Aztalan, Cahokia, Mississippian People, and Ireland?

Cultural diffusionism refers to the idea that certain practices and unique images, stories, or other items from one culture end up part of another culture when the two cultures meet.  After visiting the wonderful Milwaukee Public Museum and doing some further research, I am even more convinced of the idea that the old and new worlds were very connected before the time of Columbus.

As I mentioned in my books, the Ho-Chunk have the story of Red Horn in which two tribes were fighting and to end the fighting, a marriage between Red Horn and a Red-haired giantess was made.  The pottery displayed from Aztalan had a design very similar to a Celtic spiral.  And now, I have found a paper stating that strontium analysis was done on the human skeletal material from Aztalan and Cahokia and the conclusions were that some of the persons from Aztalan were born in or near Cahokia.

There are red-haired mummies found in Peru and recently European mummies (8,000 years old) were found in a Florida bog (Windover Bog).  One further piece of information to me besides the comparative mythology and scattering of European mummies, is the useage of mounds and mound effigies.  This was a common practice done in Ireland all through out Celtic Europe.  Of particular interest to me is the Man-Mound found in Baraboo, Wisconsin.  It is a horned man effigy.  Please take a look at what the man-mound looks like at this site:

http://www.saukcountyhistory.org/societyparkssites/manmoundpark.html


Now look at an item that was on display at the MPM from Peru:

What I find interesting is the similarity of the Man Mound in Baraboo and this item from Peru.  It reminds me of Cernunnos:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Detail_of_antlered_figure_on_the_Gundestrup_Cauldron.jpg

The horned man is a common theme in Southwestern Petroglyphs in America.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Newspaper_rock.jpg

It is also found in an old image of Shiva-Pashupati from India:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Shiva_Pashupati.jpg

With recent discoveries of the drug Cocaine and Tobacco in the ancient mummies of Egypt, the fact that cross-Atlantic or trans-oceanic travel occurred thousands of years ago is a fact as Cocaine and Tobacco were only found in MesoAmerica and South America during that time period.

I believe the evidence is mounting that trans-Atlantic travel in both directions occurred often and thousands of years ago and that many cultures have blended together as well as the blending of tribes from Europe and Pre-Columbus North, Central, and South America.

Perhaps I will write a paper on this and submit to an anthropology publication for the record.


by Rita Jean Moran (www.thelibrarykids.com)



Sources:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Man_Mound.jpg

http://www.saukcountyhistory.org/societyparkssites/manmoundpark.html

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cernunnos

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Detail_of_antlered_figure_on_the_Gundestrup_Cauldron.jpg

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Shiva_Pashupati.jpg

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Newspaper_rock.jpg

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Petroglyph

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pre-Columbian_trans-oceanic_contact_hypotheses

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mississippian_culture