What do Dan Brown, David Mitchell, and William Falkner have in common? Apparently, The Matriarch Matrix!

Amazon reviews have compared this book to works from these three esteemed authors. I am very flattered and thank all reviewers profusely for their time and efforts in leaving their thoughts.

The second edition launched at the turn of the New Year 2019. This re-edit reflects the critical comments and suggestions from all reviewers, both positive and critical. I had trimmed the length nearly 20% from eliminating sections that contributed to uneven pacing.

With great sorrow, I eliminated a very eloquent chapter with Zara’s back history. I wrote this to explain the very rational and logical religious and cultural traditions of her character. I had put this in the first edition to answer back the ill-informed “islamophobic” comments I heard during the ISIS invasion years. As I have written, cultural and religious tolerance is a major theme in this book and in my family’s lives. I will republish this chapter as part of a prequel book.

Some had commented upon sexuality in the book within the first thirty reviews. Ironically, I had fifteen women as alpha and beta readers and they did not mention the same issues. As well, my editors are women. No issue from them. But I listen to these readers and the second edition had been radically re-tooled on these issues. However, I needed to speak out about the history of sexual violence against women in most all armed conflicted throughout history. I wrote Zara’s personal history as allegorical. The issues she faced have all been documented in books, articles, and biographies describing the transgressions against Kurdish and Yazidi women in the past decade and the centuries before.

Read more about the slavery of the Yazidi women.

“I’ll never forget,” 40-year-old Bissa says softly, as she recounts being “bought and sold” by six different jihadists.

“We did everything they wanted to do with us. We couldn’t say no,” says the Iraqi woman from the Yazidi religious minority, after fleeing her IS captors.

Read blog post: Zara’s character as a reflection of Kurdish oppression.

The new title says “The Matriarch Matrix: Mystery of the Matriarchs Book I”. Yes, there is the sequel in the works as well as an outline of the prequel. The prologue and the first two chapters of the sequel are included in edition two of The Matriarch Matrix.

After three alpha readers, some of the smartest most accomplished women I know commented on the first draft of “The Matriarch Messiah: Mystery of the Matriarchs Book II”, I sent the second draft for an editorial assessment and to three female beta readers who had read the first book. Heaven as the first two beta readers love the draft. Better than the first book. The editorial assessment praised it as well. Then the hell of the third beta review. Panned. One’s and two’s rating the different elements of the draft.

That was at the end of October 2018 – three months ago. I did what veteran authors say you shouldn’t. I stopped the third draft edit. In part, because I need to do other work to pay the bills of paying editors, book designer and formatters, and the costs of advertising. But mostly I feel prey to writer’s slump. That last beta review stopped me in my tracks.

This past month, the second edition of The Matriarch Matrix has been flying. It has sold in five weeks almost half of what it did in its first year on the market. The reviews have been fair and encouraging. I thank these new reviewers for their insights and thoughts, which has given me the inspirations to make the final push to get The Matriarch Messiah to the finish line.

Spoiler Alert: The sequel is even more surprising that the first book.

“The challenge for each one of you is to take up these ideals of tolerance and respect for others and put them to practical use in your schools, your communities and throughout your lives.

Nelson Mandela, 2011

A year ago I was in the midst of finalizing the final draft of The Matriarch Matrix. A story full of twists and turns. Perhaps too many for most readers. For in part, it was designed to demonstrate the principles of tolerance and its link to human stereotypes among readers.

Why is tolerance important? Peace for mankind comes when we as humans take the time to be open and learn about the culture, history, and beliefs of those who appear different from us. Think about how much of the world’s strife comes when the exact opposite happens.

Judging something rapidly is likely a self-survival mechanism inherited from our most ancient ancestors. Making a snap decision could mean the difference between life and death. But when such a decision is not needed for survival, then what is the harm in taking the time to understand the other party better?

Through the course of The Matriarch Matrix I lead the reader into situations where one might make a judgment which later, if the reader is still open-minded, they will find that judgment would be wrong. I have read each and every review of this book in detail. Those who stay open-minded write one type of review. Those whose minds closed down part way into the book write something else. I appreciate the thoughtfulness of those who recognized this book as a metaphor for our times.

The metaphor of oppression and violence as tools of genocide

The story of Zara and the oppression of her people, the Kurds, the largest ethnic group in the world without a geographic political nation, represent what has happened to numerous ethnic minorities around the world today and throughout the millennia. I pulled no punches in this book describing the violence and organized rape that oppressed people endure. Why? Because we must learn from the atrocities of the past and the current so we can strive to not have these crimes against humanity to persist in our future. My parents’ generation lived through violent occupation and survived such atrocities which irrevocably altered their views of the world. A number of reviewers noted the emotional roller coaster within the book. I wrote the ancient ancestor sections with particular attention to elicit deep feelings by readers in hope that more people will be willing to speak out against the violence we see happening all around us.

Everything that I described has been documented in the news or in historical records. I purposely made a fictional people from the past as the perpetrators of these heinous acts as to not stereotype any ethnic or cultural group today. For the assigning of blame to any group perpetuates intolerance.

For the Kurds, not only were the acts of oppression part of their history but still occur in this day and age. See the links below:

http://www.newsweek.com/rape-weapon-war-wielded-against-girls-women-syria-un-report-says-846887

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/02/05/world/middleeast/syria-video-kurds.html?partner=rss&emc=rss

The taking of 3,000 Yazidi women in Sinjar, Iraq by the Daesh in 2015, repeated what has happened across the ages. These women were sold in markets as sex slaves.

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2017/jul/25/slaves-of-isis-the-long-walk-of-the-yazidi-women

https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/middle-east/yazidi-isis-sex-slave-rape-survivor-nadia-murad-a8064311.html

The same is still happening in Africa and Southeast Asia today.

http://www.scmp.com/news/asia/southeast-asia/article/2141719/humiliate-and-terrorise-myanmar-military-blacklisted-united

https://www.cnn.com/2017/12/14/africa/hrw-kenya-election-sexual-violence-report-intl/index.html

https://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/opinion/boko-haram-survivors-starved-raped-nigeria-military-180523144207062.html

I had hoped for more readers to be inspired to speak out against the violence that is happening today all around them. But for some, they could only react and pass judgment to the first chapters of the ancient people which symbolized the violence and oppression of the ages. Intolerance in action.

Follow the money

One of the messages in The Matriarch Matrix is how power struggles and wars ultimately are about resources. Often these conflicts are sugar-coated with words about how bad the other side is or a religious reason. But if you follow the money, inevitably you will find control of key resources is the root.

For example, the fictional Father Jean-Paul Sobiros comes from the south of France and traces his ancestry to the Cathars, a dualist Christian sect. A million Cathars were killed in the Albigensian Crusade authorized by Pope Innocent III. Was this a religious war or was it the way the barons of northern France justified plundering the riches of the south?

And thus, the fictional Peter Gollinger laments that oil dominates the world’s politics. Look at the lands where the Kurds live. Mostly oil-rich and mineral-rich territories. Look at the recent conflicts in Turkey, Syria, and Iraq. Are these politically motivated or based on control of the oil?  To let the Kurds have semi-autonomous rule means they might control oil fields and other valuable commodities.

Before one judges too quickly, look for the motivations behind the glossy surface. Too often people in power prey upon our weakness to accept their stories.

Growing up knowing hate

When a child grows up thinking that the world around them hates them, they learn to hate back. The fictional Zara grew up knowing the love of her parents, of her relatives, of God. But as she ventures outside her community, she learns of the hatred others have of her people and by default, her. Over her teen years, she begins to stray from the teaching of her family, to stray from her faith, and hate begins its cancerous ways devouring the love within her soul.  The Matriarch Matrix is a story of how such a lost soul finds her way back to the love she once knew through her tolerance of someone who is her exact opposite. Someone who at first seems to her an irrelevant, disrespectful fool. Someone who many readers have dissed his character. I grew up with many people who were like Peter Gollinger. Hence he represents the composite of many real people. And these folks are no different from any other – they seek respect. And so does Peter, who meets a woman, Zara, who is so far beyond him he can only stand in awe.  It is through him, through his tolerance that Zara learns to shed her hate, shed the cancerous nodules in her soul.

When Zara meets Peter, she is intolerant of him. Those who grow up being hated begin to assume the worst of what others think of them. We see this so often in our press today how minorities view an incident which the majority did not see the same way. An oppressed minority is on the alert for being attacked and reacts according. So does Zara which is demonstrated by how she verbally attacks first. Her intolerance blinds her to those who might be on her side.

I purposely chose to write Zara as very religious. Many Kurds are not very religious which I am told is why they suffered particular persecution by the Daesh. In Zara, I wanted to address the Islamophobia that millions face throughout Europe and the Americas. It is the same bias, same discrimination, same hatred that many ethnic minorities face throughout the world. It is the manifestation of intolerance.

Europe’s experiment with multiculturalism, or the side-by-side existence of different cultures, has failed throughout the continent. Integration requires a minimum basis of shared values, that is, a culture of mutual tolerance and respect – in other words, what constitutes the heart of European culture.

Walter Kasper, German Roman Catholic Cardinal and theologian

The stereotypical heroic man

Poor Peter. He gets no respect. Many readers felt he was weak. Or weak compared to Zara. I wrote him as courageous, but not in the American Hollywood superhero way. He was courageous enough to take the time to understand Zara, his exact opposite. He was courageous enough to stand up to the most powerful monstrous man in the world defending her honour. But he curls into a ball when the bombs dropped.

