Chacmool
What can I claim from you, or you from I?
Some words I spent as was your beauty lent,
Misshapen wings impossible to fly,
Things unfinished that aren't that important.
Seeds beneath the rain know their destiny.
No path between this and that I gave thought,
Each very own peculiarity;
A battlefield where tumbleweeds fought.
Could I have been more important portent
Clearly in the obsidian mirror?
My allusions you would only resent,
Polished pyrite trying not to error.
They have their quick to find silvery war,
The pyramids' red streaming cinnabar.
DolphinWords
Notes: meanwhile, meanwhile, meanwhile...it's been mean!...the BoSox have been whopp'n my Angels...bottom of the ninth...Simmons up...base hit...Ohtani up...'who's had an 0 for 3 night...he's getting his cuts...grounded out, two Ks...everything inside...offspeed...another foul...2-2...all fastballs...sinker...K...sigh...Cozart...I've lost track of score...like 9-2...while printing up my ticket to see Allison Kraus...this August 9...fly out to RF Betts...Mookie the Menace...by now there are more Red Sox fans at the stadium than Angel Fans...I can attest as having been there for the previous two games of the 3 game set...K....8-2...what was it...10-1, 9-0, 8-2...well, we had done much the same to KC and Texas...still!...a worrisome stretch...concert tickets are problematic...an early purchase will be at the going rate, but then subsequent ticket sales are re-sales...and raised according to demand...insomuch as I was booted out of the menus when purchasing early, I was a bit suspicious of ticketmaster...now from another seller I get a ticket, and it's a resale of a ticketmaster ticket...hmmph...embarrassing to say how much...for me...though a usual price in Town for most...sitting in my 510-511 perches at the stadium I have a view of Town, the crowd, full for Ohtani in the first game, and the playing field complete...somehow prefer it to the lower seats...and I have enough acuity to read the close plays and where and what the pitches are from so far away...so okay!...tomorrow morrow, back to the perch for SF Giants... .... ...
Oh, the ancient mystery mysteries on youtube keep algrorithimacally being presented to me when I go to see the mlb highlight clips...these clips are really nice...and the comments a hoot...but intermixed are the mystery clips which I can't resist...there all the same, charlatans trying to stir up enough subsciptions to make a buck...which looks to be impossible from youtube's requirements to get paid!...but anyway, they're fun, and I double check things that really do look like mysteries with google web searches...wiki is fairly well grounded, sourcing real archaeologists and such...a refrain in the clips is to compare similar things in ancient cultures all over the world, and remark, how is this possible, gee golly?!...for instance...stone blocks in ancient Egypt, Peru, China, Mesoamerica, most everywhere, can be found to be joined together with metal clamps, butterfly clamps...the clamps are long gone, but the chiseled out holes they go in, are really distinctive...I thought about this, how such an innovation could spread worldwide before Columbus, way before, like 1400 BC...and came to the notion that the clamps are a take on a woodworking joinery...brb...hmmph...closest wiki mention at their wood joinery page is a the biscuit...need to be more specific!...brb...
