ERM - In Quest Of The White God
Report by Ella Rose Mast
IN QUEST OF THE WHITE GOD
by Pierre Honore
'Columbus reported November 6, 1492 that after a march of twelve miles his messengers found a village with perhaps 1000 inhabitants. The natives (called Indians by Columbus) received them with great ceremony, lodged them in the most beautiful of houses, carried them around in their arms, kissed their feet, and in short tried to make clear to them in every possible way that it was known the White men came from the Gods. About 50 men and women asked my messengers to be allowed to travel back with them to the heaven of the Eternal Gods.'
Fray Bernandino Shagun:...'They could do practically anything, for nothing seemed to difficult for them, they cut the green stone, they melted gold, and all this came from Quetzalcoatl....arts and knowledge.'
The Author:....Pierre Honore an internationally known scientist and diplomat. He was in Brazil as director of a research institute and advisor to the government, and was able to travel extensively thru out Latin America and was able to examine remains of a great civilization, a study to which he devoted more than 15 years. This book was translated from the German in 1964, and became the first American Edition.
Pierre Honore altho he found the evidence of the existence of the White Gods in legend and other works of Archaeology and so forth, still he himself went to the source of the great stone pictures before he was thru with his research. And without a doubt there was a great White civilization in South America a long time before the Birth of Christ. And more White migrations occurred over the years and the civilization moved to the north from its original source into the land of the Maya, and the Aztec as this book will show.
(Ella compiled this manuscript in 1984 while in her wheelchair, after having fallen and broken her hip. Said this was one of her favorite works)( I am going to try to give you a summary of the content of this amazing book. We would remind you that our Aryan race has forgotten their heritage. They seem to know nothing about the years of Enoch as he walked this earth in perfect obedience, and Archaeology calls them the Golden Years. They do not know the people of THE BOOK, therefore do not know of the accomplishments of our race in different eras of time. Ella Rose Mast
PART ONE
THE LEGEND OF THE WHITE GOD
We know from ancient Indian legends that at some point shrouded in the mists of time, White men landed on the shores of the New World, long before Columbus. Every Indian society of which we have any knowledge records this arrival and refers to a White God who brought them their system of science, and engineering, gave them their legal codes, and helped them achieve a high level of civilization. But who was this HIGH GOD? And how did he and his relatives cross a vast unknown Ocean to arrive in a New World? From these ancient legends we learn that these White Gods arrived in huge foreign ships with Swan wings, hulls gleaming so brightly that they looked like giant serpents gliding over the water. When they reached the shore, strange men emerged from the ships, fair skinned and blue eyed, wearing gowns of a course black material with a circular opening at the neck and short wide sleeves.
The legend of a particular white God has also survived to our day from all the ancient civilizations of Central and South America. The Toltecs and Aztec of Mexico called him Quetzalcoatl, the Incas called him Viracoha, to the Maya he was Kukulcan who brought their laws, also their script, and was worshiped like a god by the people. To the Chibchas he was Bochia, the White Mantle of Light. To those of Peru he was Hyustus, and to this day they will tell you that he was fair, and had blue eyes.
According to two of the chroniclers White Men with beards turned up on the shores of Lake Titicaca, built a great city, and taught the inhabitants a more civilized way of life. The Indians said that the White Gods built this city 2000 years before the time of the Incas.
Since the White God had come to the Indians long ago wearing a black beret, and a black gown, then as Cortes arrived he wore both these and landed almost in the same spot where it was said the White God had bid his people farewell, promising to come back, but with Cortes came white men who were mercenaries and adventurers who were not interested in this civilization. They wanted gold and treasures, but the language survived and the Indians still speak the Maya language, the Aztec, and other original languages, and they did not understand the Spanish lust for gold.
People living in the Peruvian highlands still have features very like the old statues and head-shaped jugs found. And as of old the Indians salute to a stranger whom they trust is Viracocha...meaning White God. If you enter an Indian hut in the Yucatan jungle; join the elders around their fires on the icy Bolivian plateau; talk to the Indians in the jungle on the banks of the Amazon; wherever you go you hear this legend of the White men with beards who came in the dim past and became Gods of the New World.
TWO
WHITE MEN BEFORE COLUMBUS
Every history book calls Columbus the discoverer of America, as if he and the Spaniards after him had been the first white men in the New World. But the Spaniards provided evidence against this belief. For one thing they heard from the Indians this legend of the White God and more than that some Spaniards met White men, and spoke to them. These were entirely different men from the Indians, looking almost like their fellow countrymen in Spain, or even like North Europeans.
Columbus mentions that he was greeted as a god, a 'Son of Heaven', by primitive Indians of what is now San Salvador, and that he had often seen Indians who were nearly white as the Spaniards.
The Incas of Peru were also found to have a ruling class with a strong 'European influence'. Most of the Great Lords and Ladies looked White as the Spaniards. Pedro Pizarro wrote them saying he met an Indian woman with her child, both were fair skinned, and were hardly distinguishable from fair White women. Their fellow countrymen called them..'Children of the Gods'.
The ruling Incas were one large family which supplied all the country's governors, generals, and the dignitaries and reigned over an immense territory inhabited by native Indians. These Aristocrats shunned all intermarriage with the Indians. They were White with fair hair, spoke a language of their own, and were better educated than their subjects. There were 500 members of this Royal family when the Spaniards arrived.
Later travelers accounts refer often to White Men among Indians of the Amazon. The older chroniclers say that the 8th., ruler of the Inca dynasty, Virococha, was white bearded and his wife was as white as an egg. Another of the chroniclers..Garcilaso de la Vega..a son of an Inca had an impressive description of how as a boy he was taken to see something he was to remember all his life. The boy was led into a room and shown several mummies lining a wall, and was told that these were of former Inca Emperors, and this boy was looking at his Ancestors. But one of these mummies had hair as white as snow in contrast to the others. He was told this was the mummy of the White Inca..eighth ruler of the Sun. Since this White Indian was supposed to have died fairly young this whiteness of hair was not of old age, so it must have been that his hair was not black to begin with.
Besides meeting White men in this New World, the later Spanish conquerors had other experiences which should have made them wonder.
For centuries the court painters of Europe have been painting portraits of their Emperors, Kings, Princes, their Bishops and Nobility with recognized insignias. Kings and Emperors were shown riding thru the country side on horses, and usually the horses are rearing. They carry a scepter in one hand and a cloak, always in a shade of purple flows down from the Royal shoulders with usually a heraldic devise painted into the corner of the picture of these rulers. Sometimes these rulers set on huge thrones draped in precious cloth and decked out with golden ornaments, or else they recline in an easy chair often with a canopy over it while the chair is carried on poles by Noblemen. Thus throne, litter, scepter, crown, flowing drapery, purple, heraldic beasts, such as the insignias of the Old World civilization are seen. The oldest litter in Europe was found by Evans in the Palace of Knossos in the shape of a little clay model. The litter can be traced to all civilizations of the Old World as can the crown and scepter. The oldest European Chalice is from 1650 B.C., and shows a Cretan ruler holding a scepter. Rulers thus have sat on thrones from times immemorial, and the shape of the thrones in the Old World has always had a heraldic device, and one color...purple..has always been reserved for them in all Old World civilizations.
But...the Spaniards found these symbols in the New World as well. Clearly the Indians had been familiar with these symbols, and with White men long before the Spaniards came. The Indians knew the headdress of feathers as the White God's crown. For instance...Montezuma's greatest treasure was this headdress and at one time he sent it to the Spanish Camp, with a mask of the White God to show Cortes that he was giving the crown to the rightful owner. When boys of today use the headdress in a Red Indian get-up they do not realize that it is something European in origin, something found dating back to the civilization of ancient Crete at least. Of course the Spaniards did not know of the ancient background, and they thought this peculiar to the Indians.
But we have the plumed crown worn by the White God of the New World in the Vienna Ethnological museum where it is preserved and shown as a great treasure. It is shaped like a bird diving with spread tail. The Quetzal birds have only from two to four green tail feathers each, where as the Vienna crown has 459 such feathers. Its center piece shows four concentric bands made from the feathers of the Cotinga bird, inlaid with 193 pieces of gold leaf.
An interesting little incident came when Montezuma sent one of his Nobles to the Spanish Camp. This Noble brought a wicker basket filled with ornaments of rough gold, gifts from his Emperor. As the Spaniards pressed closer to see the golden splendor, the Noble spied among the Spaniards a helmet which had a thin gold plating. He was so fascinated by this helmet that when Cortes handed him gifts to take to Montezuma he declined them all to ask only for the helmet saying:..'I must show it to the Emperor for this helmet looks exactly like the one that was once worn by the White God. Cortes then sent the helmet and expressed the wish that it be filled with gold as the Spaniards were troubled with a disease of the heart from which gold was a special remedy.
When the Cortes expedition was approaching the Aztec Capital they saw the first litter, it belonged to Montezuma's nephew. It was decorated with plates of gold and precious stones. This young man came to meet them outside the capital, but when they met Montezuma he came in a litter also. This litter was preceded by three officers of state bearing golden wands, and the litter had a canopy of gaudy feather work, as well as jewels, and fringed with silver. It was supported by four attendants. Montezuma was wearing a cloak with a girdle, sandals with gold soles fastened with gilt straps. His cloak and sandals were embroidered with pearls and Precious stones. The Emperor was tall and slum and about forty years of age, had straight black hair, a thin beard, and his skin was paler than that of the other Indians.
In the kingdom of the Incas in Peru, the Spaniards saw another litter. The Inca ruler always used it to travel, and we have pictures of it. He also wore purple, as did the Aztec Emperor. For solemn occasions the Inca held a golden scepter as large as a halberd, his big leather shield was adorned with a heraldic bird...a falcon. We now know both throne and scepter as emblems of Royal dignity not only from the Aztec and Inca Empires, but also from drawings on ancient Mayan vases, and the painted friezes of other American Empires. On their heads the Inca Priests wore something like a tiara decorated with a golden sun. The Incas recognized the Spanish Bishops with their miters as the High Priests of the new religion.
William Prescott, the great nineteenth century historian of the Conquista said of Montezuma that his brows were covered by the 'Copilli', or Mexican diadem resembling in form the pontifal tiara. In Montezuma's Palace at Tenochtitlan the Spaniards found a device known to them from the old world: ..it was an Eagle with a panther in it's talons, carved in stone above the main entrance.
The Spaniards were so impressed by what they found in the Aztec country that Bernal diaz del Castille, who accompanied Cortes on all his expeditions wrote:..The Mexicans are here what Romans were to the old world! In a letter to the Emperor Charles V. Cortes wrote:..Montezuma's town Palace is of such great and wondrous beauty that hardly can I find words to describe it. I confine myself to the large statement that we have nothing to match it in Spain. Yet Montezuma's Palace was not the largest the Spaniards saw. The Palace of the king of Tezcoco had 300 rooms, and measured 2,600 feet, by 3,000 feet. It was surrounded by a vast park. The gardens had numerous mazes, and if you lost your bearings, it was impossible to find your way out. The water for the fountains and basins and for irrigation came from a spring. To get the water there from an incredible distance over hills and valleys, an aqueduct that was built on tall thick concrete walls was reaching the highest spot of the park.
When Cortes and his men entered Montezuma's Palace they crossed several inner yards with fountains squirting crystal clear water into the air. Their way led them thru great chambers with ceilings in aromatic woods which were beautifully carved.
In the antechamber the Emperor's hall...the Spaniards were met by members of the nobility, then a murmur of amazement rose from the ranks of the Spaniards as they finally stood before Montezuma for he was sitting on a throne, just as their own rulers did, and the couriers paid their respects before the throne in the same way as the Spaniards would have done at home.
At this meeting Montezuma spoke about his people saying that a great White man had led them to this land in the dim past, and had given them their laws. One day he had left them going in the direction the Spanish White men had come from. This great White leader had promised the people that eventually he would return to them. Montezuma said that he and his people had believed the Spaniards..these white men who had now come must be the White Gods returned. Thus the Spaniards heard from the Emperors mouth the legend of 'The White God' which they had already been told so often in this new land.
Another European thing the Spaniards saw was the commanders standard. It was this emblem in fact which saved the remnant of the Spanish forces on their exodus from Tenochtitlan. As the last Aztec Emperor tried to block the Spanish retreat with an army of 20,000 men where as the Spaniards were only a few hundred now encircled, Cortes recognized the Indian commander by his standard on a nearby hill. Cortes jumped on his horse, called his horsemen to follow, and with drawn swords they stormed the company of Indians who retreated before the horses, clearing a narrow lane for the attackers. Cortes galloped up the hill killing the Aztec commander and seizing the standard waved it above his horse. So 20,000 Indians turned tail in panic...for fear of the White Gods who had returned.
The Spaniards saw many pyramids and the one at Cholula was the largest found in the World. It is only 1/2 the height of the great Pyramid at Giza but is almost twice as long, for its sides measured 1,200 feet. Legend says that tens of thousands worked on this one building in honor of the White God. The Pyramid formed has four huge steps, an outside staircase of 120 steps which lead up to a platform. This was the site of the temple which housed the White God's statue.
Cortes now learned that they sacrificed humans to the god every year and he was convinced that this was just one of the Indians many idols for he did not as yet know of the proof of the White Man in America. This pyramid was the mecca for the Indians and it stood in a walled square, big enough for 500 houses to be built in it. There were four gates leading into the town facing north, south, east and west with a big building at each gate, an arsenal for the army was at each gate. Montezuma had hesitated for some time before he allowed the Spaniards to see this pyramid. But Cortes was smooth as a mirror. He mounted the steps of the pyramid and when he reached the platform he saw a large block of jasper. On the platforms far end stood two towers each three stories high. The lowest built of stone and stucco, the top ones of carefully carved wood. In front of each an altar with that eternal flame of extinction which spelt so much misfortune for the country, as with the Vestal fire of Rome.
As the Spaniards entered one of the temples they were to see what the Indians now worshiped..they saw the war god of the Aztec. He had the huge folds of a serpent, made of pearls and precious stones coiled around his waist. Above the statue hung a canopy of gold and on the altar lay the human heart that had just been sacrificed. The stench of blood was intolerable and the Spanish thought surely men of Europe could not have been here. But remember the Spaniards did not know of the Pyramid of Egypt until Napoleon invaded Europe and Europe came to see them. Besides look at the results when false gods took over in the Old World.
There was still a smaller temple in the city, one was consecrated to Quetzalcoatl, it was circular in form with an entrance in imitation of a dragons mouth but even here now Pagan Priests sacrificed humans.
The Spaniards were amazed however as they entered Tenochtitlan at the wide streets, the high mansions built of red porus stone, nearly all with roof gardens full of luxurious plants. Between the lines of their account you read of the amazement at finding in this Indian country so much that was familiar to them or very like the things they knew in Spain. The extensive Aztec buildings with their halls and arches, pillars and arcades are often compared to Spanish ones like in Barcelona or in Servile. The Spaniards found houses kept like those by apothecaries, where you could buy medicinal potions ready for drinking, ointments and plasters. There were houses where you could eat or drink for money. Cortes and his men were to stay in a great complex of buildings where the Emperors father lived, and here also Cortes met the Emperor who put a necklace around his neck; it consisted of shells of small crabs put together by gold rings with gold ornaments hanging from the chain.
In Spain their king wore a heavy gold necklace which has been a symbol of power and royal office which can be traced back to the oldest civilizations.
This city of Tenochtitlan had about 60,000 houses and 300,000 inhabitants. The Spaniards found the streets swept clean and well washed. Strong pipes carried clean water down from the mountains into the center of the city. At the heights of its prosperity, this city was a lively city with arsenals, granaries and an aviary, and an enclosure for wild animals (like our zoos of today). There were houses for state visitors, schools, special blocks for Priest living quarters, and a wonderful market which Cortes and his men were still amazed at, which was surrounded by arcades. Tens of thousands of people collected there each day to buy and sell. The men wore cloaks slung over their shoulders, and tied around their necks, their robes were adorned with wide belts, fringes, tassels, and all sorts of jewelry. The women wore several skirts one on top of the other, and very ornate ribbons and beautiful embroideries. Many had their faces covered with thin veils, and their hair was in long braids. Everything the New World produced was found in this market. Even a variety of curios could be bought. At the food stalls were mountains of poultry, fish and game, vegetables, maize, bakers wares, bread, cocoa, and Pulgue and intoxicating drink. And of course flowers everywhere, beyond anything the Spaniards had seen. When the Spaniards came this was still a land of flowers, and yet Mexico was said to be a land of Savages. Even plates, spoons and forks were in use, had been for at least 1,000 years before the Spanish discovered this New World.
