Aspects of History that are potentially Truer than mainstream views?

[Ewan]

Washington DC: The Secret Goddess Worship

Did the architects of Washington D.C. hide a secret in the city's streets and monuments? Forensic Geologist Scott Walter teams up with researcher Alan Butler to investigate a groundbreaking theory: that the nation's capital was secretly designed as a temple dedicated to Goddess Worship. By examining sacred geometry, hidden symbols like the diamond-shaped District of Columbia, and the use of the ancient, long-lost Megalithic Yard, they uncover evidence suggesting that Freemasons and the Founding Fathers embedded a profound, esoteric message for those with eyes to see.

Source: https://youtube.com/watch?v=BxP-8zhRCdQ

==============================================================


Bat Creek Stone: The True Story Of America's Forgotten Visitors

Forensic geologist Scott Walter re-examines the highly controversial Bat Creek Stone, an artifact found in a Tennessee burial mound in 1889 that bears an inscription in an ancient form of Hebrew. Using state-of-the-art 3D microscopic analysis, Walter seeks to definitively prove the stone is a genuine pre-Columbian relic, not a hoax planted by an archaeologist.

Source: https://youtube.com/watch?v=E8v_Zh_81RQ

===================================================================

The Newberry Tablet: Is This Minoan Script The Key To America's Lost History?

Did the Minoans discover America 3,000 years before Columbus? Forensic geologist Scott Wolter investigates a mind-boggling mystery: the disappearance of over one billion pounds of copper from Michigan’s Isle Royale. Using forensic geology and particle-induced X-ray emission (PIXE) testing, Wolter links the purity of Great Lakes copper to Bronze Age shipwrecks in the Mediterranean. From the cryptic Newberry Tablet to underwater stone mounds, uncover the hidden narrative of America’s first industrial revolution and the seafaring empire that may have built it.

Source: https://youtube.com/watch?v=fx6GzUeKn44

=====================================================================

And I have not even mentioned evidence of both Chinese and Viking landfalls in the distant past of America's history. There is far more unknown to us than the thin, flimsy sliver of info presented to us as factual history.

Wouldn't it be lovely to know more?

(NB: Well advisable to accelerate videos to at least 1.5x if you are comfortable with listening to English.
The dialogue is very kitschy in places!)

Postscript:

Note: The Minoan culture, alongside the Phoenicians, dominated all maritime trade in the Mediterranean around 3100 BCE so may well have ventured past the Gibralter gateway into wider waters.

[Denise/Dizi]

There is a wall that runs down the coast of California that has to predate "Americans" living here... And there is much roof that even Egyptians lived here, one only need to look at the Grand Canyon, and the places they have not allowed humanity to examine... Old pyramids, snake mounds, and caves within the walls of the canyon itself... America was not the desolate land they claimed it to be when they got here. I believe there were remnants of star forts here already, and many other things...

It's a shame how much we were lied to over the centuries.

[Mark]

Great information. I find myself getting closer and closer to the understanding that architecture does not lie. The question of how 'old' many of these buildings are, who built them and why, is a series that should underlie all interpretation of this data.

[The KMan]

Hi Ewan, your framing is the honest one, so let me take it at face value. Investigate. Seeks to prove. May have built it. Fair enough. Let's investigate.

A quick story first because I accidentally ran this experiment myself close to 40 years ago. A friend once came over very excited with a large road map of Washington DC after watching one of those videos about freemasons, satanists, hidden geometry and so on. He had drawn lines all over it to show me how the city supposedly revealed a secret design “for those with eyes to see”. So I grabbed some clear plastic from my study and a maker pen and sat down at the kitchen table and started drawing shapes of my own. Triangles, stars, alignments, whatever came to mind. I was basically making them up on purpose. But, he actually found mine just as convincing as the ones from the video.

Some weeks later I returned the favour and did the same thing with a map of Canberra. Different city, different country and different architects. Same result. Within minutes we had another “hidden masonic egyptian satanic layout” episode.

That kitchen table moment stuck with me because it taught me something early on in that patterns are easy. If you draw enough lines across any planned city, you will always find shapes that look meaningful. At some point the pattern reflects the interpreter more than the thing being interpreted. So over time my questioning and reasoning changed and still gets refined to this day. Instead of asking “Can I find a pattern?” I started asking “What would this have left behind if it were actually true?”

That, at least to me and for now, is the part that matters.

