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Know_files/FINGERPRINTS OF THE GODS.pdf - D Ank Unlimited

Know_files/FINGERPRINTS OF THE GODS.pdf - D Ank Unlimited

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Graham Hancock – <strong>FINGERPRINTS</strong> <strong>OF</strong> <strong>THE</strong> <strong>GODS</strong><br />

Quetzalcoatl, the Plumed Serpent, would return ‘from across the Eastern<br />

Sea’ with his band of followers? 3<br />

Because of this expectation, the naive and trusting Cholulans permitted<br />

the conquistadores to climb the steps of the ziggurat and enter the great<br />

courtyard of the temple. There troupes of gaily bedecked dancing girls<br />

greeted them, singing and playing on instruments, while stewards moved<br />

back and forth with heaped platters of bread and delicate cooked meats.<br />

One of the Spanish chroniclers, an eyewitness to the events that<br />

followed, reported that adoring townsfolk of all ranks ‘unarmed, with<br />

eager and happy faces, crowded in to hear what the white men would<br />

say’. Realizing from this incredible reception that their intentions were<br />

not suspected, the Spaniards closed and guarded all the entrances, drew<br />

their weapons of steel and murdered their hosts. 4 Six thousand died in<br />

this horrible massacre 5 which matched, in its savagery, the most<br />

bloodstained rituals of the Aztecs: ‘Those of Cholula were caught<br />

unawares. With neither arrows nor shields did they meet the Spaniards.<br />

Just so they were slain without warning. They were killed by pure<br />

treachery.’ 6<br />

It was ironic, I thought, that the conquistadores in both Peru and<br />

Mexico should have benefited in the same way from local legends that<br />

prophesied the return of a pale, bearded god. If that god was indeed a<br />

deified human, as seemed likely, he must have been a person of high<br />

civilization and exemplary character—or more probably two different<br />

people from the same background, one working in Mexico and providing<br />

the model for Quetzalcoatl, the other in Peru being the model for<br />

Viracocha. The superficial resemblance that the Spanish bore to those<br />

earlier fair-skinned foreigners opened many doors that would otherwise<br />

certainly have been closed. Unlike their wise and benevolent<br />

predecessors, however, Pizarro in the Andes and Cortez in Central<br />

America were ravening wolves. They ate up the lands and the peoples and<br />

the cultures they had seized upon. They destroyed almost everything ...<br />

Tears for the past<br />

Their eyes scaled with ignorance, bigotry and greed, the Spanish erased a<br />

precious heritage of mankind when they arrived in Mexico. In so doing<br />

they deprived the future of any detailed knowledge concerning the<br />

brilliant and remarkable civilizations which once flourished in Central<br />

America.<br />

What, for example, was the true history of the glowing ‘idol’ that rested<br />

3<br />

Ibid., pp. 3-4.<br />

4<br />

Mysteries of the Mexican Pyramids, p. 6.<br />

5<br />

Mexico, p. 224.<br />

6<br />

Contemporary account cited in Mysteries of the Mexican Pyramids, p. 6.<br />

115

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