Fingerprints of the Gods

by Graham Hancock

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  able to count a total of thirty-three angles, every one intermeshed

  faultlessly with a matching angle on an adjoining block. There were

  massive polygons and perfect ashlars with razor-sharp edges. There were

  also natural, unhewn boulders integrated into the overall design at a

  number of points. And there were strange and unusual devices such as

  the Intihuatana, the ‘hitching post of the sun’. This remarkable artefact

  consisted of an elemental chunk of bedrock, grey and crystalline, carved

  into a complex geometrical form of curves and angles, incised niches and

  external buttresses, surmounted at the centre by a stubby vertical prong.

  Jigsaw puzzle

  How old is Machu Picchu? The academic consensus is that the city could

  not have been built much earlier than the fifteenth century AD.9

  Dissenting opinions, however, have from time to time been expressed by

  a number of more daring but respectable scholars. In the 1930s, for

  example, Rolf Muller, professor of Astronomy at the University of

  Potsdam, found convincing evidence to suggest that the most important

  features of Machu Picchu possessed significant astronomical alignments.

  From these, through the use of detailed mathematical computations

  concerning star positions in the sky in previous millennia (which

  gradually alter down the epochs as the result of a phenomenon known as

  precession of the equinoxes), Muller concluded that the original layout of

  the site could only have been accomplished during ‘the era of 4000 BC to

  2000 BC’.10

  In terms of orthodox history, this was a heresy of audacious

  proportions. If Muller was right, Machu Picchu was not a mere 500 but

  could be as much as 6000 years old. This would make it significantly

  older than the Great Pyramid of Egypt (assuming, of course, that one

  accepted the Great Pyramid’s own orthodox dating of around 2500 BC).

  There were other dissenting voices concerning the antiquity of Machu

  Picchu, and most, like Muller, were convinced that parts of the site were

  thousands of years older than the date favoured by orthodox historians.11

  Like the big polygonal blocks that made up the walls, this was a notion

  9 The Ancient Civilizations of Peru, p. 163.

  10 Cited in Zecharia Sitchin, The Lost Realms, Avon Books, New York, 1990, p. 164.

  11 Another scholar, Maria Schulten de D'Ebneth, also worked with mathematical methods

  (as opposed to historical methods which are heavily speculative and interpretive). Her

  objective was to rediscover the ancient grid used to determine Machu Picchu's layout in

  relation to the cardinal points. She did this after first establishing the existence of a

  central 45° line. In the process she stumbled across something else: ‘The sub-angles

  that she calculated between the central 45° line and sites located away from it ...

  indicated to her that the earth's tilt ("obliquity") at the time this grid was laid out was

  close to 24° o’. This means that the grid was planned (according to her) 5125 years

  before her measurements were done in 1953; in other words in 3172 BC.’ The Last

  Realms, pp. 204-5.

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  that looked as though it might fit with other pieces of a jigsaw puzzle—in

  this case the jigsaw puzzle of a past that didn’t quite make sense any

  more. Viracocha was part of that same puzzle. All the legends said his

  capital had been at Tiahuanaco. The ruins of this great and ancient city

  lay across the border in Bolivia, in an area known as the Collao, twelve

  miles south of Lake Titicaca.

  We could get there, I calculated, in a couple of days, via Lima and La

  Paz.

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  Chapter 8

  The Lake at the Roof of the World

  La Paz, the capital city of Bolivia, nestles in the uneven bottom of a

  spectacular hole in the ground more than two miles above sea level. This

  plunging ravine, thousands of feet deep, was carved in some primeval

  age by a tremendous downrush of water that carried with it an abrasive

  tide of loose rocks and rubble.

  Provided by nature with such an apocalyptic setting, La Paz possesses a

  unique though slightly sleazy charm. With its narrow streets, dark-walled

  tenements, imposing cathedrals, garish cinemas and hamburger bars

  open till late, it generates an atmosphere of quirky intrigue which is

  oddly intoxicating. It’s hard going for the pedestrian, however, unless

  equipped with lungs like bellows, because the whole of the central

  district is built up and down the sides of precipitous hills.

  La Paz airport is almost 5000 feet higher than the city itself on the edge

  of the Altiplano—the cold, rolling uplands that are the dominant

  topographical feature of this region. Santha and I landed there well after

  midnight on a delayed flight from Lima. In the draughty arrivals hall we

  were offered coca tea in little plastic cups as a prophylactic against

  altitude sickness. After considerable delay and exertion, we extracted our

  luggage from customs, hailed an ancient American-made taxi, and

  clanked and rattled down towards the dim yellow lights of the city far

  below.

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  Lake Titicaca.

  Rumours of a cataclysm

  Around four o’clock the next afternoon we set off for Lake Titicaca in a

  rented jeep, fought our way through the capital’s incomprehensible

  permanent rush-hour traffic-jams, then drove up out of the skyscrapers

  and slums into the wide, clear horizons of the Altiplano.

