- The Cygnus Mystery -
Have Cosmic Rays Affected Human Evolution?
by Andrew Collins
Cygnus X-3 taken by the Chandra X-ray Observatory.
Did cosmic rays have a hand in effecting shifts in
human evolution, from Palaeolithic times through to the modern day? Has this
helped determine not only our physique and behaviour, but also our creativity
and consciousness? These are wild notions, yet suddenly they are beginning to
appeal to main-stream scientists and astronomers. Indeed, as long ago as 1973
American astronomer and science writer Carl Sagan wrote in his book The Cosmic
Connection that human evolution was the result of incoming cosmic rays from
some distant neutron star, demonstrating how we are right to think of ourselves
as part of a greater whole at one with the cosmos.
Yet is this correct? Is Charles Darwin's theory that
evolution is caused merely through survival of the fittest, and the process of
natural selection, somehow flawed? The idea of cosmic radiation reaching Earth
from deep space has fascinated the scientific world since its discovery
following a series of balloon ascents by Austrian physicist Victor F Hess
(1883-1964) in 1912. Then when in the late 1920s American geneticist H J Muller
(1890-1967) discovered that radiation (he used X-rays and later radium) was a
mutagen through his work with Drosophila fruit flies, the subject of whether or
not high energy cosmic rays might cause changes in human DNA was voiced for the
first time. Muller himself twice wrote about the subject, concluding on each
occasion that the normal background fluctuation in cosmic rays reaching Earth
was inadequate to explain spontaneous mutations in life forms, whatever their
type. Muller was not wrong. Yet had he been privy to modern scientific data
which now confirms that at certain times in the Earth's history the solar
system has been bombarded with high levels of cosmic rays then he might have
thought again.
When so-called "primary" cosmic rays hit the
upper atmosphere almost all of them break up when they collide with nuclei of
oxygen and nitrogen, the process producing a plethora of charged secondary
particles. Many disintegrate in milliseconds, but others form isotopes that are
preserved in everything from lake sediments to stalagmites and, more crucially,
the layers of ice that accumulate each year to great depth in the Arctic and
Antarctic regions.
One such isotope is Beryllium-10 (10Be), which can be
extracted from ice cores and measured to provide an accurate indication of
cosmic ray activity in the upper atmosphere. It shows that over the past
100,000 years, there have been three periods when the cosmic ray flux has
increased dramatically. The first was around c. 60,000-70,000 years ago, the
second occurred approximately c. 35,000-40,000 years ago, and the third and
last peak began around c. 16,000-17,000 years ago, and continued until around
14,000 years ago. Each spike lasted for a period of approximately 2,000 years.
Similar results have been determined from a stalagmite removed from a submerged
blue hole in the Bahamas. An examination of its Beryllium-10 content indicates
that at various points between 45,000 and 11,000 years ago the Earth was
bombarded by twice the amount of cosmic radiation than we get today.
Where's the Cosmic Source?
The first question we must ask is where this influx of
cosmic radiation might have come from. Was it really a neutron star, as Carl
Sagan suggested, or could it have been another astronomical source out there in
deep space? Alternatively, was there some other, more prosaic solution to this
enigma? The more or less regular gaps between the spikes of Beryllium-10
activity noted in the ice cores might well indicate some kind of cyclic force
in action, most obviously that of the sun. Cosmic rays are known to be
partially deflected by the solar magnetic field that stretches far out into the
heart of the solar system, making the rate of Beryllium-10 production in the
upper atmosphere dependent on the strength of the solar field, which is itself
connected with sunspot activity.
In addition to this, the sun's long term climate
cycles of 100,000, 41,000 and 23,000 years, first noted by Serbian geophysicist
Milutin Milankovic (1879-1958), must also affect the production of Beryllium-10
for similar reasons, i.e. the influence of the solar field upon the Earth's
upper atmosphere. This said, there might easily have been other factors behind
the sudden increase in cosmic rays hitting the earth, the most catastrophic
being a supernova, the death of a star as it expels the last of its nuclear
fuel and collapses to form a high-mass compact object, most usually a white
dwarf, black hole or neutron star.
