Thursday, November 16, 2017

Hysterical AD ‘History’. Part Two: Settling the New World Post-Flood


Image result for mesoamerican flood legends

 

by

 

Damien F. Mackey

 

 

 

 

 


“A large number of Mesoamerican flood myths, especially recorded among the Nahua (Aztec) peoples tell that there were no survivors of the flood and creation had to start from scratch, while other accounts relate that current humans are descended from a small number of survivors”.


 

Milky Way Mythology

 

 

 

Introduction

 

In some cases, it seems to me, aspects of what have long been accepted as AD histories can be, when investigated, traced back to famous Old Testament (BC time) stories. A handful of the most gripping dramas or tales of the Old Testament seem to get regurgitated again and again. The Noachic Flood is a standout example of this.

This event was so catastrophic and so terrifying as to leave an indelible impression upon the collective minds of humanity. Those who witnessed it, and who lived to tell of it - solely the band of people in the Ark - passed it on to their descendants both in written form (see my):    

 

Genesis Flood Narrative An Eyewitness Account

 


 

and also by word of mouth (oral tradition). Noah, “a preacher of righteousness” (2 Peter 2:5), was not going to let the world forget so marvellous and awe-inspiring a work of God.

 

Abundant Flood legends were already circulating about in BC time, most famously in the Mesopotamian Epic of Gilgamesh. Then, as the tribes and clans went forth to re-populate the world, they carried their own accounts of the biblical event, each now idiosyncratically re-cast, into all the continents and regions. For a collection of world-wide Flood legends, see e.g.: http://www.native-science.net/Flood-Myths.htm

 

It seems to me, too, that there are, apart from the Flood, a handful of other biblical tales that are popularly reproduced in supposed AD time. And I should like to preface what comes next by stating that I am not necessarily saying that such AD histories did not occur, but that they became heavily infused or coloured, with events that had happened in far earlier times. Such other biblical tales that I find to have been popularly reproduced in AD time (all of which were already being widely spread about in BC time, it should be noted) are:

 

  • events associated with Moses and the Exodus (even occurring in The Iliad);
  • events associated with kings David (e.g. the giant Goliath) and Solomon;
  • the life of King Ahab and especially Queen Jezebel;
  • the fascinating tale of the prophet Jonah; 
  • Tobit and Tobias (= Job) and the angel Raphael (especially in The Odyssey, and as a foundation for the concocted life of the Prophet Mohammed, still tied to Nineveh);
  • the lovely heroine Judith and the demise of Sennacherib’s Assyrian army;
  • the conquests of Alexander the Great (he is in my Bible, in I Maccabees 1:1-8).

 

New World Arrivals

 

History books tend to split American history into pre- and post- Columbian (Columbus) phases:


 

“Pre-Columbian civilizations, the aboriginal American Indian cultures that evolved in Mesoamerica (part of Mexico and Central America) and the Andean region (western South America) prior to Spanish exploration and conquest in the 16th century. The pre-Columbian civilizations were extraordinary developments in human society and culture, ranking with the early civilizations of Egypt, Mesopotamia, and China. Like the ancient civilizations of the Old World, those in the New World were characterized by kingdoms and empires, great monuments and cities, and refinements in the arts, metallurgy, and writing; the ancient civilizations of the Americas also display in their histories similar cyclical patterns of growth and decline, unity and disunity”.

 

Most apposite here, I think, is the statement about the “Pre-Columbian civilizations … ranking with the early civilizations of Egypt, Mesopotamia, and China”. For, although the major Mesoamerican civilisations (apart from the Olmecs), namely, the Maya; the Inca; and the Aztec, are thought to have been flourishing well into AD time, they have all the hallmarks of “the early civilizations of Egypt, Mesopotamia, and China”.  

 

The Clovis people may not have been the earliest people (as once thought) to have arrived in the Americas some time after the Flood, but they were distinctive - for example in their skilled use of spearheads. The Clovis may approximate to the Acheulean people of the Old World. Early immigrants such as these would undoubtedly have brought with them to the New World their Flood (and other Genesis, e.g. Cain and Abel) tales.

 

At a significantly later time, the Olmecs came to Mesoamerica.

Now, according to my series, “Hindu-Chinese elements influenced the Olmecs” - and based on the views of a Chinese specialist - the Olmec may have been refugees from the fall of the mighty Shang dynasty:

 


 


 

Hindu-Chinese elements influenced the Olmecs. Part Two: Language Links

 


 

Hindu-Chinese elements influenced the Olmecs. Part Three: Fall of the Shang Dynasty

 


 


 


 

Now, in conventional history, the lengthy Shang dynasty - which must have partly overlapped with the Old Babylonian dynasty to which Hammurabi belonged - fell to the Zhou dynasty in c. 1046 BC. This date, though, would presumably - in a revised context - have to be lowered somewhat down the BC timescale.

