Secrets of Ancient America: Archaeoastronomy and the Legacy of the Phoenicians, Celts, and Other Forgotten Explorers

by Carl Lehrburger

  My time with Sthapati was rushed, and his heavy Indian accent allowed me to understand only a fraction of what he sought to convey. Yet this small, quite elderly man was able to reveal the story of the Maya through his knowledge of what he called pre-Vedic writings in the Tamil language.

  Sthapati took pride in recounting his lineage of Tamil temple builders of southern India, which was steeped in the tradition of the ancient Bharata Desa spiritual culture. This made him one of the custodians of the science of Vaastu Shastra, the ancient Indian science of energy and matter, light and sound, time and space, and spatial forms. The original writings had been passed down to him, and he was thus an expert in the Aintiram, an ancient collection of writings in the Tamil language that were allegedly authored by a spiritual guide named Maayan.

  While there is controversy about the ages of Sanskrit and Tamil, Sthapati insisted that the Tamil language came first*14 and that the Mayan culture originated from Maayan.20 He taught me that Maayan was the “Man of the South,” who had authored a number of important books. The Mayamatam was a Vaastu Shastra text on art, architecture, and town planning; the Aintiram was about architectural philosophy, grammar, and cosmology; and the Surya Diddhanta the first-ever scientific treatise on astronomy. In other words, all of these books dealt with the supreme science of cosmology and how it was and is applied to architectural creations in the material world.21

  Fig. 5.14. V. Ganapati Sthapati (1927–2011) was a master temple builder and student of ancient Indian and Tamil sacred sciences. He is pictured here with the author in 2008. (Photo by Gerry Lehrburger)

  When I met Sthapati, he was quite adamant that the followers of Maayan taught the spiritual sciences to the Maya, including the “om” sound and the principles of light. Sthapati also taught that the common heritage goes beyond architecture—which of course he was an expert in—and that it embraced dress and hair styles, mudra hand signs as they appear in art and dances, and the appearance of numerous Shiva linga sculptures, along with similar imagery and iconography of gods and deities.22

  After Sthapati returned from his visit to the Americas, he talked about Chichén Itzá and Peru with Marcus Schmieke, founder of the Veda Institute in Kranzlin, Germany, halfway between Hamburg and Berlin. Schmieke reported:

  Not only is its plot based exactly on the same geometric matrix, the Vasatipurusha Mandala, but also its form is identical with the South Indian Vimana (temple domes) even in details. Furthermore, [in Peru] there are amazing similarities as to measurements. . . . Dr. Sthapati discovered that the South-Indian measure/rule (Kishku yardstick approx. 33 inch) was used mainly in the Peruvian region of Kushku. Residential buildings were also built strictly according to the principles of Vasati, as developed by Maya Danava. Its plots, position of doors and windows, proportions, form of roofs, inclination angles of roofs, diameter of columns, width of walls etc. are perfectly in accordance with the rules of Vasati, which are still applied in 60% of all houses built in India nowadays. . . . .In addition, also the techniques applied by the Maya to erect their buildings and to hammer their huge stones for temples and pyramids are identical to those still taught and applied by Dr. Sthapati today. They have been described by Maya Danava in his books on Vasati.

  [After discussing similar Mayan words for Kundalini and yoga] . . . . it is most interesting to investigate the connection between the Maya word Chilambalam which is the name for the temple room of the caste-pyramid Chichen Itza. . . The centre is formed by a square made of four squares, which corresponds to the Brahmasthana, the place of Brahma [with its strong divine energies] . . . . Both in the Vasati temples and in the Maya pyramids the most sacred place of the whole structure is located exactly in this square. The Mayas call this area Chilambalam, which means sacred room. This room is cubic and corresponds to the original form of room itself in Vasati. . . . Adhering to this principle, there is a Shiva-temple in South India in which the sacred room or the room of consciousness is being worshiped. This temple with immaculate proportions is called Chidambaram and ranks amongst the most famous Vasati temples of South India next to Shri Rangam. The same concept of the sacred room or hall of consciousness was called Chilambalam by the Mayas.23

  What else but intercontinental travel could explain these similarities in temple building, art, and mudra hand signs? Years later in California and the Great Basin I was to discover many other apparent links between the Indian subcontinent and the Americas, which I will chronicle in the coming chapters.

