Megalith, Crop Circles and Pyramids of the World

Compiler: Adnan Hussain

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Megalith

Megalithic grave "Harhoog" in Keitum, Sylt, Germany.

Clooneen wedge tomb, the Burren, Co. Clare, Ireland

Stonehenge, Wiltshire, United Kingdom, is one of the world's best known megalithic structures. A megalith is a large stone that has been used to construct a structure or monument, either alone or together with other stones. The word "megalithic" describes structures made of such large stones, utilizing an interlocking system without the use of mortar or cement, as well as representing periods of prehistory characterised by such constructions. For later periods the term monolith, with an overlapping meaning, is more likely to be used. The word "megalith" comes from the Ancient Greek "" (megas) meaning "great" and "" (lithos) meaning "stone." Megalith also denotes an item consisting of rock(s) hewn in definite shapes for special purposes.[1][2][3] It has been used to describe buildings built by people from many parts of the world living in many different periods. A variety of large stones are seen as megaliths, with the most widely known megaliths not being sepulchral.[4] The construction of
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these structures took place mainly in the Neolithic (though earlier Mesolithic examples are known) and continued into the Chalcolithic and Bronze Age.[5]

Early stone complexes in eastern Turkey

At a number of sites in eastern Turkey, large ceremonial complexes from the 9th millennium BC have been discovered.[6] They belong to the incipient phases of agriculture and animal husbandry. Large circular structures involving carved megalithic orthostats are a typical feature, e.g. at Nevali Cori and Gbekli Tepe. Although these structures are the most ancient megalithic structures known so far, it is not clear that any of the European Megalithic traditions (see below) are actually derived from them.[7] At Gbekli Tepe four stone circles have been excavated from an estimated 20. Some measure up to 30 metres across. As well as human figures, the stones carry a variety of carved reliefs depicting boars, foxes, lions, birds, snakes and scorpions.[8]

European megaliths

Poulnabrone portal tomb, Ireland The most common type of megalithic construction in Europe is the portal tomb a chamber consisting of upright stones (orthostats) with one or more large flat capstones forming a roof. Many of these, though by no means all, contain human remains, but it is debatable whether use as burial sites was their primary function. Though generally known as dolmens, the correct term accepted by archaeologists is portal tomb. However many local names exist, such as anta in Galicia and Portugal, stazzone in Sardinia, hunebed in the Netherlands, Hnengrab in Germany, dysse in Denmark, and cromlech in Wales. It is assumed that most portal tombs were originally covered by earthen mounds. The second-most-common tomb type is the passage grave. It normally consists of a square, circular, or cruciform chamber with a slabbed or corbelled roof, accessed by a long, straight passageway, with the whole structure covered by a circular mound of earth. Sometimes it is also surrounded by an external stone kerb. Prominent examples include the sites of Br na Binne and Carrowmore in Ireland, Maes Howe in Orkney, and Gavrinis in France. The third tomb type is a diverse group known as gallery graves. These are axially arranged chambers placed under elongated mounds. The Irish court tombs, British long barrows, and German Steinkisten belong to this group.
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Another type of megalithic monument is the single standing stone, or menhir. Some of these are thought to have an astronomical function as a marker or foresight, and, in some areas, long and complex alignments of such stones exist, for example, at Carnac in Brittany. In Italy dolmens can be found in Apulia, Sardinia and in Sicily. In latter place they are located in Mura Pregne (Palermo), Sciacca (Agrigento), Monte Bubbonia (Caltanissetta), Butera (Caltanissetta), Cava Lazzaro (Siracusa), Cava dei Servi (Ragusa), Avola (Siracusa), all structures covered, in the ancient, by a circular mound of earth and dated to the early bronze age. In the dolmen of Cava dei Servi, the archaeologists found numerous human bone fragments and some splinters of Castelluccian (Early Bronze Age) ceramics.[9] In parts of Britain and Ireland the best-known type of megalithic construction is the stone circle, of which examples include Stonehenge, Avebury, Ring of Brodgar, and Beltany. These, too, display evidence of astronomical alignments, both solar and lunar. Stonehenge, for example, is famous for its solstice alignment. Examples of stone circles are also found in the rest of Europe. They are assumed to be of later date than the tombs, straddling the Neolithic and the Bronze Ages.

Tombs

Large T shaped Hunebed D27 in Borger-Odoorn, Netherlands. Megalithic tombs are aboveground burial chambers, built of large stone slabs (megaliths) laid on edge and covered with earth or other, smaller stones. They are a type of chamber tomb, and the term is used to describe the structures built across Atlantic Europe, the Mediterranean, and neighbouring regions, mostly during the Neolithic period, by Neolithic farming communities. They differ from the contemporary long barrows through their structural use of stone. There is a huge variety of megalithic tombs. The free-standing single chamber dolmens and portal dolmens found in Brittany, Denmark, Germany, Ireland, Netherlands, Sweden, Wales, and elsewhere consist of a large flat stone supported by three, four, or more standing stones. They were covered by a stone cairn or earth barrow. Examples with outer areas, not used for burial, are also known. The Court Cairns of southwest Scotland and northern Ireland, the Severn-Cotswold tombs of southwest England and the Transepted gallery graves of the Loire region in France share many internal features, although the links between them are not yet fully understood. That they often have antechambers or
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forecourts is thought to imply a desire on the part of the builders to emphasize a special ritual or physical separation of the dead from the living. The Passage graves of Orkney, Ireland's Boyne Valley, and north Wales are even more complex and impressive, with cross-shaped arrangements of chambers and passages. The workmanship on the stone blocks at Maeshowe for example is unknown elsewhere in northwest Europe at the time. Megalithic tombs appear to have been used by communities for the long-term deposition of the remains of their dead, and some seem to have undergone alteration and enlargement. The organization and effort required to erect these large stones suggest that the societies concerned placed great emphasis on the proper treatment of their dead. The ritual significance of the tombs is supported by the presence of megalithic art carved into the stones at some sites. Hearths and deposits of pottery and animal bone found by archaeologists around some tombs also implies that some form of burial feast or sacrificial rites took place there.

Cup and ring marks,In England Further examples of megalithic tombs include the stalled cairn at Midhowe in Orkney and the passage grave at Bryn Celli Ddu on Anglesey. There are also extensive grave sites with up to 60 megaliths at Louisenlund and Gryet on the Danish island of Bornholm.[10] Despite its name, the Stone Tomb in Ukraine was not a tomb but rather a sanctuary.

Other structures
Associated with the megalithic constructions across Europe, there are often large earthworks of various designs ditches and banks (like the Dorset Cursus), broad terraces, circular enclosures known as henges, and frequently artificial mounds such as Silbury Hill in England and Monte dAccoddi in Sardinia. Sometimes, as at Glastonbury Tor in England, it is suggested that a natural hill has been artificially sculpted to form a maze or spiral pattern in the turf.
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It seems that spirals were an important motif for the megalith builders, and have been found carved into megalithic structures all over Europe along with other symbols such as lozenges, eye-patterns, zigzags in various configurations, and cup and ring marks. While not a written script in the modern sense of the term, these symbols are considered to have conveyed meaning to their creators, and are remarkably consistent across the whole of Western Europe.

Spread of megalithic architecture in Europe

In Western Europe and the Mediterranean, megaliths are, in general, constructions erected during the Neolithic or late stone age and Chalcolithic or Copper Age (4500-1500 BC). Perhaps the most famous megalithic structure is Stonehenge in England, although many others are known throughout the world. The French Comte de Caylus was the first to describe the Carnac stones. Pierre Jean-Baptiste Legrand d'Aussy introduced the terms menhir and dolmen, both taken from the Breton language, into antiquarian terminology. He interpreted megaliths as gallic tombs. In Britain, the antiquarians Aubrey and Stukeley conducted early research into megaliths. In 1805, Jacques Cambry published a book called Monuments celtiques, ou recherches sur le culte des Pierres, prcdes d'une notice sur les Celtes et sur les Druides, et suivies d'Etymologie celtiques, where he proposed a Celtic stone cult. This completely unfounded connection between druids and megaliths has haunted the public imagination ever since.[citation needed] In Belgium, there is a megalithic site at Wris, a little town situated in the Ardennes. In the Netherlands, megalithic structures can be found in the northeast of the country, mostly in the province of Drenthe. Knowth is a passage grave of the Br na Binne neolithic complex in Ireland, dating from c.3500-3000 BC. It contains more than a third of the total number of examples of megalithic art in all Western Europe, with over 200 decorated stones found during excavations.

Timeline of megalithic construction

Construction of a megalith grave Mesolithic Excavation of some Megalithic monuments (in Britain, Ireland, Scandinavia, and France) has revealed evidence of ritual activity, sometimes involving architecture, from the Mesolithic, i.e., predating the Neolithic monuments by centuries or millennia. Caveats apply: In some cases, they

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are so far removed in time from their successors that continuity is unlikely; in other cases, the early dates, or the exact character of activity, are controversial. Neolithic

Circa 5000 BC: Constructions in Portugal (vora). Emergence of the Atlantic Neolithic period, the age of agriculture along the western shores of Europe during the sixth millennium B.C. culture of La Almagra, Spain near by, perhaps precedent from Africa. Circa 4800 BC: Constructions in Brittany (Barnenez) and Poitou (Bougon). Circa 4400 BC: Constructions in Malta (Skorba temples). Circa 4000 BC: Constructions in Brittany (Carnac), Portugal (Lisbon), France (central and southern), Corsica, Spain (Galicia), England and Wales. Circa 3700 BC: Constructions in Ireland (Knockiveagh and elsewhere). Circa 3600 BC: Constructions in England (Maumbury Rings and Godmanchester), and Malta (gantija and Mnajdra temples). Circa 3500 BC: Constructions in Spain (Mlaga and Guadiana), Ireland (south-west), France (Arles and the north), Sardinia, Sicily, Malta (and elsewhere in the Mediterranean), Belgium (north-east) and Germany (central and south-west). Circa 3400 BC: Constructions in Ireland (Newgrange), Netherlands (north-east), Germany (northern and central) Sweden and Denmark. Circa 3300 BC: Constructions in France (Carnac stones) Circa 3200 BC: Constructions in Malta (aar Qim and Tarxien). Circa 3000 BC: Constructions in France (Saumur, Dordogne, Languedoc, Biscay, and the Mediterranean coast), Spain (Los Millares), Sicily, Belgium (Ardennes), and Orkney, as well as the first henges (circular earthworks) in Britain.

Chalcolithic

Circa 2500 BC: Constructions in Brittany (Le Menec, Kermario and elsewhere), Italy (Otranto), Sardinia, and Scotland (northeast), plus the climax of the megalithic Bellbeaker culture in Iberia, Germany, and the British Isles (stone circle at Stonehenge). With the bell-beakers, the Neolithic period gave way to the Chalcolithic, the age of copper. Circa 2400 BC: The Bell-beaker culture was dominant in Britain, and hundreds of smaller stone circles were built in the British Isles at this time.

Bronze Age

Circa 2000 BC: Constructions in Brittany (Er Grah), Italy (Bari), Sicily (Cava dei Servi, Cava Lazzaro), Sardinia (northern), and Scotland (Callanish). The Chalcolithic period gave way to the Bronze Age in western and northern Europe. Circa 1800 BC: Constructions in Italy (Giovinazzo). Circa 1500 BC: Constructions in Portugal (Alter Pedroso and Mourela).

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Circa 1400 BC: Burial of the Egtved Girl in Denmark, whose body is today one of the best-preserved examples of its kind. Circa 1200 BC: Last vestiges of the megalithic tradition in the Mediterranean and elsewhere come to an end during the general population upheaval known to ancient history as the Invasions of the Sea Peoples.[citation needed]

African megaliths
Nabta Playa

Nabta megalith Nabta Playa at the southwest corner of the western Egyptian desert was once a large lake in the Nubian Desert, located 500 miles south of modern-day Cairo.[11] By the 5th millennium BC, the peoples in Nabta Playa had fashioned the world's earliest known astronomical device, 1,000 years older than, but comparable to, Stonehenge.[12] Research shows it to be a prehistoric calendar that accurately marks the summer solstice.[12] Findings indicate that the region was occupied only seasonally, likely only in the summer when the local lake filled with water for grazing cattle.[12][13] There are other megalithic stone circles in the southwestern desert.

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Middle Eastern megaliths

Megalithic structure at Atlit Yam, Israel Dolmens and standing stones have been found in large areas of the Middle East starting at the Turkish border in the north of Syria close to Aleppo, southwards down to Yemen. They can be encountered in Lebanon, Syria, Israel, Jordan, and Saudi Arabia. Megaliths have also been found on Kharg Island in Iran and at Barda Balka in Iraq. The most concentrated occurrence of dolmen in particular is in a large area on both sides of the Jordan Rift Valley, with greater predominance on the eastern side. They occur first and foremost on the Golan Heights, the Hauran, and in Jordan, which probably has the largest concentration of dolmen in the Middle East. In Saudi Arabia, only very few dolmen have been identified so far in the Hejaz. They seem, however, to re-emerge in Yemen in small numbers, and thus could indicate a continuous tradition related to those of Somalia and Ethiopia. The standing stone has a very ancient tradition in the Middle East, dating back from Mesopotamian times. Although not always 'megalithic' in the true sense, they occur throughout the Orient, and can reach 5 metres or more in some cases (such as Ader in Jordan). This phenomenon can also be traced through many passages from the Old Testament, such as those related to Jacob, the grandson of Abraham, who poured oil over a stone that he erected after his famous dream in which angels climbed to heaven (Genesis 28:10-22). Jacob is also described as putting up stones at other occasions, whereas Moses erected twelve pillars symbolizing the tribes of Israel. The tradition of venerating (standing) stones continued in Nabatean times and is reflected in, e.g., the Islamic rituals surrounding the Kaaba and nearby pillars. Related phenomena, such as cupholes, rock-cut tombs and circles also occur in the Middle East.

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Asian megaliths

Northern-style megalithic burial from Jukrim-ri, Gochang-eub, North Jeolla Province, Korea. Megalithic burials are found in Northeast and Southeast Asia. They are found mainly in the Korean Peninsula. They are also found in the Liaoning, Shandong, and Zhejiang in China, the East Coast of Taiwan, Kysh and Shikoku in Japan, Dong Nai province in Vietnam and parts of Pakistan and India. Some living megalithic traditions are found on the island of Sumba and Nias in Indonesia. The greatest concentration of megalithic burials is in Korea. Archaeologists estimate that there are 15,000 to 100,000 southern megaliths in the Korean Peninsula.[14][15] Typical estimates hover around the 30,000 mark for the entire peninsula, which in itself constitutes some 40% of all dolmens worldwide (see Dolmen).

Northern style
Northeast Asian megalithic traditions originated in northeast China, in particular the Liao River basin.[16][17] The practice of erecting megalithic burials spread quickly from the Liao River Basin and into the Korean Peninsula, where the structure of megaliths is geographically and chronologically distinct. The earliest megalithic burials are called "northern" or "table-style" because they feature an above-ground burial chamber formed by heavy stone slabs that form a rectangular cist.[18] An oversized capstone is placed over the stone slab burial chamber, giving the appearance of a table-top. These megalithic burials date to the early part of the Mumun Pottery Period (c. 1500-850 BC) and are distributed, with a few exceptions, north of the Han River. Few northern-style megaliths in northeast China contain grave goods such as Liaoning bronze daggers, prompting some archaeologists to interpret the burials as the graves of chiefs or preeminent individuals.[19] However, whether a result of grave-robbery or intentional mortuary behaviour, most northern megaliths contain no grave goods.

Southern style
Southern-style megalithic burials are distributed in the southern Korean Peninsula. It is thought that most of them date to the latter part of the Early Mumun or to the Middle Mumun Period.[18][19] Southern-style megaliths are typically smaller in scale than northern megaliths. The interment area of southern megaliths has an underground burial chamber made of earth or lined with thin stone slabs. A massive capstone is placed over the interment area and is supported by smaller propping stones. Most of the megalithic burials on the Korean Peninsula are of the southern type.
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Representations of a dagger (right) and two human figures, one of which is kneeling (left), carved into the capstone of Megalithic Burial No. 5, Orim-dong, Yeosu, Korea. As with northern megaliths, southern examples contain few, if any, artifacts. However, a small number of megalithic burials contain fine red-burnished pottery, bronze daggers, polished groundstone daggers, and greenstone ornaments. Southern megalithic burials are often found in groups, spread out in lines that are parallel with the direction of streams. Megalithic cemeteries contain burials that are linked together by low stone platforms made from large river cobbles. Broken red-burnished pottery and charred wood found on these platforms has led archaeologists to hypothesize that these platform were sometimes used for ceremonies and rituals.[20] The capstones of many southern megaliths have 'cup-marks' carvings. A small number of capstones have human and dagger representations.

Capstone-style
These megaliths are distinguished from other types by the presence of a burial shaft, sometimes up to 4 m in depth, which is lined with large cobbles.[21] A large capstone is placed over the burial shaft without propping stones. Capstone-style megaliths are the most monumental type in the Korean Peninsula, and they are primarily distributed near or on the south coast of Korea. It seems that most of these burials date to the latter part of the Middle Mumun (c. 700-550 BC), and they may have been built into the early part of the Late Mumun. An example is found near modern Changwon at Deokcheon-ni, where a small cemetery contained a capstone burial (No. 1) with a massive, rectangularly shaped, stone and earthen platform. Archaeologists were not able to recover the entire feature, but the low platform was at least 56 X 18 m in size.

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Living megalith culture of Indonesia

People on Nias Island in Indonesia move a megalith, circa 1915. Digitally restored.

Toraja monolith, circa 1935. The Indonesian archipelago is the host of Austronesian megalith cultures both past and present. Living megalith cultures can be found on Nias, an isolated island off the western coast of North Sumatra, the Batak people in the interior of North Sumatra, on Sumba island in East Nusa Tenggara and also Toraja people from the interior of South Sulawesi. These megalith cultures remained preserved, isolated and undisturbed well into the late 19th century. Several megalith sites and structures are also found across Indonesia. Menhirs, dolmens, stone tables, ancestral stone statues, and step pyramid structure called Punden Berundak were discovered in various sites in Java, Sumatra, Sulawesi, and the Lesser Sunda Islands. The Punden step pyramid and menhir can be found in Pagguyangan Cisolok and Gunung Padang, West Java. The Gunung Padang Site is the biggest megalithic site in Southeast Asia. The Cipari megalith site also in West Java displays monoliths, stone terraces, and sarcophagi.[22] The Punden step pyramid is believed to be the predecessor and basic design of later Hindu-Buddhist temples structure in Java after the adoption of Hinduism and Buddhism by the native population. The 8th century Borobudur and 15th-century Candi Sukuh featured the step-pyramid structure. Lore Lindu National Park in Central Sulawesi houses ancient megalith relics such as ancestral stone statues. Mostly located in the Bada, Besoa and Napu valleys.[23]

Madia Gonds of Maharashtra, India

A study[24] mentions living megalithic practices amongst the Madia Gonds. The Madia Gonds live in Bhamragad Taluka of Gadchiroli District of Maharashtra, India.

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Melanesian megaliths
Megaliths occur in many parts of Melanesia, mainly in Milne Bay Province, Fiji and Vanuatu. Few excavations has been made and little is known about the structures. The megalith tomb Otuyam at Kiriwina has been dated to be approximately 2000 years old which indicates that megaliths are an old custom in Melanesia. However very few megaliths have been dated. The constructions have been used for different rituals. For example, tombs, sacrifices and rituals of fecundity. Dance sites exist next to some megaliths. In some places in Melanesia rituals are continued to be held at the sacred megalith sites. The fact that the beliefs are alive is a reason that most excavations have been stopped at the sites.

Analysis and evaluation

Megaliths were used for a variety of purposes. The purpose of megaliths ranged from serving as boundary markers of territory, to a reminder of past events, to being part of the society's religion.[25] Common motifs including crooks and axes seem to be symbols of political power, much like the crook was a symbol of Egyptian pharaohs. Amongst the indigenous peoples of India, Malaysia, Polynesia, North Africa, North America, and South America, the worship of these stones, or the use of these stones to symbolize a spirit or deity, is a possibility. [26] In the early 20th century, some scholars believed that all megaliths belonged to one global "Megalithic culture"[27] (hyperdiffusionism, e. g. 'the Manchester school',[28] by Grafton Elliot Smith and William James Perry), but this has long been disproved by modern dating methods.[citation needed] Nor is it believed any longer that there was a European megalithic culture, although regional cultures existed, even within such a small areas as the British Isles. The archaeologist Euan Mackie wrote "Likewise it cannot be doubted that important regional cultures existed in the Neolithic period and can be defined by different kinds of stone circles and local pottery styles (Ruggles & Barclay 2000: figure 1). No-one has ever been rash enough to claim a nation-wide unity of all aspects of Neolithic archaeology!" [29]

Types of megalithic structures

The types of megalithic structures can be divided into two categories, the "Polylithic type" and the "Monolithic type."[30] Different megalithic structures include:

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Gallery

Easter Island's Moai at Rano Raraku

Inside the burial chamber at Mane Braz, Brittany, France

Menhirs at the Almendres Cromlech, vora, Portugal

Megalithic tomb in Khakasiya, Russian Federation

Megalithic tomb in Khakasiya, Russian Federation

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Capstones of southern-style megalithic burials in Guam-ri, Jeollabuk-do, Korea

Ale's Stones at Kseberga, around ten kilometres south east of Ystad, Sweden

Bryn Celli Ddu Wales

Talaiot in Majorca

Deer stone near Mrn in Mongolia

the Great Menhir of Er Grah, the largest known single stone erected by Neolithic man, later toppled.
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Menhir in the "Cham des Bondons" site, Lozre, France.

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Nazca Lines
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia Jump to: navigation, search Coordinates: 144300S 750800W

UNESCO World Heritage Site Lines and Geoglyphs of Nazca and Pampas de Jumana Name as inscribed on the World Heritage List

Peru Cultural i, iii, iv 700 UNESCO region Latin America and the Caribbean Inscription history 1994 (18th Session) Inscription Country Type Criteria Reference The Nazca Lines /nzk/ are a series of ancient geoglyphs located in the Nazca Desert in southern Peru. They were designated as a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 1994. The high, arid plateau stretches more than 80 kilometres (50 mi) between the towns of Nazca and Palpa on the Pampas de Jumana about 400 km south of Lima. Although some local geoglyphs resemble Paracas motifs, scholars believe the Nazca Lines were created by the Nazca culture between 400 and 650 AD.[1] The hundreds of individual figures range in complexity from simple lines to stylized hummingbirds, spiders, monkeys, fish, sharks, orcas, and lizards.
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The lines are shallow designs made in the ground by removing the reddish pebbles and uncovering the whitish/grayish ground beneath. Hundreds are simple lines or geometric shapes; more than seventy are zoomorphic designs of animals such as birds, fish, llamas, jaguar, monkey, or human figures. Other designs include phytomorphic shapes such as trees and flowers. The largest figures are over 200 metres (660 ft) across. Scholars differ in interpreting the purpose of the designs, but in general they ascribe religious significance to them. Other theories have been summarized as follows: "The geometric ones could indicate the flow of water or be connected to rituals to summon water. The spiders, birds, and plants could be fertility symbols. Other possible explanations include: irrigation schemes or giant astronomical calendars."[2] Due to the dry, windless, and stable climate of the plateau and its isolation, for the most part the lines have been preserved. Extremely rare changes in weather may temporarily alter the general designs. As of recent years, the lines have been deteriorating due to an influx of squatters inhabiting the lands. [3]

Inhalt

1 History 2 Purpose 3 Alternative explanations 4 Environmental concerns 5 Images 6 See also 7 Notes 8 References 9 Further reading 10 External links

History
Contrary to the popular belief that the lines and figures can only be seen with the aid of flight, they are visible from atop the surrounding foothills. They were first discovered by the Peruvian archaeologist Toribio Mejia Xesspe, who spotted them when hiking through the foothills in 1927. He discussed them at a conference in Lima in 1939.[4], although it must be added that although some of the figures can be worked out from the surrounding foothills the full designs can not be truly appreciated unless viewed from the sky. Paul Kosok, a historian from Long Island University, is credited as the first scholar to seriously study the Nazca Lines. In the country in 1940-41 to study ancient irrigation systems, he flew over the lines and realized that one was in the shape of a bird. Another chance helped him see how lines converged at the winter solstice in the Southern Hemisphere. He began to study how the lines might have been created, as well as to try to determine their purpose. He was joined by Maria Reiche, a German mathematician and archaeologist to help figure out the purpose of the
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Nazca Lines. They proposed one of the earliest reasons for the existence of the figures: to be markers on the horizon to show where the sun and other celestial bodies rose. Archaeologists, historians and mathematicians have all struggled with determining the purpose of the lines. Determining how they were made has been easier than figuring why they were made. Scholars have theorized the Nazca people could have used simple tools and surveying equipment to construct the lines. Archaeological surveys have found wooden stakes in the ground at the end of some lines, which support this theory. One such stake was carbon-dated and was the basis for establishing the age of the design complex. The scholar Joe Nickell of the University of Kentucky has reproduced the figures by using tools and technology available to the Nazca people. The National Geographic called his work "remarkable in its exactness" when compared to the actual lines.[5] With careful planning and simple technologies, a small team of people could recreate even the largest figures within days, without any aerial assistance.[4] On the ground, most of the lines are formed by a shallow trench with a depth of between 10 cm (3.9 in) and 15 cm (5.9 in). Such trenches were made by removing the reddish-brown iron oxidecoated pebbles that cover the surface of the Nazca desert. When this gravel is removed the lightcolored clay earth which is exposed in the bottom of the trench produces lines which contrast sharply in color and tone with the surrounding land surface. This sublayer contains high amounts of lime which, with the morning mist, hardens to form a protective layer that shields the lines from winds, thereby preventing erosion. The Nazca "drew" several hundred simple but huge curvilinear animal and human figures by this technique. In total, the earthwork project is huge and complex: the area encompassing the lines is nearly 500 square kilometres (190 sq mi), and the largest figures can span nearly 270 metres (890 ft). Some of the measurements for the figures include that the Hummingbird is 93 meters (310 ft) long, the Condor is 134 meters (440 ft), the Monkey is 93 meters (310 ft) by 58 meters (190 ft), and the Spider is 47 meters (150 ft). The extremely dry, windless, and constant climate of the Nazca region has preserved the lines well. The Nazca desert is one of the driest on Earth and maintains a temperature around 25 C (77 F) all year round. The lack of wind has helped keep the lines uncovered and visible to the present day. The discovery of two new small figures was announced in early 2011 by a Japanese team from Yamagata University. One of these resembles a human head and is dated to the early period of Nazca culture or earlier and the other, undated, an animal. In March 2012 the university announced that a new research center would be opened at the site in September 2012 to study the area for the next 15 years.The team has been doing field work there since 2006 when it found about 100 new geoglyphs.[6][7] In 2013, it was reported machinery used in a limestone quarry had destroyed a small section of a line, and caused damage to another.[8]

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Nazca Lines seen from SPOT Satellite

Purpose
Archeologists, ethnologists, and anthropologists have studied the ancient Nazca culture to try to determine the purpose of the lines and figures. One hypothesis is that the Nazca people created them to be seen by their gods in the sky. Kosok and Reiche advanced a purpose related to astronomy and cosmology: the lines were intended to act as a kind of observatory, to point to the places on the distant horizon where the sun and other celestial bodies rose or set in the solstices. Many prehistoric indigenous cultures in the Americas and elsewhere constructed earthworks that combined such astronomical sighting with their religious cosmology, as did the later Mississippian culture at Cahokia in present-day United States. Another example is Stonehenge in England. But Gerald Hawkins and Anthony Aveni, experts in archaeoastronomy, concluded in 1990 that there was insufficient evidence to support such an astronomical explanation.[9] Reiche asserted that some or all of the figures represented constellations. By 1998, Phyllis B. Pitluga, a protg of Reiche and senior astronomer at the Adler Planetarium in Chicago, had concluded that the animal figures were "representations of heavenly shapes. But she contends that they are not shapes of constellations but of what might be called counter constellations, the irregular-shaped dark patches within the twinkling expanse of the Milky Way."[10] Aveni criticized her work for failing to account for all the details. In 1985, the archaeologist Johan Reinhard published archaeological, ethnographic, and historical data demonstrating that worship of mountains and other water sources predominated in Nazca religion and economy from ancient to recent times. He theorized that the lines and figures were part of religious practices involving the worship of deities associated with the availability of water, which directly related to the success and productivity of crops. He interpreted the lines as sacred paths leading to places where these deities could be worshiped. The figures were symbols
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representing animals and objects meant to invoke the gods' aid in supplying water. The precise meanings of many of the individual geoglyphs remain unsolved as of 2013. Henri Stierlin, a Swiss art historian specializing in Egypt and the Middle East, published a book in 1983 linking the Nazca Lines to the production of ancient textiles that archeologists have found wrapping mummies of the Paracas culture.[11] He contended that the people may have used the lines and trapezes as giant, primitive looms to fabricate the extremely long strings and wide pieces of textile that are typical of the area. By his theory, the figurative patterns (smaller and less common) were meant only for ritualistic purposes. This theory is not widely accepted, although scholars have noted similarities in patterns between the textiles and the Nazca Lines, which they take as sharing in a common culture.

Alternative explanations

Satellite picture of an area containing lines. North is to the right. (Coordinates: 1443S 7508W) Phyllis Pitluga, senior astronomer at the Adler Planetarium & Astronomy Museum and a protg of Reiche, performed computer-aided studies of star alignments. She asserted that the giant spider figure is an anamorphic diagram of the constellation Orion. She further suggested that three of the straight lines leading to the figure were used to track the changing declinations of the three stars of Orion's Belt. In a critique of her analysis, Dr. Anthony F. Aveni noted that she did not account for the other twelve lines of the figure; he commented generally on her conclusions, saying:

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I really had trouble finding good evidence to back up what she contended. Pitluga never laid out the criteria for selecting the lines she chose to measure, nor did she pay much attention to the archaeological data Clarkson and Silverman had unearthed. Her case did little justice to other information about the coastal cultures, save applying, with subtle contortions, Urton's representations of constellations from the highlands. As historian Jacquetta Hawkes might ask: was she getting the pampa she desired?[12] Jim Woodmann believes that the Nazca lines could not have been made without some form of manned flight to see the figures properly. Based on his study of available technology, he suggests that a hot air balloon was the only possible means of flight. To test this hypothesis, Woodmann made a hot-air balloon using materials and techniques he understood to have been available to the Nazca people. The balloon flew, after a fashion. Most scholars have rejected Woodmann's thesis as ad hoc,[4] because of the lack of any evidence of such balloons.[13]

Environmental concerns
People trying to preserve the Nazca Lines are concerned about threats of pollution and erosion caused by deforestation in the region. The Lines themselves are superficial, they are only 10 to 30 cm deep and could be washed away... Nazca has only ever received a small amount of rain. But now there are great changes to the weather all over the world. The Lines cannot resist heavy rain without being damaged. Viktoria Nikitzki of the Maria Reiche Centre[14] After flooding and mudslides in the area in mid-February 2007, Mario Olaechea Aquije, archaeological resident from Peru's National Institute of Culture, and a team of specialists surveyed the area. He said, "[T]he mudslides and heavy rains did not appear to have caused any significant damage to the Nazca Lines," but the nearby Southern Pan-American Highway did suffer damage, and "the damage done to the roads should serve as a reminder to just how fragile these figures are."[15]

Images

The Hummingbird

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The Condor

The Heron

The "Giant"

The Spider

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The Pelican

The Dog

The Hands

The Monkey

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Geoglyph
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia Jump to: navigation, search

The geoglyph of Cuzco, map E.G. Squier, c. 1860. The fortification Sacsahuman (north of the town) represents the head of an animal (El Puma Yacente, puma lying down), the back, legs and tail of the animal are recognisable in the patterns of the town, the backshape follows a mountain river, the feet are standing on the shore of the river Sapi A geoglyph is a large design or motif (generally longer than 4 metres) produced on the ground and typically formed by clastic rocks or similarly durable elements of the landscape, such as stones, stone fragments, live trees,[1] gravel, or earth. A positive geoglyph is formed by the arrangement and alignment of materials on the ground in a manner akin to petroforms, while a negative geoglyph is formed by removing patinated clasts to expose unpatinated ground in a manner akin to petroglyphs.

Inhalt

1 Ancient 2 Contemporary 3 See also 4 References 5 External links

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Ancient

Geoglyphs on deforested land in the Amazon rainforest. The most famous geoglyphs are the Nazca Lines in Peru. The cultural significance of these geoglyphs for their creators remains unclear, despite many hypotheses.[2] The "Works of the Old Men" in Arabia, "stone-built structures that are far more numerous than (the) Nazca Lines, far more extensive in the area that they cover, and far older," [3] have been described as geoglyphs by Amelia Sparavigna, a physics professor at Politecnico di Torino in Italy.[4] The use of this term to describe these features is probably inaccurate, as recent research has shown that most were not constructed primarily as art, but were rather built to serve a range of purposes including burial sites and funerary customs, aiding in the trapping of migratory animals, and as cleared areas for camps, houses and animal enclosures.[5] Since the 1970s, numerous geoglyphs have been discovered on deforested land in the Amazon rainforest, Brazil, leading to claims about Pre-Columbian civilizations.[6][7][8] Alceu Ranzi, a Brazilian geographer, is accredited with first discovering the geoglyphs whilst flying over Acre.[9][10] Other areas with geoglyphs include Megaliths in the Urals, South Australia (Marree Man, which is not ancient, rather a modern work of art, with mysterious origins), Western Australia and parts of the Great Basin Desert in the southwestern United States. Hill figures, turf mazes and the stone-lined labyrinths of Scandinavia, Iceland, Lappland and the former Soviet Union are types of geoglyphs.

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Contemporary

Bunjil geoglyph at the You Yangs, Lara, Australia, by Andrew Rogers. The creature has a wingspan of 100 metres and 1,500 tonnes of rock were used to construct it. Not all geoglyphs are ancient. The Land Art movement created many new geoglyphs as well as other structures; perhaps the most famous example is Spiral Jetty by Robert Smithson. Many towns and cites in the Western United States use hillside letters (also known as "Mountain Monograms") on the hills above their locations. Contemporary Australian sculptor Andrew Rogers has created geoglyphs around the world called "The Rhythms of Life". You Yangs National Park is the home of a geoglyph constructed by Rogers in recognition of the indigenous people of the area. It depicts Bunjil, a mythical creature in the culture of the local Wautharong Aboriginal people.[citation needed] In 20082009 Alfie Dennen created Britglyph, a locative art focused Geoglyph created by having participants across the United Kingdom leave rocks at highly specific locations and uploading media created at each location. When taken together and viewed on the main project website an image of a watch and chain inspired by John Harrison's marine chronometer H5 was created.[11]

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Crop circle
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia Jump to: navigation, search For the irrigation method that produces circular fields of crops, see center pivot irrigation.

A 780 ft (240 m) crop circle in the form of a double (six-sided) triskelion composed of 409 circles. Milk Hill, England, 2001. A crop circle is a sizable pattern created by the flattening of a crop such as wheat, barley, rye, maize, or rapeseed. Crop circles are also referred to as crop formations because they are not always circular in shape. The documented cases have substantially increased from the 1970s to current times. In 1991, two hoaxers claimed authorship of many circles throughout England. Twenty-six countries reported approximately 10,000 crop circles in the last third of the 20th century; 90% of those were located in southern England. Many of the formations appearing in that area are positioned near ancient monuments, such as Stonehenge. According to one study, nearly half of all circles found in the UK in 2003 were located within a 15 km (9.3 miles) radius of Avebury.[1] Archeological remains can cause cropmarks in the fields in the shapes of circles and squares, but they do not appear overnight, and they are always in the same places every year. The scientific consensus is that most or all crop circles are man-made, with a few possible exceptions due to meteorological or other natural phenomena.

