Chapter Five
STRANGERS FROM ACROSS THE SEAS
 

"When the Toltecs under their leader Topiltzin-Quetzalcoatl left Tollan in A.D. 987, disgusted by the religious abominations and seeking a place where they could worship as in the olden days, they went to Yucatan. Surely they could have found a new home closer by, a less arduous journey, a passage through less hostile tribes. Yet they chose to trek almost a thousand miles, to a land different in all respects - flat, riverless, tropical - from their own. They did not stop until they had reached Chichen Itza. Why? What was the imperative in reaching the sacred city that the Maya had already abandoned? We can only search the ruins for an answer.

Chichen Itza, easily reached from Merida.... it was the jungle canopy that had to be removed....

"....Rewarding the visitor with a double treat: a visit to an "Old Empire" Maya city and to a mirror image of Tollan as its emigrants had last seen it; for when the Toltecs arrived, they rebuilt and built over Chichen Itza in the image of their erstwhile capital.

"Archaeologists believe that the site was an important settlement even in the first millennium B.C.... Most of the visible remains from the era of Maya dominion are located in the southern or "Old Chichen" part of the site.... Last to occupy (or rather, reoccupy) Chichen Itza before the arrival of the Toltecs were the Itzas, a tribe that some believe were kinsmen of the Toltecs and others see as emigrants from the south. It is they who gave the place its current name, meaning "The Well Mouth of the Itzas."

Among the many features of Chichen Itza, Mr. Sitchin mentions:

The image of Chacmool and of a jaguar, which the Toltecs installed.

"As at Tula (Tollan), facing the pyramid of Quetzalcoatl-Kukulcan, across the main plaza is the main ball court. It is an immense rectangular arena, 545 feet long - the largest in Mesoamerica. High walls rise along the two long sides; at the center of each, thirty-five feet above the ground, there protrudes a stone ring decorated with carvings of entwined serpents. To win the game the ballplayers have to throw a ball of solid rubber through the rings. There were seven players in each team; the team that lost paid a heavy price: its leader was decapitated.

"....The severe end suggests that there was more than play and entertainment to this ball game. At Chichen Itza, as at Tula, there were several ball courts, perhaps for training or lesser matches. The main ball court was unique in its size and splendor, and the importance of what took place in it was underscore by the fact that it was provided with three temples that were richly decorated with scenes of warriors, mythological encounters, the Tree of Life, and a winged and bearded deity with two horns.

"All this, and the diversity and regalia of the ball players, suggest to us an intertribal, if not international, aspect of an event of great political - religious significance. The number of players (seven), the decapitation of the losers’ leader, and the use of a rubber ball seem to mimic a mythological tale in the Popol Vuh of a combat between the gods conducted as a contest with a rubber ball. It pitched the gods Seven-Macaw and his two sons against various Sky Gods, including the Sun, Moon, and Venus. The defeated son Seven-Huanaphu was executed: "His head was cut off from his body and rolled away, his heart was cut out from his chest." But being a god, he was resurrected and became a planet.

"Such a reenactment of godly events would have made the Toltec custom akin to religious plays in the ancient Near East. In Egypt, the dismemberment and resurrection of Osiris was reenacted annually in a mystery play in which actors, including the pharaoh, played the roles of various gods; and in Assyria, a complex play, also performed annually, reenacted a battle between two gods in which the loser was executed, only to be pardoned and resurrected by the God of Heaven. In Babylon, Enuma Elish, the epic describing the creation of the solar system, was read annually as part of the New Year’s celebrations; it depicted the celestial collision that led to the creation of Earth (the Seventh Planet) as the cleaving and decapitating of the monstrous Tiamat by the supreme Babylonian god Marduk.

"The Maya myth and its reenactment, in echoing Near Eastern "myths" and their reenactments, appear to have retained the celestial elements of the tale and the symbolism of the number seven as it relates to the planet Earth. It is significant that in the Mayan-Toltec depictions along the walls of the ball court, some players carry as their emblem the Sun Disk, while others carry that of a seven-pointed star. That this was a celestial symbol and not just a chance emblem is confirmed, in our opinion, by the fact that elsewhere in Chichen Itza a four-pointed star was repeatedly depicted in combination with the "eight" symbol for the planet Venus and that at other sites in northwestern Yucatan temple walls were decorated with symbols of six-pointed stars.

"The depictions of planets as pointed stars is so common that we tend to forget how this custom had arisen: As so much else, it began in Sumer. Based on what they had learned from the Nefilim, the Sumerians counted the planets not as we do, from the Sun outward, but from the outside in.

"....We find the Sumerian method much more elegant and accurate, and suggest that the Maya/Toltec depictions followed the Near Eastern iconography; for, as one can see, the symbols found at Chichem Itza and elsewhere in Yucatan are almost identical to those by which the various planets had been depicted in Mesopotamia.

