Interesting Petroglyphs Uncovered in Veracruz State, Mexico

Shaman and "dancing figure."  Being too cautious!  They're both representing the same thing, methinks.  And those spirals - spirals all over!  Yeah, but -- it's just coincidence, right, that the same exact symbols are found on both sides of the Atlantic Ocean.  Right? 

Rock slab covered in spiral petroglyphs. Image: Maria Eugenia Maldonado / INAH

At Past Horizons

Shaman petroglyph recorded in Veracruz

Article created on Wednesday, April 24, 2013

A set of petroglyphs including one which depicts a priest or “wise man” has been recorded by archaeologists from the National Institute of Anthropology and History (INAH). These rock cut images were found on the slopes of Cerro del Bonnet in the Mexican state of Veracruz.

The pecked stone petroglyphs are thought to be about 500 years old and were discovered in January 2013 by members of the local farming community.

The priest or shamanic figure measures 1.40 m high by 50 cm wide. He is represented with his eye closed and mouth open and wears a zoomorphic helmet with a cape and underskirt decorated with triangles, a girdle and ankle bracelets and an ear plug. Around him there are symbols related to divination and astronomical elements and near the top of the stone there are two concentric circles that could have held a chalchihuitl (precious green stone – Literally “Heart of the Earth”).

Dancing figure, (left) with a circular earplug wearing a long flapping loincloth. Shaman figure (right) surrounded by symbols related to the divination and astronomy. Images: Maria Eugenia Maldonado / INAH

A constellation?

On a higher slab, lies a further though much cruder anthropomorphic figure (50 cm high by 20 cm wide) facing to the right. This time, depicted with mouth and eye open and also wearing an ear plug, the figure seems to be dancing as the máxtlatl (loincloth) lifts up at the front.
Unlike the shaman, this figure is schematically drawn. No hands are represented and the feet seem to be wearing shoes. It is possible that this figure represents a constellation rather than a human being.

Unknown meaning

One of the final elements on the petroglyph panels is a spiral whose terminal is intersected by a rough horizontal line which in turn is cut by a vertical line that divides into two lines ending in what has been suggested to represent a flower or leaf.

Although the iconographic style of the petroglyphs is not known in the Huasteca region, the symbols appear to be reinterpretations of known elements used by agricultural cultures, such as the zoomorphic helmet character which is reminiscent of the Teayo Castle sculptures, or the “Lord of Death” monolith discovered in the Las Flores Cinco Poblados.

“An important aspect to investigate is the location and function of all possible petroglyphs, because by observing the horizon and solar events it may represent a means of marking events in the agricultural year. “added archaeologist Maria Eugenia Maldonado.

“The study of petroglyphs in the region is still in it’s infancy, but becoming more important for understanding the cosmology and beliefs of the societies that inhabited this area. Such findings contribute to increasing knowledge of the cultural development of the Huasteca Veracruzana“, Maldonado concluded.

Source: INAH

Evidence of Spiral-Formed Settlements - Oldest in the World?

From The Australian
Unearthed Aryan cities rewrite history
From: The Sunday Times October 04, 2010 12:00AM



Map of Chelyabinskaya region (red arrow is the city of Chelyabinsk,
Russia), showing also Iran, Pakistan and northern India.

 BRONZE Age cities archaeologists say could be the precursor of Western civilisation is being uncovered in excavations on the Russian steppe.

Twenty of the spiral-shaped settlements, believed to be the original home of the Aryan people, have been identified, and there are about 50 more suspected sites. They all lie buried in a region more than 640km long near Russia's border with Kazakhstan.

The cities are thought to have been built 3500-4000 years ago, soon after the Great Pyramid in Egypt. They are about the same size as several of the city states of ancient Greece, which started to come into being in Crete at about the same time.

If archeologists confirm the cities as Aryan, they could be the remnants of a civilisation that spread through Europe and much of Asia. Their language has been identified as the precursor of modern Indo-European tongues, including English. Words such as brother, guest and oxen have been traced back to this prototype.

"Potentially, this could rival ancient Greece in the age of the heroes," said British historian Bettany Hughes, who spent much of the northern summer exploring the region for a BBC radio program, Tracking the Aryans.

