Maya Pyramids
Known on seven continents “Real Life Indiana Jones,” David Hatcher Childress personifies the maverick archaeologist, bucking the academic establishment in a personal quest for the real story. At just 19 years of age, he left home to backpack his way around the globe, always off the beaten path, ferreting out answers to the enigmas of human origins beyond the reach of armchair explorers.
In 20 years of often life-threatening travel, from the overthrow of Idi Amin in Uganda to the murky depths of the Pacific Ocean in Micronesia, Childress accumulated vast personal experience of the modern and ancient worlds. This he distilled into his best-selling selling “Lost Cities” series, in addition to more than 15 other unconventional books about the deep
past and alternative science. He heads up the World Explorers Club out of Kempton, Illinois, with branches in Peru and Australia. Childress was featured with Charleton Heston in the nationally televised “Mysterious Origins of Man,” and appeared in “The Search for Atlantis” with Richard Crenna.
As early as the fourth issue of Ancient American, in January, 1994, Childress wrote of his encounter with a pyramidal anomaly in the jungles of Indonesia. It dramatized a very real link between Java and Mexico long before the first Spaniard ever set foot in Middle America.
SEARCHING FOR A MAYA Pyramid in Java by David Hatcher Childress
I have spent a good portion of my adult life traveling around the world in search of lost cities and ancient mysteries. I journeyed all through Central and South America, and was familiar with many of the archaeological sites, especially those in Guatemala, such as Tikal and Quirigua, or Copan, in Honduras. I wrote about some of the mysteries of the Maya, postulating contacts between them and ancient Chinese and Hindus. Imagine my surprise, then, when I discovered what looked exactly like a Maya pyramid complex, complete with stelae, on a remote hillside in Java. I arrived in Indonesia from Australia, where I had been lecturing on evidence for Egyptian explorers and mining expeditions to coastal areas of that country.
After a week on Bali, I took a ferry to the main island of Java, the population center of this large southeast Asian island-nation. I made my way to Jakarta in the south-central hills of the ancient capital of the Moslem kingdom. From Jakarta, one can make easy day-excursions to such famous sites as Borobudur, the largest Buddhist
structure in the world, hidden by a lava flow until the Dutch uncovered it in the early 1800s. One day, while sitting in a cafe near my hotel, I was looking through a postcard rack and was astonished to find a postcard of what looked exactly like a four-sided Maya pyramid in a jungle setting. There were even Mayan-looking stelae (carved marker-stones) around the pyramid. The site is that of Sukuh, an ancient pyramid-temple on the slopes of Mount Lawu near Sukakarta, in Central Java.
The amazing temple has stone stelae, and a step-pyramid that would match any in the jungles of Central America. I left Jakarta the next morning and took a bus to Solo, a large town in central Java and an ancient capital of one of Java’s kingdoms. I checked into a hotel in the city center and began making inquiries how I might get to Candi Sukuh. I discovered it would be best to go early the next morning, so instead I took a quick trip to the famous Java Man site in a ravine a few miles outside of the city. The following morning, I took a local bus toward the mountain that the site is located on. For an hour, the bus meandered through terraced rice paddies, picking up villagers with products heading to markets.
At the small town of Karangpandan, I changed to a mini-bus headed up a minor but paved side road through the central Java mountains. I told the driver, and everyone else on the bus, in fact, that I was going to Candi Sukuh. They all nodded and assured me that they would tell me where to get off. As we rounded a hill and came to some houses along a thickly wooded section, the battered mini-bus screeched to a halt, and everyone pointed out the door. I grabbed my day-pack and bounded out into the morning sunlight. Immediately, a young man with a motorcycle helmet in one hand grabbed me by the shoulder with the other and asked, “Candi Sukuh? I take you on my motorcycle!”
I checked the directions and ascertained that the pyramid structure was at the top of a steep hill just where the bus had stopped. Apparently, it was a very strenuous, hourlong hike, but a road did not lead to the summit. I began bargaining with the motorcycle-guide
lava's Candi Sukuh pyramid compares with its Maya counterpart, Uaxactun, or "Eight-Stone, " named after an eight-year-cycle calendar found at the Yucatan site.
and was content to hike up the hill myself, but I was also interested in seeing another nearby site, which I knew was too far to reach by foot. We struck up a deal, and soon we were off up the hill on his small motorcycle. The road was extremely steep, and it seemed that only a motorcycle or small 4x4 Suzuki jeep could make the ascent. There were the slopes of Gunung Lawy, an ancient, eroded volcano that has maintained its symmetrical shape over time.
The pyramid site was located on the knoll of a steep ridge, looking out to the west with a tremendous view of the surrounding countryside. I was amazed by the four-sided Maya-looking pyramid and the many statues that had been placed around it. A fence enclosed the main temple area, but a caretaker allowed me to enter through the gate. The structure is small, as are many Maya pyramids, only about 40 feet high. A stairway on the west side climbs the stepped terraces to a platform on the top. The pyramid, in fact, is virtually identical to those found in the ancient Maya site at Uaxactun, near Tikal. According to the guidebooks, Candi Sukuh is an ancient Hindu temple that was used up until the 15th century, when Islam became the religion of all Java, including the remote interior. Many guidebooks mistakenly call the temple a 15th-century site, though it is sure to pre-date the great Buddhist temple, Borobudur, which was covered by a volcanic eruption in the ninth century A.D.
It is probable that Candi Sukuh is thousands of years old, and may date back to 500 B.C. or even further. No serious excavation or dating of the complex has been done since the Dutch and Indonesian archaeologists turned it into a small park. One thing is certain: An extremely ancient flight of steps reached Rom the lower plains of Java to the temple-pyramid. The similarity to Maya pyramids has been noted by a number of Indonesian and other archaeologists. The popular Indonesian Handbook by Bill Dalton says this: “The shape of Candi Sukuh, with its steps leading to the upper part of the temple, is strikingly similar to the Mayan temple of Yucatan and Guatemala, which were being built at the same
time!” Candi Sukuh is a controversial and mysterious structure to the Indonesians themselves, because it is a highly erotic temple, with statues of men holding their phallus, and a general sexual overtone to the complex.
