Page Content (OCR)
Although I emphasised that it is not my intention to call in question the history of mankind during the last 2,000 years, I believe that the Greek and Roman gods and also most of the figures in sagas and legends are surrounded by the breath of a very remote past. Since mankind has existed, age-old traditions have lived on among the various peoples. More recent cultures, too, provide us with Ruins in the jungles of Guatemala and Yucatan can bear comparison with the colossal edifices of Egypt. The ground area of the pyramid of Cholula, 60 miles south of the Mexican capital, is bigger than that of the pyramid of Cheops. The pyramid field of Teotihuacan, 30 miles north of Mexico City, covers an area of almost 8 square miles and all the edifices are aligned according to the stars. The The calendar of the Mayas, the most accurate in the world, has already been mentioned, and so has the Venusian formula. Today it is proved that all the edifices at Chichen Itza, Tikal, Copan and Palenque were built according to the fabulous Mayan calendar. The Mayas did not build pyramids because they needed them; they did not build temples because they needed them; they built temples and pyramids because the calendar decreed that a fixed number of steps of a building had to be completed every fifty-two years. Every stone has its relation to the calendar, every completed building conforms But an absolutely incredible thing happened about A.D. 600! Suddenly and for no apparent reason a whole people left its laboriously and solidly built cities, with their rich temples, artistic pyramids, squares lined with statues and grandiose stadiums. The jungle ate its way through buildings and streets, broke up the masonry and turned everything into a vast landscape of ruins. No inhabitant ever Let us pretend that this event, this enormous national migration, happened in ancient Egypt. For generations the people built temples, pyramids, cities, water conduits and streets according to calendar dates; wonderful sculptures were laboriously carved out of stone with primitive tools and installed in the magnificent buildings; when this work lasting more than a millennium was finished, they left their homes and moved to the barren north. Such a procedure, brought a little closer to the course of historical events that we are familiar with, seems incredible because it is ridiculous. The more incomprehensible a procedure, the more numerous the vague explanations and attempts at interpretation. The first version put forward was that the Mayas might have been driven out by foreign invaders. But who could have overcome the Mayas, who were at the peak of their civilisation and culture? No traces that could be connected with a military confrontation have ever been found. The idea that the migration could have been caused by a marked change in climate is well worth considering. But there are no signs to support this view either. How could there be, when the distance covered by the Mayas from the territory of the old to the borders of the new kingdom measures only 220 miles as the crow flies—a distance that would have been inadequate to escape a catastrophical change in climate. The explanation that a devastating epidemic set the Mayas on the move also Chapter Nine - Mysteries Of South America And Other Oddities indications pointing to the remote, unknown past. oldest text about Teotihuacan tells us that the gods assembled here and took council about man, even before homo sapiens existed! exactly to certain astronomical requirements. returned there.