One of my most important life mentors fought in the French Resistance when he was a teen. He was not courageous when he blew up Nazi trains and bridges when he saved Allied bomber pilots from capture. He said he was but a crazy teenager. My friend was Jewish fighting the oppression of the Nazi’s who would have killed him if he were ever to be captured. And that he was only to be saved by the ingenuity of a Catholic priest who told him to say he was circumcised because he was North African.

My mentor told me of the concentration camp he was sent to next to the V2 rocket factories which were bombed by the Allies. He crawled into a ball in terror of the bombs which fell on a weekly basis. One time when he emerged from his ball, he found his friend next to him without his head. Even courageous people crawl into balls. And so I wrote Peter as so.

Those raised on Hollywood movies have an appetite for seeing the superhuman male. Courageous when bombs and bullets are flying. Real people have fear. Real people seek cover when bombs are dropping. Tolerance includes empathy for real people actions and reactions.

Why must the evil ones be killed in the end?

I found it an interesting essay in human desire that a few of my alpha and beta readers commented that they were let down that the “villain” Alexander Murometz did not die in the end. How many Hollywood movies feature the protagonist killing the antagonist in the end to fulfill the audience’s desire for justice?

In writing the final draft of The Matriarch Matrix I let Alexander Murometz explain why he lived.

With a look of disappointment, Alexander says, “Peter, let’s look at things in a different way. So many people want to, they need to villainize others. They need a clear bad guy who suffers the consequences of violating their morality. But isn’t this the essence of intolerance? Isn’t that your own intolerance not seeing who I really have been? Ask yourself, who equipped the world’s greatest militaries with the most advanced tech ever to be invented? Albeit, tech incredibly fragile to the most frightful electromagnetic pulse known to mankind. And who sent you and Zara out there to find the object?”

Perhaps when mankind can truly embrace tolerance and tame the desire to kill those who are considered different, we will finally find peace. Maybe our great grandchildren will live in such a world. Only if we teach our children today the essences of tolerance.

For Further Reading:

Biographies of Iraqi Kurdish women who endured oppression

Four nice vignettes of the lives of Kurdish women in Iran

An inspirational novel about the Cathars

An interview with Alexander Murometz

https://www.tailofthebird.com/exclusive-interview-mr-alexander-murometz-chairman-moxworld-holdings

“Mylène Farmer? Non, mais non. Not the singer, but Sister Magali. I thought they were having an affair in the Philippines when he was nearing the end of his Regency…..he never stopped loving her.’”

Father Petrus, comrade in arms and prayer of Father Jean-Paul, June 2021

 

I read that many authors have their playlist of songs they listened to as they wrote their books. If I told you mine, you’d might say “Mylène Farmer, who?”

Mylène Farmer arguably is the most successful singer in France, of either gender, of any nationality according to Syndicat National de l’Édition Phonographique (SNEP).  From 1988 to 2016, she has had 15 singles hit number one in France, 9 of which went straight to number one.  More number one singles than any other artist American, English, French, of all countries.  Seven of her albums went diamond (million copies) more than any other artist in France.  Her success in francophone markets over the decades has mirrored that of Madonna in anglophone markets.

With trademark red hair, some fans have called her an angel on earth. Many of her songs feature her “trademark” harmonious soaring refrains as if lifting all of us into the heavens with her voice.  While drafting The Matriarch Matrix in Bruxelles, I picked up her 2016 album “Interstellaires” in a local FNAC and three songs gravitated into the book’s play list:  “A Rebours” which features her soaring chorus vocals, “Voie Lactée” a mix of reggae and urban beats, and “City of Love” her 15^th number one single.

Below is a YouTube video of City of Love – a mini story of a higher love discovered, much like the metaphors in The Matriarch Matrix.

 

Why would a Jesuit priest love Mylène?

The Matriarch Matrix is a book of metaphors.  And former Father Jean-Paul Sobiros’ love of Mylène’s music is his metaphoric expression of his love for another redheaded “angel on earth” for whom overt love was no longer an option given his choice in life and spirituality.  Ironically, if you watch some of Mylène’s videos from the 80’s and 90’s, you will see the darkness of her songs and rebelliousness against the Church. And yet Father Jean-Paul finds listening to her as the acceptable means to appreciate his unrequited love for Sister Magali – the songs of someone so, so different.

You can read a stand-alone chapter about Brother Jean-Paul and Sister Magali during their formation period in the link below.

https://www.tailofthebird.com/chapter-26/

This vignette follows the traditional romance story rhythm, but speaks of the different types of love between a man and a woman.  It serves as an allegory to the love that Zara seeks and Peter is destined to find.

You can read about the history of romance stories in this blog post. The Jean-Paul and Magali story is reminiscent of the 17^th and 18^th century French romantic dramas where love is often a higher order concept.

https://www.tailofthebird.com/2017/09/27/is-it-a-romance-or-not/

What is the higher love that Zara seeks?

Zara Khatum devoutly follows Sufism, a mystical form of Islam.  In chapter 6, one is introduced to Zara’s desire to emulate one of the greatest Sufi saints, Rabi’a al-Adawiyya, an eighth-century Persian philosopher and mystic, more commonly known in English as Rabia of Basra.

https://www.tailofthebird.com/chapter-six/

Rabia was born into a poor family in the lands now known as Iraq. Legends written 400 years after her death said at her birth her father saw a vision of the Prophet Muhammad who said Rabia is a favorite of the Lord.  Poor Rabia was orphaned at an early age and sold into slavery.  Even as a slave, she prayed many times a day.  Legend tells of how one of her slave masters awoke one night to see her praying and a holy light illuminated around her head. Afraid, the slave master set her free the next day.

Rabia’s poetry bespeaks of Divine Love.  Love of the Lord and a mutual love back as the purpose, the destiny to which a person should strive towards.  She never married as she did not need an earthly husband with her love of the Lord.  She is considered one of the most important of the early Sufi saints.

Her story provides a parallel for that of Zara, who after having been taken into sexual slavery by the Daesh and freed by her oligarch benefactor, Sasha, she turns to the love of the Lord as her guiding path and has opted to forgo seeking the love of a man. The forceful request by Sasha to bond with Peter, her spiritual, physical, and emotional antithesis from the other side of the world is against everything she has thus far evolved to be. How could she continue seek the love that she so desires tethered to this man?  Therein lies a critical conflict driving this story of love like no other.

I have loved Thee with two loves –

a selfish love and a love that is worthy of Thee.

As for the love which is selfish,

Therein I occupy myself with Thee,

to the exclusion of all others.

But in the love which is worthy of Thee,

Thou dost raise the veil that I may see Thee.

Yet is the praise not mine in this or that,

But the praise is to Thee in both that and this.

Rabia al Basri

For Further Reading and Viewing:

Mylène Farmer

http://www.europopmusic.eu/France_pages/Farmer.html

https://www.mylene.net/

http://www.parismatch.com/People/Mylene-Farmer-ses-racines-sa-liberte-1258895

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Rabi’a al-Adawiyya

http://www.khamush.com/sufism/rabia.htm

https://sufipoetry.wordpress.com/poets/rabia-al-basri/

http://www.rabianarker.com/html/rabia_stories.html

 

 

Photo credit: licensed from depositphotos.com

“Peter, we had a few weeks of time together. We became close in ways normal people never will know. Alas, it was only a few weeks. Here in America, in your films, a man and a woman meet. They have an adventure for a couple of weeks. And it’s love for life. Happily ever after.”                                 

Zara Khatum, June 2021

 

Why do you have to pick a BISAC code?

And while we’re at it, what is a BISAC code?  And why do you have to fit within a genre?

One of the first things someone asks you when you say you writing a book or have written a book is “What is it about”?  Well that’s a signal you should give the elevator pitch version of the book.  It helps if you can say “It’s a thriller” or “It’s a mystery” or “It’s a romance” because most folks have an idea of what type of story it might be.

At the Writer’s Digest Conference in NYC this year, a renown literary agent, giving advice to the few hundred-strong aspiring author audience, made it very clear that she would need to know how to categorize your book in order to sell it to a publisher.   “It’s a such and such, like this famous book but different in this way.”  Classical marketing 101.  What is it you are offering and why is it unique.

On this author journey, I’ve learned that many readers have a distinctive set of expectations for a book when it is listed as part of a specific genre.  If that book does not follow these expectations for that genre, these readers feel dissatisfied which shows in their reviews.  Hence, many authors face the peril of having to write to the unwritten rules of a specific genre.

BISAC stands for the Book Industry Study Group which has established 52 general codes for fiction and non-fiction book categories.  When one files with the US Copyright Office, you are asked for BISAC codes.  When you submit your book to Amazon you are asked for BISAC codes.  That is a defining moment.  What is your book?

How Amazon liberate us from tight genre definitions

In the world of the brick and mortar bookstores, that unfortunate dying breed of retailer, one can understand the need for book categories and classifications.  The need for where should the book seller place your book?  Which section and aisle of the store?  And where might a such-and-such genre reader go in that store to find their favorite genre?  And given a bookstore only has so many shelves, there are logically only so many classifications.

