Page 85 - Fingerprints of the Gods by Graham Hancock

Graham Hancock – FINGERPRINTS OF THE GODS

Chapter 11

Intimations of Antiquity

In his voluminous work Tiahuanacu: the Cradle of American Man, the late
Professor Arthur Posnansky (a formidable German-Bolivian scholar whose
investigations at the ruins lasted for almost fifty years) explains the
archaeo-astronomical calculations which led to his controversial re-dating
of Tiahuanaco. These, he says, were based ‘solely and exclusively on the
difference in the obliquity of the ecliptic of the period in which the
Kalasasaya was built and that which it is today’.
1
What exactly is ‘the obliquity of the ecliptic’, and why does it make
Tiahuanaco 17,000 years old?
According to the dictionary definition it is ‘the angle between the plane
of the earth’s orbit and that of the celestial equator, equal to
approximately 23° 27’ at present’.
2
To clarify this obscure astronomical notion, it helps to picture the earth
as a ship, sailing on the vast ocean of the heavens. Like all such vessels
(be they planets or schooners), it rolls slightly with the swell that flows
beneath it. Picture yourself on board that ship as it rolls, standing on the
deck, gazing out to sea. You rise up on the crest of a wave and your
visible horizon increases; you fall back into a trough and it decreases.
The process is regular, mathematical, like the tick-tock of a great
metronome: a constant, almost imperceptible, nodding, perpetually
changing the angle between yourself and the horizon.
Now picture the earth again. Floating in space, as every schoolchild
knows, the axis of daily rotation of our beautiful blue planet lies slightly
tilted away from the vertical in its orbit around the sun. From this it
follows that the terrestrial equator, and hence the ‘celestial equator’
(which is merely an imaginary extension of the earth’s equator into the
celestial sphere) must also lie at an angle to the orbital plane. That angle,
at any one time, is the obliquity of the ecliptic. But because the earth is a
ship that rolls, its obliquity changes in a cyclical manner over very long
periods. During each cycle of 41,000 years the obliquity varies, with the
precision and predictability of a Swiss chronograph, between 22.1° and

1 Tiahuanacu, II, p. 89.
2 Collins English Dictionary, London, 1982, p. 1015. In addition, Dr John Mason of the
British Astronomical Association defined obliquity of the ecliptic in a telephone interview
on 7 October 1993: ‘The earth spins about an axis which goes through its centre and its
north and south poles. This axis is inclined to the plane of the earth's orbit around the
sun. This tilt is called the obliquity of the ecliptic. The current value for the obliquity of
the ecliptic is 23.44 degrees.’

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