Montezuma sat on a cushion on the floor to eat with a low table in front of him. Plates and cups he used were made of pottery. He had a set made of gold which he used on Holy days. After the main course there was bread, cakes and pastries of all kinds. He drank his Chocolate from a gold mug, and used a gold spoon. A silver bowl was brought to him to dip his hands in after the meal. This procedure was similar at the table of the Inca of Peru as well where they also had spoons, plates and cups of pure gold.
The Egyptians had spoons 3,000 years before Christ and yet we read in many places that people ate with their fingers not so many hundreds of years ago in Europe.
There had of course been earlier Spanish expeditions to the New World long before Cortes, and some of the Spaniards had been taken prisoners and kept for years on offshore Islands where they picked up the language of the Mayans. And it was from those people that Cortes and his men using them as interpreters could talk to the Indians, and in conversation with educated Indians one of them recounted a legend which we still find today. He recounted a legend strikingly similar to the Old Testament story, even including how Noah sent out the Dove. And one of the strange stories told to the Spaniards was abut an ancient kingdom which started to build an immense tower, so high its spire would reach the sky, but the gods came and destroyed this kingdom, and not a trace remains.
Even the custom of baptism was found among the Indians. A child was sprinkled with water and given a name. The Aztec and Incas used Incense, and the Spaniards saw the Aztec Priests...'forgive sins'. They ate bread in a very devout manner, thereby pleasing the gods such was the manner of the Indians explained...as to the ceremony. In the time of the first Spaniards a form of 'confession' was going on in some Indian temples, and they watched Priests blessing a marriage, saw the sacred Crosses in the temples, heard of the White God of the Indians said to be born of a Virgin by immaculate conception. All this they witnessed...where in other temples human sacrifice was being practiced by Pagan Priests.
As the Spanish eventually settled, as Priests, civil servants, or judges, they became familiar with Mayan custom and made some new and astonishing discoveries. The Mayans were still celebrating their age old festival in the same way they had done for centuries which were strangely like the festivals of the Catholic world. For instance the tenth of May was for the Patron Saint of Bohemia...St. John Nepomucen...Saint of the water. September eighth was the birthday of the White God's mother. In Catholic countries its the day of the Blessed Virgins birth. The White God's birthday was celebrated on the 25th., of December. And on November two when Catholic's even today visit the cemeteries to put flowers on the graves of their dear ones, the Maya used to go to the graves of their dead and decorate them with flowers. Thus the Catholic customs had come to he New World.
But the Maya also knew of earth, water, fire, and air. The talked of ages, and periods ruled by different gods, and their months had 20 days. The Maya distinguished between 13 heavens, the lower one was earth, and below earth were nine underworlds, the 9th., lowest was the realm of the god of death. The Mayans had the four points of the compass; and the four giants who carried the Celestial roof from the four directions just as in the old world myth, the giant...Atlas is condemned to carry the roof of the heavens. These giants are found in all Mayan chronicles and myths, and in the legends thru out the Indian civilizations. These are the same family as the giants or Titans who fought the Gods, the builders of Cyclops, and the NORDIC Valhalla.
To sum up:..crowns, thrones, litters, heraldic devices, standards, plates, spoons, forks, the bread of heaven, the blessing of the waters, the stories of the flood, the tower of Babel, it would seem incredible if all these things were invented by the Indians...would it not? Thus they must have been brought from the old world by people who came to American shores much, much earlier. This conclusion is confirmed by the study of just one piece of evidence which does not disappear even after 3,000 years, this is the script that they used.
THREE
THE WHITE GOD WROTE THE CRETAN SCRIPT
When the Spanish came to Mexico, the Aztec's script was a primitive, phonetic, hieroglyphs and this is always used as evidence against the theory of a transfer of civilization. But suppose there was a highly developed script in earlier Indian civilization which had afterwards perished? This may sound unlikely but...the Maya did in fact have such a script, and an extremely complicated one. The Mayans themselves aid it was their White God Kukulcan who once brought them their script. Among the most frequent symbols in Mayan script are those for their days and months which sound distinctly Semitic such as Ben-Eb-Caban-Eznab-Akbal. They are indeed very like the ancient Phoenician and Greek letters, in fact some are identical. In many cases the Phoenicians and Maya have very similar characters for the same letters, and also similar meanings for the 'characters'. Thus both scripts have a common root from which they both developed. We may therefore say that the Mayan legends were right...Kukulcan...their White God...taught their people the script that he had brought with him which was the script of the ancient Cretan or the Phoenicians.
About 1700 B.C., Cretan Script, which was a purely pictorial script, developed and changed into simpler symbol, which was even further simplified around 1450 B.C. Three different scripts succeeding one another have been found in Crete. The Greek script traces back to 800 B.C., but the Mayan scripts seems to have been taken from the two older Cretan scripts, not from the youngest one. Thus when the first White God came to the Indian's they brought many things with them such as different concepts and names for them, and gold was then 'kuri' in the Inca language.
It is now clear from Archaeology that many cultural influences from the Mediterranean area reached the Indian civilization VERY EARLY in history, and one of these was the Cretan (Phoenician) script. Some say the Mayan civilization started between 300 B.C., and A.D. 300, but the Cretan script had perished as far back as 1400 B.C., and the Cretian successors in the Mediterranean area no longer knew about it. Thus the Mayans of 300 B.C., must have received their components of civilization from a more ancient people who received it from the old world.
PART TWO.....THE RETURN
THE CONQUEST OF MEXICO
On October 12, 1492...Columbus landed on a small Island in the Bahama group, which he called San Salvador, today called Watling Island.
On February 18, 1519 a fleet of eleven ships, 110 sailors, 553 soldiers, 200 Indian natives, and 16 horses along with 10 heavy guns and 4 light ones left the Island of Cuba with Hernando Cortes a Spanish Nobleman in charge. Cortes had settled in Cuba in 1511, and had made a fortune by acquiring land and washing for gold. He was 33 years old and became known in history as....'The Conquistador'. The Cortes expedition sailed along the coast of Yucatan as far as the river of Tabasco, and there met armed Indian warriors, and a battle was fought which the Conquistadors won because of their heavier arms and the Indians surrendered. Here the gifts given by the conquered were 20 young Indian women. One became Cortes's interpreter, for she was intelligent, faithful and reliable and she accompanied him everywhere. She was a chieftain’s daughter from the Aztec highlands, but after the death of her father she had been sold as a slave. The Spanish called her Dona Marina, and according to the chronicles she must have been a woman of singular attractions and Noble character. It was also said that she could bend the Indians to her will, thus she was of extreme importance to the men of this expedition and played a vital part in this adventure of exploring the Aztec Empire, and its vassal states of those ruled by Montezuma.
The first big city the Spaniards entered was Cempoalla the Capital of the Totonacs, one of the east vassal states. This city had 30,000 inhabitants and the people were different from the near savages of the Islands. They were richly dressed with embroidered clothes, and had built homes, temples, and palaces from mud and stone. They gaped in awe at Cortes and his men in their shining armor, and especially at the horsemen.
Here Cortes learned that the Aztec were hated Masters of a subjugated people, that if the tribute was not sent on time their youth were dragged off to be sacrificed on the altars at Tenochtitlan, the Aztec capital on the Mexican plateau.
Cortes returned to Vera Cruz to write letters to his Sovereign Charles V. and painted in glowing colors the chance of winning an Empire. But before the ship set sail he uncovered a plot against him instigated by one... Velosques. Thus Cortes put to death the leader of the conspiracy then had his ships destroyed to sever all ties with the outside world, and prevent his soldiers from going home. He then marched with his forces west..from coast to coast, thru mountain wilderness, and after several days reached this country of the Tlaxcatecs where he received a hostile reception. But soon the Indians surrendered and here in the nation of Tlaxcatec's Cortes found beautiful homes and cities.
Montezuma the leader of the Aztec had heard of the coming of Cortes and he sent gifts to Cortes and invited him to visit his residence in Tenochtitlan, the only condition being that he come by way of the town of Cholula. The Tlaxcates people warned Cortes that this was a trap but he decided to go anyway. When he came to Cholula he was met by 20,000 men but Cortes with his horsemen, guns and help from the Tlaxcates people was victorious. When the battle was over most of the city was destroyed and 6000 lay dead in the streets. To the Indians this defeat spelled judgment of the White Gods, and many towns then surrendered in a hurry and Cortes thus marched on to Tenochititlan..which today is Mexico City.
This city had been built on an Island in the lake of Tezcoco, and was connected to the mainland by three large causeways. Little Indian boats swarmed all over the lake, and down the canals which were used as roads like a substitute Mexican Venice. A mountain arose out of the western bank of the lake and the Emperors castle was built high on a huge rock giving a fantastic view of the valley of Mexico. Today this Royal mountain is covered with thick underbrush, and giant cypress trees, already hundreds of years old when the Spaniards arrived, but they still mark the spot where this fairy-tale castle once stood.
As Cortes was approaching the inside of this castle was all gloom and despondency for all Omens showed that this Emperor's power was nearing an end...'of what avail is resistance if the gods have declared themselves against you'. And Cortes felt as tho he was walking into a trap and he and a few of his men went over the causeway to enter the city but he went anyway leaving most of his men on the outside. The Spaniards began to ask many questions about the human sacrifices carried out here in the Capital city, and this made the Indians restless. Cortes then took Montezuma as his prisoner, but this only caused more trouble. Montezuma then went out to speak to his people and someone threw a stone and hit him on the temple. He refused all medical treatment from the Spaniards and would not eat, and a few weeks later he died. Here was Cortes trapped in this city and their position was now desperate and the time had come for a retreat along one of the causeways. It cost him all his guns and powder, and nearly all his horsed, and most of the vast treasure he and his men had amassed. The Aztec people rose, a new commander, New Emperor took office and a battle took place but again the fear of the horse rider brought victory with the help of the Indians who had entered the city, and now 1000 Spaniards marched on the city, and their guns were to much for the Aztecs. Thus the Aztec who were former masters of an immense Empire now became slaves and they razed their own capital to the ground. The Aztec civilization which was once so great had deteriorated without the White God as ruler and became a pagan nation to be destroyed by its own people after the Spaniards came in the 1500's.
FIVE
PIZARRO AND THE INCAS
After subjugating the Aztecs and taking over their Empire the Spaniards had still not discovered the legendary Eldorado talked of by the Indians. Balboa was one of the first to drive south from Panama, hoping to find it. He made his way across the Isthmus of Panama, and discovered...The other ocean called the Pacific but failed to reach Peru, and for 18 years he attempted to do so, but he failed as did other explorers. Among Balboa's mercenaries was Francisco Pizzarro born in Spain about 1478. He became an ambitious adventurer, and finally in 1524 he sailed south from Panama, but his expedition failed. However a year later he finally reached the coast of Peru, but found it so densely populated that he dared not invade it. He had amassed a small hoard of gold so returned to Spain, and after describing Peru he was made governor of that area. In 1531 he then started out with three small ships and 180 men. These Spaniards marched thru forests, up steep slopes, climbed dizzy narrow paths to the Plateau and then looked down from the mountain to what was the Inca army...thousands of seasoned warriors...where as the Spaniards were only 106 infantry men and 62 horses.
At this late date many in the Inca army no longer did quite believe in the legend of the White God's existence but now they shed their doubts for here they came with their snorting creatures and the mysterious apparatus that was reported to produce thunder and lightening. The Incas had heard from their scouts about these White Gods and had warned his people not to resist them. Pizarro sent his brother Hernando to the Inca leader, who would not talk to him. The Spaniard decided they must take the Inca leader prisoner for they were outnumbered. They managed to trap the Emperor and in this way they received a great store of gold from all over that country as a ransom. The Incas were in revolt against the Spaniards for many years but finally retreated into the mountains and were never found again.
The Spaniards found that the Inca Empire was held together by a remarkable network of roads. They threaded in and out over the Andes, along precipitous heights, and dark gorges, across mountain torrents, and thru the plains right to the Pacific. For as soon as the Incas had conquered a country they built a road welding it to the Empire. The Spaniards were surprised to find engineering on such a vast scale in the New World. The chroniclers stated that the roads were better than those that Ancient Rome built. Now and then the roads were intersected by steps which the Spaniards horses found very troublesome. Some of the roads were supported by walls up to 15 feet high, and several led thru mountain tunnels. In built up areas they were bordered with pillars, posts, or low walls; and on marshy ground embankments had been built for them to run on. In the plain they were wide enough for six horsemen to ride abreast, but in the gorges and on the mountains they were only 3 feet wide. These feats of engineering however were almost dwarfed by the architectural achievement in the Capital itself.
800 years ago the Arab Adbul Calif visiting the pyramid of Giza noted that the stones fitted together so exact that neither hair or pin could go into the joints between them. In 1880 Sir Flanders Petrie in examining the inside of the Pyramid found that the faults in measurements and angles were small enough to be 'covered by a thumb'. The Spaniards found this same type of perfection in Inca land. Fergusson wrote of Cuzcos' architecture that it was beyond anything achieved by the Greeks or Romans, or in the Middle Ages. Even more imposing...that the buildings of Cuzco were the old Inca fortresses from which the Indians organized their resistance to the Spaniards. For instance the huge fortress of Saczahuamed, just outside the Capital as well as the fortress Allontaytambo equally gigantic, deep in the jungle of the Andes, the ruins of which have survived. We have to go back to the earliest civilizations of Europe, to Tiryns, and Mycenae to find anything comparable to these Inca buildings. And the Incas had something which the Aztec did not have, scales of balance, and measurements which are the foundations of all science. The Incas had their measures, and they used beam scales like those of Ancient Rome or beyond. The Incas used the Roman division of their army into units of ten, hundreds, and thousands, and they also used the decimal system.
European women today still buy their eggs by the dozen or the 1/2 dozed counting them by sixes, and twelves, and sixties where as our clocks and watches of course deal in twelves and sixties. This mathematical everyday life goes back a long, long way to old Babylon or beyond, while the Semites after Babylon combined it with the decimal system. The decimal system actually was known 4000 years or more back in Egypt and around 1700 B.C., in Crete. The Greeks adopted it from there, and the Romans got it from the Greeks, then it was scattered thru out Europe. But in the Inca Empire the people were classified by age in ten categories, starting with newly born babies and ending with centurions. The whole social organization was ruled by the decimal system. And the Incas had taken it from the ancient people of Chimu. They had been subject for a long time to the Chimu who had been familiar with the decimal system before the Incas appeared. The older Indian people not only knew the 'zero' when the Spaniards came, but they had known it roughly since the beginning of the white man era.
As the Spaniards entered Cuzco, they say something else was familiar to them, nearly all the Indian dignitaries had turbans. This headgear is much older than Islam for paintings show the Hittites, the Babylonians, and Egyptians also wore turbans. Every where in the Inca Empire the Spaniards were greeted or addressed as...Viracocha...and they learned that this was the name of the Great White God who had come to the Indians in the past and brought them all their knowledge.
The Spaniards heard of a temple which had been erected outside of town to the God who was greater than all the other gods. They hurried there hoping to find an immense store of gold. They came to its temple of Viracocha..a one storied building about 125 feet by 100 feet. They entered and found a maze of passages, in fact 12 narrow passages going round the building. They made their way from one into another and finally penetrated to the sanctuary, a small room paved with black slabs. On a dias on the far wall there was the figure of a man. When they stood before this figure even the wildest, roughest, and most hardened veterans took their caps into their hands and hastily crossed themselves. They knew that figure from all the Churches and Chapels of Spain. It was of a man with a beard, standing erect, holding a chain in one hand; the chain around the neck of a fabulous creature which lay before him on the ground. To the Spaniards this was a statue of St. Bartholomew. And when they had recovered from their surprise they slowly filed out into the passage again. They found nothing of treasure here but they reported what they had found to the others. Then more and more Spaniards rode out to the old temple which held not treasure, just to see this strange bearded Saint whom the Indians called....'The White God'.
