When the earth tilted and the cloud cover broke, the sun shone forth. Primitive men had a new hero to worship. The sun and the moon and the stars became objects of veneration. Each became the personification of a god. In Greece Venus was the goddess of love; in Rome Mars was the god of war. In the Bible the heavenly rulers are called stars: the name Hillel ben Shachar, that famous fallen personality of Isa 14:12, literally in Hebrew means Day Star, Son of Dawn. Thunder and lightning produced awe in those primitive people. Don brought woe to this world and thus became the god of thunder. Eve was immortalized in the moon as Diana. The rainbow became an object of worship to the American Indians.
 

The great meteorological and physical changes brought hardship to the survivors. Neanderthal man disappeared to be replaced by the more adaptable children of Adam. Many different folk explanations arose. Men began to monitor the cycles of the moon on bone and stone. The earliest records of that new calendric time appear around 30,000 years ago. We might expect that men responded to the, now visible, cycles of the heavenly bodies.
 

But a few people here and there maintained more reliable records. The Sumerians were among those; they left us with accounts that permit some estimate of the time of that great earth event.
 

The King Lists give specific numbers. If we could date the personalities on those lists we might be able to date the Flood, since the years of the reigns are given with precise numbers. However, individuals ages do not add to the sums given on the lists. Although the Sumerian scribes may have constructed the lists to conform to their notions of planetary history, they must have based their numbers on traditions which carried much weight. We saw that the antediluvian kings were assigned ages which had to fit in some higher scheme, but that the WB-144 was the most faithful of the lists. We can expect that the postdiluvian kings also were assigned lengths of reign which had to meet other criteria. Strong tradition said that those rulers lived hundreds of years. The reign of Etana, an evident Don form, "the one who to heaven ascended," is given as 1500 years. Although the reign may be fabricated it is another attempt to remember Adam. In spite of such difficulties we should expect that the overall scheme had some basis in reality.
 

From Babylonian myths we know that Gilgamesh was contemporary with Agga (Aka), the last king of the First Dynasty of Kish. By taking kings on more recent lists, who are verified through other records, and summing backward through time, scholars estimate the date of Gilgamesh around 4,000 BC. If we accept the sums from WB-144, as given, we see that the First Dynasty of Kish existed for 24,510 years. (Other versions would add another 3,000 years.) If we would be daring enough to accept the numbers literally, and that Gilgamesh lived approximately 4,000 BC, we would calculate the Flood somewhere between 28,000 and 31,000 BC.
 

This date has important significance in the geophysical and anthropological record of our planet.
 

1) It coincides with the beginning of lunar records on bone and stone, the beginning of the famous cave paintings of Europe, the disappearance of Neanderthal, and the appearance of Caucasian man^ROC.
 

2) It is the time of the onset of the last cold period of the Wisconsin glacial epoch^{SC-159,BGSA-75}.
 

3) It is the time of a sudden expansion of modern man into widespread sections of the world^NAT-301.
 

4) It is the onset of an archeological hiatus in China when most of China was denuded of men^SC-162.
 

5) It is the onset of another hiatus in depositions in Shanidar Cave in Iran. For more than 100,000 years men used that cave as a habitat. Suddenly they abandoned it about 30,000 years ago. They returned to use it again about 17,000 years ago and continued to do so except for another brief hiatus about 10,000 years ago, at the time of the great Atlantean event^ARSI.
 

6) It is the approximate date for the first violent explosion of Santorini volcano in the east Mediterranean,
 

7) It is the beginning of the deposition of marine protozoa off the Pacific coast of Washington and Oregon. The topography of that region now under water displays rolling hills with some mountains. Beneath the marine deposits is a layer of red clay showing that the lands of the Pacific Ocean west of North America sank at that time^SC-146.
 

Numerous other data could be cited to mark this great geophysical event in earth history.
 

The coincidence between the date of the Flood on the King Lists, and dates on the last ice age, upheavals in the earth, archeological hiatus, the appearance of a new race of men, and other phenomena, attest to the fact that the ancient Sumerians were recording more than mythological history. By means not known to us they were able to provide a date which can hardly be coincidental. Although their records may have been fragmentary and corrupt they could not have been too far from the truth.
 

