As mentioned in my
previous blog post, I've been reading journal articles that make use of gene sequencing to explore the movements of ancient peoples in the Near East. One such study is "
The Genomic History of the Bronze Age Southern Levant".
Southern Levant. The authors of that study (published in 2020) concluded that the genetic data indicate: "Almost all individuals can be modeled as a mixture of local earlier Neolithic populations and populations from the northeastern part of the Near East."
 |
human mobility patterns (source)
|
Here is a quote from Isaac Asimov: "
The human way of life has always been subject to drastic and more or less irreversible change, usually (or, as I believe, always) mediated by some advance in science and/or technology." (source; "
The influence of science fiction") I've
previously imagined that there was an extra-terrestrial source of cultural knowledge from
Interventionists that was centered on a teleportation terminal at the eastern end of the Black Sea.
 |
Genetic history of the Southern Arc (source)
|
I like the idea that regions around the Black Sea were early sites of domestication of
horses, development of
wheeled vehicles,
wine making, innovations in
pottery and techniques for
smelting ores and crafting
metal objects. It is also suggested in the Torah that Abraham's family lived in
Harran; thus he can be viewed as part of the general movement of peoples in the direction from the northeastern part of the Near East towards
Canaan.
Another interesting biblical character is Enoch. For my science fiction story about "
Mosy", I want to depict Enoch as being an "immortal"
replicoid who is in charge of training the Interventionist agent (originally an Earthling named
Tara) who will alter the life of Mosy and in so doing end the
Ekcolir Reality. In my imagination, Enoch was an important part of a breeding project on Earth that selected for
Ek'col and
Asterothrope gene patterns, allowing for use of the
Bimanoid Interface. Originally, while on Earth, Enoch "was constantly with God" by means of the Bimanoid Interface, then was taken to
Observer Base and met his replicoid.
It is interesting to speculate about the meaning of "Egypt" at the time of the story of Moses. I'm intrigued by the idea that Egyptians had a long history of interacting with "Asians". For the ancient Egyptians, was there ever really a defined border between Africa and Asia?
The image to the right is meant to depict Egypt around 1600 BCE during the time when the
Hyksos controlled northern Egypt.
From the Bingbot: The suffix "mose" in the names Dedumose, Kamose, Ahmose, and Thutmose is derived from the ancient Egyptian particle "mose," which means "born" or "son" ¹. For example, Kamose can be translated as "son of [Ra's] majesty," Ahmose as "son of the moon" or "the moon is born," and Thutmose as "son of Toth" ¹. The name Moses, which is similar to these names, is also believed to have originated from the Egyptian word for "child" or "son," which is rooted in the verb "to beget" ². Source: Conversation with Bing, 8/4/2023 (1) Moses' Hebrew name was given to him in Egyptian?. https://judaism.stackexchange.com/questions/89130/moses-hebrew-name-was-given-to-him-in-egyptian. (2) Joseph Knew First: Moses, the Egyptian Son - Interpreter Foundation. https://journal.interpreterfoundation.org/joseph-knew-first-moses-the-egyptian-son/.
 |
Harran and the Kingdom of Mitanni (1500 BCE, see)
|
Here is another take on the origin of the name "Moses": '
... the first great Hebrew leader whose name has come down to us. It is important to notice that his name, Moses, was Egyptian. It is simply the Egyptian word “mose” meaning “child,” and is an abridgement of a fuller form of such names as “Amen-mose” meaning “Amon-a-child” or “Ptah-mose,” meaning “Ptah-a-child,” these forms themselves being likewise abbreviations for the complete form “Amon-(has-given)-a-child” or “Ptah-(has-given)-a-child.” ' (
source, page 350)
 |
biological warfare (image source)
|
Reading accounts of Egyptian history for the
first and
second "intermediate" periods has made me skeptical about the idea that the eastern Nile river delta was ever really anything more than a conquered foreign territory from the perspective of Upper Kingdom Egyptians, similar to the Sinai and Canaan. An even more dramatic possibility is that Egyptian contacts with foreigners in Lower Egypt resulted in a type of biological warfare that shaped Egyptian history. Before "civilization" was brought to the Nile river valley, adjacent lands were full of life. I like the idea that relentless human deployment of
grazing animals combined with practices like
ore smelting and
forest clearing eventually resulted in desertification, trapping Egyptians in complete reliance on river irrigation.
Another feature of the Abraham story from the Torah is the idea that Abraham's family practiced inbreeding. Abraham married his half-sister, Lot was depicted as fathering children with his two daughters, and descendants of Abraham were depicted as traveling long distances in order to marry family members rather than marry any of the local girls in Canaan.
Recently, an
ancient-DNA study detected high rates of inbreeding in ancient Aegean populations. For my science fiction story, I imagine that inbreeding was required in order to maintain high levels of Ek'col and Asterothrope gene patterns among a select group of people who could then utilize the Bimanoid Interface during Interventionist missions.
For my fictional account of Mosy, I want to include to idea of some ancient people (those carrying large numbers of Ek'col and Asterothrope genes) having a cultural practice of keeping "natural gardens" and struggling against invasive pastoralists and the ecosystem-altering effects of their lifestyle.
I don't mind depicting such "natural gardeners" as being guided by Interventionists who are working to maintain a few unusual gene combinations in a small population of Earthlings. When needed, those "interventionist agents" can be used to adjust the course of Earthly history.
 |
end of the last glacial maximum
|
What if there was a small group of people living in southwest Asia after the end of the last glacial maximum who were the tool of Interventionists? In the Ekcolir Reality, that "tribe" received a special gift from the Ek'col and the Asterothropes: an appreciation for the need to conserve native species and natural resources.
The question is often asked in time travel stories: what information from the future could be sent into the past that would have a profound impact on the course of human history? Maybe when the Ekcolir Reality was being crafted, the most important idea from the future was the concept of conserving Earth's biodiversity. Sadly, that spirit of conservation was not always able to successfully compete against other forces that led to environmental degradation. However, in the Ekcolir Reality, the Interventionists were somewhat more aggressive and that made European culture in that Reality somewhat different than what we have known here in the Final Reality.
The "paradox" of the Ekcolir Reality was that even with Interventionist efforts aimed at limiting human damage to the planet's ecosystem, early contact with space aliens (the
Fru'wu) triggered catastrophic global warming and sea level rise.
Next: part 1 of the Mosy Saga
No comments:
Post a Comment