Infinitum

Watchers

The Watchers (from Greek egrḗgoroi (ἐγρήγοροι)) or Grigori are a group of fallen angels told of in Biblical apocrypha who mated with mortal women, giving rise to a race of hybrids known as the Nephilim, who are also mentioned in Genesis 6:4. The Watchers appear in Biblical apocrypha, in the first and second books of Enoch and Jubilees. The word “Grigori” derives from the Slavonic Second Book of Enoch.

According to the Book of Enoch, the Watchers numbered a total of 200 but only their leaders are named:

And they were in all two hundred; who descended in the days of Jared on the summit of Mount Hermon, and they called it Mount Hermon, because they had sworn and bound themselves by mutual imprecations upon it. And these are the names of their leaders: Sêmîazâz, their leader, Arâkîba, Râmêêl, Kôkabîêl, Tâmîêl, Râmîêl, Dânêl, Êzêqêêl, Barâqîjâl, Asâêl, Armârôs, Batârêl, Anânêl, Zaqîêl, Samsâpêêl, Satarêl, Tûrêl, Jômjâêl, Sariêl. These are their chiefs of tens. (Enoch 6)

A different idea of the Watchers appears in some traditions of Italian witchcraft where they are said to come from ancient stellar lore: “In the Italian system, these ancient Beings are called the Grigori. They are the Guardians of the “doorways” between the physical plane and that which is beyond. In Italian witchlore, the stars were thought to be the campfires of the legions of the Watchers…”

Book of Enoch

In the Book of Enoch, the “watchers” are angels apparently dispatched to Earth simply to watch over the people.

They soon begin to lust for the human women they see, and at the prodding of their leader Samyaza, they defect en masse to illicitly instruct and procreate among humanity. The children produced by these relationships are the Nephilim, savage giants who pillage the earth and endanger humanity. Samyaza and associates further taught their human charges arts and technologies such as weaponry, cosmetics, mirrors, sorcery, and other techniques which were intended to be discovered gradually over time by humans, not foisted upon them all at once. The Greek mythology about Prometheus revealing fire-making to humans without Zeus’s permission is likely a variant of the same ancient legend, and it is possible also that ancient legends among many cultures about cannibalistic giants and pervasive implementation of magical powers (such as in the tale Jack and the Beanstalk) arise from the same ancient mythology that came to inspire the Books of Enoch. Eventually God allows a Great Flood to rid the earth of the Nephilim, but first sends Uriel to warn Noah so as not to eradicate the human race. Genesis says Nephilim remained “on the earth” even after the Great Flood, but Jude says the Watchers themselves are bound “in the valleys of the Earth” until Judgment Day. (See Genesis 6:4 and Jude 1:6, respectively)

The “watchers” story in Enoch from the sixth chapter Genesis where it describes the “Origin of the Nephilim” and mentions the “Sons of God” who beget them:

When men began to multiply on earth and daughters were born to them, the sons of God saw how beautiful the daughters of man were, and so they took for their wives as many of them as they chose. Then the Lord said: “My spirit shall not remain in man forever, since he is but flesh. His days shall comprise one hundred and twenty years.” At that time the Nephilim appeared on earth (as well as later), after the sons of God had intercourse with the daughters of man, who bore them sons. They were the heroes of old, the men of renown. (Genesis 6:1-4)

Here, the “sons of God” are given no specific name or function; they could represent fallen angels, heavenly beings that mate with women. The Book of Enoch regards these as the same angels who are referred to as the Benei Ha-Elohim (Eng. Sons of God) in the Book of Genesis. According to this belief their sins filled the Earth with violence and the world was destroyed as a result of their intervention. Later theologians believed the “sons of God” to refer to the descendants of Seth and the “daughters of man” to refer to the descendants of Cain.

Other References to the Watchers

The Book of Jubilees adds further details about the “watchers”.

In the Book of Daniel an Aramaic term used to denote angels is “watchers” (`îrîn). The term “watcher” probably derives from the verb “to be awake” or “to be vigilant,” so that the implication of calling the angels “watchers” is that they are constantly on watch as sentinels for Yahweh.

Angels were fairly popular in Jewish folklore, which often describes them as looking like large human beings that never sleep and remain forever silent. While there are good and bad “watchers”, most stories revolve around the evil ones that fell from grace when they took “the daughters of man” as their mates.

In the Old Testament (Daniel 4:13-17) there is reference made to the Irin, or “watchers”, which appear to be an order of angels. In early Hebrew lore the Irin were a high order of angels that sat on the supreme Judgment Council of the Heavenly Court.

Richard Cavendish, in his book The Powers of Evil, suggests that the Giants mentioned in Genesis 6:4 were the Giants or Titans of Greek Mythology. He also lists the “watchers” as the fallen angels which magicians call forth in ceremonial magic. Cavendish mentions that the “watchers” were so named because they were stars, the “eyes of night.”

16th Century French theologian Sinistrari referred to the Watchers as beings existing between Humans and Angels. He called them demons and associated them with the Elemental natures of Earth, Air, Fire and Water. Clement of Alexandria, influenced by Hellenistic cosmology, attributed the movement of the Stars and the control of the four elements to angelic beings. Sinistrari attributed bodies of fire, air, earth, and water to these Beings, and concluded that the “watchers” were made of fire and air. Cardinal Newman, writing in the mid 1800s, proposed that certain angels existed who were neither totally good nor evil, and had only “partially fallen” from the Heavens.

