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

by Graham Hancock

In other words, the true enigma of this 1513 map is not so much its inclusion of a continent not discovered until 1818 but its portrayal of part of the coastline of that continent under ice-free conditions which came to an end 6000 years ago and have not since recurred.

There was, he asserted, irrefutable evidence that the earth had been comprehensively mapped before 4000 BC by a hitherto unknown and undiscovered civilization which had achieved a high level of technological advancement:10

Most of these maps were of the Mediterranean and the Black Sea. But maps of other areas survived. These included maps of the Americas and maps of the Arctic and Antarctic Oceans. It becomes clear that the ancient voyagers travelled from pole to pole. Unbelievable as it may appear, the evidence nevertheless indicates that some ancient people explored Antarctica when its coasts were free of ice. It is clear, too, that they had an instrument of navigation for accurately determining longitudes that was far superior to anything possessed by the peoples of ancient, medieval or modern times until the second half of the eighteenth century. This evidence of a lost technology will support and give credence to many of the other hypotheses that have been brought forward of a lost civilization in remote times. Scholars have been able to dismiss most of that evidence as mere myth, but here we have evidence that cannot be dismissed. The evidence requires that all the other evidence that has been brought forward in the past should be re-examined with an open mind.12

Moreover, far from being applauded for making a serious new contribution to the debate about the antiquity of human civilization, Hapgood until his death was cold-shouldered by the majority of his professional peers, who couched their discussion of his work in what has accurately been described as ‘thick and unwarranted sarcasm, selecting trivia and factors not subject to verification as the bases for condemnation, seeking in this way to avoid the basic issues’.

The Piri Reis Map seems to contain surprising collateral evidence in support of the thesis of a geologically recent glaciation of parts of Antarctica following a sudden southward displacement of the earth’s crust. Moreover since such a map could only have been drawn prior to 4000 BC, its implications for the history of human civilization are staggering. Prior to 4000 BC there are supposed to have been no civilizations at all.

At some risk of over-simplification, the academic consensus is broadly: • Civilization first developed in the Fertile Crescent of the Middle East. • This development began after 4000 BC, and culminated in the emergence of the earliest true civilizations (Sumer and Egypt) around 3000 BC, soon followed by the Indus Valley and China. • About 1500 years later, civilization took off spontaneously and independently in the Americas. • Since 3000 BC in the Old World (and about 1500 BC in the New) civilization has steadily ‘evolved’ in the direction of ever more refined, complex and productive forms. • In consequence, and particularly by comparison with ourselves, all ancient civilizations (and all their works) are to be understood as essentially primitive (the Sumerian astronomers regarded the heavens with unscientific awe, and even the pyramids of Egypt were built by ‘technological primitives’). The evidence of the Piri Reis Map appears to contradict all this.

According to a contemporary text, the Relacion anonyma de los costumbres antiquos de los naturales del Piru, this idol took the form of a marble statue of the god – a statue described ‘as to the hair, complexion, features, raiment and sandals, just as painters represent the apostle Saint Bartholomew’.10 Other accounts of Viracocha likened his appearance to that of the Saint Thomas.

Through all the ancient legends of the peoples of the Andes stalked a tall, bearded, pale-skinned figure wrapped in a cloak of secrecy. And though he was known by many different names in many different places he was always recognizably the same figure: Viracocha, Foam of the Sea, a master of science and magic who wielded terrible weapons and who came in a time of chaos to set the world to rights.

A bearded man of medium height dressed in a rather long cloak … He was past his prime, with grey hair, and lean. He walked with a staff and addressed the natives with love, calling them his sons and daughters. As he traversed all the land he worked miracles. He healed the sick by touch. He spoke every tongue even better than the natives. They called him Thunupa or Tarpaca, Viracocha-rapacha or Pachaccan …8

It seemed, however, that some of the more remarkable structures routinely attributed to them could have been erected by earlier civilizations; the evidence suggested that the Incas had often functioned as the restorers of these structures rather than their original builders.

What was particularly noticeable about these traditions was the repeated emphasis that the coming of the Viracochas had been associated with a terrible deluge which had overwhelmed the earth and destroyed the greater part of humanity.

