A Mid-201x Helical View of our Solar System

The achievements in positional measurements of celestial bodies in Mesopotamia and other regional powers of the Bronze Age were lost in social collapse brought on by climate change (or attack by “sea people” – really there is a fun online Crash Course, by John and Hank Green on the subject).   The layer model in the Iron Age replaced the knowledge of cosmology lost by the ancients.

The layers: The “underworld” held up the Earth; the ‘firmament’ (the air) held up the Moon; the Moon to Mercury; Mercury to Venus; Venus to the Sun; Mars, Jupiter, and Saturn; and a final layer for all the stars (top of heaven).   It was not always in this order, sometimes the firmament was above the sun, the moon and the starts – with water above the firmament and water below, as depicted in the following picture:

While the layers changed depending on who explained the concept there was a basic idea of a static universe;  if represented by the seven-layer dip, hell would be the refried beans, we live in the guacamole, and heaven is a mixture of green onions and chilies.  Iron Age ideas set humans back ~2700 years.  But we must remember the Bronze Age collapse was a dark age for the Mediterranean, a sudden decrease of technology and literacy.  Thus, it isn’t hard to understand why the Bronze Age measurements in positions, motions, and magnitudes of stars degenerated into a seven layer dip by the dawn of the Common Era.

That 2700 year extended dark age of cosmology ended between the mid-fifteen or sixteen-hundreds depending on who you ask and the human mind has been kicking ass building instrumentation to expand our view of the universe since.  Here is a 2015 helical model of our solar system https://youtu.be/mvgaxQGPg7I . . . this would blow the socks off, and most likely cause a few strokes in our Iron Age ancestors.  The first notable stand out is the lack of an “underworld”; there is nothing under Earth; there isn’t even a concept of “under Earth,” it is a sphere.  I hope the next time you hear the term underworld you roll your eyes – at least metaphorically act out an Iron Age meme.

On the other hand -- The seven layers of heaven (the dip) looks exactly like we would expect it to look if created by the minds of iron-age humans who were fighting to make their first attempt at cosmology, psychology, and philosophy; a first attempt at politics and control of the environment, in the wake of a sudden cataclysm in the region.