Evidence in Support of Old and New World Ancient Contact

According to the established view, apart from a few Vikings, people in the Old and New Worlds were not in contact with each other prior to the travels of Columbus, 500 years ago. However, what I found, in the early days of my research, is that there were remarkably similar religious traditions, customs, and legends, throughout the Early World and it didn’t seem that this was the result of parallel development as we have been led to believe. As my studies continued, I became even more convinced that early history books are wrong.

There are huge stone dolmens in many parts of the world, including on opposite sides of the Atlantic, and those in Brazil have been compared to the hundreds in Algeria. (1) Stone circles, some with attached lines of stones, are found in Europe and Asia, West Africa, the Pacific Islands, and Australia.  A small number have also been found in the Americas. The custom of building huge domed earth burial mounds spread across Europe the Northern Hemisphere and into parts of Australia. There were also large numbers of them in North America and there were some in parts of South America such as in Colombia and Ecuador.

The Ancients associated mountains with their gods and in the Old and New Worlds, they built artificial ones (pyramids.)  There were burials in many of the pyramids but some, such as in Babylon and Mexico, were monuments on which priests enacted rituals on festive occasions.

Various Old and New World peoples had legends of a series of past ages each of which ended in watery or fiery destruction.  Donald. A. Mackenzie explains that the following colours were attributed to some of them:

India (1) –White,Red.Yellow,Black

“       (11)-  White,Yellow,Red,Black.

Celtic –White,Red,Yellow,Black

Mexican. White,Yellow,Red,Black.

Greek.-Yellow,White,Red,Black.

Mackenzie points out that Indian (11) and Mexican are identical, which suggests that this tradition was introduced into the New World by contact. (2)

Nine was a sacred number in many Old and New World cultures. It’s often found in Irish legends, and in Norse mythology where there are nine worlds, and among various peoples in the Northern Hemisphere.

For 2,000 years, on the winter solstice, the Chinese emperor climbed Mount Tia, one of the county’s five sacred mountains, which was associated with the east and rebirth, and he offered prayers to the gods. After the Altar of Heaven was built in Beijing’s Forbidden City, (between 1406-1420), on the winter solstice, the Emperor climbed the nine steps on each of its three tiers, (these represented the nine layers of heaven), and he prayed to the gods in the centre of the nine concentric circles on the summit.

The Mayan tradition of the nine levels of the world was reflected in sacred architecture in

various buildings. The Temple of the Inscriptions at Palenque, completed in 683, was aligned to, and consecrated on, the December solstice. On his sarcophagus lid, Pakal is depicted laying on his back looking up from the base of the World Tree. He is about to start his Afterlife journey, a new beginning, after rising through the nine levels on the winter solstice. The mythical World Tree, which rises into the heavens from the notional centre of the Earth, appeared in Assyrian art and it can still be found in the traditions of the Dyak in Borneo ( 3) There are representations of it at Externsteine in Germany. In Norse legend its known as Ysdrasil and there’s a representation of it on a tapestry at the old Christiansborg Palace in Copenhagen Denmark. (4)

Old and New World people also had traditions of the World Mountain which rose from the Primal Sea on the Creation and they usually built it in stone. There were large stone models of it in Teotihuacan, and elsewhere in Mexico, in Tiahuanaco in the Andes, in Egypt, Assyria, and Babylon. In Central Asia it’s called Meru and in Cambodia it’s represented by the great temple of Angkor Wat.

In the 18^th century, the Irish Viscount Kingsborough was convinced he had found the Lost Israelite tribes in the Americas and he wrote twenty illustrated books, Antiquities of Mexico, in support of his theory, which resulted in his bankruptcy. Although many Cherokee traditions are remarkably similar to those of Ancient Israel, (5) there’s no evidence to show that they are of Israelite descent. However, there are controversial claims about Phoenician inscriptions on North American rocks and of Phoenician coins found in that country. If only some of them are authentic, then they suggest early Semitic links with this region.

Around 3,200 years ago, the Olmec civilisation ‘arose’ in Mexico but historians never query who these people were or where they came from. The Olmec’s are renowned for the huge stone heads that were carved by their stonemasons, many of the faces are of African and Asian appearance, but one figure, at La Venta, who appears to be wearing a turban, has pronounced Semitic features and is said to resemble Egyptian bas relief carvings of Semites (6). Also, a head of baked clay, at Balsas, in Mexico, is said to resemble the Phoenician god Melkarth

The Valley of Teotihuacan, in Mexico, is where the great Central American city, of the same name, was built around the second century b.c.e.  Although the identity of its founders is also a mystery, it’s worth noting that this was the era of the Punic Wars that were fought between Rome and Carthage in North Africa and which resulted in the total destruction of the latter. Carthage was founded by the Phoenicians and it controlled trade outside the Straits of Gibraltar. Seeing that defeat was on the horizon, could it be that some of the Carthaginians fled to a land which was unknown to the Romans at that time? I.E to the Valley of Teotihuacan in Mexico? There’s no evidence to support this suggestion but it’s worth mentioning.

The Aztecs adopted, as their own, the heritage of a tall, fair-skinned, race, the Toltecs and it’s from these people who their rulers claimed descent. (7) Maybe there’s more to this tradition than ‘meets the eye’ because the Aztec ruling class were fair-skinned whereas their subjects were short and dark-skinned. The name Toltec means ‘builders’ and it was given to these people as their identity is unknown. The Toltec civilisation flourished in Mexico between the 10^th and 12th century C.E and important elements of its religion are found in Teotihuacan which was abandoned in 700 C.E.

The Mayan city of Chichen Itza, in the Yucatan, Mexico, is famous for its Pyramid Temple of

Kukulcan which was built in a different style to the city’s early architecture. This well-preserved pyramid is thought to be either the work of the Toltecs or else that it was influenced by them. Murals in Chichen’s Toltec style Temple of the Warriors show people of a turbaned white race attacking a village and carrying booty to their boats. Also shown are black people and the sacrifice of a golden-haired man. (8) Were the marauding whites Toltecs?

When I was in Chichen Itza, many years ago, I had a conversation with Prof. Gualberto Zapata Alonzo about his book, ‘An Overview of the Mayan World.’ Alonzo reports similarities between the Japanese and Mayan languages. He says: ‘We have other reasons to believe in the reality of a cultural contact between the Maya and the Asians’ Quoting the late Carlos Echanove Trujillo’s comments on Copan, he refers to the latter’s description of the stelae of Copan A which depicts a Chinese –looking face and stelae B’ which has a head crown with a headdress of decidedly Asiatic influence. ( 9 )

The most significant evidence of Old and New World contact ,which has never previously been revealed, is that in both regions there were versions of a 5,000 year old Pleiades linked ‘sky-god’ linked religion. (10) According to the Mayan calendar, the present age began in 3,113 b.c.e.  (Just eight years before that of the Hindus.)  In that era there was flooding, and climate change, in many parts of the world and several civilisation arose ‘fully developed’. In other words, this was not the birth of civilisation but its rebirth after the Flood destroyed the previous age.  There were hundreds of similar, allegorical, deluge stories about this event and they were often linked with a great civiliser who taught people agriculture and many useful arts. (11)

The great civiliser of man was known under many names. In the New World, the Aztecs called him Quetzalcoatl, the Incas Viracocha, in Colombia he was Bochica, among the Wabanaki, in Maine and the Atlantic coast of Canada, he was Glooscap. In the Old Word, the Egyptians knew him as Osiris, in Sumeria he was called Ea or Enki and the West African Dogon, know him as Lebe, He was also known to the Australian Aborigines. The story of the events that, reputedly, happened at that time was passed on by initiates, from generation to generation, and it was explained to the general public in allegorical stories often with the use of animal and geometric symbolism. In both the Old and New Worlds, the most popular animal symbol was the snake which was sometimes linked with a disc. Civilising gods were associated with a serpent and, over the years, it was linked with numerous gods and goddesses. One form of Mayan serpent symbolism is remarkably similar to that of the Ancient Egyptians. It appears in Mesopotamian legends and in those of the Phoenicians. It was also associated with Ea. In Central Asia there were representations of it on temples. The Basques have legends about it and so do the West African Dogon who still follow a version of the Early World religion. (12).

Multiple circles were symbols in the sky-god religion and one type of concentric circle symbolism, that’s thought to be associated with Ea, (13) was popular among people in the Stone Age British Isles. It’s also carved on the summit of a mountain in Brazil (14 ) and it’s one of the drawings in the Nazca Desert in Peru.( 15) This geometric feature is also mentioned in a Native American Indian legend. Another multiple circle symbol, in the Early World religion, was associated with Osiris, in Egypt, and Viracocha in Peru. It featured in rituals of renewal in many early religions and it still does in some.

The Ancient World’s civilising ‘god’ was associated with the entities who the Sumerians called the Annunaki. Stories often passed from one people to another and this may be the reason why there were similar legends about the Annunaki leaders in the Old and New Worlds. Some people called them their ancestors, or the creators, and legends based on them have been popular right through to present times. Another series of stories, linked either the Annunaki, found its way into Jewish and Christian legend and among the Yoruba in West Africa. (16) Another version was popular among the Incas in Peru.  In some cultures the leaders of the Annunaki were linked with the Pleiades. These stars regulated agricultural activity, and the timing of religious rituals, throughout the Americas and in much of the Old World.

The mythical place of origin of the Maya, and Toltec’s (The ‘Other World of the gods’), was linked with the Earth shattering catastrophe that occurred at the end of the last age and it was represented in stone at Chichen Itza, in Mexico, and at other Central American cities. The architectural layout of the ‘home of the gods’ is similar to that of a secret Ancient Egyptian sanctuary and to the internal plan of a 5,000 year old stone mound in Ireland. (17) It’s also mentioned in a legend of the North American Hopi relating to the flood destroyed Third Age. (18) It appears in the Popul Vuh (the Mayan creation story), in Mesopotamia, where it was based on the leaders of the Annunaki, and in some Northern Hemisphere cultures. Finally, it was alluded to in early Irish legend and in a Mithraic tradition in Ancient Rome which was adopted from earlier religious beliefs.

by Leonard Farra author of the Pleiades Legacy series.

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References

• Marcel Homet, Sons of the Sun (p12), Neville Spearman 1963
• A.Mackenzie, Myths of Pre-Columbian America (P67), The Gresham Publishing Company
• Mircea Eliade, Shamanism( p285), Princeton University Press 1964
• Leonard Farra, The Pleiades Legacy The Stone Age (p134), Blurb. 2010
• “ “       The Pleiades Legacy The New World (p106-115), Blurb 2010
• James Bailey, The God-Kings & The Titans ( p53), Hodder & Stoughton 1973
• Leonard Farra, The Pleiades Legacy The New World (p18-22), Blurb. 2010
• Thor Heyerdahl, American Indians in the Pacific ( p320), George Allen & Unwin 1952
• Gualberto Zapata Alonzo, An Overview of the Mayan World (p64-66), M. Esquiliano 1980
• Leonard Farra, The Pleiades Legacy (The Old World) and The Pleiades Legacy (The New World), Blurb 2010
• Internet article, Leonard Farra, The World in upheaval 3,000 b.c.e
• Leonard Farra’s Pleiades Legacy books, Blurb 2010
• Francois Lenormant, Chaldean Magic its Origin & Development (p161), Samuel Bagster 1877
• Erich Von Daniken, In Search of Ancient Gods ( p77), Book Club Associates 1975
• Leonard Farra, The Pleiades Legacy The New World (p146), Blurb 2010
• Anthony Atmore & Gillian Stacy, Black Kingdoms Black Peoples (p40), Orbis Publishing 1979
• Leonard Farra, The Pleiades Legacy The Stone Age (p28), Blurb 2010
• Frank Waters, Book of the Hopi (p90), Penguin Books 1977