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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 />

mountains’. 31<br />

Are the peculiar parallels between the Sumerian and Mexican myths<br />

pure coincidence or could both have been marked by the cultural<br />

fingerprints of a lost civilization? If so, the faces of the heroes of that<br />

ancestral culture may indeed have been carved in stone and passed down<br />

as heirlooms through thousands of years, sometimes in full view,<br />

sometimes buried, until they were dug up for the last time by<br />

archaeologists in our era and given labels like ‘Olmec Head’ and ‘Uncle<br />

Sam’.<br />

The faces of those heroes also appear at Monte Alban, where they seem<br />

to tell a sad story.<br />

Monte Alban.<br />

Monte Alban: the downfall of masterful men<br />

A site thought to be about 3000 years old, 32 Monte Alban stands on a vast<br />

artificially flattened hilltop overlooking Oaxaca. It consists of a huge<br />

rectangular area, the Grand Plaza, which is enclosed by groups of<br />

pyramids and other buildings laid out in precise geometrical relationships<br />

to one another. The overall feel of the place is one of harmony and<br />

proportion emerging from a well-ordered and symmetrical plan.<br />

Following the advice of CICOM, whom I had spoken to before leaving<br />

Villahermosa, I made my way first to the extreme south-west corner of<br />

the Monte Alban site. There, stacked loosely against the side of a low<br />

31 Pre-Hispanic Gods of Mexico, p. 59; Inga Glendinnen, Aztecs, Cambridge University<br />

Press, 1991, p. 177. See also The Gods and Symbols of Ancient Mexico and the Maya, p.<br />

144.<br />

32 Mexico, p. 669.<br />

148

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