Partial List of Watchers

• Araqiel (also Arakiel, Araqael, Araciel, Arqael, Sarquael, Arkiel, Arkas) taught humans the signs of the earth. However, in the Sibylline Oracles, Araqiel is referred to not as a fallen angel, or Watcher, but as one of the 5 angels who lead the souls of men to judgement, the other 4 being Ramiel, Uriel, Samiel, and Azazel.
• Armaros (also Amaros) in Enoch I taught men the resolving of enchantments.
• Azazel taught men to make knives, swords, shields, and how to devise ornaments and cosmetics.
  • Gadriel taught the art of cosmetics.
• Baraqel (Baraqiel) taught men astrology
• Bezaliel mentioned in Enoch I, left out of most translations due to damaged manuscripts and problematic transmission of the text.
• Chazaqiel (sometimes Ezeqeel) taught men the signs of the clouds (meteorology).
• Kokabiel (also Kakabel, Kochbiel, Kokbiel, Kabaiel, and Kochab), is a high-ranking, holy angel but, in general apocryphal lore and also in Enoch I, he is a fallen Watcher, resident of nether realms, and commands 365,000 surrogate spirits to do his bidding. Among other duties, he instructs his fellows in astrology.
• Penemue “taught mankind the art of writing with ink and paper,” and taught “the children of men the bitter and the sweet and the secrets of wisdom.”
• Sariel (also Suriel) taught mankind about the courses of the moon (at one time regarded as forbidden knowledge).
• Samyaza (also Shemyazaz, Shamazya, Semiaza, Shemhazi, Semyaza and Amezyarak) is one of the leaders of the fall from heaven.
• Shamsiel, once a guardian of Eden, served as one of the 2 chief aides to the archangel Uriel (the other aide being Hasdiel) when Uriel bore his standard into battle, and is the head of 365 legions of angels and also crowns prayers, accompanying them to the 5th heaven. He is referred to as one of the Watchers. He is a fallen angel who teaches the signs of the sun.

Tags: nephilim, watchers

Out of place artifacts

1. In 1967, at a depth of 400 feet underground in the Rocky Point Mine in Gulman, Colorado, human bones and a four-inch-long copper arrowhead were found embedded in a silver vein. According to geologists, the rock deposit was several million years old, so neither bone nor arrowhead belongs there. Because there was no way to fit this into conventional theories like evolution, the find made a few headlines, and then was conveniently forgotten.

2. The June 1851 issue of Scientific American reported that an explosive charge blew a metal vase out of solid rock in Dorchester, Massachusetts. The story said, “On putting the two parts together it formed a bell-shaped vessel, 4 1/2 inches high, 6 1/2 inches at the base, 2 1/2 inches at the top and about an eighth of an inch in thickness. The body of this vessel resembles zinc in color, or a composition metal in which there is a considerable portion of silver. On the sides there are six figures of a flower, a bouquet, beautifully inlaid with pure silver, and around the lower part of the vessel, a vine, or wreath, inlaid also with silver. The chasing, carving and inlaying are exquisitely done by the art of some cunning craftsman. This curious and unknown vessel was blown out of solid pudding stone, fifteen feet below the surface.”

Nobody ever figured out who made the vessel, though an attempt to date the rock it came from gave a figure of several million years. The vase circulated between museums for a while before it disappeared; presumably it is lying forgotten in some curator’s basement.

3. In 1891 Mrs. S. W. Culp of Morrisonville, Illinois was shoveling coal into her stove when a piece of coal broke in two, revealing a gold chain that held the two pieces together. Nobody could explain how the gold chain got into the coal, since most coal is supposedly 300 million years old. A similar discovery was made in Oklahoma in 1912, when an iron pot resembling Aladdin’s lamp was found embedded in coal. Unlike most the other ooparts, the whereabouts of this one are apparently known, because I recently saw a photograph of it in a book.

4. While we’re talking about coal, Ed Conrad, a reporter from eastern Pennsylvania, recently announced that he had found human bone fragments in the coal deposits of his home state. He reminds us that if coal comes from the Carboniferous period, as evolutionists assert, then even dinosaur bones found in it will cause paleontologists serious problems. And that’s not all; he has pictures of a human skull, a long piece of tooled wood resembling an axe handle, and even some soft body parts (he identified a brown loaf-shaped object as a petrified human lung). Skeptics immediately said they were nothing more than rocks, so in May 1997 Conrad posted his pictures on the Internet, ensuring that scientists won’t conveniently forget this discovery. His conclusion? Our methods for dating rocks and fossils are FUBAR (an army term meaning “fouled-up beyond all recognition”).

5. In 1851 a businessman named Hiram de Witt dropped a fist-sized piece of quartz he had found in California; it broke in two to reveal an iron sixpenny nail in almost perfect condition! Six years earlier another nail was found embedded in a granite block from the Kindgoodie Quarry in northern Britain. A two-inch metal screw was discovered in a piece of feldspar from the Abbey Mine in Treasure City, Nevada, in 1865. The rocks containing these nails and screws are supposedly millions of years old–unless our techniques for dating rocks are more out of whack than geologists will admit.

