“So how did they do it?”
“Doesn’t it look,” Gamarra asks, “like they worked with the stone when it was soft?” He runs his hand along the curves and angles of a polygonal joint. “Like butter? So they could mold everything together?”
Suddenly all becomes clear. The strange shapes I’m seeing in the rock would be easy, indeed effortless, to create if these blocks were made of something of the consistency of room-temperature butter instead of cold, hard limestone. Then as well as molding them together to create this massive jigsaw puzzle effect, the tip of a table-knife could be used to gouge out the shallow scallops and the back of a spoon would serve to make the hollows.
It’s an attractive idea and I don’t have to buy into Gamarra’s theories about orbits and gravity in order to explore it further. There are other ways of explaining the patterns. For example, the technology of a lost civilization might have been up to the challenge of softening rock so that it could be worked like butter. Perhaps heat was involved? An intriguing study by the Institute of Tectonics and Geophysics of the Russian Academy of Sciences, working in cooperation with Peru’s Ministry of Culture, produced evidence that the limestone of the Sacsayhuaman megaliths was at some point subjected to temperatures in excess of 900 degrees centigrade and possibly as high as 1100 degrees centigrade.
When the Russian researchers went to the quarries where the blocks are believed to have been cut, they found the natural limestone filled with tiny organic fossils. This is what you would expect, since limestone is a sedimentary rock that forms under ancient seas and consists largely of the remains of tiny shells and the micro-skeletons of other marine organisms. Strangely, when samples from the Sacsayhuaman megaliths were assayed by the researchers they confirmed that the rock was indeed limestone of “high density.”8 However there were:
no obvious fossils and organic remains in it, but only clearly visible fine-grained structure.9
Their conclusion was that the blocks had been subjected to intense heat between the time when they were quarried and the time when they were placed into the wall and that this heat was sufficient to reduce the fossils to indeterminate fine-grained structure:
Of course we need more detailed researches and analysis in order to estimate the real reason for the thermal effects on the studied limestone … But the fact remains the fact—recrystallization of biogenic siliceous limestone into microcrystalline siliceous limestone. The result of this process we can see in the material forming the wall polygonal blocks of Sacsayhuaman. In normal nature conditions this process is absolutely impossible.10
“Some magic presided over its construction…”
Jesus Gamarra and I continue our exploration by climbing the stairways through the lines of the megalithic walls until we reach the slope above and can approach the dilapidated ruins littering the hilltop. “These,” says Gamarra, indicating the ruins, “are examples of what was done in the Ukun Pacha period—the work of the Incas.” Some of it, he makes clear, for example the structure of three concentric circles of walls, was very nicely done. The Incas called it Muyuc Marca, he tells me. It was a tower that once rose to over 30 meters in height and was built as an imperial residence for the Emperor—whose title was “the Inca.” Only later, and by extension, did the entire nation become “the Incas.”
Gamarra’s argument is that in buildings like Muyuc Marca we are looking at the finest results the Incas were capable of. Yet these results are so patently inferior to the megaliths—and so different—that they must obviously be accepted as the work of another culture.
