The name Juan Diego itself suggests that the story was a fictional invention. It basically translates as John Doe, a generic everyman, whose identity is unimportant. This doesn’t prove anything, since there certainly were real people named Juan Diego, but it is an intriguing element.
It is the actual image of Mary itself that tells us the most about its true history. As every schoolchild knows, Hernán Cortés (1485-1547) was the Spanish Conquistador who overthrew the Aztec empire and placed much of Mexico under Spanish control in 1521. He was born in a region of Spain called Extremadura, and grew up to revere Our Lady of Guadalupe, a statue of a black version of the Virgin Mary, at the Santa María de Guadalupe monastery in Extremadura. This statue is credited with miraculously helping to expel the Moors from Spain in the Reconquista. Cortés brought reproductions of this European image of Mary with him when he went to the New World. Her dark skin resembled the Aztecs, and she became the perfect icon for the missionaries who followed Cortés to rally the natives into Christianity.
One such missionary was Fray Pedro de Gante (1480-1572), a Franciscan monk from Belgium (born Pieter van der Moere) who learned the Aztec language and created the first European-style school in Mexico, San Jose de los Naturales. One of his promising art students was a young Aztec man with the Christian name Marcos Cipac de Aquino, one of three known prolific Aztec artists of the period. In 1555, the newly arrived Archbishop of Mexico, Alonso de Montúfar (1489-1572), successor to the deceased Zumárraga, was looking to commission a portrait of the Virgin Mary, as a sort of teaching aide to help convert the Aztecs. Montúfar found the young artist Marcos at de Gante’s school. And so, in 1555, the Aztec artist Marcos Cipac de Aquino painted a portrait of the Virgin Mary, with dark skin, with head slightly bowed and hands together in prayer, on a common cactus-fiber canvas. The painting was named the Virgin of Guadalupe according to the tradition Cortés brought from Spain. Although the Extremadura statue was not in this pose, the pose was still one of European tradition. The most often cited example of Mary in this exact pose is the painting A Lady of Mercy, attributed to Bonanat Zaortiga and on display at the National Art Museum of Catalunya, painted in the 1430’s. Marcos followed more than a century of European tradition.
There was a pragmatic element to Montúfar’s introduction of this painting and allowing it to be worshipped. Before the Conquistadors, Tepeyac was home to an Aztec temple, built to honor the Aztecs’ own virgin goddess, Tonantzin. So rather than replacing the Aztec goddess, Montúfar’s plan was simply to introduce Mary by giving Tonantzin a name and a face (recall that Marcos had painted the Virgin with dark skin). This process of using an existing belief system to graft on a new one has been called syncretism. Understandably, this exploitation of a pagan idol caused discomfort among some of the Franciscan priests, while many of the Dominicans welcomed the way it helped baptize 8,000,000 Aztecs.
The primary corroborating documentation of Marcos’ painting is a report from the Church in 1556, when this growing disagreement between the Franciscans and the Dominicans prompted an investigation into the origins of the tilma. Two of the Franciscans submitted sworn statements in which they expressed their concern that worshipping the tilma was leading the Aztecs to return to their traditional pagan ways. One described the image as “a painting that the Indian painter Marcos had done” while another said it was “painted yesteryear by an Indian”. Appearing on the side of the Dominicans, who favored allowing the Aztecs to worship the image, was Bishop Montúfar himself. As a result, the construction of a much larger church was authorized at Tepeyac, in which the tilma was mounted and displayed.
Significantly, the 1556 report is the most extensive documentation concerning the Virgin tilma of its century, and it makes no mention whatsoever of Juan Diego, the miraculous appearance of the image, or any other element from the legend. If the miracle story did exist at that time, it seems inconceivable that it could have been omitted from this report. This strongly supports the suggestion that the Juan Diego legend had not yet been conceived. It also supports that Valeriano’s Nican Mopohua was written later.