Inhalt

1 History o 1.1 Early reports of circular formations o 1.2 Modern crop circles 1.2.1 Bower and Chorley 1.2.2 Art and business 1.2.3 Legal implications 2 Explanations
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2.1 Man-made 2.2 Weather 2.3 Paranormal 2.4 Animal activity 2.5 Changes to crops 3 Folklore 4 Gallery 5 See also 6 References 7 Further reading

o o o o o

History
The concept of crop circles began with the original late-1970s hoaxes by Doug Bower and Dave Chorley (see Bower and Chorley, below).[2][3][4][5][6] They said that they were inspired by the Tully "saucer nest" case in Australia, where a farmer found a flattened circle of swamp reeds after observing a UFO.[3] Since the 1960s, there had been a surge of UFOlogists in Wiltshire, and there were rumors of "saucer nests" appearing in the area, but they were never photographed. [6] There are other pre-1970s reports of circular formations, specially in Australia and Canada, but they were always simple circles, which could have been caused by whirlwinds.[3] In Fortean Times David Wood reported that in 1940 he had already made crop circles using ropes near Gloucestershire.[7]

Early reports of circular formations

In 1686, British scientist Robert Plot reported on fairy rings in his The Natural History of Stafford-Shire and said they could be caused by airflows from the sky.[8][9] In 1991 meteorologist Terence Meaden linked this report with modern crop circles, a claim that has been compared with Erich von Dniken's pseudohistoric claims.[10] An 1880 letter to the editor of Nature by amateur scientist John Rand Capron, describes how a recent storm had created several circles of flattened crops in a field.[11] In the 1960s, in Tully, Queensland, Australia, and in Canada, there were many reports of UFO sightings and circular formations in swamp reeds and sugar cane fields.[3] For example, on 8 August 1967, three circles were found in a field in Duhamel, Alberta, Canada, and the Department of National Defence sent two investigators, who concluded that it was artificially made but couldn't make definite conclusions on who made them or how.[12] The most famous case is the 1966 Tully "saucer nest", when a farmer said he witnessed a saucer-shaped craft rise 30 or 40 feet (12 m) up from a swamp and then fly away. When he went to investigate the location where he thought the saucer had landed, he found a nearly circular area 32 feet long by 25 feet wide where the grass was flattened in clockwise curves to water level within the circle, and the reeds had been uprooted from the mud.[3][13] The local police officer, the RAAF, and the University of Queensland concluded that it was most probably caused by natural causes, like a down drought, a willy-willy (dust devil), or a waterspout.[13] In 1973, GJ Odgers, Director of Public Relations, Department of Defence (Air Office), wrote to a journalist that the "saucer" was
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probably debris lifted by the causing willy-willy.[13] Hoaxers Bower and Chorley were inspired by this case to start making the modern crop circles that appear today.[3]

Modern crop circles

The majority of reports of crop circles have appeared in and spread since the late 1970s[2] as many circles began appearing throughout the English countryside. This phenomenon became widely known in the late 1980s, after the media started to report crop circles in Hampshire and Wiltshire. After Bower's and Chorley's 1991 statement that they were responsible for many of them, circles started appearing all over the world.[14] To date, approximately 10,000 crop circles have been reported internationally, from locations such as the former Soviet Union, the UK, Japan, the U.S., and Canada. Sceptics note a correlation between crop circles, recent media coverage, and the absence of fencing and/or anti-trespassing legislation.[15] Although farmers have expressed concern at the damage caused to their crops, local response to the appearance of crop circles can be enthusiastic, with locals taking advantage of the increase of tourism and visits from scientists, crop circle researchers, and individuals seeking spiritual experiences.[5] The market for crop-circle interest has consequently generated bus or helicopter tours of circle sites, walking tours, T-shirts, and book sales. The last decade has witnessed crop formations with increased size and complexity of form, some featuring as many as 2000 different shapes,[14] and some incorporating complex mathematical and scientific characteristics.[16][17][18] A video sequence used in connection with the opening of the Olympic Games in London in 2012 shows two crop circle areas shaped as the Olympic Rings. Another Olympic crop circle area was visible for those landing at Heathrow Airport, London, UK before and during the Olympic Games. Bower and Chorley In 1991, self-professed pranksters Doug Bower and Dave Chorley made headlines claiming it was they who started the phenomenon in 1978 with the use of simple tools consisting of a plank of wood, rope, and a baseball cap fitted with a loop of wire to help them walk in a straight line.[19] To prove their case they made a circle in front of journalists; a "cereologist" (advocate of paranormal explanations of crop circles), Pat Delgado, examined the circle and declared it authentic before it was revealed that it was a hoax.[19][20][21] Inspired by Australian crop circle accounts from 1966, Doug and Dave claimed to be responsible for all circles made prior to 1987, and for more than 200 crop circles in 19781991 (with 1000 other circles not being made by them).[14][22] After their announcement, the two men demonstrated making a crop circle. According to Professor Richard Taylor, "the pictographs they created inspired a second wave of crop artists. Far from fizzling out, crop circles have evolved into an international phenomenon, with hundreds of sophisticated pictographs now appearing annually around the globe."[14]

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Art and business

A crop circle with the logo of Swedish Railways. Since the early 1990s, the UK arts collective named Circlemakers[23] founded by artists Rod Dickinson and John Lundberg (and subsequently includes artists Wil Russell and Rob Irving), have been creating crop circles in the UK and around the world both as part of their art practice and for commercial clients.[24][25][26] On the night of July 1112, 1992 a crop-circle making competition, for a prize of three thousand UK pounds[27] (partly funded by the Arthur Koestler Foundation), was held in Berkshire. The winning entry was produced by three Westland Helicopters engineers, using rope, PVC pipe, a plank, string, a telescopic device and two stepladders.[28] According to Rupert Sheldrake the competition was organised by him and John Michell and "co-sponsored by The Guardian and The Cerealogist". The prize money came from PM, a German magazine. Sheldrake wrote that "The experiment was conclusive. Humans could indeed make all the features of state-of-the-art crop formations at that time. Eleven of the twelve teams made more or less impressive formations that followed the set design[29] In 2002, Discovery Channel commissioned five aeronautics and astronautics graduate students from MIT to create crop circles of their own, aiming to duplicate some of the features claimed to distinguish "real" crop circles from the known fakes such as those created by Bower and Chorley. The creation of the circle was recorded and used in the Discovery Channel documentary Crop Circles: Mysteries in the Fields.[30] In 2009 The Guardian reported that crop circle activity had been waning around Wiltshire, one of the reasons being that makers preferred making promotional circles for companies that pay well for their efforts.[26] Legal implications In 1992, Hungarian youths Gbor Takcs and Rbert Dallos, both then 17, were the first people to face legal action after creating a crop circle. Takcs and Dallos, of the St. Stephen Agricultural Technicum, a high school in Hungary specializing in agriculture, created a 36-metre (118 ft) diameter crop circle in a wheat field near Szkesfehrvr, 43 miles (69 km) southwest of Budapest, on June 8, 1992. On September 3, the pair appeared on Hungarian TV and exposed the circle as a hoax, showing photos of the field before and after the circle was made. As a result, Aranykalsz Co., the owners of the land, sued the youngsters for 630,000 Ft (~$3,000 USD) in damages. The presiding judge ruled that the students were only responsible for the damage caused in the circle itself, amounting to about 6,000 Ft (~$30 USD), and that 99% of the damage
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to the crops was caused by the thousands of visitors who flocked to Szkesfehrvr following the media's promotion of the circle. The fine was eventually paid by the TV show, as were the students' legal fees.[citation needed] In 2000, Matthew Williams became the first man in the UK to be arrested for causing criminal damage after making a crop circle near Devizes.[31] In November 2000, he was fined 100 and 40 in costs.[32] As of 2008, no one else has been successfully prosecuted in the UK for criminal damage caused by creating crop circles.[33]

Explanations
Formations are usually created overnight,[14] although some are reported to have appeared during the day.[34] Various theories have been put forth ranging from natural phenomena and man-made hoaxes to extraterrestrials, the paranormal, and even animals.[14] While it is not known how all crop circles are formed, the most likely theory as put forth by a variety of scientists and sceptics is that all, or virtually all, of them were made by people.[14][35]

Man-made
The scientific consensus on crop circles is that most or all are constructed by human beings as a prank.[36] The most widely known method for a person or group to construct a crop formation is to tie one end of a rope to an anchor point and the other end to a board which is used to crush the plants. Sceptics of the paranormal point out that all characteristics of crop circles are fully compatible with them being made by hoaxers.[35] Bower and Chorley confessed in 1991 to making the first crop circles in South England.[14] When some people refused to believe them, they purposefully added straight lines and squares to show that they couldn't have natural causes.[14] In a copycat effect, increasingly complex circles started appearing in many countries around the world, including fractal figures.[14] Physicists have suggested that the most complex formations might be made with the help of GPS and lasers.[14] In 2009, a circle formation was made over the course of three consecutive nights and was apparently left unfinished, with some half-made circles.[14] The main criticism of alleged non-human creation of crop circles is that while evidence of these origins, besides eyewitness testimonies, is essentially absent, some are definitely known to be the work of human pranksters, and others can be adequately explained as such. There have been cases in which researchers declared crop circles to be "the real thing", only to be confronted with the people who created the circle and documented the fraud,[37] like Bower and Chorley and tabloid Today hoaxing Pat Delgado,[19][38] the Wessex Sceptics and Channel 4's Equinox hoaxing Terence Meaden,[22][38] or a friend of a Canadian farmer hoaxing a field researcher of the Canadian Crop Circle Research Network.[39] In his 1997 book The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark, Carl Sagan concludes that crop circles were created by Bower and Chorley and their copycats, and that UFOlogists willingly ignore the evidence for hoaxing so they can keep believing in an extra-terrestrial origin of the circles.[40] Many others have demonstrated how complex crop circles can be created.[41][42] Scientific American published an article by Matt Ridley,[22] who started making crop circles in northern England in 1991. He wrote about how easy it is to develop techniques using simple tools that can easily fool later observers.
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He reported on "expert" sources such as The Wall Street Journal, who had been easily fooled and mused about why people want to believe supernatural explanations for phenomena that are not yet explained. Methods of creating a crop circle are now well documented on the Internet.[41] Some crop formations are paid for by companies who use them as advertising.[26][33][41] Many crop circles show human symbols, like the heart and arrow symbol of love, stereotyped alien faces,[43] or the logo of local soccer club Feyenoord.[44] Hoaxers have been caught in the process of making new circles, for example, in 2004 in the Netherlands.[44] (See more cases in the "legal implications" section) Cereologists discount on-site evidence of human involvement as attempts of discrediting the phenomena.[44] Some cereologists even argue a conspiracy theory, with governments planting evidence of hoaxing to muddle the origins of the circles.[44] When scientific writer Matt Ridley wrote negative articles in newspapers, he was accused of spreading "government disinformation" and of working for the UK military intelligence service MI5.[22] According to Matt Ridley, many cereologists make a good living from selling books and making personal tours through crop fields (they can charge more than 2,000/person), and they have a vested interest in rejecting what is by far the likely explanation for the circles.[22][45]

Weather
Some cereologists have suggested that crop circles are the result of extraordinary meteorological phenomena ranging from freak tornadoes to ball lightning, but there is no evidence of any crop circle being created by any of these causes.[14][35] In 1880, an amateur scientist, John Rand Capron, wrote a letter to the editor of journal Nature about some circles in crops and blamed them on a recent storm, saying their shape was "suggestive of some cyclonic wind action".[11] In 1980, Terence Meaden, a meteorologist and physicist, proposed that the circles were caused by whirlwinds whose course was affected by southern England hills.[14] As circles became more complex, Terence had to create increasingly complex theories, blaming electromagnetohydrodynamic "plasma vortexes".[14] The meteorological theory became popular, and it was even endorsed in 1991 by physicist Stephen Hawking who said that, "Corn circles are either hoaxes or formed by vortex movement of air".[14] The weather theory suffered a serious blow in 1991, but Hawking's point about hoaxes was supported when Bower and Chorley stated that they had been responsible for making all those circles.[14] By the end of 1991 Meaden conceded that those circles that had complex designs were made by hoaxers.[46]

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Paranormal

Sketch of a "spaceship" creating crop circles, sent to UK Ministry of Defence circa 1998. Since becoming the focus of widespread media attention in the 1980s, crop circles have become the subject of speculation by various paranormal, ufological, and anomalistic investigators ranging from proposals that they were created by bizarre meteorological phenomena to messages from extraterrestrial beings.[35][47][48][49] Many crop circles have been found near ancient sites such as Stonehenge, a prehistoric monument located in the English county of Wiltshire. They have also been found near mounds of earth and stones raised over a grave or graves, also known as tumuli barrows, or barrows and chalk horses, or trenches dug and filled with rubble made from brighter material than the natural bedrock, often chalk. There has also been speculation that crop circles have a relation to ley lines.[47][50][51] Many New Age groups incorporate crop circles into their belief systems. Some cereologist groups think that crop circles are caused by ball lighting and that the patterns are so complex that they have to be controlled by some entity.[52] Some proposed entities are: Gaia asking to stop global warming and human pollution, God, supernatural beings (for example Indian devas), the collective minds of humanity through a proposed "quantum field", or extraterrestrial beings.[52] Responding to local beliefs that "extraterrestrial beings" in UFOs were responsible for crop circles appearing, the Indonesian National Institute of Aeronautics and Space (LAPAN) described crop circles as "man-made". Thomas Djamaluddin, research professor of astronomy and astrophysics at LAPAN stated, "We have come to agree that this 'thing' cannot be scientifically proven." Among others, paranormal enthusiasts, ufologists, and anomalistic investigators have offered hypothetical explanations that have been criticized as pseudoscientific by sceptical groups and scientists, including the Committee for Skeptical Inquiry.[26][53][54][55][56] No credible evidence of extraterrestrial origin has been presented.

Animal activity
In 2009, the attorney general for the island state of Tasmania stated that Australian wallabies had been found creating crop circles in fields of opium poppies, which are grown legally for medicinal use, after consuming some of the opiate-laden poppies and running in circles.[57]

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Changes to crops
Scientists have found differences between the crops inside the circles and outside them, and they are still studying them.[14][35] It has been reported that the pulvini of wheat in 95% of the crop circles investigated were elongated in a pattern falling off with distance from the centre and that seeds from the bent-over plants grew much more slowly under controlled conditions. Furthermore, traces of crop circle patterns are sometimes found in the crop the following year, "suggesting long-term damage to the crop field consistent with Levengood's observations of stunted seed growth." These current investigations seem to imply that at least in some crop circles, there is more at work than the effects of mechanical crushing of plants by human activity such as the use of microwaves by crop circle artists.[14]

Folklore
Researchers of crop circles have linked modern crop circles to old folkloric tales to support the claim that they are not artificially produced.[2] Circle crops are culture-dependent: they appear mostly in Western countries and Japan, but they don't appear at all in Muslim countries.[58] Fungi can cause circular areas of crop to die, probably the origin of tales of "fairie rings".[2] Tales also mention balls of light many times but never in relation to crop circles.[2]

1678 pamphlet on the "Mowing-Devil". A 17th-century English woodcut called the Mowing-Devil depicts the devil with a scythe mowing (cutting)[59] a circular design in a field of oats. The pamphlet containing the image states that the farmer, disgusted at the wage his mower was demanding for his work, insisted that he would rather have "the devil himself" perform the task. This is, however, not a historical precedent of crop circles because the stalks were cut down, not bent.[2] The circular form indicated to the farmer that it had been caused by the devil.[2] In the 1948 German story Die zwlf Schwne (The Twelve Swans), a farmer every morning found a circular ring of flattened grain on his field. After several attempts, his son saw twelve
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princesses disguised as swans, who took off their disguises and danced in the field. Crop rings produced by fungi may have inspired such tales since folklore holds these rings are created by dancing wolves or fairies.[2]

Gallery

A crop circle in Switzerland.

Aerial view of crop formation in Diessenhofen, Switzerland, July 2008.

A crop circle in the form of a triskelion.

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Crop Circle Theories

May 2012 -- After years of observing crop circles and studying all the theories, I stand by my conclusion that crop circles are another phenomena created by the Consciousness Hologram in which we experience. Somewhere a thought for a pattern comes into consciousness and is then created into physical reality by either humans, aliens, other. It's the messages that count and the effects the patterns have on those who encounter them. It's also about discovering our origins why we are here and where we are going (returning).

Crop circles are areas of cereal or similar crops that have been systematically flattened to form various geometric patterns. The phenomenon itself only entered the public imagination in its current form after the notable appearances in England in the late 1970s. Various scientific and pseudo-scientific explanations were put forward to explain the phenomenon, which soon spread around the world. In 1991, more than a decade after the phenomena began, two men, Doug Bower and Dave Chorley, revealed that they had been making crop circles in England since 1978 using planks, rope, hats and wire as their only tools. Many other people around the world are also openly making crop circles. Although the commonly accepted view today is that crop circles are a manmade phenomenon, paranormal explanations, often including UFOs, are still popular. In paranormal circles the study of the crop circle phenomena is called Cerealogy. Cerealogists commonly refer to these designs as agriglyphs or landscape art. Crop circles are found in fields, over tree-tops, and in ice and snow. They are mostly often found in wheat or corn fields, but have also been found in oat, rape (canola), and barley. They are a world wide phenomena, highlighted in England.

History of Crop Circles No one knows how far back in history they go. Allegedly, the earliest recorded crop circle is depicted in this 1647 woodcut called the Mowing-Devil.

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This image depicts a strange creature creating a circular design in a field of corn. The legend suggests that the farmer, disgusted at the wage his mower was demanding for his work, insisted that he would rather have the devil himself perform the task. Proponents of the belief that crop circles are either naturally caused, or are formed by as yet unknown entities, often support their viewpoint with this old tale. It is worth noting, however, that this is little more than a tale - the circular formation supposedly caused by the creature may be coincidental, or may have been caused by any number of natural or human processes. An apparently more convincing historical report of crop circles was published in the journal Nature in 1880 (reproduced in 2000). An amateur scientist named Brandon Meland appears to describe a field containing a number of crop circles, along with his suggestion that they might have been caused by "some cyclonic wind action". Not long after WWII, the aerial surveys that were being made over large areas of Britain revealed some unexpected phenomena, undetectable from the ground. When the surveys photographed ripening crops or drought-stressed terrain they revealed what were soon termed "crop marks", the differential ripening of the crop that revealed differences in the subsoil. These patterns were found to be caused by the buried remnants of ancient buildings. Archaeological investigations were soon instigated, but, though many previously unsuspected archaeological sites were found, no crop circles were ever recorded. Skeptics argue that this would have pointed to circles as a modern phenomenon, even if the initial pranksters had not revealed themselves; believers reply different agendas may simply be at work in the modern day. Crop Circles shot into prominence in the late 1970s as many circles began appearing throughout the English countryside. To date, thousands of circles have appeared at sites across the world, from disparate locations such as the former Soviet Union, the UK and Japan, as well as the U.S. and Canada. 1991 - Barbury Castle Crop Circle

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The first major "breakthrough" formation that departed from the original patterns was Barbury Castle 1991. Some researchers believe that the Barbury formation was the "Rosetta Stone" to the understanding of the geometric nature of the dimensions in the universe.

Creatoring Crop Circles In 1991, more than a decade after the phenomena began, two men announced that the phenomenon of crop circles was an idea thought up one evening in a pub in Southampton, England in 1978. World War II veteran Doug Bower and his friend Dave Chorley revealed that they made their crop circles using planks, rope, hats and wire as their only tools. Bower and Chorley stated to reporters that a small group of people can stomp down a sizable area of crop in a single night. "Stomp" does not mean using the feet: simple tools to make crop circles have been demonstrated. The pair became slightly frustrated that their work had not received as much publicity as they had hoped. In 1981 they created a crop circle in a highly visible area called the Winchester Punchbowl - an area surrounded by roads from which a clear view of the field is available to drivers passing by.

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Bower's wife had become increasingly suspicious of him due to noticing particularly high levels of road mileage in their car. Eventually, fearing that his wife suspected him of something else, Bower confessed to her what he had been doing and subsequently informed a British national newspaper. Bower revealed on TV the method used, which was that of a four-foot-long plank with rope attached and circles of eight feet in diameter could be easily created. He stated that a 40-foot circle could be created by two men in a quarter of an hour. The designs were at first simple circles. When newspapers claimed that the circles could easily be explained by natural phenomena, Bower and Chorley chose more complex patterns. A simple wire with a loop, hanging down from a cap - the loop positioned over one eye - could be used to focus on a landmark to aid in the creation of straight lines. Later designs of crop circles were to become increasingly complex. Dave Chorley died in 1996 though Doug Bower has made the occasional crop circle as recently as 2004 - over ten years after he revealed it to be a hoax. Bower has said that, had it not been for his wife's suspicions, he would have taken the secret to his deathbed, never revealing that it was a hoax. Circlemakers have demonstrated that making what self-appointed cerealogist experts state are "unfakeable" crop circles is possible. One such cerealogist, G. Terence Meaden, was filmed claiming that a crop circle was genuine when the night before the making of that crop circle by humans was filmed. On the night of July 11-12, 1992, a crop-circle making competition, for a prize of several thousand pounds (partly funded by the Arthur Koestler Foundation), was held in Berkshire. The winning entry was produced by three helicopter engineers, using rope, PVC pipe, a trestle and a ladder. Another competitor used a small garden roller, a plank and some rope. The size and complexity of the designs demonstrated that minimal equipment and preparation sufficed to produce even the most complex crop circle designs.Scientific American published an article by Matt Ridley (August 2002, p. 25), who started making crop circles in Texas in 1991. He wrote about how easy it is to develop techniques using simple tools that can easily fool later observers. He reported on "expert" sources such as the Wall Street Journal who had been easily fooled, and mused about why people want to believe supernatural explanations for phenomena that are not yet explained. Methods to create a hoaxed crop circle have been well-documented on the Internet, there's even a beginners guide.A counter argument to hoaxing is that where circles appear in crops mature enough that they carry seeds (as they do so often) seed-pods are unbroken, whereas trampling causes seed-pod breakage. Crop circle hoaxers counter that it is easy to leave dry seed pods unbroken during stomping and also leave no trace of entrance and egress trampling when the plants and ground are both dry and some care is taken while walking.

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Several crop circles, later to have been determined to be hoaxes, were at first certified as being 'genuine' by cerealogists due to the lack of seed pod breakage. Entry to a field without leaving traces is also easy, since there always are several tracks made by the machines used to spray insecticides on the crop that people can use. Some claim that the circles might still have merit as a social phenomenon regardless of their legitimacy. New Age experts have expressed interest in researching the shapes and symbols depicted. The first people to be charged with creating a crop circle were Hungarian teenagers Gabor Takacs and Robert Dallos, both 17 and from the St. Stephen Agricultural Technicum, a high school in Hungary specializing in agriculture. On the night of June 8th 1992 they created a 36 meter diameter crop circle in a wheat field near Szekesfehervar, 43 miles southwest of Budapest. On September 3rd 1992 they appeared on a Hungarian TV show and exposed the circle as a hoax showing photos of the field before and after the circle was made. As a result Aranykalasz Co. the owners of the land that the corp circle was created on sued the youngsters for Fts.630,000 (approx 5,000 UK pounds) in damages. The court eventually ruled that the boys were only responsible for the damage caused in the 36 meters diameter circle, amounting to about Fts.6,000 (47 UK pounds). They concluded that 99% of the damage to the crops was caused by the thousands of visitors that flocked to Szekesfehervar following the media's promotion of the circle. The fine was eventually paid for by the TV show, as were the boys legal fees. Some crop-circle photographs are hoaxes, created using image manipulation. Despite the fact that many of the most complicated crop circles created are well documented human efforts, some enthusiasts argue that some designs have a degree of complexity that humans would not be able to easily recreate on paper let alone in a field at night. They argue that the shapes of these formations are far too complex, and display a tremedously high level of symmetry which make it extremely difficult for a team of humans to create using just simple hand tools. Circle makers respond by noting that the only tool necessary for perfect symmetry is a measured length of rope rotated around a central pivot point. In 1972 two witnesses, Arthur Shuttlewood and Bryce Bond, sat on the slope of Star Hill near Warminster, England, hoping to catch a glimpse of the strange unidentifyed flying craft that had made this part of England a UFO mecca for almost a decade. In the light of a full moon, from a distance of 100 feet, they allegedly witnessed a large circular area of plants that collapsed within twenty seconds creating a crop circle. Crop formations are sometimes accompanied by sightings of unusual lights and structured craft beaming shafts of light onto the field the night before.

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Very often crop formations appear where powerful ley lines intersect or the Earth's magnetic energy lines. This is often at the same place where megalithic sites such as Stonehenge are found. Dowsing can be done within the formations after the crop has been plowed when there are no longer traces of physical evidence. I believe the real formation are created by the grid consciousness that creates our reality their messages reflect creation and rebirth. This lends itself to creation by sound as reality manifests by sound harmonics. The concepts for the hoaxed patterns is also set in play by the same consciousness as an awakening tool. Reality is about the evolution of consciousness in the alchemy of time.

Crop Circles Designs Early examples of this phenomenon were usually simple circular patterns of various sizes, which led some people to speculate that it was a natural phenomenon. But after some years more and more elaborate and complex geometric patterns have emerged. There have been many recurring themes over the years. In general, the early formations (1970 - 2000) seemed to those who believe in a para-normal origin of the circles to be based on the principles of Sacred Geometry. After the public admission of the original creators, Doug and Dave, crop circle activity skyrocketed. Each new design sought to be more complex than earlier designs. Today crop circle designs have increased in complexity to the point where they have become an art form in and of themselves. John Lundberg, in an interview with Mark Pilkington, spoke about this change in crop circle designs, "I am rather envious of circlemakers in other countries. Expectations about the size and complexity of formations that appear in the UK are now very high, whereas the rather shabby looking Russian formation made the national news.

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The Stonehenge Julia Set was first reported on 7 July, 1996. It measured 900 by 500 feet, with 151 circles. Julia Set The Treble Julia Set, widely felt to be the pinnacle of the crop circle formations in that year, was found on Windmill Hill near Yatesbury, Wiltshire in July 1996. Later formations, those occurring after 2000, appear to be based on other principles, natural sciences and mathematics designs, including fractals. Many crop circles have fine intricate detail, regular symmetry and careful composition. Elements of three-dimensionality became more frequent, culminating in spectacular images of cube-shaped structures.

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Maze, Cube and Squares, Complex Formation were found. Notice the size of the formation relative to the people lying in it. Crop illustrations which include cartoon characters have also appeared.

Contending Beliefs Most critical observers, and the scientific mainstream, are convinced that crop circles are hoaxes engineered by humans, and indeed more and more crop formations have been claimed by their makers. This explanation, supported by the documentation produced by some crop-circle hoaxers, has the advantage of not requiring the assumption of the existence of flying saucers or other as-yet-unobserved phenomena. However, there are many contending hypotheses which assume that at least some crop circles are not the products of mundane hoaxers; these hypotheses vary in their degree of scientific rigor, but all fall to some extent outside the mainstream. One modern belief is that crop circles are created by flying saucers landing in fields and flattening a neat circle in the crop. However, the increasing complexity of formations from the 1980s on make this conjecture seem unlikely.

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Some enthusiasts suggest that crop circle may be cymatics, the visualization of vibration or sound. According to this hypothesis, the complex patterns are two-dimensional geometric or visual representations of sound frequencies, with higher sound frequencies producing more complex shapes similar to both mandalas and crop circle designs. Another hypothesis is that a man-made satellite in Earth orbit is using some kind of beam (e.g., microwaves) to create the designs. Heating stems of wheat with a short intense burst of microwave energy can produce wilting similar to that in a crop circle. Flattened stems often have the bend just below a stem-node, and also may feature blackened burn holes indicative of intense heating. Microwave heating has been shown to be capable of producing these effects. It is postulated by believers of this theory that the U.S. Pentagon's "Star Wars" program has a satellite capable of delivering such a microwave beam. However, there is a reasonable counter-argument to this stating that there were no traces of supposed radiation detected in the crop circles. Crops that were bent using the microwave technique showed all signs of various radiations and moisture differences. The original crops in the crop circle showed no abnormalities compared to normal crops, except for being mysteriously bent. Furthermore, the "Star Wars" theory leads to the question "Why would a US military satellite be making patterns in crops across the world?" Such activity would be either a matter of official policy (in which case the question "why?" remains) or random acts by (bored?) military personnel, which would be tantamount to firing a major and highly secret weapon near populated areas, and would surely subject the perpetrator(s) to harsh disciplinary action. Often touted as evidence for the mystic origin of crop circles is the coincidence that many circles in the Avebury area of southern England occur near ancient sites such as earth barrows or mounds, white horses carved in the chalk hills, and stone circles. Other ideas on their formation have been proposed include tornadoes, freak wind patterns, ball lightning, and something called "plasma vortices".A number of witnesses claim to have observed circles being created, saying that it takes a few seconds and the corn falls flat like a fan being opened - though these accounts are always anecdotal and have never been supported by any evidence beyond the claimants' assertions. Crop circle enthusiasts claim that there are other features of crop circles that undercut the hoax theory. They say that bends in the corn in many circles occur at the node, while the flattening of

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the corn by hoaxers produces a crack at any point in the stem, and some scientific studies on apical nodes bear them out. Also they say that flattened corn often lies in groomed layers, rather than random crushings. While there have been cases in which believers declared crop circles to be "the real thing", only to be confronted soon after with the people who created the circle and documented the fraud, the bending issue remains in dispute.

Electronic Equipment There are numerous reports of electronic and mechanical equipment breaking down in crop circles. Cameras frequently malfunction, and even when they do work, the results may be overexposed, streaked, smeared, or entirely black. Video equipment is also very vulnerable, and often picks up severe interference. Battery draining is quite common, and even fresh power packs can die. Cell phones often fail to operate within a formation but sometimes work perfectly again if taken outside it. Magnetic compasses frequently behave erratically both inside crop formations and when flying directly over them. Witnesses sometimes report TV, cell phone, smoke alarm and security device interference or malfunctions during nights when a crop circle forms nearby. The night before the appearance of the 1991 Barbury Castle tetrahedron), residents in the nearby village of Broughton experienced a power blackout and many residents reported balls of colored light flying above the field where the formation later manifested, along with a low rumbling noise.

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Hackpen Hill (3), nr Broad Hinton. Wiltshire. Reported 26th August

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Oxleaze Copse, nr Stitchcombe, Wiltshire. Reported 23rd August.

Washington Crop Circle Surprising, But Typical

Live Science - August 8, 2012

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When a four-part crop circle pattern roughly resembling a Mickey Mouse head appeared last week in a wheat field outside of Seattle, Wash., farmers Greg and Cindy Geib were surprised but not shocked. After all, it was not the first crop circle in the area; several others had appeared in previous years, mostly chalked up to mischievous youth. The pattern was noticed by a neighbor driving on a nearby highway who soon called the Geibs on July 24 and told them they'd been punk'd. The mysterious circle had apparently been made overnight, with no obvious signs of hoaxing. People are always surprised by crop circles (especially when it happens to them), but in fact they're not as rare as often assumed: According to an article by Richard Taylor published in "Physics World" (August 2011), "these patterns appear around the world at a rate of one every evening," making them literally an everyday event.

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Geibs' fields near Wilbur. Washington. Reported 24th July

CCC - August 8, 2012

Crop circles in Washington are quite rare, this is the third one in roughly the same area in about as many years.

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Mexiko

The First Crop Circle 2012 CCC - March 7 - Tula, Mexico -

Videos featuring reporter and researcher Jaime Maussan.

Spanish with Subtitles

Mayan Calendar Connections -- Ashbury, Wiltshire -- August 9, 2005

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Page 52 of 416

May is the start of start crop circle season in England accompanied by the usual questions and arguments: Who created the intricate patterns and what do they represent on a conscious and unconscious level? Each design originates from the collective unconsciousness awakening those who are guided to create and experience its energies. Most formations are encoded with metaphoric content to that end. The 2009 formations definitely seemed to follow themes about metamorphosis and creation depending on one's interpretation. A recent History Channel special, "Ancient Aliens", included a segment on crop circles in which one woman described spiral energies seen in the fields as the formations were created - implying UFO activity. It's all linked to the spiraling consciousness that creates realities for us to experience.

'Beautiful Math Equation' Found in Crop Circle Live Science - June 8, 2010

Crop circle season arrives with a mathematical message Independent.co.uk - May 26, 2010

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Northdowns, Wiltshire. Reported 13th August CCC - August 14, 2010

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Pewsey White Horse, nr Pewsey, Wiltshire. Reported 8th August CCC

Wickham Green nr Hungerford, Berkshire. Reported 30th July. CCC

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Jesus images 'crops up' beside motorway: Religious images spotted in fields by the M4 Mail Online - August 5, 2010

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East Field, nr Alton Barnes, Wiltshire. Reported 29th July. CCC

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Beggar's Knoll, Nr Westbury, Wiltshire. Reported 27th July CCC

Windmill Hill, nr Avebury Trusloe, Wiltshire. Reported 27th July. CCC

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East Field, nr Alton Barnes, Wiltshire. Reported 26th July. CCC

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Fosbury, Wiltshire. Reported July 17, 2010

Cley Hill, nr Warminster, Wiltshire. July 9, 2010

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Danebury Hill. Hampshire July 6, 2010

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Ufton Warwickshire June 25, 2010

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White Sheet Hill Wiltshire June 25, 2010

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Chirton Bottom, Wiltshire June 16, 2010

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Codford St Peter, nr Warminster, Wiltshire June 3, 2010

12 Around 1

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Each design originates from the collective unconsciousness awakening those who are guided to create and experience its energies. Most formations are encoded with metaphoric content to that end. All crop formation are subject to individual interpretation.

Butterfly Crop Circle This crop formation has to be hoaxed, but is totally cool!

The Butterfly Crop Circle Netherlands and 2012 September 2009

Butterfly Effect - Emerging From the Coccoon Crystalinks

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Wayland's Smithy Oxfordshire. Reported August 12, 2009 From Crop Circle Connector: 12:12 This beautiful formation has appeared at Wayland Smithy on this day August 12th, The number 12 is significant within this design. The revelation came when we counted the outer sections of the pattern, and realised the full significance. There is a clear and concise message here, as Im sure it was no coincidence to turn up on the 12th August. This important formation with regard to its numerology, not only signified that this date was part of the message, but also of the overall design. On closer inspection of the design, there is a remarkable resemblance to Gothic Architecture, especially Rose Windows, seen in many cathedrals from the 13th Century throughout many parts of Europe. Rose windows utilise geometry on three levels: manifest, hidden, and symbolic. The 12 divisions throughout this Crop Circle design that are also typically found on Rose Windows all point to the finite and infinite, Earth and Heaven, or matter and spirit, and of course the 12 Disciples. Numbers had a metaphysical significance in the 13th Century, which is why they incorporated them into the Architecture at the time. The same can also be said for the Crop Circle phenomenon today as this latest Wayland Smithy design demonstrates. Are we just like the
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Pilgrims from centuries ago, gazing in wonder and raising subconsciously our awareness of the Divine?

12 Around 1

Woodborough Hill, Nr Alton Barnes, Wiltshire. Reported August 10, 2009

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Bishop Sutton, Hampshire. Reported August 9, 2009

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Crop

Circle

near

Silbury

Hill

Reported

August

3,

2009

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Oxfordshire. Reported August 3, 2009

Vesica Pisces

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Ogbourne St Andrew, nr Marlborough, Wiltshire. Reported July 29, 2009

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Smeathe's Plantation nr Ogbourne Down Gallop, Wiltshire. Reported July 24, 2009

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Tzolk'in 12 Around 1

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East Field, Nr Alton Barnes, Wiltshire. Reported July 14, 2009

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Lucy Pringle's report: "The new East Field formation is a real beauty. I found features in there, which I cannot explain in human terms. Apparently, someone was driving past the field at 4:18 AM the morning of July 14, and there was nothing in the field; it was bare of any imprint. When he drove back past the field at 5 AM, the formation was there. It is very clearly visible from the road."

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Martinsell Hill, nr Wootton Rivers, Wiltshire. Reported July 19, 2009

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This formation ends at a barbed wire fence.

Patterns in the Fields

Most formations follow specific patterns, whether created by human consciousness, alien grays, or humans. These patterns, brought forth as landscape art, trigger human consciousness in its journey of awakening. Patterns of late, have triggered those linked to the alien experience, allowing us to feel that the time for their return, actually it's our return, is close. The gods will return ... no ... we are returning. Quetzalcoatl .. 2012. On the 4th of July, I was guided to watch the film Signs about crop circles and gray aliens. This is also in the window of the Roswell crash on July 2, 1945, wherein a UFO presumably was brought down by the magnetics of the area, government intervention, other. You can sense the truth about to be shown to the world. This will occur after the existence of UFO's becomes undeniable - all within the next 3 years. Watch for the 'signs', as they are everywhere, and for some reason connect with the timing of Michael's Jackson's death in the June 25-July 5 Masonic window. Those who have been abducted by the Gray Aliens are often referred to as "Experiencers" which takes us to ... What if the Grays Show Up? Whitley Strieber - July 6, 2009 -- "This year's crop formation activity suggests that the grays are coming ever closer to us."

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Beckhampton, Wiltshire. Reported July 4, 2009

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Silbury Hill, nr Avebury, Wiltshire. Reported July 5, 2009

UK "Quetzalcoatl Headdress" and "Sixth Sun Tzolkin"?

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Quetzalcoatl

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Hummingbird Symbology, Mythology

Milk Hill, Nr Stanton St Bernard, Wiltshire. July 2, 2009

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Nazca Lines - The Hummingbird

Hummingbird Symbology

The Hummingbird is another symbol of regeneration or resurrection. Hummingbird is the creature that opens the heart. When the hurt that caused us to close our hearts gets a chance to heal, our hearts are free to open again. With hummingbird consciousness, we learn the truth of beauty. Our life becomes a wonderland of delights in flowers, aromas and tastes. We laugh and enjoy creation, we appreciate the magic of the present moment, and the magic of being alive. Hummingbird, the tiniest of all birds, is the only creature that can stop dead while traveling at full speed. It can hover, or can go forward, backward, up or down. It lives on nectar and searches for the sweetness of life. Its long tongue lets it bypass the often tough and bitter outer layer to find the hidden treasures underneath. Hummingbird is loved by the flowers and plants, for as it sucks the nectar from the flower, the plant reproduces and more of its kind are created. In many traditions, Hummingbird feathers have been prized for their almost magical qualities. It is said that Hummingbird brings love as no other medicine can, and its presence brings joy to the observer. If you have Hummingbird medicine, you adapt easily to whatever situation you may find yourself in, and make the most of your new circumstances. You don't waste time looking back and wishing for "what was" for you are concerned with making the most of "what is". Also, you could never become addicted to any artificial stimulants, for you find joy in your own heart. You take great pleasure in spreading joy and love and beauty to all around you, and have the gift of taking that inner joy into new and different surroundings. You have a talent for finding the good in people, and are not put off by a gruff or abrupt exterior, for you know that, if you can only get beyond that tough outside layer, you'll find goodness and beauty inside. You may have a gift for working with flowers, maybe growing them to share with others, or using flower essences for healing. Aroma therapy may be your calling. You have high energy and a spirit that must be free.
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To restrict that wonderful, free, loving energy is to suffer great depressions and feelings of uselessness. Hummingbird must fly free in search of beauty, spreading joy and love to all it touches. It is about independence and courage.

Spider Woman Myths

Other Native American Creation Myth With Hummingbird

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Hummingbird Hoya - Zuni Myth

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Huitzilopochtli In Aztec mythology, Huitzilopochtli, also spelled Uitzilopochtli (Classical Nahuatl: "Hummingbird of the South (on the Left)", or "Left-Handed Hummingbird") was a god of war, a sun god, and the patron of the city of Tenochtitlan. He was also the national god of the Mexicas of Tenochtitlan.

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West Kennett, nr Avebury, Wiltshire. Reported June 21, 2009

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Huge Pre-Stonehenge Complex National Geographic - June 15, 2009

Found

via

"Crop

Circles"

This discovery was made near the time of Summer Solstice - June 20, 2009.

Stonehenge Ceremonies and Astronomical Observatories

Twitter, the Crop Circle Bird

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This enormous design, discovered below the Hill Fort of Barbury Castle, appears to be a direct representation of the Aztec Spirit Bird mentioned in Aztec Mythology. The Aztec's most important Gods were represented as Birds, and were right at the top of their pantheon of gods. Quetzalcoatl himself was also a (Bird - god) and is thought to return in 2012. Once again we have another powerful symbol within the fields with ancient connections.

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Aztec Spirit Bird Design by Zazzle Most Crop Circles that appear near Barbury Castle have greater meaning. This one is for the birds - even if it references Quetzalcoatl. Don't forget ... Quetzalcoatl was also Thoth. Birds of a feather .... Maybe this is all about Twittering which is very trendy in 2009 ... Tweet! Tweet!

The Dragonfly Crop Circle and Related

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Little London, Wiltshire. Reported June 3, 2009

Dragonfly and Dragonfly Symbology Illusion - Transcendence

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Dragonfly Drones UFO's?

