When the first known European peoples landed upon the shores of the Americas, history became confused. Such questions arose within the theological church, as to the beginnings and location of the origins of man. Coming upon metropolitan complexes derived from the Aztec Indians (and even the silent and long forgotten cultures before, such as the Maya, and even stranger, the Inca), these Spanish conquerors must have felt some awe at the megalithic monuments of these strange and alien cultures. Thought to have been brought from the pit of hell itself, the Spanish were terrified at the sights of many religious practices of these people, as the Aztecs slaughtered hundreds of victims daily in religious sacrifice by cutting out the beating hearts of their enemies with sacred blades of obsidian. So to eradicate fear, the Spanish destroyed much of the possible elements of any historical evidence of these cultures that may have had any connection to the old world.
To find a connection between the old world and the new has not been easy for scholars as they try to fit together the pieces of this mysterious puzzle. In most cultures mythology is many times mixed with fact and event, and then through the years handed down by word of mouth or particular text, as half mythological and half historical
There is one such story of interest to the origins of history and this is concerning Votan, another form of the god Quetzalcoatl, the plumed serpent. For reasons unknown Votan was ordered by the gods to go to America to found a culture. Votan traveled to the Americas and founded the Mayan city of Palenque. His home of origin was a place called Valum Chivum a place of unidentified location. According to ancient text Votan traveled back to his home annually to where at last, “he came upon a tower which was originally planned to reach the heavens but which was destroyed by a confusion of tongues.” Rather or not this has any connections to the biblical story of Babel one can only speculate. Also, being that there is any validity to this mythological tale it might mean the timing of these cultures are much older then perceived. Another strange twist to this tale is that he was allowed to use a subterranean passage that reached the “rock of heaven.” This is strange, for gigantic subterranean passages are for a fact being discovered in Central and South America. These tunnels lead for miles, they are gigantic and no one knows who built them, how old they are, or where they lead to.
Quetzalcoatl is found in hundreds if not thousands of faces within the Aztec and Mayan religion. He was the god of light, beauty, and flowers. He was a representation of the sun, the sacred fire, the running rivers and flying birds, and in the darker aspects, (still to our western thinking) he was that of death and sacrifice. The representation between the identity of Votan and Quetzacoatl are not clear, just that he declared himself as the serpent who was sent by the gods as a sacrifice to create a true manhood in the western hemisphere.
It is obvious the distorted beliefs of Votan (or better know as Quetzalcoatl) have been widely transformed throughout the history of the Mayan people and then later the Aztecs. But historians are sure of one thing that this god was once of human form and he defiantly made an impact upon the people of the region for several centeries after his departure.
According to many scholars and historians the people of the Americas originated from Siberia and made their way downward but that is only popular opinion. No one really knows where the people of the Americas had come from or how long they had been here.
Due to recent findings of a female body in Arizona by archeologists, there are new theories now claiming that American Indians of the southwest may have derived from the Imu, a culture that intermingled with the people of what is now modern day Japan, but there is no proof as to say this is where all the Indian cultures of North and South America had derived from. The bone structure of the Indian people in the Arizona/New Mexico region holds a striking resemblance to the Japanese people. Archeologists have found evidence of Vikings of an earlier period on the northeastern Atlantic seaboard, in the southwest were found Celtic ogams dating 500 AD. There are also theories of trading by the Phoenicians with Central American Indians that have reached as far north as the United States. It is rare findings like these that shed light on a once strange and mysterious landmass that the Spanish conquerors claimed as the “abode of all evil.”
Compared many times to the glory of the Greeks, the Aztec culture left many things for the people of Europe to indulge. They gave chocolate, coffee, rubber, and most of all, gold. As the Romans thought of the Scots when they reached the island of naked, blue painted savages, the Spanish must have had the same reaction and maybe even worse, because the Aztecs were a people of structured governance, and to the western mind of the Spanish warriors with a devout thought of Christ and the Catholic Church, the Aztecs by that aspect were more then barbaric in nature, they were of evil origin and must be destroyed.
Could it be regardless of how civilized we seem, there is always that primal aspect of our nature, dark and fordoding within the primal minds of all men just waiting to escape, as we rise, just to fall into the decadence like many, if not all, cultures before us?
NOW FOR A LITTLE FUN AND MUSIC!!
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