But the oldest finds in the world is "naturally" from the Persian Gulf were the great cultures we know of started together with Egypt and Indus. We should always remember that our knowledge build on the fact that "known" cultural places are well dug, while the rest of the world still is "archaeological wilderness" and places for cult and primitive beings if we should say it ironically.

Shipbuilders of normal vessels usually make a little model of what they are going to build. They have found such models of Egyptian high seas ships from third millennium BC. The model is exactly the same as many big fishermen's boat in the Indian Ocean and also the catamarans of the Pacific have often the same shape. Usually mankind tries the latest inventions and I am convinced that "the World" gave the ship a trial. In Northern Norway there are rock carvings showing Egyptian ships from third millennium BC.

Discussion about the background to the Indus Script in Idaho includes that we should know about seamanship and such things. I have discussed it with Randall Hale a lot. Rodi Wout from Scotland wrote me and we began to discuss. His family roots and work is in seamanship and he is also interested in the history of sailors. There are naturally no sources from distant times so we have to discuss and reason about it and gather what we know.

Rodi reminded me that maybe traders went out for three years and bartered where they could make the best profit. Besides the yearly cycle ancient cultures practised also other cycles in their administration. For instance we know from medieval times that the bishop visited every forth year and so did the tax collector. The king maybe visited more seldom and some great thing were held every ninth year. Since there were fair and festivities the traders planed their visits after that. From the rock carvings we can se that there were suitable law and order according to their needs.

From the Scandinavian rock carvings we learn that the boat was the main vessel and that seas and rivers were the highways. So it would only be natural that people explored the lands around and near rivers and seas everywhere. We also see that they lived in space-time and pictured our journey on the Time River with our doings as cargo. We see the same method used also in Egypt and Sumer with deities on the Time River. That was one part of the organisation together with the concept "suite" that delegated the jobs to be done. Such things develop on demand everywhere.

Around the coasts in most of the world were people specialised on their own seas. That goes back tens of thousand years since the sea was the easy food most of the season for those that dared and knew. Every fisherman knows that there are not plenty of fish in all waters. Some places are better and others and the real big one are those were the big ocean streams turn when meeting land. In the river it is where river meats and below falls or behind obstacles downstream.

One such area is in Northern Norway for that Atlantic Gulf Stream. Inn the Pacific it is at the Gulf of Alaska where the northern Pacific Stream meets lands and become the California Stream. There are plenty of places around the world and soon mankind learned to use them.

We cannot apply our worldview on those days. We have the globe and satellites that give us the concrete image of the earth/ world looking like an apple. That is why we think, "No they could not travel that far over those big oceans". We have a world map of Sargon from middle of first millennium BC but it could be much older. They paint their world in the middle of the circle. Outside that is the neighbours and outmost the circle give a limit to the unknown. It just the same as the Scandinavian "Midgaard, Utgaard and the big Midgaard Snake outmost".

There are no distances on the map and when you travel towards the outer limit "the snake guarding the unknown" simply is in front of you but advances away in pace with you. The early travellers did not know the limits and in pace with their exploring they could be on travel longer and longer and their know world grew. The profit from the travel was the reason to come back. That is why we get the impression that the visits of foreigners were occasional and sometimes short. Naturally it also depends on the fact that the world is big and it is only excavated in places were modern cities and roads grow.

Guiding stars for sailors

The Macedonian poet at court Aratos wrote the poem Phaenomena about 200 BC. From that we may read something about praxis then.

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All professionals are eager to keep their secrets and so the sailors. We have only some fragments but we know they used Ursa Minor or Little Bear. The star Koschab could be used as pole from about 2000 BC and onward. We find the star on a carving in Haugsbyn Dal. Before that that they could use Thuban in Dragon.

The Indus culture used "compass birds" and like other ancient cultures they knew the starry sky well. That would also mean that traders/ sailors would soon try to discuss the celestial sphere when they came to a new far place.

