Painting in Cave of the Indian in Tamaulipas Burgos Municipality Mexico Marks Taurus, Orion and Other Stars ca. 2300 B.C.

Many ancient cave paintings were recently discovered (2013) in Tamaulipas, Burgos municipality, Mexico, as reported at BBC News in Cave paintings in Mexico: Carvings uncovered in Burgos:

"Archaeologists in Mexico have found 4,926 well-preserved cave paintings in the north-eastern region of Burgos ... in 11 different sites."

As written by Meredith Bennett-Smith at the Huffington Post in Nearly 5,000 Ancient Cave Paintings Found In Mexico:

"This photo released by the National Institute of History and Anthropology (INAH) in Mexico, shows cave paintings found in the San Carlos mountain range in the Burgos municipality of the Tamaulipas State, Mexico. Archaeologist Martha García Sánchez said the paintings were made by at least three groups of hunter-gatherers and show hunting, fishing, housing, animals as well as religious and astronomical symbols. According to archaeologists the paintings have not been dated because they have yet to collect samples of the pigments used in the images."

Read the article to see a number of photos of the main cave paintings, one of which we decipher below as marking stars, perhaps ca. 2300 B.C. when the Celestial Equator split Taurus in two, with the cave painting showing such an unusual splitting of stars in this region.

We also considered the much earlier date of 5000 B.C. if one put the Vernal Equinox at the boat rudder below Auriga and above Orion, and indeed we did find a similar "Sun Line" shadow mark at page 20 in Todd W. Bostwick, Ph.D., Archaeoastronomy of the Southwest, Arizona Archaeological Society, 2007.

However, such an early date appeared too far back for us, but we did note the early dates referred to by K. Krist Hirst at archaeology.about.com in Ocampo Caves (Tamaulipas, Mexico): Evidence for Early Domestication of Crops.

In making our graphic image illustrations, we considered photographs by the Instituto Nacional de Antropología e Historia (INAH), photos found at the Los Angeles Review of Books in Gustavo A. Ramirez on the Rock Art of Burgos, Tamaulipas, Mexico and photos at La Gran Época, Anastasia Gubin, México: descubren 5000 pinturas rupestres en cuevas de Tamaulipas: La mayoría tiene un grado de conservación impresionante y representa sus viviendas, sus costumbres y formas de vida.

Our decipherment below shows a wall section of cave painting figures found at the Cave Painting of the Cave of the Indian, "Cueva del Indeo".

As seen there, some familiar star clusters (today constellations) are clearly marked, as is the Milky Way (the area we have marked in light blue).

The hour-glass figure of Orion is unmistakable, and the rest follow logically after that. Cancer, Gemini, and Auriga (unusual as a boat for these stars) are clearly marked above the Milky Way, Perseus in turn is marked in the Milky Way, and Canis Major, Orion and Taurus (the latter found in an unusual representation as two halves) together with the Hyades are marked below the Milky Way.

The locational mesh of star clusters and Milky Way (properly placed above, in or below that Milky Way) serves as very strong probative evidence for the correctness of our identification of the prominent star groups.

The "underworld" of the ocean below the Milky Way then shows Canis Major (with Sirius), Puppis (as a squid?), Carina as an electric (?) eel (with "shock" symbols ?, and with the major star Canopus as the eel's eye), and Columba as a turtle. Stars between Orion and Canis Major are seen as a fence.

Tamaulipas, Burgos Municipality, Mexico

The Cave Painting in the Cave of the Indian, "Cueva del Indeo"

Marks Orion and Neighboring Stars
With Taurus Split by the Celestial Equator ca. 2300 B.C.

Stars from Sirius to Perseus along the Milky Way Are Included

 The Corresponding Stars are Marked in Blue in the Image Below

 The stars between Canis Major and Orion seen as fence posts

Viewing these stars as "fence posts" is otherwise unknown to us in ancient astronomy, but one can see from the above image -- where we have drawn in the blue fence post lines -- that such a view fits the stars, and it indeed thus adds further probative value to the decipherment of the cave painting as presented above.

We know from our immediately preceding posting that the mounds of Poverty Point in Louisiana, USA, represent stars of the heavens that form the shape of a flying bird, which we call the "Thunderbird", found in close proximity and to the right of the famous star cluster of the Pleiades. These mounds by our decipherment marked the Vernal Equinox in ca. 1675 B.C.

