Migrational Meanderings…        

    Since Collective Memory can remember, we as a people have always been on the move, if for no other reason than to just see what it may look like over the next hill.
    However, increasing local tension and strife brought about by the decreasing availablity of raw materials, both locally and imported, due in part to a steady interference of highly established trade routes by outside influences would then tend to instill new social orders. Thus it is through these changing social orders that a static society which has been previously based upon small tribal gatherings could then generally expand into a hierarchy with distinct class seperations of national or even inter-national proportions. Also swift climatic changes in both ocean currents and air currents alike would affect seasonal occurences which had hitherto been relied upon, inducing even further insecurity and discontent. Yet the question still remains, where do we come from?
    By looking to anthropology for a bit of factual evidence… Here, let me show you… This 500,000 year-old left tibia, or shin bone, believed to belong to a man who stood more than 5 feet 9 inches tall and weighing something over 187 pounds, is gnawed at both ends and was discovered along with two hominid teeth from another mature adult, plus many another interesting finds, which are all thought to belong to a species called Homo heidelbergensis unearthed from a Middle Pleistocene archeological dig that is just outside Chichester in West Sussex, England, and is thought to be the largest landsurface of preserved palaeolithic findings within Europe. Another find authentically dated at 240,000 BCE. from the Danish peninsula of Jutland records the earliest known traces of human ancestral presence within Scandinavia proper.
    We can also easily find that skeletal remains of man which date to approximately 50,000 BCE have to date been discovered in present day Ireland, Spain, France, Germany, Italy, Croatia, Bulgaria, Ukrainia, Kazakhstan, Turkey, Israel, Iraq, Iran, Egypt, The Sudan… and more finds shall continue to surface as present-day skills continue to develop. Now then, notice the pattern here, starting from… let's say Ireland, and expanding ever outwards by connecting each archaological finding to date, and allowing for geographical obstacles, one clearly begins to see the formation of trade and travel routes that still exist, and are in use to this day.
    It is now well known, and widely accepted by most, that there were Three Great Cities which happened to form the basis of civilization from the time period before the most recent Great Deluge and are in fact known in various mythos world-wide as:
    1) The City of Water, which was known to be located in the south and was responsible for the Principal of Agriculture. Kindly note that Ancient Egypt was the most successful and longest lasting civilization here on Earth with a rich and abundant harvest due to the yearly overflowing of the Nile River; or perhaps China, where according to Chinese and Japanese archaeologists who studied 125 samples from more than 100 sites along the Yangtze River, recent findings reveal that rice cultivation was in use around 9,500 BCE. The oldest specimens were from sites on the middle Yangtze in Hubei and Hunan provinces, which is also known to frequently flood.
    2) The City of the Sun, which was "centrally" located and responsible for the Arts of Divination. Kindly note that the Island of Malta, which has remnents of some very ancient temples, is in fact the upermost portion of a mountain chain that was once undulated with water around 10,000 years ago and is indeed in line with the proposed location of the other two Great Cities; or perhaps in Western Turkey where there is a lost city, which is reputed, and believed by scholars, to lie near Mount Sipylus some twenty miles or so inland from the Aegean coast, which was devastated by an earthquake and submerged beneath a lake around 10,000 years ago.
    3) The third Great City sadly goes unnamed, though said to be the most northerly of the three, and is maintained as the location of the Heroes of the Flood Epics. Kindly note that the Keltic Shelf is the land mass surrounding much of England, which although currently underwater, was actually above water during the last ice age, over 10,000 years ago; or perhaps there was a "reversal" of the Cardinal Directions to which Plato and Herodotus both make reference, along with other ancient authorities, which would place this third city within the Indonesian land mass which submerged about- yep, you guessed it, 10,000 years ago.
    If we do in fact accept the notion that in order for these Great Cities to survive and thus to succeed, a world economy must have been created in all outlying areas structured under highly specific classes. By an intense and focused means of superior technological control of all the major facilities of production, transportation, and communication which enabled this fact to originally occur and thus to continue. Although these peripheral areas may well have been politically and religiously less well-organized than society within the quick grasp of the Great Cities, they were still none-the-less of vital import because it was these areas which contained enough significant natural resources to help support the ever-expanding population and were thus simply incorporated into the world economy out of necessity.
    Now then, let's fast-forward a few millennia… According to various historical sources in the area of the Black Sea there was a ruler named Odhinn, son of Ti'ras, (possible original founder of Tyre in Phoenicia), who was a great and just king. Now this was well over four thousand years ago, around the time of the Great City of Troy; the second rebuilding –{Troy II went through eight progressive phases, from 2600-2250 BCE, before it was ultimately and utterly destroyed by fire}; which was a colony of Etruscia, or mayhaps the other way around seems much more feasible to me for the Trojan War was in 1180 BCE, (which is approximately when the Mycenean Empire fell by the way), and Etruscan Tuscany appeared in 968 BCE.
    Flourishing in trade not only because of prime locale, being well-situated along the waterfront within a major crossroads betwixt numerous nations, but also due to its solid defensability, many cultures and their wares, due in part to easy access of the sea, passed thru its gates, and a great many tales, as always in any city of worth, of exotic lands and far away riches were told. Political power ran rampant as vast outlying kingdoms were continually overrun or even obliterated, yet the trade mostly continued to flow uninterrupted among the nations.
    Realize that within the Eddas and Sagas of the Northern Traditions, especially in the beginning of the Ynglinga Saga, we have a type of migratory expedition which is led by one called Odhinn of the Æsir. Ths may well be fanciful notions of Kristjans attempting to humanize our deities, but we hold to the conviction that these same deities are our ancestors do we not not? Where then these roving emigrants perchance the ancestors of the Assyrian Empire of Upper Mesopotamia? Traveling, trading, conquering and producing offspring as the Clan and kindred journey ever northwards in search of what lies just over the next rise.
    Creating new Kingdoms from the land, possibly because of the raw materials found, or perhaps satisfying those who no longer wish to proceed on the journey, as well as conquering various powers already in progress – the Vanir, possibly a Celtic Clan... or even a colony from the Empire of Van, (once located on the fertile plains along the northern expanse of the Caucasus Mountains, in between the Black and Caspian seas); being one of few clans to actually not become overrun. Instead they became assimulated while retaining their individuality, most of which is now sadly lost to us due to personal, political, and religious agendas.
    We must realize something major happened, again supported by archaeological evidence, to cause this migratory exile northwards of a well-established group of individuals; a need to find and create new ideas in a stagnant environment of old motifs.. to keep open the trade routes to the rich amber fields being jepordized by the Urnfield Celts mayhaps.. a political uphevel and overthrow within the Mediterranean cultures.. the true collapse and fall of the Bronze Age...

These are just a few of many diverse probabilities…