The mysterious geoglyphs of Madre de Dios.

Madre de Dios region, Amazonia, Northern Peru, rising above the mists from the bend of the river below we see an inscrutable face in the forest canopy carved from the cliff face, on a giant scale...






To the right of this face can be seen two others, of an age indeterminate and purpose enigmatic, yet appearing as benign Deities of the forest in which they are immersed...





In trying to understand who and what these geoglyphs represent we shall need to take into account their smaller cousins downsteam, the Petroglyphs, of Pusharo.








My information on these Petroglyphs is largely from the site linked below, they put out a video also, generally they are hoping these Petroglyphs will lead them to a lost city of the Inca full of gold and that seems to be the extent of their interest, but i'm looking here to understand their intrinsic meanings.

Pusharo Petroyphs







So what does it all mean....?













First of course we are required to suggest some meaning and function for the face we saw dominating the forest canopy, this is seen many times in the petroglyphs with minor variations;





The face does a passable representation of a gray alien, but this is Amazonia and not Area 51 and i'm going to suggest it illustrates a frog, and a Divine frog at that.

There are many types of frog in Amazonia, some are milked for their secretions which can produce strange effects, they were very important to the indigenous folk.

We need to evaluate the context the frogs are seen in;





Important for me is that they are seen in conjunction with an abstraction of the birth Goddess motif (which electrical universe subscribers consider a plasma discharge...), this i looked at in some detail here with regards to caves in Equador;


Mysterious cave in Equador


Much of what i wrote there with regards to the Underworld birth Goddess based on the form of Canis Major will hold good here. Throughout the greater region of Amazonia frogs were associated with primeval creation, arising from the first mud as it were.



There is also seen in the motifs the generation of and the linking therein of spiral vortices, these represent generation and formation at one focal point, and then the transition through to another, in one sense this can be from the womb through to birth, or the passing even from one world to the next, or maybe even just a journey down river...but that's the sort of things frogs do in their ponds and spawnings.



The frog do the cycle of life very well, as seen in this Colombian piece;






There are a few other aspects of the motifs that are also very interesting, amongst them the usage of the classic stepped mountain motif for place of establishment, the frog seen in this context establishes its role as a fundament of first time creation, it is seen also in the context of linking the two mountains of the Eastern and Western horizons, which would give a rebirth context.





In terms of comparative mythology, then Heqet of ancient Egypt is the classic example of what a frog Goddess should be about;

(Heket) A Goddess depicted either as a frog-headed woman or as a frog, Heqet is associated with the development of the fetus in the womb, with birth and with resurrection.

The association of the frog with resurrection persisted even among the Christians of Egypt, a lamp having been found with the figure of a frog on it which proclaims, in Greek, “I am the resurrection

Heqet...the Frog Princess


The Christian ressurection had associations with frog lore in that in the Near East the frog represented an intermediate state between the physical life and the spiritual, when Jesus appears to Mary Magdalene in the garden, where she mistakes him for the gardener this would have been seen as the intermediate state, hence his words 'Noli me tangere', don't touch me yet..


Again this would have been based on the Sumerian myth of Inanna turning the gardener of Anu, Ishullanu into a frog for rejecting her physical advances, hence the frog Prince legends...so go ahead kiss those frogs

Mate, I love your threads
I found this pic buried in my pictures folder.
The artifact comes from an ancient settlement Nevali Cori of the Gobekli Tepe region, man I love that place.
Nevali Cori is dated about 1000 years younger than Gobekli Tepe itself.
It's interesting to note also that the Gobekli Tepe site is thought to represent constellations.

reply to post by LeLeu



Thanks, i think what's seen in your image is a turtle Deity, frogs were seen as great for life getting started from the primeval mud, but if you wanted something solid to create your world upon a turtle was required. Some of the round geometrically sub-divided motifs in the OP illustrations are probably such turtle shells.






The Belt stars of Orion were seen as this cosmic turtle by the Maya, Orion being the consort of Canis Major, the frog Goddess...the amphibians having got things rolling when it came to Creation.

reply to post by Kantzveldt


as i opened the thread, i have to admit i laughed on seeing the first pic appear as i scrolled.... i guess i could be forgiven for thinking someone had drawn with their finger on condensation on the window that the pic may have been taken through.

you have obviously put effort into this thread so for me to just go with that first glance reaction would be unjust. i checked the pusharo link but it's in spanish (?) and my old pc spits the dummy when i go translate - do you have another source for the forest pics that open the post?

but what could have caused this? i studied archaeology and so am obvs aware that features below the soil make a noticable difference on how plants grow, hence the discovery of many sites etc, but this was the only rational explanation i could apply to this.

however, i cant see how that would produce this particular result due to how the colouration is changed, the fact that there are clear spaces making parts of the pattern etc, and i cant see much in the way of difference in height in the trees that i assume make up this pattern.

so... my only suggestion (lacking further info to research or consider) is that this is either a photgraphic hoax, or modern mischief making by some dudes with chainsaws (reducing vegetation to produce the outline) and too much time on thier hands.

it would be highly interesting though to see vid of these (apologies if i missed one), especially a fly around them to see how a changing/encircling POV would appear.

jolly interesting tho

ETA: is there some evidence re these being carved into the cliff face? this is of course well within the realms of possibility, but i would be fascinated to see some photos of the ditch/carvings from on the ground

reply to post by Kantzveldt

reminds me of this

reply to post by skalla



Here's an English site link. There isn't much readily available on the geoglyphs, the petroglyphs are better recorded and more commonly known.


www.granpaititi.com...


