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

reply to post by kidflash2008



Humans tend to react and think the same overall. They also faced similar dangers and thought about the same questions. For these reasons their myths tend to be the same.

What would be really interesting if a large number of cultures had the same myths that were the same and only one or just a few were radically different - that would mean they had encoutered something truly unusual.

Funny... wonder if Anne Rice had this in mind when she wrote the story of the red head twins in the "Queen of the Damned", from the Vampire Chronicals. They were witches that dewlled in caves in Ancient times. In modern times an archelogist was comparing cave paintings in South America and Europe finding them identical. She was ( in my opinion ) trying to ci=onvey an ancient intercontinental connection.

It's cool to read a book and find some basis for it in actual history!
thx for the thread

Originally posted by punkinworks
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.

SNIP

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.

Punkinworks,

Not to discredit anything else you said in that post, which was very logical, I just wanted to point out that nothing resembling a Clovis point has ever been found anywhere in the eastern hemisphere.

The nearest to it is the Solutrean points used by the Solutrean peoples of France and Iberia.

These people predate the Clovis points by several thousand years.

Clovis itself extends back to the end of the younger dryas, and they were loooong gone before the Olmec arose.

Even if clovis points evolved from solutrean points (and there's no real reason to think they did), it's virtually certain that the solutreans were not what we today refer to as "Basques."

Look at the timeline.

Harte

A discussion/summary of the Solutrean hypothesis can be found here

Discussion

reply to post by Harte


You miss understood my statement, in north american the clovis style point appears to have spread from east to west.
And there is no analog to it in asia at all, the asiatic people who moved into NA were forest dwellers and hunted small game. Thier points attest to this life style, and after the clovis dissapears you find these smaller and more delicate points spreading from nw into NA.


Genetic evidence points to the basque as having been descended from people who populated europe during the upper paleolithic.
The fact that their language has no realted laguage among other euopreans attests to their different backgrounds.

Waht Im say is that as the ice built back up in europe during the wurm glaciation? , the people who lived in the interior of the continent were forced to migrate to the coast, where it was warmer and changed from hunting large land game animals to hunting sea mammals. They followed the southern margin of the ice westward till they reached NA.
They may have settled in small groups along the coast, some pushed inland and some stayed on the coast. Its my contention that the clovis type point itself spread and maybe not nesscearily the people themselves.


By the way clovis points have been found at pre-olmec sites dating to 7k-8k years ago, 2k years after they dissapered in NA.

The other interesting thing is the Atlatl, or spear thrower, the Atlatl was used by paleolithic europeans until the arrival of the bow and arrow.
It was used by neolithic north americans and many native american tribes and in meso america.
And as far as I can find there is no asiatic analog at the same period in time.

At several sites in cal and nev, all on the east slope of the sierra, the giant glaciers 17k+ feet in elevation, kept people from crossing, there are caucasoid skeletons at the oldest levels of habitation, 10K years ago.
One site that was inhabited for seversal thousand years, there is a distinct transtion from caucasoid to asiatic, yet the people reamin the same culturaly, they used the same points, they wove baskets the same way, they made clothing the same way.

And you cant totaly discount the remembered lore of the people involved, some stories are rememberd for a long time.
A perfect example is that of the Lemba in south africa, for generations they have maintained that they were descended from jewish priests, and it was discounted.
But recent gentic testing proves they are descended from 8-12 jewish males who lived 1300 years ago, in yemen.

The lemba's own tales state that they are descedned from 7 men who came from a far off place called Sena, sena was infact one of the last jeweish settlements in Yemen, at the time of the spreading of islam.

So there is certainly a thread of truth running through the shared tales of so many disparate cultures.

There is a site that has a compilation of native american creation and flood myths from tribes all over the americas north south and central.
It really changed my perceptions of this whole subject, in flood myth their are two common themes,1) that a couple or a small set of induviduals survived on a raft or canoe
2) or that a coulpe or small group survived by hiding in a cave in the mountains.

