Feature - The Gungan Sacred Place

Nestled between the foothills of the Gallo Mountains and the edge of the Lianorm Swamp on Naboo, lies a hidden ruined temple complex. The humans on Naboo are completely unaware of the existence of this site, as the Gungans have kept it a closely guarded secret. It is held in the highest esteem by the Gungan peoples and is a site of veneration. In times of danger, the Sacred Place is used as a safe hideout.

The site consists of walled ruins, staircases, and huge sculpted heads. What we have seen of the Sacred Place in Star Wars Episode 1: The Phantom Menace and the EU is only a small part of an allegedly much larger complex. The clearing where Queen Amidala and her group met and joined forces with Boss Nass seems to have been a meeting point for the temple complex, with many of the sculpted heads located there. EU literature states that the humans were only allowed into here and no further.

At the time of the Phantom Menace (32 BSW4), the temple complex is slowly being claimed by the swamplands. Quite a few of the sculpted heads are partially submerged in water, and the local flora is gaining hold on the stonework.

EU literature focuses most of it attention on the sculpted heads. Below are some of the comments made about them and the species that built them.

The builders of the Sacred Place temple complex and the sculpted heads, known as the elder species, have vanished from Naboo. Several theories have been given.

1) The elder species existed at the time when the planetary make-up was still volatile and extremely dangerous. Plasmic energy found in underground chambers was extremely unstable and uncontrollable (though both the Naboo humans and Gungans have developed systems to control and utilize the plasma in recent times). The elder species was destroyed in such a cataclysm and are now extinct. Gungans as a species were disunited until the time of Boss Gallo, three millennia before Star Wars episode 1: The Phantom Menace. As the Gungans have no written record of the elder species, there civilisation definitely predates Gungan unification under Boss Gallo. How far back the elder species' civilisation goes before that time is unknown and open to speculation.

2) Naboo faced invasion from an outside force and the elder species were destroyed.

3) Having reached a certain stage of development, the elder species departed Naboo to walk amongst the stars, never to return.

Description of the sculpted heads
[See image below >>Look<<]

The head is humanoid, of a currently unidentified species. The facial expression holds a dignified grace.
The eyes - on all the sculptures they appear to be closed. The eyelids are clearly represented as being shut together. This can mean one of two things - they represent a person either asleep or a person meditating.
The face - is criss-crossed by about five vertical and at least two horizontal lines, forming a grid pattern.
The upper head - either covered by a highly decorative hairstyle or a headdress with an elaborate band dividing the hair in two.
The ears - are covered by another decorative side panel.
The engraved circular ring on the forehead - is the most interesting feature of the sculpture. Does it represent a third eye? Or is it a piece of decorative jewellery, like the bindi of the Hindu culture of sub continental India? Hindus wear two significant symbols, bindi and tilaka (means "mark"), on a particular spot on their forehead - between the two eyes known as the Ajna chakra, the Spiritual eye, or the Third eye. In ancient times in India this spot was believed to be the major nerve of the human body. The red tilaka is a Hindu mark, stating that the person is a follower of Hinduism. It is also associated with marriage and denotes that a woman is married. Bindis have been incorporated into Western culture as a fashion accessory and its religious significance ignored.

Images (from left): [1] Example of bindi [2] example of tilaka [3] Buddha Head (Thailand - of the Sukhothai Period, 1298-1438) [4] Stone head, Angkor temple complex, Cambodia [5] Olmec sculpted head (Anthropology Museum, Veracruz University, Jalapa.) [6] Sculpted head from the Gungan Sacred Place.

In some EU literature it has been suggested that the elder species, through their depiction of the sculpted heads, were actually adept in the ways of the Force. The pose of eyes closed is used in Earth cultures to depict meditation such as in the Buddha statues of Asia. The purpose behind these sculptures is enigmatic. Did they represent the elder race physically or were they an idealised religious icon made to honour their gods? Either could be true.

The sculpted heads are not only found in the Lianorm Swamp or Gungan Sacred Place. They can be found on the edges of the Great Grass Plains, where the Grand Gungan Army met the Trade Federation droid army in a devastating battle to reclaim Naboo from hostile invaders (32 BSW4).

I have looked through all the EU literature that I can find, fiction and non-fiction, and have found no references to background material used in designing the Gungan Sacred Place for Star Wars Episode 1: Phantom Menace. I would have liked to provide a quote, one like George Lucas' description of using Art Nouveau as the basis for the design of Otoh Gunga. No such luck. So instead, I will attempt to break down what I believe are the real-life sources for the design of the Gungan Sacred Place and its sculpted heads.

The Sacred Place is reminiscent of temple complex at Angkor, Cambodia, built over the period from 879 AD to 1191AD at the height of the Khmer civilization. The temples and sculpture are similar in design. Part of this sacred complex is covered in jungle flora.

Images (from left): [1] Temple of Ta Prohm, Angkor, Cambodia [2] Stone Heads of Bodhisattva Avilokiteshvara, Bayon temple, Angkor, Cambodia

Some architectural sculptures from the Angkor temple complex, have the similar "mediation" pose of eyes closed that the sculpted heads from the Gungan Sacred Place have. The LucasFilm designers may well have taken this facial expression from the sculptures from Angkor purposely.

Visually, the Gungan Sacred Place does resemble the Angkor temple complex to some extent, but it may well have been based on the jungle temples of the Pre-Hispanic civilisations of Central America. These include -

Olmecs - Dominated the costal plain along the Gulf of Mexico from 1200 BC to 400 BC
Maya - Golden age from 250 AD to 900 AD
Toltecs - ruled central Mexico between 900 AD and 1200 AD, and destroyed the main cultural and trade city of Teotihuacan, 'City of the Gods', around 750 AD
Aztecs - settled the area of present-day Mexico City around 1200 AD, built the city of Tenochtitlan on Lake Texcoco, and were conquered by the Spanish led by General Hernan Cortes, between 1519 AD and 1521 AD.

Images (from left): [1] & [2] Mayan city of Bonampak, Chiapas, South Mexico (buildings of the Late Classic period 300-900 AD) [3] Yaxchilan (located on the banks of the river Usumacinta River) , Chiapas, South Mexico (buildings of the Late Classic period 300-900 AD)

Again, these civilisations have temple complexes in a jungle environment, and some of the above are also the basis for Sith Temples that appear elsewhere in the EU. As there are no references to the design of the Gungan Sacred Place in EU non-fiction literature, apart from a few behind the scenes images, any of the above and other real-life civilisations and their architecture could have been used. Art Nouveaux was the basis of the design for the Gungan city of Otoh Gunga is documented, and shows that George Lucas likes his Star Wars civilisations to have some grounding in our world so that the audience can relate to these new and alien worlds. I think this is something that makes Star Wars so successful and stands out from other Science Fiction films where the directors try and make something so alien that the bulk of the audience cannot associate with what they are seeing.

The Gungan Sacred Place provides a fascinating glimpse of an earlier civilisation on Naboo, one venerated by the native Gungans, and one which alludes to there being Force-users on the planet over three millennia before the Gungans became united.

If you are interested in learning more about the civilisations, fictional and real, discussed in this article, please take a look at the web resources and offline bibliography located >>here<<

For an attempt at unravelling the mystery of the Gungan Sacred Place, please take a look at my fan fiction, "Jar Jar Binks and the secrets of the Gungan Sacred Place" [Read Story] and then the discussion about how I reached my conclusions [Read Notes].