Against Antediluvian Aprecipitation

One of my greatest frustrations with the interpretation of the creation in Genesis was when I discovered how irrationally the whole situation was presented, by both the so-called literal interpretations and the fully scientific rejection of it. Part of my motivations for imagining Eldwan include presenting a different take on creation. I'll deal with a couple of points in this post.

The first major gripe - Who in the world advocated the idea that there was no precipitation until Noah's flood?

A little research directs me to Genesis 2 : 4 - 6 'This is the account of the heavens and the earth when they were created. When the Lord God made the earth and the heavens- and no shrub of the field had yet appeared on the earth and no plant of the field had yet sprung up, for the Lord God had not sent rain on the earth and there was no man to work the ground, but streams came up from the earth and watered the whole surface of the ground-', which has been interpreted to suggest that there was no rain until rain is quite undeniable by Genesis 7 : 12.

Let's try and sort this muddle out. Genesis 2, as I understand it, is an account of Day 6 of creation in more detail, about the creation of Adam and Eve. As such, the unique characteristics of this period, namely that there were no plants of the field, that there was no rain and that there was no man to work the ground, should be confined to our understanding of Creation Day 6. Of course there is no indication of when these conditions ceased to prevail, but I don't think they can be reasonably interpreted to have lasted until the flood. For one, after this brief description of the state of creation at the beginning of Day 6, the Lord raises the garden of Eden, and creates man. This already changes the conditions from 'no plants of the field' to many garden plants which are pleasing to eye and good for food. And man, while he may not be a worker, has also come into existence. These alterations already take effect by the end of Day 6.

By the time of the fall, man has clearly been cursed as a worker of the field, whose toil is what cultivates food for consumption. Cain is a farmer. Since the absence of rain was described with the other points that have clearly been changed, even by the fall, let alone the flood, I think rain would have pattered down on the vegetation of Eden as well. I have serious doubts about alternative hydrological cycles prevailing in this early stage of Earth's history. Just because God used rainbows as a symbol of his promise doesn't mean no one had seen a rainbow before.

Which leads me on to my second major gripe - The vapour canopy hypothesis

Unless the fundamental chemistry and intermolecular forces of water were drastically different from what they are today, I doubt that any water canopy could hover over the atmosphere of the earth for the length of time that these theorists claim. Incidentally, if water were so dissimilar to permit such structures, I don't think it would have functioned very well in human bodies.

The vapour canopy doesn't agree with scientific facts, or even biblical facts. If it was indeed the water above the earth, then the 'sky' would be limited to the space between this suspended aquatic layer and the seas. Since the sun and the moon were stated to have been placed in the sky, that would mean the sun and moon should have been sandwiched by the waters. Having a flaming sphere of plasma in such close proximity would hardly befit pre-rebellion paradise.

Exercising some creative liberty, I am re-imagining the water above the sky in Eldwan as an ice-belt that existed outside the orbit of Earth. If water was indeed raised to such an extent, the region between the ice belt and the Earth's seas would be the sky between the waters. The Sun and the Moon at least, would literally be contained within these two regions of water. I admit I cannot help the position of the stars, as they are a little too far away to wrap in an envelope of dihydrogen monoxide. But an ice-belt would at least fulfill a few more criteria that a vapour canopy cannot hope to explain.

Imperfect Apotheosis

This idea has grown to become particularly important despite its origin as a cursory addendum. So many essential themes have grown entwined with it that I should record its current state. It has to do with the postcorporists and Alero's dream for humanity. With the new reflections of Alero's motives, my original intentions for various events have grown irrelevant or inconsistent.

Alero's goal is for human fulfillment, and he interprets this as humans having the full potency of Eleyon in creative power and knowledge. This is not entirely out of line with what Eleyon wants of course, but it is incomplete and Alero jumpstarted the process before the evezhen were ready during the rebellion. After that fateful day, Alero remained proud and boasted that he could bring humanity into full bloom without Eleyon. Because of this, Eleyon decided to give Alero his way for a time, the Age of Light, and so a group of people who were willing to serve Alero were handed over to Alero to do as he pleased. At the end of that time, Eleyon showed Alero that the evezhen would never be made complete apart from himself.

