Earth’s Lost Canopy—The Prehistoric Attempt to Restore an Edenic Climate
Product ID: EEE7
Report Topics:
- Description in the Book of Genesis of a very different atmospheric condition existing before the global cataclysm of the “Flood”
- The Biblical record of the consequences of a water vapor canopy once surrounding the Earth—the resulting significant reduction of radiation which now reaches the surface, and the impact on biological rates of decay, size and aging
- The “Flood” caused the collapse of the canopy, and the post-diluvian effects on the lifespans of the patriarchs listed in the Hebrew texts
- Evidence from the Genesis account that a brief attempt was made several generations after the “Flood” to restore the lost canopy
- Memories of the primordial sky covering and longer human ages preserved in Greek, Babylonian, Egyptian, Indian, Persian, Australian, Chinese, Japanese and Norse legends
Full Report:
The Hebrew Book of Genesis in its opening chapters describes to us a most unusual atmospheric past that was alien compared to ours today. In the beginning, an enigmatic group of individuals called the Elohim—translated as “God” in the texts—is portrayed as establishing the foundation of an Edenic weather mechanism:
“And God said, Let there be a firmament in the midst of the waters, and let it separate the waters from the waters. And God made the firmament and separated the waters which are under the firmament from the waters that are above the firmament. And it was so. And God called the firmament heaven.” Genesis 1:6-8.
The “firmament” or “heaven” here is the sky, the atmosphere of the Earth. The texts say that in the earlier world depicted here there was water below the atmosphere (in the form of oceans and rivers, and the “fountains of the deep” or subterranean water-energy currents), plus what appears to have been an equal amount of water above the atmosphere. It is clear that clouds and other moisture in the air are not what is being referred to, for these exist in the atmosphere, not above it.
This distinction is emphasized in Psalms 148, where in verse 6 God is praised by the “waters above the heavens” which are set apart from, in verse 8, “hail, snow and frost” or the atmospheric forms of water. Psalms 104:6 also alludes to this primordial heavenly water as once surrounding the Earth and existing at a high altitude:
“You covered it (the world) with the deep as with a garment; the waters stood above the mountains.”
Just how this water canopy existed is indicated in Job 38:9 where it is described as being surrounded by the “thick darkness” of space. In other words, it existed between the atmosphere and the vacuum of the spatial heavens above the planet.
Just how plausible is the idea of a water canopy once existing at such a high level? There are several likely altitudinal candidates, which even today exist as possible remnants of the prehistoric canopy.
At the 22-mile and 50-mile levels pearly clouds of ice crystals are sometimes seen, called nacreous and noctilucent clouds, respectively. Atmospheric conditions are right at these altitudes for the creation of much larger suspended ice crystal formations if water vapor could be “pumped up” and “held” in those regions.
Still higher, above the stratosphere, is an area called the troposphere which borders on the edge of space, and here—between 80 and 85 miles above the Earth—is a specific layer called the thermosphere. Here, the temperatures reach well above the boiling point of water and remain constant day and night. This layer has the potential for holding indefinitely a vast quantity of water vapor, and there is evidence that it may have done just that, for traces of water-cluster ions and an overabundance of He3—which can only be produced in the presence of water molecules—have been discovered at that altitude.
In 1997, German scientists announced that their research satellite Christa-Spas, launched earlier by the European Space Agency, had successfully detected traces of water vapor at a very high altitude in the Earth’s upper atmosphere. Some of the scientists were of the opinion that passing comets could have seeded the Earth with water molecules brought from deep space. But other evidence suggested that the vapor was a natural product of the Earth itself, and had once constituted part of a very different planetary ecosphere.
As to what happened to the ancient water canopy can be found in the Genesis story of Noah’s Flood. Genesis 7:11-12, 19 reads:
“On that day the windows of the heavens were opened. And rain fell upon the earth forty days and forty nights.”
Clearly, no normal rainstorm in the atmosphere could have created so vast a quantity of water. The only answer is that the “windows of heaven were opened” refers to a collapse of the old water vapor canopy, and the sudden and tragic precipitation of what would have been perhaps billions of tons of water from on high in the sky onto the surface of the Earth.
In the Earth’s atmosphere today there is the equivalent of only 2 inches of water, and at its maximum saturation can hold only as much as 4.14 inches (with a sea level temperature of 28 degrees Centigrade). Over a forty day period this would amount to just 0.00431 inches of rain falling per hour--certainly not the torrential downpour described in Genesis. To have unleashed a continuous rain, say between 0.5 and 2 inches per hour, there must have been somewhere in the atmosphere or above it a reservoir of between 40 to 160 feet of water that fell.
