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''Hamlet's Mill'' (first published by Gambit, Boston, 1969) by Giorgio de Santillana (a professor of the history of science at MIT) and Hertha von Dechend (a scientist at Johann Wolfgang Goethe-Universität) is a nonfiction work of history and comparative mythology, particularly the subfield of archaeoastronomy. It is mostly about the claim of a Megalithic era discovery of axial precession, and the encoding of this knowledge in mythology. The book was not well received by critics, in spite of the admission of occasional "flashes of insight" it may contain.〔Jaan Puhvel (1970) "This is not a serious scholarly work on the problem of myth () There are frequent flashes of insight, for example, on the cyclical world views of the ancients"〕 ==Argument== Santillana had previously published, in 1961, ''The Origins of Scientific Thought'', on which ''Hamlet's Mill'' is substantially based.〔Compare various statements in ''Hamlet's Mill'' to this quote from ''The Origin of Scientific Thought'': "We can see then, how so many myths, fantastic and arbitrary in semblance, of which the Greek tale of the Argonaut is a late offspring, may provide a terminology of image motifs, a kind of code which is beginning to be broken. It was meant to allow those who knew (a) to determine unequivocally the position of given planets in respect to the earth, to the firmament, and to one another; (b) to present what knowledge there was of the fabric of the world in the form of tales about 'how the world began'." (As quoted in pages 35-36 of ) Feyerabend goes on: "There are two reasons why this code was not discovered earlier. One is the firm conviction of historians of science that science did not start before Greece and that scientific results can only be obtained with the scientific method as it is practised today (and as it was foreshadowed by Greek scientists). The other reason is the astronomical, geological, etc., ignorance of most Assyriologists, Aegyptologists, Old Testament scholars, and so on: the apparent primitivism of many myths is just the reflection of the primitive astronomical, biological, etc., etc., knowledge of their collectors and translators. Since the discoveries of Hawkins, Marshack, Seidenberg, van der Waerden (''Geometry and Algebra in Ancient Civilizations'', New York, 1983) and others we have to admit the existence of an international paleolithic astronomy that gave rise to schools, observatories, scientific traditions and most interesting theories. These theories, which were expressed in sociological, not in mathematical terms, have left their traces in sagas, myths, legends, and may be reconstructed in a twofold way, by going ''forward'' into the present from the material remains of Stone Age astronomy such as marked stones, stone observatories, etc., and by going ''back'' into the past from the literary remains which we find in sagas, legends, myths. An example of the first method is A. Marshack, ''The Roots of Civilization'', New York, 1972. An example of the second is de Santillana-von Dechend, ''Hamlet's mill'', Boston, 1969." .〕 further influences can be found in the work of Leo Frobenius (Leach 1970 mentions particularly the 1900 ''Die Mathematik der Oceaner'' and the 1904 ''Das Zeitalter des Sonnengottes''). The main argument of the book may be summarized as the claim of an early (Neolithic) discovery of the precession of the equinoxes (usually attributed to Hipparchus, 2nd century BCE), and an associated very long-lived Megalithic civilization of "unsuspected sophistication" that was particularly preoccupied with astronomical observation. The knowledge of this civilization about precession, and the associated astrological ages, would have been encoded in mythology, typically in the form of a story relating to a millstone and a young protagonist—the "Hamlet's Mill" of the book's title, a reference to the kenning '' Amlóða kvren'' recorded in the Old Icelandic ''Skáldskaparmál''.〔 Chapter VI, Amlodhi's Quern: "Shakespeare's Gentle Prince () who was known once upon a time as a personage of no ordinary power, of universal position, and, in the North, as the owner of a formidable mill. () The Mill is thus not only very great and ancient, but it must also be central to the original Hamlet story. It reappears in the Skaldskaparmal, where Snorri explains why a kenning for gold is 'Frodhi's meal'" 〕 The authors indeed claim that mythology is primarily to be interpreted as in terms of archaeoastronomy ("mythological language has exclusive reference to celestial phenomena"), and they mock alternative interpretations in terms of fertility or agriculture.〔"Nevertheless, the expression of this proto-scientific vision of the cosmos was not mathematical but mythological. All the gods are stars, and mythological language has exclusive reference to celestial phenomena: for example, "earth" in myth means only "the ideal plane laid through the ecliptic" (p. 58); all stories of floods "refer to an old astronomical image" (p. 57). Without bothering to refute alternative positions which hold that some, at least, of the gods and myths stemmed from concern with fertility or meteorological phenomena, the authors merely mock "the fertility addicts" (p. 308) and "the Fecundity-'Trust" (p. 381)." White (1970:541).〕 The book's project is an examination of the "relics, fragments and allusions that have survived the steep attrition of the ages".〔''Hamlet's Mill'', as quoted in Leach 1970〕 In particular, the book reconstructs a myth of a heavenly mill which rotates around the celestial pole and grinds out the world's salt and soil, and is associated with the maelstrom. The millstone falling off its frame represents the passing of one age's pole star (symbolized by a ruler or king of some sort), and its restoration and the overthrow of the old king of authority and the empowering of the new one the establishment of a new order of the age (a new star moving into the position of pole star). The authors attempt to demonstrate the prevalence of influence of this hypothetical civilization's ideas by analysing the world's mythology (with an eye especially to all "mill myths") using "cosmographic oddments from many eras and climes...a collection of yarns from Saxo Grammaticus, Snorri Sturluson ("Amlodhi's mill" as a kenning for the sea!), Firdausi, Plato, Plutarch, the ''Kalevala'', ''Mahabharata'', and ''Gilgamesh'', not to forget Africa, the Americas, and Oceania..."〔Puhvel (1970)〕 De Santillana and von Dechend state in the Introduction to ''Hamlet's Mill'' that they are well aware of modern interpretations of myth and folklore but they find them shallow and lacking insight: "...the experts now are benighted by the current folk fantasy, which is the belief that they are beyond all this - critics without nonsense and extremely wise". Consequently, de Santillana and Dechend prefer to rely on the work of "meticulous scholars such as Ideler, Lepsius, Chwolson, Boll and, to go farther back, of Athanasius Kircher and Petavius...". They give reasons throughout the book for preferring the work of older scholars (and the early mythologists themselves) as the proper way to interpret myth; but this viewpoint did not sit well with their modern critics schooled in the "current anthropology, which has built up its own idea of the primitive and what came after".〔All quotes are from the Introduction to ''Hamlet's Mill'', first edition.〕 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Hamlet's Mill」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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