But now in the virtual digital bookstore, there can be nearly unlimited classifications due to the power of search engines and hierarchical hyperlinked lists.  In my first writers’ meeting, I had the distinct honor and privilege of having dinner next to Melinda Leigh, who, little did I know at the time, is the number one Amazon author in Romantic Suspense.  When she wrote her first book, she did not write to any genre but to the story she had envisioned.  Amazon had approached her for publishing her book in one of their new companies.  They were able to envision how her book crossed genres and how they were uniquely able to help her sell across genres.  And Romantic Suspense was born.  Her books lead on romantic suspense, mystery-crime-murder, and romance-mystery in Amazon.  A traditional publisher would not have had that ability to merchandise so easily across genres.

Outlier Sheep

At a recent writers’ conference sponsored by a chapter of the Romance Writers of America (RWA), Damon Suede, a RWA board member and an immensely popular speaker, gave a reflective talk about the state of the book publishing industry.  As many published authors are acutely aware, the book publishing industry is in a downturn.  The Kindle revolution was, at first, a boom to authors.  But as self-publishing led to the pricing of books to drop tremendously, the quality of book offerings dropped as well.  Consumers who used to rely on established traditional publishers to screen books for quality now are faced with a glut of books offered at nominal or free price which no longer have that quality control.  Thus, the moral of this part of his talk was the need for authors to focus on quality, the best possible book they can write, to give readers the best product as opposed to producing volumes of books.

Perhaps, the most intriguing part of his talk focused on sheep.  Wool?  No, social dynamics as an allegory to genre bounds.  Sheep will tend to stay in a flock for predator defense and consequently eat together at one spot until the vegetation is gone – right down to the roots.  Survival of the flock depends on the “outlier” sheep who wander off and graze somewhere else.  Most of these outliers will be eaten by predators as they no longer have the security of the flock.  Once the flock has decimated the spot they are grazing, there are “bellweather” sheep who lift their heads and look around for where the “outlier” sheep are – that is the ones who haven’t been tragically eaten.   And the “bellweather” sheep will lead the flock to new grazing grounds.

Hmmm…think about that when a sub-genre is over published with marginally original works.  Are the outliers the future?

The Matriarch Matrix – A member of the outlier sheep family?

That dinner sitting next to Melinda Leigh, who told her life stories and author history, of course led to the fateful moment when she asked me politely what I was writing.  And I couldn’t tell her anything other than “it was an epic”.  Partially it was newbie disease, but I know understand mostly it was because I didn’t write to any genre in particular.  As a reader, I read across a number of genres.  In writing this book, I had a story in mind and I pulled from different genre styles as needed to tell that story. But I had no idea what genre(s) this book fit into.

At that same meeting, I attended a seminar on emotions given by romance author Virginia Kantra.  My book was in review with beta readers at that time and I didn’t think I would need the craft she so artfully espoused.  But a week later, the first of three eventual rounds of beta reader feedback arrived.  Ouf – as the French say.  I needed the craft that she taught.  Perhaps the lack of deep POV was fine for an action-thriller, but no so if this book was to broach a broader audience.  So, the next edit became more intense.  And fortunately, I also attended Michael Hauge’s Story Mastery seminar from which I began to understand the concept of the inner wound and inner journey to deepen POV and reader engagement.  I also joined RWA to access their huge library of past meetings’ mp3s.  And I studied and incorporated these veteran RWA authors’ advice into the rewrites of The Matriarch Matrix.

Come September 2017.  The moment of truth comes.  What two BISAC codes do I select for the US Copyright Office?  What two BISAC codes do I select for Amazon?  I chose Metaphysical Fiction and SciFi Adventure.  Why metaphysical?  The book has a sub-theme about the characters’ religious beliefs which shape who they are and how they interact.  I didn’t want someone who would dislike religiously based characters to be misled by the genre I picked.  I had learned from a RWA lecture that what I wrote was not Inspirational Fiction.  So metaphysical fiction was as close as I could get to signal to readers about the spiritual character based content in the book.  And because the book had both a created past world, 9600 BCE at the founding of Göbekli Tepe, and a created future world in 2021, I listed it as a science fiction book and adventure as a sub-genre as the second half of the book had an adventure timbre.

And The Jury Says…

The power of Amazon in post-hoc defining “what is your book” comes from two sources.  The first is the reader feedback in the reviews.  The second comes from their infinite wisdom artificial intelligence which then starts categorizing your book based on sales insights.

I thank all of the kind people who took the time to write a review.  All of your feedback has been invaluable and appreciated – high stars and low stars alike.  Three of the many learnings I have made from the first thirty reviews are:  1) suspense and mystery began to emerge in the verbatims; 2) comments about how the book crosses genres which could be a positive or negative; and 3) some readers not feeling fulfilled or satisfied by the end.

I think #2 and #3 are linked.  If you are expecting the unwritten rules of a certain genre as part of what makes a book satisfying to read, you might not like this book.  I listened to many authors over the last year describe what their genre is and is not.  And this book does not fit cleanly into any genre.  That said, after the first thirty reviews I asked Amazon to change the Kindle classification from SciFi Adventure to Religious Mysteries and left the Metaphysical Fiction categorization in place.

Last week, the power of Amazon sales information revealed a number of things about this book.  I ran the KDP free book program for five days and 3,500 copies were downloaded.  The book hit #2 in the entire science fiction genre free Kindle books.  #1 in science fiction/adventure.  #1 in science fiction/metaphysical & visionary. #1 in religious mysteries.  #1 in metaphysical fiction.  People voted with button pushes.  We will see in the subsequent reviews if the book meets their expectations of whatever genre they thought they were downloading.

In contrast, the paperback version reflects Amazon’s sales intelligence.  They have the paperback categorized under:  Metaphysical & Visionary Genre Fiction; Romance – Science Fiction; and Romance – Action & Adventure.  The second two bowled me over.  Perhaps the learnings I made from RWA authors came through in the final book?  See my blog post “Is it a romance or not?”

https://www.tailofthebird.com/2017/09/27/is-it-a-romance-or-not/

All that said, I think this reviewer’s advice is best taken:

“I had heard a lot of good things about this book and I was not disappointed. Great plot, a lot of food for thought and good entertainment. If you don‘t mind reading About spiritual and religious topics, and are comfortable with books that do not bother to conform to unspoken genre rules give this great work a try. *** I have been given an ARc of this book and this is my honest and voluntary review.”

“I do not live in an American film, Peter. Love is something that happens over years. Over decades. Over a lifespan. And my love is for my mother, my family, and my country.”

Zara Khatum, July 2021

 Further Reading:

BISAC Codes

http://bisg.org/page/BISACFaQ

http://bisg.org/page/BISACEdition

Outlier Sheep

http://www.worldanimalfoundation.org/articles/article/8948554/181125.htm

Romance Writers of America

https://www.rwa.org/

Melinda Leigh

http://melindaleigh.com/

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Damon Suede

http://www.damonsuede.com/

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Virginia Kantra

http://virginiakantra.com/

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Michael Hague

https://www.storymastery.com/

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Photo Credits:  licensed from depositphotos.com

“And the other principle I asked everyone to recite. ‘Woman’s true freedom is only possible if the enslaving emotions, needs and desires of husband, father, lover, brother, friend and son can all be removed. The deepest love constitutes the most dangerous bonds of ownership.’”
Zara Khatum, May 2021

“That’s why I followed you and still do. You made tangible, made real for our soldiers the teachings we learned in our Peshmerga training. Were we not told that a country cannot be free unless the women are free? Under Kurdish rule, women have equal say in political rule.”
Peri, Zara’s best friend before she met Peter

I read with fascination each and every review for The Matriarch Matrix. And I thank every single reviewer for their candor and especially for their time they took not only reading this epic, but the extra time taken to write a review. Merci.

The subject of feminism has arisen in some reviews. In the blog post https://www.tailofthebird.com/2017/08/29/from-patriarchy-to-matriarchy-and-back/,
I discussed the strategic change from a patriarchal story to a one about a matriarchy. As such, the focus went from Orzu and Peter to Nanshe and Zara. And the flavor of the book forever changed.

Why A Feminist Protagonist? Or Maybe, Why A Kurdish Protagonist?

When the story line was still about a patriarchy that created the 12,000 year old monolithic sanctuary at Gobekli Tepe, a secondary character, a guide from the local area, would escort Peter and Father Jean-Paul to the archaeologic site. As the story morphed into one about matriarchy, this secondary character became a woman, one who would share the same genetic heritage as did Peter. The link hidden in their beings connecting them to the originating matriarch and her family from 9600 BCE.

So why did Zara’s character become Kurdish? I envisioned this woman as a fighter. Someone who would offset Peter’s inability to be a fighter mimicking his ancient counterpart Orzu. Perhaps the most well-known aspect of Kurdish women in the west are the images and interviews with women who fought in Iraq and Syria against the Daesh (ISIS).

In Iraq, these women fought and still fight as part of the Peshmerga, the military forces of the Iraqi Kurds. They helped the American forces in 2003 in the fight to topple Saddam Hussein’s regime. 1600 Peshmerga women were involved in fighting the Daesh in Iraq.

In Syria, these women fought and still fight in the YPJ, or Womens Protection Union. These all-female make up 40% of the Kurdish forces battling the Daesh in Syria. The YPJ and the male counterpart YPG are controversial in their link to the PKK in Turkey, considered a terrorist organization.

What is Jineology?

“A country can’t be free unless the women are free.”
—Abdullah Öcalan, imprisoned leader of the PKK, recognized as a terrorist organization by the US, NATO, and the EU.

