animal keeper
exterminator
pot maker
time keeper
beggar
painter (40,000BC)
fire keeper (30,000BC)
Pottery maker (30,000BC)
priest (15,000BC)
gardener (14,000BC)
Native Indian (10,000BC)
Jericho (9000BC)
tower of Babel (6000BC)
copper pot (5000BC)
Brewer (3700BC)
bronze wheel (3600BC)
glass (3400BC)
Stonehenge (3000BC)
pyramid (2500BC)
Star Gazer (2500BC)
Silk (2400BC)
Olmec (2300BC)
A Few short lives of Dr Joe Ova
Interview:
Interview:
There was a light glimmering on the high ceiling above the bed that was like a curtain of light unfolding to show a starry sky. The hazy light with all different colors focused into forms with different shapes. There was a murmur in the air around the still body laying on the bed. The hum turned to a buzz and to familiar words. “Joska madàrkàm”. A feeling of Deja vu enveloped Joe. He had heard these words before, so very very long ago. Images of his childhood were surfacing from the depths of his long buried memories.
He awakened as if from a coma and slowly realized that he was with his son Chris in a crowded room. Many people were there celebrating and rejoicing. Looking into their faces and into their eyes, he could not recognize any one except for Chris. He was in a bed covered in a white robe. Everyone else standing around him wore similar white robes. He knew he was in heaven and recognized it as his home. He was back home.
He awakened as if from a coma and slowly realized that he was with his son Chris in a crowded room. Many people were there celebrating and rejoicing. Looking into their faces and into their eyes, he could not recognize any one except for Chris. He was in a bed covered in a white robe. Everyone else standing around him wore similar white robes. He knew he was in heaven and recognized it as his home. He was back home.
Most of the welcoming committee were people reported to be his ancestors. He was introduced to his grandmother who looked just like he remembered her 4000 years ago when she refused to get baptized or to open a Heaven Inc. account. She committed suicide.
“Joska madàrkàm”, she whispered in Joe's ear. “I am so glad that I am not away on a life and I am here at home with you celebrating your long awaited return.”
“Grandmama, you are just like I remember you.” Joe uttered.
“We missed you so much” she replied.
Chris was unable to wait any longer and jumped in giving his father a hug and tugged at his long white beard. “Welcome home Dad”.
“How is Lucy doing?” Joe asked. Chris's face turned suddenly pale.
“I'm afraid I have some bad news” Chris stuttered. “Mom won't be coming home. She has been incarcerated for life along with a few of her followers. After they executed you for killing me, Mom started a movement of followers who started to kill their own children to have their brains disconnected. Gabriel was able to use his influence and to prohibit, on humanitarian grounds, the death penalty. Lucy and her 12 followers were instead charged in court and sentenced to serve life terms in a high security prison they built just for them called Hell Inc.
The second interview from Heaven
Now, for the first time ever, Dr. Ova and his lives are featured on our program. The last time he was here in his body, when he discovered heaven - the very first man to do so and enter without dying. He not only discusses his past life that lasted 10,000 years, but now that he has freed himself from Heaven Inc. and died, he is now free to discuss all his other lives. As you already know, Dr. J Ova has been the most influential soul in humanity's growth. He made long lasting contributions to the taming of fire, playing of music, domesticating of animals, using of money and the development of technology. He finally reached such high levels as to be able to find heaven our only real home without dying.
We are very thankful for our sponsor NERA -The New Earth Reincarnation Agency. NERA offers reincarnations to new-man on new earth in the new universe, created by Dr. Ova. We are proud and pleased to have his soul back home with us. So without further delay, we proudly present ......
Very influential early lives.
In one of my lives, I was born the son of a very poor man in the mountains. He was a soldier hired to guard the possessions of a very rich man. He employed a few soldiers to help him and equipped them with drums instead of spears. He taught them to whistle very loudly as well as shout strange aggressive sounds. This proved very effective in scaring away any intruders, as the sound of a few drummers yelling and whistling sounded like an entire army. He also developed a very large horn made from a hollowed piece of wood that made such a sound that it could be heard from very far away and was used to signal any approaching intruders long before they reached our caves. My father became very wealthy and he had very many children.
My mother had a beautiful voice and used her voice to imitate any animal you could think of. She had many children who learned her skills and who made very many special sounds just with their voices.
I was born to the sound of singing. My mother and my 10 brothers and sisters were humming and whistling and singing in beautiful harmony on my birth. When I was old enough to walk, I would dance to their singing. My mother told me I sang before I talked and danced before I walked.
We became very famous as we were so good. People from far away would hire us to entertain them. We charmed kings and their family and their friends from many faraway lands. I grew up in a traveling show entertaining people on the road.
When I got older my wife used many objects that made interesting sounds that I could sing to. She blew into shells and reeds while our many children vibrated stretched strings of animal gut and banged on stretched sheets of leather and hollow wooden boxes. I was able to continue our family entertainment business into a second generation. I lived to be a very old and happy man playing music with my great grandchild who was 6 years old when I died.