In the Siege of Cuzco as the Incas made their assault on the town the Spaniards were surprised to hear a trumpet blast, drum rolls, jingling of bells and the playing of flutes, the same musical instruments as they had heard and used as well in celebrating victories in battle or while making charges. But trumpets were known to the Incas long before the Spaniards came.
(TO BE CONTINUED)
(THE QUEST OF THE WHITE GOD CONT.)
SIX
THE MYTH SURVIVES
As Archaeologists arrived in Central America they found that the Conquistadores had not been careful to preserve what they found. As many things were melted down for its gold, and the Zealots of the Catholic faith had destroyed temples and idols of history.
In Maui..all the illuminated manuscripts of the Maya were burned in 1526 by the second Bishop who arrived in the New World. He became had of the various schools of the 'Jesuit' colleges in Peru. He was responsible for the destruction of all state archives, the lists of customs and tributes, the royal and imperial archives, the code of laws of the temple and all historical records, everything was burned. Thus only a few manuscripts from the ancient people came down to us. What is left is guarded as great treasures by the libraries of Oxford, New York, Madrid, Mexico, Vienna and a few more. These were all written long before the Spaniards came. Four of them were from the Empire of the Aztec, and only three were from Mayan territory. One of the Aztec manuscripts deals with history.
When the Spaniards came as settlers the natives were converted to Catholicism Christianity. But the spade cannot alone reconstruct a civilization without legends and historical knowledge. Before Archaeology became a science the recorded history of the old world was 5000 years old and widely known. When a find was hit they could usually interpret them and establish a connection with history, epic or folklore. In due course Archaeologists in the New World, particularly in South and Central America found the ruins of Ancient cities, but they were about 200 years working their way thru old songs, myths, legends, fairy tales, laws, government organizations and religions to arrive at a basis of an outline of this ancient people. As the Spaniards married the natives of the New World then they began to write of the history of this ancient people they now lived among.
In 1796, William Prescott was born in New England. He would later examine all the evidence of the ancient civilizations and finally the story of the Conquistadores would be recorded, and then that of the Incas of long before the Spanish.
We find then that the Plumed Crown of the White God, Quetzalcoatl, was preserved by the Aztec over the centuries and later presented to Cortes. And with the Hapsburg it came to Vienna and is now kept in the museum of Ethnology there.
But as hard as they tried the Spaniards never found Vitcos, the City of Faith which they had heard of. It was not until 1913 that the Archaeologist Bingham penetrated into the jungle above the Urubamba valley, that he came face to face with mysterious ruins. And he found that building features from southeast Asia are often to be found in Mayan architecture as well and even extend to complete agreement in details. Step pyramids like those of Egypt are to be found everywhere in the western world. The 'House of the Magician' as the Indians today call the pyramid of the White God... Kukulacan at Uxmal, was the burial place of a Mayan king. It is a step pyramid with buildings on top.
The White God of the Olmecs shown by statue is quite an un-Indian type with a heavy growth of beard.
Yes, ancient step pyramids have been found, event the warrior temple of Chichan Itza. This temple had its colonnades, and the 1000 pillars, and is reminiscent of ancient Egypt, and today we have the pictures of these ancient temples, and statues. The author in this book has included many pictures, illustrations and maps to outline his findings.
Today we have a history of the Inca who ruled at one time, ruled over a vast Empire in the Andes. Later this kingdom would also decay and disappear but thru out this history the legends run of this so called 'myth'... of THE WHITE GOD with many different versions presented. Some of the stories represent the 'White God' as the one who brought to the Indians their script, their calendar, as well as cotton, and taught them how to weave, taught them to cut and to manufacture the green stone. These highly practical contributions to society do not seem like the figments of a story teller with a vivid imagination. They suggest, a real basis for the 'White God' in historical fact.
SEVEN
FIRST FRUITS OF EXCAVATION
After the soldiers of the conquista came, the explorers were just seeking gold. In the second half of the eighteenth century the first scientific explorers set out to see with their own eyes the ancient Indian countries. They then followed the march of Cortes' to the coast and they also came to Tenochtitlan. Then in the 19th., century more followed, and the evidence was slowly coming to light that suggested parallels between the Indian and the old world. The pyramids it was said pointed to Egypt, and the Aztec myth of the White God must refer to Messiah. Some claimed the Indians were the 'Lost tribes of Israel'. Others said that the Apostles, perhaps St. Thomas must have reached America, or that these people came from Atlantis the submerged continent between Africa and the West Indies, or from another submerged continent..MU..from the Pacific.
Lord Edward Kingsborough wrote 9 huge volumes attempting to prove that the Indians were one of the Lost Ten Tribes of Israel, but scholars rejected this. The nine volumes on the antiquity of Mexico were published between 1831-1848 costing $3,500.00 so the buyers were few. Today those which contain these volumes we learn some of the old Inca script, and the ancient Maya code. In Dresden, Germany there was once a set of these volumes but no one seems to know its fate at the present.
In 1790 drainage workers in Mexico city were digging in a hole, and at three feet they struck a stone, it was finally extracted by hawsers and pulley, and they found that it was a tremendous statue 9 foot tall, and after washing with water they found a gruesome, barbaric figure of a goddess with snakes around her. They knew this goddess and her snakes had once stood in Tenochtitlan. Thus Mexico city had been built over the ruins of the old Aztec capital. Then under the city they found the great Pyramid of Tenochititlan 100 feet high with a base of 330 by 260 feet. And gradually outside of Mexico city evacuations were bringing to light buildings not so touched by war and destruction. In 1944 'finds' produced an entirely new picture of the ancient civilization no longer to be considered barbaric. These evacuations produced evidence also of a people ...OLDER...than the Aztec of the time of Cortes.
As to the human sacrifices of Mexico that Cortes found and as to when it started...on the Mesa Central, on the bank of the former lake of Tezcoco the diggers found a hill and they began to dig in the hill. After 3 years of hard work they found a great pyramid with a height of over 60 feet and a base of 200 by 165 feet. Two flights of steps led to the top platform with its two temples. At the foot of the steps were the stone images of snakes. In all, 138 huge turquoise snakes coiled in front of low altars, and they looked completely lifelike. But...inside the big pyramid was a smaller one, the big pyramid had been built around it like a cloak, and under the second pyramid was a third, and a fourth and yes a fifth. The building of the youngest and largest pyramid could be dated at about 1507 A.D., just a few years before the Spaniards came to Mexico. The builders of these mantle Pyramids were not the work of the ancient Aztec...and the snake goddess was connected to the latest pyramid built.
In Peru in 1911 many discoveries were made, for here in the Urubamba valley they discovered...'The City of Faith'..which the Spaniards had hunted. Here were stones piled on stones with the joints hardly visible and one of the high walls had three well marked windows. Three thousand steps led up to the huge block building on the Summit with walls around to form terraces. There on the top platform overlooking the precipice stood a stone which Measured the sun, the house of the altar with the sun dial, an obelisk carved from the rock pointing to heaven like a great stone-finger. Aqueducts led from one terrace to another, and there were three story buildings among the humble people of the plain dwelling there. Next to the town of ruins rock cliffs rose steeply with a sheer drop on their side into the surrounding gorge. The 'City of Faith' which Bingham found in the Andes mountains was more fantastic than any legend. This new 'find' also testified to the mysterious White God.
PART THREE
THE CIVILIZATIONS OF THE WHITE GOD....THE MAYAN EMPIRE...TULA AND CHICHEN ITZA...OTHER ANCIENT PEOPLE OF MEXICO...THE OLMECS AND THEIR INVENTIONS... ANCIENT PEOPLE OF THE PERUVIAN PLAIN...THE GREAT CITY OF TIAHUANACO...THE CHAVIN CIVILIZATION AND THE ANCIENT GODS...THE GOLDSMITHS...THE FIRST MEN IN AMERICA...Are some of the things that part three looks at in this search for the first White Gods, and the great civilizations that they brought to South and Central America.
EIGHT
THE MAYAN EMPIRE...AND WHAT THEY FOUND
On their drive across the Peninsula of Yucatan (as it is now known) and thru the jungles of Guatemala and Honduras, the Spaniards came across traces of an ancient people. Today modern Archaeology has found Mayan temples, in fact eighteen of them as well as 20 other buildings and vast rooms let into the earth with stone altars and temples.
Palenque is a large Island in the midst of an immense forest. There is nothing in Europe north of the Alps at that time to compare with the Mayan buildings and reliefs found there.
In the middle of the last century a young man Etinne Brasseur de Bonebourg became a priest and teacher in an Indian village in Guatemala. He then went back to Madrid and in a library one day he took out a book. He found many loose leaves in the book and they interested him. He returned the book but not the loose leaves, and they turned out to be a copy of Bishop de Landa's manuscript and were the KEY to the Mayan script, and thus another find of the past was made.
In a Mexican market where old books were sold by the pound he found what is still the most comprehensive Maya-Spanish dictionary we know today. He bought it for four Pesos. He then wrote an account of de Landa's work and explained the Mayan glyphs, but hardly anyone was interested.
From 1881 to 1894 Alfred Mandslay explored in Yucatan, in these old ruins, and the British museum now houses the famous Mandslay collection, Archaeological finds and documents from Yucatan. He wrote four volumes with explanatory notes under the title..'Biologia Centralii American'. As the scholars studied this material they found that every ornament, relief or sculpture, every freeze on the temples was covered with symbols, distributed at random all over each surface. Then someone found the de Bonebourg's works, and Bishop de Landas' drawings; the Mayan symbols for the months and day. And they found that the symbols talked with those on all the sculptures in the temple, and the designs of the ornaments. The mystery was solved, it emerged that every ornament and fresco bore a date, and so did every building. Not only the buildings but every staircase, and parapet, number of steps, height, direction, all these indicated a mathematical concept, a date. The temple of the White God Kukulcan at Chichen Itza for instance was built with 9 steps which together reached a height of 80 feet. And its four stairways add up to 365 stairs altogether. The temple was thus a symbolic representation of the nine heavens and the number of days of the year so said the scholars. When an ornament was repeated ten times running or more, when a flight of steps counted 75, when a pyramid reached a certain height, it was no accident, it was a mathematical statement. The whole of Mayan art was mathematics, literally petrified and turned to stone. The science of their Priests was entirely in the service of the calendar. Research into the Mayan calendar is a highly complicated system which counted a ceremonial year one of 260 days, and a solar year one of 365 days like ours. The latter was made up of 18 months each of 20 days with another 5 days or more called a..bank holiday. The least common multiple of 365 and 260 produced a sacred period of 52 years. This was taken over by other Central American people and became the keystone of Aztec chronology.
The Aztec Priests were expert astronomers, they observed the stars with particular care when the 52 year period was enduring. During the last night of the period the Constellation of the Pleiades reached its highest point, the fires were lit over the bodies of their sacrificial offerings, it was the time of the ceremonies of the 'New Fire'.
The revival of Archaeological interest which Mandslays work helped bring about in England was very vigorous in the United States as well. Between 1892 and 1915 the Peabody museum of Archaeology at Harvard sponsored 20 expeditions into the territory where the Mayans once lived. From 1951 to 1958 the Carnegie Institute at Washington D.C., financed evacuations at Uaxactun, Chichen Itza, Kaminaljuya and Mayapan.
Stephens and Catherwood then found the 'city of Copan'. The acropolis is right above the river Copan, by the steep slope down to the river they found pyramids, terraces, temples, large square courtyards, a town covering 12 acres with a stairway leading up from one of the courtyards and it was 33 feet wide and had 62 steps. The front of each step carries a relief, and this stairway alone contains between 1,500 to 2,000 of the Mayan hieroglyphic carvings.
The evacuators in Mayan lands discovered 26 stelae in just a single city. They found nearly 100 Mayan cities. Ten new ones were built between 435 to 534 A.D., these were the earliest, with 14 between 633 to 731 B.C., being the latest, but there were ruins below those and they told a different story.
A White man had lived in the city of Tulum as a slave for 15 years before Cortes discovered Mexico. This Spaniard had been stranded with others on the coast of Yucatan in 1511 A.D., after a shipwreck. He became a great help as interpreter for the Cortes expedition.
The word Stelae means stone, and the gravestones of cemeteries marks the progress of different races as they migrated. Other Stelae or large stones are for the purpose of recording events, names, laws, lists of kings, accounts of victories like the law stelae of Hammurabi, the Rosetta stone from the Nile, and the tablets of the ten commandments.
There were other ancient people of Central America besides the Maya who knew of these stones, and what they meant. The Olmes were the oldest people of that area, and it was they that were the masters of that craft of stone carving. Thus the stelae art was passed from one people to another as it was in the old world, but the only bridge missing is how it was passed from the old world to the New.
The oldest Mayan city to be found was Uaxactun and there William Ricketson Jr. made a remarkable find. As he walked thru the old temple town, he stopped in front of the pyramid marked on his maps as E VII. This time he noticed that something white was in a crack of the wall. He scraped off a bit of this white stuff and had this analyzed, and was told that this was stucco. He had the old pyramid pulled down and found underneath a perfectly preserved little temple, the oldest Mayan building so far discovered and notably different than all previous 'finds'. Here was a small snow white pyramid with a large low platform and all its sides and steps were entirely covered in stucco. The architecture and art pointed to a very early stage in Mayan civilization. The human figures are carved exactly like the ancient Egyptian reliefs. But stucco is an artificial product based on two inventions. It is roughly what we call mortar, a mixture of sand and lime and to make it you have to know two things; how to get lime by heating limestone, and how to harden the mixture of lime and sand by exposing it to air. Yet these procedures were very familiar to the oldest Maya as to the ancient civilizations of the old world.
In 1950 Ruz Lhullier was evacuating there at Palenque, on the platform of the Temple of Inscriptions and suddenly he noticed a pit leading down from the middle of the platform. After clearing it he was able to descend deeper and deeper into the temple, and eventually found a staircase which led still further down. On reaching what he took to be the base he came upon a heavy stone door. This gave into a sepulchral vault, nearly filled with reliefs. The slab was much to heavy to be shifted without mechanical aid. A quarter of a century earlier, Howard Carted had faced a similar problem on discovering the tomb of Tutankhamen (king tut) in the valley of the kings. The monumental sarcophagus there was sealed by a 120 lb weight slab which had to be lifted by means of ropes and pulleys. And here in Maya land the same process was tried and finally the great slab lifted enough to show remains in this sarcophagus. Surely those were of the great rulers of the Mayans?? So they measured and photographed every detail of the crypt and recorded it.
New miracles of Mayan art are coming to light after a sleep of well over 1000 years. The stucco Masks, the death masks of the tomb brought the question as to whether the New World Pyramids were the work of the Indians, or somehow connected to ancient Egypt where they also buried Pharaoh's under their pyramids.
As the scientific exploration of Palenque proceeded there were other surprises. Pictures of a large cross were found on a wall of one of the temples which was named..'The temple of the Cross'. This one tallies almost exactly with the one of 'the tree of heaven from Java only it shows a face between the beams of the Cross' and the Java one has a sort of demonic face.
Comparing the Mayan calendar with others, scholars found that surely the reckoning of time must have come from the far east for it had its exact counterpart in China, Siam and Java.
In 2772 B.C., Egypt divided the year into ten months with 365 days. 2500 B.C., Mesopotamia had a calendar of 360 days. And in 2025 B.C., Mesopotamia had a cycle of the moon and sun of 19 years...12 with 12 months each and seven with 13 months each. In 1200 B.C., Judea had a moon year of 365 days with irregular inter calation of varying length. 46 B.C., Julius Caesar introduced a calendar of the sun year of 365 days with intercalary day every 4 years. This is still used in Russia and the reason why Russian New Year is 13 days after ours. In 1582 in Rome..Pope Gregory reforms Julian calendar and establishes the one valid today, of 365.242,400 days of the year. In approximately 300 A.D., the Mayan calendar still divided the year into 18 months with 20 days each plus 5 blank days, the exact length of the astronomical year...365. 242,198 still the scholars proved that the early Mayan civilization used a different calendar, this one of twelve months with 30 days and the Incas had the calendar that used 12 months. The Incas also knew of the Pleiades, the Southern Cross and the Zodiac. They used the old Babylonian Zodiac calendar, as we still know it today.
