In the world of fringe history, bad arguments never die. It’s been almost 135 years since Ignatius Donnelly argued that the similarity between Egyptian and Mexican pyramids argued for a common source, and somehow that claim of a connection continues today despite the complete lack of evidence to support it. The pyramids are neither from the same time period, of the same shape, or served the same purpose. Indeed, the only thing they have in common is that they taper as they rise, an inevitable consequence of premodern construction techniques that prized stability and had to deal with gravity. In a recent article published in Ancient Origins, Kirk Kirchev, the co-creator of a type of tree tent (a kind of glorified covered hammock) who proudly quotes a description of himself as having “the imagination of a 5 year old Indiana Jones,” proposes that ocean currents can explain the transmission of pyramid-building techniques westward from Egypt to Mexico to Cambodia. Presumably the Egyptians and Maya educated their sailors better than later peoples if they were able to provide architectural advice. According to the author, at some point after the Pyramid Age in Egypt, a Mediterranean sailor and his vessel were swept out to sea beyond Gibraltar and carried by the currents to the Caribbean, from which he ventured on to Mexico. The Natives, being awed by the grandeur of a Mediterranean visitor, immediately devoted their civilization to reproducing his: However, one thing that would have likely occurred is the sporadic spread of knowledge. The odd stranded Mediterranean castaways that end up on the shores of Mesoamerica would tell incredible stories of grand civilizations with even grander megalithic constructions. An inspiring tale for any emerging culture. Wouldn't the Olmecs and Maya get inspired to build their own rocky grandeur? Why wouldn't they? There are a number of answers to that question, starting with the basics of Mesoamerican pyramids: They didn’t start out as pyramids. Most Mesoamerican pyramids were formed from adding new layers atop older temples, gradually raising them higher and higher on larger platforms, with the original temples encased below. There is simply no need to suggest an Old World visitor tutored them in this art. Nor does it explain the fact that the pyramid-temples of Peru are not on this ocean highway and they are coeval with their Egyptian counterparts.
Kirchev adds that at the height of the Maya civilization, another group of sailors drifted all the way to Southeast Asia, prompting the Khmer and other peoples to start building Hindu and Buddhist temples in the shape of Maya step-pyramids, for, once again, everyone was so in awe of the visitor that they allegedly abandoned their own cultures to devote all their resources to reproducing that of an exhausted and waterlogged sailor. Somehow the similarities to Hindu and Buddhist architecture of the Indian subcontinent are unimportant. (Kirchev is apparently not up on the research into Polynesian voyages to Mexico and Peru, or else he might have made them the transmitters of knowledge.) This is rather astonishing since Kirchev proposes that a single sailor in both instances, set adrift by chance, transmitted pyramid-building techniques and purposes around the world. Consider this, however: Egypt is known to have had trade relationships with the Levant, which in turn is known to have had trade relationships with India, which also had trade relationships with what used to be called Indochina. And yet despite these established connections, the supposedly overwhelming power of the pyramid idea never diffused across the Old World across thousands of years of documented interaction. But somehow, one guy (give or take) convinced an entire civilization to go Egyptian, practically overnight, and three thousand years after the Egyptians stopped building pyramids. He must have been a heck of salesman, probably a better one than the guy who sells covered hammocks.
69 Comments
Scott Hamilton
8/23/2016 11:31:51 am
I always wonder how these theories account for the complete lack of pyramids in Europe. I mean, if pyramids were just such a manifestly important thing to build that just hearing about them inspired enormous construction projects oceans away, why weren't the Finns building them too?
Reply
Templar Secrets
8/23/2016 12:09:44 pm
The shape of the Egyptian Pyramids is indicative of mind-expansion, copied in Exodus by way of Mount Sinai - that never really existed, being itself a metaphor for mind-expansion (the origin of The Ten Commandments).
Reply
Rotty Scoberts
8/23/2016 05:02:37 pm
Do you ever post anything worth reading? sheesh!
Templar Secrets
8/23/2016 05:08:16 pm
Okay, Mount Sinai was really the "eruption of Mount Etna"
Templar Secrets
8/23/2016 05:11:23 pm
Here's a good one - again, this author knows nothing.
Not the Comte de Saint Germain
8/23/2016 06:02:11 pm
If you want to explain Judaism by reference to hallucinogens, you have to explain why it contains no hallucinogens. Andean religion, which really did heavily feature hallucinogens, clearly shows them in its artwork, and Zoroastrian texts refer frequently to haoma. Why does a collection of religious texts as long and varied as the Bible give more prominence to bulls' blood than to the substances that you claim inspired the whole religion? Interpreting the episode at Mount Sinai as a symbol of the "expanded mind" is pretty strained and flimsy evidence.
