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Chapter 10
Graham Hancock – FINGERPRINTS OF THE GODS
The City at the Gate of the Sun
The early Spanish travellers who visited the ruined Bolivian city of
Tiahuanaco at around the time of the conquest were impressed by the
sheer size of its buildings and by the atmosphere of mystery that clung
to them. ‘I asked the natives whether these edifices were built in the time
of the Inca,’ wrote the chronicler Pedro Cieza de Leon, ‘They laughed at
the question, affirming that they were made long before the Inca reign
and ... that they had heard from their forebears that everything to be
seen there appeared suddenly in the course of a single night ...’ 1
Meanwhile another Spanish visitor of the same period recorded a
tradition which said that the stones had been lifted miraculously off the
ground, ‘They were carried through the air to the sound of a trumpet.’ 2
Not long after the conquest a detailed description of the city was
written by the historian Garcilaso de la Vega. No looting for treasure or
for building materials had yet taken place and, though ravaged by the
tooth of time, the site was still magnificent enough to take his breath
away:
We must now say something about the large and almost incredible buildings of
Tiahuanaco. There is an artificial hill, of great height, built on stone foundations
so that the earth will not slide. There are gigantic figures carved in stone ... these
are much worn which shows their great antiquity. There are walls, the stones of
which are so enormous it is difficult to imagine what human force could have put
them in place. And there are the remains of strange buildings, the most
remarkable being stone portals, hewn out of solid rock; these stand on bases
anything up to 30 feet long, 15 feet wide and 6 feet thick, base and portal being
all of one piece ... How, and with the use of what tools or implements, massive
works of such size could be achieved are questions which we are unable to answer
... Nor can it be imagined how such enormous stones could have been brought
here ... 3
1
Pedro Cieza de Leon, Chronicle of Peru, Hakluyt Society, London, 1864 and 1883, Part
I, Chapter 87.
2
Indians of the Andes: Aymaras and Quechuas, p. 64. See also Feats and Wisdom of the
Ancients, Time-Life Books, Alexandria, Virginia, 1990, p. 55.
3
Royal Commentaries of the Incas, Book Three, Chapter one. See, for example, version
published by Orion Press, New York, 1961 (translated by Maria Jolas from the critical
annotated French edition of Alain Gheerbrant), pp. 49-50.
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