In Chapter six of the Book of Genesis, for example, which describes the Hebrew God’s displeasure with his creation and his decision to destroy it, I had long been intrigued by one of the few descriptive statements made about the forgotten era before the Flood. According to the enigmatic language of that statement, ‘There were giants in the earth in those days …’ .4 Could the ‘giants’ buried in the biblical sands of the Middle East be connected in some unseen way to the ‘giants’ woven into the fabric of pre-Colombian native American legends? Adding considerably to the mystery was the fact that the Jewish and Peruvian sources both went on, with many further details in common, to depict an angry deity unleashing a catastrophic flood upon a wicked and disobedient world.

If Muller was right, Machu Picchu was not a mere 500 but could be as much as 6000 years old. This would make it significantly older than the Great Pyramid of Egypt (assuming, of course, that one accepted the Great Pyramid’s own orthodox dating of around 2500 BC).

Here are the mysteries, and some of the solutions that have been proposed: 1 Though now more than two miles above sea level, the area around Lake Titicaca is littered with millions upon millions of fossilized sea shells. This suggests that at some stage the whole of the Altiplano was forced upwards from the sea-bed, perhaps as part of the general terrestrial rising that formed South America as a whole. In the process great quantities of ocean water, together with countless myriads of living marine creatures, were scooped up and suspended among the Andean ranges.1 This is thought to have happened not more recently than about 100 million years ago.2 2 Paradoxically, despite the mighty antiquity of this event, Lake Titicaca has retained, until the present day, ‘a marine icthyofauna’3, in other words, though now located hundreds of miles from any ocean, its fish and crustacea feature many oceanic (rather than fresh-water) types. Surprising creatures brought to the surface in fishermen’s nets have included examples of Hippocampus (the seahorse).4 In addition, as one authority has pointed out, ‘The various species of Allorquestes (hyalella inermis, etc.) and other examples of marine fauna leave no doubt that this lake in other periods was much saltier than today, or, more accurately, that the water which formed it was from the sea and that it was damned up and locked in the Andes when the continent rose.’5 3 So much, then, for the events which may have created Lake Titicaca in t...

It sent a tingle down my spine to see them now so colourfully brought to life on an obscure island on Lake Titicaca – even though my research had partially prepared me for this coincidence. I knew that no satisfactory explanation had ever been given for how such close and richly detailed similarities of boat design could occur in two such widely separated places.

In those far-off days, before Lake Titicaca became more than one hundred feet shallower, Tiahuanaco had stood at the water’s edge overlooking a vista of awesome and sacred beauty. Now the great port, capital city of Viracocha himself, lay lost amid eroded hills and empty windswept plains.

My background research had made me especially curious about the Gateway of the Sun and, indeed, about the Kalasasaya as a whole. This was so because certain astronomical and solar alignments which we review in the next chapter had made it possible to calculate the approximate period when the Kalasasaya must originally have been laid out. These alignments suggested the controversial date of 15,000 BC – about seventeen thousand years ago.

‘The Aymara Algorithm is used as a bridge language. The language of an original document is translated into Aymara and then into any number of other languages.’

Like the many different peoples and cultures that had preceded them in Mexico, the Aztecs believed that the universe operated in great cycles. The priests stated as a matter of simple fact that there had been four such cycles, or ‘Suns’, since the creation of the human race. At the time of the conquest, it was the Fifth Sun that prevailed.

And it is within that same Fifth Sun, or epoch, that humankind still lives today. This account is taken from a rare collection of Aztec documents known as the Vaticano-Latin Codex: First Sun, Matlactli Atl: duration 4008 years. Those who lived then ate water maize called atzitzintli. In this age lived the giants … The First Sun was destroyed by water in the sign Matlactli Atl (Ten Water). It was called Apachiohualiztli (flood, deluge), the art of sorcery of the permanent rain. Men were turned into fish. Some say that only one couple escaped, protected by an old tree living near the water. Others say that there were seven couples who hid in a cave until the flood was over and the waters had gone down. They repopulated the earth and were worshipped as gods in their nations … Second Sun, Ehecoatl: duration 4010 years. Those who lived then ate wild fruit known as acotzintli. This Sun was destroyed by Ehecoatl (Wind Serpent) and men were turned into monkeys … One man and one woman, standing on a rock, were saved from destruction … Third Sun, Tleyquiyahuillo: duration 4081 years. Men, the descendants of the couple who were saved from the Second Sun, ate a fruit called tzincoacoc. This Third Sun was destroyed by fire … Fourth Sun, Tzontlilic: duration 5026 years … Men died of starvation after a deluge of blood and fire …9

The symbol of the Fifth Sun, our current epoch, is the face of Tonatiuh, the sun god himself. His tongue, fittingly depicted as an obsidian knife, juts out hungrily, signalling his need for the nourishment of human blood and hearts. His features are wrinkled to indicate his advanced age and he appears within the symbol Ollin which signifies Movement.11 Why is the Fifth Sun known as ‘The Sun of Movement’? Because, ‘the elders say: in it there will be a movement of the earth and from this we shall all perish.’