One suggestion is that the temple might have been used for sex education! On the masonry floor at the top of a steep tunnel leading into the complex, a large, realistic penis faces a lovingly sculpted, swollen-in-excitement vagina carved in relief. It is believed that the temples are dedicated to the Hindu Bima, a giant warrior god of the great Hindu epic, the Mahabarata. A conspicuous statue at the temple is that of the winged god, Garuda, who name is also used for the Indonesian national airline. Most of the statues have been placed on the modern concrete slab, forming an inexplicable hodgepodge of sculptural styles, eras, and themes. One can see guardians holding their clubs in on hand and their penises in the other, marker-stelaes with ancient south Indian script on them, statues of Bima, or pylons with the story of Garuda. All in all, it is a baffling site, out-of-place in Indonesia, even by Indonesian standards.
Everyone who sees Candi Sukuh remarks on its obvious similarity to Maya architecture. Could there be a link? Though it may be possible that a lone sailing mission from Central America somehow washed ashore on Java and a temple was built in their honor in Maya style, it seems doubtful. Rather, it appears more likely that the ancient Hindus had some role in both the early development of Indonesia and Central America. It is well-known that ancient Hindu explorer/traders began penetrating the Indonesian archipelago many thousands of years ago. Indian chroniclers wrote of Indonesia as early as 600 B.C., and the Hindu epic of the “Ramayana” (probably much earlier) also mentions Indonesia. The early Nagas of South India, Burma, South East Asia, and Indonesia were great traders who set out through Indonesia in their large ships and theoretically sailed beyond Indonesia into the great Pacific Ocean. They might have explored the north coasts of Australia and coastal areas of New Guinea. Then they set out to the various island groups in the Pacific, beyond to Central America.
Diffusion anthropologists, such as Thor Heyerdahl, Barry Fell, and myself, believe that ancient Hindus, Dravidians, Babylonians, and Cambodians sailed in large ships along the Indonesian archipelago, and then set out into the Pacific Island groups by either going north or south of New Guinea. It is well-known that ancient Hindus explored and colonized Indonesia many thousands of years ago. The question that suddenly arises is whether the ancient Hindu Indonesians were in contact with the Mayas and influenced their pyramid-temple structures. Anthropologist Gunnar Thompson makes a good case for Taoist influence coming to Central America in his book, Nu Sun, Asian American Voyages, 500 B.C. Thompson starts his case by describing the ancient Shang Dynasty of China, showing its symbols and motifs (the yin-yang is the most famous, but there are many more), and then relating them to known Maya art and sculpture. In many parts of Southeast Asia, Taoism replaced Hinduism as the dominant philosophy of the time. Did Taoism supplant an earlier Hindu-style religion that had been in contact with Central America at an earlier time than 500 B.C.?
It is theorized that a succession of ancient civilizations ventured out from Indonesia into the Pacific, including Egyptians, Sumerians, Hindus and Chinese. The famous anthropologist, Peter S. Buck, who wrote the classic book Vikings of the Pacific, believes that the Polynesian race (of which he belonged) was descended from Indo-Malaysian groups. They obviously arrived on Pacific islands via catamaran boats. As far as the temple of Sukuh goes, its amazing parallel with early Maya temples in the Peten jungles of Guatemala, might prompt someone to ask if this design originated in Central America. Or perhaps some other, third locale? The similarities between Maya practices, such as pyramid-building, the use of stone markers known as stelae, and hieroglyphic writing, has been discussed in many diffusionist publications. Is the Sukuh pyramid proof of contact between Asia and Central America?
In looking at nearby islands around Java, one finds evidence of ancient sea-farers with a high degree of culture and science. The Indonesian
island of Celebes, northeast of Java, is home to the huge and ancient megaliths of Tana Toraja. These lichen-covered stones are similar to the menhirs of Western Europe. They are certainly of a megalithic-building, maritime culture that move throughout the western Pacific region from Indonesian islands, out past New Guinea, and into the island archipelagoes of Fiji, Micronesia, the Samoas, Tahiti, the Marquesas, and the Americas. In an article for the prestigious journal, New Scientist, entitled, “Pacific Islanders were the first Farmers” {New Scientist, December 12, 1992, p. 14), author Leigh Dayton points out that archaeologist J. Golson, formerly of the Australian National University, has found ditches and crude fields in this area of New Guinea.
The implication is that humans were tending plants here between
7,000 and 10,000 years ago. Dayton further points out that on Buka Island in the Solomons, while excavating Kioly Cave, archaeologists M. Spriggs and S. Winkler unearthed small flaked tools with surfaces displaying small, starch grains and other plant residue. Evidently, these tools were used for processing taro. Further, the starch grains resembled those of cultivated, rather than wild taro. The date for the find was an astonishing 28,000 Years Before Present! Dayton points out that a site at Wadi Kubbaniya, Egypt, has been dated at 17,000 to 18,000 years old by G. Hillman of the Institute of Archaeology, London. This site also had grinding stones and tuber remains, but the Solomon Island discovery was 10,000 years older!
Another new discovery is that of a Candi Sukuh-like pyramid and even a stone sphinx on a remote island off New Guinea. The site is known to even a nearby logging company, but no one to the outside world in general. This giant pyramid has only been seen by helicopter pilots and a few natives of the island. It is another example of the Hindu/Maya connection in the early Pacific. So far, no photographs of the site have come forth. No one yet knows the age of this New Guinea pyramid and its “sphinx” on a remote island near the Solomons. When some of the more than 400 gravel hills on New
Caledonia were excavated in the 1960s, they had cement columns of lime and shell matter carbon-dated by Yale and the New Caledonia Museum. They came back with a date that was set before 5120 B.C. These weird cement columns can be found in the southern part of New Caledonia and on the Isle of Pines.
