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The Impossible Libraries

During the summer of 2011 I made a four-month trip to explore and film the heights and jungles of Peru and Bolivia, and I found a clue to the existence of the pre-Columbian metallic libraries. It was a matter of finding other clues that hinted at the existence of information deposits, of a certain form of writing, to verify or refute the legendary aspects of the Tayos, to find a final truth.

Javier Sierra wrote about my explorations in the magazine Más Allá de la Ciencia (Beyond science). He said, “The idea that in some remote spot of the planet, hidden under a mountain, or in the passages of a pyramid, the lost story of the origins of our species is hidden is an old and powerful archetype.” This coincided with the Mormon doctrine that golden plates were the perfect media used by ancient civilizations to record their history.

Sierra wrote that my expeditions were “a step forward for that archetype of the lost library. I have the impression that in this case, like in the searches for the Holy Grail, the important thing is not reaching the goal, but continuing the search. The path, not fate, will teach us the lesson.”

Sierra was one of the few authors who believed that finding the halls and libraries was important. He knew they all hide clues to the truth of those protohistoric times that have been forgotten in the chronicles of our ancestors.

Two Bolivian friends, Antonio Portugal Arvirzu and Marcelo Saiduni, who are members of a group doing state-of-the-art archaeological studies with an emphasis on the Aymara culture, talked to me about a sixteenth-century book based on plates reconstructed from other, more ancient ones found on the islands of Lake Titicaca. This book mentions two hundred drawers with golden and silver plates, engraved stones, and slates filled with hieroglyphs with countless objects, all reflecting the high level of culture and civilization of these ancient people.

These manuscripts had been compiled by a sixteenth-century Augustinian priest, Brother Baltasar de Sales. He classified these materials found in tunnels that were similar to underground mining ducts, describing as them “hieratic and demotic plates and stones.” In the Aymara language, these records were known as the kkellkas and kipos, which were later used by the pre-Incas and Incas. These “hieratic plates,” made of thick, rustic materials, dated to two thousand years before the Flood.

At these sites Baltasar de Sales and his researchers also found sculptures that, like the plates, depicted humans, mountains, rivers, and land and sea monsters. Many of the recurring topics in the engravings showed Noah’s Ark next to the sun, the moon, and the fixed stars. The year 2158 AM (or anno mundi, a calculation based on biblical accounts of the creation of the world) appears in some plates; this was the year of the death of Noah’s son Shem.

In de Sales’s book, the second age describes Hebrew plates and sculptures from 2530 AM, when the Israelites left Midian. These have representations of the tau, a T-shaped cross with a metal serpent. They also show the golden calf at the foot of Mount Sinai; the IHS Christogram of the Jesuits; a tabernacle with cherubs, bells, and drawings; and sacred musical instruments.

These themes are mixed with Aymara symbols and legends, giving birth to the religious subculture of the gentiles,^*10 who lived in the south and in the western Andean mountains, as well as in the north of Chile and Argentina.

De Sales also says there is a third age that is shown on sixteen divine plates whose motifs were the same as those symbols adored in the Middle East until 80 CE. The plates seem to have been made by the local natives under the influence of the Catholic priests and friars. De Sales’s obscure book of the eighteenth century mentions a total of 111 talismans and oracles of the Incan Empire with hieroglyphs that cover the three ages. But the question remains: where are all these artifacts?

THE SACRED LINES TO THE ORIGIN

To find more answers, I decided to embark on another, smaller expedition to the place where it all began, where the Incas were supposed to have originated: Pacaritambo. Bernabé Cobo had described it in 1653, when the Spaniards had occupied and dominated the Peruvian mountains for over one hundred years. Later, in 1913, it was studied by George Eaton.

Over the years, adobe superstructures with stone walls thought to have been used by the pre-Incas, Incas, and Aymaras have been found. But about five generations later, scholars would find that here was the evident origin of the ceque system: lines that connected pre-Incan and Incan sanctuaries, plazas, and native communities. In 1585, Juan Polo de Ondegardo had listed hundreds of these systems that “had to be destroyed.”

The Jesuits had warned the Crown of this invisible but powerful network. Another regent, Cristobal de Albornoz (1582), had defined these ceque systems as “diabolical lines.” In ancient Quechua they were called checan ceque or direct consanguinity, as well as pallcarec ceque, transverse or collateral lines, which meant that the lines were connected not only to the geography but also to the clans. The invisible power of the blood lineage was a secret and invisible language for the Spaniards, and the ignorance of the Spaniards never cracked the legacy and mystery of the Andean peoples.

