Fingerprints of the Gods

  two invisible dimensions—a door between nowhere and nothing. The

  stonework was of exceptionally high quality and authorities agreed that it

  was ‘one of the archaeological wonders of the Americas’.15 Its most

  enigmatic feature was the so-called ‘calendar frieze’ carved into its

  eastern façade along the top of the portal.

  At its centre, in an elevated position, this frieze was dominated by what

  scholars took to be another representation of Viracocha,16 but this time in

  his more terrifying aspect as the god-king who could call down fire from

  heaven. His gentle, fatherly side was still expressed: tears of compassion

  were running down his cheeks. But his face was set stern and hard, his

  tiara was regal and imposing, and in either hand he grasped a

  thunderbolt.17 In the interpretation given by Joseph Campbell, one of the

  twentieth century’s best-known students of myth, ‘The meaning is that

  the grace that pours into the universe through the sun door is the same

  as the energy of the bolt that annihilates and is itself indestructible ...’18

  I turned my head to right and left, slowly studying the remainder of the

  frieze. It was a beautifully balanced piece of sculpture with three rows of

  eight figures, twenty-four in all, lined up on either side of the elevated

  central image. Many attempts, none of them particularly convincing, have

  been made to explain the assumed calendrical function of these figures.19

  All that could really be said for sure was that they had a peculiar,

  bloodless, cartoon-like quality, and that there was something coldly

  mathematical, almost machinelike, about the way they seemed to march

  in regimented lines towards Viracocha. Some apparently wore bird masks,

  others had sharply pointed noses, and each had in his hand an

  implement of the type the high god was himself carrying.

  The base of the frieze was filled with a design known as the

  ‘Meander’—a geometrical series of step-pyramid forms set in a

  continuous line, and arranged alternately upside down and right side up,

  which was also thought to have had a calendrical function. On the third

  column from the right-hand side (and, more faintly, on the third column

  from the left-hand side too) I could make out a clear carving of an

  elephant’s head, ears, tusks and trunk. This was unexpected since there

  are no elephants anywhere in the New World. There had been, however,

  in prehistoric times, as I was able to confirm much later. Particularly

  numerous in the southern Andes, until their sudden extinction around

  10,000 BC,20 had been the members of a species called Cuvieronius, an

  15 Ibid.

  16 Ibid.

  17 See Joseph Campbell, The Hero with a Thousand Faces, Paladin Books, London, 1988,

  p. 145.

  18 Ibid., p. 146.

  19 The calendrical function of the Gateway of the Sun is fully described and analysed by

  Posnansky in Tiahuanacu: The Cradle of American Man, volumes I-IV.

  20 Quaternary Extinctions: A Prehistoric Revolution, Paul S. Martin, Richard G. Klein, eds.

  The University of Arizona Press, 1984, p. 85.

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  elephant-like proboscid complete with tusks and a trunk, uncannily

  similar in appearance to the ‘elephants’ of the Gateway of the Sun.21

  I stepped forward a few paces to take a closer look at these elephants.

  Each turned out to be composed of the heads of two crested condors,

  placed throat to throat (the crests constituting the ‘ears’ and the upper

  part of the necks the ‘tusks’). The creatures thus formed still looked like

  elephants to me, perhaps because a characteristic visual trick the

  sculptors of Tiahuanaco had employed again and again in their subtle

  and otherworldly art had been to use one thing to depict another. Thus

  an apparently human ear on an apparently human face might turn out to

  be a bird’s wing. Likewise an ornate crown might be composed of

  alternate fishes’ and condors’ heads, an eyebrow a bird’s neck and head,

  the toe of a slipper an animal’s head, and so on. Members of the elephant

  family formed out of condors’ heads, therefore, need not necessarily be

  optical illusions; on the contrary, such inventive composites would be

  perfectly in keeping with the overall artistic character of the frieze.

  Among the riot of stylized animal figures carved into the Gateway of the

  Sun were a number of other extinct species as well. I knew from my

  research that one of these had been convincingly identified by several

  observers as Toxodon22—a three-toed amphibious mammal about nine

  feet long and five feet high at the shoulder, resembling a short, stubby

  cross between a rhino and a hippo.23 Like Cuvieronius, Toxodon had

  flourished in South America in the late Pliocene (1.6 million years ago)

  and had died out at the end of the Pleistocene, about 12,000 years ago.24

  21 Ibid.

  22 See The Calendar of Tiahuanaco, p. 47. Posnansky's work is also replete with

  references to Toxodon.

  23 Encyclopaedia Britannica, 1991, 11:878.

  24 Ibid., 9:516. See also Quaternary Extinctions, pp. 64-5.

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  Top left: Detail from Tiahuanaco’s Gateway of the Sun showing

  proboscid, tusked elephant-like figure. Top right: Biological

  reconstruction-drawing of Cuverionius, a South American proboscid,

  once common in the Tiahuanaco area but extinct since approximately

  10,000 BC. Above left: Unidentified animal, possibly Toxodon, carved

  on the side of the Viracocha figure in the Subterranean Temple.

