04.04.2013 Views

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

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

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

SHOW MORE
SHOW LESS

Create successful ePaper yourself

Turn your PDF publications into a flip-book with our unique Google optimized e-Paper software.

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

summits of the Pyramids of the Sun and the Moon were level even though<br />

the former was taller. The reason was the same in both cases: the Great<br />

Pyramid was built on lower ground than the Pyramid of Cephren, and the<br />

Pyramid of the Sun on lower ground than the Pyramid of the Moon. 21<br />

Could all this be coincidence? Was it not more logical to conclude that<br />

there was an ancient connection between Mexico and Egypt?<br />

For reasons I have outlined in Chapters Eighteen and Nineteen I<br />

doubted whether any direct, causal link was involved—at any rate within<br />

historic times. Once again, however, as with the Mayan calendar, and as<br />

with the early maps of Antarctica, was it not worth keeping an open mind<br />

to the possibility that we might be dealing with a legacy: that the<br />

pyramids of Egypt and the ruins of Teotihuacan might express the<br />

technology, the geographical knowledge, the observational astronomy<br />

(and perhaps also the religion) of a forgotten civilization of the past<br />

which had once, as the Popul Vuh claimed, ‘examined the four corners,<br />

the four points of the arch of the sky, and the round face of the earth’?<br />

There was widespread agreement among academics concerning the<br />

antiquity of the Giza pyramids, thought to be about 4500 years old. 22 No<br />

such unanimity existed with regard to Teotihuacan. Neither the Street of<br />

the Dead, nor the Temple of Quetzalcoatl, nor the Pyramids of the Sun<br />

and the Moon had ever been definitively dated. 23 The majority of scholars<br />

believed that the city had flourished between 100 BC and AD 600, but<br />

others argued strongly that it must have risen to prominence much<br />

earlier, between 1500 and 1000 BC. There were others still who sought,<br />

largely on geological grounds, to push the foundation date back to 4000<br />

BC before the eruption of the nearby volcano Xitli. 24<br />

Amid all this uncertainty about the age of Teotihuacan, I had not been<br />

surprised to discover that no one had the faintest idea of the identity of<br />

those who had actually built the largest and most remarkable metropolis<br />

ever to have existed in the pre-Colombian New World. 25 All that could be<br />

said for sure was this: when the Aztecs, on their march to imperial power,<br />

first stumbled upon the mysterious city in the twelfth century AD, its<br />

colossal edifices and avenues were already old beyond imagining and so<br />

densely overgrown that they seemed more like natural features than<br />

works of man. 26 Attached to them, however, was a thread of local legend,<br />

passed down from generation to generation, which asserted that they had<br />

been built by giants 27 and that their purpose had been to transform men<br />

into gods.<br />

21<br />

The Ancient Kingdoms Of Mexico, p. 74; The Traveller’s Key To Ancient Egypt, pp. 110-<br />

35.<br />

22<br />

See, for example, Ahmed Fakhry, The Pyramids, University of Chicago Press, 1969.<br />

23<br />

Mysteries of the Mexican Pyramids, pp. 230-3.<br />

24<br />

Ibid.<br />

25<br />

The Prehistory of the Americas, p. 282.<br />

26<br />

Mysteries of ‘the Mexican Pyramids, pp. 11-12.<br />

27 Ibid.<br />

170

Hooray! Your file is uploaded and ready to be published.

Saved successfully!

Ooh no, something went wrong!