Take the Bat Creek Stone. If it really proved ancient Hebrew visitors, then the claim has to survive attempts to disprove it. But researchers later showed the inscription matches an 1870 printed source, right down to a copied mistake. Once you see that, the microscope analysis becomes secondary. Copied errors are evidence too. Or take pre-columbian contact. It is not impossible at all. The Norse reached North America centuries before Columbus. But that became accepted because it left a full material footprint in datable structures, iron working, artifacts and tools as well as an actual settlement.

And that is where I personally separate confirmed revision, plausible but unproven ideas as well as pattern projection.

Hey, I am completely open to history being incomplete. It obviously is. We have rewritten major parts of it many times already with more to come but over the years this little black duck has found four questions that keep me grounded, at least for now:
1. What is the source?
2. What would prove the claim wrong?
3. Is this direct evidence or interpretation?
4. Does the theory explain more than the current model, or mainly reinterpret a few anomalies?

Ironically, I probably learned those questions from that old Washington DC come Canberra map experiment. That was the moment I realised how easily coherence can appear and how important it is to check whether it connects to the real world or only to the lines we draw on top of it.

[Ewan]

Posted by The KMan (here)
Hi Ewan, your framing is the honest one, so let me take it at face value. Investigate. Seeks to prove. May have built it. Fair enough. Let's investigate.

A quick story first because I accidentally ran this experiment myself close to 40 years ago. A friend once came over very excited with a large road map of Washington DC after watching one of those videos about freemasons, satanists, hidden geometry and so on. He had drawn lines all over it to show me how the city supposedly revealed a secret design “for those with eyes to see”. So I grabbed some clear plastic from my study and a maker pen and sat down at the kitchen table and started drawing shapes of my own. Triangles, stars, alignments, whatever came to mind. I was basically making them up on purpose. But, he actually found mine just as convincing as the ones from the video.

Some weeks later I returned the favour and did the same thing with a map of Canberra. Different city, different country and different architects. Same result. Within minutes we had another “hidden masonic egyptian satanic layout” episode.

That kitchen table moment stuck with me because it taught me something early on in that patterns are easy. If you draw enough lines across any planned city, you will always find shapes that look meaningful. At some point the pattern reflects the interpreter more than the thing being interpreted. So over time my questioning and reasoning changed and still gets refined to this day. Instead of asking “Can I find a pattern?” I started asking “What would this have left behind if it were actually true?”

That, at least to me and for now, is the part that matters.

Take the Bat Creek Stone. If it really proved ancient Hebrew visitors, then the claim has to survive attempts to disprove it. But researchers later showed the inscription matches an 1870 printed source, right down to a copied mistake. Once you see that, the microscope analysis becomes secondary. Copied errors are evidence too. Or take pre-columbian contact. It is not impossible at all. The Norse reached North America centuries before Columbus. But that became accepted because it left a full material footprint in datable structures, iron working, artifacts and tools as well as an actual settlement.

And that is where I personally separate confirmed revision, plausible but unproven ideas as well as pattern projection.

Hey, I am completely open to history being incomplete. It obviously is. We have rewritten major parts of it many times already with more to come but over the years this little black duck has found four questions that keep me grounded, at least for now:
1. What is the source?
2. What would prove the claim wrong?
3. Is this direct evidence or interpretation?
4. Does the theory explain more than the current model, or mainly reinterpret a few anomalies?

Ironically, I probably learned those questions from that old Washington DC come Canberra map experiment. That was the moment I realised how easily coherence can appear and how important it is to check whether it connects to the real world or only to the lines we draw on top of it.

Well thank you, and I mean that sincerely, a timely reminder to not take things at face value without at least a little investigation. Your Washington DC experiment leaves the measurements in megalithic yards to one side though, as though coincidental - and perhaps it is!

I have never tried measuring anything in that unit of length but perhaps we would also find amazing numbers in all kinds of experiments, ones that just happen to look significant because we attached the significance ourselves.

[The KMan]

Thanks Ewan and that’s a fair pull up. The megalithic yard is exactly the kind of case my four questions are for and I haven’t properly run it through them yet.

From what I’ve seen the universal version of the claim gets weaker the wider it is drawn though there may be something more regional going on. I’d rather go away and look at it properly than answer off the top of my head.

I’ll come back to it.

[Ewan]

Posted by The KMan (here)
Take the Bat Creek Stone. If it really proved ancient Hebrew visitors, then the claim has to survive attempts to disprove it. But researchers later showed the inscription matches an 1870 printed source, right down to a copied mistake. Once you see that, the microscope analysis becomes secondary. Copied errors are evidence too.

I do hope you can find this to confirm your memory because I have failed to locate it.