  Above right: Another possible representation of Toxodon from

  Tiahuanaco. The raised nostrils are indicative of a semi-aquatic

  animal, somewhat like a modern hippopotamus in its habits, which is

  what Toxodon is known to have been.

  Reconstruction-drawing of Toxodon, a South American species that

  became extinct in the eleventh millennium BC.

  To my eye this looked like striking corroboration for the astroarchaeological evidence that dated Tiahuanaco to the end of the

  Pleistocene, and further undermined the orthodox historical chronology

  which made the city only 1500 years old, since Toxodon, presumably,

  could only have been modelled from life. It was therefore obviously a

  matter of some importance that no fewer that forty-six Toxodon heads

  had been carved into the frieze of the Gateway of the Sun.25 Nor was this

  25 The Calendar of Tiahuanaco, pp. 47-8.

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  creature’s ugly caricature confined only to the Gateway. On the contrary,

  Toxodon had been identified on numerous fragments of Tiahuanacan

  pottery. Even more convincingly, he had been portrayed in several pieces

  of sculpture which showed him in full three-dimensional glory.26 Moreover

  representations of other extinct species had been found: the species

  included Shelidoterium, a diurnal quadruped, and Macrauchenia, an

  animal somewhat larger than the modern horse, with distinctive threetoed feet.27

  Such images meant that Tiahuanaco was a kind of picture-book from

  the
past, a record of bizarre animals, now deader than the dodo,

  expressed in everlasting stone.

  But the record-taking had come to an abrupt halt one day and darkness

  had descended. This, too, was recorded in stone—the Gateway of the

  Sun, that surpassing work of art, had never been completed. Certain

  unfinished aspects of the frieze made it seem probable that something

  sudden and dreadful had happened which had caused the sculptor, in the

  words of Posnansky, ‘to drop his chisel for ever’ at the moment when he

  was ‘putting the final touches to his work’.28

  26 Tiahuanacu, III, p. 57, 133-4, and plate XCII.

  27 Ibid., I, pp. 137-9; Quaternary Extinctions, pp. 64-5.

  28 Tiahuanacu, II, p. 4.

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  Chapter 12

  The End of the Viracochas

  We saw in Chapter Ten that Tiahuanaco was originally built as a port on

  the shores of Lake Titicaca, when that lake was far wider and more than

  100 feet deeper than it is today. Vast harbour constructions, piers and

  dykes (and even dumped cargoes of quarried stone at points beneath the

  old waterline), leave no doubt that this must have been the case.1 Indeed,

  according to the unorthodox estimates of Professor Posnansky,

  Tiahuanaco had been in active use as a port as early as 15,000 BC, the

  date he proposed for the construction of the Kalasasaya, and had

  continued to serve as such for approximately another five thousand

  years, during which great expanse of time its position in relation to the

  shore of Lake Titicaca hardly changed.2

  Throughout this epoch the principal harbour of the port city was

  located several hundred metres south-west of the Kalasasaya at a site

  now known as Puma Punku (literally, the Puma Gate). Here Posnansky’s

  excavations revealed two artificially dredged docks on either side of: ‘a

  true and magnificent pier or wharf ... where hundreds of ships could at

  the same time take on and unload their heavy burdens’.3

  One of the construction blocks from which the pier had been fashioned

  still lay on site and weighed an estimated 440 tons.4 Numerous others

  weighed between 100 and 150 tons.5 Furthermore, many of the biggest

  monoliths had clearly been joined to each other by I-shaped metal

  clamps. In the whole of South America, I knew, this masonry technique

  had been found only on Tiahuanacan structures.6 The last time I had seen

  the characteristic notched depressions which proved its use had been on

  ruins on the island of Elephantine in the Nile in Upper Egypt.7

  1 Tiahuanacu, II, p. 156ff; III, p. 196.

  2 Ibid., I, p. 39: ‘An extensive series of canals and hydraulic works, dry at present, but

  which are all in communication with the former lake bed, are just so many more proofs

  of the extension of the lake as far as Tiahuanacu in this period.’

  3 Ibid., II, p. 156.

  4 Bolivia, p. 158.

  5 The Ancient Civilizations of Peru, p. 93.

  6 Ibid.

  7 For example on the paving blocks above the Nilometer at Elepantine Island, Aswan. I

  am indebted to US film maker Robert Gardner for pointing this similarity out to me.

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  12,000 years ago, when Lake Titicaca was more than 100 feet deeper

  than it is today, Tiahuanaco would have been an island, as shown

  above.

  Equally thought-provoking was the appearance of the symbol of the

  cross on many of these ancient blocks. Recurring again and again,

  particularly at the northern approach to Puma Punku, this symbol always

  took the same form: a double crucifix with pure clean lines, perfectly

  balanced and harmonious, deeply recessed into the hard grey stone. Even

  according to orthodox historical chronology these crosses were not less

  than 1500 years old. In other words, they had been carved here, by a

  people with absolutely no knowledge of Christianity, a full millennium

  before the arrival of the first Spanish missionaries on the Altiplano.