The legend did get its first boost of testable evidence in 1995, which (in a case of suspiciously fortuitous timing) was after Juan Diego’s beatification in 1990, while there was still debate over whether he should be canonized (he ultimately was, in 2002). A Spanish Jesuit named Javier Escalada produced a deerskin that pictorially depicted the Juan Diego legend and has become known as the Codex Escalada. The Codex also mentioned several historical people, and even bore the signature of a Franciscan historian, Bernardino de Sahagún (1499-1590), dated 1548. Basically, it was the Perfect Storm of tailormade evidence proving that the Juan Diego legend was the accepted history at the time. A little too tailor-made though; no serious historians have supported its authenticity. The best analysis I’ve found is by Alberto Peralta of the Proyecto Guadalupe project. Based on its dubious unveiling, numerous inconsistencies, and other factors, Peralta concludes that it’s impossible for the document to be authentic.
If the Virgin tilma is indeed a painting, and not a miraculously produced image, then it should be a simple matter to determine that scientifically. There are obvious signs that are hard to argue with, notably that the paint is flaking along a vertical seam in the fabric. But a truly scientific examination involving sampling of the material has not been permitted. The most notable examination was a three hour infrared photographic session by Philip Callahan in 1981, who did note multiple layers of paint covering changes to the hands and crown, but came away with more questions than answers. Callahan found, for example, that most of the entire painting seemed to have been done with a single brush stroke. He recommended a series of more tests, but the only one allowed by the Church was a spectrophotometric examination done by Donald Lynn from the Jet Propulsion Laboratory. The only result released of his examination was that “nothing unusual” was found.
Much has been made of the claim that figures can be seen reflected in Mary’s eyes, with some even identifying these figures as Zumárraga or Juan Diego or other characters from the legend. The Church even went so far in 1956 as to have two ophthalmologists examine the eyes under 2500× magnification. They reported a whole group of figures, including both Aztecs and Franciscans. Why ophthalmologists should be better qualified to identify Aztecs and Franciscans in random blobs of pigment has not been convincingly argued. Photos taken by another ophthalmologist in 1979 have been released, and it’s quite obvious that it’s simply random noise. I see a dozen or so speckles; if you want to make them into Aztecs, Franciscans, bananas, or Bozo the Clown, then you’ll probably also be great at spotting dozens of Bigfoots hiding in any given photograph of a forest.
The Virgin of Guadalupe is yet more one mythical story whose believers are missing out on true facts that are actually more respectful and confer more credit upon them than the myth. The image on the Virgin tilma was painted by a native Aztec artist; and the painting had not only an important role in Mexico’s early history as a nation, but also a staggering impact upon its culture ever since. Mexicans with Aztec heritage should take pride in the fact that their original culture, specifically the goddess Tonantzin, was a key ingredient in the spread of modern Catholicism. The Juan Diego myth takes that away, and whitewashes part of Mexican history clean of any Aztec influence. That’s a disservice to one of humanity’s greatest ancient civilizations, and it’s a disservice to history.
When we see the Virgin of Guadalupe image today, most people react in one of two ways: They worship it as a miraculous apparition, or they dismiss it as someone else’s religious icon. Both reactions miss the much richer true history. The Virgin of Guadalupe stands not only as an invaluable work of ancient art (possibly the most popular piece of art ever created), but also as a reminder of how the conquest of Mexico was truly accomplished: Not only its military conquest, but one of history’s greatest religious conversions as well.
REFERENCES & FURTHER READING
Acosta, M. “Juan Dieg
o: The Saint That Never Was.” Free Inquiry. 1 Apr. 2003, Volume 23, Number 2.
Nickell, J., Fischer, J. “The Image of Guadalupe: A folkloristic and iconographic investigation.” Skeptical Inquirer. 1 Apr. 1985, Volume 9, Number 3: 243-255.
Olimon, M. La Búsqueda de Juan Diego. Mexico City: Plaza & Janes, 2002.
Peralta, A. “El Códice 1548.” Proyecto Guadalupe. ProyectoGuadalupe.com, 19 Dec. 2001. Web. 5 Apr. 2010.
Sanchez, E. Juan Diego, una vida de santidad que marcó la historia. Mexico City: Editorial Porrúa, 2002.
Smith, J. The Image of Guadalupe: Myth or Miracle? Garden City: Doubleday, 1983.
20. THE MYSTERY OF PUMAPUNKU
Were the stone structures at Pumapunku truly so advanced that the ancient Tiwanakans could not have made them unassisted?
