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Re: Ariadne's thread
Posted:
Jan 19, 2013 4:15 AM
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Chavin, early Peru, combined condor calendar
and jaguar calendar, spider as quipu deity,
birdman of Chavin de Huantar (and Yverdon-Clendy)
In the beautiful and impressive Chavin (stress on -vin)
exhibition at the Rietberg Museum Zurich (we know of
Americans who fly over the 'big pond' for a visit of this
museum, while many of my fellow natives never have
been there) I found to my big pleasure a perfect and
much earlier analogue of the condor calendar inspired
by the seven and seven condor strings on the Bennett
Monolith of the Akapana Pyramid at Tiahuanaco -
a large gold crown in the form of a curved sheet with
seven and seven windows, one row above, one below,
framed by embossed intertwined strings, two above
and two below, or one loop above and one below, and
hung in the windows, fixed with wire, seven and seven
male heads en face, while a smaller and simpler gold
crown has six and six windows, in them six and six
male profiles with feline features. The two crowns are
from Kuntur Wasi meaning Condor's Nest on a hill
of a beautiful mountain range, between 800 and 550 BC.
In my opinion they represent a condor calendar based
on a period of 26 days and a jaguar calendar based on
a period of 30 days, counted on knotted strings that were
consecrated to the quipu deity of the spider, an insect
producing a thread, worshipped as mythical inventor
of the quipu system, originally used for counting time
1 condor (string) for 26 days
7 condors for half a year (182 days)
14 condors 1 knot for a regular year (365 days)
14 condors 2 knots for a leap year (366 days
92 condors for 81 moons (2392 days)
(mistake four hours in fifty years)
1 jaguar (string) for 30 days
6 jaguars 2 knots for half a year (182 days)
12 jaguars 5 knots for a regular year (365 days)
12 jaguars 6 knots for a leap year (366 days)
63 jaguars for 64 moons (1890 days)
(mistake half a day in a lifetime)
Begin with 30 29 30 29 30 29 30 29 30 days for
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 ... moons or lunations or synodic
months. 15 and 17 lunations yield 443 and 502 days
respectively. 17 15 17 15 17 lunations yield 502 945
1447 1890 2392 days for 17 32 49 64 81 lunations.
A long cycle of 64 moons or 81 moons - counted on
the knotted strings and completed - would have been
symbolized by the head of a jaguar-man or condor-man
in the web of the quipu-spider: eyes closed, corners
of the mouth dropped, periods of time over and gone.
Chavin de Huantar (stress on -an-) is the emblem
of the Chavin culture, higher up in the mountains,
at the base of a triangular peak, inhabited already
five thousand years ago. A monolith, over four meters
tall, shows a man, in my opinion the birdman, his nose
also a beak, his eyes moon and sun combined, his
hair snakes curled around stars, while further elemens
invoke the kaiman and puma or jaguar. The so-called
Lanzon (stress on -zon) stood on the roof of the main
temple in between 3,500 and 3,000 years ago, then
was placed in the holiest chamber of a new complex,
a narrow room in the center of four meeting gangways,
lit by the morning sun, especially on midwinter.
The Lanzon reminds me of the birdman among the over
forty menhirs at Yverdon-Clendy in western Switzerland,
on the southern end of Lake Neuchatel. The seven
hypothetically oldest menhirs would have formed a large
raven. Five of the seven menhirs would have represented
the equinoxes and solstices. Four of them would have
marked the corridor of the midsummer sun, rising by then
from the middle of the lake, and of the setting midwinter sun.
And all seven stones would have been the raven map of
the region of the three lakes. The head stone is a bird
with a round eye and beak, but also a man (and a hand,
and a tree) depending on light and vantage point. Reliefs
of a pair of courting ravens are seen on the spring menhir,
end of the left wing:
http://www.seshat.ch/home/menhir1b.GIF
http://www.seshat.ch/home/menhir1d.GIF
http://www.seshat.ch/home/menhir1f.GIF
http://www.seshat.ch/home/menhir7k.GIF
http://www.seshat.ch/home/menhir8b.GIF
http://www.seshat.ch/home/menhjr54.JPG
http://www.seshat.ch/home/menhjr56.JPG
http://www.seshat.ch/home/menhjr60.JPG
http://www.seshat.ch/home/menhjr77.JPG
An early astronomical sanctuary of seven poles
in the shape of a 'condor' at Chavin de Huantar
could have provided sighting lines of the rising
and setting sun on the equinoxes and solstices
if the poles had had the following x / y coordinates
head 0 / 2 (pointing northward or southward)
right wing 4 / + -1
body 0 / 0
left wing - 4 / + - 1
tail 0 / - 2
One pole would have represented a period of 26 days.
The 'condor' may have flown northward for half of a year,
and southward for the other half year.
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