Man And Mushrooms
Further evidence in support of the idea that the relationship between Man and hallucinogens - in this case mushrooms - is indeed an ancient one comes from the ancient populations of the Sahara desert who inhabited this vast area when it was still covered with an extensive layer of vegetation (Samorini, 1989). The archeological findings consist in prehistoric paintings which the author personally had the opportunity to observe during two visits to Tassilli in Algeria. This could be the most ancient ethno-mycological finding up to the present day, which goes back to the so-called Round Heads Period (i.e. 9,000 - 7,000 years ago). The center of this style is Tassili, but examples are also to be found at Tadrart Acacus {Libya), Ennedi (Chad) and, to a lesser extent, at Jebel Uweinat (Egypt) (Muzzolini, 1986:173-175). Images of enormous mythological beings of human or animal form, side by side with a host of small horned and feathered beings in dancing stance cover the rock shelters of which there are very many on the high plateau of the Sahara which in some areas are so interconnected as to form true citadels with streets, squares and terraces. One of the most important scenes is to be found in the Tin-Tazarift rock art site, at Tassili, in which we find a series of masked figures in line and hieratically dressed or dressed as dancers surrounded by long and lively festoons of geometrical designs of different kinds. Each dancer holds a mushroom-like object in the right hand and, even more surprising, two parallel lines come out of this object to reach the central part of the head of the dancer, the area of the roots of the two horns. This double line could signify an indirect association or non-material fluid passing from the object held in the right hand and the mind. This interpretation would coincide with the mushroom interpretation if we bear in mind the universal mental value induced by hallucinogenic mushrooms and vegetals, which is often of a mystical and spiritual nature (Dobkin de Rios, 1984:194). It would seem that these lines - in themselves an ideogram which represents something non-material in ancient art - represent the effect that the mushroom has on the human mind.
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My research on mushrooms led me to your web site
ReplyDeleteregarding prehistoric rock art and mushrooms...
Recently, Mexican archaeologists Manzanilla López, Rubén; and Arturo Talavera González, (LAS MANIFESTACIONES GRÁFICO RUPESTRES EN LOS SITIOS DE ACAPULCO)(and Pedro de Eguiluz Selvas "Los Origines del Calendario Maya/Olmeca, 26 March 2009, Internet), found a petroglyph on a hillside in the state of Guerrero, Mexico bearing a Long Count date of 3.3.4.3.2. The petroglyph is of a monkey holding a five pointed star who I have identified as jumping from a hallucinogenic mushroom. The probable Long Count date is shown between the left shoulder and the tail of the monkey who holds a five-pointed star that I would agree represents the planet Venus. Researcher Pedro de Eguiluz Selvas ("Origins of the Long Count,") reports that this date using the Herbert Spinden correlation, ie: 2168 B.C.in the contemporary Western calendar, corresponds in the Unified Count of Anawak correlation (CRAN) to the year 3 Monkey in the Maya/Olmec Calendar. There is no corresponding association of the year 3 monkey using the more often cited Goodman-Thompson-Martinez correlation. The date 3 Monkey may be significant and might solve the so-called never ending correlation debate.
There has long been a debate among scholars as to the exact correlation of the Maya calendar with the European calendar. By the time of the Spanish Conquest the Maya Long Count system of dating had been out of use for hundreds of years. Maya dates were written in an abbreviated form called the Short Count which made any exact correlation with the calendar used by the Spanish a virtual impossibility. Attempts to correlate the Mayan Long count with secular time resulted in two different interpretations; the GMT (Goodman-Martinez-Thompson) correlation and the Herbert Spinden correlation. The two correlations differed by 256 years at the crucial Julian year of 1539. The Goodman-Martinez-Thompson (GMT) correlation has been the basis for the belief that the world would end in the year 2012. This correlation fits much of the chronological evidence from archaeological and historical sources. However,the correlation developed by Herbert Spinden fits even better than the GMT correlation with archaeological evidence from both the Maya lowlands and southern Highland regions. According to this correlation, all Maya dates fall 256 years (one Short Count cycle) earlier than the GMT correlation, meaning that the prophesied end of the world occurred in the year 1756.
If this interpretation is correct, the year 3 monkey, it establishes the beginning of the world at 3374 B.C. That, in turn, places the "so-called" end of the Mayan Calendar at 1756 rather than 2012. In other words, contrary to much contemporary hype, the end of the "fifth world" may have already ended. If so, there was no Armageddon and the Mayan Calendar simply began another cycle.
Carl de Borhegyi
To see monkey petroglyph jumping from a sacred mushroom visit mushroomstone.com