then take 20 cycles of harvesting for these non-brittle seed heads to finally dominate the crop [Miten, 2004, pp36-37].  Given the rarity of these seed heads, why would anyone bother to wait, especially with hungry families to feed?  48-49.

You can read more of Lucy's discussion of this practical problem to the modern fable of man's supposed transition from millenia of hunter-gathering to domestication of grains in an article she published here on the Graham Hancock website. 

Similarly, Lucy points out the difficulties with the breezy narrative describing the supposed domestication of wild animals during the transition from paleolithic to neolithic:

The domestication of animals was as strange as the modification of cereals.  Not only did animals change shape -- as prehistorian Steve Mithen points out [Mithen, 2004, p34]: 'All animal species become reduced in size when domesticated variants arise' -- but they also became conveniently and usefully docile.  Is evolution capable of producing the necessary change in the fundamental nature of an animal, even if a cow is still recognizably related to an auroch (considered to be the precursor to a cow)?  

Anyone who claims that farm animals evolved out of tamed wild ones has clearly never worked with animals.  Taming might conceivably work with a jungle fowl having its wings clipped and being bred into a chicken -- although even a chicken can be vicious -- but not with a cow, let alone a bull or a horse.  Even domesticated modern versions of these larger animals are still capable of killing a person and demand enormous respect.  They are too powerful and dangerous to be capable of being bred in captivity from wild and then turned into the sufficiently docile creatures necessary for farming.  

If domestication was so easy, why has the zebra never been domesticated? [. . .]  Even Julius Caesar knew that wild aurochs could not be tamed [Fagan, 2004, p156].  So how can one believe the nonsense that hunter-gatherers managed to tame aurochs because they 'culled more intemperate beasts and gained control of the herd' when they came into close contact with them during droughts? [Fagan, 2004, pp157-158].  

If it really was possible to tame wild animals simply by penning them, over how many generations would it take for them to become no longer wild?  Why would anyone wait to find out?  Surely, if you breed a wild animal with more of the same species, the result is still wild? [. . .]

There is of course the usual 'chance mutant gene' explanation.  We are given the impression that, around the time of these early experiments Stone Age man was able to spot a genetic variation in the wild herds he followed and was capable of realizing that a particular animal was carrying a mutant gene that one day would make a 'useful cow.'  But while we might know what would make a 'useful cow,' how could Stone Age man know what the desired outcome was?  How suspicious that the outcome was so convenient and so useful.  49-51.

These objections should indicate that any reflexive dismissal of Plutarch's assertion that vegetarianism is in fact mankind's original diet and that meat came later, based on what our school masters tell us about mankind's supposed ancient hunter-gatherer timeline, may be overly hasty.

Similarly, the Wikipedia assertion (which only echoes the modern dogma published in current academic texts on the subject) that "all modern humans were hunter-gatherers until 10,000 years ago" certainly runs into problems when it tries to grapple with the abundant evidence attesting to the incredible achievements of the ancient Egyptians, whose civilization apparently popped up right out of these endless millennia of nomadic hunter-gathering and started creating monuments evincing mathematical and philosophical knowledge that in some ways still surpasses our own.

In his incredible 1976 text Serpent in the Sky, John Anthony West explains the evidence that completely refuses to fit into the orthodox timelines of conventional anthropological orthodoxy:

Egyptologists postulate an indeterminate (and indeterminable) period of 'development' prior to the First Dynasty.  This assumption is supported by no evidence; indeed the evidence, such as it is, appears to contradict the assumption.  Egyptian civilisation, taken field by field and discipline by discipline (even according to an orthodox understanding of its achievement), renders unsatisfactory the assumption of a brief development period.  The much vaunted flowering of Greece two thousand years later pales into insignificance in the face of a civilisation which, supposedly starting from a crude neolithic base, produced in a few centuries a complete system of hieroglyphs, the most sophisticated calendrical system ever developed, an effective mathematics, a refined medicine, a total mastery of the gamut of arts and crafts and the capacity to construct the largest and most accomplished stone buildings ever built by man.  The cautiously expressed astonishment of modern Egyptologists hardly matches the real magnitude of the mystery.  196.

