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MAN DOES NOT LIVE BY FISH ALONE

As was discussed in last year’s survey, while in the eastern hemisphere early large scale societies depended on cultagens, in North America the early societies depended on arboriculture. Indeed, the cultivation of trees began very early in the western hemisphere, and while the evidence recovered to date is sparse, the North American shell ring cultures almost certainly depended on the cultivation of various palm trees. Ramon nut is seen in Caribbean sites, while plantain (banana variant) and cocoanut trees show up in differing limited Pacific coastal regions.

SOUTH AMERICA AS A TECHNOLOGY SOURCE?:
EARLY AGRICULTURE ON THE AMAZON AND ORINOCO RIVERS

The final foodstuff important to early coastal man in the area under survey was manioc, and for this one must turn to its native range, what is now the jungles of South American. Given the dense vegetation that exists in this region today, it is hard to imagine this area to turned into plains by foraging megafauna. It is harder still to imagine that the hunters of those megafauna turned to agriculture when that megafauna died off.

Fortunately for us, someone already has imagined this:

http://www.ukans.edu/~hoopes/nature.html.

As Dr. Hoopes points out, “The earliest evidence for New World pottery comes from the central Amazon, with dates around 7000 BC (Roosevelt et al. 1991, Roosevelt 1995). It is present in northern Colombia by 4000 BC (Oyuela 1995), coastal Ecuador by 3500 BC (Damp and Vargas 1995), and central Panama by 3000 BC (Cooke 1995).” By Hoope’s account there is no need to look for the introduction of pottery technology via trans-oceanic contacts, as Native Americans had already developed the technology quite independently. And as the Amazon dwellers were riverine peoples, it is likely that they had developed dugout canoes as well.

One thing which Hoopes could not visualize, but which we can, is that nearly the whole of Amazonia was set on fire sometime before 2,000 BCE by the entry and explosion of the Rio Cuarto impactor, and that this led to the jungles which we know today. As for the irrigation agriculturalists, what appears to me to have happened after the Rio Cuarto impact event is that gradually, over time, those few manioc cultivators who survived it, those living in the far north west of Amazonia, gradually managed to re-establish themselves:

http://www.sas.upenn.edu/~cerickso/baures/Mann2.html

Verifying this would involve ground survey and excavations on the headwaters of the Orinoco River, an area which today is largely under the control of cocaine traffickers.

THE SOUTH AMERICAN MOUND BUILDERS

In the mountains of South America, around 2,600 BCE the arboriculture of the coastal peoples was supplemented by the cultivation of beans, lima beans, and squash:

http://www.archaeologychannel.org/caralint.html

One of the most distinctive items of this culture is their construction of large mounds in the center of their urban complexes. In as much as their cultivation appears to have been based on networks of channels for irrigation, this implies some measure of organization of labor, and thus of a hierarchical organization to their societies, a hierarchy demonstrated very convincingly by the existence of these large mounds. These cultures aquatics roots may be seen in their heavy use of sea-food, and besides the use of irrigation, it is more than likely that they may also have used some forms of aquaculture.

THE SPREAD OF MOUND BUILDING: THE “FORMATIVE”

While the Rio Cuarto impact event appears to have put an end to the South American mound builders of the Amazon headwaters and the mountains, mound building cultures survived on the west coast of South America, and enjoyed dominance there until the rise of the Inca. More to the focus of this survey, the mound building culture appears to have spread north, with these arboreal, raised field, and aquaculture technologies forming the basis for the coastal Zoque (Olmec) societies and other societies both along the eastern coast of Central America as well as along the shores of the highland lakes of the region.

That this technology transfer was water borne is indicated by the existence of large mounds in Cuba(no longer exsiting, but reported by Daniel G. Brinton, in The Archaeology of Cuba, American Anthropologist, Vol 10, 1898), as well as the appearance of a large mound culture first seen in North America at the mouth of the Mississippi River, particularly at Baton Rounge, Louisianna. (For a discussion of these, see last year’s survey.) Whether this technology transfer was done by paddle powered dugouts or by sail powered craft is unknown, but the cultivation of both cotton (possibly used for sails) and hennequin (possibly used for ropes for rigging) spread.