He was a child super star. He could dance and sing in a special way that captivated the audience. He could look like he was walking forward while actually walking backward. He could jump high up and momentarily look like he was hanging in the air.
My next reincarnation was to the daughter of an animal keeper. My father kept many kinds of animals. Over many years he collected and raised so many different kinds of animals that he eventually built a zoo and people from all over came to visit to see and study his animals.
He had a herd of cattle with a bull and 3 cows providing milk and producing calves for meat. He had a rooster and 7 hens providing eggs and producing chicks which he sold. He had a pack of dogs with a litter of pups every year which he bred. He had a big pond filled with schools of fish and colonies of frogs that attracted flocks of birds that built their nests nearby. He kept a swarm of bees in a hive producing honey. He had 4 horses, a stallion for working and a mare with a filly and a colt for riding. He even had deer for the children visitors; a stag, a doe and her 2 fawns.
Camels were especially difficult to keep as they were very stubborn and resolute and proud, so they were very difficult to control.
I developed a very close bond with the animals my father raised. I could herd camels just by waving my hands and showing my presence. Our camels and sheep were so tame that I was able to milk them. The milk turned into a delicious curd when left out in the sun. The curd would dry and harden to a tasty meal that did not spoil. My father had such tame animals that he became very successful in breeding them for other people. I was able to tame big animals to pull machines to plough the earth for planting in spring and to carry the heavy harvests reaped in fall. These tamed work animals eventually helped people over many generations to domesticate wild plants. One man, with one horse, could plough land and reap crops that needed more than 20 men before.
Once men were freed from gathering and hunting, they congregated in larger and larger tribes, groups, and communities, to do other things with their lives other than hunt and farm. They were freed to pursue their dreams. And with time and many generations communities grew to cities and cities exploited other cities forming empires causing civilizations to blossom. I died long before cities ever formed, leaving behind 5 children.
It was at the peak of my career. I had become a famous performer entertaining visiting kings of far-away lands with my tamed animals. One day during a show I unexpectedly died when my elephant fell on me.
One of my grandsons tamed camels to be ridden. He trained them to make great voyages over what were before deserted and uncrossable deserts. He discovered a great sea with a few very big cities along the coast. He brought back with him many new materials and ideas from people living on the other side of the desert. He eventually set up a caravan route and transported trade between the coast on the great sea, and the fertile valleys on the other side of the vast desert. He ended up trading dried fruit and sugar for dried fish and salt.
In my next life, my father was a harvester of grain and one year he lost more grain to mice than he was able to keep for himself. I was his only daughter. I was able to domesticate small desert wildcats by feeding them milk and winning their trust with affection. Their presence kept the mice away. Later the granary was invaded by termites, and I was able to use a special method to save the wood from being destroyed. Instead of trying to kill the millions of termites, I found their nest and kill only the one huge one who was laying all the eggs. I observed that like ants and bees, the entire colony of these insects had only one insect who stayed in the nest to breed. The other insects were just specialized to work in bringing in materials and food for all the hatching eggs.
I lived near mineral hot springs that left a white powdered salt that some people used to flavor and preserve food. By accident I mixed sugar and this salt together as they looked so alike. The next morning the opened jar was filled with dead cockroaches. The sugar attracted them and the salt killed them. I became a very well-known person sought after by many people with pest problems. One day I was bitten by a rabid dog and suffered a painful death.
I was born to a father who made pottery. His pottery was as round as he was able to form it by hand, with some rounder than others. My mother had the idea of putting the clay on a spinning table to make them spin so they could be formed and shaped more round and symmetric. My brothers who were carpenters were able to make such a table. It was not easy to make the spinning table as it had to spin very fast. My brothers saw that the wooden axle at the point of spin would get so hot that it started to smoke. Eventually it would get so hot that we could start fires from it. We sold a few of these “fire makers” to fire keepers.
We eventually crafted an axle made of clay. The table was heavy and turned rapidly and smoothly without causing any fires. My father started making round hollow thin vases that were so round and symmetrical as have never been seen before. Before burning theses vases in the oven I drew pictures on them. People thought our vases were so beautiful that with time our family became well respected potters making bowls and vases for kings and their families.
My heart was more into wool and plant fiber and weaving it into thread and rope. I would use the thread to sew smaller pieces of leather together to make large blankets. Then I started to spin thread thicker and thicker. All this was very tedious to do by hand as it needed a lot of spinning. When I saw my brothers make the spinning table for the clay vases, I asked them to make me a spinning wheel for my wool and fibers. My children as they grew up helped me work my spinning wheels. We became very successful for our fine threads, strings, and strong ropes. Long after I died, my great-great-grandson developed a wooden machine that wove threads into cloth. He ended up making fine fabrics and clothing from silk for kings and their families.
