Tag Archives: MesoAmerica Links

Four trees at the Cardinal Directions

Diagram of Dante's Divine Comedy
The multi-layered universe of the Mesoamerian culture has been taught and appears in books as if it has been proven. Jesper Nielsen’s article Dante’s heritage: questioning the multi-layered model of the Mesoamerican universe questions this notion.
It appears the pre-conquest model of the universe was of the cardinal directions, the center, the upper world and Underworld thus making for a three tiered universe. The different levels were divided into different regions and on each of the levels these different regions correspond to the four cardinal directions.
The number nine is prominent. It is represented by a god in the center and two gods at each of the four cardinal directions. These added up equal nine.
After the conquest, it appears there was a mixture of the cosmological ideas from Dante’s The Divine Comedy brought by the Franciscan friars with the ideas of the native Indian’s resulting in a skewed view of their universe which is how it is taught now and not seriously questioned.
The full article can be viewed at the following link.
http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_hb3284/is_320_83/ai_n42366465/

B. Beltrán / Science
This vertical column of ancient Mayan glyphs was painted on stone found in a Guatemalan pyramid complex dating back to between 200 B.C. and 300 B.C. and show the Maya were writing at a complex level 150 years earlier than previously thought, though simple glyphs are dated to as early as 600 B.C.
They were found on preserved painted walls and plaster fragments in the pyramidal structure known as Las Pinturas, in San Bartolo, Guatemala.

The writing is completely different than the Zapotec writing and indicates they are not simple derivatives of each other.
Though a lot is now known of Mayan writings it is not known what these glyphs say.
Full article is here is printed on MSNBC.
MesoAmerias.com has published Daniel Brinton’s argument that Tula was merely one of the towns built and occupied by that tribe of the Nahuas known as Azteca or Mexica and its inhabitants were called Toltecs, but there was never any such distinct tribe or nationality; they were merely the ancestors of this branch of the Azteca and the Toltec “empire” is a baseless fable.
The paper is published in MesoAmericas Book Collection.


The section of the main site MesoAmericas.com for the people of the ancient cultures has been started. Here is the first paragraph:
Olmec Mother Culture
The earliest known civilization in Mesoamerica is the Olmec. It appears they are the genesis of most of the aspects of the Mesoamerican cultures. The form of their government, pyramid-temple building, writing, astronomy, art, mathematics, economics and religion became the template for succeeding cultures. The questions of where the Olmec received their inspiration and knowledge, not to mention the required force, to create the Mesoamerican culture is rarely examined deeply.
More to come…

What mystery was evoked,
Seeing hieroglyphs for the first time,
With no comprehension of the mind,
To resurface at a later time,
What does this riddle represent to me?
Maybe unraveling it, unravels something in me.