Twilight of the Gods: The Mayan Calendar and the Return of the Extraterrestrials (8 page)

That's it exactly! There's certainly something rotten in the Kingdom of Denmark! For a start, because of the tools that simply don't fit in with this Stone Age culture, and secondly because of the complex technical plans that would have been necessary. Honestly, today's archaeology really can't take the risk of looking at the problem, because it would open a real can of worms. Intentionally. Even back in the age of the Spanish conquistadores, so-called "comites" were set up that were given the task of systematically destroying everything that alluded to the "heathen religion." The priests' fanatism was insatiable. The comites consisted of people who were familiar with the conditions in the area. Often, the sons of the tribal chiefs and sun priests were forced to join these comites and seek out the ancient shrines. Under the leadership of the Catholic priests, everything was destroyed that was in any way destroyable. It was a systematic erasure of the hated heathen culture. Thousands of statues and temples built by the Inca and from pre-Inca times were smashed, and the rubble was thrown down the mountainside. The only religious symbol that was allowed was the sign of the cross. And when this religious zeal was finally sated, then came the stone plunderers looking for building material for streets, churches, and houses. Maybe the Tiwanaku builders suspected the dangers of blind, religious zeal and intentionally left behind a few signs for eternity.

Tiwanaku is said to have been built "in a single night"-according to the chroniclers. It involved unknown builders, unknown tools, and unknown draftsmen. One of the helpful gods was called "Viracocha," but "Ticsiviracocham Con Ticsi Viracocha and Pachayachachic are one and the same figure."44 According to Stubel and Uhle, the word can be separated into its Quechua components. Cocha means sea; vira is fat or foam. Put it together, and you end up with "foam sea." Linguistic scientist E.W. Middendorf, who published four volumes of the Quechua and Aymara languages around 150 years ago and is recognized as one of the world's great authorities on Indio languages, comes up with another interpretation. He translates "Con Ticsi Viracocha" as "God of the liquid lava sea" [author's emphasis].45 Here con =god, ticsi =lava, and cocha = sea. Johann Jakob Tschudi translated this correspondingly as "Sea of the origin and end of all things."46

Does the name "God of the liquid lava sea" bring us any closer to the secret of this Viracocha?

After Stubel and Uhle had paved the way for serious research in Tiwanaku, a number of other scientists from various different faculties picked up on the subject. Around the turn of the century, Tiwanaku and Puma Punku were the very epitome of a world mystery-alongside Egypt, of course. The problem was that Egypt was a lot closer for the British, French, and German archaeologists who preferred to dig around in the desert sands. Very few chose to take the arduous journey to the High Andes of Peru and Bolivia. Let's not forget that Tiwanaku lies at an altitude of some 13,000 feet. The air is thin and the way up is difficult. Today's tourists have it much easier. A jet brings them to La Paz, the capital of Bolivia. From there, it's just an hour and a half on the now fully paved road to Tiwanaku and Puma Punku. The altitude hasn't changed, however, and if you choose to make the trip, don't try to do too much on your first few days. It takes a couple of days for your blood cells to acclimate to the different altitude.

~osnansky: A Fanatic?

One man who decided he did want to know more was Arthur Posnansky, the Royal Bavarian professor of geodesic engineering. He worked from 1904 to 1945 in Tiwanaku. The place fascinated him so much that, soon after he got there, he decided to remain in Bolivia, and over the years he was lauded with one honorary academic title after the other. Posnansky was: President of the Geographic Society of La Paz; president of the Archaeological Society of Bolivia; director of the Tiwanaku Institute for Anthropology; Ethnography and Early History; member of the New York Academy of Sciences; and so on and so on. From 1910 onward, practically nothing happened in the field of Bolivian and Peruvian archaeology unless Arthur Posnansky had given it the go ahead. He was respected, honored, and hated-all in all a very controversial person. Posnansky wrote four scientific treatises on Tiwanaku, or the "cradle of humanity," as he called it.47 He despised, mocked, and scorned archaeologist Max Uhle, even calling him an illusionist, counterfeiter, and fantasist, this last in a pamphlet written to discredit Max Uhle.48

Posnansky was the first person to ascertain the exact geographic position of Tiwanaku: 16 degrees, 33 minutes, and 7 seconds south, and 68 degrees, 40 minutes and 24 seconds west of Greenwich. Posnansky cursed the unprofessional destruction of the ruins by an excavator named Georges Courty and claimed that this same indiscriminate and cavalier Georges Courty, who had carried out excavations in Tiwanaku in 1903, was nothing more than a grave robber and had caused more destruction than in any of the long ages that had passed. The indigenous peoples, according to Posnansky, had named their main temple "Akapana," as their forefathers had done. In the ancient Aymara language this meant "the place where the observers dwell." That's something we really ought to keep in mind, don't you think?