Further, Mr. West along with Robert Schoch have famously discussed the abundant evidence which argues that Egyptian civilization may have roots stretching much further back into antiquity than orthodox historians are willing to allow.  Their discussion of the question of the age of the Great Sphinx of Giza and some of its attendant megalithic temple complex indicates that it may be orders of magnitude older than even the First Dynasty (conventionally believed to have started around 3100 BC).

Mr. West's discussion of the misty antiquity before the First Dynasty is significant, and touches on many of the same difficult issues raised in the discussion of domestication presented above.  He notes:

The archaeological record for the period preceding Dynastic Egypt is confused and incomplete.  An number of neolithic cultures are thought to have existed, more or less simultaneously, from about 6000 BC onwards.  These cultures built nothing permanent, apparently, and their arts and crafts were simple and rudimentary: there is no archaeological evidence that would support the notion of a prior great civilization -- with one possible exception.

These simple cultures had cultivated cereal grains and domesticated animals.  The manner in which wild grains were originally cultivated and wild animals permanently domesticated is one of those questions that cannot be satisfactorily answered, but a period of long development is assumed.  The fact is that throughout recorded history, no new animals have been domesticated; our domestic beasts have been around since the beginning, and no new grains have been cultivated. 

The cultivation of grain and the domestication of animals probably represent -- after the invention of language -- the two most significant human achievements.  We can fly to the moon today, but we cannot domesticate the zebra, or any other animal.  We do not know how the original domestication was done, we can only guess.  To attribute these immense achievements to people who could only chip flint and work crude mats and pottery is perhaps premature.  It is plausible to suggest that, like the Sphinx and its temple complex, these inventions dated from an earlier and higher civilization.  228-9.

If Egypt was the recipient of some unknown and incredibly ancient and incredibly advanced civilization which existed long before 6000 BC, then the current human timeline of academic orthodoxy (and its unbroken centuries of mostly nomadic hunter-gatherer societies) is wrong.  

If so, and if Egypt was the recipient of the ancient knowledge of that lost civilization, and if Egypt's priests preserved a tradition of abstaining from the eating of flesh (a tradition which descended from that ancient advanced civilization), then Plutarch -- who was after all recording what he had been taught by those Egyptian priensts -- may know something more than the peddlers of the modern evolutionary storyline (a storyline which may be correct but is certainly not the only storyline that fits the evidence, and in fact seems to have some serious trouble with some pretty extensive evidence that argues for a different timeline).

All this is not to suggest that those who follow the "Paleo Diet" and any other diet which rejects the twisted and damaging "modern industrial diet" (which is really a product of the World War II and post-war era in industrialized nations, "led" by the "innovations" of the US in this regard) are not able to achieve health benefits due to the abandonment of the worst aspects of the typical US diet.  

However, the advocates of that primarily meat-based diet should consider the possibility that their health improvements are less based on their consumption of meat and more due to the rejection of certain other modern dietary staples, and should consider the arguments that Plutarch makes against the shedding of blood in order to eat meat that comes from other sentient and conscious beings.  They should also consider the possibility that the storyline of "paleolithic cavemen" pursuing a hunter-gatherer lifestyle for a couple million years before suddenly settling down and developing in fairly short order civilizations such as ancient Egypt might be seriously flawed, and that we should be careful before basing our entire lives on a historical model that may be nothing more than a modern evolutionary fiction.

In fact, based on the arguments above, it is at least possible that Plutarch is the one who was right, and that there existed an incredibly advanced ancient civilization which bequeathed to us domesticated grains for food, and domesticated animals for companionship and assistance in farming, gifts which could not have been developed in the manner that evolutionary professors since the end of the 1800s have been teaching that they were developed.  If the testimony of the priests of Egypt is correct, then this ancient civilization taught at least some form of vegetarianism, and the subsequent lapses into more primitive hunter-gathering and other forms of meat-eating were a devolution from the original plan.