"We are all told that there is this kind of mother tongue, proto-Indo-European, from which all the languages we know emerge.

"I was very excited to hear on the archeological grapevine that in exactly the period I am an expert in, this whole new Bronze Age civilisation had been discovered on the steppe of southern Siberia." [Except, it was discovered more than 20 years ago!]

She described driving for seven hours into the steppe grasslands with chief archeologist Gennady Zdanovich. "He took me to this expanse of grass; you couldn't tell there was anything special. Then, as he pointed to the ground, suddenly I realised I was walking across a buried city," she said.

"Every now and again you suddenly notice these ghostly shapes of fortresses and cattle sheds and homes and religious sites. I would not have known these had he not shown them to me."

The shape of each of the cities, which are mainly in the Chelyabinsk district, resembles an ammonite fossil, divided into segments with a spiral street plan. The settlements, which would each have housed about 2000 people -- the same as an ancient Greek city such as Mycenae -- are all surrounded by a ditch and have a square in the middle.

The first city, known as Arkaim, was discovered in 1989, soon after the soviet authorities allowed non-military aerial photography for the first time.

The full extent of the remains is only now becoming apparent. Items that have so far been dug up include many pieces of pottery covered in swastikas, which were widely used ancient symbols of the sun and eternal life. The Nazis appropriated the Aryans and the swastika as symbols of their so-called master race. Ms Hughes believes that some of the strongest evidence that the cities could be the home of the Aryans comes from a series of horse burials.

Several ancient Indian texts believed to have been written by Aryans recount similar rituals. "These ancient Indian texts and hymns describe sacrifices of horses and burials and the way the meat is cut off and the way the horse is buried with its master," she said. "If you match this with the way the skeletons and the graves are being dug up in Russia, they are a millimetre-perfect match."

[Note: The Nazi swastika was reversed from the ancient goddess-honoring symbol.  The term "Aryan" has political connotations; most specialists prefer the term proto-Indo-Iranians to identify the steppe-ranging people of this region in ancient times, the possible inventors of the first wheeled carts/wagons and speakers of a proto-Indo-European language from which many languages descended].

It's an Eye Goddess Symbol or a Goddess Spiral

Come on, dudes, it's as plain as the nose on your faces.  This is either a Bronze Age eye-goddess symbol or a Neolithic Goddess spiral pattern (similar to New Grange).

Cambridgeshire Quarry throws up 4,500-year-old find
July 16, 2010

(PhysOrg.com) -- A remarkable piece of Neolithic rock art, unlike anything previously found in Eastern England, has been unearthed in the Cambridgeshire village of Over (photo).

The hand-sized artefact, which could date back to 2,500 BC, was found by a participant in a geological weekend course which was being run by the University of Cambridge's Institute for Continuing Education.

It consists of a hand-sized slab of weathered sandstone with two pairs of concentric circles etched into the surface - a motif which, according to archaeologists, is typical of "Grooved Ware" art from the later Neolithic era.

While examples of similar Grooved Ware art have been discovered at sites elsewhere in the UK, this is the first time that any such find has been encountered in Eastern England, which may provide more information about the connections of the communities who inhabited the area 4,500 years ago.

The motives of whoever created the design are unclear. Researchers say that it could represent the ornamental efforts of a Prehistoric Picasso, but may just as easily have been an aimless inscription.

"It really is a fantastic find; certainly we have had nothing like it from any of our sites before," Dr. Chris Evans, Director of the Cambridge Archaeological Unit, which operates out of the Department of Archaeology at the University of Cambridge, said.

"In fact, it's unique in Eastern England, with the nearest comparable example being the similar scratch patterns on a sandstone plaque from a Grooved Ware site in Leicestershire. Otherwise you would have to look to Wessex or Northern Britain and the much more formal Megalithic Art of the period."

"The big question in the case of the Over stone is whether we should actually be calling it meaningful art, or if it amounted to no more than Neolithic doodling. Either way it's a great find."

The stone will make its first public appearance since the discovery was made this Saturday (July 17th), when it will go on display at Over Village Carnival.