Supernovas are thought to produce enormous bursts of
cosmic rays and gamma rays, which are sent careering across space at virtually
the speed of light. If such an event occurred close enough to our own solar
system then the Earth would be showered by deadly radiation. This would damage
the ozone layer, causing not only many more rays to reach the surface of the
planet, but also the onset of high levels of UV radiation from the sun. More
conservatively, catastrophists suggest that cosmic rays from a close supernova
would dramatically increase cloud formation, preventing the sun from
penetrating through the atmosphere, thus bringing about a sudden ice age.
Whatever the consequences of a close supernova, life
on Earth would suffer mass extinctions. As terrifying a scenario as this might
seem, it was the favoured theory for the sudden disappearance of the dinosaurs
some 65 million years ago until the discovery in 1980 of the Chicxulub impact
crater in Mexico's Yucatan peninsular. This helped confirm the alternative
theory that a super-sized asteroid or comet had been responsible for their
extinction. Indeed, the supernova solution had been the choice of Carl Sagan
and his co-author Dr I S Shklovskii, the famous Soviet astrophysicist and radio
astronomer, in a book entitled Intelligence in the Universe, published in 1966.
In fact, one wonders whether Sagan's unique view that cosmic rays have
accelerated human evolution actually stemmed from his obvious fascination with
the extinction of the dinosaurs.
Yet the powerful idea of a close supernova wreaking
devastation on earth during some past geological age lingers, with some
catastrophists believing that it could have brought about mass extinctions
during other geological epochs, for instance at the close of the Jurassic age
some 145 million years ago, as well as at the culmination of the Pleistocene
age, which coincided with the end of the last Ice Age, some 12,000 years ago.
And such scientific speculation is where it starts getting interesting, for
when the high levels of Beryllium-10 were first noted in the ice cores at the
beginning of the 1990s, scientists from the Cosmic Ray Council of the Soviet
Academy of Sciences, working alongside a team from the University of Arizona,
speculated that those around 35,000-40,000 years ago probably resulted from a
supernova explosion.
To back up their dramatic claims the joint
Soviet-American team cited the presence of an immense formation of glowing
clouds of gaseous debris - the remnants of an unimaginable supernova explosion
at around 150 light years away (that's just 900 million, million miles from
here) in the northern constellation of Cygnus. Had this remnant of a supernova
explosion - known to astronomers as the Cygnus Veil, or Veil nebula - been
responsible for showering the Earth with cosmic rays for anything up to 2,000
years some 40,000-35,000 years ago? Did it bring about dramatic climatic
changes and bursts of radiation that evolved humanity into what we are today?
The Emergence of Man
For whatever reason, the worldwide press coverage that
resulted from this dramatic announcement of a close supernova decimating the
Earth some 35,000 years ago came to nothing. Yet, thankfully, there was one
person who did take notice, and this was British anthropological writer Denis
Montgomery. Having lived in Africa for many years, where anatomically modern
humans emerged for the first time around 200,000 years ago, he became intrigued
as to why sudden jumps in evolution occur. Was it purely spontaneous, through
chemical changes in the body, or were there other exterior factors at play,
such as environmental and climatic changes, nutritional variety, interbreeding
or even simple competitiveness?
Although there is ample evidence that our
earliest ancestors migrated from Africa, most probably in search of new
resources of food as early as 70,000-80,000 years ago, there exist only tiny
glimpses of what we were capable of achieving at this time. For instance,
around 80,000 years ago the peoples of the republic of Congo were making barbed
bone hooks for fishing, while a community that inhabited a large cave at a
place called Blombos on the southern coast of South Africa would seem to have
fashioned the earliest known examples of expressive art. These take the form of
incised pieces of red ochre, showing recurring cross-hatch designs, as well as
perforated snail shell beads, once strung on a cord and worn either as a
necklace or bracelet. All of these invaluable objects are thought to be around
75,000 years old. Then there is the recently discovered archaeological evidence
from a remote mountain cave in Botswana sacred to the indigenous San
bushmen.
