Page Content (OCR)
But what can have induced the pre-Inca peoples to build the fantastic lines, the landing strips, at Nazca? What madness could have driven them to create the 820-ft-high stone signs on the red cliffs These tasks would have taken decades without modern machines and appliances. Their whole activity would have been senseless if the end-product of their efforts had not been meant as signs to beings approaching them from great heights. The stimulating question still has to be answered: why did they do all this if they could have had no idea that flying beings actually existed? The identification of finds can no longer remain a matter for archaeology alone. A council of scientists from different fields of research would certainly bring us closer to the solution of the puzzle. Exchange of opinions and dialogue would definitely produce illuminating insights. The danger of research coming to no definite conclusion lies in the fact that scientists do not take the posing of such questions seriously and ridicule them. Space travellers in the grey mists of time? An inadmissible question to academic scientists. Anyone who asks questions like that ought to see a psychiatrist. But the questions are there, and questions, thank heavens, have the impertinent quality of hovering in the air until they are answered. And there are many inadmissible questions like that. For example, what would people say if there was a calendar which gave the equinoxes, the astronomical seasons, the positions of the moon for every hour and also the movements of the moon, even taking the rotation of the earth into account? That is no mere hypothetical question. This calendar exists. It was found in the dry mud at Tiahuanaco. It is a disconcerting find. It yields irrefutable facts and proves— can our self-assurance admit such a proof?—that the beings who produced, devised and used the calendar had a higher Another fantastic discovery made there was the Great Idol. This single block of red sandstone is over 24 ft long and weighs 20 tons. It was found in the Old Temple. Again we have a contradiction between the superb quality and precision of the hundreds of symbols all over the idol and the primitive technique used for the building housing it. Indeed it is called the Old Temple because of the primitive technique. H. S. Bellamy and P. Allan have given a closely reasoned interpretation of the symbols in their book The Great Idol of Tiahuanaco. They conclude that the symbols record an enormous body of astronomical knowledge and are based, as a matter of fact, on a round earth. They conclude that the record fits perfectly Hoerbiger's Theory of Satellites published in 1927 five years before the idol was discovered. This theory postulates that a satellite was captured by the earth. As it was pulled towards the earth it slowed down the speed of the earth's revolutions. It finally disintegrated and was replaced by the moon. archaeological thinking. south of Lima? culture than ours. The symbols on the idol exactly record the astronomical phenomena which would accompany this