Page 93 - Fingerprints of the Gods by Graham Hancock

Graham Hancock – FINGERPRINTS OF THE GODS

creature’s ugly caricature confined only to the Gateway. On the contrary,
Toxodon had been identified on numerous fragments of Tiahuanacan
pottery. Even more convincingly, he had been portrayed in several pieces
of sculpture which showed him in full three-dimensional glory. Moreover
26
representations of other extinct species had been found: the species
included Shelidoterium, a diurnal quadruped, and Macrauchenia, an
animal somewhat larger than the modern horse, with distinctive three-
toed feet.
27
Such images meant that Tiahuanaco was a kind of picture-book from
the past, a record of bizarre animals, now deader than the dodo,
expressed in everlasting stone.
But the record-taking had come to an abrupt halt one day and darkness
had descended. This, too, was recorded in stone—the Gateway of the
Sun, that surpassing work of art, had never been completed. Certain
unfinished aspects of the frieze made it seem probable that something
sudden and dreadful had happened which had caused the sculptor, in the
words of Posnansky, ‘to drop his chisel for ever’ at the moment when he
was ‘putting the final touches to his work’.
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26 Tiahuanacu, III, p. 57, 133-4, and plate XCII.
27 Ibid., I, pp. 137-9; Quaternary Extinctions, pp. 64-5.
Tiahuanacu, II, p. 4.
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