We therefore sought evidence that Equinoxes and/or Solstices were similarly and systematically marked by stars in other previous eras in Native America.

Looking at the stars of Perseus and the Pleiades, to the left of them we find the stars of Taurus and lower and to the left we find the stars of Orion.

Looking at a map of North America, we saw that if it was marked consistently in the same system as Poverty Point, then we would surely have to cross the Gulf of Mexico to look for Native American sites that may have marked the stars of Taurus and/or Orion. Tamaulipas, Burgos Municipality, fit the bill, marking ca. 2300 B.C. when the Celestial Equator split Taurus as apparently marked in the cave painting and when the Vernal Equinox was left of the Pleiades in Taurus.

Stars along the Milky Way from Canis Major (and some stars below and to the left of that) to Perseus are marked on the cave painting of the "Cave of the Indian" -- "Cueva del Indeo", although the chronological dating of the figures is still uncertain, with the options of ca. 2300 B.C. or ca. 5000 B.C. both possible, with the latter, however, very unlikely in our opinion. It will be interesting to see what the radiocarbon data ultimately tell us.

THIS POSTING IS Posting Number 14 of
The Great Mound, Petroglyph and Painted Rock Art Journey of Native America

Cave Painting in Cave of the Indian in Tamaulipas Burgos Municipality Mexico Marks Taurus and Other Stars ca. 2300 B.C.

Effigy Mounds in Native America: Poverty Point, West Carrol Parish, Louisiana as Astronomy: Thunderbird of the Pleiades

Sometimes the simplest decipherment is the best and here it is: the "Thunderbird" "of (near to) the Pleiades" (to the right of them), whose stars are marked at Poverty Point, West Carrol Parish, Louisiana, USA.

We show below first an idealized map image of the Poverty Point mound site (only a model, not definitive) and then an image of the decipherment:

Below is the image of the decipherment, the "Thunderbird of the Pleiades" at Poverty Point as marked out in the stars to the right of the Pleiades.

Not only is the bird shape apparent but the curved portions clearly mark the body of feathers of "the thunderbird". We do not know how the ancients marked the back, so we leave that to imagination. We are also not sure where the exact point of the Vernal Equinox was located in the mounds. An accurately surveyed map of the mound site should reveal that fairly clearly as the crossing of the ancient trails.

Our decipherment in the previous posting of the Iowa effigy mounds enabled us to find the stars marked at Poverty Point, Louisiana, which is considered the oldest location of an effigy mound in Native America, with the Poverty Point era starting in ca. 1700 B.C. and lasting until about 500 B.C. See Dan F. Morse & Phyllis A. Morse, Archaeology of the Central Mississippi Valley, Academic Press, May 10, 2014, http://books.google.de/books?id=hTq0BQAAQBAJ, originally published by the New York Academic Press in 1983.

The decipherment image above was made using Starry Night Pro (http://astronomy.starrynight.com) -- the best astronomy software out there (!) -- and we say that as a magna-user, this is not an ad, but pure conviction.

The four major mounds at Poverty Point are found -- nicely constructed by Maximilian Dörrbecker (Chumwa) -- in a graphic map at the Wikipedia article on Poverty Point. We used that map as a reference together with a useful image of Poverty Point as found at Andrei Apostol, North American Indian Effigy Mounds: An Enigma at the Frontier of Archaeology and Geology, Journal of Scientific Exploration , Vol. 9, No. 4, pp. 549-563, 1995, image p. 551, Figure 1, Poverty Point, West Carrol Parish, Louisiana (1,700-700 B.C.) showing a drawing by Jon L. Gibson as found in Richard Balthazar, Remember Native America! the Earthworks of Ancient America.

We looked at those maps and made a conglomerate simple one for purposes of illustration, as shown at the start of this posting, but that map is not definitive. A very accurate map should be able to date Poverty Point very accurately.

Dan F. Morse & Phyllis A. Morse, Archaeology of the Central Mississippi Valley, Academic Press, May 10, 2014, http://books.google.de/books?id=hTq0BQAAQBAJ, originally published by the New York Academic Press in 1983:

"There are no radiocarbon dates from Poverty Point period sites in the Central Valley. The Poverty Point period is normally dated to around 1700-500 B.C. in Louisiana. Recent work in Mississippi at the Denton site, where rich lapidary-industry examples dated to 3000 B.C. and earlier, extends one of the primary characteristics of Poverty Point culture back in time (Connaway 1977)."

