Draft:Original research/Creationism

Creationism appears to be a system of interpreting scientific evidence which uses the Bible as a basis for interpretation. This can be contrasted with evolution which apparently uses methodological naturalism as its basis for interpretation.

Huitzilopochtli on the right was the patron god of the Mexica tribe. Originally he was of little importance to the Nahuas, but after the rise of the Aztecs, Tlacaelel reformed their religion and put Huitzilopochtli at the same level as Quetzalcoatl, Tlaloc, and Tezcatlipoca, making him a solar god.

Religions
"The religions of all ancient nations ... associate the abode of the supreme God with the North Pole, the centre of heaven; or with the celestial space immediately surrounding it."

Radiation
In 1960, with respect to the theory of evolutionary progressivism, Huxley wrote "Improved organization gives biological advantage. Accordingly, the new type becomes a successful or dominant group. It spreads and multiplies and differentiates into a multiplicity of branches. This new biological success is usually achieved at the biological expense of the older dominant group from which it sprang or whose place it had usurped."

Astronomy
In Radiation astronomy/Astronomy, cosmogony refers to the study of the origin of particular astrophysical objects or systems, and is most commonly used in reference to the origin of the solar system.

Cosmogony is any scientific theory concerning the coming into existence, or origin, of the cosmos or universe, or about how what sentient beings perceive as "reality" came to be.

The hominins of Earth may have observed and recorded a genealogy, or a begetting, of astronomical objects. Such a begetting may be called an astrogony.

Their astronomical observations may have suggested a genealogy, a progression from one astronomical object to another from the point of view of Earth. These objects may have been recorded and perhaps regarded based on what was observed.

Planetary sciences
At least in the northern hemisphere of Earth, the local hominins may have observed, recorded, and regarded a progression of astronomical objects in the sky.

These objects have been remarkable enough that they have made their presence known to the locals of Earth. The time frame could be as short as 10,000 years or as long as a million.

From the current state of knowledge about astronomical objects around other stars, especially nearby, it may be possible to imagine similar objects in the solar system to account for these observations.

Since hominins are recording these phenomena, it is reasonable that these phenomena occurred during an oral history into a written history in some form.

Minerals
"At the end of the Pleistocene era around 13,000 years ago, North America lost most of its megafauna—including mastodons, giant ground sloths, saber-toothed cats, and short-faced bears. Some researchers think the mass extinction was caused by climatic changes or maybe even humans; others think it was the abrupt environmental changes resulting from a comet collision with Earth that led to the Younger Dryas period of global cooling just a couple centuries later."

The "same cosmic impact that took out the Pleistocene megafauna may have also created tiny diamonds across at least three continents around 12,800 years ago."

"Cosmic collisions such as these produce a type of material called nanodiamonds. To date, the only other layer where more than one nanodiamond has been found is the Cretaceous-Tertiary boundary (now known as the Cretaceous-Paleogene boundary) from 65 million years ago, famous for the extinction of dinosaurs."

At "32 sites in 11 countries [...] an abundance of nanodiamonds distributed over 50 million square kilometers across the Northern Hemisphere at the Younger Dryas boundary (YBD)—a carbon-rich layer that appears as a thin black line just a few meters below the surface [has been found]."

"We conclusively have identified a thin layer over three continents, particularly in North America and Western Europe, that contain a rich assemblage of nanodiamonds, the production of which can be explained only by cosmic impact."

"These are exotic conditions that came together to produce the diamonds from terrestrial carbon. [...] The diamonds did not arrive with the incoming meteorite or comet."

Theoretical creationism
Def.
 * 1) the "doctrine that each individual human soul is created by God [in Christianity, Judaism, Islam and the Baha'i Faith], as opposed to traducianism",
 * 2) "a belief that the origin of things is due to an event or process of creation brought about by the deliberate act of any divine agency, such as a Creator God (creator god)",
 * 3) the "belief that a deity created the world, especially as described in a particular religious text, such as the Quran or the Book of Genesis", or
 * 4) any belief of "or relating to"

is called creationism.

Entities
Def. a "conjecture claiming that biological life on Earth, or more broadly, the universe as a whole, was created by a unspecified intelligent agent rather than being the result of undirected natural processes" is called intelligent design.

"Anaxagoras (500–428 B.C.) was the first of the Greeks "to attribute the adaptations of Nature to Intelligent Design, and was thus the founder of Teleology," an idea that has played a retarding function in the history of evolution."

"Intelligent design means that the various forms of life began abruptly through the agency of an intelligent creator with their distinctive features already intact—fish with fins and scales, birds with feathers, beaks, and wings, etc."

