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The manned Monster

Gisela Ermel
mysterious location in Central America
In: Q'Phase, No 12, Kassel 2008

The iconography of Mesoamerica still offers a number of motives, to decipher their meaning and purpose to today in the professional world and fierce debate is . One of these motives is what archaeologists call the others as a monster's mouth. The motif comes in two variants before: once with a person inside, but also alone without a person. It is one of the Paleo-SETI research Ikonographiemotive interesting when you look at it with modern and unbiased eyes. It was over 2700 years shown repeatedly on ceramics, on wall paintings, illuminated manuscripts, it was carved in stone and built as an architectural detail in buildings.
The first researcher, who called attention to this particular subject, was the archaeologist Matthew Stirling, who excavated in the 1940s in the Olmekenstätte La Venta. He found a stone stele that shows a person apparently in the open mouth of a jaguar standing. Time and again, in the following years more Examples of this mysterious motif discovered. At the Conference on Pre-Columbian iconography - "The Cult of the Feline" - which was held in October 1970, claimed George Kubler, a scientist from Yale University, that this motif, which have characteristics of a jaguar or a snake and a combination comprise of both, can certainly be Olmec origin and thus go back to the early days of the Central American cultures.
In 1987 David Grove's work on the Olmec site Chalcatzingo. Again, there were several examples of this from a number of researchers now so-called "Jaguar's mouth", including as a walk-in stone monuments, but also as a relief on a rock face, a person pointing, sitting in as a "monster mouth". Grove described the rock relief as "highly stylized and beyond any identifiable".
Can you come out of this extraordinary subject in more detail präastronautischer view? Worth a try.
culture as we understand it began in Central America with a bang around 1200 BC., As did Stone Age farmers culture a sudden jump. (See also my article "The Count of San Lorenzo"), you began virtually from one day to the other so as to build on the drawing board designed plants and cities based on an astronomical-geometrical layouts, without first necessary to do to pass through intermediate and stages of development. At the same time they began to present things, the fantastic and - according to our interpretation today - contained unrealistic elements. In the next jump time to the cultural essence of the pictures and figures that are biologically impossible, became the favorite motifs of the Olmecs. People that look like a mixture of human and jaguar or from bird and human, winged snake-like objects just as well as the alleged monster's mouth. Strikingly, just take the people who sit in as a "monster mouth" or are not human characteristics and almost always a kind of helmet.
make such a "monster mouth", highly stylized, the so-called altars or thrones represents, of which up to now no archaeologist knows what those huge stone blocks should be. They are similar in form to typical examples a little bit today but closed behind desks, and usually sits under the cover in a niche a helmeted person. The area around the niche is clearly a stylized "foot", giving it at any rate interpret almost all excavators Olmec sites.






altar 4 in La Venta:
About the person in the niche
the so-called "Big Foot"

A typical example is the Altar 4 at La Venta. La Venta is the most important site in terms of time of a second phase of Olmec culture, which - after the sudden and inexplicable end of San Lorenzo - BC to approximately 900th began. It can be seen in a niche under the "stylized Jaguar Monster Maul" (as David Grove) a person sitting with a helmet-like hat, a cape and an object on the chest. The face of the person is not recognizable because it was intentionally damaged by the Olmec themselves. The same motif show even more "altars" in La Venta. Even in San Lorenzo, in the first phase of Olmekenkultur was made such a stone monument with the same design.

Monument 19 from La Venta













19 in La Venta Monument shows the scene "person in Monster" in a slightly different way, but are the Archaeologists now considerable agreement that, while there still the same basic theme was meant. This time a person is sitting in something that was a "serpent" represented or interpreted. The person with a complicated, enclosing the head and face leaving clear helmet, in front of a typical nose breathing symbol that since the sudden start of the basic equipment Olmekenkultur all so-called Jaguar people - across the board helmeted - belonged. The excavators have no idea what that means this representation and speculate about a "snake on a horse-shaman", though it is clear that this person rather than on a "snake" sits. The snake, it is further speculated, could also be a "fire snake" to be. The stone monument once stood in the vicinity of three colossal heads and with his pitch and to these and other monuments are part of the astronomical and geometrical city layouts.


