by Freddy Silva
Might this also explain the idea behind the curious H-blocks scattered about Puma Punku? Was the Breath of God literally and symbolically bestowed onto the walls of this temple?
The H-symbol also forms the underlying design of Mayan ball courts, where initiates were taught the secrets of the Cosmos in the ultimate game of life, death and rebirth, also referred to as the Game of the Gods. Never were the ball courts intended for blood sports, as any respected Mayan elder will inform.45 The reference to death is metaphoric, it alludes to the symbolic death of the initiate leading to the resurrection of the spiritual self. This is why ball courts — the most exceptional example being Chichen Itza— are lined with friezes depicting the motions of the planets, the Tree of Knowledge, the creation of the world, and other sacred teachings. They also incorporate some of the best sonics known to architecture, along with angles synonymous with the motions of the Earth. Such details are obviously at odds with the theory erroneously expounded by western academics.46
Which brings us to a striking carving in Enclosure D at Göbekli Tepe, what appear to be three containers in a row along the top of cryptic Pillar 43. It has been a mystery up until now as to what these might represent. The Waitaha narrative provides working proof of the function of these unusual receptacles. Called kete (basket), they represent the container into which all tribal knowledge is deposited; the word is still used by Maori wisdom keepers. Therefore an individual who holds the kete is a wisdom keeper, and this truth aligns perfectly with images of wisdom keepers from Sumeria to Mesoamerica who are pictured holding the exact same vessel.
One of the most fabulous archaeological discoveries in the Olmec world concerns a unique stela of what ancient alien theorists adamantly believe to be an astronaut riding a space capsule, except the capsule is in fact a rattlesnake. But that's not the real riddle here, for in his hand this 'astronaut' — who incidentally appears to be wearing either a beard or a stylized snake helmet or both — holds exactly the same container. A close look at the rattlesnake's head reveals a feathered crown, a feature also depicted on the head of Sumerian zoomorphic, falcon-headed figures called Apkallu (sages), the title given to a group of seven antediluvian emissaries entrusted with bringing the civilizing arts to humanity following the flood.
Long, slim fingers and navels: pillar, Nevali Çori; Göbekli Tepe; a moai.
Containers of wisdom: Pillar 43; Apkallu sage; Quetzcoatl stela, La Venta.
Hardly surprising, then, that the Apkallu are regularly depicted standing beside the Tree of Life and the Tree of Knowledge, picking fruit with one hand and holding a banduddû in the other — the same container held by our Olmec astral-naut, and carved on Pillar 43 at Göbekli Tepe.
Bearded kings such as Ashunarsipal are shown on Sumerian panels standing beside the Tree of Knowledge, banduddû in one hand, while the other points directly at the Creator God Ahura Mazda inside his winged disc. Obviously anyone holding the container of knowledge was awarded a privileged position since the object marks its owner as an individual who has gained access to transcendental information possessed and revealed by the gods. Mesopotamian friezes and clay seals depict the first Apkallu — the aforementioned bearded fish-man U-annu (later transliterated to Ou-anna and Oannes) — holding the banduddû in one hand and a scroll bearing godly information in the other.
It stands to reason that the kete carved on Pillar 43 at Göbekli Tepe not only identifies the site as a location where the gods deposited the same knowledge — for which it was elevated to the status of Navel of the Earth, umbilical cord of Osiris — it also represents the oldest expression of this symbol, one that has been promulgated from the Middle East to Central America for over 12,000 years.
EVIDENCE LIES SIDEWAYS
Besides demonstrating the existence of an antediluvian culture with links around the world, the beauty of Göbekli Tepe is how effortlessly it inverts the accepted academic model concerning the ascent of humanity from rudimentary experimentation to highly complex civilization, because on this remote mountaintop in Anatolia these oldest of structures appear fully developed, complex and megalithic, without development or precedent, before devolving over time. By way of analogy, it is like a group of scientists developing space rockets only to end up with fireworks.
The answer to anomalous places such as this, to paraphrase the late Egyptologist John Anthony West, is simple: such civilizations were not developments but legacies.