Def. "the belief that the soul or spirit is inherited from ones parents" is called traducianism.

Def. the "spirit or essence of a person usually thought to consist of one's thoughts and personality" or the "spirit or essence of anything" is called a soul.

Def.
 * 1) the "main religious text in Christianity",
 * 2) the "Jewish holy book that was largely incorporated into the Christian Bible",
 * 3) the "analogous holy book of another religion", or
 * 4) a "specific version, edition, translation, or copy of any of the above or one of the [below]-mentioned texts"

is called a Bible.

Coordinate terms


 * "scripture, religious text; Adi Granth,‎ Aqdas,‎ Avesta,‎ Bible,‎ Book of Shadows,‎ Dianetics,‎ Geniocracy,‎ Liber AL vel Legis,‎ Ofudesaki,‎ Qur'an,‎ Satanic Bible,‎ Tao Te Ching,‎ Torah,‎ Tripitaka,‎ Veda"

Objects
It is possible that at some point in hominin existence, the Sun with the Earth in orbit around it was in a binary system with a second star. With the orbit of the Earth around the Sun being similar to what it is now, the axial tilt of the Earth being similar to what it is now, the Earth-Sun system may in turn have been in such an orbit around the second, probably smaller star, that this star was a northern hemisphere pole star for the Earth.

Def. "God, in Islamic or Arabic contexts" is called Allah.

"We are too much men and women; we are yet formed in the image of the Creator, and what can we say of Him with any certainty except that He, whoever He may be—Christ, Yahweh, Allah—He made us, did He not, because even He in His Infinite Perfection could not bear to be alone."

Usage notes

"While the Arabic الله is used generically to refer to God in Jewish, Christian, and Islamic contexts, current English usage almost always restricts the corresponding term Allah to Islamic contexts only. Various newspaper style manuals recommend translating the Arabic word in English as God, as this better reflects Arabic usage, but the term is often left untranslated in Islamic contexts. Thus either “Allah is great” or “God is great” may be seen."

Def. the "single deity of various monotheistic religions",

is called God.

Usage notes

"God is often referred to by masculine pronouns, not necessarily implying that the speaker believes God to be male. God is also referred to by pronouns that begin with a capital letter, as a sign of respect, in many languages written in Latin script. In English, these include He, Him, His and Himself. Many Jews follow a prohibition in their tradition against using this term and other equivalents in writing (see G-d)."

Synonyms


 * "Allah, Almighty, cosmocrat, Divine Father, G-d, god, Jah, Jehovah, Lord, LORD, Most High, Yahweh, Brahman, Ahura Mazda, Ra, Waheguru, Sage, Odin, Zeus"

"Saturday is the day of Saturn, and the color of Saturn, according to astronomers, is said to be black".

There is some resemblance between the color of God in Michelangelo's "The Creation" and that of Saturn.

Strong forces
Def. "[t]he action of making or becoming" "[n]o longer in existence; having died out" is called extinction.

Def. the apparent percentage (not the absolute number) of marine animal genera represented by those that are readily fossilized becoming extinct during any given time interval is called the genus extinction intensity.

Evolution
Def.
 * 1) a "turning (rolling or revolving) motion" or
 * 2) a "single turn of a coil"

is called a volution.

Def. "gradual directional change especially one leading to a more advanced or complex form" is called evolution.

Def. "[t]he change in the genetic composition of a population over successive generations" is called evolution.

Def. any change across successive generations in the heritable characteristics of biological populations is called evolution.

Modern evolutionary synthesis: "Other previously dominant groups of organisms that also became extinct at the end of the Cretaceous are many marine taxa, such as most nautiloids and the ammonities, both of whom had been previously highly successful organisms." Page 320 of the 2001 book: "Ernst Mayr is the biologist largely responsible for shaping the modern synthesis of genetics and evolutionary theory."

"The central problem with the synthesis is its failure to show (or to provide distinct signs) that natural selection of random mutations could account for observed levels of adaptation."

Weak forces
On page 212 of a 1944 book by Simpson is "[i]n the history of life it is a striking fact that major changes in the taxonomic groups occupying various ecological positions do not, as a rule, result from direct competition of the groups concerned in each case and the survival of the fittest, as most students would assume a priori. On the contrary, the usual sequence is for one dominant group to die out, leaving the zone empty, before the other group becomes abundant." "Simpson noted that major extinctions provide opportunities (space, ecological niches, etc.) for later diversification by the survivors."