I have spent several hours today researching further, I could have done without that quite honestly. There was certainly a time when it was pronounced a fake or hoax but what I learnt today, including accounts from the land owner on the undisturbed nature of the pit. (As it was built from a distinct red clay any previous incursion would have been quite obvious). Also what the inscription means - it definitely doesn't say "For the Jews" as some would have you believe. Did Cyrus Thomas plant the artifact so he could 'discover' it.

Ultimately it comes down to a choice of belief, and that is where our prejudices can sometimes be revealed to ourselves. I remain open minded on the subject.



The Translation (Bat Creek Stone)

Source: https://youtube.com/watch?v=8JPVElCkdi4

(( It's quite a tough watch and I think, unfortunately, way longer than necessary ))

[shaberon]

Posted by The KMan (here)
And that is where I personally separate confirmed revision, plausible but unproven ideas as well as pattern projection.

Hey, I am completely open to history being incomplete. It obviously is. We have rewritten major parts of it many times already with more to come but over the years this little black duck has found four questions that keep me grounded, at least for now:
1. What is the source?
2. What would prove the claim wrong?
3. Is this direct evidence or interpretation?
4. Does the theory explain more than the current model, or mainly reinterpret a few anomalies?

That is an important way to analyze things. I also consider motive -- such as, if we are analyzing to determine error, there is a big difference between someone being wrong and someone lying on purpose.

When you talk about challenging mainstream views, this is something that could barely be done in the west even in the nineteenth century.

Well, the subject of Linguistics started around the 1780s based on the perspective:


Is Genesis a historical document?


To run with the conclusion, no, ancient man does not have historical documents.

In the case of Greece, Minoan is a perfect example -- King Minos was probably invented somewhere around 600 B. C. E.. In fact, you can focus almost every region and find it has a purely legendary personality as the forerunner of a known, completely objective person. The vast majority of tales in any culture seem to fit this mold, it probably having started in the Sumerian Kings List.

Therefor, all mainstream views are repetitions of tales. At least, until Creationists have to contend with the Scientific Revolution.

Now, the nineteenth century was particularly horrid, in terms of orientalism. This means that advanced westerners would examine artifacts and translate languages, and go and feed back their determinations to Asian countries. And so for a century or so, education in these places consisted of following whichever academic paradigm happened to be popular.

So we have to review ourselves, and say, well, some of those first linguists were not the final word.

One of the most famous cases is Aryan Invasion Theory (AIT), the assumption that Europeans had invaded India, bringing a new language with horse culture and other advancements.

In actuality, what is truer is Out of India Theory (OIT). And what makes this more interesting is that it portrays a world order that lasted from about 2,300 B. C. E. to about the 600s after the fall of Rome.

The easiest way to identify this is because the Indian system of weights was used as far afield as Mari, Syria, to regulate trade.

It's very notable that traces of Indian commerce can be found all through there, but, almost nothing Mesopotamian is found in India. Also, there is no gene flow going into India; this too only exists outwardly until about 1,200 B. C. E..


Whatever appears new or imported in India is not an invasion, but a choice. This includes domesticated rice, chicken, horse, saffron. There is very little to say anything about western ideas. However there is an important exception.


In fact, you could call it "Minoan" or Cretan, although you could almost say universal. This is with respect to megalith culture, particularly with how it may be like architecture, that is, built to star alignments as seasonal timers.

Crete has so many structures that it is hard to "star map" it all, although at least one study has been done in the attempt. And, yes, of course everything about this and Egypt and so on should be subjected to analytical questions, because it is very easy to take a quick finding and base an entire theory on it.

Stones and structures in probable alignments are found in several European areas and pre-date writing.

India appears to "import" the idea of single megaliths around 2,000 B. C. E., and makes a small "Indian Stonehenge" at Mudumal by 1,500 B. C. E.. This is very junior or subsidiary to the rest of the world's work. Because it lacked elaborate stone masonry such as Egypt did, it was simply ignored as being an undeveloped nothing by the mainstream; but, no, it was in fact rather dominant all along.

I have a huge focus on what it looks like for humanity to have emerged from Ice Age refugia. Physically, they were few in number and almost entirely locked apart, and then you can find, for example, Ulug Depe in Turkmenistan shows the longest continual inhabitation in Central Asia. In other words, every "layer" of development has been discovered on site from something like 7,000 B. C. E. until its abandonment far later. And from this we find an impressive "triangle" of trade to eastern Iran and north India. This seems to have been the center of the world.

