Page 170 - Fingerprints of the Gods by Graham Hancock

Graham Hancock – FINGERPRINTS OF THE GODS

model of the solar system. At any rate, if the centre line of the Temple of
Quetzalcoatl were taken as denoting the position of the sun, markers laid
out northwards from it along the axis of the Street of the Dead seemed to
indicate the correct orbital distances of the inner planets, the asteroid
belt, Jupiter, Saturn (represented by the so-called ‘Sun’ Pyramid), Uranus
(by the ‘Moon’ Pyramid), and Neptune and Pluto by as yet unexcavated
mounds some kilometres farther north.
11
If these correlations were more than coincidental, then, at the very
least, they indicated the presence at Teotihuacan of an advanced
observational astronomy, one not surpassed by modern science until a
relatively late date. Uranus remained unknown to our own astronomers
until 1787, Neptune until 1846 and Pluto until 1930. Even the most
conservative estimate of Teotihuacan’s antiquity, by contrast, suggested
that the principal ingredients of the site-plan (including the Citadel, the
Street of the Dead and the Pyramids of the Sun and the Moon) must date
back at least to the time of Christ. No known civilization of that epoch,
12
either in the Old World or in the New, is supposed to have had any
knowledge at all of the outer planets—let alone to have possessed
accurate information concerning their orbital distances from each other
and from the sun.

Egypt and Mexico—more coincidences?

After completing his studies of the pyramids and avenues of Teotihuacan,
Stansbury Hagar concluded: ‘We have not yet realized either the
importance or the refinement, or the widespread distribution throughout
ancient America, of the astronomical cult of which the celestial plan was a
feature, and of which Teotihuacan was one of the principal centres.’
13
But was this just an astronomical ‘cult’? Or was it something
approximating more closely to what we might call a science? And whether
cult or science, was it realistic to suppose that it had enjoyed ‘widespread
distribution’ only in the Americas when there was so much evidence
linking it to other parts of the ancient world?
For example, archaeo-astronomers making use of the latest star-
mapping computer programmes had recently demonstrated that the
three world-famous pyramids on Egypt’s Giza plateau formed an exact
terrestrial diagram of the three belt stars in the constellation of Orion.
14
Nor was this the limit of the celestial map the Ancient Egyptian priests
had created in the sands on the west bank of the Nile. Included in their
overall vision, as we shall see in Parts VI and VII, there was a natural

11 Ibid., pp. 266-9.
The Ancient Kingdoms of Mexico, p. 67.
12
13 Mysteries of the Mexican Pyramids, p. 221.
14 The Orion Mystery.

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