Templar Secrets
8/23/2016 09:23:33 pm
That's right !!
Templar Secrets
8/23/2016 09:37:43 pm
I have provided links in the past to scholarly papers about Cannabis in Ancient Egypt and that was shit upon.
Not the Comte de Saint Germain
8/23/2016 11:08:26 pm
Israel and Judah are not Egypt. And the Exodus story can't be used as evidence of Egyptian origins for Judaism because the Exodus story is a nationalist foundation myth with little basis in reality.
Templar Secrets
8/24/2016 03:54:03 am
There's lets and lots of drugs in Judah and Israel,
Not the Comte de Saint Germain
8/24/2016 09:34:46 am
If there were lots of drugs in Israel and Judah and they influenced Judaism, there should be evidence of that. Where is it?
Bob Jase
8/24/2016 01:30:08 pm
Oh the Finns built pyramids all right, its just that they were made out of ice blocks which melted during the Medieval Optimum.
Reply
An Over-Educated Grunt
8/23/2016 02:01:51 pm
That's ridiculous. If European stories of wandering sailors have shown is anything it's that they'd kill everything in sight, steal all the livestock, and then sleep with the queen. Nothing about building projects, and the Odyssey includes a scene where Odysseus wins a bumfight over a hot dog. If there were a building project to be mentioned it would be!
Reply
Templar Secrets
8/23/2016 05:00:20 pm
>>>Odyssey<<<
Reply
An Over-Educated Grunt
8/23/2016 06:14:37 pm
Hey, speaking of full of it!
Templar Secrets
8/23/2016 09:21:53 pm
Over Stupid Grunt does not want to know about George Washington the Freemason laying the cornerstone of the House of Congress BECAUSE IT IS BULLSHIT but that person takes seriously the mythical bullshit stories of Homer.
Templar Secrets
8/23/2016 09:32:41 pm
Me thinks that Over Stupid Grunt is unable to tell the difference between Apples and Oranges and confuses historical Freemasonry with the bullshit version of Freemasonry offered by Manly Hall and Mark Dice and the tons and tons of spam about the Illuminati. And the tons and tons of crap about Rosicrucianism.,
Only Me
8/23/2016 10:04:42 pm
"I read the texts myself. I study the history myself. I arrive at my own conclusions without any need from scholarship."
An Over-Educated Grunt
8/24/2016 12:42:51 am
GEORGE WASHINGTON RODE A HORSE. ALL THE FOUNDING FATHERS WERE IN CLOSE COMMUNICATION WITH HORSES. A HORSE KILLED WILLIAM THE CONQUEROR AND JUST BEFORE HIS DEATH EDWARD I WAS SEEN IN THE COMPANY OF A HORSE. HORSES HAVE OVERTHROWN KINGS. HORSES ARE STILL FOUND IN ALL BRANCHES AND AT ALL LEVELS OF GOVERNMENT. ALL HISTORY IS A CONSPIRACY OF HORSES. WAKE UP SHEEPLE!
Templar Secrets
8/24/2016 04:02:48 am
America had Thomas Paine and England had Richard Carlile - both of which were staunch humanists that detested the existence of Chritianity - both were early debunkers of Christianity, Both Thomas Paine and Richard Carlile extolled the existence of Freemasonry,
Templar Secrets
8/24/2016 04:09:45 am
The comments above from Only Me and Grunt only reveal their respective limitations.
Only Me
8/24/2016 04:18:20 am
Since this blog post isn't about Freemasonry or religion, I'll just say this:
Templar Secrets
8/24/2016 04:22:20 am
And how can Only Me be taken seriously when that individual worships the resurrection of Jesus Christ. A heap of hooey.
Only Me
8/24/2016 05:09:45 am
Hmmm... A personal insult, how boring. Not even vaguely related to the blog post. Show's over, I guess. Good. Now I can interact with the intelligent posters of this blog.
An Over-Educated Grunt
8/24/2016 07:38:00 am
I think you mean Whinny the Pooh-Pooh. And since I've never denied Washington was a Mason... NEIGH!