Scholars also found that the quality of art and architecture did not improve with the centuries. It was the original civilization from which came the knowledge. The last of Mayan works is dated 909 A.D., and within a few decades all the cities, temples were suddenly deserted. The people seemed to have migrated leaving their temples and all the features of a highly developed civilization. This was found to be a custom, and the Toltecs were one of the last civilization of the area as they conquered the Empire of the Maya.
At the city of Chichen Itza the archaeologists found buildings un-mistakenly Mayan in design but with ornaments very different from those of the old Empire. This was now the design of the Serpent.
At Uxmal the buildings were concentrated in a small area and are still impressive as ruins today. The largest Pyramid there is the so called... House of the Magician...which chroniclers say was erected in honor of the WHITE GOD.
NINE
TULA AND CHICHEN ITZA
'Alas, from Tollan, where the temple stood, and serpent columns still are soaring high, Our prince Nactitl left for distant lands.'....Lament of the Toltec Prince...'Ten Flowers', after the White God's departure.
One of the old scholars described the land of the Toltecs as a paradise where the corn cobs reached such a size they could not be carried, but had to be rolled. Where the vegetables grew as tall as palm trees, and the cotton grew colored in the field. The floors of the Palaces were made of precious stones, their walls of colored stucco, and inlaid with turquoise.
The Chroniclers give the names of the Toltec rulers, the fifth one being the White Bearded Quetzalcoatl who reigned them and then eventually left the people, after that came the time of war and human sacrifices.
After the Spaniards came in 1520 they heard the legend of the great ancient city where the White God was king. The legend was that the White God left Tula with part of his people, and went to the southern coast of the Gulf, and came to Yucatan wearing the feathered crown, the adornment of the people of the coast. In Yucatan he founded a new kingdom with his capital at Chichen Itza. Then Archaeologist started being interested in Chichen Itza about 75 years ago and digging did not start there until 1925 under S.G. Morley. Today tourists from the U.S. can visit the old city of Chichen Itza the largest Mayan city of the Mayan world for it has now risen again from the rubble and ruins. Once more the old chroniclers were proven right; when the Toltecs conquered the New Mayan Empire their White God spared Chichen Itza and made it his residence. A proof of this is Caracol.. originally a Mayan observatory, to which the Toltecs made alterations, one of their first building jobs after the conquest, the most impressive of the many observatories in the ancient civilization was this tower with seven narrow slits in its top story for measuring the Solstices, and equinox. Here as in all civilizations instruments have been found which testify to a high degree of astrological knowledge. Here also in this city the pyramid was found to contain a smaller one inside far older than the outside pyramid.
The young architect E.H. Thompson as he studied the wonderful building of the Mayan civilization was struck by the contrast with the Red Indians of his time, very simple people living in miserable dwellings. He decided these people could not be the descendants of the ancient Maya who must have come from another country...from Atlantis for instance.
Mr. E.H. Thompson was appointed American consul for YUCATAN. He then spent much time among the Indians. In 1896 he found a small pyramid at Chichen Itza to the north of the great terrace, and on unearthing the platform where the shrine used to be he came across a pit, where the floor must have opened up. He started digging in this place. The pit was full of stone, earth, and bones. The pit went deeper and deeper, and further down the pit widened into a sizable cave which housed a tomb. He was so excited he declared this to be the tomb of the White God Kukulcan...founder of all Mayan civilization. Others would not go along with his idea saying only that this must be the grave of a Priest, someone to be honored even beyond death.
Much evidence of human sacrifice was found in the New World but this practice was all over the old world as well for the Bible warned Israel against this practice of the pagans. The later pyramids all seem to show the practice of Human Sacrifice after the disappearance of the White Gods.
In the great city of Tula it was found that a White man had been king of the Toltecs and that he resided in that city. Then he left Tula and conquered the Empire of the Mayan so the legend goes, and made Chichen Itza his capital. He made a great journey for those two cities are 770 miles apart as the crow flies. He came from the area of Chakanputan, south of Kampuchea and sailed across the Gulf of Tabasco to the coast of Yucatan. He was an architect and an artist. He was a shrewd politician, a governor, and a conqueror. He was a scholar, an astronomer, but also a good business man who organized the trade in cotton and cocoa in his kingdom, the largest kingdom which ever existed in Central America. While he was king he was called Quetzalcoatl and he is beyond doubt a historical personality. His name was also current with other people. And was given to pioneers of civilization right up to the time of the Aztecs.
In the Mayan Empire they still looked to Kukulcan as White God, their first teacher, altho he had been dead for many centuries. To them Quetzacoatl was a foreign conqueror, and oppressor. But at Chichen Itza there were two White Gods worshiped. As time went on Kukulcan and Quetzalcoatl were sometimes identified as a plumed serpent, and at times a crown over his head shaped like a Zuetzal bird pouncing. These symbols are old symbols for the rain-god among the Indians. But the highest rain-god was symbolized by the Quetzal bird killing a snake. Thus all thru the ancient Indian thinking was..that the White God..was the pioneer who made civilization sprout, and could therefore be compared to the effect of rain on vegetation. Originally these symbols were attributed to the Mayan Kukulcan but many centuries later they were then transferred to Quetzalcoatl, the White God of the Toltecs. The knowledge of astronomy, and the entire wisdom of the Priests go back to Quetzalcoatl, for he was a warrior king and unlike Kukulcan became a warrior god. The later Toltecs identified him with the warlike god of the morning star, and the feathered serpent became a symbol for the sky and the god of the Zodiac. Then Quetzalcoatl became represented as a crocodile, a crocodile jaw, and often with a birds beak, thus the gods of the old world were also to be found in the New.
We have known from old records that men of the old world were excellent sailors, and had big seaworthy ships. Walter Krickenberg was to point out that ships with crews of 200 or more men, larger than those of Columbus 1000 years later were very well known in earlier times. Even travelers from east Asia probably sailed by way of the Kuril and Aleutian Islands toward the north west coast of America then went south along the coast to Mexico and beyond, for they left their traces. And scholars do agree that the New World was discovered long before Columbus. But the Atlantic would be a much more favorable route for the coming of the White Gods to America.
TEN
OTHER ANCIENT PEOPLE OF MEXICO
The chroniclers mention cities, temples, and palaces in the land of the Zapotecs, that they had migrated to that territory in the first century A.D., but they seemed to have perished long before the Spaniards landed in Mexico. The chroniclers found however in this area a small remnant of ancient people, men with richer and more beautiful clothes than the other Indians. These men wore robes reaching to their feet which were covered with embroidery and their headgear was a feathered crown.
The Chroniclers referred also to the Michauage, a people who lived on the banks of Lake Patzcuaro, a lake 6,700 feet above sea level, and which abounded in fish. One of Cortes' officers wrote that these people who the Spaniards called Tarascans were excellent goldsmiths and true artists in producing feather ornaments, and that even in the Spanish times they still supplied the church with Priest vestments made of feathers. They were fine painters, embroiderers and weavers, master stone-cutters, carpenters, wood carvers, obsidian and metal workers. Some of the strange buildings of these people are still standing near the Mexican town of Paricuti. One day in February 1943, a peasant was plowing his field quite close to these terraces of that old city and he was going to sow new maize. Suddenly the ground opened in front of him swallowing up his plow and team of oxen. He fled back toward his village and as he turned he saw red hot lava belching from the ground and pouring over his field. After ten days the volcano had reached a height of 1,000 feet, a burning mountain which buried everything beneath it.
There was one tremendous city which outshone all the Maya cities, this of course was Teotihuacan and according to the old legends White giants had come in the dim past to raise its buildings to their towering height. But as Cortes and his army on their escape from Tenochititlan passed this city in 1520 it was already in ruins. At one time it extended over 8 square miles, and these ruins were never swallowed up by the jungle like the other ancient cities. It was located just north of what was once Tenochititlan.. or still now Mexico city. In 1905 Leopold Batres started digging up the buildings which the Indians called the Sun Pyramid. Later on Manuel Gamio dug a tunnel thru this outside Pyramid and discovered the Citadel. This sun Pyramid had the same foundation measurements as the great Pyramid of Giza, but it was only 215 feet high.
Oddly enough the old chroniclers said nothing about the citadel, a pyramid built in six steps, consisting of an older temple and a later super structure. Again this pyramid had been added to and contained images of snakes, gods heads with obsidian eyes, and between the snakes the butterfly symbol which you find thru out the Aztec and others of the region. After all the archaeological work in this old city it was decided that this city was built on the site of a primitive settlement. These early stirrings of a great civilization were followed without transition by the style of Teotihaucan, the change was so abrupt that presumable a different people came to dwell. These archaeologists found that this great civilization had close ties with the Mayan and the Zapotecs and others, and you found the mythical Butterfly in all. Then came the deteriation of the civilization as other gods crept in and destruction of the old ways began.
In 1928 archaeologists excavating on the northern bank of Lake Tezcoco found a rubble heap between twenty three to forty six feet deep. They found a very old civilization at the bottom and an immediate one during which the population must have changed, and the one on top was contemporary with the highly developed civilization of Teotihiacan. They found ancient civilizations existed 3000 B.C. to 1000 B.C., and found certain articles which showed trade with the people of the Pacific and the Atlantic as well as the people in the south. They found that there must have been a flood over that area at one time. The Indian myth speaks of this flood, and also talks of a great flood and how Noah survived. And there were survivors of this Indian flood as well for the people migrated to get away from it. One thousand years later this valley of Mexico saw its second great catastrophe. The people who had fled from the flood and their descendants returned to this area. They talk of how the ground beneath them was not calm, that it shook and that finally a great volcano spat steam, smoke and fire. That the mushroom of smoke over the crater became higher and higher, then the volcano blew and the people fled again but only their tallest and largest pyramid was to tall for the lava to swallow. Some of this pyramid today still rises over the ocean of lava turned solid. But 32 miles of area had turned to stone before the eruption had spent itself and the lava cooled. A stone ceiling between 20 to 25 feet thick now covered the traces of human life in the South West area of the valley of Mexico. These traces were discovered by archaeologists as they dug under the layers of lava. This pyramid of Cuiculco lying in the southern outskirts of Mexico city was freed from its stone mantle. It is a round building 65 feet high and 450 feet in diameter. Its outer cast consists of pounded mud, which at its base has a protective covering of un-hewn stones, joined together without mortar. Steps led up to the platform which had a rectangular altar. The pyramid is surrounded by several concentric rings of graves. It was built a few centuries B.C., so could the volcano have erupted around the time of Christ's birth or a little earlier, more important 'finds' were made from a definite period which showed great artistic skill that they could have come only from a highly developed civilization. To old to be attributed to the people of Central America..not to the Aztecs, the Toltecs, the Chichemes, the Mayans, the Tolonacs and the Zapotecs...for the history of these people of their last civilization had been laboriously traced back to A.D. 300 then back, and back, and back to a high civilization so far overlooked.. older than any of the known ones? For years this question as to who these people were and where did they come from has remained the greatest riddle of Mexico.
ELEVEN
THE OLMECS AND THEIR INVENTIONS
The most ancient of the Indian kingdoms, a paradise where cocoa and rubber grew, and rare birds were flying around, the Zuetzal bird, the Kotinga, Trupial, and Spoonbill, the country abounded in Jade, Turquoise, gold and silver. The Olmecs were clad in robes and magnificent ornaments on their feet sandals of leather or rubber. They worshiped, it seemed, a goddess of earth and a goddess of the moon. They were familiar with secret sciences and had one considered a magician for a king. Everything great seemed to have happened in Olman..all civilization seemed to have come from there.
Then in 1884 Alfredo Chavero reported 'finds' on the coast of the Gulf of Mexico so strange that they could not belong to any of the known civilizations, and he could explain them only by the immigration of men from a different old world civilization. There were stone heads of colossal dimensions, and axe-heads with faces on them, the features were a mixture of man and jaguar. Then they found a little green stone figurine at Michoacan...a clay figure of the same type also at Gualapila. They all seemed to be in the years before. Thus you could trace the movement of this once great civilization.
An American, Matthew W. Stirling came in the early thirties to see what he could find of this ancient civilization. Altho he worked systematically and questioned the natives he could get no hint as to where to start digging. Then one day he saw a wooded hill rising in the middle of a swamp. It might have been once an Island in a big lake. He asked the natives what they knew of this Island and was told its name was La Venta. That was all he could get out of them. He had a hunch however so he and his companions made their way to the spot and the same thing Stephens had found at Copan was here. Suddenly in the dense foliage they stood in front of a high building, they had found the Olmecs capital...La Venta. When Stirling started digging there he made a strange discovery. North of the Pyramid at a depth of 23 feet he came upon a mosaic of serpentine laid out crosswise on the Mosaic. On closer investigation he found that the single parts and chips of the Mosaic were carefully embedded in asphalt. But asphalt was a trading commodity of the area between the rivers of Euphrates and Tigris where the soil was rich in oil, and from there it reached the civilization of the old world. The Cretans used asphalt in their art, and recent evacuations on Crete found old Ceremonial caves, altars were unearthed with heaps of bronze and gold axes lying or hanging near them just like Stirling found at La Venta. He found huge altars here weighing from 20 to 50 tons. They were hewn from immense blocks of stone in such a way that their upper parts jutted out like a table top, and they were covered with reliefs on all sides, the jaguar motif prevailing. The stones used for the Altars came from the Tuxtla volcanoes, and had to be brought 80 miles as a crow flies, so how did they move these great stones?? This is still a great mystery.
Another mysterious find was an immense human head in stone. They found six of these stone heads, one of the smaller ones was 6 feet tall, and 18 feet in circumference. At first the evacuators took them for gigantic statues, only the heads sticking out, but it soon turned out that there were no bodies attached to the heads which were supported by only a stone pillar. One of those found is holding a bowl, and wears a comb in its hair. A giant figure with a mask shaped like a jaguar's face once stood on the edge of the Tuxtla volcanoes. Equally astonishing is that these statues do not represent Indians, they wear a helmet with flaps protecting the cheeks. But remember in all legends the White God also wore a helmet. The Aztec Prince remember had asked Cortes for a gilt helmet for it was like the one which had been worn by THE WHITE GOD. Helmets were worn in the old world, they are found on Crete, and that one had boars teeth, which show the cheek protection, they were adorned with a horse hair plume, as shown also on an 'ivory relief' from the old city of Mycenae. Perhaps this is the helmet of the king worn by THE WHITE GOD. Thus does this White God's helmet go back to the Olmecs, where the country was described as a paradise of tropical birds. It was said that it was from here that Quetzalcoatl left Tollan and went to this coast, and he wore the crown of feathers of the Quetzal bird. This was the same as the famous crown which Montezuma II wore which today is kept in the Museum in Vienna.
We also know of other feather work from the ancient civilization, gossamer feather embroideries; smaller and smaller feathers assembled into a carpet, rug or coat. Feathers of a metallic brilliance mixed with others ranging form the lightest to darkest blue, from the palest to the richest yellow; feathers of green, brown, purple, red and orange joined together to make patterns of the most delicate shading and of the softest silkiest, most weightless cloth. There these feather coats were so wonderfully beautiful that long after the 'Conquista' the Spanish Bishops still had their vestments for their rulers. No feather work was found during the excavations in Mesopotamia, Egypt..nor on Crete, but the Cretans were certainly familiar with this craft. In the legend of Icarus (originally Cretian-Phoenician) his father made wings from feathers so he two could escape from the dungeon of King Minos, who had summoned them to build the maze; their jailor found feathers, wax and straps which they had left behind in their empty cell.
