[Aztlan] Maya and Hopi

[John B. Carlson]

30 March 2009

Sharon & Donald,

I found your questions qne comments to be of interest... particularly 
if the Hopi symbol that you are calling the "cross of four 
directions" is the specific symbol that I think it might be. 
(Obviously, I am not sure because we don't know what it looks like 
without seeing the image.) I got interested in the migration of a 
specific Maya symbol, the cuincunx form that is the Maya Lamat symbol 
(the 8th Maya day sign), as I found it represented in other 
Mesoamerican iconography and beyond, including among the Hopi. I 
circulated a short paper for comment back in 1991 at the 
International Congress of Americanists in New Orleans and a longer 
paper was eventually published in Archaeoastronomy Journal Volume 
12/13 which was also published as a book entitled "Songs from the 
Sky."  The title of the paper is "Transformations of the Mesoamerican 
Venus Turtle Carapace War Shield: A Study in Ethnoastronomy" : Songs 
from the Sky (2005:99-122).

AZTLAN wisely doesn't allow attachments, but I could send a PDF of 
the paper to anyone interested. I could also send it to Mike Rugieri 
or Dave Hixson if they would convert it to a tinyurl to post on 
AZTLAN. I would certainly welcome comments on this paper which 
follows a very specific war-related symbol from the Maya region 
northward well up into North America and perhaps as far south as 
Panama.

Sharon, perhaps you could arrange some way for the AZTLAN listeros to 
see the specific Maya and  Hopi forms that you are talking about to 
see if is essentially the same as the Lamat symbol... or something 
else. In not, please send me the images so that I can see if they 
relate to what I have worked on.  Thanks in advance,

John Carlson




At 10:06 AM -0700 3/29/09, donald raab wrote:
>Has any work been done trying to determine the relationships between 
>these groups.  Much of what I remember was that the study of the 
>various indian groups was compartmentalized.  Implied was that there 
>was no outer connections or contact.  I remeber Linda Schele writing 
>at one time about a colleague of hers who found strong connections 
>to the Maya in Columbia.  And of course M. Coe who found cultural 
>connections to Mesoamerican indians in Indonesia (dance).  If this 
>modern day Hopi is strongly affected by Mayan symbolism it might be 
>interesting to see what she says.
>
>Myself; I was taken aback a few years ago; when I viewed a 
>reconstruction of Cahokia via computer.  The mounds and topping 
>looked like a perfect rendition of mayan temple sites with the 
>exception that the mounnds were earth rather than stone.
>
>--- On Sun, 3/29/09, sharon orlet <ojuliana at sbcglobal.net> wrote:
>
>
>From: sharon orlet <ojuliana at sbcglobal.net>
>Subject: [Aztlan] Maya and Hopi
>To: "aztlan" <aztlan at lists.famsi.org>, aztlan-request at lists.famsi.org
>Date: Sunday, March 29, 2009, 9:19 AM
>
>
>Maya folk,
>I took some of the Maya symbols found in Palenque to one of the Hopi 
>potters, Rachel Samie, who is the granddaughter of  the famous 
>Nampeyo potter who started the whole movement of taking designs 
>found in the ancient pot shards found in the ruins and putting them 
>on the "modern" undecorated pots.
>    She was taken aback by the symbols-- they seemed to stir 
>something deep inside.  Her favorite was the "cross" of four 
>directions-- which i do not have to show you. She has been making 
>her pot designs more angular, and these seemed to be proof of her 
>new way.
>
>
>The hopi have in the thier kivas  four posts, to represent the four 
>worlds that have come, and a lattice criss-cross of cedar to remind 
>them of the time "when they lived on the water."   This look like 
>the cross-hatching on many Maya designs.
>
>I wished i had the swastika-- -- anyone have a photo of that? that i 
>might send to her.
>
>thanks
>sharon mcmullen orlet
>st louis
>ojuliana at sbcglobal.net
>when we dream alone it is only a dream;
>when we dream together it is the beginning of reality
>                       brazilian proverb
>

-- 
*****************************************

John B. Carlson, Ph.D., Director
The Center for Archaeoastronomy
P. O. Box "X"
College Park, MD  20741-3022  USA
(301) 864-6637  office  {fax by arrangement}
http://www.archaeoastronomy.net
<Tlaloc at umd.edu>