Page 73 - Fingerprints of the Gods by Graham Hancock

Graham Hancock – FINGERPRINTS OF THE GODS

included examples of Hippocampus (the seahorse). In addition, as one
4
authority has pointed out, ‘The various species of Allorquestes
(hyalella inermis, etc.) and other examples of marine fauna leave no
doubt that this lake in other periods was much saltier than today, or,
more accurately, that the water which formed it was from the sea and
that it was damned up and locked in the Andes when the continent
rose.’
5
3 So much, then, for the events which may have created Lake Titicaca in
the first place. Since its formation this great ‘interior sea’, and the
Altiplano itself, has undergone several other drastic and dramatic
changes. Of these by far the most notable is that the lake’s extent
appears to have fluctuated enormously, indicated by the existence of
an ancient strandline visible on much of the surrounding terrain.
Puzzlingly, this strandline is not level but slopes markedly from north
to south over a considerable horizontal distance. At the northernmost
point surveyed it is as much as 295 feet higher than Titicaca; some
400 miles farther south, it is 274 feet lower than the present level of
the lake. From this, and much other evidence, geologists have
6
deduced that the Altiplano is still gradually rising, but in an
unbalanced manner with greater altitudes being attained in the
northern part and lesser in the southern. The process involved here is
thought to have less to do with changes in the level of Titicaca’s
waters themselves (although such changes have certainly occurred)
than with changes in the level of the whole terrain in which the lake is
situated.
7
4 Much harder to explain in such terms, however, given the very long
time periods major geological transformations are supposed to
require, is irrefutable evidence that the city of Tiahuanaco was once a
port, complete with extensive docks, positioned right on the shore of
Lake Titicaca. The problem is that Tiahuanaco’s ruins are now
8
marooned about twelve miles south of the lake and more than 100
feet higher than the present shoreline. In the period since the city was
9
built, it therefore follows that one of two things must have happened:
either the level of lake has fallen greatly or the land on which
Tiahuanaco stands has risen comparably.
5 Either way it is obvious that there have been massive and traumatic

4 Tiahuanacu, J. J. Augustin, New York, 1945, volume I, p. 28.
5 Ibid.
6 See, for example, H.S. Bellamy, Built Before the Flood: The Problem of the Tiahuanaco
Ruins, Faber & Faber, London, 1943, p. 57.
7 Ibid., p. 59.
8 Tiahuanacu, III, pp. 192-6. See also Bolivia, Lonely Planet Publications, Hawthorne,
Australia, 1992, p. 156.
9 Ibid. See also Harold Osborne, Indians of the Andes: Aymaras and Quechuas,
Routledge and Kegan Paul, London, 1952, p. 55.

71