Of particular interest, the word “window” in the text above is the Hebrew ’aruba, from the Ugaritic ’urbt, which means “lattice” or “network of openings.” Modern observations made by astronauts and cosmonauts have shown that the linear energy patterns of the Crystalline lattice of the Earth are reflected upwards into the atmosphere, seen as criss-crossings of high altitude clouds. Also, storm centers originate above Earth node points and have been tracked moving along the terrestrial webs.
In the pre-Flood world these energy systems would have also manifested in the water vapor canopy, mirroring the energies below. The Genesis account is clear that the “windows” or lattice-work of the sky “opening”—becoming disturbed—was directly linked with the “fountains of the deep” being “broken up.” Here the “fountains of the deep” are equivalent to the Babylonian apsu, the waters beneath the earth or the subterranean water systems which are directly related to the earth energy currents.
Naturally, if the earth energy patterns were thrown askew in the Earth, this would also have created havoc in the atmospheric reflections of these patterns in the canopy, to the point of unbalancing the moisture equilibrium and causing the water canopy to collapse. But before this disaster occurred, what would have been the effect of a water canopy surrounding the planet?
Water molecules, first of all would have diffused heat, causing a greenhouse effect, but not like what we have today. More specifically, the water canopy would have allowed long-wave solar radiation through it, but not let it escape back into space, trapping the heat in the atmosphere.
The results would have made the Earth very different indeed. Heat would have been more evenly distributed so that there would be no great temperature differences with the entire Earth enjoying a more temperate, even semi-tropical to tropical climates. Even seasonal temperature changes would have been greatly minimized. Genesis 1:4 mentions the Elohim establishing the times for the seasons in the early world, but it is not until after the Flood--after the protecting water canopy had collapsed--that the extreme and harsh temperatures of the seasons first appear. At that time, in Genesis 8:22, God tells Noah, “While the earth remains, seedtime and harvest, cold and heat, summer and winter, day and night shall not cease.”
Regarding the uniformity of climatic conditions in a canopied world, geologists have long been aware of the evidence in the rock record that at more often than not the entire Earth was uniformly tropical. This has been explained on the basis of an increase in solar radiation in the past. However, this is only one factor that controls climate to a world-wide extent. No evidence exists that changes have taken place in the radiation of the Sun, but it is not necessary that there had to have been a change in the Sun itself. If there was a change in the heat-absorbing capacity of the atmosphere, that would accomplish the same thing. The most likely means of accomplishing this would have been through the increase n water vapor in the upper atmosphere.
Not only would the canopy have affected climate, but the Earth’s weather system would have been radically different as well. With no temperature differences there would have been little or no wind. In fact the first time wind is mentioned in Genesis is during the Flood, after the water canopy had been precipitated:
“And God made a wind to blow over the earth, and the waters subsided.” Genesis 8:1.
With no wind, there would have also been no rain. Genesis 2:5-6 records:
“The Lord God had not caused it to rain upon the earth, but a mist went up from the earth and watered the whole face of the ground.”
Because the temperatures would have been generally higher than they are now, the atmosphere would have been able to hold moisture near what is called the dew point or saturation level. A temperature fall of only 2 or 3 degrees occurring in the evening would have allowed dew to form, and because of the high humidity could have created a “mist” or fog that hugged the ground and surrounded most vegetation. This phenomenon can be witnessed today in the tropics, or in specially built greenhouses and hothouses with controlled temperature variations. That this slight temperature drop did occur is attested to in Genesis 3:8, where God is described as “walking in the garden (Eden) in the cool of the day,” probably near dusk.
Rain did not make its first appearance in the pre-Flood world until the beginning of the Flood, Genesis 11:12. It was probably for this reason that Noah’s contemporaries scoffed at his predictions for rain (Genesis 7:4), for these people had never seen such an atmospheric event before. After the Flood, Noah and his family were given a unique sign in the heavens, in Genesis 9:13-16--a rainbow. The implications of these verses is that the survivors had never seen a rainbow before. And indeed, they had not, for rainbows are created by sunlight passing through water droplets of no less than 0.30 millimeters. These are the size of normal rainstorm droplets, which had not existed before the Flood, when the water canopy was in place.
