THE ROBERT W. WHITAKER ARCHIVE

This may seem an obvious thing to say, but most of history is based on the idea that creativity only took place where things were rotting away. The reason for this is that historians think that where they find something is the place where it was created.

A historian would go to Cuba and decide that the automobile was invented there. He would note that the average car on the streets of Havana was built decades ago, while cars in the United States are mostly from less than one decade ago.

The Middle East contains whole civilizations that have died out. You will find the oldest wheels in those areas. There is a major pagan center in Uppsala, Sweden, but we can't study it because it has half a dozen Christian churches built over it. If you want to study pagan sites you have to go to the Middle East, where everything is dead.

So paganism was invented in the Middle East.

Stonehenge is famous because it is still standing on land where there has been life throughout the ages. So until carbon dating was developed it was assumed that Stonehenge was built very late in the stone age.

There are stone henges of this type in the southern Mediterranean. They are from the same old culture that built Stonehenge. Henges from that ancient culture are in Spain and all over Europe, but it was assumed that the ones in the Middle East were the oldest, because history says everything came from the Middle East.

So historians were amazed when carbon dating showed that the oldest henge was Stonehenge and the one in the Middle East was actually the YOUNGEST. This surprised them but did not cause them to rethink anything.

Stonehenge was built in England and then that culture spread southwards to the Middle East. If you look at history you will see this is an old and repeated story. The history of the Middle East is a history of "northern invasions." The wheel came to Egypt because it rolled over the Egyptian armies from the north. The Hittites brought iron to Egypt in another northern invasion. Stonehenge culture came down to the Middle East after a millennium or two in the north.

So historians assume that everything began in the Middle East. And every time the origin of anything is traced, historians are astounded, once again, to find it didn't come from the Middle East.

The blond mummies from four thousand years ago that have been found in China were wearing a type of weave that historians had long since officially said was developed in the Middle East two thousand years later. Apparently it was old when these blond people had it twice that long ago.

Historians were, as always, amazed, especially the ones who spent their entire lives studying the history of weaving.