The Olmec and the ancient Basque peoples share a common myth.

The Palace of Night.

Musa: “A serpent woman?”
Varus: “Come and see.”

This is the title of a chapter in the novel ATLA, written by Mrs. J. G. Smith published in 1886. This novel was published four years after Ignatius Donnelly released his book Atlantis: The Antediluvian World. The subject of this chapter relates to the thread at hand. The novel takes place in the land of Atlan and the chapter describes the sacred place to which no common Atlantean tread. At the base of a volcanic mountain there dwells a Sorceress named Kirtyah who lives in solitude in a cave under a mountain. The cave proves to be a great palace hewn from the bedrock. The palace is also home to another living being. This creature is a yellow asp of great size and age, whose name is Lucksor. At the center of this chamber there is a revolving wheel glowing with phosphorescent light.

A wheel image on the spine of Ignatius Donnelly’s book.


The pre-Christian mythology of the Basque people of Northern Spain mentions a sacred woman by the name of Mari. This woman would enter into a cave somewhere on a high mountain. There she would meet with her consort named Sugaar. When they were together they would produce storms and when they traveled together the storms would produce hail. Basque legends describe Sugaar as either a fire-sickle, a fire ball or even a two horned serpent.


Modern rendering of Mari by Josu Goni.


Modern rendering of Sugaar as a serpent in the lauburu by Josu Goni.


Mount Anboto in Biscay, Spain. The supposed location of Mari’s cave.


This Basque legend is of great interest because it is similar to one of the primary bas-reliefs of Chalcatzingo, a pre-classic Olmec site. The Olmecs are believed to have had their start around 1500 B.C. and then reached their apogee between 700 and 500 B.C. This site is located at the foot of three 1,000-foot volcanic cones and is considered sacred by the Aztecs as well as other ancient peoples. Monument 1, El Ray, depicts a man or woman sitting in a cave. Above the image of the cave are three clouds which are releasing rain. Sitting on top of the cave dwells a ball of fire with a St. Andrew's Cross at its center. The most prominent feature of this bas-relief is the energy explosion coming out of the mouth of the cave. Monument 5 is of interest as well because it is a bas-relief of a large two horned serpent devouring a man. This image is also shown with the St. Andrew’s Cross.


Chalcatzingo. The location of the Pre-Classic Olmec bas-reliefs.


Sketching of Monument 1, El Ray, at Chalcatzingo.


Actual photo of Monument 1 showing El Ray seated on a throne.



The current understanding of the Olmec “!” is thought to be rain. However, if the Basque mythology is a true comparison then the “!” symbol is really hail. When Mari and Sugaar travel together the clouds produce hail. The explosive emitting energy coming out of the cave could also denote movement. Then we see Sugaar sitting on top of the cave in the form of a fire ball. Sugaar is taking a ride with the moving cave. With monument 5 Sugaar is in the form of a two horned serpent. I believe the St. Andrew’s Cross is identified with Sugaar and sometimes denotes death.


Monument 5, Horned serpent devouring man at Chalcatzingo.


I propose the new theory that the Olmecs and ancient Basque peoples were in contact with each other around 1500 B.C. Then somehow, mysteriously, they were disconnected and both cultures evolved separately across the vast Atlantic ocean.




Many thanks to Skyfloating for creating the amazing thread Native Americans, Celts and Ancient Transatlantic Travel. The content in that thread influenced my research into the ancient myths of the Basque peoples.








[edit on 14-11-2008 by lostinspace]

[edit on 14-11-2008 by lostinspace]

Interesting reading, starred and flagged, nice research and you draw some good similarities to each race. I always found the Basque's interesting, especially their language, it is apparently like no other language on Earth.

The image of Mari:


This is incredibly interesting, to me, that looks like a powerful Aura, although, I may e wrong, interesting image none the less.

EMM

[edit on 15-11-2008 by ElectroMagnetic Multivers]

[edit on 15-11-2008 by ElectroMagnetic Multivers]

[edit on 15-11-2008 by ElectroMagnetic Multivers]

Im glad you made a seperate thread out of this. I will link from my thread on transatlantic connections to this one since its "all related".

Star+Flag to you for original research.

very interesting but,


Like the maya inherited thier mythos from earlier cultures, such as the olmec, just as the olmec inherited thiers from earlier cultures.

The basque may have made contact with the people of the americas, but that link was much farther back than 1500 bc.
There is archeological evidence that shows a cultural link between the early people of the Iberian penninsula( the basque) and people living on the north eastern coast of the us but this was more like 5k bc.