And when will this catastrophe strike? Soon, according to the Aztec priests. They believed that the Fifth Sun was already very old and approaching the end of its cycle (hence the wrinkles on the face of Tonatiuh). Ancient meso–American traditions dated the birth of this epoch to a remote period corresponding to the fourth millennium BC of the Christian calendar.13 The method of calculating its end, however, had been forgotten by the time of Aztecs.

Suppose, in other words, that some truly awful geological catastrophe is already unfolding, deep in the bowels of the earth, as the wise men of the Maya predicted? In Peru and Bolivia I had become aware of the obsessive concern with the calculation of time shown by the Incas and their predecessors. Now, in Mexico, I discovered that the Maya, who believed that they had worked out the date of the end of the world, had been possessed by the same compulsion. Indeed, for these people, just about everything boiled down to numbers, the passage of the years and the manifestations of events. The belief was that if the numbers which lay beneath the manifestations could be properly understood, it would be possible to predict successfully the timing of the events themselves.

I felt disinclined to ignore the obvious implications of the recurrent destructions of humanity depicted so vividly in the Central American traditions. Coming complete with giants and floods, these traditions were eerily similar to those of the far-off Andean region.

Meanwhile, however, I was keen to pursue another, related line of inquiry. This concerned the bearded white-skinned deity named Quetzalcoatl, who was believed to have sailed to Mexico from across the seas in remote antiquity. Quetzalcoatl was credited with the invention of the advanced mathematical and calendrical formulae that the Maya were later to use to calculate the date of doomsday.19 He also bore a striking resemblance to Viracocha, the pale god of the Andes, who came to Tiahuanaco ‘in the time of darkness’ bearing the gifts of light and civilization.

After spending so long immersed in the traditions of Viracocha, the bearded god of the distant Andes, I was intrigued to discover that Quetzalcoatl, the principal deity of the ancient Mexican pantheon, was described in terms that were extremely familiar. For example, one pre-Colombian myth collected in Mexico by the sixteenth-century Spanish chronicler Juan de Torquemada asserted that Quetzalcoatl was ‘a fair and ruddy complexioned man with a long beard’. Another spoke of him as, ‘era Hombre blanco; a large man, broad browed, with huge eyes, long hair, and a great, rounded beard – la barba grande y redonda’

Another still described him as a mysterious person … a white man with strong formation of body, broad forehead, large eyes, and a flowing beard. He was dressed in a long, white robe reaching to his feet. He condemned sacrifices, except of fruits and flowers, and was known as the god of peace … When addressed on the subject of war he is reported to have stopped up his ears with his fingers.

According to a particularly striking Central American tradition, this ‘wise instructor …’ came from across the sea in a boat that moved by itself without paddles. He was a tall, bearded white man who taught people to use fire for cooking. He also built houses and showed couples that they could live together as husband and wife; and since people often quarreled in those days, he taught them to live in peace.3

All in all, I felt Morley was right in looking for a factual historical background behind the Mayan and Mexican myths. What the traditions seemed to indicate was that the bearded pale-skinned foreigner called Quetzalcoatl (or Kukulkan or whatever) had been not just one person but probably several people who had come from the same place and had belonged to the same distinctively non-Indian ethnic type (bearded, white-skinned, etc.). This wasn’t only suggested by the existence of a ‘family’ of obviously related11 but slightly different gods sharing the symbol of the snake.

According to the Spanish chronicler Las Casas: ‘The natives affirmed that in ancient times there came to Mexico twenty men, the chief of whom was called Kukulkan … They wore flowing robes and sandals on their feet, they had long beards and their heads were bare … Kukulkan instructed the people in the arts of peace, and caused various important edifices to be built …’14

Like some long-lost twin of Viracocha, the white and bearded Andean deity, Quetzalcoatl was depicted as having brought to Mexico all the skills and sciences necessary to create a civilized life, thus ushering in a golden age.16 He was believed, for example, to have introduced the knowledge of writing to Central America, to have invented the calendar, and to have been a master builder who taught the people the secrets of masonry and architecture. He was the father of mathematics, metallurgy, and astronomy and was said to have ‘measured the earth’. He also founded productive agriculture, and was reported to have discovered and introduced corn – literally the staff of life in these ancient lands. A great doctor and master of medicines, he was the patron of healers and diviners ‘and disclosed to the people the mysteries of the properties of plants’. In addition, he was revered as a lawgiver, as a protector of craftsmen, and as a patron of all the arts.

