Manataka® American Indian Council
Monolith raises questions about ancient Mexican culture
Deep in the Huastec jungle (Mexico) the enormous carved stone
monolith stands, suspended over the pool of water where a team of
archaeologists discovered it. A powerful woman stands at the center
of the carving, flanked by two smaller decapitated women. A stream
of liquid flows from the headless women toward the woman in the
center. The women on each side are thought to represent
priestesses, and the liquid represents the life force, while the
woman at the center represents Mother Earth; so the priestesses seem
to be nurturing the Earth with their life force. The truth is,
however, nobody knows for sure what these stones mean.
One thing is fairly certain - because of the recurrence of the
number 13, the monolith seems to be a lunar calendar of some sort.
That's why it set the archaeological world abuzz with discussion
when it was unveiled in November, 2006. It is believed to have been
created around 600 BCE - 2,000 years before what was previously the
oldest discovered calendar in the Americas, the Aztec Calendar,
which dates to 1400 CE.
"What
this discovery did was to force us to stop, turn around and dig
deeper into the history of the Huastecan groups to re-evaluate
them," said Guillermo Ahuja, the lead archaeologist at Tamtoc who
discovered the stone tablet, or Monolith 32, as it's called. The
discovery was especially surprising given that the Huastec people
were thought to be a relatively recent culture. Now archaeologists
are wondering whether the Huastecs - or their predecessors, the
Proto-Huastecs - might have played a bigger role in the development
of Mesoamerica than previously thought. It has also raised questions
about whether the Olmecs might have had an influence in the region,
since there are cultural similarities, or whether there might have
been a third group of people, the so-called Mother Culture, that
dominated the area first.
What is known is that Tamtoc was inhabited by a sophisticated people
who enjoyed a high standard of living for the time, with one of the
most sophisticated hydraulic systems in Mesoamerica. It was first
excavated by a group of French archaeologists in the 1960s, but
their project was short-lived, and work did not begin on the site in
earnest until 2001. It's the only major Huastec archaeological site,
and like the Huastec people themselves, it is shrouded in mystery.
The intricate carvings the Huastecs left on the stones leave clues
to a culture in which women clearly played a strong role as
governors, priestesses and warriors. The monolith was discovered in
a graveyard surrounded by the remains of 84 women - 90 percent of
all the remains discovered there. Ahuja has pieced together a story
that might explain why. The monolith seems to have been toppled from
its original location, broken into pieces and covered with mud.
Ahuja estimates the time period at about the same time that several
coastal cities were flooded, probably by a tsunami-type surge,
around 300 BCE. Ahuja believes the sacred tablet was impossible to
resurrect, and the people decided to let it lie and create a sacred
site where it was buried. The most honored and sacred members of
that society were permitted to be buried there. Women became
goddesses when they gave birth, and those who died in childbirth
were deified, and so they were allowed to be buried along with the
Great Mother.
An
important item backing this theory was another find: a headless
woman's naked figure, carved of limestone and polished to a high
sheen. The figure, found in a pool that once stood at the feet of
the monolith, was believed to be an offering to the gods. The raised
dots on her arms and legs correspond with the number of days in the
lunar calendar, according to archaeologist Ricardo Muñoz, while the
width of her hips and the fullness of her breasts indicate a woman
at the height of her fertility.
With only six years of excavation and analysis behind them, there
are many secrets yet to be unearthed, and Ahuja and his team are
enormously excited at the possibilities - discoveries that might
contradict much of what historians think they already know about
ancient Mexican history.
Source: My San Antonio (11 October 2007)
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for photos see:
Ancient Mexican city Raises Questions About Mesoamerica's Mother
Culture
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~Submitted by Linda VanBibber, Manataka Communications Chair