Monument 1 in Chalcaztingo:
"El Rey"

A similar representation Does Chalcatzingo, the Olmec outpost in Morelos, coinciding with La Venta. This is known as "El Rey" has become known monument 1, a high on the mountain behind the site on a rock wall mounted relief. As a person sits in one, as some archaeologists believe "in the profile seen Jaguar mouth", with a complicated head-dress, a "jaguar mask and holding a unidentifiable object in his hand. What this might have been ready to buy? The archaeologists are puzzled and debating whether a person sitting here in a cave or on a cloud or an object that are in heaven because of the cloud around it. Kent Reilly III. wondered in 1968 whether this is a Person is shown sitting in the sky or on a cloud. There is some confusion also about what come out of the "monster mouth". Sprachvoluten, symbolic of that noise? Or this is a plant motif in connection with a jaguar mouth? That makes no sense, since the out sounding noises sound even more logical. Here's the same event as shown on Monument 19 in La Venta?





Monument 9 Chalcatzingo:
El Portuzuelo

Is there a link between "El Rey" and 9 in Chalcatzingo monument, known as El Portuzuelo that goal? This stone monument is a detached "jaguar mouth" dar. David Grove said that there could be the front view of the object in which the El Rey seated figure. The monument was the time of the Olmecs set up vertically, and people often need to be crawled through the open hole, the result of archaeological research. According to David Grove El Portuzuelo stood on the main platform of the Mound - of course, also built by astronomical and geometrical layout - City. No one knows what the monument represents. An artificial cave entrance? An entry in the pantheon? Or in the underworld? A walk-Earth Monster? Or entrance into a "monster mouth"? And so the input into an object with which you reside "in heaven" or with which one could travel between the clouds?
Chalcatzingo offers other examples of this motif. Monument 13, also a relief on the rock wall behind the site shows a "non-human person in a cloverleaf-shaped mouth of a supernatural creature," the interpretation of David Grove. Also this is reminiscent of the gate-foot monument. The person with a massive helmet, as worn so many of the archaeologists so-called "supernatural". Even more interesting is Monument 5, also found on this cliff. Here we see a "dragon on a sky band of clouds" with a human figure in its mouth, the half-sticking out of it. The latest on the rock art begins to suspect, wanted to show what the Olmecs with this creative group at all the manned and unmanned monster mouths: a helmeted person goes into something or something is in, which is associated with the sky and as presented in heaven located. If this is the primitive act, according to the hearsay illustrated version of a flying object?
then shows a sculpture of Las Limas, Michael Coe interpreted as the rain god Tlaloc "in the midst of a fire serpent", the same basic motif. Just as a bas-relief of Cerros de la Canteras, whose motive Pina Chan as a man in the mouth of a serpent described, but seen in profile. Both sites are at the same time La Venta, but the motif of a flying Snake goes back also to the beginning of the Olmecs, as even a drawing on pottery from Black Eddy man, a branch of San Lorenzo, which was like an assembly line pottery made has been to a bird snake.