Different worldview

When we talk about guts and faith we can expect that they believed in resurrection. That would be the normal conclusion when we see how things circulate in nature. Other believes are based on intellectual speculations that need we keep much in mind if we want to see some reason in it. If you believe there is a natural afterlife you do not care if you die, since you will be born again. They saw animals as their fellow beings. They had no objections for becoming an animal in next life.

Our valuations are often tied to money and materialism and that we live our dear property when we died. With little owning they had no such problem. That is maybe one of the reasons that we in the cities of the Indus culture get the impression of egalitarian world order in the towns. Surely they did not think much about such things since we can also see that they followed the ritual order.

That means the ritual was the framework for their life and they lived and worked in the name of their deities. From Sumerian texts we see that at least the scribe described ordinary citizens as "legs of gods". The Ritual Age and their time concept were based on what was going to happen and be done in next period. They were not tied to plans and schedules but to "time for doing this and that". We see the seven suites of the summer as a mean of doing what should be done in each period

Modern town-dwellers and even many rural people have initially many objections due to the fact that few have real experiences of manual work. When they see some ancient labour with the tools of those days they think it is too hard and take too much time. People had not that kind of thoughts however they were human and wanted to get things done fast. I make that conclusion from the fact that they used rough tools for daily work and made fine tools for ritual as far as we can see from sparsely populated places.

Some tools were real inventions and can tell us approximately for what purpose they were made. In Scandinavia we have finds of very fine and narrow chisels in early 3^rd millennium BC. Surely they were used for fine carpentry. With good copper chisels it would maybe be possible to make the sharp groves in the lava block of Snake Valley. Even bronze was in use in 3^rd millennium and the Chinese became specialists in cast bronze items.

The tools of the Egyptian culture have often better finish, but still in many cases they used stone and wood. In a big culture they have the work force for making fine art and handicraft. Metal was not that frequent before our general Bronze Age. But they could afford to get metals earlier than the rest of the world. In fact some of the tools from those days are still used in special handicrafts.

Nowadays we have stone workers specialised in making ancient tools and they tell it is no match to make a rough tool. I suppose we underestimate our ancestors' technical skill when it comes to polishing stone tools for special purposes. The desire of pleasing their deities with gems and hard weapons made people work a little harder and it was an adventure for the explorers.

There is a later folk memory telling about merchant begging for leather to their Queen since she had no shoes. Maybe be that was one method for getting cheap leather, skin and other things. The Naked Lady and the motherless child were early an urge to manhood "get clothes for Her!"

In Europe the Bronze Age began around 2300 BC and besides the bronzes we clearly see the cultural flow of slab cists and myths. Together with that came the script we see on our rocks with my province as exceptional sample. That shows us also that they were searching for metals in our mountains and maybe there was "a mission" all over the world "search for the Lady" … which in Egypt meant the pregnant Hathor. In symbolism they "work in the fork".

Citizens and the academics have difficulties with the cultural step "down" to the rural people. That is why they set up labels like "shaman and cult" on things they do not understand. It is the same phenomenon as when our ancestors set the Unknown = Midgaard Snake. That is why they use labels like "shaman" without proof.

In the Indian society I get the impression that there were a chieftain or leader in the tribe and besides were the Medicineman as archetype for solving mainly problems with health that natural could imply psychic health too. Nowadays we would call him healer. I do not think we can set medicineman = shaman in the Indian nations.

They often interpret figures with horns as shamans. We see horned figures all over the world in the three millennia before AD. They are archetypes or deities for managing the cattle and also wild, horned animals. They do not picture real people but idols and archetypes. Observe that horned idols were used also in the "high cultures". We can never prove to which extend real people took the guise of these idols.

Why on earth should we make differences starting from Egyptian Toth and Seth as odd beings? If an Egyptian priest took the guise it is quite the same as when a medicineman and a noid in Scandinavia do the same. In both cases the task is to make rituals in life. However if we take the word "medicineman" literally his profession was to be a healer (and not a spiritual priest). The Egyptian society was complex and the ritual should satisfy all groups in the land. In the Indian society it is very simple because everyone was living under the same conditions.

