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Claims | Native Americans made contact with pre-Columbian European explorers, influencing their religions and culture. |
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Related scientific disciplines | Archaeology |
(Overview of pseudoscientific concepts) |
White gods is the pseudoscientific belief that ancient cultures around the world were visited by white races in ancient times, and that they were known as "white gods".
Some authors have claimed that white missionaries or "gods" visited America before Christopher Columbus. Authors usually quote from mythology and legends which discuss ancient gods such as Quetzalcoatl to conclude that the legends were actually based on Caucasians visiting those areas, and that the Caucasians were really the gods. [1] [2]
This story was first reported by Pedro Cieza de León (1553) and later by Pedro Sarmiento de Gamboa. Similar accounts by Spanish chroniclers (e.g. Juan de Betanzos) describe Viracocha as a "white god", often with a beard. [3]
The first Spanish chroniclers from the 16th century, however, made no mention of any identification with Viracocha. The first to do so was Pedro Cieza de León in 1553. [4] Similar accounts by Spanish chroniclers (e.g. Juan de Betanzos) describe Viracocha as a "white god", often with a beard. [5] The whiteness of Viracocha is however not mentioned in the native authentic legends of the Incas. Most modern scholars, therefore, had considered the "white god" story to be a post-conquest Spanish invention. [6]
Rupert Furneaux also linked "White gods" to the ancient city of Tiahuanaco. [7]
Colonel A. Braghine in his 1940 book The Shadow of Atlantis claimed that the Carib people have reports and legends of a white bearded man whom they called Tamu or Zune who had come from the East, taught the people agriculture and later disappeared in an "easterly direction". [8] Braghine also claimed Manco Cápac was a white bearded man. [9] The Atlantis author Gerd von Hassler linked the "White gods" to the biblical flood. [10]
Acclaimed Norwegian explorer Thor Heyerdahl, best known for his voyage across the Pacific in a reconstruction of an ancient vessel in an effort to prove that Polynesia was peopled by South American voyagers, believed that a white race inhabited South America. [11]
The archaeologist Pierre Honoré in 1962 proposed the fringe theory that the pre-Columbian Mesoamerican civilizations were due to "white men from the vicinity of Crete". [12]
The writer and treasure-hunter Robert F. Marx has written extensively about the concept of "White gods". Marx came to the conclusion that white gods "figure in almost every indigenous culture in the Americas." [13] [14]
The British writer Harold T. Wilkins took the concept of the white gods the furthest, writing that a vanished white race had occupied the whole of South America in ancient times. [15] Wilkins also claimed that Quetzalcoatl was from Atlantis. [16] [17]
The occultist James H. Madole, influenced by Aryanism and Hinduism, wrote that the Aryan race was of great antiquity and had been worshipped worldwide by lower races as "white gods". Madole also wrote that the Aryans originated in the Garden of Eden located in North America. [18]
Most modern scholars consider the "White god legends" to be a post-conquest Spanish invention and that the ideas are based on pseudoscience. [19] [20]
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Some Mormons believe that Quetzalcoatl, a figure described as white and bearded, who came from the sky and promised to return, was likely Jesus Christ. According to the scriptural account recorded in the Book of Mormon, Jesus Christ visited and taught natives of the Americas following his resurrection, and regarded them as the "other sheep" whom he had referenced during his mortal ministry. The Book of Mormon also claims that Jesus Christ appeared to others, following his resurrection, even to the inhabitants on the "isles of the sea." [21] With regard to the Mexican legend, LDS Church President John Taylor wrote:
The story of the life of the Mexican divinity, Quetzalcoatl, closely resembles that of the Savior; so closely, indeed, that we can come to no other conclusion than that Quetzalcoatl and Christ are the same being. [22]
This idea was adapted by Mormon science fiction author Orson Scott Card in his story "America".[ citation needed ]
Some Ancient astronaut and UFO writers have claimed the "white gods" were actually extraterrestrials. Peter Kolosimo believed that the legends of Quetzalcoatl had a basis in fact. He claimed that the legends actually describe a race of white men who were born in spaceships and migrated to Atlantis; then, after Atlantis was destroyed, they moved to the Americas to be treated as "white gods" by the "primitive earth-dwellers". [23]
Mormonism is the theology and religious tradition of the Latter Day Saint movement of Restorationist Christianity started by Joseph Smith in Western New York in the 1820s and 1830s. As a label, Mormonism has been applied to various aspects of the Latter Day Saint movement, although since 2018 there has been a push from The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints to distance themselves from this label. A historian, Sydney E. Ahlstrom, wrote in 1982 that, depending on the context, the term Mormonism could refer to "a sect, a mystery cult, a new religion, a church, a people, a nation, or an American subculture; indeed, at different times and places it is all of these."
Thor Heyerdahl KStJ was a Norwegian adventurer and ethnographer with a background in biology with specialization in zoology, botany and geography.
Viracocha is the great creator deity in the pre-Inca and Inca mythology in the Andes region of South America. According to the myth Viracocha had human appearance and was generally considered as bearded. According to the myth he ordered the construction of Tiwanaku. It is also said that he was accompanied by men also referred to as Viracochas.
Pre-Columbian transoceanic contact theories are speculative theories which propose that visits to the Americas, interactions with the Indigenous peoples of the Americas, or both, were made by people from elsewhere prior to Christopher Columbus's first voyage to the Caribbean in 1492. Studies between 2004 and 2009 suggest the possibility that the earliest human migrations to the Americas may have been made by boat from Beringia and travel down the Pacific coast, contemporary with and possibly predating land migrations over the Beringia land bridge, which during the glacial period joined what today are Siberia and Alaska. Whether transoceanic travel occurred during the historic period, resulting in pre-Columbian contact between the settled American peoples and voyagers from other continents, is vigorously debated.
