Page 201 - Fingerprints of the Gods by Graham Hancock

Graham Hancock – FINGERPRINTS OF THE GODS

Indescribable cold, fire, earthquakes and derangement of
the skies

The Avestic Aryans of Iran, who are known to have migrated to western
Asia from some other, distant homeland, are not the only possessors of
7
archaic traditions which echo the basic setting of the great flood in ways
unlikely to be coincidental. Indeed, though these are most commonly
associated with the deluge, the familiar themes of the divine warning,
and of the salvation of a remnant of mankind from a universal disaster,
are also found in many different parts of the world in connection with the
sudden onset of glacial conditions.
In South America, for example, Toba Indians of the Gran Chaco region
that sprawls across the modern borders of Paraguay, Argentina and Chile,
still repeat an ancient myth concerning the advent of what they call ‘the
Great Cold’. Forewarning comes from a semi-divine hero figure named
Asin:
Asin told a man to gather as much wood as he could and to cover his hut with a
thick layer of thatch, because a time of great cold was coming. As soon as the hut
had been prepared Asin and the man shut themselves inside and waited. When the
great cold set in, shivering people arrived to beg a firebrand from them. Asin was
hard and gave embers only to those who had been his friends. The people were
freezing, and they cried the whole night. At midnight they were all dead, young
and old, men and women ... this period of ice and sleet lasted for a long time and
all the fires were put out. Frost was as thick as leather.
8
As in the Avestic traditions it seems that the great cold was accompanied
by great darkness. In the words of one Toba elder, these afflictions were
sent ‘because when the earth is full of people it has to change. The
population has to be thinned out to save the world ... In the case of the
long darkness the sun simply disappeared and the people starved. As
they ran out of food, they began eating their children. Eventually they all
died ...
9
The Mayan Popol Vuh associates the flood, with ‘much hail, black rain
and mist, and indescribable cold’. It also says that this was a period
10
when ‘it was cloudy and twilight all over the world ... the faces of the sun
and the moon were covered.’ Other Maya sources confirm that these
11
strange and terrible phenomena were experienced by mankind, ‘in the
time of the ancients. The earth darkened ... It happened that the sun was
still bright and clear. Then, at midday, it got dark ... Sunlight did not
12
return till the twenty-sixth year after the flood.’
13

7 The Arctic Home in the Vedas, p. 390ff.
8 The Mythology of South America, pp. 143-4
9 Ibid., p. 144.
10 Popol Vuh, p. 178.
Ibid., p. 93.
11
12 The Mythology of Mexico and Central America, p. 41.
13 Maya History and Religion, p. 333.

199