This shows that ritual activity has been occurring
here in a similar manner for anything up to 70,000 years, around the time when
the first migrations out of Africa are thought to have occurred. Strangely,
this was also when the ice core samples tell us that there was a dramatic
increase in cosmic radiation hitting the earth, the first of three major bursts
in the past 100,000 years.
Age of the Artist
Yet aside from this clear evidence of human creativity
and imagination 70,000-80,000 years ago, it was not until the start of the
Upper Palaeolithic age around 40,000 years ago that something quite dramatic
started to take place. At a time coincident to when homo sapiens first entered
a Europe dominated by his Neanderthal cousins, there is clear evidence for the
sudden emergence of a complex life style, the earliest known to human kind. It
involved religious expression and practices, including detailed funerary rites,
as well as magnificent new forms of art, such as the carving of animals, birds
and humans in bone and stone and, crucially, the manifestation of highly
sophisticated cave art, such as the extraordinary painted galleries discovered
as recently as 1994 at Chauvet in France's Ardèche region.
Occupied as early as 32,000-30,000 years ago, it
contains images and sculptures of whole menageries of wild animals, including
horses, rhinos, lions, mammoths and bison. Alongside these are perhaps the
oldest known representations of the human form anywhere in the world. These
take the form of a painted torso and legs of a large bodied woman, typical of
later "Venuses" found either in statue form or as high relief in other
caves, and an accompanying bison-headed figure labelled the Sorcerer, both of
which are to be seen in the deepest part of the cave system.
Rapidly, hundreds of caves across Western Europe
became full of accomplished art forms, a tradition which lingered through until
around 17,000 years ago, when suddenly there was a renewed interest in sacred
painting deep underground. This trend ended finally around 12,000 years ago
when the Upper Palaeolithic age climaxed coincident to the cessation of the
last Ice Age.
What Denis Montgomery wondered was whether, in
addition to other environmental, climatic and human factors, the increase in
cosmic rays around 35,000 years ago, perhaps from the assumed supernova
explosion which caused the creation of the Cygnus Veil, acted as a mutagen to
effect sudden changes in the brain's neurological processes. This in turn might
have brought about the enlightened age of the cave artist in Western Europe. It
could also explain why the Neanderthal peoples suddenly became extinct around
this time, perhaps as a result of too much competition from their competitive
new neighbours, the homo sapiens.
Montgomery's unique ideas were privately published,
and, inevitably, largely ignored by the scholarly community. Adding to his
problems was the realization by astronomers during the mid 1990s that the
Cygnus Veil, the nebula at the centre of what Montgomery came to refer to as
"the Cygnus event", was found to be not 150 light years away from
Earth, as had previously been thought, but much further away, probably around
1,800 light years distance from here. At this greater distance any supernova
would have been little more than a bright light source in the northern sky,
lasting for a period of several days before gradually dying away. Doubly
damning were recalculations concerning the age of the supernova event, which
now appears to have occurred as recently as 5,000-8000 years ago (even though
some astronomers still reckon it took place much earlier, perhaps 10,000-15,000
years ago). Thus there was no way that the Cygnus Veil can have been
responsible for the high levels of cosmic rays reaching Earth's atmosphere
prior to the emergence of the first European cave artists some 32,000 years
ago. So where did they come from?