Jineology is the science of women, a form of feminism espoused by Abdullah Öcalan, head of the controversial PKK. Female soldiers in the Peshmerga and YPJ are taught jineology as part of their on-boarding. Why? The thought is two-fold. 1) A nation is only half as strong with just men. For the Kurds to gain the independence and freedom they have desired for centuries, women must be empowered; and 2) The regional traditions of patriarchy must be broken in order for women to help the nation.

In older traditional Kurdish communities and non-Kurdish communities in the same lands, the patriarchal tradition leads to a form of women’s oppression. Women are not as highly educated, their career opportunities are limited, and they do not play strong roles in family and societal decision making. In some of these areas, this patriarchal tradition leads to honor killings, political rapes, and other forms of physical and violent oppression.

Activist author Dilar Dirik from Turkey writes a clarification between feminism and Kurdish freedom:
“First, it should be mentioned that Kurdish women’s relationship to the feminisms in the region has often been quite complicated. Turkish feminists for instance had the tendency to marginalize Kurdish women, which they perceived as backward, and tried to forcefully assimilate them into their nationalist “modernization project”. In practice, this meant that all women first had to be “Turkish” in order to qualify for liberation. Their political struggle, especially when armed, was often met with harsh state violence, which used a gross combination of racism and sexism, centered around sexualized torture, systematic rape, and propaganda campaigns that portrayed militant women as prostitutes, because they dared to pose themselves as enemies of hyper-masculine armies….The struggling women in Kobanê have become an inspiration for women around the word. In this sense, if we want to challenge the global patriarchal, nation-statist, racist, militarist, neo-colonialist and capitalist systemic order, we should ask which kinds of feminism this system can accept and which ones it cannot. An imperialist “feminism” can justify wars in the Middle East to “save women from barbarism”, while the same forces that fuel this so-called barbarism by their foreign policies or arms trades label the women who defend themselves in Kobanê today as terrorist.”

In contrast, in Rojava, the Kurdish part of Syria and in parts of Kurdish Turkey, women are in co-leadership positions with a male counterpart reflecting the philosophy that a nation will not be strong unless women are included.

The Kurdish Women Who Fight For Freedom From Oppression

The following are quotes from some of the real Kurdish women from whom the beliefs of the character Zara were fashioned after:

“We are defending a democratic, secular society of Kurds, Arabs, Muslims and Christians who all face an imminent massacre. Kobani’s resistance has mobilized our entire society, and many of its leaders, including myself, are women. Those of us on the front lines are well aware of the Islamic State’s treatment of women.” Meysa Abdo, October 2014, a commander of the resistance in Kobani.

“The hallmark of a free and democratic life is a free woman”
“Isis would like to reduce women to slaves and body parts. We show them they’re wrong. We can do anything.” Asya Abdullah, co-chair of the Syrian Democratic Union Party in Rojava

These women are subject to tremendous risk fighting the Daesh as noted by Colonel Nahida Ahmad Rashid leader of the 2nd Battalion, a 500-strong force based in Sulaymaniyah in Kurdistan, northern Iraq. From her interview by The Sun:
….she says her soldiers must never allow themselves to be captured by ISIS, usually contemptuously called ‘ Daesh ‘ in the Middle East, as they face torture and rape at their hands.
In fact, her fighters are always careful to leave a bullet in their weapons to use on themselves if it looks like they will be taken.

These sentiments are echoed by another Peshmerga soldier:

“We always have a bullet ready to use on ourselves in case we are about to be taken prisoner.”
“We will tear them apart. When they have killed our babies in the womb why should we show them mercy.”
“Here the men cook for us.”
Mani Nasrallahpour, Peshmerga solider, in November 2016 Reuters interview

Zara Khatum – The Manifestation of the Matriarch 

Who is she? Is she the voice of a feminist book? Or is she the reimagining of many Kurdish women who are seeking the best for their people, for other women like her? Loaded question.

I feel simply horrible for the women who have reviewed this book for whom violence and rape have been the most looming impressions from this book. These parts of the book were intended only to realistically portray the struggles of Zara as a Kurdish woman, the real-life struggles faced by Kurdish women. I hope what has been outlined in this blog help bring forth an understanding of why Zara’s story and her character were told they way they were. There are many sources, articles, books, which outline the inhumanity inflicted upon Kurdish women by oppressors in recent years. Zara’s depiction is mostly true to these depictions. See reading list below at end of blog post for book suggestions.

The barbarity, the uncivilized behaviors of tyrannical men exists today in this decade. A fact that is hard to believe. In 2014, 3000 Yazidi women were taken by Daesh soldiers and made into sexual slaves for the soldiers or sold in open markets. Girls as young as 12 to 13 taken and raped and sold. But this is not an isolated case. In 2015, 200 school girls were taken into sexual slavery by the Boko Haram. In the 90’s during the Bosnian war, institutionalized rape by the oppressors has been estimated to be committed to a range from 12,000 to 50,000 girls and women.

Zara’s character was born into the savage years of Kurdish oppression and genocide known as the Anfal Campaign, where 4000 villages were raised to the ground, where deadly gases were used on civilian populations, and women were taken to rape prisons. After her father returns from being taken a political prisoner, he eventually commits suicide. An act that drives Zara to join the Peshmerga with a local boy, someone she has interest in, to fight Saddam’s tyranny. Later in life, she joins the YPJ to fight tyranny against the Kurds there as well as the Daesh invasions. With passing of two bad relationships with men, she comes to realize that she does not need men to be the person she want to be. And thus she finds the principles of Jineology very compatible with her emerging belief system.

Core to the character Zara’s inner wound was a critical moment in Sinjar, 2014, when the Daesh overran her half-Yazidi cousins’ home. She did not have that bullet ready as described by female Kurdish soldiers earlier in this blog. And thus, she could not kill her cousins, her aunt, or herself before being captured and subjected to several months of captivity of the worse kind. The guilt of not having that bullet and what happened when she did have such a bullet haunted her until she met Peter, her “other half of the apple”.

Excerpt from chapter 37:
“Rona begged me to leave her there and save her sister. She cried and cried about what those monsters would do to her. She could not take any more. We all were so disfigured already….And then Rona looked at me, her eyes saying what she wanted me to do. To shoot her. But I could not. I just could not. She was my sister.” Zara Khatum, June 2021

Writing a novel is a very daunting affair. You simply want to stop and go onto something else many times along the way. But it was the comments from a 22 year old beta reader from Germany which gave me the inspiration, the courage, the commitment to bring Zara’s story, un-softened, unadulterated, into fruition. She wrote:
“I would actually like to extend my gratitude. I can’t explain how touching it has been to read about a character like Zara. I think it sends a really strong message home that people seem to really forget. We can all be subject to rape. The world isn’t pretty. And it doesn’t matter how strong you are. But through everything, Zara is so incredibly beautiful. I think that’s important. Whether she agrees or not, she’s a stronger person for everything she’s been through. Thank you for not writing her as some typical rape victim. Thank you for creating something so much more powerful.”

I hope Zara’s story can be a source of strength for others as much as she was for this woman from Germany. The world is not always a pretty place. But together we can work to help make it better for our children.

For Further Reading:

First I would like to thank Ava Homa, author of Echos from the Other Land, for her advice on Kurdish women and politics.  Please take a look at her book which offers four lovely vignettes sharing the lives of young Kurdish women in Iran.

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Kurdish women in military

https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/nnem3x/female-fighters-of-kurdistan-part-1

https://www.vice.com/sv/article/4w7yk3/meet-the-kurdish-female-freedom-fighters-of-syria

http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/world-news/female-kurd-soldiers-fighting-isis-8732664

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-mideast-crisis-mosul-womenfighters/kurdish-women-fighters-battle-islamic-state-with-machineguns-and-songs-idUSKBN12Y2DC

MEYSA ABDO’s Op-Ed piece in New York Times
https://www.nytimes.com/2014/10/29/opinion/turkeys-obstruction-of-kobanis-battle-against-isis.html?_r=1

Jineology

Jineology: The Kurdish Women’s Movement by Meral Düzgün
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/625064

The Kurdish Women’s Movement: Challenging gendered militarization and the nation-state by Meral Düzgün
http://womeninwar.org/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2015/08/Beirut/7/1.pdf

Feminism and the Kurdish Freedom Movement by Dilar Dirik
http://kurdishquestion.com/oldarticle.php?aid=feminism-and-the-kurdish-freedom-movement

Enslavement of Yazidi, Nigerian, Bosnian Women

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2017/jul/25/slaves-of-isis-the-long-walk-of-the-yazidi-women

https://www.nbcnews.com/feature/show-me/video/a-german-program-is-helping-yazidi-women-rebuild-their-lives-1053948995508

http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/world-news/evil-isis-thugs-cooked-baby-10697937

https://www.newyorker.com/news/news-desk/life-aftehttps://www.nbcnews.com/storyline/isis-terror/once-used-sex-slaves-isis-these-yazidi-women-are-rebuilding-n801226r-isis-slavery-for-yazidi-women-and-children

http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/world-news/isis-harvests-organs-yazidi-sex-6281626

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/women/womens-life/11342879/Nigerias-Boko-Haram-isnt-just-kidnapping-girls-its-enslaving-them.html

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/bosnia-war-crimes-the-rapes-went-on-day-and-night-robert-fisk-in-mostar-gathers-detailed-evidence-of-1471656.html

Other Recommended Books

 

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Photos licensed from depositphotos.com

“Am I all that Alexander said?

Did I do to you what he said?

