An Ancient Connection? Aboriginal Rock Art and Holes in Peru

Okay, I may be going way out on a limb here for my first thread on ATS....but then again, it's ATS, so we should all be out on a limb already, right?

First things first: Mods, I wasn't sure which forum this thread should be posted in; it was a toss-up between Aliens and UFOs, Ancient and Lost Civilizations, and maybe The Gray Area. I went with Ancient and Lost Civilizations because that topic comprises the bulk of this post. So please feel free to move the thread wherever is best.



Now...I promise am not about to climb onto a soapbox and deliver a rehash of the "Ancient Astronauts" ideas, despite the obvious implications of the forum choices I listed above. Instead, my intention here is to indicate the possibility of a connection which I stumbled onto rather unexpectedly several days ago. I have been trying to resist posting about it on ATS because part of me insists that it is absurd...and yet it continues to pop up in my head, where it deftly avoids my accusations of ludicrocity(word?) and insinuates itself into my thoughts, compelling contemplation.
A few days of that and I gave in. So here I am. I will present the necessary information, illustrate the depth of my research in this matter, draw the line of the possible connection, then sit back and invite discussion. I should also note that I did attempt to find out if this idea had previously been tossed into the gauntlet of ATS debate, ripped apart, put back together, clung to desperately, hung out to dry, then reduced to a t-shirt slogan...as so many other ideas have. I didn't find anything, but of course I may have failed to search correctly. I did try though. (And we totally should have t-shirts. I want one that says "I Survived the Project Serpo Thread at ATS")


Okay, the prefaces, prologues, disclaimers, NDAs, and FBI Warnings are all taken care of. Let me now direct your attention to

Australia

"...those ancestors of ours who ventured forth from Avalon across the continent of Mu as far as the central desert of Australia--when all the continents were a single land mass, the wondrous Pangaea. If only we could still read (as the Aborigines can, but they remain silent) the mysterious alphabet carved on the great boulder Ayers Rock, we would have the Answer.
Ayers Rock is the antipode of the great (unknown) mountain that is the Pole, the true, occult Pole, not the one that any bourgeois explorer can reach. As usual, and this should be obvious to anyone whose eyes have not been blinded by the false light of Western science, the Pole that we see is not the real Pole, for the real Pole is the one that cannot be seen, except by some adepts, whose lips are sealed. -Umberto Eco, Foucault's Pendulum

The Australian Aborigines have a fantastically interesting culture and view of life, the earth, and especially the relationship between humans and land--or as they say, "country."

Aboriginal people, when speaking in English of this connection, often refer to land as "country". Anthropologist Deborah Bird Rose has described 'country' in this way:
"People talk about country in the same way that they would talk about a person: they speak to country, sing to country, visit country, worry about country, feel sorry for country, and long for country. People say that country knows, hears, smells, takes notice, takes care, is sorry or happy. Country is a living entity with a yesterday, today and tomorrow, with a consciousness, and a will toward life. Because of this richness, country is home, and peace; nourishment for body, mind, and spirit; heart's ease."

One of the most sacred and loved parts of 'country' for the Aborigines is an ancient geological formation known as Uluru, or "Ayers Rock."

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[atsimg]http://files.abovetopsecret.com/files/img/yx4e7bb699.jpg[/atsimg]
Uluru

The Aborigines venerate Uluru and have much lore that is centered around it. They do not go there lightly, nor do they climb it. There are caves into which they go, under certain circumstances, to further their walk along the path of their beliefs and philosophy.
As far as I can tell--and I could be wrong about this, I am no expert obviously--the Aboriginal culture, religion, social rules and law and modes of conduct...everything about them, basically, is structured around(or is given structure by) a central concept they refer to as The Dreamings, or The Dreaming, or the Dreamtime. They use all three terms and I'm not sure if they are the same or not, or if they can sometimes mean the same thing, but other times mean different things. For instance, look at the following quote, which is an extract of a description of the Dreaming by a Yanyuwa Aborigine from the Gulf of Carpentaria, named Mussolini Harvey:

...The Dreamings made our Law. This Law is the way we live, our rules. This Law is our ceremonies, our songs, our stories; all of these things came from the Dreaming. ... our Law cannot change, we did not make it. ... The Dreamings named all of the country and the sea they traveled; they named everything that they saw. The Dreamings gave us our songs. These songs are sacred ... are like maps, they tell us about the country, they are maps we carry in our heads. ...