THE 1150 BCE IMPACT EVENT AND ITS SURVIVORS

Sometime between 1150-1050 BCE nearly all of the Atlantic cultures suffered a tremendous setback. In Atlantic North America, the Late Archaic comes to an end, and shell ring cultures pretty much disappear from the Atlantic Coast, while survivors appear to have hanged on in Western Florida.

In the Caribbean Islands, the early shell cultures come to a stop, as does inter-island trade. Peoples immigrating into the islands a 1,000 years later would find a few technically primitive survivors who told tales of their ancestors surviving a great flood from the east by hiding out in caves.

Along the Gulf Coast of Central America, there are site discontinuities over a large area, centered around a date of about 1150 BCE.

THE ZOQUE (OLMEC) RECOVERY

The Zoque (Olmec) did recover, and what I believe to have happened is that survivors moved from their in-land locations into the newly depopulated area and founded new cities.

Some researchers are arguing today that the Zoque (Olmec) were influenced by contacts from Africa; other researchers argue that they were influenced by contacts with Asia. Letting these hypothesis pass without comment, I need to outline briefly here some of the early key cultural characteristics of Zoque (Olmec) culture, aspects which were shared with the Maya who later occupied the Zoque (Olmec) areas.

First of these cultural elements is the construction of large mounds.

Second of these cultural elements is the head deformation of leaders. This appears to have been helped along by the use of a small axe, known to the Maya as k’awil, and images of Zoque (do I really need to write the Nahua identification “Olmec” again?) leaders commonly feature a cleft head. Combined with a city totem, this indicated rulership over a city. This cranial deformation was also practiced by the Machalilla, who moved from Colombia into Ecuador around 1,600 BCE.

The third of these cultural elements is an annual ceremony of the raising of a pole (later a stone) to keep the heavens and sky separate, in other words to prevent impact events. The symbol of this ceremony is a rectangle crossed by diagonal linear bands, where the diagonals lead to the four gods which hold up the heavens. (This ceremony will be described in detail in Part 4 of this survey.) Among the Maya this ceremony is the “seating” of the “tun” and “katun” periods of time, and similar practices are also attested at a later date by the people living along Lake Nicarauga. This rite is conducted timed to a count of days.

The fourth of these cultural elements is a detailed astronomy, and it is symbolized by a tri-lobe E with circles between the lobes. This symbol is the later Mayan “star” sign.

The fifth cultural element is the use of a celestial jaguar symbol by the priesthood, who it may be safely assumed oversaw the detailed work of items three and four above, and by the king, whose divine intercession with the sky gods was needed.

The sixth cultural element is the use of celestial dragon imagery.

The seventh cultural element is a ball game. Ritual stone spheres have a wide distirbution throughout Central America and the Caribbean.

The eighth cultural element is the use of hallucinogens from water lilies and toads.

The ninth cultural element is a ceremonial cylinder, an implement of office carried by kings.

The tenth cultural element is the use of writing.

MAIZE AND THE MAYA

Pollen from a maize variety has been recovered at the very early date of 5100 BCE from a coastal site in Veracruz near the Zoque site of La Venta, and a more advanced version of maize shows up there only 100 years later. (http://www.famsi.org/reports/pohl/pohl.htm) My own belief is that this maize was used by these early formative people simply to provide pasturage and fodder for deer herds which were then harvested. This is borne out to some extent by the continued cultivation of the smaller variety of maize down to 2,500 BCE, and by the practice of keeping game reserves in later times.

More amazingly, manioc, the principle cultagen of the irrigation societies, shows up at La Venta at the very early date of 4,600 BCE, some 500 years after maize. Tracing this spread from the Amazon jungle is difficult, and once again, in dealing with these early coastal cultures, one must remember that their remains may lie under the rising level of the waters of the oceans, or simply have been washed away by the late Archaic mega-tsunami.

