Page 176 - Fingerprints of the Gods by Graham Hancock

Graham Hancock – FINGERPRINTS OF THE GODS

Chapter 23

The Sun and the Moon and the Way of the Dead

Some archaeological discoveries are heralded with much fanfare; others,
for various reasons, are not. Among this latter category must be included
the thick and extensive layer of sheet mica found sandwiched between
two of the upper levels of the Teotihuacan Pyramid of the Sun when it
was being probed for restoration in 1906. The lack of interest which
greeted this discovery, and the absence of any follow-up studies to
determine its possible function is quite understandable because the mica,
which had a considerable commercial value, was removed and sold as
soon as it had been excavated. The culprit was apparently Leopoldo
Bartres, who had been commissioned to restore the time-worn pyramid
by the Mexican government.
1
There has also been a much more recent discovery of mica at
Teotihuacan (in the ‘Mica Temple’) and this too has passed almost
without notice. Here the reason is harder to explain because there has
been no looting and the mica remains on site.
2
One of a group of buildings, the Mica Temple is situated around a patio
about 1000 feet south of the west face of the Pyramid of the Sun. Directly
under a floor paved with heavy rock slabs, archaeologists financed by the
Viking Foundation excavated two massive sheets of mica which had been
carefully and purposively installed at some extremely remote date by a
people who must have been skilled in cutting and handling this material.
The sheets are ninety feet square and form two layers, one laid directly
on top of the other.
3
Mica is not a uniform substance but contains trace elements of different
metals depending on the kind of rock formation in which it is found.
Typically these metals include potassium and aluminum and also, in
varying quantities, ferrous and ferric iron, magnesium, lithium,
manganese and titanium. The trace elements in Teotihuacan’s Mica
Temple indicate that the underfloor sheets belong to a type which occurs
only in Brazil, some 2000 miles away. Clearly, therefore, the builders of
4
the Temple must have had a specific need for this particular kind of mica
and were prepared to go to considerable lengths to obtain it, otherwise
they could have used the locally available variety more cheaply and
simply.
Mica does not leap to mind as an obvious general-purpose flooring

1 Mysteries of the Mexican Pyramids, p. 202.
Ibid. The Pyramids of Teotihuacan, p. 16.
2
3 The Pyramids of Teotihuacan, p. 16.
4 Encyclopaedia Britannica, 8:90, and The Lost Realms, p. 53.

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