Ancient Greek Kite-Making Technology

In the article, Folklore of the Guatemalan: Giant Kite-Flying Event there was a village in Guatemala which flew giant kites every year until the earthquake destroyed their village on February 4, 1976. It was said that there are still kites being flown in Honduras, Central America, but the book that gives this information is dated 1975.

With research in Maya still being done in these areas, there is no excitement about this event in any of the seminars I have attended since 1994. No one seems to remember the giant kites to the gods. But what if they were originally kites "OF MAGIC" The kites in question were of an immense size; some up to nine meters in diameter.  The one shown here has twenty ribs. Sixteen are radii. On this particular kite, there is a square made up of four sides at the outer edges in order to strength the circle.

The total of twenty ribs is interesting because it calls to mind another builder of a sail-driven craft from ages past. His name was Ulysses.

It always fascinated me since I also had read the story of the Argonauts and Jason's encounter with Circe, the witch of Ulysses's travels. She had known a sudden deluge which stripped the land clear of both houses and vegetation. This event left strange giant animals and fish on the bare land that in turn, reminded me of the murals of Bonampak: the lobster-headed men with giant claws shown on the walls who made a lot of noise with drums and horns.

I always thought there was a connection. The only problem was that Ulysses was not really a Greek story. It came from the east. India is targeted as the origin of this tale. And sure, enough there is a similar story of such a sailor, with a different names. However, the tale is also found in Japan as an unknown location known as Kusaka (Ideograph) "Shield Cove" or (Greek) Schería on the Western Sea. Ulysses landed there after leaving the island of Calypso on the craft he built with her help.

It is the craft of Ulysses that is so interesting. Twenty logs he cut down, trimmed and shaped in four days. Apparently Calypso was busy joining pieces of cloth for a sail during that time, because when she brought it to Ulysses, the stays, halyards and sheets (lines that hold the sails) were also ready to connect. What is wrong with this scenario?

For a grown man to cut down twenty trees in four days and also trim and shape them is an impossible feat. But twenty light-weight saplings to make a kite large enough for a man IS possible. The ship building techniques of the Egyptians1 were probably inserted into the Odyssey as necessary for eurasian listeners's comprehension in an area where there was no bamboo, It was probably not part of the original text. It was a very long distance where another adventurer actually created a craft for crossing the sea from light-weight bamboo.

Is it possible that this is a story about the construction of a giant kite which carried him OVER the waves of the sea (not on top of them), to the island of Schería which could be seen from above as a shield. Such a form could not be seen nor recognized from a boat. But it could be both seen and described as such from a short distance above the earth.

The question is "Do we read ALL of the words, or do we sift out the words that clash with others in the same text? Did the person called Ullyses (Odysseus) actually make the first-known kite in the Americas: a custom carried on for centuries by the natives of the same area? And, since the story of Shield Island is known in many parts of the world, where did this adventurer actually come from? There are no kite-flying events in Greece, nor is it important in Europe, except for Leonardo da Vinci's experiments with gliders. Such gliders were known to the Maoris of New Zealand 2 and to the Maurya (Ashoka) dynasty of India. 3
Note: 1: Stanford, W. B., Ltt.D. (ed.) (1984) The Oydssey, V, p. 300, notes 246-261.
Note: 2:Hammond, Rev. R. G. (1924) The Story of Aotea. Christchurch, Australia: Lyttelton Times Company, Ltd. Printers,
Note: 3:Bhandarkar, Prof Devadatta Ranikridna. (1955) Asoka, (Ashoka). Third ed., Calcutta: University of Calcutta, and Eggermont, Dr. Pierre H. L. (1956) The Chronology of the Reign of Asoka Moriya, (Ashoka). Leiden: E. J. Brill, .
Grunfel, Frederic, V. (ed.) (1975) Games of the World: How to Make Them; How to Play Them; How They Came to Be, New York: Ballantine Books, Photo by Wil van Sambeek Collection, Museum of Ethnology, Breda, p. 220.

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