  6

  Sacred Sexuality at the Pathfinder Site

  The aging Bill McGlone was willing to share his decades of rock art experience with me, but I wasn’t sure why. Now I realize he was passing on a tradition. It’s not that I had an archaeological background or even many prospects for sticking with it. It was my sincerity and willingness to return again and again that made the difference.

  Fig. 6.1. Map of Colorado showing general location of the Pathfinder and other sites referenced in chapters 7, 8, and 9. Central Colorado Ogam Site (X), Pathfinder (P), Crack Cave (C), Sun Temple (S), Anubis Cave (A).

  MEETING BILL McGLONE IN COLORADO

  In 1996, with little resources to fall back on during harsh economic times in New England where I had been living, I made the decision to move back to my native Colorado.

  Upon arriving, I contacted William “Bill” McGlone, who lived in La Junta in southeastern Colorado to be near the canyons and subcanyons of the Purgatoire River. Because there was an abundance of game, water, and shelter, these canyons had been the breeding grounds for the telling and retelling of ancient stories of the tribes who retreated from harsh weather on the Plains during winter. Imagine ancient teachers during the long nights instructing the next generation, describing and inscribing on their rock walls the most sacred stories that were then spread throughout the nations of Plains Indians as these migratory people left the protective canyons every spring.

  I had picked up McGlone’s 1986 book, Ancient Celtic America, (coauthored with Phillip M. Leonard) at an annual convention of New England dowsers before moving to Colorado.1 It was fascinating and scholarly, with a focus on documenting the presence of ancient Celtic peoples in Colorado and Oklahoma thousands of years before Columbus, but it also addressed diffusion-ism in America. After this book, McGlone had coauthored Ancient American Inscriptions: Plow Marks or History? (1993), which incorporated material from the earlier Ancient Celtic America, along with Petroglyphs of Southeast Colorado and the Oklahoma Panhandle (1994). By the time I met him he was working on Archaeoastronomy of Southeast Colorado and the Oklahoma Panhandle, which eventually was published in 1999.2

  McGlone was painfully aware of the importance of Barry Fell’s research in revealing the New History of America, but being a methodical engineer type, he had severe difficulties with some of the methods that had been used. To address the discrepancies in Fell’s translations, in Ancient American Inscriptions he and his coauthors offered a systematic way of assessing the research, including recommendations for improving epigraphic methods and a rating system to determine the acceptability of epigraphic translations.

  In the summer of 1996, I was admittedly naïve about how to approach this seasoned rock art researcher by phone. In my excitement to speak with him, I had sought an invitation to join him on one of his rock art outings. McGlone was silent for a while. He seemed cautious and inquired into my motivation and interests in Old World rock art inscriptions. I carefully invoked Martin Brennan’s name, and after I explained my close association with the pioneering but reclusive researcher, McGlone surprised me by excitedly announcing, “I’ve been trying to meet Brennan for over a decade! If you agree to get him down here one day, I’ll help you out!”

  “Yes!” I said, just as excited. “It’s a deal!”

  Contact established, I became a fascinated student, especially after the ex-engineer bragged he had driven half a million miles to visit petroglyph sites in over thirty-five states and more than a half dozen countries. Listening
in wonder, I was imagining McGlone crisscrossing the country in search of evidence of ancient travelers, which was something I wanted to do and eventually did accomplish.

  While we shared a professional interest in new technologies, including research and development projects and enterprises (I had founded two research and development companies), rarely did we discuss anything other than the work at hand. Even when the weather didn’t allow early-morning expeditions in pursuit of sunrise alignments in and around the canyons, I would be in his basement reviewing videos of rock art sites and photos of petroglyphs. Occasionally, our evenings were punctuated with watching a John Wayne Western, as he was a fan and had all of the Duke’s movies on tape.