It was found by Susie Sinclair, who was taking part in the weekend course led by Dr Peter Sheldon (from the Department of Earth and Environmental Sciences, The Open University) at Hanson Aggregates' Needingworth Quarry. The quarry lies north and west of Over alongside the River Great Ouse.

The Cambridge Archaeological Unit has been excavating sites within the quarry for 15 years, partly in an effort to better understand the shape and nature of the landscape in prehistoric times. The remains of several settlement clusters from the late Neolithic period have already been found.

The Over stone, however, was hidden in the quarry's spoil, one of the heaps of waste geological materials discarded by quarry workers. Researchers believe it had been deposited within one of the river's ancient palaeochannels crossing the area and that, with the existing information they have about the geographical layout of the region, the point where it was found can be reconstructed with relative ease.

The area around Over and the River Great Ouse would have looked dramatically different 4,500 years ago. Huge, "S" shaped bends from the river originally meandered across the fens and efforts to tame them only really began in earnest in the late medieval period.

According to the latest research, at the time the Over stone was being carved, the countryside would have been dominated by the snaking course of the river, its tributary channels and flooding. This would essentially have broken the area up into a delta-like landscape of small islands, channels and marshlands.

Strange Light Over Norway

I saw this reported tonight on NBC World News. Mystery as spiral blue light display hovers above Norway By Mail Foreign Service and Will Stewart Last updated at 5:00 PM on 09th December 2009 A mysterious light display appearing over Norway last night has left thousands of residents in the north of the country baffled. Witnesses from Trøndelag to Finnmark compared the amazing sight to anything from a Russian rocket to a meteor or a shock wave - although no one appears to have mentioned UFOs yet. The phenomenon began when what appeared to be a blue light seemed to soar up from behind a mountain. It stopped mid-air, then began to circulate. Within seconds a giant spiral had covered the entire sky. Then a green-blue beam of light shot out from its centre - lasting for ten to twelve minutes before disappearing completely. The Norwegian Meteorological Institute was flooded with telephone calls after the light storm - which astronomers have said did not appear to have been connected to the aurora, or Northern Lights, so common in that area of the world. The mystery deepened tonight as Russia denied it had been conducting missile tests in the area. Fred Hansen, from Bø in Vesterålen, described the sight as 'like a big fireball that went around, with a great light around it again.' 'It spun and exploded in the sky,' Totto Eriksen from Tromsø told VG Nett. He spotted the lights as he walked his daughter Amalie to school. He said: 'We saw it from the Inner Harbor in Tromsø. It was absolutely fantastic. 'It almost looked like a rocket that spun around and around and then went diagonally down the heavens. 'It looked like the moon was coming over the mountain, but then came something completely different.' 'It was like a giant spiral - a shooting star that spun around and around. I initially thought it was a projector', added Axel Rose Berg, from Alta. Celebrity astronomer Knut Jørgen Røed Ødegaard told VG Nett he had never seen anything like the lights. He said: 'My first thought was that it was a fireball meteor, but it has lasted far too long. 'It may have been a missile in Russia, but I can not guarantee that it is the answer.' Air Traffic control in Tromsø claimed the light show lasted for two minutes, but admitted that was 'far too long to be an astronomical phenomena.' Tromsø Geophysical Observatory researcher Truls Lynne Hansen was certain the light had been caused by a missile launch. He told Norwegian media that the missile had likely lost control and exploded. The spiral, he claimed, was the result of light reflecting on the leaking fuel. He was quoted as saying the light was sunlight, despite the strange lights showing up at night. The Barents Observer quoted Norwegian Defence spokesman Jon Espen Lien as saying that the Norwegian military does not know what the lights were - but that they were probably from a Russian missile. He said it was normal for Russia to use the White Sea and the Barents Sea as a testing ground for missiles. However a Moscow news outlet tonight quoted the Russian Navy as denying any rocket launches from the White Sea area. [What - would anyone really expect the Russian military to tell the truth?] Norway should be informed of such launches under international agreements, it was stressed. The Russian Defence Ministry was unavailable for comment last night.