This same maize technology seen at La Venta seems to have spread elsewhere, as maize in the highlands of Mexico undergo a marked change from 4,300 BCE to 3,500 BCE. Again, I am of the opinion that this may simply have been the development of animal forage. Why? Because the artifacts required to process the maize for human consumption have not been found.

If one is looking for the development of maize as a human foodstuff, I think one must look to the Mayan homeland in the area around Kaminaljuyu, Guatemala. The Zoque had control of the Atlantic to Pacific trade route which ran up the Grijalva River and then down the Izapa River to the Pacific, and they also controlled trans-oceanic land routes which ran up the Usumacinta River, its tributary the Salinas, and then down to the Pacific. But while the Zoque controlled the lower Montagu River from their base in Copan, the Maya at Kaminaljuyu blocked access via this route to the Pacific.

If maize is to release its nutrients and be made sufficient to sustain human life, it requires that it be ground and soaked in lime water and then cooked, the “nixtamal” process. My guess is that this what the Maya discovered how to do; this technology allowed the growth in their population, and their subsequent movement down the Salinas and the Belize Rivers. This brought them into conflict with the Zoque, and this conflict would end with the Maya in control of nearly all of the former Zoque territory. Another factor to remember in this process is that it is entirely too likely that the Zoque population had been severely reduced around 1150 BCE by the mega-tsunami.

Besides their reliance on maize, the most distinctive thing about the Maya is their extensive use of a number of hallucinogens. This hallucinogen use is usually mentioned in passing in the literature, but it is quite central to Mayan life. The Mayan glyph for the investiture of a Lord, an Ahau, features him presenting his buttocks to the reader for a hallucinogenic enema, and scenes of this enema usage have been preserved on Mayan painted vases, with enema tubes themselves recovered from royal tombs. Even more to the point, one of the central symbols of Mayan religion, the ceiba tree, is a source for an MAO inhibitor used to amplify the effects of ayahuasca, a source of DMT. And DMT itself is described by those who have experimented with it as being like LSD, but much stronger. It’s but little wonder then that some pieces of Mayan art feature scenes of self decapitation.

THE DIFFICULTIES OF WORKING WITH NON-MAYAN MEGA-TSUNAMI CULTURAL MATERIALS:
LATER POPULATION MOVEMENTS AND CULTURAL TRADITIONS IN CENTRAL AMERICA

There are abundant non-Mayan materials which preserve memory of the mega-tsunami event, but they have been ignored for the purposes of this survey, and a few words of explanation are in order to explain this decision.

At about the same time as the Maya moved from their home area around Kanminaljuyu into the Zoque lands, another group appeared to the north in the region of the Valley of Mexico and established their control over the areas which the Formative peoples had previously held. These peoples established their major city at Teotihuaca, and the cultural complex evidenced there is quite different from that of the either the Zoque or the Maya.

These peoples appeared on the scene without nearby antecdent, and their language family Otto-Manguean (Otomi/Mixtec/Zapotec), is different from that of Maya. As for the origin of these peoples, I hope that Conference participants will forgive me for not definitively solving a problem which has vexed researchers for over a century. My guess, and let me emphasize that this is merely a guess, is that these people may have emigrated via large watercraft from the west coast of South America, and that their appearance in Mexico may be related to the disappearance of the Cupisnique people from South America around 200 BCE.

These Teotihaucans, for lack of a better word, would go on to establish political dominance over both over most of the highlands as well as over the adjacent Mayan cities of Usumacinta River, beginning at Tikal in 378 CE. Wars between the group of Mayan cities under Teotihuacan influence and the group of cities not under Teotihaucan influence would continue until some 300 years later, to around the year 650 CE, when another people arrive, conquer Teotihuaca, and establish their control there and begin their own raids into the Mayan lands.

The new rulers of the Valley of Mexico were the Toltec, and once again their cultural traditions are quite distinct, this time both from those of the Maya and from those of the Teotihaucans. Once again, these people’s language is different (Nonoalca), and they appear without nearby cultural antecedent. Once again I hope that conference members will forgive me for not definitively solving another problem which has vexed researchers for over a century. My guess, and let me emphasize that this is merely a guess, is that these people may have emigrated via large watercraft from the west coast of South America, and that their appearance in Mexico may be related to the disappearance of the Moche people from the coastal region of South America around 650 CE.

