America: Fear of the Dark II

'It seemed to me then, as I overlooked the mathematical city of the gods from the summit of the Pyramid of the Moon, that our species could have been afflicted with some terrible amnesia and that the dark period so blithely and dismissively referred to as 'prehistory' might turn out to conceal unimagined truths about our own past.'[1]

With their superior architecture, and the advanced mathematical knowledge involved one would imagine that the high civilizations of the Americas would also have been advanced in many other ways. Curiously however, the cultures of those about which we know are accepted to be fairly unremarkable. Adrian Gilbert sums the mystery of the Maya up in the beginning of the book he wrote with Maurice Cotterell, The Mayan Prophecies:

The pattern that is emerging is of a people very different from ourselves. Unlike us the Maya had few personal possessions other than the bare necessities of life. They cultivated the earth using the simplest of tools to grow maize and a few other staples. Meanwhile their gorgeously attired rulers performed strange and painful rituals on themselves to ensure the fertility of the land. It was a stratified society, in which both rulers and peasants knew their place, but there was one great difference between it and the sort of Dark Age societies that were its contemporaries in Europe: the Maya were expert astronomers.[2]

The Maya's advanced astro-calendrical knowledge puzzled a leading authority on the archeology of Central America. In 1954 J. Eric Thompson asked:

"What mental quirks led the Maya intelligensia to chart the heavens, yet fail to grasp the principle of the wheel; to visualize eternity, as no other semi-civilized people have ever done, yet ignore the short step from corbelled to true arch; to count in millions, yet never learn to weigh a sack of corn?"

The Maya used a sophisticated calendrical system to plot the earth's rotation around the sun, one which is widely recognized to be more accurate than the famous Gregorian calendar used in Europe from 1582 to the present day. Their calendars plotted the time taken by the moon to orbit the earth with an accuracy that can only be matched by the finest of modern methods. They were also skilled in predicting solar and lunar eclipses. Unlike the Ancient Greeks, but like the Ancient Egyptians, the Maya understood that Venus was both the morning star and the evening star, which they also ingeniously incorporated into their calendar. The combination of their interlocking systems ensured that the calendar was virtually error-free, over vast expanses of time.


The interlocking Maya calendrical system

The most amazing part of the Mayan calendrical system is the so-called 'Long Count'. The function of the Long Count was to record the elapse of time since the beginning of the current Great Cycle.

'They believed that they were living in the fifth age of the sun; that prior to the creation of modern men there had been four previous races and four previous ages. These had all been destroyed in great cataclysms, leaving few survivors behind to tell the tale. According to Mayan chronology, the present age started on 12 August 3114 BC and is to end on AD 22 December 2012. At that time the earth as we know it is again to be destroyed by catastrophic earthquakes.'[2]

The Maya themselves were quick to point out that they had received their calendrical system, more or less intact, from an earlier culture called the Olmecs, who had used it over a thousand years before them. Little is known of the Olmecs except that they appeared from nowhere, carried out advanced engineering works, and left an artistic legacy that involved the (quarrying, transporting and) carving of massive basalt heads depicting a bewildering variety of clearly negroid heads, some of them weighing more than twenty tons.

The Olmecs also left behind carved stele of bearded men. Nobody knows when the heads were carved. Indians don't grow beards, and there is no further evidence that sub-Saharan Africans reached the New World anytime before Columbus. Most of the giant negroid heads had further been meticulously buried in pits with other, ritually mutilated artifacts. Pieces of charcoal found in the pits were carbon-dated to between 1500 and 1100 BC, but as Hancock points out, that only tells us the age of the charcoal.

The question is then, where did the Olmecs get the calendrical system they passed on to the Maya from? And if they did get it from some other, older civilization, who were they to devise such a sophisticated calendar, and what drove them to such lengths to do so?

