Fig. 12.19. A Kokopelli from Chaco Canyon, New Mexico. This Kokopelli image depicts a grasshopper-like creature blowing something resembling an Australian didgeridoo.
On the other hand, Matlock argued that Kokopelli was a transplanted ancient Hindu God.19 The pre-Vedic Hindu god of good fortune was named Kubera or Kuha, and Matlock pointed out that both Kokopelli and Kubera are hunchbacked, dwarfish, and often depicted wearing a kilt and headdress.
There are many other equally viable ideas of where Kokopelli comes from. While traditionalists may describe him as an original American myth, John J. White III, who has authored more than a hundred papers on linguistics (many in association with the Midwestern Epigraphic Journal), suggests that Kokopelli was most likely an adjunct of an ancient sun god who arrived in the Americas from the Old World more three thousand years ago.
In his article, “Interpretation of Rock Art Figure ‘Kokopelli’: A Connection with the Ancient EMSL Sun God,” White proposes that Kokopelli originally represented a sun priest playing the flute to attract the attention of the sun god.20 He further suggests that the Earth Mother cultures of Bronze Age and Neolithic societies had a sacred language that they used to communicate sacred teachings. The sun god often contained an L-sound in its name (as in Lugh, Sol, El, Ba’al, Bel, and Apollo), and ceremonies involving him included equinox and cross-quarter day celebrations. But citing the work of his mentor, Clyde E. Keeler, a geneticist and student of the Cuna Indians of Panama, White also suggests that Kokopelli performed in other rituals, including the tribe’s “coming out” puberty ceremony.21
But Carl Bjork has still another suggestion. As told by many American tribal groups, the so-called Kokopelli were a group of traders unlike any of the indigenous people. They came from the southeast, arriving in great boats, and then traveled north up the waterways of the Mississippi River system. From there, groups also traveled over the Rocky Mountains and traded with the Four Corners and Great Basin people. Despite the fact that some say that the term Kokopelli was used only in the Southwest until the iconic figure became popular in the early 1960s, White notes that Kokopelli-like petroglyphs are also found from North Carolina into Alberta, Canada, and down into Mexico.
What is interesting is that many American Indian tribal groups have legends or oral histories that are very similar to the European legends regarding a Pied Piper who came to isolated villages, enraptured the older people with magic and piping, and then led away the children to unknown fates.
CUPULES AND GRINDING HOLES
In addition to the rock art in the Great Basin areas, there are groupings of other rock workings left by ancient Americans that also indicate there are possible links to the practices of overseas cultures. These are referred to as cupules, grinding holes, cup and rings, and, in special cases, PCNs (pecked curvilinear nucleated). Because they are small, only up to three or four inches in diameter, and many of them are not horizontal, they are not like Native American horizontal metates that were used for grinding corn, nuts, and seeds. They abound in California, Nevada, and other North American sites and are similar to European examples, including early Celtic cup-marked stone from Scotland22 and those found on the Indian subcontinent, including grinding holes from Chandesh, India.
Anthropological research suggests they may have had ritual functions involved with tribal lore. However, because of their minute size and mysterious arrangements on large stones, their specific use remains largely unknown.
Because of the vast international abundance of vertical grinding holes, Taddei favors a theory that the small depressions were the aftereffects of grinding to produce powdered rock for ingesting. The term geophagy today refers to “eating rocks,” sometimes in the context of a psychological or physiological condition of craving, and it remains a little explored aspect of ancient cultures. In ancient times, medicines and elixirs processed from rocks were widely used, providing medicinal as well as nutritional value. Even today in parts of Africa, rural areas of the United States, and villages in India, pregnant women eat clay to supply calcium and other minerals that are essential for fetal development.23 Bjork was told by many Native American grandmothers from different tribes that grinding in the cupules produced powdered rock to help women become pregnant.
Fig. 12.20. Indian Grinding Rock State Historic Park, California.
Fig. 12.21. Deliberately ingesting rock is suggested by this rock art from Nevada, not far from Reno.
Fig. 12.22. Red stain from the top of the boulder follows the worked vertical lines, leading into what appears to be a pecked cup held by an anthropomorphic figure.
