The question of white and bearded people in pre-Columbian America has not yet been resolved, and it is on this that I am concentrating my attention now. For the sake of clarification of this problem, I crossed the Atlantic on the papyrus boat "Ra-II" … I believe that here we are dealing with one of the early cultural impulses from the African-Asian region of the Mediterranean. The most likely candidate for this role, I consider the mysterious "Sea Peoples" … From T. Heyerdahl's letter to the author, autumn 1976 In the photo: Figurine of Quetzalcoyatl, the god of the Aztecs.
Nowadays, no serious researcher would argue that there are white and dark Indians, differing in their origin. There are no white Indians in America.
L. A. Fainberg, Soviet Americanist
An unknown Indian tribe was discovered by an expedition of the Brazilian National Indian Fund (FUNAI) in the state of Para in northern Brazil. The white-skinned blue-eyed Indians of this tribe, who live in the dense rainforest, are skilled fishermen and fearless hunters. To further study the lifestyle of the new tribe, the members of the expedition, led by the expert on the problems of the Brazilian Indians, Raimundo Alves, intend to conduct a detailed study of the life of this tribe.
Pravda, 1975, June 4
The Lost Expedition
When the German traveler of the last century Heinrich Barth first discovered rock carvings of moisture-loving animals in the Sahara and told about it in Europe, he was laughed at. After another German researcher, Karl Mauch, shared with colleagues his impressions of the gigantic structures of Zimbabwe, he was surrounded by a wall of cold silence and distrust. The Englishman Percy Fossett, who traveled to Brazil at the beginning of this century, would have faced the same thankless fate if he had not … disappeared forever in the jungle, leaving only a book of travel notes. Younger contemporaries of the brave traveler called it "Unfinished Journey" …
Page 133 of Fossett's diary: “There are white Indians on Kari,” the manager told me. “My brother once took a longboat up the Tauman, and at the very head of the river he was told that white Indians lived nearby. He did not believe it and only laughed at the people who said this, but nevertheless went on a boat and found unmistakable traces of their stay.
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… Then he and his men were attacked by tall, handsome, well-built savages, they had clean white skin, red hair and blue eyes. They fought like devils, and when my brother killed one of them, the rest took the body and fled."
Rereading the comments to the diaries, one is bitterly convinced of how deeply mistrust of the testimonies of eyewitnesses, in particular travelers, has penetrated into the minds of people over the past decades. However, this is understandable - too many forgeries and hoaxes have been born during this time, discrediting the true state of this or that issue. Fossett is not believed. Rather, they do, but very few. Perhaps this can be explained by the mystery and seeming unreality of the events described in the book?.. “Here I again heard stories about white Indians. I knew a man who met such an Indian,”the British Consul told me. “These Indians are quite wild, and it is believed that they only go out at night. Therefore they are called "bats". “Where do they live? I asked. - Somewhere in the area of the lost gold mines, not to the north,or to the northwest of the Diamantinou River. Nobody knows their exact location. Mato Grosso is a very poorly explored country, no one has yet penetrated the mountainous regions in the north … Perhaps in a hundred years flying machines will be able to do this, who knows?"
Flying machines were able to do this after three decades. In 1930, flying over the areas of Gran Saban, American pilot Jimmy Angel discovered huge unknown sinkholes in the ground and a giant waterfall. And this is in an age when, as it is believed, all corners of the Earth have already been discovered and explored …
"Guess" by von Deniken
… It all started with Columbus. “My messengers report,” he wrote on November 6, 1492, “that after a long march they found a village of 1000 inhabitants. The locals greeted them with honors, settled in the most beautiful houses, took care of their weapons, kissed their hands and feet, trying to make them understand in any way that they (the Spaniards) are white people who came from God. About 50 residents asked my messengers to take them to heaven to the star gods. This is the first mention of the worship of white gods among the American Indians. “They (the Spaniards) could do whatever they wanted, and no one hindered them; they cut jade, smelted gold, and Quetzalcoatl was behind all this …”- wrote one Spanish chronicler after Columbus.
