Page 86 - Fingerprints of the Gods by Graham Hancock

Graham Hancock – FINGERPRINTS OF THE GODS

24.5°. The sequence in which one angle will follow another, as well as the
3
sequence of all previous angles (at any period of history) can be
calculated by means of a few straightforward equations. These have been
expressed as a curve on a graph (originally plotted out in Paris in 1911 by
the International Conference of Ephemerids) and from this graph it is
possible to match angles and precise historical dates with confidence and
accuracy.
Posnansky was able to date the Kalasasaya because the obliquity cycle
gradually alters the azimuth position of sunrise and sunset from century
to century. By establishing the solar alignments of certain key structures
4
that now looked ‘out of true’, he convincingly demonstrated that the
obliquity of the ecliptic at the time of the building of the Kalasasaya had
been 23° 8’ 48”. When that angle was plotted on the graph drawn up by
the International Conference of Ephemerids it was found to correspond to
a date of 15,000 BC.
5
Of course, not a single orthodox historian or archaeologist was
prepared to accept such an early origin for Tiahuanaco preferring, as
noted in Chapter Eight, to agree on the safe estimate of AD 500. During
the years 1927-30, however, several scientists from other disciplines
checked carefully Posnansky’s ‘astronomic-archaeological investigations’.
These scientists, members of a high-powered team which also studied
many other archaeological sites in the Andes, were Dr Hans Ludendorff
(then director of the Astronomical Observatory of Potsdam), Dr Friedrich
Becker of the Specula Vaticanica, and two other astronomers: Professor
Dr Arnold Kohlschutter of the University of Bonn and Dr Rolf Muller of the
Astrophysical Institute of Potsdam.
6
At the end of their three years of work the scientists concluded that
Posnansky was basically right. They didn’t concern themselves with the
implications of their findings for the prevailing paradigm of history; they
simply stated the observable facts about the astronomical alignments of
various structures at Tiahuanaco. Of these, the most important by far was
that the Kalasasaya had been laid out to conform with observations of the
heavens made a very long time ago—much, much further back than AD
500. Posnansky’s figure of 15,000 BC was pronounced to be well within
the bounds of possibility.
7
If Tiahuanaco had indeed flourished so long before the dawn of history,
what sort of people had built it, and for what purpose?

3 J. D. Hays, John Imbrie, N. J. Shackleton, ‘Variations in the Earth's Orbit: Pacemaker of
the Ice Ages’, in Science, vol. 194, No. 4270, 10 December 1976, p. 1125.
4 Anthony F. Aveni, Skywatchers of Ancient Mexico, University of Texas Press, lago, p.
103.
Tiahuanacu, II, p. 90-1.
5
6 Tiahuanacu, II, p. 47.
7 Ibid., p. 91.

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