Saturday, April 16, 2016

Geoglyphs of the Mind

Mining mythologies is one means to unearth imagination.

Understanding human civilizations is enriched by analyzing and interpreting artifacts, yet aspects of the human narrative are best expressed by less literal communication channels like art, or poetry.

In the closing stanza of Forgotten Home, Dejan Stojanović writes:
There is another alphabet
Whispering from every leaf,
Singing from every river,
Shimmering from every sky.
Stojanović' reminds me there'll always be something overlooked or left unimagined.

Few phenomena excite the imagination like geoglyphs — large-scale, ancient or contemporary impressions made on the landscape by rearranging found materials. The Atacama Giant is one of many examples of ancient geoglyphs.

The Atacama Giant
by Emilio Erazo-Fisher

The Atacama Giant likely represents a deity created by Atacama Desert inhabitants. Some time from AD 1000 to 1400, people intentionally and methodically arranged desert materials in contrasting lines that, from a distance, formed the impression of an anthropomorphic figure.

One can only imagine what our desert forebears were thinking.
It's enough for me to be sure that you and I exist at this moment.
― Gabriel Garcí­a Márquez

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