According to Posnansky, Tiwanaku had experienced no "decadent period. And those that claim such nonsense have never really studied this prehistoric metropolis.... Tiwanaku is the greatest sun temple ever to be constructed by mankind-not just in South America, but in the whole world."49

That was no flamboyant comparison: Posnansky was well acquainted with the structures in Egypt. In Tiwanaku he found countless signs that pointed to a connection between Heaven and Earth. He deciphered depictions of stars and other heavenly bodies and noted that one of the large statues that was found in Tiwanaku carried the name Pachamama, which meant no less than "Mother of the Cosmos." (Pacha means "cosmos" in Aymara.) This statue bears two of the same winged beings on its breast that can be seen on the sun gate. On its back is a series of phenomenally delicate illustrations engraved millimeter for millimeter, as if the hand of the artist were guided by some kind of intricate stencil and he were using a drill of dental precision. The statue is now the pride and joy of the Open-air Museum in La Paz. Among the engravings, Posnansky discovered the most perfect calendar, which not only chronicled the passing of the year, but also the phases of the moon.

1.10. This statue is known as Pachamama. Image courtesy of Tatjana Ingold, Solothurn, Switzerland.

The same applied to the engravings on the Gateway of the Sun. The "priest-astronomers" (Posnansky) knew how to represent the winter and summer solstices, and also the equinoxes, the daily position of the Moon, and even the "heavenly equator" down to the finest detail ("y el eje vertical de estas dos Figuras representa el Ecuador Celeste").50

Posnansky was pulled along by his own excitement and enthusiasm. He was acquainted with all of the literature that had been written about Tiwanaku, knew the legends and lore of the Incas, could speak Aymara and Quechua fluently, and was determined to find the answer to one key question: How was all this possible? He often doubted his own discoveries, consulted with other scientists, and was still forced to come to the same conclusion-namely that Tiwanaku must be viewed a kind of prehistoric metropolis, built before the last great flood by beings that were somehow way more advanced than any kind of Stone Age man had any right to be. For Posnansky, the Gateway of the Sun was just the centerpiece of a fantastic wall filled with calendrical depictions. ("...La Puerta del Sol es unicamente la Parte central de un formidable muro de inscriptiones calendograficas...."51)

This means that the priest-astronomers must have taken the precession of the Earth into account. (Precession refers to variations in the inclination of a planet's rotational axis. The Earth's precession cycle lasts around 25,800 years.) Posnansky identified three construction periods at Tiwanaku and noted that parts of Puma Punku at least belonged to the oldest of these-this oldest period was also, paradoxically, the most technically perfect, contrary to any rules of technological evolution. As we all know, at the beginning it's always quite primitive: Tools and techniques have to be developed. From generation to generation, small advances are made and skills improve. This only applies to a limited extent at Tiwanaku, because in one corner of the complex lies Puma Punku-built with inexplicable technology. Later generations simply tried to extend the complex with poorer-quality tools.

Based on his astronomical calculations, Posnansky dated the second period as being at least 10,000 years before Christ, and the oldest at around 15,450 BC. This was long before New Grange (Ireland), Stonehenge (England), or any kind of Egyptian or Sumerian culture. At least, it was if we accept established archaeological teachings.

But although Arthur Posnansky was often overtaken by his own enthusiasm, he was anything but a fantasist. He was a true researcher in body and soul: He didn't simply base all his work on his own discoveries and theories, but rather called regularly on the wisdom of other astronomers, geologists, and so forth. In this way, he was able to ascertain that the fauna and flora present during the building of the first stage of Tiwanaku must have changed radically: "This can be clearly shown by the remains of sea life and the silt sediments by Lake Titicaca."52 Posnansky searched for the quarry from which the large stone blocks came and found it around 40 miles from the site of the ruins in the volcanic slopes of "Kjapphia" (now known as "Cerro de Skapia") near Zepita on the Peruvian side of the border. Here, a number of various different types of andesite could be found. (Andesite forms from cooled volcanic magma.)

Then Posnansky was confronted with another problem: How did the blocks get all the way to Tiwanaku? The most plausible solution involved specially built roads on a very solid foundation. Rollers would have then been used to get the 200-ton slabs moving. Then came the ships. Posnansky maintained there was once-"without a shadow of doubt"53-a canal system. The fact that there was water around can be shown geologically. Tiwanaku itself was sited on a harbor. But that was a long, long time ago in a prehistoric epoch.

Posnansky was the first person to postulate a complicated and perfectly designed canalization system, including piping that-to this day-looks as if it were cast in modern concrete. (See figure 1.11.) In addition to this, there existed-in Puma Punku in particular-a number of underground chambers created from andesite blocks that were as perfectly fitted into each other as a waterproof Swiss watch. Posnansky often demonstrated this to his incredulous visitors by pouring bucket after bucket of water into the closed rooms.

Today's tourists don't get to see these subterranean rooms. They are still there, but they have been filled in.

1.11. These pieces of pipe look almost as if they were cast in concrete (photo from 1967). Author's own image.

There was one problem for which Posnansky could find no solution:

... Hay otra cosa curiosa....

There is one other puzzling thing. At the center of the Sun Temple in Tiwanaku, in other words in the most important part of the existing ruins, I discovered a cut block around one meter wide and two meters long. This was, without a doubt, where the priestastronomers had once placed the Gateway of the Sun in the center of their gigantic calendrical wall. The strange thing about it is the fact that this central block, lying at the holiest point in the complex, is made of a completely different kind of stone than the rest of the ruins. It is an uncommonly ugly stone.... For the lay person, it looks as if it were put together from many other particles, but I suspect that this is a kind of hard trachyte with seams of another volcanic rock making it look like a conglomerate of different stones. I would like to repeat: this stone was not used anywhere else-neither for the statues, nor for the platforms."