Lapita pottery that is found throughout the Solomons, New Caledonia, Vanuatuy, and as far as Fiji, Tonga, and Samoa, is dated to
4,000 Years Before Present. A major site in the timber- and metal-rich Solomon Islands would make an excellent sea-colony to explore and trade across the Pacific. Here we find a connection with the Aroi Sun Cult and pyramid-building religion of the Polynesians. Their sacred island and cult-center was Raiatea, where they built massive platforms and step-pyramids by the sea, and erected gigantic statues.
In other words, the archaeological evidence abundantly supports a cultural connection from Java, home of the Candi Sukuh site, out across the Pacific Ocean to Middle America, with its comparable stone temple-platforms. Ancient pyramids still exist all over the world, from China and Indonesia to the Pacific Islands, and across the Americas. From Maya pyramids in Indonesia, or Indonesian pyramids in Central America, ancient man and his architecture spanned the globe.
Chinese Treasure
Long before Columbus set out on his transatlantic voyage of discovery, Imperial Chinese vessels three times larger than his Santa Maria were cruising throughout the Pacific. These immense ships, imminently more sea-worthy than anything floated by Renaissance Europeans, were said to have reached the other side of the ocean at a continent referred to as Fu Sang, a land some investigators believe was North America. As though in support of their conclusion, a precious object dated to early
15th-century China was found on the West Coast and described in the December, 2003 issue of Ancient American.
Ancient Chinese Gold in California by Arthur D. Palmer
In 1957, Mr. Orval Stokes and several family members were hunting in the Susanville area of northern California. They had recently moved into the area and were enjoying some of the beautiful scenery, as well as the recreational hunting that was available. Even so, he had so far failed to “bag” the buck he dreamed of finding. He sat on a rock for more than an hour, patiently awaiting a good target to either appear on its own or to be flushed out into his area by other family members. Orval got up to stretch cramped muscles after carefully setting his rifle against a tree, then took a few steps and stubbed his boot on what appeared to be an automobile hubcap sticking out of the ground.
Prying it from the dirt, he realized that the object was heavier than any wheel-cover and stuffed it in his backpack. Returning home, he found the encrusted plate more difficult to clean than anticipated, so he put it aside and more or less forgot his discovery. Several years later, he made a more serious attempt with a stiff bristle brush. After a good scrubbing, the item was still dark, but he could now discern some images on the bottom. Applying a mild acid solution brought out an unsuspectedly bright sheen of bronze, brass, or gold. Unimpressed, he put it aside for another 40 years until a young Chinese couple happened to move into the neighborhood. When they heard about Orval’s “discovery,” they asked to see it. The husband was astounded to behold the plate, which he instantly recognized as part of a Ming Dynasty treasure. “It has been stolen and must be returned!” the man exclaimed.
The Ming Dynasty plate found in California holds many mysteries. Did an Imperial Chinese mariner beat the Spanish to California?
But having found, not stolen the object, Orval was not inclined to give it up to Communist China and locked the artifact in his gun-safe. On reconsideration, he approached Yixian Xu, professor of Chinese history at Idaho State University. He closely examined the plate and found a faint inscription that he was able to translate with little difficulty. The words read, “Made in the reign of Xuan De (1426-1435) of the Ming Dynasty (1368-1644).” Orval’s Chinese neighbor was correct: The object was authentically Ming Dynasty; its metallurgical composition is perhaps a bronze-gold alloy.
Less certain is how it arrived in a remote, seldom-visited area of the Susanville area. Some Yurok Indians say they have Chinese blood in their veins. Could a Chinese treasure-ship have come aground off the Northern California coast sometime in the early 15th century? Perhaps Orval Stokes’s discovery is physical proof of transpacific visitors to our continent from Imperial China decades before the arrival of conquerors from Christian Spain. A thorough search of the area in which he found the plate might yield additional pieces of a discovery more valuable than gold.
Mysterious Bear Statue
The fortuitous discovery made by a small, pioneer girl playing in the dirt may shed light on transpacific visitors to the American Northwest long before 19th-century settlers reached the same area. This revealing, unique artifact was described in the May/June, 2002 issue of Ancient American.
Around 1840, a family of early settlers arrived in the Pacific Northwest, in what would eventually become the State of Washington. While digging a well, the parents noticed that their 4-year-old daughter was playing with something she lifted from the pile of loose, freshly excavated dirt. At 1 5/8” tall and 1 1/2” wide at the base, it was the representation
The Puyallup River Bear left by visitors from ancient Japan.
Washington State’s Mystery Beast by Gary L. Wilson
of a bear-like creature, standing on its hind legs spread far apart, its clenched claws apparently grasping spherical objects. The weighty, solid figure was apparently composed of several metals, including bronze and—judging from traces of verdigris—copper. The base was incised with characters ascribed to no known culture, although the glyphs are plainly Asian. Attempts at determining their positive identification or the age of the artifact itself have been consistently negative.
Its Tacoma-area discovery near the Puyallup River, which leads directly into Commencement Bay in the Pacific Ocean, suggests the item may have been brought to Washington State by overseas’ visitors in the ancient past, considering its subterranean find. The beast appears to be dancing, and perhaps belonged to a bear-worshiping group who were pre-Asian inhabitants of Japan, a Caucasian people known as the Ainu. Professor Gunnar Thompson devotes an entire chapter (Chapter 2, “Japanese Voyagers”) of his classic encyclopedia of cultural diffusion, American Discovery, the Real Story, to abundant evidence for the arrival of travelers from ancient Japan along America’s Pacific Northwest shore.
