link between Africa and South America?

[Kill Cavalry]

The Dogon tribe of Mali (in Western Africa) have a model of the universe that is much like a Central or South American pyramid. The bottom of the universe consists of the sun, then steps ascending triangularly to a flat plane representing the sky, in the center is a circle for the moon, and it extends from there into a sort of heaven. If anyone knows of a link to a picture of this, the similiarities to a South American pyramid are uncanny. What reasons might there be for this? From the 700s until shortly before the age of exploration, there were several trading empires in the region of Mali. Is it possible there was some sort of exchange between these peoples? Why the lack of evidence?

[Aaron H]

I am a big master culture guy. I personally believe that Panega broke up only a few thousand years ago, and before it did, there was a master race/civilization/ect. There are too many religous, arcitectual, and cultral similarities to ignore. For example, that is to say above and beyond yours, most cultures have some form of dragon that breaths fire, and eats small kids;). Most cultures all have similar stories of their gods, the Aztecs and the Norse were very similar in their religion. That is not to mention every major culture developed pyramids, a hard to design structure.

[Finn]

Aaron, I think somewhat same way too.

But instead of that major continent, I much rather tend to believe that there was on master race in some "central" spot of the world (Middle East makes a good call) and that's where they spread to teach their knowledge to ones in need of it. They haven't reached the Americas through west but by through east, because due that time, there was a landway in the Bering to cross from one continent to another.

The human race may have originated in Africa, but the origin of the civilization is somewhere else. Maybe even in some place we haven't even discovered yet.

[Attila the Professor]

I love the theory, that all the civilizations have derived from some master sources, be it the Egyptians or Atlanteans or aliens or Antarctica or whatever else all those bad documentaries try to tell you. I personally think that if the is a "lost civilization" it is one we don't know of, but it isn't aliens and it isn't Atlantis.

However, a lot of the things that people cite as similarities may be like the evolutionary concept of homologous and analogous structures. A lot of people (amateurs like ourselves and the people that write the books and do the documentaries) believe that pyramids, gods, and the like are homologous, meaning they derived from the same thing. However, they may merely be analogous, meaning they are similar, and evolved to fill the same need (or a similar need...for example - tomb, place for sacrificial rituals), but have not derived from the same thing.

The pyramids in particular. The Aztec pyramid mold is considerably different from the Egyptian one. One is terraced, the other is, for all practical purposes, smooth. One has steps, the other never does. And the Chinese type was more or less a built up mound of earth (not that there's anything wrong with that).

As much as I would like to believe it, I'd prefer to be skeptical, in this case anyway. Besides, isn't it more incredible that all these great civilizations would evolve independent of each other?

One more thing...Occam's Razor.

[Finn]

Good point. Especially the one between American and Egyptian pyramids. There may not be any link between those two at all, because we must also remember the way they were used.

In America, the pyramides are temples and holy places. In Egypt, they're tombs.

[dameain]

Not all temples and holy places, in Palque, in the 1950's an archaeologist named Alberto Rue, found the tomb of a mayan ruler.

[bob]

I really dont believe in this idea of the lost uber civilisation, i think that rather than account for the ancients having all this contact then accepting that human minds do think alike to a certain extent (perhaps in a Jungian way seeing things in symbols) I think that we would all like to think that there were some special origins of civilisation and that it did not just slowly develop somewhere in the Middle East 5000 years ago, but i just dont see the evidence for it what so ever; you can make a lot of negative and circumstantial proofs but there arent any positive argumenets that argue from anything other than coincidentce

[Kill Cavalry]

Yes, this is the one flaw to the master culture race. Frankly, I really have no idea whether one existed or not. What I was really asking was was there any contact between South Americans and the outside world before the Age of Exploration?
Nonetheless, we've sparked an interesting debate. Why is there such a lack of evidence? Could it be that mankind's greatest civilization was destroyed so thoroughly that there is nothing left? Or has time merely eroded this civilization to even less than a memory?

[bob]

Originally posted by Kill Cavalry

Nonetheless, we've sparked an interesting debate. Why is there such a lack of evidence? Could it be that mankind's greatest civilization was destroyed so thoroughly that there is nothing left? Or has time merely eroded this civilization to even less than a memory?

This is the central problem i have with the Uber Atlantis theory such a wonderous and advanced civilisation would leave artifacts all around the world even if by some bizarre process the whole of the Super races home was annhilated. Wouldnt the whole world be covered in artifacts? rather than just the long echoes of it through strange similarites. Its like saying that at the height of the British Empire the UK had vanished are we really going to say that there would be no trace of the artifacts that were left behind across the world there would be no traces of British influenced cities in Australia these would have inexplicably vanished, the whole of the British influenced civilisations such as USA would have forgotten their history...I know this is a rather tortourus parallel but it sets out the problems with the Atlantean theory it worked well enough in the 19th Century when so much was unknown but there is nowhere for a Super Civilisation to exist and leave no trace, i would go as far to say that it is like they have never existed at all.....

[Aaron H]

Well 15,000 years is a loooong time.

[Attila the Professor]

Yeah, I guess someone should respond to the actual topic.

It certainly is possible that someone from one of the great African trading empires made it to the Americas. However, as sailing went, they could not compare to that one Chinese admiral, the one who was a near-contemporary of Columbus, and went from China to India and as far as the Red Sea and the East African trading states. If anyone might have made it there at that point in history, it was him.

Of course, no one is really sure how far the Vikings got, but Newfoundland still seems most likely. Then there is that one monk...I have forgotten his name. Then there are a lot of other ones that people mention, like the Pheonicians or the Egyptians.

[swords]

:)

[Edited by swords on 05-28-2003 at 01:45 pm]

[swords]

Originally posted by Attila the Professor
Yeah, I guess someone should respond to the actual topic.

.

Darn! You beat me to it. We posted at the same time, didn't we?

[Edited by swords on 05-28-2003 at 01:46 pm]

[Attila the Professor]

Originally posted by swords
Originally posted by Attila the Professor
Yeah, I guess someone should respond to the actual topic.

.

Darn! You beat me to it!:D We posted at the same time, didn't we?

More or less...I'm sorry swords, I got you. ;)

[westford]

Originally posted by Attila the Professor
The Aztec pyramid mold is considerably different from the Egyptian one. One is terraced, the other is, for all practical purposes, smooth. One has steps, the other never does.
Ever hear of Djoser's step-pyramid (designed by the royal architect Imhotep), the pre-cursor to the later Egyptian pyramids? ;)

[Attila the Professor]

Originally posted by westford
Originally posted by Attila the Professor
The Aztec pyramid mold is considerably different from the Egyptian one. One is terraced, the other is, for all practical purposes, smooth. One has steps, the other never does.
Ever hear of Djoser's step-pyramid (designed by the royal architect Imhotep), the pre-cursor to the later Egyptian pyramids? ;)

Actually, I almost mentioned that, but decided not to complicate matters. But seeing as you've brought it up...they don't exactly look similar. Djoser's pyramid had rather large "steps," especially compared to the Maya-Aztec mold.

[bob]

Also the step pyramids are a lot older than the ones in S-America.

Also there is a key line of progression in pyramid design in Egypt from ones that were almost flat to step pyramids (some of which had gone wrong) and finally to the Giza Pyramids. Now what is it that is actually being proposed here, if it is that South America is linked with Egypt then the Egyptions would have had to have got there in their boats designed for the Nile across the Atlantic and then pass of their ideas about Pyramid building to the Maya/Olmec/Azetec who then waited several hundred/thousand years before deciding to build pyramids.

However if you are propsing the whole idea about a common source for the idea of the pyramid then why is there a key line of progression in the evolution of pyramids, remember they only gradually evolved into high structres.

Of course the fact is that Pyramids were constructed on both sides of the Atlantic because before other great ceremonial constructions could be built (Arches etc) Pyramids were among the only thing a techonologically backward society could construct which would have great effect; after all building Pyramids is more a question of manpower and rescorces than a great deal of scientific know how.

[westford]

Good point Bob... Although besides the resources and manpower, you'd need a strong (or egomaniacal) leader to demand that it be built in the first place. There would have been a sort of competition to have the biggest and best monument, either to the memory of the leader or to honour the god/gods.

It is interesting that you get similar structures and ideas turning up in archaeological sites with no evident proof of any link between the areas. In terms of evolution in biology, there is the occurence of homology, with a similar result arising due to different environmental pressures. Maybe there are cultural homologies because of cultural pressures, from within or outside of the culture, that are sated with the construction of a pyramidal structure, or whatever else.

At some point in the past, ancient Homo sapiens came up with the idea of burying their dead, as did Neanderthals. It might be easy to think that Neanderthals borrowed the idea from Homo sapiens, but the earliest graves in Europe are Neanderthal ones. Homo sapiens are unlikely to have taken the idea from Neanderthals because they also incorporated grave goods or offerings and the use of red ochre into their burials, which Neanderthals did not. That's two different species (or 'cultures' if you like) coming up with a similar idea, and adapting it to suit themselves. We can only speculate why they did it - the reasons for each may have been different or the same.

[StarFire]

It is interesting that you get similar structures and ideas turning up in archaeological sites with no evident proof of any link between the areas. In terms of evolution in biology, there is the occurence of homology, with a similar result arising due to different environmental pressures. Maybe there are cultural homologies because of cultural pressures, from within or outside of the culture, that are sated with the construction of a pyramidal structure, or whatever else.


It is indeed interesting! Perhaps it's part of a human univeral we share as a race. Almost all cultures belive in the incest taboo, some sort of life after death, a 'heaven' up in the sky and a 'hell' underground. In most cultures, the pyramid structure was used to raise the temple at the top of the pyriamid closer to the gods. This is one possible explanation for wide-spread use the pyrimid structure.

Those interested in Diffusionist theory should look for "Man Across the Sea: Problems with PreColumbian Contacts", edited by Edited by Carroll L. Riley, 1972. Stephen C. Jett also has some excellent articles.

[Venture]

GRATUITOUS CHRISTIAN INTERJECTION

A one-race theory, with said race existing well into a technologically advanced period, is Biblically sound.

"Now the whole earth had one language and one speech. And it came to pass, as they journeyed from the east, that they found a plain in the land of Shinar,and they dwell there."

Making a long story short, this is where they build the Tower of Babel.

"Therefore, its name is called Babel, because there the LORD confused the language of all the earth; and from there the LORD scattered them abroad over all the face of the earth."

Genesis 9:1,2,9

As I understand it, a Mesopotamian "cradle of life" is pretty much a universal gimme, and linguists now agree, that all known languages seem to have stemmed from one parent language.

[Kill Cavalry]

A pyramidical tower of babel is a good notion as well. Possible that this one tower inspired all of the others that we have seen and grown to know? Or is it merely coincidence that the pyramids we know are so similar? There was an experiment in which a group of monkeys (all of the same species and, granted, not human) was placed on several different islands and left to fend for themselves. The islands were all climatically and geographically similar. The monkeys, it was found, discovered food, created shelter, discovered water, and grew into a social structure at the exact same rate. If this experiment has any merit on humanity, and im not saying that it does, it says that we all grow at relatively the same rate in our societies. It is possible that the cultures we've mentioned were merely developed at different time periods and all had the same idea of building structures in a pyramidical form.

[Pilot]

If there was a single source for the knowledge of pyramid construction, why aren't they all alike? Personally, I think that it was a coincidence that this style developed in different places. The pyramid shape happened to have been the most effective shape for constructing large buildings in those days. They also discovered that razor blades get sharper inside the pyramids. It's possible that Africa and South America were once linked. I think there is some circumstantial evidence to that effect. Good luck getting them back together again.

[The Adventurer]

...Thor Heyerdahl ...maybe he find a posibility to acomplish that...or not... but...all the page is interesting but in particular "The RA Expeditions (1969-70)"...

"Thor Heyerdahl continued his research on ancienct navigation and turned his attention to the ancient reed-boats made of papyrus. These boats were deemed insufficient to cross the Atlantic as the reeds were believed to become water-logged after less than two weeks on open water. Heyerdahl believed that contemporary science underestimated the the ancient vessels and undertook to prove this by experiment. In 1969, he bought 12 tons of papyrus and worked with experts to construct an ancient-style vessel. The result was a 15 m boat which was launched at the old Phoenician port of Safi, Morocco. In the spirit of cooperation, Heyerdahl embarked under the UN flag with a crew of seven men from seven countries. The papyrus craft, Ra, sailed 5000 km (2700 nautical miles) in 56 days until storms and deficiencies in the construction caused the team to abandon their target only one week short of Barbados.

Ten months later, Heyerdahl tried the same voyage with the smaller (12 meter) Ra II. This vessel crossed the widest part of the Atlantic 6100 km (3270 nautical miles) in 57 days, from Safi to Barbados. Once again, this voyage showed that modern science under-estimated long-forgotten aboriginal technologies. The theory that Mediterranean vessels built prior to Columbus could not have crossed the Atlantic was thrown on its head.

In subsequent years, Heyerdahl continued on many other expeditions, including the Tigris river (1977) and the Maldives Islands (1982, 83 and 84). Now in his eighties, Heyerdahl remains an active participant in archaeological expeditions, as well as an international promoter of cooperation and understanding between peoples across the globe."



...here is the link to the whole page: http://www.greatdreams.com/thor.htm

[The Adventurer]

Sure...Barbados is more Central America than South...but the fact remain...

[ClintonHammond]

"every major culture developed pyramids, a hard to design structure"
Hard to design??? Hardly... Just dumping a load of sand, or trying to pile rocks up as high as you can will result in a pyramid structure...

"15,000 years is a loooong time"
Not on a planetary scale, nor even in terms of human evolution... Modern humans had populated Africa for about 70K years before leaving, and spreading out around the rest of the world about, 50K years ago...

"If there was a single source for the knowledge of pyramid construction, why aren't they all alike?"
That is in fact good evidence that there was no Single Source... because they are NOT alike at all, except for the fact that they are pyramids. And that coincidence is just a matter of physics.

"razor blades get sharper inside the pyramids"
Myth BUSTED!


And that Thor did make the journey, doesn't mean that others in the past did.... IF there had been 'trade', where's the evidence?

[The Adventurer]

...from: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thor_Heyerdahl

"There has been much confusion about the purpose of these voyages. They were not, as it is often stated, an attempt to prove that Egyptians visited the New World in ancient times, something that Heyerdahl himself found unlikely. Instead, they were meant to test the possibility that vessels made of buoyant reeds were seaworthy. Such boats of various sizes were in use in a number of culture areas around the world in ancient times."

I want to say that ...maybe...this is a posibility found by Heyerdalh in this atempt...most unlikely...but not imposible.

IF there had been 'trade', where's the evidence?

Imagine a few scholars with curiosity...what is beyond the great sea???...a expedition formed...then only few boats succeded to the Americs...now, it is no trade...but the foreign reveal many aspects of their culture...the expeditioners never came back...but the knowledge are passed...
:up: ...ohhh this is pure fantasy...but I like to imagine things...:sleep:

[ClintonHammond]

"ohhh this is pure fantasy"

Yes... yes it is....

[Aino]

It originated in Africa a super spanking long time ago. Then in waves it seems it left africa and made it's way and evolved mildly differently in different places for a super spanking loooong time. (And i don't give a good god damn what those pseudo scientist Dr. Coon or more recently Dr. Rushton have to say about it.) The fact is genetic research has actually proven race doesn't exist. Sooo How could the non existant races have developed at different times in different places one after the other... The cosmic lottery involved in that multiple winning streak would be the equivalent of the ability to count cards for the drawing of the mega bucks. It is crap.)

Anyway, ultimately likely in smallish groups we left africa a very looong time ago. So it seems some core truths filtered in to each culture that ultimately evolved and is easy to find in religion. Also there is a genetic component. For example there is actually a gene that drives us to be close to other humans. As a result religion does tend to support no matter what religion it is, the 'be nice to eachother' bit.

Another factor though is that we all lived in the same world. We all saw the effects of the sun and the moon no matter where we were. Most ancient beliefs are based on survival as part of nature and therefore are based on archetypal pricipals that are easily tied to various natural forces. In some places some things are more important and in others other things. For the reason that the effect isn't quite the same everywhere.... But we are still all more or less effected by the same forces still just to varying degrees in varying places. Also, religion was a guide it was supposed to be a sort of survival support. It is even considered by some anyway that late neanderthals also had religion due to a grave yard or 2 that was found filled with them all buried int he same position etc.... But even early man had some sort of religion.... Since more or less the beginning of time... So it may not exactly be related to a ummm 'master race' it may be related to observations more of nature than anything else. (that is the different things that arose within various religions thats similar)

[Aino]

Sorry your issue with eachother around that stupid argument about Vinland and a map.... It is now finding it's way into other issues couldn't you 2 try to stay mildly more academic than that and shred eachother based on the issue of discussion of the present?

It seems to me that you are both silly because i can just picture what you are imagining the vikings looked like. Were you aware that about 30 percent of them were from Asia? Yes this is known courtesy of Gotland. They were not tall and blond and blue eyed as you wish to think of them. But short and asian.

It seems ridiculous to me to be argueing about this when there are far more interesting viking issues to argue about for example, there is no evidence of how the dead kings were 'buried' (the raft and the firey arrow.) Also, the burials uncovered are rather interesting in that it seems the men are buried beneath the women with no grave goods and the women are decked in jewels and grave goods when buried. Therefore a more interesting argument would be, Was the ancient society of Scandinavia matrifocal? After all, grave goods are an indication of status and if only the women were buried with such status symbols... Well i''ll let you all do the math. Then there is also the issue of what Vinland actually even means. No one actually knows for a certainty. Why not argue a bit about those issues rather than over the existance of a silly map and using a fictional hammer as an argument reference?