Page 55 - Fingerprints of the Gods by Graham Hancock

Graham Hancock – FINGERPRINTS OF THE GODS

as painters represent the apostle Saint Bartholomew’. Other accounts of
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Viracocha likened his appearance to that of the Saint Thomas. I
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examined a number of illustrated ecclesiastical manuscripts in which
these two saints appeared; both were routinely depicted as lean, bearded
white men, past middle age, wearing sandals and dressed in long, flowing
cloaks. As we shall see, the records confirmed this was exactly the
appearance ascribed to Viracocha by those who worshipped him. Whoever
he was, therefore, he could not have been an American Indian: they are
relatively dark-skinned people with sparse facial hair. Viracocha’s bushy
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beard and pale complexion made him sound like a Caucasian.
Back in the sixteenth century the Incas had thought so too. Indeed their
legends and religious beliefs made them so certain of his physical type
that they initially mistook the white and bearded Spaniards who arrived
on their shores for the returning Viracocha and his demigods, an event
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long prophesied and which Viracocha was said in all the legends to have
promised. This happy coincidence gave Pizarro’s conquistadores the
decisive strategic and psychological edge that they needed to overcome
the numerically superior Inca forces in the battles that followed.
Who had provided the model for the Viracochas?

10 The Facts on File Encyclopaedia ..., p. 658.
11 See, for example, H. Osborne, South American Mythology, Paul Hamlyn, London, 1968,
p. 81.
For further evidence and argument in this regard, see Constance Irwin, Fair Gods and
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Stone Faces, W. H. Allen, London, 1964, pp. 31-2.
13 J. Alden Mason, The Ancient Civilizations of Peru, Penguin Books, London, 1991, p.
135. See also Garcilaso de la Vega, The Royal Commentaries of the Incas, Orion Press,
New York, 1961, pp. 132-3, 147-8.

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