Secrets of Ancient America: Archaeoastronomy and the Legacy of the Phoenicians, Celts, and Other Forgotten Explorers
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According to Tedlock’s translation of the Popol Vuh, the astronomical Place of the Ball Game Sacrifice where Hun Hunahpú’s skull was hung is located at the intersection of the ecliptic and the Milky Way in Sagittarius.7 The cross is the “crossroads” that spoke as mentioned in the journey of the Twins, and it factors into Jenkins’s reconstruction of the astronomical alignment. What he found was a basic paradigm very similar to what Brennan discovered in the solstice chamber at Newgrange—the deeper meaning of the union of male and female energies that engender a cosmic renewal. In “Alignment 2012,” Jenkins explained:
The concept of Father Sun being reborn at the end of the age is very similar to the events in Maya Creation mythology (the Popol Vuh) in which First Father/ One Hunahpú is reborn in the underworld ballcourt. The ballgame metaphor, too, encodes the alignment. If we look at accepted notions of ballgame symbolism, we learn that it is basically about the rebirth of the sun on the temporal levels of day, year, and World Age. The sun is reborn daily at dawn, yearly at the December solstice, and, in terms of World Ages, on December 21, 2012—when the December solstice sun aligns with the Galactic Plane, which is the precession cycle’s “finish line.” The dark-rift that lies along this plane is the “goal” toward which the December solstice sun, as the gameball, moves over many millennia. In this way, the Maya conceived of the gameball going into the goal-ring as a replication of cosmic time’s end-game.
In his 1998 book Maya Cosmogenesis 2012 and in his essays for the Center for 2012 Studies, Jenkins decoded how the galactic alignment was embedded into many of the core traditions of the Maya.8 These interpretations resulted from his study of Izapa, an early Mayan site in southern Mexico. Many scholars had acknowledged that this location was involved in the formulation of the Long Count calendar, but it was Jenkins who found the key to its underlying archaeoastronomy features; that is, Izapa’s ballcourt lines up with the December solstice sunrise azimuth, which is when the iconography on its carved monuments comes into play. At that time, a solar godhead emerges from a throne on the west end of the ball court and faces the rising solstice sun. The event symbolizes a cosmological birth.
However, not unlike other independent researchers working in archaeoastronomy, Jenkins has been maligned by the establishment scholars, as many critics sought to denigrate and dismiss his work rather than assess the presented evidence rationally, at face value. Thus, he was frequently conflated with much of the doomsday hype in the 2012 marketplace, despite his long-held interpretation that the ancient Maya thought about 2012 as a period-ending renewal. We see this kind of treatment time and time again, especially in how the New History investigators are received by establishment scholars who are committed to isolationism and the dogmas of the Old History.
THE HIDDEN SIGN LANGUAGE OF THE MAYA
In addition to the archaeoastronomical accomplishments of the Maya, further age-old mysteries are revealed in Brennan’s book The Hidden Maya. He explains that the Mayan system of counting originates from the hand, with five being the basic ordering principle.9 This idea evolved into a system of hand signing to communicate ideas and concepts, not just numbers. But how was he to crack the meaning of these hand signs that are displayed in thousands of Mayan frescos, stone carvings, and ceramic vases?
The traditions of the tribes in North America affirm that their sign language had originated in Mexico, and Brennan thought it was possible to use this language to penetrate into the meaning of the unknown hand signs of the ancient Maya. He decided to examine their cylindrical ceramic vessels that contain elaborate painted scenes. This work was made possible by a photographic technique developed by New York photographer Justin Kerr, which used special cameras with vertical slit apertures mounted on turntables. The resulting corpus of photographs opened up a doorway to Mesoamerican art researchers and students, including Brennan.