Another common thread is that the survivors left their devastated homelands to start a new life and they all spoke the same tongue.
upon reaching the new land, their laguages became confused and they spread apart.

Originally posted by punkinworks
reply to post by Harte

 

You miss understood my statement, in north american the clovis style point appears to have spread from east to west.

I've not seen evidence to indicate this. But it's not like I'm an archaeologist or anything so, unless I look, I'm not gonna see it, right?

So, can you link to this for me?

Originally posted by punkinworksAnd there is no analog to it in asia at all, the asiatic people who moved into NA were forest dwellers and hunted small game. Thier points attest to this life style, and after the clovis dissapears you find these smaller and more delicate points spreading from nw into NA.

Actually, it is currently thought that the Asians were fisherman. Fishing trips along the coast is what brought them south during periods when the overland route was blocked by the ice.

As you said, many Clovis points appear particularly suited for spears/harpoons. This makes any precursor probably good for such uses too. That means nothing, however, since the Solutreans (hypothetically) crossed over while fishing/spearfishing just as the Asians (hypothetically) did.

Originally posted by punkinworks
Genetic evidence points to the basque as having been descended from people who populated europe during the upper paleolithic.
The fact that their language has no realted laguage among other euopreans attests to their different backgrounds.

Yes, they are one (of many) example of a laguage isolate. This has nothing to do with anything in North America, however. The analysis of languages here has shown at least three waves of migration, all of them from the Bering land bridge area, and (IIRC) as many as six different migrations being considered possible.

Anyway, I was only responding to this statement you made:

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.

Here youi appeared to have stated that clovis points were used in Europe. I just wanted to make it clear that they were not, as far as anyone knows.

The Solutrean point is only the tiniest bit similar to the Clovis point, and to anyone not expert in these things they appear to be completely and utterly unalike and unrelated.

The only commonality is the fact that both are biface points, thick in the middle and flaked off towards both edges (from the middle) on both sides.

There are examples of other bifaced points, though I can't say whether any were evident in Asia prior to the migration. An interesting thing to research, probably, if I ever have the time.

You wouldn't have a link to this sort of info regarding the absence of any clovis precursor-type Asiatic points, would you?

You must have seen it somewhere, you made the claim in your post.

Originally posted by punkinworks
The other interesting thing is the Atlatl, or spear thrower, the Atlatl was used by paleolithic europeans until the arrival of the bow and arrow.
It was used by neolithic north americans and many native american tribes and in meso america.
And as far as I can find there is no asiatic analog at the same period in time.

The spear thrower has a documented history of over 25,000 years and has been found on every continent except Antarctica. It has been suggested that it traveled to North America about 12,000 years ago with migratory hunters from Asia. Certainly the spear thrower developed in, or diffused into, those societies where serious hunting and fighting were done with spears.

Source

IIRC, the peopling of N. America via the Bering bridge is currently thought to have been accomplished by residents of Oceania, and not mainland Asia. While it seems true that the Atlatl is not known to have been in use in the mainland of Asia, it was certainly in use by residents of the islands of Oceania.

Of course, it (like the clovis point) could just as easily been invented here as well as in other parts of the world. That is, it is not necessary that migrations brought the atlatl to the new world. New worlders were perfectly capable of coming up with it on their own.

Originally posted by punkinworksAnd you cant totaly discount the remembered lore of the people involved, some stories are rememberd for a long time.
A perfect example is that of the Lemba in south africa, for generations they have maintained that they were descended from jewish priests, and it was discounted.
But recent gentic testing proves they are descended from 8-12 jewish males who lived 1300 years ago, in yemen.

The lemba's own tales state that they are descedned from 7 men who came from a far off place called Sena, sena was infact one of the last jeweish settlements in Yemen, at the time of the spreading of islam.

