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American Janus
Warrior Bust
The Twin Maize Gods and An American Janus By James R. Van Dyke Abstract: The Penutian language group of Western America is related to the languages of the Maya and the Zoque of Mesoamerica. A more significant connection between these tribal groups is found in their Neolithic Art. The Western American rock art motif is similar to that of the Maya. They all used Quincunx Itz stones as boundary markers for the four Cardinal directions. The tribes Zoomorphic forms include caimans, snakes, turtles, peccaries, and simian busts. Their Anthropomorphic forms include busts of different warriors. Many examples of these busts are a Janus like representation of a man facing the views left and a simian form facing right.
What follows is the results of a four year field survey between Portland, Oregon and Redwood City in the San Francisco Bay Area of California. In December of 1999 while doing a gardening project, a stone lined cache was discovered beneath the largest Douglas fir tree on my property in Oregon. The growing tree brought the cache to the surface with its cover stone and left side stone embedded in the tree’s root.
The cache contained what appeared to be objects of art and some of the stone artifacts have art inscribed on their surfaces. The art reminded me of the images in the National Geographic of art created by the Maya. Also on the property, there is a solstice circle with thirteen stones and three boundary stone markers for East, South, and West. The county road passes by the property where the fourth stone for North would have been.
After learning that many of the major tribal groups of Western America shared a common root language known as the Penutian language group, I formulated the Penutian-Maya First Nation Hypotheses. This was the beginning of the search for proof that a Penutian-Maya Nation once existed in Western America.
In Redwood City 700 miles to the south of Portland, I lived on a boat in the Docktown Marina. Not long after my Oregon discoveries, a portion of the concrete dock collapsed into Redwood City creek exposing the old creek bed for the first time. In the old creek bed, I discovered several artifacts, one of which is made of concrete and estimated to be from the eleventh century, by its art and the art on the jasper knife found next to the concrete turtle.
Turtle of Orion Redwood City Creek concrete turtle
I expanded my search to the land filled area around Docktown, then to building sites and gardens in Redwood City. The artifacts that where found as a result of this search all have the following characteristics.
ANTHR0P0MRHISM. Anthropomorphic artifacts and artifacts with anthropomorphic images carved or painted on them are the major connecting factors among the Western American tribes. Heads of different people or busts are the subjects of anthropomorphic art.
A good example is a metallic artifact with two heads painted on its surface. The significance of these two heads that are facing one another is their images appears on most of the artifacts in this collection. Another interesting fact about the different heads is they appear to represent different individuals. The Maya used head variants to represent numbers and dates. The artifacts of the Penutian-Maya seem to use head variants in the same manner. HOMOMORPHISM. Homomorphism is a mathematical term that means there exists a one to one mapping between two objects. To a mathematician a coffee cup and a donut are homomorphic objects. For each point on the coffee cup there is a one to one mapping to each point on the donut. Isomorphism is an identical mapping of an object to itself. For an anthropologist these two concepts are combined, since finding two identical objects rarely happens.
Some artifacts, such as the gorilla busts pictured here, are very similar to one another and they are homomorphic objects. For anthropology, homomorphism is defined by a one to one mapping between the art of similar artifacts. Identical art themes and motif are two more connecting factors among the Western American tribes. POLYMORPHISM. Polymorphic artifacts, as their name suggests are artifacts that contain multiple images, a rainbow hologram in stone. The artifact pictured here is one of the best examples of this type, which has five zoomorphic forms, two pumas, a rams head, a turtle, and a peccary.
ZOOMORPHISM. Zoomorphic artifacts are those artifacts that portray animals. The TURTLE and the PECCARY (a pig like animal native to the Southwest and Central America) are two zoomorphic representations for the Maya constellations in the star group we call Orion. The constellations and the associated art of the turtle and the peccary are PENUTIAN-MAYA ARCHETYPES.
Turtle of Orion Brisbane The Popol Vuh presents us with the common theme of this rock art and three sets of twins; the eldest, Hun-Hunahpú and his brother Vucub-Hunahpú, the sons Hunahpú and his brother Xbalanqué, and their half-brothers Hun Batz and Hun Chuen. Their exploits and accomplishments are set forth in the Quiché story of creation. Although I have found paired images of heads, only one has been identified by its relationship with reptiles.
The first sorcerer of the Maya is Itzamna or First Father, who is their maize god. Interestingly, in addition to this role, J. Eric Thompson proposed that Itzamna was the Lord of the reptiles.
REFERENCES: MAYA COSMOS, Fredel, L. Schele, J. Parker, William Morrow and Company, New York, 1993. THE POPOL VUH, Translated by D. Tedlock, Revised edition, Simon & Schuster, New York, 1996.
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