Now; here is something interesting...the oldest ball courts were found in the cities of the Olmecs, but remember the meaning of Olman is given as a country of rubber. The jaguar motif goes back to the Olmecs as well and then passes from there to the Inca, to the Maya, to the Toltecs, and to the Aztec. The Cretans had a motif of the lion, and many lion masks were found in the Cretan civilization but as yet no Jaguar.
Another thing found in La Venta was also typical of Crete...a little talisman of Jade, the bluish or emerald green stone to which all the Indian people attached a tremendous value. They cherished it more than gold or silver, it was their most precious possession, and after life itself the most precious gift to be offered to the gods. Very big 'finds' of Jade were made in the Olmecs territory. They were masters in working Jade, and the craft passed from them to all the civilizations of Central America. The Aztecs paid their tribute in Jade. One tomb in La Venta yielded ear rings of Jade, as well as animal figures, axes, and so forth, even a trough shaped dug-out with paddles, and the figure of a weeping dwarf.
The dredgers brought up a great deal of Amber from the sacred well at Chichen Itza. Amber jewelry was found in nearly all the Indian civilizations. In the Old World only the Phoenicians traded in Amber, bringing it from the Baltic. So perhaps the Indian's Amber like their Jade came from the Old World. Yes, Old World origins can be proved for the Stone yokes which were taken by the Totonacs from the Olmecs were found, and these yokes shaped like horseshoes represented animals or birds, sometimes human beings. The head is at the base, the arms and legs at the sides, and they are clearly connected with some ritual for the dead. Its significance has never been explained for certain. Some of the Olmec Yokes have the two sides connected by cross beams, a shape known from representations in ancient Egypt, where it was also a part of the ritual of the dead. The Egyptians referred to this symbol as 'Ankh'; it was their symbol of life after death. Thus the Olmec could scarcely have invented the same symbol in the same context by mere chance??
Olmec and Totonac axes have been found in entirely different shapes, there are ceremonial ones, and axes with perforated blades, which have animal and human figures, sometimes acrobats, worked into the opening, and fitting beautifully into the curves. We know such an axe from Ancient Egypt, it has only the outline of the blade left, while the animal figures worked into its frame are arranged just as skillfully to harmonize with the given space and curves. The scholars were forced to the conclusion that all the stone craftsmanship of Central American civilizations originated from the Olmecs. They also invented relief sculpture in the round and the Stelae. (stone carving) Their Stelac were such masterly creations that they served as models to all the people who came after them. The art of the Olmec Stelae can be traced almost without gaps thru a whole Millennium. And the Maya took over Stucco as well as Stelae from the Olmec, who had discovered how to make mortar for building pyramids.
From the Olmec came also the pyramid itself, the big stone altars, the sarcophagus, the use of asphalt, probably feather work, and the rubber ball, and the script. The Olmec script; the oldest Indian script known is preserved on some few Stelae, and is like the Mayan in style, thus the Olmec gave the Maya their script and probably their figure symbols. The Mayan characters were also like the Cretan symbols so the Olmecs must have known the Cretan script.
The Olmec civilization, short as it was in time,...that it lasted is however unique in history for the strength, range and durability of the influence it exerted. It seems to have been destroyed by force but passed on to the Olmecs nearest neighbor, the oldest of the Mayan civilization, and to the Zapotecs at Monte Alban, and the people of Teothuacan, which the Olmecs had also built. Two early inscriptions have been found equivalent of A.D. 31 and one of A.D. 162, but older ones will surely be discovered. The features of the Olmec statues proves the Olmecs were not Indians. They must therefore have been the WHITE GODS OF MEXICO, who later went to the Mayans, and to the Zopotecs and others to become the White Gods of these people as well.
The Olmecs however must have received their civilization and their script from a New World Empire even older which flourished outside Central America where the Cretan Script was known and used, where art and engineering had gone on developing for hundreds of years. What the Olmecs knew of these things when they arrived in Mexico they could not have acquired from one day to the next, but only by long experience. This mysterious Empire of the Olmecs in South America...did the Olmecs migrate from there coming to the North?
TWELVE
ANCIENT PEOPLES OF THE PERUVIAN PLAIN
The Peruvian plain has no jungle, it stretches about 1000 miles along the Pacific coast. As you fly over this area you see hundreds of pyramids over seventy of them among the ruins near the mouth of the river Jequetanamu, dozens more in the ruins of another big city once called Chan-Chan, and all the Peruvian pyramids are Step Pyramids with an outside staircase leading up to the platform which carries the temple, all are built of adobes. According to the chroniclers the Chimu people created this Empire by federating many small kingdoms like those of Quito, Lambayeque and the Chira Valley. They were founded by men who had come on rafts from Mexico's Pacific coast probably driven out of their country by that great flood, and they brought legends with them. They were originally called Mochica and that was the name of their language. They defeated their neighbors and ruled over the whole coastal plain. Then became called the Chimu which means ruler, an extension of one of their kings...the Great Chimu who ruled at the end of the 5th., Century. They were finally conquered by the Incas.
When the Spaniards came they saw the remains of the Chimu civilization. There was a fortress in the south of the country on a hill which was 165 feet high. The hill was surrounded by ramparts with a fort for an entrance, the other three corners of the fortress had been built up into outer forts with sides 130 feet long. The first Spaniards found this intact, along with other fortresses and walls intact with other fortifications equally imposing, with monuments to Chimu showing the former greatness and military power, all such monuments have since been destroyed.
In 1602 Spaniards came and destroyed the big pyramid here and they found much treasure but they ignored the smaller pyramid with a different sort of treasure, for here later was found mummies in graves and the excavators received these in tack. The Spaniards found a particularly rich booty in the tomb of the Chimu kings. In the temple of Moche they pillaged gold and silver of immense value. Later travelers found the residence of the kings of the Chimu. This city covered six square miles and lies between Triyillo and the Pacific about five miles north of the river Moche. It used to be a port but is no longer on the sea. Among the ruins were found foundations of two very large walled Palaces. The big Palace had sides of 1,300 feet by 1,650 feet and contained a large reservoir. Both Palaces had courts, halls, dwellings and planned gardens.
A Pilot who sailed up and down the Peruvian coast reported that everywhere ...in the temples he had found wooden or stone statues of a god called Guator..the name meaning whirlwind and equivalent to the old German name of ..'Wotan'..the ancient God of Storm, the Maya called him Votan, the Scandinavians called him Oden).
The Archaeologists were surprised to find mummies in Peru and they established that resin and oils were used, so the method of mummification were almost exactly the same as in ancient Egypt. Mummies were not only known to the Incas in Peru but also in Colombia. They were found wearing small gold crowns with funeral offering, gold fingers, ornaments and emeralds. As the Spaniards set up a court system with Judges, they saw a full court room but a lot of extremely old people seemed to be sitting with veils or masks over their faces. After the verdict the Indians sitting next to these old people would pick them up like a bundle and made for the exit. Every morning the Indians would hurry in carrying these old people on their shoulders. Eventually the judges found out that these 'aged people' were family mummies who always had to be present when an important decision for the family was to be expected. The Indians resented the Spanish for their trying to change their customs, and for years after the Conquista many a Spanish judge had to read his verdict to a court where half the people 'present' were dead and had been for generations.
Mummies were found also in the burial ground of another ancient people on the Peru Coastal plain, the people of Nazca, Ica, and Paracos. The ruins of that civilization showed several temples and fortresses. La Centinela was built during the time of the Incas. But even here the eastern part built of adobe was much older. It was this people who constructed a vast irrigation system for which the country was famous in Inca time. Like the Chimu they must have migrated to the Peruvian coast from further north. They had to fight the wild tribes of the mountains and became a warrior people. We know them better from their ancient burial grounds on the coast, with evidence of amazing arts, crafts and such to be found there. At Ancon the dead were buried often on top of one another in simple holes in the ground. The mortal remains have long since disintegrated but the funeral offerings such as weapons, ornaments, pottery and material have survived. Strange creatures are depicted on pottery and textiles of this early civilization. Animals like cats and dogs, but with several heads on top of another are found...cat heads wearing beards, snake bodies surrounded by lightening flashes, parrots, owls, fishes, forms with puma masks and so forth are found. Also found is the interlocked dragons with short sickles, shaped very characteristic of the Chou-style in China. The Chinese may also have brought copper to the New World but there is also many snakes in things found of this representative style.
Thus you find traces of the Asiatics in migrations here, but also we run across proof that men from the east reached America. For from the Mayan to the Tolonacs and now on the Peruvian coast the textiles point quite clearly to the ancient civilizations of the Mediterranean area. In the tombs at Paracas, textile remains were found twenty feet below ground. There the mummies found were wearing masks of wood and copper. Hundreds or even thousands of them were found wearing masks of wood, copper, silver, gold, or adorned with precious stones and wrapped up in either feather work or something of that sort. The features were fastened to the web, and there were often masks made up of a variable feather carpet. There were shrouds woven from wool or cotton, sometimes lengths of 20 yards or more can be seen in the Lima National Museum. Unique in the Nazca civilization, they have a fairy tale beauty, and are among the great achievements of Indian applied art. These woven in images look as tho painted on.
The Archaeologist Nevermam came to the conclusion that this was the method of people of the south and east of Asia as the Mediterranean. The Indians knew and used the batik method of weaving the cotton first then covering the design with Melted Wax. The dye is then absorbed only by the uncovered portions until the wax is dissolved in boiling water or scratched off, when a net of fine veins appears on the material along the lines where it has been broken thus the design. Both batik and ikat techniques must surely be imports from the Old Word where they have always been much favored.
From Greek mythology we know Cererus, the three headed dog with the skin of a snake who guarded the entrance to Hades, and the aged ferryman Charon who took the souls of the dead across the river which flowed 9 times around the underworld. The Greeks put a small coin into the mouth of the dead, as a present for Charon. In Egypt too the god of death is depicted like Cereberus..with a dog's head. In Aztec mythology Zoloth...the god of death wore a dog's head. He is also one of the incarnations of the White God Quetzalcoatl who went down to the realm of the dead and appeared again as Zoloth. For a long time this was thought an invention of post-Spanish times; but when the mummies of the Peruvian coast had been unwrapped from their beautiful shrouds, and submitted to a thorough medical examination, it was found that they had a small thin copper disc in their mouths.. like the 'Obol for Charon'. Vases with strange designs were retrieved from the tombs, designs of the Cormorant trained for catching fish, such training of cormorants had been known in China from very early times; designs of men planting fish. They were digging holes into the ground while crossing a field and were putting fish into the holes together with a seed of maize. This was the rite of 'fish manuring', a custom so old that it came down to us from Babylonia. Then there were animal mummies, parrots, dogs, from the Peruvian Coast, and we know of the holy graves of ...APIS..bulls of Egypt, the cat graves of Bubastis, those of the sacred crocodiles of Ombos. All these contain state sarcophagus where the Egyptians used to keep those dead animals in their temples as 'living gods'. And here in the New World the Chan-Chau (Asiatics) had the residence of their living god...the snake, the serpent.
Many things then show that Asiatics at one time came to the Peruvian Coast, and also that the mummies show that the White man must have come to the Peruvian coast at a very early time. There is stronger evidence mounting to positive proof, from plant life...particularly cotton, and the sweet potato, and possible maize as well. One parent of the Indian cotton is the American cotton growing wild which has 26 small chromosomes. But the other parent does not exist in America, and must have been imported. It came from Europe where the cottons cell nucleus always contains 26 large chromosomes. So the cotton of the Indian civilizations is a cross between Europe and wild American cotton. SO..how did the Indians get the cotton seed from Europe to cross with their own wild cotton? These could not have been brought during the migrations of people from Asia by way of the Bering Straits since that migration lasted for thousands of years, but cotton cannot be grown in very cold conditions. It must have come by some other route, and gone direct to the regions with suitable conditions, for its growth, certainly not what today is Alaska or Canada. It cannot have traveled by sea, for sea water would have destroyed its germinal power. Nor could birds have been the carriers for they do not eat cotton seed. The cotton examined came from the Peruvian Coast, a few centuries back before the B.C., therefore the Indian civilization must have known European cotton at that time, and crossed it with their own wild cotton.
As to Maize, it is said that the God Quetzalcoatl stole it from the Food Mountain and brought it to mankind. Maize is said to have been cultivated from wild plants in the south of Mexico and in Guatemala as far back as archaic times. Could it have been the return gifts the White Gods brought with them when they went back to their old country?
As to the sweet potato, it certainly traveled across the Pacific, tho we cannot be sure in which direction. The name Cumura...for sweet potato, can be found in the entire Pacific area, and derivations of it were current among the Aztec, and the people of Panama and the Caribbean. This then points to the fact that there was an exchange of civilization across the Pacific perhaps in both directions long before Columbus discovered America. Thus we need to review history and establish these facts of migrations of people from different parts of the world and come to the conclusion that we have had hidden from us the facts.
The chroniclers said the WHITE GODS made the cotton to grow colored. Several scientists claim to have established that this was the work of the Phoenicians who varied it from pale violet to pale pink, and lilac. In their colonies such as Carthiage this color was obtained from a Whelk like shellfish called Murex. Heaps of these shells still can be found today near Carthiage. Phoenician ships took Tyrian purple to the entire Mediterranean area.
It is significant of course, for like our own potentates, the Indians chose purple as a symbol of majesty and sovereignty, for they were familiar with other natural dyes such as indigo and cochineal, and with complicated ways of dyeing textiles, such as the alum-bath which for a long time was a closely guarded secret of the Phoenicians. Some centuries B.C., the Phoenicians having noticed that certain materials were hard to dye because they would not take color, discovered how to treat the material first with an alum solution, preparing the fiber in such a way that it took the colors desired. This process is still widely used in dyeing today.
Thus in summary:...purple and alum-bath, cotton and sweet potato, the Obol for Charon and the dog-headed god of Hades, these and many more parallels were discovered or confirmed by the finds on the Peruvian plain, proving once again that men from the east and the ancient Mediterranean civilizations must have come to the America Indians. Thus we must follow the WHITE GODS traces still further to a very old Indian people living high up on the plateau of the Andes.
(To be continued)
(THE QUEST OF THE WHITE GOD CONT.)
THIRTEEN
THE GREAT CITY OF TIAHUANACO (TIAHUNACO-IN OTHER SPELLINGS)
Two mountain ranges are parallel...the Andes, the Cordilleras both reach nearly 25,000 feet, and run north and south, and cast the mold for the whole Pacific coastline of South America. Between them is the corridor of the Sierra which goes on for thousands of miles reaching Ecuador and right down to Argentina. It is over 500 miles around Lake Titicaca. Further north near Cuzco, it narrows down to 200 miles, then further north to a little over 100 miles. It is now a land bare of trees, framed by snow covered volcanic mountains, the vast plateau is 13,000 feet above sea level. It is transversed by low chains of mountains with bizarre lava rocks, and clefts and gorges, and fissures cris-crossing the rocky ground, evidence of continued volcanic activity is everywhere. It is the land of the ancient Aymara and Colla, the country around La Paz the capital of modern Bolivia. One wide river, the Santa breaks out of the Cordillera to flow to the Pacific. But the plain is so dry that many rivers that started in the mountains ooze away to nothing before they reach the sea. The Amazon and several of its great tributaries have their source in the mountains of the east Andes...the 'Montana'...Virgin forests starts here, the 'Green Hell' as it is called reaches for thousands of miles.
With the jungle to the east, and the Pacific to its west, the Sierra lies between its mountains, a lonely, silent, hostile Steppe where Condors circle the sky on enormous wings. The days are sultry, the nights icy cold. Only a few valleys lie lower than 7000 feet, and they are near tropical like Oases in a desert of stone. When the sun rises blood-red above the eastern Cordillera it turns the desert into a fairyland. The bare rock shines first a brilliant red, then brown, yellow and blue. In the clear air you can see immense distances. When some of the volcanoes shake the earth then houses in La Paz and Cuzco start tumbling to earth. But the houses and buildings which were standing before the Spaniards took possession, those of the Incas from earlier times, still defy the earthquakes. This was once the realm of the WHITE GOD...Viracocha.