This time, we at least have materials relating to that movement, specifically The Annals of the Cakquichiquels, and what must be a very late pictographic version of the same, the Codex Borgia. These close parallels between these peoples and the Vikings in Europe appear quite striking to me, and so I note a few of them here.

Watercraft played a role in these peoples’ attacks, as may be seen at:
http://www.rjames.com/toltec/borgia/borgia10.jpg
(The people in black are non-Toltec. All of these scenes are repeated in written form in The Annals of the Cakquichels.)

In much the same way that the Vikings used dogs in their attacks, these people heaved containers of bees at their opponents, as may be seen at:
http://www.rjames.com/toltec/borgia/borgia08.jpg

While I have not spotted a clear scene of this in the late Codex Borgia version, The Annals of the Cakquichels also relate these peoples use of the bow and arrow, and his may be indicative of South American origins. The appearance of this new weapon would bear parallel with the Viking’s introduction of the battle axe.

THE COLLAPSE OF THE CLASSIC MAYA

Those Conference participants looking for catastrophic ecological reasons for the collapse of the “Classic” Maya would do well to examine Linda Schele’s work The Code of Kings, pages 199-201, (written with Peter Mathews), where she outlined the effects of the Toltec population movement. The conquest of Teotihuaca by the Toltecs touched off a final devastating round of wars between those Mayan city-states which had been under Teotihaucan influence and those city-states which had not.

But on the other hand perhaps those looking for a catastrophic reason for the Maya collapse should not abandon hope. If the Toltec were in fact Moche immigrants, then it appears likely that the original Moche immigration from South America had been touched off by a seismic event which destroyed their irrigation systems.

FURTHER MIGRATIONS

There were no victors in these wars between the Mayan city states, except, of course, for the Toltecs. Sometime around 1150 CE the Mexica (Aztec) appeared in the Valley of Mexico, and the Toltec left the area, immigrating en masse to the Yucatan, where they finally established dominance over the Mayan areas, and set up their capitol at Chichen Itza around 1150 CE.

Another parallel between the Viking and Toltec societies is their rule by “democratic” associations of nobles. This “democracy” allowed the establishment of political units larger than the city state, and the “mat” houses (meeting houses of nobles) played a greater and greater role in the governance of Mayan peoples from the time of the very first appearance of the Toltecs in the Valley of Mexico. Both of these processes, the Toltec migrations, and the “democratization” of Mayan society, were still ongoing at the time of Spanish contact.

WHY THE LATER MATERIALS WERE IGNORED

Given all of these cultural overlays, the original Formative peoples’ flood stories were severely modified by each succeeding people. If the Mayan records themselves had not survived, it would be necessary to go through each of these stories, strip off each cultural layer, and try to arrive at something approaching an accurate memory of the mega-tsunami event.

These migrations have important consequences, particularly when working with the 20 some pictographic manuscripts which the Spanish conquistadors sent home from their base of conquest in the city of Texcoco. (This was a rival with the Mexica (Aztec) capitol city, Tenochtitlan). For any Conference participant who may wish to try working with these materials, I direct their attention to the Mexica (Aztec-Nahua) adaptation of the tale found in the Codex Rios, along with the translation there into Italian of the Spanish commentary to the text. My own Italian and 16^th century cursive are not good enough to handle it. After they have established the text, including its time and date of transmission, all that it will be necessary for them to do will be to strip off the Mexica, Toltec, and Teotihaucan additions to the original Formative version of events. I wish them the best of luck.

Fortunately, to establish the original materials underlying this manuscript we do not need to do this, as as it will be seen in Part 3 and Part 4 of this survey, Mayan reports of this impact event survived fairly intact.

MIGRATIONS IN THE CARIBBEAN ISLANDS

The same holds true for flood myths from the Caribbean Islands: if we lacked fairly clear and early Mayan reports of the impact and mega tsunami event, we would have to go through each of the numerous flood myths from the islands, examining closely the migrations of peoples from South America and Central America into each island, the exact time and place of the recording of each myth, and through labored analysis attempt to come up with something approaching a fact. Fortunately we don’t have to do any of this.