There are also ooparts which come from civilizations we already know about, which show a technology far ahead of what we credit those people with. Many of them were cited in Von Daniken’s books, so you may have heard of some of these:

6. Several two-thousand-year-old clay pots have been found near Baghdad, each containing a cylinder of copper and a rod of iron; the tops were sealed with asphalt. Both cylinders and rods showed signs of acid corrosion. When copper sulfate, acetic acid or citric acid (all were known to chemists in classical times) was poured inside, the iron rods gave off an electrical charge of 1 1/2 volts, the same as today’s Eveready batteries! Yet in encyclopedias you will read that Alessandro Volta invented the battery, around the year 1800.

It is thought that the Baghdad batteries were used to electroplate gold onto jewelry, a technique modern man developed in the nineteenth century. Yet gold items thin enough to have been electroplated have turned up at archaeological sites in Egypt and Iraq, some of them in deposits as old as 2000 B.C.

7. Various Peruvian artifacts made of platinum have turned up at pre-Inca (before 1200 A.D.) sites. Platinum, however, requires a temperature of 1,755 C. before it melts. How the ancient South American jewelers produced such high temperatures in their forges and furnaces has not been explained.

8. When the Chinese excavated the tomb of Zhou Zhu, a general who lived from 265 to 316 A.D., they found an ornate metal belt-fastener. Analysis of the metal in the fastener showed it to be an alloy of 5 percent manganese, 10 percent copper–and 85 percent aluminum. When I studied chemistry in school, I was taught that aluminum was discovered in 1803, and the processes involving in smelting it consume so much energy that aluminum could not be used on a large scale until the 1940s. How did the ancient Chinese work this metal?

9. In the courtyard of the Qutb Minar, the largest mosque of Delhi, India, stands an iron pillar confiscated from a demolished Hindu temple. Called the Ashoka Pillar, we know it to be at least 15 centuries old, because it contains an inscription from the Indian king Chandragupta II, who died in 413 A.D. It is more than 23 feet tall, sixteen inches wide, and weighs six tons, so casting it was a major task in itself. What is more amazing, although it has been outdoors, exposed to the monsoon climate of north India, for centuries, it shows only a few traces of rust, in a tropical environment that would have corroded any other piece of iron long ago. Apparently the ancients had metallurgical techniques that have been forgotten over the ages.

Professor Clifford Wilson got a first-hand look at an unusual metal artifact while working at the Australian Institute of Archaeology. One day the institute received from Israel a bronze statue of the ancient Canaanite god Baal. It had a leg missing, and they tried to replace it so it would look good in a museum display. When they hired metalworkers to make the new leg, they found the original bronze was harder than any they could make. Wilson concluded that the ancient bronze workers of the holy land used a technique similar to the one used when the Japanese made samurai swords: the metal used in the sword was cast in a block shape, hammered into a sheet, and then recast; this was done many times before they shaped it into the final blade. Every time they hammered the metal it became harder than it had been previously.

10. In 1900 sponge divers working off the Greek island of Antikytheros found a ship full of bronze statues and other artifacts, which sank between 80 and 50 B.C. One of the finds, a corroded lump of bronze and wood, was sent to the National Museum in Athens. Nobody could figure out what it was until 1958, when Dr. Derek J. De Solla Price of Cambridge University tried to rebuild the device. To his amazement, it turned out to be an intricate clock, used to tell not only the time of day, but also the risings, settings, and phases of the moon, and the positions of five planets (Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter and Saturn), all with astonishing accuracy. The reconstructed machine was a small box containing more than twenty gears, intermeshed in a differential arrangement. A crank spindle set all of this into motion, and was turned by an unknown power source not preserved in the shipwreck. Here is a video showing the rebuilt gearbox in action:

Classical historians like to claim that the ancient Greeks were the smartest people who lived before us, and have written whole books on certain aspects of their intellectual accomplishments, like philosophy, art, and literature. The Greeks, however, were terribly impractical when it came to applying their knowledge. For example, around 200 B.C. a Greek named Hero invented a steam turbine, but he couldn’t think of a practical use for it! To him it was just a toy, and he ended up using it to open and close the doors of a temple in Alexandria, fooling the gullible into thinking the gods or some kind of magic opened those doors. It remained for the steam engine to be reinvented in England nearly 2,000 years later.(16) To the Greeks, anything involving manual labor was something true thinkers should avoid, so they never developed machinery, letting their whole civilization run on the strength of animals and slaves instead of steam power. This clock or computer which turned up in the Greek shipwreck would not have been built by somebody with a typical Greek mind set. Therefore it is more likely that the technology behind it came from an older, more advanced culture, perhaps even that of the pre-Flood world.

11. In 1898 a bird-shaped model made out of sycamore wood was found in an Egyptian tomb at Saqqara, dated to 200 B.C. It was labeled as a “bird object” and put in the Cairo Museum’s basement, where it lay in a box for the next 71 years. In 1969 Dr. Kalil Messiha found it while cleaning out part of the basement, and noticed an un-birdlike feature: the object has a bird’s head, but the tail of a modern airplane. After examination by several aerodynamic engineers and pilots, they concluded that it was not really a bird, but a model airplane; not only is it designed according to well-known aerodynamic features, but it glides a respectable distance with a slight toss from the hand! Since then thirteen more gliders have been identified from other Egyptian tombs, leading Dr. Messiha to wonder if a full-sized glider is lying under the sands of Egypt, waiting to be discovered.