Templar Secrets
8/24/2016 08:20:13 am
Another crass comment from Grunt, Of course George Washington existed. Of course the laying of the cornerstone to the House of Congress was a Masonic ceremony, But that didn't mean anything because Freemasonry was nothing more than a social group and not pivotal to the establishment of a humanist and secular state that denied the piffle of Christianity,
Templar Secrets
8/24/2016 08:27:42 am
>>>A personal insult<<<
Templar Secrets
8/24/2016 08:30:09 am
There are no personal insults in this crass message directed at me from Only Me
An Over-Educated Grunt
8/24/2016 08:33:27 am
You forget that the founders were mostly lawyers. A sizeable chunk of them had also been surveyors. DC is very definitely a pre-planned city obviously laid out in design by someone with a background in land survey. No one claims undue influence fit lawyers and surveyors in American history. You have yet to dominate that masonry, in and of itself and necessarily and without any other factors, has th influence you claim for it.
Templar Secrets
8/24/2016 08:34:22 am
>>>interact with the intelligent posters of this blog<<<
Templar Secrets
8/24/2016 08:37:00 am
You don't have to look very hard to find out how important the Freemasonic input was - but you won't get that information from Grunt, who believes in a Christian America that only began to be developed from the 1930s
Templar Secrets
8/24/2016 08:42:10 am
While L'Enfant was in New York City, he was initiated into Freemasonry. His initiation took place on April 17, 1789, at Holland Lodge No. 8, F & A M, which the Grand Lodge of New York F & A M had chartered in 1787.
Only Me
8/24/2016 08:52:37 am
Hey, Templar Secrets, didn't you just ask how I could be taken seriously because, "You believe in Jesus! EWW!"?
An Over-Educated Grunt
8/24/2016 08:56:14 am
That's twice you've told me what I believe in this thread. You have therefore demonstrated a pattern of what you consider acceptable behavior.
Templar Secrets
8/24/2016 08:57:11 am
No, it does not mean that at all.
Templar Secrets
8/24/2016 08:59:56 am
Grunt, you know that Freemasonry was only a social club and nothing else. You refuse to acknowledge it was much more than that,
An Over-Educated Grunt
8/24/2016 09:07:45 am
That might be because you have yet to prove it was more than that. You have yet to prove there weren't masons on both sides of th revolutionary divide of the late 1700s, that masons and not just what was in the air in political thought at the time caused the wave of liberal constitutions, you haven't proved any of that.
Templar Secrets
8/24/2016 09:13:08 am
Horse shit from Grunt,
An Over-Educated Grunt
8/24/2016 09:31:04 am
Problem is that yes, when making a point to an audience, yes. You do have to support your claims. Assertion isn't enough. You haven't proven squat, especially on the issues that you claim YOU can prove. Instead you change the subject (as you haven't addressed the fact that there were plenty of British masons who were in favor of crushing the rebellion, and plenty of members of Louis XVI's government who were masons, or that there were plenty of pro-slavery masons in the Old South, or, or, or...). You ignore the fact that you routinely post things like, back to back, "nothing is certain - I am certain!" The only thing that's certain out of that is that you're a horse's ass.
Templar Secrets
8/24/2016 10:57:08 am
No, croney Grunt.
An Over-Educated Grunt
8/24/2016 11:25:40 am
Ah, but you keep saying you could prove everything in a few seconds, and that historians can't be trusted but you can! So which is it - do you have proof of anything you claim or must I rely on other researchers, whom you call unreliable?
Templar Secrets
8/24/2016 01:14:46 pm
The bottom line is that society eventually rationalised itself and jettisoned Christian fundamentalism.
Templar Secrets
8/24/2016 01:18:11 pm
I can prove that the Judeo-Christian religion is founded on a psychedelic drug. In seconds. And taxpayer's money could be better spent on other things than Biblical scholarship.
Not the Comte de Saint Germain
8/24/2016 01:53:56 pm
If you can prove it in seconds, why don't you actually prove it?
Templar Secrets
8/24/2016 02:41:51 pm
>>>If you can prove it in seconds, why don't you actually prove it?
Not the Comte de Saint Germain
8/24/2016 03:56:37 pm
In other words, you're dodging because you can't back up your assertions, or can't back them up strongly enough to actually prove your position. If you won't provide evidence, then why don't you just go away rather than repeating the same assertions ad nauseam?
An Over-Educated Grunt
8/24/2016 05:52:34 pm
But I thought the Freemasons had overthrown Throne and Altar?
Templar Secrets
8/24/2016 06:43:50 pm
Your stupid words have failed.