Def.
 * 1) a "state of nature; conformity to nature",
 * 2) the "doctrine that denies a supernatural agency in the miracles and revelations recorded in the Bible, and in spiritual influences",
 * 3) any "system of philosophy which refers the phenomena of nature as a blind force or forces acting necessarily or according to fixed laws, excluding origination or direction by a will",
 * 4) a "doctrine which denies a strong separation between scientific and philosophic methodologies and/or topics", or
 * 5) a "movement in theatre, film, and literature that seeks to replicate a believable everyday reality, as opposed to such movements as Romanticism or Surrealism, in which subjects may receive highly symbolic, idealistic, or even supernatural treatment"

is called naturalism.

Meteors
Some objects seem to wander around in the night sky relative to many of the visual points of light. At least one occasionally is present in the early morning before sunrise as the Morning Star and after sunset as the Evening Star, the planet Venus. These wanderers and related objects are subjects for observational astronomy and some are meteors.

“The earth was chaotic and void; and darkness was upon the face of the deep; and God’s wind moved upon the face of the fluid.” Book of Genesis.

“Nor is this world inhabited by man the first of things earthly created by God. He made several worlds before ours, but he destroyed them all.”

Liquid objects
"According to another tradition, several heavens were created, seven in fact. Also seven earths were created: the most removed being the seventh Erez, followed by the sixth Adamah, the fifth Arka, the fourth Harabbah, the third Yabbashah, the second Tebel and our own land called Heled, and like the others, it is separated from the foregoing by abyss, chaos, and waters.(2)"

Rocky objects
Marrella, an example of which is shown in the image at the right, is the most abundant Burgess Shale organism.

Apparently, not even one modern species has been found to occur in the Burgess Shale.

"[In Aysheaia we have a form living under entirely different ecological conditions from those of the modern species, and at a very remote time, yet having an external appearance, which in life must have been extraordinarily similar to that of the living representatives of the group (1931, p. 18).] In spite of some recent contrary opinions, it appears that the head of the Middle Cambrian onychophora Aysheaia is equivalent in its segmentation to the embryo of the modern member of the group such as Peripatopsis capensis."

Wanderers
"The ages of the past, between the successive catastrophes, are called in many diverse sources “sun ages.” I have tried to show why this designation is meaningful.(1) But the ancients also maintained that the successive ages were initiated by planets: [Eretz,] Moon [Adamah], Saturn [Arka], Mercury [Harabah], Jupiter [Yabbashah], Venus [Tevel], Mars [Heled]. Therefore the sun-ages could also have been called planet ages."

An alternative succession may be Neptune, Uranus, Saturn, then Jupiter. The number of these ages or likely catastrophes was usually seven or less that have occurred and include the current period.

Mercury
"The sequence of events as presented in the Book of Genesis places the catastrophe of Babel [Harabbah] next after the Deluge."

"It can be assumed with a fair amount of probability that the planet that caused the disturbances described above was the planet Mercury, the Greek Hermes, the Babylonian Nebo."

Venus
"Ancient Mexican records give the order of the occurrences. The sun was attacked by Quetzal-cohuatl; after the disappearance of this serpent-shaped heavenly body, the sun refused to shine, and during four days the world was deprived of its light; a great many people died at that time [Tebel]. Thereafter, the snakelike body transformed itself into a great star. The star retained the name of Quetzal-cohuatl [Quetzal-coatl]. This great and brilliant star appeared for the first time in the east.1 Quetzal-cohuatl is the well-know name of the planet Venus.2"

Earth
"The Earth underwent re-shaping: six consecutive remouldings. Heaven and Earth were changed in every catastrophe. Six times the Earth was rebuilt—without entire extirpation of life on it, but with major catastrophes. Six ages have passed into the great beyond; this is the seventh creation, the time in which we live."

“The seven heavens form a unity, the seven kinds of earth form a unity, and the heavens and the earth together also form a unity.”

“The Universe is called by the Burmas Logha, which signifies successive destruction and reproduction.... The Burma writings do not conceive of one world, but of an infinite number, one constantly succeeding another; so that when one is destroyed, another of the same form and structure arises....”

Moon
"Many traditions persist that at some time in the past [Adamah] the Moon was much brighter than it is now, and larger in appearance than the Sun."

Mars
"If the commotion of the days of Uzziah [Heled] was of global character and was brought about by an extraterrestrial agent [Mars], it must have caused some disturbance in the motion of the earth on its axis and along its orbit. Such a disturbance would have made the old calendar obsolete and would have required the introduction of a new calendar."

Jupiter
"The destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah took place in historical times [Yabbashah], according to my scheme in a catastrophe which caused also the end of the Old Kingdom in Egypt. The geologists refer the upheaval which tore Syria in two to the end of the Tertiary period—long before human history began."