My husband became an ink maker. He produced black ink from charcoal. I often imagined how nice it would be to have colored ink, especially for my fibers. He experimented with various plants, pulverizing them in alcohol to make different colored inks to dye my wool and fibers. My son later found out that colored rocks can be dissolved in plant oils to give an ink that water cannot erase. I lived to see my grandson become a painter so well respected, that the king hired him to paint the walls of his cave.
In my next life, my father was the king's timekeeper. Every day my father would have to sound bells at 12 intervals starting from sunrise to sunset and 12 more intervals during the night from sunset to sunrise. The king at first thought that because we have only 10 fingers, 10 intervals should be used. My father convinced the king that 12 is a better number to use because 10 could be divided by only 2 and 5, while 12 could be divided by 2, 3, 4, and 6.
He used the position of the sun during the day and the stars during the night to determine when he should signal the time intervals. As long as the sky was clear, he had no problems, but whenever the sky was cloudy, he had to guess at the precise time the bells should be sounded. A few times when the sky suddenly cleared it was clear that he guessed wrong and it caused the king to get angry and my father to get scared and my mother to get worried.
So when I was about 15 years old my father had this great idea that at first I did not like at all. He claimed that he could count time precisely without sun or stars but by simply counting numbers. He had me move stones from one pile to another and timed me with the sun. Whenever the sun or stars were covered I would start to move my pebbles. By counting the number of pebbles, my father could calculate and estimate how much time passed. And for every notch on the sundial, I moved 100 stones. This method of measuring time proved so exact that my father was given praise and a bonus for his accuracy.
When I was a young man and I was moving pebbles one dark day I must have dropped my water jug too hard on the ground. When the sun came out after a few hours and I could stop, I noticed that my water jug was just about empty of water because the jug got cracked when it fell on the ground and the water was slowly leaking out. It then dawned on me that I could use dripping water to count time instead of moving pebbles. By the time I was an adult I made a device that dripped water all day and night into a deep narrow transparent glass container. I calibrated the container with levels in the same way that sundials were calibrated. My container however showed hours and minutes during day and night independent on the weather. The king was very happy with my invention. He allowed my family to continue to be his time keepers, but instead of moving pebbles, we made time keeping machines for the king's family and friends. With time, we made better and smaller timers using sand instead of water.
Next, I was born a very poor beggar's son and ended up to be a very rich thief. My father was blind and as a small thin child I was sent out with him to beg in the wealthy neighborhoods. I thought it easier to steal for an hour in the night than to beg for the entire day, so I became a burglar. I was small and thin enough to squeeze between the bars of iron gates in windows and I stole gold, jewelry, gems and other valuables. I grew very agile and could climb the highest and most fortified walls. As I grew older and bigger I could no longer fit into the small cracks in people's homes, so I taught my children all of my skills. Before long we were the best crooks in the city and were able to buy whatever we wanted.
My wife got tired of my being away most nights and suggested I offer to insure people's wealth from being stolen and to protect it instead of stealing it. When my sons grew older, they built a house like a fortress and offered rich people a safe place to keep their gold jewelry and other valuables and to ensure their safety from being lost.
We had a great amount of gold that we had stolen many years before. One of my daughters suggested that we melt the gold and mold small pieces with pictures of the king. My gold pieces were so sought after by people that they gradually changed from being a collector's item to a medium for paying for goods and services, and for settling debts. Soon no one was able to trade without using our gold molded pieces people called “money”.
In my next life, I became a great hunter and developed a way to kill huge animals that could otherwise not be killed before. My trick was to chase animals into a narrowing canyon with noise made of drums and screams until the animals fell down the cliffs at the end of the canyon. In order that this knowledge could be preserved after my family and I died, I took powdered colored rocks and crystals, blood, mud, charcoal and extracts from plants and flowers and sketched and painted scenes showing this hunting method on the wall of a cave, deep inside protected from the elements of eroding wind, rain and plant growth. The picture not only showed the map of where the canyon was, but also showed how the animals fell off of the cliff as they were chased by men waving sticks and beating their drums.
Mankind was like a child playing with fire.
Playing with fire was like playing with the sun. And the sun was seen by man like a god who sustained life. Man with fire was an enlightened man - ready for us souls, ready for me.
There was an opening for a reincarnation to a family of a fire keeper whom I have been observing with great interest. What interested me most was that it was in a location with many materials nearby ready to be discovered. A bed of pure clay lay by the shores of a winding river entering into a pristine lake filled with fish. A large meteorite full with iron lay in the creek that flowed into the river. Mineral rocks lay scattered washed by the waterfalls ready to be picked. A stretch of rapids exposed layers of coal beds ready to be burned. Up a meandering creek was a gushing stream exposing a bed of gold with nuggets glancing in the sun waiting to be found. A bubbling brook emptied into the stream with wild wheat all around ready to be harvested. Nearby there was a mineral hot spring with ponds of hot water ready for bathing in.
I eagerly applied for this life and was accepted.
