Twilight of the Gods: The Mayan Calendar and the Return of the Extraterrestrials (12 page)

Even the carbon-14 datings of bones and wood fragments found in and around Tiwanaku are not exactly convincing. (C-14 is a method of dating that is based on measurements of the levels of radioactive carbon isotope C-14). The ruins and platforms could have been lying around for a very long time before later visitors used them to camp in or just came and pottered around. Today, it is their organic remains that are being dated. What good is that? (I know plenty more examples of this kind of thing.)

In our times, the established wisdom is that the Tiwanaku culture existed from around 300 BC until 1100 AD. You can forget Posnansky's 15,000 years. As you can also forget all the calendar variations, the silt layers, the bone sediment, or coastal markings. There have been a number of attempts at reconstruction.65 But you can't really blame the archaeologist or architects if any attempt at reconstruction must remain little more than a patchwork. Too much material has been dragged off over the centuries, taken away and used to build streets and churches, broken down by the forces of nature, or simply been shot to pieces. Architects from the University of California, Berkeley, who have done sterling work in Tiwanaku and used computers for their reconstruction, were forced to admit: "The fragmentary remains are an insufficient basis from which to gain an understanding of the significance or meaning the architecture may have had for the people of Tiwanaku."66

Confronted with the precision work carried out by the creators of Tiwanaku/Puma Punku all those thousands of years ago, today's commentators can only talk of "fascinating compositions" and "incredibly tight fit[s],[...] deviating from each other by no more than a millimeter."67

We are the prisoners of our own way of thinking-and hanging constantly on the umbilical cord of evolution. For heaven's sake, please don't serve us up with anything so spectacular from ancient times! People like me, who ask questions on the basis of the platforms still around in Puma Punku today and the surveying techniques that can still be proven today, are considered eccentrics. Burn the heretics at the stake! And when that doesn't work, pour scorn on them! Hold them up to ridicule! As if I didn't actually already know all the literature in Tiwanaku and Puma Punku. Despite this, I allow myself the freedom to ask some legitimate questions.

ew Answers

Legitimate questions? Too right!

In the summer of 1966, I shot some pictures that really revealed something fascinating. They show a series of monoliths and some individual free-standing monoliths. (See image 1.23 on page 81.) In this picture, the tops of five monoliths can be seen rising out of the ground. All of them display 90-degree recesses, which once would have served as anchor points for some kind of cross-blocks. At the top of the huge monolith you can see a clean, 90-degree cut. Another of the photos shows-as plain as the nose on your face-an extremely fine groove from top to bottom. When you compare this with today's reconstruction of the wall, there's no sign of recesses, right angles, or even a cleanly cut groove. The interstitial spaces have simply been filled in with stones. The former recesses and the groove, which after all were an intrinsic part of the monolith all those millennia ago and provide clues to whatever techniques were used, seem to have vanished into thin air. Is this just a case of "retouching"? It gets better.

1.23. Monoliths with 90-degree recesses (photo from 1966). Author's own image.

The earlier water pipes-from which intact cornerpieces were found in the ground back in 1966-are now sitting at the top of the reconstructed wall. Later a sunken inner courtyard was re-created and heads were set into its walls that orginally had nothing to with this wall. The assiduous Bolivian and international reconstruction teams have put in a lot of effort to revive the former glory of Tiwanaku. Some of it has been reconstructed to death.

There is still one possibility for getting a little bit closer to solving the riddle of Puma Punku. Of course it is one that is harder to swallow than all the rest: Schliemann's route via the myths and legends.

Viracocha, the god of "the flowing lava sea," is said to have been one of the helpful gods in Tiwanaku.

4 The place was built "in a single night."

This happened "long before the time of the Incas."

Carried out by "unknown and powerful beings."

All of this happened "before the flood."

Akapana (the main temple) means "the place where the observers dwell" in the Aymara language.

. The original name of Puma Punku is said to be "Winay- Marca" (eternal city).

The huge statue is called Pachamama (mother of the cosmos).

On the Gateway of the Sun the major god is depicted, flanked by 48 further winged figures.