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Dovetail keys or Butterfly joints have been used both in decorative and structural joints since ancient times. They were prominently used in construction of the Cairo Dahshur Boats, a type of Khufu ship from the Egyptian middle kingdom.[2]
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and there is my reached for notion...these joints were used in boatbuilding and boats reached everywhere, as did carpentry...and stonemasons copied the joint...the Khufu ship was made with the Pyramids at Giza, so this is a long way back...there are a lot of similar technologies common to the Old World and the New...and just as many gaps!...Mesoamericans didn't have the wheel...the old World didn't have corn on the cob...there's no historical record of back and forth trade...and there's a mystery as to why there are stone monuments everywhere, especially pyramids...I can see where the carpenters' stonemasons' joinery technologies easily spread from the Atlantic to the Pacific across Europe, Asia, Africa...not so easy to see how they made it to the Americas...but there that butterfly clamp is way up in the Andes mountains!...go figure!...in zoology, you have parallel evolutions, where entirely different species fill the exact same eco niche, and come to look alike...Australia has a bunch of these...brb...convergent evolution is what I'm thinking of...does convergent explain the similarities around the world of ancient cultures?...I don't know...after Columbus the world knitted itself together, so the notion of invention independent of one another became moot...and if it was independent before, how long before!?...there's those really old cave paintings that look a lot alike, from Europe to Asia...just that we all have a penchant to invent things is the marvel...we see kindred when we see seagulls drop butter clams to crack them open...so, given that, invention, convergent is possible...no need for butterfly clamped ship timbers to find their way to everywhere...but wait!...I found a lost Phoenician!...some sites note this, some don't...in Alabama, there is a pre-Columbian Indian site where was found a clay disc and on its surface the image of an open hand with an eye in it, Fatima's hand it's called...and it's a common thing from ancient Europe to Asia, sometimes linked to very old goddesses, like Innana, and to the Phoenicians...so, so, is the image an independent convergent?, or did a Phoenician ship manage to make it to North America?...place is called Moundville, has a museum, and other artifacts with the hand and eye...now, I'm nearer what I'm reaching for!...on the back of the disc it is nearly blank, save for some circles...and there are other discs like it...and some other artifacts with the hand and eye too...but, those discs are called speculatively, 'palletts for mixing paints'...not so!...they are mirrors, I speculate, once surfaced with reflective pyrite...pyrite oxidizes and so it is gone from the discs...oh, thinking on this I just thought that the Egyptian Narmer Pallette, which is too thought a pallett for mixing cosmetics, was a pyrite mirror...brb...hmmph...anyway...in viewing a mystery clip I happened on mention of the 'smokey mirrors' the Mayans/Aztecs had...they were obsidian mirrors...Black Decks!...I went off, and now I am an expert on Mesoamerican mirrors!...pyrite mirrors have been found in Arizona...brb...
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Most of the mirrors were found broken, burned, and buried with cremated human remains, with 36 mirrors having been discovered in 16 separate graves. They were just one of the many signs of cultural interaction from Mesoamerica discovered at Snaketown — along with ceremonial ball courts, copper bells, and the remains of colorful macaws.
http://westerndigs.org/mesoamerican-fools-gold-mirrors-found-in-arizona-reveal-ties-to-ancient-mexico/
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oh...re -visiting this, I see I missed that a ball court is there too!...but I get ahead of myself!...well, on one hand there is 'cultural interaction' and on the other 'convergent'...why does this remind me of the current 'witch hunt' in the news?...lol...anyway, pursuing the mirrors, I found myself contemplating the chacmools...if you have ever seen a tourist add for Cozumel you've likely seen one...it's a statue of a man lying down with his legs folded, and his back raised up...he doesn't have a back rest, but if you imagine someone sunning on the beach with one of those folding back rests, propped up, legs folded, holding on their tummy a book, or nowadays, a cell phone or tablet, a 'black mirror', you about have it...but, this fellow is where the Mayans spread eagle victims to be sacrificed, it's thought, and the disc on his chest a place to rest the heart, or a bowl for hearts...or maybe the disc is just to place offerings...one reels from the horror of it...and they are everywhere and everywhen in the old ruins in Mexico and Central America...and, but, one thought is that the disc, (these statues are all remarkable alike, and over a wide area of time and distance) may have been a mirror...or held an obsidian mirror...brb...here's one site that doesn't look scary...http://www.mexicolore.co.uk/aztecs/artefacts/smoking-mirrors/kids
...bewildered reading about these mirrors, I found myself under one of the pyramids at Teotihuacan...archaeologist have found a tunnel there...its roof collapsed on a rainy day in one place, otherwise they wouldn't know it was there...and inside, mirrors...brb...
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Pyrite degrades with time to leave little more than a stain on the mirror back by the time it is excavated. This has led to the frequent misidentification of pyrite mirror backs as paint palettes, painted discs or pot lids. By the Postclassic period obsidian mirrors became increasingly common.
... ... ...
