I will post pictures and more articles about Tiahuanaco as we proceed.
GGG Ping.
I am interested in what you have to say, and will check back from time to time this evening.
Don't let Nagin hear about this!
Well, I guess we can rule out the Berserks.
Maybe Spielberg or Howard will make a movie and tell us who built it
After all, the Old World had bows and arrows in the late Paleolithic (thousands of years ago), but the invention appears to have not reached the New World until about 800AD.
It would be extremely difficult to believe the "white" visitor to Meso-America failed to bring along his bow and arrow!
First, the legend of Viracocha doesn't claim that he built the city, and it tells quite clearly where he came from. Viracocha was their god, and their legend about him is quite interesting. It says that he created the Earth and populated it with giants and evil people. He eventually flooded the entire world for 60 days to kill off the evil people, and afterwards recreated people out of mud by forming them and breathing life into them. He came to the Earth in bodily form to return civilization to them at Lake Titicaca and directed the people there to build the city (the lake has since moved, but when it was built the city was on the shoreline). Eventually other neighboring tribes grew angry at his peaceful ways and basically demanded that he leave or they'd kill them all. Rather than see his people killed, he hopped into a boat and sailed off into the Pacific, promising to return to his people one day.
There are many variations of the legend found in different cultures and at different times, but all basically follow that outline. Some versions claim that Viracocha was only one of several gods who showed up, and they eventually left after the people got sick of them fighting and drove them away.
As for his/their descriptions, it says that the god had skin like the snow, emerald eyes, a long white beard, and flawless white robes. Now, that could be translated as "caucasian", or it could be translated as simply meaning pure. The people who believed these legends lived in a time when the only truly clean thing they ever dealt with was snow (pure white), and the most valuable gem was emerald. Since the earliest versions of Viracocha describe him as the god of the sky, and since pure snow comes from the sky, it's very possible that their description of him had absolutely nothing to do with white people in Europe.
Thanks again, Blam.
Oh you sillies! Don't you know that it was aliens from outer space that built it. Haven't you kept up with the books of ERIC VAN DANAGAN?
Chariots of the Gods and all that Jazz!
Yep! outer space people did it!
Sarcasm off.
Then the last paragraph says, No evidence to prove any of these "theories", then, "who were THESE white men and why did they build Tiahuanaco."
I would guess the Indians down there as the white men were only "theory", "tradition", and "legend". There, I solved this complicated case for those idiot scientists.
As his last (?) project, Heyerdahl was in the Andes somewhere, investigating a known but obscure site with a bunch of pyramids. Heyerdahl's excavations on Easter Island in the 1950s turned up a statue (shown in "Aku-Aku" I think) that was an early ancestor to the famous statues of that place, and also has affinities to art of Tiahuanaco.
There was a claim that the plaza at Tiahuanaco was built to align with (I think) the sunrise at the equinox, but that the alignment was only valid about 17,000 years ago. That is very poor methodology, obviously, since there is no inscription or carved illustration showing that intent. That's my usual complaint for most archaeoastronomical claims. The site is obviously not 17,000 years old.
Surviving stonework was set without mortar (a common technique in PreColumbian America), but there are also carved channels to bridge across the tops of many of the stones; metal joiners were either pounded in to the holes, or molten metal poured in to fill the channels. The same technique was used here and there in pharaonic Egypt.
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I thought that Quetzalcoatl was a feathered, winged serpent!
Mark
I wonder if deep ocean current (set and drift) could be calculated for period around 200 A.D.
I doubt it's changed in such a short geographic period of time.
Do a google for Pedro Cieza de León. He seems to be the one who discovered and gave the earlier accounts.
NFP
Thought you might find this interesting, considering the book you were reading.
Interesting. I have read that Spaniards encountered white people in South America, they had red hair and light skin. I would not be surprised if Indians were actually White. Many of those Indians I have seen look Caucasian based on facial features. I know Mayans, Mapuches, and Incas have the same rate of Rh negative blood as Basques and Celts. It would not surprise me if they are related to them.