Tequila, Cocaine, and Ancient Mummies

Tobacco and various hallucinogenic drugs were smoked all over the Americas as early as 5000 BC, in shamanistic rituals. Traces of cocaine and tobacco, plants only to have existed in the Americas prior to Columbus, were found in some Egyptian mummies.



Robert Sepehr is an author, producer, and anthropologist specializing in linguistics, archeology, and paleobiology (archeogenetics). READ: Species with Amnesia: Our Forgotten History

Pre-Inca Observatory Is Oldest in Americas, Study Says

A mysterious set of massive monuments in Peru make up the oldest solar observatory in the Americas, according to a new study. The 2,300-year-old Thirteen Towers of Chankillo were used for marking the sun's position throughout the year—an activity that was part of the sun-worshipping culture of the Inca, scientists recently announced.

The large stone towers are arranged in a line along a ridge near Chankillo, a walled hilltop ruin north of Lima. "This is the oldest known example of landscape timekeeping in the Americas," said Ivan Ghezzi, lead author of the study and an archaeologist at the Pontifical Catholic University of Peru. Ghezzi and archaeo-astronomer Clive Ruggles of the University of Leicester, England, report their findings in a recent issue of the journal Science. 

 

The Inca civilization, which took power in the region around A.D. 1200, are known to have kept track of the positions on the horizon where the sun rose and set. Writings by Spanish conquerors describe the Inca's methods of tracking these positions using sets of pillars.

But nearly all of these markers were apparently destroyed in a campaign to undermine the Inca Empire in the mid- to late 1500s.

 

"Astronomy was the backbone of the political and ideological system that supported the authority of the Inca rulers," Ghezzi said.

 

 

The Chankillo site appears to have been used only from about 300 B.C. to A.D. 1, meaning that an unidentified pre-Inca culture built the monuments. Only one similar site in the Americas had been spotted so far, on the Island of the Sun in Lake Titicaca, on the border between Bolivia and Peru. 

 

"Now we know how far back the solar cult goes," Ghezzi said. "What the documents are telling us about the Incas [using pillars to track the sun] is correct." The Chankillo towers vary from 7 to 20 feet (2 to 6 meters) high. But they are as precisely spaced as the teeth of a comb—roughly 15 feet (5 meters) apart. They seem to be marking regular divisions of the year for a solar calendar, the study authors said.

 

The scientists also found that one of the nearby buildings had an odd architectural feature: a 131-foot-long (40-meter-long) corridor running along the side that lacked any windows or doors into the main building.

 

"The best explanation for that architectural space is it led people to an observation point to have a full view of the towers," Ghezzi said. 

 

Throughout the year, the points along the horizon where the sun rises and sets trace an arc. In Peru the sun rises and sets farthest north on the longest day of the year, the winter solstice, and farthest south on the shortest day, the summer solstice.

 

Day and night are roughly equal in length during the autumnal and vernal equinoxes. Only from the vantage point at the opening of the corridor do the towers precisely span the solar arc. It appears the opening of this corridor was a ceremonial site where people made offerings, since the researchers found a variety of artifacts ritually buried there. 

 

There also appears to be another observation spot on the other side of the ridge for watching the setting sun. "Individuals with the status to access [these observation spots] and conduct ceremonies would have had the power to regulate time, ideology, and the rituals that bound this society together," Ghezzi and Ruggles wrote in their paper.

 

David Dearborn, a physicist at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in California who studies ancient astronomy, called the new study "a very credible case."  "With the abundant evidence for Inca interest in astronomy, and for its use in social organization, archaeologists have long suspected that earlier cultures also may have engaged in such activities," he said. "Finally, in this work, material evidence is presented that strongly supports such suspicions."

 

Brian Bauer, an archaeologist at the University of Illinois in Chicago, agreed. "There are various announcements like this every year, but most of them are not very rigorous," Bauer said. "I found this [study] very, very convincing," he added. "It ties in with what we already knew about the Incas. "It shows they were both using a solar calendar and [that] the solstices were used to mark the beginning and end of the year. Because it was being carefully observed, there were probably large rituals associated with this." 