The red paint people, so called because of the red ochre they used to cover bodies for burial.
The people of iberia also covered their dead in red ochre,
The Iberians were already whaling and open ocean cod fishing that far back, and the fish hooks and harpoon points of the red paint people are almost exactly the same.
The remains of cod and whales have been found in the rep paint people excavations.
This was a favorite subject of one of my early Am. history professors, we spent about a 1/3 of the semester on the subject of the red paint people and the iberians.

When I was a child a read an old book, published in the early '60's by a former german scientist, I believe he invented the submarine snorkle,
that pondered the link between the people of that part of mexico and the basque.
His whole deal was that there was a meteor strike in north america at some point that caused the destruction of a mythical land common to both people.(can you say atlantis).
It has sisnce been found out that the impact structures he referenced, (in chesapeke bay) are far older (millions of years) than he though.

Much of his work has been discredited( thats a harsh word), except the fact that it is now almost a certainty that there was a impact event in north america( the single most influential event in human history) 12.5K years ago.

He pointed out that the basque and the native americans of a certain part of mexico share a distinctive physical feature. The shape of the nose, it not much, but compelling, since it is now common in anthropology to use the shape of the feet as a ethnic identifier, in mixed ethnicity cultures.
A researcher in britain noticed that the celtic people had a different shaped foot, than that of the romans, or the germanic peoples.
In a blind study she was able to identify the ethnicity of a skeleton by the shape of the foot.
But I'm certain that any gentic evidence will show that the basque and the indians of central mexico do not share a recent dna lineage.

reply to post by lostinspace


The part that you missed is that the basque tell a tale of a land being lost below the waves, as do the meso americans, there is even a carving of a man swimming with a mountain of fire in the background.

reply to post by lostinspace


Go lostinspace!

I am so glad you got this up (and just realized I spaced on u2u'ing you back, sorry).

Does your theory acommodate punkin's suppostion that they could have been in earlier contact?

S & F!

reply to post by punkinworks


Punkinworks, can you please show me a link where it is said the Basque had legend of a sinking land mass?

I would love to see it. Also link an image of the swimming man with a volcano in the background.

reply to post by TheWayISeeIt


TheWayISeeIt, the only data I had before me was the Olmec's start date. We could push back the date as punkinwork states to 5000 BC, but Chalcatzingo's beginnings is stuck between 1500 BC and 500 BC. We need to find evidence of the red paint people at Chalcatzingo to push the date back further.

Basque Legends Book

I found an interesting book. It is a collection of old Basque legends, published sometime around 1879. Anyone have the time to look through it?

reply to post by lostinspace


sorry it was in a book i read 35 years ago.
and history class over 20 years ago.
If anybody wants to try and track it down it was written by a german, possibley the inventor of the torpedo,snorkel or periscope? i remember a reference to some submarine related invention.
I believe it was originally published in the late 50's early sixties and was a book about the origins of the atlantean legends.
It was republished in the mid seventies? because i think i read it before "america BC" (1976).




This discussion illustrates one of the down sides of the internet.
Although people from all over the world can gather here to have this discussion, its almost as though if the info isnt on the net it doesnt exist.
Most of the worlds knowledge is not available through the internet, its locked up in billions of volumes of a thing called a book and they are kept in these places called a library.
That rant wasnt directed at anyone in this discussion, just the general trend in internet discussions.

Originally posted by spec_ops_wannabe
Basque Legends Book

I found an interesting book. It is a collection of old Basque legends, published sometime around 1879. Anyone have the time to look through it?

Right on,

Its fascinating, but no references to any sunken lands.
But the discussion at the end on the basque language and its similarity to finnish(sammi) magyar, and algonquin

The algonquin came from the north east coast of the us, the land of the red paint people, hmmmmm.

The link is there its just farther back than most people are looking.




[edit on 15-11-2008 by punkinworks]

Any contact between the peoples had to be well before the age of metals.
Because by 1500 bc the people of europe were well into the bronze age, and surely copper or bronze artifacts would have been found as sites that had continuous habitation for thousands of years.

The monument five relief is that of a crocodile.

There would have been no red paint people anywhere near central mexico.

But all of these people might be descended from a common lineage.

reply to post by punkinworks


2. OTTO MÜCK: THE GREAT ASTEROID OF 8498 BC
The late Otto Mück, the distinguished German geologist, prehistorian and inventor had already, unknown to the English-speaking world, written an epoch-making work on Atlantis in the 1950s.