wall painting in the cave of
Oxtotitlan

There is an interesting wall paintings from the La Venta period. This is a drawing in the cave of Oxtotitlan. There sits a person with a kind of bird a bird costume and helmet, on a thing that looks like a typical altar in La Venta or San Lorenzo. The importance of this wall painting is just as unknown as that of the so-called Altars. What is the relation between a means equipped with bird attributes of people, sitting on something that was interpreted as a "monster mouth"? Moreover, the cave entrance Oxtotitlan with even a drawing that is supposed to represent, according to David Grove is also a "Jaguar monster face" - so a walk. That a "monster mouth" simply should symboliserien only a cave entrance can imagine I feel bad, because that would be unnecessary in this case, yes my song twice: a cave with a symbolic cave decorated. That makes no sense.
we go a few hundred years. The Zapotec of Oaxaca were from the beginning - 1200 BC. - With the Olmecs name. In San Jose Mogote, a kind of workshop outpost of San Lorenzo, were even then as objects of iron ore produced at the assembly line and those shown with non-human attributes. Around the year 500 BC. but was the motive, the elements of Jaguar, bird and snake combined together into imaginative monuments have become a typical and stereotyped Zapotec motif. About
BC 350th - Or even earlier - was built by the Olmecs, one of her typical astronomical and geometrical cities, this time near the Pacific coast, known as El Baul. Here findenwir not only the famous "astronauts" carved in stone - for the archaeologists now an example of a Werjaguar (see my paper "From Werjaguar to the rain god") - but also the "monster mouths, both manned and unmanned. Monumten 34 shows a kind of stylized Werjaguargesicht ", and the same motif is repeated on several other monuments of the site. Another monument shows a human figure who looks out from a "snake mouth." Perhaps the Maya began
BC already the year 300. construction of its magnificent stucco masks. It is stucco sculptures on buildings in the form of "Jaguar" - or "snake mouths, often equipped with jaguar claws, earrings," goggles "and glyphs. The archaeologists are also at a loss here and talk among others about a "rain god-monster-foot stucco mask" and other nonsense. These architectural embellishments may be much older than the later pyramids. They are found in Tikal, Uaxactun Nakb and, in places, which began during the time of the Olmecs. Here may have already been mixed with the monster mouths of the "crew" (crew), the "Jaguar helmeted men."



Two steles from Izapa showing
like a helmeted person enters into or out
something gets out
something that looks like a snake
foot


fall into this time also Ikonographiebeispiele from Izapa. There are including a stele, a now has us already familiar motif. It shows a person - or a God, then propose a number of archaeologists - who with a look out when a thing that seems to be a mixture of mouth and monster snake. Another stele in Izapa also shows a person in, on or about a "monster." There are other such scenes where people are located within a "monster mouth" or surrounded by them.






stele Izapa



















Stela C at Tres Zapotes

In Tres Zapotes, a late Olmekenstätte, there are at the same time on C totem even three people in a monster's mouth. The most famous stele from Tres Zapotes stele is C, with an early Long Count Date: 32 BC. Less well known is that on this stele was on a "Werjaguar" with helmet, as shown in, or through one of these monster mouths.
Around the birth, the location elements in Teotihuacan to a combined Jaguar-bird-snake motif made, including that of the excavators so named "paw-wing motif". The Maya endowed by this time continue their buildings with monster-foot stucco masks. But the "manned monster mouth" was not forgotten. A stele at Copan from around 250 AD. shows a ruler with a bombastic headdress (decorated the development of simple kopfumschliessenden helmet the first Olmekenzeit), standing on a distinctive "monster mouth".






stele at Copan: a ruler
standing on one foot monster




good five hundred years later, this bizarre motive is still in vogue. The so-called P Zoomorph of Quirigua shows something that the archaeologists found such a person in a turtle shell, which is why the monument was also known as the "Great Turtle". Another attempt at interpretation is that the rain god Chac appears in the sky out of a Schilkrötenpanzer. One also wonders whether the monument had served as an altar.




Quirigua: Zoomorph P

If you look closely at the thing but, we see again the good old "person in Monster" motif. The person is then time as a rain god, as Werjaguar, sometimes interpreted as a costumed rulers, for it carries the typical helmet and a "jaguar mouth" - traits that as elements of style both are of Werjaguars and the rain god, to which other places are still his "goggles."

sketch of the front of the Zoomorph P

from Quirigua

side view of the Zoonmorp P

from Quirigua






also a person makes a monster in the mouth is Zoomorph G in Quirigua, and this time the front looking out from an opening, of course, as always equipped with a helmet. Both objects - the alleged tortoise shells and the monster foot - are equipped with numerous somewhat technical drawings, of which so far no one has any idea what they mean.

Around the year 800 AD. enjoyed the Jaguar-bird-snake motif seems popular because it is only found in Chichen Itza good five hundred times, including in connection with the Paleo-SETI research is so well known "descending gods." Also in Chichen Itza you can see people in the throat of winged serpents.

the beginning of the Postclassic around 900 AD. is the motive for Jaguar, bird and snake items already 2000 years old and still recognizable, although there are many changes went through.