Accepting this challenge, Alero holds the advancement of his followers in his hands. He guides them to greater and more potent technological ability in an accelerated manner. Alero grants them magic, albeit through unethical means, to enhance their progress further. He pushes for the postcorporists, the gods within the machine. By transferring their primary existence into the digital network, those individuals who gave up their physical bodies could exercise a shadow of Eleyon's creative ability. By intending and designing it, whole virtual worlds and simulations could come into existence.

Initially, I thought of it as borrowing from science fiction. However, I realised something potentially more significant upon deeper reflection. It may be, that out of a multitude of human endeavours, our only true creative efforts come through language. Anything physical is simply a rearrangement of pre-existing material. But words - the meaning of words is shaped by subtle societal forces, creative leaps of fluid definition. The language of a society is a collective lexical masterpiece, a creative effort en masse with every syllable we express, written or spoken.

Our control over virtual worlds is no different. We create them by language. Not by a natural human language, but a language of computers, which nonetheless finds itself the product of human ingenuity. So by inducing a shift from a physical world into a virtual world, Alero is really immersing humanity into the only domain in which their creative potential can be directly manifested, the domain of language.

Of course though, Alero's attempt is incomplete, just as his interpretation of human fulfillment is lacking. We are not fulfilled by power or ability. Our divine qualities shine through not when we are capable of immense god-like actions, but when we reflect the divine character of the Creator. Eleyon points this out to Alero before he destroys the Radiant society in the Flood.

Alero remains bitter, convinced that he could have achieved what he intended if Eleyon had not interfered. And so, with such an attitude, the next Age, the Age of Water, commences. The postcorporists in the network of Alaris reboot as the tidal generators begin to power the skeleton of the city. In their turn, they present themselves as gods to the scattered people of the coasts. Alero hears of them and approaches them, but instead of finding the gratitude he expects, they reject his leadership. The postcorporists are determined to achieve equality with the infinite for themselves with their second chance. Alero's love for them changes to hatred.

Through their actions and their internal feuds, it becomes clear that the new gods of Alaris are anything but divine. They are petty, selfish human beings who have found themselves with the power of gods. Alero finally admits in his own heart that they were never going to approach true apotheosis by the simple accumulation of power, but he bears a vendetta against the Alarians for the rest of time.

Eventually, when Eleyon himself comes to humble the Alarians, he does so by confusing their greatest creation; their language. They are cut off from their cultural heritage, from their philosophical texts, from their great novels, from their historical records. Man is truly humbled and progress must begin anew in the fragmented nations.

The fleeing, divided groups of Alaris carry their stories of their gods by oral tradition to the various areas of the coast they settle in from the destruction of their metropolis. From their half-remembered stories, the pantheons of gods of the various cultures in the Age of Rulers have their altered derivations. Stories of gods with jealous fights, selfish agendas and fickle favour. After two Ages of history, the people of Eldwan stop struggling to grasp equality with God, and Alero realises what a Sisiphean proclamation he made on the Day of Rebellion.

Horological Dabbling

I've decided to come up with the system by which the evezhen and their various divisions would have used in order to track the passage of time. The systems would have been based around the relative motion of the celestial luminaries, and would have differed between the Age of Harmony, Light and Water according to the earth shaking events that enacted their transitions. With this in place, it would help to solidify the exact dates of various historical events. 

To begin with, the original system that existed in the Age of Harmony. I know that I've posted that the passage of time was not carefully monitored due to the absence of death's call, but that is in terms of the number of years that would have passed. The evezhen would be bound to notice the day-night cycle, the phases of the moon and the turning of the constellations. But a count of years was not kept, and before the calendar was devised and decided on, none of the evezhen remember how many years had passed. Thus those who lived in this time were indeed of unknown age.