But there is one further mystery at Göbekli Tepe and it literally lies on the other side of the hill, where the stones were quarried and fashioned from the bedrock. There is something eerie about a 20-foot T-pillar lying on the ground, still partly attached to the bedrock, waiting to be fully detached, polished and transported. It is as though something interrupted the work in-progress and destiny took a different course.
The reason I find it unsettling is because the situation is repeated far too often at key megalithic sites — such as the string of abandoned monoliths meant for Ollantaytambo; or gargantuan rectangular monoliths left idly in a quarry in Lebanon, meant for the temple of Baalbek. Like an abandoned moai, there’s a certain melancholy looking at these recumbent stones because it seems their journey was abruptly curtailed by some uninvited astral event.
6. POLYNESIAN BLONDES AND ANDEAN REDHEADS
One wonders how the early Waitaha felt when coming face-to-face with people so different to themselves — flood heroes such as Kiwa, offspring of the Urukehu, with their light skin, golden or red hair and blue or green eyes? Probably much the same as early Europeans did when first exploring North America, perplexed by the rich traditions and myriad languages they discovered as they made contact with what they'd been led to believe were savages. After all, wasn’t this supposed to be the uninhabited New World?
What fascinated them most was a tribe of indigenous people who looked positively Caucasian. In 1738 the French Canadian trader Sieur de la Verendrye, traveling along the Missouri River in the Dakotas, sent back reports of the Mandan tribe, whom he described as fair-skinned, with red or blonde hair and blue or grey eyes. The women in particular were distinctly Nordic in appearance, and aside from clothing, they were indistinguishable.
Within fifty years of contact, the tribe was decimated by smallpox. When the explorers Lewis and Clark visited the Mandan in 1804 they were again described as “half-white, peaceful, civilized, courteous, and polite.” The pictorial historian George Catlin spent several months drawing and painting the Mandan in 1832. He too was struck by their Europeaness and how they were more advanced compared to neighboring tribes: “They are a very interesting and pleasing people in their personal appearance and manners, differing in many respects, both in looks and customs, from all the other tribes I have seen. So forcibly have I been struck with the peculiar ease and elegance of these people, together with their diversity of complexions, the various colors of their hair and eyes; the singularity of their language, and their peculiar and unaccountable customs, that I am fully convinced that they have sprung from some other origin than that of the other North American Tribes, or that they are an amalgam of natives with some civilized race.”1
The Mandan’s tribal myth is particularly enlightening given how they lived in the high plains, far from major bodies of open water, yet claimed in no uncertain terms to be descended from a strange white man who appeared aboard a canoe in ancient times after an enormous flood wiped out everything in sight. He taught them agriculture, domestication of animals and all the civilizing arts.2
Mandan was the name given to Verendrye by his guides, a simplification of Mayadana, however, the tribespeople collectively referred to themselves as Numakaki (People by the River). I couldn't help ruminating on this name and how it sounds like a corruption of Anunaki, People of Anu, antediluvian gods of Mesopotamia said to have descended from heaven and maintained a lineage of divine kings and queens long after the flood.
The Mandan or Mayadana.
Numakaki shares no obvious linguistic connection with
Anunaki, but Mayadana does, since it incorporates the syllable ana, a recognized variant of anu. Since each group existed on opposite sides of the world I wasn't sure what to make of the relationship, if one exists at all, until I was introduced to a gentleman from an island few outside the central Pacific have heard of, which was to remind me of how western preconceptions of ancient civilizations are often incorrect.
THE ANU OF TONGAREVA
Tongareva is an atoll with a circumference of forty-eight miles enclosing an azure lagoon. Nine degrees south of the equator and two hundred miles from its nearest neighbor in the Cook Islands group, it is literally in the middle of the Pacific Ocean and sits atop the highest submarine volcano, 16,000 feet from the ocean floor. Tongareva means ‘island floating in space’, and seen from space it looks exactly like the name implies.