Templar Secrets
8/24/2016 06:46:26 pm
Christianity is called a cult in France,
Templar Secrets
8/25/2016 03:46:23 am
So you see, there are countries in the world where Christianity is tolerated and allowed to exist only second to the primary secular state. France is one example. The United States is another.
An Over-Educated Grunt
8/25/2016 10:53:03 am
First - by the proper definition of a cult, in use before the word started to be associated with folks like Jim Jones, a cult is a religious organization dedicated to the veneration of one central figure. Thus we can speak of the Marian cult within Catholicism. By that definition, all of Christianity is indeed a cult since you can't very well have Christianity without Christ.
Templar Secrets
8/25/2016 03:59:29 pm
You just don't want to learn anything.
An Over-Educated Grunt
8/25/2016 04:01:52 pm
No, you go back and double-check. Where did I say it wasn't?
Templar Secrets
8/25/2016 04:11:21 pm
https://web.archive.org/web/20081008155922/http://www.godf.org/comm_p_detail.asp?num=142
Jim
8/23/2016 03:55:53 pm
Well, perhaps it was not just a single sailor, but the ship also had a squad of Indo-Mesopotamian inter-mural cheer leaders. To appease the hostile looking natives, these cheerleaders performed their routine culminating in the pyramid maneuver.
Reply
Clete
8/23/2016 04:44:55 pm
Well, since the first pyramids were based on the idea of Mustabas, basically rectangular building, one piled atop another, each smaller than the one below. They were first made of sun-dried bricks, then later of stone. The sides were then filled in later to form the classic pyramid shape. This did not happen overnight, the process of doing so, basically trial and error, took hundreds of years. That was the classic Egyptian pyramid. Pyramids built in Meso America and in the far east are based on different models, which explains why they look different. Also they were used for different purposes. The Egyptian pyramids were always used as tombs, some in Meso-America seem to have been tombs, but many were temples. The ones in the far east seem to have been, first smaller and more decorative, except in China, where they were also used as tombs.
Reply
Day Late and Dollar Short
8/23/2016 05:25:53 pm
Didn't you listen to Time Machine? Egyptian Pyramids are obviously symbols of the expanded mind...or something.
Reply
Templar Secrets
8/23/2016 05:28:42 pm
You mean read, not "listen"
Day Late and Dollar Short
8/23/2016 05:55:38 pm
I think I meant listen, which colloquially implies being attentive, concentrating, and to a lesser extent following. I think if you're arguing semantics, I have a case. Listen has a stronger and different implication than read. Maybe not, though.
Only Me
8/23/2016 07:50:44 pm
Call me silly, but I think the natives would have been more awestruck by the sailing vessels.
Reply
Killbuck
8/24/2016 12:00:30 am
A pyramid with a four cornered base, tapering to the apex is about the only effective way to construct a massive hand made stone monument.
Reply
Templar Secrets
8/24/2016 04:05:59 am
>>>apex<<<
Reply
V
8/24/2016 10:32:51 am
...you know the difference between a priceless Ming vase and a modern fake worth about $50?
Templar Secrets
8/24/2016 10:59:34 am
The finished product is more important than how it was made.
V
8/27/2016 06:09:15 pm
Are you really this stupid? In terms of function at the time of manufacture, yes, the end product is more important than the process.
CPOFastForward
8/24/2016 06:57:34 am
I recently retired after 30 years in the Royal Canadian Navy. I visited the four corners of the globe in that time.
Reply
V
8/24/2016 10:37:19 am
I am and long have been a convert to the greatness that is maple syrup, but I have to argue with the "universal" in the appeal of hockey, since I really have never been able to understand or get into a sport where you go to a fight and a game breaks out.
Reply
CPOFastForward
8/24/2016 08:41:05 pm
The similarities between the Inuit igloo and the Great Stupa at Sanchi, India argue for a common source.
Bezalel
8/28/2016 07:46:09 pm
Not to defend Templar Secrets, but
Reply
Your comment will be posted after it is approved.
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorI am an author and researcher focusing on pop culture, science, and history. Bylines: New Republic, Esquire, Slate, etc. There's more about me in the About Jason tab. Newsletters
Enter your email below to subscribe to my newsletter for updates on my latest projects, blog posts, and activities, and subscribe to Culture & Curiosities, my Substack newsletter.
Categories
All
Terms & ConditionsPlease read all applicable terms and conditions before posting a comment on this blog. Posting a comment constitutes your agreement to abide by the terms and conditions linked herein.
Archives
November 2024
|