Valuable sculptures with more "stars" are kept in the Museum at Merida, like the one found at Tzekelna. Also at Oxkintok, a female figure, as counterpart of the one mentioned above, both are given suggestions of being Water Gods.

"....The focal point of the worship of Itzamna (the god of the Itzas) and Quetzalcoatl, and perhaps also of the memories of Votan, was the Sacred Cenote of Chichen Itza - a huge well that gave Chichen Itza its name.

Continuing with the story about the Cenote of Chichen Itza....

North Section of Chichen Itza.

" In 1885, Edward H. Thompson, after purchasing one hundred square miles of jungle, which included Chichen Itza.... he organized for the Peabody Museum of Harvard University systematic dives into the well to retrieve its sacred offerings.... More than 3,400 objects were made of jade.... more than 500 objects bore carvings depicting animals and people. Among the latter, some were clearly bearded, resembling depictions on the temple walls of the ball court.

"Even more significant were the metal objects that the divers brought up. Hundreds were made of gold, some of silver or copper - significant finds in a peninsula devoid of metals. Some of the objects were made of guilded copper or copper alloys, including bronze, revealing a metallurgical sophistication unknown in the Maya lands and attesting that the objects had been brought from distant lands. Most puzzling of all was the discovery of disks of pure tin, a metal that it is not found in its native state and that can be obtained only by a complex refining of ores - ores that are altogether absent in Mesoamerica.

"....Most important, disks with engraved or embossed with encounter scenes. In these, persons in different garbs and of diverse features confront each other, perhaps in combat, in the presence of terrestrial or celestial serpents of Sky Gods. The dominant or victorious hero is always depicted bearded.

"....The identity of these bearded people is a puzzle; what is certain is that they were not native Indians, who grow no facial hair and have no beards. Who, then, were these foreigners? Their "Semitic" or rather Eastern Mediterranean features (even more prominent in clay objects bearing facial images) have led various researchers to identify them as Phoenicians or "seafaring Jews," perhaps blown off course and carried by the Atlantic’s currents to the shores of Yucatan when King Solomon and the Phoenician king Hiram joined forces to send maritime expeditions around Africa in search of gold (circa 1000 B.C.); or a few centuries later, when the Phoenicians were driven away from their port cities in the eastern Mediterranean, established Carthage, and sailed to western Africa.

"No matter who the seafarers might have been and the proposed crossing time, established academic researchers dismiss out of hand any notion of deliberate crossings. They either explain the obvious beards as false beards, artificially attached by the Indians to their chins, or as belonging to the chance survivors of shipwrecks. Clearly, the first argument (seriously made by renowned scholars) only begs the question: if the Indians emulated some other bearded people, who were those other people?

"Nor does the explanation of a few shipwrecked survivors seem valid. The native traditions, as in the legend of Votan, speak of repeated voyages, of exploration followed by settlement (the establishment of cities). The archaeological evidence belies the notion of a few chance survivors cast on a single shore. The Bearded Ones, in poses of a variety of activities and circumstances, have been depicted at sites all along the Mexican gulf coast, at inland locations, and as far south as the Pacific coast. Not stylized, not mythified, but as portraits of actual individuals.

"Some of the most striking examples of such depictions have been found in Veracruz. The people they immortalize are clearly identical to West Semitic dignitaries taken prisoner by Egyptian pharaohs during their Asiatic campaigns, as depicted by the victors in their commemorative inscriptions upon temple walls.

"Why, and when, did such Mediterranean seafarers come to Mesoamerica?  The archaeological clues are baffling, for they lead to an even greater enigma: the Olmecs, and their apparent black African origins; for, as many depictions - as the one from Alvarado, Veracruz - show, the Bearded Ones and the Olmecs had met, face to face, in the same domain and at the same time.

Olmec Colossal Heads

"Of all the lost civilizations of Mesoamerica, that of the Olmecs is the oldest and the most mystifying. It was by all counts the Mother Civilization, copied and adapted by all the others. It dawned along the Mexican coast at the beginning of the second millennium B.C. (or, some hold, by 1500 B.C.). Spreading in all directions, but mainly southward, it made its mark along Mesoamerica by 800 B.C.

"The first Mesoamerican glyphic writing appears in the Olmec realm; so does the Mesoamerican system of numeration, of dots and bars. The first Long Count calendar inscriptions, with the enigmatic starting date in 3113 B.C.; the first works of magnificent and monumental sculpted art; the first use of jade; the first depictions of hand-held weapons or tools; the first ceremonial centers; the first celestial orientations - all were achievements of the Olmecs.... they have been compared to the Sumerians in Mesopotamia, which accounted for all the "firsts" in the ancient Near East. And, like the Sumerian civilization, the Olmecs too appeared suddenly, without a precedent or a prior period of gradual advancement.... The Olmecs expressed their "myths" in sculptured art, as on the stela from Izapa of one winged god beheading another. The tale-in-stone is remarkably similar to a Sumerian depiction.

