Twilight of the Gods: The Mayan Calendar and the Return of the Extraterrestrials (6 page)

There have even been cosmic impacts during Earth's history. Meteorites may have collided with the Earth at certain times or fallen into its oceans and triggered horrendous floods around the world. The only thing is: The cause of all these things-as we now know-cannot have been the Moon. So Horbiger's followers will need to think again.

There is, however, one point that still remains open-something that Horbiger simply came up with intuitively and that has recently again been the subject of some debate. Horbiger claimed that everything in the cosmos was subject to an overarching process of evolution-that the entire universe was a "living organism" in which every constituent part has an influence on every other part. And indeed, elementary particles didn't just acquire their confusing characteristics from nowhere, but rather through their interaction with other objects, such as Higgs particles. Particles are-as the word implies-not independent objects; they are a "part" of something else. Every particle reflects the whole, and the universe consists of particles that it has created itself. This simple truth has led astrophysicists to the (at first glance absurd) question: Is the universe a living organism?

he Universe: A Living Organism?

What or perhaps even who is the universe? Is God simply a manifestation of the entire cosmos? Questions like these have been a part of religious philosophy for millennia, and were not concocted by Horbiger. In modern astrophysics the "being of the universe" is treated just as it is in religion-the difference is, however, that cosmologists do not claim to represent faith but scientific opinion. Professor Paul Davies, a quantum physicist and cosmologist at the Arizona State University, has published several articles on the subject as well as controversial books such as The Accidental Universe, The Mind of God, About Time, and The Goldilocks Enigma."

Another brilliant exponent of this "God-as-universe" hypothesis is the American James Gardner. Talking at international conventions and symposia, he astounds and amazes his listeners with his cool logic and provocative statements such as the following:

Every kid knows that the universe is an environment that is hostile to mankind. But if you look a little bit deeper, you'll see that that's not true. The universe is a very hospitable place!29

James Gardner begins his presentations with the origin of the universe and proves that this very hospitability was a constituent element of the Big Bang itself. All of the components-which later developed into atoms, subatomic particles, molecules, and even life forms-were already present at the time of the Big Bang. Looking at it from this point of view, the development and proliferation of life forms in the cosmos did not happen on a random basis, but was rather a natural part of universal evolution. The aim of the universe is to fill the entire cosmos with intelligent life. Thus, we continuously observe the birth of new universes. Every black hole that swallows a Milky Way, spits it back out again in a new Big Bang somewhere and somewhen else. There's a kind of cosmic reproduction going on: New "baby universes" are being born. Highly advanced hyper-civilizations then seed these baby universes with life. This "message of life" is spreading through the entire cosmos; we humans are simply a part of it. This is one insight that I have shared in many of my books, long before I had ever read James Gardner's wonderful research.3' So where did my insight come from? Well, it's no coincidence, claims the controversial James Gardner. It is the "memes" that are responsible for this proliferation." Unlike genes, memes are information particles that spread like viruses. Whereas genes pass on hereditary information (DNA), memes transmit information in a more disembodied manner-directly from brain to brain, uninterrupted, day in day out, and throughout the entire universe. Every time I give a lecture, I "infect" other brains with my memes. (The same thing, dear reader, is happening to you right now as you read these very words.)

Horbiger may have scored a few lucky points with his World Ice Theory-for instance, on the possible existence of giants in the dim and distant past, or the flooding of ancient sites as a result of global catastrophes-but in most other respects he was way off base. The Moon of today has been around for a lot longer than 14,000 years, for instance. Then I ask myself, how did Horbiger come up with the idea that the entire universe is some kind of cosmic life form? That was considered crazy talk back in those days. Was it just his megalomania, or did it have something to do with the memes?

he Discovery of Tiwanaku

People have been streaming to Tiwanaku for centuries. The earliest reports on the subject came from the Spanish chronicler Pedro Cieza de Leon, who visited in 1549.