The most remarkable feature of the prehistoric canopy would have been its effects on life. Water molecules absorb short-wave or actinic radiation, the type which aids in the decomposition of organic material. In Genesis 9:20-21, we read that after the Flood Noah planted a vineyard, and became drunk from the juice of the grapes extracted. The subject matter suggests that this condition was something unexpected, that the fermentation of grapes into wine had been previously far slower. This would have been true, for after the Flood and the disappearance of the canopy, the destructive short-wave radiations were now reaching the Earth’s surface for the first time, creating organic chemical breakdowns at a much faster rate than ever before.
Added to this, under the canopy equivalent of 40 feet of water or more, the surface atmospheric pressure would have been 2.18 times greater than it is now. Fermentation occurs as carbon dioxide from the reaction is allowed to escape, leaving alcohol. Under greater atmospheric pressure this rate of formation would have been retarded. But once the canopy collapsed and air pressure dropped, the reaction would have speeded up. Also, drunkenness occurs faster in thinner air, and the patriarch was thus unprepared for the quickness with which he was overcome with inebriation because of the new lower pressure conditions.
These unusual affects would not have been limited to just dead organic matter, but would have covered all life in general. Laboratory tests have shown in the past two decades that increases in short-wave radiation dosages stunt the growth of plants and animals. It is most interesting to note that the fossil record reveals that in the distant past most flora and fauna were many times larger in size. One need only look at the skeletal reconstructions of giant sloths, megatheriums and mammoths of the Pleistocene era and compare these with their dwarfed and degenerated counterparts living in today’s world. Genesis 6:4 states that before the Flood, “there were giants in the earth in those days,” which can refer not only to humanity but other life forms as well. The increase in radiation reaching the Earth’s surface as compared with that in the canopied world of long ago has taken its toll.
Most interesting is the fact that radiation dosages effect not only growth but also life-spans. It is known that increases in ultra-violet exposure speeds up the deterioration of tissue and bone calcification, resulting in shorter ages. Radiation can also harmfully alter genetic material of cells resulting in mutation, physical deformity and other disabilities that can lead to shorter lives—not only for one individual, but by inheritance through several generations.
The typical reaction of organisms to a sudden high dosage of radiation with the dosage then maintained for a length of time is a dramatic drop in the life-spans in the organisms’ first generation, followed by succeeding generations leveling off at a new lower life-span average. When charted out, this reaction is called a transient decay curve.
In Genesis chapter 5 appears a listing of the generations and ages of men who lived before the Flood, and in Genesis chapter 11 and following is a second listing, of the generations and ages of those who lived immediately after the Flood. A comparison of the two lists is quite remarkable.
For those who inhabited the canopied world before the Flood, the average of 910 years remains relatively the norm throughout the era. When we look at those men who lived after the Flood, however, the figures reveal a dramatic change having occurred as the generations went by—Noah 950 years, Shem 600 years, Arphaxad 438 years, Selah 433 years, Eber 464 years, Peleg 239 years, Reu 239 years, Serug 230 years, Nahor 148 years, Kohath 133 years, Amaram 137 years, Moses 120 years, Joshua 110 years, Eli 90 years, David 70 years.
First, we can note that there is a sharp drop in the ages of the first few post-Flood generations, followed by a slow leveling off to a new lower life-span average. What we have here is a good example of a transient decay curve, significant testimony to the sudden increase of radiation that would have reached the Earth’s surface after the disappearance of the prehistoric protecting water vapor canopy during the Flood.
A second contributing factor to the pre-Flood retardation of aging was the benefit of living in an environment of increased atmospheric pressure. Experiments have shown that increased pressure creates high oxygen tension and a greater diffusion driving force which imparts more oxygen at a greater rate into cuts, wounds, bruises and other areas of physical healing. This has led to the development of hyperbaric or high-pressure surgery in cases where speed of healing is critical.
Going one step further, experts in the hyperbaric oxygen application field have discovered that patients treated for short periods of 2.5 atmospheres of oxygen and gradually decompressed show remarkable relief from the effects of aging, including improvement of memory, energy levels, and reversal of senility.
If these are the short-term effects, we can wonder what the positive effects would be on a scale of a planetary population living in a pressurized environment for thousands of years.