Jellyfish Crop Circle

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Waylands Smithy, Oxfordshire - May 29, 2009.

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Windmill Hill, nr Avebury Trusloe, Wiltshire - May 25, 2009

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Bishop Cannings, Wiltshire - May 24, 2009

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Each design originates from the collective unconsciousness awakening those who are guided to create and experience its energies. Most formations are encoded with metaphoric content to that end.

Avebury Down, nr Avebury, Wiltshire - 28th September

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Etchilhampton Hill, Wiltshire. August 15

08/08/08

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Below Milk Hill, nr Alton Barnes, Wiltshire. Reported 08/08/08

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Watchfield Wind Farm, Oxfordshire. Reported August 1

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< Honey Street, Wiltshire Reported July 27

Triple Goddess Crystalinks

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Wayland Smithy, Nr Ashbury, Oxfordshire. Reported July 27

July

21,

2008

July

22,

2008

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South Field, Alton Priors, Wiltshire. It appears the 'creators' of the first part of the crop formation went back and completed their original design - (therein lies a metaphor) - making it spectacular.

Hillside Farm, nr Lockeridge, Wiltshire - Reported July 20

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Westwoods, nr Lockeridge, Wiltshire. Reported July 17, 2008

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All Cannings - July 1, 2008

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Cannings - June 30, 2008

As is Above, So is Below

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"The Gasket" Clocks - Gears

Ridgeway

near

Avebury

June

15,

2008

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West Kennett - Fibonacci Sequence - June 9, 2008

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Barbury Castle, Wiltshire - June1, 2008

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Avebury - May 8, 2008

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Woodborough Hill Formation August 22, 2007

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The

Stanton

St

Bernard

formation

speaks

to

me

of

Completion,

Canister

(Torah

oder

New

Program,

Diploma)

outside

an

inner circle 12 spirals around 1 (Spiraling connected to each other through the grids - 13=4=closure in time.

Consciousness)

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The Clock is ticking down until Dandelions Are Free!

Sugar Hill -- Sugar Cubes -- Sweet!

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Sugar Hill, nr Upper Upham, Wiltshire. Reported 1st August. CCC - August 2, 2007 18 [9] cubes/boxes in interesting patterns (flat or dimensional) 36 Around 1 X 4 = 144 -- Fibonacci Numbers -- Sacred Geometry Somebody's reading Crystalinks or playing in the same grid!!

The

Butterfly

Crop

Circle

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Westwoods, Nr Lockeridge, Wiltshire - CCC - June 24, 2007 Heavenly Connections

Serpent Formation CCC - June 16, 2007

Serpent Symbology Serpent Symbology Caduceus, Serpents also link to the Aquarius Symbol posted below

and Rod

of

Related Hermes

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Megalithic Sundial at Easton Royal CCC - June 16, 2007 June 21, 2007 we come Ceremonies embrace Stonehenge Ceremonies: Images -- News -- Video to the planet Summer Solstice Earth.

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White Horse Milk Hill, nr Alton Barnes, Wiltshire. Reported 7th June

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Pyramid-style crop circle Daily Mail - June 21, 2007

points

the

way

to

Wiltshire's

White

Horse

Crop circle season has started early this year but in a familiar setting after this impressive threedimensional pyramid design was discovered at Milk Hill in Wiltshire. The 175-foot formation was spotted by early morning commuters on the A361 Devises to Alton Barnes road. Just metres from the chalk White Horse on the slope at Milk Hill, the pattern consists of a pyramid shape within a circle, surrounded by four smaller circles. Milk Hill is common ground for crop circles with some of the world's most impressive formations appearing there each year.

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1, 3, 3, 1, 1, 2, 9, 3, 1, 1, 2, 2, 7, 1, 1, 2, 4, 1, 5, 1, 3, 2, 1 Yatesbury Field nr Avebury Trusloe, Wiltshire. Reported 30th May CCC - June 4, 2007 Abacus Wikipedia Sacred Geometry Spirals of Creation Yatesbury Spiral Formation Earthfiles Report, Linda Howe - June 4, 2007 - Various Theories From Norma Smith: "The sum of all circles is 57...Rose...England. Also, notice the palindrome 1, 3, 3, 1 at the outside 'end' or 'start' of the circles sequence. Could be either end or beginning of such a spiral or a palindrome. Sum of 1331 to 7 = 36...Child; the 5,1 as 51 = June 1 (date of The Child dream). In fact, the sum for this series to '51' does = 51. Then the final circles of 3, 2, 1 brings the circle total to 57. 3, 2, 1 as letters C, B, A are the 3 notes in that Rosslyn music decoding." This takes us to the research of my friend Stuart Mitchell and his father Tommy, as their research at Rosslyn Chapel guides their next discovery related to sacred geometry and harmonics. Stuart and I emailed about the formation above after the formation was reported. Stu wrote: This is the sequence of the circle, a total of 57 circles: 1, 2, 3, 1, 5, 1, 4, 2, 1, 1, 7, 2, 2, 1, 1, 3, 9, 2, 1, 1, 3, 3, 1 You can apply these numbers to tones and pitch. Then apply them to any key in your mind either major or minor or even 12 tone music. Its beautiful! I've played its melodies and chords out and through all modes, in my mind. They are simple but its not what it is. It could be a chord a massive harmony. But I think its binary language though, it's a word! Maybe it's the binary code for 'OM'.
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Earthfiles Report on Crop Circles in the US, May 2007 Yatesbury, England and Madisonville, Tennessee - A Mayan Link?

Completion portal" glyph on the lid of Pakal's tomb in the Mayan ruins of Palenque, Chiapas, Mexico. (Metaphoric Pattern, X, 4, Zero, Circle) Two crop formations an ocean apart - one in English barley near the ancient and sacred ground of Avebury Trusloe on Yatesbury Field; the other in a Madisonville, Tennessee, wheat field not far from the historic Cherokee Indian capital of Chota and its sacred burial mounds. The English pattern has fifty-seven circles threaded on a thin, 4-inchdiameter spiral. The Tennessee pattern has nine circles with a triangular "pointer" in the middle standing circle that aims toward Chota.

Chilcomb Down, Nr Winchester, Hampshire. Reported 22nd April CCC Vesica Pisces Crystalinks

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Ice Circle in Michigan

Report from Michelle in Amasa, Michigan - December 2006 An ice circle has recently appeared on the Hemlock River located near Amasa, Michigan. As I was checking out the Amasa salt shed, a nearby resident drove up and told me an interesting story. On Tuesday night, December 26-27, 2006, his neighbor was coming home from work at 12:45 AM and noticed pulsating lights as he turned off US 141 onto Townline Road which crosses the Hemlock River. As he approached the hill which breaks into the river basin, the lights disappeared. Thinking he was just going crazy he went home and went to bed. The next morning he called the man I was talking to and told him what he had seen. Curious, he drove down to the bridge and found a perfect circle about 50' in diameter cut into the ice and it was rotating in clockwise rotation. I went down to see what was going on and sure enough there was the circle which I photographed. Due to the man witnessing vibrating beam of lights around the area where the ice
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circle was discovered, researchers are looking for a possible connection between the two. We must also realize that ice circles can be made by natural currents in a stream or river.

Ufoinfo.com Report

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Each design originates from the collective unconsciousness awakening those who are guided to create and experience its energies. Most formations are encoded with metaphoric content to that end.

Celtic Goddesses ... White Horses ... Chalk Figures

Bird Formation - June 8, 2006 - Uffington White Horse Quote from the crop circle file above: "By tradition, the Uffington White Horse was made in honour of the Celtic goddess Rhiannon. Less well known is that the same goddess was also symbolized by birds. Hence the new crop drawing of a bird, pointing to a white horse, seems self-explanatory in terms of ancient history. But why did they draw it just now? Of possible relevance, there is the famous song "Rhiannon" (Will You Ever Win) by Stevie Nicks. It did occur to me here, that Celtic views on reincarnation might possibly be correct. Thus, some crop circles may be made with specific people in mind, to assist in their spiritual awakening."

Rhiannon Celtic Mythology - Gods and Goddesses

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Uffington White Horse Chalk Figures in England Wikipedia Old Pewsey White Horse in Wiltshire (1785)

Crop Circles Gain Perspective Wired - August 4, 2006

The new circle is located near the famous Uffington

White Horse and a Neolithic burial chamber called

Wayland's Smithy, which dates back to 3700 B.C.

Unicorn

Pegasus Pegasus, the winged horse, was born from the blood of Medusa, the Gorgon, after Perseus cut off her head. Poseidon was his father. With the help of Athena and Poseidon, Pegasus was captured by Bellerophon to aid in the attack on the Chimaera, which was a fire-breathing she-goat with a lion's head, a goat's body, and a serpent's tail. Once Bellerophon killed the Chimaera, he became too overconfident and tried to fly Pegasus to Olympus. He didn't make it, and fell to the earth.

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Pegasus did make it, and Zeus captured him for himself to carry his thunderbolts. He is sheltered in the heavenly stalls of Olympus. Behold a White Horse

Revelation 6:1-2 White Horse References Wikipedia

The Grand Finale in Crop Circleland August 5, 2006 With any performance - the Grand Finale comes at the end of the season and is usually a spectacular display - like fireworks or a good film that tugs at your soul. The best of 2006 is yet to come on the playing field - August being the end time. By now you understand the patterns of the archetypes that manifest each year - most reflecting creational metaphors as that is why they are set in place ... and you have watched crop patterns over time ... you can sit back and enjoy the show with greater meaning. You are now thinking out of the box - based on patterns and holograms.

No one has ever discovered who creates crop circles other than the formations hoaxed by humans. There are theories ... some go to ET's (why would they bother?) or the governments using satellite technology (why would they bother?) - among others. Crop circles have an energy about them that magnifies - amplifies - electrifies - those who visit them - based on their grid matrix and what one wants to access from the experience. Crop circles have a function in the fiction of our reality - just as alien encounters - healing modalities - grid points - ley lines, vortexes - megalithic monuments - are placed within the grid

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as a mechanism to enlighten those programmed to that end. Whatever works. Whatever connects and runs the current. Human consciousness is remembering the end times of the program. There are many venues to choose from. Select your option and hit PLAY! This coincides with major Earth changes - terrorism and war coming out of the Middle East and the world as a game board - religious paradigms shifting from old belief systems that enslave humanity and no longer work to free souls - government control and conspiracies that enslave as well as humanty controlled by vices - mental illness - diseases - etc. My thoughts on crop circles - as with all else in our reality - they are created by the consciousness grid - either as an insert - or by planting the idea (seed) for a specific pattern in the mind of those who would create it on the ground. It is all preset. Crop formations inspire souls to awaken - following specific geometric patterns. Their energies enhance the viewer's experience. They are best viewed as holograms. From time to time - I keep in touch with several of the researchers from the old days. Most are well intended have a passion for bringing greater meaning to the formations that appear each year. As with any course of study - many researchers moved on. August 25, 1995 Crystalinks premiered online. That November I sponsored Colin Andrews at Madison Square Garden. His name is linked to crop circle research from the beginning. At that time I was hoping crop circles were created by aliens who would come forth one day with the truth. There are many who still believe this will happen - as creation of everything in this 'playing field' is from above. Colin Andrews should not be confused with another UK investigator and author - The Black Alchemist - Andrew Collins. In 1995 - through Colin Andrews - I emailed with a researcher (man) from the UK who created a software program that allegedly correlates a connection between the appearance of crop circle and UFO sightings. His program also foretold the best time for UFO sightings in different areas based on grid alignments. His program had a lot of 'hits' - but as with all programs - there were 'misses'. This includes our reality which has recycled many times to its end. He planned to perfect his program. We lost touch and sadly I don't recall his name. One has to assume if his predictions were accurate - he would be famous by now. It's the passion of the experience - as this program is about emotions - that is important - the quest - and Europeans love to quest.

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Wayland Smithy, 12 Around 1

nr

Ashbury,

Oxfordshire.

Reported

8th

July

Old Hayward Farm, nr Straight Soley, Wiltshire. Reported 20th July.

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Blofield, Nr Brundall, Norfolk. Reported 5th July.

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Each design originates from the collective unconsciousness awakening those who are guided to create and experience its energies. Most formations are encoded with metaphoric content to that end.

Penrose Triangle

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Wayland's Smithy, nr Ashbury, Oxfordshire, 9 August 2005

Alton Barnes July 4, 2005

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Uffington

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CROP CIRCLES 2006

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Each design originates from the collective unconsciousness awakening those who are guided to create and experience its energies. Most formations are encoded with metaphoric content to that end.

This formation was created in 2 stages - August 2nd and 3rd at Silbury Hill, Wiltshire, England. The design in its border is a mirror image of a rare statue of the Aztec God, Xochipilli, the Prince of Flowers, Maizes, Love, Games, Beauty, Song and Dance.

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The Aztec creational story speaks of Quetzalcoatl.

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Aztec Calendar In the mid-1800's, a 16th century Aztec statue of Xochipilli was unearthed on the side of the volcano Popocatapetl near Tlamanalco, Mexico. The statue is of a single figure seated upon a temple-like base. Mt. Popocatapetl has had many UFO sightings in recent years as have other areas of Mexico.

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The book Mysteries of the Ancient Americas, states: "To the Aztec, as to all ancient Mesoamerican peoples, time proceeded not linearly, but in cycles. ... Just as the world was created, destroyed and recreated time and again, so smaller units of time repeated themselves. ...If life was impermanent for the Aztec, so, in the last analysis, was death. Life contained the inevitability of death, but death held within it the certainty of rebirth. For the Aztec, as for other native American peoples, death meant passage from Earthly life to another existence on a different plane in a multi-level universe. For some, it also meant even the possibility of return to Earth, though in a different form." In the News ... Mayan Crop pattern sparks fresh debate BBC - August 2004 An elaborate pattern in flattened crops in a Wiltshire field has sparked fresh debate over one of rural Britain's most perplexing mysteries - crop circles. The formation, thought to be as long as a football pitch, appeared in a field near Silbury Hill over two nights at the beginning of August. Some say the pattern is made by mysterious forces and features symbols from the ancient Mayan civilisation which mark the beginning of a new world order. Others believe it is made by commercially-minded 'landscape artists'. The only 'new order', these sceptics say, will be from publishers wanting photographs of the design. So who is right? Is it possible that someone or thing is trying to communicate with us using imagery from a culture more than 1,000 years old. Or is this just the latest example of landscape art that will be displayed on the pages of books and glossy magazines? Francine Blake, a crop circle expert from Wiltshire, believes the crop formation indicates the world is going to change dramatically. "The Moon has a cycle around the Earth, the Earth has a cycle around the Sun, the Solar System has a cycle in the Milky Way," Ms Blake says. "That [the
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galaxy cycle] takes 26,000 years, and this particular calendar is coming to the end of that cycle. "That long cycle ends in 2012 - it's the end of a cycle, the end of a time. A new era is starting for the solar system." Ms. Blake likens the changes ahead to that of the fall of some of the great empires. "Just like the era for the Romans stopped and something else started, we are going from era to era and this is the end of one of them," she said. Crop circles have become a common sight in Britain since the 1970s, when they began to appear in significant numbers in fields, mainly in the south of England. There is widespread debate over when the first crop circle appeared. Some experts say the first sighting was in Lyon in 815 AD.

Others refer to a 17th Century legend called the 'Mowing of the Devil', when a devilish entity visited a farmer's field and trampled down the crops in a circle. Modern day incidents range from simple circles of flattened crops, to intricate patterns and complex shapes, similar to the one at Silbury Hill.

Scientists have examined grain stalks and soil inside circles and found anomalies. For example, they say they have found more magnetic iron compounds in soil inside the circles than outside. But Ray Cox, chairman of the Centre for Crop Circle Studies, says all but the most simple patterns are created by humans. "We started out studying the subject from a scientific angle - and there is still a mystery," he said. "We still don't know their origin. They go back in decades, centuries, but these have been simple round circles, maybe with a ring round them. "You didn't get the elaborate ones in years gone by. These have only happened since the 1980s." Mr Cox puts the Wiltshire design down to the work of crop circlers or landscape artists. And it appears it is not a case of just sneaking out into the local farmer's field armed with planks of
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wood, rope, and rollers to create this 'art'. Some crop circlers are far more sophisticated, and more commercially minded, even using computers to design their intricate patterns. Such is the excitement and enthusiasm for these swirls, whorls and Mayan features, that genuine crop circles often get overlooked, the chairman said. "You don't get many these days," Mr Cox said. "There is no point photographing these simple circles because the big and pretty patterns look better and are more saleable as posters, calendars, books and postcards." Mark Fussell, who runs the Crop Circle Connector website and makes DVDs of crop circles, believes whatever the cause, the designs should be appreciated as works of art. "There have been ones that are better - there was an 'alien disc' two years ago," he said. "There have always been really good ones each season. "These circles are much better than some of the junk in the Tate some of the stuff they call 'art'." Art or a mysterious forces? It seems after two decades of ever more sophisticated designs, the crop circle community remains divided over this rural 'phenomenon'. But throughout the debate, there is one point on which everyone agrees: these elaborate patterns can be a dramatic and fascinating addition to the natural landscape. Everyone, that is, except the farmers whose crops are crushed to make the circles. "Creating crop circles is akin to trampling over someone's back garden," a National Farmers' Union spokesperson said. "It is unfair and irresponsible. Crop circlers seem to forget that they are damaging someone else's property and there are financial implications."

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ach design originates from the collective unconsciousness awakening those who are guided to create and experience its energies. Most formations are encoded with metaphoric content to that end.

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Avebury July 30, 2003

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Northdown July 6, 2003

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Each design originates from the collective unconsciousness awakening those who are guided to create and experience its energies. Most formations are encoded with metaphoric content to that end.

Crabwood Farm House, nr Winchester, Hampshire August 15

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The Gallops, nr Beckhampton, Wiltshire - July 28

12 Around 1

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Spiderweb Effect

Crop Circle 1994, Wiltshire The shimmering effect is created by the crop being laid in opposing directions. Notice the ten points indicating two intersecting pentagrams. This web is quite appropriate as Avebury is a Goddess center, and Arachne can be found spinning her web in many places around Avebury.

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Each design originates from the collective unconsciousness awakening those who are guided to create and experience its energies. Most formations are encoded with metaphoric content to that end.

Milk Hill, 800 feet across - 409 circles

Wiltshire,

August

12,

2001

Former Julia Patterns

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1996

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The Arecibo Radio Telescope broadcast

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Each design originates from the collective unconsciousness awakening those who are guided to create and experience its energies. Most formations are encoded with metaphoric content to that end.

Hopi Theme - August 22, 2000

Dodworth (3), nr Barnsley, South Yorkshire - August 14, 2000

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Woodborough Hill, Wiltshire - August 13, 2000

Chilbolton August 13, 2000

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Avebury Trusloe, nr Avebury, The Moire Pattern - Fractal - Creation

Wiltshire

July

22,

2000

East Kennett, nr Avebury, Wiltshire - July 2, 2000

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Reported 6 July

Bishop Cannings, nr Devizes, Wiltshire - June 27, 2000

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Windmill Hill, nr Avebury, Wiltshire - June 18, 2000

Light Refraction - Spiral of Light

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Taken Date: Camera Place:

By: July Used: Inside

Amica 21, the

Kusaka from 2000 between 8-9 Olympus Digital White Hill crop

Japan PM Camera formation

in Lockeridge, Wiltshire, England

In the News ...

Magnetic 'solution' to crop circle puzzle

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Colin Andrews has researched crop circles since the 80s August 9, 2000 - BBC Research into the appearance of crop circles in summer fields claims the strange phenomena are caused by the Earth's magnetic field. Scientist Colin Andrews says 17 years of work has revealed that about 80% of the formations are man-made. But he believes that magnetism may account for the rest, which display a simplicity of form compared with elaborate, beautiful patterns of the "hoaxes". Dr Andrews believes a mysterious shift in the magnetic field gives rise to a current that "electrocutes" the crops forcing them to lie flat on the ground. The known hoaxers, artists who spend hours trampling fields with footboards attached to a length of rope, say the public does not believe in scientific explanations. Crop circles are a regular summertime feature of the UK arable landscape, particularly in Wiltshire and the West Country where there are a number of ancient sites. Designs in the flattened wheat, barley and corn become more elaborate each year, fuelling the debate over who or what is responsible for them. Explanations have ranged from freak weather conditions to alien visitors. But Dr Andrews, funded by a grant from the Rockerfeller Institute in the US, believes he is closer to the truth. He has hired private detectives to track hoaxers and now says he can rule out 80% of the formations. He claims the less elaborate designs are the "natural" creations caused by a three-degree shift in magnetic field lines. Self-proclaimed hoaxer John Lundberg said no-one would ever believe a scientific explanation for crop circles because people want to believe it is something more mysterious. "The public don't want it explained," he said. Most mainstream scientists believe the only explanation for crop circles lies in the footboards of hoaxers.

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Each design originates from the collective unconsciousness awakening those who are guided to create and experience its energies. Most formations are encoded with metaphoric content to that end.

Avebury Manor, nr Avebury, Wiltshire - September 1, 1999

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The 90-foot center circle has a bird's nest in the middle, which spirals out for a few feet, overlapping a radial lay, which in turn overlaps a clockwise lay that completes that circle. Each of the eight medium size circles has a different lay, ranging from the conventional, to S-swirl, to a sort of bizarre, spiral snake. These circles are each crowned with a small crescent, and (counting the ones inside the crescents) eight grapeshot adorn all of the eight "branches."

Roundway Hill, Wiltshire "The Basket" - August 6, 1999

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ET - Bishop Canning - August 24, 1999

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East Kennett, Avebury, Wiltshire - August 4, 1999

West Overton

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Wimpole - July 31, 1999

Devils Den, Wiltshire - July 20, 1999

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Honey Street, Nr Alton Barnes, Sperm and Egg - Creation - Sacred Geometry

Wiltshire

July

16,

1999

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Windmill, Hill, Nr Avebury, Wiltshire Massive formation in the shape of a diameter of 500 feet (approx) consisting of 230 circles

July 16, Knights Templar

1999 cross

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Allington Down, Wiltshire June 1999

Horus

Zoroaster

Isis
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Allington, nr Cube References

Devizes,

Wiltshire

June

24,

1999

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Barbury - DNA - Spiraling Consciousness

Serpent

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Dumbbell Effect

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West Kennett

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Each design originates from the collective unconsciousness awakening those who are guided to create and experience its energies. Most formations are encoded with metaphoric content to that end.

Tree of Life

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Torus

Ellie's Crop Circle Adventure - Lawrence, New Jersey

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Each design originates from the collective unconsciousness awakening those who are guided to create and experience its energies. Most formations are encoded with metaphoric content to that end.

Double Helix DNA

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Mesoamerican Theme

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Each design originates from the collective unconsciousness awakening those who are guided to create and experience its energies. Most formations are encoded with metaphoric content to that end.

Spiderweb, Avebury, Wiltshire, August 11, 1994 The shimmering effect is created by the crop being laid in opposing directions. Notice the ten points indicating two intersecting pentagrams. This web is quite appropriate as Avebury is a Goddess center, and Arachne can be found spinning her web in many places around Avebury.

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Crop Circle 2002

Each design originates from the collective unconsciousness awakening those who are guided to create and experience its energies. Most formations are encoded with metaphoric content to that end.

The Famous Barbury Castle Crop Circle

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Barbury Castle Wiltshire

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Pyramids in Australia
Walsh's Pyramid Cairns, Australia

To the south of Cairns is the highest freestanding natural pyramid in the world. You could be forgiven for thinking it is a tree covered man-made pyramid - the shape is almost perfect. But no, this is a natural phenomenon that is one of the most distinctive landmarks for the small sugarfarming town of Gordonvale. If you're planning a visit, make sure you find the best flights to Cairns soon. Walsh's Pyramid is used for hiking. The mountain is 922 metres tall, and quite steep so you need to be fit and healthy to make the climb. For experienced hikers, the ascent and descent can take approximately 3 hours. Allow for longer if you are not an avid hiker or if you are taking kids with you. The vegetation on the mountain is heavy, consisting mainly of Australian scrub. Rocks feature heavily, so if it is raining you'll need to be careful not to slip. Take plenty of water with you and make sure to apply sunscreen regularly. The scenery from the top of the pyramid is spectacular and takes in 360-degree views - it makes the climb worth all the effort.

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Legend of Gympie and the Gympie Pyramid

The Gympie Pyramid located in the outskirts of Gympie in Queensland, Australia is a terraced structure that some claim was built by ancient Egyptians long before Europeans came to Australia, while others say it was built by an Italian vineyard owner in the 1950s.

Constructed from granite blocks, it stands about 100 feet tall. A small idol was allegedly dug up around the same area that some say is a representation of the Egyptian god Thoth in ape form clutching the Tau or the Cross of Life. This statue is now on display in the Gympie Museum. According to Rex Gilroy, the man who discovered the pyramid and who runs the museum, it was created by Egyptians who had mining operations in Australia centuries ago, with bases of operation reaching as far as the Blue Mountains in New South Wales. Other objects have been purportedly found in the area including scarabs, coins and even an Easter Island type head. The town of Gympie, at Tin Can Bay, north of Brisbane, Queensland, is the unlikely site of a pyramid complex. The first Europeans to come into the area in the 1830's learned of them from the now extinct Kabi speaking people of Gympie, known then as the Dhamuri. According to the Aboriginals, brown skinned, blue eyed, blond haired beings wearing dolphin pendants came from Orion long ago and built pyramids and temple sites, but water covered them all. The ruins were taboo to them. Settlers took the stones of the pyramids and other buildings and used them as foundation stones for the main street of Gympie and the construction of buildings, including the local church, which still stands. There were stone statues like the Easter Island statues and also animal statues. These have since been destroyed or are hidden, but photos and sketches of them remain from the first white man to come into the area. Even the tunnels under Gympie were dynamited. All but one of the Pyramids was bulldozed into the ocean by the army in the 1950's and the lone survivor remains on private land with a strict "no trespassing policy. The Pyramid is 100 foot high and designed with a series of terraces up to 4 feet tall and eight feet wide. The army sealed the entrance in the 1930's after investigating reports of cattle wandering into the pyramid, when an opening was still accessible, and never coming out. No reports or findings are available. In recent years, according to locals, the owner has attempted to destroy the pyramid in the hopes of discouraging visitors to the site. Artifacts have survived including the 'Gympie Ape', which was dug up in 1966 and is thought to be a statue of the Egyptian God Thoth, who was often portrayed as an ape, and another resembling Ganesha from Indian mythology. Egyptian God Thoth is clutching the Tau or the Cross of Life. This statuette is badly weathered with age. Thoth was the god of writing and wisdom, depicted as an ape by the Egyptians until about 1000 BC when he became an Ibis-headed human bodied deity who recorded the judgment of the souls of Amenti, the after world. Thoth's symbol was the papyrus flower.

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All of this is speculation.

ULURU - AYERS ROCK

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Pyramids in Belize

Altun-Ha Pyramid Altun-Ha means "stone water" - is located approximately 30 miles north of Belize City. This ceremonial center, located six miles from the sea, was important as a trading center and as a link between the coast and the settlements of the interior. Within the central portion of the site there are more than 500 structures. The entire city covered some 1.8 square miles and contains around 250 to 300 unexcavated mounds. Population estimates for Altun Ha at its peak are 9,000 to 12,000. Also, a treasure of over 300 jade objects was found there, including the ornately carved head of Kinisch Ahau, the Mayan Sun God. This head, weighing 9 3/4 pounds and measuring nearly 6 inches from the base of the crown, is believed to be the largest Maya jade carving in existence. Caracol means "conch shell" or "snail", is located south of San Ignacio, in the Cayo district. Though only considered to be a simple Mayan ceremonial center when discovered in 1938, it was later found to be one of the largest sites in all the Maya World. The center of the site has about 20 major plazas and the pyramid, the Canaa, meaning "sky palace", which rises 140 ft and is the tallest man-made structure in Belize.

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Cerros

Cerros is located in the north of Belize, on a peninsula, in the Bay of Chetuma. Its tallest structure rises 65 feet above the plaza floor and the site includes three large acropolises which dominate several plazas bordered by pyramids. With it's location at the mouth of the New River, Cerros was important as a coastal trading center. Now its a great getaway since Cerros, Belize Resorts offer a relaxing experience and they are only within walking distance of the ancient Mayan Cerros ruins.

Caracol Mayan Temple Page 192 of 416

Cuello

Cuello is located on private property southwest of Orange Walk Town and most of it is still overgrown. Cuello is one of the oldest of all Maya sites, dating from 2600 BC.

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Lamanai

The Lamanai ruins lie along the lagoon and cover an area of 3.5 square miles and have more than 700 structures. This site features monumental architecture of temples and palaces, one of which is over 100 feet high.

The El Pilar Archaeological Reserve is located just out of the western town of San Ignacio, astride the Belize-Guatemala border. El Pilar has more than twenty-five identified plazas. In an
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area of 100 acres, there are more than a dozen large pyramids and many other buildings. It is the largest center in the Belize River area.

Las Milpas is located in the Rio Bravo Conservation Area in northwestern Belize. The site contains more than 24 courtyards and over 85 structures and is the third largest Maya site in Belize. The Great Plaza at Las Milpas is one of the largest in the Maya world. Beyond the Great Plaza lie other plazas, pyramids, and buildings. There is evidence of advanced agricultural techniques with terracing and water management systems.

Lubaantunis located northwest of Punta Gorda near the village of San Pedro, Columbia, Lubaantun is noted for its unusual style of construction. The large pyramids and terraces are made of precision cut stone blocks fitted together without mortar.

Xunantunich is located across the river from the village of San Jose Succotz in the Cayo district. The most prominent structure at Xunantunich is El Castillo, a pyramid rising over 130 feet at the south end of the main complex.

El Castillo (Spanish for "The Castle") is a spectacular pyramid that dominates the center of the Chichen Itza archaeological site in the Mexican state of Yucatan. It was built by the Maya civilization around the 9th century.El Castillo served as a temple to the god Kukulcan (the Maya

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name for Quetzalcoatl ). It is a step pyramid with a ground plan of square terraces with stairways up each of the four sides to the temple on top.

Great sculptures of plumed serpents run down the sides of the northern staircase, and are set off by shadows from the corner tiers on the spring and autumn equinoxes. It was practice in Mesoamerican cities to periodically build larger and grander temple pyramids atop older ones, and this is one such example. Thanks to archaeologists, a doorway at the base of the north stairway leads to a tunnel, from which one can climb the steps of the earlier version of El Castillo inside the current one, up to the room on the top where you can see King Kukulcan's Jaguar Throne, carved from stone and painted red with jade spots. The structure was partially reconstructed from the somewhat dilapidated state in which it was first rediscovered, as part of a 17-year rebuilding effort for the site conducted under the auspices of the Carnegie Institution of Washington, led by the noted Mayanist scholar Sylvanus G. Morley. Two sides of the pyramid were almost completely rebuilt under this program, which ran from the late 1920s to its conclusion in 1940. Each of the structure's four stairways contain 91 steps. When counting the top platform as another step, in total El Castillo has 365 steps, one step for each day of the approximated tropical year recorded by the portion of the Maya calendar known as the Haab'. The structure is 24 metres high, plus an additional 6 m for the temple. The square base measures 55.3 metres across.The outside edges of the pyramid also include nine large steps, which are theorized to represent the nine planets in our solar system.

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2,300-year-old

Mayan

pyramid

bulldozed

MSNBC

May

14,

2013

A construction company has essentially destroyed one of Belize's largest Mayan pyramids with backhoes and bulldozers to extract rock for a road-building project. The head of the Belize Institute of Archaeology says the destruction was detected late last week. Only a small portion of center of the pyramid mound was left standing. Mayan pyramid bulldozed by Belize construction crew BBC - May 14, 2013 Officials in Belize say a construction company has destroyed one of the country's largest Mayan pyramids. Head of the Belizean Institute of Archaeology Jaime Awe said the Noh Mul temple was leveled by a road-building company seeking gravel for road filler. The Mayan temple dates back to pre-Columbian times and is estimated to be 2,300 year old. Only a small core of the pyramid was left standing. Police said they were investigating the incident. Archaeologists said this was not the first incident of its kind.

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Pyramids of Akapana, Bolivia

Drainage The 59-foot-tall Akapana resembles a large natural hill more than a pyramid. Closer inspection shows walls and columns sticking out from the base and carved stones on its summit and tumbling down the sides. The somewhat amorphous shape of this tremendous pyramid is the result of centuries of looting and quarrying of its stones for colonial churches and even for a railway built in the 1900s. New research shows that this pyramid was never quite finished in antiquity.

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At Tiwanaku we seem to have an interesting situation where the city's previous infrastructure was razed and completely redone just before the city was suddenly abandoned. It seems that around A.D. 700, three centuries into the existence of Tiwanaku as a monumental and powerful city, there was a sudden change to direct all construction efforts toward building what was the largest structure in the Andes. The previous monuments of the city were torn down and their stones reused to build the Akapana pyramid. The effort was too great, and the pyramid lay unfinished when the city was abandoned. One Spanish chronicler said of Tiwanaku, "They build their monuments as if their intent was never to finished them." Around the rising pyramid, the arrangement of small single homes was replaced by large square compounds--also using the scavenged remains of previous monuments--serving perhaps as ritual places for powerful families or ethnic groups. What this change represents is unknown at the present. This could represent the rise of a powerful king, a popular religious movement, or the formation of a multicultural city. Whatever the cause behind this massive transformation, it didn't last long. By A.D. 950 all monumental construction suddenly ends with stones in various stages of dressing scattered around the partially built monuments. The Akapana Pyramid Mound

Bolivian pyramid makeover disappoints MSNBC - October 19, 2009

Tiwanaku, Bolivia - Eager to attract more tourists, the town of Tiwanaku in the Bolivian Andes has spruced-up the ancient Akapana pyramid with adobe instead of stone, in what some experts are calling a renovation fiasco. Now, the Akapana pyramid risks losing its designation as a U.N. Page 199 of 416

World Heritage Site, and there is concern the makeover could even cause its collapse. P> The pyramid is one of the biggest pre-Columbian constructions in South America and a building of great spiritual significance for the Tiwanaku civilization, which spread throughout southwestern Bolivia and parts of neighboring Peru, Argentina and Chile from around 1500 B.C. to A.D. 1200.

Jose Luis Paz, who was appointed in June to assess damage at the site, says the state National Archeology Union, UNAR, erred in choosing to rebuild the pyramid using adobe, when it is clear to the naked eye that the original was built of stone. "They decided to go free-hand with the (new) design ... There are no studies showing that the walls really looked like this," Paz told Reuters as he stood before the pyramid in the Tiwanaku archeological site, some 40 miles north of Bolivia's administrative capital of La Paz. According to Paz, who now heads excavation at the site, the town of Tiwanaku hired the UNAR to renovate Akapana to make it "more attractive for tourists," regardless of how the pyramid may have originally looked like. Thousands of tourists visit Tiwanaku every year and pay about $10 to enter the site, but the village of Tiwanaku, which manages the park, thought a better-looking pyramid would attract even more visitors, he said. Culture Minister Pablo Groux dismissed some of the criticism and said the renovation was long called for. "The UNAR has restored the original form the pyramid had. If we look at pictures from five years ago, there was just a hill there. What we can see now is something close to what the construction originally looked like," he told Reuters. Still, Paz said the controversy is not only about aesthetics. The archeologist said lower decks are slightly tilted because of the extra weight of the adobe walls, which could lead to the collapse of the pyramid. The United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization, or UNESCO, is due to visit Tiwanaku shortly and if it decides Akapana has been excessively tampered with, it may drop Tiwanaku from its list of World Heritage Sites. In 2000, UNESCO decided that Tiwanaku deserved to be in the list because its ruins "bear striking witness to the power of the empire that played a leading role in the development of the Andean pre-Hispanic civilization." The Tiwanaku civilization, which flourished around Lake Titicaca, was one of the precursors of the Inca empire, the largest pre-Columbian civilization in the Americas. Groux believes that Tiwanaku will not lose its World Heritage status because the government halted the reconstruction project earlier this year, as soon as UNESCO told them to. "The inclusion in the list of World Heritage Sites involves regular checks, because some places may lose the essence of why they were included in the list. In the case of Tiwanaku losing that title is unlikely," he said. Looting of Akapana's carved stones and ceramics started soon after the Spanish conquest and the structure was later used as a quarry, from which stones were extracted to build a rail line and a Catholic church near-by. Its size and the still-standing lower decks suggest that Akapana was once a remarkable building, but as a result of the ransacking and the extreme temperatures and strong winds in the Andean plateau, some 12,500 feet above sea level, the pyramid looks rundown.
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Treasures found inside Bolivian Pyramid MSNBC - May 2, 2007

Archaeologists have uncovered the 1,300-year-old skeleton of a ruler or priest of the ancient Tiwanaku civilization, together with precious jewels inside a much-looted pyramid in western Bolivia. The bones are in very good condition and belong to either a ruler or a priest, Roger Angel Cossio, the Bolivian archaeologist who made the discovery, told Reuters on Wednesday. He said the tomb containing a diadem and a fist-sized carved pendant of solid gold survived centuries of looting by Spanish invaders and unscrupulous raiders who depleted Tiwanaku of many precious treasures. "After so much looting ... miraculously this has stayed to tell us the history," Cossio said. "Its a complete body... next to it are jewels, offerings and a llama." The llama may have been a status symbol or a source of food for the journey to the afterlife, archaeologists said. The corpse was found in a niche carved inside the 15-yard-high (15-meter-high) Akapana pyramid, which was built around 1200 B.C. and is described by experts as one of the biggest pre-Columbian constructions in South America. At its peak, the city of Tiwanaku stretched over 1,480 acres (600 hectares) and had a population of more than 100,000, according to chief archaeologist Javier Escalante, who presented the findings on Wednesday at a news conference near the pyramid. The Tiwanaku civilization spread throughout southwestern Bolivia and parts of neighboring Peru, Argentina and Chile from around 1500 B.C. to A.D. 1200. Although experts still have to do carbon dating to determine the age of the remains, archaeologists estimate they were buried 1,300 years ago, during the decline of the Tiwanaku empire. Cossio believes the remains belong to someone of importance in the Tiwanaku society.
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"Not just anyone would be buried under the Akapana pyramid," he said. In the 1900s, workers used the base of the pyramid as a quarry from which they extracted stones to build a rail line connecting the neighboring town of Guaqui with La Paz.

