Mayan Sarcophagus Lid vs. "Blueprints" of NASA's Mercury Capsule

I didn't know the mercury capsule had an "attitude" controller!

Must explain why Gordon Cooper was such a grumpy old fart! (That is a joke, I didn't know the man!)


I am sure many of our civilisation's in history had meddling from "someone else" .

And I think the elites fascination and practise of Canaanite rituals ties into all of this somehow.

Why else would they worship "deity's"?

Strange stuff, but trying to consolidate the simulation hypothesis with alien intervention and visitation has always been a sticking point for me.

Unless the UFO's just house the "mods"?

a reply to: Soapusmaximus

Quite an intriguing typo, isn't it? I wonder if the same kind of controller was also used in the Apollo designs?

originally posted by: Wandering Scribe
a reply to: jeep3r

You've got the sarcophagus lid tilted the wrong way. It is not meant to be viewed horizontally like that, but vertically, because the King depicted atop the altar has the Tree of Life erupting from his body and reaching toward the Heavens.

Interesting! So could that be the sacrificial altar and this carving is what they imagine happens when they take out the beating heart - that their spirit makes like the tree of life into the heavens and what looks like flames below is the massive blood loss?

That does indeed make sense. But does that suggest that the King himself was ultimately sacrificed - that maybe they saw such a death as an honour, or a direct route to heaven?

However, there is indeed an obvious resemblance between the carving and the blueprints. That doesn't mean they'd seen the blueprints themselves, but perhaps the real thing!

ETA: i've seen this thing in the flesh, so to speak, in Palenque and it is indeed enigmatic and easily conjures more questions than it answers.

originally posted by: ArtemisE


The problem is that an alien civilization that could come here would have a more modern capsule. Mercury is primative to us and they would have to be way more advanced then we are now.

Good point. So how about a 'Planet Of The Apes' scenario...?

Crazy proposition de jour:

Did one of our Mercury era capsules go missing - one that we weren't told about?

Could that have encountered a space/time phenomenon that involves General Relativity and curved space, sending the capsule back to around 300 BC, to land in central America and kick off the Mayan era with a worship of this bizarre device?

Maybe it'll be dug up, or found in a yet undiscovered tomb one day?

And for those of you go along with the consensus that only forward time travel is possible, as Einstein believed, then could the capsule have come from a forgotten, Atlantean pre-history civilisation and thrown forward to 300 BC by a Space/Time phenomenon?

Like i said, crazy proposal de jour, but you gotta cover all the bases, right?

a reply to: jeep3r

I get the impression it's a fancy telescope. Maybe why they were so fascinated by cycles because some of them were watching the stars and planets and such? And the "World tree" = tree of science/understanding... Like the branches of science?

The AE did the same. Sub deities for aspects of science/engineering, but theirs were codified to keep the knowledge and true understanding in the minds of those initiated. Control the knowledge and you control the people and resources.

See, the principle of "Occam's Razor" tells me that... not bizarre, complex, convoluted myths/stories about a "spirit" of a king (but no other "spirits" I guess) travelling on a tree to heaven, or animal headed anthropomorphic "gods" playing with lotus flowers and such.

It's ridiculous anyway. "Occam's razor" was not meant for scientific debate/research but religious in the first place.

originally posted by: Flux8
a reply to: jeep3r

I get the impression it's a fancy telescope. Maybe why they were so fascinated by cycles because some of them were watching the stars and planets and such? And the "World tree" = tree of science/understanding... Like the branches of science?

The AE did the same. Sub deities for aspects of science/engineering, but theirs were codified to keep the knowledge and true understanding in the minds of those initiated. Control the knowledge and you control the people and resources.

See, the principle of "Occam's Razor" tells me that... not bizarre, complex, convoluted myths/stories about a "spirit" of a king (but no other "spirits" I guess) travelling on a tree to heaven, or animal headed anthropomorphic "gods" playing with lotus flowers and such.

It's ridiculous anyway. "Occam's razor" was not meant for scientific debate/research but religious in the first place.

The problem with everyone seemingly to be quickly opting to give ol Occam a dog in every hunt, is the ease at which data is discarded that doesn't fit our exact knowledge at this time in history. Thus stifling the exploration phase of a good mystery in a blaze of dust that benefits the shills of the current paradigm more than it does actual intellectual debate.


