mch

THE FOUR MOONS 167
Does that prove that trade existed between these ancient cultures,
or is it just proof that both cultures had common roots?
Now that we know the exact dimensions of the cubit, the foot,
and the finger, it is interesting to go back to the andesite pillars
of the western gallery and try to find out what the dimensions
there teU us. It does not make any sense to give dimensions in
our metric system, because our modem units of measurement do
not give the nimibers 7, 9, 11, 12, and 13, numbers that fit exactly
in the layout of the temple to reflect the astronomical values we
are interested in. Here are nine dimensions, all in cubits, that can
simultaneously help to explain the irregularity of the spaces between
pillars and prove that at the time these pillars were set
there was in the sky a moon much larger and much closer than
our present one. Since of the eleven pillars, the outer two are
there only to frame the field of vision, lefs look at the nine possible
combinations of the nine spaces between the inner pillars
and each time add the pillar's own width to the distance. Thus
we obtain the following measurements in cubits: 20^/4, 19, 19, 18,
i8i/4, 17V4, 19V4, 17^, 19V4.
We now have seven different intervals, two of them repeated
twice, probably to measure something very big, like
a moon so
close to earth tibat it would vary in its apparent diameter because
of the elliptic path it was describing in the sky. But it does not
take long to discover that if an observer places himself 170 cubits
from the pillars, the angles from there represented by the above
intervals read, starting from the south, 7°, 6°4o', 6^40', 6°2o',
6°3o', 6°, 6°5o', 6° 10', 6°5o', giving a total for the observation
field of 59°. The average apparent diameter of the moon at that
time must have been 6Vi°, or 11.68 per cent bigger than the diameter
that we calculated from the laws of celestial mechanics
for our present moon, namely, 5.82°. We can conclude that the
moon of that period was 12 per cent larger than the present one.
We have yet to talk about an additional problem tied in with
the theory of the four moons, the age of Tiahuanaco. One way to
estimate its age would be to use the climatic cycle of 21,000
years that we discussed when we talked about ice ages in Chapter
1. This cycle is the time period needed for the date of the
equinox to arrive at the same moment when the sun is at its
perigee—the point closest to earth. If we want to believe the