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

E.P. Grondine epgrondine@hotmail.com 

INTRODUCTION: SURVEY SCOPE AND TECHNIQUES USED 

Hello Benny, 

In my survey last year of impact events and the Native American peoples of
South-East North America, I mentioned several items and then let them
pass, as they laid outside of the scope of that survey proper. Nearly all
of those items pertained to the coastal peoples of the region, and there
were good reasons for this limitation of scope: due to both the maritime
nature of these peoples? cultures, as well as to the ecological niches in
which they lived, it is impossible to consider these peoples outside of
the wider context of the peoples who lived during the same period on the
islands in the Caribbean Sea and along the coasts of Central America.

This essay is a first attempt to extend that earlier survey into those
coastal areas. Unlike last year?s survey, where site visits were followed
up with an extensive literature search, this survey is limited solely to a
literature search. My opinion is that the technique used for the first
survey is much more efficient, as site visits allow for a familiarization
with the pottery sequences, iconography, and technologies, those items
which are really the key to population movements, and thus to a full
understanding of the evolution of any oral or written records which
remain. But sadly yet once again, as in preceding years, the folks at the
MacArthur Foundation have failed to declare me a genius and send me a
large amount of money, so due to the costs involved in visiting sites over
such a wide area, a literature search was the only technique available to
me. Should someone wish to fund visits to sites in the Caribbean and
Central America they would undoubtedly improve the survey to a
considerable degree; the general consensus seems to be that site visits to
the Caribbean and Central America which are taken in the middle of the
North American winter are optimal.

Before starting any survey we might reasonably expect, given the data
which has been recovered up to this time from other areas of the Earth,
that over a suitably long period of time the peoples living in these
coastal areas would also have been affected by impact events. Indeed,
several Conference participants have been arguing for quite some time for
the existence of a Holocene-start impact event which affected this area.
The first part of this survey will be a limited review of some
anthropological materials pertaining on this possible impact event, though
this will not be a detailed work. Also included in this first part of the
survey will be a brief mention of a possible mega-tsunami produced
geological structure, the Puuk Foothills of the Yucatan.

The bulk of this survey will focus on a mega-tsunami event ca. 1150-1050
BCE, which fairly well devastated those living along the coasts of this
area. In order, the second part of the survey will cover the peopling of
the areas which the impact affected, and describe the lives of those who
died in the event. The third part of the survey will cover the
preservation of later historical records and folk memories of the
catastrophe. The fourth part will set out some of the historical and myth
materials which have survived, including also some materials which appear
to refer to the earlier Rio Cuarto impact event.

In closing this introduction, I want to state that this has been the
survey from hell. These peoples were completely warped by this impact, and
had a world view which was both unified and completely distinct from that
of western Europe.  While the world view of the South East Native American
peoples resonated with me to a certain degree, as I am familiar with their
lands, the world view of the peoples of the coastal regions never has.
Having worked through the material on them to the extent which I have, I
suspect that anthropology would be better as a science if anthropologists
were generally required to work on peoples with which they did not
identify, so as to reduce the problem of identification.

Given this far far far different world view, it appears that it normally
takes around 20 years for an anthropologist to master these materials to
the point at which they can make substantial contributions to the field.
But in the case of these impacts events, the cultural points are gross, to
put it succinctly, and my ambitions extend no further than that I may
direct those trained in these cultures to that evidence, without
committing too many blunders along the way.

Finally, it helps if one is not distracted by current events. That said,
here goes...

THE DIFFICULTIES OF WORKING WITH COASTAL DATA

One of the key difficulties working with coastal data from any part of the
world is its lack of completeness. This is due in part to the rise in sea
level which has been occurring since the last ice age, a rise which the
archaeologists at the United States? National Park Service have estimated
at being between 60 to 100 meters. The image here gives some idea of the
effects of this rise in sea level on the area being surveyed here:

As many here might expect, this rise in sea level was not continuous, as
may be seen at:

(I wish that I could show you these graphics, but The National Park
Service computers are out at the moment due to a court order: it seems
that since some of the Bureau Of Indian Affairs computers were not secure,
a judge decided to shut done all of the Department of Interior?s
computers. While it is clear that the judge exceeded his purvey, the
problem is really more fundamental than that, and this decision more
generally is somewhat indicative of the general political disfunction
which US citizens are currently enjoying.)

The good news is that most ports from the time of European contact still
remain well above water. It would be nice if we had a much better idea
exactly how long this is going to be true.

Another principle cause of lack of completeness of south-east North
American and Caribbean coastal data may be ascribed to the effects of
hurricanes, which regularly come in off the Atlantic Ocean and wash away
large areas within this region. It is very difficult to differentiate the
effects of impact produced mega-tsunami floods from the effects of
hurricane, even when a large area is damaged, as this may be due a
particularly severe hurricane season instead of a mega-tsunami.

Aside from scale, the only other means of the first differentiating the
effects of smaller mega-tsunami from that of hurricane is human memory of
impact, and this exists only if the people survived the impact, and then
survived into the modern age when their memories could be recorded, and
then those records survived to be circulated. Fortunately for us, some
materials did survive, and these can now be used to direct subsequent
geological and archaeological fieldwork.

THE ANCIENT SIBERIAN LAND BRIDGE(S) AND THE PALEO AND ARCHAIC HUNTERS

In my previous survey I mentioned some of the prevailing theories held
generally by the anthropological community as to the peopling of North
America, and went into some detail on the difficulties that community
faced in moving that work forward. While the Paleo time period is outside
the scope of this survey proper, again a few words on the Paleo and
Archaic hunters are in order at this point.  It is popularly believed that
there was ?the? ancient Siberian land bridge which allowed man to cross
into the Americas ran down the Pacific coast. While some Pacific coastal
sites are most certainly are now under water due to rising sea levels, it
is certain that a main corridor ran inland of the coastal mountain ridge,
a corridor which connected to the plains of North America.

The dates when people first crossed this land bridge are hotly contested,
and there is little consensus. Some anthropologists argue that there were
multiple crossings, some very very early, with very different racial types
coming across each time, racial types as different as say Chinese, Korean,
and Japanese.  Others argue that a wave of very early people came first,
and that then a wave of ?oriental? Native Americans was followed by a wave
of more ?european? Native Americans. But problems arise with this, as the
actual rate of human mutation in response to diet and environment is
unknown. It is clear that the current generation of Japanese is much
taller than their parents, in response to nothing more than a change in
diet between one generation and the next.

The Paleo occupation sites that have been found and studied are widely
scattered in time and space, and there are no less than 3 lithic
traditions and 1 a-lithic tradition present. Whoever they were, the Paleo
peoples hunted large game such as mammoth and ground sloths until their
extinction, pursuing the vanishing herds to the south and east of the
North American continent, and down through Central America on into South
America. Total game populations as well as the environments are pretty
well unknown. It is known that in Africa large herds of elephant have
converted forested areas to grassland, and that later Native Americans
would intentionally set fires both as a way of hunting bison as well as to
provide pasturage for deer. Besides stampeding game off of cliffs, another
hunting technique was the trapping of mammoth in bogs, and the digging of
pit traps certainly seems to be another possible technique.

THE ROLE OF LARGE WATERCRAFT IN THE PEOPLING OF THE AMERICAS

With regard to the coastal peoples of South East North America, two final
migrations must also be noted. In my previous survey I mentioned that the
Red Paint peoples showed up on Canada?s northern east coast at a very
early time.  Their economy was ocean based and seems to have relied upon
the harvesting of a flightless bird which is now extinct, possibly as a
result of this harvesting, and it is possible that this also was true for
mammoths, sloths, etc...  Amazingly, these peoples? culture shows
affinities with contemporaneous northern European cultures.

Apart from this European passage, since last year?s survey new data have
become available which show that large boats may have played a role in the
initial movement of people into North America, and this at a time far
earlier than suspected. At Quebrada Jaguay in Peru, a team led by Daniel
H. Sandweiss of the University of Maine, Orono, recovered bits of knotted
cordage, possibly the remains of fishing nets, abundant bones of fish,
primarily drum, and shells of mollusks and crustaceans dated to between
11,924-10,774 BCE. At Quebrada Tacahuay in Peru, researchers led by David
K. Keefer of the U.S. Geological Survey found a hearth, tools and obsidian
flakes, as well as the bones of numerous fish?mostly anchovy, whose small
size implies the use of nets rather than hook and line?and seabirds,
including cormorants, booby, and pelican, remains radio carbon dated to
about 10,789 BCE.

It is suspected by some anthropologists that man had large watercraft at a
very early period in time, roughly at about the time of the peopling of
Australia, though here again the dates are hotly contested. While the
remains recovered from South America so far do not confirm the existence
of large watercraft at this very early period in time, the remains from
the Arlington Springs site on Santa Rosa Island off the coast of
California most certainly do:

http://www.peak.org/csfa/mt14-3.html.

We have abundant documentation of the large ocean going water craft in use
along the Pacific coast during the time of European contact, watercraft of
a type whose use extended up to the 1900?s CE [that is CE, read
correctly], and these watercraft will be discussed a little farther along
in this survey.

MAN ENTERS THE EAST COAST

My house here in Virginia lies on Mountain Run, a small stream which flows
into the Rapidan ?River? over at Claire Ducker?s place; the Rapidan River
itself flows into the Rappahannock River just a little further downstream,
over at the community college and the highway. There archaeologists
surveying the route for the widening of the highway stumbled across an
ancient jasper quarry at Brook Run which was in use ca. 9500 BCE.

Little occupational debris has been found at the Brook Run site, and this
is little surprise. These Clovis hunters probably continued down the
Rappahannock River to what would then have been the Chesapeake River,
(instead of the Chesapeake Bay), on down stream to the land of easy
living. They then returned to Brook Run only to gather the stones they
needed to make their tools. If you stop to consider it, it immediately
seems reasonable that it would have been far easier to make a living by
harvesting fish and shell fish and killing peaceful coastal browsing deer
rather than by killing large angry mamoth and mastodon;  and indeed,
judging from the remains found to date, ancient man seems to have reached
this very same conclusion rather quickly.

The earliest evidence found so far of ancient man in Virginia comes from
the Cactus Hill site, which lies near the interior of southeastern
Virginia?s coastal plain, on the floodplain of the Nottoway River, a small
river that drains a relatively moist region before it joins with two other
rivers to ultimately discharge into the Albemarle Sound in North Carolina.
Along the Nottoway blades made from the local quartzite have been found in
pre-Clovis levels dating back to ca. 14,990 BCE.

