Flim-Flam! Psychics, ESP, Unicorns, and Other Delusions - James Randi [70]
Let me explain these marvels to Mr. von Daniken. (If you are a high school student who already knows the answers, please indulge me a moment.) First: Yes, Erich, the Sumerians also had fixed stars. In fact, they had essentially the same stars we have now. And they had planets. And they had eyes to see them, so they recorded them. So what? The Babylonians knew about the saros, the period between eclipses, and thus they were able to predict them. And they, too, wrote down their observations. Clever, yes, but not supernatural. As for the lions and camels, you should know that the Marcahuasi drawings are of pumas and llamas, animals indigenous to South America and still found there in great numbers. What 10,000 years ago has to do with it, I cannot tell, nor can you. It is an impressive and nicely rounded figure, however. And rocks can be inscribed at 12,500 feet just as well as at sea level. And on and on it goes.
This man has the nerve to ask us, "How is anyone going to explain these and many other puzzles to us?" Easily, Erich, easily.
In his excellent expose of the von Daniken fribble, Ian Ridpath says, in summing up, "It seems pointless to continue." But there is one important failing evident in all of von Daniken's writings that should be made clear: He is simply unable to admit or conceive of the fact that early man was capable of soaring visions and the technical and artistic ability to create the fortress of Sacsahuaman, the Great Pyramid of Egypt, and other wonders without assistance from outer space! But he at no point calls to our attention the miracle known as Chartres Cathedral, the Parthenon in Greece, or even Stonehenge—that most remarkable astronomical construction—because these wonders are European, built by people he expects to have the intelligence and ability to do such work. He cannot conceive of our brown and black brothers having the wit to conceive or the skill to build the great structures they did leave behind. Instead, to satisfy what appear to be his personal prejudices, he invents some sort of divine/extraterrestrial/supernatural intervention that he maintains was necessary to enable the inferior races to put stone upon stone or place paint upon a cave wall.
I personally feel very damaged and insulted by this attitude, and though it is an observation with which I cannot expect my reader to identify, I must mention that years ago—after having read numerous descriptions of the fortress of Sacsahuaman that guards the Inca capital city of Cuzco, with its marvelously constructed walls of stone—I finally had the opportunity to visit the site. I arose at dawn, walked the long, narrow pathway to the hill overlooking Cuzco, and saw the sun strike the cyclopean sides of this extraordinary structure. I stood in awe of the men of long ago who not only could conceive of such a project but who built it with prodigious effort and dedication. Could they have known, or even suspected, that someone from an era so far removed from theirs in time, culture, and technology would stand transfixed by their skill and audacity in giving birth to such a wonder? I literally burst into tears as I experienced a sense of reverence for those workers of miracles.
Try as he may, von Daniken cannot diminish the works created by greater men than he. For every giant, there is a little man to kick at his ankles. But the great accomplishments of long ago remain.
We are told by the sensationalists that beyond this barred window in Cuzco is the entrance to the Caves of Gold used by the Incas. In reality, a storeroom of the Church of St. Dominic is there.
Father Carlo Crespi, as photographed by the author in 1966 in Cuenca, Ecuador, among some