For example, lead tools from prehistoric Japan have been found at a site in Ozette, part of the Olympia National Park, another coastal site in Washington. The bear was likewise a sacred animal for the Haida and Tlingit, but no British Columbian tribes created metal figurines before historic times. Although no parallels close enough to make useful comparisons with the object’s script are known in Asia, it may nonetheless represent proto-Japanese glyphs so far found nowhere else. Any modern or local provenance for the object seems ruled out by the circumstances of its discovery and lack of affinity with resident native cultures.
According to Dr. Thompson, Japanese sailors began arriving along the Pacific coasts of America 7,000 years ago. Given the rather high level of the figure’s metal craftsmanship, a date closer to 1200 B.C. seems more likely. If so, then the little dancing bear may have been brought by Ainu or early Japanese visitors across the vast Pacific Ocean, down Puget Sound and up the Puyallup River at a
time when the Trojan War was raging on the other side of the world. In any case, there must be something special about the mysterious little object, because it has been continuously treasured, handed down from mother to daughter across the generations of the same pioneer family whose little girl picked it out of the dirt more than one hundred fifty years ago.
Corn Links 2 Worlds
Gunnar Thompson graduated Magna Cum Laude, Phi Beta Kappa, with High Distinction in Anthropology from the University of Illinois, Urbana, in 1968. Despite his impressive academic background, university authorities “invited” him to leave their graduate program, because they found his belief in pre-Columbian contacts between the Old and New Worlds “unacceptable.” Forced to change careers, Dr. Thompson earned a Ph.D. in Rehabilitation Counseling at the University of Wisconsin, in Madison, then went on to become assistant professor in Counselor Education at the University of Hawaii, Honolulu. But he never abandoned his research into prehistory, publishing his first book, Nu Sun, Asian-American Voyages, 500 B.C., in 1989, and his widely acclaimed American Discovery, the Real Story, five years later.
In his article for the October, 1998 issue of Ancient American, Dr. Thompson traced the global distribution of corn during pre-Columbian times to establish the impact of India on the native peoples of the New World.
Seeds of Paradise by Gunnar Thompson, Ph.D.
During the 1992 Columbus Quincentennial celebration, the Smithsonian Institution sponsored a special exhibit called “The Seeds of Change.” According to Smithsonian curators, the 1492 Columbus voyage inaugurated the spread of New World plants across the Atlantic
to the great benefit of mankind, an event often billed as “The Great Encounter,” or “The Great Exchange.” At the very front of this 2.5 million-dollar exhibit was a spectacular, grand archway made up of
14,000 ears of corn, or “maize,” the most important food plant to reach the Old World from the Americas. Within two decades of the Spanish mariner’s return to Europe, or so we are told, maize agriculture had spread throughout the world.
Orthodox historians justify the fame and glory bestowed upon Columbus by reminding us through such grandiose exhibits of the mariner’s illustrious achievements. The only problem is that maize cultivation was already present in Europe, Africa, and Asia many centuries before Columbus was even born. The antiquity of maize in Europe goes back at least to Roman times. During the first century A.D., Pliny the Elder described several plants that were first domesticated in the New World. These included “henbane,” or tobacco, and maize, which Pliny called “India Millet.” As early as the 16th century, Spanish historian Joseph De Acosta realized that a maizelike plant was known to the ancients: “The millet that came from the Indies into Italy, 10 years before Pliney wrote about it, hath some resemblance unto mays (maize), for it is a grain, as he says, that grows in reeds and covers itself with the leaf, and hath the toplike hairs, being very fertile; all of which things agree not with millet” (Markham, 1880, 231).
Spanish archaeologists have confirmed that maize was present in the Roman Empire. Miguel Oliva found remains of the grain inside third century silos at Ullastret, along the Mediterranean coast. This “Indian mays” was a marginal crop in Spain and Italy up to the time of Columbus. Spaniards called it panzio, or “panic-grass.” A contemporary of Columbus, the famed historian, Peter Martyr, compared panic-grass growing around Milan and Granada to the New World plant (“mahiz”) that Columbus had brought back from Hispaniola in 1493. Martyr noted that the same kind of grain, the size of peas, was “found in abundance among the Insubres (people of
Milan, Italy) and the people of Granada (Spain).” His account was found in a letter written to the Cardinal of Sfroza and later published in his book, Decades. By the time of his third voyage in 1498, Columbus wrote that “there is already much maize growing around Castile.” This seems rather quick for a foreign plant to replace traditional forms of agriculture. Orthodox historians have interpreted this to mean that Spanish farmers had already adopted the “new” grain from Hispanolia; but it is more likely that Columbus simply used the Indian name in place of panzio.
Several varieties of maize reached Europe during the Middle Ages. The principle conduit seems to have been from Asia Minor across the Mediterranean Sea in Arabian or Turkish merchant vessels. This grain was invariably called “grano de turkey,” “turkie korn,” “Mecca corn,” “Saracens’ corn,” or some other variation of “Turkey grain” expressing the belief that the origin of the shipment was from the Middle East.
Botanist Leonhard Fuchs (1542) published the earliest known illustration of the maize plant in Europe with the caption, “Turchish corn,” and the scientific name, Turcicum frumentum. At this point in time, Fuchs was convinced that Turchish corn originated in the Middle East, from where it was shipped to European ports. There is no historical indication of any suspicion among the botanist’s associates that this common feed grain might be a New World import. A variety of other names given to the plant suggest multiple sources for early maize in Europe. Along the shores of the Adriatic Sea in Italy, a mysterious import (probably maize) was known as “grana de Brazil,” or Brazilian grain. This name was mentioned in a commercial contract (dated 1193) between the Duchy of Ferrara and a neighboring town.
