[Aztlan] [Aztla n] hurricane/huracán

[Susan Gilchrist]

Thank you so much for your help, including Dea who
sent a separate e-mail. I'm sorry to take so long to reply.
The Steve Houston article makes the puzzle look much
more complicated, particularly with the illustrations at
http://www.popolvuh.ufm.edu.gt/eng/cuatrovientos.htm
which was in her original 2006 e-mail. It seems as though
Europeans must have agreed with the "four winds" terminology
since the pictures look just like European maps.

Also looking a little bit at the meterological
explanations of things, it seems as though hurricanes up
close would include all kinds of eddies and whatnot, so it's
probably good to expect winds from all directions.

The reason I'm interested in the question is that in the
painting I've been studying, El Jardin de las Delicias,
*http://tinyurl.com/d7luj7*
it seems as though the circle of riders in the center
might represent a hurricane since they're going counterclockwise.
I think they're representing Ecclesiastes 1:6
The wind goeth toward the south, and turneth about
unto the north; it whirleth about continually, and the wind
returneth again according to his circuits.
gyrat per meridiem, et flectitur ad aquilonem.
Lustrans universa in circuitu pergit spiritus,
et in circulos suos revertitur.
since an old inventory now seems to have called the picture
"la banidad del mundo," and the part about wind is right
after the opening "vanitas." So I guess what I need to look for
is some indication that people knew hurricanes went around
counterclockwise and the artist didn't come up with such a
correct model of a hurricane accidentally. Just looking for
the idea of a circle isn't specific enough since people on both
sides of the Atlantic thought of the winds in terms of a circle.
     Looking for the National Geographic book, there's one with the
title Nature on the Rampage: Our Violent Earth (1986) where Gene
Stuart was the co-author, and maybe that's it since the date is
about right. Will look for it. Thank you--susan


On Sun, Mar 29, 2009 at 1:50 PM, Nicholas Hopkins <nickhopkins at live.com>wrote:

>  Susan-- The late Gene Stuart (mother of David) did a book on storms (with,
> I think, that title) for National Geographic, about 20 years ago (?), and I
> know she dug into the Colonial sources.  You might get something from her
> book.
> Nick
>
>
> > Date: Sun, 29 Mar 2009 03:50:44 -0700
> > From: gilchrist.susan at gmail.com
> > To: aztlan at lists.famsi.org
> > Subject: [Aztlan] hurricane/huracán
>
> >
> > Does anyone know when Europeans figured out that hurricanes
> > go in a circle, always counter-clockwise (at least north of the equator)?
> > I've just been looking at Peter Martyr's first three decades, and
> > he only talks about wind and rising seas.
> > I've found a reference to Fernandez de Oviedo saying about a
> > 1508 storm that lasted 24 hours that "the wind commenced at
> > North, driving ships from their moorings, and subsequently
> > changed suddenly to an opposite quarter, blowing then from
> > the South as violently and with as much fury as before from
> > the North. The Indians distinguished these excessively
> > tempestuous storms as *huracanes*."
> > It seems as though people in hurricane areas must have known
> > from the way the wind stops and then starts up again that
> > the whole thing was going in a circle.
> > On a practical level, it would have been nice to know that
> > the sudden calm when the eye passes over is the half-way
> > point, not the end of the storm.
> > Did the Maya represent hurricanes as circular? or like a
> > huge whirlwind? Or did they go first one way, then
> > the other?
> > Any help would be appreciated.--Susan Gilchrist
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