The Sunday News
Pathisa Nyathi, Cultural Heritage
THE Mayan people like their counterparts, the Inca are reputed to have created and built colossal stone monuments although much later than the creators and builders of Nubta Playa and the Egyptian pyramids and to a lesser extent African graves and glean from their architecture and related cultural beliefs, worldview and cosmology. There is something that we may glean from their architecture and related cosmology, worldview and attendant beliefs.
The common denominator of interest to us is the embracing of stones not only as part of their architecture but also in other cultural practices beyond artistic renditions. There does seem to be some common perception of stone which led to its incorporation in daily life, in particular when it came to the social characteristics and attributes of society and expressions of spirituality. We are going to extract the commonalities among the various communities to shed some light on them in order to provide a more enlightened and sustainable interpretation of Stonehenge.
Our major point of departure and line of argument is that a built environment is an expression of the mental state.
The mind expresses itself through concrete built structures. Cultural features and practices originate and remain intrinsically linked to Source-the Mind. We are thus better placed to understand Stonehenge when we assess and analyse and finally interpret the cultural monument from the vantage point of similar or comparable cultural structures/features from the various parts of the world.
As we seek the interpretation of Stonehenge, we shall lean upon the concrete cultural features from architecture, to sculpture and art in its broadest terms. Reflections and lessons from the scrutiny of other contemporaneous stone structures will be made with a view towards a more informed and sustainable interpretation of England’s iconic cultural monument which was accordingly declared by Unesco a World Heritage Site (WHS).
For now, before we pick on cultural features from Stonehenge, we shall visit the Mayan megalithic structure in Central America to glean some ideas and beliefs that relate to perceptions of stone that explain some of their cultural practices. That done, we shall proceed to identify the results from archaeological research work to derive meaning out of them. All the time we shall not be treating Stonehenge as an isolated and unique megalithic monument but one that shares a lot in common with other megalithic monuments in the rest of the world. Cultural features on the terrestrial plane are best interpreted in recognition of relatedness to similar cultural features elsewhere in the world.
The Mayan people, like their counterparts, the Aztec and the Inca are reputed for creating and building megalithic structures. Our interests here are the mentally grounded cultural beliefs with some bearing on stone. The Mayan people believed in the afterlife. This is to say to them death was not the end. Rather, it was an important transition from ephemeral or transient life to immortal, enduring, everlasting and eternal life in another dimension.
For them there was a journey to be travelled by the departed ancestral spirits who were assisted in their journey to the underworld. This translates to funerary items, the artefacts that the spirit-in-life used on the terrestrial dimension. This is a practice that is still in vogue in black Africa. The departed ancestral spirits were regarded as the link between God and the living progeny. As a result, the ancestral spirits were propitiated through various means such as sacrifices, offerings and libations which were accompanied by spiritual chants.
Some maize grain was placed in the mouth of a corpse to symbolise rebirth, as expressed through germination which perpetuates life. Rebirth was to them an expression of enduring cyclicality or the never-ending nature of human life.
All there was is transformation, including incarnation and the existence of the soul/spirit in other natural forms such as trees, reptiles, animals, snakes (hence the reference to izinyoka), and birds. Like Africans, they believed the moon symbolised rebirth, regeneration, revival and renewal.
A jade or stone bead was placed in the mouth of a deceased person. The cultural practice was informed by a belief in the journey to eternal life in another dimension. It was a dimension that was characterised by eternal life. The stone was the best-suited natural item to symbolise continuity, eternity, endlessness, perpetuity and immortality. The stone was the currency during the journey to the underworld. The Mayan, like Egyptians, built megalithic structures when their societies became diversified.
There was royalty, the kings and the low-class commoners. It seems this social stratification with its social energy gradient provided some socio-economic motive force to power society to a higher level. Socially differentiated societies, where there was centralising political authority, witnessed socio-economic and political advancement. Water will not flow where there is a flat surface.
Megalithic structures reflected on the concrete plane what obtained on the socio-economic and political levels. The change was captured through the differentiated graves/tombs. The pyramids testify through their size and use of stone. There was centralised political authority, a united polity and belief in eternal life of royalty, a status which was symbolised through the use of stone in the construction of royal tombs.
So far, we are in a position to draw some similarities between African burials, Mayan burials, Egyptian burials with a common application of stones done on the basis of a shared view of the world, a view that is reflected at the level of death, spirituality, the after-life and provision of funerary items during the journey to the after-life. In Egypt the Pharaohs were accompanied by more than the lifeless funerary items. Journey to the after-life was spiritually assisted.
As we draw this article to a conclusion, let us summarise some ideas that have emerged so far, which ideas may illuminate our efforts at seeking some better understanding and interpretation of Stonehenge. The one observation that we make relates to ideological transformation prior to the creation and building of colossal stone structures.
Sustainable change in society is a result of the adoption of more advanced ideas which embrace new social, economic, political and ideological transformations.
Emergence of royalty seems to be associated with socio-economic and political forces which drive society to a new level where royalty provides centralising and unifying authority. The transformative ideas embrace the field of political ideology and some supportive religion or spirituality which acts as justification legitimation of the new order. There also develops some link between earth and the cosmos. Terrestrial inhabitants seek to replicate the heavens on earth. “As above, so below.”
That was the stage where Astronomy and the related fields of Physics, Alchemy and Mathematics were applied in particular through lunar knowledge rather than solar knowledge to interpret the creations and constructions of lunar minds. Celestial bodies were reckoned to exert influence on life on earth and that related also to the human beings who accordingly sought to monitor and obtain maximum benefit from the movements of cosmic bodies and their relative positions.
As a result, the megalithic stone circles were created and built to monitor the movements of celestial bodies and used their relative universal locations to navigate their travels and anticipated seasonal changes and related agricultural activities and associated rituals which are informed by the rhythmic movements of cosmic bodies.
In the next article we revisit Stonehenge to obtain archaeological research findings and, once armed with these, take our interpretation to a higher level.