Did I withhold from you what he said?

You did not know for sure.

And yet, you still loved me.”

Zara Khatum, June 2021

The business side of being an author can be daunting.  One of my learnings along this journey is the question “what genre is your book?”  In my journey, I have attended live four writers’ conferences and listened to recordings from four others.  Many commercially successful writers clearly target their works to a specific audience and their reading desires.  In contrast, there are those who write for the sake of the art of expression, often categorized into literary fiction.  And then there are those whose works cross many genres.  The Matriarch Matrix is one such work.  Cross-genre books are difficult for literary agents and publishers to market as they need to clearly communicate to the buying public “what is this?”

In my effort to develop deeper point of view and emotional closeness in The Matriarch Matrix, I studied the teachings of romance writers, joined the Romance Writers of America, and read outside my normal genres…that is I read across a number of romance subgenres.  I find that successful romance writers are simply superb at developing 3D characters, deep emotional wounds, and building page turning conflict and suspense.  As I learned from these authors, I built in an underlying romance into The Matriarch Matrix.  Actually, two romances.  One between two “unlikely to be a couple” people who are as vastly different from each other as are the worlds they grew up in.  And a background romance of a Catholic priest and a Sister, both in their formations and both in love.  But in the bigger picture, is this book a romance?

***For the quick answer, see addendum added two weeks after this post was original made at bottom of page***

Definitions of Romance Novels

As per Romance Writers of America:

https://www.rwa.org/romance

Two basic elements comprise every romance novel: a central love story and an emotionally satisfying and optimistic ending.

 A Central Love Story: The main plot centers around individuals falling in love and struggling to make the relationship work. A writer can include as many subplots as he/she wants as long as the love story is the main focus of the novel.

 An Emotionally Satisfying and Optimistic Ending: In a romance, the lovers who risk and struggle for each other and their relationship are rewarded with emotional justice and unconditional love.

From Writer’s Digest:

http://www.writersdigest.com/qp7-migration-books/on-writing-romance-excerpt

Distinguishing a true romance novel from a novel that includes a love story can be difficult, because both types of books tell the story of two people falling in love against a background of other action. The difference lies in which part of the story is emphasized.

 In a romance novel, the core story is the developing relationship between a man and a woman. The other events in the story line, though important, are secondary to that relationship. If you were to take out the love story, the rest of the book would be reduced in both significance and interest to the reader to the point that it really wouldn’t be much of a story at all.

 In contrast, in other types of novels that contain romantic elements, the love story isn’t the main focus. The other action is the most important part of the story; even if the love story were removed, the book would still function almost as well. It might not be as interesting, but it would still be a full story.

 From Romance Novelists Association:

http://www.romanticnovelistsassociation.org/about/what_is_romantic_fiction

Many writers—even those who have just won an award for Romantic writing—deny that they write romantic fiction. So how does one decide that a novel, a story is romantic? The dictionary defines romantic as “characterised by or suggestive of Romance, imaginative, visionary, remote from experience.” Romance, apart from being “the vernacular language of old France” is defined as “a prose tale with scenes and incidents remote from everyday life…”

 Clear?

 Is Donna Leon a romantic writer? She writes crime—and extremely well, but her hero is definitely in love with his wife. Tolstoy? Anna Karenina? There’s a love story there all right—but is the book a romantic novel? An editor once referred to Dr Zhivago as “that old saga.” Is it a literary novel or is it a saga? Could it possibly be both? Sarah Harrison, The Dreaming Stones? A great historical or a love story with a great deal of literary merit thrown in?

The Oldest Written Romances

Perhaps one of the oldest, if not the oldest, written romance is that of Callirhoe from the 1^st Century CE – the old surviving Greek romance on papyrus.  In this story, a supernaturally and exquisitely beautiful new bride is locked away in a tomb after faking her death. Liberated from the tomb by pirates only to be taken into slavery, Callirhoe finds a new life as wife of her slave master.  Her husband Chaereas finding out she is still alive pursues Callirhoe.  A naval battle and shipwreck later, the two are finally united.

There are those who would argue that the Epic of Gilgamesh, dating back to 2000 BCE, could be the oldest romance.  But that would be a very liberal interpretation.  See the Further Reading section for more discussion on this topic.

The Earliest Medieval Romances

Much of English romance literature traces its roots to the medieval romances.  The first of which was the King Horn, from around 1225 CE, which was derived from the French romance-adventure, Le Roman de Horn, written around 1170 CE.  In this romance, deposed prince Horn falls in love with a princess of another land, Rymenhild.  But Horn is exiled before they could be married and Rymenhild is bethroed to another king.  In his effort to reunite with her, epic deception and battles ensue.  And they are happily united in the end.

The Prototype Modern Romance

“It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune must be in want of a wife.”  Opening line of Pride and Prejudice.

I have to admit, I really did not bond with Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice as I read it late in life.  But when Elizabeth Bennett turns down her first marriage proposal from Mr. Collins, I began to engage with the story.  For she forcibly eschews the opening theme of the book.  She wishes to marry for something greater than “a good fortune.”  That something was love.  And I am glad I kept reading as inevitably talks by romance writers refer to the exemplary models and theme from Jane Austen’s classic romance.  Classic three act structure. The iconic romantic heroine.  The unlikable hero who becomes likable as the reader and the heroine learns more about him.  The character arcs which lead the two initially opposing protagonists together to celebrate their love for each other.

Shrek – A Romance or Not?

Elizabeth Bennett in form of a princess who turns ogre at night?  Mr. Darcy in form of Shrek?  Sacrilege! And yet Shrek exudes the RWA definition of “individuals falling in love and struggling to make the relationship work.”  And yes, there is a happy ending with not only two ogres together in the swamp, but donkey and the dragon together as well.  This link below provides an amusing analysis.  “And remember, Orges are like onions.”

https://www.scribd.com/presentation/115461221/The-Medieval-Romance-in-Shrek

The Matriarch Matrix – A Romance or Not?

In Part II of the book, the two main protagonists “fall in love and struggle to make the relationship work”.  Is this the core main focus of the novel?  Or is it a sub plot?  This is a question for the reader.  Thus far, the Amazon and Goodread reviews identify this novel as suspense, mystery, drama.

Zara, the heroine, has sworn herself to celibacy after a number of ill-fated relationships.  Her love she wishes to follow in the footsteps of Rabi’a al-Adawiyya, eighth-century Persian philosopher/mystic and the single most famous and influential Sufi woman of Islamic history.  Zara simply wishes to dedicate her love to Xwedê, Kurdish for Allah, for God.

Peter, the unlikely hero, is in deep despair from his break up from his beloved blonde girlfriend, with whom he intimately shared his love of all things alien and extra-terrestrial.  He is primed for rebound and under pressure to mate from his blonde mother whose biological clock is demanding grandchildren.

Zara and Peter are told separately by their grandparents of an ancient myth extolling that “only man and woman together” can solve an ancient mystery which will save the world.  As they will find, they are destined to be together.  But how can they as they are so desperately and disparately opposed and different?

When these two unlikely of the unlikeliest people meet, Peter thinks Zara has clobbered his skull with a blunt object.  As he profusely bleeds, does he notice how Zara nurses and cares for his wound.  More importantly, do she realize what she is doing?

The second component of the Romance Writer’s of America romance definition is “An Emotionally Satisfying and Optimistic Ending”.  I wrote two endings for The Matriarch Matrix.

One is a very 1970’s/1980’s French film ending.  One of the beta readers capture the sense correctly – “Life goes on”.  The other ending made some beta readers cry.  An emotionally satisfying ending?

Whether The Matriarch Matrix is a romance or not is up to you the reader to judge.  In any event, I hope you find that it is not only an intellectually satisfying read, but an emotionally and spiritually satisfying one as well.

For one last time, Zara clasps his hands in hers, and says, “No matter where you go, your destiny follows you.”

 She kisses him lightly on his lips, for she too cannot bear the thought of how long it might be before they will touch again, feel that peace again, if ever again. Peter closes his eyes and savors the moment, which lasts for eternity, and yet ends too quickly. Releasing from the kiss, she readjusts her scarf back into a nice respectful and modest headscarf. And into the government-issued black SUV Zara goes, assertively saying to Dan the shop is closed. And she goes.

 The last Peter is to see of Zara. Ever.

*************

***ADDENDUM on October 9, 2017***

Three weeks of actual launch results after this blog post was created, there are 32 reviews on Amazon hovering around 4 stars and the book is #4 on Amazon’s metaphysical fiction new release list.  The inferred review feedback is that this book does not meet the US based romance readers’ expectations of a good read.  I can understand why.  Zara and Peter are dog and cat.  Mirrored opposites by design.  Not the kind of couple you would typically root for.

I wrote this book with a Western European style, like a 70’s/early 80’s French film.  The story is one of the search for love as opposed to romance.   Zara for a higher love.  And Peter for the meaning of love.  And Father Jean-Paul?  Perhaps a return to a love he left.  One reviewer captured the love essence of this story in her sentence: “It also explores if love outlasts the human body/experience.”

But the most apropos feedback was that of this reviewer who captured the extreme cross-genre aspect of this book.

“I had heard a lot of good things about this book and I was not disappointed. Great plot, a lot of food for thought and good entertainment. If you don‘t mind reading About spiritual and religious topics, and are comfortable with books that do not bother to conform to unspoken genre rules give this great work a try.”

