Sumerian Writing Found On Bolivia Bowl
By
James Donahue
More evidence of ancient international exploration, travel and even trading
has turned up in one of the world’s strange mysterious places, near La Paz, Bolivia, not far from Lake Titicaca one
of the highest elevation lakes in the world at 12,507 feet.
Dubbed the Fuente Magna bowl, the artifact is a large stone bowl filled with
engraved carvings of figures and script. What is amazing about the script is that it has been found to be an ancient alphabet
used by the Sumerians on the other side of the world at least 3,000 to 4,000 years ago.
The
discovery thus raises the controversial question: How did a bowl containing the known script used by the people of Mesopotamia,
located in what is now Iraq, find its way into the dirt under a pig farm in the high mountains of Bolivia, South America?
The
bowl was accidentally dug up by the farmer in 1960 on private land owned by the Manjon family. Fortunately the bowl got into
the hands of Bolivian archaeologist Max Portugal Zamora who launched research among his peers in an attempt to decipher the
strange writing on both the insides and outsides of the bowl.
What perplexed researchers
was that there are two different types of engraved scripts, a proto-Sumerian ancient alphabet and the quellca language of
the ancient Pukara, who preceded the Tiahuanaco civilization, a pre-Columbian people who lived in the La Paz area about 2,000
years ago.
With scripts from both cultures engraved in the same stone bowl, we appear to have
proof that both civilizations in some way merged and possibly co-habituated in and around Lake Titicaca. But if we are to
accept the official historical story regarding these ancient “stone-age” times, it seems that such a union of
cultures could not have happened.
It appears, however, that the Sumerians were much more advanced than modern
historians would like to believe. We know that the Phoenicians and Carthaginians were ship-builders who explored the seas
of the world, as were the Chinese, Mongolians and Vikings. Why should we not believe the Sumerians were also building ships
and exploring the open seas in search of new lands?
Indeed, archaeologists have found copper from Michigan’s Keweenaw Peninsula
in sites throughout Europe, the Middle East and South America. Coca leaves, grown in South America, have been found in mummies
of some of the Egyptian pharaohs. It should be no surprise that a ceremonial bowl, with engraved prayers to the ancient fertility
goddess Nia, would turn up in Bolivia.
The name of this goddess, popular among the ancient Egyptians and Libyan people
of North and Middle Africa, adds yet another wrinkle to the history of this bowl. Obviously the people who carved the scripts
in that stone really got around.
Recent excavations on the island of Bahrain in the Persian Gulf have turned
up evidence of a major port city identified in Sumerian text as Dilmoun. If this is true, this may have been the home of a
Sumerian fleet of ships that sailed the world, trading fabrics, gold, incense and copper. If they reached the western coast
of South America, there is no reason why the Sumerians could not have settled this part of the world.