"Unique in all aspects are giant stone heads sculpted with incredible skill and unknown tools to portray Olmec leaders. The first to see such a gigantic head was J.M. Melgar y Serrano at Tres Zapotes in the state of Veracruz. He described it in the Bulletin of the Mexican Geographical and Statistical Society (in 1869) as "a work of art.... a magnificent sculpture that most amazingly represents an Ethiopian." Accompanying drawings faithfully reproduced the head’s negroid features.

The heads measure about eight feet high, twenty-one in circumference, and weigh about twenty-four tons.
"It depicts without question a negroid African wearing a distinct helmet. In time, additional such heads, each portraying a distinctly different individual with his own different helmet but with the same facial features, were found at La Venta.

"....By now sixteen such colossal heads have been found.... radiocarbon readings gave dates to circa 1200 B.C.... That these were individuals all of the same African negroid stock but with their own personalities and diverse headgear, can be readily seen from a portrait gallery of some of these heads.... "giants" in stature, no doubt in the eyes of the indigenous Indian population.... some terracotas and even some more so stone sculptures of the Olmecs portray them as holding babies - an act that must held special significance for them.

Extraordinary finds at La Venta (which shows "that it was a small island in the swampy coastal area, has been artificially shaped, landfilled and built up according to a preconceived plan, a place devoid of stones; major edifices have been laid out with great geometric precision along a north-south axis, extending for about three miles"), have been found, and Mr. Sitchin gives a good description of them in his book.

"At any rate, the insistence of the employment of great blocks of stone, even if it had to be brought from afar, for monuments, commemorative sculptures, and burials must serve as a clue to the enigmatic origin of the Olmecs.

"No less puzzling was the discovery at La Venta of hundreds of artistically carved objects of the rare jade, including unusual axes made of this semiprecious stone that is no locally available. Then, to add to the mystery they were all deliberately buried in long, deep trenches. The trenches, in turn, were filled with layers of clay, each layer of a different kind and color of clay - thousands of tons of soil brought over from diverse distant places. Incredibly, the trenches were paved at the very bottom with thousands of tiles of serpentine, another green-blue semiprecious stone. It has been generally assumed that the trenches were dug to bury in them the precious jade objects; but the floors of serpentine could also suggest that the trenches were constructed earlier, for another purpose all together; but were used to bury highly valued objects, such as rare axes, once the need for them (and for the trenches) ceased. There is indeed no doubt that the Olmec sites were abandoned by them around the beginning of the Christian era and that the Olmecs even attempted to bury some of the colossal heads. Whoever gained access to their sites afterward, did so with a vengeance: some of the heads were clearly toppled off their bases and rolled down-hill into the swamps; others bear marks of attempted mutilation.

"As another enigma from La Venta, let us note the discovery in the trenches of concave mirrors of crystallized iron ores (magnetite and hematite), shaped and polished to perfection. After studies and experiments scholars at the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, D.C., have concluded that the mirrors could be used to focus the sun’s rays, to light fires or for "ritual purposes" (the scholars’ way of saying they do not know what an object was for).

"The final enigma at La Venta is the site itself, for it is precisely oriented on a north-south axis that is tilted 8 degrees west of true north. Various studies have shown that this was an intentional orientation, intended to permit astronomical sightings, perhaps from atop the conical "pyramid" whose prominent ridges may have served as directional indicators. A special study by M. Popenoe-Hatch. (Papers on Olmec and Maya Archaeology No. 13, University of California) concluded that,

"the pattern of observation being made at La Venta at 1000 B.C. indicates that it must date back to a body of knowledge learned a millennium earlier.... The La Venta site and its art of 1000 B.C. seem to reflect a tradition based in large part on the meridian transits of stars occurring in the solstices and equinoxes around 2000 B.C."

"A beginning at 2000 B.C. would make La Venta the earliest "sacred center" in Mesoamerica, preceding Teotihuacan, except for the legendary time when gods alone were there. It still may not be the true time of the Olmecs’ arrival from across the seas, for their Long Count begins at 3113 B.C.; but it does clearly indicate how far ahead of the renowned civilizations of the Maya and the Aztecs, the Olmecs had been.

"....Experts in earthworks, masters of stoneworking, diggers of trenches, channelers of water, users of mirrors - what, thus endowed, were the Olmecs doing in Mesoamerica? Stelae show them emerging from "altars" that represent entrances into the depth of the earth, or inside caves holding a puzzling array of tools, as on the Stela from La Venta in which it is possible to discern the enigmatic mirrors being attached to the toolholder’s helmets.