Enter the Meinel Group
It would not be until 2005 that this same cosmological
conundrum would again be tackled, this time by an academic think tank from
Nevada. At the conference of TAG (the Theoretical Archaeological Group) in
Sheffield, England, held in December that year, Dr Aden Meinel - Emeritus
Professor of the College of Optical Sciences at the University of Arizona and
distinguished veteran of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, who in the 1980s was
responsible for the launch of space telescopes such as Hubble - told a packed
audience of archaeologists and students that the high levels of Beryllium-10 in
the Greenland and Antarctica ice cores indicated that cosmic rays were
responsible for germ-line mutations in both animals and human life around
35,000-40,000 years ago. This, he reported, had been the reason for the
emergence of Cro-magnon man in Western Europe, and the sudden disappearance of
the Neanderthals at the same time.
In addition to this, Meinel revealed that he and his
colleagues had been able to use the ice core evidence to determine the
approximate astronomical coordinates for the source of the cosmic rays. They
had pinpointed an area of the sky in the northern hemisphere, coincident to the
constellation of Draco. Here they searched for a possible source of cosmic rays
and settled on a planetary nebula (a mass of glowing gas and cloud) known as
the Cat's Eye. This Meinel group proposed was the remnants of a galactic binary
system consisting of a super giant and a once active black hole that had spewed
out jets of plasma, superheated ionized gas, along its line of axis at close to
the speed of light. These, he said, had penetrated thousands of light years of
space to reach the earth around 35,000 to 40,000 years ago, causing the changes
in evolution witnessed at this time.
It was a bold theory. Unfortunately, astrophysicists
are unanimous in their opinion that the Cat's Eye nebula does not, and has
never, contained a black hole able to produce cosmic rays that might reach the
solar system. However, the Meinels are sticking to their guns and remain
convinced that the Cat's Eye nebula is the source of the cosmic rays that they
believe affected human evolution in Palaeolithic times. Yet tellingly, before
being beguiled by the beauty of the Cat's Eye nebula, the Meinels had
originally determined the direction of the cosmic ray activity detected in the
ice core samples as coming not from Draco, but from neighbouring Cygnus, the
constellation of the swan. So had they got it wrong? Were the cosmic rays
coming, as Denis Montgomery had surmised, from somewhere in Cygnus after all?
The Oldest Constellation
The Cygnus constellation, showing at both a swan in
flight and the Cross of Christ.
This is where I enter the frame. My own independent
research into the emergence of primitive societies, with their unique
cosmologies and religion, had revealed an inordinate interest in one particular
constellation - Cygnus, the celestial bird or swan, better known today as the
Northern Cross. Indeed, it features as one of the oldest known artistic
representations of a constellation anywhere in the world, for it is seen on the
walls of the famous Lascaux cave in southern France, which is known to have first
been occupied around 17,000 years ago. Here it appears in a fresco found in the
cave's deepest part, known as the well-shaft, as a bird man falling into a
trance next to a charging bison and a bird on a pole.
This is likely to represent the so-called sky-pole of
the shaman used universally to enter the sky-world via a cosmic axis, located
in the vicinity of the north celestial pole, or Pole Star. From around 16,000
to 13,000 BC this was located amid the stars of Cygnus, which even by this time
would appear to have seen as a sky-bird of some sort.
Sky-poles wercreated by the Tungus shamans of Siberia,
topped with swans signifying the cosmic axis. Was this an indication of where
the ancients believed the sky-world to be - in the vicinity of Cygnus, the constellation
of the celstial swan?
Cygnus was also very likely the inspiration behind the
appearance of the Venus and Sorcerer fresco in France's Chauvet cave, where the
woman's legs and thighs might well signify an abstract representation of the
region of the Milky Way known as the Dark Rift, which opens out in the Cygnus
region. Throughout the ages this region of the sky, close to where the
ecliptic, the path of the sun, crosses the Milky Way, has been viewed as the
vulva and womb of a sky-goddess, or Cosmic Mother, who gives birth to the
sun.
