tarahumara men

For the Tarahumara of the Sierra Madre, the worst possible offence is to fail to live a contented life.  No matter what situation he finds himself in.  For the Tarahumara everything around them has life, and every plant and animal, having an individual personality and well-defined behaviors, is like a person.  All are considered, tolerated and respected, despite any problems they may cause.

An example is the case of the coyote.  Since everything was surely created for some purpose, the coyote is respected with equal; rights as a human being even though it may steal or challenge the Tarahumara for food.

Rather than finding personal use for every animal, as in beasts of burden, the Tarahumara learn to co-exist with everything in nature.  Each species serving the other.  This is why the Tarahumara are far superior and have much more expertise in the somewhat new science of ethology, the study of animals.  Animals have been appearing in Tarahumara stories, legends, myths, jokes, dances, songs and as symbols for thousands of years.

Since everything was created for a purpose, the Tarahumara do not fear death, but they do fear the dead.  It is believed that once people leave their body some can continue to exist.  They are believed to be able to travel in dreams.  For this reason, evil people who have died are cut into pieces to keep them from reshaping themselves.

Tarahumarapreparing for ceremony

When a person dies, certain ceremonies are performed to assure that the deceased will go to the next stage and not try to stay where they can no longer live.

Since ancient times, the dead have been buried with their possessions, which no one would dare take for fear of angering the owner.  Sometimes the objects are rendered useless, making holes in pots, so that the dead person understands that they can no longer live among the people.

View Tarahumara ceremonial items.

The God Quetzalcoatl

About 145 years before the Aztecs arrived in the valley of Mexico and fully 345 years before the founding of the mighty Aztec city of Tenochtitlan, the invading Toltec empire carried south to the Maya lands the belief in an all powerful being whose origin is still the subject of much research and debate among scholars.

Quetzalcoatl (Q) is a mysterious ancient god who took the appearance of a serpent like figure, whose body was covered with the emerald feathers of the sacred quetzal bird.  Q was Lord and Master of the wind, science and the arts, a supreme creator god who together with two brothers gave life to man and the universe during the current “fifth sun”.  Quetzalcoatl (the Nahuatl name for the god means “feathered serpent”) is perhaps one of the most ancient gods to exist in Mesoamerica.

In the Maya language, he was known as Kukulcan.   But Q has even more distant origins than the Aztecs or Maya or even the Toltecs.  Q probably dates back to the earliest of all Mesoamerican civilizations, the Olmec whose beginnings date back to around 1500 BCE.

The resilience of this god is extraordinary.  In the 3^rd century CE, at the magnificent city of Teotihuacan (which is older than the Toltecs), an important temple was dedicated to Q.  A mysterious cult centered on the veneration of Q is said to have originated there.  The inhabitants of the valley of Mexico believed the cult communicated directly with Q and derived mystical powers from its veneration of Q.  This mysterious cult of Q was credited with having the power of seeing into the future.  The cult is said to have foretold the date of the downfall of mighty Teotihuacan itself, the date of the downfall of the future Toltec nation and even the Aztec empire.

In the centuries leading up to the Spanish Conquest, the cult of the feathered serpent became pre-eminent throughout the regions of Mexico.  Early on, the veneration of this god may have been promoted by the Toltecs, and then adopted by the Maya, but by the time of the Aztecs, its veneration was a requirement by the force of the mighty Aztec empire.

Temple of Quetzalcoatl

Mysteriously, during the Toltec empire, the god takes a flesh and blood form.   In one tradition, Q is incarnated into a light skinned bearded figure who bestows knowledge and wisdom unto his people.  But his evil brother Tezcatlipoca, the god of fate, manages to organize an insurrection and effectively de-thrones him.

Q, then flees to the Gulf of Mexico and sails away across the sea on a raft of serpents, promising to one day return to reclaim his throne.

If was indeed the belief in the fulfillment of this prophecy that lead Motecuhzoma II, emperor of the Aztecs to not oppose the arrival of Hernan Cortez to the heart of the Aztec capital.  Interpretation of prophecy concerning Q told of a specific day on each 52 year cycle upon which Q could return.

