The Golden Age
According to all ancient traditions and beliefs, the cradle of the human race was in a portion of the world characterized by an altogether extraordinary exuberance of life. Of all lands the sun shone upon it was the fairest and best. Even down to the Deluge, and later, something of the divine goodness of that primeval home-land remained.
The same idea of a perfect primeval climate is found among all ancient peoples. Ovid represents the spring, in Saturn's reign, to have been perennial. The spring of our world-age is only an abbreviated reminder of that great original. So Lactantius has preserved a fragment of the old ethnic creed when he tells us that only upon the loss of Paradise, darkness and winter came over the earth.
With this supposed deterioration of soil and climate the deterioration of man kept pace. Hence ancient writers, with hardly an exception, represent the men of their own day as far inferior in stature, in strength, and in longevity to the first progenitors of the race. Hesiod, Aratus, Ovid, Vergil, and Claudian vary somewhat in their accounts of the Golden, Silver, and later ages of human history, but all agree in representing the men of their time as weak and puny and short-lived, compared with men of the early ages of the world.
Plato, speaking of the antediluvians, says, "For many generations, as long as the divine nature lasted in them, they were obedient to the laws, and well affectioned toward the gods who were their kinsmen; for they possessed true and in every way great spirits, practicing gentleness and wisdom in the various chances of life and in their intercourse with one another. . . .but when this divine portion began to fade away in them, and became diluted too often, and with too much of the mortal admixture, and the human nature got the upper hand, they, being unable to bear their fortune, became unseemly, and to him who had an eye to see they began to appear base, and had lost the fairest of their precious gifts."
The ancient Indian conception of the world's decadence from period to period is given in the "Laws of Manu."
Of the four great ages of the life of the present universe, we are living in the last and worst. In the first yuga all men were holy; in the present all are utterly corrupt and vile. In the first they were tall and long-lived; in each succeeding age they have grown dwarfed and feeble.
Similar to the Indian was the Iranian belief as reflected in the Bundahish. Here the duration of the universe is represented as filling four world-periods of three thousand years each. During the first of the four all is pure and sinless, but at its close the Evil One declares war against Ahura Mazda, the holy God, which war is destined to fill the three last ages. During the first of the three, the Evil One is unsuccessful; during the second, good and evil are exactly balanced; while in the last, which is our own, evil obtains, and till the destined overthrow at the very end maintains supremacy.
The conception which we are noticing is as old as it is universal. Berosus, reporting the earliest traditions of Chaldæa, represents the first men as of extraordinary stature and strength, and as retaining in lessening degree these characteristics until some generations after the Flood.
The bearing of this unanimous verdict of ancient tradition upon the problem of the location of Eden is obvious. The traditions of the whole ethnic world, not less than the record in Genesis, require that the cradle of the race be placed in the one spot on earth where the biological conditions are the most favorable possible.
The Ancient Greek Golden Age
Plato wrote that the Golden Age furnished fruits in abundance and that agriculture was in plentiful (Statesman, 272b). The later ages in contrast declined in their happiness and by the time of the Iron Age which started prior the 8th century BC, all was non-perfect and miserable.
The ancient Greek poet Hesiod in his Work and Days wrote prior to his era (8th century BC which he named the Iron Age) there were three main ages which declined in their perfectness. Hesiod wrote that during the Golden Age of Kronos, mankind:
first of all was of gold
in the time of Kronos
they lived like Gods, with carefree heart, remote from toil and misery. - Work and Days, 109
This idea of the original age of man being peaceful, harmonious and superior is repeated in numerous other pieces of ancient Greek literature, as well as traditions across the globe. According to Plato, the original man was thought to be gold, but not literally. Plato in his dialogue Cratylus (397e) clarified that the original race of man Hesiod described was gold in the sense it was good, noble and long lasting (according to Hesiod men of the Golden age lived long lives, around 1000 years or more).