Saturn
"All that we have considered up to now indicates that Saturn [Arka] once exploded in a nova-like burst of light. The date of this event I would be hard-put to specify, even approximately, but possibly it took place about ten thousand years ago. The solar system and reaches beyond it were illuminated by the exploded star, and in a matter of a week the Earth was enveloped in waters of Saturnian origin."

Uranus
"The ancients’ religions and mythology speak for their knowledge of Uranus; the dynasty of gods had Uranus followed by Saturn, and the latter by Jupiter. In the clear sky of Babylonia the planet Uranus could have been observed by an unaided eye; but since it was known as a deposed deity, it would seem that at some later time the planet lost much of its brightness."

"The age of Uranus [Erez] preceded the age of Saturn; it came to an end with the “removal” of Uranus by Saturn. Saturn is said to have emasculated his father Uranus.(2) Behind this story there might have been a scene in the sky. In one theory of the origin of the solar system a sideswiping star tears out from the sun a long filament of gaseous material. Similarly Saturn may at one time have “emasculated” Uranus—Saturn was represented by the Romans with a sickle in his hands."

Neptune
Neptune is never visible to the naked eye, having a brightness between magnitudes +7.7 and +8.0.

Neptune was the Roman god of water and the sea in Roman mythology and religion. He is the counterpart of the Greek god Poseidon. In the [interpretatio graeca] Greek-influenced tradition, Neptune was the brother of Jupiter [Italic Neptune has been securely identified as a god of freshwater sources as well as the sea.]

“Syncretic traces of a Lybian/Punic agrarian god of fresh water sources, with the epithet Frugifer, "fruit-bearer"; have been enumerated”.

The German scholar H. Petersmann proposed an etymology from IE rootstem *nebh- related to clouds and foggs. The concept would be close to that expressed in the name of Greek god Uranus.

Indo-European people, having no direct knowledge of the sea as they originated from inland areas, reused the theology of a deity originally either chthonic or wielding power over inland freshwaters as the god of the sea. This feature has been preserved particularly well in the case of Neptune who was definitely a god of springs, lakes and rivers before becoming also a god of the sea, as is testified by the numerous findings of inscriptions mentioning him in the proximity of such locations. Servius the grammarian also explicitly states Neptune is in charge of all the rivers, springs and waters.

Locations on Earth
But asteroid impacts, though rare, occur once in a while, over very large areas, at aperiodic intervals such as the Chicxulub crater. Most scientists agree that this impact is the cause of the Cretatious-Tertiary Extinction, 65 million years ago (Ma), that marked the sudden extinction of the dinosaurs and the majority of life then on Earth. This shaded relief image of Mexico's Yucatan Peninsula shows a subtle, but unmistakable, indication of the Chicxulub impact crater.

Prehistory
The prehistory period dates from around 7 x 106 b2k to about 7,000 b2k.

Saturn has been known since prehistoric times.

Ancient history
The ancient history period dates from around 8,000 to 3,000 b2k.

Apparently 5102 b2k (before the year 2000.0), -3102 or 3102 BC, is the historical year assigned to a Hindu table of planets that does include the classical planet Saturn. "Babylonian astronomy, too, had a four-planet system. In ancient prayers the planets Saturn, Jupiter, Mars, and Mercury are invoked; ... and one speaks of "the four-planet system of the ancient astronomers of Babylonia." "

Babylonian astronomers systematically observed and recorded the movements of Saturn.

Ancient Chinese and Japanese culture designated the planet Saturn as the earth star.

In ancient Hebrew, Saturn is called 'Shabbathai'. Its angel is Cassiel. Its intelligence or beneficial spirit is Agiel (layga) and its spirit (darker aspect) is Zazel (lzaz).

In Ottoman Turkish, Urdu and Malay, its name is 'Zuhal'.

Anu
Anu may be an early Sumerian, Akkadian, and Babylonian name for Saturn.

"An, the oldest and highest of the Sumero-Babylonian gods, whose primordial age was "the year of abundance," signified Saturn, according to Jensen.6"

Baal-hamon
The potential cruelty of Saturn was enhanced by his identification with Cronus, known for devouring his own children. He was thus equated with the Carthaginian god Ba'al Hammon, to whom children were supposedly sacrificed. Saturn was also among the gods the Romans equated with Yahweh, whose Sabbath (on Saturday) he shared as his holy day.

Modern scholars identify Baal-hamon variously with the Northwest Semitic god El or with Dagon.

Ancient Greek writers identified him with the Titan Cronus. In ancient Rome, he was identified with Saturn.

Brahma
The Hindu Brahma, Yama, Vishnu, and Manu converge as representatives of a solitary supreme god and creator governing a lost paradise as the first king, setting forth the first moral codes, and imparting to mankind the fundamentals of civilization.

