- Graham's quest takes him to Mexico's ancient pyramids, to explore the tradition of Quetzalcoatl, the "Civilizing Hero" who showed up after the Great Flood to teach humanity the ways of civilization.
- Graham Hancock travels to Mexico in his search for a lost civilization. Mexico has fertile valleys and simmering volcanoes. Mexico has the oldest inhabited city called Cholula. Spanish Conquistadors arrived in Cholula in 1519 AD. The Spanish victors massacred the entire living population of the city and all of their culture. But they could not erase everything. Spanish built a church on top of a hill, but it wasn't a hill. It was the great pyramid of Cholula.
It rose to at least 213 feet or 65 meters. It was dedicated to the Mexican God of Rains and Floods named Tlaloc. It was made from mud and bricks. It measured 400 by 400 meters at its base, but not as tall as the pyramids of Giza. This is the largest monument created by any civilization anywhere. The Pyramid was completed around 1200 AD. But when the archaeologists cut into the structure, they found beautiful murals depicting mythological scenes. These murals were painted on almost 8 kilometers of tunnels found inside the pyramid. They find that the latest pyramid is simply the newest in a whole series of pyramids built on top of each other. They trace the oldest Pyramid to be from 500 BC, measuring 120 square meters and 17 meters high.
The fact that the original architects chose a pyramid structure is not an accident at all. The Cholula Pyramid started with a sacred spring at its heart, just as with the pyramid at Gunung Padang. The same is with the sub-surface chamber within the great pyramid at Giza (this was the first sacred place on the Giza Plateau), Pyramid of the sun in Teotihuacan sits on top of a natural cavern. All pyramids were built to mark a place that was already considered sacred by the locals.
The Pyramid of Cholula was full of mines and caves within it. It was rumored to have an inner chamber but was never published or excavated. The inner chamber was oriented towards the setting sun on the summer solstice. The Great Pyramid of Giza was built to align precisely with the true astronomical North. How could pyramid builders around the world have so much in common.
Mainstream archaeologists believe that all civilizations built pyramids as that is the easiest shape to build a tall structure without modern building techniques. But Hancock argues that pyramid shaped buildings all over the world have a cultural significance associated to death, and this cannot be a coincidence. To Hancock this looks like an extra ordinary master plan. He argues that maybe all civilizations had a common root, from which they grew and flourished.
According to the natives in Cholula the pyramids were built by a race of giants. The giants were destroyed in the great flood. Only 7 survived the flood. One of them was an architect named Xelhua, who went to Cholula and built a massive artificial mountain out of bricks and dedicated it to the worship of the Rain God. Hancock argues that the giant was perhaps not a physical giant, but an intellectual giant, whose race was lost to the annals of time.
Hancock travels to Textcotzingo in Mexico, which is an ancient Aztec complex. He encounters a pyramid again. Aztecs built a remarkable network of gardens and pool on top of the pyramid, fed by cleverly constructed aqueducts. The aqueducts carried water down from a reservoir on top of the pyramid. The pyramid was also dedicated to the God Tlaloc as at Cholula. Hancock argues that the Aztecs only built on top of what was already constructed by a much older civilization. The erosion on some part of the pyramid resembles work of thousands of years by the elements.
Textcotzingo is a Pre-Aztec site that was re-purposed and reused. A nearby statue of Tlaloc dates back to 700 AD, much before the Aztecs, which means that Tlaloc was worshiped by ancient civilizations much before the Aztecs. The worship of Tlaloc goes back to prehistoric Mexico. The myth tells the tale of Quetzalcoatl (The Feathered Serpent), a stranger who landed in Mexico after the great floods. He taught the locals how to grow crops and domesticate animals. He gave them laws and taught them architecture, astronomy and arts. He was worshiped as a deity. He was ousted by the followers of the Mexican God of War.
The same story is heard all around the world in cultures that had no connection to Mexico. In Greek it is the Titan Prometheus who shares the secret of fire with humans after the great flood. In South American Andes, they talks of a robed and bearded figure named Viracocha, who emerged from a great lake, and taught the locals to create amazing works of masonry. Hancock finds these similarities hard to ignore. He believes these are accounts of survivors of an advanced civilization, lost at the end of the last Ice Age.
Hancock travels to Xochicalco for further evidence. Xochicalco was built in 7th century AD and has 2 large pyramids one dedicated to Tlaloc and the other to Quetzalcoatl. The pyramid of Quetzalcoatl has glyph that tell the story of Quetzalcoatl and his arrival in Mexico. It says that Quetzalcoatl comes from a land that was destroyed in a cataclysm and post that he came to Mexico as a founder of MesoAmerican civilization. Historians argue that the pyramid is 1300 years old, and there was no cataclysm at that time, but Hancock believes that the pyramid is just telling a story that is much older. The pyramid is simply a true record of a forgotten past.
Geologists confirm that there was an ancient apocalypse at some point around 12,800 years ago. But where was the lost civilization based.
Contribute to this page
Suggest an edit or add missing content