"All in all, the capabilities, the scenes, the tools appear to us to lead to one conclusion: the Olmecs were miners, come to the New World to extract some precious metals - probably gold, perhaps other rare minerals too.

"The legends of Votan, which speak of tunneling through mountains, support this conclusion. So does the fact that among the Olden Gods whose worship was adopted from the Olmecs by the Nahuatl people were the god Tepeyolloti, meaning "Heart of the Mountain." He was a bearded God of Caves; his temple had to be of stone, preferably built inside a mountain. His glyph-symbol was a pierced mountain; he was depicted holding as his tool a flamethrower - just as we had seen at Tula!

"Did the Mediterranean Bearded Ones come to Mesoamerica at the same time as the African Olmecs?  Were they allies, helping each other - or competitors for the same precious minerals or metals? No one can say with any certainty; but it is our own belief that the African Olmecs were there first and that the root of their arrival must be sought in that mysterious beginning date of the Long Count - 3113 B.C.

"No matter when and why the relationship began, it seems to have ended in a convulsion.

"....Olmec sites seem to have been abandoned gradually, first in the older "metropolitan center" near the Gulf, circa 300 B.C., then later on at more southern sites. We have seen the evidence of the date equivalent to 31 B.C. at Tres Zapotes; it suggests that the process of the abandonment of Olmec centers, followed by revengeful destruction, may have lasted several centuries, as the Olmecs gave up sites and retreated southward.

"The depictions from the turbulent period and from that southern zone of Olmec domains show them more and more as warriors, wearing frightening masks of eagles or jaguars. One such rock carving from the southern areas show three Olmec warriors (two with eagles masks) holding spears. The scene includes a naked captive who is bearded. What is not clear is whether the warriors are threatening the captive, or are depicted in the act of saving him. This leaves unclear the intriguing question, were the negroid Olmecs and the Bearded Ones from the eastern Mediterranean on the same side when the troubled times shattered Mesoamerica’s first civilization?

"They do seem to have shared, though, the same fate.

"At a most interesting site near the Pacific coast called Monte Alban - erected on a vast array of man-made platforms and with unusual structures built for astronomical purposes - dozens of stone slabs, erected in a commemorative wall, bear the carved images of the African-negroid men in contorted positions. For a long time they were nicknamed Danzantes, "Dancers"; but scholars now agree that they show the naked bodies of mutilated Olmecs -presumably killed in a violent uprising by the local Indians. Among the depicted negroid bodies there is one of a bearded man with a Semitic nose who obviously shared the fate of the Olmecs.

"Monte Alban is believed to have been a settlement since 1500 B.C. and a major center since 500 B.C. Thus, within a few of its grandeur, its builders ended up as mutilated bodies commemorated on stone - victims of those whom they had tutored.

"And thus did the millennia, the golden age of the Strangers From Across the Seas, become just a legend.

Return

Chapter Six
REALM OF THE GOLDEN WAND
 

"The story of civilization in the lands of the Andes is shrouded in mystery, deepened by the absence of written records or stelae bearing glyphic tales; but myth and legend fill the canvas with tales of gods and giants, and kings who had descended of them.

"....Spanish chroniclers, as well as native ones who had learned Spanish, had established that the father of the two Inca kings at the time of the conquest, Huayna Capac, was the twelfth Inca ( a title meaning lord, sovereign) of a dynasty that began in Cuzco, the capital, circa A.D. 1020. It was just a couple of centuries before the conquest that the Incas had swooped down from their highland strongholds to the coastal zones, where other kingdoms had existed from much earlier times. In extending their dominions northward to today’s Ecuador and southward to today’s Chile with the aid of the renowned Highway of the Sun, the Incas essentially superimposed their rule and administration over cultures and organized societies that had thrived in those domains for millennia. The last one to fall under Inca domination was a veritable empire of the Chimu people; their capital Chan-Chan, was a metropolis whose sacred precincts, step-pyramids and dwelling compounds spread over eight square miles.

"Located near the present-day city of Trujillo, where the river Moche flows into the Pacific Ocean, the ancient capital reminded explorers of Egypt and Mesopotamia.

"....The coastal areas that lie between the western range of the Andes and the Pacific Ocean are climatically rainless areas. Habitation and civilization was able to flourish there because the waters flowing off the high mountains into the ocean do so in the form of rivers large and small that transect the coastal plains every fifty to one hundred miles or so. These rivers create verdant and fertile areas that separate one desertlike stretch from the other. Settlements therefore arose on the banks and at the mouths of these rivers; and the archaeological evidence shows that the Chimus augmented these water sources with supplies brought from the mountains via aqueducts. They also connected the successive fertile and settled areas by a road that on the average was fifteen feet wide - the precursor of famed Highway of the Sun of the Incas.

