Page 65 - Fingerprints of the Gods by Graham Hancock

Graham Hancock – FINGERPRINTS OF THE GODS

with new finds which extend the horizons further and further back in
time. So why shouldn’t they one day discover evidence of the penetration
into the Andes, in remote antiquity, of a race of civilizers who had come
from overseas and gone away again after completing their work? That
was what the legends seemed to me to be suggesting, legends that most
of all, and most clearly, had immortalized the memory of the man/god
Viracocha striding the high windswept byways of the Andes working
miracles wherever he went:

Viracocha himself, with his two assistants, journeyed north ... He travelled up the
cordillera, one assistant went along the coast, and the other up the edge of the
eastern forests ... The Creator proceeded to Urcos, near Cuzco, where he
commanded the future population to emerge from a mountain. He visited Cuzco,
and then continued north to Ecuador. There, in the coastal province of Manta, he
took leave of his people and, walking on the waves, disappeared across the
ocean.
7
There was always this poignant moment of goodbye at the end of every
folk memory featuring the remarkable stranger whose name meant ‘Foam
of the Sea’:

Viracocha went on his way, calling forth the races of men ... When he came to the
district of Puerto Viejo he was joined by his followers whom he had sent on
before, and when they had joined him he put to sea in their company and they say
that he and his people went by water as easily as they had traversed the land.
8
Always this poignant goodbye ... and often a hint of science or magic.

Time capsule

Outside the window of the train things were happening. To my left,
swollen with dark water, I could see the Urubamba, a tributary of the
Amazon and a river sacred to the Incas. The air temperature had warmed-
up noticeably: we had descended into a relatively low-lying valley with its
own tropical micro-climate. The mountain slopes rising on either side of
the tracks were densely covered in green forests and I was reminded that
this was truly a region of vast and virtually insuperable obstacles.
Whoever had ventured all this way into the middle of nowhere to build
Machu Picchu must have had a very strong motive for doing so.
Whatever the reason had been, the choice of such a remote location had
at least one beneficial side-effect: Machu Picchu was never found by the
conquistadores and friars during their days of destructive zeal. Indeed, it
was not until 1911, when the fabulous heritage of older races was
beginning to be treated with greater respect, that a young American
explorer, Hiram Bingham, revealed Machu Picchu to the world. It was
realized at once that this incredible site opened a unique window on pre-

7 The Ancient Civilizations of Peru, p. 237.
8 Juan de Batanzos, 'Suma y Narracion de los Incas', in South American Mythology, p. 79.

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