To delve further into the source of the Olmec-Mayan calendrical system we must turn to the oral tradition and mythology of the pre-conquest Indians. We must turn to remains of the tradition that, despite having being devastated in the religious conquest of Mexico, is emphatic about the the source of Mayan knowledge. According to the Spanish chronicler Las Casas:

'The natives affirmed that in ancient times there came to Mexico twenty men, the chief of whom was called Kukulkan ... They wore flowing robes and sandals on their feet, they had long beards and their heads were bare ... Kukulkan instructed the people in the arts of peace and caused various important edifices to be built ...'

Juan de Torquemada recorded an even more specific tradition concerning the bearded strangers:

'They were men of good carriage, well-dressed, in long robes of black linen, open in the front, and without capes, cut low at the neck, with short sleeves that did not come to the elbow ... These followers of Quetzalcoatl were men of great knowledge and cunning artists in all kinds of fine work.'

According to the Popul Vuh, these were the first men, who had handed gifts of civilization to the Mayan forefathers. Whether Kukulkan, Quetzalcoatl and their Andean counterpart Viracocha are the same individual is a matter debated, but it certainly appears they were connected or of the same group of civilizers. They were:

' ... endowed with intelligence; they saw and instantly they could see far; they succeeded in seeing; they succeeded in knowing all that there is in the world. The things hidden in the distance they saw without first having to move ... Great was their wisdom; their sight reached to the forests, the rocks, the lakes, the seas, the mountains, and the valleys. In truth, they were admirable men ... They were able to know all, and they examined the four corners, the four points of the arch of the sky, and the round face of the earth.'

Quetzalcoatl was depicted as having brought to Mexico all the skills and sciences necessary to create a civilized life, thus ushering in a golden age. He was believed to have introduced the knowledge of writing to Central America, to have invented the calendar, and to have been a master builder and teacher of the secrets of masonry and architecture. Quetzalcoatl was the father of mathematics, metallurgy, and astronomy and was said to have 'measured the earth'. He also founded productive agriculture, and was reported to have discovered and introduced corn, taught the people the mysteries of the properties of plants and was the patron healers, diviners and craftsmen. He forbade the grisly practice of human sacrifice during his period of ascendancy in Mexico, which held until he once again left, when the bloody rituals were reintroduced with a vengeance.[1]

At first it sounds like all the stories of the 'civilizer' gods we have read about in Egyptian, Sumerian, and Hindu mythology, and it becomes tempting to write the attributes of Quetzalcoatl off as another 'myth'. Yet something about the story arrests this temptation. In the words of the Mayan academic, Sylvanus Griswold Morley:

"The great god Kukulkan, or Feathered Serpent, was the Mayan counterpart of the Aztec Quetzalcoatl, the Mexican god of light, learning and culture. In the Maya pantheon he was regarded as having been the great organizer, the founder of cities, the former of laws and the teacher of the calendar. Indeed his attributes and life history are so human that it is not improbable that he may have been an actual historical character, some great lawgiver and organizer, the memory of whose benefactions lingered long after death, and whose personality was eventually deified."

'There is a mystery still unsolved on the plateau of Lake Titicaca, which, if the stones could speak, would reveal a story of deepest interest. Much of the difficulty in the solution to this mystery is caused by the nature of the region, in the present day, where the enigma still defies explanation.'

So wrote Sir Clemens Markham in 1910.

'Such a region is only capable of sustaining a scanty population of hardy mountaineers and laborers. The mystery consists in the existence of the ruins of a great city at the southern side of the lake, the builders being entirely unknown. The city covered a large area, built by highly skilled masons, and with the use of enormous stones.'[6]

A more modern source describes the following;

'Anyone who attempts the 4,350 meter climb up the rough winding road to Lake Titicaca in the Peruvian Andes gasps as the thin mountain air evades their lungs. But the struggle is worth it, for at the summit lies a mysterious lake. Only the graceful reed boats of the native people who still fish its depths and the restless winds of the past disturb the calm surface of this, the highest major lake in the world. The Inca claim that their ancestors came here in the remote past to construct the great city of Tiahuanaco with its massive Temple of the Sun. The city was built from massive boulders, comparable to those of the Egyptian Pyramids. But the construction is incomplete, as if it had been abruptly abandoned.'[3]

When Graham Hancock visited Lake Titicaca he was intrigued to see that the reed boats of the local Indians looked exactly like those he had seen in Egypt; local Indians declared that the design had been given to them by the Viracocha people.