There were also other forms of evidence of prehistoric grinding for minerals. Cupules are small and smoothly ground-out intrusions made into vertical and horizontal surfaces. They are considered among the world’s oldest petroglyphs and ubiquitous form of prehistoric art. They appear on cave walls or large stones in, for example, cupules at the Auditorium Cave in Bhimbetka, Madhya Pradesh, India, that dates to circa 700,000–290,000 B.C.24 However, PCNs are different from ordinary cupules, even though they may also have been associated with ingesting and rituals. This is because the center is left intact, which creates a vulva shape that is somewhat distinguishable from the cup and ring marks that have depressions surrounded by circles or concentric circles.25 Donna Gillette of the University of California, Berkeley, was kind enough to show Taddei and me a rock covered with these PCN petroglyphs on a boulder atop the town of Tiburon near San Francisco Bay.26
Fig. 12.23. PCNs, a form of cupules, from Tiburon, California.27
Fig. 12.24. Cupules on the vertical face of a rock from the Columbia River near Portland, Oregon.
Fig. 12.25. Detail of a Columbia River cupule. Found throughout the Great Basin and the world, cupules have mistakenly been associated with grinding food or making tools instead of for use in rituals and for producing powdered rock to ingest.
Additionally, Taddei believes that the grinding and harvesting of cupules and PCNs often involved the aid of acids when they were dug on dolomitic limestone:
Cupules, thumb size holes on rocks, mark locations where they harvested minerals used for sacraments and for processing into elixirs used for extending life and for spiritual growth. They knew how to prepare them, using acids made from the sal ammoniac (ammonium chloride) of the horns of deer, sheep, and other animals to produce digestible medicines. That’s the connection to the big horned sheep at many of these sites in the Great Basin. The petroglyphs tell the story, but they are only intelligible if we understand the alchemy and astronomical symbols we are looking at.28
DIFFUSION OF VEDIC CULTURES VIA THE PACIFIC INTO THE GREAT BASIN?
There are many questions surrounding the presence of Indus Valley–looking symbols throughout the western United States. One example is the swastika symbol that first arose out of the Indus Valley in ancient times and was then spread elsewhere, including, it is easy to theorize, the American Southwest. My own feeling is that they provide evidence for migrations of earlier peoples via the Pacific into Oregon, Washington, and Idaho along areas near the confluence of the Columbia, Clearwater, and Snake Rivers, and generally throughout the Great Basin. Of course, the archaeopriests whose work is professionally tied to the accomplishments, legacies, and goings-on of Native Americans resist this interpretation.
Now that the groundwork has been laid for a connection between the Indus Valley and North America, one can look to the sky for several more complicated and involved clues to the “Hermetic Drift” of symbols as told in the rock art. One striking Indus Valley–style example is a motif similar to the Mojave North lunar conjunction index marker. If so, this symbol evolved to have significance for later peoples, including the Tohono O’odam tribe of Arizona.
Still another possible connection between the Old and New Worlds is revealed in the accounts of Indian time cycles that are tied to the solar and lunar calendars. Complicated counts are often integrated into petroglyph motifs and are represented by circles, dots, and r
ays of a petroglyphic sun. Among many other astronomical and astrological purposes, the cycles recorded in rock art were used to predict eclipses. These counts could have included the mysterious and far-reaching nakshatra, metonic, and saros cycles from India.*22
Fig. 12.26. Tohono O’odham sculpture. The connection between the lunar conjunction index marker from Mojave North (chapter 11, fig. 11.18 and fig. 11.20) and this tribal symbol may point to a tradition passed down from earlier peoples. (Graphic by Dorian Taddei, from Matlock, India Once Ruled the Americas!)
The metonic cycle was used to determine how intercalary months could be inserted into a lunar calendar, so that the calendar year and the tropical (seasonal) year were kept in step. Evidence of the use of both metonic and nakshatra cycles has been identified by Taddei throughout the Great Basin, as well as along river systems leading into the interior. On the Idaho side of the Snake River, at a site known locally as Buffalo Eddy, he identified a marker that appears to represent the nakshatra cycle, saros cycle, and lunar twenty-eight-day counts.