Thus we see that Plutarch's two essays "On the eating of flesh" are incredibly important, important even beyond the very important question of what kind of diet is best for mankind.  For they open a fascinating window onto the question of mankind's ancient past, and where the grains we eat and the domestic animals we take for granted came from in the first place.

Plutarch's "On the Eating of Flesh"

We have already seen in a previous post that the ancient historian Plutarch, a Platonist philosopher and initiated priest of Delphi, explained why the priests of Isis abstained from eating the flesh of various animals, as well abstaining from wearing clothing made from animal matter including wool.  

The Plutarch passage discussed previously came from his discourse on Isis and Osiris.  However, Plutarch also wrote two other more thorough discussions of the question of abstaining from the eating of meat, entitled De Esu Carnium, ("On the Eating of Flesh").  Both are fragmentary, meaning that the complete text as composed by the author has been lost to history, but what remains contains some rather forceful argument against the consumption of the meat of animals.

Here is a link to the first discourse: Plutarch,  On the Eating of Flesh, I.

Here is a link to the second: Plutarch,  On the Eating of Flesh, II.

The discourses begin with a series of questions from the author loaded with graphic language and packing quite a punch:

Can you really ask what reason Pythagoras had for abstaining from flesh? For my part I rather wonder both by what accident and in what state of soul or mind the first man who did so, touched his mouth to gore and brought his lips to the flesh of a dead creature, he who set forth tables of dead, stale bodies and ventured to call food and nourishment the parts that had a little before bellowed and cried, moved and lived. How could his eyes endure the slaughter when throats were slit and hides flayed and limbs torn from limb? How could his nose endure the stench? How was it that the pollution did not turn away his taste, which made contact with the sores of others and sucked juices and serums from mortal wounds? 

Later, Plutarch turns his rhetoric up another notch by imagining the reproach that the animals slaughtered for food might offer, if they "could recover feelings and voice," telling those who killed them for food that it was all unnecessary:

Oh blessed and beloved of the gods, you who live now, what an age has fallen to your lot wherein you enjoy and assimilate a heritage abounding in good things! How many plants grow for you! What vintages you gather! What wealth you may draw from the plains and what pleasant sustenance from trees! Why, you may even live luxuriously without the stain of blood.  [. . .] But you who live now, what madness, what frenzy drives you to the pollution of shedding blood, you who have such a superfluity of necessities? Why slander the earth by implying that she cannot support you? Why impiously offend law-giving Demeter and bring shame upon Dionysus, lord of the cultivated vine, the gracious one, as if you did not receive enough from their hands? Are you not ashamed to mingle domestic crops with blood and gore? You call serpents and panthers and lions savage, but you yourselves, by your own foul slaughters, leave them no room to outdo you in cruelty; for their slaughter is their living, yours is a mere appetizer.

In the second discourse on the subject, Plutarch brings up the doctrine of reincarnation, noting other philosophers who make this their main reason for avoiding the consumption of animals for food.  He does not go that far, he says, saying that there is room for doubt about whether souls do in fact "migrate from body to body."  However, he says that because there is enough doubt on either side of the reincarnation question, we should abstain from eating animals just in case, just as a soldier who is unsure whether or not a half-seen figure is friend or foe should err on the side of caution rather than risk killing a friend, saying:

Yet even if the argument of the migration of souls from body to body is not demonstrated to the point of complete belief, there is enough doubt to make us quite cautious and fearful. It is as though in a clash of armies by night you had drawn your sword and were rushing at a man whose fallen body was hidden by his armour and should hear someone remarking that he wasn't quite sure, but that he thought and believed that the prostrate figure was that of your son or brother or father or tent-mate — which would be the better course: to approve a false suspicion and spare your enemy as your friend, or to disregard an uncertain authority and kill your friend as your foe? The latter course you will declare to be shocking. 