So there is certainly a thread of truth running through the shared tales of so many disparate cultures.

There is a site that has a compilation of native american creation and flood myths from tribes all over the americas north south and central.
It really changed my perceptions of this whole subject, in flood myth their are two common themes,1) that a couple or a small set of induviduals survived on a raft or canoe
2) or that a coulpe or small group survived by hiding in a cave in the mountains.

Another common thread is that the survivors left their devastated homelands to start a new life and they all spoke the same tongue.
upon reaching the new land, their laguages became confused and they spread apart.

Well, floods happen you know. And big gigantic floods happen when ice dams break and release glacial lakes, like what happened in Dakota's scablands.

I don't discount tribal lore completely. But I wish you'd come up with a better example than the one you used about a 1300 year long oral tradition.

I mean, that's only about one-tenth of the time period the Americans would have to maintain a reasonable oral record.

Far, far less likely. No such oral record, changed or not, exists anywhere else on Earth, that we know of.

Harte

While doing some research for this thread I found an interesting comment.
Someone had mentioned they saw something like this before.

"Basque folkatles still recount the Aintzine-koak, their seafaring forefathers who arrived in the Bay of Biscay after "the Green Isle," Atlaintika, went under the waves. Atlnatida is a national Basque poem describing their ancient greatness in Atlaintika, its fiery collaps, and the voyage of the survivors to southwestern Europe. Composed in the 19th century, according to Readers Digest, "it is based on age-old flok belief and oral traditions."

u2u me if you want the link.


I have some rather interesting things to add later regarding another Olmec site and its connections to Basque myths.

reply to post by lostinspace


Howdy Lostinspace

I believe you will find that this "Atlantis" connection goes no farther back than the start of the Atlantis fad in the late 19th century. It may also be a "made up" connection to support, Edgar Cayce who said the ancestors of the Basques were Atlanteans who moved to the Pyrenees Mountains of southwestern Europe. (Reading 990-1.). Like so much of Atlantean stuff it difficult now to separate real stuff from the old made up shaff - and their lots of it.

You might want to see if there is any mention of it in sources outside of Atlantis fan sites. I made a cursory search thru real Basque myth site and could find no mention of it. I'm going on memory based on the last 10-15 times this was brought up. If you're interested you might search further and farther.



[edit on 20/11/08 by Hanslune]

reply to post by Hanslune


Thanks Hanslune. I did not know Cayce channeled that connection.

My original plan was to get a verified Basque myth and compare it with the artwork of an Olmec site. Atlantis doesn't have to be mentioned in the comparison. What I am looking for is an uncanning similarity between the two cultures.



[edit on 20-11-2008 by lostinspace]

reply to post by lostinspace


Take a look at the original materials of Ignatius Donnelly. His book is on line. He did a fairly good job of locating materials to support his ideas. See if he has the Basque myth included in his works. If not, then that might be an indication it was created after the publication of Anteluvian World.

There is also, probably a greater amount of material on Basque myth in Spainish and French sources. A lot of 19th century material has never been translated over.

reply to post by Hanslune


I’m glad I have my original copy of Donnelly’s book because it has an index in the back. This is what I found when looking up “Basques.”

sacred-texts.com...

This was on page 173 (Part III, Chapter IV: Corroborating Circumstances).

“Dr. Farrar, referring to the Basque language, says:
"What is certain about it is, that its structure is polysynthetic, like the languages of America. Like them, it forms its compounds by the elimination of certain radicals in the simple words; so that ilhun, the twilight, is contracted from hill, dead, and egun, day; and belhaur, the knee, from belhar, front, and oin, leg. . . . The fact is indisputable, and is eminently noteworthy, that while the affinities of the Basque roots have never been conclusively elucidated, there has never been any doubt that this isolated language, preserving its identity in a western corner of Europe, between two mighty kingdoms, resembles, in its grammatical structure, the aboriginal languages of the vast opposite continent (America), and those alone." ("Families of Speech," p. 132.)”