KEY MARCO, FLORIDA:
A SMALL IMPACT EVENT?

As was mentioned earlier, some shell peoples appear to have survived on the West coast of Florida, and these would re-emerge to dominate a large part of Florida by the time of Spanish contact. One of the most interesting sites which has been found so far is that of Key Marco, unusual because of the recovery there of a large number of wooden and organic artifacts. These have been dated to around 800 CE, though I understand this date is subject to debate.

What is quite interesting is the manner in which these perishable artifacts were preserved. The artifacts were found buried in the muck around a major urban complex, a complex which included ceremonial mounds, and the artifacts were accompanied by signs of fire. The hypothesis currently put forward is that a hurricane occurred, which started a fire, and then blew the burning artifacts into the muck. I don’t know what you think of a raging fire in a hurricane, but it seems entirely more likely to me that what occurred was a detonation at altitude of an impactor, with the thermal wave igniting the objects, only to have the blast wave arrive a few seconds later and blow the artifacts into the muck. This phenomena was seen at Tunguska, where trees were set on fire by the thermal wave from the detonation, only to have those fires extinguished a few seconds later by the arrival of the blast wave.

DID TIMUCUA AND CALUSA LEGENDS OF THE MEGA-TSUNAMI SURVIVE?

Given the cultural continuity of the shell peoples of Florida, and the prolonged interaction of both the Timucua and the Calusa with Spanish, French, and English colonists, it is likely that their myths were at least partially recorded. Unfortunately, I am unaware of any work consolidating surviving materials of the myths of either tribe. Of course, January and February are approaching, and should someone wish to provide me with an extraordinarily large sum of money, I would be perfectly delighted to hire my neighbor’s son to feed the cats and head off to Florida to talk with the experts in the field about the problem:

http://members.aol.com/jeworth/gboarch.htm

To gain some idea of the difficulties which they face, see for example:

http://members.aol.com/jeworth/gbopaleo.htm

Thus prepared, let us begin our examination of the surviving Mayan materials on the impact produced mega-tsunami event of 1150 BCE.

GOING INTO THE WATER:
A SURVEY OF IMPACT EVENTS AND
THE COASTAL PEOPLES OF SOUTH-EAST NORTH AMERICA, THE CARIBBEAN, AND CENTRAL AMERICA

@2001 E.P. Grondine epgrondine@hotmail.com

PART THREE: THE SURVIVAL OF MAYAN HIEROGLYPHIC RECORDS

THE SURVIVAL OF MAYAN RECORDS:
INTERPRETERS, OCCUPATION, LITERACY, AND SURVIVAL

I suppose that some Conference participants will be surprised to learn that any Native American records of the Rio Cuarto and 1150 BCE impact events survived the Spanish conquest. It is well known that the Spanish Catholic priests in their efforts to stamp out the religions of the Native American peoples burned most of the books of the conquest period “Maya” as well as other Native American peoples, and thus it is also widely believed that they managed to destroy nearly all of these Mayan records, except for those few Mayan hieroglyphic documents which somehow managed to escape destruction. Such is not the case.

Unlike the European immigration into North America, where relatively low-density Native American populations were nearly completely finished off by contact with the European diseases, with large numbers of colonists then settling in their lands, the Spanish exploiters of Central America faced a much different situation. In Central America there were very large Native American populations, populations so large that even after the European diseases had taken their toll, fairly large Native American populations still remained.

This is one factor in the survival of the records, but an even more significant factor in the survival of the Native American cultures and their records was the difference between the Northern European countries and Spain in their strategies for exploiting the newly discovered lands. France, England, and the Dutch were all late in the settlement of the New World; their primary goals at the time were the control of the long standing Spanish trade routes to the New World. To satisfy this goal these countries focused on the permanent settlement of ports capable of hosting their fleets, fleets capable of intercepting the Spanish trade.