Other researchers have made claims of ancient observation sites in the Americas, some of which would outdate Chankillo. Last May, for example, Robert Benfer of the University of Missouri and colleagues announced their discovery of the oldest astronomical observatory in the Western Hemisphere at another site near Lima. The so-called Buena Vista site dates back 4,200 years—making it 1,900 years older than the Chankillo site.

 

 

Ancient Pre-Inca Royal Tomb Found in Peru

The Ancient Olmec Culture of Mesoamerica - ROBERT SEPEHR

 

 

 

 

 

The Legendary Lost Continent of Mu

Ancient Giants of the New World - ROBERT SEPEHR

According to Paiute Indian oral legends, a tribe called the Si-Te-Cah were a native American race of tall red-haired giants that once occupied the area in the distant past.

Amazingly, 9,400 year old Mummified remains were indeed found in a cave in Nevada, though scientific study is NOT allowed on the remains for political reasons.

Sarah Winnemucca Hopkins, a prominent female Native American activist, educator, and daughter of Paiute Chief Winnemucca, related many stories passed down in her tribe, first hand, about the Si-Te-Cah in her book Life Among the Paiutes, published in 1883.

"My people say that the tribe we exterminated had red hair. I have some of their hair, handed down from father to son. I have a dress which has been in our family a great many years, trimmed with the reddish hair. I am going to wear it some time when I lecture. It is called a mourning dress, and no one has such a dress but my family."

The oldest mummies in the world are the Chinchorro mummies from northern Chile and southern Peru. While the earliest Egyptian artificial mummy dates to around 3000 BC, the earliest Chinchorro artificial mummy dates to around 5050 BC. And while the earliest Egyptian natural mummy (red-head named "Ginger") dates to around 3400 BC, the earliest Chinchorro natural mummy dates to around 7020 BC.

The Chinchorro culture was the only Andean culture that performed mummification on all members of their society. In all of the other Andean cultures, only the elite were mummified. These photographs of Chinchorro mummies show that they have Caucasoid hair and features. This may mean that only the Chinchorro culture consisted exclusively of Caucasoids, and that all of the other Andean cultures were comprised of a Caucasoid elite ruling over a Mongoloid proletariat.

"Native Races of the Pacific States" by Hubert Bancroft, published in 1874, Bancroft says that in Peru there were "numerous vague traditions of settlements or nations of white, bearded men, clad in long robes, who regulated the calendar, and were possessed of an advanced civilization".

A major burial site of the Nazca culture was the Chauchilla Cemetery, established in 200 AD, used for 600 to 700 years. The hair of the mummies are obviously Caucasoid and they’re all wearing long robes. The ceramic vessels were produced by the Moche culture (100 to 800 AD), they all have beards, their facial features are Caucasoid, and again, they’re all wearing long robes.

The photograph below of the village Wari mummies, one of the many pre-Inca peoples who inhabited the area now known as Lima in Peru. They were directly taken from a pyramid bearing the blue-eyed masks you see in the picture. Besides the mummy wrapped in six layers of wool, needles were found and other textile materials.

All over the New World we find legends of Quetzalcoatl (by Aztecs), Kukulkan (by Mayans), Amalivaka (by Tamanacs), Manco-Capac (by Incans), Viracocha (by Aymaras). All of them describe: a tall white man, blue eyed, with long blond-reddish hair and beard. Numerous PRE-HISPANIC Caucasian mummies have been found in South America with fair hair, some with blue stones covering the eyes, as well as gold masks with similar striking blue eyes, matching the legends of the pale-skinned Sun-gods.

Two thousand years ago a mysterious and little known civilization, with a blue-eyed elite, ruled the northern coast of Peru. Its people were called the Moche. They built huge pyramids that still dominate the surrounding countryside; some well over a hundred feet tall. The Lord of Sipán tomb is held by some archaeologists to be one of the most important archaeological discoveries in this region of the world in the last 30 years, as the main tomb was found intact and untouched by thieves.

Pizarro asked who the white skinned redheads were. The Inca Indians replied that they were the last descendants of the Viracochas. The Viracochas, they said, were a divine race of white men with beards. They were so like the Spanish that the Europeans were called Viracochas the moment they came to the Inca Empire. The Incas thought they were the Viracochas who had come sailing back across the Pacific.