Coincidentally, Cortez was spotted off the coast of Mexico on a “floating mountain”, on one of the possible cycling days of Q’s prophesized return.   Who could the stranger be, except the returning god Q?

Spotters described a light skinned, bearded being with shiny flesh that was impregnable to arrows.  Does one meet a returning god with force?

View Aztec ceremonial items.

Recovered Maya box

A mysterious 1,500-year-old Maya stone box that had been looted from an archaeological dig has resurfaced safe and sound.  The priceless artifact recently excavated from a dig in a cave in the jungles of Southern Mexico has been returned by an unidentified person.

The artifact was delivered anonymously to officials at the Chiapas Ministry of Culture.

Experts had described the artifact as one of the most impressive finds from the Early Classic Period (A.D. 250-600) of ancient Maya civilization.  Of special importance was that it was discovered at the base of a cave.  According to the Maya, caves were the entrance to the underworld, therefore the box was probably meant as an offering to the Lords of the Underworld.  It supposedly included a special incantation that would allow the Maya to temporarily cross the underworld safely in case of some yet untranslated event to come.  This free passage was meant to allow the Maya to escape some major event or cataclysm by using the roads of the underworld.

What’s most amazing according to onsite archaeologists is that the cataclysm the incantation seems to refer to is the now famous 2012 event.  It would seem that the incantation was meant to be used by the surviving Maya to coax the gods of the underworld to allow temporary free passage through their realm while the outside world played out the foretold 2012 cleansing and rebirth.  Upon conclusion, the surviving Maya would reemerge from the underworld to inhabit perhaps the new sixth sun.

The box’s theft sparked a national investigation and it is believed that the thoroughness of the search made the looters reconsider the cost of keeping the artifact.

The theft had touched a chord with the local Maya population and even sparked a few tense moments between local officials and the surrounding community.  It seems the local descendents of the Maya believe the box holds a special message meant for them.

In previous events, some of the excavated Maya artifacts had a habit of simply disappearing, probably never to be seen again.  Private collectors abroad are usually the buying party for such looted items.  This apparently does not sit well with the Maya community who consider the act a sacrilege and a theft of their already decimated culture.  They cite these types of recent acts as no different than those performed by the Spanish conquistadores and Catholic priests upon the colonization of the new world.

ancient mixtec skull

The Mixtec are indigenous Mesoamerican peoples inhabiting the modern day Mexican states of Oaxaca, Guerrero and Puebla in a region known as La Mixteca. The Mixtecan languages form an important branch of the Otomanguean linguistic family.

In pre-Columbian times, the Mixtec were one of the major civilizations of Mesoamerica.  Important ancient centers of the Mixtec include the ancient capital of Tilantongo, as well as the sites of Achiutla, Cuilapan, Huajuapan, Mitla, Tlaxiaco, Tututepec, Juxtlahuaca, and Yucuñudahui.

The term Mixtec (Mixteco in Spanish) comes from the Nahuatl word Mixtecapan, or “place of the cloud-people”.

The Mixtec are well-known in the anthropological world for their Codices, or phonetic pictures in which they wrote their history and genealogies in deerskin in the “fold-book” form. The best known story of the Mixtec Codices is that of Lord Eight Deer, named after the day in which he was born, whose personal name is Jaguar Claw, and whose epic history is related in several codices, including the Codex Bodley and Codex Zouche-Nuttall. He successfully conquered and united most of the Mixteca region.

The Mixtec used a 260-day sacred calendar. A day is a combination of a number, called the coefficient, and a day sign. The coefficient ranges from 1 to 13, while the day sign is one of 20 glyphs.

Mixtec Tripod vessel

Mixtec religion worshipped the forces of nature including life, death and an afterlife. The sun was the deity held in highest esteem. Humans were tasked with maintaining the balance among men, nature, and the supernatural world through conscious acts of private and social ritual.