The Adam–God doctrine was a theological idea taught in mid-19th century Mormonism by Brigham Young, a president of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Although the doctrine is rejected by the LDS Church today, it is still an accepted part of the modern theology of some Mormon fundamentalists.
Ancient astronauts refer to a pseudoscientific set of beliefs that hold that intelligent extraterrestrial beings visited Earth and made contact with humans in antiquity and prehistoric times. Proponents suggest that this contact influenced the development of modern cultures, technologies, religions, and human biology. A common position is that deities from most, if not all, religions are extraterrestrial in origin, and that advanced technologies brought to Earth by ancient astronauts were interpreted as evidence of divine status by early humans.
The Latter Day Saint movement is the collection of independent church groups that trace their origins to a Christian Restorationist movement founded by Joseph Smith in the late 1820s.
In orthodox Mormonism, the term God generally refers to the biblical God the Father, whom Latter Day Saints also refer to as Elohim or Heavenly Father, while the term Godhead refers to a council of three distinct divine persons consisting of God the Father, Jesus Christ, and the Holy Ghost. However, in Latter Day Saint theology the term God may also refer to, in some contexts, the Godhead as a whole or to each member individually.
James Harting Madole was an American fascist and leader of the National Renaissance Party in the United States. He is now recognized as a pivotal figure in the development of post-war occult-fascism.
The World's Sixteen Crucified Saviors; Or, Christianity Before Christ, Containing New, Startling, and Extraordinary Revelations in Religious History, which Disclose the Oriental Origin of All the Doctrines, Principles, Precepts, and Miracles of the Christian New Testament, and Furnishing a Key for Unlocking Many of Its Sacred Mysteries, Besides Comprising the History of 16 Heathen Crucified Gods is an 1875 non-fiction book written by American freethinker Kersey Graves, which asserts that Jesus was not an actual person, but was a creation largely based on earlier stories of deities or god-men saviours who had been crucified and descended to and ascended from the underworld. Parts were reprinted in The Book Your Church Doesn't Want You to Read edited by Tim C. Leedom in 1994, and it was republished in its entirety in 2001.
Mayanism is a non-codified eclectic collection of New Age beliefs, influenced in part by Pre-Columbian Maya mythology and some folk beliefs of the modern Maya peoples.
Harold Tom Wilkins was a British journalist known for his books on treasure hunting and pseudohistoric claims about Atlantis and South America.
Studies of the Book of Mormon is a collection of essays written at the beginning of the 20th century by B. H. Roberts (1857–1933), a general authority of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, which examine the validity of the Book of Mormon as a translation of an ancient American source.
Mormon cosmology is the description of the history, evolution, and destiny of the physical and metaphysical universe according to Mormonism, which includes the doctrines taught by leaders and theologians of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, Mormon fundamentalism, and other denominations within the Latter Day Saint movement. Mormon cosmology draws from Biblical cosmology, but has many unique elements provided by movement founder Joseph Smith. These views are not generally shared by adherents of other Latter Day Saint movement denominations who do not self-identify as "Mormons", such as the Community of Christ.
Douglas Eugene "Gene" Savoy was an American explorer, author, religious leader, and theologian. He served as Head Bishop of the International Community of Christ, Church of the Second Advent from 1971 until his death. Rising to prominence as one of the premier explorers of Peru in the 1960s, he is best known for his claims to have discovered more than 40 lost cities in Peru and is credited with bringing to light a number of Peru’s most important archeological sites, including Vilcabamba, the last refuge of the Incas during the Spanish conquest, and Gran Pajaten, which he named but did not discover.
Bochica is a figure in the religion of the Muisca, who inhabited the Altiplano Cundiboyacense during the arrival of the Spanish conquistadors in the central Andean highlands of present-day Colombia. He was the founding hero of their civilization, who according to legend brought morals and laws to the people and taught them agriculture and other crafts, including textiles.
Quetzalcoatl is a deity in Aztec culture and literature. Among the Aztecs, he was related to wind, Venus, Sun, merchants, arts, crafts, knowledge, and learning. He was also the patron god of the Aztec priesthood. He was one of several important gods in the Aztec pantheon, along with the gods Tlaloc, Tezcatlipoca and Huitzilopochtli. The two other gods represented by the planet Venus are Tlaloc and Xolotl.
Mormonism and Nicene Christianity have a complex theological, historical, and sociological relationship. Mormons express their doctrines using biblical terminology. They have similar views about the nature of Jesus Christ's atonement, bodily resurrection, and Second Coming as mainstream Christians. Nevertheless, most Mormons do not accept the doctrine of the Trinity as codified in the Nicene Creed of 325 and the Nicene-Constantinopolitan Creed of 381. Although Mormons consider the Protestant Bible to be holy scripture, they do not believe in biblical inerrancy. They have also adopted additional scriptures that they believe to have been divinely revealed to Joseph Smith, including the Book of Mormon, the Doctrine and Covenants, and the Pearl of Great Price. Mormons practice baptism and celebrate the sacrament of the Lord's Supper, but they also participate in other religious rituals. Mormons self-identify as Christians.
The Título de Totonicapán, sometimes referred to as the Título de los Señores de Totonicapán is the name given to a Kʼicheʼ language document written around 1554 in Guatemala. The Título de Totonicapán is one of the two most important surviving colonial period Kʼicheʼ language documents, together with the Popol Vuh. The document contains history and legend of the Kʼicheʼ people from their mythical origins down to the reign of their most powerful king, Kʼiqʼab.
Chiminigagua, Chiminichagua or Chimichagua was the supreme being, omnipotent god and creator of the world in the religion of the Muisca. The Muisca and their confederation were one of the four advanced civilizations of the Americas and developed their own religion on the Altiplano Cundiboyacense in the Andes.