Even in the period shortly before and after the conquest of Mexico by the Spaniards cavorting in illuminated manuscripts snake chaps, go to the people, clouds, snakes (Codex Zouche-Nuttall), on which persons ascend (Seldenrolle) or a "bee monster with snake's head, from which a human head sticking out "(Codex Borgia). In a monster foot cave entrance you see a "fire serpent god with turtle moves" (Seldenrolle), and Codex Borgia also offers another, surrounded by smoke serpent, in which a person sits with spectacles, or heads, which protrude from a snake mouth, "fire-breathing dragon" snake mouths gaping gods besides in a boat, a flying "Wind Serpent", a boat shaped like a flying snake and bird-like objects that stick out from those people, to give but a few examples.

Perhaps we should finally replace the term "Big Foot" by the much more honest name "unknown object". Then would sit at one helmeted people in unknown or are Objekiten which are equipped or provided with signs that point to the sky or flying. then this age-old motive Would not it make sense? In this sense, the artists had to conquer time, the god Quetzalcoatl, a feathered serpent sitting on and flying through the sky constitute, nor always shown the same scene when this God better - would have to put in the flying snake - or faithful.

Addendum: When I published my article "Steps to Heaven" wrote, was still not clear to me the context in which the "monster mouth" - or "cosmic monster" or "gateway between the world of gods and the human world" or both are always imaginative interpretation attempts of archaeologists - with this unusual architecture is that the impersonated a Mayan ruler a trip to heaven and act out. After I researched for my monster foot-article, it struck me like scales from their eyes. At the end of the corridors and before the final ascent to the sky waiting for the ruling the monster mouth - just the object that carries him to heaven. Where they stand on a ruler represented the monster mouth, you had not understood exactly what it was. Where they represented the Monster Maul walked and manned, you still knew that we had to climb into the thing in order to fly through the clouds, as is shown very well in Chalcatzingo: first, the helmeted person sitting in this house, amid clouds of heaven (El Rey), then the walk-Foot Monster (El Portuzuelo, the gateway monument), was passed by the apparently in some rites. Who knows, maybe this was the initial replayed on the floor in the departure of the standing buildings ...

Literature:

Coe, Michael D.: Olmec Jaguars and Olmec Kings. In. EP Benson: The Cult of the Feline: A Conference in Pre-Columbian Iconography. Washington, DC, 1972

Coe, Michael D. and Rex Koontz: From the Olmec to the Aztecs. New York 2002

Covarrubias, Miguel: The Eagle, the Jaguar and the Serpent. New York 1954

Cyphers, Ann: From Stone to Symbols: Olmec Art in Social Context at San Lorenzo Tenochtitlan. Washington, DC, 1999

Ermel, Gisela: The sacred bundles of the Aztecs. Gross-Geraus 2007

Ermel, Gisela: Das Rätsel von San Lorenzo. In: Sagenhafte Zeiten, Nr. 2, Beatenberg 2006

Ermel, Gisela: Flammenbaum und Sky Lords. In: Sagenhafte Zeiten, Nr. 1, Beatenberg 2007

Furst, Peter T.: The Olmec Were-Jaguar-Motif in the Light of Ethnographic Reality. In: E. P. Benson: Dumbarton Oaks Conference of the Olmec. Washington, D.C., 1968

Grove, David C.: Ancient Chalcatzingo. Austin, Texas, 1987

Grove, David C.: Olmec Felines in Highland Central Mexico. In: E. P. Benson: The Cult of the Feline. A Conference in Pre-Columbian Iconography. Washington, DC, 1972

Joralemon, Peter D.: A Study of Olmec Iconography. In. Studies in Pre-Columbian Art and Archaeology, No. 7, Washington, DC, 1971

Kubler, George Jaguars in the Valley of Mexico. In: EP Benson: The Cult of the Feline. A Conference in Pre-Columbian Iconography. Washington, DC, 1972

more:

Gisela Ermel:

The sacred bundles of the Aztecs.

Culture jump, Master Plan and gods cast:

Central America mysterious past

Ancient mail Verlag, 2007 Gross Gerau

ISBN 978-3-935910-44-6

272 pages, numerous illustrations