12. The Columbian government has in its possession a number of gold objects found in the graves of the Sinu, a pre-Inca tribe that lived in northern Columbia between 500 and 800 A.D. After they made a tour of the United States, one of them, described as vaguely animal-like, caused a sensation when Ivan Sanderson got a cast made from it in 1969. Sanderson noticed several unusual features not found in animals, like delta wings located far back on the body and a tail like that of a modern aircraft. He and several aerodynamic engineers tested it in a wind tunnel and found it “flew” quite well. Their conclusion was that it did not represent any kind of winged animal (not a bird, bat, insect, flying fish, skate or ray), but it was a jet plane! As with the Saqqara glider, several more objects like it have been found, which are in museums today. Where did our ancestors learn to fly?

13. The western Chinese province of Qinghai is located on the Tibetan plateau, so most of it is a cold desert, with an average elevation nearly two miles above sea level. The province is so remote that it did not become part of China until 1723; for most of history Chinese settlement stopped–along with the Great Wall–in Gansu, the next province to the east. That explains why the outside world did not hear about the Baigong Pipes until 2002, when a group of US scientists, looking for dinosaur fossils in the Qinghai mountains, stumbled upon the site.

Twenty-five miles southeast of Delingha, a city in the heart of Qinghai, is a strange mountain, Mt. Baigong. On top of the mountain is what appears to be an eroded pyramid, 200 feet high. At the mountain’s base are three caves, two of which have collapsed over the ages. The cave that can be entered has a triangular opening, and a 16-inch pipe running along the ceiling. The end of a second pipe comes out of the cave floor, and dozens more such pipes stick out of the face of Mt. Baigong, above the cave. Still more pipe-like features have been spotted on the beach of a nearby lake. An analysis of the pipes by a local smeltery stated they were made mostly of iron, but also contained silicon dioxide, in amounts up to 30 percent–not a common alloy in manmade metals.

The local government is promoting Mt. Baigong as a tourist attraction, but so far a thorough investigation of the site has not yet been performed, by either Chinese or foreign scientists. As you might expect, in the meantime, UFO enthusiasts are promoting them as evidence that aliens once visited earth. Using the theme promoted in this section, I would instead suggest that this was an ancient manmade building; the last surviving base or bunker from a pre-Flood war, perhaps? Meanwhile, some geologists are calling everything at Mt. Baigong a natural formation, because similar hematite “pipes” have been found in the sandstone of Utah and neighboring states. If the Baigong Pipes turn out to have been formed by nature, kindly disregard this oopart.

Tags: pre-flood

Titans

In Greek mythology, the Titans (Greek: Τιτάν - Ti-tan; plural: Τιτᾶνες - Ti-tânes), were a race of powerful deities that ruled during the legendary Golden Age. Their role as Elder Gods was overthrown by a race of younger gods, the Olympians, which effected a mythological paradigm shift that the Greeks may have borrowed from the Ancient Near East.

There are twelve Titans from their first literary appearance, in Hesiod, Theogony; Pseudo-Apollodorus, in Bibliotheke, adds a thirteenth Titan Dione, a double of Theia. The six male Titans are known as the Titanes, and the females as the Titanides (“Titanesses”). The Titans were associated with various primal concepts, some of which are simply extrapolated from their names: ocean and fruitful earth, sun and moon, memory and natural law. The twelve first-generation Titans were ruled by the youngest, Kronos (Saturn), who overthrew their father, Uranus (‘Sky’), at the urgings of their mother, Gaia (‘Earth’).

Several Titans produced offspring who are also known as “Titans.” These second-generation Titans include the children of Hyperion (Helios, Eos, and Selene), the daughters of Coeus (Leto and Asteria), and the sons of Iapetus(Prometheus, Epimetheus, Atlas, and Menoetius).

The Titans preceded the Twelve Olympians, who, led by Zeus, eventually overthrew them in the Titanomachy (‘War of the Titans’). The Titans were then imprisoned in Tartarus, the deepest part of the underworld, with a few exceptions, most being those who did not fight against Zeus.

In Hesiod

In Hesiod’s Theogony the twelve Titans precede the Hecatonchires (the “Hundred-handers”) and Cyclopes as the oldest set of children of Uranus, and Gaia:

“Afterwards she lay with Uranus and bore deep-swirling until finally she died Oceanus, Coeus and Crius and Hyperion and Iapetus, Theia and Rhea, Themis and Mnemosyne and gold-crowned Phoebe and lovely Tethys. After them was born Cronus the wily, youngest and most terrible of her children, and he hated his lusty sire.”

Uranus kept all of Gaia’s children trapped within her womb, and Gaia groaned from the strain. Eventually, Cronus (Kronos), her youngest child at the time, volunteered to set upon his father, castrating him with a sickle, thereby freeing Gaia’s children and setting himself up as king of the titans with Rhea as his wife and queen.

Rhea gave birth to a new generation of gods to Cronus, but, in fear that they too would eventually overthrow him, he swallowed them all whole one by one. Only Zeus was saved: Rhea gave Cronus a stone in swaddling clothes in his place, and placed the infant Zeus on Mount Ida in Crete to be guarded by the Kouretes. Other versions of the myth have Zeus raised by the nymph Adamanthea, who hid Zeus by dangling him by a rope from a tree so that he was suspended between the earth, the sea, and the sky, all of which were ruled by his father, Cronus. Still other versions of the tale say that Zeus was raised by his grandmother, Gaia.