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Pyramids in Bosnia

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Bosnian pyramids refers to an area located around Visocica hill (or Grad hill), in the Bosnia and Herzegovina town of Visoko, northwest of Sarajevo , which became the focus of international attention in October 2005 following a news-media campaign promoting the false idea that it is actually the largest of a group of ancient man-made pyramids.

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Scientific investigations of the site show that there is no pyramid there. Additionally, scientists have criticized the Bosnian authorities for supporting the pyramid claim saying, "This scheme is a cruel hoax on an unsuspecting public and has no place in the world of genuine science." The 213 metre Visocica hill, upon which the Old town of Visoki was once sited, is roughly pyramid-shaped. The idea that it constitutes an ancient artificial edifice was publicized by Houston-based expatriate Bosnian author and metal worker Semir Osmanagic, whose subsequent excavations at the site have uncovered what he claims to be a paved entrance plateau and tunnels, as well as stone blocks and ancient mortar which he has suggested once covered the structure. Osmanagic has claimed that the dig involved an international team of archaeologists from Australia, Austria, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Scotland and Slovenia. However, many archaeologists he named have stated they had not agreed to participate and were never at the site. The dig began in April 2006.

Osmanagic's Interpretation

Osmanagic has named Visocica Hill the "Pyramid of the Sun" and two nearby hills, identified from satellite and aerial photography - the "Pyramid of the Moon" and the "Pyramid of the (Bosnian) Dragon". Another two - one named the "Pyramid of the Earth", have been mentioned in reports. Newspaper reports have quoted Osmanagic as claiming that they were constructed by ancient Illyrian inhabitants of the Balkans as early as 12,000 BC. But in an interview with Philip Coppens in Nexus (April-May 2006), Osmanagic attempted to clarify his previous statements, stating he was misquoted: he does claim that they were most likely constructed by the Illyrians, who he claims lived in the area from 12,000 BC to 500 BC, and that the pyramid was therefore most likely constructed between those two dates - not in 12,000 BC. Osmanagic claims the excavation has produced evidence of building blocks as well as tunnels. Earlier geological work has also indicated that human activity had shaped the hill. Additionally Osmanagic claims to have found tunnels in the hillside which he interprets as ventilation shafts. Osmanagic believes his discoveries around Visoko will have further implications for world prehistory. By comparing the varying heights of the tallest pyramids in Mexico and Egypt with Visocica hill, he concluded that the pyramids were all built by the same people, with the Bosnian Pyramid being the last to be built. However, upon further thought he has decided that this dating mechanism may not be reliable and has now announced Visocica hill could be "The mother of all Pyramids", a claim he says

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would be corroborated by the existence of sacred geometry and further numerological study of messages left in the pyramid for future generations. Osmanagic estimates that the Sun pyramid stands 722 feet (220m) high (or, depending upon the report, either 230 feet (70m) high or 328 feet (100m) high). If it is 722 feet, it would be one third taller than the Great Pyramid of Giza, making it the largest pyramidal structure on Earth. The current target of the project is to complete excavation by 2012. This is in order to "break a cloud of negative energy, allowing the Earth to receive cosmic energy from the centre of the galaxy" according to Osmanagic, who also hopes that it will be listed as UNESCO World Heritage Site.

Expert Interpretations

Semir Osmanagic's claims, widely reported in the mass media, have been challenged by a number of experts, who have accused him of promoting pseudo-scientific notions and damaging archaeological sites with his excavations. Penn State University Professor Garrett Fagan is quoted as saying "They should not be allowed to destroy genuine sites in the pursuit of these delusions. It's as if someone were given permission to bulldoze Stonehenge to find secret chambers of lost ancient wisdom underneath." Boston University's Curtis Runnels, an expert in prehistoric Greece and the Balkans states that, "Between 27,000 and 12,000 years ago, the Balkans were locked in the last Glacial maximum, a period of very cold and dry climate with glaciers in some of the mountain ranges. The only occupants were Upper Paleolithic hunters and gatherers who left behind open-air camp sites and traces of occupation in caves. These remains consist of simple stone tools, hearths, and remains of animals and plants that were consumed for food. These people did not have the tools or skills to engage in the construction of monumental architecture." Enver Imamovic of the University of Sarajevo, a former director of the National Museum of Sarajevo, concerned that the excavations will damage historic sites such as the medieval royal capital Visoki, said that the excavations would "irreversibly destroy a national treasure". Excavations by archaeologists not related to the Foundation in the summer of 2008 uncovered medieval artefacts and led to renewed calls for the government to cancel Osmanagic's digging permits. In a letter to the editor of The Times on 25 April 2006, Professor Anthony Harding, president of the European Association of Archaeologists, referred to Osmanagic's theories as "wacky" and "absurd" and expressed concern that insufficient safeguards were in place to protect Bosnia's "rich heritage" from "looting and unmonitored or unauthorised development". After visiting the site himself, Harding reported, "we saw areas of natural stone (a breccia), with fissures and cracks; but no sign of anything that looked like archaeology."

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On May 8, 2006, members of the Geological team investigating Visocica on behalf of the Archaeological Park: Bosnian Pyramid of the Sun Foundation held a press conference in Tuzla to present the results of their research. The academics, from the Faculty of Mining and Geology at the University of Tuzla and led by Professor Dr. Sejfudin Vrabac, concluded that the hill is a natural geological formation, made of classic sediments of layered composition and varying thickness, and that its shape is a consequence of endodynamical and exodynamical processes in post-Miocene era. According to Professor Vrabac, who specializes in paleogeology, there are dozens of like morphological formations in the Sarajevo-Zenica mining basin alone. The Geological team report on Visocica, based on the data collected in six drill holes at 3 to 17 metre depths, is supported by the Research and Teaching Council of the Faculty of Mining and Geology, as well as the Association of Geologists of Federation of Bosnia and Herzegovina. In June 2006, Zahi Hawass's name became linked to the excavations as recommending a supposed expert, Aly Abd Alla Barakat, to investigate the hills. Upon being contacted Hawass denied any involvement, accusing Osmanagic of "giving out false information", and clarifying that Barakat "knows nothing about Egyptian pyramids". The Archaeological Park: Bosnian Pyramid of the Sun Foundation has said that Barakat inspected the hills and stated, "My opinion is that this is a type of pyramid, probably a primitive pyramid." In November 2007 an English version of a 2006 report by Barakat was posted on the foundation site. Osmanagic also invited geologist and alternative archaeologist Robert Schoch to visit the site. In a preliminary report he concluded that there were natural geological explanations for all the features claimed to be artificial by Osmanagic. In the case of the tunnels he further added: The much-touted ancient inscriptions seem not to be ancient at all. I was told by a reliable source that the inscriptions were not there when members of the pyramid team initially entered the tunnels less than two years ago. The ancient inscriptions had been added since, perhaps non-maliciously, or perhaps as a downright hoax. Schoch's website documents "extreme damage being done by the way the excavations are being performed," and accuses Osmanagic of launching "a deliberate smear campaign." Bosnia Pyramids Wikipedia Bosnia Pyramids Google Videos

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Experts

find

evidence

of

Bosnia

pyramid

MSNBC

April

20,

2006

Chinese Pyramid

Great White Pyramid

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The pyramids of China are approximately 100 ancient mounds, many of which were used for burial. Most of them are located within 100 kilometers of the city of Xi'an, on the Qin Chuan Plains in the Shaanxi Province, central China. The existence of pyramids in China has come in two stages. Most early stories were focused on the existence of "Great White Pyramid." A photograph of this pyramid in the Qinling mountains was taken by Americans in 1945, but remained in military files for 45 years. US Air Force pilot James Gaussman is said to have seen a white jewel-topped pyramid during a flight between India and China during World War II, but there is scant evidence for a source on this story. However, it is now believed that the Gaussman story was actually based on Colonel Maurice Sheahan, Far Eastern director of Trans World Airlines, who told an eyewitness account of his encounter with a pyramid in the March 28, 1947 edition of The New York Times. A photo of Sheahan's pyramid appeared in The New York Sunday News on March 30, 1947. It is this photograph that later became attributed to James Gaussman. It is now known, thanks to efforts of Chris Maier, that the particular pyramid shown in the photo is the Maoling Mausoleum. This pyramid sits just outside of Xi'an. In 1994, German tour operator and author Hartwig Hausdorf was noted for photographing and studying several pyramids. He drew attention to the structures' existence with his 1994 book Die Weisse Pyramide, the subject of an article in Nexus Magazine in 1995 by Philip Coppens, later translated into English under the revised title The Chinese Roswell (1998). The pyramids of Xi'an can now be visited on trips from Xi'an and no longer are located in "forbidden zones". Several pyramids have small museums attached to them. The Great White Pyramid itself (rather than the photograph), as described by Sheahan, remains unidentified. List of Chinese pyramids

Inner Mongolian pyramid (1 kilometer north of Sijiazi Town, Aohan County) Maoling Mausoleum Pyramid of Gathering (Tibet) Qin Shi Huang's mausoleum Zangkunchong Step Pyramid (Ziban)

Pyramids of China Google Videos

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The Burma Tibetian Pyramid

The Burma Tibetian Pyramid is called 'The Pyramid of Gathering'. It is allegedly a bright white pyramid that is well preserved in the Buhtan Province. The limestone is still preserved beyond imagination. It supposedly glows under light. This pyramid was spotted by U.S. pilots in China in WWll flying over the hump in Burma. It is mentioned much by an Irish author Mona Rolf. It same size as the Great Pyramid in Egypt.
These images were taken by Hartwig Hausdorf, a Germany researcher.

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Zangkunchong Step Pyramid

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Coffins and ceiling in the inner chamber

Pyramids in China Google Earth The "White Pyramid" is the Maoling Mausoleum.

October

25,

2006

3000-year-old "pyramid" discovered in NE China

China View - August 31, 2006 Chinese archaeologists have discovered a group of ancient tombs shaped like pyramids, dating back at least 3,000 years, in Jiaohe City of northeast China's Jilin Province. The tombs, covering an area of 500,000 square meters (1,000 meters long and 500 meters wide), were found after water erosion exposed part of a mountain, revealing two of the tombs. Six smaller tombs had eroded away leaving no indications of their original scale and appearance, but the biggest tomb, located on the south side of the mountain, could clearly be discerned as a pyramid shape with three layers from bottom to top.

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The pyramid's square bottom is about 50 meters long and 30 meters wide, about the size of a basketball court, with an oval platform on the top, about 15 meters long and 10 meters wide. The tomb was made of stone and earth dug out from the hill. A stone coffin, surrounded by four screen boards and covered by a granite top, was placed on the top platform. The coffin appeared to belong to the king of an early tribe based on the dimensions of the site, according to experts with the Jiaohe Archaeological Research Institute. The tombs are part of the Xituanshan cultural ruins site, which dates back 3,000 years to China's Bronze Age period. The ruins were excavated in Jilin in 1950. A lot of ancient hunting and domestic tools, including a stone knife and axe, as well as bronzeware and earthenware, have been unearthed from the stone coffin and other six smaller graves. The discovery will provide valuable clues on study of ancient funeral customs and the tomb structure and culture of ethnic groups in the area.

Pyramid Built 5000 years ago Found in Inner Mongolia

People's Daily - July 7, 2001 A three-story pyramid dating 5000 years back has been discovered in north China's Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region. The pyramid, which looks like a trapezoidal hill from afar, is located on a hill one kilometer north of Sijiazi Town, Aohan County. The pyramid is about 30 meters long and 15 meters wide at its base. This is considered the best-preserved pyramid built during the Hongshan Culture period that has been found so far, said Guo Dasun, an archaeologist in charge of the excavation. Seven tombs and one altar were also found on the top of the pyramid. Archaeologists also discovered a number of pottery pieces with the asterisk character inscribed on the inner wall. The asterisk character is believed to be related to the understanding of ancient people on astrology. Among the culture relics excavated from one of the seven tombs are a bone flute and a stone ring and a full- sized stone statue of Goddess unearthed from another tomb. What astonished the archeologists is a one palm-sized stone genital found on the inner wall of a tomb with a small stone statue of Goddess below. Guo Dasun said that most of these relics are found for the first time and will shed light on studying the origin of Chinese civilization.

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Pyramids in Ecuador

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The complex of pyramids and funeral mounds found at Cochasqui is a tangible testimony of a past culture and of pre-Hispanic architecture. Cochasqui is made up of 15 truncate pyramids and about 20 dispersed funeral knolls, all of which are enclosed in a 83,9 hectares area. The pyramids of Cochasqui are considered the most important archaeological site in the Northern Andes of Ecuador. In 1979, the pyramids of Cochasqui were declared a Cultural Patrimony of Mankind. The Provincial Council of Pichincha was given the task of maintaining the integrity of the archaeological park and furthering scientific research, conservation and restoration.

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The history of Cochasqui goes back from year 950 AD to the year 1550 AD, with two well differentiated periods defined by the type of pottery found by archaelogists. The first period, Cochasqui I is characterized by the vasija zapatiforme (shoe shape pot), while, in Cochasqui II, the typical ceramic figures discovered were vasija tripode and the anfora de fondo puntiagudo (amphora of pointed bottom). Several hypotheses have been formulated in order to explain the nature and purpose of the monumental complex comprising Cochasqui: - It was a ceremonial-ritual center - It was a home compound center for native elites (caciques) - It was an astronomical center of observation. Presently, the Cochasqui Complex has an open air ethnographic museum which displays various tenants of the Cochasquies' way of life. In addition to the ethnographic display, there is a llama reproduction reserve, a botanical garden specialized in Andean plants with medicinal purposes and a small but informative archaeological museum. The modern Cochasqui complex is an organic structure striving to diffuse scientific knowledge and promote anthropological tourism. Underlying these efforts is the motivation to conserve and impel an Ecuadorian national identity. The caretakers of the complex also execute projects of socio-economic development for the people of the region, most of whom live a substinence existence. The pyramids are located 45 minutes north of Quito via the panamerican highway. From the city of Guallabamba, one should take the left fork heading towards Tabacundo. Further along, signs on the highway indicate where to get off in order to reach the pyramids. After getting off the highway, a 15 minute drive along a dirt road takes you to the pyramids. The pyramids of Cochasqui are most frequently visited during the solar soltices and equinoxes, when local people gather to celebrate the passage of the sun. The solar seasons also indicate the time of sowing and harvesting for the locals. Potatoes, corn, beans and quinua are the essential nutrients for the inhabitants of this part of the world. Although they may not be as impressive as many of the Inca ruins to be found in Ecuador, the importance of the Cochasqui Pyramid Complex is indisputable. Believed to have been built by Cara Indians between 950 AD and 1550 AD, the 15 clay pyramids are situated on the equator and were the location of various sun-orientated celebrations. Colorful shamans gather at the sacred site of the pyramids in order to bless the multitudes of people who come and to bless the coming harvests. The winter solstice, celebrated on December 21st, initiates the transit of the sun as it begins its long journey towards the equinox. The sun provides light, chlorophyll and the shelter of warmth to all living things on Earth . The shamans

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and the locals believe the sun to be the true "giver" of life on our humble planet, and that Cochasqui is a special place to honor the sun. There is a mystical aura to this place located high in a barren Andean plateau and directly under the equatorial path of the sun. This mysticism comes from the ancient history of a peoples whose past is represented in the form of the pyramids whose shapes eerily penetrate the collective conscious of the observer. In addition, the vast and unrelenting passage of time, is represented here by the sorrounding and watchful Andes and the vegetation coverage of the pyramids. The pyramids hint at our own individual and cultural transience and the immortality of natural history, of which human history is just a part.

Pyramids in El Salvador

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San

Andreas

Tazumal

Part of the large Chalchuapa site, Tazumal comprises a group of flat-topped stepped pyramids and is still being studied by historians. Located 78km from San Salvador on the outskirts of the city of Chalchuapa. El Salvador is the smallest and most densely populated Central American country, and the the only one without a coast on the Caribbean.

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Pyramids in France

The Falicon pyramid is a monument located at a rural site near the town of Falicon, on the French Riviera, near Nice. It is constructed above a karstic cave known as the Cave of the Bats (Occitan: Bauma des Ratapignata) and is one of the few pyramids in Europe. The pyramid is constructed of small irregularly-shaped stones, possesses a fairly acute angle of inclination, and is in a partly ruined condition. While most of its upper section is missing, the lower section is reasonably well-preserved. The pyramid's purpose and origins are unknown, although it has been suggested that it may have been constructed by Roman legionaries involved in Egyptian cult practices. But more recent research has shown that the pyramid has actually been built between 1803 and 1812.

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The number of stairs leading into the cave below the pyramid also supposedly corresponds to the 7-level initiation rituals of the cult of Mithras - an eastern religion that was popular with members of the Roman Army during the later Empire.

Cairn of Barnenez

The Cairn of Barnenez (also: Barnenez Tumulus, Barnenez Mound etc; in Breton Karn Barnenez; in French: Cairn de Barnenez or Tumulus de Barnenez) is a Neolithic monument located near Plouezoc'h, on the Kernelehen peninsula in northern Finistere, Brittany (France). It dates to the early Neolithic, about 4,500 BC; it is considered one of the earliest megalithic monuments in Europe. It is also remarkable for the presence of megalithic art. Today, the Barnenez cairn is a 72 m long, up to 25 m wide and over 8 m high. It is built of 13,000 to 14,000 tons of stone. It contains 11 chambers entered by separate passages. The mound has steep facades and a stepped profile. Several internal walls either represent earlier facades or served the stability of the structure. The cairn consists of relatively small blocks of stone, with only the chambers being truly megalithic in character. The monument overlooks the Bay of Morlaix, probably a fertile coastal plain at the time of its erection. The 11 chambers of the Barnenez cairn are of the type known as Dolmen at couloir in French archaeological terminology. The term translates roughly as "passage grave". They are built of large slabs of slate and granite. Originally, all the chambers were entirely enclosed by the mound. The fact that several of them are partially exposed now is the result of modern quarrying.

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Each of the 11 chambers is reached from the southeast via a long narrow passage (7-12 m long). They are arranged parallel to each other. Shapes and construction techniques differ slightly. In nine cases, narrow passages lead to corbelled chambers. Normally, the corbel vault rests on orthostats, in one chamber it actually sits on the ground, forming a true tholos. The passages have slab-built or dry stone walls and are covered with slabs. One of the chambers has a drystone vaulted ante-chamber. One cubic meter of the Barnenez cairn contains 1,500 kg of stone. It is estimated that the quarrying, fashioning, transport and construction of such an amount represents about four work days for a single worker (assuming a 10-hour day). The original monument, Cairn 1, had a volume of circa 2,000 cubic metres; it is built of 1,000 tons of granite and 3,000 tons of dolerite. It would thus have required 15,000 to 20,000 working days; in other words, it would have taken 200 workers three months to erect Cairn 1 alone. In its final form, the Barnenez mound is nearly three times as big as the first phase. Engraved symbols occur in several of the chambers and passages. They depict bows, axes, wave symbols or snakes and a repeated U-shaped sign. One of the carved slabs is in secondary use; it was originally part of a different structure, an interesting parallel to the situation in several other such monuments, including Gavrinis. The symbols on the engraved blocks resemble those found in other megalithic monuments in Brittany; in broader terms they belong to the cultural phenomenon described as megalithic art. One of the recurring symbols is sometimes interpreted as an anthropomorphic depiction (the so-called "Dolmen Goddess").

Pyramids In Greece

There are more than 16 pyramids spread over Greece. The oldest one is the Pyramid of Hellinikon.

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At the South-eastern edge of the plain of Argolid, near the springs of the Erasinos river (nowadays 'Kephalari') and on the main arterial road which in antiquity lead from Argos to Tegea and the rest of Arcadia and Kynouria, there is a small structure at present known as the Pyramid of Hellenikon. The Academy of Athens has published results of dating the Hellenikon pyramid ( 9-2-1995). Dating measurements were performed by the Laboratory of Archaeometry at Dimokritos Resarch Institute in Athens and by the Nuclear Dating Laboratory of the department of Physics at the University of Edinbourgh in Scotland. The method of Optical Thermoluminescence was employed to date samples taken from the pyramid. It was determined that the pyramid was erected at about 2720 B.C. It must be noted that, according to these results, the Hellenikon pyramid predates, by at least 100 years, the oldest Egyptian pyramid (Djoser - 2620 B.C.) and by 170 years the Great Pyramid of Cheops (Khufu - 2550 B.C.) . There in no clear evidence as to the use of pyramids in Greece in antiquity. Archeologists believe that they are memorials or observation-communication towers (phryctoriums). During the later years of Antiquity, the ''Pyramid'' was considered as a burial monument , a ''polyandreion'', while nowadays there is no doubt that it was a fort of the type of small strong-holds which controlled the arterial roads and which are known from other regions of the Argolid. The pyramid at Hellenikon has the shape of a tour with its external sides sloping and surrounding a rectangular building of total dimensions 7,030 by 9,070 m. These external walls, which rise with a gradient of 60o up to 3,500 m high become vertical to in order to support the floors of the building. The main entrance of the monument is situated at its eastern side, that is the side which is turned towards the bay of the Argolid. From inside this gate a narrow corridor which leads to a smaller entrance, opened on the southern wall of the main space, a square room with sides about 7 m long. This monument is built entirely from the gray limestone of the district with large blocks in a trapezoidal and partially polygonal system.

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Pyramids In Greece

There are more than 16 pyramids spread over Greece. The oldest one is the Pyramid of Hellinikon. At the South-eastern edge of the plain of Argolid, near the springs of the Erasinos river (nowadays 'Kephalari') and on the main arterial road which in antiquity lead from Argos to Tegea and the rest of Arcadia and Kynouria, there is a small structure at present known as the Pyramid of Hellenikon. The Academy of Athens has published results of dating the Hellenikon pyramid ( 9-2-1995). Dating measurements were performed by the Laboratory of Archaeometry at Dimokritos Resarch Institute in Athens and by the Nuclear Dating Laboratory of the department of Physics at the University of Edinbourgh in Scotland. The method of Optical Thermoluminescence was employed to date samples taken from the pyramid. It was determined that the pyramid was erected at about 2720 B.C. It must be noted that, according to these results, the Hellenikon pyramid predates, by at least 100 years, the oldest Egyptian pyramid (Djoser - 2620 B.C.) and by 170 years the Great Pyramid of Cheops (Khufu - 2550 B.C.) . There in no clear evidence as to the use of pyramids in Greece in antiquity. Archeologists believe that they are memorials or observation-communication towers (phryctoriums). During the later years of Antiquity, the ''Pyramid'' was considered as a burial monument , a ''polyandreion'', while nowadays there is no doubt that it was a fort of the type of small strong-holds which controlled the arterial roads and which are known from other regions of the Argolid.

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The pyramid at Hellenikon has the shape of a tour with its external sides sloping and surrounding a rectangular building of total dimensions 7,030 by 9,070 m. These external walls, which rise with a gradient of 60o up to 3,500 m high become vertical to in order to support the floors of the building. The main entrance of the monument is situated at its eastern side, that is the side which is turned towards the bay of the Argolid. From inside this gate a narrow corridor which leads to a smaller entrance, opened on the southern wall of the main space, a square room with sides about 7 m long. This monument is built entirely from the gray limestone of the district with large blocks in a trapezoidal and partially polygonal system.

Pyramids in Italy

The Pyramid of Cestius (in Italian, Piramide di Caio Cestio or Piramide Cestia) is an Egyptianstyle pyramid in Rome, Italy near the Porta San Paolo and the Protestant Cemetery. The pyramid is a funerary monument built about 12 BC as a tomb for Caius Cestius, a member of one of the four great religious corporations at Rome, the Septemviri epulonum. It is of brickfaced concrete covered with slabs of white marble, 27 meters high and about 22 meters square, standing on a travertine foundation. In the interior is the burial chamber, 5.95 metres long, 4.10 wide and 4.80 high. On the east and west sides, about halfway up, is the inscription recording the names and titles of Cestius, and below, on the east side only, another which relates the circumstances of the erection of the monument (CIL vi.1374). The peculiar conceit of a pyramid in Rome must be laid to the fact that Rome had conquered Egypt a few years before, in 30 BC, and the ancient culture of the new province became
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fashionable for a while; at any rate the tomb is unique among ancient Roman monuments, and not until modern funerary architecture did Rome see another pyramid within its walls. A comparison of their shape reveals that the structural strength of concrete made it possible to build the Roman pyramid at a much sharper angle than those of Egypt. In the 3rd century the pyramid was included inside the Aurelian Walls, and the Middle Ages, including the author Petrarch, seems to have thought of it, erroneously, as the tomb of either Romulus or Remus, in spite of the inscription. At that time, it was considered one of the most important monuments of antiquity. It had been conserved 'nearly intact', but was neverhteless overgrown with plants. The inscription 'Caius Cestius' was barely visible. Pier Paolo Vergerio mentioned around 1400 that it was difficult to read because of the vegetation. In 1660, excavations were undertaken: two statue bases were found outside it dedicated to Cestius, and an opening was dug into the pyramid itself, when it was discovered that the burial chamber was once decorated with frescoes, only the scantest traces of which now remain. The Falicon pyramid near Nice in France is suspected by some to have been constructed by Roman legionaries from an Egyptian cult. References and Links
Three Pyramids Discovered In Montevecchia, Italy

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Discovered May 2, 2003, from the air over northern Italy, 40 km from Milan, were three pyramids, with the same alignment as Giza and Orion. They are the first pyramids ever discovered in Italy and the dimensions are quite impressive. The highest pyramid is [500 feet] tall. They are stone buildings, as recent excavations have proved. However, they are now completely covered by ground and vegetation, so that they look like mounds.

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Sirius Orion

The inclination degree of all the three pyramids is 42/43 and there is a perfect alignment with the Orion constellation. Nothing was found nearby which may help to date the structures and in the area there was not any civilization able to build similar structures at the time. The people who lived there were mainly gatherers and hunters.

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Yonaguni Ruins

The Yonaguni Monument is a massive underwater rock formation off the coast of Yonaguni, the southernmost of the Ryukyu Islands, in Japan. The Monument consists of medium to very fine sandstones and mudstones of the Lower Miocene Yaeyama Group, deposited about 20 million years ago. Most of the significant formations are connected to the underlying rock mass (as opposed to being assembled out of freestanding rocks). There is a debate about whether the site is completely natural, is a natural site that has been modified, or is a manmade artifact. The main feature (the "Monument" proper) is a rectangular formation measuring about 150 by 40 m (490 by 130 ft), and about 27 m (90 ft) tall; the top is about 5 m (16 ft) below sea level. Most of its top surface consists of a complex series of terraces and broad steps, mostly rectangular, bounded by near vertical walls.

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It is composed of terraces and steps, and has formations up for personal interpretation. It is perhaps part of an ancient civilization that lived on the planet millennia ago, almost looking like an ancient landing platform. This takes us to Ancient Alien Theory.

Artificial Structures

The flat parallel faces, sharp edges, and mostly right angles of the formation have led many people, including many of the underwater photographers and divers that have visited the site and some scholars, to the opinion that those features are man-made. These people include Gary and Cecilia Hagland and Tom Holden who went on underwater expeditions to study and photograph the site as well as Dr. Sean Kingsley, a marine archaeologist. These features include a trench that has two internal 90 angles as well as the twin megaliths that appear to have been placed there. These megaliths have straight edges and square corners. However sea currents have been known to move large rocks on a regular basis. Some of those who see the formations as being largely natural claim that they may have been modified by human hands. The semi-regular terraces of the Monument have been compared to other examples of megalithic architecture, such as the rock-hewn terraces seen at Sacsayhuaman. The formations have also been compared to the Okinawa Tomb, a rock-hewn structure of uncertain age. Other evidence presented by those who favor an artificial origin include the two round holes (about 2 feet wide, according to photographs) on the edge of the Triangle Pool feature, and a straight row of smaller holes which have been interpreted as an abandoned attempt to split off a section of the rock by means of wedges, as in ancient quarries. Kimura believes that he has identified traces of drawings of animals and people engraved on the rocks, including a horse-like sign that he believes resembles a character from the Kaida script. Some have also interpreted a formation on the side of one of the monuments as a crude moai-like "face". Supporters of artificial origin also argue that, while many of the features seen at Yonaguni are also seen in natural sandstone formations throughout the world, the concentration of so many peculiar formations in such a small area is highly unlikely. They also point to the relative absence of loose blocks on the flat areas of the formation, which would be expected if they were formed solely by natural erosion and fracturing.

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If any part of the Monument was deliberately constructed or modified, that must have happened during the last Ice Age, when the sea level was much lower than it is today (e.g. 39 m (130 ft) lower around 10,000 years BCE). During the Ice Age, the East China Sea was a narrow bay opening to the ocean at today's Tokara Gap. The Sea of Japan was an inland sea and there was no Yellow Sea; people and animals could walk into the Ryukyu peninsula from the continent. Therefore, Yonaguni was the southern end of a land bridge that connected it to Taiwan, Ryuyu, Japan and Asia. This fact is underscored by a rock pillar in a now-submerged cave that has been interpreted as a fused stalactite-stalagmite pair, which could only form above water. Kimura first estimated that this must be at least 10,000 years old (8,000 BCE) dating it to a time when it would have been above water. In a report given to the 21st Pacific Science Congress in 2007 he revised this estimate and dated it to 2,000 to 3,000 years ago as the sea level then was close to current levels. The existence of an ancient stoneworking tradition at Yonaguni and other Ryukyu islands is demonstrated by some old tombs and several stone vessels of uncertain age.

Natural Formation

Some of those who have studied the formation, such as geologist Robert Schoch of Boston University, state that it is most likely a natural formation, possibly used and modified by humans in the past. Schoch observes that the sandstones that make up the Yonaguni formation "contain numerous well-defined, parallel bedding planes along which the layers easily separate. The rocks of this group are also criss-crossed by numerous sets of parallel and vertical (relative to the horizontal bedding planes of the rocks) joints and fractures. Yonaguni lies in an earthquake-prone region; such earthquakes tend to fracture the rocks in a regular manner." He also observes that on the northeast coast of Yonaguni there are regular formations similar to those seen at the Monument. Schoch also believes that the "drawings" identified by Kimura are natural scratches on the rocks. This is also the view of John Anthony West. Patrick D. Nunn, Professor of Oceanic Geoscience at the University of the South Pacific, has studied these structures extensively and notes that the structures below the water continue in the Sanninudai slate cliffs above, which have "been fashioned solely by natural processes" and concludes in regard to the underwater structures that "there seems no reason to suppose that they are artificial."
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Other examples of natural formations with flat faces and sharp straight edges are the basalt columns of the Giant's Causeway and the natural staircase formation on Old Rag Mountain.

Mythology

In addition to scientific explanations, other esoteric theories are that Yonaguni was part of the legendary ancient civilizations of Mu (Lemuria), whose fate it shared with Atlantis or Thule, as an ancient advanced civilization which sank into the sea. Another theory is that the Yonaguni structures fit in with the claims made by some biblical creationists regarding the presence of advanced civilizations prior to a global catastrophe, resulting in the destruction of many such civilizations.

Photos

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Post Holes

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Interpretations of the Structures

The "Loop Road" is a 5 m (16 ft) wide ledge that encircles the base of the formation on three sides; The "Totem" is a stone column about 7 m (23 ft) tall; The "Gosintai" is an isolated boulder resting on a low platform;

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The

Turtle

oder

Thunderbird

is

low

star-shaped

platform

The

Dividing

Wall

is

straight

wall

10

(33

ft)

long

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The

Triangle

Pool

is

triangular

depression

with

two

large

holes

at

its

edge

The

Stage

is

an

L-shaped

rock

that

Resembles

Dragon

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The

Stone

Face

is

reminiscent

of

the

Moai

of

Easter

Island

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The

Ramps

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Japan's Ancient Underwater National Geographic - September 20, 2007

"Pyramid"

Mystifies

Scholars

Yonaguni Monument Wikipedia Seabed Ruins of Yonaguni Google Videos

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Mythological Atlantean Underwater Pyramid

Ray Brown's Updated November 2011

Crystal

Pyramid

Erleben Sie

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Pyramids in Japan

These are burial tombs, dating to the Kofun period (circa 300 - 710 AD). I only mention them here because of their immense size and multitude, Japan has over 10,000 mound tombs. The largest is the Daisen Kofun, above, which has the common kofun keyhole shape, and is 35 metres high and an incredible 486 metres in length. Situated in the city of Sakai, 92 other kofun can be found within six square miles. In Japan one can also find an ancient stone pyramid. It is a beautifully shaped monolith, about six and a half feet tall and twelve feet at the base, practically lost in the thick forest growth on the slope of a hill near the town of Ena, in central Honsu, largest of the Japanese islands. Cut from a single, massive block of gray granite, the object was a pyramidian, a smaller version of the Great Pyramid and its full-size cousins. This trignon, as they call it, might have passed for the missing capstone of its gigantic counterpart in Giza. People leave flowers at the base of the pyramid. Their veneration is more in keeping with Shinto practices, which predate Buddhism in Japan by unknown centuries. There are few folk lores about the pyramid. The only mythic element still current concerns a white serpent that dwells either within or underneath the trignon. It is a beneficent creature, which local people worship by laying out plates of small eggs for the snake to consume. Somehow, this practice is related to human and agricultural fertility. But who cut the straight angles of the Japanese pyramid, when and for what purposes are utterly unknown. Nor is it the only such example. Perhaps 100 meters further up the same hill another trignon of approximately the same dimensions stands in an apparent alignment whose suspected celestial orientation has not yet been determined. At least one more pyramidian lies toward the north. Together, the monolithic trio forms a triangular relationship, the significance of which continues to escape investigators. Surprisingly, the immediate area features many other puzzling remnants of a culture or cultures which flourished around Ena long before the advent of recorded history. The area is
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uncommonly rich in petroglyphs. One site is extraordinary for the enormous, flat slab of stone, some 8 by 15 feet across its smooth surface. Reverently incorporated into the forecourt of a private home by a man sympathetic to archaeological values, it is incised with dozens of human and geometric figures, together with examples of a linear script that bears a striking resemblance to Ogam. The petroglyph stone lies in a valley surrounded by hundreds of terraced farms where rice is cultivated in a manner preserved over the course of unguessed generations. So much so, they have been honored by the government as "national treasures." But anyone who has visited the Inka cities of Ollantaytambo or Machu Picchu in the Peruvian Andes would be struck by their similarity to the Ena agricultural terraces. On the other side of the valley from the trignons, we climbed to another, steeper hill densely covered with pines. Eventually, the path leading through dark shadows opened into a sunlit clearing, at the center of which waited two upright, stone slabs. Some seven feet tall and two feet thick, they were practically mirror images of each other and separated by a one-inch gap. After patient observation, a local resident, Mr. Suzuki, proved that the stones were precisely oriented to sunrise of the winter solstice. At dawn of the shortest day of the year he was thrilled to phtotograph the rising sun shoot its first rays through the thin gap between the twin megaliths-and only on the morning of that day. Later, he found a faint image apparently representing the sun incised on the flanks of one of the stones, strongly suggesting the astronomical intentions of its prehistoric builder. Like the trignons, the solar marker's age and cultural identity are unknown. Yet, its similarity to more famous megalithic structures in Western Europe is uncanny. In Ancient Greece, as well as pre-columbian Ohio (Locust Grove's Great Serpent Mound), the icon of a snake disgorging an egg from its mouth recalls surviving folk traditions of the trignon's white serpent and its ritual offering of eggs by resident farmers. What are we to make of Ena's rice terraces? Throughout the world, the only other comparable examples (save those in Peru) may be found in the Philippines, north of Manila, at Bonaue, which date back 2,000 years. The three widely separated locations imply a line of relationship defying the formidable oceanic distances between them: Peru, the Philippines, Japan.

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Yonaguni Monument or Step Pyramid

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Pyramids in Java, Indonesia

Candi Sukuh

Not a lot is known about this site, except that it has the only pyramidal temple in Southeast Asia, and dates to 1416-1459 AD. It bears an uncanny resemblance to the Mayan pyramids. There is also a twin-headed serpent which may represent Quetzalcoatl.

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Most Ancient Mesoamerican civilizations built pyramid-shaped structures.

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These were usually step pyramids, with temples on top more akin to the ziggurats of Mesopotamia than the Pyramids of Ancient Egypt. Mesoamerican Pyramids served many functions from - from astronomical observatories to places of ritual worship and sacrifice, and perhaps something linked to extraterrestrials.

The Great Pyramid of Cholula

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The Great Pyramid of Cholula, also known as Tlachihualtepetl (Nahuatl for "artificial mountain"), is a huge complex located in Cholula, Puebla, Mexico, and is the world's largest monument as well as the largest pyramid by volume. The temple-pyramid complex was built in four stages, starting from the 3rd century BCE through the 9th century CE, and was dedicated to the deity Quetzalcoatl. It has a base of 450 by 450 m (1476x1476 ft) and a height of 66 m (217 ft). According to the Guinness Book of Records, it is in fact the largest pyramid as well as the largest monument ever constructed anywhere in the world, with a total volume estimated at over 4.45 million m3, even larger than that of the Great Pyramid of Giza in Egypt which is about 2.5 million m3. However the Great Pyramid of Giza is higher at 138.8 m (455 feet). The Aztecs believed that Xelhua built the Great Pyramid of Cholula. Today the pyramid at first appears to be a natural hill surmounted by a church. This is the Iglesia de Nuestra Seora de los Remedios (Church of Our Lady of the Remedies), also known as the Santuario de la Virgen de los Remedios (Sanctuary of the Virgin of the Remedies), which was built by the Spanish in colonial times (1594) on the site of a pre-Hispanic temple. The church is a major Catholic pilgrimage destination, and the site is also used for the celebration of indigenous rites. Many ancient sites in Latin America are found under modern Catholic holy sites, due to the practice of the Catholic Church repurposing local religious sites. Because of the historic and religious significance of the church, which is a designated colonial monument, the pyramid as a whole has not been excavated and restored, as have the smaller but better-known pyramids at Teotihuacan. Inside the pyramid are some five miles (8 km) of tunnels excavated by archaeologists.

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Great Pyramid of Cholula

Mayan Pyramids
The Maya are a people of southern Mexico and northern Central America (Guatemala, Belize, western Honduras, and El Salvador) with some 3,000 years of history. Archaeological evidence shows the Maya started to build ceremonial architecture approximately 3,000 years ago. The earliest monuments consisted of simple burial mounds, the precursors to the spectacular stepped pyramids from the Terminal Pre-classic period and beyond. These pyramids relied on intricate carved stone in order to create a stair-stepped design. Many of these structures featured a top platform upon which a smaller dedicatory building was constructed, associated with a particular Maya deity. Maya pyramid-like structures were also erected to serve as a place of interment for powerful rulers. Maya pyramid structures occur in a great variety of forms and functions, bounded by regional and period differences. The complexity of their celestial alignments, structure and design baffle archaeologists to this day.

