Mar 05, 2008
The Circular Ocean: a Round Up
It is probably fair to say that the cosmological systems
described by traditional societies around the world contain
more features that do not make sense from a modern
perspective than ones that do.
Contemporary members of
indigenous societies will dwell on the phenomena of sunrise
and the cycle of the moon and point out the Milky Way and a
few notable constellations, but these statements are far
outweighed by the excessive interest shown in a bevy of
anomalous features. Worldwide motifs such as the stony or
metallic composition of the sky, four stanchions supporting
the sky, a hole at the pole, a navel of the earth, a dragon
below the surface of the earth whose contortions cause
earthquakes, a tree, mountain or pillar at the centre of the
earth, a giant thunderbird at the top of this column, or the
superposition of nine heavens like a stack of pancakes pose
so many challenges to specialists, from anthropologists to
archaeologists and from philologists to art historians.
The sanity of the thousands of such testimonies is not in
any doubt, possibly even overshadowing the intelligence
displayed in modern western views on the cosmos. As exactly
the same puzzling traits populate the most ancient
descriptions and depictions of the “world” in abundance, a
more plausible solution is that these remarkably consistent
reports preserve memories of forms and fixtures that were
once really observed in the heavens.
The theme of an ocean following the circular perimeter of
the earth is widespread, and in quite a few cases, the
enclosing body of water is itself envisioned as a “ring” or
river. The Egyptians had such a concept, portraying the god
Osiris in his “watery” aspect as the personification of the
circular ocean: “… you are hale and great in your name of
‘Sea’; behold, you are great and round in <your name of>
‘Ocean’; behold, you are circular and round as the circle
which surrounds the Ḥзw-nbwt …”, says a spell in the
Pyramid Texts.
The Greek historian Herodotus bemoaned his compatriots for
“foolishly” perpetuating the myth of the circular ocean, in
the face of current knowledge: “And I laugh to see how many
have ere now drawn maps of the world, not one of them
showing the matter reasonably; for they draw the world as
round as if fashioned by compasses, encircled by the river
of Ocean, and Asia and Europe of a like bigness.” But the
concept remained popular for millennia afterwards, in
countries far outside the sphere of Greek influence. As an
example, the people of Benin contended until recently that
“the water surrounds the earth around its entire convex
surface”. And the Pueblo people of New Mexico “believe the
earth to be circular and surrounded on all sides by the
ocean.”
As with many other instances of “erratic” features of
traditional cosmography, scholars have tried to explain the
theme of the circular ocean as springing from more or less
obvious and spontaneous observations of nature. For example,
the Dutch orientalist Anton Wensinck clarified: “The
primitive eye starts from what it observes: the seashore
presents the unlimited sight of the ocean; this means that
the ends of the earth are surrounded by the ocean.” And John
Pairman Brown, a modern savant, offers: “Since the bottom of
the sky-vault is obviously a perfect circle, so must be the
plane of earth and water that it encloses.”
Yet, for all the confidence expressed in such sentiments,
the circularity of the horizon may on a closer inspection
perhaps seem less “obvious” than these writers suggest.
Although the impression of roundness may certainly present
itself to people familiar with other geographic environments
than mountainous ones, they might as well imagine the
expanse of land or sea they see to extend indefinitely in
all directions, especially in cultural contexts that have
not yet embraced a spherical model of the cosmos.
And why would forest-dwellers such as the Warao or the
Shipibo-Conibo, who have never toyed with the idea of a
spherical earth, envision a round horizon? The apparent
rotundity of the horizon may at best have served ancient
societies as a confirmation of their cosmological beliefs,
while early guesses about the distribution of water will
have influenced the notion of a flowing world ocean.
A strong indication that something else is going on is the
ingrained tendency of ancient cosmographers to equate the
round ocean with the coiled body of a serpent, tail in
mouth, that is technically known as an ouroboros.
From Latin America to equatorial Africa and from Oceania to
the Judaic tradition, the entity surrounding the earth is
perceived as a dazzlingly bright “feathered” serpent coil of
an aquatic composition.
Preliminary findings suggest that the theme of the circular
ocean as well as the ouroboros’ link with the
circular ocean are roughly restricted to the equatorial
zones of the earth for the time frame between 5,000 and
3,000 BCE. This suggests that, in these areas, the plasma
ring responsible for the related body of mythology appeared
close enough to the horizon to suggest its physical identity
with the known oceans bordering the land.
In addition, other traditions imply or enunciate that the
“earth” of the mythical age was a region in the sky rather
than the earth known as such today. In the mythology of the
Iroquois, of New York State, for example, “the earth was the
thought of the Indian Ruler of a great island which floats
in space.” The modern earth was only “formed” at a later
point in the process of creation. Such considerations help
to establish that the prototype of ideas such as the “round
ocean” could really be in interplanetary space rather than
on earth in the strict sense.
Close cooperation with physicists modeling plasma
instabilities in laboratory conditions has led to the
conclusion that the ouroboros of world mythology
corresponds in virtually all its details to a so-called
diocotron instability. Research has revealed that the
ouroboros is intimately associated with the “world axis”
or axis mundi.
This suggests that the round ocean, along with the full list
of anomalies given above, finds its ultimate explanation in
a configuration of high-energy density plasma structures
formed in and above the earth’s ionosphere at a time of
increased auroral activity, most likely in the late
Palaeolithic or early Neolithic period. Far from an amusing
figment of imagination, the circular ocean appears to belong
to a largely forgotten but nonetheless genuine “sky world”
revealed when electromagnetic forces dominated the physics
of the near-earth environment.
Contributed by Rens Van der Sluijs
www.mythopedia.info
Further Reading:
The Mythology of the World Axis; Exploring the Role of
Plasma in World Mythology
www.lulu.com/content/1085275
The World Axis as an
Atmospheric Phenomenon
www.lulu.com/content/1305081
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