My grandfather was also a fire keeper all his life, just like his father was before him. I had 8 brothers and 10 sisters. My mother died after she gave me birth and I was raised up by my aunt who lived in the same cave. I remember my aunt warning me to stay away from the fires. She told me should I get too close, I would suffer greatly. If I should ever fall in, I would surly die. When I grew older, my main duty was to help my older brothers keep my father's 3 separate fires alive. My father made a living by bringing fire to other people. I would often go with him. He used clay pots of different sizes to hold red hot charcoals smoldering in a layer of white ash.
The smaller pots were for shorter trips, and the larger ones for longer trips. Just before the burning charcoal died and vanished, my father started a new fire and refilled his clay pot and went further. He supplied fire to people as far away as a few days travel. People treated him with great respect. I was the youngest and as I did not have to look after anyone younger, I had plenty of time to play. I played a lot with fire. I made my own fireplace in secret, and made a dome out of clay to put over it to protect it from the rain. The fire in the dome burned hotter and longer than my father's fires. I felt like I had tamed it and had total control over it.
I was curious and fed it material other than wood. I burned various flowers and plants. Inhaling the smoke of one hardy and fibrous sweet grass seemed to make my mind feel light as if it were blown and expanded to its limits. It gave me many other ideas to try out. I made a paste of wheat seeds and saw some rise in the hot sun like it was alive and breathing. I put this rising paste in my oven and it became light and fluffy to eat. When I cooked meat, it turned soft and oily and fatty and delicious. When I smoked meat, it would dry and keep from spoiling for many months. When I mixed oil with ash, I got globs of a slippery substance that lathered with water and cleaned grease and dirt off my hands very easily. The liquid that was left behind had the smell of wine and burned more quickly than kindling. Kindling, soaked in this wine, exploded in flames when set next to a red hot charcoal.
I used my oven to burn wood slowly, having seen that charcoal burns hotter and longer. I made containers of clay with pictures drawn into them when wet. After they burned in the oven, they were hard and sturdy to hold water and the pictures I carved were permanently marked on them. My father used these pieces of permanently marked clay to trade with. He would give people these marked clay pieces for anything they might have that he wanted, promising that he would always redeem them as payment for his fire services. These clay pieces became a form of money that other people began to use. He became a banker, and then a trader of all items that people wanted to trade. He became very wealthy.
I experimented with fire and even burned stone. I found that some rocks could be hammered to shape when red hot. One particular rock I heated red hot and hammered flat started to attract red sand dust like it was wet with water. I collected this red sand and heated them in the fire and made various shapes with it. They all stuck together like magic. When I balanced thin pieces of it by hanging them from string, they all swung to the same position and pointed in the same direction. When they were turned to face different directions, they would spring back to their original direction. My father used this whenever he would get lost on cloudy nights. He would balance a piece of my magic wire and let it swing to this one position which never changed wherever he was. This allowed him to travel on starless nights. From this magic sticking material I made many objects with many shapes. Some were very thin and sharp and were useful for cutting. Others were very thick and heavy and were useful for hammering. Others were like dishes that I used to melt sand in.
I found that melted sand turns into a transparent rock that is very sharp and beautiful. I was able to polish a small piece into a pebble that focused bright sunlight into such a small spot that it would burn dried grass and start a fire. When I showed this to my father, he decided that instead of making clay pots to carry fire to his customers he would instead just carry the transparent pebble I made. We later started to sell these pebbles to people working for us as fires starters in distant places. I became very rich and had free time to make many things. I made everything from toys and weapons to tools.
I melted other types of rock. Some melted easier than others, and had different properties of melting, hardness, and strength. I combined many metals until I found a few combinations that I found useful. I lived 40 years and had 10 children from 3 wives. One became a baker, and another became a jeweler. Two worked ceramics making ovens and utensils. Two became metal workers; one specialized in tools, and the other in weapons. When I died I did not stay too long in heaven.
I discovered that if I took clay from a river bank and shaped it to a form, when I put it in the fire to cook, it became as hard as rock. I made various forms. I made little figures of our gods. It was a big seller as people believed that the figures kept them safe and brought them luck. As soon as one claimed his good luck came from the statue, others would tend to believe that also. And the more people were convinced, the more people bought my statues of clay. I also made cup shapes I called "jars" that could be used to drink from and keep berries in. The water and berries seemed to like my jars as they mixed quite well and produced a bubbly drink that made your head bubble and made you forget your hunger and worries for a while.
I was born to a mother who was very receptive to her intuitions. She raised me up to be hungry for knowledge. I did not keep all of this knowledge to myself. I shared it with others whenever we were sitting around the fire. People said that I was the best story teller and with my stories, I could make people either gasp with fright or shake with laughter. I knew so much and was able to do many things that others could not, I was considered a magician. I was able to stop hiccups and cure stomach aches. Some even claimed that I had brought them back from death. I knew of the plants that cured many of the ailments that people suffered from. People came to me from very far away to get healed. They asked me my opinions and followed my advice.
