Page 202 - Fingerprints of the Gods by Graham Hancock

Graham Hancock – FINGERPRINTS OF THE GODS

The reader may recall that many deluge and catastrophe myths contain
references not only to the onset of a great darkness but to other changes
in the appearance of the heavens. In Tierra del Fuego, for instance, it was
said that the sun and the moon ‘fell from the sky’ and in China that ‘the
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planets altered their courses. The sun, moon and stars changed their
motions.’ The Incas believed that ‘in ancient times the Andes were split
15
apart when the sky made war on the earth.’ The Tarahumara of northern
16
Mexico have preserved world destruction legends based on a change in
the sun’s path. An African myth from the lower Congo states that ‘long
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ago the sun met the moon and threw mud at it, which made it less bright.
When this meeting happened there was a great flood ...’ The Cahto
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Indians of California say simply that ‘the sky fell’. And ancient Graeco-
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Roman myths tell that the flood of Deucalion was immediately preceded
by awesome celestial events. These events are graphically symbolized in
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the story of how Phaeton, child of the sun, harnessed his father’s chariot
but was unable to guide it along his father’s course:
Soon the fiery horses felt how their reins were in an unpractised hand. Rearing and
swerving aside, they left their wonted way; then all the earth was amazed to see
that the glorious Sun, instead of holding his stately, beneficent course across the
sky, seemed to speed crookedly overhead and to rush down in wrath like a
meteor.’
21
This is not the place to speculate on what may have caused the alarming
disturbances in the patterns of the heavens that are linked with cataclysm
legends from all over the world. For our purposes at present, it is
sufficient to note that such traditions seem to refer to the same
‘derangement of the sky’ that accompanied the fatal winter and
spreading ice sheets described in the Iranian Avesta. Other linkages
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occur. Fire, for example, often follows or precedes the flood. In the case
of Phaeton’s adventure with the Sun, ‘the grass withered; the crops were
scorched; the woods went up in fire and smoke; then beneath them the
bare earth cracked and crumbled and the blackened rocks burst asunder
under the heat.’
23
Volcanism and earthquakes are also mentioned frequently in
association with the flood, particularly in the Americas. The Araucanians

14 See Chapter Twenty-four.
Ibid.
15
16 National Geographic Magazine, June 1962, p. 87.
17 The Mythology of Mexico and Central America, p. 79.
18 New Larousse Encyclopaedia of Mythology, p. 481.
19 The Mythology of all Races, Cooper Square Publishers Inc., New York, 1964, volume X,
p. 222.
20 See particularly the writings of Hyginus, cited in Paradise Found, p. 195. See also The
Gods of the Greeks, p. 195.
21 The Illustrated Guide to Classical Mythology, p. 15-17.
The Iranian Bundahish tells us that the planets ran against the sky and created
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confusion in the entire cosmos.
23 The Illustrated Guide to Classical Mythology, p. 17.

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