This argument may strike modern readers as one that they can safely ignore, especially if they believe that "souls" do not really exist, or cannot survive the death of the body.  However, Chris Carter's excellent and important book Science and the Afterlife Experience contains reports of rather rigorous modern examinations of the question of reincarnation, and some evidence that the possibility should not be hastily dismissed.  

In that book, Chris Carter notes the widespread belief in reincarnation outside of cultures that have historically been heavily influenced by orthodox Christianity, Judaism, and Islam, and also points out that:

at least some Christians believed in reincarnation up until the sixth century.  Although it was not part of official instruction, leaders of the church appear to have tolerated the belief as acceptable, until the Council of Nice in 553 CE. 

and in a footnote to this discussion, Chris Carter points out the following:

there are at least two references to reincarnation in the New Testament.  At one point the disciples ask Jesus if a blind man sinned in a previous life, and Jesus did not rebuke them (John 9:1-2); at another point Jesus describes John the Baptist as the prophet Elijah reborn (Matthew 11:11-15).  18-19 and footnote on 19.

However, it is likely that the disappearance of the doctrine of reincarnation discussed above is connected to the historic decline in vegetarian practice in some parts of the world, as well as the continuation of the practice of vegetarianism among at least some parts of the population in parts of the world that continued to believe in reincarnation (including areas to the east of the lands conquered by the Roman Empire, such as India, Tibet, and China).  

The fact that vegetarianism clearly had some very strong advocates in the west in ancient times and that the practice continued in other parts of the world (such as the lands to the east) may be an important clue, and it may tell us that the most ancient cultures around the world, including apparently the priests of ancient Egypt, taught abstinence from eating meat.  

As Plutarch says at the beginning of his discourses (and I paraphrase), the question might not be "when did vegetarianism begin?" but rather, "When and why was that teaching discarded, and the eating of meat initiated?"

Powerful video from Dr. Terry Wahls, "Minding your Mitochondria"

Above is a powerful video of a TEDx talk given on November 11, 2011 by Dr. Terry Wahls, entitled "Minding your Mitochondria."

In it, she describes how she was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis in 2000, and transitioned to secondary progressive multiple sclerosis in 2003. In the video, she discusses radical changes in diet she began implementing in 2007, which she believes to be directly related to her amazing recovery, a recovery that started within a month of implementing the dietary changes.

The video discusses the importance of our diet, examining the problems with the "modern" or "western" diet, and providing some thought-provoking recommendations about foods and proportions that she selected primarily for their impact on mitochondrial health and myelin production, but which may have other beneficial impacts on overall health and may more closely correspond to the diet we were designed to eat (or, as some believe, that we evolved to eat).

She recommends daily consumption of three cups of green leaves or leafy vegetables, three cups of sulfur-rich vegetables, three cups of colorful vegetables and/or fruits, and daily consumption of grass-fed meats or wild fish. She also recommends weekly consumption of organ meats. One notable point in these recommendations is that there is a host of other literature which points to the importance of all of these items -- none of the food groups recommended should really be too controversial. Writers from Michael Pollan (author of In Defense of Food: an Eater's Manifesto, as well as many other works, who recommends fewer "seed-based" foods and more "leaf-based" foods) to Sally Fallon (author of Nourishing Traditions, which was mentioned in this previous blog post, and which contains an entire section on organ meats and a discussion of their health benefits and value in almost all traditional diets) have argued for the value of the foods that Dr. Wahls discusses in the video above.

We have seen in previous blog posts such as this one and this one that some analysts believe that the cholesterol hypothesis, which undergirds many of the recommendations pushed by government food "allowances," may be dangerously flawed. As Sally Fallon says in the cookbook linked above (published in 1999):

Many of our grandparents will remember the days when liver was served once a week. Establishment nutritionists now recommend we discontinue this healthful practice in order to avoid cholesterol! page 299.