They carved out caves and built me a grand house they called the "Temple" where I lived and housed a few of the best prostitutes. They clothed us in the finest skins and fed us the fattest meats. They expected me to solve all of their problems so I told them that I was just a priest, a representative of gods who were the ones that could solve all of their problems. I introduce them to many gods. The sun god was responsible to ensure that life goes on. His wife was the god of love and fertility and she helped us to be fruitful and to multiply. The hawk god looked over us from the sky and saw everything. The fire god kept us warm from the cold and safe from the wild animals and gave us light to see in the dark.
One of my responsibilities was to determine when it was the best time to plant the seeds for the next harvest. To be able to do that, I studied the movement of the stars. I noticed that many stars formed patterns which slowly moved around up in heaven. There were many patterns, from hunters to the animals they hunted. Their dance was synchronized and cyclic. One of the patterns, the ram, was especially useful. He told me when to plant my plants to get a good harvest. I remembered where the ram in the sky was when I planted my plants and had a good harvest and waited the next year till he was back in that place in the sky to plant for the next harvest.
I expected that if the stars can show us the best time to plant plants, then they can also show us when the best time was to plan plans. To make order to the gods in heaven, I placed 12 of them in 12 sections or "houses" in the sky and called them "constellations".
After I died, my son became a very good gardener and a better fortune teller.
I was born to become a gardener. I hoed the earth with the toughest piece of sharp sticks I could find. I had a cellar dug deep into the earth where the plants we harvested the previous fall kept cool in the hottest of summer days. I provided our community with fruit and wine, and also vegetables and grains to make bread.
While I stayed at home and farmed, my brother Abel traveled far away from home and hunted..
One day we both wanted to please our father Adam on his birthday. We decided to pool our efforts and make him a very special meal. I ground the wheat I had harvested after the grueling work of hoeing and watering and weeding. With flour, I made the most delicious breads and pastries. Able built a fire and grilled a lamb over it turning it occasionally between naps while I struggled the whole day baking and cooking the vegies. Father pigged out on the juicy roasted lamb and didn't even try any of my breads, vegies and pastries. Abel got all of the praise and credit as he usually did. I got so pissed off that I took my cane and was able to hit Abel over the head. He was hurt very badly and on his next hunt, he never came back. We found his dead body in the river a few weeks later. People thought that I had killed him.
We all missed Abel and the games he hunted and shared with us. So I started to herd a flock of sheep to provide us with meat that we all liked so much. The animals we farmed also provided. milk to drink and to make yogurt, cheese, and butter, and also wool to wear for warmth and leather for our shoes and bags.
We were settlers and lived on the shores of rivers that provided enough water for our fields of crops. When our settlements had more than 150 people we dug irrigation canals to water lands that were dry and formed new settlement. We lived communal lives where we made love and multiplied. Because we made love to all the women who lets us make love to them, and communally supported all the children who were born and treated them all equally. We observed that mothers who made love with their grown up sons, and brothers who made love with their sisters, they often bore children who were handicapped and who died sooner than others who were born normal. Wise priests advised that if we should trade our men with men of other nearby settlements. We not only shared our children, but also share all that we had.
When I died, I was so ashamed that I had killed my brother Abel, that I waited a very long time before taking on a new life. As if to chill out, I took on a life of a boy born to an Eskimo.
I was born in a nomad family just like my ancestors before me and my descendants who followed me. My ancestors wandered across great ice fields and found new lands that were empty of any people. They were very ingenious. They lived in houses made of snow called "igloos" and hunted seals for their clothing, food, and fuel. They made boats called “kayaks” out of the skins of the seals. My descendants gradually moved to warmer lands south reaching great forests and rivers which led to Great Plains covered by buffalo as far as the eye could see. They lived in houses called “teepees” made of the skins of the buffaloes they hunted. The teepees were warm in winter, cool in summer and could be easily and quickly rolled up and dragged along the ground to any new place. They built boats they called "canoes" out of the bark and tar of the birch trees they used to fuel their fires. The canoes were so light that they floated in very shallow rivers, even when fully loaded. The land was very vast and they used smoke to signal one another over great distances. By covering and uncovering the smoky fire, short and long billows of smoke rose high up in the air which was seen far far away. It took them many thousands of years to populate the entire continent called "North and South America".
They revered nature. The land that they lived on was as vast and endless as the air they breathed and was as plentiful as the water they drank. The land contained a sea of buffalo herds that provided them with an endless source of food to eat and hides to use. Taking private ownership of land was foreign to them as owning the air was as foreign to the “white” nomads who came across the ocean and started to claim ownership of the lands they settled and overtook.
My last life as a wandering nomad was interesting, but for my next life, I chose one that was settled down. My great grandfather and his large family found a place that provided them fresh water the entire year to water the fertile gardens they tamed. There were many scattered stones lying around that we used for building our houses. With such favorable conditions, we were able to stop worrying about shortages and the need to move on, so we settled down and built permanent homes. We traded the freedom we had before for safety, shelter and regular meals. We never had so many people living so close together.