'The city of Tiahuanaco was once a port, as is revealed by its vast docks - one wharf big enough to take hundreds of ships. The port is now twelve miles south of the lake and more than a hundred feet higher. The old port is located at a place called Puma Punku (Puma Gate), and dozens of huge blocks lying around in chaos indicate that it had been subject to some earthquake or other disturbance.'[4]

Just as in Egypt, Hancock was astonished by the sheer size of the building stones, many 30 feet long and 15 feet wide. One of the construction stones weighed 440 tons - more than twice as much as the gargantuan stones of the Sphinx Temple in Giza. Accounts of how the city was built in a single night and another of how the stones had been transported through the air by the 'sound of trumpets' have come from Spanish chroniclers who had recorded the traditions of the Incas.

None have spent more time or effort studying Tiahuanaco's ruins than a Polish researcher, Arthur Posnansky, who spent almost 50 years at the site. He writes:

'At the present time, the plateau of the Andes is inhospitable and almost sterile. With the present climate, it would not have been suitable in any period as the asylum for great human masses' of the 'most important prehistoric centre of the world.' Endless agricultural terraces of the people who lived in this region in pre-Inca days can still be recognized. 'Today this region is at a very great height above sea level. In remote periods it was lower.'

The terraces rise to a height of 15,000 feet, twenty-five hundred feet above Tiahuanacu, and still higher, up to 18,400 feet above sea level, or to the present line of eternal snow on Illimani.[5]

It was while studying the astronomical alignment of the Temple of the Sun that Posnansky came to the remarkable conclusion that it had been built in 15,000 BC. The estimate stunned his academic colleagues, who maintained it was built in AD 500. Posnansky was soon written off and derided as a crank. A later study by the high-powered team of the German Astronomical Commission, who didn't concern themselves with the further implications of the findings, confirmed after three years' study that the Temple of the Sun was an observatory, and concluded that Posnansky's figure of 15,000 BC was well within the bounds of possibility. In making his peace with the academic establishment, Posnansky later revised the possible date to 10,500 BC.

Archeologists continue to dismiss the notion as a fantasy. 'It is simply not possible, in their view, for a civilization to have existed at such an early date. This would be four thousand years older than Sumeria (the 'first' civilization of world archeology). Posnansky's research has consequently been ignored and his calculations have never been tested by other researchers.'[3]

Posnansky's view has been given a recent boost by the idea that the Sphinx of Giza may be much older than the proposed beginning of Egyptian civilization. Whatever the case, the fact that a people built a vast port using cyclopean stones 4,350 meters up in the mountains should also strike us as somewhat mysterious. In a book called Moon, Myths and Man, the author Bellamy may help explain this. He writes:

'Near Lake Titicaca we find a very interesting phenomenon: an ancient strand-line which is almost 12,000 feet above sea level. It is easily verifiable as an ancient littoral (coast line) because calcareous deposits of algae have painted a conspicuous white band upon the rocks, and because shells and shingle are littered about there. What is even more remarkable is that on this strand line are situated the cyclopean ruins of the town of Tiahuanaco, enigmatic remains which show five distinct landing-places, harbours with moles, and so on, while a canal leads far inland.'

