Monolith raises questions about ancient Mexican culture

The following posting was sent to me by Tim Ward, author of the "Savage Breast:
One
Man's Search for the Goddess"

Enjoy!!

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Hi Friends, I thought this latest Goddess archaeological discovery would
intrigue you. The
link at bottom has photos.

Tim

Subject: [DiosasAncianos2012] Huastec "Mother Culture" & Lunar Calendar in
Southern Mexico
Monolith raises questions about ancient Mexican culture

Deep in the Huastec jungle (Mexico) the enormous carved stone
monolith stands, suspended over the pool of water where a team of
archaeologists discovered it. A powerful woman stands at the center
of the carving, flanked by two smaller decapitated women. A stream of
liquid flows from the headless women toward the woman in the center.
The women on each side are thought to represent priestesses, and the
liquid represents the life force, while the woman at the center
represents Mother Earth; so the priestesses seem to be nurturing the
Earth with their life force. The truth is, however, nobody knows for
sure what these stones mean. One thing is fairly certain - because of
the recurrence of the number 13, the monolith seems to be a lunar
calendar of some sort. That's why it set the archaeological world
abuzz with discussion when it was unveiled last November. It is
believed to have been created around 600 BCE - 2,000 years before
what was previously the oldest discovered calendar in the Americas,
the Aztec Calendar, which dates to 1400 CE.

"What this discovery did was to force us to stop, turn around
and dig deeper into the history of the Huastecan groups to
re-evaluate them," said Guillermo Ahuja, the lead archaeologist at
Tamtoc who discovered the stone tablet, or Monolith 32, as it's
called. The discovery was especially surprising given that the
Huastec people were thought to be a relatively recent culture. Now
archaeologists are wondering whether the Huastecs - or their
predecessors, the Proto-Huastecs - might have played a bigger role in
the development of Mesoamerica than previously thought. It has also
raised questions about whether the Olmecs might have had an influence
in the region, since there are cultural similarities, or whether
there might have been a third group of people, the so-called Mother
Culture, that dominated the area first.

What is known is that Tamtoc was inhabited by a sophisticated
people who enjoyed a high standard of living for the time, with one
of the most sophisticated hydraulic systems in Mesoamerica. It was
first excavated by a group of French archaeologists in the 1960s, but
their project was short-lived, and work did not begin on the site in
earnest until 2001. It's the only major Huastec archaeological site,
and like the Huastec people themselves, it is shrouded in mystery.

The intricate carvings the Huastecs left on the stones leave
clues to a culture in which women clearly played a strong role as
governors, priestesses and warriors. The monolith was discovered in a
graveyard surrounded by the remains of 84 women - 90 percent of all
the remains discovered there. Ahuja has pieced together a story that
might explain why. The monolith seems to have been toppled from its
original location, broken into pieces and covered with mud. Ahuja
estimates the time period at about the same time that several coastal
cities were flooded, probably by a tsunami-type surge, around 300
BCE. Ahuja believes the sacred tablet was impossible to resurrect,
and the people decided to let it lie and create a sacred site where
it was buried. The most honored and sacred members of that society
were permitted to be buried there. Women became goddesses when they
gave birth, and those who died in childbirth were deified, and so
they were allowed to be buried along with the Great Mother.

An important item backing this theory was another find: a
headless woman's naked figure, carved of limestone and polished to a
high sheen. The figure, found in a pool that once stood at the feet
of the monolith, was believed to be an offering to the gods. The
raised dots on her arms and legs correspond with the number of days
in the lunar calendar, according to archaeologist Ricardo Muñoz,
while the width of her hips and the fullness of her breasts indicate
a woman at the height of her fertility.

With only six years of excavation and analysis behind them,
there are many secrets yet to be unearthed, and Ahuja and his team
are enormously excited at the possibilities - discoveries that might
contradict much of what historians think they already know about
ancient Mexican history.

Source: My San Antonio (11 October 2007)
http://tinyurl.com/35bdsl
For photos see:
http://redicecreations.com/article.php?id=2035