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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 />

note). Scholars argue endlessly about the nature of these resemblances.<br />

What really matters, however, is that in each sphere of influence the same<br />

solemn tradition has been preserved for posterity—a tradition which tells,<br />

in graphic language, of a global catastrophe and of the near-total<br />

annihilation of mankind.<br />

Central America<br />

The identical message was preserved in the Valley of Mexico, far away<br />

across the world from Mounts Ararat and Nisir. There, culturally and<br />

geographically isolated from Judaeo-Christian influences, long ages<br />

before the arrival of the Spaniards, stories were told of a great deluge. As<br />

the reader will recall from Part III, it was believed that this deluge had<br />

swept over the entire earth at the end of the Fourth Sun: ‘Destruction<br />

came in the form of torrential rain and floods. The mountains<br />

disappeared and men were transformed into fish ...’ 8<br />

According to Aztec mythology only two human beings survived: a man,<br />

Coxcoxtli, and his wife, Xochiquetzal, who had been forewarned of the<br />

cataclysm by a god. They escaped in a huge boat they had been<br />

instructed to build and came to ground on the peak of a tall mountain.<br />

There they descended and afterwards had many children who were dumb<br />

until the time when a dove on top of a tree gave them the gift of<br />

languages. These languages differed so much that the children could not<br />

understand one another. 9<br />

A related Central American tradition, that of the Mechoacanesecs, is in<br />

even more striking conformity with the story as we have it in Genesis and<br />

in the Mesopotamian sources. According to this tradition, the god<br />

Tezcatlipoca determined to destroy all mankind with a flood, saving only<br />

a certain Tezpi who embarked in a spacious vessel with his wife, his<br />

children and large numbers of animals and birds, as well as supplies of<br />

grains and seeds, the preservation of which were essential to the future<br />

subsistence of the human race. The vessel came to rest on an exposed<br />

mountain top after Tezcatilpoca had decreed that the waters of the flood<br />

should retire. Wishing to find out whether it was now safe for him to<br />

disembark, Tezpi sent out a vulture which, feeding on the carcasses with<br />

which the earth was now strewn, did not return. The man then sent out<br />

other birds, of which only the hummingbird came back, with a leafy<br />

branch in its beak. With this sign that the land had begun to renew itself,<br />

And the dove came in to him in the evening; and, lo, in her mouth was an olive leaf<br />

plucked off; so Noah knew that the waters were abated from off the earth ... And Noah<br />

went forth ... and builded an altar unto the Lord, and offered burnt offerings on the<br />

altar. And the Lord smelled the sweet savour ...<br />

8 Maya History and Religion, p. 332.<br />

9 Sir J. G. Frazer, Folklore in the Old Testament: Studies in Comparative Religion, Legend<br />

and Law (Abridged Edition), Macmillan, London, 1923, p. 107.<br />

187

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