Curiously, although such ideas are regarded as heresy by archaeologists today, this was not the case when the Andes first came under serious scientific scrutiny in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. For example, the great geographer Sir Clements Markham, who traveled extensively in Peru and wrote the classic study The Incas of Peru, states that “the Incas knew nothing” of the origins of Sacsayhuaman:
Garcilaso refers to towers, walls, and gates built by the Incas, and even gives the names of the architects; but these were later defenses built within the great cyclopean fortress. The outer lines must be attributed to the megalithic age. There is nothing of the kind which can be compared to them in any other part of the world.11
The “Garcilaso” mentioned by Markham is the chronicler Garcilaso Inca de la Vega, the son of a Spanish conquistador and an Inca princess, a heritage that gave him unique access to genuine Inca traditions, particularly since he was born and brought up in Cuzco and spoke Quechua, the language of the Incas, as his mother tongue. Had the megalithic elements of Sacsayhuaman been recent work, done in the century before Garcilaso’s birth, there should have been fresh and clear memories, even eye-witness accounts, of so magnificent an achievement. But Garcilaso reports nothing of the sort and instead can only offer magic as an explanation for what he describes as “an even greater enigma than the seven wonders of the world.” Here is what he wrote about Sacsayhuaman in his Royal Commentaries:
Its proportions are inconceivable when one has not actually seen it; and when one has looked at it closely and examined it attentively, they appear to be so extraordinary that it seems as though some magic had presided over its construction; that it must be the work of demons, instead of human beings … If we think, too, that this incredible work was accomplished without the help of a single machine, is it too much to say that it represents an even greater enigma than the seven wonders of the world? How can we explain the fact that these Peruvian Indians were able to split, carve, lift, carry, hoist and lower such enormous blocks of stone, which are more like pieces of a mountain than building stones, and that they accomplished this, as I said before, without the help of a single machine or instrument? An enigma such as this one cannot be easily solved without the help of magic.12
Are we looking, yet again, at the handiwork of the Magicians of the Gods? Remembering that the great temple of Edfu in Upper Egypt was dedicated to the god Horus, who was sometimes depicted as a falcon and sometimes as a lion, it is intriguing to discover that the very name “Sacsayhuaman” means Falcon (specifically “Satisfied Falcon”). Furthermore, it has long been recognized that Sacsayhuaman forms part of a large geoglyph, once visible from surrounding mountain peaks, in which it combines with the oldest quarters of Cuzco to form the shape of an immense feline—a puma, the closest creature in the Americas to an old world lion. The river Tullumayo (now diverted underground where it passes through the city) used to serve as the spine of this ancient lion. The torso was the spit of land between the Tullamayo to the east and the river Huatnay (now also underground) to the west. Sacsayhuaman is still recognizable as the head of the lion. The zig-zag walls, that Jesus Gamarra attributes to the second (Uran Pacha) episode of civilization in the Andes, outline the upper side of its snout and muzzle, with the snout facing due west, the direction of the equinox sunset, just as the Great Sphinx of Giza faces due east, the direction of the equinox sunrise.13
Figure 62: The Cuzco-Sacsayhuaman “puma.”
There are traditions, supported by some modern excavations, of a network of tunnels under the Sphinx where mysterious treasures lie concealed.14 There are virtually identical traditions—again supported by recent excavations—of a labyrinth of enormously long tunnels under the head of the Sacsayhuaman lion “into which people descend to be lost forever, or to emerge, gibbering, mad, clutching items of treasure.”15
Before we leave Sacsayhuaman, Jesus Gamarra takes me to a very strange place a few hundred meters to the northeast of the megalithic walls, where a narrow stairway with a dozen steps appears to have been molded—not cut—into the midst of a massive boulder 20 feet high and as many wide. The stairway would only have been visible from above when it was made, but the boulder has been split into two parts—by an earthquake, Gamarra thinks—with one side standing upright and the other leaning away from it at an angle of about 40 degrees, thus exposing the steps which we approach from ground level. At the point where the lowe
st of the steps would originally have touched the earth, Gamarra shows me the entrance to what looks like a deep, dark hole, now filled up with slabs of rock. “It’s a tunnel,” he tells me. “It goes under the ground all the way to Cuzco, but the government blocked the entrance to stop people exploring it.”
Civilizing mission
Over the next few days Jesus Gamarra shows me more of the evidence behind his theory. Indeed now that I’ve understood his reasoning, I can see examples everywhere.