This example illustrates the importance of examining the theories which are handed to us by the establishment, theories which are often prefaced with the words, "Scientists have now proven . . ." Dietary theories are a powerful example of the importance of examining the assumptions and the analysis that underlies the theories that inform our thinking, because diet really is an area in which we all can see that "faulty theories can hurt you." I would argue that theories about the ancient history of the human race are also vitally important, and that faulty theories in that department can also be quite harmful. The same can be said for geological theories as well.

We should all wish Dr. Wahls the very best with her ongoing fight for her own health, as well as with her courageous work in conducting clinical studies to learn more about the interaction of diet and chronic disease and to share this knowledge with the world, all of which is intended to help others.

A series of other related videos is available at Dr. Wahls' website here.



Big "hat tip" to Graham Hancock Message Board member "Ratcho," who shared the link to this video in a Message Board discussion here.

Caution: certain vegetable oils may be harmful when heated

One of the assertions made in the Mathisen Corollary book and throughout this blog is that it appears not only possible but very likely that the widely held beliefs about the geology of the earth (including the tectonic theory) and the history of ancient mankind are completely incorrect.

Many readers may ask themselves, "Is it really possible that so many people, including so many well-trained academicians and researchers, could be wrong?" In light of the implications for Darwinism, some readers have also asked, "Hasn't Darwinism been proven?" -- in other words, isn't the evidence that has led to the conventional theories so strong and so abundant that the theories can be considered fact for all practical purposes?

Some of these arguments are addressed in the dialogue found in the new introduction to the book. Additionally, we have made the analogy to the conventional wisdom which argues that fat and cholesterol are bad for us, a theory that is so widely accepted and which is supported by so many academicians, scientists, and government officials and bureaus that it seems beyond question (see this and this previous post). Those who examine the research that launched the conventional view that fat and cholesterol are harmful might reasonably expect to be asked quite often, "Hasn't the connection between lipids and heart disease and other deadly problems been proven?"

The answer to this question, just as to the question of whether theories about tectonics, Darwinism, or the timeline of mankind's ancient past have been proven beyond the point of reasonable doubt or criticism, is: "Not hardly."

Before revisiting the apparently tangential topic of whether the food advice we have been getting from our government and our schools for fifty years may be not only wrong but harmful, let us first examine a quotation from John Anthony West's magnificent exposition of the theory of R.A. Schwaller de Lubicz, Serpent in the Sky, a work whose importance was briefly discussed in this recent post.

As part of his larger discussion about the fact that we live in a universe composed of energy and wavelengths, which interact with the human body and which have resonances and harmonies at various wavelengths, resonances and harmonies which the ancient Egyptians appear to have perceived and understood to a very advanced degree, Mr. West writes:

Since Einstein's relativity theory it has been known and accepted that matter is a form of energy, a coagulation or condensation of energy. One consequence of this is that, for scientists at any rate, materialism has been a provisionally impossible philosophy, a fact which has done nothing to prevent most scientists from professing it. 120.

While it does not address the lipid hypothesis which alleges a harmful correlation between consumption of fat and cholesterol and circulatory health, Mr. West's book does explore the evidence that the ancient Egyptians possessed a very advanced medical knowledge, as well as the belief expressed by ancient writers that the Egyptians were the healthiest people in the ancient world (137 - 138). It should be clear, however, from the quotation above that the food we eat contains the energy that is transferred to us, energy that is stored in the grapes or the tomatoes or the grains or the animals that we eventually eat, and that paying attention to this connection between matter and energy may be important in all areas of human endeavor, including health and diet.

It is very interesting, then, to note the arguments found in the excellent 1999 book Nourishing Traditions: The Cookbook that Challenges Politically Correct Nutrition and the Diet Dictocrats, by Sally Fallon. There, the author notes that the theory, called the lipid hypothesis, of "a direct relationship between the amount of saturated fat and cholesterol in the diet and the incidence of coronary heart disease" may rest on very questionable interpretation of the data, beginning with the foundational work of Ancel Keys in the 1950s and continuing through the present day (4).