Chichen Itza

One of the most famous pyramid sites can be found at Chichen Itza, its name meaning "At the mouth of the well of the Itza (people)". Although this was the name for the site in pre-Columbian times, it is also referred to in the ancient chronicles as Uucyabnal, meaning "Seven Great
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Rulers". It is a large pre-Columbian archaeological site built by the Maya civilization located in the northern center of the Yucatan Peninsula, in the Yucatan state, present-day Mexico. Chichen Itza contains many fine stone buildings in various states of preservation; the buildings were formerly used as temples, palaces, stages, markets, baths, and ball courts.
El Castillo Temple of Kukulkan

Dominating the center of Chichen is the Temple of Kukulkan (the Maya name for Quetzalcoatl), often referred to as "El Castillo" (the castle). This step pyramid has a ground plan of square terraces with stairways up each of the four sides to the temple on top.

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On the Spring and Autumn equinox, at the rising and setting of the sun, the corner of the structure casts a shadow in the shape of a plumed serpent - Kukulcan, or Quetzalcoatl - along the west side of the north staircase. On these two annual occasions, the shadows from the corner tiers slither down the northern side of the pyramid with the sun's movement to the serpent's head at the base. Mesoamerican cultures periodically built larger pyramids atop older ones, and this is one such example. In the mid 1930s, the Mexican government sponsored an excavation of El Castillo. After several false starts, they discovered a staircase under the north side of the pyramid.

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By digging from the top, they found another temple buried below the current one. Inside the temple chamber was a Chac Mool - a human figure in a position of reclining with the head up and turned to one side, holding a tray over the stomach.

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The

Quetzal

A Mayan glyph shows plumed serpent with a gigantic Quetzal bird behind him.

Kukulkan/Quetzalcoatl

the

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Quetzalcoatl

The Quetzal has represented the Spirit of the Maya for thousands of years. Spirits, in many traditions, speak in echoes, lacking a body, just pure frequency and sound. Handclaps evoke chirped echoes from the staircases of the Pyramid of Kukulkan. The physics of the chirped echo
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can be explained quite simply as periodic reflections from stepfaces. The chirped-echo sounds much like the primary call of the Mayan sacred bird, the resplendent Quetzal. The sounds perhaps trigger something with the subconscious of the person listening as harmonics are linked to creation. Throughout the world, ancient cathedrals and monuments have been acoustically designed to align with the sacred geometry of human consciousness, igniting when accessed. Could the Maya have intentionally coded the sound of their sacred bird into the pyramid architecture? The dimensions of the steps are the key to the effect. Each step is tall, but the tread, where the foot is placed, doesn't cut deeply into the pyramid. If the stairs were deeper and not so high, the effect on the echoes would not be as great, and they wouldn't sound like a chirp. In the millennium since this pyramid was built, though the plaster has eroded from the limestone staircases, the sound is still recognizable. Today the Quetzal still plays an important role in modern Mayan culture. The Quetzal is the unit of currency in Guatemala. The Guatemalan government issues a prestigious award named "The Order of the Quetzal."

Language of the Birds - God Language

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Temple

of

the

Tables

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To the east of El Castillo are a series of buildings, the northernmost is the Temple of the Tables. Its name comes from a series of altars at the top of the structure that are supported by small carved figures of men with upraised arms, called Atlantes.

The

Great

Ball

Court

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Stone Ring located 9 m (30 ft) above the floor of the Great Ballcourt, Chichen Itza

Archaeologists have identified several courts for playing the Mesoamerican ballgame in Chichn, but the Great Ball Court about 150 metres (490 ft) to the north-west of the Castillo is by far the most impressive. It is the largest ball court in ancient Mesoamerica. It measures 166 by 68 metres (540 ft x 220 ft). The imposing walls are 12 metres (39 ft) high, and in the center, high up on each of the long walls, are rings carved with intertwining serpents. At the base of the high interior walls are slanted benches with sculpted panels of teams of ball players. In one panel, one of the players has been decapitated and from the wound emits seven streams of blood; six become wriggling serpents and the center becomes a winding plant.

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Temple

of

the

Bearded

Man

At one end of the Great Ball Court is the North Temple, popularly called the Temple of the Bearded Man. This small masonry building has detailed bas relief carving on the inner walls, including a center figure that has carving under his chin that resembles facial hair. At the south end is another, much bigger temple, but in ruins.

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Temple

of

the

Jaguar

Built into the east wall are the Temple of the Jaguar. The Upper Temple of the Jaguar overlooks the ball court and has an entrance guarded by two, large columns carved in the familiar feathered serpent motif. Inside there is a large mural, much destroyed, which depicts a battle scene.

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The Temple of the Jaguar features a jaguar throne with red paint and jade spots. Behind this platform is a walled inscription which depicts a relief of Tzompantli - a low, flat platform surrounded with carved depictions of human skulls. A doorway at the base of the north stairway leads to a tunnel, from which one can climb the steps of the earlier version of El Castillo inside the current one, up to the room on the top where you can see King Kukulcan's Jaguar Throne, carved of stone and painted red with spots made of inlaid jade.

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In the entrance to the Lower Temple of the Jaguar, which opens behind the ball court, is another Jaguar throne, similar to the one in the inner temple of El Castillo, except that it is well worn and missing paint or other decoration. The outer columns and the walls inside the temple are covered with elaborate bas-relief carvings.

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Temple

of

Thousand

Warriors

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The 'Temple of the Warriors' and its adjacent 'Temple of the Jaguar' are very impressive ruins of the complex. A massive temple structure, surrounded by hundreds of columns is carved with reliefs. The columns continue on into the jungle, that part of the temple still has not been restored. The Temple of the Warriors complex consists of a large stepped pyramid fronted and flanked by rows of carved columns depicting warriors. This complex is analogous to Temple B at the Toltec capital of Tula, and indicates some form of cultural contact between the two regions. The one at Chichen Itza, however, was constructed on a larger scale. At the top of the stairway on the pyramid's summit (and leading towards the entrance of the pyramid's temple) is a Chac Mool. This temple encases or entombs a former structure called The Temple of the Chac Mool. Along the south wall of the Temple of Warriors are a series of what are today exposed columns, although when the city was inhabited these would have supported an extensive roof system. The columns are in three distinct sections: an east group, that extends the lines of the front of the Temple of Warriors; a north group, which runs along the south wall of the Temple of Warriors and contains pillars with carvings of soldiers in bas-relief; and a northeast group, which was apparently formed a small temple at the southeast corner of the Temple of Warriors, which contains a rectangular decorated with carvings of people or gods, as well as animals and serpents. The northeast column temple also covers a small marvel of engineering, a channel that
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funnels all the rainwater from the complex some 40 metres (130 ft) away to a rejollada, a former cenote.

The

Observatory

To the north of Las Monjas is a cockeyed, round building on a large square platform. It's nicknamed El Caracol ("the snail") because of the stone spiral staircase inside. The structure with its unusual placement on the platform and its round shape (the others are rectangular, in keeping with Maya practice), is theorized to have been a proto-observatory with doors and windows aligned to astronomical events, specifically around the path of Venus as it traverses the heavens.

Pyramids of the Sun and Moon in Teotihuacan

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City Plan

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Teotihuacan was, at its height in the first half of the 1st millennium BCE, the largest preColumbian city in the Americas. The city during its existence was larger than any European city of the same era, possibly including Rome. The civilization and cultural complex associated with the site is also referred to as Teotihuacan. Its influence spread throughout Mesoamerica; evidence of Teotihuacano presence, if not outright political and economic control, can be seen at numerous sites in Veracruz and the Maya region. The city was located in what is now the San Juan Teotihuacan municipality in the State of Mexico, Mexico, approximately 40 km (24.8 mi) northeast of Mexico City. It covers a total surface area of 83 kms and was made a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 1987. The early history of Teotihuacan is quite mysterious, and the origin of its founders is debated. For many years, archaeologists believed it was built by the Toltec. This belief was based on colonial period texts such as the Florentine Codex which attributed the site to the Toltecs. However, the Nahuatl word "Toltec" generally means "craftsman of the highest level" and may not always refer to the archaeological Toltec civilization centered at Tula, Hidalgo. Since Toltec civilization flourished centuries after Teotihuacan, they cannot be understood as the city's founders. In the Late Formative period, a number of urban centers arose in central Mexico. The most prominent of these appears to have been Cuicuilco, on the southern shore of Lake Texcoco.
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Scholars have speculated that the eruption of the Xitle volcano may have prompted a mass emigration out of the central valley and into the Teotihuacan valley. These settlers may have founded and/or accelerated the growth of Teotihuacan. Other scholars have put forth the Totonac people as the founders of Teotihuacan, and the debate continues to this day. There is evidence that at least some of the people living in Teotihuacan came from areas influenced by the Tiwanaku Civilization, including the Zapotec, Mixtec and Maya peoples.
Sun Gate of Tiwanaku

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The culture and architecture of Teotihuacan was influenced by the Olmec Civilization,

who are considered to be the Mother Civilization of Mesoamerica.

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The

Pyramid

of

the

Sun

The earliest buildings at Teotihuacan date to about 200 BCE. The Pyramid of the Sun, was completed by 100 BCE. It is the largest building in Teotihuacan and one of the largest in Mesoamerica. Found along the Avenue of the Dead, in between the Pyramid of the Moon and the Ciudadela, and in the shadow of the massive mountain Cerro Gordo, the pyramid is part of a large complex in the heart of the city.

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The name "Pyramid of the Sun" comes from the Aztecs, who visited the city of Teotihuacan centuries after it was abandoned; the name given to the pyramid by the Teotihuacanos. It was constructed in two phases. The first construction stage, around 100 A.D., brought the pyramid to nearly the size it is today. The second round of construction resulted in its completed size of 738 feet (225 meters) across and 246 feet (75 meters) high, making it the third largest pyramid in the world behind the Great Pyramid of Cholula and The Great Pyramid. The second phase also saw the construction of an altar atop of the pyramid, which has not survived into modern times. The Adosada platform was added to the pyramid in the early third century, at around the same time that the Ciudadela and Temple of the Feathered Serpent, (see below) Teotihuacan Pyramid of the Feathered Serpent were constructed. Over the structure the ancient Teotihuacanos finished their pyramid with lime plaster imported from surrounding areas, on which they painted brilliantly colored murals. While the pyramid has endured for centuries, the paint and plaster have not and are no longer visible. Few images are thought to have been included in the mural decorations on the sides of the pyramid. Jaguar heads and paws, stars, and snake rattles are among the few images associated with the pyramids. It is thought that the pyramid venerated a deity within Teotihuacan society but the destruction of the temple on top of the pyramid, by both deliberate and natural forces prior to the archaeological study of the site, has so far prevented identification of the pyramid with any particular deity. Some scholars have suggested that the deity of the pyramid was the Great
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Goddess, one of two major Teotihuacan deities and one of the few goddesses in ancient Mesoamerica. However, little evidence exists to support this theory. Modern investigations The first major archaeological excavation of the site was done by Leopoldo Batres in 1906. Batres supervised restoration of the Pyramid for the 1910 centennial of Mexican independence. Some aspects of Batres' reconstruction of the pyramid have been questioned by later archaeologists. Subsequent excavations of Teotihuacan have continued to the present. In 1925 Pedro Dosal discovered skeletons at the 4 corners of the foundations of the temple, which he interpreted as human sacrifices at the dedication of the temple. Structure location and orientation The orientation of the structure may hold some anthropological significance. The pyramid is oriented slightly northwest of the horizon point of the setting sun on two days a year, August 12 and April 29, which are about one divinatory calendar year apart for the Teotihuacanos. The day of August 12 is significant because it would have marked the date of the beginning of the present era and the initial day of the Maya long count calendar. In addition, many important astrological events can be viewed from the location of the pyramid that are important in terms of both agriculture and belief systems of the ancient society. The pyramid was built over a man-made tunnel leading to a "cave" located six meters down beneath the center of the structure. Originally this was believed to be a naturally formed lava tube cave and interpreted as possibly the place of Chicomoztoc, the place of human origin according to Nahua legends. More recent excavations have suggested that the space is man-made instead, and could have served as a royal tomb. In 2008 scientists used muon detectors to try to find other chambers within the interior of the pyramid, but substantial looting has prevented the discovery of a function for the chambers in Teotihuacan society. Recovered artifacts Only a few caches of artifacts have been found in and around the pyramid. Obsidian arrowheads and human figurines have been discovered inside the pyramid and similar objects have been found at the nearby Pyramid of the Moon and Pyramid of the Feathered Serpent in the Ciudadela. These objects may have represented sacrificial victims. In addition, burial sites of children have been found in excavations at the corners of the pyramid. It is believed that these burials were part of a sacrificial ritual dedicating the building of the pyramid.

Original offering found at Teotihuacan pyramid PhysOrg - December 14, 2011 Archaeologists announced Tuesday that they dug to the very core of Mexico's tallest pyramid and found what may be the original ceremonial offering placed on the site of the Pyramid of the Sun before construction began. The offerings found at the base of the pyramid in the Teotihuacan ruin site just north of Mexico City include a green serpentine stone mask so delicately carved and detailed that archaeologists believe it may have been a portrait. The find also includes 11
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ceremonial clay pots dedicated to a rain god similar to Tlaloc, who was still worshipped in the area 1,500 years later, according to a statement by the National Institute of Anthropology and History, or INAH.

Ancient

Offering

Discovered

Beneath

Pyramid

of

the

Sun

Ornaments

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Archaeologists in Mexico have uncovered a small treasure trove of items that may have been placed as offerings to mark the start of construction on the Teotihuacan Pyramid of the Sun almost 2,000 years ago. The offerings include pieces of obsidian and pottery as well as animal remains. Perhaps most striking are three human figurines made out of a green stone, one of which is a serpentine mask that researchers think may have been a portrait. 17 Images of the Excavation Site

The location of the excavation site between the Feathered Serpent Temple and the platform in front of it (Structure IC).

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Vertical shaft in front of the Feathered Serpent Temple.

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[Go to 11:18]

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The

Pyramid

of

the

Moon

The Pyramid of the Moon is the second largest building in Teotihuacan after the Pyramid of the Sun. The Pyramid of the Moon is located in the northern part of Teotihuacan and it mimics the contours of Cerro Gordo. Some have called it Tenan which in Nahuatl means "mother or protective stone." The Pyramid of the Moon covers a structure older than the Pyramid of the Sun which existed prior to 200 A. D. The Pyramid's construction between 200 and 450 A.D. completed the bilateral symmetry of the temple complex. A slope in front of the staircase gives access to the Avenue of the Dead, a platform atop the pyramid was used to conduct ceremonies in honor of Chalchiuhtlicue, the goddess of water and of the moon. This platform and the sculpture found at the pyramid's bottom are thus dedicated to Chalchiuhtlicue. Opposite Chalchiuhtlicue's altar is the Plaza of the Moon. The Plaza contains a central altar and an original construction with internal divisions, consisting of four rectangular and diagonal bodies that formed what is known as the "Teotihuacan Cross." Between 100 and 500 A.D, an ancient people built a flourishing metropolis called Teotihuacan on a plateau about 25 miles (40 km) from present-day Mexico City. With its accurately aligned avenues and a huge plaza surrounded by 15 monumental pyramids. It was said by the Aztecs to have been surmounted by a huge stone figure related to the moon but this figure was uncovered (weighing 22 tonnes and was somehow lifted to the top of the pyramid) and it is thought more likely that it represents a water deity. Recently, archaeologists have excavated beneath the Pyramid of the Moon. The archaeologists are looking for clues to the history of this mysterious culture. Tunnels dug into the structure have
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revealed that the Teotihuacan's citizens did not remain pleased with their architectural feats for very long. Over a period of several hundred years, the pyramid underwent at least six facelifts and each new addition was larger and covered the previous structure. As the archeologists burrowed through the layers of the pyramid, they discovered artifacts that provide the beginning of a timeline to the history of Teotihuacan. The latest find, made by a team led by Saburo Sugiyama, associate professor at Aichi Prefectural University in Japan and adjunct faculty at Arizona State University, and Ruben Cabrera of Mexico's National Institute of Anthropology and History, is a tomb apparently made to dedicate the fifth phase of construction. It contains four human skeletons, animal bones, jewelry, obsidian blades, and a wide variety of other offerings. Archeologists estimated that the burial occurred between 100 and 200 A.D. Another tomb dedicated to Chalchiuhtlicue was discovered in 2007. It is dated to the fourth stage of construction. It contained a single human male sacrificial victim as well as a wolf, jaguar, puma, serpent, bird skeletons, and more than 400 other relics which include a large greenstone and obsidian figurines, ceremonial knives, and spear points.

Temple

of

the

Feathered

Serpent

in

Teotihuacan

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The Temple of the Feathered Serpent of Teotihuacan is an important religious and political center of the city. The Pyramid of the Feathered Serpent has revealed a great deal about religious ceremonies, burials, and politics in ancient Mesoamerica for the site of Teotihuacan. The structure contains some of the earliest-known representations of the Mesoamerican "plumed serpent" deity figure, most generally known by the term Quetzalcoatl, from the Nahuatl language of the much-later Aztec peoples. The Feathered Serpent Pyramid is located at the Pre-Columbian site of Teotihuacan, which was at one time the largest city in the western hemisphere. The Feathered Serpent Pyramid is located in the Ciudadela at the South end of the Avenue of the Dead, a long avenue which is surrounded by platforms displaying the talud-tablero architectural style. The Ciudadela is a Spanish term first used when the Spanish conquistadors arrived at Teotihuacan. It is a structure with high walls and a large courtyard that surrounds the Pyramid of the Feathered Serpent. The Ciudadela's courtyard is massive enough that it could house the entire adult population of Teotihuacan within its walls, which was estimated to be one hundred to two hundred thousand people during its peak. Within the Ciudadela there are several monumental structures, including the Pyramid of the Feathered Serpent, two mansions on the North and South side of the pyramid and the Adosada platform. The Adosada platform is located on the front, West side of the Pyramid of the Feathered Serpent, blocking its front view. The Feathered Serpent Pyramid is built in the talud-tablero style, with several platforms forming the pyramid. In between every platform there is a wall where a feathered serpent's head sticks outward. Its body wraps around the entire pyramid. Along with the feathered serpent there is also
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another figure that some believe is a representation of a crocodile or a representation of the deity Tlaloc. These figures alternate around the pyramid. In the eyes of these figures there is a spot for obsidian glass to be put in, so when the light hits, its eyes would glimmer. In between the heads a row of three shells can be found, showing that the people of Teotihuacan were trading with people along the Mexican coast. In antiquity the entire pyramid was painted. Today it is hidden by the adosada platform built in the 4th century hinting at political restructurisation of Teotihuacan during that time. Burials at the Pyramid of the Feathered Serpent The people of Teotihuacan believed in ritual sacrifice to satisfy the gods. Multiple burials were found at the pyramid, and it is believed that they were sacrificed as part of the dedication of the temple. The numbers of the burials are 4, 8, 9, 13, 18, and 20; these numbers represent significant ideology in Mesoamerica. There are four directions in the world, nine layers of their underworld, thirteen layers of heaven and earth, and a ritual calendar of thirteen months of twenty days or two hundred and sixty day calendar, and a solar calendar of eighteen months of twenty days. Relation to the Calendar As stated above there was a correlation between the Pyramid of the Feathered Serpent and a calendar for the people of Teotihuacan. The pyramid also is thought to contain two hundred and sixty feathered serpent heads between the platforms. Each of these feathered serpents also contains an open area in its mouth. This open area is big enough to put a place holder in. Thus, it is believed that the people of Teotihuacan would move this place marker around the pyramid to represent the ritual calendar. When a spiritual day would arrive the people would gather within the walls of the Ciudadela and celebrate the ritual. Political Influences The Pyramid of the Feathered Serpent was not only a religious center but also a political center as well. The rulers of Teotihuacan were not only the leaders of men; they were also the spiritual leaders of the city. The two mansions near the pyramid are thought to have been occupied by powerful families. An interesting feature of the Feathered Serpent Pyramid is that there are examples of a shift in power or ideology in Teotihuacan and for the Pyramid itself. The construction of the Adosada platform came much later than the Feathered Serpent Pyramid. The Adosada platform is built directly in front of the pyramid and blocks its front view. Thus, it is thought that the political leaders lost favor or that the ideology of the Feathered Serpent Pyramid lost virtue and was covered up by the Adosada.

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Teotihuacan Ruins Yield 1,800 Year Old Tunnels and Tomb

For nearly 100 years, archeologists have searched for clues to the identity of the monarchs of the ancient city of Teotihuacan in northern Mexico. On Tuesday archeologists announced they have found what they believe is a tunnel and possibly leading to a ruler's tomb.

The long sealed tunnel is believed to be more than 1,800 years old. With the use of a camera and ground-penetrating scanner, archeologists have so far found that the tunnel extends about 37 yards and leads to what appears to be a tomb chamber. In the tomb chamber, archeologists reported finding rich offerings, including almost 50,000 objects of stone, jade, shell and pottery, including rare ceramic beakers. They have not confirmed that chamber contains the remains or imagery of a ruler. The first hint of where the tunnel lay came in 2003 when a heavy rainstorm caused the ground to sink at the foot of the Pyramid of Quetzalcoatl in the central ceremonial area of the ruins, which lie approximately 340 miles north of Mexico City. Unlike any other pre-Hispanic metropolises that contain remains of deified rulers, Teotihuacan has to date not yielded a single depiction of a ruler, or even the tomb of a monarch. Teotihuacan is a large, sprawling complex of temples, avenues and plazas, still used for ceremony by many native Mexican tribes. It is home to the Jaguar Temple, Pyramid of Quetzalcoatl, and the towering Pyramids of the Moon and the Sun. Researchers believe that the tunnel was deliberately closed off, between A.D. 200 and 250 and was a central element around which the rest of the ceremonial complex was built, making it the most sacred aspect of the ruins. The city is believed to have had more than 100,000 inhabitants and scientists posit it may have been the largest and most influential city in pre-Hispanic North America at the time. The city reached it's height between 100 B.C. and A.D. 750 and was designated "Teotihuacan" by the Aztecs who discovered it in the 1300's. Teotihuacan means "the place where men become gods." Since no names, images or other references to rulers have been found in Teotihuacan's stone carvings and exquisite murals, one theory is that city rule may have been shared among multiple leaders, its four precincts possibly ruled by alternating leaders. In 1987 Teotihuacan was designated as a UNESCO World Heritage Site. It is one of the most visited archaeological sites in Mexico.

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Archaeologists Find Tunnel Below the Temple of the Feathered Serpent at Teotihuacan Art Daily.org August 3, 2010

After eight months of excavation, archaeologists from the National Institute of Anthropology and History (INAH) have located, 12 meters below , the entrance to the tunnel leading to a series of galleries beneath the Temple of the Feathered Serpent, Quetzalcoatl in the Archaeological Area of Teotihuacan, where the remains of rulers of the ancient city could have been deposited.

In a tour made by to site today with the media, archaeologist Sergio Chavez Gomez, director of the Tlalocan Project went below the ground and announced the advances in the systematic exploration undertaken by the INAH of the underground conduit, which was closed for about 1,800 years by the inhabitants of Teotihuacan themselves and where no one has gone in since then. INAH specialists hope to enter the tunnel in a couple of months and will be the first to enter after hundreds of years since it was closed. This excavation, which represents the most profound that has been done in the pre-Hispanic site, is part of the commemorations
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for the first 100 years of uninterrupted archaeological explorations (made in 1910) also called the City of Gods. Gomez Chavez explained that the tunnel passes under the Temple of the Feathered Serpent, the most important building of the Citadel, "and the entry was located a few meters from the pyramid. Access is by a vertical shaft of about five meters per side down to a depth of 14 meters from the surface, the entrance leads into a long corridor with an estimated length of 100 meters which ends in a series of underground chambers excavated in the rock. The tunnel was discovered in late 2003 by Sergio Gomez and Julie Gazzola, but its exploration has required several years of planning and managing the financial resources necessary to carry out research at the highest scientific level. The team is composed of more than 30 people and has advisors renowned nationally and internationally. Before starting the excavations, the archaeologists from INAH had the collaboration of Dr. Victor Manuel Velasco, from the Institute of Geophysics of the UNAM, through a the use of a GPR it was determined that the tunnel has a length of about 100 meters, and has large chambers inside. Another of the technologies used in the exploration has been the laser scanner, a sophisticated device with high resolution, facilitated by the National Coordination of Historical Monuments (CNMH). INAH made the three-dimensional record of the archaeological finds. Just a couple of weeks ago, archaeologists corroborated that the tunnel entrance was located in the place they had anticipated, then opened a small hollow hole at the top of the access, and using the scanner took the first images from inside the tunnel to a length of 37 meters, of the 100 it is estimated to have in length. "Although we need to excavate two more meters to reach the floor of the tunnel, having the first images of the inside will allow us to better plan how to enter. Even so, we will have to withdraw a large amount of soil and a heavy block of stone that blocks the access. The whole process could take two more months of work, as we continue with the same systematic exploration that we have done from the start to avoid losing important information that lets us know what activities the citizens of Teotihuacan performed thousands of years ago and why they decided to close it, "said archaeologist Sergio Gomez. So far, 200 tons of earth have been withdrawn, he said, while doing this we have found about 60,000 pieces of artifacts and pottery. Angel Mora, who belongs to the Technology Support Unit of the CNMH, and engineer Juan Carlos Garcia, who operates the scanner, said that by introducing the laser, which has a range of 300 meters, through the small hollow opening the archaeologists made,
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there was only a length of 37 meters. Mora noted that this reading is because the laser beam "runs into something, maybe with some collapsed stones or because the tunnel has a gap." Sergio Gomez reported that it has not yet been precisely determined the time of construction of the tunnel, however it he has a better idea of when it was closed by the people from Teotihuacan. "Several indications suggest that access to the underground passage was closed between 200 and 250 AD, probably after depositing something inside. One of the hypotheses postulate that, within the large chamber detected by the GPR, we could locate the remains of important people in the city." The investigations have led to know with certainty that this tunnel was made prior to the construction of the Temple of the Feathered Serpent and the Citadel. The tunnel is contemporary with a large architectural structure, which could be a ball game court, according to theform of the ground, said the archaeologist. Unfortunately, the INAH researcher said, when the tunnel was closed, large stones were thrown which blocked access, "and the court was also destroyed and razed by the people of Teotihuacan, only small remnants remain. "Locating the entrance to the tunnel fulfills one of the most important objectives of the Project Tlalocan, to precisely confirm that the main entrance was located in the exact spot where the excavation is planned. We must continue the excavation of the vertical shaft until it reaches the floor level to thereby start scanning the tunnel towards the East. " According to the hypothesis about the meaning and symbolism of the tunnel, archaeologist Sergio Gomez, said the tunnel had to be linked to concepts related to the underworld, hence it is possible that in this place were carried out initiation rituals and the divine investiture of Teotihuacan rulers, since the power was acquired in these sacred spaces. Also, it is known that rulers were buried in the holiest places. "For a long time local and foreign archaeologists have attempted to locate the graves of the rulers of the ancient city, but the search has been fruitless. "That's why every day our expectations are increasing, as there are many chances that they are sitting inside a large tomb or offering. However, it is not something we are obsessed wih, the discovery and systematic exploration of the tunnel is something of great significance for archaeological research and a unique opportunity to approach the cosmogonic and religious thought of ancient Teotihuacan. "

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Other Mesoamerican Pyramids

Altun Ha

Altun Ha is the name given ruins of an ancient Maya city in Belize, located in the Belize District about 30 miles (50 km) north of Belize City and about 6 miles (10 km) west of the shore of the Caribbean Sea."Altun Ha" is a modern name in the Maya language, coined by translating the name of the nearby village of Rockstone Pond. The ancient name is at present unknown.The largest of Altun Ha's temple-pyramids, the "Temple of the Masonry Altars", is 54 feet (16 m) high. A drawing of this structure is the logo of Belize's leading brand of beer, "Belikin". The site covers an area of about 5 miles (8 km) square. The central square mile of the site has remains of some 500 structures.Archeological investigations show that Altun Ha was occupied by 200 BC. The bulk of construction was from the Maya Classic era, c. 200 to 900 AD, when the site may have had a population of about 10,000 people. About 900 there was some looting of elite tombs of the site, which some think is suggestive of a revolt against the site's rulers.

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The site remained populated for about another century after that, but with no new major ceremonial or elite architecture built during that time. After this the population dwindled, with a moderate surge of reoccupation in the 12th century before declining again to a small agricultural village. The ruins of the ancient structures had their stones reused for residential construction of the agricultural village of Rockstone Pond in modern times, but the ancient site did not come to the attention of archeologists until 1963, when the existence of a sizable ancient site was recognized from the air by pilot and amateur Mayanist Hal Ball. Starting in 1965 an archeological team lead by Dr. David Pendergast of the Royal Ontario Museum began extensive excavations and restorations of the site, which continued through 1970. One of the most spectacular discoveries is a large (almost 10 pounds or 5 kilograms) piece of jade elaborately carved into an image of the head of the Maya Sun God, Kinich Ahau. This jade head is considered one of the national treasures of Belize. A road connects Altun Ha to Belize's Northern Highway, and the site is accessible for tourism.

Calakmul

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Calakmul is the name of both a municipality and a major archeological site in the Mexican state of Campeche, in the central part of the Yucatan Peninsula. Calakmul (also Kalakmul and other less frequent variants) is also the name given to site of one of the largest ancient Maya cities ever uncovered. It is located in the 1,800,000 acre Calakmul Biosphere Reserve, deep in the jungles of the Peten, 30 km from the Guatemalan border. First discovered from the air by biologist Cyrus L. Lundell of the Mexican Exploitation Chicle Company on December 29, 1931, the find was reported to Sylvanus G. Morley of the Carnegie Institute at Chichen Itza in March 1932. According to Lundell, who named the site, "In Maya, 'ca' means 'two', 'lak' means 'adjacent', and 'mul' signifies any artificial mound or pyramid, so 'Calakmul' is the 'City of the Two Adjacent Pyramids'." Calakmul was the major seat of power of the Kaan or "Kingdom of the Snake", which first arose further north but built Calakmul into a Late Classic Era superpower ally of Caracol and rival to
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Tikal. A series of 11 painted vessels, dubbed Dynastic Vases, describe the ascensions of the Kaan rulers, including ancestral and legendary figures. Calakmul probably supported a population of over 50,000, and so far more than 6,250 structures have been discovered in an area of up to 70 square kilometers with a substantial northern wall and a series of water management features (Calakmul's reservoirs include the largest in the Maya world) delineating a dense core of 22 square kilometers. Calakmul's 45 meter pyramid "Structure 2" is the largest Classic Era Maya temple platform known. Many of the city's monuments and structures are constructed of chalky local limestone, which has made interpretation of the site difficult. After a long period of inactivity following Morely's 1932 expedition, the city was explored by William Folan between 1984 and 1994, and is now the subject of a large-scale project of the National Institute of Anthropology and History (INAH) under Ramon Carrasco.

Caracol

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Caracol or El Caracol is the name given to a large ancient Maya site located in the Cayo District of the nation of Belize. Caracol is about 25 miles south of Xunantunich and San Ignacio Cayo, at an elevation of 1500 feet (460 m) above sea-level, in the foothills of the Maya Mountains. The name is Spanish for "The Snail"; the ancient Maya name may have been Oxhuitza. It is known as such due to the large numbers of these creatures found at the site on its visitation by A.H. Anderson, the then chief archaeologist to British Honduras, after its discovery in 1937 by Rosa Mai, a mahogany logger. The site was occupied as early as 1200 BCE, but had its greatest period of construction in the Maya Classic period, with over 40 monuments dated between 485CE to 889CE which record the dynastic sequence of the rulers. Ancient Caracol was one of the largest ancient Maya cities, covering some 65 square miles (168 kms) with an estimated peak population of about 120,000, or possibly as many as 180,000 people. One monument here records a military victory over the army of Tikal in 562CE, where Caracol's Lord Water is shown to have captured and sacrificed Tikal's Double Bird. This event is seemingly concurrent with archaeological and epigraphic evidence indicating the beginning of the Tikal Mid-Classic Hiatus, when a seeming decline in Tikal's population, a cessation of monument building, and the destruction of certain monuments in the Great Plaza occurred as Caracol's population and urban development seemingly skyrocketed. The site was first noted and documented in archaeological terms in 1937. More extensive explorations and documention of the site was undertaken by the University of Pennsylvania in 1951 and 1953. A project of archaeological excavations and restorations of the ancient structures at Caracol started in 1985 and is ongoing. The project is currently directed by Drs. Arlen and
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Diane Chase of the University of Central Florida in Orlando. The site is maintained by residential wardens from the Belize Institute of Archaeology, a sub-division of the National Institute of Culture and History, a government-run agency. The site currently accommodates an average of 15-20 tourists per day, with greater numbers during the peak season around Easter. A museum to hold the large monuments found at the site is currently being constructed. A visitor center is already at the site, and recent developments include new directional and informational signs and a house for the residential staff. The only road Caracol may be accessed by is paved for the last ten miles and leads to the Western Highway between San Ignacio and Belmopan and to Santa Elena. Caana ("sky-palace") is the largest building at Caracol. It remains one of the largest man-made structures in Belize.

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The Mesoamerican region's largest pyramid by volume, the largest in the world by volume is the Great Pyramid of Cholula in the Mexican state of Puebla. It is also known as Tlachihualtepetl Nahuatl for "artificial mountain". The Aztecs believed that Xelhua built the pyramid. The temple-pyramid complex was built in four stages, starting from the 3rd century BCE through the 9th century CE, and was dedicated to the deity Quetzalcoatl. It has a base of 450 by 450 m (1476x1476 ft) and a height of 66 m (217 ft). According to the Guinness Book of Records, it is in fact the largest pyramid as well as the largest monument ever constructed anywhere in the world, with a total volume estimated at over 4.45 million m, even larger than that of the Great Pyramid of Giza in Egypt which is about 2.5 million m. However the Great Pyramid of Giza is higher at 138.8 m (455 feet). Today the pyramid at first appears to be a natural hill surmounted by a church. This is the Iglesia de Nuestra Senora de los Remedios (Church of Our Lady of the Remedies), also known as the Santuario de la Virgen de los Remedios (Sanctuary of the Virgin of the Remedies), which was built by the Spanish in colonial times (1594) on the site of a pre-Hispanic temple. The church is a major Catholic pilgrimage destination, and the site is also used for the celebration of indigenous rites. Many ancient sites in Latin America are found under modern Catholic holy sites, due to the practice of the Catholic Church repurposing local religious sites. Because of the historic and religious significance of the church, which is a designated colonial monument, the pyramid as a whole has not been excavated and restored, as have the smaller but better-known pyramids at Teotihuacan. Inside the pyramid are some five miles (8 km) of tunnels excavated by

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El Tajin

El Tajin is a Pre-Columbian archaeological site near the city of Papantla, in the state of Veracruz, Mexico. Construction of ceremonial buildings at El Tajin began about the 1st century. Early classic Tajin shows influence of Teotihuacan; early postclassic shows considerable Toltec influence. Construction continued to about the start of the 13th century, at which time the city was conquered and burned by Chichimec invaders. The site continued to be occupied after this by a smaller population, but no new large construction projects were initiated. The site was completely abandoned with the arrival of the Spanish conquerors in the early 16th century. The abandoned site was overgrown with forest. In 1785 engineer Diego Ruiz visited the site and published the first description of the site. In the early 19th century it was visited by Guillermo Dupaix, Alexander von Humboldt, and Carlos Nebel, who published additional accounts.The first archeological excavation of the site was made by Jose Garcia Payon from 1943 through 1963. The Mexican Institute of Anthropology & History has made additional restoration to buildings at the site since the 1980s.

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The ceremonial center of the site is covers only about 1 km square, but there are mostly nonexcavated remains of subsidiary buildings extending for a considerable distance beyond.The ceremonial center has number of temple-pyramids, palaces, and several courts for playing the Mesoamerican ballgame. The site's most famous building is the Pyramid of the Niches. The step pyramid of 6 terraces is some 60 feet high. The size is only medium as Mesoamerican pyramids go, but the architecture
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creates a striking and visually pleasing effect. The terraces are of well cut stone forming a series of 365 niches. A staircase rises up the pyramid's east side. Originally the pyramid was topped by a temple, but little remains of this. A number of the buildings have carved relief on them, and the site also has some free standing stone stelae. Many of the sculptures depict the ritual ballgame and ritual bloodletting by the elite. The site is now a tourism destination, has a moderate sized museum.

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Lamanai

Lamanai (from Lama'anayin, "submerged crocodile" in Yucatec Maya) is a Mesoamerican archaeological site, and was once a considerably sized city of the Maya civilization, located in the north of Belize, in Orange Walk District. The site's name is pre-Columbian, recorded by early Spanish missionaries, and documented over a millennium earlier in Maya inscriptions as Lam'an'ain. Lamanai was occupied as early as the 16th century BC. The site became a prominent centre in the Pre-Classic Period, from the 4th century BC through the 1st century CE. In 625 CE, "Stele 9" was erected there in the Yucatec language of the Maya. Lamanai continued to be occupied up to the 17th century AD. During the Spanish conquest of Yucatan Spanish friars established two
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Roman Catholic churches here, but a Maya revolt drove the Spanish out. The site was subsequently incorporated by the British in British Honduras, passing with that colony's independence to Belize. The vast majority of the site remained unexcavated until the mid-1970s. Archaeological work has concentrated on the investigation and restoration of the larger structures, most notably the Mask Temple, Structure N10-9 ("Temple of the Jaguar Masks") and High Temple. The summit of this latter structure affords a view across the surrounding jungle to a nearby lagoon, part of New River. A significant portion of the Temple of the Jaguar Masks remains under grassy earth or is covered in dense jungle growth. Unexcavated, it would be significantly taller than the High Temple. The first detailed description of the ruins was made in 1917 by Thomas Gann. Archeological excavations at the site began in 1974 under David M. Pendergast of the Royal Ontario Museum, which continued through 1988. Further excavations and restoration work is being conducted as of 2004. The ruins are being excavated by a team from the nearby villages of Indian Church and San Carlos. The current project is co-directed by Dr. Elizabeth Graham (Institute of Archaeology, University College London) and Dr. Scott Simmons (University of North Carolina at Wilmington). Since 2006 research at the site has been directed mostly towards artifact analysis. Major excavations will resume when funding for more artifact processing, analyses and storage is acquired.