Occam would still be interested in solving the mystery and to say a king would be sacrificed as mentioned this thread, or just be a tree of life thing might be it. However he is pointing up sitting in something that does loosely appear to be a capsule. Deny those things is to be way off base. Some here know of the evidence of apparent dwindling knowledge they had of the building techniques used during the Toltec civilization. With all the other artifacts spoken of here over time added in, I could well say Occam's razor says there must have been a great civilization that died out and the survivors gradually lost the ability to use the technology.

originally posted by: Wifibrains

You need to re think that one matey.

That cannot be true. The carvings have a embossed effect, (protruding) The shading on the rock (light source top RHS) gives me the impression, excuse the pun.

I'm a little surprised that you see it an embossed effect. If that were the case, with the lightsource top RHS, you would expect to see a darker edge along the lower/left side of each carving caused by the edge being slightly shaded by the raised symbol.

Instead, we see carved images being light from the lower LHS. The inner walls on the lower/left sides are not apparent because the angle precludes this, while the inner walls on the upper/right sides are picking up the light source - exactly as would be expected for a carving lit from that angle.

Pay specific attention to the semi-circles that are carved into the rock. You can see the inner top wall (the curved part of the semicircle) starting clearly visible on the right side and remaining visible nearly all the way across to the left, with almost zero shade along the bottom - I cannot see how that would be in any way consistent with a projecting image, but it appears to be entirely consistent with a carved image.

Edited to add:

On a more practical note, the carving appears to be above head level as the camera angle suggests that it is being pointed upwards. If you're taking a photo in that location, what is more practical? To have someone stand beside you shining a light up at it when you take the photo (which would be consistent with my suggestion) or to make them climb up a ladder/stick a light on a pole and hold it up, in order to light it in the way you suggest?

a reply to: EvillerBob

Look at the rock formation below the cartouche, the shadows are consistent with being lit from above, as are the protruding glyph on the flat face.

a reply to: MonkeyFishFrog

You do realize you have the Pakal image sideways, and that right there makes this entire thread misleading.

Yes, but as we know rockets are always launched from vertical...so if anything, placing the image of Pakal vertically, reinforces the rocketry resemblance.

The picture was placed horizontally to tally up with the NASA capsule images.

So you're kinda arguing against Pakal looking like he's sitting in a stylised rocket, but reinforcing it by doing so with the orientation comment.

If this isn't a representation of a real-world rocket with Pakal as the astronaut, it could well be an 'interpretation' by Pakal of a set of earlier drawings, or even an actual crashed object containing an 'astronaut'.

If they were copying something they didn't comprehend, it would not be an identical copy, and every element would not represent real world components, with much of it stylised and based upon the artists interpretation of what he or she was looking at and what its function was...a bit like a child drawing something he or she doesn't understand.

originally posted by: Wandering Scribe
a reply to: jeep3r

You've got the sarcophagus lid tilted the wrong way. It is not meant to be viewed horizontally like that, but vertically.

~ Wandering Scribe

Ummm...Correct me if I'm wrong....but...when in the launch position, wouldn't the capsule depiction also be viewed vertically.................hmmm?

It would be interesting if one of our more technical members could...overlay, both of these depictions....vertically so that it could be given a better comparative treatment...


YouSir

Edit to add: I see that MisterX also mentioned the vertical launch position as well in the above post...

There are a lot of things I see in the image but two pieces stood out that look like wiper motors:



Maybe it's a Chevy.

originally posted by: Wifibrains
a reply to: EvillerBob

Look at the rock formation below the cartouche, the shadows are consistent with being lit from above, as are the protruding glyph on the flat face.

There are two channel carved into the rock above and below the inscription. Both channels show the same lighting features - a top wall that has caught the light, and a bottom wall that is indicated by a single thin line. If it was a raised carving that was lit from the upper RHS, you would see some indication of the lower wall, at the very least a slightly darker area of similar height to the upper wall. There is no indication of the lower wall, which means you are looking at the lip of the carving - in other words, you can only see the line where the lower wall meets the surface, with the rest of the wall being hidden from view because of the angle.

Now let's move to the surface below the inscription. There is a shift in perceived colour tone between the inscription and this surface. While the difference in prepared and rough surfaces would cause some of this change, I would say that the difference we see is consistent with the surfaces being at a slightly different angle to each other, causing them to catch and reflect the light in a different way. This is accentuated by the rough surface have a greater variety of planes to catch the light.