Cronus
The Greeks had made the outermost planet sacred to Cronus, and the Romans followed suit.

El
In the Canaanite religion, or Levantine religion as a whole, Ēl or Il was the supreme god, the father of humankind and all creatures and the husband of the goddess Asherah as recorded in the clay tablets of Ugarit ... The noun ʾēl was found at the top of a list of gods as the "Ancient of gods" or the "Father of all gods", in the ruins of the royal archive of the Ebla civilization, in the archaeological site of Tell Mardikh in Syria dated to 2300 BC.

Ēl (rendered Elus or called by his standard Greek counterpart Cronus) is not the creator god or first god. Ēl is rather the son of Sky and Earth.

Joseph Fontenrose first demonstrated that, whatever their deep origins, at Ugarit Dagon was identified with El,

Osiris
Osiris is the mythological father of the god Horus, whose conception is described in the Osiris myth, a central myth in ancient Egyptian belief. The myth described Osiris as having been killed by his brother Seth, who wanted Osiris' throne. Isis joined the fragmented pieces of Osiris, but the only body part missing was the phallus. Isis fashioned a golden phallus, and briefly brought Osiris back to life by use of a spell that she learned from [Geb] her father. This spell gave her time to become pregnant by Osiris before he again died. Isis later gave birth to Horus. As such, since Horus was born after Osiris' resurrection, Horus became thought of as a representation of new beginnings and the vanquisher of the evil Set.

"The Phoenician El - Saturn - has four eyes, as does the Orphic Kronos (Saturn)."

"The Chinese Yellow Emperor Huang-ti--identified as Saturn--is also four-eyed.74"

"Osiris, as the Ram of Mendes, is the god of "four faces on one neck."62"

Romulus
Def. in Roman mythology, "[t]he legendary founder of Rome and the twin brother of Remus" is called Romulus.

"Ioannes the Lydian, writing in the sixth century on the usage of his native town, says: "Our own Philadelpheia still preserves a trace of the ancient belief. On the first day of the month (sc. January) there goes in procession no less a personage than Janus himself, dressed up in a two-faced mask, and people call him Saturnus, identifying him with Kronos2.

"The twins [Romulus and Remus], as in the case of Janus, attach themselves to the Universal Monarch as his two faces, looking in opposite directions."

Archeologists "working in the ruins of the ancient forum in Rome discovered what appeared to be the very shrine to Romulus, dating back 2,600 years, that so many people had written about. They decided to dig deeper and, on Friday, presented what is not quite a tomb—there are no bones— but instead a sarcophagus and altar that they believe was built as a shrine to Rome’s legendary founder."

"This is not the tomb of Romulus per se. It is a place of memory where the cult of Romulus was celebrated."

"Pagan rituals and sacrifices of all kinds were likely held at this site over the many centuries, based on preliminary evidence found, which backs up the theory that this was an historically important shrine. The lack of bones could be because, according to one version of events, Romulus was attacked and dismembered by senators of the time, meaning the body was not intact to be buried. Another version is that Romulus “ascended into heaven,” leaving no earthly remains."

"A lack of human remains makes it impossible to verify just who the tomb honors. But as sensational as it might seem to point to the funerary shrine of a mythical legend, the site needed further exploration before verifying or discounting any theories. You need to let us do our work, to continue excavating and discover more about this entire section of the Roman Forum. The suggestion that this is linked to Romulus is supported in literary documents, but only further study will reveal the truth."

"This is a great relief that this ruin is still intact and was not destroyed by work done during the Fascist era. Now we need time to tell the full story."

Saturnus
“In ancient Roman mythology, the god Saturnus, from which the planet takes its name, was the god of agriculture. The Romans considered Saturnus the equivalent of the Greek god Cronus.

The Latins considered Saturn the predecessor of Jupiter. Saturn reigned in Latium during a mythical Golden Age reenacted every year at the festival of Saturnalia. Saturn also retained primacy in matters of agriculture and money. Unlike the Greek tradition of Cronus and Zeus, the usurpation of Saturn as king of the gods by Jupiter was not viewed by the Latins as violent or hostile; Saturn continued to be revered in his temple at the foot of the Capitol Hill, which maintained the alternative name Saturnius into the time of Varro.

Late prehistory
Late prehistory roughly coincides with the late or upper paleolithic between 50,000 and 10,000 years ago (the beginning of the Holocene), with the appearance of behavioral modernity and before the advent of agriculture.

Ouranos
“Uranus was the Sky in Greek mythology, which was thought to be dominated by the combined powers of the Sun and Mars.