In downtown Cuzco—the name of the city means “the navel of the earth” in the Quechua language of the Incas16—he takes me to the ancient temple known as the Coricancha, which was converted into a cathedral after the Spanish conquest. The temple was used by the Incas, indeed it was central to their sacred life, but Gamarra does not believe that the Incas built it. In his view, though they undertook some repairs and added some minor constructions of their own, the bulk of the polished, precise, sharply angled gray granite stonework is from the Uran Pacha (“second world”) period and thus predates the Incas by thousands of years. He’s reluctant to commit to a timescale, but suggests that the Coricancha was originally raised up “more than 20,000 years ago” in order to venerate an even earlier Hanan Pacha (“first world”) monolithic site—the original “uncovered navel stone” from which the city derives its name.17
The Incas preserved a tradition, passed down to us by Garcilaso Inca de la Vega, concerning the foundation of Cuzco. It seems that some sort of cataclysm had affected the world, some sort of disaster, and the inhabitants of the Andes had fallen into a very lowly state. Garcilaso was told by his own uncle, an Inca nobleman, that the people of that far-off time “lived like wild beasts, with neither order nor religion, neither villages nor houses, neither fields nor clothing … They lived in grottoes and caves and, like wild game, fed upon grass and roots, wild fruits, and even human flesh … Seeing the condition they were in, our father the Sun was ashamed for them, and he decided to send one of his sons and one of his daughters from heaven to earth” to bring them the gifts of civilization and to teach them “to obey his laws and precepts … to build houses and assemble together in villages.”18
This royal couple—for, like Isis and Osiris in Egypt they were brother and sister as well as husband and wife—traveled the land carrying a golden rod given to them by the Sun God, who instructed them to plunge it into the earth at various points until they found a place where it would disappear at one thrust and there they were to establish their court. Finally, “the Inca and his bride entered into Cuzco valley. There [at a spot called Cuzco Cara Urumi, the Uncovered Navel Stone] they tried their rod and not only did it sink into the earth, but it disappeared entirely … Thus our imperial city came into existence.”19
There is an exact parallel here to the story of the Zoroastrian patriarch Yima, recounted in Chapter Seven, who was given a golden poniard by a god and who likewise plunged it into the earth as the founding act of a civilization.
And what a civilization it was that flowered in the Andes! Certainly the extraordinary accomplishment of the giant edifices of the Coricancha seems to suggest the application of more than ordinary skills and abilities. The huge granite blocks are so finely cut—Gamarra insists they were molded into shape—that the towering inner chambers look more like the parts of some gigantic, sophisticated machine than of a temple. Adding to this impression are the complicated series of grooves, channels, holes and niches indented into several of the blocks, giving them the appearance of printed circuit boards from which the circuitry has been removed, leaving only empty tracks.
After spending some hours inside the Coricancha, Gamarra takes me outside into the neighboring Loreto Street which he promises will provide a particularly graphic demonstration of his arguments. It’s a narrow alley bounded by high walls and in these walls, surmounted by sections of modern plasterwork, four distinctly different styles of stone masonry are visible. Of these, Gamarra says, two are Inca, Ukun Pacha, one is from the colonial period around the seventeenth or eighteenth century, and one dates back to the Uran Pacha period.
Along a large part of one side of the street there are granite blocks that are every bit as fine and beautifully fitted as those inside the Coricancha. Indeed, this section of the wall is the exterior elevation of one of the Coricancha’s large chambers, and therefore, according to Gamarra, is from the Uran Pacha period. The joints between the blocks are so thin, and yet so complex, with interlocking elements, that they do indeed seem molded together. In addition—and he has previously shown me examples of this at Sacsayhuaman as well—there is a curious glassy sheen around the joints, which he believes is evidence of “vitrification caused by exposure to intense heat.” He makes a convincing case that what we’re looking at is different from the normal shine that passers-by might impart to the stone by rubbing and touching it over the centuries. Indeed the “vitrified” elements—and I make no claim that this is what they are—form a clear skin over the underlying blocks that is particularly evident where areas have been damaged or broken.
Beside the courses of Uran Pacha blocks, though not rising to the same height, are others that look superficially similar but that, on closer examination, prove to be much more crudely made with obvious tool marks, no glassy sheen and yawning gaps between some of the joints. “Good Ukun Pacha work,” comments Gamarra. “Made by the Incas. They were doing their best to imitate the Uran Pacha style, but they couldn’t quite succeed and their efforts got poorer and poorer.”