  At first, still close to the city, our route took us through a zone of bleak

  suburbs and sprawling shantytowns where the sidewalks were lined with

  auto-repair shops and scrap yards. The more distance we put between

  ourselves and La Paz, however, the more attenuated the settlements

  became, until almost all signs of human habitation ceased. The empty,

  treeless, undulating savannahs, distantly bordered by the snow-covered

  peaks of the Cordillera Real, created an unforgettable spectacle of natural

  beauty and power. But there was also a feeling of otherworldliness about

  this place, which seemed to float above the clouds like an enchanted

  kingdom.

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  Although our ultimate destination was Tiahuanaco, we were aiming that

  night for the town of Copacabana on a promontory near the southern end

  of Lake Titicaca. To reach it we had to cross a neck of water by

  improvised car ferry at the fishing town of Tiquine. Then, with dusk

  descending, we followed the main highway, now little more than a narrow

  and uneven track, up a series of steep hairpin bends and on to the

  shoulder of a mountain spur. From this point a contrasting panorama

  unfolded: the dark, dark waters of the lake below appeared to lie at the

  edge of a limitless ocean drowned in sombre shadows, and yet the

  jagged peaks of the snowcapped mountains in the distance were still

  drenched in dazzling sunlight.

/>   From the very beginning Lake Titicaca seemed to me a special place. I

  knew that it lay some 12,500 feet above sea level, that the frontier

  between Peru and Bolivia passed through it, that it covered an area of

  3200 square miles and was 138 miles long by about 70 miles wide. I also

  knew it was deep, reaching almost 1000 feet in places, and had a

  puzzling geological history.

  Here are the mysteries, and some of the solutions that have been

  proposed:

  1 Though now more than two miles above sea level, the area around

  Lake Titicaca is littered with millions upon millions of fossilized sea

  shells. This suggests that at some stage the whole of the Altiplano was

  forced upwards from the sea-bed, perhaps as part of the general

  terrestrial rising that formed South America as a whole. In the process

  great quantities of ocean water, together with countless myriads of

  living marine creatures, were scooped up and suspended among the

  Andean ranges.1 This is thought to have happened not more recently

  than about 100 million years ago.2

  2 Paradoxically, despite the mighty antiquity of this event, Lake Titicaca

  has retained, until the present day, ‘a marine icthyofauna’3, in other

  words, though now located hundreds of miles from any ocean, its fish

  and crustacea feature many oceanic (rather than freshwater) types.

  Surprising creatures brought to the surface in fishermen’s nets have

  1 Professor Arthur Posnansky, Tiahuanacu: The Cradle of American Man, Ministry of

  Education, La Paz, Bolivia, 1957, volume III p. 192. See also Immanuel Velikovsky, Earth

  in Upheaval, Pocket Books, New York, 1977, pp. 77-8: ‘Investigation into the topography

  of the Andes and the fauna of Lake Titicaca, together with a chemical analysis of this

  lake and others on the same plateau, has established that the plateau was at one time at

  sea level, 12,500 feet lower than it is today ... and that its lakes were originally part of a

  sea-gulf ... Sometime in the past the entire Altiplano, with its lakes, rose from the

  bottom of the ocean ...’

  2 Personal communication with Richard Ellison of the British Geological Survey, 17

  September 1993. Ellison is the author of the BGS Overseas Geology and Mineral

  Resources Paper (No. 65) entitled The Geology of the Western Corriera and Altiplano.

  3 Tiahuanacu, III, p. 192.

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  included examples of Hippocampus (the seahorse).4 In addition, as one

  authority has pointed out, ‘The various species of Allorquestes

  ( hyalella inermis, etc.) and other examples of marine fauna leave no

  doubt that this lake in other periods was much saltier than today, or,

  more accurately, that the water which formed it was from the sea and

  that it was damned up and locked in the Andes when the continent

  rose.’5

  3 So much, then, for the events which may have created Lake Titicaca in

  the first place. Since its formation this great ‘interior sea’, and the

  Altiplano itself, has undergone several other drastic and dramatic

  changes. Of these by far the most notable is that the lake’s extent

  appears to have fluctuated enormously, indicated by the existence of

  an ancient strandline visible on much of the surrounding terrain.

  Puzzlingly, this strandline is not level but slopes markedly from north

  to south over a considerable horizontal distance. At the northernmost

  point surveyed it is as much as 295 feet higher than Titicaca; some

  400 miles farther south, it is 274 feet lower than the present level of

  the lake.6 From this, and much other evidence, geologists have

  deduced that the Altiplano is still gradually rising, but in an

  unbalanced manner with greater altitudes being attained in the

  northern part and lesser in the southern. The process involved here is

  thought to have less to do with changes in the level of Titicaca’s

  waters themselves (although such changes have certainly occurred)

  than with changes in the level of the whole terrain in which the lake is

  situated.7

  4 Much harder to explain in such terms, however, given the very long

  time periods major geological transformations are supposed to

  require, is irrefutable evidence that the city of Tiahuanaco was once a

  port, complete with extensive docks, positioned right on the shore of

  Lake Titicaca.8 The problem is that Tiahuanaco’s ruins are now

  marooned about twelve miles south of the lake and more than 100

  feet higher than the present shoreline.9 In the period since the city was

  built, it therefore follows that one of two things must have happened:

  either the level of lake has fallen greatly or the land on which

  Tiahuanaco stands has risen comparably.