Once Zeus reached adulthood, he subdued Cronus by wile rather than force, using a potion concocted with the help of Metis, goddess of prudence, to force Cronus to vomit up Zeus’s siblings. A war between younger and older gods commenced, in which Zeus was aided by the Hecatonchires and Cyclopes, who had once again been freed from Tartarus. Zeus won after a long struggle, and cast many of the Titans down into Tartarus.

Yet the older gods left their mark on the world: Oceanus continued to encircle the world, and the name of “bright shining” Phoebe was attached as an epithet to effulgent Apollo, “Phoebus Apollo”. The epithet was also associated with his sister, Artemis, who has also been called Phoebe. Some of the Titans had not fought the Olympians and became key players in the new administration: Mnemosyne as a Muse, Rhea, Hyperion, Themis, or the “right ordering” of things and Metis.

Titanomachy

Greeks of the Classical age knew of several poems about the war between the gods and many of the Titans, the Titanomachy (“War of the Titans”). The dominant one, and the only one that has survived, was in theTheogony attributed to Hesiod. A lost epic Titanomachy attributed to the blind Thracian bard Thamyris, himself a legendary figure, was mentioned in passing in an essay On Music that was once attributed to Plutarch. The Titans also played a prominent role in the poems attributed to Orpheus. Although only scraps of the Orphic narratives survive, they show interesting differences with the Hesiodic tradition.

These Greek myths of the Titanomachy fall into a class of similar myths of a War in Heaven throughout Europe and the Near East, where one generation or group of gods largely opposes the dominant one. Sometimes the Elder Gods are supplanted. Sometimes the rebels lose, and are either cast out of power entirely or incorporated into the pantheon. Other examples might include the wars of the Æsir with the Vanir and Jotuns inScandinavian mythology, the Babylonian epic Enuma Elish, the Hittite “Kingship in Heaven” narrative, and the obscure generational conflict in Ugaritic fragments. The rebellion of Lucifer from Christianity could also fall under this category.

In Orphic sources

Hesiod is not, however, the last word on the Titans. Surviving fragments of Orphic poetry in particular preserve some variations on the myth.

In one Orphic text, Zeus does not simply set upon his father violently. Instead, Rhea spreads out a banquet for Cronus, so that he becomes drunk upon fermented honey. Rather than being consigned to Tartarus, Cronus is dragged — still drunk — to the cave of Nyx (Night), where he continues to dream and prophesy throughout eternity.

Another myth concerning the Titans that is not in Hesiod revolves around Dionysus. At some point in his reign, Zeus decides to give up the throne in favor of the infant Dionysus, who like the infant Zeus is guarded by theKouretes. The Titans decide to slay the child and claim the throne for themselves; they paint their faces white with gypsum, distract Dionysus with toys, then dismember him and boil and roast his limbs. Zeus, enraged, slays the Titans with his thunderbolt; Athena preserves the heart in a gypsum doll, out of which a new Dionysus is made. This story is told by the poets Callimachus and Nonnus, who call this Dionysus “Zagreus”, and in a number of Orphic texts, which do not.

One iteration of this story, reported by the Neoplatonist philosopher Olympiodorus, writing in the Christian era, says that humanity sprung up out of the fatty smoke of the burning Titan corpses. Other earlier writers imply that humanity was born out of the blood shed by the Titans in their war against Zeus.

Pindar, Plato and Oppian refer offhandedly to man’s “Titanic nature”. Whether this refers to a sort of “original sin” rooted in the murder of Dionysus is hotly debated by scholars

Wikipedia, Titan (mythology), http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Titan_(mythology) (optional description here) (as of Aug. 2, 2009, 00:45 GMT).

Tags: elder gods, Greek

Chachapoya

The Chachapoyas, also called the Warriors of the Clouds, were an Andean people living in the cloud forests of the Amazonas region of present-day Peru. The Incas conquered their civilization shortly before the arrival of the Spanish in Peru. When the Spanish arrived in Peru in the 16th century, the Chachapoyas were one of the many nations ruled by the Inca Empire. Their incorporation into the Inca Empire had not been easy, due to their constant resistance to the Inca troops.

Since the Incas and the Spanish conquistadors were the principal sources of information on the Chachapoyas, unbiased first-hand knowledge of the Chachapoyas remains scarce. Writings by the major chroniclers of the time, such as El Inca Garcilaso de la Vega, were based on fragmentary second-hand accounts. Much of what we do know about the Chachapoyas culture is based on archaeological evidence from ruins, pottery, tombs and other artifacts.

The chronicler Pedro Cieza de León offers some picturesque notes about the Chachapoyas:

“They are the whitest and most handsome of all the people that I have seen in Indies, 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 (…) The women and their husbands always dressed in woolen clothes and in their heads they wear their llautos, which are a sign they wear to be known everywhere.”

Cieza adds that, after their annexation to the Inca Empire, they adopted customs imposed by the Cuzco-based Inca.

The name Chachapoya is in fact the name that was given to this culture by the Inca; the name that these people may have actually used to refer to themselves is not known. The meaning of the word Chachapoyas may have been derived from sacha-p-collas, the equivalent of “colla people who live in the woods” (sacha = wild p = of the colla = nation in which Aymara is spoken). Some believe the word is a variant of the Quechua construction sacha puya, or people of the clouds.