According to the principal Inca legend, before the reign of the first Inca, the sun-god, Con-Ticci Viracocha, had taken leave of his kingdom in present day Peru and sailed off into the Pacific with all his subjects.

When the Spaniards came to Lake Titicaca, up in the Andes, they found the mightiest ruins in all South America - Tiahuanaco. They saw a hill reshaped by man into a stepped pyramid, classical masonry of enormous blocks, beautifully dressed and fitted together, and numerous large statues in human form.

They asked the Indians to tell them who had left these enormous ruins. The well known chronicler, Cieza de Leon, was told in reply that these things had been made long before the Incas came to power. They were made by white and bearded men like the Spaniards themselves.

The White men had finally abandoned their statues and gone with the leader, Con-Ticci Viracocha, first up to Cuzco, and then down to the Pacific. They were given the Inca name of Viracocha, or "sea foam', and vanished over the sea.

Archeologists have discovered a lost city deep within the Amazon rain forest of the long-lost tribe of white-skinned, blonde-haired people called the Cloud People. The Cloud People, also known in legend as “the white warriors of the clouds” established expansive pre-Inca kingdom located in the northern regions of the Andes in present-day Peru. Other pre-Hispanic groups referred to the Cloud People... as “White Gods” due to their height, blonde hair and blue eyes. According to Inca legend, the Chachapoyas remembered that their ancestors came from the East.

Aztec codices are books written by pre-Columbian and colonial-era Aztecs. Note that the giant pictured below has a name near him, the text reads Quinametzin, one of the old ones.

Fallen Angels, Giants, Nephilim - Species with Amnesia: Our Forgotten History

Thank you for supporting Atlantean Gardens:  https://www.patreon.com/user?u=5703352

Quetzalcoatl, Kukulkan, Viracocha, Votan, Gucumatz - ROBERT SEPEHR

When the Spanish conquistadors and the Catholic fathers first arrived on the shores of Mexico, and in South America, and when the English and French colonizers and missionaries first penetrated Canada and United States, they received from the native Indians tribes scattered in the western hemisphere several versions of a tradition of a "Bearded God" who had in the distant past visited their ancestors, taught them their culture, and mysteriously disappeared, but who would eventually return to them.

Although the traditions from the different Indian groups regarding the "Bearded God" do not agree in every detail, there being a variety of versions, yet in the principal points these Indian traditions, from Canada to Chile, have a close resemblance to one another.

 

The Feathered Serpent God is one of the great mysteries of many ancient cultures. He was called Quetzalcoatl by the Aztecs, Viracocha by the Incas, Kukulkan by the Mayas, Gucumatz in Central America, Votan in Palenque, and Zamna in Izamal. He and his ‘men’ were described as being tall, bearded, with white skin in some writings and as someone of stature with hair on the face and beautiful emerald blue eyes in others.

 

Legends all seem to agree that Quetzalcoatl was tall and light-skinned, with blonde hair, blue eyes, and a beard. His name translates to “plumed serpent”. Fray Juan Torquemada, the Franciscan missioner, who collected traditions about Quetzalcoatl from the natives of Old Mexico, says:

"Quetzalcoatl had blonde hair, and wore a black robe sewn with little crosses of red color." 

Image of Quetzalcoatl from a public school textbook in Mexico (Secretaria de Education Publica Mexico)

Mexico's legendary and precolonial past is represented here with the central focus on Quetzalcoatl, god of the Toltecs, Mayans, and Aztecs. He wears a headdress of quetzal feathers and a conch on his chest, a symbol of the wind god; he carries a curved baton, the scepter of the seven stars or constellations. Behind him are the pyramids of the Sun and Moon in the city of Teotihuacan, the great political and religious center of pre-Hispanic Mexico.
 

Mural: The Legend of Quetzalcoatl, Palacio Nacional de Mexico, Diego Rivera 1929-30

The image below is of another mural, this time in Cholula Puebla Mexico, of a blond bearded Quetzalcoatl.

This is a mural in Cholula Puebla of a blond bearded Quetzalcoatl

The world famous explorer Thor Heyerdahl claimed that in ancient Incan legend there was a sun-god named Con-Tici Viracocha who was the supreme head of the mythical fair-skinned people in Peru.

