EDGE (35 page)

If the inscriptions here are similar to the hieroglyphs of ancient Egypt, I might be able to make them out. Hieroglyphs, inscribed on the Rosetta Stone which Napoleon brought back from an expedition to Egypt, had not been in use for almost two thousand years and become indecipherable. It was only in the first half of the nineteenth century that French linguist Champollion managed the difficult task thanks to the Rosetta Stone.

From a low crouch I take some video footage and Polaroid shots of the gate, then sketch some of the more weathered sections into a notepad. If I have the time, it would be an interesting challenge to try and decipher the glyphs myself. Civilization does not always appear to have progressed in orderly stages from past to present, and perhaps the reason for this is hidden somewhere in the text.

Just as the ability to read and write hieroglyphs was lost, so too was the know-how of constructing pyramids. Much about how the ancient Egyptians were able to build such large structures remains a mystery. We know that π was used for the pyramids built in Egypt between 3000 and 2000 B.C. and in South America. However, our histories tell us that the number was not discovered until much later. And how do ever make sense of the fact that structures based on accurate observations of the heavens were erected well before the advent of modern science?

Temporally speaking, it sometimes seems as though the
flow of civilization carelessly blends past and future.

Why were the Nazca Lines drawn if they could only be seen from high above?

Why do accurate maps of Antarctica exist from ancient times if the ice-covered continent was only discovered in 1820?

How did the ancient Indio of South America build a furnace that may have reached temperatures of 2000 degrees centigrade and gauge heavenly orbits so accurately?

If it’s true that Copernicus came across the heliocentric theory in a text from antiquity rather than invent it, then who was the author, from which exact period?

Why were the reed boats used on the Lago Titicaca identical in both design and method of construction to the vessels that sailed down the ancient Nile?

Why do ancient world maps have accurate longitude markings when the chronometers necessary for this weren’t invented until the eighteenth century?

Why does the ancient Hindu sacred text
Mahabharata
contain a description that obviously appears to depict a nuclear explosion?

Why do the sacred Brahman
Vedas
, compiled between 1500 and 1200 B.C., clearly note the efficacy of vaccination?

There is ample evidence that a civilization of unclear provenance existed, and the impression is that it emerged without following discrete stages of development.

There are many books already published around this theme, all and one attempting to answer the questions through invoking a lost civilization. They assert that a continent such as Mu in the Pacific or Atlantis in the Atlantic nurtured an advanced civilization but, due to some calamitous event, sank into the ocean, taking most of their knowledge with them.

Myths do not appear out of the blue but form around a nucleus of memory shared by a people. An analysis of the myths of the world reveals that almost all of them describe a flood. It seems certain from this that there was in fact massive flooding on a global scale over 10,000
years ago. Thus the authors postulate that an advanced civilization in the Pacific or Atlantic was lost to a flood and that its landless survivors scattered around the world and taught other peoples their ways. As time passed, however, and the first generation died off, the memory of the civilization grew increasingly dim, with fewer and fewer numbers in each following generation to carry it forward. From our perspective, civilization gradually regressed.

There is something about the names “Mu” and “Atlantis” that excites people.

The arguments are logical, but they are far from gaining mainstream academic acceptance. No submerged metropolis has ever been excavated, and it does not seem likely that a civilization able to calculate π with any accuracy flourished over 10,000 years ago. That being said, the idea of an environmental shift causing a mass flood at around that time seems plausible, whether looked at from the analysis of prevailing world myths or from geophysical theory. The idea of an ancient civilization is perhaps just a romantic notion, but there is credence to the idea of an ancient cataclysm.

A natural disaster, caused by anomalies on a global scale like fluctuations in the geomagnetic field or changes in orbital paths, can be predicted by observing the heavens. That is why the ancient Egyptians and Indio of South America went to such obsessive lengths in hoisting and positioning huge stones in a way that faithfully reflected celestial motion. If it could help them predict disaster, no effort was too grueling.

If their reasons for constructing huge stone structures are recorded somewhere in writing, I would like to look for that text. The ability to read it would of course have long since been lost; it would be a daunting task for us moderns, but when it comes to codes, the tougher the merrier.