In our ceremonies we wear marks on our bodies; they come from the Dreaming too. We carry the design that the Dreamings gave to us. When we wear that Dreaming mark we are carrying the country, we are keeping the Dreaming held up, we are keeping the country and the Dreaming alive. That is the most important thing; we have to keep up the country, the Dreamings, our Law, our people.

That is not the only way in which the Dreaming has multiple forms. In one way it seems to describe creation, while in another it causes creation.

The Australian aborigines believed that the land they occupied was once vacuous - empty. This belief was a source of great mystery to them. It was also a great truth that was known with absolute certainty, because the ancestors had said this was the way things once were. Then, during what has become known as the Dreamtime, the land, the sky above and all they contained were formed by the actions of supernatural and mysterious beings.

These "supernatural and mysterious beings" came in a variety of forms. Some were "shapechangers" and could appear in any form.

The Dreamtime itself has been explained in a number of ways. Various explanations refer to creators who were mysterious and supernatural beings. They include references to men and women 'just like us' who had the ability to shape-change into animals and other fauna; creators such as the Rainbow Serpent and also All-father and All-mother figures. There have also been references to the creators as heroes and heroines.

These beings are also sometimes referred to as Giants or [a]Ancestors. The Aborigines have many stories about the activities and antics of these beings, some of which are ties to Uluru and its many curious features.
Another interesting aspect of the Dreamtime is that, according to the Aborigines, it is ongoing; in some way it is a "Beginning" that never ended. But at some point in the distant past, the supernatural beings responsible for the onset of Dreamtime disappeared from the sight of men.

Another aspect of the Dreaming that confuses me is that the history of it seems to imply that the Aborigines predate the creation part; somehow their ancestors were witness to the emptiness of the land. And yet the teachings of the Dreaming also say:

"It was during the Dreamtime that the creators made men and women, decreed the laws which all must obey - their behavior to one another, the customs of food distribution, the rules of marriage, the rituals of initiation and the ceremonies of death which must be performed so that the spirit of the dead would travel peacefully to his or her spirit-place.

...which leaves me stumped.
However, I am not particularly surprised. Shamanism and the initiate process is very much alive in the Dreaming, and there are apparently many aspects of the mysteries of this philosophy that are not communicated to the non-initiated. Since neither I nor Google are adepts, the understanding will likely remain forever beyond my grasp.

(continued in next post)

Even so, there is much about the Dreamings that have been communicated to non-initiates--I suspect in part to foster greater understanding of the Aborigine philosophy--and provides much to study. I don't understand it all but there is a lot of wisdom in what I have read so far...and as the Dreaming and the Aborigine culture are by far the oldest still in existence today--archaeological records indicate they have inhabited Australia for at least 20,000 years, and perhaps up to 60,000 years--I think both the people and their beliefs deserve a great deal of respect.

For more information and reading on the Dreamtime, visit my sources:
Living the Dreaming - The Relationship to the Land for Aboriginal Australians
The Dreamtime - Aboriginal Art Online

The Artwork

[atsimg]http://files.abovetopsecret.com/files/img/de4e7bcf94.jpg[/atsimg]
An integral part of the Dreamtime journey involves the rock art of the Australian Aborigines. They take this stuff very seriously; apparently you can't just sit down with some charcoal and draw one of the ancestors. I myself am an artist, but I subscribe to the Robert Heinlein philosophy of Art: "There are only five things worth drawing. One is Cats. The other four are pretty girls." If I want to draw, I sit down and draw, and four out of five times I draw a pretty girl. For the Aborigines however, a certain amount of preparation and ceremony is required beforehand. In fact, in some cases it is said that someone making Dreamtime art without proper preparation is "stealing the Dream," which definitely sounds serious.

Non-initiates--including Aboriginal children and any Aborigine not far enough along the path--are not allowed to see certain Dreaming drawings. These include much of the work at Uluru, which are inside caverns and caves that are off-limits to tourists. However, there are plenty that can be viewed. Here are a few of my favorites:



Some of these are many thousands of years old. Many of them depict beings that are obviously not human; in many cases these are images of the ancestors or the bringers of Dreamtime.

