INTERPRETING ANCIENT ARTIFACTS WITH MODERN PERSPECTIVES by Daria M. Brezinski, PhD
Recently uncovered by archeologists in Java, Indonesia, is a 500,000 year old ‘purposefully made graphic art or writing form’ on a mollusk shell. I lived with native peoples observing first-hand how elders with great simplicity intertwine teaching children Sacred Geometry, Spirituality and the Tangible World through storytelling at pre-verbal (ages 1 through 6) ages using nature (vines, sunflowers, etc.) in a way youngsters understand without the use of ‘technical or scientific jargon, written language or symbols’ yet most adults cannot grasp with a high school education. If an infant/child can learn and understand higher level mathematics and geometry through storytelling, how does this relate to our interpretations of the scribbling and artifacts discovered from past civilizations?
TIME ERAS
In life, time, especially the past, is not a straight line from point A to point B. There is lots of meandering in between. Tunnel vision arrogantly interprets the past using suppositions as if the same level of evolution thrived simultaneously throughout all lands in ancient times in a forward trajectory. In other words, during a certain era, it is assumed that all humanoids were Neanderthal with the same skills. Or that ancient’s behaved within our modern worldview so that there is religious significance interpreted in all artifacts.
This is how interpreting the past using present mindset looks. In the year 4150, after the planet has reemerged from its polluted environment and nature has replenished itself, I often wonder what an archeologist will interpret of a dig she uncovered from a volcanic eruption which struck a motel full of guests, skeletons lying on a bed, with fake fingernails, hair extensions and cubic zirconia jewelry, plastic bags all over the room, with a remote in their hands in front of a flat screen TV as worshiping or paying tribute to the gods? Awe struck by not being able to reproduce an un-degraded plastic bag or water bottle which lasted thousands of years or find a cubic zirconia in nature, thinking us god-like and a highly evolved species that disappeared by natural disaster? Interpreting the bathroom as the place where one cleansed oneself before worshiping to the gods where ancients wash their feet in the toilet, hands in the sink prior to entering the spiritual waters of the bathtub in order to commune with the gods in front of the TV set?
A panoramic view of the today’s world shows many TIME ZONES exist between peoples from the Modern Cultures in America and Europe, the Third World Cultures to the Indigenous Cultures untouched by the “civilized” in remote New Zealand or Africa. So in the modern era with multitudes of evolved phases of what might be considered ‘time eras’ or ‘cultural eras’, imagine how many different epochs existed in ancient times when technology did not connect the planet and ice separated the multitudes hidden in remote pockets of the globe? Since they were so in-tune with nature, they might well have been connected at an intuitive/psychic/metaphysical level of awareness that animals often exhibit in what Rupert Sheldrake calls Morphic Resonance which most humans can only imagine rather than experience. Perhaps thoughts were communicated telepathically instead of speaking aloud or scribing them to eternal legacy in stone.
Today a comet hitting the earth would leave survivors located in various parts of the globe, without technology, electricity, knowledge of food production, unable to work together as a species, disconnected from the rest of civilizations across the globe, each pocket of survivors would evolve differently depending on climate, group skills, values, resources, etc. New species would emerge out of Silicon Valley technicians vs. mid-west farmers vs fishing cultures along coasts vs big city populations. Each would have different priorities, values, customs, strategies to survive and perhaps one day, come into contact with the others with clashing or compatible viewpoints. What would be valued by each of these groups: history written in stone or on cave walls: preserving Heirloom seeds, books and technologies for future generations who after the initial backsliding into survival mode- food, clothing and shelter- find society evolving again? But after so many generations in survival, past achievements are now myths, legends or memories in human psyche? Will only white men tell His-Story?