There are 213 people living on the island today. Teokotai Andrew is a descendent of one of the oldest families and has been given responsibility for safeguarding his ancestors’ genealogies and oral traditions. He is quite possibly the tribes’ sole surviving wisdom keeper. "We have links with Teiwanaku and Te titi o Motu taiko i titikaka," he said, referring to Tiwanaku and Lake Titicaca. "Peru is the homeland of my ancestors, my people come from a lady called Punaruku who is from Puno."3
Puno to Tongareva is a six thousand-mile excursion. Not surprisingly I was keen to hear what else Teokotai had to share regarding Tongaveran tradition, handed down from generation to generation. As curious researchers find, if you ask politely and demonstrate good intentions, people in Teokotai's position are generous with their time and accumulated knowledge, and the stories inevitably paint a picture that diverges dramatically from the one promoted by academics, especially as they were directly experienced by people who lived thousands of years closer to the events. For that reason alone I view such accounts as more reliable.
During our conversations Teokotai informed me about "an island disappearing in the sea, we call it Motu Taiko [the land that disappears and re-appears], it used to exist in the vicinity of the Cook Islands. My ancestors left Motu Taiko after the flood covered the island, in search of a very similar landscape with water around it. One tribe who arrived in Tongareva from Motu Taiko were called Titi, or Maori, they had blonde and red hair, fair-skinned, blue eyes and green eyes. In our language maori means ‘fair skinned voyager’.”4 Many Tongarevans still bear such physiognomy.
I thought for one excited second that the story of the disappearing island referred to the great deluge, but it turns out this particular event took place in the ancient past rather than the remote past, and climatic data shows a notable sea level rise of twenty-six feet occurred between 3200-2500 BC, enough to drown many of the Pacific’s low-lying islands. This is the epoch described in the tradition. Naturally it caused a migration to Tongareva, as Teokotai explains: "They were called the people of Tupenaki or Tupenake, also known as Anunaki or Anunake, they came from Saupewa [Mesopotamia]. The Titi/Maori people from Motu Taiko and the Tupenake all met in Tongareva, intermarried, and together became Hare Vananga [House of Knowledge].”5
This was quite a revelation. The Anunaki are believed to have been singularly involved in Mesopotamia, if one accepts the conventional argument, and their association with the great flood places them in the same region much earlier, in the period of the Younger Dryas. The Tongareva tradition demonstrates the lineage continued for another 6000 years, and whereas the Anunaki have always been described as gods, Tongarevans bring them down to earth. According to Teokotai, "most historical facts about the Tupenaki/Anunake are exaggerated. They are not gods but normal people, great sages, star navigators and intelligent human beings.”6
Of course it all depends on one's definition of a god. In ancient times the term applied to any individual capable of understanding and bending the laws of nature. But the bigger questions on my mind were, what would have driven a group of sages in the Middle East to travel all the way to a remote island in the middle of the Pacific? And how could the Anunaki still be living some six thousand years after the flood?
The first thing to examine is their possible reason for migrating. The Pacific was not the only place affected by rising seas 5000 years ago, Mesopotamia too was subjected to a significant incursion of the ocean, validating the Tongareva narrative; an earlier incursion of the sea c.8600 BC led to the creation of the Persian Gulf. Still, if I were living in Mesopotamia in 2600 BC my natural impulse would have been to move inland, not take off to the middle of the ocean. Clearly something possessed the Anunaki to undertake a 9000-mile sea voyage, and the most rational explanation is they already had an established presence in such a remote region going back to prehistoric times.
I wondered if there might be a connection between the Anunaki and the red haired Urukehu who once arrived in Easter Island from the direction of Tiwanaku. This is where Teokotai dropped another bombshell: "The flood is recorded in my ancestor's chants, stories and tradition. My remote ancestors came from Te Pitaka, a circular island with water around it, which was situated in Te Piupiu o Nahari Kiokura [Arabian Peninsula]. This was around the time of the flood, but that land today bears no resemblance to what it looked like then, there is virtually no trace of it. They came via Teiwanaku, well after the flood. We have proof in our stories and chants as well as ancestral genealogical names from those areas. Te Pitaka was also the ancient name of Tongareva, so that the people remembered their original homeland.”7
A missing land of the gods in the vicinity of the Arabian Peninsula? This is a revolutionary upturning of history, to say the least.