Fig. 5.2. Drawing of a Mayan cylindrical vase from the Copan site in western Honduras. (From Brennan, The Hidden Maya, 243)
Brennan realized in reviewing the details of scores of Mayan vases three tiers of communication are being conveyed—the obvious picture story portrayed by actors, the artistically drawn Mayan glyphs, and the hand signs used to reinforce actions of the actors. He surmised that only royalty and scribes could understand the glyphs, while the commoners relied on the hand-signing images to better comprehend the messages being conveyed by the artisans. This is much in the way that peasants of the European Middle Ages came to understand the Christian message via its images in churches, since the rituals were carried on in Latin. Although Brennan used post-Mayan Native American sign languages from North America to crack the hand-signing code, ritualistic and symbolic hand gestures called mudras were being used in Buddhism and Hinduism long before the Maya came into existence.10 In India, there are 108 mudra hand positions used in worship and dance. Mudras also appear in Asian kung fu and in Christian iconography.11
Brennan supplied many examples of what he had learned about the drawings and paintings on the vases and plates, explaining that the images were not merely static pieces of art but instead were also moving pictures. They were “the great mother of communications.”
Fig. 5.3. A mudra hand position from India.
Fig. 5.4. The Resurrection of the Sun God (plate painting). In order to generate life from the death skull, Xbalanqué, who is named and depicted on the right, pours forth itz, the sacred essence of being, from a jar. (From Brennan, The Hidden Maya, 250)
One of the great masterpieces of Mayan art is a painted ritual plate of the sun god resurrected as the corn god, and it is a chi hand gesture that predominates in the action. As previously told, after defeating the lords of death in the underworld, the Hero Twins attempted to bring their decapitated father, Hun Hunahpú, back to life (or at least to a “half-life”) before asking him about his skull. This was done largely through the magical power of mudra because the chi hands displayed by Hunahpú resonate with the chi hand extended by his father located in the center between the Hero Twins, thus creating a magnetic tension in a field of energy.
Fig. 5.5. Hand-sign drawing. The left hand when inverted carries the phonetic value “ye.” To evoke the “ch” sound for the right hand the artist borrows from a hand sign that carries the phonetic value chi. (Martin Brennan, The Hidden Maya, 17)
Behind the group of figures, the death skull within the turtle carapace symbolizes the seed that must die to generate the living corn plant. This emergence of life from the turtle carapace is compared to dawn with chi hands, evoking the regenerative powers of the sun and its triumphant appearance after a perilous journey through the underworld.
Moreover, out of the left side of the turtle carapace emerges Uo, the frog god, who represents the moon and is symbolic of the element water. Hun Hunahpú, “First Father,” appears to spring from the frog god’s headdress. The frog’s ear contains the sign of the god of the number seven, the heart of heaven, and from the right side Yahaute, the lord of the tree, issues forth. The central theme of the painting is rebirth and the triumph of life over death.12
CHICHÉN ITZÁ’S EQUINOX SERPENT
During the 1970s, I traveled extensively throughout Mexico and visited some of the major ruins, including Palenque and then Chichén Itzá. Thirty years later, and after a year of studies with Brennan, my newfound interests in the Maya and their calendar led me back to the Yucatán Peninsula.
My excitement grew as I approached the archaeological park alone on the first day. I had learned from a previous excursion fifteen years earlier that the Mayan name Chichén Itzá means “at the mouth of the well of the Itza.” This refers to the Cenote Sagrado, or “Sacred Well,” one of two large natural sink-holes that were formed because all the rivers in Yucatán run underground. Some artifacts at the site are two thousand years old, and the location was in use at least six thousand years earlier. Into it, the early Maya sacrificed objects and human beings for their rain god Chaac, and around A.D. 400 they began building a city nearby, which, however
, was abandoned around A.D. 1000 for unknown reasons.
Fig. 5.6. El Castillo at Chichén Itzá, probably the most famous Mayan archaeological site, is located in the northern center of the Yucatán Peninsula. (Photo by Jaakko Sakari Reinikainen)
As with other ancient cultures, the buildings, pyramids, temples, and other large stoneworks of the Maya were based on celestial alignments. Thus, the Maya integrated the macro into the micro in their architecture, replicating the relationships of celestial bodies in their buildings and temples.