People were put to work in groups. There were tool makers who made tools and there were builders and miners who harvested stones for them. Then there were farmers who domesticated plants and animals, tending gardens and herding cattle. There were fishermen and hunters who captured and sold fish and meat. Work efficiency increased to a point where a few farmers and fishermen could feed many in the city. Artists began to increase in numbers. Before long, soldiers, teachers and servants allowed a few privileged the time and the peace necessary for thinking and planning, painting and writing, and singing and dancing.
When I died I was buried with my dog in a grave covered with limestone slabs.
I was born the son of the chief librarian in Sumer in Mesopotamia. My father collected and stored all the clay tablets with all the statistics that were recorded on them. I became an architect and built the palaces for our king. We used bricks made of dried clay. I was known for building the highest tower ever built. It was known as the "Tower of Babel". It was about 200m high. We hired nomads who lived in the forests - the blue eyed and white skin barbarians called Aryans who came from the north looking for work. They had their own way of talking and we could not understand them and they could not understand us. In fact, it seemed that even among them they talked differently and they could not understand each other.
In my next life, I found and collected green rocks at the bottom of a very deep pit near where we lived. My wife was a very talented cook. She roasted meat over the fire and cooked plant roots till they were soft to eat. I collected the rocks because they were so beautiful. I was so protective of these rocks, that I built a wooden house almost half as big as my own. My wife warned me that the gods would not be approving of such extravagance for my rocks. She thought that I should spend more time with her and my family and less time with my rocks. One day, my shed of rocks got hit by lightning and burned until there were only ashes and burned rock. The green rocks had turned black. When I piled up the shrunken remnants of my once green rocks, I noticed that the pile was noticeably smaller. I did not clean up the area for many years preferring to keep it as a memorial to the shed I was so proud of and so sad to have lost.
My wife sympathized with my loss but was deep down happy that I no longer had the shed. She always nagged me to clean up the yard, especially the ash heap that kept blowing ashes all over the place when the winds got windy. After years of nagging, I finally decided to remove and dispose of the ash. It was very hard work as I had nothing to put the ash on to for carrying it away. I was almost ready to give up when I uncovered an orange colored thin flat sheet of a type of rock under the ash. By pulling on this sheet with the help of my friends, I was able to move the ash on top of it. I named this sheet "copper" and made many more by collecting green rocks and melting them over a huge fires in a deep pit.
I hammered the sheets which were very malleable. They were more like leather than stone. I made pots for carry and storing water. It was only when a pot of water got too near a fire that we realized that we could cook water and make delicious hot soups in these pots.
My family became very wealthy as everyone wanted such a pot and they were ready to trade anything my family needed and wanted. We all soon had everything we wanted. But while my family and I were always in need of the products and services provided by others, the others we traded with did not always need a pot, I made small pieces of my copper I called “coins” and when I needed to have something, people would take my small pieces as IOUs in the trust that they could exchange them for a pot whenever they needed one. My “coins” became so useful that people started to use them as barter for anything they wanted to buy or sell, knowing they can always trade them for my pots. My “coins” made trading for everyone, even for those not needing any pots, very efficient.
I died 1 year before my wife gave birth to a beautiful baby boy, and decided to reincarnate in his life.
My mother, who was my wife in my last life, had a restaurant where she cooked soups for the copper miners. She used the copper pots to cook the soups. She also used his copper pots to hold fruits that my family harvested. One day my mom asked me to cover the pot of fruits and to carry it down into the cellar where it was cold. I promised to do that for her but forgot and it was left it out in the sunshine for 3 days. When mom asked me to serve the dessert of fruits to the miners, I didn't have any other choice than to serve the frothing ruined fruits in the pot. I covered the froth up with cream and added in extra honey. I just hoped that nobody would end up either complaining of the foul taste or of a foul stomach. Boy was I surprise. The miners started to sing and laugh. And they asked me to serve the same dessert every day. We experimented with different fruits and grains. When we drank this drink, we all got a very nice bubbly feeling that lasted all night.
My father was a copper pot maker who had a very nagging wife called Bronze. She did not like the noise of the workers hammering the copper sheets. She was as well annoyed by the smoke that came from the fires making the copper for the pots. She nagged my father to move the fire far away from the house. She nagged him for many years and her nagging greatly embarrassed him because his work colleagues started to make fun of him. In a moment of eureka, he realized that if he moved his fire far away from his wife, she would not nag so much and even if she did, his colleagues would not see and hear her. He moved up the valley and found a place which he thought would make a good base for his fire. It was on a moraine on the side of a glacier. To his surprise, the soft and malleable copper sheet he was expecting turn out to be stiff and hard.
I made very many shapes with this metal which we called Bronze after my mother's name. With copper, it was not possible to make wheels that lasted long enough before getting worn down to make it worth their while to make them. Now with bronze, the wheels never got worn down and we were able to make the wheels very thin making them very light and easy to roll. My family got very prosperous. When my son started to make swords out of bronze, he got very powerful.