Blood sacrifice from the ears and tongue, and bird feathers were sometimes offered in purified vessels as gifts to the gods. These rituals were accompanied by dances that sometimes included human heart and animal sacrifices. Fire ceremonies indicated a renewal of the world and a granting of a new epoch given by the gods who were satisfied by the offerings provided to them.

View Mixtec ceremonial items.

Lost Aztec Treasure

The Aztecs eventually ended up in central Mexico where they founded the mighty city of Tenochtitlan.  From there, they conquered and subjugated the then entire known world.  It was chronicled by the conquering Spaniards that the Aztecs had so much gold that entire rooms were filled to the ceiling.  And although gold was admired by the Aztecs, it was not so much admired as things like jade or quetzal feathers.

It was this obsession with gold that pushed the conquistadores to attempt the unthinkable, defeat the mighty Aztec armies.  Although unthinkable, the allure of gold was so strong that death seemed an acceptable risk.

And, when the Aztecs were finally defeated, crushed by Cortez and his supporters, when the untold treasures of the entire empire were finally within hand, Cortez found…. nothing.

To this day, the whereabouts and what happened to the vast amounts of gold and treasure the conquistadores had seen in Tenochtitlan is unknown.

According to the author R.G. Babcock, “It is commonly believed that the Aztecs were conquered in 1519-21, and that they were decimated by disease, scattered by the Spaniards, and then absorbed by surrounding Indian tribes”.

“This not what happened, I think this conclusion is in error.  Written legend implies the Aztecs upon seeing the end of Tenochtitlan were once again guided by Huitzilopochtli, their patron god to their origin point.  Legend claims they returned to the place of seven caves taking their ceremonial and religious artifacts and treasures with them.”

Another argument Babcock gives besides written legend for this belief goes something like this; “Somewhere in the 19th century two men from the Midwest and an old Indian Chief were in an Arizona cave filled with treasure… A hundred years later I received a letter, describing a first-hand account of the lost gold of the Aztec Empire.  I believe Aztec gold is the source material for all those tales about a curse and lost gold in Arizona and New-Mexico”.  “I believe the Aztecs left a ceremonial cave there and it is still stuffed with the treasure that Cortez lost in Tenochtitlan (Mexico City).”

View Aztec atrifacts

sign from Huitzilopochtli

The legend narrated by the Aztec codices mention an eagle perched on top of a cactus devouring a serpent as the sign that the God Huitzilopochtli would send to identify the place.  For over 165 years the Aztec people wandered the northern and central areas of the modern nation of Mexico. 

Until finally the sign was sent.  Unfortunately the sign indicated the sacred spot for the future capital to be located on a small island in the middle of the lake Texcoco.  A very inhospitable place unstable because it was in the middle of a lake, surrounded by inhospitable swamps and infested with snakes and grasshoppers.

In this unlikely place, the mighty city of Tenochtitlan was built.  At its height it was the splendor of the then known world.  Populated by the mightiest warriors Mexico had ever known and center of the place where the covenant between the Aztecs and the God Huitzilopochtli was kept.

Today, the Mexican flag, and every Mexican coin circulating display the sign from Huitzilopochtli as the National identity of the country of Mexico.

Learn more on Aztecs, Aztec pottery and artifacts

Maya Blue Warrior

The pigment color known as Maya blue seems to have been used by the ancient Maya to paint pottery, murals, and even the bodies of humans destined for ritual sacrifice.

Scientists have long sought the basic chemical components of the pigment, which has a remarkable ability to resist age, acid, weathering, and even modern chemical solvents.  Unlike most natural pigments that fade, Maya blue is very stable. But the exact recipe, along with the tools the Maya used to create the pigment was unknown.  That is, possibly until now.

While inspecting a Mayan pottery bowl discovered in Mexico, archaeologists noticed that the bowl contained a wedge of preserved incense dotted with white flecks and a blue pigment.

mayan pottery

Analyses revealed the incense was made of copal, a tree resin whose smoke the Maya believed nourished the gods. The pigment turned out to be the famed Maya blue, and the flecks were bits of a white clay mineral called palygorskite.