All in all, if one takes the time to do the counting on petroglyph panels, it becomes clear that there is rarely anything randomly carved, especially in the older petroglyphs found throughout the Great Basin. Despite the Hermetic drift at work, many of the original Old World symbols, counts, and stories have been accurately preserved in the rock art of the later Native Americans.
Fig. 12.27. Snake River petroglyph rock in Idaho identified by Dorian Taddei as a lunar marker stone. According to Taddei the ancients tracked the metonic cycles to predict eclipses and to calibrate their lunar and solar calendars. (Photo by Dorian Taddei)
Fig. 12.28. Graphic showing the Snake River lunar marker stone portraying the nakshatra and saros cycles used in India. (Photo and rendition by Dorian Taddei)
EAST MEETS WEST IN MORE WAYS THAN ONE
As I became more familiar with the possible Indus Valley aspects of Mojave North on the edge of the Great Basin, I began to see some similarities between it and the Anubis Caves in Oklahoma, especially in their identifiable symbols and inscriptions. For example, the equinox heliolithic animations at the two sites suggest a common cultural interest. Even though they are separated by over one thousand miles and the Rocky Mountains, they were likely created by people crossing different oceans, with Anubis Cave visitors crossing the Atlantic from Europe heading westward and Mojave North creators arriving from the Indus Valley area via the Pacific Ocean heading east. Among other things, these Old World traditions shared sophisticated light-and-shadow animation stories embedded with religious and cosmological symbols.
Site Comparison Cave 2, Anubis Caves, Oklahoma (Chapter 8) Mojave North, California (Chapter 10, 11)
Central figure Grian/Bel/Mithra/Perseus/Apollo Shiva/Mitra/I’Itoi/Belos/Hercules
Primary animation on equinox (sunset) Shadow engulfs sun god as Anubis remains in light. Also a nose pointer. Nose alignment at sunset. Singular profile separates and a hidden face emerges.
Phallus Sun god holding phallus in hand “Lugh” figure with large phallus
Complex multiglyphs Mithraic symbols interposed SEA Rock, multiface petroglyph
Esoteric shape/symbols Mithra stands on a cube Shiva/Mitra/Hanuman at apex of triangle
Other markers at site Twelve-line and many other equinox markers. One summer solstice marker. Markers on all solstices, equinoxes, and cross-quarters, including a six-line equinox marker
Epigraphy Ogham in Celtic Several, none conclusively determined: Kufic (Fell), Ogham (Schmidt), Samaritan (Taddei)
Other deities Sheila na Gig, Epona, Anubis Tanith and a winged anthropomorphic figure
Origin (estimate) Celtic Iberia via Atlantic, 200 B.C.– A.D. 200 Indus Valley via Pacific (date unknown; estimated by author to be at least 1000 B.C.)
Animal petroglyphs Ram, bull, horse, Anubis (canine) Sheep, ibis (bird), Anubis (canine)
Constellations glyphs Yes, constellation in Cave 1 Yes, many star petroglyphs, lunar glyphs
Fig. 12.29. Table comparing Mojave North in California with the Anubis Caves in Oklahoma suggests Old World similarities in archaeoastronomy, esoteric traditions, and cosmologies.
These two American sites can provide invaluable clues as to how religion and cosmologies might have spread throughout the world in ancient times. Early Indus Valley migrations would have been driven by wars of conquest, cataclysmic disasters, and weather changes. Thus, the central gods, goddesses, and religious traditions would have been carried to distant lands, often accompanied by changes in names and characteristics to make them more acceptable to other cultures and religions over many millennia. Thus, the earlier esoteric foundation of the triangle found at Mojave North in time could have evolved into the sacred cube as the cosmological “foundation of nature” at the Anubis Caves, and the earlier Phrygian cap of Mitra could have been replaced with the halo of solar rays seen in the Anubis Caves.
Anubis Caves and Mojave North demonstrate that the central characters, heliolithic artistry, and equinox cosmological themes remained conceptually congruent. Celtic groups would have arrived in America via the Atlantic a millennium later. Their traditions originated in Europe but came earlier than that from India, as Mitra became Mithra, who, under Roman rule, evolved into Mithras. The Celtic Mithras would have arrived in America from Atlantic crossings and to Oklahoma via the Arkansas River.
