The ancient semi-gods: from Osiris to Cortes
About 11,000 years ago something seems to affect all Paleolithic cultures existing at the time, regardless of race or geographical distance: the development and, above all, the spread of agriculture.
Indeed, the peoples of the time seem no longer to practice only the art of hunting and nomadism, and to devote themselves to a more settled type of life devoted to agriculture.
Simultaneously, then, from the Far East to America, agriculture developed and spread in a "spontaneous" and "homogeneous" way. History in its most classical form speaks of a "diffusionist" theory, which would assume rapid and simultaneous cultural and social changes in the various populations of the world, after millennia of slow maturation. The whole thing seems very haphazard.
If we took into account a common origin of all civilizations here is where the picture changes. A people, or some of its survivors, with superior knowledge, landed, after a long wandering, in new places and came into contact with the local indigenous people, still at a primitive stage. The union between these few heirs of a superior civilization and the primitive inhabitants on the spot gives rise to a new system of social, religious, political and engineering life. Pure fantasy ? One would not think so having to lend credence to Sumerian, Aztec, Mayan, Inca, Egyptian and Indian accounts. Different names are used but the concept is always the same: some semi-gods, white-skinned and with beards, landed (so they came from the sea) on their lands and by virtue of superior technical knowledge in a short time managed to place themselves at the head of the local communities, even raised to the role of semi-gods, in imperishable memory of the local peoples.
The coincidences are too many to be the result of mere chance and here they are indicated:
- all these semi-gods come from the sea (they are thus, hypothetically, a people of navigators);
- they all escape from a cataclysm that destroyed their homeland;
- they have fair complexions and have black or blond beards and hair;
- they are endowed with great knowledge in astronomy, law, architecture, and agriculture;
- almost all of these semi-gods are killed or forced to flee by social classes envious of the power and prestige they have acquired;
- all these semi-gods promise return (this will be the cause of crumbling empires such as the Aztec and Inca empires).
The most important aspect of these semi-gods are their ethnic characteristics, as the description made of them (white, with beards and hair) often differs, as in the case of the Amerindian peoples, from the ethnic type present locally. Could it be that the Amerindian peoples so accurately imagined a race unknown to them, at least so it is believed, until the arrival of the Spanish conquistadors? Could it be that the Inca Atahualpa and the Uey-Tlatoani (Revered Orator) Montezuma fell, without any real underlying belief, into such deception?
One would not think so since so vivid was the memory of these semi-gods that when the troops of Cortès and Pizarro, immensely inferior in numbers to the local armies, arrived at the gates of the city-states of the Aztec and Inca empires, these populations surrendered without practically fighting to those who were identified in the ancient semi-gods, returned as per their promise.
The physical appearance of Cortès and Pizarro and their conquistadores (white and bearded), their incomprehensible weapons (the rifles), capable of killing at a distance and without apparent reason, and their fantastic transport animals (the horses, animals believed to be immortal by the local populations, so much so that the Spaniards secretly buried the fallen bodies of such animals), never before seen on the Amerindian continent, must have made the astonished local peoples well believe that they were facing the return of their much-loved and coveted semi-gods. But they would soon learn, at very high cost, that the reality was quite different and far more tragic, but it would be too late: the Aztec and Inca empires, after millennia of splendor, were destined to disappear under the onslaught of Spanish fury that would soon erase many of their traces. Imagine what the course of history would have been if Cortès and his 500 men had been annihilated and destroyed immediately by the Aztec people!
Back to the mythology of the various peoples, it must be said that a further confirmation that such ancestral memories of such ancient civilizers are more than mere myths is to be found in the consideration that all these peoples, on both sides of the Atlantic, share many other characteristics, even contrary to their actual knowledge: they are excellent astronomers, great connoisseurs of the cosmo (but, as in the case of the Amerindian peoples, they do not know the principles of an elementary, but essentially important, invention such as the wheel); they are great architects and builders (although they do not know iron or other heavy metal alloys, useful for working, dissecting, chiseling and carving the colossal stone blocks they use); they are builders of megalithic complexes (Sacsahuaman, the Pyramids Di Giza, the Sphinx, the Ziggurats, the Baalbek blocks, Tiahuanaco and more) with cyclopean systems (just remember the size of the stone blocks used. Why toil so much when the same result could have been achieved with blocks of less weight?), the pyramidal form (pure, stepped, ziggurat) seems to obsess them.
The Maya tell of Kukulkan, the Aztecs cite Quetzalcoatl, while the Viracocha are still alive in the Inca memories.
All of these semi-gods come from the sea, with other survivors from a vanished land, and almost always relate back to a post-flood period, or at any rate having characteristics of the upheavals that had occurred across the globe.
The Spaniards, who were the first, so far as history teaches us, to deal with the Amerindian peoples, were largely incredulous and astounded when they learned of such ancient traditions, is more than once chroniclers specified how such myths predated their coming to such lands, so they could not be polluted with their own presences.
It is said that a depiction of the Inca god Viracocha was kept in the Coricancha, a temple in ancient Cuzco; chroniclers of the time describe this statue
"similar to the representations of the painters of the apostle Saint Bartholomew, as to hair, features, complexion, clothing and sandals ..."