Irish legends from the same time period tell of a land called “Hy-bresail” across the North Atlantic, suggesting an early import of maize from the East Coast of North America. Icelandic explorers called the New World grain they found near Wineland, “self-sewn corn.” This was recorded in a saga from the 11th century. Back home,
Scandinavians called the grain “turkie korn,” possibly because it was fed to turkey fowl. This New World bird also reached Europe in ancient times. Thus began a tradition in the northern countries that turkie korn was unfit for human consumption; yet it made excellent feed for fowl and pigs. The earliest reported name for maize in Portugal was “milho marroco”—or “corn of Morocco”—which suggests that the Portuguese first got maize from North Africa.
Inhabitants of some German cities called the grain “Welsh korn,” and it was so named in Hieronymus Bock’s 1572 book of plants. Many Europeans identified two kinds of corn at the same time: There was both “panzio” and “mahiz” in Spain; England had “Turkic Korn” and “Indian corn”; Germany had both “Welsh Korn” and “Indienisches Korn”; the French had “bled d’ Turquie” and “bled d’Inde.” Here, “Indian” referred to the so-called “New India” that Columbus identified across the Atlantic—and that he had named in accord with Roman traditions. Such multiple names are not consistent with orthodox assumptions that maize was introduced from a single source, such as Spaniards returning from the New World. However, these names are consistent with different kinds of maize being introduced from different sources or at different times.
Botanists and historians did not have to deal with the issue of the original habitat of maize until the early 17th century. Until that time, people generally assumed that the continents were all joined together, making it easy for plants to become dispersed over land. However, by the late 1500s, it was becoming clear to geographers that the continents of the Western hemisphere, Amerigo Vespucci’s “New World,” were effectively separated from the Old World by great ocean barriers. Soon, botanists realized that plant domestication had to occur on either one side of the world or the other. The issue of where maize domestication took place was a perplexing problem. Europeans had a tradition that maize was first known as a plant from the Middle East; yet it was also clear that maize was an ancient feature of the New World.
Over time, there emerged two diametrically opposed factions:
those who believed that maize was independently domesticated in both hemispheres, and others who insisted that maize was a New World domesticate totally unknown in the Old World until after Columbus. Supporters of the “dual-centers of domestication” paradigm included such famed botanists as Bock, Ruellius, Fuchs, Sismondi, Michaud, Gregory, Lonicer, Amoreux, Regnier, Viterbo, Donicer, Tragus, Tabernamontanus, Bonafus, St. John, DeTurre, Daru, DeHerbelot, and Klippart. They were close enough in time to accept the Turkish names for maize and traditions of Turkish imports as evidence that the grain originated in the Middle East. The botanist Tragus compared Turkish corn to plants described by Pliny and Theophrastus in the first century.
It was also apparent that maize was a traditional crop of New World civilizations; thus, two centers of domestication were indicated. Accordingly, in 1588, Tabernamontanus identified two kinds of corn: Turkish corn and Indian corn. His Indian corn was a new variety brought back from the New World, which was sometimes referred to as “India Occidentalis” or “India Nuovo” which means New India. This new variety had what he called “prop roots” and larger ears; thus, it was distinguishable from Old World varieties. The belief that the grain was known in both the Old and New Worlds is reflected in the scientific name that Linnaeus gave the plant in 1753. He called it Zea mags, combining a Greek word for grain (zea) along with the native Arawak “maiz.”
Opposed to the dual-center model was a growing number of botanists who insisted that maize was a New World plant that couldn’t possibly have reached the Old World until after Columbus. Religious doctrine certainly played a role in their theory, for it was now popular to think of the New World as totally isolated until after the God-ordained mission of Columbus opened the way for exploration and conquest. Members of this group believed that maize could only be domesticated in one center. Strong similarities between maize found
in America and Europe were regarded as proof that the plants had common parent varieties. It was also clear that maize played a central role in native American cultures, as opposed to Europe, where it was served principally used for animal feed. Therefore, it seemed evident that maize was older in the New World, and this was judged to be the single center of domestication. The Old World name for maize, “Turkic corn,” was dismissed as a colloquial expression: Presumably, anything imported or of sub-standard quality was identified with Turkish merchants. So the name was regarded as a post-Columbus anachronism.
The botanist, Matthioli, was the first to ascribe a New World origin to maize in 1570. Rebart Dodoens followed in 1583, and, in 1588, Camerarius added his description of maize as an American plant. Those favoring a New World origin for maize explained the apparent and sudden spread of the new grain throughout Africa and Asia as proof of the importance of the Columbus voyage. The conclusion, based solely on tricky rationalizing, was neither logical nor supported by either physical or historical evidence. It merely served to put a positive spin on claims by the opposing camp that such a rapid and abrupt change in traditional agricultural practices was a blatant impossibility.
Loyalists of the “Columbus-Was-First” doctrine led the march to revise history by condemning the so-called “mistakes” of their theoretical adversaries and predecessors. The botanist, Herbert Prescott, lamented the popular French name for maize, ble de Turque, or “Turkish grain.” He called it an “error” due to contrary evidence that maize was a New World domesticate. The famous Swiss taxonomist, Alphonse DeCandolle (1890), also branded the French tern “an error.” He based his argument on the central importance of the plant to native American culture and its similarity to the Mexican grass-teosinte. Certain assumptions also played a role in his belief regarding the origin of maize. He erroneously assumed that the oceans were effective barriers to maize
diffusion until after Columbus. And he surmised that the plant was such an improvement over earlier grains that it spread throughout the Old World within two decades of the Columbus’s voyage—simply because farmers appreciated a good value when they saw it.