So according to the belief of the ancient Greeks, and later the Romans the Golden Age or Age of Kronos (the original superior age of harmony), the Silver Age (the age of Olympians after Kronos was dethroned), Bronze Age and Heroic Age all existed before the 8th century BC and the Heroic Age most likely over-lapped the Silver and Bronze Ages, eventually ending sometime before the 8th century BC - before the Iron Age. During the Silver Age, mankind started to get impetuous and lost their wisdom, they became inferior and according to Hesiod they lived shorter lives then they did during the Golden Age (around a hundred and twenty years). Mankind also got even inferior intellectually during this age, especially by violence and arrogance. The final Iron Age, which began prior to the 8th century BC, is the worst age, the age of vice, corruption and decay.
Hesiod even wrote how he didnt want to live in the Iron Age, and that he had wished he had been born in an earlier age!
(a) Golden Age - Age of the Titans, men lived amongst the elder Gods uncorrupted in a superior state, they were ruled by the Titan Kronos. The Roman equivalent to Kronos was Saturn and they called the Golden Age the Saturnian Age.
(b) Silver Age - Age of Olympians, men during this age were inferior to that of the Golden Age, and lived shorter lives, only around 120 years in age.
(c) Bronze Age - During this age, man became even more corrupt via warfare.
(d) Iron Age Age of Vice and misery, the current age.
(e) Heroic Age Overlapping Age, the age of quests and heroes, not given a specific time boundary, but most likely overlapped from Silver to Bronze Age.
The Biblical Golden Age
The Biblical Book of Daniel (2: 31-40) references Hesiods age of man by describing a statue with the superior metals at the top and descending in order, and the decadence of mankind associated with these metals - thee shall arise another kingdom inferior to thee.
The fall of man in the Bible, is contained in the early Book of Genesis and relates to the transition of Adam and Eve from a superior obedient state in the Garden of Eden to an inferior state of disobedience.
In short summary man in the earliest era, the Golden Age, were closest to their creator. Cicero, a pagan in his De Legibus (X.XI) wrote exactly this:
The ancient times came very close to the Gods.
Tradition vs Modernity
Is there any scientific or archeological evidence to support the Golden Age and the recent creation of the earth?
Such questions have two possible approaches.
(a) Traditional
(b) Modern
The ancients of course went by a traditional approach; their answers would have been based on mythology, legends, and historical writings.
In contrast the modern approach is rooted in no established records, only modern scientific theories i.e. Darwinism and Uniformitarianism. Both these modern theories, assert life emerged millions or even billions of years ago, and through a gradualist process evolved. But nowhere in any ancient or traditional writing do we see such a bizarre idea as this! Commenting on this, the radical traditionalist and esoteric writer Julius Evola (1898 1974) wrote the following, comparing Darwinism or the theory of evolution with the beliefs of traditional ancient man:
Although modern man until recently has viewed and celebrated the meaning of the history known to him as epitomizing progress and evolution, the truth as professed by traditional man is quite the opposite.''
''In all ancient testimonies of traditional humanity it is possible to find, in various forms, the idea of a regression or fall; from originally higher states.
Evola was correct, only considerably recently has man started to trade their traditional beliefs and values for Darwinism. The doctrine of the four ages (Golden, Silver, Bronze and Iron) is completely the opposite as Evola noted to the theory of evolution. Regarding what the traditional ancients based their evidence on, mostly myths, Evola wrote the following:
To uphold with Tradition that in the beginning there were no animal like cavemen, but rather more-than-human beings, and that in ancient prehistory there was no civilization but an era of gods, this too many people - who in one way of the other believe in the gospel of Darwinism amounts to pure and simple mythology. Since I have not invented the mythology myself, however, critics still have to explain its existence, that is, the fact that according to the most ancient testimonies and writings there is no evidence to support evolutionism, what is found in them instead is the opposite, in other words, the recurrent idea of a better
superhuman (divine) past.
Again Evola was correct, Darwinists dispel mythology, ancient tales etc yet at the same time cant explain why they were constructed.
De-evolution vs. Evolution
Man thus has become inferior as time progressed.
This theory is de-evolution, but it does not imply huge physical alterations but instead mental ones. Man has always looked like man, since the beginning of his creation by God, however during earlier ages, such as the Golden Age he was taller according to myths and also lived a greater age.
In all mythological accounts across the world, and from religious texts, primordial man is always described as having a superior lifespan and often as having been taller.
Darwin's theory of evolution is monumental error, man has not evolved!