  5 Either way it is obvious that there have been massive and traumatic

  4 Tiahuanacu, J. J. Augustin, New York, 1945, volume I, p. 28.

  5 Ibid.

  6 See, for example, H.S. Bellamy, Built Before the Flood: The Problem of the Tiahuanaco

  Ruins, Faber & Faber, London, 1943, p. 57.

  7 Ibid., p. 59.

  8 Tiahuanacu, III, pp. 192-6. See also Bolivia, Lonely Planet Publications, Hawthorne,

  Australia, 1992, p. 156.

  9 Ibid. See also Harold Osborne, Indians of the Andes: Aymaras and Quechuas,

  Routledge and Kegan Paul, London, 1952, p. 55.

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  physical changes. Some of these, such as the rise of the Altiplano from

  the floor of the ocean, certainly took place in remote geological ages,

  before the advent of human civilization. Others are not nearly so

  ancient and must have occurred after the construction of

  Tiahuanaco.10 The question, therefore, is this: when was Tiahuanaco

  built?

  The orthodox historical view is that the ruins cannot possibly be

  dated much earlier than AD 500.11 An alternative chronology also

  exists, however, which, although not accepted by the majority of

  scholars, seems more in tune with the scale of the geological

  upheavals that have occurred in this region. Based on the

  mathematical/astronomical calculations of Professor Arthur Posnansky

  of the University of La Paz, and of Professor Rolf Muller (who also

  challenged the official dating of Machu Picchu), it pushes the main

  phase of construction at Tiahuanaco back to 15,000 BC. This

  chronology also indicates that the city later suffered immense

  destruction in a phenomenal natural catastrophe around the eleventh

  millennium BC, and thereafter rapidly became separated from the

  lakeshore.12

  We shall be reviewing Posnansky’s and Muller’s findings in Chapter

  Eleven, findings which suggest that the great Andean city of Tiahuanaco

  flourished during the last Ice Age in the deep, dark, moonless midnight

  of prehistory.

  10 Earth In Upheaval, p. 76: ‘The conservative view among evolutionists and geologists is

  that mountain-making is a slow process, observable in minute changes, and that

  because it is a continuous process there never could have been spontaneous upliftings

  on a large scale. In the case of Tiahuanaco, however, the change in altitude apparently

  occurred after
the city was built, and this could not have been the result of a slow

  process ...’

  11 See, for example, Ian Cameron, Kingdom of the Sun God: A History of the Andes and

  Their People, Guild Publishing, London, 1990, pp. 48-9.

  12 Tiahuanacu II, p. 91 and I, p. 39.

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  Chapter 9

  Once and Future King

  During my travels in the Andes I had several times re-read a curious

  variant of the mainstream tradition of Viracocha. In this variant, which

  was from the area around Lake Titicaca known as the Collao, the deity

  civilizing-hero had been named Thunupa:

  Thunupa appeared on the Altiplano in ancient times, coming from the north with

  five disciples. A white man of august presence, blue-eyed, and bearded, he was

  sober, puritanical and preached against drunkenness, polygamy and war.1

  After travelling great distances through the Andes, where he created a

  peaceful kingdom and taught men all the arts of civilization,2 Thunupa

  was struck down and grievously wounded by a group of jealous

  conspirators:

  They put his blessed body in a boat of totora rush and set it adrift on Lake

  Titicaca. There ... he sailed away with such speed that those who had tried so

  cruelly to kill him were left behind in terror and astonishment—for this lake has no

  current ... The boat came to the shore at Cochamarca, where today is the river

  Desguardero. Indian tradition asserts that the boat struck the land with such force

  it created the river Desguardero, which before then did not exist. And on the water

  so released the holy body was carried many leagues away to the sea coast at Africa

  ...3

  Boats, water and salvation

  There are curious parallels here to the story of Osiris, the ancient

  Egyptian high god of death and resurrection. The fullest account of the

  original myth defining this mysterious figure is given by Plutarch4 and

  says that, after bringing the gifts of civilization to his people, teaching

  them all manner of useful skills, abolishing cannibalism and human

  sacrifice, and providing them with their first legal code, Osiris left Egypt

  and travelled about the world to spread the benefits of civilization to

  other nations as well. He never forced the barbarians he encountered to

  accept his laws, preferring instead to argue with them and to appeal to