They say there they are around 200 metres in width, which looks about right, they also say they were created by the Inca, which is completely wrong, but it's going to be hard to put a date on them.


As to how they are seen, you're right it is a head scratcher, but i think the effect created is by shadows due to the depth the geoglyph has been cut into, in other words its just this on a large scale...

reply to post by Kantzveldt


thanks for the reply and the extra link, it doesnt really show what i'm after, ie a picture of the ditch or whatever feature is presumably made in the landscape to produce this...
it's a shame there is not more info on this as these geoglyphs, if credible (and that is highly possible ofc) deserve a much wider audience.
thanks for the op, really good stuff

reply to post by skalla



I've sorted out were that information is, it's sector IV from the Spanish link, here are the accompanying pictures;









I've ran it through google translate;


Googles take...


Obviously they were carved to a considerable depth, and as you said deserve to be better known.

reply to post by Kantzveldt


thats brill

many thanks for taking the time to dig () those pics out, much appreciated.

these are as cool and fascinating as any other human monument, i'll certainly discuss them with friends

Interesting story!

Bump!

You threads are quality, and interesting thanks for the info.
Those things are huge !!! The ancients always amaze me.
Slayer better watch out he's defiantly got some competition

Forgive me. I wonder if Spielberg ever saw these glyphs.

Hmmm...well maybe they were trying to reference the frog or the turtle's hibernation habits. If these are by people who were trying to hide their gold and weren't sure of when they would need it, and they would want only those who knew of their culture to have it, they would reference ancient burial areas. The turtle and the frog lie dormant in extreme weather. Maybe they were referencing someplace or sometime that was affected by extremely unusual weather. Maybe a valley that gets flooded only at certain times of the year that also served as a burial site. Or a mountain that had severe snow only at certain times of the year.

reply to post by Kantzveldt


Interesting!

Is there any way of determining where on Google Earth this is? My first reaction was that it's an artifact of position and tree ages, but the view of the trench sparked my curiosity. That should be visible in some way from above, and it'd be interesting to get a much closer look.

I think your tying them to the locally known petroglyphs is probably the right explanation -- the Egyptian connection doesn't hold if you look at it closely (I did some research on Central and South American frog deities one time long ago) -- Central American beliefs about frog-spirits are quite different from Hequet and both are different when compared to what's shown for the Amazonian area.

Anyway... I'm hoping that someone with some time available can pinpoint the site on Google Earth and we can all go have a look (and see if there might be another geoglyph in the area. If this is NOT just an artifact of the tree canopy, then there's undoubtedly others in the region.

reply to post by Kissplash




There is a sign i mentioned for this culture, the stepped motif, which is common throughout the Americas signifying mountain or place of first establishment, or even pyramid. Surprising to see it in an Amazonian context, but its one of the main reasons the explorers try to relate the site to the Inca.

But anyway there is the suggestion seen in the video i linked to around the 3.00 minute mark that four mountains in the nearby valley have been terra-formed;





so there may be some reason they thought the area special and marked it with the geoglyphs.


reply to post by Byrd



This is the information for the site from the Pusharo web site;

Our position is then the following UTM:N 8’607.246,70, E 230.119,37 and then our altitude of 834 meters above sea level.

I'm intending having a look....


reply to post by IAMTAT




Yes that's a curious little archetype plucked from the subconcious...

My Spanish is...not so good. However, your coordinates into Google led to this page on the Petroglyphs:
www.pusharo.com...
Ah, a translation button exists for he site.

BTW: Longtime fan of your threads.

reply to post by Kantzveldt


The picture resembles some Monkeys in the area also to me.

there are so many kinds
www.google.com...# imgrc=qMaulr8swwx7cM%3A%3BhHQDVNKzOFhsyM%3Bhttp%253A%252F%252Fcdn.c.photoshelter.com%252Fimg-get%252FI0000BsZjSiWe9b0%252Fs%252F750%252F750%252FCIC133 5.jpg%3Bhttp%253A%252F%252Fandrebaertschi.photoshelter.com%252Fimage%252FI0000BsZjSiWe9b0%3B750%3B500

reply to post by IAMTAT



I can't figure his co-ordinates. seem all wrong, for the Madre de Dios region, these are correct;


11°51′23″S 71°43′17″W


en.wikipedia.org...

The location of the Petroglyphs;



12°34'59"S 71°29'7"W



I think the largest can just about be made out on google Earth above and to the right of the river bend, but the resolution for the area is very low and not really much of a help.

At first I was leaning towards something a bit more natural, but when seeing those petroglyphs, it does look strikingly similar

S+F, I don't get to say that alot these days sadly

I wonder...many of the smaller glyphs seem to exhibit elements reminiscent of an aerial-view map.
Notice the river/serpent features.




Does this image show the mountain range, itself (zig-zag lines)...marking the location of the large mountainside facial image?

Considered more relevant, possibly, when taken in context with the aerial-viewed land-form glyphs.