Why did Quetzalcoatl go away? What went wrong? Mexican legends provided answers to these questions. They said that the enlightened and benevolent rule of the Plumed Serpent had been brought to an end by Tezcatilpoca, a malevolent god whose name meant ‘Smoking Mirror’ and whose cult demanded human sacrifice. It seemed that a near-cosmic struggle between the forces of light and darkness had taken place in Ancient Mexico, and that the forces of darkness had triumphed …

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 …’10 Elsewhere he elaborated on the same theme: We found great numbers of books [written in the characters of the Indians] but as they contained nothing but superstitions and falsehoods of the devil we burned them all, which the natives took most grievously, and which gave them great pain.

It is worth noting, however, that Byron Cummings, the American archaeologist who originally excavated the site for the National Geographical Society, was convinced by clearly demarcated stratification layers above and below the pyramid (laid down both before and after the volcanic eruption) that it was ‘the oldest temple yet uncovered on the American continent’. He went further than the geologists and stated categorically that this temple ‘fell into ruins some 8500 years ago’.21

The Olmecs were much, much older than the Maya. They’d been a smart, civilized, technologically advanced people and they did, indeed, appear to have invented the bar-and-dot system of calendrical notation, with the enigmatic starting date of 13 August 3114 BC, which predicted the end of the world in AD 2012.

The Pyramid of the Magician was by no means unique in being associated with the supernatural powers of dwarves, whose architectural and masonry skills were widely renowned in Central America. ‘Construction work was easy for them,’ asserted one typical Maya legend, ‘all they had to do was whistle and heavy rocks would move into place.’10 A very similar tradition, as the reader may recall, claimed that the gigantic stone blocks of the mysterious Andean city of Tiahuanaco had been ‘carried through the air to the sound of a trumpet’.11 In both Central America and in the far-off regions of the Andes, therefore, strange sounds had been associated with the miraculous levitation of massive rocks.

The orthodox view is that Archimedes in the third century BC was the first man to calculate pi correctly at 3.14.8 Scholars do not accept that any of the mathematicians of the New World ever got anywhere near pi before the arrival of the Europeans in the sixteenth century. It is therefore disorienting to discover that the Great Pyramid at Giza (built more than 2000 years before the birth of Archimedes) and the Pyramid of the Sun at Teotihuacan, which vastly predates the conquest, both incorporate the value of pi. They do so, moreover, in much the same way, and in a manner which leaves no doubt that the ancient builders on both sides of the Atlantic were thoroughly conversant with this transcendental number.

Could it be that the myths themselves are historical records? Could it be that these cunning and immortal stories, composed by anonymous geniuses, were the medium used to record such information and pass it on in the time before history began?

In the far south of the continent a Yamana legend from Tierra del Fuego states: ‘The moon woman caused the flood. This was at the time of the great upheaval … Moon was filled with hatred towards human beings … At that time everybody drowned with the exception of those few who were able to escape to the five mountain peaks that the water did not cover.’18 Another Tierra del Fuegan tribe, the Pehuenche, associate the flood with a prolonged period of darkness: ‘The sun and the moon fell from the sky and the world stayed that way, without light, until finally two giant condors carried both the sun and the moon back up to the sky.’19

The Luiseno of lower California had a legend that a flood covered the mountains and destroyed most of mankind. Only a few were saved because they fled to the highest peaks which were spared when all the rest of the world was inundated. The survivors remained there until the flood ended.21 Farther north similar flood myths were recorded amongst the Hurons.22 And a legend of the Montagnais, belonging to the Algonquin family, related how Michabo, or the Great Hare, re-established the world after the flood with the help of a raven, an otter and a muskrat.

Lynd’s History of the Dakotas, an authoritative work of the nineteenth century which preserved many indigenous traditions that would otherwise have been lost, reports an Iroquois myth that ‘the sea and waters had at one time infringed upon the land, so that all human life was destroyed’. The Chickasaws asserted that the world had been destroyed by water ‘but that one family was saved and two animals of every kind’. The Sioux also spoke of a time when there was no dry land and when all men disappeared from existence.