During the first half of the 13th., century Maya Capac, the fourth Inca led his army against the Aymara. After a long march from Cuzco he and his men reached this highland around Lake Titicaca, and they found the remains of an ancient city. A pyramid rose to great height, and the immense platform was there with only the remains of a temple left. In front of it an enormous monolith gate towered into the sky. Its columns had the heads of gods carved into them, and they were still keeping watch over the ruins. Remains of walls were hewn of granite and decorated with reliefs. The colossal blocks of stone lay scattered from those walls now fallen. A flight of steps leading to the sacred precinct were still in tact, its food had once been lapped by the waters of the lake, and boats had moored here to land tribute, and visitors to the capital.
The fourth Inca stopped his litter and got down and ascended the steps of the great pyramid. He saw little pyramids rising between tumbled columns and idols, the stone vaults below were the resting places for the bones of those who once ruled the country like Gods. The fourth Inca with only his highest dignitaries walked up the steps of this great pyramid and thru the ruins of this city where his ancestors had lived in, so legend said...over 1000 years before.
After the Spaniards conquered the Inca Empire and became masters of South America, expeditions kept going out, chiefly to look for gold. Some reached the barren plateau of Lake Titicaca and found not only the huge stone slabs which did not interest them, but gold nails in the slabs which did.
The Inca chronicler, Garcilaso de Vega, had this to say about the ruins of Tiahuanco. The most beautiful structure is a hill created by the hand of man. In order to prevent the masses of earth from collapsing they secured the foundation by well built stone walls. From another side there are two stone giants to be seen clothed in long gowns with caps on their heads. Many large gateways had been built with one stone. Among the buildings on the Lake's bank was a paved court 80 feet square with a covered hall 45 feet long going down one of its sides. Court and halls are of one single block of stone, this masterpiece had been hewn into the rock. There are still many statues to be seen here today. They represent men and women, and are so perfect one could believe the figures were alive. Some seem in the act of drinking, others look as if they were about to cross a stream; women are giving children the breast. One of the buildings in the city was one of the wonders of the world; stones 37 feet long by 15 feet wide had been prepared without the aid of lime or mortar, in such a way as to fit together without any joints showing.
One of the buildings is a low mud terrace, 13 feet high, 420 feet by 390 feet, a flight of wide steps leads up to it. The structure was originally surrounded by great stone columns which stood on top of a wall at intervals of 16 feet.
One of the chroniclers, Ciazade de Leon, wrote of a huge building with a patio fifteen spans square and walls more than twice as tall as man. On the opposite side stands a hall measuring 45 feet by 22 feet with a roof built exactly like the roofs of the Temple of the Sun at Cuzco. This hall has many big gates and windows, the lagoon of the lake laps the stairs leading to the vestibule. The natives say the temple was dedicated to Viracocha the creator of the world.
Other travelers tell of a great building on this artificial hill and Arthur Posnansky a modern authority says this building was 2,251 feet by 2,101 feet and he refers to it as the 'Sanctissium', the Holy of Holies. The stone columns are treated as the remains of a sort of Colonnade encircling the Temple of the Sun. The entrance to the Palace was a gateway which is called The Gate of the Sun.
The rulers and Priests were divided from their people by a wide gulf. Their palaces and halls must have had a magnificence equal to those of the Pharaohs and Babylonian kings in the old world. The walls were hung with stone and clay masks, precious gold and bronze ornaments, and were adorned with large headed nails, the holes from these can still be seen today. Many of these nails are on view in the Bolivian Posnansky Museum at La Paz, and the stone masks are hanging on the museum walls, just as they used to be in the Palace of Tiahuanaco. The pieces of gold to be seen in South American private collections are truly magnificent, gold statues of gods weighing between four and six pounds, gold animals and birds, ducks, gold cups, plates, goblets and spoons. There are dozens of good spoons with pointed ends and an ornament where the bowl joins the handle.
The gold 'talent' used as a weight in the ancient civilizations of the Mediterranean was the shape of a duck, so perhaps the people of Tiahuanaco knew the Old World currency unit, just as they knew cups, plates, spoons, and goblets.
The British Archaeologist..Evans..had been studying hieroglyphs for years when he came across something strange...characters pointing to Crete. He went to Crete in 1900 and started digging. He found the maze of Knossos. He found the remains of a palace that once covered nearly six acres. The great court was a huge quadrangle with towering adobe buildings on all sides with the roof testing on great columns. There must have been several stories containing halls, and great rooms. The palace once had white washed columns, and walls decorated with stucco and murals. One day he discovered leading into the earth and opening, and further digging showed that there was a room beyond twenty by thirteen feet surrounded on three sides by stone benches, and with a throne of Minos..the audience chamber of the Royal Palace of Knossas Tiahuanaco. Ponansky refers to the building east of the stairs leading to the Calasasaya as the Palacio, and it is alleged to go back to Tiahunanco's early period. Its walls too enclosed a room let into the ground which had stone walls adorned with many human faces. But Mino's audience chamber found on Crete is no more than a closet compared with this one of the rulers of Tiahuanaco. The one on Crete..13 feet by 20 feet with its antechamber 6 feet by 10 feet, where the bigger Tiahuanaco audience chamber is 160 feet by 125 feet, the antechamber 85 feet by 100 feet. On Crete, Evans came upon a drainage system in the palace of Knossos. There the water had to be poured in from a jug. These drains were big enough for men to walk thru in order to clean them. The system of supplying water came cross country in aqueducts, and that is known not only from Crete, but also from the Hanging Gardens of Babylon where the water from wells, fountains, and gardens was brought from a long distance by stone conduits.
The builders of Tiahuanaco were drainage experts, as were the ancient Cretans. The city had an aqueduct to supply it out of stone pipes with sparkling fresh drinking water from the mountains; and it had an extensive drainage system as well. The conduits built from stone slabs may also have supplied water for gardens but there are no traces of such gardens left.
The ruins of Tiahuanaco were still a majestic sight until the end of the last century when the ruins were then used as a quarry for building blocks. The ancient walls and stone statues were blasted with dynamite and smashed up with pick-axe. The fact that anything remains is largely due to the work of Arthus Posnansky, a German engineer at La Paz himself the owner of a large brick yard, he died only a few years ago. When he first came to Tiahuanaco he was fascinated by the ruins, he was no trained archaeologist but had the sure instinct of a man with a feeling for 'the soul of stones'. He realized these were the ruins of a very ancient and mighty civilization, probably unique in the whole of America. For years he wrote articles and pamphlets condemning the work of destruction. He spent all his leisure time at the site, photographing every stone, every fragment he could find. He was the first to make a blueprint of the ruins 'lay out'. Then he got the town of La Paz to found an open air museum, he built it himself and put in it what ever he could save from Tiahuanaco. He excavated on his own paying expenses which came out of his own pocket to pay the workmen who helped shift the huge blocks and statues so as to preserve them. The museum became a place which today gives at least some inkling of the city's former greatness, and a high level of civilization. Later expeditions arrived with government permits to dig and he could do nothing but photograph everything which came to light before it was destroyed.
A bitter and disappointed man he at last confined himself to writing about his wonderful find. He contends that the plateau of Lake Titicaca must have been the cradle of all mankind, that he at Tiahuanaco (the city) found the origin of all civilization. He had taken the measurements of the Gate of the Sun and worked out that it must have served an astronomical purpose, a kind of calendar stone, to which he attributed a date of 16,000 B.C. His enemies took their chance to brand him a charlatan, but what ever his later errors he did preserve a priceless record for future generations particularly with his photographs. His photos show the great stone slabs lying on top of one another or side by side, with niches and blind windows carved into them, as for instance on the reverse of the Gate of the Sun. They show the remains of a magnificent drainage system, they show the Monoliths and Stelas, the sculptures in the round and the reliefs. These photographs still convey some small impression of that magnificent civilization, all records of but for Posnansky would have been irretrievably lost. His work can be fully appreciated only by someone who goes to Tiahuanaco today.
An antiquated narrow-gage carriage travels from La Paz, it crosses desolate steppes and only Indians ride it for it stops in little villages then in the middle of the Steppe, at the place called Tiahuanaco. There is now only a small church, a cemetery, surely one of the grimmest cemeteries in the world, and a few miserable Indian huts; otherwise only an expanse of barren stone without any vegetation at all, and in a dead plateau naked under the dazzling sunlight. Close to the village there is a strange sight; a big stone gate rises straight out of the desert; with a few square stone columns and large flat stones lying beside it, with some imagination you can recognize these as the remains of a flight of steps, and in the background a mountain of mud. Lake Titicaca is now 16 miles away from the once majestic city of Tiahuanaco and it recedes a bit year after year.
It is hard to imagine how those ancient people transported these great blocks of stone weighing 100 or even 200 tons from the volcanic area 40 miles away as the crow flies. As with the pyramids of Egypt did thousands of men work for hundreds of years building an enormous building with one special feature, the use of copper rivets, which is known from only two places in the old world...Assyria and Etrurian. The stone blocks of the walls were fastened together with pegs. Little holes were bored into the slabs and copper poles put into these holes, then when fastened at both ends, turning them into a sort of rivet.
Other parallels with the old world in architecture and building techniques include the audience chambers, those rooms let into the ground; the little round holes in the top slabs of graves, exactly as on Egyptian tombs, and the technique of 'cast packing'. From the pyramids of Tiahuanaco up to the latest Aztec pyramids they all contain a mound, a kernel of mud which is covered by a stone cast. Then there are the double parallels at Tiahuanaco filled with mud. This method too was used in the old world in particular by the Cretans, whose way of building can still be traced in an old harbor they constructed on the mouth of the Nile.
What is shown at Tiahuanaco shows that it was a city of artisans, and craftsmen; carpenters, builders, stone masons, painters, potters, blacksmiths, and weavers, bronze founders, and metal workers. Besides their workshops this city must have had centers of planning and directing for all projects for buildings, aqueducts and draining.
We know from reliefs that the boats moving on Lake Titicaca both in construction and material were amazingly like the Egyptian papyrus boats. The name of Tiahuanaco also means something bright and shining, an apt description for the White God of this Great City.
We know this great city was destroyed by force, that legends say that the Wild Indians killed all the men and left only the women and children to survive; for the White God managed to escape with a small band of his followers.
There were also other pyramids in this kingdom for over 1/2 mile south west of Tiahuanaco was a bigger one. The great gate on the third platform here at Puma Puncu was the so called 'Gate of the Moon'. Then a third pyramid was found on the coast at Secchim, a part of the Tiahuanacan Empire, as was Cuzco which later was the Inca capital.
The earliest similar buildings in the old world were the Step Pyramids between the Tigris and Euphrates rivers in Mesopotamia. They were originally earth mounds serving as 'hills of refuge' during the frequent floods. From them developed the Babylonian Zigguretes in which several mud terraces each of diminishing size were pile up on top of another to make a step pyramid with a temple standing on top. They were temples not tombs, and the Bibles 'Tower of Babel' was a step pyramid with a temple on its platform which probably contained an altar.
The Egyptian pyramids were of a different design, they contained a chamber in which the Pharaoh's bones rested. The chamber was assessable by a low passage through the stone which was filled in with earth after the ruler had been entombed.
The New World Pyramids were step pyramids with an outside stairway leading up to the temple on top. Back thru ancient religions the idea was as of the mountain ascending to heaven. Many ancient people sacrificed to their gods on the mountains, did these pyramids represent artificial mountains?....perhaps sometimes.
Nearly every large town in Europe contains and obelisk that strange needle shaped stone monument, actually a little pyramid towering on top of a slender four sided pillar. The obelisk comes from Egypt where it was common. Two of the tallest, built by a powerful pharaoh stood in front of the temple at Heliopolis. Obelisks were common in Crete, and an Obelisk also stood outside the temple of Tiahuanaco. In addition 21 human figures in stone, 16 Stelae, and 48 sculptures altogether have been salvaged from the horseshoe shaped temple of Pucara in Peru. These are more rounded than the 'cubist' forms of Tiahuanacan art, but otherwise the two styles tally exactly.
We find that Tiahuanaco the capital of the Empire had a great influence on the whole of the Empire as can be seen from the ruins found extending right down to Peru's coastal plain. On the coast near Pisco Professor J. Tello, the Peruvian archaeologist, dug up the ruins of two large cities, one of which is said to have had over 40,000 inhabitants. Unlike the others along the coast these two are all of stone; their houses, their temples, their tombs. The archaeologist found the jaguar figures on the coast as well. A few of the statues of their gods are found today in the museum at La Paz, and they are six feet or more tall covered all over with reliefs, and with turbans on their heads, and the turban significantly is Semitic headgear. There is another Semitic feature..'The prefix'..'pacha'.. which is found in several of the gods names such as Pachomac, or Pachatata, god of the sun and keeper of the world, and Pachamama the great goddess of the city, mother of the earth. He big statue with a turban like headgear from Tiahuanaco's second period is preserved, while from the city's third period Posnansky found a further statue of the Goddess in the little temple east of the steps leading to Calasasaya...here she is crowned with a sort of turban. Pachameacac, was the god who later came to the coast and remained so powerful that the Incas stole him to incorporate him with their gods; in fact he became their highest god.
One of the surprising things that survived in the ruins is...gates. You would have thought them the weaker part, but the Babylonian gate of Nebuchadnezzar, the lion gate at Mycenae, and the Hittite gate at Hattuse have been preserved, all have animals or fabulous monsters as ornaments.
Again at Tiahuanaco there are animals on the huge monolith arch at Tiahuanaco, which towers on the barren plateau in solitary magnificence. This is now commonly known as the Gateway to the sun, altho that name is very recent. This gate is carved from a single block ten feet high and over six feet wide. It is in largest carved monolith on earth. At the front its vertical walls rise sheer, crowned by a frieze extending along its whole width. A stylized Jaguar with human features is enthroned over the arch's center, holding the symbols of thunder and lightening, and carries a nimbus round its head. Jaguars, Condors, and the Cobra are represented on the freeze, which also shows several rows of winged creatures forward in all American Indian art. The Gate of the moon has fishes instead of the Condor, and no winged creatures, and has plates of silver.
In the 1840's, A.H. Layard was excavating the great Palace of Assur Nastir (884-859 B.C.) and he discovered on the hill of Nimrod no fewer than 13 pairs of winged lions, or bulls, great giant animals thought to be the immense statues of the ancient Assyrian Astral God Murdoch. With the Egyptians in what we call gryphons were lions with bird heads. The Cretans to had genies, demons in animal shapes, hybrids of men and beasts with wings, goats with horns and wings. The Etruscans had the winged typhoon with snake feet and other winged creatures. The Gateway of the sun at Tiahuanaco had a similar creature representing..a man's body..a birds head and wings. From the Greek mythology we know of human figures with the body of a fish, with scales and a tail. Little statues found at Tiahuanaco and all over the Plateau show the same kind of hybrid, worked from gold and silver. Women with fish bodies and tails and their breasts conspicuous, as well as witches or something like them were also found known to the Incas, however they were not then riding broomsticks.
One creature found in the Tiahuanacan Empire was the pre-historic creature. In 1920 Professor Tello was digging up vessels from those two coastal cities mentioned earlier, and he came up with jugs with a representation of a five toed Llama. Today they have two toes. The Tiahuanaco civilization must have been very old, could the Indians have found 'living fossils' some how left over from primeval time?
The period of Colossal buildings in the world was about 1200 B.C., so immigrants to America must have brought this style across before then.
But Tiahuanaco cannot have been the first city which white men built on reaching America. Strangers cast up on those shores for the first time would not have moved to an icy plateau 13,000 feet above sea level, far from the coast, in the midst of the most forbidding country. But their descendants were not looking for fertile soil or mild climate. Tiahuanaco was the only New World city of its time with had tin...Bolivia has it today, and bronze was produced from copper and tin; its site must have been chosen because of the deposits of tin found there.
