ANCIENT ALIEN GLYPHS TV

Here you see the same imagery (minus the reclining human): the World Tree rising from the offering bowl (marked with the dotted X “kin” sign and filled with the trappings of royalty: the crossed sky band, the fish, and the lancet for ritual blood-letting) on top of the Underworld/realm of the dead (Cauac monster head). The version used on Pakal’s tomb lid is also used in a mural in the Temple of the Foliated Cross at Palenque. It took several forms, including a Ceiba tree, a stylized maize plant, and a cacao tree. Its roots were in the Underworld, its trunk in the Middle World, and its highest branches in the Other World. However, these realms weren’t necessarily defined as good or evil. They saw the world as divided into three zones: The Upper World, or the land of the gods, the Middle World, where humans live, and the Underworld, which is the realm of death. Imagine the wild theories you could come up with if you didn’t know the background.Īs it turns out, Maya cosmological beliefs, many of which were absorbed from earlier cultures, were fairly consistent across the Maya city-states. (That would be clockwise from the top left: Mathew – shown as a winged man, Mark – shown as a winged lion, John – shown as an eagle, and Luke – shown as a winged ox.) These symbols come from the prophetic Revelation of St. Or looking at the image from the Book of Kells, the beautiful illuminated gospels drawn on calfskin in Ireland around 800 AD, without an understanding of the Four Evangelists it pictures and their winged representations.

It would be like seeing a photo of the Indian god Ganesh (See image, above) and trying to interpret it with no knowledge of the Hindu beliefs behind it. This whole debate arose out of ignorance of the belief system and cultural symbols of the ancient Maya. (See photo, above.) He admitted, “I had to be a little interpretive.” I guess so! The “rocket” he created looks nothing like the image on the sarcophagus. For an episode of “Ancient Aliens,” Paul Francis, a model maker, created a 3-D image of the alien astronaut on Pakal’s tomb lid.

ANCIENT ALIEN GLYPHS TV

TV shows like “Ancient Aliens,” “In Search of Aliens,” “Mystery Quest,” and “History’s Mysteries” keep the story of the alien astronaut alive and well. Maybe it’s the appeal of seeing intelligent aliens as part of our history. But the vendor also held the plaque up sideways and pointed out the alien astronaut, in case that’s what I wanted. When I was walking from the ruins to the museum, I passed numerous street vendors offering small replicas of Pakal’s tomb lid, one of which I bought for ten dollars. The problem is now that experts can read Mayan glyphs and understand Mayan cosmology, people still want to see a picture of an alien astronaut on Pakal the Great’s tomb. So Von Danniken was simply using popular science fiction theories and imposing them on specific ancient sites, including, among others, Machu Pichu, Nazca, Cusco, and Palenque. In 2001: A Space Odyssey, the obelisk proves to be the force behind the sudden advancements in human achievement, including the first use of weapons by the ape-men shown at the beginning of the movie. It continued a story line from his earlier work, “The Sentinel,” written in 1951, which tells the story of an ancient artifact left on the moon by alien beings. Clarke’s space epic, 2001: A Space Odyssey, was published. The book was wildly popular, selling over seven million copies. Palenque was one of the ancient sites that he proposed were proof of alien presence on Earth. In his book, Chariots of the Gods, published in 1968, Eric Von Daniken proposed that the image on the sarcophagus actually showed an alien astronaut. One guess, in particular, proved to be very popular.

Unfortunately, archaeologists at that time were not able to translate the many symbols and glyphs on the sarcophagus.

The original is still under the Temple of Inscriptions, where it was discovered in 1952. When I visited the famous Maya city of Palenque, in southern Mexico, I had the chance to see the full-size replica of the sarcophagus of K’inich Janaab’ Pakal, or Pakal the Great.

Ancient alien glyphs