Due to the creation of the heavenly lights for the purpose of marking time, it makes logical sense that the evezhen would have reckoned time by the lights of the firmament. To that end, the names for day, month and year are compound words in tas eldwaraj. They are simply sun-cycle, moon-cycle and star-cycle, or satcwan, latcwan and yatcwan. In the perfect state of unblemished creation, these cycles matched up in exact periods. A year held 13 months and 364 days. Bear with me and I'll explain the rationale behind these odd numbers. The first evezhen held a seven day week, so the year was divided into 52 weeks. Each of the 52 weeks was in turn grouped into four week blocks of a month, resulting in 13 months. A month began with each full moon. Each new year began when the crown star, the brightest star in the sky, was at the zenith at midnight. 

Why have a seven day week? Seven became a sacred number to the evezhen, for to them, it represented perfection, completion and unity. Seven is the number of persons in the original pantheon of the Yevel. The three persons of Eleyon, Alero, Ilvesu, Oleri and Unavo. These seven persons sculpted the world in a grand cooperative exercise. Seven is a prime number, indivisible. Tolkien had his elves count in sixes and twelves, but I suggest otherwise. Six and twelve are useful because of their factors, it makes it easy to divide quantities of various things for trade, commerce and partitioning. The evezhen, in Elin Garden, would have had no need for such divisions. We prefer factorisable numbers because we are used to calculating exactly how much someone should get for each transaction and what those calculations to be straightforward. The early evezhen would have honoured prime numbers above all as little cohesive jewels, unconcerned as they were about possession and partition in their material abundance. 

The seven days of the week would be named after the seven persons of the pantheon. Spirit's Day, Soul's Day, Matter's Day, Alero's Day, Ilvesu's Day, Oleri's Day and Unavo's Day. Of the four weeks in a month, they could have been named the waning week, the failing week, the waxing week and the ripening week, following the shape of the moon. Then, each month would have been named after a constellation that would be at the zenith at midnight for the greater duration of that month. I haven't yet thought of imaginary constellations on a star map, so these months may remain unnamed for now. Then again, it also implies that I need to design a star map on top of a geographical map, quite literally. The Day of the Spirit was the holy day of rest.

Why 13 months? Well there's certainly no triskaidekaphobia amongst the garden evezhen, and 13 is another lovely prime number. The 13 months would be grouped into three seasons of four months each, and an extra month, the month of worship. During the month of worship, all other activities would be put aside for a collective focus of giving glory to Eleyon Cilves. The three seasons, another prime number mind you, were named after the three planes, the season of the Spirit, season of the Soul and season of the Body. As the garden was situated at the equator, there would not be much seasonal variation apart from varied precipitation and the change of the wheeling stars. 

After the Rebellion, the massive tectonic activity and the destructive geological actions that ensued caused the cycles to go out of synchronisation. In actual fact the only thing affected is the rotational speed of the earth, turning slightly faster. Therefore in the Age of Light, a year had 365.1633 days instead. A month lasted 28.089 days and not exactly 28 days.

Because of these changes, the Elves had to alter their calendars. An extra day was added, and this day was not included in the weekly cycle to keep as much of the old system of weeks intact. It was known as the Day of Mourning, for on that day the Elves remembered the destructive effects of the Rebellion and wept over what was lost. That day was located in the middle of the season of the Spirit, for that was when Alero had enacted his plans. Furthermore, the days of the week were changed to the Spirit's Day, Soul's Day, Matter's Day, Light's Day, Water's Day, Air's Day and Earth's Day, in order to remove Alero's name from the week.

Corrections had to be introduced to account for the discrepancy between the years and the days. There was a leap year every 7 years. This day was added to the thirteenth month, and was another day of remembrance, but this time of the promise that Eleyon would return to set things aright. Every 49 years, the corrections would be too much, so there would be a leap lap year, where no extra day was added. Unfortunately the moon was very hard to account for, and the months and the phases of the moon gradually diverged. Every 12 months, the days would go out of alignment with the months by a day, so a day was taken from the twelfth month and given to the thirteenth. This gradually caused the months to shift out of step from the year. I'll work out more of these details once I study lunar calendars.