When the Spaniards then invaded the Inca Empire they landed on the Island of Puna and they saw objects made of Bronze for the first time in America. Afterwards they met plenty of these weapons of bronze in battle. The Incas had learned to make bronze alloy from people who had conquered the Aymara and Colla people, who had known the technique centuries earlier. The Aymara's 'tutors' who discovered the secrets of making bronze once lived at Tiahuanaco. Bronze was used there when copper was still the staple metal everywhere else in the new world. But pure copper was also worked at Tiahuanaco. The only way to make things it was particularly suitable for such as nails to join the single stone blocks of the buildings; which we call rivets today. The ends of the soft copper poles were very easy to flatten. 1000 years after the fall of Tiahuanaco there was not metal worked in Mexico, not even copper. Bronze traveled from them to other people of the continent. The Tiahuanacan bronze tools are shaped like those of the old world, and their animal figures in bronze are almost exactly the same as such figures from the Caucasus.
Archaeologists will only suggest that Tiahuanacan was probably built about the first of the fifth century. That the city was taken over by the Aymara, an Indian people of near savage mentality, and perhaps the people were ruled by the White Gods, they may have rebelled and chased their ruler away and destroyed the city in the process. But these people inhabited large areas of Bolivia around lake Titicaca settling them at least 1000 B.C. They were conquered by the Incas after three generations. Even the Inca rule came to an end, but some of the Aymara and Colla survived and with them the ancient myth of the Great White God and his mighty city. When a white man visits them today their greeting is still..Viracocha, the name once given to their highest God. They still show visitors the only remains left of the White God which is a great gateway on a desolate highland, with a huge artificial hill behind it, the shape now so faded that you can scarcely recognize the great pyramid it was once was.
Now; as you know old masters leave a stamp upon their paintings so that even without a signature the experts can tell at once who the artist was, work by his pupils or originating from his workshop will bear his stamp, style, choice of colors, techniques, conception, and it will remain more or less imprinted or even the later output of his former pupils. Well, the Olmecs were the pupils of such a workshop. They migrated to Mexico at about the beginning of our era. Judging from the many things they brought with them they must have come from a much older country with a civilization presumably going back to springs in the old world. Such a country could only have been situated in South America. There were certainly Master Masons living at Tiahuanaco itself, and the Olmec may have come on to Mexico for there style and form are very much alike.
Tiahuanaco itself was not a civilization transplanted direct from the Old World, they must have carried on a tradition brought over the centuries earlier. The first White God in fact must have come to or founded an Empire a thousand years older than even Tiahuanaco...for such an Empire did exist.
FOURTEEN
THE CHAVIN CIVILIZATION AND THE ANCIENT GODS
At the end of the 19th., century when European archaeologists were digging up ancient burial grounds near a village on the Peruvian coast, an Indian boy watched them lift skulls out of the soil. They showed him the square holes in the skulls, marks of trepanning, and the bulge of bone matter formed round the edges, indicating that the patients survived that dangerous operation. The boy asked whether the white men could open up skulls this way. The Europeans admitted they could not. So the Indians are more clever than you, the boy said. This boy was Julio Tello and all his life he took great pride in his ancestors achievements, it was this which influenced him to take up archaeology. He became the only notable American Indian Archaeologist and presented his country of Peru with 6 museums of anthropology and early history. He led his last expedition into the jungle as late as 1941, and he died in 1947. With great skill and very limited means he devoted himself to discovering the most ancient of Indian civilizations which he called Chavin..because the greatest of the ruins from which he 'resurrected' it was near the village of Chavin de Huantar, 600 miles north of Lake Titicaca at the foot of the mountain range but still 1000 feet above sea level. These ruins were of a magnificent temple, fortress with terrace steps leading up to the slope to it from the river Pucca. Its walls tapering upward like dams, rebuilt from dams, are built from square and oblong stone blocks. The Cornices have representations of Jaguars, condors and snakes with menacing fangs. There is a flight of Granite steps going up to a rectangular pyramid with a wide flat top. The shrine on the platform above contains a round sacrificial stone bowl standing on four legs, it has a groove leading to a block carved with the gods image in a jaguar shape.
The part of the temple called 'the Castillo' had an ingenious system of air conduits carrying fresh air to every room in the building, a similar air conditioning system has been discovered at Knossos. Underneath the temple of Chavin just as at Knossos there were crooked passages lines with small square stones, tall enough for a man to stand in. Then in a few places they widened out into niches, which had ceilings supported by stone pillars. And recalling the niches in much later buildings, such as halls at Milla, and the temple of Viracocha near Chacha you see the same here.
Two of the chroniclers referred to the Chavin site as 'one of the most famous ones' like Rome or Jerusalem with us. According to professor Tello (however scholars have since disagreed), the Chavin civilization began between 4000 to 3000 B.C., and was in its prime about 1500 B.C. That was the era in the Old World of the palace of Knossos, the Cretan sarcophagus and bronze spiral of the Hittites, and Thotmes I in Egypt. During the next century there was a female Pharaoh on the Egyptian throne...Queen Hatshepsut, who launched great expeditions across the sea.
Chavin was not only the first high civilization of the Andes; it covered the widest area as well, probably extended right from the jungle to the sea, from the sources of the Amazon to the Pacific, and even the Pacific Islands. On the eastern slopes of the Cordilleras in the Urubamba Valley, and on the upper course of the Maranao river, a temple fortress near Tantamoyo, probably belonged to the Chavin Empire and so did the colossal building on top of which the Incas erected their fortress of Machu Pecchu. In the 14th or 15th., century the Inca, Tupac Yupanqui, was defeated in a war against the Chachapoyas; and he encountered a great mountain fortress defended by men of white skins who hurled huge blocks at the attackers. This fortress shows the influence of the Chavin civilization, with their conical tombstones in the shape of human figures. There are these same Chavin features in the old civilizations of Columbia. For in Columbia at the site of the ruins in Moniquira, an old palace was found with great round and oval stone columns and Obelisks. Another was found in Lavapata, with the room let into the ground. San Augustine on the source of the river Madalena has statues up to 13 feet high showing human figures which wear kind of a flat hat very like those at Tiahuanaco were found, and quite in style of the Olmecs.
At Neyta, statues were found very much like those of Chavin and Tiahuanaco. You also found the snakes on Chavin walls and statues for those people were very aware that there was a people represented by the symbol of the serpent, and you find eagles and panthers as symbols used in different civilizations and among different people. Translators say these were gods but they also do not understand the symbols of the Bible nor do they know that Israel did wander among the world order at a later date when they were worshiping other gods. But you will find the symbol of the snake or serpent back at the beginning of Adams time and way beyond because that was the symbol of the fallen Archangel. Thus the symbol of the snake was found at Crete as the Archaeologists tell us. And at one time the Cretans considered the snake symbol of a good spirit, and made clay bowls and vases to be fitted with milk for snakes. The Etruscans had an underworld people with snakes and demons. At Charu, their god of death accompanied the souls on their last journey, and was depicted with a nose like a birds beak and with snake hair. Thus the story in symbolism is there if you understand it. The Jews knew a demon called Jaldaboth in the shape of a snake, and certain gnostic sects made a snake cult out of the middle eastern and Chaldean conception of snake gods combined with the serpent from the Garden of Eden.
FIFTEEN
THE GOLDSMITHS
The Spaniards heard the old tale of El Dorado the gilt king, and they searched for this special gold land. And in 1562 they found it, for on reaching Lake Qualavita they literally fished for gold. Their dragnets brought up a god alligator, 13 gold toads, many golden fish, and three statues of pure gold, representing monkeys. Later Spaniards came again and made a great haul. At the same time gold hunting mercenaries were marching thru Colombia to the valley of the river Cauca, and as they penetrated deeper into the country they came upon an old Indian people ruled by a woman. She welcomed the strangers warmly, and showed them her palace and the great temple where there were 24 large statues of gold covered entirely with gold foil. In the sacred grove surrounding the temple, the Spaniards saw something which took their breath away for every branch of the tall trees in the grove had gold bells hanging from it. The Queens guests took away all the gold bells and gold covering of the statues. They stole a ton and 1/4 of gold from the tombs of former princes.
The area of what today is Columbia and Costa Rica provided the most famous gold objects from the Indian civilizations. Evidently the art of working gold was already flourishing here in the first centuries A.D., and kept right to the time of the Spanish Conquest in the 1500's. These goldsmiths had outstanding talent, they made gold animals, jewelry, eagles, jaguars, alligators, frogs, human figures with animal heads. Female figures in gold were frequent, and the outlines of their arms and legs, lips and eyes were traced in fine gold wire.
The Chibcha people were working gold when their primitive neighbors had scarcely started on any sort of craft. Thus art seemed to have matured suddenly with its workmanship and shaping immediately perfect. It was practiced also by one of the neighboring tribes, the Manabis on the coast of northern Ecuador, who made gossamer gold objects consisting of little grains, no bigger than 1/2 a pinhead into ornaments. You have to look at them thru a magnifying glass to appreciate the craftsmanship.
It is surprising that this art was practiced at such an early date in the New World, but certainly the Manabis of the Chavin Empire were masters of this art. All the Central American Empires were far behind South American in their knowledge of metal. The old objects found in Mexico are over 1000 years later than the early South American ones, and the MayaN for instance used gold thru out the time of their Empire.
When the Spaniards at Cajamarca for the first time faced the leader of the Inca he wore a tiara of feathers, silver and gold studded with diamonds, turquoise, rubies, and emeralds; and a necklace of huge topazes dangled from it, the largest the Spaniards had ever seen. The Spaniards took the Inca ruler captive and he attempted to buy his freedom by promising to fill the room with gold. He made good his promise even tho it was found that it would take 3,500 cubic feet of gold to fill the room. So day after day long lines of carriers came down from the mountains. They brought ornaments and utensils of gold weighing nearly 30 pounds each. Loads of gold articles so heavy, one man could only carry one item brought. Goblets, water jugs, vases of all shapes and sizes; ornaments and utensils from the Imperial palace came, gold tiles which had decorated public buildings, with animals and plants sculptured in gold were brought. The most beautiful of all that was brought to the Spaniards were the representations of maize (corn) with gold ears framed by broad silver leaves, with the rich fringe of silver wires hanging down from there. They brought a fountain throwing up a jet of sparkling gold with birds and animals made of gold playing around its edge. Most of these items were melted down into lumps of gold, and 3 1/2 million pounds sterling were divided among the victorious soldiers, while the leader of that expedition took 57,000 gold ducados, apart from the gold Inca throne which alone was worth 25,000 ducados.
At Cuzco the Spaniards came upon a fantastic site. A terraced garden went down from the Temple of the Sun. A garden which had a lawn with statues of Lizards, birds and other creatures as well as statues of people, and everything was in gold, the statues, the grass lawn, the trees and shrubs, as well as this fountain spurting jets of gold. The Spaniards walked thru the garden and plucked a flower here, tearing up a plant there till a good part of the garden disappeared. However the Indians managed to save quite a lot of the garden and hid it away, but where they hid it is not yet known. They were quick to recognize that these White Gods were nothing but robbers, so they went up by night into the mountains to find a permanent hiding place for the country's treasures. Perhaps the most single piece among the things the Indians hid was the gold chain of the Inca, which a procession of his used to carry to the temple square at Cuzco, when an heir was born. This was a chain made from links the size of a man's fist, all of sheer gold. It was 700 feet long and tradition said, so heavy that ten men were needed to carry it. About a ton of gold went into its makings and 250 carriers had brought this from the Caramanco mountains. There is a deep circular lake in Peru near a place called Urcos, and according to the chronicles the chain must still be hidden perhaps there.
Part of the Inca treasure never reached the Spaniards for as they heard the news that the Spaniard had not kept his word...his side of the bargain and killed the Inca ruler then those 7000 men who were taking gold for the Ransom of their leader went into the Andes and left the treasure in well hidden and inaccessible places. The Indians also managed to save 12 large statues of the Inca rulers made of solid gold which had been erected near Cuzco. But for all the enormous riches, the gold treasures of their Empire represented the Incas were never to reach the same height in gold working as had those before them, the ones who taught them.
As the Spaniards came to Tenochtitlan as guests of Montezuma II, they asked to convert a hall of the palace into a chapel. During the work they discovered a place in a wall which looked as tho a door had been plastered over. Altho guests, they knocked out the plaster and sure enough they found a large hall filled with rich and beautiful articles, in gold and silver of all kinds, gold jewels of value, bars of gold and silver and so forth.
Bernal Diaz, one of those who saw it said:..I was a young man, and it seemed to me as if all the riches of the world were in that room. This was Montezuma’s hoard, and the Spaniards managed to take along only a fifty percent of it as they had to flee for their lives. Cortes was obliged to deliver this to the Spanish Court but it never reached Spain. Finally it came into the possession of the King of France...this Aztec hoard that was left.
Montezuma presented his conquerors with many gifts..two wheels above seven feet in diameter, one of gold work with 20,000 ducados representing the Sun and the other one of silver representing the Moon.
In 1931 The Archaeologist Alfonso Caso started on a new investigation of the Monte Alban tombs. Over 100 tombs have been discovered, and when he opened the tomb numbered, Tomb 7, he found the most amazing treasure of gold and precious stones ever discovered by excavators in America. From the Artistic point of view as well this find is the most valuable so far known from all Indian civilizations, a necklace made up of 20 rows consisting of 854 closed gold links, ear-rings and tiaras, plated gold rings, bangles and broaches, a lady’s bag made of guilt leaves, the finest jewelry made of Jade, turquoise, obsidian, pearls, corals and amber, all this gives some idea of the wonderful works of art that perished in the conqueror's melting pot.
Thus what we know of Metal working in the ancient Chavin Empire comprises the entire scale of metal knowledge in the old world. The first white immigrants must have come to a primitive people, or the natives would have regarded them as equals instead of worshiping them as Gods, and the legend of the White Gods would never have arisen.
SIXTEEN
THE FIRST MEN IN AMERICA
Take a map of South and Central America and paint in the high civilization of the Andes and of Central America and Yucatan, and there will be a large wedge between them without any color at all. This is the area which includes the present Brazilian provinces of Amazona and Peru and Venezuela, the highlands of Ecuador and Columbia and you have an area about the size of Europe. The Spaniards found no gold or silver or precious stones, only savage Indian tribes who shot poisoned arrows and they were cannibals. Then when the Spaniards came to Orinoco, the great river of Venezuela they found it has been so little explored it had only a primitive civilization. But the archaeologists have recently shown a new interest in this area. The spade has reached deep but there is not a single trace of MAN to be found. Important discoveries were made nevertheless; for instance that America was first settled about 20,000 to 15,000 B.C., and before that it was inhabited by herds of huge animals. It seems the first men to appear were hoards of short headed, beardless mongol types with protruding cheek bones, and straight black hair. They carried stone axes, clubs and primitive hunting gear. They had migrated from Asia by way of the Bering Straits, and moved down into America from north to south. This migration toward the south lasted thousands of years. They left their marks as they slept in caves with the bones of the giant animals they had slain in modern Nevada, Ecuador and Argentina. This migration crossed the narrow strip of Central America and came into South America, and this migration stopped about 3000 B.C.
Immigrants from South Asia, Australia, and Polynesia also reached America and remains of this migration are to be found in Brazil, Ecuador and near the Magellan straits.
The first inhabitants of South America then were altogether primitive. Excavators have found stone weapons, knives and primitive jewelry. Other traces are carved into the big rocks and stones; clumsy representations of birds, snakes, turtles, lizards and beasts of prey, heads and hands, circles, suns and crosses were found of these carvings. They brought what they had known in their former countries and had adopted in the 1000 years of their migrations. There is no sign of a real civilization starting till it suddenly appeared all at once in the Chavin Empire.
SEVENTEEN
CIVILIZATION TRANSFERS TO THE NEW WORLD
As we compare the ancient Indian Empires as they succeeded one another we meet one of the strangest parallels we could find in world history. The New World had two centers of high civilization, one in Central America and one in Peru. They were thousands of miles distant yet many features of history are very similar. In both areas all higher civilization began in one center; with the Olmecs in Central America and with the Chavin in South America. In the early days of each a might Priest-city arose; Teotihuacan in Central America, and Tiahuanaco in South America. Both so gigantic that legend said only giants could have built them. Both were destroyed by savage warrior tribes bursting in like a hurricane.
