From: Subject: Earth without a Moon Date: Sun, 4 May 2008 18:31:56 +0300 MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/html; charset="windows-1255" Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable Content-Location: http://localhost:8780/pubs/journals/pensee/ivr03/25earthm.htm X-MimeOLE: Produced By Microsoft MimeOLE V6.00.2900.3198 Earth without a Moon

Earth without a Moon

Immanuel Velikovsky

Democritus and Anaxagoras taught that there was a time when the Earth = was=20 without the Moon. Aristotle wrote that Arcadia in Greece, before being = inhabited=20 by the Hellenes, had a population of Pelasgians, and that these = aborigines=20 occupied the land already before there was a moon in the sky above the = earth;=20 for this reason they were called Proselenes (1).

Appolonius Rhodius mentioned the time "when not all the orbs were yet = in the=20 heavens, before the Danai and Deukalion races came into existence, and = only the=20 Arcadians lived, of whom it is said that they dwelt on the mountains and = fed on=20 acorns, before there was a moon (2)."

Plutarch wrote in "The Roman Questions": "These were Arcadians of = Evander's=20 following, the so-called Pre-Lunar people (3)." Also Ovid: "The = Arcadians are=20 said to have possessed their land before the birth of Jove, and that = folk is=20 older than the Moon (4)." Lucian in his book on Astrology says that the=20 Arcadians "affirm in their folly that they are older than the moon (5)." = Censorinus alludes to the time in the past when there was no moon in the = sky=20 (6).

The Assyrians referred to the time of the Moon god as to the oldest = period in=20 the memory of the people: before other planetary gods came to dominate = the world=20 ages, the Moon was the Supreme Deity (7). Such references are found in = the=20 inscriptions of Sargon I I (about -720): (8). "Since the far-off days of = the=20 Moon-god's time (era)."

Some allusions to the time before there was a moon may be found also = in the=20 Scriptures. In Job 25:5 the grandeur of the Lord who "makes peace in the = heights" is praised and the time is mentioned "before (there was) a moon = and it=20 did not shine." Also in Psalm 72:5 it is said: "Thou wast feared since = (the time=20 of) the sun and before (the time of) the moon, a generation of = generations."=20 [See A.S. V., 1901, fn. 7. Ed.]

A "generation of generations" means a very long time. Of course, it = is of no=20 use to counter this psalm with the myth of the first chapter of Genesis, = a tale=20 brought down from exotic and later sources. It is probably the most = remote=20 remembrance of mankind: the time when there was no moon.

The memory of a world without a moon lives in oral tradition among = the=20 Indians. The Indians of the Bogota highland in the eastern Cordilleras = of=20 Columbia relate some of their tribal reminiscences to the time before = there was=20 a moon. "In the earliest times, when the moon was not yet in the = heavens," say=20 the tribesmen of Chibchas (9).

The traditions of diverse people offer corroborative testimony to the = effect=20 that in a very early age, but still in the memory of mankind, no moon=20 accompanied the earth. Since human beings already peopled the earth, it = is=20 improbable that the moon sprang from it: there must have existed a solid = lithosphere, not a liquid earth. Thus it is more probable that the moon = was=20 captured by the earth.

(The above remains as it was prepared for press before = 1950. See=20 also A. M. Paterson, "Giordano Bruno's View on the Earth = without a=20 Moon," in the Forum Section of this issue. Ed.)

REFERENCES

1. Aristotle, Fr. 591 (ed. V. Rose).
2. Apollonius Rhodius. IV, = 264.
3.=20 PIutarch's Moralia, tr. F.C. Babbit. Section 76.
4. Ovid,=20 Fasti, tr. Sir James G. Frazer, II, 290.
5. Lucian,=20 Astrology, tr. A. M. Harmon, 26 (p. 367).
6.=20 Censorinus, De die natal, 19. also Scholium on Aristophanes,=20 Clouds, 398.
7. "It is remarkable that at first = the=20 primacy was assigned to the moon." Fr. Cuznont. Astrology and=20 Religion among the Greeks and Romans, (1912) p. = 124.
8.=20 Luckenbill, Ancient Records of Assyria, Vol. II, 870.
9. A.=20 Humboldt, Vues des Cordilleras, I, 87.

PENSEE Journal III

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