Page 161 - Fingerprints of the Gods by Graham Hancock

Graham Hancock – FINGERPRINTS OF THE GODS

uncontaminated, pre-Colombian tradition. It is therefore puzzling to find
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such similarities between these traditions and those recorded in the
Genesis story. Moreover, like so many of the other Old World/New World
links we have identified, the character of the similarities is not suggestive
of any kind of direct influence of one region on the other but of two
different interpretations of the same set of events. Thus, for example:
• The biblical Garden of Eden looks like a metaphor for the state of
blissful, almost ‘godlike’, knowledge that the ‘First Men’ of the Popol
Vuh enjoyed.
• The essence of this knowledge was the ability to ‘see all’ and to ‘know
all’. Was this not precisely the ability Adam and Eve acquired after
eating the forbidden fruit, which grew on the branches of the tree of
the knowledge of good and evil’?
• Finally, just as Adam and Eve were driven out of the Garden, so were
the four First Men of the Popol Vuh deprived of their ability to ‘see far’.
Thereafter ‘their eyes were covered and they could only see what was
close ...’
Both the Popol Vuh and Genesis therefore tell the story of mankind’s fall
from grace. In both cases, this state of grace was closely associated with
knowledge, and the reader is left in no doubt that the knowledge in
question was so remarkable that it conferred godlike powers on those
who possessed it.
The Bible, adopting a dark and muttering tone of voice, calls it ‘the
knowledge of good and evil’ and has nothing further to add. The Popol
Vuh is much more informative. It tells us that the knowledge of the First
Men consisted of the ability to see ‘things hidden in the distance’, that
they were astronomers who ‘examined the four corners, the four points
of the arch of the sky’, and that they were geographers who succeeded in
measuring ‘the round face of the earth’.
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Geography is about maps. In Part I we saw evidence suggesting that the
cartographers of an as yet unidentified civilization might have mapped
the planet with great thoroughness at an early date. Could the Popol Vuh
be transmitting some garbled memory of that same civilization when it
speaks nostalgically of the First Men and of the miraculous geographical
knowledge they possessed?
Geography is about maps, and astronomy is about stars. Very often the
two disciplines go hand in hand because stars are essential for navigation
on long sea-going voyages of discovery (and long sea-going voyages of
discovery are essential for the production of accurate maps).
Is it accidental that the First Men of the Popol Vuh were remembered
not only for studying ‘the round face of the earth’ but for their
contemplation of ‘the arch of heaven’? And is it a coincidence that the
8

Popol Vuh, Introduction, p. 16. See also The Magic and Mysteries of Mexico, p. 250ff.
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7 Popol Vuh, pp. 168-9.
8 Ibid.

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