  McGlone proved true to his word, as I was true to mine when I arranged for Brennan to travel with me to visit La Junta several years later. So for the next four years until his death in 1999, I spent every spare opportunity I could with him and his small entourage of researchers, epigraphers, and fellow rock art hounds.

  THE PURGATOIRE RIVER CANYON

  ”Rock art” is generally divided into petroglyphs, pictoglyphs and large stone designs on the Earth’s surface. Of these, in southeastern Colorado petroglyphs predominate. Petroglyphs are often found on cliff tops and on the vertical walls of the canyons, but it took years of working with McGlone to appreciate the many dimensions and skills required to identify and differentiate the great variety that can be found there. Examples include very early ”pecked” glyphs created with a hammerstone and/or chisel, and later “abraded” petroglyphs creating by scrapping, and, in the historic period, painted glyphs or “pictoglyphs” whose ages extended back over five thousand years ago.

  Fig. 6.2. Looking down on the Purgatoire Canyon. The top capstone layer is hard basalt. Softer sandstone and eroded materials make up the sloped hills.

  Thanks to Petroglyphs of Southeast Colorado and the Oklahoma Panhandle, a picture-filled book that McGlone and Leonard had self-published with local retired rancher Ted Barker, I acquired a concise guide to the rock art of the area. I would discover that among the diverse rock art of the region, a small number of the petroglyph sites included what looked like ancient scripts from Old World Europe.

  Fig. 6.3. Pioneering researcher William McGlone. He mastered astronomy, archaeoastronomy, and epigraphy to become a leading diffusionist scholar.

  Although the Purgatoire Canyon is thousands of miles from New England, where I had previously found evidence for a Celtic presence, I was soon to learn that a small sampling of the hundreds of rock art sites had petroglyphs with links to visitors from Old Europe, although the vast majority had been made by different groups of Native Americans.

  Fig. 6.4. Rock art styles from southeastern Colorado. The different styles distinguished the many people and time frames from which the rock art originated. (McGlone/Leonard, 1994)

  ARCHAEOASTRONOMY BASICS

  Self-taught, McGlone had applied his analytical and engineering mind to become a master archaeoastronomer, which benefited me greatly in learning about rock art. My previous journeys to early New England sites, including America’s Stonehenge, had demonstrated that the ancients were preoccupied with recording celestial events. Thus, McGlone taught that archaeoastronomy was the scientific tool to understand these people, whether Native American or foreign. “The key to determining the validity of an archaeoastronomical alignment is its intentionality,” he emphasized on many occasions. “A light or shadow just hitting a petroglyph is meaningless, unless it can be tied to an intention by the creator.” Accordingly, he and his colleagues developed specific criteria for determining this crucial factor of archaeoastronomical alignments.

  Criteria for Determining Archaeoastronomical Intention

  A regional context of other alignments, as in the Newgrange area

  Deliberate or distinctive marking of a sighting point, as at Stonehenge

  Inclusion of an indexing pattern regarding the time to read, as in sunrise sites

  The use of important calendar days, such as cross-quarter days, equinoxes, or solstices

  An ethnographic involvement, as in ritual days important to the local culture

  The use of astronomical symbols, such as targets or sighting points

  Definitiveness of construction, as in the placement of gnomons (sundial pointers) and the creative use of light or shadow shapes, such as sun daggers

  A progressive sequencing of lighting events, as in the Mayan Kukulcán pyramid

  The accuracy of alignments

  The chipping or shaping of shadow-casting surfaces to match target shapes

  Petroglyph in unusual places, such as on rough surfaces or high above ground

  Fig. 6.5. William McGlone’s criteria for determining archaeoastronomical intention. Without being able to demonstrate intentionality, alignments may merely be coincidental or without a cultural meaning.