I would go so far as to say that the light source is angled so that parts of the rough surface are closer to perpendicular, while the flat prepared surface is at a more oblique angle. This would account for the rough surface clearly picking up more light that the smooth surface.

If the inscription was lit from the upper RHS as you suggest, this would require that the rough surface was angled slightly towards the photographer. In other words, the inscription would need to be at the bottom of a shallow channel carved into the rock.

If the inscription was lit from the lower LHS as i suggest, this would suggest that the surface was originally flat and prepared like the inscription surface, but the bottom part had crumbled or eroded over time, causing it to "drop away" from the original plane.

Another practical element - relief carving is significantly more difficult and time consuming than carving into the rock. To be consistent with your lighting, the builders would have needed to carve and prepare a channel into the rock, then spend a great deal of time in relief carving the inscription and then smoothing and levelling all the other surfaces in the inscription. To be consistent with my lighting, the builders would have needed to flatten and smooth the wall surface and then carved directly into it. The extra time and effort is certainly not a barrier and the Egyptians did use some form of relief carving, but in quite so labour-intensive a way. The Egyptians tended to use a "sunk relief" style of carving - so rather than the carving being above the surface, the area immediately around the image was removed, so the highest point of the carving was never above the original surface level.

Example of sunk relief art in Egypt:

upload.wikimedia.org...

I really cannot see how the inscription is a relief carving. Everything about it seems inconsistent with that style. I fully accept that I may be wrong, but in the absence of a photograph from a different angle or a description confirming it, I simply cannot see it.

originally posted by: McGinty


... Interesting! So could that be the sacrificial altar and this carving is what they imagine happens when they take out the beating heart - that their spirit makes like the tree of life into the heavens and what looks like flames below is the massive blood loss? ...

Cool interpretation! Weird that just before reading this I read a quote from 'Melchizedek And the Mystery of Fire' by Manly P. Hall that said "What oil is to flame, blood is to the spirit of man."

... So the whole sacrifice/blood loss thing thought of as rocket propellant for the spirit?
This before rocket fuel was invented to propel physical bodies rather than spiritual ones, of course.

a reply to: Spinx
Good catch!

a reply to: jeep3r

uh... why would they be using a mercury capsule?


that's almost useless for anything but short trips into orbit.

I mean Vostok, or Soyuz, or even Apollo would have been a better choice, even those are cramped miserable things to be in.

X-20 dyna-soar or Skylon, or something else would be more believable.

This of course assumes that the supposed "original document" came from aliens or something

a reply to: Justoneman

Exactly, and much more succinctly put. Thank you.

a reply to: EvillerBob

Here's a more comprehensive angle of the "Abydos Helicopter" hieroglyphics.

This is from "Ancient Aliens Debunked" so somewhat off topic. But still does a good job of explaining the lid. If you don't want to read this wall of text you can click the source link at the bottom. There is a video clip.

Ancient Aliens: “Arguably the most remarkable Mayan artifact ever found – the stone sarcophagus lid of King Pacal – has produced considerable controversy. Mainstream scholars believe the depiction of King Pacal on a journey to the underworld, but ancient astronaut theorists believe the king is portrayed at the seat of the controls of a space craft and have dubbed him the Palenque astronaut.”

AA: “He appears to be going into space. He is the original rocket man manipulating his spacecraft; going into space.”

AA: “We have maintained for a very long time that the depiction here is king Pacal sitting in some kind of spacecraft. He is at an angle like modern-day astronauts upon lift-off. He is manipulating some controls. He has some type of breathing apparatus or some type of a telescope in front of his face. His feet are on some type of a pedal. And you have something that looks like an exhaust – with flames.”

The sarcophagus lid of Pacal has been a centerpiece for the Ancient Astronaut theories since the beginning. Eric Von Daniken believes this to be one of his best pieces of evidence.

AA: “You see his upper hand – he is manipulating some controls. From the lower hand – he is turning something on. The heel of his left foot is on a kind of pedal and, outside the capsule, you see a linking flame. This is incredible. This is absolute proof of extraterrestrials.”

The theory rests on the idea that the Mayans were not depicting their usual symbols here but were trying to realistically depict a rocket with Pacal as its pilot.

I think the best thing I can do for you here is to clearly explain what Mayanists and other scientists who specialize in Mayan culture and artwork believe this scene is depicting.