In this chapter, we’re going to climb high into the Andes and take a look at an ancient structure that has been cloaked with as much pop-culture mystery as just about any other on Earth: Pumapunku, a stone structure that’s part of the larger Tiwanaku. Pumapunku, which translates to the Doorway of the Puma, is best known for its massive stones and for the extraordinary precision of their cutting and placement. It’s one of those places where you’ve heard, probably many times, that the stones are so closely fitted that a knife blade cannot be inserted between them. Due to these features, Pumapunku is often cited as evidence that Earth was visited by aliens, Atlanteans, or some other mythical people who are presumably better at stonemasonry than humans.
Tiwanaku is in Bolivia, up in the Titicaca Basin, about 10 kilometers away from the great Lake Titicaca. The Titicaca Basin is high; 3,800 meters (12,500 feet) above sea level. Half is in Peru and half is in Bolivia, and right on the border sits Lake Titicaca. It’s in a vast region of the Andes Mountains called the Altiplano, or “high plain”, the largest such plain outside of the Himalayas. The Tiwanaku Culture predated the Inca, and their history is known largely from archaeology, since they had no written language that we know of. The earliest evidence of habitation dates from around 400 BC, but it wasn’t until about 500 AD that the Tiwanaku Culture truly developed. At its peak, 400,000 people lived in and around the Tiwanaku site, centering around Pumapunku and other important structures. Trade and farming flourished. Farming was done on raised fields with irrigation systems in between them. Decades of drought struck around 1000 AD, and the city of Tiwanaku was abandoned, and its people and culture dissolved into the surrounding mountains. Five centuries later, the Inca Culture developed.
So within the context of Tiwanaku, Pumapunku does not leap out as extraordinary. However it does differ from the other structures at Tiwanaku, in that many of the blocks are shaped into highly complex geometries. There is a row of H-shaped blocks, for example, that have approximately 80 faces on them; and all match each other with great precision. Pumapunku’s stones suggest prefabrication, which is not found at the other Tiwanaku sites. In addition, some of the stones were held together with copper fasteners, some of which were cold hammered into shape, and others that were poured into place molten.
Complex shapes at Pumapunku
Due to the complexity and regularity of many of Pumapunku’s stone forms, a number of authors have suggested that they’re not stones at all, but rather concrete that was cast into forms. We don’t have any record that such technology was known to pre-Incan cultures, but that doesn’t prove it wasn’t. What can be proven, and proven quite easily, is that there is no concrete at Pumapunku or anywhere else in Tiwanaku. Contrary to the suppositions of paranormalists, modern geologists are, in fact, quite able to discern rock from concrete. Petrographic and chemical analyses are relatively trivial to carry out, and even allowed us to determine exactly where the rocks were quarried. Pumapunku’s large blocks are a common red sandstone that was quarried about 10 kilometers away. Many of the smaller stones, including the most ornamental and some of the facing stones, are of igneous andesite and came from a quarry on the shore of Lake Titicaca, about 90 kilometers away. These smaller stones may have been brought across the lake by reed boat, then dragged overland the remaining 10 kilometers.
Much is often made of the vast size and weight of the Pumapunku stones, with paranormal web sites routinely listing them as up to 440 tons. Pumapunku does indeed contain the largest single stone found at any of the Tiwanaku sites, and it’s part of its Plataforma Lítica, or stone platform. The accepted estimate of this piece of red sandstone’s weight is 131 metric tons, equal to 144 US tons. The second largest block is only 85 metric tons, and the rest go down sharply from there. The vast majority of the building material at Pumapunku consists of relatively small and easily handled stones, although many of the most famous are megalithic. The absurd numbers like 440 tons come from much earlier estimates, and have long since been corrected.
We do not claim to know how the heavy lifting and exquisite masonry was accomplished at Pumapunku, but that’s a far cry from saying we believe the Tiwanaku were incapable of it. We simply don’t have a record of what tools and techniques they used. All around the world are examples of stonemasonry from the period that is equally impressive. The Greek Parthenon, for example, was built a thousand years before Pumapunku, and yet nobody invokes aliens as the only explanation for its great beauty and decorative detailing that more than rivals Pumapunku’s angles and cuts. At about the same time, the Persians constructed Persepolis with its superlative Palace of Darius, featuring details that are highly comparable to Pumapunku. Stonemasons in India cut the Udayagiri Caves with megalithic doorways that are very similar to those in Pumapunku. The Tiwanaku did magnificent work, but by no means was it inexplicably superior to what can be found throughout the ancient world. It is unnecessary to invoke aliens to explain the structures.
