Atlantis Beneath the Ice (8 page)

Like the Araucanians, the Inca were paralyzed by the fear that any change in the sun foretold doom. A 1555 Spanish chronicler recorded their terror, stating when “there is an eclipse of the sun or the moon the Indians cry and groan in great perturbation, thinking that the time has come in which the earth will perish.”
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The Peruvian historian, Carcilasso de la Vega, the son of a Spanish conquistador and an Incan princess, asked his Incan uncle to relate the story of his people’s origins. How had Lake Titicaca become the source of their civilization? The uncle explained, “In ancient times all this region which you see was covered with forests and thickets, and the people lived like brute beasts without religion nor government, nor towns, nor houses, without cultivating the land nor covering their bodies. . . . [The sun god sent a son and daughter to] give them precepts and laws by which to live as reasonable and civilized men, and to teach them to dwell in houses and towns, to cultivate maize and other crops, to breed flocks, and to use the fruits of the earth as rational beings.”
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The supposed gods who brought agriculture to the vicinity of Lake
Titicaca were said to have come
“out of the regions of the south”
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immediately
“after the deluge.”
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Those whom the Inca called gods may have been people who possessed precious skills and were forced to leave their southern home after it was destroyed by a flood.

The word
inca
means “son of the sun” and was a title originally granted only to the emperor. To preserve his culture from the ravages of the conquistadors, Inca Manco II left the great capital of Cuzco in 1536 and retreated into the daunting heights of the Andes. He took with him three sons, each of whom would, in turn, become inca and suffer a succession of bloody encounters with the Spanish. Manco II chose a mountain peak overlooking the Urubamba Valley to build his palace. Francisco Pizarro, leader of the Spanish invaders, was never able to find this secret base, and its existence intrigued those who followed him. But all who tried to discover the lost city failed.

Later, in the same century, two monks, Friar Marcos and Friar Diego, did come tantalizingly close to lifting the veil of the hidden city. Friar Marcos was fired with a “desire to seek souls where not a single preacher had entered, and where the gospel message had not been heard.”
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Traveling with him was a medical missionary, Friar Diego, who became popular with the local people and a favorite of the royal inca. The two monks had established a convent at Puquiura, near Vitcos, and were fascinated by Incan stories of the “Virgins of the Sun,” who dwelled in a fabulous city known as “Vilcabamba the Old.” This mountain city was said to house “wizards and masters of abomination.”
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The two monks repeatedly tried to coax an Inca who sometimes emerged from the hidden city into revealing its location. Finally, he agreed to take them. Higher and higher they traveled, the air becoming thinner with every step. The Inca was carried in a litter and enjoyed the view, while the monks stumbled through the thick jungle, tripping over their long robes. After three days they arrived at the foot of yet another barrier of mountains that jutted even farther into the sky.

For three weeks the monks preached to and taught the natives who lived in a settlement just beyond sight and sound of the mystery city.
They were forbidden to enter its enclaves for fear they would learn something of its rites, ceremonies, and purpose. During the night the Incan priests high in the forbidden city conspired to corrupt the monks by sending beautiful women to tempt them from their vows of celibacy. Friars Marcos and Diego resisted to the end and finally concluded that they would never reach the sacred city. It was never found by the Spanish.

In 1911, four centuries later, the American historian and explorer Hiram Bingham (1875–1956) discovered the marvelous, haunting ruins of a lost Incan city cradled in the summit of a mountain called Machu Picchu.

Bingham believed that he had discovered the lost city of “Vilcabamba the Old,” where the “Virgins of the Sun” catered to the wishes of their Incan master.
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He recovered a number of skeletons from Machu Picchu, which he sent to Dr. George Eaton of Yale University. The professor concluded that among the skeletons, “there was not a single one of a robust male of the warrior type. There are a few effeminate males who might very well have been priests, but the large majority of the skeletons are female.”
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Why did the Inca maintain a settlement of young women in their sanctuary, Machu Picchu? A clue might come from the U.S. Air Force and its bunker buried deep beneath Colorado Springs. It was built as a retreat in the event of nuclear war and a base from which civilization might be reestablished. For the Inca, the threat was not nuclear, but rather a Great Flood. To meet this danger, they created bases on mountains far from the ocean. If another deluge was unleashed, a base like Machu Picchu could repopulate a drowned world.

In his book
The Lost City of the Incas,
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Bingham described a ritual performed on the winter solstice by the priests of Machu Picchu. A mystical cord was secured by a great stone pillar to “guide” the sun across the sky, preventing it from losing course. This
intihuatana
, or hitching post of the sun, may have represented a symbolic attempt to prevent another earth crust displacement. If so, then the mysterious
solar megaliths (known as sun stones) that are found around the globe may have represented ancient attempts to secure the sun in its new path across the sky after the Flood. A reined sun could not release another Great Flood. The earth would be safe for another year.

This obsession with the stability of the sun’s path is also found in the American southwest among the ruins of the Anasazi (a Navajo word meaning “the ancient ones”). They are famed for their cliff dwellings, their circular architecture, and other artistic achievements. Chaco Mesa in New Mexico is the site of one of the most remarkable solar megaliths in the world. Three slabs of stone, each weighing two tons, have been arranged so that the light of the sun falls on a spiral petroglyph, marking the summer and winter solstices and the spring and fall equinoxes.

