The Sophistication of the Ancients

Some may imply that my “reading in” gives ancients too much credit, that there is something of the “New Ageist” in my analysis, where “ancient Myth contains all knowledge or wisdom.” That these myths are instead primarily subconscious manifestations whose meanings we may only idly speculate as a kind of pleasurable pastime. After all, the ancients were every bit as benighted as ourselves.

But this is decidedly false, as both my analysis and the JEM will corroborate. To be clear, I do not assert great numbers had access to the truths I reveal, nor will they have great access to them in the future. Instead, through every period, this access is limited to a “ruling” few.

In open and relatively “Apollonian” periods of Aryan dominion, perhaps, it seems possible that these conditions persisted because most men are incurious of these things, confidently leaving them to priests, scholars, and artists. This is practical. In relatively “Saturnian” periods, these truths are kept hidden because they have the power to overthrow ruling elites. Yet, on the other hand, these truths may not or would not be consciously destroyed, as they also contain the power to rule and psychologically dominate.

The idea that myths rise willy-nilly from the “collective unconscious” as superstitious explanations for natural phenomena, or merely pleasurable stories with little decodable meaning, is often assumed because it is assumed that our ancestors were less sophisticated than we are. Yet this is clearly not so. And certainly they were not less intelligent.

Even if, as some have argued, the estimated IQ of some European populations reached a peak in the 1800s due to fortuitous reproductive conditions, we know the philosophers, playwrights, and early scientists of Greece, particularly during the fabled Age of Pericles, were no slouches. In Hereditary Genius, Francis Galton estimated their average IQ at 125, 10 points higher than the highest estimate of any known ethnic group today. It is perhaps an overestimation, but certainly we have reason to believe Greece was inhabited by geniuses.

Yet even looking into a pre-civilizational period, we might speculate a practical, problem-solving intelligence was perhaps even greatest in the wilds, particularly the northern wilds, where survival was the most difficult and stakes the highest. Why wouldn’t we guess, for example, a natural eugenics occurred there, where a balance of strength and intelligence, for which beauty bore evidence,^[1] actually increased chances of survival. Man was in this environment especially alert, even if he was bereft of the large networks that constitute complex societies.

After all, we observe the wolf to be more intelligent than the dog, ^[2] at least in terms of self-sufficiency if not generally. Analogously, we might also guess that a pre-civilizational man, and thus a founding man, would be more intelligent, at least in some ways, than the settled, civilizational man. Nevertheless, in the organization of civilization, devoted to new problems, intelligence becomes “sophisticated.” More accurately, through a proliferation of population and shared information, it became “knowledgeable.” Yet it is unclear whether it increases along all lines. The myths suggest something similar with the Aryan Apollo, who was both the founder, ancestor, and Hyperborean, as well as a god of Intelligence. The clear Jewish desire to admix with an Aryan “firstborn,” as seen through their myths, as this study discusses,[3] suggests a similar genetic desirability among an Aryan founding group.

After the establishment of human settlement, intelligence weakens in some ways, improves in others, as populations grow and conditions become urbanized. Intelligence adapts to other things, primarily the manipulation of other people. I suggest it may become, in these early days, more verbal. The Japanese , a high-IQ urban people, are not as verbally gifted as they are gifted in other ways, yet cleaving to Gobineau’s theory of Aryans as civilizational founders, I argue their current racial form is not a meaningful consideration.  Indeed, the late stages of a kinetic Aryan civilization, however short-lived, may tend to select, at least among certain climes, for relatively docile, quiet, and industrious types dominated by “politically correct”^[4] taboos.

Earlier, at the very onset of an Aryan and Semitic divergence or competition, communication, language, and symbol become of utmost significance. They have become a way of consciously weakening the alertness and intelligence of others, of directing them away from power, while masters of language and symbol seek it. This is “sophistication” that shares its root with the word sophistry.

It is true we are more “knowledgeable” than at any point in history. Yet knowledge is a cumulative element. It seems unlikely that we are more intelligent than at various times in the past, nor more sophisticated. This study will make plain that contemporary artists consciously invest highly sophisticated meanings in their work, which, while deducible, are often far from obvious. We will see as well that the ancients did likewise. And why would we guess otherwise? What we discover is an esoteric symbol language shared by both contemporary and ancient Myth-makers, millennia apart.

^[1] I return in this study to a discussion of the possible correlative link between beauty and intelligence. For instance, take the relatively high-IQ population of Scandinavia{Scandinavia / IQ}, where bloodlines are relatively pure. Where populations are relatively admixed, the correlation becomes weaker. Studies do indicate, generally, at least a weak correlation between facial symmetry or beauty and intelligence, as will be discussed.

^[2] One study, tending to confirm earlier, similar studies, was performed at the Wolf Science Center in Vienna in 2017. It showed that wolves have a better understanding of cause and effect than dogs. Michelle Lampe, Juliane Bräuer, Juliane Kaminski & Zsófia Virányi, The effects of domestication and ontogeny on cognition in dogs and wolves, Wolf Science Center, Vienna, 15 September, 2017.

[3] See the chapter in this book entitled The Semitic Bride Gathering Cult: A Primary Purpose and Theme of J.E.M. From here follows a series of chapters dealing with this complex phenomenon.

^[4] I use the term “politically correct” here generally and not as a reference to communist or multicultural societies or this or that particular taboo. The goal is to allow readers to imagine how such processes could progress.