Iknow-notl believe !-that our planet was visited by extraterrestrials before the Flood. I've written 25 books about it and, even if some of my evidence hasn't been so solid or even rebuttable, there are still too many things that are simply irrefutable. Anyone who has actually invested any significant amount of time examining the material will know I am right. The others should just take a moment to listen. Our forefathers lived in the Stone Age. They didn't understand anything and believed-erroneously, of course-that the ETs were gods. Those of us living today know that there are no gods; our forefathers didn't have this knowledge. These beings that were called gods back then have made their way into our myths and legends and even the major religions. In Enoch, Plato, and others this occurred-without any doubt-before the Flood.68

The visitors studied mankind, as today's ethnologists do, and occasionally gave out a few friendly tips to help the primitives on their way toward civilization. This can be proven. Just like mountaineers attempting to conquer mighty Everest, they needed the odd base camp here and there to store their technical equipment and protect it from the curiosity of mankind or from wild animals. So in one night, they built Puma Punku-the eternal city in the eyes of the indigenous people, the place where the observers dwell.

It's precisely here that the critics jump in with the observation that extraterrestrials would never use stone. They would be able to use other materials. Excuse me! When our astronauts finally get to building on the Moon and Mars, they'll use the raw materials that are on hand. They won't be dragging steel and other artificial materials to the next planet.

Our extraterrestrial visitors carried out their ethnological work; other groups may have exploited mineral resources; and a small number taught the more gifted among the indigenous folk about astronomy and other practical skills. Maybe just a little bit of development aid?

To take this contemporary interpretation a little further, the core of the original temple-here Puma Punku-was nothing more than a storehouse (base camp) for extraterrestrial technology. It may also have served as a school for a few of the more "switched on" and curious locals.

When they left, the ETs promised to return in the distant future. This idea became a firm component in mankind's religious thinking. Following the extraterrestrials' departure, some kind of natural catastrophe was visited upon the Earth-for whatever reason. The poor maltreated Earth recovered, and soon groups of people gathered in mute bewilderment in front of the mighty remains of the former base camp. "Once the gods lived here," they murmured. "They built this place in a single night. No man lifted a finger in help." In wonderment, they ran their fingers along the fine grooves in the diorite, the rectangular recesses, the polished slabs. The natives took word of what they had seen to the next valley. Soon, people from all around came to admire the gods' works, the "holy shrine" from which the gods spied on the people. Puma Punku became a place of pilgrimage. Soon the first temples were built to honor the gods. The people began to watch the heavens. After all, hadn't the gods said that they had come from the stars? Generations were born and died. Tiwanaku was built, one piece at a time.

It's a way of looking at events that at least explains the problem of the various different architectural styles and the "know-how" from diverse epochs.

I beg you to also consider the "god variant" in your observations of Puma Punku. It solves a number of problems and cannot simply be ignored just because it comes from me. After all, one thing is certain: The technology used here had nothing to do with any Stone Age race.

So what do we do now? Dig! Even today. That's just what is happening, thanks to a group called Akakor Geographical Exploring. With support from Bolivia's Ministry of Culture and archaeologists from the UNAR (Unidad Nacional de Arqueologia), its researchers managed to discover artificially built shafts and water pipes underneath the so-called Pyramid of Tiwanaku. Monolithic slabs-highly polished and precisely worked like all the rest-make up the side walls and the ceiling of these subterranean passageways. In some places, the seals of the great stone slabs were no longer completely intact, and over the millennia 15-centimeter-long stalactites had formed. In several places, the team found damage that had clearly been caused by seismic disturbances.

Nobody knows what these tunnels and shafts under Tiwanaku and Puma Punku were used for. Posnansky was already writing about them in 1913! And Kiss in 1939! Yet they were simply laughed at by the oh-soserious scientific community of the time. So, what now? I'm still waiting for the "sensible" answer from those establishment dolts whose heads are eternally stuck in yesterday that the Stone Age schmucks probably needed these megalithic tunnels so that they could play marbles in the dark.

There is yet another mystery that can easily checked by anyone at anytime-by laymen as well as experts: As early as 1968, I had noticed strange anomalies on my pocket compass. Sometimes the needle changed direction completely within two blocks. I demonstrated this strange phenomenon to several groups of passing tourists. In the meantime, my colleague Hartwig Hausdorf has made more precise measurements.69 In one of the stone blocks in Puma Punku there are five depressions-one over the other. Hausdorf passed a compass of these holes and registered a magnetic deviation from hole to hole. It goes like this: the first hole had a deviation of 5 degrees, the second hole had a deviation of 10 degrees, the third hole had a deviation of 20 degrees, the fourth hole had a deviation of 40 degrees, and the fifth hole had a deviation of 80 degrees! He repeated the experiment several times in front of astonished witness.

A physicist would question an anomaly like this; an archaeologist doesn't know anything about it.