Curiously, if you do an Internet search for Pumapunku, you’ll find it almost universally, and quite casually, referred to as a “port”. At least, this is what it’s called on the paranormal web pages, which make up the overwhelming bulk of Pumapunku information on the Internet. In fact, it’s not a port, and it never was a port. To anyone doing even the most basic research or visiting the area, it’s a fairly bizarre assertion, considering that Pumapunku was in the middle of a vast farming nation of 400,000 people. Nor are Tiwanaku’s structures in locations where they could serve as a port. Pumapunku is just one of several stepped platform constructions that have been excavated at Tiwanaku. The others include Akapana, Akapana East, Kalasasaya, Putuni, and the Semi-Subterranean Temple. If you look at them from above, they’re simply squarish enclosures scattered about the area. If you imagine water filling the region — let’s pretend just high enough to cover the ground but not the enclosures themselves — then each of these “ports” would be an island unto itself, amid a sea of knee-deep water too shallow to be navigable. (That is, except for the Semi-Subterranean Temple, which being recessed into the ground, would have been underwater.)
But even that imaginary scenario presumes that the lake could ever reach Tiwanaku. It can’t. The Altiplano is a vast sloping plain, and the point at which Lake Titicaca spills off the edge into its sole outlet, the Río Desaguadero, is about 30 meters below the elevation of Tiwanaku. Has this always been the case? At least since the last ice age, yes. Because the sediment at the lake’s bottom has been accumulating for some 25,000 years, it’s one of the best places to get data about Earth’s climate history, and so it’s been extensively studied. The paleohydrology of Lake Titicaca is thoroughly known. Currently, the water is at its overflow level. This level has fluctuated about 5 meters in the past century. During the past 4,000 years, it has dropped as much as 20 meters during drought periods. The maximum it’s ever been is about 7 meters above overflow level, which would still locate the shore many kilometers away from Tiwanaku’s suburbs and farms.
Most of these same paranormal sources that refer to Pumapunku as a port also state that the ancient shoreline is still visible along the surrounding hills, albeit tilted at a strange
angle. Ancient lake levels are often visible in such a way — they’re quite prominent throughout Death Valley where I often visit, for example. But it makes no sense for Lake Titicaca. The lake would spill off the edge of the plain before it could get as high as Tiwanaku; and there’s certainly been no tectonic activity in that time that could have tilted the hills, or mysteriously tilted the hills yet left the Tiwanaku structures level.
Finally, one other feature at Pumapunku is said to have the archaeologists baffled: Carved figures, said to represent an elephant relative called a Cuvieronius, and a hoofed mammal called a toxodon. These both went extinct in the region around 15,000 years ago, and so some paranormalists have dated Pumapunku to 15,000 years, apparently based on this alone. When you hear that an elephant is carved there, it certainly does give you pause, because an elephant is hard to mistake. However, when you look at a picture of what’s claimed to be the elephant, this becomes less surprising. Tiwanaku art was highly stylized, much like what we’re accustomed to seeing from the Mayans or the Aztecs. It’s actually the heads of two crested Andean Condors facing each other neck to neck, and their necks and crests constitute what some have compared to the tusks and ears of an elephant’s face. The image of the toxodon is known only from rough sketches of a sculpture discovered in 1934, and so it’s a drawing of indirect evidence of an artist’s interpretation of an unknown subject. It looks to me like a generic quadruped. Pig, dog, rat, toxodon, name it.
So once again, we have an accomplishment by ancient craftsmen whom some paranormalists have attempted to discredit by attributing their work to aliens. This is not only irrational, it’s a non-sequitur conclusion to draw from the observations. Most people don’t know how to intricately cut stones because those are skills we haven’t needed for a long time — we’ve had easier ways to make better structures for a long time. But this argument from ignorance — that just because we don’t know how to do it, nobody else could have figured it out either — is an insufficient explanation. Simply say that you don’t know, instead of invoking aliens. This is not only the truth, it accurately represents the findings of science so far; and perhaps most importantly, it leaves the credit for this wonderful contribution to humanity where it belongs: with the Tiwanaku themselves.
Skeptoid 4: Astronauts, Aliens, and Ape-Men Page 13