  Solar Alignment Types in Southeastern Colorado

  Indirect 1. Shadow or light shapes from natural rock formations

  2. Shadow or light shapes from man-placed gnomons

  3. Image matches of shadow shapes to a petroglyph

  4. Sun dagger or shadow appearances or disappearances

  5. Grazing lights on petroglyphs or lines

  6. Sunset simulations or animations

  7. Moving shadow pointers

  8. Commemorations of dates or events

  9. Anticipatory, to predict dates or events

  10. Stationary shadows

  Direct 1. Petroglyph pointers

  2. Standing stones or cairns

  3. Placements of architectural features

  4. Observing or sighting the sun from glyphs or gnomons using a foresight

  Fig. 6.6. Solar alignment types in southeastern Colorado. William McGlone and his colleagues documented many types of solar alignments. (Adapted from McGlone/Leonard, Archaeoastronomy of Southeast Colorado, table III, “Solar Alignment Types”)

  The primary purpose of solar alignments is calendrical—to anticipate upcoming ceremonial events with index markers or to set the time for planting crops and to schedule gatherings. At solar alignment rock art sites, which McGlone had found were not generally habitation sites, he and his colleagues discovered many types of “direct” and “indirect” alignments. Direct alignments involved sightings of the sun, as when standing stones are lined up to a point on the horizon, while indirect alignments involved the sun’s casting shadows or light shapes onto petroglyphs.

  After I spoke with McGlone on the phone, my first visit was timed for the fall equinox. Before I arrived, I had anticipated perhaps seeing a Celtic-related rock art site. After we greeted each other he showed me rock art photos he had in many ring binders and a video recording of a debate he participated in with some old school archaeologists. Before turning in for the evening, I asked him, “Will we see any Ogham inscriptions tomorrow?” He replied, “Tomorrow is the equinox, and this is the time to be here. But it’s not going to be what you expect!”

  McGlone was leading me on. He knew of my keen interest in Old World cultures but understood I lacked the skills to know what I would be looking for. “Being in the right place at the right time is essential,” he continued, “but knowing what to look for is the key to comprehending the story. We’re heading out early, and I want you to be open to seeing something quite fantastic.” As a result, I spent a restless night in his spare bedroom, anticipating what the day would bring.

  We were up by 3:30 a.m., and after coffee and a hurried breakfast we headed south from La Junta in his well-traveled Jeep. As one descends from the high plains into the Purgatoire River Valley through which the river flows, on both sides and in many subcanyons there are diverse and significant rock art sites. However, it was still dark so I would not see any of them until later.

  Just as first light began to brighten the horizon, we turned off the main road and proceeded down a winding dirt road. Spanish explorers had named the nearby Purgatoire River in the 1760s
in remembrance of the unrecovered bodies of an ill-fated expedition up the river. As the story goes, the Spanish thought the lost soldiers had been left to wander in purgatory.

  “These are not Celtic sites,” remarked McGlone, “but you’re going to see some really good things, and later we’ll visit a new site we just discovered. Just keep your eyes open, boy, because this is the real thing.”

  THE PATHFINDER

  As we followed the river, the sun had not yet reached into the canyon when McGlone pulled his Jeep into the yard of a farmhouse. Jim Walter, a local rancher, along with his four daughters, greeted us. “Looks like it’s going to be a dandy,” said McGlone as he pointed toward the eastern sky. The clouds from the previous night had dispersed, and only a slight haze could be seen as the horizon brightened. The gentle chirping of awakening birds and the sweet smell of wet dew on the land, pinion trees, sagebrush, and fruit-bearing cacti greeted me as I stepped out of the Jeep to the sound of the Walters’ barking dog.

  After greetings, McGlone, Walter, and I followed his children—Kaysie, Jamie, Erin, and Sarah—across an irrigation ditch into a long field populated by numerous large boulders of basalt, which in earlier times had rolled down from the canyon capstone above. Some were as large as cars, and they were all dark, almost black, with thousands of years of accumulated patina. This had formed on the rocks with the oxidation of magnesium and iron and the buildup of organic residue from lichen and other biological matter. In places with petroglyphs, this process goes on until it becomes nearly impossible to distinguish the peckings from background rock.

  “You walked right by them!” McGlone suddenly shouted as he pointed toward a round boulder about five feet high that I had passed. I looked again and began to make out worn petroglyphs in the predawn light. They blended into the background rock and looked somewhat like wavy lines. I stopped to study them and had taken out my journal to draw them when McGlone called out, “Not now, man, the sun’s coming up. Hurry up over here!”