Sometimes the Cygnus stars are even seen to be
attached to the Earth via a kind of invisible umbilical cord, showing it as a
nourisher of life.Cygnus also appears as a bird in Church Hole cave in
Derbyshire's Creswell Crags alongside cave art dated to 12,800 years ago, while
an 12,000-year-old stone temple - the oldest anywhere in the world - at Göbekli
Tepe in southeast Turkey seems aligned to this same constellation. It is the
same story with ancient stone and earthen structures worldwide, from the bird
effigy mounds of North America to the Olmec centres of Mexico, the Incan sacred
city of Cuzco, the Egyptian Pyramids of Giza, the Hindu temples of India, to
the Irish and British megalithic stone complexes of Newgrange and Avebury, all
seem to reflect an age-old interest in Cygnus.
Putting aside more obvious astronomical reasons why
our ancestors might have favoured this particular constellation in their
religious beliefs and practices, I searched for other reasons why it was
depicted deep underground by the cave artists of the Upper Palaeolithic age. In
the knowledge that the work of South African anthropologist and rock art
specialist David Lewis-Williams had determined that much prehistoric cave art
was inspired by shamans in mind-altered states, a finding explored byGraham
Hancock in his ground-breaking book Supernatural (2005), I wondered
whether the stars of Cygnus had come to be associated with religious
experiences deep underground, where their most sacred cave art was executed.
I searched for answers and found that in the early to
mid 1980s underground particle detectors in different parts of the world began
detecting incoming cosmic rays from deep space. Since they came in cycles of
exactly 4.79 hours, the source was easily determined, for this same cycle had
already been recorded in connection with other forms of electromagnetic
radiation inbound from an object called Cygnus X-3, located some 37,000 light
years away in the heart of the Cygnus constellation. So inexplicable were these
peculiar, neutrally-charged, strongly-interacting particles, resonating at some
of the highest energies ever detected, that they were quickly dubbed
"cygnons", later changed to "cygnets", meaning "children
of the swan". This amazing data led to controversial claims that Cygnus
X-3 was the first identified cosmic particle accelerator in the galaxy.
Cygnus X-3 is a binary system composed of a dying
Wolf Rayet star that feeds a close proximity neutron star (or, some suggest, a
black hole or strange quark star) producing streams of superheated plasma
(ionized gas). This ejecta is shot out at relativistic speeds, i.e. very close
to the speed of light, along its line of axis, causing jets of debris that reach
out into the local stellar medium for tens of light years of distance. These
unimaginable beams, like cosmic searchlights, are held together by magnetic
sheaths that produce powerful particle acceleration in a variety of frequency
ranges, including x-rays, infrared, radio waves and gamma rays. This is not
uncommon in so-called compact stars, like black holes or neutron stars, but in
2000 astrophysicists announced that Cygnus X-3 might well be the galaxy's first
blazar, a term used when one of a deep space object's twin plasma jets is
aligned towards our solar system, i.e. it is pointing straight at us. Other
blazars have been identified outside of the galaxy, but this is the first time
that one has been suspected to exist in our own back yard, so to speak.
What this means is that we are looking straight down
the barrel of the most dangerous cosmic cannon in the galaxy, and have been,
according to astrophysicists, for anything up to 700,000 years. The
significance of this is that the ejecta produced by such jets could easily be
responsible for increased levels of cosmic rays reaching the Earth. This
includes Cygnus X-3's unique cygnet particles which, being neutrally charged,
reach the Earth directly from source, and are able to penetrate deep
underground, which is something that cosmic rays are usually unable to do,
since they are positively charged and break up before they reach the surface of
the planet (neutrinos, which are negatively charged cosmic particles with
almost no mass, pass through the earth all the time without affecting
anything). More importantly, recent findings by Japanese and Chinese scientists
using data from a facility in Tibet have shown that there is even today a huge
excess of high energy cosmic rays coming from a point in the Cygnus constellation,
close to the astronomical coordinates of Cygnus X-3.