One of these lines reached the Temple of the Moon, or the Palace of the Virgins of the Sun, in Coatí island in Lake Titicaca. These constructions had typical subterranean halls, and were made up of simple, interconnected rooms with multiple doorposts. This Coati temple overlaps with the creation myth of the pre-Inca, Inca, and Aymara, which states that the god Viracocha made the sun (analogous to the first Inca) and the moon (analogous to the first Coya, a name used for a mythical royal couple) emerge from Lake Titicaca.

In the sacred valley of the Incas, and to the southwest, where these cultures were born, we found huacas^*11 of carved stones that corroborate these straight-line projections that go from Antisuyo to Chinchaysuyo. The directions of the lines were marked with the help of natural or man-made signs throughout the ceques—from three to fifteen—located as close as possible to the directions. These were considered sacred and have been called huacas since ancient times. The lines never crossed each other; they changed direction following a zigzag through the landscape and natural surroundings. Evidence of these lines is also confirmed by artifacts from the Inca ritual of the Capac Cocha, ritual sacrifices performed on these sacred lines. The Inca priests traveled in a straight line visiting sanctuaries of the empire. These lines could and can be re-created from the vantage points toward the horizon, even with the confusion of the overpopulated city of Cusco. From Cusco, the cultural epicenter, the Incas moved in all directions.

Every myth begins with the original ancestors, who were gods or kings from mythical kingdoms. These original ancestors were born outside of the territory the elite group would later control. This appearance, or birth, outside of the dominated region, established the ancestral king and his descendants as foreigners. Anthropologists Graeber and Sahlins explain, “The governors don’t even come from the same clay as the aboriginal people: they come from the Heavens, or from a different ethnic group. Royalty is always foreign.”

THE CAVE OF ORIGIN

The pre-Incas and the Incas continued a more primordial system of following invisible lines that connect towns and sacred sites along the Andes. There is a very important association between solstitial sites and towns and religious or artistic sites, where we found constructions or stones or boulders with inscriptions.

The caves have always been a place of gestation. Thus, when we think of the Tayos, it is interesting to find connections with the ancestors of the Andean cultures. The gods created men in the depths of the oceans—where silence and darkness also reign—and in caverns and the depths of the Earth.

Manco Capac, the founding king of the Incas, went down to Cusco, fighting against his wife/sister, but he emerged from a cave east of Pacaritambo, 1.2 miles toward the hills known as Tamputoco or Tombotoco. The discoverer of Machu Picchu, Hiram Bingham III, passed through in 1912, but he did not describe the most important point. Manco Capac and the dynasty after him lived in Puma Orco, a sacred point. Legend talks about demigod ancestors of the Inca at Puma Orco, where the lines pass, protect, and radiate toward the south.

We have found pre-Inca ashlars along the south and northern Andes. These ashlars, which seem to have been made by being dissolved or softly sculpted, almost polished by hand, could soften and shape other granite or volcanic stones and were surrounded by circles and receptacles where water accumulated, working as a mirror for the sky.

It is said the internal chamber of these hill sanctuaries was used as an oracle by Manco Capac himself, and there was a niche as a window in one of the entrances. I could also observe—thanks to my young guide—the pool where Manco Capac’s wife bathed; its edge was soft and curved.

Here began the mythical route of the founding Inca king. This pilgrimage road led to the Huanacaure sanctuary (close to Cusco), and then continued through the valley of the river to Yaurisque-Huaynacancha-Maukallaqta. Maukallaqta is newer than Puma Orco and is located on the Huaynacancha River. This region is a tributary of the Yaurisque River and on the other side of this river, there is an outcrop-sanctuary of the Purma Orco or Puma Orko.

The Spanish explorer Sarmiento de Gamboa talked about these regions and the legendary feats of the Inca Yupanqui Pachacuti. The same oracle existed in the town of Pacaritambo, with idols and stone statues. These sacred places are called paqarinas. Although these may have existed before Inca times, they developed fully under the Incan empire. According to Incan mythology, the creator god, Viracocha, ordered Manco Capac to emerge from the cave in Tamputoco.

THE MYSTERY OF THE NAME MANCO CAPAC

The name of the mysterious descendant of the sun and the moon, who became the first Inca, is fairly important. Mango or Manco is a name we also find in Mongolia; it is the name given by Marco Polo to Kublai Khan, brother of Genghis Khan. The Third Khan died in 1257, murdered in a place called Ho-Cheu (China), and he was succeeded by his second brother, Kublai, who took Tibet by storm. The Chinese pronounced the g very strongly, as in the word “bengal” that is also said “penkola.” Yet it is interesting to note that ancient Peruvians had no g in their language, so it is not a stretch to say the g became a c.