  Where, come to that, had the Christians obtained their crosses? Not

  only from the shape of the structure to which Jesus Christ was nailed, I

  thought, but from some much older source as well. Hadn’t the Ancient

  Egyptians, for example, used a hieroglyph very like a cross (the ankh, or

  crux ansata) to symbolize life ... the breath of life ... eternal life itself?8

  Had that symbol originated in Egypt, or had it perhaps occurred

  elsewhere, earlier still?

  With such ideas chasing one another around my head, I walked slowly

  around Puma Punku. The extensive perimeter, which formed a rectangle

  several hundred feet long, outlined a low pyramidal hill, much overgrown

  with tall grass. Dozens and dozens of hulking blocks lay scattered in all

  directions, tossed like matchsticks, Posnansky argued, in the terrible

  natural disaster that had overtaken Tiahuanaco during the eleventh

  millennium BC:

  This catastrophe was caused by seismic movements which resulted in an overflow

  of the waters of Lake Titicaca and in volcanic eruptions ... It is also possible that

  8 The Encyclopedia of Ancient Egypt ed. Margaret Burson), Facts on File, New York and

  Oxford, 1991, p. 23.

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  the temporary increase in the level of the lake may have been caused in part by

  the breaking of the bulwarks on some of the lakes further to the north and

  situated at a greater altitude ... thus releasing the waters which descended toward

  Lake Titicaca in onrushing and unrestrainable torrents.9

  Posnansky’s evidence that a flood had been the agent of the destruction

  of Tiahuanaco included

  The discovery of lacustrine flora, Paludestrina culminea, and Paludestrina

  andecola, Ancylus titicacensis, Planorbis titicacensis, etc., mixed in the alluvia with

  the skeletons of human beings who perished in the cataclysm ... and the discovery

  of various skeletons of Orestias, fish of the family of the present bogas, in the

  same alluvia which contain the human remains ...10

  In addition, fragments of human and animal skeletons had been found

  lying

  in chaotic disorder among wrought stones, utensils, tools and an endless variety

  of other things. All of this has been moved, broken and accumulated in a confused

  heap. Anyone who would dig a trench here two metres deep could not deny that

  the destructive force of water, in combination with brusque movements of the

  earth, must have accumulated those different kinds of bones, mixing them with

  pottery, jewels, tools and utensils ... Layers of alluvium cover the whole field of the

  ruins and lacustrine sand mixed with shells from Titicaca, decomposed feldspar

  and volcanic ashes have accumulated in the places surrounded by walls ...11

  It had been a terrible catastrophe indeed that had overwhelmed

  Tiahuanaco. And if Posnansky was right, it took place more than 12,000

  years ago. Thereafter, though the flood waters subsided, ‘the culture of

  the Altiplano did not again attain a high point of development but fell

  rather into a total and definitive decadence’.12

  Strugg
le and abandonment

  This process was hastened by the fact that the earthquakes which had

  caused Lake Titicaca to engulf Tiahuanaco were only the first of many

  upheavals in the area. These initially resulted in the lake swelling and

  overflowing its banks but they soon began to have the opposite effect,

  slowly reducing Titicaca’s depth and surface area. As the years passed,

  the lake continued to drain inch by inch, marooning the great city,

  remorselessly separating it from the waters which had previously played

  such a vital role in its economic life.

  At the same time, there was evidence that the climate of the Tihuanaco

  area had become colder and much less favourable for the growing of

  crops than had previously been the case,13 so much less favourable that

  9 Tiahuanacu, I, p. 55.

  10 Ibid., I, p. 39.

  11 Ibid., III, pp. 142-3.

  12 Ibid., I, p. 57.

  13 Ibid., I, p. 56, and II, p. 96.

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  today staples such as maize cannot ripen properly and even potatoes

  come out of the ground stunted.14

  Although it was difficult to piece together all the different elements of

  the complex chain of events that had occurred, it seemed that ‘a period

  of calm had followed the critical moment of seismic disturbance’ which

  had temporarily flooded Tiahuanaco.15 Then, slowly but surely, ‘the

  climate worsened and became inclement. Finally there ensued mass

  emigrations of the Andean peoples towards locations where the struggle

  for life would not be so arduous.’16

  It seems that the highly civilized inhabitants of Tiahuanaco,

  remembered in local traditions as ‘the Viracocha people’, had not gone

  without a struggle. There was puzzling evidence from all over the

  Altiplano that agricultural experiments of an advanced and scientific

  nature had been carried out, with great ingenuity and dedication, to try to

  compensate for the deterioration of the climate. For example, recent

  research has demonstrated that astonishingly sophisticated analyses of

  the chemical compositions of many poisonous high-altitude plants and

  tubers had been undertaken by somebody in this region in the furthest

  antiquity. Such analyses, furthermore, had been coupled with the

  invention of detoxification techniques which had rendered these