In both areas there were these petty kingdoms, civil wars, temporary conquests and defeats, to be followed by unity under two big Empires which were the Aztec and the Incas. In both the first high civilization came into existence very abruptly. In South America all at once the Chavin civilization started. In Mexico the Olmecs sprang up just as suddenly as they migrated probably from South America. The Olmecs civilized the whole Mexico and the Yucatan in the period of their mass migrations. And these migrations were connected with trade, which carried one people's achievements to its neighbors; and with centuries almost every feature which had developed in South America made its way into Central America. The same artifacts are to be found in three different parts of the world. In the Caucasus, with the Phoenicians in East Asia, and in parts of America. In fact all the features of civilization which were taken over to America actually came from the civilizations of the Caucasus, the Mediterranean, from the Danube countries and South Russia. It is safe to say the original White Gods of the Indians came from Europe, the Mediterranean area and Crete not the far Eastern part of Asia.
The primitive Indians could not have taken a Chinaman for a white man with a beard if he had been the first to come to them. Even today the difference between an American Indian and an Asiatic is not so great, both belong to the Asiatic races which have only a small growth of beard.
EIGHTEEN
THE WHITE GOD, THE CRETANS, AND THE PHOENICIANS
A mural at Chichen Itza of the tenth century shows men of two races in battle at sea. The dark skinned race fighting with a light skinned obviously fair-haired race. The seated old Priest taken to be the White God appears on a Mayan relief. There are a whole series of representations there of the white man with a beard who had the characteristic feature of the Caucasian race.
At Tiahuanaco the stone head of a man with strikingly European features probably also represents one of the White Gods.
Statues of white men have been found in the Empire of the Chibchas. There these men wore their hair long, had well formed noses, big full eyes. They are the same type as depicted by the Olmecs.
In the fresco at Chichen Itza there is also a fresco of a definite Negro head with all the marks of the black race, thus there were Negroes as we know in Central and South America.
Archaeological finds have shown that when the Olmecs migrated to Mexico they brought a high civilization and one of them probably became the White God whom the Maya called Kukulcan. And the White God Quetzalcoatl must have been an Olmec. The White God had all the characteristics of the Caucasian for over 1000 years. Clearly the White Gods were immortal or would not have been a God. So when a ruler died he was secretly laid in a magnificent sarcophagus and a pyramid. And the Priest told the people that he had sailed across the sea, but would one day return again, for he had promised, and the people believed it with all their heart.
In the New World there is only one case where we know who is buried in one of these graves. The chronicles relate that Quetzalcoatl the White man with a beard visited his fathers grave. It was underneath a small pyramid which turned into a hill with the centuries. Archaeologist discovered this sacred hill in 1910.
Did the ancient civilizations have ships? In 3000 B.C., Egyptian ships reached Somoland. In 2400 B.C., they sailed around Africa and discovered a country of gold they called Punt. In 1500 B.C., Queen Hatshepsut the lady Pharaoh equipped an expedition to Puntu, which sailed around Africa.
Ancient literature contains many reports of great voyages and expeditions ...some of them might have come to America??? Plato for instance mentioned a large Island beyond the Pillars of Hercules, with a great sea behind it. Theopompas describes a big continent which was supposed to be behind the Islands of the Atlantic, and which was called Meropes; he said it was ruled by Meropes a daughter of Atlas, king of Libya.
In A.D. 45...Diodorus the Greek historian in Rome wrote of a great country far away from Libya, many days voyage in the Atlantic. This country had navigable rivers, and big houses, much forests, and an abundance of fruits which were ripe all year around. The Phoenicians had discovered the country when a storm drove them far out into the ocean. According to Aristotle the Senate of Carthage decreed that, on pain of death for disobedience, no ship would sail to the great unknown Island of the Atlantic.
In one of the big libraries of San Paulo, Brazil; there is one of the strangest books ever produced. And altho only forty years old one of the rarest too. Only a few copies are left because most of the people who acquired a copy soon threw it away thinking its author's claim completely incredible. The author was a former rubber tapper, a man called Bernardo de Silva Ramos, and his book is in Portuguese, yet even a Portuguese scholar cannot read it like any ordinary book. Its subject...the Rock carvings of the Amazon area. Stones and boulders are photographed and then drawn inscriptions and letters, animals and cat like creatures, figures of gods and so forth, are all covered with letters of the Phoenician alphabet; for Ramos 'read' these drawings as we read a book. The outline of the bird for instance he broke up into Phoenician letters, the beak became one letter, each feather and talon another. In this way he arrived at whole texts which are to be found in his book first Phoenician and then in Portuguese translation. All the texts seemed to show surprisingly so, that the savage Indians of the Amazon spent a great deal of their time calling on a god Zeus who is continually turning up in these 'readings'.
Ramon in the jungle kept coming upon these stones with strange symbols on them. He compared the letters on his photographs and drawings with inscriptions on old coins in the European world.
Other explorers in the Amazon and other parts of Brazil had found these inscriptions on rock faces and stones. Today there is a whole library full of their reports, and they to are firmly convinced that the inscriptions were Phoenician texts. They were sure also that King Solomon (975-935 B.C.) had once come to the Amazon with his ships; that the gold countries of Ophir, Tarshis and Parvaim were not to be looked for in the old world at all but here in the Amazon region on the river Solimoes (Solomon's River). They were mislead say the experts, but the inscriptions, and frequency of complete Semitic names for rivers, mountains, and hills, for people, animals and plants is remarkable.
There were two monoliths in the Amazon region which the Indians worshiped as gods and called Keri, and Kameso. These also were in the old world, but scholars laughed at Ramos for believing the inscriptions were Phoenician so they disregarded the 'finds' even tho the drawings showed clearly they were a script from the old world carved into these stones, thus if not Phoenician, then what???
About 1500 B.C., Cretans may have reached the New World, and they could possibly have gone far on the mighty rivers of the Orinoco or Amazon... when will their traces be found????
NINETEEN
I FOUND THE WHITE GOD'S TRACES
After the Conquistadores had looted all the gold they could find they heard from the Indians the legend of a land of gold, its capital... El Dorado. In his history, General de Los Indios Francisco Lopez, describes this unknown capital which was called Manoa; it was supposed to be somewhere northwest of the river Amazon, in the mountains of Parima. Manoa he says:..is on an Island in a big salt lake. All the palace cutlery, for the table are of pure gold and silver; copper and silver are used even for the most unimportant things. In the middle of the Island there was a temple dedicated to the Sun. Around this temple there were statues of gold representing giants. On the Island there are trees too of gold and silver. The statue of a Prince also completely covered in gold-dust.
Fernando Denis also mentioned this capital in his..'History of Guiana', and Hernando de Riberia left a testimony on March 3, 1545 in which he wrote:...El Dorado is on an Island in a big lake, and on it there is a temple of the Sun.
Another gold seeker of those days described exactly how he had reached one of the cities of the Amazon jungle, and in this document which was found forty years ago by Colonel Fawcett, the British explorer are things he took very seriously. For in 1925 he set off for the jungle and never returned. Despite frequent expeditions in search for him, one of them a few years ago by his son, still no trace of him has ever been found. But before he disappeared he did find the remains of an old city in the jungle. He wrote:..the existence of the old cities I do not for a moment doubt, how could I for I myself have seen a portion of one of the larger cities, which I am convinced will be found together with others. On thing is certain, between the outer world and the secrets of South America, a veil has descended and the explorer who seeks to penetrate this veil must be prepared to face hardships and dangers that will tax his endurance to the uttermost. The chances are that he will not get thru but if he should, if he is lucky enough to run the gauntlet of savages, and come out alive, he will be in a position to further immeasurably our historical knowledge. So far none of the white explorers has succeeded in penetrating this veil.
The first traveler to the Amazon we know was the Inca Captain Apo Camac.. nicknamed, Tiger. The sixth Inca ordered him to go to the jungle and fetch parrots and wild animals for the Inca's garden. He descended into the lowlands on the bank of the river Pancatambo and soon regretted having ventured into such a hazardous undertaking. Many months later a meager remnant of the proud army reached a clearing and found men from the tribe of the Chancas who took them in and saved their lives. The 'Tiger' never came back out of the jungle, he found a girl of the tribe and preferred to say goodby to his ranch and the palace at Cuzco.
In 1539 Gonzalo Ximense went into the jungle with 300 Spaniards and 500 Indians to seek for this city of gold. He returned with 15 men.
Antonio de Berrio fought his way on for years with 1000 soldiers and 700 horses, and he returned with 50 men.
In 1784 Bodadilla set off with 400 men and came back with 25.
All modern expeditions have failed. Even Hamilton Rice in 1925 with his sea planes, motor boats, wireless station, and machine guns, seventy bearers and oarsmen, all had to turn back about forty miles before reaching the Sierra Parima.
The Indians know of these old cities. The chief of the Maku described one of them to Homet who returned from the Amazon three years ago equally unsuccessfully. This is the description:...Opposite the rocks on the right of the river bank there is a sort of village. The houses were once of stone, but now they are completely in ruins. These houses are built in long rows and separated by wide streets. If you leave this village, and go straight on in the direction in which the sun goes down every day, after two days you come to a high wall in the mountains. You don't get thru but look for a stone gate under a big arch which leads into the ground. The city was built in straight rows, you can follow these rows but watch your step, for where there were once dwelling, there are only big stone slabs, and many of them are split by strong roots which have grown between them. And quite near you will find a great mass of water, and in that there is much of those yellow stones, and that powder you Whites seek with such greed.
In 1743 Francisco Raposo set out from what is today the Brazilian state of Mina Geraes making for the Ru Xingn, to look for the lost mines of Muribeca. On his way he came to a plain enclosed by high rocks. Following a deer he reached the top in three hours and saw a town beneath him. When he went down he came to a huge gate with three arches made from massive stones, characters were carved on the second arch. He found a road with stone houses on both sides and everything was overgrown with plants. The square which had a statue of a man with one arm pointing north.
On the gate of the Palace..Raposo found the remains of the sculpture of a man with characters carved into the stone underneath. He copied them and later was to establish that they were archaic Greek letters. Near the city he found a big temple, and in it a small gold piece showing a kneeling man on one side and a bow, a crown, and a musical instrument on the other. When he left this mysterious jungle city, two Indians met him, but fled when they saw him...both had white complexions.
Colonel Fawcett also met white Indians on the Amazon, people with red hair and blue eyes, he expressly says:..They were not albinos.
In 1906 he had heard a strange story from the manager of a French rubber colony. That there were white Indians on the river Acre. His brother went up in a launch one day, will up the river, and was told that White Indians were near. He didn't believe it, and scoffed at the men who told him this, but nevertheless went out in a canoe and found unmistakable signs of Indians. The next thing he knew he and his men were being attacked by big well built, handsome savages pure white with red hair and blue eyes who fought like devils too.
Many say that these White Indians do not exist, that they have to be half-breed, a mixture of Spanish and Indian. But that is only what people say who have not seen them, those who have think differently.
Yes, even today there are White Indians living in the forests of Venezuela called Motilon. In 1926 Harris made a study of the Indians of San Blas and wrote that their hair was a color between flax and straw and their complexion almost white. More recently Homet has described meeting some of the Indians from the temple of the Waika in the Amazon jungle whose hair was chestnut brown. The so called 'White Race' he remarked has even in outer appearance many representatives among the Indians along the Amazon.
The Amazon has not always been a 'Green Hell' hostile to man. The great rivers isolation is historically a quite recent phenomena, and the chroniclers could still report that its banks were thickly populated. 'The Great Death' set in after the Conquista for they were not used to the Old Worlds diseases and the people were easily stricken, tuberculosis consumed whole tribes. But traces of the former thriving civilizations have been found such as the gigantic buildings of Viscosa. The traveler..Brandao saw them as late as 1911, and they had walls nineteen feet high and twenty-five feet long; with the massive blocks of stone being put together almost without joints. But the forest today is so dense you could pass within three feet of large buildings and not notice them.
In the last ten years, 20 expeditions have been made into the Green Hell and five of the 20 returned decimated, ravaged by mosquito bites, sick and exhausted. The rest never returned and nothing has been heard of them.
600 miles from the coast in the middle of the Amazon jungle lies the old rubber town of Manaos, where Ramos the rubber picker lived. Here are the things in a museum which he found in the jungle. But not one stone with an inscription did our author find even tho they were described in a book. No one had since seen these stones and our author had to see them, had to find the very first traces of the White God.
Thus our author says:..(quote)..I went every day to the market. Strange Indian canoes came loaded with fish and fruit. I went from boat to boat but no one had heard of such stones and I began to doubt whether Ramos had invented them. One day two Indians arrived in a long sturdy canoe; its bottom full of round wicker baskets. I went to stand by the Indians helping to unload. As the baskets were opened I saw they contained a shoot, pea sized fruit of a brilliant red, which is used in Holland to color cheese; strongly diluted they produce a beautiful yellow color. In such masses as these two were offering are found only in the heart of the jungle. Thus when I asked about Ramos's stones they nodded yes, they had seen such stones. 'Stones of The White God', one of them said. They offered to take me, and it would be fur days rowing up the river, turn off into a big tributary and follow this two days, then it would be simplest to hack out a path so as to shorten our way. We came to terms and a canoe was loaded with everything we would need. And while mist was still over the harbor the next morning they rowed me up river. One of my guides came from the region of the Apurimac, the river which makes a frontier with Bolivia, 3000 miles farther in the jungle. He had once came down the Amazon and then stayed in the Rubber town. The two Indians addressed me as Viracocha, and one night as this one from the Apurimac pushed branches deeper into the fire he began to talk about the Great White God, the Ancient God of his country. He told of how once upon a time a white man with a beard had come to his people, from the east, and told how he had brought them all knowledge, all higher skills. He became the God of the Aymara people, the white, and the bright, the shining God, how he had gone away but that he had promised to return. For six evenings I sat by our camp fire and heard of the great deeds of this Great White God called....Kon Tiki Illac Viracocha. On the seventh day we tied up the canoe in another creek and started on our march. The air was humid, and sultry, the sun blazed down but we could not see it in this green twilight. Mosquitoes got into my mouth, nose and ears, and thorns tore my shirt, arms and face. As we cut our path, yard by yard, thru bushes and bamboo, and day after day we fought on for the Stones I was looking for. Finally we found a narrow path which Ramos has used, and in another two hours we had reached the bank of a broad river bed, and there lay the stones I was seeking, there the lay by the dozens, in the water and most were under the water.
I forgot the hardships I had been thru. I forgot thirst and hunger, and for hours I stood up to my belly in the mud of the bank and scrutinized the symbols on the stones, line for line, page for page, like a great picture book which lay open in front of me. Quite a number had their whole surface covered with a jumble of lines and patterns but most were sketches of fishes, birds, jaguars. Other stones showed boats, ships, boats with keels not known to the Indians of the Amazon. Among others the head of an ox with horns turned up which was most surprising because there were not cattle in America until the Spaniards came in 1500 plus A.D. Sometimes there were carvings of birds in flight and landing, there was even a rhinoceros, yet the rhinos never lived in the Amazon region. There were men represented here, the god heads with haloes, sometimes helmets of horns similar to those known from Crete, and from Egyptian Stelae and reliefs. The animals were so life like thus Masters were at work here. There is no other explanation, men from the old world must have once been here on the water way which once led to the White God's kingdom.
Ramos had not been carried away, the carvings really looked as he had reproduced them in his book, and the stones are still there today. When I saw them they were under water and I could not photograph them. The River subsides only every ten years, and then the great stone picture book rises out of the water. These however were only a few of the carvings that Ramos described in his book.
I sat out again with my two guides and found four stones with characters. These were those Ramos and his predecessors had taken to be Phoenician inscriptions. They were typical of the Cretan script and the Cretan double axe.
Today we cannot read the stones, but all the same they tell us that the legends of the old settlements outgrown by jungle were by no means as baseless as people said.
Expeditions will go there in the future, and one day they will discover the ancient city the White God built. The spade will make it rise again and an epoch suggestive will thereby solve one of the greatest riddles of human history, the riddle of where the American Indian civilization came from and its connection with our own world.
End of this Writing.
From Ella Rose Mast
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