We always meet the Great Spirit as the greatest deity in the Indian world. In the Catholic Church we know that the Holly Spirit was created during the discussions about Trinity in 4^th millennium AD. The original Greek Trinity was Father, Son and the Word.

The Indian Great Spirit is the unknown and unspoken Mights in nature plus the gathered knowledge of the particular tribe. In scientific rational analysis we cannot say that the Great Spirit created it all and that counts for the Christian holly concepts too. In our science processes must be measurable but not necessary visible. We cannot measure things done by deities.

I think the Greek analysis is right. Words of mankind are the tool of creating man made things and culture. It would be very convenient if we could blame some Might if we fail. Often the religious world simplifies too much and forgets the "law of cause and effect". That is outspoken when they use the word "Evil" in the meaning of something with existence. If we are scientific we must analyse what cause the evil deeds. It is always a case of custom and taste, since evil could be good for the evil doer. Evil for the man with angle wings is always that he does not gain from it.

During my many years in company with our ancestors I have got the impression that they knew more about essential physics than ordinary people today. The thermodynamics were automatically involved in their intuitive thinking as soon as they used space-time as the time concept. They were also cautious about what effects their doing would have on the nature that was dominions of the Mights.

For the Indian World and society the simplification is sufficient in their rural world. But many Indians are nowadays living in cities and with the same problems as the technical world. Then it is not enough to say that Great Spirit was the starting point. In such case we should see Great Spirit as the common mind of mankind or the Indian Nation.

I have to say I sympathises with an old Indian woman talking about living in symbiosis with nature an such things. It is only that city-dwellers would not understand such metaphors and words. The old woman does not know about the world outside her nation. We can tell that in old parts of the industrialised world old people feels alienation. Before World War II eight of ten lived rural life, nowadays eight of ten live in towns and big cities. The past decades I have met many alienated people and also people searching for their root while local people try to store as much as possible of the Old World.

There are many cultural levels and differences in time and space. We have to transform things to be on level. The main reference is sustainability. Some people of today live using the same cultural form as their ancestors thousands of years ago. That is the proof that their culture is sustainable. I just wonder how long our technical culture will withstand?

Another great difference is that at least westerners are practising individualism and living alienated from society in many ways. For liberal politicians it is a sin to talk about collectivism and the egalitarian view. They want to see the world as a jungle with fighting individuals. It is possible in crowded cities were "tribes" of all kind can fight for the individual and group.

In the sparsely populated rural society collectives of families were the only way of security for all members. That gives the natural egalitarian society and none is allowed to ride on another. It is not necessary. Naturally they honour the knowledge of elderly people and specialised persons. They also honour their ancestors since much of their knowledge is inherited and belongs to the local environment.

Their life is based on the year ritual. Depending on the environment they might occupy a place continuously ambulate between places and maybe follow their main animals. At Snake River under the falls for instance the coho salmon spawned both in spring and autumn. It would be easy life there when it was season …The Nez Perce Indians dwelled in winter downstream in Hells Canyon and maybe they went to Yellowstone in summer.

Summary conclusions

Generally we have too little evidence about times before 1000 BC. Only high and stony cultures are "on the map" so to speak. That is also why National Geographic shows us so much about Middle Kingdom in Egypt. When it comes to Europe the only stony monuments are Stonehenge and sometimes also Carnac in Bretagne if we should decide from what we see on the agenda. It also means that we should appreciate only "high culture"

Most of the world is like an archaeological wilderness. In the subtropics and tropics nature takes back or covers most of the remains. Then we are forced to make conclusions from few samples and that is always risky. The fact is that very few places in the world are explored in this sense. India and East Asia are little excavated and unknown to westerners. Americas are big continents and the most fertile parts have nature as one enemy and mankind as another.

As soon as we search for occasional or wooden cultures with little remains we see how little we know. It is not much better in Europe where cultivation took all remains long before the fairly modern interest for archaeology and history. Historians are normally only interested in kings and knights and such things …at least in my lifetime. When archaeologists seek remains they are fond of gold and "high culture" whatever that is.