There are more details on page 388 (Part V, Chapter IV: The Iberian colonies of Atlantis).

[edit on 21-11-2008 by lostinspace]

Howdy lostinspace

I won't comment on lingustic stuff but I'll take that snippet to means there is no mention of the 'green island' myth?

There is another myth of Mari that connects her to the Olmec civilization.
When researching the myths of the Basques you’ll find Mari is connected with the birds of prey. Sometimes she would fly out of caves in the form of a vulture or crow. Mari and her relatives, the Laminak, are drawn with human bodies, but their feet are shown as chicken, duck, or goat feet.

www.evertype.com...

About 48 miles (77.24 km) northwest of Chalcatzingo there is another ancient site of interest called Cacaxtla. This location was the capital of the inhabitants who were called Olmeca-Xicalanca. At the end of the 16th century Historian Diego Munoz Camargo described Cacaxtla as the principal settlement of the Olmeca.

This is the only site that I have seen that shows a Mesoamerican with a complete bird costume. Most importantly the character is wearing bird feet. This is one of the defining features of Mari and her family.

The Living Goddess-The Basque Religion

The Olmeca figure below has two St. Andrews crosses on his clothes and he’s standing on a serpent, who could represent Sugaar.



www.donporter.net...



[edit on 24-11-2008 by lostinspace]

[edit on 24-11-2008 by lostinspace]

[edit on 24-11-2008 by lostinspace]

Originally posted by punkinworks
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.

This sounds like you are referring to the stone-frieze found in the Yucatan by Teobert Maler sometime in the 1870’s. That carving also had a mountain of fire in the background and a man swimming in the foreground.

Robert Stacy-Judd published a book in 1939 entitled “Atlantis-Mother of Empires” and in his book he mentions that he holds the actual photo Maler took in the Yucatan. The painting above is the artwork that is on the front cover of his book. It is based on the images from the stone-frieze found by Maler.

Here’s a link to the stone-frieze I found on the net.
www.goldenageproject.org.uk...

Robert Stacy-Judd said this in his book, “The picture was taken by Teobert Maler in a remote and at the time unknown spot deep in the jungles of the Yucatan. Maler stated prior to his death that the recorded scene was but a portion of a continuous frieze which surrounded the interior of an underground chamber.”

Most archeologists think the stone-frieze is a fake and that Maler just made it up to sell his photos. I guess his family became super rich because of the photo. Not!

Howdy Lostinspace



I'll host that picture

According to Lost Cities of Atlantis, Ancient Europe & the Mediterranean By David Hatcher Childress. unfortunately I have found that Childress is at best a questionable source. He states in this book

Source

What is very odd about this statement is that it says Maler moved the frieze from Tikal. Maler was noted for extreme position against removing materials from ruins and shipping them to Europe.

The other oddity about this photograph is it is cut off, the hieroglyphs that would explain it are not shown. Maler was also noted for the excessive detail he went into to make good photographs.

Hopefully a better photograph of its exists, the Berlin museum was also noted for excellent recording of its materials - if it in deed had this frieze.

[edit on 7/2/09 by Hanslune]

Thanks for the great find Hanslune. I bet the frieze went to Berlin. I hope they locked the artifacts underground during WWII. It would be a tragic loss if the museum was destroyed by a bomb.

Shouldn't someone be able to find a matching slot that would fit the stone-frieze in the main temple at Tikal?

Maybe the cut portion on the left hand side could fit into the temple wall.

[edit on 8-2-2009 by lostinspace]

reply to post by lostinspace


It is my understanding it was destroyed. I've asked over at HoM for any additional information.

What is odd about Childress note is (no source of course from Childress) but that Maler was well known for being against removing things from the ruins - he was quite advanced in his thought on that. I find it odd he would have taken that piece to Berlin, especially as he was more aligned towards France and the American Peabody.