This theory of the “rapid spread” of maize was nothing more than DeCandolle’s own fantasy. Unfortunately, this fantasy was resoundingly adopted as a canon by anti-diffusionists. Any evidence that served to challenge this doctrine was condemned “out of hand.” Those who brought forth such evidence were accused of disloyalty or scientific naivete.
An alternative to the conundrum is suggested by cultural diffusionists: The evidence seems to indicate that maize was carried across the oceans in ancient times, perhaps quite frequently. If the dual-centers of domestication model had been correct, then New World maize should have been significantly different from Old World varieties of corn. But all the major varieties of maize have been found in both hemispheres. If the New World isolation model had been accurate, then there should be no evidence of maize in the Old World until after Columbus. However, evidence of maize in Asia and Africa before 1492 is quite sufficient to set aside the theory of cultural isolation.
During the British colonial period in India, schoolchildren learned that maize was first brought to the subcontinent by the Portuguese, circa 1498, along with the other benefits of European civilization. At one time, historical accounts seemed to confirm this belief. Milho (the Portuguese word for maize) is mentioned in naval records of the region as early as 1503. Documents include inventories of grain used to feed sailors in the Portuguese fleet that sailed on the Indian Ocean.
This 13th-century statue from India offers an ear of corn with its left hand, proof that the plant was known in the Sub-Continent long before it was supposedly first introduced to the outside world from America by the Spaniards.
So, it would appear that a scant 11 years following the Columbus voyage, Portuguese mariners acquired the grain, brought it down the coast of Africa, introduced it to Hindu farmers, who were also taught maize agriculture for the first time, and within a short time thereafter, the grain was raised in such vast quantities that there were sufficient harvests to feed the Portuguese fleet. Considering such a seemingly miraculous achievement, it is no wonder that orthodox historians might honor Columbus for changing the world by bringing maize back from Hispaniola. However, it is now clear that this concept of maize introduction into India resulted from religious myopia and sloppy scholarship.
Mohammed Azhar Ansari and Jaweed Ashraf are among the new breed of scholars who have questioned these antiquated paradigms and the academic ineptitude of doctrinaire scholars. Ansari wondered how it was possible for Hindu farmers to change crops so radically. Ashraf noted that European scholars had completely missed ancient sculptures of maize
plants on Hindu temples. And they had failed to identify vernacular names for maize in ancient religious and medicinal texts. Sculptures of Hindu deities holding maize ears are abundant in northern India, and they soon attracted the attention of American geographers. Stephen Jett provoked the wrath of isolationists with his 1976 illustration of a Hindu goddess holding an ear of maize. Orthodox scholars reacted by insisting that the item in her hand must be “a stack of beads, candy, or a pomegranate.”
That speculative rationale fell apart under the thorough research of Carl Johannessen and Anne Parker from the University of Oregon. Their examination of scores of Hindu statues confirmed that the plants depicted in stone carvings had all the characteristics of maize: elongated husks, parallel rows of kernels, and silk strands at the top. Some of the items included hybrid forms of maize with two sizes of grains. Their shapes also conform to the same variety of shapes that are characteristic of maize—bulbous, conical, and elongated. Similar maize ears are present in the local markets.
Sculptures on Hoysala temples can be dated by historical accounts to the 12th or 13th centuries; thus, they are unquestionably of pre-Columbian age. According to Ashraf, the oldest sculptures of maize at Sanchi, India, date to the second century B.C. In 1995, archaeologist Dr. John Jones traveled to northern India to photograph maize sculptures. His field report is indicative of the conflict that still rages in Hindu universities between adherents of colonial-era misconceptions about maize and more recent appraisals of the evidence: “When I was at Halebid,” he stated, “some Indian professors approached me to ask where I was from. Several were botanists. Excitedly, I showed them some of the carvings on the temple, and I asked their opinion of the food being held by the carved figurines. After a short discussion, they said ‘corn.’ I then told them of the issue of corn being a Western hemisphere plant. This created more discussion amongst themselves in the local language.”
Unintentionally, Jones had ignited a controversy among the group
of Hindu scholars. According to the popular version of history inherited from British colonialism, maize was regarded as a Portuguese import that transformed Hindu agriculture. However, the professors that Jones met at Halebid were well aware that the temple itself dated to the 13th century! After Jones pointed out the obvious contradiction, they must have realized at once that it was impossible for stone masons to have carved statues with ears of corn more than two centuries before the grain was supposedly “introduced” by the Portuguese. What other errors, they must have wondered, were taught as part of the official academic doctrine?
The plant sculptures on temples at Halebid, Mysore, Khajuraho, and Somanthpur are undoubtedly varieties of maize. But this plant is not portrayed here as an agricultural item—it is a sacred one! And this explains one reason why Western scholars failed to notice references to maize in ancient Hindu documents. They began with a bias towards Portuguese introduction of the plant, so they only looked for references to “ milho” at the time of Portuguese contact. They relied on revenue documents and completely missed references in religious and medicinal texts, because they didn’t bother to consider non-dietary uses of maize in Hindu culture. Furthermore, they were not proficient in the local languages (Hindi and Sanskrit), so they disregarded the ancient Vedas and Puranic texts. Jaweed Ashraf’s study of maize in the ancient texts was reported in the Annals of The National Association of Geographers of India (1994). He traced regional names for maize backwards in time beginning with vernacular names for maize in the 16th century: juarijwarijunhari and makka. Juari Mata was the Hindu goddess of fevers; juari (maize) was a medicinal used in the treatment of fevers. Thus, it is only expected that maize ears would be found in temples dedicated to the goddess. The 16th century Padrrivat of Akbar has “juhar-i” as a royal garden fruit and a food item of the Mogul army. Another name, lohjara, was recognized as maize in several Hindu dictionaries. The 14th-century physician,
Hakim Diya, used a medicine which he called makka or bhutta.
