Page 178 - Fingerprints of the Gods by Graham Hancock

Graham Hancock – FINGERPRINTS OF THE GODS

This was planning and architecture of a high order. It had survived the
passage of the millennia and it had survived the wholesale remodelling of
much of the pyramid’s outer shell conducted in the first decade of the
twentieth century by the self-styled restorer, Leopoldo Bartres. In addition
to plundering precious evidence that might have helped us towards a
better understanding of the purposes for which the enigmatic structure
had been built, this repulsive lackey of Mexico’s corrupt dictator Porfirio
Diaz had removed the outer layer of stone, mortar and plaster to a depth
of more than twenty feet from the entire northern, eastern and southern
faces. The result was catastrophic: the underlying adobe surface began to
dissolve in heavy rains and to exhibit plastic flow which threatened to
destroy the whole edifice. Although the slippage was halted with hasty
remedial measures, nothing could change the fact that the Sun Pyramid
had been deprived of almost all its original surface features.
By modern archaeological standards this was, of course, an
unforgivable act of desecration. Because of it, we will never learn the
significance of the many sculptures, inscriptions, reliefs and artefacts that
had almost certainly been removed with those twenty feet of the outer
shell. Nor was this the only or even the most regrettable consequence of
Bartres’s grotesque vandalism. There was startling evidence which
suggested that the unknown architects of the Pyramid of the Sun might
have intentionally incorporated scientific data into many of the key
dimensions of the great structure. This evidence had been gathered and
extrapolated from the intact west face (which, not accidentally, was also
the face where the intended equinoctial effects could still be seen), but
thanks to Bartres, no similar information was likely to be forthcoming
from the other three faces because of the arbitrary alterations imposed
upon them. Indeed, by drastically distorting the original shape and size of
so much of the pyramid, the Mexican ‘restorer’ had possibly deprived
posterity of some of the most important lessons Teotihuacan had to
teach.

Eternal numbers

The transcendental number known as pi is fundamental to advanced
mathematics. With a value slightly in excess of 3.14 it is the ratio of the
diameter of a circle to its circumference. In other words if the diameter of
a circle is 12 inches, the circumference of that circle will be 12 inches x
3.14 = 37.68 inches. Likewise, since the diameter of a circle is exactly
double the radius, we can use pi to calculate the circumference of any
circle from its radius. In this case, however, the formula is the length of
the radius multiplied by 2pi. As an illustration let us take again a circle of
12 inches diameter. Its radius will be 6 inches and its circumference can
be obtained as follows: 6 inches x 2 x 3.14 = 37.68 inches. Similarly a
circle with a radius of 10 inches will have a circumference of 67.8 inches

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