Current faunal remains from the Cactus Hill site include deer bones and
mud turtle shells. Clovis technologies, usually thought to be some of the
earliest lithic technologies, do not show up here until the relatively
late date of 8,970 BCE. It is currently impossible to know whether this
change in tool types was simply the introduction of new technologies, or
whether it represented a new migration into the area; in part this is due
to lack of excavation, and in part it is due to the looting of the site by
arrowhead hunters.

LET?S NOT HUNT ANYTHING WHICH CAN KILL US, EH?

The switch in diet is more clearly seen at the Saltville River site
located in the Shenandoah Valley, which lies to the west of the coastal
area, between ridges of the Appalachian Mountains. The animals were
attracted here by the salt licks (it is after all called the ?Saltriver?),
and man in turn was attracted by the animals, particularly the ones who
had become bogged down in the mud near the salt licks. The remains of
mastodon, mamoth, ground sloth, bison, musk ox, caribou (it was still
cold), wild horses, and deer have been found here, including the worked
bones of mastodon and musk ox dated to around 12,000 BCE.  Nearby the
excavators found large shell middens (mounds of fresh water shells)  
which incorporated the butchered remains of fish and amphibians and which
dated to around the same time. While the ages of both the Cactus Hill site
and the Saltville site are hotly contested, it is extremely unlikely that
these shells just piled themselves up, conveniently including butchered
remains.

THE EARLY HUNTERS OF FLORIDA

The range of the mega-fauna on which early man dined was not limited to
northern regions. As has been pointed out elsewhere repeatedly, elephants
live today in Africa, India, and South East Asia, and they are not
restricted to eating grass in grasslands, but will eat the bark off trees
if necessary. Remains of early man have been found at the Coats-Hines site
in Tennessee, at the Topper site in South Carolina, and more central to
the area of this study, at the Little Salt Spring site and Page Ladson
site in Florida. In particular, worked bone and ivory from a number of
extinct mammals have been found at a number of places in Florida.

A DISCONTINUOUS DEVELOPMENT?

Strangely, the quarry at Brooks Run was abandoned after what is estimated
at only a few hundred years of use. Strangely, at the Cactus Hill site,
the early pre-Clovis and Clovis levels are separated by several meters of
sterile sand from the occupation levels left there by the later Archaic
peoples. IT NEEDS TO BE NOTED that the date of these discontinuities is
shortly before 8,000 BCE, a date much different than some of the dates
currently being proposed by some for a Holocene-start impact event.

Anyone who wishes to work on the study of the hypothesized Holocene-start
impact event will have to go through the every site report for every
excavation east of the Appalachian Mountains of the remains of early man,
and try to prove discontinuous habitation of them. Further, they will have
to go through every site report for the mid-section of the continent in
order to locate exactly where man survived the event, and where the
earlier tool forms show clear signs of evolution into the later archaic
tool forms.

Good luck. Those who may wish to undertake such a task can find a list of
sites compiled by National Park Service researchers at:
http://www.cr.nps.gov/aad/EAM/SE1.HTM.

Another list, this one giving a list of Chesapeake region sites may be
found at:

http://www.chesapeakebay.net/pubs/gateways/plainandpiedmont/HF-CH2.pdf

A SHORT NOTE ON THE PUUC FOOTHILLS

During the course of research for this survey I learned of the existence
of a geological formation which may be the result of a mega-tsunami. The
Puuc Foothills lie in Northern Yucatan, and take their name from the Mayan
word for hill, ?puc?. They are composed of mounds of alluvial soil piled
in a great set of hills which roughly outline the north coast of Yucatan.
While to my knowledge no effort has been made to date these structures,
due to their layout I doubt if they are indicative of the hypothesized
Holocene-start event; rather, they seem to indicate an impact event and
mega-tsunami, which occurred in the Gulf of Mexico at date unknown.

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 II: MAN RETURNS TO THE COASTAL AREAS

THE ARCHAIC IMMIGRATIONS

Given the spread of sites over such a wide area of south east North
America where pre-Clovis and Clovis tools are found, some may wonder why
these peoples did not adopt the new archaic tool technologies, and why
evidence of that evolution has not been found. Of course, no Conference
participant will have any such questions, as to most it will probably seem
likely that the reason these peoples did not adopt archaic tool
technologies was simply that they were dead, killed in the Holocene-start
impact event.

Instead, Conference participants might expect what is found, which is the
slow introduction of these archaic tools by the migrations of archaic tool
users from other areas. Indeed, any Holocene-start impact which may have
occurred would not only have killed all humans living in the area affected
by it, but it would also have completely destroyed all the herds of game
animals which lived in the area.  With no game to hunt, there would have
been no reason for man to move back into the area, until game herds had
recovered.

A NEW TECHNOLOGY APPEARS IN THE ARCHAIC: WATERCRAFT

In the Chesapeake Bay area we find evidence of new additions to the
Archaic peoples? diets of deer, bear, and small mammals: the remains of
American oysters, hard clams, soft clams, Bay shad, and sturgeon. The sure
signs of the maritime adaption of these archaic peoples are the appearance
of fishing net weights along with axes and adzes. While nets can be cast
from shore to catch some varieties of both birds and fish, they are more
effective for fish if they are used from a canoe. And while dug out canoes
can be manufactured by burning out the center of naturally downed trees,
better watercraft can be had if a good tree is selected, ringed with an
axe, coals set into this ring until the tree is downed, the tree trunk?s
center burned out, and then the rough form finished into a hull with an
adze.

WAS THIS TECHNOLOGY IMPORTED? - THE RED PAINT PEOPLE?

The question now comes as to the spread of this technology, and its point
of origin. Clearly, if the proposed Holocene-start impact event occurred,
nearly all peoples along both the American and European Atlantic coastal
areas would have perished. An artic survival may have been possible, and
then have been spread back across the north Atlantic by the Red Paint
people. But as near as I know, the Red Paint People used watercraft
constructed from animal hides, and not dug out canoes. Another problem
with attributing these Mid-Atlantic developments to the Red Paint People
is that they appear and disappear around 5,200 BCE, a date much earlier
than those being discussed here, dates which lie around 2980 BCE.

(As Conference participant Worth Crouch is better informed about the Red
Paint people than I am, I am most interested in hearing his views on their
possible role in the appearance in the late Archaic of this dugout
watercraft technology.)

THE LATE ARCHAIC RIVER PEOPLES?

Another problem with attributing this marine technology to the Red Paint
People is that at these middle Atlantic sites the remains of cultivated
hickory nuts and walnuts appear, along with the stone tools for working
the nuts, at the same time that these watercraft construction technologies
do. This seems to indicate contact with those cultures who had already
developed arboriculture, those peoples who I discussed in last year?s
survey. (The maypop fruit was also cultivated by these peoples. Further,
soapstone cooking bowls and soapstone baking tools also appear at the same
time.)

While it is possible that these technologies could have spread by inland
contact, the Chesapeake Bay peoples? source for the arboriculture
technology appears to have been the riverine peoples whose remains have
been found at the Sara?s Ridge site, the Paris Island, South Carolina
site, and the Rocky River, North Carolina site. These peoples did not live
along the coast, and at these river sites there is no indication of LARGE
watercraft construction.

ENTIRELY NEW TECHNOLOGIES APPEAR: LARGE WATERCRAFT, POTTERY, AND THE
STALLINGS ISLAND COMPLEX

But then these river dwelling peoples later adopted an entirely new
technology, and this may be clearly seen at Stallings Island, Georgia,
where the Mill Branch riverine culture existed for several hundred years
before being replaced by a Shell Ring culture around 1700 BCE. Here have
been found levels containing soapstone artifacts overlain by levels
containing fiber tempered pottery. This is an entirely new technology.

THE PROBLEM: THE SPREAD OF LARGE WATERCRAFT TECHNOLOGIES

Given the area and time period being surveyed here, the problems of when
these watercraft were developed, how they were used, and how they spread
become central.

Many in the anthropological community decry any suggestion of
trans-Pacific or trans-Atlantic contact, as though the adoption by Native
Americans of ?foreign?  technology would somehow take something away from
them. The plain fact is that due to natural currents, both trans-Pacific
and trans-Atlantic contacts were inevitable, if not by design, with
certainty by accident. In the one century from 1775 to 1875 at least 20
Japanese junks were involuntarily driven by storms and currents to landing
points from the Aleutian Islands to Mexico, an average of 1 watercraft
every 5 years. (Robert Heine-Geldern, The Problem of Transpacific
Influences in Mesoamerica, The Handbook of Middle American Indians, Volume
4, University of Texas Press, citing Brooks, 1875.) Further, in the last
century some 600 African craft have washed up on the coast of South
America, a rough average of 1 watercraft every 2 months. (John L. Sorenson
and Martin H.  Raish, Pre-Columbian Contact with the Americas Across the
Oceans: An Annotated Bibliography, Vol II, p. 106, entry M-143)

Given these rates of accidental trans-oceanic crossing, it is a slur on
the Native American peoples to insist that either 1) they were so cruel
that they immediately dispatched every ship-wrecked mariner who had the
misfortune to be ship-wrecked and then the good luck to be stranded on
their shores alive, or 2)  they were too stupid to take advantage of the
new technologies which these mariners or their crew-less watercraft would
have held. Those who blindly dismiss trans-oceanic contact also fail
completely to consider that technologies may have spread from Native
Americans in the other direction - and this is well evidenced as well.
Plants with trans-oceanic distribution includes cocoanut, various edible
palm, pineapple, banana, cotton, the grain amaranth, and hennequin, a type
of hemp. But without site visits it is simply impossible to trace the
spread of these plants, so at this point I will remain focused on the key
items of large dugout canoes and pottery.

