Let us put this in perspective. It is three thousand years since the global Bronze Age Culture that operated from at least 2400 BC which was its apex through 1159 BC. Obviously that apex needed five prior centuries to become global through multiple voyages, just as ours did.
That surely meant ample trade factories and trader lords all depending on copper ingots to act as acceptable currency. This is the society that built pyramids globally and which was echoed in Mesoamerica and elsewhere after their fall.
Thus concurrent glyphs from Sweden to Mexico makes total sense. Our problem is that three thousand years is wonderful for making things disappear. Even this site was torn down, likely when the copper stopped in 1159BC, This is also when Mycenae fell to annoyed Greeks from the Baltics...
Ancient Bronze Age symbol on the mountain above Teotihuacan
Long forgotten slide of a Great Sun glyph
While wandering around the
stone ruins on the top of Cerro Gordo, north of Teotihuacan, I took
color slides of several rock carvings. However, I never really looked
again at the slide immediately to the right, after first glancing at it
in a slide viewer in 1970. It was never used in any of my lectures on
Mesoamerican architecture, during the subsequent decades. It didn’t look
very “Mesoamerican” and seemed to have nothing to do with
architecture. There it sat in the slide box, forgotten, until just
recently.
You can thank Georgia Tech
architecture professors, Ike Saporta and Julian Harris, for me having
all those precious images of Mesoamerican civilization that you never
see in videos or in books. Ike was also president of the Atlanta
Archaeological Society and hammered into my head the directive that I
document EVERYTHING I encountered . . . not just what interested me. Julian
was the architect for the Etowah Mounds Museum and also a professional
sculptor. In writing, he requested that I photograph as many glyphs and
motifs as possible. He often sculptured traditional Creek motifs to
place on his buildings. Copies of all my slides were to be held by the
Georgia Tech Library.
Someone really, really didn’t like
whoever the Great Sun symbol stood. The petroglyph had been torn from
the wall of a building and severely defaced. In fact, all of the stone
ruins near where archaeologists are working now, showed signs of
violent destruction. Archaeologists had to dig down to an earlier phase
of the structure or building complex to get to walls that had not been
torn asunder.
Although the other fragments of rock
carvings on Cerro Gordo look more “Mesoamerican,” they still do not
look like those in the valley above. My guess is that the rock carving
above dates from the time of the Olmec Civilization. Note that the rock
has an Olmec Civilization- Maya number on the upper right-hand corner.
In fact, I believe that it is safe to say that we are looking at an
early form of their writing system. This stone slab was also torn from a
building an broken up, but there were no attempts to gouge out the
imagery.
2018 archaeological dig on the western crest of Cerro Gordo
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