"....Goldsmithing was mastered to an extent never attained by the subsequent Incas.... The environs of another city (besides Tumbes), Tucume, have yielded the greater part of the gold objects that had been found in Peru in the century following the conquest.... Indeed, the amount of gold the Chimus possessed astounded the Incas when they overran the coastlands. Those legendaries quantities, and the actual finds thereafter, still puzzle scholars; for the gold sources of Peru are not in the arid coastlands, but in the highlands.

"The Chimu culture-state was in turn the successor of previous cultures or organized societies. As in the case of Chimu, no one knows what those people called themselves; the names that are nowadays applied to them are actually names of archaeological sites or rivers at which these societies and their recognizable cultures were centered.

CHIMU
 

"On the north-central coastal area, the one called Mochica, rolls back the fog of history to about 400 B.C. They are known for their artful pottery and graceful textiles, but how and when these arts were acquired remains a mystery. The decorations on their ceramic vessels are replete with illustrations of winged gods and menacing giants, and suggest a religion with a pantheon headed by the Moon God whose symbol was the Crescent and name was Si or Si-An.

"The Mochica artifacts clearly show that, centuries before the Chimu, they had mastered the art of casting gold, of building with mud bricks, and of laying out temple compounds replete with ziggurats. At a site called Pacatnamu, a buried sacred city with no less than thirty-one pyramids was excavated in the 1930s by a German archaeological team.... They determined that the many smaller pyramids were about a thousand years older than the several much larger pyramids that had sides of two hundred feet and were forty feet high.

"The southern border of the Chimu empire was the river Rimac, from which name the Spaniards corrupted Lima as the name of their capital. Beyond this boundary the coastal zones were inhabited, in pre-Inca times, by Chincha tribesmen; the highlands were occupied by Aymara-speaking peoples. It is now known that the Incas had obtained their notions of a pantheon from the former, and the tales of Creation and Beginning from the latter.

"The Rimac region was a focal point in antiquity as it is nowadays. It was there, just south of Lima, that the largest temple to a Peruvian deity had stood. Its ruins from the time it was rebuilt and enlarged by the Incas can still be seen. It was dedicated to Pacha-Camac, meaning "Creator of the World," a god who headed a pantheon that included the divine couples Vis and Mama-Pacha ("Lord Earth" and "Lady Earth") and Ni and Mama-Cocha ("Lord Water" and "Lady Water") the Moon god Si, the Sun God Illa-Ra, and the Hero God Kon or Con who was also known as Ira-Ya, names that evoke a host of Near Eastern divine epithets.

MOCHICA
 

"The temple of Pachacamac was a "Mecca" for the ancient peoples of the ancient coasts. Pilgrims came to it from far and near.... Only select priests could enter the Holy of Holies where, on certain holidays, the god’s image pronounced oracles that the priests then related to the people. But the whole temple precinct was so revered that pilgrims had to take off their sandals to enter it - just as Moses was commanded to do in the Sinai and as Moslems still do as they enter a mosque.

"....Local agents attribute the establishment of this temple to the "giants." What is known for certain is that the Incas, adopting the veneration of Pachacamac from tribes they had overrun, enlarged and embellished the temple.

"....Not only the living came to pray and to worship here, the dead too were brought to the Rimac valley and the coastal plains to its south, to spend their afterlife in the shadow of the oracle gods; perhaps even for an eventual resurrection, for there was a belief that Rimac could resurrect the dead.... The dry climate and the outer sack protected the superbly woven garments, shawls, turbans, and ponchos, and their incredible bright colors. The textiles whose exquisite weaving reminded archaeologists of Europe’s finest Gobelin tapestries, were embroidered with religious and cosmological symbols.

"The central figure, on the textiles as well as on the ceramics, was always that of a god holding a wand in one hand and a thunder-bolt in the other and wearing a horned or rayed crown; the Indians called him Rimac, like the river’s name.

"Were Rimac and Pachacamac one and the same deity, or two separate ones? Scholars disagree, for the evidence is inconclusive. They do agree that the nearby mountain ranges were dedicated exclusively to Rimac. His name meant "The Thunderer," and thus in meaning and phonetically is akin to the nickname Raman by which Adad was known to the Semitic peoples - an epithet stemming from the verb meaning "to thunder."

"According to the chronicler Garcilaso, it was in these mountains that "an idol, in the shape of a man," had stood in a shrine dedicated to Rimac. He may have been referring to any of several sites in the mountains flanking the Rimac valley. There ruins of what archaeologists believe were step pyramids dominate the scenery to this very day, fooling the viewer to imagine he is seeing a seven-step ziggurat in ancient Mesopotamia.