In terms of geologic time, the Genesis story of an Edenic pre-Flood ea with its high altitude canopy can be placed during the last Interstadial period before the last Ice Age began. The listing of Antediluvian generations which appears in Genesis chapter 5 are now recognized by Bible scholars as not being strictly successive, with each name given most likely representing a dynasty of patriarchs rather than just one individual. Thus what the Genesis genealogies offer in numbers as the passing of a few thousand years in actuality covered several tens of thousands of years in time. The last Interstadial which began roughly 70,000 years ago indeed saw a most unusual conformity in world-wide climate, with a pole-to-Equator spectrum of less than 20 degrees F., as compared with the present 90 degrees F. This was also the period of the predominance of the giant-sized Pleistocene mammals, including such oversized members of the human species identified in the fossil record as Gigantoanthropus and Meganthropus.
With the advent of the last Ice Age, even during most of its time there existed definite boundaries of world climate. Paleo-climatologists recognize that the northern and southern latitudes were the only areas held in the grips of glacial freezing, while the temperate and tropical latitudes were able to maintain a constant comfortable climate, in some cases even to within a few miles of the ice fields themselves.
One atmospheric model proposes that in the last Ice Age the Earth’s prehistoric canopy became partially unstable, and collapsed at the poles, creating polar openings, and allowing for the precipitation and rapid build-up of snow and ice in these areas. But it remained intact elsewhere over the Earth’s surface, explaining the climatic modifications. However, about 10,000 B.C.E., the imbalances became total, the high altitude canopy which once surrounded the globe completely collapsed and disappeared, accompanied by a pole shift of the planet, a magnetic reversal, the sinking of Atlantis, and the submergence of all major islands and coastal areas, plus the wholesale disappearance of almost every species of the large forms of Pleistocene flora and fauna, including those of humanity.
It was these events that are remembered in Genesis as well as in the myths and legends around the world as the Flood.
Not long after this planetary cataclysm—in an era between 8000 and 3000 B.C.E.—the Golden Age blossomed, when the world-wide network of ley-energy lines was dowsed for and operated by an advanced civilization through the construction of global Megalithic monuments, pyramids, temples and other structures. And it was also during this period that the entire planet was surveyed and charted, particularly at the polar regions where the Renaissance maps copied from far older prehistoric maps show us that the ice caps which existed at that time were deliberately melted. The reason for the melting? It was an attempt to restore the collapsed water canopy that had covered the world only a few millennia before, by using the water from the melted polar ice catapulted into the higher atmosphere as a new protective medium.
The fact that the Golden Age civilization which accompanied this was successful can be seen by taking a second look at the Genesis 11 listing of post-Flood descendants. Immediately after the Flood and global catastrophes of 10,000 B.C.E., when the original water vapor canopy collapsed and began letting in increased radiations, the first three generations named show the result in a dramatic drop in their ages—950, 600, 438 years.
But beginning with Arphaxad the ages level off and even briefly begin to slowly climb for the next few generations—438, 433, 464 years. This suggests that new conditions were prevailing at this time, that a second canopy had been temporarily established shielding out harmful radiations once more. Had the canopy remained, undoubtedly the ages would have begun slowly climbing back to the millennium ages of the Edenic patriarchs of old.
Significantly, according to Genesis, the generations of Arphaxad to Eber were contemporary to those of Mizraim, Peleg, Almodad and Sheleph—as we shall see shortly, those associated with world measurement and dowsing. This was also the period the geologic record shows an optimum climate condition prevailed for the world.
Tragically, however, beginning with the end of Peleg’s life, living only 239 years, there begins a 40 percent reduction in ages, indicating the second canopy failed to take hold, and radiations continued to reduce life-spans. Peleg’s brother, Joktan, was given his name to commemorate the tragedy, for his name means “a shortening of time.” And following Peleg, the ages of the generations continue to decline from 239 to 175 years and still lower, indicating the canopy was never again restored.
Noteworthy is the fact that this second collapse of the planetary canopy also witnessed the end of the Golden Age in many respects. We are informed by paleo-climatologists and geologists that about 7,000 to 6,000 years ago ice began building up at the poles again, climates became harsher and more extreme, ocean levels significantly changed, both animal and human populations diminished in numbers, seismic activities within the Earth increased, and the ancient monuments of the world—the stone circles, pyramids, temples and other sacred centers—fell into disuse and disrepair.
