Page 95 - Fingerprints of the Gods by Graham Hancock

Graham Hancock – FINGERPRINTS OF THE GODS

12,000 years ago, when Lake Titicaca was more than 100 feet deeper
than it is today, Tiahuanaco would have been an island, as shown
above.
Equally thought-provoking was the appearance of the symbol of the
cross on many of these ancient blocks. Recurring again and again,
particularly at the northern approach to Puma Punku, this symbol always
took the same form: a double crucifix with pure clean lines, perfectly
balanced and harmonious, deeply recessed into the hard grey stone. Even
according to orthodox historical chronology these crosses were not less
than 1500 years old. In other words, they had been carved here, by a
people with absolutely no knowledge of Christianity, a full millennium
before the arrival of the first Spanish missionaries on the Altiplano.
Where, come to that, had the Christians obtained their crosses? Not
only from the shape of the structure to which Jesus Christ was nailed, I
thought, but from some much older source as well. Hadn’t the Ancient
Egyptians, for example, used a hieroglyph very like a cross (the ankh, or
crux ansata) to symbolize life ... the breath of life ... eternal life itself?
8
Had that symbol originated in Egypt, or had it perhaps occurred
elsewhere, earlier still?
With such ideas chasing one another around my head, I walked slowly
around Puma Punku. The extensive perimeter, which formed a rectangle
several hundred feet long, outlined a low pyramidal hill, much overgrown
with tall grass. Dozens and dozens of hulking blocks lay scattered in all
directions, tossed like matchsticks, Posnansky argued, in the terrible
natural disaster that had overtaken Tiahuanaco during the eleventh
millennium BC:

This catastrophe was caused by seismic movements which resulted in an overflow
of the waters of Lake Titicaca and in volcanic eruptions ... It is also possible that

8 The Encyclopedia of Ancient Egypt ed. Margaret Burson), Facts on File, New York and
Oxford, 1991, p. 23.

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