In my next life, I witnessed a lightning bolt hit a very big pile of wood on a pile of sand. It caught fire and burned for many days. The fire was so hot that we had to leave the area. When we went back to the place where the lightning struck, we saw that there were root-like rocks that were very smooth, hard and brittle under the ash. When this brittle rock broke, the edges were so sharp that it could cut thru the toughest leather very easily. What was as well amazing was that we could the see the light from the sun shine thru it. Around this root like material, the sand had turned into sheets of this strange and wonderful material. We found that when we burnt sand in a fire made hot by blowing a strong wind thru it, the sand melted into this strange material we called “glass”. We used the sharp edges from the broken pieces to cut leather and carve wood.
My ancestors came from very very far away. They were nomads who traveled following the sun in the direction that it set. I was a wheel maker. My wheels running over 2 tracks of rail carried very huge and heavy rocks great distances. Our king decided he wanted to study the stars and their movement. Sandstone blocks 4m high, 2m wide and 1m thick were cut and moved great distances to make an immovable and indestructible reference point pointing to the stars. It was only after we built the carefully aligned structure that we realized that we could not use it as we wanted to because we did not have an accurate means of measuring time. In order to measure space and motion accurately, you needed to measure time very precisely.
I was born in Egypt and became the chief engineer for the Pharaoh. He wanted to make a multi-functional structure. First and foremost it was to be a tool to investigate and measure heavenly movements. It had to be a structure that would stand stable for thousands of years to help future generations to observe and study the heavens. It was to be a laboratory to examine earth and heaven movements. It had to endure the erosion of nature and the plunder and destruction of man.
It was also to serve as a lookout and communications tower sufficiently high to see approaching armies hundreds of kilometers away. It was to provide the Pharaoh and his family a safe refuge whenever threatened by siege from enemies and a secure vault for his wealth. It was to serve as a silo for grain and a reservoir for water. It was to be a symbol of his lasting power and of his nation that built the imposing structure. Some thought he was just making a pretentious tombstone for himself.
The project was actually a “make work program”. The wise Pharaoh believed that such a project would stimulate economic growth in the long term. It was hoped that such a grand project would help open the region for tourists and farmers for generations to come. It was my responsibility to design and build it.
I had at my disposal the best mathematicians, scientists, and engineers. The site was chosen 1 km from a tributary of the Nile that had thick and flat bedrock. 200,000 men and children as young as 5 years old worked day and night with 10,000 elephants for 70 years and excavated, cut, carved and moved 2.5 million 2.5 ton blocks from hundreds of km away and piled them up into a 140m high pyramid. They were divided into 4 teams. Recognition and prizes were given to the team that made the most progress each year. 4 blocks were placed every hour, 100 blocks each day. They were placed into position on the pyramid, one on each of its 4 sides, until the last blocks were raised to the top 70 years later. I was 25 years old when I started and lived to see the pyramid's completion.
First a suitable site was chosen, 20m higher than the delta, with a thick and flatbed stone. A canal with a series of locks was dug from the tributary of the Nile to the site of the pyramid. The stone blocks from far away quarries along the Nile were floated in wooden rafts to the canal that ran to the pyramid's base. Along their long journey the blocks were shaped and polished to precision. Then they were raised by steep steps of locks that emptied into a flat platform. Once the platform was walled in and sealed by tar, it was flooded. The base platform was a square that was 250m wide. This huge swimming pool got smaller as it got higher each year forming a pyramid structure.
Each year a new level was completed. As the platform got higher, it got smaller. The higher it got the more it shrank until at the very top it shrank to a single point. It was divided into 4 parts. One was a swimming pool for the people, the other was a pond with birds and water plants for the privileged. The 3rd was a natural pond that people visited like a park. The 4th was a water reservoir.
Children were used to lift the water up to the top level. They climbed up to the top and then jumped down attached to a rope. Their weight pulled up an equal weight of water in a bucket. The water from the top fed the steps of locks that were used to float the blocks up to the top where they were moved toward the walls and used to build up the walls for the next layer.
The structure lasted for 7,000 years despite being ravaged by man and nature. In the end the entire continent sank into the sea. The pyramid served as a tourist attraction for its entire lifetime. But its main purpose as tool for studying the heaven and measuring the movement of the earth with respect to the stars was forgotten a few generations after it was built.
My father built the pyramids and I studied the stars. Most people saw the sun rise in the east and set in the west and concluded that it orbited our earth. I used the pyramids to prove that the heavenly bodies danced a much different dance. I used the immovable and indestructible pyramid as a reference point to the sky. I also used the pyramid's height as a very accurate clock to measure the speed the heavenly bodies were moving. This was done by carving a winding groove around the pyramid's 4 sides starting at the top and slowly winding down to the bottom. The amount of time it took the water to flow and run down to the base was assumed to be always the same, and it was called "one hour". 24 such runs could be made each day from noon to noon. The grooved channel was calibrated into 60 equal lengths and each of the lengths was called "one minute". All of the minute lengths were calibrated into 60 equal lengths which were each called "one second". By measuring the distance water rolled down the channel, I was able to measure a very precise interval of time very accurately. By measuring the distance that the stars moved across the sky during a very precise interval of time, I was able to accurately map the movement of the heavenly bodies.
