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blocks. The number of gigantic architectonic edifices and the number of artistically dressed boulders we can still marvel at today can only be plausibly explained if we assume the primitive erectors of these works to have been giants or beings with techniques unknown to us. Whenever I stand in front of a prehistoric monument on my travels, I always ask myself whether we ought to be satisfied with the previous explanations of its origin and purpose. Surely we ought to band together and have the courage to find out if novel and fantastic interpretations have any validity. During my last journey in Peru in 1968 my friend Hans Neuner and IJ revisited the megalithic buildings above Sacsayhuaman (Falcon Rock), which is situated at a height of 3,450 to 3,780 ft near the limits of the former Inca fortress of Cuzco. Tape measure and camera in hand, we approached these ruins, which are not ruins at all in the ordinary sense of the word. This is no heap of crumbled stone, remains of some historical building that have become unrecognisable. The rock labyrinth above Sacsayhuaman gives the impression of a super-edifice constructed with the last word in technical refinement. Anyone who has spent days in the thin air of this plateau clambering about among stone giants, caves and rock monstrosities, will find it hard to accept the explanation that all this was created ages ago by human hands using damp wooden wedges and crude stone mallets. Here is only one of the examples we measured: a rectangle 7 ft 1 in high, 1 ft 2 ins wide and 2 ft 8 ins deep had been cut out of a granite block 36 ft high and 59 ft wide that appeared to have been torn from the cliff face. A first-class piece of work! There is nothing botched or crude about the way it has been extracted, there is no uneven or clumsy dressing. Even if we are prepared to admit the possibility that extremely skilled stonemasons managed to free the four lateral incisions of the colossus from the rock face after many years of work, we are still left with the riddle of how they freed the rear side of the rectangle. In those days the stonemasons certainly did not have cutting jibs of the kind used today when excavating the stone for underground submarine shelters. And presumably they did not possess the chemical knowledge to free the stone block from the rock face with the help of acids. Or did they? We climbed down into some caves in the rock that were 180 to 240 ft deep. As if shaken by some primaeval force, the caves' course has been interrupted and they are partially destroyed or telescoped together. Large sections of the ceilings and walls have been preserved. They are so perfect that they could compete with any present-day piece of pre-cast concrete. Nothing has been joined together; there are no parts held together by a binding agent. The whole thing looks as if it had come from one casting-mould. The edges are cut at right-angles and are knife sharp. Eight inch wide granite ledges lie stepwise as neatly as if the wooden mould had been taken away yesterday. We walked upright through galleries and chambers, waiting tensely for the surprise awaiting us around the next turning. I kept on thinking about the current archaeological explanations of these masterpieces of technology, but they did not convince me. It seems much more likely to me that superlatively built fortifications must have existed here above Sacsayhuaman. All these faultlessly dressed stone colossi could have formed part of a megalithic building complex. Presumably this lay-