If the Sumerian date for the Flood follows that of planetary scientific evidence how do the reigns of the long-lived kings before the Flood relate to planetary history? Is there also a correlation between the reigns of those kings and the geophysical record of our planet?
 

One of the most precise techniques for dating the geological cycles of Quaternary and Pleistocene time is that of deep-sea cores. Long metal cylinders are driven into the ocean bottom, closed, and brought back up to the surface. Within the cores are samples of primitive life which settled to the ocean floor over many thousands of years. The life forms vary from age to age, both in type and in density. Some of them are sensitive to temperature; they come and go as the surface temperature of the planet changes. By counting the density of these primitive forms one can estimate the temperature cycles of the earth. The topmost portions of the cores can be dated fairly precisely through radio-carbon techniques to about 40,000 years ago. By estimating rates of deposition, planetary dates can be taken back much farther, to 500,000 years ago or more. The temperature variations reflect the advance and recession of the great ice sheets during the ice ages. Thus it is possible to more precisely date the ice ages of the earth.
 

Figure 28-1 shows the temperature cycles of the earth from data presented by Cesare Emiliani^BGSA-74. Alongside I plot the dispensational cycles of the earth as recorded by the Sumerians for their antediluvian kings.
 

The correlation between the recent scientific data on the temperature cycles of the earth, and the ancient record of dispensational cycles, is unique and astonishing. The ancient Sumerians had records of the long-term geophysical history of our world through the reigns of the kings. The cyclic history of our planet is somehow related to rulership sent down from heaven. The ice ages are a measure of divine dispensations.
 

Gilgamesh, and the differences among clay tablets of the length of reigns for the First Dynasty of Kish would modify the dates at most by 4,000 years. This difference is well within the scientific dating errors over 30,000 or 40,000 years. If I used 28,800 years for king position #8 it would move following dates down slightly, but would bring the earlier king dates more in alignment with the geological dates.
 

Bluntly stated, it is impossible that the ancient Sumerians were inventing numbers that would correlate so astonishingly well with modern geological dates for temperature changes on the surface of our planet.
 

Not all geologists agree with the dates given by Emiliani^JG-74. Ericson and his co-workers would spread the dates of the cycles farther back into time^SC-146. Chappell briefly reviewed the various data and cited evidence why Emiliani's dates probably are more correct^NAT-219. These include temperature analysis of cores from the Caribbean, K-Ar radioactive dated soil terraces from the Rhine river valley, four well-attested glacial deposits in the Kansan Glaciation, and other evidence spread across the planet, including the data from Frerichs^SC-159. Based on this evidence we are on solid ground for the proposed correlation. The fact that the King List dates and the geological dates correspond so well suggests that both are not far from the truth. They are mutually corroborative. It also shows that the Sumerians were not merely inventing numbers. They had sound reasons for giving precise dates on those long ages, although Berossus and WB-62 demonstrate modification of the ages to push back the sums to nearly 500,000 years ago.
 

We also now have explanation for the four or five ages recorded in myths from around the world. They come in pairs, a warm portion and a cold portion. If there were four ice ages there would be eight kings; if five ice ages then ten kings. Ziusudra, the last king on the list before the Flood, would be associated with the warm period that lasted from about 50,000 to 30,000 years ago. The king before him was associated with the preceding cold period, and so on back through time. Thus we have an explanation for both the myth of four or five world ages and for the twinning of the kings. The cycles of the ages came in pairs; the kings did also.
 

During a warm, or "up" cycle, a cloud cover envelopes the earth. This period lasts 30,000 or 40,000 years. The earth tilts over, the sun breaks forth to bring a new sun, a "down" cycle begins, and the earth turns colder. When the earth tilts we have a deluge. Thus we have an explanation for the Greek traditions of more than one Flood. When the earth tilts back "up" on the next cycle much water evaporates to form the next cloud cover. This causes widespread drought as the planet restabilizes into the new weather mode. Each tilt also creates great cataclysms in the wracking of the globe. Volcanos erupt everywhere. Thus an upswing is associated with the destruction of the world by fire. Deluge and conflagration, flood and fire, one follows the other. Meanwhile biological evolution goes on, perhaps stimulated by the cycles.
 