That is the reason why archaeologists are blind for small fragments of evidence. Most of our scientists in Scandinavia have not yet discovered all the small symbols among the figures in our rock carvings. It is quite the same at Snake River that the automatic presumption is that abstract symbols are "hunting magic" or scribble …and in Scandinavia they ordinate a shrink to our ancestors. I would not talk with people showing that kind of attitude against me … neither do our ancestors tell anything to such persons. I have to tell this and begin the conclusions this way since I already have met such attitudes.

Now we can start discussion about dating the rock carvings of Idaho and maybe some other activities in America and cultural interchange westward. Physical evidence for interchange is the finds mentioned by Carl Johannessen of the University of Oregon says American peanuts are found in two provinces in China dated to 2300 BC.

Next rough evidence is the Indus Culture with heyday 2600 - 1700 BC and that we can compare the symbols and find many similarities. We also find the explanation why some of the rock carvings evidently are made with sharp metal tools. Indus Culture could produce the necessary metals in third millennium. The oldest bronze object a knife from China is dated to about 3000 BC. So if China was transit harbour for the traders they could also get the tools there.

Once we recognise the Indus Script and some of the celestial figures we can also use them in our dating. The Urn would be current around 2000 BC and the Bearwatcher around 1700 BC so we can roughly set the heydays of these rock carvings to 2000 - 1700 BC.

The script on the Thunderbird stone shows very high technical skill and abstraction in the figures. That is not seen anywhere in America as far as I know. It is hard to believe that normal hunter-gather-fishing culture would create a vocabulary like this. There are signs of trials in cursive text or they have merged figures. That means initially that the symbols were syllables that would give words when pronounced. There are a few strings of symbols and that is also sign of organised script.

Only minor part of the rock carvings are made with deep grooves and made like direct copies of a script. The rest are made by free hand and mixed with inventions of their own. We would not wonder about a symbol for compasses since there is a perfect circle on the Thunderbird rock. But there is a deep syllable AR known from the Levant and another is a deep halberd of the type we know from the Alps. Such symbols make the ants fool around on my baldhead. Hard to draw any conclusions from single occurrences.

For a wider outlook I have mentioned the Chinese or maybe Japanese connection to the Olmec Culture. The decoration style is much the same however we have little evidence about early second millennium in Meso-America and in the Shang Culture. We get different dates but maybe we should date the Shang culture 1700 - 1100 BC. Dr Emily Sano tells:

"Bronze thus was related to power and divinity. According to legend, King Yu, founder of China's first dynasty, the Xia, around 2200 BC, had nine monumental food cauldrons cast to symbolize the nine provinces of his realm. When the Xia dynasty fell, the nine vessels, the "Auspicious Bronzes of the State," passed to the victorious Shang dynasty and then, in the 11th century BC, to the Zhou. In 1976 a bronze vessel was discovered whose inscription records that it was commissioned only eight days after the defeat of the Shang and the capture of the Auspicious Bronzes. These bronzes, however, have not yet been discovered. The oldest vessels discovered thus far are dated to 1800 BC".

There is much to be discovered in India, China, Japan and of course South East Asia that is unknown during those times. Still there is a "tin belt" over Burma and Thailand so we can expect they were interesting places for the metallurgists those days.

It is easy to see that Randall must have been exited by the find of the alabasteregg with Tutankamun's cartouche in 1914 before Carter opened the tomb. I notice that Randall has read much about the time around this. Now I found a note about find of Tut's iron dagger:

It is easy to see that Randall must have been exited by the find of the alabaster-egg with Tutankamun's cartouche in 1914 before Carter opened the tomb. Now I know that the great grandfather of Kathy Kincaid once owned it … see emeil below under "comment".

I notice that Randall has read much about the time around this. Now I found a note about find of Tut's iron dagger and chisels:

Once Randall has mentioned that there is plenty of meteoric iron in Rocky Mountains naturally my "think tank" starts. It is near to think that they found iron and manufactured it on the place. The lava blocks were the best place to make a trial with chisels. They had also to try out the technique by trial and error ... in the mountains there should have been plenty of wood for the melting and working on the iron.