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Lubaantun

Lubaantun is a pre-Columbian ruined city of the Maya civilization in southern Belize, Central America. Lubaantun is in Belize's Toledo District, about 42 kilometres (26 mi) northwest of Punta Gorda, and approximately 3.2 kilometres (2 mi) from the village of San Pedro Columbia at an elevation of 61 metres (200 ft) feet above mean sea level. One of the most distinguishing features of Lubaantun is the large collection of miniature ceramic objects found on site; these detailed constructs are thought to have been charmstones or ritual accompanying acoutrements. The city dates from the Maya Classic era, flourishing from the AD 730s to the 890s, and seems to have been completely abandoned soon after. The architecture is somewhat unusual from typical Classical central lowlands Maya sites. Lubaantun's structures are mostly built of large stone blocks laid with no mortar, primarily black slate rather than the limestone typical of the region. Several structures have distinctive "in-and-out masonry"; each tier is built with a batter, every second course projecting slightly beyond the course below it. Corners of the step-pyramids are usually rounded, and lack stone structures atop the pyramids; presumably some had structures of perishable materials in ancient times.

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The centre of the site is on a large artificially raised platform between two small rivers; it has often been noted that the situation is well-suited to military defense. The ancient name of the site is currently unknown; "Lubaantun" is a modern Maya name meaning "place of fallen stones".

Monte Alban

Monte Alban is a large archaeological site in the state of Oaxaca, Mexico, located at 17.02 N 96.45 W, elevation 1941 meters.The name "Monte Alban" means "White Mountain" in the Spanish language; the Zapotec name was Danipaguache, meaning "Sacred Mountain of Life". The Aztecs knew it as Ocelotepec, or "Jaguar Mountain". This sacred Mesoamerican city is on an artificially flattened mountain top some 400 meters above the city of Oaxaca.

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Monte Alban was built over a period of over 2,000 years, starting about 900 BCE, by the Zapotec people. The early art shows Olmec influence. The most impressive building period was during the Mesoamerican Classic era, from about 550 CE to 1000 CE. |About 1300 CE, the Zapotec were driven out of the site and surrounding area by the Mixtec people. The Mixtec made further additions to Monte Alban until they in turn were conquered by the Spanish Conquistadores in 1521, at which time Monte Alban was abandoned. Monte Alban has many step-pyramids, temples, elite tombs, and a court for playing the Mesoamerican ballgame. There are also free-standing sculptured stelae, and large bas-relief carved panels in some of the buildings. The oldest carved stones at the site are the so-called "Danzantes" (literally, dancers), featuring drawings of people in contorted and twisted poses. Although the notion that they depict a dance is generally discredited now, there is still little agreement on what exactly the figures represent, but many archaeologists think that the "dancers" are representations of tortured war prisoners. Some of the original stones can be viewed in the museum at the site. Building J (the arrowhead-shaped building shown in the top picture) has also invited much speculation, due to its unusual shape and orientation. Alfonso Caso suggested it was an astrological observatory, though other theories have been offered.

Palenque

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Palenque is a Maya archeological site near the Usumacinta River in the Mexican state of Chiapas. It is a medium-sized site, much smaller than such huge sites as Tikal or Copan, but it contains some of the finest architecture, sculpture, roof comb and bas-relief carvings the Maya produced. The site was already long abandoned when the Spanish arrived in Chiapas. The first European to visit the ruins and publish an account was Father Pedro Lorenzo de la Nada in 1567; at the time the local Chol Maya called it Otolum meaning "Land with strong houses", de la Nada roughly translated this into Spanish to give the site the name "Palenque", meaning "fortification". Palenque also became the name for the town (Santo Domingo del Palenque) which was built over some peripheral ruins down in the valley from the main ceremonial center of the ancient city. An ancient name for the city was Lakam Ha, which translates as "Big Water" or "Wide Water", for the numerous springs and wide cascades that are found within the site. Palenque was the capital of the important classic-age Mayan city-state of B'aakal (Bone). The Maya Classic City While the site was occupied by the middle Pre-Classic, it did not gain importance until several hundred years later. By 600 the first of the famous structures now visible were being constructed. Situated in the western reaches of Maya territory, on the edge of the southern highlands, B'aakal was a large and vital center of Maya civilization from the 5th century AD to the 9th century.
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The B'aakal state had a chequered career. Its original dynasts were perhaps Olmec. Politically, the city experienced diverse fortunes, being disastrously defeated by Kalakmul in 599 and again in 611. Nevertheless, B'aakal produced what is arguably the best-known Maya Ajaw (king or lord), Pacal the Great, who ruled from 615 to 683, and left one of the most magnificent tomb-works of ancient Mesoamerica, beneath the Temple of Inscriptions. This is a grand temple atop a step pyramid dedicated in 692; inside is an elaborate, long hieroglyphic text carved in stone detailing the city's ruling dynasty and the exploits of Pacal the Great. A stone slab in the floor could be lifted up, revealing a passageway (filled in shortly before the city's abandonment and reopened by archeologists) to a long interior stairway leading back down to ground level and the shrine/tomb of the semi-divine Pacal. Over his crypt is an elaborate stone showing him falling into the underworld, and taking the guise of one of the Maya Hero Twins in the Popul Vuh who defeated the lords of the underworld to achieve immortality. Other important structures at Palenque include:

The Palace, actually a complex of several connected and adjacent buildings and courtyards built up over several generations on a wide artificial terrace. The Palace houses many fine sculptures and bas-relief carvings in addition to the distinctive four-story tower. The Temple of the Cross, Temple of the Sun, and Temple of the Foliated Cross. This is a set of graceful temples atop step pyramids, each with an elaborately carved relief in the inner chamber. They commemorate the succession of King Chan Bahlum II to the throne after the death of Pacal the Great, and show the late king passing on his greatness to his successor. These temples were named by early explorers; the cross-like images in two of the reliefs actually depict the tree of creation at the center of the world in Maya mythology. The Aqueduct constructed with great stone blocks with a three-meter-high vault to make the Otulum River flow underneath the floor of Palenque's main plaza. The Temple of The Lion at a distance of some 200 meters south of the main group of temples; its name came from the elaborate bas-relief carving of a king seated on a throne in the form of a jaguar. Structure XII with a bas-relief carving of the God of Death. Temple of the Count another elegant Classic Palenque temple, which got its name from the fact that early explorer Jean Frederic Waldeck lived in the building for some time, and Waldeck claimed to be a Count.

The site also has a number of other temples, tombs, and elite residences, some a good distance from the center of the site, a court for playing the Mesoamerican Ballgame, and an interesting stone bridge over the Otulum River some distance below the Aqueduct.

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Peru

Odd Pyramid Had Rooftop Homes, Ritual Sacrifices? National Geographic - October 22, 2010 A newly excavated platform atop a pyramid at the Huaca Colorada site looks out on the Peruvian desert. it's yielded human remains - including five females who may have been ritually sacrificed. But it's the signs of life that make a half-excavated Peruvian pyramid of the Moche culture stand out, archaeologists say. "Often these pyramidal mounds were built as mortuaries more than anything else," said excavation co-leader Edward Swenson. (See pictures from the tomb of the Moche "king of bling.") The newly exposed 1,400-year-old flat-topped pyramid supported residences for up to a couple dozen elites, who oversaw and perhaps took part in copper production at the site, evidence suggests. The pre-Inca pyramid dwellers likely presided over important rituals, feasted on roasted llama and guinea pig, and drank corn beer, according to archaeologists working at the site.

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Templo Mayor

The Great Pyramid or Templo Mayor was the main temple of the Aztec capital of Tenochtitlan (modern Mexico City). The temple rose 60 m (197 ft) above the city's ritual precinct, surmounted by dual shrines to the deities Huitzilopochtli (god of war and sun) and Tlaloc (god of rain and fertility). It was mostly destroyed in 1521 after the conquest of the Aztec empire by the Spanish conquistadores under the leadership of Hernan Cortes. Remains of the lower portions of the temple complex have been discovered by modern archaeologists buried under a portion of modern Mexico City. Numerous smaller buildings and platforms associated with the temple formed a closely-situated complex around its base. A stucco relief depicting a tzompantli, or "skull rack", decorated one platform leading to the temple. The temple was enlarged several times, and for the last time in 1487. The Great Temple was excavated between 1978 and 1987 in a major project directed by Eduardo Matos Moctezuma.

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Tikal

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Tikal is the largest of the ancient ruined cities of the Maya civilization. It is located in the El Peten department of Guatemala. The ruins lay on lowland rainforest. Conspicuous trees at the Tikal park include gigantic ceiba (Ceiba pentandra) the sacred tree of the Maya; tropical cedar (Cedrela odorata), and mahogany (Swietenia). Regarding the fauna, agouti, spider monkeys, howler monkeys, ocellated turkeys, guans, toucans, green parrots and leaf-cutting ants can be seen there regularly. Jaguars and coatis are said to roam in the park. Tikal was one of the major cultural and population centers of the Maya civilization. Monumental architecture was built here as early as the 4th century BC. The city was at its height in the Maya Classic Period, approximately 200 AD to 850 AD, after which no new major monuments were built, some of the palaces of the elite were burned, and the population gradually declined until the site was abandoned by the end of the 10th century. The name "Tikal" means "Place of Voices" or "Place of Tongues" in Maya, which may be an ancient name for the city, although the ancient hieroglyphs usually refer to it as Mutal or Yax Mutal, meaning "Green Bundle", and perhaps metaphorically "First Prophecy". Scholars estimate that at its peak its population was between 100,000 -- 200,000. The site presents hundreds of significant ancient buildings, only a fraction of which have been excavated in the decades of archeological work. The most prominent surviving buildings include six very large step pyramids supporting temples on their tops. They were numbered geographically by early explorers. They were built during the city's height from the late 7th and early 9th century. Temple I was built around 695; Temple III in 810; The largest, Temple-pyramid IV, some 72 meters (230 feet) high, was dedicated in 720. Temple V is from about 750. Temple VI was dedicated in 766.The ancient city also has the remains of royal palaces, in addition to a number of smaller pyramids, palaces, residences, and inscribed stone monuments. There is even a building which seemed to have been a jail, originally with wooden bars across the windows and doors. There are also several courts for playing the Mesoamerican ballgame. The residential area of Tikal covers an estimated 60 square km (23 square miles), much of which has not yet been cleared or excavated. Some of the pyramids of Tikal are over 60 meters high (200 feet).A huge set of earthworks has been discovered ringing Tikal with a 6 meter wide trench behind a rampart. Only some 9km of it has been mapped; it may have enclosed an area of some 125 km square. Recently, a project exploring the earthworks has shown that the scale of the earthworks is highly variable and that in many places it is inconsequential as a defensive feature. In addition, some parts of the earthwork were integrated into a canal system. The earthwork of Tikal varies significantly in coverage from what was originally proposed and it is much more complex and multifaceted than originally thought.

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Tula

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Tula is a town of 28,432 (2005 census) in the southwestern part of the state of Hidalgo in central Mexico, some 100 km to the north-northwest of Mexico City. The modern town is known as Tula de Allende; also a state municipality that covers part of the southeastern portion of the PreColumbian city. The present-day municipality has a population of 93,296 and an areal extent of 305.8 kms (118.07 sq mi), which includes numerous smaller outlying towns, the largest of which are El Llano, San Marcos, and San Miguel Vindho. Nearby are the remains of the ancient capital city of the Toltecs, also known as "Tula" or as "Tollan". Usually identified as the Toltec capital around 980 CE, the city was destroyed at some time between 1168 or 1179. The site is at and around the junction of two rivers, the Rio Rosas and the Rio Tula. The two largest clusters of grand ceremonial architecture are nicknamed "Tula Grande" (the most visited by tourists) and "Tula Chico". Remains of other buildings extend for some distance in all directions. In the residential areas streets were laid out in a grid pattern. The city was the largest in central Mexico in the 9th and 10th centuries, covering an area of some 12 kms with a population of at least some 30,000, possibly significantly more. While it might
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have been the largest city in Mesoamerica at the time, some Maya sites in the Yucatan may have rivaled its population during this period. Distinctive Toltec features here include terraced pyramids, colonnaded buildings, and relief sculptures, including the characteristic chacmools, reclining figures that may have been avatars of the rain god, Tlaloc. There are two large courts for playing the Mesoamerican ballgame. Some of the architecture is similar to that at Chichen Itza. The site was extensively looted in Aztec times, with much of the artwork and sculpture carted off. The first scholarly description of the ruins was made by Antonio Garcia Cubas of the Mexican Society of Geography and History in 1873. The first archaeological excavations were conducted in the 1880s by French antiquarian Desire Charnay. A twenty year archaeological project under Jorge Acosta of Mexico's National Institute of Anthropology and History (INAH) began in 1940. In the 1970s further excavations and restorations of some structures were conducted by INAH and the University of Missouri Columbia. Parts of the site are open for tourist visits, and Tula has a small museum.

Tzintzuntzan

Tzintzuntzan is a city in the state of Michoacan, Mexico. It stands on the eastern shore of Lake Patzcuaro, about 15 km north of the city of Patzcuaro and about 60 km west of state capital Morelia, and at some 2050 m above sea level. It serves as the administrative seat for the surrounding municipality of the same name and, in the 2000 census, reported a population of 3,610 people.
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The city was founded in the 13th century by the Native American Tarascan or Purepecha nation, in whose language the name means "Place of the Hummingbirds". The Pre-Columbian city of Tzintzuntzan covered an area of about 7 kms. The site, which stands on a hillside above the modern town, has the remains of many step pyramids of a design typically used by the P'urepecha in their ritual buildings, known locally as yacatas (by extension, the present-day archaeological site is also known as "Las Yacatas"). The Tzintzuntzan yacatas are of several different shapes, some rectangular, some oval or circular, and others in the distinctive Tarascan "T" shape. The population of the ancient city is estimated to have peaked at somewhere between 25,000 to 35,000 people. The population of the entire Lake Patzcuaro basin was between 60,000 to 100,000, spread among 91 settlements of which Tzintzuntzan was the largest. Tzintzuntzan was still the P'urhepecha capital when the Spaniards arrived in 1522. First contact, led by Nuno de Guzman arrived in 1529, Chieftain Tangaxuan II was burned alive and the city largely dismantled to provide stones for Roman Catholic temples and civic buildings, most notably the large 16th century Franciscan Monastery of Santa Ana. Following the disgrace and recall of Nuno de Guzman, Vasco de Quiroga was sent to the region, and Tzintzuntzan served as the headquarters of Spanish power in the area until the bishopric was relocated to Patzcuaro in 1540. The modern town of Tzintzuntzan is known for the basketry and weaving produced there. The Monastery of Santa Ana is also still standing. It is home to several allegedly miraculous relics and icons and is reputed to have growing on its grounds what were the first olive trees to be planted in America. Tzintzuntzan municipality covers a total of 165 kms. In addition to the municipal seat, the other main settlements are Ihuatzio, Cucuchuchu, and Los Corrales. In 1995, the municipality's total population numbered some 12,500, of whom 2550 spoke a Native American language (principally Purepecha and Ixcatec).

Uxmal

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Uxmal is a large Pre-Columbian ruined city of the Maya civilization in the state of Yucatan, Mexico. Uxmal is pronounced "Oosh-mahl". The place name is Pre-Columbian and it is usually assumed to be an archaic Maya language phrase meaning "Built Three Times", although some scholars of the Maya language dispute this derivation. Even before the restoration work Uxmal was in better condition than many other Maya sites thanks to being unusually well built. Much was built with well cut stones not relying on plaster to hold the building together. The Maya architecture here is considered matched only by that of Palenque in elegance and beauty. The Puuc style of Maya architecture predominates. Thanks to its good state of preservation, it is one of the few Maya cities where the casual visitor can get a good idea of how the entire ceremonial center looked in ancient times. A number of temple-pyramids, quadrangles, and other monuments, some of significant size, and in varying states of preservation, are also at Uxmal. The majority of hieroglyphic inscriptions were on a series of stone stelae unusually grouped together on a single platform. The stelae depict the ancient rulers of the city, and they show signs that they were deliberately broken and toppled in antiquity; some were re-erected and repaired.A further suggestion of possible war or battle is found in the remains of a wall which encircled most of the central ceremonial center. A large raised stone pedestrian causeway links Uxmal with the site of Kabah, some 18 km to the south.

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The site, located not far from Merida beside a road to Campeche, has attracted many visitors since the time of Mexico's independence. The first detailed account of the ruins was published by Jean Frederic Waldeck in 1838. John Lloyd Stephens and Frederick Catherwood made two extended visits to Uxmal in the early 1840s, with architect/draftsman Catherwood reportedly making so many plans and drawings that they could be used to construct a duplicate of the ancient city (unfortunately most of the drawings are lost). Desire Charnay took a series of photographs of Uxmal in 1860. Some three years later Empress Carlota of Mexico visited Uxmal; in preparation for her visit local authorities had some statues and architectural elements depicting phallic themes removed from the ancient facades. Sylvanus G. Morley made a map of the site in 1909 which included some previously overlooked buildings. The Mexican' governments first project to consolidate some of the structures from risk of collapse or further decay came in 1927. In 1930 Frans Blom led a Tulane University expedition to the site which included making plaster casts of the facades of the "Nunnery Quadrangle"; using these casts a replica of the Quadrangle was constructed and displayed at the 1933 World's Fair in Chicago, Illinois. In 1936 a further Mexican government repair and consolidation program was begun under Jose Erosa Peniche. Queen Elizabeth II of the United Kingdom visited on February 27, 1975 for the inauguration of the site's sound & light show; when the presentation reached the point where the sound system played the Maya prayer to Chaac, a sudden torrential downpour fell upon the gathered dignitaries, despite the fact that it was the middle of the dry season. Two hotels and a small museum have been built within the remains of the ancient city.

Xochicalco

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Xochicalco is a pre-Columbian archaeological site in the western part of the Mexican state of Morelos. The name Xochicalco may be translated from Nahuatl as "in the (place of the) house of Flowers". The site is located 38 km southwest of Cuernavaca, about 76 miles by road from Mexico City. The apogee of Xochicalco came after the fall of Teotihuacan and it has been speculated that Xochicalco may have played a part in the fall of the Teotihuacan empire. The architecture and iconography of Xochicalco show affinities with Teotihuacan, the Maya area, and the Matlatzinca culture of the Toluca Valley. Today some residents of the nearby village of Cuentepec speak Nahuatl. The main ceremonial center is atop an artificially leveled hill, with remains of residential structures, mostly unexcavated, on long terraces covering the slopes. The site was first occupied by 200 BC, but did not develop into an urban center until the Epiclassic period (A.D. 700 - 900). Nearly all the standing architecture at the site was built at this time. At its peak, the city may have had a population of up to 20,000 people.

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Pyramids in Peru

Stunning Astronomical Alignment Found at Peru Pyramid

Live Science - May 6, 2013

An ancient astronomical alignment in southern Peru has been discovered by researchers between a pyramid, two stone lines and the setting sun during the winter solstice. During the solstice, hundreds of years ago, the three would have lined up to frame the pyramid in light. The two stone lines, called geoglyphs, are located about 1.2 miles (2 kilometers) east-southeast from the pyramid. They run for about 1,640 feet (500 meters), and researchers say the lines were "positioned in such a way as to frame the pyramid as one descended down the valley from the highlands." Archaeologists have discovered a pyramid in southern Peru, built between 600 B.C. and 50 B.C. ago, would have aligned with two stone lines and the setting sun during the winter solstice. Here, a 3D model shows the event that happened at the Cerro del Gentil pyramid during the winter solstice. The two stone lines frame the pyramid with the sun setting directly behind it. This alignment may have had cosmological significance for the people who lived there. An ancient astronomical alignment in southern Peru has been discovered by researchers between a pyramid, two stone lines and the setting sun during the winter solstice. During the solstice, hundreds of years ago, the three would have lined up to frame the pyramid in light. The two stone lines, called geoglyphs, are located about 1.2 miles (2 kilometers) east-southeast from the pyramid. They run for about 1,640 feet (500 meters), and researchers say the lines were "positioned in such a way as to frame the pyramid as one descended down the valley from the highlands." Using astronomical software and 3D modeling, the researchers determined that a remarkable event would have occurred during the time of the winter solstice. "When viewed in 3D models, these lines appear to converge at a point beyond the horizon and frame not only the site of Cerro del Gentil where the pyramid is, but also the setting sun during the time of the winter solstice,"
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the research team wrote in a poster presentation given recently at the Society for American Archaeology annual meeting in Honolulu.

Mysterious Pyramid Complex Discovered in Peru

National Geographic - February 22, 2008 Remnants of at least ten pyramids have been discovered on the coast of Peru, marking what could be a vast ceremonial site of an ancient, little-known culture. In January construction crews working in the province of Piura discovered several truncated pyramids and a large adobe platform. Officials from Peru's National Institute of Culture (INC) were dispatched to inspect the discovery. Last week they announced that the complex, which is 2 miles (3.2 kilometers) long and 1 mile (1.6 kilometers) wide, belonged to the ancient Vicus culture and was likely either a religious center or a cemetery for nobility. The Vicus was a pre-Hispanic civilization that flourished in Peru's northern coastal desert from 200 B.C to 300 A.D. and is known for its decorated ceramics. Experts say little is known about the culture, because its sites have been heavily looted over the years. "We found several partial pyramids, at least ten," said Cesar Santos Sanchez, chief archaeologist for INC's Piura division. "We also found a large adobe platform that we speculate could have been used for burial rituals. But we cannot know without further testing."
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Skull Fragments: The platform, measuring 82 feet (25 meters) by 98 feet (30 meters), was found alongside one of the larger pyramids in the complex. Another of the larger pyramids contained some artifacts as well as bone fragments from a human skull. The fact that the skull fragments were found several meters below the surface, indicating a deep grave that took much time to dig, prompted researchers to theorize that the individual buried there had high social status. Ancient "Lost City" Discovered in Peru, Official Claims National Geographic - January 16, 2008

Ancient pyramids in Peru had the same functions as Pyramids found in other ancient civilizations around the world. Most were used as places to worship their Gods and Goddesses - rituals (at various equinoxes and solstices) - ceremonial rites of various kinds. They were generally built major planetary and energetic grid points

Huallamarca

Pyramid

This imposing monument has remained impervious to the ravages of time, and modern civilization and stands surrounded by the asphalt jungle. The two-story construction is made of adobe with a steep ramp leading to the upper level. Archaeological excavations have unearthed mummies on display with ancient objects inside the on-site museum. Photo Gallery

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Tucume

Rumors of a vast hoard of gold prompted famous Norwegian scientist and explorer Thor Heyerdahl to investigate the area around Tucume in northern Peru. The result was the archaeological discovery of 26 pyramids. Forty tombs pre-dating the arrival of the Spaniards were opened, and enough Inca and Chimu artifacts unearthed to justify the building of a museum at Tucume. Four burial chambers in the 600 meter long Huaca Larga pyramid were excavated. Inside the burial chambers the bodies of 16 female weavers sacrificed to the gods. The area near Tucume consists of 26 massive pyramids which suggest a civilization that flourished in the now endless desert for perhaps more than 1,500 years. Photo Gallery

Pachacamac Pyramid Project

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Ichimay Culture; had a Magic-Religious function of adobe brick. Theories about the Pyramids in Peru place their creation at the same time the Nazca Lines were created. The pyramids had flat tops looking much like those in Mexico. Photo Gallery

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MACHU PICCU

Pulemelei Mound in Western Samoa

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The Pulemelei mound or the Star Pyramid on the island of Savai'i (part of Samoa) is the largest and most ancient structure in Polynesia. The pyramid was built in the shape of a five pointed star. It is a pyramid constructed of natural basalt stones and at its base measures 65m x 60m and has a height of about 12m. Excavations have revealed that it was probably constructed sometime between 1100-1400 AD and was no longer used by 1700-1800 AD. It is almost squarely oriented with the compass directions. Smaller mounds and platforms are found in four directions away from the main structure. There is a relatively large platform about 40 metres north of the main pyramid and connected to it by a stone walkway. Unfortunately the jungle there is almost uncontrollable. The pyramid has been cleared on several occasions, but tends to get overgrown quickly once again.

Pyramids in Spain
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Pyramids of Guimar

Six step pyramids were discovered in 1998 near Guimar, a town on the eastern shore of Tenerife Island, the Canary Islands. They are still a mystery to archaeologists. The Pyramids of Guimar include six step pyramids with a rectangular ground plan reaching a maximum height of about 12 metres. They have a noticeable similarity to the pyramids built by the Maya and Aztecs in Mexico. They are rubble-filled with facings of black volcanic stone and are the result of multiple episodes of construction. The main complex of three pyramids were found to be astronomically orientated with the sunset of the summer solstice. Stairways ascend from a level plaza to the top of each pyramid, where there is a flat summit platform covered with gravel. The stairways are all on the west wall, suggesting a ceremonial purpose, because someone ascending them on the morning of the solstice would be directly facing the rising sun. Spain's Canary Islands off the northwest coast of Africa hardly seem a place for pyramids, but there seem to be six of them on Tenerife. The inhabitants have generally ignored these dilapidated piles of black volcanic stones. However, one perceptive native described them to Thor Heyerdahl of Kon Tiki fame and a leading proponent of cultural diffusion across all oceans. The Canary Islands had been part of the route Columbus took to the Americas. He stopped in Tenerife for provisions in 1492. The Guanches on Tenerife in 1492 did not permit Columbus or any other Europeans to land on their island. They were not impressed by the physical appearance of the bearded Europeans, who looked like the Guanches themselves. But when Columbus and the Europeans who followed in his wake landed in the New World they were welcomed and
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initially worshipped as gods, since the beardless Indians they encountered believed that the Spanish belonged to the same people as the legendary founders of their civilization, bearded men from across the Atlantic Ocean. In 1991, famous researcher Thor Heyerdahl and others involved in the project were lead to believe that these pyramids may be remains from pre-European voyagers who sailed the Atlantic in ancient times, and may have possibly forged a link with the pre-Columbian civilizations of the Americas. They were neither terraces nor random piles of stone cleared by the Spaniards, as some had tried to explain them away. They were painstakingly built step-pyramids, constructed according to similar principles as those of Mexico, Peru, and ancient Mesopotamia. Heyerdahl persuaded a Norwegian businessman to buy the site, clean up the debris of centuries and found a museum. One of the 'black' pyramids has now been restored, but some experts are still unconvinced. However, recent excavations under one pyramid have yielded artifacts identified with the Guanches, the pre-Spanish inhabitants of Tenerife. The six pyramids in Tenerife are quite small, like training exercises for those in Central America. They are found near Guimar, a town on the eastern shore of Tenerife Island, about 40 kilometers (24 miles) south of Santa Cruz de Tenerife. Long dismissed by locals as mere piles of rubble, Norwegian explorer Thor Heyerdahl turned up and declared that they were indeed pyramids, not unlike those in Tucume, Peru that he had been studying. Far from being piles of unworked rubble, every stone was turned with its flat side out and placed together by stone masons. With slopes of the volcano Mt. Teide at their back and facing the Atlantic, the edifices are precisely aligned according to the sunset on the summer solstice, as are other sacred structures in different parts of the world. Carefully built stairways on the west side of each pyramid lead up to the summit, which is not a pile of stones, but a perfectly flat platform covered with gravel, as though for ceremonial performances and/or sun worship. The stones were not weather-worn, rounded boulders, such as farmers had found in the fields, but sharp fragments of lava, and some of the corner stones had been trimmed. Archaeologists from the University of La Laguna were contracted to do test excavations of a ceremonial platform between two of the pyramids. As predicted by Dr. Heyerdahl, they found that rather than being a random pile of stones as they had expected, it was built of blocks, gravel and earth. Skeptics had to admit that this was definitely some kind of ceremonial architecture. Yet some still refused to admit that such impressive structures could have been built by the Guanche, the original inhabitants of Tenerife, and suggested that they might have been constructed by the early Christian conquistadores as a time measuring device to know when to celebrate the Catholic festivities of St. John.

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The Canary Islands are a popular solution to the location of Atlantis, based on their location west of the Mediterranean, and their mountainous terrain. They are part of a volcanic archipelago with marine trenches as deep as 3,000 metres and mountains as high as 3,718 meters above sea level. Archaeological findings suggest that the original inhabitants were Berbers who arrived from north Africa around 200 B.C. However, some early navigators reported the Canarians as being a race of tall, blond-haired, blue-eyed people, perhaps suggesting northern European or Atlantean origins.

Pyramids in the Sudan - Nubia

Royal pyramids were built in Nubia about 800 yeras after Egyptian pyramid building stopped. Above the third cataract the principle pyramids were built at el-Kurru, Gebel Barkal, Nuri and Meroe, containing approximately 220 pyramids.
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Pyramids of Meroe

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The Amun Temple served as a principle Kushite religious center near Shendi in what is now northern Sudan. This monumental statue is part of a group of twelve identical statues which form the alley leading to the Temple of Amon at Naga. The restoration of the ram's fleece, in spiral curls, is also found on the even larger statues which border the access to the Temple of Amon at Meroe.

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Many

of

the

pyramids

have

hieroglyphic

inscriptions.

The area of the Nile valley known as Nubia that lies within present day Sudan was home to three Kushite kingdoms during antiquity: the first with its capital at Kerma (2400-1500 BC), that centred on Napata (1000-300 BC) and, finally, that of Meroe (300 BC-300). Each of these kingdoms were strongly culturally, economically, politically and militarily influenced by the powerful pharaonic Egyptian empire to the north - and the Kushite kingdoms in turn competed strongly with Egypt, to the extent that during the late period of ancient Egyptian history the kings of Napata conquered and unified Egypt itself, ruling as the pharaohs of the Twenty-fifth Dynasty. The Napatan domination of Egypt was relatively brief - it ended with the Assyrian conquest in 656 BC - but its cultural impact was enormous, and this coalesced into an extraordinary burst of
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pyramid-building activity that was sustained throughout the existence of Napata's successor kingdom, Meroe. Approximately 220 pyramids were eventually constructed at three sites in Nubia to serve as tombs for the kings and queens of Napata and Meroe. The first of these were built at the site of el-Kurru. These include the tombs of King Kashta and his son Piye (Piankhi), together with Piye's successors Shabaka, Shabataka and Tanwetamani, and 14 queens' pyramids. Later Napatan pyramids were sited at Nuri, on the west bank of the Nile in Upper Nubia. This necropolis was the burial place of 21 kings and 52 queens and princes. The oldest and largest pyramid at Nuri is that of the Napatan king and twenty-fifth dynasty pharaoh Taharqa. The most extensive Nubian pyramid site is at Meroe, which is located between the fifth and sixth cataracts of the Nile, approximately one hundred kilometres north of Khartoum. During the Meroitic period over forty kings and queens were buried there. The physical proportions of Nubian pyramids differ markedly from the Egyptian edifices that influenced them: they are built of stepped courses of horizontally positioned stone blocks, and range from approximately six to thirty metres in height, but rise from fairly small foundation footprints that rarely exceed eight metres in width, resulting in tall, narrow structures inclined at around seventy degrees. Most also have small Egyptian-inspired offering temple structures abutting their base. By comparison, Egyptian pyramids of similar height generally had foundation footprints that were at least five times larger, and were inclined at angles of between forty and fifty degrees. All of the pyramid tombs of Nubia were plundered in ancient times, but wall reliefs preserved in the tomb chapels reveal that their royal occupants were mummified, covered with jewelery and laid to rest in wooden mummy cases. At the time of their exploration by archaeologists in the 19th and 20th centuries, some pyramids were found to contain the remains of bows, quivers of arrows, archers' thumb rings, horse harnesses, wooden boxes and furniture, pottery, colored glass and metal vessels, and many other artefacts attesting to extensive Meroitic trade with Egypt and the Hellenistic world. Reference

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El-Kurru lies on the west bank of the Nile, about 13 km south from the Gebel Barkal. Excavations directed by G.Reisner in 1918-19 discovered on the cementery pyramids, which stood above tombs of kings of XXV Dynasty: Piankhi, Shabaka, Shabataka and Tanutamun. Pyramid of Piankhi had a base length of about 8 m and a slope of probably about 68 degrees. A stairway of 19 steps opened to the east and led to the burial chamber cut into the bedrock as an open trench and covered with a corbelled masonry roof. Piankhi's body had been placed on a bed which rested in the middle of the chamber on a stone bench with its four corners cut away to receive the legs of the bed, so that the bed platform lay directly on the bench. The pyramids of Piankhi successors were similiar. There were also 14 queens pyramids at elKurru, 6 to 7 m square, compared to the 8 to 11 metres of the king's pyramids. Northeast of the royal cementery, 24 graves of 24 horses and two dogs were found.

The Pyramids of Nuri

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The pyramid field of Nuri contained 21 kings together with 52 queens and princesess . The first to build his tomb at Nuri was king Taharqa. His pyramid had 51.75 m square and 40 or 50 m high. Taharqa subterranean chambers are the most elaborate of any Kushite tomb. The entrance was by an eastern stairway trench, north of the pyramid's central axis, reflecting the alignment of the original smaller pyramid. Three steps led to a doorway, with a moulded frame, that opened to a tunnel, widened and heightened into an antechamber with a barrel-vaulted ceiling. Six massive pillars carved from the natural rock divide the burial chamber into two side aisles and a central nave, each with a barrelvaulted ceiling. The entire chamber was surrounded by a moat-like corridor entered steps leading down from in front of the antechamber doorway. After Taharqa 21 kings and 53 queens and princesess were buried at Nuri under pyramids of good masonry, using blocks of local red sandstone. The Nuri pyramids were generally much larger than those at el-Kurru, reaching heights of 20 to 30 m. The last king to be buried at Nuri died in about 308 BC.

Pyramids in Tahiti

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When Captain Cook visited Tahiti, he described the Marae of Mahaiatea as having a stepped pyramid with a base of 259 by 85 feet. Unfortunately all that remains today is a pile of stones. This drawing comes from the 1799 book The Voyage of McDuff.

Pyramids in Turkey

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Mt Nemrut, Kahta is a natural mountain (2150m), with a 50 metre artificial peak built on top. It was constructed as a tomb for King Antinochus I during the period 80 B.C-72 B.C. If pyramids are meant to represent mountains, the builders of this one have gone a step further by placing it on top of a real mountain. Not just an artificial mound, this site features huge (10 metre high) statues.

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ShareThis

Pyramids In Space, Mars, Moon

To say that manmade pyramids exist in space, is to say that an extraterrestrial intelligence created them. To date, this has not be proven, and may never be. Found in space are mounds and (generally dormant) volcanoes, and whatever we discover along the way ...
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Mars

The Face on Mars is a large feature on the surface of the planet Mars located in the Cydonia region, thought by many to resemble a human face. It measures approximately 3 km long and 1.5 km across and lies some 10 degrees North of the Martian equator. It was first photographed on July 25, 1976 by the Viking 1 space probe orbiting the planet at the time. It was brought to the attention of the public in a NASA press release of the photo six days later. The Mars civilization theory proposes that an ancient civilization existed on Mars during a time when Mars may have been habitable. Supporters point to artificial-looking objects on Mars such as the Face on Mars and the "Pyramids" of the Cydonia region of Mars. One of the most notable proponents of this theory is Richard C. Hoagland, who was first to suggest that the Face on Mars could be an artificial monument. In his 1987 book The Monuments of Mars: A City on the Edge of Forever, Hoagland interpreted other nearby surface features as remnants of a ruined city and artificially constructed pyramids. The publication of this book has done much to encourage and popularize belief in the artificial nature of the face. Subsequently a further cultus has claimed that the face has leonine qualities, leading to a postulation that the extraterrestrials may be similarly visaged.

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Silbury Hill

Silbury Hill is located just south of the village of Avebury in Wiltshire, is a massive artificial mound with a flat top. It is the tallest man-made prehistoric mound in Europe. It is part of the complex of Neolithic monuments located just south of the village of Avebury in Wiltshire. Recent excavations have allowed us to discover that the people who created it actually layered it in a three-part process similar to how we would create a battery. Silbury Hill may have been created as a 'natural Earth battery'. Silbury Hill has been carbon-dated at 2660 years BC, the same era as the Giza pyramids. It contains an estimated 340,000 cubic metres of chalk and earth, rising to a height of 39.6 metres. The base of the monument is 167metres in diameter and it is perfectly round. The flat top is 30m across. It is part of a sequence of ancient sites in the area that are in alignment. Despite its external appearance, this is actually a step pyramid, consisting of six, six metre high steps. The steps are walled with blocks of chalk, which easily deteriorates when left exposed. Consequently the builders preserved it, by covering it with earth and grass. Excavations have revealed that it is not a burial mound. It has a base circumference of 1640 feet. It is composed of over 12 million cubic feet (339,600 cubic m.) of chalk and earth and covers over 5 acres (2 ha). Silbury Hill occupies a low-lying site and except at certain points in the landscape (notably from the West Kennet Long Barrow from which this photograph was taken), it does not protrude significantly above the horizon.

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It was built in three stages, the first begun around 2,660 B.C.E. The last phase comprised the building of six concentric steps or terraces of chalk which were then covered with chalk rubble, flints, gravel, and finally soil to form a cone-shaped mound. Each of the six steps was concealed within the overall profile of the mound, except the last one at the top which was left as a terrace or ledge about 17 feet (5 m.) below the summit. This terrace is clearly visible on the eastern side of the mound, but less distinct from the west. Various legends have been attached to Silbury Hill. Folklore has claimed it to be the burial place of an otherwise forgotten King Sil (or Zel); of a knight in golden armour; and even of a solid gold horse and rider. It is also told that the Devil was going to empty a huge sack of earth on the town of Marlborough, but was forced to drop it here by the magic of the priests from nearby Avebury. According to William Stukeley, the top of the hill was dug into in 1723 and some bones were discovered together with an ancient bridle. The mound was again dug into in 1776 and in 1849. In 1967, excavations were undertaken by Richard Atkinson but again neither burials nor any clue to the mound's meaning were discovered. Atkinson did learn, however, through radiocarbon analysis that the mound dates to around 2660 B.C.E. Further evidence from the remains of plants and insects indicated that the structure was begun during the first week in August, probably at the time of the Celtic festival of Lugnasadh (or Lammas) at the start of the harvest season.

