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

by Carl Lehrburger

  To sum up my adventures with the New England stone chambers, the kiva, dolmens, assorted mysterious mounds, and standing stones, I could not say for certain they were the work of Celts rather than Indians, but America’s Stonehenge soon convinced me otherwise!

  AMERICA’S STONEHENGE

  Returning to the Boston area from an excursion to the Calendar One site in Vermont in 1995, I drove south toward North Salem, New Hampshire, to experience New England’s largest megalithic astronomical complex. Now known as “America’s Stonehenge,” it was opened to the public in 1958. The thirty-acre site is a restored archaeological complex containing a series of stone walls as well as large, shaped standing stones, stone chambers, and other earthworks.

  The first known modern residents were Jonathan Pattee and his family, who lived there from 1823 to 1849. During and following the Pattee occupancy many tons of the stone were carried away and used as curbstones in the nearby town of Lawrence. However, in 1930 William Goodwin purchased the site because he suspected that Irish monks had built it around A.D. 1000, and he wanted to protect it.5

  Twenty-eight years later, the complex passed to Robert E. Stone, an engineer who later, in 1964, was to found NEARA and become its first president and later its president emeritus. After revamping the site, he finally opened it to the public in 1958 while he continued to conduct research and investigate the astronomical alignments. Once the trees had been cleared, transit surveys could even anticipate the locations of many of the standing stones, because he had determined that an observer standing on the central, elevated viewing platform could see and sight the major alignment stones that had been placed around the perimeter, including the precisely placed standing stones that indicated the summer and winter solstice sunrises and sunsets. In short, Stone’s work revealed the complex to be an accurate astronomical calendar that could determine specific solar and lunar events. Moreover, it featured nearly all the components of Celtic megalithic sites in Europe. These included:

  A winter solstice sunset monolith

  A February 1 sunset alignment

  A November 1 stone

  An equinox sunrise boulder (a fallen monolith and pillar)

  A summer solstice sunset monolith

  A true north monolith

  A summer solstice sunrise stone

  A May Day monolith (fallen)

  An equinox sunrise stone

  A winter sunrise monolith (fallen)

  A lunar standstill alignment wall

  Fig. 4.10. This map from America’s Stonehenge helps visitors locate and explore various standing stones and stone chambers. (Map courtesy of America’s Stonehenge)6

  Fig. 4.11. Photo of summer solstice sunset.

  (Photo courtesy of America’s Stonehenge)

  By the time I arrived in 1995, significant archaeological restoration had been completed throughout the area. Despite the fact that some of the stones were sagging from centuries of rain-soaked springs and freezing winters, several large chambers had been restored, and many of the walls were rebuilt so that an observer could comprehend their magnitude and importance.

  Now, standing in the central observation area as Stone had first done decades earlier, I was able to identify the standing stones and line them up where the sky met the horizon. According to Dix, these stones mark intervals of about thirty-nine to forty-three days, and it was possible to identify the sunrise and sunset positions for the eight major Celtic festivals—two equinoxes, two solstices, and four cross-quarter days. Most important was the presence of the cross-quarter day markers that linked the site to similar sites in Ireland and the Old World with only rare reports that early Native Americans marked their cross-quarter days. Still another important factor, as we shall see in chapters 7–9, was the presence of inscriptions at America’s Stonehenge and elsewhere that use the Celtic Ogham alphabet.

  As I returned to Western Massachusetts, my mind was racing about the idea that such a vast ceremonial complex was nearly destroyed a century earlier when stones that had been gathered, hewn, and precisely positioned so long ago were taken away and used for street curbs. It just boggles the mind. Yet, through the preservation efforts of Robert Stone and the pioneering research of James W. Mavor Jr., Byron E. Dix, Barry Fell, and others, this Old World archaeoastronomy site in New England has been decoded and will remain accessible to future generations.

  5

  They Settled in Mesoamerica

  I concluded that, as is the case in North America, it is impossible to postulate a single explanation for the origins of and influences on the Mesoamericans. These are the people living in Mexico and Central America, south to Panama. Thus, going forward, I ceased lumping “Native Americans” or “Mesoamericans” or the Maya into one group or category and instead sought to discover their singular distinctions in origins, identities, and cultures.

  MARTIN BRENNAN IN MEXICO

  After that exceptional first meeting in Massachusetts, Martin Brennan and I became the best of friends, and we would meet regularly and discuss Old and New World histories at length. I was honored to be in the company of such a knowledgeable researcher, and he was fascinated to learn about New England Celts and America’s Stonehenge in New Hampshire.

  Brennan had lived in Mexico, learning the language and studying the Maya, and then had spent years in North American libraries reading everything he could while developing his theories about the origins of Mayan hand signing. I, too, had spent quite a bit of time in Mexico but hadn’t studied ancient Mesoamerica in much depth, so he urged me to begin by reading the Popol Vuh, admonishing me that without an understanding of the exploits of the Mayan Hero Twins and the creation of the Quiché people’s empire, I would be lost to any understanding of this ancient culture. And he was right.

  Brennan explained that the first few chapters of the Popol Vuh included the essential creation myths that were replicated and embedded in the Mayan artwork and cosmology that he was studying and working with. The book has been likened to our Bible in its importance to the Quiché culture, and we are fortunate to have any account of the story, as the Spanish were so thorough in their destruction of the Mesoamerican historical records.

  I present this story in detail as an introduction to what ancient peoples were capable of thinking about in terms of time, calendars, the history of the human race, and their relationships to the cosmos. There are also possible ancient ties to Africa, India, and China that will become apparent toward the end of this chapter.

  THE HERO TWINS OF THE POPOL VUH

  One of the themes of the Hero Twins tale in the Popol Vuh links nonhuman creatures, corn, fertility, and a ball game called pok-a-pok. This was a sacred contest, heavy with symbolism, and it ranged from stickball to a type of “soccerbasketball” played on enclosed I-shaped courts so that balls could bounce off the walls. In the more complicated kinds of games, the players used yoke-like belts attached to their hips to try to drive the balls through a stone ring. These balls were formed by using strips of rubber wound around objects and sometimes human skulls They weighed up to eight or nine pounds and ranged in size from our baseballs to beach balls.1 The losers were usually sacrificed, but in some portrayals of the game it was the winners who got sacrificed—having won the honor of feeding the gods.2 As we will see, the Maya fashioned a close connection of this game to their calendar, cosmology, and the features that they saw in the night sky during the changing seasons.

  In the “empty” time of Chi Agabal, after the creation by the Forefathers of Day, Night, Earth, Sea, and the Animals, but before there was a sun, moon, or humans, the divine “Grandparents” Xmucane and Xpiyacoc became the mother and father of Hun Hunahpú, and Vucub Hunahpú—“One Hunahpú” and “Seven Hunahpú.*10 Together with Egret Woman, the brothers fathered two sons who were taught the arts, becoming flautists, singers, painters, sculptors, jewelers, silversmiths, and shooters with blowguns.

  Unfortunately, their parents were addicted to playing ball games of pok-apok, in which a rubber bal
l is hit about by two teams. Their ball court was near the underworld of Xibalba, so their constant shouting while they were playing became annoying to the two chief lords of darkness, Hun Camé, called “One Death,” and Vucub Camé, called “Seven Death.” They called together all the other lords of Xibalba who were in charge of making up many kinds of illnesses and deaths of humans and they all discussed what they should do.

  . . . . “Let us sacrifice them tomorrow, let them die quickly, quickly, so that we can have their playing gear to use in play,” said the Lords of Xibalba to each other referring to their annoyance with Vucub Hunahpú and Hun Hunahpú.

  Using their owl messengers, the dark lords summoned the brothers to come immediately down the Xibalba be, the “Black Road,” past the “River of Blood” and the “River of Pus” to the underworld to play ball. Beyond these was a crossroads where travelers had to choose from among four roads that spoke in an attempt to confuse and beguile. However, after they arrived, the dark lords gave them a “test” that was impossible to perform. When they failed, the original brothers were sacrificed, and while Vucub Hunahpú was ritually buried, the head of Hun Hunahpú was cut off and put into a calabash tree that had been barren. Instantly it was covered with fruit, and the lords of death could not recognize the head; it looked exactly like the other calabashes, so they forbade anyone to go close to the tree or pick the fruit.