"Was Rimac the god sometimes called "Kon" or "Ira-Ya," the one called Viracocha in Inca lore? Though no one can say for certain, what is beyond doubt is that Viracocha was depicted exactly as the deity shown on the coastal pottery - holding in one hand the forked weapon and in the other the magical wand.

"It was with that wand - a wand of gold - that all Andean legends of Beginnings commence; on the shores of Lake Titicaca, at a place called Tiahuanacu.’"

"When the Spaniards came, the lands of the Andes were the lands of the Inca empire, ruled from the highland capital Cuzco.

"And Cuzco, Inca tales related, was established by the Children of the Sun who had been created and instructed at Lake Titicaca by the Creator God, Viracocha.

"....One of the first padres to record the native tales of their history and prehistory was Blas Valera; unfortunately, only fragments of his writings are known from mentions by others, for his original manuscript was burnt in the sack of Cadiz by the English in 1587. He recorded the Inca version that their first monarch, Manco Capac, exited from Lake Titicaca through a subterranean way. He was the son of the Sun and was given by the Sun a golden wand with which to find Cuzco. When his mother went into labor, the world was in darkness. When he was born, there was light and trumpets sounded, and the god Pachacamac declared that "the beautiful day of Manco Capac had dawned."

"But Blas Valera also recorded other versions that suggested that the Incas appropriated to their dynasty the person and tale of Manco Capac, and that their true ancestors were immigrants from somewhere else who had arrived in Peru by sea. According to this, the monarch called by the Incas "Manco Capac" was the son of a king called Atau who had arrived to the Peruvian coast with two hundred men and women and disembarked at Rimac. From there they went to Ica, and from there, they marched to Lake Titicaca, the place from which the Sons of the sun had governed the Earth. Manco Capac sent his followers in two directions to find those legendary Sons of the Sun. He himself wandered many days until he came to a place that had a sacred cave. The cave was artificially hewed out and was adorned with gold and silver. Manco Capac left the sacred cave and went to a window called Capac Toco, meaning "Royal Window." As he came out, he was dressed in golden garments he had obtained in the cave; and by putting on these royal garments he was invested with the kingship of Peru.

"One of the versions regarding the Beginning was that the great god, Creator of All, Viracocha, arranged for four brothers and four sisters to roam the land and bring civilization to its primitive peoples, and one of these brother-sister/husband-wife couples began kingship in Cuzco. The other version was that the Great God, at his base in Lake Titicaca, created this first royal couple as his children and gave them an object made of gold. He told them to go north and build a city where the golden object would sink into the earth; the place where the miracle had happened was Cuzco. And that is why the Inca kings - providing they had been born of a succession of brother-sister royal couples - could claim direct descent of the Sun God.

"Recollections of the Deluge featured in almost all versions of Beginning. According to Father Molina (Relacion de las fabulas y ritos de los Yngas) it was already "in the time of Manco Capac, who was the first Ynca and from whom they began to be called Children of the Sun.... that they had a full account of the Deluge....

No living thing survived except a man and a woman who remained in a box; and when the waters subsided, the wind carried them to Huanaco, which will be over seventy leagues from Cuzco, a little more or less. The Creator of All Things commanded them to remain there as Mitimas, and there in Tiahuanaco the Creator began to raise up the people and nations that are in that region...."

"....The Creator also had with him on the Island of Titicaca the Moon and the Sun, whence they had come on his orders. When all that was needed to replenish the Earth was done, the Moon and the Sun rose up to heaven.

"The two divine assistants of the Creator of All are presented in another version as his two sons. "Having created the tribes and nations, and assigned dresses and languages to them," Father Molina wrote, "the Creator ordered his two sons to go in different directions and introduce civilization." The old son, Ymaymana Viracocha (meaning "in whose power all things are placed"), went to give civilization to the mountain peoples; the younger son, Topaco Viracocha ("maker of things"), was ordered to go by way of the coastal plains. When the two brothers completed their work they met at the seashore, "whence they ascended to heaven."

"Garcilaso de la Vega, who was born in Cuzco to a Spanish father and an Inca mother soon after the conquest, recorded two legends. According to one the Great God came down from the heavens to Earth to instruct mankind, giving it laws and precepts. He "placed his two children at Lake Titicaca," gave them a "wedge of gold," and instructed them to settle where it would sink into the ground, which was at Cuzco. The other legend related that "after the waters of the deluge had subsided, a certain man appeared in the country of Tiahuanacu, which is to the south of Cuzco. This man was so powerful that he divided the world in four parts, and gave them to four men whom he honored with the title of king." One of them, whose epithet name was Manco Capac ("king and lord" in the Quechua language of the Incas), began kingship in Cuzco.