More than 500 deluge legends are known around the world and, in a survey of 86 of these (20 Asiatic, 3 European, 7 African, 46 American and 10 from Australia and the Pacific), the specialist researcher Dr Richard Andree concluded that 62 were entirely independent of the Mesopotamian and Hebrew accounts.

For example, early Jesuit scholars who were among the first Europeans to visit China had the opportunity in the Imperial Library to study a vast work, consisting of 4320 volumes, said to have been handed down from ancient times and to contain ‘all knowledge’. This great book included a number of traditions which told of the consequences that followed ‘when mankind rebelled against the high gods and the system of the universe fell into disorder’: ‘The planets altered their courses. The sky sank lower towards the north. The sun, moon and stars changed their motions. The earth fell to pieces and the waters in its bosom rushed upwards with violence and overflowed the earth.’

In the Malaysian tropical forest the Chewong people believe that every so often their own world, which they call Earth Seven, turns upside down so that everything is flooded and destroyed. However, through the agency of the Creator God Tohan, the flat new surface of what had previously been the underside of Earth Seven is moulded into mountains, valleys and plains. New trees are planted, and new humans born.27 A flood myth of Laos and northern Thailand has it that beings called the Thens lived in the upper kingdom long ages ago, while the masters of the lower world were three great men, Pu Leng Seung, Khun K’an and Khun K’et. One day the Thens announced that before eating any meal people should give them a part of their food as a sign of respect. The people refused and in a rage the Thens created a flood which devastated the whole earth. The three great men built a raft, on top of which they made a small house, and embarked with a number of women and children. In this way they and their descendants survived the deluge.28

In similar fashion the Karens of Burma have traditions of a global deluge from which two brothers were saved on a raft.29 Such a deluge is also part of the mythology of Viet Nam, where a brother and a sister are said to have survived in a great wooden chest which also contained two of every kind of animal.30

Several aboriginal Australian peoples, especially those whose traditional homelands are along the tropical northern coast, ascribe their origins to a great flood which swept away the previous landscape and society. Meanwhile, in the origin myths of a number of other tribes, the cosmic serpent ...

There are Japanese traditions according to which the Pacific islands of Oceania were formed after the waters of a great deluge had receded.32 In Oceania itself a myth of the native inhabitants of Hawaii tells how the world was destroyed by a flood and later recreated by a god named Tangaloa. The Samoans believe that there was once an inundation that wiped out almost all mankind. It was survived onl...

On the other side of the world, Greek mythology too is haunted by memories of a deluge. Here, however (as in Central America) the inundation is not viewed as an isolated event but as one of a series of destructions and remakings of the world. The Aztecs and the Maya spoke in terms of successive ‘Suns’ or epochs (of which our own was thought to be the Fifth and last). In similar fashion the oral traditions of Ancient Greece, collected and set down in writing by Hesiod in the eighth century BC, related that prior to the present creation there had been four earlier races of men on earth. Each of these was thought more advanced than the one that followed it. And each, at the appointed hour, had been ‘swallowed up’ in a geological cataclysm.

The Mayan Popol Vuh associates the flood, with ‘much hail, black rain and mist, and indescrible cold’.10 It also says that this was a period when ‘it was cloudy and twilight all over the world … the faces of the sun and the moon were covered.’11 Other Maya sources confirm that these strange and terrible phenomena were experienced by mankind, ‘in the time of the ancients. The earth darkened … It happened that the sun was still bright and clear. Then, at midday, it got dark …12 Sunlight did not return till the twenty-sixth year after the flood.’

In Tierra del Fuego, for instance, it was said that the sun and the moon ‘fell from the sky’14 and in China that ‘the planets altered their courses. The sun, moon and stars changed their motions.’15 The Incas believed that ‘in ancient times the Andes were split apart when the sky made war on the earth.’16 The Tarahumara of northern Mexico have preserved world destruction legends based on a change in the sun’s path.17 An African myth from the lower Congo states that ‘long ago the sun met the moon and threw mud at it, which made it less bright. When this meeting happened there was a great flood …’18 The Cahto Indians of California say simply that ‘the sky fell’.19 And ancient Graeco-Roman myths tell that the flood of Deucalion was immediately preceded by awesome celestial events.20 These events are graphically symbolized in the story of how Phaeton, child of the sun, harnessed his father’s chariot but was unable to guide it along his father’s course: