Secrets of Ancient America: Archaeoastronomy and the Legacy of the Phoenicians, Celts, and Other Forgotten Explorers
Page 20
Fig. 11.20. Conjunction index and lunar eclipse marker at Mojave North.
Fig. 11.21. Marker stone from Carschenna, Switzerland.
Fig. 11.22. Detail of the Mojave North six-rayed conjunction index marker used in specific cross-quarter day full-moon alignments. (Photograph and detail rendering by Dorian Taddei)
It was indeed a remarkable accomplishment by the ancients to use the same “egg” and concentric circles for the biannual equinox sunrise Light Serpent animation and as a target for rare full-moon cross-quarter evening alignments. It will take other archaeoastronomers to verify and confirm the nature of the Mohave North lunar alignments and their relationship with the cross-quarter days and/or lunar standstill cycle; however, it is clear from our discoveries that the ancients tracked the moon in addition to the sun at Mojave North.
While some may think it was just luck that we were on-site for the amazing lunar and cross-quarter evening alignments, Taddei demonstrated that understanding what the ancients were tracking, including the cross-quarter days and cross-quarter evening full moons, proved to be a key to unlocking the secrets of the petroglyphs and was useful for predicting when to be at the site. To date at least thirteen of these archaeoastronomical alignments at Mojave North have been documented, including four heliolithic animations. This makes it one of the most prolific ancient archaeoastronomy locations in the Americas.
Season Time of Day Name/Type Heliolithic Animations
Equinox Sunrise 1. Serpent animation
2. Pecked sun petroglyph 1. Serpent consuming egg
2. Phallus-shaped shadow fits in pecked star on horizontal surface (more recent pecking)
Equinox Sunset 1. Sunset six-line marker
2. SEA Rock 1. Three lines in light, three lines in shadow
2. Animation and conjunction on petroglyph
Summer solstice Sunrise Retracting shadow animation Serpentlike shadow fits into pecked circle
Summer solstice Sunset 1. Spiral alignment
2. Companion alignment 1. Sun dagger pierces inner circle
2. Edge of shadow aligns with arrow
Winter solstice Sunrise Split pecked circle Light pierces/separates inner circle
Feb./Nov. CQD Sunrise 1. Pecked circle glyph
2. Cross-quarter panel 1. Light splits pecked circle
2. Triangle-shaped phallus is “enlightened”
May/Aug. CQD Sunrise 1. Cross-quarter panel figure
2. Double-sun petroglyph 1. Light/shadow line separates head from body
2. Light/shadow line splits upper sun and inner circle
Lunar Rise of full moon Serpent animation rock: Full moon on Samhain (2006) and Imbolc (2007) crossquarter evening lunar alignment(s) 1. Moonlight/shadow line splits conjunction marker
2. Moonlight dagger penetrates same concentric circles as in sunrise equinox animation
Fig. 11.23. Major archaeoastronomical alignments at Mojave North. CQD = cross-quarter day.
CEREMONIAL BASINS MYSTERY
Yet another mystery is lurking on the ground level of Mojave North, below the elevated areas that display most of the inscriptions and artwork. Besides the dolomite outcroppings rising above the dried-up lake bed, the site is graced with a smooth rock base that features many natural basins that collect rainwater. These basins are not to be confused with the metates that were ground into smooth horizontal rock surfaces and used for grinding corn, nuts, and seeds. Instead, some of them have a combination of natural and worked lines. This makes it apparent that Mojave North was a ceremonial site where, if our theories are correct, Old World travelers gathered to observe the equinoxes, solstices, and cross-quarter days, as well as to celebrate their revered deities enshrined in stone. Taddei theorizes that it was these travelers who taught such things to the Native Americans, who, however, have long forgotten them.
Fig. 11.24. A basin at Mojave North with worked and abraded lines. These were interpreted by Roderick Schmidt as Ogham script, but that is disputed by others.
Fig. 11.25. A ceremonial basin in the morning light. The notion that the ancients observed ceremonies at Mojave North is supported by the location of large, eroded natural basins.
But how were these basins used? Taddei suggested that some of these basins were “libation” or celebratory mixing bowls. He also noted that they often are aligned to the local sunset positions that occur on the May and August cross-quarter days. He observed an Imbolc alignment in February for the local sunset at another similar bowl on the western rim of the site in 2006 and in 2009 verified that the two parallel rays on what Schmidt referred to as the Lugh bowl did in fact align with the cross-quarter day evening sunrise (which occurred the evening before the actual cross-quarter day).
And what do we make of the grinding holes and finely ground cupules that are additionally found at the site? I will address these in the next chapter when I discuss the general features of the Great Basin area.
THE ROOTS OF MOJAVE NORTH
Once the bigger picture is accepted as a reality, the esoteric secret knowledge of the existence of the New World in ancient times becomes clear. Yet to accept this knowledge, we need to accept a simple reality: the esoteric adepts from many regions of the Earth shared both a high science and a knowledge of global navigation and transoceanic ships that carried them around the world.
However, the archaeopriests demand artifacts to prove Old World contacts. But no traditional artifacts remain at the Mojave North site because it has been washed clean in torrential flooding events such as what destroyed the mining town nearby. In fact, Schmidt recovered some smelted artifacts from the nearby dried lake bed, but these never underwent further testing. However, the archaeoastronomical artifacts—the petroglyphs and the carved lunar and solar markers—are still there.
While Taddei and I have made significant claims concerning Mojave North and a trans-Pacific connection, to date there hasn’t been any third-party verification. The existence of the Shiva linga, the lunar standstill alignment, the SEA Rock, the cross-quarter day alignments, and the equinox and solstice alignments, among other discoveries remains far from mainstream archaeological research. Thus, independent verification is the key to unlocking Mojave North’s secrets and recognition of its importance. Until then the unprotected and vulnerable site remains an enigma.
Based on our discoveries and many of the petroglyphs with apparent Old World connections, I came to agree with Taddei’s analysis—that the images at Mojave North were carved by early visitors from the Indus Valley, Indo-European and Indo-Turkish cultures from around 3000 B.C. to about 1300 B.C., when the influence ended, probably due to drought caused by failure of the monsoons. If this is so, then the inventory of petroglyphs and the extraordinary light animations found at Mojave North will continue to preserve the myths, cosmology, and esoteric symbols of these Old World peoples, while conveying the beauty and sacredness intended by them.
ENDANGERED HISTORY AT MOJAVE NORTH
Because of its proximity to the Shoshone/Paiute Native American reservation, Schmidt on several occasions sought the tribe’s assistance in protecting and studying Mojave North. Regrettably, these attempts were greeted with skepticism and even anger. When meeting with local tribe members, Schmidt played down his theory that Native Americans did not create Mojave North and instead tried to focus on establishing alliances and preservation efforts. But he was Caucasian, and they eventually became aware of his conclusions, which infuriated some tribal leaders. Ironically, we discovered that few in the tribe had visited the site or knew much about it, and our efforts to forge an alliance to advance cooperation with the tribe were rejected on several occasions. They saw Schmidt’s efforts as a whitewash of native culture, and he died in 2012 without achieving any reconciliation with the local tribes or any success in securing their involvement in protecting the Mojave North site.
It wasn’t just the local Native Americans who perceived our attempts to organize research projects at Mojave North as a threa
t. The Bureau of Land Management archaeologists did their best to discourage serious study as well. On one occasion, I invited one of them to view the equinox sunrise Light Serpent animation and to attend a lecture Schmidt and I had prepared for local residents. The local archaeologist told me I needed a “research permit” to study the site and that I was not welcome because my investigation was “commercial” in nature. As a result, I spent two hours on the phone with the senior archaeologist in the Bureau of Land Management’s California office, and she, in support of her colleague, explained that I did need a permit because my research would result in a book, but she then went on to say that I wasn’t qualified to get a research permit because I didn’t have an archaeology degree. After I pleaded my case, she called the local archaeologist, then gave me “permission” to return to the site, which, after all, was situated on public land.
