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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 />

attrition and misery to barely 10,000. 36 Like the Ancient Maya whose<br />

descendants all across the Yucatan are convinced that the end of the<br />

world is coming in the year 2000 y pico (and a little), 37 the Hopi believe<br />

that we are walking in the last days, with a geological sword of Damocles<br />

hanging over us. 38 According to their myths, as we saw in Chapter<br />

Twenty-four:<br />

The first world was destroyed, as a punishment for human misdemeanours, by an<br />

all-consuming fire that came from above and below. The second world ended<br />

when the terrestrial globe toppled from its axis and everything was covered with<br />

ice. The third world ended in a universal flood. The present world is the fourth. Its<br />

fate will depend on whether or not its inhabitants behave in accordance with the<br />

Creator’s plans ...’ 39<br />

I had come to Arizona to see whether the Hopi thought we were behaving<br />

in accordance with the Creator’s plans ...<br />

The end of the world<br />

The desolate wind, blowing across the high plains, shook and rattled the<br />

sides of the trailer-home we sat in. Beside me was Santha, who’d been<br />

everywhere with me, sharing the risks and the adventures, sharing the<br />

highs and the lows. Sitting across from us was our friend Ed Ponist, a<br />

medical-surgical nurse from Lansing, Michigan. A few years previously Ed<br />

had worked on the reservation for a while, and it was thanks to his<br />

contacts that we were now here. On my right was Paul Sifki, a ninety-sixyear-old<br />

Hopi elder of the Spider clan, and a leading spokesman of the<br />

traditions of his people. Beside him was his grand-daughter Melza Sifki, a<br />

handsome middle-aged woman who had offered to translate.<br />

‘I have heard,’ I said, ‘that the Hopi believe the end of the world is<br />

coming. Is this true?’<br />

Paul Sifki was a small, wizened man, nut-brown in colour, dressed in<br />

jeans and a cambric shirt. Throughout our conversation he never once<br />

looked at me, but gazed intently ahead, as though he were searching for<br />

a familiar face in a distant crowd.<br />

Melza put my question to him and a moment later translated her<br />

grandfather’s reply: ‘He says, “why do you want to know”?’<br />

I explained that there were many reasons. The most important was that<br />

I felt a sense of urgency: ‘My research has convinced me that there was<br />

an advanced civilization—long, long ago—that was destroyed in a terrible<br />

cataclysm. I fear that our own civilization may be destroyed by a similar<br />

cataclysm ...’<br />

36 Community Profile: Hopi Indian Reservation, Arizona Department of Commerce.<br />

37 Breaking the Maya Code, p. 275.<br />

38 Book of the Hopi.<br />

39 World Mythology, p. 26.<br />

480

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