Countless legends of the Indians of both Americas tell that white bearded people once landed on the shores of their country. They brought the Indians the foundations of knowledge, laws, and the whole civilization. They arrived in large strange ships with swan wings and luminous hulls. Having approached the coast, the ships disembarked people - blue-eyed and fair-haired - in robes of rough black material, in short gloves. They wore snake-shaped ornaments on their foreheads. This legend has survived almost unchanged to this day. The Aztecs and Toltecs of Mexico called the white god Quetzalcoatl, the Incas - Kon-Tiki Viracocha, for the Chibcha he was Bochica, and for the Mayans - Kukulkai … Scientists have been dealing with this problem for many years. Collected extensive data on the oral traditions of the Indian tribes of Central and South America, archaeological evidence and materials from medieval Spanish chronicles. Hypotheses are born and die …
The Swiss writer Erich von Deniken, well-known to the reader, also naturally could not pass over such an attractive topic in silence and made it work for himself. “The white deities of the Indians are, of course, aliens from outer space,” Deniken said without a shadow of a doubt and cited several legends to support him. Indeed, these legends (too long to be cited here) contain, like any product of folklore, elements of fiction, and such a venerable interpreter and "interpreter" of legends like Deniken, it was not difficult to lead them in the direction he needed. But let's not deal with this dubious case with Deniken. We have a hard job ahead of us - flipping through the notes of Spanish chroniclers, listening to some legends and delving into the mountains of archaeological finds confirming the legends and chronicles. Let's try to understand this problem from earthly positions.
The success of the conquistadors
Columbus's letter clearly shows the reverence and respect shown to the first Spaniards on American soil. The powerful civilization of the Aztecs with an excellent military organization and a multi-million population gave way to the few Spaniards. In 1519, Cortez's detachment walked freely through the jungle, climbing to the capital of the Aztecs. He was hardly hindered….
Pizarro's troops also exploited the Inca's delusion as best they could. The Spaniards broke into the temple in Cuzco, where there were golden and marble statues of the white gods, smashed and trampled the decorations, marveling at the strange behavior of the Incas. They, the Spaniards, were not resisted. Peruvians came to their senses too late …
The details of the conquest are well described in many books and it makes no sense to dwell on them. But far from everywhere there are attempts to somehow explain the incomprehensible behavior of the Indians.
The Aztec priests calculated that the White God, who left them in the year of Ke-Acatl, would return in the same "special" year, repeated every 52 years. By a strange coincidence, Cortez landed on the American coast just at the change of cycles determined by the priests. By dress, he also almost completely "coincided" with the legendary god. And it is clear that the Indians had no doubts about the divine identity of the conquistadors. And when they doubted, it was too late.
Another interesting fact. The ruler of the Aztecs Montezuma sent one of his dignitaries (history has preserved his name - Tendile or Teutlila) to Cortes with a gift - a headdress filled with gold. When the envoy poured out the jewelry in front of the Spaniards and everyone crowded to watch, Tendile noticed among the conquistadors a man in a helmet trimmed with the finest gold plates. The helmet hit Tendile. When Cortez invited him to take the return gift to Montezuma, Tendile begged him to give only one thing - the helmet of that warrior: "I must show it to the ruler, for this helmet looks exactly like the one that the white god once put on." Cortez gave him a helmet with a wish to be returned filled with gold … To understand the Indians, we need to travel back in time and space - to Polynesia in the first centuries of our era.
Procession of the bearded gods
Modern scholars agree that the race of the Polynesians is still unclear. Despite the fact that they owe their origin to two, and perhaps several races that have mixed with each other, among them to this day there are often people with pronounced dolicocephaly (long-headed) and light, like in southern Europeans, pigmentation. Now all over Polynesia, the so-called Arab-Semitic type (Heyerdahl's term) with a straight nose, thin lips and straight red hair has been discovered. These features were noted by the first European travelers all the way from Easter Island to New Zealand, so it is impossible to talk about any late mixing with Europeans in this case. People of this strange type, called by the Polynesians "uru-keu", descended, in their opinion, from the ancient fair-skinned and white-haired "race of gods",originally inhabited the islands.