There is a lot to this, no questionable interpretation is necessary.


So far on the forum, there has been discussion on an alternative that I don't find valid, based on:


Translation of Gobekeli Tepe pictograms -- yes this may be the oldest known intentional arrangement of stones, painted with pictures and symbols, but the translations are usually oriented towards two fallacies


Greenland Comet impact -- a hypothesis suggested by Ignatius Donnelly

Black Sea Deluge -- inarguably, the sea rose, but is unlikely to have come as a massive surge


I would generally say the Flood is an erroneous orientalist notion based from taking legends literally. On the other hand, if the "Minoans" were adversely affected by a flood-producing volcano at Thera -- which does seem to match physical evidence -- there is no "knowledge" of it to the Mycenaeans or anyone else. This cataclysmic event was apparently forgotten almost immediately. There is more of a failure to record things, and, it does not appear anyone would measure equinoctical precession until an Egyptian monument had been standing long enough to prove it.

This foretells the next major import, math. India actually refuted precession. It has Mansions of the Moon that would have been accurate in 2,300 B. C. E. and then refuses to update until the Greek system based on First Point of Aries is standard. The Greek contributions of geometry and trigonometry are irreplaceable, it is only with this that we can develop "ancient cycles" abstractly, such as a Great Year being more than 20,000 years.

Aries is the last sign to have been invented, appearing on kudurru or Babylonian border stelae around 1,300 B. C. E.. And so if we look back before this time, there is some bad astronomical information, because later ideas have been projected somewhere they were not.


To add a subjective aspect, it is entirely possible to find "pure" versions of certain things, that is, the Indian Veda and the Zoroastrian Ahura Mazda or Wisdom Religion.

They are just hymns. They don't have a Genesis story. Nothing like that is involved. Similarly, in Greece, you might say Hesiod's Cosmogony lacks most of the narrative work that appears in "mythology".

The thing is, those were syncretic to each other, in the sense of mutually comprehensible rather than disputing.

Zoroaster is like a "simplified" Veda, by adding teaching points to a similar mythos, which is less detailed. The Veda praises things that would have been elaborately known to an audience. It can be understood by critical analysis. Rather than the beginning of time, it begins itself. That is to say, it is a specific ritual or spiritual practice that was started in, presumably, the same Sanskrit background and some existing beliefs. It was created, and spread, but it does not claim to invent the language, or begin civilization, or deal with any people prior to its own.

It has creation and that's it. The cosmos was manifested divinely. No knowledge between then and recent times.

By asking critical questions, I have a colossal amount of detail, that rests mostly within this focus. Sources like the Mayans or even somewhere like China don't really have any input. There is a detectable sphere of interaction passed down to most of us in the northern hemisphere. As a Buddhist convert, I find that the original Indian Buddhist system has continuity from the Veda; so what seems like distant archaic evidence is fully present.

If you have ever had chicken or rice, you got it from India, unless you are in the direction of Indonesia. Every chicken from Iran to Ireland is thanks to India. It can even be determined a finite number of Brahmin bulls used to sire Chadian cattle around 1,000 B. C. E.. This is extensive.


This is cross-disciplinary archeogenetics, which is becoming standard in most current research. You cross-reference crafts technology with genetic remains, that could be human, or could be some seeds, and so it makes a fairly sharp picture about vegetable and animal development along with people.

What wound up being irritating to the AIT people was Russian research into Sintashta, the Ural Civilization arising around the same 2,300 B. C. E.., which was tremendous. This so far turns out to be the origin of the spoked wheel, with, literally, rapid distribution. It's genetically distinct from the "Steppe Nomads".

This massive industrial site was abandoned fairly young by about 1,800 B. C. E..

The spoked wheel makes its major debut in the Mitanni Empire, which around 1,600 B. C. E. devastated its neighbors with chariot warfare. This is not only in Indian-influenced Old Syria, but has an Indian community. India are the masters of steel and it is possible there could have been iron prospects in the Anatolian highlands.

On the other side, so to speak, the Sintashta genetics are most purely preserved in the Kalash people of Pakistan, who in fact have the purest genetics in the world, to the level of being equivalent to their own continent. They speak a derivative form of Sanskrit that has some amount of Vedic influence, but is not the same thing. There's no trace of this going into India; those "are" Sintashtans strategically located at the Dorah Pass.

Another technological jump is that the Biblical Ships of Tarshish may not have been any reference to a home port, but, a "class" of vessel seaworthy to cross the Indian Ocean.