In 1875, British-American photographer and antiquarian Augustus Le Plongeon and his wife Alice visited Chichén Itzá and afterward spent decades trying to prove that the Mayan cosmologies and architecture had come from the Egyptians. Their single-minded quest included ten months at Chichén Itzá over two seasons, and there were some significant discoveries, including a reclining sculpture called a chacmol. These sculptures are now called chac mools, but their meaning is still unknown.13 However his theory of a direct connection between the Egyptians and the Maya has been largely discredited by the establishment and his achievements diminished.
Fig. 5.7. Augustus Le Plongeon excavated one of the first chac mool sculptures at Chichén Itzá. This circa 1875 photo shows Le Plongeon and the chac mool, with his wife Alice standing in background. (Photo from Stephen Salisbury Jr., Project Gutenberg)
THE AZTEC QUETZALCOATL AND THE MAYAN KUKULCÁN
Quetzalcoatl, according to many Aztec legends, was a light-skinned, bearded god-king who sprinkled his blood on some human bones in the Toltec underworld and thus created the Aztec race. Another mythical rendering, since the name Quetzalcoatl means “feathered serpent,” unites the magnificent green-plumed quetzal bird that symbolizes the air element of the heavens with a snake that symbolizes the Earth. These are the fertility symbols that ultimately created civilization.
Fig. 5.8. Quetzalcoatl, the “Feathered Serpent,” is the Aztec name for the ancient Mesoamerican feathered-serpent deity. In this photo from Mexico he is a triple deity: bird, serpent, and man.
In another of the Aztec versions of the Quetzalcoatl story, he became drunk through the trickery of the evil god Tezcatlipoca, who wanted people to make bloodier sacrifices than the flowers, jade, and butterflies they had offered to his rival. The drunken Quetzalcoatl then violated the laws he had himself established by committing incest with his sister. In self-punishment, he exiled himself and set off across the Gulf of Mexico on a raft of snakes. There he was burned by the sun, and his heart became Venus, the morning star, but as he arose into the sky ablaze, he vowed to return one day to rule again and destroy his enemies. Based on this legend, the Aztecs welcomed the Spanish conqueror Hernán Cortés as the returning Quetzalcoatl in 1519.
However, in the Mayan version Quetzalcoatl takes his place in their pantheon under the name Kukulcán. According to legend this was after he too had departed on the sea and returned, in this case, to build Chichén Itzá and its largest structure, the temple named after him but now called El Castillo (the Castle). As with other Mesoamerican structures, it was built on top of an earlier site of worship, and at its top is a temple that contained a chac mool and a red jaguar throne with inlaid jade spots. This is where Kukulcán appears at every equinox in a dramatic solar shadow display on the pyramid, which is attended by thousands of visitors every year.
At the rising and setting of the sun, the corner of the structure casts a shadow along the west side of the north staircase, and this shadow moves down the side of the pyramid, portraying Kukulcán as a massive serpent snaking down the pyramid.
Fig. 5.9. Chichén Itzá on the spring equinox. The undulating triangles of light that dance on the back of the colossal serpent are connected to the massive stone snake heads at the base of the stairs. (Photo by ATSZ56)
Fig. 5.10. The Caracol observatory at Chichén Itzá. The Maya used the Caracol observatory to track three Venus alignments, other planets, and the Pleiades.
The Kukulcán structure was also designed to reflect the essence of the Mayan calendar. Each of the four sides has steep staircases of ninety-one steps to the top platform. If one includes the top platform as a step, this adds up to 365, one for each day of the year. The nine main platforms of the pyramid represent the levels of the Mayan underworld, and the fifty-two panels in the upper temple represent the fifty-two-year calendar round. There are also alignments at Chichén Itzá relating to Venus, the Pleiades, and the moon, and a structure called the Caracol was built to observe them.*12
INFLUENCES FROM AFRICA AND ASIA?