On Easter Island, the most remote from Polynesia and closest to America, a piece of land, there are legends that the ancestors of the islanders came from a desert country in the East and reached the island after sailing 60 days towards the setting sun. Today's islanders - a racially mixed population - claim that some of their ancestors had white skin and red hair, while others were dark-skinned and black-haired. This was attested by the first Europeans who visited the island. When a Dutch ship visited Easter Island for the first time in 1722, a white man boarded, among other inhabitants, and the Dutch wrote the following about the rest of the islanders: “Among them there are dark brown, like the Spaniards, and completely white people, and some the skin is generally red, as if the sun was burning it …"
From early reports collected in 1880 by Thompson, it became known that the country, according to legend, 60 days to the east, was also called "burial place." The climate there was so hot that people died and plants dried up. To the west of Easter Island, all the way to Southeast Asia, there is nothing that could fit this description: the shores of all the islands are closed by a rainforest wall. But in the east, where the inhabitants indicated, lie the coastal deserts of Peru, and nowhere else in the Pacific Ocean region is there a place that better matches the descriptions of the legend than the Peruvian coast, both in climate and in name. Numerous burials are located along the deserted coast of the Pacific Ocean. The dry climate has allowed today's scientists to study in detail the bodies buried there. According to initial assumptions, the mummies located there should have given researchers an exhaustive answer to the question: what was the type of the ancient pre-Incan population of Peru? However, the mummies did the opposite - they only asked riddles. Having opened the burial place, anthropologists found there types of people that had not yet been met in ancient America. In 1925, archaeologists discovered two large necropolises on the Paracas Peninsula in the southern part of the central Peruvian coast. The burial contained hundreds of mummies of ancient dignitaries. Radiocarbon analysis determined their age to be 2,200 years. Near the graves, researchers found large quantities of debris of hardwood, which was usually used to build rafts. When the mummies were opened, they revealed a striking difference from the main physical type of the ancient Peruvian population.
Here is what the American anthropologist Stewart wrote at the time: "It was a selected group of large people, absolutely not typical for the population of Peru." While Stewart studied their bones, M. Trotter analyzed the hair of nine mummies. According to her, their color is generally red-brown, but in some cases the samples gave a very light, almost golden hair color. The hair of the two mummies was generally different from the others - they curled. Further, Trotter established that the shape of the hair cut is different for different mummies, and almost all forms are found in the burial … Another indicator is the thickness of the hair. "It is smaller here than in other Indians, but not as small as in the average European population (for example, the Dutch)." Trotter herself, a supporter of the "homogeneous" population of America, tried to justify the observation so unexpected for herself that death changes the shape of the hair. But another authority in this area, the Englishman Dawson, objected to her: “I believe that after death, no significant changes occur to the hair. Curly remains curly, smooth remains smooth. After death they become brittle, but no color changes occur."
Francisco Pizarro wrote about the Incas: “The ruling class in the Peruvian kingdom was fair-skinned, the color of ripe wheat. Most of the nobles were remarkably like the Spaniards. In this country I met an Indian woman so fair skinned that I was amazed. Neighbors call these people - children of the gods …"
It can be assumed that these layers adhered to a strict endogamy and spoke a special language. There were 500 such members of the royal family before the arrival of the Spaniards. Chroniclers report that the eight rulers of the Inca dynasty were white and bearded, and their wives were "white as an egg." One of the chroniclers, Garcillaso de la Vega, son of the Inca queen, left an impressive description of how one day, when he was still a child, another dignitary took him to the royal tomb. Ondegardo (that was his name) showed the boy one of the rooms of the palace in Cuzco, where several mummies lay along the wall. Ondegardo said they were former Inca emperors and he saved their bodies from decay. By chance the boy stopped in front of one of the mummies. Her hair was white as snow. Ondegardo said it was the mummy of the White Inca, the 8th ruler of the Sun. Since it is known that he died at a young age,then the whiteness of his hair can in no way be explained by the gray …
Comparing the data on the light-pigmented element in America and Polynesia with the legends of Easter Island about its homeland in the East, it can be assumed that white-skinned people went from America to Polynesia (and not vice versa, as some researchers believe). One of the proofs of this is the similar custom of mummification of the bodies of the dead in Polynesia and South America and its complete absence in Indonesia. Having spread on the shores of Peru, the method of mummification of the nobility was transferred by migrants (white?) To the scattered and not adapted for this islets of Polynesia. Two mummies, recently found in a cave in Hawaii, "demonstrated" in detail all the details of this custom in ancient Peru …
So the white deities of the Indians lived in Peru? A superficial acquaintance with the huge and multi-genre literature on the history of Peru is enough to find there many references to bearded and white-skinned Indian gods …
Already mentioned by us Pizarro and his people, robbing and breaking the Inca temples, left detailed descriptions of their actions. In the temple of Cuzco, wiped off the face of the earth, there was a huge statue depicting a man in a long robe and sandals, "exactly the same that painted by the Spanish artists in our home" …
In the temple, built in honor of Viracocha, there was also the great god Kon-Tiki Viracocha - a man with a long beard and proud bearing, in a long robe. A contemporary wrote that when the Spaniards saw this statue, they thought that Saint Bartholomew had reached Peru and the Indians created a monument in memory of this event. The conquistadors were so impressed by the strange statue that they did not destroy it immediately, and the temple for a while passed the fate of other similar structures. But soon the wreckage was also carried away by the poor peasants in different directions.
