Quiche Maya Blessing Garth Norman-Guatemala, June 2010

Click for Video: Izapa Temple Restoration (Produced for SAA 2010): http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CXloZvW-f94

Click to view Maya Ceremony at Izapa–Dec. 3, 2010: Dias de las Mujer

Western Guatemala’s POPOL VUH – Sacred book of the Quiche Maya originally written in Spanish ca. 1550 (Recinos 1950:5, 77-80) “Preamble. . .This is the beginning of the old traditions of this place called Quiche, by the tribes of the Quiche nation. . . we shall bring it to light because now the Popol Vuh, as it is called, cannot be seen any more in which was clearly seen the coming from the other side of the sea and the narration of our obscurity, and our life was clearly seen.   Great were the descriptions and the account of how all the sky and earth were formed, how it was formed and divided into four parts, how it was partitioned, and how the sky was divided, and the measuring-cord was brought, and it was stretched in the sky and over the earth, on the four angles, on the four corners, as was told by the Creator of and the Maker, the Mother and the Father of LIfe, he who gives breath and thought, she who gives birth to the children, he who watches over the happiness of the people, the happiness of the human race, the wise man, he who meditates on the goodness of all that exists in the sky, on the earth, in the lakes and in the sea.”

Quiche Maya Blessing Izapa - June 2010

June 20-27, 2010 The Maya Conservancy (Georgeanne Johnson-President) sponsored a tour with 13 Quiche and Cakchiquel Maya “Day Keepers” accompanied by a study group, including archaeologists, Mayanists, historians  and scientists to witness Quiche ritual during the summer solstice week.  The objective was to bring the Quiche Mayan Elders to Izapa for the first time in perhaps a thousand years, to witness this important site as a possible ancient temple center of their ancestors.  Here it is believed the Maya calendar originated during the Late Preclassic formative period (c.a.400 B.C.).   The archaeological and calendrical record compiled by Garth Norman (who participated in the Tour), the New World Archaeological Foundation and other scholars, primarily Vincent Malmstrom, has brought considerable attention to Iaapa to learn the origins of the ancient Maya calendar.

Mayan Elder Kukulkan burning offerings at Atitlan-June 2010

Rigoberto Itzep Blessing Izapa-Birthplace of the Maya Calendar

The ancient Temple Center of Izapa, Mexico comprised of small pyramids and grassy plazas the size of football fields is located on the Pacific Coast of Southern Chiapas, Mexico on the Tapachula-Talisman Highway border of Guatemala. Izapa is acclaimed for its many stone monuments mostly carved in a distinctive low relief narrative style expressing cosmological, religious and historic themes. The Izapan cultural period of Mesoamerican civilization developed in the wake of a hiatus of Olmec civilization around 500 B.C. and flourished to about 100 A.D. Izapan culture evolved into or influenced virtually all of the rising ancient Classic Mesoamerican cultures.

Garth Norman receives gift for his pioneering research of the Izapa Temple Center from Tapachula, Mexico Presidente Orduna Morga at Civil Ceremony June 2010

Norman speaks at Tapachula Civil Ceremony June 24, 2010  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4-8sVWavqeI

Some Izapa Temple Center discoveries:

• Central northern axis of the Temple Center aligns to the Tacana volcano.
• Stelae are aligned astronomically with Sun, Moon and Venus cycle rises on the eastern mountains for June21/December 21 Solstices and September 20/March 21 Equinoxes.
• Base Date of the Mayan Creation is in the 260/105 Day Sacred Calendar.
• Maya Long Count Calendar at Izapa has a continuous running day count from creation of 3114 B.C.
• Mesoamerican 52 year Calendar Round substantiated at Izapa.
• Ancient Geometry and Measurement systems are on stone carvings and in the Temple Center planning and positioning of Mounds.
• There are 33+ man-made mound-pyramids.
• There are 90+ stone stelae with pictographic-heiroglyphic low relief carvings–35+ altars and monuments.
• Annual calendar cycle (spring, summer, autumn, winter) compares to the human life cycle on the monuments, expressing man’s creation origin, mortal road of life and immortal destiny.
• Some of the extraordinary sculptured monuments display elements and characters from the Popol Vuh, sacred book of the Quiche Maya of Guatemala.

Izapa Sculpture/Text & Album by V. Garth Norman, New World Archaeological Foundation #30, 1976.

Click on the books below to view a digitized copy.