The Spanish conquest itself had preceded these efforts by some 200 years. As Spain had very few people involved in the exploitation of the lands which they discovered, in order to exploit these lands it was necessary for the Spanish to make use of the Native American peoples already living in them. In Cuba, their first conquest, the Spanish quickly discovered that if they attempted to enslave a population, it would fight them to the death. In the future the Spanish would largely leave the Native American societies in place, as long as their leaders served them and provided them both with the labor they needed and with the goods which they desired to send back to Spain.

What do you need to conquer a densely populated land? First of all, you need interpreters capable of understanding the language of the peoples already living in that land. These interpreters are of incredible historical significance, and their role has been little studied to date. The usual Spanish technique for obtaining these interpreters was to kidnap speakers of the desired language and then to learn the language from them. In the case of Central America, people with mastery of two languages were available from among the captives of warfare and from those engaged in the coastal trade. Another source of interpreters was the recovery of Spanish crew members who had been ship wrecked and had then not been killed by their Native American “hosts”.

Other key items of intelligence which could be learned from these individuals were descriptions of the lands, the resources available for exploitation, the military strength of the people living in them, any cultural myths which could be used during the conquest, and most importantly, knowledge of conflicts between the different Native American peoples, conflicts which the Spanish could then use to enlist allies for their conquests.

As I said earlier, the Spanish goal during conquest was to kill off only the very top levels of Native American governments and to take their role, leaving the subservient political leadership in place to run local affairs for the benefit of both the Spanish and as well as themselves. These local leaders had intellectuals in their employ, and these intellectuals would thus survive as well, at least until the Catholic priests arrived later and began the co-optation of these lesser leaders (by conversion) or their elimination (by auto de fe).

WHO WERE THE CHILAM BALAM’S?

In Classic Mayan (Chol and Yucatec) creation myths there are featured two characters known as the “Paddler Gods”. (It must be remembered that Classic Mayan (Chol and Yucatec) language and rites were also absorbed by later Toltec and Itza immigrants into the area.) One of these “Paddler Gods” has been firmly identified as the primal version of a Classic Mayan Lord, an Ahau, by the stingray spine placed through his nose. The other Paddler God is the primal version of the Classic Mayan Lords’ intellectual advisor, the Chilam Balam, who may be identified by the jaguar (Balam) cap which he wears.

What does the title “Chilam Balam” mean in English? On a primitive level, it means “Jaguar Interpreter”, but this does not do the title justice. The Mayan Lords are referred to as jaguars; and at the same time the Maya also referred to both the sun, spotted with sunspots, and the night sky, spotted with stars, as jaguar. The best translation of the title I can come up with is “The Lord’s Celestial Interpreter”, which still does not fully do the title justice, but at least it does account for some Mayan connotations of “jaguar”.

What were the duties of a Lord’s Celestial Interpreter? He was the intellectual advisor to a Mayan Lord, the intellectual leader of a city state, and as such his duties were all encompassing, as can be seen from this description by Bishop Diego de Landa: (A.R. Pagden translation, J. Philip O’Hara, Chicago, 1975, page 42):

“The people of Yucatan were as diligent in matters of religion as they were in those of government. The had a high priest whom they called Achkinmai, and by another name Ahaucanmai, which mean the Priest Mai or the High Priest Mai.”

Landa’s Mayan is known to be bad, and this is a good example of it. The first title is “Ah Kin May”, which means “The Sun-Priest of the (Sun) Cycle”, and the second title is “Ahua Can May”, which means “Lord of the Heavens’ Cycle”. These titles are in addition to that of Chilam Balam. It is also important to note when working through Mayan studies that the title “Chilam Balam” has caused much confusion, and it has been quite common for some to confuse the title with the existence of one person, and for others to confuse the balam, interpreters, of which there were many, with the Chilam Balam, of which each Lord had only one. Continuing now with Landa’s account

"This person was greatly revered by the Lords, and had no repartiamento (a Spanish colonial term for an allocation of serfs) of Indians, but in addition to the offerings, the Lords made him gifts, and all the priests of the town made contributions. He was suceeded in office by his sons or closest relative, and in this lay the key to their learning.