The older trade zone was certainly maritime in the sense of vessels that would ply the coast, and you could go all along the Persian Gulf and Arabian Peninsula that way. With newer ships, you could go straight to Kerala. It is likely that Jews and Nabathean Arabs did this perhaps around 1,000 B. C. E., and then on to Sri Lanka. India has both Cochin Jews and Thomasene Christians.

When missionaries discovered this, it was news to them. How could they be experts about it?

[rgray222]

Posted by The KMan (here)
Hi Ewan, your framing is the honest one, so let me take it at face value. Investigate. Seeks to prove. May have built it. Fair enough. Let's investigate.

A quick story first because I accidentally ran this experiment myself close to 40 years ago. A friend once came over very excited with a large road map of Washington DC after watching one of those videos about freemasons, satanists, hidden geometry and so on. He had drawn lines all over it to show me how the city supposedly revealed a secret design “for those with eyes to see”. So I grabbed some clear plastic from my study and a maker pen and sat down at the kitchen table and started drawing shapes of my own. Triangles, stars, alignments, whatever came to mind. I was basically making them up on purpose. But, he actually found mine just as convincing as the ones from the video.

Some weeks later I returned the favour and did the same thing with a map of Canberra. Different city, different country and different architects. Same result. Within minutes we had another “hidden masonic egyptian satanic layout” episode.

That kitchen table moment stuck with me because it taught me something early on in that patterns are easy. If you draw enough lines across any planned city, you will always find shapes that look meaningful. At some point the pattern reflects the interpreter more than the thing being interpreted. So over time my questioning and reasoning changed and still gets refined to this day. Instead of asking “Can I find a pattern?” I started asking “What would this have left behind if it were actually true?”

That, at least to me and for now, is the part that matters.

Take the Bat Creek Stone. If it really proved ancient Hebrew visitors, then the claim has to survive attempts to disprove it. But researchers later showed the inscription matches an 1870 printed source, right down to a copied mistake. Once you see that, the microscope analysis becomes secondary. Copied errors are evidence too. Or take pre-columbian contact. It is not impossible at all. The Norse reached North America centuries before Columbus. But that became accepted because it left a full material footprint in datable structures, iron working, artifacts and tools as well as an actual settlement.

And that is where I personally separate confirmed revision, plausible but unproven ideas as well as pattern projection.

Hey, I am completely open to history being incomplete. It obviously is. We have rewritten major parts of it many times already with more to come but over the years this little black duck has found four questions that keep me grounded, at least for now:
1. What is the source?
2. What would prove the claim wrong?
3. Is this direct evidence or interpretation?
4. Does the theory explain more than the current model, or mainly reinterpret a few anomalies?

Ironically, I probably learned those questions from that old Washington DC come Canberra map experiment. That was the moment I realised how easily coherence can appear and how important it is to check whether it connects to the real world or only to the lines we draw on top of it.

That is a great way to look at all things in life. Sadly, many people do not want intellectual honesty anchored in reality. They want appealing narratives and superficial patterns. After all, the truth often requires effort, critical thinking and confronting uncomfortable realities that go against their long-held beliefs. The truth requires a bit of verification and cross-checking, which almost no one is willing to do. It is easier to take an emotionally satisfying shortcut to fortify your beliefs and align with your tribe. Over-reliance on third-party interpretation is out of control. For instance, allowing the news or some person on a YouTube channel to interpret Obama, Biden, or Trump's speeches leads to uncritical acceptance and absolute manipulation. Listen to what is said from the source and dispense with the interpretation.

[The KMan]

Hi Ewan, fair pull-up and appreciate you putting the hours in. The reference is Robert Mainfort and Mary Kwas “The Bat Creek Stone Revisited: A Fraud Exposed,” American Antiquity (2004). The 19th century source they point to is Macoy’s General History, Cyclopaedia and Dictionary of Freemasonry and the core argument is that when the inscription is oriented the way Cyrus Gordon later read it, it aligns very closely with the Masonic illustration reproduced there rather than with a genuine ancient inscription.

And that is the part doing the evidentiary work for me at the moment though I am still looking further into broader claims. I will also give that video you linked a proper watch when I get a clear hour for it.

[shaberon]

Hebrew and Arabic are the youngest languages of the Semitic group, attested after ca. 1,300 B. C. E..

Their outward influence in their early times is practically nothing.

Looking at the other example described as "Minoan", it was workshop-produced along with a load of similar pieces known as the Michigan Relics:




Nevertheless, these led to some seriously-held beliefs like it came from the Lost Tribes of Israel.