Things That Look Like "Chess"

One of my favorite parts of Goddesschess is dondelion's collection of art and artifacts, some of which are "things that look like 'chess'." While doing some research on the Gundestrup Cauldron (see prior post), I visited the website of the National Musem of Denmark, and came across this beautiful miniature replica of the original "Sun Chariot": The Sun chariot; small copy The sun chariot was discovered around 1400 BC when the bogs near Trundholm on Zealand went under the plow in 1902. The small six wheeled chariot was broken into many parts but this was not only done by the plow. The chariot must have been broken already when it was dumped in the bog during the Bronze Age. The pieces were salvageable, however, and formed a miniature sun disc on a horse drawn carriage. The sun disc is made from two bronze plates that have been fused together. One side has been covered in a thin layer of gold. The horse is delicately formed with patterns on the front end forming eyes, mane and reins. The casting has been done by a master. The whole piece is put together on a frame and is to be seen as a horse drawn sun on a six wheeled chariot. This miniature copy is approx. 20 cm long which makes it some what smaller that the original. It is made from bronze patinated metal with a gilded sun disc. The original is displayed at the Danish National Museum.

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I find this piece incredibly beautiful, and I have a hard time wrapping my head around the thought that someone just tossed it into a bog around 1400 BCE because it was broken! This does not jibe with the Museum's theory that this was a sacred piece used by priests to demonstrate the journey of the Sun across the sky (and through the Underworld) each day. Who would dare just toss a sacred artifact into a bog, even if it was broken? Only a barbarian! Notice that the wheels have four spokes. I'm certainly no expert, but we know that the eight-spoked wheel first came into use around Armenia (far eastern Anatolia) around 1850-1800 BCE and by about 1650 BCE it was in use throughout the Middle East. Prior to the invention of the eight-spoked wheel, I believe the four-spoked wheel was the norm. So, guessing - it would seem that based on the design of the Sun Chariot's wheels, it dates back to BEFORE the eight-spoked wheel became the norm - in other words, prior to about 1650 BCE. This would make it older than the c. 1400 BCE date attributed to it. Yes - I do not know how long it took for the improved technology of the eight-spoked wheel to reach such a far-away place from the Middle East as Trundholm! Did it take 400 years? Hmmmm.... Something about this piece reminds me of the Minoan culture - perhaps it is the "lines" of the casting itself, or perhaps it is the spiral designs, which speak to me of the Goddess. The museum says otherwise, attributing the spirals to a "unique" form of Danish artwork during the Bronze age that signified the journey of the sun across the sky during the day and through the underworld at night, day after day. This explanation is akin to the ancient Egyptian explanation for the sun's journey across the sky and what happened to it when "night" came. I think the curators at the Museum are so eager to attribute this piece to the Bronze Age ancestors of the Danes that they are ignoring other parallels and iconography from other cultures that existed in the Bronze Age - and before. Did the Bronze Age "Danes" have the technology/metalurgical skills necessary to produce such an artifact? That is not something answered in the Museum's material on this artifact. Here is a short video on the Sun Chariot from the Museum. Here is what the Museum says about the Sun Chariot: The Sun Chariot – unique and sacred (scroll down to text) There is nothing else like the Sun Chariot – at least nothing similar has appeared since it emerged from Trundholm Bog in 1902. It is the National Museum’s absolute highlight. The Sun Chariot was made in the Bronze Age, c. 1350 BC, and shows the sun on its eternal journey, drawn by a divine horse. The elegant spiral ornamentation on the golden sun disc reveals its Nordic origin. The Sun Chariot still holds an almost magical attraction. And its message is universal: it reflects existence in an eternal cycle of alternations between light and darkness. Well, I certainly agree that the message of the Sun Chariot is universal - but I do not believe it has been definitively established that spiral decoration is Nordic in origin! Just for instance, the spirals at New Grange are much older (dating back to c. 3000 BCE) and owe nothing to the Danes. That example easily came to mind. I'm sure there are others. Perhaps the Sun Chariot was a precious and unique artifact that was imported from the Mediterranean Area/Middle East, perhaps in exchange for precious amber.