When this was published in Germany in 1976, and in English in 1978 by Collins as "The Secret of Atlantis", despite good reviews there seemed to be little response, as if the thesis was, literally, too earth-shattering for more than a few to contemplate. With the passage of time, however, helped by a Fontana paperback edition, the incredible message sank in, and in recent lectures on Atlantis I have found more people who are aware of it: there is strong evidence that an asteroid, possibly six miles wide, struck Earth at about the time of this rise in ocean level, perhaps 8-10,000 BC; were they connected?

This had been widely believed by Atlantologists, including Donnelly and the late Egerton Sykes (who told me personally), but Muck assembled the evidence impressively. He traced back the previous flight path of the Adonis Group of asteroids which, for example, came within 186,000 miles of Earth in 1936. In 8,498 BC, there was a line-up of the planets which could have attracted in to the Earth a hypothetical extra member of the group, "asteroid A".

It could have flown in over what is now the USA. , white hot and with pieces flaking off, one of which could have caused the Arizona Meteorite Crater, and others the line of crop-mark craterlet remnants running diagonally across South Carolina to the Atlantic. Here "asteroid A", he suggests, broke into two, causing the two deep holes in the sea-bed Puerto Rico Trench which now exist. The Maya, he argues, may have seen it, describing as they did a white "snake in the sky" which rained down fragments on them, followed by great tidal waves which flooded them. He even claims, with less evidence, that they could have dated their famous calendar from this event

source: www.hyarama.org.uk...

Author of "the secrets of Atlantis" Inventor of the submarine snorkel

Two observations oh the idea from Muck, presented by HMFTW

There were no 'Maya' in that time period but there were certainly humans around and about. The Arizona (Barringer) crater has been dated to 46k BP. It has been dated by cosmogenic Cl-36 dating, rock varnish and erosion estimates.

Or perhaps there is simply some common eidos between these cultures, some quality that any group of humans living under similar environmental conditions invariably share, which had subsequently manifested in the form of these similar drawings? What does direct physical contact have to do with similarities in their cultures? In ancient times it was incredibly difficult to transmit cultural differences across highly distinct groups of people (some might say the same about modern cultures), especially those that were geographically isolated from one another. Therefore, the simplest answer should be that they came to these drawings independently, and that they result from the two cultures' similar tribal practices or ideas, drawn from similar environmental conditions.

It's that natural human tendency to make connections out of the most bizarre of circumstances, however, that we have to be careful doesn't occlude our understanding of the reality of any situation... But that's not to say that your theory is invalid. The conclusions you made definitely prove something.

It's just that we can't really know for sure unless there is some physical evidence connecting the two. There might be tools brought along between voyages. Tools are a good indicator because they were incredibly varied, enough so that you could pinpoint any tool to a very specific tribe. Also, this isn't exactly too ancient history (though for South America they were relatively behind Europe), so the technology could have been there to provide for those voyages. At this point in time, a burgeoning Mycenaean civilization was thriving off the Greek peninsula; their seafaring skills were sufficiently advanced for travel in and around the islands of the Aegean (though the Mediterranean is relatively weak waters). The Minoans had built a civilization on the island of Crete, and they fished extensively.

If the Basques visited South America, or the Olmecs, Europe, then they would have brought along more than just symbols. Although your theory doesn't exactly prove that these symbols are related, they do have something in common. And that could either be from direct physical contact, or the natural tendency of human cultures to be rather similar, even across geographically isolated areas. Today, we can't say for sure. But you must admit that at least two of these cultures, out of all the many thousands around the world, had to be almost exactly the same, speaking merely out of probability, since most lived relatively similar lives. Also, at that time, no one cultural tradition was truly capable of dominating any population, because there were very few political and economic reasons for either one practice to be favored over others. So you can't explicitly ascribe a certain cultural tradition or practice to any one group, or assume that they were directly related. Indirect relation might be possible, but it's more likely these symbols were of independent origins. Also, religion and cultural traditions didn't really become important until you had enemies trying to destroy either the culture itself (they were either disgusted with it or opposed to it), or tribes actually trying to destroy each other, forcing leaders to call on the collective power of their culture in order to defend themselves, and punishing any who would dare deviate from the norm.

[edit on 15-11-2008 by cognoscente]

Originally posted by punkinworks
Any contact between the peoples had to be well before the age of metals.
Because by 1500 bc the people of europe were well into the bronze age, and surely copper or bronze artifacts would have been found as sites that had continuous habitation for thousands of years.