He indicates four courses of irregular cobbles higher up with wide spaces between the joints filled by adobe. “Colonial period,” he says.
Finally he takes me to the other side of the street to show me a long section of dry-stone wall. The cobbles have been subjected to a certain amount of shaping, but are clumsily and unevenly fitted together. There’s no adobe in the gaping joints. “Made by the Incas,” says Gamarra.
“And what’s the opinion of the archaeologists?” I ask.
A grin. “They recognize the colonial work, but they’ve fooled themselves into believing that everything else was done by the Incas. They are so convinced there was no earlier, more advanced civilization here, that they’re blind to the huge differences between the Uran Pacha blocks and the Inca workmanship.”
“I suppose the fact that the Incas themselves sometimes attempted to imitate the Uran Pacha style—at least in that section over there—makes things more complicated?”
“More complicated, yes. But still they should be able to see. Such profound changes in the quality of workmanship, especially when examples like this are found all over the region, should give the hint that different cultures were involved.”
Sacred valley
If the focus around the Coricancha is the fine megalithic work that Gamarra associates with the Uran Pacha period, there are many other structures in the area that he sees as pure Hanan Pacha—the oldest phase of Andean civilization, where the work in stone is entirely monolithic. Several great outcrops of bedrock have been completely refashioned into bizarre complexes of steps, terraces and alcoves. At Qenko, one such outcrop a little way beyond Sacsayhuaman, there are multiple snake-like grooves and channels winding their way down the sides of a mystic dome filled with caves, ledges, passageways and hidden niches. On the very top, again carved—or molded—from the raw stone, is an oval protrusion surmounted by a stubby double prong. There are also the outlines of various animals—a puma, a condor, a llama—and yet more terraces and steps leading nowhere.
Figure 63
We go on to another sculpted outcrop a hundred meters tall known locally as the Temple of the Moon. At the base of the mound there’s a dark, mysterious, folded slit that leads within, along the edge of which, at about shoulder height, emerges the sinuous sculpted form of a serpent with a strange bulbous head. To the right of the entrance the rock takes distinctive shape as the head of an elephant, complete with trunk, eyes and ears. About the serpent there’s no doubt, but is the elephant a
n example of what psychologists call pareidolia—the human tendency to see meaningful shapes and patterns that don’t really exist? Or did some cunning artist in ancient times deliberately set out to sculpt the appearance of an elephant emerging from the rock? If the latter, then we have a problem with history, since the last species related to elephants that could be portrayed here—Cuvieronius—became extinct in South America at least six thousand years ago, while the Incas who are supposed to have made the Temple of the Moon date back less than a thousand years.
I’ll have more to say about the serpent, and the “elephant,” later. Meanwhile, as I stoop down through the slit in the rock to enter the temple I notice another carved stone animal—a puma, this time, and somewhat damaged—at my feet.
Now I’m inside what feels like the womb of the mountain, and a soft velvety gloom envelops me. The cave is five meters wide with an organic, meandering feel to it, but to my left a couple of deep alcoves have been cut into the wall, while twenty meters ahead a shaft of brilliant, golden light finds its way in through some aperture in the rocky mound above and illuminates a stone plinth about a meter and a half high with two large steps. I climb up onto the plinth and sit there, my back resting against the living rock, deep in thought.
Gamarra says this place is from the most ancient Hanan Pacha epoch, that it has nothing to do with the Incas, and that it long predates the Uran Pacha period that was responsible for the megaliths of Sacsayhuaman and the stunning, high-precision architecture of the Coricancha. Looking around, taking in the atmosphere, I’m more and more inclined to agree with him. The people who made this cave temple were not the same as those who made the Coricancha. It’s not just different building styles that are involved in each of the different periods. It’s a different ethic and a different spiritual heartbeat.