Well, that was probably one of the most seriously-taken topics of the European mind since the 1580s. Obsessed. However the most plausible explanation is that they are simply the Mountain Jews of Iran.

The strange thing is that the population of the Americas came from Siberia about 30,000 years ago, meaning, in the genetic sense, they are a purer descendant of "ancient Europeans" than what we call "Europeans" today. Indo-Iranians came out of this about 12,000 years ago. In this sense, it is really an "Amero-European family" as distinguished from Africa and East Asia. The current working definition is that Anatomically Modern Human is detectable about 45,000 years ago.

The relatively late question that is unavoidable:


Why is Greek cognate to Sanskrit?


On the large scale, mainstream thinking has been conditioned to champion Egypt and Sumeria as the beginning of civilization, due to writing and masonry around 3,000 B. C. E., and, yes, that is pretty old, and in fact solvable unlike Gobekeli Tepe.

It was not until 2004 that the rain washed out some artifacts in Iran that led to older discoveries.

Comparatively speaking, it appears the origin of these technological criteria of civilization is Iranian.

To speculate where there is a lack of proof, my suggestion is what has been called the Indus Valley Civilization is the flow of this technological wave and its language.

On the subject of metallurgy, gold and copper are often found in pure, workable forms; the first gold work is at Varna in Europe around 4,000 B. C. E.. Pure copper, on the other hand, is not very useful. The conditioning factor over time is Tin. There is a new technology called "Bronze Age" but Tin is actually rare and only found in limited areas, and defined supply-and-demand for millennia.

The opposite art of metal is Silver. Silver is almost never found as raw metal. It is relatively abundant, but almost always trapped inside ores and formations that require processing to extract it. The first known silver work dates to about 3,300 B. C. E. in Isfahan, Iran.

Given the time frame, it is apparent there was something like a school in west Iran, Sistan, Kandahar (Afghanistan), Mehrgarh (Pakistan). When taken up by India, the result is a human flood, something like a million people participating. Iranian structures include ziggurat designs, implying they may have influenced the more well-known ones in Mesopotamia.

The Indian influence is visible in continuity from IVC seals --> Dilmun seals --> Old Syrian seals.

However, I do not think it corresponds to the following example.


This is another relatively recent discovery, the Haifa Tin Ingot:






It has been asserted the marks are IVC script.

Well, they are the same shapes, but those are not very intricate are they.

This was recovered from a shipwreck in the Mediterranean. Source of the ingot is most likely Cornwall.

Does that make it "proto Hebrew"? I don't know what it is. But it corroborates the expectation, i. e., around 1,000 B. C. E. there was commerce from Britain.

Before that, however, Tin had been brought in from possibly as far afield as Uzebekistan. In the other direction, this supply reached Hanoi.

The most adequate description of the backbone of interconnected development is probably the Tin Road.

Subsequently, "bronze age" is not a true epoch, but, the relative spread of technology. Instead, Meghalayan Age has been taken as a marker of droughts that occurred around 2,200 - 1,900 B. C. E., that are thought to have adversely affected most civilizations.


There is another very good marker that reflects subjective development.

That's because Zoroaster promoted Air Burial.

A person would be decarnated and only bones kept for burial.

You can read this in the archeological record of Yaz Culture. The change begins around 1,500 B. C. E.. That makes it necessary that Zoroaster was within this culture; he did not necessarily start the practice by decree, but standardized it.

The Zoroastrian country "Bahlika" is attested in the Atharva Veda, by 1,200 or at most 1,000 B. C. E.. So, we have narrowed down a range during which Zoroaster should appear, somewhere between the physical beginning of a practice, and verbal awareness of its establishment.

Zoroastrianism conditions Abrahamic theologies. Its influence was absolutely massive. But this has not gotten much attention.

Indian decarnation is slightly older about 1,900 B. C. E., and the difference is it allows air burial or cremation. Zoroaster believed the corpse would pollute the Element, Fire, like it would pollute Earth or Water if you simply buried it. This is a fairly stringent belief with him. The concept of Zoroastrian Fire Altars is considerably later and probably Median or "the Magi". It certainly is an accreted tradition that has lost all of its original commentary except Bag Nask. When taken back to its pristine form, it does not have these elaborations about the Devil or the Savior. Those are developments within the Persian Empire, transferred fervently into Abrahamism.

You don't really see it in the Semitic traditions either.

Mainstream religious belief appears to be re-packaged medieval Zoroastrianism.

I thought this should be a major subject in intellectual history, but it seems to be escaping concern.