Page 61 - Fingerprints of the Gods by Graham Hancock
P. 61
Graham Hancock – FINGERPRINTS OF THE GODS
And while promising new tests such as Chlorine-36 rock-exposure dating
were now being developed their implementation was still some way off.
Pending further advances in the latter field, therefore, ‘expert’
chronology was still largely the result of guesswork and subjective
assumptions. Since it was known that the Incas had made intensive use of
Sacsayhuaman I could easily understand why it had been assumed that
they had built it. But there was no obvious or necessary connection
between these two propositions. The Incas could just as well have found
the structures already in place and moved into them.
If so, who had the original builders been?
The Viracochas, said the ancient myths, the bearded, white-skinned
strangers, the ‘shining ones’, the ‘faithful soldiers.’
As we travelled I continued to study the accounts of the Spanish
adventurers and ethnographers of the sixteenth and seventeenth
centuries who had faithfully recorded the ancient, pre-contact traditions
of the Peruvian Indians. What was particularly noticeable about these
traditions was the repeated emphasis that the coming of the Viracochas
had been associated with a terrible deluge which had overwhelmed the
earth and destroyed the greater part of humanity.
59