Monsters of the
Deep: Mesoamerican Symbols from Jaredite Origins
By V.
Garth Norman
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Ether 6:10 states that
as the Jaredites traveled across the great sea,
"No monster of the sea could break them, neither
whale that could mar them" (Ether 6:10).
According to Randall Spackman, this brief statement
when combined with what is known about storms at
sea, suggests that there were times when the Jaredites
could remain on deck and view the sea life that
surrounded them.
The Jaredite record
points to the most frightening meetings between
men and these huge creatures, when vessels and leviathans
encounter each other close up and occasionally collide.
Heyerdahl reported that one day on the Kon Tiki,
while the crew ate by the side of the raft, "we
started when suddenly something behind us blew hard
like a swimming horse and a big whale came up and
stared at us."
Knoble described an
incident when the whale disappeared momentarily,
then "the deck began to tremble, and a scraping
sound rose up from below the ship. The whale
was scratching its back..." (Quoted from Miner
2006)
Heyerdahl also found
monsters in the sea at night when the stars twinkled
in the dark sky and the sea was phosphorescent with
glowing plankton. The visitors were big squids
that came to the surface and floated near the raft,
their "two round shining eyes" a "devilish
green" color like phosphorus.
On several occasions,
"the black water round the raft was suddenly
full of round heads two or three feet in diameter,
lying motionless and staring at us with great glowing
eyes. On other nights balls of light three
feet and more in diameter would be visible down
in the water, flashing at irregular intervals like
electric lights turned on for a moment."
(Randall P. Spackman, The Jaredite Journey to
America, pp. 146-150, unpublished) ) (Quoted
from Miner 2006)
“Bearded Foreigners”
at the City of Lib?
Olmec Jaredite period
monuments from the ruins of La Venta on the Gulf
Coast of Mexico have bearded figures that a respected
art historian in the 1960's called “bearded foreigners.”
We don’t have to look very hard at this heavy bearded
racial type to see a probable origin from the Mediterranean
world of ancient seafarers.
Where might La Venta
tie to the Book of Mormon? The city of Lib,
like La Venta, was built on the eastern coast by
the narrow neck of land (Isthmus of Tehuantepec),
“by the place where the sea divides the land” (Ether
10:20), as was the case with La Venta, located on
an island in an inland coastal sea.
This bearded racial
type ceased to exist among indigenous peoples of
Middle America sometime before Spanish contact.
Where did they go? They became lost through
attrition with the dominant racial type we see today
and by possible warfare, which recalls the Jaredite
and Nephite wars of extermination at Ramah/Cumorah
near the Narrow Neck of Land.
A Monster of the
Deep at La Venta
La Venta Monument 63
is a standing stone column 2.5 meters high featuring
a fantastic aquatic creature modeled after a shark
that looms menacingly over a king who is holding
it up like a banner on a serpent-like fish body
staff.
Drawings from
La Venta Park monument booklet show that the king’s
headdress has plumage at the back. A tie knot
on top with feet facing left (west) appears to be
coming off the fish’s fin to signify movement with
the fish. The king faces a large “sun” circle
on the fish’s body where his arm rises up from the
sun along its back.
The shark at La Venta
ties directly to the Gulf Coast sea. I propose
the circle on the raised fish with raised arm represent
the king’s origin from the land of the rising sun
across the sea. The headdress footprints on
the knot flowing off the fish fin may signify his
journey or ancestral origin from across the sea.
This is a rare monument, but it does not stand alone.
There is a related
figure on Izapa Stela 5 — the Tree of Life stone.
Sea Monster as Migration
Symbols
This interpretation
fits well with a similar raised giant serpent on
Stela 5 at Izapa in southern Mexico. A sunrise
glyph is on its head. Humans come from its
body, with the head above framing other people like
the Monument 63 figure, as it rises from the sea
on the right east sea coast.
These and other signs
relate to creation and migration origin, in harmony
with Mesoamerican migration origin traditions from
across the sea. (Norman 1976, Stela 5
chapter 4. p.165).
I have always puzzled
over selection of fish symbols rising in smoke clouds
on the left west side of Izapa Stela 5. I
now for the first time see its origin and its meaning
more clearly. I identified the fish by their
head shapes as a dolphin and porpoise, large ocean
fish. I now believe they were selected to
signify the journey in death across the western
sea of the setting sun, as the opposite from crossing
the eastern sea in the journey of birth with the
rising sun that is tied to the ancestral migration
origin from across the eastern sea.
Ancient Navigation
— A Fact
When the “bearded foreigners”
were recognized on La Venta monuments in the 1960's,
any mention of the most obvious origin from the
Mediterranean world was strictly taboo in American
anthropology — and still is.
The rigidity of the
isolationist school is starting to give place to
long distance navigable boat travel across open
seas. In a 2005 symposium session at the Society
for American Archaeology Meetings held in Salt Lake
City, navigable boats were tracked all over the
Pacific by their unique and sophisticated plank
tie construction. The same type open sea boat
made by southern California Indians in the exact
same complex manner still had to be an “independent
invention” for a diehard isolationist guarding the
American evolution laboratory. Somehow they
could navigate all over the Pacific islands, from
Hawaii to the South Seas, but not cross an equal
distance eastward and hit the North American mainland.
However, contact between the South Sea Islands and
South America is now a recognized fact.
This year’s SAA meetings
in Puerto Rico in April highlighted evidences of
the Caribbean and Gulf islands chain communications
between North to South America, Florida to Veracruz,
and navigating the open sea between Yucatan and
the Caribbean islands.
The long disputed Book
of Mormon migrations by sea are no longer unthinkable
in American archaeology. They are not only
possible, but probable, and mounting evidences are
proving significant transoceanic contact and even
sustaining the actual Book of Mormon historic accounts.
References
Miner, Alan C.
Step by Step Through the Book of Mormon,
manuscript, 2006.
Norman, V. Garth.
Izapa Sculpture, Part 1 Text. Papers of
the New World Archaeological Foundation.
Brigham Young University, 1976.
Ochoa, Lorenzo and
Marcia Castro–Leal. Archeological Guide
of the La Venta Museum Park. Government
of the State of Tabasco, Villahermosa, 1986.
Spackman, Randall P.
The Jaredite Journey to America, unpublished.
Copyright © 1999-2002
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