As for a professional investigative presence at the site, during my dozen research visits to Mojave North I only encountered one U.S. government archaeologist. He happened to see my parked car and wanted to know why I was there. We spoke for a while, and while I tried to engage his perspectives, he was absolutely adamant that there were no Old World connections, and more extraordinary, he said he had little interest in the site. When I proposed some type of effort to protect it, the location being on U.S. government land, he replied it would attract people who in the end would damage the site. To him and many other professional archaeologists, leaving it exposed to occasional vandals, or even unknowing tourists, was a better course of action.
It was during that same excursion that I arrived one late afternoon to find a family casually walking around the site. There were no signs to inform the visitors about the petroglyphs or unique alignments. When I observed one of the young boys throwing chunks of rock at one of the rock art panels, I intervened. Neither the boy nor his parents could make out the petroglyphs the boy was throwing stones at.
From my vantage point of twenty-five years of investigations, I have learned that Mojave North in California, along with the Anubis Caves in Oklahoma, are among the great repositories of records left by Old World peoples in North America. The archaeopriests holding onto academic biases against diffusionism, combined with Native American indifference and incompetent archaeologists, have left Mojave North virtually unknown and vulnerable to further destruction. It is fittingly ironic that each year scores of academics and archaeologists comb the Four Corners region, investigating the Anasazi, Mogollon, and other tribes, yet none have devoted significant time to studying Mojave North.
While the faded petroglyphs still dance in the sunlight, the Mojave North site is in desperate need of protection and further study. Perhaps by the time these words are read it will have been recognized for what it is, one of the few remaining great archaeoastronomy parks of the ancient world that offers more evidence that ancient peoples arrived in North America thousands of years before Columbus.
12
The Great Basin Melting Pot
They were in the Great Basin before and during the last Ice Age; they came from the northwest via the Columbia River system, from the south up the Colorado River system, east from the Southern California coast, and west from Wyoming and the Four Corners area. They came from Egypt, India, China, the South Pacific Islands, Middle East, and Europe. Perhaps others went from the Americas to the outside world. There is a story about great floods that covered many lands, which says that the early people to the Great Basin were survivors of that flood. It is all carved on the rocks to see.
CARL BJORK, ROCK ART INVESTIGATOR*21
THE GREAT BASIN
The Great Basin encompasses nearly all of Nevada and parts of southeastern Idaho, southeastern Oregon, northwestern Arizona, western Utah, and eastern California. Within this ten-thousand-square-mile area are more petroglyphs and ancient rock art than in any other known location.
The Mojave North archaeo-complex was ground zero for me. Situated at the western edge of the Great Basin, it provided a jumping-off point for rock art expeditions throughout the western United States. To the south were extensive rock art sites of the California Mojave Desert, the principle one being Little Petroglyph Canyon on U.S. military property near Ridgecrest. To the north were significant petroglyph sites near Bishop, California, on Donner Pass, and farther north, in western Oregon and Idaho along the Snake River. To the east were numerous ancient rock art sites in western Nevada, including Pyramid Lake and Grimes Point and farther south sites near Las Vegas, including the Valley of Fire.
For nearly ten years Dorian Taddei and I pursued extensive expeditions throughout the Great Basin regions of California, Nevada, Arizona, Idaho, Washington, and Oregon. In those areas, the water levels had risen and fallen dramatically over the past 30,000 years, with high water marks occurring between 13,500 and 15,000 years ago. At that time, Lake Lahontan dominated western Nevada, encompassing an area of 8,665 square miles, with depths reaching down to seven hundred feet.1
Fig. 12.1. Map showing the modern and historic climates in the Great Basin. Large pluvial (rain-made) lakes have dominated life throughout the Great Basin, with more than one hundred substantial water basins in western Utah. (Map by U.S. Geological Survey, Department of the Interior, adapted in R. B. Morrison, Quaternary Nonglacial Geology)
Geological and weather conditions dictated the habitation in the Great Basin. At the end of the ice age 12,000 years ago, the area became filled with water and life, and sites such as Crater Lake formed about 7,600 years ago. However, the eruptions of Mount Mazama in central Oregon that began 6,845 years ago (± 50 years) generated ash, which blew eastward and southward, causing animals and humans to flee. At the end of that period new peoples came, including the Northern Paiutes, who date their migrations from that time. Finally, beginning around A.D. 1050, drought changed things dramatically, and as will be detailed in chapter 16, many of the great tribes and civilizations from the region were dispersed, including the Chaco Canyon cultures and the Anasazi of the Four Corners area.