Seeing the Light
This staggering scenario might well explain why our
ancestors came to recognize the celestial swan as so important to their
religious mindset, since there is every reason to conclude that ancient shamans
who achieved altered states of consciousness in deep cave settings, most
obviously using hallucinogens, somehow became aware of the effect Cygnus was
having on their lives. This might seem impossible. However, there is every
chance that they would have been able to see the disintegration underground of
cygnet particles, through a process known as Cherenkov radiation, which allows
decaying cosmic rays to be seen as ghostly flashes of white or blue-white light
as they pass through the aqueous part of the eye.
Astronauts first discovered this phenomenon in 1968
when they were aboard the Apollo 11 spacecraft. As they tried to get off to
sleep they reported seeing "flashes and streaks" before their eyes
(scientifically known as "phosphenes"). This occurred with their eyes
open or closed, something that recurred during future space missions, prompting
a series of onboard experiments that proved they were being caused by cosmic
rays passing through the hull of the space vessel.
Like Looking into the Universe
Hungarian-born Cornelius A. Tobias (1918-2000), a
founding member of Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory's Donner Laboratory
and an expert on space biology, had earlier predicted the level of cosmic
radiation that future astronauts would be exposed to, and even described its
potential effects. More significantly, he predicted that they would also see
flashes of light before their eyes. In order to test his hypothesis, he devised
a unique, but very dangerous, experiment. He decided to expose himself to sub-atomic
particles produced by Berkeley's Bevalac particle accelerator, which has been
described as a veritable cosmic ray factory. Part of its function is to rip
away electrons from heavy elements including iron, and then focus the nuclei
into a beam of particles, which are then accelerated to virtually the speed of
light, like the relativistic jets produced by compact objects such as black
holes and neutron stars.
Tobias quite literally stuck his head in the flow of
the particles and observed something almost unique on Earth. "You see
visual flashes," he recalled, shortly before his death in 2000. "It
is an exhilarating sensation. It is as though you are looking into the universe
itself." Tobias repeated the experiment, even introducing his colleagues
to the experience, until finally the tests were discontinued on health grounds.
Although it is suspected that these sub-atomic
particles pass through the aqueous part of the eye, more recent research by
Livio Narici of the National Institute for Nuclear Physics in Rome has
suggested that some cosmic rays might hit the brain directly, causing not only
the sensation of light flashes but also other seemingly external effects such
as odd smells. Narici believes that phosphenes can be created when the particles
hit the visual cortex, along with the olfactory bulb (causing smells) and
possibly even the central nervous system. If so, then they could pose a
potential health hazard to astronauts on future space missions, especially if
phosphenes, or indeed other forms of sensory phenomena, occur at crucial
moments such as when manoeuvring vehicles to land. Narici has now been granted
permission to conduct experiments with astronauts onboard the International
Space Station (ISS) under the project name of ALTEA. A helmet-shaped
multi-sensor device will be worn by volunteers for an hour at a time to monitor
the passage of incoming cosmic rays. At the same time the astronauts will log
when they see light flashes or trails. Hopefully, the two will coincide,
telling Narici and his team where exactly the particles are hitting.
Under normal circumstances, we do not see cosmic rays
down here on Earth, since we rarely experience total darkness. Moreover, the
vast majority of cosmic rays hitting the Earth are broken up in the upper
atmosphere, and fall as showers of harmless secondary particles. Even if we
were to experience total darkness at ground level, so many other forms of
environmental radiation, whether natural or industrially produced, might
additionally cause phosphenes, meaning that any produced specifically by
incoming cosmic rays would be lost in the process.
Only if you travel deep underground are virtually all
forms of environmental radiation shielded out, the reason why particle
detectors and accelerators are located deep underground in mines, or off the
side of tunnels inside mountains. Only here can they be sheltered from
extraneous radiation, including stray cosmic rays penetrating the overhead
rock. This then is what makes the cygnets from Cygnus X-3 so unique.
Only strong, neutral particles of this kind are able
to penetrate depths of hundreds of metres, before finally breaking up to cause
secondary particles known as muons. It is for this reason alone that they were
first detected by underground facilities, which at the time were attempting to
witness the decay of a sub-atomic particle known as the proton. They included
the Soudan underground mine facility in Minnesota and the NUSEX experiment in
the Mont Blanc facility in southern France.