The Tongavera tradition not only places the Anunaki in the central Pacific c.3000 BC, it also claims the link extends back to the great flood, when they lived on an island somewhere in the region of what is today a vast desert. If they also journeyed westerly from Tiwanaku, ostensibly the Anunaki may be the same people as Viracocha and his seven white-skinned, red-haired Shining Ones, least of all because the same description of the Anunaki is given in post-flood Mesopotamia: seven sages (apkallu) led by a charismatic leader appear from the sea, depicted as half-human half-fish and nicknamed Shining Ones. Both groups were tall and bearded. We could just as well be describing the Urukehu, in fact it looks as though these once disparate groups of gods now appear to be one and the same people.
There exists a monument in the hills of Abu Dhabi that may provide the link in this Andean-Pacific-Mesopotamian connection. It is said to be a burial site from c.3000 BC, but the basis for the date is purely speculative. Sited in the town of Al Ayin, it is a round structure, 36-feet in diameter by 14-feet in height, buried in dirt until 1967, after which it was faithfully restored; the thickness and slope angle of the walls suggest it may have once been much taller, perhaps a tower. If visitors from Tiwanaku were taken here blindfolded they would assume they’d never left the Andes, because the design and method of construction are identical to the flood-era megalithic temples around Lake Titicaca, in fact it bears a resemblance to the chullpas, the round towers at Silustani and Cutimbo. Both the Al Ayin enclosure and the chullpas feature the same tiny entrance aligned to the equinox, and both have been mistaken for tombs (the chullpas were shown in my book The Lost Art of Resurrection to have been originally used for a restricted initiation ritual).8
Al Ayin chamber masonry identical to Easter Island ahu, and Andean chullpas.
It would seem the same culture built the same monuments, in the same style, in the same era on two separate continents. And if you throw in the numerous ahu of Easter Island, Tahiti, Tinian, Tonga and Fiji we are left with an unbroken megalithic fingerprint stretching in a band from the high Andes, across the Pacific to the Middle East.
BUILDER GODS IN THE PACIFIC
When European explorers first ventured into the Pacific they were often astonished at the sight of megalithic structures on uninhabited islands, some accounts describing the stone platforms on Malden Island or Kiribati as indistinguishable from those in South America. The Marquesas — Hiva Oa, in particu
lar — were once filled with colossal ahu. The novelist Herman Melvile described them while marooned there: “One day in returning from this spring by a circuitous path, I came upon a scene which reminded me of Stonehenge... a series of vast terraces of stone rises, step by step, for a considerable distance up the hillside. These terraces cannot be less than one hundred yards in length and twenty in width. Their magnitude, however, is less striking than the immense size of the blocks composing them. Some of the stones, of an oblong shape, are from ten to fifteen feet in length, and five or six feet thick. Their sides are quite smooth, but though square, and of pretty regular formation, they bear no mark of the chisel. They are laid together without cement.... Kory-Kory, who was my authority in all matters of scientific research, gave me to understand that they were coeval with the creation of the world; that the great gods themselves were the builders.”9
On Tonga's main island, Tongatapu, there are three-tiered platforms called langi, made of megalithic slabs of limestone, with older sections made of basalt, closely fitted, featuring the type of L-shaped elbow design common to Saqsayhuaman and Egypt’s Valley Temple. Basalt is found nowhere near Tongatapu. Myth states such stone was moved by magic from the volcanic island of Uvea some six hundred miles away. There is also a massive, dolmen-style structure called Ha’amonga a Maui, made of eight-feet thick, fifteen-feet tall coral slabs, said to have been brought to the island by the god Maui on a giant canoe after raising the islands from below the ocean. Could this be the same Màui, grandson of the flood heroes, featured in the Waitaha narrative?