(Those who are more interested in trans-oceanic contact than in the
peopling of the coastal areas of South-East North America, the Caribbean,
and coastal Central America, and the effect of cometary and asteroidal
impact on these peoples, I direct to:Robert Heine-Geldern, The Problem of
Transpacific Influences in Mesoamerica; and Philip Philips, The Role of
TransPacific Contact in the Development of New World Pre-Columbian
Cultures, both in The Handbook of Middle American Indians, Volume 4,
University of Texas Press; Geoffrey Ashe, Thor Heyerdahl, Helge Ingstad,
J.V. Luce, Betty Meggars and Brigitta Wallace, The Quest for America, Pall
Mall Press, London, 1971; and Andrew Collins, Gateway to Atlantis, Carroll
and Graff, New York, 2000)

LATER WATERCRAFT IN THE CARIBBEAN SEA AND ATLANTIC OCEAN

When we think of dugout watercraft, the first image that comes to mind is
that of the dugout canoes used today on the rivers of many parts of the
world. This smallness in size reflects not only the uses for which these
craft were and are constructed, which are those of production and trade on
rivers, but also reflects the current scarcity of large diameter trees. It
must be remembered that during the times of the first migrations into
North America, and indeed even up to the time of European contact, trees
with diameters of 3 meters and more were common. Indeed, satisfying the
need for timbers for the British Navy was one of the first reasons that
that government had for placing its settlers in North America. I don?t
think it can be excluded that this need for large trees may also have
played a role in much earlier trans-Atlantic contacts, those contacts
which may have occurred as Europe was deforested, while the peoples of
coastal Europe still depended on large watercraft built from large single
trees.

Fernando Colon, Columbus?s second son, provides us with an account of one
ocean going large dugout which his father encountered during his fourth
voyage, and it is worth repeating part of it in full here: ?Having come to
the island of Guanaja, the Admiral sent ashore his brother Bartholomew
with two boats. They encountered people who resembled those of the other
islands, but had narrower foreheads. They also saw many pine trees and
pieces of earth called calcide which the Indians use to cast copper; some
of the sailors thought it was gold....by good fortune there arrived at
that time A CANOE AS LONG AS A GALLEY AND EIGHT FEET WIDE, MADE OF A
SINGLE TREE TRUNK like the other Indian canoes; it was freighted with
merchandise from the western regions around New Spain. Amidships it had a
palm-leaf awning like that on Venetian gondolas; this gave complete
protection against the rain and waves. Underneath were women and children,
and all the baggage and merchandise. There were twenty-five paddlers
aboard, but they offered no resistance when our boats drew up to them.?

The ?other Indian canoes? which Fernando refers to were those that
Columbus and his men had seen earlier, those of the Taino (Arawak) and
Carib of the islands, and these dugouts were probably not as large as
those of the Choton traders of Central America. Orvieda (Historia general
y natural de las Indias, Gonzalo Fernandez de Orvieda Y Valdez, 1535)
recorded the use of sail by the Taino, but not by the Carib, who relied on
paddles for propulsion. Given the trade which existed along the east
coasts of Central America and South America, the Taino (Arawak)  likely
used sails at a much earlier period. Orvieda also recorded the Choton?s
use of sails on their watercraft, and the Choton?s conduct of regular
trade along the east coast of Central America for a long period of time is
fairly well evidenced by the distribution of the remains of trade goods.

It seems likely that all of the Caribbean watercraft did not use
centerboards or sideboards, and thus the prevailing winds and currents
must have played a large role in determining the movements of peoples and
goods through the region.  Seasonal current and wind charts for the
Caribbean may be found in Art and Archaeology of Pre-Columbian Cuba, Ramon
Dacal Moure and Manual Riviero de la Calle, University of Pittsburgh
Press, Pittsburgh, 1996. As might reasonably be expected, and as will be
seen, these watercraft played a significant role in the spread of peoples
and the conduct of trade.

LATER WATERCRAFT ALONG THE PACIFIC COAST

In his book ?Pyramids of Tucume?, Thor Heyerdahl describes the watercraft
used by Native Americans along the Pacfic Coast, and these were ocean
going rafts equipped with sails and a superstructure to keep their goods
and passengers dry.  Called ?balsa?s, a term connected with the balsa wood
logs which the Native Americans tied together to construct them, these
watercraft had capacities of up to 60 to 70 European tons. The bindings
which tied the logs together were of hennequin, a type of hemp, and the
distribution of this plant is important.

These balsa?s used masts of two types, with one type of mast mounted along
the center line, and the other type constructed of two poles attached to
the raft?s sides and joined over its center to form an upside down V
shape. The balsa?s had two types of sails, both square and lateen
(triangular), which when combined with the use of centerboards gave them
the ability to travel against the wind.

These craft ranged up and down the Pacific Coast of both South America and
Central America, and special note should be made of the circular stone
anchors which these watercraft used. Anchors of this type have been
recovered at several west coast Central American sites, and not identified
as anchors. (So much for the mysterious ?stone rings? found in some
excavations.) Another artifact which must be associated with the use of
these rafts are large jars for the storage of fresh water, jars which most
likely replaced earlier wooden vessels used for the same purpose. A final
artifact indicative of the use of balsa watercraft are non-native stones
used for ballast.

These craft not only carried merchandise for trade, but also served as
?mother-ships?  for fishing expeditions. The general method of fishing was
not line fishing, that is fishing with hooks and lines, where the hooks
would have been preserved as artifacts. Net fishing was used instead,
sometimes from the shore, or sometimes two fishermen would mount small
three log craft and drag a net between them, returning their catch to
either the shore or to a large balsa ?mother-ship?.

While the designs of these watercraft reflect the lack of large trees in
the areas on the west coast of South America, based on the evidence of
trans-Pacific contacts there is good reason to suspect that the first
ocean going watercraft in this area were large dugout boats.

WHERE DID THE STALLINGS ISLAND TECHNOLOGY COME FROM?

The Stallings Island complex is preceded by shell rings from Florida which
appear to have been built almost 1,000 years earlier. There is little
doubt that this was an ocean going maritime technology, with very large
dugout watercraft, as shell ring sties also earlier existed on Cuba.

EUROPEAN CONTACT?

As near as I am aware, some of the earliest evidence of large boat
building comes from Franchti cave in Greece, and is dated to around 7,000
BCE. The idea presents itself that dug out technology may have survived
the Holocene-start impact event in this area, and then spread from
Mediterranean survivals back into coastal Europe. It is possible that from
here the technology for building dug out boats may have spread back into
North America.

PACIFIC CONTACT?

Further, even more ancient coastal shell sites have been found along the
Pacific Coast of both Central America and South America. Betty Meggars has
thoroughly documented contacts between Jomon Japan and coastal South
America at Valdivia by around 3300 BCE.

A LIST OF EARLY COASTAL SITES

The following list started with a list given in The Art and Archaeology of
Pre-Columbian Cuba, Ramon Dacal Moure and Manuel Rivero de la Calle, 1996
translation, and this was then added to. The list must be used with
caution, as the dates those authors gave for both Stallings Island and
Poverty Point are wrong, further, I have not verified myself that all
sites are maritime culture sites, and the National Park Service list was
unavailable at the time of composition.

ATLANTIC SITES

It is generally held that there were two early migrations into the
Caribbean Islands: the Casimiroid, which is ?hypothesized? to have crossed
a land bridge or island chain from Central America around 4,000 BCE, and
the Ortoiroid, which is believed to spread from the north east coast of
South America after 2,000 BCE.  Despite the pottery found at Puerto
Hormiga, these later are generally held to have been aceramic.

Banwari Trace, Trinidad 5,500 BCE Gulf of Paria, Venezeula 3,650 BCE
Levisa, Cuba 3,190 BCE Puerto Hormiga, Coastal Columbia 2,925 BCE Pottery
Canimar Abajo, Cuba 2,750 BCE 22 sites, Aruba 2,500 BCE-ca 1,000 BCE
shells, no pottery Cubagua, Venezeula 2,200 BCE Sapelo, Georgia 2,150 BCE
shell ring Ossabaw Island, Georgia 2 sheel rings? -
                                              late archaic ends ca
1,000BCE Cueva Funche, Cuba 2,050 BCE Canapote, Coastal Columbia 2,050 BCE
Madrigales, Hispaniola 2,030 BCE St. John's River, Florida ca 2,000 BCE
East Coast, Orange Pottery,
                                              incised decoration Gulf
Coast, Florida ca 2,000 BCE West Coast, Norwood Pottery,
                                              paddle decoration Hilton
Head Island, S. Carolina ca 2,000 BCE 3 shell ring sites of 17 in US Hoyo
Del Todo, Hispaniola 1,940 BCE Stallings Island, Georgia 1,850 BCE
Pottery, up Savannah R. from coast Jolly Beach, Antigua 1,775 BCE no
pottery Manicuare, Aruba, Off Venezeula 1,620 BCE Barlovento, Coastal
Columbia 1,550 BCE Damajayabo, Cuba 1,300 BCE El Povenir, Hispaniola 1,185
BCE Cueva el Purial, Cuba 1,110 BCE

(The United States Naional Park Service maintains a list of shell ring
sites, but due to the judge?s shutdown, it was impossible to retrieve
information on them and their dating.)

PACIFIC SITES

Cerro Mangote, West Coast Panama 4,860 BCE Rio Chiriqui, West Coast Panama
4,610 BCE Siches, Peru ca. 5,000 BCE Valdivia, Ecuador (pottery)  3,300
BCE influenced by Jomon Culture, Japan
                                             (Meggars) Xoconocho, West
Coast Mexico 3,000 - 2,000 BCE shells middens, no pottery Barra, Mexico
1,800 BCE pottery, riverine,
                                             early species of maize
Machalilla, Ecuador 1,600 BCE from Columbia,
                                             practiced headbinding
Chorrera, Ecuador 1,200 BCE from Central America

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 16th 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.

THE RESPONSIBILITIES OF THE CHILAM BALAM'S:

"And indeed it was in such matters that these priests worked most, giving
advice to the Lords and answering their questions. The High Priest rarely
participated in matters of sacrifice, unless they concerned major feasts
or important affairs.  He provided priests for the towns when they were
needed, examined them in the knowledge of their sciences and ceremonies,
charged them with all the duties of their office, and urged them to be a
good example to the people; and he provided them with their books, and
sent them out.

"He also looked after the temples, as well as teaching Indian sciences.
and writing books about them. He also taught the children of the other
priests and the second sons of the Lords. who were reared for the office
from infancy if they showed any inclination to it."

(This is a major exception to Landa?s earlier statement on the passage of
the office of Chilam Balam by inheritance.)

WHAT MATERIALS DID THE BOOKS OF THE CHILAM BALAM?S COVER?

?The sciences which they taught were the reckoning of the years, months,
and days, and of their feasts and ceremonies; the administration of their
sacraments, and of the fateful days and seasons; their manner of
divination; and their prophecies, incidents, and cures for sickness; as
well as their antiquities, and method of reading and writing, where by
means of their letters and characters they wrote in glyphs which
represented the meanings of their writings.

HOW DID THE CHLIAM BALAM?S WRITE THEIR BOOKS?

