Page 81 - Fingerprints of the Gods by Graham Hancock

Graham Hancock – FINGERPRINTS OF THE GODS

representations of animals. Or perhaps it would be better to describe
these carvings as representations of odd animals, because they looked
like big, clumsy, prehistoric mammals with fat tails and club feet.
There were other points of interest. For example, the stone figure of
Viracocha had been sculpted with the hands and arms folded, one below
the other, over the front of a long, flowing robe. On each side of this robe
appeared the sinuous form of a snake coiling upwards from ground to
shoulder level. And as I looked at this beautiful design (the original of
which had perhaps been embroidered on rich cloth) the picture that came
into my mind was of Viracocha as a wizard or a sorcerer, a bearded,
Merlin-like figure dressed in weird and wonderful clothes, calling down
fire from heaven.
The ‘temple’ in which the Viracocha pillar stood was open to the sky
and consisted of a large, rectangular pit, like a swimming pool, dug out
six feet below ground level. Its floor, about 40 feet long by 30 feet wide,
was composed of hard, flat gravel. Its strong vertical walls were formed
from precisely dressed ashlar blocks of varying sizes laid closely against
one another without mortar in the joints and interspersed with taller,
rough-hewn stelae. A set of steps was let into the southern wall and it
was down these I had come when I had entered the structure.
I walked several times around the figure of Viracocha, resting my
fingers on the sun-warmed stone pillar, trying to guess its purpose. It was
perhaps seven feet tall and it faced south, with its back to the old
shoreline of Lake Titicaca (originally less than six hundred feet away).
4
Ranged out behind this central obelisk, furthermore, there were two
others, of smaller stature, possibly intended to represent Viracocha’s
legendary companions. All three figures, being severely, functionally
vertical, cast clean-edged shadows as I gazed at them, for the sun was
past its zenith.
I sat down on the ground again and looked slowly all around the
temple. Viracocha dominated it, like the conductor of an orchestra, and
yet its most striking feature undoubtedly lay elsewhere: lining the walls,
at various points and heights, were dozens and dozens of human heads
sculpted in stone. These were complete heads, protruding three
dimensionally out of the walls. There were several different (and
contradictory) scholarly opinions as to their function.

Pyramid

From the floor of the sunken temple, looking west, I could see an
immense wall into which was set an impressive geometrical gateway
made of large stone slabs. Silhouetted in this gateway by the afternoon
sun was the figure of a giant. The wall, I knew, enclosed a parade-ground-

4 Bolivia, p. 156 (map).

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