Thus a shaman in the total darkness of a deep cave
setting would be troubled only by incoming cosmic rays from just a very few
deep space sources, the most likely being Cygnus X-3 (although some facilities
have detected a weaker cosmic particle inbound from a source designated
Hercules X-1). Intriguingly, I have spoken to a woman whose father worked in
the Soudan underground mine before the particle detection facility was built at
the beginning of the 1980s. She claims that he would experience unaccountable
flashes of light in the total darkness. I have heard similar stories from those
who have spent long periods inside deep caves and mines in Britain, including
the Cheddar caves in southern England and an abandoned slate mine beneath a
mountain at Dinas, West Wales. All report unaccountable flashes of light in
such environments. Even though geologically-produced radiation, such as radon
gas, might account for the production of some phosphenes underground, there is
every chance that some are the result of incoming cosmic rays.
Closer to God
Is this then what our Palaeolithic ancestors also
experienced deep underground - flashes of light caused by the passage of cosmic
rays inbound from sources such as Cygnus X-3? Would they have interpreted such
experiences in a religious context? I think the answer is going to be yes. On
the isolated peninsular of Mount Athos in southern Greece, ascetic monks
adhering to a form of religious devotion known as hesychasm, also called
omphaloscopy, or "navel-gazing", have for centuries repaired to the
darkness of caves on the mountain in order to witness the divine light and
glory of God, which is compared with that experienced by the disciples on Mount
Tabor at the time of the Transfiguration of Jesus. It is a process that
involves a period of deep meditation and contemplation that can last for
several days, perhaps even longer.
Yet eventually, I have been told first hand, they
witness flashes of light, which are interpreted as the Light of God. When this
occurs it is often accompanied by visions of Jesus, the Virgin Mary, and the
Christian saints - the whole process is said to bring them closer to God.
The Greek Orthodox vision of the Transfiguration of
Jesus Christ on Mount Tabor, is seen as an expression of the belief in
seeing the light in the practice of hesychasm.
No one knows the origins of hesychasm, although it is
thought to have been introduced to Mount Athos, its principal centre, from
Cappadocia in eastern Turkey, the home of the earliest Christian Fathers, and
some of the most austere Christian ascetics. Such religious practices most
probably came originally from shamanistic based notions that had their genesis
among the earliest Neolithic communities of central and eastern Turkey,
including the city of Çatal Hüyük near Konya and before that the Pre-pottery
Neolithic cult centres of Göbekli Tepe, c. 10,000 BC, and Nevali Cori, c. 8400
BC.
Although apparently unconnected to the term
omphaloscopy (which is a derisory term), it should be pointed out that the
navel (the Greek omphalos) is a primary symbol of the axis mundi, the axis of
the earth, thought to be linked via an invisible sky-pole or umbilical cord to
a cosmic axis located in the vicinity of the North Star. Curiously, the name
Göbekli Tepe means in Turkish the "hill of the naval", suggesting
that it was once thought to be an axis mundi in its own right.
Gobekli Tepe. The Pre-pottery Neolithic cult centre
near Urfa in southeast Turkey. Did its shamanic elite inherit ideas relating to
divine light consciousness caused by cosmic rays from Cygnus X-3 from the
Palaeolithic cave artists of Western Europe?
I believe it highly probable that the mental
discipline of "seeing the light", i.e. witnessing flashes of light in
deep cave settings, is something that was first experienced by Palaeolithic
shamans, in Europe especially, and was then inherited by the shamanic elite
responsible for the construction of sub-surface cult centres built by the
earliest Neolithic peoples. The idea of spending time in the darkness of
cave-like environments was, I suspect, a key element in their beliefs and
practices. Such ideas brought with them the vision of a communion with
otherworldly influences which, as space biology expert Cornelius Tobias
commented in connection with his own experiences of seeing the light, made you
feel like "looking into the universe itself".