If this photograph is real it will be found documented in German language materials on the late 19th century and early 20th. Yuck high German. Lots of twenty-five letter words.

World war II story. At the start of the war the various German museums took to hiding their various treasures out in the countryside. The story is told that they'd just finished packing away most of the skeletal material from Sumer when a four engine British bomber- in one of early day light raids fell out of the sky and obliterated the barn and the Sumerians....or so the story goes.


Hmmmm nothing like a ride on the ocean in a one man cockleshell~

[edit on 8/2/09 by Hanslune]

I found this website a couple days ago and I was surprised to find out Edgar Cayce believed the ancestors of the Basques were Atlanteans.

While observing and studying a group of linguistically interrelated Indian tribes along the Amazon River, archaeologist Marcel Homet learned that their common language, Tupi-Guarani, contains idioms that are strikingly similar to the Basque language. Edgar Cayce says the ancestors of the Basques were Atlanteans who moved to the Pyrenees Mountains of southwestern Europe. (Reading 990-1.)

www.atlantisinsights.net...
Atlantis in the Caribbean

The striking similarities in the Pre-Classic Olmec bas-relief at Chalcatzingo and the Basque Mari-Sugaar legend give supporting evidence that there may have been a lost civilization that connected these people together. I’ve never studied the prophecies of Cayce but I’m beginning to believe he had some things right. I think he was compelled to give half-truths and this was probably on purpose.

The Atlantisinsites.net website gives some really interesting points trying to prove the existence of Atlantis. They say Atlantis was in the Atlantic ocean somewhere near the Atlantic ridge and that it sank to the bottom of the ocean. They also said the survivors of that culture moved to the Caribbean and to the Pyrenees Mountains of southwestern Europe. A great deal of Ice-Age glaciers melted around 10,000 B.C. which made the ocean levels rise 350 feet and cover the surviving Atlantean communities around the Caribbean. It was also said that the surviving families of the Atlantean had the custom to meet every 104 years to coordinate their calendars. What was so important to them that they had to keep their calendars aligned?

Atlantis is Cuba and the Americas

Native Americans, Celts and Ancient Transatlantic Travel

Lewis Spence felt that the Basques (Southern Spain) and the Berbers (Morocco) were direct descendants of the Cro-Magnon-Atlanteans and that the languages that they spoke were the closest to the actual Atlantean language. He also said in his book The Problem of Atlantis proposes that Cro-Magnon man remains, which are mainly found in Spain and France, are linked to Atlantis and the Berbers. Cro-Magnon man had a high forehead, a strong chin and averaged over six feet in height. Spence says that many Cro-Magnon men were seven or eight feet tall, according to early skeletal finds.

books.google.com...=onepage&q=bearded%20Toltec&f=false

Remember the Basque mythology talks about giant humans known as the Jentilak. They are credited in placing the giant megalithic stones throughout Spain and France. They are thought to have thrown these stones into their current positions. This had given rise to the Basque Ball game pilota. It looks similar to the Mesoamerican ball game.

To the south there is the Berbers of Morocco. The civilization that existed before them in that area were the Carthaginians. There is a theory that the Carthaginians sailed to the Americas and founded colonies there. Native Americans are not known to have much facial hair, or any at all, but a head carving of a Toltec warrior is shown with a beard. It is proposed that the Toltecs were really Carthaginians who founded Tula and imprinted their society onto the Mesoamerican cultures. The Aztecs claim their ancestry from the Toltecs.

It is said that the Carthaginians invaded their trading colonies in the Yucatan and the Gulf of Mexico. The Carthaginians became the Toltecs of Mexican history. The Toltecs looked very much like the warriors from the Middle East. They had long, thick beards, helmets, spears and shields.

books.google.com... 1zCTN3xAYSbnweJhcjRCQ&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=1&ved=0CBMQ6AEwAA#v=onepage&q=bearded%20Toltec&f=false