While the Elves kept with a seven day week, the Radiant changed their calendars under the direction of Alero. They preferred to count in sixes and twelves, their new mindset about possession and barter inclining them to factorisable numbers. They tried to enforce this system on the calendar as well, with a six day week. Thus, they had sixty weeks of six days a year, which were divided into twelve months of five weeks long. They renamed the days of the week to the Light's Day, Sun's Day, Moon's Day, Star's Day, Dark's Day and Man's Day. Man's day was the day of rest. The twelve months were named after the constellations as well, but the original thirteenth constellation was annexed into its two neighbours. The months were divided into four seasons. As for the five remaining days, they were festival days inserted between the seasons, with the gap of two days marking the start of the new year. These five festival days were named after the gods of the Pantheon of Light, Alero's Day was at the start of the year, then Saroza's Day after three months, Lassier's Day after half a year, Stalie's Day after another three months and Daron's Day at the end of the year.

The corrections would also have had to apply to the Radiant calendar, and would have frustrated their numerologists. To the Radiant, it was an ugly seven year reminder that whatever their preferences and senary impositions, the original seven would still persist, and haunt their timekeeping.

Infantile Translation

I decided to have a go at translating ths Lord's Prayer from Matthew 6:9-13, into Tas Eldwarach, to test how well the language would hold out in its present state. I'll admit that there were some simplifications and loss of subtle meaning, but my vocabulary is not extensive enough yet. Anyway here it is :

Bevos üt ocesach, idizhen id weidin, ebeto arel beupesach. Abeidin beupesach utaito, wetel beupesach sepi seto, id udidin rabreu eten sete seto id weidin. Ocen satcwan, egeto zhazhen satcwagüu üt ocesach üt ocesun, ec egilto üt oces vasodz üt ocesach, rabreu üt oces egilto vaves üt ocesun. Acatom üt oces eserun vasaj, ot ibeto üt oces valots. Cive beupes geto abedin, ec esel, ec ebel, sepilun sedülach. Oseto ocen sepi seyo.

Geographical Changes

I've detailed the maps a little more and made a number of changes, the most tedious of which was a manual conversion of the scanned map into vector diagrams, click by click. There's probably a program out there that could have saved me several hundred clicks, but anyway, since the map is in digitized format now, it's much easier to modify, and when I get around to colouring it by climate, I hope it will be easier as well.

Meanwhile, I'd like to record my ideas about Eldwan's geographical history, ranging from the Age of Harmony to the Age of Rulers, with two major changes happening in between. In the Age of Harmony, all the lands are united in one supercontinent, and this is partly due to the fact that I wish to take the evidence for a supercontinent breakup into account for Eldwan.

Figure 1.1 - Supercontinent during the Age of Harmony

This is the rather hastily sketched supercontinent. I decided not to spend too much time designing it because it really doesn't feature that much in the story, save as a backdrop and to satisfy my desire for detail. I've been trying to devise a way that a creation story might possibly weave between the evidence and be consistent with both a creation mythos and apparent scientific evidence to the contrary in future. This is what I have come up with so far.

The major issues that have to be explained concern the following points : 

- The fossil records showing the distribution of species across now separate continents

- The geologic record of magnetic reversals in the seafloor

- The apparent age of the earth that a supercontinental division implies

The current sequence of events that I am toying with involves challenging one of the basic assumptions of science, that how the laws of the universe are now represents the laws of the universe in the past. Among the reasons why the earth has tectonic activity is the convection of the mantle, and the heat that drives the movement of the mantle comes from the leftover heat from the earth's formation, friction, gravity and most significantly, from radiation.

Since I do have the Yegül, who control the strong and weak nuclear forces, they effectively have control over radioactive decay. Thus, the following progression might just be workable. In the Age of Harmony, there would have been no tectonic activity, perhaps because the mantle was cooler, or there were regulated hot spots that helped to dissipate heat evenly. As a result, there would also have been no earthquakes or volcanism, two natural acts which are extremely destructive and don't befit a perfect world in my opinion.

The interior of the earth clearly cannot be dead cold, because that would imply a paralysis of the outer core and the absence of a protective magnetic field. So perhaps the interior of the earth was hot, but there were just stable ways of dissipating that heat. I'm not entirely sure if there's a way to balance these requirements of tectonic stability and a magnetic field - this calls for yet more research. 

