Page 113 - Fingerprints of the Gods by Graham Hancock

Graham Hancock – FINGERPRINTS OF THE GODS

Tula

Fire serpents

Tula, Hidalgo Province
I was sitting on the flat square summit of the unimaginatively named
Pyramid B. The late-afternoon sun was beating down out of a clear blue
sky, and I was facing south, looking around.
At the base of the pyramid, to the north and east, were murals
depicting jaguars and eagles feasting on human hearts. Immediately
behind me were ranged four pillars and four fearsome granite idols each
nine feet tall. Ahead and, to my left lay the partially unexcavated Pyramid
C, a cactus-covered mound about 40 feet high, and farther away were
more mounds not yet investigated by archaeologists. To my right was a
ball court. In that long, I-shaped arena, terrible gladitorial games had
been staged in ancient times. Teams, or sometimes just two individuals
pitted against each other, would compete for possession of a rubber ball;
the losers were decapitated.
The idols on the platform behind me had a solemn and intimidating
aura. I stood up to look at them more closely. Their sculptor had given
them hard, implacable faces, hooked noses and hollow eyes and they
seemed without sympathy or emotion. What interested me most,
however, was not so much their ferocious appearance as the objects that
they clutched in their hands. Archaeologists admitted that they didn’t
really know what these objects were but had tentatively identified them
anyway. This identification had stuck and it was now received wisdom
that spearthrowers called atl-atls were held in the right hands of the idols

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