Twilight of the Gods: The Mayan Calendar and the Return of the Extraterrestrials by Erich Von Daniken Read Free Book Online

the technical means available to the ancient Peruvians.43
    These sentences come from Alphons Stiibel, a geologist by trade and an expert who-we can be fairly sure-was well acquainted with the degree of hardness of the stones. Diorite-for example-a graygreen plutonic rock, has a hardness grade of 8. The hardness grade is a measurement of the resistance of a solid body to being penetrated by another body. The hardness of minerals is measured on the Mohs scale (named after Friedrich Mohs, 1773-1839). Any solid material has a lower degree of hardness than a material that can be used to scratch it, and a higher one than any material it can scratch. Take a look at this: Diamonds, the hardest minerals on Earth, have a hardness grade of 10. Diamonds cannot be scratched by stones like granite. In order to work diorite with the kind of unbelievable precision that can be seen in Puma Punku, you would need far more advanced tools than just stone axes. (See image 1.9 on page 52.) The tools that were used must have been at least as hard as, if not harder than, diorite. To maintain anything else is just humbug!

    1.9. Every piece is polished. Author's own image.
    eeble Excuses
    That's it exactly! There's certainly something rotten in the Kingdom of Denmark! For a start, because of the tools that simply don't fit in with this Stone Age culture, and secondly because of the complex technical plans that would have been necessary. Honestly, today's archaeology really can't take the risk of looking at the problem, because it would open a real can of worms. Intentionally. Even back in the age of the Spanish conquistadores, so-called "comites" were set up that were given the task of systematically destroying everything that alluded to the "heathen religion." The priests' fanatism was insatiable. The comites consisted of people who were familiar with the conditions in the area. Often, the sons of the tribal chiefs and sun priests were forced to join these comites and seek out the ancient shrines. Under the leadership of the Catholic priests, everything was destroyed that was in any way destroyable. It was a systematic erasure of the hated heathen culture. Thousands of statues and temples built by the Inca and from pre-Inca times were smashed, and the rubble was thrown down the mountainside. The only religious symbol that was allowed was the sign of the cross. And when this religious zeal was finally sated, then came the stone plunderers looking for building material for streets, churches, and houses. Maybe the Tiwanaku builders suspected the dangers of blind, religious zeal and intentionally left behind a few signs for eternity.

    Tiwanaku is said to have been built "in a single night"-according to the chroniclers. It involved unknown builders, unknown tools, and unknown draftsmen. One of the helpful gods was called "Viracocha," but "Ticsiviracocham Con Ticsi Viracocha and Pachayachachic are one and the same figure."44 According to Stubel and Uhle, the word can be separated into its Quechua components. Cocha means sea; vira is fat or foam. Put it together, and you end up with "foam sea." Linguistic scientist E.W. Middendorf, who published four volumes of the Quechua and Aymara languages around 150 years ago and is recognized as one of the world's great authorities on Indio languages, comes up with another interpretation. He translates "Con Ticsi Viracocha" as "God of the liquid lava sea" [author's emphasis].45 Here con =god, ticsi =lava, and cocha = sea. Johann Jakob Tschudi translated this correspondingly as "Sea of the origin and end of all things."46
    Does the name "God of the liquid lava sea" bring us any closer to the secret of this Viracocha?
    After Stubel and Uhle had paved the way for serious research in Tiwanaku, a number of other scientists from various different faculties picked up on the subject. Around the turn of the century, Tiwanaku and Puma Punku were the very epitome of a world mystery-alongside Egypt, of course. The problem was