These Hindi words are still used to refer to maize in some regions of India. An Arabian traveler from this period, Tahir Maqaddasi, reported that durah was used on the west coast of India. This durah was synonymous with khundrus, a Hindu herb mentioned in a Greco-Arabian medicinal (the Canons of Avicenna). Dura is a common Arabic word for maize; thus, khundrus can also be regarded as a name for maize. The medieval dictionary of Mohammed Husaini calls hanta a synonym for khundrus. At this point in time, the plant was widely regarded as a medicinal or a garden fruit in most of India, whereas it was an agricultural crop in the mountain regions of the north. Sanskrit translator Hakim Bhua Khan (1491) identified mak or makka as the Ayurvedic medicine for fevers used between the second to eigth centuries. Sanskrit lexicons, Puranic texts, and palm-leaf manuscripts also mention a plant called markata or makataka, which is an early version of makka (maize).
The fifth century B.C. text Apstharnba Sarutasutra mentions a plant called markataka, the earliest recorded name for maize in India. Hindu religious texts call maize one of the 12 original plants bestowed by the gods; it is known as “the Fruit of Rama,” the highest god. Such a deep religious identification of maize constitutes a strong argument that the grain or fruit was an ancient plant in India. Likewise, Tibetan traditions indicate great antiquity for maize. Among Lamanists, maize is said to be the “first” plant domesticated by mortals. It plays a central role in rituals celebrating the birth of Buddha. Such traditions are hardly consistent with claims that the plant was introduced by Portuguese traders in the 16th century. Geological and archeological findings have confirmed the ancient presence of maize in India. Radio-carbon dates for Zea mays pollen found in earthen cores from Kashmir fall between the third and 10th millennia B.C. Dr. Vishnu-Mittre, an Indian archaeologist, reported maize imprints on potsherds dated to 1435 A.D. at Kolhapur.
The historical record of Chinese plants is very poorly developed,
thus we can only speculate on the origins of maize in this region of the world from a few brief texts. The second century B.C. Chronicle of NingPo mentions a grain that paleo-botanist Heinrich Bretschneider (1870) identified as maize. Court historian Wang Yu Kie's sixth century account of the mysterious voyage by the Afghani monk, Hui Shen, to a land called Fu-Sang might be a description of maize circa 500 A.D. According to Yu Kie, the monk returned from an overseas’ voyage with seeds from a new plant that had leaves similar to an oak, a stalk similar to a sugarcane, and a reddish, pear-shaped fruit (maize?). The chronicle of Anwhei, dated 1511, mentions maize as a “barbarian grain.” A few decades later, a wood-block illustration in the Pen-tsao-kung-mu book of plants called maize “a gem-like sorghum” or “a cereal from Szechwan that was like a precious stone” (shu-cho-yu). Inhabitants of other provinces called maize “imperial wheat.”
The Portuguese name, milho, is absent, even though orthodox historians assume Portuguese traders introduced the “new” grain. Whether or not outsiders inspired the agricultural use of maize, there is evidence that it was already a religious or medicinal plant. Statues found in Buddhist caves dating to the sixth century have garlands over their shoulders that were made to look remarkably similar to maize cobs. Maize is definitely featured on a ceramic mural in Shanxi Province, where a footlong yellow cob with kernels has long leaves at the base. California State University Professor, Sidney Chang, identified the mural as a ninth- or 10th-century design. In 1422, Chinese naval officers reported seeing “extraordinary large ears of grain” on voyages to Africa and India. Thus, the khan’s mariners had ample opportunity to bring home samples of maize already growing in the Old World.
In his taxonomy of plants, Swiss botanist Alphonse DeCandolle observed that maize kernels had been recovered from an ancient Egyptian sarcophagus. But this he regarded as so impossible that he explained away the evidence as “the dastardly attempt of Arabs to mislead science.” However, the recent identification of such New World plants
as cocaine and tobacco in the mummy of Ramses III cautions against assuming that Egyptians were ignorant of maize until after 1492. M.D.W. Jeffreys has dated the introduction of maize at Ife, Nigeria, to about 1000 A.D., based on the impression of maize cobs on potsherds. Other than the kernels found inside the Egyptian sarcophagus and the Ife potsherds, the only other evidence we have to go on is linguistic.
Maize was so widespread in central Africa at the time of Portuguese colonization that some orthodox historians assumed the grain had come via overland routes from Egypt and the Sahara. Although some names suggest that maize was an occasional Portuguese introduction, most native names for maize, along with deep cultural traditions, indicate that maize was present in more ancient times. The earliest Portuguese reference to maize in West Africa is found in the chronicle of Valentim Fernandez (1502), who reported seeing milho zabuffo along the coast. Later writers compared this plant to mehiz of the West Indies. One writer even included a sketch of a plant (as maize) in the 1554 book, Del navigatione e viaggi.
The plant was known in West Africa as misr, the Arabic word for “Egypt.” In a letter dated 1514, the trader Goncalo Lopes mentioned his receipt of “red corn” from Sierra Leone. John Locke, a 16th-century mariner, described a “wheat” on the west coast of Africa in 1554 that had ears with more than two hundred kernels the size of peas. British seaman Andrew Battell (1591) wrote about “wheat” in Angola that was also known as “Guinea wheat,” a common European name for maize in Guinea. The natives called this grain masa maputo. Maize was called clough-eub in Zanguay and makkary in Fuli along the Niger river.
In both places, maize was a central part of the culture and religion when the tribes were first visited by European explorers in the 17th century. In 1746, British botanist Thomas Ashtley described four kinds of maize growing in Angola. One variety, called massanga, had ears a foot long. The other varieties were called
masambala, masinpeta (or Guinea wheat), and masamambala (great millet). Another variety, mazza (or mazza maput), was known to the Portuguese as “Congo corn”; it was fed only to hogs. Duarte Lopez saw this plant in the Congo in 1591. Phonetic similarities between Hindu-Persian makka, West African mazza, and West Indian maize provide linguistic evidence of ancient transoceanic contact.