 

The original name for Viracocha was Kon-Tiki or Illa-Tiki, which means Sun-Tiki or Fire-Tiki. Kon-Tiki was high priest and sun-king of these legendary "white men" who left enormous ruins on the shores of Lake Titicaca.

 

The legend continues with the mysterious bearded white men being attacked by a chief named Cari who came from the Coquimbo Valley.

They had a battle on an island in Lake Titicaca, and the fair race was massacred. However, Kon-Tiki and his closest companions managed to escape and later arrived on the Pacific coast.

The legend ends with Kon-Tiki and his companions disappearing westward out to sea.

 

When the Spaniards came to Peru, Heyerdahl asserted, the Incas told them that the colossal monuments that stood deserted about the landscape were erected by a race of white gods who had lived there before the Incas themselves became rulers.

The Incas described these "white gods" as wise, peaceful instructors who had originally come from the north in the "morning of time" and taught the Incas' primitive forefathers architecture as well as manners and customs.  They were unlike other Native Americans in that they had "white skins and long beards" and were taller than the Incas.

The Incas said that the "white gods" had then left as suddenly as they had come and fled westward across the Pacific. After they had left, the Incas themselves took over power in the country.

Below: Ancient Untouched Royal Tomb Found in Peru

 

 

♥ Legendary Pre-Flood Civilizations ♥

Legend of the Seven Cities of Gold

In the 16th century, Spanish conquistadores had noticed the native peoples' fine artifacts of gold and silver long before any legend of "golden men" or "lost cities" fired the imagination of kings and commoners alike.

 

The prevalence of such valuable artifacts, and the natives apparent ignorance of their value, supported the native rumors as to a plentiful source for them.

The Spaniards settlers in New Spain (now Mexico) began to pursue these mythical "Seven Cities of Gold" that they heard were located across the desert, hundreds of miles to the north.

 

Supposedly situated somewhere in south western Continental North America, these legendary cities were said to be filled with great and limitless riches. Essentially, the Seven Cities are the El Dorado (Spanish for "the golden one"), of North America.

 

Originally El Hombre Dorado (the golden man), El Indio Dorado (the golden native), or El Rey Dorado (the golden king), was the term used by Europeans to describe a tribal chief of the Muisca native people of Colombia, who as an initiation rite covered himself with gold dust and dove into Lake Guatavita.

 

Conquistadores Lázaro Fonte and Hernán Perez de Quesada attempted (unsuccessfully) to drain the lake in 1545 using a "bucket chain" of labourers. After 3 months, the water level had been reduced by 3 metres, and only a small amount of gold was recovered, with a value of 3000–4000 pesos (approx. 100,000 USD today; a peso or piece of eight of the 15th century weighs .88oz of 93% pure silver).

 

 

Later, it became the name of a legendary "Lost City of Gold", also known as Manõa, that fascinated explorers since the days of the Spanish conquistadors and was supposedly located on Lake Parime in the highlands of Guyana, South America. There are all kinds of romantic legends connected with these lost cities, especially in regards to why they fell into ruin, abandonment, and were eventually forgotten.

 

The stories may have some of their roots in an earlier Portuguese legend about seven cities founded on the mysterious island of Antillia by a Catholic expedition in the 8th century.

 

It was said that a sizable group of Visigothic Christian bishops fled to the island from the Muslim invasion of the Iberian peninsula, taking vast riches with them to eventually settle on an island somewhere in the Atlantic. 

 

In both cases there exist actual ancient documentation and maps, but nothing concrete has ever been officially found, leaving the Seven Cities in the realm of legend.

 

In 1539, the Spaniard Francisco Vásquez de Coronado led a large expedition north from Mexico to search for wealth and the "Seven Cities of Cibola". Instead of wealth, he found farming peoples living in the flat-roofed adobe towns in what are today Arizona and New Mexico. These were what remained of the Hopi, Zuni, and was inhabited largely by the Pueblo Indians of today.

 

Coronado was disappointed by the lack of wealth among the Pueblos, but he then heard of a wealthy civilization named Quivira far to the east, where the chief drank from golden cups hanging from the trees. 

 

In 1541, He led his army of more than one thousand Spaniards and Indian allies onto the Great Plains in search of this mysterious civilization which supposedly accumulated vast resources of gold. Coronado found Quivira:

 

“well settled... the land itself being very flat and black and being very well watered by the rivulets and springs and rivers. I found prunes like those of Spain, and nuts and very good sweet grapes and mulberries.”