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Silbury can clearly be seen in the background, its summit in line with the horizon, in a drawing made by William Stukeley of part of the Sanctuary in 1723. The very top of the mound can also be discerned from the village of Avebury in what has been described as a precise geomantic relation with the so-called 'Obelisk' in the Avebury complex. It can be seen, however, only after the crops in the intervening field on the horizon have been harvested; the standing grain is sufficient to obscure the view. For some, this is further evidence for interpreting the mound in connection with harvest festivals. The original purpose of Silbury is unknown, although various explanations have been put forward over the years. Recently, Michael Dames has suggested that the hill is a symbolic effigy of the ancient Mother Goddess and is to be associated with fertility rituals which marked the course of the year. The festival of Lugnasadh (or Lammas) in August, when it is thought Silbury was founded, celebrates the first fruits of the harvest. It has been pointed out that the spring which rises five hundred yards south of the hill and is the source of the River Kennet, was formerly called the Cunnit, a name which may be connected to the Mother Goddess and fertility. Another explanation argues that Silbury Hill could have been used as an accurate solar observatory by means of the shadows cast by the mound itself on the carefully levelled plain to the north, towards Avebury. The meridian line from Silbury runs through Avebury church which stands on a ley line running between Stonehenge and the stone circle at Winterbourne Abbas. The same ley line also passes through two churches and the eastern slope of Silbury. Silbury, in fact, is a centre for alignments of straight prehistoric tracks, resurfaced by the Romans, and of standing stones. The Roman road between Marlborough and Bath runs directly towards Silbury Hill before swerving to avoid it. This would indicate that the Roman road followed a pre-existing track or ley line.

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John Michell makes the following observations: "In view of the fact that in China mounds like that at Silbury were erected upon lung-mei, the paths of the dragon , there is good reason to suspect that Silbury itself was sited by Pre-Celtic Druids on a dragon line with the assistance of a geomancer's compass. It may also be inferred that the Chinese lung-mei stretch over the entire globe. Many centres of English dragon legend stand at the junction of well-marked leys, one notable long-distance example being the St Michael's line that runs from the Avebury circle to the extreme west of Cornwall." In the early 18th century, William Stukeley visited the site on several occasions and witnessed, to his great distress, the destruction of numerous stones by farmers intent on clearing the land for fields. Stukeley agreed with Aubrey's identification of the site and in 1743 published his book Abury, a Temple of the British Druids,

William Stuckeley's 'great stone serpent' - Silbury can be seen in the background. Dragon- Symbology - Snake - DNA - Omega - Leo - Lion - Closures

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Avebury Restored Mostly dating to around 2,600-2,500 B.C.E., the Avebury complex, which covers about 28 acres and is partially overlapped by the village, comprises a huge circular earthwork ditch, originally about 30 feet deep, and bank about a quarter of a mile in diameter which encloses an outer circle of standing stones. Within this outer circle are two inner circles, both about 340 feet in diameter. The northern inner circle, of which only a few stones remain, apparently consisted of two concentric circles; an inner one of 12 stones and an outer one of 27 stones. At the centre of the northern circle stood a trio of very large stones, two of which survive, called The Cove. At the centre of the southern circle stood a tall stone over 20 feet in length called "the obelisk." It had already fallen when William Stukeley saw, and drew it, in the 18th century, and is now gone altogether. This site, as with the other missing stones at Avebury, is now marked by a concrete pillar. The northern and southern inner stone circles are believed to have been built first, around 2,600 BCE, and the outer circle and the earthworks added about a hundred years later, around 2,500 B.E. The outer circle is breached at four points - roughly at points north, south, east, and west to form entrances. From two of these originally ran two great avenues of which only the one, leading from the south entrance, the so-called "West Kennet Avenue", survives for a short way in reconstructed form with stones lining its course on both sides. Originally, according to Stukeley, the West Kennet Avenue stretched all the way to the Sanctuary on Overton Hill, while the other, the Beckhampton Avenue, of which very little survives, terminated near the Beckhampton Long Barrow. Stukeley interpreted the avenues as representing a great stone serpent passing through a ring formed by the Avebury circle. But Avebury is more than just a stone circle - although this is its main feature. There is also a rampart, a ditch and two mysterious avenues. The rampart or bank is on the outside, then comes

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the ditch. They both have four entrances and enclose some twenty eight acres. Inside these 'circles' - none of the circumferences are perfect, is the stone circle itself. It once consisted of around one hundred unquarried stones; inside this larger circle were once two smaller circles. Only four stones of one of the smaller circles survive, although it is though there may have once been as many as twenty seven. None of the stones in the other small circle are now standing, although it is thought to have consisted of around twenty nine stones at one time. Silbury Hill Wikipedia

AVEBURY

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Glastonbury

A prominent site is Glastonbury Tor.

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Perseid meteor shower in pictures Telegraph.co.uk - August 13, 2010

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Glastonbury, a small town about 125 miles or 220 km west of London, is full of myth and legend. The town is known for its history, including Glastonbury Lake Village, Glastonbury Abbey, Somerset Rural Life Museum, and Glastonbury Tor. There are many myths and legends associated with the town.

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Joseph of Arimathea

Holy Grail Mythology Page 353 of 416

King Arthur Glastonbury is notable for myths and legends concerning Joseph of Arimathea, the Holy Grail and King Arthur. The legend that Joseph of Arimathea retrieved certain holy relics was introduced by the French poet Robert de Boron in his 13th century version of the grail story, thought to have been a trilogy though only fragments of the later books survive today. The work became the inspiration for the later Vulgate Cycle of Arthurian tales. De Boron's account relates how Joseph captured Jesus' blood in a cup (the "Holy Grail") which was subsequently brought to Britain. The Vulgate Cycle reworked Boron's original tale. Joseph of Arimathea was no longer the chief character in the Grail origin: Joseph's son, Josephus, took over his role of the Grail keeper. The earliest versions of the grail romance, however, do not call the grail "holy" or mention anything about blood, Joseph or Glastonbury.

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Stories of a sacred vessel dear to the Celts became entwined with the story of Christ's Last Supper and the Christian Holy Grail which inspired quests and crusades across England, Europe and the Far East. The Glastonbury and Somerset legends involve the boy Jesus together with his Uncle, Joseph of Arimathea building Glastonbury's first wattle and daub church. These legends gave rise to the continuing cult of the Virgin on the site of the present Lady Chapel and inspired the title 'Our Lady St. Mary of Glastonbury,' which is still used today. After the crucifixion of Jesus, lore has it that Joseph of Arimathea (who according to the Bible donated his own tomb for Christ's interment after the Crucifixion) came to Britain, bearing the Holy Grail--the cup used by Christ at the Last Supper and later by Joseph to catch his blood at the crucifixion. When Joseph landed on the island of Avalon, he set foot on Wearyall Hill - just below the Tor. Exhausted, he thrust his staff into the ground, and rested. By morning, his staff had taken root leaving a strange oriental thorn bush-the sacred Glastonbury Thorn. For safe keeping, Joseph is said to have buried the Holy Grail just below the Tor at the entrance to the Underworld. Shortly after he had done this, a spring, now know as Chalice Well, flowed forth and the water that emerged brought eternal youth to whosoever would drink it. Intertwining the myths and legends of Glastonbury Abbey's history, it is widely believed that finding The Holy Grail Joseph is said to have hidden was years later the purpose behind the quests of King Arthur and the Knights of the Round Table. In 1191, monks at the abbey claimed to have found the graves of Arthur and Guinevere to the south of the Lady Chapel of the Abbey church, which was visited by a number of contemporary historians including Giraldus Cambrensis. The remains were later moved and were lost during the Reformation. Many scholars suspect that this discovery was a pious forgery to substantiate the antiquity of Glastonbury's foundation, and increase its renown. In some Arthurian literature Glastonbury is identified with the legendary island of Avalon. An early Welsh poem links Arthur to the Tor in an account of a confrontation between Arthur and Melwas, who had apparently kidnapped Queen Guinevere. According to some versions of the Arthurian legend, Lancelot retreated to Glastonbury Abbey in penance following the death of Arthur. Joseph is said to have arrived in Glastonbury by boat over the flooded Somerset Levels. On disembarking he stuck his staff into the ground and it flowered miraculously into the Glastonbury Thorn (or Holy Thorn). This is the explanation of a hybrid hawthorn tree that only grows within a few miles of Glastonbury, that flowers twice annually, once in spring and again around Christmas time (depending on the weather). Each year a sprig of thorn is cut, by the local Anglican vicar and the eldest child from St John's School, and sent to the Queen. The original Holy Thorn was a centre of pilgrimage in the Middle Ages but was chopped down during the English Civil War (in legend the roundhead soldier who did it was blinded by a flying splinter). A replacement thorn was planted in the 20th century on Wearyall hill (originally in
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1951 to mark the Festival of Britain; but the thorn had to be replanted the following year as the first attempt did not take). Many other examples of the thorn grow throughout Glastonbury including those in the grounds of Glastonbury Abbey, St Johns Church and Chalice Well. Today, Glastonbury Abbey presents itself as "traditionally the oldest above-ground Christian church in the World," which according to the legend was built at Joseph's behest to house the Holy Grail, 65 or so years after the death of Jesus. The legend also says that earlier Joseph had visited Glastonbury along with Jesus as a child. The legend probably was encouraged in the mediaeval period when religious relics and pilgrimages were profitable business for abbeys. William Blake mentioned the legend in a poem that became a popular hymn, 'Jerusalem' (see And did those feet in ancient time).

Glastonbury Abbey in Somerset, England

Glastonbury Abbey was a rich and powerful monastery in Glastonbury, Somerset, England. Since at least the 12th century the Glastonbury area was frequently associated with the legend of
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King Arthur, a connection promoted by medieval monks who asserted that Glastonbury was Avalon. The abbey was suppressed during the Dissolution of the Monasteries under King Henry VIII of England. The ruins and associated buildings are open today as a visitor attraction.

Chalice Well

The

Lion

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Vesica

Pisces

Sacred

Geometry

Chalice Well is a holy well situated at the foot of Glastonbury Tor in the county of Somerset, England. The natural spring and surrounding gardens are owned and managed by the Chalice Well Trust (registered charity no. 204206), founded by Wellesley Tudor Pole in 1959. Archaeological evidence suggests that the well has been in almost constant use for at least two thousand years. Water issues from the spring at a rate of 25,000 gallons per day and has never failed, even during drought. Iron oxide deposits give water a reddish hue, as dissolved ferrous oxide becomes oxidized at the surface and is precipitated. Like the hot springs in nearby Bath, the water is believed to possess healing qualities. In addition to the legends associated with Glastonbury, the Well is often portrayed as a symbol of the female aspect of deity, with the male symbolized by Glastonbury Tor. As such, it is a popular destination for pilgrims in search of the divine feminine, including modern Pagans. The Well is however popular with all faiths and in 2001 became a World Peace Garden. Wells often feature in Welsh and Irish mythology as gateways to the spirit world. The overlapping of the inner and outer worlds is represented by the well cover, designed by the church architect and archaeologist Frederick Bligh Bond and presented as a gift after the Great War in 1919. The two interlocking circles constitute the symbol known as the Vesica Piscis. In
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the well lid design, a spear or a sword bisects these two circles, a possible reference to Excalibur, the sword of the legendary King Arthur, believed by some to be buried at the nearby Glastonbury Abbey. Foliage represents the Glastonbury Holy Thorn. Bligh Bond wrote that the vesica design for the well cover was "typical of many early diagrams, all having the same object the rendering of spiritual truth by means of the purest, most intellectual system of imagery conceived by the mind, namely, truth which is aeonial or eternal, of which geometry is the best interpreter, since it can figure for us with remarkable suggestiveness those formative principles upon which the Father has built his Creation, principles which shall endure when heaven and earth have died ." (Ref. Central Somerset Gazette, Friday, November 14, 1919) Christian mythology suggests that Chalice Well marks the site where Joseph of Arimathea placed the chalice that had caught the drops of Christ's blood at the Crucifixion, linking the Well to the wealth of speculation surrounding the existence of the Holy Grail. The red of the water is also said by some Christians to represent the rusty iron nails used at the Crucifixion. Frequent events are held in the grounds of Chalice Well including annual celebrations for the winter and summer solstices, World Peace Day, Easter, Michaelmas and Samhain (Halloween). It is a grade I listed building.

Glastonbury Giants

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A landscape zodiac (or terrestrial zodiac) is a map of the stars on a gigantic scale, formed by features in the landscape, such as roads, streams and field boundaries. Perhaps the best known alleged example is the Glastonbury Temple of the Stars, situated around Glastonbury in Somerset, England. The temple is thought by some to depict a colossal zodiac. The theory was first put forward in 1935 by Katherine Maltwood, an artist who "discovered" the zodiac in a vision, and held that the "temple" was created by Sumerians about 2700 BC. Interest was re-ignited in 1969 by Mary Caine in an article in the magazine Gandalf's Garden. The landscape zodiac plays an important role in many occult theories. It has been associated with the Celtic Saints, Grail legend and King Arthur (according to some legends buried in Glastonbury). The Glastonbury Giants or Zodiac is a great landscape configuration, a circle 10 miles across. The 12 zodiac signs appear in their right order, formed by hills, outlined by roads and rivers. Katherine Maltwood who rediscovered this great circle in the 1930's claimed it as the original Round Table in Avalon with Arthur, Guinevere, Merlin and the Chief Knights still seated about it as the signs of the Zodiac and the seasons of the year. A great hound five miles long, the Girt
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Dog of Langport, guards this star temple. Several local legends and about 100 place-names, like Wagg on the Dog's tail, Earlake Moor on his ear, hint that these effigies were once well known. You will find Aries at Street, the Phoenix of Aquarius rises from Glastonbury Tor, and the circle continues around the Isle of Avalon. The Glastonbury Zodiac, a marvelous example of geomantic earthwork, measures 10 miles across and can be viewed totally only from the air. Hedges, roads and woods were laid out to form a ring of the 12 signs of the zodiac in the Age of Taurus as a Temple of the Stars. With the passage of time, successive cultures have interpreted the form according to their own myths and symbols, so the Zodiac has also been seen as an illustration of King Arthurs Round Table and the quest for the Holy Grail. Parkwood in the center of the Zodiac represents the Pole Star, a point of stillness in the heavenly wheel. It remains today a virgin wood, like a sancturary to the soul.

Colored Balls of Light

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Perhaps the most intriguing of all Glastonbury's mysteries are the strange balls of colored lights frequently seen spiraling around the Tor. In 1970, a local police officer reported seeing eight egg-shaped objects "dark maroon in color, hovering in formation over the hill" and in 1980 a witness saw "several green and mauve lights hovering around the tower, some smaller than others, about the size of beachballs and footballs. One hovered outside the east facing window". This author spent one summer night sleeping within the tower and, waking from a dream of castles and magical beings, found the interior of the tower radiantly aglow with a luminous white light. Glastonbury, the mystic isle of Avalon is truly an enchanted place. A sacred site since time immemorial, it is often forgotten but always rediscovered. Today a major haven for pilgrims and spiritual seekers, Glastonbury is a power place of potent transformational energies.

EXCALIBUR

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MERLIN

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Pyramid Mound Ireland - Newgrange

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Newgrange is not so much a pyramid as it is a large mound. It was originally built c. 3200 BC according to the most reliable Carbon 14 dates available, this makes it more than 500 years older than the Great Pyramid of Giza in Egypt, and predates Stonehenge trilithons by about 1,000 years, (the earliest stages of Stonehenge are roughly contemporary with Newgrange). Although it was built thousands of years ago, it lay lost for over 4,000 years due to mound slippage, until the late 17th century, when men looking for building stone uncovered it, and described it as a cave. Newgrange was excavated and much restored between 1962 and 1975, under the supervision of Prof Michael J O'Kelly, Dept. of Archaeology, University College, Cork. It consists of a vast man-made stone and turf mound retained within a circle 97 large kerbstones topped by a high inward-leaning wall of white quartz and granite. Most of the stones were sourced locally (within a radius of 20km or so) but the quartz and granite stones of the facade must have been sourced further afield, most probably in Wicklow and Dundalk bay respectively. Within the mound, a long passage, only going in one third of the length of the mound, leads to a cruciform (cross-shaped) chamber. The passage itself is over 60 feet (18m). The burial chamber has a corbelled roof which rises steeply upwards to a height of nearly 20 feet (6m). A tribute to its builders, the roof has remained essentially intact and waterproof for over 5,000 years.Newgrange appears to have been built as a tomb. The recesses in the cruciform chamber hold large stone basins into which were placed the cremated remains of those being laid to rest. During excavation, the remains of only five individuals were found. It is speculated that the sun formed an important part of the religious beliefs of the New Stone Age people who built it. Formerly the mound was encircled by an outer ring of immense standing stones, of which there are twelve of a possible thirty seven remaining. However, it seems that the stone circle which encirlced Newgrange are not contemporary with the monument itself but were placed there some 1,000 years later in the Bronze Age.

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Every year, at the time of the winter solstice, the sun shines directly along this passage into the chamber for about 17 minutes as it rises. The alignment with the sun is too precise to have occurred by chance.The sun however, does not enter the passage at Newgrange through the main entrance, but rather through a specially contrived opening, known as a roofbox, which lies directly above the entrance. Although solar alignments are not uncommon among passage graves, Newgrange is essentially the only one said to contain the additional roofbox feature. The solar alignment at Newgrange is also still very precise compared to similar phenomena at other passage graves such as Dowth or Maes Howe in the Orkney islands off the coast of Scotland. Spiral and lozenge motifs engraved on the magnificent entrance slab, "one of the most famous stones in the entire repertory of megalithic art" include a triple spiral motif, found only at Newgrange and repeated along the passage and again inside the chamber, are reminiscent of the triskelion motif of the Isle of Man, of ancient Sicily and of several passage tombs on the island of Anglesey in North Wales. There are further examples of megalithic art on many other kerbstones at Newgrange (notably Kerbstone 52 and 67). However the majority of the megalithic art in the Bru na Boinne complex is located at Newgrange's sister tomb of Knowth. Near Newgrange are many other passage tombs, the largest being Knowth, and another significant tomb; Dowth. These tombs are all contempory with Newgrange and together they and their 37 smaller satellite tombs form the Bru na Boinne complex. Newgrange Wikipedia Newgrange Video by National Geographic

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North American Mounds

Platform Mound

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A platform mound is any earthwork or mound intended to support a structure or activity. The indigenous peoples of North America built substructure mounds for well over a thousand years starting in the Archaic period and continuing through the Woodland period. Many different archaeological cultures (Poverty Point culture, Troyville culture, Coles Creek culture, Plaquemine culture and Mississippian culture) of North Americas Eastern Woodlands are specifically well known for using platform mounds as a central aspect of their overarching religious practices and beliefs. These platform mounds are usually four-sided truncated pyramids, steeply sided, with steps built of wooden logs ascending one side of the earthworks. When European first arrived in North America, the peoples of the Mississippian culture were still using and building platform mounds. Documented uses for Mississippian platform mounds include semi-public chief's house platforms, public temple platforms, mortuary platforms, charnel house platforms, earth lodge/town house platforms, residence platforms, square ground and rotunda platforms, and dance platforms. Many of the mounds underwent multiple episodes of mound construction, with the mound becoming larger with each event. The site of a mound was usually a site with special significance, either a pre-existing mortuary site or civic structure. This site was then covered with a layer of basket-transported soil and clay known as mound fill and a new structure constructed on its summit. At periodic intervals averaged about twenty years these structures would be removed, possibly ritually destroyed as part of renewal ceremonies, and a new layer of fill added, along with a new
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structure on the now higher summit. Sometimes the surface of the mounds would get a several inches thick coat of brightly colored clay. These layers also incorporated layers of different kinds of clay, soil and sod, an elaborate engineering technique to forestall slumping of the mounds and to ensure their steep sides did not collapse. This pattern could be repeated many times during the life of a site. The large amounts of fill needed for the mounds left large holes in the landscape now known by archaeologists as "borrow pits". These pits were sometimes left to fill with water and stocked with fish. Some mounds were developed with separate levels (or terraces) and aprons, such as Emerald Mound, which is one large terrace with two smaller mounds on its summit; or Monks Mound, which has four separate levels and stands close to 100 feet (30 m) in height. Monks Mound had at least ten separate periods of mound construction over a 200-year period. Some of the terraces and aprons on the mound seem to have been added to stop slumping of the enormous mound. Although the mounds were primarily meant as substructure mounds for buildings or activities, sometimes burials did occur. Intrusive burials occurred when a grave was dug into a mound and the body or a bundle of defleshed, disarticulated bones was deposited into it. Mound C at Etowah Mounds has been found to have more than 100 intrusive burials into the final layer of the mound, with many grave goods such as Mississippian copper plates (Etowah plates), monolithic stone axes, ceremonial pottery and carved whelk shell gorgets. Also interred in this mound was a paired set of white marble Mississippian stone statues. A long-standing interpretation of Mississippian mounds comes from Vernon James Knight, who stated that the Mississippian platform mounds were one of the three "sacra", or objects of sacred display, of the Mississippian religion - also see Earth/fertility cult and Southeastern Ceremonial Complex. His logic is based on analogy to ethnographic and historic data on related Native American tribal groups in the Southeastern United States. Knight suggests a microcosmic ritual organization based around a "native earth" autochthony, agriculture, fertility, and purification scheme, in which mounds and the site layout replicate cosmology. Mound rebuilding episodes are construed as rituals of burial and renewal, while the four-sided construction acts to replicate the flat earth and the four quarters of the earth.

Mound Builders

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The varying cultures collectively called Mound Builders were prehistoric inhabitants of North America who, during a 5,000-year period, constructed various styles of earthen mounds for religious and ceremonial, burial, and elite residential purposes. These included the PreColumbian cultures of the Archaic period; Woodland period (Adena and Hopewell cultures); and Mississippian period; dating from roughly 3400 BCE to the 16th century CE, and living in regions of the Great Lakes, the Ohio River valley, and the Mississippi River valley and its tributaries. Beginning with the construction of Watson Brake about 3400 BCE in present-day Louisiana, nomadic indigenous peoples started building earthwork mounds in North America nearly 1000 years before the pyramids were constructed in Egypt. Since the 19th century, the prevailing scholarly consensus has been that the mounds were constructed by indigenous peoples of the Americas, early cultures distinctly separate from the historical Native American tribes extant at the time of European colonization of North America. The historical Native Americans were generally not knowledgeable about the civilizations that produced the mounds. Research and study of these cultures and peoples has been based on archaeology and anthropology. Mound Builder or Mound People is a general term referring to the Native North American peoples who constructed various styles of earthen mounds for burial, residential, and ceremonial purposes. These included Archaic, and Woodland period, and Mississippian period PreColumbian cultures.

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The term Mound Builder was also applied to an imaginary race believed to have constructed the great earthworks of the United States, this while Euro-american racial ideology of the 16th-19th centuries did not recognize that Native Americans were sophisticated enough to construct such monumental architecture. The final blow to this myth was dealt by an official appointee of the United States Government, Cyrus Thomas of the Bureau of American Ethnology. His lengthy report (727 pages, published in 1894) concluded finally that it was the opinion of himself and thus the United States Government that the prehistoric earthworks of the eastern United States were the work of Native Americans. Thomas Jefferson was an early proponent of this view after he excavated a mound and ascertained the continuity of burial practices observed in contemporaneous native populations. Poverty Point in what is now Louisiana is a prominent example of early archaic Mound Builder construction from about 2500 BC. While other and earlier Archaic mound centers existed, Poverty Point remains one of the best recognized centers. Throughout the United States, the Archaic period was followed by the Woodland period, and mound building continued. Some well understood examples would be the Adena culture of Ohio and nearby states, and the subsequent Hopewell culture known from Illinois to Ohio and renowned for their geometric earthworks. The Adena and Hopewell were not, however, the only mound building peoples during this time period. There were contemporaneous mound building cultures throughout the Eastern United States. Around 900-1000 AD the Mississippian culture developed and spread through Eastern United States, primarily along the river valleys. The major location where the Mississippian culture is clearly developed is located in Illinois, and is referred to today as Cahokia. The namesake cultural trait of the Mound Builders was the building of mounds and other earthworks. These burial and ceremonial structures were typically flat-topped pyramids, flattopped or rounded cones, elongated ridges, and sometimes a variety of other forms. Some mounds took on unusual shapes, such as the outline of cosmologically significant animals. These are considered to be distinct and are known as effigy mounds. The best known flat-topped pyramidal earthen structure, which is also the largest pre-Columbian earthwork north of Mexico at over 100 feet tall, is Monk's Mound at Cahokia. The most famous effigy mound, Serpent Mound in southern Ohio, is 5 feet tall, 20 wide, over 1330 feet long, and shaped as a serpent. The most complete reference for these earthworks is Ancient Monuments of the Mississippi Valley, written by Ephraim G. Squier and Edwin H. Davis and published by the Smithsonian Institution in 1848. Since a large number of the features they documented have since been destroyed or diminished by farming and development, their surveys, sketches and descriptions are still used by modern archaeologists. A smaller regional study in 1931 by author and

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archaeologist Fred Dustin charted and examined the mounds and Ogemaw Earthworks near Saginaw, Michigan. The mound builders included many different tribal groups and chiefdoms, probably involving a bewildering array of beliefs and unique cultures, united only by the shared architectural practice of mound construction. This practice, believed to be associated with a cosmology that had a cross-cultural appeal, may indicate common cultural antecedents. The first mound building is an early marker of incipient political and social complexity among the cultures in the Eastern United States. As with other continents, the mounds and pyramids of North America vary greatly. It could be that humankind has a primal need to build fake mountains, and that there are absolutely no connections between these sites. Perhaps size and shape are irrelevant, and location is everything, and the guidelines for their placement was once universally known. It is difficult to determine how many mounds were built in North America, for many have been destroyed by modern civilization - but there were thousands.

Poverty Point, Louisiana

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Poverty Point combines mounds with an aspect of ancient Rome - an amphitheatre. Consisting of concentric ridges 5-10 feet high and 150 wide, the construction has a diameter of 3-4 of a mile, five times the diameter of the Colosseum in Rome. The ridges were built with 530,000 cubic yards of earth (over 35 times the cubic amount of the Great Pyramid of Giza). Of the earth mounds, one has a base of 700 feet by 800 feet and is 70 feet high. It is shaped like a bird. Poverty Point is a prehistoric earthworks of the Poverty Point culture, now a historic monument located in the Southern United States. It is 15.5 miles (24.9 km) from the current Mississippi River, and situated on the edge of Macon Ridge, near the village of Epps in West Carroll Parish, Louisiana.

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Poverty Point comprises several earthworks and mounds built between 1650 and 700 BCE, during the Archaic period in the Americas by a group of Native Americans of the Poverty Point culture. The culture extended 100 miles (160 km) across the Mississippi Delta. The original purposes of Poverty Point have not been determined by archaeologists, although they have proposed various possibilities including that it was: a settlement, a trading center, and/or a ceremonial religious complex. Mound A (The Bird Mound) Alongside these ridges are other earthworks, primarily platform mounds. The largest of these, Mound A, is to the west of the ridges, and is roughly T-shaped when viewed from above. Many have interpreted it as being in the shape of a bird and also as an "Earth island", representing the cosmological center of the site.[4] Scholars use the fact that Mound A is in the center of a direct alignment between Mound B and E as an element demonstrating the complex planning exercised by the sites' builders. Researchers have learned that Mound A was constructed quickly, probably over a period of less than three months. Prior to construction, the vegetation covering the site was burned. According to radiocarbon analysis, this burning occurred between approximately 1450 and 1250 BCE. Workers immediately covered the area with a cap of silt, followed quickly by the main construction effort. There are no signs of construction phases or weathering of the mound fill even at microscopic levels, indicating that construction proceeded in a single massive effort over a short period. In total volume, Mound A is made up of approximately 238,000 cubic meters of fill, making it the second-largest earthen mound (by volume) in eastern North America. It is second in overall size to the later Mississippian-culture Monks Mound at Cahokia, built beginning about 950-1000 CE in present-day Illinois. Mound B Mound B, a platform mound, is north-west of the rings. Below the mound was found a human bone interred with ashes, a likely indication of cremation, suggesting that this might have been a burial mound or the individual was a victim of human sacrifice. Mound B aligns in a straight north to south line with both mounds A and E. Mound E (Ballcourt Mound) The Ballcourt Mound, which is also a platform mound, is so called because "two shallow depressions on its flattened top reminded some archaeologists of playing areas in front of outdoor basketball goals, not because they had any revelation about Poverty Point's sports scene." Mound E forms a north-south line with mounds A and B. Dunbar and Lower Jackson mounds

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Within the enclosure created by the curving earthworks, two additional platform mounds were located. The Dunbar Mound, had various pieces of chipped precious stones upon it, indicating that people used to sit atop it and make jewelry. South of the site center is the Lower Jackson Mound, which is believed to be the oldest of all the earthworks at the site. In the southern edge of the site, the Motley Mound rises 51 ft (16 m). The conical mound is circular and reaches a height of 24.5 ft (7.5 m). These three platform mounds are much smaller than the other mounds. Theories Some followers of the New Age movement believe the site has spiritual qualities. John Ward, in his controversial pseudo-archaeological Ancient Archives among the Cornstalks (1984), claimed that Poverty Point was built by refugees who fled up the Mississippi River after their home, Atlantis, was destroyed in 1198 BCE. A similar connection to the legendary lost city was made by Frank Joseph, who claimed that individuals who were the reincarnation of former Atlanteans were able to unleash the psychic energies of Poverty Point by spilling purified water on the oak tree upon the main mound at the site. Erich Von Daniken has suggested a connection to extraterrestrials. He suggested that one of the mounds was a landing platform for alien aircraft.

Archaic Native Americans built massive Louisiana mound in fewer than 90 days, research confirms PhysOrg January 30, 2013

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Nominated early this year for recognition on the UNESCO World Heritage List, which includes such famous cultural sites as the Taj Mahal, Machu Picchu and Stonehenge, the earthen works at Poverty Point, La., have been described as one of the world's greatest feats of construction by an archaic civilization of hunters and gatherers. Now, new research in the current issue of the journal Geoarchaeology, offers compelling evidence that one of the massive earthen mounds at Poverty Point was constructed in less than 90 days, and perhaps as quickly as 30 days - an incredible accomplishment for what was thought to be a loosely organized society consisting of small, widely scattered bands of foragers.

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The Great Serpent Mound

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The Great Serpent Mound is the largest effigy mound in the world. While there are several burial mounds around the Serpent mound site, the Serpent itself does not contain any human remains and wasn't constructed for burial purposes. It is located in Adams County, Ohio. 1,330 feet in length along its coils and averaging three feet in height. One of many sacred places associated with ancient wisdom identified by the serpent symbol. Nearly a quarter of a mile long, Serpent Mound apparently represents an uncoiling serpent. The head of the serpent is aligned to the summer solstice sunset and the coils also may point to the winter solstice sunrise and the equinox sunrise. Today, visitors may walk along a footpath surrounding the serpent and experience the mystery and power of this monumental effigy. A public park for more than a century, Serpent Mound attracts visitors from all over the world. The museum contains exhibits on the effigy mound and the geology of the surrounding area. Serpent Mound lies on a plateau overlooking the valley of Brush Creek. It is located on a plateau with a unique cryptoexplosion structure that contains faulted and folded bedrock, which is usually either produced by a meteorite or volcanic explosion. This cryptoexplosion structure has caused Serpent Mound to become misshapen over the years. This is one of the only places in North America where such an occurrence is seen. Though the meaning is grounds for debate, the mound's placement on such an area is almost undoubtedly not by coincidence. Glotzhober & Lepper summarize the dispute in their work. Put it another way. The experts can not agree whether the immediate geological area of Serpent Mound was created from within the earth or from without. Geologists from the Ohio Division of Natural Resources Division of Geological Survey and from the University of Glasgow (Scotland) concluded in 2003 that a meteorite strike was responsible for the formation after studying core samples collected at the site in the 1970s. Further analyses of the rock core samples recovered at the site indicated the meteorite impact occurred during the Permian Period, about 248 to 286 million years ago. Nearby conical mounds contained burials and implements characteristic of the prehistoric Adena people (800 BC-AD 100). Many questions surround the meaning of Serpent Mound, but there is little doubt it symbolized some religious or mythical principle for its builders. The museum contains exhibits on the mound and the geology of the surrounding area. The date and creators of the Serpent mound is still debated among archaeologists. Several legitimate attributions have been made concerning both of these questionable factors: The Adena culture and the Fort Ancient culture. Both of these sub-cultures belonged to the broader Hopewell culture, a term used to encompass all of the pre-Columbian Native American groups that resided in Southern Ohio. All of these civilizations had similar characteristics, including burial mounds and effigy mounds, such as the Serpent Mound. Historically, the mound has been attributed to the Adena Indians (800 BC-AD 100). Many nearby mounds can be assuredly contributed to the Adena culture. The Adena are also renowned for their elaborate earthworks.
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However, recent carbon dating studies place the serpent mound outside of the span of the Adenas. There are also no cultural artifacts present within the mound, a trait of most other Adena mounds. This could possibly be because the mound is not of Adena origin, or that it held a special significance above other burial mounds. A few pieces of wood charcoal were found in the undisturbed portion of the serpent mound. When carbon dating experiments were undertaken on these artifacts, the first two yielded a date of ca. 1070 AD, with the third piece dating to the Late Archaic period. The first two dates place the Serpent Mound within the realm of the Fort Ancient Indians, a Mississippian culture, but the third back to very early Adena or before. The Fort Ancient Indians could very well have been the erectors of the Serpent Mound. A significant symbol in the Mississippian culture is the rattlesnake, which would explain the design of the mound. However, this mound, if built by the Fort Ancient Indians, is uncharacteristic for that group. They also buried many artifacts in their mounds, something of which the Serpent Mound is devoid. Also, the Fort Ancient Indians did not usually bury their dead in the manner which the remains have been found at the effigy. Astronomy - The head of the serpent is aligned to the summer solstice sunset and the snakes coils align with the winter solstice sunrise and the equinox sunrise. It is thought that perhaps the mound was created as a response to astrological occurrences. The carbon dating attribution of 1070 coincides with two significant astronomic events - The appearance of Halley's Comet in 1066 and the light from the supernova that created Crab Nebula in 1054. This light was visible for two weeks after it first reached earth, even during the day. There is speculation that the serpent mound was to emulate a comet, slithering across the night sky like a snake. The Serpent Mound was first discovered by two Chillicothe men, Ephraim G. Squier and Edwin H. Davis. During a routine surveying expedition, Squier and Davis discovered the unusual mound in 1846. They took particularly careful note of the area. When they published their book, Ancient Monuments of the Mississippi Valley, in 1848, they included a detailed description and a map of the serpent mound. One man who it particularly intrigued was Frederick Ward Putnam of the Peabody Museum of Harvard University. Putnam was fascinated with the mounds, specifically the Serpent Mound. When he visited the mounds in 1885, Putnam found that they were gradually being destroyed by plowing. Putnam raised funds, and in 1886 purchased the land in the name of the university to be used as a public park. Excavation of the Serpent Mound - After raising sufficient funds, Putnam returned to the site in 1886. He worked for three years excavating the contents and burial sequences of both the Serpent Mound and two nearby conical mounds. After his work was completed and his findings documented, Putnam worked on restoring the mounds to their original state. In 1900, Harvard

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University turned over the Serpent Mound to the Ohio Historical Society to operate as a public park. The Serpent Mound is one of those rare loci of the planet's topography where the consummate joining of terrestrial magnetism with astronomical alignments serves to astonish one at the accomplishments of our ancestry's knowledge of Earth and Heaven. Unless you are an experienced geologist, the unique features of the topography of the lands surrounding the Serpent Mound are not obvious. The land rises and falls, sometime in gentle slopes but often sharply with steep contours, like the outcrop of stone and earth the serpent sits upon. Through the land, flows many streams, some maintaining their flow throughout the summer. From atop the tower constructed to give tourists an elevated view of the mound, you also see a land covered with mixed hardwoods and the occasional evergreen. The view appears little different from the rest of southern Ohio, but within recent years the land here has been found to be unique. I believe the Adena peoples knew it over two thousand years ago when they sculpted this serpent out of stone, clay, and dirt. In 1933 W.H. Bucher published an account of this area calling it a cryptovolcanic structure. Bucher was German, and his article was published in a German publication. Perhaps it takes an outsider to see the inner qualities of a place. Bucher saw similarities in the land forms at the Serpent Mound to barely recognizable volcanic upheavals in Germany. But like so many who speculate about the mounds, he saw what he wished to see. No volcanic materials have been found here; however, he helped people see what is hardest to see: the familiar as strange. In 1947 R.D. Dietz in Science magazine suggested that a better name to describe the land features was "cryptoexplosion" - the folded and faulted beds of landforms from different geologic eras exposed from the impact of meteors. The central area is characterized by uplifted and faulted Silurian and Ordovician rocks that have been folded sharply into seven radiating anticlines. The forces that produced this structure caused the central area to be uplifted a minimum of 950 feet. Shatter cones - shock - produced structures - are found in moderate amounts in the central area. This description is from a map showing a nearly circular area representing the disturbed landscape; looking closely you can see the serpent mound sitting on the circumference of the circle. There is a great appeal to Dietz's theory even if the geology does not completely support it; there is no meteoric metal here. But there are serious suggestions that the serpent is intimately connected with the heavens. Several writers have suggested that the serpent is a model of the constellation we call the Little Dipper, its tail coiled about the north star. It is tempting to believe that the Indians knew of the meteor's explosion into the earth, and they built the mound to honor that event.

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Bucher's theory and the variation of it is supported more by the evidence of the rocks and the symbolism of the mound. The explosion came from within the earth from the incredible pressure of accumulated but repressed energies, trapped, blocked, but finally exploding upward as gas forcing its way to be released through the body of the earth toward the sky above. Old maps of the area show Mounds at these places where the waterways meet, which some people consider gateways - the ways of passage, movement of consciousness between realities. This signifies the inner energies of the earth all embody. This powerful energy rising from the depths of the earth-body is the energy of transformation, the energy that destroys blockages and barriers to the higher states of consciousness. It is the energy charted by shamans of every primary culture, the energy inherent in every human body. In Ohio we also find the Decalogue Stone - Battle Creek Stone.

Mississippi Mounds

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Wonders of geometric procession, the earthworks and mounds of the lower Mississippi were centers of life long before the Europeans arrived in America, as was the river itself. The alluvial soil of its banks yielded a bounty of beans, squash, and corn to foster burgeoning communities. Over the Mississippi's waters, from near and far, came prized pearls, copper, and mica. Along Mississippi's scenic Natchez Trace Parkway sits an immense flat-topped platform 35 feet high, spanning eight acres.