It took long time before iron could compete with bronze manufactured by skilled bronze metallurgists. To get real steel they were forced to develop the right process to get carbonated iron = steel. It was a good help if iron was alloyed and meteoric iron has the right alloy from the beginning. It would be natural that traders and metallurgist were seeking for that "gold" all over the world. It could finance a long trip and would create good contacts to royal houses.

We can note the 16 small iron chisels from Tut's tomb of course. But what does it mean when a great king get such a gift? Naturally the traders were interested in selling their product to the pharaoh that was a big builder. Fort the pharaoh it could improve the work on his buildings. Naturally he let others do the job but he got the knowledge. If he gave the alabaster-egg as gift in return the traders could show it to others and get great reputation. In the end it would be natural to give it to their source. Since the egg has no use it was just a symbol of good relations.

I come to think that in the same tomb they found a boomerang wrapped in birch bark. In some way I am touched when I see these foreign things. The iron was very expensive gifts as such and a step forward in technology. They were stored in the same way as the boomerang wrapped in birch-bark. The value in such things is a kind of valued friendship and we do not know what the real exchange was. That is why it is natural to see the alabaster-egg as a gift in return. To give a gift and get gift in return was a holy principle in old Scandinavian literature and still it is wise to balance the relation with everyone.

In the tomb was also a folding chair of the same kind as they found in a Danish mound from the time of Tut. They have also found a certain type of bronze sword surely made in Scandinavia and exported to Greece and even with some find in Egypt. Generally the early type of bronze sword is the same from India to Scandinavia. This is telling about "world-wide trade" in Bronze Age so to speak.

I remember when I first read about it many years ago. I saw the connection and it gave me one of the first ideas about cultural exchange that we can prove. In the years I have found many signs of the trade between Scandinavia and the so-called Old World in south. The Scandinavian rock carvings show that they imported idea of wagon, chariot, horse, plough, bronze sickle, to catch octopus in pots, ornaments from Knossos and more. Generally we see things they could immediately use in their life. Expensive things had few buyers and were for the little upper class. I hope future generations will find the same increase in real evidence about cultural interchange with Americas.

I think it is time for the metallurgist interested in ancient times to careful analyse the meteorite iron in the finds from Tut's tomb and compare it with other known places with much of the free meteorite iron.

Early archaeologist were sceptical to connection between the Old World an America. But I think that we have many indications that should be taken seriously by know. Let me list them as far as I know: The Chinese connection could have been established by Indian transit traders … rock carvings of Snake River … Tut's alabaster-egg ... corn-cobs in Indian temple … tobacco and cocaine mummies … the snake and parrot mythic symbols … Olmec connection …

The indications are so many that even if some of them drop away for some reason there is plenty left. Generally the economical strong culture could afford to send expeditions out exploring the world. But even small populations with guts and skill could sail around most of the world. They were not depending on much export/ import but on getting the journey paid. As far as I have seen there are few ships on American rocks. That could mean that they were not using such vessels and that would also mean that foreign traders brought American culture to China for instance.

We should not underestimate small rural cultures. They were skilled in adapting what they could use in their environment. That is why it sometimes is difficult sort out the influences from local culture. We should remember that a small culture like the Scandinavian became skilled in making steel and imported that and mercenaries to Rome and later to Carlemagne.

Only if we have an open mind we discover novelty … preconceived ideas are like blindfolds.

Comments

Here I open for comments and start with professor emeritus Carl L Johannessen of the University of Oregon:

Let us hope that future brings us more knowledge. The disciplines of archaeology are still young. There is the syndrome that too much money is spent on the Giza Plateau and little in the Nile Delta or in other places along the Nile. For instance in Sweden major part of the diggings are made at the big island Gotland and in the southern corner in Skaane. There they only find flint mining, while searches for copper and early iron mining are bound to be outside these areas.

It is the same all over the world. America is a huge area and rural cultures leave not much for us. In science it is always that we need good questions to start with. One of them is have they been searching for metals and precious stones? And if, with whom did they trade?