 

The Quivirans were simple people. Both men and women were nearly naked. They “were large people of good build” many of the men being over six feet tall. They seemed like giants compared to the Spaniards. Disappointed at his failure to find wealth, Coronado turned his face toward New Mexico and marched back across the plains.

 

By the mid-1570's, the Spanish silver strike at Potosi in Upper Peru (modern Bolivia) was producing unprecedented real wealth for many.

 

In 1695, bandeirantes in the south from Sao Paulo struck gold along a tributary of the Sao Francisco River in the upper highlands of Brazil.

 

This new prospect of real gold over-shadowed and replaced the promise of "gold men" and "lost cities" in the vast interior of the north, leaving them as myth and legend.

 

 

The Incan Legend of the Viracocha

Ancient Untouched Royal Tomb Found in Peru - ROBERT SEPEHR

An ancient royal tomb, older than the Inca civilization, and filled with treasures and mummified women dating back over 1,200 years, has been found in Peru. This is the first such tomb belonging to South America’s Wari civilization found untouched by vandals, the National Geographic said.

Long before the Inca built Machu Picchu, the Wari empire flourished throughout much of present-day Peru. At a time when Paris had just 25,000 residents, the Wari capital Huari was home to 40,000 people at its height, according to National Geographic, which reported the find.

Though the surrounding site has been looted many times, this mausoleum has managed to evade grave robbers for hundreds of years, archaeologists say. The fact that most of the skeletons were of women and the very rich grave goods, leads archeologists to the interpretation that this was a tomb of the royal elite.

Protected from looters by 30 tons of stone, those interred in the mausoleum lay exactly where Wari attendants left them long ago. It is very likely that the children's bodies found inside were placed there as an offering, and to accompany the prominent person.

"The adult was likely a master weaver", said Isabel Flores, an archaeologist at Pucllana. "The infant", she added, "was probably killed and buried in the tomb as an offering in the adult's honor. When we unwrap the bodies, we will be able to determine the adult's age, position in society and gender," said Ms Flores.

The Wari civilisation was active in an area that now contains Lima from approximately 600 to 1,000 AD, some 500 years before the Inca empire emerged.

Seventy Wari tombs have been unearthed at the Pucllana site, which is nestled in a residential neighbourhood in central Lima. The funerary bundles are large textile wrapped individuals. The bundles themselves appear like individuals, with a large circular body and a false head made of textile or wood.

Ms Flores and Gladys Paz, the head archaeologist of the team that made the discovery, both said that this most recent find is among the site's richest treasures yet.

"This is the most important find in decades of excavation, because the mummies are intact," said Ms Paz.

Piercing blue eyes undimmed by the passing of 1,300 years, this is the Lady of the Mask – a mummy whose discovery could reveal the secrets of a lost culture. She was found by archaeologists excavating a pyramid in Peru’s capital city.

It is the first time a tomb from the region’s Wari culture has been discovered intact and gives historians the chance to pin down exactly how the pre-Incas buried their dead.

Archaeologists have uncovered this mummy and three others belonging to the ancient Wari culture in Peru

The mummy - assumed to be a noblewoman because of the ornate mask - was found in a crouching position surrounded by ceramics and textiles associated with female weavers.

“Her face startled me at first,” said 19-year-old Miguel Angel, one of the workers who carried her body out of the tomb. "I wasn’t expecting to find anything like that.” Earlier the workers at the site removed other adult mummies found lying near the lady of the mask.

 

Species with Amnesia: Our Forgotten History

Massive Monolithic Stone Figures of Easter Island

Moai are monolithic human figures carved from rock on the Chilean Polynesian island of Easter Island. Recent excavations there are revealing new discoveries about the many massive Moai figures carved centuries ago.

Almost all Moai have overly large heads three-eighths the size of the whole statue. The production and transportation
of the 887 statues are considered remarkable creative and physical feats. The tallest Moai erected, called Paro, was almost 33 feet high and weighed 82 tons; the heaviest erected was at Ahu Tongariki, weighing 86 tons; and one unfinished sculpture, if completed, would have been approximately 69 feet tall with a weight of about 270 tons.