?They wrote their books on a large sheet doubled over several times, this
closed together between two boards which were highly decorated. They wrote
on both sides of the sheet in columns, following the folds. And the paper
they made from the roots of a tree, giving it a white gloss on which it
was easy to write.

THE MAYAN LORDS? KNOWLEDGE OF THE SCIENCES

?Some of the principle Lords out of diligence had also acquired these
sciences, and although they never used them in public, they were held in
great esteem for having done so.?

THE CHILAM BALAMS? [BALAMOB] ADOPTION OF THE EUROPEAN ALPHABET

When the Spanish conquered the Native Americans of Central America, they
usually killed only the Lords who were the rulers of the leading city
states. Those Lords who ruled lesser city states usually escaped death, at
least for a while, and their Chilam Balams escaped death as well. These
Chilam Balam were of especial use to the Spanish, as among other items of
knowledge which they kept, they wrote detailed records of the tribute the
Lords had received, as well as the lands which they ruled. This
information was vital to Spanish exploitation, and copies into Latin
alphabet of many of these land holding records survive in the Spanish
archives.

The detailed study of the conquest period is still in its infancy, and
while it is known that the Latin alphabet was adopted in several
variations, where these adoptations took place and when and by whom are
currently unknown, as is exactly who were the Chilam Balams during the
conquest period, or the Lords of the local ruling dynasties, for that
matter.

What is clear is that the different Chilam Balams made local
transliterations into the Latin alphabet of the hieroglyphic records
available to them, and some of these survive in collections of their
records, which are usually called ?The Chilam Balam of X?, where X is the
town in which the collection was recovered.  Some 9 manuscripts of these
collections have been preserved, usually in later copies, while some 9
more collections were known but have disappeared. The location and
recovery of these manuscripts is much desired, but is not funded in any
way.

THE DECIPHERMENT OF MAYAN HIEROGLYPHIC AND THE UNDERSTANDING OF MAYAN
LANGUAGE

In thanks large part to funding from the US National Science Foundation
several decades ago for the development of several dictionaries of Mayan
and other Central American languages, it has at last been possible for
scholars working on Mayan Hieroglyphic to read part of it. About 140
glyphs out of 287 are currently read (Coe, op cit, p. 220-222), and the
number capable of being read is slowly increasing, despite the fact that
due to both the nature of the writing and the language of the Mayan script
it is not amenable to decipherment by techniques of phonetic loading. For
an excellent introduction to the Mayan glyphic, I highly recommend
Understanding Maya Inscriptions, A Hieroglyphic Handbook, John F.  Harris
and Stephen K. Stearns, The University of Pennsylvania Museum of
Archaeology and Anthropology, Philadelphia, 1997.?

One of the key figures in this decipherment was the late Linda Schele,
both for her own personal contribution as well as for her technique of
annualy assembling most of the Mayan scholars together in Texas for
sessions of joint work. This technique sped things along significantly.
(Conference participants may find it of interest that David Stuart, who
has played a significant role in the decipherment, studied briefly with
computational linguistics expert David Packard, who they may know as a
patron of the Spacewatch effort of the Lunar and Planetary Laboratory in
Arizona.)

Another technique which Schele encouraged was field work among modern
Maya, and with these two techniques, along with her artist?s eye, many key
words in Mayan were at last understood to some degree. This reading of
Mayan texts from codices, stelae, and painted poly-chrome pottery has
fundamentally changed the understanding of the Chilam Balams? collections
of texts. The world view which has emerged is very significantly different
from a European one, and Schele?s works must be read before reading any
earlier translations of the Chilam Balams?  collections. The translations
of these writing by Munro S. Edmonson, where available, are the ones I
prefer.

Thus for the purposes of this survey, in addition to the later copies in
European alphabet, we now have partial translations of the 3 Mayan
hieroglyphic codices which survived, as well as translations of some of
those Mayan stone inscriptions which have been recovered. For an
introduction to the codices, I highly recommend The Paris Codex, Handbook
for a Mayan Priest, Bruce Love, University of Texas Press, Austin, 1994.

I do not know the current state of National Science Foundation funding for
Mayan related work. If traditional methods of publication are relied upon,
those of publication, comment, and re-publication, the work will take
centuries, as will the search for manuscripts, and the assembly of a
detailed history of the conquest period. If electronic means are used
(computers, the internet, e-mail, multi-spectral imaging, and online
collections of archives), it may be as little as a 20 years until adequate
translations of the underlying documents are assembled from the recovered
fragments.

FUNDAMENTAL NATIVE AMERICAN CONCEPTS AND RITES

As was mentioned earlier in the second part of this survey, the first
thing which must be understood about Native American religions from
Central America is that they were based on the use of hallucinogens. The
Maya used hallucinogens, and while specific identification of plant
species is difficult, particular note must be taken of their references to
what they called the ?Sac Nicte?, or ?White Flower?.

One well known effect of hallucinogens is the inability of their users to
differentiate themselves from their environment. Thus Mayan shamans would
become the gods themselves by taking on their ?way?, or channeling the
god?s spiritual force, in their way of thinking. Another effect of the
stronger hallucinogens is the hallucination of objects which are not
there, and this can include the hallucination of people who have been
dispatched to the gods.

The Mayan shamans conducted one fundamental rite to ensure that an impact
event (?tzuk?) would not take place, and this was known as the ?Seating of
the Katun?.  Fundamentally, what occurred was that the rite?s participants
would assume the roles, the ?ways?, of the ?bacabs?, those gods who kept
the heavens separate from the Earth, and the by their performance of the
?bacabs? tasks the Mayan shamans would thus magically ensure that no
impact would take place during a katun?s period of time.

The shaman-bacabs would erect poles in the east, north, west, south, (some
say in the NE, NW, SW, and SE) of the city-state?s lands, and finally in
the center of the city-state. While some times the ?poles? were stones, at
other times the Maya raised trees, and the one raised in the center of the
city state was the Ceiba tree, source of a MAO-DMT inhibitor. Given the
terrible nature of the impact event which prompted the adoption of this
rite, its sacrifices were severe as well, and included human sacrifice.

The journey of the shaman-bacabs to the four corners of a city-state?s
territory also provided a means for the city-states to affirm their
control over a territory. Thus the seating ceremony, which ensured the
separation of the Earth from the Heavens, also served to separate a
polity?s lands from that of its neighbors, and it was accompanied by a
journey through all of a polity?s lands and villages. This ritual need is
a key reason why so many itineraries have survived from Central America.

This ?seating of a katun? rite has great antiquity, and as was mentioned
earlier, that it was practiced by the Pre-Formative (Zoque (?Olmec?) et
al.) peoples may be seen by one symbol worn by their lords, which is that
of a rectangle crossed corner to corner by parallel lines with a square in
the center. In the earlier rites poles were used instead of trees, and a
Zoque (Olmec) image of just such a rite may be seen at:

http://FAMSI.Saiph.com:80/dataSpark/schele/preview/07/IMG0049.jpg

Throughout Mayan history, and even before it, the territorial conflicts
brought on by the need ?to seat a katun? brought on regular conflict on a
20 year basis.  By the conquest period the city-states were entering into
larger confederations, and thus the competition to ?seat a katun? had
become even more intense, leading to warfare on a larger scale.

The Mayan shamans also conducted another fundamental rite, this one to
ensure rainfall, crop yield, and fertility. When we think of Central
America we think of rain forest, but in point of fact all rain which falls
in the Yucatan is quickly absorbed by the limestone underlying the region,
and the region is very arid. To ensure the crops, the shamans took on the
?ways? of the ?chac? rain gods, and performed rites tied to the timing of
the appearance of Venus, which is strongly correlated with the times of
optimal planting.

These chac-shamans were also responsible for ensuring the fertility of the
people themselves, and performed coming of age ceremonies. In order to
assure fertility, the shaman-chacs would ?purify? both people and land,
and thus the Lords would wage war to ?purify? the lands of their enemies
under the symbols of the stars. When you read a reference by a specialist
on the Maya to a ?star war?, this is what they mean.

Again, as was mentioned earlier, that the rituals of the chac-shamans are
of great antiquity may be seen in another symbol worn by the Zoque, that
of an ?E?  on its side, kind of a ?W?, which is identified as a symbol for
star (see Love, op cit, pg 89; Schele, 1993, p 361; and Milbrath, op cit,
p 188 for differing analyses). The two troughs of this symbol may be
related to the Venus cycle. For those Conference participants further
interested in Maya astronomy and time keeping, I point them in the
direction of Schele?s ?Mayan Cosmos?, Edmunson?s ?Book of the Year?,
Love?s ?The Paris Codex?, and Milbrath?s ?Star Gods of the Maya?.

To my knowledge no one in the community of Central American
anthropologists has ever considered the possibilty of historical impact
events.

WHAT BOOKS DID THE CHILAM BALAMS HAVE?

As some two volumes of The Handbook of Middle American Indians are devoted
to the manuscripts of the Native American peoples, no comprehensive
listing of their writings is possible here. Mention will only be made of
some of the key titles which were commonly in the Chilam Balams
collections of writings, and remember that these have hieroglyphic
antecedants.

The first of these writings was a creation tale, of which in the Popul Vuh
we have a pretty full copy of the Quiche adaptation and variation of the
Maya tale.  As was mentioned in Part 2 of this survey, other peoples?
adaptations of the Mayan version differ from their own. Fragments of this
tale also remain in the Chilam Balams? collections. These creation tales
contain information on the items under study here, the impact events, the
multiple creations of the world and their subsequent destruction, the
?partitioning? events, the Mayan ?tzuk? .

One of the interesting things about the Mayan sciences is that they form a
cohesive body of knowledge. An example of this may be seen in another of
their books which survived, a book of medical cures. In this book the same
gods which ruled over the parts of creation which included the patient?s
diseased part were invoked, along side of a listing of the cures for the
diseases, and thus the Maya intellectuals actually repeated a part of
their creation story within a medical text.

In the codices themselves the creation myths appear to have usually been
followed by a history of each people. While many other peoples seem to
have used a sequential record, the Maya themselves appear to have extended
their inductive method of science to their history. Among the Chilam Balam
of the conquest period there was a book known as ?The Book of Seven
Generations?, where the ?Generations?  in question seem to have been
turnings of either baktun?s or may?s, time periods of roughly 400 and 256
years respectively. (My completely amature guess is that baktuns were
used.) It appears that the Maya organized historical events along cyclical
temporal lines, instead of along a straight temporal line, so that they
could bring to bear the predictive power of earlier periods as a means of
handling current events. We have fragments of history in both forms
preserved in the Chilam Balams? works.