I kneel and embrace the rock with both arms, sliding my palms along the textured contours of its surface. To feel it with my whole body, I lovingly run my fingers
over the etchings and put my ear to inanimate matter, listening for ancient words.

Burn paper and words are reduced to ash. Indeed, during the Spanish conquest, huge numbers of invaluable cultural relics were burned: books on astronomy, pictures, copied tomes, hieroglyphic texts. But it was not so easy to erase the words of these ancient sites, carved as they are in stone and rock. If something had to be communicated to future generations at any cost, the only choice was to give meaning to a layout of stones and to carve words into them.

Kalasasaya is a wide open space surrounded by double walls. Gigantic rectangular columns line the outer enclosure, and these too are thought to have functioned as precision observatories.

How surprised the Spanish must have been to discover the ruins here. Even today, the local Indio hold to the legend that Tiwanaku simply appeared out of the blue, a long time before the emergence of the Aztecs. Maybe it is just my prejudice, but I find it hard to imagine that the ancestors of the Indio idling in the streets today built this great site.

The ruins haven’t been dated definitively. A historian argues that they’re 500 years old; an archeologist pushes it back to 2,400 years. Yet another, a scientist, claims that the ruins have stood for 17,000 years. Any agreement seems far off.

My heart laden with queries, I decide to climb the Akapana pyramid. It is stepped, and its four sides, each around 200 meters in length, are set down precisely according to the cardinal points of the compass. Unfortunately, only the base maintains its original grandeur, the upper stones having been plundered by the Spanish and resembling a mere hill.

Reaching the top, I look out across the surrounding area. The Lago Titicaca used to be 30 meters higher than it is now; its curving edge must have been close by to the north. The view would have been quite different then.
In my imagination the lake fills up, accompanied by tall lush grass, leaving Tiwanaku an island. Deep waterways meander between the mountains and reflect the sky, a blue snake writhing.

The impact of climbing Akapana is fundamentally unlike the euphoria I experienced at Giza and Teotihuacan. A simpler and purer feeling that I have known this land before assails me. It resembles déjà vu but is more intense. It does not weaken with each blink; the longer I look, the stronger the familiarity and the impression that I have lived here in the past. As I close my eyes and relish my nostalgia, I catch a faint scent of citrus on the air. Nothing brings back old memories like the sense of smell. My excessive false remembrance must have brought it in tow.

The southern sun has already begun to chart a descent towards the west, yet the heat is relentless. I hold a hand up to my forehead and strain my eyes against the light.

The inhabitants of Tiwanaku, like those of Machu Picchu, are said to have abandoned the place en masse one day. How do I begin to contemplate the mindset that compelled them to leave this stone city that they had slaved to build? Whether from cities or not, there are instances of humans suddenly deciding to move on. Many historians and archeologists put forward the commonplace view that environmental changes caused food shortages. The same argument has been applied to Tiwanaku. The mainstream explanation is that a progressively drier climate brought about the failure of agriculture, fishing, and livestock rearing and hence societal collapse. The Indio departed, then, in search of more fertile land.

The widespread theory should not be blindly accepted. It is true that peoples migrate for the sake of sustenance, but to see that rationale as an end-all is simplistic. Our premise needs to be that the ancients did not necessarily think as we do. While we moderns have no difficulty handling abstract concepts such as morality, love, and the good, ancients apart from the tiny minority
who were literate couldn’t have grasped them as such, since these are only obtained via mastery of a rich, complex system of writing. Their cognition does not align with ours. Applying current reasoning unmodified to those times exacerbates the gap and takes us further from the truth.

What to do, then? We must do away with reasoning by modern analogy and adequately examine their language and cognitive level, then rely on the work of our imagination. How did the ancients conceive of life and death? Only by discarding our yardsticks and reenacting their sensitivities within ourselves are we able to glimpse the truth.

One of the reasons put forward for the sudden abandonment of ancient Machu Picchu is that the inhabitants feared the onslaught of a powerful enemy. True, the Incas stood in terror of the Spanish invasion at the time, but there are no signs that Machu Picchu was ever actually attacked. A grave containing over a hundred bodies has been found, but the remains tell no tale of war.

