Page 92 - Fingerprints of the Gods by Graham Hancock
P. 92
Graham Hancock – FINGERPRINTS OF THE GODS
Top left: Detail from Tiahuanaco’s Gateway of the Sun showing
proboscid, tusked elephant-like figure. Top right: Biological
reconstruction-drawing of Cuverionius, a South American proboscid,
once common in the Tiahuanaco area but extinct since approximately
10,000 BC. Above left: Unidentified animal, possibly Toxodon, carved
on the side of the Viracocha figure in the Subterranean Temple.
Above right: Another possible representation of Toxodon from
Tiahuanaco. The raised nostrils are indicative of a semi-aquatic
animal, somewhat like a modern hippopotamus in its habits, which is
what Toxodon is known to have been.
Reconstruction-drawing of Toxodon, a South American species that
became extinct in the eleventh millennium BC.
To my eye this looked like striking corroboration for the astro-
archaeological evidence that dated Tiahuanaco to the end of the
Pleistocene, and further undermined the orthodox historical chronology
which made the city only 1500 years old, since Toxodon, presumably,
could only have been modelled from life. It was therefore obviously a
matter of some importance that no fewer that forty-six Toxodon heads
had been carved into the frieze of the Gateway of the Sun. Nor was this
25
25 The Calendar of Tiahuanaco, pp. 47-8.
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