PARALLELS
Mesoamerican and
Ancient Middle Eastern Traditions

by Diane E. Wirth

Comments by University Professors on the book:

“The classic academic dogma is that, after the initial population of the Americas across the Bering land bridge at the end of the last ice age over ten thousand years ago, the Old World and the New World were completely isolated from one another (the brief and insignificant visitation of Norse interlopers about a thousand years ago notwithstanding) until Columbus "discovered" America and set off a major European invasion of the western hemisphere. Yet for decades, a few heretical scholars have proceeded to assemble evidence, often circumstantial and perhaps only tantalizingly suggestive, that there were transoceanic contacts between the Old World and the Americas well before the late fifteenth century A.D. In my opinion the evidence is now overwhelming. There was sporadic contact and diffusion of ideas (including myths, rituals, and linguistic elements), technologies, and biological traits (such as human genes, certain domesticated plants and animals, and various disease vectors) across both the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans from at least 3000 B.C. Furthermore, we now understand that ancient peoples indeed possessed the nautical ability to cross the oceans, as the lifework of the late Thor Heyerdahl helped to demonstrate.

In PARALLELS: Mesoamerican and Ancient Middle Eastern Traditions, Diane E. Wirth presents a stunning analysis of the many detailed similarities found among Middle Eastern (for instance, Egyptian, Mesopotamian, and Hebrew) and Mesoamerican (for instance, as found in the Popol Vuh) myths and traditions. Similarity after similarity, detail after detail, of stories and rituals from both sides of the Atlantic line up. The parallels, as referred to in the title of the book, are made obvious by the author. It is too much for all of this to be dismissed as merely coincidence and independent invention. Neither the scholarly community nor the general public should ignore the evidence for pre-Columbian transatlantic contacts any longer. With this important book, Diane E. Wirth is helping to rewrite not only the history of pre-Columbian Mesoamerica, but the history of the ancient Middle East as well.”

Dr. Robert M. Schoch, Boston University, author of Voices of the Rocks and Voyages of the Pyramid Builders

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“Many competent anthropologists and archaeologists have done detailed studies of specific characteristics shared by Old World and New World cultures. A much smaller number of scholars have attempted to demonstrate similarities in substantial segments of particular cultures of the New World and the Old World. Wirth’s parallels, largely between intellectual-symbolic systems of the Fertile Crescent and Mesoamerica, are a welcome addition to such studies. Professional scholars should be aware of the numerous highly specific parallels, and possible interpretations.”

Dr. David H. Kelley, Professor Emeritus, University of Calgary

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“One of the most puzzling problems for culture historians and archaeologists has been how to account for shared similarities in diverse parts of the world. Simply stated, elements similar in form and/or meaning can be seen as borrowings from one culture by another (diffusion) or as features invented independently by the cultures possessing them (independent invention).

This thought provoking book very carefully documents many parallels, some quite detailed, between cultural traditions of ancient Mesoamerica and the ancient Middle East, providing excellent discussion of the similarities in cultural forms and their meanings that link the two regions. These parallels are fascinating in and of themselves, but the current academic establishment tends to ignore them on the poorly tested assumption that there is no historical relationship between these areas, and that the many parallels can therefore be of no consequence or interest; neither worthy of documentation nor of explanation.

Breaking with this orthodox view, the author carefully constructs a case in which the detailed cultural parallels on both sides of the ocean are not only of interest and require explanation. She suggests that in fact they constitute evidence of a historical relationship between the cultures involved, proposing that long ago transoceanic voyages were made from the Middle East to the western hemisphere. Her case is so well presented that I believe it will be difficult to simply ignore these and other cultural parallels in the future.”

Dr. Brian M. Stross, Professor of Anthropology, University of Texas at Austin