There is an old book titled The Coming of the British to Australia - 1788 to 1829 by Ida Lee (Mrs. Charles Bruce Marriott), published in 1906 by Longmans, Green, and Co., that details the first interactions between Europeans and the Aborigines. This book is available online in its entirety and can be found here. It contains, among its fifty-five illustrations, one or two images of rock art "discovered" by a Sir George Grey. The one that caught my attention is this one:
[atsimg]http://files.abovetopsecret.com/files/img/gs4e7bd6cb.jpg[/atsimg]

Now, aside from the fact that it totally looks like an alien wearing a transparent helmet with symbols etched on it--which I'm sure has been discussed here in ATS before--I was particularly interested in another feature of this image. Look at the markings on the left:
[atsimg]http://files.abovetopsecret.com/files/img/wc4e7bd6d4.jpg[/atsimg]

Got it? Now follow me to

Peru

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Lots of interesting stuff in Peru, including the geoglyphs known as the "Nazca Lines", some of which look a lot like the creatures depicted in the rock art of the Australian Aborigines. You can see markers for some of the Nazca lines in the Google Earth screencap above, if you squint and look at the lower-right portion of the image.
But, we're not going to talk about the Nazca lines. Instead, I want to direct your attention to another interesting feature in Peru, which is also shown on the above image, near the top and off to the left a bit(follow the 26 highway and, again, squint). This feature is known as the Band of Holes.

The Band of Holes

This curious phenomenon begins just outside the Pisco Valley, up on a plateau named Cajamarquilla(which makes me grateful that this is a written rather than spoken presentation). While the valley below is lush and green, the plateau itself is gray and arid. The Band of Holes traverses this inhospitable terrain for a distance of about 4,830ft, or 1,470m(sayeth Google Earth's 'ruler' function), continuing unabated across steep inclines and declines.

I merged several GE screenshots to show the entire band, and tinted it very slightly. Prepare yourself for an extremely long image.

[atsimg]http://files.abovetopsecret.com/files/img/gg4e7bda76.jpg[/atsimg]

Archeologists have speculated they were dug to store grain in. Two problems with this, say the folks thinking out of the box: there were a lot easier ways to create storage containers than the hard work and decades it must have taken to chip out all of these, and it would have made more sense, if these were to store grain, to build several huge chambers. Ok, said the archeologists. Perhaps they were used as one-person tombs? Vertical graves of some sort? But no bones, artifacts, scraps, inscriptions, jewelry...not even a tooth or strand of hair has been found in them. They have no covers to seal them as you might a tomb and no sacred history or even myth was passed down to label them as such.

Some sections have holes in rigid and perfect precision; some run in rows that curve up in arches, some staggered lines. They vary in depth to about 6-7 feet deep yet some are merely shallow indents as if not completed - though surrounded by those that are. To date, no one has a clue why they're here, who made them or what they were.

Sources
World-Mysteries.com
Nazcamystery.com
(I tried hard to find a source of info on the Band of holes that did not contain the word "mystery" or "forbidden" or "astral" and so forth. No luck. If there is a conventional science source for the Band of Holes, I could not find it. My apologies.)

So there is no current satisfactory explanation for the Band of Holes. Nor is there a satisfactory date for its construction, due to the complete lack of organic materials in or around the holes to be used for any kind of dating.
Looking at the band from up on high using Google Earth invariably gives one the idea that something massive rolled through the area, leaving the pattern behind...but I sort of discount that idea as some of the holes have stacked rock walls inside them, somewhat like an old well would have--though I suppose the "well-walls" could have been added after the pattern was set down.
In any case, I am not here to discuss the origin of the Band of Holes. Many others have done that just as well or better than I could, and you can follow the above links to my sources if you wish to read more on that subject. Instead, I am interested in the seeming similarity between an eagle's eye view of the Band of Holes and an illustration of an example of Australian Aborigine rock art found in a book published in 1906.








What follows is a summary of approximately 1,000 words:

[atsimg]http://files.abovetopsecret.com/files/img/sy4e7bf18d.jpg[/atsimg]

...and the rest, I leave to you. Bring on the debunkers! Or, as Anthony says in Shakespeare's Julius Caesar:

"Cry 'Havoc!!' and let slip the dogs of war!"

First Thread Post Complete!!

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Thank you, ladies.



....carry on then.