But it wasn’t just visitors from the Indus Valley and the Celts who were likely visitors to the shores of the Americas. As mentioned before and will be further investigated, among others, the Chinese, Hebrews, Romans, and Phoenicians would have been interested in the lands that they thought might have existed beyond their horizons. With the growing interest in a New History will the blinders come off as we begin to understand that many peoples who migrated across the Pacific and the Atlantic, in addition to arriving from the from the north, to populate and influence the native cultures of the Southwest and Mexico?
13
Midwest Relics, Mounds, and Controversies
The challenge we face is unraveling all the false information and opening up all the relics and information that have been hidden for too long.
WAYNE MAY
Beginning in 2005 after my explorations of Pathfinder, Crack Cave, and the Anubis Caves, I thought that I might have something to offer by way of a series of informative articles addressing these sites. Not having any credentials and finding myself aligned with Bill McGlone, among other diffusionists, the media outlets for presenting my investigations were limited. Nevertheless, I believed it was important to offer firsthand documentation of Old World travelers in the Americas to a wider audience, so I pursued several publications, of which Ancient American: Archaeology of the Americas before Columbus proved to be the most receptive. In preparing six articles in the following five years addressing the Colorado Pathfinder and the Celtic sites reported in previous chapters, I was in communication with the editor and publisher, Wayne May. He had spent many decades looking into diffusionism, with a focus on the Midwest.
Except for viewing the Davenport Stone (chapter 2), I had little firsthand experience with the many hundreds of artifacts purported to be from Old World cultures originating in the Midwest. In my pursuit of a New History, I decided to investigate these many claims and subsequently traveled to Wisconsin to meet Wayne.
May had cofounded his open-forum magazine in 1993 to address the small pockets of people devoted to the ancient archaeology of the Americas.1 Each issue included articles of interest to those devotees, many on controversial topics ranging from known artifacts such as the Crespi Collection from Ecuador (chapter 2) to the existence of giants. Although it is not peer reviewed or considered credible by mainstream archaeology, there was often much to glean from a variety of writers, previously published or not, including John J. White III, Gunnar Thompson, Scott Wolter, and many others.
THE DISCOVERY AND EXCAVATION OF MOUNDS IN NORTH AMERICA
May’s interest in the New History began in 19
57 as a boy when he observed excavations of millennia-old mounds in Wisconsin, many attributed to the Hopewell culture that flourished along rivers in the Northeast and Midwest from 200 B.C. to A.D. 500. Today, archaeologists consider the Hopewell people to have had widely distributed population centers connected by a common network of trade routes.2
As he grew up, May focused on Hopewell archaeology and history, reading all he could and exploring the culture’s mounds throughout the Midwest. By the mid-1980s, he was exploring early sites with James Whittall, an early researcher and diffusionist, while also actively reading NEARA publications and participating in the Ancient Earthworks Society of Madison, Wisconsin.3 As we talked in his office, he noted that in twenty years of publishing Ancient American, he had produced ninety-seven issues of five to ten articles each. In addition to Fell’s ESOP, Ancient American has become an important source of information on the unfolding of the New History of America.
Fig. 13.1. Wayne May, publisher of Ancient American.
According to May, perhaps the greatest tragedy of North American archaeology was the destruction and misrepresentation of some of the Mound Builder artifacts and a 130-year-old cover-up by the Smithsonian Institution and professional archaeologists over their legitimacy.
In the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, white American settlers encountered tens of thousands of large earthen mounds extending from the Great Lakes to the Gulf of Mexico and mostly concentrated around the Mississippi and Missouri Rivers. In fact, the largest structures that George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, and other colonists observed in America were man-made earth mounds. Unlike Mesoamericans, who constructed their pyramids out of available stone, the builders in the United States’ Midwest constructed their mounds with dirt, the sheer quantity of which boggles the mind. For example, Monks Mound at Cahokia, located near modern-day St. Louis, rose to more than a hundred feet, with a base of nearly fourteen acres. Though it was not as high, this was a larger volume of material than that in Egypt’s Great Pyramid!4
Secrets of Ancient America: Archaeoastronomy and the Legacy of the Phoenicians, Celts, and Other Forgotten Explorers Page 22