Tiaguanaco no es pueblo may grande, pero es mentado por los grandes edificios que tiene....

...Tiwanaku is not a small village, rather it is famous for its grandiose buildings... a short distance from a hill stand two stone statues shaped as men... they are so large that they look like giants ...but the thing that elicits the greatest amount of wonder is the size [of the stone slabs; author's addition], which are so huge we cannot understand how men could ever have moved them. Many

1.3. The platforms of Puma Punku. Image courtesy of Tatjana Ingold, Solothurn, Switzerland.

of these platforms have been worked in various ways.... There are also stone slabs with doorways, all made from a single block.. .we do not comprehend with which tools such work could have been achieved... what's more, the blocks must have been even greater in size before they were worked.... No one understands how these great weights could ever have been moved.... I have been assured that these constructions were already there before the Inca ruled, and much of what the Inca later erected in Cuzco had been inspired by what they had seen in Tiwanaku.... In the presence of Juan Varagas, I asked the natives whether these buildings had been erected during the age of the Incas: they laughed and answered, the buildings had been there for many years before the Incas began their rule. These structures, they assured me, and they knew this with certainty from their forefathers, had been built in a single night, constructed by beings whose provenance they did not know.... And may the fame of these things remain intact throughout the universe... (...y hacen que vuela la fama de las cosas que suceden por el universo...) There were none still living who knew this unearthly site as anything other than ruins ....32

Some 400 years ago, Garcilaso de la Vega, too, stood before the ruins of the mighty walls and platforms, only some of which remain today. (This is because the Bolivians blew up the millennia-old slabs to make stone for building.)

In Book 1, Chapter 23, of his work on the subject Garcilaso de la Vega wrote of the inexplicable site:

I looked in wonder at a great wall built of such mighty stones that we could not imagine which earthly power could have been used to accomplish such a feat.... The natives maintain that the buildings were there before the Incas.... They do not know who the builders were, but know with some degree of certainty from their ancestors that all these wonders were erected in a single night.... 13

Juan de Betanzos, another Spanish chronicler of that time, claimed to know that it was the creator "Con-Tici Viracocha" who also created the sun, Moon, and stars: "And in that same night of the people, he personally built Tiwanaku."34

1.4. Sections of the platform at Puma Punku. Image courtesy of Tatjana Ingold, Solothurn, Switzerland.

According to this version, the gods-however you wish to interpret that term-were involved in Tiwanaku's construction. One thing all of the chroniclers are agreed on: The mighty complex was built "in a single night."

In 1572, Cristobal de Molina was working as a priest and doctor in the Indio hospital in Cuzco. He had intensive contact with the indigenous peoples and diligently wrote down all their religious lore. Hans Horbiger could have used his writings as a source for his World Ice Theory, as Molina wrote that Manco Capac was the first Inca and that the "flood" story was already well known by educated Indios in preChristian times. According to their legends, all life had been destroyed and the floodwaters covered even the highest mountains. Only one man and one woman survived the flood "in a box."35 The creator, they said, had delivered this pair to Tiwanaku where he started to create new animals, fish, and birds.

I'd have no problem quoting at least 50 pages from the age of the Spanish conquistadores and I'd always come to the same conclusion: Anyone who visited the ruins of Tiwanaku 400 years ago and stood in front of neighboring Puma Punku would have felt overawed by the mighty constructions. These days, you might even say overwhelmed. A hundred years later, Antonio de Castro y del Castillo, who was Bishop of La Paz in 1651, summed it up perfectly:

Although it was once supposed that the ruins had been the work of the Incas, as fortresses for their wars, now it is clear that they are, in fact, of antediluvian origin.... [author's emphasis] Had it been the Inca's work, buried so deep, not even the Spanish would have been capable of creating such a wonderful and momentous building... 16

Miguel Balboa, a chronicler and priest who settled in Peru in 1566, wrote that even the Inca Huayna Capac had viewed the ruins of Tiwanaku "with awe and wonder."37

Stony Problem