The monument five relief is that of a crocodile.

There would have been no red paint people anywhere near central mexico.

But all of these people might be descended from a common lineage.

The only way I can see this working is if the Olmec themselves succeeded in crossing the Atlantic, influencing certain aspects of Basque culture, or even just a few handful of its population. If it were the other way, then surely metal artifacts should be found in Mexico. Any such discovery would be ground shattering for the anthropological community.

Also, poor navigation skills wouldn't really be a factor, because whichever group decided to take off from their homeland would have simply arrived at a random destination. It's not like they knew they were going to end up in Spain, or Central America. So you can't assume that because they had poor navigation skills that they were incapable of the voyage itself. It would have just been random.

So there are two rather high improbabilities here that go contrary to known physical evidence. Olmecs having the technology to travel the Atlantic and reach Spain, and lack of bronze artifacts, original to Europe, present in Mexico. Although with the latter, any bronze artifacts that made the voyage, could have been destroyed in a subsequent ship wreck, or perhaps the voyagers themselves lost their ships to storm at almost the moment they arrived or very soon after. This event (the shipwreck and subsequent loss of bronze artifacts) should be highly likely if such a voyage to Mexico ever took place successfully, because the likelihood of any European voyage at that point in time having reached Central America itself, would have been equally unlikely to ever have occurred. So what I'm saying, if this unlikely contact ever did happen, then the shipwreck was just as likely to have occurred as that unlikely voyage itself. You need more than just a couple successful voyages to secure the permanence of any advanced, then out of place, artifacts brought into any foreign population. You need a lot more interaction than one voyage (which would have been the case; there would be no reason for the Basques to ever return). So lack of bronze artifacts might not even matter. Personally, I'm thinking it's more probable that Europeans came to Central America than the other way around, just by the factual absence of those bronze tools. Then again, for exactly this reason, I will never be able to prove such an event ever took place. It would have been rather obscure. It would almost be like a someone identifying the exact individual that might have chipped a piece of bark from a tree in some random forest upon passing by on walk.

One thing I'd like to note. The Polynesians by this time were already spreading across Indonesia. So it wouldn't be unlikely that Olmecs had some type of technology, or even that they were capable of relatively advanced seafaring, however, physical evidence for any such technology is not present. Then again, there is very little information or good evidence of anything Olmec related technology-wise. The Olmec is almost just a name given to some random population, that may not have even been a single, unified group itself. It's like physicists using dark energy to explain for the lack of force in the Universe. The extent of that culture is not entirely conclusive.

[edit on 16-11-2008 by cognoscente]

One correction

The Polynesians by this time were already spreading across Indonesia.

I believe you mean Micronesia and Melanesia. Polynesian naval technology is well established and as you noted there is no evdience for any sea going technology for the Olmecs.

Sorry about that. Honest mistake. Thanks for the correction.

[edit on 16-11-2008 by cognoscente]

reply to post by punkinworks


Thank you sir,

He had the right idea but not the particulars, he specu;lated that an asteroid impacted in NA from a south to north tragectory.
But in reality it was from the NW to the SE and it was a comet.


The Maya didnt invent thier calender or thier mythos, they inherited it from ealier cultures like the olmec and toltec, and refined it.

The key to this whole thing, IMO, is the clovis point.
While there is an analog to the clovis in europe at the same time there is not one in asia. And it appears that the clovis point moved from east to west.
What i'm saying is that the after its initial introduction the point moved and not nescecarily the people.
The clovis point and its method of fixing to a wooden shaft is essentialy a harpoon. The point is fixed to a bone or wooden foreshaft, then to the main shaft.
The fore shaft might be around a foot long and the point is very securely fixed to it with dried sinue or rawhide. This foreshaft is then attached to the main shaft with a wedge socket, so that the main shaft can break away from the foreshaft, just like a harpoon.
Here's my theory,
The clovis point is a point that came full circle in its purpose.
Originaly it was used by the first modern humans in europe as they hunted large game along the fringes of ice sheets.

Ok I have a question, what is the hardest thing to find on the tundra or along the edge of a glacier?
And what is the easiest thing to find?

Oh no battery
And

reply to post by lostinspace


It is fascinating how so many myths from different peoples all across the world have so much in common. It is also true that many myths and legends come from some basis of fact. These myths predate the bible by thousands of years, but few people actually look into what the myths are saying.

Starred and flagged a well researched post.