After I died, my son continued to study how the heavenly bodies moved, and was able to conclude that the sun did not orbit the earth as it seemed to, but instead the earth orbited the sun.
In my next life, I was born to a family of silk weavers in China. We had many mulberry trees on our estate and we used the cocoons of the worms that grew on the trees. A worm's cocoon fell into my mother's tea cup while she was drinking tea under a mulberry tree in her garden. Wishing to extract it from her drink, my mother noticed that the cocoon began to unroll into a thread. She then had the idea to weave this fine thin thread into a cloth. The resulting fabric was so soft and strong that it became a luxurious cloth she called “silk”. How this wonderful material was manufactured remained a closely guarded secret for 3,000 years. The fabric was restricted to be used by members of the imperial family for the next 1,000 years. Eventually silk was so sought after by rich nobility all over the world that it became one of my countries most important exports.
Silk became progressively more valuable in its own right, and became more than simply a material. It was used to pay government officials. By the same token that one would sometimes estimate the price of products according to a certain weight of gold, the length of the silk cloth became a monetary standard in China. For more than 1000 years, silk remained the principal diplomatic gift of the emperor of China to his neighbors and his vassals.
In my next life, I became a famous Olmec professional ball player. I was born in the southern part of Mexico, near the borders of Belize and Guatemala. My father was the best ball player and ended up being in the Olmec hall of Fame for scoring the most points. He was never defeated in a match and died a natural death just after playing and winning his very last match.
The games were very demanding, requiring constant training. After all we were literally playing for our lives. I started training when I was 3 years old and continued to train every day for 8 hours. Many children played and practiced to be admitted as professional players for the fame and glory of it. Professional players were well fed and well taken care of. They had the choice of having the most beautiful girls. And they had the opportunity of being sacrificed for and by their Emperor if they lost a deciding game played in front of the Emperor. It was the second greatest honor one could have in life, only next to playing for the Emperor and being watched by him.
Each team was confined to one half of the court and the ball was hit back and forth until one team failed to return it or the ball left the court or hit the ground. The game rules were very simple. All we had to do was to ensure that the game continued. The game ended when we failed to return the ball to the opponent, or when we returned the ball but it landed outside the boundaries of the court. Sometimes the game continued for a few hours. The players could hit the ball with their hips, their forearms, or their rackets. The ball was made of solid rubber and was as big as a man's head and weighed about just as much. Ballgames were held as ritual events. Whenever we played for the Emperor, the losing team of the match was honored by being sacrificed for and by the Emperor.
The size of the ball courts varied depending on how many players were playing. It ranged from 20m when there was only 1 person on each team to 100m long when there were 5 players on the team. The court was a long narrow alley with sloping side-walls against which the balls could bounce. It was about 4 times longer than it was wide. Courts were public spaces used for a variety of elite cultural events and ritual activities like wrestling events, festivals and musical performances with musicians often playing at ballgames.
The games were extremely brutal and there could be serious injuries inflicted by the solid, heavy ball. Sometimes players were even critically injured by the ball, or died in the middle of a game from sheer exhaustion. The balls were made from latex sap of the rubber tree. This slippery latex was mixed with the sap from the vines of the plant called “morning glory” to turn it into a resilient rubber. Players wore pads to protect them from the ball.
The ballgame served as a way to defuse or resolve conflicts without genuine warfare. Instead of battles, sports were used to settle disputes. My civilization lasted for 2,000 years. It was mainly because of this sport that my society was able to last as long as it did. We were able to make very important achievements that helped other following civilizations to prosper.
We were the first to develop writing. We were also the first to use the symbol "zero" to be able to efficiently write numbers so that they could be easily calculated by additions, subtractions, multiplications and divisions. And we were the first to discover the compass that allowed us to navigate without having to see the sun in the day or the stars at night. These new ways of writing, calculating and navigating allowed us to trade and thus prosper and flourish.
The neighboring Maya civilization started to flourish 500 years after our civilization and it lasted 1,300 years longer than ours did. The Mayas continued to play this most important sport. They modified our ballgame by placing vertical stone rings on each side of the court which the rubber ball had to be thrown to pass thru the hoops. This sport with this innovation continued into the following Aztec culture 4,000 years later. 400 years later, a basket was attached to this ring and a new sport was started that was extremely popular called “basketball”.
I happened to be playing in front of the Emperor one day. I had the great honor of being sacrificed along with all my team mates for losing that match.
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NEXT: 0AD->2100AD Nero, Hadrian, Mani, Attila, Aryabhata, Bang Gun, Bank Poo, Henry I, Genghis Khan, William Wallace, John Wycliffe, Johannes Gutenberg, Martin Luther, Galileo Galilei, Adam Smith, Accountant for Rothschild, Karl Marx, Adolph Hitler, Andrew Vecsey
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