Keeping in mind the above discussions, we must realize that prior to the Mayan ascendancy, from about 1200 B.C. to 400 B.C., a group called the Olmecs had built an empire that included large cities, temple building, and calendar keeping. They also began to use astronomical orientations to direct the layout of several ceremonial centers where they constructed pyramids oriented to observe the sun and moon. But where did the Olmec come from? Based on the distinctly Negroid colossal stone heads they left behind, it is quite evident to many investigators that they originated from Africa.*13 15
Fig. 5.11. An Olmec head in the Denver Art Museum’s permanent exhibit on Mesoamericans, Denver, Colorado. Both the monumental head sculptures and jewelry-sized stone Olmec “head beads” emphasize the Negroid features of the Olmecs.14
Osteology (the study of bones), numismatic studies (the study of coins) and epigraphy, along with DNA evidence16 have created much controversy about the Olmecs’ origins, while many questions linger, including the source of their language, calendar, and counting systems.17 Yet in spite of the contrary evidence uncovered to date, the mainstream archaeopriests’ consensus is still that the Olmecs were indigenous to the region.
However, while the Maya likely inherited some calendrics and writing from the Olmecs, the origins of the later Maya are less clear, and I remain unconvinced that there can be a single indigenous explanation. For example, the best evidence of a Chinese influence in Mesoamerica is provided by the similarity of specific artistic motifs, including the cosmic duality yin/yang symbols and flying serpents. These appeared during the late Olmec and Mayan preclassical periods from 500 B.C. to A.D. 200 and are found in Olmec cultures, but most notably in early Mayan symbols. In Nu Sun: Asian-American Voyages, 500 B.C., Gunnar Thompson tabulated thirteen artistic motifs derived from the tens of thousands of artifacts he examined that show striking similarities between East Asia and Mesoamerica.18 He also suggests this trans-Pacific contact began arriving from China on the southwest coast of Mexico around 500 B.C., the era of the Zhou dynasty (1046–256 B.C.) in China. Since it had taken thousands of years for Asian symbols to evolve in Asia, he feels that the sudden appearance of thirteen specific symbols so closely resembling their Chinese counterparts cannot be attributed to independent invention or random situations. Additional evidence connecting Mesoamerica and Asia as documented by Thompson and others is provided in chapter 15.
Fig. 5.12. Four symbols that Gunnar Thompson speculates arrived in Mesoamerica from Asia (Gunnar Thompson, Nu Sun, table 2).
Fig. 5.13. Similar serpent motifs from Asia (left) and Mexico (right) indicate Old World cultural diffusion to America (Gunnar Thompson, American Discovery)
INFLUENCES FROM INDIA?
While the Olmec glyphs have still not been translated, systems of hieroglyphic Mayan writing in the codices have been, and they demonstrate how astronomy was interwoven throughout Mayan culture, architecture, mythologies, and religion, just as it had been in India and even in Le Plongeon’s discredited Egypt. Was there a connection through diffusion?
Most obvious is the famous and interesting close correspondence between the beginning of the thirteen-baktun cycle of the Mayan Long Count on August 11, 3114 B.C., and the start date of the Hindu Kali Yuga. According to the Surya Siddhanta and calculating back using the Julian calendar, the Kali Yuga began at midnight on February 18, 3102 B.C. Using the Gregorian calendar, it began on January 14, 3102 B.C., and by both counts, it will last 4
32,000 years. It is also accepted that the dynastic Egyptians began their calendar around 3100 B.C., and these similarities seem to be not a mere coincidence. Donald Alexander Mackenzie (1873–1936) expresses these thoughts in his Myths of Pre-Columbian America. He wrote, “The doctrine of the World’s Ages (from Hindu Yugas) was imported into Pre-Columbian America . . . the Mexican sequence is identical with the Hindus. The essential fact remains that they were derived from a common source. . . . It would be ridiculous to assert that such a strange doctrine was of spontaneous origin in different parts of the Old and New Worlds.”19
So as I observed different influences on Mesoamerican art, I found it difficult to understand where the Maya originated. It was therefore quite remarkable that I met someone who thought he did. As so often is the case, the meeting was propitious in timing and good fortune, shining light on the path I was seeking to travel. It was my fortune to meet V. Ganapati Sthapati (1927–2011), a famous master of traditional temple building from southern India, who had traveled to Chichén Itzá in March of 1995, serendipitously when I was also there.