***ADDENDUM on October 16, 2017***

At the New Jersey chapter of the Romance Writers of America’s conference last weekend, many speakers talked of the element of hope, optimistic hope, as a defining characteristic of a romance.  A woman who finds hope through a romantic relationship with another person.

In that definition, the story of Zara becomes one of a form of romance as shown by this kind reviewer who has captured the essence of the form of romantic story portrayed in this epic.

For Further Reading:

Giglamesh – A Romance or Not?

https://books.google.com/books?id=yviB9uv3A0AC&pg=PT69&lpg=PT69&dq=romance+gilgamesh&source=bl&ots=LhOx5MaLbG&sig=uba25Jxj7bnolY5m27nJX-v6o3A&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwipkp-30azWAhVo2oMKHcsZAHwQ6AEIVTAL#v=onepage&q=romance%20gilgamesh&f=false

https://www.amazon.com/Gilgamesh-John-Gardner-ebook/dp/B004EWFUW8/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1505666857&sr=8-1&keywords=john+gardner+gilgamesh

http://www.litcharts.com/lit/the-epic-of-gilgamesh/themes/friendship-love-and-sexuality

http://lgbthistoryproject.blogspot.com/2012/02/worlds-first-gay-love-story.html

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Photos:  licensed from depositphotos.com

“Aliens. They brought the object to Earth. It is their way of communicating to us. Think about it. We find the object together, and on behalf of mankind, we will talk with them….We will find our aliens and the object and talk with them about anything they want to talk about.”    

 Alexander Murometz, Chairman of MoxWorld Holdings, May 13, 2021

“Aliens landed with the long-tailed star, which was their spaceship descending through the atmosphere. The oral tradition said, ‘Only the giants of the reindeers prospered, because of power from this star.’ The giants were descendants of the aliens. They had extraordinary powers and advanced technologies. They built all these monolithic buildings, which we cannot fathom how our prehistoric ancestors could have built. Your Crimean pyramids, the temples at Göbekli Tepe.”

Peter Gollinger, May 15, 2021

The Appeal of Aliens in our Antiquity

July 28, 2017.  9pm.  A million pairs of eyeballs are fixed to the History Channel.  The strongest rating lies among the 50 years old plus category.  Twelve seasons, 130+ episodes, first airing in 2009, “The Ancient Aliens” series is alive and well.

Long before this hit series, books, comics, and films have extolled the premise that aliens or extra-terrestrials have influenced human evolution, history, culture, and maybe even religion.  The following is but a partial list of notable media.  Why this belief or desire to believe is so strong in the 50+ crowd may be found in the influence of fiction and film media.

The Matriarch of Theosophy

1888. Ukrainian immigrant Helen Blavatsky, co-founder of the Theosophical Society in New York City, publishes her seminal book, The Secret Doctrine, where she proposes embodies the “wisdom of the ages” as she learned in her trips into Central Asia and Tibet. This “wisdom” comes from ancient higher beings coming from other planets who have watched over the human race over time.

“It is useless to say that the system in question is no fancy of one or several isolated individuals. That it is the uninterrupted record covering thousands of generations of Seers whose respective experiences were made to test and to verify the traditions passed orally by one early race to another, of the teachings of higher and exalted beings, who watched over the childhood of Humanity. That for long ages, the “Wise Men” of the Fifth Race, of the stock saved and rescued from the last cataclysm and shifting of continents…”

In the later part of The Secret Doctrine, she traces ancient influencers to Seven Key Root Races, including those from the lost civilizations of Hyperborea, Lemuria, and Atlantis. She refers to the Fourth Race as the Giants, who were affected by the Great Flood – a theme exposed in Nanshe storyline in The Matriarch Matrix.

“….there seems to be no serious objection to the supposition that the first “great flood” had an allegorical, as well as a cosmic meaning, and that it happened at the end of the Satya Yuga, the “age of Truth,” when the Second Root Race, “The Manu with bones,” made its primeval appearance as “the Sweat-Born. The Second Flood — the so-called “universal” — which affected the Fourth Root Race (now conveniently regarded by theology as “the accursed race of giants,” the CAINITES, and “the sons of Ham”) is that flood which was first perceived by geology.”

Ancient Alien Stories over the Last Seventy Years

Very retro Sci-Fi fans might remember the 1940’s “Shaver Mystery”, a story told by Richard Sharpe Shaver recounting an ancient race of aliens whose offspring lived beneath the Earth’s surface and whose influence could be traced to many of the misfortunes or disasters in human history.  An editor of Amazing Stories published Shaver’s story in 1945 and the ancient alien theme became a common feature in future issues of this magazine for the next three years.  Amazing Stories even published pictures of flying saucers in their Shaver Mystery derivative stories.  Did the UFO craze of the 1950’s stem from these science fiction stories of the previous decade?

Then the 60’s.  1968 was a big year for ancient aliens.  The film 2001: A Space Odyssey opened with a mysterious black monolith influencing a prehistoric group of hominids around four million BCE.  First teaching them how to use tools and then ultimately how to use these tools as weapons of war.  In that same year, the book Chariots of the Gods? Unsolved Mysteries of the Past by Erich von Däniken is published proposing the same – ancient aliens influence human use of technology.  The book outlines art and structures pointing to aliens having had contact with our ancestors.  He points to different passages in the Old Testament as possible alien-human contact.

But someone in their early 50’s today would have only been an infant to toddler when these two seminal films and book released in 1968.  More than likely, someone in their 50’s who has a proclivity towards the ancient astronaut concept was influenced by media in the 70’s, 80’s and 90’s.

1973, NBC broadcasts Twilight Zone star Rod Sterling hosting a documentary called Chariots of the Gods, In Search of Ancient Astronauts, which reached an audience of 28 million in its first airing – perhaps the first broad mainstream exposure of the ancient astronaut concept.

In 1976, Marvel Comics publishes The Eternals, a series about an extraterrestrial race who perform genetic experiments on proto-humans five million years ago leading to beings with super human capabilities.

1977 was the year of two landmark science fiction films gone mainstream.  Star Wars, grossing over $700 million and Close Encounters of the Third Kind, grossing over $300 million.  These films brought into the mainstream conscious the notion of advanced civilizations in the far reaches of space and, in the case of the latter, that contact has been made with man in the past and present.

A person the age of 50 today would have been a year old when the Chariots of the Gods was popular.  But on the other hand, they would have been 10 years old when Star Wars and Close Encounters premiered.  And they would have been 24 to 25 years old when The X-Files premiered in 1993 and the film Star Gate premiered in 1994.  The latter along with the television series, Star Gate SG-1, propose that the ancient Egyptian and Norse gods were aliens who interceded with human culture and religion.  Is it the Star Wars/Close Encounter generation driving the interest in aliens in antiquity?

In recent times, author A.G. Riddle published The Atlantis Gene, a science fiction thriller which traces numerous events in human history to a pair of warring alien races.  The current descriptor for this book states over two million copies sold in 32 countries and 23 languages.  The notion of ancient aliens and their genetic influence on mankind remains extremely popular.

“Let’s not discount the possibility that this object is a device for communication with the aliens who profoundly influenced human history. I agree with Alexander about the monolith hypothesis. It’s like 2001: A Space Odyssey, where the monoliths were technology from aliens sent to influence the development of humankind. They somehow changed our DNA and changed our evolution. My DNA aberrations, they were caused by this alien object, which zapped my prehistoric forefathers.”

 Peter Gollinger, May 15, 2021

Did Aliens Influence Mankind’s Technologic Development?

Many of the ancient astronaut programs and websites use the ancient marvels of engineering and architecture as evidence that aliens must have guided our technologic development.  The Giza Pyramids, Stonehenge, Machu Picchu, all works of wonder raising question if mankind in those eras had the engineering knowledge to create these structures.  In Peru, there are a number of structures other than Machu Picchu which raise this same question.

Sacsayhuaman is a temple-fortress sitting high above the Andean city of Cuzco.  Built in the 15^th century, the site features walls built from polygonal monolithic stones weighing upwards of 100 tons.  They are perfected mitered and fitted among each other without the use of mortar.

 

Likewise, the Ollantaytambo ruins in the Sacred Valley linking Cuzco to Machu Picchu and the Amazons is built upon massive monolithic blocks that were quarried on a mountainside on the opposite side of a river valley.  A race more ancient than the Incas is credited with building these foundations.  How did they possess the engineering know how to quarry and shape these stones?

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Did aliens create God or did God create aliens?

The Matriarch Matrix, this question is a theological and philosophical divide between ex-Jesuit Father Jean-Paul Sobiros and Peter Gollinger, who grew up watching X-Files and Star Gate with his father, the latter likely an Ancient Aliens viewer as well.  Father Jean-Paul Sobiros sat on the Pontifical Commission for Sacred Archeology and a Vatican working group on extraterrestrial affairs.  Peter on the other hand through tragic life events became an atheist believing aliens must have been involved in mankind’s past.  Who will prevail between the two of them?

The character of Peter Gollinger embodies the theosophy of one who abandoned the belief in a supreme deity guiding us spiritually due to a tragic moment in his life. Without religious belief, he naturally gravitated to the attractive notion that alien beings guided us through history. And then he meets Zara, who through many tragic moments in her life, renews her deep spiritual faith and returned to her Sufi roots. Who will prevail between the two of them?

