(John Barn) The USA is only a small part of America. Native Americans had many magnificent cities. BBC Four looks at Lost Kingdoms of South America, like Bolivia in the Andes Mountains.
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| After being re-elected for a second term, Bolivian President Evo Morales, accompanied by indigenous leaders, holds the staff of command during an Aymara indigenous ceremony at the ancient Kalasasaya Palace at Tiwanaku, 1-21-10. The Kalasasaya Palace is believed to be used to observe the location of the sun and influenced the Aymara calendar that Pres. Morales has proposed for Bolivia (Mariana Bazo/Reuters). |
The Native Aymara on the shores of Lake Titicaca in the Andes view the future as behind us. We can't see it, but we can see the past and are constantly looking at it. Maybe clocks should run counterclockwise, as Evo Morales demonstrated. In any case, we should return to a pre-Columbian time in the future. It is now 5524 because at least 5,000 years of Incan culture preceded the rapist-imperialist-capitalist Columbus arrived 524 years ago.
Bolivia's president wants to go back to indigenous calendar |
| Let's go back to the future for change. |
It's the year 2016, but it's not really 2016. Planet Earth has been around for about 4.5 billion years, and modern humans about 200,000 years [Buddhist and Vedic sources and Michael Cremo can show that it has been much longer, but that is "forbidden archeology"].
The current year, 2016, is based on a Christian [Gregorian] calendar, thus the meager 2,000-plus years. Bolivia's Pres. Evo Morales says it's time for his country to adopt a calendar that's more culturally relevant to his people. And according to that calendar, it's the year 5524.
(MG) Tiwanaku: Forbidden History, Part 1: Arthur Posnansky spent much of his life in Bolivia, where he conducted 50 years research on Tiwanaku. Based on surveying of sight lines within the Kalasasaya
before its reconstruction, that is, based on the angles created by the
standing stones, he thought that the Kalasasaya dated to around 15,000 BCE, far older than Jericho, which is thought in the West to be the world's oldest city.
Modern radio carbon dating suggests that the Kalasasaya might date to
around 800 to 400 BCE, while the Akapana and Puma Punku may date to around
500 to 600 AD. If Tiwanaku was indeed built around 15,000 BCE then
it's the world's oldest known city. Should the Americas then be renamed the
Old World?
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| Aymara girl, 2012 (David Mercado/Reuters) |
Evo Morales is Bolivia's first indigenous president and he's Aymara, which is the country's largest indigenous group, numbering about 2 million. Paul Goldstein, an anthropologist at the University of California at San Diego, says Morales is basing his proposed calendar on the Tiwanaku civilization, the ancient ancestors of the Aymara.
"With Evo Morales, there's been a huge waive of popularity for things ancient, things Tiwanaku, things Aymara," Goldstein says. "It's a very big part of Bolivian nationalism, which we could call an almost archaeological nationalism."
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| Waving the Andes' rainbow flag, the Wiphala* |
Morales' calendar has 13 months, uses a beginning date of 1492 and adds 5,000 years before that, a somewhat arbitrary estimate of how long pre-Columbian people have lived in Bolivia.
"In a sense it's part and parcel of this sort of larger awakening of Aymara identity as a very important part of Bolivian nationalism," says Goldstein. "And this calendar sort of fits into this idea of setting themselves apart from the 500 years of oppression since the advent of Columbus, hence the 1492 year is a particularly telling part of this calendar."
Each month has 28 days. Morales says that makes it simpler than the Gregorian calendar, with its varied month lengths and leap year. But there's a larger goal. When Morales suggested the new calendar he denounced the Gregorian as a "colonial imposition" and said his country must "reclaim our ancestral calendar as part of the rebuilding of our identity."
- *PHOTO: A Bolivian woman waves the colorful Wiphala, the flag of native Andeans, who live on the shores of Lake Titicaca, while awaiting the arrival of Pres. Morales to enact the new constitution in a public gathering of thousands of his supporters, in El Alto on the outskirts of La Paz, Feb. 7, 2009 (David Mercado/Reuters).
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| Bolivian Pres. Morales (L) blessed by Aymara priest Valentin Mejillones during ceremony at Tiawanaku, a pre-Columbian archaeological site about 40 miles west of La Paz, in 2006. The Aymara people, of which Morales is a member, are the descendants of the Tiwanaku whose civilization flourished from around 400 BC to AD 1000 (Stringer/Files/Reuters). |
"You could call this a case of the invention of traditions," says Gary Urton, a Harvard University professor and specialist in pre-Columbian Andean cultures. He's done extensive research at the ruins in Tiwanaku, a UNESCO heritage site about 40 miles west of Bolivia's capital La Paz.
"Tiwanaku is the iconic site in Bolivia. It's the one celebrated by the people of the linguistic and ethnic group [Morales] belongs to, the Aymara. It's their homeland. Their mother culture."
Like the ancient Tiwanaku, Morales' calendar is based on the passage of the sun, a way to time harvests and plantings, a practice still used by modern Aymara, says Urton.
"If you go to an average Aymara village in the high Andes of Bolivia, they're still planting some of the same crops as their ancestors, like potatoes, other tuber crops and quinoa," Urton says. "They're speaking Aymara. They're using coca. More
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