THE GREAT WALL OF CHINA 4
GEMINI was YUMEN
Copyright © 2002 by Andis Kaulins

GEMINI At the Great Wall of China and the Silk Route Why does the Great Wall of China in its traditional length (without the extension recently found) - as will be demonstrated - start at what appears to be Sagittarius in the East and seem to end at what appears to be Gemini in the West? This is because these are the only two points where the Milky Way and ecliptic cross. The ecliptic is the path of the Sun - along which e.g. the modern signs of the "Zodiac" are distributed and along which the planets and Moon more or less move. This recognition of the special importance of the two crossings of the ecliptic and the Milky Way for ancient astronomy is not my discovery. Rather I have David B. Kelley to thank for it - based on his discussion of this phenomena in Maya and Chinese sources. GE-MINI (The Twins) =YU-MEN Gemini is the city Yumen Yumen marks Yumen-guan (Yumen Gate on the Great Wall) in Gansu province, China. Variant forms are Yümen, ancient Laojunmiao, Laoj-un-miao. It is Little known, but Yumen-guan also had its "twin gate" known as the Yang Guan. These gates on the Great Wall are at the position of Gemini next to Taurus the Bull in an astronomical context since Chinese legend states that at this pass Laozi "rode his black buffalo out of the Hexi Corridor into the oblivion of the Western Regions when he was disillusioned by the social reality". The black buffalo is Taurus the Bull and the rider is riding into the "Hexi-Corridor" of Gemini [the well of Gemini]. Yumen-guan was the "Jade Gate Pass" on the Silk Road (Silk Route) going West. As noted at http://www.ess.uci.edu/~oliver/silk.html "The description of this route to the west as the `Silk Road' is somewhat misleading. Firstly, no single route was taken; crossing Central Asia several different branches developed, passing through different oasis settlements. The routes all started from the capital in Changan, headed up the Gansu corridor, and reached Dunhuang on the edge of the Taklimakan. The northern route then passed through Yumen Guan (Jade Gate Pass) and crossed the neck of the Gobi desert to Hami (Kumul), before following the Tianshan mountains round the northern fringes of the Taklimakan. It passed through the major oases of Turfan and Kuqa before arriving at Kashgar, at the foot of the Pamirs. The southern route branched off at Dunhuang, passing through the Yang Guan and skirting the southern edges of the desert, via Miran, Hetian (Khotan) and Shache (Yarkand), finally turning north again to meet the other route at Kashgar. Numerous other routes were also used to a lesser extent; one branched off from the southern route and headed through the Eastern end of the Taklimakan to the city of Loulan, before joining the Northern route at Korla. Kashgar became the new crossroads of Asia; from here the routes again divided, heading across the Pamirs to Samarkand and to the south of the Caspian Sea, or to the South, over the Karakorum into India; a further route split from the northern route after Kuqa and headed across the Tianshan range to eventually reach the shores of the Caspian Sea, via Tashkent." [Lexiline Note: Note that Loulan (Lou-Lan) is Lop Nor (Lopnor), to which satellite pictures have "extended" the Great Wall.] At http://www.china.org.cn/ it is stated: "[W]hat is known today as the Old Silk Road came into existence. It started from Chang'an (present-day Xi'an) and Luoyang as two separate routes, continuing through the Yumen and Yangguan passes respectively, extending westward parallel to the northern and southern edges of the Taklimakan Desert, further crossing into the Congling Mountains and Central and West Asia, and, finally, reaching Egypt on the southern bank of the Mediterranean, and Greece and Rome on the northern bank." For an account of a journey ca. 400 A.D. (a thousand years prior to Marco Polo) in the region of the Great Wall of China and beyond, please go to Record of Buddhistic Kingdoms: Fa-Hien [Fa-Hsien] Translated by James Legge at Record of Buddhistic Kingdoms This record of the travels of Fa-Hien viz. Fa-Hsien is a fantastic historical account of peoples and places in this region. The above material thus gives us a terminological and geographic basis for further discussion and shows how farflung ancient contacts between Egypt, the Fertile Crescent, India and China were. Although the Great Wall of China - the world wonder as it now stands - is of course a fantastic achievement of the Chinese people themselves, the progenitors of the idea may have come from the West - through trade and migration. We now continue to Orion and the rest of the Milky Way. Go to Orion, Taurus The Hyades and the Great Wall of China