  In spite of the pronouncement, Xquic, called “Blood Moon,” a maiden daughter of Lord Cuchumaquic, heard the story and was curious. “Why can I not go to see this tree that they tell about?” the girl exclaimed. “Surely the fruit of which I hear tell must be very good.” So she went alone and arrived at the foot of the tree, which was planted in a place called Pucbal-Chah. This was the “Place of the Ball Game Sacrifice,” the name of the altar where losers of the game would lose their lives.3

  “Ah!” she exclaimed. “What fruit is this, which this tree bears? Is it not wonderful to see how it is covered with fruit? Must I die, shall I be lost, if I pick one of this fruit?” said the maiden.

  Then the skull, which was among the branches of the tree, spoke up and said: “What is it you wish? Those round objects which cover the branches of the trees are nothing but skulls.” So spoke the head of Hun-Hunahpú turning to the maiden. “Do you, perchance, want them?” it added.

  After the maiden answered yes, she stretched her right hand toward the skull, which instantly let a few drops of spittle . . . fall directly into Blood Moon’s hand.*11

  “In my saliva and spittle I have given you my descendants,” said the voice in the tree. “Now my head has nothing on it any more, it is nothing but a skull without flesh. . . . Go up, then, to the surface of the earth that you may not die.”

  The maiden returned directly to her home, and after six months her belly had swollen, resulting in a confrontation with her father, but with the intervention of the sympathetic owl messengers, she escaped being sacrificed. Blood Moon then traveled to the underworld and back up to the Earth’s surface, to live in her grandmother’s house. There, she gave birth to the Hero Twins Hunahpú and Xbalanqué.

  Later in their lives and after many adventures disguised as vagabond dancer-magicians, the boys journeyed to the underworld to avenge the death of their parents. Unaware that the vagabonds were really the twins, the lords of Xibalba tried to trick them, as they had their fathers, but they were foiled every time.

  Next, the lords invited them to put on a show and a demonstration of their magic powers. The boys danced for the lords’ entertainment and then sacrificed a dog and brought it back to life. Next, the twins set a house on fire containing all the lords except Lords One and Seven Death and then brought the burned lords back to life. Xbalanqué then cut off his brother’s head and rolled it out the door, and removed the heart from the body, but then spectacularly put him back together and revived him. Enthralled by all this, One Death and Seven Death asked to be sacrificed and brought back to life, but the boys tricked them and did not revive them. This is how the Hero Twins defeated the lords of the underworld.

  Afterward, the twins then went to the Place of the Ball Game Sacrifice and tried to restore Hun Hunahpú in the calabash tree by having him name all the features of his face. However, since a dried calabash resembles a skull, he could only recall his eyes, nose, and mouth, so his sons left him there to be forever honored with prayer. His day, the one in the Mayan calendar called Hunahpú, is still reserved for the veneration of the dead.

  Having revealed their true identities, the twins then mandated that the Xibalbans change their practice of sacrifices and in the future admonished that not hearts but flowers be used: “We . . . the avengers of the torments and suffering of our fathers . . . shall put an end to all of you, we shall kill you, and not one of you shall escape.”

  Next, the Hero Twins ascended into the sky to become the sun and the full moon, and they were followed by the “Four Hundred Boys” (who had been killed in a previous bloody episode) to became the stars in the sky, a metaphor for the Milky Way. Later on, men were made from blue corn and women from yellow corn, and the Earth slowly came to be as we know it today.

  The Hero Twins are preserved in Maya art, including hundreds of beautifully painted ceramic vases. Each twin is assigned a day-sign in the Maya Tzolkin calendar discussed below. Hun Hunahpú also plays prominently in Mayan art and cosmology. His death and resurrection is symbolically revealed in the Maya system of numbers, as the Mayan god of the number four represents the sun god, which when doubled becomes the god of number eight, the resurrected Yum Caax, the corn god.

  Later, diminished by the flower sacrifices, the fate of the lords is unclear, although Xibalba itself seems to have continued its existence as a dark place in the underworld.