She notes numerous reasons to doubt this hypothesis, including the fact that coronary heart disease was very rare in America before 1920 and the replacement of the consumption of traditional animal fat with the consumption of dietary vegetable oils in the form of margarine and refined oils, as well as sugar, or the fact that studies of Yemenite Jews who moved to Israel and replaced diets that once consisted of fats solely from animal origin with diets containing margarine and vegetable oil (and lots of sugar) showed little evidence of heart disease and diabetes among those on the old diet but high levels of both diseases among those on the new regime (5-6).

She says, "Politically correct dietary gurus tell us that polyunsaturated oils are good for us and that saturated fats cause cancer and heart disease. Such misinformation about the relative virtues of saturated fats versus polyunsaturated oils has caused profound changes in western eating habits" (10). Polyunsaturated fatty acids remain liquid even when refrigerated, and are found in many vegetable oils from northern climates, such as those derived from canola, safflower, corn, or soy. She then argues that:

One reason the polyunsaturates cause so many health problems is that they tend to become oxidized or rancid when subjected to heat, oxygen and moisture as in cooking and processing. Rancid oils are characterized by free radicals -- that is, single atoms or clusters with an unpaired electron in an outer orbit. These compounds are extremely reactive chemically. [. . .] Is it any wonder that tests and studies have repeatedly shown a high correlation between cancer and heart disease with the consumption of polyunsaturates? New evidence links exposure to free radicals with premature aging, with autoimmune diseases such as arthritis and with Parkinson's disease, Lou Gherig's disease, Alzheimer's and cataracts. 10.

In other words, it appears that adding certain levels of energy (through heating) to some types of foods, especially those containing polyunsaturated fatty acids (which our body needs and which are beneficial in some forms), can change their energy into harmful energy, a change which takes place at the molecular level and involves the pairing or lack of pairing of electrons. The observation of John West about the importance of the connection between matter and energy appears to be extremely relevant to what we eat.

With all of the evidence available that appears to contradict the lipid hypothesis, it is somewhat amazing that more people do not begin to question what they are taught about diet, and that so many people believe that the dietary advice dispensed by schools, governments, and doctors rests on theories that have "been proven" and are therefore beyond question.

Perhaps more people should adopt the attitude that it is important to examine the evidence for themselves, at least when it comes to matters as important as healthy eating, Darwinism, tectonics, and the history of mankind's ancient past.

Faulty theories can hurt you

Steven Malanga, the senior editor of City Journal and a fellow at the Manhattan Institute, has just published an article entitled "The Washington Diet: Following the government's nutritional advice can make you fat and sick."

He cites extensive evidence that the arguments for a connection between cholesterol and heart disease are based on very scanty evidence, and possibly on erroneous interpretation of ambiguous studies. Similarly, he cites studies involving 350,000 subjects which found absolutely no connection between consumption of saturated fats and heart disease (although not from lack of looking for such a connection). The article even cites evidence that lowering levels of cholesterol could lead to an increased vulnerability to disease, including cancer.

This is exactly the type of evidence that Uffe Ravnskov discusses in his books and scientific articles, as we discussed in this earlier post on the subject dated May 9. Dr. Ravnskov argues that the scientific consensus is absolutely wrong on this very important, life-and-death question over what to eat and how to prevent heart disease.

While the question of what to eat and whether cholesterol actually causes heart disease (or if it is in fact part of an important defense system in our bodies that helps prevent diseases including cancer) is beyond the scope of the Mathisen Corollary (which examines the connection between a theory of a cataclysmic global flood within human memory and the extensive evidence of an advanced ancient civilization not taught in conventional historical timelines of mankind's past), the entire issue is a perfect illustration of the way a "scientific" consensus can take on a life of its own and drown out alternative theories, even if it may in fact be based on incorrect analysis. Dr. Ravnskov also gives examples of the ways the defenders of orthodoxy tend to attack and ridicule individuals who challenge the ruling paradigm, rather than discussing the arguments based on the merits of the evidence (see the previously-mentioned post and Dr. Ravnskov's descriptions of his books being publicly burned by those who wanted to marginalize his arguments).