Aside from the fragments of these historical works found in the Chilam
Balams?  collections, we have a fairly long version of one given by Landa,
and this was undoubtedly provided to him by his own Native American
Interpreter and Chilam Balam, Gasper Antonio Chi (Xiu). Gaspar Antonio Chi
was the son of a Xiu nobleman slain by the Cocom (Edmonson gives Itza),
and the Xiu of (Tiho-Merida)  apparently thought that the Spanish would be
good allies against the Cocom.

After the creation story, and then the historical records of each separate
people, there seem to have been a series of astrological works, whereby
the goodness and badness of days, months, years, and katuns (20 years)
seems to have been forecast.

Parts of different versions of these also remain in various adaptations of
other differing peoples. This reflects the inductive nature of Mayan
science, and is also reflective of their world view. Sadly, undoubtedly
through their peoples?  trade networks the Chilam Balams had learned of
the genocide which the Spanish were engaged in Cuba, and not surprisingly
many of their ?prophecies? which advised surrender have been preserved.
Definitely more amusing than these is one Mayan book wherein an
individual?s entire life and fortunes, including his marriage, number of
children, illnesses, and date of death, was predicted based entirely on
date of birth. (Now if we could only convert all this into a computer
program, and either sell the program or sell the results online!)

Since these peoples had been pounded by the Sky Gods pretty severely not
just once, but several times, as will be shown in Part 4 of this survey,
their obsession with astronomy is perfectly understandable. The books on
creation, history, and astrology appear to have been followed by books
which were astronomical ephemerides, used to predict solar cycles, the
cycles of Venus, and those of other planets, along with tables for the
easy computation of significant dates. (It is not only modern scholars who
had difficulty with Mayan dates!) Copies of these have been recovered in
the hieroglyphic, and work on reading these extremely difficult texts is
proceeding. For a good overview of work on the codices see Love, The Paris
Codex. While little of these works appear to be seen in the Chilam Balams?
collections in Latin letters which we now have, we do find multiple
attempts to reconcile the Mayan and Spanish calendars.

THE ANTHROPOLOGISTS' CURRENT UNDERSTANDING OF MAYAN ASTRONOMY

A short aside as to the level of the Mayan researchers? understanding of
Mayan astronomy is in order here. Standard Mayan inscriptions usually give
the date in four ways: first, as a count of days from an initial starting
day; second, as a combination of the day count and solar year date; third,
by means of series of glyphs Morley catalogued as GFZYEDCXBA; and fourth
in a 819 day cycle. The last two are not understood (Harris and Stearns,
op cit, p 16-17) but are thought to be astronomical in nature. My belief
is that these date forms were probably also generated using the
information in the books contained in these parts of the hieroglyphic
codices.

Now before the advent of carbon 14 dating, there were only two ways in
archaeologists could date remains. The first of these methods was by the
discovery and decipherment of astronomical records, and usually these
pertained to eclipses. The second method which archaeologists then used
was stratigraphy, the placing other remains within the context of remains
with astronomically established dates. Since the advent of carbon 14
dating, no archaeologist has had to master astronomy in order to master
dating.

One piece of analysis which I think should now be provided by the
astronomical community to the archaeological community is a table which
gives BY DATE the estimated times of the appearance of known periodic
comets which are visible to the naked eye, a list extending from at least
3,000 BCE to the present day. This table should include a rough estimate
of the areas of the Earth from which the comets were visible, and very
rough estimates of the lengths of the comets?  tails in degrees, using
standard comet erosion data, such as it is. Further, this table should
indicate whether the comets were visible at day, or not.

As if this was not enough, this table should give this information in both
absolute terms as well as in descriptive terms. In other words, the areas
of visibility should be given not only in geographic co-ordinates, but in
standard descriptive terms - North America, South America, Central
America, Middle East, Africa, Europe, Russia, China, South East Asia,
Australia, etc.; the tail data described not only in degrees, but also in
centimeters; the peak magnitude data given with a separate column
indicating daylight visibility; and not only the time span of the
visibility of any comet?s visit, but the date of its peak visibility.

Oh, and by the way, throw in super-nova and cite all known written
references to all of the phenomena. Even better yet, such a table should
be generated and it should be posted to the internet, so that it will be
available to any researcher.

Any volunteers?

MORE MAYAN BOOKS

Back to the Maya. The timing of the rituals was determined on an
astronomical basis, and parts of those books which gave detailed
descriptions of how these rites were to be performed survived. Fragments
of quiz books for the testing of both astronomers, ?The Theodora?, and
public officials, ?The Language of Zuyua?  (Zoque?) have survived as well.

Two other books, one book for the instruction of sons, another for the
instruction of daughters, have survived in a fairly complete but
Christianized form.

THE CHRISTIAN APOTHEOSIS

Amazingly, the Maya had stylized their Ceiba tree, the source of their MAO
hallucinogen intensifier, into a cross long before Spanish contact. The
identification of this Ceiba cross with the Christian cross was almost
immediate;  that the Spanish should kill the Mayan Lords as a sacrifice to
their God, while the Mayan Lords only sacrificed prisoners of war and the
underclass, was more of a display of the power of the Spaniard?s God than
anything else. It is only among those Chilam Balams who were of peoples
who were not the Spaniards allies that the Mayan literature survived, and
that survival continued only for a while.  Slowly their writings become
more and more Christianized, and knowledge of the glyphs faded.

But before that occurred some of the Mayan books were preserved, at least
in part. And those parts which remain leave clear record of the impact
events.

<<<<<

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 FOUR: RECORDS OF THE 1150 BCE AND RIO CUARTO IMPACT EVENTS IN MAYAN
HISTORY AND MYTH

For all of the following records it will require extremely detailed study
to determine which calendar systems were in use in each of them and the
dating corruptions which may have been introduced into them over the
course of 2,000 - 3,000 years, and in transmission. In other words, it is
going to be quite a task the for the professionals to determine if any
useful dating information can be recovered, and the prospects for tieing
these records to cyclical astronomical phenomenon is slim.

THE END OF THE SECOND CREATION: THE 1150 BCE IMPACT EVENT AND MEGA-TSUNAMI
IN MAYAN HISTORY

AN ACCOUNT OF THE IMPACT MEGA-TSUNAMI AND BRIEF EXPLANATION OF THE
RELIGION

from The Codex Perez and the Book of Chilam Balam of Mani, page 118
Translated to English with notes by Eugene Craine And Reginald Reindorp
University of Oklahoma Press, Norma, 1979

It is unclear from the statements of Craine and Reindorp whether the parts
in brackets are new readings, restorations from other copies, or their own
additions to the text.

?[In the reign of 13 Ahau and 1 Ahau were the days and nights that fell
without order, and pain was felt throughout the land. Because of this] the
Thirteen Gods and the Nine Gods created the world and life; there also was
born Itzam Cab Ain (The Spirit of the Earth Crocodile, the Milky Way - see
Schele, Maya Cosmos, page 97,-epg).

?[Ah Mesencab (glossed by Craine and Reindrop as the Four Bacab, but the
Musencabs are shamans, see below )] turned the sky and the Peten upside
down, and the Nine Gods raised up Itzam Cab Ain (the Spirit of the Earth
Crocodile).

?There was a great cataclysm, and the ages ended with a flood. The 18 Bak
Katun was being counted and in its 17th part.

?The Nine Gods refused to permit Itzam Cab Ain (the Milky Way) to take the
Peten and to destroy the things of the world, so he (?) cut the throat of
Itzam Cab Ain (the Spirit of the Milky Way) and with his body formed the
surface of Peten...

?[Ah Mesencab (again, glossed by Craine and Reindrop as the Four Bacab,
but see below)], the one who laid waste to the Earth, rose up in the Katun
11 Ahau and bandaged the face of the Thirteen Gods (this appears to be bad
translation of ?  put (a) mask(s) on ?), but they did not know his name
and they were told he was called Father, Son, and Holy Ghost [an obvious
Hispanic insertion]. When the Thirteen Gods told them fire, stones, and
clubs came down.

?He took the green buds, large and small gourd seeds, wrapped them up with
the Nine Dz?acab ? (These have been identified as either gods, creators,
conjurors, priests, steps, the Lord of the Nine Generations, the Nine
Doctors - see Munro, 1982, p. 46, f. 888 and Schele, 1993. Most likely
they are simply the well attested Mayan hallucinogens.), ?and [...]

?They did not know that the heart of the tubercule (tuber=manioc?) was
gone.  After the evil sons and daughters were buried, although alive [they
had no hearts], and those who were on the beach were buried between the
waves of the sea.

?In this katun, on the day 3 Oc, an avalanche of water came, and on the
day 1 Cimi, everything came to an end. It was said that four gods, four
Bacabs, were the ones that destroyed the Earth. (The Bacabs held the sky
off of the Earth.)

?After this cataclysm the Red Imix (=Alligator:Munro,1986;=Milky
Way:Schele, 1993) Tree was erected, for it is one of the supports of
heaven and the sign of the dawn.

?This one (east) is the Bacab who turned aside. (The tsunami came from the
east.)

?Kan Xib, the father, planted the White Imix (Milky Way) Tree to the
north, and Zac Xob Chac says that this is a sign of destruction. The Black
Imix (Milky Way)  Tree was planted to the west of Peten for the pixoy to
sit upon. The [...] planted the Yellow Imix (Milky Way) Tree to the south
of Peten. The Green Imix (Milky Way) Tree (The hallucinogenic ceiba tree.)
was planted in the middle of the earth as a record of the destruction of
the world. Since then [...] has established his gourd, his bowl, and his
mat.? (These last are signs of office.).

ANOTHER COPY OF THE 1150 BCE MEGA-TSUNAMI ACCOUNT

from The Book of Chilam Balam of Tizimin: The Ancient Future of the Itza,
translated and annotated by Munro S. Edmonson, University of Texas Press,
Austin, 1982, page 45 et seq

?In 11 Ahau, then arose the Priest of Muzen Cab, and tied the faces of the
Thirteen Gods, but they did not know their names. ?The Holy?, ?The
Remote?, these are the names they called them. And they also did not show
their faces to them either. At last it dawned, and they did not know their
going or their coming,? (This is a comment either on the state of
religious knowledge at that time or at a later time. The meaning is
unclear.)