In fact, the Inca myths narrated thus:
"... suddenly there appeared, coming from the south, a white man of great stature and authoritative bearing. This man was so powerful that he turned the hills into valleys, and from the valleys he made great hills, causing streams to spring from the living stone ... This man continued his journey northward performing wonders of all kinds ...he taught great things and love for one another and provided our people with laws ... he healed the sick by touching them with his hands and called everyone sons and daughters ... He disappeared into the sea as easily as he walked on land ... and promised to return ..."
Viracocha was remembered for bringing to the Peruvian peoples various disciplines such as medicine, metallurgy, agriculture, animal husbandry, the art of writing (which according to the Incas was later lost along with metallurgy) and knowledge in the fields of engineering and architecture.
Moving on to Mexico and its environs we find the Mayan and Aztec cultures passing on the memory of Kukulkan and Quetzalcoatl, in fact very similar to each other:
"... a mysterious individual ... a white man of robust build, broad forehead, with large eyes and a flowing beard. He wore a long white robe that reached to his feet. He condemned sacrifices and was known as the god of peace ... When questioned on the subjects of war he plugged his ears ... He taught men to use fire, build houses and legislated ..."
So like their Andean counterpart Viracocha, both Kukulkan and Quetzalcoatl are forced by the envy of some commoners to flee by sea, but promise to return.
The civilization that inhabited Tuahuanaco told of Thunupa
"a bearded white man of great stature, whose presence and person commanded great admiration and respect."
If the similarities of these myths could be explained by the relative geographical proximity of these populations, it is a different matter when we observe similar myths in Egypt and Mesopotamia.
Scientists speak of simple coincidences, common remnants of ancient thought processes, but even this thesis seems unfounded, since, on closer inspection, such coincidences become too numerous (remember the old saying that losing one relative is a fluke, losing two is bad luck, losing three is no longer a coincidence?).
Yet here are the number myths that tell of Oannes, the mysterious bearded man-fish, who comes from the sea and to the sea he returns in the evening to make lodging on his ship:
"... Oannes' whole body was like that of a fish ... when the sun went down it was his custom to dive back into the sea and dwell all night in the depths, he was in fact amphibious ... During the day he used to converse with men and instruct them in all kinds of arts. He taught them to build houses, found temples, to draft laws, and enlightened them on geometrical and astronomical principles. He taught men to distinguish plants and to cultivate what they had need of ..."
In Egypt the figure of Osiris stands out above all others:
"Osiris was the first son of Nut, the goddess of the sky, whose other sons were Isis, Seth and Neppthys. Osiris, man and god at the same time, became the first king of Egypt, where he established the rule of law. He came to these fear-stricken lands and taught the people the religion and arts of civilization. Unfortunately, the envious Seth killed him and scattered the pieces of his body throughout Egypt ... Isis, his consort, retrieved the pieces, lay with him, and became pregnant with his seed. Having done this Osiris transfigured himself into a stellar being (Orion) and became the master of the Duat ..."
The Greek historian Diodorus Siculus provides us with another image of Osiris, much more "human" always drawing on Egyptian traditions:
"They tell that Osiris, because he had a benefactor's disposition and a lust for glory, gathered a great army with the intention of moving to the time of all the inhabited land and teaching mankind how to cultivate vines and sow wheat and barley; for he thought that if he succeeded in freeing men from feral habits of life and directing them to a civilized and orderly existence, he would receive immortal honors for the greatness of such benefits. Which indeed he did, for not only the contemporaries, who received these gifts, but also all subsequent generations, grateful for the pleasant form of food introduced, honored the discoverers as supreme deities."
Again, numerous depictions and descriptions point to Osiris as a white-skinned and bearded man, characteristics that would later influence the pharaohs, who, identifying themselves precisely with Osiris, are often depicted with the famous "goatee" added.
If that were not enough, here we find the same traditions miles away, in the New Zealand peoples who pass down the memory of Wakea, while Hindu peoples recount the exploits of Manu. The same peoples of some of the South Sea Islands have ethnic characteristics of the white race, and this has caused more than one doubt in academic sources. How could they have arrived there, those men, openly belonging to the, so-called, Aryan race?
The same Dutch captain Roogeven who discovered Easter Island was astonished to find white-skinned inhabitants there, so similar to himself. Perhaps some survivors of a great cataclysm, the last heirs of a great lineage of men of sea and science, find salvation by scattering around the world. Some died along the journey, some plunged into a wild stage of civilization, while others reached various parts of the world and decided to make their wealth of cultural knowledge, in various fields, available to the Paleolithic peoples present. They begin to practice agriculture, to give foundations of law and society to the new rising nations, to plan great works. After a few generations, unable to pass on their knowledge to their offspring, only the memory of such power and knowledge remained, effectively losing much technological cognition. Man takes a step backward in his evolution, but the first step toward the birth of history as we know it had been taken.
These model-types of civilizational semi-gods, as familiar to people then as to scholars of the history of religions today, have been passed down through the blanket of centuries under the only form of communication that has survived a series of cataclysms: myths.