What we also know is that flashes of light produced in
deep cave settings by cosmic rays coming from Cygnus X-3 will have increased
and decreased in accordance with the presence overhead of the Cygnus stars,
enabling the Palaeolithic shamans eventually to synchronize their chthonic
beliefs and practices with its cosmic ray cycle, and thus identify this
astronomical region as the source of origin of their visionary experiences.
Moreover, the appearance of seemingly objective flashes in the eyes might
additionally have been taken, as is the case of the hesychasts of Mount Athos,
as manifestations of some kind of primal cause, triggering more complex
connections with what might have been conceived of as a divine being.
This scenario might well have led our ancestors to
learn what science is confirming today - that life came from the stars. Indeed,
the modern theory of panspermia, literally "life everywhere",
proposes that the most primitive forms of life probably arrived on this planet
having hitched a ride either on a comet, meteor or asteroid. In many ways it is
the origins behind the belief that we come from heaven, and will return there
in death.
In Europe, it was the swan that was said to carry the
souls of the dead into the next world, which was located in the north, the
direction in which swans migrated to their breeding grounds each spring. In the
Baltic region it was the swan that took the place of the stork in bringing
babies into the world. It is very likely for these reasons that the stars of
Cygnus, an ever present northern constellation, became associated with
migratory birds such as the swan. However, in regions where the swan was
absent, other avians took its place. For instance, it is clear that in the Near
East, the bird of Cygnus was originally the vulture, which in early Neolithic
practices at places such Çatal Hüyük was involved in the excarnation process of
denuding bodies and then, as a psycopomp (the Greek word for "soul
carrier"), accompanied the soul of the deceased into the afterlife.
Cosmic Mother
In my opinion, this communion with the great unknown
in deep cave settings led the ancients to celebrate the idea that we are
star-stuff by teaching that the sun was periodically reborn from between the
thighs of the Cosmic Mother, symbolised by the Milky Way's Great Rift which
begins in the Cygnus constellation (something that might indeed be depicted in
the Palaeolithic cave of Chauvet in southern France). Moreover, I feel sure
that at least a proportion of the cosmic rays that arguably caused mutagenic
changes in DNA during Palaeolithic times came from the direction of Cygnus, the
location searched originally both by anthropological writer Denis Montgomery
and ex-NASA scientist and astronomer Aden Meinel for a source of cosmic rays
hitting the Earth.
Such an intrusion into human consciousness from a deep
space object in the Cygnus region might well explain why the cosmic bird has
been at the heart of religious beliefs and practices since Palaeolithic times.
Worldwide, there is a tradition concerning a sky-bird that either lays a cosmic
egg which then becomes the universe, or gives forth a honk, or call, that
brings the universe into manifestation. It is present in India, Egypt and even
in the Pacific South Seas, and in each instance the bird is said to be represented
by the stars of Cygnus.
When in 1973 Carl Sagan wrote that cosmic
rays were responsible for changes in human evolution he boldly asserted that
their source was most probably a distant neutron star. Today there can be
little doubt that the neutron star in question is Cygnus X-3 - the galaxy's
first blazar as well as the best candidate by far for at least a proportion of
the cosmic radiation responsible for the acceleration of human evolution at a
time when we were just beginning to emerge as modern human beings.
Yet more disturbing is the fact that Cygnus X-3 is out
there now, its cosmic gun barrel trained towards the solar system, ever ready
to release volleys of cosmic debris and other types of electromagnetic
radiation in our direction. Astrophysicists studying Cygnus X-3 are waiting for
what they describe as the "next big bang" - showers of cosmic
particles on a level never seen before, and when this happens, who knows, it
might well signal the commencement of the next upgrade in human evolution.
All references for this article are to be found in
Andrew Collins's book The Cygnus Mystery. For more information on the Cygnus
constellation & for copies of 'The Cygnus Mystery' visit
www.AndrewCollins.com
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