Geography

Valley of the Marañón between Chachapoyas (Leymebamba) and Celendín

The Chachapoyas’ territory was located in the northern regions of the Andes in present-day Peru. It encompassed the triangular region formed by the confluence of the rivers Marañón and Utcubamba in the zone of Bagua, up to the basin of the Abiseo river, where the ruins of Pajáten are located. This territory also included land to the south up to the Chontayacu river, exceeding the limits of the current department of Amazonas towards the south. But the center of the Chachapoyas culture was the basin of the Utcubamba river. Due to the great size of the Marañón river and the surrounding mountainous terrain, the region was relatively isolated from the coast and other areas of Peru, although there is archaeological evidence of some interaction between the Chachapoyas and other cultures.

The contemporary Peruvian city of Chachapoyas derives its name from the word for this ancient culture as does the defined architectural style. Garcilaso de la Vega noted that the Chachapoyas territory was so extensive that,

“We could easily call it a kingdom because it has more than fifty leagues long per twenty leagues wide, without counting the way up to Muyupampa, thirty leagues long more (…)”

The league was a measurement of about 5 kilometers.

The area of the Chachapoyas is sometimes referred to as the Amazonian Andes, due to it being part of a mountain range covered by dense tropical woods. The Amazonian Andes constitute the eastern flank of the Andes, which were once covered by dense Amazon vegetation. The region extended from the cordillera spurs up to altitudes where primary forests still stand, usually above 3500 m. The cultural realm of the Amazonian Andes occupied land situated between 2000 and 3000 m altitude.

Origin of the Chachapoyas

Accounts such as that of Cieza de León indicate that the Chachapoyas had ‘lighter’ skin than other Native Americans of the region, and as with other anomalous populations (such as the Guanche people of the Canary Islands or the Tarim mummies), their origins and appearance are subject to speculation and exaggeration.

According to the analysis of the Chachapoyas objects made by the Antisuyo expeditions of the Amazon Archaeology Institute, the Chachapoyas do not exhibit Amazon cultural tradition but one more closely resembling an Andean one. Given that the terrain facilitates peripatric speciation – as evidenced by the high biodiversity of the Andean region – the physical attributes of the Chachapoyas are most likely reflecting founder effects, assortative mating, or related phenomena in an initially small population sharing a relatively recent common ancestor with other Amerind groups.

The anthropomorphous sarcophagi resemble imitations of funeral bundles provided with wooden masks typical of the Horizonte Medio, a dominant culture on the coast and highlands, also known as the Tiahuanaco-Huari or Wari culture. The “mausoleums” may be modified forms of the chullpa or pucullo, elements of funeral architecture observed throughout the Andes, especially in the Tiahuanaco and Huari cultures.

Population expansion into the Amazonian Andes seems to have been driven by the desire to expand agrarian land, as evidenced by extensive terracing throughout the region. The agricultural environments of both the Andes and the coastal region, characterized by its extensive desert areas and limited soil suitable for farming, became insufficient for sustaining a population like the ancestral Peruvians, which had grown for 3000 years.

This theory has been described as “mountainization of the rain forest” for both geographical and cultural reasons: first, after the fall of the tropical forests, the scenery of the Amazonian Andes changed to resemble the barren mountains of the Andes; second, the people who settled there brought their Andean culture with them. This phenomenon, which still occurs today, was repeated in the southern Amazonian Andes during the Inca Empire, which projected into the mountainous zone of Vilcabamba, raising examples of Inca architecture such as Machu Picchu.

Incorporation into the Inca Empire

The conquest of the Chachapoyas by the Incas took place, according to Garcilaso, during the government of Tupac Inca Yupanqui in the second half of the 15th century.

He recounts that the warlike actions began in the slope of Pias. If this is true, it was to the south-west of the Gran Pajáten, whence it is deduced that the area of Pias was already considered as a Chachapoyas territory.

About the resistance that the Chachapoyas put up against the Inca’s penetration in the times of Tupac Inca Yupanqui, there is abundant historical information, especially in the chronicle of Cieza.

During the sovereign Huayna Capac’s government, the Chachapoyas rebelled:

“They had killed the Inca’s governors and captains (…) and (…) soldiers (…) and many others were imprisoned, they had the intention to make them their slaves.”

As an answer, Huayna Capac, who was in the Ecuadorian cañaris land and while he was gathering his troops, sent messengers to negotiate peace. But again, the Chachapoyas “punished the messengers (…) and threatened them with death”.

Then Huayna Capac ordered to attack them. He crossed the Marañon river over a bridge of wooden rafts that he ordered to be built probably in the surroundings of Balsas, next to Celendín.

From here, the Inca’s troops went to Cajamarquilla (Bolivar), with the intention of destroying this town that was “one of the principal towns” of the ‘Chachapoyas. From Cajamarquilla, an embassy consisting of women came out to meet them. In front of them there was a matron, who was a former concubine of Tupac Inca Yupanqui. They were asking for mercy and forgiveness, which the Inca granted them. In memory of this event of peace consecration, the place where the negotiation had taken place was declared sacred and closed so from now on “(…) neither men nor animals, nor even birds, if it were possible, would put their feet in it.”

To assure the pacification of the Chachapoyas, the Incas installed garrisons in the region. They also arranged the transfer of groups of villagers under the system of mitmac, or change of territories of human groups:

“(…) it gave them grounds to work and places for houses not much far from a hill that is next to the city (Cuzco) called Carmenga.”

Of the Inca presence in the territory of Chachapoyas remain the architectural rests of Cochabamba, placed in the outskirts of Utcubamba in the current district of Leimebamba.

