Fingerprints of the Gods: The Evidence of Earth's Lost Civilization

by Graham Hancock

What might we learn if we could examine this ‘very old’ jewel today? And how old was it really? We shall never find out because Fr Benito, the first missionary of Achiotlan, seized the stone from the Indians: ‘He had it ground up, although a Spaniard offered three thousand ducats for it, stirred the powder in water, poured it upon the earth and trod upon it …’8 Equally typical of the profligate squandering of the intellectual riches concealed in the Mexican past was the shared fate of two gifts given to Cortez by the Aztec emperor Montezuma. These were circular calendars, as big as cartwheels, one of solid silver, and the other of solid gold. Both were elaborately engraved with beautiful hieroglyphs which may have contained material of great interest. Cortez had them melted down for ingots on the spot.9 More systematically, all over Central America, vast repositories of knowledge accumulated since ancient times were painstakingly gathered, heaped up and burned by zealous friars. In July 1562, for example, in the main square of Mani (just south of modern Merida in Yucatan Province) Fr Diego de Landa burned thousands of Maya codices, story paintings and hieroglyphs inscribed on rolled-up deer skins. He also destroyed countless ‘idols’ and ‘altars’, all of which he described as ‘works of the devil, designed by the evil one to delude the Indians and to prevent them from accepting Christianity