?And then spoke the Thirteen Gods to the Nine Gods: ?Bring down fire,?
(This is most likely the impact detonation.) ?bring down the rope?, (This
is most likely an impact plume.), ?bring down stones and trees.??

?Then came the pounding of sticks and stones.? (This is the impact blast.)

?And then appeared the Thirteen Gods, and beat their heads and flattened
their faces, and they were spat on and snatched away. (This is an account
of the destruction of the Zoque (?Olmec?), who were ?spat upon? with a
mega-tsunami.)

?The Four Year-bearers? (Munro later (1986) translated ?cangel? as ?four
changers? instead of as ?year-bearers?; but as will be seen below, the
cangel are astronomical.) ?and 5 Za Bac,? (Munro translated this as ?Soot
Head?, an obvious impactor reference.) ?and the Quetzals were taken, and
the Bluebirds.? (These seem to be totems used thoughout the surviving
literature in reference to two population groups.)

The shamans rituals are established next, with the preparation of the
hallucinogens followed by the heart sacrifice.

?Crushing the Zic, crushing the Top, and wrapping the seeds of the first
Nine Tz?acab, which went to the Thirteen Levels of Heaven.

?Then was cut the membrane, and the nose, of the skeleton. Then went the
heart, on account of the Thirteen Gods. But they did not know what was
going.? (Either a comment on the current state of knowledge or on the
anethesitic effect of the drugs.)

?The heart of the Moon there is dropped flat. And the fatherless, the
miserable, and those without spouses or living relatives, (Sacrificial
victims came from these populations.) ?and those that don?t have hearts,
then began to rot, by the margin of the sand, by the margin of the sea.

?One torrent of water occurred, which was released by the Year-bearers.?
(Once again, the ?Cangel?, something astronomical, see below.)

?That was the cleaning of heaven, and also the cleaning of the lands for
the period (of time) opposite the fold (of the katun), killing the
youngest sons.  That is the fold of the katun cycle, 3 Oc is the time it
arrived here. 1 Cimi is the time that ended the word of the returned
katun. The four gods - the Four Bacab (Sky-Bearers) - that is their
flattening of the land.?

What follows is the description of the Bacabs, the Sky-Bearers, interlaced
with the then current Spanish execution of their five priests.

?When the lands have been flattened, then there returns the Red (east)
Imix (Alligator=Milky Way) Tree, that is proceeding to pass the four. That
is the sign of the flattening of the land; that is the toppling of the
Tree of the Fathers of the Land, called the East Priest Xib Yuy.

?Then there returns the White Imix (Alligator=Milky Way) Tree to the
north; he is called the North Priest Xic, the sign of the flattening of
the lands.

?Then also returns the Black Imix (Alligator=Milky Way) Tree to the west
country, the sign of the flattening of the lands, that is the Black Imix
Tree, seating the West Priest Tam Puc the Weak.

?Seating the Yellow Imix (Alligator=Milky Way) Tree to the south of the
country, the sign of the flattening of the lands, seating the South Priest
Oyal Mut.

?Then is seated the Green Imix (Alligator=Milky Way) Tree in the middle of
the lands, the reminder of the flattening of the lands. Piled in its place
is the whole of the existence of this katun.?

A BRIEF SYNOPSIS OF THE 1150 BCE MEGA-TSUNAMI ACCOUNT

also from The Book of Chilam Balam of Tizimin, pages 40-41:

(A Lord?s Celestial Interpreter finishes tranlsating one account of
creation from hieroglyphic to roman letters, and begins working on a copy
of another part of it, which includes the tale set out above.)

?...This is the arrival of the end of the word of the Sun Priest of Muzen
Cab and Za Bac Na, which completes the lordship of the Thirteen Lords
(Gods).

?1 Ahau is the day for it, when they will join with each other: the rising
Sun, and Moon, and night.

?Then comes the dawn from the Thirteen Gods, for the Nine Gods, who are
then born and created.

?Then is born Itzam Can Ain (the Spirit of the Milky Way), cutting the
Pyramid of the Sun and the World.

?Then the sky is divided (from the Earth by the four Bacabs), and the land
is raised.

?And then there begins The Book of the Thirteen Gods.

?Then occurs the great flooding of the Earth.

?Then arises the great Itzam Cab Ain (Spirit of the Milky Way)

?The ending of the word (the book?): the fold of the Katun: that is a
flood which will be the ending of the word of the katun.

?But they did not agree, the Nine Gods; and then will be cut the throat of
Itzam Cab Ain (the Spirit of the Milky Way) who bears the country upon his
back.

That is Uoh Puc (?) by name, for they didn?t bear their right names - to
tie the stone face, and return the lordship.?

This last sentence refers to the tying on of a ritual mask, and by doing
so they would be re-establishing the old rituals and return their local
leaders to power.

ANOTHER ACCOUNT OF THE IMPACT MEGA-TSUNAMI, CONTAINED IN AN ACCOUNT OF ONE
OF THE LAST PERFORMANCES OF THE RITUAL, WITH CATHOLIC DISCLAIMERS

?????????

from The Book of Chilam Balam of Chumayel: Heaven Born Merida and Its
Destiny, translated by Munro S Edmunson, University of Texas Press,
Austin, 1986, page 152 et seq

?It is very necessary, the path that is the introduction to the heart.
This is the tun period, when it was shaped by our Father the Remote.

?This is the taking of the occasion: this is the bal-che (?+tree)
ceremony, as we honor Him here. We, the rulers spread in many parts,
worship them, the true Gods.

?There they are as tuns, the established representation of the True God,
our God, our Father, who is God the Father of Heaven and Earth, the true
God.

?However, the first gods were leperous gods, finished is the word of their
worship. They have been done in by the benediction of the Father in
Heaven. Then it ends, the redemption of the tz?oc (tz?uk = partitioning of
Earth and Heavens = impact event - epg) is over, (by) the twice born life
of the true God, the true Dios. When they sweetly prayed to heaven and
earth, that put an end to the gods of you Mayan people. Shattered is the
belief in your gods then.

?This is the account of the land at that time. That is because it was
written there, because it would not have happened at the time of the
making of these books. These are the thousand words here for the
examination of the Mayan people here, who may know how they were born and
(how they) settled the land here in this country.

?In 11 Ahau, that was when there began the Muzen Cabs (some kind of
priests) to tie the faces of the Thirteen Gods - and they did not know
their true names, for their older sisters and their engendered sons, their
offspring, and those who are not grown: perhaps even their faces and their
voices are gone. The dawning of the land they did not know about either,
the going and the coming.

?and then there were finished the Thirteen who are Gods, by the Nine who
are Gods.

?They then brought down fire (impact detonation), they then brought down
the rope (symbol of the impact plume), they then brought down stones and
sticks, then came the beating with sticks and stones.? (the impact blast)

?And then were finished the Thirteen who are Gods; and so their heads were
beaten, and their faces were flattened (by the impact blast), and then
their faces were flattened, and then they were forgotten, and then they
were also carried away (by the mega-tsunami).

?And then were planted the four cangel (heavenly bodies, see below),
together with the Soot Heads. Then was created also the Quetzal and the
Blue Bird.

?And then was created the placenta of breast plants, and the heart of
breast squash, and breast pumpkin, and breast beans, the wrapping of the
seed of the First Nine Steps (these are most likely the hallucinogens).

?Then they went to the thirteenth (13th) level of (the) heaven(s), and so
then were established his membranes, and his nose, his skeleton here in
the world. So then went his heart, because of the Thirteen who are Gods.
But they did not know his heart was to be a plant.

?And then they all arrived, even the fatherless, and the suffering poor,
and the widows; the living and those without hearts.? (This probably
describes the classes of people from which sacrificial vitctims were
selected.)

[THE TSUNAMI IS DESCRIBED HERE, AND THE ?CANGEL? ARE DESCRIBED]

?And they began to wait for it: the direction of the thatch grass, the
direction of the sea. The deluge of water, a storm of water, then reached
the hearts of the Four Cangel, who radiated in (the) heaven(s), and also
radiated on the land.  Said the Four who are Gods, the Four who are
Fathers of the Land: ?This water shows them to their faces. Then let us
finish the flattening of the lands.??

(The ?Can?in Cangels has commonly been interpreted as ?four?, but perhaps
given this passage reading ?Can? in its sense of ?heavens? might make
sense: the four heaven changers, the planets or something else?. The
Bacabs now intercede.)

?The South Priest Xib Yuy then bore the North Alligator (Milky Way) Tree
in the north. And then he bore the Entrance to (the) Heaven(s), the sign
of the flattening of the lands. That is the North Alligator (Milky Way)
Tree, said to be carried.

?And then he bore the West Alligator (Mikly Way) Tree to the seat of the
black-breasted weaver bird.

?And then he bore the South Alligator (Milky Way) Tree to the sign of the
flattening of the lands to seat the yellow-breasted weaver bird.

?And was seated the South Priest Xib Yuy, and the South Priest Oyal Mut.
And then he bore the Center Alligator (Milky Way) Tree to the middle,
signifying the flattening of the land.

?It is seated. Its being raised established the town. And the same when
the return of the katun is fulfilled.?

MEGA-TSUNAMI WITH STAR SIGN FROM THE CODEX DRESDEN

For a picture of the mega-tsunami flood, see the Codex Dresden, page 74,
availble also in Schele, 1993, p 106. This page is now believed to have
been page 1 of the Codex.

http://www.tu-dresden.de/slub/proj/maya/maya.html#74folio

A DESCRIPTION OF SEVEN MACAW (ITZAM YE) FROM THE POPOL VUH

A very late and highly modified version of the Mayan mega-tsunami account
survived as part of the Quiche collection of translations known as the
Popol Vuh, and it includes a description actor, Seven Macaw (Izam Ye), the
tale of whose defeat is included along side those two other hazards to
these early people, Volcano (Zipacna) and Earhquake.

The translation of the Popol Vuh used here is that of Dennis Tedlock, with
a few modifications to tense and punctuation. To give some idea of the
stages of transmission the tale had undergone by that time, see the
Quiche?s own migration lists on pages 149 and 184-185 of Tedlock?s
translation. While from the account itself, it is clear that Seven Macaw
was originally a combined comet/asteroid, Tedlock and Schele argue that
Seven Macaw was the Big Dipper, and it seems likely that such a
metamorphesis was underway as memory of the impact faded.

?This was when there was just a trace of early dawn on the face of the
Earth:  there was no Sun. But there was one who magnified himself: Seven
Macaw is his name.

