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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 />

due course. Meanwhile, let us note that the Nazca spider also accurately<br />

depicts a member of a known spider genus—Ricinulei. 4 This, as it<br />

happens, is one of the rarest spider genera in the world, so rare indeed<br />

that it has only been found in remote and inaccessible parts of the<br />

Amazon rainforest. 5 How did the supposedly primitive Nazcan artists<br />

travel so far from their homeland, crossing the formidable barrier of the<br />

Andes, to obtain a specimen? More to the point, why should they have<br />

wanted to do such a thing and how were they able to duplicate minute<br />

details of Ricinulei’s anatomy normally visible only under a microscope, 6<br />

notably the reproductive organ positioned on the end of its extended<br />

right leg?<br />

Such mysteries multiply at Nazca and none of the designs, except<br />

perhaps the condor, really seems quite at home here. The whale and the<br />

monkey are, after all, as out of place in this desert environment as the<br />

Amazonian spider. A curious figure of a man, his right arm raised as<br />

though in greeting, heavy boots on his feet and round eyes staring<br />

owlishly forward, cannot be said to belong to any known era or culture.<br />

And other drawings depicting the human form are equally peculiar: their<br />

heads enclosed in halos of radiance, they do indeed look like visitors<br />

from another planet. Their sheer size is equally noteworthy and bizarre.<br />

The hummingbird is 165 feet long, the spider 150 feet long, the condor<br />

stretches nearly 400 feet from beak to tail-feathers (as does the pelican),<br />

and a lizard, whose tail is now divided by the Pan-American highway, is<br />

617 feet in length. Almost every design is executed on the same<br />

cyclopean scale and in the same difficult manner, by the careful<br />

contouring of a single continuous line.<br />

Similar attention to detail is to be found in the geometrical devices.<br />

Some of these take the form of straight lines more than five miles long,<br />

marching like Roman roads across the desert, dropping into dried-out<br />

river beds, surmounting rocky outcrops, and never once deviating from<br />

true.<br />

This kind of precision is hard, but not impossible, to explain in<br />

conventional commonsense terms. More puzzling by far are the<br />

zoomorphic figures. How could they have been so perfectly made when,<br />

without aircraft, their creators could not have checked the progress of<br />

their work by viewing it in its proper perspective? None of the designs is<br />

small enough to be seen from ground level, where they appear merely as<br />

a series of shapeless ruts in the desert. They show their true form only<br />

when seen from an altitude of several hundred feet. There is no elevation<br />

nearby that provides such a vantage point.<br />

4<br />

Firm identification of the Nazca spider with Ricinulei was first made by Professor<br />

Gerald S. Hawkins. See Gerald S. Hawkins, Beyond Stonehenge, Arrow Books, London,<br />

1977, p. 143-4.<br />

5<br />

Ibid.<br />

6<br />

Ibid., p. 144.<br />

47

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