 

This likely Chinese connection in the case of the Olmecs, plus the fact that the Nahuatl language of the Aztecs has close affinities with ancient Egyptian:

 

Does the Name ‘Senenmut’ Reflect the Hebrew 'Solomon'? Part Two: Egyptian and Nahuatl

 


 

(Egypt, China) – would help to explain why the so-called “Pre-Columbian civilizations” instinctively remind scholars of “the early civilizations of Egypt, Mesopotamia, and China”.

 

There are some divines (old and recent) who have opined that the combined sea voyages of King Solomon and King Hiram to the gold-rich land of Ophir actually pertain to Peru:


 

The Biblical Land of Ophir (Peru), , Frances Bacon, Ben Johnson, King Solomon, and Gene Savoy


 

The possibility that Thor Hyerdahl suggests--that man traveled westward across the Pacific--might well explain the expansion of this concept from a Central American culture to a civilization of the East. Also the reverse could just as easily be true that ancient mariners have been shown to have traveled from the Old World to this hemisphere as long ago as 600 BC as demonstrated by the discovery by Gene Savoy in the highlands of Northern Peru at the headwaters of the Amazon River where he found a cave that housed three stone tablets or tables, one of which was roughly six feet long with carvings hewn into the stone in very ancient Hebrew and Phoenician that seems to say (translation of these very ancient Hebrew and Phoenician glyphs is somewhat problematic. It is estimated that they are from around 900 BC at the time of Solomon’s Temple construction, so the availability of scholars that are familiar with that old of writing is a problem so we need more research to absolutely verify the literal meaning of the inscriptions), “We have sailed across the big ocean and then traveled up this huge river (the Amazon) and we then traded for gold with these people and are going back to our home now”, or words to that effect. *
The discovery at Gran Valaya "ship" designs of the Chachapoyas from the tomb walls at "Pueblo de los Muertos"

In an article written for the journal of The Explorer's Club of New York (vol. 76, no. 4, winter 1998/99), explorer Gene Savoy recounts how he made the discovery of the symbol and described the glyph's appearance:

"At the conclusion of my 1966 expedition into the area, I reported a funerary monument near Tingorbamba [Pueblo de los Muertos].... The site was in the cliffs far above the Utcabamba River. We had found some thirty-odd anthropoid funerary coffins of mud and fiber which contained the mummified remains of dignitaries, apparently of the Chipuris culture. Further along we came across what looked like a royal cenotaph, a funeral monument erected to the memory of some titular personage. incised in the wall of one mud building we discerned two extraordinarily important glyphs. The smaller sign (8.5 inches high by 21.5 inches long) was the Babylonian hieroglyph for "ship." This compares to a figure in Unger's list of pictorial characters (E. Unger, "Babylonsches Schrifitum," Ziscar, 1920). The second glyph (14.5 inches by 36 inches in length) was also a primitive sign for "ship." The sign obviously indicated a seagoing ship with high vertical prow in the form of the Egyptian "hieroglyphic sign for God, reading neiter, he of the tree" (Margaret A. Murray, The Splendor that was Egypt, Sidgwick and Jackson, London, St. Martin's Press, New York).... What was this ancient sign doing incised on a mortuary cliff in Peru, we asked? How does one explain the conflict in chronology; i.e., a Peruvian temple built circa A.D. 1250 bearing a hieroglyphic sign dating at least 3500 B.C.? Adding to this enigmatic puzzle is the fact that this glyph for ship is found on rock art in the Dead Sea region of Sinai."

The commonly accepted theory is that the Indians of the Americas developed independently and owe nothing to outside influences before the arrival of the Spaniards. The existence of these glyphs strongly points to contacts in some inexplicable manner.

Ophir was the distant land to which the fleets of Phoenicia sailed on behalf of Israel's King Solomon to acquire for him gold to build the Temple at Jerusalem. Its exact location has never been confirmed. In 1 Kings 9:26-28 we read:

And King Solomon made a navy of ships in Ezion-geber, which is beside Eloth, on the shore of the Red Sea, in the land of Edom.
And Hiram sent in the navy his servants, ship men that had knowledge of the sea, with the servants of Solomon.
And they came to Ophir, and fetched from thence gold, four hundred and twenty talents and brought it to king Solomon.