?The Sky-Earth was already there, but the face of the Sun-Moon was clouded
over.

Even so, it is said that his (Seven Macaw?s) light provided a sign for the
people who were flooded. He was like a person of genius(?) in his being.

(In the Popol Vuh version, Seven Macaw appears after the impact. Seven
Macaw now speaks)

?I am great. My place is now higher than that of the human work, the human
design.(The ?wooden? people had just been created.)

?I am their Sun, I am their light, and I am also their months. So be it:
My light is great. I am the walkway and I am the foothold of the people,
because my eyes are of metal. My teeth just glitter with jewels, and
turquoise as well:  they stand out blue(?) with stones like the face of
the sky. And this nose of mine shines white into the distance like the
Moon.

?Since my nest is of metal, it lights up the face of the Earth. When I
come forth before my nest, I am like the Sun and (the) Moon for those who
are born in the light, begotten in the light. It must be so, because my
face reaches into the distance,? says Seven Macaw.

?It is not true that he is the Sun, this Seven Macaw, yet he magnifies
himself, his wings, his metal. But the scope of his face (his light) lies
right around his own perch: his face does not reach everywhere beneath the
sky. The faces of the Sun, Moon, and Stars are not yet visible, it has not
dawned. (This last is probably a reconciliation.)

?And so Seven Macaw puffs himself up as the days and the months, though
the light of the Sun and Moon has not yet clarified. He only wished for
surpassing greatness.

?This was when the flood was worked upon the mannequins, the wood carvings
(the wooden people).?

In the Popol Vuh, the description of Seven Macaw is preceded by accounts
of the Rio Cuarto impact and the 1150 BCE mega-tsunami, and these will be
given later on. It is followed by a long astronomical allegory, in which
hero twins defeat Seven Macaw. Again, this is a very late version, and
isolating the underlying components and modifications will be a very
complex task.

ITZAM YE AS A ?TZUK?, A PARTITIONER

Before continuing to the records of the Rio Cuarto Impact, it is very
important that the Mayan concept of ?tzuk? be clearly understood. ?Tzuk?
was a ?partition?, a separation of the Earth from the Heavens or Sky. Each
of these ?tzuk??s was a creation, and the way in which these
partitions-creations was ended and a new partition-creation established by
the divine power was by impact event.

One sign for ?tzuk? was a mirror affixed to the head. This makes sense in
that the Maya considered both asteroids and comets as being the same, with
meteoritic iron being a source for their mirrors. For some examples of
early use of the tzuk sign, see Schele?s Maya Cosmos, p 140-141, and
418-419, though sadly Schele was unaware that impact events actually could
and did occur in historic times.

THE RIO CUARTO IMPACT EVENT FROM THE B?AAKAL (PALENQUE) INSCRIPTIONS: HUN
NAL YE, THE PARTITIONER

Part of the Maya story of these multiple creations, multiple impacts, has
been preserved in a series of hieroglphic panels set up around 692 CE at
B?aakal (Palenque)  by the Mayan Lord Kan Balam II. These are part of a
general florescence of inscriptions which were written at that time, which
probably reflect a crisis in dynastic legitimacy. The triggering event for
this particular series of inscriptions occurred on 23 July, 690, and is
thought to have been a planetary conjunction.

What the texts describe is Hun Nal Ye Tzuk, First Maize Revealed the
Partitioner, his wife Na Sak (White), and their children. In Mayan
thought, the destruction of the wooden people (the 1150 BCE mega-tsunami
event) led to the creation of the maize people, and accounts for his name
First Maize Revealed the Partitioner.  But the events described here refer
to the destruction of the mud people, in other words the Rio Cuarto event,
and Hun Nal Ye Tzuk apparently was associated with that as well.

Perhaps this may be indicative of a fragmenting comet in an Earth
intercepting orbit... but perhaps not. One must remember that this is an
adoption of a Zoque cycle by the Maya, and that it is written in a
language that is only half understood.

The translations given here adapted from those Understanding Maya
Inscriptions, A Hieroglyphic Handbook, John F. Harris and Stephen K.
Stearns, Philadelphia, 1997, with adaptations focusing of the titles of
GIII, which are actually read pretty well, though not believed by the
translators themselves. This book is an excellent introduction to the
Mayan glyphic, and it is frank in its admission as to how many problems
remain in reading these texts. The dates given in the table following
these translations are very very tentative, and Conference participants
wishing to see exactly how difficult the problem of reading them is should
examine the work cited.

TEMPLE OF THE CROSS INSCRIPTION

http://FAMSI.Saiph.com:80/dataSpark/schele/preview/01/IMG0078.jpg

?12 Bak?tuns, 19 k?atuns, 13 tuns, and 4 winals after the previous era
began; on 8 Ahaw, 18 Sek, was born Lady White. It was 8 tuns and 5 winals
since the birth, and then the (?) event was carried out on 4 Ahaw 8
Kumuku. 13 baktuns were completed. It was 1 tun, 9 winals, 2 kins since
the image was made visible at the Closed Sky, the First Three Stone Place,
and then First Maize Revealer the Partitioner entered the sky. On 13 Ik?
20 Mol he prepared the Raised Up Sky Place, Eight House Partition is its
holy name, it is the House of the North. It was 1 bak?tun, 18 k?atuns, 3
tuns, and 12 winals since Raised Up Sky Heart was set in motion by First
Maize Revealer the Partitioner, and then he (identified as God 1) arrived
as Matawil. He (identified as God 1) is the child of White Ox Ya Ch?okle
Lady. It was 2 bak?tuns, 1 k?atun, 7 tuns, 11 winals since her birth and
then the white headband was closed for her White on 9 Ik? 0 Sak.

TEMPLE OF THE SUN INSCRIPTION

http://FAMSI.Saiph.com:80/dataSpark/schele/preview/01/IMG0075.jpg

?1.18.5.3.6, 13 Kimi 19 Keh: He was born, The spirit of the Sun-eyed
Torch, The killer of the Kings in the White House, the White Bone House,
The ?? of heaven, who with fire closed the eye of the Sun-eyed Lord Sun.

?1.18.5.3.6 days (note the day count repetition, but this time as a day
displacement) since he (First Maize Revealed the Partitioner) set in
motion the Raised Up Sky Heart and then he (Sun-eyed Torch, the king
killer) arrived at Matawil. He (Sun-eyed Torch) is the child of Valley
Lady White Holy Palenque Lord

?9.12.18.5.16 days since made visible the image at Closed Sky First Three
Stone Place on 4 Ahwa 8 Kamk?u and then happened 2 Kib 14 Mol.

TEMPLE OF THE FOLIATED CROSS INSCRIPTION

http://FAMSI.Saiph.com:80/dataSpark/schele/preview/01/IMG0076.jpg

?1.18.5.4.0, 1 Ahaw 13 Mak: The Third one was born, the Red Dwarf(?)
Partitioner, the third born of the K?awil Man (First Maize Revealer the
Partitioner), the Divine Sprout K?awinal.

?1.14.14.0 days since he arrived, the Sprout K?awinal, at Matawil, and
then was completed 2 baktuns.

?2 Ahaw 3 Wayeb, She conjured up the gods, Valley Place Lady White, Holy
Matawil Ruler. It happened at First True Mountain White Flower, Born First
Tree Precious.?

THE DATES

Such as they have been reconstructed by the glyph scholars, and this is
extremeley extremely tenative, are:

16 June, 3122 BCE - The First Maize Revealer Partitioner is born 7
December, 3121 BCE - Birth of Lady White (?)  13 August, 3114 BCE - Image
made visible at Closed Sky, the First Three StonePlace;
                        Event for The First Maize Revealed Partitioner 5
February, 3112 BCE - The First Maize Revealed Partitioner enters the sky,
                        Prepared/Dedicated the Raised Up Sky Place in the
North
                        Set in motion the Raised Up Sky Heart 8 November,
2360 BCE - Birth of the Red Dwarf(?) Partitioner 25 October, 2360 BCE -
Birth of Sun-eyed Torch, The killer of the kings in
                        the White House, the White Bone House, the ?? of
the heavens,
                        who with fire closed the eye of the Sun-eyed Lord
Sun;
                        ?arrived? (struck) at Matawil 21 October, 2360 BCE
- Birth of G1 7 September, 2325 BCE - A white headband was closed for
White? 17 February, 2325 BCE - Lady White conjured up the gods at Matawil

23 July, 690 CE - Some significant contemporaneous event occurred,
                        thought by some scholars to be a planetary
conjunction.
                        Is this a comet?s appearance?

Most of these dates are very poorly derived from the texts of these
inscriptions, and these translations really need to be very carefully
re-done. If the dates hold, then it would appear that the Rio Cuarto
impactor may perhaps have landed at a much earlier date than previously
thought, leaving the ca. 2100 BCE climate collapse without explanation.

THE RIO CUARTO IMPACT EVENT: THE DESTRUCTION OF THE FIRST CREATION AND THE
BEGINNING OF THE COUNT OF DAYS

from The Book of Chilam Balam of Chumayel: Heaven Born Merida and Its
Destiny, translated by Munro S Edmunson University of Texas Press, Austin,
1986, page 120 et seq

?Thus it was read by the First Sage Melchisedek, and the First Prophet,
Puc Tun:  the Catholic priest (sacerdote), and the First Sun Priest. This
is the sermon of the occurance of the birth of the Count of Days, which
was before the awakening of the world occurred, and it began to run by
itself, alone.?

This appears to be a team translation: Melchisedek was the biblical name
given by the Padres to their Catholic sacerdote, and Puc Tun was the First
Prophet and First Sun Priest - in other words, the Chilam Balam. Following
the introduction, some kind of prime force next brings into existence his
companions by ?saying ?  them, and together they then try to create and
perfect man:

?Then said his mother?s mother, then said his mother?s sister, then said
his father?s mother, then said his sister in law, ?What is to be said when
a man is seen on the road?? So they said whilst going along, but no man
occurred.

?And then they arrived, there, in the east, and they began to say, ?Who is
it that passed by here now? Here are his tracks, right here. Measure them
with your foot, according to the word of the Planter of the World.?

?Then they were to measure the footprint of our Father, who is the holy
God.  This was the beginning of saying the Count of the World by
footsteps. This was 12 Oc.

?This is the account of his birth. For 13 Oc occurred, and they matched
each other?s paces, and arrived there at the east.

