World of Shareware - Software Farm 2/wosw_2.zip/wosw_2/GENERAL/SCIFI.ZIP/TLN3RGRG.REG

Text File | 1992-06-23 | 14KB | 290 lines

                                        tln3rgrg.wpw
                                        BEN BLUMENBERG
                                        REALITY SOFTWARE
                                        P.O. Box 105
                                        Waldoboro, Me 04572
                                        June 12, 1992



                           THE TIMELINE

     Welcome to 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
'politically correct' thinking would have it, although there is
an element of cultural blindness in such research. 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 Mediterranean 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.
The multidimensional nature of nonEuropean history mandates that
a narrative of events in secular time is but one component of the
whole. '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 the 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 the circum-
Mediterranean region.

     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 emphasizes and
highlights (literally in the decision where to use italics and
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 Eurocentric 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, Serbs, Croats and Magyars
for example. Above all, reflect upon the Chinese invasion and
continual occupation of Tibet since 1950. 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 54 printed
pages. The entire chart is three pages across and 18 pages deep
(landscape orientation). The printout is programmed for 'over
than down' and thus the first three pages are the top three pages
of the complete chart. Arrange pages 4 through 6 under them, left
to right, and proceed accordingly for each succeeding group of
three pages. Cut off the footers on pages 1 through three. Cut
off the headers (optional) and footers on all other pages (except
pp 52-54), align and tape together or glue down on a piece of
masonite. One of the nice features of Excel 4.0 is that the
larger font size will produce a chart that does not need to be
read close up.  Final dimensions are approximately 33" x 144",
depending upon exactly where you cut. A singly chart will present
a majestic sweep of a vast period of history.

     This third edition of Timeline (Timeline3) explores one of
the most fascinating and mysterious observations contained in the
data (see sonsgod.wpw). 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 'being' 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 facts 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. The numbers are here subjected to statistical
analysis in order to demonstrate how improbable, in quantitative
terms, those events of the first millenium B.C. were. Notice that
this file is in Word Perfect format (.wpg).

     As mentioned above, this timeline is also an adjunct to an
extensive software publishing project about the history and
mytholology of the Great Goddess. It forms an invaluable
historical context against which to assess that research. On disc
flyers will introduce these studies which are available from
Reality Software.

     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.

     If you wish to explore  history beyond the ancient Near East
and classical/medieval Europe, several of these references may be
unfamiliar and extremely valuable.



                           BIBLIOGRAPHY


Anonymous. 1986. Ancient Tibet: Research Materials From the Yeshe
     De Project. Berkeley: Dharma Pub.

Basham, A.L. 1954. The Wonder That Was India. New York; Grove
     Press.

Chang, K-C. 1977, 3rd ed, rev. The Archeology of Ancient China.
     New Haven: Yale Univ. Press.

Cunliffe, B. 1974. Iron Age Communities in Britian. London:
     Routledge & Kegan Paul.

Darvill, T. 1987. Prehistoric Britain. New Haven: Yale Univ.
     Press.

Dumoulin, H. 1988. Zen Buddhism A History. Vol. I: India and
     China. New York: Macmillan.

Gimbutas, M. 1989.  The Language of the Goddess. New York: Harper
     & Row.

Goodrich, N.L. 1986. King Arthur. New York: Harper & Row.

Grun, B. 1991 3rd rev. ed. The Timetables of History. New York:
     Simon and Schuster.

Hammond. 1988. Past Worlds: The Times Atlas of Archeology.
     Maplewood, N.J.: Hammond, Inc.

Hull, E. 1988. fasc.ed. The Wall Chart of World History. New
     York: Dorset Press.

Keightley, D.N. ed. 1983. The Origins of Chinese Civilization.
     Berkeley: Univ. Cal. Press.

Keller, W. 1981. rev.2nd ed. The Bible as History. New York: Wm.
     Morrow and Co.

Sansom, G. 1958. A History of Japan to 1334. Stanford: Stanford
     Univ. Press.

Snellgrove, D. 1987. Indo Tibetan Buddhism. Vol II. Boston:
     Shamabala.

Stone, N. 1989. 3rd ed.  The Times Atlas of World History.
     Maplewood, N.J.: Hammond, Inc.

Tillinghast, W.H. and H.E. Barnes. 1925. Ploetz' Manual of
     Universal History. Boston: Houghton Mifflin Co.

Tolstoy, N. 1985. The Quest for Merlin. Boston: Little Brown.

Wood, J.E. 1980. Sun, Moon and Standing Stones. Oxford: Oxford
     Univ. Press.

               REGISTRATION FOR TIMELINE VERSION 3.0

          Reality Software urges you to register this software
for several reasons.

     1. This labor of love took many hours and it is only
honorable to reward the author for his laborious, obsessive and
thoroughly enjoyable work. Without registration, this project
cannot continue. This timeline is unique in its global
perspective and the information is unavailable elsewhere in this
single compact format.

     2. The shareware version of the timeline does not contain a
complete Timeline3 as did that for Timelin2, merely six pages
from the complete chart. Timelin2, which was distributed via the
shareware system in its complete form, was extremely attractive
to many folks judging by the hundreds of downloads. However, only
a handful of people chose to register and therefore I did not
feel justly compensated for the many, many hours of research that
went into the project. You must register to obtain the complete
Timeline3 which comprises 54 printed sheets and includes several
dozen new data items and an extensive rewrite of about 3/4 of the
material. Timeline3 is a major revision of Timelin2 and
represents a vast expansion of the quantity and quality of
information.

     3. Upon registration, you will be sent a second disc that
contains the complete Timeline3. On disc flyers introduce you to
other software from Reality Software that discuss various themes
in the history of religion. You will also be placed on our
permanent mailing list to receive future updates of the timeline
at special reduced rates.

     To register, simply fill out the form below and mail to:


     REALITY SOFTWARE, P.O. BOX 105, WALDOBORO, ME 04572.


Name ____________________________________ Date __________


Street Address __________________________________________


Town or City _______________ State ________ Zip _________-




TIMELIN3:
Disc Size  5 1/4 (Quant) ________$13 each. Total __________

           3 1/2 (Quant) ________$15 each. Total ___________


Method of Payment.  Check ___   Money Order ____
(Please make payable to Ben Blumenberg)


Where did you obtain Timelin3? _____________________________