Page 122 - Fingerprints of the Gods by Graham Hancock

Graham Hancock – FINGERPRINTS OF THE GODS

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

Pyramids upon pyramids

Going inside the Cholula pyramid really did feel like entering a man-made
mountain. The tunnels (and there were more than six miles of them) were
not old: they had been left behind by the teams of archaeologists who
had burrowed here diligently from 1931 until funds ran out in 1966.
Somehow, these narrow, low-ceilinged corridors had borrowed an
atmosphere of antiquity from the vast structure all around them. Moist
and cool, they offered an inviting and secretive darkness.
Following a ribbon of torchlight we walked deeper inside the pyramid.
The archaeological excavations had revealed that it was not the product
of one dynasty (as was thought to have been the case with the pyramids
at Giza in Egypt), but that it had been built up over a very long period of
time—two thousand years or so, at a conservative estimate. In other
words it was a collective project, created by an inter-generational labour
force drawn from the many different cultures, Olmec, Teotihuacan,
Toltec, Zapotec, Mixtec, Cholulan and Aztec, that had passed through
Cholula since the dawn of civilization in Mexico.
22
Though it was not known who had been the first builders here, as far as
it had been possible to establish the earliest major edifice on the site
consisted of a tall conical pyramid, shaped like an upturned bucket,
flattened at the summit where a temple had stood. Much later a second,
similar structure was imposed on top of this primordial mound, i.e. a
second inverted bucket of clay, and compacted stone was placed directly
over the first, raising the temple platform to more than 200 feet above
the surrounding plain. Thereafter, during the next fifteen hundred years
or so, an estimated four or five other cultures contributed to the final
appearance of the monument. This they did by extending its base in
several stages, but never again by increasing its maximum height. In this
way, almost as though a master plan were being implemented, the man-
made mountain of Cholula gradually attained its characteristic, four-tier
ziggurat shape. Today, its sides at the base are each almost 1500 feet
long—about twice the length of the sides of the Great Pyramid at Giza—
and its total volume has been estimated at a staggering three million

21 Byron S. Cummings, ‘Cuicuilco and the Archaic Culture of Mexico’, University of
Arizona Bulletin, volume IV:8, 15 November 1933.
22 Mexico, p. 223. See also Kurt Mendelssohn, The Riddle of the Pyramids, Thames &
Hudson, London, 1986, p. 190.

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