?They said his (the Count of Days?) name, since the days had no name(s)
then. (By ?saying? the days? names, the gods created them.) And he
traveled on with his mother?s mother, his mother?s sister, and his
father?s mother, and his sister-in-law.

The month was born, and the day name was born, and the sky born, and the
earth, the pyramid of water and land, stone and tree. Then were born the
things of sea and land.?

What follows is an expansion of the preceding passage.

?On 1 Chuen (Monkey) he manifested himself in his divinity, and created
[the] heaven[s] and [the] Earth.

?On 2 Eb (Peak) he made his first pyramid. He descended, coming from there
in the heart of [the] heaven[s], there in the heart of the water[s]. For
there was nothing of earth, or stone, or tree.? (Perhaps the Maya
concieved of space as a cold clear lake, as did the Hurrians.)

?On 3 Ben he made all things, each and every thing: the things of [the]
heaven[s], and the things of the sea, and the things of the land:

?On 4 Ix there occurred the separation of [the] heaven[s] from the Earth.

?On 5 Men occurred the working of everything.

?On 6 Cib occurred the making of the first light (candle): there occurred
illumination, for there was no Sun or Moon.

?On 7 Caban there was born the Earth, which we did not have before.

?On 8 Etz?nab He planted His hands and feet, and made birds upon the
Earth.

?On 9 Cauac Hell was first tasted.

?On 10 Ahau occurred the going of evil men to Hell, because the Holy God
had not yet appeared.

?On 11 Imix occurred the shaping of stones and trees. That was done on
this day.

?On 12 Ik (Wind) occurred the birth of breath. This was the beginning of
what is called breath, because there is no death in it.

?On 13 Akbahl occurred the taking of the water. Then He moistened earth,
and shaped it and made man.?

This is the creation of the ?clay? men of the first creation. Oher Native
American peoples have different numbers of creations and destructions, but
the Maya had 2: the first, that of the clay men, seems to have been
destroyed by the floods caused by rain from the soot of the Rio Cuarto
impact; as was seen above, the second, that of the ?wooden? men, was
destroyed by the mega-tsunami of the 1150 BCE impact. God now plans the
destruction of the ?clay? men.

?On 1 Kan he was disturbed in his (at) heart, by the evil that had been
created.  (the clay men)

?On 2 Chicchan occurred the appearance of everything evil.run: And He was
it, even within the towns.

?On 3 Cimi (Death) He invented death. It happened that then was invented
the first death, by Our Father who is God.

?On 4 Manik ... (Sadly, the text here is lost.)

THE RAINS FROM THE SOOT OF RIO CUARTO:

?On 5 Lamat there was the invention of the Seven Floods of Rain, water,
and sea.

?On 6 Muluc occurred the burial of all the caves. And this was before the
awakening of the world. (In other words, the final creation.) This
occurred by the commandment of Our Father, who is God.

?Everything that there was not (which had been destroyed), was then spoken
in [the] heaven[s]. (In other words, everything is created again.) For
there had been no stones and trees. (These are required by the Bacabs for
the separation of the heavens from the Earth.)

And they went and tested each other (This probably refers to the
astronomical quiz, the ?Theodora?, posed to candidates for astronomer.),
and then He spoke as follows: ?Thirteen heaps and seven make one.?, He
said for speech to emerge. (A count of 13 and then of 7 exhausts the 20
day names.)

?For they had no speech. Its origin was requested by the First Lord
Sun-Priest (Kin), for their organs of speech were not yet opened, so that
they could speak to each other.

?They went there to the Heart of the Sky, and took each other by the hand.
And then they (the Bacabs) stood there in the middle of the country, and
(they)  divided it up.

(This is the Bacabs? partitioning ceremony described in the passages
above.)

?And they (the Bacabs) divided the Burners, the four of them: 4 Chiccan
the Burner, 4 Oc the Burner, 4 Men the Burner, and 4 Ahau the Burner.
These are the Lords, the four of them.

(These ?Burners? were officials who kept a fire cult which was tied to the
Count of Days.)

(This is followed by a long passage untranslated from the hieroglyphic and
a closing. Continuing with the last line.)

?The account of all the days, through which The Beginning is counted, was
in the east, as has been told.?

AN ACCOUNT OF THE RESPONSE TO THE RIO CUARTO EVENT FROM QUIRIGA, STELA C?

Freely adapted From Schele, 1993, p 67

Schele interprets the wording of the following stela inscription, which
dates from the mid- first millenium, as being an astronomical parable,
where the three thrones represent the sky, the earth, and the sea; but a
literal reading of the words as the response of the Lords of 3 different
lands may originally have been meant and seems to work just as well.

?4 Ahaw, 8 Kumk?u, to say - to make appear; Three stones were set, they
planted;? (Either the parts of creation, the sky, the earth, and the
water; or a list of three peoples perhaps now follows.)

?One stone, the Jaguar Paddler (Chilam Balam) and Stingray through nose
Paddler (Lord), It happened at First-Five-Sky (Na-ho-chan) Jaguar (Lord?s)
throne stone;? (Na-ho-chan the Maya homeland?)

?He planted a stone, the West-First-Rainpriest, It happened in the land,
of the Serpent-Throne-Stone;?  (Some north-western people?)

?And then it happened a stone was set, Na Itzamhi, Waterlily-throne-stone,
it happened at Lying-Down-Sky;? (The tsunami happened in the east, where
the ?sky laid down?. The ?Waterlily-Throne-Stone?  is probably a reference
to the people widely known as the ?Olmecs? (the Zoque).)

?(The) First stone place were completed 13 baktuns (?ago);  It was his
action, Raised-up Sky Lord.?

13 baktuns is a year count, and translates into 5,200 years. This clause
may refer to the raising of the first stone, a different time than the
raising of the 3 stones; if Rio Cuarto dates to roughly 2360 BCE, then
moving back 5,200 years brings you to 7,560 BCE; add in the years between
the baktun start to 4 Ahua, 8 Kumk?u, and possibly you?re at 8,000 BCE or
so, the time of the hypothesized Holocene-start impact event, and quite
possibly the beginning of Native American astronomy.

If you?re attempting to reconcile the dates, remember that conquest period
Tultul Xiu and Itza peoples used different counts, and it is likely that
those counts differed from those of the ?Classic? Maya.

A EUROPEAN MEMORY OF THE 1150 BCE IMPACT: PLATO?S TALE OF ATLANTIS

It has long been known that Plato?s tale of Atlantis was a construction of
his designed to instill moral lessons. It has been widely known that Plato
incorporated into this construction two remote historical memories, one a
description of the Minoan confederation, and the other a memory of the
invasion of the ?Sea Peoples?.

The mystery has been why Plato set this tale in the Atlantic.

In his book Gateway To Atlantis, author Andrew Collins has carefully
assembled a large amount of material documenting very firmly early
contacts by peoples from Europe and the Mediterranean with those of the
Western Hemisphere. So far so good, but then Collins goes on to set
?Atlantis? in Cuba, and further argues that Plato?s tale actually refers
to the Holocene-start event.

From the Mayan records of an impact produced mega-tsunami which occurred
around 1150 BCE, we can assert that it is far more likely that the bit of
ancient history which Plato incorporated into his moral fable was most
likely is a dim memory of that impact event, rather than the Holocene
start impact event.

NEAR EASTERN MEMORIES OF THE 1150 BCE IMPACT:

II CHRONICLES 20:34

?Now the rest of the acts of Jehoshaphat, first and last, behold, they
[are] written in the book of Jehu the son of Hanani, who [is] mentioned in
the book of the kings of Israel.

And after this did Jehoshaphat king of Judah join himself with Ahaziah
king of Israel, who did very wickedly. And he joined himself with him to
make ships to go to Tarshish: and they made the ships in Eziongeber. Then
Eliezer the son of Dodavah of Mareshah prophesied against Jehoshaphat,
saying, ?Because thou hast joined thyself with Ahaziah, the LORD hath
broken thy works.? And the ships were broken, that they were not able to
go to Tarshish. ?

PSALM 48:4

?For, lo, the kings were assembled, they passed by together. They saw [it,
and] so they marvelled; They were troubled, [and] hasted away. Fear took
hold upon them there; Pain, as of a woman in labor: Thou breakest the
ships of Tarshish with an east wind.?

It is important to note that while the ships of Tarshish were destroyed,
enough people survived on land that Tarshish was able to re-build.


GOING INTO THE WATER

Well, there you have it: a worldview so absolutely different from our own
that it has defied analysis for several hundred years by some of the best
intellects available. It appears to me that the fundamental reason for
this failure is that modern Europeans had not experienced impact events
for a considerable period of time, and certainly nothing so devastating as
the impacts the Maya experienced twice.

One of the most interesting aspects of this difference between peoples is
their view of the afterlife. The Europeans retained but dim memories of
the sky gods, and most peoples placed their afterlifes either in heaven,
living comfortably with the sky gods, or in hell, consumed by the dimly
remembered flames of a land impact. In contrast, the Maya had experienced
a massive impact produced mega-tsunami, and they placed their afterworld
under the sea, and described death as ?going into the water?.

The differences are actually that great, and dealing with them has been
exhausting. As for myself, this is simply as far as I am able to take this
survey from hell for the indefinite future, a future in which I am looking
forward to going into the water at some sandy beach. I plan to come back
out of that water as well.

EP http://FAMSI.Saiph.com:80/dataSpark/schele/preview/05/IMG0093.jpg

@copyright 2001 e.p. grondine

For further online reading about the peoples of this area, see:
http://www.ukans.edu/~hoopes/bookmarks.html

With many thanks to Munro, as well as to Mukta Antz Chingon and her
friends

?The ship at sea, now old and without strength to navigate, be it with two
or three masts, will list and turn over.? The Priest Xupan Nauat

?The diviners of birds, The diviners of stones, (tun) The diviners of flat
stones, The diviners of jaguars, (balamob) are weak spirits.

?Sixteen hundred years is the end of their lives, And three hundred years
follow. And so their lives are ended: Because they know the Count of Days
among them.

?Returned is the month; Returned is the year; Returned is the day;
Returned is the night; Returned is the wind, And gone again.

?Returned is the blood also: It has arrived, And divined, On the nobles
mats, And on the thrones.

?They have measured to learn the best hours; They have measured to find
the best day; They have measured there to see the arrival of the best
stars in ascendancy; They have measured to observe the arrival in
ascendancy of the best stars: The best tun altogether.

?And so they form their opinions.? (Ca tun u takbes y al ob.) Author
unknown

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