There are two credible theories regarding Tiahuanaco's altitude, and Charles Darwin himself pondered them long. Either the oceans were once two miles above the present sea-level, or the Andes themselves have risen more than two miles. The presence of sea-creatures such as sea horses in Lake Titicaca leave no doubt that it was once part of the sea. The consensus amongst geologists appears to be that the Andes have risen. Immanuel Velikovsky's Earth in Upheaval argues exactly this convincingly, and sums up:

Sometime in the remote past the entire Altiplano with it's lakes rose from the bottom of the ocean. At some other time point a city was built there and terraces were laid out on the elevation around it; then in another disturbance the mountains were thrust up and the area became uninhabitable.[5]

If this is right Tiahuanaco was being constructed as a port before the Andes rose above sea level - at sometime between 15,000 BC and 10,500 BC. This is, of course, a suggestion that has frequently given orthodox archeologists a fit. But mythology backs the extreme age and catastrophic circumstances of the geological evidence. The tradition comes from the Aymara, who still live on the shores of Lake Titicaca.

The Aymara are a very ancient and proud race. More than two and a half million people speak the Aymara language, raise llamas, and grow potatoes on the lake's shore - just as their ancestors have done for thousands of years. Even the renowned Inca Empire borrowed heavily from their ancient customs of sun worship, agriculture, and the use of llamas.

The Aymara tell of strange events at Titicaca after the Great Flood. Strangers attempted to build a great city on the lake. An Aymara myth retold by a Spanish visitor tells of how their ancestors crossed over Lake Titicaca and with their warriors " ... waged such a war on the people of which I speak that he killed them all."

Surviving the Great Flood and coming to build their city on the shores of Lake Titicaca, the strangers were suddenly engaged in a war with another cataclysmic force - the hand of fellow man. Whether it was before or after this time that the earthquake which interrupted Tiahuanaco's
completion struck remains a mystery, but interrupted it was, just as the magnificent monolith of the Gateway of the Sun nearby was left unfinished. Something had interrupted the sculptor and snapped the gate in two - and the scattered stone blocks made it obvious that it was an earthquake.

The only other myths relating to the period of 15,000 BC to 10,500 BC - and that coincide with global cataclysms - infringe on possibly the most contentious of subjects for archeologists, Egyptologists, historians, anthropologists, and much of the the rest of the academic establishment - the myths of an advanced maritime culture which lost its homeland in a long series of violent global catastrophes. A people whose origins lay in the World Ocean, 'beyond the Pillars of Hercules.'

Let me leave with the haunting impression Hancock shares with of us regarding the ancient past as he stood atop the Pyramid of the Sun at Teotihuacan, Mexico:

'What is prehistory, after all, if not a time forgotten - a time for which we have no records? What is prehistory if not an epoch of impenetrable obscurity through which our ancestors passed but about which we have no conscious remembrance? It was out of this epoch of obscurity, configured in mathematical code along astronomical and geodetic lines, that Teotihuacan with all its riddles was sent down to us. And out of that same epoch came the great Olmec sculptures, the inexplicably precise and accurate calendar the Mayas inherited from their predecessors, the inscrutable geoglyphs of Nazca, the mysterious Andean city of Tiahuanaco ... and so many other marvels of which we do not know the provenance.

It is almost as though we have awakened into the daylight of history from a long and troubled sleep, and yet continue to be disturbed by the faint but haunting echoes of our dreams ...'[1]

CONTINUE

[Apocalypse Aerie] [The Einstein Connection] [Ancient Maps] [Earth Crust Displacement] [Myths of Catastrophism] [History & Science in Myth] [Egypt; The Call of the Sphinx] [India; A Cradle for Civilization] [America; Fear of the Dark] [World Ocean; Path to Atlantis] [Precession; Warning of the Ancients] [Epilogue & Links]
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Copyright © Marc Bergvelt. 1998-2002. All Rights Reserved.

CLICK BACK ON BROWSER TO RETURN TO FOOTNOTE
[1] Graham Hancock, Fingerprints of the Gods, Mandarin, 1995.
[2] Adrian Gilbert & Maurice Cotterell, The Mayan Prohecies, Element Books, 1996.
[3] Rand & Rose Flem-Ath When the Sky Fell, Orion, 1995.
[4] Colin Wilson, From Atlantis to the Spinx, Virgin Books, 1997.
[5] Immanuel Velikovsky, Earth in Upheaval. 1955.
[6] Clemens Markham, The Incas of Peru. 1910.