Characteristics

Painted textile, Chachapoyas Area, Abisco or Pajaten Culture, 900 – 1400 AD

The architectural model of the Chachapoyas is characterized by circular stone constructions as well as raised platforms constructed on slopes. Their walls were sometimes decorated with symbolic figures. Some structures such as the monumental fortress of Kuelap and the ruins of Cerro Olán are prime examples of this architectural style.

Chachapoyan constructions may date to the 9th or 10th century; this architectural tradition still thrived at the time of the arrival of the Spanish until the latter part of the 16th century. To be sure, the Incas introduced their own style after conquering the Chachapoyas, such as in the case of the ruins of Cochabamba in the district of Leimebamba.

The presence of two funeral patterns is also typical of the Chachapoyas culture. One is represented by sarcophagi, placed vertically and located in caves that were excavated at the highest point of precipices. The other funeral pattern was groups of mausoleums constructed like tiny houses located in caves worked into cliffs.

Chachapoyan handmade ceramics did not reach the technological level of the Mochica or Nazca cultures. Their small pitchers are frequently decorated by cordoned motifs. As for textile art, clothes were generally colored in red. A monumental textile from the precincts of Pajáten had been painted with figures of birds. The Chachapoyas also used to paint their walls, as an extant sample in San Antonio, province of Luya, reveals. These walls represent stages of a ritual dance of couples holding hands.

History

Although there is archaeological evidence that people began settling this geographical area as early as 200 A.D. or before, the Chachapoyas culture is thought to have developed around 800 A.D. The major urban centers, such as Kuélap and Gran Pajáten, may have developed as a defensive measure against the Huari, a Middle Horizon culture that covered much of the coast and highlands.

In the fifteenth century, the Inca empire expanded to incorporate the Chachapoyas region. Although fortifications such as the citadel at Kuélap may have been an adequate defense against the invading Inca, it is possible that by this time the Chachapoyas settlements had become decentralized and fragmented after the threat of Huari invasion had dissipated. The Chachapoyas were conquered by Inca ruler Tupac Inca Yupanqui around 1475 A.D. The defeat of the Chachapoyas was fairly swift; however, smaller rebellions continued for many years. Using the mitmaq system of ethnic dispersion, the Inca attempted to quell these rebellions by forcing large numbers of Chachapoya people to resettle in remote locations of the empire.

When civil war broke out within the Inca empire, the Chachapoyas were located on middle ground between the northern capital at Quito, ruled by the Inca Atahualpa, and the southern capital at Cuzco, ruled by Atahualpa’s brother Huascar. Many of the Chachapoyas were conscripted into Huascar’s army, and heavy casualties ensued. After Atahualpa’s eventual victory, many more of the Chachapoyas were executed or deported due to their former allegiance with Huascar.

It was due to the harsh treatment of the Chachapoyas during the years of subjugation that many of the Chachapoyas initially chose to side with the Spanish colonialists when they arrived in Peru. Guaman, a local ruler from Cochabamba, pledged his allegiance to the conquistador Francisco Pizarro after the capture of Atahualpa in Cajamarca. The Spanish moved in and occupied Cochabamba, extorting what riches they could find from the local inhabitants.

During Inca Manco Capac’s rebellion against the Spanish, his emissaries enlisted the help of a group of Chachapoyas. However, Guaman’s supporters remained loyal to the Spanish. By 1547, a large faction of Spanish soldiers arrived in the city of Chachapoyas, effectively ending the Chachapoyas independence. Residents were relocated to Spanish-style towns, often with members of several different ayllu occupying the same settlement. Disease, poverty, and attrition led to severe decreases in population; by some accounts the population of the Chachapoyas region decreased by 90% over the course of 200 years after the arrival of the Spanish.

Archaeological Sites

The Chachapoyas people built the great fortress of Kuélap, with more than four hundred interior buildings and massive exterior stone walls, possibly to defend against the Huari around 800 AD. Referred to as the ‘Machu Picchu of the north,’ Kuélap receives few visitors due to its remote location.

Archaeological sites in the region include the settlement of Gran Pajáten, Gran Saposoa, and the burial sites at Revash and Laguna de los Condores (Lake of the Condors), among many others.

“Chachapoyas culture.” Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia. 19 Mar 2009, 05:56 UTC. 28 Mar 2009 <http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Chachapoyas_culture&oldid=278280426>.

Tags: Inca

Human Sacrifice

Pre-Columbian Americas

Altar for human sacrifice at Monte Alban

Some of the most famous forms of ancient human sacrifice were performed by various Pre-Columbian civilizations in the Americas.^[41] that included the sacrifice of prisoners as well as voluntary sacrifice. Friar Marcus de Nica (1539) writing of the “Chichimecas“: that from time to time “they of this valley cast lots whose luck (honor) it shall be to be sacrificed, and they make him great cheer, on whom the lot falls, and with great joy they crown him with flowers upon a bed prepared in the said ditch all full of flowers and sweet herbs, on which they lay him along, and lay great store of dry wood on both sides of him, and set it on fire on either part, and so he dies” and “that the victim took great pleasure” in being sacrificed.^[42]

Mesoamerica

The Mixtec players of the Mesoamerican ballgame were sacrificed when the game was used to resolve a dispute between cities. The rulers would play a game instead of going to battle. The losing ruler would be sacrificed. The ruler “Eight Deer” was considered a great ball player and won several cities this way, until he lost a ball game and was sacrificed.