At any rate, on the Day of Rebellion, as the Body of Eleyon destroys Baveris, Eleyon commands Unavo and Oleri to enforce a temporary change in the nuclear forces for a large spike in radioactive decay throughout the whole volume of the planet. This heats the mantle and forces the once stable crust to break up into mobile tectonic plates. The plates, propelled by the sudden increase in heat and convection of the mantle, cause the rapid break of the original supercontinent, and it results in the configuration shown in Figure 1.2

 Figure 1.2 - Divided Continents during the Age of Light

Part of why this has to occur is so that the High Elves can be given a separate continent from the Fallen, where they will be safe for a long era. I guess it makes thematic sense as well, what with a single unified continent fragmenting as the pristine order of Eldwan was fragmented by Rebellion. I have not yet named the continents since that is not really essential at the moment. 

The species distribution issue is resolved because they would have been distributed across the supercontinent during the Age of Harmony, and subsequently separated. It is perfectly possible that a great deal of fossilisation happened during this catastrophic event, and the Elves would have had to work to revive nature.

The magnetic alignment of the rocks would have been unstable given the sudden changes to the heating of the mantle and the outer core. There might have been rapid alternations during the upheaval. Lastly, the very nature of increased radioactive decay accounts for the apparent age of the earth, since our calculations are largely based on radiometric dating and massive backward extrapolation.

At this point, familiar tectonic features would affect the planet, quakes, volcanism, tsunamis, orogeny, seafloor spreading, and so on. The rate of continental drift would have decreased since the radiation burst would have ended and allowed the mantle to cool. Somewhat amusingly, this works very well with Romans 8:22 - 'We know that the whole creation has been groaning as in the pains of childbirth right up to the present time.' I'll admit that was at the back of my mind while I was coming up with this.

Figure 1.3 - After the effects of the Deluge, for the Age of Water and Beyond

The next major modification to the geography of the planet comes with the Deluge at the end of the Age of Light, that leads to the end of Radiant civilisation and Alero's grand experiment. I haven't sorted out all the details of the Deluge just yet, but I do have some ideas in mind that I would like to record here. 

One of the greatest unresolved issues with the Biblical Creation account is the 'water above the sky', which was separated from the 'water below the sky' on Day 2. It has been suggested that 'water above the sky' refers to some vapour canopy that blanketed the earth in a thick atmosphere. The hydrological cycle would have been different in the absence of precipitation. I have serious doubts about this suggestion. If the properties of water were so fundamentally different in antediluvian times that precipitation was impossible, I don't think water would have been suitable for life either. In fact, there is nothing that indicates there was no antediluvian rain. That notion comes from a misinterpretation of the verse Genesis 2:5b - 'For the Lord God had not caused it to rain on the earth, and there was no man to till the ground.' Genesis 2 merely describes Day 6, and not anything between Day 6 and the Flood. If someone argues that the verse does imply a dearth of raindrops, they might as well argue that man did not till the ground until after the Flood as well.

Next, the creation account clearly states that water was above the sky, not within the sky, so it could not be referring to clouds. This led me to the idea that the water might be in low earth orbit, encased in rock since liquids would not be gravitationally stable. However this was vetoed by the description of Day 4, which stated that the sun, moon and stars were placed in the expanse of the sky, which would seem to imply that they were sandwiched between the water above the sky and the waters below. This spurred me on to the notion that perhaps it would be better if the water was not in low earth orbit, but rather in an ice belt orbiting the sun. Well the stars would not be within the sky, strictly speaking, but at least the sun and moon, the greater lights, are. Overanalysing the text, stars are only mentioned in a short additional phrase after the sun and moon, so perhaps a little leeway is permissible.

During the Deluge, the floodgates of heaven were opened. Just as the fragmentation of the supercontinent involved manipulation of fundamental forces, the Deluge has Ilvesu alter the gravitational balance of the ice belt and cause many of the ice pieces to fall in towards the Cradle. The impacts of the falling ice destroy the landscape of the Cradle and the encircling mountain range, and the augmented gravity also causes much of the land of the Cradle to sink lower than normal. As a result a large inland sea forms, as drawn in Figure 1.3, and this sea serves as my parallel Mediterranean as Alaris rises to power.