The islanders themselves tore down most of the standing Moai after their civilization broke down.

Species With Amnesia: Our Forgotten History

Lost City of 'Cloud People' Found in Peru - ROBERT SEPEHR

  Shoulder to shoulder and nearly naked, gnome-like statues have stood for centuries at Los Pinchudos, a stone-and-plaster complex of nine tombs built into a high rock cleft in one of Peru’s northern cloud forests. The two-foot-tall (half-meter-tall) mahogany carvings bore silent witness as waves of looters hiked up to ransack the burial chambers. Vandals even hacked down one of the six unusual statues, whose robust male anatomy inspired the name Los Pinchudos (slang for “the big penises”).

 By the time locals led researchers to the site in 1980, the tombs were nearly empty. Yet the initial absence of mummies didn’t deter archaeologist Warren Church, who’s worked for 19 years to save Los Pinchudos and learn its secrets.

 Little is known about the hill tribes that in the tenth century began carving settlements out of the dense cloud forests in the mountains between the Marañón and Huallaga Rivers. Inca contemporaries called them Chachapoya, the Cloud People. Although they left no written language, they did leave scores of stone ruins in this vertical wilderness of orchids, butterflies, and jaguars, where thick brush and mists camouflage sheer drop-offs. “You can literally find your legs dangling over empty space, your armpits supported by tree branches,” says Church.

  For more than 500 years the Chachapoya cut farm terraces and villages into these steep slopes, raised llamas and guinea pigs—and fought each other. Around 1470 the Inca conquered the region. When Spaniards arrived in 1535, the surviving Chachapoya joined them to rout the Inca, impressing the Europeans with their battle prowess.  By 1700 smallpox and other diseases had killed most of the Chachapoya.

  Los Pinchudos is a vital link to this lost people. Researchers don’t know who was buried here but think the tombs relate to Chachapoya ruins nearby at Gran Pajatén.

  Even in its looted state the site has yielded tantalizing artifacts such as shell jewelry, which suggests contact with coastal people.

  Most surprising are the statues. Wood artifacts rarely survive the humidity. Scientists attribute the figures’ preservation to the site’s location in an arid climate. The tombs might have been lost without Church and Peruvian conservator Ricardo Morales Gamarra, who restored the eroding foundations.

  Church believes Los Pinchudos and its surroundings will teach volumes about this extinct culture: “My mind races, thinking of what the forests still hold.” Now a team of archaeologists, working on a tip-off from a local farmer, have uncovered a burial site in a 820ft-deep cave. The researchers have so far found five mummies, two of which are intact, as well as ceramics, textiles and wall paintings.

“This is a discovery of transcendental importance. We have found these five mummies but there could be many more,” Mr Corbera said. “We think this is the first time any kind of underground burial site this size has been found belonging to Chachapoyas or other cultures in the region.”

 “The remote site for this cemetery tells us that the Chachapoyas had enormous respect for their ancestors because they hid them away for protection,” Mr Corbera said.   Locals call the cave Iyacyecuj, or Enchanted Water in Quechua, because of its spiritual importance and its underground rivers. The tribe had white skin and blonde hair – features which intrigue historians, as there is no known European ancestry in the region, where most (other) inhabitants are darker skinned.

  The tribe’s own name is unknown. The word Chachapoyas is thought to come from the Quechua for “cloud people”, and is the name by which they were known to the Incas, because of the cloud forests they inhabited in what is now northern Peru.

  A white-skinned people who were famed as ferocious fighters, the Chachapoyas held out against the Incans, who ruled an empire stretching from southern Chile to northern Ecuador until their conquest by the Spanish.

  Archaeologists found an underground burial vault inside a cave with five mummies, two intact with skin and hair. ‘The women and their husbands always dressed in woollen clothes and in their heads they wear their llautos [a woollen turban], which are a sign they wear to be known everywhere.’

  Chachapoyas chronicler Pedro Cieza de Leon wrote of the tribe: ‘They are the whitest and most handsome of all the people that I have seen, and their wives were so beautiful that because of their gentleness, many of them deserved to be the Incas’ wives and to also be taken to the Sun Temple.

 

Submerged Pyramid Discovered in the Atlantic Ocean