There are other similarities between the ancient Mongolians and Incas. For example, the Incas and Mongolians both worshipped the same bird, the owl; in fact, the owl is said to have saved Genghis Khan’s life.

In the portrait of the first Inca, Mango Capac, there is a representation of the sun, and over his armor-covered shoulder, a headpiece with sunrays. The exact time when the Mongolians started embellishing their weapons with the sun and the lion is not really known. It is also not known whether this had an astronomical interpretation, possibly with the constellation of Leo. In Taimingzing, in Mongolia, there are two cyclopean constructions shaped like an octagon, with large stone lions and turtles on each side. The lion symbol is common in Africa and is also represented by the cougar or leopard in North America and in several South American countries.

Beyond symbols, there are other similarities in names from the royalty or sovereigns of both kingdoms. For example, the Inca Pacha Camac, who was connected to the cult of the Sun and Earth, is the same name as a royal figure or sovereign of the Mongolians and Asians.

From the eighty-three languages of the American continent studied by the scholars Barton and Vater, 170 words are similar to those used by the Mongolians, or the Montchou, Tungouse, Samoyede, Tshoud, Biscayan, Coptics, and those in Congo.

According to the translations collected in Lican, the ancient capital of the Kingdom of Quito, the quipos or quipus were chosen by the Puruays before defeating Manco Capac. Mongolian shares the words quito, kito, and qipu. The North American researcher and explorer John Ranking saw an interrelationship between the Mongolians and the Incan builders of Koricancha, the Temple of the Sun.

In the year 544, the Toltecas were eradicated from their own country, Huc Huc Tlopallan, and they arrived with seven leaders. They settled in Anahuac, where they built the city Tula, the most ancient city in America. A dynasty was founded in 670. There was a famine in 952, which caused another migration to Guatemala and Yucatán. The Tula is also a river in Mongolia; it flows through latitude 48—north of Ama. Legend says Quetzalcoatl walked with the Toltecas and a man called Kuthuku Lama and lived at Tula.

Ranking, who lived in the mid-nineteenth century, left behind many studies of the possible transmigrations from Asia to America. Unfortunately, his work has barely survived.

He was one of the few people to find evidence that the elephants arrived in America before the Conquest, in the thirteenth century, and he offers documents stating that the Mongolians brought them and rode on them to travel from Mexico to Peru.

He also rebuilds the story of the domestication of elephants fifty-eight centuries ago (thirty-five if you create your timeline based on the Deluge) by a culture previous to the Mongolians and the Huns. Only Herodotous talks about them, five centuries before the Common Era.

For 150 centuries the planet ignored the 180 degrees of latitude below the Equator, even if there was some knowledge of the east of Greenland in the Arctic Circle. But if we conclude that nothing was known in the south, under the Tropic of Capricorn, almost half the latitude was waiting to be discovered.

Ahead of many devotees of the wrongly named “fantastic realism,” Ranking collected many stories of arches found in Europe and the United States. He was interested in the deposits found in the Ice Cave in California; in Fingal’s Cave; and in the arch in the Arno valley in Florence, where different species coexisted, such as hippopotamuses, rhinoceroses, elephants, oxen, horses, deer, hyenas, bears, tigers, wolves, mastodons, pigs, tapirs, and beavers. This was repeated all over the planet. Were there other Noahs who realized cataclysmic changes were coming and decided to safeguard the animals for the future, over two thousand years ago? The Muslim Mongolians of the fifteenth century did not suspect the convexity of the planet. If the canopy of the sky were a vase, or a container, and Earth were a string, and if calamities were arrows, and mankind the target of these arrows, and if the almighty god were the archer—though not a roaming one—then Adam’s sons would surely find protection.

In the present period, much of the region in Africa between 10° north latitude and 30° south is blank for the civilized world. A large territory between Tibet and Siberia has been, and still is, imperfectly described. Half of the Earth has not been visited by people with the correct qualifications to communicate knowledge of civilizations, economics and trade, or history.

Timougin, Pisouca’s son, the chief of the Mongolian tribe near the Baikal Lake in Siberia, was finally proclaimed Genghis Khan, or Grand Khan, in 1205 CE. Before the death of his grandson Kublai toward the end of the thirteenth century, the Asian continent was conquered. After the European consternation Japan was invaded, and as a consequence of that storm, the generals and troops that rose up escaped to reach America.

“When the Mongolians arrived,” Ranking writes, “America was a wild territory. Suddenly, two empires were founded with the splendor, ceremony and greatness of the grand Asian sovereigns.” When you travel and explore the Andes there is no doubt there is a heavy oriental influence.

Ranking believed Manco Capac was the son of the Great Khan Kublai and that Moctezuma was the ancestor of the great Mongolian of the Tangut region: Assam.