After these changes, only normal processes affect the landscape to any significant degree. Weathering, erosion, residual continental drift and volcanism for example. But the time of massive geographical alteration is over as magic is gradually removed from Eldwan, and from the Age of Water and onwards, the land masses remain essentially the same.

World Maps - Vectors on Projections

Time for more maps, this round, with the whole world map instead of the local area as it was in a previous post. I decided to use the Mollweide projection, but I admit that my estimation of vectors on the projection is simply, an estimation. I doubt they are very accurate. Why vectors for maps? Well forgive me for going overboard with the detail again, but I wanted to include tectonics in Eldwan's geography. In actual fact, I would say the tectonics helped, it made the generation of the map more procedural and less arbitrary.

I've got two drafts of Eldwan's map, the first was scrapped because it didn't account for a supercontinent breakup. 

1.0 - Tectonics of Eldwan, Draft 1

For the first draft, I began by drawing the tectonic plates, with no regard for surface geography at first. I simply started by marking out the divergent boundaries, where the crust spreads. From there I looked for convergent boundaries and marked out the general direction of each of the resulting plates. This was the step that had me terribly confused by vectors, particularly at the poles. I resorted to pencil drawing on my globe to visualise what would happen.

1.1 - Tectonics and Major Lands, Draft 1

After sorting out the tectonic plates, I proceeded to draw land masses, and added the consequent features of the tectonic map. The most straightforward were the mountain ranges, which would be at the converging boundaries of tectonic plates. There were also a couple of scattered volcanic islands.

 1.2 - Major Lands and Islands, Draft 1

I transferred the outline of the continents onto a fresh grid, to observe their form more easily and add details without the confusing subterranean tectonics. The inland seas are highlighted with a blue outline.

1.3 - Major Lands and Islands (C), Draft 1

And of course I coloured it in to see what the result would look like. The white circle is the location of the Cradle, the first home of the Evezhen in the Age of Harmony and the location of most of the stories in the Ages of Light and Water. After all this, I noticed that when the map is upside down, the central land mass looks like a strange ghostly creature with two antennae...

At any rate, it was soon apparent to me that the map did not reflect tectonics very well, despite how I had taken the plates into account. The land masses didn't appear to have any sort of relation to each other, in terms of their shape, to show their history. Hence I was prompted to redraw the map by a different process.

 2.0 - Age of Harmony Supercontinent, Draft 2

This time I began by drawing the supercontinent first, indicating the location of the Cradle by the circular mountain range. Some basic tectonic boundaries were drawn in order to break up the supercontinent in the required way. 

 2.1 - Tectonics and Major Lands, Draft 2

Next, I redrew the map after the breakup of the supercontinent, first by marking out the tectonic boundaries from the previous map. Here, the divergent boundaries are in red, and the convergent boundaries are in blue. One thing I should work out in a little more detail would be which plate subducts under the other at the convergent boundaries. That would determine the appearance of volcanic islands and so on more procedurally.

2.2 - Major Lands and Islands, Draft 2

Again, I transferred the outlines of the land masses onto a fresh map without the tectonic boundaries, then added more details. This step will probably be redone in draft 3, because I'm not really satisfied by the location of the islands and shape of the land in general.

2.3 - Major Lands and Islands (C), Draft 2

The map of 2.2, coloured in with simple blue and green. I hope to rework this map once again, then I should be able to proceed to name the major continents. I would also like to add in ocean surface currents, ice caps, precipitation pattens and rivers. Once those are in place, it'll be easy to generate climates based on temperature and precipitation. There is lots more to be done, but this framework will suffice for now. The Far Continent mentioned in the posts on the Elves is the land mass to the left, while the 'Old World' is the area with the Cradle of the Evezhen. So this map helps me to visualise the broad movements of history and I should be able to work on the actual writing for now. When I start looking at the Age of Rulers, then the varied climates will become important factors in the story.