This new carefully-argued and well-documented piece from Steven Malanga of City Journal serves to reinforce the points we made earlier this month. It also does an excellent job of focusing on the real danger in faulty theories: they can have very unhealthy repercussions in society and in the lives of individuals.

We have argued in the past that the question of mankind's ancient history is not simply an esoteric question for debate between specialists, akin to the famous struggle over how many angels can dance on the head of a pin. On the contrary, if we hold a completely incorrect view of our collective past, based on incorrect analysis, it has major ramifications for the way we see ourselves and the questions we ask at this important juncture in history. It impacts very real aspects of our everyday life -- including what we eat (just look at how many diets are based upon Darwinian assumptions of man's origins which may in fact be completely wrong).

Ignorance of our past can also have a deleterious impact on our ability to avoid a slide from technological prowess into outright barbarism. The human record indicates that such a fall has taken place in mankind's past on a scale far beyond the supposed transition from classical Rome into the "Dark Ages," on a scale in fact that would parallel a fall from modern civilization into widespread cannibalism and violence. However, if we don't even recognize that such a fall took place, we cannot ask ourselves how or why it happened or how it could have been avoided.

These questions are every bit as important as the question of whether eating saturated fat or foods high in cholesterol are bad for you or not. In many areas of modern life, faulty theories can hurt you. It behooves every one of us to become engaged in these matters, and to learn to examine such things carefully for ourselves and our families.

What do you think about cholesterol?

The tectonic theory is an example of a theory that was rejected and ridiculed for many decades before being accepted in the second half of the twentieth century and then coming to dominate geological thinking. If you were to walk into a university today and declare that you thought the tectonics theory was wrong, you would face severe criticism.

However, just because the prevailing orthodoxy has lined up decisively behind a theory does not make it true. In fact, there is extensive evidence (see for example the discussions here and here) that the theory of plate tectonics is incorrect. It may appear to explain the evidence, but the actual underlying explanation may be quite different.

Erroneous theories based upon incorrect interpretation of the evidence can lead to serious consequences. To use an example that may be even more familiar to readers, imagine that instead of walking into a university and declaring your opposition to the theory of plate tectonics, you were to walk into your doctor's office and declare: "I think fat and cholesterol are actually good for me, and all the medical literature that says it causes heart disease is based on flawed interpretation of the data!"

This is in fact what some detectives are concluding after looking at the evidence (these outside voices of course are ridiculed and marginalized by the "authorities," in exactly the same way that Sherlock Holmes or the gang from Scooby Doo are resented and marginalized by the authorities in crime fiction).

For example, Uffe Ravnskov (who is an MD and a PhD) has written numerous books challenging the theory that consumption of cholesterol and fat in the diet is responsible for atherosclerosis and heart disease. His numerous books, articles and research pieces, some of which are listed here, argue that the data in the studies during the twentieth century which led to the adoption of the hypothesis that atherosclerosis and heart disease are caused by cholesterol was wrongly interpreted. His examination of the evidence is quite detailed and extensive, and his conclusions are convincing.

Dr. Ravnskov argues that cholesterol is not the cause of the atherosclerosis and blood clotting that can lead to heart disease and death, but rather that it is found near such atherosclerosis and clots because it is part of the body's defense against the real culprit, which is microbial infection and arterial inflammation. The body sends LDL cholesterol to fight the symptoms of the microbial attack, and the cholesterol that is being blamed is actually beneficial: it is the microbial invaders that the current theory overlooks which are the actual problem.

