Page 150 - Fingerprints of the Gods by Graham Hancock

Graham Hancock – FINGERPRINTS OF THE GODS

mountains’.
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Are the peculiar parallels between the Sumerian and Mexican myths
pure coincidence or could both have been marked by the cultural
fingerprints of a lost civilization? If so, the faces of the heroes of that
ancestral culture may indeed have been carved in stone and passed down
as heirlooms through thousands of years, sometimes in full view,
sometimes buried, until they were dug up for the last time by
archaeologists in our era and given labels like ‘Olmec Head’ and ‘Uncle
Sam’.
The faces of those heroes also appear at Monte Alban, where they seem
to tell a sad story.

Monte Alban.

Monte Alban: the downfall of masterful men

A site thought to be about 3000 years old, Monte Alban stands on a vast
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artificially flattened hilltop overlooking Oaxaca. It consists of a huge
rectangular area, the Grand Plaza, which is enclosed by groups of
pyramids and other buildings laid out in precise geometrical relationships
to one another. The overall feel of the place is one of harmony and
proportion emerging from a well-ordered and symmetrical plan.
Following the advice of CICOM, whom I had spoken to before leaving
Villahermosa, I made my way first to the extreme south-west corner of
the Monte Alban site. There, stacked loosely against the side of a low

31 Pre-Hispanic Gods of Mexico, p. 59; Inga Glendinnen, Aztecs, Cambridge University
Press, 1991, p. 177. See also The Gods and Symbols of Ancient Mexico and the Maya, p.
144.
32 Mexico, p. 669.

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