Thursday, February 6, 2014

Evidence of an Ancient Global Civilization, pt 3

Murdock goes on to detail what she thinks is evidence for contact between on one side Africa and the middle East and on the other hand Mesoamerica, but suddenly changes gears and presents a game changer: evidence for contact between India and Mesoamerica.
The traces of this particular type of white race, as well as of a black one, are found in legends in Central America and in images on stelae, with the black race also immortalized in massive stone heads purportedly made by the Olmecs. In any case, the Mexicans are not colonies of the Semites in the Middle East, although it is probable there was ongoing contact and colonization by at least the time of the Phoenicians. Nevertheless, Mexican natives asserted their ancestors came over the ocean from the west, not the east. The Mexican civilization resembles not only the Semitic, which is one reason it is clearly not an outgrowth of it. The Maya have much in common with the Indians as well. As to the similarities between the Mayan and Hindu religion and language, Hinduism Today says, “Chacla in Mayan refers to force centers of the body similar to the chakras of Hinduism. K’ultanlilni in Mayan refers to the power of God within man which is controlled by the breath, similar in meaning to kundalini. Mayan chilambalam refers to a sacred space, as does Tamil Chidambaram. Yok’hah in Maya means ‘on top of truth,’ similar to yoga in Sanskrit.”[1, p. 393]
Yoga, as it happens, means yoke, whereas Yok'hah seems rather to mean 'on top of'Chilam Balam, as it happens, means priest jaguar, Balam/jaguar being a common surname, also Chidambaram in Tamil rather seems to mean 'small hall/stage'. Chacla apparently is an inflected form of the word 'red', 'chak' - a Maya dictionary provides two particular words that are similar enough - chac la, a kind of nettle, and chac lah, red-faced. K'ultanlilni seems to be a word invented by westerners out of thin air, haphazardly sticking Mayan morphemes and words together to obtain a word that looks like kundalini - not a reasonable way of doing linguistics, may I add. In a long time of looking, I have failed to find a single source that quotes an actual Mayan text using the word. All of these claims are essentially groundless bullshit. The source, Hinduism Today, is mainly hindu propaganda - devotionals, apologetics, Hindu ethics, etc. Not exactly a scholarly news source. Needless to say, it very seldom provides verifiable sources.

The more general structure of the above argument, again, is rather quirky. First Murdock provides shoddy evidence that she argues links the Mesoamerican tribes to Semitic tribes, then she refuses to accept the conclusions her own evidence would suggest and instead provides an extra helping of equally shoddy evidence to argue against that conclusion and instead support another, equally untenable one. If neither option seems satisfactory, it might be because they both are wrong!
The Maya also had the same goddess Maya, mother of the gods and man, as in India.mlxvii Furthermore, the legendary founder of the Maya was the god Votan or Wotan, a name identical to the god of Teutonic tribes. There are many such correspondences between the Old and New Worlds.[1, p. 394]
But the founder God of the Maya is Itzamna! Votan/Wotan is the human founder of some kind of community.

Murdock goes on and presents her evidence that other parts of the world - in this case Polynesia - also had this global religion she believes existed in ancient times.
As James Churchward says:
Probably the most astounding of all is the fact that the Polynesians, who have been shut in from the rest of the world for over 12,000 years, should have among themselves traditions of the Creation identical with the Biblical account, such as the names of the first man and woman; and that the first woman was made out of the man’s bones; that man was a special creation of God. The Marquesans and other Polynesians could not possibly have got these traditions from the outside world. The traditions of the Polynesians start from 12,000 years back, and how much more no one can surmise. The Biblical tradition started with Moses some three thousand years ago, which proves that it was handed down to Moses in some form. The Naacal and Egyptian show us in what form it was handed down and from whom.[1, p. 394]
James Churchward is of course not a credible source. The most significant reason that he is not a  believable source is his insistence on using Naacals as a source. The Naacals are a delusion or a hoax - in Churchward's case I am kind of convinced he may have been delusional enough to believe they were real, but dishonest enough to fabricate evidence regarding them. For those readers who are happily ignorant of Churchward's Naacals, they were a supposedly ancient civilization - 50 thousand years old or older - who had inhabited the sunken continent of Mu, from which they had colonized the Americas and India among other places. Yes, this is Atlantis, but in the Pacific Ocean. And with even less evidence - it would seem Mu was by and large made up by delusional mystics.

 Whether the Polynesians have been wholly shut in from the outside world is also a separate question - they were indeed, as previously pointed out by Murdock herself, astonishing navigators, who are likely to have traded with mainlanders of eastern Asia, Indonesia, etc. We do know there was some regular contact between Borneo and Madagascar (both populated by Oceanian peoples) for at least several centuries around 700CE.

Of course, the claims made regarding the time the Polynesians have been somewhat isolated is also somewhat iffy - 12 000 years seems somewhat exaggerating the likely time of the Polynesian expansion. Further, since the age of exploration, all Polynesian tribes have been in contact with other people and their traditions - and we simply cannot discount the chance that some of these narratives, if indeed shared by the Polynesians, are the result of Christian evangelism.
The South Sea island of Java, site of human occupation beginning many tens of thousands of years ago, also produces a number of pertinent mysteries, including that the last avatar there was to come riding on a white horse, exactly like the solar heroes Krishna and Jesus. [1, p. 394]
By the time of Ibn Batuta (1304 – 1368 or 1369) , the horse had not been introduced to Java.[2, pp. 144-145] This by itself should properly debunk the idea that the myth of the Last Avatar arriving on a white horse goes back any significant stretch of time. Of course, Javanese religion has had great influences from India - both Hinduism and Buddhism have been important influences. Thus if a last avatar is just like Krishna, it may very well be because he indeed is a relatively recently adopted Krishna. The source given for the Javanese claim is Higgins, who indeed says:
Every Indian inquirer knows that the last Avatar was always expected by the people of Java to come mounted on a white horse. [3, p. 38]
No source whatsoever is provided by Higgins, though. At this point, it is worth keeping in mind that Indonesia has had a large population for a long time, and local traditions may have varied significantly as well, so his claim is essentially unfalsifiable. It would be good to provide some more specific claim - i.e. a more well-defined region within Java or even some other testable source.
The Australian aborigines have a similar mythology to the Egyptian, and several Australian terms are nearly identical in Egyptian. [1, p 394]


Here, Murdock must not have evaluated Massey's claims very closely. First we notice that the page given is wrong - the relevant discussion is roughly at page 150 of Massey's Egyptian Book of the Dead, whereas she refers to page 115. (We are using different editions, but hers is a facsimile reprint of the original edition, just as mine is.) Massey does not provide a comparison - he provides the Arunta terms, without saying anything about the Egyptian terms. Murdock's phrasing exaggerates Massey's claims significantly, and Massey's claims themselves are somewhat suspect. Alas, Massey did not provide very good or useful sources, so it is nearly impossible to further evaluate his work on this particular claim. Very little actual comparisons of Australian and Egyptian mythology are done in Massey's work.
[1]. D.M. Murdock, The Christ Conspiracy, 1999, Adventures Unlimited
[2]  Ridgeway, William, The Origin and Influence of the Thoroughbred Horse, 1905; Gives further source Voyages d'Ibn Batoutah, vol IV p. 245, no mention of edition of that book though. The Origin and Influence of the Thoroughbred Horse is available at https://archive.org/details/origininfluenceo00ridgrich 
[3] Godfrey Higgins, Anacalypsis vol. II, 1836. Available from https://archive.org/details/anacalypsisanatt014474mbp

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