FARMS and the Invention of Evidence

[_beastie]

Can you recap what the arguments surrounding this photo are? I'm lost. Do the apologists say this is a horse?

I'm just now unraveling this riddle. Milton R. Hunter was the stake president who accompanied Thomas Ferguson on his trip to Mesaoamerica. They wrote a book called Ancient America and the Book of Mormon. In this book, a photo is included, taken by Otto Done, that is supposed to be a "bearded man" riding a horse, from a wall in chichen itza.

Here is a close up of the photo:

http://www.the-book-of-mormon.com/otto-done.jpg

I had long ago seen this picture on the aforementioned (zombie, ever returning to haunt me) Benjamin Chapman's site. I tried, in vain, to figure out what it was actually a photo of. I have many books that talk about chichen itza, some at length, and not one ever mentioned a picture of a horse on one of the temple walls. So I was stumped. Crocket helpfully provided a review written by someone called "rc carrier" who stated that he had finally located the actual real sculpture, and it was a sculpture of the jaguar serpent. That picture is here:

http://www.sacred-texts.com/nam/maya/cbc/img/pl1a.jpg

If you copy and paste the two photos on a page beside each other, and analyze the shadow patterns, you can tell that it is, indeed, the same sculpture. The Otto Done photo is of such poor quality that it can look like a horse if you try hard enough.
The better photograph can not look like a horse, no matter how hard you try.

[_beastie]

crocket,

I'm waiting for your admission that you don't have any background knowledge about ancient Mesoamerica, as witnessed in your incredibly ignorant assertion that the codices are not literature because the Maya had no writing. Don't think for one minute I'm going to let you get away with this, particularly after the arrogant attitude you've repeatedly shown on this site.

[_rcrocket]

crocket,

I'm waiting for your admission that you don't have any background knowledge about ancient Mesoamerica, as witnessed in your incredibly ignorant assertion that the codices are not literature because the Maya had no writing. Don't think for one minute I'm going to let you get away with this, particularly after the arrogant attitude you've repeatedly shown on this site.

I am a lay person when it comes to science. I hire and fire archaeologists and supervise and review their work, but I am not an archaeologist.

But, the Mayans did not have literature. They had no written language unless you think that pictography is a written language. If you think that is the case, then the Yucatan peninsula has millions upon millions of examples of your "literature."

None of the consquistadors mention any written language; certainly, Bernal Dias does not and he would have mentioned it had he seen it. There is mention of burning "books" but "Books" do not mean there was written language.

I see absolutely no similarity in the images. But, it seems to me that if this argument had legs that persons other than Otto Done would have produced pictures of this horse.



rcrocket

[_beastie]

But, the Mayans did not have literature. They had no written language unless you think that pictography is a written language. If you think that is the case, then the Yucatan peninsula has millions upon millions of examples of your "literature."

Unbelievable. You are arrogant AND stubborn. The codices are ABSOLUTELY literature, and their writing system was NOT simple pictography. Their writing system was complex to write abstract ideas as WELL AS WE DO.

Repeat, you know NOTHING about ancient Mesoamerica.

Do you ever read any link I provide for you?

Maya writing system:

http://www.famsi.org/mayawriting/

Brief Note about Maya Hieroglyphic Writing

Numerous features distinguish the Maya from other cultures of ancient Mesoamerica, but one that has attracted explorers, scholars, and enthusiasts for centuries is Maya Hieroglyphic Writing. The calligraphic style and pictorial complexity of Maya glyphs are like no other writing system.

While the decipherment of Maya hieroglyphs has been advancing rapidly in the past few decades, differing opinions of whether or not Maya writing was either a number of simple word-pictures or a sophisticated phonetic system stifled decipherment for years. Indeed, it was only in the mid-twentieth century following a breakthrough by Mayanist Tatiana Proskouriakoff that epigraphers (or glyphic experts) could finally agree that Maya Hieroglyphic Writing was a fully functional system based on phonetic signs.

While our system is also based on phonetic signs, in comparison to Maya writing our system seems much simpler. All of our words are formed from various combinations of only 26 signs—that list of letters we call an Alphabet. By contrast, all Maya words are formed from various combinations of nearly 800 signs, and each sign represents a full syllable—so that list of signs is called a Syllabary, not an Alphabet.

Twenty-six signs versus hundreds of signs? Sounds impossible? Not really. As can be seen in the Syllabary below, while one sign of our alphabet can represent only one sound, Maya writers could select from many different signs to represent one sound. For example, there are at least five different signs that could be chosen to represent the Maya syllable ba. Please note that the syllabary includes only about 100 of the nearly 800 possibilities.