“Uranus ..., Ouranos meaning "sky" or "heaven") was the primal Greek god personifying the sky. His equivalent in Roman mythology was Caelus. In Ancient Greek literature, Uranus or Father Sky was the son and husband of Gaia, Mother Earth. According to Hesiod's Theogony, Uranus was conceived by Gaia alone, but other sources cite Aether as his father.

Caelus
Caelus or Coelus was a primal god of the sky in Roman myth and theology, iconography, and literature (compare caelum, the Latin word for "sky" or "the heavens", hence English "celestial").

“The name of Caelus indicates that he was the Roman counterpart of the Greek god Uranus, who was of major importance in the theogonies of the Greeks. Varro couples him with Terra (Earth) as pater and mater (father and mother), and says that they are "great deities" (dei magni) in the theology of the mysteries at Samothrace.

According to Cicero and Hyginus, Caelus was the son of Aether and Dies ("Day" or "Daylight"). Caelus and Dies were in this tradition the parents of Mercury. Caelus was the father with Hecate of the distinctively Roman god Janus, as well as of Saturn and Ops. Caelus was also the father of one of the three forms of Jupiter, the other two fathers being Aether and Saturn.

Sciences
"A hiatus of about 8 m.y. separates Late Cretaceous from Tertiary rocks in the [San Juan] Basin. Most of the missing strata are from the Maastrichtian Stage. The unconformity is overlain by the Ojo Alamo Sandstone in the south and underlain by the Kirtland or Fruitland Formation at most other places in the basin."

The right femur of the hadrosaurian dinosaur is shown at left where the bone is in place in A and after excavation, preparation, and mounting in B.

"[P]ollen was the more accurate age indicator and therefore the Ojo Alamo dinosaurs were Paleocene in age. The conclusion was tentative because Paleocene pollen nowhere occurred at exactly the same locality as dinosaur bone. Paleocene pollen is present, however, in the Ojo Alamo near Barrel Spring, within one mile of the Alamo Wash bone locality [...]."

Hypotheses

 * 1) It is possible that at some point in hominin existence, the Sun with the Earth in orbit around it was in a binary system with a second star.
 * 2) With the orbit of the Earth around the Sun being similar to what it is now, the axial tilt of the Earth being similar to what it is now, the Earth-Sun system may in turn have been in such an orbit around the second, probably smaller star, that this star was a northern hemisphere pole star for the Earth.
 * 3) Any nova-like pulses from the secondary star may have caused widespread death and destruction of life on Earth.
 * 4) Hominins in the northern hemisphere or with empires overlapping the equator into the northern hemisphere may have regarded the source of emanations they could see that killed many as one or more deities.
 * 5) Survivors who saw phenomena headed for Earth from the secondary star may have come to think of themselves as "chosen" for survival by this deity or deities.
 * 6) The approximate number of these major destructive events was probably six or seven.
 * 7) Peoples or hominins living in the southern hemisphere would have been spiritual but not have deities in the sky they could see or worship.
 * 8) In its orbit around the galaxy, the Sun slowly caught up to a smaller star, or it caught up to the Sun, the approach was such that for thousands and perhaps millions of years the smaller star was a north pole star for the Earth.

Equatorials
Studies of human mitochondrial DNA suggest that all humans share common ancestors from Africa, originated in the southwestern regions near the coastal border of Namibia and Angola at the approximate coordinates 12.5° E, 17.5°S with a divergence in the migration path around 37.5°E, 22.5°N near the Red Sea.

A particular haplogroup of DNA, haplogroup L2, evolved between 87,000 and 107,000 years ago or approx. 90,000 YBP. Its age and widespread distribution and diversity across the continent makes its exact origin point within Africa difficult to trace with any confidence, however an origin for several L2 groups in West or Central Africa seems likely, with the highest diversity in West Africa. Most of its subclades are largely confined to West and western-Central Africa.

Africans bearing the E-V38 (E1b1a) likely traversed across the Sahara, from east to west, approximately 19,000 years ago. E-M2 (E1b1a1) likely originated in West Africa or Central Africa.

Due to the large numbers of West Africans enslaved in the Atlantic slave trade, most African Americans are likely to have mixed ancestry from different regions of western Africa. 60% of African-Americans (in the study) were of the E1b1a haplogroup, within which 22.9% were particularly of the E-M2 haplogroup; they also possessed numerous Single-nucleotide polymorphism (SNPs) (e.g., U175, U209, U181, U290, U174, U186, and U247).

Colonial boundaries are reflected in the modern boundaries between contemporary West African states, cutting across ethnic and cultural lines, often dividing single ethnic groups between two or more states. In contrast to most of Central, Southern and Southeast Africa, West Africa is not populated by Bantu-speaking peoples.