Similar to The Atlantis Gene, The Matriarch Matrix is a multi-layered, multi-story line interwoven plot centered around aliens, ancient interventions, mysterious buildings/artefacts, and the influence of altered genetics on the protagonists.  The latter takes these topics into the philosophical, the spiritual aspects of the three protagonists’ personal, familial, redemption and search for inner peace.

 “Aliens did this. They did this to us, Zara and me. They are speaking here on this medallion.” With a serious face, he looks into Jean-Paul’s eyes and asks again, “What are you going to do when we talk with the aliens? The moment of truth is coming shortly. Are you going to ask if they are God? Are you willing to cross that line, admitting that thousands of years of religious belief is simply about ‘beings from another world,’ as Professor Schmidt said about these giant figures?”

Peter Gollinger, May 26, 2021

“Maybe the question should be, ‘Did God make them too?’ Peter, for all you know, we might be worshipping the same God together, mankind and your aliens.”

Father Jean-Sobiros, May 26, 2021

 Further Reading:

Ancient Aliens Ratings

http://www.showbuzzdaily.com/articles/showbuzzdailys-top-150-friday-cable-originals-network-finals-7-28-2017.html

The Shaver Mystery

https://lareviewofbooks.org/article/the-shaver-mystery-the-most-sensational-true-story-ever-told/#!

http://mysteriousuniverse.org/2012/09/the-strange-saga-of-richard-shaver/

NBC Broadcast: Chariots of the Gods, In Search of Ancient Astronauts

http://www.jasoncolavito.com/blog/revisiting-in-search-of-ancient-astronauts-and-the-popular-appeal-of-pseudo-history

The Secret Doctrine

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Chariots of the Gods

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The Atlantis Gene Triology

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“The gift of Nanshe’s family, farming, turned out to be no gift to women. In her time, equality existed between man and woman, dividing the tasks of hunting and finding food. In her times, women bore fewer children. Today, the needs of the farm and harvest favor the larger families. Women have been pushed into domestic roles, raising child after child until they can bear no more. The great vision of the matriarchy of Nanshe could not compete with the farming patriarchy, as fathers pass land to sons and women are traded like cattle. The Ki warrior of peace and faith will never happen again. Not in my lifetime.”

Amanta, High Priestess of the Followers of Illyana, 8500 BCE

 

 

 

 

 

 

Why a patriarchy?

Spring 2016. Brainstorming with a trusted colleague. I bounce around the idea of a novel that traces an oral legacy back to a patriarchy linked to the founding of the monolithic sanctuary at Gobekli Tepe. “Patriarchy,” she says. “Why not a matriarchy? A patriarchy is so stereotypical.” And so the book with a placeholder name of “The Object” took its first major thematic change.

But why was thinking of a patriarchy such a first natural thought? In 1911, Charlotte Perkins Gilman writes in her book, Our Androcentric Culture: “Our historic period is not very long. Real written history only goes back a few thousand years, beginning with the stone records of ancient Egypt. During this period we have had almost universally what is here called an Androcentric Culture. The history, such as it was, was made and written by men.”

Conkey and Spector carried forth a similar supposition in their 1984 paper, Archaeology and the Study of Gender: “Androcentrism takes several different forms in anthropology. One principal feature is the imposition of ethnocentric assumptions about the nature, roles, and social significance of males and females derived from our own culture on the analysis of other groups. Researchers presume certain “essential” or “natural” gender characteristics. Males are typically portrayed as stronger, more aggressive, dominant, more active, and in general more important than females. Females, in contrast, are presented as weak, passive, and dependent.”

Following these logic, one can easily fall in the trap of thinking the builders of the world’s oldest temple must have been male hunter-gathers. Traditional anthropology proposed that pre-historic humans split tasks by gender – males hunted and females gathered. Or was that really true?

When did patriarchy start?

In 1986, Dr. Gerda Lerner released the book, The Creation of Patriarchy, where she proposes how the notion of property formed in the Neolithic period when ownership of herds of domesticated animals, farms, led to “herder” men wanting to pass these assets down to blood relations, their sons. She postulates that the plow culture created by agriculture created a gender task split. “….It strengthens the influence of older males and it increases the tribes’ incentive for acquiring more women. In the fully developed society based on plow agriculture, women and children are indispensable to the production process, which is cyclical and labor intensive. Children have now become an economic asset. At this stage tribes seek to acquire the reproductive potential of women, rather than women themselves.”

Similarly in 1991, Sebastien Kramer writes in his paper, The Origins of Fatherhood: An Ancient Family Process: “Male supremacy came about not through greater skill at hunting but, rather, when men had consolidated their economic advantage in herding and agricultural societies by inventing creators in their own image, which also effectively made up for their perceived reproductive disadvantage.”

In 1956, Marija Gimbutas proposed the Kurgan hypothesis where migration from the steppes above the Black Sea and Caspian Sea led to the spread of the Proto-Indo European culture and language, see blog post:

https://www.tailofthebird.com/2017/06/20/just-proto-indo-europeans-come/

She postulated that the Kurgans were a patriarchal culture and their invasion into Europe gave rise to patriarchy in western societies. She also postulated that the lore of an Eden where man and woman lived in paradise stemmed from the pre-PIE Europeans longing for the days of peace and gender equality they had before the Kurgan invasion.

Did the plow create patriarchy?

In 1970, Ester Boserup proposed a difference in gender roles between sifting and plowing agricultural societies. Sifting with sticks is a labor intensive process where productivity from both women and men are equivalent. The plow is a capital intensive device that requires the upper body strength of males to most effectively use. In the latter societies, men tended to work outside the home and women tended to in home tasks.

In 2011, Nunn, et al., published a study examining a database of over 1,200 societies and validated Bosup’s hypothesis. “Using data from the FAO, we identify the geo-climatic suitability of finely defined locations for growing plough-positive cereals (wheat, barley and rye) and plough-negative cereals (sorghum and millet). We then use the relative differences in ethnic groups’ geo-climatic conditions for growing plough-positive and plough-negative cereals as instruments for historical plough use….Traditional plough use is associated with attitudes of gender inequality, as well as less female labor force participation, female firm-ownership, and female participation in politics.”

The matriarchy in The Matriarch Matrix

As the premise of this book, a parallel patriarchy and matriarchy formed. The patriarchal side is represented in modern day by Alexander Murometz, one of the most powerful men in 2021, who is chasing the secrets of the oral traditions passed from father to son since the times of Gobekli Tepe. The matriarchal side is represented by Sara, great grandmother of the main female protagonist, Zara Khatum, who passed to her daughter, granddaughter, and great-grand daughter the wisdom, words, and an artifact that passed from her maternal lineage.

Likewise, the speculative early Neolithic world of Nanshe and Orzu features two cultures in the lands north of the Black Sea. One of a patriarchal society of the Reindeer Giants which enslaved women as reproductive resources for their domain. The other a society in which men and women shared equally. Where women and men hunted for game equally. In the case of Orzu, his sister Illyana was a better hunter. And Nanshe’s eldest daughter, Ki, carried forth this tradition as they fled the Reindeer Giants to the lands south of the Big Black Lake. Nanshe’s descendants carry forth with spiritual leadership from her blessed daughters and their daughters.

“The voice is beautiful, but we were not ready for beauty
When you are once again ready to know beauty
Not the beauty of the skin, but the beauty of the soul
The beauty in the collective in all of us
Then you are ready to seek the object
It is said it must be man and woman
But it must be man who loves woman
Not for her skin, not for her fertility, not for her family
But for her
For her inner beauty seeking to be with the voice.”

Amanta, High Priestess of the Followers of Illyana, 8500 BCE

Further Reading:

Charlotte Perkins Gilman, Our Androcentric Culture, or The Man Made World, Charton Co., 1911
http://www.gutenberg.org/files/3015/3015-h/3015-h.htm

Margaret W. Conkey and Janet D. Spector, Archaeology and the Study of Gender, Advances in Archaeological Method and Theory, Vol. 7 (1984), pp. 1-38

G. Learner, The Creation of Patriarchy (Women and History), Oxford University Press (April 17, 1986)

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Glenn Collins, Patriarchy: Is It Invention Or Inevitable?, New York Times, April 1986
http://www.nytimes.com/1986/04/28/style/patriarchy-is-it-invention-or-inevitable.html?mcubz=0

S. Kraemer, The Origins of Fatherhood: An Ancient Family Process, Fam Proc 30:377-392, 1991
http://sebastiankraemer.com/docs/Kraemer%20origins%20of%20fatherhood.pdf

Alberto F. Alesina, Paola Giuliano, Nathan Nunn, On the Origins of Gender Roles: Women and the Plow, Working Paper 17098, National Bureau of Economic Research, Cambridge, MA, May 2011
http://www.nber.org/papers/w17098

Photo:  Licensed from depositphoto.com

 

“It’s part of our unconscious mind that is shared with other humans, common to all humankind, and stems from latent memories from our ancestral past, even prehistoric past. Jung proposed that evolution has innately imprinted our minds with certain predispositions, archetypes. For example, anxieties such as fear of the dark, fear of death, and even fear of failure might come from this preconditioning. Perhaps in your grandfather’s case, his dreams are trying to bring out some ancestral traumatic event. Freud, on the other hand, would call his dreams ‘wish fulfillment.’ There is a forbidden or repressed wish, which may be a result of guilt or taboos imposed by society or family. The dream is the way to transform that wish in a nonthreatening way. It’s an attempt to resolve the repressed conflict.”