[_Phaedrus Ut]

I am a lay person when it comes to science. I hire and fire archaeologists and supervise and review their work, but I am not an archaeologist.

But, the Mayans did not have literature. They had no written language unless you think that pictography is a written language. If you think that is the case, then the Yucatan peninsula has millions upon millions of examples of your "literature."

None of the consquistadors mention any written language; certainly, Bernal Dias does not and he would have mentioned it had he seen it. There is mention of burning "books" but "Books" do not mean there was written language.

I see absolutely no similarity in the images. But, it seems to me that if this argument had legs that persons other than Otto Done would have produced pictures of this horse.

rcrocket

How can you review the work performed by archeologists when you are apparently completely ignorant of almost all world history?

The Mayans had a robust written language and many many books. They are called Mayan codices. Here is a quote from what many consider to be the formost expert on the Maya.

"Our knowledge of ancient Maya thought must represent only a tiny fraction of the whole picture, for of the thousands of books in which the full extent of their learning and ritual was recorded, only four have survived to modern times (as though all that posterity knew of ourselves were to be based upon three prayer books and Pilgrim's Progress)." (Michael D. Coe, The Maya, London: Thames and Hudson, 4th ed., 1987, p. 161.)

I seriously can't tell if you are really so ignorant of your own ignorance or if it's some sort of a ruse.


Phaedrus

[_rcrocket]

Well, I certainly confess my limitations. And, yes, I wonder why anybody would ever put me in charge of archaeologists given my complete ignorance of the subject.

But, my opinion (have traveled extensively in the Yucatan) remains; the Mayans did not have "literature" in the sense that we think of it today, unless you consider glyphs literature. I consider Popol Vuh to be literature, but that is in Spanish.

If you consider glyphs to be literature, then please feel free to assail my ignorance. I will bow to your superior wisdom.

And, Beastie, thanks again for using caps in your argument. You have thoroughly convinced me with that tactical consideration.

rcrocket

[_beastie]

But, my opinion (have traveled extensively in the Yucatan) remains; the Mayans did not have "literature" in the sense that we think of it today, unless you consider glyphs literature. I consider Popol Vuh to be literature, but that is in Spanish.

If you consider glyphs to be literature, then please feel free to assail my ignorance. I will bow to your superior wisdom.

It's not my wisdom. It is the wisdom of people who have actually studied the subject. All of them.

But, hey, maybe they haven't traveled as extensively in the Yucatan as you have.

And, Beastie, thanks again for using caps in your argument. You have thoroughly convinced me with that tactical consideration.

This doesn't work. We still see your ignorance.

[_Phaedrus Ut]

If you consider glyphs to be literature, then please feel free to assail my ignorance. I will bow to your superior wisdom.

Glyphs are not just pictures they are language. Mayan is a logosyllabic language which means that some glyphs are phonetic, others function as either logograms or phonetic elements. Maya writing uses rules of grammar like ,verb subject object, it also uses it uses both prefixes and suffixes to show grammatical function.

The Mayan codices, were books ranging in subject matter from religion to astronomy, agricultural cycles and Mayan history. They were written paper several meters long and divided into pages and folded just like you'll find the long written codices of the Romans and Chinese(also with a pictographic language).


Phaedrus

[_beastie]

Just in case anyone other than, of course, crocket, doubts that the codies are, indeed, LITERATURE (caps just for crocket so he can have a momentary sense of superiority), here's a link that discusses the translation of the Dresden Codex:

http://www.mayalords.org/mayafldr/dres1.html

Each of the codices, including the Dresden, appear to have several pages dedicated to the origins of mankind. Each chooses the element of creation that is most importantat to their particular area. The Codex Ríos first showed a watery place where meteorites are falling, ending the four-page "story" with a beautiful mountain covered with flowers and fruit in spite of the meteorites still falling. The Vindobinessis used a "story board" segment ending with the newly discovered corn culture.

Well, my goodness, that almost sounds like, why, could it be, LITERATURE?

[_beastie]

I found another explanation of this so-called "horse".

Ferguson was aware that there was no support for the existence of the horse during Book of Mormon times. Just as the discredited Jean Frederic Waldeck saw elephants depicted in Mayan ruins, so Milton R. Hunter, an LDS General Authority in the First Council of Seventy, saw horses; and in his Archaeology and the Book of Mormon he displayed a photograph of a carved stone showing a bearded man standing by a horse on the Temple of Wall Panels in Chichen Itza. However, this reputed “horse” reaches only to the height of the man’s waist, and John L. Sorenson rightly suggested that Hunter’s animal is probably a deer.

From Quest for the Gold Plates, page 190

It must be noted that Ferguson was with Hunter when they saw this "horse". Obviously, he was unconvinced.