One Hebrew patriarch who lived through the post-Golden Age period and who described life during the period with great detail, was Job. Several Bible commentators believe that Job was the same person as Jobab, or “father Job,” who is listed in the Genesis 11 genealogy as the youngest son of Joktan and the brother of Almodad and Sheleph—members of the last generation to map and dowse the world. From various data given in the Book of Job, his age is put at 248 years, which strongly suggests he was a contemporary of the first generations after the second canopy collapse, whose life-spans averaged 235 years and less.
Job 42: 16-17 also informs us that Job lived to see four generations of his offspring, indicating he was witness to a time when the life-spans of succeeding generations were rapidly diminishing. In Job 8: 8-11 the patriarch describes their lives as “shadows” compared with the “fathers of yesterday” who had enjoyed far longer life-spans.
Job, in his recorded conversations with his friends and with the Elohim, makes known the fact that he was aware of how the world had been and how very changed it had become during his lifetime.
In Job 38: 1-7, God asks the patriarch a series of rhetorical questions which reflect directly upon the Golden Age of earth energies as no longer existing:
“Where were you when I laid the foundations (the Crystal lattice) of the earth? Who laid the measures (form, design, plan, structure) thereof, if you know? Or who has stretched the line (energy lines) upon it? Whereupon are the foundations fastened (where are the energy node points?)”
Again, in verse 25 we read:
“Who has divided the water courses of the living waters, the way of the lightnings (electrical earth currents)?”
These subterranean waters, called in Job the “water underfoot,” were by Job’s day “forgotten,” “they are dried up, they are gone away from men,” their magnetic energies gradually weakening along with the Earth’s own field.
In Job 3:13-14 and 15:28, the patriarch bemoans the fact that former “kings of the earth” once built “solitary piles” over the surface, but these had now become “desolated places” and “desolated heaps.” At one point n his pain Job cries out, “Is my strength the strength of stones?” (6:12)--which may refer to his awareness of the former powers held within the world’s old standing stone monuments, which now, like how he felt in his relationship to God, had been weakened and abandoned.
Many portions of the text of Job also suggest that the patriarch of long ago knew of the former existence of the Earth’s canopy, which had by that time disappeared. In Job 26:13 he declares that the Creator, “by his spirit he has garnished (decreased) the heavens.” Elsewhere, as in Job 26:8 and 9, and 28:9, the patriarch makes further mention of the “spreading of “thick clouds” and “mists” of the former heavenly “garment”” or “swaddling bands” of the Earth’s canopy.
Without the canopy, the world of Job’s time was beginning to experience the dire consequences in the form of disastrous weather and temperature extremes, with the added problem of growing ice fields at the poles (Job 38: 22-30, 30: 9-10, 26:7 6:15-17, 24:19, 28:4, 12:14, 30:14):
“Have you entered into the storehouses of the snow, or have you beheld the treasures of hail? Out of whose womb came the ice? And the frost from heaven, who had gendered it? The waters are hardened as stone, and the surfaces of the deep are frozen. He commands the snow to go down upon the earth and the shower of his strength. Out of the inner parts (the south) shall a tempest come, and cold out of the north. When God blows, there comes frost, and again the waters are poured forth abundantly. He stretches out the north over the empty (desolate) place.
“The streams and brooks are brackish by reason of the ice, and wherein the snow is hid. What time they wax warm they vanish; when it is hot, they are consumed out of their place. They that fear the hoary frost, the snow shall fall upon them. And at that time when they shall be scattered they shall perish; and after it grows hot they shall be melted out of their place. Drought and heat consumes the snow waters. The flood breaks out, then they are gone away from men.
“He withholds the waters, and they dry up; also he sends them out, and they overturn the earth. They come upon me as a wide breaking of waters; in desolation they roll themselves over me.”
What is remarkable is that Job wrote of the phenomena of ice, snow, hail and floods, alternating with spells of drought, as an inhabitant of Uz, which was once located in modern northern Arabia. Today, the climate of this area is extremely arid and hot year round. Yet climatologists inform us that the type of conditions Job described did in fact once exist in the Middle East up to about five millennia ago, when Arabia and other large stretches of the world began turning into desert.
In the Hesiodic poems of the Greeks, the legend is told that, far back in time, Ouranos (Heaven), “came down to embrace Mother Earth, and lay close about her on all sides.” Ouranos has the connotation, “upper waters,” and indeed in most ancient cosmologies the sky which once existed above the atmosphere was considered a “heavenly ocean of waters.”
