A second reading of history

The idea that classical Greece was the original source of Western knowledge may be a simplification. There are signs of far older bodies of knowledge, preserved and passed on, that challenge our understanding of history.

## The shadow of what once was

They say **Rome** was a copy of classical **Greece**, a somewhat lacklustre version. And that **Greece**, in turn, drew from even older sources. **Solon**, that father of Athenian democracy, supposedly travelled to **Sais** to absorb knowledge he could not find at home. And **Pythagoras**, the man of musical harmonies, is also said to have packed his bags for **Egypt**. The twelve-"step" scales with seven notes, their five tones and two semitones, which we still call "Greek modes", were already inscribed in cuneiform tablets in **Akkadian**, found in **Nippur** (Iraq), at least **3600 years** old. That is a millennium before the Greeks. And who knows where those tablets came from, whether they were themselves copies of even older ones.

It is as if history worked in cycles, with civilisations rising and falling, and through those swings, knowledge is safeguarded, sometimes almost by miracle. The copyist monks of the Middle Ages, keeping manuscripts in their monasteries, are a good example. Preserving the old goes hand in hand with creating the new, provided there are resources and structures that allow it. Thinking of **Greece** as the absolute starting point of knowledge gives us a solid foundation for our paradigm, but if we are honest about the limits of our knowledge, perhaps we should leave a prudent ellipsis instead of fixing a single origin.

## Echoes of a forgotten knowledge

**Göbekli Tepe** has been discussed for some time now, that solar calendar from about **11000 years** ago. A knowledge that, it seems, neither Greeks nor Romans ever came to know. And let us not forget the serpent of **Kukulcán** at **Chichén Itzá**, descending the staircase at every equinox. With its **91 steps** per side, it adds up to **364**, plus one at the top, a total of **365**. A similar phenomenon occurs at the **Great Pyramid of Giza**. This contrasts with the lunar count, which gives about **354** days, a considerable gap that, before **Julius Caesar** brought us his reform, was a source of mockery.

The knowledge behind that calendar reform, the one we use today with a small correction from the **Vatican**, comes from the Egyptian solar calendar, passed through **Alexandria**. And **Alexandria** is the perfect example: knowledge is not only created, it is also lost. Destroying is always easier than building. What I have been saying for a long time: our "Greco-Roman" heritage is rather poetic; we are more the heirs of those they called barbarians and who, precisely, destroyed those empires.

## The unstoppable cycle of change

It seems to be a historical constant, even if our window of observation is brief. All systems, if not in perfect equilibrium, carry the seed of their own destruction. Today's order is, inevitably, tomorrow's disorder. Seen from a political-economic perspective, this idea takes on the force of a physical law. In general, those who know the past do not need to foresee the future.

And this other idea, somewhat arrogant and enigmatic at once, points to the axis of a new way of understanding things: there is a second reading of history, ever more solid, that points to a source of lost knowledge. And it comes from many places: from **Plato**'s Atlantean legacy, from the megalithic constructions scattered around the world with similar patterns such as polygonal walls and pyramids, from geological theories speaking of drastic changes **12000 years** ago, from the sacred texts and myths that have reached us, from music theory already present in cuneiform tablets, from the exact knowledge of the equinoxes in **Egypt** and **Mexico** long before **Rome**, from evidence of the use of electricity beyond its modern rediscovery with the **Baghdad** Battery, and from the notion of power structures operating with a certain secrecy, elitism and nepotism.

It is impossible not to reach the conclusion that history is, in fact, the opposite of what we are told. We are not the lighthouses of civilisation, but perhaps those who burned the lighthouse and now marvel at shards of glass we barely understand. Well, perhaps not the lighthouse, but the library. I miccionan **Alexandria**. Or perhaps that "we" should be revisited, asking ourselves whether other forces are at work, moving humans through networks, with interests alien to them.

Seen through the right lens, the evidence is everywhere. It filters down from the economic structure into politics. In the end, we have a system of extractive elites that shapes education to its convenience, and ignorance too, under a system of laws that promotes its perpetuity and impunity through the monopoly on violence. Knowledge is born fragmented at its base, not only through specialisation, but to limit any overall vision. Nowhere is anything formally taught about "ufology" or "conspiracy theories"; they are usually objects of discredit, whether through their own errors, induced or forced. Human beings seem to be helped by their worst enemy. Perhaps themselves.

What is undeniable at this point is that it is increasingly difficult to shake off the notion of a previous civilisation with knowledge we are only beginning to decipher, which collapsed due to some kind of cataclysm. Sometimes scattering that knowledge among societies that were barely able to preserve it; other times using it to deal with them with an advantage and, finally, to dominate them. Welcome to the post-Atlantean world.