I’ve found the Sipapuni!
"What’s the Sipapuni?" you ask.
Well–that’s it! Right there! In the middle of the picture. The reddish round thing on the edge of the river. Has a little black dot in the center of it.
"Okay, but can I have a more informative answer?" you ask.
Sure. The Sipapuni is a natural formation on the Little Colorado River, about four miles upstream from where it intersects with the Colorado River. It’s in the Grand Canyon, though it’s just outside Grand Canyon National Park.
The Sipapuni is a travertine dome, which means that it’s a dome made of calcium carbonate (think: limestone)–usually layered–and formed from spring water, particularly the water of a hot spring. That black dot in the center of the Sipapuni is the spring, and the reason it’s a different color than the surrounding land is because of minerals in the spring water that leave orange and yellow deposits.
"Okay, but why is the Sipapuni important and why does it have a name–whereas so many travertine domes don’t?"
Because the Sipapuni is an enormously important location in the folklore of several American Indian tribes, particularly the Hopi and the Zuni.
According to both of these tribes, the Sipapuni is the location from which man emerged into this world. In other words, it’s their equivalent of the Garden of Eden.
According to both tribes (though the details vary), the beings that eventually emerged into the world went through a series of other worlds before climbing up out of the Sipapuni into ours.
In Hopi folklore, this is the fourth world. Things weren’t going so good in the third world, and so they found a way to climb up into a new, largely uninhabited world and became the human race.
In Zuni folklore, humans passed through a series of four caves before emerging through the Sipapuni, making this the fifth world.
Other tribes also believe that humans emerged from a site in the Grand Canyon but do not identify it with the Sipapuni, claiming that the site has been lost.
The idea that a body of people have an identifiable Eden that you can go see with your own eyes (though they don’t want you to do that since the site is considered sacred) is something I find fascinating.
If the early part of the book of Genesis were to be taken literally, you could get a rough fix on Eden’s location, but not with this kind of precision–and you certainly can’t find it today with Google’s satellite imagery.
HERE’S ANOTHER PICTURE OF THE SIPAPUNI WITH LATITUDE & LONGITUDE MEASUREMENTS.
HERE’S A HOPI CREATION ACCOUNT FEATURING THE SIPAPUNI.
Having discussed where Hopi and Zuni Eden is, sometime soon I’ll have to tell you about where Zuni Heaven is.