Among the Koren tribe of Burma, the “celestial vault” was the source of the Great Flood which drowned the world.
In the Babylonian creation story, the Enuma Elish, the god Marduk sundered the great serpent Tiamat in half, and from its body formed three regions of water--Tiamat remained as the salty water of the ocean, Apsu became the great subterranean “sweet water” channels below, and Mummu the “cloud-fog cover” rose to rule high over the heavens.
Marduk placed a special crossbar over the “sluice gates” of the sky, and kept guards of lesser deities to watch over the ocean above. Eventually, however, the guards became neglectful, the crossbar broke, and the waters on high poured forth.
From ancient Egyptian sources we learn that in earlier times the sky goddess Nut embraced Geb the deity of the earth until one day Shu, ruler of the atmosphere, interjected between them, and Nut receded into the heavens above. The sun god Ra was also remembered as once traveling the “sea of heaven” daily in his solar boat. The watery sky itself was the god Canopus, whose symbol was the water jug combined with the serpent.
In India, Varuna was once guardian of the “sea of heaven,” and ruled over a peaceful paradise-like Earth, but was replaced by Indra, who brought with him destructive storms, winds, thunders and lightning along with the appearance of a different solar deity in the sky.
One sees in this account a reflection of the Greek myths of Cronos, who once reigned over an idyllic World Age of Gold, only to be ousted by his more violent and unruly son, Zeus, the “thunderbolt hurler” and storm god. This tradition also saw the old sun, Hyperion, disappear and be replaced by a new sun, Helios, who rose out of the waters covering the earth.
From the Persian sacred book Zend-Avesta, we read that for a long time Yima was the heavenly overseer of a world in which there was neither cold nor hot winds, and in which humans, animals and all life grew to great sizes and numbers. But then floods and frosts came, caused by the gods leaving their ordered place in the heavens above.
Among the Ifugao of the Philippines, the Manobo of Mindanao, and the Maori of New Zealand, there is a memory of the sky being once very close to the Earth, but then the Sun changed its appearance, and the sky retreated to high above.
The Native Australians of the Victoria district recount that long ago during the Dreamtime, their country was far more fertile and luxurious in plant growth than now, inhabited by great creatures they call the Kadimakara, the animals of the Pleistocene whose bones they still find in the desert rocks. At that time the sky, “was covered by clouds so dense that it appeared solid,” and this great dew-laden vault was supported by great gum trees acting as props. But one day the gum trees broke, the sky collapsed, the land turned to desert, and the Kadimakara died, leaving behind their bleached skeletal remains. Today the Native Australians call the modern sky puru wilpanina—the “great hole” or “emptiness.”
The image of the sky supports collapsing is also found elsewhere. The ancient Sumerians told how one day the god Ea took a magic knife and cut the column “bonds” holding the heavens up, and it fell amid great catastrophe and floods.
In the Orient, Hwang-ti, the Yellow Emperor and founder of the Chinese civilization, discussed in his work, Su Wen, the three kinds of atmosphere once encircling the Earth.
First there is T-ch’I, or the air near the surface.
Second is You-ch’I or “cycles of wind,” which are the upper airs moving eastward and carrying clouds.
And finally T’en-ch’I or the “envelope of the heaven,” a great “parasol of waters” which existed above the clouds but below the stars.
The Chinese poem to the goddess Hsi Ho observed that this watery heaven, where the Sun was seen reflected upon it, measured 300 li or 100 miles high. The sixth chapter of the Huai-non-Tzu recounts further that:
“In very ancient times the four sky pillars of the compass points were broken down, the nine provinces of the habitable Earth were split apart, Heaven no longer wholly covered the world, and the Earth did not completely support heaven.”
There followed terrible destruction by fire and flood, by men and beasts going mad with terror, until the goddess Nu-kua brought order by once more “fusing together stones of fire” and patched the heaven together with the color azure.
Often, too, the prehistoric canopy was represented as a broken bridge. In their sacred writings of Kojoki, the Japanese tell of their two earliest gods, Izangagi and Isanami, the “sun-moon pair,” who once ruled the world from a “floating bridge of Heaven” high above the Earth at a time when “the heavens and the earth were very close to each other.” But when Ninigi, the celestial representative, was sent to rule the planet in the twin-gods’ absence, the account says that “the heaven and earth, which had already separated to a great height, receded utterly.”