Emerald Mound

Emerald Mound the second largest ceremonial earthwork in the United States, was built over two centuries before Columbus waded ashore in the Caribbean. The Mississippians erected hundreds - maybe thousands - of earthworks across the southeast while Europe was living through the Middle Ages and the Renaissance.

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As the Mississippians flourished, the mounds evolved into urban centers with the common city problems of overcrowding and waste disposal. Sometimes one large flat-topped mound dominated a village or ceremonial center. More often, as at Emerald, several mounds surrounded a plaza, with the village at its edges. Structures atop the plaza - temples or official residences sat on large four-sided flat-topped mounds. A palisade of saplings surrounded the entire complex. Periodically, the Mississippians would raze one of the wood-and-mud structures, bury the remains of a deceased leader in a fresh layer of earth, and erect a new building on top. Commonly, the well-to-do were laid to rest in specially built burial mounds, conical or round. Crews labored periodically over generations, sometimes a century or more, before an earthwork reached its final dimensions. A mound might begin as a slight rise with an important building on it. After a time, perhaps it might burn accidentally or people would burn it down as part of a cleansing ceremony. The crews brought basket after basket of dirt to cover the old and lay a new foundation, and another building went up. Many workers, hauling 60 pounds of soil apiece, labored to complete each stage. Some archeologists say that the culture's survival depended on a steady flow of immigrants to compensate for the high death rates. When the flow ceased, they argue, the cities collapsed. Today, most of the moundbuilders' legacy is gone. Many of their earthworks have been plowed, pilfered, eroded, and built over. Yet evidence of the culture remains. This website is part of an effort to preserve the legacy that survives along the banks of the lower Mississippi. The Mississippian Native American Platform Mound

Spiro Mounds
Spiro Mounds is an important pre-Columbian Caddoan Mississippian culture archaeological site located in present-day eastern Oklahoma in the United States. The site is located seven miles north of Spiro, and is the only prehistoric Native American archaeological site in Oklahoma open to the public. The prehistoric Spiro people thrived and created a strong religious center and political system. The site was eventually abandoned after several hundred years of occupation, although it is still unclear why. The Great Mortuary at the site was looted in the 1930s. Many of the looted artifacts were eventually tracked down, although many others were destroyed by the looters, who used dynamite on the mound to gain access to its contents. The mounds site has been significant to North American archaeology since the 1930s, especially in the defining of the Southeastern
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Ceremonial Complex. Listed on the National Register of Historic Places, the site is under the protection of the Oklahoma Historical Society and open to the public. Spiro is the western-most known outpost of the Mississippian culture, which arose and spread along the lower Mississippi River and its tributaries between the 9th century and 16th century CE. Cahokia, a major chiefdom that built a six-mile-square city, arose east of St. Louis in present-day Illinois. Mississippian culture extended along the Ohio River and into the southeast, and the trading network ranged from the Great Lakes to the Gulf Coast and into the southeastern mountains. The Spiro area includes twelve mounds and 150 acres of land. As in other Mississippian-culture towns, the people built a number of large, complex earthworks. These included earthen mounds surrounding a large, planned and leveled central plaza, where important religious rituals, the politically and culturally significant game of chunkey, and other important community activities were carried out. The population lived in a village that bordered the plaza. In addition, archaeologists have found more than twenty other related village sites within five miles of the main town. Other village sites linked to Spiro through culture and trade have been found up to a 100 miles (160 km) away. Spiro has been the site of human activity for at least 8000 years, but was a major settlement from 800 to 1450 CE. The cultivation of maize allowed accumulation of crop surpluses and the gathering of more dense populations. It was the headquarters town of a regional chiefdom, whose powerful leaders directed the building of eleven platform mounds and one burial mound in an 80-acre (0.32 km2) area on the south bank of the Arkansas River. The heart of the site is a group of nine mounds surrounding an oval plaza. These mounds elevated the homes of important leaders or formed the foundations for religious structures that focused the attention of the community. Brown Mound, the largest platform mound, is located on the eastern side of the plaza. It had an earthen ramp that gave access to the summit from the north side. Here, atop Brown Mound and the other mounds, the town's inhabitants carried out complex rituals, centered especially on the deaths and burials of Spiro's powerful rulers. Archaeologists have shown that Spiro had a large resident population until about 1250 CE. After that, most of the population moved to other towns nearby. Spiro continued to be used as a regional ceremonial center and burial ground until about 1450 CE. Its ceremonial and mortuary functions continued and seem to have grown after the main population moved away.

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Craig Mound - also called "The Spiro Mound" - is the second-largest mound on the site and the only burial mound. It is located about 1,500 feet (460 m) southeast of the plaza. A cavity created within the mound, about 10 feet (3.0 m) high and 15 feet (4.6 m) wide, allowed for almost perfect preservation of fragile artifacts made of wood, conch shell, and copper. The conditions in this hollow space were so favorable that objects made of perishable materials such as basketry, woven fabric of vegetal and animal fibers, lace, fur, and feathers were preserved inside it. Such objects have traditionally been created by women in historic tribes. Also found inside were several examples of Mississippian stone statuary made from Missouri flint clay and Mill Creek chert bifaces, all thought to have originally come from the Cahokia site in Illinois. The "Great Mortuary," as archaeologists called this hollow chamber, appears to have begun as a burial structure for Spiro's rulers. It was created as a circle of sacred cedar posts sunk in the ground and angled together at the top like a tipi. The cone-shaped chamber was covered with layers of earth to create the mound, and it never collapsed. Some scholars believe that minerals percolating through the mound hardened the chamber's log walls, making them resistant to decay and shielding the perishable artifacts inside from direct contact with the earth. No other Mississippian mound has been found with such a hollow space inside it and with such spectacular preservation of artifacts. Craig Mound has been called "an American King Tut's Tomb."

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Artifact hunters looted Craig Mound between 1933 and 1935, tunneling into the mound and breaking through the Great Mortuary's log wall. They found many human burials, together with their associated grave goods. The looters discarded the human remains and the fragile artifacts, which were made of copper, shell, stone, basketry and textile, traditionally made by women of the culture. Most of these rare and historically priceless objects disintegrated before scholars could reach the site, although some were sold to collectors.The looters dynamited the burial chamber when they were finished and quickly sold the commercially valuable artifacts, made of stone, pottery, and conch shell, to collectors in the United States and overseas. Most of these valuable objects are probably lost, but some have been recovered and documented by scholars.

Cahokia Mounds
Cahokia Mounds State Historic Site is located on the site of an ancient Native American city (c. 600-1400 CE) situated directly across the Mississippi River from modern St. Louis, Missouri. This historic park lies in Southern Illinois between East St. Louis and Collinsville. The park, operated by the Illinois Historic Preservation Agency, is quite large, covering 2,200 acres (890 ha), or about 3.5 square miles, and containing about 80 mounds, but the ancient city was actually much larger. In its heyday, Cahokia covered about 6 square miles and included about 120 manmade earthen mounds in a wide range of sizes, shapes, and functions. Cahokia was the largest and most influential urban settlement in the Mississippian culture which developed advanced societies across much of what is now the Southeastern United States, beginning more than 500 years before European contact. Cahokia's population at its peak in the 1200s was as large as, or larger than, any European city of that time, and its ancient population would not be surpassed by any city in the United States until about the year 1800. Today, Cahokia Mounds is considered the largest and most complex archaeological site north of the great Pre-Columbian cities in Mexico. Cahokia began to decline after 1300 CE. It was abandoned more than a century before Europeans arrived in North America, in the early 16th century, and the area around it was largely uninhabited by indigenous tribes. Scholars have proposed environmental factors, such as overhunting and deforestation as explanations. The houses, stockade, and residential and industrial fires would have required the annual harvesting of thousands of logs. In addition, climate change could have aggravated effects of erosion due to deforestation, and adversely affected the cultivation of maize, on which the community had depended. Another possible cause is invasion by outside peoples, though the only evidence of warfare found so far is the wooden stockade and watchtowers that enclosed Cahokia's main ceremonial precinct. Due to the lack of other evidence for warfare, the palisade appears to have been more for ritual or formal separation than for military purposes. Diseases transmitted among the large,
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dense urban population are another possible cause of decline. Many recent theories propose conquest-induced political collapse as the primary reason for Cahokias abandonment. Cahokia Mounds is a National Historic Landmark and designated site for state protection. In addition, it is one of only 21 World Heritage Sites within the United States. It is the largest prehistoric earthen construction in the Americas north of Mexico. Although there is some evidence of Late Archaic period (approximately 1200 BCE) occupation in and around the site, Cahokia as it is now defined was settled around 600 CE, during the Late Woodland period. Mound building at this location began with the Emergent Mississippian cultural period, about the 9th century CE. The inhabitants left no written records beyond symbols on pottery, shell, copper, wood and stone, but the elaborately planned community, woodhenge, mounds and burials reveal a complex and sophisticated society. The city's original name is unknown. The original site contained 120 earthen mounds over an area of six square miles, of which 80 remain today. To achieve that, thousands of workers over decades moved more than an "estimated 55 million cubic feet of earth in woven baskets to create this network of mounds and community plazas. Monks Mound, for example, covers 14 acres (5.7 ha), rises 100 ft (30 m), and was topped by a massive 5,000 sq ft (460 m2) building another 50 ft (15 m) high." The Mounds were later named after a clan of historic Illiniwek people living in the area when the first French explorers arrived in the 17th century. As this was centuries after Cahokia was abandoned by its original inhabitants, the Cahokia were not necessarily descendants of the original Mississippian-era people. Scholars do not know which, if any Native American groups, are the living descendants of the people who originally built and lived at the Mound site, although many are plausible. Native American bands migrated through different areas, and those living in territories at the time of European encounter were often not the descendants of peoples who had lived there before.

Monk's Mound at Cahokia

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Monks Mound is the largest Pre-Columbian earthwork in America north of Mesoamerica. Located at the Cahokia Mounds UNESCO World Heritage Site near Collinsville, Illinois, its size was calculated in 1988 as about 100 feet (30 m) high, 955 feet (291 m) long including the access ramp at the southern end, and 775 feet (236 m) wide. This makes Monks Mound roughly the same size at its base as the Great Pyramid of Giza (13.1 acres / 5.3 hectares). Its base circumference is larger than the Pyramid of the Sun at Teotihuacan. Unlike Egyptian pyramids which were built of stone, the platform mound was constructed almost entirely of layers of basket-transported soil and clay. Because of this construction and its flattened top, over the years, it has retained rainwater within the structure. This has caused "slumping", the avalanche-like sliding of large sections of the sides at the highest part of the mound. Its designed dimensions would have been significantly smaller than its present extent, but recent excavations have revealed that slumping was a problem even while the mound was being made. Construction of Monks Mound by the Mississippian culture began about 900-950 CE, on a site which had already been occupied by buildings. The original concept seems to have been a much smaller mound, now buried deep within the northern end of the present structure. At the northern end of the summit plateau, as finally completed around 1100 CE, is an area raised slightly higher still, on which was placed a building over 100 ft (30 m) long, the largest in the entire Cahokia Mounds urban zone. Deep excavations in 2007 confirmed findings from earlier test borings, that several types of earth and clay from different sources had been used successively. Study of various sites suggests that the stability of the mound was improved by the incorporation of bulwarks, some made of clay, others of sods from the Mississippi flood-plain, which permitted steeper slopes than the use of earth alone.
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The most recent section of the mound, added some time before 1200 CE, is the lower terrace at the south end, which was added after the northern end had reached its full height. It may partly have been intended to help minimize the slumping which by then was already under way. Today, the western half of the summit plateau is significantly lower than the eastern; this is the result of massive slumping, beginning about 1200 CE. This also caused the west end of the big building to collapse. It may have led to the abandonment of the mound's high status, following which various wooden buildings were erected on the south terrace, and garbage was dumped at the foot of the mound. By about 1300, the urban society at Cahokia Mounds was in serious decline. When the eastern side of the mound started to suffer serious slumping, it was not repaired. The Grand Plaza is a large open plaza that spreads out to the south of Monks Mound. Researchers originally thought the flat, open terrain in this area reflected Cahokia's location on the Mississippi's alluvial flood plain but instead soil studies have shown that the landscape was originally undulating. In one of the earliest large-scale construction projects, the site had been expertly and deliberately leveled and filled by the city's inhabitants. It is part of the sophisticated engineering displayed throughout the site. The Grand Plaza covered roughly 50 acres (20 ha) and measured over 1,600 ft (490 m) in length by over 900 ft (270 m) in width. It was used for large ceremonies and gatherings, as well as for ritual games, such as chunkey. Along with the Grand Plaza to the south, three other very large plazas surround Monks Mound in the cardinal directions to the east, west, and north. The high-status district of Cahokia was surrounded by a long palisade that was equipped with protective bastions. Where the palisade passed, it separated neighborhoods. Archaeologists found evidence of the stockade during excavation of the area and indications that it was rebuilt several times. Its bastions showed that it was mainly built for defensive purposes. Beyond Monks Mound, as many as 120 more mounds stood at varying distances from the city center. To date, 109 mounds have been located, 68 of which are in the park area. The mounds are divided into several different types: platform, conical, ridge-top, etc.. Each appeared to have had its own meaning and function. In general terms, the city center seems to have been laid out in a diamond-shaped pattern approximately 1 mi (1.6 km) from end to end, while the entire city is 5 mi (8.0 km) across from east to west.

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The reconstructed Woodhenge, erected in 1985. Archaeologists discovered postholes during excavation of the site to the west of Monks Mound, revealing a timber circle. Noting that the placement of posts marked solstices and equinoxes, they referred to it as "an American Woodhenge", likening it to England's well-known circles at Woodhenge and Stonehenge.[ Detailed analytical work supports the hypothesis that the placement of these posts was by design. The structure was rebuilt several times during the urban center's roughly 300-year history. Evidence of another timber circle was discovered near Mound 72, to the south of Monks Mound. According to Chappell, "A beaker found in a pit near the winter solstice post bore a circle and cross symbol that for many Native Americans symbolizes the Earth and the four cardinal directions. Radiating lines probably symbolized the sun, as they have in countless other civilizations." The woodhenges were significant to the timing of the agricultural cycle.

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Etowah Indian Mounds

Etowah Mounds is a 54-acre (220,000 sq. miles) archaeological site in Bartow County, Georgia south of Cartersville, in the United States. Built and occupied in three phases, from 10001550 CE, the prehistoric site is located on the north shore of the Etowah River. Etowah Indian Mounds Historic Site is a designated National Historic Landmark, managed by the Georgia Department of Natural Resources. It is the most intact Mississippian culture site in the Southeastern United States. These were made during the same Mississippian Temple Mound Building Period, as were mounds at Moundville (near Tuscaloosa, Alabama) and at Cahokia - roughly 700 AD to 1400 AD. The six flat-topped earthen knolls and a plaza were used for rituals by several thousand Native Americans between 1000 and 1500 A.D. The largest mound has a height of 63 feet. Only nine percent of this site has been excavated, but we already know that the mounds have caves underneath them as do some Mayan and Giza pyramids. It may also just be a coincidence, but there is a Limonite mine at Etowah. Limonite is a ironbearing ore with a very special use - as radiation shielding for atomic bomb tests, nuclear reactors and space stations. It is also what gives Mars its red color.

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Etowah has three main platform mounds and three lesser mounds. The Temple Mound, Mound A, is 63 feet (19 m) high, taller than a six-story building, and covers 3 acres (12,000 m2) at its base. In 2005-2008 ground mapping with magnetometers revealed new information and data, showing that the site was much more complex than had previously been believed. The study team has identified a total of 140 buildings on the site. In addition, Mound A was found to have had four major structures and a courtyard at the height of the community's power.

Mounds A and B as seen from Mound C

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Mound B is 25 feet (7.6 m) high; Mound C, which rises 10 feet (3.0 m), is the only one to have been completely excavated. Magnetometers enabled archaeologists to determine the location of temples of log and thatch, which were originally built on top of the mounds. Adjacent to the mounds is a raised ceremonial plaza, which was used for ceremonies, stickball and chunkey games, and as a bazaar for trade goods. When visiting the Etowah Mounds, guests can view the "borrow pits" (which archaeologists at one time thought were moats) which were dug out to create the three large mounds in the center of the park. Older pottery found on the site suggest that there was an earlier village (ca. 200 BCE-600 CE) associated with the Swift Creek culture. This earlier Middle Woodland period occupation at Etowah may have been related to the major Swift Creek center of Leake Mounds, approximately two miles downstream (west) of Etowah. War was commonplace; many archaeologists believe the people of Etowah battled for hegemony over the Alabama river basin with those of Moundville, a Mississippian site in present-day Alabama. The town was protected by a sophisticated semicircular fortification system. An outer band formed by nut tree orchards prevented enemy armies from shooting masses of flaming arrows into the town. A 9 feet (2.7 m) to 10 feet (3.0 m) deep moat blocked direct contact by the enemy with the palisaded walls. It also functioned as a drainage system during major floods, common for centuries, from this period and into the 20th century. Workers formed the palisade by setting upright 12 feet (3.7 m) high logs into a ditch approximately 12 inches (300 mm) on center and then back-filling around the timbers to form a levee. Guard towers for archers were spaced approximately 80 feet (24 m) apart.
Artifacts

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Etowah Birdman The artifacts discovered in burials within the Etowah site indicate that its residents developed an artistically and technically advanced culture. Numerous copper tools, weapons and ornamental copper plates accompanied the burials of members of Etowah's elite class. Where proximity to copper protected the fibers from degeneration, archaeologists also found brightly colored cloth with ornate patterns. These were the remnants of the clothing of social elites. Numerous clay figurines and ten Mississippian stone statues have been found through the years in the vicinity of Etowah. Many are paired statues, which portray a man sitting cross-legged and a woman kneeling. The female figures wear wrap-around skirts and males are usually portrayed without visible clothing, although both usually have elaborate hairstyles. The pair are thought to represent lineage ancestors. Individual statues of young women also show them kneeling, but with additional characteristics such as visible sex organs, which are not visible on the paired statues. This female figure is thought to represent a fertility or Earth Mother goddess. The birdman, hand in eye, solar cross, and other symbols associated with the Southeastern Ceremonial Complex appear in many artifacts found at Etowah.

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Warren K. Moorehead's excavations into Mound C at the site revealed a rich array of Mississippian culture burial goods. These artifacts, along with the collections from Cahokia, Moundville Site, Lake Jackson Mounds, and Spiro Mounds, would comprise the majority of the materials which archaeologists used to define the Southeastern Ceremonial Complex (SECC). The professional excavation of this enormous burial mound contributed major research impetus to the study of Mississippian artifacts and peoples. It greatly increased the understanding of preContact Native American artwork.

Lake Jackson Mounds

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Lake Jackson Mounds Archaeological State Park (8LE1) is one of the most important archaeological sites in Florida, the capital of chiefdom and ceremonial center of the Fort Walton Culture inhabited from 1050-1500. The complex originally included seven earthwork mounds, a public plaza and numerous individual village residences. One of several major mound sites in the Florida Panhandle, the park is located in northern Tallahassee, on the south shore of Lake Jackson. The complex has been managed as a Florida State Park since 1966. On May 6, 1971, the site was listed on the U.S. National Register of Historic Places as reference number 71000241. The site was built and occupied between 1000 and 1500 by people of the Fort Walton culture, the southernmost expression of the Mississippian culture. The scale of the site and the number and size of the mounds indicate that this was the site of a regional chiefdom, and was thus a political and religious center. After the abandonment of the Lake Jackson site the chiefdom seat was moved to Anhaica (rediscovered in 1987 by B. Calvin Jones and located within DeSoto Site Historic State Park), where in 1539 it was visited by the Hernando de Soto entrada, who knew the residents as the historic Muskogean-speaking Apalachee people. Other related Fort Walton sites are located at Velda Mound (also a park), Cayson Mound and Village Site and Yon Mound and Village Site.

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When the site was abandoned it was a large complex (19.0 hectares (0.073 sq mi)) that included seven platform mounds, six arranged near a plaza and a seventh (Mound 1) located 250 metres (820 ft) to the north. The mounds were the result of skilled planning, knowledge of soils and organization of numerous laborers over the period of many years. The ceremonial plaza was a large flat area, constructed and leveled for this purpose, where ritual games and gatherings took place.

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Diagram showing the various components of mound construction The area around the mounds and plaza had several areas of heavy village habitation with individual residences, where artisans and workers lived. There were also communal agricultural fields in the surrounding countryside, where the people cultivated maize in the rich local soil, the major reason such a dense population and large site were possible. Only a few of the mounds in the park have been systematically excavated by archaeologists. The site itself is oriented on an east-west axis, oriented perpendicular to the north-south axis of the Meginnis Arm, a nearby extension of Lake Jackson. All of the mounds are laid out to reflect this alignment, although it is unclear if this is symbolic or merely the result of the lake arms orientation. The layout and arrangement of the mounds in the central area of the site suggests that there may have been two large plaza areas. Mounds 2, 3, 4, and 5 form a large rectangular shape that was mostly free of debris. Mounds 2, 3, 6, and 7 also form a rectangular shape that suggests it too was a plaza. Both plazas would have had Butler's Mill Creek (a small stream that once bisected these areas, but whose course was altered in historic times) running through it. Excavations have shown that a clean area between Mounds 2 and 4 was a plaza, but not enough work has been done at the rest of the site to confirm the larger dimension suggested by the first arrangement or the existence of a plaza at the second arrangement at all.

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Moundville Archaeological Site

A view of the site from the top of Mound B looking toward Mound A and the plaza. Moundville Archaeological Site also known as the Moundville Archaeological Park, is a Mississippian culture site on the Black Warrior River in Hale County, near the town of Tuscaloosa, Alabama. Extensive archaeological investigation has shown that the site was the political and ceremonial center of a regionally organized Mississippian culture chiefdom polity between the 11th and 16th centuries. The archaeological park portion of the site is administered by the University of Alabama Museums and encompasses 185 acres (75 ha), consisting of 29 platform mounds around a rectangular plaza. The site was declared a National Historic Landmark in 1964 and was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1966. Moundville is the second-largest site of the classic Middle Mississippian era, after Cahokia in Illinois. The culture was expressed in villages and chiefdoms throughout the central Mississippi River Valley, the lower Ohio River Valley, and most of the Mid-South area, including Kentucky, Tennessee, Alabama, and Mississippi as the core of the classic Mississippian culture area. The park contains a museum and an archaeological laboratory. The site was occupied by Native Americans of the Mississippian culture from around 1000 AD to 1450 AD. Around 1150 AD it began its rise from a local to a regional center. At its height, the
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community took the form of a roughly 300-acre (121 ha) residential and political area protected on three sides by a bastioned wooden palisade wall, with the remaining side protected by the river bluff.

A view across the plaza from mound J to mound B, with mound A in the center. The largest platform mounds are located on the northern edge of the plaza and become increasingly smaller going either clockwise or counter clockwise around the plaza to the south. Scholars theorize that the highest-ranking clans occupied the large northern mounds, with the smaller mounds' supporting buildings used for residences, mortuary, and other purposes. Of the two largest mounds in the group, Mound A occupies a central position in the great plaza, and Mound B lies just to the north, a steep, 58 feet (18 m) tall pyramidal mound with two access ramps; it rises to a height of 58 feet. Along with both mounds, archaeologists have also found evidence of borrow pits, other public buildings, and a dozen small houses constructed of pole and thatch. Archaeologists have interpreted this community plan as a sociogram, an architectural depiction of a social order based on ranked clans. According to this model, the Moundville community was segmented into a variety of different clan precincts, the ranked position of which was represented in the size and arrangement of paired earthen mounds around the central plaza. By 1300, the site was being used more as a religious and political center than as a residential town. This signaled the beginning of a decline, and by 1500 most of the area was abandoned.
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Crooks Mound
Crooks Mound in Louisiana is a large, conical, burial mound that was part of at least six episodes of burials. It is located in La Salle Parish in south central Louisiana. It is a large, conical, burial mound that was part of at least six episodes of burials. It measured about 16 ft high (4.9 m) and 85 ft wide (26 m). It contained roughly 1,150 remains that were placed however they were able to be fit into the structure of the mound. Sometimes body parts were removed in order to achieve that goal. Archaeologists think it was a holding house for the area that was emptied periodically in order to achieve this type of setup Most of the time, the people were just placed into the mound, but a few of the burials were in log-lined tombs or rarely stone lined tombs. Only a few out of each burial were interred with copper tools as grave goods. This suggests that the area was mainly for common people to be buried in. The site is on private land, usually with no public access but you are able to view it from the roadway. There were two separate mounds that make up the site. In 1938-1939 the site was completely excavated under the direction of James A. Ford. The mounds were 1,200 feet (370 m) southeast of French Fork Bayou and 450 feet (140 m) southwest of Cypress Bayou. Mound A was a conical mound that stood 21 feet high and 84 feet in diameter. Mound B was 2 feet (0.61 m) high and 50 feet (15 m) in diameter and located 110 feet (34 m) southwest of Mound A. Excavations revealed that Mound A had been built in three stages; Mound B was a single-stage structure. The mounds held 1,175 burials: 1,159 from Mound A, and 13 from Mound B (3 unknown). Pottery accompanied some burials; the weight of mound fill apparently crushed the vessels. The mounds were used for burials around 100 BCE to 400 CE. No evidence for domestic structures exists on or near the mounds, leading archaeologists to believe they were strictly for mortuary purposes.

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Miamisburg Mound

The Miamisburg Mound -- Miamisburg is the location of a prehistoric Indian burial mound (tumulus), believed to have been built by the Adena Culture, about 1000 to 200 BCE. Once serving as an ancient burial site, the mound has become perhaps the most recognizable historic landmark in Miamisburg. It is the largest conical burial mound in Ohio, originally nearly 70 feet tall (the height of a seven-story building) and 877 feet in circumference; it remains virtually intact from its construction perhaps 2500 years ago. Located in a city park at 900 Mound Avenue, it has been designated an Ohio historical site. It is a popular attraction and picnic destination for area families. Visitors can climb to the top of the Mound, via the 116 concrete steps built into its side.

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Ziggurats

Mesopotamian Ziggurat at Ur, c. 2100 B.C.

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A ziggurat "to build on a raised area" is a temple tower of the ancient Mesopotamian valley and Iran, having the form of a terraced pyramid of successively receding stories. Ziggurats were a form of temple common to the Sumerians, Babylonians and Assyrians of ancient Mesopotamia.The earliest examples of the ziggurat date from the end of the third millennium BCE and the latest date from the 6th century BCE. Built in receding tiers upon a rectangular, oval, or square platform, the ziggurat was a pyramidal structure. Sun-baked bricks made up the core of the ziggurat with facings of fired bricks on the outside. The facings were often glazed in different colors and may have had astrological significance. The number of tiers ranged from two to seven, with a shrine or temple at the summit. Access to the shrine was provided by a series of ramps on one side of the ziggurat or by a spiral ramp from base to summit. Notable examples of this structure include the Great Ziggurat of Ur and Khorsabad in Mesopotamia. The Mesopotamian ziggurats were not places for public worship or ceremonies. They were believed to be dwelling places for the gods. Through the ziggurat the gods could be close to mankind and each city had its own patron god. Only priests were permitted inside the ziggurat and it was their responsibility to care for the gods and attend to their needs. As a result the priests were very powerful members of Sumerian society.

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There are 32 known ziggurats near Mesopotamia. Four of them are in Iran, and the rest are mostly in Iraq. The most recent to be discovered was Sialk, in central Iran. One of the best preserved ziggurats is Choqa Zanbil in western Iran, which has survived despite the devastating eight year Iran-Iraq war of the 1980's in which many archeological sites were destroyed. The Sialk, in Kashan, Iran, is the oldest known zigurrat, dating to the early 3rd millennium BCE. Ziggurat designs ranged from simple bases upon which a temple sat, to marvels of mathematics and construction which spanned several terraced stories and were topped with a temple. An example of a simple ziggurat is the White Temple of Uruk, in ancient Sumer. The ziggurat itself is the base on which the White Temple is set. Its purpose is to get the temple closer to the heavens, and provide access from the ground to it via steps. An example of an extensive and massive ziggurat is the Marduk ziggurat, or Etemenanki, of ancient Babylon. Unfortunately, not much of even the base is left of this massive structure, yet archeological findings and historical accounts put this tower at seven multicolored tiers, topped with a temple of exquisite proportions. The temple is thought to have been painted and maintained an indigo color, matching the tops of the tiers. It is known that there were three staircases leading to the temple, two of which (side flanked) were thought to have only ascended half the ziggurat's height. Etemenanki, the name for the structure, is Sumerian and means "The Foundation of Heaven and Earth." Most likely being built by Hammurabi, the ziggurat's core was found to have contained the remains of earlier ziggurats and structures. The final stage consisted of a 15 meter hardened brick encasement constructed by King Nebuchadnezzar. It has been suggested that the ziggurat was a symbolic representation of the primeval mound upon which the universe was thought to have been created. The ziggurat may have been built as a bridge between heaven and earth. The temples of the Sumerians were believed to be a cosmic axis, a vertical bond between heaven and earth, and the earth and the underworld, and a horizontal bond between the lands. Built on seven levels the ziggurat represented seven heavens and planes of existence, the seven planets and the seven metals associated with them and their corresponding colors. Joseph Campbell in his Masks of God books says that there is archaelogical evidence supporting a direct link between Mesopotamian ziggurats and the pyramids of Egypt. Campbell also states that from Egypt, the Mesopotamian culture was passed on almost simultaneously on two separate fronts to Crete and India. From India it reached China and from there it crossed the ocean to the pre-columbian societies of Central and South America, which could explain the similarities between ziggurats and Mayan pyramids.

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Campbell further explores the geometry of the ziggurat and its philosophical and spiritual repercussions. According to Campbell, ziggurats first appeared during a sudden scientific and philosophical golden age where such other discoveries were made such as the invention of the wheel, the discovery of the calendar and astronomy, as well as the invention of the written word. For Campbell these are all related. The Earth needs 365 days to make a single revolution around the Sun, which is also an approximation of the number of degrees in a circle. Ziggurats, like all pyramidal structures, have a square base which could be encompassed within a circular area. The square base theoretically represents the additional five days. The five days can be seen in the four points of the square as well as the fifth point in the middle, which is the point of the square's equilibrium as well as the point of equilibrium of whatever circle that encompasses it. The fifth point represents the bridge to heaven represented by the circle, a universally considered symbol for infinity and perfection, and the terrestrial world in turn represented by the square. The highest point of a pyramid is a projection of the square's center point. This can be interpreted as the earth's highest point being heaven's lowest. There are examples of the philosophies surrounding the ziggurat in all major ancient civilizations of the world, which Campbell has affirmed is no accident. Examples can be observed in the seven leveled Chakra system of India as well as the dualistic Yin-Yang of China. The Biblical account of the Tower of Babel may be based on Mesopotamian ziggurats. The ziggurat style of architecture continues to be used and copied today in many places of the world. One example would be the University of Tennessee central library, in Knoxville, Tennessee.

University of Tennessee Central Library

Another would be the ziggurat by the river, near downtown Sacramento, California, used as corporate office space.

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Archaeologists dig up some of Nebuchadnezzar's legacy

Boraippa, Iraq - December 3, 1998 - Associated Press After 20 years of digging, Austrian archaeologists say they have determined the design of a Mesopotamian ziggurat - a temple tower - built by King Nebuchadnezzar some 2,500 years ago. The temple tower consisted of seven terraces built of millions of mud bricks and rose 231 feet, the scientists say. It probably was similar to the many ziggurats built by Nebuchadnezzar, the ruler who ordered the destruction of the ancient Jewish temple in Jerusalem, they add. The temple of Borsippa, 75 miles south of Baghdad, was constructed atop the ruins of a smaller tower from the second millennium B.C. Nebuchadnezzar's temple was dedicated to Nabu, the god of science and learning in Mesopotamia and the king's protector. Wilfrid Allinger-Csollich of the University of Innsbruck said that of all the temple towers built during the Nebuchadnezzar's 40-year reign, the Borsippa ziggurat has best survived the ravages of time. The Austrians removed thousands of tons of debris from the mound that gradually built up around the tower over the ages and uncovered most of the ziggurat's remains, which still rise to 172 feet. The work revealed the tower's exact dimensions, Allinger-Csollich said. "We did not use high-tech, but rudimentary means. We just counted the number of bricks," he said.
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The square bricks used by Nebuchadnezzar had standard dimensions -- 13 1/4 inches on each side and 3 1/4 inches in depth. The Austrians used mechanical shovels to reach the foundation, which they measured at 297 by 297 feet. More than 1 million fired bricks were used for the first level's 3.3-foot-tall outer wall, AllingerCsollich said. Given the Borsippa tower's height of 231 feet. The builders filled the inside of each level with tens of millions of unfired bricks held in place with cedar beams brought from Lebanon. The Austrians determined the tower had three staircases and are in the process of calculating how many steps each had. Their picture of the temple's exterior is almost complete. The first two levels were covered with bitumen and were black. The third, fourth and fifth were decorated with blue-glazed bricks and possibly adorned with bulls and lions. The sixth and seventh terraces, close to the sanctuary, were wholly made of mud brick. For cultic purposes the Mesopotamians thought mud to be the purest of substances. On top was Nabu's residence with rooms for servants and priests and wings for his wife, Tachmitum, his children and daughters. There must have been a big library of cuneiform tablets. Among the finds are several tablets and a foundation stone with inscriptions detailing why and how Nebuchadnezzar constructed the tower in Borsippa. One text says the king wanted the Borsippa built on the same design as that of the Tower of Babel, of which only the foundation survives in Babylon seven miles to the north. Another text quotes Nebuchadnezzar as declaring that Nabu's tower should reach the skies and be no less in grandeur than that of Babel, which was dedicated to the god Marduk.

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Ziggurats in Iraq
Sialk

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Sialk is a large ancient archeological structure in Kashan, Iran.It is claimed to be the world's oldest ziggurat, dating to the 3rd millennium BC, tucked away in the suburbs of the city of Kashan, in central Iran, close to Fin Garden. What remains of this 5000-year-old ziggurat is not in a favorable condition like many other ancient ruins in Iran. At the site, there are actually two structures (necropolis) at Sialk situated several hundred feet from each other. The three platforms of the larger ziggurat however still remain in place. Not much remains of the smaller structure. The Louvre has also excavated a cemetery near the structures that have been dated as far back as 7500 years. Sialk is one of four ziggurats built by the Elamite civilization. The other three are:

Choqa Zanbil (1250 BC), Susa ziggurat (1800 BC), and Haft Teppeh (1375 BC), all in Khuzestan.

The Ziggurat at Ur was rebuilt by Saddam Hussein with bricks stamped with his name. Sialk is the 32nd and most recent ziggurat to be discovered.

"Teppe Sialk" (In Persian, Tappe means "hill" or "mound") was first excavated by a team of European archeologists headed by Roman Ghirshman in the 1930s. His extensive studies were followed by D.E.McCown, Y. Majidzadeh, P. Amieh, up until the 1970s, and recently reviewed by Iran's Cultural Heritage Organization in 2002 (led by Shah-mirzadi, PhD, U of Penn). But like the thousands of other Iranian historical ruins, the treasures excavated here eventually found their way to museums such as The Louvre, The British Museum, The Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, and private collectors.

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The Sialk ziggurat has 3 platforms, and although the ziggurat itself was built in 2900 BC, it still predates Urnamu's Ziggurat at Ur, which was built in 2100 BC. However, the earliest archeological remains of the north mound date back to the middle of the 6th millennium BC, i.e. about 7500 years ago. A joint study between Iran's Cultural Heritage Organization, The Louvre, and Institute Francais de Recherche en Iran also verifies the oldest settlements in Sialk to date back to 5500 BC. Sialk, and the entire area around it, is thought to have first originated as a result of the pristine large water sources nearby that still run today. The Cheshmeh ye Soleiman (or "Solomon's Spring") has been bringing water to this area from nearby mountains for thousands of years. The Fin garden, built to its present form in the 1600s is a popular tourist attraction today. It is here where Persian Kings of the Safavid dynasty would spend their vacations away from their capital cities. It is also here where, Piruz (Abu-Lu'lu'ah), the Iranian assassin of Islam's second Caliph is buried. All these remains are located in the same location where Sialk is. What little is left of the two crumbling Sialk ziggurats is now threatened by the encroaching suburbs of the expanding city of Kashan. It is not uncommon to see kids playing soccer amid the ruins, while only several meters away lie the supposedly "off limit" 5,500 year old skeletons unearthed at the foot of the ziggurat. The site still remains to be registered as a World Heritage Site at UNESCO for protection. Sialk Wikipedia

Choqa Zanbil

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Choqa (or Chogha) Zanbil is an ancient Elamite complex in the Khuzestan province of Iran. It is one of the few extant ziggurats outside of Mesopotamia (the other is Sialk). It lies approximately 45 kilometres south of Susa and 230 kilometres north of Abadan by way of Ahvaz, which is 60 kilometres away. It was built about 1250 BCE by the king Untash-Napirisha, mainly to honour the great god Inshushinak. Its original name was Dur Untash, which means 'town of Untash', but it is unlikely that many people, besides priests and servants, ever lived there.

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The complex is protected by three concentric walls which define the main areas of the 'town'. The inner area is wholly taken up with a great ziggurat dedicated to the main god, which was built over an earlier square temple with storage rooms also built by Untash-Napirisha. The middle area holds eleven temples for lesser gods. It is believed that twenty-two temples were originally planned, but the king died before they could be finished, and his successors discontinued the building work. In the outer area are royal palaces, a funerary palace containing five subterranean royal tombs, and a necropolis containing non-elite tombs. Although construction in the city abruptly ended after Untash-Napirisha's death, the site was not abandoned, but continued to be occupied until it was destroyed by the Assyrian king Ashurbanipal in 640 bce. Some scholars speculate, based on the large number of temples and sanctuaries at Choqa Zanbil, that Untash-Napirisha attempted to create a new religious center (possibly intended to replace Susa) which would unite the gods of both highland and lowland Elam at one site. There is no adequate watersource near Choqa Zanbil, and in order to secure a supply to the town's inhabitants, the king dug a great canal from a river many kilometres away. This canal was a massive work at the time, and a length of it is yet in use. Archaeological excavations undertaken between 1951 and 1962 revealed the site again, and the ziggurat is considered to be the best preserved example in the world. In 1979, Choqa Zanbil became the first Iranian site to be inscribed on the UNESCO World Heritage List.

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