NWAF Publication 1976

Geometry and Measure at Izapa

Studies of measurements at Middle American archaeological sites and museum scuptures have revealed a 49.5 cm. cubit and a 52.5 cm. cubit  was used by ancient artisans in the high civilizations of Mesoamerica.

Presentation on Middle East Geometry and Measurement in Middle America by V. Garth Norman delivered at the Atlantic Conference in Halifax, Nova Scotia, August 17, 2008.   Bio Clip: http://www.atlanticconference.org/2009/bioGarthNorman.html

The standard measure used to plan and create monuments at the Izapa temple center in southern Mexico is the 49.5 cm. cubit. It can be detected along with its doubling and halving divisions and proportional repetitions on monument carvings and architecture as well as in the layout of the entire temple enter complex, confirmed in field studies from the 1980′s to the present.

The full system of geometry and measures is most evident on Izapa Stela 4 dedicated to a half life sized priest-king standing about 3 feet tall. The  Cubit (Rod Base) standard measure (49.5 cm.) is the height of the ground panel and also the distance between the king’s ear and belt mask earspools. The figure’s full height to his raised scepter contacting the diving god is 99 cm. – 2 RB cubits. From the same contact point to his ear spool is one RB cubit, and from that ear spool to his belt mask’s ear spool is half again.

Palenque ruins exhibit the Mesoamerican Standard Measure and Geometric planning.

by V. Garth Norman

The excellent precision drawings of Palenque panels by Merle Green Robertson, Linda Schele, and Alfred Maudslay, made my task of checking geometric structure in the five major Palenque slab sculptures a truely rewarding exercise. The Palenque panels express an unsurpassed vitality for utilizing the geometric mandala frame with great variety of artistic creativity. The consistency of their golden mandala formats seem self evident.

Divisions in the Palace hieroglyphic panel (below) were obviously dictated by the underlying Golden Mandala format. The center point was interestingly reserved for reference to the ancestral King Pacal in the text.

Centers on all carvings are easily located between base and side mandala border references. The open top (except Sarcaphogus lid below), seems to refer to the unbound sky as expressed on Izapa sculptures in upward sloping sky panels. The composition of the Foliated Cross panel to my Golden Mandala reconstruction (as with other Palenque panels) appears self evident.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The perfection of the Golden Mandala composition is reflected in mirror images and glyph columns on opposite sides of sculptures that conform to geometry lines.  The composition and theme of Pacal’s Sarcaphogus Lid carving are distinctly rooted in the Izapan tradition, best manifest on Izapa Stela 5.  This Palenque carving is unsurpassed in Mesoamerican art for its beauty in expressing immortality. I believe the geometry dramatizes that theme.  In addition to the conch, Pacal is being lifted by the long-lipped masks beneath his foot and in back of his head. Pacal is in the midst of flowering through the action of the sun (Kin glyph) on the crown of the earth monster. He sits directly on a budding blossom. Death is evident in the Cimi glyph at the right, but life out of death is manifested in the tri-partite leaf plant projecting from it. As with most dramatic death scenes at Izapa (Stelae 12 and 50), the focus of death here is unmistabably toward a subsequent heavenly ascension.

 

Measurements of antiquities at Palenque

 

Further evidence is added through measurements of Palenque sculpture (Classic Maya) during a 1986 field study and from excellent scaled drawings of Merle Greene Robertson. LIfe size stuccoed Maya figures on temple wall panels and pillars have hands and fingers curved in gestures for the full forearm length to be measured along the back of the hand and around the fingers. Regardless of the different gestures, forearms of four out of the six intact figures in the Palace are the same length–49.5 cm. RB Cubit. An added surprise came in finding that intact feet on these figures are consistently half the arm length (24.75 cm.) indicating that the foot acts in conjunction with the arm as a standard measure. A double RB Cubit is found on forearms of the carved giants in the north court of the Palace, and a smaller carved figure in that court measures a full RB Cubit – 49.5 cm.

49.5 cm. RB cubit

Palenque figure's foot measures half of arm's 49.5 cm. Royal Babylonian Cubit

Other measures reveal the RB Cubit was used in Palenque architecture. Some T-shaped windows in the Palace are exactly 1 RB Cubit high and 1 RB cubit wide. Others that differ may have been the work of less skilled masons. Four out of six hieroglyphic panels in the west wall of the Palace’s north court are one RB Cubit square.

See other Website articles on “Geometry and Measure” for more information. Geometry and Measure in Mesoamerica by V. Garth Norman will be announced on this Website.

