Santa and the Penguins

Approximately 30,000 years ago, man started migrating from the African cradle of civilization. A huge portion of mankind went toward the lands now known as China and India.

A large portion of those people traveled further, following a long and winding land bridge to an incredible fertile place they called Australia. This land had no deserts, only beautiful greenery and attractive temperate climate. This land came to be the most populated area on earth. Culture grew, with the first human developments in philosophy and creative literature and science.

The Australians developed large ships before the other populations of the world, and eventually started reaching beyond its shores toward the nearby Indonesian islands in one direction, and , in the other direction, the cold and forbidding place they called Antarctica.

Their voyaging came with a precise knowledge of the heavens above, as star charts became indispensable to sea travel. They noted that the stars seemed to revolve around a fixed point above Antarctica. They called this the North Celestial Axis. Anybody facing this celestial axis was said to be facing “North”. The opposite direction -- toward Indonesia, was called “South”

Maps got larger in size, representing larger and larger areas, as the Australians knowledge grew. The top of the map was always the North direction, with the useless Antarctic land mass at the top.

Eventually the world was proven to be spherical, with navigators sailing around it in every direction.

Globes were manufactured, now accurately showing what the world looked like. Some globes were mounted so as to be spinned, on a 23 ½ degree axis, to imitate the now-known rotation of the earth.

As a simple expansion of the “map” idea, the globe had Antarctica at the top. Some referred to the area as the North Pole, and the fabled character called Santa Claus was said to live there, with thousands of penguin-elves helping make toys for the children of the world.

In the 18th Century, models of the solar system were drawn, Planetariums were built to represent the earth and other planets moving around the sun. Conveniently, the nine planets moved around the sun on the same plane, together describing a “disc” spinning like a record. The visible side of the record, with the turntable needle on it, showed the North side of all the planets. Including of course, Antarctica, Australia, and the northern part of Africa.

The rotation of the earth demanded a corresponding celestial axis point on the other end of the earth, and it turned out to be a watery area, covered by an ice cap. There was a solitary star located exactly on the Southern axis, thus called the South Star. The Southern half of the heavens had some of the most attractive constellations, like Orion and the Big Dipper. Primitive peoples were found far south, among them the Eskimos, Siberians, and Scandinavians. They were said to be living “Down Under” , and the Scandinavian pop group ABBA had a hit song by that title in 1983.

Space satellites eventually provided photographic proof of what the earth looked like. The Australians had it exactly right. Beautiful photos were produced of Antarctic North Pole area, with Australia just to the south of it, Indonesia further south, past the equator, China, the Siberian “Down Under” area, and the South polar icecap.

In the year 2750, a spaceship from a faraway galaxy approached the solar system, and saw it exactly as earthlings had pictured it. They saw a “disc” of planets rotating the sun. One of the aliens wondered if they were looking at the “A” side or the “B” side of the disc. The answer of course, was that it didn’t matter.