"....A Quechua tale says that Viracocha after establishing kingship in Cuzco, he continued his journey "as far as the coast of Ecuador, where his two companions joined him. There they all began to walk together on the waters of the sea, and disappeared."

"Some of the tales of the highland peoples focused on how there had come to be a settlement at Cuzco, and how Cuzco had been divinely ordained to become the capital.... Manco Capac found the site of the city with his pure gold wand, it was called Tupac-yauri, meaning "splendorous scepter." Reaching a certain stone, his companions (brothers and sisters were struck with a feebleness, when Manco Capac struck the stone with the magical staff, it spoke up and told him of his selection as ruler of a kingdom.... "The Ynca Manco Capac married one of his own sisters, named Mama Ocllo.... and they began to enact good laws for the government of their people."

"This tale, sometimes called the legend of the four Ayar brothers, relates as all other versions of the founding of Cuzco do, that the magical object whereby the monarch and the capital were designated was made of solid gold. It is a clue that we consider vital and central to the unraveling of the enigmas of all American civilizations.

"When the Spaniards entered Cuzco, the Inca capital, they found a metropolis with some 100,000 dwelling houses, surrounding a royal-religious center of magnificent temples, palaces, gardens, plazas and marketplaces.... at an elevation of 11,500 feet, Cuzco begins at the promontory of Sacsahuaman.... The city was divided into twelve wards - a number that puzzled the Spaniards - arranged in an oval.... The twelve wards emulated the division of the heavens (according to leading scholar Stansbury Hagar) into twelve houses of the zodiac. Significantly for our own studies of events on Earth and their timing, Hagar concluded that the first and earliest ward represented Aries.

Mr. Sitchin explains the splendor of Cuzco by quoting some of the earlier chroniclers, like Pedro Cieza de Leon. Also:

"As the earlier chroniclers attest, the most famous and superb structure of pre-Hispanic Cuzco was the Cori-Cancha ("Golden Enclosure), the city’s and the empire’s most important temple. The Spaniards called it The Temple of the Sun, having believed that the Sun was the supreme deity of the Incas. Those who had seen the temple before it was vandalized, demolished, and built over by the Spaniards, reported that it was made up of several parts. The main temple was dedicated to Viracocha; adjoining or auxiliary chapels were devoted to the Moon (Quilla), Venus (Chasca), a mysterious star called Coyllor, and to Illa-pa the god of Thunder and Lightning. There was also a shrine devoted to the Rainbow. It was there, at the Coricancha, that the Spaniards had plundered the golden riches.

"Adjoining the Coricancha was the enclosure that was called Aclla-Huasi - "The Chosen Women’s House...." for spinning, weaving and sewing the royal and priestly garments.... one of their tasks was to preserve the Eternal Fire attributed to the god.

"The conquering Spaniards, having plundered the city’s riches, set out to appropriate to themselves the city itself, dividing among themselves by drawing lots its various edifices.... The Dominicans, first on the scene, took over the Temple of the Sun.... One of the most interesting sections thus used and therefore still intact is a semicircular outer wall of what used to be an enclosure of the Inca temple’s High Altar. It was there that the Spaniards found a great golden disk representing (they assumed) the Sun; it fell by lot to the conquistador Leguizano who gambled it away the following night. The winner had the venerated object melted and cast into ingots.

"After the Dominicans came the Franciscans, the Augustines, the Mercedarios, the Jesuits; they all built their shrines, including Cuzco’s great cathedral, where Inca shrines had stood. After the priests came the nuns; not surprisingly, their convent stands upon the Inca’s convent of the House of the Chosen Women. Governors and Spanish dignitaries followed suit, building their edifices and homes upon and with parts of Inca stone houses.

"Some believe that Cuzco, meaning "Navel, Omphalus," was so named because it was the capital, a place chosen for a command post. Another theory held by many is that the name means "Place of Raised Stones." If so, the name suits Cuzco’s main attraction - its astounding megalithic stones.

"....All are agreed by now that while the beautiful ashlars (perfectly cut, dressed and shaped stones, like the ones of the Enclosure) represent a "classical" Inca phase, the cyclopean walls belong to an earlier time. For want of clearer answers, scholars simply call it the Megalithic Age.

"It is a puzzle that still seeks a solution. It is also a mystery that only deepens as one ascends the promontory of Sacsahuaman. There, what is assumed to have been an Inca fortress thrusts an even greater enigma at the visitor.

"The promontory’s name means Falcon’s Place. Shaped like a triangle with its base to the northwest, its peak rises some eight hundred feet above the city below.