Nice first thread!! Now I knew about as much about the dream time as you posted I can see just a basic similarity in the drawing and the layout of Peru. So I am gonna be going to the skeptical side. Still I like your presentation style and look forward to another thread!

reply to post by Tsurugi


-claps-

GREAT JOB! The aborigines of Australia have always intrigued me and so has the "Lost Continent of Mu/Lemuria". Hopefully by becoming an Anthropologist I can uncover some of the secrets that lie hidden from us

S&F

I have seen something similar on the moon





maybe nothing but I think you are on to something

Originally posted by hangedman13
Nice first thread!!

Now I knew about as much about the dream time as you posted

I can see just a basic similarity in the drawing and the layout of Peru. So I am gonna be going to the skeptical side. Still I like your presentation style and look forward to another thread!

Thanks!

I agree it is just a basic similarity to the layout of the Band. It's also just a basic similarity to the appearance of an ET.

Originally posted by IEtherianSoul9
-claps-

GREAT JOB! The aborigines of Australia have always intrigued me and so has the "Lost Continent of Mu/Lemuria". Hopefully by becoming an Anthropologist I can uncover some of the secrets that lie hidden from us

S&F

Thank you.

The "pangea" connection had occurred to me; I did some research and the models show that Australia merged with the east side of the African continent rather than the west side of South America, as I had originally hoped(in order to make a land-connection for the Aborigines).
I dunno if Pangea is supposed to be Mu/Lemuria though.

Originally posted by gaurdian2012
I have seen something similar on the moon

Well that's definitely weird looking Do you have coordinates for that? Wow.

Originally posted by IEtherianSoul9
reply to post by Tsurugi

 

-claps-

GREAT JOB! The aborigines of Australia have always intrigued me and so has the "Lost Continent of Mu/Lemuria". Hopefully by becoming an Anthropologist I can uncover some of the secrets that lie hidden from us

S&F

i doubt it mate
99% of their history and culture is gone.
any real secrets they would have discovered over their 50000 years here would most likely be lost forever

Great post! I always wondered if it was just the Euro-centric "superiority" complex which maintained the line of thought that of all the 500+ aboriginal nations that occupied Australia pre-white occupation, that all were illiterate. Seems a stretch, especially looking at the markings in your pics...that certainly looks like text to me!

Originally posted by Silverkiss
Great post! I always wondered if it was just the Euro-centric "superiority" complex which maintained the line of thought that of all the 500+ aboriginal nations that occupied Australia pre-white occupation, that all were illiterate. Seems a stretch, especially looking at the markings in your pics...that certainly looks like text to me!

a huge stretch
aboriginal nations opereated as a society far superior to what we see today. obviously they didnt have the same technology but this really means nothing.
they were extremley intilligent and lived as one with the land. they were connected to the land and no doubt we have destroyed a group of people that had rightful ownership of this land

Thank you Tsurugi!!

Completely amazing
Please continue!

SNC.

great thread. a friend of mine went to australia a few years ago and went straight to ayers rock.
he spent the whole day there (as im sure most people would. what a place) and he took photographs in the morning, midday, afternoon and evening. each photo the rock was a different colour. not just different shades of red/orange, but different colours altogether. absolutely stunning pics from a stunning place

Well done.

I coencidently read an article on the BBC's website this morning about aborinal people's DNA being traced back. They were the first people to move out of Africa over 70 thousand years ago. They were pioneers and were able to pretty much walk the whole way as the coast line was different.

www.bbc.co.uk...

Aboriginals these days can identify mountains that have been under the sear for thousands of years as stories of them have been constantly passed down from generation to generation. One can only imagine the things they saw and how their dreamtime first started.

Its a shame that now a lot of them have been forced out of their natrual habbitat and made to live as westerners. Alot of the are second class citizens now living in the white man's world and a lot of them have turned to abusing drink and drugs.

I apologise on behalf of my British ancestors for what we have done to the Aboriginal and all native peoples of this world.

reply to post by gaurdian2012


I think that has been debunked at as the probe artifact...

great post my man(woman)...great posts indeed!

2nd

reply to post by Tsurugi


Great research and education on the two subjects. Great structure, complete with quotes, cited sources and other links.

Unfortunately, I do not see the same connection as you do.

80% Aboriginal history, 19% Peruvian anomaly (Band of Holes), 1% effort to tie them together (picture).

That is a rather large jump/connection to make. I find BOTH histories fascinating. I'm gonna need more though to assume that they are related.

S&F for your efforts, regardless.