As Ancient Aliens said, archeologists believe this scene is depicting the moment of Pascal’s death and his decent into the underworld. Let me show you why they believe that.

The most famous symbol in this picture is that of the “World Tree”[1] which, if you believe Ancient Aliens, would make up the entire hull of the rocket. It’s hard to over emphasize the importance of the World Tree in Mayan mythology.

The idea was that the World Tree extended into the heavens with its branches, and its roots extended into the underworld. So it was a symbol of the bridge between the underworld, heaven and earth.[2]

When it is depicted it almost always has the double headed “vision serpent” on its branches[3], just like it’s depicted on Pacal’s lid. The vision serpent was believed to live at the center of the world, thus it is depicted just above the underworld and just below the heavens.[4]

In its top branches is the celestial bird which is seen a little more clearly in other World Tree depictions like this one, but on Pacal’s lid you can see its clearly depicting the same bird.

The celestial bird represented the heavens and thus was pictured on the top of the World Tree.[5]

What Ancient Aliens says is the exhaust or fire from the rockets takeoff is the roots of the World Tree extending into the underworld. Which is not just typical for depictions of the World Tree, it’s pretty much a requirement.[6]

In the underworld we see a picture of the Mayan sun monster which Pacal is riding into the underworld.[7]

The idea was that every time the sun set it was actually travelling into the underworld where it would die, like everything else in the underworld. You can even see the bottom half of the suns face was a skeleton while the top half still had flesh and had not yet died. This too is a common theme showing the moment of transition.[8]

So Pacal is hitching a ride on the sun into the underworld.

Even the so-called smoke is easily explained when you understand Mayan symbols.

In Mayan art whenever you see a so-called “traveler”- which is a person in transition from one world to the next – there must be something that is making that travel possible.[9] Sometimes it is a twisted umbilical cord, but almost always it is a serpent, often a double headed serpent.[10] In other words being in the mouths of a double headed serpent was a symbol of transition from one world to the next.

You can see that the so called smoke is actually the traditional serpent’s beard which appears in almost every depiction of a serpent in Mayan art.

Now that you have an idea about what the scholars believe about this, let’s look at some of Ancient Aliens’ specific claims.

AA: “He is manipulating some controls right here.”

They say his hands are manipulating some controls, but if you look closely his right hand isn’t touching anything at all, and the thing to its right is not connected to the tree anymore that any of the other floating design elements in the picture.

His left hand could be said to be manipulating controls more than his right, but you would have to say that all these marks on the tree are controls too which, in reality, is probably the bark of the World Tree, which was modeled after the Ceiba tree, which had a very unique bark and was usually depicted in some way or another in World Tree art.[11]

The odd position of Pacal’s hands in this image is really what the fuss is all about. In the 1970s video refutation of the Ancient Astronaut theories the Mayan expert in that film made the point that the hands in Mayan art are often depicted in “delicate positions”[12]

“The Maya liked to show hands in rather delicate gestures.”

“Such gestures are common in Mayan art. There are similar examples on the side of the slab.”

As far as the claim about his foot being on a type of pedal, I would have to say that if that is how aliens designed pedals, then we are far more advanced in pedal technology than they are because that may be the worst angle to put any kind foot pedal.

Plus, there are other reliefs of Mayans in the underworld on similar slabs, with their feet in similar positions, but without the rocket.

What about this so-called “breathing tube” for his nose?

Well, it doesn’t connect to anything and, if you look closely, thing it could potentially connect to is also represented on the other side of the lid and is clearly a stylistic element of the vision serpent.

What it actually is a nose piercing, particularly a bone.

“Here an earring extended from a pierced ear; a nose plug – which has the elements of death because it takes the form of a fleshless bone.”

Finally, consider the context that we find this image. It’s on a coffin lid, so the mainstream view is perfectly in line with that, and the whole concept was common in Mayan burials. It would have been a strange thing for them to all of a sudden abandon their usual symbolic artwork to depict a rocket on a coffin lid.

The fact is that the symbols on the sarcophagus lid are really consistently used[13]. Often the symbols are even explained in the extensive Mayan writings. These symbols fit perfectly with what we know about their beliefs about the world and the afterlife. [14]

Source

a reply to: Wandering Scribe

The Aztecs didnt build Teotihuacan.

a reply to: jeep3r

Great Article!

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