BEN BLUMENBERG
                                        REALITY SOFTWARE
                                        P.O. Box 105
                                        Waldoboro, Me 04572
                                        December 10, 1991

                     THE GODDESS TIMELINE

     Welcome to the GODDESS TIMELINE!  We have all seen
historical timelines; they are a marvelous visual device for
condensing and displaying a vast amount of data. This timeline is
different from those you have seen before and so a few comments
are in order about how it was designed and what information was
selected for inclusion. 

     Most historical charts focus upon great political events and
show a distinct bias towards events that happened as Western
Culture developed.  The classical world of the Near East and the
Mediterranean thereby received great emphasis.  This bias is not
entirely due to Eurocentric First World arrogance, as currently
political thinking would have it, although there is an element of
cultural blindness in such products.  Writing did arise first in
the ancient Near East and so the time depth of written records is
greatest for this region and classical cultures in Europe.
Furthermore, historical and archeological research, as we know
it, did arise first as deductive, analytical disciplines in
Europe and the United States and it was only natural that
expeditions and scholars went first to those cultures that are
our immediate forebearers.  It is an intuitive and instinctive
priority to study first that which seems closest to us, both in
personal and broad historical-cultural terms.  Furthermore,
scholars in classical Asia when interested in history did not
conceive of it as we do in the West. History did not exist as an
objective narrative of events in secular time.  History meant the
establishment, through oral epic poetry, of one's mythological
ancestry (and thereby credibility) and the accurate recitation of
the mythological ancestors from the time of creation to the
present.  Such a process contacted mythological space-time, the
sacred time of Mercea Eliade, and enabled the participants to
transcend the cares of everyday life and be uplifted, renewed and
momentarily feel the greatest of their potential.  History, as we
conceive it, did not exist and by comparison it is certainly a
one dimensional intellectual exercise however, valuable from a
data aquisition point of view.  "History" was mythic and
ritualistic and so retrieving what we in the West need for an
informational timeline from such records is extremely difficult.
Nonetheless, the work has begun and the rewards are flowing in.
As Westerners, I do not propose rejecting our heritage. I do
propose assimilating it and then widening our vision to integrate
other dimensions.  Therefore I begin as a Westerner with an
informational, fact filled, timeline. 
 
     Only in this second half of this century has a broad ,
based, systematic, global effort begun to understand the
Neolithic, classical and medieval history of continental and
northern Europe and Asia.  I have made a serious effort to
incorporate much of this work into the timeline and as a result
there is a great deal of information collated here for northwest
Europe, the Indian subcontinent and Tibet, China and Japan that
does not appear in any other published timeline as of this date.
As a result, you have a more balanced view of history, albeit the
great wealth of data that fills the column for continental Europe
and the Near East.

     As no timeline can contain every published, dated event for
the period in question. a word about the data selection process
is in order.  My larger, overriding project concerns the history
of mythology and religion with a particular focus upon the mytho-
poetics of the Great Goddess.  This timeline is designed for that
project and will be one of several files in the Goddess package
when it is published sometime in 1992.  With those objectives in
mind, the timeline emphasizes and highlights (literally in the
decision where to use italics or bold type) events critical to
the historical narrative of evolving mythologies and the history
of religion.  Important political and cultural developments are
here as well, for they form the essential secular context against
which mythologies and rituals are to be explored.  The timeline
begins at 10,000 B.C. as the great Wurm ice sheets of the last
glaciation began to melt and recede northward, setting the stage
for a global warming and the Agricultural Revolution of the early
Neolithic. My closing date is certainly atypical.  I chose 900
A.D.in order to reduce further the Euro-centric bias; 1056 A.D.
(Norman Invasion and the birth of a familiar England) is a more
obvious choice to a Westerner if the timeline is designed to stop
before the high Middle Ages of Europe when Christianity had
solidified its hold over a vast region.  About 900 A.D, the great
Islamic empire was at its zenith, the enormous Tibetan empire
over Central Asia was under attack and beginning to disintegrate
and the Russian state had just been formed around Novorogod and
Kiev.  These observations point to a feature of this timeline
that speaks to our own times.  Many of the republics that chose
to assert their independence in this century have national
identities based upon ancient ethnic integrity that has a
cultural validity of great time depth.  Hidden within this
compacted data are many examples: notice the origin points for
the Slavs and Magyars for example.  Above all, reflect upon the
Chinese invasion and continual occupation of Tibet.  In the
eighth and ninth centuries A.D., Tibet was the imperial power of
Central Asia and invaded China, captured the capital and dictated
treaty terms.  The Chinese have never forgiven the Tibetans, who
are a distinct ethnic group as well, and they now have their
revenge.  The time clock runs very differently in the orient.

     This timeline is designed to stand alone; it is self
contained.  You may construct a large single chart by the
following procedure.  Overall, the timeline consists of 22
printed pages, two columns to a page as you can see.  The single
chart is two pages across and 11 pages deep.  Arrange pages 1
through 11 in a vertical row and then adjacent to them line up
pages 12 through 22. Cut off the footers on pages 1 and 12. Cut
off the headers and footers on all other pages, align and tape
together or glue down on a piece of poster board. Final
dimensions are approximately 20" x 75", depending upon exactly
where you cut.  A single chart will give you a majestic sweep of
a vast period of history, but due to the small type size, it is
unsuitable as a wall chart.
     
     The next edition of TIMELINE will explore one of the most
fascinating and mysterious observations contained in the data.
Over a period of some seven centuries (700 B.C. to 0 A.D.), the
world was changed irrevocably by interaction with all but one of
the "sons of god".  During this period the following were born
and lived: Zoroaster, Siddharta Gautama, Vardhamana, Confucius,
Lao-Tzu and Jesus Christ.  Only Mohammed's life lies outside this
time period.  If we take the beginning of recorded history to be
c.3000 B.C., then there is a span of some 4000 years to consider
within this timeline, approximately 5000 years if we wish to
bring our observations up to the present.  It is impossible to
imagine a mechanism that would structure the birth of
extraordinary human beings ("sons of god"); the probability of
such a "person" appearing in one year or another should be
random.  One year, or century, should be just as likely as any
other to contain such divinity.  Yet the dull recitation of
historical fact say otherwise, however mysterious the underlying
mechanism may be!  There was something extraordinary special
about the first milllenium B.C. in that it produced 6 of the 7
global religious geniuses known to history.  Why this clustering
of such lives at this time?  This clustering has been noted
before by historians and mention of it is buried in many books.
My further comment will not attempt an explanation, but will
subject the numbers to statistical analysis in order to
demonstrate how improbable, in quantitative terms, these events
of the first millenium B.C. were.    
     
     As mentioned above, this timeline also accompanies an
extensive electronic publishing project about the history and
mytholology of the Great Goddess for it forms an invaluable
historical context against which to assess those documents.
Please contact us to receive a flyer about this "book" which will
exist only on disc and will be accompanied by an extensive
bibliography and thought provoking flow charts.  If you have
thoughts or comments about this timeline, please write!  I do
want to hear from you, and while all letters will not be
answered, all will be read and thoughtfully considered I assure
you. 
                                                                 
                         


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