The amount of gold retrieved was extensive. Four hundred and twenty talents is about fourteen hundred pounds. Another biblical passage (2 Chronicles) suggests that the voyage round trip took three years to complete.
The land of Ophir is described variously --a place in the east, a place of rivers and mountains, land of the sun, a place inhabited where even apes are found. No one has yet found this land of legend, although many have suggested various locations, in Africa, in India, and even in the Americas.
It is believed that King Solomon sent two fleets out to Ophir: one through the Red Sea, the route known to the Egyptians, and another right through the Straits of Gibraltar. It is generally assumed that both fleets sailed to a port on the coast of east Africa. But if it is true that Hiram's ships made the voyage in no less than three years, that location in Africa does not lend itself to this fact.... Many have suggested that Peru may indeed have been Ophir. Etymologically, the names of both places may have the same meaning: Ophir, "the land of fire," and Pir-u, "the land of fire."

….

 

At another site (http://hope-of-israel.org/hebinusa.htm), the question is asked”

 

Were Hebrews in the Americas long before Columbus?

More evidence comes from the investigations of Dr. Alexander von Wuthenau, whom I interviewed at his home in Mexico City. His living room was filled to overflowing with terra cotta pottery figures and objects d' art. In his book The Art of Terra Cotta Pottery in Pre-Columbian Central and South America, Dr. Von Wuthenau published scores of photographs of these art objects. He tells of his astonishment, when he first noted that in the earliest, lower levels of each excavation he encountered -- not typical Indian heads -- but heads of Mongolians, Chinese, Japanese, Tartars, Negroes, and "all kinds of white people, especially Semitic Types with and without beards" (p. 49).

At Acapulco, von Wuthenau found that early Semitic peoples lived in considerable numbers. "The curious points about these essentially primitive figures are that, first, there is an emphasis on markedly Semitic-Hebrew features," he declared (p. 86). Female figures found in the region are also markedly Caucasian, with delicate eyebrows, small mouths and opulent coiffures.

Cyrus Gordon, who has studied the collection, points out: "In the private collection of Alexander von Wuthenau is a Mayan head, larger than life-size, portraying a pensive, bearded Semite. The dolichosephalic ("long-headed") type fits the Near East well. He resembles certain European Jews, but he is more like many Yemenite Jews."

Near Tampico, the early Huastecan culture reveals portrait heads with a predominant Semitic, white element, but also Negroid features appear. At Veracruz, meanwhile, a figurine of a female dancer possesses the features just like those of a Frenchwoman of Brittany! She wears a headdress reminiscent of Phoenician fashion. Also at Veracruz a figure with a false beard, styled like an Egyptian beard, had a snake-like protrusion on the forehead.

Again and again, figures with definite Semitic features have been found. A sample of Maya ceramic painting shows a lady with a flower who has an undeniable Negroid character. The figure has an affinity with Egyptian painting, says Wuthenau. [Yet] it was not found along the Nile, but in Central America! On the Pacific coast of Ecuador, also, evidence for the presence of early Hebrews has been found. Also discovered was a figurine of a lovely girl who wore a headdress with a remarkable Phoenician affinity. Other Ecuadorian heads show definite Semitic features. Clearly, the Semites penetrated a large part of the American continent in "prehistoric" times! ….

 

If Thor Heyerdahl could cover the distance, then might not those skilled sea-faring Phoenicians have found their way to the Americas? Professor Cyrus Gordon was convinced that the famous Paraiba Stone, for instance, indicating such a Phoenician sailing expedition, was authentic: https://history.stackexchange.com/questions/7326/what-is-the-state-of-the-art-historical-analysis-of-claims-that-carthaginians-di

 

In 1872, four pieces of a stone tablet inscribed with strange characters were found on a Brazilian plantation near the Paraiba River. A copy of the inscription was sent by the owner of the property to Dr. Ladislau Netto, director of the Museu Nacional in Rio de Janeiro. After studying the document carefully, Dr. Netto announced to a startled world that the inscription recorded the arrival of Phoenician mariners in Brazil centuries before Christ.  

….

American scholar, Cyrus H. Gordon, revisited the Paraiba inscription [which] … he claims, contains grammatical forms and expressions that have been recently discovered and were unknown to linguistic experts of the 19th century like Renan and Netto. Therefore, he contends, the document could not have been a fake. Gordon's translation reads, in part:

 

We are sons of Canaan from Sidon...We sailed from Ezion-geber into the Red Sea and voyaged with ten ships. We were at sea together for two years around Africa but were separated by the hand of Baal and we were no longer with our companions. So we have come here, twelve men and three women...may the exalted gods and goddesses favor us. ….

 


“Basically Gordon asserted that the Paraíba inscription contained Phoenician grammatical constructions unknown in 1872. …. Subsequent research during the twentieth century, Gordon said, revealed that the anomalous grammatical usages in the Paraíba Stone were genuine”.