While exploring the territory of Peru, the Spaniards also stumbled upon huge metal structures from pre-Inca times, also lying in ruins. “When I asked the local Indians who built these ancient monuments,” wrote the Spanish chronicler Cieza de Leon in 1553, “they replied that it was done by another people, bearded and white-skinned, like us Spaniards. These people arrived long before the Incas and settled here. " How strong and tenacious this legend is, is confirmed by the testimony of the Peruvian archaeologist Valcarcel, who, 400 years after de Leon, heard from the Indians who lived near the ruins that "these structures were created by a foreign people, white as Europeans." Lake Titicaca turned out to be in the very center of the "activity" of the white god Viracocha, for all the evidences agree on one thing - there, on the lake, and in the neighboring city of Tiahuanaco, was the residence of the god. “They also said,- Leon continues, - that on the lake, on the island of Titicaca, in the past centuries lived a people, white like us, and one local leader named Kari with his people came to this island and waged a war against this people and killed many …"
In a special chapter of his chronicle dedicated to the ancient structures of Tiahuanaco, Leon says the following: “I asked the locals if these structures were created during the Inca era. They laughed at my question and said that they knew for certain that all this was done long before the rule of the Incas. They saw bearded men on the island of Titicaca. These were people of a subtle mind who came from an unknown country, and there were few of them, and many of them were killed in wars …
When the Frenchman Bandelier 350 years later began excavating the area, the legends were still alive. He was told that the island in ancient times was inhabited by people similar to Europeans, they married local women, and their children became Incas … “The information collected in various regions of Peru differs only in details … Monk Garcillaso asked his royal uncle about the early history of Peru … He replied: “Nephew, I will gladly answer your question and what I say, you will forever keep in your heart. Know, then, that in ancient times this whole area you know was covered with forest and thickets, and people lived like wild animals - without religion and power, without cities and houses, without cultivating the land and without clothes, for they did not know how to make fabric to sew a dress. They lived in twos or threes in caves or crevices of rocks, in grottoes under the ground. They ate turtles and roots, fruits and human meat. They covered their bodies with leaves and animal skins.
They lived like animals and treated women like animals, for they could not live with one woman … “De Leon adds Garcillaso:“Immediately after that, a tall white man appeared and he had great authority. They say that he taught people to live normally in many villages. Everywhere they called him the same - Tikki Viracocha. And in his honor they created temples and erected statues in them …"
When the chronicler Betanzos, who took part in the first Peruvian campaigns of the Spaniards, asked the Indians what Viracocha looked like, they replied that he was tall, in a white robe up to his heels, his hair was fixed on his head with a tonsure, he walked importantly and held something in his hands. that looks like a prayer book. Where did Viracocha come from? There is no single answer to this question. “Many people think that his name is Inga Viracocha, which means sea foam,” notes the chronicler Zarate. Gomara claims that, according to the stories of the old Indians, he transferred his people across the sea.