  There are other Hero Twin stories throughout the United States, including those of the Yuma, Menominee, Navajo, Seneca, Skidi Pawnee, Winnebago, Creek, and Iowa tribes. For example, in a Canelos Quechua myth from South America, the twins Iureke and Shikiemona avenge the death of their mother, which is also the theme of the Pawnee myths.4 There, as in the Popol Vuh, both brothers championed goodness, but in most of the North American stories one is evil.

  THE MAYAN CALENDAR

  Martin Brennan was preoccupied with Mayan timekeeping and provided an esoteric and cosmological perspective, in addition to a concept of the mechanics of how the calendar works. In one of our conversations he told me that one must first “recognize that there is not one calendar but at least twenty interconnected and inherently consistent calendars. The Maya, like the ancient pre-Hindu people, tracked big time! And this grand time system is ingeniously conceived to be symmetrical with our relatively comprehensible time!” He became quite animated as he waved his hands in a circle to emphasize these points.

  Brennan’s enthusiasm about the Mayan calendar convinced me of the importance of drawing the individual calendar day-signs as a daily ritual. Along with reading the Popol Vuh and other books and attending Brennan’s weekly lectures to a few interested friends, I was soon spending hours each week studying the Maya and their systems of tracking time. These included their 365-day solar calendar called the Haab, the Tzolkin, a 260-day sacred calendar, and the calendar of the Long Count with its 1,872,000 days or approximately 5,128 years that famously pointed to a modern ending date, December 21, 2012.5

  JOHN MAJOR JENKINS AND THE GALACTIC ALIGNMENT

  During this time I was also in correspondence with researcher John Major Jenkins, and I found after we met in Colorado in 2000 that we also shared an interest in archaeoastronomy in addition to Mayan timekeeping. Jenkins, a generation younger than I, was an avid Mayanist with a focus on the calendar. His scholarly approach to the Mayan systems of time and calendrics complemented Brennan’s teachings, but he took the calendar to the next level by comprehending the larger dimensions and significance of an incredible celestial alignment predicted by their ancient ancestors.

  Jenkins noted that a rare alignment of the solstice sun with the Milky
Way’s equator (the galactic equator) occurs in the years around 2012, and he adopted the terms “galactic alignment” and “solstice-galaxy alignment” to describe it. The galactic equator is the precise midline running down the middle of the Milky Way. It is analogous to the Earth’s equator and divides the galaxy into two hemispheres, or lobes. The famous Mayan cycle-ending date of December 21, 2012, was, according to Jenkins, intended to target this alignment.

  This galactic alignment occurs only once every 25,625 years, which works out to approximately five cycles of 5,128 years. Due to this phenomenon, the sidereal position of the solstice sun slowly shifts backward along the ecliptic and comes into alignment with the galactic equator in the years around 2012. This, by the way, approximates the 25,772-year cycle of the precession of the equinoxes and is often confused with this cycle. Despite the vast confusion about this idea, it is a fact of astronomy.

  In an article titled “Alignment 2012,” Jenkins elaborated on how the solstice-galaxy alignment of the 2012 era was encoded by ancient Mayan thinkers into their basic cultural institutions:

  Fig. 5.1. The alignment of the 2012 December solstice sun with the crossroads of the Milky Way and the ecliptic. A = position of the December solstice sun six thousand years ago; B = position of the December solstice sun three thousand years ago; C = position of the December solstice sun in our era. (From John Major Jenkins, Galactic Alignment)

  The solstice-galaxy alignment was conceived as the union of the male principle (December solstice sun) with the female principle (the Milky Way’s center). The region of the Milky Way that the solstice sun will unite with contains not only the nuclear bulge of the Galactic Center (which, by the way, is recognizable with the naked eye) but also a “dark-rift” feature caused by interstellar dust. The modern Maya call this dark-rift or Great Cleft the xibalba be—the Road to the Underworld [that we saw in the Hero Twins tale]. This feature is the key to understanding the rebirth metaphor of the 2012 end-date, for it was also conceived, in Maya symbology, as the birth canal of the Great Mother (the Milky Way).6