The association of the human eye with mirrors was so strong that stylised eyes were frequently used in Teotihuacan art as a substitute for the face of a mirror.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mirrors_in_Mesoamerican_culture
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hmmph...a hand with an eye...a mirror!...so, I was under the Pyramid of the Feathered Serpent, wondering about the mirrors, and along with them, there's a lake of mercury...now, if there is anything shiny like a mirror, it's mercury/quicksilver!...what a marvel...brb...
quote, same wiki
Mirrors worn on the back and the chest could have served a dual protective function, deflecting physical blows as well as supernatural attacks. The mirror itself may have symbolised war in Teotihuacan; the combination of its association with fire and water may have been a precursor of the Aztec atl-tlachinolli, Nahuatl for "water-fire", the phrase that the Aztecs used for war.[1
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Needless to say, the mysterians have gone bananas over this mercury, lots on web and youtube, and well they should...
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Let’s remember that the same Roman god Mercury, patron of speakers, travelers and merchants, is also a psychopomp, a god tasked with carrying souls to the afterlife. The element Mercury has also been found in Egyptian tombs, and is rumored to surround the underground necropolis of Chinese emperor Qín Shǐ Huáng Dì. Mercury’s “immortal” nature was also prized by early modern alchemists and was often alluded to in their references to the philosopher’s stone.
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Mercury is the Greek god Hermes...now, the invention of 'mercury', its discovery, has to go way way back, and could well be independent...it comes from cinnabar, whose red color lends it being good painting pigment...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cinnabar#/media/File:Cinnabar_crystal_structure.png
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The primary prehistoric use of the mineral was grinding it to create vermillion, and its earliest known use for this purpose is at the Neolithic site of Çatalhöyük in Turkey (7000-8000 BC), where wall paintings included cinnabar's vermillion.
https://www.thoughtco.com/cinnabar-the-ancient-pigment-of-mercury-170556
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hmmph...I would have thought, along with red ochre/hematite, very earliest artists would have had cinnabar...but the web sites date it to like five or six thousand BC...Mercury comes from heating(?grinding) cinnabar...I haven't seen this happen...brb...essh...there's a clip about mining cinnabar to get mercury to use in early nuclear power plants!...in California...thought was some stone age folk accidentally heating some cinnabar, which they were drawing with, and seeing the silver mercury come out of it...early metallurgy only included like gold, copper, and...mercury...and it is one of those natural wonders that metals come from stones...'water from rock'...well, I've gone past where I wanted to reach, to give a 'note' to Chacmool, my poem, and somehow lighten its grimness...one of the Egyptian mystery clips notes that the image on the Narmer Palette of Pharoah holding a bunch of captives by their scalps, and about to wack them with his mace, was repeated over and over in Egyptian 'art' for like five thousand years!...the Chacmools are like this...brb...
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The five that were found in secure architectural contexts were all placed within entrance areas near a ritual seat or throne.[13] The chacmools in Tula also had an association with thrones or raised seating platforms, either in front of the throne or at the entrance to a chamber containing a throne.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chacmool#Distribution
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...even more pervasive than these, are the Mesoamerican ball courts...while at the ballgame in my perch, I was contemplating how persistent religions are, their rituals, buildings built just so, and so on, and realized I was looking at something similar...the baseball field...it is curious in its dimensions, as it is in its rules!...and the bounce in a baseball comes from the rubber balls invented by the Mesoamericans...before Columbus, Cortez more likely!, rubber was only known in the Americas...and the Mesoamericans started out playing rubber ball games right from the gitgo...those distinctive ball courts date back to like 1200BC...brb...
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Pre-Columbian ballcourts have been found throughout Mesoamerica, as for example at Copán, as far south as modern Nicaragua, and possibly as far north as what is now the U.S. state of Arizona.[5] These ballcourts vary considerably in size, but all have long narrow alleys with slanted side-walls against which the balls could bounce.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mesoamerican_ballgame
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I recall seeing in old NatGeos these courts (in sixth grade I made a mural for homeroom class day of Aztecs fighting Cortez!), and always wondered how it looked like when a game was in progress...wonder no more...youtube has a fine collection of revivalist ballers performing!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_ZYpRsxqfFg
meanwhile, writing this, my legs folded, keyboard on my lap, head propped with pillows...a sideways glance...
:)
DavidDavid
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