The Aymara people celebrate their New Year on June 21. A particularly beautiful and significant celebration occurs at sunrise when the sun shines right through the Portal (or Gate) of the Sun in Tiwanaku.
Tiwanaku - Portal of the Sun
Tiwanaku’s god of the sun is depicted here in stone in the center above the gateway. This sun god and their creator is a being who may be thought of as an ancient astronaut. Viracocha here is carved into this most famous gateway, the Portal of the Sun, to overlook his people and lands. The Portal of the Sun is a monolithic structure of regular, non-monumental size. Viracocha many believe is associated with the weather: a celestial high god that personified various elements of natural forces intimately associated the productive potential of altiplano ecology: the sun, wind, rain, hail. This portal has symbols that may have been the written language of Tiwanaku. They are symbols that probably indicate the months and days of the year that were important to the people of Tiwanaku.
Detailed drawing of god in center of the Portal of the Sun
Viracocha was worshipped as god of the sun and of storms. He was represented as wearing the sun for a crown, with thunderbolts in his hands, and tears descending from his eyes as rain. The art form above then is a representation of Tiwanaku’s religious cosmology. In some accounts, he wore sandals and a white, flowing robe that reached to the ground and carried a book in his hands. Viracocha taught the the ancestors of the Tiwanaku agriculture, mathematics, astronomy, and technological skills that enabled them to advance into the civilized culture they eventually became. He is credited with giving these primitive peoples all the knowledge they absorbed, used, and was immortalized in stone, leaving a legacy that baffles the best and brightest archaeologists and scientists of our time. As there exists no local written language yet deciphered (khipus remains poorly understood), what is known of their religious beliefs are based on archaeological interpretation and some myths, which may have been passed down by the Aymara, the Inca, and the Spanish.
An Inca Khipus
The word "khipu", means, "talking knot" or "to knot", comes from the Quechua language. Archaeological evidence has shown that systems similar to the khipu were in use in the Andean regions from ca. 5000 BC. There is a possibility that the Ancient Astronauts taught the people of the Andes a rudimentary way of keeping records and that this was by using a Khipu.
Gary Urton Professor of Pre-Columbian Studies in the Department of Anthropology at Harvard University Specialist with Khipus Research
There is currently a theory put forward by Gary Urton that the Khipus represented a binary system capable of recording phonological information, which can be symbols of language. A logographic method where a single symbol representing an entire morpheme, word, or phrase, as for example the symbol (%), meaning per-cent could have been written in the language of an early Andean culture before the Incas. All information for what is known today is based on what was recorded by priests, from the iconography on Incan pottery and architecture, and the myths and legends, which survived amongst these native peoples. A few of these ancient priests may have been Ancient Astronauts as well.
Ancient Tiwanaku khipus
Khipus (or Quipus), sometimes called talking knots, were recording devices historically used in the region of Andean South America. A quipu usually consisted of colored, spun, and plied thread or strings from llama or alpaca hair. It could also be made of cotton cords. The cords contained numeric and other values encoded by knots in a base ten positional system. Khipus might have just a few or up to 2,000 cords. However, the name by which Tiwanaku was known to its inhabitants may have been lost, as the people of Tiwanaku have no recognizable written language that has been discovered yet. Nevertheless, they used khipus too, and the name we know them by probably comes from the Inca. Like most ancient civilizations, the Inca probably adopted the Khipus from an older civilization that they conquered or assimilated. What was bartered for, how much, when and who, was recorded by making marks (or knots here). The real wordiness of language came along much later. They did not know the experience we have of writing today-as in writing; we use to write books (like this story or a story in a book). They preserved such stories in the oral tradition passed down from generation to generation. The Inca also probably made Tiwanaku’s religion and mythology their own much as the Romans did when they conquered ancient Greece. Things that were used to make writing marks and the objects or materials they used to write on did not last long in these early times. The khipus subsequently played a key part in the administration of Tahuantinsuyu, the empire controlled by the Incan ethnic group, which flourished across the Andes from ca.1450 to 1532 AD. However, their use began long before the Inca came into existence. Khipus, sometimes called talking knots, were recording devices historically used in the region of Andean South America. . The cords contained numeric and other values encoded by knots in a base ten positional system. Quipu is the Spanish spelling and the most common spelling in English. Khipu (pronounced [ˈkʰipu]) is the word for "knot" in Cusco Quechua (the native Inca language); the kh is an aspirated k. In most Quechua varieties, the term is kipu.
System:
Marcia and Robert Ascher, after having analyzed several hundred Quipus, have shown that most information on Khipus is numeric, and these numbers can be read. Each cluster of knots is a digit, and there are three main types of knots:
1. Simple overhand knots:
2. "Long knots", consisting of an overhand knot with one or more additional turns:
3. “E” knots, “Z” (top) and “S” (bottom):
Structure of a Khipus:
- Powers of ten are shown by position along the string, and this position is aligned between successive strands.
- Digits in positions for 10 and higher powers are represented by clusters of simple knots (e.g., 40 is four simple knots in a row in the "tens" position).
- Long knots represent digits in the “ones” position (e.g., four is a knot with four turns). Because of the way, the knots are tied, the digit 1 cannot be shown this way and is represented in this position by a figure-of-eight knot.
- Zero is represented by the absence of a knot in the appropriate position.
- Because the ones digit is shown in a distinctive way, it is clear where a number ends. One strand on a quipu can therefore contain several numbers.
Pendants showing three common types of multicolored cords
Khipus could be quite complex as they could indicate number and place and time. Knots indicated number; time could be indicated by location of the knot, and place of origin by the color of the cord (cords come in four or five different colors). The Inca used it in the administration of its empire to account for population and taxes. However, some theorists believe there may be a type of cryptic writing that can be deciphered from it. Gary Urton, may have already decoded the first word from a khipu—the name of a village, Puruchuco, which Urton believes was represented by a three-number sequence, similar to a ZIP code. If this conjecture is correct, Khipus are the only known example of a complex language recorded in a 3-D system. If the Ancient Astronauts did teach ancient man how to use this simple but complex computing device then they did it world wide, as Khipus were also used by ancient man in Europe and Asia as well.
No comments:
Post a Comment