Page 249 - Fingerprints of the Gods by Graham Hancock

Graham Hancock – FINGERPRINTS OF THE GODS

other words, is that certain central imagery should survive and continue
to be passed on in retellings, however far these may drift from the
original storyline.
An example of such drift (coupled with the retention of essential
imagery and information) is found among the Cherokees, whose name for
the Milky Way (our own galaxy) is ‘Where the Dog Ran’. In ancient times,
according to Cherokee tradition, the ‘people in the South had a corn mill’,
from which meal was stolen again and again. In due course the owners
discovered the thief, a dog, who ‘ran off howling to his home in the
North, with the meal dropping from his mouth as he ran, and leaving
behind a white trail where now we see the Milky Way, which the Cherokee
call to this day ... “Where the Dog Ran”.’
30
In Central America, one of the many myths concerning Quetzalcoatl
depicts him playing a key role in the regeneration of mankind after the
all-destroying flood that ended the Fourth Sun. Together with his dog-
headed companion Xolotl, he descends into the underworld to retrieve
the skeletons of the people killed by the deluge. This he succeeds in
doing, after tricking Miclantechuhtli, the god of death, and the bones are
brought to a place called Tamoanchan. There, like corn, they are milled
into a fine meal on a grindstone. Upon this ground meal the gods then
release blood, thus creating the flesh of the current age of men.
31
Santillana and von Dechend do not think that the presence of a canine
character in both the above variants of the myth of the cosmic mill is
likely to be accidental. They point out that Kullervo, the Finnish Hamlet, is
also accompanied by ‘the black dog Musti’. Likewise, after his return to
32
his estates in Ithaca, Odysseus is first recognized by his faithful dog,
33
and as anyone who has been to Sunday school will remember, Samson is
associated with foxes (300 of them to be precise ), which are members
34
of the dog family. In the Danish version of the Amleth/Hamlet saga,
‘Amleth went on and a wolf crossed his path amid the thicket.’ Last but
35
not least an alternative recension of the Kullervo story from Finland has
the hero (rather weirdly) being ‘sent to Esthonia to bark under the fence;
he barked one year ...’
36
Santillana and von Dechend are confident that all this ‘doggishness’ is
purposive: another piece of the ancient code, as yet unbroken,
persistently tapping out its message from place to place. They list these
and many other canine symbols among a series of ‘morphological

30 James Mooney, ‘Myths of the Cherokee’, Washington, 1900, cited in Hamlet’s Mill, pp.
249, 389; Jean Guard Monroe and Ray A. Williamson, They Dance in the Sky: Native
American Star Myths, Houghton Mifflin Co., Boston, 1987, pp. 117-18.
31 The Gods and Symbols of Ancient Mexico and the Maya, p. 70.
32 Cited in Hamlet’s Mill, p. 33.
33 Homer, The Odyssey, Book 17.
Judges, 15:4.
34
35 Saxo Grammaticus, in Hamlet’s Mill, p. 13.
36 Ibid., p. 31.

247