THIS POSTING IS Posting Number 12 of
The Great Mound, Petroglyph and Painted Rock Art Journey of Native America

Effigy Mounds in Native America: Poverty Point, West Carrol Parish, Louisiana as Astronomy: Thunderbird of the Pleiades

Effigy Mounds National Monument, Harpers Ferry, Iowa, as Astronomy From Stars of Libra and Boötes to Ursa Major to Perseus and the Pleiades

We now continue with some locations that include some of the effigy mounds in Native America -- mounds shaped into the figure of a living thing. The Serpent Mound in the previous posting is the best known example, but there are many more such effigy mounds in existence, though none of course quite as large. As the Serpent Mound has turned out to be, the effigy mounds may be younger than once thought, but may also be based on an older stratum nevertheless.

The image below contains our decipherment of the mounds at Effigy Mounds National Monument, Harpers Ferry, Iowa, in the far northeast corner of that State, bordering on Wisconsin. The mounds (some normal, some effigy) are shown in the middle column and can be viewed at the website of the U.S. National Park Service at  http://www.nps.gov/common/commonspot/customcf/apps/maps/showmap.cfm?alphacode=efmo&parkname=Effigy%20Mounds. The astronomical correspondence is shown in the left and right columns:

As one can see, for mounds that are found on Earth in a line just as in the middle column here from top to bottom, we decipher these Iowa "normal" and also perhaps later-added effigy mounds as marking stars from Libra at the top, going to stars of Boötes, and then to Ursa Major, which seems to mark the colure of the Solstices there at alpha Ursae Majoris (Dubhe). Here is a graphic image showing the line marked for the colure of the Solstices:

Then we go along the Celestial Meridian to the not so prominent stars of what we today call Camelopardalis, and then to the well-known stars of Perseus and the Pleiades at the bottom of the graphic image. Those stars from Libra to Perseus clearly mark a "row" of stars that more-or-less are along the Celestial Meridian in ca. 1400 B.C., i.e. they are the colure of the Equinoxes in that era, and that would be the reason for marking those stars in the manner in which they are marked, thus concentrating on stars near that line.

Our results are puzzling, however, in terms of dating. Astronomical considerations clearly mark a date of ca. 1400 B.C. -- meshing well with the beginnings of the "effigy mound era" -- an era said to start with Poverty Point in Louisiana ca. 1700 B.C. However, our decipherment does not mesh at all with current archaeological dating of Effigy Mounds National Monument.

Our next posting, by the way, is Poverty Point, where our deciphered date there DOES match the archaeological dating and where the stars that Poverty Point marked were in fact found through our decipherment here of the Iowa effigy mounds. Poverty Point, as you will see, marks a spectacular "thunderbird" at the Vernal Equinox near the Pleiades around 1700 B.C.

Dating of the Iowa mounds has been controversial for years and our results thus add to that controversy. Is it possible that the start and design of the entire site occurred in ca. 1400 B.C. whereas many of the effigy mounds were added at a later date? Surely that could explain having some mounds as normal mounds and others as effigy mounds -- and from different construction eras, all dating to a design that points to ca. 1400 B.C.

The Iowa mounds are near neighbors to the many Indian mounds in Wisconsin. The abstract to Robert A. Birmingham and Leslie E. Eisenberg, Indian Mounds of Wisconsin, University of Wisconsin Press, 2000, writes that:

"The archaeological record indicates that most ancient societies in the upper Midwest built mounds of various kinds sometime between about 800 B.C. and A.D. 1200; the effigy mounds were probably built between A.D. 800 and A.D. 1200....  It is likely that the distant ancestors of several present-day Native American groups were among the mound-building societies, in part because these groups’ current clan structures and beliefs are similar to the symbolism represented in the effigy mounds."

Whatever the answer may turn out to be, the decipherment of the Iowa mounds led to decipherment of Poverty Point, because then we knew where to look -- you had to go "South" -- and so, logically, we looked underneath Perseus near the Pleiades, just as at the bottom of the decipherment in this posting. 

THIS POSTING IS Posting Number 11 of
The Great Mound, Petroglyph and Painted Rock Art Journey of Native America

Effigy Mounds in Native America: Effigy Mounds National Monument, Harpers Ferry, Iowa, as Astronomy From Stars of Libra and Boötes to Ursa Major to Perseus and the Pleiades