MULTIPLE LAYERS OF INTERPRETATION
The past is seen AS IF communication represents the same interpretations used in Modern Times. Cultures of the past may have been more evolved and assigned greater multiple-layered meaning to distinctive characteristics, hieroglyphics and scribbling then moderns who merely consider ‘A’ as letter, as a sound ‘ah’ and an ‘adjective’ put together to have a consistent interpretation over time. Rather, one ancient stroke represents multi- layers- spiritual/intangible, perceptual, vibrational, auditory, light spectrum- as well as a visual and communicative. The viewer, depending on level of consciousness, recognizes the multiple meanings. For example, when the ‘all-seeing-eye of Horus’ is observed in an ancient pyramid, the observer not only interprets it as a word or symbol for the anatomical part, a combination of Egyptian letters or numbers, representation of governmental overseeing, but also as a vibrational energy, a deep mystical meaning that touches the spirit of those who gaze upon it. Modern observers who see symbols at face value lose the depth of meaning.
Thus the markings here of 500,000 years demonstrate patterning of vibration, mathematics or an intuitiveness that we no longer possess. In a deeply innermost way that touches our souls instead of mere intellect, words and symbols have vibrations which are lost to the moderns who take things so literally, mono-layered and material that the most important conveyances are missed. Try banging a metal plate with sand resting upon it and see how the sound vibration creates beautiful distinct geometrical patterns that change and evolve. Uttering words, written symbols, has the same such vibrational qualities whether they be in a name, a number or a shape.
INTERPRETING HIS-STORY
Pompously, the belief and celebration that modern Europeans ‘discovered’ the Americas disregards the facts that archeology demonstrates: the Clovis French came to the east coast thousands of years ago or Orientals who became Native Americans traveled across the Bearing Straight after the last Ice Age. Native friends have related generational stories about the Mayas crossing the ocean, coming to Florida and Georgia, relocating to a less drought driven geography by boat. The first presence in the US of ‘corn’ (a Mayan invention, the first genetically modified product that if it had come by land would have first appeared in Mexico and Texas) was in Florida. The names of towns and tribes in Florida, reveal even more evidence- Mayamee (Miami), or Lake Okeechobee was originally named Lake Mayaimi whose tribes in the area were the Mayaimi, Mayayuaki, and Mayaka or the presence of Mayan chocolate and turquoise in Chaco Canyon. Languages such as the Yucatec of the Mayas or the Quechua Language of the Incas are strewn all over Florida, Georgia and the Southwest NOT along the land routes that might have been taken by foot, hinting that Mayans were seafaring people who did not die off because of starvation and drought as some postulate.
Still unknown are how Egyptians built pyramids and more importantly WHY they exist around the globe in every hemisphere, how structures such as Gobi Teppi and other recent finds demonstrate high levels of artistry, architecture, design and technologies created in an era when technology to build such edifices, did not exist. Believing we understand, know and can interpret what is dug up, observed on fish shells or pyramid walls, is arrogance.
SUMMATION
To interpret the past with the eyes, perceptions and knowledge of the present dismisses the genius, high levels of mastery of the material world and the invisible world that the ancients possessed but cannot yet be understood or interpreted with modern perspectives. Rather, it is important to be open- minded. The entire Light Spectrum, for example, cannot be seen by the naked eye but can be viewed by microscopes, telescopes, x-rays and, as yet to be invented, other technologies that will uncover still more levels of the spectrum. It is accepted that the ‘unknown’ layers of the light spectrum will one day be dis/rediscovered through technologies. What must it have been to the ancients who might possibly have been able to see the spectrum with their eyes, senses or just ‘felt’ the presence so much so that they were able to manifest in the material world what they experienced and saw in such beauty, symbology, symmetry and structures for us to marvel and contemplate? As moderns become more aware of the multiple layers of reality, those interpretations of ancient artifacts will be seen as attempts to communicate more clearly higher orders of consciousness that are individually ‘felt or experienced’ in which words cannot possibly express.
Daria M. Brezinski, PhD , professor, psychologist, socially responsible serial entrepreneur, international speaker and mentor, national consultant, TV/Radio show host and author took an overarching, circuitous and unconventional path towards business, education, health and parenting.