However, the prolific and diverse rock art these cultures left behind is found throughout the area. There are a host of different styles, and thanks to extensive preservation efforts many petroglyph sites are now accessible to view and photograph.
Fig. 12.2. Little Petroglyph Canyon, one of several significant Mojave Desert sites.
GREAT BASIN JOURNEYS
In 2007, during one of our many Great Basin expeditions, Taddei and I visited the Grimes Point near Fallon, Nevada. There, the dark varnish that covers the rocks and rock art was largely due to the acid rains caused by the numerous eruptions of Mount Mazama and other volcanoes. The earliest dating in that area, at a site on the shore of ancient Lake Winnemucca in Nevada, northeast of Reno, goes back 14,800 years.2
Most surprisingly, among the hundreds of petroglyphs at three different areas in the Grimes Point complex, we found a heavily varnished and patinated petroglyph with the distinct likeness of an elephant with a rider on top (see figure 12.4 below).
The rock itself, with the elephant and rider petroglyph, had the shape of an elephant’s head. Taddei suggested that the elephant petroglyph seemed to have no tusks; therefore, this petroglyph would not have represented an African elephant. Did the aboriginal peoples of the area witness and record the coming of mariners from the Pacific, accompanied by little elephants?
The friezes of the Borobudur Temple (ca. 543 B.C.) and the Angkor Wat temple complex in Cambodia clearly illustrate small boats carrying little Asian elephants (see figure 12.5 below). “How could they have done it?” I asked Taddei, realizing that a journey from India to the California coast would be considerably more difficult than an Atlantic crossing from Europe.
Fig. 12.3. Grimes Point, Nevada, shaman rendition in the shape of a fleur-de-lis.
Fig. 12.4. Rendition of the pecked image of an elephant with a rider from the Grimes Point, Nevada, site.
Fig. 12.5. This drawing is a reproduction of a fresco from ancient Ajanta caves showing elephan
ts being transported to Sri Lanka showing small boats carrying elephants, from about 543 B.C. (K. M. Panikkar, India through the Ages)
Fig. 12.6. Map of currents and shipping paths from the Indus Valley. (Drawing by Dorian Taddei)
“After crossing the Indian Ocean the travelers from India would have island-hopped through the Islands of Malaysia before crossing the Pacific with stops along the way at Palau, the Island chain of Vanuatu, and other lands now under the sea.”3
Taddei continued, “While oar driven boats in a gentle sea would be hard pressed to make it to the Americas, ancient Indian mariners would have used the Pacific Equatorial Counter Current to take advantage of the wind and sea currents, both coming and going. As such, these ancient mariners could use the ocean’s ‘expressways’ to plumb the seas for God, as well as for gain! These ancient ‘India Indians’ not only visited the North and South American continents on an on-going and regular basis, but set up outposts and trade zones in the New World; a place known to them as Patala.”
“Seafaring in Ancient India” by Sushama Londhe on the Hindu Wisdom website, does a good job in summing up what we know and what is theory.
Indian traders would set sail from the port of Mahabalipuram, carrying with them cinnamon, pepper, and their civilization to the shores of Java, Cambodia, and Bali. Like the Western world, the Indian world stretches far beyond its border, though India has never used any violence to spread her influence. . . . It has been proved beyond doubt that the Indians of the past were not, stay-at-home people, but went out of their country for exploration, trade, and conquest. Sir Aurel Stein (1862–1943) a Hungarian, whose valuable researches have added greatly to our knowledge of Greater India, remarks: “The vast extent of Indian cultural influences, from Central Asia in the North to tropical Indonesia in the South, and from the Borderlands of Persia to China and Japan, has shown that ancient India was a radiating center of a civilization, which by its religious thought, its art and literature, was destined to leave its deep mark on the races wholly diverse and scattered over the greater part of Asia.”4