Orthodox historians contend that the African term, mazza, was derived from Portuguese slave merchants who brought the West Indian word, maize, along with the domesticated plant after 1492. However, the common Portuguese term for maize was and still is this word that seems to provide evidence for a 16th-century Portuguese role in maize diffusion—but only in a few places. One of these was South Africa, where natives called maize mielie, or mealie, a term that was probably derived from Portuguese milho. In 1798, the explorer Lacerda reported maize growing deep in eastern Zambia. He called the grain milho grosso in his field notes. Subsequently, translators compared this milho grosso to the Hindu diowarri, the Persian durrah, and New World maize. Apparently, they were all the same kind of plant.
The shippers of Medieval Europe’s “Turkie korn” obtained their seeds and supplies from even more distant sources. Maize was known to the Turks as misr (“grain of Egypt”) or kukuruz (“barbarian grain”). Arabs called maize dhurah India (“sorghum of India”), Abysinnian sorghum (“Ethiopian grain”), bandum-i-makka and hanta-i-rusia (“corn of Russia”); in Egypt it was called Syrian sorghum. Persians called maize ghendum, ghendumi-makkah, haldah, duram-i-makka, kakui, Jao-i-barhana, and gandum-isahrai. Another Persian name for maize suggests that at least one variety came from Russia, and this was mentioned in a 15th-century text. Presumably, this Russian corn originally came via Hanseatic merchants sailing across the North Atlantic.
Maize was part of the ancient, Greco-Arabian medicinal tradition of Avicenna. One of the medicinal names for maize was hantah-i-rumi. Medieval medicinal dictionaries regarded hanta-i-rumi as an equivalent to khundrus (“maize in India”). A medieval dictionary, the
Nasiral-Mualyin, mentions that khundrus is the Arabic name foqowar (“maize of India”), and this plant is known in Persia as durah-i-makka. The plant is described as follows: “fruit is a head of sweet white grains. The plant grows as tall as a man and resembles sugarcane.” Al-Ber-uni’s 1358 medicinal says that the fruit is “a cob of red, white, or yellow grains the size of peas.” These characteristics identify the plant as maize. Other forms of “corn,” such as millet, barley, wheat, and sorghum have smaller grains, and lack the variety of colors.
The oldest evidence for maize yet found comes from Mexico, where botanist Paul Manglesdorf has estimated the age of fossilized pollen at nearly 80,000 years old. The pollen was taken from geological core samples drilled down two hundred feet below Mexico City. In the nearby Tehuacan Valley, archaeologist Richard MacNeish found corn cobs which were radiocarbon dated to 5000 B.C. Equally important, botanists have identified two native grasses, teosinte and diploperennis, which strongly resemble the maize plant. By the time of Columbus, native varieties of maize had spread throughout both North and South America. On Haiti, Columbus found a grain that the natives called mahiz, a common name for the plant in the Caribbean region. Elsewhere, maize was known by a variety of native terms. In Virginia, it was called pagatowar. Near Boston, it was known as nokehick or nasaump. Natchez natives called it boota copassa. It was sagamite to the Iroquois. One name for maize in Brazil, milho de Guinea, was probably introduced along with African slaves in the 16th century. The name suggests that maize and slaves taken from Guinea were brought to Brazil. This is only one historic example of Old World maize being brought to South America, a place that already had its own local varieties of the grain.
Columbus might have brought samples of maize back to Spain in 1493. Strangely, there is no historical basis for the Spaniards or other Europeans raising crops from New World seeds until the mid-16th century (or long after Portuguese colonists supposedly introduced the “new” plant along the coasts of Africa and Asia). Native American corn, or “Indian corn,” may have provided a greater yield
than varieties of corn already growing in Europe. That judgment seems likely from the illustration by Tabemamontanus (1588), which shows the cobs and kernels of Indian corn from the Caribbean region to be much larger than those taken from Europe’s traditional maize or “Turkish corn.”
Neither the isolationist paradigm nor the dual-origin model sufficiently explains the remarkable fact that maize seems to have maintained parallel diversity in both hemispheres and also to have retained genetic compatibility among both populations. This could not be possible if maize plants were effectively isolated over a span of several thousand years.
One of the arguments put forth to support the origin of maize in China or India is the presence of primitive forms of the plant that developed during the early stages of domestication. Presumably, if maize had been imported by the Portuguese, there would be only modern varieties represented, and they would have European names such as “Portuguese millet.” Supporters of the isolationist paradigm have argued that such primitive form—still growing in marginal areas— do not constitute proof of Asian domestication, because the same kinds of maize are also found in the Americas. In this instance, the isolationists assume that the primitive forms, as well as more modern maize varieties, were taken by the Portuguese to India and China. The logistics required for the Portuguese to have imported all the varieties from different areas of the Americas to Asia, while simultaneously preserving the genetic uniqueness of each variety. That would have been a formidable endeavor. Perhaps too formidable to even warrant consideration. Furthermore, there is no historical basis that this simultaneous, multi-variety introduction of maize ever took place under the auspices of Portuguese mariners.
In order to overcome the deficiencies in earlier theories of maize origins, we offer a new paradigm for maize: It is an inter-hemispheric domesticate that has been cross-fertilized on numerous occasions, as
it was being domesticated in various cultural centers and simultaneously transported across the oceans at the hands of ancient explorers. This periodic separation for a time and then reunion of divergent forms undoubtedly contributed to the tremendous variety of maize plants that we are blessed with today.
Joseph, F (2006). Discovering the mysteries of ancient America : lost history and legends, unearthed and explored. USA: Mark Book Press
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