Mr. Sitchin explains the sizes of some of the stones in this fortress, one of them being twenty seven feet high and with a weigh over 300 tons.

"The style and the period are clearly of the same cyclopean construction as that of the Megalithic Age remains in Cuzco, but here they are substantially more massive."

 

"....Only the colossal walls remain unscathed, mute witnesses that bespeak an enigmatic age and mysterious builders; for as all studies have shown, the gigantic stone blocks were quarried miles away and had to be transported to the site over mountains, valleys, gorges, and gushing streams.

"How and by whom - and why?

Continuing with the building of the big walls of Sacsahuaman:

"Chroniclers from Spanish conquest times, travelers in recent centuries, and contemporary researchers, all arrive at the same conclusion: not the Incas, but enigmatic predecessors with some supernatural powers.... But no one even has a theory. Why.

"Garcilaso de la Vega wrote of these fortifications that one had no choice but to believe that they were "erected by magic, by demons and not by men, because of the number and size of the stones placed in the three walls...." (the three walls here is referring to the Falcon’s Place: Mr. Sitchin writes: "separating or protecting this "developed" area from the rest of the promontory are three massive walls that run parallel to each other in a zigzag).

"....which it is impossible to believe were cut out of quarries, since the Indians had neither iron nor steel wherewith to extract and shape them. And how they were brought together is a thing equally wondrous, since the Indians had neither carts nor oxen nor ropes wherewith to drag them by manual force. Nor were there level roads over which to transport them; on the contrary, steep mountains and abrupt declivities to overcome.

"Many of the stones," Garcilaso wrote, "were brought from ten to fifteen leagues, and especially the stone or rather the rock called Saycusa or the Tired Stone, because it never reached the structure.... it defies imagination to conceive how so many and so great stones could be so accurately fitted together as scarcely to admit the insertion of a point of a knife between them. Many are indeed so well fitted that the joint can hardly be discovered...."

Mr. Sitchin continues quoting Garcilaso:

"a number of Catholic priests who had suggested that "one cannot conceive how such stones were cut, carried and set in their places.... unless by diabolic art."

 

"Squire.... was enthralled and puzzled by many other features of these stone colossi and of the other rock faces of the area. One such feature was the three gateways through the row of walls, one of which was called the Gate of Viracocha. This gateway was a marvel of engineering sophistication.

"All chroniclers related that this central gateway, like the other two at the wall’s extremes, could be blocked by lowering large, especially fitted stone blocks into the openings. These stone blockers and the mechanisms for their raising and lowering (to open and block the gateways) were removed at some ancient time, but the channels and grooves for them can still be discerned.

"Behind the line of walls the promontory was the site of an agglomeration of structures, some undoubtedly built in Inca times. That they were built on the remain of earlier structures is probable; that they had nothing to do with a maze of subterranean tunnels is certain....

"....that the Incas used the promontory for a last stand against the Spaniards is a matter of historical record. That they had put structures atop it is also evident from the remaining masonry. But that they were not the original builders at the site is further evidenced by their recorded inability to transport even one megalithic stone.

"The attempt-that-failed is reported by Garcilaso in regard to the Tired Stone. According to him, one of the Inca master-masons who wished to enhance his fame decided to haul up the stone from where the original builders had dropped it and use it as his defensive structure.

"More than 20,000 Indians brought this stone up, dragging it with great cables. Their progress was very slow, for the road up which they came is rough and has many steep slopes to climb and descend.... On one of these slopes, as a result of carelessness on the part of the bearers who failed to pull evenly, the weigh of the rock proved too much for the strength of those controlling it, and it rolled over down the slope and killed three or four thousand Indians."

According to this tale, then, the only times the Incas attempted to haul up and lift into place a cyclopean stone - they failed. Obviously, then, they were not the ones who had brought up, cut and shaped lifted into place, with a mortarless fitting, the hundreds of the other cyclopean stones.

 

Ancient Ruin Walls of the Old Empire, predating Inca; Phiquillacta, Peru

"....An earlier traveller, W. Bryford Jones (Four Faces of Peru, 1967), stated in amazement of the massive stone blocks:

"They could only have been moved, I felt, by a race of giants from another world...."

Hanz Helfritz.... said of the incredible cyclopean walls of Sacsahuaman: "The impression is created that they have stood there from the very beginning of the world."

 

Long before them, Hiran Bingham.... did not accept the native tradition tale of the stones having been shaped by "softening" them by rubbing the stones together with a magical herb....

Mr. Sitchin asks the question:

"....Who was it that could lift and hold up such a cyclopean stones to rub them against each other?

"....And so we come full circle back to the Andeans legends; only they explain the megalithic builders by claiming that there had been gods and giants in these lands, and an Old Empire, and kingship that began with a divine golden wand.

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