The new hypothesis is; Maya blue is made by fusing palygorskite with pigments from the leaves of the indigo plant.  But the two ingredients do not readily combine, and it is still unknown how the Maya fused them.

Archaeologists had suspected that copal was important to the production of Maya blue, and the new findings seem to confirm that theory.

Possible location of Site Q

In the late 1960’s a large number of looted Maya stone tablets with hieroglyphs flooded the international antiquities markets.  They immediately disappeared into private collections.  Recently, archaeologists specializing in Maya writing were allowed to examine some of these pieces and concluded that they all must have come from one yet unknown Maya site.

Archaeologists named the unknown location “Site Q”, for the Spanish word “Que” – meaning “What”.  Unfortunately, researchers had little idea until recently of where the mysterious site Q was located. 

This was indeed a disappointment as the newly partly deciphered tablets told of a yet undiscovered Maya city and of a yet unknown Maya king that may have played a major role in the mystery of why the Maya abandoned their ancient cities.

It is believed that in late 2009, NASA satellite photographs may have finally discovered the location of the mysterious Site Q.  The yet unconfirmed site sits in the remote Petén jungle of northern Guatemala.

Maya Warriors

One tablet in particular seems to hint at yet another prophecy possibly dealing with the now famous 2012 date.  It mentions the date 9 Imix, 9 K’ank’in, 12.19.19.0.1 correlating to our Gregorian calendar’s December 28, 2011.  The tablet reads

Now for some, the process begins

Not much more will they wait

— section missing from tablet—–

road  —section missing from tablet—–  The black road    —section missing from tablet—–

Of interest to archaeologists is the reference to “black road”.  The Maya describe the “black road” as a place located in the heavens where a band of dust clouds makes the sky particularly dark from our view from earth.   They describe it was a place of misfortune and an entrance to the underworld.

Two other famous sources make reference to this “black road”, the Dresden Codex and stela 6 in the Maya site at Tortuguero.  These two sources, and possibly this third one, in effect are the only ones as of yet discovered that make mention of the 2012 prophecy.

Interestingly, the stelar location of this “dark road” correlates with the location where our Milky Way Galaxy has its galactic center and possibly the location of a super massive black hole that actually powers the spirals in our galaxy.

If these partial pieces of tablets indeed describe more of the 2012 prophecies, any new discoveries at the Site Q may further clarify what the most precise keepers  of time foresaw and meant to leave as a message. 

This news should at the very least inspire a few more Earth destruction movies.

Learn more on the Maya

Huitzilopochtli, god of war and incarnation of the sun

According to one version of Aztec mythology, three gods reigned supreme.  Among them was Huitzilopochtili (hummingbird wizard), Tezcatlipoca (smoking mirror) and Quetzalcoatl (sovereign plumed serpent).

Below these three gods, it was believed were four sub-gods and an infinite number of gods below them including Tlaloc, the god of rain and growth.

Of particular importance to the Aztecs was Huitzilopochtli. In the current fifth world, he was the reigning god of war, and protector (and possibly an incarnation) of the sun.  Huitzilopochtli chose the Aztecs as his own people and under his guidance they conquered the entire known world. 

Aztec sacrifice

Tenochtitlan the mighty capital of the Aztec empire was itself directly protected by Huitzilopochtli.  A special temple on top of the Main Pyramid housed the presence of the war god. Many sacrifices took place there and the heads of the victims were placed on racks around the base of the pyramid.

Huitzilopochtli was the son of Coatlicue, goddess of the earth who had also given birth to the stars and the moon.

Aztec legends have it that the moon and the stars were jealous of Huitzilopochtli as he was destined to become the incarnation of the sun.

During his birth, Huitzilopochtli emerged from Coatlicue’s womb fully dressed for battle and used the “serpent of fire” to defeat them. From that point forward, the stars and the moon continued to battle the sun.  They conspired every night to keep it from rising in the sky after its nightly journey through the underworld.

Human sacrifices made to Huitzilopochtli were in part to help him gain strength for his nightly battle.

Learn more on the ancent Aztecs