For my first post, I want to show how the distant past, in areas that we often find unrelated to history can influence the present. In one of my discussions earlier this week, we were discussing the Nazis of Germany and the swastika came up. Where did it come from? Someone pointed out that the Nazis were not the first to use this symbol, but that it appears many places in the world and at many different times.

A very plausible explanation for this is the comet Encke. Comet Encke or Encke's Comet  is a periodic comet that completes an orbit of the Sunonce every three years — the shortest period of any known comet. It was first recorded by Pierre Méchain in 1786, but it was not recognized as a periodic comet until 1819 when its orbit was computed by Johann Franz Encke; like Halley's Comet, it is unusual in being named after the calculator of its orbit rather than its discoverer.

Its main characteristic is that its tail seems to have been disintegrating for a long time, creating a comet that looks like this:

Notice that the tail is really four arms that radiate out from the core.

When viewed head on, the comet looks like this:

In addition, the comet then rotates from time to time, creating tails that look like this:

Comets were often seen as omens or signs, and this comet, being rather unusual, would have attracted lots of attention from early astronomers.

As it would be seen around the world, it is natural that it would begin appearing in the art of civilizations.
This is how it appears to some civilizations.

So you can see, the German Nazis weren't the first to use this symbol.