The Parowan Gap-Nature’s Perfect Observatory by V. Garth Norman

Parowan Gap, Nature's Perfect Observatory

Parowan-Gap petroglyphs & astronomy – Click to view pdf

The spectacular sunsets on April 29 and August 12 highlight the main inscriptions of the Parowan Gap, Utah, petroglyph calendar ( ca.700 A.D.) which correlate with ancient calendars of Mesoamerica. Garth Norman has spent 40 years researching the ancient site of Izapa (300 B.C.) in southern Mexico and was intrigued to find that later migratory peoples from that southern region created a similar but natural “temple center” at what is known today as the Parowan Gap, So. Utah.

These ancient knowledgable “astronomers” recorded sun solstice and equinox dates, cross-quarter dates for the four seasons, and the famous 260-day ancient Mesoamerican ritual calendar. Norman has found a sophisticated lunar-solar calendar system where hundreds of petroglyphs on the Gap cliffs interact with an extensive observatory system composed of over twenty-five stations where sunsets and sunrises were viewed through the Gap Narrows to mark key dates.

Norman began explorations at the Parowan Gap in southwestern Utah in 1993, and in 1996-2003 undertook a major preservation enhancement study of the Gap for Iron County and Parowan City under a joint federal and public funded project. Evidences from this project show that the primitive culture of Fremont Indians (ca. 700-1200 A.D.) of Utah had sophisticated astronomical knowledge. Excavation of a cave shelter revealed a fire pit associated with petroglyphs with a C14 date almost 5,000 years old, documenting the earliest dated writing in Utah.

Go to Bookstore – Amazon.com for Publication: Parowan Gap-Nature’s Perfect Observatory by V. Garth Norman

April, 2008 John Pratt, Lance Harding, Garth Norman in front of the Dome of the Rock on the Temple Mount in Jerusalem. Astronomical and measurement readings were taken from the Temple Mount looking east to the Mount of Olives, also from key observation points beyond the Temple Mount.

Jerusalem Temple Mount-Dome of the Tablets and Dome of the Rock

New Proposed Location for Solomon’s Temple

by John P. Pratt, V.Garth Norman, Lance Harding, and Jason Jones

Exactly where was Solomon’s temple located? Virtually all investigators agree that it was on the Temple Mount Platform in Jerusalem, but its precise location has been in question. This article proposes a new location on that platform, where no building presently exists. If correct, then Solomon’s temple could be restored without affecting the magnificent Muslim mosque, the Dome of the Rock, which is situated where most scholars believe Solomon’s temple stood.

Garth Norman measures stone on Jerusalem Temple Mount 49.5 cm. Royal Babylonian Cubit

The evidence presented here was discovered by our team who were sent to Jerusalem April (2008) to research the Temple Mount and surrounding area. Team leader Garth Norman is a professional archaeologist with decades of expertise in archaeoastronomy, Lance Harding is an expert in structural design comparative study of temples, Jason Jones was our field work engineer and facilitator, having previously lived in Jerusalem, and John Pratt is an astronomer specializing in ancient sacred calendars. The research funding was arranged by Vern Swanson-Springville Museum of Art & Lyle Mortimer-Cedar Fort Publishers, Springville, Utah.

Historical Background

King David, the father of Solomon, was commanded by the seer Gad to build an altar to the Lord on the threshing floor of Araunah, the Jebusite. David purchased the site and obeyed (2 Samuel 24:11-25). David himself was not allowed to build the temple, but was told that his son Solomon would accomplish that great task (1 Kings 5:5). The magnificent temple was seven years in construction and was finished in King Solomon’s eleventh year of reign (1 Kings 6:38).

All tradition and evidence indicate that Solomon’s Temple was build at or near David’s Altar, atop the hill formerly known to Abraham as Mount Moriah. It is believed that it was the location of Abraham’s offering of his son as a sacrifice (Gen. 22:2), and hence the mount is sacred to all believers in Abraham, including Muslims, Hebrews and Christians. The Temple Platform is located near the southeast corner of the old walled city of Jerusalem.

Solomon’s Temple was built during the tenth century B.C. and lasted until it was destroyed in 587 B.C. by King Nebuchadnezzar of Babylon. He took into captivity those of the Kingdom of Judah who were not slain or scattered, where they remained until the Persians conquered his kingdom.

To read the entire article where evidence is presented for the location of Solomon’s temple, go to: http://www.johnpratt.com/items/docs/lds/meridian/2008/temple.html

Assyrian warrior's height measures a 49.5 cm. Royal Babylonian Cubit

Egyptian figure inside Geometry planning with 52.5 cm. Royal Egyptian cubit