Tag Archives: archaeology

2012 Apocalypse Porn

Even some Mayans are finally getting fed up with the whole 2012 end-of-civilization-as-we-know-it apocalypse porn.

(You know it’s porn because there is no real goofiness, humor, or affection.)

A little while ago I received a copy of 2012: Science or Superstition, a video from Disinformation.

It’s got it all: Hopis, Islamic astrology, reverse cowgirl, Stonehenge, and lots of self-appointed experts saying “X appeared to have Y.”

Lots of vague references to “cultures around the world” sharing the same cosmology, which is, shall we say, unsupported.

Why the Mayas? Why not the ancient Roman calendar? The year 2012 will be 2765 AUC. That sounds significant too. Or wait until 2772?

Anthony Aveni, who is a genuine scholar of archaeoastronomy, is in there, along with a bunch of apocalyptic pornographers—and who can tell them apart without a scorecard?

You won’t hear much from any Mayas, however.

“The December 21st, 2012 date is gaining ground in the popular media,” says one of the talking heads. Yes, and we will see more of that, no doubt.

And Halloween is coming, so you could pick up 2012: Science or Superstition for your scary movie. Or you could watch The Exorcist.

UPDATE: The day that I wrote this post, the new issue of Archaeology magazine arrived, with an article by Professor Aveni examing the 2012 craze.

You will find the full text at the link but here are two brief quotations:

It is amusing that the Y12 prophets are certain the world will end for all of us based on a date that may or may not have had historical significance to the Maya a few thousand years ago, who were themselves looking to a date a few thousand years before that. The ancient Maya might tell us: “Hey, get your own zero point!”

•••

We live in a techno-immersed, materially oriented society that seems somewhat bewildered by where rational, empirical science might be taking us. This may be why the mystical, escapist explanations of a galactic endpoint, replete with precise mathematical, historical, and cosmic underpinnings (masquerading as science), have such wide appeal. In an age of anxiety we reach for the wisdom of ancestors–even other peoples’ ancestors–that might have been lost in the drifting sands of time. Perhaps the only way we can take back control of our disordered world is to rediscover their lost knowledge and make use of it. And so we romanticize the ancient Maya.

Some of the people pushing the 2012 stuff said much the same things about the “Harmonic Convergence” of 1987.

That summer, a campfire skit at a Pagan festival in New Mexico celebrated the “Harmonica Virgins.”

Bring on the 2012 parodies.

Did a ‘Pagan’ Bury the Staffordshire Hoard?

The “Staffordshire Hoard” is a cache of 7th-century Anglo-Saxon sword jewels and other items recently found in England (and a great boost for metal-detector sales, no doubt).

The caption on one slide of the golden hoard suggests that because a gold cross was folded in on itself before burial, the person who buried the treasure might well have been (wait for it) a “pagan.”

England was becoming Christian by then, although the Norse were not. But I think he (?), whether Pagan or Christian, might as well have been looking at the cross as so much gold rather than superstitiously thinking he would be smitten if he deformed it.

Here is another slide show. Magnificent stuff. How long until we see Ren Faire reproductions?

Mazes and Labyrinths

A web page of mazes and labyrinths, from the Paleolithic forward.

Shamanic Images of the Altai

I found this video on PaganSpace — evidently it is supposed to evoke the shamanic spirit of Kazahkstan (since the poster lives in Almaty). The Altai are a range of mountains in Central Asia.

Greek Orthodox Cover-up of Parthenon Defacing

Via Richard Bartholomew: Orthodox clergy in Greece demanded — and got — removal of a film segment in the Parthenon visitor center that showed their predecessors smashing Pagan statuary, etc., centuries ago.

UPDATE: (Via Jason) The museum backed down and is restoring the original film.

The Mists of Avalon and Its Antithesis

I recently re-read Marion Zimmer Bradley’s The Mists of Avalon for the first time in years, in order to cite it in a paper.

Now I am reading its antithesis, Simon Young’s A.D. 500: A Journey Through the Dark Isles of Britain and Ireland.

Based on the fiction of a geographer in Constantinople writing a guide to the “Dark Isles” based on contemporary reports and present-day archaeology, Young’s sixth century agrees very little with Bradley’s except, perhaps, on the importance of Tintagel.

If Tintagel is a work of Nature’s art, then man has, however, botched its decorations. The British Celts who live there are not great builders….The king’s court is a timber shack, something approximating in size and finish to one of our royal stables.

You want all-wise Druids at the close of Pagan Ireland?

But even in their reduced state, these old men–the young with spiritual gifts turn to the Church–have a certain notoriety. Instantly recognizable for their curious cloaks and their shaved heads–each has a short tuft over the forehead–they walk from place to place officiating over oaths and sacrifices (it is better not to ask of which sort).

Young admits that the story of the last Temple of Bacchus in Britain is “necessarily speculative,” but does offer sources for it, as for all his information.

Young’s book is a useful corrective to the “matter of Britain’s” multiple re-tellings–the last time I checked, library databases listed more than 900 works under the category of “King Arthur-Fiction.”

Gallimaufry with Gray Matter

• Ten myths about the brain.

• Paganistan gets a designated blogger in the Examiner network, Murph Pizza.

• A “prehistoric pin-up”? Archaeological video from the journal Nature.

Gallimaufry with Old Bones

¶ Some British Pagans want to rebury a 4,000-year-old skeleton. It seems to me that they are just parroting NAGRPA language without realizing that (to borrow from another blogger) that the Archbishop of Canterbury has as much “blood” claim to the bones as they do.

¶ George Plimpton was an American writer of what was once called “new journalism” and is now called creative nonfiction. But this article about him in The Nation also points out to what extent famous literary journals were subsidized by the CIA as part of the culture war with the Soviet Union. Who says our government does not support the arts?

¶ Anne Hill defines “California Cosmology” and its evil twin.

Apparently “analog” now means “natural.” I missed that.

So is the “planetary consciousness” of neotribal gatherings like Boom just window dressing for the same old hedonistic consumption and pursuit of distraction? Perhaps. But as a self-consciously visionary environment, Boom necessarily foreshadowed the apocalypse as much as the eco-dream.

¶ A wall painting at the Neolithic town of Catal Huyuk was often called the world’s oldest map. But what if it is not a map at all? Would that mean that map-making was not practiced by “peaceful ancient matriarchies” but was invented by them evil Kurgans?

Needed: Druids with Scuba Gear

Yes, the news of a possible stone circle under Lake Michigan has been “surprisingly under-reported.”

If verified, the carvings could be as much as 10,000 years old – coincident with the post-Ice Age presence of both humans and mastodons in the upper midwest.

A Ritual with Swan’s Eggs

The November/December 2008 issue of Archaeology magazine contains an article titled “Witches of Cornwall,” about odd, ritualistic or votive burials of skins, eggs, and other items at a place called Saveock Water.

These burials took place from the 1640s at least through the 1950s.

There is as yet no link to the article (so ask a librarian), but this site gives some of the same information.

The writer, Kate Ravilious, creates a purely hypothetical spell that might have accompanied one of the offerings:

Take a swan and wring its neck. Skin the bird and, under a full moon, lay its skin in a shallow hole with the feathers face-up. Add eggs–five for every child you want to bear. Atop each egg, place the talon of a blackbird and a black stone. Circle the hole three times, clockwise, then close it with a clod of earth. As soon as you are with child, empty the hole, or terrible things will come to pass.

(Wringing the neck of an angry adult swan might be harder than Ms. Ravilious realizes, however. Apparently her magic is not for the faint-hearted.)

UPDATE: Archaeology put a link up.