                                                                               Dr. Beverly Fontaine, May 2021

The Big Bear Fear

What is instinct?  How do we have certain survival behaviors from the time we are young before we have ever been in danger?  How do we know to be afraid of what we may never have seen before?  The famous Swiss psychologist Carl Jung proposed we inherit at birth an assemblage of images and knowledge which we are unaware of.  However, at certain moments these ancient memories or engrams arise into our consciousness.  Dreams for examples.  Moments of danger where we need to act or die.

The Selfish Genome and the Meme

In 1986, Clinton Richard Dawkins published a revolutionary book on evolution, The Selfish Gene.  He proposed our genomes seek to preserve themselves by copying their structures and therefore are selfish in nature.  In this endeavor to survive, the gene will contain mechanisms that will best reproduce and protect itself.

These mechanisms extend beyond physical or chemical manifestations that allow this genome to out reproduce other competitive genomes.  For ultimately behavior is also a survival mechanism and thus behavior that gave a competitive reproductive advantage would be coded into the genome. He termed these coded behaviors “memes”.  These could be ideas, beliefs, and or behaviors which are transmitted from one generation to another which allow the descendants of the genome to prosper.

Transmission of these memes could be accomplished through the genetic coding of the nervous system.  So why could not the collective unconscious of Carl Jung be the expression of ancient memes which act to protect us?  Dawkins also proposes that the “selfish gene” is capable of altruism in that unselfish acts can ultimately help the gene achieve competitive reproduction through social cooperation.

Memes and Religion

In a 1991 follow-up paper, Dawkins proposed that religion was a virus of the mind – a meme which promotes survival benefits to the genome.  In 2006, Daniel Dennett expands upon this thinking in his book Breaking the Spell: Religion as a Natural Phenomenon where he pulls together elements of anthropology, archeology, biology, and psychology to explain the origins of religious belief.  He uses the analogy of a group of basketball players to explain the evolutionary fitness benefit of cooperation.  A group of “selfish” individuals would score less points than a group of “unselfish” ones who effectively played together.  The latter would have more fans, more attendance at their games and therefore thrive.  The former would eventually pass away from their lack of success.

Dennett compares religious society to the cooperative unselfish players in a successful basketball team.  He proposes a concept of “intentional stance” where an individual is pre-disposed to believe that an event has a specific causal source.  For example, seeing an arrow falling from the sky a person is pre-disposed to believe that arrow was shot into the air by someone even though one did not see the archer.  The same can be said for religious belief in that individuals can be pre-disposed to believe in a great being, a greater divinity, is the unseen causal agent for many unexplainable phenomena.

In 2010, Sue Blackmore, author of The Meme Machine, professed in an essay that she no longer believed Dawkin’s ‘virus of the mind’ to be true.  She cited recent data that showed religious belief to be correlated with greater reproductive success and more importantly happier and healthier than secularists.  Although the religious meme as proposed by Dawkins could lead to detrimental effects as would a virus, Blackmore likens the religious meme to bacteria, which can be both helpful and healthy as well as detrimental.

The Matriarch Matrix – A tale of the transmission of culture and messages across 12,000 years

At the origin of this epic story, a woman of great inner strength survives the traumatic ordeals of slavery to a race of giant warriors.  This matriarch finds solace in her faith which is further strengthened by her encounter with “the object”.  Her faith and beliefs which allowed her to survive and strive, she passes to her children as they would to theirs.  Through memes and genes, her influence reaches Peter and Zara in the 2021 who must wrestle with what they uncover as it challenges all they know to be true in their world.

The Matriarch Matrix puts Peter Gollinger, a scientific atheist like Dawkins, Dennett, and Blackmore, up against two people of deep faith, Father Jean-Paul Sobiro, a Jesuit, and Zara Khatum, a devout Sufi Kurd.  Who will change who in this story?  Is the selfish genome stronger than faith in God?

“Peter, we believe the answer is buried deeply in your subconscious. Only you and Alexander show a close enough DNA match with the originators to exhibit what Jung might have called an ancient repressed memory, handed down through time in your genes. These ancient memories drive your response to the collective unconscious, the afflicted dreams you wrestle with each night. We believe we may be able to activate this repressed memory or image. Our Mei was tasked to work with you to allow your subconscious to be expressed.”          Father Jean-Paul Sobiros, May 2021

 

Further Reading:

“Empirical study of associations between symbols and their meanings: Evidence of collective unconscious (archetypal) memory”, D.H. Rose et. al., J. of Analytical Psychology 1991, 36, 211-228.

“The Selfish Gene “, Richard Dawkins, Jan 1976, Oxford University Press

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“Cui Bono? A Review of Breaking the Spell: Religion as a Natural Phenomenon by Daniel C. Dennett”, J Exp Anal Behav. 2007 Jan; 87(1): 143–149.

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1790880/

“Why I no longer believe religion is a virus of the mind”, Sue Blackmore, The Guardian, September 16, 2010.

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/belief/2010/sep/16/why-no-longer-believe-religion-virus-mind

photo licensed from depositphoto.com

 

“Oh, you must have spoken to Jerrod. I saved his author from enormous embarrassment and public ridicule. As I explained to Jerrod, that author clearly ignored the last decade’s evidence refuting the Black Sea flood hypothesis. Another noted scholar hypothesizes a major meteor strike in the Black Sea around 9,000 BCE may have caused the legendary flooding, wiping out the advanced civilizations thought to have lived on the northern shores.”              Peter Gollinger, May 2021

The Flood Mythology

Noah and his ark.  One of the most famous stories of Genesis presented in the three Abrahamic religions.  The story of a great deluge, a great flood, is found in a multitude of ancient stories from all over the world across diverse cultures and religions.  In the Americas, among the Hopi, the Mayan, the Aztecs, the Huaxtecs.  In lore from China, India, Korea, Malaysia, and the Philippines.  In medieval Irish, Welsh, and Norse legends.

The oldest recorded flood myth comes from ancient Sumerian text in the epic Giglamesh dating back to 2000 BCE.  Thought to be an epic poem told orally from generation to generation, this story had been written in Sumerian cuneiform on tablets, then Akkadian cuneiform text, and later in Babylonian text.  Some believe this Sumerian epic may have influenced the Jewish scribes in exile in Babylonia during the formative writing of the Torah.  Other debate that the Genesis account is older than Giglamesh having been handed down through generations to the Prophet Moses.  Either way, an inspiration moral story was passed through generations by word of mouth until the day mankind was able to permanently inscribe the lore.

The Black Sea Flood Hypothesis

In 1996, William Ryan and Walter Pitman proposed that a post ice age glacial melt bloated Mediterranean Sea breached the Bosporus and caused a catastrophic flood of the once large inland freshwater lake.  Using marine life data, they hypothesized this breach caused a waterfall 400 times greater than the Niagara Falls around 5500 BCE rapidly flooding the shallow lands around the Black Sea.

This hypothesized some scientists to further proposal that the rapid disruption of farming lands lead to the great migrations of people away from these lands spreading the Proto-Indo-Europeans across to other lands taking their language with them.  The inevitable question of whether this Black Sea deluge led to the flood stories of Noah and Giglamesh has been raised as well.

How Can There Be So Many Flood Myths and Religious Stories?

Did the great melt of the last ice age, which started somewhere between 16,000 and 15,000 years ago led to devastating floods around the world?  Are our stories today the result of ancient people retelling these catastrophic life altering events to warn future generations?

The Matriarch Matrix – A tale that started on the north shores of the Black Sea

At the heart of this epic story, an intrepid early Neolithic couple lived with their daughter and son farming, fishing, and hunting along the shores of a Big Lake.  They are survivors of the tyranny and terror of a race of giant warriors who enslave and denigrate the people in lands they wish to take.  A story that has been repeated throughout the millennia thousands and thousands of time.  Their endeavor to ensure generations to come have the strength and will to overcome such adversity leads to a legend that is passed down orally to their next generations.

 “I remember looking back at the shoreline. The waves began to recede, exposing the beach and lake bottom. When we reached the dark part of the lake, where we could never set anchor, we were lifted up and down on the highest waves I have ever seen. As Nanshe had yelled to do, I was roped in tightly at the rear of the boat, helping Narn with the rudder. And then we saw it behind us. The waves, which were enormous when we crested them, became the size of mountains as they rushed across the exposed lake bed and then demolished the beach in front of it. Nanshe told us later that God had killed the giants, who defiled God’s people.” 

Ki, first daughter of Nanshe, 9600 BCE

Further Reading:

“Geologists Link Black Sea Deluge To Farming’s Rise”, JOHN NOBLE WILFORD, New York Times (DEC. 17, 1996) http://www.nytimes.com/1996/12/17/science/geologists-link-black-sea-deluge-to-farming-s-rise.html

“Compilation of geophysical, geochronological, and geochemical evidence indicates a rapid Mediterranean-derived submergence of the Black Sea’s shelf and subsequent substantial salinification in the early Holocene”, A.G. Yanchilina, et. al., Marine Geology, Volume 383, 1 January 2017, Pages 14–34 http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0025322716302961

“Ancient Chinese Megaflood May Be Fact, Not Fiction”, David R. Montgomery, Scientific American, August 5, 2016

https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/ancient-chinese-megaflood-may-be-fact-not-fiction/

“A Catholic Perspective on a New Attraction”, July 19, 2016

https://www.catholic.com/magazine/online-edition/a-catholic-perspective-on-a-new-attraction

Photo: Licensed from Depositphoto.com