The most common name for Kon-Tiki, Viracocha, consists of three names for the same white deity. In pre-Inca times, it was known on the coast as Kon and inland as Tikki. But when, with the coming to power of the Incas, their language (Quechua) spread to the entire area, the Incas learned that these two names refer to the same deity, which they themselves called Viracocha. And then all three names were connected …
Legends of the Chimu Indians tell that the white deity came from the north, from the sea, and then ascended to Lake Titicaca. The "humanization" of Viracocha is most clearly manifested in those legends where various purely earthly qualities are attributed to him - they call him smart, cunning, kind, but at the same time they call him the Son of the Sun …
Many legends agree that he sailed on reed boats to the shores of Lake Titicaca and created the megalithic city of Tiahuanaco. From here he sent bearded ambassadors to all parts of Peru to teach people and say that he was their creator. But, in the end, dissatisfied with the behavior of the inhabitants, he decided to leave their lands. Throughout the vast Inca empire, up to the arrival of the Spaniards, the Indians unanimously named the path along which Viracocha and his associates left. They descended to the Pacific coast and sailed westward along with the sun. As we can see, they left in the direction of Polynesia, and came from the north …
In the north of the Inca state, in the mountains of Colombia, lived the Chibcha, another mysterious people who reached a high level of culture by the arrival of the Spaniards. Their legends also contain information about the white teacher Bochika. Its description is the same as that of the Incas. He ruled over them for many years and was also called Sua, that is, "sun" in local dialects. He came to them from the east …
To the east of the Chibcha region, in Venezuela and neighboring regions, we again come across evidence of the stay of the mysterious wanderer. There he was called Tsuma (or Sumy) and it was reported that he taught them agriculture. According to one of the legends, he ordered all people to gather around a high rock, stood on it and told them the laws and instructions. Having lived with people, he left them.
Directly north of Colombia and Venezuela, the Kuna Indians live in the area of today's Panama Canal. They preserved reports that after a severe flood someone came and taught people crafts. With him were several young companions who spread his teachings.
Farther north, in Mexico, the high civilization of the Aztecs flourished at the time of the Spanish invasion. From Anahuac (modern-day Texas) to Yukotan, the Aztecs spoke of the white god Quetzalcoatl. According to legend, he was the fifth ruler of the Toltecs, came from the land of the Rising Sun (of course, the Aztecs did not mean the country that we mean by this name) and wore a long cape. He ruled Tollan for a long time, forbidding human sacrifice and preaching peace. People no longer killed animals and ate plant foods. But this did not last long. The devil made Quetzalcoatl indulge in vanity and wallow in sins. However, he soon felt ashamed of his weaknesses and decided to leave the country. Before leaving, God made all the tropical birds fly away and turned the trees into thorny bushes. He disappeared southward …
Cortes's "map of the shogunda" has an excerpt from Montezuma's speech: “We know from the writings inherited from our ancestors that neither I nor anyone else inhabiting this country are its indigenous inhabitants. We came from other lands. We also know that we trace our lineage from the ruler, whose subordinates we were. He came to this country, he again wanted to leave and take his people with him. But they had already married local women, built houses and did not want to go with him. And he left. Since then, we have been waiting for him to return someday. It will return just from the side you came from, Cortez … "We already know what price the Aztecs paid for their" come true "dream …
As scientists have proved, the neighbors of the Aztecs - the Maya also did not always live in today's places, but migrated from other regions. The Maya themselves say that their ancestors came twice. The first time - this was the largest migration - from across the ocean, from the east, from where 12 thread-paths were laid, and Itzamna led them. Another group, a smaller one, came from the west and among them was Kukulkan. They all had flowing robes, sandals, long beards and bare heads. Kukulcan is remembered as the builder of the pyramids and the founder of the city of Mayapaca and Chichen Itza. He also taught the Maya how to use weapons … And again, as in Peru, he leaves the country and leaves, towards the setting sun …
A traveler traveling west from Yucatan must certainly pass through the Zeltal region in the Tabasco jungle. The legends of the population of these places store information about Wotan, who came from the regions of Yucatan. Brinton, a major expert on American myths, says that few folk hero myths have led to as much speculative fiction as the Wotan myth. In ancient times, Wotan came from the East. He was sent by the gods to divide the earth, distribute it to the human races and give each of them their own language. The country he came from was called Valum Votan. When the Wotan embassy arrived in Zeltal, people were "in a deplorable state." He distributed them to villages, taught them how to breed cultivated plants and invented hieroglyphic writing, examples of which remained on the walls of their temples. It is also said that he wrote his story there. The myth ends very strangely:"When at last the time came for a sad departure, he did not leave through the valley of death, like all mortals, but went through a cave into the underworld."
