Page 98 - Fingerprints of the Gods by Graham Hancock

Graham Hancock – FINGERPRINTS OF THE GODS

Likewise, in the same ancient period, somebody as yet unidentified by
scholarship went to great lengths to build raised fields on the newly
exposed lands that had so recently been under the waters of the lake—a
procedure which created characteristic corrugated strips of alternately
high and low ground. It was not until the 1960s that the original function
of these undulating patterns of earthen platforms and shallow canals was
correctly worked out. Still visible today, and known as waru waaru by the
local Indians, they proved to be part of a complex agricultural design,
perfected in prehistoric times, which had the ability ‘to out-perform
modern farming techniques’.
19
In recent years some of the raised fields were reconstructed by
archaeologists and agronomists. These experimental plots consistently
yielded three times more potatoes than even the most productive
conventional plots. Likewise, during one particularly cold spell, a severe
frost ‘did little damage to the experimental fields’. The following year the
crops on the elevated platforms survived an equally ruinous drought:
‘then later rode high and dry through a flood that swamped surrounding
farmlands’. Indeed this simple but effective agricultural technique,
invented by a culture so ancient that no one today could even remember
its name, had proved such a success in rural Bolivia that it had attracted

as a usable nutritive source. Both factors are clearly present.
‘The other plants identified as early domesticates at the Titicaca sites have similar
levels of toxins, and all require the use of various detoxification techniques to make
them suitable for human consumption. Oca has significant amounts of oxalates; quinoa
and canihua have high levels of hydrocyanic acid and the alkaloid saponin; amaranth is
a nitrate accumulator and has high levels of oxalates; tarwi contains the poisonous
alkaloid lupinine; beans contain varying levels of the cyanogenetic glycoside
phaseolunatin; and so on ... In some cases the detoxifying procedures serendipitously
result in an end-product that has excellent storage features, multiplying the beneficial
effects of the technology. Where the detoxification technology does not have this added
effect—for example, in the case of quinoa, amaranth and tarwi—the plants generally
already have excellent natural storage characteristics. There is as yet no satisfactory
explanation for the development of these detoxification processes ...’ ‘New Light on
Andean Tiahuanaco’.
19 At the heart of the system were ‘the earthen platforms about 3 feet high, 30-300 feet
long and 10-30 feet wide. These elevated earthworks are separated by canals of similar
dimensions and built out of the excavated soil. Over time the platforms were
periodically fertilized with organic silt and nitrogen-rich algae scooped from the bottom
of the canals during the dry season. Even today ... the sediment in the old canals is
much richer in nutrients than the soil of the surrounding plains.
‘But the platform-canal system was not merely a way of enriching infertile ground. It
also appears to have created a climate that both extended the high-altitude growing
season and helped crops survive hard times. During the area’s frequent periods of
drought, for example, the canals provided vital moisture, while the higher level of the
platforms raised plants above the worst effects of the region’s frequent floods.
Moreover the canal water may have acted as a kind of thermal storage battery absorbing
the sun’s heat during the day and radiating it back into the freezing night, to create a
blanket of relatively warm air over the growing plants.’ Feats and Wisdom of the
Ancients, pp. 56-7.

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