What is the significance of the Far Horizons logo?
Have you wondered about that image of the little guy with the TV in his stomach that is the Far Horizons logo?
Let me tell you the story…
The Mimbres people lived a thousand years ago in several hundred small villages of no more than 200 inhabitants each in what is now southern New Mexico. Contemporary with the Pueblo people to the north in Mesa Verde and Chaco Canyon, this culture would be of little interest were it not for their production of an exquisite kind of painted pottery. The artists created deep bowls as a surface on which to paint dynamic imagery, many of highly stylized animals and human figures most likely relating to the Mimbres life and religion, placed within framed picture spaces.
The discovery of Mimbres pottery in the early part of the 1900s led to research and digs, but not all of them were scientific. A growing market for these lovely ceramic vessels led to a flood of skilled looters who used bulldozers to strip-mine sites in search of pots that could be sold to collectors. Virtually all these village sites are now destroyed.
When I started Far Horizons thirty years ago, I wanted a logo that would depict human culture, history and archaeology. After many months of search for the idea image, I chose a Mimbres vessel. The little ‘TV’ that’s in the figure’s stomach is called a ‘kill hole’. The Mimbres buried their dead with these pots. Before being placed in the burial pit, however, a pointed tool was used to symbolically ‘kill’ a bowl by punching a hole through its base. It is postulated that this might have been to release the soul of the deceased.
The expertise of the Mimbres potters is considered superior to that of any other Native American potters.