Machu Picchu was first discovered by the American archeologist Hiram Bingham, who believed he’d found the legendary city of Vilcabamba. But when the excavation failed to turn up the empire’s gold hoard, Bingham concluded that he must have stumbled upon a previously unknown ancient city. The diggers may not have revealed any hidden gold but did uncover, in a tomb near the “Funerary Stone,” 173 mummified bodies of which curiously enough 150 were female. Archeologists explain that Machu Picchu, with its many shrines, was a place for rituals and included many priestesses among its inhabitants. An alternative view holds that when the Incans fled the city fearing a Spanish attack, they killed and buried the older women that would have slowed down their progress.

Be it for food in a new land or from a potential enemy, the mainstream theories of flight are too easily imagined. No matter what interpretation is applied to the fact that 150 out of 173 mummies were women, it can be no more than a fiction devised by some individual. Rather than choose
or not choose to believe someone else’s fiction, why not come up with a more convincing story yourself?

The sense of that something like déjà vu is coming back. I am becoming certain that I have seen this same landscape somewhere before. It’s affecting not just sight but hearing, smell, taste, and touch as well. The dusty wind seems to whisper in my ear. The enveloping air feels rough against my skin, and I can taste sunbaked earth on my tongue.

They’re nothing as gentle as sensations. A chill is assaulting the nape of my neck, and my skin is breaking out in goose bumps. At first I’m not sure why, but I gradually recognize the feeling. I’m less gazing at a landscape than being gazed at by something. Not just one, but by many, as though I’m on a stage addressing an audience.

The Underground Shrine is nine meters wide by twelve meters long, cut 1.8 meters into the ground. On the south side descends a set of steps. I stand at the top and look down. The rectangular space is surrounded by an elaborate collection of piled stones, and in the center is a large stone pillar flanked by two smaller ones. The human figure of Viracocha is carved into the central pillar.

This Viracocha appears in many of the ancient South American legends. It is probably better to think of him as a group of people with a certain talent than as one man. Depending on the legend, his name changes, as do the places and ages in which he appears. In each legend, however, he has more or less the same physical characteristics: tall, pale, robed, wearing a goatee on his chin and a belt around his waist.

He is said to have appeared from nowhere one day to bestow various benefits on the locals. He built irrigation ducts, taught how to build stone structures, planted crops, and even healed the sick. He preached mercy, ended fights, encouraged good deeds, exuded dignity, and commanded the respect of all. He was first a scientist, but also an architect and an artist. He was fluent with words and taught Aymara, the world’s oldest language. In
short, he was the one who brought civilization and order to a primitive land, a god-like figure.

But Viracocha would never stay in one place for long. As soon as his work was done, he would leave as suddenly as he’d arrived.

The relief carved into the surface of the pillar leans more towards the abstract than the mimetic. Viracocha’s hair is long, and his beard thick around his mouth. His forehead is the shape of Mt. Fuji, his nose rounded, his face plum, and his eyes are simply depicted as circles. His eyebrows and lips are manly, like thick ropes twisted by the ends. Looking closer, however, it becomes apparent that his eyes are brimming with tears. This feature is clearly part of the original carving, not an effect of centuries of wear and degradation.

Is it empathy with the weeping figure? I find myself close to tears and dab a handkerchief to my cheek. The sun now hangs behind the column and gives a halo to the man. When face and sun come to overlap, the illusion is of the sun itself crying.

Later, when I was driving away from Tiwanaku on my way back to La Paz, I came across a young Japanese backpacker hitching for a ride. It was late in the day and the sky was already growing dark, so I felt compelled to pick him up. He was talkative; for the whole trip back he leant forwards, his head poking out between the front seats as he spoke excitedly about his own theories about the ancient civilizations. He seemed to favor the idea that they were driven away by a “spurring fear.” Fear has indeed always been a fundamental factor in the patterns of human behavior over time, and his idea isn’t to be dismissed. The next day he was due to set off for Machu Picchu.