MU Archeologist Finds Oldest 3-D Statue In Western Hemisphere

University of Missouri ^ | May 19th, 2011 | Steven Adams

[SunkenCiv]

Robert Benfer, a professor emeritus of anthropology, said the mud plaster bust -- a bust of a figure blowing a trumpet and another mask-like image flanked by foxes -- was found at the "Buena Vista" site in the Andes...

..."Even today, the Andean people still tell stories about the fox as they explain the gift of the first cultivated foods. The Andean legend says the fox found a rope that led to heaven where it found an abundance of new foods. When the fox fell from heaven, it split open, providing a variety of new foods for the Andean people."

The 4,000 year old bust is fully exposed, although the legs are not visible because they hang over the edge of a wall. The fingers of the hands can be seen on the flute.

The Andeans had their own Zodiac signs, and the constellation of the fox is still associated with the timing of agricultural events such as planting and irrigation, Benfer said. At sites like Buena Vista, ancient astronomer-priests directed the construction of platform pyramids and art in their temples based on astronomical alignments of the sun, moon and other figures in the Andean Zodiac.

On the 4,000-year-old statue, it appears that the horn player is announcing the priests when they enter the Temple of the Menacing Disk, a site first discovered by Benfer in 2004. On the left, the female foxes around the menacing disk mask-like central figure face the June solstice sunset with two eyes shaped like the moon, indicating gathering darkness Benfer said. On the right, the male fox has one eye shaped like the sun, looking to the rising sun of the December solstice.

[SunkenCiv]

Exposed sculpture of the menacing disk flanked by two mythical foxes. The foxes have lunar eyes that face the December solstice sunset.

[SunkenCiv]

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[I Drive Too Fast]

The middle one looks like an un-happy face to me.

[VastRWCon]

The middle one is the MOON MAN. M-O-O-N spells moon.

[King Moonracer]

From the foxes and snakes game...hmm, is the dark lord stirring in Shaoul Goul?

[ClearCase_guy]

I find pre-Columbian art quite interesting. Much of it is weirdly oval and wrapped around itself. It’s not terribly naturalistic, nor is it linear. It tends to be curving and self-contained. Just a different approach from art we find in other parts of the world.

[decimon]

3-D statue. Are there two-dimensional statues?

[muawiyah]

Probably all of that mostly because it presages full blown writing and is just this side of pictoglyphs. Given what we now know of PROBABLE pre-Columbian migration from East Asia to South America this art could very well be writing ~ as so much of it has been found to be.

[Wuli]

Every culture “invented” a zodiac, a twelve segmented division of “creation” with the heavens above as a macrocosm of the life they had - the microcosm below (as it is in heaven so it is on Earth)

What is more interesting to me than this fact is the question of why did all humans do this. What is the source of this in all ancient humans? I think there is a simple answer, but in that answer I still find ancient humans as resourceful as modern humans; they were just living at an earlier point in the path of acquired human knowledge. I think their brains - the physical instrument - were not working or wired much differently than ours, if at all.

[Ruy Dias de Bivar]

***MU Archeologist Finds Oldest 3-D Statue In Western Hemisphere***

Shucks! I thought this was about the Lost Continent of MU!

[epluribus_2]

when I read trumpet I thought - uh oh - they found ZARAHEMLA.

[Tainan]

Use of ones..uhh...IMAGINATION...is very important in this kind of archeology...very important.

[bigheadfred]

Use of ones..uhh...IMAGINATION...is very important in this kind of archeology...very important.

Specially when filling out that grant order form.

[Tainan]

Yep...I like that question somebody asked about them “2-D” statues...

[bigheadfred]

Yep...I like that question somebody asked about them “2-D” statues...

Yeah, does Obama count? You can see him when he is facing you, but turn him sideways and he completely disappears.

[Fred Nerks]

Fox representations have great antiquity in the world, but their accompanying verbal explanations have not often survived. The oldest fox representations from archaeology are those at Góbekle Tepe in Turkey, but any accompanying verbal explanations of these stone sculptures did not survive as myths or stories into post3 Neolithic Mesopotamian cultures (Peter and Schmidt 2004, p. 210). The Sumerian myth of Gilgamesh may date from the second millennium BC (North 2008), but surviving versions of the Indo‐European myths are that are still are known in only few limited small and isolated regions (Gimbutas 2008). On the other hand, the Andean fox myth is still widespread in South America. This paper describes that mythical fox from South America and relates its mythology to recent archaeological finds in Peru that fix its origins at more than 4,000 years ago. It introduces the cosmology of Mesoamerica and South America, especially the origin accounts and the myth of the Andean fox.

JOURNAL OF COSMOLOGY

[caww]

Every culture “invented” a zodiac, a twelve segmented division of “creation” with the heavens above as a macrocosm of the life they had - the microcosm below (as it is in heaven so it is on Earth)

In reality they simply passed it on from one pagan culture to another... and adapted, changed and or eliminated it to formulate whatever signs and symbols might be advantageous to their cultures and or tribes...taking various forms and meanings as it went.

Humans did this as they have a natural bent to worship something outside themself...with that comes a desire for order and leadership among them to accomodate that desire. Thus man will always make attempts at building dieties and/or pagan idols in which to carry out a sense of order in an otherwise and seemingly disordered world around them they cannot explain nor understand completely.

Human nature does not change over the centuries so of course the only thing which man can really change is the world they create around themselves....and all men see that which is around themselves thru the brain. It is thru the brain man might imagine or discover what he will. But despite what he might imagine there is a 'reality' in the world that is clear and precise...and able to be understood though always with limitations.

Not so much an acquired knowledge as it is discovery of what already is and realities of.

[Wuli]

"In reality they simply passed it on from one pagan culture to another"

Sorry, but there is no evidence that either Asian or European cultures "passed it on" to any ancient culture in North or South America. Yet, there too such systems existed.

As far as either Asian or European culture's "passing it on" in either one direction or another, again, given the earliest dates the systems are found in both regions, there is again no evidence they "passed it" one way or the other.

"Humans did this as they have a natural bent to worship something outside themself...with that comes a desire for order and leadership among them to accomodate that desire."

Again, I think you're missing the true origins of these systems, which I believe only superimposed "belief" systems on something else.

"Not so much an acquired knowledge as it is discovery of what already is and realities of.

There you are getting closer.

[caww]

If you google The Temple of Isis in relation to America you will see they had missionaries all over the world in ancient times...and evidence of such thru various records of antiquity. Though these sometimes may have not benn called “Temple of Isis” in all the cultures that adopted that religion.

Some of her missionaries taught the arts of civilization to the known world, others were out exploring the rest of the world. Pagan religion and genealogy were actually more widespread in the ancient world than Christianity is now.

If you look at the religions and cultures of pre-Columbian Central American ...civilizations were intimately related to the Pagan religion and culture of Egypt.

We know Spanish priests identified the Mayas, Aztecs, and Incas as “Pagans.”.... They burned their books along with any literate people and teachers who taught and kept these books.

The “isolationist” scholars of today who deny pre-Columbian contact between the Americas and Mediterranean civilizations are in deep denial..... All of the evidence is clearly there for anyone who wishes to see it. None are so blind as those who choose not to see.

[caww]

Not so much an acquired knowledge as it is discovery of what already is and realities of. There you are getting closer.

Now don't go and misunderstand my statement. God will and does reveal what we need to know but that will always have limitations....we are responsible for what we do with the realities we know and act accordingly....not those we manufacture in our minds which we desire to be the realities, and which oppose the reality of the world we live in and the life given to live it...grounded in reality.