Dr. Ravnskov outlines this theory in his book Fat and Cholesterol are Good for You! In the introduction to that book, he explains the attacks that his arguments have endured:

When the cholesterol campaign was introduced in Sweden in 1989 I was very suprised. Having followed the scientific literature about cholesterol and cardiovascular disease superficially I could not recall anything in support of the idea that high cholesterol or saturated fat should be harmful to human health. I became curious and started to read more systematically.

Anyone who does that with an open mind soon discovers that the emperor is naked. But I also learnt that my critical comments were met with little interest from the editors of the medical journals or with mocking answers from the reviewers. [. . .]

My first book on this subject, the Cholesterol Myths, was published in Sweden in 1991 and in Finland in 1992, and has since then been translated into five languages. It made little impact. In Sweden the science journalists usually lost their interest in the subject when they, after having read the book, consulted the researchers or health authorities that I had criticized. In Finland the book was actually burnt in a television show after having been denigrated by some of the Finnish proponents to the cholesterol campaign.

Sadly, this kind of ridicule and marginalization often characterizes the response of those who uphold the prevailing theory (as stated above, the currently-popular tectonic theory was subjected to exactly the same kind of treatment). Instead of trying to silence dissenting voices, alternate views should be welcomed and the arguments and evidence brought forward by those with a different interpretation should be examined on their merits.

Dr. Ravnskov typifies this approach in his own work: he states that his explanation is only a hypothesis, and invites his readers to examine the data and decide for themselves. In the same book cited above, he tells his reader: "remember, my idea is only a hypothesis, just as the idea about good and bad cholesterol is a hypothesis. I may be wrong, and most doctors and researchers who have been accustomed to the cholesterol hypothesis for many years will probably shake their heads uttering: It is high cholesterol, stupid! but if you have an open mind and if you are willing to spend a little time by following my arguments I think that it will be very difficult for you to find anything in conflict with my hypothesis" (193).

Other medical doctors have reached similar conclusions, such as Dwight Lundell, MD, who argues that inflammation in the arteries is the problem and that it is not caused by cholesterol. Others have put forward the possibility that the oils used to fry and cook food, which changed significantly during the twentieth century due to a variety of social factors and medical theories, are the real problem, rather than the foods themselves.

The point of this discussion is not who is right in the topic of diet and heart disease, which is outside the scope of this particular blog about mankind's ancient history. The point is that in one very important topic, open examination of the prevailing theory is not permitted, and even contrary opinions put forth by sincere professionals and backed up with extensive evidence are mocked and even burned in public. Since the cause of heart disease is an actual matter of life-and-death, uncritically accepting what "the authorities" say can lead to serious consequences if their theory is wrong, and individuals would be advised to conduct at least some level of due diligence on their own.

The question of mankind's ancient history is perhaps not as immediately important to human health, but it does carry important implications for the health of a society. Following the wrong theory about history and origins can lead to societal "heart disease" over long periods of time.

Because these issues are so important, we should be alert to those whose response is to ridicule or even burn contrary opinions or conflicting evidence. We should adopt the attitude expressed by Dr. Ravnskov in the quotation above, which freely admits that his hypothesis and the prevailing hypothesis are each only hypotheses, and that individuals should be encouraged to examine the evidence for themselves.

Dr. Brown adopts the same attitude in his books on the hydroplate theory, and suggests that teachers should say to students: "Don't be concerned with what I believe. What matters in this class is how thoroughly you examine the scientific evidence on both sides of this issue" (7th edition, 285).

It may turn out that the current cholesterol theories are incorrect, based on what was originally a sincere but misguided interpretation of the evidence. I would argue that the tectonic theory may in fact misinterpret the evidence in much the same way.

While the original errors may have been based on sincere misinterpretation, I would further argue that the more the defenders of an interpretation use ridicule and marginalization instead of honest examination and argument to protect their position, the more we might suspect that their theory is in need of the attention of a Sherlock Holmes or a Scooby Doo.