It was discovered in 1977 by artist and amateur archaeo-astronomer Anna Sofaer,
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who called it a “sun dagger” because of the pattern the sunlight makes on the rock carvings during the summer solstice. Since its true purpose may have been the Anasazi’s equivalent of the Inca’s hitching post of the sun, it could be called a solar cord, designed to prevent a wayward sun or at least to monitor the sun’s path to ensure that all was in order.

The fear of a wayward sun or falling sky became a global nightmare for the survivors of the last earth crust displacement. For example, from 400 to 1200 CE, the Celts occupied much of central and western Europe. They were known as fearless warriors who “did not dread earthquakes or high tides, which, indeed, they attacked with weapons; but they feared the fall of the sky and the day when fire and water must prevail.”
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And in 1643, a bishop in Ireland discovered an ancient manuscript containing the most detailed Germanic mythology ever found. These myths open with the haunting prophecy of an inspired seeress: “The sun turns black, earth sinks into the sea. The hot stars down from the heavens are whirled.”
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The overwhelming anxiety that earthquakes might foreshadow a worldwide flood was suffered not just by those who dwelled on the lip of the ocean. The Mari, who still occupy the land west of the Volga
River in Russia, believed that the earth was supported on the remaining horn (the other had broken before the Great Flood) of a massive bull. The bull, in turn, balanced precariously on the back of a giant crab, which crouched on the ocean floor. Any movement of the bull’s head was thought to cause earthquakes. The Mari lived in terror that the bull’s remaining horn would snap, sending the earth tumbling once more into the ocean. As the beast’s head tipped, throwing the earth forward, violent earthquakes would erupt. And then, as the earth was pitched from the bull’s horn and hurtled through the air, the sky would seem to fall. Finally, the earth would tumble into the ocean, releasing a cataclysm of water that would drown the world.
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Throughout ancient Europe giant stones were erected to honor the sun. Stonehenge in Wiltshire, England, is one of the most famous of these sites. Like the structures in North and South America, Stonehenge may have been built as a magical device designed to prevent another earth crust displacement. People clung to the belief that by controlling the sun’s movements, these massive stones might ensure the safety of the world.

The horseshoe mouth of the stones is open to receive the sun’s rays on the summer solstice. The body of the horseshoe corresponds to the path of the sun from sunrise to sunset. Each day, as spring moves toward summer, the sun rises slightly farther north on the morning horizon. On the summer solstice this “migration” north seems to stall. On the day after the solstice the sun reverses its journey and begins to rise farther south each morning. To a people ever vigilant to the dangers of a wayward sun, any irregularity threatens catastrophe. To prevent this, the priests may have, like their counterparts on Machu Picchu, attempted to symbolically harness the sun by tying its rays to successive stones within the horseshoe. The world would be safe for another year.

The Greek’s fear of a wayward sun involves their god, Helios, who was responsible for the passage of the sun across the sky. Helios drove a chariot drawn by winged horses that flew a regular route across the sky. The burning sun was dragged behind Helios’s chariot. Helios had a son,
Phaethon, by a mortal woman. The boy traveled to the ends of the earth to find his father. After many adventures he arrived at the edge of the earth, where he saw Helios preparing to harness the winged horses. The son begged for his father’s approval. Helios granted Phaethon one wish.

Phaethon asked to drive the winged chariot to impress on his doubting friends that he was truly born to a god. Helios was horrified and tried to dissuade his son. The boy would not relent and forced the issue. Locked into his promise, Helios reluctantly relinquished the reins.

Under Phaethon’s inexperienced hand, the horses veered from their normal path, swinging the raging sun closer and closer to the earth. Fire erupted across the globe. Phaethon was powerless to bring the winged steeds under control. The world was ablaze. Desperately, the gods appealed to Zeus, who reluctantly cast a thunderbolt at Phaeton, killing him. A Great Flood was unleashed to drown the fire.

The story of the misguided son playing with powers beyond his control traces the sequence of events that would erupt during an earth crust displacement: a shocking change in the path of the sun, followed by a violent worldwide flood.

In Egypt, the pyramids were also precisely aligned with the rising sun on the summer solstice. In an ancient Egyptian writing, the sun god decrees, “I am the one who hath made the water which becomes the Great Flood.”
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The sun “is usually said to have been born on or by ‘the great flood.’”
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In Egyptian mythology, the world was seen as a bubble within an endless “Primordial Abyss of Waters.” “This was unlike any sea which has a surface, for here there was neither up nor down, no distinction of side, only a limitless deep—endless, dark, and infinite. . . . It was thought that the seas, the rivers, the rain from heaven, and the waters in the wells, and the torrents of the floods were parts of the Primeval Waters which enveloped the world on every side.”
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The Egyptians feared that these primeval waters might eventually seep into the world, flooding it. The pyramids, artificial mountains aligned with the new path of the sun, may symbolize the mountain on
which the survivors of the last Great Flood ultimately found refuge.
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The builders of these ancient monuments may have been paying homage to the land that their ancestors clung to after the Flood.

From all corners of the earth, the same story is told. The sun deviates from its regular path. The sky falls. The earth is wrenched and torn by earthquakes. And finally a great wave of water engulfs the globe. The survivors of such a calamity would have gone to any length to prevent it from happening again, and they lived in an age of magic. It was natural and necessary to construct elaborate devices to pacify the sun god or goddess and control or monitor the sun’s path.

Is it any wonder that so many ancient people called themselves children of the sun? It was perhaps only later that this label became one of pride. At first it may well have originated as a frantic appeasement to the violent sun god. The sun was feared, the sky untethered, and the ocean volatile. A wayward sun might initiate a chain of events that could brutally shatter our world.

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