But in reality, the mysterious Wotan did not go underground, but on the Soke plateau and received the name Condoy there. Soke, whose mythology is almost unknown, were neighbors of the inhabitants of Zeltal. According to their legend, the god father came and taught them how to live. They, too, did not believe in his death, but believed that he in a light golden robe withdrew into a cave and, having closed the hole, went to other nations …
To the south of the Maya soke lived the Quiche of Guatemala, who were culturally close to the Maya. From their sacred book "Popol Vuh" we learn that their people were also familiar with the wanderer who passed through the land. Quiche called him Gugumats.
… The white bearded god passed from the shores of the Yucatan across the whole of Central and South America to the Peruvian coast and sailed west towards Polynesia. This was attested to by the legends of the Indians and the chronicles of the early Spanish observers. Is there any archaeological evidence left? Or maybe the white-skinned and bearded aliens were just a ghost, a product of the inflamed mind of the Indians?
The medieval Spaniards did not destroy all the statues. The residents managed to hide something. When in 1932 the archaeologist Bennett was excavating at Tiahuanaco, he came across a red stone figurine depicting the god Kon-Tiki Viracocha in a long robe with a beard. His robe was decorated with horned snakes and two pumas - symbols of the highest deity in Mexico and Peru. Bennett pointed out that this figurine was identical to the one found on the shores of Lake Titicaca, just on the peninsula closest to the island of the same name.
Other similar sculptures were found around the lake. On the Peruvian coast, Viracocha was immortalized in ceramics and drawings - there was no stone for the figurines. The authors of these drawings are early chimu and moche. Similar things are found in Ecuador, Colombia, Guatemala, Mexico, El Salvador. Note that the bearded images were noted by A. Humboldt, looking at the drawings of ancient manuscripts kept in the Imperial Library of Vienna in 1810. Colored fragments of frescoes of the chichén-Itza temples have come down to us, telling about the sea battle of black and white people. These drawings have not yet been solved …
White bearded deities of the Indians … Quetzalcoatl, Kukulkan, Gugumats, Bochica, Sua … What do modern scientists say about all this? Undoubtedly, a wide range of sources indicates the spread of a light-pigmented population in the New World. But when was it? Where did it come from? How could this Caucasian (by Heyerdahl's definition) minority retain their racial type during the long migration from Mexico to Peru and Polynesia, passing through areas inhabited by numerous Indian tribes? The last question can be answered by simply mentioning the European Roma - the situation was approximately the same. Strict adherence to endogamy - marriage within an ethnic group - contributed to the preservation of the anthropological type. “They say that the sun married his sister and told his children to do the same,” says an Indian legend,recorded in 1609 …
“There are no white Indians, which Fossett writes about in his book, in America …” Apparently, there are still. In 1926, the American ethnographer Harris studied the San Blas Indians and wrote that their hair was the color of flax and straw and the complexion of a white person. More recently, the French explorer Homé described an encounter with the Vaika Indian tribe, whose hair was brown. "The so-called 'white race'," he wrote, "has, even on a superficial examination, a mass of representatives among the Amachon Indians." The American selva has the ability to isolate no less than the island, and the isolation of centuries …
We have raised only a few testimonies from Spanish chroniclers, only a part of the legends of the American Indians and a small fraction of archaeological and anthropological evidence - the surface of the iceberg … Who were these white bearded gods? That not aliens - that's for sure. Their origin is clearly earthly. Ancient creators of megalithic structures of the Old and New Worlds? Sea Peoples? Cretans? Phoenicians? Or maybe both? There are many interesting points of view on this score. But this is already a topic for another big conversation …
N. Nepomnyashchy, journalist of "Secrets of Ages"