Bingerville (13,000 BP) and Iwo-Eleru (11,000 BP) are the most early microlithic industries in West Africa.

In the 10th millennium BCE, there was development in pyrotechnics and employment of subsistence strategy at Ounjougou. Prior to 9400 BCE, Niger-Congo speakers used matured ceramic technology (e.g., pots) in their economy to cook their grain (e.g., Digitaria exilis).

During the Holocene, the Green Sahara underwent the process of becoming a desert and became the Sahara; this occurrence may have contributed to the start of domesticating field crops. Akin to the Fertile Crescent of the Near East, the Niger River region of West Africa served as a cradle for field crop domestication and agriculture in Africa. Yams, rice, sorghum. Pearl millet, and cowpea are field crops that originate in Africa. Taming of yams (e.g., D. praehensilis) likely began in the basin of the Niger River between eastern Ghana and western Nigeria (e.g., northern Benin). Taming of rice (e.g., Oryza glaberrima) likely began in the Inner Niger Delta region of Mali. Taming of pearl millet (e.g., Cenchrus americanus) likely began in the region of northern Mali and Mauritania. Taming of cowpeas likely began in the region of northern Ghana.

In West Africa, the wet phase ushered in expanding rainforest and wooded savannah from Senegal to Cameroon. Between 9000 and 5000 BCE, Niger–Congo speakers domesticated the oil palm and raffia palm. Two seed plants, black-eyed peas and voandzeia (African groundnuts) were domesticated, followed by okra and kola nuts. Since most of the plants grew in the forest, the Niger–Congo speakers invented polished stone axes for clearing forest.

During the Green Sahara, at Gobero, there were two groups: the Kiffian and the Tenerian. The Kiffian were hunters who lived approximately 8,000-10.000 years ago. The Tenerian hunted, fished, and herded cattle approximately 4,500-7,000 years ago.

In the steppes and savannah of the Sahara and Sahel, the Nilo-Saharan speakers started to collect and domesticate wild millet and sorghum between 8000 and 6000 BCE. Later, gourds, watermelons, castor beans, and cotton were also collected and domesticated. The people started capturing wild cattle and holding them in circular thorn hedges, resulting in domestication.

Between 8000 BCE and 5000 BCE, Niger-Congo speakers independently developed agriculture (e.g., yams - Dioscorea). Prior to 5000 BCE, their agricultural practices were spread throughout the woodland savanna, and afterward, were introduced southward into the West African rainforest belt.

By 8000 BP, canoes (e.g., Dufuna canoe) were being utilized in West Africa. While some Niger-Congo speakers may have utilized bows and arrows to hunt, other Niger-Congo speakers (e.g., Atlantic, Bak, Kru, Kwa, Ịjọ), who diverged from the hunters, may have utilized canoes to search for resources in river systems.

Due to the complexity of pottery patterns and vastness of the area, where interactions between peoples occurred during the mid-Holocene, specifying which linguistic group (e.g., Niger-Congo, Nilo-Saharan, Afroasiatic) is the first settling population is challenging. In any case, pottery in Gajiganna shares cultural similarity, across nearby areas of the southern Sahara, most of all, with northwestern Niger and northwestern Sudan. Pottery from sites, dated to the second millennium BCE, close to the Mandara Mountains in Cameroon and Nigeria, also share affinity with the ceramics in Gajiganna.

By 6300 BP, pottery began to appear in Konduga. Occurring in the era of Mega Lake Chad, the pottery was decorated in the custom of Saharan ceramics.

Before Green Sahara (5,500 BP), Kordofanian hunters may have traversed from West Africa, along what is now the Wadi Howar, into the Nuba Hills.

The Korounkorokalé rockshelter was continually dwelled in by isolated Sub-Saharan Africans who kept a quartz microlithic tradition for a minimum of 5000 years and hunter-gatherer practices up until the mid to late first millennium CE (as asserted by MacDonald); the “little peoples” identified in the oral history of modern savanna residents when they first arrived in the area were used in reference to these Sub-Saharan Africans.

In the Aïr Mountains, present-day Niger, copper was smelted independently of developments in the Nile Valley between 3000 and 2500 BC. The process used was not well developed, indicating that it was not brought from outside the region; it became more mature by about 1500 BC.

In 4000 BP, there may have been a population that traversed from Africa (e.g., West Africa or West-Central Africa), through the Strait of Gibraltar, into the Iberian peninsula, where admixing between Africans and Iberians (e.g., of northern Portugal, of southern Spain) occurred.

