They create jagged jigsaws, delicately tendrilled frets, wide geometric blocks of it. One and then another Central American culture (Zapotecs, Aztecs, and more) use the stepped fret patterns in endless variety, scale, and medium. It stuns in at least one pyramid with a weight-bearing fret pattern made from stone so well-notched it needed no mortar. The design winks at us in masterfully carved stonework. Mitla shows abundant use of the stepped fret pattern. ![]() ![]() Images via Gianni Dagli Orti/Shutterstock, Stephanie Colasanti/Shutterstock, and Historia/Shutterstock. So, the pattern may not have been passed from one of these cultures to the other, but somehow there it is in Mexico, at the Mitla ruins from 900 BCE. The world is still a place where communication between disparate geographies-Central America, Greece, China-is unlikely. In the next leg of the Greek key journey, the pattern shows up in Central America around 900 BCE. The fret pattern has legs (and a hidden time machine). and see the same design snaking its way around a ceramic Chinese plate. The design is so deeply entrenched in China’s history that even now, more than two thousand years later, you can go to an old-school Chinese restaurant in the U.S. The pattern is also revealed centuries later on a scrap of wool trousers dating 800 BCE (the oldest pants in the world). ![]() A millennia later, Rolling Thunder motifs are painted on richly decorative Chinese caves from 1038-1227 BCE. Whichever ways the Chinese accented this design, once it shows up in their culture, the pattern never leaves.
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