 

All of the above pertain to possible BC arrivals in the new World.

But we must not omit to consider the possibility also of early AD time arrivals:


 

The Viking Explorer Who Beat Columbus to America


 

By Christopher Klein // October 8, 2013

 

Did a Viking explorer travel from Greenland to modern day Canada in the 11th century, beating Christopher Columbus by nearly 400 years?

 

….

Nearly 500 years before the birth of Christopher Columbus, a band of European sailors left their homeland behind in search of a new world. Their high-prowed Viking ship sliced through the cobalt waters of the Atlantic Ocean as winds billowed the boat’s enormous single sail. After traversing unfamiliar waters, the Norsemen aboard the wooden ship spied a new land, dropped anchor and went ashore. Half a millennium before Columbus “discovered” America, those Viking feet may have been the first European ones to ever have touched North American soil.

Exploration was a family business for the expedition’s leader, Leif Eriksson (variations of his last name include Erickson, Ericson, Erikson, Ericsson and Eiriksson). His father, Erik the Red, founded the first European settlement of Greenland after being expelled from Iceland around A.D. 985 for killing a neighbor. (Erik the Red’s father, himself, had been banished from Norway for committing manslaughter.) Eriksson, who is believed to have been born in Iceland around A.D. 970, spent his formative years in desolate Greenland. Around A.D. 1000, Eriksson sailed east to his ancestral homeland of Norway. There, King Olaf I Tryggvason converted him to Christianity and charged him with proselytizing the religion to the pagan settlers of Greenland. Eriksson converted his mother, who built Greenland’s first Christian church, but not his outlaw father.

Icelandic legends called sagas recounted Eriksson’s exploits in the New World around A.D. 1000. These Norse stories were spread by word of mouth before becoming recorded in the 12th and 13th centuries. Two sagas give differing accounts as to how Eriksson arrived in North America. According to the “Saga of Erik the Red,” Eriksson crossed the Atlantic by accident after sailing off course on his return voyage from Norway after his conversion to Christianity. The “Saga of the Greenlanders,” however, recounts that Eriksson’s voyage to North America was no fluke. Instead, the Viking explorer had heard of a strange land to the west from Icelandic trader Bjarni Herjolfsson, who more than a decade earlier had overshot Greenland and sailed by the shores of North America without setting foot upon it. Eriksson bought the trader’s ship, raised a crew of 35 men and retraced the route in reverse.

After crossing the Atlantic, the Vikings encountered a rocky, barren land in present-day Canada. Eriksson bestowed upon the land a name as boring as the surroundings—Helluland, Norwegian for “Stone Slab Land.” Researchers believe this location could possibly have been Baffin Island. The Norsemen then voyaged south to a timber-rich location they called Markland (Forestland), most likely in present-day Labrador, before finally setting up a base camp likely on the northern tip of the island of Newfoundland.

The Vikings spent an entire winter there and benefitted from the milder weather compared to their homeland. They explored the surrounding region abounding with lush meadows, rivers teeming with salmon, and wild grapes so suitable for wine that Eriksson called the region Vinland (Wineland).

After spending the winter in Vinland, Eriksson and his crew sailed home to windswept Greenland with badly needed timber and plentiful portions of grapes. Eriksson, who would succeed Erik the Red as chief of the Greenland settlement after his father’s death, never returned to North America, but other Vikings continued to sail west to Vinland for at least the ensuing decade. In spite of North America’s more bountiful resources, the Viking settlers remained in desolate Greenland. This was perhaps due to the violent encounters—including the slaying of Eriksson’s brother Thorwald–they had with the indigenous population of North America.

Archaeologists have unearthed evidence that supports the sagas’ stories of the Norse expeditions to America. In 1960, Norwegian explorer Helge Ingstad scoured the coasts of Labrador and Newfoundland for signs of a possible settlement, and he found it on the northernmost tip of Newfoundland at L’Anse aux Meadows. An international team of archaeologists that included Ingstad’s wife, Anne, excavated artifacts of Viking origin dating from around A.D. 1000, and the remains of the Norse village are now part of a UNESCO World Heritage site.

While Columbus is honored with a federal holiday, the man considered to be the leader of the first European expedition to North America has not been totally forgotten on the calendar. In 1964, President Lyndon Johnson signed a proclamation that declared October 9 to be Leif Eriksson Day in honor of the Viking explorer, his crew and the country’s Nordic-American heritage. The proximity of the days honoring Eriksson and Columbus is coincidence. October 9 was chosen because it is the anniversary of the 1825 arrival in New York of the ship [Restauration], which carried the first organized band of Norwegian immigrants to the [U.S.].

 

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