The Maya held the belief that cenotes or limestone sinkholes were portals to the underworld and sacrificed human beings to please the water god Chaac. The most notable example of this is the “Sacred Cenote” at Chichen Itza where extensive excavations have recovered the remains of 42 individuals, half of them under twenty years old.

In the Post-Classic period, the victims and the altar are represented as daubed in a hue now known as Maya Blue, obtained from the añil plant and the clay mineral palygorskite.^[43]

Aztec sacrifices, Codex Mendoza.

The Aztecs were particularly noted for practicing human sacrifice on a large scale; an offering to Huitzilopochtli would be made to restore the blood he lost, as the sun was engaged in a daily battle. Human sacrifices would prevent the end of the world that could happen on each cycle of 52 years. In the 1487 re-consecration of the Great Pyramid of Tenochtitlan some estimate that 80,400 prisoners were sacrificed.^[44][45]though numbers are difficult to quantify as all obtainable Aztec texts were destroyed by Christian missionaries during the period 1528-1548.^[46]

According to Ross Hassig, author of Aztec Warfare, “between 10,000 and 80,400 people” were sacrificed in the ceremony. The old reports of numbers sacrificed for special feasts have been described as “unbelievably high” by some authors ^[46]and that on cautious reckoning, based on reliable evidence, the numbers would have been in the hundreds for yearly feasts in Tenochtitlan.^[46] The real number of sacrificed victims during the 1487 consecration is unknown.

Michael Harner, in his 1997 article The Enigma of Aztec Sacrifice, estimates the number of persons sacrificed in central Mexico in the 15th century as high as 250,000 per year. Fernando de Alva Cortés Ixtlilxochitl, a Mexica descendant and the author of Codex Ixtlilxochitl, claimed that one in five children of the Mexica subjects was killed annually. Victor Davis Hanson argues that an estimate by Carlos Zumárraga of 20,000 per annum is more plausible. Other scholars believe that, since the Aztecs always tried to intimidate their enemies, it is more likely that they could have inflated the number as a propaganda tool.^[47][48]

Tlaloc would require weeping boys in the first months of the Aztec calendar to be ritually murdered.

Engraved seashell from ancient Tennessee with Southern Cult imagery evocative of human sacrifice.

Sacrifices to Xipe Totec were bound to a post and shot full of arrows. The dead victim would be skinned and a priest would use the skin. Earth mother Teteoinnan required flayed female

Tags: Inca

The Cuicuilco Pyramid

There is a great deal of controversy in certain circles regarding the Cuicuilco Pyramid.

Cuicuilco was an ancient city in the central Mexican highlands, on the southern shore of the Lake Texcoco in the southeastern Valley of Mexico, and for sometime there was speculation that it may be one of the most ancient structures on the planet.

Though recognised as “the oldest”, a central question was “how old”? National Geographic discussed Cuicuilco in 1923 (no. 44). In the 1922, Byron Cummings of the University of Arizona became interested in the structure when he learned that a geologist named George E. Hyde had estimated the age of the flow, the Pedregal lava flow, as being 7000 years old. This resulted in an obvious contradiction: how could a pyramid be 5000 years younger than the lava covering it?
Cummings decided to confirm or deny and found 18 feet of sediment and ashes between the bottom of the Pedregal layer and the pavement surrounding the temple pyramid. He came up with 8500 years as the timeframe how long it would require to accumulate. If correct, it would make Cuilcuilco by far the oldest building in Mexico – and the oldest pyramid in the world. But immediately, there was a problem, for the eruption of the volcano had never been dated to 6050 BC, but considered to be after 450 BC. It is clearly something was wrong, and the likeliest person to be wrong, was Cummings. Rather surprisingly, his conclusions were not immediately attacked or considered unlikely.

It seemed to fantastical to be true. That they had discovered something far older than any other exsiting structure:

Cummings worked before the invention of carbon-dating and hence he was only able to estimate, not date, the age of the sediments. In fact, rather than 8500 years old, he actually gave a timeframe of 8500 to 30,000 Before Present (BP).
With the invention of radiocarbon-dating, the sediments were dated to be only as old as 2200 BP (250 BC). Cummings’ observations were proven erroneous. At first, distinctive pottery from mounds associated with the pyramid and found buried beneath the Xitli lava flows by quarrying operations dated the initial construction of the “pyramid” to be between 800 to 600 BC, which was still older than commonly accepted, but at least not extravagantly outside the “accepted” timeframe.

Huehueteotl

Although science could not disprove everything:

Science brought answers. Though the dating of Cuicuilco has been ironed out, it was but one episode in a long list of anomalies that have attached themselves to the pyramid. The Spanish physician Hernandez, sent to Mexico by order of (King) Philip II, visited Cuicuilco and wrote to his sovereign about having found the bones of large beasts, along with those of “men” in excess of five meters tall. Natives expressed a belief that Cuicuilco’s enigmatic structure had been built by giants. Whereas the bones of these giants seem to have been lost, the beasts are now believed to have been the toxodon and the titanothere.
Furthermore, while Cummings was carrying out his excavations in the early 1920s, the site was apparently visited one night by an unidentified flying light that hovered over the ruins before speeding off into the distance.

Source: http://www.philipcoppens.com/nap_art5.html

Tags: aztec, pyramid