In the western Sahel, the rise of settled communities was largely the result of domestication of millet and sorghum. Archaeology points to sizeable urban populations in West Africa beginning in the 2nd millennium BCE. Symbiotic trade relations developed before the trans-Saharan trade, in response to the opportunities afforded by north-south diversity in ecosystems across deserts, grasslands, and forests. The agriculturists received salt from the desert nomads. The desert nomads acquired meat and other foods from pastoralists and farmers of the grasslands and from fishermen on the Niger River. The forest dwellers provided furs and meat.

Dhar Tichitt and Oualata were prominent among the early urban centres, dated to 2000 BCE, in present-day Mauritania. About 500 stone settlements littered the region in the former savannah of the Sahara. Its inhabitants fished and grew millet. It has been found that the Soninke of the Mandé peoples, who, according to their tradition, originate from Aswan, Egypt, were responsible for constructing such settlements. Around 300 BCE, the region became more desiccated and the settlements began to decline, most likely relocating to Koumbi Saleh. From the type of architecture and pottery, it is believed that Tichit was related to the subsequent Ghana Empire. Old Jenne (Djenne) began to be settled around 300 BCE, producing iron and with sizeable population, evidenced in crowded cemeteries. Living structures were made of sun-dried mud. By 250 BCE, Jenne was a large, thriving market town.

Two migrations occurred, from first millennium BCE to first millennium CE, likely due to aridification, resulting in significant contributions being made to the overall protohistoric peopling of the Niger Bend. One migration originated from the complex societies (e.g., Dhar Tichitt) of Mauritania and the other migration occurred with the iron metallurgists from Niger. Peoples of the Niger Bend practiced “fishing, hunting, herding, agriculture, iron metallurgy, interregional (or even long-distance) commerce, and sometimes-hierarchical social organization.”

Southern hemisphere
Botswana is a landlocked country located in Southern Africa. Botswana is topographically flat, with up to 70 percent of its territory being the Kalahari Desert. It is bordered by South Africa to the south and southeast, Namibia to the west and north, and Zimbabwe to the northeast.

Archaeological digs have shown that hominids have lived in Botswana for around two million years. Stone tools and fauna remains have shown that all areas of the country were inhabited at least 400,000 years ago.

Evidence left by modern humans such as cave paintings are about 73,000 years old.

The original inhabitants of southern Africa were the Bushmen (San people) and Khoi peoples. Both speak Khoisan languages and hunted, gathered, and traded over long distances. When cattle were first introduced about 2000 years ago into southern Africa, pastoralism became a major feature of the economy, since the region had large grasslands free of tsetse fly.

The endonyms used by the San themselves refer to their individual nations, including the ǃKung people, ǃKung (!Xuun) (subdivisions ǂKx'ao-ǁ'ae, ǂKx'ao-ǁ'ae (Auen), Ju,'hoan dialect, Ju 'hoan, etc.) the Tuu (subdivisions ǀXam language|, Xam, Nǁng language, Nusan (Nǀu), ǂKhomani, etc.) and Khoe languages, Tshu–Khwe] groups such as the Khwe language, Khwe (Khoi, Kxoe), ǂAakhoe dialect, Haiǁom, Naro language, Naro, Tshwa language, Tsoa, Gǁana language, Gǁana (Gana) and Gǀui dialect, Gǀu (Gwi).

Cagn is said to have created the moon which holds special significance to the San people; the phase of the moon dictated when rainmaking rituals were to be performed.

"[T]he notions of mantis [/Kaggen or Cagn ]and moon worship [by the Nharo, Bushmen, or San people] were European fabrications". Cagn is said to have created the moon. But, if these gods are European fabrications either by the San people for the Europeans, or by the Europeans of the San, then it may be unlikely that /Kaggen created the Moon. Or, perhaps that the Mantis created the Moon but neither, nor the Sun, are or were worshipped by the San.

It is unclear when Bantu-speaking peoples first moved into the country from the north, although AD 600 seems to be a consensus estimate. In that era, the ancestors of the modern-day Kalanga moved into what is now the north-eastern areas of the country. These proto-Kalanga were closely connected to states in Zimbabwe as well as to the Mapungubwe state. These states, located outside of current Botswana's borders, appear to have kept massive cattle herds in what is now the Central District--apparently at numbers approaching modern cattle density.

This massive cattle-raising complex prospered until 1300 AD or so, and seems to have regressed following the collapse of Mapungubwe. During this era, the first Tswana-speaking groups, the Bakgalagadi, moved into the southern areas of the Kalahari. All these various peoples were connected to trade routes that ran via the Limpopo River to the Indian Ocean, and trade goods from Asia such as beads made their way to Botswana most likely in exchange for ivory, gold, and rhinoceros horn.