Men become conditioned to the new ecology of the planet. As they build higher culture they become more divorced from God -- or the gods whose children they are. Things go bad, the earth becomes unstable, it tilts over, there is a deluge, and another ice age begins. About 100,000 years ago the earth is good; the red man migrates to the New World; this is the period when the eighth divine ruler appears, Divine Yao of China, Methusaleh of Genesis, Enmenduranna of the Sumerians. About 70,000 years ago things go bad, the earth becomes unstable, it tilts over, there is a deluge, and an ice age occurs. Millennia go by, the earth tilts back up about 50,000 years ago, there is a conflagration, a cloud cover develops, a warm era ensues, Adam appears -- and falls. The earth tilts back down, the Great Flood occurs, the one we children remember. A new ice age occurs. About 10,000 years ago a great recession takes place in the ice sheets. Approximately 30,000 years have gone by since the last tilt; we are about to swing again. Never again will the earth be destroyed by Flood. This age will end in fire. God is about to take a hand in the cycles of the ages. A totally new era awaits the future of this planet.
 

One of the more difficult questions facing us in this inquiry is the mechanism behind the changes. What would cause the earth to tilt up and down, or otherwise change in its rotational attitude?

No sure theories exist for such dramatic changes. The magnetic field of the earth has reversed repeatedly over many millions of years. The average time is some 420,000 years for the 'normal' interval and about 480,000 years in the 'reversed.' (Note the similarity to the 432,000-year period we encountered in the old folk mathematics.) The present era of normal polarity has lasted about 700,000 years. These cycles may be related to magnetic changes or reversals in the Sun or other planets of the Solar System. The Sun goes through a 22-year period of magnetic reversal but how this affects the earth is unknown^PT.
 

Microscopic animal fossil populations change significantly at the magnetic reversals. But this evidence does not help elucidate the data on the ice ages where changes take place every 30,000 or 40,000 years. Current scientific research stresses a 23,000-year ice-volume cycle of the earth^SC-212.
 

We know the earth has a wobble of its axis at this present time. This small precession cycles over a sixteen-month period^SC-161. Scientific measurements show a slight displacement of the precession during heavy earthquake activity. It is not known if the displacement is due to energy releases in the earth crust during the earthquakes, or if the earthquakes are generated by perturbations in the wobble. If large energy changes were somehow induced in the earth's surface it might go into an unstable rotational mode.
 

J. R. Heirtzler summarized recent scientific thinking on the cause of the ice ages^SC-219.
 

. . . A common thread running these and many other proposals at the frontier of geophysical research is the role played by displacements of the earth's axis of rotation. It seems that rather minor variations can affect to a surprising extent both the climate at the surface of the earth and forces and stresses within the earth.  . . . Mechanisms have been suggested whereby the earth's magnetic field could be generated by convective motions caused in turn by irregularities in the earth's orbit.  . . . There has been a revival of a 30-year-old theory that the glacial ages were caused by changes in the tilt of the earth's axis.

Scientists suggest that the ice ages are due to three major parameters in the earth's relation to the sun:
 

a) the degree of tilt of the axis,
b) the direction of the tilt, whether pointed to the north star or some other direction, and
c) the perihelion of the orbit with respect to the tilt.
 

The earth has an elliptic orbit around the sun, not a circular one. The northern hemisphere has greater land mass than the southern. Therefore, conditions are more amenable to the accumulation of ice when the northern hemisphere summer is farther from the sun, and hence, has reduced warming. These parameters all interact to modify the temperature at the surface of the earth. The precession has a period of about 25,000 years. From measurements of temperature obtained from deep see cores the degree of tilt is thought to have a period of about 40,000 years. These two combine to produce the ice-age cycles^SA-249.
 

Notes:
 

(1) WB-144 ages are as reported on Sumerian lists, order preserved,

and merely shifted for two empty positions.
 

(2) Dates are from Hurley^HOIE, who synthesized them from Cesare Emiliani.
 

(3) Date of the last ice recession, marked by Plato's Atlantean event.
 

(4) Calculated from Sumerian King list, assuming Gilgamesh at 4,000 BC

and literal ages for First Dynasty of Kish.
 

(5) Calculation assumes 36,000 years from Berossus. This number is

assumed missing from WB-144.
 

(6) Not reported from geological studies. Too distant to estimate reliably