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Chaos & Complex Systems Seminar
Star-beings and stones: Origins and legends
Date: Tuesday, March 29th
Time: 12:05 pm - 1:00 pm
Place: 4274 Chamberlin Hall (refreshments will be served)
Speaker: Herman Bender, Freelance Geologist
Abstract: Native American myths, legends and oral traditions are rich with stories of giant beings existing in ancient times. They all talk of giant Thunderers or Thunder-beings, giant snakes and great Thunderbirds. Even the first humans were said to be giants, some half man, half animal. The Tsistsistas (Cheyenne) have a name for the giant beings their ancestors encountered during the early migration to the grasslands of the Great Plains. They called them haztova hotoxceo or “two-faced star people”. Other Plains tribes such as the Black Feet, Gros Ventres and Lakota have similar stories. These old stories may have real world counterparts. Discovered in a prehistoric effigy-mound group (the Kolterman Mounds) in southeastern Wisconsin (USA) is a human-like petroform effigy with a serpentine body and wing-like arms known as the ‘Star-Being’. Configured in stone, it is approximately 20 meters in length with a red colored, bison-shaped headstone aligned to face the summer solstice sunrise. However, it is not a lone or singular occurrence. The ‘Star-Being’ is but one of two human-like petroforms effigies discovered in southeastern Wisconsin. There is another of almost the same size called the Starman which also has a red-colored, bison-shaped headstone aligned to face the summer solstice sunrise. Both the Starman and Star-Being petroform complexes are codified by the State Historical Society of Wisconsin as archeological sites of Archaic age. Each giant effigy appears to be a reflection of certain constellations and stars, the ‘Star-Being’ a mirror-image of the (western) constellations of Scorpius and Libra (with Sagittarius); the Starman an almost exact representation of Taurus and the Pleiades. Both giant effigies are estimated to be 3500-6000 years old, embodiments of ancient legends and traditions writ large in stone and connected to ‘The People’ through ceremony and acts of cosmic renewal.
Host: Clint Sprott
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