The Japanese “floating bridge” is an echo of the Norse “Bifrost bridge,” the heavenly arc which joined the celestial Asgard of the gods with the Midgard Earth. The bridge was constantly maintained and guarded, say the Norse legends, lest the ice-giants of the far north personifying the polar glaciers form a warring party and cover the earth.
Always associated with the memories of the canopy are parallel legends from around the globe of humanity living hundreds, even thousands of years. Josephus, writing at the beginning of the Common Era, defended the Ancient traditions of long life-spans as being true, and gave several supported sources.
According to the Hindus, in the “first age” remembered men lived for 400 years. Then came an age when men lived only 300 years. Then a third age passed of only 200-year spans. And now, in our age, it is deemed a great thing to live to 100 years.
The Chinese too record that their most distant ancestors lived very great ages, and at least one Chinese Emperor commissioned a court inquiry to look into the reasons how the Ancients lived so long.
In Egyptian mythology, the first rulers of the Nile were the gods. Manetho, the Sebennyte priest who lived during the reign of Ptolemy Philadelphus, recorded the names and ages of the first Egyptian god-rulers, and attempted to correlate them with their Greek equivalents. His listing reveals:
*Ptah (Hephaestus or Vulcan) -- 9,000 years
*Helios (the new Sun) -- 1,000 years
*Agatha Daimon -- 700 years
*Geb (Cronos or Saturn) -- 500 years
*Osiris -- 400 years
*Typhon -- 350 years
*Horus -- 1,800 years
*Bitus -- 70 years
*Ares (Mars) -- 23 years
*Anubis -- 27 years
*Heracles (Hercules) -- 15 years
*Apollo -- 25 years
*Amun -- 30 years
*Tithoes -- 27 years
*Sosus -- 32 years
*Zeus (Jupiter) -- 20 years
Notice here that the reign of the first god, Ptah, is measured in thousands of years. Then, gradually, the reigns drop off from 1,000 to 70 years, finally leveling off to an average of 24 years, which is close to the reigns of the first Pharaohs of Egypt in recorded history. The one exception is Horus, whose age suddenly climbed back up to that of the earlier gods, indicating he may have lived during the time of the Golden Age when the world canopy was briefly restored, and ideal conditions prospered once more, including prolonged life-spans.
From Sumeria-Babylonia comes similar listings of long-forgotten rulers as preserved by the Graeco-Babylonian historian Berosus, and discovered in the unearthed King Lists of the Weld-Blundell cylinder.
Once again, the ten rulers listed prior to the Flood of Utnapishtim (the Mesopotamian Noah) are assigned ages measured in thousands of years, while those who came after have years greatly reduced in a gradual decay curve like the Genesis post-Flood generations. And again, too, in the midst of the curve is a sudden exception, then a leveling back.
The same is found in the early King List of the city of Erech:
*Meskiaggasir -- 325 years
*Enmekar -- 420 years
*Lugalbana -- 1,200 years
*Dumuzi -- 100 years
*Gilgamesh -- 126 years
*Ur Nungal -- 30 years
*Utulkalamma -- 15 years
*Labashu -- 9 years
*Ennunadanna -- 8 years
*Melanamma -- 6 years
*Lugalkiaga -- 36 years
From ancient China comes the Shu Ching, the Book of History, which records a total of 88 generations of rulers, beginning in 2953 B.C.E. and ending in 101 B.C.E. At the beginning of the listing we find a group of emperors with very long reigns, yet with slowly diminishing numbers:
*Fuhi -- 115 years
*Shen Nung -- 120 years
*Huang Ti -- 100 years
*Shao Hao -- 84 years
*Chuan Hsi -- 78 years
*Ti Kao -- 70 years
*Yao -- 102 years
Now compare this with those emperors who came toward the end of the listing:
*Lao Shang -- 14 years
*Zhun Chen -- 32 years
*Yi Zhi Xie --13 years
*We Wei -- 10 years
*Wu Shi Lu Er -- 2 years
*Jiu Li Hu -- 1 year
In India a translation of the ancient Sanskrit book, Satyartha Prakash recounts a listing of 124 generational rulers of the Kingdom of Indraprastha, within a period spanning 4,157 years. Plotting out the ages of the rulers in graph form reveals the same disintegration curve--the earliest potentates with the highest ages, slowly diminishing to later rulers with much reduced ages—as can be seen in other royal lists from around the world, from the same time period.
[Copyright 2009. Joseph Robert Jochmans. All Rights Reserved.]
